Wait a minute. Am I being hoaxed?

I feel very uncomfortable doing this but a number of factors compel me to get on with it, so here goes. Without going into this too personally, due to events beyond my control, there are a fair number of threats, most indirect, but some quite direct, and many very specific (what exact kind of gun should be put to what exact part of my body) made against my life. Mostly just suggestions that I be killed, etc, (quite graphic etc, often) with motivation, sometimes a cost estimate.

While I try not to let this affect how I do things too much and I know that the internet (which I love and is mostly a net gain, in part because it is through the internet that I came to know many of you good people and how i have managed to do much of my work) I have for a few years now declined all invitations to do public events. Several people who have looked at these things have been advised me against doing all anyone-attends-posted-online affairs and if you see me say I am in a place, I am not there anymore.

It’s not a huge thing and I know most threats are empty but I believe the advice is correct, given the number and nature of these posts and messages.
Anyway, now I have this book coming out and a number of literary festivals have kindly invited me to attend and I can’t. This is a disappointment to my fine publisher and of course and I really enjoy meeting readers.

I will have an invitation-only book launch here in Toronto, late September, when the book comes out, and I very much hope many of you will come.
The point to this post is this, I did promise, contactually and otherwise, to promote my book, and attend a number of public events. I can’t, and a fair number of you are in media one way another, and so here’s my pitch, I will happily answer questions about my book, and work, write you a few lines about life in general, donate a recipe for your publication, pop in to your podcast, wander in to whatever it is you got going. You name it, I will do it.
So, please keep me in mind if you have a space of slot I might be able to fill and thanks very much for your time and interest if you read to the end of this.

  

This VERY strange statement appeared today, posted on a Facebook friend's page, so it got into my feed. A very big question mark immediately formed over my head. I didn't know much about this writer, whose name I will mask for now, and when I looked up her publisher, this is the description I saw about her (which, as an author myself, I know is traditionally written by the subject):

(Writer Under Threat) is smart, funny and very beautiful. She has the prettiest eyes. She describes her hair as iconic. That's how men think of her breasts. She is also a gifted writer. Elle Canada, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus and Explore Magazine are four of the publications lucky enough to have her in their pages. She has a lovely laugh and has been nominated for ten National Magazine Awards. She is also an excellent cook, terrific in bed and weary of self-deprecating chick writers.

So I sort of got the fact that this was a humourist of sorts, but what about that statement about her life being in danger? And therein lies the dilemma of social media.

As a humorist, a satirist I assume, irony and exaggeration are her stock in trade. Fair enough; I expect that. But what do I make of this rather long and elaborate statement? Is there any truth in it at all, or is it just an irony-tinged way of saying, "Hey, guys, I don't feel like doing any book promotion this year"? If so, those who are in on the joke, her loyal readers/fans/"in-crowd", will probably immediately know what she is talking about, and perhaps are chuckling away to themselves right now - threats on her life! Right! That's a million laughs.

Certainly the way she expresses the threat ("what exact kind of gun should be put to what exact part of my body. . sometimes a cost estimate. . .") borders on the flip. Her statement a little later on that it's "not a huge thing" seems equally puzzling. Threats on her life are not a huge thing?

So I was left in a state of confusion that made me unaccountably angry. It's happening again, I thought. Happens every time I turn around. We don't know what to take seriously, and what to - not. The whole thing was confusing in the way only social media can be confusing, triggering a weird, irrational shame. It's because you don't know whether or not you're being hoodwinked, and you feel you should know. You should know what's going on, but everyone seems to be speaking in some sort of mysterious code.

My first reaction when I saw this was, good grief, why is my Facebook friend in so much trouble? Then I realized it wasn't my Facebook friend at all, but this author (unknown to me - I don't live in Toronto) whom my friend was quoting. So, who was she, and why (actually, really, I mean) was she not going to promote her book?

People just don't go around randomly shooting authors, or making threats against someone who is no threat to them. Not in Canada, anyway. But if it IS true, what the hell is going on? She is a lovely, laughing, iconic-breasted humour writer, is she not? I just can't see who'd want to gun her down in cold blood. It makes no sense.

The truth is, I have absolutely NO fucking clue what to make of this, and it makes me very very uneasy. Just doubting it is giving me doubts, although I find I'm doubting half of what I read these days.

What do we take seriously in this era of fake news? What/whom do we (mis)trust? I was all ready to accept this at face value, until that little voice (the one I generally trust) said, "Wait a minute."

