News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #44…
#244: Calling all readers! (Well, maybe not elementary school kids.) Take a look at the books in my opus. Let’s start with my new release, The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. Thriller and conspiracy lovers, take note. Women tired of vampire romances, take note. Baby boomers tired of watching ups and downs in their retirement funds, take note. This sci-fi thriller is fast-paced entertainment that’s gripping and thought provoking. (If you live in northern New Jersey, you will recognize the locales. Talk about a local writer!)
Friend of androids and ETs and going where no sentients have gone before, take a peek at Sing a Samba Galactica. The “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” comprised of Survivors of the Chaos, Samba, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, is my Foundation series—all sci-fi thrillers containing enough hard sci-fi, military sci-fi, and space opera to entertain the most demanding sci-fi fan.
And for young adults and adults young at heart, don’t forget the sci-fi novel The Secret Lab, starring Mr. Paws and the Fearsome Four, as they solve a mystery on the International Space Station. Become involved with traditional sci-fi a la Heinlein’s Podkayne series more than sci-fi fantasy like Star Wars or Harry Potter in space. No magic, no light sabers, just good old scientific extrapolation that’s fun for everyone.
Why is there almost something for everyone? Because I like to tell stories that entertain everyone. Maybe it’s the Irish blarney in me. Oh, I almost forgot. If you want to just try me out with an introduction to “The Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” spend a buck on Pop Two Antacids and Have Some Java, short stories representing cases that involve the intrepid NYPD homicide detectives, the main characters in The Midas Bomb and Angels Need Not Apply.
All my books except Soldiers of God are in ebook format (yeah, I need to make an ebook version of that—maybe a second edition?), inexpensive, and at least worth your peek inside at Amazon, B&N, or other online ebook retailers. Enjoy!
#245: B&N’s digital woes. About a year ago, Barnes & Noble embarked on a “new digital publishing” initiative, where Nook and .epub files designed for it, would be emphasized. Sounds like they’re now throwing in the towel, sort of. They’ll still push their Nook, which is finding fierce competition with Amazon’s Kindle Fire and tablet computers, but the emphasis will be on generating more digital content for it.
There are good, bad, and ugly sides for this decision with respect to indie authors. The good is that maybe we’re heading for some kind of universal ebook format. I, for one, am tired of having to think through whether I want my ebook published in all formats. Sure, Smashwords makes this a bit easier. My formatting guru, Donna Carrick, prepares an ebook for Amazon and another for Smashwords, and the latter covers all formats except Amazon’s (I learned recently that it sort of covers Amazon’s too—I don’t know what the difference is, but I was able to download a file from Smashwords compatible with my Kindle).
The bad? B&N will probably, forever and ever, be a sycophant to traditional publishing. They’ve tried to make their book barns profitable by attracting people with author signings, discussions, and what not, along with the usual Starbucks coffee counters where you can get your burnt-toast coffee either full octane or watered down as Blonde. I’m sorry. I don’t want to meet Jodi Picoult. Or, even Lee Child. Or, any author who has sold his soul to traditional publishing. In fact, I don’t read them anymore, because their new ebooks are almost as expensive as hard covers (not their fault, of course—in traditional publishing, the author has no control over pricing).
The ugly? B&N is doomed. Borders died. Other bookstores are dying. It’s only a matter of time before the B&N book barns take that trip into the Jurassic sunset. It will take time, but digital indie publishing is a killer that excuses no slip-ups in book publishing. Traditional publishing, and its partners like B&N, are doomed. Times are a-changin’. People are still reading. In fact, they’re reading more than ever. They have become better consumers, though. And authors, indie authors, have become savvy business people. B&N bookstores and their feeble attempts to jump on the indie publishing train don’t figure into indie authors’ business model—at least, not in mine.
#246: Grammar rules? I receive newsletters from Writer’s Digest (WD)—sometimes helpful, other times not, and all too often telling me what to do relative to traditional publishing, when I only care about indie publishing. I was amused last weekend to see a discussion of grammar rules, in particular the one about split infinitives, where they say, “to understand where this so-called rule came from you have to understand it’s Latin connection and why splitting infinitives will cause others to accuse of not using correct grammar—even if you really aren’t breaking any rules.”
First, being a wee bit nitpicky, I would have put a comma after “came from”—it just seems clearer. Second, it should be “to understand ITS Latin connection” because “it’s” is the contraction of “it is,” and not a possessive. Third, it should be “to accuse YOU of not using correct grammar.” Fourth, the “really” is a superfluous adverb that should be eliminated: “even if you really aren’t breaking the rules” à “even if you aren’t breaking the rules” (you’re either breaking them or not). And people tell me to get an editor for my work!
