MY PURPLE WRITER BRAIN: September 2023 Edition
Book Blurbs, My Latest Book Review, My Latest Author Interview, and More
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Book Blurbs
Seems the latest things that folks in the writing and publishing communities are complaining about is book blurbs. You know, the glowing recommendations from Stephen King or Margaret Atwood or whoever that declares, “This book is immaculate! Luminous! A page turner!” Two excellent articles in Esquire and The Atlantic talk in-depth about this: the blurb fiasco, the broken system, the publishing industry plague. And in some cases, the authors of these articles are right. In other cases, they are off base. Look, I feel blurbs are important; many people feel they don’t matter at all. But if they weren’t important, then they wouldn’t be highly sought after. They wouldn’t be put on books at all if they didn’t matter. In the weird calculus of what makes a book attractive to a potential reader / buyer, an excellent blurb along with a beautiful cover and a compelling book description can move books to the cash register or shopping cart. So why are people crapping on book blurbs? Because the system can be rigged.
Where the argument in these two articles seems to make sense is at the big publisher level where big corporations with lots of money to gamble on big sales do seem to have the system rigged. When books like American Dirt come out with glowing reviews from all the top authors and review outlets, then it seems like this book is the greatest thing since who-knows-what, until it isn't. Many felt this novel appropriated Mexican culture by a white author, and that’s when all the authors who blurbed this novel backpedaled, many even claiming that they didn’t even read the novel in the first place. The curtain was quickly pulled back. Many screamed that the system was rigged and that blurbs were suspect. In this case, they were absolutely right.
But in my experience, this isn’t the case at all. I have almost no connections in the traditional publishing world. I don’t have an MFA. Until this year, I had only self-published my books. I did have a few publishing credits with literary journals under my belt. I had been a published cartoonist. But I didn’t get my first book contract with a traditional publisher until the spring of 2022. I didn’t sign with a literary agent until the fall of 2022. I’m 52 years old now and have been writing fiction for over thirty years. So, when I reached out to my favorite authors for book blurbs for my new novel, it wasn’t some “Hell Mary” pass. I had read their books and felt a deep connection to them and their work as it was reflected in my own new novel. I had interviewed some of them for my show Austin Liti Limits or met them through writers groups I belonged to. I didn’t have an agent at the time when I requested these blurbs or a publicist or an editor with deep industry connections. I made these “author friendships” on my own and asked nicely. I explained the connection I saw with them and my novel. I gladly agreed to wait for up to six months for them to read my novel and write a blurb as most of them were very busy with their own writing careers or day jobs like teaching or editing. And once the blurbs came back to me, these authors explained in detail what they liked about my book and really wanted to stand behind it and me, show their support, so I knew that they read it and enjoyed it. And I’m so very appreciative of that. Their blurbs gave me a real boost because I admire them and their work. My hope is that their blurbs will be part of the overall package of publishing my book, giving it validation to readers who may not know me, but know the authors who’ve blurb my book. If that is the ultimate reason they plunk down money for my book, then I will be forever grateful.
So, at my level of publishing where I have a literary novel coming out from a university press, do I think the system is rigged? Nope. Do I feel the blurb system can be rife with problems? Sure, at some levels. I think something that would be helpful is if writers and publishers were more transparent about how the blurbs were procured. Were the authors simply asked and they gladly read the book, enjoyed it, and wrote about it? I’d like to know that. Did the publisher offer money for their blurb? I’d like to know that, too. Were the author and the blurber students in the same MFA program? That happens. Did the author and the blurber agree to blurb each other’s books (I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine)? That would be nice to know. But I don’t see this transparency happening any time soon. The big publishers don’t want to be transparent.
I like to be transparent about these type of things, though. I’ve published outside of the traditional system for so long that, now that I’ve been welcomed into traditional publishing, I want to help others in the writing community. So I don’t mind talking about how I got the blurbs for my new novel. I’m proud of my book and I’m grateful that these authors spent the time to read it and support me. Read more about my new novel THE CODGER AND THE SPARROW on my website. It’ll be published by TCU Press in spring 2024. Here are some of the blurbs it has received from my favorite authors: Kevin Wilson, Annie Hartnett, James Wade, and Stacey Swann.
