Another Rejection On My Next Book

The publisher that seemed interested decided it was too much of a trade book for them.  (They aren't interested in publishing books that might sell tens of thousands of copies.)  Alas, there seem not be any trade publishers anymore, unless you already have a national television or radio show, or a regularly published newspaper column.

Looks Like I Have A Publisher For My Next Book

They said they want to publish it (although with a different title)--but their booklist is already full for 2010 and 2011.  I'm seeing if we can go ahead and do a contract for January 2012 publication.  First few chapters are here.

Interesting Surprise Saturday

Interesting Surprise Saturday

One of my students brought in a copy of my book Armed America and asked me to autograph. The surprise is that it was the paperback edition--which I didn't know existed!

"On The Cover of the Rolling Stone"

"On The Cover of the Rolling Stone"

You may remember when Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show recorded "On the Cover of the Rolling Stone":

Well we are big rock singers, we've got golden fingers
And we're loved everywhere we go
We sing about beauty and we sing about truth
At ten thousand dollars a show
We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills
But the thrill we've never known
Is the thrill that'll get you when you get your picture
On the cover of the Rolling Stone

Well, that's about how it feels when you finally break out of the third tier law reviews and into the top tier law reviews. Getting cited in a Supreme Court decision was even more cool, but I was told over dinner in Chicago that having a paper published in Hastings Law Journal means that I will have an easier time getting published in other first tier law reviews.

Anyway, I now have a bunch of reprints of the Hastings Law Journal article by Don Kates and myself, as well as the Williamette Law Review paper by Professor Joe Olson and myself. If you are interested in having those reprints, I would be quite happy to mail you the two of them for $5. I also have more copies of the full volume than I can possibly ever need. The Hastings Law Journal volume in question is a symposium issue devoted to Second Amendment issues. If you are interested in the full volume, let me know.

And to quote Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show:

Rolling Stone
   Wanna see my picture on the cover
Rolling Stone
   Wanna buy five copies for my mother
I'm sending one copy to my mother.

Articles Up

Articles Up

Added the following articles to the Popular Magazine & Newspaper Articles page: The Heller Aftermath," Shotgun News, October 1, 2008, pp. 22-24, "She Can Field Dress A Moose—A Donkey Will Be Easy!", Shotgun News, November 1, 2008, pp. 30-32, "Gun Shows and Public Safety," Shotgun News, December 1, 2008, pp. 20-21, "Big Trouble," Shotgun News, January 1, 2009, pp. 22-24, "A Nation of Marksmen," America's First Freedom, January, 2009, 37-41, "Parks, D.C. Dragging Their Feet," Shotgun News, February 1, 2009, pp. 22-24, "Post-Heller Victories," Shotgun News, March 1, 2009, pp. 20-22, "Is the Militia Obsolete?", America's First Freedom, March 2009, 38-41, "Speak Softly and Carry a Big Video Camera," Shotgun News, April 1, 2009, pp. 20-22, "Poor Mexico: So Far From God, And So Close to the United States," Shotgun News, May 1, 2009, pp. 26-28.

Good News! A Publisher Asked To See The Manuscript

Good News! A Publisher Asked To See The Manuscript

Okay, not a huge publisher, but it's a start. Remember that the first few chapters are visible here.

Screenplay

Screenplay

I am still waiting for literary agents to respond to my query concerning Personal Tragedies. So far, I have lots of "not right for us" responses, and a few that have made a point of saying that it was very well written. In the meantime, I'm writing a subversive screenplay about one of the last great incidents of slave rescue before the Civil War started.

I've never tried something like this before, and it is exhilarating. Henry James famously once wrote, "Show, don't tell." This is even more true with a screenplay than it is with a novel. A voiceover or text on the screen can provide a certain amount of background, but only a little. I would say that the opening crawl of Star Wars is very nearly the maximum that a film can get away with, and even that only worked because of the way in which the words receded. The opening explanations of Red Dawn were, in some respects, a sign of laziness on the part of the screenwriter (or the necessity of getting the film to a length that the studio was willing to release).

Information that everyone in the film knows has to be explained in dialog--and in a way that feels natural--not like a character is lecturing the audience. If you want the audience to know a character's name, you need to introduce him--and one way of doing so is to have another character introduce him, or he introduces himself. I learned quite a bit about film taking film classes at USC--and I'm putting that knowledge to work now.

I'm about 15 pages in so far, and I'm already thinking of the next steps. I'm told that one strategy for raising the roughly $250,000 to $500,000 to make a small independent film like this is to film a few powerful scenes, and put that up as a trailer. We'll see how that works. I've lined up a colleague from HP to play a regionally prominent black abolitionist in the sentencing sequence. He isn't an actor, but I believe that he'll do a good job--the speech that Langston gave to the court was powerful, and with enough practice, I suspect that it will be a strong enough scene to show the power of the material. (And yes, you may find it hard to believe, but there are black people in Boise. To cast the whole film might, however, exhaust the supply of black actors in our state!)

