Another San Pancho Writer Breaks Out

One of our number, Ellen Greene, published a wonderful book called Remember the Sweet Things (William Morrow/HarperCollins) in 2009, and now I’ve followed her with The Lives of La Escondida (Lirio, 2011.) When we started our writers’ group several years ago, publishing was only a gleam in our eyes, though we were all serious about our “craft” and a couple of us had books in the works. I think both Ellen and I would say that our writing group was catalytic in our writing process.

Things are strange in the book world these days. Barry Eisler (writer of bestseller thrillers) turned down a $500,000 advance in favor of self-publishing on Amazon’s CreateSpace after a hard look at the bottom line. Considering that an advance is, by definition, to be paid back from royalties; that book royalties from publishing houses run in the 10-15% range, while you’ll get more like 40% if you self-publish—with the disparity even greater for the e-version—the math was clearly in favor of the Indie approach.

Of course, Eisler was already well known and has no need for the book tours and all the other publicity efforts of the established publishing houses. Oops, make that the book tours, etc. that used to be part of the package at the established houses. Now, times are tough, and HarperCollins belongs to Rupert Murdoch.

And those traditional houses accept manuscripts only through literary agents, and agents take a hefty percentage, too, if you can land one, which I hadn’t when I stopped trying. I stumbled upon a publisher that would accept author submissions. I submitted; I was accepted! But if something seems too good to be true… After nearly two years of dealing with rank amateurs—extending to their knowledge, or lack thereof, of grammar and punctuation, and a refusal to allow the book to appear in e-form—I extricated myself from my contract.

What’s more, the publisher was going to print my book using CreateSpace, and then give me 10%. Sure, he provided me an editor—whose work I couldn’t use—and a proof-reader—who wouldn’t consider even the Chicago Manual of Style (“We aren’t in Chicago.”) Those, if competent, are worth a lot. However, the publisher wasn’t paying these people—thus justifying his percentage. They were working for royalties, too, and their work was slow since these weren’t their day jobs, which they should never consider quitting.

So, like Barry Eisler, I published on CreateSpace, and I make about two dollars more per book than Kathryn Stockett gets for The Help. (It won’t be necessary for you to point out who is likely making more money.) For fees, CreateSpace will edit, proof, or design, but you may do it all yourself virtually free of charge. And, if there are tricky bits, there is also prompt and competent tech support. For ten dollars, one can have an ISBN attached to a publishing house of one’s own—mine is named Lirio, from Casa de los Lirios, my San Pancho home.

My book is a romance that violates some of the conventions, hopefully making my characters more lifelike, while still devastatingly appealing. I based it in New Mexico where I lived for thirty-seven years, and in Mexico, too. There, in the 1590s, the Inquisition drove suspected Jews north to New Mexico where they went underground and hang on until this day. The book is available on Amazon and in all e-reader forms, as described on my webpage: www.carolynkingson.com.

Tlacuaches Trumped

Opossoms, (tlacuaches, in Spanish), find my San Pancho home agreeable, as I’ve complained in several posts. Yes, they can have some bad habits, such as chewing through the gas line to my stove and causing an explosion, but I’ve now achieved perspective. My daughter found baby-blues to be too much, my grandbaby beckoned, and I’ve moved to London for a time to be what help I can. And it is London that has opened my eyes.

And how has London, more precisely, Chiswick, done this? Chiswick with its meandering streets, some of which probably follow old cow paths; where dropped items hang on fences until reclaimed; dense with prams and nannies and lovingly tended gardens; home of Colin Firth, for crissakes—is infested with foxes. Walk home after dark, gaze out into the garden early in the morning, and you’re sure to see them starting out on the night’s business or heading back to the den, which is probably hidden under a garden buddleia, maybe yours. But don’t think they aren’t out in the day, too. These foxes look as though they have no need of “sly” or “wily;” those traits were apparently given up as unnecessary long ago. A better epithet would be “arrogant as a fox.” They don’t slink or skulk home in the grey-green morning light. These animals are alpha, top, apex predators. And I’m not overlooking humans.

I say without fear of contradiction that everyone in the UK knows that a fox entered an east London house, went upstairs, and mauled twin baby girls in their crib—one on the face. When the screams brought the parents running, they found the fox sitting as calmly as if it were the family dog. It was headline line news when the babies finally got out of the hospital. Tlacuaches would never do anything like that.

Another baby was attacked while sleeping beside its mother on the sofa. The woman whose house I’m staying in found one in her living room with her three-year-old. They regularly tear up my daughter’s garden. Everybody has a story. It’s been hot, but do you think you dare leave open a ground-floor window?

Foxes have a devoted following in England. Fox hunts—“…the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.” (Oscar Wilde)—were a target for animal rights advocates for decades and are now banned. One may be arrested for killing or trapping a fox—though, I presume you’d get off lightly if it could, definitively, be shown to have injured your baby. It’s hard to understand why some humane fox removal is not being attempted until you realize that there’s no place in England that isn’t already full of foxes. Given that, one wonders why the men aren’t out with torches and pitchforks at night.

And if it’s not enough that foxes threaten babies, they kill house cats. (In fairness, I note that The National Fox Welfare Society disputes this and says they only chase them away from their kits, or tease them. Italics, and scepticism, mine.) You’d think even a rumour of cat-killing would put the nail in the fox coffin, cats being nearly as essential to human happiness as babies. And while London wrestles with its dilemma, we hold our grandchildren close and think of the mild-mannered tlacuaches of San Pancho.