Cabbages and Kings

Cabbages and Kings - a new story by Flo

You Can Tell a Book By Its Cover—sort of

Bookstore browsing was a family affair for us—Eoin would wander the entire store, not just the children’s section, I’d aim for the True Crime shelves, and John would scour technical books and psychology tomes. Once surrounded by books about serial killers, mass murderers, mad bombers, and assassins, I’d blissfully spend a half hour scanning volumes until I found one I just had to add to my collection. I didn’t realize it but I would skip over any that did not have red and black in the cover. If pressed to put my unconscious thoughts into words, I would say: “Where’s the blood?”

Pretty shallow, right?

But perhaps my prejudice isn’t so irrational. Because, despite the old adage, you can determine a lot about a book from its appearance. Publishers work with psychologists and market-study companies to design books that appeal to a specific audience. They know that after years of reading, shopping for, and assessing books, you, the reader, can tell almost at a glance if you’re interested in a specific volume or not. Various factors of a book’s design register with you and steer you unconsciously toward or away from it.

Is it hardback or paperback? A paperback may fall more within your target price range, but a hardback implies there’s something inside to recommend it; after all, the publisher thinks she can make a profit on it, expensive as it is. Check the clearance table for older hardbacks, and track the release dates of your wish list in paperback.

What size is it? 11.5x18, 8.5x11, 6x9? A 3.75x5 silly joke book may be just what you’re looking for, but any art book that does justice to its contents should be at least 8x10. Note the spines as you walk around: skinny or thick? Small size and a thin spine may indicate the publisher is trying to get away with skimpy content (particularly if the cover is thick). To get your money’s worth you expect a paperback novel to be at least 4x6, to be printed in a font size of not less than 10 and not more than 12, the print to fill up the pages, and a length of at least 200 pages.

What’s the color scheme? You won’t often find multiple, bright colors on the cover of a classic, a law reference, or a volume of serious poetry. A jacket with pink dominating indicates “For girls only.” As noted, crime fans look for a color-message that conveys: “There’s blood in here!”

Do the fonts appeal to you? You are not going to consider a title in screaming bold if you want an old-fashioned romance novel, and a hard-boiled detective fan is not going to pick up one in elaborate script imposed on a scene of muted colors.

All this data registers with you and influences your window-shopping selections before you are even close enough to read the actual titles. And once you do see the title, author, and publisher—

Does the name of the book pique your interest? Does it give a fair indication of what’s inside?

Is the writer someone you’re familiar with? One of your favorites? (I take a “Got it, need it” list for the very prolific Christie, Francis, and Sanders when I go mystery shopping to avoid buying duplicates.) Or do you want to take a chance on a “new” (to you) writer, perhaps someone recommended by a favorable reviewer or a friend? (Fair warning: when the author’s name is bigger than the title of the book, the publisher is counting on the author as a name brand to sell the book regardless of the quality of the content inside.)

What’s the publisher? Does it have a good track record?

Then, finally, another look at the cover–is it appropriate to the presumed content? A size-color scheme-font-content mismatch indicates the publisher is confused about what the book is, and results in no sale.

All this happens before you even look at the blurbs, back jacket, flaps or inside back cover, flip through the pages, scan review excerpts, or read a random passage!

I didn’t realize I was prejudiced against true crimes that did not sport red and black covers until one afternoon John showed me a volume with an orange and blue jacket he pulled from my favorite section. Pffffft. How could it be a valid true crime book? I thought. (Where’s the blood?) I took a look anyway. It was Never Let Them See You Cry by Edna Buchanan, a compilation of stories from her days as a crime beat reporter in Miami. It turned out to be a terrific read. (And the orange and blue colors on the cover are very appropriate for a book about Miami, as any fan of “CSI: Miami” can attest.)

Just as sneaking a peek at the ending of Cujo before I was halfway through cured me of that practice, I no longer dismiss a book out of hand because the cover “feels” inappropriate. (If I did, I would have missed Buchanan’s next book, Nobody Lives Forever, with its purple and green cover—another good read.)

Publishers are very aware of what resonates with you as a reader even before you discover what a book is about. Next time you’re browsing, notice your own reactions to what influences you to consider one book and not another. You may have to set them aside to find a gem.

