Peace Talks (a book review post)

 

What?!?! Two reviews in the same week? What the heck is going on here?

It's been a while since I've been in Dresden-land. A long while. It's possible I should go back and re-read the series at this point but, with 17 books now (this is number 16) in the series proper and a slew of related books with short stories and things, it's highly unlikely that I'll ever do that. Fortunately, Butcher is quite talented at reminding readers of details from earlier books when they are needed. 

Unfortunately, it's not enough for this book to be a good place to come into Dresden if you wanted to just jump in. Some of his books are self-contained enough that anyone could pick one of those up and read it on its own. Not this one. Not any of the last few, in fact. We are solidly into the area of the series where you need to have read pretty much all of the previous books. The memory prompts for readers are not enough to get you through if you haven't been reading. And there's nothing wrong with that; that's the nature of a long series. What I'm saying is that this is not the place to come in as a new reader but, also, Butcher is very good at helping his long-time readers along, which most authors are not good at.

But how is Peace Talks, I hear you asking. Peace Talks is good. It's a solid entry into the Dresden series. It has some good moments and interesting developments. It was a fun read and a welcome change of pace for me compared to the other things I've been reading lately. If you're a Dresden fan, you will, of course, be wanting to read this as big things are afoot, and this is the book that's going to lead you into Battle Ground.

However, upon reflection after finishing it, the book has a few... issues. Well, one big issue. It has too much going on it. Too many big things going on it, and it's difficult to get invested in anything because you're constantly being distracted by the next ultra important development which is super big. 
Let me sidestep a moment...

For at least several books now, Butcher has been developing this idea of a Black Council that's in existence operating from the shadows and have a particular hate-on for Harry. He's been building it up and up as the next Big Bad showdown, kind of like with the showdown against the Red Court which took several books of building. And while the Black Council is mentioned in this book, they are sort of shoved out of the way for an even bigger menace, one which kind of appears from nowhere. And, yeah, we could argue that point, but there was nothing prior to this book to indicate a villain of this level, so she's really from out of nowhere, and I don't really approve. It's like telling me that you make the best chocolate cake ever and telling me and telling me and, then, inviting me over and making me banana pudding. There's nothing wrong with the banana pudding; I like banana pudding; but it's not what you lead me to expect.

Also, there's this whole thing with Thomas, and you want to care about Thomas, right? We like Thomas. Thomas deserved the book to deal with this, especially since it involves revealing the information about Thomas to McCoy. Instead, after introducing the thing with Thomas and expecting the book to deal with that, it also gets shoved to the side to deal with the aforementioned uber-villain.

Sure, I get that life can be like that. Things come up and distract us from other things, and we have to decide which things to focus on. But that kind of thing makes a book messy, just like it makes life messy. I can't do anything necessarily about the messy in my life, but I would prefer a little less of it in my reading material. These threads could have, probably should have, been developed into separate books.

Then there is the issue of McCoy and his extreme uncharacteristic behavior at the end of Peace Talks. And you can try to no-prize your way out of what he did all you want, Butcher himself did by stating that McCoy was "out of control," but I'm not ever going to buy that Ebenezer did what he did for any other reason than the author poking his finger in McCoy's head and making him do something outside of his character. I understand that sometimes, as an author, you want or need certain things to happen for the plot to do what you want, but, as an author, I don't personally approve having your characters do things outside of the personalities that you've written for them.

Was all of that vague enough for you?
I am trying to do this without spoilers.

Having said all of that, I want to reiterate that Peace Talks is really good. I enjoyed it. It's not the best Dresden novel, but it's certainly not the worst (that would be Turn Coat, as far as I'm concerned). I've already ordered my copy of Battle Ground and am eagerly awaiting it. But what is a review for if not for pointing out the good and the bad?

The Cuckoo's Calling (a book review post)

 

Let's get the issue of Rowling out of the way before I get into the actual book review. First of which is to say that I'm not going to discuss Rowling beyond saying that the fact that she doesn't know when to shut her mouth shows that having lots of money can affect the way that anyone views themselves and the world. She's at that stage where she believes that she, because she is who she is, is right and doesn't need to listen to other people, so she has continued to dig her hole bigger and bigger rather than just shutting up and keeping her opinions to herself. That she didn't shut up shows an amount of entitlement which is disappointing.

The other thing I want to say is that I started reading this book... well, so long ago that I don't remember when it was. I picked it up during some free promotion thing just to check it out and have been reading it in bits and pieces ever since. It's on my Kindle, and I don't really read from my Kindle all that often. I don't carry it places with me like I do physical books, so I lag a lot with books on there unless they are really engrossing. Which tells you that this book was not. Seriously, I've been working on it for over a year, maybe closer to two.

What this book has taught me is that I need to read some Agatha Christie, something I've been meaning to do for a long time and have never gotten around to. Maybe I don't like detective novels? I don't know. I like Butcher's Dresden books, but they're hardly detective novels after the first few. Beyond those, I can't recall any mystery novels I've ever really liked, including this one.

Which is not to say that I didn't like it, I just didn't much care for it. Rowling doesn't make it possible for the reader to really solve the mystery as they're reading, which seems to me to be the point of detective novels, because she doesn't reveal crucial information until the actual reveal at the end of the novel, and the reveal was one of the most contrived things I've ever read. And this is an ABSOLUTE SPOILER, so turn away now if you don't want to know who the killer is...

I'm waiting...

Still waiting, because I'm absolutely serious that I'm going to spoil the ending of this book. And let me just toss out there that I never spoil a book that I think you ought to read. If I spoil it, it's because I don't think it's really worth your trouble.

Having said that, the book itself was just fine. By that, I mean it's readable. Mostly engaging, though not engaging enough to prompt me to read it more quickly. It's... typical. Down on his luck private eye getting a high paying, juicy case which might just get him out of debt. Your basic story about an underachiever finally getting a break and getting to show the world who he really is. Honestly, after Harry Potter, I expected something less... cliché.

So the book goes along with our detective -- the son of a famous rock star, seriously? -- gathering up evidence about a case that is several months cold. And closed. But he's hired by the brother of the murdered woman because the brother believes it was a murder though the police ruled it a suicide. And this is the hitch and what I'm sure Rowling thought would make it a clever story: the brother is the murderer. So Strike is hired by the murderer to discover who the murderer is. The motivation for this is never explained adequately since the murderer had already gotten away with the crime.

What the novel mostly does, as most mystery shows do (I don't know about mystery novels, as I said, but I have watched a lot of detective shows) is to show that everyone had a motive for killing the victim. Rowling walks us through the suspects over and over again almost always strengthening the case for why each person might have wanted Lulu dead. In fact, the only person not shown to have a motive, not until the very end of the book, basically not until just before the reveal, is the actual murderer. Of course, the motive is money, but we don't get to find out the murderer's money issues until Strike is sitting alone in a room with the murderer revealing all the things the murderer already knows.

The reveal was clumsy and contrived. The fact that Bristow (the murderer) sits through Strike's walkthrough of the entire crime is, frankly, unbelievable. The fact that Bristow then attacks Strike is even more unbelievable considering that Strike is a bear of a man and ex-boxer while Bristow is your very stereotypical account type, even though he's a lawyer, not an account, a "gag" that is run into the ground over the course of the book.

I want to say that Rowling's strength as a writer is her characters but, as I'm thinking of this now, she has no real strength in that, either. Her character's tend toward the stereotype, including pretty much all of the characters in Harry Potter. In Harry Potter, we're able to overlook that, though, because the world is so new and interesting, but this world, the world of C. B. Strike, is not new or interesting so the fact that all of the characters are two dimensional really stands out. The most real character in the book is Strike's temporary secretary, Robin, and she's really just a pale reflection of Hermione Granger.

Also, the title of this book is stupid. It's just tossed in somewhere over the halfway mark of the book that "Cuckoo" is a nickname of the murdered woman that only one character in the book ever called her. It's a throwaway excuse to have "Cuckoo" in the title. Without that very vague reason, the title of the book is meaningless.

So, yeah, I suppose I am actually disappointed with this book and don't really understand all the praise for it. Again, maybe I just don't really like detective novels; I don't know. This book doesn't inspire me to try more, though.

Skin Game (a book review post)

Am I all caught up now? I think I'm all caught up now.
Actually, I know I am, because I checked. I'm so caught up there's not even a release date for the next book. And, my goodness, there are a lot of these now!
Butcher seems to be playing quite the long game with the series at this point, each book moving the over-arching story a few inches closer to wherever it is he's going with all of this, which may be feet or may be miles away.

My biggest criticism about this book remains the issue of Dresden and his association with pop culture. I get that it's part of Butcher's schtick with Dresden, but it's gotten beyond the stage where it makes any sense, if it ever made sense. I mean, come on, Dresden has been stuck on an island in a cave for a year (at least) when this book starts but, yet, Dresden is still up to date on the latest pop culture references. And, yeah, it's funny (to an extent) but, now that I've noticed that Dresden shouldn't be aware of any of this, I can't get it out of my head as I read. Plus, in this one, the parkour joke ran on a bit far. Running jokes should be more related to sprints than to marathons.

