In 2009 I won the WildSound.ca One Page Screenplay Contest where the prize was having my script turned into a short film.  They did one better and made two films and now you get to vote which film is better.  Go to WildCard Pictures to watch both films and cast your vote.

Been a while since I showed my face around here, so it's nice to see that not much has changed. The last time I checked in I was about to head off to the Great Blue Heron Workshop.  Normally when I go to GBH I take an Acadian bus to Antigonish, which is a four hour journey and entails changing buses at Amherst and again at Truro.  This year a pal of mine, Liza (or just Za, whom I met at the Seawords workshop at Brackley Beach here on PEI last year) was driving there and taking the ferry to boot (Yay!) ,so I offered to help out with gas and we rode together.  Much more pleasant than the bus and Za is a fun traveling companion, very easy going and interesting to talk to.  I actually ended up paying for us to get on the ferry, which is cheaper than the round-trip bus ticket, so it all worked out quite well.

As usual, GBH was a great week.  I was in Alistair MacLeod's fiction group (my second time working with him).  He actually remembered me from last time, remembered one of the stories we worked on then, and even remembered (much to my embarrassment) that I had inadvertently commented (half-jokingly) that he had “control issues” with his characters.  We had a good group of writers and our sessions together were pleasant and fruitful.  My one-on-one session with Alistair was also very encouraging.  He liked the story I was work shopping and had only a couple of minor suggestions for improvement.  He even asked if I would submit it to The Windsor Review (of which he is the Fiction Editor).  I've been published twice in that fine magazine.  After I've done my revisions on the story I may submit it to The New Yorker (which I try every now and then, being the cock-eyed optimist that I am).  No doubt I will be rejected by them yet again and will most likely end up sending it to the WR.  I guess that sounds like I'm settling for second-best or something, but I don't mean it that way at all.  I just think it is important to submit my work beyond the normal purview of my publishing experience.  I'd like to think Alistair would agree with me on that.  Of course, I would be more than happy to have my work appear once more in The Windsor Review.

In the middle of our week we had a free day and I had arranged to do a reading at Frog Hollow Books in Halifax.  They had recently moved from their location at Park Lane Mall to a new store nearby on Brenton Street.  It was a very cool and funky little space. The owner, Heidi, was very welcoming and had a nice little set up with Fatted Calf Blues displayed prominently.  Three people I know showed up and it was nice to catch up.  I read a couple of stories, which garnered the attention of some of the walk-in traffic and resulted in a couple of more sales.  I was really hoping that I would be able to go back and read at Frog Hollow some time in the future, but I am sorry to report that they are closing their doors permanently (after 25 YEARS!) near the end of August.  A very sad state of affairs indeed.  

I also brought copies of FCB to display at the Great Blue Heron book table and actually sold around eight copies.  

When I got back home it was time to get down to brass tacks and finish my novel so I could get it to my agent before the end of her reading period (after which she is very busy).  That is the reason for my recent absence from this blog.  It was quite a haul, but I did finish the draft a few days ago and then had to read it over to clean it up as best I could and make a few revisions.  Let it not be said that my agent wastes any time.  When I was done I emailed it to her at midnight and the next morning had got some early feedback on my first chapter.  There were some compliments and some criticism, accompanied by a heavy edit of the chapter attached to the email.  I thought the edit was quite good (my agent has many years of experience as an editor}. Now she is reading the rest and I expect to hear from her shortly, no doubt with some other changes that need to be made.  

Other than that, I'm looking forward to tackling the pile of books that I've been ignoring while I've been writing the novel.  Of course, I have a number of other writing projects on the back burner.  I think the next thing I will work on is a screenplay adaptation of my short story, The Most Important Man In The World (the opening story in Fatted Calf Blues) for a short screenplay competition. After a novel, writing in a different format that I can finish relatively quickly will be a nice change of pace.  A change is as good as a rest, as they say.

Before I get this entry started, I must rectify an omission I made in my last entry.  When I wrote about my time in Hamilton I neglected to mention that I stayed for two nights at the Inchbury Inn, which is a wonderful bed & breakfast run by Doug and Solange Trudel.  Those of you who read this blog know that I tend to stay at B&Bs when I'm traveling and have written about many of the terrific places I've stayed at.  I am happy to say that the Inchbury Inn ranks right up there with the best of them for comfort, affordability and all around hospitality.  The inn is really Solange's baby and she runs it with great care.  Her breakfasts are delicious and her friendly demeanor brightened up the mornings.  If there was anything I needed, she and/or Doug were always happy to help out.

