Item. Countdown to countdown.  Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, #3 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” is a Kindle Countdown Deal from July 1 through July 7.  The $2.99 price will be reduced to $0.99 for this short time.  Here’s the elevator pitch: Does Chen commit murder? The long answer is surprising.  Look for it.  Note: This is more mystery than thriller.  (It’s not my first mystery, by the way.  The first was The Secret Lab, a YA sci-fi mystery taking place on the ISS in the same fictional universe as Survivors of the Chaos.)  If you missed the Countdown Deal for Angels Need Not Apply, put this one on your calendar.

Item. Language concerns.  ABC weatherperson: “Today is more perfect than yesterday.”  ABC reporter: “Traffic is basically at a standstill.”  Another ABC reporter: “It’s literally chaos here.”  (Those all occurred in one day!)  Maybe in the heat of the moment, such slips are acceptable.  I’m not saying that we should start our own Académie Française, but these are examples of bad English usage.  Avoid them in your writing, even in dialog.

Worse: People writing those news banners running across the bottom of my TV screen should watch their grammar and spelling.  Other people (like me) multitask and read them.  No serious crimes are committed, but it is unprofessional, although some of the errors are hilarious and provide some comic relief from bad news reports.

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I’ve been trying to schedule some book reviews for More than Human: The Mensa Contagion, getting a head start before the book is released (real soon now).  As usual, I first scan reviews of similar books, try to find some reviewers on that famous Amazon top reviewers list, and peruse Simon Royale’s list on The Indie View.  Here are some comments about what is going on right now in the reviewing world.

Item. What do I look for in a book review?  First, I really don’t look at book reviews when I buy ebooks for my casual reading.  A large percentage have no content other than a thumbs up or down, and they shouldn’t even be figured into that Amazon star-average (see the rant against Amazon below).  Many are just lies, so I don’t believe them.  They’re often from friends or family too—nothing wrong with that per se except that I know there’s an automatic bias involved.  These sets of reviewers aren’t mutually exclusive either—one reviewer can belong to all three classifications.

No, my question refers more to what I’d like to see in a review of my own ebooks.  Please note that a recent MFA, creative writing, or journalism grad isn’t a requirement for writing a decent review.  You might have hated reviewing books in school and don’t want to get into those writing details.  You don’t need to—at least not for me.

All I’d like is a simple list of things you liked or disliked about the book and why, maybe a comparison with some other books you’ve read, and comments about peripheral things like cover art, whether you like Irish whiskey too, etc—if you’re so inclined.  That sort of thing helps me write better books and helps my very efficient publishing team too—the book review becomes a learning experience and shows other readers why they might be interested in the book (hopefully not just for the sexy cover or the Irish whiskey mentioned in my bio).

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[Note from Steve: Two different books that are additions to series for your reading enjoyment, but with two different results…]

Ashes.  Kelly Cozy, author.  First book in a series.  (Smite, 2013, 978-0-9851234-5-1)  The obvious pseudonym is misleading.  This isn’t a cozy mystery.  It’s not even a mystery.  It’s a thriller, at least half of it—the other half reads like the clinical records of a mental patient.

The story begins when Jennifer Thomson becomes the last of a dozen or so survivors of a terrorist attack.  She works in an office building in LA filled with federal workers.  She survives because she needs a copier.  The only functioning one is on the other side of the building from her cubicle, the side that remains standing long enough for to find her way down the stairs and out of the building before the whole thing collapses.  This is a copy of the 9/11 disaster, of course.  She develops PTSD, wondering why she survived while others didn’t.  It doesn’t help that some relatives of victims blame her for surviving too.

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Item. Countdown to countdown.  Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, #3 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” is a Kindle Countdown Deal from July 1 through July 7.  The $2.99 price will be reduced to $0.99 for this short time.  Here’s the elevator pitch: Does Chen commit murder? The long answer is surprising.  Look for it.  Note: This is more mystery than thriller.  (It’s not my first mystery, by the way.  The first was The Secret Lab, a YA sci-fi mystery taking place on the ISS in the same fictional universe as Survivors of the Chaos.)  If you missed the Countdown Deal for Angels Need Not Apply, put this one on your calendar.

Item. Language concerns.  ABC weatherperson: “Today is more perfect than yesterday.”  ABC reporter: “Traffic is basically at a standstill.”  Another ABC reporter: “It’s literally chaos here.”  (Those all occurred in one day!)  Maybe in the heat of the moment, such slips are acceptable.  I’m not saying that we should start our own Académie Française, but these are examples of bad English usage.  Avoid them in your writing, even in dialog.

Worse: People writing those news banners running across the bottom of my TV screen should watch their grammar and spelling.  Other people (like me) multitask and read them.  No serious crimes are committed, but it is unprofessional, although some of the errors are hilarious and provide some comic relief from bad news reports.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part of being nice (Rule #1 from my article “Rogue Waves in Calm Seas”) is being ethical about how you treat readers and other writers.  One of my interests is scientific ethics, but this is a little more general and more complex.  Let’s say you receive a bad review from person X.  Is attacking that person online ethical?  If X is a writer, is it ethical to write a bad review of X’s book in revenge?  I hope you agree with me that it isn’t.

