Try this, Penney’s

Yes, I’m kind of obsessed with the department store J.C. Penney. Actually, I’m kind of obsessed with retail icons in general. See this post. And this one. And…  well, you get the idea.

Now, at last, the J.C. Penney board has listened to me. I’m sure it was my blogging and a letter to the Wall Street Journal that caused them to let CEO Ron Johnson, whose changes to the store had led to precipitous declines in sales and stock values, go. What else could have forced the change, really?

Now that they’ve listened to me, the hard work really begins. How do they turn around this retail giant? It’s one thing to halt a store’s slow slide into irrelevancy, which is where Penney was when Johnson took over. Its quite another to try to stop a speeding train careening down a hillside on iced tracks, which is where they are now that Johnson’s plans were being implemented.

The problem, you see, isn’t just that Penney’s lost customers. Penney’s ticked off customers. Made them mad. Luring them back will require the opposite of subtlety.

Okay, I’ll roll up my sleeves and offer more advice. Maybe they’ll listen again.

ADVERTISE IMMEDIATELY

The average customer isn’t reading the financial pages. She might not know the company just did a big 180. You have to tell her. I suggest three possibilities for ads that should get on the air and in print pronto:

1. The funny message: Play off the theme that it’s now “safe” to go back to Penney’s. I’m sure some Mad Man could come up with something that would have viewers howling with laughter. Caution, though–don’t let the laughs eclipse the underlying message, which should be: Come back, customers, we’ve changed for the better.

2. The straightforward message: Air/print something that merely says “we heard you, we’ve gone back to what you loved best about us, come in again and see.”

3. The apology: As I mentioned above, Penney’s has the distinction of not just losing customers but pissing them off. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have the new CEO (who happens to be the fellow who ran the place before Johnson took over) just stare into the camera and apologize to customers, urging them to give Penney’s a try again.

THE STORES THEMSELVES

The problem with urging folks back into the stores, though, is…the stores themselves. If you’ve been near a Penney’s lately, you know they’re now in the midst of construction, putting into place new displays, new “stores within stores” that were the brainchild of the former CEO. This has been a visual and retailing mess as large plastic sheets drape huge parts of the stores, yellow tape roping off others, making them seem more like a crime scene than a place to shop. All this makes inventory hard to find or even see, and it’s been taking an inordinately long time to get it all done.

I don’t know the details of the construction contracts, but here’s what I would do were I CEO: stop any construction immediately, having the crews clean up their mess. Then task individual store managers and employees with restoring order. Get on the phone with each store manager, asking what the status of their construction is. Walk him or her through some ways to get inventory on shelves immediately. Empower local staff to set things up in attractive displays. Worry about uniformity later. The goal now should be: get customers back in the stores, and get inventory back on the shelves for customers to buy. If inventory is slim, get more in–start by going back to big sellers in the past. Your current tactic has to be to stop the slide. The turnaround will come later.

COUPONS OR NOT?

Penney’s used to kill many a tree in their coupon mailing frenzies. It wasn’t a bad idea to cut back on those confusing discounts. But it was a bad idea to get rid of them entirely.

As part of the strategy to aggressively entice customers back to the store, start a one-for-one campaign: for every dollar you spend at Penney’s during a certain few days, you’ll get a dollar of “Penney cash,” to use in the store at a subsequent visit. Yes, put a fuse on those Penney dollars so they don’t last forever, but make them good on any merchandise, on sale or not. Sure, you can put a limit on how many you can earn, too. The idea, however, is to make a bold move to bring folks back.

Another possibility: discount cards that can be swiped by the cashier for a ten or twenty percent discount on all merchandise during a certain period of time. Kohl’s uses these to great effect.

AFTER THE SLIDE IS STOPPED

Once  you get customers back in the store regularly, it’s time to start the hard work of the slow rebuild, the re-evaluation of where Penney’s is and where it needs to be. I know it will shock folks who’ve listened to me rant about the store and its just-ousted CEO, but he did have a right idea in trying to attract a new customer base to Penney’s. (Where he went wrong was ignoring the base that was already there, even treating them with disdain.)

Get moving, J.C., time’s a’wastin’!

Libby Sternberg is a novelist and busybody.

The perils of writing about the near past

You’ve set your story in the near past, a time period with which you are familiar because you grew up in those decades or had relatives who lived through them. Research should be a breeze, right? After all, how hard can it be to get the time period of your own life right? You have memories. And you have internet research at your fingertips, a wealth of information just awaiting your mouse click.

But, beware. The near past as a story setting is a minefield. Step out of line, and verisimilitude explodes, throwing the reader out of your narrative.

You’d think that writing about the near past would be easier, though, than setting tales in faraway times. Easy-to-access research and memory both provide ample material for the meticulous writer of near-past stories. But there’s the rub. Almost too  much is available on the near past, making it difficult for the careful writer to find small details that make a story resonate with truth. And sometimes, we make assumptions about certain aspects of life in the near past that turn out not to be true, had we bothered to look them up.

A few examples: don’t assume that because you grew up watching certain television shows that your characters can watch them…whenever. Back in the days before syndication, TV programs aired in specific time slots. Reruns aired in those slots, too. It took decades for many shows to reach the hamster wheel of syndication, available at all hours and days.

A man wouldn’t “zip” his pants in a story set before the 1940s.

Don’t assume, either, that a movie released in a particular year was available the month in which your story is set. Singin in the Rain came out in 1952, but that doesn’t mean the characters in your story could go see it in January of that year, or even in August. It was released, according to IMDB, in U.S. movie theaters in April of that year.

Don’t assume, either, that modern dress was completely modernized at the time of your tale, just because the outfits bear a resemblance to what we wear now. A famous bestseller of the past few years set in the 1930s mentioned a man zipping his pants. But men’s trousers had button flies even up until the 1940s. When zippers replaced buttons, tailors advertised they’d take out the newfangled gadget, replacing them with the old-fashioned buttons, for men who didn’t like this latest sartorial trend.

Think twice, too, about icons of the past. I once began a tale set in the early 1950s, describing one of my characters as having Marilyn Monroe looks. Only problem? I needed to find out specifically when Monroe became well-known during that period. Yes, Monroe’s star had started to soar in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until at least 1953 that she became the sex symbol we all now think of when her name is mentioned. Would she have been hot enough at the early part of that decade to use as a descriptor? I wasn’t sure. I took the reference out.

I also once set a story whose denouement was on December 7, 1941. It took a great deal of time to find out how most Americans learned the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, what radio show was on at the time, when it was interrupted.  Oh, there was a huge amount of information on the attack, but it was all too broad-brush for my story. I needed to know how this news would have reached a particular family in a particular city.

The point is that you might know the macro details of those times, but getting the tick-tock of a momentous day’s hours right is a lot tougher.

The writer who sets a story in the near past has an entire population of possible nitpickers who also lived through those times or know folks who did. And, while there aren’t any Tudorites still living to wag their fingers at the author who gets an arcane fact wrong in a story set during Henry’s reign, armchair critics abound who don’t need a history degree to point out your mistakes in a near-past setting.

So, when writing about the near past, it’s best to treat it as if it were a foreign time long ago. Don’t completely trust your memory, and do look up details whenever possible.

Fruitcake, balls and tornadoes

Like Ahab hunting Moby Dick, I’ve been on an obsessive search–to find those big, fat, shiny ornaments you hang on deciduous trees outside. Finally, I hit the target. I mean Target, the store. That’s where I found them. And I’ve hung them outside as my own clenched-fist protest against the winter sky–its shortening days and longer nights:

Speaking of things Christmasy, let’s take a break from making fruitcake jokes to actually make…fruitcake. Or, rather, fruitcake bar cookies. Believe it or not, until I was in my twenties, I’d never tasted fruitcake. But after I married, I discovered that my mother-in-law not only liked it, she made batches of it every Christmas, all soaked in apple brandy, to send as gifts to friends and relatives. Her recipe was very good–a dark, dense cake filled with candied citron, orange peel, cherries and nuts and raisins, too. When she lived in Maryland, she’d go to Lexington market to find these candied treasures.

She is gone now, and I can’t recreate her fruitcake success. Her recipe was for many cakes–I tried one year to make only one loaf by doing lots of math (long division, even!) with the recipe. Me + lots of math = not-so-good-fruitcake.

