Tag: rants

Stalking potential customers isn’t really a good idea

I love going on cruises. I’ve been hooked ever since my parents and I went on a three-day Caribbean cruise on Norwegian Cruise Line’s old Leeward back in 1996. Since then, I’ve taken NCL’s Norwegian Wind to Alaska and done a transatlantic crossing on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2. There’s something wonderful about life onboard a ship, and I enjoy being able to visit several different places in the course of a single vacation.

It’s been a while since I set sail, and I’m itching to get my sea legs back. In preparation for a possible trip next year, I’ve been poking around the web and ordering brochures. For nostalgia’s sake, I ordered a brochure from NCL, but I’m starting to wonder if that wasn’t a mistake. I requested the material on Saturday, July 30 and on Tuesday, August 2, I got a voicemail message from a “personal cruise consultant” at NCL offering to help me plan my vacation. He also sent me an email, complete with a smarmy postscript reminding me to tell my friends about him when they ask about my cruise. Since he didn’t hear back from me, he called again today.

I really don’t like this approach. For starters, I haven’t received my brochure yet, so I don’t know whether or not they have anything I’m interested in. And being nagged like this doesn’t make me want to open up my wallet to them. There’s a fine line between being solicitous and being obnoxious, and NCL has crossed it. I have half a mind to respond to their email by saying that each unwanted communication will lower my chance of booking with them by 20%!

Songs that set my teeth on edge

Today I had the great misfortune to hear “What I Am” by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. When I was a lad, the Elder Mr. Loch used to listen to that song quite a bit. At the time, I thought it was a stupid song with banal lyrics (if you need someone else to shove you in the shallow water before you get too deep, you need to get out of the damn pool). Listening to it 20 years later, I’m pleased to report that my initial assessment was correct. It’s a stupid song with banal lyrics.

It got me thinking though about other songs that make me want to defenestrate myself whenever I hear them. I came up with the following list:

“The Locomotion” by Little Eva

“I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” by Gail Peevey

“Teenager in Love” by Dion and the Belmonts

“Working Man’s PhD” by Aaron Tippin

“Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus

And finally, the worst of them all:

“When We Make Love” by Alabama (this song is the reason I cringe whenever I hear the phrase “making love”)

What about you? What songs do you absolutely loathe? Feel free to share in the comments.

Even in the digital world, Formatting 101 is important

As I read more and more ebooks on the Kindle, I’m starting to detect a quality-control problem.  For example, in both of Aliette de Bodard’s Aztec mysteries (which are awesome, by the way), I’ve noticed formatting glitches galore.   Hyphens are missing.  Text is improperly italicized.  And in Mike Shevdon’s Sixty-One Nails, two characters’ dialogue will  often be smushed into the same paragraph, which makes for an incredibly confusing read.

Both de Bodard and Shevdon are published by Angry Robot, but the problem is not confined to one particular publisher.  I’ve heard reports of similar problems in ebooks published by other companies.  These kinds of basic formatting errors might have been understandable back in 2007, but ebooks have been around long enough that they should have worked out the kinks by now.   I have to wonder, do ebooks actually undergo any kind of independent proofreading?  Or do they just take the electronic files from the print edition and transform them into an ebook?

Truth in fiction

I was rudely awakened this morning by the fire alarm.  As I waited outside for the all clear to return to my cozy bed, I decided to download a sample of Wilbur Smith’s Warlock on my iPhone.   Warlock is a fantasy novel set in ancient Egypt and I had been meaning to check it out for some time, but I never managed to get around to it until now.

By the end of the first page, it became apparent that artistic license was going to be the order of the day.   I had hoped that Warlock would be a work of historical fantasy on par with Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but Smith took so many liberties with the past that it had a negative impact on my ability to enjoy the story.

Now I get the fact that this is a novel and not a history textbook.  I also understand that artistic license is often necessary.  But if you’re going to set your work in a real-world society, I think you have to adhere to a certain basic standard of authenticity.  Populating your version of ancient Egypt with people named “Lostris” and “Memnon” is like writing a story about feudal Japan with characters named “Tiffany” and “Bartholomew.”  If you’re going to fudge that many details, why not just go all the way and set your story in a wholly fictional world of your own creation?

Let me make one thing clear, though: I’m not saying that Warlock is a bad book because it lacks authenticity.  It’s just not the sort of book I want to read.   I think I’ll download something by C. J. Sansom instead…

On infodumps

One of my biggest pet peeves is when authors clutter their work with excessive background information.  Few things irritate me more than having the flow of a story broken so the narrator can regale me with a mini-lecture on Egyptian temple decoration, the lineage of the High Elf Lords of Fantasia Minor, or the sewer system of Paris.  Even if I’m actually interested in the subject material, I resent having it dumped on me in that fashion.

Part of the problem is that these infodumps are almost always done by the narrator.  For me, narrators work best when they’re unobtrusive and it’s hard for them to be unobtrusive when they’re yammering on about  beekeeping in the Roman Empire.  Some writers try to avoid this by putting their infodumps in the mouths of their characters, but that gets dangerously close to “As you know, Bob…” territory.

