Showcasing Mary Batten Award Winning Writer for Television, Film and Publishing

Mary Batten is an award-winning writer for television, film and publishing.  She is the author of some 15 nature/science books for adults and children, dozens of magazine articles and 30 television scripts for Time-Life Films, National Geographic, Walt Disney Educational Media, and others. She was nominated for an Emmy for her work on the Children’s Television Workshop’s 3-2-1 CONTACT series. Her books include Sexual Strategies: How Females Choose Their Mates, which The New York Times called “Fun and delightful to read, offering an abundance of fascinating facts.” This book led to an appearance on OPRAH. Her children’s book, Aliens from Earth: When Animals and Plants Invade Other Ecosystems, won the 2006 Izaak Walton League of America Conservation Book of the Year Award and was adopted by New York City Public Schools in support of the 4^th grade science requirement for study of ecosystems. Her magazine articles have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, Modern Maturity and others.  Her magazine article for Science Digest, “Sexual Choice: The Female’s Newly Discovered Role,” won The Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Front Page Award for best feature story.

She has recently published her first eBook, “How To Have Sex If You’re Not Human: Intimate Journeys in Natural History,” a collection of articles about the wild, often bizarre mating behavior of animals and the reproductive strategies of plants.   

Children’s books include Please Don’t Wake the Animals: A Book About Sleep (Peachtree 2008); Who Has a Belly Button? (Peachtree 2004); Aliens from Earth: When Animals and Plants Invade Other Ecosystems  (Peachtree 2003); Hey, Daddy! Animal Fathers and Their Babies – Named Outstanding Science Read Aloud 2003 by the National Association for the Advancement of Science (Peachtree 2002); Wild Cats (Random House  2002); Anthropologist: Scientist of the People -- Named Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children by the National Science Teachers Association and the Children’s Book Council  (Houghton Mifflin 2001) and Hungry Plants (Random House, 2000).

She is married to composer Ed Bland. They have two children: dancer/choreographer Stefanie Batten Bland and writer Robert Bland.  More information is on her website: http://www.marybatten.com 

Tell us about the genre of your work.   

I write nonfiction in the areas of nature and science.

Why did you choose this genre?

The genre chose me. I knew I wanted to be a writer from the age of eight or nine, but I thought I would write fiction. By chance, I wrote my first book, “Discovery by Chance,” about important scientific discoveries that were made because the inventor or scientist had the wrong formula or made a mistake. The underlying theme of each of the biographical stories in the book is that people with a curious mind can transform mistakes into great discoveries. Each of the scientists featured in this book might have thrown the failed experiment in the trash but because each wanted to find out what had happened, he made a serendipitous discovery. Some of the discoveries in this book include the x-ray, penicillin and chemical dye. I had to work really hard to write this book because I had no background in science. I was living in New York City at the time and I had a full-time job. In order to write this book, I spent a year of weekends in the New York Public Library doing research.  

Following publication of that book, I got a job as chief researcher for the Time-Life Films television series, THE WORLD WE LIVE IN. My real science education came through this job, as I had to do research on 13 subjects derived from the Time-Life Nature/Science book series. I was reading all the time and talking to scientists; it was like a crash course in all the science subjects I lacked. One of the topics was tropical rainforests. The producer sent me down to Panama where the Smithsonian Institution has a tropical field station, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, on Barro Colorado Island. This trip was life-changing for me. I met field biologists doing research on plants, spiders, monkeys, insects, bats and birds. Through these dedicated scientists, I was introduced to the stunning beauty and complexity of the rainforest ecosystem. I was hooked on the excitement of tropical biology, and when I returned to our office in New York City, I asked the producer, Lothar Wolff, for a chance to write the script.  Now I had never written a TV script and in the television business, if you haven’t written a script, you aren’t likely to get a job writing one. But because I had written Discovery By Chance, Lothar did something very rare in television. He gave me a chance to write the script. I will be eternally grateful for him. After writing that script, Lothar hired me to write almost 30 scripts for this and other series that he produced. Sometimes we worked on the scripts together. It was a wonderful working relationship and learning experience, more valuable than any college science courses could ever have been. 

How is writing in the genre you write, different than other genres? 

