by
Scott D. Parker
So far this summer, I have been reading more than writing. Hate to admit that, but it's true. Part of the problem of non-writing is that words just aren't flowing. The other part, however, is that I'm really enjoying just reading. Here's a list of some of past few titles: The Chase (Clive Cussler), Master Mind of Mars, Captain Blood, On Stranger Tides, The Presidents Club, and Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain.
When I'm not reading books, I'm reading comics. A LOT of comics. And not only the new ones from DC and "Atomic Robo" from Red5, but old ones, too. I've pulled out many of my long comics boxes and have flipped through them, gazing at all those covers. Inspired by the new "Batman in the 1970s" feature series over at bare bones e-zine, I've started re-reading many of the same titles. It's really neat to rediscover how Batman was portrayed before Frank Miller got a hold of him.
Now, back in the day, the Batman team-up book, the Brave and the Bold, was my favorite, and I recently pulled out #122, the first team-up of Batman with Swamp Thing. I'm not here, today, to discuss the story itself, but everything in the book except the story. The advertisements. In all of my historical research when I had to read and take notes from an old newspaper or magazine, I always loved looking at the ads because they often gave a more clarifying picture into the time of the magazine than the content.
The same is true for comics. Issue #122 had 32 pages, of which 18 told the story. Removing the two-page letter column, that leaves 14 pages of ads. Throwing in the insides of both covers and the back of the book, you actually have 17 pages of ads. Four of those pages are house ads for other DC comics and publications, leaving 10 pages of non-DC ads. (And I'm not including the glorious ad that Shazam starred in for Twinkies. Remember when your favorite hero hawked dessert products?)
The number of ads isn't really what I'm focusing on. It's what the ads are selling. Sure you had the standard ones: Slim Jims, "X-Ray glasses", binders in which to store your comics, magic stuff, and the near omnipresent ads for "100 Green Army Men" (although this one is a naval task force). What struck me were the ads offering up ways for kids to earn money by *working*. Both inside covers display a full-page spread of prizes kids could earn by selling personalize Christmas cards. This was not a page of things they could buy, mind you, but prizes to earn by working. Sell 9 boxes of cards and you could select a pair of walkie talkies, 16 gets your a pocket electronic calculator, and 25 gets you a portable 8-track player. Or, if the young salesman didn't want any of those things, he could pocket $1/box sold. Not a bad deal for 1975.
Another ad was for LaSalle Extension University. Here, readers of this comic book could send off a postcard and receive information on any number of carer opportunities: accounting, dental assistant, automotive mechanics, drafting, interior decorating, executive development, or even the high school diploma program.
What do these ads say about the comic buyer in 1975 ? He (or she) had the opportunity to order more comics (naturally), buy any number of cheap toys ("X-ray" glasses), or buy Twinkies. But it also provided an opportunity (key word there) for self improvement.
I buy comics digitally almost exclusively nowadays and the ads are few and far between. Mostly house ads for other DC merchandise and video games, but that's all that is there, Gone are the ads for trade schools. Candy is still there, too. Gone are the ads encouraging young people to sell stuff to earn extra money.
Might this say something about our culture? What do you think?
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Friday, June 29, 2012
Location, Location, Location
By Russel D McLean
Are some characters wedded to their surroundings?
I watched the 1986 screen adaptation of Lawrence Block’s superb Matt Scudder novel 8 Million Ways to Die the other week. I knew from people who had seen it that there would be problems, but the idea of adaptations intrigues me and I love to see the way film-makers approach novels, often finding that those who have a strong vision produce the most interesting works that don’t always have to be note-perfect adaptations.
However, it always intrigues me when they move characters out of their natural surroundings.
And that’s exactly what they did here with Scudder.
The plot of the film is fairly inconsequential in many ways. It marries together a few different elements from the Scudder books and very quickly sets up his alcoholism after softening (just a touch) the mistake that got Matt fired from the police. Now, what the film has in its favour is Jeff Bridges. Even now he’d be my first choice for Scudder (although the recent announcement that Liam Neeson is to take on the role is not one that I’m opposed to), and here he does a fine job of playing the asshole with the unshakeable sense of responsibility. He’s great struggling with the bottle and acting against his better instincts. But something feels off.
And I realised that its nothing to do with Bridges or the character of Scudder.
It’s the fact they moved him to LA.
LA, the town that has so many personalities it never feels entirely cohesive. LA, where the sun shines and the city sprawls.
Matt Scudder does not belong there. Even the way the script portrays, you know that he is New York man, that he belongs in the crowded, occasionally dirty, always edgy city that is New York. Matt Scudder does not belong near the beach or the houses of the Hollywood stars. He is dirty, grungy, hard-bitten. He is New York. And New York is not LA.
And that’s where everything falls apart. Matt is so out of place in this new location that everything else begins to feel wrong. No matter how good Bridges’ performance is, it never feels right. And let’s not even talk about some of the odd narrative jumps or the strange, hallucinogenic way he gets involved in his “case”. It often feels like we’re missing half the narrative that was meant to explain some of the characters’ motivations here.
Oh, and Andy Garcia’s little pony tail is hilarious. As is his weird accent “Hello, Mr Scooder,” he drawls, pretending to be all Latin American and sleazy.
Following this, I watched SLAYGROUND, an adaptation of the Richard Stark novel of the same name. His character, Parker, is something of a drifter. He does where there’s a job. He’s not wedded to one place, but he is wedded to a country. Which is why it strikes me as odd that they took a book whose sole purpose is to trap Parker in one location (an abandoned fairground) and then move him all the way across America before – for no good reason – suddenly sending him to England where he gets to team up with Mel Smith in a finale that seems almost an afterthought to that great title.
It was bad enough watching this poorly made, poorly conceived adaptation while Parker… sorry, Stone… blundered across America displaying none of the professionalism that we had come to expect from the character in the novels. But when they moved him to the UK, suddenly everything felt deeply, sickly, wrong. The entire mis-en-scene was screwed. The character and his story did not belong there. And there was no strong reason to move either there, other than the script seemed to say it happened.
Location can make a massive difference to character. But not always. Take the adaptation of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, which does not suffer in the slightest from moving to the states after the novel was set in the UK. Why? Because Hornby did not wed his characters to place. He did not create them to be English so much as he created them to be geeks.
Its just something that struck me, especially with these two movies, that some characters are integral and part of the place they come from. They become unstuck when moved, somehow lesser. And the more I think about it, the more we do associate certain characters, especially in crime fiction, with place. Marlowe with LA, Hammet with SF, Rebus with Edinburgh (and look what happened when he moved to London – it really didn’t work), Holmes with London… I guess what I’m saying is, a movie needs a strong reason to move narrative location and has to work twice as hard to make us believe in the change, especially when its characters are not part of that location but come and are a product of somewhere else entirely.
 |
| Scudder was so drunk. he thought that 'tache was cool |
I watched the 1986 screen adaptation of Lawrence Block’s superb Matt Scudder novel 8 Million Ways to Die the other week. I knew from people who had seen it that there would be problems, but the idea of adaptations intrigues me and I love to see the way film-makers approach novels, often finding that those who have a strong vision produce the most interesting works that don’t always have to be note-perfect adaptations.
However, it always intrigues me when they move characters out of their natural surroundings.
And that’s exactly what they did here with Scudder.
The plot of the film is fairly inconsequential in many ways. It marries together a few different elements from the Scudder books and very quickly sets up his alcoholism after softening (just a touch) the mistake that got Matt fired from the police. Now, what the film has in its favour is Jeff Bridges. Even now he’d be my first choice for Scudder (although the recent announcement that Liam Neeson is to take on the role is not one that I’m opposed to), and here he does a fine job of playing the asshole with the unshakeable sense of responsibility. He’s great struggling with the bottle and acting against his better instincts. But something feels off.
And I realised that its nothing to do with Bridges or the character of Scudder.
It’s the fact they moved him to LA.
LA, the town that has so many personalities it never feels entirely cohesive. LA, where the sun shines and the city sprawls.
Matt Scudder does not belong there. Even the way the script portrays, you know that he is New York man, that he belongs in the crowded, occasionally dirty, always edgy city that is New York. Matt Scudder does not belong near the beach or the houses of the Hollywood stars. He is dirty, grungy, hard-bitten. He is New York. And New York is not LA.
And that’s where everything falls apart. Matt is so out of place in this new location that everything else begins to feel wrong. No matter how good Bridges’ performance is, it never feels right. And let’s not even talk about some of the odd narrative jumps or the strange, hallucinogenic way he gets involved in his “case”. It often feels like we’re missing half the narrative that was meant to explain some of the characters’ motivations here.
Oh, and Andy Garcia’s little pony tail is hilarious. As is his weird accent “Hello, Mr Scooder,” he drawls, pretending to be all Latin American and sleazy.
Following this, I watched SLAYGROUND, an adaptation of the Richard Stark novel of the same name. His character, Parker, is something of a drifter. He does where there’s a job. He’s not wedded to one place, but he is wedded to a country. Which is why it strikes me as odd that they took a book whose sole purpose is to trap Parker in one location (an abandoned fairground) and then move him all the way across America before – for no good reason – suddenly sending him to England where he gets to team up with Mel Smith in a finale that seems almost an afterthought to that great title.
It was bad enough watching this poorly made, poorly conceived adaptation while Parker… sorry, Stone… blundered across America displaying none of the professionalism that we had come to expect from the character in the novels. But when they moved him to the UK, suddenly everything felt deeply, sickly, wrong. The entire mis-en-scene was screwed. The character and his story did not belong there. And there was no strong reason to move either there, other than the script seemed to say it happened.
Location can make a massive difference to character. But not always. Take the adaptation of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, which does not suffer in the slightest from moving to the states after the novel was set in the UK. Why? Because Hornby did not wed his characters to place. He did not create them to be English so much as he created them to be geeks.
