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Fiction in Flux

Posted on: May 24th, 2012 by Warren Adler No Comments

For fiction writers in search of a publishing outlet, these are the best of times. For fiction writers in search of readers, this is the worst of times. For fiction writers in search of monetary rewards it is, for most, a disaster.

The challenges for genre fiction writers, those who fashion their stories within the confines of categories such as mysteries, romance, fantasy, zombies, vampires, erotic, and all the subgenres within them, are enormous. If such writers are unbranded and unknown, the odds of finding readership traction in an arena where thousands enter the fray daily are daunting.

An Experiment in Self-Publishing for the Non-Genre Novelist: Part One

Posted on: April 24th, 2012 by Warren Adler 6 Comments

A decade’s worth of experience in pioneering e-books and non-traditional methods of publishing novels.

The Sunset Gang: A Journey from Page to PBS to Musical

Posted on: April 19th, 2012 by Warren Adler 1 Comment

A number of years ago, Larry Russell Brown and I met at the Donna Reed Festival in Denison, Iowa. Larry is a songwriter whose credits include such perennial favorites as “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” “C’mon Marianne,” “Knock Three Times,” and many others. We were each invited to speak to high school students as part of the festival.

We had time on our hands, since there was little to do once our talks were over, and would sit around discussing our careers and how we saw our future projects. I told him about the eleven stories that Viking had just published titled “The Sunset Gang.” The president of Viking at the time, Tom Guinzburg, had given the manuscript to his mother to read and he reported that she was so taken with the stories that he just had to publish them.

The E-Book Dilemma

Posted on: April 17th, 2012 by Warren Adler 2 Comments

So now that the pricing structure of e-books has been resolved once and for all, where does that leave the authors, without whom the publishers, their employees, and agents might be on food stamps?

Once the gatekeepers of the printed word, the power of the publishing community has been severely diminished by the indifferent scythe of technology. The e-book intrusion on their vaunted system of cultural filtration has been breached and they are now forced to compete with anyone who believes they have something to say that will add to our knowledge, entertainment and cultural advancement, once the exclusive purview of the publisher-chosen printed book.

Voting Maybe

Posted on: April 13th, 2012 by Warren Adler No Comments

I no longer take anything at face value. Like Freud asking, “What do women want?” I find myself asking this question without regard to gender, embellishing it further with yet other questions like: “What does he or she really mean?” or “What is he or she thinking?” or “What does he or she want me to believe?”

Perhaps, being steeped in the irony of my profession as a novelist, I am getting paranoid. I have discovered that I am developing a kind of shell, an armor, that is trying to protect me from manipulation. My level of distrust has expanded exponentially as I grow older. I find I am resisting all manner of attempts to persuade me about anything. As a result, I have discovered that I am subliminally blocking out all forms of commercial or political attempts at manipulating me to act in the manner that serves other people’s agendas.

Let’s Hear it for the Self-Published Author

Posted on: April 9th, 2012 by Warren Adler 5 Comments

It is no small thing to write a book. It takes dedication, concentration, discipline, singleness of purpose, long hours of isolation and, above all, ideas. Years ago, before the rise of the Internet and the ease of digitization and the proliferation of e-readers, those who self-published were considered the bottom of the publishing barrel, rejected by mainline and established publishers, ignored by agents and dismissed as ego-centric wannabes.

For many who had hopes and dreams of obtaining authorial credentials by being taken on by the publishers who controlled the marketplace and the distribution chain, the prospects were grim to nil. Publishers and agents relegated their manuscripts to what the industry referred to as the “slush pile” and most, if not all manuscripts, were returned unread by clerks who inserted printed rejection slips and returned the manuscripts in self-postage ready envelopes.

What Is a Literary Novel?

Posted on: April 2nd, 2012 by Warren Adler 1 Comment

I have been baffled for years over what constitutes the definition of a “literary” novel. Over the course of my career, I have heard numerous definitions, but none quite resonate for me as the one gold standard, definitive answer.

In search of this definition, I am tempted to discount all of the various genre novels, many of which are well written and exemplary, but they do suggest formula and have been slotted by common publishing practice to fit a category that does not suggest “literary.”

Our Comic Book Culture

Posted on: July 25th, 2011 by Warren Adler 4 Comments

I’m not sure when I gave up my love for the comics. I suppose it was around thirteen or fourteen when I became far more interested in reading books for young boys, mostly in series like Bomba the Jungle Boy, The Boy Allies, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift and others.

I would haunt the Stone Avenue Library in Brownsville, Brooklyn and walk home with as many books the library allowed, gobbling up the stories like popcorn. I suppose I still read the comics but with declining interest. Perhaps I preferred to imagine the characters instead of seeing them laid out for me with little balloons of dialogue.

A Confession

Posted on: July 8th, 2011 by Warren Adler 3 Comments

For more than thirty years people have asked if my book The War of the Roses, a story about the nasty breakup of a marriage with bizarre and fatal consequences, is autobiographical. It is not. I have been married to the same lovely lady for sixty years.

A Book Worth Reading

Posted on: July 7th, 2011 by Warren Adler No Comments

Just finished reading “In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin,” by Erik Larson. It deals with the life, trials and tribulations of the American Ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, in the crucial years of Hitler’s rise to power. In what must be a gargantuan feat of research, Larson has read everything he could gets his hands on in the period including memoirs from ex-Nazi’s, communists, family friends and lovers of the Ambassador’s flirtatious daughter Martha, to weave together a most remarkable tapestry.

Just the Six of Us

Posted on: June 21st, 2011 by Warren Adler 2 Comments

We are six of us staying now in the house in Beaulieu. It is not an easy task to get six people corralled into doing a single thing, except dining. My son Jonathan and his wife are heavy duty athletes and demand strenuous activity.

Villefranche-sur-Mer

Posted on: June 8th, 2011 by Warren Adler 1 Comment

Last night I had dinner at Le Cosmo a little restaurant at the port at Villefranche-sur-Mer where we went to school a few years ago learn French. Unfortunately, we failed at fluency. But contrary to prevailing opinion we found all those we asked for help to be wonderfully foregoing and eager to please. But then I always reject prevailing opinion. Today started out sunny and gorgeous. We took a long walk to St. John Cap Ferrat for lunch along a beautiful walk from the little beach at Beaulieu to the little line of restaurants around the port. Unfortunately the rainclouds arrived and we just made it back to our car.…

Off to Beaulieu

Posted on: May 30th, 2011 by Warren Adler 1 Comment

Sunny and I are leaving for a month on the Riviera, the beautiful village of Beaulieu a few miles from Nice. We know the area having spent a month in a nearby town Ville France Sur Mer at a school trying to learn French, my lifetime dream. Never did learn properly although I manage mostly using a small phrase intoned with a perfect accent. Je voudrais, meaning “I want”, then I mime the request. Works most of the time.

The villa we’re renting is owned by my friends Jon Pierre and Suzy Farout and apparently has hosted a number of scribblers like myself. In addition to entertaining children and friends I’ll be spending my time writing poetry and short stories to feed my compulsive writing obsession, reading Balzac and Simenon, sipping fine wine and enjoying my lifetime love and palship with Sunny.

We’ll be taking long walks on Cap Ferrat, a bit of gambling in Monaco, and then visits to St.…

The Real Warren Adler

Posted on: March 1st, 2011 by Warren Adler 1 Comment

For nearly sixty years I used to think that I was the only Warren Adler in the world. In school, from elementary to college, in the United States Army where I served and in my career as a writer. Up to then I had never met or even heard about another Warren Adler.

It made me believe that my parents had given me a name so unique that it couldn’t be replicated. I was told I was named after a great grandfather whose name was “Wolf” and my Hebrew name is Zev, which means Wolf.

I have a feeling, although never admitted by my parents, that the name Warren was suggested by the President Warren Harding, who died in office four years before my parents were married.

How I Got the Idea: The War of the Roses

Posted on: January 19th, 2011 by Warren Adler 4 Comments

It’s been thirty years since the novel The War of the Roses was published and twenty one years since the movie version with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner was released.

In that time this cautionary tale about the perils of divorce and the destructive power of materialism which burst upon the public consciousness, has not only become part of the world wide zeitgeist, but it has morphed into the nomenclature of divorce, both as a legal description and a symbolic description of a marriage breakup’s ultimate consequences.

The Dangers of Historical Ignorance

Posted on: January 11th, 2011 by Warren Adler 2 Comments

The aftermath of the attempted assassination of Congressman Gabrielle Giffords and the senseless killings of bystanders has exposed those who create the media conversation in America as appallingly ignorant of American history.

What is most egregious is that some of our major and normally respected media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post and numerous talk show hosts have showcased their ignorance by attempting to pin the blame on political hate speech much of it emanating from the conservative end of the political spectrum.

Official Amazon Press Release: Bestselling Author Warren Adler Releases Five New E-Books Exclusively in the Kindle Store

Posted on: December 13th, 2010 by Warren Adler 3 Comments

SEATTLE, Dec. 13, 2010 – Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that bestselling author Warren Adler has made five e-books, none of which have been previously published in any format, available in the Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore). These books, all of which draw from Adler’s skill as a novelist and his keen insight into the nature of intimate human relationships, will also be available in print editions through CreateSpace. All five books in the series – “The David Embrace,” “Flanagan’s Dolls,” “The Womanizer,” “Residue” and “Empty Treasures”—are available for sale today for $7.95 with the e-books exclusive to the Kindle Store for two years.

Five Original Novels Launched on Kindle and Amazon Books.

Posted on: December 12th, 2010 by Warren Adler 1 Comment

This week I have chosen to launch five original novels simultaneously and exclusively on the Kindle and on Amazon books as a trade print edition.

It represents another revolutionary marketing concept in what is the rapidly changing publishing world. Although my many novels and short story collections are available on all platforms and all devices, the exclusivity of these five titles further pushes the concept of what I believe will eventually be a major factor in an author’s ability to find readers in a world that will shortly offer an astounding number of books that will soon approach the multi-millions.

Tag: Warren Adler

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