C. Litka's Blog, page 41

The Marvelous Mrs Maisel Review

image credit: https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-marv...

Now that I have all my self-promoting postings out of the way, it’s time to come up with some general interest posts – an old man conversing with the clouds sort of thing.

Our credit card company gave us three free months of Amazon Prime, so my wife and I took the opportunity to watch a show that I had heard many positive things about, the 4.3 star rated The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. This is a review of the first two seasons and three episodes of the third.

About the reviewer: How any reviewer rates a work depends upon what the reviewer values in the medium. A reader needs to know what the reviewer is looking for in order to judge the value of the review for their purposes. What I value starts with relatable, likable characters – they are pretty much a necessity for me. A coherent, plausible plot, where the action flows from the characters and their situation is also very important to me.  Since I primarily read and watch fiction for the purpose of escape, I value humor, and mostly enjoy light and witty fare. For a visual medium, I’d like good cinematography and sets. This review reflects my tastes.

The Marvelous Mrs Maisel

Since this show has been around for four years, I don’t think there is any need to delve deeply into the premise – a wealthy young Jewish woman decides, after her husband walks out on her, to become a stand-up comedian in New York city in the late 1950’s. There are currently three seasons of the show, with a fourth being filmed.

The cinematography, location shoots, and sets are excellent, and evocative of the time. Five stars.

I did not grow up in NY city, nor do I have any experience with the Jewish lifestyle portrayed in the show. Being Jewish is very much a key element of the show, and so it needs to be addressed. It struck me that the way the show portrayed its Jewish protagonists bordered on stereotyping them. Being a modern show, I assume that if this was the case, objections would’ve been made. None were, to my knowledge, so I'll assume that they are authentic people that have been somewhat exaggerated, for comic purposes to create a colorful portrayal of that sub-set of NY city life. As such, I found it interesting to see how these people lived.

Which brings us around to the individual characters and their actions. I found Joel Mainsel’s decision to leave his wife, the inciting incident of the series, unconvincing. The explanations offered for the abrupt action didn’t convince me that it was in his character to act the way he did, with the provocation the writers provided. Of course that plot twist was deemed necessary to the story, so necessity must be served. For that reason I’ll give it a reluctant pass. The same can be said for Mrs Maisel’s mother’s sitcom-like flight to Paris. It was just plausible enough for me to go along with it, though clearly, it was  less about the character and more about the writers needing something different to write about, and a new location to film. Susie and the gangsters are interesting characters. Lenny Bruce wasn’t funny – nor were any of the other comedians. Indeed most of the stand-up comedy routines were not funny. Maybe you had to have been there...

Still, all in all, we enjoyed the first season a lot. The show began to fall apart in the second season. The action moved to the Catskills and a summer camp for wealthy adults, where the whole Maisel family spends two months each summer. A minor point: at this time Mrs Maisel was working in a department store. How a part-time employee could swing two months of vacation is a mystery. All I can say is, nice work if you can get it.

In any event, I found it amazing that places like that resort existed, (and still do?) and that there was a class of people, who were not multi-millionaires, but who had the time and money take two months off each summer go to an expensive camp, where they were fed, entertained, and otherwise catered to. The humor was probably down a peg from the first season, but it was still pretty entertaining – while they were at camp. If the series had ended with the Labor Day dance, it would’ve been a four star show for me.

But it didn’t. It went down hill fast from that episode, in part because the characters began to do things that were not in their character. They had become the mere puppets of the writers, who seem to have run out of realistic ideas for the show going forward. As a result, the writers had them doing things that simply made no sense.

If the characters, especially Mrs Maisel’s parents, had began the series almost like caricatures of well off New York Jews at the beginning of the show, by the beginning of the third season they had been reduced to furniture – stage settings – to be moved around at will to serve the silly plot the writers concocted in search of laughs. Nothing they did made organic sense. Mrs Maisel’s father would never have given up his tenured position at the university, no matter how burned out he was, especially with a sabbatical available to him, something that he had earned. He wasn't an idiot. Sorry, the beatnik/radicals in the show for two episodes weren’t motivation enough. Or humorous.