Its just something that struck me, especially with these two movies, that some characters are integral and part of the place they come from. They become unstuck when moved, somehow lesser. And the more I think about it, the more we do associate certain characters, especially in crime fiction, with place. Marlowe with LA, Hammet with SF, Rebus with Edinburgh (and look what happened when he moved to London – it really didn’t work), Holmes with London… I guess what I’m saying is, a movie needs a strong reason to move narrative location and has to work twice as hard to make us believe in the change, especially when its characters are not part of that location but come and are a product of somewhere else entirely.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Share The Free
By Jay Stringer
My novel OLD GOLD comes out in under a month. You already know this, because I've been mentioning it in every other post since December.
The story takes place in the region where I grew up, in the Black Country of England. It's a region that took it's name from coal mining and industry, so you can imagine how kind the last thirty years have been to the people there.
I'm aware that buying a book by a first-time author can be a bit of a thing. The reader is having to place trust in that writer in a way that they don't have to for an established author, and at hard times like these that's a choice to gamble with your hard-earned money.
I decided to give people a primer. I've had work published online and in print, short stories here and there, and I've been blogging and writing for websites for a few years now, but I wanted to give people something specific to OLD GOLD.
FAITHLESS STREET is a prequel of sorts. It contains four short stories that set the scene for the novel. Each one features a character (or characters) who show up in OLD GOLD. It adds back-story to these people, and fleshes out the world that you'll be walking in if you buy the book. The novel is narrated in first person by Eoin Miller, a particularly mixed up individual, but he only shows up in one of the prequel stories, so it's a chance to get into other peoples heads. Do we trust Miller as a narrator? Well, that's up to you.
In THE DARK KNIGHT, Heath Ledger's Mr J says, "If you're good at something, never do it for free." But that begs the question, how can people judge if you're good at something? People on my mailing list have already had a week to take a look at an ARC version of the collection for free, and now I'm opening it up to you guys. You'll see it's priced at 0.99 at the moment, but from tomorrow until tuesday it will be 0.00 (unless I've set it wrong....) so that everyone out there can share the free.
Why start out straight away with free? Why not try and make some money first? Well again, I want to get this out to people. And, let's be honest, I want people to buy the novel. I figure giving you all a chance to try out my writing for free for a few days now is better than asking you all to buy a whole book just on faith. Try it out, and if you like it, tell other people while it's still free. Let's share the free with as many people as possible.
And while we're talking about that magic price point, Dave White's brilliant Witness To Death is free right now. Action? Spies? Torture? Go click, do it now.
And one final thing. I've prepared a Spotify playlist. I have to stress that I don't have permission from any of the musicians (although Franz Nicolay kindly allowed me to use his words as the epigraph to the book) so I can't claim this is in any way the official soundtrack album. But it's music that reflects the moods and flavours of the book. Most of it, you could imagine, is the kind of moody guitar music that Eoin Miller would pick, but thrown in there are selections that reflect each of the main characters and the region of the Black Country.
If you don't already, follow me on twitter (@JayStringer) because that's where I'll be announcing when it's gone free tomorrow and when the promotion ends.
If you don't have a kindle but still want in on the free stuff, tweet me before Tuesday and we'll see what we can sort out.
My novel OLD GOLD comes out in under a month. You already know this, because I've been mentioning it in every other post since December.
The story takes place in the region where I grew up, in the Black Country of England. It's a region that took it's name from coal mining and industry, so you can imagine how kind the last thirty years have been to the people there.
I'm aware that buying a book by a first-time author can be a bit of a thing. The reader is having to place trust in that writer in a way that they don't have to for an established author, and at hard times like these that's a choice to gamble with your hard-earned money.
I decided to give people a primer. I've had work published online and in print, short stories here and there, and I've been blogging and writing for websites for a few years now, but I wanted to give people something specific to OLD GOLD.
FAITHLESS STREET is a prequel of sorts. It contains four short stories that set the scene for the novel. Each one features a character (or characters) who show up in OLD GOLD. It adds back-story to these people, and fleshes out the world that you'll be walking in if you buy the book. The novel is narrated in first person by Eoin Miller, a particularly mixed up individual, but he only shows up in one of the prequel stories, so it's a chance to get into other peoples heads. Do we trust Miller as a narrator? Well, that's up to you.
In THE DARK KNIGHT, Heath Ledger's Mr J says, "If you're good at something, never do it for free." But that begs the question, how can people judge if you're good at something? People on my mailing list have already had a week to take a look at an ARC version of the collection for free, and now I'm opening it up to you guys. You'll see it's priced at 0.99 at the moment, but from tomorrow until tuesday it will be 0.00 (unless I've set it wrong....) so that everyone out there can share the free.
Why start out straight away with free? Why not try and make some money first? Well again, I want to get this out to people. And, let's be honest, I want people to buy the novel. I figure giving you all a chance to try out my writing for free for a few days now is better than asking you all to buy a whole book just on faith. Try it out, and if you like it, tell other people while it's still free. Let's share the free with as many people as possible.
And while we're talking about that magic price point, Dave White's brilliant Witness To Death is free right now. Action? Spies? Torture? Go click, do it now.
And one final thing. I've prepared a Spotify playlist. I have to stress that I don't have permission from any of the musicians (although Franz Nicolay kindly allowed me to use his words as the epigraph to the book) so I can't claim this is in any way the official soundtrack album. But it's music that reflects the moods and flavours of the book. Most of it, you could imagine, is the kind of moody guitar music that Eoin Miller would pick, but thrown in there are selections that reflect each of the main characters and the region of the Black Country.
If you don't already, follow me on twitter (@JayStringer) because that's where I'll be announcing when it's gone free tomorrow and when the promotion ends.
If you don't have a kindle but still want in on the free stuff, tweet me before Tuesday and we'll see what we can sort out.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Mining Your Unpublished Novels
By Steve Weddle
We're talking about THE LAST KIND WORDS in the DSD book club. Pop over and join in. Feel free to start your own thread, too.
Oh, and here's a cool interview with Julian Barnes. I just read THE SENSE OF AN ENDING and quite dug it. The interview is from a decade or so ago, but still has great insight into reading and writing.
Also, PULP INK is free for now. The book has all your favorite authors, so go grab a free copy.
And I've started a thing for your phone/mobile/tablet that I call Shorts2Go in response to friends who've said they like to read stories on their phones. I looked for decent sites that collected stories I liked and wanted to share with folks. Some were cool. None were formatted to work cleanly on your phone. Or my phone. So I started Shorts2Go. For you people. Because I love you. Dave says I should Kickstart it for $100,000 so I can buy copies of WITNESS TO DEATH.
So, anyhoo, I've been working on the next big project.
I have two novels in the drawer. They're the first and second of a series. The first one set things up fairly well, but, for whatever reason, we never closed the deal on it. The second one takes most of the same characters and throws them into another disaster.
You know how this works, so why am I explaining it to you?
Well, I went back to the first novel to streamline it. Keep in mind, this is a novel I started nearly a decade ago. I don't write the same way anymore. I don't have the same, well, whatever it is real writers call "style." My writing is different and I write differently.
So revisiting the first novel is weird as hell.
Anyhoo, I figured I'd take some of what I liked from the first one and some of what I liked from the second one and see could I work something out. They both have similar themes, though the second one is considerably darker than the first.
But they both have good writing in them. I say that with very little pride. I'm just telling you. There's good writing in there. And there's writing that's not so awesome. So, I don't want to just let the characters in there die, never to exist, suffocated in some .rtf file on a hard drive I won't be able to find in a few years.
Have you ever mined earlier works for pieces? I mean, extensive mining? Not running down there and grabbing a scene, but really devoting a year to digging about?
Did it work? Is there a trick to doing it well?
We're talking about THE LAST KIND WORDS in the DSD book club. Pop over and join in. Feel free to start your own thread, too.
Oh, and here's a cool interview with Julian Barnes. I just read THE SENSE OF AN ENDING and quite dug it. The interview is from a decade or so ago, but still has great insight into reading and writing.
INTERVIEWER
Of course, some novelists have produced only one great book—Dr. Zhivago, The Leopard. In fact, should one be a sort of jobbing novelist and produce lots of books at regular intervals? Why shouldn’t one great book suffice?
BARNES
Absolutely right. No reason at all why one should go on writing just for the sake of it. I think it is very important to stop when you haven’t got anything to say. But novelists sometimes stop for the wrong reasons—Barbara Pym gave up because she was discouraged by her publisher, who said that her books had become flat. I’m not much of an E. M. Forster fan, but he stopped when he thought he had nothing more to say. That is admirable. Perhaps he should have stopped even earlier.
Also, PULP INK is free for now. The book has all your favorite authors, so go grab a free copy.
And I've started a thing for your phone/mobile/tablet that I call Shorts2Go in response to friends who've said they like to read stories on their phones. I looked for decent sites that collected stories I liked and wanted to share with folks. Some were cool. None were formatted to work cleanly on your phone. Or my phone. So I started Shorts2Go. For you people. Because I love you. Dave says I should Kickstart it for $100,000 so I can buy copies of WITNESS TO DEATH.
So, anyhoo, I've been working on the next big project.
I have two novels in the drawer. They're the first and second of a series. The first one set things up fairly well, but, for whatever reason, we never closed the deal on it. The second one takes most of the same characters and throws them into another disaster.
You know how this works, so why am I explaining it to you?
Well, I went back to the first novel to streamline it. Keep in mind, this is a novel I started nearly a decade ago. I don't write the same way anymore. I don't have the same, well, whatever it is real writers call "style." My writing is different and I write differently.
So revisiting the first novel is weird as hell.
Anyhoo, I figured I'd take some of what I liked from the first one and some of what I liked from the second one and see could I work something out. They both have similar themes, though the second one is considerably darker than the first.
But they both have good writing in them. I say that with very little pride. I'm just telling you. There's good writing in there. And there's writing that's not so awesome. So, I don't want to just let the characters in there die, never to exist, suffocated in some .rtf file on a hard drive I won't be able to find in a few years.
