More Ragging on Terry Goodkind

I came across this during a web surfing session yesterday and thought I'd share.  You know, since I've kind of drifted away lately from the fantasy theme that this blog is supposed to have.

On Terry Goodkind and His Latest Self-Publishing Endeavor

Wow, someone saw The Law of Nines in hardcover at B&N for $2.99?  I feel ripped off for having paid a whole $5.  (Still haven't read it yet.  But thoroughly looking forward to ripping it to shreds.  And at this point, I've pretty much made up my mind not to buy any more of Goodkind's books.)

Also, getting the book to people within weeks of the final keystroke?  While still allowing time for editing?  That's just not possible.  Take it from someone who has actually completed a manuscript.  After I finished writing, I took another 8 months to edit.  Granted, it was my first time editing a completed novel-length manuscript, and I'm sure I'll get faster with more experience, but "weeks" is simply not enough time to do it right.

Speaking of Terry Goodkind, the cover of Faith of the Fallen was recently featured on Good Show Sir.  But in fairness, he didn't paint the picture (as far as I know).  Still, I always cringe a little when I see the cover of a book I own on that site.

Well, at any rate, I wash my hands with the guy.  He and Paul Ryan can go have a little Ayn Rand party together.  Let me know when and where and I'll be sure to be somewhere else.

Reading Outside of Genre Project - August 2012

I did the unthinkable this month for my reading outside of genre project.  I read NONFICTION.  Seriously.

This month's book was Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham.  (As opposed to the other Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, which I read a few months ago.)

My boyfriend recently read this month's pick and lent it to me.  If you are at all interested in human evolution, anthropology, etc., but don't have a strong scientific background, you will find this book to be pretty approachable.  I was able to anticipate the last chapter pretty early on, but I have a Ph.D. in biochemistry, enjoy cooking, have been a vegetarian for 19 years, and recently had a cat with a lot of GI tract problems.  So in addition to my educational background, I have been doing a lot of thinking, especially recently, about the topics covered by this book.  It was a little simpler than my usual nonfiction reading (patent applications, lately), and I breezed through it fairly quickly.

But I'm not here to write a review, because that's not really the point of this series of posts.  The point is to apply what I learn from reading non-fantasy books to writing (and reading) fantasy.  Couple of thoughts:

1. Good writing is still good writing, regardless of whether you're reading fiction or nonfiction.  Certain elements are going to be absent from a lot of nonfiction (e.g. dialogue), but variety of sentence structure, avoidance of repetition, etc. -- these are all still important.
2. If you are writing fantasy and thinking about a crazy diet as part of your world building process, consider it in light of what it would actually do to the people who consumed said diet.  If you're unable to maintain a healthy weight, or your reproductive capacity as a population is severely diminished, or you're lacking major nutrients like iron or B12, then it's probably not a sustainable diet.

Also, this book totally justifies my dislike of raw vegetables.  I maintain that they give me intestinal issues and I don't eat them (other than an occasional tiny restaurant salad).

I don't have as much to say about this book as I have for previous months.  Maybe I should read nonfiction more often -- I can't get bogged down in how the author screwed up the craft of writing fiction, if the author isn't writing fiction in the first place.  Might make me a little nicer for a day or two (just kidding, that's not likely).

(Fake) Reviews for Hire

I've seen a lot of stuff lately about fake reviews (on Amazon, or elsewhere) and reviews for hire.  So I thought I'd share.  This gets me riled up, at any rate.  It should make you mad, too.

First, The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy from the New York Times.  I'll admit to never using book reviews to judge whether or not to buy a book.  I mean, sometimes I could read the negative reviews and save myself the pain of paying for crap.  But I usually go with my instinct, and am always willing to take a chance on an unknown author (even with no reviews at all), as long as said author is traditionally-published.  I am not going down the route of purchasing self-published titles.

At any rate, I'm glad the website run by the dude in the Times story has been shut down (I clicked on the link and the domain is for sale).

I do read reviews for some things; e.g. when I wanted an external hard drive to back up my data from the lab and my manuscript, or when I wanted a new laser printer (got tired of inkjets jamming).  And perhaps because these things come from big corporations (Western Digital and Samsung, respectively), there's no need to pay for fake reviews (unlike with a self-published book).  I think.  I would imagine if anything, reviews of electronic equipment are biased towards the negative because the only people who are motivated to write reviews are the ones who had bad experiences.

At any rate, I've gone far off topic at this point and don't think I can recover.  So on to the next link:

Self Publishing, Lies, and Fake Amazon Reviews from the Best Fantasy Books blog.  I can tell this topic hits a nerve with Ben (the guy who wrote it), but the post makes a lot of points on topics I also frequently write about, here on this blog.  Not much more I can say about this because it's getting late and I'm tired and I spent a good chunk of the day reading the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure which is not exactly riveting stuff.  (Would actually make good bedtime reading if it wasn't thousands of pages long...just too damn big, or else a bunch of printed PDF pages and 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper everywhere.)

And here's an exchange between an author and some bloggers who want her to pay them to review her book (they say they can promise a good review -- before having received the product!).  And they get kind of nasty when she calls them on it, publicly.

So it's a nasty world out there.  You can trust my reviews, though.  I've only ever once received a free book in exchange for writing a review.  The review was mostly positive because it actually was a pretty good book, but there was some bad science and I mentioned that right alongside the praise.  I've never taken money for writing a review.  And I don't post them on Amazon (well, my Amazon account is registered under my real name and I don't want my real name appearing online in such forums -- even though I'm not looking for a job anymore).

Well, hopefully I will finally get to move into my office today.  Though the firm is on the 8th floor and one wall of my office is floor-to-ceiling windows.  Not cool, man, not cool.  I will keep the blinds down ALL DAY and I will never turn my chair around to look out the window.  But this post has digressed so far, at this point, that it's never getting back on track, so bye.

More Fantasy for Beginners

I've been doing some thinking lately (spurred on by a discussion in the Best Fantasy Books Forum) and I decided to add to my list of fantasy for beginners.

• The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper.  I vaguely remember encountering these as a child and liking them, and they had good re-read value during my adulthood.  Lots of Welsh/Celtic mythology, and tie-ins to the Arthurian legend.
• The Song of the Lioness and Daughter of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce.  I'll be honest, these are not my personal favorite books, and they're definitely YA.  (I may have mentioned them on one of my YA posts.  But YA is a good place to start reading fantasy.  Joe Abercrombie or George R.R. Martin or Mark Lawrence might scare you away entirely, if you're new to this.)  But back to Tamora Pierce.  She's apparently quite popular with the fan fiction set, and probably a better recommendation for female readers as opposed to male readers.  (Not that men and women shouldn't read the same books, I'm just saying, some books seem to have more female fans.)  Appropriate for teens, though there is some sex.  Lots of strong female characters.  Long-ish books, but as Pierce says in the acknowledgments for one of her books, J.K. Rowling showed everyone that young readers are capable of finishing long books.  I'd classify these as fairly traditional fantasy, with knights and quests and such.
• The Habitation of the Blessed and The Folded World by Catherynne M. Valente.  She's tough reading, uses a lot of figurative language and a very literary style.  But there's some wonderful imagery, and a clear knowledge of history (as well as some imaginative elements), and if you're looking to segue into fantasy from literary fiction, this might be a good stepping stone.  (She also has some titles which I believe are more YA oriented, if you want something that makes for slightly easier reading.)
• Riyria Revelations by Michael J. Sullivan.  These are fairly predictable but are easy reads and well-plotted and clearly thought out in advance, which is something I can't say for more established writers in the genre.  Since the series is finished, you won't be frustrated waiting for the next book to come out, either.

I'm sure there are others.  I'll come back to this topic every now and then as new books come out.  Feel free to suggest more in the comments.

Review - The Kingdom of Gods

The Kingdom of Gods is the final installment of N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy and follows The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Broken Kingdoms.

I really don't know where to begin with this one, which is often the case when I review books that I actually liked.  I have very little to say about editing issues, as I only noticed two main types: speaker attributions with adverbs and verbs other than "said," and the occasional "taller than him"-type of construction (as opposed to the grammatically correct "taller than he is").

I swear, half my reviews lately have been long lists of bullet points with all sorts of problems with the stories, the writing, etc.  I'm at a loss for words when I don't have that to go on.

Seriously, though, why don't I start with a teeny bit of plot summary, because the blurb on the back of the book has almost zero to do with the actual content.  (Also, the "Gods and mortals.  Power and love.  Death and revenge.  She will destroy them all."  from the front.  No idea what that's referring to, but certainly nothing in this book.)

This volume is set some centuries after Broken; the Arameri family is still in power, though diminished in numbers and forced to resort to incest for breeding purposes.  The gods who were once slaves to the Arameri have been free for some time, and the face of society has been changing.  Arameri power, once absolute, is now tenuous, and Northerners are mounting a rebellion.  Nonetheless, the viewpoint character for all but one chapter is Sieh, the trickster, the god of childhood with whom we've become acquainted in previous volumes.

Sieh befriends a pair of Arameri children (the twins Dekarta and Shahar) and in an incident which he struggles to explain for a good part of the book, he becomes a mortal and subject to rather quick aging.  Despite the best efforts of the other gods, including Yeine (a minor character, really) and Nahadoth (really not much of a presence at all), no one can figure out what's wrong with him.  When Shahar attempts to use Sieh as a sire for half-god children, he gets disgusted and leaves Sky (the Arameri palace) behind, taking up employment alongside some other godlings.

One more detail and then I'll move into some real analysis.  Arameri family members have been dying and it seems to be associated with some peculiar masks which their bodies are found to be wearing.  Arameri scriveners are frantically scrambling to figure out the secret of these masks, which can actually be traced to the Northerners and their rebellion.  I mention this because the masks become important later.

So, Sieh as the viewpoint character.  I actually rather liked Jemisin's attempt at a god as a viewpoint character.  I frequently complain about gods in fantasy novels, but that's usually when the gods are distant, not involved in everyday life.  (Steven Erikson's gods often walk among mortals, ally with mortals, have children with mortals, even.  They're very much a part of people's lives, and they're characters we've come to know.  They're not abstract concepts, for the most part.  So I can put up with his gods.  And I can put up with Jemisin's for the same reason.)

What I think Jemisin does really well is make Sieh seem alien.  Different.  Immortal, and thus not having the concerns and morality of mortals.  On the one hand, he's our POV character for 95% of the book, and we're inside his head, and he's largely sympathetic.  We've come to know him in the previous volumes, and we want him to get back to his normal state.  On the other hand, his ideas about sexuality (and about who is an appropriate sexual partner), his ideas about death (and the killing of mortals), and so forth, are different.  Other.  Now, he doesn't act on his killing impulses, but we learn that he did in the past.  That he even collected the bones of Arameri who abused him.

The other characters pretty much take a back seat to Sieh.  They have complexities, but most of them really are minor characters, even Shahar and Dekarta.  As I read in one of the Amazon reviews of this book, they exist to more fully flesh out Sieh, and we do learn a lot about him in the context of his relationships with others.  I found Shahar less sympathetic than Dekarta, but that was probably because Sieh was angry with her for a good portion of the book.  Shahar goes along with her mother's plan to manipulate Sieh and try to conceive a half-godling child.  (I guess it doesn't work, because she doesn't have a child when Sieh reencounters her later.)  But she does seem to have a protective instinct with respect to Dekarta, and we're told she loves her mother (this isn't as well-developed as I'd like), and she does make a sensible and politically-expedient decision at the end of the book.

Dekarta is viewed with suspicion by many and after the incident in which Sieh loses his immortality, Dekarta is sent away to become a scrivener.  I gather the suspicion has something to do with Dekarta's skin tone, even though he is Shahar's twin.  Honestly, I'm rather unclear on skin tones and hair color and texture in this book, not sure whether the people are black, white, mixed, or something else.  I always pictured Yeine from the previous books as a light-skinned black woman, for example, but I don't know if that's accurate at all or not.  And I pictured Oree from the second book as a darker-skinned black woman, but again, no idea if it's accurate.  I have no idea what Shahar is actually supposed to look like.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, for race and ethnicity to be a bit fluid, it just made it a bit harder for me to understand what was going on with Dekarta.  (I gather he was also something of a scapegoat for the loss-of-immortality incident, which apparently caused a lot of physical damage to Sky, as well.)  Anyway, Dekarta works really hard and becomes about the best scrivener possible.  I'm not sure of his motivation, unless it's self-preservation.  I wish that had been explored a bit further.

I mentioned sexuality, and you need to be prepared for that if you read this book.  There are some sex scenes, not too graphic in detail (in my opinion).  There are allusions to the sexual abuse of children (when we get glimpses into Sieh's past).  There are suggestions of incestuous relationships among the gods, and there are both gay and straight couples and sexual encounters in The Kingdom of Gods.  I thought it was done appropriately; it was necessary to understand the characters without being unduly titillating.

Overall, I was quite happy with the book; I thought events unfolded at a nice pace.  I thought the sub-plots were interesting and well-integrated into the story (and thankfully, loose ends were tied up by the time the book was over).  I also thought the sub-plots (e.g. regarding Ahad and Glee) incorporated appropriate amounts of information from the previous volumes without beating it over the head of the readers.  You really will get a lot more out of The Kingdom of Gods if you read the previous two volumes in the series.

Couple of things I wasn't so happy with.  The Darren society has never seemed realistic to me.  In this society (which we were first introduced to with Yeine, who grew up there), women are the warriors and men stay home to care for the children.  It's an interesting idea, and I don't have a problem with societies that incorporate some female warriors (e.g. the Aiel in the Wheel of Time books).  But I think it's just a biological impossibility for a warrior society to allow only women to fight.  I don't see how it would develop from a more primitive culture, because biology makes men bigger and stronger.  While matrilineal societies have existed in the past (and still today), matriarchal societies have never existed.  There's a difference.  (Matrilineal societies make a good deal of sense -- you always know who the mother of a child is, but paternity can be questionable sometimes.  Read Malinowski's Argonauts Of The Western Pacific for one example.)

The other biological imperative for a society without baby formula is for women to nurse children.  And of course, there's the whole pregnancy thing.  If most of your women are warriors, it stands to reason that they're not nursing or pregnant.  A good deal of the reproductive capacity of society is lost, to the point that a population might not actually be able to sustain itself.  Jemisin tries to explain this away, but it doesn't really work for me.  There's a limit to the number of children one woman can nurse.  But enough about that.  The Darren society is relatively minor in this book.

With respect to the masks, which we see in Darr, I really liked that they were sold as mementos for tourists, and brought back across the world to the area surrounding Sky.  The threat was spread to people's very homes and places of business without them knowing it, and this had been going on for years.  It was impossible to stop.

I guess the big thing about the plot that bugs me is Kitr, the chief villain.  He's apparently Sieh's son by Enefa, the original mother goddess whose place Yeine has taken.  For some reason, Enefa hid Kitr away and made Sieh forget about him.  There's an argument made elsewhere in the book that Sieh would lose his status as god of childhood if he knew he had a child.  So perhaps this is why Enefa hid Kitr away.  Anyway, Kitr is mad and wants to destroy the world, and he's the one really in control of the whole thing with the masks.  He's not afraid to kill mortals to give the masks power.  I felt like Kitr wasn't well-integrated into the story, I guess.  We knew the Arameri family from before, we knew Ahad (or knew of him, or his origins), we knew Nahadoth and Yeine and Itempas, we knew Glee's mother, we knew the Darren people.  Kitr just came out of nowhere.  Sometimes you can tell if an author has something planned all along, and you can see the hints dropped in earlier books.  I couldn't do that with Kitr.  Granted, it's been awhile since I read the previous books, but I guess the whole "forget" thing that Enefa implanted in Sieh was supposed to explain why we had no clue as to Kitr's existence.  I just wasn't feeling this aspect of the book so well.

If I had one other complaint, it would be that during the climax battle, I couldn't always tell what was going on.  The rules of mortality and immortality weren't always clear.  At one point, Yeine is described as having fallen.  But then later she's back fighting.  Itempas's heart is removed by Kitr (I think, I was a little unclear here), and even though he's been confined to mortal form for his past actions, he comes back to life as well?  Sometimes actual physical occurrences were also hard to follow.

Anyway, though, I liked The Kingdom of Gods overall and would recommend the whole trilogy.  I love it when I can actually think about ideas and story construction and plot and world building and so forth, and not get fixated on spelling and grammar.  (It doesn't hurt when the story is generally compelling and ties in well to the rest of the series!)

Be Nice to Bloggers

From Catherine Ryan Hyde's blog:

An Open Letter to Authors

It's a good post, and I'm linking to it now, even though it's over a year old, in the hopes of getting it a new round of publicity.  There's some important advice in there.

I recently wrote about cranky authors and how they may or may not stop by blogs to read reviews.  I've never actually had an author leave a comment on my blog, or try to harass me online.  (I've had one or two follow me back on Twitter, and I've had a few links from their blogs back to my own.)

And yeah, I'm not a published author *yet.*  But one day I hope to be.  In the meantime, I have a rather large body of work available on the web.  Criticize it to your heart's content.  I don't care.  If I come across your criticism, and I think you're a moron, I might say something about you.  But if you look at any of the (few) comments on this blog, you'll see that I approve everything.  (Haven't actually gotten any spam comments yet, though.  Too low-profile for that, I guess.)  If I don't agree, I'll post back.  But you have a right to your opinion.  And until I find a publisher, this blog *is* my body of work.  Say what you want about it.

Sometimes I screw up.  Maybe I'm tired when I write a post, and I don't finish a thought, or I get sidetracked when trying to make a point.  Call me on it.  I'll try to finish the thought.  (Though I may go off on a different tangent.)  I figure it's good practice for dealing with criticism when/if my book gets into print.

Are You Ready to Self-Publish?

First, a link:

3 Questions to Ask before You Jump on the Indie Publishing Bandwagon

Some good advice, I think.  But it doesn't go far enough.  For example, Amanda Hocking is cited as an example of someone who was professional enough to hire an editor.  Um, have you read some of the reviews of her books on Amazon?  There was no editor involved.  Yes, you SHOULD hire an editor.  And you should have someone code your book for the various electronic platforms.  You should find some readers who are not your friends and are not members of your family (in other words, people who will be completely honest because they don't give a fuck if they hurt your feelings).

Anne R. Allen, the author of the linked post, also makes a very good point when she says that you shouldn't self-publish because you're afraid of the rejections that traditionally-published authors inevitably encounter as they submit themselves and their work to scrutiny by publishers, agents, and professional editors.  If you can't handle criticism at this stage, you certainly can't handle negative reviews.  (Related note: an editor might hand you back a document with red pen on EVERY PAGE.  You can either take that as the constructive criticism that it is, and make some changes -- you don't have to agree with every single one, but if you're arguing with 50% of them, you're in for a rude awakening -- or you can go cry in a corner.)

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend going the self-publishing route.  If you get rejected by a bunch of publishers and agents, either (1) you're not choosing appropriately where to submit or (2) your book really sucks and everyone can see it but you.

Remember: if you have any respect for your (potential) readers at all -- or for yourself, for that matter -- go the extra mile, go through the gatekeepers.  Your name is going to be on this and you want to be ready for prime time.

Another "How to Write Better" Post

It's been awhile since I've been to StumbleUpon so I decided to check whether they have any new material for me.  I found this today:

How to Write Better: 7 Instant Fixes

I like it (unlike some writing advice I find on the web).  Mostly because it advocates terse writing that makes sparing use of adjectives, adverbs, color words, and other excessive description.  Folks, you really DON'T need to describe everything.  If it's important to the story, put it in.

If you're really proud of a setting you've created, though, resist the urge to describe it in detail.  If your hero goes into a room and retrieves a piece of paper from the top of a desk, we don't need to hear about:

• the view from the window
• what kind of wood the desk is made of
• whether there's a fire going in the fireplace
• that there are secret panels in the desk drawers
• that the room is brightly-lit (or dark, unless it's so dark that the hero stubs his toe and dies Jack Daniel-style of an infection at some point in the future)
• that there's a painting over the mantel 
• descriptions of all the other items on the desk (unless they make the paper hard to find)
• the dimensions of the room down to the foot/inch/meter/cubit/whatever

A case could be made for modifying some of these conditions, if they actually have bearings on future events.  If the person isn't supposed to have the paper from the desk, and is sneaking into the room secretly, well, that changes things.  (For example, perhaps the person whose desk it is, is doing something in clear view on the lawn which can be seen out the window.)

But for the most part, just lose the distractions and tell the damned story.

Failed Publicity Strategies

So you've written a "book."  You've sent it to a vanity press or a POD publisher, or you've uploaded it to Amazon or B&N or some other site (I really don't know about where to buy e-books because I don't buy e-books).  You sit back and wait, and you don't get any purchases.  So, you decide to market it.

Here are some tactics I've seen that don't work:

• I've said it before, but Twitter.  Seriously.  I have about 50 "authors" who followed me on Twitter in the hopes that I'd follow back.  I did, out of politeness.  But I don't pay any attention at all to their incessant tweets about their books.
• Press releases.  I can spot a press release aggregator website from a mile away.  Almost none of this stuff EVER gets picked up by mainstream media, other than the occasional small-town newspaper.  Don't waste your time or your money.
• Forums.  Don't join a forum, post once, and then never show up again.  Regular users are on to you.  They might look at your Amazon page and poke fun at you.  But they won't buy your book.  (On a somewhat related note, don't go to Amazon discussion forums and recommend your own book.  Unless you stick to the "meet the authors" thread.)
• Amazon reviews by people with the same last name.  We can tell they're your relatives.  So of course we're not going to take their opinions seriously.

Why Does This Guy Keep Getting Attention?

Terry Brooks's Strange Tales Aren't Limited to the Realm of Shannara from Wired

Sure, he's got a lot of bestsellers, and a new book coming out.  Sure, he started his career as a writer the same year I was born (so he's been around for awhile).  And he's apparently got at least a couple of enthusiastic fans.  But he's NOT A GOOD WRITER.  His character names are all over the map (and stupid...Pe Ell?  Rimmer Dall?  Cinnaminson?  Flick?).  He has a poor understanding of evolution (I know, it's the science again -- but this stuff matters).  His first book was a slavish copy of Tolkien and he basically rewrote that same story a whole bunch more times.

It's sad that he gets so much attention when some really good writers don't.

Also, I would love to get my hands on some of the work he did on the manuscripts he said had to be abandoned.  If they were too terrible to be published, and the work he's publishing now is decidedly sub-par, I wonder how awful those discarded pages would be?

Running Together

I came somewhat late to the fantasy-reading game.  So a lot of series had multiple volumes, or were even already completed (yeah, really).  The way I typically read, I pick up books in a series one after the other until I'm through with everything that's published.  What this means, in practice, is that if you asked me whether I preferred The Shadow Rising (Wheel of Time #4) to Lord of Chaos (Wheel of Time #6), I would have no fucking idea.  I remember events from the series as a whole, but not which book they appeared in.  Well, except for maybe the first one.  And even then, I'm not clear on the dividing line between the first and second books.

Other series I have this problem with:

• Glen Cook's Black Company books.  I bought them as the omnibuses that came out the last few years.  I remember the basic groupings into larger volumes, but not individual titles.
• L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s Recluce books.  In addition to these books having been published out of chronological order for the world they're set in, many of them have the words "order," "chaos," and/or some reference to colors in the title.  I remember some of the protagonists (actually a lot of them -- Lerris, Justen, Dorrin, Kharl, Lorn, etc.) but not which books they appeared in.
• The first four A Song of Ice and Fire books by George R.R. Martin.  I'm down on the first one, I guess, because of the TV series.  I remember A Dance with Dragons because I reported on it on this blog, as I read it.  #s 2, 3, and 4, though?  No idea which is which.
• The middle Malazan Book of the Fallen volumes.  I loved these, don't get me wrong.  But I read the first three of them several times each, then ran out of time for re-reading.  At least the titles are semi-descriptive and I remember a few big events from each.  If I think about it for a long while.
• The Thomas Covenant books.  I don't even know the titles of these, to be honest.  (Read them in omnibuses.)  I know that at least for the first chronicles, the three books represented three different trips by Covenant to the Land.

I'm sure there are others.  These are the first ones I thought of.  My cats are meowing to get out of their respective feeding rooms right now so I'll post this and go deal with that.

Destroying Books

I like the blog Awful Library Books quite a bit.  I haven't spent much time in public libraries in a long time, and I'm not a librarian or library science student or anything like that.  But what libraries do with old books, to make room for new ones, is something I had never thought about before, and I find it fascinating.  While I personally would never give up even the books in the worst condition from my personal library, I completely understand the need for weeding in public libraries.  Old moldy nonfiction books from the 1960s are unlikely to get checked out, for example.  And libraries don't have unlimited space.  So I'm okay with weeding.  (If you don't know what that means, explore Awful Library Books.)

But then there is another category of removing books from a collection (probably not best done with library books) -- making crafts out of them.  Apparently, not even very good crafts, judging by the comments on the post linked to in the previous sentence.  Look, if you buy a book, or set of books, and you want to rip them up and do whatever with them, you paid for them and it's your right to do so.  But if you buy a new or close-to-new set of books and then destroy them to make some treasure box cover, well, that's just wasteful.  I understand repurposing books that will never see use.  Maybe they're falling apart or something.  Maybe you inherited them and have no interest in the subject matter.  But if they're in good shape, you should consider donating them.  If you Google "book donation," a whole lot of links pop up.  You could:

• Donate (newer) books to help educate people in Africa
• Donate books to help fund literacy programs
• Donate books to a library

I happen to think that books are more than just decoration.  What they contain -- the stories and ideas -- is so much more valuable than just a nice set of matching spines and colors on the shelf (if you like that matching crap, go here).  I haven't read every book on my shelves, but I've read most of them.  And I'm working my way through the rest as time permits (also, my books don't match on the shelves at all...mismatched editions, differently-sized hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and mass market paperbacks all mixed in together).