My last night in Hamilton was spent at the home of writer Jean Rae Baxter and her playful terrier Robbie.  Jean has published a few books and is connected to the Hamilton reading series Lit Live, which is how I came to be billeted in her home.  On a free afternoon I had, Jean was happy to drive me around Hamilton to show me some of the sights. We also took a drive to nearby Dundas for the the buskers' festival. 

Since returning home from Toronto and Hamilton, I have been pushing ahead with my novel.  I am under the gun to get this draft finished in time to send it to my agent, whose reading period ends in September. So I have roughly six weeks before the just-under-the-wire deadline and I have to say I'm feeling the pressure.

That said, I am off to Antigonish, Nova Scotia next week for the annual Great Blue Heron Writers' Workshop.  This will be my fifth consecutive year there, which makes me think I should be getting some kind of diploma or something.  I will be in Alistair MacLeod's group (this being my second time working with him) and, as usual, I am expecting a terrific week of literary socializing and work.  Being at GBH, or at most writing workshops for that matter, is much like being at summer camp for writers.  Writing, being the solitary activity that it is, means spending most of the year holed up in my office, so it is always refreshing to meet up with other like-minded souls and share our similar obsessions.  Just call us word nerds but don't call us late for last call.

This year GBH is offering a free day during the workshop week, which happens to fall on Friday July 3rd.  I'm taking that opportunity to make a day trip to Halifax to do a reading at Frog Hollow Books, 1459 Brenton Street (their brand new location), at 2:00 p.m.  Hope to see you there.

The big news with writers around the world is the Google Book Settlement.  If you haven't heard, Google has the rights to digitize published or out-of-print books from before January 5th, 2009 and will make them available on the web.  Writers can claim ownership of their works by going to www.googlebooksettlement.com and setting up an account.  They will receive a one-off settlement of at least $60 per book and will then be poised to receive future profits from Google's efforts to sell their works as downloads or print-on-demand.  Just how much the writer will make off each download or p.o.d. is unclear.

The writer also has the option to opt out of the settlement when setting up their account on the web site.  Opting out won't necessarily stop Google from digitizing their books, but they then will have some kind of grounds on which to sue Google. Good luck with that.

Writers are being advised to stay in the settlement, the wisdom being a crappy deal is better than no deal at all.  But we don't know what the deal is yet so here's hoping...

When I set up my account on the web site I searched for my upcoming book, Fatted Calf Blues, that won't be available in stores until April 15.  Lo and behold, there it was on the web site.  Of course I won't be getting any $60 one-off deal, but who knows what the future holds.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that it was on their site, since it has been listed on various book selling web sites such as Amazon and Chapters/Indigo since January.

A little more disconcerting for me was to find a poetry chapbook I self-published in the late 1970s called With My One Free Hand, which is catalogued in one of the Dalhousie University Libraries. How it got there is beyond me, considering I lived in Montreal when I published it.  Since Google has approached pretty much every library to digitize books, I shouldn't be surprised to see my modest first effort pop up on their settlement web site.  Nevertheless, I couldn't help but be reminded of the Borg sucking up every scintilla of human existence.  I know that sounds alarmist, but I'm a writer and prone to dramatization.

But here's the real thing that's bothering me.  I'm not particularly proud of that chapbook.  I was in my early twenties when I wrote those poems and was eager to see my name and my efforts in print.  While I can excuse youthful exuberance, frankly those poems embarrass me now.  In fact, they kind of embarrassed me then too.  I remember when I first got them back from the printer, I was at home having lunch when my father came into the kitchen.  A copy was sitting on the table and I pointed it out to him.  To my surprise he sat down and read the whole thing -- all ten pages of it! --  right then and there.  I watched, mortified, from behind my sandwich as he slowly turned the pages with a serious expression.  What felt like hours, but was more likely fifteen minutes or so, passed before he put it down and proclaimed in a sober voice: "I think I understand what you’re trying to say."  Then he got up and left.  I suppose it could have been worse.

