MCM's Blog, page 7

Madness

I was ready to write about reviewers and the need to balance literary markers in a story against the specific guidelines that define a genre, so a meaningful review is more than just ‘I liked this book’ or not. Seeing ‘this was a romance and I hate romance so I gave it two stars’ bugs me.

But while I was looking at reviews, I found a one star review of the series of books popularly known as ‘mommy porn’ and I got sidetracked. You will find the review virally all over the social media networks or at Goodreads if you want to search for it. It’s detailed and funny and a bit crass, with lots of moving pictures – [praise be the free use of images on the net. If anyone is watching film copyright, that review is packing an invoice for thousands of dollars in use and breach.] I’m not going to link to it and I’ll tell you why.

Since I intend to leave the uber-popular series unnamed, no press is bad press, I’ll leave it to your imagination and when I need an example I’ll drag out poor Stephenie Meyer and use her fine work.

I read an interesting article about the books being a catalyst for discussion on the role of pain in the modern world, but in truth, I have not seen such meaningful subjects drawn from its pages. I have seen a replay of the Twilight rants, with basically two sides: one – I love it, it’s hot; and the other – boo, hiss, crap, badly written etc.

The only time I have heard anyone try to determine why it has swept the world was a brief rant in New Statesman on the theory that it is criticised because it is porn, porn for women of a certain age, and mums aren’t supposed to read porn. All porn is badly written, it is argued, so what? This is titillation and fun for the taboo read – especially in ebooks where no one can see the cover.

I can’t agree with that. The digital fiction world is filled to brimming with erotica of all kinds, much of it written by authors who know the genre and who understand the specifics and appeal of various fetishes. Even the simple category romances on supermarket shelves, usually the ones with scarlet on the covers, are racy to a greater or lesser degree. Romance, especially erotic romance, has always sold well. Rarely however, do we see a single title raised across all marketing divides to claim the world’s, read media’s, attention.

When Twilight was released, as I have pointed out before, it emerged in a flood of positive press and raving reviews in newspapers and journals of repute. It had been established as the must-read before it began to draw the fierce criticisms it is now so well known for. Once those criticisms began, rather than losing impetus, the Twilight saga flared brighter by the day, with negative press only serving to fuel the fires. In a short space of time readers were given to believe they were the only living soul who had not read the books, and consequently were unable to join the debates on its merits or otherwise.

Readers of any publishing phenomenon must fall into two categories: those who have read and those who have not read. Have not read is no barrier to criticism and comment in today’s free range broadcast arenas. Those who have will have formed their own opinion and will, honestly or not, discuss that with their groups depending on what they consider to be the consensus. Those who have not will fall into three other categories. Those who want to read, those who will not read, and those who might but are undecided. Those who want to read have already been affected by the raging hype, those who will not have also been affected, and both groups will only read reviews to ensure they are supported by like minded individuals.

The undecideds are the only group who matter. They are as likely to be moved to read by negative hype as by positive. Many will say, ‘I have to read this for myself to know how I feel’ rather than being put off by savage attacks. Multiple one star reviews on Joe Blog’s latest KDP epic are likely to have him languish unread, but once the tinder is lit under these huge marketing locomotives, no press is bad press. Once the spark has made them viral and they are ripping up the internet chat sites and forums and facebook and G+ and youtube etc, every word about them stokes the blaze.

The brilliant one star review I mentioned first will not deter many at all. It might well prompt a whole group of will not reads to join the ranks of the have reads if only to see if it really is that bad.

The goal is to have everyone feel like they must be involved in the discussion. Virality and the need to be involved are not rare. Everyone knows the sneezing panda, the cynical kid, and the Boromir ‘one does not simply …’ memes. But these are 24hr fevers. They flash up, run amok, and disappear. They have no fuel under them.

Twilight emerged from a vast pool of supernatural romance which began, if I recall, with Silhouette Shadows and its like in about 1992. It was by no means unique; neither did it bring any literary excellence, nor did it bring any more adolescent angst than many other books, nor did it draw on any fabulous sensual tension. It was not outstanding in any way. Neither is this newly phenomenal title outstanding among erotica titles.

It is often pointed out that our failing education system and declining literacy is to blame, especially when our less literate YAs are consuming an enormous amount of written material from sites like Wattpad. Young people on the net are reading and writing more, if not correctly, than ever before and they no longer recognise quality, it is said. More importantly, however, our education system has failed to teach us all to think critically about and to question what is driving our thoughts and reactions.

