Author, book doctor, raker of muck

David Henry Sterry

Month: September 2015

The Book Doctors Do Deadwood & South Dakota Book Festival

If someone ever comes up to you & says, “Hey wanna go to Deadwood?” Do yourself a favor: Say Yes. Ditto the South Dakota Book Festival. The country is spectacular & so is the festival.  Here are some pics to prove it.

Buffalo, prairie dawgs & writer.

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Here’s a video:

Attack of the Donkeys

When donkeys attack!!!

Ann Ralph author

The Book Doctors: Ann Ralph on the Joys of Fruit Trees, Taking Care of Mother Earth, and How to Get a Book Deal Writing About Something You Love

We first met Ann Ralph when she won our Pitchapalooza with one of the greatest elevator pitches we’ve ever heard: The Elements of Style for fruit trees. It made total sense even as it was counterintuitive. It communicated something so clearly, with such economy, intelligence and style. She also presented it in such a smart, relaxed, fun and yet information-packed way you couldn’t help but sit up and pay attention. Plus, who doesn’t love a great fruit tree? So now that her book Grow a Little Fruit Tree: Simple Pruning Techniques for Small-Space, Easy Harvest Fruit Trees is out, we thought we’d pick her brain and find out exactly how she did it.

To read this interview on the Huffington Post, click here.

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The Book Doctors: How is your garden?

Ann Ralph: The garden is thirsty, but so far, so good. These dry winters are unusual and scary. Long, dry summers are nothing new. In most of California rain stops in May and won’t start again until November. I planted with this in mind. The plants on a hot bank behind my house do entirely without summer water. The roadside tree trimmers left behind a huge pile of chipped prunings last fall. This stuff is gold to me. I applied it as a deep mulch around my fruit trees and ornamentals. Mulch helps tremendously with transpiration. I water my established fruit trees only about once a month. Mulch improves soil quality and sequesters carbon, too.

TBD: How did you get started as a writer?

AR: Nursery work was meant to be a placeholder until I got a real job. I got waylaid in a composition class on the way to a respectable career, then abandoned pretense for the work I liked, low pay, the outdoors, a cavalcade of interesting questions, great people, and writing in my off hours.

TBD: What are some of your favorite books and why?

AR: However beautifully rendered, nonfiction is constrained by facts. I get more sustenance from the truth in fiction: I think of the Salman Rushdie character who cooks grievances into her chutneys. I wish everyone would read All the King’s Men, A Passage to India, and A Place on Earth. When our president quotes Marilynne Robinson, I feel sure we’ll be okay.

TBD: How did you get started as a fruit tree enthusiast? What are some of your favorite fruit trees and why?

AR: I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley. We were awash in fresh fruit all year long. I went out the front door for Meyer lemons. Neighbors left bags of nectarines on the front porch. Teachers, like my dad, graded and weighed peaches for Del Monte in the summertime. He brought home leftover lug boxes full of fruit. My mother canned peaches and apricots to tide us over until summer came again. I had no idea how good we had it until I left California for New York. This last weekend I visited friends in Ripon and came home with a huge box of tree-ripe grapefruit. There is never too much grapefruit at my house.

TBD: What were some of the joys and difficulties of taking your passion and turning it into a book?

AR: I had a good idea about what made fruit trees confusing and difficult for people, and what was missing from existing books on the subject. Storey asked me to double the content. How right they were! Every step in the process led to a better book. The photography was more complicated than I expected it to be. Marion Brenner was generous with her time and up for anything. The trees, weather, light, and backgrounds weren’t as cooperative. The photos took another year, the design a third. I sometimes despaired that I’d ever see the thing in print.

TBD: You’ve gotten some wonderful reviews. What did you do to promote and market the book?

AR: Storey Publishing has reach into the book business I could never have managed on my own. My sister has been a buyer for independent bookstores for thirty-five years. She drilled into me a sense of my shared responsibility for the book’s promotion. I knew my audience. I also knew I had a book that people needed and would want to buy. I have great garden connections from Berkeley Horticultural Nursery. I’m easily evangelical on the subject of fruit trees.

TBD: The environment is going through some terrible times. What do you think are some solutions to bring back a balance with nature?

