Category Archives: Editing/writing life

About doing this stuff for a living.

Editing/writing life

Print magazines: hunting down and alienating the remaining customer base

6 Comments

In these days of declining print subscription, you’d think that the print magazine business model would do its level best to make its remaining customers stick around. Wouldn’t you?

It’s stuff like this that makes me say to people: “When you are looking at organizations you think are surely more sophisticated and know things you don’t, and assuming you must be missing something because they could not possibly be this stupid, guess what. They could. They are. It’s not you. They are stupid.”

At last count, I take Mother Jones (a hellraiser mag that drew me in with its first subscription pitch, which used naughty words and seemed as independent as it got), mental_floss, PC Gamer, Smithsonian, Consumer Reports, Strategy & Tactics, and Modern War. Until recently, I took The Week. I also get the UW alumni magazines for free, but since they’re free, they don’t really count here. I’ll keep MoJo, CR, S&T, and MW. The rest, I’m done with.

Of course, all the mags hope that you will do all business through their websites, so most of them make their phone numbers kind of hard to find. They send out numerous resubscription and gift subscription offers, often in deceptive envelopes (“IMPORTANT INFORMATION ENCLOSED”, OR “IMMEDIATE PAYMENT DUE”), and one thing I notice is that they keep getting better at munging the printed date of your subscription’s expiration. On top of that, the issue date is typically a month and a half in the future. It all seems calculated to make you think your subscription is about to expire, when it probably isn’t. They’ll start shelling you with offers months before expiration, to the point where you forget whether you’ve actually renewed. There’s a good chance, if you weren’t paying too much attention, that they will get you to double-renew. That happened with The Week, and it annoyed me.

Rarely will the renewal pitch entertain you. While MAD went way downhill as the old guard retired, it had a great renewal pitch. “When you subscribed to MAD, you proved you had bad taste. Now it’s time to show that you don’t learn from your mistakes!” Mostly it’s false urgency, a lot of self-gratification, and firm assurances that the rate will never be lower. None of it rings as anything but Standard Marketing Crap.

If you plan to renew by credit card, get a fine point pen. It’ll take one to write all sixteen numbers in that tiny space. And if you renew saying Bill Me Later, some will get very grouchy when their bill arrives two days after your billpaying day, and they simply have to wait a month. Recently I tried writing to one Leslie Guarnieri, listed as the consumer marketing director at m_f, who had just sent me my ‘third notice’ (when I wasn’t even sure there’d been a renewal, and definitely hadn’t seen a first or second notice) worded in collection agency tones. I decided that if Ms. Guarnieri could allow her name to be signed to threats, she could take time to discuss them, so I attempted to call and speak with her. Not that I imagined I’d be able to; it was just a necessary prelude to a letter. m_f is supposed to be a brainy magazine, so I figured they could not be that stupid.

They are. By the way, Leslie’s name is on the notices for another mag I get. I forget which one, but since I’m not renewing that one either, I do not care. Anyway, I decided it was time to rattle Leslie’s cage a bit. Even looked her up to make sure I got the salutation right:

===

July 27, 2015

Ms. Leslie Guarnieri, Consumer Marketing Director, mental_floss Magazine

8051 Mayfield Rd, Chesterland, OH 44026

Re: threatening notice

Dear Ms. Guarnieri:

Please see the attached ‘3rd Notice’ threatening to discontinue my subscription. Since your name is ‘signed’ to it, with no evidence of falsification, I take it as coming from you.

I attempted to phone you, to discuss why you would send me a third notice when I had received neither a second nor a first notice, but the representative I spoke with could or would not assist me. I find that very bad business. You shouldn’t allow threats to be sent out under your name unless you’re willing to face the music for mistakes.

Many magazines send out subscription offers that imply that one’s subscription is nearly over, when in fact it remains good for another year and a half. For this reason, one cannot even take the leap of faith to assume that the USPS, by incredible coincidence, managed to misplace the first two notices. What is certain: I did not simply ignore a clearly labeled first or second invoice in proper form. I did not obtain a gleaming credit rating by being the deadbeat that a ‘3rd Notice’ implies, and I resent the notice’s implication.

