K.J. Cartmell's Blog, page 8
February 11, 2016
NFL vs Mom
I walked through the Financial District of San Francisco today. The City is slowly getting back to normal after the Super Bowl. The NFL invaded two weeks ago and set up "Super Bowl City" on the Embarcadero. They closed streets and relocated homeless encampments. Last week, there were police in body armor, brandishing big guns, on street corners. The message to terrorists - Not here, not today.
It's a testament to the power of the NFL that they could come in and remake a corner of San Francisco in their own image. (The game, as you may know, was forty-four miles to the south, in Santa Clara.) They even had the clout to say, "The $5 million for the security can come out of your hotel taxes, not our pockets." The people made a fuss, but the mayor and the City Council didn't.
The NFL is a powerful entity in the United States, and Super Bowl week is not the only time they flex their political muscles. They were recently seen bullying the cities of Oakland, San Diego, Los Angeles and St. Louis, trying to get local leaders to spend public money on new stadiums for NFL franchises. (Oakland's Libby Shaaf, to her credit, refused to acquiesce.)
The US Government seems entirely unwilling to corral them. (The politicians might need those campaign dollars, after all. That's a post for another day.) But, as powerful, and seemingly unchecked the NFL is, the Leauge is facing a serious threat. The hand that rocks the cradle has the Billionaire Boys Club shaking in their Italian suits. The NFL is in trouble with Mom.
You may have seen, or at least heard about, the movie Concussion, starring Will Smith. (Denied an Oscar nod, I know! I'll get to that also in another post.)
Since this is a Goodreads blog, however, I want to direct you to a book: League of Denial, by Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada. The two journalists lay out the science behind concussions, and the irreparable brain damage it does to NFL players (and others that play American style football.) The League has fought to suppress this evidence, and now that it's fully out of the bag, they are counting on us just forgetting about it.
(By the way, those cute ads about Super Bowl babies? They're sending the message that the NFL is family friendly. "Don't worry about that head trauma stuff! We got it all under control!")
As powerful as it is, the League has one glaring weakness. Because the sport is so violent, player's careers are short. The NFL requires huge influxes of new players each year to keep 31 teams at full strength.
The trouble is, Mom is worried about her boys playing football. She doesn't want them to get brain damage and suffer like Junior Seau did. I know personally of two mothers who, since the concussion story went public, have re-directed their athletically gifted sons into other sports.
If that happens on any scale, if this insurgency becomes widespread, the NFL is in serious trouble. Their pipeline of new players will be reduced, or, their quality will be seriously diminished, as the next generation of premier athletes brighten other leagues. The NFL as we have known it could, within a few short years, become a memory.
It's a testament to the power of the NFL that they could come in and remake a corner of San Francisco in their own image. (The game, as you may know, was forty-four miles to the south, in Santa Clara.) They even had the clout to say, "The $5 million for the security can come out of your hotel taxes, not our pockets." The people made a fuss, but the mayor and the City Council didn't.
The NFL is a powerful entity in the United States, and Super Bowl week is not the only time they flex their political muscles. They were recently seen bullying the cities of Oakland, San Diego, Los Angeles and St. Louis, trying to get local leaders to spend public money on new stadiums for NFL franchises. (Oakland's Libby Shaaf, to her credit, refused to acquiesce.)
The US Government seems entirely unwilling to corral them. (The politicians might need those campaign dollars, after all. That's a post for another day.) But, as powerful, and seemingly unchecked the NFL is, the Leauge is facing a serious threat. The hand that rocks the cradle has the Billionaire Boys Club shaking in their Italian suits. The NFL is in trouble with Mom.
You may have seen, or at least heard about, the movie Concussion, starring Will Smith. (Denied an Oscar nod, I know! I'll get to that also in another post.)
Since this is a Goodreads blog, however, I want to direct you to a book: League of Denial, by Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada. The two journalists lay out the science behind concussions, and the irreparable brain damage it does to NFL players (and others that play American style football.) The League has fought to suppress this evidence, and now that it's fully out of the bag, they are counting on us just forgetting about it.