I’ve been on both ends of this little debate.  I received a questionable review and made the mistake of saying something like “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy Y, but I can offer you a free copy of Z.”  (I won’t go into details here because I have so few reviews you might be able to figure out who it is.)  On the other hand, one person called me to task for a review I wrote, saying that I hadn’t even read the book (exactly what the first person did—he admitted it).  Again, I apologized (I’m human and read a lot, so there’s a small probability I mixed the book with another—that’s about as likely as winning the lottery, though).  But I also stuck by my guns (that’s Rule #2), and added the experience to my list of reasons to stop reviewing on Amazon and return to my mini-reviews for booksI casually read.  (BTW, if I review a book, I’ve read it.  For casual reading, I often only read it once.  For my Bookpleasures reviews, I usually read the book twice, once as a casual reader and again with a critic’s eagle eye.)

If I sinned, it isn’t at the level I described in the first paragraph.  But we can go farther.  I once discussed a plot idea with an author who didn’t express any interest in the idea (I was thinking we might become the next Preston and Child).  Later I found he’d written a book using basically that plot idea.  Is that ethical?  Whatever your opinion, it taught me a lesson that I’d better not discuss my plot ideas with other authors.  I’ve worked hard over the years to accumulate what-ifs, story and character ideas, and possible venues for my novels.  I’ve learned now to keep them to myself.  (When you see an excerpt for the next ebook in a series at the end of the present one, be assured that novel’s done and in editing mode at least—it will be released before another writer can release her/his with the same plot idea.)

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Aloha.  Dir. Cameron Crowe.  Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone, A-listers.  Slow start, but it improves to ho-hum.  Major casting error with Stone, and Cooper flops big time after American Sniper and Elephant Man (why didn’t he win a Tony for that performance?).  But I expect the fault lies in the chaotic but plodding screenplay and the directing of same.  “Aloha” is the “ciao” of Hawaiian—it can mean many things, including “goodbye,” which is what you’ll want to say to this one.  I’ll give it a D only because of the scenery, but you can see better views in Magnum PI and Lost reruns and in that “old movie” Jurassic Park (it was on about a gazillion cable channels as Spielberg promotes the new version, Jurassic World, which looks absurd).

Spy.  Dir. Paul Feig.  Melissa McCarthy, Jude Law, Rose Byrne, and Jason Statham, A-listers, plus many cameos.  I changed my mind about McCarthy in St. Vincent and recent episodes of Mike and Molly, so I wasn’t surprised that this movie is entertaining.  I know some people can’t stand her.  Profanity comes out of her mouth as fast as bullets out of an automatic pistol in this one.  It’s a spoof on the Bond franchise and more and deserves its R rating, but it’s great fun.  Watch for hilarious details, especially in the credits.  Forget about Aloha above—this one’s actually worth the ticket price.  I rate it A+ with a caveat: profanity, violence, sexual innuendoes, projectile vomiting, flatulence, and some questionable selfies might seem over the top.  But if you don’t laugh at this movie, you really need to develop a sense of humor.

In elibris libertas…. 

Item. PR ploy?  Fifty Shades MS stolen?  OK, maybe someone wants a bit of the action ($$$ these books make, you dirty-minded people!), so they’ll sell illegal copies on the web.  I doubt it.  The idea of having two novels, one from the POV of the innocent and gullible victim (those are nice adjectives to describe her) and one from the POV of Mr. Grey, the S & M king (again, nice adjectives to describe him), is purely exploitive—the author and publisher should be ashamed.  And I wouldn’t be surprised this is a PR ploy akin to leaking J. K. Rowling’s name as the author of those droll mysteries—the latter’s only redeeming quality is showing what name recognition and branding can do for you.  For traditional publishing, it’s all about greed and money, no matter what it takes.

The flip side of the coin is to ask why this schlock appeals to people.  Because I’m a writer, I’m interested.  I ask readers (both men and women), who say they’ve read at least the first book in the trilogy, what part of the book they liked best.  “Give me the juicy details,” I say.  A Puritan’s silence follows 99% of the time.  1% admit that the books are terrible, and/or they were just curious.  The guys are secretive wannabe Mr. Greys, I guess; and the gals are frustrated wannabe S & M victims?  I’ll just write it off as just part of our crazy culture, though.  But I sure hope that this series’ readers aren’t avid readers, just people with hidden, prurient interests, because I can’t and won’t write this schlock.  ‘Nough said.

Item. Changing genres.  To continue with the theme above, romance novels have always been a popular genre, but they’ve become so popular that people like James Patterson and his wrecking crew of associated co-authors are trying to dominate those genres too.  Maybe that’s a smart move when you run out of ideas in your original genres and become too formulaic?  Or, is it just a way to take a break?

