Assorted Stuff of Interest

Playboy has a big honking list, ranking all episodes of all Star Trek series ever: "Clues", my episode, is #115 out of almost 700. Not too shabby a number.

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Speaking of big lists, among the plethora/tsunami of "Best Books of 2014" lists, the 250-title list from National Public Radio is pretty impressive. The full list can be filtered by various categories for more manageable results.

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ASU's "jetpack" may be the jetpack we'll get, not the jetpack we want.

This is more of a "jet-assist" invention, being developed to let troops move more quickly in combat situations while carrying a shitload of weaponry and gear.


Any true believer, though, knows that a real jetpack will allow you to fly, dammit!




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David Laferierre, an illustrator from Massachusetts, has been drawing on his kids' sandwich bags for their lunchboxes since 2008, and posting photos on Flickr.  One of his common subjects is rocketships. Here are a few:

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And, to finish off this post, South Africa's MUTI (I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a name or a company) has designed an impressive poster for Jules Verne's fantastic fictions, Voyages Extraordinaires, incorporating numerous icons for a variety of separate works.  The full poster, and separate renditions of the icons, are on display at behance.net. Below is the icon for From The Earth To The Moon:

A Few Quotes About Books

I habitually browse the book giveaway listings on Goodreads. Sometimes you can tell if a book's worth entering a giveaway for by how well-written is the blurb for it.  If the blurb's well-written, the odds of the book being well-written increase.  If the blurb's kinda sucky, the book is likely to be sucky too.

And then you occasionally get something like this, where an author quoted part of a review for his book:

"...like the best of Tolkien crossed with a great Dean Koontz thriller."

The idea of which put an expression on my face something like this:

"What the... I can't even...."

Really, I can't imagine how anyone could put Tolkien and Koontz together in the same sentence. One an obsessive academician who spent many years building a detailed world with a deep history, even its own languages, and the other a writer of rush-and-rumble thrillers who drives his keyboard fast and loose, sometimes too fast and too loose.  That's not a combination I find appetizing.

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Here's a different quote I liked a lot better.  I've been reading Matthew Hughes' To Hell And Back trilogy, and came across this slightly tongue-in-cheek, but perceptive, description of too many popular best-sellers:

"He began a new career as an author of fat-spined novels in which men and women of power intrigued against each other's interests and interfered with each other's bodies. His characters had unending appetites for sexual encounters and a predisposition to solve disputes with unrestrained violence, His books were hugely popular, and sold by the truckload through Wal-Mart and discount stores." -- Matthew Hughes, Costume Not Included

Yeah-h-h-h, that  may have come out of a work of fiction, but it's a shoe that fits quite a lot of popular writers.

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(photo via The Commons on Flickr)

Non-Performance Art, Centenarian Books, and the Survivors of 1914

Over on tor.com, there's a post about the Future Library "art project".  Scottish artist Katie Paterson plans to 1) plant 1,000 trees in Oslo, Norway, then 2) commission 100 stories from 100 writers, one per year over the next century, and not publish them until 3) in the year 2114, harvest those 1,000 trees and turn them into paper on which to finally print the 100 stories.  Margaret Atwood has signed on to write the first story. 

I suggested in comments that this  could be considered "non-performance art".

I figure that if I want to think about having to wait years and years and years to see a story published, I can get pretty much the same feeling just by looking at the submission-tracking spreadsheet for my own fiction. So I have a hard time taking Ms. Paterson's idea seriously.

I can't help wondering, considering the "Scottish artist" label, whether this might be yet another Scottish invention -- like golf, bagpipes, and haggis -- meant to cement Scotland's reputation as the world's greatest and most evil practical jokers.

Other commenters raised the question of whether writers of 2014 would still have a viable reputation after a century's passage of time. Commenter StrongDreams suggested comparing popular writers of a century ago, from 1914, to see how many have survived the passage  of time and would still be considered publication-worthy.

That sounded like a good idea. Googling ensued.


via Wikipedia, bestsellers of 1914:

The Eyes of the World by Harold Bell Wright
Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
The Inside of the Cup by Winston Churchill
The Salamander by Owen Johnson
The Fortunate Youth by William J. Locke
T. Tembarom by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Penrod by Booth Tarkington
Diane of the Green Van by Leona Dalrymple
The Devil's Garden by W. B. Maxwell
The Prince of Graustark by George Barr McCutcheon

Most of these writers would be unrecognized by much of today's audience, and even the recognizable names aren't represented here by their best work, with the possible exception of Tarkington's Penrod.

Blogger Linda Aragoni has recently reviewed all the 1914 bestsellers on her Great Penformances blog, a site dedicated to reviewing vintage books..

More pertinent might be this list from Goodreads for the 200 "Most Popular Books From 1914". The selection criteria is how many people have added a 1914 title to Goodreads, ranging from over 100,000 for James Joyce' Dubliners, to 23 for The Auxilia of the Roman Imperial Army by George Leonard Cheesman. (The Goodreads list mixes fiction and non-fiction.) 

Writers familiar to the SF/F/H community on the Goodreads list include Frank L. Baum, Algernon Blackwood, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lord Dunsany, George Allan England, H. Rider Haggard, Franz Kafka, Arthur Machen, A.A. Milne, Sax Rohmer, Bram Stoker, and H.G. Wells.  A lot of that familiarity is because of their historical importance; stylistically, I suspect most wouldn't be able to sell original fiction in today's world.

I don't really see much point in the Future Library project.  Whatever Atwood writes will probably be better appreciated and more widely read if published today than by seeing print, finally, a hundred years in the future. The same applies, to a decreasing degree, to future writers commissioned for the project. Only the last, oh, dozen or so writers contributing to the project, from about 2099 on, will be writing in a style and about a society that won't be considered antiquated, quaint or obsolete by 2114. It strikes me as a "stunt" project, not a literary project.

On Audio Fiction: Three Audiobooks and A Podcast

I have, on a semi-regular basis over the years, been listening to audiobooks from the local library, either at work or while commuting to and from work. First on cassettes, then CDs, then -- starting about a year ago -- downloaded via the Overdrive app onto my smartphone.  I also use the Podkicker app to download short audio fiction from various SF/F/H podcasters and online magazines (Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, the EscapePod/PodCastle/PsuedoPod trio, and a few others).

Sitting in a chair and using all your attention and focus on listening to an audiobook isn't something most people do very often. Most of the time, and certainly in my own case, listening takes place while doing something routine and/or repetitive. (Walking, jogging, driving, housecleaning, and, oh, a big chunk of the hours at my workplace.)

But even routine tasks use part of your attention and brainpower. Leaving not-quite full attention and not-quite full brainpower to use to listen to an audiobook.

Most audiobooks I've listened to without problems. But there have been a few....

I'd like to discuss why these problems might arise, and how they might be avoided, citing a few examples of both good and bad. What makes an audiobook easy to listen to, and what makes it difficult?

To start, a few audiobook principles:

• Structure matters
• Characters matter.
• Presentation matters.

By "Structure", I mean how simple or complex the plotline of a story is. Whether it progresses in straight chronological order, focusing on one or two primary characters, or if it's presented in a more complex manner with flashbacks, asides and sometimes even footnotes, and with multiple characters or viewpoints and changes of setting.