(By the way, those cute ads about Super Bowl babies? They're sending the message that the NFL is family friendly. "Don't worry about that head trauma stuff! We got it all under control!")
As powerful as it is, the League has one glaring weakness. Because the sport is so violent, player's careers are short. The NFL requires huge influxes of new players each year to keep 31 teams at full strength.
The trouble is, Mom is worried about her boys playing football. She doesn't want them to get brain damage and suffer like Junior Seau did. I know personally of two mothers who, since the concussion story went public, have re-directed their athletically gifted sons into other sports.
If that happens on any scale, if this insurgency becomes widespread, the NFL is in serious trouble. Their pipeline of new players will be reduced, or, their quality will be seriously diminished, as the next generation of premier athletes brighten other leagues. The NFL as we have known it could, within a few short years, become a memory.
December 14, 2015
Switch to Small Press
I've decided to suspend my agent hunt and pursue small press options for my big book, The Gospel of Thomas. I stuck it out for eighteen months and collected 22 rejection notices. I believe in this story, in its power and its ability to reach readers, so I decided to switch tactics. I made a list of small presses that publish fiction (there are many more that specialize in poetry), and tonight, I made my first query. I will let you know if I get a bite.
November 11, 2015
Thoughts on Censorship
Thoughts on Censorship:
As I writer, I’m deeply invested in the concept of freedom of expression. Our free speech is protected by the Constitution. We’d like to think that censorship has no place in our society.
Yet, censorship is everywhere. It’s not always government driven, and so, it’s unevenly applied across our media outlets. But, it’s there.
How am I defining censorship? Censorship is the restriction or modification of an artistic vision which runs counter to an established belief or ideology.
Consider the digital blurring of some naked person’s body parts on a TV show like “Naked and Afraid.” It’s a practice so ubiquitous now, so common and ordinary, that we don’t even think about it. You may not think of that as censorship, but it is. You can argue that this is proper, that we don’t want naked bodies on our television shows. “What about the children, after all?” you may cry.
I don’t have the expertise, nor do I have the data, to debate this point from a child psychology perspective. I’m merely stating, unequivocally, that this is censorship.
Who is censoring and restricting our content? More often than not, in our current society, it is corporations, rather than the government, that is doing the censoring. That explains the patchwork, haphazard effort at play across our broader media.
I was streaming the Tom Cruise movie Oblivion recently, courtesy of my Comcast service. I was informed at the outset that “This film has been edited for content.” Why they felt the need to edit a PG-13 film puzzled me. The TV rating they gave it, after editing, was TV-14. If anything, they should have added content. (They did, in fact, add content. They added commercials.)
Not having seen the film before, I may have missed some of the edits, but one did jump out at me. There’s a scene in which one of the female leads is skinny-dipping. In the version of the film I was watching, her bum was digitally blurred.
I wondered, Why the effort to edit such a brief scene? The intensely explicit French film, Blue is the Warmest Color, is available on Netflix streaming, unrestricted and completely unedited. Meanwhile, bare bums are permissible on Instagram, but frontal nudity is not. (According to Instagram, men are allowed to have nipples, but women are not. Bare bums are OK for either sex.) Yet, here on Comcast streaming, bare bums are not allowed. (Comcast has never even heard of French cinema.) That’s what I mean by patchwork.
A logical response may be “Let the Market decide!” I could switch to another cable TV provider in my area, except there isn’t one. Comcast holds a monopoly. Is Oblivion available for streaming, unedited, through some other service? I can’t speak for all of them, but it’s not available for streaming on Netflix. (Because Comcast now owns Universal, the studio that produced Oblivion, they now own the film outright. They may be purposefully keeping Oblivion from their rival as part of their ongoing struggle for market dominance.) I could buy the film, but what am I paying Comcast and Netflix for every month if I have to go and buy the movie anyway?
My point is, Comcast is limiting, though not outright restricting, my access to this film. On top of that, they are editing it away from the original vision of the director. They are censoring it.
The good news, at least for us readers and writers, is that books are not censored nearly to the degree as our visual media is. I took a stroll through the paperback stacks at my local Barnes & Noble recently, and spotted Nabokov’s Lolita, Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty trilogy, and two books by the legendary Emmanuelle Arsan. I wonder, though, if these books were brand new and not acknowledged classics, would they be published in this current climate?
How many new books, as daring as Lolita, are being published these days? Not many. I spotted the innovative Japanese masterpiece, Murakami’s 1Q84, during my B&N reconnaissance. It’s important to note that this international bestseller was not originally published in the United States, that it came here after winning acclaim elsewhere. More to NYC publisher’s tastes is 50 Shades of Grey, a rehash of some long established ideas. (See the Anne Rice books, mentioned above, and Story of O, for comparison.)
As good as All the Light We Cannot See was, it was still one of a million books about World War 2. The Goldfinch had the benefit of having its main character live in New York City. U.S. publishers love books about NYC as much as Hollywood loves movies about movies.
Who out there is pushing the envelope? Is anybody challenging the status quo in publishing, mixing styles, turning genres inside out? Are innovative writers being stopped at the gate? Are they lost in the deluge of sloppy, poorly plotted e-books that flood the internet each day?
If our government was censoring us, we could write our Congressperson. We could protest. We could vote.
I can’t vote against Comcast. I can’t switch to its competitor if it holds a monopoly. I can’t buy a book that’s not even being published.
The regime that is controlling our media, that limits and restricts what we see and buy, is a loose collection of corporate entities accountable to no one. Awareness is the first step in taking action.
As I writer, I’m deeply invested in the concept of freedom of expression. Our free speech is protected by the Constitution. We’d like to think that censorship has no place in our society.
Yet, censorship is everywhere. It’s not always government driven, and so, it’s unevenly applied across our media outlets. But, it’s there.
How am I defining censorship? Censorship is the restriction or modification of an artistic vision which runs counter to an established belief or ideology.
Consider the digital blurring of some naked person’s body parts on a TV show like “Naked and Afraid.” It’s a practice so ubiquitous now, so common and ordinary, that we don’t even think about it. You may not think of that as censorship, but it is. You can argue that this is proper, that we don’t want naked bodies on our television shows. “What about the children, after all?” you may cry.
I don’t have the expertise, nor do I have the data, to debate this point from a child psychology perspective. I’m merely stating, unequivocally, that this is censorship.
Who is censoring and restricting our content? More often than not, in our current society, it is corporations, rather than the government, that is doing the censoring. That explains the patchwork, haphazard effort at play across our broader media.
I was streaming the Tom Cruise movie Oblivion recently, courtesy of my Comcast service. I was informed at the outset that “This film has been edited for content.” Why they felt the need to edit a PG-13 film puzzled me. The TV rating they gave it, after editing, was TV-14. If anything, they should have added content. (They did, in fact, add content. They added commercials.)
Not having seen the film before, I may have missed some of the edits, but one did jump out at me. There’s a scene in which one of the female leads is skinny-dipping. In the version of the film I was watching, her bum was digitally blurred.
I wondered, Why the effort to edit such a brief scene? The intensely explicit French film, Blue is the Warmest Color, is available on Netflix streaming, unrestricted and completely unedited. Meanwhile, bare bums are permissible on Instagram, but frontal nudity is not. (According to Instagram, men are allowed to have nipples, but women are not. Bare bums are OK for either sex.) Yet, here on Comcast streaming, bare bums are not allowed. (Comcast has never even heard of French cinema.) That’s what I mean by patchwork.