AR: Humans wield a lot of clout in the natural world. The organics now in markets are there because we wanted to buy them. We can look to decisions we make everyday, regarding packaging for one. We’re drowning in plastic. Recycling is better than nothing, I suppose, but recycling plastics is a dirty business. I make yogurt at home. Its deliciousness aside, this small action by one person eliminates a need for hundreds of plastic containers. The environment doesn’t exist apart from us. We’re in the thick of it. For good or ill, we build it as we go.

TBD: How did you get a book deal?

AR: The Book Doctors pulled my name out of a hat at a Pitchapalooza at Book Passage in Corte Madera. They liked my pitch. I shopped a proposal around to several publishers with interest but without success, always on the heels of another fruit book. Arielle took the idea to Storey Publishing. I strengthened the proposal based on information from The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published. I’m sure that made the difference. I’m not just saying this because the Book Doctors happen to be asking the question. It’s true.

TBD: What advice do you have for fruit tree growers?

AR: Keep your fruit trees small enough to manage. I wish I could take credit for my favorite pruning advice. It came from a UC Davis seminar, “If you don’t know what to do, cut some stuff out.” Fruit trees are forgiving. If you goof it up, they give you another chance.

TBD: What advice do you have for writers?

AR: Let’s leave fruit advice to me and writing advice to Anne Lamott.

Ann Ralph is the author of Grow a Little Fruit Tree: Simple Pruning Techniques for Small-Space, Easy Harvest Fruit Trees. Publisher’s Weekly called the book “a thrilling read for the backyard farmer.” She is a fruit tree specialist with 20 years of nursery experience. She lives in the Sierra Foothills near Jackson, California.

Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry are co-founders of The Book Doctors, a company that has helped countless authors get their books published. They are also co-authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How To Write It, Sell It, and Market It… Successfully (Workman, June 2015). They are also book editors, and between them they have authored 25 books, and appeared on National Public Radio, the London Times, and the front cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review.

Me & Sally: A True Interspecies Love Story

Sally and I are hired to act in a Michelob beer commercial. The theme of the spot is evolution. I am cast as a Neanderthal Man. Typecasting.

Four hours I sit while a crew of highly skilled make-up artists glue thin layers of skin-colored latex over my face, transforming me from end of Second-Millennium American Homo Sapien into a caveman: gigantic forehead with a scary hairy monobrow, wee sunken eyes, a flaring nose cauliflowering across my cheeks, thick rubber caveman lips, and huge wooly mammoth-eating fake teeth. I look for a long time in the mirror but I can’t find myself in there anywhere. I feel the strong desire to grunt and snarl and hump someone from behind.

Finally, I am ready for my introduction to Sally. Her handler comes up to me, very serious. “Don’t make eye contact at first. Let her come to you. Get down on her level and don’t make any quick movements. Be very calm and very still. They sense fear. She can jump six feet straight up in the air, and she’s ten times stronger than a human being. Sally’s jaw is so strong she could snap your arm in two like a twig. It’s really important she doesn’t feel any fear coming off you.”

All I can see is my bloody hand dangling out of her mouth.

Sally comes out of her trailer, hand-in-hand with another trainer. I squat down to her level. Avert my eyes. I can feel Sally’s stare as she inches slowly towards me. I’m so scared I have no spit. There’s a small crowd gathering, all quiet tension, waiting to see what Sally will do to David the Neanderthal. Finally she’s right in my face. Since I’m not making eye contact for fear of having my Adam’s apple ripped out, I smell her before I see her. She smells clean, wild, untamed, of the earth. I feel myself calm when I smell her. Slowly, ever slowly, I turn towards her, raising my head like a simian Southern belle, bringing my eyes up to meet hers.

Wise, curious, clever, keen, deep, sharp, smart, mysterious animal passion beams from Sally into me, jolting my soul and rattling my bones. Her face is a picture of puzzlement, brows knitted, head tilted to one side. As she stares into my half-man, half-monkey face, I find I can read her thoughts: “What are you? You’re not one of them, but there’s no way you’re one of me…Really, what are you?”

Sally sniffs me suspiciously, moving her mouth to my jaw. Her hot breath on my lips, I’m trying desperately not to visualize her biting my nose off. Sally brings her lips to my cheek, puckers, and covers my face and lips with tiny sweet little kisses.