Okay, I'm getting sleepy so I'd better stop writing now.  Hopefully there'll be some more inspired posts this weekend because I'll actually have time to write.

What the Stars Actually Mean

Sometimes posts just write themselves.  Thanks, XKCD:

Writing for a Living

So I've mentioned my new job a couple of times this week already.  I'm basically a patent agent in training, and will specialize in chemistry-related patents (with some biological stuff).  I've been given a couple of technologies to look over, and I'm pleased to say that I understand the science, and that it makes broad use of my background in courses ranging from histology to microbiology to biophysical and analytical chemistry, as well as my own research experience.

What I don't understand is the legalese.  Words apparently don't mean the same things in patent-related documents as they do in normal English.  I had to look so many words up today that I just KNOW and understand in other contexts.

I found myself staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes, trying to decipher its meaning.  It's the same feeling I get when reading philosophy, but at least there, the words usually mean what I'm accustomed to them meaning.

I hope this doesn't affect my writing!  (Still in the black hole, it's been a little over two months now.  I come home every day dreading seeing my self-addressed stamped envelope in the mailbox -- I figure they'd call or e-mail if they had good news.)  I had to prioritize what I was actually going to do at night, now that I have less time, and writing (fiction) and P90X are at the top of the list (after the necessary things like pet care).

Anyhow, I'm spending so much time at work (never thought I'd say THAT) that I am going to have to start banking posts over weekends again.  And my forum participation will drop precipitously.  That's just the way things are going to have to go.  (Welcome to the real world, I know.)

I Got Nothing

So today (well, yesterday -- I'm writing this Monday night for Tuesday posting) was my first day of my first real job ever.  I consider it an accomplishment that I've made it nearly to age 35 (well, I'll be 35 in October) before reaching this milestone in my life.  (I'm one of those "professional student" types.)

Who knew sitting at a desk all day was so exhausting?

Anyway, I can't think of a single thing to write about.  Had a couple of abortive starts but wasn't really inspired to continue with any of them.  (Let me remind you all, by the way, that suggestions for posts are always welcome.)

Here are some random links:

• Coursera Free Online Fantasy and Science Fiction Course (started in July but its existence may be a clue to future offerings)
• Are online courses more susceptible to cheating problems? (wherein the above-mentioned course is cited as an example of an online course with plagiarism problems)

While it might be fun to participate in such an online course, I just don't have the time.  For those of you with a few hours to kill, well, now you know.

Both Sides of Indie Publishing

I have been a little harsh lately, when it comes to self-publishing.  I found the following (rather long) piece about whether or not to go the traditional route, and thought I'd share it:

Hurry.  Up.  Wait.

For those of you who found it tl;dr: some highlights.  Mixed with my own pontificating on the subject.  Hey, you came to my blog.  Deal with it.

• A bit more optimistic about sales figures for indie (read: self-) publishing than other sources I've come across.  With the caveat that it could take years, or even decades, to actually reap success.  While this might sound nice for those considering the indie route, I don't know how big the data set is.  The Kindle has only been around since 2007.  While e-books are overtaking print books in many categories, and while I think a lot of self-published stuff is more likely to be purchased in e-book format, I don't think it's fair to say that you'll make $1000/month (to use an example from the linked-to post) on your titles 10 years in the future, because the e-book revolution really hasn't been going on that long, and while print-on-demand and vanity presses have certainly existed for longer, the world of book marketing has changed, and quite recently at that.  So the income figures may be too optimistic.  (And they assume that you've outlaid all the money up front for good editors, jacket design, cover art, etc.  I think most self-published authors don't, possibly because they don't have the money for it.  If people think your writing is shit, it won't sell $1000/month ever.)
• I really didn't know how long it took from acceptance of your book by a publisher to getting it to print.  So I appreciate the estimates there, assuming they're accurate.  That can be a good thing, though.  If it takes 1-5 years per book, and I write about 1 book every 13 months, I could have a couple of sequels ready to go by the time the first one comes out.  It might mean I'm pushing 40 before I see my name in print, but hey, I got a good job last week.  I can wait.  And I find that the act of writing (and participating in writing communities online) is rewarding in itself.
• The writer of the piece definitely has a bias.  But just because she's receiving income from her self-published stuff, doesn't mean you should expect that.  If someone looks at your sample chapters on Amazon and sees that you're functionally illiterate, you won't make any sales.  You won't be getting these monthly checks.  At least she says not to promote.  Because like I've said 3 or 4 times before, I DON'T PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR TWEETS.
• The asking for donations at the end of the post turns me off.  (I thought she was making a nice income selling her indie-published works...)

Did I mention my new job is at an IP law firm?  Patent stuff, not literary stuff.  Because my background is in science.  But it might be possible to make connections in the industry and get an agent that way, instead of the spray-and-pray approach that a lot of people seem to take.  (Also, if I keep flipping back between referring to "today" and "tomorrow," well, I'm writing this on Sunday night but posting it Monday morning, because even though my new job is super close to my condo -- I lucked out there -- I figure it would be bad to show up late because I started writing a blog post and didn't keep track of the time.)

Critical Critics

I am, by no means, a professional critic.  People don't pay me to write reviews (I mean, I make about three cents a day from AdSense, which hardly counts).  I do what I do out of love for the fantasy genre.  It's actually quite a lot of time to spend for little return.

I wrote the other day about cranky authors who ask that negative reviews be taken off blogs.  I've never actually been asked to take a review down, and I wouldn't, at any rate.  As long as I don't lie, and write my interpretation of the book as I see it, I figure I stand on solid ground.

Some authors can be quite nasty in response to negative reviews.  I thoroughly enjoyed this recent piece in the New York Times, which includes some examples of said responses:

A Critic's Case for Critics Who Are Actually Critical

Positive reviews are a dime a dozen.  Or possibly more expensive if you pay for them with advance reading copies and/or actual payments.  And, truth be told, I almost never read positive reviews on Amazon.com, though I regularly read negative ones.  So many of the positive ones are shills, or one sentence in length, or full of gushing and effusive praise, that they have no merit as tools for evaluation.

Sure, you'll find idiotic negative reviews, as well, that say "there was no plot and the characters were flat" without giving examples, or the ever-popular "I couldn't finish this book."  (Or, alternatively, "I threw it across the room" or "I deposited it directly into the garbage can where it belongs.")  But the negative reviews tell you so much more about the book.  If the reviewer complains that the characters never seem to be in any danger, or that plot devices are recycled repeatedly, or that the book is riddled with typos, or that the author seems to have something against women, well, those points probably have some basis in fact.  And if those are things that bother me, as a reader, I can stay away from the book.  If they don't bother me, well, I might still be able to enjoy it.

Not every book is great.  Not every book deserves to be published.  In fact, the vast majority of them probably don't.  (I say this as an aspiring novelist; yesterday marked two months exactly since I dropped my first manuscript in the mail.)  And if you are writing something and putting your work out there, well, you had better have a thick skin.  Because people like me will get ahold of your work and rip it to shreds.

If I should be so lucky as to get a publisher?  Well, I probably just won't read reviews on blogs.  Or Amazon.  I think.  Morbid curiosity might win out.  But I'll never ask anyone to take a review down.  You can't please everyone and if you try, your work becomes a hollow shell that no longer represents you as an author.  (Be true to yourself.  But do please pay attention to your editor, at least.  Or you'll deserve every snarky comment that you get about misuse of words, unnatural dialogue, and tropes, just to name a few.)

Think of Your Audience

I've been thinking about my review of The Sword of Angels by John Marco and remembered a few points that I wanted to bring up and that I just forgot in the long complaint that review became.

• Don't have male characters refer to other male characters as "my sweet friend" unless you're also implying that they bat for the same team as Ringil Eskiath.  Although I can't picture Gil talking like that, actually.  So I will amend that statement to say don't do that unless your characters are gay and effeminate.  (Note: this is not implying anything homophobic.  I don't mind if there are gay characters.  But making a character gay doesn't give you a pass to make him or her act stupid.  Gay characters need to be as realistic and well-thought-out as straight characters.)
• Don't watch Looney Tunes and then write.  Or you might end up having a Yosemite Sam moment and using a word like "varmints" when "vermin" or possibly "rodents" would have been more appropriate.

I know, more "do nots."  But some fantasy authors screw so many things up that "do nots" are, well, necessary.

But back to my original point.  Your setting may be exotic, remote, semi-historical, or whatever.  But your readers are not.  They exist here and now, in the 21st century.  So tailor your language to them.  That's not to say there's only one correct style, or that grandiose and/or formal language can never be used.  Just make sure it adds something to the story to have characters talking or thinking that way.  (It usually works for Stephen R. Donaldson, for example.)  And try to avoid words listed in the dictionary as being archaic.  Recent ones I've read are "bedight" and "leman."  (Just being able to tell from context what they mean doesn't justify their use in prose.)

(It doesn't hurt to keep in mind that your readers are not all necessarily living in English-speaking countries, and even among English-speaking countries, the idioms can be quite different.  So don't get too exotic when it comes to figures of speech -- expressions which probably wouldn't be the same in a fantasy world where English isn't spoken, anyway.  For example, "bat for the same team" used in the first bullet point in this review may not make sense to everyone.  Because baseball doesn't have that much of a following outside the western hemisphere and Japan.  It certainly wouldn't make sense in a fantasy world without baseball.  Give me a break, it's Sunday morning and I'm tired because I had weird dreams all night last night.  Must be anxiety about starting my new job tomorrow.)

Self-Published Authors and Promotion

So, you've written a book.  You've sent it off to half a dozen publishers and/or agents, and gotten no takers.  You really think your work deserves to be in print, and so you decide to go the self-publishing route.  There are a LOT of people like you out there.  Often, they reek of desperation.  I could not tell you how many Twitter followers I get who are JUST LIKE YOU.  They self-publish (maybe e-books, maybe print-on-demand, maybe vanity press) and then they don't get very many sales.  Because, with a few exceptions, self-published books DON'T SELL.  Maybe 100-150 copies (I recently linked to a story that quoted that figure), at most.

So, you wake up and decide you need to do some marketing.  You think, "Aha!  Twitter!"  And you go on Twitter and find other people who have book blogs (like I do) or who are aspiring writers (like I am), and you incessantly send out Tweets about your book and how great it is and how it's ONLY $2.99 ON THE KINDLE STORE RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE.  Just so you know, I follow back out of politeness, but I don't actually pay attention to anything you have to say.

Here are a couple of links about the mistakes self-published authors make:

6 biggest mistakes of self-published authors
Book Promotion for Self-Published Authors: A Waste of Time?

If you're promoting, that's time you're spending doing something other than writing.  (According to the first link, you might not even know how to write, and you probably don't even realize it.)  And it may be the case that by focusing all your efforts on marketing your first book, that you don't get around to finishing the second manuscript.  If people like your first book, and you don't have a second ready to go pretty soon, they may lose interest.  You're not George R.R. Martin, after all.  People will put up with a lot more crap from someone like him, than they will from you.

I linked to this speech in a comment the other day, but I think it ought to be said again in an actual post:

You're not special

Face it, rejection is a part of life.  And if you get rejected more than a handful of times (assuming you've chosen appropriate markets to submit to), they you're probably not ready for prime time.  You can self-publish and I might well mock you on this blog (and I won't be alone).  Or you can join a writing group or hire an editor or participate on a website like Book Country and get feedback from other writers online (anonymously, if you wish).  If you're writing because you actually like to write, you'll enjoy the process whether or not you ever get picked up by a publisher.  If you're writing because you think you ought to be a famous author and make a living writing novels, well, don't quit your day job.

Lazy Post

I don't think I'll have a lot of time to write in here today.  Two cats to the vet, grocery shopping, and my boyfriend's parents are in town.  And I've got to find time to do my P90X and yoga for the day.  But here's something for you.  On a superficial level, I thought this was funny:



Sure, you can analyze it as literature and complain about the "it was all a dream" aspect.  But I don't think that's the point.  (Which is why I'm not going to critique the writing, including the overuse of the word "strange" in the third paragraph.  That's a word with a lot of synonyms, folks...)

About the Author

So I was trying to think of a topic for this blog post and I went to Google news, where I have some customized sections set up.  I saw this in a story preview:

"Nina Berry, born in Hawaii, resides in Hollywood by way of Chicago, where she threw her first snowball and earned a Master's degree in film and TV, which has nothing to do with the snowball."

(Here is the link to the story in question, by the way.)

I find this a little obnoxious because of the "threw her first snowball" thing and it made me think back to "about the author" sections in books that made impressions on me.  Here's a selection, from my bookshelves:

First, the obnoxious (and please remember, my opinion of the "about the author" section has nothing to do with my opinion of the author's books):

Catherynne M. Valente.."lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner, two dogs, an enormous cat, and an accordion."

C.S. Friedman..."shares her home in Northern Virginia with several cats -- including one who insists on helping with the typing -- and numerous tidbits of antique clothing."

So why do I find these obnoxious?  It's not the cats (after all, I have cats, myself).  It's the mention of strange possessions.  The attempt to be cute.  I don't care for it.  (Let's see if I can do this for myself...Sneaky Burrito is a Harvard graduate who also has a Ph.D. in chemistry.  She's a borderline animal hoarder and refuses to eat white flour or high fructose corn syrup; she has been a vegetarian for 19 years.  She shares her home with a six-foot long green iguana, a Rottweiler, four cats, a tortoise, a guinea pig, and 17 birds. -- See?  I sound like an ass and a weirdo when I write this way about myself.  All of it's true, by the way.  Except the animal hoarding part; my pets are well-cared for and receive regular veterinary attention.)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.  Here's a funny one:

Quote from Glen Cook: "Unlike most writers, I have not had strange jobs like chicken plucking and swamping out health bars.  Only full-time employer I've ever had is General Motors."

And one that creeps me out, though it's mostly because of the picture, which, unfortunately, I can't share here:

"Terry Goodkind lives in the Western United States."

(I guess it creeps me out because he just looks like a militia member ready to scream about how you can't take his guns or Ruby Ridge or something.  Side note: damn, Ruby Ridge was 20 years ago?  Now that makes me feel old.)

Feel free to share your own favorites (or un-favorites) in the comments.

Oops

I realized it was noon and I hadn't posted yet.  It's one of those "life gets in the way" kind of days.  I got a job offer yesterday, went home and did the figuring about whether or not to take it (it's one of those base salary + billable hours deals), and decided to go for it.  They want me to start Monday but I hadn't yet informed the people at school and I think I pissed off some of said people in the process (long story that I won't get into here).  But I've got to look out for myself first, you know?  And finding a job in this job market, close to my house, with good pay and opportunities for advancement, which is actually appropriate for the advanced degree I recently obtained, after only about four months of serious searching, is a pretty good deal.

Anyway, to make this post at least marginally about writing, I thought I'd share this link:

50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills

I haven't clicked a lot of the links but it appears to be one of the better lists of this type that I've encountered on the web (no listing of Google services, for example -- I think listing Blogger, Google Docs, etc. as writing resources is just lazy).  During a quick scroll up and down the page, I found word frequency counters, grammar tips, etc.  Definitely something to bookmark if you write or are thinking about writing.

Self-Publishing: Still Not a Good Deal

Okay, a qualification to the post's title: whether or not you should self-publish your book depends on your goals.  The common example of wanting only a couple dozen copies of a family history is a good enough reason to self-publish, if you are willing to invest the money.  And the costs can be substantial, as laid out in the following article from this morning's New York Times:

The Joys and Hazards of Self-Publishing on the Web

So what's your goal?  Is it just to see your book in print (or on the Kindle or Nook or whatever)?  Or is it actually to make a name for yourself as an author, possibly even earn a little money?

Sure, if you have a spare $5,000 or $10,000 burning a hole in your pocket, and you want to see your name in print, go for it.  Most of us don't have that kind of money.  In fact, many of us are living paycheck-to-paycheck or supplementing with nearly-maxed-out credit cards or sometimes even selling our own stuff on eBay (although in about an hour I'm going to discuss a job offer, for real -- as a 34-year-old with 3 bachelor's degrees and a PhD, I'm supposed to be in that full-employment group...but I digress).

You could do the Kickstarter thing and maybe come up with enough to pay for all the editing and cover design.  If you go that route, I'd advise hiring someone to help you format your work for the various electronic distribution platforms.  I once read that if you don't have a Kindle (or iPad, or whatever) and absolutely love it and use it all the time, then you're really not qualified to do the formatting of your own book for a Kindle.  It's not just "press a button and everything magically converts," I gather.  Although I don't have an e-reader so I don't know this for a fact.  But I see a lot of complaints about Kindle formatting issues in Amazon reviews, so it is a real problem.  (Especially in the early days, when there was a rush to put as many titles on Kindle as possible.)