So, yeah, that's the biggest fault I found with this book. In fact, this is the first book in a while where I felt Butcher was really hitting his stride (and we all know how long Dresden's legs are, so that's saying something), again, with Dresden, pop culture aside. Maybe it was dealing with the Nicodemus and the Denarians again or, maybe, it was having Michael back. Maybe, Butcher was just hitting the right beats. Maybe it was the absence of vampires, not that I don't like Thomas, but there have been a lot of vampires for a lot of while in these books, and there wasn't anything like that this time. No stuff with the council, either.

Oh, wait, there was one other thing:
A clever author will hide a twist in a story in plain view by giving you the pieces of the puzzle but in such a way that you don't really know what you're seeing or how to put them together. A good example of this is The Sixth Sense. When the reveal happens, you kick yourself and realize you should have seen it the whole time.
A not so clever author hide the twist by hiding the pieces so that you can't figure it out at all. Sure, I suppose you could guess the twist, but that's just guessing. A good example of this is The Illusionist, a movie which has, like, 10 minutes of flashbacks during the reveal to show you all of the things it didn't show you during the movie.
And that's what Butcher does here, stops and almost literally says, "Oh, here's what I didn't tell you about that happened earlier in the story." There are ways you can make that work but probably not in a first person narration where the narrator is the one holding stuff behind his back.

Anyway... I suppose I got over that bit fairly easily because I almost forgot to include it at all despite the fact that I was quite annoyed at that point in the book.

This book feels like it has a lot of significant events in it. Little events. Not huge things like when Dresden died or when Dresden became the Winter Knight but lots of little things, all of which would be spoilery, so I'm not going to mention them. And there's one thing that happened that the un-happening of is never mentioned, though it's kind of implied that the un-happening happened, but that also seems like it should be more significant than to mention that it happened, or un-happened, and I don't know if it's significant or not! And it's kind of niggling at me and I want to know what it means!

Damn you, Butcher!

Well, as I'm sure I've said before, if you're a fan of the Dresden books, you're almost sure to like this one. If you're not a fan, it's probably because you haven't read any of the books. Or... well, I'll just say it: There's probably something wrong with you.

Cold Days (a book review post)

Wow! It has been a long time since I read one of these! More than three years according to the date on when I reviewed Ghost Story. Looking back, I remember that I had really wanted to get started on Cold Days pretty much right away, but, well, I didn't have the book yet, and, then, I continued to not have the book for, well, three years. heh I guess that's just how it goes sometimes. Besides, I've been reading other things.

Which I finally needed a break from, evidently, because most of what I've been reading has been on the heavier side, and the Dresden books, in my mind, are still categorized as "light reading." I may have to re-think that after this one, though, and probably actually should have begun to rethink that several books ago. These books are not so "light and fun," anymore, though I suppose I still would not call them heavy.

Anyway...

Obviously, Harry didn't stay dead. Or, well, wasn't quite dead. At any rate, he's back in the land of the living. Although I would guess that we haven't seen the end of the ghost world based on the way that Butcher tends to bring things back around. This book is another example of that, bringing threads back in from all over the place from earlier in the series. It keeps it interesting. You can't ever just be done with one of the books, because it all seems to matter.

That's a good thing, by the way. At least it is in my book.
heh

Maybe it was the long break I had from the Dresden books, but I feel like I enjoyed this one more than I did the last few, though, looking back at my reviews and ratings and things, that's probably not actually true. Except for Turn Coat; that one was definitely the low point of the series so far for me.

Although I will admit that the pop culture references did begin to wear on me after awhile. I don't think there were than in previous books, but it felt like he was trying too hard with them this time. I felt myself being reminded of the Xanth novels and how the quality of the puns went down as the series progressed; the quality went down as the frequency increased. It wasn't quite that bad, here, but I do have to wonder how Harry is able to draw on all of this pop culture seeing as how he can't really watch television and movies. Sure, I get some of it's from his childhood but, really, he's way too current for an isolated wizard. And, no, this isn't a big thing, just something I noticed this time.

The last book, kind of obviously, dealt with how Harry's friends dealt with his death. This book deals with how they deal with him still being alive after thinking he was dead. Who's moved on and who hasn't, so to speak. It's good stuff. Real emotions and all of that. Mostly, it doesn't skimp. Except maybe with Thomas. That seemed a little rushed.

Overall, great addition to the series. He got me with the ending again. I'm a pretty savvy reader and am not frequently surprised at endings, but this two in a row where Butcher has managed to squeeze somethings in that I didn't anticipate. At least one of those things, I probably should have, but, then, all you of you probably should have, too, but I bet you didn't see it coming either. He did a good job of setting that up. I'm looking forward to the next book, Skin Game, and, this time, I already have it!

Furies of Calderon (a book review post)

Any of you who have been around here for a while will know that I have a fairly high tolerance for reading -- let's say -- poor books. Sometimes really poor books. Sometimes really poor series of books. It's not that I enjoy it -- the pain of reading bad books -- I just don't like not finishing something that I start. Also, I tend to hold out the hope for some of them that they'll get better.

I suppose I was hoping this would be one of those, one that gets better, because I like Jim Butcher. The Dresden Files are great, at least the first dozen or so that I've read are, so I was expecting that The Codex Alera would be at least somewhere in the same range of quality.

But no...

Let's make a sports analogy, just for fun. If The Dresden Files were a major league baseball team, Furies of Calderon would be, like, a little league team. Except it would be grown men playing at a little league level and trying to go up against a major league team. It would be something worse than the Bad News Bears.

This book was bad.

Seriously, there was nothing in it that I enjoyed. Not even a single character. The plot was a pretty cliche. And don't get me started on the magic system.

Let me give some context:

I picked up the first two books when I got Furies. See, I really did expect to like it. Jim Butcher, right? By halfway through, I'd decided that there was no way I was going to read anymore of the books, and I hate not reading a book that I've already bought. It's a waste of money. But it was so bad I knew there was no way I could do it.

But I decided that I would, at least, go ahead and finish the one I was reading. I mean, Jim Butcher! It could get better! There was a chance, right? So I forged ahead... and got to within a hundred pages of the end of the book (and it's a long book, so 100 pages was, really, close to the end) and...
Well, I decided I'd had enough. Even with just only 100 pages to go, I couldn't bring myself to finish it. It wasn't worth wasting that much more time to do.

Here's my insight into this series:
Butcher has said that he always wanted to write epic fantasy. It was what he started out trying to do when he was a kid after reading Tolkien. I think this is the story he came up with when he was a teenager, maybe a middle schooler. Once he got famous enough off Dresden, he went back to this story he dreamed up when he was a kid and began writing it without any changes. Because it reads like it was written by a kid, and I've read enough stories by middle schoolers to recognize the style.

Oh, and possibly the worst thing in the book?
He uses the word "pace" all the time! No one walks; everyone paces. And it just doesn't mean the same thing. It broke me from the story every time he used it, sometimes three or four times on a page. It was awful. That wasn't the only word he used repetitively, but it was by far the worst.

All I can really say is don't read this book. I mean, I couldn't finish it. I couldn't finish it, and that's pretty significant.

Ghost Story (a book review post)

Here's the warning right  up front:
This review will be full of spoilers. Not spoilers about this book, specifically, but about the series in general. If you even think you might want to read these at some point, you do not want to read this review. At all. Any of it. If you are reading this series but aren't this far, yet, stop reading right now. Seriously, go find something else to do. Just be satisfied with me saying that this book is good, and go away. You will only be mad if you go farther.

Is there anyone left? Just Rusty? (Because he's read them all.) Oh, well, I'll just go ahead anyway.

The end of book twelve, Changes, leaves us with a major "cliffhanger." I say "cliffhanger" because it's not really a cliffhanger. A cliffhanger is when a story ends before the climax is resolved. In Changes, the climax is resolved, but a horrible thing happens during the denouement: Harry is killed. At least, as far as we can tell, Harry is killed. I can understand why people who were reading these as they came out were really pissed by the ending. I would have been pissed, too. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait, because I had Ghost Story (and Side Jobs) sitting here waiting for me when I finished Changes.

As the story hints, Ghost Story opens with Harry's ghost. He has, evidently, been killed. Why else would his spirit be roaming free, right? And that is the $64,000 question. And it's a question the book asks almost right away, but it takes Harry some time to figure it out. Which was, all things considered, kind of surprising. I mean, when someone tells you, "There were some irregularities with your death," you ought to start thinking things.

My big issue with the book is the whole "ghost whisperer" angle, and I mean Ghost Whisperer just like the TV show. Butcher even acknowledges it within the book, but I can't help but think, "Really? That's what you had to go with?" I don't know; maybe, that whole "unfinished business" notion is so pervasive that it's the only reasonable option you can go with, but it annoyed me.

Other than that, though, the book is, as the Dresden books tend to be, a very captivating read. You want Harry to figure out what's going on, because you want Harry to figure out that there's a way back to life. And I'm not saying that there is a way back to life, but you want Harry to figure that out. You want that to be a thing. I mean, how can the series go on if the protagonist is dead, right? Except that Butcher shows us that that's also a possibility. And that could be interesting, a dead protagonist. And that's the struggle of reading this book. And, of course, finding out who killed Harry.

