Weekly Wilson

My new humor book Laughing through Life will go on Virtual Tour beginning on November 28, 2011.

Here is the schedule:

Nov. 28th – Page Flipperz.  (Interview and Give-away on November 29th)

Nov. 30th – Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers – Giveaway of book with blog post.

Dec. 1st – She Treads Softly – Guest Post on Dec. 2nd

Dec. 5th – Carabosses’s Library – Giveaway

Dec. 6th – Ruthi Reads – Giveaway and Interview on December 7th

Dec. 8th – Joy Story – Giveaway

Dec. 9th – Read More Books

Dec. 10th – A Life Sustained – Giveaway

Dec. 12th – Stacy’s Books – Interview and Giveaway on Dec. 13th

Dec. 14th – Book Zone – Giveaway

Dec. 15th – Guest Post on Dec. 16th

Check these blogs for reviews of Laughing through Life and the chance to win a free book in either Kindle or paperback formats (check giveaway blogs, above).

You can read more about the book at www.ConnieCWilson.com at the link devoted to Laughing through Life, or you can go to PremierVirtual Author Tours or Amazon.com (Connie Corcoran Wilson) and read reviews already posted.

Neal and Carolyn Cassady with their son John.

At one point in the documentary “Love Always, Carolyn” son John Cassady, [Neal Cassady’s son with the Carolyn of the title], says, “In a secret way, I dig the attention.” Someone should break it to John that his love of the spotlight is no secret; it comes through loud and clear in this documentary made by Swedish filmmakers Malin Korkeasalo and Maria Ramstrom. This underscored when Malin shared, after the film screened in Chicago at the Chicago Film Festival, that John, now in his sixties, drives around in something dubbed “the Beatmobile.”

Swedish filmmaker Malin Korkeasalo.

Asked how this documentary about Carolyn Cassady came to be made, how the filmmakers gained access to her, Malin said, “I did a short portrait of Carolyn for a magazine and, afterwards, she wanted help with her photographs.” Added Malin, “I was surprised at how eager she was to have her children involved (in the documentary).”

Carolyn Cassady was not the only woman in Neal Cassady’s life. He had a previous marriage (to LuAnne Henderson in 1947, which was annulled), became a bigamist with Dianne Hansen (he had another son named Curtis in 1950). When he died in Mexico at age 41, he had yet another woman (Anne Murphy) in his life. Said Carolyn, “Every woman fell in love with him.”

Swedish filmmaker Maria Ramstrom.

Apparently every man did, as well, since Neal and Alan Ginsberg had a well-documented homosexual relationship that spanned 20 years. I saw Alan Ginsberg come onstage to give a poetry reading at the University of California at Berkeley in the summer of 1965. A less attractive physical specimen would be difficult to find, “Howl” notwithstanding.
Neal Cassady, on the other hand, was physically handsome and very charming, but his upbringing with his alcoholic father in Denver, Colorado was far from normal—although Carolyn, in the documentary says, “There is no such thing as normal.” Carolyn also says, “I don’t regret knowing Neal, but I regret all the artificial self-promoting stuff that has come after it.  You just can’t get away from it.”

Maria Ramstrom and Malin Korkeasalo.

At this point in her life, nearing her 89^th birthday (April 28) Carolyn has begun divesting of various mementos of her life with Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, her lover from 1952 until 1960 at Neal’s urging. As Carolyn explains in the film, “It was Neal’s wish to share me with Jack.  I was against it, to begin with, but it was a survival for me to keep the man I loved.” Puffing on one of many small cigarillos, she says, “You have to go with the flow…There isn’t any hard and fast thing called love…Your heart is too big to just hold one sometimes.”

Going with the flow must have been difficult for Carolyn Cassady, who describes herself in the documentary as frigid ever since an older brother (she is one of 5 children) molested her in adolescence. Said Carolyn, “I was totally frigid from then on, but from then on I sold it for affection.” As she told the filmmakers, “You just do what you have to do. You get on with it and do it.”

Maria Ramstrom during the Q&A.

Carolyn’s early life in Lansing, Michigan and Nashville, Tennessee was fairly repressive. The youngest of 5 children, she describes a very solid Victorian upbringing, with a good home and a good education. “There was no touching or cuddling after infancy.  My nanny was the only hugging I ever got.  Almost anything you did, you never were quite good enough.” Carolyn left home at 16 to study drama and theater and became an accomplished painter and costumer of theatrical productions.

She met Neal and Jack in Denver at age 24 (1947) and says, “Some clog just clicked on a wheel.  That’s just how it felt and I knew this was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.” Unfortunately, her parents strongly disapproved. Her mother wrote Carolyn a letter in which she told her “what a horrible horror I was” and her parents eventually disinherited her.

