Michael Potts's Blog: Bits and Pieces: Book Reviews and Articles on Writing, Horror Fiction, and Some Philosophy, page 4

Dekker's BURN an Excellent and Chilling Read

Burn by Ted Dekker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Ted Dekker is known for unpredictable twists, and this book is no exception. The plot revolves around a young woman and her struggle over whether good or evil will seize her heart. The depiction of evil people as self-centered is true to life and chilling. Yet the book, as all of Dekker's books, leaves ample room for grace. I highly recommend this book.



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Publicity and Time

Every author has to publicize his or her book. Even the major publishers are spending less on publicity and require authors to help with marketing. Those published via small presses have more responsibility for marketing, and Indies most of all. The issue is how to balance the time spent marketing with writing time. I have found that marketing takes far more time than I first realized. Getting an online presence, keeping one's website updated, posting to groups and blogs, and posting to Facebook pages as well as setting up book signings can drain precious writing time. It is essential, however, even if there are few sales. If your books thus far have sold poorly but your next book sells well, that success can slide over to your other works, and the work that you did earlier in marketing them will pay off. People wanting to discover more about your work will easily be able to do so.

Yet you cannot spend all your time on publicity. You can fall into a trap like a gambler--"this strategy didn't work, so now I have to find another and I can't write until I do so." Your number one priority as a writer should be writing. I am reminding myself of that as much as I am reminding my readers. Lives are busy enough, so finding a balance between the various aspects of "authoring" is a must. Perhaps set aside a half hour a day to work on marketing, and then use the rest of your available time for writing.

For someone with Asperger's Syndrome like me, an overemphasis on marketing is parallel to the immense amount of time I spend on what interests me at the time. Now it's not only marketing my books, but research on my family tree. Someone with Asperger's must often use the strength of the will to start writing--I know I do. Once the person with Asperger's gets into the flow of writing, than writing becomes the "special interest," and the person will write a great deal quickly. I wrote the first draft of my first novel in ten days and the first draft my second novel in eight days. During that writing time I did not care about any other interest but writing. Other people may find other ways to motivate them to write. Do whatever works for you, but for goodness sakes, do what a writer does--write!

Why Does Bad Writing Sell?

A few days ago I listened to a book on CD, a thriller by a major author in the field, who shall remain unnamed. It was the most poorly written book I have heard and/or read. The plot trudged along slowly, even though the book was short. There was little imagery and the book was chock full of stereotypical adjectives and adverbs. The dialogue tags, especially the adverbial dialogue tags, drove me nuts. Since listening to bad writing is a good way to know what to avoid in one's own writing, I listened until the book (mercifully) ended. Yet the book was a bestseller.

Of course one could mention FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY and anything written by Dan Brown. It is possible to break the "rules of writing" and have a good book; THE LORD OF THE RINGS is an example. However, when authors clearly do not know how to write, get published by a major publisher, and sell millions of copies, this sends a negative message about American education and culture.

In the nineteenth century, thousands of people lined up by the docks in New York City to purchase and read the latest book by Charles Dickens. In the twentieth century, some of Ernest Hemingway's books were bestsellers. But that was the past; in the twenty-first century good literary fiction is rarely read except by writers. Now and then a well-written bestseller appears, but that is rare, and much of what sells is awful.

Years of "dumbing down" the educational system of the United States have taken their toll on literacy. In addition, students are taught to avoid all hierarchies--thus some of them deny that any work of literature is better than another literary work. Even if a student accepts a hierarchy of literary value, the student's reading skills are so poor that he or she is incapable of making an intelligent judgement about the quality of writing in a book. Political correctness and an unhealthy focus on race, class, and gender to the exclusion of other factors of a literary work have led to a superficial, politicized understanding of literature.

The main problem remains poor reading skills--the majority of young people read books at their level of understanding and are unwilling to read more challenging works. When I browse the ratings of Indie books on Amazon and read the samples from those that sell well, often I find multiple grammar errors, stilted dialogue, and unbearably bad prose.

