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September 29, 2005
The new book is here!
I got a surp[rise package from the publisher today--two hardcover copies of The Greatest War Stories Never Told, hot off the presses! I am very happy with the photo reproduction--the prictures look crisper and stronger than they did in the first book. I don't know if that was something the desinger did, or something the printer did, but the pictures look sharp. I also liked the flaps, and the reproduction of my picture (yes, I have an actual author picture in this bok, so I can prove it was by me!)
I'm less happy with the back cover, which doesn't look very elegant. I saw a faxed proof of it, and Okayed it, even though I couldn't really see it. Now I'm sorry I did. It isn't awful, just kind of clunky. I talked to Joelle Yudin, the associate editor on the book, and she said that she and Mauro DIpreta (who is the Executive Editor/Big Cahuna) were liess than thrilled with it too. But the print run is already done for the first 18 thousand copies, so I guess were' going to have to learn to like it!
Posted by rickbeyer at 04:16 PM | Comments (1)
September 18, 2005
So many books
I was just perusing the Harper Collins website, where I found a page devoted to Upcoming Books--books coming out in the next three months. I find it somewhat daunting that there are more than 250 of them�and that�s just one publisher. Another example of why it is so hard for any one author or book to get noticed.
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:37 AM | Comments (0)
September 17, 2005
The Literati Scene
I went to a party the other night at the home of a most extraordinary woman. Her name is Smoki Bacon, and she lives with her husband Dick Concannon in an 1842 brownstone a few steps from Boston�s Public Garden. I was there along with a hundred or so other guests, feeling, as I always do at one of Smoki�s affairs, as if I have entered another dimension, one where I hobnob with literary luminaries and blue-blooded Brahmins, and wonder how I got past the transom.
Smoki has been described in the pages of the Boston Globe as a �legendary Back Bay socialite,� a �socialite superhostess� and �Boston�s Perle Mesta.� She is a 70 plus year old woman with long white hair and the biggest glasses you have ever seen. A fixture on the Boston social scene and a board member for charities too numerous to mention, she and her husband also produce and host a local cable TV show entitled �The Literati Scene.� They videotape interviews with authors and other luminaries at the Swann Caf� at Boston�s Park Plaza Hotel, each operating the camera for the other. After the interviews are done, they sit down for a luncheon with their guests. It�s most civilized�sort of a Boston version of the roundtable at the Algonquin. I appeared on the show in 2003 and will be taping another interview in a few weeks. When I was on the first time, I thought, �God, why is my publicist sending me to this local cable show.� As it turned out, I had a delightful time�and was surprised at the number of people who later saw it. At lunch afterwards, the person who sat next to me was William Taubman, an Amherst College professor who had just written a biography of Nikita Khrushchev. A few months later he won they Pulitzer Prize for it. You never know who you�ll meet when you hang out with Smoki.
Every September, Smoki and Dick hold a big party for all the folks who have appeared on the show, and a passel of old friends as well. I�ve been to three of these bashes, and each one is a trip. There is no other venue in my life where I can converse with the former ambassador to Pakistan, chat up the authors of a new diet book, exchange cards with a jazz pianist performing next month at New York�s Lincoln center, and listen in as bow tied Harvard grads recall their classmates from the Class of 51�all in the space of a few minutes. Then there�s house itself�chock full with an eclectic mix of books and antiques, and pictures�omigod, millions of pictures of Smoki and Dick, and autographed photos of everyone from Babe Ruth to Kitty Carlisle.
Upon meeting Smoki, I assumed she was a 7th generation Brahmin, born to the breed, old money all the way, and yet it isn�t so. According to the Boston Globe, she was born �Adelaide Ruth Ginepra, the daughter of impecunious parents of Italian and Scottish heritage.� Her mother, says Smoki, was a battered woman who threw her father out. They barely scraped by until she graduated from Brookline High in 1945. She married a man named Ed Bacon (the Bacons being an old time Boston family) in 1957. Then, according to the Globe, she �began her quest for fun and fulfillment in the tricky world of Boston society, which in those days was dominated by a notoriously exclusive class of rich Anglo-Saxon Protestants.�
Her life hasn�t always been easy. In 1974, her husband died from cyanide poisoning. Smoki maintains to this day that he was murdered by his business partner, who is currently serving a life sentence for another murder. The insurance company, according to the Boston Globe, �claimed he committed suicide because he was miserable over his wife's social activities, her insistence on living in town and her refusal to cook at home. (The family joke has been: If you want to get away from Mother, go to the kitchen; she never goes there.)�
Over the years she has gotten into the society columns scads of times, and her parties are legendary. One year, when people simply wouldn�t leave, she began ringing a loud bell and walking room-to-room announcing last call. She and her second husband, Dick Concannon (who she met at a Harvard reunion) have also raised done a huge amount of fundraising for local charities. Every year she acts as a surrogate mother to a couple of foreign students at Harvard. (I find this particularly heartwarming, since my mother did the same thing foreign students at Brown).