Have you ever mined earlier works for pieces? I mean, extensive mining? Not running down there and grabbing a scene, but really devoting a year to digging about?
Did it work? Is there a trick to doing it well?
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Thoughts on Kickstarter
I don't really have a fully formed opinion on Kickstarter yet, but something about it seems kinda shady to me.
On the outside, everything seems hunky dory. I mean, you know people want the book, movie, graphic novel, or TV show because it's crowd sourced. And then it's like the crowd owns a piece of it. So that's kind of cool.
But, at the same time, doesn't it seem like you may not trust your work to sell otherwise? You're basically begging for an advance, and then doling out the material. You're trying to even the odds. Which is okay, I guess.
Also, I'm always curious what happens to the money. I'm sure it's different with movies, because those are expensive... but with books? When I self-pubbed WITNESS TO DEATH, I went for it. I spent money on promotion, cover, and formatting. It wasn't cheap, but I felt like I was confident I'd make that money back and then some.
And I did. WITNESS did pretty well, in my eyes.
But it didn't cost me near what people are asking for when they Kickstart their novels. So, the question lies, where does the money go? Are people using it on a mortgage payment? Author photos? Or are they doing something with their books I don't know about?
I'm not writing this post to make people angry. I truly don't know the answer. I need more information to understand. My opinion isn't informed yet. I'm just going on gut reaction....
So, if you could fill me in on Kickstarter, I'd really appreciate it.
On the outside, everything seems hunky dory. I mean, you know people want the book, movie, graphic novel, or TV show because it's crowd sourced. And then it's like the crowd owns a piece of it. So that's kind of cool.
But, at the same time, doesn't it seem like you may not trust your work to sell otherwise? You're basically begging for an advance, and then doling out the material. You're trying to even the odds. Which is okay, I guess.
Also, I'm always curious what happens to the money. I'm sure it's different with movies, because those are expensive... but with books? When I self-pubbed WITNESS TO DEATH, I went for it. I spent money on promotion, cover, and formatting. It wasn't cheap, but I felt like I was confident I'd make that money back and then some.
And I did. WITNESS did pretty well, in my eyes.
But it didn't cost me near what people are asking for when they Kickstart their novels. So, the question lies, where does the money go? Are people using it on a mortgage payment? Author photos? Or are they doing something with their books I don't know about?
I'm not writing this post to make people angry. I truly don't know the answer. I need more information to understand. My opinion isn't informed yet. I'm just going on gut reaction....
So, if you could fill me in on Kickstarter, I'd really appreciate it.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Five movies I LOVE
I was watching a great documentary a few weeks ago called Midnight Movies: From the Margins to the Mainstream.
I couldn't help but notice that both George Romero and John Waters
both said almost exactly the same thing. To badly paraphrase they both
said that they were bored out of their skulls sitting around in film
school dissecting and discussing the merits of Potemkin and just wanted
to get out there and do it.
I once had a conversation with my oldest brother and we were talking about movies from when we were kids that we had watched again recently. We both were surprised that other then surface dating some of these movies had held up surprising well all these years later. Now that I have kids I'm constantly showing them movies that I saw when I was their age.
All of which got me thinking. Its easy to name a movie like The Godfather as a favorite because it really is a great movie and if you bring it up in conversation people will nod in agreement. But if you mention Cyborg they look at you with disdain if they have even heard of it. Some people just can't appreciate the artistry and genius of some movies. So putting aside the genius that is completely evident in movies like The Godfather, Raging Bull, Citizen Cane, Unforgiven etc. lets talk about the real movies that are our favorites.
In the spirit of TNT's "New Classics" I compiled a quick list of five movies (I could have done more) that are among my real favorites. My love for these movies knows no bounds and I've seen them hundreds of times each.
I once had a conversation with my oldest brother and we were talking about movies from when we were kids that we had watched again recently. We both were surprised that other then surface dating some of these movies had held up surprising well all these years later. Now that I have kids I'm constantly showing them movies that I saw when I was their age.
All of which got me thinking. Its easy to name a movie like The Godfather as a favorite because it really is a great movie and if you bring it up in conversation people will nod in agreement. But if you mention Cyborg they look at you with disdain if they have even heard of it. Some people just can't appreciate the artistry and genius of some movies. So putting aside the genius that is completely evident in movies like The Godfather, Raging Bull, Citizen Cane, Unforgiven etc. lets talk about the real movies that are our favorites.
In the spirit of TNT's "New Classics" I compiled a quick list of five movies (I could have done more) that are among my real favorites. My love for these movies knows no bounds and I've seen them hundreds of times each.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
It takes time to create art
By: Joelle Charbonneau
This week our very own Steve Weddle started a discussion
about the trend in publishing where authors are being asked to produce more
than one work in a year. Sometimes they
are asked to create a short story to help promote a book. Often they are requested to up their
production to two books or more. Steve
did a great job of laying out the possible reasons for this in his post – here– even if he did tweak me a bit by saying I have 17 books hitting shelves in
the next 2 years. (6 is more than
enough!)
During the ensuing discussion, I saw more than on person
comment that creating more than one book a year lowers the quality of an
authors work. I have to admit that the
certainty in which those comments were made gave me pause for a minute. I mean, I have 4 novels due to my publishers
in the next year. The comments on
Steve’s blog post made it sound as if I am selling out by writing that much or
that my writing will suffer mightily from the commitment. Um…yikes.
Then I thought about the arguments and I went from feeling
scared to being annoyed – not just at those comments, but the discussion on
this issue I have seen across the internet.
People say that writing fast means lowering the quality of the
writing.
Screw that.
Just because something is created quickly doesn’t lower the
value of the work. You know how I know
this? Because some of the greatest art
in history was created quickly and has not only lasted throughout the
generations, but with each passing year is more revered.
Let’s look at music.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is considered to be one of the
greatest composers that ever put pen to paper.
He was 35 when he died. During
his time on this earth he wrote over 600 works that are still being preformed
today. In 1791 alone – the last year of
his life – Mozart created over 60 works which included 2 operas, one of which
was Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute), symphonies, choral music, concertos
etc. I don’t think that anyone would claim
his work suffered from speed.
And if you think Mozart was prolific, take a look at another
luminary composer - J.S. Bach who lived to be 65. Part of his job as a church composer was to
write a new cantata every week. He wrote
1126 works during his lifetime – that we know of. Who knows what works were lost to the passage
of time and poor documentation. I
guarantee you won’t hear people say they wish he’d written less.
The visual arts also have their share of prolific
artists. Raphael Sanzio – who was better
known by just his first name of Raphael – was only 37 years old when he
died. During his short life, he
completed at least 100 works that we know of.
And as impressive as that sounds, Pablo Picasso has him beat by a
mile. The total number of artworks
created by Picasso is estimated to be around 50,000.
Am I saying that all writers should be prolific? NO! Am
I saying that all the artwork that was created by Picasso or the music produced
by Bach are at the very highest standard?
Probably not.
But blanket statements saying that “all writing done quickly
is crap” and that “those who take years to craft a book are geniuses” really
tick me off. Each of us as writers—as
readers—as people move at our own pace. Associating
the time it takes to create something to its value is just plain wrong.
Read the book.
Look at the painting.
Listen to the opera or concerto and determine based on the
work alone if it speaks to you.
If it does, why does the time frame it takes to create it
matter?
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Loving "Longmire"
Scott D Parker
Now that Don Draper's gone for another year, I have a new Sunday companion: Walt Longmire.
This new A&E television program follows the cases of Sheriff Walt Longmire in the fictional county of Absaroka, Wyoming. A recent widower, Longmire has a grown daughter, Cady, a staunch deputy in Victoria Moretti (Katie Sackoff), another deputy vying for Longmire's job (Branch Connally), and the "Barney Fife" deputy (The Ferg). To top it off, Lou Diamond Phillips plays Henry Standing Bear, a bartender at a local bar, friend of Longmire, and the diplomat between the sheriff and the folks on the reservation.
Based on the novels by Craig Johnson, I have never read these books, but I'm very much enjoying the new television program. As in nearly every good mystery program, it all boils down to the characters. Longmire, as played by Australian actor Robert Taylor, is exactly who you would think would be the sheriff of the western state. He wears jeans, boots, blue denim shirts, brown jacket, and, of course, the cowboy hat. Mr. Taylor is a striking figure when he is dressed like this, the typical hard, rugged man as any grade-school kid would imagine him. He is the visible embodiment of integrity, according to my wife. His mouth is often set in thin, hard line with his study chin and chiseled jawline. From the looks of him, he's the kind of bad-ass sheriff you want on your side.
But Longmire is different. When he's wearing the hat, you can barely see his eyes. When he removes the hat––always when walking into a building and when talking to the relatives of recent victims––you get to see his eyes. And that is where his soul lives. He may have a hard, gruff exterior, but his eyes are soft, tender, full of empathy because he knows what it's like to lose a loved one. In the first episode, he has to tell a new widow her husband is dead. Instead of the more efficient way of doing this (phone), he insists on driving hours to meet the woman in person. The tears in his eyes as he breaks the bad news, the haunted look is pretty much what sold the entire program for me. Longmire's empathy and sympathy reminds me of CSI: Miami's Horatio Caine, especially as both pilot episodes show a lead protagonist that is as compassionate as he is tough.
The stories themselves are good, especially when you add a brand-new twist at the 45–minute mark as they did last week. As good and compelling as Longmire is as a character, it's the supporting cast that can make a good show more than the sum of its parts. Sackoff's "Vic" Moretti is a former police officer from back east. As the show premieres, Longmire has been in a funk after the death of his wife, with Vic and Branch picking up the slack. In Longmire's absence, the two of them started doing things their own way, something that rubs Branch the wrong way once Longmire returns to the game. Vic has Longmire's back and, lest you think that the older Longmire and the young Victoria are destined to be romantic with each other, nothing can be farther from the truth. They basically have a father–daughter relationship or mentor–student relationship. He trusts her, but often leaves her to do the small-ball work of police work while he goes off and interviews suspects.
Branch Connelly is exactly what you think of with the modern detective in a Western state. He's young, has a military looking persona, and has modern ideas about police work, even if the feelings of the people don't exactly enter into his equations. And, given the fact that he's running for sheriff against Longmire, there's some natural conflict.
As you might expect from a laconic character like Walt Longmire, the show "Longmire" can best be described as unhurried. I'm not saying it's boring, not by any stretch. This show shares the spirit of the good BBC mysteries like "Foyle's War" where there's a lot unsaid and subtle, but, this being the west, gunfights do ensue. That's always fun.
"Longmire" airs Sunday night on A&E. Here's the website. Give it a look and see if there's a better way to spend an hour a week during this summer.
Friday, June 22, 2012
First Impressions
By Russel D McLean
This week, I have finally been indulging properly in the first seaosn of Boardwalk Empire, over a year after everyone else managed to see it. But, hey, I've never been one for keeping up with the zeitgeist.
What initially impressed me - before anyone uttered a word - was the incredible opening sequence. There was a feeling for a while that opening titles were going the way of the dodo. And after years of generically bland "introduce the characters" titles, a-la CSI, you could see why. A spot of soft rock. A bunch of shots of the main cast with their name underneath. Job done.
But opening titles, when done well, are masterpieces unto themselves and introduce you completely to the tone of the show. Boardwalk Empire's music is perhaps a little anachronistic, but the great, sweeping shots of all those bottles of booze and Buscemi on that beach are just brilliant
The opening credits of a TV show have to put you in the right frame of mind. In the case of Dexter, the juxtaposition of such odd shots of everyday life put you right into the mind of a central character who doesn't see life in the same way that we do. And of course all that blood (and keptchup) reminds you of the basic tent of the show, with Dexter being a blood spatter analyst moonlighting as a serial killer (or is that the other way round?):
But its not just the most recent shows that had great opening sequences. The opening credits of Crime Story, from the 1980's were quite brilliant, but then that show still has, in many ways, a massive influence on modern TV:
And of course, I won't post them all here, but THE WIRE, went a great stage further with its opening credits, changing them from season to season to highlight the different themes involved. By changing the artists recording the main title track, they managed to ensure that each season felt utterly different from the last and yet somehow connected:
I guess you could say that the opening credits of a TV show are something like the cover of a book: they are the first thing the reader/viewer sees, and they sure as hell have to give an idea of what the books are about. And while many of them are generic, those that are unique or truly inventive, tend to stick in the mind.
This week, I have finally been indulging properly in the first seaosn of Boardwalk Empire, over a year after everyone else managed to see it. But, hey, I've never been one for keeping up with the zeitgeist.
What initially impressed me - before anyone uttered a word - was the incredible opening sequence. There was a feeling for a while that opening titles were going the way of the dodo. And after years of generically bland "introduce the characters" titles, a-la CSI, you could see why. A spot of soft rock. A bunch of shots of the main cast with their name underneath. Job done.
But opening titles, when done well, are masterpieces unto themselves and introduce you completely to the tone of the show. Boardwalk Empire's music is perhaps a little anachronistic, but the great, sweeping shots of all those bottles of booze and Buscemi on that beach are just brilliant
The opening credits of a TV show have to put you in the right frame of mind. In the case of Dexter, the juxtaposition of such odd shots of everyday life put you right into the mind of a central character who doesn't see life in the same way that we do. And of course all that blood (and keptchup) reminds you of the basic tent of the show, with Dexter being a blood spatter analyst moonlighting as a serial killer (or is that the other way round?):
But its not just the most recent shows that had great opening sequences. The opening credits of Crime Story, from the 1980's were quite brilliant, but then that show still has, in many ways, a massive influence on modern TV:
And of course, I won't post them all here, but THE WIRE, went a great stage further with its opening credits, changing them from season to season to highlight the different themes involved. By changing the artists recording the main title track, they managed to ensure that each season felt utterly different from the last and yet somehow connected:
I guess you could say that the opening credits of a TV show are something like the cover of a book: they are the first thing the reader/viewer sees, and they sure as hell have to give an idea of what the books are about. And while many of them are generic, those that are unique or truly inventive, tend to stick in the mind.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Memory Lane
By Jay Stringer
I've been doing some research over the last few weeks. Whilst I don't pretend that the events in the Miller books are acts of wanton journalism, I do like to keep up to date on the real goings on in the area they are set. The truth is stranger than the fiction, of course. We all know this by now. There are things we'll find in 'real life' that nobody would believe in one of our stories. With that in mind I started to go a wander down memory lane, to the time I was young and stupid and knew many of the kinds of people I would later invent in fiction.
I'm thinking of the time a friend called me at three A.M. asking me to come and fetch him- he'd taken something he was offered in a nightclub and crashed his car, and was now hiding behind a road sign to avoid the police. I don't drive, which made me the single worst person he could have called, but I rounded up another friend and we drove out to where he was. He hadn't crashed his car. Well- he had. He'd gotten in, turned the ignition, put it in gear, and driven into the metal railing of the car park a couple of feet ahead. There was minor cosmetic damage to the car, if that, and he was squatting behind the metal railing thinking we couldn't see him. It's nights like this you learn to switch your phone off. It's also on nights like this you learn the difference between the truth and the tale. In the years since, everyone I've told the story too has preferred the stoned imagination version of events to the real one.
But even more, I'm thinking of the single most entertaining day I had in this period of my life.
We were film students. Each of us saw ourselves as the rightful heirs to different directors. Added to that, I was the idiot who wore an Indiana Jones jacket and had to be the expert on everything. Two of my friends, Channy and Pepsi, were making their third year film. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that making a film with these guys was an experience. No scripts, no plan, no permissions. They would set out armed with a promise to get you drunk, a notion of which Scorsese shots they wanted to ape, and a Rolling Stones CD ready to insert their favourite songs into the scene.
Their third year film was going to be a straight up heist story; they had an experienced actor for one of the male leads and me for the other. I wasn't, and never will be, a decent actor. But I was the best they had. Plus, I had that jacket thing going for me.
Early on the first day of shooting Pepsi picked me up and asked where we could get the props. Neither of us being master criminals we made it up as we went along. We drove to a chemist and picked up two sets of stockings and took them to the counter.
"Are these good?" I asked the guy behind the counter.
He shrugged,
"Like," Pepsi said, "Would they fit over our heads?'
This was not the first time we'd had to talk someone down from panic and explain that we were film students. Better was yet to come.
For the gun we agreed to drive to the local comic shop. Like all comic shops at the time they basically sold a bit of everything. Replica swords, Princess Leia costumes, black trench coats an cuddly toy versions of serial killers. They also sold air pistols and other replica guns. Trouble was, Pepsi didn't know the city centre well, and was taking directions from me. And again, I don't drive. Wolverhampton then and now is a maze; a one-way system from hell surrounded by a large ring road. I think some drivers are still caught up in it after one wrong turn in 1969.
So we drive the wrong way down the one way system and get flashed by a police car. As Pepsi pulls over I say to him, "just blame me. Play dumb. You don't know the area and you're taking directions from someone who doesn't drive."
"I've got it," He says.
He climbs out, and says, "Sorry officer, but we got lost, we're on our way to buy a gun."
After another bout of having to flash our University badges and explain the whole crazy film student thing, and that, yes, there is a connection between us buying a gun and having stockings on the seat, but it's not quite the connection you think, officer, we made it to the film set.
The film set being a street, next to an office building, and with a nice secluded car park. The actor and meself donned out 'masks,' and spent the next hour or so repeatedly robbing someone dressed as a security guard, then running off down the street when the getaway car wouldn't start.
the thing about office buildings is that they tend to have office workers in them. And these office workers, when they see two men run past carrying guns and wearing stockings over their heads, tend to jump to irrational conclusions. Totally unjustified. Still don't know why they panicked, or even thought they should need to call anyone.
Hi officer, yes, I'm wearing a stocking, and what? This? Not even a real gun. It's all a misunderstanding. We're students, you see...
This is all around ten years ago now. And in the years between I can't count the amount of times I've sat down and tried to fictionalise this into a short story. But the thing is, nobody would believe it as fiction.
I've been doing some research over the last few weeks. Whilst I don't pretend that the events in the Miller books are acts of wanton journalism, I do like to keep up to date on the real goings on in the area they are set. The truth is stranger than the fiction, of course. We all know this by now. There are things we'll find in 'real life' that nobody would believe in one of our stories. With that in mind I started to go a wander down memory lane, to the time I was young and stupid and knew many of the kinds of people I would later invent in fiction.
I'm thinking of the time a friend called me at three A.M. asking me to come and fetch him- he'd taken something he was offered in a nightclub and crashed his car, and was now hiding behind a road sign to avoid the police. I don't drive, which made me the single worst person he could have called, but I rounded up another friend and we drove out to where he was. He hadn't crashed his car. Well- he had. He'd gotten in, turned the ignition, put it in gear, and driven into the metal railing of the car park a couple of feet ahead. There was minor cosmetic damage to the car, if that, and he was squatting behind the metal railing thinking we couldn't see him. It's nights like this you learn to switch your phone off. It's also on nights like this you learn the difference between the truth and the tale. In the years since, everyone I've told the story too has preferred the stoned imagination version of events to the real one.
But even more, I'm thinking of the single most entertaining day I had in this period of my life.
We were film students. Each of us saw ourselves as the rightful heirs to different directors. Added to that, I was the idiot who wore an Indiana Jones jacket and had to be the expert on everything. Two of my friends, Channy and Pepsi, were making their third year film. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that making a film with these guys was an experience. No scripts, no plan, no permissions. They would set out armed with a promise to get you drunk, a notion of which Scorsese shots they wanted to ape, and a Rolling Stones CD ready to insert their favourite songs into the scene.
Their third year film was going to be a straight up heist story; they had an experienced actor for one of the male leads and me for the other. I wasn't, and never will be, a decent actor. But I was the best they had. Plus, I had that jacket thing going for me.
