Podcast: PEN / Sol Literary Magazine Reading Series, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Stone of Kings, Spiritist Manual

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN to the new podcast:

Gerard Helferich, author of Stone of Kings: In Search of the Lost Jade of the Maya, and C.M. Mayo (Yours Truly), translator of Francisco I. Madero's secret book of 1911, Spiritist Manual. Introduced by Eva Hunter, editor of Sol Literary Magazine. Recorded on February 22, 2012 in the café of Biblioteca Pública, San Miguel de Allende. *57 minutes.

(My talk starts at 26:36. You'll notice background noise throughout; the café had a burpy-slurpy cappuccino maker and, next door, a well-attended kindergarten. But the microphone for the readers seemed loud enough.)

More podcasts:

>All C.M. Mayo podcasts (master list)

>Conversations with Other Writers, an occasional series
So far: Sara Mansfield Taber, Solveig Eggerz, Rosemary Sullivan

>Podcasts for Writers (tips and more)

>Marfa Mondays Project 2012-2013: Exploring Marfa, Texas & Environs in 24 Podcasts
One podcast per month until the end of 2013. The most recent: Charles Angell in the Big Bend. Up next: Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony.

>The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire
Includes my lecture at the Library of Congress and the Historical Society of Washington

>Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico
Some excerpts about Bob van Wormer and the Jesuits in San Ignacio

>Mexico: A Literary Traveler's Companion
A reading of the prologue (a good basic introduction, if I do say myself, to contemporary Mexican writing)

So, yeah, I am totally into podcasts! I'll be offering a workshop on podcasting for writers at the Writer's Center, near Washington DC, this summer (details to be announced), and meanwhile, after our chat in San Miguel de Allende last week, novelist Sandra Gulland spilled the beans over at her blog. Merci beaucoup, amiga!

My Excellent (If Occasionally Head-Banging) E-Book Adventure

What do best-selling historical novelist Sandra Gulland, marketing guru Seth Godin, genre-writer Joe Konrath, spirituality writer Mare Cromwell, goddess and tarot expert Kris Waldherr, and Kevin (What Technology Wants) Kelly have in common? They've all made a foray into the swashbuckling and glitch-ridden landscape of self-publishing e-books. Add Yours Truly to the growing list. No, I have not abandoned my publishers, but I am publishing some of my own e-books.

In 2009, when Unbridled Books published the hardcover edition of my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, they didn't waste more than a moment before bringing out the e-book. It was news in 2009, though it isn’t anymore: the e-book market is exploding. And what of my other books? Like the above-mentioned writers, with several books published more than a few years ago, I own the digital rights because my various publishers didn't care to keep them or, going further back in time, didn't even contemplate them in their contracts. I figured, how difficult can it be to upload an e-book? So I expanded my writing workshop company, Dancing Chiva, into publishing and, voila: a catalog of e-books.

Miraculous Air, my memoir of travels through Mexico's nearly 1,000 mile-long Baja California peninsula, is the one I am most delighted to have been able to turn into an e-book. Based on my travels in the late 1990s, it's a book I put both shoulders and heart into, and even now, more than a decade later, I think it's one of the best things I've written. Originally published in hardcover by University of Utah Press, and still in print in a paperback edition from Milkweed Editions, it has found many readers over the years but, I know, travel books are the most fun to read en route, yet, with suitcase space at a premium, even the most avid readers often pass them up. Got a Kindle? Problem solved.

But preparing e-books-- as Kevin Kelly's blog posts should have warned me-- has not been as easy as I anticipated. First, one has to prepare an absolutely clean unformatted Word doc, a tedious and frustrating task when it comes to a nearly 500 page book originally written in Wordperfect. (True, for a fee, I could have farmed out that job, but I wanted to learn how this works.) It turns out that, though one can convert a Wordperfect to a Word doc easily, when it then goes through the program for e-books, the punctuation comes out all whichwaysly wacky. (What to do with a 500 page manuscript where every dash is now a question mark?!) Then, the programs for converting Word docs to Kindle are riddled with glitches: figuring out how to address these required many hours with my computer coach (bless you, Rubén Pacheco). Then, there are more decisions than turn-offs on the highway through LA: ISBN? Tags? Which comes first, the Kindle or the Nook? PDF or iBook? How to navigate amazon.com, itunes, and etc? Which program to use for the cover? Cover image? Font? What to do with the maps?! What price?

