Now With 87% More Austen!

Guess what launched today?

That's right, my new website. Go check it out at www.janebitesback.com. Or just click on the pretty picture.

Aisle Five, Next to the Flip Flops

When first-time authors ask me if I have any advice, I tell them this: Never google yourself.

Google is a fine tool. I use it frequently, and it provides helpful answers to questions such as "What was the name of the actor who played H.R. Pufnstuf?" (Roberto Gamonet, pictured out of costume at right) and "What was the #1 song of 1968, the year I was born?" ("Hey Jude"). Just today I used it to find out whether or not there was a DVD release of the short-lived television show Glory Days. (There is, but sadly not in the U.S.)

But googling your own name is just asking for trouble. All sorts of things can come up that you just don't want to see. Regrettable pictures. Your ex's blog. Outstanding warrants.

Which is exactly why I shouldn't have googled Jane Bites Back. But I did. I never said I was smart.

Truthfully, I google the book from time to time to see if anyone is talking about it. And they are. Mostly it's in a good way, but every so often I run into someone who's determined to hate the book before it's even out. These are my favorite comments. It's always fun when someone forms an opinion about you and your work without actually having read any of it.

Today my googling brought me to the following comment on a Jane Austen blog. It was credited, as many such comments are, to Anonymous. I present it here exactly as it appeared.

HOW DARE YOU ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR SENSE TO WRITE THIS NOVEL MR MT FORD.
FIRST WE GET ZOMIES IN PRIDE AND PRJUDICE AND SEA MONSTERS IN S&S MAY BE YOU SHOULD WRITE NOVELS FOR BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER IF YOU LIKE TO WRITE ABOUT THEM.
WHAT HAS POOR MISS JANE AUSTEN DONE FOR YOU TO TURN HER IN TO A VAMPIRE NOTHING.
BY NOW YOU WOULD HAD GUESS I WILL NOT BE GOING OUT TO BUY THIS BOOK OR ANY LIKE IT.
YOUR EVER A VERY DISPLEASED MISS JANE AUSTEN FAN

I'm tempted to say that judging by the tone and content of this post it's unlikely Anonymous has read very many books at all. Or is six. But that wouldn't be fair. I don't know Anonymous any more than Anonymous knows me. Unless, of course, it's just one of my friends being horrid, which is entirely possible given the crowd I run with.

Here's the thing--this is not the only post like this. There aren't a lot of them out there, fewer than half a dozen, but they all resonate with the same indignant tone. How dare I write about Jane Austen as a vampire?

Here's a thought: Unless you are Jane Austen, maybe you shouldn't be huffing and puffing about what she would or would not approve of. Because I have news. She's not your friend. No matter how much you love her books, you're not going to be calling her up and saying, "Can you believe what Michael Thomas Ford did to you in that awful book? How dare he?"

Besides, I already showed the book to her and she thinks it's most agreeable.

My point is this: If you read it and you hate it, fine. But if you haven't read it, sit in the corner and let the grown ups talk.

And while we're at it, what's wrong with being a vampire, Anonymous? You just don't like anything, do you? Well, I know people like you, and I'll tell you something--they all come to bad ends. Mark my words. If I were you I'd watch out for falling anvils, and bear traps, and poisoned lozenges.

In nicer news, my googling also revealed that Jane Bites Back is now on sale at Walmart. This is thrilling indeed as, no matter what you think of them, those stores move books. Obviously you can't walk in and get a copy--the book isn't out until December 29--but you can preorder it on their website if you're so inclined.

You can preorder it lots of other places as well, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Indiebound, and your local independent bookstore. But I love, love, love that I'm going to be on sale at Walmart as well. For one thing, my relatives may actually see it. Oh yeah, Teri and Nancy, I went there.

