Keryl Raist's Blog, page 51

Indie Book Review: Nearly Departed In Deadwood

Nearly Departed in Deadwood was not what I was expecting.  Between the cover, the title, and the paranormal tags, I was expecting zombies and some sort of mad necromancer tied into a mystery with missing kids.  And with the early set up of the crusty, old guy who lives way out of town in a farm house with a huge pile of shot guns, hearing odd sounds coming from out behind his barn, I was planning out how the main characters were going to end up holing up there, with the huge arsenal and blasting the hell out of the zombies.  
But, title, cover, and tags aside, this is a romantic mystery.  Violet Parker has returned to Deadwood, SD.  She's starting life over again, got her realtor's license, and moved herself and her kids in with her aunt.  And so far, this new life is none too rosy.  She's got an absolute asshole co-worker, who rapidly jumps up to the top of everyone's better off dead list, (I was looking forward to seeing the zombies eat him, alas, no zombies.) a completely empty appointment book, and if she doesn't sell a house in three weeks, she'll get fired.   On top of it, little girls are going missing.  Three of them in the last year.  And they all look a whole lot like her daughter.  In a town as small as Deadwood, Violet's worried for her own daughter's safety.
Then, within one day, things start to look up.  Men (and real estate clients) start pouring from the sky. The aforementioned crusty, old guy from out on the plains is looking to sell.  One of the richest men in town walks into Calamity Jane Real Estate, asking for her to sell his house.  He's tall, blonde, gorgeous, and runs a jewelry store that makes its own pieces.  Basically, he's perfect.  Alas, the house is not.  It's old, decrepit, spooky, rumored to be haunted, and before she can even start to see about fixing it up to sell, she's got weeks' worth of paperwork to do with the town because it's a protected historic building.  The tall, dark, and handsome mystery man from the store next door wants to decides he's in the market for a house, too.  And then, on top of all of that, she starts getting mystery presents from a secret admirer.  A really creepy secret admirer.
So, all the characters are in play.  The two main plotlines, tall, dark, and handsome or tall, blond, and gorgeous, and what is happening to the little girls get running and twist together.  Like any good mystery we get some red herrings, and, of course, the real herring is wearing a tuna costume, so you can't tell he's the one until the last possible second.  
If you want a mystery you could possibly solve on your own, this isn't it.  At all.  Obviously, because of the way it's set up, Violet is going to figure out who is kidnapping the girls, which means it has to be someone else we meet along the way.  But beyond knowing it's got to be one of the characters, the reader is left in the dark. 
The romance swims along prettily.  Tension builds nicely.   Jewelry designer or mystery man?  Ahh... to have such options.   The sex was erotic and well written: no clichés, anatomical impossibilities, or off putting euphemisms.  I would have liked to have seen a bit more of it, but given the time frame of the story and nature of the characters, the amount we got was just right. 
The writing and dialog runs the gamut of competent to exemplary.  The plot had at least one more thread than was necessary, but it might come into play in the next book of the series.  Characters are especially well developed, with even the secondary and tertiary characters being fully drawn and alive.    And for the serious romance fans it has to be a happily for now instead of happily ever after because this is book one of a series.   For the most part, I was very satisfied by this story.
My main complaint, and this probably won't continue onto the next book in the series, is it's not really paranormal.  It's not enough to have a paranormal aspect of the book; it has to actually do something with the plot.  The expectation of paranormal lends a tension to the story that is never brought to fruition.  Now, since this is book one, this is probably just the set up round, and it will come into play more heavily in the next books, but for this one, the psychic ability of the one character isn't really necessary.  The fact that he can talk to dead people is entirely extraneous for the plot of this story.  That he can do this being kept hidden for so long is also not necessary. 
But if you like romantic mysteries with a tinge of paranormal creepiness, this one is well worth your time. 

Indie Book Review; Expert Assistance

Sit back and imagine, if you will, a story where Lazarus Long, Hannah Montanna, and the Marvin the Paranoid Android on prozac get together to liberate a planet.  Got that image in your head?  Sounds like fun doesn't it?  Yep.  Reading it was fun, too.

Jake, the main character is something of a cross between Han Solo and Lazarus Long.  Like Han he's in financial trouble.  Like Lazarus he seems to have seen and done everything at least once.  And like both of them he exudes a sense of fond grouchiness at the naive-cute-and-fuzzy-puppy types that keep tripping through his life.

Like Lazarus, Jake has a sentient computer/spaceship with a brain the size of a planet.  This one is not depressed, but does seem to have a dry sense of humor and irony sensors on overdrive.  Odin, in addition to knowing basically everything that ever was recorded, also has teleporter technology, can build almost anything, and crack basically any code.  As you can imagine, Odin is a very good friend to have.  Odin was built as a military vessel.  He became sentient and decided he did not want to be a warship.  Jake found him floating abandoned in the middle of space, probably bought him some fuel, and the two have been together since.

And now, looking for some fast money, Jake has a new job.  Two new jobs really.  One is shuttling Evvie Martini (Hannah Montanna, down to her dyed hair) from gig to gig.  The other is helping the people of Antioch Two throw off  Sordius Maxi, the owner of their planet.