I’m overcome, undone, head-over-heels in love with Sally. She puts her arms around my neck and hops into my arms. The crowd oohs and ahs, witness to the start of a great love story.

For the rest of the shoot, whenever Sally sees me, she runs up to me excited as a bride, jumps up in my arms, and covers me with kisses. We cakewalk around the set, handholding, swooning and spooning. I’ve never known a female who was so openly, unabashedly, good-naturedly affectionate. Work laws for actors like Sally are very strict, due to decades of abuse. So we can only show our affection in 12-hour shifts.

In the commercial I, Neanderthal, will be sitting next to Sally, while an actress, playing a waitress, flirts with me. We block the scene without Sally. The actress walks up to me stiffly, just lobbing her line in my general vicinity, like a lazy newsboy tossing an errant morning paper:

“Hey, Good Looking, come here often?”

It’s bad. Bad, bad, bad. The director stops everything, walks over to her all cocksure and says, “I need you to hot it up, honey, make with the goo-goo eyes, like you did in the callback, babe.” She promises she will, and shoots him an obligatory sex-baby look, which evaporates into disdain as soon as the director walks away.

Lights are tweaked. Camera focused. Hair, make-up and wardrobe are fluffed, patted, and tucked. Finally hundreds of highly paid technicians and advertising geeks are ready to make commercial magic.

Sally is brought in, hops up on her stool next to me at the bar, and kisses me on the cheek as I whisper sweet nothings into her ear.

“Scene 4, take 1. Roll camera!”

“Camera rolling. Speed.”

“Sound?”

“Speed!”

“And… Action!”

The actress walks towards us like a nervous hamster at a cat show. Even I can smell her fear. She starts to make very tentative flirty eyes in my direction.

Sally goes bananas, jumps up on the bar, bares her teeth, and hisses, looking like she’s going to rip this poor spooked woman’s heart out, show it to her, then eat it. The actress’ scream curdles blood as she runs wailing and weeping through the set, and out the door.

I thought the advertising geeks should have used that in the commercial, because it said more about evolution than any of the lame shit they came up with. But no, they decide to write the waitress out of the commercial.

Then it’s 6:30 p.m., and we’re way behind schedule. So they send some junior flunky over to Sally’s trainer and he asks if they can get Sally to work overtime, because if they don’t get all her shots, they’re going to have to bring everybody back for another day and go way over budget.

The trainer looks at the mad man like he’s a lunatic and says he seriously doubts Sally will want to work overtime, but he’ll see what he can do.

6:45 PM. The ad geeks huddle, whispering toxically. A much-better dressed executive walks up to the trainer. They’ll pay whatever he wants. Name the price.

The trainer smiles and slowly reminds the executive that Sally’s not particularly financially motivated.

“Well then we’ll give her all the damn bananas she wants,” says the better-dressed executive.

“Well,” explains the trainer patiently, as if he’s talking to a dumb animal, “Sally already gets all the bananas she wants, but I’ll see what I can do.”

6:58 p.m. The best-dressed executive hustles over to the trainer.

“Listen, I don’t care what she wants, we need to get three more shots before she leaves, is that clear?”

You can see the trainer’s about to lose it, wishing to God that he only had to deal with reasonable animals.

But before he could say anything, it’s 7 o’clock, exactly 12 hours after Sally started working. Sally steps up on the bar, and slowly, dramatically, like the consummate performer she is, raises her left arm over her head, and slaps her wrist three times where a watch would be. She jumps down, grabs my hand, and pulls me toward the door. Sally and I proceed through the set and straight out the door, hand-in-hand, a bride and Neanderthal groom heading for our abba dabba honeymoon.

They’re forced to bring everybody back the next day, and Sally is hailed as a hero. When I ask the trainer, he tells me that Sally has an extremely acute sense of time. Because she works so often, she knows exactly when 12 hours are up, and has figured out that by making the sign for time, not only will her day be over, she’ll also make everyone love her and get the Big Laugh. All day, whenever it’s time for a meal, or a break, everyone from actors to Teamsters raise their left hand up over their head, and slap their wrist three times where a watch would be, in silent homage to Sally. Much to the amusement of everyone except the ad geeks, who seem basically jaded and disgusted by pretty much everything except what swanky restaurant they’re going to eat at that night.