Wait a minute. We have no proof at all that any of this is real. If it isn't, it's a great way to play on the paranoia that runs rampant these days, a way to tweak everyone's vulnerability and then suddenly say, "Hah! Had you going there, didn't I?"

HAS she got me going? For no reason, I mean? How big a fool am I, anyway? IS there anything to this? Yes, no, I don't know. I feel ridiculous for not knowing. If it's satire, after all (the way she makes her living), if she's not really going to be murdered in cold blood at a book signing, then perhaps the intended reaction really is a mixture of exasperation, bewilderment and baffling shame.

SHUT UP!: Advice for New Writers

So what do I have to report? I get pulled back and forth – or in several directions, at least – between setting up a cleanly organized, professional-looking blog (and they DO impress me sometimes) and the scrapbookish/bulletin-board-like mess I choose to keep. It is tenderly attended to and fed regularly, which I always think is the best/main thing about a blog. There is nothing worse than eagerly following a link, and finding out the last post is dated 2011.

But I always read these strident exhortations (mainly on Facebook) to never do the things I regularly do, i. e. have inconsistencies in it, stray from the (single) topic, and (gasp, horrors) use different fonts! One “how-to” article even listed specific fonts one must NEVER use, and most of them were fonts I use all the time. I use different fonts because I love different fonts. I match the font to the tone of the article. Why not? Am I selling widgets or am I selling chunks of my soul?

Most of my posts get fewer than 20 views, and I only have 39 followers, pathetic really, in fact I think it's the worst I've ever seen for a long-running blog, but I have to stop and think what it would take to get more views. Homogenize. Emphasize publicizing the novel (a lot) harder. (OR NOT! See below.) Even at that, it wouldn’t work because good luck doesn’t stick to me. My stuff is always obscure, but it HAS to resonate and express my own world view/soul. 

One would think, OK then,  it’s patently obvious that you need to follow your own path and forget about everyone else. Right, and lose money on all my novels and disappoint my publishers because I don’t know the secret handshake! Funny how things that applied in your childhood drag on and on throughout your life, haunting you. An outsider then, an outsider now, largely because I wouldn’t or couldn’t conform. I always thought (naive me) that publicity should pull potential readers toward the product, rather than push the product aggressively up their nose and down their throat.

I wish I didn’t have to do any of this at all. I am at the point in my life where I don’t need to be told I’m good. I know I’m good, and there is no ego in that. Why would I be wasting my time and energy, not to mention the time and energy of publishers and potential readers, if I was no damn good? But being good, even damn good, isn’t the issue here. If deep in prehistory the storyteller sat alone by the fireside with no one to hear his or her story, humanity might still be writing with a sharp stick dipped in a little pile of dog shit.

Lately I keep finding articles that exhort writers to stop doing certain things – the most recent one being, pushing yourself on potential readers via the internet. The title even contains the words SHUT UP!, a message to all writers who indulge in such blatant prostitution.  The article blasts the idea at us that if you want to sell the first novel (and I hear this over and over again now, as if it’s an anodyne against all evils in the writing field), then JUST WRITE THE NEXT ONE. They don’t explain how, or why, that undertaking will suddenly/magically burst open the barriers on the first novel and send it leaping up the bestseller list.

The subtext seems to be “you publicity whore, why do you even CARE how many copies you sell?” Either that, or once you stop caring about it, success will automatically drop into your lap, one of those New Age beliefs where you just have to wish on a star to get what you want. (The subtext here is that good writing will automatically find an audience, just because it's good. It amazes me how many people believe that.) Then comes the kicker – always – that the writer of the article used the internet copiously to sell her first book, because, though that was allowed back in 2006, you can’t do it any more because it is no longer 2006. It just makes you look desperate and like a know-nothing. 

Then comes even more of a kicker, the revelation that she already has several bestsellers out – likely some sort of homogenized series about dragons and witches, probably having sex with each other – and is much sought after for writers’ events, where “really, I have no control over how much awe they feel for me as they seat me at the head of the table”. Seriously – not a trace of irony in the whole thing. 

But here’s the kicker to the kicker: I went on this author’s Facebook page, and NEVER have I seen more sickeningly aggressive hype for her next book. Splat, splat, splat, splat, post after post after post slapping you in the face.  But hey – SHE gets to do this because she is already a bestselling author! I know if anyone even notices this post, they are likely to say something like, "belt up and quit being jealous," and /or  "just follow your heart, it won’t make any difference anyway”. (Or, assuming this is a wide-open call for advice rather than an expression of frustration, tell me just what I am doing wrong.)  But to avoid being caught up in this, to not care at all how you are rated (and everything and everyone is rated now in the most callous manner possible) is nearly impossible unless you wear blinders and ear plugs. We all must swim in the waters in which we are forced to live.