I don't even own a copy of that chapbook.  Now that my first book of stories is about to be published, I keep hearing from friends who still have a copy of that chapbook.  I cringe a bit, but feel relieved that only a select few will be able to see my sophomoric scribbling.  At least I used to feel that relief until this whole Google thing.  Now everyone might be able to see the freaking thing.  Typical writer's vanity, you say?  Guilty as charged.  I remember reading that, before his death, Mordecai Richler was trying to buy up every copy of his first novel, he was that embarrassed by it.  No such luck here.  I don't know if anyone will ever want to see those poems or how much money Google will pay me for making them available to the public.  I'm pretty sure, though, that, no matter how much, it won't be near enough.

I recently submitted an ad to The Buzz, Prince Edward Island’s arts and entertainment newspaper, to promote my upcoming book launch at the Confederation Centre Library on April 23rd. In the ad I referred to myself as "Island writer, Steven Mayoff."  It made me wonder if I had the right to call myself such.  I'm not from the Island, although I have been living here since 2001.  I have been writing since high school, but it wasn't until I moved to PEI that I focused on my writing in earnest and began to send out work on a regular basis.  I believe I can say with all sincerity that I came to PEI to establish myself as a writer.

But anyone who lives here knows that if you weren't actually born on the Island you will always be considered "from away", no matter how long you live here.  I suppose I could have used the phrase "Resident Island Writer", but that seems to undermine the commitment I've made by moving to PEI as the place where I am establishing my identity as a writer.  The interesting thing is that I am quite content with my "from away" status, even though I expect to live on PEI for the rest of my life.  I believe a writer should be something of an outsider and that part of his/her integrity benefits from being on the outside looking in.  In a way this made PEI the perfect place in which to launch my writing career.  You could say I feel very much at home being from away.

There is no denying how much PEI has influenced my work.  The moment I moved here I was struck by the beautiful landscape and immediately began incorporating it in stories and poems.  In my upcoming collection, Fatted Calf Blues, the stories have both rural and urban settings.  The first story, The Most Important Man In The World, is set on a streetcar in Toronto.  The sense of isolation in the streetcar proves to be a crucible for extreme human behaviour.  Living on an island is a bit like that.  In fact, isolation seems to be a factor in most of my stories, both urban and rural. Perhaps an argument can be made that everyone on PEI -- those from "here" and those from "away" -- have something of the "outsider" in them. In that case I feel justified in wearing the title of "Island Writer" and will continue to do so with pride.  

I dropped my laptop a couple of days ago (I can practically hear the collective gasp).  I was in Charlottetown, taking advantage of the free wi-fi in the Confederation Centre and had been packing the laptop up when it slipped out of my hands ("Oooohhh nooo!" I can hear you cry).  So naturally I took it to The Little Mac Shoppe, the only authorised Apple service centre on PEI.  It looks like I need a new hard drive and I’ll be getting a larger one, which is nice.  It is still uncertain if they will be able to retrieve the info from my old HD.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Although I try to back up my work as often as possible, I never think of backing up my emails or my address book.  I can't really ponder the possibility of losing that stuff at the moment. I'm already a bit freaked out by the whole thing and I'd prefer to try to think positively.

Thankfully I had backed up in early February, so I didn't lose too much work. In fact, I have been preoccupied with setting up readings for myself in Montreal and Toronto, so I haven't really done much work on my novel.  I suppose procrastination has turned out to be a lucky break for me, although, in my defense, I have been obsessive about Googling bookstores, libraries, various media, reading series, colleges and universities and anywhere else I think I might have a shot at reading in public.  As it stands now Fatted Calf Blues will have an official launch in Charlottetown on April 23rd and a Montreal launch at Casa del Popolo in Montreal on May 4th.  My other Montreal gig is at the Visual Arts Centre on May 13th.  So far the only Toronto reading is at the The Press Club on June 3rd, then two readings in Hamilton (where I will also be leading my first workshop, but more on that in an entry-to-come).  I'm still looking for a venue for a Toronto launch.  I'm hoping for the Drake Hotel, although there are other possibilities.  The full list of readings is on my home page and will be updated as dates are confirmed.

