Charlaine Harris, Southern Vampires, and Entitlement

This is the second take of my title.  The first was "Charlaine Harris is not your B***H".  It seems very posh to quote Mr. Gaiman these days and well, it seems to fit.  Specifically it comes, so the legend goes, from a time that Neil Gaiman was asked how a fan could ask GRR Martin to write faster because they were so anxious to see where the Game of Thrones story line went.  His answer?

You don't.

And that quote started to make the rounds again as authors weighed in on the recent debacle related to the much anticipated end to the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampires True Blood series.

But, given that ChibiNeko did that for her blog, I thought I'd write up my take on the whole thing under my own title.

The best write up of the event is here at the Blog of one Mary Janice Davidson, author of UNDead and Unwed and other stories of Vampire Queen Betsy. Edited:  I originally mistyped the title of Ms. Davidon's Queen Betsy series as "Dead and Unwed" rather than "Undead and Unwed".  For clarity here's the actual book.  In fact, I need to really apologize because so much of Mind the Thorns and my own efforts to write to a similar audience was influenced by having read the first two books in that series.

Doing Something - The Twitter Option

I've found that the moment you realize that you "just have to do something" that rational thought seems to take a back seat equally as fast. When you see someone in the path of a car, you don't think "can I get to them in time?" That would be a rational thought. And it would involve doing a risk assessment, taking time, and possibly even finding yourself unable to act because of the delay.

No, we cast caution to the wind and we do something.

A few weeks ago a woman at a convention found herself in the exact same position. She had to Do Something and she had to Do It Now. And what she did had the kind of ripple effect of consequence that a fair comparison would be that of a nuclear bomb going off. First one atom splits, then those fragments strike two more, and then four, and then eight until you've burned off all of your fissible material and leveled a city.

In fact I've taken to calling what happened the "Nuclear Option" for that very reason.

Goodreads, STGRB, and Marketing

How is that so much drama can revolve around a single website such as Goodreads and from it mature adults who should know far better than they appear to can think it appropriate to so such horrible things to each other?

Review bullying, arguing, websites like Stop the Goodreads Bullies, and with it personal attacks, threats to reveal personal information online, accusations of illegal behaviors and inappropriate relationships: the list goes on and on and on.

It has reached levels that go beyond just words and is well in the realm of harassment and endangerment if you take them all at complete face value.  These are things if done in person would lead, quite likely, to blows or worse, yet they seem to come hard and fast on the internet.

And the obvious reason is: Why?

One word:  Marketing.

Still at least the seats get sold...

Over on Goodreads we've been discussing how to respond to bad reviews as writers, specifically as self published writers.  This lead us, of course, to some classic examples of writers refusing to accept that someone else might not find their writing as brilliant as they and their friends do.

And these reactions are not limited to just self published authors.  One of the criticisms of Amazon's rating system has been that it is easy for a publishing house to use agents, friends, and other industry connections to pump up reviews, or vote down negative reviews.  By using the like buttons, bad reviews can fall down and off the main page, leaving only the glowing reviews provided by "professional" reviewers.  It is an inherent problem with user rankings:  how do you know which users are real users and which are sock puppets?

The conversation turned, naturally enough, to the potential value of bad press.  Really, more to the fundamental question:  Is there such a thing as bad press?  Or is any publicity good publicity?

The Hunger Games - Movie Review

This is the first in a multi-part series discussing the movie adaptation of The Hunger Games.  I have not read the novel and do not expect to in the near future (I may this summer but I don't consider that "near".)  It may contain light spoilers for the movie (and thus novel).  I will do my best to keep it spoiler free but if you wish to remain pure you may wish to skip these posts.

Watching The Hunger Games I had an opportunity to have many reactions and thoughts.  The movie was intense, longish, with a cast of characters and some very strong imagery wrapped around some incredible effects and shots. Before I delve into my reactions as an author and a parent I thought I'd begin with a general movie review as a viewer.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I wasn't going to post anything until this video wandered my way.  Happy Feast of the Irish Saint!




Best line?

"My judgement is impaired, and my confidence is not."

Wicked: Children's Edition

As a Christmas present a friend bought his wife tickets to go see Wicked at a major theater Downtown.  Being friends he invited us to join them and my wife and I did.  The seats were very good on the main floor about 15 rows back.  They also were, well, I won't quote you a price, dear readers, but let's leave it at "somewhere in the ball park of a new xBox game console, and games" for one seat.

Which you know, was worth it.  The show was amazing.  The costumes, the music, the story, the effects, everything.  The last production of Wicked that we got to see I was rather unimpressed with the illusion of defying gravity.  However in this one, they one upped it and had the Munchkins come running out under as she sang (and hit those high notes).

Everything was great.  Until... (and you, dear reader, had to know there was an "until..." coming)

Across the isle from me was a 4-year old who by the middle of second act was bored and annoyed at being bored.  Most of the first half of Act 2 was spent moving back and forth from her seat to her father's lap.  But at the half way mark she was now actively protesting being there.  Loudly.  To her parents' credit they did try to convince her to lower her voice. And they were moderately successful in short bursts.  I imagine that with the music and the singing that her protestations were probably inaudible more than 5 rows away.

I, however, was not 5 rows away.

And there I sat, trying to politely ignore the increasingly in-ignorable.  And I was also left with the question:  Who thinks that it is worth that kind of money to take a 4-year old to see a professional stage production?

I love X, our 4 year old, dearly.  I love taking him to movies, especially the Sunday Family Movie Matinee that our local theater runs. ($1 tickets for kids to see a movie that's about a year old; popcorn is, of course, not discounted).  But I'm sorry, at that age I don't think he can really appreciate a professional company production.  Or perhaps he can but will he remember it as vividly and as long?

And what of the other patrons who also came to enjoy a quality show?  Is the desire for a young child to see a show something that should trump the desire for adults to enjoy that show in peace?

Perhaps the solution is to have designated "kid friendly" shows so that those who want to spend an XBox on tickets for their 4 year olds can do just that, in the company of similarly minded folks....

And thus it begins...

So, the official first post of the blog.....

For a writer, or rather an aspiring writer, I find myself in the horrid position of not knowing what to say.

Actually let me begin like this:

Back when I first wrote FantastiCon, I used to say "I wrote a book".  My wife, whom I love dearly, would politely correct me.  I had a manuscript.  I had the text of a book, but I could not say I had written a book until someone could go on Amazon.com and buy that book, or walk into a book store and ask them to order a copy of that book.  For her, a true bibliophile, I was among millions of people who sat down, told a story and then let that story sit in some folder or some hard drive and never make it out to the general populous.

But, that's changed.

You can go on Amazon and see, yes, there's a book there for sale and it has, of all things, my name on it.  Right there on the cover image.  Rather impressive, I think.  And thanks to some fledgling word of mouth campaigning, I can even claim to have made money on this book.  Not a lot, but there is a non-zero number on the Amazon reports page under Royalties.  I am a professional writer.  Well a paid writer at any rate.

It's an odd turning point, really, to have hit a point where someone feels that there might be enough to your story that they're willing to trade money for a chance to read it.

And I'm onto my next project.  There's still a great deal to work out with the world building and one advantage of this blog is that I can use it to flesh out ideas, post teasers, and even, on occasion, invite you, dear reader, to provide some feedback.  Is it really believable to have a race of robot women?  Is it beyond even the realm of science fiction to have ships that only can fire broad-sides?  I hope the answers are, respectively, yes, and then no, as both are aspects of this next project.

As to other updates, I sent the files back to CreateSpace last night and hope to order the next proof copy of the book for delivery early next week.  If it passes muster, then in roughly a week a print edition of FantastiCon will be available.

I can't wait....