Tales of a Woman Scorned

"Fidelity" by Ash Krafton
"Saving Alice - The Brotherhood" by Neil E. Leckman
"Maggie's Wedding" by Nandy Ekle
"The Thing About Hate" by Flo Stanton
"Don't Speak" by Charlotte E. Gledson
"Scorched" by Nate Burleigh
"Blood Will Tell" by Ken L. Jones
"Model Behaviour" by David Bernstein
"Fairytale" by Christopher Hivner
"Eat Your Heart Out Lorena" by Nathan Robinson
"Deer Gap" by Thomas M. Malafraina
"Popsicle for Emmy" by Terrie Leigh Relf
"Red Riding Hood Bites" by A. E. Churchyard
"Gargulax" by John C. Lewis
"Sex, Lies and Death" by S. E. Cox
"Prince of Tortured Hearts" by Kimberly Graham

Interior artwork by John Stanton

Buy a copy here

The Best Present of All

Cranky shoppers—including John and me—crowded the mega store. At the point we could not fit one more packet of gravy mix in the cart and were debating what Christmas carol the muzak was playing (I still say it was “Up on the Housetop”) we finally admitted we needed a break and sat down with sodas at a table in the deli. After a few minutes I started telling John about a story I was writing for an anthology. I was pretty happy with it but was worried he’d think the whole idea was silly (a sculptor becomes obsessed with releasing a beautiful woman from a ton of stone) and still wasn’t sure about the ending.

I needn’t have worried. He thought the premise was solid and even contributed an alternate ending that the editor eventually chose. (John’s a terrific writer himself and has that much-pursued and rarely discovered ability to bring out the story a writer really aches to tell.)

In the middle of the store, in the unforgiving heart of the Christmas crunch (only twelve shopping days left!), we sat next to our cart full of groceries and talked story. The ice cream was melting, the turkey thawing, the mac ‘n cheese from the deli cooling down. Supplies for baking twelve dozen cookies and a half-dozen loaves of bread awaited checkout, too. So did a number of gifts that needed immediate wrapping and mailing. But there we sat, happily oblivious to all the noise, twinkling lights, and sweaty, smelly, hustling and bustling workers and shoppers, talking story. We sat there for a half hour. It was wonderful.

Over the next couple of weeks, despite the baking, shopping, wrapping, mailing, delivering, cleaning, cooking and socializing demands of the holidays, John helped me carve out writing time and I finished the story by the deadline of December 31st. Traps came out the next year. I can’t remember what other presents I got for Christmas that year, but that thirty minutes John gave me in the deli is the one I remember.

That was three years ago. This year we found ourselves in the same mega store two weeks before Christmas, this time with two full carts (we’ve taken on shopping for John’s elderly mother), feeling a little overloaded from several hours of shopping. We went to the same deli and plopped down. Again, I started telling John about a creative idea that I wasn’t sure about. I’ve been futzing around with several mysteries, all with solid plots and good characters but missing that essential element that grabs the reader and propels him onward.

I thought perhaps I’d chosen the wrong narrator and proposed the idea of using myself as a model for one. Would an interested bystander based on myself who observes and reports on the action around her be viable? He warmed to the idea and suggested I try it. “See what happens,” he advised. I’m excited about it, especially in view of the good luck that came my way three years ago after talking story in the same spot. (I knock on wood, won’t pass salt directly to the person who asks for it, and avoid walking under ladders, too.) But I think the magic will hold because it comes from the love and support of a very honest and true partner—the story he encouraged me to start today will be done soon.

Talk is Cheap

I collect aphorisms. From time to time I’ll post my favorites here.

Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it’s their fault.—Henry Kissinger

Two kinds of people fail—those who listen to nobody, and those who listen to everybody.

Take your choice: Talk about others and you’re a gossip. Talk about yourself and you’re a bore.

When you hear a simple idea expressed in a complicated manner, you should know that you‘re talking to an expert.

A mistake at least proves somebody stopped talking long enough to do something.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who prefer to say what they think, and those who prefer to keep their friends.

Never argue with a fool; he may be doing the same.

Blessed are they who really have nothing to say and cannot be convinced to say it.

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.—W. Somerset Maugham

It’s All About the Madeleines

The great editor Maxwell Perkins once wrote, “Anybody can find out if he is a writer. If he were a writer, when he tried to write of some particular day, he would find in the effort that he could recall exactly how the light fell and how the temperature felt, and all the quality of it. Most people cannot do it. If they can do it, they may never be successful in a pecuniary sense, but that ability is at the bottom of writing, I am sure.”

When I recently came across this quote, what immediately leapt to mind was Proust’s wonderful “episode of the madeleines.” In A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, the narrator is offered some tea by his mother. He accepts, which is not his custom. She sends out for some cakes, or madeleines, and he soaks one in a spoonful of tea. “No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses… with no suggestion of its origin.”