The whole process of setting up readings for myself has pushed me to make connections with the literary communities of PEI, Montreal and Toronto.  As much as some writers complain about having to promote themselves, I'm finding this aspect of being published quite useful and interesting.  I tend to think of it as a natural extension of the publishing process, as much as publishing is a natural extension of the creative process.  It is certainly a nice antidote to the hours one spends alone writing (although I like that too).  But in retrospect, I see the dropping of my laptop as a kind of punctuation to that process of self-promotion.  A full stop.  And something of a wake-up call.

At first I felt cut off at the knees (and still do to some extent), but now I realize this is my opportunity to get back to the novel.  While my computer is in the shop I am using Thelma's iBook.  Of course she has been very good about letting me use it whenever I need to, but I am very aware of using somebody else's machine.  It is a weird, tentative feeling and it will be interesting to see how it might affect my writing.  Sometimes I wonder if I should switch to longhand (I've tried that before), but it has now hit me where I live (so to speak) how much my laptop has become an extension of myself.  What once felt like a luxury -- being able to move paragraphs around, researching on the Internet, etc  --  is truly an integral part of my creative self.

A couple of days ago it was my birthday. Having a birthday in February is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it's a nice break in what is arguably the most depressing month of the year.  On the other hand, if birthdays depress you then you feel just that bit deeper in the hole.  It is not that getting a year older depresses me, but around this time I'm not at my best.  I feel I'm in some kind of creative, emotional and even spiritual deep-freeze, a period of stasis where my life has come to a standstill. The new year never really starts for me until March or April.

This year, I'm happy to say, has been an exception for the most part. Preparations for my upcoming book are keeping me busy and I've been trying to come up with creative ideas for promoting it.  Also, I'm working on revising a novel, so there has been a lot to occupy my thoughts with little time to feel sorry for myself.

The icing on the birthday cake, so to speak, came actually the day before the big event when I received a phone call saying I had won the One-Page Screenplay Contest  I had entered in 2008.  The contest is a continuing one put on by WILDsound  in Toronto.  The winner gets their screenplay made into a short film that is posted on the WILDsound web site and shown at some film festivals.  I was also interviewed for the WILDsound podcast.

I am also trying to book live readings to promote Fatted Calf Blues.  I will be having a book launch in Charlottetown on April 23 and so far have two readings in Montreal in May and two in Hamilton in June. The details for these readings are posted on the home page of this web site and on my FCB Facebook group page.  

Things seem to be happening fast and I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a tad overwhelmed at times, but I look out my window and see the frozen white expanse of Foxley River and think that in a few months I'll hear that tell-tale crack when the ice starts to break.  In the meantime, an early thaw seems to be taking place even closer to home.

The craft of fiction is the craft of perfecting a great lie.  The art of fiction is a kernel of truth (hopefully) within that lie.  

Unfortunately, I sound like a wannabe Oscar Wilde, but those two statements reflect how I see writing stories.  Not that these statements are original thoughts.  No doubt I heard them, or something like them, written or spoken elsewhere, although I couldn't tell you by whom.  The question that has been nagging me these days is: where do the two -- the craft and the art -- meet?  

I once saw an interesting film called Storytelling, where one of the characters, a creative writing teacher, says "Once you start writing, it all becomes fiction."  (I once used this quote as the basis for a poem).  The context of this statement relates to a story one of his female students has written.  The story is a recounting of a humiliating sexual experience she had with this particular teacher. The teacher says that the story is not bad, but not great, to which another student says, in the story's defense, that it is true.  The teacher's response  "Once you start writing, it all becomes fiction"  can be seen as some kind of lame defense for his sexual encounter with the student.  Or maybe it's a comment on how memory is selective at best. Personally, I believe that memoir or autobiography should be classified as a form of fiction.

That quote immediately resonated with me.  In it I recognized a universal truth. Perhaps the innate need for all of us to tell stories.  But in telling stories, in crafting fiction, do we have a certain responsibility to the truth?  I heard someone once say that good fiction carries with it a facsimile of truth.  The reader has to believe -- or suspend his/her belief -- that what lies on the page is real.  

Writers achieve this in different ways.  Some do it through research, particularly if they are writing historical fiction, although most genres of fiction probably require some amount of research. Some do it by trying to create a feeling of immediacy in their prose, evoking the five senses wherever possible, so that the reader believes he/she is experiencing what is on the page.  

