Is Honesty the Best Policy?

Last weekend I taught a course at Kennesaw College for the Georgia Writers Association. It was an hour and a half on “Being A Critic – For Fun, Fame and Profit?” You notice the question mark at the end of the title. That refers to the profit aspect.

I went through the whole history of how I, Jackie K Cooper from Clinton, South Carolina, became a film and book critic. It was a long journey full of wonderful coincidences and amazing mentors.

At the end of the session I was talking about what goes into a book review. I stated I always try to find something good in even the worst book and something not so perfect to add to a rave review. I always try to remind people this is just one man’s opinion and not anything more.

Having said this I added I always try to send the author a copy of my review. I usually “Google” them and find a website which will have a “Contact” me area. I then send the author an e-mail which states, “My review of (the book) has been posted to my website www.jackiekcooper.com. This review also appeared in my newspapers."

I have been doing this for ages and frequently get a note back from the author thanking me for the review. From these correspondences I have struck up a friendship with various authors. But friendship or not I still give an honest review of the books I select. This sometimes makes it a little awkward but I don’t think I have lost any friends over my reviews.

Recently I did have one friend tell me if I did not like his book just not to review it (or at least not have the review published). Still I think most writers agree with my attitude as a writer which is that any publicity is good publicity.

When I attended the Dahlonega Book Festival this year I was sitting with some authors and mentioned to them an incident that had happened with my book reviews. I had sent a notice of my review of a book to an author. It was a mixed review. I had found some things I liked and some I didn’t. Well shortly after I sent the notice to the author he responded with an angry message about it. He said if I sent him notice of a review that he should reasonably expect it to be a “good” review. He hardly expected it to be unfavorable, and that I was never to review any more of his books.

Of course I can review any book I choose to review but I probably will make a note to leave this author’s books off my desk. I thought his response was extremely thin skinned and touchy. But the authors who I told this story to had mixed feelings.

One agreed totally with me and said he had used my reviews to help improve his writing. Another said I should never send notice of a review unless it was a good review. She said that even mildly negative reviews can be terribly hurtful.

I don’t know if I am going to change my policy or not. I certainly don’t want to cause anyone grief by what I write but if I am not honest in my opinion of what use is it? I am lucky enough to have newspapers and other media like my reviews enough to pay for them. That makes me a professional critic per se. It doesn’t however mean that my opinion is any more credible than that of someone else.

I would like to know your opinion. You can e-mail me at jkershawcooper@aol.com and let me know what you think. I’ll be waiting to hear the pros and cons of doing what I do.

JKC

Jackie K Cooper is the author of five books, the latest being THE SUNRISE REMEMBERS. All five books have received rave reviews from the esteemed book critic Jackie K Cooper.

Sweet Home Carolina

A week ago I went back to Ohio—back home, I would have said not that many years ago. It was “book” travel, the kind you can deduct on your Schedule C as a business expense. We stayed with my stepson and his family for eight days. (They’re very understanding and wonderful people.)

On Tuesday night, I had a scheduled speaking engagement at the Parma South branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. Good crowd, nice book sales for the Friends of the Library group, and lots of interesting questions from the audience. But as we stepped outside just after 9 PM, we were greeted by sleet. A fine mist of it, but definitely the dreaded combination of rain mixed with snow. SNOW!! On October 28! We shook our heads, and I hoped I remembered how to drive in the blasted stuff in my Hertz-supplied mini-SUV. As I pulled out of the library parking lot, I found myself with the old familiar death grip on the steering wheel. Ah, those were the days.

By Thursday, the weather had ameliorated to bright sunshine and a balmy 62 degrees. We met with an old classmate of mine, did a nostalgia tour of my hometown, and visited a high school hangout for a famous Oh Boy double-decker burger. Saturday was the Buckeye Book Fair in Wooster, about an hour south of where we were staying. It was a fabulous festival held at a huge building on the Ohio State Wooster campus, crowded with book lovers—and buyers—for the entire day, with some of the proceeds going to charity. Heaven is hanging out surrounded by books with people who are eager to talk about them. I dispensed some advice to aspiring writers, reconnected with folks I’d met at previous fairs, and generally had a fabulous time.