To this day, Carolyn has money issues. At the film’s outset, her son John says of her situation that she has only 200 pounds in her British bank. (John:  “She was down to 200 pounds in the bank last week, and I don’t know what we’re gonna’ do next month.”) (*Carolyn moved to Bracknell, England, outside London, at age 63 and lives there alone, as her 3 children with Neal Cassady all live in the United States. At one point in the film she jokes that the sheets she is folding have been around since 1954 and that “maybe I should sell them to Johnny Depp or somebody.”) There is also a line about “all those pictures that have been supporting me ever since” and Carolyn is heard verbally admonishing a representative of Penguin Books, who is selling a book that has a picture of Neal and Jack on the cover that Carolyn took. (“Well, shame on you! You used my photograph without permission or payment!”)

“I think we learn by our mistakes, by our wrong choices,” says the 89-year-old in the film. “The hardest part of my whole life is ending up alone.” She repeated the theme, “It’s a real drag that I ended up my life completely alone,” yet it was Carolyn who moved thousands of miles away from her children. She pronounced possible men in her age range after Neal to be “married or gay or impossible.”

When she looks back at Neal’s constant departures and irresponsible behavior as a husband and father she says, “You don’t do that (leave on a road trip) when you have a new wife and baby.” But, she adds, “He’d always talk himself back…Throwing them out never worked.” She says wryly, “He couldn’t quite get the marriage thing together.”

Cassady also “hated himself like that” when he would play the fool while high on drugs.  Neal told her, “They all just look at me and I get high and behave like an idiot.” Added Carolyn, “Which is so sad.  He hated himself for it. I asked him, ‘Then why do you do it?’ He responded, ‘I don’t know.  They just all expect it.’” Several times, Carolyn murmurs, “Such a brilliant mind.  Just horrible that he wasted it all on drugs.”

Carolyn has been quoted in Notes from the Underground as saying, “As far as I’m concerned, the Beat Generation was something made up by the media and Allen Ginsberg.” Her marriage to Cassady suffered tremendously when she refused to post his $5,000 bail after he was arrested for offering 3 marijuana cigarettes to an undercover policeman and he did 5 years in prison at San Quentin as a result. Said Carolyn, “We had some good times after that, but always in the background was resentment.  He never ever really forgave me.  I couldn’t risk the house, could I?”

The throngs of college students cheering for Carolyn and John Cassady at their appearances on campus seem to have bought into what Carolyn dubbed the myth of the Beat generation, without considering the consequences to the participants.  Sad is the biggest emotion that comes through.

Carolyn says, “I watched both of them destroy themselves.  It was hell.”  She quotes from a letter written to Neal discussing their young son John, who is acting out in adolescence, and says, “I don’t know how I can stand to watch him go the way you have, at what expense?”

Maria Ramstrom and Malin Korkeasalo.

Carolyn Cassady may have lived an interesting and memorable life that she has chronicled in her own book Off the Road, but this documentary takes a look at an almost 90-year-old woman who is living alone, trying to sell off memorabilia from her past with two of literature’s notorious Merry Pranksters in order to survive. What is even more distressing is that her three children seem to also have the idea that living off their always-absent father’s name is desirable. (One daughter wanted to market a wine with the pictures of Kerouac and Cassady on the jug.)

Far from leaving the film feeling envious of a woman who has experienced this history up close and personal, it just made me feel sad. Sad for Carolyn Cassady now, and sad that her life was spent in thrall to a man who had numerous women other than Carolyn in his life. (LuAnne Henderson, his first wife, in 1947; Diane Hansen, who gave birth to Curtis in 1950; Anne Murphy when he was in Mexico, where he was found dead alongside the railroad tracks just 4 days shy of his 42^nd birthday.)
As for Jack Kerouac, he drank himself to death at age 47.

Allen Ginsberg, bearded, disheveled and unkempt, in 1965 had to be physically carried offstage by the janitor at Berkeley, since squatting on the floor playing finger cymbals and mumbling incoherently didn’t really fall under the heading of “poetry reading.”

Adjectives like “ineffectual,” “powerless” and “desperate” are employed by the central figure in the film.  Carolyn says of herself, “I was overwhelmed,” but adds, “That’s what makes life interesting is all these complications.  Mine was pretty messed up.”

“Moneyball” is a movie about baseball that Brad Pitt wanted to make. But to say that “Moneyball is a movie about baseball is like saying that The Sopranos was a series about the waste-management business,” as Austin Murphy put it in “Brad Pitt Deals.” (September 26, 2011 Sports Illustrated).

It’s a wonder the film got made at all, since Pitt was really not a baseball player back in his high school days at Springfield (Mo.) Kickapoo High School. Wrestling. Diving. Football. But no baseball for Brad Pitt in his sports-playing days.

