Sunday, June 18, 2017
Resurrection
After a long hiatus, I'm reviving this website and resuming work on a sequel to The Grand Mirage, hopefully the first of many. A workshop on self-publishing by the Washington Writers conference yesterday reminded me of the potential this has for reaching readers.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
DC writers
One of the great floating institutions in DC is the Moldea Authors' Dinner, which is held a couple of times a year at the Old Europe restaurant. Aside from being fun -- you don't worry about how Zagat's is going to rate the schnitzel here, you just kick back some good German beer and enjoy yourself -- it's inspirational to see all these writers, some very successful and others struggling, like me, to get the next book out.
So you have writers like Jeff Deaver, who is firing on all cylinders with another authorized James Bond sequel and his own Lincoln Rhyme (the character portrayed by Denzel Washington in "The Bone Collector") series, and Jim Grady, who reached fame and fortune at an early age with a book that became "Three Days of the Condor." And you have writers like Dan Stashower, who published some mysteries but has switched to nonfiction (his new book, The Hour of Peril, on how Pinkerton foiled a plot to assassinate Lincoln even before the Civil War is coming out in January), and Jim Reston, a well-established nonfiction writer who is now working harder than you might think necessary to get his novel published.
There are assorted others who haven't published a book in several years along with the inimitable Paul Dickson, who brings out several books each year. Regardless of how successful (in terms of sales) or which genre, we're all dealing with the same problems in getting books written and published. One author who has a pretty high post in the administration and who is writing a thriller suggested that writing fiction on an intermittent basis is challenging because you need to stay in touch with your characters. This rang a bell with me and helped me understand why I have trouble finding any sort of rhythm in writing the new financial thriller. It's not so much writer's block per se, but a lack of continuity with the character.
So you have writers like Jeff Deaver, who is firing on all cylinders with another authorized James Bond sequel and his own Lincoln Rhyme (the character portrayed by Denzel Washington in "The Bone Collector") series, and Jim Grady, who reached fame and fortune at an early age with a book that became "Three Days of the Condor." And you have writers like Dan Stashower, who published some mysteries but has switched to nonfiction (his new book, The Hour of Peril, on how Pinkerton foiled a plot to assassinate Lincoln even before the Civil War is coming out in January), and Jim Reston, a well-established nonfiction writer who is now working harder than you might think necessary to get his novel published.
There are assorted others who haven't published a book in several years along with the inimitable Paul Dickson, who brings out several books each year. Regardless of how successful (in terms of sales) or which genre, we're all dealing with the same problems in getting books written and published. One author who has a pretty high post in the administration and who is writing a thriller suggested that writing fiction on an intermittent basis is challenging because you need to stay in touch with your characters. This rang a bell with me and helped me understand why I have trouble finding any sort of rhythm in writing the new financial thriller. It's not so much writer's block per se, but a lack of continuity with the character.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Gold sequel
It turns out, somewhat to my surprise, that the new financial thriller I've been working on has a gold angle and may end up being a sequel of sorts to Gold. Not a sequel in the sense of the same characters, but it will treat once again the same issues of money and debt and the role of gold in our modern economy.
It didn't start out that way but it does seem that when you get into it, there's no way around gold. Such is the weight of millennia on our monetary system. As one of the characters in the new book says, "It's just a shiny rock." But an iconic rock.
I'm still excited about the sequel to The Grand Mirage, which will feature Lord Leighton and some of the other characters from that book. I'm researching and working on one set in Cairo and have toyed with another set in the Levant.
Gold, even though it is 20 years old, is selling better than Mirage. I think a financial thriller set in contemporary times is more accessible than an adventure story set in 1910. Price may also play a role, because the Kindle edition of Gold is 2.99 while Mirage is still at 4.99. I do feel the audience for Mirage will build, especially if I can get a couple more in the series, much like it did for Patrick O'Brian's books or Bernard Cornwall's Sharpe series.
I even have a notion now for a third financial thriller involving gold, making a sort of of Gold Trilogy, though again it would probably feature a different set of characters. It's ambitious, but I'm pleased with the progress on the new financial thriller.
It didn't start out that way but it does seem that when you get into it, there's no way around gold. Such is the weight of millennia on our monetary system. As one of the characters in the new book says, "It's just a shiny rock." But an iconic rock.