So, what is the actual kernel of truth that is found in these well-crafted lies?  Some illumination of the human condition? Something that tells us we are not as different from each other as we believe?  Maybe it's the understanding that (to paraphrase the famous Jack Nicholson line) we can't handle the truth.  We prefer to be lied to.  We'd rather have the comfort of knowing that it's "just a story."  Maybe, without knowing it, we indulge in these entertaining illusions so that we might know ourselves better.

It's been quite a week.  On Monday I attended a day-long workshop given by the Writers' Union of Canada  called “From Desk to Bookstore: Making the Leap to Writing as a Career.”  It was a very good workshop and covered a variety of topics: getting published in magazines and books for both fiction and non-fiction (very different  because non-fiction involves much more querying and story pitching than fiction), agents, the editor/writer relationship, contracts, etc.

Although I learned quite a bit, I was also able to contribute some information, including a couple of web sites that are excellent resources for publishing in magazines.  One is www.placesforwriters.com which lists links to web sites for magazines in Canada and abroad, as well as offering updated calls for new work and contests.  The other is Duotrope's Digest, an ingenious search engine where you fill in the on line form with details like the genre and length of your submission (as well as other particulars) and -- Voila! -- you are immediately presented with a list of magazines and links to their submission pages.  I have published most of my work using both of these resources.  They are indispensable to any writer.  In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, I should mention that both of these web site were brought to my attention by J.J. Steinfeld, a fine fiction writer and poet in Charlottetown. 

As much as I enjoyed the workshop, I have to admit its title gave me pause for reflection.  I never really imagined writing to be my career.  As a matter of fact, although I have been writing on and off for most of my adult life, I rejected the possibility of making it my career.  At the risk of sounding somewhat pretentious, I would have to say, if anything,  I saw it more as a "calling" rather than a "career."  I guess by that I mean writing was something I came back to every so often, mostly as a way to vent frustration, in the course of trying to discover who I was and what I should be doing with my life.  In that way it seemed to be choosing me, rather than the other way around.  It wasn't until 2001, when my wife and I decided to move to Prince Edward Island, that I made the conscious decision to focus solely on my writing with the hope of eventually making it my livelihood.

So, in making this choice, was I also making the transition from "calling" to "career"?  I'm not sure what it is about the word "career", but it somehow implies a sense of conformity and also a limited shelf life.  After all, doesn't one eventually retire from a career?  Whereas "calling" carries a different kind of weight, a sense of destiny that suggests a life-long commitment.

This week I also had the opportunity to reconnect with one of my high school teachers.  His name is included on the page of acknowledgements in my book.  When I was his student I asked him what one needed to do to be a writer.  He looked at me soberly and said that to be a writer one needed to suffer.  Sounds a bit harsh and I have to admit his reply frightened me.  In retrospect, I believe he was telling me that I had to go out and experience life, the joy as well as the suffering, before I could ever write in earnest.  It's only now, when I look back on my life, that I realize that was exactly what I did, that all my years of drifting from job to job and trying to discover my place in life, were somehow preparing me for the writing life.  In my own circuitous way I was answering the call.  Careering toward my career, you might say.

But the big news of this past week is that I finished the last round of copy editing before Fatted Calf Blues goes to print.  I reread the fourteen stories for what felt like the millionth time and listed the last of the changes I wanted to make.  By all rights, I should be sick of these stories, but in reading them I tried to imagine how other readers might see them.  In a way I was able to experience them with fresh eyes and gain some perspective on their strengths and weaknesses, as well as my own.

So this is it.  It's out of my hands now.  The next time I see my manuscript it will be a bonafide, honest-to-goodness published book.  In the meantime I am dividing my time between devising strategies for promoting the book and revising the novel I have been plugging away at lo these many years.  No matter how you see it -- calling, career or crap shoot -- a writer's work is never done.

First of all, a confession.  I stole the above title from myself.  Way back in 2004 the first workshop I ever did was the Maritime Writers' Workshop at UNB in Fredericton.  I applied to the workshop for financial help and received some from a benefactor to whom I had to write a letter of thanks.  At this workshop I rediscovered my love for public reading and decided to write my thank you letter in the form of an essay in which I realized that reading my work to an audience could be construed as selling myself to them.  Hence the title.  As I wrote in the beginning of that essay: 

It’s a dirty, dirty word. The S word. Selling. It makes one think of everything unsavoury, from unscrupulous travelling hucksters who sleep with farmers’ daughters to ruthless day traders whose only point of reference is the bottom line. For most people there is no chicken soup for the soulless conglomerate.

