How Many Words?

If you look around on the web, there is a general consensus that anything over 50,000 words counts as novel length.  (Or at least, that's what it seems like based on my cursory survey yesterday.)

Well, I'm definitely at novel length.  I am at approximately 108,000 words right now.  This is a very general estimate, based on me counting the number of words on one page of one spiral notebook and multiplying by the total number of pages.  That page may or may not have been representative, it was chosen at random.  Further complicating this estimate is the fact that each of the three spiral notebooks I have used so far has a slightly different page size, although all of them are college-ruled, so the number of lines per page should be the same.  But since I'm writing the first draft by hand, this is the best I can do for an estimate.

Anyway, one or two links I visited yesterday (sorry, I didn't save them or I'd post here) suggested that for first-time authors, publishers are looking for works between 80,000 and 120,000 words.  I suppose that is a good goal to shoot for.

So I'm within that range right now.  However, I'm probably only 3/4 finished with the draft.  I could easily end up with 160,000 words or more.  I'm not sure this is a problem, though, for the following reasons.  (1) I don't know how accurate my word count estimate is.  (2) It's a first draft.  I will probably be cutting some things, and tightening up the writing in other areas.  There were some scenes that just seemed to drag when I was writing them.  These need to be shortened, or just to go away.

I hit 610 pages this morning, handwritten of course.  But I'm feeling pretty good about how far I've come.

Gay Characters

So I was reading over my review of Green and I realized that one might interpret my problems with the second part of the book as stemming from homophobia.  I just wanted to set the record straight (forgive my use of the word "straight").  I've got nothing against gays or lesbians; actually, I was quite happy for all the couples in New York who were finally able to have their unions legally recognized starting last weekend, many of them after literally decades of being together.

I've been doing some thinking about homosexuality in fantasy novels though, and it really runs the gamut.  Here are some examples:

The Fool in Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice and sequels) and Tawny Man Trilogy (Fool's Errand and sequels).  Oh yeah, and he/she was in the Liveship Traders Trilogy (Ship of Magic and sequels) as well, living as a woman, no less.  I'll admit I always thought of him as a man, perhaps an effeminate one, perhaps exceedingly private because of his gender identity and/or sexual orientation.  He actually tried very hard to suppress his feelings (Fitz takes a very long time to catch on, and is not happy about it when he does find out), and the only time he actually made a pass at anyone male was so he could take his leave of the Bresingas in the Tawny Man trilogy (I suppose that's one way out of an invitation).  I think the Fool is sympathetic because his/her situation is representative of a lot of gays an lesbians who are afraid to come out of the closet for fear of rejection by their friends and families.

Gil in The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan is maybe at the opposite extreme.  There actually is a lot of graphic detail about sex between men in that book, but I didn't mind so much, perhaps because it really is part of who the character is.  His social position, his tenuous relationship with his family, wouldn't be what it was if he denied his true nature.  Gil is an antihero very well done.

If you're into young adult fantasy and takes on the Arthurian legend, there are a few gay characters in End of the Century by Chris Roberson.  Nothing too graphic because of age of the intended audience.  (And hey, Dumbledore was gay, too!  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and well-known sequels, as if you needed to be reminded.  Although there's really no discussion at all of this in the books.)

I can't think of a lot of gay and lesbian characters who play major parts in other fantasy novels.  (Usually I'm full of examples.)  There are quite a few novels where gay characters have minor roles, or where their sexuality is only incidental.  Shiv in Juliet McKenna's Tales of Einarinn (The Thief's Gamble and sequels) and his partner are actually important characters, but the fact that they're both men is remarked upon briefly and then just seems to be accepted, at least by Livak and company.  There is some bisexuality among male characters in later volumes of Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars (King's Dragon and sequels) and in Lian Hearn's Tales of the Otori (Across the Nightingale Floor and sequels).  There are the "pillow friends" among the Aes Sedai in the Wheel of Time books (The Eye of the World and many, many sequels).