"Characters" can be problematic both numerically and in regard to how complex and deep their characterizations and interactions are.

And "Presentation" is that extra dimension a narrator brings to the written words; the pacing, the emotion, the acting. That extra dimension can be a positive or a negative part of the audiobook experience.

The audiobook of Karen Joy Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club presented some difficulties when I listened to it recently. There are a half-a-dozen members of the titular book club, and it wasn't clear at first which were going to be the primary characters of the ensemble. (None of the characters are unimportant, but some are more important than others.) Add in flashbacks to the characters' lives prior to the club's first meeting, and things got a little complicated, hard to follow, and I had some difficulty at first remembering which character was which and which backstory was theirs.

I did, after a few chapters, get to where I could identify and follow the characters and plot without problems, and I ended up enjoying the novel very much. But if I'd been reading the print version, I could have swiftly flipped back to previous pages to refresh my memory of who was who and what they'd done. With an audiobook, it's very difficult to skim back through earlier sections.

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker presented much less problem with structure and characters. Although there are numerous flashbacks to the Jinni-trapped-in-human-form's backstory, they were infrequent enough, and distinct enough, they did not disrupt or jar the main narrative. That main narrative, involving the unusual (to say the least) presence of both the Jinni and a masterless female Golem in 1899 New York City, both trying to pass as human, is very straightforward and chronological. Besides one heck of an interesting story, Wecker also paints a portrait of fin-de-siecle New York City, both it's privileged mansion residents and the less fortunate tenants of lower class neighborhoods.

The narrations for the Fowler and Wecker books are well done. No complaints there.

The audiobook for The Rook, by Daniel O'Malley, unfortunately didn't work well in regards to the narration. My wife Hilde read the print-version of The Rook several months ago, and enjoyed it without any serious problems. The audiobook version kicked me out of the story strongly enough that I didn't finish listening to it. (I rarely leave audiobooks unfinished, I think only once or twice before.)

The Rook starts out with the classic trope of a bad-ass amnesiac hero (heroine, in this instance) coming to awareness in a situation where people are trying to kill her. This story's a little different than most in that the protagonist had advance knowledge that she'd be losing her memory, and had left a folder of documents to instruct her forthcoming amnesiac self on how to pass as, well, herself. This shortly involves reporting to her workplace (a secret governmental agency of paranormals, of dubious purpose and morality, other members of which may be the very people who want to kill our heroine) and trying to get through the workday with her loss of memory undetected.

Unfortunately for our heroine, the files left for her instruction are: 1) not as comprehensive as they should be, and 2) she has to impersonate herself before she has time to thoroughly read or study the files. The results are, well, pretty stumble-footed.

Reading that same section in print, one can create their own mental narration, giving the words whatever individual tone or cast of voice that seems best. Readers, as a class, are pretty forgiving. We want to suspend our disbelief. We want to enjoy what we're reading. When we read, we're not the writers of a story, but sometimes we're the director of the mental movie those words evoke in our head. We choose the camera angles, we choose the lighting, we choose wide views or closeups, and we choose the tone and inflection of the words and voices we're working with.

With audiobooks, the narrator provides that tone and inflection. And in the case of The Rook, that tone and inflection didn't work. The scene where Myfanwy Thomas, the "Rook" of the title, tries to pass as herself is presented as so stumble-footed, so awkward, so obvious that, rather than passing, the first co-worker she spoke to should have pointed a gun at her and asked "Who are you and what have you done with the real Rook?" Reading a printed version, the reader can make allowances for the implausibilities of that same scene. (As Hilde apparently did when she read the actual book.) With the audiobook, I found that impossible, and that was the point where I stopped listening.

On the opposite end of that spectrum, an instance where the narration added to a story's impact, I recommend "The Mao Ghost" by Chen Quifan, translated by Ken Liu, originally published in the March 2014 issue of Lightspeed magazine. (There's a "Listen" button for the audio version on the webpage.)

There is a single word in "The Mao Ghost" which is omnipresent but left unwritten/unsaid. The story circles around that word, and circles around it, and circles around it in ever-tightening gyres. The reader becomes aware, with growing dread, of what that word is. And when the single word is said, only the one time, it is devastating.

I listened to the podcast version of "The Mao Ghost", narrated by Alex Hyde-White. I like to think of myself as a tough old guy, replete with manly macho manliness, but I have to admit to this: When that pivotal, essential word was spoken in "The Mao Ghost", I cried. I was just overcome with sadness and grief.

I later went to the Lightspeed website and read the print version of that story. I didn't cry that time. Maybe because I knew what was coming. But I think it was the audio element that made the difference. Alex Hyde-White's narration added an extra element of immediacy and involvement to what was already an outstanding story and made it something even more than that.

Summary reviews:

The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler -- Multiple characters and flashbacks caused some difficulty and confusion in early chapters. After becoming familiar with those characters, though, this was highly enjoyable. Recommended.

The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker -- Supernatural creatures stranded in 1899 New York City. Fascinating concept, well executed, with interesting historical detail. Straightforward plotline, with occasional flashbacks to the Jinni's earlier life. Highly recommended.

The Rook, by Daniel O'Malley -- A scene that stretched the limits of believability in the print version has that believability snapped in audio by an inappropriate narrative voice. Print version may be acceptable. I did not finish the audio version; can't recommend it.

"The Mao Ghost" by Chen Quifan -- Very highly recommended, both in print and especially the audio version. I would expect this to show up on other recommendation lists and possibly as an award nominee.  If the audio version isn't nominated for a podcasting award, well, there just ain't no justice in this world.

Slow Words: Book Titles

Besides having a good cover, a striking and/or memorable title is one of the best ways to get people to take a further look at your book, maybe even the actual words inside. Past titles that have caught my attention in such a manner include THE DIRTY PARTS OF THE BIBLE and DEATH BLIMPS OF DOOM!

Here's the newest one to catch my eye: DIE YOU DOUGHNUT BASTARDS by Cameron Pierce. This falls into the "Bizarro" genre, which is kind of anything-goes, weird, weirder, weirdest combination of magic realism minus the realism, mixed with the brown acid from Woodstock and frequently with a large dose of tastelessness as well. (Pierce is also the author of ASS GOBLINS OF AUSCHWITZ, frequently cited as an exemplar of Bizarro fiction.) Not really to my taste, so I probably won't ever read the book, but I do love DYDB's title; I get a smile on my face every time I read it.

And I note from the latest LOCUS magazine that a fellow named Sam Munson has a book titled THE WAR AGAINST ASSHOLES coming out from Saga Press next year. Another great title, but, dammit!, now I have to come up with a different title for the autobiography I thought I might write someday.

So what are your favorite book titles?

Wheel of Time and the Hugo Awards

Based on a technical interpretation of Hugo Award rules, the entire 13-volume Wheel of Time fantasy epic by Robert Jordan was ruled as eligible to be nominated for Best Novel for this year's Hugo awards.  People who bought a supporting or attending membership in this year's Worldcon are able to vote on the awards.

In recent years, a "Hugo Voter Packet" has collected a year's fiction nominees (usually four or five full novels, plus the shorter works) in digital format.  Some people view the HVP as enabling voters to read the full slate of nominees for Hugo consideration, and some people see it as an opportunity to buy a whole bunch of books and stories for a bargain rate.   (Supporting memberships are $40 this year.)

