Author and Work: In Context
In The Souls of Black Folk W.E.B Du Bois describes two worlds black people live in: a world behind a veil and another lived without the veil.  Some believe this duality no longer exists for African Americans because so much time has passed since the publication of Dubois’ book.  This is not the case.

I am a forty-three year-old black man, born sixty-three years after the publication of Dubois’ book, and I’m still learning to navigate between these worlds.  Many things that seem common knowledge to my peers in academia, I’ve had to learn -- sometimes the hard way.  I didn’t even know what to ask at times.  Other times, I was embarrassed to ask questions everyone else seemed to know the answers to, like what is tenure or what does it mean when someone says she’s teaching a 2/2 or a 3/2?

All of us, to some extent, assume the lives of others are like our own.  What bothers me is the aggressive denial I sometimes encounter from people outside my experience.  Here’s an example:

In creative writing departments and schools, there is something called a creative writing workshop.  Each person writes a story and then submits it to his or her peers in class.  They read it and then mark up their copies with suggestions and point out errors.  During class, others in the workshop tell the author what he or she found (right and wrong) with the draft.

I wrote a short story while going to graduate school at the University of South Alabama.  In the story, I described a young black woman who didn’t know what a toothbrush was for.  A white female in my workshop group called the description unrealistic.  “Everyone knows what a toothbrush is,” she said.  How could a person not know, when there were dozens of commercials about toothpaste and toothbrushes?

My workshop peer, first, assumed that everyone had televisions, and then she assumed that dental care was a part of the life of poor southerners.  I bet that even she didn’t buy everything she saw in a commercial.  Would she have assumed that everyone had an Ab-Belt just because it appeared in a commercial?  Much of what we do in our day-to-day lives is learned from our family of origin and from the friends who surround us, not from the media.

Often, something I write out of intense emotion will merely elicit a comment like “I love the way you put words together.” 

There really is no connection.  Maybe that is my fault.  Perhaps, I need to provide greater context, but I suspect the listener needs to hear more voices.  Academic departments should be a chorus -- not a solo.

There are so few African-Americans in academia.  I recall only two people from my neighborhood, besides myself, who graduated from college.  Both are female. 

The black male college professor is a rare species.  And there are fewer still who bring experiences from outside mainstream culture.  It is important that the way be opened for diversity (I don’t just mean racial diversity).  A diverse faculty not only helps a university recruit others, it fosters understanding across cultures, and it provides students with needed role models, but more importantly, a diverse faculty means the preservation of various cultures.

As a writer, my desire is to connect all these different ways of viewing the world and to deliver my experience to those who can’t experience it for themselves.

Genres
The purpose of the following is to provide more context so that you can better understand the author and his place in the field of writing.









Thrillers and Suspense Novels
Thrillers and suspense novels are, arguably, a blend of mystery and horror.  However, a thriller is unlike a mystery in that the focus is not on crime solving but rather on the resolution of a bad situation.  Also, I think that what separates the thriller from horror is its level of realism (horror occurs in the hyper-real) and its focus is different (more on horror’s focus later). Suspense focuses on the consequences of a deed or act.  For example, in Nancy Price’s classic “Sleeping with the Enemy,” the main character, Sara Burney, is freed from her husband’s abuse when she is swept overboard from a sailboat.  Readers see the consequence of this fortunate accident: Sarah grows into a more confident, self-sufficient person, and then later, readers follow the unfortunate consequence of Sara’s desire to visit her mother in a nursing home which enables her husband to find her.  Throughout the novel, Sara’s life is in jeopardy from the males who surround her.  This is the convention of the suspense or thriller genre: the main character’s life is always in jeopardy.


















Fantasy
When one thinks of fantasy today, the name Harry Potter can’t help but come to mind.
In the fantasy genre, readers are often transported to an alternate world or to a fantastic past.  Like other genres the fantasy genre contains a recognizable cast of characters, wizards and griffins for example.  Among the most well-known of fantasy novels is J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.  One of the most popular recent series is Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.  I recommend Small Gods, the 13th book in the series.









Gary K. Wolfe in the book Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy identifies over 30 definitions for science fiction.  Unfortunately, for us adults, much of the science fiction being written today is targeted to youth and young-adult readers.













Westerns
The western was considered to be a dead genre until it was revived by being elevated through language and style as in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses (Volume One of the Border Trilogy) or through point-of-view: told from the perspectives of Native Americans, females or African-Americans. Note that McCarthy's book is in the literature category.












Magical Realism
I can’t explain why many genre lists leave out magical realism.  This type of writing seems distinct enough from other genres to require its own label.  The genre is a popular choice of Latin American writers, the most well known being Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  This genre uses realism, such as a realistic setting, only to explode it or to make it hyper-real.



Literary Fiction
Literary fiction is the least published of the genres. According to Claudia Suzanne in This Business of Books, all trade fiction (which includes all the genres listed here) accounts for only 12 - 14 percent of any given year’s publishing. 













Generally, a literary novel takes longer to write.  If we use homebuilding as a metaphor for writing, then a romance novelist would have a foundation and a frame already up, while the literary novelist would only have a foundation.  From what I’ve gathered from my novelist friends who write literary fiction, the average time to complete a novel is about three years.  However, a literary novel sometimes takes much longer to write.  For example there was a space of eleven years between Edward P. Jones’ first book and his well-received novel, The Known World.  It took Charles Frazier nearly a decade to write Cold Mountain.  I could compile a list of writers who took just as long.


Upmarket Fiction
While looking for an agent to represent my novel, I kept coming across this term.  Upmarket fiction refers to a literary-commercial blend.  Anne Fortier’s JULIET, due out this fall, a re-visioning of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, is labeled upmarket fiction.
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Why Are Genres Important
Genres are important to publishers, editors and agents because they help them to promote and place a book in the marketplace, to target it toward a particular audience.  The genre acts like a label on a package.  It lets you know what’s inside.  You could also say the genre functions like a headline over a news or magazine article.  You don’t have to read the whole story in order to know what it’s about.

My Publishing Track
I completed The Nations of Denmark in about three years.  I had a draft in 2004.  However, the chair of the English department suggested I publish a book of poetry because by that time I had about fifty unpublished but workshopped poems.  I spent the rest of the year and the beginning of 2006 working on Terminal Switching.  In the meantime, I’d been reading poems to different audiences.  Editor, author and publisher Wade Hall attended a poetry reading I gave at Troy University in 2004 and was so impressed that he asked me to send him a manuscript.  After looking it over, he didn’t feel that the book was complete, so I kept working on it.  However, a year later, Hall’s press was no longer publishing.  Fortunately, I’d met Bonnie Roberts at Troy University who read from her book Dances in Straw with a Two-Headed Calf, Elk River Review Press, 2002.  I sent a copy of Terminal Switching to her editor, John Chambers, and he accepted the manuscript.  It was published in April 2007.

I resumed working on The Nations of Denmark in 2008 and a year later was polishing a fourth draft.  One of the most frustrating things I’ve encountered is not being able to find helpful readers.  Don’t even bother letting someone you know read your work -- or thank the heavens above if you have found someone.  You want a “hard” reader, someone willing to tear your manuscript to shreds.  Why?  The publishing industry has changed.  It’s tougher because of the sheer volume of books.  Agents, editors and publishers now expect a book to be  complete when you submit it.


How Does it Feel to Write Fiction
This is just about the most difficult thing to explain to someone who doesn’t write in a long form.  I’ve written essays, poems, short stories, and now, a book, and let me tell you, there is a definite difference.
Some rhetoricians have borrowed terms from mathematics to describe this difference.  One such term is closed-form, from "Closed-Form Expression."  This means that the mathematical result can be expressed by a well-known function.  Closed-form is an apt expression for much of the academic writing done outside the creative-writing department.  This form relies heavily on research, synthesis and analysis. This kind of writing can also be approached directly.  However, as a writer approaches the open-form end of the writing spectrum, he or she must approach indirectly: open form relies on play and association; this is particularly true when I write a poem.
The long form, however, is altogether different.  Writing in this form is a wakeful dreaming; it is meditative.  That’s why most writers need things like retreats, or why they have a room or cabin all to themselves.
When Stephen King remarked in an interview with Writer’s Digest magazine that only hack writers plan their novels, this is what he was most likely referring to.  You can’t, ultimately, plan a novel.  You can create and outline or plot, yes, but that’s not really a novel.  The novel is alive. 

Because of this meditative need, the most important thing to a writer is Time -- the next important thing is an unfractured schedule -- Okay that’s time as well.  In a nut shell: the writer needs a good stretch of time in order to get comfortable.



The Publishing Process

1.Write the book.

2.Send the book to various agents.  The purpose of an agent is to get a fantastic deal.


3.The agent tries to find a publisher: The publisher’s job is to print the book and use his or her editor to   refine the book so that it is perfect.

4.After the publisher buys the book, the revision process begins.  The book is worked on extensively until it   is ready for print.


5.After numerous edits, the publisher then sends the finished work to a copy editor, who then finds
  teenie-weenie mistakes that need to be corrected before the book goes to press.