That said, let’s put the cards on the table. Right now, I stand offended, and inclined to simply write ‘cancel’ on the ‘3rd Notice.’ I like the magazine, but it presents the pretense of higher intellect, with which this entire handling is inconsistent. Also, lately, I’m not so sure I’d miss the magazine. The paid print magazines can ill afford to lose subscribers from the dwindling number of literate Americans who still want to read a paper magazine, so it’s up to you to determine if or how it’s worthwhile to make this up to me.

According to your letter, by August 17 this all becomes moot. Too bad. If I’d received a normal invoice, I’d have paid without delay or complaint. I dug through my records and can’t even find where I sent in a resubscription request, but surely you would not just send invoices without first determining whether a client intended to renew. That would be unthinkably dishonest in a reputable business, so I am sure that did not occur. Thus, I take on faith that you have evidence on file that I ordered a renewal in the first place, and that the action has slipped my mind over a few months.

Your move.

J.K. Kelley

===

You don’t suppose I’ve heard back, do you?

The print magazine industry will not rest until it has hunted down every vestige of good business and kicked its ass, tracked down every remaining customer and invented some way to alienate him or her.

I’m done with it, for the most part. I don’t like it, but they worked at it, and hard work does pay off.

Editing/writing life, Social comment, Sports

Ending my one remaining newspaper dependency

Leave a comment

Warning: wandering blog entry. Those looking for a carefully structured persuasion attempt, well, that’s why this doesn’t cost the reader any money.

A couple of days ago, I deleted the RSS feed that used to give me Adam Jude’s Washington Husky football coverage via the Seattle Times, Seattle’s surviving daily mainstream paper. My link had shifted to collecting some other aggregation of Times headlines, it needed fixing, and figuring out the new RSS bookmark was more effort than their coverage was worth.

Since I do not actually buy a newspaper, and since I do my level best to block ads, refuse cookies, nerf scripts, and otherwise sidestep every effort the news media make to eke some benefit from my freeloading, one might fairly level some accusations at me:

  • I’m a freeloader.
  • I am contributing to the death of the hometown newspaper concept.
  • I’m probably in violation of their terms of service.

Even if all of those are just, I don’t care. Because:

Newspapers seem to get the vast majority of their content from wire services anyway. Most of it is the same words one could read anywhere. At no time do I ask them to cover anything. They choose what to cover, and are quite immune to any desires or non-desires on my part. I don’t think that becoming a paying customer would change that much. My business just isn’t that big a deal for them to lose, if they were to gain it to start with.

The newspaper is a corporation of some sort, thus it must do or be something exceptional to qualify for any sympathy from me. In fact, Jude’s efforts at covering Husky football are a major step downward from his predecessor Bob Condotta, one of the hardest working sportswriters in the business. I’m not sure if this speaks more to Jude’s work ethic or to the paper’s spreading his available hours thinner, but I’m not required to care. I care about reading the news concerning Husky football, and the hometown paper is no longer the best source. It might not be the third best. It was once the very best, no contest. If Condotta were still covering the Dawgs, I wouldn’t be so hasty.

That’s a business decision by the paper. My choice is also a business decision: the coverage wasn’t worth paying for before, and now it’s not worth the effort to avoid paying for. If they don’t want people to make choices on how they read the material, the executives are welcome to take down the website. I certainly have no right to object. No one forces them at bayonet point to post anything.

My issue is that the expectation of empathy seems to go only one way: from everyone to the consumer. I hate that in society:

“Give to me/do for me/let me get away with/make allowances for me.”

“And in return, you will what?”

“Well…er…I’ll do the work I am paid to do.”

“Those are the key words: you get paid to do that. You are not owed more. If you want more compensation, that’s between you and your employer.”

