Conventional Cleis

Who knew Cleis Press is merely conventional? I thought they were fearless cutting-edge risk-takers. I queried Brenda Knight at Cleis about my book Secreta Corporis, from whom I never received a reply, and I have a strong suspicion her reaction was "We don't publish books that have already been self-published." Stock response. Standard answer. A response Zondervan might give (you can't get much more conservative and conventional than that). Legal issues? Customer confusion? Even I, from my non-legal perspective, can figure out how to clearly separate the two books in the marketplace, after the self-published book is taken out of print, so that there would be no confusion. Easy. Tsk-tsk, Ms. Knight—coloring inside the lines like that. Even after you had read Michael Nava's review of my book (which is included below). "Marvelously erudite"? "Immerses the reader"? "I highly recommend it"? Michael Nava didn't know what he was talking about? He thought it was great, and you passed on it because it was already self-published. Conventional. You wear gingham dresses to work, don't you.

Following is the query letter.

7 August 2013

Ms. Knight,

My gay historical novel, Secreta Corporis, has the misfortune of being gay and literary (simultaneously, yes) while the subject matter (the Knights Templar in the Holy Land) seems to place it in the adventure or thriller genres. When I started the project in 2006, substituting the male archetype of "cowboy" presented in Brokeback Mountain with the similarly archetypal "knight" seemed like a good idea at the time. I set the story after the Third Crusade, during the three-year truce, so that there would be no need for battle scenes and the story could focus on the relationship between the two knights. The appearance of Templars in the story, however, incorrectly signals to readers of literary fiction that this isn't their kind of book, and it has attracted a few readers of genre fiction who have thought that my novel was the dullest 'thriller' they've ever read. It's a problem of positioning that is beyond me to solve, and so I'm turning to you, who seem uniquely abled and situated to take on a project like this.

Ordinarily I wouldn't bother you with this project; I'd just wave the white flag and move on to some new creative project. But I was lucky enough to obtain, at my request, a short but favorable review of my book from Michael Nava (author of the Henry Rios novels and the forthcoming historical novel, The City of Palaces):

Secreta Corporis is, in the tradition of The Name of the Rose, a marvelously erudite novel that brings the past to life in all its complexity while engaging the reader's sympathy in the love story of Rolant and Audric, Knights Templar, as they travel in and around the Holy Land at the end of the 12th century. Garvey's book immerses the reader in Rolant and Audric's world while never losing sight of the deep bond between them that is the heart of the story. This is not the cartoon version of the past readers get in so many historical novels but a rich and detailed landscape in which the reader can happily lose him- or herself. I highly recommend it.

After I emerged from the coma, I emailed Michael to thank him and expressed my surprise at such a glowing review. He responded "...Years later when I met [Joseph Hansen] and asked him why [he had written a glowing review of his book], he said, basically, 'because it was a good book.' You have written a good book. It may not find the audience it deserves but this is one appreciative reader who wishes it and you well." I'm hoping that an assessment like this from a known source, a known quantity, will encourage you to see the potential in my book. The book can be found on its product page at Amazon. A synopsis and Chapter One are below, and the manuscript in PDF form is attached.

Thanks very much.

John Garvey

Oops, wrong book

Robert,

I'm really sorry you had an unpleasant time reading my book Secreta Corporis. Can I reimburse you for the cost of the book? I feel responsible when my book turns out to be the wrong book for a reader; I feel that I must not have promoted it right or summarized it correctly.