Writing nonfiction demands real-world accuracy; you can’t stray from the facts. When you write fiction, you create an imaginary universe that must have realistic details but doesn’t have to correspond to any real persons or places. For my nonfiction work, I interview scientists for each article and book that I write. With scientific subjects, it’s particularly important to provide readers with up-to-date research, which can only come from scientists working in the particular field. Interviewing scientists is one of the most enjoyable aspects of my work. The other requirement is getting away from jargon and writing clearly so that non-scientists can understand the topic. In this regard, my lack of an academic science background is really an advantage because I have to explain the subject to myself before I can explain it to readers.    

Tell us more about your published books. 

My most recent book is the eBook, How To Have Sex If You’re Not Human: Intimate Journeys in Natural History (ASIN B006CVU7TU). This is published in formats for Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook. The book is available on both Amazon’s Kindle website (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006CVU7TU) and Barnes and Noble’s NOOK website (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/how-to-have-sex-if-youre-not-human-mary-batten/1037149130?ean=2940013442917).

It’s a collection of a dozen of my articles about reproductive strategies among a range of animals and plants. Despite all our love songs and romantic fantasies, reproduction is the name of the game in biology. All forms of life are genetically programmed to reproduce. Animals—plants, too—“do it” in wild, bizarre ways. With both a vagina and a penis, hermaphroditic snails form orgiastic daisy chains. In the ultimate form of togetherness, walking sticks (insects, not skinny people) stay locked in copulo up to 79 days! Some reef fishes change sex—male to female or vice versa, depending on whether their social structure is headed by a dominant male or a dominant female. Pygmy chimpanzees called bonobos use sex to greet each other: male-male, female-female, male-female, young old—nothing is off limits to these animals with whom we share 96 percent of our DNA. Among bonobos, sex helps to keep the peace. Plants also have sexual lives but for them, three is not a crowd; it’s a necessity. Plants trick and seduce a variety of animals to do their sexual bidding by carrying the plant’s sperm—the pollen—to fertilize the female part of another blossom. Avocados and orchids, no less than mammals and insects, are genetically programmed to reproduce.  

Sexual Strategies: How Females Choose Their Mates (ISBN 978-0-595-51039-9) an Authors Guild Backinprint edition by iUniverse 2008; Originally published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1992) This book explores the complexities of the mating game from fruit flies to humans and explains why females are in charge. By determining which males mate and father offspring, females play a directive role in evolution. Fascinating examples reveal the biology underlying courtship, deception, love and sexual conflict. More information is on the book’s website: www.sexualstrategies.com  

Aliens from Earth: When Animals and Plants Invade Other Ecosystems  (ISBN 13: 978-1-56145-236-1 / ISBN 10: 1-5645-236-X hardcover, Peachtree 2003; ISBN 13: 978-1-56145-450-1 / ISBN 10: 1-56145-450-8 paperback, Peachtree 2008) Aliens are everywhere! And they are not creatures from another planet, but real living things right here on Earth. This book introduces readers to the serious and ongoing environmental problems caused by invasive plant and animal species, such as gypsy moths, African honeybees, fire ants and the plant kudzu.  

Anthropologist: Scientist of the People  (ISBN 0-618-08368-5, Houghton Mifflin 2001) This book is part of Houghton Mifflin’s  Scientists in the Field series. It’s about Magdalena Hurtado, an anthropologist who studies a group of hunter-gatherers called the Ache who live in Paraguay. Hurtado says that our generation may be the last to witness our fellow humans living in a way that was typical for most of human history. Many of the ways that human beings feel and act today evolved in very different environments than we live in today. Learning about the great diversity of cultures on our planet teaches us about ourselves. It also inspires us to preserve knowledge of a fast-disappearing way of life. Named Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children by the National Science Teachers Association and the Children’s Book Council.        

 Hungry Plants (ISBN-10: 0375825339; ISBN-13: 978-0375825330 Random House, 2004; also available as an eBook)  This book is about the strange and fascinating world of carnivorous plants, from the hairy “jaws” of the Venus flytrap to the pretty sundew plant whose delicate tentacles entrap its prey and the pitcher plants that “digest” their prey. This book has been translated into French as part of the U.S. State Department’s Cultural Affairs program for distribution in French-speaking Africa and Haiti. 