My own manuscript has now been in the "black hole" for 59 days.  Another month or two and I should hear something.  If it gets rejected, well, on to the next publisher.  (If it gets rejected 3 or 4 times, well, I've got some ideas or I can post a bit on Book Country and get feedback.)  If it gets accepted, well, then, I'll have a team of professionals to help me make it a polished product on every platform, and a marketing team.  Not that I expect to slack in the marketing area, but Twitter is full of small-time authors trying to self-promote.

Bottom line: if you want to sell lots of copies of your book, self-publishing is not the way to go.  For every E.L. James, Amanda Hocking, or Michael J. Sullivan, there are thousands of people whose work doesn't get a bit of attention.  Even if it is more deserving (at least in the case of James or Hocking...Sullivan was all right, at least).

Review - The Sword of Angels

My first thought upon finishing The Sword of Angels by John Marco was, "oh, what a relief!"  This book was, at 980 pages, far too long.  It's not the sheer number of pages that gets to me, as I made it through To Green Angel Tower, after all.  It's the terrible, terrible writing.

What makes the writing so bad?  Well, how about some specific examples:

• Inconsistencies.  Ruana (Gilwyn's Akari) can see things, like whether Salina is alive, but isn't allowed to tell Gilwyn.  Later, though, Malator (Lukien's Akari) gives Lukien all sorts of clues about where the Devil's Armor is.  And Kahldris (the Akari in the Devil's Armor) not only tells Thorin lots of stuff, but reaches out and interferes in the world.  (All of this "I can tell, but I cannot tell you" stuff is irritating, as well.)  The rule seems to be that the Akari hide information when it needs to be hidden to advance the story, and otherwise they tell their people all kinds of things.
• More POV switches.  We'll be in one of the main POV characters' heads (say, Jazana).  Then Marco will start in describing some minor character, switch to his head to reveal one small detail about his intent, and then go back to Jazana in the next paragraph.  Careful editing would get rid of this problem.  (It is NOT a third-person omniscient style of narration.  It's third-person limited that gets fucked up somewhat frequently.)
• Characters getting out of character.  Jazana says "I didn't want this war any more than you did."  Only, she's the one who drove the army towards Liiria.  So in fact, she did want the war.  (Maybe it didn't turn out how she intended, but she was the instigator.)
• Redundancy.  In dialogue, in narrative description.  Cut the redundancy and cut 1/3 of the book.  An example.  "I have no beard.  It does not grow now."  Are both of these sentences really needed?  Couldn't they be combined?
• Grammar.  "This is her."  And so forth.  This isn't actually the worst problem here, I didn't even notice as many who/whom problems as in Armor.  But still, it's a problem.
• Overuse of certain words and/or concepts.  There are so many times people are "impressed" in this book, it's ridiculous.  Or if they're not impressed, they experience "breathless awe."  (I'm not impressed.)  Or..."King Baralosus let his daughter sob, watching broken-hearted from his imposing chair."  Really, this is a problem for several reasons.  This sentences is from the King's POV, even though this is a Salina chapter.  And is the chair he sits in, really imposing to himself?
• Weak figurative language.  "The river beside him moved sluggishly, like thick syrup."  Is the "syrup" simile really necessary?  Also, ADVERBS.
• Seriously unnecessary adverbs.  Someone "expertly" uses a key to unlock a prison cell door.  (Then apparently he unlocks it again a sentence or two later.)
• More inconsistencies.  We're told that Mirage's looks are only looks, that if one was to feel her skin where she'd been burned, the texture would still be different.  I maintain that this means maids couldn't put makeup on her without noticing the roughness of her skin.
• Way too many clauses that begin with "-ing" words.  Such as: "Avoiding the carts and beasts of burden, they took the sidewalks of the avenue, heading directly towards the palace."
• Mixing up of "tortuous" and "torturous."  These are actually different words, with different meanings.  Look it up.  (Silence can be "torturous" but "tortuous silence" doesn't make sense.)
• Armored wagons with arrow slits in them.  This is inserted in such a way that it is likely meant to be a throwaway detail.  But the practicality of it needs to be discussed.  Armored wagons would be heavy and I have to wonder how many horses would be required to pull them?  Also, can't imagine drawing a bow from inside a wagon.  Bottom line: just don't write throwaway details.
• I'll just put some direct quotes in here: "Promise me one thing, Thorin.  Promise me that you'll keep your promise to me."  Five lines later: "Just as I promised."  Then, another two lines later: "Have I not promised?"  This should totally have been rewritten.  It just sounds silly (I read it out loud to my boyfriend and we had a good laugh over it).
• When Craiglen and Kaj are wrestling near the river, the scene is written from Craiglen's POV.  But there is a lot of POV switching here, to the point that the text actually gets confusing to follow.  (Also, it doesn't help that Kaj is referred to sometimes by name, sometimes as "the desert man" in this scene.)
• Lukien is afraid when he and Jahan go looking for rass (big attack snakes).  But the whole rest of the book, Lukien has either been (1) wishing for death, or (2) not afraid because he's got the Eye of God amulet that keeps him alive.  I guess this is just an out-of-character moment for Lukien.
• At the beginning of chapter 38, Jazana looks into the library and notes the "vast emptiness."  A few lines later, she's making note of abandoned equipment, clutter, and workmen's tools.  So which is it?  Emptiness or crap everywhere?
• Corvalos Chane.  Why does this guy get a first name and a last name, when everyone else (well, except Gilwyn, and his surname is rarely mentioned, and Jazana Carr) has only one name?  I think Marco thought of the name Corvalos Chane one day, and really liked the sound of it.  (To me, it sounds like a bad soap opera character or romance novel hero.)
• More redundancy.  "Bring us food and drink.  Any drink you have that's cold and any food that's hot."  Both of those sentences were not necessary.  One would have sufficed.  (Also, it's unlikely that there would be cold drinks in a pseudo-medieval world where magic is rare.)
• Random introductions of characters who are around for only a paragraph or two.  For example, Gogin on page 549-550.  Sure, give your pages and such names, especially if it's going to be otherwise awkward to refer to them by some descriptive epithet.  But don't give us random POV snatches inside these characters' heads, and don't describe everything they're wearing, and please don't describe men as having "ample" chests.  Unless they're obese and have man-boobs, and even then it's probably not a good idea.
• Having something "stand out importantly" is silly.  Nothing can "stand out unimportantly."  Just drop the adverb.  Seriously, the book would be WAY shorter if crap like this had been edited away.
• While I believe a blind person could learn to ride a horse, mounting a blind person on an animal during a battle is not a very smart thing to do.  Especially when said person is the rightful queen and doesn't yet have any heirs.
• Referring to Daralor's wife as "a lovely blonde thing."  It's not the anti-feminist construction that gets me here, it's that this phrase doesn't fit at all with the voice of the rest of the novel.  (It's entirely possible that a male character could think of women this way, and if it was otherwise in character, I'd probably let it slide.)
• After Lukien has the sword, he goes back through the abandoned Akari city of Kaliatha.  He goes back to the home where Riavik, the Akari, has his story stone (a place Riavik can manifest in the world, tell stories, hear news, etc., even though long dead).  Lukien has been through here once before.  The place was described then.  But Marco decides to describe it again on Lukien's second trip.  Even though nothing has changed.
• I am pretty sure that the shrana houses were not open to women (except on holidays).  But there is a serving girl in the one that Lorn visits outside Jador.
• A smile is described as "audible."  How in the hell is that even possible?
• Chapter 72.  I don't think I've ever read a book before, where I thought an entire chapter should just be eliminated.  But this one adds absolutely nothing to the story.  Nothing happens except Raxor playing with his tame bears.  But we already knew Raxor was agitated over the loss of his son, and we already knew he had tame bears.  So there was no point to this chapter.
• Unnecessary details.  Someone is described as displaying "aplomb" for scheduling a meeting "sharply at noon."  Later, this sentence: "Because it was a formal meeting, no drinks or food were provided."  Look, if you don't talk about food or drinks, we'll assume there aren't any there.  Or we won't think about it at all.  Mentioning that there aren't drinks only calls attention to something that's completely unimportant (unless there's a character who is super hungry or starts coughing and can't stop or something like that -- and there's no character like that in this scene).
• Hair can't be both graying and youthful.  Marco tries to qualify this by the words he uses between "graying" and "youthful," but it doesn't work.  This is something else that should've been left out.
• Malator is described as flexing a "hoka."  But a few paragraphs earlier, we learned that a hoka was a blade, and a blade is unlikely to be flexible.  Maybe Marco meant to say that Malator flexed the arm that was holding the hoka?  Why leave out words here when there are so many extraneous ones elsewhere?
• Something pointed out by an Amazon reviewer which I happened to miss: the Eye of God that Lukien wears is responsible for Lukien's ability to communicate with Lakhali's people.  So Lukien gives the Eye to Lakhali when she goes to kill the great rass.  And while Lukien's old wounds start to reappear (the Eye was keeping him alive), because he's not wearing the amulet, he can still talk to his companions, even though he doesn't know their language.
• Gilwyn spends a very long time at a farm with an old couple.  For a bit, he's recuperating, and they care for him.  But as the weeks (and maybe months) drag on, it's obvious that Marco didn't plot too well, and he has to have Gilwyn hang around so that he and Lukien and Thorin can all be in the same place at the same time.  And the only way to do this is to have Gilwyn take an uncharacteristic detour for a long period of time.
• We have no idea what kind of resolution Salina had.  She went back to her father and Aztar was dead, so she couldn't marry him.  I kept thinking that Salina's father would marry her off to someone else, against her will.  But we really don't have any idea what happens to her.
• The way Jazana Carr dies is on par with the Bond girl who gets painted gold.  Or possibly the Bond villain who is left in the desert with only motor oil to drink.  (Seriously, swallowing diamonds?  Then having so much pain you claw your eyes out?)

