Weekly Links, 2-5-2015

Writing/Publishing Links:
Kameron Hurley on how "writing every day" doesn't work best for everyone: Life on 10,000 Words A Day.

Alex Shvartsman on The Art and Science of Anthology Editing.

Deborah Ross on How To Succeed As A Writer In 2015.

(I've posted my own comments on the last two.)

Last minute addition: Kristine Kathryn Rusch on Business Musings: Following The Crowd.



World/Political Links:
This story has, rather appropriately, gone viral already, but hey: GOP Senator: Don't Force Employees To Wash Hands After Using Toilet. This is the triumph of ideology over sanity. The GOP's tolerance and endorsement of extremists and public menaces like Senator Tillis is a major reason why I haven't voted for a Republican office-seeker in years.


Related to the above: The Sepsis Alliance is an organization promoting awareness and prevention of sepsis (aka "blood poisoning"), runaway infections that are the third-leading cause of death in the US and leave large numbers of survivors with physical and mental impairments. A primary cause of early infections developing into full-blown sepsis is insufficient education and enforcement of sanitary procedures.


Food/Cooking Links:

Cooking Will Be Suddenly Awesome If You Buy Any of These 19 Products. (Pictured: The Defensive Swordsman.) [via Cascata Nerina]

Modern Farmer gives an interesting overview of The New Food Police.

Oh dang, I missed National Chocolate Cake Day on January 27th! To make up for it, here's baking-savant Dorie Greenspan's recipe for Double Chocolate Marble Cake.


Art Links:

Here, Kitty, Kitty....  Because nothing says "Sci-Fi" like a Cowboy Space Bear riding Rocket Sharks in pursuit of a Space Cat With A Jetpack. Doing it in black-velvet-painting style is a bonus. (Design by Cory Freeman and chazwick31. I liked it so much I bought the t-shirt!)


Zim & Zou are the team of Lucie Thomas and Thibault Zimmerman, French artists who work in paper, leather, and other materials. The image at left is a sample of their work. The link above goes to a large list of other projects they've posted on behance.net.

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.

- - - - -

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.

- - - - -

(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.

Opening A Vein

 'There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.'

-- attributed to various*           

Working on a story during my latest blood donation. (My 67th!)

*The quote at the top has primarily been credited to sportswriter Red Smith.  But an interesting article at Quote Investigator gives a number of variants, some predating Smith's 1949 version.  I think I prefer Paul Gallico's 1946 version best: "It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader."

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?

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.

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.

Slow Words: Some Thoughts About Self-Blurbing and Self-Promotion

Over on John Scalzi's Whatever blog, this week features his annual Holiday Shopping Guide, where he lets people post promotional comments and suggestions for holiday gifts.  Tuesday's category, 12/3/13, was for Non-Traditionally Published books.

Reading over the comments posted there by writers trying to promote their books, one thing is certain:  Writing blurbs is hard work.

From nearly 300 suggestions, I came up with a list of slightly over a dozen books that I'll probably take to Amazon and use its Look Inside! feature to get a closer look at before I decide to take a chance or not on actually buying any.

(With some traditional publishers and/or established authors, their previous track record can probably give a measure of reassurance that a book will be competently written and edited.  With so many writers in the self-publishing explosion of the past few years having only been self-published, doing a double-check to make sure they can write and spell on a non-embarrassing level is probably a good idea.  If you've been reading my occasional "The Brave Free Books" review posts, you know that some of the self-published books out there can get pretty, umm, non-rewarding to read.)

So only about 1 in 20 of the promos on Whatever caught my interest enough to want to check them out a bit more.  Not a great success rate, and I suspect I'm probably more generous than most in making such a follow-up list.  Why did one blurb work in catching my interest, and another nineteen didn't?

I'm an old, grumpy guy who's been reading SF and Fantasy for over fifty years.  So I'm kinda familiar with the standard plots and characters and tropes that have been used over and over in the field for generations.  What I try to look for these days, what I still hope for, is those works where the writer still manages to make a story seem fresh and different from the same old same old that constitutes the majority of books and stories published.

