Jen Black's Blog, page 107

Sockpuppetry

If you've been following the literary row about sockpuppets, then reading Dean Crawford's blog is calming. The Guardian has a long article for those who want to catch up on what's been happening: click and there are a couple of links so you can find out more.
I find it amazing that some authors think it's worthwhile to spend so much time writing anonymous praise of their own work and denigrating the work of fellow authors. If a book can't achieve some measure of success without such lies, then it can't be a very good book in my view.
Trying to imagine why they do it leads me to thoughts of fear. Fear of failure, of falling sales. Perhaps publishers do it, thinking to help sales along. Every publisher will have people who live in fear of losing their job because they've backed the wrong author too many times. Perhaps authors do it because they fear their contracts will not be renewed. If sales of the latest book fall, publishers don't hesitate to cut the string, and once that happens, finding another publisher can be hard. Livlihoods depend on sales, and I imagine desperation can set in for those concerned. It can't be easy when the well runs dry and ideas don't come any more.
So many things have become possible with the internet, but I bet Tim Berners-Lee never envisaged sockpuppetry.
I don't know why, but Blogger won't let me upload a pic today. I'll try again later.

Amazon tags

Amazon is a strange and wonderful thing. Maybe you know, maybe you don’t, but I have 3 books published by two independent publishers in the States, and 3 I’ve self-published on Amazon. Now, I can check every day what is happening saleswise to the self-published titles, which is wonderful; for the other three, I rely on hearing once a quarter or so that they’ve sold a few copies.
I got quite a surprise when I looked at Amazon the other day to see if I’d garnered any new reviews. I hadn’t, but something else caught my eye. There is a section that allows me, and any reader who cares to take the time, to tag any book. I’ll admit I’m probably not very good at tagging, and don’t fully understand what it actually does in the mythical Amazon algorithms, but I think (and hope) it makes the book easier to find. My tags are the unexciting kind – historical romance, romantic suspense, Regency romance, Vikings – that kind of thing.
Imagine my surprise therefore, when I glanced down the screen and the words forced consent caught my eye. Some kind person has tagged my book FAR AFTER GOLD with the following tags: erotic romance, erotic fantasy, forced consent, steamy romance, threesome, Kindle erotic best, sexy fiction. Threesome? Erotic fantasy? Well, maybe to some people a steamy sex scene – no more graphic than many I’ve read in modern literature from Mills & Boon to Philippa Gregory – equates to erotica. Maybe Amazon thinks that some of the 50 Shades success will rub off on my book and they’ve added the tags…. Who knows? That’s one of the mysteries of Amazon – you never know who is doing what. But I assure everyone there are no threesomes in my books!

The pic this time is a view of Durham Cathedral's Lantern Tower across the Cloister. Click on it to enlarge and enjoy the detail!

Locked out!

We went for a walk over the Bank Holiday weekend. Picked up the keys, slammed out of the house and halfway down the drive realised we'd picked up the wrong set of keys. Duh. Fortunately we'd left the windows open and hadn't engaged the security alarm. We usually do both, but luck was with us this time. Hopefully we knocked at a neighbours door. Did he have a set of ladders long enough to reach an upstairs window? Amid much laughter, he did, and climbed in through our bedroom window, came down the stairs and opened the door for us, grinning.

For those who are interested in the current trends in reviewing, here's another link:
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/18/how_to_write_a_bad_review/
This one has lots of spin-off links and makes an interesting read.

As for me, I'm away up the hill to visit the Bank Manager this morning, so I can't dilly-dally here for much longer. We've been out walking every day this week so far, and it certainly pays off in alertness, though I can't say it helps with sleeping. I still do most of it after 1am. The radiators warmed up this morning for the first time since May, which means we had a very cold night, and certainly there's been frost on car windscreens. Summer's over, folks. Autumn is here, so look out for falling leaves clogging the drains and Virginia creeper leaves turning a gorgeous dark red. Ours hasn't, as yet, but it will, it will. All the rain this summerhas turned our garden into a crazy jungle in which I've been hacking and tearing all this week. Untold bags of vegetation have gone to the household waste recycling plant (otherwise known as The Tip) and there's loads more to do. And yes,before you ask, interspersed with all this activity, I've edited a good many chapters of my book about Matho.

