Guest post by David Rocklin, author of THE LUMINIST

I am delighted to welcome David Rocklin, author of THE LUMINIST, a highly-praised novel which Jacquelyn Mitchard calls: "... a weave of legend and history, science and art, politics and domesticity that are symphonic themes . . .the story of an enduring and forbidden friendship.”

Set in Colonial India, in a time of growing friction between the ruling British and Indian populace, The Luminist tells the story of Catherine Colebrook, an Englishwoman living in Ceylon, and a fifteen-year old Tamil boy, Eligius Shourie, who is brought as a servant to the Colebrooks’ neglected estate. Catherine’s obsession to arrest beauty—to select a moment from the thousands comprising her life and hold it apart from memory—transforms Eligius into her apprentice in the creation of the first haunting photographs in history, even as their fragile world crumbles.

Please join me in welcoming David Rocklin.

In early 2004, I went to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. They were exhibiting photographs from the earliest days of the art, including a number from Julia Margaret Cameron. Now, I’m not a photographer – I’m the one waiting for it to tell me how to use it when you ask me to take a picture of you and your family. I’d never heard of Ms. Cameron or her work. I am, though, very visual. Everything I’ve written had its start not as a theme or a character, but as an image that I could not shake, that hinted at a larger story.

The photographs I saw that day really moved me. Those faces had a lost quality to them when viewed from a distance; here, after all, was a wall of people who died before I’d ever encountered them. Individual moments of whimsy, contemplation, mourning, a child’s exasperation at having to wear wings. The first image I saw, of a woman half-shrouded in shadow, was stunning. Her face emerged from the dark into a muted light. She was unreadable. The model, as it turned out, was Julia Jackson, the mother of Virginia Woolf (I wrote a blog about that image, and the serendipity that caused it to become the cover of the novel).

After the Getty, I did a bit of research on Ms. Cameron. She was unique for her time, a Victorian woman who obsessively pursued this unknown art and science despite all societal expectations or barriers. The likes of Charles Darwin, Lord Tennyson, Robert Carlisle and Sir John Herschel sat for her, enduring the interminable stillness necessitated by the technology of the time. She saw something like prayer in her work, and made of it images to rival painting.

I found a quote of hers: “I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me…” Her quote took on a newly relentless, tragic meaning when I learned that she lost a child shortly after birth. An image of her started to form, but from a vantage point outside of her, as if I was observing her from the eyepiece of an old camera.

That’s where the story started. What transpired is completely fictionalized, but my jumping-off point began that day at the Getty.I really lived with this world for quite a while before starting the book. I realized early on that even if I travelled to India, I could not find the setting for the book. Ceylon no longer exists as it was. More importantly, the moment that really drives everything in “The Luminist” no longer exists: that moment before the first photographic image existed, before that instant of fast-passing life could be held still. And then, it could.

So much of what I learned from writing The Luminist is making the journey with me towards realizing the new novel I’m working on. Patience with the stops and starts of the first draft (the characters were really battling for dominance in voice, and I’ve re-started the book three times now). Immersion in the world, and once immersed, picking my battles from amongst so many possibilities. Daunting and exciting – that tangled emotional combination that I think all writers know.

Thank you, David. We wish you much success with this fascinating novel. To learn more about The Luminist and David, please visit his website.

Interview with Eva Stachniak, author of THE WINTER PALACE

I'm delighted to welcome Eva Stachniak back to Historical Boys for an interview about her bestselling novel THE WINTER PALACE, one of my favorite historical novels this year and a riveting account of the rise to power of Catherine the Great. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Eva!

1. Congratulations on the publication of THE WINTER PALACE! It's an honor to have you with us. Set in Russia during the era of the Czars, this novel offers us two different characters—Catherine the Great and her spy and maid-servant, Barbara—each of whom is linked to the dramatic and ultimately deadly struggle for the throne. What inspired you to write about Catherine? Why did you choose a fictional character through which to tell Catherine’s rise to power?

Thank you, C.W.