Maybe a better title for this entry would be "Rebirth of a Salesman" because here it is 5 years later and my first book of stories, Fatted Calf Blues, will be published by Turnstone Press in April.  And once more I find myself in the position of being a salesman.  I have already set up a book launch on April 23rd at the Confederation Centre Library in Charlottetown.  I have also, with the help of Thelma (my wife, web mistress and right arm), created a Fatted Calf Blues group on Facebook and recruited a fair number of members (with hopefully more to follow after the book comes out).  In the future I am planning to create a virtual book launch with videos of myself reading from the book, to be posted on Facebook, Youtube and anywhere else that will have them.  But most importantly, I expect to hit the road and do a few live readings this year, on and off PEI.     

But of course I'm not doing all of this planning and plotting alone. My publisher is going to do what they can to get me into writer's festivals, send out review copies of the book and submit it for any prize and award that it might be eligible for.  Turnstone has been very supportive with helpful suggestions on how and where to promote the book (such as contacting book clubs).  It's surprising where a salesman's leads will take him.  

I suddenly understood that the people who were able to effortlessly sell newspaper ads or time-shares did so because they actually believed in what they were selling. And now I had something to believe in too. My talent. Myself. 

Now that I think of it, I've been selling myself since I moved to PEI in 2001 and started to write in earnest and send my work out. Part of the creative process includes sending your work out.  If you are serious about your writing then you always have an audience in mind, even if you don't know who they are but if you persevere, one day you may just find yourself having to get out there and meet them face to face.  I'm looking forward to that.

Here we are at the end of the first full week at the beginning of 2009.  I have to say it's been a sluggish start, but then again that's how it is every new year.  In fact, for me the new year doesn't really start until March when the first stirrings of spring make themselves felt.  April will be particularly auspicious for me because that is when my first book of stories, Fatted Calf Blues, will be released by Turnstone Press.

These days I have been struggling to return to my novel (I was at it great guns last October and November, then hit a bit of a wall in December) while trying to make some preparations to promote Fatted Calf Blues (researching writers' festivals and other potential gigs).  I did manage to set a date for my book launch, which will be at the Confederation Centre Library in Charlottetown on April 23rd at 7:00 pm.  But on the whole I feel like I've been spinning my wheels.

Then imagine my surprise when I discovered (thanks to my wife, Thelma, who keeps me apprised of these things) that Fatted Calf Blues can now be pre-ordered (for a substantial discount) at Amazon.ca and Chapters.Indigo.ca.

Spinning wheels or not, I guess this thing is starting to roll.  CHEERS!

Well, the year is almost up. And not a moment too soon.  There are a lot of things I could write about for my last entry of 2008, but I think all those subjects have probably been covered already.  So I'm going to make a personal request.   

I recently entered a One-Page Screenplay Contest and became one of ten finalists.  All ten screenplays were given live readings and the videos of these readings have now been posted on-line.  The screenplay that gets the most votes will be made into a short film.

So please have a look at the reading for my screenplay, The Dim Sum of Its Parts, and vote for it, thus making my cinematic dreams come true.

Other than that, party safely this new year's eve and all the best in 2009.

My publisher, Turnstone Press, sent me the cover for my upcoming book of stories, Fatted Calf Blues, to get my opinion. I have to admit I loved it on first sight. It was not what I had expected, which was definitely part of its appeal. In fact, earlier on I had been asked if I had any suggestions for a cover image. My initial idea was a cow skull, like a Georgia O'Keefe painting,  which, paired with my title, appealed to my dark sense of humour. 

But the image that my publisher chose - a chrome exhaust pipe jutting up from an eighteen-wheeler - is a fitting one. The title story takes place at a truck stop in Manitoba and some of the characters are truckers. The whole sense of life reflected in the chrome exhaust pipe that the photo depicts seems apt. It is a striking image that I think will garner some attention. Whether it actually helps sell the book is another matter.

