Of Mules in Horse Harness

I must be missing that chromosome that allows me to come up with book titles. It’s one of my great struggles as a writer. Some writers come up with a great title, which spawns an idea, but they never seem to finish the book.

I’m the opposite, because my book is sitting here staring at me, and I can’t figure out a name for my baby.

Of course, I could just call it what I’ve called it all along––The Panama Hotel. It’s a real place. It’s where the story begins. But the book takes place in Chinatown, Japantown and various internment camps. The Panama Hotel, while I’m used to it, sounds like a place Manuel Noriega would go for spa treatment.

Plus, Kristin (agent) wasn’t crazy about it, and neither were the other agents that offered representation. And when Kristin did some pre-submission pumping of the book in NYC, the name was a bit confusing.

So after much hair-pulling, hand-wringing and Diet-Pepsi drinking, I’ve sent a mondo list to Kristin for her input. We’ll see…

In the meantime, here are some books you know, and their original titles. Nice to see I’m not the only one who has this problem.

First Impressions - Pride and Prejudice
The Copperfield Survey of the World As It Rolled – David Copperfield
The Sea-Cook - Treasure Island
Stephen Hero - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Under the Red White and Blue - The Great Gatsby
The Old Leaven - The Sun Also Rises
Tenderness - Lady Chatterley's Lover
Twilight - The Sound and the Fury
Catch-18 - Catch-22
Salinas Valley - East of Eden
Mules in Horse Harness - Gone With the Wind
Proud Flesh - All the King's Men
Come and Go - The Happy Hooker
Bar-B-Q - The Postman Always Rings Twice

And my personal favorite, Something That Happened eventually became Of Mice and Men. (Steinbeck must have let Lennie come up with that one).

The Hardy Boys, and other forms of child abuse

Akira? No, the Hardy Boys.Book update: My agent, Kristin, has the latest version of The Panama Hotel in her hot little hands. (I actually haven’t seen Kristin's hands. For all I know she could have mitts the size of Andre the Giant’s, but you know what I mean). I made significant edits, killed a couple of chapters and wrote four new ones. Tightened up the ending to boot. Now I’m working on alternative titles as we head towards a mid-July submission window.

After years of hearing my daughter chirp “why do we need books when we have a perfectly good TV?” it’s finally happened. My daughter is reading. Not for a crappy book report. Not because it’s Thursday and everyone in the 6th grade goes to the library on Thursday. She’s reading for the fun of it. It’s officially summer, and she’s still reading––for pleasure. I’m not sure, but my daughter reading is probably one of the signs of the apocalypse. As she cracks the cover of Kevin Brooks’ YA novel, Kissing the Rain, I swear I can hear this Bergman-like voice booming “and the seventh seal was rent asunder.”

Why is she reading? Because her father is a writer? I wish. She’s reading because there’s a rich YA section at the bookstore that she can get lost in.

Think about it. What did you read when you were a kid? What was there?

Here’s my childhood highlights:

The Hardy Boys––I couldn’t get through a single book. They looked so clean-cut it frightened me. These were the kind of kids Betty Crocker would give birth to via planned caesarean so she could get back to her casseroles. I know, they’ve recently sent Frank & Joe Hardy to Starsky & Hutch’s stylist in a ham-handed attempt to make them “cool”—but I still ain’t buying it.

Judy Blume––I read a bunch. To this day, I’m not sure if I actually liked her books or was merely surfing them to get to those parts that seemed salacious to my 4th grade sensibilities. Maybe it was simply because her books were chronically banned for touching on such controversial subjects as (gasp) menstruation.

The Anarchist Cookbook––Speaking of banned books, this was banned to the display shelf. My local library met censors halfway, putting this counter-culture classic behind the front desk––but within eyesight of every curious 5th grader. You couldn’t check it out, but you could “look at it” within the confines of the library. (Hey, I didn’t make the rules). Among the homespun recipes for explosives, I remember descriptions on how to get high off banana peels. Never tried it but if someone out there has, by all means set that glass pipe down and let us know how it went.

Encyclopedia Brown––I don’t know how this guy slipped under the wire of suspicion that kept the Hardy Boys out of my reading list, but he did. Must have been the “how’d he do it” aspect of each story. My favorite was the one about how a man befuddled a guard-dog trained to chomp down on an intruder’s sleeve––by robbing a place naked. Sure, Judy Blume gets banned, while ‘Cyclopedia here is busting al fresco felons.
 
