About This Blog

Hello writers and those of you who love books! Welcome to the Grassroots Writer’s Guild–a place where you can discover exciting new authors and books, read free sample chapters, and purchase titles that appeal to you for under five dollars each! Please read our About GWG page to the right for more information on who we are and what we’re all about. 

Feel free to comment on any and every page and post on this site, that’s what we’re here for–to provide a direct connection between writers and readers.  GWG’s founding members, Connie Kirchberg and Julia Simpson, will post essays and various other dribble on this home page as they see fit. Topics will vary greatly, but always in some way, shape, or form, they WILL relate to the business of writing.  You have our promise.

So, sit back, relax, and start clicking away on the links to the right. You’ll see that both Connie and Julia decided to implement a “get to know the writer” approach in their sales technique that includes  personal experiences and family photos. They discuss the ideas behind their books and share their experiences regarding agents and traditional publishing. You may decide to go with a less intimate approach. The point is to figure out a marketing strategy that’s right for you and implement it.  Remember, the person best equipped to sell your book(s) is the person who knows and cares the most about it. And that would be you.

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A Great Book that Died: The Story of a British Muslim

Marmaduke Pickthall

I know good books die.  But it is still a mystery that it happens.

Peter Clark, an expert on British Muslims and the Middle East, not to be confused with Peter Clarke, Britain’s most senior conterterrorism detective, was the author of a wonderful book I read in the late 80′s titled Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim.  It was put out by Quartet Books in the U.K. and I reviewed it at the time for the Saudi newspapers.

Considering the number of British converts to Islam (not to mention American), one would expect this fabulous book to be easy to get. It is not. Try Amazon; I just did and there were no more than 13 copies available, all used. I tried googling it and found a few articles about Pickthall, Clark or written by the latter. . . but the book is rarer than it should be.

Clark did a splendid job on telling the story of a man who spent the first 20 years of his adult life as a practicing Christian and the last 20 as a conscientious Muslim.  When Pickthall converted to Islam in the 19th century, his wife followed two years later.  British Muslim describes an erudite and self-thinking man who was not cowed by popular opinion. Pickthall fought with his pen, writing articles for New Age in defense of Turkey during the first World War at a time when Turkey, by association with Germany, was Britain’s proclaimed enemy.  If not for his political ideas deemed dangerous by official circles, Pickthall’s “Talents as a linguist and as an authority on Syria, Palestine and Egypt could have been used.”  It was because of his loyalties that he was not offered the job with the Arab Bureau in Cairo, then under British rule, that subsequently went to T.E.  Lawrence.

T.E. Lawrence

The greatest work of his Pickthall’s life was his translation of the meaning of the Qur’an, which began around 1927. As early as 1919, Clark tells us, when Pickthall was acting imam in London, he translated passages from the Qur’an piecemeal from the sake of Friday sermons. His was the first translation by a Muslim. By 1927 Pickthall was teaching in the Nizamate of Hyderbade, an offshoot of the Moghal Empire which had “evaded absorption in the British empire.” The Nizam gave Pickthall special leave of absence on full pay for two years in order to complete the translation. Pickthall decided he should also secure approval from the ulama of Al-Azhar in Cairo. He spent three months in Egypt from November 1929 and met leading writers including Taha Hussein (who seemed to enjoy annoying Pickthall). The Egyptian trip was a failure. King Fuad, who was then toying with the idea of being caliph, did not support the notion of Pickthall’s translation. The ulama were all in a flutter when it came out: most pronounced it as “unfit to be authorized.”

Marmaduke Pickthall’s translation of the meaning of the holy Qu’ran, my personal favorite translation, has never gone out of print.  The translation has been rendered into Turkish, Portuguese, Mozambique and Tagalog.

Peter Clark too was a fascinating man. You can read his daughter’s thoughts on Clark and his obsession with his favorite writer, Marmaduke Pickthall here:  http://www.loyalenemy.co.uk/?location_id=187

I wish Clark’s book will be reprinted.  I hope by writing about it, I will stimulate interest in Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim by Peter Clark.