Of course, eventually Evvie finds out about the revolution, gets involved, and a cute little tale that can be described as "Yay Liberty!" ensues.  The story is more or less the fictional equivalent of kettle corn.  It's sweet, crunchy, yummy, but not exactly nutritious.

Here's why.  In the past I've mentioned something called power balance.  So, let's talk a little more about plot and power balance.   For a plot to work, the good guys and the bad guys need a shot at winning.  It can be a one in a million shot, that's good reading, too.  But unless you want to study some sort of human emotion, (ie lit fic) the guys on one side can't so completely overpower the guys on the other to the point where the guys on the other have absolutely no shot at winning.  Sure the struggle of David V. Goliath is good reading, but the struggle between Goliath and the quadriplegic toddler isn't.  The toddler has no chance at all.
Maxi never had a shot.  Odin isn't so much taking a gun to a knife fight as taking a tank and making sure that Omniscient God Almighty is driving it.  Maxi was so far out gunned by that computer it wasn't funny.  And to throw the power balance off even further, Maxi is a lot more like Fredo Corleone than Michael.
There's no tension to this plot, because there's no real danger.  There's no chance the revolution won't work.  There's no possibility of any of the main characters being in any danger.  Because of that, none of the main characters experience any real change.  And why would they?  Nothing was really risked.  Evvie is just a childish at the beginning of the revolution as she is in the end.  The rebels are just as clueless; they never had to learn anything.  Odin, well, he's already the pinnacle of intellectual evolution, so there was nowhere for him to go.  Jake has no deeper understanding of anything because he knew it all to begin with. 
If you'll forgive the comparison, this is not Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  It's not even close.
When discussing revolution it's hard to avoid politics.  This was a fairly innocuous screed against commercialism, without being insulting or annoying.  I'm about as far off on my side of the political spectrum as it's possible to get, and I didn't find the political content too bothersome.  I doubt anyone else who can still claim to be somewhere on the rational scale would either. 

So, if you want a cute and safe read, an adventure where you know everyone comes home just peachy and the good guys are guaranteed to win, this one's for you.

Self Publish With BookBaby

So, a new player on the self-publish ebook market is up.  Lets take a moment to see how BookBaby works.

The basic lay out is fairly similar to Smashwords, you upload a document, they turn it into an .epub, and send it off to the Apple Store, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Reader (Sony store.)

Now, here's the difference, you pay BookBaby $99.00 (on sale right now, usually $149.00) upfront.  Then each additional year you pay them $19.  And you've got to pay them $19 for an ISBN (unless you already own one).  Then you get 100% of your sales (minus Amazon's, B&N, Apple's, or Reader's cut).  With Smashwords you pay 0 upfront, have no upkeep fees, and get a free ISBN.  You keep 85% of your sales (once again, minus the seller's cut).  So, using some really simple math here, if you make one dollar per sale, you've got to sell one hundred and eighteen books before you break even on BookBaby.  But once you've sold those 118 books, all your income is profit.

Meanwhile, if you make $1.00 per book, and Smashwords takes their fifteen cents, you have to sell six hundred and sixty books before you've paid Smashwords  $99 in royalties.  Then you have to sell and additional 127 copies in each additional year to even the $19 maintenance fee.  And another 127 to cover the cost of the ISBN.

So, here goes.  You sell one hundred books for a dollar a piece.  On Bookbaby, you've made one dollar.  On Smashwords, you've made 85.  For the next hundred books on BookBaby, you're at 101 dollars, on Smashwords you're at 170.  For the next hundred you get to 201 and 255.  Next hundred 301 and 340, and on and on, the number gets closer and closer until BookBaby pulls ahead. 

So, the question is, what's the value of money in your hands versus potential money?  It's entirely possible that you'll sell those kinds of numbers if you've written a good book and put the work into promoting it.  (And, of course the more you sell your book for, the fewer books you have to sell to break even.)  If you've already got a half decent following, this may be a great way to go.  At the same time, especially if you're just breaking into the ebook market, you might want to go with Smashwords first.  At least that way you aren't paying for distribution out of hand.

BookBaby also charges you to add images, charts, graphs, and more than thirty interactive chapters to your table of contents.  Things like that feel nickle and dimey to me.  (All are free on Smashwords.)  But the prices aren't outrageous, and if you're banging your head against a wall trying to get the Smashwords Meatgrinder to work, spending an extra $100 for picture formatting might not seem like a big deal.

This is another calculation you need to do, which is worth more, your time or your money?  It took me three hours to get my Word .doc all set for the Meatgrinder.  With BookBaby I would have skipped most of that (You do have to do some of your own format fixing for BookBaby, and if your copy is really messed up, they do charge you to get in into shape.) and just sent them $99, and they would have done it.   Depending on what you'd normally make in an hour, you may save money by sending your manuscript off to BookBaby.

Unlike Smashwords they offer ebook cover design for $99 or $199 depending on how fancy you want to get.  The covers on the gallery looked fine, and that's a decent, but not fantastic, price for the offerings.  Or you can upload your own for free.

All in all, I'd say BookBaby looks like a valuable new option on the ebookery front.