A logical response may be “Let the Market decide!” I could switch to another cable TV provider in my area, except there isn’t one. Comcast holds a monopoly. Is Oblivion available for streaming, unedited, through some other service? I can’t speak for all of them, but it’s not available for streaming on Netflix. (Because Comcast now owns Universal, the studio that produced Oblivion, they now own the film outright. They may be purposefully keeping Oblivion from their rival as part of their ongoing struggle for market dominance.) I could buy the film, but what am I paying Comcast and Netflix for every month if I have to go and buy the movie anyway?
My point is, Comcast is limiting, though not outright restricting, my access to this film. On top of that, they are editing it away from the original vision of the director. They are censoring it.
The good news, at least for us readers and writers, is that books are not censored nearly to the degree as our visual media is. I took a stroll through the paperback stacks at my local Barnes & Noble recently, and spotted Nabokov’s Lolita, Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty trilogy, and two books by the legendary Emmanuelle Arsan. I wonder, though, if these books were brand new and not acknowledged classics, would they be published in this current climate?
How many new books, as daring as Lolita, are being published these days? Not many. I spotted the innovative Japanese masterpiece, Murakami’s 1Q84, during my B&N reconnaissance. It’s important to note that this international bestseller was not originally published in the United States, that it came here after winning acclaim elsewhere. More to NYC publisher’s tastes is 50 Shades of Grey, a rehash of some long established ideas. (See the Anne Rice books, mentioned above, and Story of O, for comparison.)
As good as All the Light We Cannot See was, it was still one of a million books about World War 2. The Goldfinch had the benefit of having its main character live in New York City. U.S. publishers love books about NYC as much as Hollywood loves movies about movies.
Who out there is pushing the envelope? Is anybody challenging the status quo in publishing, mixing styles, turning genres inside out? Are innovative writers being stopped at the gate? Are they lost in the deluge of sloppy, poorly plotted e-books that flood the internet each day?
If our government was censoring us, we could write our Congressperson. We could protest. We could vote.
I can’t vote against Comcast. I can’t switch to its competitor if it holds a monopoly. I can’t buy a book that’s not even being published.
The regime that is controlling our media, that limits and restricts what we see and buy, is a loose collection of corporate entities accountable to no one. Awareness is the first step in taking action.
October 26, 2015
Novel Writing Month
I was asked recently if I was participating in the novel writing contest in November. I said, “Every month is novel writing month at my house.”
Whereas, I appreciate the idea of everyone coming together and writing as a big communal effort, trying to write a novel in just one month is a really bad idea. A novel is a marathon, not the 100 meter dash. If you try to run a marathon at a sprint, you will fail.
One thing beginning writers rely on extensively is Inspiration. Granted, if anything is going to propel you through 200 + pages in 30 days, it’s the euphoric rush of Inspiration. When you’re inspired, the pages flow quickly. The words come as fast as your fingers can move across the keyboard.
The tough thing is, Inspiration only gets you so far. Eventually, like the sprinter running a long distance, you’re going to run out of gas. If you don’t have the discipline and methodology to keep going when Inspiration abandons you, your novel will never get finished.
I have a dear friend, a brilliantly creative person, who writes when he is inspired. I have several of his manuscripts, beautiful, exciting, would-be novels. None of them are finished.
Let’s say you’re one of the lucky ones. You take the entire month of November off from your life, and spend hours each day churning out pages. You push out 8-10 pages every day, encountering no resistance from your loved ones or snags in your plot, and on November 30, you write “The End.” You’re done!
Except, you’re not. Drafting is only one part of the writing process. The next step is Revision. You need to read through your draft and fix typos. (Inspiration is a great ride, but it’s a terrible speller. Passages in my own writing that I wrote quickly often had key words completely missing.) You need to let your friends read it, to make sure your creative vision is transferring properly into someone else’s head. Anything that doesn’t make sense to your friends needs to be changed.
Unfortunately, like the mythic runner Marathon, after your 30 day writing binge, you are creatively dead. You can’t even look at your book anymore, much less muster the energy to fix all of its problems. It may be months before you’re ready to sit at a keyboard again.