Early on the first day of shooting Pepsi picked me up and asked where we could get the props. Neither of us being master criminals we made it up as we went along. We drove to a chemist and picked up two sets of stockings and took them to the counter.
"Are these good?" I asked the guy behind the counter.
He shrugged,
"Like," Pepsi said, "Would they fit over our heads?'
This was not the first time we'd had to talk someone down from panic and explain that we were film students. Better was yet to come.
For the gun we agreed to drive to the local comic shop. Like all comic shops at the time they basically sold a bit of everything. Replica swords, Princess Leia costumes, black trench coats an cuddly toy versions of serial killers. They also sold air pistols and other replica guns. Trouble was, Pepsi didn't know the city centre well, and was taking directions from me. And again, I don't drive. Wolverhampton then and now is a maze; a one-way system from hell surrounded by a large ring road. I think some drivers are still caught up in it after one wrong turn in 1969.
So we drive the wrong way down the one way system and get flashed by a police car. As Pepsi pulls over I say to him, "just blame me. Play dumb. You don't know the area and you're taking directions from someone who doesn't drive."
"I've got it," He says.
He climbs out, and says, "Sorry officer, but we got lost, we're on our way to buy a gun."
After another bout of having to flash our University badges and explain the whole crazy film student thing, and that, yes, there is a connection between us buying a gun and having stockings on the seat, but it's not quite the connection you think, officer, we made it to the film set.
The film set being a street, next to an office building, and with a nice secluded car park. The actor and meself donned out 'masks,' and spent the next hour or so repeatedly robbing someone dressed as a security guard, then running off down the street when the getaway car wouldn't start.
the thing about office buildings is that they tend to have office workers in them. And these office workers, when they see two men run past carrying guns and wearing stockings over their heads, tend to jump to irrational conclusions. Totally unjustified. Still don't know why they panicked, or even thought they should need to call anyone.
Hi officer, yes, I'm wearing a stocking, and what? This? Not even a real gun. It's all a misunderstanding. We're students, you see...
This is all around ten years ago now. And in the years between I can't count the amount of times I've sat down and tried to fictionalise this into a short story. But the thing is, nobody would believe it as fiction.
***
Couple of quick mentions. First, our buddy Nigel Bird has an ebook available for you all to buy and love, and t'other friend of DSD, Paul Brazil, has a website waiting for you to go and flirt with it.
Finally, a quick shout to Craig at Gritfiction. He's offering to help people out with kindle formatting, and I can vouch for him- he's helped me on a project you'll be hearing about soon and did a great job. Go check out his site and clicky-click some of those links.
Okay that's me done for today. Get off my lawn.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
The Once-a-Year Problem
By Steve Weddle
OK. Over at the DSD Book Club, we're reading THE LAST KIND WORDS. Grab your Tom Piccirilli and head on over. We'll start posting discussion topics there, probably next week.
--
The InBox here at DSD HQ has been flooded with articles and links about this here "One Book A Year" Thing.
According to the NYT, Lee Child and John Grisham are being asked to write more than a book a year.
Which makes sense.
So, publishers are asking writers for smaller, promotional pieces? OK. And publishers are asking writers for more than one novel a year? OK. Publishers want to make money. Writers want to make money. Selling more of a thing means more money. And one thing can lead into another. OK.
I remember when The Office was a popular television show. They'd have "webisodes" you could watch online. I never did. But they were supposedly these 10-minute clips you could watch between shows, between seasons, to get your fix.
Spring training and winter ball are good examples for baseball. Fall league. Rookie ball. These are all ways to keep interested in The Sport of Baseball while the main show is on hiatus, I guess.
What seems odd is the various responses of writers. Some look at the new opportunities and delve into something different. Grisham, as that NYT piece says, writes young adult between his thrillers. Others write prequels or alternate universe pieces for their main series.
But some writers seem to see the new opportunity as a burden. Seems they feel like Lucy and Ethel working on the line at the candy factory. Traditionally, writers with a series -- thriller, mystery, etc. -- would put out a book a year, often in the same month. The bookstores would know that August is Johnny Author's month and would plan accordingly. Stock. Signings. Then every October is the newest dog training mystery from Jane Deplumme. There was a schedule, damn it. Now it's all screwed up. Now full-time writers are being pressured to write more than a book a year.
Some folks seem to think that this is the fault of self-published writers. See, they bust onto the scene with four or five trunk novels and now Johnny Author's publisher wants Johnny to do the same.
Other folks, who have done the math, have pointed out that if a full-time author writes 1,000 words a day, then the full-time author (FTA) will have 365,000 words each year -- four or five novels.
The FTAs have countered, saying that you have to figure in research time and travel time and convention time and editing time and promotion time.
Others have pointed out that if you have a Grisham book on Jan. 1 and then a Grisham novella on June 1 and then a Grisham novel on Sept. 1, then the people who read Jo Blo because they were told "she's like a midwestern Grisham" might never have discovered her, because there's no Down Time for Grisham publications.
Our own Joelle Charbonneau has 17 books coming out in the next two years. Friend of the blog Chris F. Holm has two "Collector" books coming out this year. Many authors -- maybe you -- have more than one book a year coming out. Heck, I know writers with non-author day jobs who do a book a year.
Obvious point that must be made: Everyone writes at a different pace.
I'm not sure, as some have said, that this is the fault of self-published authors flooding the marketplace with three books a year each.
Self-pubbed books -- or indie books, or whatever it is this week -- might take less time to "produce."
If I'm a big seller of vegetables, I might get vegetables from farmers all over the planet. They produce and then send in to my warehouses. I have to have those little stickers printed. I have to work with the grocery stores. I have to work with advertising agencies. I have to argue for eye-level shelf placement. I have all sorts of things I have to do. I have committees set up for this. This takes a great deal of work, a good amount of overhead, as it were.
Meanwhile, there's a man down the street who pulls his cukes out of the ground (updated below) on Friday morning, rinses them, drops them into bushel buckets in the back of his truck, and carries them down to the farmers' market.
Are the farmers' market cukes better? Maybe. Maybe not. But have they been "vetted" by the corporate committees looking to make a profit? No. Have they been through all the steps that the corporate cucumbers go through? No. Might there be spots on them that aren't on the corporate cukes? Maybe. But I've had my share of corporate cukes that were bland or blotchy.
But the farmers' market is able to get things into your hands much faster, once the cuke comes out of the ground.
When the grocery stores and food corporations lose market share to the farmers' markets, they're going to lower costs, to increase their revenue, to work on the bottom line.
More cukes at a better price? Yes, please. It's what the cuke eaters of the world want. And it's what the corporations of the world want.
Readers want more to read. And they want it quicker. The corporations that have signed FTAs to multi-book deals want more to sell. Of course they do. Why wouldn't they? And if a 10,000-word Jack Reacher story between novels helps to promote the upcoming novel, that's a win for the corporation that owns the book and the reader who enjoys the book and the author who wrote the book.
The old adage still works: Write the best book you can. Just, you know, write more of them. Because if the grocery store runs out of cucumbers, there's a market open downtown that has some. And folks love them some good cukes. Is that the fault of the farmers' market?
UPDATE: I've been informed that my cavalier reference to pulling cukes from the ground is incorrect. Cukes actually grow from the sky.
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--
The InBox here at DSD HQ has been flooded with articles and links about this here "One Book A Year" Thing.
According to the NYT, Lee Child and John Grisham are being asked to write more than a book a year.
Which makes sense.
Publishers say that a carefully released short story, timed six to eight weeks before a big hardcover comes out, can entice new readers who might be willing to pay 99 cents for a story but reluctant to spend $14 for a new e-book or $26 for a hardcover. That can translate into higher preorder sales for the novel and even a lift in sales of older books by the author, which are easily accessible as e-book impulse purchases for consumers with Nooks or Kindles.
So, publishers are asking writers for smaller, promotional pieces? OK. And publishers are asking writers for more than one novel a year? OK. Publishers want to make money. Writers want to make money. Selling more of a thing means more money. And one thing can lead into another. OK.
I remember when The Office was a popular television show. They'd have "webisodes" you could watch online. I never did. But they were supposedly these 10-minute clips you could watch between shows, between seasons, to get your fix.
Spring training and winter ball are good examples for baseball. Fall league. Rookie ball. These are all ways to keep interested in The Sport of Baseball while the main show is on hiatus, I guess.
What seems odd is the various responses of writers. Some look at the new opportunities and delve into something different. Grisham, as that NYT piece says, writes young adult between his thrillers. Others write prequels or alternate universe pieces for their main series.
But some writers seem to see the new opportunity as a burden. Seems they feel like Lucy and Ethel working on the line at the candy factory. Traditionally, writers with a series -- thriller, mystery, etc. -- would put out a book a year, often in the same month. The bookstores would know that August is Johnny Author's month and would plan accordingly. Stock. Signings. Then every October is the newest dog training mystery from Jane Deplumme. There was a schedule, damn it. Now it's all screwed up. Now full-time writers are being pressured to write more than a book a year.
Some folks seem to think that this is the fault of self-published writers. See, they bust onto the scene with four or five trunk novels and now Johnny Author's publisher wants Johnny to do the same.
Other folks, who have done the math, have pointed out that if a full-time author writes 1,000 words a day, then the full-time author (FTA) will have 365,000 words each year -- four or five novels.
The FTAs have countered, saying that you have to figure in research time and travel time and convention time and editing time and promotion time.
Others have pointed out that if you have a Grisham book on Jan. 1 and then a Grisham novella on June 1 and then a Grisham novel on Sept. 1, then the people who read Jo Blo because they were told "she's like a midwestern Grisham" might never have discovered her, because there's no Down Time for Grisham publications.
Our own Joelle Charbonneau has 17 books coming out in the next two years. Friend of the blog Chris F. Holm has two "Collector" books coming out this year. Many authors -- maybe you -- have more than one book a year coming out. Heck, I know writers with non-author day jobs who do a book a year.
