BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Relationship Stuff, and Career Aspirations
This was going to be a post with a few random notes, but as I started writing it became all about my recent and future dating activities. So it's kind of unified in theme, now. Funny how that worked. I even went back and changed the title.
It's the weekend. Late Friday night, at least. And I'm busy. Most of my weekends are busy, now that I have a new girlfriend. I'm either down at her place for a day and a half, or she's up here, and while the time is fun, it flies, and I'm certainly not online or even on the computer during that time. So when I get back on (the computer) late Sunday night, I'm going a million miles an hour to catch up on what I would usually have been doing all day Saturday and/or Sunday.
This weekend Elle's off to some family events all day Saturday, but she'd going to drive up here early Sunday morning, hopefully arriving in time to surprise me in bed. Later in the day we're doing a sorta double date with Malaya and her husband (they're approaching their first anniversary, so I suppose I should stop saying "new" husband?). Neither Malaya or her guy have met Elle, and since I've told each party a fair amount about the other, I think that curiosity is fairly high. (I knew Malaya's husband long before she ever met him, so there was never any such "first" meeting curiosity betwixt myself and he, when they were dating.) And I've not talked to the capricious young woman formerly known as the I.G. in weeks, so there's very little likelihood of Elle and she ever coming face to face.
One thing that's very odd (to me) with Elle is our mutual physical admiration. I don't just mean sex -- I mean that we are both fairly visual creatures, and we're both in better shape than any of each other's past boy/girl friends, so we tend to spend some amount of time in various states of undress, simply admiring each others physiques.
I'll spare you any overly eroticized descriptions, but she's a dancer and is fairly tall for a woman, so I'm forever getting lost tracing up and down the smooth lengths of her long, shapely legs. I'm also overly fond of her primary objects of human sexual dimorphism, as well as the curve of her upper thigh, where it tapers out at the hip and my hands naturally slide down over her smooth, flat stomach.
For her part, she is forever focusing on an unmentionable portion of my anatomy, but she also quite enamored of my shirtless upper body. And, as I said previously, she loves red hair and freckles, the later of which I have in abundance on my upper arms and shoulders.
It always amazes me that women like the male body, especially that they like body hair. It's become fairly trendy for men to shave themselves to look like overgrown altar boys, but I've yet to meet a woman who actually prefers a bare-chested man to one with body hair. And that includes the IG, who hated and waged constant war on her own body hair, and was 21 when we met; seemingly in the prime age range to believe the media hype about chest waxed metrosexuals.
Women even love hair on the legs; one of the funniest former sex stories Elle ever told me was about a guy she dated who had shaved his genitals. And not just the cock and balls, but several inches up his thighs and stomach. She said it was just a weird, deforested sight, and not at all erotic.
My experiences make me wonder who exactly is pushing the hairless man ideal? Homosexual fashion magazine photographers? (Except that gay men don't seem to dislike body hair either.) At any rate, I've not shaved my chest in years, since Malaya asked me to stop doing it since the stubble tickled her ear when she laid her head on my chest or stomach. And I'm certainly not going to start now, the way Elle loves to run her hands and finger tips over it.
Yes, that's me in a very recent photo, to the right. I thumbnailed it so anyone opposed to a topless man won't scar their beautiful eyes. Click it to see it larger. No, I don't know what's going on with my forehead there. It's an odd angle, and unforgiving bathroom lights overhead.
The picture stemmed from an amusing girlfriend interaction. I was giving my head a buzz, as I do every few weeks, and I texted Elle to tell her that she'd be seeing a bit less of me next time we met, she asked for a pic. That's what resulted, and since I may not continue to have pecs and abs forever, I figured I should immortalize the fitness moment on the blog. I'm not doing any special diet or physical training; just my usual 90 minutes 3 or 4x a week at the gym, with most of that spent on cardio. I imagine that if I concentrated more on lifting, and took some of those protein powders that are forever getting professional athletes suspended, I'd really see some upper body definition form. Perhaps someday...
I must be doing something right, since Elle is always raving about what a perfectly "manly" shape I have. The wider shoulders than waist, the muscular legs, the solid jaw and defined neck, etc. None of those are things I think of myself as a paragon of, but she certainly enjoys the visuals. Sometimes when we're lounging around she asks me to get up and walk around just so she can enjoy the view. I'm game, though it feels weird. I'm not self conscious, but I've always thought of myself as average to ugly in looks, and I was also the skinny kid. So why is this hot chick asking me to parade around for her eyes? She probably feels much the same strangeness when I ask her to parade around, bend over, pose with a saucy expression on her face, etc, for me, but she's done some modeling and has danced and sung on stage countless times, so it's less odd for her. Besides, men are usually the visual creatures in a relationship, so women are more used to being looked over and admired in private, not to mention their "every guy is looking at my boobs/ass" regular daily existence.
At any rate, her constant comments on my desirability influenced the above photo. Also, I sent it to Malaya's cell and asked her if I'd ever been in that sort of shape when I was with her. I wasn't trolling for compliments, and in fact I rather expected snark and sarcasm. But I was genuinely curious what she'd say, since she hasn't seen me without a shirt in years. (She said surprisingly nice things, and confirmed that I'd never been that muscular when in her acquaintance.)
It's hard to keep track of one's own bodily changes. I see myself every day, and muscles grow very slowly, so I can't really remember if I was bigger or smaller 4 or 5 years ago. I suppose most men around my age experience a similar transformation, though it's usually going the other way on the fitness meter. And that's probably where I'd be going, if I hadn't been single and childless and trying to date 22 y/o's over the past couple of years.
The muscles and six pack never quite got me through the door with the IG, but they certainly helped win Elle over. Or more accurately, they didn't really affect her "I like him a lot" judgment, but they did make her enjoy the "getting to know him in a physical way" process more than she might otherwise have. It's funny, since she's much more discerning in her partner selection than the (secretly slutty) IG was (that's one of the little details that came out when we argued as our friendship apparently came to an end earlier this summer). Elle has dated a lot of guys, especially in the month+ she was doing online dating before we met, but most of them were just one or two dates and not so much as a peck on the cheek. She's very often marveled at how attracted she was to me, and how the things we've been doing together are different than her usual behavior with a new boyfriend.
The irony is that the IG, while much younger and having dated far fewer guys than Elle, had sex with substantially more men, though most of them were very short term relationships she almost invariably regretted afterwards. It's ironic since she knew me much longer than most guys she went down on, and she liked me a great deal more, and often told me how much more attractive/built I was than most of her exes. (And non-exes she concealed during our time together. She just came to think of me as a friend and a big brother, rather than a boyfriend, and she liked me too much to ruin our relationship with sex. And she was right, since that would have ruined it, especially since she would have cheated on me, as she had (and will continue to do) with every other guy she's slept with. And I'm very monogamous, so we would have fought and it would have been ugly and then we'd not have been friends anymore.
Instead of that we didn't have sex, and ended up fighting about the non-sex, and it was ugly, and now we're not friends anymore. Great success!
I digress. Not that this post ever had a central theme to digress from.
Next weekend I'm going down to Elle's place on Saturday night and staying over through Sunday, and the weekend after that we're looking at some sort of getaway. Up to wine country for an overnight, down to Monterey, etc. She's got a real job doing scientific lab stuff, and she needs to tend ongoing experiments and projects almost every day (frequently including weekends) so she can't just take off a Friday and/or Monday and be gone for 4 days without a lot of advance planning, which slightly limits our ability to dash off for romantic weekends away.
I'm interested in enjoying some of those with her, though I've had to do some soul searching to feel accommodating about that sort of activity. Much less encouraging. Who doesn't like a vacation? Me, that's who. I came to this realization some months ago, and probably blogged about it then. Though I certainly can't expect anyone reading this to remember that, since I didn't, and I (theoretically) wrote it. At any rate, the realization was that most people enjoy travel and getaway activities on weekends or holidays since they work all week, and whether they love or hate their jobs, when they leave work on Friday evening, they want to not think about it until Monday morning.
That's a perfectly natural concept, it's just not one I've ever really experienced, since I've never had a M-F, 9-5 type job. I'm always working on some freelance editing project, or a website, or writing fiction, or at least I should be. So I don't have a regular schedule, which means I don't really have any regular vacations. When I'm not at home I'm always thinking about the work I should/could be doing, and since I enjoy my work and since it's got to be kept up on constantly, I usually do some hours of it every day.
In a larger sense, most people don't have anything personal tied up in their jobs or careers. They do them for the money and maybe the satisfaction, but it's not really anything personal. They're just a cog in a wheel, and if they weren't doing what they do, someone else would, with no real difference to the company or the world at large.
That's not meant as an insult; it's just the way of things. Sure, some teachers are really good and memorable to their students, and some doctors save lives, etc. But the vast majority of people are fairly faceless and highly fungible, in their careers. Usually by choice; it's certainly easier and safer to go to work and just do what you're assigned than it is to strike out on your own and take all the risks/rewards/initiative.
I'm rambling here, but my point is that I feel a more personal connection to my work than most people do. Not so much the website stuff; true, if I didn't do it much of it wouldn't get done, on my site or any other, but if a few tens of thousands of Diablo 3 fans had slightly less game info and news to read, it wouldn't really change their lives in any significant fashion. Not much more so than if their usual barrista were eaten by Shamu, and the new guy put too much/little cream in their mochachino.
On the fiction though, as terribly as I've (so far) underachieved my potential, I am the only one who can do it. True, the fantasy/horror/mystery readers of the world aren't exactly living lives of quite desperation, deprivation, and misery due to the fact that I've written about a dozen fewer books than I should have, to this point in my life. But the books/movies I have in my head aren't going to be written by anyone else, and if/when I write them, they'll be something permanent, a literary legacy, for better or for worse. And to that I feel some amount of responsibility (though not enough to do more than 1/10th as much writing as I fucking well should be doing), which makes me want/need to work on them. Even on weekends.
These thoughts came about chiefly from reading many of the online dating profiles (not Elle's, though) where the women (men too, but I seldom read those) were so gleefully up front about their desires to party and go crazy every minute of every weekend, and to get out of the city/state/country the minute their vacations arrived. I had subliminal annoyance/confusion about that for a while, until I finally realized why it bothered me. It was due to what I said above; that I feel a need/urge/responsibility to do some work every day, and it seems very weird to me that a person (most people) are the complete opposite. When they're not at work they're not working or thinking about working. In fact, they're working hard to not think about working. That's the whole point of weekend getaways and vacations and drunken nights out for most people!
Which is fine. Whatever gets them (you) through. If I had a job I didn't like and only did for the $, I'm sure I'd feel much the same way. (Though I'd probably spend those weekends and nights diving into my fiction writing as an escape. Which might actually result in more writing productivity, ironically.) But it took me a while to come to this realization, and for months I was mildly annoyed at all the dating personals written by people who wanted nothing but party/fun on weekends. "Sit down, stay home, and accomplish something with your life!" I found myself muttering. And while that reaction is perfectly rational for me, or when applied to my life, it's utterly irrelevant and misplaced when aimed at the lives of most people, who work at work, and try to have fun and forget about work when they're not at work. They're not going to write novels, or even maintain websites, and there's no benefit to them sitting home at their computers at nights. They might as well party, or travel. In fact, those are probably much more wholesome and enriching behaviors than the gaming, watching TV, reading-the-paper-and-yelling-at-their-kids alternatives.
Not that many of the women whose profiles I was viewing had papers to read or kids to yell at, but you get my drift.
Fortunately, Elle agrees and understands my psychology on this. She has a job she loves, but it's not one she can do much on when she's not in the lab. She can read scientific journals and work on grants and proposals and articles and such, but even those largely require her to be in the lab for tech work, computer access, etc. Plus she mostly does that stuff at work, to keep herself busy while she's running experiments on this and that. When away from work, shes' not a party animal (just a dancing machine), and she loves to read and engage in other quiet and solitary pursuits in her free time. So she's quite happy to set aside a couple/few hours during our planned weekends together, when she'll read, or take a walk, or window shop while I hunch over my laptop and attempt to further my literary aspirations.
That's the plan, anyway. Thus far it exists entirely in the theoretical, since we've not had any whole weekends to spend together, and when we are in each others company for a day, we can't help but interact for hours on end, often without the aid of verbal utterances. And it's not like we're eager to put a halt to that, but all things in good time, and since she's been spending virtually all of her free time in some sort of socialization, with her family, friends, or me, Elle's probably happy to plan some free time to herself, for reading or just thinking, while I'm tapping away.
Not that we'll be putting that to the test this weekend, with her early morning arrival, lunch with my friends, and then a few more precious evening hours together before she's got to drive back home to get some sleep before Monday morning work. Personally, I'm looking forward to it.
Also, I've not Twittered in weeks, but that's since I changed my phone upload over to the @Diii.net Twitter account, so I could tweet updates directly from Blizzcon. I did, about five times, during the Blizzard HQ tour on the Thursday before Blizzcon. I then completely forgot about the twitter distraction once BlizzCon began. I was on my laptop constantly at the show, usually in the press room, but I was writing content, posting news, jumping into the live chat, etc. Not burping up 140 character non sequiturs for an audience a fraction the size of that which was viewing the forums and the D3 main page. (I did text a fair amount over my phone, but those were mostly to Malaya, who was also at BlizzCon, or to Elle, who was as almost as horny and missing me as I was horny and missing her.)
After Blizzcon I remembered that any tweets sent from my phone would go to @Diii.net rahter than @BlackChampagne, but I only remembered that far enough to stop myself from sending any tweets, rather than as motivation to go into the account and change the settings back. Thus when I've thought occasionally about tweeting during the past 2.5 weeks I've just not done it, since said tweet would have gone up to the @Diii.net, where posts about my mercantile misadventures, cats, garden, and prophylactic purchases would have been out of place. At best.
I just switched my phone tweets back to BC though, so for both of you who sometimes thought about checking there, you can think about it again. It's almost sure not to entertain. If it had been working today, I'd have made two posts in the evening. Which I shall now recreate. With better grammar and punctuation than my thumbs would have provided, and likely character overflows as well.
# I'm enjoying the irony of browsing the birth control aisle in Target while women wheel screaming babies past.
# They say not to shop for food when you're hungry because you'll indulge cravings. By that metric when could I ever rationally buy these intimate items?
I'm going to see Harry Potter 6 with a new female acquaintance next weekend, and amidst other email-based conversational topics, we've been talking about movie adaptations of popular novels. Especially fantasy novels. We're both fans of the LotR efforts, and Harry Potter as well, to a lesser extent. The way we're approaching them is very different though.
I saw the first 2 HP movies (my mom dragged me) before I read any of the books. I then started reading the series with some skepticism, before they grew on me as the books got better/more mature around #3 or #4. I've enjoyed the movies since then, but primarily because I'd read the books first, and knew what was going on. Plus it's fun for me to compare the films to the novels. I like to ponder what they cut, what they expanded, how they translated character thoughts and narration to the visual medium, etc.
Quite the opposite is true of my date. She's purposely put off reading the books until after she sees the movies. She prefers to enjoy the films first, her thoughts untainted by advance knowledge, and then after seeing each one she goes and reads the book. She said she had all of the DVDs as well, so apparently she enjoys the films again after reading the books, too.
Along with that conversation, we traded some thoughts about how movie adapatations work, and as you might suspect, I had a lot to say about that. Too much to presume upon her via email, so I greatly condensed what I said to her, and saved the main block I wrote to post here, where 1) you've come to read my bullshit, 2) you're bored at work anyway, and 3) I'm not trying to impress you, so I can be windy to a fault.
So... The issues and perils of adapting a 400 page book to a 120 page screen play are fairly well known, but differ between projects. I think the HP movies have been fairly good films, and fairly good representations of the books, but so much of what makes the books work is the sense of place and time and routine and repetition, and the films just don't have time to delve into that.
The structure of the HP books, one set each school year, always starting off with Harry at home with his wretched relatives, racing to school just ahead of some dire misadventure, and then diving into the comforting routine and rhythm of the school year. But before he can get totally settled in each year, some larger plot starts to occur; a new teacher or two, some peril at the school, and always the overarching quest/menace of Voldemort growing in importance throughout the series.
The movies tap into that neatly as well, and while I don't think they've done anything brilliant, they've been fairly entertaining. The structure is useful in the books, and it helps the films as well, by saving on exposition. The movies don't need to reintroduce the setting or principles each time, since the viewer can be counted on to known about Hoggwarts, Dumbledore, Hagrid, quidditch, etc. And the HP world is gorgeously visual, with all the costumes, the great architectural sets of Hogwarts, magical spells, and mythological creatures galore.
I haven't thought any of the HP movies were brilliant, but they've all been pretty entertaining, and I've enjoyed them more with additional viewings. I've never sat down and watched any of them start to finish, other than in my initial theater viewing, but the hour here and half hour there I've seen on TV has kept me entertained. I think they're better the more you know of the stories. Hoping for surprises or big shocks is pointless, and watching them before you've read the books is confusing. They're more like comfort food; better when you know what's coming, and just want something enjoyable but not especially challenging or novel.
Another recent, famed movie adaptation is Lord of the Rings. I won't go into huge detail on that one, but I'd read the books a few times, and I thought the movies improved on the books in almost every way. Besides the great casting and acting and scenery and special effects, the writing was inspired; preserving all the mood and tone and epic scope of the books, while greatly improving Tolkien's fairly lacking characterization, dropping unnecessary material, tightening up the plot, increasing the female roles, etc.
The other ongoing fantasy (sort of) series is Twilight, which I'm somewhat curious about. I might watch the movies at some point (#2 is this fall, #3 is next summer. They must really be worried about cashing in before the current craze fades.) just to see how they handled the adaptation. I went off in fairly critical terms about their visual cheapness and poor casting, as evidenced by trailers for the first two films. But giving the idea of Twilight films some more thought, it's quite likely they'll be better than the books.
Admittedly, I didn't think much of the books, but they provided enough raw material to make some decent films. The novels left enormous room for improvement, since they were rambling, repetitious, and seemed virtually unedited.
That said, so much of what makes the books work (at least for their core audience) is Bella's endless worrying, dithering, whining, moping, fretting, heart-sicking, etc, etc. Much of the books are virtually diaries in their presentation of her every activity and angsty thought, and while that's "bad" on any professional quality of writing measure, it's what (I think) all the girls and (immature?) women who are embracing it most enjoy. They want to delve into some (fictional) woman's every thought and worry and feeling of love or betrayal, and her mooning exultations over her uber-hot vampire boyfriend/true love/soul mate/destiny, etc. That's why learned critiques of the literary failings, while correct, are largely beside the point.
Less defensible is the generally wretched plotting, the overly wordy, blabbering prose, the poor characterization (everyone talks the same and the chars lack distinctive behaviors or behaviors), and the way big showdown scenes are constantly and frustratingly sidestepped at the last minute.
So, how the films will work (or not) is a matter of debate. Unlike the HP movies, honing films from the source material isn't a matter of cutting down the plot events to squeeze all the material into a less-than three hour block. There's very little plot in the Twilight books, with most of the books' length made up of Bella's moment-to-moment thoughts and worries. That sort of internal psychological struggle is difficult to convey cinematically, and I'm not at all sure the Twilight movies should even try to convey it, since it's not very good in the books (despite the fact that it's what most of the fans are so enamored of).
The essential points, which are somewhat contradictory.
The Twilight novels are easy to adapt to film, since the books are very light on content and all key plot events can easily be fit into a 2 hour film.
Unfortunately, the plots of the Twilight novels aren't actually very good, and even where the sequence of events is potentially thrilling, the way exciting events are presented in the books is very poorly done. Meyer's rudimentary writing skills are at their weakest when trying to describe physical events and actions.
However, the Twilight novels are not "about" their plots. They're about the emotions of Bella Swan, and how she reacts to events. That sort of tight focus on one character, especially on her thoughts and emotions is very difficult to translate to screen, and the way the effect is achieved in the books is by endless repetition. Very skilled screenwriting would be required to transfer that into films that were not themselves vastly overlong and boring.
I think they'd be better off almost going from scratch. Retain the characters and the plot skeleton, and make changes/improvements/modifications very liberally. And that seems to be what the first film did, judging from what I read in reviews and saw in the trailer. Were the fans okay with that? All the buzz I heard was about how hot the 14 y/o girls thought the actor hired to play Edward was, and honestly... that's a perfect macrocosm of the whole Twilight phenomena. Adolescent urges and hysteria trumping any tangible quality, intelligence, plot, etc.
For these Twilight "reviews" I'm going in a chronological, journal style, with comments written down on two or three occasions over the course of reading the books, and then the formal score tabulation in the last update on each book.
I've never done book reviews this way before, but it's an approach I've often considered. Strange that I began it with such insubstantial books, but.... eh. Often while reading a book for the first time, I get ideas for discussion topics, or note things I want to riff on when I write the review. Sometimes I remember to do so, but quite often I forget that thought over the hours or days it takes to finish the book and find time/motivation to write the review. Sometimes that forgetting is just as well, since the idea wouldn't have been that great in the final discussion anyway, but as a general rule, I prefer to edit my output intentionally, rather than by the effects of partial amnesia.
So, these reviews were written in 2 or 3 or 4 stages, proceeding chronologically through the books. I read the books very quickly (as will be discussed forthwith), and had a lot of thoughts about them, or spurred by them, mostly because the books have become such a phenomena. None of them are very good, from a literary sense, but they clearly serve a valid and valuable function for their core audience, and that's a function worth trying to understand. Especially since it enlivens the otherwise fairly dismal experience of reading this puppy love romance fluff.
These commentaries are full of spoilers, since I'm discussing the books and their plot and characters as I go. If you've not read these books and plan to, you might want to stop here. I didn't skimp on the details since I figure most of you will never read them, and might be somewhat curious about the stories. So here you go; Cliff's Notes and snarky criticism all in one.
A very basic outline of book one:
The Twilight series is set in the modern day in very rainy Washington State. The main character and narrator is Bella Swan, a 17 y/o female. She's just moved back to live with her dad in the very small town. She's shy and insecure and bookish, and doesn't know anyone in town. Her first day in school she makes a few friends, mostly when guys hit on her, and she notices the impossibly beautiful Cullen family. Four of them, adopted siblings. Edward is the prettiest, and he stares at Bella in shock, then after some rocky early stages she soon realizes she's in love with him, and soon after that she discovers that he and his family are all vampires.
