Writing ramble: I have a minor problem…

Yes, the weather’s going wonky, so I’m dealing once again with mood swings. And let me tell you, this time they’re a real doozy. I go from depressed to enraged in 2.2 seconds, and then shift to guilty and melancholy in another two.

I suppose it’s good luck that I finished my last writing project when I did, because now I don’t have to worry about negative emotions leading to a writing block. But it’s also kind of a bad thing because my usual post-book brain drain problems are compounded by the wonky weather mood swings. So not only do I hate all of you, but I also hate myself too. And no, I don’t really hate y’all. I don’t even know you. But once the mood swing hits, logic and reason both get up and leave. And then…oh yeah, fuck the lot of you.

One of the things driving me nuts in these mood-swinging times is these sudden desperate urges to do something to change my fortunes. Maybe if I released a new book today, y’all would show up and buy a few copies, and I could feel like I accomplished something. Maybe if I wrote a better book, today, I’d start making enough sales to handle my medical needs. Maybe I could write “something more meaningful,” and that would be popular even if the rest of my stuff got ignored by the mainstream.

But there’s no point in selling a story today, because no matter what I put up from my queue of unpublished works, none of them are likely to sell. I’ve got four sequel to books that didn’t sell well, and one standalone story that I’m already feeling doubtful over on the grounds that it’s “too gay” to be popular. (Well, it is a gay romance, so you’d think it’d be okay in this instance.)

I don’t need to write better to sell a lot either. I need to write “right.” Any bestseller I read tells me it’s not the quality of the writing that moves units. It’s the choices of which characters to put on display, the right choices of plots and themes that will appeal to the reader quickly if summed up in a blurb. There’s formulas that offer a higher chance of success, and my inability to embrace those formulas are what keep me from capturing more mainstream interest in my writing.

The monthly status report and butt smooch

It’s the 28th, so it’s about time for another sales and progress report, followed by your monthly butt smooching. I’m already wearing lip balm, even. =^*

This month, nobody bought all my books all at once, so this month wasn’t as awesome as last month in terms of sales. But I’ve had 13 sales from Amazon and a sale of a three-book zip file on the blog bookstore. I’m still debating if I should call that three book sales or one efile sale, but for now I’m calling it one. I don’t have my Lightning Source numbers yet, but they shouldn’t bump me up by more than 3-4 extra sales. For me, for a summer month, this is really rather good. Last year at this same time, I only had half these sales.

Alas, Roll the Bones had a a terrible first month in terms of sales, getting only two for the entire month. A lot of the books I sold this month were not what I was advertising, which is par for the course with me. One of these days, I’m going to figure out how advertising actually works. And then? Hand over fist, baby.

(>_>) Well I can dream, anyway.

Setting aside the first month sales, Roll the Bones did manage to get a good review, three stars, which totally works for me. I also got a good review for Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies from Wading Through Electronic Ink, and Peter’s series got another review this month, with the second being a YouTube video review for Peter the Wolf. So, it wasn’t a great month for the new book, but it has been a good month for regular sales, and I got a few extra reviews. Definitely can’t complain with new reviews, especially when none of the reviews are bad. =^)

Overall, this summer’s sales have been much better than I normally get during this time of year. So first, thanks to all of y’all picking up my books, and then I’ll thank the reviewers for taking the time to write up a little something for their fellow readers. I really do appreciate the financial help, and even more the help with word of mouth promotions and reviews. That I continue to sell books is a sure sign that some of you are helping with promotions, and I appreciate all the help I can get.

I’ll close with a writing update and let you know that I’ve completed the first draft of A Boy and His Dawg, a YA werewolf romance that I’ve been working on since the start of summer. It’s about halfway over 50K but depending on what the editor thinks, it could get bigger or smaller. You may recall, while I was writing this an editor offered to read the completed story because she liked the premise I was pitching for a unique werewolf story with a gay protagonist and an African breed of werewolf. I double checked to see if she still wanted to read it, and she said she had space in her schedule to look it over. I’ve sent the first draft to here, and I can’t say if she will like the story or not, but I’m sure she will have suggestions for what to fix or tweak. I’m also going to be looking for beta readers to check this story out before I consider any publishing plans. If you would like to beta read for me on this project, email me at: zoe_whitten (at) yahoo (dot) com. Obviously it will be a while before this goes on sale, probably 9 months to a year from now. I wish I could pump these puppies out for you faster, but the polishing process requires outside eyes, and it takes a long, long time to get all of those little freaking mistakes out.