Marcel revels in the feeling the tea has provoked and marvels at its clarity and intensity but “cannot interpret” it. He wonders if he can pinpoint the cause of this “all-powerful joy”—his ruminations on the very process of self-examination will fascinate anyone inclined to introspection—and attempts to track it down. He takes another sip hoping “the magnetism of an identical moment” will bring to mind the source he is certain is locked in his unconscious, but tasting it again causes the experience to lose some of its magic. He puts himself in the exact moment of drinking that first sip but is unable “to follow and recapture once again the fleeting sensation.” After clearing his head he conjures that first taste again. He feels something stir but no definite associations arise. Only after ten tries does he recall the event associated with the taste—morning tea with his aunt as a child—and leaves for another time why this memory made him so happy.

We’re all born with the ability to perceive our reality on multiple, even infinite, levels. As children we whole-heartedly embrace every experience; as adults we often feel foolish doing so. But every experience is compound and multi-layered; there is a complex of thoughts and feelings associated with unbuttoning your shirt and locking your car door and stepping on an ant and holding your neighbor’s baby, let alone an event of any significance. All those sensory perceptions, emotional responses, and thought processes are felt and recorded. But we have to place value on them so we can experience them fully at the time, so we can study them to better understand our own processes, and so we can call them to memory. Proust writes, “the smell and taste of things remain poised… and bear unfaltering… the vast structure of recollection.”

I have a “tea” memory myself, although not as profound as Proust’s. It is late fall; it is not yet six o’clock but the lamppost across the street is already casting a pale pool of light onto the pavement. My sister two years older than me and I have been studying all afternoon in our rooms. Our mother calls us to take a break from our homework. She’ll spend a few minutes away from her chores, too. She’s fixed orange pekoe tea and laid out cinnamon crisps. The three of us sit at the kitchen table and munch on the crisps and sip our tea and chat about our day and what the neighbors are up to. The pressure cooker on the stove whistles merrily; when the potatoes are done Mom will add milk and butter and whip it all up into creamy potato-y goodness and my sister and I will clear the crumbs off the table and set out the silverware for dinner. But for now we just sit and sip and talk idly about nothing. Those “nothing happened” times make the best memories…

To this day, the smell of orange pekoe tea—even the phrase “orange pekoe tea”—triggers the taste of the tea and cinnamon crisps and the memory of those long ago days, and once again I feel the warmth of those autumn afternoons with my sister and mother.

We writers notice everything. We are writing, in our heads, an experience even as we live it. Like Snoopy describing eating his own dinner (“the famous WWI flying ace attacks his bowl of dog food”), we mentally chronicle the events of our lives for general life-logging purposes, for inspiration, and for later use in conversation or story. We regard the whole of our lives as fodder for our Art, and easily recall “exactly how the light fell and how the temperature felt, and all the quality of it.” It’s what creative people do, what we must do. It’s all about the madeleines.

Story as Magic

One of the neatest aspects of a story is that it exists in the present. When you tell a friend about a story you very much enjoyed, one that pulled you in and kept you there, you say, “It is really good.” You use the present tense. The story is not over. It’s never over. As I write this, Sherlock Holmes and Watson are racing down the Thames, Margot Macomber is ending the short happy life of her husband, the good aldermen of Jefferson are staring at the single strand of iron gray hair on the bed in Miss Emily’s house, and Mme. Loisel is discovering she and her husband suffered years in poverty paying for a fake necklace.

The action is still happening—it occurred as you were reading it, it is happening as someone on the other side of the planet is reading it at this moment, it will take place for someone one hundred years from now. It’s like time travel, or the telepathy Stephen King writes about. He very purposefully described a rabbit in a cage with the numeral “8” on its back in Maine in 1997 and I visualize it today, August 21, 2010, in Indianapolis. And you saw it, too, just now, on whatever day it is for you, wherever you happen to be. How cool is that?

That brings us to the dual action of a story—there is what happens in the story to the characters and there is what happens inside us as we read it. I refer not to the internal emotions we feel—and that are often the author’s primary purpose in writing it—as the story moves along. I mean the action that takes place in our imaginations. Our neurons are firing like crazy as we create each scene in our minds. We are recreating what the author already built in his own head, yes, but we are creating every scene, too, with fresh energy and purpose every time we read a favorite story. And when we clue in a friend that “this is a good read,” she can pick up the story and enjoy the same experience we did—Holmes racing, Margot Macomber shooting, aldermen gaping, Mme. Loisel paying a huge price for her pride. It’s telepathy, it’s time travel. It is magic.