Harry Connolly's Blog, page 32

UNBOUND preorders available

The anthology I’m going to be appearing in–with Jim Butcher, Mary Robinette Kowal, Seanan McGuire, Joe Abercrombie, and Terry Brooks–is available for preorder. Check out the cover art and the table of contents.

My contribution is set during the events of The Way into Chaos. (Spoilers!)

In the Midst of Death, by Lawrence Block

In the Midst of Death by Lawrence Block

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Matt Scudder is a former cop and an unlicensed private investigator. Sometimes he does favors for people, and they give him money as a favor in return. This time he’s hired by a cop who’s accused of extortion; can Scudder convince the accuser to retract?

Of course things get complicated and there’s a murder. The cop claims he’s been framed by other cops, and Scudder is the only one who can help.

This is early in the series, when Scudder was still drinking heavily. It was much later that he joined a 12 step program and struggled to keep his life together. I’m not sure which version I prefer.

The weird thing is that, while I enjoyed the book–the tone, the characters, the plot–I’d completely forgotten I’d read it before. Read it and didn’t remember it at all, except for one sentence. I rarely reread deliberately, and this isn’t a book I would have tackled again if I’d recognized that utterly generic title.

Buy this book.

61 Hours by Lee Child.

61 Hours by Lee Child

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Jack Reacher novels are interesting, in that they’re enjoyable but not particularly involving. Reacher is the basic competence-porn thriller hero, who can work out where a fugitive has run off to after nothing more than a brief phone call, but doesn’t recognize the killer when the plot needs him to assume something else.

The heroic levels of research that books like this are built on is often the best part, like reading an oddball magazine article on, say, congressional boondoggles during the Cold War. Unfortunately, “Show the research” can be intrusive, too. When Reacher is handed a gun, do we need a rundown of the manufacturer’s founding like some Wikipedia copy pasta? Nope. We get it anyway.

The climax was so absurd that I threw credulity aside and enjoyed it as camp. I prefer thrillers that strain credulity, and know it. It’s fun.

Buy this book

Child of Fire on sale

I woke up this morning and saw this:

In case you missed it, CHILD OF FIRE by @byharryconnolly is a $1.99 e-book special! (Featured today on @BookBub).

— Sarah Prineas (@SPrineas) September 21, 2015

I don’t subscribe to BookBub‘s newsletter (which shares promotional deals with large numbers of readers, and is a powerful marketing tool) but I do know they’re choosy about which books they choose. Anyway, it seems that today they’ve chosen mine. It was submitted by Del Rey, of course, and they didn’t let me know about it, of course.

Still, Bookbub favors sale prices, and that means the ebook edition of Child of Fire is on sale right now for only $1.99. If you haven’t read it, here’s your chance (buy links at the bottom of that page).

What makes a classic, according to a 13 year old

On Thursday afternoon, I was working with my son on his homeschool reading. He’d just finished Fahrenheit 451, and he explained that he liked the chase scenes at the end more than the setup at the beginning and middle.

“It seems to me,” he explained, “that in books that are considered classics, they’re more concerned with the… psychology of the characters than in the chase stuff.”

I agreed with him.

That night was family movie night. we picked MARATHON MAN, which was on Netflix Streaming. Spy thrillers are a big hit with the kid, because he’s a big fan of, as he puts it, “smart people being smart.” That’s why he prefers Mission Impossible to James Bond, and why he had an allergic reaction to Dumb and Dumber.

Anyway, Marathon Man’s dental stuff went by without much comment, but the movie was slow (compared to the stuff we make the time to see in the theater) and it was low-key, and it was concerned with the relationship between the characters. When it was over, I asked him what he thought.

“I liked some parts.”

That’s his answer when he finds long stretches of a film kinda dull.

“It’s a classic seventies thriller. Remember what we said earlier about classics? The long shots of people’s faces, or the awkward conversations they have, are their to show the psychology, like you said. Maybe the greatest story ever would combine the character and the exciting event, but we can’t all be Shakespeare.”

Then he nodded and pointed at me, and retreated to his bedroom to draw or read his latest light novel. Anything to avoid a longer conversation about a movie or book.

My wife squeezed my hand and said “Very good. Very good.” She’s happy when we can explicitly tie movie night into his schooling. “But it was pretty slow.”

Three Shows I Watch on Netflix That I Won’t Be Recommending Ever

Somewhere in my list of incomplete blog posts I have a piece I’ve started months ago about forgiving the shows you enjoy. Everyone does it. Everyone has to. A terrific show has a weak episode, or a joke that’s in bad taste, or a special effect that looks fake as hell, and you shrug it off, because the rest is worthwhile.

Well, this post is going to be about TV shows I watch(ed) on Netflix that were in some ways wonderful, but which have flaws that are so egregious that I don’t recommend them to anyone. First up:

FINDER

Premise:

An Iraqi veteran receives a head injury that changes his personality and thought processes so that he can discern connections other people would never notice, making him a savant when it comes to finding lost items and people.