So that’s the monthly report. Thank you very much for your continued support. I should have some new stuff out for you sooner rather than later. I just have to finish editing some of it to whack a few last typos. Of course I’ll never get them all, but I will hunt down as many of those wayward little bastards as I can. And when I find them…ahem.

Thanks, y’all. More books coming soon!

Initial review: Sony PRS-T1 ereader

My CyBook Opus kicked the bucket at barely a year old, and when I lamented to my sister-in-law that I was going to have to spend 150 euros to replace it, she offered to buy me a new reader. As much as I loved my Cybook Gen3 from Bookeen, the Opus was much less stable, and I’d dealt with random lockups and stability issues even after two ROM updates were released. So when the screen went black and I couldn’t recover anything, I decided to see what else was on the market that could read epub.

I found out that Sony’s current line of readers is epub-friendly, and it was roughly 9 euros cheaper than the model from every other competitor. It has a touch screen which is more responsive than the Bookeen Orizon and a simple set of gestures to turn pages and zoom. It also has Wi-Fi and access to an online book store, but I suspected this wouldn’t work in Italy, and I was right. I can connect the device to my Wi-Fi router, no problem. But clicking on the store button brings up a screen that says in Italian that there is no bookstore for my country. No option to shop in the US either. Just “sorry, no books for you.” Fortunately, since I’ve been buying DRM-free epubs all year, I have plenty of files to load on my new reader.

The screen looks great, as most e-ink screens do. The new Pearl e-ink screens are very nice, and they display text and ebook covers with nice resolutions and smooth pixels. The touch screen is responsive, and the gesture for page turns is easy, just a little flick of the thumb on either side of the screen. The pinch to zoom works pretty smoothly, though I don’t have much use for it reading reflowable text fiction instead of manga or other comics where zoom might come in handy.

About the only thing that I can’t sort out is the stylus. Sony sent this nice bookmark like stylus with a loop-over hook similar to a pen for attaching to a chest pocket. I guess that’s how you’re supposed to carry it, but most of my clothing doesn’t have a chest pocket, and I’d lose this tiny thing in my purse. There’s no recessed space for the stylus on the reader, so it’s an extra piece of plastic that I just leave at home rather than risk losing it on the road. If there were some way to attach it to the device and make it convenient to carry, I might use it. But since it doesn’t attach, I figure I’ll just suffer with fingerprints.

I’m also not entirely fond of the menu button layout, with the page turn buttons on the lower left corner. Yes I can just flick my thumb on the right side to move to the next page, but I kind of liked how the Opus had page buttons right under my thumb, making one handed operation easy. This is a minor quibble, though, as I don’t actually need the buttons at all. I’d just like them to be in a more convenient location in case I planned to use them.

I’ve only just started using the reader, so I can’t speak to issues of stability or battery life yet. One thing I do like is that when the device goes into sleep mode, the screen flashes to the cover of the book I’m currently reading. On the Opus, the sleep mode screen was essentially a series of ads for Bookeen. So having the ereader advertising my current read instead is an improvement, in my opinion.

Currently, I’ll give the Sony PRS-T1 four stars. I’d give it a higher score if Sony would let me buy books in the US store, even though I’m in Italy. Then the Wi-FI might be slightly less than useless. But Since I have sources for ebooks already, my bigger concern is, will it read the files I’ve already bought. It will, and the screen looks gorgeous. So that for me is good enough for now.

I’ll try to do another short review about stability and battery life after I’ve had some time to beat the new reader up a bit.

So, I’ve been reading…

I’ve taken the month off from serious writing partly because it’s too hot to work. But I’ve also had a bad year of reading, with my book selections not working for me during most of the early year. Many books I struggled with for months, and others, I read only a few pages before dropping them with no desire to go back. But this month, I decided to catch up on my reading goals, and I’ve been reading five books at a time, taking one chapter from each book in turns. I’ve been told this takes great willpower, but I find that’s only true for books that don’t suck. It also makes bad books somewhat more bearable, giving me a 25% improved chance of finishing them.

I’m not really reading to study, but I end up noticing things that I don’t think your average reader does. One thing that I’ve brought up before is how the mainstream has effectively erased diversity. Of all the books I’ve read this year, only a handful of main characters weren’t white. Those that weren’t white were usually written by non-white authors. Of all the white authors I’ve read this year, male and female, only one attempted to write a black main character. (And did so rather well, I might add.) Which brings me to the rambly topic of writing formulas.