Nevertheless, I’ll give the person(s) who wrote this the benefit of the doubt and say that too many of our grammar rules are made up by idiots who think they know the English language and want to impose their preferences on others. It’s like being a missionary to South America in the 1600s and telling a native, “Bow to my religion or else you die!” (English is not the only language where these nut cases run around trying to burn authors at the stake. The French have given them a formal vultures’ nest to hang out in their l’Académie. I suppose if we had an English version, it would be in London and the participants would wear wigs.)
Splitting infinitives? There’s nothing wrong with “to boldly go where no man has gone before”! Maybe your high school English teacher thought so, but he was wrong. Compare this to “to go boldly where no man has gone before.” By the way, that’s another pet peeve of mine, political correctness. Just try “to go boldly where no person has gone before” and see if it works for you (I have no problem using man to signify all human beings, although I’m the first one to appreciate that women are often more intelligent and usually more interesting than men).
Ending a sentence with a preposition? There’s nothing wrong with saying “there are some problems we have no solutions for.” It’s lean and mean and less stilted than “there are some problems for which we have no solutions.” I can’t imagine anyone saying the latter in dialog, for example. One can turn things around and say “we don’t have solutions for all problems,” but that’s a bit tainted because you have traded a bold, positive statement for a weak, negative one. Moreover, it creates the question about who “we” might be. Choices, choices!
The two conclusions: (1) WD needs to do some editing of their own before preaching to everyone else; and (2) authors should know which rules are valid (it’s = it is, always and forever, whereas splitting an infinitive or two or three is a question of style). ‘Nough said, ye olde grammarians!
#247: Too many authors, too few reviewers. I try to do my part reviewing. Many authors do. I also try to give emphasis to indie authors’ books. When I lurk around online reviewing sites to scrounge up some reviews for my books, I often see invitations for people to become reviewers at that site. If you’re an author, you should be an avid reader; and if you’re an avid reader, you don’t have to have an MFA to make an intelligent review now and then that informs other readers’ decisions on book borrowing or buying.
Joining the reviewing staff of an already existing site is easy. You need some kind of computer, of course, but you don’t need a blog or website—you will use the online site you join. I did this for Bookpleasures, for example, and have never regretted it. I’m an avid reader, but, believe me, it’s more difficult to read the book than review it. Like I said, you don’t want to bore your readers with a stodgy old MFA treatise where you focus on the author’s Freudian problems. Your readers just want to know if you think the book’s worth reading.
If you’re an author, in fact, it’s almost your duty to become a reviewer. That’s another reason for associating with an online site. Amazon apparently doesn’t like writers reviewing other writers, but online sites don’t care (at least, not yet). Of course, almost everybody wants an honest review, but most sites let you choose the books you want to review—your choice almost invariably implies that you’re interested in the book, so you want to try it, which is already a plus for the book.
I don’t think trading reviews with other authors is a good idea, even on online sites, where it seems almost incestuous. Early on, and after the fact, I realized that I had done that one-on-one with a few authors, but fortunately in all cases both reviews always seemed to be honest. (For example, I’ll forever be indebted to the author-friend who pounded me for POV errors.) I do think that giving a bad review is only justified on special occasions—you were interested in the book, after all.
I also believe that charging for reviews is terrible. I’ve panned several online sites who do this. Shame, shame! How can these sites even pretend to be honest and unbiased? The threat of a bad review keeps an author honest. Paying for a good review just seems sleazy. The latter doesn’t mean you don’t give your book to the reviewer. That’s expected and accepted. The reviewer knows this isn’t a bribe and the author shouldn’t expect a positive review just because he gives a free book to the reviewer.
With the digital publishing revolution, readers rule, but they need information—there are just too many good books out there and they need filters that allow them to choose their entertainment wisely. Every author, and every reader too, can do authors and readers a service by writing reviews. It doesn’t take much to be useful, to go beyond “This is a great book!” or “This book is trash!” Authors and readers will both appreciate your efforts.
Note that I’m not asking you to review on Amazon. There are many reasons not to, but one is that your review will be more valuable on some other online site. (If you’re an avid reader and buy books by reading their Amazon reviews, you would be better off visiting an online site. The information there is more reliable.) How many reviews do you have to make? Most online sites don’t force a set number. How could they? You don’t have to read any more books than you already do, in fact…so go for it!
In libris libertas….
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