If you want to finish your novel and have, at the end, a work that you’re proud of, you need to start at a slower pace. Do a page or two every night, five days a week. Take the weekends off to recharge – watch a movie, play a video game, spend time with a loved one. Start up again Monday and write another page or two. At the end of November, keep going.
If you stay at that pace, by the middle of March, you should have 100 pages. By the end of Summer, you should have around 200 pages. The more leisurely pace not only will allow you to go to work or to school, and have a social life. It will allow for revisions as you go along. Fix typos as you spot them, and share chapters with your friends. Their positive feedback will keep you going, whether Inspiration is there or not.
When you can see the end point in the distance, go ahead and pick up the pace. Get it done, so you can say, “I did it!” Just know, every novel needs revisions. Tinker, polish, share, and tinker some more. Then, start again. It’ll go easier the next time, because you’ll know what you’re doing. You’re a novelist, after all. You’ve done this before.
Whereas, I appreciate the idea of everyone coming together and writing as a big communal effort, trying to write a novel in just one month is a really bad idea. A novel is a marathon, not the 100 meter dash. If you try to run a marathon at a sprint, you will fail.
One thing beginning writers rely on extensively is Inspiration. Granted, if anything is going to propel you through 200 + pages in 30 days, it’s the euphoric rush of Inspiration. When you’re inspired, the pages flow quickly. The words come as fast as your fingers can move across the keyboard.
The tough thing is, Inspiration only gets you so far. Eventually, like the sprinter running a long distance, you’re going to run out of gas. If you don’t have the discipline and methodology to keep going when Inspiration abandons you, your novel will never get finished.
I have a dear friend, a brilliantly creative person, who writes when he is inspired. I have several of his manuscripts, beautiful, exciting, would-be novels. None of them are finished.
Let’s say you’re one of the lucky ones. You take the entire month of November off from your life, and spend hours each day churning out pages. You push out 8-10 pages every day, encountering no resistance from your loved ones or snags in your plot, and on November 30, you write “The End.” You’re done!
Except, you’re not. Drafting is only one part of the writing process. The next step is Revision. You need to read through your draft and fix typos. (Inspiration is a great ride, but it’s a terrible speller. Passages in my own writing that I wrote quickly often had key words completely missing.) You need to let your friends read it, to make sure your creative vision is transferring properly into someone else’s head. Anything that doesn’t make sense to your friends needs to be changed.
Unfortunately, like the mythic runner Marathon, after your 30 day writing binge, you are creatively dead. You can’t even look at your book anymore, much less muster the energy to fix all of its problems. It may be months before you’re ready to sit at a keyboard again.
If you want to finish your novel and have, at the end, a work that you’re proud of, you need to start at a slower pace. Do a page or two every night, five days a week. Take the weekends off to recharge – watch a movie, play a video game, spend time with a loved one. Start up again Monday and write another page or two. At the end of November, keep going.
If you stay at that pace, by the middle of March, you should have 100 pages. By the end of Summer, you should have around 200 pages. The more leisurely pace not only will allow you to go to work or to school, and have a social life. It will allow for revisions as you go along. Fix typos as you spot them, and share chapters with your friends. Their positive feedback will keep you going, whether Inspiration is there or not.
When you can see the end point in the distance, go ahead and pick up the pace. Get it done, so you can say, “I did it!” Just know, every novel needs revisions. Tinker, polish, share, and tinker some more. Then, start again. It’ll go easier the next time, because you’ll know what you’re doing. You’re a novelist, after all. You’ve done this before.
September 5, 2015
Tartt's The Goldfinch
The Goldfinch by Donna TarttMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I admit being a little put off by the phenomena of Donna Tartt. Who spends 12 years on a book? What other celebrity, in any other field, could disappear for a dozen years and then pop out of the snow like a tulip and have everyone fuss over her? (Pulitzer Prize, Time Magazine's list of most influential people, etc.)