If a writer wants a successful book, the first thing they will do is write a white heterosexual main character. That character will be morally good, though most likely an alcoholic. (Because alcoholism is the only disease heroes are allowed to have without being seen as too flawed. Can’t have a coke-addicted cop, but a cop who hangs out in bars? A-okay.) That character will either meet a new member of the opposite sex to appease the romantic demographic and give the shippers something to hope in, or they will run into an old partner of the opposite sex and realize they’ve been denying their true feelings. (Satisfying the same shipper demo in the process.)

Successful mainstream books are a formula that allows for a lot of variant forms of expression. But once you’ve read 20 or so books from a wide swatch of genres, you see how often this same formula is used—in sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, horror, whatever—you begin to see how little room in this field there is for depictions of diversity. Writers slip a token black into a cast of all whites, and half the time, the black guy can’t help but be the recipient of lines like “Damn,” or “Sho ’nuff.” Writers slip a “safe gay” into a group, someone who will be funny, charming, only slightly gay, and who will never talk about or have sex in the course of the story. Can’t risk freaking out any straight readers with actual gayness.

Book review: Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Hush, Hush has been on my TBR pile a long time through no fault of its own. I’d tried to read Fallen by Lauren Kate and since it didn’t work for me, the premise of fallen angels fell off my radar for a while, pun intended. But I finally got back in the mood for the meme, and I pulled this down to give it a shot.

A couple things needs to be said about the main character, Nora Gray, and her best friend Vee. These are not the brightest girls in high school, and they have low senses of self-preservation. They make bad choices. They never have a good comeback when involved in cut down contests. Nora is a horrible liar, being almost entirely incapable of coming up with believable excuses. She’s working at the lower end of the educational bell curve.

Does this make this book bad? No.

To get the story started, Nora is swapped in Biology class from her friend Vee to “the guy at the back of the class,” a move which set off about a billion red flags for me. I early on came to the decision that either the author had never been in a real Biology class, or the teacher’s strange unprofessional behavior had to be the result of mind control. And it does come out later that mind control is a factor in the story. but, as it’s happening in the story, a lot of what’s going on reeks of WTF. But readers who stick around will soon learn it all relates to Patch, “the guy from the back of the class.”

The ballad of Pinky McSparkles

I love Twitter. Can I just get that out of the way first? I interact with a number of people who are creative in various ways, and who sift through my crazy ramblings and sometimes reply to my outbursts in unpredictable and awesome ways.

The other day, I was rambling about how if I took up a pen name, I’d want to make sure that my alter ego was a kids book wuss of a creampuff author. So if she came back from the dead, as with George Stark, no way could she be tough enough to kill anyone, much less everyone I knew. This led to me briefly talking about why I don’t have a pen name, but I commented that I had thought about it. I had decided that I might do it, but only if I came up with a book so different that it demanded a pen name.

Well along come @CrookedFang to suggest helpfully that I should take the pen name Pinky McSparkles. And I went to tell hubby and he laughed loud and long. I laughed with him, almost until tears came out. What a brilliant name. It even tells you what kind of story she should write, some kids fantasy story about unicorns and rainbows and…

“And zombies,” said @Alpharalpha. More specifically he wrote:

Pinky McSparkles and the zombie apocalypse = want

So now there’s this idea flying out there, with added spin, and it’s just begging “Take a swing at me!”

And then, after I lamented that I’d have to hire someone to impersonate Pinky for the book signings with the kids, @Polerin volunteered to take on the role of Pinky. @Polerin is active in roller derby, and I thought, “Well, if Pinky McSparkles is supposed to survive a zombie apocalypse, she’d best be a roller derby girl.”

So here you have a possible plan that I may, or may not pursue. I mean, Pink McSparkles is an awesome name, but it demands a certain kind of story, a kind of sugary voice that exudes good cheer and rainbows. And sparkles. Can’t forget those. Right now, I don’t have anything that would fit her style, not even an inkling of a premise. But it IS a rather good pen name, and wouldn’t it be ironic if I sold a book under a new name and it sold a billion copies?

So I’ve got this whimpering request sent up to my muse: “Please, at some point, come up with a cute kids fantasy story worthy of the pen name Pinky McSparkles.”

Book review: The Dark Half by Stephen King

True fact: I have owned multiple copies of The Dark Half in my life, but have always somehow lost those copies without reading the book. I bought this…third copy, I believe, and I finally committed myself to reading it. I really wish I hadn’t.