Catherine the Great tempted me for a long time. Or I should rather say, her many incarnations. Catherine, or Sophie, for such is her birth name, arriving in Moscow at 14 to marry the Crown Prince, with just a few Russian words at her command and a meager supply of linen in dire need of mending. Catherine a vulnerable immigrant who has to reinvent herself and find friends who will not betray her. Catherine an unloved wife of a not too stable and mature husband who—jealous of her abilities—constantly threatens to push her aside.

But there is also another Catherine, the enlightened empress who reforms Russia’s institutions and strengthens its army, turning her adopted country into a formidable European power. Catherine the usurper, a woman who stole her husband’s crown and condoned his murder. Catherine a masterful politician, with steady nerves, foresight, and courage, demanding her place at the political gaming table of the 18th century Europe.

My fictional narrator? I wanted to tell Catherine’s story from an observer’s point of view in order to show the essence of Catherine’s power over people. I wanted the reader to experience Catherine’s spell over those around her, show how this Prussian princess managed to command the hearts of so many. In addition, my narrator, Varvara/Barbara, is an immigrant to Russia. Most outsiders make excellent observers, readers of clues, and hidden intentions. And, of course, she is also a spy, a perfect tool for a writer.

2. THE WINTER PALACE shows the seamy underside of life at court, especially the constant scheming, intrigue, and relentless quest for power. And Catherine’s own actions as she fights for the crown are controversial. What types of challenges did you encounter while researching this story? What surprising or interesting facts did you discover about Catherine’s role in history?

For me, born and raised in Poland, Catherine is the empress who, with the help of Prussia and Austria, wiped Poland off the map of Europe for over a hundred years, and made my own ancestors reluctant subjects of the Russian tsars. She was the one who crushed the last Polish uprising and made Poland’s king—her one time lover—her prisoner. I grew up hearing stories about her, bitter stories of a woman feared and despised, hated and cursed. What I have uncovered through my research was the more authentic Catherine, a woman behind the politician, passionate, clever, but also sometimes at a loss.

3. Barbara is both the narrator and key player in the novel. Her struggle to find her independence as a woman and a human being is an important part of this story. Because your book is centered on women and told through the eyes of a woman, do you believe it can also resonate with male readers? Is there anything in particular that you do in your book to address this issue?

I assume that the book will resonate with anyone, man or woman, fascinated or troubled by the issues of power. Catherine often referred to herself as being of “a manly” turn of mind. She certainly stood her ground against male monarchs and politicians of eighteenth century Europe. Her world is not particularly feminine, even in the sexual terms, for as empress she chose her lovers —younger and younger as she grew older—and let them go when they no longer pleased her. Not unusual for male monarchs of Europe, but still quite revolutionary for a woman.

I try to write from a universal perspective—show women and men navigating their worlds, reaching for their dreams, but there is also another reflection. The ambitious vision Peter the Great had for Russia was fully realized by two women rulers: Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine the Great. Would Russia have been a stronger, more just, or even only more prosperous country, if it were ruled by men?

4. Please tell us about any methods that you employ to give your characters authenticity.

I try very hard to see my characters, imagine their physical characteristics, hear them speak. To do it, I scrutinize all existing portraits of my historical characters looking for anything that might help: facial expressions, background scenery, the pattern on a dress. If they have written memoirs and letters—like Catherine did—I read and re-read them for the turn of phrase, the patterns of thinking.

With fictional characters I spend time writing a short biography of their lives, and when I know what they did in life and when, I look for a portrait that would help me see them. Often I find their likeness among the many portraits in a museum—hanging there to tease and temp the writer in need—and when I do, I get a good copy of this portrait and keep it on my desk when I write.

6. How do you think your novel speaks to today’s reader or how do the events you evoke resonate for today’s world?

I have a persistent sense that the Iron Curtain separated the West and the East not only politically but culturally and spiritually, and that eliminating this division is a slow and laborious process. I like to think that the stories I tell—stories that come from behind the former Iron Curtain—make this process easier. I also like to think that if you read my novels you will understand something about Russia, Poland, and other countries east of the Oder river, something you might have missed in history books.