The pic? Durham Cathedral from the south yard. We were there on Tuesday, and it was a gorgeous day - for an hour, and then it all went to hell in a handcart...

Death knell part 2

Elvet Bridge at DurhamMy Monday post on reviews was not some kind of feeble attempt to make reviewers feel bad or guilty for speaking their minds. It wasn't even intended as a form of censorship, or intimidation against those who refuse to gush and hand out four- and five-star reviews when what they have read is trash, or close to it. 

Far from it: my intention was to alert people to two things:1) Amazon weights things in curious ways, and 2) reviews, particularly on Amazon, have more clout than most people suspect. In effect, poor reviews do become a form of censorship, even if that was not the intention. The poor review sends the book down the lists, where eventually it goes so far down it is lost among the millions.
Though some may not believe this, I was brought up to say nothing if I couldn’t say anything nice, so if I read something I don’t like, I just let it go. I don’t feel the need to tell the world when I read something bad. A week later I can’t remember it, (if I ever finished it) and I shrug and say, oh well - there may be a lot of people out there who actually enjoy that sort of thing. I do write the occasional review, and I try to do it honestly, without using fulsome praise unless it is deserved. I've come to realise that even respected publishers have been guilty of using authors in their stable to recommend other authors who write for them. To me, and for reasons I'm sure are obvious, that is valueless as a recommendation.Bestsellers become bestsellers because lots of people liked them, and say so in reviews. Word of a good book travels like wildfire. There will always be divergent opinions, which are fine in a book group or private conversation. Telling your friends you didn't like book x is fine, a personal view, something we all love. But putting those negative views online to be read by thousands, has consequences, especially if done in a hurried, skimpy way.

The big name authors can stand a few knocks in the shape of a poor review, and often get it from newspaper reviewers (and their peers these days) but authors without a publisher behind them, struggling to write after a working day, with few resources to fall back on – then it seems to me like hitting out at someone who can’t hit back. Some may argue that if putting up a good review is acceptable, then it's only fair that the negative ones should go up too.Once, when I was only a reader, I would have agreed with that statement. Now I remember the people who raid the Amazon Free lists, pick everything and then publically slate the titles that don’t suit them. Gortner, who wrote the initial piece that sparked my thoughts on this, has, I assume, suffered from trolls, or knows people who have. R J Bennett is another and his blog is amusing ~ http://robertjacksonbennett.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/the-types-of-online-reviews-that-drive-writers-totally-nuts/

There is a difference between a bad review which claims I didn’t like this because it annoyed me/it didn’t excite me/and I hate thrillers anyway….

...and a review that offers constructive criticism about where the book went wrong (assuming it did!), backs it up with examples without giving away the entire plot, and does it from an objective standpoint, not forgetting to mention where the author succeeded.

The three star death knell

Chichester Cathedral
It's difficult, isn't? Here in the UK we're not given to praising something we consider good but unexceptional. We reserve our praise for the truly great, exceptional things that occur only occasionally. I had experience of this difference way back in the eighties when I went to Maine as a Summer Camp Counsellor and was astonished to hear a US counsellor praising a child to the skies for something sporty that I thought was pretty mediocre. Not that I would have told the child it was mediocre, you understand; but I wouldn’t have praised it, thereby letting it know that there was (lots of!) room for improvement. We got to talking about it later, and I discovered that the US had a system of praising everything in the belief that all a kid needed was confidence, and given enough it would blossom and turn into a prize sportsperson if not overnight, then very soon. In the UK, I explained, a child would have its shortcomings pointed out and be told where it could improve. Ah, those American Counsellors said, that's hard on the kid. But then, it's hard to know which system works best in the long run - constructive criticism versus praise-no-matter-what. Perhaps it's a case of each to its own culture. But I’ve discovered there are metaphorical playing fields where both sets of players meet head on, and that's the internet where writers, readers and book reviews are concerned. I read last night that Amazon algorithms give any reviewer the power to support writers - or to send them on the slippery slope to obscurity. Reviews of 4 stars or more are rated as good by Amazon. (Authors think they're good, too.) A three star review slips below Amazon's radar, and will penalise a book in the Amazon rating system; it may very well deter sales and therefore destroy any potential income the author would otherwise have received. I don't know an author who doesn't read their reviews, nor would I believe them if they claimed never to look at them. I'm not saying a reviewer should lie, far from it; there are books that really don't appeal to certain readers, but....in such a case, perhaps it's better to simply accept that in this case you didn't hit lucky, and not review it. After all, there may be many people out there who did like the book. If you decide you must write a review, tell what you liked about the book and where you think it could be improved, but don't give a mere three stars if you wish to read more from that author! Read more: http://www.epublishabook.com/2012/07/20/amazon-book-reviews-10-cardinal-rules-of-using-reviewing-power/#ixzz24g1cHV9f Almost as an afterthought, I should point out that until 1st September, DARK POOL, my book about Vikings and Christians in eleventh century Dublin, is available on Amazon Kindle at a special low price of £2.30/$3.61 from 26th August for one week. Check it out - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Pool-Banners-Alba-Sequel-ebook/dp/B004SREKJI   