Obvious point that must be made: Everyone writes at a different pace.
I'm not sure, as some have said, that this is the fault of self-published authors flooding the marketplace with three books a year each.
Self-pubbed books -- or indie books, or whatever it is this week -- might take less time to "produce."
If I'm a big seller of vegetables, I might get vegetables from farmers all over the planet. They produce and then send in to my warehouses. I have to have those little stickers printed. I have to work with the grocery stores. I have to work with advertising agencies. I have to argue for eye-level shelf placement. I have all sorts of things I have to do. I have committees set up for this. This takes a great deal of work, a good amount of overhead, as it were.
Meanwhile, there's a man down the street who pulls his cukes out of the ground (updated below) on Friday morning, rinses them, drops them into bushel buckets in the back of his truck, and carries them down to the farmers' market.
Are the farmers' market cukes better? Maybe. Maybe not. But have they been "vetted" by the corporate committees looking to make a profit? No. Have they been through all the steps that the corporate cucumbers go through? No. Might there be spots on them that aren't on the corporate cukes? Maybe. But I've had my share of corporate cukes that were bland or blotchy.
But the farmers' market is able to get things into your hands much faster, once the cuke comes out of the ground.
When the grocery stores and food corporations lose market share to the farmers' markets, they're going to lower costs, to increase their revenue, to work on the bottom line.
More cukes at a better price? Yes, please. It's what the cuke eaters of the world want. And it's what the corporations of the world want.
Readers want more to read. And they want it quicker. The corporations that have signed FTAs to multi-book deals want more to sell. Of course they do. Why wouldn't they? And if a 10,000-word Jack Reacher story between novels helps to promote the upcoming novel, that's a win for the corporation that owns the book and the reader who enjoys the book and the author who wrote the book.
The old adage still works: Write the best book you can. Just, you know, write more of them. Because if the grocery store runs out of cucumbers, there's a market open downtown that has some. And folks love them some good cukes. Is that the fault of the farmers' market?
UPDATE: I've been informed that my cavalier reference to pulling cukes from the ground is incorrect. Cukes actually grow from the sky.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Summer Time and the Reading is Easy
Summer is just about here for me (less than a week of school left). I always get a ton of reading done in the summer.
Usually I try to shake things up in the summer. Read something big (3 years ago THE POWER OF THE DOG and THE GIVEN DAY, last year AMERICAN GODS and GAME OF THRONES). But at the same time I also like to fall back on some favorite writers.
Right now I'm reading some Don Winslow. Up next is Chuck Wendig.
But to be honest, I'm opening up this post to the comments. Sell me on something cool (and maybe even a bit different) to read this summer.
Go to it:
Usually I try to shake things up in the summer. Read something big (3 years ago THE POWER OF THE DOG and THE GIVEN DAY, last year AMERICAN GODS and GAME OF THRONES). But at the same time I also like to fall back on some favorite writers.
Right now I'm reading some Don Winslow. Up next is Chuck Wendig.
But to be honest, I'm opening up this post to the comments. Sell me on something cool (and maybe even a bit different) to read this summer.
Go to it:
Monday, June 18, 2012
Snubnose Press is one year old today - some thoughts
On June 18th, 2011 Snubnose Press released it's first book, Speedloader, an anthology of six original stories. Here we are, one year later.
In that time we have released 14 titles, including one anthology (Spedloader); one issue of Spinetingler; six short story collections (Cold Rifts, Old School, The Chaos We Know, Monkey Justice, Laughing at Dead Men, Gumbo Ya-Ya); three novellas (Nothing Matters, Dig Two Graves, Old Ghosts); and three novels (Harvest of Ruins, The Duplicate, Hill Country).
So why did we decide to get into book publishing? How about a little history (I promise I'll keep it quick). Years ago, even as far back as when Spinetingler was owned by another site, we had been looking for a way to branch into publishing. Once we even tossed around the idea of getting into limited edition hardcovers, kind of like you see in the horror market. Even back then I was talking about novellas. Simply put, Ebooks finally allowed us to enter the fray with lower costs.
Also in the mix was a couple of ideas that came together for us, forcing us to decide if we wanted to do something about it. One, we knew a lot of really good authors who had come up through the short crime fiction scene and knew that they starting to produce manuscripts. Two, the changing market place seemed to have had a negative effect on certain types of darker crime fiction, so we saw a gap that we could potentially fill. Three, we were aware, through various personal correspondence , of some quality manuscripts that were floating around not getting picked up by bigger publishers.
Spinetingler Magazine strives to publish the best in darker crime fiction with a mix of established writers, emerging writers and new writers. More then one story in Spinetingler has been expanded and published as a novel, and many authors have gone on to signing with agents and publishing deals. Snubnose Press was started to be an extension and continuation of that ethos.
One question I'm asked sometimes is What are we looking for in a manuscript? The simple answer is, unfortunately for authors, a vague one. We want to be grabbed, without a wasted word, and dragged along against our will to the very end. I want to say "holy shit, I have to publish this".
That idea of what we wanted to publish can, and does, cover a broad range of genres, sub-genres and styles. Which is how we like it. But one thing we have noticed over the past year is that we are seeing a lot of hardboiled manuscripts. I can only surmise that this is one sub-genre that the market changes are squeezing out. While it is not our intention to be considered solely a hardboiled publisher I have to admit to some pleasure in seeing this written about Snubnose Press:
It's the little things that really make this worthwhile.
Over the past year, two of our books have come out in print. I am sometimes asked if we will continue to expand into this area. The simple answer is yes. The extended answer brings to mind a political phrase, "incremental change you can believe in", which to my mind simply means that we want to continue to grow, to do new things, but we also want to maintain a reasonable pace so that we don't stumble and fall because we want to continue publishing books for a long time to come. So yes, you may see some more printed books this year.
So where are we headed in year two and beyond?
A key to continued success in year one was to try and keep costs as low as possible in order to maximize revenue. One thing that we decided to do was to start out using a free blog platform as our website. We will be looking into an upgrade to a dedicated domain in the near future.
We will be launching a customer feedback form for people to tell us how we are doing and what we can do better.
Right now, as we speak, I am planning a big batch of Summer titles. In July and August we are planning on releasing at least ten titles. I've had a bit of a change in philosophy since last year. Initially I worked one one book at a time, getting everything ready for publication then launching the title, at about a one title a month pace. At some point I thought that it was silly to sit on a manuscript that was publication ready because of a pre-existing schedule. So now, we are increasing the amount of titles that we are working on at any one time and when a book is ready, we're going to publish it. This means that you guys are going to see a huge increase in production over the course of the rest of the year.
Look, I know that Snubnose Press is a small fish in a big ocean but I want everyone to know just how serious we take it. We went into his with realistic expectations. Our sales numbers during year one have been on the small side but we have all the pieces in place to really see them grow. As a new publisher, with only a handful of titles, we have been focusing on developing a reputation for putting out quality titles. Building that reputation is part of our strategy for increasing sales in the long-term. However, although we do have authors who are earning royalties and receiving payments, building those sales can be a slow process. We are working hard to grow the sales numbers. There are some who seem to suggest all a person needs to do is upload their title and start cashing checks for thousands of dollars. That isn't the case. Unless the writer has a preexisting base of readers to bolster sales and reviews immediately, e-publishing seems to run counter to print publishing. In print publishing, the bulk of sales occur in the first few months from release. In e-publishing, sales tend to build.
Finally, once the queue is cleared out some, we will be opening up submissions again some time in the summer.
Please drop us a line or leave a comment. Tell us how we are doing because we would be nowhere without you, our readers. What have we been doing right? What could we be doing better? Any questions, comments or concerns?
To celebrate Speedloader, our first release, is FREE this week, and all of our titles are .99 this month.
In that time we have released 14 titles, including one anthology (Spedloader); one issue of Spinetingler; six short story collections (Cold Rifts, Old School, The Chaos We Know, Monkey Justice, Laughing at Dead Men, Gumbo Ya-Ya); three novellas (Nothing Matters, Dig Two Graves, Old Ghosts); and three novels (Harvest of Ruins, The Duplicate, Hill Country).
So why did we decide to get into book publishing? How about a little history (I promise I'll keep it quick). Years ago, even as far back as when Spinetingler was owned by another site, we had been looking for a way to branch into publishing. Once we even tossed around the idea of getting into limited edition hardcovers, kind of like you see in the horror market. Even back then I was talking about novellas. Simply put, Ebooks finally allowed us to enter the fray with lower costs.
Also in the mix was a couple of ideas that came together for us, forcing us to decide if we wanted to do something about it. One, we knew a lot of really good authors who had come up through the short crime fiction scene and knew that they starting to produce manuscripts. Two, the changing market place seemed to have had a negative effect on certain types of darker crime fiction, so we saw a gap that we could potentially fill. Three, we were aware, through various personal correspondence , of some quality manuscripts that were floating around not getting picked up by bigger publishers.
Spinetingler Magazine strives to publish the best in darker crime fiction with a mix of established writers, emerging writers and new writers. More then one story in Spinetingler has been expanded and published as a novel, and many authors have gone on to signing with agents and publishing deals. Snubnose Press was started to be an extension and continuation of that ethos.
One question I'm asked sometimes is What are we looking for in a manuscript? The simple answer is, unfortunately for authors, a vague one. We want to be grabbed, without a wasted word, and dragged along against our will to the very end. I want to say "holy shit, I have to publish this".
That idea of what we wanted to publish can, and does, cover a broad range of genres, sub-genres and styles. Which is how we like it. But one thing we have noticed over the past year is that we are seeing a lot of hardboiled manuscripts. I can only surmise that this is one sub-genre that the market changes are squeezing out. While it is not our intention to be considered solely a hardboiled publisher I have to admit to some pleasure in seeing this written about Snubnose Press:
"Snubnose Press came to hardboiled literature as welcome as ten feet of gauze on an open wound. So much talent had little to nowhere to go. They are such a hardcore, dedicated publisher, that I know whatever title I'll pick up from them will be strong."
