Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 346

Ebook of the Month June 2012 – WOOL, but Hugh Howey

I first heard of “Wool” a few weeks ago on various blogs when news came around that Ridley Scott had optioned some self-published science fiction book for movie rights. Of course, a book getting optioned for movie rights means very little in a practical sense, since producers are forever buying rights to books that they never actually use.  In a theoretical sense, it was a big deal, because a self-published book getting optioned does not happen very often, or ever.

Anyway, it made me curious, and the book was cheap ($5.99 for the omnibus edition), so I picked it up. I had absolutely no idea what to expect – based on popular trends, I supposed the book would be about a clumsy yet bland teenage girl who falls in love with a brooding vampire billionaire who has a thing for handcuffs and leather.

I am pleased to report that I was wrong. WOOL is excellent. In fact, it is one of the best books I have read this year.

The setting is an underground habitat (the locals call it a “silo”) in a post-apocalyptic Earth. Some sort of disaster has rendered the atmosphere both toxic and corrosive. The silo’s only link to the outside world is a set of cameras outside the airlock, which are connected to a massive screen in the silo’s cafeteria. Due to the corrosive effects of the atmosphere, the cameras’ lenses gradually build up with grit. Which means every so often, an inhabitant of the silo has to suit up for a “cleaning” to wipe off the lenses.

And those who are sent to clean never, ever come back.

As a book and a work of speculative fiction, WOOL excels on every level. The characters are deep and fully realized – the sheriff, the mayor, the technician in the silo’s IT department, the maintenance worker in the generator room. The plot and pacing are excellent – it starts off slowly, building tension bit by bit, and the book lands some gut-punches in several place.

And WOOL is an absolute masterpiece of the writerly art of conservation of information. The setting – an underground habitat on a poisoned Earth – is fairly esoteric, but the book contains absolutely no infodumps. The backstory is revealed, bit by bit, as the book grows more tense, and every bit of new information only cranks up the tension further. WOOL is like an onion, with layer after layer peeled away, and every layer relevant, indeed vital, to the plot.

I think WOOL is destined to become a classic of the science fiction genre, and I recommend it completely and without reservation.

-JM

THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS – now free on Barnes & Noble

I’m pleased to report that THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS is now free at Barnes & Noble. So if you’ve been wanting to pick up the book for your Nook device, now’s your chance!

-JM

The High Crusade, by Poul Anderson

The last two books I read sucked, so THE HIGH CRUSADE by the late Poul Anderson was a pleasant contrast.

The book begins in an English village in 1345. The local lord, Sir Roger, is gathering his men to join King Edward III for the Hundred Years’ War in France.

And as his men prepare to leave, a spaceship lands outside the village. An alien emerges and vaporizes one of the villagers, quite certain that the primitives will scatter in terror of his superior technology.

Needless to say, things do not go according to plan.

After a short battle, Sir Roger and his men find themselves in control of the alien spaceship. Sir Roger gleefully plans to take the ship to France, defeat the perfidious French in the name of the King, and then take the alien ship on to Palestine to liberate the Holy Land from the Saracens once and for all.

Things quite promptly get out of hand.

I really liked THE HIGH CRUSADE, in part because of its constant action and keen characterizations, and in part because it gleefully overturned one of my least favorite cliches in fiction. Namely, the idea that the medievals were ignorant and stupid, hobbled by superstitions, unlike we oh-so-clever 21st century Americans. If you were to drop a 14th century peasant into 21st century Chicago, he would adapt much more quickly than a 21st century graduate student dropped into 14th century England. Sir Roger and his men prove this to dazzling effect.

I quite recommend THE HIGH CRUSADE, and definitely will be reading more Poul Anderson as I find the time.

-JM

SOUL OF SORCERY – a second snippet

I am now 60,000 words into the rough draft of SOUL OF SORCERY. 15 chapters down, another 21 to go. I think the rough draft will come to around 140,000 words, though I’m hoping it will be shorter.

(It’s hard to judge these things in the process of writing, since books sometimes develop organically while you write them.)

Anyway, here is another brief bit from SOUL OF SORCERY:

“Lord Lucan,” said Malaric, straightening up and executing a neat little bow. “You do me great honor. I have never had a son of the House of Mandragon grace my tent.”

“Consider yourself fortunate, then,” said Lucan. “My father is a tedious bore, and my brother a murderous madman.”

Malaric gave a polite little laugh. “Does your lord father wish to hire my swords? My men are all capable veterans.”

“What you mean,” said Lucan, “is that your men are practiced killers, and not burdened with scruples.”

Malaric gave a lazy shrug. “Twelve in one hand, and a dozen in the other. A war is coming, my lord Lucan. And wars boil down to killing, in the end.” He smiled. “And we are very good killers.”

“Not surprising,” said Lucan, “given that you are an assassin of the Skulls, sent here to kill Lady Molly Cravenlock.”

Malaric’s easy smile froze in place. Lucan watched him, intrigued. He wondered if Malaric would deny it. He wondered if Malaric would try to kill him. He watched the gears spinning behind Malaric’s eyes…

-JM

Reader Question Day #28 – all about “Brave”

I wasn’t going to do a Reader Question Day this week, but all of a sudden a bunch of questions about my one-sentence review of “Brave” popped up.

So, let’s get to it!

Marsheila Rockwell, author of the forthcoming Skein of Shadows, asks:

Okay, but did you LIKE it?

I didn’t dislike it. It was alright. But I suspect I am not the target market for a fairytale about a mother and her teenage daughter repairing the delicate fabric of their fragile relationship.

Manwe asks:

I assumed it was going to be a ‘girl power’ movie, so I was going to skip it. Was it?

Not really. It was pretty standard “spunky Disney princess” fare. The focus wasn’t on “girl power” so much as “mom and daughter fix their relationship.”

Lovecraftian horror?! Do tell!

In one scene, a husband almost murders his wife, because his wife has been transformed into a monster and he doesn’t recognize him. Which, know that I think about it, is more Brothers Grimm than Lovecraft, but still pretty horrific to contemplate.

-JM

a one-sentence review of “Brave”

Basically, 60% of “Brave” was a chick flick about mother-daughter relationships, 20% was a coming-of-age story, 15% was unspeakable Lovecraftian horror in the mold of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and the remaining 5% was a stern moral against using sorcery to resolve family conflict.

-JM

gratitude

Today, someone bought all four THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS books at once.

That was nice. Thank you, whoever you are.

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I used a PC for the first time when I was twelve. Specifically, a 386SX running MS-DOS 5.0 that turned up in my sixth-grade classroom when I was twelve. No one knew how to use it, not even the teacher, so I got a book on DOS from the library and taught myself how to use it. It is safe to say that I paid more attention to that computer than anything else that happened that year. (Though, to be fair, the skills I learned playing with DOS would one day be the foundation of a nicely selling book.)

I am always grateful that I did not grow up with computers from an early age. Because of that, the sense of wonder has never quite worn off. I work with computers and tablets and smartphones every day (in both of my jobs), and sometimes they seem less like machines and more like wonderful objects crafted by wizards, and I marvel that men, mere men, have fashioned such things by the strength and skill of their hands.

###

Of course, whatever the circumstances, it’s always best to remember this:

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

-JM

on confidence for self-publishers

I frequent a lot of writers’ forums and blogs and such, and I very often see comments that go like this:

“I’ve written a book, but I don’t know if it’s any good. How do I know if it’s good enough to self-publish?”

On that topic, someone sent me this post by Newberry Honor winning-writer Shannon Hale on self-publishing and asked what I thought about it.  Specifically, I suspect my correspondent wanted my opinion on this bit:

1. When you buy a professionally published book at a bookstore, you know it’s been vetted by industry professionals. A publisher has said, “I think this is so good, I’m willing to bet a significant amount of our company’s money and of my personal and valuable time that readers will love it too.” With a self-published book, it’s the author vetting him/herself, putting her/his own money on the line. There’s understandably going to be more consumer confidence in the professionally vetted book.

2. Publishers hire the best people in the world at their jobs. A team of professionals puts in significant hours and hard work on every single book they publish. I read that an average of twenty people are vigorously engaged working on any book from a professional publisher. Many drafts, copy edits, care for the best cover, how best to promote, etc. Some self-published books represent years of hard work by the author. However, many (I would guess most) are first drafts. I worked a slush pile once. I read a lot of hideously bad stories that the writers believed were good enough to be published. Bless their hearts, they were wrong. Sometimes we’re not our best judge, especially when first starting out.

3. Editors go through the slush pile so we don’t have to. The slush pile is the stack of unrequested manuscripts that hopeful authors send to a publisher. Most (over 90%) are rejected. A small percentage catch an editor’s eye, and after further work on the author’s part, with advice and support from the editor, the book turns out great and ends up published. Self-published books are in many cases simply the slush pile for sale. No one has gone through them, selected the best, helped the author make them better, and marketed them to their best audience. If e-publishing had existed when I was starting out, I would have been tempted to self-publish. The rejections were hard, and I just wanted to share my work. But now I would be mortified by what I thought at the time was good enough. [EDIT: I should have also included AGENTS in this process! Agents wade through more slush nowadays than editors. They're a vital part of the chain.]

