In SW Miami, there's a used book store Tea 'N' Sanity I like. The owners took over the inventory and name of the Kendall Book Exchange, and are very nice people who sell aromatatics and teas and holistic medicines as well. I'm not much into that part, but I did visit one day with a serious sinus condition and the lady made me a tea of herbs and flowers that made my head stop hurting and my nose start working, so I would recommend trying out these products.
Treasure hunting in a used book store is fun but requires patience and a good memory. The start at most used book stores is to bring in a box of your old books, and get credit for them, which is applied as additional discounts on the already half-priced books. Then rummage the shelves and boxes of other peoples books and see if you can find those special books you always wanted to read but balked at paying $25 or whatever the MSRP was.
Example: I got Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad, Ann Patchett's Belle Canto and Tom Perrota's The Abstinence Teacher on one Saturday visit, and my bill came to $7.00. Another day I found David Foster Wallace's Consider The Lobster for $2.50.
Keep in mind you can find bargains at retail and specialty stores as well. Last week I found The Evergreen Review Reader for $5.98 at Books&Books in Coral Gables. Edited by Barney Rosset himself, this collection opens with Samuel Beckett's story, Dante and the Lobster ( a direct antecedent of the Wallace essay), then goes into Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind and Allen Ginsburg's Howl. The whole collection runs from 1957 to 1966, when literature outgrew obscenity courts and pinhead formulas. Pauline Reage's Story of O is included, the forerunner of Fifty Shades Of Grey. While O was considered radical, 50Shades is nicknamed Mommy-porn because it is so widely accepted as bedside literature.
Feel free to post comments about your own finds. I think it's important to support these kind of stores, like antique stores full of curios. I could not handle seeing all these great books at the county dump. If anything can be recycled and enjoyed, it's the world's literature, created and edited and published, and full of the wonder of the printed word.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Back from The Dead
I started this blog a couple years ago to have a place to say the things I needed to say about life in America. Then I learned about self-publishing and social networking and all the cool things I am incapable of doing. I marketed my book of short stories under the same title, devoted myself to selling what cannot be sold, and pretty much let the Devil has his way with me in cyberspace.
No mas. No more.
Believable Lies is a blog about all the crap we hear everyday. It has a point of view. For example, I think the USA should kill Gaddafhi, his sons too, before they murder thousands of innocent rebels. Ronny Reagan would have done it by now. I'm not a conservative, I'm a Democrat, a liberal like back in the Kennedy days. But if Beyonce is giving back a million dollars for performing for this murderer, then we should give back too. Admit our mistakes in ever supporting him, drop a smart bomb down his chimney, and save thousands of lives.
No mas. No more.
Believable Lies is a blog about all the crap we hear everyday. It has a point of view. For example, I think the USA should kill Gaddafhi, his sons too, before they murder thousands of innocent rebels. Ronny Reagan would have done it by now. I'm not a conservative, I'm a Democrat, a liberal like back in the Kennedy days. But if Beyonce is giving back a million dollars for performing for this murderer, then we should give back too. Admit our mistakes in ever supporting him, drop a smart bomb down his chimney, and save thousands of lives.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Believable Lies Featured at Indie Books Blog
Scott Nicholson interviewed me a few months ago and we discussed Believable Lies. Take a look.
http://indiebooksblog.blogspot.com/
http://indiebooksblog.blogspot.com/
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Welcome, Earthlings
I've been busy. I never have time to do all the things I want to do, so I waste time doing things I don't want to do, and have a constant though mild case of despair right behind my eyes like a hangover. I'm wondering how I get so distracted. All I can come up with is, I have too much free time on my hands. When you're as poorly organized as me, that's a bad thing. I would be good in some totalitarian country, mindlessly following orders. Standing at a conveyor belt, adding one screw to each of the two million widgets that roll by, the same repetitive behavior for hours and hours, then give me a piece of bread and a beer and send me to The Combine. I have such simple goals.
I need to get back to writing. Now that I'm convinced I will never have more than five thousand thirty-two readers, I must concentrate on giving them something worthwhile, an entertainment to justify the effort. At one point I was going to write a memoir, but even the word gives me a headache, memoir, ouchie ouch, I can't do it. It's all I can do to shut out my past as it is. Forcing myself to write it down, dear God. Fiction is my calling, more believable lies.
I need to get back to writing. Now that I'm convinced I will never have more than five thousand thirty-two readers, I must concentrate on giving them something worthwhile, an entertainment to justify the effort. At one point I was going to write a memoir, but even the word gives me a headache, memoir, ouchie ouch, I can't do it. It's all I can do to shut out my past as it is. Forcing myself to write it down, dear God. Fiction is my calling, more believable lies.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Believable Lies now in Paperback at Amazon.com
The long awaited paperback version of Believable Lies is now available at Amazon.com for just $8.99.
Many friends have asked for a print copy, and I'm glad to offer it. Schools and libraries can use your standard Amazon discount.
Book stores wanting to offer Believable Lies for sale, please contact me directly via email or Facebook, and I'll take care of it personally.
The cover is another great design from Mark Goldberg at Mark's Covers. See his ad at this blog and get in touch.
Many friends have asked for a print copy, and I'm glad to offer it. Schools and libraries can use your standard Amazon discount.
Book stores wanting to offer Believable Lies for sale, please contact me directly via email or Facebook, and I'll take care of it personally.
The cover is another great design from Mark Goldberg at Mark's Covers. See his ad at this blog and get in touch.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Believable Lies Now Available at Smashwords.com
Smashwords offers Believable Lies for $2.99 in several different formats. If you have the Apple iPad or iPhone, download the ePub format for Stanza, a free eReader app from Apple.
If you want to read on your PC, use the RTF (Rich Text Format) and read it in Word, or the PDF format and read it in Adobe Reader.
You'll see the LRF format for the Sony Reader, and Palm formats are there as well. The other major format standard .mobi is there for Kindle and other devices.
Take a look at the huge selection of titles. I started a new blog, Smashwords Books Reviewed, to help find authors of merit and new exciting things to read.
If you want to read on your PC, use the RTF (Rich Text Format) and read it in Word, or the PDF format and read it in Adobe Reader.
You'll see the LRF format for the Sony Reader, and Palm formats are there as well. The other major format standard .mobi is there for Kindle and other devices.
Take a look at the huge selection of titles. I started a new blog, Smashwords Books Reviewed, to help find authors of merit and new exciting things to read.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Kindle Author--- I'm Interviewed by David Wisehart
David Wisehart asked some great questions on writing Believable Lies for his blog, Kindle Author.
http://kindle-author.blogspot.com/2010/08/interview-neil-crabtree.html
DAVID WISEHART: What can you tell me about your story collection, Believable Lies?
NEIL CRABTREE: Believable Lies is made up of stories written since 2004, when I discovered online journals would not only accept submissions, but respond in days. I wanted to create situations or scenes where the people I have known, and the people I have been, get a chance to interact. Over the years, these stories have appeared at Verbsap.com (now defunct), BewilderingStories.com, and DenverSyntax.com, and I thank those editors in my Amazon product description. I also have had the tremendous good luck to participate in an ongoing writers workshop in Miami, where author and FIU creative writing professor John Dufresne has had his Friday Night Writers meeting every two weeks for the last fifteen years. The rules are simple: you want to contribute, you read and critique everyone else’s contribution, as honestly and fairly as you can. So each of my stories got a thorough vetting, not only from John but from twenty other readers, before I even sent them out.
DAVID WISEHART: How much of these stories is based on lived experience, and how much is pure invention?
NEIL CRABTREE: There’s a lot of me, and friends from over the years, in each story. In "Live Band Tonight," the first story, the musicians have an argument about the Bryllcreem Conspiracy. This came up in a discussion while getting loaded thirty years ago, with rock drummer Jeff Bailey in Tampa, who explained that John Kennedy invented dry hair and that the greasers had him assassinated. Jeff passed away nearly a dozen years ago, but his brother Bernard reminded us all of his birthday in August. To celebrate the event, we shared the story, and agreed we could hear Jeff and the rest of us in the dialogue.
DAVID WISEHART: What is the appeal for you of short fiction, as opposed to novels?
NEIL CRABTREE: Good question. I’ve been writing a novel for way too many years, and the short stories were great to take me outside that framework. Also, in a writers group, it seemed like those submitting novel chapters had a shield, since whatever came up in the group critique could be excused as straightened out in the coming chapter. I wanted pieces that would stand or fall on their own merit. Luckily, even those that fell flat could be revised and rewritten, once the sting of criticism wore off, and I could see what the reader was talking about.
DAVID WISEHART: Who do you imagine is your ideal reader?
NEIL CRABTREE: For me, an open mind is the key. My stories are not poignant; they may even be anti-poignant. What I have learned, growing up in the 20th century, is that much of what is available to read is really just a TV show on paper. Literature should be different. People should say things you don’t expect them to say. My reader should know what it’s like to get high, to love and lose, to wonder how much longer he or she will be alive. I don’t know any vampires. The people I’ve known and loved have all experienced life the same way. Parents die, kids get sick, accidents happen, but there’s also friendship and family and being brave when your time comes.
DAVID WISEHART: What was your journey as a writer?
NEIL CRABTREE: I started college in 1968. There were only a few Creative Writing programs in the country then, maybe Stanford and Iowa, and a lot of other things were going on. I’ve always written, but it really wasn’t until the 1990s that I realized that writers worked at their craft like electricians worked at theirs, putting in man-hours doing the job over and over until you got it right. I found a book called Deal To Die For by Les Standiford in my local grocery store. On the back cover, I read that Les teaches Creative Writing at FIU in north Miami. He was a real person, not some Hollywood invention. So I drove over and introduced myself, and he suggested I audit a course and see if I liked it. And for less than $200, I got a class in Creative Writing by one of the best narrative writers I’d ever read. He’s also one of the warmest human beings you’ll ever meet. But he doesn’t let anyone slide when it comes to writing. If you half-ass it, he’ll eat you up.
DAVID WISEHART: What is your writing process?
NEIL CRABTREE: I do a lot of writing in my head before I ever sit down. Driving is particularly good for this, since you can be alone and bored for hours at a time. What I try to get is a scene, a character in a scene, then see what I might hear or say in that situation. Once I’ve got that, I sit down and do a draft and try to capture as much as I can. When I was young and stupid, I’d be so excited I’d send off that first draft to whoever I thought might read it, like, look here, a work of genius. Then the next day I’d see the misspelling and the poor sentence structure and I’d contact everyone and ask them to discard what I’d sent without opening. Now, old and stupid, I sit and go back a couple days later, and find ways to make things better.
DAVID WISEHART: You received feedback from author John Dufresne. What was that process like?
NEIL CRABTREE: John Dufresne is an incredible human being. A couple years ago, when he was one of the three judges for the PEN/Faulkner Award that was given to Phillip Roth for Everyman, he had to read 400 books in a year. In addition to teaching, writing, grading papers, and conducting Friday Night Writers. What strikes you when you talk to John, he remembers all 400 books, and the student papers, and the FNW submissions. John writes beautifully, he actually takes control of you as a reader. And in his feedback, he makes suggestions on how a writer can do the same thing. Character and dialogue have to be credible. His new book on Writing Your First Novel is titled Is Life Like This? I’ve never seen anyone who gives as much of himself as John.
DAVID WISEHART: What authors most inspire you?
NEIL CRABTREE: In addition to John Dufresne and Les Standiford, I re-read Walker Percy often. My upcoming novel is closer to The Thanatos Syndrome than to The Overlook. I admire Michael Connelly, James W. Hall, and Martin Cruz Smith. Recently, I’ve been enjoying David Foster Wallace and I’m very happy to see his friend Jonathan Franzen getting recognized as the serious writer he is. Jonathan Lethem is very good, and I’ve been blown away by books by Roberto Bolanos. In high school, the short stories of Joyce, Faulkner, and Hemingway elevated my reading.
DAVID WISEHART: How did you create your cover?
NEIL CRABTREE: I googled public domain art, then narrowed the search to lies or liars. The painting is Paul Gauguin from 1889, Eve Don’t Listen To The Liar. My friend Mark Goldberg then applied the magic touch and produced a fine looking cover.
DAVID WISEHART: How have you marketed and promoted your work?
NEIL CRABTREE: I have joined discussions and author groups and emailed friends, but I’m not really much good at this. J.A.Konrath inspires me with his blog and his determination to break from the BigWigs in NYC. This is something I wanted to learn about. Fortunately, the process is fascinating. I have three blogs now, http://believablelies.blogspot.com, http://neilsreaders.blogspot.com, and http://neilcrabbooks.blogspot.com. When I introduce Rooster (my comic thriller) next month, I’ll do more sites for the book and for the DooMee device, technology’s answer to Viagra.
DAVID WISEHART: Why publish on Kindle?
NEIL CRABTREE: I have three books I need to get out to readers. The get-an-agent process is harder than ever, and then, you read someone like Brad Morrison, and you see that even with a great agent like Irene Goodman, there’s no guarantee your book will be bought. I just don’t have years to spend waiting for complete strangers to tell me to write about teenage vampires. Kindle is clean, easy, and immediate. I would like a better way to upgrade what I post. I’ve put in hyperlinks from the Table of Contents to the individual stories, and I’m not sure DTP is allowing the upgrade. I’m sending you the upgraded text as a .doc so you can view it this way. But DTP has answered every question I had so far. I think as more and more they allow uploads of epub formats, the easier it will be.
DAVID WISEHART: What advice would you give to a first-time author thinking of publishing on Kindle?
NEIL CRABTREE: Produce the best product you can. Have readers check it over and over, and then go through and see if you can cut another 10% out. Then get a good cover. Get help getting the formatting correct. And read as much as you can in the different Kindle readers groups and writers forums. Read David Wisehart’s interviews. And don’t give up on print altogether. You might really be the Next Big Thing. Query at least twenty agents before going direct.
DAVID WISEHART: Thanks, and best of luck on your books.
http://kindle-author.blogspot.com/2010/08/interview-neil-crabtree.html
DAVID WISEHART: What can you tell me about your story collection, Believable Lies?
NEIL CRABTREE: Believable Lies is made up of stories written since 2004, when I discovered online journals would not only accept submissions, but respond in days. I wanted to create situations or scenes where the people I have known, and the people I have been, get a chance to interact. Over the years, these stories have appeared at Verbsap.com (now defunct), BewilderingStories.com, and DenverSyntax.com, and I thank those editors in my Amazon product description. I also have had the tremendous good luck to participate in an ongoing writers workshop in Miami, where author and FIU creative writing professor John Dufresne has had his Friday Night Writers meeting every two weeks for the last fifteen years. The rules are simple: you want to contribute, you read and critique everyone else’s contribution, as honestly and fairly as you can. So each of my stories got a thorough vetting, not only from John but from twenty other readers, before I even sent them out.
DAVID WISEHART: How much of these stories is based on lived experience, and how much is pure invention?
NEIL CRABTREE: There’s a lot of me, and friends from over the years, in each story. In "Live Band Tonight," the first story, the musicians have an argument about the Bryllcreem Conspiracy. This came up in a discussion while getting loaded thirty years ago, with rock drummer Jeff Bailey in Tampa, who explained that John Kennedy invented dry hair and that the greasers had him assassinated. Jeff passed away nearly a dozen years ago, but his brother Bernard reminded us all of his birthday in August. To celebrate the event, we shared the story, and agreed we could hear Jeff and the rest of us in the dialogue.
DAVID WISEHART: What is the appeal for you of short fiction, as opposed to novels?
NEIL CRABTREE: Good question. I’ve been writing a novel for way too many years, and the short stories were great to take me outside that framework. Also, in a writers group, it seemed like those submitting novel chapters had a shield, since whatever came up in the group critique could be excused as straightened out in the coming chapter. I wanted pieces that would stand or fall on their own merit. Luckily, even those that fell flat could be revised and rewritten, once the sting of criticism wore off, and I could see what the reader was talking about.
DAVID WISEHART: Who do you imagine is your ideal reader?
NEIL CRABTREE: For me, an open mind is the key. My stories are not poignant; they may even be anti-poignant. What I have learned, growing up in the 20th century, is that much of what is available to read is really just a TV show on paper. Literature should be different. People should say things you don’t expect them to say. My reader should know what it’s like to get high, to love and lose, to wonder how much longer he or she will be alive. I don’t know any vampires. The people I’ve known and loved have all experienced life the same way. Parents die, kids get sick, accidents happen, but there’s also friendship and family and being brave when your time comes.
DAVID WISEHART: What was your journey as a writer?
NEIL CRABTREE: I started college in 1968. There were only a few Creative Writing programs in the country then, maybe Stanford and Iowa, and a lot of other things were going on. I’ve always written, but it really wasn’t until the 1990s that I realized that writers worked at their craft like electricians worked at theirs, putting in man-hours doing the job over and over until you got it right. I found a book called Deal To Die For by Les Standiford in my local grocery store. On the back cover, I read that Les teaches Creative Writing at FIU in north Miami. He was a real person, not some Hollywood invention. So I drove over and introduced myself, and he suggested I audit a course and see if I liked it. And for less than $200, I got a class in Creative Writing by one of the best narrative writers I’d ever read. He’s also one of the warmest human beings you’ll ever meet. But he doesn’t let anyone slide when it comes to writing. If you half-ass it, he’ll eat you up.
DAVID WISEHART: What is your writing process?
NEIL CRABTREE: I do a lot of writing in my head before I ever sit down. Driving is particularly good for this, since you can be alone and bored for hours at a time. What I try to get is a scene, a character in a scene, then see what I might hear or say in that situation. Once I’ve got that, I sit down and do a draft and try to capture as much as I can. When I was young and stupid, I’d be so excited I’d send off that first draft to whoever I thought might read it, like, look here, a work of genius. Then the next day I’d see the misspelling and the poor sentence structure and I’d contact everyone and ask them to discard what I’d sent without opening. Now, old and stupid, I sit and go back a couple days later, and find ways to make things better.
DAVID WISEHART: You received feedback from author John Dufresne. What was that process like?
NEIL CRABTREE: John Dufresne is an incredible human being. A couple years ago, when he was one of the three judges for the PEN/Faulkner Award that was given to Phillip Roth for Everyman, he had to read 400 books in a year. In addition to teaching, writing, grading papers, and conducting Friday Night Writers. What strikes you when you talk to John, he remembers all 400 books, and the student papers, and the FNW submissions. John writes beautifully, he actually takes control of you as a reader. And in his feedback, he makes suggestions on how a writer can do the same thing. Character and dialogue have to be credible. His new book on Writing Your First Novel is titled Is Life Like This? I’ve never seen anyone who gives as much of himself as John.
DAVID WISEHART: What authors most inspire you?
NEIL CRABTREE: In addition to John Dufresne and Les Standiford, I re-read Walker Percy often. My upcoming novel is closer to The Thanatos Syndrome than to The Overlook. I admire Michael Connelly, James W. Hall, and Martin Cruz Smith. Recently, I’ve been enjoying David Foster Wallace and I’m very happy to see his friend Jonathan Franzen getting recognized as the serious writer he is. Jonathan Lethem is very good, and I’ve been blown away by books by Roberto Bolanos. In high school, the short stories of Joyce, Faulkner, and Hemingway elevated my reading.
DAVID WISEHART: How did you create your cover?
NEIL CRABTREE: I googled public domain art, then narrowed the search to lies or liars. The painting is Paul Gauguin from 1889, Eve Don’t Listen To The Liar. My friend Mark Goldberg then applied the magic touch and produced a fine looking cover.
DAVID WISEHART: How have you marketed and promoted your work?
NEIL CRABTREE: I have joined discussions and author groups and emailed friends, but I’m not really much good at this. J.A.Konrath inspires me with his blog and his determination to break from the BigWigs in NYC. This is something I wanted to learn about. Fortunately, the process is fascinating. I have three blogs now, http://believablelies.blogspot.com, http://neilsreaders.blogspot.com, and http://neilcrabbooks.blogspot.com. When I introduce Rooster (my comic thriller) next month, I’ll do more sites for the book and for the DooMee device, technology’s answer to Viagra.
DAVID WISEHART: Why publish on Kindle?
NEIL CRABTREE: I have three books I need to get out to readers. The get-an-agent process is harder than ever, and then, you read someone like Brad Morrison, and you see that even with a great agent like Irene Goodman, there’s no guarantee your book will be bought. I just don’t have years to spend waiting for complete strangers to tell me to write about teenage vampires. Kindle is clean, easy, and immediate. I would like a better way to upgrade what I post. I’ve put in hyperlinks from the Table of Contents to the individual stories, and I’m not sure DTP is allowing the upgrade. I’m sending you the upgraded text as a .doc so you can view it this way. But DTP has answered every question I had so far. I think as more and more they allow uploads of epub formats, the easier it will be.
DAVID WISEHART: What advice would you give to a first-time author thinking of publishing on Kindle?
NEIL CRABTREE: Produce the best product you can. Have readers check it over and over, and then go through and see if you can cut another 10% out. Then get a good cover. Get help getting the formatting correct. And read as much as you can in the different Kindle readers groups and writers forums. Read David Wisehart’s interviews. And don’t give up on print altogether. You might really be the Next Big Thing. Query at least twenty agents before going direct.
DAVID WISEHART: Thanks, and best of luck on your books.
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