Three Things You (Well I) Didn't Know About Advances

In the great Indie v. Trad debate one thing that always comes up in the pro column for the Traditional Method is the author's advance.  And really, who's going to argue about that?  You get a publisher interested in your book, and then he gives you a pile of money.  It's Yog's Law's perfect application.
Except...  And of course you know there has to be an except...
First off, you don't get all that money at once.  You get paid in installments, often three, one chunk when the project is accepted, one when you finish it, and one when it hits stores.  This makes sense; the publisher wants to make sure he gets an actual book out of you.  But at the same time, you're probably looking at a year or two before you've gotten all the money.  Even a six figure advance doesn't look like all that much if you realize that's your entire income for the two years until your book hits the shelves and however long it takes to earn out the advance.  Say you get a 200k advance, once you paid your taxes on it (almost 20% in FICA and Medicare alone, plus whatever federal, state, and local) and divide that by say (optimistically) four years.  It's not exactly vast riches.
Secondly, that money is not just what you're living on, it's what you're using to promote your book.  It's possible that if you're a big name, the publisher will set up book tours, speaking appearances, and the like for you.  But if you're the kind of person reading this, you aren't that big of a name.   If you're the kind of writer reading this and you want a book tour, you're paying for it out of that advance.  
Thirdly, that advance is often all the money you're ever going to see from that book.  An advance is supposedly your earnings paid to you before you earn them.  A loan, really.  Now, in most cases, somewhere in that contract will be something saying that if you don't earn out (your book doesn't sell enough copies to make you the advance) in a certain time (say three years) they own the book.  What does that mean?  It means that if you don't make back the advance, you never see any additional royalties on your work.  Basically, your book is the collateral on that loan, and if it's not repaid in time, they get to keep it.  So, say your book is earning a few hundred a month, not enough to have earned out your advance in the time allotted, but still it's a steady stream of income.  Would you rather that money be going into your pocket or theirs?
Now, money in your hand now is worth more than potential money later on.  But, when you're debating Indie or Trad, you need to go in with your eyes open and understand what those dollars really mean.

The Indie Book Review: Asatru For Beginners

A few days ago I got a new review query, this one had a book in it called Asatru For Beginners.  Asatru is a recreated version of the ancient Norse religions.  Now, I was a religious studies major in college.  I've got friends in the Pagan and Wiccan communities.  I'm pretty well versed in the various New Age magickal philosophies.  I read fantasy. I write fantasy. I'm up to date on my European mythos.  No one needed to point out to me who Wednesday was in American Gods.  So this looked like a fine addition to the vast pile of religious information in my arsenal.  I was happy to accept it for review.
Now, I'm not, by any stretch of anyone's imagination, an expert on Norse mythology.  I can identify Odin, Freya, Midgard, Thor, etc... and because of my RS background concepts like a multipartite soul was  already something I'd run into, but given all of that, I found Asatru For Beginners to be confusing.
First off, the formatting was doing nothing to make the reading easier.  The Kindle sample I downloaded had real issues.  On the most basic level, if you start the book off with a FAQ, doing something to differentiate the questions from the answers (indenting, starting them off with Q: or A:, putting the questions in bold or italic, anything) would have made the reading easier.   Maybe post FAQ the formatting improved.  But the author sent me a .doc version, so I don't know if the Kindle version improved.
Secondly, beginning with a FAQ was a bit odd.  Not just because of the questions asked (Did the Vikings wear helmets with horns on their heads?  Are all Asatuars white?) and not asked (Who are the main gods? What is Ragnarok?) but because if you really are a beginner a quick overview before getting into the FAQ would have been helpful.  Beyond a FAQ, what this book very much needed was a glossary.  For every question the FAQ answered there were at least three terms with no definition or a definition that occurred much later in the book.  Likewise, a pronunciation guide would have come in handy.  Terms like: Fjorgynn, Ljossalfheim, fylgia, have no sound in my mind.  I have no idea how to pronounce them.
Thirdly, it is very clear this was written by someone who knows absolute scads of information on the subject, and has known scads of information for so long that she's forgotten what sorts of things a beginner doesn't know.  For example: there's a section with a list of gods, in this section we learn of the god's hall and where the god has influence.  Now, while I'm sure this information is useful to someone who already knows something about the subject, if you don't really know what a hall is or where these places are supposed to be, it's confusing.  Likewise the term Ragnarok is used something like twenty times before it's defined.  In effect this book would more correctly be called Asatru For Already Conversant with Norse Mythology, or Asatru For the Low Intermediate.
Fourthly, the organization of this book left a lot to be desired.  It's laid out in sections: Frequently Asked Questions, History, The Gods, Other Beings, Beliefs and Morality, Rituals, The Three Kinds of Magic, and Resources.  Now, as a logical flow goes this didn't flow all that well.  There were often bits where I'd want more information, and that information would be in a later section.  As I understand a religion it's the beliefs that are the core.  I would have started there, moved into rituals (as we learn in the beliefs section Asatru is a religion of actions, not belief), then gods and other beings, slid from there into history, finished up with magic, and then wrapped up the book with the FAQ, Glossary, and list of resources.  
So, now that we've gotten the book as a device for the transmittal of information out of the way, how about the quality of that information?  Now, as I said earlier I'm not an expert on this subject, but from the very brief bit of independent research I did, everything in the book looked fine.  Other Asatruas might have different opinions on the subject, but to an outsider it appeared to be complete.  The writing was engaging and fairly easy to follow.  It was a quick and pleasant two hour read with a good deal of information I had never run into before.
As a religion Asatru had things I appreciated, and bits I was less than thrilled with.  I'm a fan of religions based on actions rather than beliefs, and Asatru is a religion of action.  You do not have to believe in literal land spirits to be an Asatruar, but you do have keep the folkways.  Likewise the idea that works of both men and women is of value held appeal.  And the very intense affection for freedom struck a resonant chord.  However, as a moral framework, Asatru did nothing for me.  But, as the author pointed out, it's the morality of a pirate culture.  These were not pacifistic farmers living in harmony tilling the soil.  This is a recreated version of the faith of the Vikings, and the Vikings were not known as easy neighbors. There appears to be no idea that a human is of value because he is a human.  Anything that improves the lot of the (family, clan, tribe, country, the unit gets bigger as populations grow) is good, anything that harms that is evil.  Rape, murder, theft, those are all fine and dandy, as long as not done to members of your group, meanwhile oath breaking is considered just as bad as killing a member of your group.  And, while I'm a massive fan of keeping your pledges, I'm also a fan of the idea that humans are of value, and harming outsiders for personal gain is not appropriate.       
In effect Asatru is a religion where the actions of the Nazis can be seen as honorable.  They were, after all, out conquering their neighbors to improve the lot of their own (narrowly defined) group.  The Jews, gays, politicals, mental and physical defectives were all defined as "others."  They weren't part of the master race.  Killing them and confiscating their goods to enrich the race is, by Asatru thinking, a moral good.  The great irony here being that the Asatruars were also rounded up, classified as politicals, and killed by the Nazis.  Now, the author points out that she personally considers fascism evil, but she also points out that's her own personal interpretation of their morality, and that others disagree.  Obviously, I may be missing some of the subtleties of the religion, and I'm going off of just the one book here, but I'm not seeing anything besides a sense of personal disgust that would condemn the Nazis or any other group before or since that decided to destroy the "other" to enrich itself.
At the same time, there is an elegant and unapologetic simplicity to the morality of Asatru.  The rules are exceptionally easy to follow.  There is no existential angst, no worries as to the nature of salvation or forgiveness.  Sin is a matter of breaking the law, and the laws are few and far between.  Live well, enrich you and yours, keep your word, die fighting your enemies, and you too shall dwell in the halls of your gods, feasting and practicing combat until the end times come and you once again pick up your sword and fight for your kind. 
All in all, if you really are a beginner, I'd suggest heading over to Wikipedia and searching Asatru.  Not only will you get about the same amount of information (about 20k words) but the Wiki article is easier to understand and better organized.  Then, once you've read that, go get Asatru For Beginners to start filling in the holes and rounding out the picture.