Why do we keep trudging around the millwheel of arguments about the merits of these phenomena  instead of asking why, or who decides which books, bands, movies, etc will get the big splash of gold?

The unnamed series appears to me to be a marketer’s ideal – as if someone in sales said, erotica is popular, [just as they once said, YA supernatural romance is popular] – and they looked for an author to fit. MMF, LGBT and BDSM are the most popular erotica subjects out there now, and BDSM is least likely to alienate any part of the market. Rape fantasy is still considered, rightly or wrongly, to be the number one female erotic fantasy. If their chosen author did not know anything about erotica or BDSM or narcissism or misogyny, well, who’ll care? Marketers do not know about them either; it’s about shifting units and mass market manipulation, not literature. If the author knows nothing about literary techniques and 101 rules for writing, again, who’ll care?

In the end, no one.

Because the more people talk about the title, and argue and ridicule or rave about and recommend, the more they willingly do the work of an army of Mad Men. And no doubt those Mad Men have Google stats to monitor just how often the title is mentioned out here in the ether.

Hosts Wanted! A Blog Tour of Epic Proportions!

Looking for an exciting blog tour to join? I thought you were! Well aren’t you just in luck? Our upcoming YA Superhero fiction release, Legion of Nothing: Rebirth by Jim Zoetewey is being released at the end of July, and we’re looking for some great blog tour hosts to send off LON with a bang throughout the month of August!

Here’s a short blurb:



“You may kill somebody today. We won’t think anything less of you for it.”

Nick Klein’s grandfather was the Rocket.

For three decades, the Rocket and his team were the Heroes League–a team of superheroes who fought criminals in the years after World War II.

But Nick and his friends have inherited more than their grandparents’ costumes and underground headquarters… they’ve inherited the League’s enemies and unfinished business.

In the 1960′s, Red Lightning betrayed everyone, creating an army of supervillains and years of chaos. The League never found out why.

Now, Nick and the New Heroes League will have no choice but to confront their past.

We have been working closely with Jim to bring his popular webfiction series to new audiences, and keep at the forefont of independent, quality fiction for print and web alike.

Of course, as this is a blog tour, there are prizes:

Grand prize: Kindle + e-copy of LON for kindle

2nd: Hard copy of LON, LON tshirt

3rd: e-book bundle of LON and the Antithesis by Terra Whiteman (3-5 gift packs)

The above is in addition to the prize they can win on your post, if you choose to run a giveaway.

We hope you’ll come join us because this blog tour is going to be awesome! Contact our lovely assistant Merissa to join us and get more details! (She also does magic tricks).

merissa@1889.ca

Check out the Legion of Nothing teaser page just over here.

Ow, My Shoulders!

Are you familiar with rubies? The famous gemstone? They can be big or small, pale pink or deep crimson. They can be tiny pebbles or thick, coagulated droplets of the Earth’s blood. Imagine one the color of the setting sun, as big as that blazing disc as it shines through a cocoon of smog. You’re not supposed to stare directly at the Sun. It will destroy your vision. But never will you see a more beautiful sight, and so you take the risk. The color dazzles the eye, mesmerizes the brain. An extraterrestrial ember glows in the sky every night.

That’s the color of my shoulders after a vigorous sunburn.

I spent a long weekend at a rural lake cabin and the aforementioned sunburn was achieved during a rather spirited game of Water Toss with a lemon that we found floating in the water.

I also spent time in the lake floating around. And while I floated around on my back, listening to the snapping of tiger muskies, I let my mind drift.

Letting my mind drift isn’t a good idea if I have any deadlines that day. When my mind drifts its the kind of drift where you’re driving sideways and all you hear is tires squealing and smell burning rubber as you try to get your mind back on track. It takes a lot of skill and bravery to see the drift through to its conclusion. But when I’m on vacation its like my brain has hit the mental salt flats. It can go for miles with nothing to stop it.

It took a lot of photons, traveling very long distances, to scorch my shoulders. Those photons carried the fury of the Sun all the way to Earth.. But they also carried information, like how fiber optic cables carry information in packets of photons. The difference lies in the precision. Hyper intelligent engineers, upon whom modern society depends, calibrate fiber optic systems to extremely precise parameters. Without that precision, receivers could not decode the pulses of light careening down the glass cables.

