When Lolita meets Dr. Frankenstein

This was the original working title of my latest book - When Winter Wind Wears Desert Boots.

Why is this original title - When Lolita meets Dr. Frankenstein - nowhere to be seen in the final published copy? Another story to be told. Perhaps if you read the book (if you haven't already done so), you will have a theory to offer.

And today and tomorrow: July 29-30, you can still download the Kindle version of the book for FREE.
Click here to go to Amazon and download a FREE copy.

Your comments are more than welcome. You may find this hard to believe, but even scathing, negative criticism is far better than no feedback at all. For your comments and reviews feed my writing and give me reason to press on.

The book's the thing

There are still books out there. Many, many books. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Books have been here for... well, not forever, but for a very long time. More than I can remember, at least, but that’s not saying much.

The thing is: the book is quite a clever concept. A bundle of knowledge, strapped together by pieces of leather... well, once by leather... But it is the concept of the book which matters, whether in hard cover or in soft cover.

“What about an electronic cover?”
“How can something electronic be a cover? It is virtual.”
“Therefore it does not exist?”
“Yes, I mean no. I mean, it must exist if we can still read its pages.”
“Yes?”
“But that doesn’t make it a book.”
“Not even an electronic book?”
“Call me a romantic. I still like the smell of leather... Well, something to hold in my hands.”
“I hold my Kindle in my hands. Can even hold it and turn the pages with the same hand.”

*insert awkward pause

“Anyhow, I liked things the way they were.”
“Writing on stone, you mean.”
“Now let’s not go to extremes.”
“Me go to extremes!”

The thing is, electronic books, electronic information of any type, excites me. No, it is not a fetish. I simply like access to anything, anywhere, at any time. Many of you will claim that I have become a part of the “me now” generation which demands immediate satisfaction, and can do with nothing less. But I will have nothing to do with this.

I have always had a fascination for books. I would travel with my parents and suddenly disappear. They knew then to search for the nearest bookstore. Opening a book was an exploration, an exploration into a parallel universe from whence I emerged changed, even if only in a small way. But so much has happened since. It used to be that a teacher could stand up at the front of a one room schoolhouse and teach students all there was needed to know. A set of encyclopedias could contain all of the information of both the modern and ancient worlds. Dictionaries could contain an accurate list of vocabulary and not need to be updated for decades. But then came the information explosion. Books became out of date almost before they were published. A wise teacher soon realized that s/he could no longer be a valid source of information but should rather serve as “facilitator”, in leading students to search, find and properly evaluate information. Huge conglomerations which once controlled the access to knowledge, have now lost their control over us. And writers can now easily turn out their novels on a computer, and even go way of self-publishing rather than suffer years of rejection at the hands of literary agents and publishers who are becoming less and less willing to take chances in a market whose bottom is falling out.

When I finally got my own novel published, I had no idea what was waiting for me in the literary world. Bookstores, however big, can not even represent a fraction of what is out there. Many of you will claim that most of the books published today are probably not even worth printing. But the thing is, there are many good books out there which would have never gotten published otherwise. And I, personally, take this to be the decisive factor: not the surplus of what we consider unworthy, but rather the absence of what should be there.

But what I have found to be even more compounding is how social networks offer an interactive platform in which readers and writers come together - where readers and writers no longer sit in worlds clearly separate, but are now accountable to each other. Writing has become a social experience in ways never conceived of before.

And I realize now that being a writer not only means that I should write books, but that I also should bring something back to books and writers that I read. This is why I began my own book review blog - “The Virtual Muser eBook Review”. And I must say that I am learning as much from this experience as I am from my own writing.

Books are here to stay. Maybe not in the way that you would expect or hope them to. But they have been here forever, at least in the human experience. Whether they were written in stone, or told and passed down from generation to generation. Think of it: the concept has never changed. And what about the need?

You might say, then - why even sell books? Why not just put them up there for anybody to download? Isn’t the message the thing that is important? You may or may not be surprised to hear that more and more writers are doing exactly this. Is this the beginning of a serious trend? We will wait and find out.

They sell books in Supermarkets, don’t they?

A well known Israeli writer is selling his new book exclusively through an Israeli supermarket chain. There, nestled between the carrots and tomatoes, you can pick up his book and add it to your cart of groceries. How is he doing so far? He has already sold over 50,000 copies of his book - which is quite good in such a small country as Israel.  Why did he choose to sell his new book only in this one supermarket chain? He apparently read the writing on the wall. More and more bookstores are closing. Those which are still open have entered into a price war, and as a result - books are marked down by more than 70% and it is impossible for an author to make any real money from his writing. Is his decision then a protest, or is he simply giving in to the inevitable?

We live in an age where e-books are becoming more and more popular, and many people fear that they will replace the hardcover book altogether. Will only online bookstores survive and the library shelves now be filled with e-readers? And if there still is such a thing as the hardcover - will this be nestled somewhere in the supermarket? Attention shoppers. There is a special sale of fresh books in aisle 5. And what about the author? Will he be sitting in the dairy section signing books? Maybe they will leave it up to each author to decide where in the supermarket he wants to set up his table. For some, the pastry and desserts section would serve quite well. Others may prefer coffee and tea. And others may resign themselves to the vegetables. Will your place in the supermarket define you?

Or does it really matter? Surely the idea is the essence, and how it is housed is of secondary importance. Once upon a time, such things were literally written in stone. A rather tedious and slow operation. And then ink was invented and each book was painstakingly written out by hand. And if you wanted a copy of the book, that too had to be written out by hand. And then along came the printing press. There must have been a lot of opposition to that. Mass producing ideas through automation. How could anything good come out of automation? But, like most things, it didn’t take long for us to forget what came before and we soon began romanticizing the notion of the mass produced book. Or maybe the romanticizing only came when the book appeared to be in danger of extinction. Think of it - we are not even left with something we can hold in our hands! How crass. Well, actually you can hold a kindle in your hands, but what about the smell of leather and the rustling of the pages. (When was the last time we actually held a leather book in our hands - or anything with a hardcover?)

And then some people - those real fanatics - ask why we even need books. Why not let ideas  play out through film. Much more visual and so much  more can be included. Imagination? People want to be entertained, without exerting too much effort on their own part. The demands of imagination is maybe why fewer and fewer people read books these days - even before the first e-book or supermarket haven.

It is quite a mess, actually. At times I ask myself why I couldn’t have published my novel twenty years ago when the rules were much clearer. But then, maybe it is better this way. I actually wrote and published an e-book before reading one. Is there any real irony in this? Would I consider selling my book in a supermarket? But then, how could an e-book be sold in a supermarket? Maybe the back of cereal box could be transformed into an ink based e-reader screen. Different brands offering different books. This isn’t such a revolutionary idea. It wasn’t long ago that you got a free video cassette of a movie together with your six pack of beer. I mean - what do we want as a writer? To reach the widest and largest number of readers possible - no? I see some of you shaking your heads.

I have actually begun to write a screenplay for my book. Not so much because I want to quickly reach a wider audience, but rather because I realized that Gwyneth Paltrow will soon be too old to play the main female part (she was quite young when I first started writing the book). But I digress.

One day, probably not in the too distant future, young people will remark - upon hearing about bookstores - “What a quaint idea. A whole store just for selling books. But how could anyone make a living just out of selling books?”

Or by writing them.