I'm still excited about the sequel to The Grand Mirage, which will feature Lord Leighton and some of the other characters from that book. I'm researching and working on one set in Cairo and have toyed with another set in the Levant.
Gold, even though it is 20 years old, is selling better than Mirage. I think a financial thriller set in contemporary times is more accessible than an adventure story set in 1910. Price may also play a role, because the Kindle edition of Gold is 2.99 while Mirage is still at 4.99. I do feel the audience for Mirage will build, especially if I can get a couple more in the series, much like it did for Patrick O'Brian's books or Bernard Cornwall's Sharpe series.
I even have a notion now for a third financial thriller involving gold, making a sort of of Gold Trilogy, though again it would probably feature a different set of characters. It's ambitious, but I'm pleased with the progress on the new financial thriller.
Monday, June 4, 2012
More free Gold
The Kindle Select promotion for Gold just ahead of Memorial Day weekend was a huge success, with the book staying at #1 on the free suspense bestseller list most of the second day! The spike in paid sales afterwards was also significant and the books has stayed relatively high in the sales ranking since then.
It seems relatively certain at this point that the new financial thriller in progress will be the next Barnaby Woods Books publication. It is not a sequel to Gold but more like a 2012 version, with a Washington blogger as the protagonist. It's great to see that Gold remains popular and is finding a new audience so long after it went out of print.
It seems relatively certain at this point that the new financial thriller in progress will be the next Barnaby Woods Books publication. It is not a sequel to Gold but more like a 2012 version, with a Washington blogger as the protagonist. It's great to see that Gold remains popular and is finding a new audience so long after it went out of print.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Free Gold
Gold gained a lot of attention in its first free promotion in the Kindle Select program, only the second week after it was published and with only one review. It rose as high as #18 on the Free Kindle bestseller list for suspense thrillers.
The paperback has also been listed on Amazon though there seems to be a problem between Lightning Source and Amazon on indicating in-stock availability. I'm working with LSI and Amazon to resolve the issue.
The paperback has also been listed on Amazon though there seems to be a problem between Lightning Source and Amazon on indicating in-stock availability. I'm working with LSI and Amazon to resolve the issue.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Gold is live on Amazon!
The Kindle edition of Gold is now live on Amazon. After being out of print for many years, this financial thriller, now more relevant than ever, is available once again. In today's volatile markets, the disaster scenario depicted in Gold is closer than ever. Even the possibility of a U.S. default -- once just a figment of a novelist's imagination -- is now closer to reality than ever before.I'll be reviewing the final print proof later today so the print on demand version should become available later this week as part of the soft launch for the reissue of Gold.
If the roller coaster ride of financial markets intrigues or fascinates you, you'll enjoy Gold. My editor at Dutton, Richard Marek, said he had not been obsessed with markets like many of his contemporaries, but he loved the suspense in Gold and bought it on the basis of the first five chapters.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Gold reissue next month
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| New Cover |
In any case, once the six months is up and presuming Penguin does not opt to reissue the book, I will proceed with the plans to publish Gold as an ebook in the KDP Select program and as print on demand with Lightning Source. Pedernales Publishing has once again come up with a great cover and they are ably handling all the formatting.
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| Old Hardback Cover |
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| Old Paperback Cover |
Saturday, March 3, 2012
inReads
A new website from DC's public radio and TV station, WETA, features me and The Grand Mirage in their beta content, currently on display. The idea of inReads is to discuss books and culture at the intersection of technology, so they want to feature self-published authors and their ebooks. I think it was my post My Road to Self-Publishing that attracted their attention (click the "indie" tab above), and which is reproduced on the site.
It's a great showcase even if it is still just building an audience. Hopefully, it will get promotion on WETA and get lots of traffic. In any case, I'm grateful to WETA for taking this initiative and for contacting me about it.
It's a great showcase even if it is still just building an audience. Hopefully, it will get promotion on WETA and get lots of traffic. In any case, I'm grateful to WETA for taking this initiative and for contacting me about it.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Praise from Publishers Weekly
The January issue of Publishers Weekly has just appeared and The Grand Mirage was one of only two dozen self-published works of fiction selected for a review.
"Delamaide provides a fascinating look at a little-examined period: the Great Game period before WWI," the reviewer writes. This reviewer considers British Orientalist Lord Richard Leighton and American spy William Morrison "unlikely heroes," but concludes "this makes them all the more likable."
