Trump Will Win a Second Term

When I started submitting Come the Harpies to agents and publishers, I was hoping that the novel would be picked up quickly. That's because many of its themes are relevant to the social and political situation we find ourselves in today, largely as an outcome of Trump's horrific performance as president. I figured that my dystopian effort would be far more compelling to an audience while Trump was in office, assuming that America would wise up and kick him out on November 3. 

Now, I'm not so sure that we will be swearing in a new president in 2021. 

Come the Harpies projects what things will be like 50 years from now based on what's happening in America today. It's a nation where all citizens are required to carry guns; where laws regulating the environment, food processing, worker safety, oil production and much more are wiped off the books. It's a country where a small group of business plutocrats hold absolute power and where immigration is banned and non-white people have been sent into exile or conscripted into slavery. 

Needless to say, it's a nasty, smelly, violent place on the verge of environmental apocalypse.

In other words, it's what the nation would be like after 50 years of Trump-like, white supremacist rule.  The most terrifying thing is since I finished the manuscript, the nation is taking on more and more of the aspects depicted in its pages. It's playing less as a satire and more like a prophecy.

Trump is following the same playbook that others like Putin, Xi, Orben, Erdogen, Hitler, and Mussolini employed to install authoritarian rule. And it seems to be working. Trump has finally latched on to a winning strategy--at least a strategy that won him his first term. And that strategy is fear.

Fear is the strongest human emotion. Nothing stokes human response more than fear. And Trump knows how to push those buttons. 

So much to fear:

• Fear that growing numbers of brown and black people will overwhelm white privilege. 
• Fear that the Dems will take your guns away. 
• Fear that the Dems will take away your religion, your unborn babies, your right to use incandescent light bulbs. 
• Fear that "those people" will take away your job and suck up all your government benefits. 
• Fear that the Dems will make you drive electric cars, take away your oil and coal, and close down the country just because of some stupid flu virus. 
• Fear that your business will have to serve diverse-gender people. 
• And the biggest fear of all: that Dems will make the government spend much less on military stuff and much more on healthcare, college tuition, infrastructure, childcare and other non-essential things. 

While the basis for most of these fears is unfounded, ridiculous, and completely ginned up by the extreme right, the feeling of fear across vast swaths of America is quite authentic. This can be attributed to the blunt force of Trump's American Carnage messaging supported by his incredibly effective propaganda machine embodied by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and various websites. 

It's sad, but logic, truth, facts, empathy, love, and competence are all ground under the boot heel of fear. We've evolved to make fear the paramount emotion because human survival depends on our ability to react to danger--and to Trump, that danger is Democrats. 

So for all the decency and effective leadership that Biden represents, I can't help thinking that Trump has a winning formula for a large portion of the vote--just scare the bejesus out of people! Between that, voter suppression and the absurd Electoral College, I fear November 3 could be a very long night.

Of course a Trump victory would be good for my book, which lays out in detail what to expect after another four years of Trump, and beyond. On the other hand, I truly hope that November 3 is not a good day for my book.

America could use some good news.

Why I Won't Self-Publish Come the Harpies

It's been said that every person has a book in him/her. In the past, however, few people bothered to actually sit at a typewriter and crank out the masterpiece within them. Today, it's so easy to write a book, that everyone seems to be writing, even those who don't have much of anything to say.

In the days when books were written on yellow pads and typewriters (like my first novel), you had to be highly motivated to grind out drafts and then deal with the dense cross-outs, marginal scrawls, Wite Out spillage, and flaking correction tape that comprised the editing process. 

Then came the personal computer and the ease of producing draft after draft with minimal mechanical effort. Now you can even dictate a draft into a computer without your fingers even touching a keyboard. So easy, in fact, everybody got into the book-writing game. 