Blog Tour: Elements of the Soul

This week I'm hosting a blog tour by Jenny Walker for Elements of the Soul.   Here is a collection of questions/answers by the authors of the various short stories in the collection.
How has having a book published changed your life?
When you tell people you are a writer they always ask if you have anything published. If you don't they give you a skeptical look and patronizing smile. Having a book published adds credibility to my writing. Having a book published means being able to actually hold my dream in my hand. It allows me to hand that dream to those who supported me and tell them, "Look, you helped me create this, this is my dream." It is a wonderful way of saying thank you. – Rissa Watkins
Is there an established writer you admire and emulate in your own writing? Do you have a writing mentor?
While I don't really emulate his writing, my mentor has been Timothy Westmoreland. I was lucky enough to have him as a professor for a couple of creative writing classes during my undergraduate days, and he did more towards helping polish and refine my writing than I had even guessed was possible. – Thor Gunnin
It's rare today to find an author who does nothing but write for a living. Do you have a 'real' job other than writing, and if so, what is it? What are some other jobs you've had in your life?
I actually do write full time, although I also teach ballroom dancing on the side. I do freelance work through Walker Writing Services, where I write anything people need—press releases, website content, or articles. I just started a new company called Your Document Professionals (www.yourdocumentpros.com) to provide writing services to small and medium businesses. – Jennifer Walker
Have you ever won any writing awards? If so, what?
As a reporter, the writing and reporting are sort of tied together, so the writing awards I have received were all called reporting awards. In 1988, I was named journalist of the year for the Rocky Mountain College Press Association for a combination of feature, editorial and hard news writing. The contest is conducted at the annual conference for the RMCPA. I also won various awards for my content while writing for my college newspaper. – Lucinda Gunnin
How did you feel the day you learned you would be published?
I was on cloud nine! There's really an amazing feeling to know that your name will be on a book, and that people might buy it and read it. I have received so much support from my friends, family and many strangers who read and loved my stories. It's a huge amount of satisfaction. – Jennifer Walker
The main characters of your stories - do you find that you put a little of yourself into each of them or do you create them to be completely different from you?
How can you not put some of you into your characters?  I don't do it consciously, but if there is no deep connection, nothing you can look at and say, "I feel that. I understand," I'm not sure how you can write believable characters.  M. Lori Motley
What compelled you to start writing?
I have always loved writing. As a child, I would come up with stories and plays and perform them for my family. Of course, I had grandiose ideas of sets, costumes, and charging for tickets to the production, but unfortunately the product wasn't quite worth the price of admission. Books played a large part in influencing my love of writing. I constantly had my nose in a book, and was always fascinated when a book held me so captive that I felt as though I was the main character of the story. – Lindsay Maddox
The main characters of your stories - do you find that you put a little of yourself into each of them or do you create them to be completely different from you?
Yes, I find I put myself and other people into stories but I tweak the characters to better fit the storyline. – George Kramer
Have you always wanted to be a writer?
Since I was old enough to realize that there were people behind the books that I loved to read, that they didn't just appear on shelves, I have wanted to write. That is what I wanted to do. I wanted to create those worlds of words for people to get lost in...if only for a short time. – Susan Weaver Sosbe
Do you have any pets? What are they? Tell us about them.
I have a dog; Mocha is a Chow/Shepherd mix. I adopted him from an animal rescue that I was writing an article about. I saw his face and had to have him. He is my writing companion during the day and follows me everywhere I go. – Rissa Watkins

Indie Book Review: Death Has A Name

Death Has a Name by Jerry Hannel is a lovely bit paranormal mystery.  Several other reviewers of this book claimed they couldn't put it down, and while that wasn't literally true for me, it was as close to being true as I ever get with a book.  
So, what is so wonderful about this little gem?  Brodie Wade. 
There's a term from fan fiction that has crept into the world of original fiction: Mary Sue (or if male, Gary Stu).  A Mary Sue is a character that can do anything.  She's got amazing powers, gorgeous looks, a winning personality, there's no problem she can't solve, and she's probably kind to animals as well.  She's just perfect.  And, she's annoying as hell.  Unfortunately she has a tendency to show up a lot in fantasy because it's just too easy to write a story where Mary Sue has the magical power that just saves the day.  Now, in good storytelling, if a character has some sort of great power, it also has to have some sort of flaws or weaknesses.  Brodie is an example of good storytelling.
He is described as a psychic.  The Truth (not an Obi Wan Kenobi-your-point-of-view-my-point-of-view-truth, but the literal, Platonic Ideal, imagine it standing next to the rest of Neil Gaiman's Endless, TRUTH) is real and wants people to know it.  Brodie, for whatever reason, can see the Truth, and it can see him.  It's very insistent about getting its message across.  To the point of beating it into Brodie when need be, and it defines need as pretty much whenever Brodie doesn't immediately hop to and do whatever it wants.  So, Brodie has great power; he knows what's really going on, even when he doesn't want to.  He knows he's sane.  He knows what he sees is real.  But he's jumpy, nervous, and constantly on the edge of institutionalization.  Every day of his life is a struggle to hold onto a thin veneer of normal.  And, of course, as a result of this, he doesn't exactly have a booming social life. 
Characters like that make me especially happy.  When I see real world set paranormal/fantasy I want to see characters struggling with the fact that the rest of the world doesn't believe in what they see.  I want to see a cost to great power.  Brodie is a broken mess of a man, but he's a very appealing mess.  The kind of character that encourages a desire to take him home, clean him up, and try to protect him from the big, bad world.  If Hannel had marketed this to the YA world, Brodie would have a huge collection of devoted teen girls swooning over him.  
Okay, before I get too far into fan-girl-mad-crush squeeing, let me get back to being a critical reviewer.  In addition to Brodie, is Detective Phil Dawson.  Brodie uses his skills to freelance investigate cold cases.  Detective Phil is actually a member of the LAPD.  We don't get a lot of backstory, (Actually, we get no backstory on this.) but somehow these two are friends.  Maybe they worked a case together and just clicked.  Maybe Phil also finds Brodie's mess of a life appealing.  For whatever reason, Phil actually likes Brodie; believes, as much as he can, in Brodie's talents; and supports him.  Phil is the guy Brodie calls when he's missing his cat and jonesing for a cigarette to deal with the stress.  (Brodie is very attached to his cat.  If he's got a love of his life, it's the cat.  Hear that sound? It's a thousand teen girls sighing.) 
Brodie wakes up in the middle of the night, his cat is covered in blood, and the Truth wants him to investigate a murder.  The next morning, Phil gets a call: a horrible murder has just happened.    And thus the plot is set in motion, because, of course, those cases are one in the same.       
The pacing is quick, hence the 'couldn't put it down' reviews, and the dialog is sharp.  Without dialog tags you can tell Phil from Brodie.  The plot is interesting, but not overwhelmingly complex, which also aids in keeping the pacing quick.  Though this isn't the greatest comparison, not the least because they spend no time in a lab, this book reads a lot like an episode of CSI.  There's not a ton of background on the characters, the case is the primary motive aspect of the plot, and the writing is tight. 
The lack of background is my main quibble with this story. I would have liked to have seen a deeper backstory.  I would have liked to know why Phil believes in Brodie.  I would have liked more information about The Apprentice (the bad guy), Contego Veritas (the mysterious organization protecting the world from Death), how the whole Death thing worked (Death is trapped in a box kept safe by Contego Veritas, and trying to get The Apprentice to get him out.)  You've probably seen someone say a book is only as good as its villain?  Well, that's not necessarily true.  This is a good book, but the villain is very sketchy.  An extra fifty pages spent following him, showing us how he got to where he was, what was motivating him, how he was finding his victims, all would have been welcome.  More than welcome, that would have made this very good book a great one.
Brodie is the only character we get any real backstory on.  I would have liked to know more about him as well, but I think the level we got was appropriate.  There are mysteries left to solve and quirks left to discover for later novels. 
My other quibble with the book was the ending seemed rushed.  Phil's storyline gets dropped.  We leave him hanging, having to prove his case is right under penalty of losing his job.  The reader knows he's correct, but we never find out if he's able to convince his supervisor he was right, soon enough to not get fired.  I understand why it was left out, after all, we already know how the story ended, but a bit of extra wrap up on him would have been nice.  Likewise Brodie's storyline also felt a little rushed.  Not bad, but very quick.  All the plot lines converged in a matter of minutes (literally, in story time the climax takes maybe fifteen minutes tops) into the climax of the story. 
All in all Death Has a Name made me very happy.  I'll call it an extremely well recommended four star.  Brodie will be back soon, and I'm looking forward to it.

