My One Book Recommendation for the Year: "Cradles of the Reich"

I like to do a wrap-up of my "Top 5" books each year, but this year I struggled to find enough books I was passionate about. I kept making lists and deleting them, then starting over— only one book kept making the list, and I never got to five. So I am going to devote this final blog post of 2022 to the one novel that I read this year that I think you (all of you!) really should read.

As usual, I am not going to choose any of the books I edited this year, though you just might want to check out Gayle Carline's new historical-romantic-fantasy-with-dragons- and-pirates trilogy that starts with Blood Dragon Rising.

I am not going to choose a book that you've already seen over and over in every 2022 Top Ten Books List, nor any book from the Big Five Publishers. I am all about supporting indie publishers, such as Sourcebooks, and their Landmark imprint.

The one book I am recommending that you read is Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn.

Some literary works are blessed to be brought into the world at exactly the right
time; Cradles of the Reich is one such work. This is a novel that completely captures the zeitgeist of a crucial time in human history, by focusing on a very specific slice of life. The lives of three very different women, in this case, who are all are caught up within the machinery of a fascist regime.

The historical era is World War II, and the setting is Heim Hochland maternity home in Bavaria, the headquarters of the Lebensborn project—a Nazi "breeding program" that was designed to create a so-called master race. The echoes of A Handmaid's Tale are plentiful, but this project was truly stranger than fiction, and our ignorance of it is both shocking and dangerous.

Though Cradles of the Reich is not the first book written by Jennifer Coburn, I believe that it is the novel she was born to write. Not only because few authors would have done such excellent research, or cared so deeply about bringing this horrific story to light, but because few people could have crafted such a compelling story, allowing us three all-too human windows into this repellant reality.

What makes this book particularly impressive to this editor/reader is the author's sure hand with expository. For example, when introducing the character of Gundi, a stunningly beautiful young woman, she writes:

"People seemed to know all they needed to when they took in Gundi’s angelic face. Even her one imperfection, the sliver of a gap between her two front teeth, seemed disarmingly appealing. Gundi had enjoyed the attention when she first started to blossom into a woman, but now, by the age of twenty, she was starting to realize that her beauty didn’t give her any actual power but rather the illusion of it. Fewer and fewer people seemed interested in what she had to say these days; they smiled and nodded as she spoke while creating their own version of who they wanted this beautiful girl to be."

This not only captures the backstory of Gundi, but perfectly encapsulates the society in which she's grown up—one where appearances are far more important than actions, where the collective regards banal superficialities as superior to deeper meanings, and where insistently repeated promises can supersede truth (sound familiar to anyone?).

I'd already chosen this book as my 2022 recommendation when the latest spate of highly promoted hate and bigotry hit the morning news. Naturally, that only made me want to rush to get this blog post out sooner.

Ask for Cradles of the Reich at your favorite bookstore and at your local library. If they don't have it, recommend that they get it! Meanwhile, buy it for you and for someone else—maybe as a Hanukkah, Xmas, or solstice gift.

I wish you all the best for the rest of this year, during whatever holidays you celebrate. I hope we all keep writing and reading and celebrating the incredible richness of humanity and the beauty of our world.

Hasta pronto!

Sunrise, Sunset, Sunbelt Books

As most of you may know, I started writing professionally by writing plays and acting in them, which took me from San Diego, to Los Angeles, and then to New York City. In 1989, I re-connected with Russel Redmond, who quickly became my life partner and co-conspirator in all things. For our honeymoon we sailed south to Baja California’s Sea of Cortez. Eventually, we sailed on to Florida and back to San Diego, but we returned on our boat to the Sea in 1996. There we founded the Sea of Cortez Review—an eclectic literary journal of writing about Baja, which I edited and Russel illustrated.  

    That labor of love led me to Sunbelt Publications, where I spent over a decade happily editing, packaging, and marketing their books about Mexico and California. That was fun and challenging, but when I became Editor-in-Chief I started spending more time with grant proposals, P&L statements, and budgets, which meant less time with books and authors. 