It gets old, this business of people and institutions asking me to care about their problems without proposing to care about mine. “Give to me” is getting old. I like reciprocity. I care about my neighbors’ feelings because they care about mine. I care about letting people merge on the highway because I am often allowed to merge, and it feels like participation in a practice of cordial kindness. I care about my clients because I respect them, and because they pay me to offer them my very best. I’m not entitled to ask for extras from them. I quote a price, I am or will be paid, and that is all the compensation I have any right to request. Sure, it’s nice to get a complimentary signed copy of the finished book, but they aren’t obligated, and I have no right to guilt them about it. If it was that important to me, I should have negotiated it as part of my compensation. It’s nice to be print-credited, but the same logic applies. They aren’t under any obligation to do that unless we negotiate it. Of course, if I have done my work well, I won’t have to request it of them. That is purely on me, to leave them feeling warmly toward me and that they received better value than they anticipated. Good service leaves a client feeling expansive and generous-spirited. And it’s not up to the client to tell me how to do that. I’m presenting myself as the knowledge source. It’s up to me to figure out how to give the best service that is in my power.

I don’t have any evidence that the print news media see it that way, though I am sure there are exceptions.

I do not regard any lengthy, fine-print Terms of Service as morally binding. Want me to regard them as morally binding? Stop making them so long that no one will read them. Stop making the print so fine that they are burdensome to read. Start making them concise and straightforward. Stop sneaking really unpalatable clauses in around page four. Do it in 200 plain English words. Surely you have an editor around there someplace, what with being a newspaper and all.

I find it amazing that people have acquiesced to the statement ‘use of this site constitutes acceptance of these terms.’ It may hold up in court, because that works out well for lawyers (the more complex that legal matters are made, the more often the citizen requires a paid escort to navigate them), but since there’s no enforcement to speak of, I don’t care. If you don’t want me to look at it, don’t post it online. I won’t plagiarize you, of course, because that is against my own ethics, but neither will I just endorse that the site owner has the right to put up ten pages of legalese and consider me morally obligated to respect it. I don’t. If the site owner wants to put it behind a pay wall, fine. Then I have another business decision to make, just as they made theirs.

A good example is the New York Times. Most papers’ websites at least try to make you take cookies, or let all their scripts run. Some won’t work unless you take the cookies. The NYT, which seems to think it’s special, requires a login. Fine. Their prerogative. If I can circumvent that, I will. I’m sure their TOS prohibit that, somewhere deep in the duodenal section, and I am sure that I simply don’t care. If I can’t, that’s fine too. They aren’t that special to me.

Perhaps the biggest reason to give up on the hometown paper’s coverage of my alma mater, though, is that its coverage isn’t as good as what the amateurs are providing. All that cachet, all those resources, and still the amateurs are clobbering them. And I mean clobbering, too. The amateur coverage is prompter, more complete, more interesting, and at least as dependable. It has its homerist moments, but it has always been the consumer’s duty to read critically. Just because hardly anyone seems to bother doing so lately doesn’t relieve each of us of the duty.

What could the newspaper industry have done to avoid this decline? I don’t have the answer. They’re the media professionals, not me. But I can tell them that guilt trips and worsening coverage definitely aren’t the way to go. Is it too bad? Yeah, but it’s not as if this is bucking the trend. Our mainstream TV news is a sad joke. The main grownup world news source available to me is a channel out of Qatar, for gods’ sakes, or one out of the UK.

Of course, if I disable features, I can’t be annoyed with a site for not working as designed. So I’m not. But that’s not what happened here. The Times simply changed its RSS feeds, and it wasn’t worth the effort to fix them.

So I probably won’t be checking out the Times‘ Husky football coverage this season much. And that’s all right.

We’re strapping in for a rough season anyway, it seems. I have a feeling that reading some of the coverage will feel self-laceratory. But I’m a college football fan, and hope springs long-lived if not eternal, and I admit it: I can’t wait for the opening kickoff.

Adventures, Editing/writing life

Passing knowledge on, Baja Canada, and eating a bag of Dick’s

4 Comments

Now and then I take an authentic business trip, defined as travel that can without question be construed as related to my work. I am allowed to enjoy them, though, and I did this one. On Friday I headed north from Portland toward the forests south and east of Tacoma to visit a couple of my favorite clients: Shawn Inmon and Heidi Ennis.