What Works:

Geoff Stultz is fantastic as Walter, the veteran who has been so completely changed that he cares about almost nothing except whatever he’s obsessed with finding at the moment. The late Michael Clarke Duncan is wonderful as the kind-hearted, staunchly ethical friend and business manager. Like a lot of shows, the relationship between the regular characters is what sells it. Walter is brilliant and erratic, but once he starts searching for something, he becomes obsessed and can’t stop. He has also lost much of the social skills he used to have, so the people around him are always trying to protect him, especially from himself.

And yeah, it’s a bit of a Sherlock Holmes thing, but with actual humor and some irrational processes. The lost items Walter is sent to find is usually a person, but not always. The walk-on roles for each episode have complexity to them, and the show benefits from not having the same old same old in every episode. Great idea for a premise, well executed.

Why I Don’t Recommend it:

That would be the vicious racism. Note for creative people of all types: “gypsy” is not synonymous with “gangster” or “career criminal”.

DEATH IN PARADISE

Premise:

A humorless, uptight detective from London finds himself transferred to an island paradise in the Caribbean, and he hates it.

What Works:

Most TV shows sink or sail based on the relationships between the main cast, and this fairly standard episodic whodunnit (complete with a “gather all the suspects to reveal the murderer” climax) leans heavily on the main cast. But it works. DI Richard Poole hates the heat, sun, sand, and relaxed lifestyle of the Caribbean–he even hates the run down (but beachfront! with gorgeous view!) house assigned to him. He insists on clinging to the symbols of his authority–especially the jacket and ties–because he just can’t adapt.

It’s a funny show. Not in a “hilarious belly-laugh” sort of way, but they’ve cast charismatic actors (including the guy who played Cat on Red Dwarf) and everything clicks. They even play fair with the clues. There’s some unfortunate stuff with the lead actress–TV is always trying to cram romantic story lines where they don’t belong–but it didn’t work and they recognized that and backed off.

Plus: gorgeous scenery.

Why I Don’t Recommend It:

The pilot episode starts with the current DI being murdered, and Poole is sent to investigate, then trapped in the assignment. However, as the third season started, the actor playing Poole wanted out (apparently for personal reasons: too much time shooting on the islands away from his family). So, to bring in a new DI, they did the same thing as in the pilot: they murdered the old one.

Some shows kill off characters all the time. Game of Thrones kills characters you love and hate every episode, it seems. But this? Not that kind of show. DI Poole is a comic figure, and we like him, and seeing him murdered, up close, with an ice pick… well, let’s just say the fun was spoiled.

Of course they had to bring in a replacement lead, and he had to not quite fit in without being identical to the previous character’s predicament. While it’s not the actor’s fault, the new character is ridiculous and the rhythm is ruined.

Maybe watch the first two seasons and pretend the rest doesn’t exist? Or not.

THE GOOD GUYS

Premise:

Fussy, rule-abiding Detective Jack Bailey is partnered with old-school rule-breaking Detective Dan Stark because the whole department hates them both, and no one can stand to have them around. They’re given the pettiest, most bullshit crimes to investigate which always leads to a major case.

What Works:

Jack thinks it’s a good idea to correct his superiors’ grammar, and Dan won’t stop talking about the time he and his old partner saved the governor’s son back in the 80’s (and that there was a TV movie of the week made about it). Together they’re an excellent double act (straight man and comic) and the show is pretty funny, even though it doesn’t have as many laughs as it probably should have.

The crimes the leads are given to investigate–smashed vending machine, stolen dry cleaning–are handed out like insults, but somehow the people involved always connect to a huge crime that no one else in the department knows about. The plots are structured like a farce, and each episode wraps up with an extended comic action scene like a shootout or car chase.

The villains are also great characters, from the vegan bank robber to the good old boys who think it’s their patriotic duty to steal cars from British criminals. Really, as fun as the plots can get, and as strong as the two leads are in their roles, it’s the attention to creating interesting, quirky villains in the Elmore Leonard mode that makes the show work.

Why I Don’t Recommend It:

The moment for a show like this has passed, hasn’t it?

It’s one thing to feature a comicly ridiculous rule-breaking cop to make fun of the trope of the renegade cop, but we’ve seen rule-breaking cops in real life, and the effect they have is anything but comic. So, it’s a fun show, but some people will take it with a heavy dose of ick.

I took 4 days off writing. Here’s why that’s okay.

A while ago, I tweeted this:

PRO WRITING TIP: A great way to motivate yourself to write pages is to imagine yourself on your deathbed, regretting your unwritten books.

— writer of some sort (@byharryconnolly) September 9, 2015

I joke a lot on Twitter, but that’s an actual thing I do to motivate me to get out of bed: I imagine the burning regret I will feel for every minute of my wasted life, because there have been a lot of them.

For me, a lot of the work I’ve done to make myself a better writer has been about increasing my productivity. When I first started out, I could barely get through a few hundred words a day. Finishing anything took forever, and everything I finished was mostly bullshit, and it was all so incredibly hard.

