The other day, I sent out two columns from the NY Times Book Review discussing the reluctance of novelists to post less than glowing reviews about the novels of their peers.

The columns, written by Zoe Heller and Adam Kirsch, pursue the topic from slightly different angles.

According to Ms. Heller, the fiction-writing world is quite small and a novelist serving as reviewer would not be likely to hide from a peer whose work was, well, panned. You’re going to run into the other author sooner or later. In addition, empathy for the other novelist is also high, because the reviewer also has firsthand experience in all that entails in crafting a novel. As a result, authors are often reluctant to inflict pain by taking down someone else’s baby – even to a slight degree.

Nonetheless, Ms. Heller writes it must be done – in order to maintain the vitality of literary discussion and defend the vocation of being a novelist.

Mr. Kirsch takes a somewhat different track. While writing a negative review can make enemies in the literary world, in the long run the reviewer goes a long way towards defining his or her identity and informing others about contrasts between novelists. The novelist reviewer is essentially drawing a contrast between his/her artistic self and the art of someone else. Like Ms. Heller, Mr. Kirsch indicates the task must be done, despite the risks.

Okay. I am clearly not in the league of these writers nor am I even in the same galaxy of the individuals they cite in their articles. However, I was fascinated by the discussion and couldn’t help applying it to my life – specifically as it applies to my new found efforts to provide written book reviews.

When I took on the task of trying to engage in social media, I decided one thing I could offer readers is my opinion about horror novels and novellas I was currently reading. I never considered myself as an author – even though my social media efforts were part of an overall promotional device so people could learn about me. I am though, an avid (although quite slow) reader – and I love horror novels.

So, what the heck, I could provide reviews of the stuff I was reading. I realized rather quickly in the review process that I adopted an approach very similar to what I use when grading papers of my graduate students. I am not an English professor, but a counseling psychology professor. But my grading often addresses topics like structure, organization, and clarity. I start with what I like about the paper, and then provide feedback on what needs work. My comments are meant to inform and be constructive.

How is this approach (that is, commenting on positive and negative aspects) taken in reviews, especially by other authors?  I have received many “likes” from authors, and I took that at face value – that they liked or at least appreciated my comments. My review efforts do not have a long history. I’ve only done a handful, but I have been fortunate to have read very good novels and novellas. There hasn’t been a dud in the bunch – I’ve been fortunate in that regard (I haven’t had to written a negative review). In fact, most have knocked my socks off. Have there been flaws? Sure. Most novels have flaws. But I feel it is my responsibility to let people know, especially authors, what my take was on the work. I am certainly aware that I am only one opinion of many, and the author can take it with a grain of salt. However, if I have informed him or her in any way, then that is great.

But what about potential readers? Does adding a criticism in a review deter readers from purchasing or reading a book? I hope not. I am very careful to qualify my remarks and make sure a reader of my review has a sense of context within which the criticism is written. On a personal level (and I’ve addressed this in an earlier blog), I often become very intrigued about a work of fiction when it receives a 3 or 4 star review and the person writing the commentary takes special care in addressing the reasons for the rating. Often it is these very comments that make me search out a book. After all, the reviewer has taken great pains to address the pros and cons… to me that clearly says that the book had quite an impact on the reviewer.

Sigh. I have no idea if I am making any sense. I do know that I will feel honored when someone takes the time to give me thoughtful feedback on my novel, Birth Offering.

Psst: I hope to have the same attitude when negative reviews appear….

I am excited to announce that the official (new) launch day for my novel Birth Offering is September 15. On that day, the ebook version is available for discounted pricing on the Damnation Books website. On September 16th, the ebook goes on sale on Amazon with the trade paperback book following 7-10 days later. Other vendors like Barnes and Noble will also have it available within two weeks of the launch date.

When I found out that Birth Offering was accepted for publication, I was ecstatic, of course. But very quickly I realized that I needed to learn the ropes of self-promotion/marketing. All authors do it now, or so I was told (and later found to be true). The bulk of the promotional efforts would be through social media.

Here’s what I knew about social media: nothing.

I’m 59, which means I’ve been able to live my life without having to use any of the platforms. I learned to use email – that was simple. Everyone uses it in academia, and typically that is how students communicate with their professors. In addition, email approximated the timeless practice of writing notes and mailing letters. Except, the process was a lot faster.

I learned about online course platforms to bring my teaching into the 21st century. That task wasn’t too bad either. I was able to develop a wide range of activities for the delivery of information to students. So, not only do I use traditional face-to-face lecturing, I also have asynchronous online discussions, group projects, portfolios and so on. In addition, some assignments involve the students recording presentations on YouTube and uploading them to the online course platform.

All well and good, and the variety of activities serves the students well.

Now, though, with Birth Offering slated to be published, I had to learn an entirely new set of skills – all of which had been unnecessary for a happy life up until this point. Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus. Sheesh.

“Get you kid to create a Facebook page,” more than one person said.

“But, doesn’t marketing need more than stupid pictures of me?” (Or some variation of this…)

“Nah, nope, I don’t know…”

I was overwhelmed with the task. So I started seeking help.

Thank God my wife’s cousin creates web pages for a living (Webbones). She created the website (thanks, Susan).

The social media would need a lot more work, though, for one simple reason – the stuff is very confusing to me. Not the least of which is the rationale for even doing spending time doing it.

I signed up with Shari of Where Writers Win to train me in the art of social media involvement. Her guidance has been outstanding and I’ve learned about all of these strategies and then some.

There have been some clear positives to these things. I’ve networked with other authors. I’ve obtained some ideas about how to write blogs (although I find this rather difficult to maintain on a daily basis). I’ve made contact with potential readers who are horror fans. Goodreads has been a very pleasant adventure. I’ve gathered some good book recommendations and I’ve had interactions with horror authors. Google Plus and Facebook have resulted in similar experiences.

The downfall of engaging in social media is the sense of drowning in quicksand. Time disappears. Hours are swallowed in a black hole regardless of the form of social media. To make things worse, the process of developing a connection with other people “out there” is slow and often painful. Like most other authors trying to do engage with potential readers, I do have a day job with takes most of my energy. In addition, I still want to write my own fiction, and of course I have a family with whom I like to spend time.

A number of bloggers recommend being choosy with the social media. That is, go with the form that you enjoy and not worry about the others. I haven’t figured that one out yet, and I need to learn how.

After a week in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I am back at the old routine. Well, not really, but working my way into it. I managed to read a few novels and novellas (one was The Dazzling Darkness, and I was able to post a review last week). I will be posting more shortly and over the next few days. Also, Birth Offering is coming close to its launch date. The excitement builds.

I grew up in Port Chester, New York which is a village right on the coast overlooking Long Island Sound.  Many summer weekends were spent on Oakland Beach in Rye, New York and swimming in the sound. Across the sound we could easily see Long Island, an almost mythical land to my young eyes – never considering until my elementary school years that The Island, as it was often called, was really nothing more than a suburban landscape much like I was living in. Every now and again, we’d trek to Jones beach in order to swim in the Atlantic, and even more occasionally rent a beach house in Seaside Heights, New Jersey for a week at the Jersey Shore.

As a result of living very close to water, I think I’ve always been drawn to a coastal setting. As luck would have it, I’ve spent most of my adult life in the Midwest – Indiana, Kansas, and now Wisconsin.  Currently, my family and I live within a few blocks of Lake Michigan in a north shore suburb of Milwaukee, which gives us a “feel” of home. I should mention that my wife grew up in Virginia, so she is oriented towards the beach life as well. Her family spent many summer vacations at Virginia Beach, Virginia and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

As a family, we have decided to spend our vacations on the East Coast, enjoying the shoreline geography of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and every now and again, the beaches of South Carolina. Based on my experiences, I knew that my first attempt at a novel would take place on the coast, and I quickly settled on South Carolina for Birth Offering.

