The Power of Media

Last week I posted about a list on GQ of books you’ve never heard of, but should read. Like most curious folks, I looked up one or two on Amazon. It was then that the power of media struck me.

Amazon’s feature “Frequently Bought Together” listed another of GQ’s books next to the one I was searching (Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe, from 1952). Just coincidence? I scrolled down.

There, in the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section, no less that four of the other books on the GQ list showed up. I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but it was clear that people were going through the GQ list and buying up the books. I searched for one on BookFinder. By the time I clicked the link, it was gone.

I’ve often felt that people who have an institution behind them (even be it GQ) have a built-in way of succeeding as writers.

My own mention of Sherlock Holmes compels me to mention The Hound of the Baskervilles. I recently read this Holmes adventure for the first time. And time may not have been on its side. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle largely invented the detective novel (following the lead of Edgar Allan Poe, of course). But it is difficult to fool people these days.

At points in the narrative it was clear that Doyle had left out crucial information that the reader would need to solve the crime. Holmes seemed petulant, and at times self-congratulatory. The reader was unable to get the benefit of the writer’s privileged knowledge. Even more egregious was when, at the end, Watson asks a question Holmes can’t answer since there is a gap in his story logic.

I was hoping the book would be moody, set in Dartmoor as it is. Still, knowing the impossibly erudite nature of Sherlock Holmes and his amazing abilities, it was not hard to see through it like so much Exmoor mist.

Still, it was fun. And I learned something from my own clues. If you can comb your hair and get GQ to notice you, you’ll definitely sell more books.

Comments

Maybe Okay

A couple pieces of encouraging news, perhaps, dear struggling writers. I had a couple short stories accepted for publication in recent weeks. As a fellow writer recently said, “You've got to keep trying. Somebody will like what you wrote.” That’s a bit of sunshine. And it’s likely true. But the stories: “The Crossing,” about two men in a boat trying to cross the Atlantic, was accepted by JayHenge Publishing. JayHenge is a small, but paying publisher. I was flattered when they wanted it for their Masque & Maelström: The Reluctant Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe anthology. Being associated with Poe in any way feels good. The second story, “St. Spiders’ Day,” had been brewing in my mind for years—yes, this is a long game! A friend pointed me to The Creepy podcast. Since the story hadn’t been written, I followed their guidelines of what they wanted. It worked. I recently heard a successful wri...

Working Through It

The thing about being a working writer is you don’t have time. Between working nine-to-five and trying to eat and sleep, and write, of course, the week is shot. Weekends are spent doing the errands that you can’t do during the week. I should probably have known better than to join a local writers’ group. Their meetings, although only once a month, are all-day affairs on a Saturday. I generally don’t have all day Saturday to spare. I work all week and I need groceries and the occasional Target run. And I haven’t yet learned to go a week without eating. This is actually the third writers’ group I’ve joined. One was not too far from home, but not terribly helpful. They met on Saturdays, but in the morning only. Nobody seemed interested in what I was writing, so I stopped going. The second one was about an hour away. They also met on Saturdays. Their big thing was having lunch together after the meeting. ...

Creative Righting

Rejection of my writing is a rejection of my imaginative world. That’s why I was cheered by the acceptance of one of my stories this week. That makes number 31. I’ve been working on a lot of fiction lately, even as nonfiction book number 6 is going to press. The ideas are still there, and bizarre as ever, but publishing venues just aren’t welcoming. The other day I had lunch with a professor whose wife is also a professor. She just had her first novel published, and so he pointed me to her indie publisher. I went to their website to learn that they’re closed to submissions. I have to admit that my latest accepted story, “Creative Writing Club,” was probably given the green light because I know the editor. That seems like a pretty dicey way to get any notice, doesn’t it? You have to know the right people even in the low circulation world. My fiction is difficult to classify. It’s got speculative elements to it. ...

K. Marvin Bruce

Search This Blog