Heidi recently released her first book, a nuanced and well-researched Native American historical fiction tale set just before 1800. I liked everything about working with her. She is a homeschool mom with a background in education, and her daughter and son are outstanding young people. Walking past the Latin declensions on the whiteboard headed toward her kitchen, I can see why. I love history, and any time children are interested in history and reading, I become a teacher on the spot. We had lunch, then spent several pleasant hours in questions and answers. Had it been feasible, I’d gladly have stayed longer.

I spent most of the weekend with Shawn, who owes his success to a combination of work ethic and willingness to market. Marketing is a problem for authors (and not a few editors, ahem). To market well, you have to be ham enough to enjoy taking the stage, and you must not be embarrassed to stand up and announce an event or a giveaway or a new release. I would have a hard time doing that because I would find it mortifying to put myself out there that way in the assumption that anyone should care. Good marketers do it without the slightest embarrassment, and if Shawn thought that the best way to market his work was to base jump naked off Columbia Tower, he’d probably do it. (I may regret giving him that idea. Well, actually, he kind of prompted it himself, though not in quite that form.)

After a very pleasant dinner out with Shawn and Dawn, we spent the rest of the evening chez Inmon talking about his current projects and some issues we must overcome. In short, there are a couple of situations in the story that we can agree need to occur, but we cannot determine how to make them flow naturally. I’m a big opponent of ‘showing the strings;’ I consider contrivance to be a bad odor, and it emanates from so much self-published fiction. We are still working this through.

The next day, Dawn had a prior commitment, but Shawn had planned for he and I to attend a Mariners game at ‘The Safe.’ That’s a good name for a stadium with a big sliding roof that can close over the top of it, which I consider an engineering marvel. The Blue Jays were in town, so I knew to expect a veritable Hoserama. Yes, the Canadians outnumbered the USians, as they had the last time I’d seen a Jays@Mariners game. (It had been a while. I had watched it in the Kingdome, which was imploded quite some years back.) I hate the company who sponsors the Ms’ field, so I will not use their name, but The Safe is a very nice place to watch a game and I’d never been there. It felt a bit like a hockey game, with the playing of both national anthems (everyone stands up for both).

Our section of Baja Canada was just in the trajectory of sharp foul balls or bat fragments from a right-handed hitter, close enough to the first base line to discern facial expressions. Most of those in royal blue were drunk but not on their lips, and behaved very well. Props to the eh-team. As we were choking away the bottom of the ninth, I got some laughs by asking if we could pull our goalie.

Afterward, Shawn wanted to take me to lunch/early dinner. We’d originally planned to visit an old Cap Hill favorite, but to our general shock it was closed up tight. As an alternative, Shawn suggested we stop at Dick’s Drive-In. Dick’s is a Seattle staple of many years, well loved by many and with a reputation as a good place to work. Shawn told me about a homeless person whom he had once seen sitting on the sidewalk near the restaurant. “He had a sign that said HELP ME FILL MY MOUTH WITH DICK’S.”

“That’s great. Did you give him any money?”

“Definitely, I gave him a buck.”

“Good man. That deserves a buck at least.”

I hadn’t been to Dick’s in some time, and it was better than I’d remembered. After inspecting the bags to find out whose Dick’s belonged to whom, we sat down to eat in companionable festivity. A lot of people hang around Dick’s, some of whom are even there to have dinner. We spent the drive back southward working on plot issues. We have not yet solved them, but it was a good brainstorming session.

Normally, of course, the client would not be taking the vendor out to such an involved event, but this will tell you a lot about Shawn’s ethical standards. He has written some stories that went into charity anthologies. I edited them, but resisted his efforts to press payment upon me (duh). This arose out of him contacting me to notify me that he was planning to include those stories in some for-profit work, and that he therefore needed to pay me. I wasn’t interested in money, though I respected his punctilious honesty about the situation. He had already invited me to come up and visit, and attend a Mariners game with him, so he proposed to pay for my ticket. That worked out to a lot more than I’d have charged for the editing, but one can hardly say no to such a kind offer, and all senses of right action were thus satisfied all around.

