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Yesterday the little town in which I live had its first book faire. Well, it wasn’t strictly a book faire because the OjaiBookFest allowed renters of table space to sell goods such as decorated gords, crafts, pamphlets, and what-nots as well. However, as one of the booksellers (of Becoming Alice, A Memoir,) I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The first good thing that happened was that it didn’t rain despite the fact that it had been in the forcast for a week. Actully that is only partially true since the rain started at about two o’clock sending us booksellers into a frenzy to save our books from becoming soggy piles of wet paper ready for the recycler.That left me about three to three and a half hours to mind my table at the faire. In that period of time I sold a lot of books, but even better, I had a great time.

There is a method for being a bookseller at a faire. First of all the seller must be on his/her feet. So often when I looked around at the others, I found them sitting down, chatting with one another, having coffee and a snack and completely ignoring anyone that might be passing the table. The trick is to make eye contact with the passerby … not the person who’s selling something next to you. Once the passerby has stopped, smile at him/her. That’s the first invitation to maybe say something, like “Do you want to know what this book is about?” They may smile back, shake their head, and move on. That’s okay. Or, they may approach your table. That’s when you pick up your book and say, “You can find out what this book is about if you read this short synopsis on the back cover.”

If you’re lucky they’ll say, “Wow.” Then you can add whatever else you want. In my case I say, “It is a true story.” Now your passeby is engaged and will either ask more questions or make a remark like, “Oh, I’m from Portland.” Or, they might say, “I was in the war … I was with the occupation forces … we did this and that and this and that.” That’s the kind of engagement that ends up in a sale.

The best kind of engagement comes about when the passersby stop three feet from your table. They hesitate and look at the table and your invitation to read the synopsis doesn’t move them an inch closer to you. That’s when you smile and jokingly say, “You’re welcome to come and look at this book without buying it. It’s free to look … you can put it back down and walk away and I won’t mind at all.”

Of course, you already know that these passersby, who probably were afraid of a sales pitch, bought my book.

My review of Velvet Totalitarianism by Claudia Moscovici is now posted on www.amazon.com

In one of my earlier blogs I talked a bit about thinking that most people want to be liked. It probably varies a little from one person to another as to how much they want to be liked, or maybe even to the extent of certain people not caring a hoot about being liked.

I think I even wrote about a newspaper in my home town of Portland, the Oregonian, which ran a column when I was a teenager telling people what to do to be liked. Their formula was to have people give compliments to others to achieve great popularity. I couldn’t do that then or now.

My dad’s formula was to agree with everybody, whether he did or not. That didn’t work for me then and it still doesn’t. However if I do disagree I usually don’t start battle with them; I just let it go and move on to speak to someone else .. until last weekend.

I was at a dinner party having a grand old time when the conversation got around to politics and the world situation, or should I say mess, that we are in right now. The talk got to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which my particular group of dinner partners thought were wars “not worth fighting.”
Then someone commented, “I think no war is worth fighting for.

If you’ve read Becoming Alice you would know immediately why I would disagree vehemently with that statement. I hesitated. If I expressed my contrary opinion, would I lose that person’s friendship? I like her. I wouldn’t want to that to happen. What to do?

“I must disagree,” I said finally. “The threat of having to live under the rule of Hitler caused a war that was necesary and worth fighting for.” There! I said it. My grandparents were killed in that war. And if Hitler would have succeeded, which he almost did, I think a whole lot more of us would have been killed.

No one responded to my challenge. The conversation took another turn. I have yet to find out if I’ve lost a friend. But, if I have, she is not someone I would want to keep with the group I respect as my friends.

I was having lunch the other day with one of my cousins and as is usual in our meetings, the conversation turned to a rundown of what is new with each member of our extended family. We don’t have a very large family but still, it seems that certain members see each other more regularly than others. I’m not sure if that is “normal” or not. I think it is.

