Look down upon me, Jesus. This city is in the toilet. Is that the way it should be?

Seen fire. Seen rain. Detroit in the toilet? Yeah, kind of saw that coming. Happy about it? Maybe once upon a time ago I might have given it a thirty second laugh. Now? Not so much.

Detroit is a grand old lady brought low by greed and avarice. There are great people here. People who stayed because they had to. People who stayed because they wanted to. And those of us few who returned because we love this dirty old town, this wheel-spoke layout of a city that refuses to die despite those who stab it at every turn.

My stories roam from town to town, state to state, country to country but all have their roots here. Danny Samsel, hero, thief, protagonist of Stealing the Marbles? An old, brief, friend in an old neighborhood that died and remains dark and forbidding as I write this. Strange as it may be, his house is one of the few still viable on that street, a street I spent my entire kidhood on. He died across the street from where I grew up.

Miss you, Danny. You’d get a kick out of this shit.

Teller? Protagonist of Meter Maids Eat Their Young? The story may well be, roughly, set in Mt. Clemens, but Cat was born and raised west of Burt Road, South of 5 mile.

Spike, a temporary name to be sure, protag of my current WIP, was born and raise there.

All writers have a well from which they dredge the flotsam they decorate their stories with. Detroit is my well, my deep deep well. All my pain is here. All my joy.

Gonna clear this shit up. Write it.

Have at it Detroit. I’m ready.

Now you Twitter Twitter Twitter till
Your keyboard smokes
On to Shelfari
Then you write a Red Room post
You’re doin’ the Promo Pokey
At the Author’s Den
That’s what it’s all about.

Tweak your author blog
Till your fingers turn blue
Link up with Linkedin
Do an email interview
You’re doin’ the Promo Pokey
On a stranger’s site
That’s what it’s all about.

You do a reading here
A conference there
You drive across the country
To save the airplane fare
You’re doin’ the Promo Pokey
No time to write a book
That’s what it’s all about.

Early in May, from extreme left field, I received a website contact from a journalist at Adesmeytos Typos. She had come across my book and contacted me for an interview. I was thrilled beyond breathing, spending a day bouncing up and down, calling everyone I knew and, finally, settling down to answer her questions. The interview was published May 9th. I don’t yet have a link to the page but she sent me a jpg of it and I’ve posted it below. It’s in Greek, of course, but I think it looks cool.

I’m hoping to have a link to the page soon and a pdf file. I’m hoping as well that they will do a review.

For those to whom this is all Greek, here is the English version of the interview:

1. Tell us some things about the plot of the book

Danny Samsel is a thief extraordinaire. After stealing a painting from the most secure house in America, he finds himself in hiding and essentially exiled for over a year on the island of Kefalonia. Restless, unknowingly encouraged by a friend and desiring to reunite with his estranged girlfriend, he comes up with the idea to steal the Marbles, knowing he will need her help to do so.

Traveling around the world, he begins to gather the information and the personnel necessary to begin his quest. Along the way, he encounters a rogue Interpol agent who will prove to be his worst enemy.

Gathering in London, Danny and Company breach the British Museum, steal the Marbles, and begin the long journey across Europe. There is danger at every turn, betrayal and loss along the way until they reach their final destination.

2. How you came with the idea to use the Parthenon marbles in your book?

I have always had a love for Greece; the myths, the architecture, the culture, the country and its people. I had the opportunity to visit Greece in 1999 and my first visit to the Parthenon was an experience beyond words. I had known about Lord Elgin’s removal of the Marbles but seeing the temple, walking amidst its still eloquent grandeur, really brought home to me their meaning.

On my second visit to Greece in 2003, I spent a pleasant evening with my friend Gerasimos Ambatielou discussing the Marbles and their plight. He is very passionate about them, about their theft and the need for them to be returned to Greece where they belong. That passion for them ignited my own growing passion and the idea for the story was born that night. That is why the book is dedicated to him and his sister Maria and why Gerasimos was the inspiration for his namesake in the story.

Do you refer to basic parts of their history

I spent several months reading everything I could about the Marbles and as a result of that research, there are references throughout the book regarding the Parthenon, the Marbles, their history and their subsequent theft by Lord Elgin as well as the abuse they’ve received at the hands of the British Museum.

