Why I love reading Simenon

I've been on a bit of a Simenon kick after reading The Man Who Watched Trains Go By. Having enjoyed that book immensely, I decided to try my hand at The Strangers In the House. I'm not not to far into the book, but already in the first chapter, I found another glaring example of Simenon's simple mastery of writing riveting prose. I'm not giving anything away, since the flap copy on the book details it specifically, by telling you that the book opens with the main character, Loursat, discovering that someone has been shot in an upstairs room of his house. In the scene below, Simenon -- in perfectly crafted prose, not an extra bit of fat or superfluous description -- captures the moment of discovery when Loursat first hears the sound of a gunshot. Read a bit:

Normally few sounds reached him in his study. There was Joséphine, of course, who slept in a room immediately above. She went upstairs at exactly ten o'clock every night, and stumped about overhead for a good half hour before finally getting into bed.

But Phine had got into bed at least an hour ago. The sound he had just heard was quite an unusual one, in fact it was precisely its strangeness that had roused Loursat from his torpor.

At first he thought of the crack of a whip, a common enough sound to hear in the early morning when the garbage-men went on their rounds.

But this noise hadn't come from outside. Nor was it the crack of a whip. There was more weight in it than that, more percussion, so much so that he had felt a slight shock in his chest before his ears actually heard it.

As he looked up, listening, the expression on his face was one of slight annoyance at the intrusion. It might have been taken for anxiety, but it wasn't that.

What was so impressive was the silence that followed. A silence more compact, more positive than any ordinary one, but which yet seemed full of strained vibrations.

He didn't get up from his chair at once. He filled his glass, emptied it, put his cigarette back in his mouth, then heaved himself up and went over to the door, where he listened for a second before opening it.

When he switched on the light in the passage, three dusty lamps lit up receding stretches of emptiness. There was no one there, nothing except that weighty tense silence.

"Nicole!" he called softly.

He was certain now that it was a shot that he had heard. He still tried to persuade himself that it might have come from outside, but he didn't really believe it.

That description of the silence is so taut and perfect that it carries you out of the room, taking you all the way upstairs to the mysterious location of the gun shot. You are no longer standing with Loursat. Instead you are in the room, hearing the echo of the gun, standing with all parties involved, caught up in that tense moment of aftershock, when everyone is still can't believe what has just happened. Then Simenon takes you back downstairs, back to Loursat, to share his disbelief in the sound he just heard.

Now that's writing.

Paying the Bills

It’s tough being a starving artist.... Or a starving writer for that matter.

Then again it always has been. Publishing seems to go through this cyclical lament of the loss of the glory days every other year or so. “The market is fragmented!” “People are too occupied with TV, video games, and DVDs!” “Even the big authors are not selling!”

Perhaps, perhaps not. Keep in mind that most of the big authors we worship as the giants upon which the industry is built starved just as much as today’s small-to-midlist authors. Hell, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book royalties for 1932 and 1933 combined equaled out to a measly $50. That sucks even by Depression standards. And keep in mind that he had already published The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise by then. Bukowski, for all his bravado and debauchery, made sure his ass was at the post office everyday, on time, so he could keep a steady paycheck rolling in. Kurt Vonnegut worked in a PR firm in Schenectady, NY while writing Player Piano. He quit in 1951 to write full-time but still worked day jobs that included running a car dealership and the lowest of the low for an author -- writing ad copy. Whenever I hear someone complain about not having enough time to write or not having a means to “focus on the art,” I love to throw “Yeah, but Vonnegut wrote ad copy” back at them.

To be even-handed, Publishing in many ways has become its own worst enemy. The advances being paid for horrible non-fiction books, faux-memoirs (that wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny from a five-year-old), and irrelevant scribblings by bloggers who are great at duping publishers into thinking they have an audience are sickening.

Apparently Harper Collins agrees. That’s why they are launching a new “publishing studio” (bloody ‘ell, just call it an imprint and don’t get creative with the buzz words). The new imprint under the control of Robert S. Miller, founder of Hyperion, will pay either low advances or no cash up front at all. They will however set up a 50/50 profit split with its authors.

In essence, Harper Collins is saying authors are a problem. A bit like a crackhead saying his dealer is the problem. Publishers have been just as guilty at the rise in advances for shoddy books as agents and authors themselves. But in some cases they do have a point. Authors have become greedy over the past few years. So have agents. And these huge advances usually have more to do with agent egos than with the quality of a manuscript. Even worse, often these multi-million dollar advances are signed off on before word one is written. Someone is deemed as “having an audience” or “industry contacts,” and boom, in rolls the check. The new Harper Collins model puts the onus on selling books, rather than just supporting writers with blank checks.

Part of the problem is that the industry is struggling. It missed out. As television, movies, and music went digital, Publishing held fast to the idea that books don’t need to be digitized. Then once they realized that their audience was switching over to the digital world, they took half-assed steps to try and stop the bleeding. The lack of sales for eBooks has as much to do with the lag (or complete lack) of catalog digitization as it does with readers not adopting the technology. At best, most publishers have only 45% of their catalog available as eBooks. To be fair, one of the biggest hold-ups in books that would be instant top-sellers in an e-book format: authors or author estates who either don’t grasp the shift towards digital books or simply fear it.

Being an author who has openly embraced podcasting his novel and making the full text available as PDFs (both completely free of charge), I’m not so worried about living large. I have a day job, it pays me well, I’m really good at it. I think I’m a hell of a writer, but that’s debatable depending on who you ask. Do I hope to be a successful writer someday? Sure. But if Jimmy Lerner were here, he’d remind me, “You’ve got nothin’ comin’.” Simply put, I’m not greedy. I’m just happy writing. Beats the shit out of playing golf. That’s why I published my book under a break-even business model. Anything extra is gravy to feed the cat and spoil my girlfriend.

Already, some of you are probably crying foul. “Writers shouldn’t have to write on spec!” Anyone who has tried writing a screenplay or been caught up in the Hollywood system knows that. And the new Harper Collins imprint model assumes that they actually know how to market a book. There is a toilet paper roll millions of miles long with a list of books that were grossly misunderstood by their publisher and ineffectively marketed. For many books, the extent of the marketing plan is to publish the book. Don’t count on print ads, PR work, or even (cue the laughter) banner advertising or blog outreach. Writers these days cannot stick their heads in the sand and hope for book sales. They have to market themselves using everything from book sharing sites to podcasts to free PDFs to Facebook ads.

But hear me out. The simple fact is that good writers, writers whose books sell, will still get advances. Simply put, they’ll have the sales to back up their paycheck. New writers or independent writers will have to keep struggling and pay the bills by any means necessary. Vonnegut, Bukowski, and Fitzgerald found a way. Why not us?

However there are always options. Take my good friend Tim Hall. He just launched a program called Author Shares. Think of it as an independent National Endowment for the Arts solely dedicated to authors. People buy shares, for as low as $1, and the money goes to independent authors or small presses that want to finance print runs or PR campaigns or merely pay the damn rent.

The point of this very long ramble is this: authors always find a way. If you love writing, you’ll do it regardless of the paycheck. Last time I checked, Motorhead are still making albums.