You know, some really big musical acts--Garth Brooks, Journey, AC/DC, KISS--have started selling their new music only at Walmart. I know this because in October I had to drive forty-five minutes to the nearest Walmart to get the latest KISS album, Sonic Boom. It was sort of annoying, but it also made it kind of an event. In this age of being able to download things with the click of a mouse, having to actually go somewhere to get a new album or a new book feels very old school. You know, like when we used to camp outside the Ticketmaster outlet all night to get good seats for Ozzy or Heart.

You probably don't remember those days, do you? Well, you missed out. It was a lot of fun.

Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me if in the not-so-distant future some authors made a deal with Walmart to publish their books and be the sole distributor. Then we'll see ads for Stephen King's The Thing in the Hamper: Only at Walmart! Buy two and get Michael Thomas Ford's latest for only $1.99!

Anonymous would love that.

To Read Or Not to Read

Take a good look at the photo on the right. This is the view an author has when standing in front of an audience at his (or her) reading. I took this Wednesday night at a reading at A Different Light bookstore for my novel What We Remember.

Notice that there are 12 seats. Then notice that only six of them are filled. Then subtract the store's author events manager, two of my friends, and two friends of a friend who were ordered to go.

Now we have how many attendees? Oh, right. One.

To be fair, two other people came in after I took this photo, which brings the grand total to eight, three of whom were there because they like my books. Also to be fair (to me) I signed around 30 additional books that had been ordered online by people who couldn't attend but wanted autographed copies.

I think most writers dream about their first reading. The idea that people will buy your book and read it is one thing; thinking about them coming to see and hear you is something else altogether. It's been said that all writers secretly long to be rock stars. If that's true, then the reading is the equivalent of the big concert, replete with lights, crowds, and possibly even groupies and T-shirts.

There are certainly authors for whom this is true. Generally they are enormously popular or spectacularly attractive. (But seldom are they both, which is at least some comfort to the rest of us.) These authors easily pack the venues at which they read. Sometimes they even get away with selling tickets. They have handlers, and publicists, and shocking cocaine addictions. Okay, this is not entirely true. They don't all have publicists.

Then there are the rest of us.

For us readings are hit or miss affairs. After 20 years of doing them, the only thing I can say with certainty is that you cannot possibly predict what will happen. All you can do is show up and deal with whatever you get. Sometimes you're pleasantly surprised; other times you wonder how you ever imagined writing a book was a good idea.

My first book tour--which I financed myself, by the way, and am still paying off 12 years later--was for my essay collection Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me. It was my first book for an adult audience and my first book for a gay audience. Filled with optimism, I decided to visit as many bookstores as I could. I spent weeks setting up dates, figuring out flight routes, and blissfully imagining a storm of adulation. Even the bookstore owner who told me he wouldn't have me unless I guaranteed him I would sell 40 copies of my book couldn't discourage me.

I think I hit 20 stores on that tour. Of those appearances I would say that five went very well, ten went moderately well, and five were unmitigated disasters. At the three readings I did in Texas (in Houston, Dallas, and Austin) I had a combined audience of--one. But that was not the worst. That distinction belongs to Portland, Oregon, where I walked into the store, told the manager I was there for the reading, and he said, "Reading? We have a reading tonight? Nobody told me." At least he was kind enough to make the staff sit and listen to me read to them.

As I said, these were the worst ones. The ten moderately good events saw audiences of 5-10, the really good ones 20-40. Curiously, the best-attended events took place not in cities such as West Hollywood and San Francisco, where I expected big crowds, but in Columbus and Minneapolis. The one I'm proudest of, however, is the New York event, where I'd cleverly managed to schedule my reading for the night of the Oscars. As I lived in New York for almost a decade, and because I have dirt on a lot of people, I knew I could count on a dozen or so, but I didn't expect to see a single unfamiliar face in the crowd.

I did, though. I saw a lot of them. And that made up for Texas, and Portland, and Chicago (where I was caught in a downpour on the way to the bookstore and read, dripping on the carpet, to one friend).