When Pitt read Michael Lewis’ (The Blind Side) book about baseball, he realized it was not really a book about baseball as much as it was a movie about believing in yourself and having the courage to buck the system to prove that you can do it…whatever “it” is. There’s even a scripted line from the scouts, who are critiquing the prospects for next year’s team:  “He’s gotta’ be successful to be confident, and that’s when you’ve got something.” Years ago, Steven Tyler described his own success as lead singer of Aerosmith as “Fake it till you make it.”

The concept of success breeding success is something I promoted for 20 years as the CEO of a Sylvan Learning Center (#3301) I founded in the small town of Bettendorf, Iowa.  I could relate instantly to the gamble that Oakland “A’s” team manager Billy Beane has made in deciding to revolutionize the game of baseball by  integrating statistics to determine whom to draft. The team is looking for bargain basement deals that will unexpectedly turn out to be winners, giving it the appearance, at some times, of “an island of lost toys.” Their roster has just been raided of their 3 best players, and the cupboard is bare.

Beane de-emphasized the role of dugout managers such as the character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (Art Howe) and, instead, plucked “Google Boy,” as the plot dubs him, a young whipper-snapper dubbed Peter Brent in the movie (real character name: Paul Podesta, Beane’s fresh-out-of-Harvard assistant) who, in the movie, is a recent graduate of Yale. Brent (Jonah Hill in a nicely understated serious turn) tells Beane “Baseball thinking is medieval.”

Beane buys in to the premise that statistics can help make his struggling team (“We’re the last runt at the bowl.”) into a winner. The Oakland “A’s” at the time  had a budget of approximately $38 million to compete with the $121 million of teams like the New York Yankees. In Jonah Hill’s character of Peter Brent, Beane sees a way to even the playing field. This is not popular with the old-timers on staff. As Beane, using Texas Hold ‘Em terminology says says to his young assistant, “Just you and me, Pete. We’re all in.”

When Brad Pitt read the book Moneyball, he recognized the universal themes underlying the story of a team that, from a dismal start, went on to set the American League record for most consecutive wins in a season (20  games). In 103 years, the record had never been broken, but the Oakland “A’s broke it in 2002, using what the grizzled veteran scouts termed “statistical gimmicks.” Not unlike “Road to Perdition,” where the universal father/son theme resonated with  the Zanucks and helped propel the film based on a graphic novel written by Muscatine, Iowa native Max Collins, Brad Pitt wanted to play Billy Beane, a man he sees as someone tilting against windmills and fighting the good fight against odds that often seem overwhelming. Risking it all. Standing up for what he believes in. Being loyal to his principles and his team. The onscreen Beane says, “I made one decision based on money, and I said I’d never do it again,” alluding to his earlier player days, [when he turned down a full-ride scholarship to Stanford to turn pro right out of high school.] Although Beane’s success with the “A’s” earns him the offer of a $12 and 1/2 million-dollar contract with the Boston Red Sox, after wavering a bit he turns it down to stay with Oakland.

As the script puts it, “We are card counters at the blackjack table.  We’re going to turn the tables on the casino.” With “adapt or die” as the motto, Beane locks horns with virtually everyone, including his dugout manager, his scouts, his players, his family, his bosses and himself.

The script by award-winning writer Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”) and Steven Zallion (“Schindler’s List”) is clever, funny and meaningful. Much of it wrote itself when genuine baseball scouts gathered to share their wisdom. Some of the people in the room when Pitt holds a scouting meeting are real baseball scouts, but you’ll also recognize Aaron Pierce from “24″ (Glenn Morshower, 49 episodes) or Chief Jerry Reilly from “Rescue Me” (Jack McGee, 44 episodes, 2004-2007).  You may also notice that the actor playing Scott Hatteberg, Chris Pratt, is from “Parks & Recreation” where he plays Andy Dwyer (48 episodes, 2009-2011).

The most substantial role for a former TV series regular went to Kerris Dorsey (“Brothers & Sisters,” Paige Whedon, 91 episodes 2006-2011), who plays Billy Beane’s daughter Casey. She was Paige Whedon on “Brothers & Sisters” until the show was canceled recently. It is Casey’s singing of a song about being “a little girl lost in the middle,” which she performs for her dad, that frames the movie. Singing about “a little girl lost in the middle” (a la Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle”), Casey’s pure voice speaks to her dad, who encourages Casey to share her talent and perform for others. One of Billy Beane’s scouts (Grady, played by Ken Medlock) whom he ultimately must fire for insubordination has told Beane (Pitt), “You’re going to have to explain to your kid why you’re working at Dick’s Sporting Goods,” when Beane keeps pushing his statistically-driven agenda in the face of opposition. But Beane has bought into Bill James’ book on baseball statistics, 1977 Baseball Abstract:  Featuring 18 Categories of Statistical Information That You Just Can’t Find Anywhere Else. Even before that 1977 book, there was Earnshaw Cook’s Percentage Baseball, a 1964 Johns Hopkins engineering professor’s treatise on sabermetrics.