“Scott Semegran’s The Codger and the Sparrow is a wondrous novel of the road, where two unlikely people seek out the larger world, and in their uncertainty, help each other navigate the way toward something like home. Told with such an abundance of both humor and tenderness, this is a novel of discovery, of searching for answers, and I could not think of two people I’d rather ride alongside than Hank and Luis.” – Kevin Wilson, New York Times Bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
“The Codger and The Sparrow is delicious fun. A story told with an abundance of surprise and humor; I loved the characters, the snappy dialogue, and hitting the road in the pink Barracuda. Scott Semegran is one hell of a writer, and this is a terrific novel.” – Annie Hartnett, author of Rabbit Cake
“Semegran deftly blends humor with heart in a road trip romp that crosses generational divides. A coming-of-age for one, a coming-to-terms for the other, Semegran’s characters are deeply drawn in a way that envelopes readers from the start of their journey to its unexpected end. The Codger and the Sparrow is a fun, fresh meditation on friendship, loss, and new beginnings.” – James Wade, Spur Award-winning author of All Things Left Wild
“Scott Semegran’s characters capture the essential human contradiction: that deep flaws and bad decisions exist right alongside our beautiful capacity for kindness and compassion. With equal parts heart and humor, The Codger and the Sparrow is an ode to the strange, messy, and transformative power of friendship.” – Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas
My Latest Book Review
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel is a book of literary science fiction. The book description from the publisher describes it best: “Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core. Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe. A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.”
Sea of Tranquility is the latest book of literary science fiction—more literary than scientific—from Emily St. John Mandel about time travel that crosses many centuries from the early twentieth century to five hundred years later. We follow an exiled young socialite on his journey to Canada from England, an author from a moon colony on her book tour down on Earth, and a detective as they each witness a vision of a violinist in an airport terminal, an experience disconcerting to all of them as it’s out of context to their life experience. What is this aural glitch? That’s the heart of the narrative to this compelling and beautifully written novel.
One thing of note is that although this is a novel of science fiction, there is very little science or explanations of how this phenomena happens. Once revealed that we are in fact experiencing a kind of time travel, the effect is more hallucinatory than practical, more hypnotic than mechanical. Who is this violinist in the airport? Why are these three “seeing” him in different centuries? It’s a mystery worth exploring for us readers.
St. John Mandel is an exceptional writer and her prose is elegant and restrained. She does a fantastic job of setting scenes and developing her characters, painting her story across many centuries poetically yet clearly. If there is one thing disappointing about this novel, then it’s the explanation of how time travel is possible in this story. As someone who has read comic books and science fiction growing up as well as watching movies like The Matrix trilogy, the explanation of how the violinist time travels is not original; this theory (I won’t give it away here) has been posed in so many other mediums. This revelation, though, didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the novel. If science fiction without much science is a thing, then sign me up. I enjoyed being in St. John Mandel’s universe of hallucinatory possibilities and the longing for human connection across realities and time.
I really enjoyed this novel and I highly recommend it. I would give this book 5 stars.
Buy the paperback on Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/152/9780593466735
My Latest Author Interview
Watch my Austin Lit Limits interview with MARK HABER! His novel SAINT SEBASTIAN’S ABYSS is a black comedy masterpiece. Watch the interview here:
https://austinlitilimits.com/episodes/episode-50-mark-haber.html
Buy SAINT SEBASTIAN’S ABYSS on Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/152/9781566896368
Support This Newsletter
I can’t sign off without mentioning the book I have out now THE BENEVOLENT LORDS OF SOMETIMES ISLAND. It’s a Young Adult novel of suspense that’s Lord of the Flies meets The Body by Stephen King, the inspiration for the classic movie Stand By Me. Oh, it won First Place in the 2021 Writer’s Digest Book Awards and is available in paperback, hardcover, eBook, and audiobook. You can find your copy here: Bookshop, BookPeople, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo Books, Google Play Books, IndieBound. Audiobook here: Audible, Apple Books, Amazon.
Please consider supporting this newsletter by buying one of the books I mentioned or one of my own books. Until next time, read more books, support your local bookstores, be good to each other, and above all else: please support your local libraries, too. Talk to you again soon...
Sincerely,
Scott
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Header photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash