Last Line of the Series

I just finished Mockingjay, and yet by have finished the last book in the Hunger Games series, and like the first line, the book as a whole was unimpressive.  I will a more full review in a future post, but for now there is this:

In addition, the last line of the epilogue says "But there are much worse games to play". What exactly does that mean?

It's better than the first line, infact the second half is better than the first, sadly I can't say the about the series. 

20% Aint Bad

I don't know many published local authors. I know several "wanna be" published local authors, but none with books out in print that are being schlepped. The Houston Chronicle shared a list of ten in Monday's edition.

Of the ten books, based solely on the summaries, I feel compelled to read only two. These snippets come from the Chronicle's  Bookish blog with Maggie Galehouse.

“Cold Blue Steel,” by Sarah Cortez. From a Houston writer with a diverse resume — active-duty police officer, corporate accountant, Latin teacher, and more — comes 50 lyric poems set in the world of the urban street cop. “The Secret” begins: “Love whatever can save/ your life. Your ballistic vest,/ your razored reflexes. The/ keys you rubber-banded/ to keep from jingling. The/ double-tied shoelaces that/ won’t come loose in a foot chase./ The short haircut a turd/ can’t grab in a scuffle/ to ream your face into concrete.” 

“Tumbledown,” by Robert Boswell. Boswell shares the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at UH with his wife, Antonya Nelson. This new novel is a sad but funny book about a therapist and his patients, sanity and insanity, and the choices we make to accommodate the failures of the rational world. 

I'm a tad surprised that I want to read a book of poems, but those seem interesting to me . . . go figure.

Sadly, as I'm in a Year Long Thriller Fest for reading, I won't be able to read either, at least not till next year.

Been a Long Time Since I Rocked a Revision

Let me start by saying that I really liked Rock Your Revisions by Cathy Yardley. I haven't read a book on the craft of writing in a while, and I'm sorry I haven't. That being said, this one is a good one.

So many books on writing can be dry and stuffy, and especially long. Strangely, somewhat ironically, they can be filled with poor writing. Rock Your Revisions was not one of these. It was focused and broke down Miss Yardley's analytical and step by step method of revising (what I consider to be the hardest part of writing). It was also extremely well written. Concise, to the point, prompt, and readable.

I liked the way she gave advice on revisions, this in-particular:


That said, you’re going to be creating some new scenes, and if you think that you not only have to change the whole dramatic action and come up with something polished, paralysis can set in. 

Personally, I’d approach this as story only.  Don’t let yourself get caught up in the polish.  That’s coming next.  Write new scenes, tinker with existing that need tweaking, and cut those that need it. 

Then, you’re going to look at each scene, examining the prose:  looking at how a reader will experience the story you’ve so carefully laid out.  Which is the next stage in the revision plan.

I'm doing this now with my third novel (tentatively titled Vapor Trail) and so far so good . . . or should I say, so far so better.


Personally I've always had trouble with setting or with setting the scene. Miss Yardley's advice:


Take the scene, and write it as if you’re writing a play. 

You can describe your character.  You can describe the setting.  You can write the dialogue and give stage directions. 

But you cannot write one word about how the character is feeling, what his/her back-story is, or what he/she is thinking about.

I look forward to Miss Yardley's other books. Next up . . . Rock Your Plot.

Not Excited for Mockingjay

I know that she's a best selling author, I know that she has a following that is a ba-jillion times bigger than mine will ever be, if mine ever be, but as a first line/passage . . . I say this stinks:


I stare down at my shoes, watching as a fine layer of ash settles on the worn leather. This is where the bed I shared with my sister, Prim, stood. Over there was the kitchen table. The bricks of the chimney, which collapsed in a charred heap, provide a point of reference for the rest of the house. How else could I orient myself in this sea of gray? 

Almost nothing remains of District 12. A month ago, the Capitol’s firebombs obliterated the poor coal miners’ houses in the Seam, the shops in the town, even the Justice Building.

Collins, Suzanne - Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games)

There's a bit more to that second paragraph and I would have pasted it if it had made the whole better, it did not, so I did not.

