“Brígida was portrayed as a loose woman who was unfaithful to her husband, António. It was said that Floro had done his son out of his money, visited prostitutes, had extra-marital affairs and died of Aids. His wife, Inocência, was described as an ambitious, extravagant, tight-fisted, mean, avaricious and calculating woman who abandoned him on his death bed and had an affair with Floro’s brother.
Aurora was portrayed as a coarse-looking woman with bad breath. Rogério, an agent of the secret police under Salazar’s regime, was described as having had about a hundred political opponents imprisoned. His daughter, Beatriz, was portrayed as a debauched and licentious woman and a bad mother.
Imaculada was depicted as a woman of loose morals who would stop at nothing to get rich, including killing her father (Floro).”
Well, thank goodness that’s all taken care of. I’m sure that after learning about this, people will forget all about the book, and not try to find it or buy it or anything.
I think I’ll stay out of the comment threads on this one.
EDIT: The HBR post seems to have disappeared, and my Google-Fu is not strong enough to find the original article. Does it have anything to do with the hide-from-aggregate-feeds tag?
1) Person is (metaphorically) at point A, wants to be at point B. Looks at point B, says “I want to be at point B.” Walks to point B, encountering no meaningful obstacles or difficulties. The end. (A.k.a. the linear plot.)
2) Creative person is having trouble creating.
Writer has writer’s block.
Painter can’t seem to paint anything good.
Sculptor can’t seem to sculpt anything good.
Creative person’s work is reviled by critics who don’t understand how brilliant it is.
Creative person meets a muse (either one of the nine classical Muses or a more individual muse) and interacts with them, usually by keeping them captive.
What is the purpose of an author photo? It allows the reader to feel a connection with the author, of course, but the photo also communicates something about the genre of the book.
Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, Diane Mott Davidson and Shelley Costa write funny, PG-rated mysteries, where the violence and sex happen offstage.
Janet Evanovich
Sue Grafton
Diane Mott Davidson
Shelley Costa
All four author photos feature a smile and a slight head tilt; the authors look friendly and approachable.
This kind of pose is not necessarily the best fit for all genres. You probably wouldn’t mistake Mercedes M. Yardley for a writer of cozy mysteries.
Mercedes M. Yardley’s works include Nameless: The Darkness Comes and Beautiful Sorrows
Nor does Anna Taborska seem like someone who pens madcap adventures involving cookie recipes and precocious cats.
Anna Taborska, author of For Those Who Dream Monsters
For my author photo, I’ll be working with a talented Hawaii-based photographer. The Molly Barda mysteries are lighthearted and fairly clean, so we’ll go for something in the spirit of the first set of photos. I’m looking forward to seeing what we come up with. Stay tuned!
The Musubi Murder audiobook is almost done. You’d think that I’d know my own manuscript pretty well by now, but:
1. That whole “said” issue really took me by surprise. My producer has gone back and clipped out the unnecessary “said”s and now the dialog flows more smoothly. It wasn’t bad before, but those small edits make a big difference.
2. The humor in the book is broader than I realized. I thought I had written a low-key meditation on academic life, and I found myself listening to a boisterous comedy. The written word is quiet. I think this is where Confessions of a Shopaholic (a book that I found very entertaining) ran into trouble in the movie adaptation. The main character’s compulsive shopping and prevaricating was amusing in print, but on the big screen, many viewers couldn’t bring themselves to laugh at untreated addiction and compulsive lying.
3. You can start with a perfectly flawless manuscript, but if you let it sit too long on your hard drive, tiny typos will start to appear spontaneously. This is less an observation about my own particular book and more a law of nature, so there is no point in assigning blame.
The Musubi Murder audiobook is nearing completion. I’ve really enjoyed listening to the chapters as they come in. I should be well sick of the manuscript by now, so I have to give the credit to my talented (and, as you will see in a moment, very patient) producer.
In a printed book, when you have a conversation going on among three people, you’re going to need a few dialog tags. This is especially true when you’ve just introduced the characters and the reader doesn’t know them yet.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this until after Nicole had done a good amount of recording. She is now going back through the recordings and removing the superfluous dialog tags. This is beyond the call of duty, and I am extremely grateful. It’s a hassle for her, but it improves the listening experience.
“Who’s Moira?” Emma asked. “His sister,” I said. “What kind of Korean name is Moira?” Pat asked. “Moira’s not a Korean name,” I said. “Why would it be a Korean name?” “Yeah, Pat,” Emma said. “Stephen’s not a Korean name either.” “Why would Stephen be a Korean name?” I asked. “I didn’t say that Stephen is a Korean name. I said it’s not a Korean name.” “All right,” I said, “why would you say it’s not a Korean name?” Emma made an impatient, palms-up gesture. “Because it’s not?” “Why do you keep talking about Korean names?”
On the printed page, Emma’s words look a lot like Pat’s words or Molly’s words, so the tags help the reader to keep track of who’s speaking. But in the audiobook version, the characters sound distinct. Pat is the only male speaker; Emma is the only local. Too many “said” tags become repetitive for the listener. For the audiobook we’ll remove one or two of them.
What have I learned for the next audiobook? I’d mark in advance which dialog tags should be omitted by the narrator. I wouldn’t take them out entirely, because the narrator needs to know who is speaking, but maybe I’d strike them out to indicate they’re not to be read aloud.
And yes, I realize that this might mess me up with Whispersync. But maybe by the time the Kindle version of The Musubi Murder comes out, Amazon’s algorithm will be set up to deal with this.
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