Brad Pitt saw Billy Beane as “the voice of reason speaking against the establishment.” We all know that speaking truth to power is not popular, but it made for some great 70s films, which I chronicled in “It Came from the ’70s,” a book with 50 representative films of the era. Pitt also appreciates movies of the seventies. He explained the difference between today’s films and the films of that great movie-making era this way:  “In scripts today, someone has a big epiphany, learns a lesson, then comes out the other side different.  In these older films I’m talking about, the beast at the end of the movie was the same beast in the beginning of the movie.  What changed was the world around them, by just a couple of degrees. Nothing monumental.  I think that’s true about us.  We fine-tune ourselves, but big change is not real.” (Austin Murphy’s Sports Illustrated article “Brad Pitt Deals”, September 26, 2011). Director Bennett Miller shared Pitt’s enthusiasm for 70s movies, as do I.

As the third director on the film, Bennett Miller said, “It (“Moneyball”) seemed like a shoot-the-moon project because it was complex and messed up in 1,000 different ways.” Stephen Soderbergh had parted ways with the project when his idea for a more documentary-style approach was rejected as too expensive.  The film languished in development hell for 8 years. Pitt, who has given 2 Oscar-worthy performances this year (the other  as the father in Terence Malick’s “The Tree of Life”) says, “What we were trying to do is tell an unconventional story in the Trojan horse of a conventional baseball movie.”

Michael Lewis, in the 2003 best-selling book on which the film is based wrote, “At the bottom of the Oakland experiment was a willingness to rethink baseball: how it is managed, how it is played, who is best suited to play it, and why.” Lewis has said, “I always thought of it (Moneyball) as the biography of an idea, and I wrote it as a biography of an idea.  And you can’t make a movie of an idea.”

But you can if you’re Brad Pitt, the 800-lb. gorilla of leading men.

Pitt saw the same themes that Rachael Horovitz recognized after 12 years working for Hollywood studios:  Taking a new path.  Having belief in one’s self to risk and move forward. Loyalty to one’s principles in the face of the temptation to abandon them. Horovitz picked up “Moneyball” in 2003 as a free-lance producer and, fortunately for her,  “As long as Brad Pitt wanted to make this movie, it was going to get made.”

When Pitt talks about the film, he references 70s anti-heroes like R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection and Steve McQueen, in pretty much every movie he ever made. That was the premise of an entire book I wrote (It Came from the’70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now): that 70s movies were the best era for film since the 30s, precisely because of those themes and those performances. The contrast with today’s computer-generated blow-up-more-cars approach to movie-making is stark. What appealed to me as I spent 8 years of my life compiling a retrospective of  70s movies, culled from  15 scrapbooks of reviews of that decade saved in my basement for 43 years, also  spoke to Brad Pitt. (www.ItCamefromtheSeventies.com).

The result is a movie with a heart, a brain, a spine and a funny-bone. Some of the funny was provided by the scouts. A sample:  “This is the kind of guy who, when he walks into the room, his dick has already been there for 2 minutes.” Beane on the “A’s” standing amongst other teams: “There’s rich teams, poor teams, 50 feet of crap, and then there’s us.” Beane to a scout who mentions that one player “has a good face,” “It’s not like we’re looking for Fabio.”  “He’s freaky—and not in a good way,” And—one truism articulated by Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) that explains why Beane was prepared to risk it all to find a way to make his team competitive—”If we try to play like the Yankees in here (i.e., while selecting new players to draft), we’re going to lose to the Yankees out there.” And that’s what led to Beane’s radical move to using statistics to give the “A’s” a competitive advantage…something that every major league team does now, but few did then.

The Mickey Mantle quote with which the film open is apropos:  “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life.” (Oct. 15, 2001). Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” is used in one opening day montage, a particularly good choice,  and the entire film worked, for me, because, as Director Bennett Miller said about his sensibilities and those of his star, “Both of us were drawn to some of the same films from the ’70s where you don’t have to have a character that stops the asteroid from hitting the Earth.”

Pitt is excellent in the lead role. Jonah Hill turns in a nicely-restrained supporting performance as Google Boy (Will Hill be as funny now that he’s creepily cadaverous?), and Philip Seymour Hoffman is also good as bullpen manager Art Howe, a man at odds with the boss. Stephen Bishop also does justice to David Justice, (to savor the pun).

A fine film about heart and risk and life…and baseball.

"Laughing through Life:" enough laughs to keep you from yawning.

With the recent release (as a paperback) of “Laughing through Life” and the various anecdotes that make up this stroll down memory lane, I felt it apropos to share with you an amusing anecdote that is similar to those in this book

Here’s a new one for you. My nephew’s 4-year-old daughter, Sophia, decided to do a header by shoving her tiny body through a play tube that was never meant to hold a 4-year-old. She did a tremendous “clunk” to the  floor below, where she immediately moaned and began crying. (Fortunately, she landed on a carpeted surface).