Unlike the new incarnation of Kirkus Reviews, which requires a payment of several hundred dollars from authors to get a review, Publishers Weekly selects a handful of books for review from the hundreds submitted for listing (for a much more modest fee) in its annual special section on self-publishing.
The positive editorial review, complete with a thumbnail of the cover, can be found on p. 44 of the January edition.
"Delamaide provides a fascinating look at a little-examined period: the Great Game period before WWI," the reviewer writes. This reviewer considers British Orientalist Lord Richard Leighton and American spy William Morrison "unlikely heroes," but concludes "this makes them all the more likable."
Unlike the new incarnation of Kirkus Reviews, which requires a payment of several hundred dollars from authors to get a review, Publishers Weekly selects a handful of books for review from the hundreds submitted for listing (for a much more modest fee) in its annual special section on self-publishing.
The positive editorial review, complete with a thumbnail of the cover, can be found on p. 44 of the January edition.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Readers
Many nice comments about The Grand Mirage. A neighbor tells me her boyfriend started it because she had bought a copy for him at my book party and, somewhat to his surprise, I gather, found it "really good" and had trouble putting it down after the first session.
An old friend from grad school says she enjoyed the book and bought copies as gifts for Christmas. A woman in Andrea's book group says her husband has started it and is enjoying it. There's a nice new 5-star review on Amazon that says "Delamaide has told the story so vividly it comes alive."
I think the fact that Mel Parker, my agent, was so enthusiastic about the book and that many men in their 40s or so are liking it indicates that the book has special appeal for a male audience. In retrospect, it's clear that this is not the profile of the initial decision makers at publishing houses.
An old friend from grad school says she enjoyed the book and bought copies as gifts for Christmas. A woman in Andrea's book group says her husband has started it and is enjoying it. There's a nice new 5-star review on Amazon that says "Delamaide has told the story so vividly it comes alive."
I think the fact that Mel Parker, my agent, was so enthusiastic about the book and that many men in their 40s or so are liking it indicates that the book has special appeal for a male audience. In retrospect, it's clear that this is not the profile of the initial decision makers at publishing houses.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Amazon stars
It's important to remember that the stars awarded to a book by an Amazon customer are not supposed to be an objective assessment of how good this book is, but a subjective appreciation -- 5 stars, I loved it; 4 stars, I liked it; 3 stars, it was OK, and so on.
I was very pleased with my two-day promotion of the Kindle edition of The Grand Mirage because a lot of people took notice of the book and thought it looked interesting enough to download. Even if a book is free, you do have to click and then you have another book cluttering up your virtual bookshelf, so I presume most people don't click blindly.
At one point, The Grand Mirage was #6 in the genre historical fiction for free ebooks, with Tale of Two Cities, Scarlet Letter, and two editions of War and Peace ahead of it. This doesn't mean that The Grand Mirage, as entertaining as it is, ranks up there with these classics and I would be the first to tell anyone that if you haven't read Tale of Two Cities, you should read it before you read The Grand Mirage.
The star rankings, at 4 and 4.5, also were in the same range, which again, does not mean that my book, objectively speaking, ranks with these classics. After all, if you gave 5 stars to War and Peace, you'd have to give 1/2 a star to every contemporary work of historical fiction if these were supposed to be objective rankings.
What 5 stars means is that there are readers who really loved it, and that is extremely gratifying to an author. The "worst" review I've gotten on Amazon so far is one I solicited from one of these semi-pro reviewers who have popped up on the Web. He gave The Grand Mirage 3 stars, which meant, as he explains, he thought it was worth reading, but he clearly wasn't wild about it. He added that someone who like historical fiction might want to give it 4 stars.
That's fine. There's some excellent romance and paranormal novels out there that get 5 stars from aficionados of these genres, but I probably wouldn't be able to give that many stars to these books.
As is most assuredly the case with most Amazon authors, and not just indies, some of the reviews on the site were written by friends of mine, who, God bless them, loved my book. They were sympathetically disposed, let's say, but at least each and every one of them used their real name. As a reader, I'm more suspicious of 5-star reviews written by a made-up name or Anonymous.
What thrills me about self-publishing is that readers who enjoy a book like The Grand Mirage now have a chance to read it. And if giving away the book means that more of these people actually get a hold of it, that's great. In the long run, they will talk about it, recommend it, buy my next book and you have created a fan base.