I have to say, I didn't see that coming as more than a "nah, that couldn't be it" possibility in my head, and I kept trying to figure it out. I was surprised when that "nah" thought was the correct one, so that was pretty well done.

Look, this is what it comes down to:
If you've gotten this far into The Dresden Files, you must like them. Why would you read 13 books into a series you don't enjoy, right? If you like Dresden, you're going to like this book. It shows us a whole new side of the Dresden world despite the ghost whisperer issue. There's not much else to be said about it.

Oh, and I didn't see the end coming. I don't mean the answer to the "who shot Harry" question; I mean what came after that. That's going to make you happy that book 14 is already out.

Side Jobs (a book review post)

This is Dresden book 12.5. At least, that's usually how it's listed. It falls in between Changes (book 12) and Ghost Story (book 13), but, as suggested by the ".5" designation, it is not a novel. It is, in fact, a collection of short stories that fall within the series as a whole with only the final story falling in between books 12 and 13.

This book is a good reason why I don't generally tend to care for short stories and why I don't generally care to like first person very much.

So let's have a writing lesson (yeah, I know it's a book review, but I can't talk about this issue without the writing lesson):

First person is seductive, especially to the beginning writer. It's easy and it feels natural. But, see, it's a trap. When you're writing in first person, the author isn't writing from his/her voice, s/he's writing from the character's voice. The problem, then, is that most authors can't differentiate between their own voice and their characters'. And, you know, that's fine as long as you only ever write the one character in first person. But that's not what usually happens, and it's not what happened here.

Butcher's been writing Dresden a long time. Dresden's voice is distinct. But, see, it's that seduction of the young writer to write in first person, and Dresden's voice is really Butcher's (which is why we get the occasional preachy episode in the Dresden books). It hadn't occurred to me nor would I have ever noticed if Butcher hadn't decided to write from some other characters' POVs in these short stories.

There's a story from the POV of Thomas and, other than that Thomas reminds us that it's him, the story reads just like it's from the POV of Harry. Sure, it's an interesting story with all of the Oblivion War stuff in it, but Butcher should have switched to third person so that it didn't feel like Harry talking.

And there's a story from the POV of Murphy which is only differentiated by the fact that she spends a lot of time talking about Harry and that there are sections describing her hand-to-hand fighting. However, those sections have the exact same feel as Harry describing how he uses magic, essentially making it the same voice. The only other thing is the reference to men speaking Martian, but it's not enough to set the piece apart from all of the Dresden pieces.

A first person character voice should be as distinctive as listening to someone speak in person. Butcher doesn't pull that off, which was more than a little disappointing.

Then, there is the issue that the stories are of vastly variable quality with only a few feeling like they actually added anything to the Dresden world. And when the heck did Georgia become Butcher's Lois Lane? Really, we had to have two different stories about her getting kidnapped? I get that Will and Georgia are the only characters that Butcher has allowed to have any kind of long term relationship and they have to be the default for that kind of story, but, sheesh, damsel in distress much?

All of that said, if you're a fan of The Dresden Files, you'll want to read the book. "Day Off" and "The Warrior" were both very good and, actually, so is "Something Borrowed" (despite the Georgia kidnapping). And, then, "Aftermath" is almost essential reading. Almost. You could get by without it, but it's worth the read to fill in some space between books 12 and 13. And, of course, you get rescue Georgia again.

Changes (a book review post)

For those of you unfamiliar with The Dresden Files, you do not want to start with this book, book 12 in the series. While each book has an intact story that doesn't exactly require the previous books to understand, there is so much back story built up that, even though Butcher does a fairly decent job of quickly filling in details about past events/people, a lot of the context will be lost. Besides, it's a good series and, if you want to read them, you should just start at book one, Storm Front.

If you've been around for a while, you'll know that book 11, Turn Coat, was the first of the Dresden books that I haven't been in love with (or extreme like). And, wow, it was enough to allow me to go a whole year before picking up Changes. I thought about it several times over the past year but, every time I did, I decided to go with some other book. I suppose a streak of reading books I didn't enjoy much prompted me to go ahead with book 12.

The first thing I will note is that the editing is much better in this one. Although there are more commas than are strictly needed, there are none just stuck into the middles of clauses. At least not so many that I noticed them like in the last book.

The idea behind this book is right in the title. Butcher has decided to change Dresden's life, really shake it up. The one thing I have really liked about the Dresden books is that Dresden is not a static character. This is not one of those series where everything goes back to the status quo at the end of each book, which is why you can't pick the books up at random and read them. If you don't read them in order, you can't follow the overall story arc and the growth of the character. The truth is that change is a normal thing for Harry Dresden. Well, except for the fact that he can't ever seem to get ahead. But there are far-reaching consequences in these books that you don't always see in series fiction like this where each book has a happy ending and everything is fine again. Dresden may get the technical happy ending, but nothing is ever fine.

In this one, though, Butcher goes after Dresden hard.

In fact, it's so hard that it's like someone walking up to you on the street and just punching you in the face. Which is kind of the problem, because Butcher picks one of the most cliche ways of doing that: "They've taken our daughter." That's sentence one, and, of course, Dresden didn't know anything about having a kid. Nor should he have because it was from a singular sexual encounter. I'm just going to say, really, only teenagers expect people to believe that you can have sex once and get pregnant.

Sure, I know that it's technically possible, and teenagers, which I know from years of working with them, want adults to believe that, really, they only slipped up the one time and, oops!, pregnant. The reality, though, is that that pregnancy is the result of two humping like bunnies for months. So it's really kind of insulting for Butcher to throw the unknown kid at us from the one sexual encounter Dresden had with the mother years before.

But that's (almost) the only complaint I have about the book. Once you get past the whole "I have to go rescue my daughter" thing, it's a well constructed story. Butcher systematically goes through and dismantles Dresden's life and even managed to throw in a couple of things I didn't see coming. That doesn't happen for me very often. [In fact, the big problem I had with book 11 is that I knew who the bad guy was and what was going on by about 1/4 of the way through the book. The rest of it was just going through the motions.] I don't mind Dresden having a daughter. I don't even mind that he didn't know he had a daughter. I mind that it's the result of this one time thing that happened. Beyond that, this book is a great ride.

Oh, I did say "almost" the only complaint. The other thing is the cliffhanger that Butcher threw in on, literally, the last page. I won't say what happened, but I find just tossing that in at the end to be about as cliche as the beginning. So, yeah, take out the first page and the last page and this is an awesome book. Unfortunately, the reliance on those two gimmicks takes the book down a peg for me. It's still a great series, though, and I would highly recommend it to any fan of fantasy, especially modern fantasy.

No Respecter of (Third) Persons: Part One -- How Does That Make You Feel? (an IWM post)

Somewhat recently, I was presented with the question of... okay, I don't remember, exactly, what the question was, but I'll say it like this: Why do you believe that third person perspective is superior to first person?
That's a really good question, especially since I don't exactly shy away from first person.
So, I suppose, the real question is more along the lines of "Why do I think you shouldn't use first person?"

Well, okay, it's not that I think you, the specific you sitting here reading this post, shouldn't use first person; it's that I think the general you out there shouldn't use first person. At least not until you have figured out how to write in third person. First person, especially for the beginning writer, has too many traps and short cuts; until you know how to get around them, you should write in third. And, actually, it's writing in third that will help you to learn to avoid the snares.

So let's start with descriptions...

* * *

Do you know the drill, yet? I feel like you ought to know the drill. Unless this is your first time here, in which case, here's the drill:

His name is Bit, and he's glad to meet you.

Seriously, though, hop right over to Indie Writers Monthly to find out why you ought to be writing in third person. Or, at lease, why you shouldn't be writing in first. No, they're not the same thing.

Old Man's War (a book review post)

Disclaimer: Portions of this review are going to sound like I liked the book much less than I did. Just know from the beginning that I liked the book. I'm going to read the next one. But I'm still going to talk about the things that bothered me as I was reading. Mostly because they allow me to talk about some writing things within a context that gives an example of what I'm talking about.

Also: Although this is a traditionally published book, (if I have my facts straight) it started out as an indie book published serially on Scalzi's blog where it was "discovered," so I'm sort of looking at this from the aspect of covering an indie writer, albeit an indie writer that has made it big.

But let's get on with the review.

The first thing to note is that the book is in first person. Now, this is my own bias, but I'm beyond tired of first person stories. Unless there is some specific reason for first that can't be accomplished in third (like the tone of The Dresden Files and the fact that first person is part of the whole detective genre thing), I'd rather not see first person for a long, long time. Like I said, this is my own thing and may come from the fact that almost all I see is first person stories from the middle schoolers I work with despite how often I tell them to write in third. I only mention it at all because it does cause an internal groan from me at this point when I open a book and it's first person.

The next thing springs out of the first thing. There's this thing that frequently happens with sci-fi writers (sometimes fantasy, too, with magic systems). They come up with these brilliant sci-fi ideas, and they want to share them with you. Like, for instance, if I want to have a teleporter in my story, but I can't just have the teleporter because that's been done a lot, right, so I have to have some cool idea about how a teleporter works; that's what makes it mine. And, if I have the idea, I want to share it with you. In a third person story, this isn't such a big deal, because you can include a description in the narrative and it doesn't necessarily seem out of place. However, in a first person story, it's usually like inviting someone into your house then explaining how the TV works and the computer works and the cell phone works. The thing is, most of us don't have more than just a vague idea of how those things really work, so when a character in a book who is just a normalish guy starts explaining how high tech gadgets work, then it feels out of place.

Fortunately, Scalzi doesn't quite fall prey to that trap. Rather than have John Perry explain all that stuff to us, he has it explained to him, which makes Scalzi's desire to share his clever ideas mostly acceptable. Actually, the first clever idea is more than acceptable, because there's a political reason for the tech, and that was interesting. The second clever idea is also acceptable because it's something that's happening to Perry, but they start becoming gratuitous after that because they're things that most people wouldn't have an interest in knowing and are actually frequently accompanied by "you don't have the math" to explain why Perry doesn't and can't understand the things being explained to him, yet he persists in having the people give the explanations while maintaining that he doesn't know what they're talking about.

The other thing I had an issue with was that Perry was the cleverest guy around. Which isn't of itself an issue except that he would point something obvious that no one else had ever thought of. This is actually a major plot point in the book, that Perry notices something that decades worth of people, many who should have been much smarter than him, have completely dismissed as irrelevant or trivial. It was a thing I couldn't buy into. There wasn't even a "yeah, we noticed that, but we don't know what it means," which could have worked. Instead it was, "yeah, that's nothing. It doesn't mean anything." Which, of course, was wrong.

Beyond that, I had a difficult time having any emotional investment in the book. I was never worried about Perry or, even, really cared about him. I think it was the first person and the style he used within the first person. It had that feel of someone sitting right in front of you telling a story, but, you know, the guy is right there in front of you, so you know everything comes out okay in the end, so to speak. It made it hard for me to engage beyond a surface level.

That said, it was a great surface level book. The world (multiverse) that Scalzi has created is interesting, and I want to see where he's going with the meta-story. Perry's voice as the narrator was engaging so, even though I wasn't worried about him, I did want to know what was happening. It was engaging right from the beginning, too, so there was never any point where I thought I might not be able to get into the book. The parallel opening and ending was a nice touch.

In short, it's a quick, light read. If you like space opera, you ought to read this book.

ALSO!
The new issue of Indie Writers Monthly is out!

You should pick up a copy today! I know I will!

Part 1: February Was Weird, What the Heck? (an IWSG post)

February was a weird month. Not that February isn't always weird, but this one was especially weird. Don't get me wrong, I like February. It's my birth month; I'm obliged to like it. And I like that it's weird. I like that it doesn't know how many days it ought to have and all of that. But none of this February's weirdness has to do with the number of days it contains.

To be fair, the weirdness sort of started in January. That was when I finally broke down and joined that whole twitter thing (that's a link to me on twitter, by the way, not just a link to twitter (like you'd need that)). Twitter, just by itself, is weird. Seriously, I fail to see the appeal of speaking with this arbitrary 140 character cutoff, especially when people then just tweetspam (Is that a thing? That should be a thing.) a dozen times so that they can say the 1500 characters they wanted to say to begin with. That's like making mini-cupcakes so that you will eat less but, then, eating all of them.
Because they're so tiny.
You know.
Anyway...

So I'm on twitter, but I don't really know if I'm doing it correctly, because no one tends to respond to anything I tweet unless it's, in and of itself, a response to a tweet. Am I the only one actually reading what other people say? I don't know. Plus, twitter adds this unexpected pressure on me of coming up with tweets that at least approach the 140 character cutoff. Because why use just 50 characters? And it feels like they, the tweets, should be profound in some way. But once I throw it out there, no one responds, so it feels like I'm one of those guys walking down a crowded street talking to himself that everyone stares at and moves away from.

Of course, most of those people these days are just on the phone, but that weirds me out, because I'm never quite sure if the person is on the phone or just talking to him/herself.
But I digress... really, way off target here.

The weirdness started when John Scalzi replied to a tweet. I mean, I was replying to one of his tweets, but he replied back, which was kind of a jaw dropping moment. I had to tell Rusty about it just so someone else would know and, well, make it real. If that makes sense. Still, it's not quite the same as Offutt having Neil Gaiman tweet at him (which has happened more than once, if I'm remembering correctly), but it is something.

That was at the end of January, and, for a while, the most exciting thing happening on twitter, unless you count Nathan Fillion announcing that he was learning to play Magic, was the push up competition going on between Briane Pagel, Rusty, and myself. Yeah, I know. I'm sure all of you were waiting with held breaths to see our tweets on that subject. But, then, one day, I sat down at the computer to find that Jim Butcher was following me. Wait, what? I know! What the heck?! Again, I tweeted Rusty about it. But what the heck?

As it turned out, the heck was that Butcher's account had been hacked and, for whatever reason, used to follow back about 1000 of his followers. When I got home later that night, he was no longer following me. For a few minutes, though, I thought I was one of the cool kids.

However, a real thing did happen: Howard Mackie, a longtime writer for Marvel Comics and the writer of one of the best runs on any comic ever, dropped by my blog and commented. That, in many ways, is an even bigger "what the heck?" moment than the thing with Butcher. I mean, I've mentioned Butcher here on the blog on numerous occasions, but I've never mentioned Mackie. At least, not by name. I only talked about Ghost Rider and, that, only in passing. So I'm still wondering how he ended up on that post. I'm sure there's a lesson here, somewhere...
Oh, but we'll get to that.

On top of everything else, February was my lowest blog traffic in a year. Way below my current average. Way below. Way more than can be accounted for by the loss of a couple of days from the month. It's one of those things that makes you stop and go, "Whoa... what the heck?" And without wanting to you're suddenly wondering if blogging is actually worth the time it takes. Or if you did something wrong and offended a bunch of people. Or... something. It doesn't matter that your head is telling you all sorts of rational things:

• It's just a fluctuation.
• Blog traffic in general is slowing.
• It's not about you.

Because your head is also telling you all sorts of irrational things, and you can't help hearing those things.
So... why blog?

And that's what we'll talk about next time. See you on Wednesday for "Part 2: Why Bother To Blog (That's Not a Question)"

This post has been brought to you in part by the Insecure Writers Support Group.

Turn Coat (a book review post)

Turn Coat by Jim Butcher may be the first of his Dresden novels that I am truly ambivalent about. On the one hand, I really enjoyed reading it. On the other... let's just say it has some problems. And this is going to be spoilery. Be warned.

The easy stuff:
The editor needs to go back to editing school. The comma usage was distracting. Not everywhere but enough that they frequently made me stop and say, "Why is there a comma here in the middle of this sentence?" To write that as it would probably appear in Turn Coat: "Why is there a comma, here in the middle of this sentence?" or "Why is there a comma here in the middle, of this sentence?" I shouldn't be stopped by oddly placed commas. Just sayin'.
[And, yeah, I know; most people will not be stopped or even slowed down by the commas, but I kept tripping on them, and that was annoying.]
Anyway...

As with all of the Dresden books, I found this one an enjoyable read. I mean, I found the reading of it enjoyable. I find the character of Dresden enjoyable, and I really want to see where Butcher is taking us on this meta-plot he has running. However, whenever I stopped to think about this one, I would become annoyed.

As the title may indicate, this book deals with the idea of a traitor. Specifically, there is a traitor in the White Council. Okay, fine, I can deal with that. The issue here is that for the story to have any meaning, any impact on the reader, it really needs to be a character we've already met. For it to really mean something to the reader, it needs to be a character we like, even if it's a minor character. Yes, that would mean that Butcher would have to mess up the life of one of his characters, but that's what writers do, right? Evidently, that was too much to ask of Butcher because, about 1/4 of the way through the book, we're introduced to a completely unlikable character that Dresden immediately has issues with. The astute reader knows at that moment that that is the traitor. So, yeah, at not quite 25% of the way through the book, I knew where it was going, so there was this pervasive disappoint as I read. I just kept hoping that maybe I was wrong and it would actually be someone like Ebenezer and we'd all be shocked, but I knew that it wasn't going to be anyone like that.

So, you know, great, Butcher introduced a character that we didn't like just to kill him off. No emotional payoff at all.

There are some other things that don't make a lot of sense, either:
1. Why in the heck is the skinwalker working for Peabody? The skinwalker is some ancient evil creature; why does it care at all about what Peabody wants? [Granted, this may become more clear as the scope of the Black Council is revealed, but it felt more like Butcher just needing to up his game from the previous bad guys Dresden has had to fight.]
2. Why does the skinwalker kidnap Thomas? This doesn't actually make any sense within the context of the story or the skinwalkers behavior throughout the rest of the book. He just shows up and takes Thomas and leaves. What the heck? Sure, I get that Butcher wants this traumatic event to happen to Thomas to get him to embrace his vampire ways, but none of what happened felt genuine.

Also, there's the issue of the Black Council. This is probably not an issue for other readers so much, but it reminds me too much of the Black Aes Sadai (I think that's what they were called; something like that, anyway) from Wheel of Time and the black whatever they were from Sword of Truth. I'm not saying that he copied the idea, but it just feels like the same concept going on, and I find that particular thing annoying.