Waiting For Responses From Literary Agents

Waiting For Responses From Literary Agents

I sent out a query to about 150 literary agents that I found through Writer's Market. Not surprisingly, since this database was last updated in mid-December, about 15 of the emails bounced, and about 15 so far have said, "Thanks, but not for me." While I wait for the rest to respond, if you are interested, you can see the first few chapters of the book here.

My Literary Agent Has Retired

My Literary Agent Has Retired

If you have some positive experience with an agent getting a publisher for your book, please let me know. My agent did say,

I did give the first 30 or so pages of your book a quick read. It's an interesting take on an important subject and well written, so I'm fairly confident the right agent will be able to place it at the right home for it.

Nelson Current published my previous book, and the contract gives them right of first refusal for this book. (I'm still waiting to hear from them.) The book is tentatively titled Personal Tragedies: Mental Illness, Deinstitutionalization, and Homelessness.

Books about mental illness fit into two broad categories: personal accounts of what happened to a family member; and scholarly histories. I get the impression that the former sell well, but don't much move the public policy discussion, while books in the latter category don't sell well at all. My book is something of a hybrid, in that some chapters recount the tragedy that overcame my older brother, and other chapters examine the history of deinstitutionalization and its effects
on our society. I am hoping that the combination may result in a book that sells well, and influences public policy. But I'll be happy if it just sells well!

You can see a list of my books at http://www.claytoncramer.com/books/books.htm;
scholarly articles at http://www.claytoncramer.com/scholarly/journals.htm;
popular magazine articles at http://www.claytoncramer.com/popular/popularmagazines.htm. Oh yes, the Supreme Court cited some of my work in a recent decision, D.C. v. Heller (2008).

Suggestions? Recommendations?

Hard At Work on the Deinstitutionalization Book

I'm at the point where I am doing three things simultaneously:

1. Going through and polishing the sentences, looking for bad transitions, and the like. This is a boring but necessary action.

2. Adding more personal accounts of both what went wrong with my brother's spiral down into mental illness, and that of other people I knew. This is sometimes quite painful as it dredges up memories.

3. Using books.google.com to search for additional sources, especially in the nineteenth century, to either fill in material or verify the accuracy of secondary sources. For example, Albert Deutsch's Mentally Ill in America characterizes Morgan Hinchman's 1849 civil suit for wrongful commitment in a way that didn't make much sense to me. Paul S. Appelbaum and Kathleen N. Kemp, “The Evolution of Commitment Law in the Nineteenth Century: A Reinterpretation,” Law and Human Behavior, 6:3-4 [1982], 345 argues that Deutsch was completely wrong about the role of the Hinchman decision in causing the development of Pennsylvania's commitment due process changes. I dug around a bit, and found Hinchman v. Richie (C.P. 1849) available in full. And yes, not only was Deutsch wrong about this, but way wrong.

Another Review of Armed America

In the November-December 2007 Mensa Bulletin.

Speaking Engagement in Twin Falls, Idaho

I'll be speaking in Twin Falls next month. More details here.

Gun Rights Policy Conference in October

I'll be one of the speakers at the Gun Rights Policy Conference. I just finished making flight reservations. If you have media contacts in Cincinnati, I would love to do any radio or television programs in the area to promote my book.

Has Anyone Received a Review Copy of My Book Armed America?

I am beginning to suspect that very, very few (if any) review copies were sent out to bloggers--hence, the complete lack of attention that it has received from pro-gun bloggers who get thousands of visitors an hour.

Someone's PR Firm Did A Great Job

Kyle Cassidy published a book this year titled Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in their Homes. Unfortunately, it is very similar in title to my book Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie.

Cassidy's book is coffee table book of pictures of American gun owners. My book is a serious piece of historical research. So do a Google search for "Armed America" and you will see that whoever his PR firm is did a much better job of getting press for it. Or maybe I need to write books with lots of pretty pictures, and not so many words.

Houston in September

One of the colleges in the area is organizing having me come to debate the meaning of the Second Amendment with a prominent law professor on the other side. (I'm not identifying him yet until we get everything finalized.) When we get the details finalized, I'll be trying to organize other events in the area as well.

Back From New York City

I'm drained--it may be tomorrow before I post anything. I had hundreds of emails waiting for me, and most of them, amazingly enough, weren't spam.

Reminder: I'll Be Out Of Town For A Few Days on a Book Tour

I'm not taking my laptop with me, so I won't be blogging much if any. And I probably won't be checking my email, either. But make sure that if you are within several hundred miles of northern New Jersey, you come and see me speak!