It took me a while to realize why I couldn’t get anything done: I’m easily distracted. Looking out the window, checking the internet, oooh that book looks interesting… all of it stole my time and attention away.

Then there’s the daydreaming, and I don’t mean about my characters or what they’re feeling. I’m talking about stupid shit like wondering if I could hit one of the rats running through the tree outside with an arrow, or what I would say to encourage JRR Tolkien if I could time travel back to the time he was struggling with Fellowship…. Really useless, stupid shit.

But I learned that working slowly was hurting me. Too many word echoes. Too many continuity errors. Poor pacing. I became a much better writer when I taught myself to speed up. I’m still not all that fast, but I’m better than I was.

The thing is, I suspect I’ve hit my personal upper limit.

Recently, I challenged myself to accomplish 10k words a week, with the added incentive that I could take days off, guilt-free, if I hit goal early. Why not? I’d certainly managed 2k or 2.5K on dedicated writing days. If I could manage five days of two thousand words each, I could take two whole days off and feel fine about it.

And it worked. For one week. Then I had to stop because I realized I was just typing out weirdly detailed extraneous bullshit about every minute detail of whatever behavior was happening in my mind’s eye. Everything was draggy and dull and bloated. So I stopped, tossed aside my dumb new plan, and took a couple of days to do nothing.

Check out Chuck Wendig’s post here about his productivity. Chuck writes quickly, finishing a few books a year. His stuff is popular (unless you love Mandalorians more than you probably should) and he gets critical raves, too. But, as he says in his post, this is what works for him. As much as I would like to be that prolific, it just ain’t gonna happen. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

(One place I would disagree with Chuck is this statement: “Fourth and finally, and I’m mighty sorry to report this, but a full-time writing career is not easily maintained by writing slowly.” I’d suggest a writing career isn’t easily maintained in general, and there are plenty of authors doing very well releasing books slowly. GRRM, Susanna Clarke, Pat Rothfuss, and Scott Lynch each have probably sold more copies of their latest than I will sell in a lifetime, but it has nothing to do with writing books quickly)

And this is why (to finally get around to the point of this post) I would warn people against gamifying your writing output. Yeah, I just spent a couple hundred words talking about increasing productivity and finding what works for you, but turning your process into a game, with points and levels, strikes me as leaning way too hard on productivity.

Because increasing productivity can be harmful to our work and our legacy, if we’re lucky enough to have one. It might be pleasant to award ourselves points for submitting stories, but if the stories don’t sell, then what good is it? Better to award points for actually selling work to a publisher, which supposedly writers can’t control, but if the work is solid and we’re putting them into the hands of buyers, we’ll eventually hit the mark.

And that’s why I cut off a productivity experiment. It was turning my fast-paced thriller into yet another bloated fantasy, and that sucks. Yeah, it would be great to write four books a year that were critical and popular darlings. It would be great to write a book every four years that readers turned into instant best-sellers. It would, in fact, be great to revive my moribund writing career so that I could maybe hit the midlist someday.

But then I read something like this and I’m reminded that I simply need to keep doing what I do, for the reasons I do it. I need to keep pushing myself toward better, more personal, more original stories, and productivity is secondary.

Don’t Turn Your Back arrives in the mail

Look at what the friendly delivery-person-from-some-company-not-sure-which dropped off yesterday:

It’s the board game version of the rpg Don’t Rest Your Head, a horror game about people trapped in a nightmarish dream world. Readers might remember that I (and a bunch of other terrific authors) contributed to an anthology based on the game, edited by Chuck Wendig, which you can buy directly from the publisher. In my story, I created a type of enemy that has been translated into the board game. You can see the card here.

As soon as I work up the heart to cut the wrapper off the game and open it up, I’ll get to see it in person. If you’re a fan of board games, check it out.

And check out this review for a discussion of game play and the game components themselves.

Locus Review of A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark

I’m pretty sure I posted about this before, but I picked up the hardcopy yesterday, and here’s a pic of the review itself:

“… strangely satisfying conclusion…” I’m cool with that.

Learn more about the book or read some sample chapters.

Help Refugees and Maybe Win Some Limited Editions of my Work.

Most everyone who’s following the news knows about the difficulties facing Syrian refugees. Author Kevin Hearne has decided he’s going to do something to help.

Basically, he’s giving away books to people who donate to UNHCR. All you have to do is donate, send him proof, and you’re entered to maybe win something.

And, to support his efforts, I’ve sent him four copies of the limited edition omnibus of The Great Way. Did you miss out on the Kickstarter? Would you like to get one of fewer than 200 copies of that omnibus edition, the one with nothing on the cover but the fantasy map?

If so, pop over to that link above and follow the directions, so you can get a chance to win. It will help people who need it, and maybe you’ll get some books, too. Admittedly, my books aren’t pictured (yet) but he should be receiving them today, so maybe there will be a picture later. Check out the update page with my (and several other authors’) books.

Time is short, though, so don’t wait.