Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 132
June 26, 2019
Words in good order are a treasure
As I re-read Amanda Coplin’s The Orcharist (2012), I’m reminded–as I always am when I read a great book a second or third time–of the treasures the author’s words present that might be overlooked the first time through by reader’s focus on the plot.
[image error]David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous) speaks of the languages of the forest that most of us miss because we either don’t understand them or aren’t paying attention. In addition to animal tracks and calls, there are things that move (leaves blown across the sand, for example) that are another language we could learn if we wanted to understand the planet.
When I took a typesetting course in college as part of my journalism degree, the professor said that the best way to learn about a new typeface was to take a printed copy of it and trace every letter on an overlaid sheet of tissue paper. To know type, you need to see all of the thick and thin places, the ascenders and descenders, the legibility of the face on the page, and whether or not the type works best for headlines or text.
When we pay attention to a novel on a second or third reading, rather like noticing the language of a forest or the personality of a typeface, we see more than we saw the first time we read it. I’ve read The Prince of Tides and A Scot’s Quair at least five times, and each time I find a new nugget of gold or a hidden diamond. I usually let a fair amount of time go by before I’ll read a book again. That tends to make it seem newer when I pick it up for another reading.
I see on the Internet that some people track the number of books and their titles each year. I’m not sure why. I guess that’s okay, though it might emphasize quantity over quality, including making it harder to insert time in the schedule for re-reading one’s favorites.
Reading a book once seems to me to be similar to buying anything else and using it only once. Okay, maybe it’s not similar at all. But once the book is there on the shelf or on the display in one’s Kindle library, it still has things to say to us.
–Malcolm
Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of Conjure Woman’s Cat.
June 25, 2019
Book Bits: Catherine Chung, Sharon Heath, ‘Cygnet,’ Amazon, Linda Holmes, Mueller report
[image error]At my age, a vigorous, bone-crushing, muscle twisting workout comes from spending several hours on the riding mower. While recuperating, I found a few links you might enjoy. Or you might not. Long-time readers of this blog know that ever since high school, I’ve been fascinated by writings about Carl Jung, alchemy, and quantum mechanics (the many worlds interpretation), so I’m happy to see a review of a very readable book that has uncovered multiple levels and/or universes of meaning (Item 1) since we’re all entangled one way or another.
Have fun exploring the books and authors links this week.
Essay: On Being a Woman Who Loves Math, by Catherine Chung – “All my life I’ve been aware of the disheartening fact that as a society, we generally find intellect off-putting in women, and do our best to squash it.” (Lit Hub)
[image error]Review: Tizita (2017) By Sharon Heath, Deltona, FL: Thomas-Jacob Publishing, by Frances Hatfield
“Tizita, like the first novel before it in The Fleur Trilogy, The History of My Body, is as utterly original as its chief protagonist, and in some of the same, brilliant, moving, and laugh-out-loud hilarious ways.” (Psychological Perspectives)
Excerpt: ‘Cygnet’: Featured Fiction from Season Butler – “Publishers Weekly called the book poignant, adding that ‘Butler has created an appealingly rich world with quirky, flawed characters and a dramatic landscape determined by the constant action of wind and water. Butler delivers a potent and finely calibrated novel.’” (The Millions)
[image error]Opinion: Amazon Says It is Not a ‘Lawless’ Retail Platform As Charged by ‘NYT’ – “The New York Times’ recent feature on Amazon, which focuses on how much control the tech giant exerts over the book business and how detrimental that control might be for the sector’s health, has provoked a response from the company. Specifically, Amazon responded to claims in the article that it takes a lax approach to policing the sale of counterfeit books on its website, saying, in a blog post, that it ‘strictly prohibits the sale of counterfeit products’ and ‘takes proactive steps to drive counterfeits in our stores to zero.” (Publishers Weekly)
[image error]Interview: Linda Holmes with Stephenie Harrison – “I have wanted to write a novel . . . always. I can’t remember when I didn’t think that would be the absolute greatest thing I could do. But I would start things, write a few pages and just get intimidated that I couldn’t keep going. I played around with writing fiction for many years and got a little more serious in 2012 when I decided to devote some time to this story. But again, I worked on it for a while, then left it alone. I didn’t pick it up again until sometime in the fall of 2016.” (Book Page)
Quotation: “I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol and wild women. The other half I wasted.” ― WC Fields
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Wikipedia photo
Feature: How Jenna Bush Hager became the new book club queen, by David Canfield – “Around 10 minutes into my interview with Jenna Bush Hager, I make a careless mistake: I assume her new Today show book club isn’t merely a one-woman band. ‘You say ‘You guys,’ but you really are just talking about one person — me!’ she responds, laughing. ‘Reese Witherspoon was on the show the other day, and we were talking about it. She’s like, ‘I have a whole team, Jenna!’ The problem is, I definitely need to read the whole book before I recommend it — and I’m a pretty picky reader.’ (Entertainment)
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Wikipedia Graphic
New Title: A Mueller Report graphic novel will be released by San Diego publisher, by Michael Schaub – “Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has become something of a publishing phenomenon, with several book versions of the report flying off bookstore shelves. Now a San Diego publisher is planning to release a version of the report for those who might find the original a little too dry. IDW will publish a graphic-novel adaptation of the report next year, the press said in a news release.” (Los Angeles Times)
Book Bits is compiled randomly by malcolm R. Campbell, author of the “Florida Folk Magic Stories.”