And now, publicity. Ayyy... Buy my books here. Read all about Miraculous Air. Kindle version of Miraculous Air here.

In sum, I have been getting an all new appreciation for the multifaceted and time-consuming work publishers do. What I want to do is, um, write.

But here's the elephant: sometimes, for some books, a traditional publisher is not the answer. And nor are brick-and-mortar bookstores. As I told Jada Bradley in a recent interview for inReads.com:

"There are several works I want to publish but that I know are not commercial, so in attempting to place them with an agent or directly with a publisher, I would be wasting my time and theirs. But I believe in these works; I know they have readers, relatively few as they may be. For example, this November, I am publishing my translation— the first into English– of Francisco I. Madero’s Spiritist Manual. Mexican historians have written about this unusual and little-known work, and it certainly deserves to be brought out in English with a proper introduction. Why not for its centennial?"

Later this year I will also be publishing an e-book edition of a very unusual memoir of 1860s Mexico, from the Bancroft Library, Marie de la Fere's My Recollections of Maximilian. In writing my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, I came upon this and several other works (most in the public domain) that I would love to be able to bring out of the musty back shelves of libraries and share; with Dancing Chiva, I now have the platform to do it.

Similarly, my essay, "From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion," about a journey to the Emperor of Mexico's castle in Trieste, Italy, is not, on its own, long enough to interest a traditional book publisher. (They prefer to publish books with spines.) But there are people interested in Maximilian and Trieste, and willing to pay a small fee, thank you very much, to download the e-book.

Nonetheless, when I have a new novel, believe me, I will send it to Unbridled Books because they know how to get reviews, get the book out of the haystack and into quality bookstores. We can't be all things to all people. Time is scarce. As someone who writes, I am glad indeed that there are people out there who want to take manuscripts and turn them into books, and then find those books readers.

So what would I advise other writers about self-publishing their e-books? There's no formula; what's right for one writer with one title, might be different for a different writer or a different title. First, check in with your intentions. Second, make a realistic assessment of the costs and benefits. (I have more to say about intentions here.)

Alas, a realistic assessment of costs and benefits is not easy. My own experience, including my recent adventures in e-book publishing, has shown me that writers tend to underestimate the amount of work publishers do.

Though publishing e-books has been more time-consuming than I anticipated, knowing what I know now, I would still bring my older books into digital editions under my own imprint and publish works I believe in but that would not appeal to a traditional publisher. On the other hand, I want to spend most of my time writing, so when it makes sense for me and for them, I will continue to work with established publishers. But when it doesn't make sense, how wonderful to be able to publish what I want to publish! The amazing thing is, this is true now for anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and the determination to do it.


SURF ON:

Deborah Batterman, "Self Publish(?) or Perish: 5 Links on the New Digital Imperative"

Daniel Crown, "The E-Reader Boom Begins"

Kevin Kelly (of Wired fame) on Screenpublishing

Kindle Direct Publishing video tutorial and step-by-step instructions

Novelist Sandra Gulland, "E-Books: Feast or Famine for Writers?"