My books are available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. More information about all my books is on my website:  www.marybatten.com.

Where do you get your ideas for writing? 

My ideas come from anywhere and everywhere—a news item, especially a new scientific discovery, a conversation, a movie, books and science journals.  

What is your favorite thing about your books?

I enjoy the process of discovery that occurs when I’m researching a new topic, and I hope my books contribute to scientific literacy in the United States. American students are sadly deficient in their knowledge of science; we lag far behind students in other Western countries and Japan. Yet our highly technological world demands a greater command of science than at any other time in our history. I don’t see how anyone can be educated and hope to compete successfully in today’s world without a grounding in evolutionary biology. Yet, there are anti-science, anti-intellectual forces in our country--certain politicians and religious fanatics--that seem to be on a crusade to keep people ignorant by denying scientific evidence, most notably with respect to climate change and even to the established facts of biological evolution. In my books, I try to convey to readers the excitement and fascination that I find in biology, which is the science of life.   

Why and when did you begin writing?  Is there any one person who had a big influence on you or encouraged you to write?

I’ve been writing since I was around eight years old. I have no idea why I was interested in writing; there were no role models in my family or community. However, when I was in the second grade, my grandmother and I played a storytelling game with each other. Both she and I would make up stories and tell each other. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this really was a form of writing. Then there’s the whole Southern tradition of telling family stories. Since I grew up in the South, telling stories came naturally. For example, in the sixth grade, we had to learn 12 new spelling words each week. For homework we had to use each word in a sentence. I found this exercise quite boring and decided to write a story that used all 12 words. The teacher began calling on me to read my stories and my classmates seemed to look forward to them. So I’ve been writing in various forms for a long time. 

What is your writing schedule?  What atmosphere do you need to write?

I write most days, though it may not be at the same time. I don’t need any particular atmosphere to write, and I can write just about anywhere. I do like having a deadline because otherwise my tendency is to keep going with the research. When I’m writing without a deadline, I have to try to set one for myself. I say, “try,” because sometimes life intervenes and projects take longer to complete than I originally planned. 

What projects are you working on now, or plan for the future? 

I’m working on two books right now, one is fiction and the other is nonfiction. But I don’t talk about books that I’m working on.

What kind of advice or tips to you have for someone who wants to write and be published? 

Be persistent. Don’t let rejections discourage you. Every published writer probably has a stack of rejection letters. I surely do. You have to keep writing and keep submitting your work. Of course, the digital market has opened up an entirely new way to get published without an agent or a publishing house. Writers can publish their own work directly onto Kindle. The challenge for self-publishing digitally is marketing, as the writer is responsible for publicizing and marketing her book.  

Are there any other comments, advice or tips that you would give to beginning writers? 

First, learn your craft. Second, read, read, read. Study the writers you admire and analyze how they constructed their books. 

What do you do when you are not writing?  

When not writing, I’m going about the usual ordinary activities of daily life—cooking for myself and my husband, visiting family and friends, traveling occasionally and regular exercise to try to stay in shape and age gracefully.  

What “Made It” moments have you experienced in life? 

Giving birth to my daughter. Being reviewed in The New York Times. Giving a lecture at the Smithsonian. Being nominated for an Emmy. Receiving awards for some of my books.

You can visit my other blog at: http://love-faith-and-guts.blogspot.com/ that features a preview to my new book that was just released  , Traveling a Rocky Road with Love, Faith and Guts.

Professional Freelance Writer, Mike Gerrard, Publishes First Crime Novel - Strip till Dead

Mike Gerrard has added another notch on his writing belt by writing and publishing a (as he calls it) crime novel.  I think you will enjoy reading about his journey into the world of publishing as I did interviewing him.

I was born in the north of England, in St Helens, which is a few miles outside of Liverpool. I am old enough to have seen the Beatles live on stage, at the Liverpool Empire. After training as an accountant, and changing my mind, then training as a teacher, and changing my mind, I ended up in London working for a literary agent before becoming a freelance writer. I have concentrated on travel writing for about the last 15 years, and have written for people such as National Geographic and American Express. I have authored dozens of guidebooks. I now spend half my life in the UK and half in Arizona, “the winter half”.