It's the little things that really make this worthwhile.
Over the past year, two of our books have come out in print. I am sometimes asked if we will continue to expand into this area. The simple answer is yes. The extended answer brings to mind a political phrase, "incremental change you can believe in", which to my mind simply means that we want to continue to grow, to do new things, but we also want to maintain a reasonable pace so that we don't stumble and fall because we want to continue publishing books for a long time to come. So yes, you may see some more printed books this year.
So where are we headed in year two and beyond?
A key to continued success in year one was to try and keep costs as low as possible in order to maximize revenue. One thing that we decided to do was to start out using a free blog platform as our website. We will be looking into an upgrade to a dedicated domain in the near future.
We will be launching a customer feedback form for people to tell us how we are doing and what we can do better.
Right now, as we speak, I am planning a big batch of Summer titles. In July and August we are planning on releasing at least ten titles. I've had a bit of a change in philosophy since last year. Initially I worked one one book at a time, getting everything ready for publication then launching the title, at about a one title a month pace. At some point I thought that it was silly to sit on a manuscript that was publication ready because of a pre-existing schedule. So now, we are increasing the amount of titles that we are working on at any one time and when a book is ready, we're going to publish it. This means that you guys are going to see a huge increase in production over the course of the rest of the year.
Look, I know that Snubnose Press is a small fish in a big ocean but I want everyone to know just how serious we take it. We went into his with realistic expectations. Our sales numbers during year one have been on the small side but we have all the pieces in place to really see them grow. As a new publisher, with only a handful of titles, we have been focusing on developing a reputation for putting out quality titles. Building that reputation is part of our strategy for increasing sales in the long-term. However, although we do have authors who are earning royalties and receiving payments, building those sales can be a slow process. We are working hard to grow the sales numbers. There are some who seem to suggest all a person needs to do is upload their title and start cashing checks for thousands of dollars. That isn't the case. Unless the writer has a preexisting base of readers to bolster sales and reviews immediately, e-publishing seems to run counter to print publishing. In print publishing, the bulk of sales occur in the first few months from release. In e-publishing, sales tend to build.
Finally, once the queue is cleared out some, we will be opening up submissions again some time in the summer.
Please drop us a line or leave a comment. Tell us how we are doing because we would be nowhere without you, our readers. What have we been doing right? What could we be doing better? Any questions, comments or concerns?
To celebrate Speedloader, our first release, is FREE this week, and all of our titles are .99 this month.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Father’s Day: That and a Dime
I am delighted that Steve Ulfelder is back here on DSD. Since his last appearance, Purgatory Chasm has garnered both a coveted Edgar and Anthony nomination for best first book. His second book, The Whole Lie, is in stores now. If you haven't read Steve - do it! Now! You'll thank me for it. Now please give a wonderful welcome to the sensational Steve Ulfelder.
By Steve Ulfelder
Father’s Day.
My books tend to
include, even center around, father-son relationships. If protagonist Conway
Sax isn’t dealing with the sudden reappearance of his own father (who abandoned
him), he’s trying to regain the trust of his own son (whom he abandoned). The
stories are filled with sons who believe they’ve never measured up to their
fathers, in spite of material evidence to the contrary.
In my writing, I focus
on characters or story, letting themes emerge where they emerge. And it’s
become indisputable: fathers and sons are a big theme for me.
I’m fascinated by the
role of dad in the family. His
power. His other-ness, especially in the increasingly rare households with
stay-at-home moms.
And
his occasional flares of temper.
Ah,
yes. The father’s temper.
My dad
had one.
Jump
to Los Angeles, four-plus decades ago. And let’s begin with some context on my
father’s situation at the time. At age 30 or so, he had three kids under the
age of 6, a high-pressure job in the aerospace industry, a mortgage on a ranch
house in Orange County, a pair of car payments, and a young wife who’d been
uprooted and moved 3000 miles from home – with the aforementioned kids.
I can
only imagine what pressures my dad felt back then. Small wonder that he
sometimes found it necessary to vent in creative ways.
There
was the time the lawnmower, one of those engineless jobs perfect for a small
Orange County lawn, got hopelessly jammed. Dad responded by launching it over
our tall fence into the swimming pool of the apartment complex next door.
No
swimmers were injured. The lawnmower was never the same.
I
want to be fair, so I’ll point out that his temper often worked on our behalf.
One time, a hotrod went blasting down our dead-end street, spinning its tires,
barely under control. My father roared at the hotrod’s driver and went running
– running – after the car. He must have struck terror into the driver’s
heart, because the kid actually stopped and waited for my dad to catch up and
offer a piece of his mind.
Yes,
my father’s temper had the power to halt speeding cars.
But
the story that sticks in my mind occurred one Sunday morning when I was five.
My mother had taken my siblings to church, leaving me and dad at home. I
watched cartoons while he relaxed and read the LA Times.
My
parents had recently begun giving us kids an allowance – a dime a week each.
Sunday was allowance day, and though I tried to watch cartoons, all I could think
of was that dime. Man, did I want
that dime.
I
crept into my parents’ room and meekly requested it.
“I’ll
give it to you later, when I get up,” dad said.
Fair
enough. Back to cartoons.
Time
passed. A full three or four minutes – an eternity, in other words, to a
5-year-old with sweet silver on his mind.
I
padded back to my folks’ room. “Can I have my dime yet?”
“I’ll
give it to you later, when I get up,” my father said, not lifting his eyes from
the sports page. There was likely a subtle shift in his tone, a sort of warning
bell that I was pushing my luck.
But I
was 5 years old, and a subtle shift in tone was no match for that dime.
You
know where this story’s headed, don’t you?
Back
down the hall for more cartoons. After a reasonable interlude – two or three
minutes, say – pad down the hall again. Stand in my parents’ doorway. “Dad? Can
I have my …”
And
that’s when my father roared.
He roared. He became a force of nature. He
let me have it in language and at a volume that would draw complaints at a
convention of stevedores.
To
say I was chastened is an understatement. I was cowed. I was terrified.
I
retreated to my favorite spot – the floor of the linen closet, which was a
perfect size for a 5-year-old – and waited for mom to come home.
Now
fast-forward 30 years to the basement of the Massachusetts home in which my
wife and I have raised our kids.
I
need to confess I inherited my father’s temper. It doesn’t blow very often, but
when it blows, it blows. My family
will vouch for this, unfortunately.
I’d
recently introduced my son, 11 at the time, and his two best friends to my own
favorite boyhood hobby: building model cars. They had embraced it with fervor.
One Saturday afternoon, I dropped in on the makeshift studio they’d created in
our basement …
…
where it looked like a bomb had gone off.
A
paint bomb.
In
the manner of all 11-year-old boys everywhere, somebody had accidentally
spray-painted somebody else’s hand. Retaliation had ensued. Then escalation,
then a full-blown conflagration.
Of
spray-paint fighting, that is.
The
battle hadn’t ended until the last can was empty. The basement walls and
floors, along with everything in the vicinity, looked like a South Bronx
graffiti competition.
I
tracked down those boys, and I let them have it. Boy, did I let them have it, unleashing a healthy dose of the
stevedore lingo my dad had so thoughtfully taught me. I gave them the works:
the bugged-out eyes, the throbbing vein in the temple, the clenched fists.
And
when I was finished, a funny thing happened.
Only
it wasn’t funny. It was terrible.
And
it was in that terrible moment that I gained a new kinship with my father. A
loop was closed. A new point of view made the scene.
What
happened, you ask?
I saw
the boys’ eyes.
I saw
hurt and confusion, caused purely by me, in the eyes of sweet 11-year-old boys,
including my only son.
And I
was overcome by shame and regret and the knowledge I had used my power in an
awful way.
At
that moment, I flashed back to the episode of the dime. And I came to
understand what my father must have come to understand then: My loss of control
had caused an ugly memory that, while it would recede, and would be
counterbalanced by more positive recollections, would never go away.
And
this is the part all dads can relate to.
Our
power, which seems so great to our families, can be exercised with reluctance
and gentleness … or with force and impatience and outbursts of temper.
I
believe that because we’re all good at heart, gentleness and grace usually win
out.
But
because we’re human, they don’t always.
So
what do you do? How do you react to a colossal screw-up like this?
Here’s
what I did that day, after seeing the fear and hurt I’d put in the eyes of
three 11-year-olds I very much loved: I forced myself to remember those looks.
Believe
me, I would prefer to forget them. But I don’t let myself. I can recall those
boys’ eyes even today.
I
wish I could say nothing like that ugly moment has happened since. But I’m
human. So it has.
But
I’m human. So I keep trying.
I
guess I will all my life.
I
want to circle back to my dad, lest you think he’s gotten the short end of the
stick.
He’s
one of the finest men I know. Pushing 80, healthy as a horse, active in all
sorts of charitable and intellectual endeavors.
But
what’s truly beautiful about my dad is that he’s spent his entire life improving in all the important ways. As
he ages, his heart gets bigger and bigger, his capacity for love and
forgiveness greater. If I can become half the man my father is, I will have
done well indeed.
One
last thing. We left 5-year-old me curled up in the linen closet, waiting for my
mother to get home from church.
When
she did, and I emerged, guess what I found on the rug outside that closet door?
That’s right: A perfect, shiny, carefully placed dime.
Happy
Father’s Day.
BIO:
Steve Ulfelder is an amateur race driver and co-owner of Flatout Motorsports
Inc., a Massachusetts company that builds race cars. His first novel, Purgatory Chasm (Thomas Dunne
Books/Minotaur), was nominated for Edgar and Anthony Awards and was named Best First Mystery of 2011 by RT Book Reviews. His second novel, The Whole Lie, is available everywhere,
and a third book is set for May 2013 release.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
A Tomato Is Not a Book
by
Scott D. Parker
A tomato is not a book.