7. Please, tell us about your next project.

The Winter Palace is the first of two novels of Catherine the Great. The second, Empress of the Night will be written from Catherine’s point of view, and the two books will, I hope, complement each other. In Empress of the Night Catherine is an absolute monarch, a sole autocrat of a great and thriving empire. I want to explore how having power has transformed the empress herself.

Thank you, Eva. We wish you much success with THE WINTER PALACE.

Eva Stachniak was born in Wrocław, Poland, and came to Canada in 1981. She has been a radio broadcaster and college English and Humanities lecturer. Her debut novel, Necessary Lies, won the Amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and her second novel, Garden of Venus, has been translated into seven languages. Her third novel, The Winter Palace, is a #1 bestseller in Canada (Doubleday) and has also been published in the US (Bantam) and the UK (Transworld) and will soon appear in Holland, Germany, and Poland. Eva Stachniak lives in Toronto, where she is working on her second historical novel about Catherine the Great. Please visit her website.

Guest post from Taylor M Polites

I'm honored to welcome Taylor M. Polites, author of REBEL WIFE. Set in Reconstruction Alabama, Augusta “Gus” Branson's is a young widow whose quest for freedom turns into a race for her life when her husband Eli dies of a horrifying fever, and a large package of money – her only inheritance and means of survival – goes missing. Gus begins to wake to the realities that surround her: the social stigma her marriage has stained her with, what her husband did to earn his fortune, the shifting and dangerous political and social landscape that is being destroyed by violence between the Klan and the Freeman's Bureau, and the deadly fever that is spreading like wildfire. Nothing is as she believed, everyone she trusts is hiding something from her.

I really enjoyed this novel. It presents a different picture of what we often see in fiction about the south, after the Civil War, when slaves were suddenly free and an entire society had to dig itself out of the ashes of defeat. Mr Polites has clearly researched his subject in depth and it's a delight to have him with us today. Please join me in welcoming Taylor M. Polites!

Writing The Rebel Wife

This is my first novel, and I think for many people, the first novel is the hardest. It is not the first novel I have tried to write, of course, but the first one that I have finished, and hallelujah for that!

I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, and that town is really the basis for Albion in the novel. Growing up in Alabama, learning about the old homes and the history and the “hard times”, laid the groundwork for a specific way of understanding the Civil War. Getting older, I continued to be fascinated by that time and to read about it. I was looking for another level of awareness and understanding about the Civil War and Reconstruction. I began to understand Reconstruction not as a rampage of Republican carpetbaggers hell-bent on pillaging the state (although there is no doubt there was corruption, just as there was corruption in the “Bourbon” administrations that followed Reconstruction), but as a time of idealism and experimentation. This was a time in modern history when a people held in bondage were freed and given equal rights with their former captors. When in history has something like this ever happened before? It was an amazing, truly mind-blowing time, and there was a harsh and violent reaction against it that led to another hundred years of segregation and white racial dominance. What an amazing field in which to write a book!

So I began from that perspective as someone who thought about the Civil War and Reconstruction one way, but over time learned that things were not quite as originally presented. The main character, Augusta, goes through a parallel change, but she is in the period. She understands what happened and what people said about the war and the carpetbaggers, but she wakes up, she looks around her, she weighs what she believes against what she sees. And that brings about a change in her.

Her character, too, changed over the years I spent on this book. I did much writing, first in 1998. Realizing I had much more research to do, I put the idea aside and zeroed in on research for the period. Again in 2002, I picked up the story and wrote about 200 pages of text, but still felt short on what I needed to know. I went back to the history books and research. Finally, in 2006, I made a major life change. I decided this was the time for me to make a go of writing, or I would never do it. I left my job in New York City, moved to Cape Cod and began to work on this book again. Through the wonderful and fortuitous guidance of some good friends, I entered the Wilkes University MFA program and found a mentor, the great novelist Kaylie Jones, who helped me bring this work to its end. What an incredible ride! And what a dream come true!

Thank you so much for giving me space on your blog to talk about my book!