Peter Clark

Writing My Grief

Picture by David Urrutia

We do not know anything about the manifestations of grief save through sharing. Most sharing in life is done by talking, but that offers problems (to the understanding). Human beings are often competitive, and will attempt to outdo one another. The grieving person, much like the mother evaluating childbirth just passed or the sick person analyzing his or her own illness and suffering, may have to fall back upon other personal experiences.  In other words, an individual is often compelled to compare his/her feelings at one point in life with his/her feelings experienced at another point in life, and disregard all other testimony.

So I write these words to help myself and help anyone who might find comfort in them. Someone dear to me, a second mother for many years, has died. Her death has shattered me, just like my own dear mother’s death.

I lost my mother to an aneurism of the brain on Valentine’s Day when I was only 25 and she, 46. I flew to San Francisco to be by her bed. Later I found she was struggling to accept my conversion to Islam and marriage to a Saudi, for she was reading Robert Lacy’s The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa’ud.

Now I have lost my ex mother in law, Mama Juwaheir, a Saudi woman who died at a date a few days removed from my mother’s death date.   I had no idea of the irreversible nature of Mama Juwaheir’s recent illness until I received the blow of her death. While I have been divorced almost a dozen years, I have visited Mama Juwaheir almost every summer since leaving my marriage. It was she who became my comfort and who showed, in so many ways, that loved me.  Through loving me, she made me love her back unconditionally, as I did love my own mother.

In the aching of the days following death of such beloved people, one wants nothing so much as to talk to them.  Throughout the day, like the fasting person who forgets he or she is fasting and thinks about food, I yearn to speak to her.  I feel like I am writing these things into a deep but narrow hole into the universe, for to say such things to Mama Juwaheir’s real children would be to usurp their positions. Their grief MUST be greater than mine, and I respect that. I will deal with my grief, God willing, as best I can and thank the Creator for allowing me to have such a splendid person in my circle of loved beings. I miss her every hour upon the hour and do pray for her to be in the shade of the Throne.

Someone once attempted to usurp my grief, when my mother died—a young woman, former friend, who made out to be suffering more than I, her daughter.

The callousness of this former intimate  made my skin crawl and the ugliness of its memory haunts me still. God forbid it should be my sin. May God bless Mama Juwaheir and bring comfort to her family.

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What Blogs are Supposed to DO

At Fresno Airport with my son Yousef

When Connie and I started this blog, we were aware that having an online presence was de rigeur for a writers. We wrote about our individual interests as we still do, though not as frequently as when we started. (Perhaps that should change; I don’t know!) For two writers who are close friends and depend on each other as much as we do, our interests couldn’t  be more divergent–as you can see–since we appeal to basketball fans, Elvis fans, women who are thinking of marrying Saudis, and of course people involved in the literary world.

The “best” blogs are far more focused. They do the kinds of things that were recently discussed in an article put out by Publishing Perspectives on the relationship between tweeters, bloggers and publishers:  the best blogs deal with topics that are very specific, which will instantly become trendy and develop a stream of focused interest  from the public ( like being a woman who is past her “hot” years).

The question for anyone, especially other bloggers,  is do you want to do what’s “best”? I would rather follow Tony Bennett’s advice to his daughter and do what I like. Trying to figure out what will be trendy two minutes from now is guaranteed to give me angst and I already have Gerd and other less polite-to- mention ailments. My own interests diverge and if that means I will never write a smash hit book aimed at people who have been following my tweets about how to get even with the third grade teacher who tortured my younger son and left me forever bitter at her conniving duplicity, then so be it.

This blog keeps up the minimum requirement for two writers: we have an online presence, sell our books at a profoundly relaxed pace (ha ha ha) and give anyone diligent enough to find us a way to contact us.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

A writer’s book review

I don’t know about you, but for me, being a writer really limits my time for pleasure reading. After sitting behind my computer, writing for 4-6 hours per day, my eyes and mind are pretty tired of staring at words. But every now and then, a book’s synopsis strikes me as irresistible. That was the case for King’s latest, 11/22/63.

Science fiction has always been one of my favorite things. I’m a Star Trek geek. I loved (and still love) all of those series except Deep Space Nine, which I found, um, boring. The Star Wars moves are among my favorites. And the recent Battlestar Galactica series was, well, out of this world fantastic. None of these gems, however, managed to top my obsession with ABC’s LOST, which, while not science fiction, did make use of one of that genre’s most popular topics: time travel (albeit with a twist). And so, when I read a review of King’s 11/22/63, I knew had to indulge.