When Jordan's multi-volume epic got enough nominations to end up on the final Hugo ballot, a number of people wondered online whether Tor Books, Jordan's publisher, would actually include the entire three-million-word-plus work in the Hugo Voter Packet.

Yes, they will, it turns out.

In another example of why I am kind of a weirdo, this news actually lessens whatever small* impulse I had to buy a supporting or attending membership in this year's Worldcon.

Because if I bought a membership, I’d feel obligated to actually read the contents of the Hugo Voter Packet, give some consideration to the content’s merits, and actually vote. And one of the reasons I haven’t had a membership in any Worldcon since 1984 is that simply finding time enough to read all the Hugo-nominated work before the voting deadline was difficult if not impossible. I’d feel guilty about not doing that.

Add in a 13-volume, 10,000-page, three-million-word Big Fat Fantasy, and that guilt goes to a whole new level. “Crushing guilt” sounds appropriate.

(portions of this post originally appeared as a comment on File 770)

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*microscopic

The Brave Free Books -- April 2014

Yeah, it's been awhile since I did an installment of "The Brave Free Books", reviews of various books and e-books I've read for free (from promotions, giveaways, sweepstakes wins, and/or the Nook Free Fridays offerings).

In the self-published line, I'm very impressed by the work of a British chap named Luke Smitherd. His novel TheStone Man and novella The Man On Table Ten are both very compelling stories. They might be described as "Science-Fiction/Horror"; both use mysterious aliens manifesting in the normal world. The aliens don't explain themselves (with the strong implication that humans are too insignificant to bother giving explanations), they're close to omnipotent in what they can do, and we can't stop them. In those respects Smitherd's aliens are closer to Lovecraft's Elder Gods than traditional SF aliens. Smitherd draws you into the minds of his characters slowly, layering details and emotions, until you fully believe in them. Most "horror" stories, of whatever genre, slide off me; these stories actually made me anxious, both for the individual characters and for the suddenly-endangered worlds they lived in.  (Current Kindle prices: The Stone Man, 2.99; The Man At Table Ten, Free)

A less impressive self-published work was Strawman Made Steel, by Brett Adams. I picked this up during a free promotion by the author, because the opening scene was a compelling beat-the-clock scenario where the just-poisoned protagonist has to figure out which of two poisons he's been given, because taking the wrong antidote will kill him immediately. The rest of the book didn't live up to that scene, unfortunately. The protagonist can travel, via mirrors, between our normal world and a future where electricity vanished suddenly and the world has had to convert back to steam and kerosene and gas. An interesting premise, but I couldn't believe that the world, and the future New York City, would not only recover from such an overwhelming cataclysm in less than a century, but grow. The premise needed a lot more propping up and development. I also didn't see the need for the protagonist, a hard-boiled private detective, to be hopping back and forth between worlds. The central conceit of the world, the sudden disappearance of electricity, is never examined or solved. Pretty much a standard noir mystery, with gangsters and the spoiled rich and nightclubs, etc., with some fantastical trappings added on. Disappointing.  (Current Kindle Price: 2.99)

Death Blimps of Doom! by James Ivan Greco is a prequel short story to his "Reprobates of the Wasteland" novel Take The All-Mart!  The "Reprobates" series is about a couple of wasted wastrels in a satirical post-apocalypse setting.  (Chinese troops occupy a trashed California; the All-Mart has become self-expanding in runaway-nanotech style and now covers a large portion of North America; etc.)  Trip and Rudy may be the inheritors of all the bad genes from Charlie Sheen, Hunter Thompson, Cheech-and-Chong, and Leopold-and-Loeb; they make Harry Flashman look like a paragon of moral virtue and rectitude, leaving wreckage both literal and metaphorical in their wake.  It's funny, but in a kind of feel-dirty-afterwards way. As a short story, I think this sort of thing works, but I'm reluctant to engage in a full-length novel about these characters, and haven't gone on to read Greco's novel about Trip and Rudy's further adventures.  (Current Kindle price: Free)

Wool - Part One, a novellette in the Silo series, by Hugh Howey.  Oh, so this is what all the fuss has been about the last few years.  Howey was an early self-publisher, and has achieved spectacular success and income from the Silo series and other works.  "Wool" was the story that started it all.  Why did "Wool" succeed, where so many other self-publishers had only limited or negligible results?  Canny marketing and promotion was one reason, but I think the primary reason is that "Wool" is a pretty damn good story.  The post-climate-collapse, dystopian underground society is well thought out, the characters are fully fleshed, there's an underlying mystery to this future setting, all of which draw the reader through to this story's conclusion and make one want to read further works in Howey's world.  The lesson is: Write a good story first.  The rest -- marketing, promotion, etc., whether in traditional publishing or self-publishing -- are secondary.  A reader might be hooked once by marketing, promotion, a striking cover (although "Wool" succeeded despite a, umm, less-than-impressive cover), but being more than a one-shot writer requires being the very best writer you can be.  (Current Kindle price: Free)

Augur is a short story collection by Freya Robertson.  While I was reading the collection, I kept having a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, but wasn't sure why.  The stories were decently written, decently plotted, decently inventive.  But I kept scratching my head as to why I wasn't enjoying them as much as I would have expected.  Until I got to one of the last entries, "Bearcub", about a young boy competing to be chosen for a knight's training, and found myself significantly more "into" the story than I had with earlier entries in the collection.  I thought about this, and went back and reread some passages from the earlier stories.  I think what the mystery was is that Freya Robertson's use of language, overall, tends to a shorter vocabulary, simpler sentences, and uncomplicated character development.  That her natural writing voice seems to be better suited to a middle-school or YA audience; the stories that left me feeling most dissatisfied were those with adult protagonists.  "Bearcub", with its young protagonist, read much more naturally for me; the writing style seemed much more suited to that particular story and character.  (Robertson's novel Heartwood catches up with Bearcub in his early-adult life; the sample chapters included at the end of Augur read pretty well, and it's being promoted as a YA book.) (Current Kindle price: 3.99)

Unnatural History by Jonathan Green is the first novel in the Pax Brittania alternate-history series from Abaddon Books. The cover and blurbs for this made it sound like it would be a fun romp.  (Dinosaurs on the rampage in a Steampunk London!  What's not to love?) Ehh, not so much.  The hero of the series, one Ulysses Quicksilver, appears meant to be an amalgram of Alan Quatermain, Doc Savage, and other heroes from pulp and adventure fiction.  But there's no real depth or development to him, and he came across as very flat and uninvolving.  (As a lead character in a series, it may simply be that he's not permitted to change or grown from episode to episode.)  Another disappointment, and I don't feel any inclination to read more in the Pax Brittania setting.  (Current Kindle Price: Free)

The above were all e-books.  This next was a hardcover I won in a Goodreads giveaway.