When a person finds out that a book was written for someone else, he really can return the book! He shouldn't feel like he has to suffer through it. I'm sorry that you kept hoping it would get better and it never did. You were probably expecting more action scenes and more descriptive erotic passages, right? What I intended for the book, though, was to examine what would happen if those ancient clay tablets actually existed. I was fascinated when an archaeologist (Israel Finkelstein) speculated in his book that scholars for more than a century have theorized that the scroll the priests found during Temple repairs in II Kings 22:8-13 had actually been created by those priests but they presented it as the writings of Moses. I was amazed to think that the Bible itself would present a clue that it originated with a book of the Torah that was a forgery and so everything that has since been built on that forgery has been bogus. The whole thing bogus! A billion Catholics, plus all protestants, Jews, Muslims, Mormons and everyone else who believes Moses wrote the Torah/Pentateuch—billions of people have been misled since that forgery was presented as authentic. And the clue to it has been there in II Kings all along. Finkelstein and the other scholars make a strong case that the priests wanted to clear out all the other gods and shrines and altars from the Temple courtyard and elsewhere so that all of the tithe money could be redirected to the Temple treasury. And the scoll of law they created gave the priests so much more authority that the king had to seek their approval from then on. I was amazed to learn that—amazed enough to write a novel that was so long and involved I eventually divided it into two novels (in the sequel The Talpiot Find, archaeologists in the present find the rest of the tablets). So you see my reason for writing the novel was really different than what you thought it was, but I didn't convey that clearly enough and so you went into the book expecting it to be a different book. My fault. But I don’t know how to correct it. Other than writing wordy paragraphs like this to try to explain.

You probably also can see how, for another reader, the book wouldn’t be a “waste of time” but an interesting exploration of how ancient cultures profoundly affected the development of the modern world. Everybody has different tastes in books. If you somehow mistook a Hardy Boys mystery for a crime novel like those of Michael Connelly, you might write in a review “That was the dumbest crime novel I’ve ever read.” But the series has been around for a long time and has sold mountains of books, and its success would sort of prove your assessment wrong. If people on Amazon came across your negative review, they would just shrug and say “You read the wrong book. Get over it.” If you had read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, you would’ve found it even more tortuous than my book. Much longer and much more slogging through history and doctrine. But it was a NYTimes bestseller, so is it an awful book? If you find reading a book an awful experience, does that make the book awful? Lots of students have complained about being required to read Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea. Does their awful experience make it an awful book? It’s required reading at schools and colleges; there must be some reason for that.

So it would be nice if those who write customer reviews on Amazon kept some perspective about their reading experiences. When a person writes that a book is awful, they’re actually revealing that they believe every reader is just like they are and that they speak for everyone. But no book is written for everyone. Every book has an intended demographic. And people outside that demographic will be bored by that book. That’s okay. That’s the system we have to work with. Writing things like "waste of time," "annoying" and "torture" just tells whoever reads your review that you must not have realized you could return the book within thirty days for a full refund. As I said, I'd like to reimburse you for the cost of the book. I have a PayPal account; we can use that for the transfer.

Michael Nava's kind review of Secreta Corporis

Michael Nava, author of the Henry Rios novels, which were praised as "an exceptional series" by the New York Times, and the forthcoming historical novel, The City of Palaces, said of Secreta Corporis:

Secreta Corporis is, in the tradition of The Name of the Rose, a marvelously erudite novel that brings the past to life in all its complexity while engaging the reader's sympathy in the love story of Rolant and Audric, Knights Templar, as they travel in and around the Holy Land at the end of the 12th century. Garvey's book immerses the reader in Rolant and Audric's world while never losing sight of the deep bond between them that is the heart of the story. This is not the cartoon version of the past readers get in so many historical novels but a rich and detailed landscape in which the reader can happily lose him- or herself. I highly recommend it.

In my thank-you email to Nava, I expressed my surprise at such a favorable review, wondering why he'd been so nice to a total stranger, and he wrote back:

...Years later when I met [Joseph Hanson] and asked him why [he had written a glowing review of Nava's book], he said, basically, 'because it was a good book.' You have written a good book. It may not find the audience it deserves but this is one appreciative reader who wishes it and you well.

Google paying for ad click only when sale is made

In response to the article "Quality Score Explained by a Former Googler" on SearchEngineLand.com, wouldn't it be interesting if #Google introduced a CPS, cost-per-sale. #Larry Page should consider this business model but of course won't because #AdWords has become Google's main revenue source and this would seriously reduce that revenue stream. As it is now, Google's job is done when an ad is clicked on, even if a person clicks on an ad only out of curiosity and has no intention of making a purchase. An ad is clicked, Google gets paid, and they're done. I noticed that quite a few of my monthly top-four-sites were in Mandarin, although what I was advertising was a novel written in English and I had selected English as the language for the ad campaign. If the carrot were held a little farther out, it would be in Google's best interests to ensure that impressions displayed on the most appropriate sites. I'm under the impression that the tracking technology already in place is sophisticated enough to allow Google to track a user's clicks from ad to landing page to check-out. Every advertiser would benefit from Google not being paid until an actual sale is made.

