I wanted to post this on Tuesday, but I was distracted by the recent holiday. Naturally, I’m referring to National Guys in the Floral Department Day.

Every year around this time, if you go into any store with a floral department, you are likely to see a dozen or so men wondering aimlessly in the vicinity, browsing from flower arrangement to flower arrangement, obviously lost but unable to ask for directions.

Why do they do this? Well, it’s the law. And if any man in a relationship of any sort fails at this task, the consequences are serious indeed, let me tell you.

Stores plans for this day, and every year they stock up on pretty young attendants to help out the guys who don’t know what they’re doing. Except for the store that I went to, which had a fat dude telling a pimple-faced guy with a scooter—and this actually happened—that they didn’t have bouquets of roses half red and half pink. Meanwhile, I thought, if he wanted a mixture of red and pink roses for his one true love, he should have gone to a real flower shop and paid more than 20 lousy bucks on an arrangement. Then he could have swept her away on his scooter, fading with her into the horizon and the setting sun.

As for me, I chose a bouquet of a dozen roses for my Beloved, pink blossoms just beginning to brown around the edges.

She loved them, especially the brown spots. Apparently, I have her well-trained to expect almost no attention from me whatsoever. Congratulate me.

(I was just kidding about that last part, in case you couldn’t tell.)

In yesterday’s post, I distinguished between the “indie author” and the “self-published author.” A reader named Wendy commented, with a question.

This is a distinction that I originally got from Bob Baker, author of 55 Ways to Promote & Sell Your Book on the Internet. Bob got his self-publishing start with a book about indie music marketing, back in the mid-90’s. He told the story in a recent interview about self-publishing:

In 1996, I self-published the first crude version of the Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook… one of the first books to advocate self-reliance and taking your music career into your own hands (as opposed to “getting signed” to a record label, which most music business books were all about back then).

My DIY perspective came in handy when the traditional music biz began to crumble around 2001. Before long, going the “indie” route became the way to go…

Eh. So the book industry is 10 years late.

“So what do you want me to do?” I can hear you quip. “Get published? Just like that? Sorry, buddy, I’m trying, but it just don’t work that way. Some things are out of my control.”

Now, getting published may be a fine route to authorship. But this post is not about getting published.

Trish Perry, author of Unforgettable, her newly released 1950’s romantic comedy, she guest blogged on Novel Journey today: you might be a novelist if…

If you’re like most fiction writers, whether published or not, you’ve struggled with that decision about when to actually call yourself a novelist. Yes, once you land your first contract, it’s a given. But most of us toil for years before that happens. Are we presumptuous to call ourselves novelists, or even writers, right from the start?

Trish goes on to list some of the quirks that make a novelist, even if you haven’t yet snagged the ear of a publisher. An entertaining post.

Trish is on to something here. See, this isn’t about getting published. This is about mindset, whether you write novels or something else. Do you still consider yourself an “aspiring author”? When do you get to graduate to the status of full “author”?

Agent Kristin of the Pub Rants blog posted some of her comments on how hard it is to be self-published. Those are my words. She put it differently:

Regardless of whether an author self-publishes or pursues traditional publishing, some writers just win the publishing lottery and their books become major successes.

Kristin points out how hard successful indie authors have worked, and laments the common misconception, that somehow indie authors have stuck it to the man, given the finger to the industry gatekeepers. Well, maybe they have done the latter, but only because the industry gatekeepers have different priorities than indie authors, and different visions.

“We’re both dead,” he says, “long dead. But that doesn’t mean we can’t grow alive again!”

She can hardly believe what she’s hearing, of course. A fellow zombie, wanting to be human? Aspiring to be like them? If she didn’t know any better, she would think he was still one of them. But his pallor, his fetor, his unkempt appearance, his bulging eyes, his expressionless countenance, even the moan in his voice, all point to the sophistication that characterize their kind.

How? she wonders, Again human? One cannot undo death, cannot un-lose one’s innocence.

“No,” she says. “They want. We good.”

He shakes his head at her. “You have it all wrong. They don’t strive to be like us, and we don’t fulfill their wishes. They just want to be accepted, to be included.”

Craft Beer

I’m not a beer drinker. But when I watched a recent Reason.TV video about craft beer, I wanted to become one. I’m not interested in YellowWater Light beer. I’m interested in the niche, microbrew beers, dark, stimulating, challenging, insightful. Craft beer, say the experts in the video, has “taken traditional styles and [run] with them… providing choices for people.” They go on to point out that the big 4 breweries “make the lightest beer imaginable in order to create the lowest common denominator of flavors, so that their marketing and their image is what people buy into, and there’s nothing about the flavor that challenges that decision for them.”

In fact, my only real exposure to beer was at a microbrewery, the Watch City Brewing Company, in Waltham, MA. We all went out for a farewell lunch there, one of the few rituals I miss about office life. We enjoyed burgers and fries, and a couple pitchers of brew, which I sampled. Interesting flavors, reminded me vaguely of herbal tea. And I still remember the experience fondly.

Not too long ago, Jess C Scott sent me a PDF of her first indie novel EyeLeash: A Blog Novel, to kick off a series of book reviews I’ve wanted to do, of indie and mid-list novels and memoirs.

EyeLeash is the private journal of Jade, a 17-almost-18-year-old girl, who recently graduated from an all-girl high school, wants to lose her virginity with Novan, a boy (now turning into a man) she knew from earlier in her life, and struggles with how she should accomplish that.

This novel is written in an alternative format (as a personal online journal), and it’s risqué for a YA novel (because of all the talk about sex). Surprisingly, the format did not distract me, and the story kept my attention. It became clear to me early on that not only did Novan have an emotional attachment to Jade, but Jade also was whipping herself up into an emotional attachment to Novan, even though they both said there was nothing between them. As the story progressed, Jade descended from confused to disturbed to pitiful. I began to feel sorry for Novan, wanting to tell him just to forget about this girl, because she has to get herself together before she could be a viable partner to any man.

Looking at my “to-read” bookshelf for something to read after slogging through Nora Roberts’s Northern Lights… Would someone remind me: why exactly am I reading this? I’m nearing the end, but the end can’t come quickly enough. Right now, I’m rating it at about 2½ out of 5, because the prose needs momentum and the characters need personality. (All except for Bing, who actually does have personality. But he’s not even a secondary character.)

Looking at my “to-read” bookshelf, for an intelligent and engaging novel to enjoy, I discover that I have precious few books by the kind of authors I have most enjoyed: indie authors, unknown authors, and mid-list authors. These are authors of the kind who have blogs, and Twitter and Facebook accounts, who enthusiastically engage with fans, who would love for me to mention them here.

So I will.

Here are some of the authors whose work I have enjoyed, and which I expect to enjoy: