Quacking Alone

After Lee DeWyze was crowned American Idol instead of Crystal Bowersox, an amazing thing happened.  I finally understood why Adam Lambert lost Idol.  It just took me a year to figure it out.  Okay, so I’m a little slow.  But judging from the goobeldygob of irate stories and reviews that followed the competition, a whole bunch of folks are even slower than me.

I’m slow, but I’m not the slowest.  That’s always a comfort. 

Last year, Adam Lambert was amazing on Idol and he lost.  Okay, some of his post-Idol antics made me a wee bit glad that he lost.  But still, the thought remained kicking around in my head until this season. How did Adam lose?  How could he be that good, that far above the others, and still not win the whole thing? 

This season turned out to be deja vu all over again.  There were all the others and then there was Mama Sox.  Just like last year, the judges would periodically slide in a sly comment about her superiority.  Once she was accused of being too certain that she’d win – a charge she protested heartily.  On Tuesday her final songs outclassed Lee’s so easily that she looked like a sure thing.  But then again, so did Adam last year after his final competition performance.

But this year, my feelings were different.  This year, I was hoping that Lee would pull it off, and I cheered when he did.  Last year I just walked away from the finale bummed.  You know what, Simon’s last interviews made me think that he’d had the same transformation as little ole’ me, little Mrs. Nobody from the Redneck Rivera.  (Heck, if I was gonna have something in common with Cowell, couldn’t it have been my bank balance?)

That’s why it took this year to make me understand last year and to possibly predict next season.  Now that I get it, I’ll be able to watch the process happen and chart it in my twisted little brain.  What is it, you ask? 

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Hi there my little steamed dumplings, it’s yours truly, Angry Old Fat Man. We’ve decided to add a new feature to the website, mainly me rambling on about stuff in the middle of the week to augment Mary Anne’s weekend posts.

Mary Anne has a lot on her plate, especially writing-wise. She writes legalese while daylight burns, then comes home and puts in another work shift taking care of me and the children while trying to find time to write her books. Then the weekend comes, and it’s laundry, cooking, and bill-paying while trying to think of something to fill a blog post. And then actually typing out the post.

I swear to you, I don’t know how she does it. I would have run out naked into the street with a growling chainsaw and a Pez dispenser full of Xanax if I had that kind of schedule.

So being the helpful hubby, I suggested to her that I could post something in the middle of the week to keep readership up.

Yeah, she bought it. HA!

Now I get to torture entertain YOU, the formerly unsuspecting blog reader, with inane garbage insightful comments on random brain flotsam whimsical ideas and interesting events.

Just look for AOFM-MWU in the title of the post around Wednesday or Thursday of a single an occasional every week.

Tentative subject for next week: Apple overtakes Microsoft. See you then!

Joe Konrath,  author of the Jack Daniels thriller series and of the new resource for indie writers – The Newbies Guide to Publishing – has inked a deal that sieges the Publishing Royals’ Castle.  It also charts the course, showing the Royals, authors and agents where the future lies.  The deal itself and the fact that it is with the biggest, baddest ebookseller AND bookseller on the planet has traditional publishing Royals hunkering down in the castle in the futile hope that they can survive the coming indie siege.

Konrath signed a publishing deal with AmazonEncore for the newest JD thriller, Shaken. Under the deal, Shaken will be available in the Kindle store this October and will then be available in print about four months later, in February 2011.   The deal turns the traditional arrangements around 180 degrees and has the Kindle version released first with the print book following several months later.  Some of the Royals have been trying to kill the  upstart ebook industry by releasing their “big” books only in paper form for several months.  That would force loyal fans to buy the paper version and discourage the fans from investing in the future.  Or so the Royals thought and the Royals are used to deciding what we will read, when we will read it and how we will read it. 

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Writers have lots of ideas.  We have great, immense, goobledegobs of ideas. Most of them are destined to be born and die within the disturbed realms of our fertile little brains.  Most, but not all.  A few of those notions do grow up to be books. 

I germinate ideas or script scenarios in my head all the time.  My imagination is where I go to escape when the job is too sad or demanding or when reality bites too hard.  But it’s not only stress or sadness that sends me to Mary Anne World.  Sometimes a great TV show will send me there.  I’ve written alternate scripts for many a Grey’s Anatomy episode, and I’ve made up whole romances that only lived in my head (Cristina and Webber, anyone? And I always thought Izzie belonged with Dr. Burke)  Like I said, my head is a strange place. 

Of course, it’s not just Grey’s that gives birth to ideas.  I’ve gotten romance ideas for Dr. House and Cuddy or Gordon Ramsey and a Hell’s Kitchen contestant.  So far, none of those has grown up to be a book, but in the future, you never know.  Griffin’s Law came to be after I imagined Grey’s in a law school. 

But its not just TV that brings ideas.  Sometimes they grow from reading an interesting legend on the Internet (the MacLeods of Skye and their famed faerie flag became my – so far – three part Forever Series).  The idea for E-mail Enticement came during a CLE seminar.  The first book I ever wrote , Brotherly Love, came from the most unique place.  Usually the characters create the story but with my first book, the message created the story.  I got to thinking about how big and broad love is and I wondered why we create boxes and rules to try to limit and define what we should only celebrate.  The characters in Brotherly are more “real” than in most romance novels, because they were intended to be more like us – flaws and all – and the story was written to make the reader think instead of just experience.

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