Sometimes that happens because a writer manages to present an especially vivid character or setting.  Sometimes it's because a plot takes unexpected twists and turns.  Sometimes it's because of a writer's particular "voice" or style in the sentence by sentence presentation.  Sometimes it's because of an injection of sheer what-the-fuckery and I just want to see if the writer can actually pull it off.

(Think of an average novel as a high-dive into a swimming pool.  Think of a better-than-average novel as a high-dive with a triple somersault on the way down.  Think of a novel with that WTFery I mentioned as a high-dive with a triple somersault while the diver also  sets themselves on fire and play "In-A-Gadda-La-Vida" on an accordion on the way down.  That last diver might crash spectacularly, but damn, I want to watch them try.)

So when I read a book blurb, I don't want to just be told what genre it is, I don't want just a general outline of the plot or a quick description of the main character, I don't just want to know what the book is like.   I want to know how a book is going to be different, I want to know how it's going to surprise me, how it's going to be something new for me.

Those nineteen-out-of-twenty failed blurbs?  When you come right down to it, they failed because they didn't communicate that difference or freshness I look for.  They failed because they bored me.

So how do you write a blurb that isn't boring?  Hey, I said it was hard, didn't I?

(One specific suggestion though:  Don't compare your book to other writer's books.  If you tell me your book is "like" someone else's, I'm probably going to think you're still searching for a voice and style of your own.  And if you tell me your book is like Fifty Shades of Grey... well, thanks for the warning.)

One of the other common suggestions found on self-promotion articles and blog posts is that you not only need to promote the actual book, but also promote yourself as an interesting person and writer.  Most of the self-blurbs made to the Whatever post failed to do this.  The best self-blurb there, though, the one that most caught my interest, did it very well indeed.  B. Thorn's post there said:

My e-novel “A Stringed Instrument” is up on Smashwords ($4.99, first 25% available as a free sample). It’s a modern-day romance story about two Australian women who fall into bed first and in love afterwards. 

You should buy it if you’re interested in the tensions of a closeted relationship and the contradictions of falling in love with somebody outside your orientation. Or if you want a story that combines affectionate erotica with plot and a little bit of humour. Or if you want my recipe for chicken soup. 

But the #1 reason you should buy it is that somebody told my very respectable aunt about it, and she bought it, and her first words to me were “So THAT’S what lesbians do in bed. I always wondered.” If enough of you buy it, that will help me live with the knowledge that somewhere out there my aunt is reading this and learning far too much about my personal life.  

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/371453 

P.S. Having lunch with my aunt on December 29. No pressure.

It tells enough, but not too much, about the plot.  And then it adds that little bit of WTF with the mention of "my recipe for chicken soup."  And then B. Thorn tells the anecdote about her aunt.  That not only establishes a bit of connection to B. Thorn's personal life, but it's so charmingly and amusingly told that it lets me know B. Thorn can  a) tell a good story, and b) that she has a "voice" of her own.  Contemporary romance is not a genre I usually read, but this particular post piqued my interest enough that I'll definitely check into the book a bit more.




(I've decided to use "Slow Words" as an uber-label for posts about writing and self-publishing for a while.  As always, I reserve the right to be inconsistent and changeable.)

Writing: New Story Completed

I finished a new story last night, "Beks and the Second Note".  This is the first story I've completed since returning to work at the end of July.  I'd been worried that losing 40 hours of free time a week, plus a few more hours commute time, would be too much of a time and energy drain to keep working on fiction. Looks like it's still possible, though not easy.

Bok Beks, the narrator of the new story, is a character I've written before.  He first appeared in "Beks and the Monkey", in a chapbook-size anthology, REQUIEM FOR THE RADIOACTIVE MONKEYS, abut eight or nine years ago.  There are a couple more incomplete stories about Beks in my old files, which I may get back to if this new one manages to find a home.