I love these parties, I really do. Every August the invitation comes in the mail, and every September I show up. I will continue to go as long as Smoki continues to invite me. I get to meet interesting people, the company is unfailingly pleasant, and I always leave with a glow, knowing that I have been briefly admitted to a world I usually can only read about on the society pages, and what�s more, I have affirmed for another year my tenuous claim to being part of Boston�s �Literati Scene.�
Posted by rickbeyer at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2005
One Day Road Trip
Inspired by Arielle Eckstut�s new book �Putting your Passion into Print � (previously reviewed on these pages) I decided to make yesterday into a mini self promotion day. I made a list of libraries and bookstores to visit West Suburban Boston and set out to solicit public speaking engagements and generally try to raise awareness of my forthcoming book.
I went into battle armed with a stack of home-printed press kits, a few copies of the uncorrected proofs of the new book, a fountain pen, a stack of note cards, a travel mug of hot coffee and a nalgene bottle filled with cold water.My journey involved 56 miles of driving, and visits to five bookstores and five libraries, from Brookline to Concord. These were all cold calls. In one case I knew the name of a person to ask for, but for the most part it was a matter of traipsing in across the transom and going into my �hello I�m an author� dance.
It was easier than I thought it would be, and easier than any similar efforts for my first book two years ago. Easier because I knew that almost all these bookstores and libraries had carried or were still carrying the first book. I was coming in not as a newby, but as a previously published author with a demonstrated success. Even if they didn't know that, I did.
My batting average was about what you would expect. In two of the ten cases I was able to speak to the decision-maker. In two other cases, it turned out that the library or bookstore in question really didn�t do adult author events. (Bad Research!) In the other six cases, the appropriate person wasn�t there, or was busy. But I was prepared! In each case I whipped out a note card and dashed off a handwritten message, attaching my press kit. One of these people has already gotten back to me, so that�s yet another contact.
My two most successful meeting were with John Netzer at the Concord Bookshop and Beth Purcell at the Newton Free Library. Both were both exceedingly gracious, and giving of their time, considering I had dropped in out of the heavens unannounced. There�s nothing like a face-to-face visit! John and I discovered wit both lived in Lexington, and Beth and I discovered we had a mutual friend in Tug Yourgrau (and also that we share a background in radio.) Both responded very positively to the idea of my doing an event, and I keep my fingers crossed.
In every case, I also tried to make a connection with whoever I was able to speak with, whether it was Betty at Newtonville books (who spent a year as an exchange student at Dartmouth) or Bodie at the Barnes and Noble in Brookline, who I chatted up as I signed copies of my first book that they had in stock. I�m happy to say that no one I ran into was rude or dismissive, which encourages me to schedule a few more such days to hit other bookstores and libraries a bit farther afield.
Posted by rickbeyer at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2005
Print Ad for Greatest War Stories
This is the ad for the new book that will appear in The History Channel Magazine. It will be a little bigger than this...a half page, actually. Harper Collins sent me a proof of the ad on Friday, and I have to say I didn't like the initial version I saw. I called my former business partner Linda Button at Smash�an excellent judge of creative�and she gave me some very helpful comments. On Monday, I got back to the publisher to say that I was less than crazy about the ad. I made some suggestions about copy and layout, they built on them, and the final (which doesn�t look anything like the original) is a much stronger ad.