See, writing is a concept that encompasses so many things.  It's not just word choice, it's plot and pacing and POV and consistency and sensibility with respect to details.  And this book is lacking in ALL of those areas.

I'll be honest, I hate it when I write a review and I'm reduced to a bulleted list of problems I had with the book.  I want to talk about ideas and plot and character (and I'll try to do that below), but it's so difficult to do that when I'm scratching my head or groaning about two or three things on every page.

So was there anything to like?

Well, I was afraid when I found out that Lukien was training Lakhali for her fight, that she was just going to get to be a super badass in two weeks and kill the rass, no problem.  But in fact, Lukien realized that Lakhali didn't stand a chance and gave her the amulet instead.  So he realized the limitations of the situation, and did the only thing possible that would result in a positive outcome.

I rather like that Mirage didn't actually find love.  I kept thinking she would, as Marco set up a lot of potential liaisons, but in the end she dies in a fire, literally, and I'm rather glad for it.  I did wonder what happened to her abandoned Akari, though.  The one that Mirage had when she died is obviously the one that goes to Poppy.  But the first one she had, that protected her from flame, isn't mentioned again.

Marco isn't afraid to kill characters off.  Aric, Thorin, Lorn, Chane, Mirage, Jahan, Kaj, Craiglen, Jazana, Rodrik Varl, and lots more.  Maybe the pace of this was a little too quick at the end.  Marco was really approaching George R.R. Martin territory there for awhile (considering two of the three major characters from book one, also died in book one).

I also like it that no obvious leader for Norvor arises.  Jazana is dead, Lorn is dead, Thorin is dead, and there's still fighting going on.  This is much more of a real-world kind of ending (there aren't always neat endings in the real world).

For whatever reason, The Sword of Angels was much easier to read than The Devil's Armor.  I think it was a little better plotted than the second book.  Though the ending was a bit of a cop-out.  Kahldris just giving up during his spirit-world battle with Malator?  After hundreds, if not thousands, of years of waiting in the armor, and then a year or two of causing mayhem in Reec and Liiria?  (It's on par with the whole "forgiveness" thing in To Green Angel Tower).

On my way in to work today, I had something of an epiphany about this book.  The over-the-top writing style is straight out of campy sword-and-sorcery novels.  But the subject matter is more epic fantasy, and tries to take itself seriously.  And in the end, the two just don't mix very well.

Anyway, my advice would be to stay away from this whole series unless you're absolutely desperate for reading material.

Cranky Authors

I encountered the following blog post via Twitter and thought I would share.  It's a phenomenon I haven't really encountered so far, but if I keep this blogging thing up, it could happen.

What to Do About Cranky Authors

So the gist of the post is that sometimes authors search out reviews of their books online.  And ask, not always politely, for the reviews to be taken down.  I'm sure I'll run into this at some point, because I'm not often very nice in my reviews.  I know some authors have stopped by, as I got a mention on Jay Lake's LiveJournal, even though I was pretty critical of Green.  Actually, that mention resulted in a traffic spike, and honestly, my opinion of Lake as a person increased quite a bit after that.  Not because of the traffic spike to the blog, but because he seems like a mellow kind of guy who doesn't think the world is ending if one little old anonymous blogger didn't like his book so much.

I know Courtney Schafer and Bradley P. Beaulieu stopped by, because they linked to my reviews of their books as well.  Though I actually wrote fairly positive reviews for both of them.

Then there are the suspicious bits of activity that I can see from StatCounter...like the person from Utah who searches weekly for "L.E. Modesitt."

I've also seen authors commenting on their own Amazon reviews, though notably only the positive ones.  In particular, I'm thinking of Michael J. Sullivan and Jon Sprunk.  If my manuscript ever gets picked up by a publisher, I don't know if I'd be able to look at Amazon reviews or not.  It's probably best to avoid them.  I wouldn't want my writing of sequels and/or new material to be influenced by people's negative opinions.  I'm not a fan of crowd-directed writing.

Okay, time to get to work for the day.  I'm trying to write my review of The Sword of Angels; look for it in the next couple of days.  Started reading The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin last night.

Is There Anybody Out There?

I've been at this blogging thing for awhile now.  This is not my first attempt at a blog (in fact, this blog had an earlier incarnation where I talked about a random selection of things, from cooking to complaining about how I have no money  -- but those posts have been deleted).  I've had up to 8 or 9 blogs at a time, but I'm down to this one (and another I'm thinking of starting under my real name; I just won't hold myself to the same posting schedule).

I found this blog post this morning, and it made me think about what makes blogs and bloggers succeed:

Pouring your heart into posts no one will read from Knight Science Journalism at MIT

It's nice to read something about blogging that's not "SEO, SEO, SEO."  I was into that stuff for awhile, when I first started this blog.  But by spending all of my time choosing the right keywords, I'd lose sight of the point of this blog.  Which is to be a platform for me to pontificate about fantasy literature.  Well, just kidding on that "pontificating" part.  I'm perfectly open to discussion.  I've posted comments from people with whom I don't agree; of course I respond immediately, but I allow the comments to stand as long as they're reasonably intelligible and make coherent points (even if the point was, in one case, "I LOVE Terry Goodkind" -- the commenter's position, not mine, I assure you).

I'm homing in on my 600th post, and I've been going for over a year.  Those early days WERE tough.  I had tons of ideas, lots of stuff I'd been thinking about, and I'll admit that I was a little disappointed when the readers didn't come.  Since then, I've had a couple of traffic spikes, gotten a couple of mentions on authors' websites and in their blogs, and things are picking up.  I think the lack of initial traffic may have something to do with why I dropped the other blogs.  Not sure why this one is the one that I kept.  I guess I still have a lot to say about reading and writing.  (Though StumbleUpon is starting to give me the same links...)

Sometimes I wonder if it is worth it.  I've made about $8 from AdSense.  About $2 from Amazon Associates  Not even enough to get a payout from either company, and most of the AdSense is from my YouTube videos, anyway.  (People love to watch cats on the internet.)  So it's not really about the money right now.  It probably never will be.  It's about having a hobby, about being enthusiastic about a particular topic, and wanting to share that with others.  I decided awhile ago that I won't sell out and write about something that's popular, just to get hits.  (What the hell do I know about what's popular, anyway?  That "Call Me Maybe" song sounds like it's idiotic -- I haven't actually heard it, by the way.  But I've seen enough memes about the lyrics to decide I don't like it.  And yet it is doing extremely well, as far as Amazon sales ranks go.)

Anyway, I'm done being all reflective and stuff.  I'm working from home today, so I'd better do some actual work.

Postscript: I actually saw a job listing on Monster yesterday for blog writing.  Clicked on it to see what kind of terms they were offering.  Saw "This is not a paid position."  Well, hell, I can start my own blog and not get paid for it!  Oh wait, I'm already doing that.

50 "Do Nots"

Since my earlier post today talked about, among other things, the argument between "do"- and "do not"- style advice, I thought I'd share this link:

50 Things a Writer Shouldn't Do

Some of these list items are pieces of good advice, in a general sense.  Some are clearly specific to the list writers' own experiences with particular individuals and/or their books.  (There are not actually 50 list items, only 40.  That seems to have been overlooked...although the comments have some good additions, as well.)

