By Russel D McLean
There is a fly buzzing round my flat.
It won’t leave.
And it won’t stop long enough for me to swat it.
I’m sitting here, trying to work, and it buzzes past my face, or stops on the computer screen just long enough for me to lose my train of thought and then he’s gone again.
The fly won’t stop buzzing.
I’ve left the windows open, and every time he goes near them I think, at last, he’s leaving.
But he doesn’t.
The fly stays in the room. And buzzes.
I was thinking earlier that perhaps the fly is a metaphor for something. Perhaps the constant buzzing of email and text that distracts us from our real work. It seems a good thing to talk about, but I know its been done to death. All the time you hear people complain about how modern technology actually reduces productivity because it makes itself seem overly important with all that buzzing.
Yet no one seems to do anything about it.
But this fly isn’t a metaphor.
And I think he’s not so much buzzing as laughing.
Because he knows I can’t leave this chair.
People always ask about how I write and work full time. Its about discipline, really. Its about getting the arse in the chait and staying there. I have a target every evening. A minimum of 1k words. Why 1k? Because I have a rule – if I start writing, I cannot leave the chair (even to go to the bathroom) until I’ve written 1k of whatever project I’ve started on. (It is a redraft, then it becomes a page count thing – I have to do a minimum of five pages before standing)
Sometimes this will take twenty minutes.
Sometimes an hour and a half.
But the point is that the rule makes me buckle down and write. It makes me have to ignore the flies – both literal and metaphorical – and it makes me get the damn job done.
In the case of a blog post like this, I have a different target. Its tough to write 1k words every week on a random subject. So I limit myself to 500 and then say that if I do less than 1k then I have to still write on another project that evening.
So this evening, before the fly, I wrote 1K words of a book tentatively titled MOTHERS OF THE DISSAPEARED. It is now 23K deep, and I know what the ending will be.
500 words.
And all I can think about is the fly. And how, the second I hit my target, I’m going to the damn kitchen and getting out the fly swat.
Yeah, laugh away Mr Fly, you’ve got what’s coming to you.
Even if I am 35 words short.
Russel will be launching his new-look website early next week at a new domain name. In the meantime, check out the preview here.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Thursday, August 2, 2012
The Dark Knight Rises
Another week, another post unrelated to crime fiction by Jay Stringer
Now that a safe amount of time has passed since the release of The Dark Knight Rises, I thought I'd offer up my thoughts on it. Still, if you're someone who has yet to see it and doesn't like the idea of spoilers, give this post a miss, eh?
How to solve a problem like The Dark Knight?
That's a question that must have given Christopher Nolan more than a few sleepless nights. The 'problem' here being that the 2008 film -even with it's rough edges and flaws the reveal themselves over repeat viewings- set a superhuman standard for comic book films. How to follow it? Should it be followed? How to cope with the tragic loss of that film's main asset?
None of these questioned troubled me all that much. Despite Nolan's insistence on only planning one film at a time, and The Dark Knight's looming shadow, it always felt to me like the middle act of a story. And I had utmost faith that the man at the helm would finish out that trilogy by hitting all the right notes.
Did he succeed?
No. Not for me, anyway, though you'll find numerous glowing reviews elsewhere. And also, it should be said, not for lack of trying. None of the problems with The Dark Knight Rises are down to a lack of ambition or effort. It's a film that reaches for the stars, and it should be applauded for that, just as it also deserves fair criticism for stumbling in the attempt.
But first, let's talk about some positives. The film looks amazing. I can think of few films that have been so masterfully shot, with such total control over the screen. There are also passages in the film that are just about the most immersive experience Nolan has ever crafted, which is no mean feat for a director often noted for creating cold and clinical worlds. Two of the actors -Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt- put in perfectly human performances that carry the film through many of it's roughest patches. A third performance of note is put in by Anne Hathaway. Her Selina Kyle may never be as convincingly human and real as the other two, but who manages to sell us completely on the idea of the words most famous comic-book cat burglar. It's a performance from a slightly different film to Oldman and Gordon-Levitt, but it's a very strong one nonetheless.
And Tom Hardy's Bane is interesting. I wouldn't say he ever convinced me that he was a character who was actually in the film with everyone else, but he did interesting things that managed to stay on just the right side of hamming it up. And he had probably the hardest challenge of everyone in the film; how do you follow Heath Ledger's Joker? Answer, as Hardy showed, is that you don't. Don't even try to. Just use the time you're given on screen to try new things and try to be interesting. He succeeded on that level.
I don't want to criticise Christian Bale's performance, because he did superb work with what he was given, but so many of the films flaws revolve around things relating to his character that he can't help but come off looking weaker than some of his supporting cast. And Michael Caine? Well, at least this film reminded us that he can cry. A lot.
And this is where the film started to trip up over itself.