I was very pleased with my two-day promotion of the Kindle edition of The Grand Mirage because a lot of people took notice of the book and thought it looked interesting enough to download. Even if a book is free, you do have to click and then you have another book cluttering up your virtual bookshelf, so I presume most people don't click blindly.
At one point, The Grand Mirage was #6 in the genre historical fiction for free ebooks, with Tale of Two Cities, Scarlet Letter, and two editions of War and Peace ahead of it. This doesn't mean that The Grand Mirage, as entertaining as it is, ranks up there with these classics and I would be the first to tell anyone that if you haven't read Tale of Two Cities, you should read it before you read The Grand Mirage.
The star rankings, at 4 and 4.5, also were in the same range, which again, does not mean that my book, objectively speaking, ranks with these classics. After all, if you gave 5 stars to War and Peace, you'd have to give 1/2 a star to every contemporary work of historical fiction if these were supposed to be objective rankings.
What 5 stars means is that there are readers who really loved it, and that is extremely gratifying to an author. The "worst" review I've gotten on Amazon so far is one I solicited from one of these semi-pro reviewers who have popped up on the Web. He gave The Grand Mirage 3 stars, which meant, as he explains, he thought it was worth reading, but he clearly wasn't wild about it. He added that someone who like historical fiction might want to give it 4 stars.
That's fine. There's some excellent romance and paranormal novels out there that get 5 stars from aficionados of these genres, but I probably wouldn't be able to give that many stars to these books.
As is most assuredly the case with most Amazon authors, and not just indies, some of the reviews on the site were written by friends of mine, who, God bless them, loved my book. They were sympathetically disposed, let's say, but at least each and every one of them used their real name. As a reader, I'm more suspicious of 5-star reviews written by a made-up name or Anonymous.
What thrills me about self-publishing is that readers who enjoy a book like The Grand Mirage now have a chance to read it. And if giving away the book means that more of these people actually get a hold of it, that's great. In the long run, they will talk about it, recommend it, buy my next book and you have created a fan base.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Kindle promotion
The experiment continues. The Grand Mirage will be free on Kindle tomorrow and Friday, Dec. 15 and 16 as I take the first two of my five promotion days under the KDP Select program. Apparently this can lead to hundreds of downloads and it's exciting to think my book will be in the hands of so many prospective readers.
My primary goal for The Grand Mirage is that it be read. I know there are people who will enjoy it and who will be eager for the next in the series. It is secondary at this point how much money I actually collect in building that fan base. Eventually, yes, it would be nice to have a fan base in the thousands that's willing to cough up five bucks for a new book. But the first objective is to connect with those readers who like this kind of fiction.
My primary goal for The Grand Mirage is that it be read. I know there are people who will enjoy it and who will be eager for the next in the series. It is secondary at this point how much money I actually collect in building that fan base. Eventually, yes, it would be nice to have a fan base in the thousands that's willing to cough up five bucks for a new book. But the first objective is to connect with those readers who like this kind of fiction.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Amazon Kindle
Amazon is getting considerable grief, as in Richard Russo's op-ed in today's New York Times, for some of its more aggressive commercial tactics. Doubtless its actions require monitoring, but it's hardly worse that the bare-knuckle tactics employed by Microsoft and Apple in their turn. These are new markets and they have some evolving to go through still before becoming more tightly regulated.
For ebooks, and for indie publishers, Amazon is virtually the only game in town. It provides useful tools for authors and it works hard to adopt customer-friendly interface and service. Along with many other indie authors, I've decided to take advantage of further benefits now being offered by Amazon and give them exclusive sales rights for the ebook version of The Grand Mirage.
For one thing, virtually all ebook sales of Mirage so far have been through Amazon. For another thing, the granting of exclusivity is paired with a couple of promotional opportunities, which are experimental and unproven, but worth a try. Both are somewhat counter-intuitive because they involve essentially giving the book away.
The one is to include The Grand Mirage in the new lending library for Prime customers. Amazon obviously is scrambling to find alternatives to free shipping for Prime customers as it sells more ebooks, which of course don't require shipping. So people who can keep to a three-week reading period can loan out the book for free.