Thank you, Taylor. Best of luck with this fascinating novel! To learn more about Taylor Polites, please visit his website.

Review of THE WINTER PALACE by Eva Stachniak

In the crowded historical fiction marketplace, THE WINTER PALACE stands out for being a book set in mid-eighteenth century Russia, an unusual setting. But what makes this novel unique is its perspective. Told from the viewpoint of Varvara, a young Polish woman who rises to influence in the Russian Court of Tsarina Elizabeth as a spy, we are swept into a tumultuous era when the fortunes of an entire empire hovered on the often incomprehensible whims of the aging tsarina, and where an enterprising servant could rise high, if she was willing to sacrifice enough to achieve her goals. Varvara is more than up to the task— a book binder’s daughter with little to recommend her save her ingenuity, she enters service as a secret “tongue”, ferreting out petty secrets to amuse her employers, until the young German princess Sophie arrives to wed the Tsarina's nephew.

In lovely, maligned Sophie, Varvara finds the perfect ploy to both succeed in her quest for independence and play a pivotal role in the future shaping of a ruler. But as Sophie grows from naive pawn to expert manipulator of circumstance, her own fight for survival in the ruthlessness of the court unravels Varvara's carefully constructed plans. Sophie will, in time, seize fame as Catherine the Great; Varvara’s destiny, however, becomes less certain as she begins to realize the price her intrigues and trust in the fickle nature of power could cost her— and those around her.

Elegantly written and gilded with details of the flamboyant decadence of the Russian court, THE WINTER PALACE is a compelling and vivid novel that is sure to please fans of historical and literary fiction alike.

Please check back for an exciting Q&A with Eva, coming soon!

Happy Holidays 2011!

Dear Readers and Friends,
Wow! It seems as if this year went by really fast. I can't believe it's almost 2012. Looking back, however, I realize this is because it was such a jam-packed year for me, one I've been lucky to share with many of you. Here are some of the highlights:

February 2011 saw the publication of THE TUDOR SECRET, the first novel in my Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles - a wonderful achievement for me, as this is my little-novel-that-could. After years of rejection, I decided to independently publish this novel as The Secret Lion. That version's success helped me regain the confidence that the bruising cycle of submission and rejection had sapped; more importantly, it eventually gained me the attention I needed to catch my agent's eye. In an ironic twist of fate, it was sold, along with the next two in the series, to the same editor who read my very first novel, submitted by my very first agent, 13 years previously. All in all, proof that persistence is everything. To date, THE TUDOR SECRET has been sold in 7 countries and is poised for a massive bestseller campaign in Italy in February, 2012. Apparently, February is turning out to be a good luck month for me!

May 2011 saw publication of the paperback edition of THE CONFESSIONS OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI, another novel that underwent a long period of gestation, challenge, and change. From its original 798 pages, it was edited down during various submissions before it finally found its home, and transformed in the process from an epic recounting of 16th century France under Catherine's reign into a far more intimate story of this often vilified and misunderstood woman. The hardcover edition made several Top Reads of 2010 lists and sold out; I like to think that wherever Catherine is today, she's smiling :)

June 2011 brought the gathering of the historical fiction tribe in San Diego for the 4th US Historical Novel Society Conference. Beside the sparkling bay, readers, writers, bloggers, and fans of the genre congregated for two and a half days of panels, dinners and lunches, impromptu meetings, outings, and much laughter and celebration. Some of the highlights for me were lunch with my fellow authors of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency; C.C. Humphreys in blue velvet, playing the libidinous earl of Rochester in the late-night sex scene reading from Gillian Bagwell's The Darling Strumpet; seeing my agent at the podium, receiving the accolade she so richly deserves for all of her and the agency's hard work representing some of our genre's most celebrated authors; drinking wine with my editor; sharing time on panels with fellow authors, and of course fun with friends.

July through September saw me hard at work on THE QUEEN'S VOW, my novel about Isabella of Castile, which will be published on June 12, 2012. I loved returning to early Renaissance Spain and re-discovering Isabella, who'd played such a significant supporting role in my first book, The Last Queen. One of my continuing joys in writing historical fiction is recognizing my own prejudices and preconceived notions, and seeing how my research has influenced these beliefs. Like Catherine de Medici and Juana la Loca (who was Isabella's daughter) Isabella of Castile has suffered from history's verdict, her reign one of great accomplishment but also dark controversy. I hope this novel about her early years and tumultuous rise to the throne, as well as her struggles as a young bride and queen, will help to humanize her for readers. For in the end, that is what historical fiction does best: it helps us to see these long-gone characters from the past as people, first and foremost.

As the year comes to a close, I'm currently at work on the editorial revision of my second Spymaster book, tentatively titled The Tudor Deception. I plan to finish the revision by the start of 2012 and then turn my full attention to my next stand-alone novel, Borgia's Daughter, about the early years of another infamous woman I find fascinating: Lucrezia Borgia.

It's been an incredibly busy and productive year, one which certainly could not have been possible without your ongoing support. Every reader who bought my book; every book club who invited me to chat; every blogger who reviewed my work, interviewed me, or posted a guest post; every recommendation, criticism, or mention - these are integral to my success. I owe it all to you and I want to extend my most heartfelt appreciation.

I wish you all a very happy holiday season, filled with health and love. May we find better ways to live together as a community; to treat our fellow beings, animal and human, with love and respect; to find peace and restore harmony to our much beleaguered planet.

And may we always tell and read stories, for story is the universal tie that binds us.

Want to travel with me?

Academic Travel is considering doing an author-led tour with me to France or Spain, a traveling book group where we will retrace the footsteps of either Catherine de Medici, or Isabella of Castile and Juana la Loca. If you're interested, please click on the survey and let us know! Your input is most important at this stage, as we gauge interest. Thanks!

Guest post from Pam Jenoff, author of THE THINGS WE CHERISHED

I'm delighted to welcome Pam Jenoff, bestselling author of THE THINGS WE CHERISHED, which tells the story of Charlotte Gold and Jack Harrington, two fiercely independent attor­neys who find themselves slowly falling for one another while working to defend the brother of a Holocaust hero against allegations of World War II–era war crimes. Pam has garnered international acclaim for her first novel The Kommandant's Girl, as well as its sequel The Diplomat's Wife. In her guest post, Pam offers us an intriguing look at historical accuracy and a glimpse into the struggles that many of us who write historical fiction face. Please join me in welcoming Pam Jenoff.

Historical Fiction: How Real? How True?
by Pam Jenoff
I grew up an avid reader of historical fiction, devouring stories as far away as medieval England and as near as the 20th century. Yet I cannot recall asking myself the top questions my readers now seem to want to know: how much of the story is true? How accurate is it?

I suppose on some level I too was asking those questions, at least subconsciously. I became excited each time a “real” historical figure entered the story and always loved traveling to a place where a story I’d read had been set. But it was not until becoming an author that I seriously considered the matter. How much history and how much fiction and how to combine the two? In some sense, the two go hand in hand – it is history that provides the setting and milieu, and historical events can serve as a powerful inspiration and catalyst for fictional characters. But they can also be in tension with one another – history can slow down a story and make the plot drag.

Readers have very strong views. For example, when my first novel, The Kommandant’s Girl, was released, I braced myself for the backlash that would inevitably come from writing about a Jewish woman (Emma) who becomes involved with a Nazi. To my surprise, no one seemed bothered by that. Instead, the readers took issue with my portrayal of various historical details: an Orthodox Jewish family would never have named their daughter Emma, one wrote. A secular Jew like Emma’s husband Jacob would not have worn a yarmulke, insisted another. There were others too, but you get the idea.

Nowhere is the passion for reality and accuracy more intense than with readers of novels set during World War II and the Holocaust. Everyone has his or her own world view of these events. Some readers think I’m too hard on the Poles and their role in the war and others say I’m too nice. One reader took issue with a Polish character commenting that the west had taken too long to join the war effort, although that was surely the point of view of a woman trapped in an occupied country. I have found editors to be similarly sensitive to historical detail – with my second novel, The Diplomat’s Wife, we spent much time debating whether a bus would have had doors in 1946 London and would it have cost a two pence or five pence to ride? Wrestling with the historical/fiction balance was particularly challenging in my latest novel, The Things We Cherished, because it jumps between a number of historical periods.