If you love the Assassin's Creed series...

It has occurred to me that my two linked novels resemble the multi-layered or multi-timeframe aspect of the Assassin's Creed storyline, and I wonder what the odds are that there might be readers among the AC fans who would enjoy reading my novels in spite of the fact that there is much, much, much less violence in them than in AC. If you primarily love AC for the awesomely cool killing moves that snap into bullet-time slowmo, you won't like my books at all. That should be clearly understood so you don't download a copy to your Kindle or iPad and then write a review about it being the most boring thriller you've ever read. (The novels aren't thrillers.) However, if the way Assassin's Creed moves between different historical eras and the present to piece together a larger story appeals to you a lot, you might find my novels interesting. Keep in mind that my overall story is smaller than AC's sprawling saga. My story involves just the Western and Middle Eastern worlds, wherever the Old and New Testaments and related sacred writings have spread, and involves only two historical eras along with the present: the seventh century bce and the twelfth century. Also, the science-fiction aspect of Assassin's Creed is obvious, while my story's is shrouded. If a reader doesn't pick up the scifi references, the story isn't affected. If s/he does pick up the clues, it adds a deeper layer to the overall story that resembles AC's ancient-aliens premise that mankind's development has been guided for thousands of years. But there are only clues, or Easter eggs, in the novels. A lot of room was intentionally left for individual interpretation.

One of the linked novels, The Talpiot Find, is set in the present and follows archaeologists in Jerusalem who unearth ancient clay tablets that, if authentic, would rewrite history regarding the origins of the Torah and of the sacred writings that grew out of the Torah—the Gospels, the Epistles, the Quran, the Book of Mormon and so on. The novel parallels this story with a story set in the seventh century bce that shows how the clay tablets, and a human skeleton, came to be buried where the archaeologists discover them twenty-six centuries later. The other linked novel, Secreta Corporis, is set in the twelfth century and follows the Templar knight who finds the clay tablet which eventually allows the twentieth-first-century archaeologists to know where to look for the rest of the tablets. The number of people in the present-day affected by the secret of the tablets would be in the billions. If one imagines that a small number of people have known, through the intervening millenia, of the secret of the tablets and have kept that secret from the populace, a fairly pervasive conspiracy would take shape. If one also imagines that the creation, concealment, and discovery of the tablets have been scheduled over the millenia by telepathic extraterrestrials, for reasons only they know, the overall story would take on larger proportions than what at first appears in the text. But only for certain readers. You know who you are.

A little white lie of the Temple priests

"All scripture is given by inspiration of God" and/or the efforts of Temple priests to expand their authority in the year 622 bce. II Kings 22:8-13 describes an episode in which the priests find a lost scroll of the law during Temple repairs and present it to the king, who initiates sweeping reforms in Israel that greatly increase the priests' authority. Because the priests themselves are the ones who found the scroll which gives them this increased authority, it's been thought since the early nineteenth century that the priests synthesized the scroll, which later became the book of Deuteronomy, and then "found" it and falsely presented it as the writings of Moses from six centuries earlier. If this much of the Torah originated in deception, the authenticity of the Torah is seriously undermined, as well as all subsequent religions based on the Torah being written by Moses through the inspiration of God. My novels Secreta Corporis and The Talpiot Find examine the possibility of this deception by imagining the unearthing of clay tablets dating back to the seventh century bce. These fictional clay tablets represent a rough draft of the forged scroll "found" by the priests, and their discovery would undeniably establish the false origins of the scroll. The episode itself in II Kings, however, in view of the subsequent expansion of the role of the priests, is almost as incriminating as a rough draft would be, and it has been there in scripture all along, if we had wanted to see it.