June 23, 2019
People often ask if authors compete with each other
Sort of, kind of, maybe, if we’re up for the same award, but usually not.
In fact, if Amazon (or some unbiased guru) tells me that if I like book ABC, I will probably like book XYZ, I’ll probably take a look. Sure, I know Amazon wants me to buy more than I can afford to buy. But, if another author is writing books that Amazon thinks are competing with mine, I will probably want to read them. Why? I write the kinds of books I like to read, so if anyone else is doing it, I want to find their books.
[image error]Sometimes I’m surprised. I was looking for magical realism books this morning and found one on Amazon that came from an author I’d never heard of from a publisher I’d never heard of that had almost 4,000 customer reviews. After getting rid of a few initial feelings of jealousy, I wanted to find out how they did this. Usually, 4,000 customer reviews is something you expect for titles by famous writers. So how does somebody “come out of nowhere” and get that kind of response?
Unless one is a very avid magical realism reader and buys every new release, I doubt that my books are competing with this book. I have a feeling that I’m going to read this book. But first, I want to know how 4,000 people found out about it and took the time to post a review. Most people don’t review the books they read, so if 4,000 is a fraction of the book’s total number of readers, wow!
As writers, our first duty is telling stories. After that, the whole business falls into the black hole of marketing and promotion. So, when we see somebody who is successful, we want to know how they did it. We learn from each other, sometimes at conferences and panels and workshops, and sometimes through information on authors’ websites and interviews. Chances are, we will never be able to duplicate another author’s road to success exactly–or even inexactly. What s/he did, is probably so closely linked to who they are, where they are, the hundreds of choices of a lifetime they have made, that there is no way to “become them” and “do what they did.”
Perhaps we’ll learn one tip or a hundred tips. If so, we’re a little better off than we were before!
June 22, 2019
‘The Shoe Mender’s Lament and other short stories’ by Peter Ruffell
[image error]Peter Ruffell’s short foreword tells the reader that these 17 little stories, and the poem which completes the book, started life during writing sessions at Off The Cuff, a writing workshop in Weymouth. The length of these stories reflects that: they’re a little longer (and, thus, meatier) than flash fiction, but short enough to read one while you’re enjoying (say) a mid-morning cup of tea.
Source: ‘The Shoe Mender’s Lament and other short stories’ by Peter Ruffell | Judi Moore
Here’s a brief review by Judi Moore of a book I haven’t read. It sounds tempting. I love misdirection and humor with a touch of absurdity. Not enough to drink tea (gag) while reading, but enough to pour a dram of a single malt whisky and plunge right in.
June 21, 2019
Do free books devalue an author’s worth in the public eye?
There must be a thousand gimmicks on the Internet showing emerging writers how to become better-known writers. Some “gurus” advocate “street teams” who read and talk-up an author’s books. Some suggest various methods for gaming Amazon’s algorithms so that an out-of-nowhere book suddenly becomes a bestseller. Others say each of us needs a giveaway book that shows readers our style that includes links to the primary books we’re trying to sell.
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I’ve had dinner at Antoine’s numerous times and I like their food. One has to earn the kind of reputation they have. But that doesn’t mean everyone else is chopped liver.
There are stories–some probably true–that tell of unknown writers who followed a guru’s publicity program and suddenly sold $100,000 worth of books. These often sound like the claims I used to see in chain letters. And, notably, while I read a lot, I’ve never heard of any of the authors who became rich according to these claims.