Photons from the Sun also carry information: information about the state of the nuclear fusion going on inside the Sun. It’s all noise to us, like a firehose aimed at a teacup. No signal can be found in the chaotic stream of radiation bombarding the surface of the Earth. But if we could re-cast ourselves as gods who happened to be nuclear physicists and who tired of making baby demigods with muscular farmhands, we could infer the state of the Sun from the radiation arriving at our little planet.

Sort of like listening to an oncoming storm and hearing, behind the thunder and wind, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings.

The red splotches on my shoulders make it look like I got in a fight with a bottle of cranberry juice and lost, but they represent all of the solar information that hit my body. From fusion reaction to photon to skin to swearing to aloe vera.

The only connection that I comprehend between my burning shoulders and the Sun is a gross sense of cause and effect: the Sun has very powerful radiation, even from 93 million miles away. But if I were a god? I could trace the impact of each photon, its birth and death and its ancestry within the solar crucible.

A brilliant book is the Sun.

It shines with unrestrained ferocity. You only receive a fraction of its output because every story signifies different things to different people. A woman in her nineties who spent her youth in Europe the 1940s will experience Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon differently than I will, who spent my youth with my nose pressed up against a cathode ray tube. The book doesn’t change. The source is the same for every reader but the impact varies. And while you can attribute the biggest ideas and the broadest themes to a book as soon as you put it down, the deeper impacts matter more; they’re the ones that wrinkle your brain like the Sun will eventually wrinkle my skin. They penetrate so deeply that years will pass before their effects become apparent.

Likewise, some books scorch us like a cloudy day spent beneath an umbrella in winter, but we don’t make those kinds of books at 1889 Labs.

Word Gets Around by Paul Beckman

My Aunt Tess is allergic to everything. She belongs to an organization of other people who are also allergic to everything. During one of our weekly phone conversations she tells me about her “club”. The members can’t have a convention or even a meeting because of allergic reaction problems relating to transportation and hotels.

No one can leave her “safe spots”, she tells me, because the rest of the world doesn’t understand. “They think of us as crazy or neurotic.”

I looked up the word neurotic and I now see Aunt Tess in a different light. My mother is almost never available for these Sunday talks with her sister. She’s a therapist and is always on call Sunday nights. When Aunt Tess phones, mom is most likely to have left on an emergency to see one of her clients. Mom says that depression sets in over the weekend when people are alone and not socializing and that’s why she hears from them on Sunday nights.

“Be a good girl and talk to Aunt Tess for me,” she says on her way out the door every week. She does stay home and talk to Aunt Tess every fourth Sunday because she can get someone to cover for her she says.

Mom must be meeting her clients at a bowling alley because she always leaves with her bowling shoes in her pocketbook. I only found out because I went into her bag looking for a stick of gum. Okay, so maybe I snoop. That’s what twelve-year-old girls do. If it’s not her pocketbook, it’s her dresser drawers I poke in while she’s not around. We’re the same size now and I can fit into her dresses but she doesn’t like me wearing them even though I offer to let her wear my clothes. Mom’s very possessive.

Aunt Tess says the happiest day of my Dad’s life was the day he died because he could look forward to not being bossed around anymore. I was an infant, so I didn’t know him, but still I think that Aunt Tess shouldn’t say that to me so often. She and my mother are always putting each other down to me. Mom is polite to her on the phone and even sounds concerned but all the while she’s talking To Aunt Tess she’s making faces and gestures. Mom doesn’t have patience for her sister. She has great patience for her patients. I know—I hear her on the phone with them. I wonder if she would have patience with Aunt Tess if she became one of Mom’s patients. I asked Mom about it and she said that it’s not ethical to have your sister as a patient.

“Why don’t you ask your Aunt Tess how she knows so many people like her if none of them can get around?” My Mother says.

“I know your mother put you up to asking me that,” Aunt Tess says, “but I’ll tell you anyway. It’s very simple. Word gets around.”

Makes sense, I thought.

“Bullshit,” Mom said when I told her.

It doesn’t help Aunt Tess’s case that she’s allergic to almost every food known to man with a few interesting exceptions. “I don’t understand it myself, “she tells me while chewing on a pretzel she has shipped in from the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. She makes loud cracking sounds over the phone with each bite she takes into the hard pretzel. She can eat any fruit, except grapefruit, as long as it comes from Harry and David. Mom says T always hated grapefruit—even as a kid. “Thank God for Omaha Steaks,” Aunt Tess tells me, “or I’d never be able to have any red meat again.”