Sometimes poor writing is literate but of poor literary quality--Dan Brown's books, for instance--but people buy them for their story. That is something authors should keep in mind--that a catchy story can cover a multitude of sins--but having a catchy story and avoiding the sins is better.

There remains a good number of intelligent and well-read people out there, including young people--especially on sites such as Goodreads. They keep standards alive in literature by reading quality literary and quality genre fiction. They gain the unique insight into human nature that can only be gained via a good story. I applaud these people and hope that my own writing can speak to them. If anyone tries to better him or herself by reading more challenging material, I encourage that person to read the classic works of literature. Struggle with the text--and I guarantee that you will not only learn how to read (and write!) better, but you will learn something you did not know before.

On Writing about a Character with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

The main character in both my novels, Jeffrey Conley, is based to some extent on me and my own experiences as someone with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD)--what used to be called "Asperger's Syndrome." It is clear, especially in the horror novel, that this is a fictionalized view of Jeffrey, but even when Jeffrey experiences the extraordinary, he experiences it from the standpoint of a child with HFASD. Thus, he has obsessive interests (in the physical heart and with death and the afterlife), is socially awkward, does not fit in well with "normal" people, has above-average intelligence, finds it difficult to understand other people's feelings, and lives inside his head. As a writer, the most difficult thing to communicate to people without ASD is that persons really exist who are like Jeffrey in their behavior and emotional makeup. Sometimes I get comments from people saying, "I found Jeffrey unrealistic--people just don't act that way." They respond in that manner even though I make it clear in the frame story surrounding the main plot that Jeffrey has HFASD, and I show how he does through the story. To say that this is frustrating puts it mildly. Of course every writer puts part of the self into writing, and I put my own quirks and ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving into Jeffrey. Even when Jeffrey does some bad things that I never did in my own life, he does these in a way that fits his HFASD, especially his naivete concerning other people and his inability to read people well.

A book I would recommend to writers and to anyone interested in ASD is Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The main character in Haddon's novel has more severe ASD than I, but his character rings true to life, and any person on the autism spectrum will see part of him or herself in that character. The purpose of my own work is to tell a good story--in End of Summer, a good Southern fiction coming-of-age story, and in Unpardonable Sin, a scary horror story. Even though my purpose in writing is not to give a lesson on ASD, I hope that readers will learn something in the novels about how it is to grow up as a child with HSASD.

Can a Writer Avoid Cynicism?

You have spent a great deal of time writing and revising a book. You do all the right things--set up an attractive website, get into social media, publicize online, etc. You have participated in at least one giveaway. Perhaps you have some paid adds at various online publicity sites.

You check Amazon regularly--and your author rank is down. Days go by without a sale. You ask people to review your book. Some promise to do so, but never keep the promise. You get a good review from one person, but then receive a review from a prick who is sarcastic condemnation of your book.

Hundreds of people add your book in "Wants to Read," however, none of them orders it. You re-read your book--it seems like a good story, tight plot, good characterization, better than your first novel--yet it sells fewer copies. You read samples of books online that have sold thousands of copies, and some are barely coherent. Are you cynical by this stage? I must admit I am.

This is not a good thing. Luckily it has not stopped me from writing. If you get to the stage that cynicism stops you from writing, I suggest that is not the way to handle the situation. You write for a reason, and that is not necessarily to make money--you write out of love of writing. Perhaps writing is a psychological necessity. Keep doing it--write what you enjoy writing, and if it is good writing then you can take pride in it. No work of literature is perfect, and you can learn from your mistakes. As far as American readers being poor judges of quality writing, note that first, there are exceptions, and second, you cannot do anything about other people's literary tastes (or lack thereof) and their reading skills. You can constantly strive to hone your craft. That may not get rid of cynicism, but it may help you bear it. Who knows? Perhaps you will have such success with one book that your cynicism will melt away. If not, do what you love, no matter what exterior success you have. Remember that few visual artists are commercially successful, either. They make works of art out of a deep need. Fulfill that need in yourself. If you must be cynicial, fine--I am still cynical--but I assure you that you will most likely be happier writing than not.

Beautiful Language and Fiction Writing

Should a writer focus on writing beautiful prose? I am thinking of such writers as James Agee, in his book, A Death in the Family, or Ray Bradbury in Dandelion Wine. The first part of A Death in the Family consists of an earlier work by Agee, Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and is the most beautiful piece of fiction I have ever read. It is unmatched in atmosphere. You feel as if you are present with the boy, Rufus, and his father as they walk the streets of Knoxville on a summer evening. The language is the closest to magic, I think, in all of American literature.

There is a danger in writing beautiful fiction--an author could try to substitute beauty of language for good plot and characterization. Some critics of contemporary literary fiction have claimed that a great deal of current literary fiction has this problem. Much depends on what the author's purpose is--not all literary fiction has traditional plot. The fine book by Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men, is a character study, something the movie faithfully represents. That did not please all audiences, as I discovered after watching the movie and overhearing comments after the end. It is possible, however, if a writer is good at crafting beautiful lnaguage, for that writer to become lazy about plot and character development. The result is beautifully written bad fiction, which should be no author's goal.

Beautiful language can distract some readers from the flow of the plot. Although plot is not an issue in most poetry, I find Dylan Thomas' poetry to be so beautiful that I sometimes lose the meaning of the words in the beauty of the language. Personally I think it is up to me, the reader, to re-read until I can follow the meaning. As a writer, I would rather be criticized for my language being too beautiful than for not having a coherent plot or convincting characters.

Among horror writers, Robert McCammon is the best stylist in language--and his novels also do an excellent job at plot and characterization. Bradbury's early horror works are good, but are not as beautifully written as some of his later works. Vivid imagery is essential to horror, thus skill in word crafting is important. I find that McCammon or Stephen King have better use of imagery and beautiful language than Dean Koonz or Peter Straub. I will say, however, that Koonz has improved a great deal over the years, and Straub is grows on me.

My advice to a writer is to write as baautifully as a story will allow. If the writer has good language skills, some beauty of language will come out in the first draft. For me, that is the case, but many revisions are necessary to tweak the language. My goal, whether I am writing Southern fiction, or horror, is to use beautiful language that elicits images in the reader's mind. Transporting a person to another world is part of the task of fiction, and beautiful language should be part of that transportation.

On Getting Book Reviews

I suppose one of the first things for which an author of a new book searches online is reviews of the book. For me, I search for reader reviews on Amazon first, and later regularly check for reviews on Google. If you do something similar and worry about the quality of the reviews you receive, remember one thing: good or bad, a book review allows more people to know about your book. Some people may be intrigued by a bad review's description of the content in the book and want to buy it in spite of a negative review. They may wonder if the book is really as bad as the negative review claims--and they check out the book for that reason. Positive reviews help, of course, but readers tend to suspect a book that gets only "all fives" reviews.

Reviewers vary in quality. In general, the most consistently good reviewers of fiction are those who are well-grounded in literary fiction. This may include genre reviewers who also read a great deal of literary fiction outside their particular genre.

Horror reviewers are no exception. Since the advent of the "New Horror" in the 1990s, there has been a division in the horror fiction community between those who want to see a higher, "more literary" style of horror fiction and those who remain in a more limited genre mode. A few years ago at the World Horror Convention I saw a confrontation between a writer of more literary horror with a more traditional panelist over rules of writing. The literary horror writer was more willing to bend the rules when needed, while the more traditional genre-oriented writer was more legalistic in approach. Some horror reviewers do not like for a horror novel or short story to explore aspects of universal human experience--they prefer old-fashioned scares and that's about it. Such reviewers would disagree with my position that Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness can count as a horror novel.

Literary horror reviewers may not appreciate a book that offers scares but fails to provide, through the story (show, don't tell, applies to all fiction writing) insight into human experience. I tend to get better reviews from either literary fiction reviewers are more literary oriented horror reviewers. More traditional genre reviewers tend not to like my work as well.

The approach of the reviewer makes a fundamental difference as to whether you receive a good or a bad review. I am trusting that you have done your homework in making your book as good as you can be--that it is a quality book. Some people, no matter who well-written your work, will like it; others will not. Reviews are opinions that are sometimes, though not always, backed up with facts. Take them in stride, and remember that any way to get your name out into the public, even though it might be through a negative book review, ultimately works in your favor.

Review of Richard Eberhardt, Collected Poems, 1930-1986

Collected Poems 1930-1986 by Richard Eberhart

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Richard Eberhart is my favorite contemporary poet, and this collection of all his published poems over a fifty-six year period is worth the read. There are a few weak poems, but they are limited to Eberhart's later career, and he later made up for them in his splendid volume, Maine Poems. Eberhart believed in the old Greek idea of the "divine madness" of the poet, and that what arose from the creative impulse did not require revision--thus much of his poetry is his original draft of the work. His poetry deals with universal themes--nature, God, childhood, growing up, and death--and though it skirts the border of over-abstraction, his poems manage, for the most part, to maintain their connection to the concrete world of experience. The anthology includes Eberhart's justly famous 1934 poem, "The Groundhog," and his 1944 poem, "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment." My personal favorite, concerning the loss of childhood, is "If I Could Only Live at the Pitch that is Near Madness." In this poem, childhood is "violent, vivid, and of infinite possibility," yet that stage is transcended when adulthood intervenes, when "....a realm of complexity came / Where nothing is possible but necessity / And the truth waiting there like a red babe."




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Review of Ivor Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence

The Nature Of Physical Existence by Ivor Leclerc

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Ivor Leclerc was for many years Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. The Nature of Physical Existence is a masterful account of the problems of substance, matter, and the continuum from the time of the ancient Greeks to the contemporary metaphysical system of Alfred North Whitehead. Leclerc thoroughly knows the tradition of the philosophy of nature, and the reader will discover new insights into the work of Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant. Leclerc's attention to the precritical writings of Kant alerts the reader to a side of Kant with which most contemporary philosophers are not familiar. Leclerc turns out to be an Aristotelian modified by some of the insights of Whitehead. He is fair to the tradition he critiques and points out that a revitalized philosophy of nature can close the gap between philosophy and science that began with the post-Enlightenment modern world view. I highly recommend this book to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars interested in the philosophy of nature and in metaphysics.



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The Difficulty of Following Up on Writing Ideas

Have you been busy at your job or driving and had what you thought was a great idea for a story? Suppose you get lucky and stop what you're doing (and stop your car at a safe place if you're driving), and you're able to write down your idea. Or perhaps you are at a writing conference that inspires you, and you leave, excited about developing the writing ideas you gleaned. You get home, put the ideas aside, and life intrudes. You forget about the ideas, misplace your notepad, or worse, lose what you've written down. All those great ideas--wasted.

I have had that experience many times. It is rare that I have totally lost ideas--usually I find a notepad months later. Resentment at having to be so busy at other things and anger at myself for not following up on an idea soon after developing it invade my thoughts--but such negativity does no good. Further reflection reveals that some of the ideas were not as brilliant as I thought at the time I wrote them down. Sometimes a few lines of poetry are good, and I am able to take off from what I'd written and write a complete first draft of a poem. Story ideas are more difficult--I find if I don't write the story immediately when I have the idea, it is difficult to return to it, at least with a short story. Ideas for novels are easier for me to follow up. Could I, or other writers, deal with busy lives in a way that allows them to develop their ideas into literature.

I first suggest that if you have an idea for a poem, make sure you complete a first draft of a poem that same day. You should at least add a plot outline and notes to your story ideas so that when you return to them, you will be able to continue where you left off. Have a file or some other place you can easily find where you place your writing ideas. Look through them from time to time, eliminating those that are duds and working on an idea you find promising. If I followed my own advice, I would complete many more writing projects. From now on I will try to follow my advice. This advice may help you, but all writers are different. Adjust any advice to your personality, work habits, and style. As long as you are producing quality work, you are doing something right. May all your good writing ideas come to fruition.