I read Jo Baker's Longbourn, a retelling/expansion of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, focusing on the household servants as the primary characters. Much about the wide gulf between the working class and the privileged/wealthy, and the lives of unending drudgery and work most people lived. In some ways it was like reading a well-written science fiction novel, because the society of early 19th-Century Britain is almost like an alien planet. Some of the antiquated terms used were ones I was unfamiliar with, and sometimes context wasn't quite enough to fully grasp the meaning; first time in a long time that I kept a notebook handy to jot an occasional word down to look up later. Baker depicts a very grim society to live in, but I came to... "enjoy" is not the right word... appreciate her depiction of the lower classes struggling to find love and a hope for the future in their harsh lives.  (Hardcover/retail 25.95; Amazon HC 15.11, Kindle version 10.99)

And that's it for this installment of Brave Free Books.

Slow Words: A Not-So-Sweet Non-Romance

 

C.S. (Susanne) Lakin has written a number of novels from her heart; none of them have been particularly successful or renumerative.  She got tired of, especially, that latter part.  So she researched what genres and subgenres sold especially well among self-published books, and found that "Sweet Historical Western Romance" had a reliable buying audience even without labor-intensive or expensive marketing and promotion.  ("Sweet" is a euphemism for "No Sex" in this context.)  She'd never read or written in that genre before.  She found books by one of the most popular authors in that subgenre, "deconstructed" one of those novels, and used what she learned to write her own, COLORADO PROMISE (published as by "Charlene Whitman").  That book has been making fairly steady earnings since its publication.

Lakin went on to write an article about that experience, and the article was published recently on Joel Friedlander's The Book Designer blog.   Another version of that article appeared on writer Barbara Rogan's blog.  Both got a lot of appreciative comments.

A-a-a-nd... some not so appreciative comments.  Including several from Debra Holland, the author of WILD MONTANA SKY, the novel Lakin deconstructed.   Apparently, there was some degree of contact between Lakin and Holland before Lakin began writing her own SHR novel.  Exactly how much seems a little uncertain, and it also seems a little uncertain how clear Lakin was about the process she was using to try and emulate Holland's success.

Holland's first comment, on the Book Designer blog, was very -- very -- politely phrased, but with a clear undercurrent of some annoyance.  A later comment, on Rogan's blog, was rather more forceful about Holland feeling, umm, under-informed about exactly what Lakin had planned to do.  Lakin chimed in with her own replies, also growing increasingly testy.  Various commenters, both defending and criticizing Lakin, have added to the discussion.

As Internet arguments go, so far it's actually been pretty mild.  If I was trying to make a video version, it would be filled with eyerolls, significant glances and glares, haughty chins, impertinent sniffs and long sighs, ending with simultaneous flounces by everyone involved.  More like something out of a Georgette Heyer novel, rather than, say, John Ringo.

(The John Ringo version would have bullets, blood, and things that go *BOOM*.)

A few points in response to the whole situation:

I wish Lakin wouldn't use the term "deconstruction" for the process she used to study the SHR genre and Holland's particular novel.  "Deconstruction" has an established meaning in academic Literary Theory.  For a bumper-sticker version, Deconstruction tries to find the meaning behind the meaning in literature (or, more exactly, the contradictions in meaning) (or, ultimately, the impossibility of a clearly defined meaning).  A fairly plain-English explanation of the theory can be found on this webpage from Bedford St. Martin's.  A more jargon-ridden definition can be found here on Wikipedia.  (Deconstruction Theorists tend to use dense, complex, jargon-heavy writing when writing about deconstruction itself.  Critics sometimes speculate this is to disguise the fact that Deconstruction Theory has no clothes.)

What Lakin seems to have done with WILD MONTANA SKY is what I'd call a "breakdown" of Holland's novel into its essential structure.   This is not the same as copying or plagiarizing, but it seems to be more than "influenced by" or "in the style of".  As an example, both books open with the first chapter from the female protagonist's view, and the second chapter from the male protagonist's.  In both books, the female protagonist is an Easterner for whom unexpected circumstances compel a move out West, where she's a fish-out-of-water.  And, as the genre requires, both books are set in a historical period in the Western United States and involve a romance.   So the books are similar in overall plot and character progression, but not identical.

(I'm basing these comparisons on the "Look Inside!" excerpts available on Amazon.)

Larkin's actual process in breaking down Holland's book is a little vague at this point.  I'll have a bit more to say about that further below.

But "deconstruct" is definitely not the term she should use for that process.  It conflicts, badly, with a long-established meaning.  (Also, the word "deconstruction" raises, in a lot of people's minds, the image of Artsy-Fartsy Hoity-Toity Ivy-Tower Academic Snobs; it's not a "positive" word by any means.)  It makes my fingers go *twitch* and try to reach for a red pencil when Lakin misuses the word like that.

A number of other words might possibly be used to better effect.  How about "evaluate", or "study", or "modeling", or "analyze"?  (I think that last one may be particularly appropriate.)  Or, if you want to go a little more metaphorical, you might describe such an analysis as "How To X-Ray A Book -- Discovering The Anatomy Of A Novel".

Studying other people's books as education and/or guidance in writing your own is a long-standing tradition.  There was some well-known writer -- Roger Zelazny, perhaps? -- who, when starting his writing career, re-typed some of Theodore Sturgeon's stories to gain a better understanding of the choices Sturgeon made in plot and character and words.

"Formulas" and "Master Plots" have also been around a long time.  Lester Dent, who wrote many of the Doc Savage pulp-magazine stories under the Kenneth Robeson housename, used his own Secret Master Plot to turn out reliably-written adventure stories.  David Eddings had a checklist of elements to include in his fantasy novels.  When I was trying to sell movie scripts back in the 1990's, there were screenwriting how-to books that advocated, variously, a 3-part, 7-part, 12-part, and 21-part structure to screenplays.  So there's nothing intrinsically wrong with Lakin taking apart Holland's book and trying to write something similar or even with the same underlying anatomy.

But there are two aspects of this contretemps that leave me a little uneasy:

I think Lakin probably didn't give herself enough time to consider all the aspects of her project.  In particular, she didn't give enough thought to Debra Holland's end of the experiment.  Holland seems to have had only a vague idea of what Lakin intended to do with WILD MONTANA SKY.  One of the specific complaints that came up was that Lakin had asked Holland for the name and contact info of the cover artist for Holland's books; when the artist was contacted, Lakin reportedly claimed to be a friend of Holland's and told the artist Holland would be just fine with it if Lakin's bookcover resembled Holland's covers.  (Images below)  Other people have been uncomfortable that in Lakin's original articles, mention of Holland's name and book-title were left out.

It's a matter of courtesy, and openness, and professionalism.  If you're going to model the structure of your book on that of a specific book by a specific author, it behooves you to show that author more than a widow's-mite of respect.  I think Lakin was deficient on this point.  It's pretty clear that Holland certainly feels she was treated unprofessionally and with a lack of respect.

(The easy lesson here may be that, if you're going to model your work on another writer's example, pick a dead writer.)

Lakin is one of those writers who push heavily for writing quickly and publishing lots.  (She has a blog for writing advice, and critiques manuscripts in addition to her own fiction.)  Some writers do well with that sort of regimen.  (I'm not one of them, as my Slow Words Manifesto makes clear.)  I think in this case that attitude, that rush to publish, may have come back to bite her in the butt.  She'd have been better served to have sat back, taken a deep breath, and taken more time to think about her experiment and its possible ramifications and consequences.

The other thing I'm uneasy about is that Lakin's experiment comes across as, well, kinda cynical and mercenary.  And not just because, hey, she wanted to write something that would sell better than the fantasy books she'd put her heart into and actually, you know, bring in a respectable income.  Even if said something was in a niche genre of which she was, at first, almost completely ignorant.

But what makes me most uneasy, what comes across as even more cynical and mercenary, is that Lakin has said, based on the success of her experiment, she's going to be publishing a "how-to" book, explaining to others how they too can find a suitably well-selling subgenre, "deconstruct" (*twitch*) a novel from that niche, and use it as the basis for their own work.

And she's going to base this how-to book on... one sample?  On the sales success of one book?   That's... bad science.   One sample isn't even a statistic; it's just a datum.  A successful experiment is one that's repeatable.  Lakin should repeat her experiment with several books, or half a dozen, before she writes such a how-to book.  As currently conceived, the testing of Lakin's experiment will be done by the people who buy her how-to book.   That's worse science, and bad how-to writing.

I'll be a bit blunt here: Ms. Lakin, if you really publish such a one-sample how-to book, I will feel embarassed for you.

And if Lakin does publish such a how-to book, I certainly hope she'll take the time and thought to put in a chapter dealing with the issues of openness and professionalism that have come up since her articles were published.

Remembering Al's

(This originally appeared as a comment on a Jo Walton post at tor.com.)


Back in my teens, when I was first really getting into science fiction, the go-to used bookstore in Phoenix, AZ, was Al's Used Books. Al's was in a shabby building in a bad part of town with bad parking. But it was a big storefront; where the average used-book bookstore held maybe 10,000 or so books, Al's held 300,000. The space inside, except for narrow aisles, was completely filled with bookcases, tables, and floor-to-high-ceiling shelves on the walls. There were scattered fluorescent lights on the ceiling, but most illumination came from the big windows at the front of the store. The floors were bare concrete, no tile or carpet. If you'd asked for a cup of coffee there, they would have called the police to report the lunatic that had wandered into the store.

If you were looking for a specific title, Al's wasn't where you wanted to go. The proprietors sorted books by genre and that was it; books to be shelved were shoved into the closest available space in that genre section. When you went book-hunting at Al's, you hunted.

But for someone still fairly new to SF, looking thru those shelves and shelves and shelves of science-fiction paperbacks (hardcovers were a fairly small minority of the available selection) was kind of wonderful. Because you could go into Al's with two or three titles in mind to look for, and by the time you staggered up to the cash register several hours later you'd have made a couple of dozen serendipitous discoveries you hadn't known you wanted.

(This was in the late 60's/early 70's, long enough ago that you could eventually see almost every paperback since the start of paperback publishing a few decades earlier pass thru Al's. If not on one trip, then possibly on the next few trips there.)

I eventually got out of the (inconvenient) habit of going to Al's, shifting to newer and newer books as I got older. But I still held fond memories of the many books I'd discovered there. So it was still a shock when, sometime in the 80's, I happened to be back in that bad neighborhood on other business... and saw the storefront where Al's had been was now selling used appliances instead of used books. (Part of that shock was because I wasn't the only local SF fan who'd been a regular customer of Al's, and I would kind of have expected to hear of Al's closing a lot earlier.)

Not Al's, but this looks a lot like
the shopping-at-Al's experience.

My Year In 2013

And why not add my own gobbet of spit to the year's-end tsunami of "Best of" lists and retrospectives for 2013?

2013, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

Start with the Bad:  The biggie for the year was recovering, such as it was, from the bad arm break and shoulder injury from December 2012.  I wrote a series of posts throughout the year (see all the "The Arm" posts here) detailing the various ups and downs on that front.  At year's end, I still have trouble and pain from that shoulder; if I don't remember to take a couple of hefty aspirin/Tylenol tablets several times a day, I notice.  Oh, how I notice.  (A small pillbox is now an obligatory part of my pants-pocket inventory, along with wallet and car keys.) 

Range of motion and strength for the arm are still significantly compromised.   I figure I can still do about 80% of what I used to without more than mild discomfort, then about another 10% involving stronger reaching and grabbing and lifting that I can do but have to work thru discomfort/pain to do so.  And then the last 10% beyond that, which the arm just plain Don't Do Dat Shit No More.

It is what it is.  I deal with it.  But sometimes I deal with it by feeling broken and fragile and old.

Which leads into the Ugly:  In 2013 I got yet another year older.   This happens every damn year.  What is up with that shit?  In a sensible universe, you'd be able to skip that whole aging schtick once in a while.  Somewhere, there's got to be a button you can click for a drop-down menu that includes "Stop Aging" or even "Get Younger" options.  I'm getting a little tired of looking in the mirror to see some grumpy-looking old guy with a receding hairline and advancing wrinklage looking back.

But, hey, let's end this post with something a little more upbeat, the Good:  2013 was the year when I started writing and marketing fiction again on a moderately regular basis, after falling out of the practice back around 2006.  Ironically, it was in large part because of the broken arm and subsequently being off work for months that I started up again.  I've found myself enjoying the process again, enough that I've tried to continue writing even since going back to work at the end of July.

Concurrent with starting to write fiction again, I seemed to enjoy reading more this last year.  I've delved into the explosion of self/indie-published books that have come out the past few years.  That experience has been mixed.  I've found a few gems, some pretty decent books, but also a large proportion of books that should have been worked over and rewritten more before publishing, and *sigh* a few that just made me cringe.

(The self-published work I enjoyed most this past year was THE DIRTY PARTS OF THE BIBLE by Sam Torode, a picaresque bildungsroman set in 1930's Hobo America with a slight supernatural element.  My own review here.)

Among works from traditional publishers, I found myself reading ebook versions, or listening to audiobooks, more than printed hardcovers or paperbacks.  Primarily this is because I have my smartphone within easy reach on my belt almost every waking moment; with several reading apps installed on the phone, I have access to a choice of books -- there are about 50-60 books downloaded to the phone at the moment, plus I can borrow library ebooks and audiobooks via the Overdrive app --  without having to carry around an additional bulkier object to read during free moments.  Convenience trumps physicality.

My favorite traditionally-published books this year was an older one from 2001, Pat Murphy's ADVENTURES IN TIME AND SPACE WITH MAX MERRIWELL.  It was fun to read.  This 2010 review by Tansy Rayner Roberts says pretty much everything I'd say in a review of my own.

And so ends 2013.

 

 

(I've mentioned it before, but Tatsuya Ishida's SINFEST
is one of my favorite webcomics, including the traditional year's-end sequence
\when Death goes on the hunt for Father Time.
Big archive, large cast of characters, long backstories,
and multiple plotlines, but worth the effort to get into.)

Slow Words: Looking For Ebooks

(An earlier version of this post appeared as a comment on SF SIGNAL, where the question "How do you find good self-published ebooks?" was asked.)

I use my smartphone for reading ebooks, with apps for Nook and Kindle. I also use Overdrive to borrow ebooks from my local library. The smartphone screen is close enough to a paperback size that I don’t have trouble reading off it; other people find it difficult.

This is a habit I’ve only picked up in the last couple of years, but I find myself reading a lot more ebooks than hardcopy books nowadays.