There’s more. She can eat Skippy smooth peanut butter, Welch’s Grape Jelly and Arnold’s Seeded Rye Bread. And, what I consider a real lucky break; she can eat Dominos pepperoni pizza. There’s more, but it’s not a long list. “Why I can eat Mallomars and not Oreos is a mystery to me,” she says.

Mom says that she can solve the mystery. “Your Aunt Tess is a wacko, and that’s my professional opinion. “Don’t you find it strange that she can only eat food that can be delivered or ordered from a catalog, or food she loved as a kid?” she asks me.

“The mind works in mysterious ways,” I tell Mom, using the same phrase she has used to explain things to me over the years when she hasn’t wanted to take the time to go into detail. Mom looks at me as if I’ve crossed over to the enemy.

We didn’t hear from Aunt Tess for two Sundays so Mom called her on Monday. The phone rang about a dozen times and then Mom heard it answered and knocking against something as if someone dropped the receiver. Finally she heard Aunt Tess yell “hello.” My mother made the crazy sign with her finger next to her head and said, “T, can you hear me?”

Aunt Tess yelled for Mom to yell so she could hear her.

“Why do we have to yell?” Mom asked.

“Because I’m allergic to holding the phone to my head. It came on suddenly and causes rashes and pin prickly feelings. I’m lying with my head on the floor just inches away from the phone,” She yelled.

“Have you thought of getting a speaker phone?” Mom asked.

“I can’t hear you,” Aunt Tess yelled. “I’m getting a speaker phone this week and then everything will be back to normal.”

“That’s a frightening thought,” Mom said softly.

“I heard that,” Aunt Tess yelled.

“You were supposed to,” Mom said. “I was testing a different vocal range.”

Aunt Tess’s phone suddenly went dead and Mom told me she hoped T would not get a phone for a while.

Aunt Tess called the next day to try out her speakerphone. It was also voice activated so she wouldn’t break out from dialing. Aunt Tess kept mom on the phone for an hour. I wasn’t home so I had to hear all the details from Mom’s point of view. “T was always different,” Mom said. “Even as a kid she did outrageous things to get the attention she craved.”

“What kind of things?” I asked.

“In seventh grade she carried balloons around for a week and when she spoke she inhaled helium first. She only stopped after she was suspended for a day.”

“What else?” I laughed.

“She dressed our cocker spaniel in her baby clothes and pushed her around the park in her old baby carriage. Whenever someone leaned over the carriage to have a look at the baby the dog would snarl and try to attack the person. She did that for an entire summer.”

“She sounds like a fun sister,” I told Mom. Mom just looked at me as if to say you don’t know the half of it.

Aunt Tess wanted Uncle Mel to sell their house in San Francisco that looked over the bay because she woke up one morning allergic to the house. There wasn’t one room in the house that didn’t cause her some kind of discomfort. Uncle Mel called Tara and Tanya, their twin daughters to come in and talk to their mother. He wanted them to talk her out of this latest craziness but instead they accused him of being insensitive.

They both left school to find a home that their mother could live in and they succeeded. In an alternative magazine they found a trailer in the woods that was owned by a woman who was allergic to everything but the trailer. She’d had it stripped down and cleaned with this special chemical combination that was recommended for “their” disease and she and her husband lived there for seven years. They took pictures and brought them back to their mom and then their dad drove out to see the trailer. The land was gorgeous. It was just outside of Santa Rosa on two acres of mostly pine trees with a brook. He was devastated—giving up his great City house to live in a trailer in the woods. Their mother liked the pictures and pushed their father to buy it and sell their San Francisco home.

He compromised and bought the trailer but rented out the house. For a year they lived together in this tiny trailer that was really no more than a large camper and their father commuted to work in the city. At the end of the year both his patience and the lease was up and he moved back to San Francisco alone and visited on weekends. Then his visits went from every weekend to one day a weekend and finally to once a month. The girls have very little contact with him although they stay in the house in San Francisco during school breaks and summers. Sometimes they stay with their mother but they find it too traumatic. They still blame their father for abandoning her and see no correlation between their behavior and his.

Uncle Mel’s been calling Mom quite frequently and Mom only has the greatest sympathy for him. “That man’s been a saint,” she told me. “The things he’s put up with would have driven anyone else away years ago.”