3. Do you have any connection with Greece?

I have dear friends in Greece, the Ambatielou family of Nea Smirni. They allowed me into their home during my two visits and showed me a friendship I hold dear in my heart. Gerasimos sparked the idea for the story, Stamo introduced me to some very interesting cuisine, their Mom and Dad were the inspiration for Eleni and Dino in the story and my dear friend Maria was my tour guide for the mainland as well as the island of Kefalonia, which has become my heart’s second home. This love for the island is why the book begins and ends there.

4. Do you follow the updates regarding the issue of the marble.

Very closely. I follow several blogs and newsletters regarding the return of the Marbles as well as the various organizations devoted to their return. Indeed, I have pledged a portion of my profits from the sale of the book to some of those organizations.

5. From your reader’s reviews I found out that many Americans do not have a clear idea of what is the true story behind the Marbles. Do you agree?

Sadly, yes, I agree. Americans are painfully ignorant of world affairs that do not directly affect them. It has been my hope that Stealing The Marbles would enlighten those who have read it to the plight of the Marbles.

6. Do you believe that the awareness of the international public opinion would help the Greek Government to have some progress on the issue?

Yes and no. The British government seems particularly adamant about keeping them despite recent trends of other governments in returning antiquities to their source. However, recently I’ve noticed a growing, world wide interest in their return. When I first started my research for the book, I was able to find two organizations devoted to their return. Now there are a dozen or more. I believe that one day, the Marbles will find their way home again.

7. For those like you who know the actions, made by our government, how well you think that we handle the situation?

I think the Greek government has done quite well in the face of very stubborn opposition. Melina Mercouri was of particular inspiration to me during the research and writing of Stealing The Marbles.

8. In your book Daniel manages to send Marbles home, back to us?

Yes, back to Greece. I won’t reveal the end of the book but before the last page is turned, the Marbles are on display in the Acropolis Museum. A bit of trivia here, if I may. The epilogue to the book was the first thing I wrote. It remains my favorite part of the book and I think, hope, it captures well the passion the Greek people have for their Marbles.

Anyway, as I can’t seem to begin a sentence without spacing out midway through and totally forgetting whatever it was I wanted to write, I probably couldn’t string together a coherent paragraph much less an entire post, so I’ll just pass on some news.

I received a nice email from the Friends of the Jefferson Oregon Library. Seems the building housing the library has been determined to be severely structurally deficient and must be replaced. They’ve asked for: 1) an autographed copy of one of my book(s), or 2) a cash donation – no gift is too small or too large, or 3) a favorite recipe and a narrative of my choosing for inclusion in a cookbook with the working title of Authors and Appetites. There is a project brochure and submittal form available on request. Check out the Jefferson Public Library website for contact information.

I’m sending them a signed copy of Stealing the Marbles and may pull a recipe together for inclusion in their cookbook. If you’re an author and have a spare book around, why not sign it and send it along. It’s always a good thing to help out a library.

Stealing the Marbles is up for grabs at Goodreads. There are 4 signed copies being given away (I may add more). The giveaway lasts until March 31st. I think you have to be a member to sign up for the books but Goodreads is a really great place to meet authors and learn about their books.

Stealing the Marbles got a great, and I mean GREAT, review by Teagan S. Boyd over at BookWenches. I have to say I was floored by it. It not only made my day, it made my whole year.

Over at the International Thriller Writers webzine The Big Thrill, Stealing the Marbles is one of the featured books for the month of March. And I think there’s a giveaway for signed copies there as well.

There are more good things in the wind. The folks over at Rebel have been pushing hard so I hope to have more news soon.