Finding good self-published books: Sometimes a struggle. Easiest way is to keep an eye on experienced writers who are, more and more, bringing out their rights-reverted backlist as ebooks. (Walter Jon Williams, one of my favorite writers, has brought out most of his backlist as ebooks, including the non-sf nautical adventure novels from the start of his career.) You can catch up on a lot of older books this way, and the numbers are increasing.

Sorting thru new self-published works is a lot harder.

Ratings on Amazon and Goodreads are generally useless. Even the most awful books get mostly four or five stars. I think the psychology behind this is that giving three stars or less makes you a meanie, and people don’t want to be seen as a meanie.

Actual Amazon/Goodreads reviews are a little better, but not by much. Too many of the reviews fall into the same four-or-five-stars mental trap, and give gushing approval for writing that clearly doesn’t deserve it. I find it actually better to read the three-star reviews, when there are any; they tend to give a much more realistic idea what one can expect to find in a book.

There are a number of ongoing attempts to establish websites devoted to legitimate and intelligent reviews of self-published books, but none of them seem to have really gained a reputation or foothold yet.

My occasional column here, “The Brave Free Books”, reviews mostly-ebooks that I’ve gotten for free from author’s promotions, drawings, or other sources. I tend to follow a “toughlove” model of reviewing, so some books get high marks (Sam Torode's novel THE DIRTY PARTS OF THE BIBLE, for one example), while others… don’t (but get a lengthy explanation why their work was sub-par). Also, I’m a meanie.

Amazon’s “Look Inside”, and similar features elsewhere, is your biggest friend in the search for good self-published books. Being able to read a sample has saved me time and disappointment on multiple occasions.

Other things to look at are the covers and marketing blurbs. If a blurb is poorly written or boring, the book probably will be too. (This recent post dealt with the writing of blurbs, and why some failed and others succeeded in piquing my interest.)

A decently designed cover is a promising sign. If a writer is willing to take the time and effort to make the packaging presentable and professional, it may mean they also took the time and effort to make the book’s content worthwhile as well. (This doesn’t always prove true. One of the fantasy books I reviewed had a spectacularly good cover, but I was only able to read three chapters before giving up on the effort.)

Looking for good self-published works is a lot like looking thru a slushpile. Both follow a similar bell curve: On one end, there’s a fairly small (but memorable) amount of the extremely awful my-god-what-were-they-thinking flat out BAD books. Then there’s a big climb up a hill of Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time books, with clear problems in structure, plotting, characterization etc, books that needed a rethink or rewrite before they should have been published. Then the other half of that big hill, the As-Good-As books, works that are “competent”, that are “okay”, but that don’t have a distinctive voice, don’t do anything new or fresh, that are essentially imitative, and that in the end can best be categorized as “meh”. And finally the other small end of that bell curve, where the books are satisfying, well-crafted, and memorable.

It would be nice if sorting the wheat from the chaff involved less effort on my part, or if there were trustworthy sources to do a lot of that pre-sorting for me.  But the self-publishing world is still pretty much in its Wild West, Gold Rush hullabaloo days, so all the above is pretty much how I'm stuck doing it for now.   I expect changes in coming years, but I'm sure not going to place any bets on what form they'll take.

BOOK REVIEW: Stealing Into Winter, by Graeme Talboys

I've gotten pretty jaded with fantasy novels over the years.  There are tropes and plot devices and character types that have been used over and over.  It's hard to find a new one that keeps my interest.

This one worked.  Even though the main character is a thief (how many times have we seen that in fantasy before?), the opening segment caught my interest.  We first see Jeniche in a prison dungeon as it starts to collapse around her, the result of an invading army shelling the city.  Between dodging falling stonework and having to fight another, psychopathic, prisoner in her effort to fully escape, the segment is breakneck, non-stop action, very well done.  It hooked me in.

Subsequent chapters begin to fill out the world Jeniche lives in.  It's an old world, largely fallen to pre-industrial levels.  (There are exceptions, like the dirigibles that show up late in the story.)  Ancient ruins, worn and eroded, are common, and one section takes place in a long-abandoned city now buried beneath desert sands.  This story may actually take place in a far-future, fallen Earth; there's a passing mention of huge windowless buildings that makes anyone who approaches too closely sicken and die.  (Nuclear power plants?)

What I liked about Talboys writing is that he doesn't explain everything.  The city of Makamba, where the story begins, is built up slowly in the reader's mind.  We learn some of Jeniche's backstory, and that of the other characters, but not all of it, and it's not delivered in a lump, but slowly, a bit at a time.   The buried city, and the world's deep past, remain largely a mystery.

One thing that some readers might find disconcerting is that there are time breaks between chapters.  Stuff happens during those time breaks, and it's revealed by subsequent dialogue and interactions between Jeniche and the group of monks and nuns she finds herself aiding in an epic journey across the world, pursued by elements of the same army that invaded Makamba.

I didn't mind that technique.  It made me pay closer attention to what was said, and how the characters acted towards each other.  If Talboys made me work a little to keep track of what was going on, and to figure out some of the backstory and history, I enjoyed the effort, and I'm hoping to see further volumes of Jeniche's story, and to learn more about her history and the forgotten history of the world she lives in.

(And it turns out, as I double-check info before posting this, that the second book, Exile & Pilgrim, is available for the Amazon Kindle.  There's also a hardcopy version, available from Amazon.uk.)

Stealing Into Winter, Graeme K. Talboys, 240 pages, Roundfire Books, 2012.

The Brave Free Books -- August 2013

Being an occasional/monthly review of books and ebooks I've read for free, either through author/publisher promotions, giveaways or sweepstakes, or just because the authors value readers over income.

Some General Thoughts About Self-Publishing/Indie Publishing

I've been reading some of the free indie-published books available for a few months now.  Some of the books have been worthwhile, and wouldn't have been a surprise to see traditionally published.  Others... have problems.

There's a lot of advice, and a lot of "advice", out there about self-publishing.  A lot of it deals with marketing strategies, but that's putting the cart before the horse.

The first priority, the major priority, indeed the only priority until it's accomplished is this: Write a good story.

I take a lot of the conventional wisdom about learning to write that good story with a large grain of salt.  You don't have to "write a million words first".   You don't have to "write every day".  Et bloody cetera.

To write a good story, you have to read.  You have to read a lot.  You have to read widely.  You have to read critically, with an awareness beyond just the action of the narrative, an awareness and perception of how a story or book is plotted and presented and ordered.   You have to learn, even if that learning is largely self-taught.

(I may expand on some of these thoughts in a separate post.)

What I see in some of the self-published works out there are writers who haven't learned those lessons yet, or aren't diligent in applying those lessons to their own work.

For example:

- - - - -

DIESELPUNK ePULP SHOWCASE, stories by John Picha, Grant Gardiner, Bard Constantine and Jack Philpott

Editing.  It's kind of important. 

The copyright on this ebook is in John Picha's name, so I assume he was the nominal editor.  I say "nominal" because the book seems more assembled than edited.  I say this particularly because the worst story in the book is John Picha's own "Pandora Driver".

The narrative in "Pandora Driver" switches from present tense to past tense.  And back.  And back again.  And again.  And again.  Not just between sections of the story, but between paragraph, and between sentences in those paragraphs.  And even sometimes in the same sentence.

