Category Archives: Book reviews

Book reviews, Social comment, Sports

Current read: Connie Mack’s First Dynasty, by Lew Freedman

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One thing had always puzzled me about the history of baseball: future Hall-of-Famer Connie Mack’s demolition of the Philadelphia Athletics after the 1914 World Series loss to the Boston “Miracle” Braves in four games (thus a sweep). He had such a great team; why on earth? It is usually presented as a mystery (and it certainly mystified me for years), and perhaps a sudden burst of spite after his team collective wet the bed against a weaker but hungrier opponent.

One of my favorite aspects of history is when reading the take of someone who puts events into suitable context. This, combined with a general decline in critical thinking, makes such work even more important. Take anything completely out of context, and it can be spun to mislead–whether by accident or design. This is why Freedman’s book moved me to write.

The book covers the rise of Mack’s Athletics to five fine seasons: four pennants and two World Series wins. That’s no joke. The team had the best infield of its day, numerous Hall of Famers, and mostly good (often great) pitching. And after the 1914 season, Mack sold, released, or otherwise got rid of almost the whole team. Who the hell does this, and why?

I’m sure that this is all well recognized by deeper baseball historians than myself, but for me it was a revelation. Several factors played in; as usual with history, the truth is messier than a simplistic notion but is much more entertaining. What was happening:

  • Spite. Yes, there was some of that. Mack felt many of his players were complacent, and flirting with the rival Federal League and its bankrolls felt to him like betrayal. He had considered most of his players like sons, as would be his way for the rest of his career, so much so that when the outgoing Bobo Newsom showed up in Philly to play for Mack in the 1940s, he greeted him with “Hiya, Connie!” Six young and grim A’s confronted Newsom in short order. “We call him Mr. Mack, see?” To a degree, yes, hurt feelings were a part of the process. They were not the only part.
  • Federal League. The Feds began recognized play in 1914, and plenty of players jumped at the big money. This seems to happen when rival leagues form, and Mack wasn’t a big spender on salaries. His two best pitchers, Albert Bender and Eddie Plank, seemed near the end of the line. How much of his team would jump? Mack didn’t plan to wait around and find out. This was perhaps the greatest logical reason to do before he was done to.
  • War. WWI had already broken out in Europe, a major distraction that wouldn’t involve the United States for three years but was likely to be disruptive. As it was; future Hall of Famers Christy Mathewson and Grover Cleveland Alexander were physically and psychologically impaired by the war for the rest of their lives–in the case of Mathewson, a short one. The uncertainty of the times had to play a role.
  • Confidence. Mack stayed in baseball for so long that he is often remembered as an ancient and not very successful manager in the 1940s and early 1950s, still waving players into position with a scorecard. He was much younger in the 1910s, and had built a winner. He felt, with good cause, that he could do so again. And he did, though it took longer than he’d expected.
  • Shibe Park. What would become a storied big league ballpark didn’t have as much seating as would have been ideal, which (in combination with fickle fandom and surprisingly weak attendance) meant that Mack couldn’t outbid the Feds. Whatever else one says about Mack, he was neither stupid nor innumerate. Rather than lose bidding wars, he declined to fight them.

I find Freedman’s reasoning thoughtful and persuasive. Mack evidently looked at the overall situation, decided that it was either act or be acted upon, and made some tough decisions. The result was the 1915 Athletics, with a 43-109 finish as one of the lousiest teams in baseball history. The Mackmen didn’t win another pennant until 1929. They hit .237 (awful) and only one pitcher won in double digits, Weldon Wyckoff–while losing 22.

What might have happened had Mack stood pat? The 1915 team would have been better (then again, it could hardly have been worse). It is reasonable to think that enough of the old guard would have stayed and performed well that they could have brought the team out of the cellar, if not into the pennant race. It would have held up the youth movement, but not disastrously so. And while the Federal League fell apart after the 1915 season, Mack had no way of anticipating that in late 1914.

History must remember that the people of the times did not generally have foreknowledge. They could guess, predict, conjecture, analyze, and sometimes do a fair job of figuring out what was coming down from third base. In 1986, few people knew that the Soviet Union’s days as a going concern would end within five years. It’s easy to second-guess, but more difficult to see the world through the eyes of the day. I believe that this is key to understanding Mack’s personnel divestiture. He was the guy in charge, he read the tea leaves, felt his feelings, and did what he thought would lead to a rebuilt winner. Which he would, but without a single player from the 1915 season and only one of his former stalwarts from the dynasty: the unforgettable Eddie Collins, playing a bit part at 42 and mostly a coach.

Now it makes more sense to me.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Editorial Maverick: Who are my examples?

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One of the best ways to teach involves good and bad examples. In many cases it’s easiest just to show the client someone who does it better than I do, or at least as well, and recommend they learn from it. Why not share that list?

Tightening: C.J. Cherryh’s fantasy and science fiction, and it’s not  even close. I often say that you could string a bow with her writing. If you are looking to see how someone gets away with the minimum words while presenting great narrative and dialogue, she’s your draft pick. Another author who doesn’t waste words is Tim Cahill (also mentioned below), whose laconic Sconnie style is that of a trained but taciturn journalist.

Dialogue: The art of dialogue takes time to acquire. There is a fine art to the correct density of dialogue tags (“he said”, etc.), how to present emphasis, and so on. The one that stands out to me is the early and middle work by W.E.B. Griffin, before his son’s name went onto the cover (and definitely before post-Junior’s hired pens were hired). You could always tell who was talking, and there were just enough adverbs in the tags (as in not many).

The Moment: If you read much fiction, and even some non-fiction, you have observed that some authors show a powerful sense of the key moment. Most very good storytellers must be cognizant of it, but a few do it with deft gravitas. My money there is on Frank Herbert in his Dune books (not the ones after his death, most of which I strongly suspect were written by ‘lancers).

Third Person Limited Point of View: For those not familiar, this means that the storyteller is inside the protag’s head but doesn’t assume the protag’s identity (which would shift it to first person: to “I” from the 3P “s/he.” All perspective colors our fiction with a basic approach; for example, the most common for first novels is semi-autobiographical 1P, probably because that’s suited to the skill level of most novice novelists. (That sounds waspish, but is not so intended. Let’s be real: there are novices in all fields, and they find certain paths easiest. Thus here.) In any case, my favorite example for 3PL is C.S. Forester, especially the majestic Hornblower novels. A deep dive into a man’s insecurities, disappointments, triumphs, and tragedies, the bohicas and terrors and even joys of military/naval life.

Mastery of English: Winston Churchill, and it’s not even close. Churchill is what I read when I need to be reminded what I am unlikely ever to be. William Manchester (including two of his three volumes about Churchill) is another candidate in a different English dialect.

Urban Paranormal: I admit that I am pretty much over this genre, but keeping an open mind. It’s not that I fundamentally hate it, but rather that it is so often so very badly done. Miniature dragons as part of huge elfy/vampy/wolfy spell battles on the San Francisco waterfront, and the next morning the city wakes up to business as usual? No. One thing I believe is that every fiction author gets one cheat: one step they don’t need to account for or fully explain, one leap of faith. To use that one on the notion that the rest of the world would just keep calm and carry on after zombies came pouring through town–that is not good. Some–and they know who they are–are so fetishistic they have to keep ratcheting up the monstrosity, like a bondage addict who must up-kink in order to keep feeling the thrill. The one who seems at least respectably tethered to the rest of reality is Patricia Briggs with the Mercy Thompson series.

Travel: This is my favorite besides history, so I’m fussy here. For a laconic outlook that reflects his Wisconsin upbringing, anything by Tim Cahill. He has the gift of being funny without appearing to try. For unconventional ways to write about nearly everything, William Least Heat-Moon. One gets the sense that Heat-Moon is simply a deeper and more patient observer than the average person.

Biography: You might not have heard of her, but Fawn Brodie flat killed it. Just five: Joseph Smith, Thaddeus Stevens, Thomas Jefferson, Sir Richard Burton, and (the only one I have yet to read) Richard Nixon. Brodie is that sort of biographer that helps one feel a deeper understanding of the subject’s times, not simply the life.

There’s also a long list of popular authors I consider inept, even unreadable. I’m not going to write a blog post about them because I can’t. Most of you can, but I cannot. I’m in the industry, albeit one of its tiniest lights, and there’s a non-zero chance I could run into someone. Some people have long memories, and I don’t have a need to go out of my way to put myself on the bad side of those long memories for zero benefit. The standards have dropped, and as some of them age, time is unkind to their skillsets.

Anyway, I might not write about that in a concentrated form, but you perhaps have ideas. If you’d like to discuss Popular Writers I Think Are Lousy in the comments, I’m not going to interfere unless it gets out of hand.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Editorial Maverick: an interview with author Vanessa MacLellan

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Today I’ve got something fun for you.  Vanessa is a past SF con acquaintance of mine and we hit it off well enough to stay in touch. She has a new book just out titled Reluctant Hero that touches on some new themes for her; suggest you check it out. It’s kind of funny we did this via FB messaging (live, not canned), even though by a weird quirk of life, we only live at most a few miles apart. I think you’ll enjoy her candor and forthcomingness, if that is a word. Without further ado:

The Editorial Maverick: Vanessa, welcome to the blog!

Vanessa MacLellan: Thank you! I’m happy to be here, J.K.

TEM: You’re a successful indie author. This means that all indie authors who want to be successful should pay careful attention to what you choose to share. First, though, could you please give us the basics: where’d you grow up, anything remarkable about it, and up through college?

Vanessa: Sure. I come from Moses Lake, WA, in the heart of the state in the desert. I grew up in the Middle of Nowhere and so I often had to just play with my imagination rather than other kids.

I went to college at WSU for civil engineering, but I’d always been telling stories, writing poetry, and generally doing imaginary things. In college I played my first roleplaying games as well, and that opened up a whole new world. This was in the early years of White Wolf (a gaming franchise) and I adored it. Once I found a place in Vancouver, WA (for the real job) I immediately looked for other gamers.

TEM: Eastern Washington RPG nerds representing all in here. Do you find that your major helped with or influenced your later writing work?

Vanessa: In a way. I’m very analytical as an engineer, so I think I approach writing with more of that kind of studious planning versus just making things up as I go. I like numbers and formula and things that make sense. Even though I write fantasy and other speculative fiction, I still am pretty grounded about it and like it all to have form and follow a logical system. But as for real engineering, I don’t really put that in my books. Maybe I should!

TEM: It’s ‘what you know.’ So what were you doing in life before you decided you wanted to author fiction novels?

Vanessa: Well, I guess that whole ‘deciding I wanted to author fiction novels’ wasn’t really a solid line in the sand. I’d started writing very bad stories as a child and then in junior high I moved on to poetry… angst-ridden, and once I was an adult (and a gamer) I wrote stories for my early gaming characters and fanfiction for stories I wanted to see more of. I didn’t really decide to write my own stuff until NaNoWriMo of 2004 where I wrote my first environmental fantasy, to which I recently returned and got stuck again. So, I guess it was 2004 and finding out about NaNo that got me realizing…I can do this! And I did. And I’ve done it again and again (writing rough drafts, anyway).

TEM: And at roughly what age, if I may be so bold, did you decide to go that way?

Vanessa: 2004, I was 30. That was 20 years ago, if you want to do the math.

TEM: Heh, not my forte. Please share the thought process that went into your first book’s topic and story creation.

Vanessa: My first book was Three Great Lies, published by Hadley Rille Books in 2015. It’s a portal fantasy where a modern woman falls through a tomb into ancient mythological Egypt. My love for Egypt and Egyptian mythology totally took over that book. I don’t even know if there was much thought, it was more, I studied mythology for so long, I wanted to include it in a book. The portal aspect of it came from recently reading Stardust (I think that’s the name) by Neil Gaiman, and I was just delighted about going into a magical world.

Those types of stories are not new at all, but the timing just hooked me and so I decided a modern woman in mythic Egypt was what I was going to do. And I did it. And it took a while to edit it all because it was the first book I really finished and polished up and it was utter joy to have Hadley Rille pick it up.

TEM: A lot of first-time novelists would commit low crimes to have that moment. Now we’d like to hear how it felt. You were not then established. Were you confident? Nervous?

Vanessa: Hahaha…I was completely bowled over! I wrote this book and somebody wanted to publish it! Holy smokes. That’s like the holy grail. And I worked closely with the editor and he just loved it and supported it so much, I was very lucky. I would say I was super nervous, because what if nobody else liked it? I was also very happy and just inflated with all of this goodness. It’s hard to explain, but it uplifted me quite a bit. I love writing and here I was validated, if you know what I mean.

TEM: I do. You tried the trad-pub route before self-publishing. This is very interesting because so many of my clients wrestle with trad-pub vs. self-pub. Please tell us all you can about that change, the decision, and what it was like.

Vanessa: I mainly decided to go self-publishing because of the experience with my second book.

My second book is also mythology-heavy but it’s different, it’s dark fantasy versus portal fantasy. Hadley Rille told me if I wrote a similar book to the one they published, they would be interested, but this second book, Awaken, didn’t fit their bill. So, I wrote it and I shopped it out to agents and other small presses. Long story short, one press requested a full exclusively and had it for a YEAR, and rejected it, then the second had it for another year and rejected it. That was TWO YEARS gone just waiting for someone to make a decision. Ugh. I didn’t want to deal with that again.

Part of me would like the validation of an agent and traditional publishing, but the other part of me is 50!…and I don’t have years to waste because I have too many ideas in me.

TEM: You have a new book just out! Can you tell us about the inspiration behind Reluctant Hero? How did the idea for the story come to you?

Vanessa: Yes, I’m very excited about my third book coming out. It’s sci-fi superhero and the idea came from all my years of roleplaying games. (waving my geek flag) I love superheroes and enjoy a good superhero read and decided: I wanted to do that too! Many of my characters in the book are based on roleplaying game characters from my decades of gaming (see, I’m still writing gaming fanfiction).

So, I decided to make these RPG characters into characters for my book, but I had to decide where the superpowers came from. That was a lot of fun. I pondered it for a long time because I didn’t want it to be too similar to other mega-superhero franchises and I think it’s somewhat unique (though who knows, I haven’t read every book out there!) but I know my characters are unique. As for the story…the plot…it stemmed from where the powers came from. Someone put the Seed in the Seeded…why? How? To what purpose? That’s where the story evolved and I’m very happy with how it came out.

TEM: I was an RPG gamer myself for decades, so I completely get how your characters originated from roleplaying games. What are your favorite RPGs?

Vanessa: I love that! Did you ever insert a character or two into your story?

TEM: I gave some thought to novelizing one of my favorite characters, but it opened up a can of IP worms. Plus, truth told, I never much had a passion to write my own fiction. My first paid writing was non-fiction. Honestly, I’m more comfortable helping other people with their books than writing my own. But let’s get back to your RPGing.

Vanessa: I played White Wolf’s Vampire and Changeling for years, as well as D&D (earlier editions, and Third Edition, as well as Pathfinder). I think I liked WW the best, because it really was more of an unfolding story versus stats. Stats and dice rolling are important, but it felt like a more natural telling of tales. I enjoyed storytelling for other gamers and just kinda making stuff up, as well as plotting bigger stories. When the players go left field, you have to be ready for it!

TEM: Nekoka, the protagonist of Reluctant Hero, is a unique and compelling character. She’s the reluctant hero from the title, she’s a hedonist, and self-centered. What challenges and joys did you face while writing her story?

Vanessa: Nekoka doesn’t want to be a hero. She has dear friends that say ‘we have power, we should use it to help people’ and she disagrees. Just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you MUST do something. I know that’s not super popular in heroic fiction but it was where Nekoka needed to start. I think making the natural arc of her being ‘oh, no way’ to any kind of duty, to having her jump in both feet to be heroic was my biggest challenge. The progression needed to be believable and natural and I think she evolved nicely in the end.

TEM: Reluctant Hero blends elements of fantasy, science fiction, and superhero genres. How did you manage to weave these genres together so seamlessly?

Vanessa: At first, I was thinking I couldn’t mix them. I know people do it all the time and it’s been done for ages (I’m reading Silverberg right now which has magic and aliens and the like), but my engineering brain wanted to keep them separate. But I think, especially in the superhero genre, the lines are blurred. I can argue that the power is from a scientific source, but in such an alien situation, when does it become magic? So, in a way, they all just wove together naturally, on their own, as the characters used their powers using the rules I defined.

TEM: And now here you are in the Portland, Oregon burbs, just like me. The setting of Portland adds a rich backdrop to your story. Why did you choose this location, and how does it influence the narrative?

Vanessa: Howdy neighbor! Portland is such a dynamic city that I felt it would be a perfect place for my story. Though my story is in the future, it’s still very Portland. There are the wonderfully accepting open arms of Portland, as well as the not-so-shiny parts of it that we’re struggling with as a city. Two of my main characters are homeless, each giving a different perspective on that situation, and I bring in the fact that welcoming Portland LOVES the Seeded (the superpowered people) while other cities don’t accept them. Plus, it was a lot of fun to include sites I know and visit. One such site, the Firehouse, has since been torn down and it just shows how evolving and changing this city is, and you can’t nail it down.

TEM: I have certainly noticed that in nine years here. What do you hope readers will take away from Reluctant Hero? Are there any particular themes or messages you want to convey?

Vanessa: Oh yes. So, it’s a thing of mine…the whole found family and dedication to friends. It’s a thing! I can’t help it. Nekoka will do anything for her friends and even when she needs a break, she will always be there for them, and they for her. That kind of dedication, of love and loyalty, is my bread and butter and I love it. So, I just want readers to see how much she means to people and how much people mean to her and family can be found in all different places.

TEM: Being employed full time, how do you find time to write?

Vanessa: Ugh. It’s harder and harder. I have the full-time engineering day job and I write when I can. I fully believe in the writing tip of ‘write every day’ and I did that when I was younger. I got up at 5 am to write before work. I did this for years! And now, I can’t seem to write every day. Some days I just want to come home and drink a whiskey and read a good book. So, I carve out time when I can, but it isn’t every day. Retirement, I’m dreaming of you!:) But seriously, you just have to make the time. There is no ‘wait for the mood to strike.’ Now, I just need to listen to myself.

Pep talks. I’ll make it with daily pep talk.

TEM: This has been great, and it was kind of you to take the time on a busy weeknight. Thank you, Vanessa, and best of success with Reluctant Hero and all your endeavors, writing and otherwise.

Vanessa: Thank you, J.K. This was a lot of fun and it got me thinking of my books in an excited light! I’ll get back on the wagon! Cheers to you and all of yours.

Book reviews, Social comment, Sports

Current read: Victory Faust, by Gabriel Schechter

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This is arguably the best baseball book you’ve probably never heard of.

My copy was a holiday gift from Mr. Schechter himself. I met him at a mutual friend’s birthday party, one mainly focused on baseball enthusiasts, and he was handing out copies. I’m glad he was.

In 1911, a farm guy from Marion, Kansas (one county over from the one where my parents grew up) was supposedly told by a fiction fortune teller that if he went to Manhattan (New York’s, not ours), he would become a successful baseball player and meet the woman of his dreams. Charles Victor Faust was not, shall we say, richly endowed with any better critical thinking skills than he was a pitching arm, a batting eye, or a sense of baserunning. He hared off to New York City to thrust himself upon John McGraw’s New York Giants, a team that had come close to glory in recent years but never quite made it.

Faust made enough of a pest of himself to gain admission to the Giants’ clubhouse, if not the roster. He proceeded to entertain, lighten the mood, and make a fool of himself daily. He was the only one not in on the joke. Baseball players being a superstitious lot, the fact that New York tended to win with Faust in attendance got their attention. They took the correlation seriously enough for McGraw to keep Faust around the dugout, entertaining fans with his warmups, absorbing the heckles and pranks of the players. At least, when he wasn’t doing vaudeville or sulking because McGraw wouldn’t give him a contract.

The pride of Marion even got to appear in a couple of late-season games. He hardly lit the diamond on fire, but he has stat lines on Baseball-Reference.com and I don’t. The Giants won the pennant, but fell to the Athletics in the Series. Faust had worn out his welcome and migrated west, giving up on his delusions of big league pitching grandeur but not on a generally delusional nature. This was before Portland and Seattle had come to embrace their quirkiness, and he spent time in asylums in Oregon then Washington. He died of TB in Western State Hospital at Steilacoom, WA, where it seems the original numeric grave marker has in recent years received augmentation from a plaque mentioning him by name. About time.

Schechter tells all this far more effectively than I have summarized it.  His lengthy research shows in the detail he has uncovered about a ballplayer who was otherwise somewhat of an obscure caricature of a ballplayer. He offers just enough personal comment to be witty, but never to slant the narrative. If you like offbeat baseball history, this book is a yes. If you appreciate quality writing, another yes. If you respect deep research, three-for-three.

Secondary market copies go for $20-30 at this writing. I looked for a way to buy them direct from Schechter (who surely has a stockpile given that he brought some as gifts) and did not find one, but affordable copies are available.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: the Entrepreneur’s Survival Guide, by Randy Hayes

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This volume is now available to purchase. At one point or another, I performed in most of the editing modes, but mainly developmental.

Randy and I go back forty years, to when he was a year ahead of me in college. He was always an unconventional thinker, a stand-up guy, and while quite bright, leveraged his natural intellect by seeking out people who knew things he did not. He was never for five seconds of his life at risk of becoming one of those stupid-smart people who get so caught up in all their knowingness that they resist learning unless it comes from approved directions. (Most people with that mentality get Ph.Ds and become professors. Academia is the only place that will put up with that crap because it’s common enough.) Randy is the kind of guy who, if he wanted to learn to skate backward, might just go to the rink and find some kids who were doing that, and ask whether they would teach him. And they would, because he’s very amiable that way.

He won’t tell you the juicy details, but as a businessperson Randy has enjoyed enormous success in some very difficult environments, notably investing. When he brought me this book idea, therefore, I was very glad to be working on it because I have many of the entrepreneurial wrong tendencies and bad habits that the book describes. I have taken guidance from him in ways that I see manifested in his book, and they are very helpful. For example, for five years now I have been carving out an hour a week to do CEO things, which I define as management and planning activities that are not doing the actual hourly paid work that is my main business focus. It has helped me to stay focused, to review a business plan, to recognize my weaknesses. Randy is an authority on this stuff.

Want a sample of the most notable principle of Randy’s that guides me? Very simple. Offer solutions rather than services. Think about what I do. Many editors think that their work is to change people’s use of the English language. No; that’s the car, not the journey. People come to editors because we are industry pros whom they expect to know things we can share with them. Editing a book ms is not the end goal; the end goal is the best possible book or other ms consistent with the author’s objectives. Editing is just one of the ways we can help make that happen.

I knew this intuitively, but I really knew it when Randy codified it. Take websites. No one just wants a website if for commercial purposes. People want websites in order to share information, answer common questions, describe offerings, allow viewers to inquire further, and generally present the best possible marketing and informational face to the world. The website just happens to be an efficient means to those ends. The web designer who believes that her job is to push HTML and scripts around has missed her real job and needs to remember why people hire her. So in this context, I offer clients the best possible guidance (including editing support) to help them achieve their writing objectives. It is wonderful when people want to become better writers, but sometimes a writer just wants it out the door and doesn’t want to learn.

Think that’s lunacy? One of my more recent clients was a nonagenarian with a bucket list book, a wonderful man who was a marvel to work with. My directive was to get the ms from draft to publishable, staying as true as possible to the au’s intent and experiences. I was approached, I believe, because evidence indicated that I understood this. He passed on, sadly, a year after the publication. He never made back his money and did not give a rip if he did. He saw his book in print, looking professional and with the benefits of experienced handling, and had that joy while he could revel in it. Mission accomplished all around, with the helpful intercession and interpretation of one of the best in the business, Maggi Kirkbride (who does not happen to work on fiction, thus the approach to me).

Yeah. Randy has that kind of impact. As I worked through his ms, I saw numerous areas where I could improve, and other areas where I already had good practices but it helped to see them codified and reinforced. This is why his book is such a gift for entrepreneurs.

When the original ms came to me, it needed a fair bit of polish and consideration. Randy began our relationship with as many bad writing habits as the typical college graduate, but the difference is that he has declared war on them and worked to eradicate them. The work has been successful. My task was to take the mistakes (comma splices, excessive adverbs, hyperdependency on parens and em dashes) out of Randy without taking the Randy out of Randy. His basic style is informal, friendly, and approachable. For the most part, anyone at the GED level or higher can understand all of it.

We batted it back and forth. Oh, how we batted it back and forth. Randy’s always coachable, and is one of those clients who wants to know why. Why do we do it this way? What’s wrong with doing it that way? The best clients, and the ones who get the most out of what they pay me, are always the ones who ask me why I did things. Sometimes they will present alternatives and ask me why those options aren’t a better method. Well, sometimes they are. Editing isn’t sitting like the statue at the Lincoln Memorial, a giant gazing down upon the masses. Editing is making written material the best it can become. If my client has a better idea than me, that’s excellent because in the ideal world it would be the author’s creativity that would formulate solutions. So I would toss something out there, and he’d often accept it or come up with a different way of incorporating it. I did the appropriate thing: beam with pride and keep marking.

The last major step was the dignified execution of a Faulknerian darling. Randy wanted to incorporate a marketing presentation that had been very popular. Why it was popular was obvious enough to me, but it also duplicated a lot of information. When I mused about that, the fact that he was readily open to the idea told me that he’d had that same thought. Protip: When your client accepts a fairly radical change idea with surprising readiness, it’s probably because they have already been wondering about it. I left the decision to him with a recommend that he fold it in. He folded it in. With that, the book’s last major hitch was handled. He’d even bent a little bit on one of our longtime factual disagreements; an amiable difference, to be sure, but he did provide enough context that a reader couldn’t just poke a hole in it as presented. Excellent; that was all I’d wanted.

What authors should know is that some of what we do involves review protection. The editing mind looks at what the au did and comes up with the most caustic comment a reviewer might offer (and we have the capacity, if we wish, to be much meaner than most reviewers; we just should not often want to be) if that were stetted. That editing mind then figures out what changes would render the possibility of such review comments unjust; someone might still say it, but importantly, they would be incorrect and probably wouldn’t even think of it because most people at least have a process for not making up crap.

This was a lot of what I did for Randy. I foresaw the spots where readers and reviewers might start to think he didn’t know as much as he purported to (which would be wrong on their part). I got him to make enough changes that those weak spots were no longer present.

The remainder is one of the most important books any entrepreneur could read. As an entrepreneur myself, I can just about assure even seasoned pros that they’ll find new ideas.  Randy is a good guide as well as a good guy, and he will give your fair value.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Editorial Maverick: why did that book get brutal reviews?

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If you’ve been reading here very long, you know by now how stupid it is for a book reviewer to snip: “Well, obviously she should fire her editor,” or “Duh. Clearly she didn’t hire an editor.” The reviewer cannot possibly know how much editorial guidance might have existed and been disregarded, nor what sort of editing might have been sought or employed. When you read that review, just mentally mark that reviewer down as not knowing what he’s talking about.

If that reviewer understood anything about the different editing modes, about the way the relationship goes, or had at least some basic insight beyond ‘me no like book,’ they’d show it.

Here is the takeaway in context: All those truly awful self-published books you’ve seen, been cajoled into trying, bought at SF con dealer rooms, ended up with at used bookstores, came up on searches and looked cool enough to try, then turned out unreadable? Many of their authors considered an editor, then talked themselves out of it with:

  • Oh, no. No, no, no. I am not paying $1000 for you to mess with my baby! (So you’ll raise the baby, but you won’t get it medical care. Okay.)
  • Sorry, but I like my original better than your sample edit. (That, or you got a serious shock when you saw all that “red ink” and decided you need someone who “believed in your work,” that is to say, didn’t know how much help it really needed.)
  • This would damage my unique style. (Yes. Your hyperdependence on passive voice, your head-hopping, and your grammatical incontinence could be considered a ‘unique style.’ And if you are fond of all that, I wish you the best.)
  • I can find someone on Sixerr or Sevenerr or whatever who’ll do it for half that. Can you match? (Can? Yes. Will I? Zero chance, and I’ll probably decline the project at any price after that. Anyone shopping purely on price is not my target market.)

You get the idea. It’s all about money, fear, ego, or some combination of these. My rejoinders (internal to my own mind, not articulated) might seem blunt, but do remember that blunt is part of the benefit. If they don’t want that, I get it, and I accept. We can both move on.

The reality is that most people put weeks, months, or years into a book from which they hope to make money, yet rarely choose the full benefits of professional feedback.

Most such books are lost in the sea of mediocrity. They didn’t have to be.

Book reviews, Sports

1800s baseball trivia

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Wasn’t long ago a friend gave me an extra copy of David Nemec’s The Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Major League Baseball, a comprehensive attempt to complete the statistical and narrative history of the national sport’s early days. As I was reading along, it came to me that this would be a great source for a blog post on baseball trivia from that era. I got a stack of sticky notes and started tagging pages as I went.

Just to be quite clear and except where noted, all this information is mined from Mr. Nemec’s book, and I credit all of it to him. I recommend the source work to every hardcore old-time baseball enthusiast.

–In 1871, home plate was a 12″ stone square. Not until 1900 did it assume its modern five-side form, being 17″ wide.

–Batting averages did not mean quite what they mean today. In 1871, the National Association’s batting champ was Levi Meyerle with a .492 average. The fifth-placer, Steve King, only hit .396.

–Betting was a serious problem. In 1874, John Radcliff of the Philadelphia Pearls bet big ($350…in those days, half a year’s good wages for a cowboy) on the Chicago White Stockings. Against his own team. The rules said he was to be banned for life, but he was back in action in 1875.

–The 1876 Philadelphia Athletics’ pitchers struck out only 22 hitters. That’s low even for a 60-game season.

–In 1877, the Chicago White Stockings managed to hit exactly zero home runs. Those were small ball days.

–The first grandstand screen behind the plate was installed in Messer Park, home of the Providence Grays, in or before 1879. Until then, the best seats in the house were also among the most dangerous.

–One of the forgotten greats of baseball’s past was George Gore, a sharp-eyed contact hitter who averaged over one run per game from 1871 to 1892.

–It’s common–and almost always unfounded–for hecklers to accuse umpires of having money on games. It wasn’t always unfounded. In 1882 Dick Higham showed such obvious signs of being in the tank that he received a ban from baseball. What did he do then? Became a bookie.

–Some of the day’s nicknames would scandalize us today. In addition to a few players nicknamed “Nig,” and any Native American player liable to be nicknamed “Chief” (these details are outside the book’s sourcing and are generally common knowledge among old baseball buffs), any deaf player was tagged with “Dummy.” I believe that the first of these was “Dummy” Dundon, an 1883-84 Columbus Buckeye and alum of the Ohio School for the Deaf. He was the reason umpires developed hand signals for balls and strikes.

–In 1884, Hoss Radbourn won either 59 or 60 games depending on which source one embraces. I doubt anyone since then has even come close to that. (He lost only 12. In those days, pitchers didn’t get yanked on strict pitch counts.)

–Pete “The Gladiator” Browning won three batting titles and hit .341 for a twelve-year career in the 1880s and 1890s. One year he stole 103 bases. He is somehow not in the Hall of Fame.

–Before the mid-1880s, the conventional wisdom said that no lefty could become a great pitcher. By 1886 that outlook was fully discredited, with a number of left-handed pitchers posting excellent records. Between Warren Spahn, Lefty Grove, Steve Carlton, Carl Hubbell, Randy Johnson, and let’s not forget Sandy Koufax, the notion seems almost quaint today.

–Until 1887, teams sometimes used substitutes from the crowd. Often they didn’t even put on uniforms.

–The youngest player known to have ever played in a major league game is not Joe Nuxhall. In 1887, 14-year-old Fred Chapman started for Philadelphia against Cleveland. And won–by forfeit, not through his pitching. For unclear reasons, the umpire awarded the Athletics the forfeit after an argument about officiating.

–In an 1889 contest between St. Louis and Brooklyn,  when the umpire refused to call the game on account of darkness, the Browns refused to remain on the field and set candles around their dugout. After the game, the Brooklyn faithful bombarded the Browns players with beer steins on the way to their transportation.

–Also in 1889, unstable but brilliant pitcher John Clarkson of the Boston Beaneaters shot the statistical lights out. 49 wins, 620 innings pitched, 68 complete games, 284 strikeouts, a .721 winning percentage, a 2.73 ERA, and an on-base percentage of .305. All were league-leading marks.

–If they could see 1800s baseball, those accustomed to slick modern fielding might think they had gotten lost and wandered into a slapstick routine. Two players made 122 errors in a season (per baseball-reference.com, the 2021 Miami Marlins led both leagues in errors with exactly that number for the whole team’s entire season), and seventeen achieved the infamy of clearing 100 miscues in a season.

Imagine a team batting average of .349. Dress them in Phillies flannels, because that described the 1894 Philadelphians. The team leader hit .416.

Here’s a list of interesting nicknames I tagged as I went along:

  • Charles “Lady” Baldwin
  • George “Foghorn” Bradley
  • Edward “Cannonball” Crane
  • Hugh “One Arm” Daily
  • Lewis “Buttercup” Dickerson
  • Patrick “Cozy” Dolan
  • William “Cherokee” Fisher
  • Frank “Silver” Flint
  • Jim “Pud” Galvin
  • Welcome Gaston. Not a nickname!
  • George “Chummy” Gray
  • Frank “Noodles” Hahn
  • John “Egyptian” Healy
  • Charlie “Piano Legs” Hickman
  • William “Brickyard” Kennedy
  • Alphonse “Phoney” Martin
  • Samuel “Leech” Maskrey. Not exactly a nickname, but not exactly not; Leech was his middle name.
  • George “Doggie” Miller
  • Thomas “Toad” Ramsey
  • James “Icicle” Reeder
  • John “Count” Sensenderfer
  • Oliver “Patsy” Tebeau
  • Charles “Pussy” Tebeau
  • George “White Wings” Tebeau. What the hell was with the Tebeau tribe?
  • Ledell “Cannonball” Titcomb
  • William “Peekaboo” Veach
  • William “Chicken” Wolf

This book is a treasure haul of such information. Nemec has done a fantastic job.

Book reviews, Entertainment and music, Human relations

Lords of Chaos, a tabletop RPG by Randy Hayes

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This time-tested fantasy RPG has come to market in e-form and hardcover. I was developmental editor.

Randy is a friend of nearly forty years going back to our college days. He’s an interesting guy. Many people talk about doing things; Randy goes out and does things. He wanted to be a successful financial advisor, and he became one. He wanted to play in a rock band, and he does. He wanted to learn SCA-style medieval combat, and he has done so. He wanted to be an officer in the Army, and he was.

He also wanted to play a fantasy role-playing game that was as realistic as one can be and still have profound supernatural mechanics. One always needs that qualifier for the obvious reason that “realistic” doesn’t normally imply magical fireballs and summoning ogres. For our purposes, realistic means that the physical movement and combat are plausible. Randy had done enough SCA fighting to see the fundamental problems with physical combat as presented in most RPGs and movies. And yes, there is a school of thought that says: “Hell with realism, it’s fantasy, I want to do epic things.” And to that I think Randy might say: ‘To each their own. But over the years my players have done quite a few epic things. Not every system is for everyone, and I get that.’