Small publishers are cropping up like mushrooms after a rainfall and some damn fine books that otherwise would never have seen the light of day are getting out there for readers to find. Amazon is gobbling up marketshare like a hungry beast. Some big name authors are beginning to abandon the Big 6 ship and self-publish their books. The playing field between the known and unknown author is being leveled. Self-styled eBook Guru JA Konrath claims, amongst other things, that the end of the bestseller is near. I’ve had my differences with Joe in the past but of late, he has been spot on. If you want an interesting, and from what I can tell, a quite accurate appraisal of the eBook vs Tree Book war, check out his website: A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

Now, I’m all for a good controversy, and I must confess that I rather enjoy watching the Big 6 quake in their antiquated boots, but with all this warring going on, there are some important areas that are being overlooked. So, in an effort to enlighten the world to the forgotten, but no less important issues, I present:

1) Eat messy food while reading.
2) Search for that phrase or character you KNOW is in there somewhere.
3) Carry as many books on vacation as you want.
4)Buy great books for under $10.00 USD (many under $5.00 USD), that aren’t remainders or used, while remaining in your jammies.
5) Never have to build another bookshelf, ever.

And, to give the embattled Tree Book its due, I present:

1) Smell the ink, feel the texture of the paper.
2) Dog-ear the pages.
3) Prop it up on a bookshelf to show your visitors how cool you are.
4) Read in the bathtub.
5) Get the author to sign it.

Oh, and to give you a good start on your eBook collection, may I suggest anything published by Rebel ePublishers (all of which are available in both e and Tree versions), especially their exciting action/thriller Stealing The Marbles. You won’t regret it.

A previous attempt to build a sanctuary for Athena Parthenos on the same spot was begun shortly after the Battle of Marathon (c. 490-488 BC). This building would have stood beside the archaic temple dedicated to the Athena Polias. It was still under construction when the Persians sacked the city in 480 BC.

***

469 silver talents. That’s what it cost to build the Parthenon way back when. So, what exactly is a talent and how much would it be worth today?

A talent is an ancient unit of mass and corresponds roughly to the mass of water needed to fill an amphora. Now, in Rome, an amphora was around 26 liters while in Greece it could vary from 18.5 liters up to 36 liters. This obvious lack of standardization made the worth of your silver talent dependent on which empire (not to mention time period) you happen to be residing in at the time. The Babylonian talent came in at around 30.3kg while the Egyptian talent cut your net worth by 3.3kg, coming in at 27kg. You would have gotten richer faster working for the Romans as their talent worked out at 32.3kg compared to the Greek or Attic talent which low-balled in at a measly 26kg. The ancient Israelites, over-achievers from the get-go, blew everyone out of the water with a talent weighing in at a whopping 58.9kg.

Now you need to jump in your sleek little time machine, zip back to 448 BC, snatch those 469 silver talents and zip back to today. Careful, that silver’s going to be pretty heavy.

So, now that you’ve got them back, how much will all that effort net you?

Well, 469 Greek or Attic silver talents, at 26kg per talent, weighs in at 12,663kg. The per kilogram price of silver as of the date of this post is $557.98 USD/409.64 EUR. so, your little trip back in time would net you 7,065,700.74 USD/5,187,271.32 EUR.

Considering inflation, I doubt that much would be enough to build the Porch of the Maidens today.

***

Built entirely of white Pentelic marble from Attica, the Parthenon has seventeen Doric columns on either side, eight Doric columns on either end and six in the inner row of each porch. Support for the roof was provided by an interior colonnade, though little of that remains today. Two chambers divided the temple: the cella to the east and the opisthodomos on the west end. The sculptor Phidias’ 12 meter high, gold and ivory statue of Athena stood in the cella. The treasures of the goddess and the city were stored in the opisthodomos.

Ninety-two high relief metopes surround the temple, thirty-two on each side, fourteen on each end. These sculptures depict scenes from Greek mythology and legend. A low relief frieze 160 meters long depicts the Panathenaic festival. Triangular pediments at either end contained statues in the round representing the birth of Athena and her contest with Poseidon for the land of Attica.

The Parthenon is considered to be the culmination of Greek sculpture, surpassing that of any other building of the classical age.

***

When the Greeks were besieging the Acropolis in 1821, during the war for independence from the Ottoman Empire, word came down that the Turks were destroying the temple to get at the lead clamps so as to make bullets. Kyriakos Pittakis, one of the leaders of the Greek revolution, after conferring with his fellow warriors, had a quantity of lead bullets sent to the Turk defenders so they might stop the destruction of the sacred temple. Bullets they knew full well would be winging their way back to them with fatal results.

If that alone does not show how much the Greeks revere their temple, nothing can.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the death of the publishing industry. There are those who applaud its supposed imminent demise, those who decry it, and those who deny it’s happening at all.

