Look how important perseverance is.

DUNE (Frank Herbert) was rejected 23 times before it found a publisher.

A WRINKLE IN TIME (Madeleine L’Engle) was rejected 26 times before it was published.

GONE WITH THE WIND (Margaret Mitchell) was rejected 38 times before it was published.

THE DUBLINERS (James JOYCE, for Pete’s sake!) was rejected 22 times before it was published.

And the winner is… ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE (Robert Persig) which was rejected 121 times before it found a publisher.

Sometimes we are tested by the natural phenomenon, like earthquakes, tidal waves, and blizzards. Sometimes we are tested by family members. Sometimes we are tested by our own inner demons. Sometimes we are tested by the vagaries of national or international politics. Today, I am being tested by Facebook. So far, I am failing the test.

So far the first test (to link blog to FB) hasn’t worked. So this is a second test. Let’s see what happens THIS time. This is being posted 9:50 am EST on Friday January 27, 2012.

This is a test post to see if I am able to post from my website to my FB author’s page. Let’s see if it works

I just got word today that my (as-yet-untitled) novel about Iago will be published April 24, 2012. This is the week of Shakespeare’s birthday and attendant birthday celebrations, and I am delighted by the opportunity to celebrate the Bard’s birthday with a tribute to one of his greatest masterpieces.

Many thanks to all of you who participated in the Blog Tour de Troops for Memorial Day weekend. The response was so overwhelming that the Indie Book Collective will be donating 10,000 books to American troops.

Amber Scott was the wunderkind organizing the Blog Tour, and Carolyn McCray is the enterprising writer who created the Indie Book Collective. Special thanks to them both.

The Blog Tour is now over, but please: don’t stop reading, don’t stop appreciating people who put themselves in harm’s way for you, and don’t stop reading.

Blog Tour de Troops

http://indiebookcollective.wordpress.com

I’m honored to be a part of the Blog Tour de Troops, the Indie Book Collective’s original and heartfelt way to say thank you to  American men and women in uniform. Throughout Memorial Day weekend, if you leave a comment on the blog of any  participating author (there are 30 of us), not only will you get a free ebook from that author, but a free ebook will be sent to a troop -  you can either request it for a specific person, or let the IDC to determine who gets the copy. (You’ll also be entered into a drawing to win a free Kindle, as well as one for the troops. As the self-designated Luddite in this undertaking, I have no idea how they do all that, but I think it’s great that they do.) To quote one of my fellow authors on the Tour de Troops:

“As a small gift, I was given this opportunity to offer you my writing for your enjoyment as you are far from home.”

I’m still in rewrites for my latest novel – the story of Othello from Iago’s point of view, due out for Shakespeare’s next birthday (late April of 2012). So I’m offering my most recent novel, CROSSED: A Tale of the Fourth Crusade. If you leave a short comment and your email address, the folks at HarperCollins will perform their cyberspacial magic and a free ebook of CROSSED will be on its way to you very soon via the Cyberspace Fairies (see earlier Luddite comment).

Here’s a few of my favorite comments about CROSSED:

“…an act of considerable creative genius…a must-read.”
-—Ilysa Magnus, Historical Novels Review

“REQUIRED READING… A funny (really!) look at this disastrous Crusade… It’s a raucous road trip set in the 13th century.”
—The New York Post

“This epic historical adventure…succeeds in being a true guilty pleasure, a rousing shout-out to those past masters of bestselling historical fiction, Frank Yerby, Samuel Shellabarger and Lawrence Schoonover.”
-— Publisher’s Weekly

And, if you get a kick out of people laughing at themselves, here’s a chronicle of my own misadventures while researching the Fourth Crusade: Field Notes From A Broad

If you’ve been following the daisy chain of authors involved – and I hope you have! – you’ll have just come from the blog of the IDC’s founder, Carolyn McCray. http://datingafter40okayhopingtodateafter40.blogspot.com/ Thank you, Carolyn, and to all at the Indie Book Collective, for this chance to give something back, however humbly, to our servicemen and servicewomen. And once you’ve poked around my site for a bit, move on to Louisa Bacio’s eye-popping blog,

http://louisabacio.blogspot.com/

which will induce you to write erotica. Personally, I can’t wait to get over to that site myself…

But first, I want to take a moment to express what I am grateful for on this Memorial Day.

I am sometimes a loud-mouthed opinionated progressive, and have been most of my life – and I’m grateful that I get to be loud-mouthed, opinionated, and progressive, with the extreme luxury of taking all of that for granted very nearly all the time. I can be critical, even furiously so, of my government, and I may say so, safely, in whatever obnoxious form I choose.  That is a terrific privilege, and I want to take a moment to appreciate it. I hope you’ll do so too.

