Alex Beecroft's Blog, page 51

The Eagle

I went to see The Eagle last night.  I'm fairly certain that I read the book in my youth, but it must have been at least 30 years ago, and the only thing that struck me as familiar in the film was "Roman discovers that his slave is actually a very important person & undergoes a kind of role reversal."  I didn't remember the book as having so many fight scenes in it.  It's all very clouded but I thought it was mostly travelling and conversation – quite tense conversation, true, but not full out warfare.

I'm also uncertain as to whether it was my own imagination that made me expect torcs and round-houses and more of an Asterix the Gaul look for the Celts than a Last of the Mohicans.

 

However that might be, what struck me, watching it as a Briton, was how much the film expected us to identify with the Romans.  I was stuck in this odd feeling of cognitive dissonance right from the opening scene.  (Which I loved.)  Here's this boat-full of soldiers punting up a tangled river in an impenetrable forest when a savage boy appears out of the shadows and watches them go past with an inscrutable expression.  I looked at the boy and thought "that's us" and for the rest of the film I was stuck thinking "this is a Cowboys and Indians film, where we are the Indians, but we're still expected to sympathize with the Cowboys."

I mean, it was all there – the fort surrounded by hostile wilderness, the savages who are so savage they don't deserve any respect, the sidekick who proves his worth by defending the civilized man and is rewarded by being admitted to civilized society (albeit that, as he isn't a Roman Citizen, he'll never be considered as good as a real Roman.)

They paid lip service, I thought, to the idea that Esca was every bit as good as Marcus, and that he might have good reason to be anti-Roman.  But I can't help feeling that they didn't really believe it.  Who gets the pyre and the pomp and ceremony at the end?  Who gets honoured with the gift of Esca's dagger that represents his freedom?  It's the slain Roman returned to his civilized roots.  It isn't the young prince of the Seal Clan.

And I worried a lot that Esca, who is clearly a man of enormous honour, is forced to betray his hosts of the Seal Clan – who have shown him nothing but kindness.  Why doesn't that prey on his mind?  Is it because we're supposed to see the Seal people as being unworthy of being treated with respect and loyalty?  Is that at all connected to the fact that they're dressed like the last of the Mohicans?  Is it Cowboys and Indians again, but this time guilt free?

Does anyone really doubt that Marcus' father wouldn't have killed him just as readily as the leader of the Seal Clan warriors killed his son (kudos to the actors for the tenderness with which that was done) if he thought that Marcus had brought him dishonour?  Of course he would – that's what the film was about, the importance of honour above everything else.  Marcus would have done the same himself, had the circumstance arisen.

So, I don't know.  I couldn't share any happy ending because I was too busy thinking "surely, having gained his freedom and paid back his debt, Esca would be going back to his own people now?  He's the son of the slain chief – that makes him the chief.  Why the hell is he settling for a life as a hanger-on of Marcus (particularly given that as he's no longer a slave he's going to have to find work of some kind to support himself.)"

Frankly, even if every last one of his people was dead, it doesn't explain why he's going back to the Romans for his future.  We know from the Seal Clan that his people have allies who would make him welcome.  His family died fighting the Romans.  He regarded the place where the invaders were finally stopped as a place of heroes (rightly so, IMO.)  I saw no real glimmer of a friendship strong enough to wipe that out, so I was left feeling that the ending was thoroughly out of character for him, and had slipped, without the film makers being aware of it, back into "we are the Romans and therefore the Romans are good," territory.

Whatever else I remember about the book, it was not that.  I remember the book opening my eyes to the fact that the Roman PoV was not the only PoV, that their way of life was not the only way of life worthy of respect.  That, in fact, everyone was doing the honourable thing from their own PoV – everyone was worthy of respect.  I didn't get that feeling from the film, and it left a bad taste in my mouth as a result.

Finally I have news.

It's been a long dry spell since Shining in the Sun came out.  In fact I've been writing more than ever before, but as it's all been going into Under the Hill, I haven't had anything to show for it yet.