  At Sunbelt, I was lucky enough to work with the witty and brilliant short-story writer Daniel Reveles and the esteemed historian Harry W. Crosby, plus Baja buffs Judy Goldstein Botello and Greg Niemann, dry-land plant guru Maureen Gilmer, San Diego historian Richard Carrico, and many more, for over a decade. Not to mention meeting co-workers with whom I became fast friends.

On my own as a freelance editor since 2011, I work directly with authors on their books which continues to be a joy to me. 

    Recently, my old friends, Lisa Gulick and Maria Groschup-Black opted to take over Sunbelt from the retiring Lindsays who founded the company in 1984. With Maria's wife Nichole, and long-time publications manager Debi Young, they are trying to keep this regional publisher and distributor not just afloat, but expanding.

    I can't resist such "quixotic adventures" as my old friend Harry Crosby would say, so I pitched in to help. I am going to be editing a new Baja book, and I am going to be helping their new marketing and promotions intern, Emily, with some crowdfunding for new books, plus doing a bit of social media promotion and marketing when I have the time.

    All this to say that while I am still working with authors and teaching and writing my editing book, I am also returning to something I love—helping new books get published and celebrating their emergence into the world. Stay tuned for more on all this.         Hasta pronto!

So I'm Writing a Book, Among Other Things...

 The non-fiction book is about writing and editing, since I have been doing one since I was five and the other for over twenty-five years. I hope to finish it this year, and publish it next year. I'm thinking it will be short, like 100 pages. I'm pondering quirky titles, like Tips and Tricks from the Editrix. Stand by for more on all that. In the meantime, here's an excerpt, which may or may not be Chapter 1.

First Off, Forget all the Noise and Write

The more we know about writing—what some famous author or writing teacher said or wrote, what the critics seem to like, what our writer's group liked when we shared last month—the harder it becomes to simply write. And I didn’t choose the word simply at random. Most of the time, our first drafts are very simple and clear, lacking subtlety, intriguing plot twists, and sparkling dialogue. We simply get down the gist of the story. The germ of the idea that’s been bugging us when our mind wanders from our open book or screen, and waking us up at night. And that is fine. 

There is time enough to weave more layers into the plot, flesh out the character’s movements and motivations, and make the book’s settings come to life. One day, your characters will begin to talk to each other—if they were not already doing so while you are writing the first draft. When that happens, you'll gain insights that help you to envision and enliven their conversations. 

    Each time we re-read our first draft, we have the opportunity to add elements that clarify the structure or deepen the impact of the text. No first draft I have read (or heard of) ever arrived with all of the compelling complexity of the author’s final draft. And once again, that is perfectly fine.

As far as revising, there is also a time and a place to put on the editor’s visor, to judge and reject words and phrases, to attempt to “omit useless words” as a great editor once said. There is time to employ our computer’s search and replace tools, to carefully count our use (and overuse) of our favorite words, phrases and imagery, along with the mostly unnecessary thought verbs and filter words (more on those later). All of that judgment and consideration has a time, a season as it were, and can take as long as you have the patience for it. 

What I do suggest, and I am far from alone in this opinion, is that you don’t concern yourself with any of the above when writing your first draft. This is because the very act of thinking about the book’s eventual structure, story and character arcs—not to mention grammar, spelling, and punctuation—is usually the kiss of death to creativity. When I write a 500 word essay for publication, I write a slew of words, maybe 1500, trying to get to the heart of what I am “arguing.” Sometimes, when I reread that first draft, I find I have repeated myself a few times, but one of those times (usually the last) is stronger and clearer than the previous iterations. If I tried to just write a “perfect” 500 words, I would spend twice as much time and effort, all to get nowhere new, with the result being 500 words that lie lifelessly on the page, sounding either trite and hackneyed, or stilted and forced.

Here’s my suggestion: When you are writing the first draft, simply write. Save all the thoughts of revision and judgement for a later date. Just “keep your hand moving” as Natalie Goldberg would say; if you do your first drafts by hand, you’ll know what she means. I type my first drafts, so both of my hands keep moving, but you get the point. Keep writing, stop thinking. Just let the words flow. Let characters say and do things you hadn’t yet imagined; let events take place that you never pictured occurring. 

    Refuse to allow your intellectual, know-it-all, left brain, self-doubting, linear, critical mind to interfere in your creative time. See what your unconscious, right brain, big picture, confident, trusting, accepting, and curious mind has to say. See what happens on the page. 