Indie Book Review: The Summoner

Spoiler alert: read at your own risk!
So, what do stories and chocolate have in common?  They both come in different levels of darkness.  Some days you want light creamy white chocolate, sweet with just the scent of chocolate.  Some days you want black, bitter, barely sweet with hints of the land it grew in 80% cocoa chocolate.  The Summoner is a dark story.  This is not a light, cute, or fun little read, but when you're in the mood for a dark story, it satisfies like Dagoba Eclipse (87% cocoa) chocolate.  
For a little self revelation here, Paranormal Thriller is not my first choice genre.  Not that I don't like it, but I don't seek it out either.  But if it's yours, The Summoner is an excellent example and well worth the reading.
This is the first book in a series, and as such the story arc gets the characters together and gives them a reason to stay together.  In a weaker writer's hand this becomes the main focus of the story, and the plot suffers for it.  This is not true of the Summoner, the plot, although neatly accomplishing this goal, is not overpowered by it.  Also, unlike other several other ensemble stories, where it seems like the only reason the group could possibly stay together or function is the author wants it that way, these characters actually work together well.   
And who are these characters?  Dominic is the leading man.  He's working diplomatic security for the American Embassy in Harare Zimbabwe, and watching his career fizzle like the last ember of a campfire with a wet towel tossed on it.  As he puts it, his moral compass and the moral compass of his bosses do not agree on what direction north is.  He values everyone's life.  They'd prefer he did his job, making sure the (American) people around him are safe, ignoring whatever chaos and danger might be around unless it threatens them. 
Then a friend of the American Ambassador, a man called William Addison, goes missing.  He and his girlfriend visit a religious ceremony in the bush.  William walks into the center of the ceremony and vanishes.  Because he's a friend of the Ambassador there will be an attempt to find him.  Dominic gets called in to investigate (Why him specifically is a little fuzzy.  We're left with the impression that he was available.  He wasn't a cop or missing persons investigator in his pre-security life, and most of his current investigations are in visa fraud.)  But this is Zimbabwe, so it's not like he can just go off and John Wayne it.  The Zimbabwean government wants him to have someone from the Government with him at all times. 
Enter Nya.  We don't ever find out what specifically she does for the government, but we do know that investigating missing Americans isn't part of her usual tasks.  She's reserved, mistrustful of the Americans, and has a vaguely sinister air about her.  After all, she works for the Zimbabwean government, not an entity known for its justice, competence, or its dedication to providing the best possible outcomes for anyone who isn't the government.   She's wary of Dominic, unsure if he's a colonial lay about, out to abuse the locals, or an ineffectual do-gooder.  He's wary of her, seeing a woman willing to work for Mugabe's thugs. 
Between them: the professor.  Victor is a religious phenomenologist.  He studies how people understand the things that happen in relation to religious experience.  He's the guy who wants to know how people react to a bleeding statue of the Virgin Mary, not the guy who tries to figure out why it's bleeding.  He's also my favorite of the characters.  The fact that I've got a degree in religious studies and did some course work on phenomenology may have something to do with this.  The fact that we're not given much background on him, and he's left a mysterious and complexly dark character is also part of the attraction.
And so the story begins, these three are going to find William and learn to trust each other.  Of course, it's not a simple disappearance.  Like the X-files at it's best, this is dark, creepy, and by the end you don't know if magic actually happened or not. Both Scully and Mulder could have walked away from this case satisfied that their own personal truths had been vindicated. 
The setting is Harare, Zimbabwe, and the surrounding suburbs and bush.  Before reading this story what I knew about Zimbabwe could be summed up like this: it was doing its best to make North Korea look competently governed.  After finishing The Summoner, I want to get more books on Zimbabwe and it's religions to learn more about it.  Reading The Summoner I feel like I was there, that for a little while at least, I got to spend some time in a beautiful country ruined by ugly men.  The setting also works as a metaphor for the religious ceremony at the heart of this case.  The dark Juju ritual is exotic and terrifying.  It, like Zimbabwe, is far outside the experience of most westerners, and tinged with a vague sense of discomforting awfulness.    
I liked the romance, but it's a men's romance.  There's basically only one spot in the story where a bit of lovin' fits in, and it's right there.  I don't know if it's common enough to be a cliché, but I've certainly seen it in a lot of stories written by men.  The hero gets beaten to a pulp.  The heroine patches him up.  They've got a few hours until it's time to move onto whatever the next step it.  Sex ensues.  The romance makes sense and is in character for the characters, but as soon as you see Nya going for the first aid equipment, you know what's coming.  What I did find especially refreshing (though this might be a side effect of being written by a man) is that Dominic and Nya certainly like each other, and are tentatively moving toward something solid and permanent, but they don't start spouting declarations of undying love.  Characters that fall in love in three days turn me off.  Characters that value each other and are willing to fight for each other in that short of a time make me very happy.  
I have one fine quibble with The Summoner, on several occasions the plot is forward by the characters doing stupid things.  They have a tendency to wander off and investigate on their own, without telling the others what they're up to.  Now, I get these aren't bosom buddies who have long ties to each other, but still, people are getting killed, the bad guys are really bad, with torture and fates literally worse than death on the menu, and still, keeping each other in the loop is haphazard at best. 
In storytelling there is the meta story, the story as built by the author.  Characters acting stupid to keep the plot going is the kind of thing where the meta story starts to show to the reader.  If the characters do a good job of checking in with each other, then the death-defying, last-minute, out-of-the-blue rescue can't happen.  If everyone keeps everyone in the loop, the mystery of what happened to Nya doesn't work, and the reveal of the bad guy happens a bit sooner than Green wants it to. 
Another example of the meta showing is Dominic is a jujitsu master.  He's a match for any two guys, and often more than that.  He was a Marine.  He's got deadly force down.  But, when going to the rescue, when he has the advantage of both range and surprise, instead of pulling out a gun and blowing the bad guy away, he closes in for fist fight. (The careful reader will mention here, but he didn't have a gun to pull out.  He'd lost his gun by that point.  To which I'd reply, why didn't he get a new one or find his old one earlier?  He had time and opportunity to do both between losing his gun and getting into the position where he could have shot.  He doesn't have a gun because the author wants it that way.)  Victor, also in perfect sniper position, opts for creeping in unarmed, and taking his chances instead of shooting the N'ganga (The Summoner, the alpha bad guy) from afar.  Now, a few clean bullets don't make for good storytelling.  They don't ratchet up the drama.  They don't allow for more last minute saves and tension filled fights where Green gets to show us how good he is at writing combat (and he is good at it.)  They do however, make a whole lot of sense if you believe the set up, that Nya is being horribly tortured, her skin ripped off a few inches at a time, and that every minute they delay is another minute in excruciating pain for her.  If you believe in that set up, and supposedly those characters do, they should be doing everything they can to move as fast as possible to get her out of there.
This is not a perky little read.  There is no happily ever after here, especially not for William.  The mystery of what happened to him is solved, but everyone is left with scars, physical and or mental, from this case.  I found the ending is all the more satisfying for it's reality.  Dark, gritty, stories where horrible things happen and then the main characters skip off into the sunset are like walking in too small shoes to me: irritating and painful.  While I'm sure Dominic and Victor will be back, I'm less certain about Nya.  She may be too broken to have much of a role in the coming stories.  Or not.  We're left with some hope, but no certainty with her.  The one thing I do know with certainty, when Dominic Gray II comes out, I'll be there to read it.