Not to worry — she also left us a recipe for fruitcake bar cookies, a lighter batter but still moist and sweet. So if you happen to be among the few, the happy few, who enjoy fruitcake, here’s the recipe:

EDITH STERNBERG’S FRUITCAKE BARS

Cream together:

• 1/2 cup butter (one stick)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsns milk

Sift:

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tspn cinnamon
• (dash of nutmeg if desired)

Mix dry and wet ingredients. Batter is VERY thick.

Add: 1/2 cup raisins, 1/4 cup candied cherries, 1/4 cup candied orange peel, 1/4 cup pineapple — whatever candied fruits you like and, really, as many of them as you like.

Spread with spoon (or your clean fingers!) in a greased 9 x 13 pan and bake at 350 for 1/2 hour. Cool and cut into bars.

Fruitcake cookie

I saved the recipe in my new recipe book. The one I made. Yes, I did.

Finally, a note about a previous post…

I wrote about my recent trip to Kansas where I met long-time writer pals for the very first time after corresponding with them for more than ten years. In looking through my photos of that trip, I came across this one, from the Kansas City Airport:

Hmm….I guess they have tornadoes out there sometimes. Would make a great setting for a fantasy tale….

I am not crafty

This is why I don’t do crafts.

I had this idea to gather the various recipes I’ve jammed in cookbooks on notebook paper over the years and to organize them. So I have this black plastic binder, left over from who knows what, and I punch holes in the recipe papers to insert in said binder. So far, so good. I’m using up something old, I’m doing the organizing. I’m very proud of myself.

But then I think: this binder looks so blah, and I have some material left over from a time I tried to make a slip cover for a wing chair cushion (“tried” is the key word – do you detect a pattern?)….  And wouldn’t this binder be so sweet and homey and cute every time I pull it out to use a recipe if it looks like something other than leftover office supplies?

So I cut out a rectangle of fabric for the cover for this binder, but the fabric was wrinkled-looking. Back in the day, I might have been okay with that, but now, I’ve decided I’m going to do this right. Ironing! That’s the solution!

Turns out it’s one of those “Goldilocks” fabrics, though, where the temperature on the iron has to be just right in order for the wrinkles to come out and the fabric-like qualities to stay in. Ahem.

Okay, so one piece of the fabric now has a slight imprint on it  that looks like the bow of a ship. That’s okay. Since this project is all about not wasting materials, it will do. It’s just a light image, after all. The kind of thing where you look at it and think, is something off there or is it my eyes?

Moving on, I apply glue to the front of the binder and smooth the fabric over that section. I then set a big, heavy pot on top of it to make sure the fabric stays stuck to the binder.

The picture tells the tale. First of all, the glue isn’t really drying. Maybe it’s not the kind of glue you use with plastic binders and cloth with odd plastic-like qualities? Second of all, you can see the pattern of the glue through this fabric! And it’s heavy stuff. It feels like a double burlap bag. It’s like woven steel. You could probably build a house with it! (Especially if you iron it first, bringing out its stiffer aspects.) Yet it’s transparent enough to show the glue lines? What the what the…. Maybe the military should learn about this fabric…

Notice the glue swirls. How is this possible?

End of craft experiment for me. Next time I’m at the mall, I’m buying a nice recipe book I can throw my papers in, something already manufactured by people who know how to work with fabric and irons and glue, who have the skill set I was obviously not born with. I’ll step away from the glue gun…before another innocent binder gets hurt.

A twelve-year writer’s journey

About a dozen years ago, I made two amazing friends. We met on the internet through Romance Writers of America. RWA had set up some email discussion groups that proved to be a trove of information, shared by the writers on the groups– on what editors were looking for, how to format manuscripts, contests open to unpublished authors, conferences that were coming up, general encouragement for those of us still struggling to get our books into print and cheerleading for those who got “the call” from agent and/or editor.

Out of the multitude of voices on those lists, two writers and I seemed to click. We started emailing each other privately, off the various lists. It was pure happenstance that of the three of us, two lived in Kansas. (I lived in Vermont at the time, then eventually moved to Pennsylvania.) A spine-tingling discovery, however, was this: when sharing our various addresses, Writer A learned that Writer B was living in a house Writer A had lived in years ago! If any of us had written that into a story, we envisioned an editor red-penciling it with a note: “Too coincidental and not necessary to advance the story. Change.”