When new authors ask me for advice about doing readings, I don't know what to say. I know they're excited. I know they envision rooms filled with people nodding, laughing, crying as they listen to The Work. I also know that they will probably be disappointed. But I don't know whether I should try to prepare them for the likely reality or let them enjoy their excitement for as long as possible. After all, they're not going to believe me anyway. But somehow I expect them to blame me if it all goes wrong. "You should have told me!" I hear them wail.

Usually I just tell them to do it if their publishers will pay for it or if they have a lot of frequent flier miles and friends with couches. Then I hope that their reading will be the exception to the rule, and that they will leave with their self-esteem filling them up like the helium in a Macy's parade balloon.

I am enormously thankful for every single person who comes to one of my readings. And after all this time it's no longer about numbers. Now it's about connecting with people--whether it be one or five or 50--who find something meaningful in my work and want to hear me read or just say hello. I know they have a lot of other things they could be doing than sitting and listening to me read for half an hour, and the fact that they choose to come see me means a great deal.

I am also thankful for the bookstore owners and managers who, in an increasingly bleak book industry, continue to support authors by inviting us to read. People like Philip Rafshoon of Atlanta's Outwrite, Stephen Quinones of San Francisco's A Different Light, and Michael Lemon of the now-closed Baltimore branch of Lambda Rising. Thanks to them and many others like them my books--and the books of other writers--have gotten into the hands of readers they might never have reached. In a business that is increasingly conducted online, they provide a personal touch that no website, no matter how well designed, can offer.

As for those of you who promised to come to one of my readings and didn't, don't think I didn't notice. And I'm keeping a list.

And You Can't Make Me!

Starting about two years ago I went through a period where I was late on every single project I had under contract. And not just a few days, or a few weeks, or even a few months late. We're talking really late, as in moving a book from one year to the next and a couple of publishers sending me "or else" letters.

Being late had never been a problem for me. In fact, I believe I owe a great deal of my early success in publishing to the fact that I could be relied upon to write quickly and without a lot of fuss. At one point I wrote a 15-book series (Circle of Three, which I wrote under the name Isobel Bird) at a rate of one a month. I won't claim these books are perfect, but they're good. And editors liked that they didn't have to worry about me.

But after about 15 years of stolidly plugging along, things changed. I started taking more and more time between books, starting new projects when the deadlines were only months, and sometimes weeks, away. At first I thought it was a challenge I was setting myself, to see how quickly I could get a book written. If I thought it would take six months, I would start four months before the due date. I made detailed schedules of how many pages I would have to write each day between now and the due date. Then I ignored them.

Not only was my lateness a problem from a relationship with my editors perspective, it was also financially disastrous. Like most writers, I live check to check. Often I'm dashing to the bank the day the mortgage is due, depositing a begged-for check to cover it. But with no manuscripts being handed in, no money was coming my way. I started relying on credit cards, with regrettable results. Every time I got a cash advance or charged something (like my income taxes) I told myself the money would "be here soon."

Throughout this time I made regular visits to my shrink, to make sure the medications I take for my tiny little anxiety and bipolar problems were still working. And despite how miserable I was feeling, every time I went I managed to shower, change out of my pajamas, and adopt a cheerful attitude. When I was asked how everything was going I said, "Fine."

It got to the point where, because I kept not writing them, I had three novels due at roughly the same time. I kept telling myself that everything was fine, that I could get it all done and finally get some cash. But every day I got up, sat down at the computer, and spent the next ten hours looking up Tom Petty's tour schedule, poking friends on Facebook, and researching the history of costume jewelry.

And then I had what my doctor later referred to as a slight cardiac event.

Technically it was a not-very-pleasant angina attack. It occurred, probably not coincidentally, following a breakfast meeting with two of my editors, who happened to be in town at the same time but for different reasons. We're all friends, so we got together one Saturday morning over coffee. We had a lovely time. No one mentioned deadlines, and I smiled a lot. When they asked me how everything was going I said, "Fine."

Then, while walking to the subway afterward, my heart started beating irregularly. It's done this periodically throughout my life, so I don't freak out about it. But this time it didn't stop. Then I started sweating. A lot. And then I experienced intense pain in my jaw. This is what a heart attack feels like, I thought as I continued to walk. I wonder if I should do something.