Novelist Nina Vida, "How One Writer is Riding the E-Book Revolution"

Seth Godin, "You Should Write an Ebook"

Joe Konrath "What Works: Promo for Ebooks"

Nate Hoffelder, "Vook Explains Why $3, $4 or even $9.99 Isn't Always the Best Price for an eBook"

Christian Harder, "E-Reader Reality Check: 4 Limitations to Consider"

C.M. Mayo, "At Play in the Fields of Keynote: A note on designing e-book covers"

Susan Coll's 5 Favorite Comic Novels

The best novelists are sociologists with a wicked sense of humor. In her widely celebrated novels Beach Week, Acceptance, and Rockville Pike, my amiga Susan Coll has upward-striving suburbia nailed. This month Picador has released the paperback edition of Beach Week, so click on through and get your chuckles. Here's what this master of the genre has to say about some of her own comic reading. Over to you, Susan.

Now there is a pig in this world named “Super Sad True Love Story,” the thought of which is nearly as funny as Gary Shteyngart’s self-same novel, winner of this year’s Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. It’s encouraging to see an American--even one who came by way of Russia--win this award, which usually goes to a Brit. A few pages into Super Sad it occured to me that this book does have something of a British sensibility in that Shteyngart's humor relies on the mortification of his male protagonist. This got me thinking about my favorite comic novels--or at least books that had me doubled over in laughter, and I have to confess that the British do seem to have a lock on the sort of droll, dark humor that typically does me in. As do, apparently, men--which is at least the sort of observation that helps get me out of bed and to my keyboard each morning.

1. Our Man in Havana, By Graham Greene (1958), in which a cash-strapped vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba is pressed into service by British intelligence to hilarious effect, and which, I only just learned from Wikipedia, was made into not just a film but an opera and a play.

2. Burmese Days, by George Orwell (1934), which you can read free, on-line, and which amazon describes as a mix of E.M. Forster and Jane Austen. “Stir in a bit of socialist doctrine, a sprig of satire, strong Indian curry, and a couple quarts of good English gin and you get something close to the flavor . . .”

3. A Good Man in Africa, by William Boyd (1982), about a hapless British diplomat in a fictitious African country in the fledgling days of independence. I wrote about this last summer for NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126501855

4. The Wimbledon Poisoner, by Nigel Williams (1994), a suburban comedy about a man who tries to murder his wife. Confession: I read this so long ago that really all I remember is my own hysterical laughter. While I can’t vouch for how well it holds up, I can tell you who borrowed my book and failed to give it back, so perhaps you can consult with him.

5. Memories of the Ford Administration, by John Updike (1992). Odd that Updike, not known for his comedy, should be the token American on my list. I worked up the nerve to approach him at a conference many years ago, and told him how much I loved this novel. He seemed surprised, and said something about having almost forgotten writing it. I later told this to a book critic who scoffed and said, “minor Updike.” Minor Updike! The definition of an oxymoron? Or the fate, too often, of comic fiction?

--- Susan Coll

---> For the archive of Madam Mayo guest blog posts, click here.
Previous guest-blogger novelists include Janice Eidus; Sandra Gulland; Daniel Olivas; Leslie Pietrzyk; Joanna Smith Rakoff; and Porter Shreve.

Guestblogger Roberta Rich on 5 + 1 Top Books to Inform a 16th Century Historical Thriller

To write, one must first read, and to write historical fiction, goodness, one's reading can get exotic indeed. It's a very special delight to host my fellow novelist-- and a fellow English language writer-in-Mexico-- Roberta Rich, author of the hot-off-the-presses The Midwife of Venice (Random House Doubleday Canada), an historical thriller about a Jewish midwife who breaks the law and endangers the Venetian ghetto by delivering a Christian baby. As Rich herself puts it, "When in a facetious mood, which is often, she describes her book and being the story of a nice Jewish girl with really poor impulse control, who lived in 16th century Venice." Roberta currently lives in Colima, the Eden-like lime capital of Mexico, perhaps most famous as the fictional "Comala" of novelist Juan Rulfo.

5 + 1 Books to Inform a 16th Century Historical
Thriller
by Roberta Rich

My life as a writer of historical thrillers is not an easy one. I need to know how people in the 16th century cooked their food, went to the bathroom, had sex, had babies, and thought about
their spouses and their children. What kind of clothes did people wear in 16th Constantinople and how they washed them? The six books I schlepped down to Mexico this year to answer these and other pesky questions as I worked on the
sequel to The Midwife of Venice were:

1. The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York
by Claudia Rodan
This is a cookbook, history book, family memoir, and account of the Jewish Diaspora. Rodan is a culinary Scheherazade. I am not tempted to prepare any of the recipes, not being a lover of stuffed lung or cholent but I eagerly await her next book. Rodan’s writing is as personal and intimate as if she was chatting to you in your Aunt Rivka’s kitchen making kugel. (>>More Jewish recipes click here.)


2. Court Midwife
by Justine Siegemund
This remarkable woman, midwife to the Hapsburg family in Germany in the 1700’s, wrote a manual of childbirth practices complete with beautiful engravings. The tone of the book, instructional and reassuring, is written as a dialogue between herself and an apprentice. The book is an insight into how surprisingly advanced the knowledge
of obstetrics was in those days. (>>More reading here.)

3. Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light
by Jane Brox
The breadth covered by Brox is staggering―- from burning lumps of stinking fat in the Pleistocene age, to tallow and beeswax candles in early modern history to the wearable LEDs of present day. I bought it for my husband who is an energy economist. Poor guy. He hasn’t had a chance to look at it yet and it was a Christmas present.

4. Turkish Embassy Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Lady Montagu was the wife of the English Ambassador to Turkey in 1716 and a keen observer of women in Ottoman Turkey. Her observations are interesting, sometimes a bit tart, but never judgmental. One of her best letters is written to Lady Rich, who, my overheated imagination tells me, was an illustrious ancestor of mine. On her
deathbed Lady Montagu’s exit line was, “It had all been very interesting.”
(>>More reading on Turkish harems here.)

5. Everyday Life in Ottoman Turkey
by Raphaela Lewis
Ms. Lewis is a lover of all things Ottoman. Her book is rich in the kind of kinky and strange detail novelist need such as lead ladling as a means of foretelling the future and tales of the beloved Hoza Nasreddin, a Turkish figure in folklore and homespun philosopher. >>More reading on Turkish customs here.

6. The Perfect Red
by
Amy Butler Greenfield
Cochineal was a dye made from the bodies of crushed insects. It was introduced to Spain and then to the rest of Europe when Cortes saw it in the markets of Tenochtitlán in the early 1500’s. He realized its value as a dye, pigment for paints and a cosmetic. The villain in the book I am working on now, steals some of this precious dye and does something very nasty with it. Ms. Greenfield has a lovely website in which you can see a video of her, dying a piece of silk with cochineal.

--- Roberta Rich

---> For the archive of all Madam Mayo guestblog posts click here.

>>Most recent guest-blog: Novelist Ellen Meeropol on 5 Political Novels to Change the World

>>See also Novelist Solveig Eggerz on 5 Works of Historical Fiction and novelist Sandra Gulland on 5 Top Research Sites for Historical Novelists.

Blog Tour (What's a Blog Tour?) for The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano is out in Mexico, and so I'm south of the border for the time being (and happy to say, it's already gone into a second printing!). Meanwhile, the bookstore tour behind me (from DC to CA in 2009), I'm doing a fall U.S. "blog tour" for the English original, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, which is now out in paperback.

What's a "blog tour"? Just a series of "visits"-- it might be a Q & A or a guest-blog post, on blogs that cover subjects related to the book. In some cases my publisher, Unbridled Books, provided books for a giveaway to readers. It's a delightful kind of tour because I get to find out about other bloggers, reach out to new readers-- and not have to pack a suitcase!

So far:

Mary J. LohnesInterview with C.M. Mayo "The Politics of Love"

Latina Book ClubQ & A with blogger Maria Ferrer

HistoricalNovels.info
A review and an interview by blogger Margaret Donsbach

Hist-Fic-Chick: Celebrating History Through Literature
"Haunted Historicals: The Curious Coincidences Involving Senator Claiborne Pell's Mansion"
--> Now a podcast (and check out more podcasts on my page at iTunes).

Girls Just Reading "The Story of the Story of The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire"
Also: a review by Julie

Jenn's Bookshelves
An interview; also a review by Jenn.



Some previous stops on the "blog tour" (some from 2009) include:

Beatrice.com
"What Connects You to the 1860s?"

Work-in-Progress
"12 Tips to Help You Hang in There and Finish Your Novel"

Largehearted Boy
Playlist for The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

Red Room
C.M. Mayo Celebrates a Batch of Bookstores

Potomac Review Blog
"Who Knew That Mexico Had a Half-American Prince? (And How Did His Mother, a Washington Belle, End Up in Mexico?)"

Reading Group Guides
"A Book Group Meeting Menu"

Savvy Verse & Wit
Interview by Serena M. Agusto-Cox

Coffee with a Canine
C.M. Mayo & Picadou

Write On! On-line
Interview by Deborah Eckerling

Christina Baker Kline: Writing/Life"Break the Block in Five Minutes"

Critical Mass: The Blog of the National Book Critics Circle
Interview by Rigoberto Gonzalez



---> Coming up this week: She Read a Book blog


More anon.


P.S. Read more about blog tours at Diane Saarinen's Book Blog Tour Guide Blog; also historical novelist Sandra Gulland has an informative post at Red Room about her amazing 2009 blog tour for Mistress of the Sun.

Blogs Noted: C. Marina Marchese, Seth Godin, Savita, Another Bourgeois Dilemma, Sandra Gulland, David Agren, Frederick Ruess, Fred Ramey

Red Bee Blog
By C. Marina Marchese, author of Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper. I love what she's doing with honey and apitherapy-- and introducing the concept of terroir.

Seth Godin
Getting better at seeing.

Savita Blog
A nice design blog.

Another Bourgeois Dilemma
(Yeah, I have a lot of these. But not bike trips to Tuscany. I hate bike trips.)

Sandra Gulland
About research overload! By a brilliant novelist.

David Agren
Mexico City-based freelance journalist.

Frederick Reuss on Huffington Post
My fellow DC novelist and Unbridled Books author on "Secrecy and Censorship: Book Burning in the Era of E-Books" (Can a laptop spontaneously combust? Just wondering.)

Three Guys, One Book
A guestblog post by Fred Ramey about Unbridled Books.

More anon.

Book Trailers: Some Categories

Now that I have a couple of book trailers (view here and here), I am fascinated by the genre. What's a book trailer? It's a brief video or linked webpages that, ideally, tells you three things:

1. The title, author's name and what it's about;
3. Why you would want to read it;
3. When and where you can buy it.

Beyond that, it seems, whatever floats your boat. A few rough categories:

U Click

Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

TPA (Text, Photos, Audio, plus some move and transition effects)

Eric Barnes, Shimmer

C.M. Mayo, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

Masha Hamilton, 31 Hours

Chuck Palahniuk, Tell-All

Tim Wendel, High Heat

TPA Plus Film

Erica Perl, Vintage Veronica

M.J. Rose, The Reincarnationist

(It's Not a Movie Already?)

Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters, Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters

James Howard Kunstler, World Made By Hand

Patti Lacy, An Irishwoman's Tale

Author Stars

Anat Baniel, Move Into Life

Sandra Gulland, Josephine B. trilogy and Mistress of the Sun

Penny Peirce, Frequency

David Rakoff, Don't Get Too Comfortable

Mary Sharratt, Daughters of the Witching Hill

Luis Alberto Urrea, Into the Beautiful North

David Wiesner, Art and Max

Writer Reads

Sandra Beasely, I Was the Jukebox

Sergio Tronocoso, The Last Tortilla

Author and Amigo(s)

Martin Atkinson, Tour Smart

Gail Sheehy, Passages in Caregiving

More anon.

Madam Mayo's Top 10 Books Read 2009

#1. Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille by Rosemary Sullivan
Read my review / profile of Rosemary Sullivan for Inside Mexico here.

#2. Tras las huellas de un desconocido: Nuevos datos y aspectos de Maximiliano de Habsburgo by Konrad Ratz
A crucially important new work by Dr. Konrad Ratz, Austrian expert on Mexico's Second Empire. Covering a wide range of previously unknown or only superficially explored subjects relevant to Maximilian's life and brief rule in Mexico.

#3. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
The mega-paradigm shift explained by a leading networks scientist in plain, if elegant, English. Though this book first came out in 2002, it's well worth reading for the light it shines on the current financial crisis.

#4. My Grandfather's Finger by Edward Swift
An eccentric, elegant, and unblinkingly compassionate memoir of growing up in the thick of the Big Thicket.

#5. The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper
A story every American should read.

#6. The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. by Sandra Gulland
An epistolary novel that brings the French Revolution and not only Josephine, but many of France's most intriguing personalities to such life, it sometimes seemed hard to believe I was reading fiction. Gorgeous.

#7. Midday with Buñuel by Claudio Isaac
I was both charmed and moved by this poetic memoir by Mexican filmmaker and writer Claudio Isaac about his friendship with his mentor, the Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel, who died in Mexico City in 1983.

#8. Marcel Proust: A Life by Edmund White
Oh, writers...

#9. Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley
Mum and Pup of the title were William and Pat Buckley whom I-- and many millions of other Americans--- knew by their glamorous doings as chronicled in the likes of W. This is a headshaker of a memoir, but then it's about a very peculiar and supremely public couple, and by their son. Beautifully written. One of those few books that merits a re-read or three.

#10. Living by Fiction by Annie Dillard
What a splendid book. She's also a master of the intended diction drop-- which is sometimes hilarious.

---> Top 10 Books read 2008
---> Top 10 Books Read 2007
---> Top 10 Books Read 2006

Sandra Gulland and Mistress of the Sun, Barbara Levine and Finding Frida Kahlo

If you're anywhere in the neighborhood of San Miguel de Allende this Thursday November 12, don't miss this! As part of the San Miguel Literary Sala series, Sandra Gulland will be talking about her latest and splendid novel, Mistress of the Sun, and Barbara Levine will also be talking about her book, Finding Frida Kahlo. This takes place at 5 pm in the Hotel Posada San Francisco (across from the jardin) and there's a wine reception to follow (donation 70 pesos). For further information, see the San Miguel Literary Sala website.

P.S. On Thursday, December 10th I'll be presenting my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, along with filmmaker and novelist Jan Baross.

More anon.

Twitter Is

"Twitter Is," my essay on twitter which was published in the summer 2009 issue of Literal, is now (with blessings of the editor, Rose Mary Salum), on-line here. (Will tweet now!)

Thanks to:
@trhummer Twitter is an aphorism machine.
@HollyridgePress Twitter is a glittering sunrise with our books in the clouds.
@mdemuth Twitter is a confined space I can hang one hat of words upon.
@Sandra_Gulland Twitter is "poetry of the mundane" @ChetG, Page Six magazine.
@lisaborders Twitter is a message in a bottle that sometimes gets answered.

More anon.
P.S. Follow me on twitter @madammayo (for this blog) and @cmmayo1

La Sombra del Sabino, September 6th & Why Attend a Bookstore Reading?

I'll be reading from and signing The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire on September 6, 2009 at the ever-luscious La Sombra del Sabino in Tepoztlan, Morelos, Mexico (reading in English, Q & A in Spanglish)--- apropos of which I (finally!) posted this little "roundabout," "Why Attend a Bookstore Reading?" with answers provided by varios amigos, among them, Sandra Gulland, Solveig Eggerz, Leslie Pietrzyk, Richard Peabody, Richard Beban, Kathleen Alcala, Tony Cohan, Daniel Olivas, and more.