I'll admit, I don't specifically go looking for gay-themed fantasy novels.  If I come across one, and the story otherwise looks interesting, I'll probably buy it.  Actually, the "pillow friends" issue brings up a point which applies to Green.  The Aes Sedai are all Novices and Accepted in the White Tower when they are young (for the most part).  They are sometimes looked upon with distrust by men, and few of them marry.  In the case of Green, the title character truly discovers her sexuality in the Temple of the Lily Goddess, which similarly is a place of only women where sexual exploration is going on.  This is not what bothers me about that book, I think.  It's actually pretty reasonable to assume that when large groups of teenagers and young adults are kept segregated by sex, this sort of behavior occurs.

I think I'm more disturbed by the "swinger" sort of atmosphere.  You know, there are varying degrees of relationships among the women at the Temple, but they seem to swap partners and/or engage in group "activities" fairly regularly.  The emotion is a bit lacking, though.  Sex is, for them, something to do, and it doesn't seem to have much in the way of deeper meaning.  (I probably would have detested Sex and the City, from what I've heard about it.)  In the end, I'm probably just old-fashioned.  (I also read actual physical newspapers, drink milk with dinner, have never sent a text message, don't have a Facebook account, and do have a landline phone.)

Editing

I was looking through some older posts on here, and I was a little dismayed at how awful my writing can be, at times.  Granted, this is a blog, and not a book.  It's written usually spur-of-the-moment, sometimes stream-of-consciousness (especially with reviews, where I often just move from topic to topic without much thought to organization).

I'm not going to go back and change anything.  I have about 45 posts, I think.  Too much effort involved.

The thing is, if I edited this blog, I would never get anything else done.  (Of course I will fix typos.)  You can craft and re-craft a sentence over and over again, and always think of ways to do better.  There comes a point when you just have to stop.  In a way, it's good for me.  People are reading these words from me, and they're not polished words.  Hopefully, my polished words will be more impressive.

I've had a couple of scientific papers published or accepted, so I've been involved in a group writing process.  I am fast coming to hate the process of revising such papers; somehow I always get to be the one to reconcile all the edits.  Which is especially bad when people are working from different versions of the manuscript.  In this case, it's easy to say when editing is done.  It's when you are so freaking sick of looking at the document that you don't care what changes people suggest anymore, you just never want to see it again.

But it's different with this novel that I'm working on.  It's long, and I'm working alone, and it's fiction, so there's no data to explain, I can say whatever the hell I want to.  I can recognize some slow passages and awkward sentences.  But I'm keeping it close, for now.  I don't want anyone to read it until it's better.  I'll feel like I'm being judged, with that, so I want it to be good first.

Anyway, I can't promise to write better on this blog, although I will try to do so.  When I'm making like 45 blog posts a week (I have a lot of blogs), it's hard for every single one to be top quality.  I'm sure eventually I'll drop a few of them -- the less successful ones, or the ones where I just run out of ideas.  This one will probably stick around, it's doing reasonably well for this stage in its lifetime, and I have a lot to say about fantasy literature.

My Fantasy Library - K

Guy Gavriel Kay

• Sailing to Sarantium: Book One of the Sarantine Mosaic 
• Lord of Emperors: Book Two of the Sarantine Mosaic 
• Tigana
• A Song for Arbonne
• The Last Light of the Sun
• The Lions of al-Rassan
• The Summer Tree
• The Wandering Fire (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 2)
• The Darkest Road (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 3)
• Under Heaven
• Ysabel

Paul Kearney

• Ten Thousand 
• Corvus
• Hawkwood and the Kings
• Century of the Soldier

Greg Keyes

• The Briar King (The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Book 1) 
• The Charnel Prince (Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Book 2) 
• The Blood Knight (The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Book 3) 
• The Born Queen (The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Book 4) 

Russell Kirkpatrick

• Across the Face of the World (Fire of Heaven Trilogy)
• In the Earth Abides the Flame (Fire of Heaven)
• The Right Hand of God (Fire of Heaven Trilogy)
• Path of Revenge (The Broken Man)
• Dark Heart (The Broken Man)
• Beyond the Wall of Time, Book 3 (The Broken Man)

Random notes: I haven't had a post like this in awhile because I've had a lot to say on other topics.  Hawkwood and the Kings sounds like a bad name for a band, but I'm guessing Paul Kearney didn't come up with that one himself.  (If you haven't read Paul Kearney, and you share my opinions on other books where I've expressed them, you should check his books out.)  Also, am I the only person who has trouble telling Russell Kirkpatrick's book titles apart?  It used to be hellish for me at the bookstore...do I have this one?  Or not?