It’s no secret I have no great love nor admiration for the traditional publishing industry. I believe they have gotten old and stodgy and way to settled in their ways. Their emphasis on the bottom line has given rise to a lot of same-old-same-old garbage taking up space on bookstore shelves. While they shower their big name authors with support and riches – most of whom, in my humble opinion, couldn’t come up with a fresh idea for a story if their lives depended on it – they toss their mid-list and debut authors into a shark filled pool with neither life vest nor spear gun and expect them to survive if they hope to get a contract for another novel.

This emphasis on the bottom line has also narrowed the hoop of fire any aspiring author must jump through to the point that unless you’ve written something that’s been written a dozen times before, your chance of even getting an agent, much less a book contract with a major publisher, are somewhat less than that snowball’s chance in hell. I doubt that some of the great ones like Vonnegut, Heller or Salinger could even get published today. Can you imagine a world without Slaughterhouse-Five, Catch-22 or The Catcher in the Rye?

Recent technological advances have begun to rock this boat of complacency and rocking it hard. eBooks, eReaders, Publish On Demand, book reading applications for cell phones and the ability to get the book you want when you want it from the Internet is taking its toll on the publishing industry just as it did on the music and movie industry.

In addition, the ability to self-publish has opened the floodgates to all the wannabe authors out there. I’m pretty sure this last is not entirely a good thing. A lot of really crappy books are going to get ‘published’ but then, a lot of crappy books already get published by the traditional publishing houses so I suppose it’s a toss-up. But that whole can of book worms is not the topic of this post. If you’re interested, I’ve touched on this subject briefly HERE, and will no doubt touch on it again at some point on my blog.

The point I’m trying to make here is that I don’t believe the publishing industry is dying. Some of the big six publishing houses may bite the book dust, which may or may not be a good thing, but the industry overall is not dying: it’s changing.

What I’m seeing is the rise of small, independent publishers like my publisher, Rebel e Publishers. These small publishers straddle the fence between the bottom line and publishing exciting, creative books from new authors with new ideas and a fresh perspective, a perspective the traditional publishing industry has all but lost. As newspapers and magazines are dropping their book review sections, I’m seeing the rise of high quality book review blogs like Book Slut, Book Wenches, Un:Bound, Clover Hill, Women24, Author Poppet and Will Write For Love. Sites like Good Reads, Author’s Den and Red Room are out there connecting authors to the most vital part of their, sometimes insane, urge to write: readers.

For the last few decades, the marketing department’s of the major publishers, with their voodoo logic of what the reader wants, have been the gatekeepers to what actually gets to those readers. This is changing and that, I believe, is a very good thing because, in the end, it is the reader who is truly the gatekeeper. Write a good book, get it edited by a competent editor, find a graphic artist to create a great cover, get it reviewed in as many places as you can and the readers will find you.

That is the way publishing should be.

I know I’m getting traffic on this blog and that traffic has been increasing since my first novel was published in September and I’ve been posting on a more regular basis. Granted probably half that traffic is spammers and they do comment, a lot, but I doubt they actually read the posts they comment on. And, considering the level of grammatical and spelling errors in those comments, I have my doubts as to how many of those spammers actually can read. English, anyway. But that’s another story.

Half the joy of writing, for this writer anyway, is being read. Call me vain, but I long for communication with those who have read my words, whether it be in my novels, short stories or blog posts. I’ve also put a lot of effort into the look and feel of this blog. I feel a blog should be more than just a place to post ones thoughts. It should be, as well, a jumping off point to other sources of information.

So, you can imagine how please I was to receive an email from a teacher, imho the most noblest of careers one could have, informing me that she has been referencing my author birthday pages. She is teaching her kids about finding resource pages to help them with homework and has found my author birthday pages helpful. How cool is that!

Then, and this is one of the things I love most about the Web, she noted a link one of her students had found that directed me to an article about one of my favorite authors, R. L. Stine and his Goosebumps horror fiction book series (and yes, I have read several of them). This is a page I likely would never have come across on my own. It was informative, with many links to additional information, and was a joy to read.

So, I would like to sincerely thank Ms Brookes for her email and Taylor for finding the link.