We've been to many of the beaches around Charleston (Edisto Island, Isle of Palms), visited Charleston multiple times, and toured smaller cities up and down the coast (Beaufort, Georgetown). The setting is truly unique, at least to my visiting eyes. The landscape is breath taking (I never tire of the low country), and I have come to find that it is the perfect setting for a horror novel. The region is steep in history, ghost tours in various communities are abundant, and let’s face it, Spanish moss instills a very haunting presence.

Birth Offering had its inception on Edisto Island. During a visit in 1995, we found ourselves on a quiet road (I honestly don’t remember if it was paved or not). The road was lined with live oaks which were festooned with Spanish moss. The picture above could be the same location. I remember the vegetation as being very thick so that you couldn't see very far off the side of the roads. For all I knew, there were homes back in there somewhere (my mind’s eye recalls a mailbox or two), but it could have been deserted. And, here was the exciting part, an ideal location to be stalked by something evil. I remember thinking that this was the coolest location. I might have even said something to my wife about the perfect setting for a novel if I was to ever write one. Imagine being chased by something here?

And there it was. The first idea that stuck with me as a potential passage for a novel. Fifteen or so years later, this was written into Birth Offering. You should have no trouble finding it within the story…

I've been absent for a while, thanks to a combination of the July 4th holiday, a round of edits for Birth Offering and grading of final projects for my summer classes. I am teaching two classes this summer session, both master's level counseling courses (Clinical Studies and Counseling Children and Adolescents). I make use of a number of online activities in the summer, and these involve extensive group interaction and video recording. The results this summer have been astounding. Yesterday was the last day of the semester, and all final products were due. The students all did unbelievably fantastic work - although, since they are graduate students they tend to be very motivated. College and Graduate instruction can be extremely rewarding, and I love every minute of it. For those of you whoever wondered about your college professors - yes we do get a real kick out of reading and commenting on well written work...

The central character in Birth Offering is fourteen year old Ryan Perry and the narrative takes place the summer before he enters high school. I think this is a good age to capture the best (and worst) of kids for any kind of fiction, not just horror. Young adolescents are striving for independence, yet can be childlike in many of their interactions. Their cognitive skills are advancing by leaps and bounds, so they have the startling capacity – both to themselves and the adults around them – for understanding the complexity of social interactions, empathy, and cause-effect relationships between any number of different events over time. The maturation of these skills can prove difficult, as they often become trapped into worrying about what others are saying or thinking about them. Emotions can be seen and understood as more subtle and complicated, and some kids (mostly boys) have a hard time communicating their feelings.

When authors write about kids of this age, one of the problems they encounter is trying to write about their characters in an age-appropriate manner. This is extremely hard, and quite frequently even the best of them make their kids sound too mature or too sophisticated for their ages.

I tried to address this with Ryan. I wanted Ryan to sound believable. I wanted his point of view to be sullen and whiney at times. I wanted him to be hurt or angry with his mother over the simplest things. I also wanted him to be an active protagonist. That required him to make good use of his newly developed cognitive and intellectual skills. Regarding social skills, Ryan was meant to be socially astute but uncomfortable with his abilities to engage with others, especially girls. He also needed to be brave and strong – and this may be where he is portrayed too advanced beyond his years.

How successful was I in this endeavor? I’ll have to wait and see. I’m hoping readers will tell me.

Birth Offering will be released September 1 from Damnation Books.

There was a lot of personal history that went into writing Birth Offering. Not that I experienced the haunted events portrayed in the novel…far from it. Rather, the story makes use of various interests of mine that have accumulated over decades.