Don’t get me wrong: there are subgenres of that romance genre that contain very appealing stories.  Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities (his only novel I can stomach) is a historical romance, after all, as well as being a classic.  So is Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (more 19^th century schmaltzy than Two Cities, though).  Many thrillers have romantic interludes (not often as steamy as Fifty Shades and other erotica books, though); two recent ebooks of mine, Muddlin’ Through and Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By, have some romance—relationships are often part of a character’s life that make her/his life more interesting for the reader.

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That’s my rule #3 for writers (see last Thursday’s blog post “Rogue waves in calm seas…”), and a rule readers should hold writers to.  Because traditional publishing’s top authors rarely follow that rule, indie writers and midlist authors might think it’s beneath them.  At their peril!  The stereotypical  writing recluse like Jack Nicholson’s character in As Good as It Gets is who you do NOT want to be as a writer (actually his character had a few other undesirable traits as well—see the film).  The movie was a romantic comedy with serious themes (part of the comedy was that Nicholson portrayed a scurrilous writer of romance novels).  Molly’s becoming a writer of erotica in CBS’ Mike and Molly has similar comic overtones.  (McCarthy’s portrayal is funnier than Nicholson’s, but only because the movie didn’t focus on the vagaries of traditional publishing.)

So, how do you become accessible?  Here’s a few ideas that might work:

Answer emails; ignore tweets.  The difference is easy: tweets are often superficial (how deep can you go with 140 characters?) and your responses will be too (how deep can you go with 140 characters?).  You’re a writer, after all, and while a reader might not expect you to say something earthshakingly profound, s/he’ll expect you to show your writing ability a bit.  Always think about your answer, though.

Let’s suppose you have some hate email laced with profanity.  It happens.  People often have strong opinions, and they often think they can get away with crap on the internet because you’re not there to punch them in the face.  In real life, you should just say, “I’m sorry you feel that way” (unless you live in Florida, claim you felt threatened, and shoot the SOB—okay, the person could be a DOB, to make it unisex).  Your response to that odious email should amount to the same thing: “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

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[Note from Steve: It’s been awhile.  I thought I should review some of the books I casually read for broadening my horizons and entertainment, so I focused on Amazon reviews instead of writing mini-reviews (which are still longer than your average Amazon review).  I’ll do that less in the future.  Like my movie reviews, most of my book reviews will appear here or Bookpleasures, not Amazon.  Writers—don’t bother to query.  These reviews are for books I choose to read and like well enough to review.  I won’t respond to queries.

For today, there’s something in the spring air, I guess.  My new ebook, More than Human: The Mensa Contagion, to be released soon, is about an ET virus changing Earth society.  So are the two books reviewed here.  The second review is an augmented version of what appeared in last week’s “News and Notices from the Writing Trenches.”]

Season of the Harvest.  Michael R. Hicks, author; 2012.  If you get by the anti-GMO rhetoric and rampant xenophobia manifest in the 1950s B-movie aliens, you’ll find an entertaining sci-fi thriller that’s like a fast marathon.  The nasty aliens aren’t needed—human beings are quite capable of destroying themselves and Earth, and that would be more believable if it were the case in this story.  And the GMO conspiracy theories are over the top—if you don’t like GMOs, get rid of your pet dogs and cats, snuff out that 3-year-old that just won horse racing’s Triple Crown, and forget about your corn flakes and fancy leather shoes.

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The Supreme Court (SC) has made some anti-democratic (note the small “d”) and fascist-leaning decisions in recent years (you should recall that German corporations helped bring Hitler to power—some of those still exist!).  It’s forced a money-race that is tantamount to the rich elites and their toadies buying elections.  Both Dems and the GOP now play the latter game.  Hillary not only leads the small pack of Dem candidates (not that small, but certainly smaller than the GOP clown-contingent), but she also has the biggest “war chest,” AKA financial backing.  Yet she’s still wooing George Soros.

As bad as big money’s presence in American politics has become, thanks to the SC, we don’t need an anti-Citizens United amendment to stop that (it would be nice, but amendments are hard to come by).  We can redirect the money.  Mr. Soros, for example, has put up $5 million to mount legal action against laws restricting voter participation.  You see, the GOP knows they can’t win in a fair fight if everyone votes—demographics aren’t on their side—so they try to make sure all the uncool people, most of them poor and middle class folks, can’t vote against them.  You saw it in Selma and it continues, only it’s more subtle.  In fact, I can say it’s not racial anymore: You’re uncool simply if you vote Democratic.  You’re uncool if you think the rich elites have too much control.  You’re uncool if you think people deserve a safety net when they’re down and out.  You’re uncool if you think that people deserve reasonably priced but quality healthcare.

Of course, it’s the GOP that’s uncool.  In almost every state with a legislature dominated by the GOP, you can see atrocities committed.  Florida’s legislature passed the controversial Stand-Your-Ground law that allows you to blow away anyone you think is threatening you.  They also voted down a Medicaid proposal that would have helped thousands in dire need.  The atrocities happen in the U.S. Congress too, more so now with the GOP dominating both houses.  They don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about what most of the country thinks.  They think they know it all, they have the power, and they’ll make sure it stays that way—Koch brothers be praised.

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