What was striking is that they were very open to my feedback. I don�t have any contractual approval over the ad, they could have blown me off, but they did the opposite. Jean Marie Kelly , the Marketing Director for Collins (that is the Harper Collins imprint that is publishing the book) listened to what I had to say and added a great twist of her own. As a result, what could have been a bad situation�unhappy author, irritated publisher, so-so ad�turned out wonderfully. Yay! I keep waiting to have a good horror story to share, and the publisher keeps coming up strong. I hope it never ends�
Posted by rickbeyer at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)
National Booking
Some very exciting news on the PR front for the new book. Beth Mellow, my publicist at Harper Collins, emailed me that : as of now it looks like you are booked into an interview on Fox News Channel �Fox and Friends� in December. The Fox Newswebsite describes it as �America's No. 1 cable news morning show.� I�m keeping my fingers crossed that it holds up.
Posted by rickbeyer at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2005
Image of the Week: Battle of the Luxury Liners
A surprising number of historical events featured in my books have taken place on September 14, my daughter's birthday. Or, perhaps, I notice the date because it is her birthday. That is the day, for instance, that Francis Scott Key saw the "rockets' red glare" at Fort McHenry.(He was there to see it because of three drunken redcoats.)It is the day President Garfield died (shot by a lawyer, killed by his docters). And it is the day that the Battle of the Lusury Liners took place...two converted luxury liners, disguised as each other (!), that fought a gun battle in 1914, a battle that resulted in one of the ocean liners sinking the other!
I discovered this World War I headshaker completely by accident while searching for another. It is featured in my new book The Greatest War Stories Never Told, which comes out in just six weeks!
Here's an interesting tidbit that doesn't make the book. The drawing is inaccurate in its depiction of the number of funnels for each ship. THe Carmania, in the foreground, did have two funnels, but since was disugising itself as the Cap Trafalgar, it added a third fake funnel. Likewise, the Cap Trafalgar, in the bacgkround, actually dismantled one of its three funnels in the hopes that it would look like the Carmania.
For a larger version of the picture (so you can actually see the funnels) go to Image of the week page.
Posted by rickbeyer at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2005
Passion and Print
My agent, Arielle Eckstut, has co-authored a new book in which she mentions Nicole Kidman in one sentence, and me in the next, which is undoubtedly the closest I�ll ever get to Nicole Kidman. She also refers to me as �a serious hookmeister,� which, as it turns out, is a compliment.
No, it�s not a tell all expose about the publishing industry. It�s a terrific book entitled Putting Your Passion Into Print.
The book is a complete guide to becoming a successfully published author. I have nothing but nice things to say about it, and not only because it says nice things about me.Arielle and her husband David Sterry have written a book that is practical, fun to read, and totally demystifies the publishing process. Want to know where you can find an agent? How to write a book proposal that will make publishers sit up and notice? What pitfalls to avoid? Then this is the book for you. (I assume people do want to know these things because they are always asking me.)
Arielle is an experienced agent (and I can tell you she has done a terrific job for me). Both she and David are previously published authors They know the process inside and out. They also asked all the other authors, agents, book editors, and publicists they know to share their success stories and inside tips. And we did!
The result is inspirational and encouraging, entertaining and informative. Whether you are just setting out to write a book, or already have several published books under your belt, you will find this an invaluable resource. There is no doubt in my mind that it will become a standard of the industry, sitting right alongside "Writer's Market" and "The Chicago Manual of Style." (And let me tell of you-it's a much better read than either of those books could ever dream of being!)
Posted by rickbeyer at 06:53 PM | Comments (2)
Escape from New Orleans
So there we were, washing down some spicy barbecued shrimp with a Turbo Dog beer at a restaurant on Chartres Street in New Orleans� French Quarter. Little did we know that 24 hours later we would be fleeing the city, part of a monumental traffic jam of cars trying to leave New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Big Easy.
My wife and son and I arrived in New Orleans on Friday afternoon, laden with suitcases full of our daughter Bobbie�s stuff. Our daughter was already there, taking part in a weeklong Tulane pre-orientation program called the NOLA Experience. She had spent the week camping near Baton Rouge, learning the basics of Cajun cooking, touring the city by bike, and taking part in numerous other Big Easy experiences. On the last night of the orientation, a Friday, she attended a Ravens football game at the Super Dome, where she told us air conditioning was so cold she had to wear a jacket.
Friday night the storm seemed to be somebody else�s problem. People knew it was there, but expected it to land off in Florida someplace, and prove only a minor inconvenience at the most. The next morning, things had changed dramatically. The forecasts were dire and the newscasts talked of a possible evacuation. We arrived at Tulane around 10 AM, amid thousand of other students and parents trying to move in. Bedlam. We had no sooner unpacked all of Bobbie�s belongings in her third floor dorm room when word came that Tulane was going to shut down because of the incoming storm. All the students would have to evacuate by 5 PM, and it was recommended that everyone leave town.