The Beks stories are mysteries, not my usual SF or fantasy.  Once you get past the Ellery Queen's and Alfred Hitchcock's magazines, it's harder to find mystery/thriller short fiction markets than for SF/fantasy.  For one thing, SF/Fantasy has several sites devoted to listing current markets for short fiction.  (Thank you, ralan.com.) There doesn't seem to be a good equivalent for mystery/thriller fiction; a lot of the listings I've found have been out of date and cluttered with dead links.  So, while I think the story's good enough to eventually find a home, it may take a while.  (I'll run it through the local library's monthly writers' workshop for critique before I actually send it out.)

In related news, the latest submission for "Julius Jeremiah and the Time Machinist", the SF story I finished a few months ago, came back with a personal note saying "This one's so well-crafted that I expect you'll have no trouble finding a home for it."  I hope that's just a nice compliment, and not The Kiss of Total Fucking Death.

To explain:  Back when I first started trying to write serious fiction in 1980 (1975's "The Return of Captain Nucleus" was written as a joke; I was surprised to get a check.), that first serious story, "Glorypain", eventually went to 45 markets.  About half those markets sent back rejections essentially saying "This is a very good story.  I don't want to publish it."  (One editor wrote a three-page letter telling me how good it was... and then didn't buy it.)  It eventually got really frustrating to get that kind of rejection back, to the point where I almost preferred to get a form rejection instead.

(I stopped sending "Glorypain" out after 9/11.  A large chunk of the story was set at an airport, and I never worked up the energy to try and revise it to reflect the new security environment at airports.)

I'm enjoying writing (and completing) stories again, after a long time of inactivity occasionally punctuated by fragments, false starts, and dead ends.  I'd enjoy it even more if the new stories (and a few older ones I've dusted off and sent out again) actually started selling.  (This is me being grumpy.)

(Typewriter image from Wikimedia Commons.  Originally appeared in advertisement in Weird Tales magazine.)

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:

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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". 

So It Goes Over The Cliff

The Mary Sue reports that Amazon's Kindle Worlds, a program that licenses literary/media properties to produce (oxymoron alert!) "commercial fanfiction", has cut a deal for doing so with the estate handling the works of... Kurt Vonnegut.

Wait, what?  I double-checked the date to make sure it wasn't April 1st, and then the URL to make sure I hadn't ended up on The Onion's website.

Vonnegut had such a distinctive authorial voice, and style, and mindset, that I have trouble thinking that any Vonnegut-derived works for Kindle Worlds will be anything other than pastiche, rather than homage (or even passable imitation).

Vonnegut had such a distinctive authorial voice, and style, and mindset, that I have trouble envisoning a scene where someone in the Amazon Kindle Worlds offices would actually think the thought that, "Hey, let's license Kurt Vonnegut's work for the Kindle Worlds program!"

Vonnegut had such a distinctive authorial voice, and style, and mindset, that I have trouble envisioning anyone involved in handling his estate thinking the thought, "Hey, let's license Kurt's works to the Kindle Worlds program!  I'm sure Kurt would approve."

Well, actually Vonnegut might... not approve... but be phlegmatic about the idea.  Here's a quote of his:

"Go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

But you know what.  I'm not phlegmatic about the idea.  It just seems like a bad, sad joke.

Another Vonnegut quote, a bit more reflective of my reaction:

“Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.”

Fragments -- One of My Old ST:TNG Story Pitches: "However Improbable"

Back in the old days when STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION was still in its first run, one of the more notable episodes was "Redemption: Part II", wherein Denise Crosby returned not as Tasha Yar, but as Sela, Tasha Yar's own daughter.  When, in the episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", the Enterprise-C returned to its original timeline from the alternate-the-Federation-is-getting-its-ass-whupped-timeline created when Enterprise-C was kicked into the future, the not-killed-by-black-porridge-monster Tasha Yar of that alternate-future returned with it, surviving the Enterprise-C's final battle but being captured by the Romulans, eventually bearing a child, Sela, by a sympathetic captor.  The alternate-Tasha was captured and executed after trying to escape with her young daughter.  Sela was raised as a Romulan, and became an enemy of the Federation.  (Are you with me so far?)