One is particularly appropriate for an author like Terry Goodkind: "Don’t write fiction with an agenda. It reaps tedium."

Don't groan over the fact that the post is another list where every item begins with "don't."  Seriously.  All these "do nots" are doing is delimiting a set of rules that make things easier on and more interesting for your readers -- you know, the audience for your writing.  You can rewrite each item on the list to start with "do," if you're really that into that line of thinking.

No one ever complained about GOOD writing.

To Toe the Line

I've gotten into a bit of an argument on Book Country lately, and it's made me think.  I believe I'm right, but I wanted to make a longer case for myself here.  (My boyfriend has accused me of feeding the trolls, when I described the argument, but I personally think I might be arguing with either a young person or someone who is, for some other reason, not wise to the ways of the world.)

Anyway, there are really two discussions that I'm thinking of here.  One is about the use of accents/slang/dialect, and one is about the use of made up words.  First, my opinions:

• Don't use made-up words or entire sentences in constructed languages unless you are describing something that doesn't exist in real life.  Tolkien was a linguist.  Most likely you are not.  And your language will likely come out sounding idiotic, unless you've spend years developing it.  You probably haven't spent years.  Also, there's a good chance that your readers, should you ever actually get some, will not enjoy flipping back to the glossary after every single page to figure out what you're trying to say.  See A Camel by Any Other Name for some actual examples.
• Don't write accents or dialect out phonetically.  This is an absolute pain to read.  No one wants to have to say things out loud to figure out what you mean.  There's a reason I don't read the comments on I Can Has Cheezburger?, though I do like to look at the cat pictures.  A little slang, a word here or there, can add color and depth without making your reader want to throw the book across the room.  Regardless of how you might think your dialect or accent appears in print, what it actually reads like is the Russians in a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, or Elmer Fudd, or an SNL sketch.  It's hard to take this stuff seriously.  (You may run the risk of being offensive, too, if you try to write in a Chinese accent, for example.)  It's also difficult to be consistent, unless you spend a LOT of time around people with a particular accent.  Also, since I write about fantasy novels on this blog, I should point out that Russian and Scottish and French accents don't exist in fantasy worlds (alternate histories, maybe, but that's a separate issue).  Presumably what the author is offering is a translation into English.

On one of the discussion threads in question, the person with whom I disagree replied that there are too many examples of "do not" and not enough examples of "do."  Here are some of the "do nots" that I can think of:

• don't use adverbs in dialogue tags
• don't use words other than "said" or "asked" in dialogue tags
• don't use made-up words for common things that exist in this world
• don't spell accents out phonetically
• don't plagiarize
• don't infodump

And the list goes on.  Here's my thing: I would like to get published one day.  I spend a fair amount of time reading advice from editors, agents, and published authors, both on the web and in printed books.  I figure, these people either are the gatekeepers, or have made it past the gatekeepers, and they know what they're talking about.  So when they list "rules," I try to follow these rules.

It may just be a matter of perspective.  You can take the same list of "do nots" and make it into a list of "dos."  See below:

• do make your characters' words expressive and meaningful enough that adverbs aren't needed
• do make sure your dialogue tags are actually words related to speech (gestures and actions can come in nearby sentences, if they're absolutely required)
• do make up words for concepts that don't exist in this world
• do add bits of color to your speech here and there, if you so desire, but remember that a little goes a long way ("nae" for "no," "ain't" for "isn't," etc.)
• do come up with original ideas and use your own words
• do incorporate background material throughout your story, at the points where it's relevant and where it advances the story

 It's just easier to say "don't."  The "do nots" above are shorter and more succinct.  I guess my point is, if a person wants to get published, it's best to toe the line.  To adhere to the rules laid out by the gatekeepers in the world of publishing and literary agents.  Getting one's foot in the door is the hardest part.  Once you've been accepted to paying markets, and have something of a following, well, then you can play with the rules a little bit.  (Though in all honesty, I probably won't.  I like clean, terse prose without a lot of distractions.  I want it to flow smoothly and not get in the way of the story I'm trying to tell.)

Manuscript Update - August 2012

My first manuscript has been in the black hole since June 18; that's 54 days.  (Don't want to do the math yourself?  Go here and input the start and end dates.)  I've probably got a minimum of another 30 or 40 to hear back about it.  In the meantime, I'm plugging along with my second manuscript.  I realized I hadn't mentioned it for awhile (at least not a long status update as opposed to an aside when talking about something else).

Some things are going better than the last time around.  My dialogue tags are much improved.  I'm not saying I don't let a word other than "said" or "asked" slip in occasionally, but it's rare.  There's almost no sipping of drinks now (that was a big problem last time).  There's a little more nodding than I would like, but I am now extremely conscious of each instance of nodding.  And I know to watch out for it.  Few adverbs are included.

I'm going to have one of the same challenges as last time, which is the order of things.  I decided it's best to do chronological order.  This is the way my mind works, and I've had a few issues with non-chronological storytelling, in terms of following other stories (one incident in Heaven's Needle and another in The Lies of Locke Lamora).  So I'm going to go to great effort here, during the editing stage.  But, I do know what I need to write and I'm writing it, moving from character group to character group as the desire arises.  Rearranging and revising for consistency can come later.  The hardest part is getting those first words on the page.

Some minor characters from the last manuscript are getting more time here, and some major characters from the last manuscript have moved aside.  While I do hope that my characters are interesting and complex and sympathetic, this is more of a plot-driven novel, in my mind.  I've had enough of the hero's journey lately, and I didn't want to write that.  This book is a little heavier with the female characters, and there's more of a romantic element than I originally intended, but there have been deaths and deceptions and other moments of drama so far, and there's a battle (more of a minor skirmish among unequally matched sides) to come.  There have been revelations and secret assignations (side note: is "secret assignation" redundant?).  There will be a reunion, there'll be a couple of solo journeys, there's a conspiracy afoot.  (It sounds more exciting than it actually is, when I describe it this way...or maybe it really is exciting, and it's just hard for me to take a step back and see it that way, since it's my creation.)

I'm about 316 handwritten pages in; soon I'll have to switch to a new spiral notebook.  I've run through at least two pens so far and am near to running through my third (I can tell by the number of ink color changes on the pages).  This is slightly less than half as long as my first draft of my first manuscript.

Meanwhile, the ideas keep coming.  Maybe two nights ago, I had what I think is a brilliant idea for a magical system/cult and central conflict (political and personal) of a new standalone (or possibly duology).  I can't help but continue to add details to that in my head.

I wish I could write full time.  Gotta sell something first, though.

Place Name Generators

I don't really have a hard time coming up with place names.  We'll see, if I'm ever published, if people think my city/country names are stupid.  But, if this is an issue for you, here are a few place name generators I found on the web:

• Place Name Generator: Generates one at a time.  These appear to be mostly compounds of two nouns, some of which don't make sense ("Beechmeadow" -- it can't really be a meadow if it is full of trees).  Most of them are relatively pleasant-sounding, although "barrow" showed up once or twice (I'm thinking of the burial ground context).  These would be good for someone trying to name housing developments, which always have silly names like this.
• Regency Place Name Generator: Also generates one at a time.  Some have one word, and some have two.  Some are rather strange ("Bosbeare Glebe") but hey, "glebe" is actually a word and so we'll give it a pass.  A few of these also sound like housing developments, but they're maybe a little better than the first one in the list.
• Pseudo-Elizabethan Place Name Generator: More random compound words, it appears, although perhaps Elizabethan English.  Some are better than others ("Gluttonland?").  Some have internal rhymes which could be good if you want something humorous, but could come off as silly if you're not careful.
• Town Name Generator: At least this one is honest about being for subdivisions.
• Place Name Generator: You can choose nonsense names.  (I hope "Judgebread Sea" is one of these.)  But then when I choose "word names" I get "Hardsoft Tarn," which also doesn't make a lot of sense.  (Nor does "Elmleak Jungle."  And "Calmfresh Crossings" sounds like some sort of room deodorizer.)

There are a bunch more of these sites out there.  These are the ones that showed up first on Google.  Some of them might be suitable for gaming (I don't know how that works, as I don't play RPGs -- never have).  I wasn't all that happy about any of the ones I found.  (And seriously, why are all of them English-sounding?)  I think I'd recognize if someone had used one of these generators to write a novel.  (Actually, that would be an interesting exercise -- use a bunch of name generators for characters, towns, etc., and maybe choose a few tropes from TVTropes, then try to make a novel out of it.  Though it would be a challenge to make that anything that anyone would want to read.)