"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Writers you want to punch in the face

http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/writers-you-want-to-punch-in-the-facebook/

OK then, here is a link to something I particularly liked on FB. I don't like much on FB, and every time I (compulsively) go on it, I see a lot of things that are not nearly as good, or see something that makes me mad and feel I can't say anything because most comments begin with the word, "Awesome!!!!!" If you say anything else, you're a party pooper and "negative", which is the worst thing you can be.

Social media hasn't done me a whole heck of a lot of good. It has distracted me from real writing, which is what I need to be doing, always. Right now I am stymied as to how I am supposed to use it to sell my book. I seem to be nowhere with it. I know I'm not supposed to admit this, in case the unusual happens and somebody reads this. It has been known to happen, but a large number of views is rare on this blog because I write it mostly to please myself.

I finally have a book in hand, but feel a little lost. The things that helped me stay afloat and promote and get out there with my last two novels are mostly gone. The independent bookstores have been driven out of business, and Big Booky isn't too friendly these days. It's not the way I thought it would be, at all, and all too often I feel like a dinosaur.

That said, several times a day I look at the published version of The Glass Character and just shimmer all over. As it turns out, the cover has a high shine that resembles that antique turquoise glass, and it's effective, as if Harold is looking through a windowpane. It was a long, long haul writing this, and twice as long selling it, and now, though I don't know exactly where I am going with it, it has been externalized, it's no longer just a story or a thought in my head or a hope or a dream: it's a BOOK, and always will be, even if it goes out of print. As an ebook, I suppose it will always be around in some form or another.

I've written about Rich Correll, and I did ask my publisher to send him an advance copy, but I haven't heard anything back. Rich Correll knew Harold, even touched his films and became his unofficial filmographer. What he thinks of  The Glass Character matters. But I have had almost no feedback, and it's kind of like waiting for a medical test to come back. You tell yourself, it's just a precaution, I'm sure everythng's fine. . . but you know that the possibility of "not fine" exists. You tell yourself, for sure, this is your last book. Has to be.

I remember a time when Rich Correll was just some far-flung possibility. I opened a file last night in Word, my first letter to him, dated 2010. I had no idea what his mailing address was, could only find vague references to talent agencies and taxi companies. I even sent a letter to his lawyer. I gave up some time in 2012, and he phoned me in 2013. I could not believe how long ago: last summer. I thought it was maybe two months ago.

I think a lot of what I am doing now is distraction. I should be working feverishly on Facebook and Twitter (though I loathe the thought and would rather be hung upside-down by my toenails than open a Twitter account) to "try to get the word out". What word? My book is out.  Buy it, it's swell. End of message.

I suppose if I don't promote my face off, I won't be eligible for the awards that can propel a writer out of the Paperback Writer zone ("Dear sir or madam, would you read my book, it took me years to write, would you take a look"). I don't know quite how that works. Do I sound super-confident here? I doubt it.

I do feel good about the book. It's not that. Or, I don't think so. It's everything else, what goes with it. Writers are jerked back and forth: stop being so sickeningly self-congratulatory! Get out there and be a shameless self-promoter! Go away, come back.

And then there is Cinderella Syndrome, the great lottery win, with some obscure or completely unknown author catapulting to the top of the New York Times bestseller list (Nirvana for every writer, supposedly). I should have called my novel 50 Shades of Harold.

It's a weird place to be in. I wouldn't want to go back. All of it has been hard. The writing was the best part, as always. I'll never forget it. And a few people have commented on it. Even my daughter liked it! She's the toughest critic I know, one of the few people who actually speaks her mind when you ask her about something, so her opinion matters to me.

All I want to do is make Blingees, right now, to take my mind off things. I have had no reviews at all so far, and there may not be any (not that they lead to sales). One would be nice. And hearing back from Rich Correll. Now THAT would be nice. An invite to read somewhere, so I don't have to phone an organizer and say, "Please, sir. . . "

But I remember the day the idea fell on me to write this book - just fell on me like an anvil out of nowhere, and my first reaction was, "Nooooooooooooo." Somehow, that led to this. The strange "this" I'm in now, which is a long way from the initial assault.