I’ve been a Stephen King fan for decades. Even back when critics used to pan his books and his writing skills. The Rule of Law for many critics seems to be, if a writer does genre writing, he’s a hack. I’m sure King had a good laugh about their conclusions while en route to the bank with another colossal check in hand. I could actually use this post to rant on and on about why I believe King is one of the best writers of our time, but for today, I’ll just move on to my review.

Katie sent me 11/22/63 for my birthday in mid-December. I knew it was a very lengthy affair along the lines of most King books, but looking at this mammoth in hardcover form, a staggering 849 pages, I decided to set aside a reading schedule of at least an hour per day every day, starting immediately after I finished working on my own book, which is usually about 3:00 p.m. This method actually worked very well, and I am happy to report I finished the book last week (I did take a week off over the holidays due to company, etc.).

I can’t recall the last time I’ve read any book, for writing-related purposes or just for fun, where I could stop myself from analyzing the author’s style and technique, and thus it seems fitting for me to center my review on those issues. (If you want to read a critical review centered on plot, I’m sure there are hundreds floating about the Internet to choose from.) King’s style hasn’t changed all that much over the years, but I did notice a few “wow” moments along those lines in 11/22/63. Most notable, he addresses the reader directly now and then. Phrases such as, “Now, I know what you’re thinking.” I had to read it a couple of times to make sure that’s what he was doing. And yes, it was. And I am totally impressed. He doesn’t do it all that much, but when he does, it just feels like the perfect moment for that slight author-to-reader interruption.

This is also the first King book I’ve read where he writes entirely in first person. I’ve written in third and first person, and I can say without pause that first person is much more difficult. It’s a point of view factor. If you start writing in first person, you have to stay that way all through the book, which can be quite a challenge when writing a mystery or suspense novel because your narrator can only be in one place at one time and cannot (I repeat cannot) know what other characters are thinking. There were a couple of spots where King took liberties on this, but only a couple so I will give him a pass. Overall grade of point of view: A-minus.

The next thing I look for is overall quality of the storyline. If there is one downside to most of King’s books, it’s that they always seem to stall in the middle. Perhaps this is because he usually has so many characters, and he wants to keep us up to speed with all of them, so he does. Too many characters isn’t an issue in 11/22/63 (probably a direct result of the first person narrative), yet the book still stalls a bit around the halfway point. That’s partly due to what’s going on plot-wise, but more so because (I believe) King just decided he was having fun throwing a romance into the middle of his book so he went with it. End result, there is too much Sadie for my taste, too much time spent on his relationship with both her and the small town where he takes up temporary residence while waiting for time to catch up to where it needs to be so he can carry out his plan, which, if you didn’t already know, is to stop Oswald from killing Kennedy. Nonetheless, the Sadie business is but one small pothole in the road on an otherwise smooth, A-plus journey.

The last point I always look for in a novel is whether the ending works, and if so, whether its theme stretches beyond the limits of the book itself. In other words, has the author hit on something that provokes a general discussion outside of what happened between the pages of his work? In the case of 11/22/63, that answer is a definitive yes. You know how in It’s A Wonderful Life we are encouraged to think about what the world what be like if we never existed. Well, with 11/22/63, the question to ponder is, would robbing the past of a horrendous event alter the future for better or worse? King’s book has an interesting answer to that, one I’m still thinking about. Well done, Mr. King. Very well done indeed.

Literary Wars

   In the February 2012 issue of Vanity Fair, the now-deceased Christopher Hitchens has a post on Charles Dickens.  While the main thesis of the essay is on how Dickens kept his inner child alive, Hitchens reveals what readers might find shocking but which any reader  who is also a writer will understand as a given–that the “real” Dickens felt himself to be more present in his villains than in his heroes.

According to Dostoyevsky (who met Dickens in the offices of his literary magazine in 1878), “He told me that all the good simple people in his novels, Little Nell, even the holy simpletons like Barnaby Rudge, are what he wanted to have been, and his villains were what he was (or rather, what he found in himself). . . “(VF 70).