So, first things first, Donna Tartt is the real thing. Now that Updike and Doctorow are both gone, she may be America's best living writer. Her prose, in certain passages, really does have the feel of being crafted with care over time. There are more than a few sentences in The Goldfinch, that, while falling short of the bewildering lengths of Dickens and Proust, are still long by contemporary standards. Her characters are vivid and varied, and their dialog is rich, often funny, always real.
I loved the random literary and pop culture references sprinkled throughout the text, to Barbara Pym's Jane & Prudence (which I read in college and don't remember anything about, except it was incredibly dull), to Stieg Larsson, and to our beloved J.K. Rowling. Tartt clearly knows her art history, and I learned more about antique furniture reading this book than I will ever need to know.
My only qualms: For a book as long as this one is, that took as long as this one took to write, I felt she was rushing at the end to tie up her loose ends. There is a scene (I will be vague to avoid spoilers), in which the main character is off by himself, feeling sorry for himself, while off-stage, a major plot point is resolved without his help. That should never happen. The hero should always be the one to save the day. Another plot point was also resolved similarly, in an offhand way. I wanted a scene of resolution that I didn't get.
Despite all this, I'm giving this book top marks. I felt very much in the presence of a master of the English language the whole way through. Up and coming writers would do well to check out this book to learn techniques and see what is possible.
View all my reviews
July 14, 2015
On "Go Set a Watchman."
My dad was a staunch libertarian. He had a great mistrust of politicians, and he hated paying taxes of any amount and for any reason. He hardly paid any attention to current events, save what would affect the stock market, and he was proud of the fact that he never voted for anybody.
At the end of his life, as dementia set in, he became more gentle and child-like. This, incidentally, made him much easier for my mother to manage him. Less than a year before he died, he decided he wanted to vote. He registered, for the first time in his life, and cast a single vote (ignoring all of the other issues on the 2012 ballot), for Barack Obama.
This was a harmless exercise, and his vote was by no means decisive. But, it showed me the great changes that dementia can do to a person. Dad never would have voted for a Democrat had he been in full command of his faculties. It pointed out to me, too, how vulnerable the elderly can be in the last years of their lives.
Today, anticipation is building for the release of Harper Lee's book "Go Set a Watchman." Booksellers like Barnes and Noble are pre-selling copies at a pace not seen since the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This "long lost" manuscript will be a sure hit, the sequel to a universally beloved, To Kill a Mockingbird.
When the story first broke, there was a quiet backlash. There were doubts that publishing "Watchman" was what Harper Lee really wanted. Some said Lee's guardian, who had recently died, would never have allowed it. If this book was any good, if Lee had wanted it published, it would have come out long ago.
These concerns have been swept under the rug by the wave of hype over this book. (It even warranted a mention, last night, on Entertainment Tonight!) We live in a Capitalist society, after all. The First and Only Law of Capitalism is "Make Money," and this book will definitely do that.
As the first reviews hit the internet, I'm more and more convinced that this manuscript should never have seen the light of day. NPR's Maureen Corrigan calls it "kind of a mess." Certainly not the polished work of an author who has penned one of the great works of American Literature.
When I see video of the elderly Harper Lee, with her childlike smiling face, I think of my dad. I fear that the detractors were correct, that this old woman has been exploited, for personal gain, by people who do not have her best interests, or the interests of her legacy, at heart.
At the end of his life, as dementia set in, he became more gentle and child-like. This, incidentally, made him much easier for my mother to manage him. Less than a year before he died, he decided he wanted to vote. He registered, for the first time in his life, and cast a single vote (ignoring all of the other issues on the 2012 ballot), for Barack Obama.
This was a harmless exercise, and his vote was by no means decisive. But, it showed me the great changes that dementia can do to a person. Dad never would have voted for a Democrat had he been in full command of his faculties. It pointed out to me, too, how vulnerable the elderly can be in the last years of their lives.
Today, anticipation is building for the release of Harper Lee's book "Go Set a Watchman." Booksellers like Barnes and Noble are pre-selling copies at a pace not seen since the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This "long lost" manuscript will be a sure hit, the sequel to a universally beloved, To Kill a Mockingbird.