Your characters may surprise you. 

You may surprise yourself. 

Contradictory Characters Come to Life

What makes a written character interesting to readers? There are plenty of answers, of course, from honesty to loyalty to the ability to laugh at oneself. I think all those rank high on the list, but for me, what makes a character feel real is contradictions. If I am reading about a detective who is trying to solve a crime but also has a deep need to keep secrets, even when revealing one of those secrets will help bring a criminal to justice, I find that intriguing. If a character says they are doing everything in their power to help someone, but we see them take actions that clearly impede that assistance, that piques my interest.

This illogical, irrational behavior makes us able to relate to characters because, very simply, contradictions are in our DNA; they are a huge part of what makes us human. We constantly use our big brains to rationalize our behavior, because what we do—not just the actions we take, personally, but our influence and downright manipulation of others’ actions—so often goes against what we have professed to believe or know, and may even be in opposition to what we believe to be true about ourselves. 

That’s why when a character says one thing and does another, or thinks one thing, says another, and does a third, we sit up and take notice. We may or may not empathize, or even sympathize with the actions they take, but we are able to connect with that person on a level that we can’t reach with characters who are so squeaky clean that they don’t even think thoughts they wouldn’t articulate aloud. (Those people may work fine as secondary characters, because we won’t be likely to know their innermost thoughts, anyway, and will have to simply take their actions and words at face value.)

But our protagonist and hopefully, our antagonist as well, should be three-dimensional—living, breathing people who most often reveal their inner yearnings obliquely, not directly; the kind of people who don’t say everything they are thinking at all times, the kind of people we instinctively relate to, because we know them intimately and have been privy to their secrets all of our lives. Our parents, our brothers and sisters, our best friends, ourselves.

So, when your heroine has to make a tough decision between equally compelling arguments—one of which will benefit her more and the other option that is the right thing to do, don’t skimp on the moments when she vacillates. Show the inner struggle before she rises to the occasion and does the right thing (or the wrong thing for the right reason). And if she is required to show courage in the face of danger, don’t skip over the part of her that wants to cut and run, to save her own skin, to protect her precious loved ones at the expense of strangers. Because that is what makes simply “doing the right thing” into something righteous, and what makes a kick-ass fight scene meaningful as well as exciting.

This kind of complicated and contradictory inner life is what makes characters written by skilled authors like Elizabeth Strout, Jennifer Egan, and Lily King—I highly recommend Writers and Lovers, pictured here— so very intriguing and so darned likable, even when what they do and say is not always likable.

We humans are flawed. We are selfish, often defensive, and easily scared by change. In an age of better and better artificial intelligence, those foibles might be the final thing that we can cling to, as proof of our kinship with the rest of the animal kingdom. One thing is for sure, though, our insecurities and our self-doubt, and our willingness to rationalize away our bad choices are all a huge part of what make us—and the people and worlds we create on the page—so very interesting.

Keep writing, keep challenging yourself, keep growing. 
Hasta pronto!

Summer Reading and #1000WordsofSummer

First off, Summer reading has to include the compelling new book from Leslie Johansen Nack, The Blue Butterfly: A Novel of Marion Davies. What could be better beachside or poolside reading than the story of this bright, beautiful, talented and scrappy woman, and her relationship with the (at the time) richest and most powerful man in America? The author has captured her voice to the point where you absolutely believe that Marion is speaking to you, telling her "glad rags" to riches story. 

Another winner for summer is Sunshine Chief by Eric Peterson, which just took home the Silver Medal in Popular Fiction at the 2022 Ben Franklin Awards, sponsored by the Independent Book Publishers Association. The second in the Horace Button Series, which began with The Dining Car, Peterson's second is a whole new genre (mystery), but still just as much fun, with Horace's requisite (lavish) amounts of great food, strong drink, and top-notch living in private train cars. 

Speaking of genre-bending, check out Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki, which is a finalist for the 2022 Hugo Awards for Science Fiction. This book bends genres, genders, space and time. You won't know what hit you, but you won't want to put it down either. It is as hard a book to define as I have come across in my 25 years of writing book/story pitches, because it truly it is not quite like anything else out there. Suffice to say, it's got space travel, classical music, and donuts.

