John T. Cullen, Author and Self-Publisher. This week's featured self-publisher is John T. Cullen (that's me). You'll find more about my past work and future plans at my personal website, http://www.johntcullen.com and on the world's sixth oldest digital publishing house website, http://www.clocktowerbooks.com. While there, also visit the Museum page for Deep Outside SFFH and Far Sector SFFH. In my scholarly researches for A Walk in Ancient Rome, I encountered an old enigma, the Sator Square. Recognized by the first academic experts who have now read my scholarly paper, it appears that I am the first to solve this ancient Roman puzzle. I have plausibly translated as well as explained it, also suggesting its importance in the development of Classical philosophy and medieval theology. My book on ancient Rome has never been done before: an atlas for the lay or student reader, street by street and often building by building, that delves into each of the fourteen Augustan districts and often reveals wonders of daily life and religion generally known only to academic experts. My fiction embraces several genres, including science fiction, historical fiction, and science-horror. I also write poetry and fine fiction.

What's the difference between commercial fiction and fine fiction? Not what most of us were trained to suppose. Contrary to the common cliché of many, 'literary' fiction is not a genre or a marketing niche, but fine writing (including poetry) that by nature calls attention to itself. Equally contrary is the reality, amply demonstrated by PIN, that most famous authors did not starve in garrets for the titillation of later generations of English majors, but in fact most of the works on your high school or college litarature survey syllabus were astonishingly prolific, and raging popular successes in their day. In that consideration we include writers like William Shakespeare, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Beatrix Potter, James Joyce, and many more. All of these, in one fashion or another, had to circumvent gatekeepers and publish their own work. Shakespeare not only wrote plays, but owned much of the theater world in which he published them and had them performed. Dickens was forced to seek his start in weekly journals, because no printer/publisher (same thing in his day) would touch his work, and academics hated him. And so on it goes. Each author has his or her own style, persona, dasein, what have we. The supposed dichotomy between 'literary' and 'commercial' work is a mirage among sophomores.

There is, however, a kind of modern, industrial fiction (a fine thing in itself when done well) that does not call attention to itself. Let me explain it this way. In departing from the more flowery writing of earlier generations, writers of the early 20th Century tended to strip away convention and ornament. Just as the new architects raised simple, functional shapes, so modern authors began writing prose that is described as being 'like a pane of clean glass.' You do not notice the glass, but peer through it at what the author wants to describe. This can be done with all the elegance and art of a Shaker chair, and I have written much of it myself, for most conceivable writing purposes in a long career.

But I began life as a poet and an artist, at a tender age, and only wrote my first novel as a teenager. I had poetry published before I finished my first novel. As a German professor (Herr Uhlig) told us in a class, long ago, at the University of Connecticut, in regard to lyrical poets like Rilke, most such poets stop writing lyrically by around age thirty. That was certainly true of me, but I felt comfortable that my love of writing stories would give me new acres in which to plant those poetic shoots. I have come to understand, with time, that it is not as effective to mix popular fiction, intended for a broad audience, with writing (whether poetry or prose) that calls attention to itself.

Fine writing is a fine art, and has its own validity, however. Some of my work, like Umnitsa or Lantern Road, strikes out into what I would call Fine Writing (as in Fine Arts). I have deep respect for both tropes (call them fine vs. industrial). W. Somerset Maugham admirably covers this ground in his Preface to Of Human Bondage. In it, he writes that he has abandoned the verbal gymnastics of his earlier career for more utilitarian prose that simply gets the job done (my words; read his). The rhythm of the line, the phrase to the ear, these are temptations I may find it hard to resist, and this may cloud the glass for those seeking a fast read. I don't blame either myself or such readers for these sometimes intersecting (thus, mathematically, non-parallel) trajectories of expectation. It is what it is. I continue to passionately write. I try my best to bring both clarity and richness to whoever may enjoy lending his or her attention.