It is an issue that I continually wrestle with as a writer. Sometimes, I choose to stay accurate (keeping the geography of a city intact tends to be particularly important to me.) Other times the needs of plot and narrative thrust dictate that history be bent, such as reducing the approximately eighteen months between the German invasion and the creation of the Krakow ghetto to six weeks. (I felt better upon reading recently that the true story of the Von Trapp family was similarly cut from twelve years to a few months in The Sound of Music.)

I’m mixed about the intensity readers seem to place on “real life” details. I’m not saying that historical writers should not be diligent in their research with the goal of creating a realistic time and place. But this is fiction, not memoir. And I worry sometimes that it becomes a game of “gotcha” where readers, armed with the questionable accuracy of Wikipedia, try to spot mistakes in what is essentially supposed to be a fictional world. It can at times feel, well, a tad adversarial and perhaps take away from the author-reader connection. I wish that I could create a world and as long as my characters followed the rules of that world, I wouldn’t be held accountable to any external standard. I need a little latitude to make the story work (she whines). But then, I suppose, I should write fantasy, shouldn’t I?

Ultimately, though, I do think a degree of accuracy is important to create a believable story and keep the trust that is necessary between the author and reader. I’m glad that my readers are intelligent and pay attention and care as much as I do about the past.

Thank you, Pam. We wish you much success with your latest book. The Things We Cherished is published by Sphere in the UK on November 10 as a paperback original, £6.99. To learn more about Pam and her work, please visit her website.

My Favorite Scary Novels

In celebration of upcoming All Hallow’s Eve, I want to share a few of my favorite scary novels. These are the books that freaked me out; that sent me running through the house turning on lights and locking doors, or left me paralyzed in bed, staring at the closet waiting for the bogeyman to jump out.

THE EXORCIST by William Peter Blatty
I discovered it in my adolescence, not a good time to read a novel about a child possessed by a demon. It scared me so bad that for months afterwards I felt my bed rocking. In fact, it scared me so much I wouldn’t see the movie until I was in my mid-twenties and guess what? It freaked me out all over again. Written in stark, often obscenity-laden prose, the premise provokes major writer envy. Blatty struck a raw universal nerve, and hit major pay-gold, with his masterful ability to make us believe in the unthinkable.

THE SHINING by Stephen King
I read it while on vacation at the seaside and I couldn’t use the hotel bathroom because I was afraid of the dead lady in the tub. King had already blazed an enviable path with his Carrie and Salem’s Lot, but in The Shining he surpasses himself. Again, the premise provokes envy: a recovering alcoholic author takes a caretaker job in a snow-bound, haunted hotel with his wife and psychic son and starts to unravel. What elevates the story to classicism is its scythe-like insight into the dark recesses of the mind: no writer has ever portrayed the haunting of another writer as King does, and no one has ever been able to scare so many people by putting us in an allegedly empty hotel room.

THE WITCHING HOUR by Anne Rice
She’d already garnered super-star bestseller status with her Vampire Chronicles when Rice turned her velvet-and-blood attention to the world of the hereditary Mayfair witches and the vengeful spirit who haunts them. The series faltered but, oh, the first entry is perfection. From modern day San Francisco and New Orleans to the highlands of 16th century Scotland, Rice plunges us into a historically lush maelstrom of evil and redemption. The writing is drenched in allegory, feverish as only Rice at her best can be; and the moment when Lasher appears will make you shiver.

IMAJICA by Clive Barker
Known as a modern-day master of horror, the disturbed mind behind such film classic demons as Pinhead, Barker has written a number of frightening novels, but in this one, arguably his most ambitious, he delivers a vast, mythological tale of an alternate and often horrific world beyond our own, where assassins and gods and monsters engage in an elaborate chess-board game of power and destruction, offering us a breathtaking, unforgettable elegy for our times. It needs to be read twice.