The next week she told me she was going to San Francisco for a conference and I asked her if she was going to see Aunt Tess since she was going to be in California anyway.

“California’s a big state,” she said. “This is all business and I won’t have time so don’t even tell her I’ll be out there. It’ll just make her feel bad.”

Soon after she asked us not to mention that Uncle Mel has become a frequent visitor.

*   *   *

Paul Beckman is a frequently published author of short stories, flash & micro fiction. Some publishing credits: Exquisite Corpse, Connecticut Review, Soundzine, 5 Trope, Playboy, Web del Sol, Long Story Short, The Scruffy Dog Review, Other Voices, Raleigh Review, Connotation Press, Microliterature, The Molotov Cocktail, The Brooklyner & The Boston Literary Review.

Why I stopped reading.

I stopped reading a while ago.

Now I’ve never been a compulsive reader, but for most of my life I’ve had a book on the go. One or two crusty paperbacks, with folded over pages or an old price tag or shopping docket sticking out to mark my place, were likely to be found lying beside the bed, on the dining table, and one or two beside the loo.

I didn’t really notice that I had stopped reading; it just sort of ground to a halt as I lost interest in whatever it was I had begun at the time. Why? Partly because I like bookstores more than I like books. I love them. I can lose hours in a bookstore browsing and I hate to spend hours doing anything and coming home with nothing to show for it. So going into a bookstore means buying at least one book to read. That wouldn’t be a problem on its own.

I also like a bargain, so I buy boxes of secondhand books from online marketplaces. The last box I bought, a long while ago, held eighty books. That is such a bargain, or it would be if I had been able to read them all.

But having books is no guarantee they’ll be read. One thing makes reading a certainty. I give books a third of their page count to have me so gripped I do not want to put them down. The only thing that ensures a book will be read from cover to cover is that it is compelling. I don’t mind a build-up; I’ll allow some latitude, but if I start checking how thick the book is, chances are it will be put down and forgotten. If I start getting the irrits with the voice of the author, or if I have no emotional connection to the characters, or if the plot is more a plod – it’s gone.

Once reading a book becomes a chore it is over for me.

There are times in my life when I have mountains of text to read. It always needs full concentration and often needs critique. I go into a mode to read that much. I do not enjoy it; I watch the clock and I get through it like wading through a mangrove swamp. When I have a lot of nonfiction to read, I do not have any patience with unsatisfying fiction.

As I age, the act of reading gets harder, too. My eyes tire faster than they used to, my concentration lapses. I tend to nod off unexpectedly, and wake with a fright and a stiff neck and a little spot of drool on my shirt. I take medications that make the text appear to move, or my head fill with cotton, or my mind wander. It takes a power of will to be engrossed in a story if the author does not provide that incentive for me.

I am so busy. There is always something or someone that needs my attention. Books are squashed into the spaces around doing, eating, and sleeping. They have to be exceptional to hold their own.

Finding something worthwhile in the genres I enjoy has become an impossibility. There is always something good to find in the genre I will dare to call ‘Literary fiction’. The well recommended. The beautifully written novels that stand alone at the bookstore or on the Classics shelf. They are not always to my taste, but the score rate is high for quality. The truth is, however, they are often a bit dark and painful. I usually want to read to lighten the mood, not to suffer the frigid winters along with a family stricken by the bonds of human suffering.

I don’t enjoy reading Romance because it is so rigidly formulaic. It is rare to find an author who can produce the right balance between good writing and hitting exact markers for plot and characters. That is common complaint with Romance, but I find it has become true for fantasy and sci fi, too, and for political thrillers etc. I do not want to be able to predict the end or the next sentence of dialogue.

They are some of the reasons I stopped reading. All of publishing has become a mush of rules and guidelines that stamped out any individual voices and bashed stories into a set and predictable pattern and I simply do not have the patience to endure it all again and again and again.

The emergence of online fiction, in webserials, primarily, and in ebooks as they take their place in the storybook world, has brought me a renewed vigour for reading. I find things I want to read. I now buy paperbacks which I am able to deliberate over before I rush to the counter with an ill-considered purchase. I have an ereader which I have packed full of the work of people I have followed and watched develop and that I know I will enjoy. I have a computer screen that takes my attention away from boring work reading, because I know I can flip up a short episode of a serial I enjoy and give myself a break from reality.

