I was inspired to write this because I recently (well, last January) saw Pam Houston at a signing for her new book and, well, this sounds like a catty thing to say, but the jacket photo on her book that just came out is the same one that was on her last book, and that picture has to be 20 years old.
Now I understand this. I looked somewhat better when I was 24 myself, although at the time I was certain I was getting better every year. Getting better doesn’t necessarily equate to looking better.
At 24 I was an aspiring author myself, although I hadn’t quite mastered the basics, i.e., writing a whole book, sending it to agents, etc., etc. I had convinced myself that I would sell my first novel by the time I was 25. I don’t know when I thought I was going to write it. I must have thought that someone else would write it and I would merely attach my name and get all the resultant glory. (BTW I only missed it by, oh, 20 years.)
However, I did have something. I had the idea for the perfect jacket photo. There was a building right across from the dance studio where I took classes that had a really cool mural of the Continental Op, trench coat and fedora and all that, with a backdrop of the Front Range, and situated in such a way that a clever person could take a photograph of me (in my trench coat and fedora, of course) in front of this building with an angle that would include the actual Front Range or a portion thereof. Cool, huh? The author, posing as a Continental Op, in front of a mural of a Continental Op in front of a panorama of the Front Range, in front of the actual Front Range. I thought this would be a very good jacket photo for my first book, at least, and possibly all of them.
Along about 1990–when I still hadn’t finished my first book although I had started one or two and gotten as far as 12 pages into one of them before getting stuck, somebody bought the building across from the dance school. And the philistine clods PAINTED OVER THE MURAL.
So much for that as a jacket photo.
When I actually did sell my first book, nobody asked me for a photo, at least not immediately. I figured they would fly me to New York and have some vaunted professional do the honors but they didn’t even ask! Until my second book, when the publicist said it would be nice to have something, maybe a head shot, and my agent said my German publisher had also asked about it.
The best I could do was spend $200 or so (yikes!) on a boring head shot which made me look like I was 50 years old. And then somebody had the nerve to ask me–a mere four months later–“Hey, how long ago did you get that photo taken, anyway?”
What a rude question. Somebody in the audience last January asked Pam Houston that, too. She said, “Oh, I’ve always just loved that photo, because it looks the way I always feel.”
So there you go. Get it taken now, and there’s your answer for the ultimate rude question.