FEVRE DREAM by George R.R. Martin
He’s world-famous for those fantasy door-stoppers but in this early novel about a mid-nineteenth century steamboat in New Orleans where a race of vampires clash is truly awesome. Martin takes the genre clichés and redefines them; he also makes us both long to be, and conversely dread ever encountering, the now overdone undead.

Happy Halloween, everyone! Read something scary.

The Bad Review

I got a really bad review a few days ago. No, let me re-phrase that. Not merely bad. Rotten. Dreadful. As in, this reviewer said everything I imagine someone saying in my worst nightmares about my book. I wasn’t expecting it -writers rarely do - and at first I sat there, stunned. I couldn’t believe anyone could take such offense to what is, in the final say, fiction. A novel. Entertainment. It didn’t help that as I re-read the review, with that weird bewilderment which sets in as you realize someone out there really dislikes your work, I found the reviewer had put an enormous spoiler in the review and evidently thought nothing of it.

Bad reviews are, of course, part and parcel of being published; it comes with the territory and there’s no handbook to teach you how to deal with the emotional impact. Some authors cry. Others get drunk. Some call a friend to gripe. Most get mad. A few take it in stride, or at least pretend to. After all, it’s your book someone just skewered—the tangible fruit of years of labor. You’ve sacrificed valuable time with family and friends; forgone movies, restaurants, sex; you’ve walked the dog aimlessly in circles, muttering like an indigent to yourself; burned or forgotten meals; lost sleep; tussled and agonized over a single word, even screamed at your computer when no one was looking. The hard truth is writing is tough and writing a novel is the epitome of toughness. It takes perseverance, ego, and more than a touch of insanity. I mean, you spend all this time by yourself, locked in your head in a room staring at a screen or piece of paper, conjuring imaginary things, and hoping, praying, someone else will care enough to want to read it, let alone publish it. Then, insomniac, battered and badly in need of a shower, you turn the manuscript in and have to deal with everyone else’s opinion of it— your agent, your editor, the marketing team, the booksellers. In their own ways, they will each shape your work into something that can be packaged and sold to the public. Sentences you slaved over will be cut without mercy; scenes shifted here or re-crafted there; a character will be eliminated and another, to your astonishment, will attempt to hijack the plot. You’ll go back over the same lines time and time again, until you can recite them from memory and your spouse or significant other will look at you furtively as you sit hunched at your desk, crab-handed over those first-pass pages, and remark perhaps it’s time for us to start thinking of taking that oft-delayed vacation.

In the end, the idea that started as a seed in your febrile brain, was nurtured on imagination and the internal chug-a-lug of I-think-I-can, I-think-I-can will become a cooperative project, a team effort. A Book.

And then, it gets sent out. To anonymous people and places you’ve never seen. Newspapers (though these are less and less); trade magazines; online sites; bloggers—hundreds of eyes will peruse your painstakingly crafted prose and, within a few lines, maybe a few chapters, if you’re lucky, pass judgment. To review or not review; to like or not like. After all, this person who will now review your book has no stake in your well-being, particularly. They don’t know if you’re a nice person or a mean one; if you talk on your cell phone when you should be driving; if you donate to an animal shelter or spend too much money on shoes. All they care about is that visceral, subjective moment which you have no control over, when they read your words for the very first time and had a reaction. Or didn’t. So, those words you hoped and prayed were worthy of attention will now, finally, garner words of their own, for better or worse.

In some cases, as in bad reviews, you’ll almost wish they hadn’t. Almost, but not quite. Because in the end, even a bad review is still a review. It means someone cared enough to take the time to say: Hey, this sucks. Don’t bother. Buy a DVD instead. Check out the latest Ikea catalog. Collect stamps. Browse online for new underwear. Do anything but purchase this lousy book.

Yes, someone cared. And isn’t that what every writer dreams of? I know I do. So, how did I deal with the bad review? How else? I cried. I got mad. I pretended not to care. I poured myself a stiff drink and called a friend to complain.

And so it goes.