If you look at a lot of prospective books on Amazon and elsewhere, you’ll see that the Kindle edition of a well-known author’s fiction costs more than the hardback edition of an unknown author’s novels. Well, obviously people are going to pay more for a dinner at Antoine’s Restaurant than a quarter pounder and fries at McDonald’s.
Yet, sometimes I think emerging authors are setting their prices too low. This reminds me of the old phrase “I can get it for you wholesale.” Sure, but how good is it?
I don’t expect to compete–on price–with John Grisham or J. K. Rowling. Yet, if I set the price of my books too low, this gives prospective readers the idea that I’m not charging more because my work isn’t worth more. Nor would I expect a mom and pop diner in Peoria to charge as much as Antoine’s. However, when a new restaurant or an emerging author sets prices too low, I think they are devaluing their work.
[image error]As C. Hope Clark (Funds for Writers) has said on multiple occasions, writers are often expected to jump at the chance to attend a conference or serve on a panel “for the exposure.” Why do those in charge of writers’ retreats expect us to jump at the chance when everyone else supplying something to the venture–from publicity to catered meals–is being paid?
In a recent blog post, Clark said, “A few people will get their feathers ruffled. ‘Not me’ or ‘I know a lot of exceptions to that’ but the grand majority of people see free as something of lesser value; otherwise, it wouldn’t be cheap. And if something costs more, there usually has to be a reason.”
I agree. Yes, FREE might have its place, but generally, it’s not a good place. It makes us look cheap and unworthy. As Hope says, “In the long run, you deem what you are worth, and the more you give it away, the lower your stock value.”
I don’t think this is the impression we want readers to have. Experience has taught me that giving away books seldom leads to anything positive: the people who get them don’t flood Amazon with positive reviews or trip over themselves to get to my other books. The same can be said for pricing everything at 99₵. Do mainstream authors to this? No, of course not, so when we do it, the price just screams AMATEUR.
Frankly, I don’t trust cheap or free. When I download cheap or free, I’m usually disappointed. I definitely don’t go looking for more of these authors’ works because my time is worth more than the books’ low prices. Sad, but true.
We have a duty, perhaps a right, to price our books reasonably, neither free nor what James Patterson expects. I don’t think it helps us as authors to devalue our work with too much CHEAP and too much FREE.
June 20, 2019
Book Bits: book tariffs, ‘Sorcery of Thorns,’ horror novels, Joy Harjo, Smoky Zeidel, Good Omens
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This column of books, authors, and publishing links used to run frequently on this blog until I began shifting most of the links to my author’s page on Facebook. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. So, for old time’s sake and/or a change of pace, here (after a long absence) is a page of links for readers, writers, and publishers.
Tariffs have been in the news lately, so I’ve included a link to one that affects books (item 1). Readers of this blog probably know that Joy Harjo is one of my favorite poets. I’m pleased to see her new recognition of her talents. (item 4).
[image error]News: The Book Industry Speaks Out Against China Tariffs, by Jim Milliot – “Five members of the book publishing and bookselling industry appeared Tuesday at hearings being conducted by the U.S. Trade Representative over the Trump administration’s proposal to impose a 25% tariff on $300 billion of goods imported from China, including books. The representatives at the public hearing emphasized a number of reasons why books should be excluded from the tariffs, arguing that because publishers and booksellers operate on thin margins, the imposition of tariffs would almost certainly lead to higher book prices for consumers and could force some bookstores and publishers out of business.” (Publishers Weekly)
[image error]Review: Sorcery of Thorns, by Margaret Rogerson, June 2019, fantasy 14 and up – “An apprentice librarian faces a magical threat against a Great Library…An enthralling adventure replete with spellbinding characters, a slow-burning love story, and a world worth staying lost in.” (Kirkus)
Lists: Terrify Yourself with These Ten Horror Novels, by Brian Evenson – “Short stories tend to be scarier than novels: their tightness of focus allows them to do away with pesky things like backstory and character development and elaborate setting and offer a blazing unity of effect. A novel’s scare is more a creeping dread, a tension that builds slowly and inexorably and leaves you deeply unsettled even after the book is finished. For me, the most frightening books are not about scary clowns or demons or witchcraft, but those that show the awful things humans are capable of doing to one another.” (The Millions)
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Harjo – Wikipedia Photo
News: Joy Harjo Becomes The First Native American U.S. Poet Laureate, by Lynn Heary and Patrick Jarenwattananon – “Poet, writer and musician Joy Harjo — a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation — often draws on Native American stories, languages and myths. But she says that she’s not self-consciously trying to bring that material into her work. If anything, it’s the other way around.” (NPR) See Harjo’s website here.