Enough about books, let's talk writing: I am going to take on, for the second year, the exciting and fun challenge of #1000wordsofsummer, the brainchild of author Jami Attenberg, whose new memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home  is right at the top of my "to read" list, in fact it is next on my list. Find out more about the two week challenge, which starts June 4, supports great charities, and could get you two weeks into your newest writing project.

I love the accountability of having said "I am going to do this," and I love knowing a whole community of other writers are signing on, too. I really like a challenge, and I like being part of a (virtual) gathering of writers. But whether you do or don't pledge to yourself to write 1000 words a day for the first two weeks of summer, I hope you will decide to take on some new writing project this summer, or will recommit yourself to your current writing project. Why? Because it is what writers do. We write.

hasta pronto!

Some Publishing News

I have been in the same writer's group for about ten years now and someone is always publishing something. The brilliant editor Laurie Gibson is working on a very cool rock-and-roll novel set in London, entrepreneur Carol Burt is working on her years-in-the-making memoir—just like me!—and graphic designer/writer Kara is working on some humorous short pieces while working on their new ranch-in-the-city and a child (she and hubby Mark are expecting in May). 

But the biggest news this week from our writer's group is that the other two members, Lisa Gulick and Maria Groschup-Black, have taken over the reins at Sunbelt Publications. If you don't know Sunbelt, then click on this link right now and see their books and a lot more. If you are interested in Nature, Baja, Deserts, Flora and fauna, Hiking, Biking, California (and Baja) History and Natural History, or Native American Culture and Heritage, among other subjects, then Sunbelt has something for you.

You may know that I worked at Sunbelt for over a decade and I still love their history, their books, their ability to help small publishers get out in the world, and their overall mission. I truly believe that the company has an important place in the world of California book publishing and distribution. I wish Lisa and Maria and the whole family at Sunbelt a hearty felicidades and wish them all the best of luck in this transition.

hasta pronto!

Bloat, or The Power of the Shaggy Dog Story

I recently watched “The Power of the Dog” and could not believe I was watching the same movie that had been touted and lauded for so many weeks. The acting was fine, and the cinematography was beautiful, but the film's pace was glacial. The script was somewhat intriguing, but so spare as far as the actual story that it could have been the plot of a short subject, maybe thirty minutes in length. As a feature film, it was tedious.

Over the last few years, I have noticed something similar creeping into much of our visual and written arts. I think it may have started with Netflix, which is why it was dubbed “Netflix Bloat.” This awful tendency is, simply, the desire to stretch things into a longer format than their inherent story demands. TV shows are fattened up into endless miniseries, and single films are sold as the first installment in a series—to be written, if there is any demand, very soon.

Of course, I am aware that this change was driven by money. The success of franchises drives Hollywood, I get that. Obviously the LOTR trilogy was amazing in its multiple film form, and some long TV series are wonderful—I am as guilty of binge-watching “Downtown Abbey” as the next PBS devotee, but those exceptions only prove the rule. Most series episodes are fattened up with long minutes, and even whole episodes, of what can only be called “filler,” with the characters talking about things that don’t reveal anything new about themselves, or further the plot in any way.

Once upon a time, writers wrote to be serialized over a period of weeks or months, in popular magazines that paid by the word. The result was often quite enjoyable, in the hands of a master of prose like Charles Dickens, but Bleak House has a fairly limited readership today—actually, it is probably being developed as a not-very-limited series as I type these words.

Not surprisingly, we editors have been in agreement, over the years, that less is usually more. When rewriting, we attempt to always “omit useless words,” as the quote goes. Editing is about cutting the chaff and keeping the wheat, as well as taking out the colorful but pointless tangents that take readers nowhere.

But then someone told an author that “to sell well, you need a series,” and every writer took that as marching orders. If they had an idea for a book, they assumed it could be turned into a series. And so stories that had a fairly simple story arc, that could easily be told in one book, become a series of three or four or even five volumes. Next, authors will be paying editors to expand their word counts and suggest tangents.

Bottom line: More is not always better, and quantity is not the same as quality; readers will recommend your one or two books if they contain compelling stories. Period.

Hasta pronto!