A Separate Country ~ by Robert Hicks, 2009

John Bell Hood was a handsome man, 6'2" tall. Before the Civil War in the United States, he led soldiers against the Comanche Indians, but he is remembered as commander of the Battle of Franklin, one of the worst disasters for the Confederate Army. According to Sam Watkins, 1st Tennessee Infantry:

"(Franklin) is the blackest page in the history of the War of the Lost Cause. It was the bloodiest battle of modern times in any war. It was the finishing stroke to the Independence of the Southern Confederacy. I was there. I saw it."

After the war, the McGavock family of Franklin donated two acres near their home to establish a Confederate Cemetery. I read about the battle of Franklin and the burying of the dead in The Widow of the South, an excellent 2005 novel by Robert Hicks. So when I heard that Hicks would be speaking in Chattanooga, I got a copy of his newest novel, A Separate Country, which is about the life of General Hood in New Orleans in the years after the war.

In the new book Hood is haunted by his failures and wants to be vindicated somehow. He married a strong-willed woman, and together they had eleven children in eleven years (some were twins). But always, always Hood was obsessed by what he had done as a leader, in fighting the Comanches and in the battle of Franklin.

"I didn't realize then in my cursed and doomed youth [when he led soldiers against the Comanches], that one killing led to another, geometrically, until the only way possible to escape the massacre was to lead a whole army into the maw and hope for an ending" (p. 159).

"I will send him to see my other creation, not an orphan, but a killer. The killer and the orphan, the Janus face of my life's work" (p. 410).

When I met Robert Hicks on Thursday evening, I asked if Hood had really worried about making orphans and killers. Yes, he did. It's in the writings by Hood that were published.

I was interested in his wife, Anna Marie, who had been a genteel artist before they were married. In the book she comes across as a bold person, and I liked her, especially for things like this:

"In truth, painting a man is as erotic as my mother suspected. That was another reason why we sat there in the parlor, two arms length away from each other. I stared and consumed him, I put him on a canvas. I was an artist, before there came all the children, and then there was no room for my easel and no time for mixing paints" (p. 109).

One of the most poignant quotes that I copied from the book came near the beginning. Eli, one of the main characters, is thinking about the Hood family's battle with a different sort of enemy -- yellow fever:

"But the yellow jack had got Anna Marie, and the nine healthy children had been sent off. Hood and Lydia [the oldest child] were all that remained, too sick to leave. They were the ruins of what Hood said was his own separate country. There had been enough Hoods for a country, or at least a small town, but that wasn't what he'd meant and I ain't figured it out" (p. 10).

I recommend both of these books by Robert Hicks. Because his excellent first novel was more compelling to me, I rate The Widow of the South 9 out of 10 and his second novel, A Separate Country, which is also a very good book, 8 of 10.

I'll Take a Community With That Book, Please!

Guest post by Fauzia Burke, founder and president of FSB Associates, a web publicity firm specializing in creating online awareness for books and authors. She is a featured blogger on The Huffington Post, where this article originally debuted.

With today's search empowered readers, do we need to market and publish books differently? Does general publishing makes sense in an age of Google searches, micro communities, and niche marketing?

Today's readers are tech savvy and resourceful. They know how to get the information they need and have higher expectations from publishers and authors. They don't expect just a book, they expect a community with their book.

I often hear publishers say that there are "very few brands in book publishing." But to thrive in today's competitive, niche markets, perhaps brands are exactly what we need. What readers choose to read is personal and an extension of who they are. Shouldn't their book choices be supported by a publisher, a brand that is invested in their interests?

Many small publishing companies have done an enviable job of branding themselves and building reader communities around their books. Take O'Reilly, TOR, and Hay House. You may not read their books, but you know what they publish. Their communities trust them. People who share their point of view flock to their lists. These companies publish for a niche community, and are trusted members of their community. They provide extra resources, and often their authors are members of the community itself. TOR has even launched a bookstore to meet their readers' needs. These publishers show passion for their books and an understanding of their readers, and as such their readers reward them with loyalty.

Publishing books for the community

Besides reader loyalty, publishing for micro communities may have other long-term benefits as well. For example, the focus would help publishers save money on marketing. Marketing through online communities is less expensive and much more powerful than trying to reach the general public and hoping to find the right match. The publisher's web site wouldn't have to cater to a wide variety of people, it would be designed to serve the needs of a small group. Instead of expensive advertising, they could announce the book to the community that has already bought into their brand. Publishers and authors could enlist the support of the community to spread the word (which will always be the most efficient method for marketing books). The logo on the book spine would mean the readers have a promise that the book is worth reading. The readers would know that the publisher looked at over a thousand manuscripts all on the same topic and is offering them the very best.