The idea of a book of the Torah/Pentateuch originating in a deception seems minor and remote from the viewpoint of today. So they lied, so what? But so much of the contemporary world was founded, ultimately, on the belief that the earliest books of scripture were authentically God's word, that the effects of discrediting that authenticity would be felt throughout the contemporary world. Remove a foundation, and a structure built up from that foundation can't remain exactly as it was built. There will be some shifting and settling throughout the entire structure, all the way to the top. As distant and insignificant as five books of ancient writing seem now, the "floor" that represents today is supported by the floor which preceded it, directly below it, which is supported by the floor which preceded it, which is supported by the floor which preceded it, and on down to the floor directly supported by the foundation, which represents the books of the Torah. The effects of removing the foundation aren't limited to the floor directly supported by it. That floor supports the one above it, which supports the one above it, which supports the one above it, and on up to the top floor.

If the one billion Catholics, not counting Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, and all others who hold to the Mosaic authorship of the Torah, were somehow convinced, today, that the Torah originated in a deception twenty-six centuries ago, they would have to view Christ's teaching and the writings of the New Testament authors differently. Christ himself and all of the authors of the epistles accepted the Mosaic authorship of the Torah. If God were the source of the inspiration of the New Testament, it's unlikely that God would be unaware of the priests' deception regarding a scroll of the Torah. The one billion Catholics would have to view Christ as just a man and the epistles as just writings from the first century. The effect of that many people, one in seven, shifting their world-view would be felt by almost everyone else. Today.

Dan Brown's Inferno

I recently read the first few pages of Inferno by Dan Brown and thought, as I read, "Do I have to write like this to be a successful writer?" Brown's writing style includes passages of lame writing like "I scramble, breathless..." and "hoarse voices smelling of lampredotto" and "They stare deep into my clear green eyes" and "dying unthinkable deaths" and "Langdon bolted awake" and "shot a glance at the bearded doctor" and "sat bolt upright" and "advanced with the intensity of a panther stalking its prey" and "mission had gone horribly awry." Popular writing mystifies me. Millions of people will read Inferno, and bestsellers like it, without cringing when they come across the cliches and awkward phrasing in the text. I don't understand that. I'm baffled that so many people tolerate writers writing at a mediocre level. Readers should gravitate to writers who are attentive enough to clean the cliches out of their writing and come up with poignant replacements. "Langdon bolted awake"? The verb bolt should simply be retired from the language; label it obs. in the dictionary and leave it there. Brown uses the verb twice within a few pages. "Shot a glance." If the character had shot a glance, Langdon would have noticed it. I think Brown meant that she briefly met the other doctor's eyes to convey a message to him subtly. "Advanced...intensity...panther...prey"? Don't even get me started. If this were a movie, the actor would be overacting. "Into my clear green eyes"? That's an abrupt change in viewpoint, isn't it? Up to that point the reader has viewed the action as the Shade, but suddenly the reader has an external view of him. "Scramble"? I can't picture the Shade scrambling along the Arno. I think Brown meant something like "scuttle" or "crab," the Shade running sideways low to the ground to avoid being seen, since "scramble" usually implies more haphazardness than the Shade exhibits. "Hoarse voices smelling of"? Voices don't smell, breath does. Voices sound. More like "vendors..., with their hoarse voices, their breath smelling of lampredotto." Just to quibble, with actually modifies the verb snake. "I snake through vendors with their voices." But how did you get their voices away from them? Rather than "unthinkable deaths," Brown probably meant "unimaginable deaths." "Horribly awry"? If the character is as methodically deadly as I think she is, a mission may catastrophically fail, but it would never go horribly awry.

Review of The Talpiot Find

Exercising Thought

Amos Lassen
To me a book that makes me think is a book worth reading and keeping. John Garvey’s book is a great example of that. It certainly made me think about the way I think and how I began to think a certain way. I think that is the result of being able to tie present and past together and by doing so in a unique manner—using an archaeological dig to do just that.

Marc is a graduate student and he really just wants to graduate. He does not appear to be overly ambitious and does not seem to want to succeed in his profession too quickly. He has been assigned to a dig in Jerusalem in the Talpiot area. If you know anything about Jerusalem, you know there are always digs going on and Talpiot is one of the major places for them. Many feel that Jesus spent his last few hours in Talpiot. Marc is near the supposed site of Jesus’ tomb and he is lackadaisical about any kind of find there. He doubts that they will find anything there. A year earlier a garbage pit from the 7th century bce was found there during the excavation of a well. Marc has been working around the well that dates back to the 12th century and all he has been able to find are pottery shards and bones of animals—just ordinary stuff. Suddenly he finds a human skeleton and when checked the bones date back to the 7th century bce and the diggers are faced with an interesting situation and want to know if the skeleton is the result of a murder.