When the story first broke, there was a quiet backlash. There were doubts that publishing "Watchman" was what Harper Lee really wanted. Some said Lee's guardian, who had recently died, would never have allowed it. If this book was any good, if Lee had wanted it published, it would have come out long ago.
These concerns have been swept under the rug by the wave of hype over this book. (It even warranted a mention, last night, on Entertainment Tonight!) We live in a Capitalist society, after all. The First and Only Law of Capitalism is "Make Money," and this book will definitely do that.
As the first reviews hit the internet, I'm more and more convinced that this manuscript should never have seen the light of day. NPR's Maureen Corrigan calls it "kind of a mess." Certainly not the polished work of an author who has penned one of the great works of American Literature.
When I see video of the elderly Harper Lee, with her childlike smiling face, I think of my dad. I fear that the detractors were correct, that this old woman has been exploited, for personal gain, by people who do not have her best interests, or the interests of her legacy, at heart.
July 7, 2015
KJ Cartmell on Tablo.io
Back in May, I discovered a site called Tablo.io, an Australian site that publishes fiction. I posted two old manuscripts there, "Elena's Curse," and the first Sam Beale book, Life With Theenie. "Elena's Curse" is now an editor's choice, and steadily picking up reads. The two stories are quite different from one another, so it shows the range of what I'm capable. The site is free to post and to read. I welcome your views and comments.
May 26, 2015
Definition of Success
I've been thinking a lot lately about my own definition of success. Here in the United States, we tend to view success and failure in stark terms. Success is measurable, usually in terms of dollars earned. By that measure, I'm a lousy writer, and Stephanie Myers is awesome. The most I've ever earned on a story is the $50 I got for writing "On a Christmas Eve" for Down The Chimney. I worked for months on that story, so, from a business standpoint, it was a lousy return on investment of time and resources. If I sell "The Synthia," I'll probably beat that number, but it won't be "quit your day job" money by any means.
My biggest success, metric-wise, has been on HarryPotterFanFiction.com, where Liam Wren and the Dragon Wand has over 18,000 reads. Divide that by 40 chapters and it works out to about 450 people reading the book all the way through.
Yet, there are books on that site that have a million reads. I've never been a featured author. I've never even won one of their annual prizes, the Dobby. Hard to say I've been a big hit over there.
Still, between my four stories, I've had 700 reads this month. The tough thing with Young Adult, as Stephanie Myers herself found out, is that your readers grow up. If your story doesn't touch the next group of kids the way it did your first group, you're forgotten, (and your books clog the shelves of used book stores across the country . . . .) My first HPFF readers, kids like Ripley and Chas, have grown up and moved on, and new people are reading me now. That in itself is encouraging.
I have a pathetic number of Twitter followers, yet, it's more than I had even a week ago. I'm on Tablo now, and the reaction to "Elena's Curse" was quick and very positive. Because of these two sites, I have fans in England and in Australia. It's not nothing.
And here on Goodreads, people read my blog and say they want to read my books.
The money may come in time, or, it may never come. As long as people read my work, and enjoy it, I can say I'm a success. I will keep writing.
My biggest success, metric-wise, has been on HarryPotterFanFiction.com, where Liam Wren and the Dragon Wand has over 18,000 reads. Divide that by 40 chapters and it works out to about 450 people reading the book all the way through.
Yet, there are books on that site that have a million reads. I've never been a featured author. I've never even won one of their annual prizes, the Dobby. Hard to say I've been a big hit over there.
Still, between my four stories, I've had 700 reads this month. The tough thing with Young Adult, as Stephanie Myers herself found out, is that your readers grow up. If your story doesn't touch the next group of kids the way it did your first group, you're forgotten, (and your books clog the shelves of used book stores across the country . . . .) My first HPFF readers, kids like Ripley and Chas, have grown up and moved on, and new people are reading me now. That in itself is encouraging.