Her father and mother, Chris and D.J.,  ran to her side and asked her if she was “Ok” and did it hurt.

She was crying intermittently and then looked up at us and said, “It hurts all the way to God.”

[Out of the mouths of Babes. OR from "Laughing through Life!" (Try it, you'll like it!)]

It Came from the ’70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now is on tour in July and August. Here are the book blogs that will be reviewing “It Came from the ’70s” and when they will have information up about the book:

1)  “Under My Apple Tree” – July 11, 2011

2)  “Dan’s Journal” – July 12 Review. Also a Guest Post on July 13.

3)  “She Treads Softly” (Lori) – July 13 Review and Guest Post on July 14, 2011

4)  “Reading, Reading and Life” – Kendall – July 15 Review

5)  “5 Minutes for Books” – Elizabeth – July 13 Review and July 17 Guest Post

6)  “To Read Or Not to Read” – Marcie – July 18 Review and July 19 Guest Post

7)  “Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers” – Gina – July 19 Review and July 20 Interview

8)  “Books, Books, the Magical Fruit” – Sue – July 20 Review and July 21 Guest Post

9)  “Emeraldfire’s Bookmark” – Mareena’s – July 21 Review and July 22 Interview

10)  “Babbling About Books & More” – Kate – July 25 Review

Check out these varied book blogs to see what these book reviewers thought of “It Came from the ’70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now.”

Reverse the Trend: Buy and Read It Came from the ’70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now

Is reading in America a dying pursuit?  The NEA suggests it is, after conducting an in-depth study of the situation (read entire report at www.nea.gov.). “Reading at Risk” surveyed over 17,000 adults ages 18 or older, asking them about their reading habits in regards to novels, short stories, poetry or plays.  The focus was mainly on literary reading trends and  reading not associated with work or school.

To Read or Not to Read: That Is the Question

In a separate study entitled “To Read or Not to Read,” statistics were gathered from more than 40 national studies on reading habits of children, teenagers and adults.  This study dealt with all kinds of reading:  books, magazines, newspapers, and online reading.

According to the NEA, less than 1/3 of 13-year-olds read for pleasure every day, a 14$ decline from 20 years ago.  The percentage of 17-year-old non-readers doubled in that same twenty-year span.  If you’re an American between the ages of 15 and 24, you spend 2 hours a day watching television, but only 7 minutes a day reading. (Nov., 2007)

In an earlier study done in July of 2004, “Reading at Risk:  A Survey of Literary Reading in America” conducted by the census bureau in 2002 at NEA request,  adults were asked if they had read anything for pleasure in the previous 12 months.  One-half of 18 to 24-year-olds read no books for pleasure.  Between 1992 and 2002, the % dropped by 7%.

The Internet Also Rises

Between 1997 and 2003, Internet use was up 53%, however, for 18 to 24-year-olds.  The connection for 18 to 29-year-olds (broadband) was up 25points between 2005 and 2007, but the spending on books was down by 14% between 1985 and 2005.

Timothy Shanahan, a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago and past president of the International Reading Association, says that many young people say they don’t read because it’s lonely.  When they are online or text messaging, they feel involved with others, but they do not feel this sense of community when reading by themselves.  “What kids like about IM-ing and text messaging is that it’s playful and interactive and connects them to their friends,” said Shanahan in an article entitled “The Grim Reader” in the March/April, 2008 issue of Poets & Writers magazine. (pp. 10-13)

Shanahan continued, “The Harry Potter books were popular not mainly because of this wonderful story and the language, I don’t think, but because it was this huge phenomenon that allowed young people to participate in it. What was exciting was reading what your friends were reading and talking to them about it.  People of all ages are hungry for that kind of community.”

The article continues discussing the need for community and how the Internet seems to fill that void for many disconnected individuals.  It is not difficult to see that reading a book, as opposed to going online, might suffer, if the desire for feedback and community, lacking in today’s anonymous society, is satisfied most by online substitutes for actual human interaction.

An English Teacher’s Lament

One only has to go online to any blog to see the decline and fall of the English language.  A young friend with degrees in computer science tells me, “They didn’t teach us that stuff,” when I ask him about his spelling, grammar, and syntax errors.  By “they” he means, of course, his English teachers, and I have heard this refrain from my students at 6 colleges in my day.   I “taught this stuff” for almost 20 years to 12 and 13-year-olds.  In my classes, we labored long and hard learning proper grammar, spelling, syntax, subject/verb agreement, etc.

I moved into the private sector in 1985 and, apparently, the attempts to teach “that stuff” went with me.

When and why did English teachers stop trying to teach the correct use of our native, which has a direct bearing on reading?  The two subjects are inter-related, like a cat chasing its tail.  I used to tell my customers at the Sylvan Learning Center that for every $10 spent on reading improvement, only about $1 was spent on writing improvement, however, and that, too shows up everywhere today.