One of the reviews on Amazon mentions how this story "switches from past to present"; it seemed to be mentioning this as a feature, not a bug.  No, it's just bad writing.  It's writing that's horribly, desperately, in need of revision and rewriting.  As the tense-changes continued, and continued, and continued, I eventually felt like I was being slapped across the face with every change.

I don't generally feel angry over bad writing.  This is an exception, because the excess of this story shows disrespect.  It shows disrespect not only to me as a reader, but it shows Picha's own disrespect for himself by allowing this to go out in public.  I don't know what Mr. Picha's experience is, or what access he has to writers' workshops or reliable beta readers who might have given him a heads-up about the story's problems,but this story was not ready for prime-time or even for the self-publishing market.

(I had other problems with how "Pandora Driver" was written, but the constant changes between past and present tense was the overwhelming problem.)

It was also disrespectful to the other contributors to this anthology.  Because the other stories in here were reasonably good pulp adventures set in somewhat-alternate universes.  But, for me, the problems with "Pandora Driver" were so overwhelming that it cast a pall on any enjoyment of the rest of the book.

Current Kindle price: Free.

- - - - -

P.O. BOX ON THE MOON by Camilla Marks

Here's another example where the editing process broke down or was insufficient in the writing of a book.

It started out promisingly.  High-school student Persephone Miller is already trying to deal with the breakup of her parents' marriage, plus problems at school, when she finds a letter in the mailbox from someone purporting to be not only 1) the first astronaut sent to the moon in an alternate non-Neil-Armstrong timeline, but 2) trapped and forced to do the bidding of the evil Master of the Moon in that and numerous other timelines.  Eventually she's able to meet with the stranded astronaut, Andrew, in the brief periods he's physically present on Persephone's timeline.

There were some things in the earlier parts of the book that irked me.  For one, Andrew seemed to be something of a jerk, repeatedly telling Persephone there's so much about his situation she doesn't know... but he's not going to tell her.  For another, Persephone feels an almost-instant Bella-and-Edward Twilight-style attraction towards Andrew.  (Can we please bury that noxious trope once and for all?)

But Persephone was interesting enough to keep reading (though I thought her best friend Padme was actually more interesting).  I got the occasional impression that story elements and complications were being introduced without a clear idea of how they would be resolved.  But I was curious to see if everything could pull together at the end.

Ehhh... not so much.  The last section, where Persephone herself ends up on the Moon, doesn't work well.  Events and actions and resolutions feel rushed and improvised.  And when we finally meet the Moon Master himself, he is such a stiff caricature of a megalomaniac villain, with excruciatingly wooden dialogue, that one almost expects to see him twiddling the tips of a narrow black moustache and proclaiming "BWA-HA-HA-HA!!!"  After at least moderate attempts to imbue earlier characters with actual personalities, the final section reads almost as if written by a completely different writer.

The conclusion was... acceptable.  It felt rushed and forced, but the villain was defeated, disasters were averted or reversed, and if the ending was bittersweet, at least it looked like Persephone's life was back on track.

And then Camilla Marks decided to put in a twist-ending.  Which negated everything, and made the entire story an exercise in futility.  I'm not going to throw my smartphone across the room, but if I'd been reading a physical book, I might have.

The impression I got from POBOTM was that it was written "seat-of-the-pants" style, starting with the original idea of the mysterious letter appearing in the mailbox, but without a clear idea of how the story would develop or conclude.

I also noticed that about halfway through the book, more and more typos and editing errors began to appear.  This got to be bothersome.

Add in the rushed feeling of the final section, and I can't help making a guess that this novel probably started out as a NANOWRIMO project, with a last minute rush to complete the manuscript before that one-month deadline was crossed.  And that it received insufficient revision and editing afterwards, before being published.

I think NANOWRIMO is a great idea for a lot of people.  If nothing else, every November thousands of people don't hang out in bars or pool halls or on street corners.  But when you write an entire novel in a single month, you're probably not going to end up with a good novel.  You might end up with the possibility of a good novel.  But not without a lot more work.

When you finish a story, you need to  put it in a drawer for a while -- maybe a few days, maybe a few months -- and let it lie fallow long enough that you'll be able to go back to it eventually with a fresher eye and mind, better able to see what does and doesn't work, and what needs to be saved or discarded or rewritten.

Finding an honest group of beta readers, who'll give you their unvarnished opinions, is also a good idea.  (Don't ask your Mom to read your book.  You can ask your spouse or children, because if their response is just too damn mean, you can always divorce the spouse or disown the kids.  But if your Mom tells you your manuscript sucks, you're totally screwed.)

And edit, edit, edit.  The first half of POBOTM was pretty error-free, but the increasing numbers in the latter half tell me any editing was either done in an increasing rush, or that Marks started going into "my eyes glazed over" mode by that point and just didn't see the later typos and errors.  One recommendation I see over and over in self-publishing articles is to pay for a professional copyeditor to go over your manuscript.  I'm coming to agree with that advice more and more.

This was read free as part of author's promotion.  Current Amazon Kindle price $4.99.

- - - - -

Before you succumb to despair, let me tell you there are self-published ebooks out there worth the reading:

- - - - -

THE WIZARD, THE FARMER, AND THE VERY PETTY PRINCESS by Daniel Fox.

There's a sub-genre of fantasy I call "Fluffy Fantasy".  These are generally humorous takes on the various tropes and cliches of regular fantasy. (See many of Robert Asprin's or Simon Hawke's books for examples.) Sometimes they're affectionate twists, sometimes they're critical satires.  TWTFATVPP is one of the former.

Idwal the Farmer lives close by the most boring town on the map, and he likes it that way.  Things Happen, of course, despite Idwal's best efforts, and he finds himself sucked not only into adventures, but adventures in the company of an annoyingly self-centered Princess and endangered by the machinations of a disgruntled Wizard who's raised an army of the dead.  He's a reluctant -- very reluctant -- protagonist who eventually becomes an actual hero and Gets The Girl in spite of his most rational instincts.

This is not classic literature, but it's not meant to be.  It's an entertaining evening's reading by a writer skilled enough to keep the tone light and amusing throughout, but not pushing it so far as to drop into offputting silliness.  (I'm not sure if this is the same Daniel Fox who wrote the much more serious "Dragon In Chains" fantasy series, but it's certainly written to a professional standard.) 

E-book read free as author's promotion.  Current Amazon Kindle price $3.99.

- - - - -

JUMP WHEN READY by David Pandolfe

There's a subgenre of fantasy dealing with "the Afterlife", of the world inhabited by dead people, either before or instead of going to the tradtional Heaven or Hell.  Richard Matheson's What Dreams May Come, or Kevin Brockmiers's A Brief History of the Dead are some examples.

This is in a similar vein, for a Young Adult audience.  Teenager Henry has died in a drowning accident that looked like suicide to observers.  He comes to in the high branches of a fir tree, encountering the spirits of several other deceased teenagers.  In Pandolfe's version of the Afterlife, the spirits are able to create their own surroundings (similar to Matheson's book); there are limitations on how much they can interact with the real world, however.

Henry, besides dealing with his own death and the end of the normal life he expected to have, also has two goals: To let his family somehow know he did not commit suicide, and to protect his older sister Bethany from the online "friend" who turns out to be a predator.

