I may joke about how much Twilight sucks. (And it does suck, with the suckiness of a thousand sucking suckers -- this is not open to dispute. Twilight is Bad. If you disagree, you are wrong, in the same way that someone who says the sun orbits the Earth is wrong.) But while a hundred million tween and teen girls may be making Stephanie Meyer rich for her sucky, creeptastic Mormon vampire epic, I'll bet all of you, like me, have skeletons hiding on the dusty top shelves of your own bookshelves. Books you thought were awesome when you were fourteen. Books that you would now not be caught dead reading.

Books like....



Yes, I totally read these books when I was fourteen.

In my defense, I was going through a serious pulp fiction phase. I loved Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, and the first few Gor novels actually were pretty standard swords & sorcery.

(Then, so the rumor goes, John Norman went through a nasty divorce, and everything he wrote after that became endless misogynistic BDSM fantasies.)

I also used to read a lot of Piers Anthony.



Yes, he's a shameless hack with an ego that affects the tides, but several of his series started out interesting.

Okay, your turn.

I'm curious to know how many of you have had the experience of reading a book, deciding you love/hate it, and then reading a highly critical/laudatory review and thinking, "You know, they're right, I didn't think of it that way before," and revising your opinion? Do you actively seek out negative opinions, even of a book you like, to find out why some people didn't like it?

Thing to keep in mind about reviews, whether on Amazon or Netflix: most of the reviews will be positive. This is for two reasons. First, most people don't care enough to trash a book or movie they really hated; in fact, if they really didn't like it, they probably didn't even finish it. Second, most people won't start reading a book or watching a movie that they don't expect to enjoy, and assuming you are a good judge of what you'll like, that means most of what you read/watch will be something that you at least found okay.

I usually don't read reviews before I read a book, for fear of spoilers; just summaries and maybe some of the general "buzz" about it. But after I read it, I'll go looking for reviews. I'll skim some of the positive reviews, but then I'll specifically seek out the one- and two-star reviews.

I've never actually been moved from hatred to love or vice versa, but I have certainly revised an opinion downward or (much more rarely) upward, after thinking awhile on others' criticisms.

I had this experience with Deathly Hallows, for example. After first reading it (bear in mind, I read the entire Harry Potter series in a month, knowing very little about it before I started), I liked it very much. It wasn't perfect, but overall I considered it a satisfying ending to the series.

After I started reading critiques of it, however, particularly Daniel Hemmens's very snarky chapter-by-chapter review, I realized that there were in fact a lot of flaws that I hadn't really noticed before. I would now say that I still like Deathly Hallows, but it's not a really great book and I can definitely understand why so many of Rowling's fans hated it, even discounting the shipping nonsense. (Again, since I read the whole series at once, I had built up no expectations regarding the ending and couldn't care less whether Harry got with Hermione.)

Anyway, that's the prelude to my review of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin. My first impression as I was reading it was, "Damn, this is good!" By the end, a little of the luster had worn off. It's still a good book, but after I finished it, I went trawling for reviews. It's been getting mostly excellent reviews and it's all over the fantasy blogosphere as the hot new book for 2010, but I did find a few reviewers who picked up on the same problems I had with it.

I still liked it, but I think I'm going to give it 4 stars, rather than the 5 I initially thought.

Review below the cut; only very minor spoilers.

( The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms )

• FanFiction.net
  
• Mugglenet Fan Fiction
  
• FictionAlley
  

(FictionAlley updates seem to be working again -- hooray!)

Been doing a lot of reading lately about writing, genres, literary styles, etc. I find myself agreeing with B.R. Myers in A Reader's Manifesto: screw pretentious "literariness" where authors write pretty prose just for the sake of pretty prose, and hang it loosely on a thin framework of plot and characterization, as if the story were just a mannequin that's there to display the words.

There is a cinematic counterpart to literary pretentiousness, and I think I just saw it with The Fountain. I can tell that the director was probably thinking "visually ambitious," "artsy," and "Oscar." I thought: "That was the most boring, ponderous piece of crap I've seen in a long time."