As a fan of the series (not devoted, but a fan in passing) and having read and enjoyed the first two books, I would hope that the first few lines of the final book would inspire me to read on with verve and gusto not make me want to lay the book down.

I'll read on, but I sure hope it gets better than the first line.

Wool Again (this time in print)

Those of you who read these posts religiously, precious few I'm sure, will remember that I enjoyed Wool.  You will also know that I'm a huge fan of the WSJ and post articles I find intriguing from it often. Today those two passions have combined into this post where I post a link to this article.

The article, Sci-Fi's Underground Hit by Alexandra Alter is well worth a read for anyone who is considering self- or e-publishing. Wool will soon be coming out in paperback, but unlike every previous publishing deal, the publisher will not have e-book rights. Hugh Howey kept those suckers for himself. It's the first major deal of it's kind.

In a highly unusual deal, Simon & Schuster acquired print publication rights to "Wool" while allowing Mr. Howey to keep the e-book rights himself. Mr. Howey self-published "Wool" as a serial novel in 2011, and took a rare stand by refusing to sell the digital rights. Last year, he turned down multiple seven-figure offers from publishers before reaching a mid-six-figure, print-only deal with Simon & Schuster.

"I had made seven figures on my own, so it was easy to walk away," says Mr. Howey, 37, a college dropout who worked as a yacht captain, a roofer and a bookseller before he started self-publishing. "I thought, 'How are you guys going to sell six times what I'm selling now?' "

It's a sign of how far the balance of power has shifted toward authors in the new digital publishing landscape. Self-published titles made up 25% of the top-selling books on Amazon last year. Four independent authors have sold more than a million Kindle copies of their books, and 23 have sold more than 250,000, according to Amazon.

It's a long article with a lot of great content and an expose on Mr. Howey and his "over night" success. If nothing else the article and Hugh Howey's story shows that there is still a market for short story success. He built it all off publishing one little short story that he came up with while watching the news.

Pope in the Pool

I never heard this before, but with the conclave going on, it seems apropos:

I got this term from Elizabeth George’s wonderful writing reference, Write Away.  She talks about creating scenes with an eye towards making interesting action, rather than simply a few “talking heads” getting across information through dialogue.  She uses the acronym “THAD” to describe it – a Talking Head Avoidance Device. 

A similar technique, mentioned in a more irreverent writing reference guide, is Blake Snyder’s wonderful description of the Pope in the Pool trick. He wrote about needing to have the Pope get some information in dialogue, but they didn’t want the scene to be boring – so they set the conversation in the Vatican’s pool as the Pope was swimming.  Which made everyone think whoa, I didn’t even know the Pope had a pool! What could’ve been static and stereotypical suddenly

Yardley, Cathy - Rock Your Revisions

I know that the picture is a pope off, but it's the only one close enough to merit a posting. I found it on DailyEdge. Secondly, it is a terrific way to remember that it's important to spice up the writing to keep the readers interest.

Not Very Touch Improved

When I worked at a dash-mounted video camera company, where we manufactured the hardware and software for police to use dash cams, I talked to one of our users and found out that they were using our system in a revolutionary manner.

After they mirandized their suspects they would put them in the back of one of their cruisers. Then in full view of the suspects they would switch off the screen on the dash-mounted camera system so that it looked liked they'd turned it off. They hadn't. Instead they had just turned off the screen, but the camera, the audio recording, and the system were all still on and recording.

Usually the suspects would begin planning their "defense." They would talk about what actually happened and in many cases what their "stories" would be once they were taken to the police station. Since they were already mirandized everything that the camera captured could be used in court against them.

After hearing this I spoke to my boss and we developed a "covert recording" button. A button that the officer could push that would set the system up for this type of backseat recording. In less than a month we had a differentiator from our competition.

It's because of this experience that I'm continually amazed that Amazon can't produce screen savers that are personalized. Why not have a program that would make the screen saver for the Kindle the book cover of the book that was last read. Or better yet, have a compilation of book covers of the books in that Kindle's library. And these are just off the top of my head.

I got my touch yesterday, and although I'm happy with it, compared to the older Kindles, not quite impressed compared to the iPad, this one niggling thing seems like such a loss. Not only that, this is one thing from one customer that would greatly add to the appeal of the technology, . . . think about all the other great ideas out there.