On the other hand, there is the ending where Dresden actually lives up to the title of the book, a thing which I'm not going to explain, but, at least, the whole turn coat thing wasn't just about Peabody. That said, I think what I need from Butcher with these books is for them not to keep feeling like Butcher is screwing with Dresden for the sake of screwing with Dresden. The thing with Thomas just feels like one of those things where they have a good relationship and, so, you have to screw it up, because the main character isn't allowed to have good relationships, and Butcher had to contrive a way for that to happen. A way that felt contrived. The same with the stuff with Anastasia.

So... I enjoyed the read but am annoyed by the book overall. I'd say it probably comes in at a C+ for me.

Angel, Mr. Hyde and Vampires

Let me just say right off the bat, I am not a fan of vampires. [Pun totally intended.] I've never been into the whole vampire craze. Not in the 80s when it was driven by Anne Rice or in the 90s when it was, again, driven by Anne Rice and not in the time since when it's been driven by Twilight and True Blood and almost everything else. Seriously, I hate that whole noble vampire thing, all that tragic, romantic bullcrap that vampires have become. Give me my vampires evil..., so I can kill them.

And that's probably why I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Vampires are evil, and we spend our time trying to kill them.

Well, except for Angel. And, well, Angel is a show I like even more than Buffy. That sounds like a conundrum, doesn't it? I mean, Angel is full of all of that tragic, romantic shhhtuff. I realized why recently that I'm okay with Angel. It's not a vampire story. Not that he's not a vampire, but that's not the kind of story it is. It's a Jekyll and Hyde story. I love Jekyll and Hyde stories.

The central conflict in Angel is man vs himself, specifically Angel vs the demon inside him. It's a story about someone seeking redemption. It just so happens that he is a vampire, but that's not the driving force of the story. It's that ongoing conflict that Angel has with himself that makes the series interesting. Good vs evil bits. Whedon does a great job with it, but you should still read Stevenson if you haven't done it.

Speaking of vampires, I appreciate that Jim Butcher has kept his vampires evil. We're gonna give Thomas a pass, because there's something else going on there. Since I'm not all the way caught up yet, I don't know if it's been revealed or not, so don't go saying anything.

None of this is to say that I haven't written my own vampire story. A short one. But he was evil, so it's okay. It was just kind of to make a point.

And all of this to say that next week is going to be vampire week here at StrangePegs. There's a new vampire story I need to review and, let me just say, it's fantastic! No, I mean it. But more on that next week. Also, in the spirit of Halloween, I'm going to tell you all about how to be a vampire. And, maybe, there'll be other stuff. I'm not quite sure, yet, what all next week will have in store for you, but there will be vampires, so stock up on garlic.

How To Be... a Werewolf

You're probably thinking right about now that the way to become a werewolf is pretty simple. All you need to do is go out and find one and let it bite or scratch you.

That would be incorrect.

Sure, plenty of books and movies depict it that way now, but that has newly been tacked onto the werewolf legend, probably due to its association with vampiric legends due to Dracula. Which is kind of interesting, because Stoker drew on werewolf legends and attached them to the vampire legends. Although it had been believed in Medieval Europe that you had to burn a werewolf corpse to keep it from rising from the dead as a vampire. So if you're looking to one day be a vampire, it appears that being a werewolf is a good start.

But, okay, if you can't become a werewolf from getting bitten, how do you become one? It appears that there are many paths to werewolfdom, and many of them are surprisingly easy to accomplish.

One of the best ways, because you can control it, is to simply wear a belt (or girdle) made of wolf hide. Putting on the belt would cause the transformation to take place, instantly and painlessly. Removing it would revert the wearer to human form. However, some sources said it wasn't quite that simple. Some said the strip of wolf skin, the wolf strap, had to come from the devil. Although you could still control the transformation, because the devil gave it to you, you could never rid yourself of the wolf strap.

Some legends say that you could become any animal at all by drinking rainwater from its footprint. Wereelephant, anyone? Or, you know, maybe find one of those stone dinosaur footprints and drink from that. Weretyrannosaur. One catch, I couldn't find anything that said how long these transformations would last, just that drinking the water would trigger them. I imagine they must wear off; otherwise, no one would have ever known they'd happened to begin with.

Other sources say that you can become a werewolf by sleeping outside in the light of a full summer's moon as long as the light is shining directly on your face. I suppose this must be part of where the full moon part of the transformation legend comes from. The sources implied that transformed human would return to normal at dawn. But these weren't permanent changes; you'd have to do the same thing any time you wanted to become a werewolf.

Still other legends claim that one would need to be cursed by the devil to become a werewolf. Or enter into an allegiance with him. Evidently, there was once a group of sorcerers that craved human flesh, so they entered an agreement with Satan to have wolf forms so that they could fill their craving. They were given straps so that they could control their transformations.

And other sources say that the werewolf has been cursed by God or Angels or, even, saints for committing terrible offenses. I'm not sure what constituted a terrible offense. But, then, still other sources say that werewolves are actually the servants of God in his battle against Satan. They are known as the Hounds of God and go down into Hell to battle demons and witches.

Oh, and some people are just born that way.

There you go. If you want to be a werewolf, you have a lot of options to choose from. Personally, I'd go with the wolf hide belt. Then, again, being a weredinosaur sounds pretty cool, too.

Notes:
1. During the Middle Ages, it was thought that werewolves did not have tails (you know, because people don't have tails), which was how you could tell a real wolf from a werewolf. To keep from being found out, werewolves would run with one of their hind legs extended behind them so that, from a distance, it would look as if they had tails.

2. In his book Fool Moon, Jim Butcher features werewolves. I appreciate that he didn't just go with the modern concept of were-ism being like a contagion. He incorporates many of the various werewolf legends into The Dresden Files, which I find a nice change of pace from most modern renditions.

EDIT:
This post is related to the post, How To Be... a Vampire

Taking Out the Trash ( a further reflection on objectivity)

The ability to separate the subjective from the objective is something that most people cannot do. Okay, maybe "cannot" is the wrong word, but "do not" is certainly accurate. Actually, I think "cannot" is accurate, but I think it's only accurate in that most people have never learned to do it. Studies tend to indicate that many people simply cannot learn the skill, though, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to go that far. At any rate, for our purposes here (or my purposes, at any rate) "cannot" is the applicable word.

When doing reviews and making suggestions, I think this is something that's invaluable and something that needs to be distinguished. There is a difference between "I like this" and "this is good." Good, in this sense, being a qualitative, objective measure.

Most people don't see it that way, though. For most people, if they arrive at "I like this" it also means "this is good" and, likewise, "I don't like this" means "this is bad." This is why "everything is subjective" has become such an important mantra for writers and, well, all the arts. It's just not that easy, though, and people really do need to learn how to tell the difference between what is good and what they like.

Michael Offutt often talks about all the trashy TV he likes to watch. He kind of even glories in it sometimes. One of the things I really appreciate about him is his ability to say, "Hey, this is trash, but I like it anyway." That's an amazing thing that you just don't see a lot of people doing. You don't see people doing it, because, if they like it, they, for whatever reason, need to defend it and elevate it above trash. As my wife says, "It's okay to like trash as long as you acknowledge that it's trash."

Sir Peter Stothard, the chair for this year's Man Booker Prize, says, "It is wonderful that there are so many blogs and websites devoted to books, but to be a critic is to be importantly different than those sharing their own taste... Not everyone's opinion is worth the same." He adds, "As much as one would like to think that many bloggers opinions are as good as others, it just ain't so." As snobby and elitist as it may sound, I agree with him.

After all, there is a reason we go to a doctor when we're sick and not the grandmother down the street.

There is a reason we talk to astrophysicists about the origin of the universe and not the backyard astronomer next door.

Not everyone's opinion is worth the same.

Sure, only you can decide what you like, but you liking it doesn't somehow make it better than it is. A turd is still a turd even if you paint it gold.

No, all of this doesn't take away a degree of subjectivity that hangs around any artistic endeavor, but it's not all subjective, and people kind of need to own up to that.

For instance, even if you don't like The Lord of the Rings, you can't actually deny that it is a great work. Well, you can try, but that's sort of like trying to deny that 2+2=4. This is not a subjective view. Tolkien did something in creating Middle Earth that has never been equaled. The scope of his creation is staggering, the writing is intricate and wonderfully descriptive, the tale is timeless. I get that it might bore some of you, but your personal reaction to it doesn't make it "bad" as much as you might like or want to think so.

Also, as much as you might like The Hunger Games or Fifty Shades of Grey, it doesn't make it "good." It's kind of like eating candy or smoking; just because you like it doesn't mean you should try to fool yourself into thinking that it's good for you. Just own it. "This is bad, and I like it."

All of this brings me to the point, which is something I've said before, but I want to make clear again: my basic way of evaluating books. I say basic because it is a little more complex than this, because not everything breaks easily into good or bad or like or dislike, but I'm sure you can get the idea. So here is how I look at a book as I'm reading it and, then, reviewing it:

1. This is good, and I like it.
2. This is good, but I don't like it.
3. This is bad, and I don't like it.
4. This is bad, but I do like it.