When we got back in touch in life after a long stretch of doing our own things, Randy showed an interest in building his writing skills. He wasn’t bad, but he could improve, and we worked on his fiction writing techniques. Some of the fiction involved stories from his RPG gaming world, tales played out by his merry band of tabletop players. That was fine, and Randy made rapid strides. While all of his group had made contributions and suggested refinements, two seemed most involved: Mike Cook, one of our old cronies from UW, and Keith Slawson. Keith was not well, but wanted with all his heart to assist with the layout and graphics. Here’s the kind of friend Randy is: He could have just punted and gone seeking those services elsewhere, but so long as a chance existed that Keith might be able to offer them when the rulebook was ready, Randy kept that hope alive for him. I had the pleasure of brief correspondence with Keith  before his passing in late 2020. Randy, of course, visited him to the very end.

As for Mike, he aspired to publish fiction based on the LoC world, and the same drive that once put colonel’s eagles on his shoulders was in refined evidence with his work. This resulted in Out of their Depth, an excellent hard fantasy novel I had the pleasure of midwifing. I am not sure I’ve ever seen a client improve as fast as Mike did, and his medieval vocabulary taught me some new words along the way.

It was a process. This might sound odd, but rulebook editing is technical editing. I do some tech editing here and there, and even though Randy’s project was a game guide, the mentality is similar. While humor and style matter, the heart of the project is how it organizes and presents information. I have done a lot of RPGing in my life, but have never played a moment of LoC, so in some ways I was the perfect guinea pig. Randy was very receptive to rules modifications and procedural clarifications. He laughed over my developmental editing style, which is to explain a problem, make a couple of sample corrections, then let the client hunt up and fix the rest. It would be sort of drill sergeanty on my part, except that I’m not raising my voice or pointing someone’s genetic shortcomings in an attempt to motivate them to do a proper about-face.

For Randy, the hardest part was something many authors experience on long-term projects: One cannot forget what one knows, nor easily put oneself in the place of not knowing. Let us imagine a fight scene in a novel. The author has worked on the novel off and on for twenty years. She has complete mental video memory of how the fight “happened.” She knows how she pictures her characters, how they maneuvered, what their voices sounded like. Her reader has none of the above, and knows only what he learns from her portrayal. Does it matter that the room has a table in the middle? Maybe; probably; depends. It’s probably an obstacle in the fight, in which case at least enough description is wanted to help the reader picture the scene. Does it matter that it’s oak or walnut? Probably not right then. Her challenge is to keep the readercam steady, furnish enough description that her reader can follow the action, and avoid overdescription. It’s difficult to strike the balance between too much description and not enough.

This also applies to such areas as RPG rules. Randy has developed the rules for so long he can hardly remember what it is like not knowing them, so my ignorance was a help. If an experienced RPGer with reasonable comprehension skills couldn’t figure out how something worked, this raised valid questions whether something had been left out, described ambiguously, and so on. We changed quite a bit of the basic terminology because I thought some of it created confusion, and added a Game Concepts section in the front so that players had a quick reference for the terms one must understand in order to play the system. Randy came up with a genius way to present descriptions of the character skills: He created a ne’er-do-well elf named Potlatch, assigned him one point in each skill, and had him walk through a (somewhat contrived but not entirely implausible) story in short installments that involved one skill at a time. It’s hilarious, especially with Randy’s wry style of infantryman humor. As with anything Randy cares about–which means most of what he spends his time on–he took the time to do a really good job.

Another example is how the game handles the common low-value loot that characters tend to accumulate in the course of adventuring (vanquished foes’ weapons, load-bearing equipment, doodads that don’t do anything special). Randy doesn’t think the game should be Lords of Bookkeeping. Therefore, the rule is that players are assumed to gather up and sell whatever useful when possible. In turn, players do not have to keep track of and replenish consumable supplies of arrows, bolts, rations, and so forth. The selling process is presumed to sustain the common consumables; anything special or valuable is not considered common, of course, and gets valued separately. What a fantastic idea, right? One abstraction kills off two annoyances that few players would miss.

One notable aspect of the game is the lack of character classes. A player may define their character as whatever, but the game doesn’t bless or curse that choice. If you’ve always felt shackled by class restrictions, this is the open road.

This rulebook process took maybe three years. It came into final form, with areas of confusion ironed out and graphics added. Things happened. A pandemic came and sort of went. We pimped it at two Orycons and got some minor interest. Keith passed. Mike published his book while giving important input. Artists flaked. Artists delivered. Now here we are.

Randy has a bunch of online playing aids that supplement the book. If you’ve been looking for an RPG system that is designed for plausible melee and missile combat, one well refined through decades of play and experimentation, this could be just what you’ve long been looking for.

Later addendum: I have received my copy and it’s a beauty. Great layout, professional artwork, solid production. If you’re like me, and want to pick up the physical book and read relevant sections, you will appreciate this.

 

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Current re-read: Yankee Hobo in the Orient, by John Patric

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The first time I read this book, my (purchased well used) copy was a gift I soon intended to pass along. Kind of blazed through. This time, with a copy I plan to keep, I’m giving it better attention.

John Patric was an interesting guy. A die-hard libertarian and frequent traveler, he said the things one was not supposed to say. The travels in the book happened late in the Great Depression, but he updated it after World War II. We thus have someone writing about a Japan that was already embroiled in land warfare, but had not yet become involved in the general global war; he has impressions of his travel, but also perspectives on a Japan under occupation following the incineration of many of its cities (two with nuclear weapons). He was also a Pacific Northwest homie, born in Snohomish, WA and making his residence down near Florence, Oregon (southward along the coast).

What’s great about Patric is the sophistication and general fairness of his outlook toward Japan and its people. He compares costs of living in terms that avoid the common oversimplifications of relative value. His goal was to paint a candid picture of Japanese society and attitudes without quivering in fear that someone might brand him Not A Good Murrican. Even though Pearl Harbor was about the most fortunate way in which our entry into war could have come about–and yes, it’s true; they destroyed two fairly obsolete battleships and bottomed three more, while whiffing on the carriers that would have been grave losses, and came to be the most important ships in the war–his times were those in which Japan was made out The Ultimate Demon by our customary wartime fanaticism. Saying anything remotely positive about Japan was about as popular as the word “retarded” is today. Patric didn’t care.