I was hoping to post another review soon, but I am struggling through The Golden Key.  It's not a bad book, exactly, although it does have some irritating aspects.  It is very long, and I am having trouble getting very interested in the characters.  More about this later.  (I know this book has been out for a very long time, but the Amazon reviews suck and I believe a sequel is in the works.  So it will be timely, when I get to it.)

Amazon Vine Program

If you read a lot of genre fiction, you'll see some reviews with green text above them that says "Customer Review from the Amazon Vine Program."

These people apparently get advance copies of books (for free) with the stipulation that they have to write reviews of said books on Amazon.com.  I remember being particularly irritated with Vine Reviews for The River of Shadows (Chathrand Voyage) by Robert V.S. Redick.  I discovered the first volume in this series (The Red Wolf Conspiracy) and its sequel (The Ruling Sea) through the Science Fiction Book Club.  I admit they reminded me a little of Tad Williams (Shadowmarch and sequels, with the plucky teenage girl of high birth -- Briony in Williams and Thasha in Redick, and with the little people -- Rooftoppers in Williams and Ixchel in Redick) but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  I found them to be reasonably enjoyable books.

But here's the thing -- I read them in order.  This is what I generally do with novels in a series.  There may be more than one trilogy (e.g. Robin Hobb and her books that have Fitz, the Fool, and company or Russell Kirkpatrick and his Fire of Heaven and Broken Man trilogies) and I may read those out of order.  But I digress.

A large number of the Amazon Vine reviewers who gave The River of Shadows poor reviews hadn't read the first two volumes in the series.  And so they complained about not understanding the complexities of the world, and gave a pretty decent book one- and two-star reviews.  Anyone who reads fantasy will know that a lot of details of the world are set up in early volumes, whereas the plot comes to a head later on (at least, when the novels aren't standalone).  I am really hoping this is the case with Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive) because I found that book to consist of a lot of unrelated and confusing details that didn't stand well on their own, though they might be fine in the context of the apparently 10-volume series he has planned.

I guess my complaint about the Amazon Vine program, and any program where people receive free books prior to release, for the purpose of writing reviews, is that these reviews aren't very good, as reviews go.  It doesn't matter whether the book gets 1 star, or 5 stars, or anything in between.  If a review consists of statements such as "I didn't understand because I didn't read previous volumes," or is similar to something generated by Harriet Klausner (two paragraphs of plot summary from the back cover and a third paragraph with a list of the author's other works), I just can't take it seriously.  If I used reviews as a way to decide what books to buy, I would feel cheated by these.

Secondary complaint: it's difficult to figure out who gets invited to be part of the Amazon Vine program.  The whole thing is a bit mysterious.

Publicity

Authors have blogs. Authors have websites. Publishers sponsor all sorts of publicity materials, from podcasts to book tours.

I generally pay little attention to this. First off, I don't have a lot of extra time, being a full-time graduate student. If I read every blog and visited every website of an author whose books I'd read, I wouldn't have time to eat or sleep or exercise or write.

I also would prefer to approach a book without any preconceived notions of how much I might or might not like it, how much the publisher is pushing it, etc. (I do read a lot of Amazon reviews, but after the fact, to see if people agreed with me or not.) I buy most new books from Barnes and Noble, straight off the shelf, or from the Science Fiction Book Club, or from Amazon recommendations. So I might read a synopsis, I might look at the cover, but that's it. (Of course if I love a book, or sometimes even if I don't, I'll get other books by the same author.)