Writers of historical fiction need to be especially wary of falling into this trap.  We do not have the luxury of writing in worlds that are readily understandable to our readers, so we’re always going to have to make more of an effort to set the scene properly.  But while it’s fine to spend some time explaining things that modern readers might not be familiar with, that doesn’t give us license to cram so many historical tidbits into our work that it looks like it was written by an 18th century antiquary.

Regular readers of my blog may wonder how I could enjoy Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell since it contained copious amounts of background information.  She could get away with it because she was deliberately imitating the style of 19th century authors.  As anyone who’s ever read Victor Hugo or Anthony Trollope will tell you, info dumps were all the rage back then.  Clarke also tended to confine her background information to footnotes, so if you didn’t want to read it, you could easily skip over it.

What do you think?  Do extensive background infodumps detract from a story, or do they make it richer?

Rebecca Black, self publishing, and the rise of the eBook

Many of you have no doubt heard about Rebecca Black, the thirteen year old singer whose debut song “Friday” has become an object of near universal mockery on the Interwebz.  With lyrics like this:

Fun, fun, think about fun

You know what it is

I got this, you got this

My friend is by my right, ay

I got this, you got this

Now you know it.

it’s not hard to see why some people are calling “Friday” one of the worst songs of all time.

Black’s parents paid $4,000 for her to make a video with ARK Music Factory, which makes “Friday” the musical equivalent of the many self-published books churned out by vanity presses like iUniverse and AuthorHouse.  Since these companies get their money upfront, they don’t have to worry about pesky things like quality or marketability.

Recently, it has become something of a fad within the publishing world to forecast the imminent demise of literary agents and traditional publishers.  Pundits point to people like Amanda Hocking (who has become a millionaire by selling her self-published eBooks through the Kindle store) and claim that authors will eventually self publish all their work in eBook form.  It’s not hard to see why some authors find self publishing platforms like the Kindle to be an appealing alternative to traditional publishing.  Not only are you free to publish your story exactly how you want it without any editorial interference, but you can also get royalties of up to 70%.

While  eBooks will eventually relegate paper books to the status of collectors’ items, literary agents and traditional publishers still have a valuable role to play in ensuring some basic level of quality.  They’re actually making an investment in the author, so they have a vested interest in making sure that the author’s work is good, or at least marketable.  Granted, Amazon doesn’t charge you anything to publish via the Kindle, but they’re not exactly making an investment in you either, which is why they’ll still accept almost anything under the sun.  A traditional publisher also provides basic publicity services to help market your book.  If you’re self published, you have to do all that on your own and, contrary to what some people seem to think, social media isn’t a magic wand that you can wave and guarantee your book a vast readership.

As long as self publishing continues to be associated with the literary equivalent of Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” there will be a place for traditional publishers.  The switch to eBooks may provide a second chance for authors who were bypassed by traditional publishers, but easier distribution won’t automatically level the playing field.

Thoroughly Modern Marple

I just read that Jennifer Garner (of Alias fame) has been cast as Miss Marple in new Disney film.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Agatha Christie’s books, Jane Marple is supposed to be an elderly spinster who lives in the small English village of St. Mary Mead.  Apparently Disney, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to ‘reboot’ the Miss Marple franchise by turning her into a hot thirtysomething.

This takes the cake for the most absurd thing I’ve read today.  When one thinks of Miss Marple, one thinks of George Orwell’s old maids bicycling to Holy Communion, not someone who could appear on the cover of Maxim.  Miss Marple’s sublime ordinariness is part of her charm.  She’s not a high-powered secret agent, she’s just a run-of-the-mill English lady who happens to have a gift for piecing clues together.

At first I thought this was going to be a prequel, but then I read that it’s going to be set in the modern day.  So not only are they shaving decades off of Miss Marple’s age, they’re also catapulting her decades into the future.  It looks like Disney’s just trying to cash in on the Marple name, but I have to wonder if that’s a winning strategy.  Presumably, the changes they’ve made are designed to appeal to a younger demographic, but I doubt that many people under the age of 50 know who she is.  And the people who already do know who she is probably won’t care much for the changes they’ve made.

Since this is a Disney film, we probably won’t be forced to watch New Marple thrash around in bed with some buff boytoy.  Nor will she be called upon to solve a disgustingly gruesome crime.   For that we should be thankful.  The Miss Marple stories were never about gritty, realistic dramas.  They were the coziest of the cozy mysteries.

Sigh.  I wonder how long it will be before Justin Bieber is cast as a young Brother Cadfael?

First person narrators

I’m not really a fan of stories told by a first-person narrator.  I know that, to some people, they make the story seem much more personal, but I just can’t suspend disbelief enough to accept a narrator who can somehow remember the ins and outs of every single conversation he/she has ever had.  There are a few books where the story is so compelling that I’m willing to overlook the first-person narration: N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy, Robert Graves’ I, Claudius, and Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles are the ones that spring immediately to mind.

Regular readers of my blog know that I’m not really a fan of H. P. Lovecraft.  But I don’t see his frequent use of the first person as one of his problems.  In fact, he’s usually able to pull it off a lot better than other writers because he doesn’t use a lot of dialogue, so his narrators’ reminiscences seem more believable.

What do you think of first-person narrators?  Am I alone in my distaste?