I did do something. I walked four blocks to the Orpheum Theater, where I exchanged some tickets for a show (Spring Awakening) to a different night. I joked with the ticket agent and looked at the seating chart, all the while trying to calm my heart and ignore the sweat that was soaking my shirt. Then, tickets exchanged, I took the train to the Castro, where I picked up some visiting out-of-town friends and drove back to my house. There I changed my shirt and lay down until my heartbeat returned to normal.

I didn't go to the doctor for another two months. Nor did it occur to me that the attack might be related to my inability to get my books written. That didn't occur to me until a few months later, when two days before one of the books was due (and I was only about 50 pages into it) I had back spasms so severe that I woke up screaming. I couldn't sit, which meant I couldn't write, and each new spasm was worse than the last.

Off I went to my shrink, but only because it was time for our next four-month visit. This time when he asked me how everything was I said, "I think I might be a little bit stressed."

He then asked every shrink's favorite question: "Why do you think that is?"

I remember starting to babble. I said something about the books being late and not knowing why and being surprised because usually I do know why I'm having problems with a book and how it was really annoying because I actually liked the books and should be having a good time writing them and oh by the way I kind of maybe had a little heart attack and was seriously considering bankruptcy and. . .

I went on for some time. Then I heard myself say, "I think I have literary anorexia."

And that's when I understood what was happening. Shortly before the start of my "block" I'd released a book for which I had high expectations. Unlike most of my books, it had taken several years to write. It was very close to me. And it went nowhere. After some great reviews, it just sat there staring at me like a lost puppy.

Before that I'd released several other books for which I had high expectations. For one reason or another, each had been a disappointment. And what they all had in common was that their lack of success was not due to me or my writing, but to some colossal screw up on the part of the publisher. One, part of a loosely-related series of which mine was one of six books, had been given absolutely disastrous packaging despite the objections of everyone involved (except the marketing department). After the dismal reception to the first two books in the series, it was decided that the last two books would be salvaged by repackaging them as stand-alone novels. But it was too late for books three and four, which had already been printed. Those were just plopped into the pool and allowed to sink out of sight. Mine was number three.

Over the course of 20 years I've had a number of "This is going to be the one!" moments. And I've become used to them not being the one. I've had a book series for which I wrote nine titles tank because the television show on which it was based was canceled before the books came out (after we'd been promised lucrative tie-ins with Burger King and Spaghetti-O's). I've had books optioned for film by enthusiastic producers, only to have them languish in production limbo for years before eventually dying with a whimper. After so many of these experiences, I thought I was used to it. At least, I no longer allowed myself to hope for anything big.

But apparently I was not as okay with this as I thought I was. Apparently I was tired of picking myself up and starting again, of putting a disappointing experience behind me and launching into a new book with the belief that this time it would end magically. In short, I had become sick and tired of giving my book to someone (a publisher) and having them kill it.

In my mind, the only recourse for preventing this disappointment was to not give anyone the opportunity to screw up my book. If they didn't have the book, I reasoned, they couldn't screw it up and I wouldn't be disappointed yet again. Obviously, then, the solution was to simply not write the books.

I know this makes no logical sense. Neither does anorexia. It's all about trying to hang on to the one thing--the only thing--over which you have complete control. For some people that's food; in my case it's words. The only part of a book that I have any real control over is what I put down on paper. The cover, the marketing, the sales, the reviews--they're all up to someone else. And any one of the people involved in those aspects of my book can screw it up for me.

I don't like that. Apparently I don't like it enough that I'd rather have a slight cardiac event and debilitating back spasms than allow it to happen again. Well, at least at that point I would have.

I'd like to say that realizing what was going on put an end to it. But it didn't. It did make things better, and I did manage to get those books written, but I still resented handing them over. When one of them came out with a cover I didn't love, I spent a few days regretting having "given in" yet again. But I got over it. Mostly.