I enjoyed Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior ten times more, and it made no pretense of being anything other than a kick-ass martial arts movie.

I am also very pleased to be doing a lot more reading lately. (Actually, lately I've been buying new ebooks faster than I can read them. I really need to reduce that queue...)

Right now I am reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemison, and it's blowing me away. I'm only about a third of the way through it, and I know it's going to get a 5 star rating from me unless the author totally drops the ball somewhere before the end.

This will be a long review. The first part is spoiler-free; everything after the second lj-cut will be full of spoilers, as I'll discuss everything about the trilogy, including the ending. I'm really interested in comments from anyone else who has read it.

So, I had never heard of Brandon Sanderson before, but the first book in the trilogy caught my eye on the bookstore shelves for some reason:



At first glance, it looked like a fairly typical fantasy novel with a bad-ass assassin-looking chick on the cover. So I left it on the shelf; yes, I do judge books by their covers, and while this one was kind of intriguing, anything that makes me think the author is probably novelizing the AD&D games he played as a kid gets a "pass" from me.

Then I happened to see the author's name again online: apparently he'd been tapped to finish Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Which didn't really mean much to me; I've never read any of the WoT books. (Yes, I've heard they're epic and awesome and all that, and someday I probably will read the first book, at least, but it takes a lot to make me want to get invested a series that now comprises over twelve books. I just recently read my first Diskworld novel.)

But it made me a little more curious, since I knew this was a Big Deal in the fantasy world. So I went back to the bookstore and read the first couple of pages, and they were interesting enough that I bought the ebook, and then ended up finishing the trilogy.

( Spoiler-free review )

tl;dr version: I liked it, with reservations. 4/5 stars for the series, but I'd rate the individual books as 5, 4, and 3 stars, in order. Unfortunately, I liked each book in the series less than the last. It's not that they got worse, really, but that Sanderson is the sort of writer who draws on a small number of writing devices, and they get a little tiresome eventually, especially when used to bring an epic series with world-shaking events to a close.

Also, there was some really crazy Mormon shit at the end, yo.

( Detailed critique, with major spoilers )

So, has anyone else read these books? What do you think?

If I ever do become a published author, I hope someone will smack me upside the head with a baseball bat before I turn into an entitled jackass like R. Malone or Rob Thurman.

Summary for those who don't want to read Fandom_Wank: R. Malone published a crappy Twilight-ripoff sexy!vampire novel through a vanity press, and went postal on someone who wrote a negative review, sending her profanity-laden emails, complaining to her ISP to have the review taken down, posting screeds on book review sites, and creating sock-puppet accounts to add 5-star ratings to her book.

Rob Thurman is apparently a real author (i.e., her books have been published by actual publishers) who writes crappy Supernatural-ripoff urban fantasy novels, and is going nuts on her blog and Twitter, berating her fans for not buying her book when it will supposedly improve its chances of landing on the NYT Best Sellers list. Yes, she's actually publicly chewing out fans who bought the book on Monday because supposedly only sales figures from Tuesday on would count.

What happens to authors to make them lose their minds like this? I mean, I'm sure it stings to see a one-star review of your book, but how do you imagine that going on a jihad against the reviewer will improve your reviews, or your ratings? And seriously, where does Ms. Thurman get off thinking that her readers owe her that kind of fealty, or that they should put up with being scolded for buying her book on the "wrong" day?

I like John Scalzi's take on bad reviews much better.

Incidentally, I had never heard of John Scalzi or read any of his books before I came across his blog. He has since struck me as a cool, straightforward guy (even if he is peripherally involved with the lame suckage that is Stargate: Universe), so I purchased one of his books (Zoe's Tale) and so far am enjoying it a great deal.

Which brings me to my question: does what you think of an author affect what you think of their work? If you find out that an author is a raging asshole, or has political/religious views you consider loathsome, does it affect your willingness to buy their books?

In my case, the answer is yes. I don't do a background check on every author before I read them to find out whether they believe things I disagree with, but when an author makes a public ass of him/herself or reveals him/herself to be a nasty bigot (or an entitled jackass), well... there is a long, long list of books I want to read, and I'll never get to them all, so I'm not losing out by crossing assholes off my list.