I have a pathetic number of Twitter followers, yet, it's more than I had even a week ago. I'm on Tablo now, and the reaction to "Elena's Curse" was quick and very positive. Because of these two sites, I have fans in England and in Australia. It's not nothing.
And here on Goodreads, people read my blog and say they want to read my books.
The money may come in time, or, it may never come. As long as people read my work, and enjoy it, I can say I'm a success. I will keep writing.
May 18, 2015
New Ideas in Hollywood, NYC
Here's an idea for my young readers: there's a movie coming out soon, a remake of Spielberg's early 80's film, Poltergeist. Don't go see it. If you haven't yet, don't see the Mad Max movie either. Stop spending your entertainment dollars on rehashed ideas, tired to the point of exhaustion. The people in charge in Hollywood, and the book publishers in NYC for that matter, are paralyzed by the fear of failure. They really don't know a good idea from a bad idea. They can't see a trend until it's mowing them over. So, they keep going back to the same well. "This worked before," they reason, "so it will work again." These gatekeepers are standing in the way of the natural tendencies of artists to move their art in new directions. Alan Jay Lerner, the Broadway lyricist responsible for My Fair Lady, said, about the change in trends and styles in art and literature: "What causes the change? It is not the desires of the audience. It is the restlessness of authors for new forms of expression, which audiences then discover to be exactly what they were unconsciously looking for." (Quoted from Lerner's book The Street Where I Live.) The only way we'll get new ideas into the marketplace is to stop funding the old ones. If a few of these remakes are utter failures, maybe, just maybe, a few of us underground rebels will pop up and start to flower.
April 29, 2015
The New Book
I wrote The Gospel of Thomas at a furious pace. I did 600 pages in a year and a half, with only two breaks. The last half took only six months. I thought that this would be the new normal for me, and each of my subsequent books would go this quickly.
That has not been the case with my current project, however. I started my third novel for Harry Potter FanFiction, entitled Love, and Arithmancy, at the end of January. 14 weeks later, I'm not quite to 70 pages.
As I detailed in one of my author's notes on the site, the problem was with my outline. I had a huge section of plot that I hadn't worked out ahead of time. Usually, that section is somewhere in the middle of a book. This blank spot came right away, after Chapter 1. I'm now plodding through Chapter 7, and I'm still not to the second item on my original outline.
I'm getting through it, though. I think the pages will come more quickly once I get into the middle sections, and I can introduce additional elements and characters. It's been frustrating process for me, and I'm getting impatient with myself. (Part of this delay is due to me taking two weeks off to write "The Synthia." Yet, if I were in a groove with L&A I probably wouldn't have started the short story at all.)
In the meantime, the books are stacked up in my head, waiting for their turn: The Prophesies of Lara Guishar, The Curse of Maglin, The Right Guy, The Ghost of Mick Shannon, and Every Time You Speak You Break My Heart.
That has not been the case with my current project, however. I started my third novel for Harry Potter FanFiction, entitled Love, and Arithmancy, at the end of January. 14 weeks later, I'm not quite to 70 pages.
As I detailed in one of my author's notes on the site, the problem was with my outline. I had a huge section of plot that I hadn't worked out ahead of time. Usually, that section is somewhere in the middle of a book. This blank spot came right away, after Chapter 1. I'm now plodding through Chapter 7, and I'm still not to the second item on my original outline.
I'm getting through it, though. I think the pages will come more quickly once I get into the middle sections, and I can introduce additional elements and characters. It's been frustrating process for me, and I'm getting impatient with myself. (Part of this delay is due to me taking two weeks off to write "The Synthia." Yet, if I were in a groove with L&A I probably wouldn't have started the short story at all.)
In the meantime, the books are stacked up in my head, waiting for their turn: The Prophesies of Lara Guishar, The Curse of Maglin, The Right Guy, The Ghost of Mick Shannon, and Every Time You Speak You Break My Heart.