One exception, for me, is related to a particular problem I have with bookstores. You go in, and you see books 2, 4, and 5 of a 6 book series, for example. Or maybe there are 5 books that look like they go together, but it's hard to tell if that's a complete listing or not. Or maybe there are two trilogies that involve the same characters, but you don't know which came first (although publication date often answers that question). So I go to the author's website to get a complete list of publications so I can make sure I read things in the right order.

Sometimes, after the fact, I do investigate a bit. And it makes me wonder. Apparently Tor really pushed The Unremembered: Book One of The Vault of Heaven, though I stumbled upon it by accident.  Apparently Tor decided Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet wasn't selling well enough, and decided not to put out a paperback for The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet).  (I wasn't so impressed by The Unremembered, but I broke down and bought The Price of Spring in hardcover, though I haven't gotten around to reading it yet -- though I liked the first three volumes fairly well.)

Giant Insects

Note: August 1, 2011 -- noticed the image of the coconut crab was not showing and fixed it. Sorry about that!

Giant insects in fantasy novels have always bothered me.  You don't see them a lot, but they do pop up now and again.  Unfortunately, one of the places they pop up is in my favorite fantasy series, the Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson (Gardens of the Moon and sequels) -- the quorl that the Moranth fly.  Thankfully, these play only a minor role in the scope of the series.

Another place I've seen them is the pedes in Glenda Larke's The Last Stormlord and Stormlord Rising.  (I should point out here that I mention these books in the same post as I do the Malazan books only because of the giant insect connection...Larke's books are not even close to being in the same class as Erikson's.  I'll review her next paperback in a couple of weeks with a litany of complaints, I'm sure.)  These insects are so freaking big, multiple people ride around on them.

Let's review a little bit of biology.  The biggest arthropod known on Earth is the coconut crab (image from Hoax-Slayer.com):



I believe the consensus is that this is about as big as coconut crabs get.  Insects are arthropods, and while insect respiration is perhaps more varied than we once realized, efficiency of oxygen transport is going to play a role in body size.  More important is the fact that there are mammals in the environment with similar (and larger) body sizes and more efficient body plans that can better utilize resources and survive extreme conditions.  In a fantasy world, this is also going to be the case.  (If there are people, or humanoids, or dogs/wolves, or horses, etc., there will be mammals competing with the arthropods.)  So there won't be giant insects because they'll die out; there's selective pressure for smaller body size when it comes to arthropods (FYI, all insects are arthropods but not all arthropods are insects -- spiders, crabs, etc. are also arthropods).  Oh yeah, and I have a Bachelor of Science degree in biology, so I do think about these sorts of things when I read a book.

You might argue that magic allows the insects to get big.  But that never seems to be implied when you encounter them in stories.  They're exploited, instead, as transport mechanisms, despite the fact that more efficient transport mechanisms for the environment (horses, camels) exist.

So seriously, don't use giant insects in a story just because you can.

Typos in Books

The New York Times recently had an online-only piece about typographical errors in books.  You can read the story here.  (Side note...I'm a print subscriber, Monday through Friday, so I get unlimited online access and I don't know if clicking this link will count against non-subscribers' monthly total.)

I don't think I agree with the author's assessment that good spellers are drawn to poetry and wordplay.  Why?  I've always been a good speller, and I hate poetry and puns.

Side note: being a good speller means not only having a good memory, but also knowing when you don't know something, and that you need to look it up.  I'm good at this, too.  Perhaps that makes me too hard on other people, but when you turn out something like this, I just have to hope you were in a hurry and not that you don't know the difference (courtesy of FailBlog):



I know, not exactly a typo. But there's no excuse for this (also from FailBlog):



Doing things in a hurry is never a good idea.  But one of the points of the New York Times piece is that publishers are in a hurry today.  That there's pressure to put out as many books as possible, especially with the emerging e-book market.

I just can't imagine not carefully reviewing, proofreading, and revising a manuscript before I sent it out the first time, let alone not checking the galley proofs carefully.  I mean, the finished product would reflect on me, as a person!  (I'm a little protective of my work, though, preferring not to show it until it's pretty polished.)