This is important because, as I said back at the beginning, most people can't differentiate like this. Most people see "like=good" and "dislike=bad," and those things are not necessarily the truth. Yes, it is true that most often, if something is good, I will like it, and, if something is bad, I won't like it. BUT
As my wife says, I like the Dresden books, and it's debatable as to whether those fall into the "good" category. They are decidedly pulp fiction, that's how they're written, and many people consider that a lower art form, which goes back to subjectivity, but they're well written pulp fiction, and Butcher does deal with important issues. His problem is that he can get preachy about them and go on for pages, and, then, it falls into the category of bad, because he's stepped outside of his story so that he, the author, can lecture us. But, see, I like them anyway. My wife does not. They are my junk food books when I just need something fun to read. But, see, I know that, and I'm not trying to make them into more than they are.

The complication of all of this is that good and bad are opposite ends of a spectrum as are like and dislike, so it can all get kind of muddled. However, it is important to at least make the attempt to separate your subjectivity of an experience from the objective reality of it. Like being scared of a roller coaster. Subjectively, you may be so scared you're peeing your pants, but, objectively, you can look at the thousands and thousands of people riding and not dying and know that the chance of you dying is actually pretty small.

What Makes a Favorite Author?

When I was younger, a favorite author was all about favorite books. That seems like a natural thing, right? You have some favorite book, so the author of that book is your favorite author. It was all dependent upon the book.

So, in high school, my favorite authors were Tolkien, David Eddings, and Piers Anthony. Tolkien is probably self-evident enough that I don't need to explain him, but, even if not, I'm not going to explain him. I started reading Anthony during middle school. A friend of mine gave me one of his books, Split Infinity (a great title), as a birthday present, and I started reading everything he'd written. I followed him for years. I didn't quit reading his books because I quit liking him; there was just always something else I wanted to read more, because, well, it, whatever "it" was, was better. Eventually, I quit buying his books, and I haven't read anything new by him in nearly 20 years. Why? Because, honestly, his books just aren't all that good. At one point, I tried going back and reading some of the ones I'd loved as a teenager, and it made me wonder about myself. I mean, what was I thinking?

And then there was Eddings...
Eddings is the reason this post came into being, but that post is actually going to be the next post, because it made me think of this post instead. Eddings is all because of The Belgariad. I love The Belgariad; it's one of my favorite series ever, and, for a long time, I gave credit to Eddings as being one of my favorite authors based on my love for that series. But, you know, that's really all he has, and there came a time when I gave up on his books, too, and not just because there were other things I wanted to read more.

The whole "favorite" thing is tricky, which is why I don't have any favorites lists, but you can pop up to my "Of Significance..." tab to find out more about that.

Anyway... I remember when I realized that I couldn't claim Eddings as a favorite author anymore, not that I remember when it happened, but I remember it happening. I still loved The Belgariad, but I also realized that nothing else he did was ever going to be that good, or, even, close to that good, and I felt kind of betrayed. How could I love this one series so much and the author not be one of my favorite authors?

I had separation anxiety. Author/book separation anxiety to be exact. But that's really the point, an author is not the same as his work. That can be a hard thing to understand as a fan and as an author as so often we take someone's displeasure of our work as a personal attack. Well, sometimes that does happen, but, mostly, it's about the work.

These days, I'd say my top three favorite authors are Tolkien, Mary Doria Russel, and Neil Gaiman (yeah, I know, Tolkien hasn't changed and isn't likely to). I should probably make that four and include Stephen Lawhead. The interesting thing? There's not a book by Gaiman that I would point to as one of my favorite books ever. However, I love his style, and, pretty much, I will read whatever he puts out. Right now, anyway. The same with Lawhead, overall, although that could change after his Bright Empires series (you can read the review of the first one here). I wouldn't say any of Lawhead's books are among my favorite books ever, either.

And, then, there's Richard Adams and Watership Down. Watership Down has been one of my most beloved books for 30 years, and I know it is, because the only book I've read more than it is The Hobbit, but I've never considered Adams one of my favorite authors. He just wrote a book that I love.

I suppose what I'm getting at here is knowing how to separate what is a book you love from who is an author you love. What makes someone an author you love? For people that don't read much, it can really just come down to the author of their favorite book, like, right now, I bet there are women all over the place that would call that James woman their favorite author. But, for those of us that do read a lot, and read authors that write a lot, how do you deal with the disappointment of a bad book or string of books from an author you want to call your favorite? Do you cling desperately to calling that author your favorite even though s/he is writing stuff you hate, or do you toss that author aside in favor of some new shiny author that hasn't had the chance to disillusion you yet?

I'm not even sure that "favorite" is a term I can adequately use anymore. There's Jim Butcher and his Dresden books, and I love those. That's my "favorite" series fiction at the moment, and, when I was younger, that would have meant that Butcher made my favorite author list, but not anymore. His books are my popcorn, and, though I love popcorn, I don't want to live off of it. I need stuff with a little more substance and a little more to say as my regular diet.

Anyway... where I am now, my "favorites" are the authors that I read and think "wow! I want to write something that good some day. I want to write like that." However, I will never write like Tolkien. I'm not sure anyone ever will again. What I'm saying is that the author doesn't have to write my favorite story, s/he just has to write excellently. Sometimes, it's difficult to separate those things. At some point, maybe Gaiman will write a book that affects me like The Sparrow did, but it's not something he needs to do for me to look at the way he writes and really admire it. I might love The Belgariad, but I don't want to write like Eddings.

I don't normally do the whole question at the end of the post thing, but I am this time, because I'm curious as to how this works for you guys. Are your favorite authors just the writers of your favorite stories? Do you have favorite authors that have not written any of your favorite books? What do you do when a favorite author falls off the author wagon (starts producing the same old crap over and over again)? Who are your "favorite" authors/books and do they match up?

Why You Shouldn't Trust Traditional Publishing (or Why Kids Should Be in Charge of the Slush Pile)

This isn't one of those posts where I talk about all of the very famous (or merely famous) writers that started out with tons of rejections. No, they weren't really "tons," but any rejection is a heavy load, and, when they start piling up, they certainly seem to weigh tons. If you want one of those posts, there are plenty of them out there, so go find one somewhere else.

This isn't a post that is supposed to make you feel better. Make you want to work a little harder. Make you want to try that one more time. That one more time that will be the time. I'm not really much of a cheerleader, so, if you want that, go look at any of the dozens upon dozens of cheerful blogs that are all about making you feel better about yourself as a writer.

This post might do some of those above mentioned things but not because that's the plan here. It's not what I'm setting out to do. This post is about making you think. If, in making you think, it prompts you to work a little harder or to apply yourself in new ways, well, good, but that's not what I'm trying to do here.

Yeah, I know. I can be kind of a jerk. But, really, I'm just not here to make you feel better about your writing goals. Not that I won't give you advice (if you ask) or tell you what I think about... well, whatever, but I'm not emotional support. I'll help you get the job done, but I'm not going to make you feel good about doing it.

So... here's the thing:
We all know about  the subjectivity of the publishing industry. At least, we think we do. Emotionally, however, we are still invested in the idea that traditional publishing is the Gatekeeper of who is and who isn't a writer. That, somewhere, they have some secret measuring stick that they apply to manuscripts to see  if they measure up. We know this isn't true, but we don't believe it. If we would come to believe that the "professionals" don't know any more about what's good or what will sell than, say, the troll under the bridge down the path from my house, we would ALL abandon traditional publishing forever. But we cling to this... idea... that we can't really be writers unless the publishing industry bestows that title upon us.

And it will... if we just keep at it long enough. As Jim Butcher says about getting published, "You don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the guy next to you." I have to say, though, that getting published doesn't make you a writer. I don't care who's dubbing you "Sir Author." Have you seen some of the crap that's being published these days? And not just these days. Have you seen some of the crap that has always been published? And why is crap published? Because publishers don't know crap from gold. Nor do editors. Nor do agents.

See, I was thinking (and that's the phrase that generally causes my wife to say "uh oh")... Wait a minute, before you think any of this is about me, it's not. You'll kind of have to follow my separate trains of thought to where they collide in a crash almost as spectacular as the one in Super 8.

I had just come home from reading The House on the Corner in my younger son's class (6th graders), and I was out taking the dog for a walk. [Note: I read in some class or other every morning of the week.] They had been upset when it was time for me to stop. They feel like I "always end on a cliffhanger." The thing is, I wasn't reading from one of the "exciting" parts. But, whenever I have to stop, they don't want me to. I'm in the middle of something happening even if it's just exploring. Or a game of hide-and-seek. And there are groans every time.

See, kids have a different way of looking at books than adults do. And I think kids have it right. The publishing industry is really big right now on starting in the middle of the action. Why? Because they say you have to do that to grab a child's interest, but that's just not so. Kids actually have the patience to allow something to unfold in its own time and enjoy it. It's adults that want to just get right into things. Adults who sacrifice story for action. Sacrifice empathy with the characters, knowing the characters, for immediate thrills. It's adults that want to just jump straight into bed and skip the getting to know the other person and the making out. That's not how kids are.

Hold on... I'm going somewhere with this. See! You're all out there thinking, "just get to the point!" Where's the blood? Where are the explosions?

Another thing: kids are pretty honest. This is not to say that they don't lie, but they're not going to come up and tell you they like something that they don't. If you stick a pile of spinach in front of them, they're going to tell you how they feel about it. Even if you are a guest at someone else's house. They don't have the whole lying for the sake of politeness thing down.