However, I can now proudly announce that I've just signed a contract with Carina Press for my new Age of Sail story – the novella formerly known as Forced, aka The Pirate Novella Without a Title.

It does have a proper, permanent title now, and will henceforth be known as By Honor Betrayed, which is not only a much better title, but actually reflects the theme.

Carina being extremely efficient, I've already got a release date, which is 7th November 2011.  That gives me a nice run up to try and get a few more things finished and submitted this year, so that in future I don't have quite the barren wasteland between new releases as I have had in 2010/11.

Multiple causes of squee

First of all, I was summoned to the door this morning and handed a great big box I had not been expecting at all.  And lo! When I opened it, there were my author's copies of Shining in the Sun in print:

It's such a great moment when you can hold your book in your hands.  It never gets old.  And although ebooks may be the wave of the future, they can't quite give you the sheer feeling that you have written a real book as a print copy can.  It's also interesting how different the cover looks in real life.  On the screen it's quite yellow, but in the flesh it's more of a golden-brown.

Anyway, that's probably interesting only to me.  What's interesting to everyone (I imagine) is this cool vlog on YouTube by Peter Jackson.  I had been underwhelmed by the prospects of The Hobbit as directed by him, since I didn't like what he'd done with The Two Towers or The Return of the King.  But now that underwhelm-ment is turning into anticipation.  I'm sure it'll be wrong in multiple places, I'm sure it will annoy the Tolkien purist in me, but I still can't wait:

I love it when a plan comes together

I haven't been well today, so instead of writing I have been brainstorming, which involves less shutting myself in an unappealing spare room while hammering at a keyboard, and more sitting in a sunny lounge with a cup of tea and a blank notebook.

One of the most magical things about the writing process for me often occurs when I'm working my way through the second draft.  I know that there is something wrong with a plot thread.  I've thought about it enough to have finally worked out what it is.  I just don't know what to do about it.

In Shining in the Sun it was a question of why on earth Alec would have to spend a whole week combing Cornwall for any sign of Darren, so that he could apologize for forgetting to mention he was engaged, when he had Darren's mobile phone number all along.

In The Witch's Boy it was the central question of how to tie the two halves of the book together.  Yes, Adela knew she needed to find a witch of her own to go up against the bad guy.  But how was I to get her to go straight to Sulien without it looking like a massive and unbelievable coincidence?

In Under the Hill it's the fact that Flynn warns Chris of a threatened elvish invasion long before he can possibly have known about it.  And when he does find out about it, he's being held in stasis and couldn't possibly tell Chris.  But getting Chris out of prison later absolutely depends on Chris knowing about it at the right time.

In the case of both of my published books, I had no idea how I was going to resolve these problems.  In fact, though I knew there was something wrong I hadn't even realized what the problem really was until I was half way through the second draft, at which point it dawned on me and started to make my life a misery.  "Your book is horribly flawed!" it said.  "Why not give up now and start a more interesting one?  The best you can hope for with this one is that nobody spots the mistake, but you'll know it's there.  Probably everyone else will too."

I doggedly ignored the voice and carried on revising, and then, one day, completely out of the blue, the solution came to me.  I don't get much in the way of inspiration, normally.  I don't have a constant stream of ideas, and my characters are rarely chatty, but oh boy, this sudden twist where I know what to do to solve a problem I'd been sure was insolvable – that's the real thing.

In Shining in the Sun it turned out that Krissy had told Darren that his abusive ex was after him – so he had turned his phone off and was hiding from Max – meaning Alec couldn't find him either.

In The Witch's Boy it turned out that a character I had introduced very early on, on the principle of "if you don't know what happens next, have a man with a gun enter the room," turned out to have a family backstory that tied everything together beautifully.  So beautifully it looked like I'd meant it all along.

I don't know that my solution in Under the Hill is quite as elegant as Gunnar's ring – I'd have to go a long way to beat that – but today I am celebrating the mystery and brilliance of inspiration.  It seems to hit you from outside after your own brain is exhausted.  I wasn't at all sure it would happen this time – I never am.  I feel certain there's no guarantee that it always will.  But today it did.  Hurray!  I think I've cracked it!