The rub, however, is most people do not understand the massive effort it takes to write a marketable book and tend to overrate their own efforts. Worst of all, they try to publish before they've produced a polished manuscript. They haven't rewritten enough, enlisted professional editorial assistance, or subjected their drafts to a thorough proofread. They submit their masterpieces to agents and publishers anyway and get rejected and dejected.

Then we come to today, where it's even easier to write and submit books to publishers and agents. Everything is done through email, which means submitting is cheap and easy. Also it means agents who used to deal with a few dozen submissions a week a couple decades ago, are now bombarded with hundreds a week. That's the reality I'm facing with my book, in which I've invested countless hours and many dollars to make as commercially viable as possible. Only to see it rejected by agents who don't have the time to read it.

There's always self-publishing, which is also easier than ever. There are a slew of vendors who can design covers, format ebooks, and, if you choose, print as many copies as you want on demand. But the problem with many self-published books is they're poorly written and, as a result, don't sell very well. Indie writers who have skimped on the editorial process and published books with typos and grammatical errors tend to discourage readers and cast an overall bad light on the indie market.

Of course success can be found in this market. According to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos,  almost 1,000 self-published authors earned at least $100,000 on the Amazon platform in 2019. But that kind of success is rare. According to Bowker, the number of self-published books grew to more 1.6 million(!) in 2018 (the most recent year available).  So the odds of making a decent amount of money in self-publishing don't sound very good to me. 

I've dabbled in self-publishing, and the thing you quickly learn is that you end up spending as much energy marketing, networking, and otherwise promoting your books as you do writing them. And marketing books remains a puzzle to me, even after a long career selling investment products. Book promotion is hit or miss and can waste a lot of time and money.

But, look, if you write romance and erotica, crime and mystery, religious, or science fiction books, there's a chance you could find self-published success, since these are the hottest categories for indie authors.

But the main reason I will not self-publish Come the Harpies is because I don't wanna. I'm retired and I just want to write good books. If my novel does get picked up by a publisher, I'll be more than happy to take an active role to promote it. That's the deal.

Why Do People Read Novels?

I had a long and successful career as a marketing communications writer in the financial services industry. I learned early on that successful marketing requires an ability to make an emotional connection with the customer. In other words, your brochure, website, tweets, video, emailer must show how your product can make your prospects feel smarter, lovelier, sexier, more popular, or cooler. 

Doesn't matter what you're selling, every customer is a human and every human has certain desires. Keeping those needs uppermost in mind, my brochures sold a lot of sexy mutual funds and annuities! 

It appears the same thing is true when seeking success as a novelist. Know your audience. Start with the question: Why do people read fiction?  I think people read for the same reason they watch movies, stream Netflix, go to plays, attend ball games, art galleries, concerts, etc. They seek escape. They want to leave their troubled world for a while and immerse themselves in someone else's.

Writers eagerly embrace the demand--purple romances for the love-obsessed, mysteries for those who like to solve puzzles, fantasy for those who want to leave this world entirely, high-brow literary tomes for those who never stop being English majors. Authors who are successful in any of these genres have a sophisticated understanding of their audience and know how to push their buttons.

Unfortunately, I don't write fiction that way.  You see, marketing communications was my job and I was good at it. But I didn't find it rewarding. I wrote novels in my spare time, which I did find very rewarding-- and fun. It was my escape from my troubled world. It freed me from having to write with a single-minded focus on a commercial audience. 

My books are written for an audience of one: me! I write the kind of books that I like to read. I never get tired of reading my books--maybe it's the voice, the characters, the style, the themes, my narcissism. 

But the risk of writing for an audience of one is that such a bespoke approach will never appeal to a mass audience, which is required to win a publisher's interest.

While that is frustrating, to say the least, I don't envy successful authors of romance, mystery, fantasy, YA, and other standard genres. Because they are locked into writing a certain kind of book, otherwise their audiences will abandon them. Thus, writing book after book becomes a job and they are required to churn out the same thing year after year. 

Not much different than being a marketing communications writer in the financial services industry.