Cross Stitch 20 years on

our walk yesterdayI first read Cross Stitch twenty-one years ago, or thereabouts, and thought it was original and exciting. Last week I found a new copy in the library and took it home wondering how it would read, given that I'd be looking at it with a slightly different viewpoint since I've started writing my own stories now. I read it in long snatches and found it entertaining, if a little heavy on the anecdotes about Jamie’s childhood, a tad improbable that Claire could actually kill a wolf with her bare hands, or meet the Loch Ness monster. But then, most readers would agree using a stone circle as a time machine is not a great pointer to a story based on solid facts, and read on with glee, which is what I did.
In general, I thought the book wordy for today’s world, but having said that, the writing is better than most, the storyline is entertaining and there are incidents of great charm as well as menace. I’ve followed Gabaldon’s volumes as they’ve been issued, and the latest and eighth volume is due sometime in 2013 - http://www.dianagabaldon.com/2012/08/written-in-my-own-hearts-blood/
Gabaldon has her own unique style, and I shouldn’t think anyone could replicate it, but she has advice to offer that is worth reading. Here’s a snippet from her on how to write sex scenes: “Where most beginning writers screw up (you should pardon the expression) is in thinking that sex scenes are about sex. A good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids. That being so, it can encompass any emotion whatever, from rage or desolation to exultation, tenderness, or surprise.”
 Read the rest for yourselves: http://www.dianagabaldon.com/2012/07/how-to-write-sex-scenes/while I start reading Dragonfly in Amber, the second volume in the Outlander series, and ponder which emotions my current hero and heroine are currently exchanging.

The North-South divide

The Tyne Valleyhere's a link to Hazel's blog, in which she talks about the North-South Divide that exists and flourishes in this country.
Hazel lives just down the road from me, belongs to our local writers' group and has just published her second book, which is set in Northumberland. I was amused to see that even as someone not locally born, she notices and probably resents the total lack of knowledge about Northumberland that exists in this country - and probably in the rest of the world. The comments she mentions are ones I've heard frequently over the years. Even the weather forecasters on tv skip over the north of England, or they talk about "the north" and then mention Birmingham or Manchester.

Manchester is somewhat closer to us, but it's still 3 hours driving time, in a car on motorways, to get there. In that amount of time, I can be over the border, beyond Edinburgh, cross the Forth Bridge and drive north to Perth in Scotland. Another three hours will take me to Inverness, and a further hour to Ullapool on the north west coast of Scotland. People down south seem to think we still have nothing but coal mines, slag heaps and steelworks, with maybe the odd shipyard thrown into the mix. I can't deny they existed up until the late fifties and sixties, but they're not there now. Green fields and grazing cattle exist where once the mines flourished. Forget the images you remember from films like 'Get Carter' and tv series such as 'When the boat comes in' or 'Vera' because they simply don't do the place justice.

The Olympics pointed out just how London-centric this country is. Some football matches were played here in Newcastle, and that's it. That's all we saw of the Olympics. When we go south on our annual trip to France, we're always horrified by the traffic volume, which starts to build south of Leeds and is truly horrendous by the time we reach either the M25 or the Southampton-Portsmouth area.So many people everywhere, so many cars rushing in every direction. Coming home, we start to relax once we've left Weatherby behind. I once applied for jobs in Chichester, Portsmouth and Crawley, went for interview and was disappointed when I didn't get the post. Now I thank the good lord that I'm here in the north...