Finding Your NOOK: Self Publishing on PubIt

As we continue on in the self publishing series, I'd be remiss if I didn't spend a bit of time on NOOK.

Granted, Kindle is currently dominating the ereader market, but NOOK is still a sizable aspect, and since publishing with PubIt is so easy, there's no reason to overlook NOOK.

PubIt's front page lists publishing as a 1-2-3 process.  And while it's not literally that easy, it's awfully close. 

At this point I've noticed something of a trend.  Places that publish ebooks expect the author to have a finished project ready to go.  Neither Amazon or Smashword offered cover art, editing, marketing, ect... for their ebook publishing platforms, nor does PubIt.

So, before heading over to PubIt, make sure you've got all your files ready to go.  NOOKs read mostly epub files.  (Just like Kindles read .mobi.)  If you don't already have an epub version of your book, no sweat, PubIt will convert your Word, HTML, RTF, or TXT files into an epub. 

I used my Smashwords .doc version of the story.  I knew it was a clean copy, and it went through the epub conversion swimmingly.  From what I've seen this is always the rocky bit of any ebook publication process.  And like with any other platform, the cleaner your base document, the easier this whole process will be.   

Next up, cover file.  Get your .jpg, hit the button, and off you go.

Once you've got that done, it's time to pick your categories and write your description.  Fill out your rights management documentation and tax information and you're done.  In twoish days, you'll have a book up for sale on Barnes and Noble for the NOOK. 

So, yeah, not quite as easy as walking and chewing gum, but not much harder. 
 