Some of you will be offended by this post. Some of you will be surprised because I think in general my opinions steer away from an elitist view of what is quality in literature, and this post might seem elitist. I’m sorry for that, and I really hope you will read what I’m actually saying, not what I seem to be saying. There is a difference between self-published books and professionally published books. If the market doesn’t value the professional hard work that publishers do, they’ll go away.

How does this connect to whether or not your book is “good enough” to self-publish?

Basically, this is a description of how the world should work, but it doesn’t. It would be nice if the policeman on the corner was always your friend, if politicians acted in the national interest, if you left your iPhone on the bus some good Samaritan always returned it, and if publishers always published the best, the most-hard working writers after carefully polishing their works to a brilliant sheen.

Except, it doesn’t. It sometimes does, but often it doesn’t.

I’m thinking of the last two traditionally published books I read (both of which, I should hasten to point out, were not written by Ms. Hale, whom my correspondent assures me is an excellent writer). I won’t name the books, since trashing strangers on the Internet is not nice. But I did a little research on these two books. Both were represented by high-powered agents. Both were selected by editors at major publishing houses. Editors, copyeditors, and marketers worked diligently on both of the books.

And they were both terrible.

The first one started strongly, but devolved into a tedious exploration of a writer writing about a writer who was having difficulties writing. It was metafiction for the sake of looking cool and ironic. (One of the Amazon reviews characterized the book as “onanism”, a crude but apt description.) The second had an interesting concept, but was badly marred by the main character, an army officer who was also an unlikable idiot. In the first half of the book, the main character disobeys direct orders, resulting in dire injuries to one of his subordinates, and then a few chapters later, loses his temper and accidentally kills his father (himself a tedious stereotype of the ignorant Baptist evangelical), and then kills one of the sheriff’s deputies sent to apprehend him. After that, the character continues to grasp the Idiot Ball on a regular basis, all the while reflecting that he is a better person than the ignorant bigots who want to lock him up so he doesn’t keep killing people. The character never grasps that he is simply a selfish jerk (and nor does the writer, alas – I think the Marty Stu phenomenon may have been in play).

The thing is, both books had very interesting concepts and good bits in them. If the books had been professionally edited instead of self-published, perhaps the strong parts could have been polished and the weak parts improved.

Wait.

Well, they did both have very nice covers.

Every writer has a moment when they read a book and think I could do so much better than that. Stephen King writes about that in his ON WRITING memoir, when he discusses reading an old pulp SF novel and realizing that he could do better.

So if you’re wondering if your book is good enough to self-publish, do this: think of the worst traditionally published book you ever read. The worst book ever selected by a professional agent, vetted by a publisher, polished by a professional editor, and promoted by a professional marketer. Odds are that you can think of a book like that (and it may even have been an international bestseller). Odds are that you can think of more than one book like that.

Then ask yourself this question: is my book, honestly and sincerely, better than this book?

If the answer is yes, it is good enough to be self-published.

Because this is the dirty secret: storytelling is subjective. No matter how “good” the book, some people will like it, and some people will hate it. One man’s “self-published crap” is another man’ s “OMG I MUST BUY THE SEQUEL RIGHT NOW!” And the two books I criticized above? There are people who think both books are awesome. Why is my opinion more valid than theirs?

In the end, writing something for other people is an act of confidence – confidence that what you are writing is good enough for other people to read. And it is difficult to find that confidence. Clicking the “Publish” button, whether on a blog or Amazon Kindle Direct, is sometimes nerve-wracking.

Is your book good enough? Are you confident enough in it that you think complete strangers will pay money for it?

That is a question you have to answer for yourself. And then people will leave reviews to let you know exactly how they would have answered that particular question.

-JM

SOUL OF SORCERY – 1/3 done

I am pleased to report that I am 1/3 done with the rough draft of SOUL OF SORCERY. 12 chapters down, 24 to go.

Here’s a brief snippet from SOUL OF SORCERY:

“So, Father,” said Molly. “You’re the great general who threw down the Dominiars and drove back the Malrags. How do we fight those things?”

Mazael said nothing, his head bowed. On another man, such a posture would have meant despair, or perhaps panic, but Romaria knew better. Her husband waged war, commanded men in battle, the way a masterful painter wielded a brush.

It was a thing both beautiful and horrifying to watch.

“This is what we’ll do,” said Mazael, and he told them.

-JM

THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS – now available for free on iTunes

I am pleased to report that THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS is now available for free on Apple’s iTunes store. So, if you’re an iBooks user (and I know that some of you are), you can get the book for free on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

-JM