Marc makes another find—clay tablets which also date back to the 7th century bce. On the tablets was something from the Torah written in an early form of Hebrew (so now I am truly hooked on the story since my field of study is Biblical Hebrew—not to be confused with the modern spoken language). I have seen many such finds and they have always been a major source of excitement. What the archaeologists have yet to figure out is if the tablets and the skeleton are at all related and if there was a murder. They have to ascertain if the location of the tables has anything to do with anything else or is the location coincidental. The tetragrammaton appears on the tablets and means that they should not have been so openly exposed and actually belong in a genizah (a special place in most synagogues where holy books that are worn are kept). The tablets that date back to the 7th century bce should not have been in a garbage pit and even more interesting, they were found next to a dead body.

It did not take long to learn that there is something in the tables that is very important and that there are those who are willing to kill to get them. It seems that there is a connection between the skeleton and the tablets and someone knows more than Marc and his colleagues.

This is the second of Garvey’s books with a setting having to do with the Biblical world and right away the two books spoke to me. I spent many years in Israel and was on the faculty of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem so quite naturally my interest was in the books. I understand that the book is based upon historical happenings. For me, reading this was almost like going home and Jerusalem is indeed a city that has both past and present visible in daily life. I remember being told that this Biblical person or that one stood where I was standing and maybe slept in that house over there. Combining history and mystery, Garvey gives us quite a read.


From Reviews by Amos Lassen

Secrets of the body

Secreta Corporis, a novel by John Evan Garvey, was published for the Kindle on 22 February 2013.

Two Templar knights are ousted from the Order for sexual perversion but are then targeted because of their knowledge of an ancient artifact the Templars will use to control the papacy.

The story
A.D. 1193. To avoid an arranged marriage, Rolant joins the Templars and is quickly transferred from France to Jaffa, the coastal city in the Holy Land that is the main port of entry for medieval pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. At the citadel in Jaffa, Rolant, who is nineteen and only recently knighted, is paired with Audric, a more experienced knight, who cautiously introduces him to a secret brotherhood of Templars who commit “the sin which shall not be named” in the dense groves of tamarisk trees scattered among the dunes along the coast. The secret brotherhood considers their activity in the groves to be comparable to grappling or swordplay, but for Audric and Rolant, their activity takes on a different tone because love becomes an integral part of it.

One of the main tasks Templars perform in the Holy Land is escorting pilgrims to Jerusalem and other holy sites. While Rolant is among the Templars escorting a group of pilgrims to Bethlehem, they encounter Saracens digging a well just at the moment human bones are displaced by the digging. The Saracens abandon the well and the pilgrims want to see if the bones are those of a saint. While the pilgrims pray over the bones, Rolant notices an old clay tablet in a dirt pile. The text inscribed on the surface looks ancient, like no language he has ever seen. He takes the artifact back to Jaffa with him as a memento but must relinquish it because Templars are allowed no individual possessions.

When in Jerusalem, Audric has avoided sleeping in the unsanitary lodging of the pilgrims by staying with a married Saracen friend, Tariq. Audric and Rolant’s activity in the groves and with a Saracen in Jerusalem do not go unnoticed by a secret society within the Templars, Lucerna Corporis, whose mission is to purge the Order of vice. At the citadel in Jaffa, Templars who frequent the groves begin receiving cryptic threats in the form of alchemical symbols drawn in blood on their bedsheets. A couple of Templars are killed, and when Audric and Rolant learn they are the next to be killed, they secretly leave the Order. They stay first with Tariq and then find beds at a boarding house, but their first night there they are attacked by Templars in plainclothes. They return to Tariq’s home, and Rolant realizes that the tablet he found—which, he has learned, is theologically damaging, and now would be called a smoking gun—can be used effectively by the Templars to threaten the papacy with disclosure only if no one knows about it other than a few Templar leaders. The Templars then target Tariq’s family along with Rolant and Audric.

The novel is available now at the Kindle Store and soon will be available for the Nook and iPad and in paperback.