There is a heavy demand for everyone’s time and attention in our modern world. What are the things that keep you reading, or have you tossing books at the wall in disgust? Worse still, is there something that makes you wander away from a story without even feeling angry – just dissatisfied and bored? Are there barriers to your enjoyment of a book that all authors should keep in mind?

Interview with Horror Author Richard Schiver

A little about you, first. Do you have any hidden talents?

RS: I wouldn’t call it hidden, but aside from writing, I’m a pretty proficient woodworker. I enjoy working with my hands, creating something beautiful, and functional from a plain block of wood.

Tell us about Shadows of the Past — what themes does it tackle?

RS: Shadows of the Past is a horror novel that delves into the power the past has over all of us, and how it can blind us to what we have in the present. Be it our personal past, or just the past in general. The protagonist Sam Hardin, and the Antagonist Jack Griffith have both come face to face with a greater evil at one point or another in their respective pasts. One rejected it, the other embraced it. That act laid the groundwork for where they find themselves as the novel opens.

Is there anything you want readers to take away from your writing?

RS: I want them to be satisfied. I’m not looking to change a person’s life or outlook on the world around them. I’d like them to find my characters interesting and entertaining enough to follow them to the end of the story and come away looking forward to my next release.

Which other indie authors do you recommend or admire?

RS: Ian Woodhead, Armand Rosamila, and Bryan Hall.

Ian and Armand because they have each a very strong voice in their writing. Bryan because he has a style that effortlessly draws one into the story.

Lastly, what question should we have asked you, and why?

RS: Where do I get my ideas?

Everyone wants to know how a writer comes up with their unique view of the world.

My ideas come from my Idea Box. It’s a shadowy corner of my mind where all the little snippets and tid-bits of information I come across daily swirls about in a perpetual storm. Every so often two odd bits will collide and I’ll look at the result. From there it will percolate as I add substance until something resembling a story emerges.

About Richard Schiver

Richard Schiver is a life long reader whose love of the written word was sparked at the age of seven. He learned he could go anywhere in the world simply by opening a book. When he’s not writing he can be found in his wood shop making a mess, or in the back yard tossing the ball for Max, one of the guys, a 97 lb yellow Labrador Retriever. The rest of the guys include a Siberian Husky, a Heinz 57 mutt, neither of which will chase the ball, and a Himalayan Flame point cat who at all of eleven pounds rules the roost.

Review: Conditioned Response by Marjorie F Baldwin

Shayla didn’t ask to be a Councillor. As a Phoenician, she shouldn’t have to live among the humans, let alone take part in their world. But the Seven Chiefs ordered her to go with Raif, a Proctor from the world Outside. They said they had a Plan. Well, the Seven Chiefs always had a Plan, and Shayla had plans of her own after suffering 13 years as a member of the humans’ World Council.

Raif had never intended for things to go this far. A few months, maybe a year, and he could send the little Phoenician girl home again, back where she belonged. She’s not a little girl anymore and now he finds himself in competition with his own progenitor for control over his Heir–and future. It’s not a Councillor’s job to protect a Proctor but that’s just what Raif needs right now. Can Shayla save him before he loses his mind completely?

A fast-paced, Classic SciFi that reads more like a mystery with a Romantic SF thread woven in. Set in the far-future on an alien world, humanity’s last remnants are trying to save the species from extinction. Huxley-ian eugenics in a Classic Dystopian caste system are artfully blended with an Asimov-ian “machine-turned-man” story by first-time Author Marjorie F. Baldwin.

*****

Conditioned Response was not an easy book to review. As is my practice, once I had my own thoughts and feelings outlined I went back through the reviews others had provided. What I found pinpointed exactly the problem I needed to define in order to explain the difficulty I was having.

Many of the reviewers had loved this book and for good reason. Those who enjoy a detailed social Sci-Fi in the old tradition, where complex societies are presented and peopled by solid, complicated personalities, have found one of the best examples written recently. Conditioned Response is multi-layered, weaving together a number of intriguing social, personal, and political mysteries into a fast paced thriller.

The representation of this future human colony and its imperialistic disdain for the powerful indigenous people rings as true as any page of history. Caste discrimination, human trafficking, genetic regulation, sexual intimidation and violence, power-at-all-cost-manipulation of men and minds – all these things seem to rise from an inevitability we recognize in the societies we share today. And on that base the story, or more rightly stories, are masterfully built.

So, you wonder, if it was all so very good, what caused the difficulty in trying to find a fitting rating for the book.

