November 5, 2014
An
Excerpt From Behind the Lines:
READER AIDS
Primary People in the Book
THE AMERICANS
Oliver C. Carmichael—Twenty-three-year-old Rhodes
scholar Carmichael was from Alabama and had scheduled a trip to Scotland during
Oxford’s six-week Christmas break before he heard of Hoover’s need for neutral
observers to go into German-occupied Belgium. If his account is correct, he and
a fellow CRB delegate helped to smuggle from Belgium into Holland Cardinal Mercier’s famous pastoral letter, which inflamed
world opinion against the Germans and inspired the Belgians to resist their
occupiers.
Perrin C. Galpin—He was a second-year man at
Oxford when Hoover contacted him directly to see if he could round up
volunteers to become CRB delegates. Galpin organized meetings, corresponded
with Hoover and his executive committee, and chose the first twenty-five men
from Oxford who went into Belgium. He personally went into Belgium with the second wave of recruits.
Hugh Gibson—The secretary to the U.S. Legation in
Belgium, Gibson was thirty-one and nearing the middle of his career as a
diplomat when the war broke out. He earned admiration and respect for his hard
work, dedication to helping the Belgians, and fearless traveling through the country as the war was still in its pre-trenches stage. He
would be loved for his unfailing sense of humor and dry, sarcastic wit.
Herbert Clark Hoover—A highly successful
forty-year-old U.S. mining engineer, Hoover was living in London before the war
and searching for a way to get into public service or politics. When war erupted
he jumped right in to organize assistance for stranded American tourists trying to get back home. When Belgian representatives from
various cities and provinces came to England looking for a way to avert
seemingly inevitable starvation within their country, he took over and started
the Commission for Relief in Belgium, which became the largest food and relief drive the world had ever known.
Edward Eyre Hunt (E. E. Hunt)—A
sensitive and artistic magazine journalist in America, Hunt became a war correspondent
so he could see the war up close and personal. When he did get a clear vision
of what was happening—especially in Belgium—he became an important chief delegate in Hoover’s CRB, helping to create and develop the
processes of relief within the city and province of Antwerp, which encompassed 1
million people in 1914.
David T. Nelson—In late November 1914 Nelson was
a first-year Rhodes scholar ready to embark on six weeks’ vacation from Oxford.
When the twenty-three-year-old from North Dakota heard that Hoover was looking for
volunteers to go into German-occupied Belgium as neutral observers to ensure
the food would not be taken by the Germans, he signed up. Of all the CRB
delegates, he was the only one who had to walk solo into Belgium with only the
clothes on his back and what was in his pockets.
Brand Whitlock—When Whitlock was appointed
minister of the U.S. Legation in Belgium in early 1914, he was looking forward
to working on his novels at the traditionally noneventful post. He would be
thoroughly tested by the war and the potential starvation of 9 million people in Belgium and northern France. In the end, he would become
a figure who was both respected and ridiculed, beloved and belittled.
My
Post: It has been a whirlwind since I last posted back in August.
I still find it hard to believe that I wrote 140,650 words from January through
June, then had a printed book in my hands by September 16, 2014.
That incredibly tight timetable is truly a testament not to
me but to the great “Book Team” that made Behind the Lines much better than I
could ever have done by myself. You can see the entire Book Team, and learn
about their credentials by clicking here.
Before the book was actually printed (by the highly
professional Four Colour Print group, represented by Michael Daniels), I had
review copies made at the local Kinkos/Fedx store, where Torlon, Eric, Philip, and
Aaron did an outstanding job. I sent these review copies to the top American
reviewers, including members of the trade press( Publishers Weekly, Kirkus
Reviews, Book List, Library Journal), members of the consumer press (NY Times,
NY Review of Books, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle,
Denver Post, American History magazine) and radio/TV stations (NPR, Book TV,
and Colorado Matters).
Most of these reviewers state that books should be sent 10
to 15 weeks before the book’s publication date so reviews – if they are done –
will come out at the same time as the book.
It should also be noted that even though there are tens of
thousands of book reviews that are published every year, they don’t even come
close to the total amount of new books published every year in America. Figures
that I’ve seen say that there are more than 300,000 new book titles a year—everything
from cook books and novels to self-help and history books.
How do reviewers choose which books they are going to
review? Well, one quick way to eliminate many of the more than 100 books that
show up unsolicited on their desks EVERY DAY is to simply ignore (translation:
throw out unopened) books that come from non-traditional book publishers
(translation: self-published or “Indie” publishers).
While it’s true that there’s an incredible amount of shitty
books that are self-published, it’s also true that there are some incredibly
good self-published books. Finding the good indie books is just as hard as
finding the good ones within the traditionally published world.
Taken all together, this means that “Indie” books are many
times treated like second-class citizens by reviewers and traditional
publishers.
Considering all that, I’m happy to report that my Indie book
has done very well so far. Here are some highlights from the past month and a
half:
1. Kirkus Star Review (only about 760 books out of 10,000
annually reviewed by Kirkus are awarded a Star Review). I was humbled by the
last sentence of the review: “An excellent history that should catapult Miller
to the top tier of popular historians.” The full review can be seen by clicking here.
2. Kirkus has chosen Behind the Lines as the Indie Book of the Month for November. It will be featured
along with four other books in the Nov. 15 print issue, an enewsletter and the
website.
3. Foreword
magazine has done a nice review entitled “The Indie We Love,” that ends with “Writers
like Miller bring to life the people, the heroes we do not know, and this alone
is reason enough to look forward to his next book.” It will be published Nov.
17. You can read the full review by clicking here.
4. The Oct. 22, Sunday Denver
Post published a good article about myself and the book. You can read the article by clicking here.
5. Publishers Weekly
(the bible of the book business), has announced that it will be reviewing the
book—a big step for any Indie book. It will be a few weeks before the review
comes out. I’m only hoping it’s half as good as the Kirkus Review was.
That’s not even half the exciting news, but I need to get to
bed, so I’ll try to post again very soon and keep you up to date on what’s
happening.
End of Post
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