6.A cover picture for the book is decided upon by the author and publishing house, and the author decides   what picture to use on the back jacket of the book.

7.The first copy of the book goes to the print shop, and something is printed out called a “galley”-- this is   what many auctioneers sell to people who are interested in books.  This is the very first bound copy before           the actual spine is put on the book.

8.The publicist then goes to a form submitted by the author and decides which places the author is more   than likely to reach a large audience.  (For example, a publisher I met with at a conference listed my                  home town, Hammond, Louisiana; Mobile, Alabama (where I currently live) and Denmark,                   Mississippi/Oxford, Mississippi (where the novel is set).

9.A date is set for the final printing to begin, and thousands of copies are printed in hardback and   paperback.

10.The publisher distributes the books to booksellers.

11.The publicist then looks at the numbers to tell which places the book is selling most and then prints a     log of all the places an author will be touring.



Getting Paid
During any moment in this process, the writer’s agent can sell rights to other countries or companies, such as film production companies.

The author is paid an advance, a certain amount of money by the publisher to write a book.  Usually this advance is taken out of book sales and the remaining funds are split three ways: between the author, her agent and her publisher.

Agents receive 15 - 20% of everything the author makes.

Once a book is bought, the author receives royalties as long as the book is in print.



12.After the book comes out, the publisher throws a huge party for you, the writer, in New York.

13.Your book is sold to Paramount. 

14.You choose to write the screenplay, and you’re paid a million.

15.Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett vie for the female lead which creates a scandal and a ton of free             publicity for the film.

16.There is a premiere of the movie in Hollywood where all the stars come together to see it.  Russell              Crowe whispers in your ear, “You’re a genius!”


Mysteries and Crime Novels
The mystery and crime genre is one of the most popular.  It usually begins with a crime or murder which is solved by a sleuth.  The convention demands that the crime or murder either be solved or at least revealed.  This genre also contains character types: the amateur detective, such as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.  Another character type is the professional crime solver such as a police officer or crime scene investigator, and then there are the hard-boiled crime novel detectives like the ones that show up in a Mickey Spillane novel.
Romance
Romance is an enormous field.  Just walk into any supermarket, and you’re sure to find half-a-dozen or more of these novels.  The romance genre follows a strict form. The main character is usually female.  The storyline: girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl finds boy.  Romances always end happily -- the purest finishing stroke of a romance would be a wedding or something close to it.

Horror
Heard of Stephen King or Clive Barker?  Horror fiction writers want to scare us.  Plot and character matter less than the evocation of fear.  Think of Final Destination One, Final Destination Two, Final Destination Three and Final Destination Four -- pretty much the same movie.  The only thing that changes is the way in which characters meet their demise.  Horror is about what you’re afraid of.  And judging from the popularity of this genre, it appears that many of us are afraid of dying in some horrible way or of not being in control.  Perhaps that’s what the horror genre is ultimately about -- loss of control, the inability to do anything.
Science Fiction
The 1977 film Star Wars demonstrated just how large the science fiction genre had become by that time.  That movie was, in one sense, an exploration of nostalgia for golden-age science fiction, a kind of meta-science fiction movie.
I’m partial to two particular sub-genres of science fiction: Hard Science with its emphasis on technology and mathematics and Social Science Fiction which explores cultural and sociological issues.  In a sense, both subgenres rely on accuracy and science.  For me, these subgenres are the core of the genre, lending it gravitas.  For example, the strength of the social science fiction genre lies in its ability to create a cognitive dissonance that allows readers to step back and think about big, important ideas (as the best of literature does).  Science fiction might be set in far off places and times, but social science fiction explores and comments on contemporary culture and issues.  It “tricks” the reader into thinking about big ideas.  For example, Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes explores racism, history and cultural stratification through the use of the dystopian planet of apes.

Historical
To me, the historical novel is similar to the social science fiction novel because, although its story is set in a far away time, the historical novel comments on contemporary cultural and sociological issues.  Also, just as a hard science fiction novel maintains accuracy, the historical novel remains faithful to the customs and culture of the period in which it is set.
Literary fiction focuses on language, wordplay and style and often experiments with form.  Examples of literary novels include the Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.  This genre is the most difficult to publish because it’s more difficult to package.  Also, it generally takes longer to write literary fiction because there are fewer conventions in this genre.  Besides the convention of realism and mechanics, perhaps structure, the literary genre shares little with the other forms.  Its conventions are less defined.  For this reason, many bookstores shelve literary fiction under generic titles like “Literature and Contemporary Fiction.”