And Taylor, this ones for you: Classic TV Series and Books: R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps. Keep up the good work.

Blank Screen Fever doesn’t have quite the same physical hazards but it can tear apart your heart and soul and send your self-confidence packing to parts unknown.

I’m an erratic writer. I have no schedule. I write when I write. The rest of the time I’m either thinking about what I’m writing or ignoring it altogether, my nose deep in a book. I have plenty of ideas for my next book, five I could outline to you right off the top of my head.

There’s Bad Bucket and The Church of the Dung God, a piece I started awhile back. It already has about 14,000 words and should be the logical place to go. Then there’s Dust Storms May Exist and a serial killer novel I’ve been toying with, both of which have under 2000 words. I came up with a new idea a week or two back, Cape of Storms, that I like but I have no idea where the plot is going so I’ve set that aside. There’s one more that I think about a lot but will probably never write. Not that I don’t want to. I’m just not sure I have the skill or the patience to pull it off.

The problem is not ideas. It’s getting started on those ideas that is proving difficult.

Back before I published my first novel, I rarely had a problem getting started. I’d get an idea, a title, the end, and off I would go, whether it be short story or novel length. Since being published, something has changed. I noticed the edges of that something when I shifted over to my second novel. The first draft of that was essentially complete so the rewrite was more a massive editing job than a start-from-scratch one. Now, it’s finished and in the hands of my editor and I feel this need to start a new one and that is where I am really feeling the pressure.

Part of this is winter. I don’t do winter well. And part of it is that feeling you get, standing at the bottom of a very tall mountain and knowing you have to get to the top. It’s a daunting thing to start a new novel; finding the time, finding the will, finding the words. It’s enough to make you freeze up like a mouse when the shadow of the hawk passes over. But it’s something more than that this time.

I got some very good reviews of Stealing The Marbles. I can remember while editing Meter Maids Eat Their Young feeling fearful as to whether MM could live up to the reviews STM got. Now, staring at the blank screen that is my third novel, that fear has magnified a hundred fold. I know this is my internal critic (I have an internal editor as well but it only works when I do) nagging at me and trying to tear me down. I know as well that I should send that internal critic packing, perhaps to wherever it is my self-confidence has fled and hope that my self-confidence gets the hint that it is needed back home.

As someone once said, this too shall pass, and I know it will. I just wish to hell it would hurry up.

Duh?

It’s officially 22F degrees here in the land of flowers, 13F if you believe the thermometer outside my door. Not a lot of difference there as far as I’m concerned: cold is cold, period.

It’s been a hectic week. I stayed offline for several days to try and do a final read-through of Meter Maids Eat Their Young and when I logged back into the outside world, I had like a hundred and fifty messages in my email. A hundred and forty were spam, of course, I’m not that popular except to the spammers.

The usual shit: penis extenders and viagra, like I could care about either of those; breast implants, which, you know, don’t really apply to me; fake watches and sunglasses, neither of which I wear, real or otherwise; and the ability to obtain enough drugs from Canada, without a prescription mind you, to keep the entire population of the lower 48 stoned for a week or more.

Oh, and several bankers and/or lawyers in Nigeria, the FBI, Bill Gates and some woman in New Braunfals, Texas who want to give me enough money to qualify for the Republican Billionaire bail-out. Someone should tell those folks they really need to proof read those emails, get someone to correct their spelling and grammar. I’ve offered to do it, several times, for a mere hundred bucks a pop but they never write me back. I guess they’re more interested in getting my name, address, gender, phone and bank account number than in speaking – or would that be writing? – proper English.

The others were emails from friends and family. One was a joke about Santa having a bad day and an angel showing up at the door with a christmas tree and wanting to know where Santa wanted to stick it. That one really made my day. I laughed so hard I spit coffee all over my desk.

Another was from my friend Barb Annino, author of Opal Fire, which I wrote about last week. She wanted to trade pages: What I had of MM for what she had with her newest, Bloodstone. Jumped on that one, for sure. She hooked me pretty badly with that end to Opal Fire. I’m looking forward to those pages.

The most exciting email, though, was from my editor who wrote to tell me about a review of Stealing The Marbles posted on Jarika Johnson’s Will Write For Love website. The review is there if you care to read it.