The story is a combination of some of the most un-filmable Batman stories of the past thirty years. It starts off with a large chunk of Knightfall before transitioning into a truncated version of No Mans Land by way of including a few elements of Contagion, Legacy and Cataclysm. It's bookended by beats lifted straight out of The Dark Knight Returns. And it seems to me that this is the basis of the problem. The film is too self conscious about all of this- it's too busy priding itself on how ambitious it is, to stop and work on a few basic moments of storytelling.
Character arcs whimper and die, three (or four, or five) act structure goes out of the window, and themes begin to eat their own tails.
Something that has become increasingly apparent in Nolan's films as his resources have increased has been the diminishing returns of subtext. One of the few (I still insist) flaws in The Dark Knight is that too much wasn't left unsaid. Take a moment to think how much shorter and more economical that film could have been if all the unnecessary monologues were taken out. We would still have gotten the point, because that's what our brains do when we're watching a film. This problem has reached breaking point with The Dark Knight Rises. The film has no subtext, because everything is on screen, given to us in dialogue, by actors who looked like they were cringing as they delivered the lines. There are times when Checkov's gun is not so much loaded as built right in front of us. But this apparent knowledge of how to structure and foreshadow is undercut by moments that go the other way, when really obvious and important elements of act one are forgotten about by act three.
The strangest thing I can say about this Batman movie is that there was probably a great film in here that didn't have Batman in it. The version of the film we got, though, with Batman in it, falls short.
My hope is that the film marks a crossroad in Christopher Nolan's film making. Thus far he has given us several different versions of the same basic story. He's returned to Captain Ahab over and over, each time with a different lick of paint and a different level on of insight. In my opinion his career so far reached it's peak with The Prestige, a wonderful puzzle box of a film, and he followed it with the exceptional The Dark Knight. But he's taken the driven, obsessive, ambitious protagonist as far as he can. The ending of The Dark Knight Rises saw one character step out from under that shadow, while another man, more mature and well-adjusted, stepped into the role. It was a hopeful ending it it's way, and I hope this was the directors farewell to that era of his life. He's a filmmaker of rare ambition, and seemingly with the even rarer ability to sometimes realise those ambitions, and I would love to see him move onto a new story.
As for Batman, the big screen will get another one in a few years. There will be another actor and director to take up the mantle and no doubt it will be with a studio mandate to veer a little closer to the super-heroics of The Avengers, which was a much more cohesive film. In fact, a certain director by the name of Joss Whedon pitched his own Batman film to Warner Bros just before they green lit Nolan's vision for Batman Begins, so I wouldn't be surprised to see fate crack another fun little joke. But my time with Batman ends here, I had decided that the completion on Nolan's trilogy would be a good spot to mark my closure with the character, so whatever big screen fun comes from Gotham next will be for another generation of super hero fans.
If films were judged by ambition alone, The Dark Knight Rises would be one of the best we've ever seen. And we should salute that. There are too many filmmakers in mainstream cinema today who have craft without ambition. But ambition and ideas go hand in hand with failure more often than success. It's not how you fly the plane that counts, it's how you land it, and unfortunately Nolan doesn't quite manage to land The Dark Knight Rises.
Now that a safe amount of time has passed since the release of The Dark Knight Rises, I thought I'd offer up my thoughts on it. Still, if you're someone who has yet to see it and doesn't like the idea of spoilers, give this post a miss, eh?
How to solve a problem like The Dark Knight?
That's a question that must have given Christopher Nolan more than a few sleepless nights. The 'problem' here being that the 2008 film -even with it's rough edges and flaws the reveal themselves over repeat viewings- set a superhuman standard for comic book films. How to follow it? Should it be followed? How to cope with the tragic loss of that film's main asset?
None of these questioned troubled me all that much. Despite Nolan's insistence on only planning one film at a time, and The Dark Knight's looming shadow, it always felt to me like the middle act of a story. And I had utmost faith that the man at the helm would finish out that trilogy by hitting all the right notes.
Did he succeed?
No. Not for me, anyway, though you'll find numerous glowing reviews elsewhere. And also, it should be said, not for lack of trying. None of the problems with The Dark Knight Rises are down to a lack of ambition or effort. It's a film that reaches for the stars, and it should be applauded for that, just as it also deserves fair criticism for stumbling in the attempt.
But first, let's talk about some positives. The film looks amazing. I can think of few films that have been so masterfully shot, with such total control over the screen. There are also passages in the film that are just about the most immersive experience Nolan has ever crafted, which is no mean feat for a director often noted for creating cold and clinical worlds. Two of the actors -Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt- put in perfectly human performances that carry the film through many of it's roughest patches. A third performance of note is put in by Anne Hathaway. Her Selina Kyle may never be as convincingly human and real as the other two, but who manages to sell us completely on the idea of the words most famous comic-book cat burglar. It's a performance from a slightly different film to Oldman and Gordon-Levitt, but it's a very strong one nonetheless.