Patric observed a Japan in which people lived with great frugality, where fancy lodgings and things were mainly for tourists who would not tolerate the sorts of accommodations and travel most Japanese chose. Insofar as possible, he avoided the spendier options in favor of local custom.  He understood that tourist industries are designed to insulate the traveler from the truth while thinning his or her bankroll. I suspect Paul Theroux is a fan.

The result is a travel essay that did not follow the beaten paths, that saw Japan’s natural strengths and weaknesses, and that was able to apply hindsight to earlier observations. My copy was printed in 1945, when the future of Japan was uncertain from a Western standpoint.  If the book has a weakness, it might be his libertarian political ranting; Patric indulged himself in this way with as few f-bombs given as about any other subject he explored. Given that we now can see that libertarian economics ultimately lead to monopolies and corporate fascism, I find that part a bit naive given that Patric was a bright enough guy to have worked that through to its logical outcome.

Recommended for sophisticated readers who, like me, love old school travel writing.

Book reviews

Recent read: The Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker

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A tech editing client–an engineer who can write for real–said such good things about this book that I bought and read it. This vindicated his praise.

One might view the editing world as a stylistic continuum. Let us define the extreme left as accepting of nearly any stylistic oddness or grammatical perversity. The extreme right lives and dies by style manuals (AP, APA, Chicago, etc.), grammar guides, and archaic meanings. The extreme left is so fluid it has hardly any rules; the extreme right not only has them, but will follow them right off a cliff. (No direct political analogy is intended, though I won’t say none could reasonably be made.)

If you visit editors’ forums, most of the loudest voices are found on the moderate to far right. Agonized posts abound: “Hey, edi-buddies, I’m dying here. I have a sentence in which I can’t figure out where to put commas. It’s four in the morning and I’ve been mutilating my soul in an effort to solve the problem. Help!” I never bother pointing out the obvious, because no one is so strident as a far-right editor catching another editor in some tiny deviation from the strict orthodoxy of the First Church of Style Manual Orthodoxy. I can’t gain anything from fighting with them, and I don’t enjoy the debate nor do I care what they say. I just let them do their thing somewhere I am not.

What would the far left do? Not much. All the client must tell them is “that’s just my style,” and they’ll roll over. Book without upper case? Well, if that’s just your style… Book written in text-speak? Wouldn’t want to invalidate youth opinions. Street-speak? Dissent would be…racist! And so on, usually in the direction of rolling over and letting this or that demographic define its own language.

And what’s wrong with that? some might ask. Nothing, provided that demographic is the writer’s only audience, and therefore that it doesn’t give a damn about being intelligible or comfortable to anyone else. “Hi. I write like garbage but I require you to read and respect my material” is not a reasonable proposition. The reader always has the right to stop reading. Making demands of the reader rarely works. She just closes the book or browser window, flips a bird if she’s feeling annoyed, and does something else.

I find myself on the moderate left wing of this continuum, a little to Pinker’s right. He and I agree that “literally” must not be used as “figuratively,” for example. We need a word that means, well, the literal rather than metaphorical meaning of an expression. If you were literally floored, you were on the ground. If your head literally exploded or someone literally ripped your heart out, you weren’t alive to describe it. He’s a little more tolerant of beginning a sentence with a preposition, and he’s willing to see “to comprise” wander afield from its standard translation as “to consist of,” which I am not. Those are tiny shadings of degree.

My governing principle is not complicated: Editorial judgments depend on context. Should we use fewer adverbs? Generally yes, when feasible. Is there a place for strange styles? I don’t know until you show it to me in context and we see whether it works. Should a book about inner-city gangs be written in gangland style? If it works well, perhaps, so let’s see it and determine whether it works. If not, maybe the fix can preserve much of its flavor.

Here’s what to like about Pinker. As a student and educator in the field of psycholinguistics, he’s deep in the ways our minds use language. When there’s a hitch in a sentence, I can usually say what needs to be done, but I can’t always articulate why. Pinker explains that and many other nuances of the English language. It’s not a grammar guide, but it does examine many aspects of language in light of the divide between Prescriptivists (the language standards’ right wing) and Descriptivists (the left wing). He isn’t intimidated by the Red Pen of Disapproval.

The language’s right wing seems to want the language frozen in time. To that group, for example, “ain’t” could never be a legitimate word. Whatever is considered correct today is treated as if it were correct for the millennium or so in which something like the English language has existed in discernibly different form from its Germanic extended family. Pinker demonstrates that language evolves whether editorial stuffed shirts like it or not, and that the Bemoaning of the Decline in Writing Standards has been with us for a very long time. Every generation does it. Put another way, the stuffed shirts of 1822 and 1922 would scowl at what the stuffed shirts of 2022 consider acceptable.

Every generation’s has the conceit of having lived in Big Important Times. Whatever it learned in childhood was The Right Way, with every later generation being selfish, lazy slobs with no respect. To this day most people sixty and over insist on two spaces after a period (and if they paid attention, the exclamation point and colon). Why? Because Mrs. Nitpickingham taught them two spaces in their typing class, and damn it, that makes it correct for all time and eternity. Never mind that Mrs. Nitpickingham (my own was a dotty but pleasant elderly lady who troweled on eyeshadow like iridescent purple bat wings extending from her eyelids) never used an electric typewriter and passed away before the advent of the IBM PC; she could not have envisioned self-publishing. Text-speak? Let’s be glad for her that she never saw it develop; same for my elderly high school English teacher, who looked like Groucho Marx and sounded a bit like Andy Rooney if he’d smoked all his life. In the meantime, every client over sixty argues with me about two spaces vs. one. I explain why the restriction no longer makes sense nor is the standard. Tough, most say, that’s what Mrs. Nitpickingham taught me and that’s what’s correct. It is the hill they choose to die on. It’s the wrong one.

It could be worse. My wife sometimes leaves three spaces, and she’s an excellent typist. I sometimes think she’s just messing with me.

If you want to see someone make a good case for the steady evolution of language and usage–someone doing so not because he doesn’t know the rules and won’t learn them, but because he knows them well enough to know when to bend or break them–Steven Pinker is your guy.