News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #22…
#130: The blog site indiebookspot.com has interviewed me. To see more about what makes your favorite author tick, see: Steve’s interview. I recommend this site to all indie readers and authors.
#131: The writers for the TV series Lost, now writing ABC’s Once Upon A Time, have carried creative license too far once again. In Lost, they lost viewers with their flashforwards, the opposite of flashbacks (the show lived off the latter). Viewers were also disillusioned by the strange ending of the series—or, should I say non-ending. Now, in Once Upon A Time, they have been fracturing fairy tales in the tradition of Rocky and Bullwinkle, but without the humor. That’s acceptable creative license. However, with Sunday’s episode about the Mad Hatter, their creative license should be revoked. Through the Looking Glass is not a fairy tale in the usual sense of the word. In fact, the story of Alice is no more a fairy tale than the books in the Harry Potter series. It is a fantasy. It should have its own universe and not be in contact with the one of the Grimm brothers. Nitpicking? Maybe…but, I reacted negatively.
#132: Indie authors can’t catch a break! (The following is perhaps an exercise in non-productive whining?) I recently found a website called AddictedtoEbooks.com(caps are mine—I find it hard to see the e). Among the submission requirements? Five Amazon reviews. For indie authors, how stupid is that? Although I love some of the things Amazon is doing for indie authors, their review system is terrible. Egregious. Neanderthal. (You pick the adjective.) Too many reviews there are not honest ones and often reduce to a few lines—either “atta-boy” reviews or “this is crap.” The star rating is often inflated and the overall rating of your book is often hurt by one or two disgruntled people’s negative reviews (everyone has enemies) that Amazon counts disproportionately.
So, AddictedtoEbooks.com is perpetuating a system that is no help to the indie author. In the process, it sets up an exclusive membership requirement to its little club that is completely contrary to the idea of indie publishing. Since there are plenty of review websites like Bookpleasures (where I’m a reviewer), Sift Reviews (specializing in sci-fi), and many others specializing in horror, vampires, steamy romances, etc., those eBooks people seem to devour like Girl Scouts’ samoas—either sites with one reviewer or sites that have many reviewers—here’s my suggestion: use one of these and BOYCOTT SITES LIKE AddictedtoEbooks.com that deserve to crash and burn.
It’s hard enough for indie authors to get an honest review. Websites advertising themselves as offering a service to indie authors when they have exclusive submission requirements are not helping the cause. Pox on their house! And never, never pay for a book review! A reviewer’s pay is the free book you send her.
#133: The above is related to another pet peeve of mine. Go to the International Thriller Writers website. Membership in this cloak-and-cowl community right out of the Middle Ages requires that your book be published by a “commercial publishing house”—read: one of the Big Six or their affiliates. In other words, to paraphrase the title of my new thriller, indie authors need not apply! This organization of authors and many others reap benefits from legacy publishers, if only in purchasing booth space at their public events (the public pays to get in anyway). It doesn’t matter that you’re Joe Konrath or Barry Eisler, indie authors who have sold many, many books. (Both of these authors were already ITW members before they came to their senses and jumped ship from legacy publishing, but only after they were ITW members—I wonder if they still participate?) Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers is a similar organization.
Of course, I really shouldn’t fault the authors who are members of these and similar organizations. They are hypocritical SOBs doing the same thing the AMA does in controlling the number of medical students and medical schools—guaranteeing their livelihood by eliminating any competition, at the cost of the reading public. The legacy publishers are obviously thrilled in going along with this guild policy stolen from Middle Age capitalism. Let’s hope they and the legacy publishers die off fast enough so that readers soon can have full access to new and upcoming authors who are not “the sure thing” the legacy publishers now require and promote.
Fortunately, readers already have a mind of their own (legacy publishers, look out!). I’m a reader and I won’t even buy a Baldacci eBook if it’s over $10, for example. You shouldn’t either. In fact, don’t buy any legacy published eBook that’s over $10. They’re ripping you off! (David Baldacci is a good writer. He’s also an ITW member. Ironically he pushes some national literacy project but I doubt he cares much for indie writers and publishers—he doesn’t have to. He has only a couple of eBooks over $10—that might not be his fault, but I’m not reading them. Alastair Reynolds, the sci-fi writer, has only one eBook over $10. I won’t read that one either. By the way, you can’t even determine if he’s a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers—their membership list is only accessible to members!)
#134: Kids murdering kids? Hmm…where have I heard that plot before? In real life, there are places like Uganda, Rwanda, the Sudan, Kenya, Colombia, and so forth where minors are trained as soldiers and go out and kill, often as forced mercenaries in the service of some jerk warlord. In literature, the best example of excellent writing about the theme is William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, an excellent story that I always took as a morality lesson on how thin our veneer of civilization is, even for adults (Stephen King’s Cell does the same for adults—I usually don’t like King’s yarns but he’s a good writer).
The success of the Hunger Games (book series and the movie opening last weekend) shows that our taste for gladiator violence becomes magnified in our sick society when the gladiators become young adults. Like child porn, child violence is sicko, folks. I don’t care if it is the big, bad tyrant who makes the kids kill each other in Hunger Games. Moreover, I don’t need this young-adult version of Mortal Kombat to remind me that the real world is just as sick. Of course, it’s even sicker that the author and Hollywood will make enormous amounts of money from this story with a plot so thin and clichéd. Hollywood will never learn. Suzanne Collins, you should be ashamed!