Together, we went through the nail-biting waits to hear back from agents and editors, the celebrations when agents offered representation and contracts appeared. Writer B sold first, to a Penguin imprint, Writer A not long after to another Penguin imprint. And, although I’d sold a YA mystery to a small press, I didn’t join my friends in Big Publisher Land until a year or so after them, when I, too, got a call,  from Harlequin offering a contract on a “chick lit” novel.

After we’d all sold, our conversations turned to other topics, but our worries didn’t end. We discussed book marketing, we anguished over the nail-biting wait for sales numbers and reviews, we commiserated when agents and editors were sometimes unresponsive, and we analyzed why some writers were realizing great success and how we could try to emulate them. Or not.

While our correspondence began focused on writing and the publishing business, it moved on to more personal news–deaths in our families, serious illness, our hopes and fears for our children (two of us have kids), job changes, divorce and remarriage for one in the group, a move to another state for me, and the deployment of two sons among us to Afghanistan at roughly the same time. We never stopped talking about writing, but it seemed to consume less and less of our friendly chatter, with more and more attention spent on what really mattered in our lives–our families.

Writers A and B were able to meet during this time, of course, both being in the Sunflower State. But I, hundreds of miles away, never got to see these wonderful women face-to-face. I did talk to them on the phone occasionally–usually conversations when the publishing business was throwing challenges our way. I remember very well being on the phone with Writer B anguishing over whether to drop a prestigious agent whom I believed wasn’t really representing my best interests when said agent interrupted the call for our ultimate break-up talk.

We’ve laughed, too, until we’ve cried, usually over the lunacy we sometimes observe in the book business, getting into ever-more-ridiculous Round Robin emails with each other filled with fantastical scenarios about…well, I won’t tell.

As much as I wanted to meet them, a big obstacle stood in my way. I’m excruciatingly afraid of flying, a fear I developed later in life for no reason I can figure. It’s such a painful experience that my husband drove us all the way from PA to Mississippi last year to attend our son’s graduation from pilot training at a U.S. Air Force base rather than ask me to get on a plane myself. We enjoyed that journey, but I didn’t want to put him through that kind of long drive again.

But then, our Air Force son got posted to….Kansas. Wichita, to be exact. And he and his wife invited us out for Thanksgiving. My husband started mulling our route, being careful to include a stop to see my writer friends. But I just couldn’t make him give up so much time on the road behind the wheel, simply because I couldn’t bring myself to fly.

The solution: better living through chemistry! I asked a doctor about my problem, and she suggested Valium. It helped tremendously, allowing me to control my nerves.

So, last week, we flew to Kansas City, and at long last–after twelve years of sharing stories with each other (real stories and fictional stories), we finally met! My writer friends and me! They are, from left to right, below: me, Jerri Corgiat and Karen Brichoux. Look them up on Amazon to see what wonderful writers they are.

Me, Jerri Corgiat, Karen Brichoux
Together at last!

I thought the meeting would feel strange, but it felt as if we’d been getting together regularly all these years. Maybe that’s a testament to their writer voices–”hearing” them through their notes for so long, it was as if I’d been seeing them all along. It’s an evening I will treasure, along with the rest of a phenomenal holiday, seeing the wonderful state of Kansas and being lovingly hosted by my son and daughter-in-law in their cozy Wichita home.

I can’t say enough, in fact, about how exciting and fantastic this trip was, from start to finish. Since I focus on many writerly things here, I won’t go into detail about the Wichita visit, but it will be a gilded memory for me–seeing my son and daughter-in-law so happy, and enjoying their company.

Now that this trip is finished, I look forward to future ones–and seeing my friends more often.

Tip for YA writers: learn about graduated licenses

I received my driver’s license mumble-mumble years ago in Maryland, back in the day when teen driving regulations were pretty light–no restrictions on number and age of passengers or driving at night.