Year of the Thriller with Some Detours

Yesterday I mentioned I might have to make time for The Metamorphosis in my year despite my pledge to go all thriller all the time. There's one other genre that I'm sneaking in every few books. A couple of years ago one of my resolutions was to read a book on writing for every few books I read that were for fun. Yep, that's what I'm back into.

So, along those lines, and based on where I am with my most recent novel, I'm reading Rock Your Revisions by Cathy Yardley. So far I'm quite happy with it. It's had the desired effect both on me and on my draft. The book starts out strong with:


Let’s say revising a novel is like building a house.  The rough draft you’ve currently got?  That would be the building materials.  Some parts of it are more “raw” than others.  But instead of just moving things around willy-nilly, you’re going to have a systematic approach.  You don’t put in carpet before you put up walls.  You don’t put up dry wall before you put in plumbing.  And you don’t put on a roof before pouring the foundation. 

It’s all about sequence and strategy. 

In this first pass, you’re going to do a quick “inventory” and see what you’ve got, and what you need.  Then, you’re going to make sure that you do, indeed, have the right plans and you’re really building what you want.  You’ll check the foundation.  Then, you’ll build the frame.

So far so good. Rock Your Revisions might not be as mind blowing as some of the books on writing I've read in the past, but it sure has given me the kick in the pants that I needed.

Missed It in High School

For whatever reason, one that I can't remember, I was not in the advanced  or International Baccalaureate English program in high school, ergo I missed out on the assigned reading of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. I still remember seeing the other students running around with their copies and thinking to myself that I should like to read that book. Never did. Might need to take a hiatus from my "Thriller Only" year to read that sucker, particularly after having read this little piece by A.B. Yehoshua in the WSJ entitled The Limits of Imagination.

The most compelling passage in A.B. Yehoshua's article is this one:


In every work of literature, perhaps in any work of art, we may distinguish two principal forces contending with one another. Each pulls in its own direction, and finding the right balance between them is what gives the work its unique value.

On one side is the unbridled imagination—the primal spark, the fantasy, the fresh insights, the innovations in form and language, the raw originality that entitles a book to claim the attention of the reader. On the other side is the force that constructs and connects, that imposes logic on the content, winning the reader's trust, enabling him or her to relate to unfamiliar material. As a result, the reader isn't merely impressed with the fruits of wild imagination but consumes them, internalizes and identifies with them.

That tug of war between unbridled imagination and realism. How much will the reader believe? How far will they follow the author into their imagination before they say, "eh, not worth it, not believable."

This is why I am always so humbled by writers like Vernor Vinge and Isaac Asimov. Authors like these take completely made up worlds, they provide stories that are full of imagination but provide them to the reader in such a way that it's impossible not to believe them. It's as if they dare the reader to disbelieve them. It's all a matter of how far you can push the reader.

E-Cover

Normally I have trouble finding articles to write about for this blog. Then, today, BOOM! there's three right away. I plan to write about and link to all of them, but I've decided to start with this one as it seems the most apropos to what I've been writing about lately.

This article in the WSJ by Javier Espinoza entitled Designing for Digital is all about book covers for the e-reader world. It's a good little article with some nuggets of info I already knew or could have guess at. Among them:

an e-book cover must be bolder, simpler and more legible than its print counterpart, graphic designers say.

and

For Andy Fielding, an Edinburgh-based graphic designer who works with writers self-publishing their e-books, simplicity is the key to a beautiful design that will stand out. "A print book only really has to work in your hands as an object. But when people are looking at e-book covers they are looking at them on places like Amazon, where they are very small initially—the size of a thumbnail."

I've always thought that Dick Francis' book covers were simple, colorful and yet powerful. These are the ones that I tried to channel when I came up with my own.

Yes, yes, his look better, but I feel that mine meet the requirements that are laid out by the article.

Anyway, I thought it was a great article, and was full of information for anyone planning to e-publish. I've seen several other self-published folks who have not used the advice listed in the article and I believe their sales probably are hurting because of it. Then again, my sales aint no rocket ship.