And his wife would never give up her trust fund – the only other source of income after her husband gave up his job. Give it all up because she couldn’t be on the board of trustees? Really?

These characters were simply being moved around the set willy-nilly, as the writers desperately tried to keep the show “interesting” – in a soap opera/sitcom hybrid sort of way. They only way this type of writing could be justified would be if it delivered laughs. It didn’t. Their predicament wasn’t funny, and since it was so contrived, wasn’t drama either. It was just dumb.

And then we come the Marvelous Mrs Maisel herself. Yes, she grew up in wealth and privilege, with a room full of clothes, and so she could be forgiven in the beginning of the series being bright, breezy, confident, and self-centered. But, as the show progresses, she experiences the underside of NYC life, where people have to struggle to survive, where people are oppressed and marginalized. She occasionally sees how poor her manager is, and yet none of this seems to make much of an impression on her. She doesn’t grow in the story, remaining blind to the plight of others, selfish, and self-centered. And never more so when it comes to her two young children.

I have to wonder why they included the children in the show in the first place, since they seem to get in the way of  the story – when they weren’t being completely ignored – which was most of the time.

At the end of the second season Mrs Maisel instantly agrees to going on a six month tour, never considering, even for a moment, who will look after her children when she is on tour. She simply assumes that someone, other than herself, will look after them for her – as if it was due her. (As someone has been doing all along.)

Now, I’m not saying that this isn’t necessarily an unrealistic portrayal of a person like Mrs Maisel -- a person with a laser focus on obtaining fame and fortune and damn anyone who gets in his or her way. Perhaps we are meant to admire her for her ambition and drive. But even so, her failure to respond to her new life and grow as a person throughout the series – when she should’ve – makes her an increasingly unlikable character, in my opinion. I was no longer invested in her success. For me, this was a fatal flaw in the story, though it may not be for you.

The third season – of what we saw of it – went even further down hill. It was padded with a number of long, dumb, musical numbers, it wasted time on various not-funny interludes, and unrealistic situations -- the type of situations that exist only because characters, for some reason, don't talk about it to other characters. We gave up on the show after episode 3, as we no longer cared what happened to Mrs Maisel.

The Marvelous Mrs Maisel began well – bright, snappy, and funny – and went down hill, slowly at first, and then fast. Watch the first season – and maybe the second until the Labor Day dance. And stop. 

Final verdict: **

What's your take on The Marvelous Mrs Maisel?

Map for Shadows of an Iron Kingdom

 

I don't really know if a reader actually needs a map, but I always like a map in my books, so here's a sketch map for Shadows of an Iron Kingdom. It's not to scale. I did this map entirely digitally on Gimp.

Shadows of an Iron Kingdom and The Starfaring Life are now available

 

The ebook of the third Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure, Shadows of an Iron Kingdom,  is now available on Amazon for $.99 and on Smashwords for Free. Within the next few days it should also be available on Google, Apple, Kobo & B&N for free as well. The paper edition is priced at $10.00 on Amazon.

My novella length serial story, The Starfaring Life, is now available on Amazon's Vella platform. It can be read on the Amazon site here: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/product/B0989VDP6N

It can also be read on an iOS Vella app which will allow it to be read on your iPhone or iPad. The first three episodes can be read for free, after which you will have to spend tokens, one per hundred words, to read the rest. I believe that at least on the app, Amazon is offering 200 free tokens at launch, which if true would allow you to read almost the whole story for free.

Odds and Ends

 

Since I’ve taken some time off from writing, I’ve been spending my time doing other things. One of my major projects this week was to rework the covers for my older paperback books, A Summer in Amber, Some Day Day, The Bright Black Sea, The Lost Star’s Sea, Beneath the Lanterns, and Sailing to Redoubt. I wanted to bring them in line with my more recent covers, i.e. without the title boxes. I have the process of creating covers pretty well down, and having old covers around that I could just drop the new artwork over for the final step before making a PDF of the cover, saves a lot of time. Still, it served to pass a few hours over the course of a couple of days.

The Lost Star’s Sea paper edition received new cover artwork (above) and its ebook edition got a new, smaller, title font. Both editions of Sailing to Redoubt now have an island in the background (below).

Good copies of these had been uploaded to Amazon before I decided that I needed to backup all my files. Instead of doing it one by one, I tried to do it all at once, and somehow lost the entire folder of all my files for my books when I interrupted the process. I have backup files, but I was lazy and did not back up the art for the latest covers, so the files for the newest covers seem to be beyond hope. Now, if all goes well, I won’t need those files again, but losing them was enough to tear my hair out in frustration. If I had any.

Looking ahead, next week should be a big week. The ebook edition of Shadows of an Iron Kingdom will be released on Thursday, 15 July 2021. Amazon also informed us that next week the Vella program will launch – with 20 episodes of my The Starfaring Life included. I have very low expectations, so I pretty certain that I won’t be disappointed, and I’m not certain I really want to be surprised either. I guess it will be what it is, and we’ll know soon enough.

What's Up Next

 

Below is the post that I had planned to post yesterday. It is still valid, but with, let's say a "*" which I will add below.

Shadows of an Iron Kingdom, the third Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure ebook is now on pre-release on Amazon at $.99, while the paperback version is available now, for $10.00. The ebook will be released for free on Smashwords and Google on 15 July 2021, and will make its way to other retailers for free shortly after that, 

At a date yet to be announced, but sometime mid-to-late July, The Starfaring Life serial will be live when Amazon flips the switch on it Vella app for iOS. With those two releases, I’ll have cleared my desk of projects.

In the past 18 months or so, since January 2020, I’ve written and released four novels, two novellas and a short story. While this is not on par with the big time, mainstream producers of Kindle Unlimited books, it is, I think a pretty darn good pace. The key, of course, is the length of the novels. All four of the novels have word counts that range from 54K words to just over 72K words, with the novellas coming in at 34K and about 25K words each. It is a simple fact that the longer the story, the more moving parts you need to fill it. Developing all those moving parts is, for me, time consuming. As long as I have a story in my head, I can type it out at between 1,000 and 2,000 words a day in about four hours, split between two hour morning and an evening sessions. This means that it takes only an extra month or so of typing to go from a 60-70K to 100-110K word story. What takes the extra time is coming up with a more complicated story. In the past, my 100K+ word stories took between six months and a year plus to produce. But a 60-70K story takes me just two to three months to produce, once I have the story in mind, and with fewer moving parts, they are a lot easier to dream up.

But after four short novels and a couple of novellas, I want to write a longer, more ambitious story again. And I want to write something different. Now, I always want to write something different with every story, but this time I want to write something, shall we say, rather different. I have some ideas, but they are rather contrary. I’d like to write something sort of clever and comic. The story idea however has the characters discovering an ancient secret guarded by a shadowy organization – a pulp story idea. And I want write something more literary as well. I have my work cut out for myself, so don’t expect this new story until sometime in 2022, assuming I can, in fact, work it out.

The wild card, however, is that I like to fill several hours of my day typing – writing – so that if the daydreaming up of this new story takes too long, I might be tempted to pick up one of the many threads I’ve left dangling from most of my stories, and do another sequel. Guy Mons needs to move on from where I left him. Taef Lang needs to find a job. Wil Litang needs to be reunited with Naylea Cin, Ren Loh isn’t going to let Kel Cam just settle down and teach. I know that Rafe d’Mere and Kee will find a mystery to solve in space… But all these threads are just that – threads. I’d need to make a story out of them, which I don’t have a present.

*I had ordered a new mechanical keyboard for myself -- a new toy -- for all that work I've put in over the last 18 months. It was out of stock, and I hadn't expected it to be back in stock any time soon -- I figured they were stuck in some container in China. But, lo and behold, it became available, and arrived yesterday. And so  I have this new toy in hand and need to play with it. I got to thinking about one of those loose threads, and how I really want to fill up my mornings... I have at least 1/3, maybe 1/2 of a story in my head already, plus I sort of know what I want to do with the second half of the story, but, as usual, the devil is in the details. Still, there's no reason why I can't work on both stories, write one while continuing to dream up the second.

The bummer is that the "H" key on the new keyboard does not work... which means that my new toy doesn't work and will have to be replaced. Hopefully it will be replaced, but how much of a hassle it will involve remains to be seen, since I'm dealing with a Chinese company and it was shipped directly from China... Still, even without my new toy, I think I will continue to press on to see if I can't get the smaller project out this fall before starting typing on the big project.