So, I asked my cousin about some members with whom she is closer and the conversation went to a married couple in which the husband has been very successful financially. As I remember him, he was always the one to remind the rest of us about how he rose from being a shipping clerk to being the head of his lucrative company. Meanwhile, his well-dressed, bejeweled wife would sit in the background silently, smiling.

“Don’t kid yourself,” my cousin said to me at lunch. “She’s the whole show.” Of course, what she meant was that the quiet, subservient wife was, in fact, “the boss!”

It made me think about so many European families that I knew growing up as an immigrant in Portland, Oregon in which I saw that same equation at work. It seems to me, looking back at it all, that the Viennese culture I knew then required the husband/father to be the head of the family and thereby the one to lay down all the laws by which everyone under his roof was to live.

However, their wives somehow knew how to finagle their husbands into giving in to their wishes. My mother did it by crying. I’m sure others had other means for manipulating their husbands … without their even knowing it.

What was and still is clear though, is that everyone else among their acquaintances who knew the couple, knew exactly who was “the boss.”

Book signing of Becoming Alice, A Memoir, on Saturday, March 19, between 10 AM and 4 PM. For more information see http://ojaiwordfest.wordpress.com/book_fair/

Before I could write a word, I took some writing classes. The first thing I learned was “if you can talk, you can write.” I could talk. That led me to have the confidence to write … which I did about this and that. My experimentation took me to write some poetry and essays and eventually it led me to write my memoir, “Becoming Alice.” But one thing a teacher of mine said has stuck with me over the years and has come back to me often. He said the most difficult thing to write about is love. Love! It is what everyone wants. It is what not everyone can give. It is something which is hard to describe, yet many people feel. Now it seems to have become measurable. How often have you heard, “I love you more?” I guess that means ” I love you more than you love me.” How can you tell?

There was an interesting study done recently which was televised. I found it most interesting. It about a young couple who had recently become engaged and felt themselves “head over heels in love.” A brain was done to see if anything unusual would show up on the film. In fact, some areas did show some differences in color. This couple was followed over a several years and were studied again. They professed to be still very much in love. However, their repeat brain scan showed a dimished brightness in the areas which had been so vivd before. How about that? Is “love” then a physiological state of mind, or just a depth of feeling, as we had always thought of it? I like to think of it more as a feeling, even if it does change the colors on a brain scan.

And then there is this business of depth of feeling. “I love you more (than you love me.)” I think that could be true. I think that not everybody feels love to the same degree as the next person. I think some people may not even be capable of feeling love. Just as we are not all born with the same genetic material … just as not all people are as smart as others … some people may not be able to feel as deeply as others.

So often people will profess to be in love for alterior motives … money, status, admiration, subsituting their love object for another, etc., etc.

I like most people fairly well. But there are some whom I like much less and some whom I like much more. I think it is very much the same with love. In my mind, one must first have the ability to feel deeply; then the depth of that feeling is dependent on all the other variables.

Writers have feelings about their characters whether they create them in a work of fiction, or if they choose to write about real people, a work of non-fiction. In either case, the writer is going to feel something for these characters, something on a sliding scasle from positive to negative. If the person they write about is a historical figure, perhaps the British Prince of Whales who abdicated his throne for the love of a woman, or Queen Elizabeth (Sisi) of Austria, both of whom are tragic figures, they can choose to draw them with understanding and empathy, or as flawed characters. It all depands on the writer’s own previous life experiences.

I’ll bet the choice will be based on some person the writer had known, or some incident he/she may have experienced earlier in life. I believe the the writer’s orientaion may be a conscious one, or he/she may be totally unaware of the deep seated orientation he/she may have.

My own orientation in writing my memoir, Becoming Alice forced me to dig deep and bring back the personality traits and behaviors I’d seen in my parents at a specific point in time. These, sometimes, were not particularly admirable. I’ve always felt that anyone undertaking a memoir has to be completely honest, even at the expense of some of the main characters in their book. If they are unable to do that and they depict their characters more positively than they actually were, then they are writing fiction, and not a memoir.