Twilight. Book One, pages 1-150.
So far, not bad, not good. Not as bad as I'd feared, certainly. The most remarkable thing thus far? How quickly the pages turn. Not out of suspense or the book engendering some great desire to read more in my soul; it's just very easily digested material. I spent half a hour before bed last night, ten minutes in the bathroom this afternoon, and twenty minutes on the couch this evening, and I'm already on page 151. I'm not making a conscious effort to speed through it, but the type and margins are fairly large (They put fewer words per page, used classy, stark cover artwork, and boosted the page count to hardcover look thicker and grant the novel some gravitas.) and the writing is very light and easily digested. No advanced vocabulary words (though that would be unlikely to slow me down unless they were very obscure), and very simple, basic sentence structure. Plus it's all semi-stream of consciousness 1st person narrative, without any complicated events that require the reader to think about them.
The only scene thus far that was noticeably poorly written was the car crash in the parking lot, when Bella the hapless heroine is going to be squashed by van that's sliding on ice, and Edward the Vampire saves her. It's a poorly written scene since the author can't describe physical actions. Bella narrates it in her usual objective, emotionless fashion, and the van is sliding and then Edward pushes her backwards but then somehow the van is wrapping around the side of another car and still coming towards her so Edward moves her feet and then the van is still coming so he makes himself a human shield and stops the van from crushing Bella by bracing himself against the car. I guess while sort of standing over her?
It's totally unclear, both in terms of how the van crashes, where the cars are, where Edward's standing, why he doesn't just pull her out of the way in the first place, etc. And it's not unclear because it's from the frightened, confused Bella's POV. She sees everything and explains it in her usual observational voice. It's just that the explanation is totally garbled on the page.
One of the things often said about bad writers (usually in reference to students and bad term papers) is that they might have great ideas in their heads, but that they can't translate them onto the written page. Meyer's work so far in this book isn't that bad, but it's got some definite parallels to that truism. Descriptions of objects and places and happenings are not her strong suit. The car crash was the only scene of action thus far, and it was totally botched. She describes environments and feelings fairly well; the rainy, gloomy weather, the dense, green forest, and the rocky, driftwood-covered beach were all well painted. I could see them clearly, or at least sense the impressions of them, which is more important. (The fact that I've often been in such locations in NoCal probably helps me visualize it as well.)
Non-organic settings and locations and scenes are left vague, or just not described coherently. I have no idea how large the town is, how it's laid out, how the downtown looks, what the architecture of anything (town, school, her house) resembles, how big the school is or how it's organized, how far it is from any point to any other point, or what any character looks like other than Bella and Edward. The makes of cars are mentioned a few times, and we get references to Bella's parka, or wet hair, and constant mentions of the rain, but there are never any clothing brand names, detailed descriptions of clothing, mentions of specific TV shows, websites, movies, popular music, books, authors, or anything specific and grounding. At one point Bella's surfing for information on vampires, and the line is something like, "I closed the pop up ads and finally got to my favorite internet browser." Who talks like that?
The generic-ness of much of the book is kind of weird; it's like one of those cheap TV commercials where they hire a professional athlete, but didn't pay extra to the league to show actual trademarked team uniforms, so the athlete is in some generic clothing that's vaguely-similar to the iconic jersey of his team, but not so close that the league could sue.
Meyer also fails in the "show, don't tell" guideline, an aspect of writing that bad, mediocre, or lazy/hurried authors almost always fall victim to. It's not a critical failing, and I think uninvolved, inexpert, or skimming readers probably prefer things this way. "Showing" requires readers to pay attention and think and draw their own conclusions about character actions and motivations. Most authors "tell." Meyer certainly does. The whole book (so far) is from Bella's POV, in a 1st person narrative. And since everything is told, we get countless lines like, "I was so angry I couldn't speak." Or, "It always made me crazy when he behaved that way." Or, "He was so beautiful I couldn't think when I looked into his eyes."
Those are not quotes, but there are dozens of lines just like them. There's nothing about Bella's opinions or feelings or emotions that's left open to interpretation. She tells the reader how she feels about everything, and why, so that even her confusion or exasperation is spelled out. Other characters remain somewhat opaque, but we only know exactly what Bella knows or thinks about them. It's not cleverly written in a way that the reader knows or sees more about other characters than does the narrator.
More interesting novels present character interactions on two levels; what the character knows and what the reader knows. This technique can use a modified version of the unreliable narrator to add more info and interest. The author can make it clear that X loves or hates the narrator, while the narrator doesn't realize it. The reader is then wondering when the narrator will catch on, if they'll get into trouble or be rescued by X, etc. Nothing like that thus far in Twilight, and it could very easily be done. After all, Bella is 17 and not very social, so while she's very intelligent (well, she's educated and knowledgeable, which isn't necessarily the same thing), it would be natural to expect her not to pick up very well on social cues. She could be rude or oblivious or stubborn or clueless, causing complications in her life and character-based plot advancements; things the reader would notice while hoping Bella would get a clue. Nothing like that has happened yet.
As for Bella, I'm not sure what the author's aim was. She's the narrator, but her "voice" is manifestly not that of a teenager. Her tone is too formal and detached, her level of insight is too mature, and she's got a weirdly emotionless demeanor. Utterly unconvincing as a 17 y/o girl. If I didn't know the author was fairly young, I'd have assumed this book was by a woman of at least 50, who had largely forgotten the passions of youth. Or perhaps by a man, who wasn't very good at writing in a female voice. As it is I'm not sure if it's just a limitation of the author, or if the cold, clear, dry tone of the narrator is setting us up for her eventual fall into a desperate, impassioned, deranged tone when she descends into love with her vampire suitor.
Bella's lack of introspection is also curious. She's supposed to be so bright and somewhat philosophical, but she never seems to turn any kind of critical insight into her own behaviors. Why is she uninterested in making friends? Why doesn't she have any interest in the boys? Why doesn't she have any real passions or desires in life? I don't expect those questions to all be answered already, if at all, but the way the supposedly brilliant and insightful Bella trudges obliviously through the intellectual and psychological aspects of life is odd. Most bright teens and young adults I've known have been fairly consumed with those types of issues, especially when they were bored with their professional/personal lives and needed something more existential to speculate upon.
Also, the plot is dragging. The opening was fairly involving, as we got to know the narrator and her situation and met the gorgeous and enigmatic Edward. The last fifty pages though, from 100-151 or so, have been boring. The book has gotten very diary-like. Bella pines for Edward, Bella goes grocery shopping, Bella takes a walk in the woods, Bella turns down date requests from boys, Bella's bored in Chemistry class, etc. The book's (fairly transparently) making an effort to set up her boredom and ennui, probably so we'll understand/sympathize more why she's going to be accepting of the vampirish truth of things when she falls in love with Edward. But that chore could be accomplished with fewer pages of nothing, I think.
One note of good news is that I'm likely to get answers to these questions, since I'm committed to reading the whole book. That's no chore. Even with the book's shortcomings, it's a very quick read, and still fairly involving. I'd stick it out anyway, since I'm looking at this as work, as research into contemporary trends in popular fiction. My enjoyment of it is fairly irrelevant. Though that doesn't mean I wouldn't be happy to find some all the same.
151-313 I sat down to read for a moment, got trapped beneath 17 pounds of borrowed cat, and ended up reading for an hour. Things have not picked up especially. The male and female protagonists have declared their enduring ardor for each other, a realization realized during an enduring afternoon lolling in the grass and flowers of a forest glade, and then an evening lying in her bed, fully dressed. They can't have sex because he might lose control of himself with passion and crush her skull while trying to caress her cheek. That's actually the example Edward uses when explaining it. Romantic!
So they're in love and it's wonderful. True, there's no real basis for their relationship other than the physical; she thinks he's gorgeous and his breath is intoxicating (he eats nothing and drinks only blood, so imagine that fragrance), and he thinks she's very pretty, smells great, and she's the only person on Earth whose mind he can't read. And since when did 17 y/os and emotionally stunted, not-too-bright 105 y/o vampires need more than that? I'm less sure what's in it for the reader, but I suppose for a certain demographic, just that there's true love is more than enough.
It's not an awful book, and the writing is passable, though the sense that this is an all-too-extended diary entry has only intensified with the play-by-play description of every action Bella has taken for the past 4 days/130 pages. But now that the world fiction has been explained, and we know the limitations of this particular form of vampirism, so we're left with two not-very-compelling characters lolling about in the sappiest of sappy puppy love, without even sexual dynamics to compel interest. Now what?
I'm glad I heard enough details about the movie version of this to know that there's some conflict and vampire battles and such later on, since as it is, it's looking like Romeo and Juliet without the Montagues and Capulets to enliven things, and I'm not sure I could stand another 150 pages of that. Even if the small words, simple sentences, and big font ensure it will only take me an hour to finish.
I will give the author some credit on the writing quality; Bella got a lot less analytical in her narration. Instead of so much, "I felt very annoyed." type describing/telling, she actually showed some of her emotions and got all giddy with love, etc. True, it was still mostly described, "I felt my brain shut down as the bolts of electric excitement coursed through my body." Or words to that effect. But it was a bit more convincing than the earlier, emotionless sections of the novel.
The end. I got through the rest of it in fairly short order, and thankfully, things did pick up. Around 370 the rising action begins, when some other nasty vampires show up, catch the whole friendly vampire "family" out playing baseball (no, really) and immediately obsess over Bella, the tasty human. One of the new vampires is a "tracker" which is apparently the worst kind. He will follow his prey indefinitely and never give up, and now Bella is his prey. Left unexplained is why or how there are trackers at all, when every human is such an easy and unwary victim for any of the superhuman, immortal, almost invulnerable vampires. But hey, the book needed some kind of plot eventually.
Much subterfuge commences, with all the friendly vampire family instantly devoted to helping save Belle, since they see how happy she's made Edward, and she's a wonderful fascinating human despite having no real talents or gifts, etc. They split up into different groups and manage to smuggle her out of town and all the way back to her old home town of Phoenix. Where the tracker, of course, tracks her and by taking Belle's mom hostage lures her to him. She's alone with the evil vampire and he knocks her around a bit to tenderize his steak, before there's a miraculous rescue by Edward and his family, and then Bella wakes up in the hospital and Edward is waiting by her bed and everything is happily ever after. And then they go to the prom that she never wanted to go to since she couldn’t dance and didn't date, and she has a great time anyway and then she's voted prom queen and made cheerleader captain too.
Okay, the last 2 didn't happen, but it really does end with her at the prom with her perfect vampire date promising to always love her and never leave her, but refusing (for now) to bite her and make her a vampire to live forever with him.
The plot wasn't great, but it wasn't awful. The execution of it was crap though. We never saw any actual vampire conflict, other than some mildly harsh words. The rescue was mostly off-camera since Belle was fainting, and defeat of the evil, superstrong, 300-year-old bad guy vampire was entirely off screen. The only mention was much later, when Edward was like, "I pulled him off of you and my dad and brother finished him off." Orly? After long paragraphs the previous chapter about how fierce and deadly the tracker was, and how it was almost impossible to kill a vampire, etc?
We were also cheated out of Belle's reunion/apology with her father, who she insulted viciously in order to convince him she was really running away from home since she had to get away from the tracker and keep him from going after her dad. The "tell not show" tendency returned with a vengeance at the end, and Meyer's writing of the action scenes continued to be the weakest arrow in her quiver.
Is Bella Swan a Mary Sue? Not horribly, but yeah, she fits the description. There's always some reading into the author's persona to make a final judgment on this question, and I don't know anything about Meyer to make that call, but Bella qualifies by most definitions. She's overly passive to be a truly classic Mary Sue, but she's loved by everyone except the bad guys, she's the prettiest (human) girl around but has no idea of her charms, she's always the center of attention despite showing no real talents or abilities, the wins the heart of the perfect guy no other girl can attract, she's smart and kind and considerate well beyond her years, and her only flaw is her clumsiness, which is actually fairly endearing.
I'll have to see how she evolves over the course of the series, before I make a final determination on this issue.
Is Twilight worth the hype/notoriety/sales?
No way. If I had read this first novel in the series without having the others on hand, I wouldn't have read any more of them. If I'd read this novel without all the hype and notoriety, I'd have forgotten it in 5 minutes and probably not even bothered to write a review, much less making notes as I went through. It's not the author's fault her books have found a (huge) audience and created higher expectations for her work, but it is her cross to bear. I'm sure the millions in royalties, merchandise sales, and movie rights will help her get over the pain.
The book didn't suck, but it's in no way a modern masterpiece, or even a memorable novel. The plot is paper thin, there are no memorable or original characters, there are no "oh snap!" plot twists, the writing is mediocre, the action scenes are botched, the flow of events is diary-like and myopic, the narrator is Mary Sue-ish and not sympathetic, the watered down vampire mythology is unimaginative and reductionist, and the book doesn’t even end with a cliff hanger or any real enticement to read book two.
I'm going to withhold any larger sociological judgments on the overall popularity of this series until I've read more books in it (I'm interested enough to do that, at least, which is more than I can say about a lot of fantasy series.), but at this point it seems like romance fans and undemanding younger readers must be pushing the popularity of this series. There's nothing in book one to appeal to fans of the occult or horror, and the book isn't funny, or well-written, or full of interesting characters. If I was surprised by anything it was by how lame the vampire mythology and cosmology was.
Edward Cullen and his family were just boring. They have super speed and strength and such, and some of them have some mild psychic powers, but all the gothic, mythological coolness of vampires has been entirely jettisoned. They don't do anything you could describe as "magical." They're just like anyone else, except they drink blood (from anything, not just humans), don't sleep, and are super strong, and live forever. They don't have specially powerful brains, they can't mesmerize people, they aren't vulnerable to the sun, they can't transform, they have no powers over animals, etc. None of the traditional elements are retained. No sleeping in coffins, no fear of crosses or garlic, nothing. It's reasonable for an author to update elements of traditional mythology, but in this case 1) the changes make them boring and pedestrian, and 2) the changes seem transparently intended to make the vampires more appealing to girls who don't like horror movies or gory/gothic stuff.
Inexcusably few posts lately, and no idea when that's going to change. I've been working a ton of the D3 website and wiki, spending a couple/few hours a day working on the mystery novel with my dad, working part time on some paid writing/editing, sporadically dating, spending fun time with the IG, indulging in some spring gardening, filling my hard drive with anime downloads (though I limit myself to watching no more than an hour a day), and more or less keeping up with my news/politics/info web browsing.
Blizzard Entertainment is proud to present its first global writing contest. If you enjoy the Blizzard Entertainment universes and have the drive to pen fantasy fiction in them, here’s your chance to shine.
Whether you conjure stories in your free time or write for a living, you’re encouraged to participate. This contest is open to entrants from around the world, and will be judged by Blizzard Entertainment’s own writers and masters of lore.
To enter, submit a 3,000 to 10,000 word story written in English and set in the Warcraft, StarCraft, or Diablo universe by April 12 and earn your chance to visit the Blizzard Entertainment headquarters and meet the writers and staff behind the lore seen in the games and books.
I don't really care about the prizes; Irvine is a hellhole, and I've been to Blizzard HQ and met Blizzard guys often enough that I'm not overawed by the visit. I don't care about autographed copies of the books either, (the first 2 I read in the Diablo series were awful) though I do need to read them all at some point to help get the lore sections of the wiki up to snuff.
I still want to win though. For the fame and glory? It would be a nice resume boost too, I suppose. After all of the Diablo fan fiction I've written for fun, Halloween and holiday stories galore, I'd be a fool not to enter this contest. Plus, the rules are quite favorable. 3000-10000 words is very generous; I don't think any of my Diablo short stories have been much more than 5000 words, and if I'd had to guess at the size limits on this contest I'd have expected that to be the upper limit. With just 3-5k words to work with, not too much can be done, in terms of spinning a real yarn. 10k words though? That's a lot. That's enough length to do just about anything, with a short story. And if it's not enough length, the fault is with your story trying to become a novella.
I don't think I'll win, no matter how cool an idea I come up with and how well I execute it. Just about every short story contest I've ever seen has chosen something quirky and weird. Some Memento-type thing where it's all told backwards, or has a dual meaning, or is some strange experiment with an unreliable narrator. Stories that freak you out when you realize what's going on, but that don't have any real lasting value, beyond their animating gimmick. And yes, maybe I'm still bitter about some short story contests in college that let poets judge and therefore wound up with ridiculous, incoherent, metaphorical artsy-fartsy crap winners. *cough*
I don't think anything that wacky would win this contest, but I do think it'll be something 4th wall breaking. Some sort of real world cross over with Orcs and Taurens in Times Square, or real people pulled into the World of Warcraft where they must use their knowledge of medicine and technology to survive. I'm not going to write one of those, since they don't interest me, so I'm not going to win. I do want to at least score one of the book collections though, and more importantly, I want to write something I'll feel proud of. To that end I'm trying to think up something more creative than my usual "start at 11pm on October 31st" Halloween action/horror story.
I want to use the length allotment and delve into something more deeply and creatively than I have previously. My initial thought was to trace a character's whole life. Start with a young boy as he enters the Paladin training academy, or a Barbarian lad surviving some kind of Sparta-like upbringing. I'd have written it with vignettes; a page or two every few years, hitting on some key moment in his (or her) life, and leading up to graduation and then going out into the real world. Maybe continuing through a whole life, until defeat or dwindling in old age. I might still do that for some sort of ongoing website fan fiction feature, but I don't think I'll do it for this contest.
My current thought is a "sympathy for the devil" sort of approach. Write something from the PoV of one of the demons, and humanize them thorough it, without breaking the world fiction. The demon would still be basically evil, but he would have his own goals and ideals and worries, and would be working to accomplish those, instead of just existing as a monster to pop up and be killed by the human heroes. My favorite part of the LotR movies were the scenes of the Orcs living in their own societies and interacting without human interference. I'd love to see that done in the Diablo world. What's it really like in Hell? The game fiction talks about civil wars and demon factions battling and political strife, but only in very general terms. It's very undeveloped, undiscovered territory. (Unless some of the later Diablo novels delved into those topics. Demonstrating once again that I really should have forced myself to read them all, given my online job description.)
Whatever I do, I've got to get started soon. The deadline is this Sunday.
As for the lack of blog post here, besides all of my real life business, I've got another problem. I can't seem to squeeze out a BlackChampagne.com post that's under 2000 words. Every time I think of some topic I want to address here, the post turns into an essay-length article that usually requires tons of links and research. (This one probably will too.) Even though I type very quickly and seldom rewrite or edit these entries, I still spend an hour or two, as I get distracted reading this and that during the research/link-hunting phase. I'm not lacking for blog interest or inspiration, I just feel like I'd rather not post at all than do a half-assed job on something I want to discuss.
Which is my excuse for more or less dumping this next bit, without really discussing or analyzing it.
It's getting very interesting to observe the hysteria and conspiracy theorizing that's coming out of the right wing these days. There's that looney bomb thrower of a congresswoman from Minnesota, every sub-Rush radio ranter, Glenn Beck on FOX TV, etc. Beck is my chief motivation for this post, since he seems to make the blogosphere every day with another unhinged rant. I defy you to watch this clip without questioning his sanity. Colbert's satirizing antics are over the top, but at least he's clearly joking. Beck... dunno? He's either a jester or a madman. And I don't mean that rhetorically. If some random dude unleashed an equally sobbing, slobbering, rambling diatribe on a public street, he would be arrested and remanded to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
I don't know if Beck's crazy antics that gets quoted online are representative of his overall content, and I feel he must be, Ann Coulter-style, playing the fool for publicity and career-gain. But it's worrying, since he (and she) are such monomaniacal fools that would happily march their viewers over the brink for more book sales and higher rating. Plenty of normal, sensible people watch them for various reasons, but there's a smaller core of disenfranchised, unemployed, frightened, gun-hording nuts who are, increasingly, beginning to act on the paranoia the constant rabble-rousing and conspiracy theory-spreading right wing media creates.
The guy with the machine gun who ambushed those cops in Pittsburgh is a perfect example. Young, dumb, white, paranoid, gullible, neo-Nazi racist, lacking real friends or family or a career, unable to adapt to the changing world, and feeling totally powerless with the anchors of his lack of education and fossilized social views. He was consumed with paranoid terror over crazy stuff no normal person takes seriously. (To our great peril!!! *cough*) State sovereignty, UN one world governments coming to take our guns, (And wimmen. And jerrrrrrbssssss!) etc. And he was able to obtain a great deal of firepower, so when he eventually snapped he took others with him. It's fortunate that he was a loser without the ambition to get all Columbine on his office or some local school.
That's just one case. Read any random every blog post by David Niewart, an author who monitors the racist right wing fever swamps. I can't read most of his stuff, since it's just too depressing and scary. The amount of dangerous, gun-hording, useful idiot, neo-Nazi maniacs in the US, reading conspiracy theory craziness online, ditto'ing at Rush and Hannity and Malkin, buying every lie they're told, and trying to work up the courage to go out in a blaze of ignoble glory may well be approaching some sort of breaking point.
They're self-perpetuating and caught in a feedback loop. They're terrified that Obama, who was a center-left politician in Illinois, campaigned for the highest office as a center-left politician, and has governed from the center-left as president, is a fascist or a communist (not that they have any idea what those words mean, but they sound scary) and they think of the government coming to get them. So they horde guns and stockpile food and refuse to pay their taxes and break lot sof laws and harass their neighbors, which leads to complaints being filed, which leads to police intervention, which leads to the discovery that they're gun nuts with illegal weapons, which leads to... the government coming to get them. They're slacker Randy Weavers heading for their own private Ruby Ridges.
The great irony is that during the previous presidential administration, the government really was disappearing people (innocent and otherwise), spiriting them off to secret military prisons and international gulags, where they were stripped of all legal rights, tortured, held in solitary confinement, denied legal recourse, etc. But that was okay, since Bush only did that to terrorists. And we know that decent white Americans are never terrorists.
A lot of writers and bloggers are doing what I'd do about it, if I had the time and inclination to study the phenomena more closely. Try to figure out the psychology motivating this craziness. What's setting them off now? There are lots of factors; economic distress, cultural changes, a black president, etc. Anything and everything is adding up, I suspect. Plus, most of this kind of behavior is motivated by feelings of fright and paranoia, and it's easy to feel paranoid when the vast majority of Americans think you're crazy and your politicians have been overwhelmingly repudiated in the last two elections.
I'd go on... but this is one of the short posts, remember?
As my nearly-lifeless corpse makes another slow rotation on my personal, "lots of good story ideas; not spending the time to write them out properly" rope, I've gained some inspiration from a couple of other writers. Stephenie Meyer, author of the teen/romance/vampire series Twilight, and adult romance author Nicholas Sparks. Both are enjoying massive success with their work, and both entered my consciousness recently. Meyer's Twilight is getting a ton of attention since the first movie just opened to gargantuan business, and Sparks popped into my attention via a profile of him in Entertainment Weekly magazine. I'll start with Sparks, since he (and his work) are more easily dismissed.
The guy and his books had never penetrated my consciousness until last week, when I finally got around to flipping through a month-old copy of Entertainment Weekly that had been sitting (as that lame magazine usually does) beside my toilet. I used to subscribe to the mag, but the endlessly-deteriorating quality of the content (and the popular entertainment it chronicles) gradually sapped my interest. My subscription lapsed last year and I hadn't missed it at all. My surprise was therefore not entirely pleasant when new issues started appearing in my mailbox this Fall. I threw out the first 4 or 5 unopened, but eventually found myself flipping through the new issues, then hating myself for the 10 or 15 minutes I'd never get back. I've now taken to depositing them in on the toilet, for obvious reasons... I might run out of TP some day.
(Curious about their origin, I finally asked my dad. He admitted that he'd given me the subscription, since when he renewed his own subscription they'd offered him a free one for a guest. The odd part is that he hates the magazine more than I do, and has even less interest in pop culture. Yet we're both receiving them in the mail.)
The issue in question I'd saved for some months since it was the memorial Paul Newman issue. I wasn't saving it for sentimental reasons, since frankly, I don't know much about his non-pasta sauce career. I saved it since I hadn't looked through it yet, and (foolishly) thought the issue would prove informative. It was, in a way. I now know that everyone in Hollywood loved him, and that even his bad movies and mailed-in performances were among the best ever committed to celluloid. It was just the sort of hard-hitting journalism that had me thinking about resubscribing to EW at least oh, never, during the time my subscription laid fallow.
More interesting than Newman's pictorial hagiography was a profile of best selling author Nicholas Sparks, contained in the same jam-packed issue. I read it for purely professional reasons, and found it quite informative. I'd never heard of the guy, but I had heard of one of his books. He wrote The Notebook, which I've never read, but I did recall hearing of the movie adaptation, which I've never seen. Hey, it's more familiarity than I can boast of with most pop culture phenomenas.
The Notebook might be Sparks' most famous novel, but he's far from a one hit wonder. As the EW article proudly proclaimed, he's the author of 14 bestsellers in 14 years. See for yourself; its online, and from it I'll quote a couple of writing-related chunks:
A novel takes him a few months to conceive and then five months to write. He sets a daily goal for himself of 2,000 words. He writes for five to six hours a day and types approximately 60 words a minute, which he says leaves him with 54 minutes an hour to stare at the computer and six minutes to actually write. ''See,'' he says, with a friendly shrug of his shoulders, ''it's not an unbelievable pace.''
...Sparks admits to an ever-present cloud of worry hanging over his head. ''After every book I feel like the well is dry,'' he says. ''Well, that's it! Got nothing. Done. Washed up. Don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll write a cookbook.'' But then he practices his standard method of formulating the skeleton of his next love story. ''Okay,'' he says, getting excited, ''I just wrote The Lucky One. So the next one won't be a military story. I know that right off the bat. These characters were in their 20s, okay, so the characters are not in their 20s. Okay, so if you're in your 40s, what are the dilemmas? Oh, wait, I've got Nights in Rodanthe coming out, and that's a love story with characters in their 40s, so if I come out with a book just like that, people will think I'm not original. Okay, what are the dilemmas that typically face 30-year-olds that I haven't done? Are we dealing with a woman who has put herself on hold for the sake of her career? Very common for women. See, you want something universal. So, hmmm, where does that go? Could be anything. Hmmm, let me do her biological clock. Hmmm, maybe she goes to her 20th high school reunion? Ah, yes, maybe she had a boyfriend? Was he ever married? Was he divorced, is he widowed? Does he have kids? What if this, what if that, what if this...''
I imagine a "serious" author would/should be horrified by that cavalier, soulless, automated approach to formulating the cookie-cutter characters and cliche plot of a novel. Even if it is a romance novel. And sure, it's as contrived and commercial as an episode of Pokemon, but Sparks is a business man, and a very successful one. Write for the audience, don't fall into a rut, give a wide variety of readers something to identify with in your work, and don't overthink things. I find it interesting to read a novel with quirky, unique, idiosyncratic characters, and I'm sure most people would say the same thing... but there's a reason countless crappy sitcoms and lawyer shows and cop dramas are on TV for 15 years; people enjoy familiarity. It's why most fantasy series start out brilliant and inventive and then tumble into a slow grinding progression procession that continues until their author's death. And sometimes after. People like characters they know, and characters who are like them, and characters they can identify with. Plus it's a hell of a lot easier for an author like Sparks to crank out a book a year if he's not researching disparate professions and creating characters he has to deeply psychoanalyze.
Who can argue with success?
As for Twilight, it's being hailed as a successor to the Harry Potter series, but that's largely wishful thinking on the part of publishing publicists. Twilight has sold a tiny fraction of HP, since it's got a tiny fraction of HP's appeal. It's essentially 90210 with fangs. Watered-down Anne Rice. Beautiful high school kids flirting and fighting and falling in love, but some of them are vampires, and they're oh-so tortured and immortal and pretty. Especially the boys.
Like all romance novels, even/especially the occult-flavored ones, Twilight is written to function as a form of female wish fulfillment. Insecure new girl in town falls in love with god-like vampire hunk, who sweeps her off her feet. Every woman feels ugly and unloved and stupid and clumsy at times, and according to the Amazon.com reviews, Bella certainly lives up to that. But she's not an ugly duckling, she's a Swan (Literally. That's the character's last name.) and the super hunky vampire falls in love with her and is devoted to her and fights for her and saves her from danger and he's perfect and dreamy and hunk, etc, etc. He might as well be a prince, or a pirate captain, or a any other romance novel lead of the type Fabio once posed for.
The conflict comes from evil vampires, and from the passion denied between the m/f leads. The hunky vampire dude doesn't want Bella to become a vampire like him (because living forever and being beautiful isn't worth having to go to high school and date stupid 17 y/o's for 113 years), so he can't really "take" her as he wants to. But she wants to be taken, since she wants to submit to his masculine perfection. Etc. As Ebert pointed out, it's basically an abstinence play, substituting blood sucking for sex. Why they don't just have sex, or why that's not enough to tide them over if they do, is unknown. (I might read the novel someday, just to satisfy my own curiosity, but I have not done so as of yet.)
What connects these two authors, besides their romance-styled writing (Sparks bristles at his work being called "romance" but I don't think Meyers is fighting the inevitable), is their success. And their workmanlike approach to it. I haven't read that much about Meyers' writing schedule, but Sparks' is inspirational. He, and just about every successful writer I know of, treats their avocation as a profession. Schedule a block of time every day, and spend it working. You don't get to surf the internet if you're not motivated, or blog, or watch TV. As Sparks says, he writes 2000 words a day, even though that only takes 6 minutes an hour to type.
There's a great line about writing that's always stuck with me. "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." It's unfortunate that this quote is the most famous thing its author ever wrote -- why couldn't Twain or Hemingway have said it? -- but the strategy is sound.
Stunning talent is not required to be a successful writer. In fact, it's arguably a detriment, since it will drive you to distraction trying to perfect every sentence. Workmanlike prose is better, since it's good enough for 95% of readers, it's faster to write, and it's much faster to (not) edit. If you know your rough draft is virtually as good as it's going to get, you save time on rewrites.
One interesting difference between these two authors is how their detractors revile them. The Notebook has 1500 reviews on Amazon.com, with a 4-star average. Of the 180 1-star reviews, most are brief, dismissive, and uncontroversial. They say it sucks, it's boring, it's trite and mawkish and sentimental, etc. But they are far from inspired in their insults. Most of the 1-star reviews or just one or two paragraphs, and can be skimmed in seconds. The book isn't bad enough to stir outrage amongst its detractors. Most offer surprise only that it's so popular, or that so many other people profess adoration for it. Few have more than 5 or 6 agree/disagree votes, and I didn't see any with more than 12 recommends.
On the other hand, the 1-star reviews for Twilight are impassioned. There are 2900 reviews in total, and the book has a 4.5 average, which is exceptionally high. Of the 291 1-star reviews, most are discourses. Multiple paragraphs long, they rip into the book like the star boy vampire into a fleeing hare (he only sucks blood from animals; that's how you know he's the good guy). Many of them have hundreds of recommends; the most popular one now is at, "498 of 600 people found the following review helpful." These people put effort and intelligence into describing why the novel sucks, and many of their pans are quite entertaining, and quite nasty. A number of them attack not just the book, but the author as well, calling the female lead a "Mary Sue" of the highest order. Here's a quote from one that's got 192 agreeing votes:
I may just sue Ms. Meyer as it is possible that she stole the fabric covered books I wrote my own fantasy novels in when I was 13 - this book is written in the exact same style. The protagonist is a "slender" brunette, apparently so lovely that boys fall over her as soon as she arrives at her new school, including a superior and (as we are continuously told so as to avoid actual description) "godlike" and gorgeous vampire who never bothered with any other girl until he was spellbound at first sight (and evidently, smell).
This is not a typical YA novel heroine considering most readers cannot identify or sympathize with someone so amazing and physically attractive. Then I took a look at the author... oh yes, I get it now. We have a term for this and it is MARY SUE. The author has made the main character a thinly veiled perfection of herself and provided absolutely no personality to the character. In fact, every character in this book is barely even a cardboard cut out - no one has any real personality beyond some fleeting stereotypes and everyone behaves predictably and completely unconvincingly. It is like reading "slash" fiction, as Edward only speaks in that way that only exists in slash - males do not act like this in real life, they do not poke you gently on the nose, beg you to tell them ALL about every minute detail of your life and treat you like a newborn baby. Only in slash.
One other quote, since it made me laugh. 169 people found this one helpful.
The plot revolves around Bella Swan, a Mary Sue whose primary skills seem to be having a martyr complex, attracting trouble, and falling down.
As I said, I haven't read either book, so I can't offer my opinion (and since I'm about 50 book and movies reviews behind, even if I did it's doubtful any of us would live to hear it). I do find it interesting how much their hate mails differ, though. Sparks' novels appear to be disposable pap; it's a romance novel, you go in knowing that, and no one expects too much. If you like romance novels, you enjoy them and get your kick. If you don't you dislike it and probably don't care enough to go on Amazon.com and vent. Twilight attracts a larger and far more passionate audience. It's a romance novel, but it's also a saga with a world fiction and a vast and devoted young (and not so young) female audience.
I wonder if the occult genre factors into the passion of the reviewers? Sparks novels are just real world, regular people doing regular things. They're not the usual Old West, Pirate Ship, Medieval Kingdom, fantasy romance novel setting. Twilight is ostensibly set in the real world, but it's got occult vampire magical elements, which puts it into fantasy, and therefore it brings out more love and hate in its readers? Or is the greater passion about that novel due more to the young adult skew, which means its readers are more likely to be teens with hotter emotions, plus more familiarity with the Internet and time to go argue for or against the novel on amazon.com?
I got motivated to revisit the old days, and turned out a Diablo 3, Halloween-themed short story last night. It's posted now on the D3 site, and you can read it here. I'll add it to the fiction section on this site at some point, although that section, like reviews and other things, is kind of in limbo now since I need to redo the whole back end of this site along with reskinning everything. I keep putting that off, while also putting off adding new content, since I'll just have to redo it when I redo the scripts and layout. Yes, it's an ugly cycle.
The Slacktavist, a blog I enjoy only a passing familiarity with, has spent the past four years intermittently discussing the first book in the Christian Revelations-porn series, Left Behind. Each entry has covered just a few pages of the book, and it's taken four years to finish the discussion of a single book. I'd call the project a labor of love, except that the blogger clearly hates the book he's been so painstakingly deconstructing. Just about any entry from the series is worth reading, but the last post does some nice work summing up the entire pony show.
This brief chorus line stroll here on the final page of the book is only a trivial example, but larger examples of larger impossibilities can be found on every other page. This is, in fact, a major theme -- perhaps the major theme -- of Left Behind. The book is an unending series of events that it is impossible to imagine really occurring in the way they are described.
This brings us back to the failure of world-building we discussed last week. LaHaye and Jenkins almost never bother to tell us much of anything about the strange post-Event world in which their story takes place, and when they do provide details they turn out to be irreconcilable with details provided earlier. This lack of world-building in Left Behind is not an oversight, it's a necessity. The authors are presenting an impossible story set in an impossible world. The more they tell us about that world, the less convincing their story becomes. But they couldn't do more to describe such a world even if they wanted to because such an impossible place is indescribable, unimaginable.
I'm not merely suggesting that this story is outlandish or that it's premise is audacious. I like outlandish and audacious stories.
...But such outlandish settings must be consistent. Storytellers can make up their own rules all they like but, having done so, they have to abide by them. Otherwise, it's just nonsense.
And Left Behind, ultimately, is just nonsense. It makes up its own rules and then breaks them. And then it makes up more rules that require its other rules to be broken. Left Behind refutes itself.
The premise of the book is clear and clearly stated. The Rapture and all the other events foretold by premillennial dispensationalist "bible prophecy scholars" are all real and are all really going to happen. Soon. The book wants to show us the events of this cosmic drama acted out before our very eyes in a story that takes its plot from the authors' End Times check list.
Yet the more we watch, the more we read, the less convinced we become that such a series of events could ever occur. Not because they're too outlandish, but because they contradict and preclude one another. We cannot accept the authors' assertion that A will be followed by B and then by C, because A renders B impossible and C could never take place in a world in which B had already happened.
This is the great and insurmountable failure of Left Behind. It set out to be a work of propaganda, a teaching tool meant to demonstrate -- the authors would say to prove -- that the events it describes could and indeed will really happen. Yet their attempt to present a narrative of such events instead demonstrates -- I would say proves -- that these events could not and indeed will not ever happen. It proves that the weird and contradictory events of their check list could never happen in a world anything like the world we live in, or in any other imaginable world. It proves that their supposed prophecies will never, and can never, be fulfilled.
It's an interesting criticism. After all, anyone can glance at one of the Left Behind novels and see that they're horribly written, with leaden prose and terrible dialogue and boring characters, but none of those faults have ever stopped a book from being successful. It's far more revealing to consider that the entire world fiction of the Left Behind book(s) is undone... by itself. The books were written by godly hacks; we knew that, but I assumed the mythology of the books worked and developed cleanly. Apparently they fail even at that?
On a related issue, it's always amazed and amused me that people will eagerly lap up substandard entertainment offerings, whether books, movies, TV, or music, so long as they purport to come from a religious perspective. I don't mean actual televised sermons or televangelists, but works of fiction, in whatever medium, that are modern updates of Christian lore. If the Left Behind books had invented a new mythology they'd have sold about 500 copies, since they're written poorly, and there's no logic or consistency to their story. The same goes for most Christian music, movies, etc. And, I assume, for Muslim, Mormon, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, etc, entertainment, in various locations where those faiths are ascendant.
It's an interesting issue; that humans are willing, even eager, to consume sub-par entertainment so long as they feel it will not contradict, or will actually reinforce, their operational dogmas. I guess it's logical; if you buy into the metaphysical claims of religion X or Y, then it's more important that you stay true to those than that you consume entertainment that's actually entertaining.
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I've been enjoying a recording of a Chris Cornell acoustic concert. I had this song on repeat all evening, and during it my mood went gradually from "great song" to "heart broken" to "fiction aspirations." It's a yearningly beautiful, terribly sad love song. Here's a good quality recording of it from You Tube, or you can just download the whole album and extract the mp3, though you didn't hear me say that.
It was originally a Temple of the Dog song, but I think this version is a substantial improvement over the original. The acoustic guitar is just accompaniment, bringing Chris' vocal performance more to the front, and he's a better singer now, than he was in 1990. And perhaps he's learned a bit more about heartbreak and yearning in 20 years?
Read along with the lyrics as you listen, if you are so inclined. I'll get to the fiction inspiration below them.
You call me a dog well that's fair enough it aint no use to pretend, you're wrong when you call me out I can't hide anymore I have no disguise you cant see through
You say its bad luck To have fallen for me What can I say to make it good for you You wore me out, like an old winter coat Trying to be safe from the cold
But when its my time to throw the next stone I'll call you beautiful if I call at all
You call me a dog You say that I'm low cause I've slept on the floor Out in the woods with the badgers & wolves You threw me out cause I went digging for gold And I came home with a hand of coal
But when its my time to throw the next stone I'll call you beautiful if I call at all And when it's my time to call your bluff I'll call you beautiful or leave it alone
You call me a dog Well that's fair enough It doesn't bother me as long as you know Bad luck will follow you If you keep me on a leash and You drag me along
repeat chorus...
I feel these lyrics and emotion so profoundly, when I play the song loud and really listen to it. It tells a story; it doesn't just repeat the same chorus or verse a bunch of times, and it's got a cleverness and almost a plot twist with the wordplay in the final lines. It's not exactly autobiographical for me, but I think anyone who has ever loved and lost (which is anyone who has ever loved), or even just really, really wanted to love, and been denied the opportunity, can take something personal from this one.
It's archetypal. I will use a variant of this plot in a novel, some day.
My takeaway lesson isn't exactly what the lyrics convey, though. I feel it as a narrative of a man who loves a powerful woman too much. He's devoted to her, and she enjoys his devotion, but treats him like shit, while using him for her own purposes and needs. Eventually, someday, through the vicissitudes of fortune, their positions reverse, and she's the one down in the mud. He's got the power over her, others are urging him to take revenge, or to leave her to die. He's envenomed for vengeance, she's resigned to her fate, or bitterly defiant. But as he takes the stone in his hand, and raises it (metaphorically) to crush her... he hesitates. He can't do it. He still loves her. Perhaps now more than ever, with her vulnerability finally on display.
I don't see a happy ending to this tale, if you're wondering. There's no redemption of her, or validation of his love. He doesn't win her over. She takes the reprieve he offers and uses it to escape, or perhaps to restore her former power. She might even take a crueler revenge on him, for daring to spare her; to insult her by showing her mercy in her moment of shame and weakness.
The genders of one, or both, can of course be reversed without losing any of the essential archetypal power of the fable.
My college graduation ceremony is this weekend, and I'm looking forward to it. I actually graduated after the Fall '07 semester, thanks to cramming in 20 units and earning 6 more units of competency exams before Xmas, but I wanted to "walk" in the actual ceremony, and that's what's going down Saturday. Dad and mom/stepdad are coming up to see, and Malaya and the IG will be in attendance as well, so that should be interesting. My parents haven't seen Malaya since we broke up 1.5 years ago, and she and the IG have never met, and my mom and dad have been divorced for nearly 30 years and though they're not fighting, they only see each other about twice a year (during my Xmas visits, usually) despite living just a few miles apart. I might be the only student there with 5 guests sitting in 4 different places?
Adding fuel to the fire (almost literally) is the crazy weather. It hadn't been over 80 here more than a few days all year, despite being a very sunny and dry spring. Suddenly, just in time for graduation and this mini-family reunion, El Sol has erupted directly overhead, and it's supposed to be (fucking) 97 today. The average high for May in San Rafael? 73. The all time record for May is 100, so with some "luck" we might break that this afternoon. I'd be perfectly happy to never feel weather over 70 at any point during the rest of my life, so you can imagine my happiness at this development.
It's supposed to be cooler (as the frying pan is to the fire) over the weekend, with the mercury plummeting to 92 by Saturday. At least I won't be standing around for hours in the sun in a long black robe and hat. Oh wait...
The last time it was this hot was the summer of 2006, when weeks of a humid heat wave eventually drove Malaya and me to spend the best $349 ever. (That $349 has been sitting, unused, on her back patio ever since that summer ended, but I still say it was worth it. I'd bring it over here to replace the puny a/c unit in my apt, but the hole in my apt wall is way too small, and I don't plan on living here so much longer that I'm willing to go home carpentry style and thereby entirely give up my $1200 damage deposit.)
It's far from that miserably-hot now, and it's only supposed to be this hot for a few days, but here's the irony. Around the time it was so super hot in 2006 was just before Malaya's graduation. She was getting her PhD then, so she's still a couple of degrees ahead of me, but my parents were impressed enough to want to come see the festivities. So the last time they were up here was 2 years ago, for a college graduation, and it was hella hot. Now they're returning, for a college graduation... and it's hella hot. That's almost enough to put me off of my thoughts of grad school.
Speaking of grad school, that won't be starting any time soon. If at all. Like about 90% of the applicants, I was not accepted to the writing program I applied to. No idea why not, they don't explain their decisions, but since I never seriously expected to be accepted, I wasn't surprised. I was disappointed, but not terribly, and one benefit of them taking so long to notify me is that I've largely forgotten why I wanted to go. When I applied I was just finished with my 18 month return to college, and thought more of it, in a school that was actually challenging, would be fun. I'd improve my writing craft, I'd make connections in the publishing industry, I'd gain education in areas I'm interested in, and I might even meet some intelligent young women who shared my interest in the written word.
I still think that would be kind of cool, but is it worth delaying the start of my real career another two years? At $22k a year? Not so sure. I could, in theory, manage the graduate writing program course load while also working on my novels and outside writing at the same time, but in reality I think it would lead to brain burn out. There's only so much time I can spend reading, writing, and writing about what I'm reading without needing to spend some time and some brain cycles on non-literary pursuits. I could write novels at night while attending business or law school (I'd probably need to to clear my head of the technical stuff), but I'm not sure the streams wouldn't get hopelessly crossed and snarled if I were trying that while working my way through a "2 novels a week" writing program.
So sure, working on and publishing fantasy novels while doing a writing grad program focused on non-fiction, great books, classics, the publishing industry, etc, is possible, but likely? I've got some time to think it over now, at least, and I'm planning to spend this summer getting really serious about editing my fantasy novel and contacting literary agents while I start working on the sequel. Come the fall, depending on how that's going, I'll decide if I'm still interested in graduate writing programs.
The deadline for applying to most schools is around January 1st. Since I didn't think seriously about grad writing programs until Xmas, I missed the cutoff for several programs that sounded good. If they still appeal to me in 6 months I might try my luck again, but by applying to several this time, instead of just one very selective one in my immediate vicinity. Perhaps I'll have something more impressive to put on my resume by then?
(Though honestly, I have no idea if published mainstream fiction is a good thing on a grad writing program resume. The prestigious grad school writing programs have a reputation as being fiercely and defiantly artsy-fartsy, which is why I never really thought I had a chance. My stated goal was to write high quality work, but high quality commercial fantasy/horror novels -- not nuanced poetry that will never be read by more than fifty people, a dozen of whom might actually understand it. Poetry is a noble goal, but it's not my goal, since 1) I don't get it, and 2) I'd like to do this for a living.)
I came down with a sore throat on Friday. A bit of a dry cough, but mostly a tickling sort of sensation I couldn't seem to scratch. (Thoughts of a bottle brush entered my head, it was so itchy.) In seeming response to this, my nose started dripping down the back of my throat, so I constantly felt like I had to clear it, to no avail. I slept uncomfortably all Friday night; felt like I was drowning, and when I woke up Saturday I had to admit I was actually sick. Hadn't been sick for some time; not since I moved into this apt early last year, at least, but there it was.
Sunday I felt worse, dry cough, head all stuffy, and no energy. Constant napping all weekend, and it was odd to be just so happy to lie in bed. Usually I'm very restless when lying down, and if I'm not asleep, or reading, or making out, I can't remain there. I gotta get up and do something. Yet this weekend, just lying there and doing nothing more than petting the Jinxers was the best thing ever. Jinx certainly agreed; she's happiest when I'm in bed, since she loves to lie there, usually using one of my legs or hips for a backrest. She almost never sleeps in the bed otherwise, but if I'm in there, she's beside me before I know it. Pity that trick doesn't work as well on the IG.
As a result of my illness, Jinx had about the best weekend of her life, since I was in bed for most of it, and was still dragging and napping a lot on Monday. Tuesday I felt a bit better, but still had a cough that felt like a fish bone in my throat, and it wasn't until Wednesday that I felt back to normal. In fact, I had that post-sickness burst of energy and felt great. The best feelings in life are not so much about how good you feel then; they're more about how you were previously. It's easy to feel great after you've been laid low, since you notice the change, even if you just went from "awful" to "non-suicidal." To take your normal state up enough that you really notice it, you generally need a lottery win or a beautiful new boy/girlfriend in your bed, but to feel great after a cold it takes nothing more than the surcease of your hacking. Keep that eventual silver lining in mind next time you're on death's door.
As a result of feeling good (better) and eating too much (I hadn't had much of an appetite since Friday), I had a ton of energy and stayed awake all day Thursday, and then all night too. When I finally got to bed early Thursday morning, I'd been up for nearly a full day, when sleep descended upon me, it wasn't fooling around. I woke up after 6 hours, peed and drank some water, and laid back down to get a bit more sleep. Next thing I knew it was after 5 hours later, I spent a minute in confused, closed-eye calculations, trying to add up the hours and figure out if I'd really slept for 11 straight hours.
Far as I can tell, I did. I've not felt all that rested today despite that head start, but I am not feeling sick, so I guess that was the price I had to pay. It was a bit inconvenient for my work schedule, since last week I was behind on the hours I'm indebted to put in, and planned to catch up on the weekend. Then I got sick and wasn't up to working, so I entered this week about 10 hours in the hole, and got very little done Mon-Wed, what with my busy schedule of coughing, blowing my nose, napping, and informing the purring apostrophe on my bed how like shit I felt. I'd planned to get several hours in Thursday afternoon, reward myself (for working and for remaining alive) with a bike ride, and then getting another 6-8 hours in Thursday evening.
Instead I slept all day, had to run errands since I'd not been shopping in a week, and got distracted catching up on surfing and email when I got home. My reward for that was a nice hour-long chat with the IG, and then dinner, and first thing I knew it was (technically) Friday, and I hadn't done a damn bit of work all day. A state of affairs I quickly set to righting by typing out a typically-overlong and pointless blog post.
In other news, I saw this ad today on one of those ubiquitous funny video sites, and found it funnier than the actual videos I was wasting my life by watching. It's one of those "get laid tonight" ads that are just fronts for porn sites. They have a bunch of photos of hot young girls they found somewhere, random names and ages get applied to them, and by coupling that with a simple ap that customizes them to your area by tracing your IP# to find your location, it's almost like a one click singles site. Except that by clicking them you'll never, ever, meet any of the girls pictured, and greatly lower your odds of meeting any girls at all.
I didn't click it, but I did laugh at the one photo appearing twice, with different ages. You'd think they would put something into their random image/name/age generator to prevent duplicate photos. I doubt anyone actually believes those girls are those ages and available through the service running the ads, but it's a lot easier to pretend if you don't need to believe your date for the evening was cloned. Twice. Or perhaps more times than that, at bi-yearly intervals.
I've long lamented my inability to check off very many literary classics on those "100 books you must read" lists, but rather than simply ignoring the pangs of guilt, I've decided to do something about it. That's what libraries are for, after all. In preparation for this long term wrong reading rectification project, I've been looking at various top 100 classics/modern book lists, and assembling an essential list of books from them. It's all weighty stuff, Brothers Karamazov, War and Piece, In the Name of the Rose, Ulysses, etc. I'll write reviews as I go, so you can either wish me luck or delete this bookmark now, depending on your taste for such literature.
One such list I found worthy of comment was on the Random House site. Their top 100 novels seem a fairly representative selection, though I'd assume they only list ones they publish in their Classics line. Perhaps some authors or titles are exclusively affiliated with other publishers, and are thusly, unjustly, ignored? It matters little, since there are plenty of other lists to compare and contrast with, and I haven't even looked over the RH one that closely.
What I found interesting there was not their official list, but the one compiled from reader votes. It's an odd selection, with quality classics here and there, but the top of the list dominated by trash by Ann Rand and L. Ron Hubbard. Those two have 7 out of the top 10, and I feel fairly confident in saying you will never find a book by either of them in any top 100 list of books ranked by anyone other than acolytes of the religion-esque ideologies those authors created and promulgated.
The very top of the list of the readers' choices for 100 Best Non-Fiction is similarly blighted, and by the same two "authors." In fact, the top of the non-fiction list is pretty revealing of the mindset of the people who voted. It's not a healthy one either, since their book choices reveal them as gun-nut, anarchist, survivalist, libertarian sorts. Makes me wonder how The Turner Diaries didn't make the best 100 novels, and if there's an overlap between the non-fiction voters and Scientologists?
It's also odd how the Hubbard and Rand books are only in the top 10, or not at all. Hubbard wrote dozens of trashy sci-fi novels, but he's got #3, #9, and #10, and no others. If there had been some general swell of Scientologist voters, you'd expect a bunch of Hubbard's books to be scattered all up and down the top 100. Instead it's just those 3, and no others, so the voting had to have been very targeted. Some site popular with the Xenuvians must have promoted vote flooding, and picked just 3 of the master's books to flog. They got the job done, though their efforts pale beside the work of the Randroids. Better keep leaping on those couches, Tommy boy.
Turning my attention back to the task at hand, I'm not sure how I'll present my classic reviews. I read a number of so-called literary classics during my recent, breakneck, degree-finishing dash through a university of higher learning, but I didn't take many English classes, and didn't have much time to reflect on the works I read, since I had so many other classes and so much else to read and write about. I didn't exactly read them for pleasure or completeness either; more like 150 pages of Plato here and an act of Shakespeare there, with a paper due on each Monday evening.
When I read some classic novels though, I'll be reading the whole books, and reviewing them... but by what criteria? It seems silly to review Faulker or Hemingway on the same point scale I've used for oh... Christopher Piolini. And yet... books are books, and it's not fair to hold them to different standards, or to be too forgiving, just because something slow, boring, and overwritten is venerable? I also have some measure of pride in my judgments, and try to limit the idiotic comments in reviews to my abandoned Band Names section, where most of the mistakes are intentional. I'm happy to admit that I can not appreciate or tolerate Anne Rice's floridly cheesy prose and soap opera plots/characters, but will I be able to make the same admission after slogging through 500 pages of something taught in every Great Books seminar course in the Western World? I guess we'll find out.
I'll probably have to do some extra, critical reading along with the books. Classics of world literature aren't known for being easily-digested or discussed. The whole point is that such books are deep and weighty; that's why they've been studied for decades. Reviewing them based on one quick read is almost guaranteed to be a superficial exercise. Furthermore, the anointed classics haven't become classics because they're fun reads, or full of suspenseful twisting plots. Books become classics because they make brilliant societal analysis via metaphor, or express deeper truths about the human condition. That sort of thing is invaluable, and can be uplifting and enlightening, but it doesn't fit neatly into my starkly-delineating review categories.
So yeah, reviewing them will be a challenge. I'm almost more eager to write the reviews than I am to read the books, now.
I'm doing a bit more fiction reading of late; trying to get back into the mood and mindset of that form after the many months of non-fiction and essays and articles and reviews and all that came with finishing my degree and comes with blogging, reading about news and politics, building computer game websites, etc. I know I can do fiction and non-fiction at the same time, I've done so many times in the past, but I've been away from fiction and creative writing for a while, and I need to kick start my muse a bit to get into that sort of thought process.
Writing where you can (and must) make stuff up, where your aim may not be clear and cogent prose, where you may want to be artistic, by license or not -- that's a shooting a different potted black kettle of another colored fish. Metaphorically speaking.
In addition to being out or practice at fiction, I've gone years without reading or thinking much about horror, and since I find a level of visceral frisson and intensity in that genre that's seldom found in mainstream fiction, or even in most fantasy, I'm going to get back into it by reading some classics in the genre. I'll probably review them as I go, since writing helps me think about an analyze the work, but not to the point that I'll lose the creative inspiration I'm reading it to acquire. Also, my reviews section is sadly lacking in coverage of the books and authors that have most influenced and pleased me. I've reviewed tons of crap I've read or watched over the past few years, but have never, or seldom, looped back to discourse on some of the more seminal works I consumed again and again during my formative years.
This first one isn't quite a classic, but it's a book I read several times during the late 80s and early 90s when I was a committed horror fiction fan, and today it's an interesting book to analyze in terms of what came before it, and what it led to. The author is Clive Barker, and the book is his first novel, The Damnation Game. I've mentioned Barker a few times previously, but never in much detail. I'll get to more of my thoughts on his work in this review and others to come, but first, the scores:
The Damnation Game, by Clive Barker, 1985. Plot: 6 Concept: 8 Writing Quality/Flow: 9/7 Characters: 9 Horror: 8 Humor: NA Fun Factor: 3 Page Turner: 5 Re-readability: 6 Overall: 7
These scores are my current opinion, with the full benefit of hindsight and deliberation. My overall score is in terms of the whole horror genre; not in terms of Clive Barker's novels, or else it would be more like a 4. I don't know what I would have given it in 1986 when I first read it, but it certainly would have been less than a 7. Back then, I found the plot slow and not very exciting, the characters interesting but not very involving, and the whole story far less visceral and exciting than the better stories from the Books of Blood. This novel also pales in comparison to the next half dozen novels Barker wrote, two of which are nearly direct descendants of this novel. I'll discuss those books, and how this book led to them, in a bit. But first...
I hesitate to even mention the plot, since it's not what concerns me about this book, nor where the lasting value lies, nor where the analysis should be targeted. But just to momentarily pretend like I'm a real book reviewer, here goes. I'd copy from Wikipedia, but the summary there hardly goes deeper than the blurb on the jacket, and the Amazon.com editorial review is nearly as short, and has some inaccuracies. So:
The book is set in modern day London (circa 1985, when it was written), and while there are four or five main characters, and several important supporting players, the central protagonist (perhaps unjustly) is Martin Strauss. He's in prison when the book opens, and has been for six years, though he's nearing the end of his term. He's 30 years old and wound up in prison after getting deeply into gambling debt and taking part in a failed and unsuccessful robbery to try and pay off those debts. Marty's drawn down deeply into himself in prison, no longer thinking about hope or freedom, but that shell is cracked by the intrusion of Bill Toy, the confidant and bodyguard for Joseph Whitehead, a business mogul. Whitehead is looking to hire a new bodyguard, and has Toy searching the prisons for a likely candidate, figuring a man who owes him his early release, and who will be sent back to prison if he proves unsatisfactory, will work harder and show more loyalty than mere money can buy.
Marty is chosen for the task, and spends a few pleasant months on Whitehead's private estate, getting back into shape and adjusting to his limited freedom. He only gradually comes to know Whitehead and his even more reclusive, heroin-addicted 20 y/o daughter, and also gradually begins to realize that Whitehead fears something more than physical harm, from any common human attackers.
He's got cause to, since as the reader learns through the multiple POV narration, Whitehead's old friend/enemy Mamoulian is hunting him, to repay past injustices. Whitehead and Mamoulian met in the anarchic months after WW2, when Europe was in chaos and Whitehead the thief and gambler sought out Mamoulian, the legendary, magical, and undefeatable card player, in the festering ruins of bombed out Prague. Mamoulian has powers, hypnotic and mind controlling, and can work magic a well, weaving overpowering telepathic illusions, and even raising and compelling the dead. He and Whitehead became friends and Whitehead used what he learned of Mamoulian's powers build a vast empire, an effort he largely completed after a violent break with Mamoulian, some twenty years before the novel's time.
The bulk of The Damnation Game details Whitehead's fear of his old friend, Mamoulian's efforts towards and plans for revenge, and Marty's struggle to protect his savior and Whitehead's physically frail but psychically-strong junkie daughter. There are a few twists and turns in the plot, but it's not a thriller or a straight out horror story. Barker doesn't write those, at least not very often. His novels and worlds are always far more layered and nuanced and subtle, and The Damnation Game is a good example of this, though in a very early, rough, unpolished way.
The novel really isn't about the plot; if it were I'd find no reason to reread it, or write about it. The take away value here comes from the characters and the themes and the level of intelligence and maturity conveyed by the writing. Barker's imagination is justly famed, largely in a pop culture, movie-friendly, "Pinhead the Cenobite" way, but I think his greatest strength is as a writer. His ability to work words and describe things blends perfectly with the maturity of his fictional worldview and the dynamic characters he crafts. This novel is far from his masterpiece, but it's a good start in the novel form.
Lineage
Looking retrospectively, there's a direct line between the themes, plot events, and especially the type of characters in this book, Weaveworld (1987), and Imajica (1991). Barker did not write those novels back to back, they are not set in the same "world," nor do they feature any of the same characters. Nevertheless, there's a clear progression through these books, with the same plot elements and character types, but growing larger, more complicated, and more inventive in each. I don't think Barker's done anything near the quality of Imajica since then, and I think that's the best novel I've ever read, in any genre.
Just going by dimensions, The Damnation Game is about 430 pages, Weaveworld is around 700, and Imajica is upwards of 1000, depending on the edition. It's commonly sold in two volumes these days, not something you often see for a single, stand-alone novel not featuring filthy hobbitses. The Damnation Game is a bit soggy too, in places. It could easily be cut down under 350 pages without losing anything essential, an editing option I would not advise for Weaveworld or Imajica, since it would do them grave harm.
So, Weaveworld featured much bigger ideas, bigger plots, more characters, more substance, and Imajica continued that progression, easily doubling the size of The Damnation Game, while vastly expanding upon it in scope and gravitas of subject. And in books, as in life, size does matter. What are these themes and concepts that were so expanded and improved through this non-trilogy? Familiar themes to those of you who have read a fair amount of Barker, and themes difficult to succinctly explain to those of you who have not (yet).
In these books and in most everything Barker has written, there's a sense of a magical, mystical, demon-infested world within, or beneath, our world. Most people have no inkling of it, but here amidst us are demons and humans possessed of rare magical powers. No one is ever a simple comic book character, though. Barker's characters are invariably possessed of strong personalities and drives, and usually devoted to some great goal. One reason Barker's never sold as well as King and others in the genre, despite being clearly the best writer of the bunch, is that he doesn't do easy, crowd-pleasing, black and white plots or characters. There aren't good guys or bad guys, or clear struggles where the readers is sure to root for one side. In most of Barker's books the good guys have some bad traits, but most interestingly (and influentially to me) are the bad guys, who are never just "bad." They're often evil, or destructive, but for perfectly valid reasons. And while they usually appear to be horrible demons when initially introduced, as the novels progress they are humanized, and often revealed to be flawed, vulnerable, or entirely justified in their actions.
Mamoulian certainly is in The Damnation Game, and so are his various minions. Perhaps the most memorable character in the book is Breer, the razor-eater. Breer is a corpulent, psychopathic pedophile, who swallows razors, engages in self-mutilation, and is fond of murdering young children, then posing them like living dolls in carefully-arranged scenarios. He also tends to lovingly butcher them, slicing the tender meat of their bodies into a paper-thin delicacy which he reverently offers to others like the precious gift it is. Perfectly horrible, of course, but Breer is actually a sympathetic character in the book. Filled with self-loathing, disgusted by what he does, desperate for a purpose or goal in life, and always just wanting to be loved. Whitehead's daughter earns his undying devotion upon their first meeting, when she doesn't recoil in horror at the sight of his grotesque, blood-splattered form. Ultimately, Breer becomes a sort of good guy, when he turns against Mamoulian after being betrayed and by the magician. Oh, and did I mention that Breer commits suicide shortly before Mamoulian returns for him at the start of the book, and spends the entire novel slowly rotting and being consumed by flies, while never quite realizing he's already dead? Nice touch there, eh?
As for Mamoulian, he first seems to be a monster, but as we get to know more about him, from his pathetic origin to his empty existence to his desire to simply lie down and die, he becomes one of the most interesting characters in the book. He's never quite sympathetic, but he's clearly a better man than Whitehead, and more honest too. Both work malign deeds and destroy the lives of others, but Mamoulian has the courtesy to do it one on one, face to face, in a very personal fashion. He only destroys what and who he must. Whitehead has less blood on his hands, but through his ruthless business ambitions he has ruined the lives of countless people, both personally and professionally. Mamoulian is the more honest man as well; he doesn't resort to trickery or deception to obtain his ends, at least not very often, unlike the scheming, manipulating, stoop-to-anything Whitehead.
Honestly, neither character is a tenth as interesting as the leads in Weaveworld, Imajica, or various other later works by Barker, but the basic character templates; the depth and dynamic nature of them, are repeated and reused through Barker's work. The only other author I've read (besides myself, on a thus far limited nature) who does this sort of work with characters is George R. R. Martin in his ongoing Song of Ice and Fire series. And that's one of the things I like best about Martin's work, that characters who initially seem like pure villains are eventually revealed to be very human and, (like everyone you meet in real life), the heroes of their own story. Sometimes even of the book's story. It's a clear mark of bad fiction (which is to say, most fiction) when the "bad guys" are simply that. Bad, evil, uncomplicated and one-dimensional. If the enemies in a book or film exist merely to serve as hurdles for the good guys on their victory lap, it's generally a sign of a lazy or uninspired author.
It's possible to have a compelling villain who is just bad, bad, bad, but far more often the most entertaining bad guys are multi-dimensional, even to the point of becoming anti-heroes. Hannibal Lecter, for instance. Even someone like Darth Vader, despite being a principle in the cartoonishly childish Star Wars saga, is eventually revealed to be layered and complicated, and that makes his actions, and the plot of Return of the Jedi far more interesting than it would have been if he'd simply remained a horrible murderous villain in black plastic. Barker clearly had the idea for multi-layered bad guys and complicated world mythologies in place early on, since they show up in lots of his early short stories. They are nascent in The Damnation Game, but fully emerge from their cocoon in his later works.
The good guys in Barker novels have more up their sleeves, too. Marty Strauss in The Damnation Game isn't a great example of that, since Barker hadn't really come into his inventive prime yet. Marty is just your usual everyman protagonist, swept up in a world of magic and mystery far beyond his ability to comprehend or battle against. The fact that he's only the main character by default, and that he brings very little to the tale, is one of the main reasons I don't score this book higher. The main character in Weaveworld starts out as an everyman, but soon gains a far more important role in things than merely a pawn in the buffeting winds of chaos, and the main character in Imajica is an unimportant painter making a living off of forgeries and a parade of beautiful women, who grows to hold almost god-like status as that fantastically complicated book unfolds.
Incidentally, the depth of Barker's characterization is clearly demonstrated in The Damnation Game by the fact that a good dozen disposable characters are given full 3D profiles, with strengths, weaknesses, ambiguities, and ambitions having nothing to do with those of the main storyline, even if they're only "on screen" for a few minutes. The first and most obvious example is the warden of the prison Marty's in when the book opens. He has two short scenes, but in them he's portrayed as a hard man who is rapidly falling apart after the untimely death of his wife. There's no real reason to give the warden a personality, or to have him be more than a man in a suit during Marty's interview with Whitehead's agent. But the fact that he's a memorable character, despite his irrelevance to the larger novel, adds to the realism and detail of the world. Numerous other such characters are found in The Damnation Game, from Whitehead's chauffeur, to Marty's cellmate, to a fruit merchant, to Marty's ex-wife's new lover, etc. All seem fully-formed and real, and could easily be the stars of their own stories; that much is clear even if they only appear on half a dozen pages.
For all the great things Barker does, and did even in the early effort that is The Damnation Game, his weaknesses are displayed as well. I've heard from other horror fans that Barker's work never really involves them. They enjoy his writing talent, and some elements of his work, but on the whole it doesn't engaging them. Malaya always said she found Barker's writing "too cold." Technically brilliant, but to her they were books to read almost as an intellectual exercise, rather than great stories to lose herself in.
That never occurred to me in my teens when I was first devouring his work and horror fiction in general, but reading it now I can see the point. I didn't quite feel that way about Barker's more recent novels, even ones like Galilee that I disliked, but I get enough enjoyment from the craftsmanship and writing quality and overall excellence that the fact that some of the books are entirely populated by unlikable, largely emotionless characters, engaged in struggles the outcome of which I am indifferent to, doesn't weigh too heavily on me. (This is a further point to George R. R. Martin's credit; that he can do the dynamic characters, make his villains interesting and compelling, de-villainize them as the reader learns more about them, and still keep the overall story churning along.)