The Classics––Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer, et al. I read some and snoozed through others. Mainly due to my perception that as classics, these were somehow meant to educate rather then entertain. I know, this is my own baggage I brought to the party as a young reader. These books just seemed like summer school for me––something that was probably good for you, but unwanted. Like eating spinach, or getting booster shots. I read a few, grudgingly.

Comic Books––I binged on comics (Marvel & DC) like Kirstie Alley at a puddin’ eating contest. The UPS man delivered them by the hundreds, courtesy of my garage-sailing grandma. I’d even pluck tin cans from the side of the road, turning them in for their deposit (5¢ each) to buy dozens each month.

Ah, the good ol’ days. (Insert wistful, faraway gaze here…)

What were your grade school reads? What did you love? (Or hate).

Der beste Titel aller Zeit

Sorry. We're going auf Deutsch for a moment to bring you the gnarliest book title of all time, courtesy of Canadian author Adrienne Kress's German publisher.

Die halsüberkopfundkragendramatischabenteuerliche Katastrophenexpedition der Alex Morningside

I took four years of German and even Ich verstehe nicht. (Even I don't understand, understand?)

I'm afraid the translation of my own book is hardly as dramatic. The Panama Hotel simple becomes Das Panama Hotel.

Speaking of titles, I'm working on a new one. More on that later.

Curious as to how your own book might appear in a foreign tongue? Run it through Google Translate and let us know. 

Was wartest du?

Bootcamp––one year later

I can’t help but reflect that 365 days ago I was soaking in the humid air of Southern Virginia University attending Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp. An intensive week of non-stop writing and critiquing––all set in the quaint little gentry of Buena Vista.

When I called ahead to see what there was to do in my free time, they laughed. “What free time?” Turns out my spare moments were spent sleeping. (About 4 hours a night, some people got less).

Two intensive days of lecture were mixed with generating story ideas. The rest of the week was spent writing and workshopping. I wrote a sloppy 4,500-word short story. Others, propelled by caffeine and fearlessness, wrote nearly 10,000 words. Great words. Salient words. Being immersed in that environment, with so many great writers, was catalytic. It changed me.

Now a year later, I look around, and I’m still blown away. Scott Card chose a small group of aspiring authors, based on one-page writing samples. How much can you glean from a single page? Turns out it’s a heckuva lot. Need proof? Here’s a bit of a Where are they now––the class of 2006, one year later:

Between the rigors of her first year at med school, Danielle Friedman sold her first story, Even the Slowest Fall, to Shimmer Magazine.

Jose Mojica sold his hilarious YA yarn, Fat Town, to Intergalactic Medicine Show.

Pat Esden sold Black Pumps and a Skanky Tom to Cat Tales. Her story, Suck of Clay, Whir of Wheel, is now available through Fictionwise, and she has an agent reading her novel, Matchbox.

Brian McClellan’s farcical Duck Hunt, is showing up in the newest issue of Leading Edge. He also came in first in the English department's informal essay contest at BYU and won third place in the Ann Doty Fiction contest.

The “I’m a brilliant writer and I never sleep award” goes to Parisian, Aliette de Bodard who proved that English really isn’t her second language by selling her stories Deer Flight and The Lost Xuyan Bride to Interzone, Sea Child to Coyote Wild, Weepers and Ragers to Abyss and Apex, Within the City of the Swan to Shimmer, Autumn's Country to ASIM, and her novelettes The Naming at the Pool and At the Gates of White Marble found homes with Reflections Edge and Leading Edge, respectively. (Must be something to that whole “Edge” thing).

With all that, it’s impressive, but not surprising that she’s also a finalist in the most recent Writers of the Future contest for Obsidian Shards.

And last but not least, Scott H. Andrews’ short story, A Brief Swell of Twilight, won first place in the Briar Cliff Review’s 2007 Fictional Contest. He walked away with a nice check for $1000 to boot.

Honorable mention goes to Kennedy Brandt who’s not-so-short-story, Final Session, will undoubtedly be appearing soon. In his words, “a 10,000 word nightmare of addiction, depravity, suffering, and ultimately some dark form of redemption.” (It’s a phenomenal read Kennedy; it’ll find a great home).

And Margit’s, Under Janey's Garden, will, as Scott Card put it, “end up in a Best American Short Stories anthology.” I don’t doubt it.