Conversely, when I find out an author is Cool People, I'm more likely to at least check them out if I've never read them before.

Although R. Malone and Rob Thurman's behavior hasn't actually lost them a sale in my case, since I doubt I'd ever choose to read their books in the first place.

Poll #1534469 The Asshole Author Poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 19

If you find out an author is an asshole, will you stop reading him or her?

No, not that Alex.



This Alex.

Alex is my hero. He did what I didn't have the patience to do: read Twilight cover to cover. And he posted YouTube commentaries of each chapter. Twilight sporking sounds even better with an Aussie accent!

( The latest crap from my Netflix queue )

Okay, moving on... I'm still doing some tune-up on the last few chapters of AQATDR, but the book is basically finished. Any changes I make at this point won't be structural, since both my betas have finished it and reassured me that it doesn't suck and doesn't have any gaping plot holes.

So, just to give you a heads up: I am as determined as ever to finish the Alexandra Quick series, and I'm outlining book four now. However, I'm not going to start writing it immediately. Instead, I have an original fiction idea that has expanded into novel length form. This is the first time in years I've felt the urge/inspiration to write original fiction of any length. So I think I'm actually going to do this, and even see if I can get it published.

I'm not going to dedicate my life to it. I wouldn't mind getting a novel published, but at this point in my life, I'm not trying to become a professional writer. I already have a career. (Now if I get my novel published and it becomes a best-seller and then optioned by Hollywood, well... I can dream, right?)

But, since it will take me a while to work on this novel, AQ4 will be on the back burner for a while. Actually, I'm planning to possibly alternate between them; working on one when I'm stuck on something in the other. But we'll see how well that works.

(And yes, I still plan to write a Hogwarts Houses Divided sequel... someday.)

Alexandra Quick returns to Charmbridge Academy for eighth grade, angry and in denial. Unwilling to accept the events of the previous year, she is determined to fix what went wrong, no matter what the cost. When her obsession leads her to a fateful choice, it is not only her own life that hangs in the balance, for she will uncover the secret of the Deathly Regiment!



Banner by JCCollier, of Mugglenet Fan Fiction.

Alexandra Quick and the Deathly Regiment is the third book in the Alexandra Quick series.

You can read it at:

• FanFiction.net
  
• Mugglenet Fan Fiction
  
• FictionAlley
  

"Lila Zill and the Thorn Circle"

I've been looking back through the notes I made when I first conceived of Alexandra Quick, before I even started writing book one. I started out by writing lists of names for people and places. I'd actually forgotten most of these.

I have a long list of girls' names I wrote down. Then I have the three that made my short list: "Bonnie," "Lila" (short for "Lilian"), and "Alexandra."

Also, "Quick" was not the only surname under consideration. I have "Green" (which became Alexandra's mother's married name), "Stone," "Amber," and "Quick," and below all those, a circle around "Lila Zill."

Lila Zill? Really? I was going to name my main character "Lila Zill"? I swear I don't remember that...

( More names that didn't make it )

Torchwood: Children of Earth

Morally ambiguous heroes doing awful things for the greater good

This was a brilliant mini-epic. Seasons One and Two were "meh" for me. But Children of Earth was how sci-fi series should be: small and self-contained, tying up all the loose ends, and doing dramatic things that you can't do when you need to keep all your options open for the next season. (Though I understand they are planning a Torchwood Season Four now.)

( Spoilers )

Caprica

( I was a Teenage Cylon )

So I'm taking a wee bit of a breather, now that the rough draft of AQATDR is done. Which means I'm only skimming it now and then and revising a paragraph or two... I'll get back to serious revision once I get my next batch of comments back from my betas.

I am already looking ahead to my next writing project(s). I'll probably discuss that in a future post. (Yes, I do intend to continue the Alexandra Quick series. Absolutely. But I may work on something else before I start writing AQ4.)

Anyway, since I have been thinking about writing so much lately (my own and others'), I thought I would dredge up a topic that has been circulating in HP fandom for quite a while, and in literature in general for ages: the issue of authorial intent.

For those not familiar with the issue, in a nutshell it's this: does the author's intended meaning of a text matter, or is it only the readers' perception of it that matters? Is an author's work open to interpretation, or if the author says, "It means X," does it really mean X?

Now, in academia, you have whole schools of literary criticism and doctoral theses debating this. In fandom, you have wank. (Which, let's be honest, is the same thing. Have you ever read an English Lit PhD thesis?)

( Oh no, it's the old 'What is Canon?' debate! )

Alexandra Quick returns to Charmbridge Academy angry and in denial. Unwilling to accept the events of the previous year, she is determined to fix what went wrong, no matter what the cost. When her obsession leads her to a fateful choice, it is not only her own life that hangs in the balance, for she will uncover the secret of the Deathly Regiment.



Awesome banner made for me by JCCollier, of Mugglenet Fan Fiction. You should really read JC's story, Marissa and the Wizards.

The summary above is a rough draft. What do you think? (Keep in mind, it needs to be short. In fact, I need an even shorter version to fit fanfiction.net's measley 255-character limit.)

In other random news of randomness:

• Fandom Wank always brings the well-deserved snark, especially when it's Snapefen.
  
• I totally had the Monster Manual with that succubus picture. And you wonder why in the 1980s, mothers thought Dungeons & Dragons was going to lure their children into devil worship?
  
• WTF Netflix? I just finished the first episode of Children of Earth, and then discovered that while you can download episodes 1, 3, 4, and 5 instantly, episode 2 is disk-only! What is the purpose of a licensing arrangement like that? It's not going to sell DVDs, since I just put it in my regular shipping queue. Grr. (I'm still lukewarm about Torchwood after seasons one and two, but the start of CoE actually made me eager to see the next episode.)
  

Thirty-one chapters, 202,740 words.

That's the rough draft. I wrote an awful lot this past week, and whenever I write a lot of words in a short time, an awful lot of it is crap and needs to be rewritten.

But, it won't be too terribly long now.

Latest from my Netflix instant queue: The Host. (In Korean, it's 괴물, Gwoemul - "Monster" - and has nothing to do with the Stephenie Meyer book by the same name.) If you like monster movies, give this one a try. It's a Korean movie with a pretty cool monster, some endearing Everyman characters, and an ending that is satisfactory if not exactly happy. There are chases and escapes and people trying to fight the monster without having massive amounts of Hollywood-style ordnance, a brave and resourceful little girl, and quite a bit of satirical political commentary as well, including about the American military presence in Korea.



The bad acting of the American characters was the only thing that really made me wince. Korean filmmakers probably don't usually have the budget to fly a big name (or even a C-lister) over from Hollywood, and I doubt there's a large stable of American actors hanging around in Korea waiting for parts, so I found myself wondering if they just sent someone out to grab Americans off the streets of Seoul. "Hey? Want to play an American in a Korean movie?"

It wasn't entirely the actors' fault -- I could actually tell when Korean conversational idioms had been translated into English for their parts. They must have had fluent English speakers check the script, because the Americans' lines were grammatically correct, but when an American spoke, it just wasn't quite idiomatic in the way a native speaker would naturally talk.

I'm sure speakers of other languages get the same vibe when Hollywood has someone speaking their language in an American film.

Likewise, it's usually easy to tell in British dramas when they're having a British actor play an American. Besides the fact that Americans in British dramas always find some reason to bring up the Second Amendment, no matter how irrelevant to the plot, British actors trying to speak with an American accent sound like they are talking around a mouthful of oatmeal. (Hugh Laurie excepted.) Yes, I'm sure most Americans trying to do a British accent are equally painful.

I was thinking about this all through Torchwood. (I just finished Season Two.) I was undecided about John Barrowman. Yes, he sounds American, but was he really American, or was he a British actor who does a really good American accent? There was just something not quite 100% Yank in his idiolect, I thought. So I finally consulted his Wikipedia entry. Aha! He's Scottish-born, but raised in the U.S., and still uses a native Glaswegian accent with his family.

Obviously no one finds the minutiae of ebook publishing as interesting as I do, since the comment thread in my Amazon vs. MacMillan post has become a "What's going to happen in AQATDR?" discussion. :P

Okay, speculate away!



I've been making good progress. 191K words completed. I am now writing Chapter 30, and planning to end book three with Chapter 31. Or Chapter 32. Depends how the conclusion and denouement work out. There's one scene which I really want to include, but I'm pretty sure my betas are going to tell me I should save it for the beginning of book four rather than sticking it at the end of book three. And I'm pretty sure they're right. (See what I did there? I've already had a hypothetical discussion with my betas about a scene I haven't written yet that they haven't read :)), so I probably won't write it at all. Yet.

And the prediction I made way back when I started looks like it is going to hold true: book three will be longer than book one, but not quite as long as book two.

So, I expect to finish the rough draft pretty soon. My betas are still working their way through the first half of the book, though, so I'm not going to start posting chapters as soon as I write "End Year Three." But we're getting there.

Since I've been talking a lot about ebooks lately, I thought I'd mention the current battle going on between Amazon and MacMillan.

It's long and complicated; below are some links to explain it in detail. In a nutshell, Amazon has been trying to force all publishers to price all ebooks at $10. Cheap ebooks = more ebooks and more Kindles sold. MacMillan, a major publisher (who owns Tor, among others) balked and said they want to be able to set variable prices on their ebooks. Amazon responded by delisting all MacMillan books. They've since said that they will "capitulate" to MacMillan, but as of now, the books are still unavailable on Amazon's site.

I'm posting this because the general consumer response has been a somewhat misguided "Yay, Amazon! They're keeping prices down on ebooks!"

Well, yes, but the problem is that they're doing it so that they can sell more Kindles and hold onto their market share (and of course, right now they are preparing for a major turf war with Apple). In the process, they are taking a loss on ebooks, and want to force publishers to take a loss on them as well. Contrary to what's been claimed, MacMillan isn't trying to price all of its ebooks at $15. They're trying to hold onto the same pricing model as regular books: you can buy a book when it first comes out as an expensive hardcover, or you can wait until it's released as a mass-market paperback and buy it for less. Likewise, they want to price ebooks higher when the hardback is released, and lower the price when it becomes available as a paperback.

Also, the battle has been characterized as being like Apple/iTunes vs. the music industry. Which it is, in a way, but there are a lot of subtle differences that make Amazon the bad guys here.

Here's why I side with MacMillan, even though I'd just as soon pay less for ebooks myself: Who gets screwed most by Amazon's tactics? Authors.

Science fiction author John Scalzi has covered this in detail, as he's one of the authors affected. A lot of authors are taking a serious hit in their income right now, with every day that passes that their books aren't available on Amazon. And if Amazon "wins," then authors will take a serious hit in their income long term, as forcing lower prices on books by a company that treats books as loss-leaders to sell Kindles means reduced royalties for the writers.

Also worth noting: a lot of consumers have the attitude, "Ebooks should be much cheaper than paper books, since they're much cheaper to produce!" I admit I kind of felt the same way, but read up on the topic. Printing and shipping costs for books actually represent a relatively small portion of the total production cost, after paying editors, proofreaders, illustrators, marketing, agents, etc., and somewhere in there, a little bit for the author.

I now feel the same way about ebooks that I do about paper books: there are very few books which I will buy in hardcover, rather than waiting for the paperback. (The last hardcover fiction book I bought was Deathly Hallows.) The same thing applies to ebooks: I'm not going to buy one at a premium price unless I just can't wait a year or so for the price to drop, but I think publishers are perfectly within their rights to charge a premium price for those who want it right now.

So the upshot of all this is, I am going to actively avoid buying from Amazon in the future, and when I start shopping for a new ereader, I won't be looking at Kindles.

The Amazon-Macmillan book saga heralds publishing's progress (The Washington Post).

TechCrunch's articles on Amazon vs. MacMillan

John Scalzi's posts on the topic