Tell us about the genre of your work. 

I would say that Strip till Dead was crime writing rather than mystery. There is a mystery at the heart of it, as two people try to track down the killer of a stripper, but I was more interested in portraying the world of striptease in London, and the people involved, than in trying to write a mystery puzzle book.

Why did you choose this genre?

This is my first novel, and the story had been in my mind for a while. I knew someday I would do something with the story, so as it is a crime story and I also read lots of crime writing, it is inevitable what it would be.

What are some of your books, stories that have been published?

I have published a lot of travel writing, including guidebooks for publishers including the AA, AAA, Fodor’s, Dorling Kindersley, Insight, New Holland, Michelin, Thomas Cook, and National Geographic. Strip till Dead is my first work of fiction, and I have never written any short stories. I love short stories, I wish I could write even one good one, but the ideas that come to me (and I have tons of ideas, far more than I have ever time to write) are always for full-length stories. That said, I have had an idea for a short story featuring the two main characters from Strip till Dead that would act as a kind of interval between this book and the next one that I am thinking about - but at the moment it lacks a vital element: a crime!

Strip till Dead is only at the moment available for the Kindle in the USA (http://tinyurl.com/4fv32zf)

and in the UK (http://tinyurl.com/48vgygc). However, I am getting the print edition ready through Amazon’s CreateSpace, and that should be available sometime in April.

How do you come up with the names of places and characters in your books?

The places are all real, so that bit is easy. The names of characters are really important, I think. In my first draft, I just gave the characters combinations of names of people I knew. That made it easy for me to remember them. I was more concerned in the first draft with working out the plot. The characters developed as the story moved on. Then for the next draft, I had a better grasp of the characters, as I had not initially based them on any particular people I knew. So, by then the names were not right. They were just holding names anyway, as if you might give something a working title, even though you are not planning to use it. (The book was first called Stark Naked, by the way, but I never really liked that as a title.) I did then spend a lot of time working on the characters’ names, trying different ones, writing down lists of possibilities, until I hit on names that seemed right. You usually know it when you have it.

How did you develop the character of your protagonist in this book?

In order for the plot to work, I had to have someone who was slightly naïve, but not shy about becoming a stripper. She had to be new to the world, so she could investigate it, and learn about it along with the reader. For a while, she was American, partly to make her an outsider and partly a cynical move to try to make the book appeal to American readers. However, I am not really a cynical person so she had to revert to being what was right for the book. I made her from the north of England, where I am from, and a student, so she would seem more young and vulnerable, and would learn a lot about the city, stripping, and most of all about herself as the story unfolds.

What about an antagonist…is there a unique “bad guy” or a recurring nemesis of any kind?

There are several bad guys hanging round the stripping world, where of course you do find some sleazy characters on the fringes… and sometimes not on the fringe but right in there. It is a colorful world, all right. However, to say any more would reveal too much - and like the skillful stripper, I will not reveal all.

What’s your favorite thing about your book?

I am pleased with two things in particular. Three if you count the fact that I managed to finish it. It is one thing to write a guidebook of 60,000 words or so, because you are working to a format and a page plan - and also to a deadline! With Strip till Dead, I was doing it in my spare time, never knowing if it would be published, and never having written a novel before. So, the simple fact of getting it done - after several drafts - was to me an achievement.

However, the first thing I am most pleased about is the way I hope I have portrayed strippers as real women. People tend to make assumptions about them, that they are all tarts or have no morals, or whatever. In fact, they are all different, doing what they do for different reasons. Some are working class, some are posh, and a lot of them are just ordinary women doing an unusual job.

The second thing I am most pleased about is the final chapter, and in particular the ending. I did have a rough idea of where the book was headed, but not the specifics of how it would work out. I was very happy with the way the last chapter was written, and especially the last few sentences. I did not know that was going to happen, but when it did, it seemed absolutely right.

Why and when did you begin writing?