To prove this, Hitchens underlines Dickens’ prejudices and then, in respect for the literary lion, Hitchens demonstrates the attempts Dickens made to atone for the faults to which his attention was drawn. Lovely.

Throughout, we are shown Dickens’ inner child, as apparent–for example–in his enthusiasm for celebrating birthdays. There follows a witty digression into the focus on birthday cards in modern society.  Hitchens can forgive such enthusiasm because it comes from the inner child of “the man who helped generate the Hallmark birthday industry and  who, with some of his less imposing and more moistly sentimental prose scenes in A Christmas Carol, took the Greatest Birthday Ever Told and helped make it into a near Ramadan of protracted obligatory celebration now darkening our Decembers.”

I am not here to speak ill of the dead. I have understood for quite a while that Hitchens was opposed to religion in general, ascribing the ills of mankind to faith rather than to the weaknesses of humanity.  However, it seems ironic that a writer of such  perspicacity, so gifted at pinpointing the weaknesses of individuals and institutions, should have missed the distinction that since it is humans who make distortions, the goal is balance.

Literary wars continue–our humanity is in how we wage them. Dickens did not do so badly.

Writing over the holidays

I love most things about the holidays. I love that our girls and their guys come to visit. I like hearing from friends whom I don’t hear from very often and catching up with their lives (I’m not a Facebook fan, so Christmas cards are still a yearly event at our house). I like the bounce in peoples’ steps, the smiles on their faces. I love all the decorations. I don’t, however, enjoy the extra cleaning that goes with having company. I don’t enjoy fighting traffic as I scramble to finish last minute shopping. I could also do without wrapping presents. But the number one thing (by far and away) I don’t like about the holidays is that I have so very little time to write.

This year it’s more annoying than it was the past few years because I’m smack in the middle of a new project—a new project that’s been going so well the book is nearly writing itself. I have managed to snare a few days to devote to my writing (and reading/critiquing with Julia) over the past few weeks, but for the most part, my book (and new posts for this blog!!) has been on hold. There are just too many other things that need to get done. This is nothing new, of course; it’s happened to me many times over the years. Most times I’m able to settle back into a daily writing schedule by the first of the year, but there have been other times when it’s taken months.

Interrupting our flow as writers is never a good idea, but sometimes it simply can’t be helped. The holiday season is one of those times. Rather than getting frustrated, let’s give ourselves a pass. No guilty feelings about unmet goals. No sleepless nights worrying about whether we’ll recapture the flow. Of course we will! We’re writers. But we’re people, too. And on that end, I’d like to wrap this up by wishing all of our readers and fellow writers a very Merry Christmas and an incredibly safe and Happy New Year!

Read Out Loud

Young Gustave Flaubert

It is no secret to longtime writers that reading one’s own work aloud is the best way to tell if the writing moves, flows, excites. It is the best way to notice errors such as using the same word too often or making a character do something twice.

I vividly recall a teacher once telling the class about Gustave Flaubert’s habit of reading aloud. Gustave Flaubert was a 19th century novel writer best known for his work, Madame Bovary. Apparently he lived, at one time, near a river, and people in boats, were they quiet enough, could hear him reading his work aloud to himself.  (What I would not have given to have been floating by!)

Of course, reading aloud may have its drawbacks. Once, Gustave Flaubert read the first version of a novel aloud to a couple of friends, asking them to keep quiet until he was finished. At the end of his reading, they told him to throw the book in the fire. (Not my idea of friends.)

I often ask my students if they have read their works aloud and they almost unanimously answer that they have not.. On an individual basis, it is helpful to take a student aside with his or her essay–not necessarily in front of others, but possibly after class or in some manner that is quiet and non-threatening  When we have privacy, I may read the student’s essay aloud to the student. It is amazing that almost without fail, every single error of grammar or logic becomes quite apparent and the student catches almost everything that I would have had to notate by pen.  The method, for teaching, is far better than handing an annotated paper back to a student who, in the rush of everyday matters, may not take the time to note each detail.

If those wishing to improve their writing would read aloud, they might shortcut such writing classes.