Writing historicals

There's an interesting piece on writing historicals here for those who practice the art and those who enjoy reading them. Hilary Mantel has been speaking at the Edinburgh Writers' Conference recently about her trilogy on the life and death of Thomas Cromwell. She aims to have a turning point in every scene, she says. Lots of turning points. That's a good strategy, but difficult to achieve.

She also thinks it is difficult to give the reader historical information (ie background info) plus foreground information and character information as well.  I can see what she means. Add historical information for background, ie to set the scene in context of what is happening around the character, and critique groups start jumping up and down screaming Info Dump!

I exaggerate, of course, but there is a grain of truth here. The historical information must, it is claimed, be relevant to the character and their actions, and not inserted just because it is interesting in it's own right. But what of the claim that without a background setting, the character is meaningless? If he wanders through the story, swashbuckling left and right, but without reference to the happenings of the time, doesn't the story become a meaningless fantasy?

It's all in the balance, they claim. But my balance may want more historical detail than you do, and the person who lives next door might want no real history at all, but simply wants to skim through the story and wildly excited by the buckle and swash. I'm slowly learning to make more turning points, and to add my background information in an interesting, even lyrical way.
It's just a pity I didn't start all this thirty years earlier.

A summer night

Aproaching Lou PeyrolLast night we downed a few kirs by candlelight in the garden because it was so warm and we suspected it might be the last opportunity of summer! We'd heard the weather forecast predicted lots of rain for the next few days, so we wanted to make the most of the warm evening.It was fun sitting talking in the dark as the little candles expired one after another... After a late start this morning, I look out of the window and see we have no rain. In fact, we have cloudy sunshine. There's no keeping up with British weather. Or weather forecasters.

After purchasing and reading Nicola Morgan's books on writing a synopsis and how to address an agent, I sent off two submissions yesterday. Even if I say it myself, they looked immaculate, but we'll see how they do out in the big wide world. I rewrote the synopsis and my query letter and think both are much clearer now, and therefore better, so that is down to NM's advice. I sent both submissions snail mail, because I'm not happy with receiving absolutely no response to e-mail submissions.

This week has been a bit of a spending spree for me, and I am noting it here because it is so unusual! I'm not by nature a big spender, but I bought a smart new suitcase and pair of lightweight beach shorts on Monday which will be fine for when we're at the beach house in Australia, and then yesterday, when I saw the turquoise cord jacket in M&S, I very much wanted it. (I'd always wanted one of those denim bomber jackets, but never found one I really liked!)  Pillowcases, one of those big, heavy two inch deep blades chef's use, and a new pair of shoes. All in one day! Phew!

Reluctance 2nd review

Reviews for Reluctance have been thin on the ground, so I thought I'd put this one up in full for your delight.

3.0 out of 5 stars ENGAGING AND MOVING STORY 11 July 2012
By AC - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase
Something unusual happened to me when reading this book. I was extremely excited by this story, until I stumbled on a drastic and dramatic situation halfway through, and unfortunately I've never been a fan at all of such an occurrence (I will not elaborate more here) and I was quickly finishing the thirty pages in question, with a sinking heart ...! But against all odds, the author succeeded in recapturing my curiosity at a given time, which is a first because once my interest is lost, it is lost!

Set in 1803, Jen Black does a marvelous job at painting a very brilliant picture of the strangely attractive countryside of Northumberland that has a very important place in that story. I never visited that part of England but I definitely felt at home and ready to go there.

She has created a whole string of wonderfully lively characters. The two main protagonists, Frances and Jack, are a joy to observe and listen to as they interact. There's a very exciting tension between them that began from the first moment they met. There is a lot of emotion and drama with a magnificent and infamous villain who will let nothing and no one stand in his way; he's ruthless and he'll use all possible means to reach his nefarious goal.

Life is often unpredictable and these two people who both went through some difficult times and were not destined to be together, find themselves forced to deal with the accidents of life and at one point they'll have to decide what kind of future they want to build for themselves.

I have to admit that I do understand why the author developed her story the way she did, and the fact that I didn't like a little part of it doesn't diminish in any way the quality of this book. Ultimately I don't regret having read it. She was able to catch my attention again and to me it says a lot about her skill. This will not prevent me from reading her other books. In fact, I already have two on my reading pile ... Fair Border Bride and Far After Gold.

Overall I found this novel very engaging, attractive and moving with some clever and thrilling dialogs. I give 3.5/5.
Reluctance is available now from http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctance-eb...