In spite of the usual frenetic airport nonsense, we arrived back in Savannah almost on schedule. We battled up I-95, hitting rush hour traffic a few miles from Hilton Head. And then, there it was. We crested the bridges and saw the island spread out in front of us, a few boats drifting in against the retreating tide, the last of the sun casting shadows across Pinckney Island and Skull Creek. It’s so incredibly beautiful, even on a chilly November evening sliding into dusk.

It feels like home. It smells like home. When we rolled off the second bridge, it almost felt as if I could finally breathe again, as if the rest of the world had been shut out. Insular. Though I was born in Ohio and lived there for nearly fifty years, Hilton Head has become my home. We visit Lorain County just west of Cleveland, but the island is ours. I’m beginning to think I was intended all along to be born in South Carolina, but my parents somehow didn’t get the message. I truly belong here. Truly.

Maybe it’s not too late to claim citizenship if you legitimate Southerners will have me. Is there room for one more repentant carpetbagger?

I'll be happy to fill out the necessary paperwork.


Kathy Wall grew up in a small town in northern Ohio. She and her husband Norman have lived on Hilton Head Island since 1994. Her 8th Bay Tanner mystery, The Mercy Oak, was released in May by St. Martin’s Press. Watch for Covenant Hall coming next spring.
www.kathrynwall.com

These Are a Few of My Not-So-Favorite Things

By Annabelle Robertson


It's great to be back in the South - the deep South (with apologies to Louisiana and Mississippi). As is, small-town South Carolina. I've always been a Palmetto wannabe, and oh, I do not regret moving back here one little bit. The people are great and the accent is to die for. Smooth and sweet, it harks right back to the turn of the century. (The previous one.)


"Moanin'," they say, and it feels like I'm in some movie - one where people actually sound like Southerners.


And the food! I've gained five pounds just looking. Well, not looking exactly....and not five, either. But I can sure see why people weigh a lot more here than they do in California (and I mean, a LOT). One can only eat so many tortillas, after all, I guess.


These are the things I did not forget about the South. But others (I am increasingly being reminded), I definitely chose to forget, as Barbra Streisand would sing.


Like mosquitos. Good, grief! You live without those blood suckers for three years and I tell you, you forget the pain. My little girls were so startled to get bites that they started screaming one night, making me think they'd been injured.

"MAMA! LOOK!" howled my six-year-old. "WHAT IS THIS?"

She was pointing at a tiny little ole mosquito bite, like it was early warning of a chickenpox outbreak (remember those?!) Hard not to laugh.

Still in the harmless-but-frustrating category is the pace of life. Okay. I'm sorry, but when people say that Californians are laid back, they have NO IDEA what they are talking about - if "laid back" has anything to do with "slow." Because I'm here to tell you right now that South Carolinians give new meaning to the word "leisurely."

They talk slow, they walk slow, they drive slow. The react slow. Ask 'em a question and they slowly finish what they are doing, turn around like they're in a ballet then smile and say, "Can I heeeellllllllllp you?" Then they take about 30 minutes to get your shake (I told you I was gaining weight).

They also ask you to repeat yourself a lot, and spell things. But maybe this is "slow" of a different kind...

I know I sound like a damn Yankee, and I'm sorry. I appreciate all the sweetness and light. But could we pick up the pace just a LITTLE?

In another category entirely - one that is not even remotely benign, however - is something that has been on the political forefront for the past few weeks, and that would be race. Tuesday was an historic election and a historic moment, to be sure, and I was proud to be an American on that day that Martin Luther King predicted that a man would be judged by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin.

Praise God and hallelujah.

But, here's the rub -and sorry if I'm mentioning that the emperor may not have on any clothes. I'm not so sure we are.

Yes, we elected a black president, with help from about 42% of the Caucasian population - hardly a majority. But race is still a problem. The day after the election, I got a racist text message - from someone I never would have suspected. And so did my colleague. Both were mass text forwards being circulated around.

"It's not looking good," it said. "They've already replaced the rose garden with a watermelon patch."

I was horrified. My colleague's was worse - something about Obama Christmas ornaments.

I didn't even want to hear the details. I just shuddered.

Can I tell you how much I hate this sort of thing? How evil it is? And how ashamed I am to be among the race that continues to perpetuate these horrors - all the while proclaiming that we're progressive and beyond that?

It's foul - positively foul. And it's what I call "wink wink racism" - those not-so-subtle but definitely private jokes which white people share among themselves, to make themselves feel superior.

That's not the only racism I've encountered since I got home, though. A few weeks ago, I took a photo of a white woman kissing her black husband, after he stepped off the plane from Iraq. A hero, mind you. Who has been putting his life on the line, in the service of our country. And it was a poignant shot. She had jumped into his arms and was kissing and squeezing his face.

Naturally, we ran it on the front page. And you wouldn't believe the nasty calls we got. Not a few, either. Probably a dozen, in a town with a population of just 45,000. Each of our three publishers received calls on their cell phones, from different people. One woman, who was furious, said, "What am I going to tell my children?"

Ummmm....how about, "I'm a racist"?

Another yelled, "I'm a CHRISTIAN, and I'm ashamed!"

Of calling yourself a Christian, hopefully.

The whole incident really set me off. "This would NEVER happen in Atlanta," I said, storming around the newspaper.

Well, wrong.

The next weekend I drove to the beach, to see my old editor from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I told her the story, lamenting small towns in the South. "Oh, we had the same problem in Atlanta," she said. "Every time we ran a photo of a bi-racial couple."

Sick.

Last week, someone called my editor and told her that she believed that, in order to be a "real American," you had to be white.

I kid you not.


These are some of the things that I had forgotten, living out of the South. The things I simply choose to forget. Not that Californians don't occasionally crack a Latino joke or two, but it's rare, and there's a whole different vibe going down out there, when it comes to race. As it, it isn't really an issue. Not like it is here, anyway.

So, while we extol the virtures of the South on this blog of great Southern authors - most of whom reduce me to a guppy in the great ocean of Southern literature - we must also come to grips with a painful reality.

We're still struggling with racism, however latent it may be, and however much we choose to deny it.

With Southern love,
Annabelle

Annabelle Robertson is an award-winnng journalist and author who writes for a daily newspaper in Sumter, SC. Her first book, The Southern Girl's Guide to Surviving the Newlywed Years: How to Stay Sane Once You've Caught Your Man, won the 2006 USA Best Book Award for humor.