Imagine the situation from Bobbie�s point of view. This is the only college she really wanted to attend, and the only college she applied to. She has a developed a deep love of Louisiana Culture and New Orleans. Finally, after point toward this moment for two years, she�s finally there. And now, before the college experience that she�s been dreaming of can even start, she has to leave. I was and remain amazed at the resiliency she has shown through this whole experience
What to do? We checked the airport�the flights out were all packed. We came to a quick decision that we should hit the road in our rental car, and listening to the news reports, it became clear that the wisest course would be to leave immediately. We talked about where we had friends that could put us up, and eventually decided on Houston as a destination. We called friends there. �Houston, we have a problem,� I said. (Actually I didn�t think of that line until later, but I wish I had said it.) They generously offered us shelter in their home.
We grabbed an early lunch and sent Bobbie back to her room to pack a bag. (At this point Tulane was planning to reopen in three days, so she only brought a few things, leaving everything else she owns�even her journal going back to 6th grade�in her 3rd floor room, where we hope it still sits.) Then we all headed to the French Quarter where we checked out of the Place D�Armes hotel. (The sign on the lobby desk noted that any car left in the elevator garage would be inaccessible once the electricity went out�I�ll bet many are there still) and grabbed some Caf� Dumond caf� au lait for the road. We headed west on I-10 at about 2 PM.
The drive from New Orleans to Houston usually takes 5-6 hours. It took us more than 13 hours. Traffic on I-10 was bumper to bumper, with everyone trying to flee the city, and we crawled along at 5 MPH for the first three hours. Then we got diverted off of I-10 West (the road we wanted to stay on) and onto I-55 North toward Jackson Mississippi. We were directed into the �Contra Flow� lanes�headed north on what is usually the southbound side. We couldn�t get off�the Louisiana Highway Patrol was preventing us (and thousands of other cars) from going anywhere but north. The staties wouldn�t even talk when we tried to ask how to get back on the road to Houston; they just kept waving us north. People were cutting across the median in order to break free of the highway. Eventually, about 20 miles south of the Mississippi line, we were able to get off and make our way on smaller roads back to Baton Rouge, and eventually back onto I-10 West. But it took us 7 hours to get from New Orleans to Baton Rouge�usually a 90-minute drive.
Things eased a bit after that, but traffic continued to be extremely heavy, and sometimes slowed down to a crawl. It was an odyssey that I will long remember. Hour after hour of driving through the night, across Louisiana to Lake Charles (with oil refineries lit up like Christmas trees) through Beaumont, and finally into Houston. The kids were stoic. We discovered that the van had a Sirius Satellite radio, and we discovered the joys of having 184 stations of music and talk�we listened to all of them. One news report was particularly memorable. The Governor of Louisiana was exhorting people to pray in order to reduce the size of the hurricane. �Pray it down� she told Louisianans, and that became the mantra for our trip.
I remember at one point, probably about 2:30 AM, with everyone else dozing as we approached Houston, I suddenly began wondering if this sudden drive to Houston was horrible overreaction that I would seem silly in the morning.
We pulled into our friends� street at about 3:30 AM. Somehow they managed to be gracious even at that hour, welcoming us into their home, leading us to our rooms, fixing food for My daughter, and staying up to chat with the exhausted, wired family that had dropped in out of the sky.
We arrived home late Monday night, safe and sound. As events unfolded, we thanked our stars that we got out while the getting was good. Everything we�ve gone through pales to what has happened to those people in New Orleans who have lost everything, or have had to cope with the terrible conditions there, and our hearts go out to them. But it has still been a n emotional rollercoaster for our daughter.
On Thursday Tulane made the inevitable announcement: the first semester would be cancelled. We know it was coming, but still Bobbie was in tears. We hugged, and I told her that I believed she would be back there soon. �I believe it too� she said. She spends a lot of time every day Instant Messaging other Tulane students, and monitoring Tulane-related blogs, and is doing some volunteer work for the Red Cross. She remains fiercely committed to the college and the city, and while she will probably attend classes locally this fall, Tulane is her school, and she can�t wait to get back there.
Posted by rickbeyer at 06:29 PM | Comments (0)