What does the author get from this? Amazon is setting up a fund to pay authors a pro rata royalty each time the book is lent. It remains to be seen how much this will actually be, but this is an idea authors have long desired to see implemented in libraries for physical books. Authors also get a crack at that not-so-intangible word of mouth. The more people who read the book, the more they will talk about it to their friends, even give it as a gift.
The other benefit in the Amazon exclusivity program, called KDP Select with KDP standing for Kindle Direct Publishing, is five "promotional" days, during which the book is offered for purchase at no charge. There is presumably, though I haven't studied this in detail, some actual promotion of the book to Prime customers and the benefit to the author, once again, is heightened visibility and word of mouth -- the biggest challenge for an indie author.
Following the lead of my mentor in all things ebook, Jim Bruno, I'm also raising the price of the Kindle edition to 4.99 from 2.99. There has been some evolution of thought in the indie market that the higher price provides a better signal of value to the prospective book purchaser. Again, it may seem counter-intuitive, but many authors have reported an increase in sales when they increase the price.
None of this is irreversible. Enrollment in KDP Select is for an initial period of 90 days, automatically renewable. I can lower the price to 0.99 tomorrow if I choose. None of this may have any impact on sales. We'll see.
I'm willing to do what I can to support my local bookstore, but if Amazon offers me ways to get my book into readers' hands, I'm happy to take them and leave responsibility for preserving the old system to Richard Russo and the other mega-bestselling authors who have profited so well from it.
For ebooks, and for indie publishers, Amazon is virtually the only game in town. It provides useful tools for authors and it works hard to adopt customer-friendly interface and service. Along with many other indie authors, I've decided to take advantage of further benefits now being offered by Amazon and give them exclusive sales rights for the ebook version of The Grand Mirage.
For one thing, virtually all ebook sales of Mirage so far have been through Amazon. For another thing, the granting of exclusivity is paired with a couple of promotional opportunities, which are experimental and unproven, but worth a try. Both are somewhat counter-intuitive because they involve essentially giving the book away.
The one is to include The Grand Mirage in the new lending library for Prime customers. Amazon obviously is scrambling to find alternatives to free shipping for Prime customers as it sells more ebooks, which of course don't require shipping. So people who can keep to a three-week reading period can loan out the book for free.
What does the author get from this? Amazon is setting up a fund to pay authors a pro rata royalty each time the book is lent. It remains to be seen how much this will actually be, but this is an idea authors have long desired to see implemented in libraries for physical books. Authors also get a crack at that not-so-intangible word of mouth. The more people who read the book, the more they will talk about it to their friends, even give it as a gift.
The other benefit in the Amazon exclusivity program, called KDP Select with KDP standing for Kindle Direct Publishing, is five "promotional" days, during which the book is offered for purchase at no charge. There is presumably, though I haven't studied this in detail, some actual promotion of the book to Prime customers and the benefit to the author, once again, is heightened visibility and word of mouth -- the biggest challenge for an indie author.
Following the lead of my mentor in all things ebook, Jim Bruno, I'm also raising the price of the Kindle edition to 4.99 from 2.99. There has been some evolution of thought in the indie market that the higher price provides a better signal of value to the prospective book purchaser. Again, it may seem counter-intuitive, but many authors have reported an increase in sales when they increase the price.
None of this is irreversible. Enrollment in KDP Select is for an initial period of 90 days, automatically renewable. I can lower the price to 0.99 tomorrow if I choose. None of this may have any impact on sales. We'll see.
I'm willing to do what I can to support my local bookstore, but if Amazon offers me ways to get my book into readers' hands, I'm happy to take them and leave responsibility for preserving the old system to Richard Russo and the other mega-bestselling authors who have profited so well from it.
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Book Party
The book party is one of the rituals of publishing. Like reviews, it is tied to the pub date and is part of the push to create that initial buzz around a new book. This may be less relevant for a self-published book that will build its audience over time, but a book party is also just a celebration of getting a book published, and a great ego trip for an author.
We had a wonderful book party for The Grand Mirage yesterday. Many friends from Washington and a fair sprinkling of neighbors from Barnaby Woods were on hand to celebrate. It turns out that on any given weekend, a lot of people are out of town -- at weddings, in New York -- and this weekend in addition was a three-day weekend for those with kids out of school for Veterans Day, but it was still the biggest party we've had in this house.