I recently handed in two novels, both of which have the potential to do very well. My editors are excited. There's been "buzz" in the industry. The film department at my agency thinks there will be good news. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but I can't help it. And I know that if the books don't sell well, or if the film deals don't materialize, I'm going to be an unhappy camper for a while. That won't change.

However, I am fighting it. I've launched into a new book, which is going really well. For the first time in a long while I'm actually enjoying the writing. Not the having written. Not the will be writing. The is writing. I'm trying to do it without expectations, trying to remember why I liked writing in the first place. And slowly, word by word, it's coming back to me.

Work Related Injury

My father thinks that I work for a publishing company. Which, technically, I do. But not in the way he thinks. He's under the impression that I am employed by a publisher and given an annual salary to write books for them. He assumes, too, that the publisher gives me ideas on which to base my novels. He says things like, "So what are they having you write these days?"

I'd like to say that he's alone in not really understanding what writers do, but he isn't. In my nearly 20-year career I've encountered this on a regular basis. Usually it takes the form of innocent yet deeply irritating statements such as, "You're a writer? Well, good luck with that." Then there's the ever-popular, "You're a writer? Have I read anything you've written?" Inevitably, they haven't, at which point you're regarded with suspicion, because surely if you were even remotely successful someone would be reading you on an airplane.

Speaking of airplanes, woe to the unfortunate author who answers truthfully the obligatory, "Are you traveling for work?" question posed by a seatmate. New writers, usually ones flush with the thrill of publication and winging their way to their first signing or literary conference, almost always answer this query with great excitement. Finally! I can talk about being a writer!

This generally ends in tears and depression, usually when the seatmate nods and says in a tone that suggests you have something in common, "I've got this great idea for a novel. Just have to sit down one of these weekends and write it. It'll sell six million copies easy. Mind if I call your agent?"

When I travel I tell anyone who asks that I'm in the human waste reclamation industry.

My favorite incident of this type occurred when I lived in Boston. One of my neighbors was in law school, and the two of us spent part of every day sitting on his porch talking while our dogs played. One afternoon another neighbor came up and, with great sincerity, said, "I just want you guys to know that I'm really sorry you've been out of work for so long." When we finished laughing and explained to her why we weren't going to an office every day, she was actually offended, as if we'd somehow tricked her. "Well," she said. "I always see you just sitting around."

Really, you can't win. But I can't blame these people (okay, I can, and I do) because popular culture doesn't do writers any favors. When the Will Ferrell comedy Elf came out, one of its central plot lines concerned Ferrell's character's father, a children's books publishing executive, having to come up with a bestselling picture book to save his job. What does he do? Well, first he turns to the two writers who work in the office penning books for the company. When they fail, he calls in a fixer, a writer hired by desperate publishing houses to give them ideas for bestsellers (for which he is paid enormous sums of money).

Funny, yes. But I can't tell you how many people, having seen Elf, asked me why I couldn't get a job like that. "Because they don't exist," I'd say, and again the suspicious looks would come my way. I could practically hear them thinking, He's lying. It must be true. It was in a movie.

Those jobs used to exist, back in the days when rooms full of writers churned out pulp novels at ten cents a page or whatever. And I have several writer friends who wish we could go back to those days. "At least then I would get published consistently," one of them said to me a few days ago. "This whole submitting manuscripts and waiting six months to hear back thing really blows."

Yes, it does. Particularly when other writer friends ask if you've heard anything. They know full well you haven't, or that if you have it was bad news. Otherwise you would have mentioned it. In passing, while inquiring about the status of their books. And with not a hint of bragging.

Again, though, you can't get too upset with them. We're all in the same leaky boat, and knowing that everyone else is wet and cold and hungry is perversely reassuring. Besides, when we finally do sell something, they're happy for us. Sometimes. In passing. And with not a hint of jealousy.

Enough of this blogging. I have to get to work. If I'm late again my boss will give my book to one of the other writers in the office.