This very bright young man cited earlier now finds himself completely qualified to do the technical side of  web-design, but handicapped in doing it by a lack of proficiency in the areas mentioned.

I remember when I began teaching at the junior high school level in 1969.  My students routinely wrote short stories, which were then taken to the high school Creative Writing classes for judging.  By the time I left my public school post in 1985 to found a Sylvan Learning Center, the students coming up could no longer write a coherent sentence, let alone a paragraph, let alone a story.  We had to discontinue the short story contest, and the Creative Writing class at the high school level similarly withered and died on the vine.

Sometimes, veteran teachers of English feel like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.  We know that the dike will give way if we remove our finger, what are we to do?  Language is constantly changing, yes.  It is not set in stone and there are new words and terms and techno-speak being added very day.  I am much more likely to use a “sentence fragment” in stories I write today, because I have changed with the times.

But some appreciation for following the rules handed down by great writers seems wise.  Poet e.e. cummings was the exception that proves the rule, not a groundbreaker who made new ones, and Cormac McCarthy’s disdain for the apostrophe in The Road may lead nowhere good.

In Conclusion

It is a proven fact that poor reading skills lead to lower financial and job success (Dana Gioie, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts) and academic success can be predicted by the number of books in a house.

Let’s reverse the trend and keep on reading, especially It Came from the ’70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now. (www.ItCamefromtheSeventies.com) [Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or www.merryblacksmith.com].

The Kindle

I just concluded teaching “Blogging for Bucks” at the Midwest Writing Conference at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, and sat in on a presentation from an e-book publisher. The same gentleman now setting up to publish in e-book formats was an agent when I sat next to him at lunch in Chicago at “Love Is Murder” a few years ago. Now, he and his wife—and me—are pioneers packing our wagon train and heading for the New Frontier of Kindles and Nooks.

David Morrell thinks that agents, in the future, will take over most of the functions  of print publishers. I have an agent. I would rather not use her and take care of business myself, but, then, I founded and functioned as CEO of 2 previous businesses  (Sylvan Learning Center #3301 and Prometric Testing Center #3301), so I don’t mind it that “the buck stops here.” In fact, I prefer it that way.

I  just attended the BEA (Book Expo America) in New York City for the 8th time, BlogWorld, WorldCon (in Austin, TX) and the Book Blogger conference at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. All the talks and presentations and panels eventually talked about  e-book publishing and what to make of it. Here’s what I make of e-book publishing and I will echo J.A. Konrath, one of the leaders of the charge.

Why not?

“Writers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains! Give me your hungry-to-publish, your poor struggling authors, your wretched masses yearning to write free. I lift my E-Lamp beside the golden door.”

The “tipping point” for e-books versus print books has already been reached. By Christmas, the deluge will be unleashed as waves of Kindles and BookNooks and Sony Readers are gifted. The new generation (Millennials) are growing up playing with complex technology and hungry for it. My two-year-old granddaughters see anything electronic (camera, cell phone, Ipad) and immediately want to glom onto it.

There is no turning back.

The new frontier is upon us. The print publishing industry is circling the wagons. [They're humming Cher's song, "If I Could Turn Back Time."] In reading David Morrell’s blog, I saw that he had revised his opinion on when e-books would overtake print books downward from 5 years to 2 years. Reading the new E-book “How I Sold 1 Million Copies of My E-Book in 5 Months” by John Locke, I learned that GBL (Guaranteed Buy Lists) and OOU (One of Us) and blogging to spread the word are all going to be part of the Author-of-the-Future’s repertoire.

In my own case, my paperback books are not self-published. Small, independent publishers thought enough of my work to put out the print copies.  I paid Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson LLP (Chicago) to retain all e-book rights. I publish the same book as an e-book under the imprimatur Quad City Press. I make more money from virtual book sales and I know I’m being paid what I’m owed.
What are the advantages? Control, for one thing.

I had one publisher who slapped a cheap cover on a good book and nearly ruined it. (One reviewer even said, “You can’t judge this book by its cover.”) This would never have happened if I had published it as an e-book title and developed the cover myself. That same publisher kept my book a year, never paid me one cent of royalties (despite being contractually obligated to do so) and then, after I protested, sent me a check for $32. I knew, for a fact, that the book had sold that much in one book signing at a Barnes & Noble store, but how would I prove that I had been cheated? I licked my wounds and moved on, got a new (better) cover (Amish men don’t wear blue jeans, shirts with rick-rack and pork pie hats!) and published it as a Kindle title myself. It’s new and improved, and it stays up until I say it comes down. Plus, I don’t have to worry about being cheated out of my royalties or not getting paid when the company goes under, as is happening now with Leisure book authors.