Like those who rated the story much lower, aspects I value very highly in a book were not strong, or were missing entirely.

To begin with, I found the story slow to start. That is necessary to some degree in any very complex world where many characters have to be introduced and understood in context, but I found that I was a third of the way in before things really started to move. We had not travelled further than Shayla’s office or lab, and all that time was spent in dense slabs of repetitive dialogue. That tendency for the characters to launch into paragraph after paragraph of oration was tightened as the book progressed, but I found it tough going for some time. Nothing happened to break the weight of the initial narrative dump.

And the thing which I missed most was a deep emotional connection to any of the characters. These people had suffered and went on to suffer great traumas and violence, and yet, the reader is held at a distance. There is no feeling of experiencing the horror from within, no sharing of the pain with the main characters. No immediacy.

As an example, [difficult to find without some sort of spoiler attached] early in the story we learn that as a very young woman, an alien child alone in a strange human society, Shayla was brutally raped by her fellow Councillor. When the event is first mentioned, Shayla herself dismisses the memory as if it was bad, but not something she chose to dwell on. Shortly after, Raif describes the terrible injuries Shayla had suffered when he first met her. These injuries were the result of the rape, and included a broken pelvis.

Now this is horrendous. This is the rape of a defenseless child, alone and attacked by someone who should have been her protector. And yet the events are narrated as if they are simply part of a distant history; we hear nothing of the anguish. None of the terror or the pain, none of the trauma this woman had survived – which any empathic reader can imagine – is brought forward with force by the author. This kind of distance left me with a coolness toward all of the main characters that I would like to have had heated.

What I deduce from this is that enjoyment depends on the expectation of the reader when they pick up a copy of Conditioned Response to read. Those who want Sci-Fi that does not depend on Michael-Bay-bangs and special-effect diversions will love the dense plotting and careful world-building. Those who want to feel deep connection with the characters themselves, and prefer the romantic/erotic threads of a fantastic storyline are more likely to be disappointed.

All up, I am happy to give FOUR STARS, because while allowing for where Marjorie F Baldwin was not strong, what she does do well, she does very well indeed.

*****

About Marjorie F Baldwin:

Please call me Friday, I was named after the title character in Robert A. Heinlein’s book about Artificial People. I write SciFi, usually Classic, speculative stuff set in a dystopian future. My influences have been Robert A. Heinlein, Lois McMaster Bujold, Isaac Asimov, Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells, and John Scalzi.

The first full-length novel I ever wrote was Conditioned Response, which is now Book 2 of The Phoenician Series. The series will be at least 3 or 4 books long but I can see myself writing prequels easily enough. I’m releasing Book 2 first because Book 1 hasn’t been written yet.

The series will ultimately reveal who and what the Phoenicians are and reveal the Plan of the Seven Chiefs, but each book is its own, independent chapter of the Plan.

A New Generation of Teenage Superheroes

As you may have heard, we will be publishing the young adult superhero series The Legion of Nothing by Jim Zoetewey.

The Legion of Nothing: Rebirth, the first volume of the series, is a coming-of-age story about Nick Klein, a teenager who has inherited his grandfather’s superhero identity and powered armor. But with power comes responsibility, for Nick has also inherited his grandfather’s unfinished business. Between homework, corrupted politicians, teenage relationships and supervillains, Nick struggles to solve the city’s corruption–before it solves him.

In Jim’s own words:

“The story comments on the various ages of comic book history, and people who know their superhero fiction recognize them instantly. But I deliberately chose points of difference important to comic book and superhero fans. For example, characters grow gradually older, and when a character dies, they’re really dead. No resurrections. Set in the non-existent city of Grand Lake [read Grand Rapids], I let the characters live the life of any teenager in West Michigan.”

Needless to say, I’m delighted Jim has chosen to publish his serial with us.

The Legion of Nothing began serializing online over on inmydaydreams.com in 2007 and is still going strong. Over the last few months, we’ve edited, revised and fine-tuned the first part of the series… and I hope you enjoy the finished product.

Please give Jim a warm welcome and — if you like your superheroes kickass and with a hint of humour — keep an eye out for the book, coming soon.

Read any good Transformative Fanworks lately?

Me neither, BUT that is only because it is not my scene. Many, many, many writers began their online careers writing fan fic, and its popularity never wanes. If you love a show, a genre, a cartoon, a comic, a book, a series, a serial or even movie, you can read on outside the box.