In that light, The Damnation Game is a far better novel than it is a good read. I enjoyed reading it last week, but not in the same way I would have enjoyed a good early Stephen King story. I was pulled along through The Damnation Game since I was analyzing the style and form and approach Barker took, and making notes on how he structured the book. His skills as a novelist were profound, even in this early work, and the way he introduced characters, worked exposition into conversation and events, kept the story moving, relayed information to the reader through multiple POVs, occasional flashbacks, juggled multiple characters and storylines without abandoning any for so long they cooled in the reader's memory, etc, were all very well done.
If the book had a more interesting plot, had more sympathetic characters, more building conflict, was a page turner, bridged the personal struggles to larger societal themes (something Barker does very well in later works), etc, it would be a great novel. As it is it's a very well written book powered by a story that would have been unreadably dull and boring in the hands of a lesser writer. I remember Weaveworld being somewhat better, and Imajica being a masterpiece, and since I've got both books sitting out to work my way through in the weeks to come, I guess I'll find out soon enough.
Another author has been busted for falsifying his/her memoir, and in this case it's a big one. Not that the author is a famous person, or has promoted their sob story on Oprah, but in the degree of falsification. Dig this:
In Love and Consequences, a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.
The problem is that none of it is true.
Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed.
Riverhead Books, the unit of Penguin Group USA that published Love and Consequences, is recalling all copies of the book and has canceled Ms. Seltzer's book tour, which was scheduled to start on Monday in Eugene, Ore., where she currently lives.
It's amazing to me that the author would try to perpetrate the fantasy to this level, and that the publisher never checked up on any of the details before sinking so much time and resources into the property. She had to know she'd get caught at some point since she was falsifying so many major details of her life (and presumably fictionalizing most of the stuff in the book too, but that stuff's harder to check than where she grew up, went to college, etc) but I guess she saw the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and so wanted the story to be true that she half-convinced herself it was.
The article includes shocked quotes from the editor who worked with her for more than three years, totally bought into her false bio, and now feels personally as well as professionally betrayed. At least the editor was getting paid for her time, though. Pity they didn't spend a few more bucks to hire a P.I. to see if the woman's story had even minimal basis in fact?
Also linked to in the same post on Scalzi's blog was this article, about a woman who faked her holocaust memoir. She was in Brussels during that time, and her parents were killed by the Nazis when she was 4, but she fictionalized things just a bit in the book.
She didn't live with a pack of wolves to escape the Nazis. She didn't trek 1,900 miles across Europe in search of her deported parents, nor kill a German soldier in self-defense. She's not even Jewish.
Defonseca, a Belgian writer now living in Massachusetts, admitted through her lawyers this week that her best-selling book, Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years, was an elaborate fantasy she kept repeating, even as the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.
"This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," Defonseca said in a statement given by her lawyers to The Associated Press.
She got busted by people researching the story and finding that things weren't quite checking out, but she came clean before anyone could definitively prove she'd made it up. I'm almost surprised she did; she's in her seventies and could easily plead old age confusion and ill health now, and hope to die before anyone conclusively debunked her.
I mention her case for two reasons. One is in the article, where her former publisher, whom the author won a lawsuit for $22m over stolen book profits, is saying they shouldn't have to pay the judgment now. What's the logic there? Because she lied, it's okay that they robbed her?
The second point is funny, in a horrible sort of way. The news item is from AOL, and I dare you to read the comments. It reminds me of why Yahoo closed comments on their news articles; they were invariably a scum-covered sewer of racism, sexism, bigotry, hatred, and much, much more. These are the first 4 comments posted. Literally the first 4! I'm not even cherry-picking the worst, and there are over 1300 total now, so dog only knows what fresh hell you could find yourself knee deep in with a few click throughs:
What else is new. What about the 50 million other people who died who don't get hyped by Hollywood! She probably was on the Oprah book club with Oprah crying and...oh please...meanwhile the Palestinians are getting screwed.
There is no definite proof that millions of jews were killed. Some were killed YES, but not 6 million. It was a reason for the US to go there and steal all the gold. 80 % of the 500 trillion dollars worth of gold at Fort Knox is Nazi Gold. In addition to that the US stole all of Hitlers technologies. Hitler actually had Scientists create things like, Time Machines (it was called the bell) and other amazing inventions. Do your research, don't be a sheep and follow others. Look at things from different angles, and you will find the truth.
Jehovah's Witnesses denounced Hitler's treatment of all Germans and published information regarding the camps before anyone spoke up to condemn him. Public opinion did not intimidate them.
want to know the truth through a child's eyes? go to www.gildasattic.com/alexandra.html and see the link about a book called Patchwork Quilt of Memories
To recap: an asshole with an anti-Hollywood knee jerk reaction and a random digression into Middle Eastern politics, a holocaust-denying lunatic who thinks the first Indiana Jones movie was a documentary, some kook trying to promote the Jehovah's Witnesses with a lie that's entirely irrelevant, and some other weirdo plugging a website about an Austrian actress who's been dead for 40 years.
These are all registered AOL members. You know how everyone who actually knows how to use the Internet dropped AOL years ago for cable or DSL? Apparently all of the sane people went with them.
(I had to check. Page 2, comments 11-20, bring forth raving 9/11 conspiracy theorists, Ron Paul supporters, raving anti-Semites, raving pro-Semites, raving racist anti-Obama kooks, and more. It's quite an achievement, assembling that much crazy in such short order, and it gets better if you realize what brought them together. This isn't an article about the Middle East, or a war, or politics. It's about an elderly author who fudged most of the details of her memoir. It's essentially only of interest to writers and people interested in the business and process of writing, but 1300 comments later... wow. This is the kind of thing people who aren't online full time think the Internet is composed of, and why it's taken so long for bloggers and other online writers to start being taken seriously by the MSM and entertainment industry.
I read the last few weeks of News of the Weird tonight, and had a few favorites to quote.
Marjorie Kelley, 50, called 9-1-1 in Sarasota, Fla., in January after feeling chest pains, but she requested that no sirens or lights be used by the ambulance. When EMTs arrived using sirens and lights, Kelley reportedly jumped up and chased them down the street, wielding a rolling pin, according to WWSB-TV. [WWSB-TV (Sarasota), 1-4-08]
Serious Substance Abuse: Bill Long, a former member of the county council in Daytona Beach, Fla., was charged with DUI in December after he, allegedly speeding, hit another car. "When officers arrived at the scene," reported WKMG-TV (Orlando), "(Long) was found drinking ... suntan lotion." [WKMG-TV (Orlando), 12-11-07]
Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre makes News of the Weird periodically (the latest in May 2007) because the six Christian denominations that share its management become involved in petty but elaborate disputes. A similar problem arises at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics share space at the site thought to be the birthplace of Jesus, and in December, when some Orthodox faithful wandered into the Armenian section during Christmas season, officials of both faiths squared off and flailed at each other with brooms before being separated by Palestinian police. [BBC News, 12-27-07]
My favorite though, was the lead item from the most recent batch. Like all news from Japan/about Japanese culture it should be taken with a fistful of salt, but it made me laugh.
Five of the 10 best-selling novels in Japan in 2007 were originally composed, and serialized, on cell phones, thumbed out by women who had never written novels, for readers who mostly had never before read one. The genre's dominating plotlines are affairs of the heart, and its characteristics, obviously, are simplicity of plot and character and brevity of expression (lest authors' sore thumbs and readers' tired eyes bring down the industry). Said one successful cell phone writer, for a January dispatch in The New York Times, her audience doesn't read works by "professional writers" because "their sentences are too difficult to understand." [New York Times, 1-20-08]
It's hard to say what the "books" might be like without reading them, and even then I'd be reading translations that might lose the spirit of the originals, but this does sound rather depressing. And I thought that Americans were getting bad about actually reading anything longer than the capsule descriptions of upcoming programing on their Tivo screens?
On the other hand, since the Japanese alphabet, even the simplified version I assume people use when cell phone texting, is made up of hanzi symbols, most of which represent whole words or concepts. So while a text message novel in English would be ridiculous; chopped up into 160 character blocks, it's possible that you can put quite a bit of meaning into a single txt in Japanese? It's also possible that Japan allows far more text per txt message; cell phone networks in Europe and especially Asia are years better/more advanced than what we've got to use here in the US.
Also, note that these were stories delivered in serialized txt messages, which people then bought in book form. The original txt stories probably got media coverage, people heard about it and wanted in, but they missed the start of the book, or missed some installments with network problems, or their cell provider wasn't eligible, or they just wanted a hard copy. People buy books that are comprised entirely of blog posts, or articles, or online comics. Hell, the best seller lists have been choked with Dilbert and Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes and other cartoon collections for decades, and no one thinks it's odd to buy a book that's 100% comprised of cartoons that most people already read when they were free in the paper or online.
Also, just because the stories were delivered serialized via txts, that doesn't mean they were written stream of consciousness, by authors tapping away for 60 seconds between stops on the subway. One could easily write up a short story in a word processing program, divide it up into short chunks, and then email those out to the cell phones of subscribers. Or just mail it to your own cell phone, and then send it from there.
All that aside, it's a clever concept. Why not delivery serialized fiction over cell phones? It's a valid business niche. Nothing like this exists in the US, as far as I know. There are some txt message games and contests and such, and fake dating/porn chat for $.99 a message, and special services like the ESPN phones will deliver sports info, but the commercial sale/delivery of txt messages is a market that's still largely untapped.
All that said, it is kind of depressing that half the 10 bestselling novels in Japan were composed in this fashion, and that one of their authors says it's because people are too illiterate to read real books. Still, it's possible that book sales in Japan are as driven by media hype as they are in the US, and that these new cell phone novels are getting a ton of media coverage, which leads people to buy them, which leads the media to talk about their popularity, which leads more people to buy them, and so on.
I spent a couple of hours reading fiction this evening, and it was almost a novel experience. Pun not really intended. I've read, and written, and discussed, and thought about, so much non-fiction the past few months that I've been having trouble getting into a fiction mindset. I've been reviewing and rewriting my fantasy novel for the past week, but doing so very mechanistically, without feeling any of the magic or fantasy or literary inspiration. That's an approach that works for The Evolution of Desire and other books I've got lying open, but it's not the best way to approach a fantasy novel. At least not for me.
I think that approach can work, and I'm sure it's what the authors-for-hire who churn out those video game novels in 3 months do. After all, they're on a deadline, it's not their fantasy world or their dream project, and they've got to approach it in a businesslike fashion. It's the approach editors take too, since it helps them to cut through the bullshit. But it's not an approach that best serves an author who is trying to create a convincing magical world, since I think you've got to be caught up in your own fantasy to write it convincingly.
There's a balance to strike, of course. Too lost in the world and the prose becomes turgid and purple, and the book too fanboy. But I've been having trouble getting into the theme of things and the flow of the world by approaching it too technically, so I'm trying to loosen up a bit. It's tricky though, since my main priority rewriting the first half of the book is to cut out at least 50% of the overlong length, while working in a good 50 pages of extra info to set up later events, more scenes from the POV of characters who become more important later on, etc. Which means I need to cut out more like 60% of the first half of the book, so I can add in 10%. And I've got to do that without making it feel like 300 pages of skimming summary, and while preserving the good scenes that make the book worth reading.
So, today I read a number of Lovecraft shorts, both for enjoyment and inspiration. I got a little of both, and then got on the computer and did 4 hours of relatively tedious website work, since um... money. But I did feel like my mind opened up a bit in an artistic way, and I spent most of the mindless website work thinking about the novel, and ways I could change around various scenes and characters. I really want to finish it so I can get to the sequel, as it happens.
I've long felt the sequel will be a lot more interesting to the reader (of both), since so much of the first book sets up the world state, and then the second book starts up some years later, when that world state has been radically shifted by events in the first book. I'm still not sure what'll happen in the third book, assuming I do like every other fantasy author and write a trilogy (that turns into 11 books?) I have a discrete plot line that starts in book one and then twists and turns into really cool stuff in book 2, but I see it largely concluding then; at least as concerns the principle characters. The state of the fantasy world will be evolving during book 2, and may prompt ideas for book 3. Besides, it's not like I kill off all of the main characters in the conclusion of book 2. Readers will want to know what happens next to _________ and _________ and what _________ does next after she's forced to kill the only person she's ever loved.
Unteasing teasers aside, I read this Lovecraft short in the tub earlier, and noted it in the book to transcribe and blog later. But since every Lovecraft story is posted online, I can just link and cut and paste.
Some of the dream-sages wrote gorgeously of the wonders beyond the irrepassable gate, but others told of horror and disappointment. I knew not which to believe, yet longed more and more to cross forever into the unknown land; for doubt and secrecy are the lure of lures, and no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.
It's not a brilliant quote, and the story is just a fragment, only a couple of pages long, but it worked on my mind. It's the sort of thing I try to inspire myself with, anyway. Inspire to write better, and inspire to write at all, with an eye towards marketability. I'd like to escape the daily torture of the commonplace, you see...
Word of the day. pornnui. It's a combination of porn and ennui, and refers to the state a person (generally a man) reaches when they've grown totally bored with porn, or one type of porn, or the concept of porn in general. A guy might say, "I've got to download something new; nothing but Asian handjob movies are giving me total pornnui."
I don't think I need to explain "porn" to anyone. "Ennui" might be less in your head, but it's a very useful word, and a fun one to say too.
ennui: "ahn-wee" a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom: The endless lecture produced an unbearable ennui.
So, my new word is pronounced "porn-wee" and sadly for its fortunes as a word anyone will actually adopt for use, it's far better said than read, since it looks awkward and consonant-heavy on the page. That's not necessarily a fatal flaw for a neologism, except that in this case, people write about porn far more than they speak about it. Seriously, when's the last time you had or imagined having a conversation with a remark like the one I listed above to show this new word in usage? Never? Exactly...
I thought of the word late last night, hours after reading somewhere online (blog comments, maybe? I don't remember.) some guy saying how tired he was of all the porn he had or had seen lately, or something like that. Ironically, I'd already turned off the computer, so I had to write it down on dead tree and then remember to Google it today to see who'd already thought of it. Much to my surprise, no one has. Which is why I went to the trouble to type up this blog post. Well, the word exists, but not with this meaning. It's used on some Thai language blogs, but apparently as a guy's name, or a company name; not in a way that has anything to do with boredom and pornography.
So it's my word, and I will cherish it always. Until I get bored with it.
To follow up yesterday's ramble... I ended up going to get a frozen pizza, baking it, and eating half while drinking two full glasses of semi-fine red wine. It wasn't great pizza, or shiraz, but they meshed nicely, and motivated me enough to turn away from the computer and put on a DVD for the first time in weeks. It was the first time my TV had been on since early October, in fact. I haven't bought a new DVD since 2006, more out of non-desire than any desire to budget or deny myself, so I just stuck in Bourne Identity 2, and enjoyed the first hour of that smart action thriller. At that point my viewing was temporarily interrupted by a phone call, and I answered it to speak to my mom.
She was calling to congratulate me on my email notifying her that I'd passed the math CLEP and was actually done with college and had successfully earned my degree. It was an interesting conversation, since we talked for about 5 minutes, and it all felt normal and typical to me, and yet she seemed ready to get off the phone. And at that point I realized that I was drunk, or at least pretty thoroughly-tipsy, and that it must be affecting my personality, since my mom never wants to end one of our phone calls that quickly into the affair.
I don't believe I'd ever (previously) talked to my mom before while drunk. That's not a real surprise since I've only been drunk about half a dozen times in my life, and never with my mom (a couple of times with dad on wine tastings, two or three times with Malaya when we were doing shots for fun or Scrabble success, and a few times alone, most of them within the last year of post-breakup aloneness and occasional loneliness and often school stress) around. But neither she nor I have much patience with drunks, especially not trying to talk to them, and since she'd asked me what I was up to, and I'd admitted to the pizza and vino, she wasn't trying to guess what was my major malfunction. She knew, and it was probably obvious, though I don't think my rambling verbal stories were any much different than they usually were. Still, if you can't get sloshed the day you clear the last hurdle between you and your degree, after a long and very work-filled semester, when can you? Though admittedly, there should be more warm beer and keg stands involved.
Today's been more of a usual day, though it began rather late since yesterday's non-sleep and math test study stress combined with warm covers, a cold room, and no weekend deadlines to let me sleep for almost 10 hours, or about 4 more than usual. I didn't regret it a bit, either. I did wander around aimlessly in the morning afternoon, but some leftover pizza and caffeine got me on track, and I set to work cleaning and vacuuming and moving furniture. I'd grown tired of the arrangement of my apartment over the past year, and with school finished with and seven or eight months of non-academic work awaiting, I wanted to change things around. The hope is that my mental state will reflect the physical condition of my domicile, so I moved everything around. My desk went over to the side wall, turning 90 degrees in the process, a bookshelf switched walls, the TV moved to where my desk o used to be, and my Ikea futon/couch also turned 90 degrees, to face the TV across a much less yawning chasm than it previously spanned.
None of this means anything to anyone other than the half dozen or so readers who have actually seen my apartment, but the objective was to shake up my working environment, while also making the apt a bit more accessible to other people. So my desk no longer squats in the center of the room, the couch has open space in front of it and is near the open space kitchen/dining area, the TV is close enough to the couch that it could be used to comfortably watch a movie, (ideally a female someone I could put my arm around) etc. It's by no stretch of the imagination a "bachelor pad," but it was never intended to be. I do hope it's a bit more welcoming to some potential, largely-hypothetical female guest, and that it'll help me work more and be more focused on things I should be focused on. Slightly cryptic though that statement might be.
As of yet, it's neither of those things. In fact it's make me feel rather sideways. I suspect the floor in this cheap apartment is slightly concave, since I feel a bit like I'm falling downhill to my left. It's been 11 months, but I have vague recollections of feeling like I was falling to my right when I set up my desk and chair in their former position. Since my left now is towards the center of the room, which was formerly to my right, that's evidence of the floor sagging, or at least evidence that my delusions are consistently delusional. In the final analysis it doesn't matter if i feel crooked because the floor is, or because I'm delusional. In either event, I can take comfort in the fact that the same thing happened back in January, and I got used to it after a few days, thus have cause to hope I'll do the same now.
Even though I'm sideways.
One welcome benefit of all the rearranging was that I had to turn my bookcase 90 degrees as well, which rendered everything on it... backwards. It's one of those Ikea bookcases made up of multiple small square compartments, so there's not back on the back; in fact,it can be used as a sort of room divider if you so desire, turning the back into a second front. I'm using the second front now, but not the room divider since my apt is far too small for such activities. I had to turn all my books around once I moved the bookcase, but that was okay since it gave me an excuse to pull most of them out and rearrange and organize them.
I did so, packing the good stuff together by author and theme, stacking together all my leftover college books that the bookstore wouldn't buy back at even their insulting "pennies on the dollar" rates, (it's always fun to sell them a used book for $2.50, then walk over and see the same book on sale "used" for $14.50) and generally condensing my holdings to free up more cubbyholes for non-book storage in the 4x4 array. There's something soothing about sorting and arranging and putting disparate objects to rights. As evidenced by the popularity of various "collecting" hobbies, most of which require/allow their collectors to spend far more time arranging and sorting and fussing over their collected items than would be tolerated in any other circumstances outside of a mental ward.
I was surprised by one thing though; the sheer amount of books I own that I've never read. None of them were purchases, but Malaya and me haunted various library book giveaways during our time together, and at almost every such event I obtained half a dozen titles that I never got around to reading. Malaya sorted through all of our joint books when we split up and I moved out, and quite generously packed me off with every book of even slightly dubious provenance.
So now I have two full cubbyholes of books I've never read, most of them by authors I have, at best, a passing familiarity with. The prime example of this is are the four titles by Stephen Donaldson. Hardcovers of "Forbidden Knowledge" and "The Lost Story" and paperbacks of "Lord Fool's Bane" and "The One Tree." I don't recall picking any of those from the endless rows of cardboard boxes, and yet here they are. Worse yet, I've got no idea who the author is. His name sounded familiar, but I think I was confusing him with famously hawk-faced television journalist Sam Donaldson. However, I don't believe that other S. Donaldson is an author, and if he is I wouldn't be moved to read his work. Even for free.
The author Donaldson is not a writer I'm familiar with (at least not yet) but looking at his offerings on Amazon I see a fair number of fantasy-looking titles. None of the ones I have here look much like fantasy from their covers, but most likely I, or perhaps Malaya, had in the past seen his other titles with Merlin-looking dudes on the front, and the name bubbled up when we saw it in the stacks at the book giveaways.
Other noteworthy books include "Jian," by Eric Van Lustbader. I've never read anything by him, but he's got one of those names you never forget once you hear it. I'm not sure if it's a good name, or not, for an author? It's certainly memorable, and not just because we share a first name and middle initial, but it's outrageously fake, even if it's his given name. It's a better name for a male porn star than a novelist, though I guess we can be thankful it's not "Lustbladder" or worse, "Lustbatter," which would really be porn-centric.
Another author I've long meant to try out is Terry Goodkind. He's the author of The Sword of Truth, one of the most popular fantasy series going, and is blessed with a memorable last name, and at least in this book, the 1994 hardcover "Temple of the Winds," an absolute LOL gem of an author photo. He looks like a younger, pony-tailed version of General Zod, the bad guy in Superman II. Intentionally, I assume. You see the shot here, assuming it didn't make your eyes water so badly that you had to close your browser and give up on reading the rest of this potentially-neverending blog entry.
Goodkind's intense posing presents the best/worst example, but a very common theme in these library freebies, most of them published between from 1965-1985, are their awful author photos. It's not real surprising; no one becomes a novelist because they were so good looking that they grew weary of the constant demands of modeling agencies, and most people look pretty stupid in any photo more than 20, but less than 50, years old. But still. Dude! I think the key, demonstrated conversely by Senior Goodkind here, is to not try so hard. You wrote a book. No, it's not the easiest thing in the world, but it's not exactly an unheard of achievement. Just pose. Be Mr. Serious Writer Man if you can't bring yourself to smile or have bad teeth, but don't be a douche bag. And that goes double for authors of cheap pulpy fantasy/sci-fi/mystery, which sums up most of the books I looked through today. I shouldn't complain, though. The time capsules of clothing choices, hair styles, and silly poses were almost worth the price of the books by themselves. Which were um... free.