I have found that the writer’s feelings about their characters can change over time. In my case, thankfully, their depiction changed remarkably from somewhat negative to quite positive over the years following the end of my book. Perhaps I should write a sequal to set things straight.

I spent last Saturday at the Sonoma Book Festival in Santa Rosa, California, standing at table number 51 from nine in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon. It was the first time I had been to that particular festival and I learned a great deal. It is information I will need should I decide to do it all again next year.

First, is is very important to know where your table will be located. I had no idea about that until I arrived. The gods must have been kind to me because I was smack in the middle of the long line of tables. I was not one of the unfortunates not at the end of the line close to the caterer’s truck on one side or the Andy Gumps on the other. Should you ever register for a festival be sure you specify your choice of location.

Secondly, do ask if the sponsers of the festival include a tablecloth and two chairs along with the wooden fold up table itself. I did not. Luckily, they did provide two chairs so that I didn’t need to stand all day long. But no cloths. Again the gods must have been looking out for me because as an afterthought, I grabbed a comforter off my couch and threw it into my car, not even thinking about how I might need it. It was the only thing I had to use as a substitute tablecloth. It didn’t fit at all but it was better than nothing. I placed it over as much of the wood table as possible and placed my copies of Becoming Alice on its fringes so as to cover the line between cloth and bare wood. I hoped my visitors wouldn’t notice.

Lastly and most important of all, ask for a table in the shade! This festival in Santa Rosa took place when the temperature was about ninety degress. The sponsors were wise enough to provide an overhead cover for the exhibitors and their tables, but not for the walkway between the two rows of exhibitors. Visitors needed to walk in the open, with only a narrow part of the walkway in shade. Again I was in luck. The sun was located behind my table in such a fashion that my visitors were comfortable in the shade the entire day.

My sympathy went out to my neighbors across the walkway who had, all day long, the space in front if their set-up in full sun. Their space itself happened to be magnificent: a square space which looked like a living room, covered by a campers tent. Inside was a couch, end table and lamp, area rug, and bar displaying at least a dozen books by numerous authors. A handful of visitors stopped in the cool hours of the morning but the large number of choices on the bar confused them. That issue plus the blazing sun made it a very long day for them. They, like me, will have learned a lot from this particukar festival.

As for me, with a table covered only half way by a comforter with fringes and the display of only one book, I am happy to say Becoming Alice did very well for herself.

My neighbor’s son was a nerd. I watched him grow up and could almost feel his pain. He had no idea that he was good-looking. He was a bright boy who got almost all A’s in his classes, yet he didn’t think that was much of anything to be proud of. Being tall, he played basketball and, maybe he wasn’t the star on the team, but he was a darn good player.

When he got into high school, the girls used to buzz around him, coquetish, flirting, giving him every clue possible that they woukd love to jump into a relationship. He had no clue. No response. Watching all of this as the years went by, I wondered if perhaps he was gay. But there was no indication of any of that either. He was simply a nerd … a social misfit.

I identified with him. I empathized with him. I knew exactly how he must have felt. You see, if you had read Becoming Alice, you would have known that I was that kind of a kid. I was not bad looking. I got good grades. I had no friends. I never went with boys in high school like other girls did. I was a social misfit.

Let’s fast forward a bit. My neighbor’s son is now about to graduate from college … with an A+ grade point average, of course. And, believe it or not, he is in a serious relationship with the cutest, most bubbly and fun girl one could imagine.

Recently I read that there have been studies done that showed the most poplular kids in high school didn’t end up being very successful adults in their professions, or in their inter-personal relationships. Imagine that! It seems that there is some sort of reversal of roles once someone passes from adolescence to adulthood.

Let’s look at the case of Bill Gates, who is now one of the wealthiest men in the world. It has been documented that he was a master nerd as a kid. And then there is the case of me. I am happy to tell you, I’m very much okay with myself now.