If you price your book under $9.99, the author retains 70% of the money paid directly to his or her bank account. I was recently offered 35% royalties by an e-book publisher to publish my 80,000 word novel The Color of Evil. The company wanted extensive rewrites of one section. There was no upfront money, so promotion would still be all on my dime, as has been the case with the small independent publishers with whom I’ve worked. Why not publish this myself as Quad City Press, not have to rewrite in a different voice, and reap two times the royalties? (70% versus 35%). Also, you can do creative things with pricing books in a series, which is my plan with The Color of Evil, Red Is for Rage and the third book in the series, (which I am at work writing now.)

E-book publishing is both a godsend and opening the floodgates. True, some drek will be published, but if you have a person who has been writing for pay for 55 years (as I have) and has won national awards for his or her writing (as I have), your odds are pretty good that, if you like one title by this proficient author, you’ll like the others.

Pricing is key. Perseverance is key, but watch out, world. Here we come: the E-book authors are on the move! Get ready!

I copied the column below from the archives of www.blogforiowa.com. It will appear within a new Kindle offering that will go up very soon on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The title of the book is Laughing through Life, and it chronicles funny stories from my first years as a young wife, mother and teacher, on through the following of the presidential candidates in 2004 and 2008 and up to the present. When it appears for sale, I’ll be sure to let you know. For now, enjoy this “sneak preview” of one of the offerings within it. (And if you want to see the original picture of Al Franken and me, check the archives of www.blogforIowa.com.

Keynote Speaker – Al Franken

AND YOU ARE THERE!

Or

”A Mush Mute, a Big Hat and a Plum”

Just a few comments about the October 16th Jefferson/Jackson (2004) annual Democratic dinner at Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines.

1)    The acoustics at Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium suck.

2)    Because the acoustics suck, the large TV screens have captioning. The captioning must be done by a machine. This can lead to much merriment. Especially if you have made it your goal, after at least three hours of waiting, to obtain and consume a minimum of three glasses of white zinfandel prior to Al Franken’s appearance.

3)    “Ed is the Governor of Pencil.” I think the machine MEANT to say that Ed is or was the Governor of Pennsylvania.

4)    The word “Dear” is listed as “Deer.”

5)    The machine cannot make up its mind whether the choir of Gospel Singers is from the Maple or Elm Street Missionary Baptist Church Choir. At this point, the machine is introducing various tree types. Things are very confused.

6)    We are asked to join hands with the person next to us. The person next to me, on my right, is Thomas Fischermann, Economic Correspondent for the German weekly “Die Zeit.” I tell Tom that holding hands in this fashion in America means that we are now legally married. Tom tells me that he knows this isn’t true, as he was raised Catholic. I admit that I lied (which is more than I can say for George W. Bush). Tom turns out to be a delightful seat-mate for the dinner, which we are not eating.

7)    At one point, after the droning of fully two dozen would-be Democratic candidates, none of whom any of us knows, Tom says he might have to go back to his hotel room and watch Al (Franken) on TV. (He doesn’t.) He is disappointed that Sharon Stone isn’t going to appear (aren’t we all?) I ask Tom whether he thinks Vanessa Kerry is wearing nylons. He is too much of a gentleman to comment. Oh, those European men. Especially those who had English teachers from Wisconsin.

8)    After about 2 hours of the droning and bellowing (the sound system is REALLY bad), I say that it is going to be my goal to drink three glasses of white zinfandel before Franken takes the stage. I am actually doubting that Franken will EVER take the stage. This turns out to be a really bad plan. Why? I have taken my college roommate as photographer-in-residence, and, when I put my camera and the wine glasses (small plastic cups at $5 a pop) on the floor, she accidentally kicks a glass of white zinfandel over my camera and it completely soaks it. Thomas rescues the camera from the ever-widening pool of wine. The strap is soaked and the lens is “cloudy.” I do not get one single usable picture from my trusty Canon after the unfortunate wine incident, henceforth known as “Zinfandel-gate.” As I did manage to secure two glasses of zinfandel prior to Zinfandel-gate, I don’t care. Later, I will rue the day. Or night.

9)    To my extreme left is “Jane,” correspondent for “People” magazine. She is covering the candidate’s children for a story. Jane is very nice. She is dressed in black. She would like some food. We do not get any food. We would not get anything to drink, either, if I hadn’t made the infamous “Zinfandel-gate” run. (*Kids: Take note! Do NOT try this at home!)

10)    Other errors on the sub-title machine that amuse me:  “Fill” for a candidate whose first name is “Phil.” “He is a man of grass.” (This may actually be accurate; we don’t know. Perhaps he meant that “W” is an *ss? Or a man of *ss? Very confusing. Don’t know; can’t tell you.)

11)    When someone says, “The future of this country is at stake. The future of the world is at stake,” Thomas leans over and says, “The sky is falling.” I laugh. Perhaps I should write this down? Again, don’t know; can’t tell you.

