Saleena Karim's Blog, page 9

Smashwords is down (updated)

As you know Systems is on Smashwords as well as Kindle but as of yesterday there's no access to their site at all. At first I thought it was just me (I have a very badly behaved computer) but it turns out they are having major server issues. It's annoying because a lot of people were taking the free sample download from there … and I'd been pointing potential reviewers in that direction too.

For anyone who wants the sample (the first ten chapters), for now you can download or read it from here instead (PDF only. Sorry for the inconvenience). Alternatively, you can go to the Kindle US or UK store and download a sample chapter for the Kindle from there.

Update: Soon after I posted this Smashwords came back up. But I'm leaving this post up for anyone who might want to read the sample file from here.

Connectivity: The essence of a believable story

One of the most appealing things about fiction is that a story can take place anywhere. It can occur in a house, or a space ship; on planet earth or in the afterlife. It can be based on an hour-long event or spread itself across several generations. The characters can be any creature you like. But however much we let our imaginations run wild, a good story must be believable – at least in human terms. It must appeal to the intellect or our emotions, preferably both. It must be wholly acceptable to the audience even if we ask them to suspend their disbelief about the settings or even the physics of your imaginary universe.

So what makes a 'believable' story? Short answer: connectivity. Why? Because connectivity is a given real life. Everything exists just so. Water always freezes at zero degrees. Gravity keeps us safely on the ground. Everything in the universe behaves in tune with everything else. The laws of nature are all inter-connected. And stranger-than-fiction coincidences are abound.

The law of connectivity – or, to use the technical term, reincorporation – is likewise a must in making the parts of your story work cohesively. But not coincidence. In fiction, coincidence – like the cavalry turning up just in time to save the hero – is considered too convenient. Although some writers think it's okay to have a 'bad luck' type of coincidence (say, a car failing to start in a chase scene to prolong the tension), I personally find that kind of coincidence just as overly convenient and off-putting as the other type.

The TV series Doctor Who appeals to so many people because the Doctor is able to connect all sorts of things in his mind – no matter how obscurely – and also because the writers like to make connections to a single main story line in nearly every self-contained episode. Every detective and mystery story also relies heavily on reincorporation.

The more you can connect things in your imaginary universe to each other, the more ordered, in tune – and therefore believable – your story will be. This allows for events to be set up which would otherwise become coincidence. (Foreshadowing – the provision of hints about events at the end of your story – might be considered a form of reincorporation.)

I must admit, connectivity comes to me quite naturally. I applied a similar device – albeit in a different way – in both my non-fiction books. In Systems, almost everything is connected to something else, conceptually or otherwise. For example, early in the story I show that water has a 'dampening effect' on the characters' psychic abilities. For the serial killer (Peter Manner), this dampening effect is a blessing and a way to get away from the energies of countless people he can feel for miles around. For the police officer (Elise Archer), it impedes her work as a psychic aide in police investigations, since she can't, for instance, sense danger when she's around water. This minor issue becomes all-important in the climax scene, which occurs at a dam.

Have you got any examples of reincorporation from your own fiction, or from someone else's?

Thinking concepts for book covers

For writers who are traditionally published, the publisher is generally responsible for cover design – and this can lead to disappointment when the cover doesn't really match the author's expectations. But in self-publishing the cover design is the solely the responsibility of the author. This is both good and bad. You can create a cover that is true to your book's contents, but if you're not a graphic designer or artistic, you're in danger of creating a cover that doesn't look professional, even if it's conceptually correct. So you should probably get help from someone who knows what they're doing.

But let's talk concepts. You know your book better than anyone. Aside from the major story, you know the little things, and even the symbolism. One article I read recently strongly advises against getting caught up in the symbolism, because the cover is really a kind of sales pitch and not art for the sake of it. At the same time, your book cover must reflect something about its core message. What is it about? What is it saying?

My first two books were non-fiction and the design was relatively easy. For SJ1, since the focus was on Chief Justice Munir's From Jinnah to Zia I decided on a cover that would imitate the style of his cover as a gentle jibe. So I used a black silhouette of MA Jinnah on the front, and picked fonts that made the reader think about an exposé. 

 

SJ2′s cover took me a little longer. I thought: what is the central theme? The obvious answer was the Pakistan idea, but unlike SJ1, this title was also a biography on Jinnah. And yet I also didn't want Jinnah on the cover a second time. Eventually I hit upon the idea that since the book discusses Jinnah's vision for Pakistan, this is what needs to be on the cover. The result was what you see to the right: Jinnah's famous monocle containing the crescent and star of the Pakistan flag (the crescent is the right way round!) and a pen indicating Jinnah's constitutional approach. Vision. Get it? Now these were just my ideas. A professional graphic designer created the artwork based on what I described to him.