A REAL JOB

“What should I blog about this month?” I asked my 10-year-old, who was standing outside in the backyard wearing a black T-shirt his college age sister had given to him over the weekend when she was home visiting. The shirt said Nine Inch Nails, which I knew was a band, but I wasn’t really sure what they played. I’d been so distracted I’d let Sam wear it to fifth grade, then worried all day they’d send him to the office for promoting some band who sings nasty lyrics. The point is I’d been too busy to look into this band because of a reason I’ll reveal to you in just a bit.
“Why don’t you blog about how Jake is smarter than you,” said Sam, glancing over at our Australian Shepherd mix who was reclining beneath a sweet gum, “and how it’s actually him who writes your books.”
I looked at Sam. He was smiling playfully, but a part of me wondered if he wasn’t just a little bit serious.
About six months before came a really low spot in my writing career. I had spent the past three years doing interminable editing for a novel as it went through three editors (they kept getting pregnant), promoting that book when it finally came out, and then writing two more novels which still needed to be sold (my agent and I had parted, amicably). So, I was in that awful, awful spot of hunting a new agent. There was a lot of sitting on my hands waiting for queries to be received and read by potential agents, then hopefully for agents or request manuscript pages to be pondered. I am terrible at waiting for things and plus I had next to no money to entertain myself with. My husband had been very supportive during these three years, but we do have a mortgage among other bills, and we’re still paying for two teenage kids’ braces, and I promised him I wouldn’t write another novel till I’d sold those two. I also said I’d look for A REAL JOB.
I wrote out a script to help me and I began the calls. Calls to friends, to acquaintances, then to complete strangers. I called bookstores, libraries, small presses and publishers, anything I could think of in the book/writing industry. They were all dead-ends. Finally I called the Journalism School at UGA where I’d gotten my degree back in 1985. I recalled that they had since added a degree in Creative Writing. I decided I should go back to school to get my Master’s in Creative Writing. I sent some emails and waited. There came a nice week or so of picturing myself taking two interminable years of writing classes (can you see me smiling? I was absolutely positive that would not be like work at all!) and then I’d end up in the cushy job of writing professor; critiquing manuscripts and guiding writers (this too didn’t sound a thing like work).
Until. Until I began a conversation about the job opportunities at the end of this degree. I spoke with the head of Creative Writing at UGA. “I don’t want to discourage you, Julie,” she said, “but you really need a PhD, in both Creative Writing and in Literature to be able to get a job, and even then the job positions are highly competitive.”
I grieved. I whined. I ate a lot of junk food like burgers and chocolate. I read a bunch of novels. I even secretly started writing a new one. But that specter of having to find a job crept along at my heels so that I enjoyed none of it fully. “Please God,” I prayed, “send me the right agent right now! Because if I had the right agent, then I wouldn’t have to hunt a job. I could just send him /her my two novels and wait till he/she sold it and then do the editing and the promoting, etc.... I promise I’ll only write nice stuff. Really really meaningful stuff that won’t lead folks down the wrong path, and I’ll give some money from my book advances to the poor folks in Myanmar...”
Days passed, then weeks. I hovered like a vulture over my email box, waiting. I lost my perspective on how blessed I’ve been with the opportunity to do the thing I absolutely love to write stories. Finally, one Sunday afternoon I went to my folks’ house for dinner. With a nice full belly I went to their den to digest and relax in the La-Z-Boy. They live in the county next door to mine and they subscribe to the Athens Banner-Herald, so idly I picked up the nice, fat Sunday edition to peruse the classifieds. That was when I saw it. THE PERFECT JOB! It was forty hours a week at a fine wage. It required a four-year college degree, and that you pass an ability test. The beautiful thing was that it was only five weeks long!
Plus, it was kind of to do with writing. What the job was was scoring essays (some people call it rating) for the state of Georgia. These were essays written by 11th grade high school students, ranging in age from 16-20. To graduate from high school a student must write an essay on an assigned subject, called a prompt, and must pass with an acceptable score in four different domains; Ideas, Organization, Style, and Conventions. The essay scorer gets a rubric for each domain. Each of these has five possible scores ranging from “little or no capability” to “complete mastery.”
“Well, a real job will be good for you,” my husband said the night before I was to begin. “You wouldn’t have much to write about if you didn’t get out there and experience life, now would you?” I frowned at him. I had a real job. A job writing books, which if any of you do this, you know what I’m talking about. But I didn’t argue with him. Instead, I set my alarm early as I had to feed breakfast to four people, two cats, and Jake, and pack four lunches before 7:30 A.M.
I entered the huge scoring room for training that morning and found that my hundred or so other fellow scorers were computer instructors, retirees, UGA students, teachers who had quit teaching for various reasons, musicians, D.J’s, out-of-work accountants, mothers, etc.. I decided I would become a scoring superstar during my days, and come evenings I could work on my novel writing career. Ha! By the time I got home, sometime between 6:00 and 7:00 P.M. each night depending on where we had to pick Sam up, it was time to fix supper, clean that up, oversee homework, baths, and do what minimal laundry and mail couldn’t wait till the weekend. I was exhausted. I had no time to do things like write, play with Sam or Jake, or check out the band Nine Inch Nails.
What made the job harder was that on the second day I was scoring essays I got offers from two agents and I had to stifle the urge to quit. It wasn’t that hard because there was still that pesky little matter of needing to earn some money. I stayed and I enjoyed it, too. The essay prompt I was scoring asked students if the driving age in Georgia should be raised, lowered, or remain the same. Many essays were nondescript, the kind with five paragraphs in text-book fashion, but some were amazing! Some were written as brilliant narratives that took my breath away. They were gripping and made the hours fly by. I marveled at the talent and I took mental notes. I collected unusual names.
Then there was the joy of having work associates. We couldn’t talk in the scoring room, but in the breakroom we could exchange wonderful stories we’d read from high school students’ essays, as well as our own.
My job just ended and I’ve returned to the life of a full-time writer. I’ve been walking around the house between writing and editing jags, saying, “Oh, thank God for that wonderful experience!” and in the very next breath, “Oh, thank God, I’m done with that!”

Click HERE to read more about Julie L. Cannon and her books.