Deryni Rising is the first book in Katherine Kurtz' long-running Chronicles of Deryni series. This book was published in 1970, and the series is still going, with over a dozen titles now in print. The most recent was published in 2004, though I've got no idea how well it, or any of them, have sold. They must be somewhat popular, given that the first book is still in print nearly 40 years after being published. Buy (or not) your copy here; it's got a 4 star rating on Amazon, but from only 24 reviews.
Kurtz has an official site, which Google told me was appropriately located at Dernyni.net. So yeah, this is her big series. I clicked the link, and after I recovered from the eye-injury her home page inflicted upon my unsuspecting eyeballs (Deryni.net = best page design on Geocities, circa 1998), I browsed through the lifeless forums and wound up on her Deryni FAQ. It seems to be out of date, since the most recent Deryni novel listed on Amazon is In the King's Service, from 2004. That one's not listed on Kurtz' FAQ, but one as recent as 2002 is, and there are more than a dozen titles in total, along with a few short story collections and other assorted tie-ins. Including one that looks like it's half fan fiction, half Kurtz' original. Interesting concept.
So she's chugging along, and good for her. I'm not too down on any author who can earn a living with their words. It's certainly more than I've done thus far, and no, another blog entry/book review choking full of snarky criticism isn't real likely to change that. To the scores!
Deryni Rising, 1970, by Katherine Kurtz Plot: 3 Concept: 6 Writing Quality/Flow: 4/6 Characters: 4 Horror: NA Humor: NA Fun Factor: 3 Page Turner: 6 Re-readability: 5 Overall: 4
I don't know how fair it is to judge Kurtz and her whole series just from the first book; after all, even Shanarra improved greatly after book one, but unless/until I read another Deryni book this one is all I've got to go on. And it wasn't very good. It wasn't horrible, and I've read worse, but it's nothing special. It's not an adult novel, and must have been marketed in what they used to call the "Young Adult" category. That's not because it stars children, though the main character is a young prince, but because it's simple and formulaic. Bad guys are entirely bad, good guys are noble and honest and valorous, and who do you think triumphs in the end? Go on, take a wild guess...
More curious than the novel itself is the way I came to read it, since my copy of the book has been in my possession longer than some of you have been alive. The book has a used bookstore stamp inside, proclaiming that it came from Larry's Discount Books in Arlington, Texas. Arlington is a glorified suburb of Dallas, Texas, and home to the new Dallas Cowboys stadium. It's also where I lived with my dad during 6th and 7th grade, back in the 1980s. So yes, I'd been carrying this book around for over two decades, and had never gotten around to reading it until a few weeks ago.
Well, I hadn't actually been carrying it; it was in my bookshelf at my dad's house in San Diego, where I'd left it when I combined the books from my apartment with books I'd left at his and my mom's house, when I moved up north to live with Malaya in summer 2003. I was browsing that bookshelf this summer while visiting the folks, saw this book, and two others in the Deryni series, remembered I'd had them forever without ever reading them, and stuck them into my suitcase on a whim. I read it on a similar whim, and it wasn't good, but it wasn't horrible.
I picked the book up all those years ago since other kids I knew in junior high were always reading it, and the Elfstones of Shannara books. I never got into either of them then, and since I read my first Shanarra novel a couple of years ago, it's fitting that I have now read one of the Deryni books too. Kurtz is better than Brooks, at least judging her first book against his first two, but neither of them are going on my recommend list.
The world of Deryni Rising is basically England, circa 1300, if the Druids could actually work magic. They're not called Druids in the book, nor is their land called England, but it's any generic middle ages kingdom, with a brave king, potential enemies on the borders, traitors in the court, and a powerful and corrupt clergy. The magic comes from the Deryni, a race who appear to be exactly like humans, but who possess magic that humans do not. They used to be part of the main kingdom, but there was a war and all of the Deryni moved away or went into hiding. They and magic in general are now thought to be evil, and the priests condemn it.
The book starts with the noble king on a hunt, most of which he spends thinking about his half-Deryni bestest friend and General who's off in some distant outpost. The king is promptly murdered by some sort of witch, and his 15 y/o son the prince is in command. His first act is to call home General half-mage. He arrives two weeks later, and the rest of the story takes place in about 12 hours, as the General does stuff to help the prince ready himself to become king, and to regain or somehow tap into some form of magic; the kind his human father had and used to fight off enemies while he ruled the kingdom.
The Queen is hysterically opposed to magic though, the priests hate it too (though they never say why, or mention Satan, in kind of a wimpy cop out on Kurtz' part), and almost the entire court hates and fears the half-mage General, simply because he's a Deryni. The fact that the beloved late king used magic constantly to save the kingdom isn't really discussed.
None of this is awful, but it's all very formulaic. The scheming traitor noble is one-dimensional, as are the disapproving priests. We're told right away that the prince must regain his father's magic to survive, but it's not made clear why, until coronation the next morning, when the witch who murdered the king marches into the royal hall with about fifty of her enemy soldiers, and demands to fight a magical duel, to the death, for the right to rule, against the young prince.
Why this is allowed is never explained. Why the city guards didn't stop them from entering, why the royal guards didn't fight them off, and why anyone expects the prince to have a chance against a super powerful sorceress, when he's never shown any kind of magical ability at all. The clergy vanish entirely from the book come the last 50 pages and the magical showdown, presumably because after Kurtz spent most of the short book portraying them as eager to arrest or execute anyone with any magical ability, there's no way to justify them allowing it to happen.
There's also no way to justify why the evil witch would be allowed to challenge for the throne. Can anyone just waltz in and throw down? Doesn't she have to be in the royal line of succession, hated/feared magic or not? The best part is after the prince miraculously regains his father's magical powers (which he does just in the nick of time, if you can believe it), and uses them to defeat the evil witch (yeah, I was surprised too), all of the witch's soldiers just sort of melt into the crowd while everyone else is applauding the former prince/new king's victory. Because you know, when a regicidal usurper challenges the new king to a magical death match, and brings fifty of her bodyguard, all of whom are sworn enemies of the kingdom with her, it's only natural to let them all go once you defeat her in combat. Including the ones who were attendants of the scheming, traitorous noble who just got defeated by the king's champion. No hard feelings, guys. And the priests are fine with you using magic too; it's only the prince and his best friend/protector who they object to casting fire serpents.
In addition to this book I possess book 3 in the series, and another book from later on. I might skim that one at some point to see if it's any better than this one was. I'll probably have to read it to say for sure though, since this book wasn't written poorly, and there weren't an abundance of LOL-bad moments (unlike Brooks' Shanarra series). Fortunately, the Deryni stuff reads really fast. I got through all 280 pages of this book in around 90 minutes, and yeah, I was kind of skimming, but not really, since it's written on such a simple level and all the characters are so straightforward and unambiguous that I don't think I missed anything. There's not really anything to miss, other than kid's cartoon-level plot twisting.
A new werewolf movie opened this weekend in the US. Skinwalkers, a low-budget, crappy one that was kept from the critics and universally-loathed by the few who did see it. (Only 17 reviews on RT, and only 1 positive.) I didn't see it and didn't want to, but I skimmed a couple of reviews and thought this one summed things up pretty well.
No subset of the horror genre has created a higher percentage of dogs than the werewolf movie. Since The Wolf Man reached screens in 1941, it has become possible to count the number of good films about lycanthropy on the fingers of one hand. The problem with most werewolf movies isn't that they're derivative - that's pretty much a given when one considers the inherent limitations - but that they're badly written, badly acted, or just plain silly. Skinwalkers hits the trifecta: all three apply.
...
The impact of the PG-13 rating is evident everywhere. The bad guys inflict PG-13 torture on their victims then have PG-13 sex. There's PG-13 cursing and PG-13 gore. Everything is carefully sanitized so that teenage boys can see this movie without having to worry about adult supervision. Never mind that it's pretty much impossible to tell a werewolf story with anything less aggressive than an R. I don't claim that the rating is the reason why Skinwalkers fails, but it certainly doesn't help. Shots of horrific wolf attacks and an unobscured view of Malthe's body would at least have made the film seem less juvenile, if no more intelligent.
So it's poorly written, has bad actors, bad special effects, poor direction, and the back story/mythology isn't any good. Not much left, is there?
The tragic thing is that there's a perpetual audience appetite for horror movies, and monster movies, and worse, that almost all of them suck. Reading about Skinwalkers, I was reminded of my initial reaction to Underworld. That wasn't a good movie either, but it had the clever marketing angle of a hot chick in latex as the hero, and the (relatively) interesting world fiction of vampires warring against werewolves. And it made money. Skinwalkers isn't like to do so, (opening weekend half a million is a disaster), but it cost nothing to make and they'll do decent business on rentals and DVDs, as all horror movies do, so I'm sure it'll be profitable, in a minor sort of way.
Skinwalkers looks like a B-movie that's about as good (bad) as anyone involved could have hoped. Underworld, on the other hand, had a decent budget and some actual acting/directing talent, but it undermined itself with a horrible script in which every opportunity was missed and most things made no sense. I belabor those points in my rather overlong review.
I concluded my Underworld review by remarking that crap like this makes me want to write my own monster movies. I still plan to, but honestly, why do most action/horror movies suck so hard? What prevents the vast collection of theoretically-talented screen writers in Hollywood from putting together a decent 90 minutes of action? It wouldn't seem that difficult, but judging by the results on screen, it must be. Maybe it's interference from studio executives and bad directorial choices, but so often the errors in the film and script are glaringly evident to virtually everyone who sees the film. Some character is painfully stupid or annoying, there's no continuity in the action sequences, there's an excessive focus on some unimportant element that distracts from the main focus of the film, etc. (Transformers hit that trifecta.) The problems seem correctable, but they so seldom are that I'm left puzzled.
Why can't movie studios even get the basic stuff right? They sometimes do on big budget films, or at least come close enough that viewers are willing to overlook the misses, but the medium and low budget action movies seem quite incompetent. Action fans aren't looking for a masterpiece. All we need are the basic elements of story; an interesting protagonist, tolerable sidekick, clearly-defined struggle, a few action sequences, maybe a love interest, and a big finale where the good guys triumph. How hard is that? Polish and shine are just details, and it obviously helps if the action sequences are exciting, the acting is good, the characters are believable and sympathetic, etc. Those help, but they're not required, so long as the film doesn't suck at the key elements.
I think a lot of it is about the writers (or else the sausage assembly line that mutilates their original scripts into what we see on the screen). Good writers don't write formulaic action movies. They want to be Tarentino-esque and reinvent film with time flow trickery, a dozen quirky characters, unconventional stories, original concepts, etc. All of which are great if they work, but most of the time they do not, which is why we end up with neither fish nor fowl pictures like Domino and Smokin' Aces, which are meant to appeal to action fans, but are too clever by half with artsy film making techniques and crazy writing, and end up appealing to basically no one. Or overly-intelligent action films like Firefox which are loved, but only by the sliver of audience that knows about/is interested in them.
It makes you wonder what would happen if the talented writers had quotas to meet. Lots of old time movie critics lament the passing of the "studio system" where directors and actors had to do what the studios told them to do, and as a result they turned out far more quantity, that some think was also of a higher quality. What if we had that today? Instead of Tarentino (trying to) produce a masterpiece every 6 years, what if he had to turn out a movie every 12-14 months? He couldn't make films with as many inventive things as he does now, but if he were on a deadline he wouldn't have time to fool around with all the reinventions of cinema, and while his movies wouldn't be as different and unique, there would be 5x more of them. Apply the same situation to other good writers, like the interchangeably-named/talented JJ Whedon and Josh Abrahams. Take away the pet projects like Serenity and make them punch up mainstream studio action films!
Looking at their body of work on IMDB I am reminded that one of them wrote Mission Impossible III, which I enjoyed, thus my point is proven. Of course they also wrote the sucktastic Armageddon and Aliens 4, and mostly work on TV shows I've never seen and have no interest in, and it occurs to me that writing a TV show is the ultimate expression of "doing mainstream work on a tight schedule," so I might have to rethink my solution.
This was in the news a couple of weeks ago, and I meant to blog about it then, but didn't get around to it. Better late than never though, so here's the deal. An aspiring author who hasn't had any luck getting his stuff published went and submitted some classic Jane Austen novel to publishers and agents, all of whom rejected it, most with brusque form letters. The inference the clever, unpublished guy wants drawn is that those dumb publishers don't know brilliant literature when it smacks them in the face, and that they're too busy cranking out shlocky celebrity "biographies" and barrel-scraping, formulaic genre novels about video games to recognize quality writing when they pull it from an unsolicited manila envelope.
Which may or may not be true, but it's kind of not the point. The point, as heretically related by scifi author John Scalzi, (a successful novelist and blogger who's blog and business model I will write about at length in the immediate future) is that 19th century literature isn't marketable today unless it's by a famous 19th century author.
If I were an editor today, and Jane Austen had not previously existed, and someone submitted Pride and Prejudice as a mainstream novel, I'd probably reject it. Because it's the 21st goddamn century, that's why, and the style is all wrong to sell a whole bunch of them (even if it were pitched as a mainstream historical novel). In point of fact, I'd probably reject anything written in a 19th century manner, with the possible exception of Mark Twain's work; for my money he's probably the only 19th century author whose writing style doesn't make me feel like I'm slogging through a morass of commas and odd language structure. After Twain, it's a hard slog through to the 1920s, and then everything suddenly becomes far more tolerable.
A further point Scalzi makes, by quoting another blog on the subject, is that if you're working the slush pile at a publisher/agent, and you get a submission that you recognize as plagiarized from some classic piece of fiction, what are you more likely to do? Email the author a condemning rejection and run the risk that some lunatic who thinks he's the reincarnation of Nathaniel Hawthorne will become fixated on you? Or just rejection stamp it and hope the kook leaves now and never comes again? You're an overworked cog in a big business, desperately trying to assuage your conscience by balancing some degree of literay quality with the crap that's more marketable. You are not a college professor. You are not the plagiarism police. It's not your problem, and you do not have the time/energy to get involved.
On this topic, I'd had a big, 600-page hardcover collection of Edgar Allen Poe's writing sitting on my bookshelf for years. I bought it for $6 from the discount section at a Borders in 2003, and I kept meaning to start reading it, but never quite got around to it. Not until earlier this summer, when I vowed to consume it all, in reasonable daily chunks. It was easy to read in 20-40 page blocks since the collection is made almost entirely of short stories, essays, and poems. I got through about half the book before I bogged down and got too busy with other things to keep at it, but the half I read included all of Poe's famous stories, so I think I had a fair sample of his oeuvre. Better than fair, since I read all his best stuff and didn't get to lots of his (probably justly) lesser known or unknown work.
How was it? I hate to say it, but on the whole, it sucks. Poe lived from 1809-1849, and his writing is an artifact of the time. It's a morass of wandering sentence structure, armored by a semi-impenetrable thicket of verbosity, unconventional punctuation, unnecessarily-obscure multisyllabic spelling-bee killer words, and most of the prose is infected with a general wandering pointlessness. It's a slog to read the stories, even the famous ones, and though I went into the book with high hopes and eagerness, I was soon reduced to creeping through one or two rambling short stories a day, while constantly struggling to pull my attention back when it drifted away on each semi-endless page. It was with not a little relief that I put the collection down four or six weeks ago when more pressing matters demanded my reading time, and I have no idea when/intention to pick it up again.
It hurts me to not enjoy or even appreciate Poe, since I love Lovecraft, and his writing style is easily the equal of Poe's in terms of being difficult to crack. Despite that handicap, I've read everything Lovecraft wrote several times by now, and I am definitely not a detractor of excessive verbosity and archaic linguistic conventions. It's just that Poe brings very little else to the ballgame.
Lovecraft wrote in the early 1900s, and in an intentionally archaic style, but he had such visionary, genius subject matter that his mythos is still resonating today. Poe had a few cleverly-gruesome ideas, but they're never very well executed in the stories, there's no unifying concept or theme to his work, and it's all very small in scale. Individual weird things happen, but it's just some guy (or orangutan) doing unto some other guy, (or mother and daughter) and since every story is quite short there's never any emotional heft to anything that happens. Every story is brief, all the characters are completely static and largely devoid of unique traits, there are no human interactions (just scenarios/plot events), women and children are nonexistent, all the narrators/main characters have the same voice/personality, and even Poe's reputation for a healthy weirdness of imagination is misplaced. Most readers have heard of the stories starring investigator Arthur Gordon Pymm, short stories The Cast of Amontillado, The Pit and the Pendulum, and poem The Raven, but really, that's about it for the good stuff, or the lurid stuff. The rest is often bizarre, but in an absurd, forgettable way. Poe wrote a lot of farcical, humorous shorts about things like con men pretending to have ridden hot air balloons to the moon. Poe was also deeply involved in the literary magazines of the day, so the collection has numerous shorts that are satire about magazine publishers and dueling literary journals. The stories are not bad, and sometimes even interesting, but the subject matter really couldn't be more disconnected from any modern reader's interests.
As best I can tell, Poe is famous largely for his short life and tragic death, for being one of the first to write stories that were kind of horror-esque, and for sort of pioneering the mystery/detective genre. He never wrote any novels or even novella-length tales, and it's weird that he gets credit for horror stories, since his aren't especially horrific, and countless, centuries-old folk/fairy tales have many more elements of horror and weird fiction than anything this side of Clive Barker.
I'm glad that Poe is still remembered and read, and I'm sure a lot of his work was ground-breaking and visionary and brilliant in 1830, but it's all pretty dated and often quite hard to get through these days, and would have no chance of being accepted for publication today. Which is, I suppose, the whole point/greater truth elucidated by the perennial efforts of someone to expose publishers as modernistic-hacks.
The first of three novels set in the Hellgate: London world has just been published, and there's a short excerpt on the Simon and Schuster site. It's by Mel Odom, a very prolific writer who does his own original novels on top of his constant work adapting stories for TV shows, video games. I have not read the novel (Flagship didn't offer to send out promotional/review copies) but after reading the preview, I don't think I could have gotten through the whole book anyway. Mel's under contract to write all three books in this prequel-style trilogy, and I think they're all done, from what I heard talking to the Flagship guys earlier this year.
Are they any good? Um... well... Mr. Odom certainly writes quickly. A quote from the excerpt. It looks like this is the opening of the book, or at least an early chapter in it.
Loud gunshots woke Simo Cross from a too-short slumber and threw him directly into the path of a killer hangover. He sat up in the tent, automatically reaching for the hunting rifle beside his sleeping bag. He tried to figure out where the gunshots had come from, but had to admit that he might have dreamed them.
Or hallucinated them. He groaned and cursed as he forced himself to his feet. You know better than to drink like that, you stupid git. Especially while you're out in the brush.
Bright sunlight lay in wait outside the tent and the mosquito netting. No one else was up and about. The three other tents comprising the group of vacationing tourists he'd brought out to view the flora and fauna of the Fynbos grasslands for the last two weeks hadn't stirred.
I know, who am I to snark when I've published exactly nothing, but honestly... WTF? When the main character's name is misspelled in the first sentence of your novel, that's not a real good sign. And how about the last sentence from my excerpt of the excerpt?
The three other tents comprising the group of vacationing tourists he'd brought out to view the flora and fauna of the Fynbos grasslands for the last two weeks hadn't stirred.
That almost leaves me speechless. Is it a dangling participle? A run-on? I can't even begin to dissect that grammatical atrocity. I guess when you're on deadline and churning out three or four novels a year, you move well past sweating the details, especially when they're written for the barely-literate Left Behind and videogamer audience. If people can kind of get the gist of what you're describing, it's good enough. "Drop the red pencil, Professor Dorksalot!"
Seriously though, this sucks ass. It's dreadful. And that depresses me, since I know how much time and effort the Flagship guys put into perfecting the game, down to the smallest details. The game is great, the cinematics are awesome, and most of the other ancillary products are quality. I've read the comics and enjoyed them, the action figures they're just releasing were done by WETA and look awesome, etc. The game and the company making it deserve better than this rushed, derivative, lowest-bidder shite for their novels. They should have hired me to do them! Of course I'd still be laboring over my rough draft of the first novel, trying to cut the length down by 300 pages while keeping every single word exactly perfect, but that's why I'm here entertaining an audience in the dozens, while Mel Odom's got fifty paperbacks in the fantasy/sci-fi section of your local bookstore.
Nice article on AP news about the history of the Harry Potter phenomena.
True phenomena are never planned. Not "Star Trek," a series canceled after three seasons by NBC; or "Star Wars," rejected throughout Hollywood before taken on by 20th Century Fox, which didn't bother pushing for merchandising or sequel rights. The public knew better — the young people who screamed for the Beatles or watched "Star Wars" dozens of times or carried on for years about "Star Trek" after its cancellation.
In the beginning, "Harry Potter" simply needed a home. Several British publishers turned down Rowling, believing her manuscript too long and/or too slow, before the Bloomsbury Press signed her up in 1996, for $4,000 and a warning not to expect to get rich from writing children's books. An American publisher had bigger ideas: Scholastic editor Arthur A. Levine acquired U.S. rights for $105,000.
"I can vividly remember reading the manuscript and thinking, `This reminds me of Roald Dahl,' an author of such skill, an author with a unique ability to be funny and cutting and exciting at the same time," Levine says. "But I could not possibly have had the expectation we would be printing 12 million copies for one book (`Deathly Hallows'). That's beyond anyone's experience. I would have had to be literally insane."
They go through Rowling's history, how she was unemployed and writing in coffee shops, how the early books were considered great successes when they were selling tens of thousands of copies, how publishers congratulated her but warned her not to expect to get rich writing children's books, etc. I wonder what percent of aspiring (and already published, for that matter) writers around the world read this article and get a gleam of dream in their eye. I certainly do, even though I realize that anyone aspiring to be the "next Harry Potter" is insane, since it's quite probable that we will never again see a publishing phenomena of this magnitude.
Still, it's fun to pretend. The funny part is that a new author could literally be 1/1000th as popular as Rowling, and still be a great success. Perhaps even 1/10000th as popular? Quick math: 350,000,000 Harry Potters books in print. Knock off 4 zeros and that's 35,000 books in print. Okay, not a great success, but if you jump up to 1/1000th, 350,000 books, that's huge bestseller status. You can quite happily live on that, in a world where most authors dream of selling even 50,000 copies of anything.