King is typically known for monsters that are abstract and fuzzily defined. I get that, and I’m okay with it most of the time because he makes up for it with characters I want to follow. But Thad and Liz Beaumont are severely flat cardboard characters who I can’t believe in. Worse, I don’t buy the premise for the monster, which is Thad’s “twin,” George Stark.

Except, it isn’t his twin. Thad had an operation as a child to remove the partial remains of a twin fetus that was developing in his brain. So there is nothing there. No twin. No lump of goo also developing in his head. What King wants me to believe is that because Thad imagined a southern talking crime fiction-writing version of himself, his dead twin took over that personality as Thad’s pen name. And, because Thad had chosen to kill off his pen name, Stark suddenly rises from a fake grave to become an adult supa-killer. He and Thad share fingerprints, even though twins don’t. He and Thad share the same voice print, again, even though twins don’t. Stark knows where all his victims are. He’s much smarter than the cops, and he’s uber manly. He talks like a villain from a 1980s era Canon film. For a guy just born, he has amazing bomb making skills. But forget his skills. Where did he get his bomb making supplies from with no money, no wallet, and no ID? He was born with a full set of clothing and his principle weapon already in his pocket. As all twins do, usually.

And before I go on, I want to say that even with me not being a fan of cops, King’s depictions of the police as goobers or prissy so-and-so’s is just kind of pathetic. In one chapter alone, he said the FBI agents looked like H&R Block reps instead of agents, that they looked like they wanted to hold each other for comfort, and then he describes an agent eeking like a woman.

The supposed highlight of the book is a Sheriff Alan Pangborn, who is mostly just a figurehead with some home life scenes thrown in. I mention them because Alan’s wife is described one point as being “gloriously naked.” I have in mind an image of a woman laying curled on her side, the sheets glowing underneath her lithe form while a choir sings “Hallelujah!” But aside from giving me a buzzword NEVER to use while describing women, most of Alan’s role is doing legwork in the wake of Stark’s uber-spree. Pangborn’s charm wore off for me when he referred to a victim as “The cunt from Vassar with nasal problems.”

And King is humping the “twins share a psychic bond” cliche to ridiculous levels here, even having a scene where one baby falls, and the other gets a matching psychic bruise. Thad then uses this to explain how Stark knew to call Thad in a convenience store without knowing the number: “Because the sparrows are flying again. And because we are twins.” No, even if it’s King peddling this bullshit, I can still smell what it is.

But where the book finally loses me is when King insists that I read sloppy ass supa-killer handwriting, and insist that this “channeled writing” is coming from his southern talking evil twin who was literally just born from a hole in the ground.

And why is it that all of Stephen King’s writer alter egos have southern accents? Is Stephen King terrified of southerners? Do the sounds of a banjo make his butthole pucker tight enough to crack walnuts? Does a Dairy Queen make him quiver in his Maine-issued loafers? Cause in Secret Window, the alter ego pen name also speaks with a southern accent. So this feels like a trend with him.

I really tried to read the chicken scratching that’s supposed to pass as Stark’s next brilliant novel. But it just made my eyes sting trying to sort it out, and I realized, I stopped caring about King’s writer characters after Misery. Do I want to follow another of King’s writers on a writing journey under pressure? No. And really, I thought of the situation like this: if George Stark had all these skills to kill people, why doesn’t he know how to write his own stupid book? He could just know the right words from Thad though their magical twin connection, so why does he have to channel his book through Thad?

Ultimately, I don’t care to see where this story goes. I can forgive a monster with a vague origin in a King story. It happens. But without a strong cast of characters, this whole venture feels like a waste of time.

I’m a huge fan of King, but I have to give The Dark Half one star. I would only recommend it to completists who feel they need to read everything an author’s ever written.

Book review: Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Anansi Boys is the second book by Neil Gaiman that I’ve read, and it shares many similar themes with my first read, American Gods. But while I felt that book fell flat in many ways, Anansi Boys is a superior book which improved on the central idea. More importantly, Anansi Boys delivers on the premise in more satisfying ways than American Gods. Fat Charlie is by far a better protagonist than Shadow, and his story flows more eloquently, in my opinion.

Charlie Nancy, or Fat Charlie, is the son of a god named Anansi. Anasi is charismatic and a trickster, and growing up under his huge shadow, Charlie feels terminally embarrassed by his father’s outlandish behavior. He even feels embarrassed by his father’s sudden death, which happened in a karaoke bar while Charlie’s father was in the midst of wrapping up a big number.