How To: 7 Things to Look Out for While Proofreading, by Lauren M. Bailey – “Each stage in the editing process improves a manuscript and requires an acute attention to detail. But even if you’ve written the most brilliant prose and meticulously researched your book, readers will dismiss the work as sloppy, amateur, and unprofessional if it’s riddled with typos. Frustratingly, these types of mistakes are often the hardest to catch in our own work. Our brains are so busy with the higher-order tasks in writing that our eyes literally see what they want to see. Though proofreading errors are difficult to spot, once you know what to look for—and have some handy tricks for uncovering them—you’ll be amazed (and probably slightly horrified) at what you can catch.” (Kirkus)
[image error]New Editions: Smoky Zeidel’s poetry collections (Garden Metamorphosis and Sometimes I Think I Am Like Water) are now available in hardcover editions. (Thomas-Jacob Publishing)
Film: Bestselling Novel by French-Moroccan Leila Slimani To Hit the Big Screen, by Teresa Kerr – “Rabat – The Perfect Nanny, a bestselling novel by French-Moroccan Leila Slimani is making its way to the big screen, thanks to three production companies: Legendary, Why Not Productions, and Pan-Européenne.” (Morocco World News)
Quotation: “We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” – Ray Bradbury
[image error]News: Thousands petition Netflix to cancel Amazon Prime’s Good Omens, by Alison Flood – “More than 20,000 Christians have signed a petition calling for the cancellation of Good Omens, the television series adapted from Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s 1990 fantasy novel – unfortunately addressing their petition to Netflix when the series is made by Amazon Prime.” (The Guardian)
Obituary: Uighur author dies following detention in Chinese ‘re-education’ camp, by Alison Flood – “The death of the prominent Uighur writer Nurmuhammad Tohti after being held in one of Xinjiang’s internment camps has been condemned as a tragic loss by human rights organisations.” (The Guardian)
Book Bits is compiled sooner or later by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of Conjure Woman’s Cat.
June 19, 2019
Review: ‘The Snow Child’ by Eowyn Ivey
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
If my first novel had been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, I might have been ruined as an author. Instead, Eowyn Ivey follows up on her extravagant novel The Snow Child (2012)with a new work called To the Bright Edge of the World that’s being well received.
What a stunning debut, a beautifully realized re-telling of an old Russian Fairytale updated to 1920 and re-set in Alaska. A young couple moves to this rugged and unforgiving land and has trouble making ends meet on a farming homestead. They see or think they see, a young woman on the edge of the forest. Nobody else in the area has seen such a child, so Mable and Jack are doubted, thought to be having troubles adapting and staying sane through the long lonely winters.
Ivey lives in Alaska and worked for many years as a newspaper reporter there; this gives her the observational skills and knowledge of the territory to give readers realism that works as a solid foundation for a story that just might sound like magical realism at times. Kudos to Ivey for doing more than simply re-telling an old story with new clothes. In spite of the influences, this is a wondrous original work with characters of great depth and a plot that delivers for both readers of realistic tales and magical works.
The ending–which I won’t give away here–works within the context of a fairy tale and a story realistic enough to have been a veteran reporter’s feature story about a couple from back east who probably never guessed that Alaska would demand everything they could give.
Highly recommended for individuals as well as book clubs.
June 17, 2019
Potpourri – June 2019
Notice: If this post contained any real potpourri, you’d be sneezing by now. Come to think of it, I don’t know why well-meaning people thrust potpourri on innocent people who walk into a bathroom, living room, bookstore, Wicca supply shop, or auto supply store and then start sneezing their asses off.
Moving to Juneau?
If so, there’s work. I’d take this job in a New York minute (whatever that is) if I lived there:
The Sun Singer
If you’re one of the wonderful people who downloaded a free Kindle copy of The Sun Singer during the recent giveaway, thank you! If you like it, you may also like its gritty sequel Sarabande:
The Strand Bookstore
Since I have worked in historic preservation, I’m a fan of the National Register because it draws attention to a historic site or object and imposes no restrictions on the owner’s use of the property. Not so, the government overreach in forcing landmark status on New York City’s famous Strand Bookstore. The bookstore fought against the designation because it comes with rules that impact how the slim-profit-margin store can use the building it owns. I signed the petition against this kind of nonsense.
Medical Update
I posted this medical update on Facebook and since I’m too lazy to write a fresh medical update, I’ll just paste it into the blog:
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Darn it, rain
I was planning to mow the yard after supper until I noticed that it’s getting a bit dark outside (at 2 p.m.). The weather RADAR indicates that I might not be cutting grass even though we just got one of our riding mowers back from the shop and it’s ready to go.
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Fried chicken for dinner tonight, but there’s not enough for you, so don’t stop by unless you stop at the KFC on hightay 27 before you get here.
June 16, 2019
Too much logic might kill your best work
“The intellect is a great danger to creativity . . . because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth—who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads “Don’t think!” You must never think at the typewriter—you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.” – Ray Bradbury
If there’s a place for logic, perhaps it’s in your research. Facts matter, even in fiction, so it’s a bad sign getting those wrong, worse yet finding out from other people that you got them wrong. A long-time journalism professor and author of textbooks, my father often said that one of the worst things a journalist could do was misspell a person’s name. For one thing, it made him or her look sloppy. For another, it called into question everything else in the new story. If your research is flawed, small inaccuracies may kill your best work.
[image error]Otherwise–logic, as Bradbury suggests–gets in the way of our stories and even ourselves. Logic often leads to doubt, even self-doubt, and the frame of mind that arises out of that can easily become a barrier to the story you wish to tell. If you don’t think you can write it, you won’t. If you think you’re not the person to tell the story, you won’t be able to tell it. Our stories lead us down strange roads where it’s best to just keep going rather than thinking, “Holy crap, I’m lost.”
In some cases, being lost is a good thing because how you find your way out makes a good story, or at least provides the confidence you need to continue. Goodness knows, there’s not a lot of validation for aspiring writings and emerging authors, so allowing yourself the time and excitement of being lost from time to time is much better than fighting being lost. And besides, it’s easy to become prey for the doubters in your life who think you’ll never write anything, much less anything that gets published and sells a few copies, maybe a lot of copies.
Plus, it seems that when we use logic to try and puzzle our stories out of one misstep or another or one troublesome scene or another, we’re not likely to tell a story that’s true within itself and resonates with readers. I know one writing expert who says the stories we write are already “out there” in some kind of limbo area waiting for us to find them and tell them. I’m not sure I want to go that far. I do see, though, that stories appear to have an innate intelligence that wants to go in a particular direction for one reason or another. So, as we said years ago, the author has to go with the flow rather than thinking up logical rationale for swimming against the story’s current. If you’re swimming against the story’s current, you’re thinking. Stop it!
Down the road, you can do your thinking during the editing process. Then you’ll find inconsistencies, holes in the plot, and possibly other things that don’t add up. Or, maybe you won’t.
This is going to sound strange, but when I find a bunch of prospective characters who are doing one thing or another, I find it best not to judge them or find some logical yardstick that proves they’re messed up. Better to write down what they’re doing and discover the story in it. Just don’t think too much about what you’re doing.
[image error]Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the three novels in the Florida Folk Magic series, “Conjure Woman’s Cat,” Eulalie and Washerwoman,” and “Lena.”
June 15, 2019
If you read too much, you’ll pay for stuff you’ve already read
One of the problems of reading a lot of throw-away novels in between the high-quality novels you talk about on Facebook and Goodreads is discovering the book you’re reading suddenly looks familiar.
[image error]This seems to be a problem with thrillers (where there’s a lot of violence) and romances (where there’s a lot of sex) where everything is the same until you come to a pivotal scene where the author opted for a blast of creativity and did something unique with the action.
It’s a bit disconcerting to be 100 pages into a book when suddenly you realize, “Crikey, I’ve read this book already.” Not only did I not recognize the title, but for 99 pages everything seemed new. I guess that means that either nothing memorable happened or that I skimmed through a lot of words.
Women’s fiction seems to be a problem in this regard because novels are often re-issued with new titles and new author pseudonyms, so there’s no way to know the book you just bought is already in a box in the attic or garage.
At least Amazon tells you that you already bought the book, but this doesn’t help if you buy some books from Powell’s, B&N, Indies Unlimted, and at bricks and mortar stores. Apparently, the quantity of words obscures the fact that a reader has seen all this before. As an author, I wonder how another author can write so many pages in so many books that I don’t recognize the plot and characters before I get to the weird scene where the deja vu occurs.
I wonder how often this happens. I hope it happens often because otherwise, it’s just me.