It's certainly an argument for fantasy series, too. Everyone laments fantasy series that go on too long and get soggy in the middle, and spin in the sand like the Wheel of Time, but imagine if Rowling had written a one-off Harry Potter book? Or even just a trilogy, with each book rushing through 2 or 3 years of his school time? It would probably still have been popular, but nothing like it has been, with time for the story to develop, time for the audience to grow, time for the movies to become successful, etc.
Writing advice for teens and other aspiring fools...
I've recently been reading a blog by John Scalzi, a writer I'd never previously heard of. He writes Sci-Fi and lots of articles and other non-fiction, and is apparently pretty successful. He's a good blogger too, and while I ended up reading him thanks to his posts about the new Creationism Museum and his offer to visit it if enough readers donated money to a separation of church and state charity, (they did and he will), I've found his various posts on writing the most interesting.
One on his main page is entitled, "On Teens, and the Fact Their Writing Sucks" and you know I had to read that one. It's a follow up to a post he made last year, "10 Things Teenage Writers Should Know About Writing," and as you may have guessed from the title of his follow up post, one of the major thrusts of Scalzi's first blog post was that the writing produced by teenagers sucks. Equally predictable is the fact that many readers didn't really get any further than that in his first post, and addressed complaints to him based on their own incomplete reading of his advice.
I'm linking to them both, and recommending that you read them both in whatever order seems more appropriate, but I did want to quote one thing from Scalzi's first "advice" post, since I thought he really summed up an issue I've given though to since... I was a teenaged writer. (Who sucked, in retrospect.)
1. The Bad News: Right Now, Your Writing Sucks.
...There are reasons for this.
a) You're really young. Being young is good for many things, like being flexible, staying up for days with no ill effects, not having saggy bits, and having hair. For writing deathless, original prose, not so much. Most teenagers lack the experiential vocabulary and grammar for writing well; you lack a certain amount of perspective and wisdom, which is gained through time. In short: You haven't yet developed your true writing voice.
Now, if you're really good, you can fake perspective and wisdom, and with it a voice, which is almost as good as having the real thing. But usually, sooner or later, it'll catch up to you and your lack of experience will show in your writing. This will particularly be the case when you have a compelling, emotional story, which would require the sort of control and delivery of your writing that you only get through time. You may simply not have the wherewithal to express your very important story well. Yes, having a great story you're not equipped to tell pretty much bites. Normally, this is when teens look for help from the writers they admire, which brings us to the next reason your writing sucks:
The first paragraph of this is exactly what several adult readers tried to tell me about my writing when I was that age, and of course I didn't comprehend a word they said. What I wrote was the most interesting writing to me, and I assumed it would be what other people wanted to read too. I concentrated on the cool stuff; sex and violence, and didn't waste much time with character development and the other tedious aspects of a story. I remember an agent I worked (briefly) with telling me that I didn't need to try so hard to reinvent the wheel, and that I needed to just experience more of life to gain more depth and content with which to build my characters. Not advice I was partial to at the time, though I did, at least, mature quickly enough to realize that what I'd written a year or two earlier was crap (which caused me to not work with that agent for long, since he wanted to try and publish a novella I'd since disowned.)
Unfortunately, it's not essential that a writer do that to become published and/or successful; plenty of crappy genre fiction writers don't do it and most of them are decades past their last acne outbreak. Lots of writers never get any better, but what Scalzi says is very true for writers who want to. Something else he mentions in the same post is even more important.
Work on your empathy -- try to understand why people are the way they are. This will achieve two things. One, it's a good exercise for you to help you one day create characters in your writing who are not merely slightly warped versions of you. Two, it'll make you realize there's more to life than wry mockery.
Emphasis by me, since that's really a key. I could write a lot of characters when I was 17 or 19 or 20 or 22, but in retrospect... all of the main chars were pretty much slightly warped versions of me. Not biographically; I wrote female chars and old people and monsters and aliens and such, but they were sometimes believable, but they all tended to have something very close to my cynical, observing, non-emotional personality. That's something most writers do forever, and I'm still trying to avoid it; the main female char in my fantasy novel is too much like me in some ways, and one of the things I'm fixing in my current rewrite is her personality. I'm making her mentally younger, and more spontaneous, emotional, etc.
I'm good at writing characters who are scheming or manipulative or superior or Vulcan-like in their emotional detachment and superiority. Whole novels of that don't work real well though, and one of the hard things in crafting believable, varied characters is making some of them people you (the author) disapprove of, are disappointed by, or even dislike. I can easily dislike the actions of chars, bad guys or whatever, but writing them to think and act in ways that are foreign to me, and that I actively strive to not be like in real life, is more difficult. Not only couldn't I do that when I was a teenaged writer, but it didn't really occur to me that there was any reason I'd want to. I hated chars who acted stupid for stupid reasons in novels, and wanted to fix them. Sure, they were necessary to the story, and they had to be like they were to contrast to the other chars, to advance plot events, to give variety, etc, but they just annoyed me so much. I realized at the time that my reaction to them was far from universal, but it took years longer until I understood in an analytical, logical way, why and how they were essential to the story.
One example: Sansa in Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. I hated her so much through books 1-4 that I might have had to stop reading her chapters when I was 18, or 20, or 22, just because she would have annoyed me so badly. How could she be so stupid? Reading those books now though, I still hate her, but I can simultaneously appreciate her purpose and Martin's genius in crafting her. I root for her to die on every page, but I realize that my passion is a sign of how brilliant a character she is, and how well she works in the story, and how subtly Martin uses her to advance events and contrast her personality to other personalities around her. One of his greatest strengths as a writer is his ability to craft a wide variety of believable, complicated characters. As the series progresses and Sansa grows up we're seeing changes in her personality, changes that have an impact because she's been so realistically depicted over the course of the series.
Amusing article on Yahoo about bad (or are they good?) book titles:
The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification was named winner of the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for oddest book title.
The book, written by Buffalo, N.Y.-based artist Julian Montague and published by Harry N. Abrams, beat How Green Were the Nazis? a study of the environmental policies of the Third Reich.
...
Runner-up for the prize was Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan, by Robert Chenciner, Gabib Ismailov, Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov and Alex Binnie (Bennett & Bloom).
The other finalists were Di Mascio's Delicious Ice Cream: Di Mascio of Coventry: an Ice Cream Company of Repute, With an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans, by Roger De Boer, Harvey Francis Pitcher and Alan Wilkinson (Past Masters); Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium (Kluwer); and Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence, by David Benatar (Clarendon Press).
Past winners of the 29-year-old prize include People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It.
These selections seem to be judged like man a man regards his penis, with attention to excessive length, but I suppose that does make the books odd and unusual. I'd like to see some with just three or four words make the cut; anyone can make a wacky book title if they've got twenty words to do it.
In that light I approve of this year's 1st and 2nd prizes; they're real books about real things, and the oddness of their titles is just due to the oddness of their subjects. I'd enjoy looking through a book about lost shopping carts or the Nazi's environmental practices; not so much the unnecessarily long titled one about ice cream trucks, or the others torn from the same page.
Personally, I'm terrible at book and story titles. Maybe I should use more words and go for the wackiness/attention-getting concept? There's a reason I usually refer to my long-since-completed, in-need-of-revision-come-summertime, hopefully soon-to-be-published fantasy novel as... The Fantasy Novel. And it's not because the title is so cool I'm saving it to spring on the would-be agent and would-be publisher as a secret weapon.
I encountered this short poem by Dorothy Parker during some recent reading, and liked it enough to repeat it. I think it so perfectly sums up the problem with taking carpe diem to its full, hedonistic extent.
The Flaw in Paganism
Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)
Some random surfing a few days ago took me to Wikipedia, where I ended up reading about Kaavya Viswanathan, 18th century Hindu mystic. No, actually Kaavya is a woman alive today. She's the 19 y/o Harvard student who was busted last year for plagiarizing big chunks of other young adult chick lit books into her young adult chick lit book. To quote Wikipedia on the pertinent details:
In April 2006, Kaavya's first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, was published. Shortly after publication, the Harvard Crimson printed allegations that the author plagiarized passages from two novels by Megan McCafferty. The subsequent storm of national publicity led her publisher, Little, Brown and Company, to withdraw all editions of the book, derailed plans by DreamWorks SKG to develop Opal Mehta into a movie, and encouraged readers to identify possible additional plagiarism within its pages.
On May 2, 2006, Michael Pietsch, Little, Brown's senior vice president, released a statement saying "Little, Brown and Company will not be publishing a revised edition of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan, nor will we publish the second book under contract
She was given a two-book advance of around $500,000, had already sold the film rights, and she was still in her teens and just starting college. And now it's all gone; her literary career ruined -- probably forever. Besides the obvious lesson that you should not plagiarize, especially not from popular, contemporary books in your own genre, this case has lessons for us all.
Or not. Who wants to learn over Xmas holiday anyway? What I find interesting is that she plagiarized, and in fiction, and in stupid, minor ways. The Wikipedia page has side by side comparisons of stuff she lifted from various books, and what makes my head hurt is how unnecessary it was. She didn't steal a plot or a character or anything major that her book needed to work. Kaavya can write just fine; and she did so. What she stole were small descriptive paragraphs that added spice and sparkle, but that were not integral to her novel. She didn't need to steal to make her story work! She's like a successful lawyer getting arrested for shoplifting at Wal-Mart. Or perhaps a bank robber stopping to pick up a penny on his way to the getaway vehicle.
I can't condone it, but I can understand plagiarism in academic work, where (for people who can't write) you're quoting all the time and it could be tempting to kind of "forget" to quote or blockquote something once a in a while, or to lift a clever turn of phrase and use it as though you invented it. Plus, in essays and reports your main theme is almost always duplicating something someone else has already done, directly or indirectly. There are no original ideas in that area, when 40,000,000 other students have already tried their hand at analyzing the ironies inherent in Romeo and Juliet, or the metaphors in the Iliad, or whatever.
But in fiction? I don't understand it there. Why steal when you can just make up something different? And even if you can't make up anything new, you can reuse major themes and archetypes, ala Eragon or The Elfstones of Shannara. It's almost impossible to get in plagiarizing trouble that way, which is pretty stupid, when you think about it. You can even take existing characters and write your own take on them -- witness the ongoing Sherlock Holmes stories set all over the world, and even in other times. Witness the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen style of taking fictional characters and throwing them together in new adventures. Kaavya could probably have written a novel called Fridget Bones' Live Journal with 90% of the same features of Helen Fielding's novel, and that would have been fine, as an homage. But she didn't.
Instead, Kaavya wrote an original novel (well, as original as they get while following the chick lit template) and lifted a bunch of random details. She tried to sneak through a minor character who loves her pink rhinestone Playboy tank top, and a character who wears shirts with the names of the days of the week on them, and got busted, since those were distinctive elements in other chick lit books. It all seems so pointless and stupid. Not just her destroying her young career, but the way plagiarism is enforced. Cut and paste a few sentences that are irrelevant to your work as a whole -- you're skinned alive. Essentially rewrite Lord of the Rings with (barely) new character names -- launch a best selling fantasy series. Who makes up these rules anyway? Why is stealing a paragraph or two verbatim worse than the content/theme/characters of an entire book?
At any rate, I'd love to talk with Kaavya or read an interview in which she really got into it. Why did she steal such dumb stuff? Was there a compulsion? Did she just loved those few small details so much that she couldn't bear to complete her book without including them? I think she's gone into seclusion and isn't talking about it anymore, and I don't know if she ever admitted to the stealing she's been publicly condemned of, but perhaps she can use that for her comeback book after college. Or not.
I could make this a very long post, but I'll try to keep it under control. It's an interesting situation though, and I want to do it justice.
A couple of weeks ago I got an email from someone calling himself, "The Boss." He told me that someone on his site had apparently plagiarized some of my writing, and that he wanted me to look into it. He didn't include a link to the alleged word theft though, or a link to what might have been copied from my site. I wanted to investigate before I replied, so I went to the domain name from whence his email had come, and found... confusion.
Here's the site, TIWF Wrestling, and go ahead and take a look and see if you've got any idea what it is. There's no about page, and the words at the top of the main page didn't really explain anything to me:
The TIWF is an online efed created to give wrestling fans their chance to live the dream of being a professional wrestler. Haven't you ever wanted to cut a sweet promo in front of an audience? Feel like bashing someone in the skull with a chair or putting them throough a burning table? Well, here is your chance. TIWF is basically like a mix between ECW and WWE. The TIWF will have one weekly show, on Tuesdays, and one monthly pay per view held on the third Friday of every month. SIGN UP TODAY!!!
Okay, so it's something to do with professional wrestling, but what are they talking about with putting on weekly and monthly shows? I thought maybe it was some kind of online video game thing, like they organized matches over Xboxes or maybe they had some kind of Sims wrestling game and people orchestrated their own fights and uploaded the videos.
E-Wrestling is an internet variation on creative roleplay, based on the world of professional wrestling.
E-Federation Categories Most federations are categorized into one of three groups, based on which of the three content elements — the roleplay, the angle, or the written match itself — decides the outcomes of a federation's matches, championships, and shows. In all federation types, all three elements are presumed to exist, and even hybrid federations that claim to strike a balance tend to favor one element over the other.
Regardless of the federation's type, all federations are composed of players (also called handlers) who portray their own character(s) within the federation, and may write roleplays for their performances as needed. Some federations desire characters based on mainstream wrestling personalities (or "real" wrestlers) in order to lend authenticity to the federation, while others may prohibit these in favor of original characters, in hopes of cultivating a distinct identity. Additionally, use of created wrestlers avoids potential litigation over copyright infringment. The distinction does not affect the actual gameplay of the federation aside from the fact that real wrestlers start with an established character while created wrestlers have no such ready-made background.
So it's text-based roleplaying, in which players not only invent their own wrestling characters, but engage in actual matches, which presumably play out like those "everyone writes a paragraph" stories you probably did in school. One guy starts off the story, another one answers his opening and takes it in a new direction, the first gets to rebut, and so on, with the readers or site admins deciding who "wins" based on who tells their story better. If it wasn't about something as irredeemably-idiotic as pro wrestling, I might actually find the concept pretty cool.
Seriously though, and I'm not saying this to start a flame war or because one of their "wrestlers" plagiarized me, but don't the concepts of text-based RPGing and pro-wrestling seem mutually contradictive? Like anyone who would be smart and witty enough to excel at the task would be repelled by the genre?
Anyway, The Boss mailed me back promptly, and included a link to the offending entry. I was curious to see what the guy had stolen, since after all, it's not like I'm writing wrestling-based stories, or even blog entries. Not surprisingly, I'd underestimated the creativity and imagination of the plagiarizing competitor, and I was amazed to find that he'd taken several chunks from the early version of the first chapter of my just-completed novel. Yeah, the fantasy story that was originally based on Diablo II. How could that fit into a wrestling RPG thing? Check it out.
I couldn't bring myself to read the whole thing, but he seems to be doing a Gravedigger sort of thing, where he's used my descriptions of the graveyard and cathedral as the atmospheric set for his wrestler, "Nailz." So Nailz has this cool scenery and setting, and once the cameraman approaches he does the usual pro wrestler rant about how tough and deadly he is, and how wimpy his opponent is and how easily he'll crush her bones to bake his bread. Or something along those lines; I certainly didn't read the whole monologue.
It might be interesting to compare the versions of my story to the one he's copied, since I rewrote it somewhat between posting it on the D2 site and posting I here, and there are probably a few words different in the portions Nailz has copied. Not that it really matters which site he took it from. (Incidentally, it's been totally rewritten and improved upon in the final novel, which I hope goes without saying.)
If it were a subtle theft I'd quote passages side by side, but there's no point with this one. The guy took multiple consecutive paragraphs and changed maybe one word in 25, so it's not like we need the FBI lab evaluate the findings.
I guess I should be angry, but I'm pretty indifferent to the whole thing, really. If a real writer stole one of my stories and tried to get it published, I'd be outraged. Some guy taking a few paragraphs and clumsily appending his own dialogue on a e-wrestling site though, is just amusing. It's pretty much the definition of non-profit use, and while it's obviously unethical, that's more an issue for his ewrestling opponent and the commissioner of the e-fed to take action on.
Speaking of, it's my fault that nothing's been done yet, since after The Boss' second mail, I took a week to get around to following up and actually comparing the writing (I couldn't bring myself to do it... come on, it's a pro wrestling RPG!) and replying to him. When they confronted him, the Nailz guy apparently said he'd sold part of his story to me, and while that's a pretty pathetic excuse, (Sold it to me 4 years ago and just got around to using it now? And I did what, bought 6 paragraphs and then wrote 5000 more to go around them?) when I didn't quickly contradict it what were they supposed to do?
Anyway, I found the whole thing pretty interesting, as well as informative. I doubt I would have ever heard of e-feds without this episode, and while I can't imagine ever doing anything with this information, I like learning new things. It's also nice to have my first clear and official bit of fictional plagiarism. It's probably happened before, and it's certainly happened with my gaming site writing (Hell, people used to copy and sell my D2 strategy guides on ebay.) but this is the first confirmed, no-doubt, blatant theft of one of my works of fiction. And yeah, I could have asked for a bit more prestigious thief, but hey, you've got to get your cherry popped at some point, and how many of us lost it to someone we're proud to have spread our legs for?
I post about this contest whenever I see it mentioned, and since this year's winner actually made me laugh out loud... here it is:
SAN FRANCISCO - A retired mechanical designer with a penchant for poor prose took a tired detective novel scene and made it even worse, earning him top honors in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing.
Jim Guigli of Carmichael submitted 64 entries into the contest. The judges were most impressed, or revolted perhaps, by his passage about a comely woman who walks into a detective's office.
"Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean," Guigli wrote.
...The contest is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" began with the oft-mocked, "It was a dark and stormy night."
Is that so bad it's good, or just so bad? You've got to appreciate the originality of his concept, at least. "Dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean" is almost brilliant, in an incredibly over-the-top sort of way.
I haven't had a new My First Time to post for a while, but this one came in tonight and I liked it, so here it is. It's courtesy of Emory.
Where did you see the link to this site? I saw the link on Google.com when searching for Stephen King DT sites
What were your first impressions? Too much purple, too dark.
What page(s) did you first view and what did you think? I read your review about Stephen King's DT7 book. I laughed at it. You are such a pompous, arrogant ass.
Are you a regular visitor? No
How often do you return? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Whenever it strikes your browsing fancy? As Ka wills it, or Google.
My question semi-rhetorical question is, what about that particular book review seemed pompous or arrogant? I'd cop to arrogant while debating pompous and ass, at least in terms of my online personna via this website, but that's not the point, because I'm assuming the emailer is making this assessment after reading just that one review.
Reading it now to refresh my several year old memories, I didn't think it was pompous or arrogant. I thought the scores were odd, since 90% of the review is about the godawful plot mechanizations King runs through to keep his novel rolling, and my words added up to a 4 or a 5, instead of the 7 I tagged it with. But how is it pompous or arrogant?
My theory: Note Emory's closing "as Ka wills it" remark, which is taken from the DT books. I'm guessing that he's a big SK and DT fan and that he therefore disagrees with any criticism of the aging master. Since I listed a bunch of plot and character issues I thought King handled poorly, in Emory's mind that makes me arrogant, since I apparently think I know better than King how to write a novel.
That's my current theory, anyway. If you've got better, that's what comments are for.
While doing some idle, late night surfing a couple of days ago, I found myself reading my old blog entries from shortly after I moved up here in the summer of 2003. Let me just apologize now for the quality of the blog lately, since I found those old ones far more interesting than anything I'm writing about lately. Then again, I enjoy my old, rambling posts more than most, I suspect.
Anyway, I eventually happened upon the August 5, 2003 entry, in which I babbled on about this and that, before finally working my way into a semi-review of the last Jean M. Auel novel, Shelters of Stone. Though I was only able to tolerate skimming over the first 50 or so pages, I talked to Malaya, who skimmed the entire book, and felt that was sufficient to give it an overall score of a 1, the lowest I've ever given any novel.
I also couldn't resist reading (again) some of the outraged and deeply-disappointed reader reviews on Amazon.com. They're sad, really. People who loved the first four books in the series, waited loyally for book 5, and wanted so badly to like it... and gradually realized it was horrible, and a complete rip off.
While looking over those reviews, I saw a few mentions of the term "Mary Sue" in regards to superwoman Ayla, and remembered how much I liked that concept. What's a Mary Sue? A quote from a review:
Ayla's the kind of character that I have come to find myself rooting AGAINST, even though it's a fixed game - the author clearly loves her creation so much that she can't bear to think of Ayla being insufficient in any way. She's so beautiful that every guy wants her. Whenever you get the male viewpoint, it's never "Ayla was reasonably attractive, though Jarovar preferred smaller, brown-haired women." No, she's always considered dazzlingly beautiful...
Not only is Ayla beautiful, but she's a supergenius. She has already invented or discovered the domestication of animals, the needle, the use of flint to start fires, the atlatl, the travois (I believe) and the role of men in human reproduction. Let's not forget that she's an incredibly talented healer, able to learn foreign languages in less than a month, and, I think, psychic. And she's a great orienteer - she's able to find a cave that has been overlooked by the people who live directly on the site.
Does everyone love Ayla?, Well, yes, unless they're psychotic, insanely jealous jilted lovers, drunken bums or otherwise amidst the dregs of humanity. In fact, I can't even recall anyone who's lukewarm about her.
Sadly, Shelters of Stone isn't fanfic, it's by a best selling author, but that doesn't make the character any less of a Mary Sue. The fanfic type can be found here, in a good description from a very good fanfic writer's guide. There are even Mary Sue tests, to subject your characters to before you inflict them upon an unsuspecting world.
The problem with a Mary Sue, besides clearly advertising the author's wish fulfillment issues, is that, like Ayla, they're boring. They're perfect, they're infallible, they always win in the end (or fail nobly, sacrificing themselves to save everyone else), etc. Amateur writers want to have cool characters doing cool things, and that works for a while, but it gets old in a hurry for readers. There's no suspense since you know how things are going to turn out. You need heroes (in most stories, at least) but you don't want to make them unbelievable and so perfect that readers actually start rooting against them.