More information about the novel is available on this page.

Thinking on the Edge

Dear Editor,

Wow, you're all about prestige, aren't you.

Every writer on the website's front page is a world-renowned this or that.

Prestige. Climbing as high as possible up the hierarchy. Being the alpha male. Enjoying the approval of many. Being the center of attention.

Sounds grown-up, doesn't it. And much more sophisticated than the animal species that exhibit similar behaviors؟

Please recognize that wanting to associate with only the world's most prestigious thinkers is sorta immature thinking. The sort of thinking that would provide great material for a BBC sitcom.


John Garvey


[Sent to edge.org]

The greed model

(Note to the Customer Support person: Please pass this on to Administration. They need a little perspective. Thanks.)

You are kind of stupid, aren't you. It's understandable that you're not in this business to provide a free service. We understand that. But requiring that I subscribe in order to read emails/messages sent to me by subscribers? When you display ads on my screen, you are making money. If I were able to read emails/messages without being a subscriber, you would still be making money from the ads displayed on those screens. But almost every click on your site takes me to a page that says "Subscribe!" The fact that you provide so few features to non-subscribers indicates that you're trying to squeeze every penny out of the user. I wonder if you even display ads on subscribers' screens. Do you? The main purpose of a subscription is to have access to features without annoying ads on the screen. Which means that a non-subscriber could have access to those features with ads appearing on the screen, and Match.com would still make money. Didn't Match.com start out with that business model? But since then has gradually reduced the number of features available to non-subscribers? It's to the point now that a free account serves no purpose; almost no features are available. But you still make money from the ads displayed on non-subscribers' screens. Did you catch that? You still make money from the ads displayed on non-subscribers' screens. Since that revenue isn't enough for you, I won't be subscribing. Up to $40 a month? For what? On top of your not making money from my subscription, you also won't be making money from ads being displayed on pages that I would otherwise view. So, as a result, you are making less money now than you would if you provided features to non-subscribers. You lose ad revenue every time I don't view a page that I otherwise would. And I doubt I'm the only one put off by your greed. A potential user doesn't view any pages, and so no ads are displayed on those pages that are not viewed, and so no revenue is generated by either subscription or page views, multiplied times how many potential users? I'm fine with not viewing any of your pages, I lose nothing. But for you it represents a money leak—revenue lost because that revenue isn't enough for you. But the lost revenue doesn't amount to 0. It adds up to negative numbers.


[A note I sent to Customer Support at Match.com.]

Prepare to think

The Talpiot Find challenges and entertains the reader with its offbeat approach to the familiar archaeological-find-rewrites-history theme. Readers will confront the Big Questions in a calm, no-big-deal atmosphere and will find themselves musing more than once “I never thought of it that way before.” While following the thought-journey of a very likable protagonist with a bias for humor and irony, readers will explore whether their own world-view is based on a need for comfort and feeling useful, or on a desire for everything to make sense. Whether any change should be introduced to the world-view is left for the reader to decide, but by the end of the book the reader will have more information and ideas to work with in their experience of the everyday world.

Grad-student Marc isn’t hoping for a spectacular archaeological discovery to catapult his career right from the start. He just wants to graduate. His assignment on this dig site in the Talpiot district of Jerusalem, near the alleged Jesus ossuary tomb, hardly seems likely to produce anything of note, much less spectacular. An ancient garbage pit had been discovered the previous summer while the dig team excavated a twelfth-century well. Marc is now down in the well methodically uncovering unexceptional pottery sherds and animal bones thrown out with the rest of the scraps from meal preparations twenty-six centuries ago. But then he finds a human skeleton. When the human bones turn out to be as old as the rubbish around them, the archaeologists wonder if the person, apparently dumped into the pit, was a murder victim. And then he finds clay tablets, right next to the skeleton, carbon-dated to the same time frame as the skeleton and the surrounding trash. The tablets turn out to be an interesting find, a portion of Torah written in ancient Hebrew Canaanite, seventh century BCE. Are they related at all to the skeleton, and the murder? Or is their location coincidental? What are the tablets doing in a garbage pit? Bearing the tetragrammaton, they should've been placed in a genizah. Why were they discarded? In a garbage pit? Near a corpse? Of a murder victim?