Storytellersunplugged

A few weeks ago, I was invited to do a guest blog on M.J. Rose’s Buzz, Balls, and Hype. I thought you might enjoy it here. To the two of you who have read it, Mea Culpa; to all of you, Happy Holidays and a safe and healthy New Year. Also, sorry I’m posting this early, but Bob my technical maven is going away and I don’t have a clue how to do this on my own. –Janet

“You gotta have a gimmick If you want to get…” uh sales
— Misquoted from the musical “Gypsy”…

She can uh… She can uh…
She can uh…uh…uh…
They’ll never make her pitch.
Me, I uh… and I uh…
And I uh…uh…uh…
But I do it with a switch.
I’m electrifying
And I ain’t even trying.
I never had to sweat to get paid
‘Cause if you got a gimmick
Gypsy girl, you got it made.

Actually, you gotta have a good book and a gimmick, but that wouldn’t have worked as well to hook you.

Take someone like M.J. Rose as an example of the best of all worlds. She is hugely talented and gorgeous, she a marketing maven, and she’s a workaholic. How good does it get?

Once upon a time, in the Dark ages, a writer could choose to sit in a log cabin or a book-lined study or a closet and write. What a thought! No competing for reviews; no going to the loading zone at dawn to talk to the truckers who stock the paperback shelves; no begging to get books into the hands of the assistant to the assistant to the assistant of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Going on a book tour meant going to Steinbeck Country or to Stratford-on-Avon; a pen had a nib and was filled with blue-black or radiant blue ink; there were blotters and dictionaries on top of desks. Writers smoked pipes, took long walks in the woods, wore morning jackets.

Now, there are publishers who say things like, “I buy by title. Content doesn’t matter,” and “Is she mediagenic?” “Is she gorgeous, outrageous, did she murder someone?”

I was attractive enough in my day. I had panache, was known for my hats and my tendency to be just this side of outrageous. When my first novel, RITE OF THE DRAGON, came out, I convinced a local talk show host to have me on. She did a show dedicated to African Americans, and I’m from Africa, and my book was about the struggle against Apartheid. The fact that I happened to be a cute Jewish girl was my gimmick. Sigh.

But some of us have grown old. Have been ill. What do we do when we’ve spent–to borrow a joke from Douglas Adams–seven months dead for tax purposes. I was on a ventilator for most of a year and so drugged that half the time I thought I was in Afghanistan being tortured for information I didn’t have. Now I’m in a wheelchair most of the time when I go out. I use oxygen constantly.

Will I let that stop me from writing? Absolutely not.

Will anyone care? Probably not.

So what to do? Here’s an example of illustrative reality.

I have two pieces currently on Amazon Shorts: ‘River of Stones,’ a memoir that starts in South Africa; and a quirky and humorous historical story called “Give It Back to the Indians; or The Strange Tale of Way-Out Willie’s Whorehouse and Ostrich Farm.” I’m delighted to say that they are both presently in the top ten. (You can get to them from my web site, www.janetberliner.com). Go there and enjoy. End plug.

But I’m not writing this to plug the stories. I have a point to make with them, and here it is:

The Shorts are not books, so there are no covers. Amazon asks that writers provide them with a photograph and they put together a simple design and title with the author’s photo.

That was reasonable, I thought, until I saw my photo staring at me. First something good happened. Several fans commented that they thought I looked like my all-time favorite actress, Anne Bancroft. Fortunately, I sound like a cross between Bankhead and Bacall, so I have that going for me. Unfortunately, this is circa 2005. Those names may work for Baby Boomers and above, but what about the 25-49 crowd?

So here’s what I came up with.

Until a couple of years ago, I travelled anywhere, anytime, particularly if the destination was at or on the ocean. The sea was how I filled and refilled my soul. Now here I am, barely able to leave my house, afraid every time I walk into a crowd because my immune system is practically non-existent. But I still have friends and contacts all over the Caribbean. I’m thinking of getting a boat and sailing back there to interview the heads of state of all of the islands and writing about the journey. One of my friends said he could see the cover now: me in my wheelchair, lashed to the mast, sassy hat on my head and pointing at the horizon.

What do you think, have I got a gimmick?