And Tom Hardy's Bane is interesting. I wouldn't say he ever convinced me that he was a character who was actually in the film with everyone else, but he did interesting things that managed to stay on just the right side of hamming it up. And he had probably the hardest challenge of everyone in the film; how do you follow Heath Ledger's Joker? Answer, as Hardy showed, is that you don't. Don't even try to. Just use the time you're given on screen to try new things and try to be interesting. He succeeded on that level.
I don't want to criticise Christian Bale's performance, because he did superb work with what he was given, but so many of the films flaws revolve around things relating to his character that he can't help but come off looking weaker than some of his supporting cast. And Michael Caine? Well, at least this film reminded us that he can cry. A lot.
And this is where the film started to trip up over itself.
The story is a combination of some of the most un-filmable Batman stories of the past thirty years. It starts off with a large chunk of Knightfall before transitioning into a truncated version of No Mans Land by way of including a few elements of Contagion, Legacy and Cataclysm. It's bookended by beats lifted straight out of The Dark Knight Returns. And it seems to me that this is the basis of the problem. The film is too self conscious about all of this- it's too busy priding itself on how ambitious it is, to stop and work on a few basic moments of storytelling.
Character arcs whimper and die, three (or four, or five) act structure goes out of the window, and themes begin to eat their own tails.
Something that has become increasingly apparent in Nolan's films as his resources have increased has been the diminishing returns of subtext. One of the few (I still insist) flaws in The Dark Knight is that too much wasn't left unsaid. Take a moment to think how much shorter and more economical that film could have been if all the unnecessary monologues were taken out. We would still have gotten the point, because that's what our brains do when we're watching a film. This problem has reached breaking point with The Dark Knight Rises. The film has no subtext, because everything is on screen, given to us in dialogue, by actors who looked like they were cringing as they delivered the lines. There are times when Checkov's gun is not so much loaded as built right in front of us. But this apparent knowledge of how to structure and foreshadow is undercut by moments that go the other way, when really obvious and important elements of act one are forgotten about by act three.
The strangest thing I can say about this Batman movie is that there was probably a great film in here that didn't have Batman in it. The version of the film we got, though, with Batman in it, falls short.
My hope is that the film marks a crossroad in Christopher Nolan's film making. Thus far he has given us several different versions of the same basic story. He's returned to Captain Ahab over and over, each time with a different lick of paint and a different level on of insight. In my opinion his career so far reached it's peak with The Prestige, a wonderful puzzle box of a film, and he followed it with the exceptional The Dark Knight. But he's taken the driven, obsessive, ambitious protagonist as far as he can. The ending of The Dark Knight Rises saw one character step out from under that shadow, while another man, more mature and well-adjusted, stepped into the role. It was a hopeful ending it it's way, and I hope this was the directors farewell to that era of his life. He's a filmmaker of rare ambition, and seemingly with the even rarer ability to sometimes realise those ambitions, and I would love to see him move onto a new story.
As for Batman, the big screen will get another one in a few years. There will be another actor and director to take up the mantle and no doubt it will be with a studio mandate to veer a little closer to the super-heroics of The Avengers, which was a much more cohesive film. In fact, a certain director by the name of Joss Whedon pitched his own Batman film to Warner Bros just before they green lit Nolan's vision for Batman Begins, so I wouldn't be surprised to see fate crack another fun little joke. But my time with Batman ends here, I had decided that the completion on Nolan's trilogy would be a good spot to mark my closure with the character, so whatever big screen fun comes from Gotham next will be for another generation of super hero fans.
If films were judged by ambition alone, The Dark Knight Rises would be one of the best we've ever seen. And we should salute that. There are too many filmmakers in mainstream cinema today who have craft without ambition. But ambition and ideas go hand in hand with failure more often than success. It's not how you fly the plane that counts, it's how you land it, and unfortunately Nolan doesn't quite manage to land The Dark Knight Rises.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Are Libraries Killing Authors?
By Steve Weddle
Sheesh. Where to start, right?
First, our own Jay Stringer has his OLD GOLD out. It’s a great book. I’ve read it. I dug it. You should read it. In fact, I’ll grab a commenter and get you a copy.
Also, Sean Chercover's THE TRINITY GAME is just out. Look here and you'll have to get your own copy.
There’s this thing about Carroll Bryant.
And I guess I should mention some of this Harrogate-gate stuff. (In America, we end all scandals in “-gate” ever since President James Buchanan was caught one Thursday night, nuts-deep in a bowl of Watergate Salad.) Anyhoo, you can catch up here and here.A couple of issues raised from the same author. One is alleged racism.
The other is that an author creates a bunch of accounts using faked names and gives himself many positive reviews. We’ve walked around this issue before and, certainly, will do so again.