I knew I wanted to be a writer from the age of about 8 or 9, when I discovered that some of my favorite comedians were not making things up as they went along, but had scriptwriters who wrote the jokes for them. From then on, I knew I wanted to be a writer, preferably a sitcom writer, but any kind of writer really. It has been a circuitous route. The first things I sold were some poems to Lancashire Life magazine when I was in my early 20s. Then I sold them a few articles, did some general feature writing for newspapers and magazines in the UK - in my spare time, that is. I was in my late 20s and working for a literary agent in London when I decided to have a go at full-time freelance writing. I finished work one Friday, and on Monday morning sat down in my flat with a typewriter at the kitchen table and thought: OK, what now? Having all day and every day in which to write was both liberating and scared me stiff.

What is your writing schedule?

It varies enormously, depending what I am doing. When I was writing Strip till Dead, I was doing it alongside my regular travel writing. I have been lucky in that I have always made a living from travel writing, which a lot of people do not do. They have to have another job or source of income to support their travel writing, as it is not a very well-paid profession for most people. So, when I started my novel I would get up early, maybe 6am or so, sit right down at the desk and work on it for maybe 2-3 hours, before switching to my regular paid work, the guidebooks and so on. It was extremely hard, having to get up like that every day, but if you do not do it, the book is not written. And, I really wanted to write it. So, you do get up, day after day after day, until it is done. It is a long, hard slog, and I respect anyone who has written a book in their spare time.

What projects are you working on now, or plan for the future?

Right now, I am working on publicizing Strip till Dead, which is vital if you go the indie-publishing route, as I have. I got tired of waiting for publishers and agents taking 4-5 months to get back to you, and sometimes never getting back to you at all. I can take ‘no’, you have to be able to do that as a writer. What I cannot take is the bad manners of asking to see something and then never, ever, responding to you again.

Anyway, I am thinking about a short story concerning the two main characters of Strip till Dead, which would take them into the next novel. I know where I want to set it, and have been doing some background reading for story ideas and atmosphere. However, while I was trying to sell Strip till Dead to publishers and agents - and failing - I did start another crime story, and have the first couple of chapters written. That is set in Alabama, and very different from Strip till Dead. Nevertheless, as with my first one, it was just a story that came along and I felt compelled to write it, or at least make a start.

What kind of advice or tips to you have for someone who wants to write (especially mystery)?

Whatever you want to write, I think it is vital to read examples of some of the best writers in that genre, whether it is non-fiction like travel or fiction like mystery, or romance, or anything else. You cannot be a writer if you do not read. The only other thing you have to do is sit down and write. That is the hard part for many people. You often hear people saying they would like to write a book but they do not have the time. Well, people like John Grisham and Scott Turow did not have the time either, but they made the time and did not stop until they had finished. I think it was P.G. Wodehouse who said that the secret of writing is applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

Personally I am a sucker for ‘how to write’ books. I do feel that if I only read just one more ‘how to write’ book, I will find the secret and be successful. I know I am not the only one. Nevertheless, I have learned a lot from reading those books, and there are some very good ones about mystery writing. I have read them all! I especially recommend the books by Lawrence Block and David Morrell; both fine crime/thriller writers who know what they are talking about and have written books that are full of great advice.

Are there any other comments, advice or tips that you would give to beginning writers?

I have had countless emails over the years from people asking how they can become travel writers. I used to give them all long, individual replies, trying to help them. I did until a travel writer friend of mine said he now summed it up briefly - travel as much as you can, write as much as you can, and send it to as many editors as you can. And, I think that is very simple but sound advice.

What do you do when you are not writing? 

My wife says I would be happy to sit at the keyboard all day, every day, and write. She has to drag me out to do the garden, or go shopping, or anything else. Then, when I am not writing, chances are that I am reading - books, magazines, newspapers or listening to music. Then again, I may be cooking, eating, and enjoying the alcoholic beverage of my choice. Being travel writers, we do of course travel a lot too.

What “Made It” moments have you experienced in life?

Does any writer or any artist ever think they have made it? Maybe you do if you really have made it, but I think no matter how successful you are, you never feel you have made it. In fact if you write something that is brilliant, and well received, is praised to the skies and sells in millions, you probably think - oh ****, what the hell do I do next? I will let you know if I ever feel that I have made it!