Hava a look at:

Archive of Our Own. The Archive of Our Own is a fan-created, fan-run, non-profit, non-commercial archive for transformative fanworks, such as fanfiction and fanart.

Ashton Press Fan Fic site directory.

Fanzines from Ashton Press . We have zines available in many different fandoms, including Highlander, Supernatural, Stargate Atlantis, Miami Vice, Blakes 7, Man from UNCLE, Stargate SG-1, Rat Patrol, Star Wars, Alias Smith & Jones, the Western genre, and multi-media. We carry both adult and “gen” titles. At this link you’ll find details about all of our zines, including excerpts of text, samples of artwork, and descriptions of zine contents. We’re accepting submissions for a whole slew of new Stargate zines, including some brand new titles. We’re accepting submissions for Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Supernatural and Boston Legal zines and we also can publish stand-alone novellas or novels!

FanFiction – Unleash You Imagination. Everything you could want – plus forums.

Winglin Fan Fiction. Provide a simple yet elegant way to post and edit a story. Organize a story for easy navigation. Allow customization of display options. Included with each story is a mailing list, whose subscribers will receive automatic e-mail notifications whenever a new chapter of the story is posted. Included with each story is a guest-book style message board, where readers could leave feedback and comments. The author has an option to receive an automatic e-mail notification whenever a new feedback/comment is posted. The author could also delete malicious comments on the message board.

Anime Fanfiction. We have 298 stories and 3038 registered authors.

And if you are concerned about the legalities of your beloved characters:

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse Fan Fiction. When authors write stories featuring characters from other stories, movies or TV shows in new situations or adventures, these works of “fan fiction” (see FAQ: “What is FanFic?”) may run into legal challenges because the borrowed characters, scenes or plots may be protected from unauthorized use under intellectual property laws. Specifically, fan fiction authors could be faced with copyright or trademark infringement claims. This page explains the rights original authors have under copyright and trademark law and gives fan fiction authors information about when their works might infringe those rights and what might happen as a result. Authors can use this information to understand the legal issues involved and to avoid infringement of other’s works while creating fan fiction. We explain two major sources of intellectual property rights which fan fiction authors could infringe.

Who do you recommend? Anyone, even your own site. Go on, spread the love.

Top Ten Tips for Authors:On Bio Writing

by Lauren Clark

I’ll admit it–I’m a book cover junkie! I love an eye-catching concept, great colors, and crisp, bold graphics. A great cover will get me to pick up a novel… but then I have to read the summary… and check out the author bio!

Anytime I’m shopping in a bookstore, or checking out a novel online, you’ll find me turning to a book’s inside back flap (or clicking through the Kindle pages) and reading the paragraph below the author photo.

If you’ve ever tried to write a bio–your own included–you know that it’s a challenging process! Here are my Top Ten Tips for making ‘Bio Writing’ a little easier and a lot more fun!

Read author bios from ten to twenty different books. Jot down what you like and don’t like.

Write out another list–this time, 20 to 30 things about you! What do you enjoy? What makes you interesting? Don’t leave anything out. Then, choose the best elements to include.

If you’re writing the bio for your first novel, it can be as short and sweet. Shoot for about 50 words or fewer.

Convey your personality and writing style. Don’t try too hard to be funny, but do include something that makes you seem like a real person. Do you cook? Love to hike? Stargaze?

Relate it to the genre in which you are writing–if you’re writing a novel about a marathon runner–and you love to compete in 5Ks or just completed your first triathlon, mention it!

What gives you credibility? Are you a member of a professional organization? Have you published any articles? Written for a newspaper or magazine?

Hit the highlights. You don’t need long lists of resumé information (education, job history).

What helps people connect with you? (Twitter handle, Facebook page, website, or blog)

Have at least one other person (who is not a relative or BFF) read and critique your bio.

Sleep on it. Have a different person read and critique your bio. Revise and update as needed!

What do you think? Share your best bio writing tip!

About Lauren Clark

Lauren Clark is the author of Stay Tuned and Dancing Naked in Dixie. She writes contemporary novels set in the Deep South; stories sprinkled with sunshine, suspense, and secrets.

A former TV news anchor, Lauren adores flavored coffee, local bookstores, and anywhere she can stick her toes in the sand. Her big loves are her family, paying it forward, and true-blue friends. Check out her website at www.laurenclarkbooks.com. You can also find Lauren on GoodReads, Twitter, and Facebook.