Guest Blogger: Jennie Bentley: Reflections on Truth and Fiction

My husband’s a funny guy. Not hah-hah, laugh-a-minute, lampshade-on-the-head funny—although he can do that, too—but strange funny. Like, when I make him read some of my writing (and ‘make’ is the appropriate word here; he loves me, but he doesn’t like to read), and he says, “Yeah, I liked it, especially when you said...” and then he goes on to quote one of my protagonist’s lines. Or “Yeah, that was pretty good, when you did such-and-such.” Or “No, I didn’t like it when you kissed that guy.”

No kidding. I wouldn’t like it either, if he was the one doing it.

Except I’m not actually doing it. My protagonist is. Which should be obvious, since she has a different name than I do, and is kissing some guy who only exists in my imagination. On paper. But to my husband, obviously I am the main character of whichever manuscript I’m working on at the moment. And she’s me. Never mind the fact that he knows quite well that I’m not a New York City textile designer renovating houses in Maine. We live in Nashville, and DH sees me there every morning when he wakes up. So it’s not like I’ve got a secret life somewhere else.

DH isn’t the only person to think this. Other people also ask, “So are you like your character?” They seem somewhat disappointed when I say apologetically that no, I’m really not.

Or maybe I am. At least to a degree. Enough to relate, anyway.

Avery is a New Yorker born and bred. She grew up on the Upper West Side and graduated from Parsons School of Design.

I lived in New York for a few years. Long enough to get to know and love it. I’ve been to the Upper West Side, and I know what Parsons School of Design looks like, from the outside.

Avery is a 31-year-old textile designer turned home renovator in Maine, after inheriting her Aunt Inga’s home and cats.

I waved goodbye to 31 a few years ago, and I’ve never been a textile designer, nor have I ever inherited anything worth having, but there isn’t much I don’t know about home renovation. My family has owned eight houses over the past eight years, and renovated all of them. Most around our ears as we tried to go about our business as usual, with two kids, a dog, a parakeet, and a goldfish. No cats, because I’m allergic to them.

Avery is in love with Derek, who’s six feet tall, with hair that’s a little closer to blonde than brown, and dreamy blue eyes with long lashes.

I’ve been married for longer than I care to remember to DH, who is just under six feet tall, with blonde hair and eyes that are a little closer to green than blue, and surrounded by the kind of lashes any woman would gladly sell her soul for.

Avery is short—5’2” or 5’3”—with lots of strawberry blonde hair, freckles, and a fashion sense that borders on the eccentric. Derek calls her Tinkerbell.

I’m more like 5’8”, and no one in their right mind would call me Tinkerbell. Not if they wanted to live. Instead, I’m what is usually referred to as a ‘statuesque brunette.’ My fashion sense is non-existent, since like the majority of writers, I live under a rock.

Avery is insecure, a little cynical, a little hopeful, prone to being sarcastic, and quick to take offense.

I’m...

Yeah.

We may not have any outward characteristics in common, but she speaks with my voice. Her reactions are my reactions. Her thoughts are my thoughts, her feelings my feelings. She’s me, deep inside. The experiences that shaped her may not be the same experiences that shaped me, but the end result is much the same.

Ultimately, I guess it’s a compliment. I’ve created a character that’s real enough that people expect her to be a real person. And I could have worse complaints than that.

___________________________________________________________________________

Jennie Bentley is the author of the Do-It-Yourself Home Renovation mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime. When she’s not writing about real estate, she’s buying it, selling it, or renovating it somewhere in Nashville, Tennessee. You can find out more about her at http://www.jenniebentley.com/ or http://www.theabcsofdiy.blogspot.com/

Where Real Change Begins

"All great change in America begins at the dinner table."
Ronald Reagan

We've heard a great deal over the last two years about change. Everyone's promising it. But as I was thinking the other day, I realized that no matter what I think about a political candidate, that's not where real change begins.

I grew up with a mother who had dinner on the table every evening at five o'clock whether we were hungry or not. To this day those are some of the best memories in my life. It was the place where my parents challenged us on our attitudes, shared with us their dreams for our family and taught us about the things worth having and holding onto in this life.