Thank you to Tumperkin

For this brilliant review of Captain's Surrender, made all the better by the fact that she didn't think she liked Age of Sail stories

I wish I could tell you how much I loved this book, how it transported me, how profoundly it moved me. If this blog did its job, I would be able to articulate perfectly what I am feeling right now just remembering reading the final chapters of this book. Joy, elation, wrenching emotion.

Can I just say "squeeee!" in a high pitched fangirly way, possibly while flailing my hands around in an attempt to convey how delighted I am.  Fantastic!  Thank you

UK Meet and submissions call reminder

If you're in the UK in July and are interested in GBLT fiction, consider coming to the UK Meet on 23rd July.  More info here at the website.

http://ukmeet.weebly.com/index.html

anyone at all who is attending (whether professional writer or not) is invited to submit a story for the freebie British Flash anthology, details here:

http://josephinemyles.com/uk-meet/british-flash-call-for-submissions/

and/or for the professionally published anthology Tea and Crumpet, profits from which will go to fund the meet next year:

http://josephinemyles.com/uk-meet/tea-and-crumpets-call-for-submissions/

Not much time left on those submissions calls, so if you mean to come, best get writing now

Quick idea for my author friends

One of the worst things about LJ being down so often this week is that I use LJ to read my RSS feeds.  I not only keep up with my LJ friends, but use LJ's feed aggregator to read author blogs.  If LJ is going to be this flaky in future, that needs to change.

If you are an author and you have a non-LJ blog with an RSS feed, would you mind posting the URL of your blog's RSS feed here, so that I can add it to my Google Reader?  Thank you!

And if you would like to add mine, it is http://alexbeecroft.com/feed/

Testing blog crossposting. Please ignore.

Testing blog crossposting. Please ignore.

The Witch's Boy is back in town.

In 2008 I published The Witch's Boy for the first time in print and ebook format through Lulu.com.  A little later, I accepted a contract from a publisher to publish it under their imprint in 2009.  Once I'd signed the contract, I retired the Lulu version and made it unavailable. 

Then complications ensued, with the result that no new version was published in 2009, or in 2010.  By spring 2011 my contract with the publisher had lapsed and there was still no sign of it being published.  So on Friday I gave the publisher notice that I no longer wanted them to publish it, and I un-retired the Lulu version again.  That's this one:

 

I also figured out how to reduce the price of the Lulu paperback to a much more reasonable level, and I'm much happier with the value for money there now.  The paperback and the Lulu ebook have the beautiful cover designed for me by Black Hound. 

However, I wanted there to be a Kindle version, so I formatted the file for Kindle and put it up there.  At that point I realized that although beautiful, the brown cover did not look very striking in a thumbnail, so I made a new cover for the Kindle version.  That is the only change between the two.  Text wise, the two versions are identical.

If there's any demand for the paperback with the black and red cover, I might venture into putting that up on Createspace, but Lulu was a lot easier for me to deal with because everything was all set up there already and only needed the click of a button to go live again.

The Kindle version took the weekend to get itself sorted out through the system at Amazon, but is now up and ready to go, here at Amazon.com and here at Amazon.co.uk  I'm not quite sure how long the Lulu version will take to propagate through the system before the paperback is available from retailers, but it shouldn't take more than 6 weeks to show up on Amazon, and in the mean time is already available here at Lulu.

It's a weight off my mind having this available again.  I know that quite a few people have been waiting for it, and I'm glad not to have to keep saying "I'm sorry, I really don't know when it will be out."

What should I do to celebrate, I wonder?  Post an excerpt?  Have a competition/giveaway?  Make a new book trailer for it?  Something else much more exciting?

Reviews are not for Authors

I've noticed a pattern among my friends who are new authors.  They almost always start off reviewing books.  Even if they don't write reviews for a review site, they write up what they think about the books they read and post them on Amazon or on Goodreads.  There's a good reason why so many writers also write book reviews – it's because, being writers, they a) read a lot and are excited by books and b) are interested in all those technical matters that go into making a book a good one.