I buy books mostly from the remainder bin in the larger chain stores or at second-hand shops. I usually buy them based on the author - either someone I have read before and enjoyed or have read about and am curious to find out more. Or I buy them based on the title, from having read a review or recommended by a friend. But it is rare that I have ever bought a book based on the cover design. It may very well have happened, but my memory is either failing or too embarrassed to provide an example. 

Which isn't to say that I am immune to the allure of a good cover design or haven't been influenced by one. That was more the case when I used to buy record albums back in the day. And to a lesser degree CDs, later on in the day. Album art has since been lauded for its own aesthetic worth, but it has also been immortalized as being intrinsically connected to the music inside. When you think of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band  you immediately envision that immortal history of pop culture collage on the front as well as the kaleidoscopic music inside. Unzipping the blue jeans on the front of the Sticky Fingers  jacket (revealing a pair of tighty whiteys inside) is as much a part of the music listening experience as hearing Keith Richards' opening chords to Brown Sugar.

Maybe it was the size of the record album that made the cover art so appealing. CDs don't really do the trick for me. Perhaps that is why the cover for a book, while important, will never reach the status of art in itself. Who remembers the cover for the first edition of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz  or Under The Volcano? And even if you do, chances are the copy you buy today will not feature the same cover design. This is especially true if the book has been made into a hit film. Then the cover will feature whatever image helped sell the film. The book then becomes, in a way, subservient to another medium. A way of saying, "If you liked the movie you just might like this lesser facsimile of typed words on a page." 

But I'm one to talk. I've already written a screenplay of Fatted Calf Blues. And if it actually gets made into a film I may just see my original concept of a cow skull on the poster. And, God willing, maybe even on the cover of a future edition of the book. 

These days I am waist deep in editing the stories for my fiction collection, Fatted Calf Blues, which will be published by Turnstone Press in 2009. I had heard that this could be a seemingly endless process. I have also been told that some editors have a knack for helping you take your manuscript to another level. I'd have to say that both of these statements are true in my current experience. My editor at Turnstone is Wayne Tefs, who has written a number of books himself. I don't know how common that is in publishing houses, to have a published author as an editor. Possibly it is more common in the smaller independent presses. But so far it is working out for me. 

Wayne's initial notes to me were marginal and had mostly to do with verbal tics, which are words or phrases that keep cropping up in my writing. Most writers have verbal tics of some sort. For example, I tend to often use the words "just" and "practically." I use them just in the normal course of writing, as I would when speaking, practically  without thinking about it. The process of weeding these out of my prose can be tedious, but having to scrutinize my work in so menial a fashion allowed me to discover other verbal tics that Wayne had not mentioned. It also gave me the opportunity to reassess and address story problems. I was surprised by how many changes I made through my own observations. The result is a new-found confidence in myself as a writer.  

But this whole editorial process is far from over.  Right now I'm taking a break from round 2. When I am done with Wayne, I will be working with Sharon Caseburg in copy editing, which deals with style and the look of the text. For instance, I tend to use North American spelling such as "organize" instead of "organise", which is the British spelling. But Turnstone's style is to use British spelling, so I will be combing the stories once more to rectify that problem.  During this whole process I have been using the tracking device in Microsoft Word, which I had no idea about before. Sharon has been very helpful (and patient) in explaining how to use it. Now that I have the hang of it I can see how it can benefit the early stages of working on a story. 

By the way, Sharon is also a poet. I believe everyone involved with running Turnstone are also writers. One thing she asked me to think about is questions for book clubs. I had no idea what she was talking about, since I have never belonged to a book club. But she showed me examples on the Turnstone web site. Basically they are questions used to incite discussions. Apparently having questions by the author is helpful when selling packages of a book to libraries or schools. I was stymied at first, but once I started thinking up one question I couldn't stop and ended up staying up all one night. The interesting thing about coming up with these questions is it makes you look at your work differently. You have to think about it more objectively, as if it is somebody else's work. And then you begin to see patterns emerge regarding themes, settings, characters, etc. I found it most illuminating.     

I'm happy to say that everyone at Turnstone Press, not only Wayne and Sharon, but Managing Editor, Todd Besant, and Associate Publisher, Jamis Paulson, have been encouraging and supportive. It's been a terrific experience so far.