Indie Book Review: The Magpie's Secret

I'll start this review off with a bit of a backstage peak into the reviewing process.  I get stories.  I read the sample and based on that decide whether or not to review them.  I sent Lau my usual note saying that based on the sample, his grammar was so bad that, even if the story was perfect, I couldn't give the book more than three stars.  Did he still want me to review?  This is where most authors send me a polite note saying, no.  He sent me a note back saying, yes.  No matter what I think about The Magpie's Secret, I respect Lau as a man immensely.
There are two main skills the fiction author needs: the ability to tell a good story and the ability to write.  Lau is a competent story teller, one who, with some help and time may become a great one.  As a writer he's harder to characterize.  Some bits of his story are beautifully written.  Some bits have lazy errors.  Some bits make me wonder if he ever learned the basics of grammar.  The Magpie's Secret really needed professional editing, both for story development and copy editing.
On the good side: the ending has a twist that is simultaneously unexpected and well set up.  Usually "twists" are either telegraphed so far in advance that you know it's going to happen by a third of the way through the story or they come from so far off in left field there is literally no way to anticipate it.  Lau did a very nice job of setting up his twist so that it was unexpected but not impossible. 
Also on the good side:  Frank, the main character, is immensely well done.  He's as real as anyone made of words can be.  And, if you are a fan of deeply flawed, yet still sympathetic characters, he's the man for you.   
On the bad side: Frank is too stupid to live.  Too stupid to live doesn't mean that he's dumb, at least not in a book smarts sense.  In story terms it means a character who acts in a manner totally incongruous with real life expectations so the plot can continue on.  An old army buddy, who is now a hit man, drops by to tell you you've got a hit man on your tail.  Upon checking this out, you find out the old army buddy really is a hit man, and if anyone would know about a contract on your life, he would.  So, what do you do?  Go to the cops?  Hide?  Start carrying a gun?  Start wearing a bullet proof vest?  Vary your routine so you're a little harder to predict?
Frank does pretty much exactly what he had been doing before he got the heads up.  He doesn't go the cops.  He doesn't hide.  He does try to figure out what someone might want to kill him for, but he does nothing to try and protect his life.  He tries to figure out who might want to kill him, too, but he never develops any plan for what to do should he actually find out who that person is.  And, in true too stupid to live fashion, upon coming up with an idea of who might want him dead, he cozies up to the guy, tries to make friends, and goes off alone with him.  Lucky for Frank, he's wrong about who wants him dead. 
Also on the bad side: grammar.  The version of the story you read will hopefully be better looking than the version I got.  That said: I review the copy in front of me, not a potential future version. Now, I'm not the greatest grammarian in the history of English.  Nor am I the kind of reader who just can't read a story with grammar issues.  For the most part, if the story is good, I just don't notice them.  But I noticed a lot of issues with this story.  Usually when I read I don't so much see the words as the story, but there were grammar errors bad enough they jerked me out of the story and got me focusing on the actual words in front of me.
Final bad bit: story repetition.  Lau tells us the same stuff over and over again.  I'd call The Magpie's Secret a fairly short novel.  It's 98,000 words.  I'm thinking five to ten thousand of them cover things we'd already been told.  As a reader I like the occasional reminder of what is going on, especially in long novels.  But this novel isn't that long, and the reader doesn't need that many reminders.   
The in between: Frank is telling the story.  It's not just written in first person past tense, but written so Frank is having a conversation with the reader.  He breaks the fourth wall several times throughout the book.  I have no issue with that as a technique.  It fits Frank's character.  It's what he tells us that's problematic.   He tells us he's terribly depressed and more or less just going through the motions between the day his daughter vanished and the day he gets the news a hit man is looking for him.   The good thing is he's not nearly as depressed as he lets on.  (His actions don't match his description of himself.)  This is good because reading terribly depressed characters isn't much fun.  But then, as he begins to wake up and decide he likes being alive, (once again, he tells us this is how he's feeling) he does nothing to protect this life he's suddenly interested in living again.  Frank tells us things about himself that make him look very self aware, but then he acts in a manner at odds with what he's telling us.  The term unreliable narrator springs to mind.  The kicker is, I'm not sure if this is intentional, Frank tells us one thing, tells himself one thing, but the truth is different, or sloppy writing.  Frank is a very detail oriented character.  He tells us about everywhere he goes.  He tells us about what he eats.  We know about everyone he comes in contact with.  While this is good to know about Frank, it can make for boring reading.  What's especially problematic is that in many cases Lau does his best technical writing, his best use of imagery and word choice, while telling us about things that have nothing to do with the plot.  (Like the bar he's sitting in, or one of the character's homes, or what the weather is like, etc...)  I'll admit that I'm not much of a visually oriented person, and I'm a fan of minimalist setting if the setting is not important to the plot, so it could be other readers would love this level of detail.  But, I often found myself skimming through the description of whatever new place Frank was.      
Character voice was another uneven aspect of this story.  Frank has a vibrant, in character voice.  You can almost guess his back story just from listening to him talk.  The downside is that pretty much everyone else sounds like Frank, too.  There's a brilliant movie out called The Gamers: Dorkness Rising.  It's about a bunch of role players.  One of the characters is a male gamer who plays a female wizard in the game.  When the gamer remembers he's playing a female wizard, the scenes are done by a female actor.  When he forgets and plays his wizard as himself, you see him in the girl's costume.  Lau's non-Frank characters have a similar feel.  Frank's voice is Lau's default speech pattern, and his characters slip into it from time to time.    
All in all, I found reading The Magpie's Secret painfully disappointing.  There are so many good things about this story, and so many bad ones.  It's easy to see the bones of a very good story here, there's even some flesh on those bones, but that's not enough.  With any luck this is a first novel issue for Lau, and that the books that follow this one will be much better.