This was when I was still trying to sell movie scripts after having sold my own episode, "Clues", to ST:TNG.  But I still pitched story ideas to ST:TNG several times before the Toxic Boss From Hell threw a spanner into my writing gears (that unpleasant story told here), so when I cleaned out my office recently, a file folder of some of those story ideas came to light.  One of them was intended as a direct follow-up to the mystery of Sela.  I think subsequent episodes made my story idea obsolete before I had a chance to make the actual pitch.  But I thought it was a pretty good idea, so I present it here for the edification of the masses and, y'know, History!

"However Improbable"

(Picard tries to solve the mystery of Sela, the impossible daughter of Tasha Yar.)

With Sela, Picard faces the greatest puzzle of his career.  If this woman is actually Tasha's daughter, how could she be?

There may be one way to find out:  In the records of the original Enterprise is a description of a 'machine', the "Guardian of Forever", which reputedly can provide access to all of time and all possible times.  It is the nearest thing to omniscient that the Federation has yet found.

The Enterprise heads to the Guardian's planet.  After Kirk & Company had returned from their adventure years earlier, the Guardian had, apparently, shut itself down.  It had resisted all efforts at activation and analysis since then.  An unmanned station had been left there, to warn of any activity or the approach of any ship,

Picard's efforts to rouse the Guardian are to no avail.  Then -- surprise! -- Sela comes on the scene.  Seeking to regain face after the debacle of the Klingon civil war, and noting that the Enterprise was heading towards a planet the Federation appeared to hav deliberately concealed information on, she had cloaked her ship and followed the Enterprise.

It is the presence of Sela that activates the Guardian.  She is a chronic anomaly, the result of events that could not have occurred in the natural course of destiny.

The arrival of Sela and her guards, the sudden activity of the Guardian, all cause a pitched conflict.  The end result of which is that Picard, Data, and Sela go thru the Guardian's portal.

And end up... on the Romulan home planet, twenty-six years before, shortly before the altrnate-Tasha's doomed escape attempt.

Which is great from Sela's point of view: She's got twenty-six years of advance information she can give the Romulans.

Picard and data subdue Sela, disguise themselves, and enter the Romulan capitol in search of... answers.

Eventually they reach the alternate-Tasha.  And learn this is not the Tasha they knew, but one from a universe where the Federation had been fighting a losing war against both the Romulans and Klingons.

But the arrival of Picard and data gives Tasha back the hope she had lost, the hope that she might someday return to Federation space, even one differing from her own

Tasha insists on meeting the grown Sela.  She is shocked to see what her daughter has grown to become.  It increases her resolve to escape her captivity, and to take her young daughter with her.

The story can go two ways from here:

VERSION A:  Sela is also affected by th meeting.  She had previously nown her mother only thru her four-year-old's memories.  Now she sees Tasha with an adult's intelligence and reasoning.  And she sees a woman loyal to her people, loyal to her child.  A woman that Sela has to respect.

And when, during the escape attempt, the caper is blown and capture is imminent, Sela knocks out Tasha, swaps clothing, and takes her place.  When Sela-as-Tasha is executed, that triggers a return of the portal to return Picard, Data, and Tasha to their proper place.

Which means that only Picard and data return to the Enterprise they know.  The alternate-Tasha has been returned to her own universe, to a fate unknown.

VERSION B:  But despite Picard's efforts to persuade Tasha to a different course, to change history, Tasha is still betrayed by the young Sela, caught, and executed.

Returning to their own time, Picard is not only wracked by his own guilt, but Sela now considers him doubly responsible for her mother's death.  She departs, an even worse enemy than before.

Well, there you go.  I like to think that this pitch actually got bought, produced and broadcast, in some alternate timeline.



"Wibbly wobbly timey-wimey? WTF?"