Shadows of an Iron Kingdom available for pre-order at Amazon. Paper version is now available for purchase

 

Just a quick post: Shadows of an Iron Kingdom is up for pre-order on Amazon for $.99. It will be free, as usual, at all the other retailers.  If you can't wait, the paperback version of the book is now available for purchase at $10.00 from Amazon.

I had another post planned, but my future plans may've changed. I'll post something more about that tomorrow.

Shadows of an Iron Kingdom available for pre-order at Amazon. Paper version will be available soon.

 

Just a quick post: Shadows of an Iron Kingdom is up for pre-order on Amazon for $.99. It will be free, as usual, at all the other retailers.  If you can't wait, the paperback version of the book will shortly be available for purchase at $10.00 from Amazon.

I had another post planned, but my future plans may've changed. I'll post something more about that tomorrow.

Shadows of an Iron Kingdom -- coming 15 July 2021

 

“I’d like to believe that I can take the rough with the smooth. I didn’t complain about the hundred petty inconveniences of the Iron Kingdom. Not too much. It was thewerewolves, superhumans, and mad scientists whohaunted its black forests and ruined castles that got to me. Still, what did I expect in the company of Vaun Di Ai?” – Rafe d’Mere from Shadows of an Iron Kingdom.

Rafe d’Mere and Vaun Di Ai return in this sequel to The Secrets of Valsummer House. Rafe d’Mere, after turning the Fix-it-all Shop back over to its owner, follows his heart instead of his head. Concerned after not receiving a radio-packet from Lieutenant JG Vaun Di Ai for months, he sets out for the planet of VanTre to assure himself that she’s fine. There, he finds that she has resigned from the Patrol – an unthinkable act on her part. So, with some help, he follows her to the small, airless planet of Ironlode, merely, he tells himself, to find out what she’s gotten herself into this time. It was danger, of course. Danger in a Gothic inspired throw-back society. A primitive, almost feudal society, where mythical werewolves, the size of large bears, were said to roam its dark forests. As d’Mere discovered, they were more than imaginary. And even so, they weren’t the most dangerous creatures that inhabited those forests. Di Ai, d’Mere, and Di Ai’s new colleague, the all too handsome and charming (in d’Mere’s opinion), Tarvis Byn, set out to find the secret of these monsters.

Shadows of an Iron Kingdom is the third book in the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure series. Set in the same universe of The Bright Black Sea, these stories chronicle the early adventures of a character we first met in The Bright Black Sea, Systems Tech, Rafe GilGiles, a man of a hundred names.

C. Litka writes old fashioned stories with modern sensibilities, humor, and romance. He spins tales of adventure, mystery, and travel set in richly imagined worlds, with casts of colorful, fully realized characters. If you seek an escape from your everyday life, you will find no better company, nor more wonderful worlds to travel and explore, than in the stories of C. Litka.

The Starfaring Life Background

 

In the distant past, before dark energy was fully understood, faster than light travel was thought to be a fantasy. But for Rial Dunbar, navigating a faster-than-light cargo ship is routine. It’s his job. It can be a demanding job. And sometimes a dangerous one. Especially in the Kanteaon to Aeroday trade in xai leaf where the ships are hard driven to make the fastest possible passage through the shifting currents of interstellar gas and dust of the Kalfer Rift. So yes, Dunbar has some tales to tell.

The Starfaring Life opens with a simple tale. A tale of one downside leave that gets complicated, and dangerous, in the company of one Cera Marn, the power mate of a rival ship. Marn has a problem – a bookie has sent an auton and a couple of thugs to collect a gambling debt. It's a debt that Marn doesn’t feel obliged to pay. It’s a matter of principle with her. The race was fixed. Or so she says. And so she leads her debt collectors on a merry chase, with Dunbar in tow.

A few post back, I talked about the rejection slips I had collected some 40 years ago for a fantasy novel, a speculative fiction novella and a short story. About that time Amazon’s Vella program for serial stories was announced, with a vague start date. I thought it might work for me as an advertising venue for my main work. But if I wanted to use it, before there were 10,000 other space operas, I needed to come up with a story, and fast. It struck me that in my old speculative fiction novella, The Hybrid-Worlder, I had the bones of a quick story in hand.