David Pandolfe pulls this off nicely.  The narrative flows smoothly, the characters are well-presented and believable; it's a very professional, very entertaining and engaging story.  (Pandolfe's background includes teaching writing courses.  That probably explains a lot.)

The cover is also noteworthy, a simple but vivid image nicely representing the contents of the book.  It turns out to have been done by (I assume) Pandolfe's wife Samantha.  (Lucky fellow, to have another talented resource in the household.)

Read free as part of author's promotion.  Current Amazon Kindle price: $2.99.

- - - - -

That's it for the latest installment of "Brave Free Books". 

A Hard Search For Hard Case Crime

Last week, one of Amazon's "Daily Specials" for e-books was offering a $1.99 price on a wide selection of e-books from Hard Case Crime.  The Hard Case Crime line, edited by Charles Ardai, has re-published a number of hard-to-find hardboiled works by writers such as Donald Westlake and Robert Silverberg, as well as new fiction in the hardboiled/noir tradition by a number of newer writers.  It's one of the publishing companies whose output I like to keep an eye on, so I was tempted to buy and download a number of titles to my smartphone's e-reader app.

But... I've noted in the past that I don't like Amazon's business practices, so rather than spend money there, I hied over to the Barnes & Noble website to see if the same discounted prices for Hard Case's books were being offered there.

Well, they were, but it was a hard slog to find the Hard Case titles on bn.com.  On Amazon's site, entering "Hard Case Crime" in the search window brought up a full list of HCC's available titles.  Reset the filter for "Low To High Price", and all the $1.99 titles were shown grouped together.

Not so much on Barnes & Noble's site.  Enter "Hard Case Crime" in bn.com's search box, and you end up with a scattered selection of ebooks, most with the word "Hard" in the actual title or in the description, and only a very few of Hard Case's books included.

B&N has an "Advanced Search" option available, with "Publisher" as one of the search categories available.  So I tried that, entering "Hard Case Crime" and got... zero results.

Wait, what?  Zero results?  How could that happen, when the first, regular, search had at least brought up a couple of Hard Case titles?

So I went to the page for one of those titles that had come up in the earlier search, and went down to the "Details" section.  Where I found that the listed publisher for the Hard Case title was "Titan".

Ho-kay.  So apparently Hard Case has a deal with Titan Books for distributing and marketing their books, much like DAW Books has a deal with Penguin.

But to find Hard Case titles on B&N's site, you have to enter "Titan" as the publisher.  If you don't know about the arrangement (I didn't until I ran into this), you can't search for Hard Case Crime under its own name.

When you do a "publisher" search for Titan, though, you end up with all of Titan's own titles (a lot of science fiction and other categories), with Hard Case titles mixed into the batch.

A list of categories appeared to the left of the search results, so I clicked on "Mystery & Crime" to narrow the search.  And finally I ended up with a list of mostly Hard Case titles (a few books from other arms of Titan also appeared).  Do another sort by price, and I finally had a list of the Hard Case titles on sale.

Well... not quite.  I noticed that several titles I'd seen in Amazon's search results weren't included in the B&N results.  One was David Schow's Gun Work.  A specific search for that title brought it up on B&N's site, but apparently it's not categorized as "Mystery & Crime" or "Thriller" like almost all the other Hard Case titles.  There were a few other titles in similar straits.

Why does Amazon give more inclusive, and a lot easier, search results?  That's simple:  On each product page for Hard Case titles on Amazon, after each title is the parenthetical addition of "(Hard Case Crime)".  So entering "Hard Case Crime" even in Amazon's general search window will trigger a hit on all those parenthetical additions.  Plus they list the publisher as "Hard Case Crime", not Titan.

I'd rather spend my money at Barnes & Noble than Amazon.   But it would be nice if B&N didn't make it so damn hard.

(I'm sending a separate copy of this post directly to Hard Case editor Charles Ardai.  This problem really needs to be fixed, because it means a damn good publisher is losing potential sales on the second-most popular bookselling site.)

Blast From The Past - POINTS OF HONOR by Thomas Boyd

Points of Honor, Thomas Boyd, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925

Points of Honor is a collection of short stories by Thomas Boyd, best known for his novel of World War I soldiers, Through the Wheat.  TTW received a good deal of critical acclaim and support, including from F. Scott Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins.  Boyd was seen, for a while, as one of the leading lights of post-WWI American literature.   But his subsequent books never got the sales or acclaim of that first novel, and his fame faded away.  He died of a stroke at age 37; Boyd's own war-time injuries may have contributed to that early death.

Where Through the Wheat's focus was on actual combat experiences, Points of Honor is mostly set during periods between the actual fighting, or in rear-line settings, or (in "The Long Shot") follows a soldier's return to the US after being injured in a mustard-gas attack.

Here's a telling quote from the Foreword:

"...these stories may serve to correct the impression that I hate war.  That would not be my business.  But it is my business not to glorify it; it is my business to perceive it truthfully and to set down those perceptions in such a way that they may be shared by whoever is kind enough to read them.  Hate war!  Hate the ambitious who casue the wars and the financiers who grow fat on them.  Hate the people who believe sleek lies.  If we must hate let us hate causes; it is futile to hate effects.  If I hated war I should lie about it, thereby saving myself a good deal of sweat, labor, and anxiety occasioned by the endeavor to be honest."

Not all the stories are fully successful.  Several come off as more like extended vignettes.  "The Uninvited", with its Registration of Graves Department investigator tasked with finding poorly documented burial sites, works well as a traditional detective story.  Most end with irony, frequently bleak. 

"The Long Shot" is the story that got turned into the 1930 movie BLAZE O'GLORY, mentioned at the end of this post.  Reading some of the information available about Boyd, it turned out he despised movies for leading people away from reading books.  It must have galled him to the max that the bleak protagonist of this story, a former soldier trying to return to his previous career as a machinist, was turned into a Broadway entertainer for the film version so song and dance numbers could be inserted into the movie.  Considering how dark and bitter the original story is, it's hard to imagine the movie's changes being anything but a travesty.  (I don't know if copies of BLAZE O'GLORY have survived the 80+ years since it was filmed.  At best, I suppose it might have been something like Steve Martin's 1981 PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, a bleak Depression-era story with musical inclusions that left audiences mostly off-balance.)

Duncan Milner, the protagonist of  "The Long Shot", shares a good deal of experiences with Boyd himself.  Gassed in the war, unable to return to his previous machinist career, troubled relationships in his personal life.  Milner, a sniper in the war, ends up murdering the lover of his unfaithful wife.  The final irony is that the judge who vilifies him for taking another man's life and sentences Milner to the scaffold is the same man who, as an officer in the war, spotted targets for Milner to kill.

"The Long Shot" is also noticeable because of its portrayal of a veteran struggling to readjust to civilian life, his struggles with the after-effects of his war injuries, and his difficulty in finding assistance, both from friends and family and from the government, in making that transition.  It's an early portrayal of PTSD and the difficulties faced by returning veterans.  As such, it's still a very pertinent story.

His better-known novel Through The Wheat can still be found in print, but I don't believe this story collection is currently available anywhere.  I read a copy of the original 1925 printing via InterLibrary Loan.