Famous Self-Published Authors. Here is probably the most complete and detailed list of its type available on line. The famous names clearly indicate how often and how enormously establishment gatekeepers tend to get it wrong. I will add to this list as necessary. New authors should feel encouraged to join the ranks, after reading the copious information on this PIN magazine website about understanding the publishing industry, formatting their own books, and much more to come.

Stephen Crane Barry Eisler Howard Fast Zane Grey Amanda Hocking James Joyce D.H. Lawrence J. A. Konrath John Locke Anais Nin Christopher Paolini Edgar Allan Poe Beatrix Potter Irma Rombauer William Shakespeare Walt Whitman Virginia Woolf

   PIY: Formatting Your POD Print Interior (Part 2). If you have created a Smashwords interior text file, using my earlier instructions and free template, you can baseline the same file for your print edition. Here's Part 2: Nuts & Bolts…

   PIY: Good Work Habits for Self-Publishers. Learn about Version Control and other simple but important factors in a successful program—word processing in general, self-publishing in particular. Here's good info.

Umnitsa: The Good Girl Historical/Espionage/Love Story In the tradition of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, John Le Carré's Naive and Sentimental Lover, and Graham Greene's The Third Man, but Umnitsa is ground-breaking and in a class of its own. At key moments, it will also remind readers of the movie Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Umnitsa: The Good Girl This unconventional love story is complex, and by turns tragic and exhilarating. Its style and themes recall Boris Pasternak's writing textures and themes in Doctor Zhivago. If Pasternak's novel is an enigmatic slice of life in Russia at a historical pivot, then Umnitsa is likewise an enigmatic slice of life in the U.S. at its greatest historical turning point. San Francisco, in 1945, at the intersection of two epic wars (World War II and the Cold War) is a mad and brooding capital of rioting and passion. A dark, heavy atmosphere of espionage envelops the founding of the United Nations that summer, as well as the final preparations to drop the world's two first atomic bombs in war. Framing the story is the 1991 search by a wealthy French countess for her long-lost father. Marianne Didier is a wealthy, glamorous, but troubled French jet-setter. She was adopted as a toddler, out of squalor and hopelessness in post-World War II Siberia. Her legacy from her long-dead mother includes the affectionate term Umnitsa, good or clever girl. Though she has everything life can offer, she is missing one all-important piece. From her base in Paris, she goes on a search for her long-lost father while the Soviet Union collapses in 1991 and the world changes. Her journey takes her around the world, and frames the story (1942-1945) of her long-lost father back in his prime during World War II. During World War II, courageous, handsome young U.S. Navy officer Tim Nordhall pursues a Soviet-Nazi-Allied triple agent (Jaguar), who is deeply involved in atomic espionage. Tim Nordhall's adventures take him from the deserts and jungles of Africa, to London during the Blitz, and finally wartime San Francisco in 1945. In London, the naive clockmaker from Connecticut encounters the great, beautiful love of his life, a Free Polish Army nurse named Anna Stokowska. One of the women in Tim's life will bear him the lost child around which the entire novel circles. Anna, Tim, and other memorable characters fade in and out in the fog of war, while the ruthless espionage services of the Great Powers ply their shadowy and ubiquitous trade. San Francisco, like Paris a world-class City of Love, is in 1945 a wild brawl of war-weary young men and women. Atomic bomb material destined for Hiroshima and Nagasaki passes through en route to Tinian. Secret agents from around the world conduct shadowy warfare, including two remarkable women spies who become Tim's lovers. Tens of thousands of lusty, brawling young men and women party and work in the waning months of an epic war. San Francisco is a rainy neon blur, whose slick streets rattle with gunfire from passing cars, whose windows glow with parties and jazz, and whose dark doorways shelter terrified and curious eyes. The title, Umnitsa: Good Girl, refers to a common Russian term of endearment for a girl-child, and is key to Marianne (Countess) Didier's desperate, lifelong search. Time flows inexorably, but sometimes its mysteries form an infinite circle that keeps doubling back upon itself… .