Hasta pronto.

Trailers for Books: A Selection

Trailer for 'The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire' by C.M. Mayo from ParsingPlace.com on Vimeo.

Working on the soundtrack for a video shot in Mexico City by Deborah Bonello... meanwhile, just had a fascinating conversation with Julia Sussner, specialist in narrative architecture, who made the trailer for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (watch the 47 seconds here) (or click above). It's not yet an established genre. Anything goes. Herewith a few widely divergent examples:

For Sandra Gulland's historical novel, Mistress of the Sun

For Miranda July's short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You

For James Howard Kunstler's novel, World Made by Hand

For Stephanie Bennett Vogt's self-help book, Your Spacious Self

For Steven Hart's The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway
Note: You might want to mute the sound on this one.

For Penny Peirce's self-help book, Frequency

For Anat Baniel's self-help book, Move Into Life

I'd be interested to know about more unusual and/or especially good book trailer videos. Suggestions?

Tweets about Twitter

Light posting this week, as I'm working on a brief piece about twitter for (of all things) a literary journal. If you don't know about twitter, um, what planet on are you on? But what is it? The mutt's nuts, I guess. I figured I'd quote the literary tweeters themselves.

A few nuggets so far:

@trhummer Twitter is an aphorism machine

@Sandra_Gulland Twitter is "poetry of the mundane" @ChetG Page Six magazine

and say I:

@madammayo Twitter is fishing in Niagara

But that isn't the whole enchilada. It's also broadcasting / navel gazing / conversation... and why not a new literary genre?


@c_m_mayo Following no one, having no followers, she was like the woman in the back closet, grumbling at the blankets, existing on mothballed air

Read TR Hummer's post on twitter over at Mindbook.

More anon.

Friday: Blogs Noted

As of March 1st I am no longer maintaining a blogroll. Every other Friday (or so) I'll be posting blogs noted. Herewith:
Faceout Books
Next Book
Andrew Keen
Stop Smiling
Katrina Denza: Illuminate, Ruminate, Create
Life-Style Refugee - The Ajijic Blog
Sandra Gulland's Notes on the Writing Life

Twittering Ionesco

In his most recent and always thought-provoking newsletter, writer and creativity coach-of-coaches Eric Maisel opines,

I think that this social networking chatter is the new absurdity. It is absurd because it is at once effective and horrible, seductive and mind-numbing, professional and infantile.

Madam Mayo is scratching her head over that one. Yes. No. Not exactly-sort-of. What constitute "professional" and "infantile" in our culture are undergoing a seachange. Just for example, I had thought facebook was childish--- until I had a look at who's on it and what they're using it for. Herewith a few of our finest poets and writers whom you'll find on facebook: Grace Cavalieri, Chris Offutt, Naomi Ayala, Mark Doty, Martin Espada, Richard McCann, and Sandra Gulland.

Furthermore, says Maisel:

What is the state of absurdity today? It is clear to me that I am supposed to be cross-blogging and twittering all day long in order to increase my audience. If you do not know what cross-blogging and twittering mean, you are lucky. It is indeed the case that folks who spend all day doing things of this sort really do sell more of whatever it is they are selling than do people who don’t. I don’t doubt that and I don’t dispute that. But I would rather have a root canal than send out little messages all day about this and that.

But what Great White-Bearded Committee in the Sky says it has to be "all day"? Why not post only on Mondays? Or, once a month?

A couple of weeks ago, I got started with Twitter, a social-networking thingamajig I'd thought beyond absurd until I read Seth Godin on the subject. If you want to follow me on Twitter, or "get the tweets," as they say, I promise not to barage you with news of my weekend plans, what I am eating, the state of my digestion, or the view out my office window. I don't use any of these social networking things (blog, facebook, twitter) to share my life per se, rather, I share books and links, in the spirit of what-goes-around-comes-around. In the past two years, my own life and writing have been immeasurably enriched by the information I've gleaned from the Internet. The challenge is to learn how to discern and dispatch quickly and effectively. And it is no small challenge.