Just as The Grand Mirage is a self-published book, this was a self-catered party. My wife, Andrea, and her brother Henry once operated a catering service together and revived their collaboration to provide some wonderful hors d'oeuvres for the party (see my food blog for details), so the catering was no more amateur than the book.
The book sale table was also self-service, cash or check. People made their own change for one or multiple copies and I spent much more time than anticipated signing books!
I did a short reading -- a part of the excerpt from the first chapter I had read at the gathering in Santa Fe, and everyone seemed to enjoy that.
People get excited about reading, about worlds of the imagination, about the willingness of someone to make an effort to entertain them -- and all this is very gratifying to a fiction author.
We had a wonderful book party for The Grand Mirage yesterday. Many friends from Washington and a fair sprinkling of neighbors from Barnaby Woods were on hand to celebrate. It turns out that on any given weekend, a lot of people are out of town -- at weddings, in New York -- and this weekend in addition was a three-day weekend for those with kids out of school for Veterans Day, but it was still the biggest party we've had in this house.
Just as The Grand Mirage is a self-published book, this was a self-catered party. My wife, Andrea, and her brother Henry once operated a catering service together and revived their collaboration to provide some wonderful hors d'oeuvres for the party (see my food blog for details), so the catering was no more amateur than the book.
The book sale table was also self-service, cash or check. People made their own change for one or multiple copies and I spent much more time than anticipated signing books!
I did a short reading -- a part of the excerpt from the first chapter I had read at the gathering in Santa Fe, and everyone seemed to enjoy that.
People get excited about reading, about worlds of the imagination, about the willingness of someone to make an effort to entertain them -- and all this is very gratifying to a fiction author.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Praise from a top reviewer
Norm Goldman, editor and publisher of Bookpleasures, a highly regarded review site, and a top Amazon reviewer had high praise for The Grand Mirage:
I must commend Delamaide`s awesome achievement…in intelligently assembling facts and fiction to attain realism that makes the historical setting as chaotic, as well as dangerous, as anything that may exist today in the Middle East. …(T)hanks to expertly voiced narration and a skilled evocation of time and place, the tale will linger in your imagination long after you lay it to rest.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Kindlegraph
Of course it had to happen -- someone has come up with an app so that authors can "sign" ebooks. It's not perfect. The page is not actually inserted into the copy of the ebook but is a separate file. Generally speaking, the signature is not going to the genuine signature. It does, however, give the reader a chance to have direct contact with the author and to get a personalized message -- at least as personalized as anything the author writes into a book at a signing. So it's something. Not sure if it will catch on, but I'm happy to be part of the experiment. My kindlegraph address is kindlegraph.com/authors/ddelamaide.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
The Big Thrill
The webzine of the International Thriller Writers, "The Big Thrill," has a new feature each month listing the "New E-Releases" of members, and The Grand Mirage is on the first list in the issue out today.
ITW, which is backed and maybe funded by some of the bestselling thriller writers, has been in something of quandary with the surge in self-published thrillers. The group restricts membership to authors whose books appear with "qualified" publishers, ranging from the big mainstream houses to small presses and even to agents who are publishing their own authors' books. Even as the digital revolution is breaking down traditional barriers and busting the whole process wide open, they have tried to maintain something of a closed shop.
It is a true dilemma, because if there were no restrictions the organization would quickly be overrun by writers of books that don't meet minimal literary criteria. But who's to judge? How do you navigate the gray -- enlisting the genuinely good indies and keeping out, well, the riff-raff? As a tentative first step, ITW is now routinely publicizing self-published novels of active members who have previously had books from qualified publishers as well as associate members. And it is opening its prize competitions to these books as well.
New filters will have to evolve in the digital book world, to replace the traditional filters of publishers and bookstores that determined which books got into print and got into the public's hands. Reviews of course will be important and groups like ITW should be able to play a constructive role as well. This is certainly a step in the right direction.
ITW, which is backed and maybe funded by some of the bestselling thriller writers, has been in something of quandary with the surge in self-published thrillers. The group restricts membership to authors whose books appear with "qualified" publishers, ranging from the big mainstream houses to small presses and even to agents who are publishing their own authors' books. Even as the digital revolution is breaking down traditional barriers and busting the whole process wide open, they have tried to maintain something of a closed shop.