The horror aspects of Birth Offering are obvious. I've been a horror fan most of my life. The origin may stem from the first time I found my brother’s toy dinosaurs arranged in a diorama on the floor. I became fascinated with dinosaurs (and that fascination has never left me). Movies from the ‘50s and ‘60s about dinosaurs attacking and laying waste to cities were my favorites. Gorgo is my all-time favorite, mostly because the dinosaur and her baby live at the end (sorry if this proves to be a spoiler for someone). My interest in dinosaur movies quickly generalized to monster movies and then to other forms of horror movies. The transition was rather quick if I recall correctly, and I was known as the weird kid who liked scary movies at a fairly young age.

I found myself being drawn to stories that had kids as characters, especially if they were the monsters or ghosts (hence my interest in the “creepy kid” sub-genre of horror). Although, having a kid as the hero or a main protagonist worked for me as well. I can pinpoint three events that may have swayed me in this direction. The first was seeing the trailer for the Village of the Damned on TV when I was 6 years old in 1960. As I’ve written before, that scared the daylights out of me while at the same time thrilling me to no end. Second, I became a huge fan of horror novels when I read The Other by Thomas Tryon and The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty when these novels were released in the early 1970s. These novels portrayed what I feel are the quintessential creepy kids in horror fiction.

My career path also explains a lot. I majored in psychology in college and then went on to obtain my PhD in psychology. My life as a psychologist has focused almost entirely on child and adolescent issues. As an undergraduate, I became enthralled with the processes involved in human development in the first 18 years of life. The emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physiological changes during these first two decades were astounding, and I found the research literature to be absorbing. After I obtained my PhD, my research program and counseling experience has all been with teenagers, with topical issues ranging from conduct problems, stress management issues, and living with chronic health conditions. So, with a career path that involved studying kids, the interest in them as horror material kind of tagged along. As a side note, I think that having kids as characters is a simple (and some may say “cheap”) way to increase the chills and danger in a story. No one wants to see kids hurt, and if they are the source of the trouble (that is, they are the creepy kids), the tension level is already multiplied before the plot completely unfolds.

I've mentioned earlier in this blog that I am a member of a men's book club - which has been one of the highlights of my life over the past two decades. I hesitated to write the previous sentence for fear of alienating readers - only because it casts me as a rather hum-drum individual, one step in the grave due to sheer boredom. Actually, though, for avid readers, the opportunity to discuss books with like-minded individuals at regular intervals over the years can be quite an escape from the frequent grinds that have choke holds on our lives.

Last night was book selection night, when member suggest ideas for books for the coming cycle, which can range 4-7 months depending on how many books are chosen. We go around in a circle describing our choice(s) with a brief description of each title. Then, everyone has 5 votes to cast for the books to be read. All things considered, we usually end up with 4-7 books that have a plurality of votes - and these are chosen for the next 4-7 months.

This is a tough group - suggesting book titles can be stress-provoking, not because your selection might not be chosen. Rather, the stress comes from the idea that your book suggestion might actually be chosen - and then the pressure is on to be a sharp discussion leader while at the same time hoping to God that the majority of members will not think that the booked sucked.

Anyway, back to book selection night last night. Of course, I mentioned to the club a couple of months ago that I have a novel (Birth Offering) coming out in September. I had a suspicion that they may want to read the book for the book club. I swear to God that I did not campaign for this honor... I just know these guys after two decades of book discussions. As expected, it was chosen. In fact, there was no voting. The October meeting was earmarked for the book discussion (October = Halloween = horror novel). 

Secretly, I am thrilled. Not so secretly, I'm scared to death. They will be kind... I hope.

PS. Birth Offering - coming in September....

When I started my horror novel, Birth Offering, I knew the major character would be a 14 year old. Now, my entire career has been as a psychologist with the past twenty years specializing in pediatric psychology. I convinced myself that I knew a little bit about how kids acted, felt, and thought. However, I was getting rather, well, old, and I needed to brush up on how other authors were writing about kids. I found four recent novels which were excellent reads and contained great adolescent characters:

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch

The Last Child by John Hart

None of them are horror stories, although the mystery novel, The Last Child, certainly contains elements of horror. Regardless, for anyone interested in well-drawn teenage characters, these novels provide great examples. I recommend them highly.