Speaking of which, since I really don't have time for Twitter, I integrated it into the status bar of my facebook page-- two birds with one haiku, as it were.

Two quick links on the challenge:
-->To my blog post about Naomi S. Baron's book, Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World
-->To poet, editor and web 2.0 diva Deborah Ager's blog post on Time Management for Poets

Maisel shares this link to a delightfully languid --- oh so antique--- interview with the King of the Absurd, (voici le wiki), Eugene Ionesco:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGOFBLHiVXU<

Guest-blogger Sanda Gulland's 5 Top Research Sites for Historical Novelists

I met today's guest-blogger, historical novelist Sandra Gulland at last February's San Miguel Writers Conference. She's a dynamo--- not only a fun conversationalist and fellow Mexico aficionada, but she's admirably prolific (a new novel plus the Josephine Triology) and--- this is also close to my heart--- keen on the whole Web 2.0 thing for books. ("Thing?" you say... well, I'm still trying to figure it all out, never mind the vocabulary.) Check out her website, www.sandragulland.com, read her latest newsletter, go ahead and sign up for it here, and check out her blog. Apart from all of that, be sure to check out her latest novel, based on the true story, Mistress of the Sun. It's forthcoming June 3rd in the US; already it's been a best-selling novel for many weeks in Canada. Over to you, Sandra.

As a writer of historical novels, I increasingly rely on the Net for both research and inspiration. Here are five outstanding historical sites:

#1. The Medici Archive Project, Document Highlights
This is a site I go to for inspiration, to refresh my delight in all things historical. As the workers who toil in this dusty realm of historical documents put it, every now and then a document comes along that casts a spotlight into that far-away realm and demands to be shared. From this site I’ve read the historical accounts of a rain of frogs, disemboweling kisses, and the sexual crimes committed under cover of the rite of the Tenebrae-— or "The Darkness"-— during Holy Week.

#2. The Diary of Samuel Pepys
I enjoy reading Pepys delightful diary on almost a daily basis. It gives me the feeling of life in the 17th century. The annotations are informative and well worth reading, as well.

#3. BibliOdyssey: Books—Illustrations—Science—History—Visual Materia Obscura—Eclectic Bookart.
There are many, many delights in the realm of historical research, and coming upon unusual and captivating illustrations is one of them. This amazing blog revels in the unusual, the charming, the beautiful. Not all of the images are historical, but most are. I could linger on this site all day.

#4. Google Book Search Google wasn’t the first to put digitized books on-line (the French on-line library Gallica was an early pioneer), but it has quickly become the best, in my view, and certainly the easiest to use. If you specify “full view only” in your search, you will be shown books in the public domain, often published some time ago. If you go to Advanced Book Search, you may even specify the time of publication. You may also begin to build up your own on-line library.

I use it for research, but I also love to search for old expressions — for example, how someone in the past might have completed the phrase: “as hot as a ... “ A Google Book search reveals these tasty possibilities: “as hot as a turnspit,” “as hot as a plum pudding,” “as hot as a melon bed.”

#5. Oxford English Dictionary
If I want to know if a particular word or expression was used in the 17th century, this is where I can go to find out. If I want to know what words were used for—say—”pretty” before the 18th century, the OED on-line will tell me (comely, quaint, jolly...). The site, however, is restricted: one must use it through a library that subscribes or pay. I couldn’t do without it.

--- Sandra Gulland

--->For the archive of Madam Mayo's guest-blog posts, click here.

And Sandra Gulland Blogs, Too

Just back from the San Miguel Writers Conference where one of my favorite lunch companions was historical novelist Sandra Gulland. She's the author of the Josephine trilogy and Mistress of the Sun (pictured left are the just-published Canadian and forthcoming US edition covers). We had a fruitful chat about blogging and writers' blogs--- here's hers: Notes on the Writing Life. More anon.