Since that time, however, many states have adopted “graduated license” regulations that place specific limitations on drivers under the age of 18, who are driving on “learner’s permits” or “provisional licenses.” For example, in Pennsylvania, the state where I now reside, this relatively new restriction exists:

As of Dec. 27, 2011, for the first six months after receiving their junior  driver’s license, a driver is not permitted to have more than one passenger  under age 18 who is not an immediate family member (brother, sister,
stepbrother, stepsister of the junior driver and adopted or foster children  living in the same household as the junior driver) in their vehicle unless they are accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. If they have not been convicted  of a driving violation or been partially or fully responsible for a reportable  crash after six months, they may have up to three passengers under age 18 who  are not immediate family members without a parent or legal guardian present. If  they have any convictions or are partially or fully responsible for a reportable  crash while a junior driver, they are once again restricted to one passenger.

Other restrictions–such as not being able to drive late at night or not being able to drive late at night without a licensed driver over the age of 21 in the car–are part of some states’ graduated license provisions.

So, what does this mean to an author?

Beware when crafting contemporary stories involving young drivers. Make sure you know the restrictions on young drivers in the state where your story is set. Don’t have your underage driver tootling around the countryside with a car packed full of underage passengers after midnight unless you note he or she is flaunting the law.

Authors who learned to drive “back in the day” before graduated licenses and don’t have any teen drivers in their households might not be aware of these licensing laws. As a copy editor who’s flagged this issue a few times now, my helpful hint to writers of YA (or adult fiction featuring a young driver) is this: save yourself rewrites later and go to the transportation department website to look up the law on young drivers in the state where your story is set. You’ll be glad you did!

When a Bad Review Isn’t Bad

Some time ago, I vented about a careless review of one of my books. But that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy with all bad reviews. Reading tastes vary. It’s highly unlikely that there will be unanimous praise for or criticism of an author’s offerings. Authors know that and accept it. But sometimes a bad review still conveys to the reader enough about the book to alert readers with different tastes to what they might find enjoyable–even as the critic pans those parts.  As an example, I’m going to reprint here a review that dinged my romantic comedy, My Own Personal Soap Opera (written as Libby Malin). This appeared in Publishers Weekly:

Malin’s latest is heavy on humor, but disappoints with plot. Frankie McNally is the head writer for Lust for Life , the longest-running (and currently lowest-rated) television soap opera, and while she can’t shake the sense that she should be writing the Great American Novel, Frankie’s use of the show to “work out her innermost frustrations” through the characters has therapeutic value. But when management calls in “marketing guru” Victor Pendergrast to save the show, Frankie’s suddenly a little less comfortable. Victor immediately clashes with Frankie on the show’s biggest problem: how to address the fact that a real-life jewel thief has adopted a modus operandi similar to one used by a thief on the show. Meanwhile, Frankie’s predictable attraction to Victor is at odds with the sparks she feels with the show’s leading man. Malin (Fire Me ) coaxes plenty of laughs, but the multitude of misunderstandings and contrivances needed to resolve the mystery and concoct a happily-ever-after are painfully melodramatic, even by daytime TV standards. (Apr.) Reviewed on: 02/15/2010

When I read this review, I did cringe at first at the “disappoints with plot.” But then when I got to the end, the final “painfully melodramatic, even by daytime TV standards” actually lifted my spirits. That’s because this was my goal in writing the book. Oh, not to be “painful” — who wants to do that?–but to be “melodramatic,” even over-the-top compared to “daytime TV standards.” I wanted the denouement to be head-spinningly-outrageous. Obviously, I succeeded. And anyone who likes that kind of madcap storytelling might have thought, “Hmm, I might enjoy this book.”

I’ve read comments about bad reviews from readers that talk about that precise effect–that is, details in a bad review that alert them to aspects of a story they would find appealing, even if the reviewer wasn’t in love with the tale. This Publishers Weekly review falls into that category. The reviewer did a terrific summary of the book’s main plot points, and the criticisms, while unvarnished, are not gratuitous. They are specific. And that makes all the difference in whether a bad review is really “bad.”

When a reviewer takes the time and care to craft a critique that gives the reader a)  a fair and dispassionate summary of what’s in the book; and b) the specific aspects of the book that didn’t work for the reviewer, that’s not necessarily a bad review, even if it contains criticism.

So, this writer is grateful for the attention from Publishers Weekly for this goofy story of mine, My Own Personal Soap Opera.