Kids like my book. The closest I've had to any of them not liking it is one boy (2nd grade) asking me when I was going to make The House on the Corner into a movie. I asked him why, of course. Didn't he like the book? Oh, yes, he likes it very much, but he likes movies better than books.

This is where I was in my head when my thoughts strayed over to Tolkien. Did you know that The Hobbit and, by extension, The Lord of the Rings only exist (as published works) because of a child? Before I go on, let me state that I've read numerous biographies about Tolkien and C.S. Lewis including one about the two of them together and how their friendship influenced their writings. However, I don't have any of these books available to me at the moment as they are still in boxes in the garage [Yes, only unread books have been unpacked, at the moment. >sad<], so I'm going off of memory here. I'm not remembering exactly why Tolkien was seeking publication for The Hobbit, but it probably had to do with Lewis. Lewis was the impetus for pretty much all of Tolkien's fiction getting published, so it was probably Lewis back there saying, "You need to get this published." However, no one wanted The Hobbit. I don't mean there were a lot of rejections and, finally, someone said, "Yeah, I like it." No one wanted the The Hobbit. It was too different, and no one believed there would be an audience for it. Kind of like with the whole home computer thing.

At any rate, after no one wanted the book, the manuscript was sitting around someone's house. A big someone's house. Like the owner of the publishing company that eventually published The Hobbit. They had already said no to it. But something happened then. Something unexpected. The man's son got a hold of the manuscript, and he read it. He told his dad he should make it into a book. I think there was some discussion involved, but the son was firm in his opinion that The Hobbit be published. So, more to mollify his son than anything else, The Hobbit got published with a small print run of only 1500 copies. That was all. It has never been out of print since.

So here we are at the point. The climax, as it were. Traditional publishers didn't want The Hobbit. At all. It was a child. One boy who believed in a book with a father willing to humor him. The Hobbit is now considered the most influential piece of children's literature of the 20th century, and it almost never was. And this is why you shouldn't trust traditional publishing. The truth is that they don't know what they're doing. They don't know what's good and what's bad. They're not reading the books; they're just comparing aspects of them to what's popular and making judgements on what they think will sell. Any time anything slightly different comes along, they don't know what to do with it, and they tend to just say "no."

Kids should be reading through the slush pile. At least through the piles of things that are age appropriate. Kids don't care about what's popular (they do in that they are attracted to those things, but they don't evaluate new things based on the popularity of other things, not until they're teenagers, generally); they don't care about "how things are done;" they enter each new thing just as it is, a new thing, and they form their opinions based upon their interactions with that thing. It's unfortunate that, as adults, we can't enter into each new experience with those same sets of open eyes. That ability to not pre-categorize everything. That ability to not have made up our minds before an experience as to whether or not we'll like it.

As Yoda says, "Truly wonderful the mind of a child is."

So, really, don't take those rejections the wrong way. Even after the success of The Hobbit, the publisher (the same publisher, mind you) didn't want The Lord of the Rings. The wanted The Hobbit II. Tolkien really tried to give them what they asked for, but he just couldn't do it, and they kind of just published The Lord of the Rings because they knew they weren't going to get anything else, and they demanded severe changes in the text before even that happened. Like dividing it up into 3 volumes, which Tolkien hated and had to do extensive rewrites to accommodate. Of course, The Lord of the Rings is now considered the most significant piece of fiction of the 20th century. So, really, what do traditional publishers know?

It makes me wonder what pieces of literature the world has never seen because there was not a child available to advocate for it. It makes me sad.

[Note: In similar situation, none of the Hollywood studios would support Lucas' new movie Red Tails, which I really wanted to go see last weekend but didn't get to. Several of them completely snubbed the screening and didn't show at all. Lucas said they treated Red Tails the exact same way they treated Star Wars back  in 1976. It's something different. Something that hasn't been done before. Even though it's Lucas, they won't support it. Fox grudgingly agreed to act as the distributor but only if Lucas footed the entire bill. What's the point, at that point? Hopefully, I'll have a review of this one soon, as Lucas says it's going to be his last "blockbuster" movie (other than one more Indiana Jones (if they do it)).]

Cowboys & Aliens and a Small Favor

Cowboys & Aliens

I finally saw Cowboys & Aliens. It was one of those things that, even though everyone says it's bad, I had to try anyway. Everyone was right. But I don't think it was bad for the reasons I heard. Actually, I didn't hear a lot of concrete reasons; people just didn't like it. I get that. But I think there are some very concrete reasons for how bad it is.

First, though, the good:
Harrison Ford. As I said way back in this post, any time he appears in a role that is not completely heroic, there are often bad things said. What I find most curious about that, especially from people that were old enough to have seen Star Wars: A New Hope when only Han shot (none of this "Han shot first crap), is that Harrison Ford made his name playing characters that, sort of, straddled the edge, and his character in Cowboys is exactly that kind of character. I thought he did a great job; although, it was criticisms of his role that I heard most often from people talking about the movie.

Also, Daniel Craig. However, the thing that made Craig good in the role is that he was playing the part of Harrison Ford. And he did a great Ford impersonation. It really felt to me that the producers (or whoever) wanted Ford for the lead role, but Ford is too old, so they put him in as the mentor-ish, quasi-bad guy and got Craig for the lead because Craig could do a good job of being what Ford was 20-30 years ago. They were fun to watch together; although, it was a bit like having chocolate mixed with chocolate instead of, say, chocolate and peanut butter.

The other good: Sam Rockwell, Clancy Brown, and Walton Goggins.
I love Sam Rockwell. He doesn't get enough credit. Go watch Moon if you really want to see what he's capable of. And, of course, there's always Galaxy Quest. He didn't do much in this one, but it was nice to see him in it.
The same with Clancy Brown. The same in that it was nice to see him in it. He's not around enough.
I hope Walton Goggins is someone that is up and coming. He's SO good in Justified, and he brought that same intensity to his part here, "I always did like you best."

The bad:
Olivia Wilde: Not that she was bad, but she was completely interchangeable. She could have been any of at least a dozen other actresses. And her character was... well, it was one of the things that made the movie bad. The "alien" that chose to look human to blend in in order to kill the other aliens. Oh, and she's the last of her race. Of course, she is. The character was only in the movie to give Craig a love interest, but it would have been better (more believable) if she'd just been human.

The aliens:
Everything to do with  the aliens is bad and wrong. When did the whole trend start with aliens just being ravening monsters? Was it Independence Day (I hate that movie)? Is it because of Alien? Whatever the reason, it doesn't make any sense. The idea that there are aliens that invented technology that give them interstellar flight but they are just beasts (with barely the intelligence to use their tech) is completely ludicrous. I'm more than a bit tired of it, at this point. I think Super 8 is the last movie that gets a pass on this from me (because in that, at least, it made sense).

Oh, and, yeah, they're just here because of... gold. Gold? Really? That's the best they could come up with? But these guys that landed, they're just scouts. If they're just scouts, why have they set up a whole mining operation? That doesn't sound like a scouting trip to me. And they're experimenting on humans to discover their weaknesses, but they view the humans as insects and, therefore, beneath notice. Those two views don't go together. Pick one and go with it, but don't try to sell me both of those.

The bracelet:
Craig's character has this nifty bracelet that he got from the aliens. It does things like shooting down the alien ships. Seemingly on its own. But... well, nothing with the bracelet makes any sense. It only responds to Craig's commands, but it acts all on its own. Okay, which is it? And Craig has this amazing hand-to-hand combat ability that you think comes from the bracelet, but, well, evidently not. So, then, the fighting style is completely out of line with the setting. It doesn't work.

But the worst part? The worst part is that, evidently, there's just one of these bracelets. Craig stole it from the aliens, but none of them have bracelets. Why in the world not? Craig blasts aliens left and right with the thing; you'd think the aliens would want to use them against the humans. Of course, then, the humans would have had no chance at all. So they don't have them or don't use them or... well, it's really just unclear. But it's dumb. DUMB!

The Indians:
I have nothing against Indians, but they were just tossed in so that they could lend a bit of mysticism to the movie, and that was... unnecessary. You have this movie with cowboys fighting aliens, such a cool idea, why do you need to add in mysticism? Just to complicate the plot a bit more? Or to fluff it up? Whatever the reason, it didn't need to be there.

The plot:
Cluttered and completely predictable. What should have been an interesting story was reduced to the mediocrity of being exactly what you expect. No, wait, it was worse than what you expect. But the story arc was completely what you'd expect. Including the fact that if they kill this scout ship then no more aliens will come. Why? If I was an alien and I sent a scout ship to a planet and it didn't come back, I'd send someone to investigate. But, no, according to the "human" alien, if the scouts are destroyed, they'll just leave the Earth alone.

Overall, it was just a huge disappointment. Mostly, because the idea had such potential. And the lead actors were, actually, really good, but the rest of the movie was a huge train wreck. Unfortunately, not in a spectacular way like the one in Super 8. Maybe, that would have been worth watching. This was the train wreck that's been out rusting for months that wasn't even worth cleaning up. The one that kids poke around in when there is absolutely nothing else to do. And, you know what, it wasn't even bad enough to get worked up over it. You can't hate it. It's sort of too bad for that. You just feel sorry for it. Like the kid that should have won the spelling bee but accidentally spelled "of" incorrectly (true story).


Small Favor

Small Favor is the 10th book in The Dresden Files series and another solid entry. In saying that it's solid, I'm saying that I liked it. All of these books are quite above average and surprisingly good considering the genre and that they are, basically, pulp fiction. As I've said before, the thing I appreciate most about the Dresden books is that they are not static. Most books of this sort resort to returning everything to the status quo at the end of the novel so that each successive novel really starts at the same point. Instead of a series of books, what you really have is what I'll call a wheel of books in which each book starts at the same point and proceeds out along a different spoke.

Not so the Dresden novels. Although you could probably just pick up any book and start reading, you really wouldn't want to. Stuff from previous books come back into play, and, honestly, I think it would just leave you feeling a little lost. Take my advice, start from the beginning.

All of that said, let me talk about where Small Favor fails:
Jim Butcher has always used Dresden as his own voice. Used him to pontificate about various topics that actually have nothing to do with the story (or only loosely) but that Butcher wanted said. Generally, this has happened in small doses and has been (mostly) easily overlooked. However, it seems with Small Favor, he got a little carried away with this or his editor/publisher didn't rein him in enough. For instance, he goes on for three pages in chapter 28 in what he sums up with, "We're ostriches and the whole world is sand." He really didn't need to say more than that, and he certainly didn't need to go on about it for three pages. Especially since he's talked about that same subject in other books. I guess he felt like he needed to remind us more strongly this time. He also goes on at one point about how dolphins are smarter than people. And it's not that I disagree, but I don't need him to quote research at me about it when the dolphins in question barely have anything to do with the story. There are more instances, but these were the worst. I found myself annoyed at these much more than usual with this book.

The other place of failure with this book was in the handling of one of the side characters. Remember how I said that Butcher has been really good at allowing growth and change with Dresden? Well, he's also been really good about it with the side characters. Bad things happen, and he allows them all to suffer the consequences. Or good things happen and they take a step forward. This time, though, he decided to lock one of the side characters into a static condition that seemed (completely) unrealistic. Given the choice to do her job better, she refused. And for the flimsiest of reasons. I see that Butcher wants to keep this character a "normal" so that we "normal" readers will have a character that we can relate to, but this time it felt really forced.

Still, I highly enjoyed the book. Just not as much as I have the ones that have gone before it. After 10 books, though, I guess it would be a little unrealistic to expect that there's not one that takes a slight dip.

The Audition Process

My oldest son is in choir in high school. Well, he's in the ArtQuest program in drama, but he takes choir along with that. He's learning a lot about auditioning by being involved in this program. To begin with, he had to audition just to get into the ArtQuest program. Even if he'd been in the district of the school, he still would have had to audition to get into ArtQuest. That particular audition wasn't a huge deal. Here's the thing: he's a boy (obviously), and they always need more guys in the drama program (the choir program, too), so he was (almost) a shoe in (something like 85% of the boys that auditioned got accepted (I don't know the exact number and am guessing based on the number of boys my son auditioned with vs the number of those same boys that ended up in his drama group)).

Being in the ArtQuest drama program means that my son has to audition for at least two community productions each school year. That's an interesting requirement. Not be in any outside performances, just audition for them. Obviously, they think knowing how to audition is important. I don't think they actually expect that any of the students will actually get cast. Or maybe they do. One of the two productions my son auditioned for last year was The Pirates of Penzance. We were surprised to find out that he was chosen, because, honestly, we just didn't expect it. Other than the (deleted) shows he was in in middle school, he hadn't done anything. Basically, no experience. But he has a lot of charisma. And he got cast.
But I digress... This is about choir, not drama.

My son didn't want to be in choir. However, my wife took high school choir and is gifted musically, and I was involved in church choir, although I wouldn't say I'm gifted musically. In fact, when people find out I can sing at all, they are often very surprised. heh (Remember that stuff about singing on the phone...) At any rate, my wife kept suggesting that he take choir, that it was one of her best memories from high school, and he kept protesting. And I would remind him that both Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman can sing and dance, but he maintained a "so what" attitude about it. Until a girl at school started telling him about how great choir is, so he dropped Spanish I and took choir. Like I said, he's a boy.

He figured out pretty quickly that he loves choir. And I don't even think it's mostly due to the high girl to boy ratio. Beginning choir is the, for no apparent reason, ACappella group. I say no apparent reason, because they do not perform a cappella. It's a mystery to me. That was last year, though, so I'm trying to pretend it doesn't exist, now.

This year... well, this year is different. But let me backtrack a moment. His debut concert for the year was last week, and that's what has me going on about all of this. This year is concert choir. They call it their advanced group, but they only have the two options for the boys: beginning and advanced. The intermediate group is girls only. But that's not precisely true. There's another group called Chamber Singers. This is the actual advanced group. The other classes are like any other high school class, you sign up for it. So, no matter how badly you may suck, if you've taken beginning choir, you can sign up for the next level, but that's not true with Chamber Singers. Chamber Singers has to be auditioned for. And it's pretty accepted that it's for juniors and seniors. You have to be serious about the whole choir thing to be in Chamber Singers. You have to be in concert choir and, then, audition for the privilege to get to come to school for 0 period and have an extra class of choir every day of the school week.

What's 0 period, you ask? That's the class that starts at the butt crack of dawn (translated as 7:00am) that they have to be there by 6:45am which causes the students to have to get up at around 5:30AM in order to be there on time. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

School started off this year with my son in concert choir as he should be, and all was well with the world. They announced auditions for Chamber Singers. Just to make this clear, my son is a sophomore this year, and Chamber Singers is almost exclusively juniors and seniors. Not that auditions are restricted to juniors and seniors, because you only need to be in concert choir to audition, but that's how it works out. These are the guys and gals that are serious about their singing (and I just have to say some of these kids are amazing). My son decided to audition. Many of his friends told him he shouldn't bother. He's a sophomore. He'd never make it. (Some of you are seeing where this is going.) He talked it over with us. Basically, our advice to him was that he should not not audition. Sure, he probably wouldn't make it, but it would be a good experience, and it wouldn't cost him anything (not even his dignity). It's one of those things where if you don't do it (ask a girl out), then you don't get to do it (go on a date with the girl), but, if you do it, although you may still not get to do it (because she might (and, in some cases, will probably) say no), it might work (she might surprise you with a yes). So what did he have to lose? If he didn't audition, he would certainly not get to be in Chamber Singers, but, by auditioning, there was the chance, however small it might be.

And he made it in. Not necessarily because he's a great singer (he's still working on that), but they (always) need boys, and he was good enough. I mean, it's not like they took every boy that auditioned, so he made the grade even if he's not as amazing as some of the other boys that have been in Chamber for multiple years.
(Yes, this means I have to get up at 5:30AfreakingM every morning to make his lunch and make sure he gets off to school okay. But it's worth it (I think).)

Which finally brings me to my point. As I was sitting and listening to the choir teacher explain what they have to go through to be in Chamber Singers and how daunting it must have been to audition, and I know he was daunted, because he came home talking about how great some of the other boys' auditions were and how he would surely not make it, because, in comparison, he sucked, I realized that this is what's it should be like to write. The audition process that is. If you want to write, you have to approach it all the same way my son did with his audition to get into Chamber Singers.

You look at it and realize, "Wow, there are a lot of talented writers there trying to get into that group. I certainly don't measure up against them."  Still, "What have I got to lose, though?" Not trying is the same as failing, after all. So you write your book, and, even as you are looking around at the other books out there (like Rowling, Mary Doria Russel, Stephen Lawhead) and feeling completely daunted, you go forward anyway. Because, sometimes, sometimes you make it. Sure, you're not the best, but you're good enough. And, in the end, that's what really matters. Being good enough. (Unless you're my daughter, in which case you do have to be the best, because she has to win at everything (and don't even think about playing board games with her, because she has uncanny luck with  them).) Then, once you're in, you continue to get better until that time someone new comes along and is looking at you the way you used to look at all the other writers there before you.

Unfortunately, the writing world isn't really like auditioning for my son's choir group. You know, a place where things are based on merit and skill. No, the writing world is more like a cattle call. Hundreds of people show up and some bored guy comes out and "randomly" (>snicker<) selects a hand full of people to join him. Sure, they keep going through that process until they have some people they can use, but most people are turned away without a chance because they failed to be wearing a white shirt with red spots on the particular day. Or didn't have a tall enough hat on. Or failed to wear a blinking, neon sign over their head saying "pick me." Or did wear the sign, but everyone else showed up with one, too.

Still... you can't let the reality of the situation keep you from trying. Reduced down, it's still like my son going out to audition for Chamber Singers. You're always going to go into these things without enough experience, skill, and clout, but you have to do it anyway. Even though you may never be the best, you don't have to be the best to be good enough. In  the end, I think "good enough" is all that's really important as long is "good enough" is your best. Because that's what my son did, his best. It wasn't the best, but it was good enough. And "good enough" is a good place to start.

And, because it feels appropriate to repeat:
Jim Butcher (of The Dresden Files) says that being published is like being chased by a grizzly bear. You don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the guy next to you.
I'll leave that to you to puzzle out.
heh heh