While surfing for Mary Sue humor in fanfic, I found a link to this site and its collection of truly horrendous fanfic; we're talking MST3K quality. Literally. It's fanfic that's been archived and excerpted, with the story in bold, and MST3K-style commentary inserted around it. The first link I saw sent me to this story, and I laughed so hard I got sweaty and had to take my shirt off to cool down. If it hadn't been 5am I would have enjoyed it even more, since I had to constantly stifle my mirth to avoid waking up Malaya.
The original story would have given me the shakes, it's so incredibly bad, but with the commentary added it achieves something akin to genius. Remember, the original is in bold. And grammatically horrendous. And constantly misspelled. And...
Legolas was riding along the woods and one day he found a baby whaped in colth DG: Whaped? Teegs: Colth? Doodles: I'm not the only one who didn't get that, I see...
so he got off his horse and went to the baby and then Legolas said"who Teegs: Could have written such a horrible thing? Hika: CAPITALIZE, DAMMIT! Doodles: (To Hika) Simmer!
left you here little one" DG: Obviously someone who didn't want the thing.
and then the baby just cryed and then Legolas pick her up Teegs: *commanding tone* Legolas, pick her up! Hika: This author has real problems. It's like... one big run on sentence... and cried is spelt wrong... and... Doodles: We GET IT, Hika.
and hold her and then the baby stoped crying and then Legolas said"your name is going be Laura" DG: What a wonderful Elvish name!
and then Legolas and the baby went onto the horse and went back to the castle where he lived. Doodles: ...that's the first period in the whole thing. DG: That's sad. All: *nod*
That's just the start of the "story." It goes on and on from there, with more insane events and grammar and spelling and just generally enough writing atrocities to kill most literary agents. It's not the only one either; the site has half a dozen other MST'ed pieces of fanfic, all of which are as bad or worse than this one. They're so bad you'll find yourself questioning their authenticity, and assuming someone must have made up the worst writing possible, just to see if they could do it. (Please God tell me it's true.)
Reading these stories though, greatly improved as they are by the sarcastic commentary, I realized why people have such a low opinion of fan fiction, and why various authors (Anne Rice and Anne McCaffrey are 2 I know of) attempt to circumvent the first amendment and fair use laws in the US by banning even non-commercial fanfic. It's one thing to have people writing good stories set in your world and using your characters, stories that fans enjoy reading and that make them eager to buy more official material by you. It's quite another to go online and find something like this:
Legolas said sorry but I lied my love you are the descendant of gods you have to go to Frodo and take the ring from him Sary said well I'll go are you coming Legolas said I’m afraid I can't becouse I'm dying and then Legolas died
Sary yelled NOOOOOOOOOO!! My love you will have the last kiss Sary kissed Legolas and then she went to find Frodo only Legolas’s bow with her that she got from Legolas when she arrived to Frodo's cabin Frodo pulled her in and raped her and hit her with a sword but then the door opened and Aragon stepped in and killed Frodo and took Sary and headded for home
On the other hand, my future plans to host forums on my writing website, including a fanfic forum, might work nicely with this sort of work. After all, I couldn't read any good fanfic, since then I might see ideas that I was going to use myself, I'd be open to lawsuits for taking someone else's intellectual property if there were coincidences, etc. But with stories of this quality, 1) there's no way one earth anything would be worth stealing, and 2) they'd also be a great deal of fun to read.
Anyway, read some of those MST'ed fanfics, but not when there's someone sleeping in the next room, since muffling your own laughter promotes suffocation and sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of the whole process.
Editing and reviewing the last chapter of my novel, written in haste just before I left for E3 some weeks ago, I enjoyed this little exchange and thought I'd quote it. The names have been changed to keep it from being spoilery; not that I believe any of you would remember it a year or three from now, when the novel is published and you get to read the whole thing.
"Why am I alive?" Mary asked herself, as the bells filled her head and the bright light of day came crashing down as the grove appeared around her. At least she'd meant to ask herself, but when John turned and looked at her she realized her lips had betrayed her.
"You live for vengeance, Little One. As did your mother before you."
"Will I die for it as well? As did my mother before me?"
John shrugged. "There are worse things to die for."
Cool? Or trying to hard to be cool and therefore only appealing to younger readers? Not that anyone can really say, reading it totally out of context like this. I like the dialogue, though that descriptive sentence at the start needs some tweaking. I don't like saying "as the" twice in a row like that. At any rate, it's not horrible, and I'll post again, hopefully later today, when I'm actually done with the full rough draft and can give an actual word count.
It's going to be a busy summer, as Malaya helps me try to get this thing published and I scurry to rewrite and streamline the 500k+ words of chapters 2-6.
Since I can never sleep late on vacation (beds aren't right, rooms get bright at dawn, etc) and there's nothing really to do on the HGL site this morning since Flagship didn't do shit over the weekend, I might as well make a blog post this fine 7am cloudy morning.
San Diego's fine, the parents are fine, and I'm sunburned already. Went for a hike with mom yesterday morning at a place called Daley Ranch (google it if you're curious), and while it was cloudy the cool when we began, the mists soon parted and sunshine came raining down. If I'd been alone on that walk it wouldn't have mattered, since we only went about 4 miles, and I'd have jogged it in short order. Mom walks slower though, and stops to look at flowers, and like all women can not pass a bathroom without having to pee, so we spent longer out there than expected, and it was sunnier than expected, and today I'm pretty crispy. Which is kind of inconvenient, since mom's set me up with a massage later today, and I was hoping they'd spend some time on the neck and shoulders, since I'm always sore there. I'm not so red that it hurts to touch, at least, so with some oil it should be okay.
Even if it weren't I'd probably grimace and bear it, since my neck's been aching for a week. All those 14+ hour days working on the HGL site to get it ready added up, and I started getting weird pains, despite my ergonomic desk set up. My left wrist and hand kept having shooting pains that were only alleviated by dangling my arm from the shoulder and sort of shaking the fingers, and I'd never felt that before in all my years of spending far too much time on the computer. Both of my forearms are really sore and tight too, but I think most of that's coming down from my shoulders, and some nice kneading massage should help.
Other than those bitches, things are going pretty well. The drive down from the Bay wasn't bad; I left around 12:15 and got to LA by 5:30, and that was even after the last 8 miles on the 405 were stop and go. I don't know if it was due to the day being a weekend or what, but damn there were a lot of CHP prowlers in the central valley and down into the LA basin. I must have seen 8 or 10, and ducked over and slowed down to dodge half a dozen I saw coming up in the distance behind me.
It's weird ducking cops on that stretch of I5, since the speedlimits usually 70, but the flow of traffic is 80+. Especially once you get into the grapevine and up the hills to the Tejon pass, and the road widens to 4 lanes. Uphill people are kind of slow, but there's about 15 miles of plateau on top, and then 10 miles of downhill, and no one in anything smaller than an 18-wheeler is doing less than 75 on the way down. The speed limit there is 65, and 80 is about the average, with speedy people doing 90+ in the left lane. At least until they *cough* see the cops coming up at 95, at which point everyone jumps over a lane or two and slows down to the flow of traffic... which is still 15 miles over the speed limit.
Theoretically, the cops could give every single car on that road a ticket, since we're all speeding. In practice they look for reckless drivers, or someone who's really busting along and doesn't see the cop coming in time to slow down, etc. Those are the good cops, at least. The bad ones drive along in the left lane at like 67 in the 65 zone, creating massive bottlenecks behind them as they ruin the flow of traffic. Everyone creeps along behind them, wishing they'd fricking exit or something, and feeling like a herd of wildebeasts watching a lion. "Just single out someone and eat them, so the rest of us can get on with our day, damnit." we think, happily eager to sell each other out if it means we can return to normal crusing speed.
Anyway, I'm in SD for today and then tomorrow, until I leave to drive up to LA Tuesday night. My stepsister is out of town but she's letting me stay at her apartment in LA, and since I need to get at the LACC by like 8am wednesday morning, to get my press pass and be ready to go in when the doors open for a press only viewing from 9-11am, I'm staying overnight in LA. I might have done the same even if I hadn't had a place to stay; that 4:30 wake up to leave by 5 to get to LA by 8 isn't exactly the best way to open a convention. Especially not one when you hope to hang out with people afterwards.
As for the vacation so far... eh. Last night was pretty fun. Met dad's new girlfriend and liked her, and we had a great dinner here with roasted veggies and chicken dad made, and too much wine beforehand. I was feeling pretty mellow after that, and I hear wine is good for sunburns. Or something. I even got to read some; the first reading other than at the computer, or a few minutes of EW in the bathroom I'd done in like two months.
The book isn't very good, but it's just a library book, and it's part of my ongoing, "Read something by every famous fantasy author just to see what they're doing." project. Very young girl chick lit fantasy, with the archetypal Anne Macaffrey, "talented youth with undiscovered gifts runs away from horrible parents and ends up saving the world while making loving friendships" plot, but there's a reason Macaffrey's used that plot in like 10 novels, JK Rowling based her series on it, other authors use it reliably, etc... because it works. Every kid wants to feel special, every kid (sometimes) hates their parents and life and wants to run away to something wonderful and different, and every kid enjoys reading about someone else doing that, since they know it's never going to happen to them.
Lackey's writing is as ham-fisted as an Easter dinner, with bludgeonous character archetypes and constant, unrelenting "telling instead of showing," but even with that the book's not unenjoyable, and it's a very quick read. True, I hit a stretch every 10 or 15 pages where I'm forced to put the book down and look off into the distance while taking a few deep breaths, but those pass and then I can continue reading, while mostly enjoying it. Also, like all mediocre but popular fiction, it's kind of encouraging to me. After all, if this pablum got published and found fans, how can my writing fail to enjoy at some something resembling success?
Speaking of, I can't see me having time to work on my novel any for at least another week, until after I get home and spend a few fevered days writing up all of my E3 HGL experiences, but I'm really itching to get back into it. It's finished, in rough form, but I need to hack at the last chapter a bit since it got unwieldy. That shouldn't take too long though, and then after I give chapter one another going over, Malaya's going to help me start looking to get published. Writer's Market, query letters, etc. I'll be editing the middle of the book while that's going on, but with a first and last chapter I'm pretty okay with, I think we might have some luck. I certainly hope so, at least. And if anyone's uncle knows a guy who works for Random House or Del Rey or something like that, feel free to let me know.
Somewhat to my surprise, it's actually working. After years months of dicking around and not writing nearly enough, I'm now getting a lot more writing done during the 3 or 4 or 5 hours I'm spending on fiction a night, afte spending 4 or 6 or 8 hours working on the (totally unrelated) gaming website during the day. I sort of thought/hoped this would happen, like I might come to life and really work with two projects, when just one wasn't spurring me on.
I've always marvelled at those writer stories, where you hear about someone rising at 4am every day to write for 3 hours before their kid wakes up, and that's their only writing time. Stephen King legendarily wrote his first couple of novels in short snatches, working late at night, on just a few hours of sleep, after working double shifts in an industrial laundry, while he and his wife were raising Irish twins. As I always tell myself, "Well, he had plenty of motivation." Other writers talk about how they turned out their novel by doing 1 hour every day on their lunch break, holed up in a stairwell somewhere for some privacy. Or it came together in 15 minute snatches while their baby was napping and their clothes were washing.
I didn't think I could do that, since I generally need long, multi-hour blocks to feel I'm making any progress and to really get mentally into the fiction I'm writing. Most of my better (a very relative term, since I'm never happy with any of them) short stories were written in one sitting, as I rapidly struck the heated iron, and while I can't write a 1200 page novel in one sitting, I usually feel like I might as well not even bother working on it if I've only got an hour to do so, since I'd just be getting into the flow when I had to quit.
And contrary to what I was thinking three paragraphs ago, I haven't disproven that during the past two weeks. After all, I'm still writing in long, uninterrupted stretches of the sort most writers with real lives would kill for. I'm just doing them from 2-7am, after working on the website stuff from 3-5pm, and 6-9pm, and 11pm-1am, spaced around going to the gym, making/eating dinner, hanging out with Malaya, etc. And no, there's been no (or very little) leaving the house or running errands or anything. Not during the past week+ of total work.
It's not the novel I can do in snatches, when I've got time -- it's the website stuff. I can sit down for 10 or 20 minutes, or even less while dinner is cooking, and do useful work for as long as I've got. I don't need to devote a solid hour at a time, at least not for the sort of content building work I'm doing now. (Mostly writing screenshot captions, sorting quotes from the game designers, organizing pages, inserting links to relevant screenshots, writing/answering FAQ questions, etc.)
So yeah, I'm getting both done, and getting a lot done on the novel, even though I'm not working on it at all in the day or early evening. I've had far more productive days in the past, days when I've spent 10 or 12 hours on fiction and edited 50 pages at once, or written 10 or 12k words at once. But those days were spaced around all too many unproductive days. I'm definitely doing better with my regular, uninterrupted time blocks each night, even if my per day output is far from my past record days.
It's hard to stop working on the website stuff too; every night I'm all in the middle of doing content pages, with like 8 pages open in Dreamweaver, browsers open to reference stuff, a .doc of notes to paste from, etc. But I'll see that it's 2am, tell myself I can close all the gaming stuff, take a little snack break, maybe play a game of Munchy Mole to clear my head, and that's it; I've got to start on the fiction. And amazingly, it's working.
Apparently I'm the one they're talking about in the old, "If you've got all day to get something done, that's how long it's likely to take you." truism. I'm better with 2 big projects, instead of just one, since I then balance and manage my time, instead of thinking I've got hours yet, and I can surf just another site or two, or I'll still have all night to write.
Happily (I guess) this cycle has no end in sight before my San Diego/E3 trip sets sail (figuratively speaking) on the 6th, since though I'm really closing in on finishing the novel (maybe by this time tomorrow, if I keep up my 4-7k words a day pace), the website is nowhere near done. Not that a website is ever really done, especially not one I'm going to have to massively update the minute I get back from E3 on the 11th, but done enough to launch, at least. And even if I do finish the novel tomorrow, that just means I've got to go back and edit the 80-90k words that make up Chapters 7, 8, and the epilogue, since that's got to be done before I can in good conscience print out the last bit to let my mom and Malaya read it and give me some feedback.
And once that's done and I've had my little SD vacation, I'm going to have to really kick it in on redoing all the website stuff with new E3 info, and then I'll also (probably late at night) be working on editing the early, wandering, bloated novel chapters down to a more reasonable size, while we're also going through Writer's Market, sending out query letters, contacting agents and publishers, etc.
It's a good thing I enjoy both projects I'm toiling on, or this whole, "no end in sight" thing would be sort of a downer. Much like my last few blog entries have been, I guess. But when I'm writing them at 9am, while yawning constantly, after a very busy day of mentally-draining work... eh. I guess you get what you pay for. Except for the one of you who is actually paying for this, and hell, what do you want for $.33 cents a day? You know you'll get a priceless autographed copy of the novel when it's done... you probably planned it this wall all along, you libertarian schemer!
Just to check in, since it seems days since I've blogged. Work continues apace; I've spent about 6 hours a day on the upcoming website and 4 hours a day on the novel for the past week, and progress is being made in both areas. I'm enjoying them both too; I don't want to stop working on the gaming website stuff when the time (around 1am, AKA Malaya's bedtime) comes to start on the novel, and I don't want to stop writing fiction to go to bed. I don't even like sleeping, since I've got so much work I want/need to do that just lying there seems a waste. After all, isn't that what caffeine's for?
It's been years, and, Blizzard-style, I've taken flying leaps at unrealistic release dates in the past; but I really think the novel will be finished this week. My deadline was early May, since I vowed to get the last chapter(s) finished and printed out to take down to San Diego with me so my mom could read them. (She's read the rest as they've come off the presses. I'd also like to thank President Bush for spending the past few weeks talking about nuking Iran, sending gas prices skyrocketing just weeks before I plan to drive over 1000 miles.)
Keep in mind that this is the rough draft of the novel, and that I'll need at least a week just to go over and edit the last chapter (which will eventually turn into multiple chapters, since it covers a lot of ground and is going to run around 125k words). After that I'll go over the whole book again, and make major, massive changes and edits, since I need to remove literally hundreds of thousands of superfluous words. So it's far from actually being done, but we're going to get the whole "find an agent/publisher" carousel spinning this summer, while I'm working on finalizing the book(s).
In other deadline news, the website needs to be done, or at least done enough to put online before I leave for E3 in early May. And while I've been finishing the novel, I've also been working on content, posting/captioning/keywording hundreds of screenshots and images, learning to use Dreamweaver, learning to use CSS, and basically creating a large game-related website from scratch. On the bright side, the website is at least guaranteed to earn me some money, some day, though Internet ad revenues are far from a living wage, these days.
So yeah, two huge projects with identical short term deadlines, and both promising hundreds of hours more work over the summer. Good thing I enjoy them both. And have Malaya to help on them both.
In other news, I'd enjoy commenting at length on this, and a lot of other news items of late, but it's nearly 9am and I'm way overdue for bed so I can get up by 3 and get to work on the website again. Hell, I was just surfing a bit to clear my mind of the battle scene and shocking character death I spent the last 3 hours writing. I'd had the scene outlined for months, but now that I've actually written it (unsatisfactorily) I have to say that it's a pain. I'm trying to write about a character dying, from their very surprised POV, while keeping the reader in their head, feeling their shock and confusion, while also putting in enough description that the reader realizes what's happening and is shocked at this turn of events, while also feeling horrified that a character they know well appears to be doomed.
Yes, detour. Anyway, as I was going to say about the news of further resignations and replacements in Bush's cabinet: Deck chairs. Titanic. Rearranging. And if anyone seriously believes that Karl Rove is giving up any power or influence inside the White House, you don't really know very much about these people.
In related news, I hear Dracula's resigning his advisory position at your local blood bank. Give today.
I hate to disparage any author's first book, given my own future career plans, but this is too fishy. I saw a random "ads by google" link that teased something about a brilliant first novel, clicked it, and wound up looking at a very highly-priced paperback version of a book called Hidden Impact. All seems fine until you scroll down to the reader reviews, and note that there are 1) seven reviews, 2) all are 5 star scores, 3) six of the seven are the only reviews on the entire Amazon.com site by that reviewer, and 4) all six of those are by seldom-seen "real name" reviewers. Why it's almost as if someone signed up a bunch of fake Amazon.com accounts just to post glowing reviews of their own book!
And what reviews they are. So like real reviews, written by real readers. A few quotes of the first sentences of three reviews:
A very well written thriller, with fully-developed, complex characters that jump off the page, and a plot that keeps you guessing as to what will happen next. A remarkable first novel. Recommended!
HIDDEN IMPACT has all of the makings of a great novel. The characters are brilliantly created, the setting is realistic, and the plot is entertaining and fresh. Charles B. Neff tells this story through the eyes of Jim Nordberg...
This well crafted page-turner is full of plot twists that keep you wide awake and thoroughly engaged with Jim Nordberg, the narrator, as he warily deciphers the roles of each of the other characters, many of them re-emerging from his past. Neff makes Nordberg an appealing person with whom to identify, someone with a history of convictions but not always the gumption to act on them, now returning from nursing failures back into a world that needs him.
What's up with every review throwing in the nerdy name of the narrator right away? Does anyone read the name "Jim Nordberg" and think, "Any book with a character of that name must be good!" Lots of authors overdo it with Dirk Pitts and Clive Steeles and such, but come on... Nordberg?
Or perhaps this is all just a coincidence, and these six people all just happened to register Amazon.com reviewer accounts in their real names, and all six just happened to review this novel first, and all six just happened to love it, while writing praise that sounds like something you'd see on a dust-jacket.
Seriously though, I hope these weren't done by the author. Especially not that last one. I defy you to make sense of the sentence that begins with, "Neff makes Nordberg..." and (eventually) ends with "...that needs him." If that's a sample of his writing, I hope he's better at fiction than reviews. Besides, he should just make a blog, cultivate a loyal readership that numbers well into the dozens, and then command that they all fill his Amazon page with blissful reviews, ideally ones that use their own words well enough to pass the laugh test. Of course that author would have to actually finish his damn book first, now wouldn't he? *cough*
In some tragic news, famed sci-fi author Octavia Butler died over the weekend, a victim of a stroke at the age of 58. I am not familiar with her work, but she is and was one of Malaya's favorite authors. As the obit says:
Butler's work wasn't preoccupied with robots and ray guns, Howle said, but used the genre's artistic freedom to explore race, poverty, politics, religion and human nature.
"She stands alone for what she did," Howle said. "She was such a beacon and a light in that way."
Fellow Seattle-based science fiction authors Greg Bear and Vonda McIntyre said they were stunned by the news and called it a tremendous loss, and science-fiction Internet sites quickly filled with posts dedicated to her.
"We've lost the most intelligent and capable voice in the genre," one fan wrote. "Octavia was the SciFi I picked up when I realized that there could be more to SciFi/fantasy than simple escapism."
...
Her first novel, "Kindred," came out in 1979. It concerned a black woman who travels back in time to the South to save a white man. She went on to write about a dozen books, plus numerous essays and short stories. Her most recent work, "Fledgling," a reinterpretation of the "Dracula" legend, was published last fall.
She won numerous awards, and in 1995 became the first science fiction writer granted a "genius" award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which paid $295,000 over five years. She served on the board of the Science Fiction Museum.
Peter Heck, a science fiction and mystery writer in Chestertown, Md., said Butler was recognized for tackling difficult and controversial issues, such as slavery.
"She was considered a cut above both in the quality of her writing and her imaginative audacity," Heck said. "She was willing to take uncomfortable ideas and pursue them further than a lot of other people would have been willing to."
I never blogged about it at the time, but but back in November, around the time we went to the George R. R. Martin book signing over in SF, we went to an Octavia Butler book signing in Oakland.
I had never read any of her work; I just went to keep Malaya company, and being as it was in a pretty ghetto-area, (we walked past crack sellers on the same block at the African American bookstore) I'm glad I accompanied her. The signing was fine though, and Butler was an interesting speaker and gave some lively answers during the Q&A. Her death, especially while still young enough to write quality work, is a tragedy. Malaya's especially bothered since her last book was clearly the first part in a series, and now we'll never get to read it.
We're not incensed enough to desecrate her grave for it, as we will do to Martin if he dies before finishing A Song of Ice and Fire, but it's a shame to lose a promising series like this. Fortunately, (or unfortunately) Butler never had any kids, so we can't even look forward to/dread the prospect of some semi-talented offspring rooting through her files and necromantically fleshing out every rough outline and half-finished manuscript.