I forget the exact plot of the original story. The hybrid-worlder was some sort of lost creature on the small, interstellar port moon of Aeroday. Some years later, I used that setting but changed the plot for a comic book idea I was working on at the time. The hybrid-worlder creature became a pet of a gambler who used it to collect credits from deadbeat punters. That, I decided, would be the plot of my proposed serial story, but I’d lose the creature altogether. Instead I’d use an auton, a sentient machine, along with a couple of thugs in tow to be the debt collecters.

I would, however use the “universe” I had created for my narrator, Rial Dunbar, along with the setting I invented for the Hybrid-Worlder.  That was a small moon which was the interstellar port of Aeroday. This little moon had been cored like an apple during its move into orbit from one of the outer worlds, and this core serves as the interstellar port. Think of it as a river port that runs from pole to pole of the moon with wharves, shipyards and factories set on the surface of the core. The moon's surface had been divided up into compounds for the embassies of the former Aerodayian empire, but is now given over to the local population. An artificial gravity was installed on the surface and around the core, which, holds in a livable atmosphere, including in its hollow core.

The original story was based on the China tea clippers of the 1850-70’s. Each season tea was loaded on to the fastest purpose-built clipper ships, which then raced halfway around the world to be the first to deliver the new tea to London. Very serious businessmen spent a lot of money in designing and building of the fastest ship possible for this specific trade. They hired the best captains and crew, and then ran them like racing yachts in order to claim victory in this yearly tea race. An amazing story of a mix between commerce and sport that had enchanted me when I discovered it back in college. I use a similar story as the backdrop of my original story, and retained it for The Starfaring Life. Tea is now xai leaf, and the world of Kanteaon is China, and the Kalfer Rift represent the very demanding navigation required for a fast passage through the South China Sea of old.

And that is the basis of my serial. I have one complete story cycle to offer. More might follow if there is a demand for them. Who knows how this will work out?  Time will tell. But it should go live in mid to late July. Stay tuned.

Something New is Coming

 

This will be reduced down to a small thumbnail on the iPhone

In mid to late July Amazon is going to introduce a new reading experience – Vella – a platform for serialized stories that authors can publish one short episode at a time. It is going to be available only on iOS devices, which is to say iPhones. Readers will purchase tokens and redeem a certain number of tokens to read each episode. Readers will be able to read the first three episodes for free before having to unlock the rest of the episodes at a rate of 1 token per 100 words per episode. I don’t think pricing has been exactly settled, but the sample they provide has tokens costing one cent each when purchasing 200 tokens, with discounts for larger purchases. Readers can rate each episode in several ways, and authors can include notes at the end of each episode to add additional insights and engage with their readers. And that’s Vella in a nutshell.

I’m going to have a space opera offering ready to roll for the launch of this new service.

I’m approaching this concept from an old time weekday newspaper comic strip perspective. Think of Mary Worth, or Flash Gordon. Which is to say, brief episodes that move the story along in small steps. The episodes range from 1,200 words to 1,600 words – or about 12¢ - 16¢ per episode. I’ve written the first draft of a novella length story to kickoff the experiment. The story is complete in and of itself, but open ended so that I can built on to it, if it should prove worth my effort. I want to offer a complete story right from the start so as not to leave readers hanging, should I decide not to continue it. I have the option of making all the episodes available at once, or on a schedule. I believe that I will release them all at once for simplicity’s sake.

I am doing this primarily as an exercise in free advertising. It costs me nothing but my time, of which I have plenty off. I’m hoping that there will not be 10,000 space opera available at launch, so that I’ll have a fair chance of getting my name in front of readers who usually do not venture beyond the Kindle Unlimited Program, or who avoid free books as a matter of policy. I’m not expecting this will generate much in the way of revenue, but for me, money is not the point. Advertising is.

The title of my series is The Starfarer’s Life.It is a space opera –  a new "universe" for me, with starships this time around! The launch story focuses on a starfarer's one night’s leave downside. More on the story, next time.