Writers read voraciously and they pay attention to things like the strength of a book's plot, characters and setting, because writing books has taught them the importance of such things.  They have learned to analyse how books are written, what's a good technique and what isn't, what works and what doesn't, and why.  So really, with these qualities, authors must make ideal book reviewers, am I right?

And yet I've noticed that when writers become published and their names begin to be recognised in the genre, they almost invariably end up posting regretful blog posts saying "I'm not sure I should be reviewing any more."  Some will decide that they are only going to review books they liked from now on, and only the toughest and most committed tend to carry on giving bad reviews when they think they're merited.

Pretty much the reason for this is other writers.  I say this as one who knows, but the emotions of writers are as unprotected as newly hatched baby birds.  We are sensitive.  We have the artistic temperament in spades.  And we put all our hearts into our books, love and passion, obsession and a lot of hard work.  We send our books out into the world as if they were our children, and for some of us it is as unbearable to see someone criticising our books as it is if they were bad-mouthing our children.

I understand the feeling.  I get it myself.  And I get the "OMG!  Maybe I am a useless writer.  Maybe she's right and my plots are all lame and my characters are limp and my writing style is rubbish and I just will never amount to anything.  Maybe I'm doomed to be the laughing stock of the genre because everyone hates my books.  Soon publishers will realize it and stop publishing me and then I'll be a total failure and I'll be crushed forever.  So I should just stop right now and spare myself the misery."  I feel like that a lot.

But I still don't think reviewers should stop being honest.  I still don't think that reviewers should take the feelings of authors into account one way or another.  Reviews are not for authors, they are for readers.

I have many caps on this hatstand.  I'm an author and I've been a reviewer and I'm a reader.  But when I review I take the author hat off and consider what I want as a reader.  As a reader I want a review that will tell me what the reviewer really thought of a book.  If they loathed it, I want to know, and I want to know why.  I don't want to be misguided into buying a rubbish book because the reviewer was trying to avoid the wrath of angry authors or their fans.

This post was prompted in part by the comments on which is only the last of a long line of incidents of reviewers being attacked for telling it how they see it.

When the reviewer is another author, the tactics get nastier.  The reviewed author and/or their fans claim that the reviewing author is only rubbishing the book because they want to eliminate their competition.  (As though readers can't read a thousand times more books than a single author can write in a lifetime.)  They hurl around charges of mean-spiritedness and elitism, and they talk to their writer friends and on their publishers' egroups about how that author is jealous/mean/out to get them.

All this generates a certain amount of bad buzz around the author who had the temerity to say what she actually thought about a book she was given to review.  And – returning to my point at the beginning – this leads to authors slowly realizing that reviewing is too hot for them to handle and giving it up.

What to do about this?  Well, I could admonish writers that frankly they just make themselves look ridiculous if they react badly to bad reviews.  I could even say that reacting badly to bad reviews lets everyone know about the bad review, and so for your own self-interest you'd be better off not mentioning it at all.  I could say "if you react badly to bad reviews, you will find it harder to get your books reviewed next time."  But frankly I don't think that the problem is going to go away, because it's rooted in that primal feeling of "how dare you criticise my baby?!" which not everyone can successfully manage to suppress.

I could say that reviewers ought to toughen up and accept that a certain amount of bad press comes with the territory.  And I have immense respect for anyone with the integrity and self belief to do that.  But at the same time I don't think there will be many authors (see above about thin skins and sensitivity) with that kind of bravery.

It seems, for me at least, that the only option is for authors to give up reviewing.  A reader who reviews cannot be accused of trying to increase their own book's chances at the expense of others.  They don't need to worry about the potential damage to their professional network.  They can still be accused of being horrible people, but they can't be accused of acting out of self-interest, and that should make things a bit easier.

So I guess that my conclusion is an appeal for readers out there to get involved with reviewing, because authors – however much they might want to review – are pressured either to be nice about everything or to stop saying anything at all.  Most of them, being more interested in writing than reviewing, cave in to that pressure eventually.