It seems that fads in young-adult literature are taking the genre down to lower and lower levels in the cesspool. I’m talking more about plot here than other elements of writing (for all I know, Ms. Collins manages the latter like an MFA graduate suma cum laude—I don’t plan to read the series although I might see the movie—any good special effects?). Harry Potter hit a peak, although parts of that seven-novel magnum opus became as boring as watching grass grow. Then came Twilight, reducing legitimate morality-magician plays about Harry’s adventures to a huge circus of vampires and werewolves, i.e. fangs and more fangs. Finally, we now have The Hunger Games. Have we reached the bottom of the cesspool? I sure hope so! We’re certainly in the sludge. Of course, it’s all about what sells. Or what the Big Six publishing companies and Hollywood markets? Fads and more fads—the hype about the movie was and is intolerable!
OK, I’m just an old grouch. I don’t understand pop culture. For example, I can’t understand how young people can still like old farts like Mick Jagger or Stephen Tyler. I have yet to hear a current band that does anything different from the bands of the seventies and eighties. In fiction, this is turned around. Kids don’t find the “good old stuff.” For example, I can’t understand the fascination with vampires, werewolves, and the supernatural—for the former, read Bram Stoker, and for the latter, read Stephen King or Dean Koontz. And Tolkien and C. S. Lewis are much better than Rowling (nice of her to discover eBooks, by the way).
In libris libertas…
April 4th, 2012 at 12:33 pm
I just finished the third book of the Hunger Games series (my older son read them and liked them quite a bit…) and I have to say that I found it hard to put down. (I didn’t have that problem with the first book.) Yes, it’s about kids fighting kids in that first book, but not really in the others, and the message seems to be that a society that uses their children in this manner doesn’t deserve to exist. It’s not the great dystopian literature that we were exposed to with books like BRAVE NEW WORLD and 1984, but I think you may be a little overly negative about it. Just my opinion…
April 4th, 2012 at 12:37 pm
Oh, and about music…being a guitarist and keyboardist who grew up in the 70’s (and maybe came to age musically in the 80’s) I tend to agree with you that not much new is coming out of music. I’ve had discussions with my musician buddies about it and I’ve sort of felt that a lot of it is that they don’t have anything really new to work with. When Foster The People does their stuff, it’s still drums/bass/keyboards with a little guitar tossed into the mix.
My one friend pointed out that his kids were listening to this weird stuff by Mad Mouse or something like that, and that they had finally found something that he just said was “crap”. Just like my dad (and his dad) said about us listening to Black Sabbath and Deep Purple back in the day…;-)
April 4th, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Hi Scott,
Thanks for your comments.
I think I was talking more about plot in Hunger Games and probably referring more (without realizing it) to the first book. I’ll stick by my idea, though (confirmed by several movie-goers in my family), that it is not a question of a crazy social structure doing it to the kids but that the kids (and probably us in the same situation) have such a thin veneer of civilization that they jump into the games with zeal. In that sense, Golding and King portrayed the dark soul of humanity much better.
On a lighter note (pardon the pun), there is more cross-fertilization in modern music now. During First Night activities in Boston a few years ago, I heard an interesting band mixing Brazilian and soft rock…can’t remember the group’s name. In this sense, there might be some swirling around and new, exciting sounds might appear. It’s a bit like literature. There are in general only so many possible stories. The devil is in the details of how the author tells the stories. One part of my new sci-fi thriller Sing a Samba Galactica is classic road trip but the pursuers and the destination are quite different than anything else you’ve read. Let’s look for these new details in music too–it might be something else besides crap. 🙂
Take care,
Steve
April 4th, 2012 at 2:00 pm
I agree that Golding and King both write better and with perhaps more depth than Collins, though again, I felt the latter two books brought the series in deeper, more interesting (to me) directions. (My son liked the third book in the series the least, whereas it is my favorite.) You’re absolutely right about the thin veneer of civilization of many of the tributes. Our heroine is tormented by that, in all the books, I think. It’s explained in the books that the tributes from some districts that are more closely linked to the Capitol are raised almost brainwashed, and they are referred to as “Careers” because all of their youth train to get into the Games.
As to music, I’ve heard a few hybrids; my wife listens to a lot of contemporary Persian artists, and there is definitely a crossover between the Persian/Middle Eastern music and American/British pop music in several instances. But I haven’t heard much that I call “new”. Except for that electronic noise that my friends’ sons are listening to. (Both of their sons are musicians, too.) Paul McCartney released a project under the name “The Fireman” where he does experimental music with some British producer who goes by the moniker “Youth”. Being a huge McCartney/Beatles fan, I gave it more of a chance than i might have otherwise, and I have to admit I warmed up to it a little after a while…
April 5th, 2012 at 6:04 am
Hi Scott,
To continue the music discussion, when I was at IU, I received a gift from a Jordanian friend–an LP of many stylized Persian and Arabian music “greatest hits”–sort of a Paul Mauriat version of hits from the Middle East. I always thought, “What great melodies!” I also thought that combining this kind of melodic writing with soft rock (a la what Simon did for African and Brazilian music) would be an intriguing experiment.
I’m also a great Beatles fan. “Yesterday” is probably my favorite song and “When I’m Sixty-Four” now all too real. “Rocky Racoon” was my favorite on the White Album.
All the best,
Steve