Advice from the elven king…
In last week’s article, I reviewed J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Now, inspired by reading that prelude to The Lord of the Rings trilogy (I’d read the trilogy as a kid, but not its prelude), I’ve continued to read on into Frodo’s odyssey. This article isn’t about that, though.
Instead, I want to tell you about some advice to authors Tolkien offers in his Forward to the Ring trilogy. Okay, he doesn’t present it as advice, but I’ll interpret it in that way as a complement to my little course “Writing Fiction” (Revision 11 is now available as a free PDF download—see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this web site for a list of all my freebies, which includes two full novels in the “Esther Brookstone” series). Let me start with a quote from that Forward:
“Some who have read my book [he considers the entire trilogy as one book here, although traditionally it’s divided into three parts], or at any rate have reviewed them [like today, there were probably reviewers in his day who never actually bothered to read the book], have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or the kinds of writing they evidently prefer.” Powerful words from a classic author!
First, let me state that I all I have to do is change “my book” to “my books” and “found it” to “found them,” and I’ll have something that also accurately describes my publishing career. Tolkien goes on to say that his goal is to have fun telling stories that he hopes might entertain a few readers. That’s all any fiction writer can hope for if they have any common sense at all—the publishing business is full of vagaries—and it’s all I hope for. In fact, I always state that if each of my books entertains at least one reader, for me that book is a success. Making a lot of money might be other authors’ goal, but my joy is in the storytelling.
Second, Tolkien’s quote certainly applies to the erudite critics of the NY Times who don’t seem to recognize a good story when they see one—or refuse to do so. It also applies to most literary agents who live in the River Styx among the rotting corpses between good fiction and the hell of predicting the marketability of a book. They choose something trashy like Spare (1.4 million copies as of the date I wrote this article) or any other celeb’s scandalous confessions over truly good, entertaining stories. In their defense, the Big Five publishing conglomerates. and all their formulaic old mares and stallions in their stables who should have been sent to the glue factory long ago, only worry about marketability—they’re well ensconced in that literary hell!
Some people will just write J. R. R.’s quote off to despair and despondency—he’d just lived through two world wars! While writers are undoubtedly influenced by current events (the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have been my most recent causes of agita, but the advances of fascism worldwide and in the US certainly mimic Tolkien’s frustrations with the Nazi fascists), his quote and my interpretation of it represents a damning indictment of the current publishing environment as well as his. What’s sad is that his Forward shows that not much has changed: The traditional publishing establishment still tries to control what people read. It’s a more insidious form of book banning than what is seen in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (or DeSantis’s Florida). I’m actually surprised that the publisher of that pocketbook edition of the Lord of Rings trilogy didn’t leave out that Forward!
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Menace from Moscow. Edits almost done! Here’s a summary:
In the third novel of this trilogy, the critical and difficult management of geopolitics in a post-apocalyptic world caused by a worldwide bioengineered virus continues: Survivor Penny Castro and her friends’ new task is to recover nuclear-armed missiles aboard a US submarine that sunk off Cuba’s coast at the beginning of the pandemic. As if the train trip from Colorado to Florida across a dangerous, desolate, and devasted US isn’t enough, what awaits them in the Caribbean and beyond will put any fan of sci-fi thrillers on the edge of their seats. From SoCal to Cheyenne Mountain and on to Florida, Cuba, and what remains of the Russian Federation, Penny’s adventures are full of mystery, thrills, and suspense.
This book has Draft2Digital in its near future, so it will soon appear at all D2D’s affiliated retailers and library and lending services. I hope readers will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