I came home this morning very happy to see my wife again, but with the afterglow of a fine weekend’s business travel. Thanks to all my hosts for their warm welcomes. The best part of my work is the client relationships, and this weekend was a good example of why.

Editing/writing life

A story veterinarian

2 Comments

I’m not much of a pet person, but I’ve read nearly all the James Herriot books. His memoirs provide tremendous insight into good business, good people skills, and good-heartedness. At long last, a suitable analogy for my work (if not always my bedside manner).

I’m a story veterinarian. My patients are stories. Their authors, thus owners, are my clients.

My patients are so familiar to their owners, many think of them as their own children. Said owners spend many hours of loving time with my patients, and become deeply attached to some of their quirks.

I got into this line of work because I truly do love writing, books, and the eloquent employ of the English language, just as the typical vet loves animals and life.

I love to see happy owners with healthy patients, or patients I can help them to heal.

It does not always seem as if I’m that positive and enthusiastic, because I see a lot of patients, and many of them are suffering, and I require a certain thickness of skin in order to get through my working day without absorbing so much suffering that I cannot cope.

It is very hard to tell the owner that s/he was the one who harmed the patient. One can see why the owner would become very defensive and angry. Few pet owners will cheerfully cop to outright neglect. It’s too hard to contemplate.

If the owner doesn’t like what I have to say, s/he is prone to find someone to tell him or her what s/he would rather hear. Poor editors can make great livings telling mediocre writers and storytellers that the story is great, that their writing is great, and that neither will need much change, thus it will be very inexpensive. A number of desperate English majors with private school-level student loan payments are using this method to supplement their incomes from Arby’s. I feel badly for them, but it’s unscrupulous. At the same time, that author would just keep looking until he or she got that answer, therefore someone might as well ‘earn’ the money and enable the publication of the mediocrity, since that publication was going to happen anyway.

Not every owner can handle/wrangle every type of patient I see. Just as a person of 70 with steel pins in a broken hip may have trouble controlling a young German shepherd, a person with poor attention span probably should not undertake an 800-page epic.

Some patients can be healed. Some are terminal. Some suffer from genetic defects. Some just need proper diet and exercise in order to thrive.

No need to apologize to me because the patient crapped and ralphed on the floor. The patient usually craps and/or ralphs on the floor. I am well equipped for that.

My work does not encompass all specialties, and excludes some. As your canine vet may not be able to doctor your pet python, I may be unqualified to edit your offbeat mixing of two disparate genres. All I can do is be honest about my limitations.

I cannot tell the owner what the bill or prognosis will be until I examine the patient in full. Anyone demanding a price or outcome without allowing me a full examination of the patient is being unrealistic.

Every owner comes to me fortified with the accolades of half a dozen fanboys/girls, usually close relatives and longtime friends, who have told him or her that the pet is the cutest and most wonderful thing ever.

There are messages that are very hard to give to an owner, and I won’t always be good at presenting them.

At times, I must tell my client that s/he is abusing or neglecting the patient, and this requires great care and tact. I can experience lapses in that area, especially when it’s obvious the owner needs a serious dose of reality.

A serious dose of reality is often needed, because in many cases, the greatest fiction of all is not the story itself, but the author’s belief that everything s/he does is excellent and marketable.

Not all patients can be saved, or made whole, and the hardest message is to tell someone so.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Serial is good for you: new release, The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver, Book 1

9 Comments

The first bowl of this serial is available today in Kindle format. I was substantive/developmental editor.

Shawn Inmon and I have as nearly ideal an editor/author relationship as one can imagine. My job is to tell him exactly what I think, without holding back. If what I think is that his idea is inadvisable, and he insists on going through with it anyway, my job is to help him make it the best possible story. His job is to conceive and write the story, ask for my help when he finds himself perplexed or stuck, and send me a check when I finish editing. We do our jobs.