As for me, by the end of the shoot I’m madly in love with Sally. But alas, we were from different worlds. As her trailer pulls away a great wave of terrible sadness washes over me and I’m not embarrassed when big silent tears roll down my Neanderthal cheeks. Ours was a love that could never be.

Sterry

About David Henry Sterry

David Henry Sterry is the author of 16 books, a performer, muckraker, educator, activist, and co-founder of The Book Doctors.  His first memoir, Chicken Self:-Portrait of a Man for Rent, 10-Year Anniversary Edition, has been translated into 12 languages, and is being made into a movie by the showrunner of Dexter.  His book Hos Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys appeared on the front cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review.  He has featured on NPR, the London Times, Washington Post, and the Wall St. Journal.  He writes for the Huffington Post, Salon, and Rumpus.  He can be found at www.davidhenrysterry.com.

How I Won the Book Doctors’ Pitchapalooza by Gloria Chao

This is originally from a great website called Novel Pitch

Gloria Chao was the winner of the 2015 Pitchapalooza contest put on by The Book Doctors. She and I connected via twitter. The following is her experience from the event. 0wjqQGQB

I am honored that NovelPitch has invited me to share my experience pitching in The Book Doctor’s 2015 Pitchapalooza contest. I’m a strong supporter of writers helping writers, and am excited to give back (though I wish I could give more!) to the community that has helped in my journey thus far. Thank you, Ralph, for your Novel Pitch efforts, and thank you, fellow writers, for your constant support.

I heard about the Pitchapalooza contest through Twitter and submitted my query. Based on The Book Doctors’ comments, I believe my pitch stood out because of the specifics—namely, the wording and humor. Since my novel is multicultural, I used words that gave a taste of Chinese culture, e.g. “sticking herself with needles” and “fermented tofu.” I also highlighted the wacky characters with phrases such as “expiring ovaries,” “unladylike eating habits,” and “Taiwanese Ivy Leaguer.” I think capturing the manuscript’s voice in the query was why my pitch was chosen.

Winning Pitchapalooza gave me confidence and the courage to keep fighting. It also helped bring my manuscript to the next level. I had struggled with my genre, pitching NA contemporary for the contest. The Book Doctors helped me realize this was the incorrect categorization, pointing me toward adult with suggestions to age up my manuscript by changing from first person to third. This released a flood of ideas, and I spent the next several months rewriting—adding 24K words, changing the POV, and writing with a women’s fiction audience in mind. I ended up with a manuscript that finally felt right.

The journey to publication is infamous for being long and relentless, but enjoying the small accomplishments along the way (and the writing, of course!) is what keeps me motivated. Putting ideas into words, sharing work with others, getting a personalized rejection, receiving a request, winning a contest—these are all achievements that require courage and are worth celebrating. And the writing community, including myself, will always be happy to celebrate with you!

Here are some of my tips for making your query stand out:

  • If you’re new to querying, check out Query Shark, published authors’ blogs, Writer’s Digest, and craft books.
  • Keep the 250 word count in mind, but only at the end. When you first start, just write. You’re more likely to have gems if you’re whittling down.
  • Avoid clichés, generalities, and obvious stakes. Use unique words to convey your voice (and do this in your manuscript as well).
  • Cut out every word that’s not essential. Too much detail bogs the story down.
  • When you think your query is ready, get fresh eyes on it—family (my husband read a thousand versions of my pitch), friends, and other writers you meet through Twitter. Start with those familiar with your book, then end with people who know nothing about it. The latter will help identify confusing elements and will let you know if the pitch as a whole is not grabbing enough. Then, seize every critique opportunity by entering contests.

You can read Gloria’s winning pitch for AMERICAN PANDA here.

About Gloria:

I earned a bachelor’s degree from MIT and graduated magna cum laude from Tufts Dental—the perfect Taiwanese-American daughter. Except I wasn’t happy. To get through practicing dentistry, I wrote. It took years to gather the strength to push my dental career aside, against my parent’s wishes, to pursue writing full-time. Our relationship suffered, but my most recent novel, AMERICAN PANDA, strengthened our bond by forcing me to ask questions I never dared before. Now, my mother and I laugh about fermented tofu and setups with the perfect Taiwanese boy (though I think she still worries about my expiring ovaries).

You can find out more about Gloria at her website and on twitter.

Website: https://gloriachao.wordpress.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gloriacchao

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