It is a true dilemma, because if there were no restrictions the organization would quickly be overrun by writers of books that don't meet minimal literary criteria. But who's to judge? How do you navigate the gray -- enlisting the genuinely good indies and keeping out, well, the riff-raff? As a tentative first step, ITW is now routinely publicizing self-published novels of active members who have previously had books from qualified publishers as well as associate members. And it is opening its prize competitions to these books as well.
New filters will have to evolve in the digital book world, to replace the traditional filters of publishers and bookstores that determined which books got into print and got into the public's hands. Reviews of course will be important and groups like ITW should be able to play a constructive role as well. This is certainly a step in the right direction.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Great editorial review
Great review in the online Washington Independent Review of Books. Author and former journalist Lawrence De Maria praises the book not only as a highly readable spy thriller but as a history lesson for this vexed part of the world:
The Washington Independent Review of Books was launched earlier this year by a writers' group in the national capital to fill the book review gap left by the closing of the Washington Post Book World and other stand-alone newspaper reviews. It has published hundreds of book reviews plus many author interviews, podcasts, blogs and other features.
Delamaide’s prose is uniformly entertaining. If it was his intention to pluck 21st-century American readers from their living rooms and deposit them in the mysterious and dangerous souks of the Middle East ― and give them 500 years of history lessons to boot ― he has succeeded admirably.Read the entire review on the WIRoB website.
The Washington Independent Review of Books was launched earlier this year by a writers' group in the national capital to fill the book review gap left by the closing of the Washington Post Book World and other stand-alone newspaper reviews. It has published hundreds of book reviews plus many author interviews, podcasts, blogs and other features.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Kindle Author Interview
David Wisehart recently interviewed Darrell Delamaide, author of The Grand Mirage, in his series of Kindle Author Interviews. You can read the full interview at Wisehart's blog. Here are some excerpts:
DAVID WISEHART: What can you tell us about The Grand Mirage?
DARRELL DELAMAIDE: The first time I encountered the Baghdad Railway, oddly enough, was in a history of Deutsche Bank, the big German bank I covered as a financial journalist. The bank was instrumental in getting it built because the Kaiser wanted a direct land link between Berlin and the Persian Gulf. Britain opposed it because they feared war was on the way and didn’t want India to be vulnerable. What a story, I thought, full of adventure and intrigue. It’s the story I set out to tell in The Grand Mirage. I also thought it would be a great way to conjure up an exotic Middle East that has vanished in history and yet forms part of our Western imagination, from Scherezade to Lawrence of Arabia....
DAVID WISEHART: Who do you imagine is your ideal reader?
DARRELL DELAMAIDE: My ideal reader is anyone who will enjoy this book. It may be older readers who thrilled to the first Indiana Jones movie – which incredibly came out 30 years ago. But it may be younger readers who read Outside magazine and who would love the adventure of taking a caravan from Constantinople to Baghdad in 1910. One woman reader told me she liked the heroine, an Armenian poet, so much, she would like to see a sequel devoted to her. I like to think of my book as the thinking man’s or woman’s thriller – literary, intelligent, and vastly entertaining....DAVID WISEHART: What authors most inspire you?
DARRELL DELAMAIDE: I gravitated more or less naturally to the thriller genre, so in general I find a lot of inspiration there. John Le Carré is the master, though I find his characters bleak. British writers seem to have a better feel for the deep Anglo-Saxon roots of the English language. Rennie Airth (River of Darkness) and Robert Goddard (Into the Blue), who are popular in Britain but not too well known here, are particularly good in that regard. Alan Furst (Kingdom of Shadows), though an American, has lived abroad and had his early success in Britain as well. Again, I find his characters a little hard to warm up to, but he is a wizard at creating atmosphere. Among American writers, Joseph Kanon (The Good German) has also written some very fine historical thrillers.... Tuesday, October 11, 2011
'Couldn't put it down'
This is the heading on Paula Butturini's 5-star Amazon review of The Grand Mirage:
Darrell Delamaide's The Grand Mirage is a wonderful read. I simply did not want to put it down. Though inundated with things I absolutely had to accomplish over the weekend, I found myself, between endless chores, sneaking back to my computer again and again to read just one more chapter. Both historical thriller and spy novel, The Grand Mirage outlines the geo-political intrigues surrounding the construction of the Baghdad Railway during the run-up to World War I in a corner of the world still seething with unrest over its most precious commodity -- oil. Delamaide's scholar/spy hero charms...
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