As for Systems, coming up with a concept was the most difficult. With fiction, you have literally created a universe and so you have endless possibilities. The core of the story may actually seem elusive to the author for a while (hard to believe, but true). For a long time I was going to put a devil and angel design on the cover. There's an oil painting in the novel where the devil is white, and the angel black. This was a metaphor for the idea that things are not always as they seem. But whilst this is close to the core of the story, that's not absolutely the statement I was after. In the end I went with something simple. Trees are everywhere in the novel. The opening line makes a reference to a tree. Place names likewise point at trees, and some key scenes take place in a forest. They represent the core of the story, as borrowed from an ancient metaphor linking trees and systems.

I had a public domain image on my machine of a tree in a foggy sunset. When I added a certain kaleidoscope-type graphic effect, it turned that tree into the closeup of a neuron network. Or at least, that's what I see. It could be the centre of a nebula. Or the tiny roots from a germinating seed. At any rate, it's a familiar and recurring pattern in nature. It's simple, it represents the metaphor nicely, and it has a mysterious mood (since there is a great deal of mystery in the story). The title uses a mix of bold fonts that make it at once old-looking and modern.

Whatever concept you come up with for your cover design, be sure it's true to the inside of your book – its heart. At the end of the day, that's what your potential readers want to know about.

And of course, a well-written blurb helps too. But that's another subject.

How I recycled my blurb

I wrote my original blurb for Systems a long time ago. It went something like this:

"Why is Peter Manner so desperate to go to New York State, when he has never even set foot outside his psychiatric hospital? And what ties him to a British policewoman and a Brooklyn-born hacker, neither of whom he has never met?

The answer lies in a past life – a life in which the three were close friends – and an idea that could change the world. That was thirty years ago. Now they are reincarnated and psychic to boot. The question is not why they were killed, but why they were brought back to life."

Sound familiar? You've probably heard similar words in the trailer for the novel.

I had this text on my machine for a long time, but in the end I didn't use it partly because Peter Manner is not the main protagonist. I wanted a blurb that mentioned things like the Systems Experiment, the Phoenix Project (the artificial reincarnation experiment) and the World Democratic Revolution. None of these things was present in the old text. But I always liked the sound of the old text. It made me think of movie trailers. So it made perfect sense to recycle the text for the book trailer.

Waste not, want not! There's always room for that abandoned passage somewhere.

Systems: What the title says

Despite having seen a lot of people get the wrong end of the stick about the title Secular Jinnah (and though I admit I let that happen on purpose), I had never thought that the title of the novel might be similarly open to misinterpretation.

Imran S Bhinder is a young Pakistani philosopher who gained notoriety after he exposed a major literary scholar for plagiarism through translation. When he heard that my novel was titled Systems, he emailed me with the comment that my choice of title was interesting, given that it has become fashionable to be anti system – or, more specifically, that philosophers tend to dismiss any concept of a system based on 'metaphysical categories'. And that got me, because in the first place it hadn't occurred to me that the title might appear to be advocating a particular type of system, when in fact it's just a title on the themes of the story, and of course the Systems Experiment.

In fact he'd raised a good point and I felt it was worth mentioning here. In the Systems Experiment, five social systems are put to the test in a supercomputer simulation. Two of them, theocracy (or religious state) and monarchy (kingdoms) are the control, since they are accepted as historical failures. The next two are modern capitalist democracy and communism, which are down in the novel as the systems 'still being tried in history' (never mind that in real life there is a debate as to whether communism has already failed or not). The fifth is based on the Cohesive Ethics Theorem. In the novel the theorem is described as follows:

"Omar believed that justice and liberty are the only universal ideals; all other ethical principles are either derivatives or aspects of these ideals. But justice and liberty are themselves interconnected because they come, just like the physical universe and every law of nature, from a single source. He called this universal relationship cohesive ethics."

The social system based on the theorem is described as:

"The fifth represented Omar's theorem in action, and it was the only one without a name. Omar wasn't keen on giving the model a formal designation. To his mind it created the false impression that his model was offering a fixed system, when in fact dynamism was its driving force. Nevertheless for the sake of the experiment he gave his model a descriptive name: Libredux."

So in short, the title 'Systems' is a reference to the experiment itself. The 'libredux' system is based on a metaphysical theory, but it's not a fixed ideology. And whereas metaphysics is generally treated as something that cannot be tested in a lab, in this story the Systems Experiment is an empirical test for the theorem.

By the way, any resemblance to the idea that Pakistan was a 'laboratory' is completely coincidental. (What do you mean, you don't believe me?)

Note: There is a page coming (not too difficult, I promise) to explain the idea behind the theorem. I'll update this post when it's ready.

The Republic of Rumi – Book review

Khurram Ali Shafique is a historian who is also a research consultant for the Iqbal Academy in Karachi. His book Iqbal: An Illustrated Biography won the Presidential Iqbal Award last year.

I've read most of that book, but I've just reviewed one of his other titles – The Republic of Rumi -over at Goodreads. Come and take a look.

Up and running

We now have a full website and an awesome trailer. Enjoy!

Almost there …

Well, we're finally getting there. By the time you see this post, odds are the trailer will already be up. Do leave a comment here if you've seen it, or if you just want to say hello.

Welcome … again

Well, this is take two. We'll get there eventually. I'm a little rusty!