I am also grateful – as selfish as this sounds – that the men and women in my life who have served in the Armed Forces have NOT been called upon to give their lives for these privileges that I take for granted. Other men and women have made such a sacrifice; I thank them and I grieve for them, but the people I know have been spared, and I am unapologetically grateful for that. I am especially grateful that Viet Nam did not claim Michael Colaneri, because then who would have taught me how to ride a bike and tie my shoes? But there are names he knows too well, on that shiny dark wall in Washington DC. There are kids whose dads did not teach them how to ride a bike or tie their shoes, because their dads did not come home. I know this, and so my gratitude is bittersweet, as is the spirit of the day among the men and women we are celebrating.

Thank you for taking that moment with me. Now go have fun on Louisa’s blog! And if you’d like to make a donation toward purchasing more Kindles for the troops, go here: http://bit.ly/jRLSC6

I am about to plagiarize myself: what is written below is based on a post I just made to the lively, entertianing blog http://www.neptunuslex.com/

I was invited to be involved in something cool this weekend called the Blog Tour de Troops. It offers free ebooks, and even free Kindles, to troops.

There’s about 30 writers involved, from all genres ranging from historical fiction (me) to mystery to YA books to (I am not making this up) paranormal erotic thrillers. This weekend, we are each posting a blog entry about what we are grateful for re: what Memorial Day represents. If you visit any or all of the blogs, and leave a comment with your email address, 4 things happen:

1 You get a free copy of that author’s ebook
2 A troop will also receive a free copy of that ebook
3 You’ll be entered in a lottery to win a free Kindle and
4 You’ll help contribute to a Kindle being sent to atroop. (The authors put money into a kitty for this.)

If you’re intrigued, start by coming back to my blog tomorrow (my “tour date” is Monday) and post a comment. The good people at HarperCollins (my publisher) will then send you a free e-copy of my novel CROSSED: A Tale of the Fourth Crusade.

To collect all the free ebooks or just enjoy their civilian testimonals to Memorial Day, go to: http://indiebookcollective.wordpress.com

Today was the funeral of Jon Lipsky, an extraordinary man: teacher, writer, director, father, husband, community member. His service at the Martha’s VIneyard Hebrew Center was possibly the most moving I’ve ever attended.

Everyone who knew Jon has a story, or many stories, about him. My story is not about Jon directly, but about an important (sad) lesson I have learned because of him.

When I was visiting the Vineyard about 8 years ago, somebody told me that if I wanted to learn some banjo tunes, Jon Lipsky, associate artistic director at the Vineyard Playhouse, played old-time banjo. I called Jon and he said to come on over. In his front garden was a large Buddha statue. I thought, “Wow, here’s somebody else who is into the unlikely triad of banjo, theatre and Buddhism – and we live in the same town! What a funny coincidence.”  He taught me a tune. I was a terrible banjo player (I still am).

Then about a year later, I guess, I met Jon at the aikido dojo, where he was a black-belt.  I  had studied at Aikido Shusekai in Berkeley, and was checking out the Vineyard aikido scene. The fact that he was Jewish came up. “Jon, this is very strange,” I said, “How many Jewish Buddhists live on Martha’s Vineyard, doing professional theatre and spending their spare time playing old-time banjo and practicing aikido?”

With a twinkle in his eye, he said by way of answer, “Did you know I am primarily a writer?”

For various reasons, I stopped going to the dojo once I moved back to the Vineyard. About every 6 months Jon would gently urge me to give it another try. Because I was shy and untalented, I never asked him to teach me another banjo tune.

I wish I had now. At the service, his son Adam brought out Jon’s banjo and played a tune on it, and I dissolved. I was so annoyed at myself, that the universe had given me this custom-tailored mentor and I never took advantage of that gift. On more fronts than any other human being I’ve ever known, he was there to be a teacher FOR ME and I just couldn’t be bothered. That gets me. It bothers me so much. In a weird way I feel like I let him down or something.

So I’m going to go practice banjo now to make it up to him.

And the next time the universe offers such generosity, I will be sure to make more of it.

We all miss you, Jon.

Writing this blog does not make me an author. What makes me an author is that I write books, which are published – bound in paper, at least at first – and my publishing house distributes them to the world at large. I can live with that model; it’s been working for authors for a long time (although not that long by the standards of human history).

Here in the 21st century, it is becoming increasingly popular for writers to use social media (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other things I know nothing about yet) as a means to put themselves, as a brand, out into the world.

I am not a brand. I do not want to become a brand; I want to keep surprising myself every time I start on a new project. And yet, and yet, and yet…after being a panelist at the SXSW festival last week, I feel that I need to give all the new-fangled stuff the old college try before turning my back on it, if I may loosely mix a couple of tepid metaphors. And so – for the 11teenth time – I am trying to get back into blogging; I am trying to learn to Tweet regularly and entertainingly (how am I doing? #ndgalland); and I’m doing something else too, but I forget what it is at the moment.

I currently have a friendly bet going with novelist friend Mark Teppo: we’re going to see which of us can gather the most new “followers” on Twitter over the course of 2 weeks. Neither of us really understand why we should do this, but we do know that Social Media Experts feel that we Must. So we’ll give it a couple of weeks and then see how we’re surviving…and how much we’ve actually tweeted.