A shocker, I know. We all know what a tomato is and we all
know what a book is, but, for the sake of this essay, I wanted to make sure
we’re all on the same page.
Last weekend, at a local nursery, I attended my first tomato
contest. My wife is the gardener in the family and she takes great pride in its
care, what things grow in it, and the overall look of this little piece of
earth in our backyard. My role is typically in the tilling stage early in the
year: clear out the dead stuff from the previous year, crack the hardened
earth, and make the ground ready for the new crop.
This year, our garden produced the largest tomato she has
ever grown. Excited, she took it and a couple cherry tomatoes up to the nursery
where, with a dozen or so other contestants, the various tomatoes were graded
on both size and taste. The rewards were pretty good: $100 gift cards. Two
judges, a man and a woman, held court in one of the interior, air-conditioned decorating
rooms, surrounded by artificial plants, an odd thing at a nursery. Bottles of
water were made available to the contestants and patrons and a few chairs were
arranged in front of the judging table. My wife sat next
to an elderly couple and across the aisle from a middle-aged couple and a
family of three. I stood and observed while my son—although one to enjoy
digging in the dirt and, on occasion, helping his mom in the garden—entertained
himself on my iPod Touch.
The weighing portion of the judgment was first. My wife’s
tomato, a Cherokee Purple for all you vegetologists out there, was among a
dozen or so vying for the Largest Tomato prize. One thing was obvious from that
group: there was a clear winner, and it wasn't my wife’s Cherokee Purple. There
was one other that looked close, but this one, large, misshapened tomato was
going to carry the day.
Each tomato, the large ones and the other ones up for Best
Tasting, was placed on a Styrofoam plate with a number. Under each plate, taped
to the underside, was the contestant name. As the judges brought forth the
knife and began slicing (the romas were first), the two of them spoke in hushed
undertones. I was only five feet away and I could barely hear them. Very soon,
the air was filled with the meaty, earthy smell of tomatoes. It was not an altogether
unpleasant experience, that smell. I may not be a gardener, but I do appreciate
the sweet smell of the earth and the things produced by it. All the while, soft
murmuring conversations were taking place. The folks talked methods of growing,
types of food given to the tomato plants. As our election season hits the warm
months of summer ahead of the fall campaign, with heated words already starting
to fly, the contestants all were congenial and kind to each other. After a bit,
we started talking about fishing off the coast near Palacios, Texas. With the
growing odor of tomatoes in the air, I quickly started thinking how good
tomatoes would go with red fish. Shoot, I'm already thinking about a weekend trip down there. Been wanting to get some fishing done since the end of this season of "River Monsters."
Before the winners were announced, an
honorable mention was awarded to a young lad of five. His entry nearly won the
tasting contest, and he was quite pleased with his certificate of merit. That,
and the extra tomatoes he inhaled after the contest. I asked him his secret:
fish heads in the soil. Yes, really. When I disclosed this to my wife, she nodded. She knew, of course, having purchased the vile, oily liquid variety. I never knew you could actually bury a fish head.
During the time at the nursery, a strange thought occurred
to me: these growers, unlike us authors, basically had very little to do with
the end result of the thing by which they were being judged. Sure, there are
different methods of feeding the vines, tending the leaves, and helping Mother
Nature out, but, in the end, it is she that does all the work. In recent days,
lists of nominations for various mystery awards have been released and all of
those authors have been happy to be nominated. Each one wants to win because,
in some part, the award will be the reward for the long hours of imagineering,
writing, editing, proofing, and selling the fruit of their labors. While you
might make the analogy that writers are gardeners of the imagination, they are
not only the gardener but also the Mother Nature of a book. They control every
aspect of a book, for the most part, and, as such, have much more invested in
the outcome.
Once the winners earned their awards and had their pictures
taken, we all got to sample the winning tomato and the others on the table. Of
all the flavors of summer, fresh tomatoes are among my favorites. It was a very
pleasant way to spend a part of a Saturday morning in June, and it proved just
a small insight to a different type of competition: one in which Mother Nature
was being judged more so that mere humans.
Friday, June 15, 2012
What's In A Name?
By Russel D McLean
The Good Son.
The Lost Sister.
Father Confessor.
I honestly didn’t mean for this to happen. The McNee books weren’t really meant to have that whole family connection, but it became more and more clear as I wrote them that they did. I have an obsession with families in my writing. In what makes and doesn’t make a family. In whether families are about blood or something else. It runs through a great deal of what I write. Don’t ask me why. Ask my psychiatrist.
And while you’re at it, you can ask what my obsession is with older characters and violence. From David Burns to a 75 year old attempted assault in a McNee short story to the determined oldsters of Angel of Mercy, I have a thing about old people bringing the pain.
Again, ask my psychiatrist.
But the title thing intrigues me. I hate titles. Right now I’m trying to name a potential standalone and every title I use is taken or too associated with other things. And of course I’m naming the fourth McNee which has something do with mothers. But its tough to name it (although fellow DSDer Sandra Ruttan may be able to work out – four years after the fact – what name that she suggested is currently acting as a placeholder).
Titles can be great things. Or they can be dull. They can have rhythms in a series or not. Say what you like about James Patterson, naming those early Alex Cross books for children’s rhymes was kind of inspired, given that they tapped into all kinds of fears and anxieties in the reader. After all, we’re easily scared as children and as adults we’re easily scared for them, so using those kinds of titles (Big Bad Wolf, London Bridge, Along Came A Spider) tapped into all of that and primed the reader to be on the edge of their seat and unnerved. Much more so than when he finally just started calling the books, Cross, Double Cross etc etc.
By that point, the titles imply that the books have become routine. But that can be just what readers want, too. The promise of familiarity can be enticing. And of course there are only so many nursery rhymes in the world.
Doug Johnstone tells a story about how he had a great title for his book, but the publishers changed it to the very literal “Hit and Run” for publication. While I think the original title (which I now can’t remember) was more appealing, the use of a simpler title actually works. The bluntness is effective and in terms of genre, thrillers seem to work best with punchy titles. Look at thriller powerhouse Jonathan Kellerman who these days only uses one word per title.
But long titles, too, have their place. I adore the titles of Philip K Dick:
Do Androids’ Dream of Electric Sheep?
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
We Can Remember It For You, Wholesale
In Milton Lumpky Terrtitory.
And yes, that last one is the name of one of his non SF, more literary works.
Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder Mysteries had some great, lengthy titles too:
A Long Line of Dead Men
A Dance at the Slaughterhouse
The Devil Knows You’re Dead
When The Sacred Ginmill Closes
Often the longer titles have the feel of a reference or quotation. Many times that’s what they are. But that’s great, because if the reader gets the connotation, they’re ready and set up for what awaits them.
A good title sets you up. It gives you an idea about the book. It lets you know what to expect. Which is why they’re damn hard to get right. And why they’re one of the parts of the process I enjoy the least when it comes to creating them.
And let me say, that just for the record, despite some waggish suggestions that have come by email, the title of the fourth J McNee book will absolutely, definitely, posilutely, not be,
Mother F***er.
The Good Son.
The Lost Sister.
Father Confessor.
I honestly didn’t mean for this to happen. The McNee books weren’t really meant to have that whole family connection, but it became more and more clear as I wrote them that they did. I have an obsession with families in my writing. In what makes and doesn’t make a family. In whether families are about blood or something else. It runs through a great deal of what I write. Don’t ask me why. Ask my psychiatrist.
And while you’re at it, you can ask what my obsession is with older characters and violence. From David Burns to a 75 year old attempted assault in a McNee short story to the determined oldsters of Angel of Mercy, I have a thing about old people bringing the pain.
Again, ask my psychiatrist.
But the title thing intrigues me. I hate titles. Right now I’m trying to name a potential standalone and every title I use is taken or too associated with other things. And of course I’m naming the fourth McNee which has something do with mothers. But its tough to name it (although fellow DSDer Sandra Ruttan may be able to work out – four years after the fact – what name that she suggested is currently acting as a placeholder).
Titles can be great things. Or they can be dull. They can have rhythms in a series or not. Say what you like about James Patterson, naming those early Alex Cross books for children’s rhymes was kind of inspired, given that they tapped into all kinds of fears and anxieties in the reader. After all, we’re easily scared as children and as adults we’re easily scared for them, so using those kinds of titles (Big Bad Wolf, London Bridge, Along Came A Spider) tapped into all of that and primed the reader to be on the edge of their seat and unnerved. Much more so than when he finally just started calling the books, Cross, Double Cross etc etc.
By that point, the titles imply that the books have become routine. But that can be just what readers want, too. The promise of familiarity can be enticing. And of course there are only so many nursery rhymes in the world.
Doug Johnstone tells a story about how he had a great title for his book, but the publishers changed it to the very literal “Hit and Run” for publication. While I think the original title (which I now can’t remember) was more appealing, the use of a simpler title actually works. The bluntness is effective and in terms of genre, thrillers seem to work best with punchy titles. Look at thriller powerhouse Jonathan Kellerman who these days only uses one word per title.
But long titles, too, have their place. I adore the titles of Philip K Dick:
Do Androids’ Dream of Electric Sheep?
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
We Can Remember It For You, Wholesale
In Milton Lumpky Terrtitory.
And yes, that last one is the name of one of his non SF, more literary works.
Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder Mysteries had some great, lengthy titles too:
A Long Line of Dead Men
A Dance at the Slaughterhouse
The Devil Knows You’re Dead
When The Sacred Ginmill Closes
Often the longer titles have the feel of a reference or quotation. Many times that’s what they are. But that’s great, because if the reader gets the connotation, they’re ready and set up for what awaits them.
A good title sets you up. It gives you an idea about the book. It lets you know what to expect. Which is why they’re damn hard to get right. And why they’re one of the parts of the process I enjoy the least when it comes to creating them.
And let me say, that just for the record, despite some waggish suggestions that have come by email, the title of the fourth J McNee book will absolutely, definitely, posilutely, not be,
Mother F***er.
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