In fact, in just a couple weeks many of us will gather around our tables for Thanksgiving dinner and my family will scoot back from the table, unbuckle our belts, or untie our drawstrings and talk. We'll talk about our year. We'll talk about our fears. We'll talk about our new visions. We'll talk about the craziest things that have happened to us. And around that table we'll dream, laugh, maybe even cry. But it will be those moments that really change us.

I know life is crazy. I know we spend more time eating in our cars than sitting at our dinner tables. But where are we receiving the core values of our heart, the real treasures of this life? From the television? Even from books? I can't believe I'm about to say this, since people reading my books is how I make my living, but what if we took a couple nights a week, gathered our family around the dinner table and talked about the things that create true change, character, perserverence, faith, love, and the ability to still hope.

The government will never truly be able to provide such things. They can paint grand pictures, ease the pressure of our mortgages, but they can never offer that which can change the very core of who we are. No, real change is found when we're willing to go to the intimate places with one another, listen more than we talk, and love even those who at times are unlovely.

May God bless us today...as both Americans and Families.

Denise lives in Franklin, Tennessee with her two shih-tzu's Maggie and Sophie. She enjoys long walks, good books, Coca-Cola and evening dinner's with her families. And every now and then she writes a few books. Her latest is The Will of Wisteria.

Anybody There?

Is anybody out there?

It is four a.m. and I am up writing because I’ve promised a friend and sister writer I’ll be part of this southern writers blog. At four a.m., however, when the world outside my bay window is dark and not even a night bird is calling, I have to wonder who is going to wake up in the morning and seriously care about anything I have to say.

That is one prong of the eternal writer’s dilemma: is anybody out there listening?

The second prong is equally important: if somebody is listening, am I saying anything worth listening to?

The Internet has not made our society more profound, merely more prolific. Three times this week I have been invited to sign up for Facebook so I can be a “friend” to somebody who wants to fill me in on the day-to-day happenings of her life. One of those people was a total stranger. The other two are casual acquaintances, not people I already keep in touch with. Do they think I need or want an hour-by-hour update on what they are doing? Do they imagine that reading other people's journals is the way communication happens and relationships are formed?

As a society, we seem to be forgetting how to forge lasting friendships, yet desperate to be constantly connected with other people--as if by shouting into the void we can convince ourselves that we not only exist, but we matter. Why else do folks blog? Or fill up every vacant moment with text messages, cell phone calls, and the Internet? We are a society who is substituting chatter for content.

Which brings me back to the writer’s dilemma, and my own. I have finally realized why I have such a problem blogging. Blogging is supposed to fill you in what I am doing and what I am thinking, but I find both of those things too trivial to talk about. Do you really want to know about my grandchildren, as cute as they are? Do you need a report on my dad's recent gallbladder operation, or the fact that my latest haircut was less than a success?

We writers deal with Story, not minutiae of daily life. Robert McKee in his book Story says that facts are truth with a small “t,” but story is Truth with a capital “T.” The task of writers is to take the stuff of life and squeeze out the whey, reduce it to the essentials of universal truth. We spend our lives not shouting into the void, but listening to the void from which story comes. Otherwise we write books and articles that are “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

“But significance is relative,” says the voice of post-modernism. “One person’s triviality is another’s truth.”

Maybe so. But back in the late sixties a wise writer named Peter Berger anticipated where society was heading and wrote a book in which he asked a profound question: Given that all things are relative, which of them is true? The illustration he used, I believe, was that of a desert traveler, who must discern which among the mirages is the real oasis. Perhaps that is the task of everyone who seeks to navigate our current political, economic, and social world. It would certainly seem to be the task of anyone who claims to be a writer.

My latest book, Daughter of Deceit, which came out last month, deals with the issue of truth, and how the discovery of a web of lies in her own family changes the life of Bara Holcomb Weidenauer. I could tell you about it, but I’d far rather you bought the book--and let me know what you think about it.

At four a.m. in the stark light of my computer screen, I find myself facing the hard questions: Amid all the chatter on the Internet and the triviality of much of what passes for contemporary literature, do I have anything to say that is really worth reading? Amid all the words I have written, will any survive a hundred years because they speak Truth to subsequent generations?
Amid all the stuff in my fridge and pantry, is anything likely to put me back to sleep now that I’ve finished this blog?