Charlie doesn’t know he has a brother, but during his father’s funeral, a friend of the family tells Charlie many shocking things. He learns only then that his father was a god, and that he has a brother named Spider. According to the family friend Spider got all of the godly powers in the family, while Charlie was just…Charlie. The family friend suggests that Charlie summon his brother by talking to any spider. But Charlie doesn’t believe this being a bland kind of guy who doesn’t believe in gods living among men. He returns to his home in London, and he glibly tells a spider to send his brother by for a visit.

He’s understandably shocked when Spider does show up, and he’s got to be the bearer of bad news and explain their father’s death. Spider investigates the death in a way that proves to Charlie that Spider is a god, and then he takes out Charlie for a night of “mourning.” Charlie wakes up with an unknown woman in his bed, and from then on Spider’s influence in his life just keeps making things worse.

Sandy got reviewed…

Yes, I found a kind reviewer with a blog willing to take a look at Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies. While her review was fond of the work and offered mostly positive praise, she also said she wasn’t likely to read more in the series due to its grittiness. You should take a minute to read her review first. Go on, I’ll wait here.

So as you saw she was also worried that I’m plotting up a threesome for the next book, which was one of her main reasons for not wanting to read more. I can at least assure her and other readers that there will be no threesome in the next book, as the cast will be completely different, save for Sandy herself. There may be sex in book three, and I won’t say with who, but I will say I’ve got this future theoretical sex planned as a “fade to black” kind of intimacy. The point is to make a YA, after all. A graphic threesome that was still YA would be mighty darned difficult to pull off if I were planning one. But I’m not planning one. Because I don’t know if I’m that skillful to handle that kind of juggling act.

I realize that admission was probably disappointing for some of you, the one hoping for a threesome in the sequel. (>_>) I’m sorry for you, truly sorry. But the point of Sandy’s series isn’t to put her in a relationship with some actiony subplot on the side. Sandy’s relationships with other people take a sideline to her development in the mystical arts, and to her increasing role of importance in fae politics through no intentional maneuvering of her own.

In fact, I had started a draft of Sandy’s second story and thought I was headed in the right direction. I have, since then, decided that I needed to start over because I had royally messed up the introduction of Sandy’s new magic training partner, who is the nephew of her trainer Donald. Also I took Sandy in a direction that felt right from a “happy story” standpoint, but which felt like a cheap ploy right after I did it. That’s totally book four material, for when I’m ready to jump the shark. So the redo of this story will cut out that early wish fulfillment crap.

I want to close this post by thanking Wading Through Electronic Ink for agreeing to take my book, and for reviewing it. I’m happy that the reviewer felt enough to cry over the characters in my story. Also, it’s okay that she couldn’t take the werecats completely seriously. If I were facing a pack of werecats in real life, I’d be dead for not taking them seriously. I mean, it’s hard to be scared by a large grey striped tabby, yo. I’d be leaning down to pet it right before it killed me.

Anywho, thanks very much to the reviewer, and I totally understand her reason for not continuing further into the series. Since she’s not comfortable with more gritty work, I also know I can’t really offer her any of my other stories. Which is a shame, but I can respect that it’s not her cup of tea.

Woohoo! New review! And it’s a good review too! (^_^)

Yet another ungodly long writing ramble…

Right now, me and my muse are in discussions about future projects, which I suspect will cause even more people to hate me as my squicky releases pile up. But our discussion is not a debate so much as a reaffirmation of the reasons why I chose to to write in the first place, and a recognition that editing and revising have often diluted my stories.

First, I’ve been reading a lot these last few months, and a lot of what I’m reading is still relying on the same formulas. The hero that nobody talks to suddenly becomes the most important person in the world. The fate of the world hangs on the decisions of one person, or on a small group of people. Everyone always has the right answer to lead to an obvious conclusion. Morals are usually starkly black and white on these conflicts, and the conflict is typically resolved with someone being killed. Might makes right, and revenge is always the right answer. The hero works in a kitten orphanage, coaching crippled kittens to use mini-wheelchairs while the villain eats puppy stew every day for lunch…after strangling the puppies himself and saving the wrung out blood for the soup stock.

I’ve read so much of this stuff, and I’m sick of it. Lots of people aren’t, and some people will be buying new versions of the formula without knowing how old or overdone it is. Lots of people will love it, and the publishers will keep cranking out more of the same. I get that. So if I want something different, instead of complaining, I have to write it myself. Which is easier said than done, and just writing the stories doesn’t mean I can sell them. Writing a story isn’t a big fucking deal, but writing a good story with a great pitch to catch readers with? That’s not so easy.