So are large, general publishers at a disadvantage with today's search-empowered, community-oriented readers? I think so. General trade publishing is for everyone, yet there is no "everyone" out there. Readers are part of micro communities. They want good books, and they need publishers who will support their interests and passions.

The bottom line is that publishers and authors need to evolve their marketing and publishing strategies to accommodate a new kind of reader. A reader whose expectations demand more interaction and community. A reader whose loyalty you can have once you have earned it. A reader who wants more than a six-week marketing campaign so you can sell a book. This new reader requires an investment of months and years.

Is that too much to expect? Perhaps. But this is your new reader, and she will stay with you if you stay with her.

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Bonnie's question: How would you define our book community? What would you like from publishers? Share your thoughts in the comments.

It's the in thing

When asked to name four places I have been, I came up with this list:

1. in hot water
2. in love
3. indisposed
4. in the know

"In" is such an interesting word. When my friend Margreet was helping me learn a bit of Dutch (she's fluent in eight languages, but Dutch is her native tongue), she made me notice just how slippery some of our little English prepositions can be. For example, the woman drawn on this ceramic bathtub is actually "IN" hot water. But what are we "IN" when we're in love? What are we "IN" when we're in the know? Here are some more "IN" phrases to ponder, not all of which are prepositions:

in debt
in power
in for it
in with
hit in the face with a pie
the in book this year
paid in cash
written in Dutch
in equal parts
a drawing in pen and ink
split in two
a life in theater
in need
in pursuit
wrote in to the editor
closed in
one in three
three in one
stepped in
took in the view
in reference to your letter
what's in this season?
in Indiana, IN means Indiana

Oh, I love playing with words! Don't you?
__________
Cross-posted on Joyful Noiseletter:  http://joyfulnoiseletter.blogspot.com/2009/10/its-in-thing.html

Jim the Boy ~ by Tony Earley, 2000

Tony Earley said in an interview, "I never write until I have the first sentence and the first sentence never changes." Here's the first sentence in Jim the Boy:

During the night something like a miracle happened: Jim's age grew an extra digit."

Two digits, a one plus a zero. It is now 1934, and today is his tenth birthday. Jim, whose father died a week before he was born, lives with his mother and three uncles in the little town of Aliceville, North Carolina. This is a gentle book, with no action-packed car chases, no murder mysteries, nothing flashy. Well, unless you count the night electricity came to Aliceville and the new brightness pushed away the darkness and made the stars seem to fade. Excitement means things like a ferris wheel, the opening of a new school, and learning that Ty Cobb is on the train stopped at the station. Drama arrives in the form of polio, at a time when Franklin D. Roosevelt is both president of the United States and a victim of that dread disease. And resolution comes as the reader sees Jim growing up and expanding his horizons little by little from the town to the ocean to the mountains his daddy came from.

Tony Earley is from North Carolina and now lives in Nashville, where he teaches creative writing at Vanderbilt University. Jim the Boy, his first novel, provoked a lively discussion at my book club meeting Tuesday evening. (My online Book Buddies also read and discussed the book in 2008.) I rate it 7 of 10, a good book.

Question of the week ~ owning myself

If I own myself, does it follow that I should be free to sell myself into slavery if I wish to do so? Answer yes or no, and then please tell us why.

Philosopher John Locke believes that your “unalienable right” to liberty does not include the right to kill yourself. Is he right? What does your liberty entitle you to do with yourself? Where do the limits come from?

John Locke believes that government, once it is set up, should be guided by the principle of majority rule. However, he also believes that the purpose of government is to protect people’s rights, including their “unalienable” right to property. What if these two goals conflict? What if a poor majority wants to tax a rich minority?

Teaser ~ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Today's teaser is from page 62 of the 2008 novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.


"Blomkvist was sure that it was not the old-fashioned kind of love that leads to a shared home, a shared mortgage, Christmas trees, and children. During the eighties, when they were not bound by other relationships, they had talked of moving in together. He had wanted to, but Erika always backed out at the last minute. It wouldn't work, she said, they would risk what they had if they fell in love too."

Facebook ~ today's teaser

This teaser is from page 77 of The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community, by Jesse Rice, which came out on the first day of this month:

"Do you remember how your high school bedroom tried to reflect everything about who you were as a person -- your likes, dislikes, beliefs, affiliations, and attitudes -- in the space of just four walls? Facebook serves a similar end, allowing us to decorate our pages with any kind of flair necessary to demonstrate the things that are closest to our hearts."

Makes me want to analyze what's on my Facebook page: family photos, visit from an out-of-town friend, quotes from books (books? me?), links to issues and kitten with deer and climate change and humor and another book. Uh-huh, I'd say it represents "me."