This week, I’m thinking about books and video games.
Someone said something sometime along the lines of this: “If video games had been invented before books, we’d be telling our kids to quit staring slackjawed at sheets of paper and get interactive by joining their friends playing video games.”
It’s a matter of the more established thing being established because it had been established, I suppose.
So, along the lines of “what if this thing had come before that thing,” today let’s play THE LIBRARY GAME.
Imagine for a second that public lending libraries never existed. If you wanted to read a book, you had to buy it, or perhaps borrow the one book from your friend, who had to buy it.
Heck, maybe used bookstores don’t exist, either.
Imagine a world in which, in order to read a book, you had to purchase a copy of that book. In hardback.
Imagine how happy publishers would be. I picture them all having lunch in Manhattan, frolicking about in their bowls of Watergate Salad. (Do Yankees eat Watergate Salad?)
Consider that the norm for, let’s say, a thousand years.
Now, go out and try to start a public lending library.
Hey, we're going to let you have this book for a few weeks. You don't have to purchase it. Just bring it back when you're done, so we can let someone else read it for free.
Bwahaha. Fat chance, right?
Seems to me that, if libraries didn’t already exist, you’d never be able to start them.
The ebook lending fight is just a small part of it, you know.
Take this, from a PW article last year:
When it comes to e-books, the numbers are especially notable, because only half of the big six currently allow libraries to lend e-books (Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan currently do not enable e-book lending). In 2010, Macmillan CEO John Sargent called library e-books “a thorny problem” for publishers. “It’s like Netflix, but you don’t pay for it,” Sargent famously said. “How is that a good model for us?”
So, the library buys a couple of copies of SALAD RECIPES and lends them out to a couple of people every 14 days. You want to read SALAD RECIPIES, so you add your name to the waiting list. Which is fine, as you’ve been reading THE HARRIET LANE STORY for the past week and are due to get BACHELOR CONFIRMED when a patron returns it within the next few days. You’re set. You read many, many books from the library. Your tax dollars at work!
Publishers, and some authors, get mad when you use the library. Or when you buy a used book. I’m reminded of something Neil Smith said on Twitter one day, many months ago. He said that he didn’t care whether you got his books used or at the library or found them in a dentist’s office. He was just hoping folks read and liked them.
And, yet, there’s a huge disagreement in The Community about whether --
Writers who sell their Kindle books for 99 cents are devaluing writing
Free book pushes online are a bad thing
Libraries are draining sales
Ebooks being lent is ruinous
And on and on.
I grew up visiting my town’s library, my school’s library. I’d find books I liked by authors I liked, and I’d end up buying other books by those authors. I think many people do that. The library might have two of seven books from an author. If you like those two, maybe you'll buy the other five.
I don’t get to the library as often now as I did when I was a kid, but I still scan the catalog often. If I’m interested in a disposable book – some thriller I’m not likely to savor – I might check the library. If they don’t have it, I’ll check the bookstore – either physical or digital. Maybe I’ll grab the book there. For me, libraries are still important, still vital to finding new authors.
I’m much more likely to take a chance on an author if I see a good-looking book on the Just Arrived shelf than if I see that same book for $25.95 at my local indie or $12.95 online.
I am not a full-time author. I am not the president of a book publishing company. I don't see libraries as taking money out of my pocket, and I don’t have their much more nuanced understanding of what this means for profits.
I’ve worked in the newspaper industry for (counts fingers, removes socks) years. We’ve always sent subscriptions to local libraries so that patrons can read the paper without having to purchase copies.
I’ve never considered that money out of my pocket.
But publishers and authors are looking for the right “model,” and that’s not exactly the same thing that the libraries are looking for.
Libraries are successful when 1,000 readers line up to read the two copies of GONE GIRL. For publishers, this could be seen as a problem.
You can search the Internet yourself if you want, but various sites suggest that libraries account for about 10 percent of book sales for authors. Do indie bookstores account for more?
Are used bookstores "lost sales" for authors? Are yard sales?
For some authors and publishers, libraries are "lost sales" in the same way piracy is -- or used books.
When someone tells you -- "Oh. Here's my copy of GUN MONKEYS. You have to read it. Here. You'll love it" -- does Victor Gischler die a little inside?
Some authors, including Neil Smith, love for you to get a used copy.
Some authors, including Paulo Coehlo, love for you to get pirated copies of their ebooks.
Cory Doctorow loves for you to get his ebooks, many of which are free.
Other authors want to hand you a free copy of their first book in a series in hopes that you’ll spend $9.99 up the new second book.
And in with all of this is the fight over ebooks in libraries and, oddly enough, paper books in libraries.
Seems odd to ask if there’s a storm that’s been brewing, that’s getting more stormy -- with libraries on one side and publishers and authors on the other, but, well, there it is.
How did libraries become the bad guy?
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