12)    More machine sub-title errors: for “pirate suit,” (which is connected to Al Franken’s remarks about George W. Bush wearing a ridiculous flight suit with a huge cod-piece on his now-infamous “Mission Accomplished” battleship appearance). The machine spells out: “pie rat.” Perhaps this machine is smarter than anyone realizes.

13)    Other errors that I cannot explain, from the sub-titling machine: “sash and acute” (?) “A mush mute, a big hat and a plum.”

14)    I enjoyed Al Franken’s remark that, after 9/11, the country was very united. “My college roommate even got out an old T-shirt to wear that touted America. Of course, it took him four hours to white-out ‘sucks.’”

15)    What have I learned from this experience? Never trust sub-titling machines. Always trust the German correspondent for “Die Zeit.” He is very knowledgable, very handsome, and we chat at great length about the Diebolt voting machines and the potential for voter fraud in the upcoming election. Please give Thomas a raise; I think he likes Vanessa Kerry, and he will need it to win her heart.

16)    Never try to drink three glasses of white zinfandel while simultaneously shooting film and taking notes. But it’s ok to laugh. A lot.

Three local authors will be signing books in Long Grove during the annual Strawberry Festival, on Sunday, June 12, 2011. The trio will be 2 blocks from the fire station, selling a total of 10 different titles, which range from self-help nonfiction to science fiction to ghost stories set along Route 66.

The 3 local authors taking part in the event are debut author Pauline Marquez, head of last year’s Quad City Book Fair David Dorris, and Connie (Corcoran) Wilson.

Mr. Dorris’ second book, “LIfe Is Too Short” will be on sale, as will titles ranging from “It Came from the 70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now,” “Hellfire & Damnation,” “Out of Time,” “Ghostly Tales of Route 66″ (Volumes I, II and III), and “Both Sides Now.” The authors will also be present at the RME (River Music Experience) on July 30 from noon to 8 p.m. Time frame for tomorrow’s signing is noon to 4 p.m.

On May 21 at the Union Club, the Chicago branch of  the Illinois Women’s Press Association awarded its Silver Feather awards for writing excellence to several of Connie’s projects, including both of her most recent books, It Came from the ’70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now and Hellfire & Damnation.  Both books have already scored (first-ever) E-Lit awards for their Kindle versions ($8.50 and $2.99, respectively, on Amazon and Barnes & Noble). Hellfire & Damnation, which is organized around Dante’s Inferno and its 9 Circles of Hell, also placed 7th (of 46 nominees) on the Preliminary Stoker Ballot. (Stephen King placed 10th on that ballot) from the HWA (Horror Writers’ Association. A sneak preview of one of the stories from the sequel to follow went up (for 99 cents) as a Kindle short story (6,500 words) on May 17th, entitled “The Bureau.”

A third book Ghostly Tales of Route 66 in Kindle format also was named a Gold Medal winner in the E-Lit awards in the travel category earlier this year. ($9.50 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble). It has only recently been made available in other than print format, although the Kindle format contains several new stories never before published, but has no pictures as the print versions do.

Other categories awarded Silver Feather awards for excellence in writing by the IWPA were:

     Photo on the Web for “The Tall Ships in Chicago at Navy Pier” on www.WeeklyWilson website.

     Writing for the Web:  “Obama in Iowa for Health Care Initiatie:  Tea Partiers Rally Outside Iowa City Fieldhouse.”

     Writing for the Web, Column or Commentary:  “Opinion:  Phil Hare Is Better Choice than Bobby Schilling in Illinois’ 17th District Race,” Yahoo! News.

     Videos for the Website, Special Interest Site:  Hellfire & Damnation, Quad Cities’ Learning, dba Quad City Press

     Writing for the Web, Feature Article:  “What Did General Stanley McChrystal Really Say in the ‘Rolling Stone’ Article that Got Him Fired?”, Yahoo Contributor Network

     Website Development, Special Interest Sites:  www.ConnieCWilson.com, Quad Cities’ Learning, Inc.

     Blogs, Webcontent, Special Interest Sites, “Weekly Wilson:  Chicago Film Festival:  Encounters of the Famous Kind,” WeeklyWilson website.

          Connie signed copies of her newest book, It Came from the ’70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now at the BEA (Book Expo America) on Wednesday, May 25 from 2 to 3 p.m. and she will be selling and signing copies of all of her books at Printers’ Row on Saturday, June 5 and Sunday, June 6, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

   If you miss her there, try the RME (River Music Experience) on July 30th in Davenport, Iowa, during the Bix Road Race weekend which coincides with the RAGBRAI (Register’s Annual Great Bike Race Across Iowa) race finale. She will also be heading out for appearances at an assortment of Family Video stores with the movie book and delivering a lecture at the Moline Club in the near future. (Stay tuned for further developments.)