I’ll be signing Becoming Alice on September 25th at the Sonoma County Book Festival in Santa Rosa, California, 10 AM-4 PM. Book festivals and wine tastings make a great combination.

Perhaps it is because I’ve just had a dear friend die unexpectedly that I’ve been wondering about life expectancy … of anyone or anything. I know that experts are always talking about this subject as it pertains to plants, some animals, people of certain ethnicities, or those who have cancer or some other disease which may cause their life expectancy to be shortened. I know orange trees are excpected to live aboout thirty-five years. My dog, a Golden Retiever, I belive would do well to survive over ten or twelve years while a Chihuahua should live to about eighteen years. People who have pancreatic cancer are often given less than five years to live.

So I began to wonder what is the life expectancy of a book? I know that a newly published book by a traditional book publisher is marketed and advertised agressively for a year or two and if the sales don’t please the publishing house, it soon loses their interest. Without that backing, I believe many books simply die. In time falling out of print is a books’ natural fate.

What about self-published books, POD books, and books published by small presses? A major difference is that authors who do so much to get their books into print in the first place seem to me to be much more aggressive in marketing their books. They certainly don’t stick to the year or two time line which traditional published adhere to.

Another enormous difference is that they can’t really fall out of print. POD technology is such that they are printable far into the future. I am so happy about Becoming Alice. I know that she will oulive me and then … who knows what can happen?

I don’t know who it was who said “know thyself” but I’ve always tried to apply that philosophy to myself. At this stage in my life I know what kind of person I am. I’ve made peace with my stengths and weaknesses, my likes and dislikes, and I know what interests me and what bores me.

Therefore I know that in regard to my book, Becoming Alice, I can call myself a bonafide writer. That label carries with it a number of responsibilities. I must be a marketer, a salesperson, a speaker, and promoter. That is not all. I must also be an expert on the computer.

I’m not doing so badly so far. I’ve been pretty successful as a marketer, salesperson, speaker, and promoter. I didn’t know I could do that until I was actually doing it. I’ve even gotten the hang of working the computer. I’ve mastered the Word program pretty well; I do email okay; I’ve gotten myself on a bunch of social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more.

Then I hit a brick wall. My friends on these sites have encouraged me to “link up” to other blogs, to optimize for SEO, to use FBML, to install RSS everywhere,
get YouTube apps. etc. etc. It’s all Greek to me. One article I read was full of advice geared to “non-techies.” That’s me! I was excited to read that article and get going on the next level of the internet world. However, I came to the conclusion that I am not even at the level of “non-techie,” I am an out and out “internet nerd.”

I need to get this off my chest. I’m working on a story right now which seems to fall into the category of Novella. That label applies to works that are of a particular length, somewhere between a short story and a full length novel. From what I have read, they are to follow the prescriptions for a short story, that is plot and characterizations. However, they are allowed to wander. How much remains a mystery. Every definition I read gives a different word count: 20,000 to 50,000 words and 50-100 pages, or up to 70,000 words and 125 pages. I think Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is 125 pages.

I’ve learned that a novella, a prose fiction work, originated in Italy in the Middle Ages and greatly influenced the development of the short story. It is still supposed to be a short and well-structured narrative, often realistic and satiric in tone.

I have known for some time now that short stories don’t have a huge marketplace. I now know that novellas seem to have almost none. I don’t know why they are treated like second class citizens. Amazon and Barnes and Noble don’t have a Novella category to explore if you want to read one. I have often entered my memoir, Becoming Alice in various contests and noticed that there never is a Novella category in which one can enter.

I’m not sure why I’m presently writing a novella. It must be that I’m encouraged by the fact that a novella, with its small size, is much easier to put into your back pocket than a Kindle, in case you are going on an airplane or the barber. I also feel good about being in the company of such great authors as Ernest Heminway Ian McEwen, Leo Tolstoy, Steven King, Stephanie Meyers, Cynthia Ozick, and the list goes on and on.

Now, all I need to do is write a book that is as good as any one of theirs.