When Shawn first told me he wanted to write a story that incorporated elements of time travel, I groaned hard and loud. With time travel, suspension of disbelief is very difficult. My viewpoint is that an author gets one, and only one, “because I say it works” explanation for something that has serious plausibility problems. For everything else, an underlying explanation must exist even if not articulated, and that underlying explanation needs not to be stupid. Many authors squander their BISIW excuse on something petty, then continue to use it in lieu of intelligent characterization and world shaping. When someone objects, they sniff that that’s just their creative process. The result may be a good story idea taken to levels that render it silly.

Time travel thus plays that card immediately, and the problem then is that from the moment a character goes back in time, an alternative sequence of events unfolds. If you want someone to avoid a problem in July, and send him back to April, by July the actual problem will no longer be the same as in the first version of history, proportionate to the character’s ripple effect. For example, an earthquake would still occur on schedule, because there is not much anyone can do to change them. However, its impact would change dramatically, because the time travel would change the actions of many people.

Folks don’t always get that, which is why you see sports fans complaining that the ref cost them the game in the last two minutes. They hate it when I say: “Actually, on the first series, a ref cost you the game–maybe.” They do not understand, and do not like this, as it challenges their victimhood in an emotional moment. With no memory of any actual event, I say with confidence: “Well, on third down, an offensive lineman was guilty of holding. [Since offensive linemen hold on every down except for the V-formation kneeldowns, this is automatically true.] The officials did not call the penalty, and the other team made a first down that should have become a third-and-long. The bottom line is that, had your team played better throughout, it probably would have won, and blaming the refs is a lame loser’s sour grapes.” I don’t much like to watch sporting events in groups, as you may imagine. But you see my point, I trust: change time, and you change events in an outward ripple. Some people miss out on car accidents, while new people die in them. Some people get phone calls that halt impulse buys, while new people do not, and take actions they could not have taken while on the phone (a decreasing set, of late). You can’t drop someone into a situation three months before a decisive event, then expect that the event unfolds on schedule, unless it is completely immune to human choices. A volcanic eruption, for example. Yes, a scheduled election would still take place, but not in the same way.

The need to explain all that is one reason I don’t look forward to time travel stories as an editor. It’s no fun telling someone that his or her brainchild doesn’t work. And while I can fix bad writing, I can’t always fix a bad story idea, nor do most clients want to pay me to do so. The logical rejoinder is to find “an editor who believes in my work.” I understand that, even though an editor who does not but is willing to help would serve that author better.

On top of that, Shawn wanted to rehash the Shawn-and-Dawn story again with him in it, going back in time to fix his mistakes. That story has been written twice, and has inspired another book that is somewhat derivative. It. Had. Been. Done. And. Done. And. Somewhat. Done. Again.

So. I talked Shawn out of the rehash, at least, then explained to him what the problems were with time travel, and he accepted that he was burning his one BISIW with his premise. The rest of his story, if it were to succeed, would have to pay its way on demonstrated good sense, originality, and merit. Shawn got cracking. At one point, he huddled with me to work though some storyline issues he found perplexing. I can usually suggest an alternate route that will work, which is the developmental part of the editing. Shawn had a bit of a slog with some recent projects, partly due to self-imposed deadlines and partly because he felt compelled to finish what he’d begun. Both are good habits, but they can mean one would ideally be doing something else. In addition, I have been after Shawn for many months to break out of his comfort zones with his fiction. Shawn loves music, youth romance, the small-town Northwest, and other familiar inclusions. I believe that it’s okay for authors to have pet themes–look how well it worked for John Irving–provided they don’t go so far as recycling the same basic storyline and characters.

Then Shawn got the idea to release it in serial format. Since the original ms had not been designed for serialization, this presented issues as to where the story should break. When Shawn first presented the idea to me, this installment ended with Thomas’s key decision; it was much shorter. My response to Shawn, paraphrased: “And that’s it? That’s all? If you are moving this to serial format, I don’t have a lot of experience with the concept, but I can tell you that if you break it there, you will not generate a ton of interest in the second installment. Your first installment must provide some form of conclusion, yet must hold out the promise of interesting things to come.” Shawn agreed, and moved the breakpoint forward. I think he picked a good spot given the flow of the tale. We may have several more discussions about breakpoints, because I believe that each installment needs to be rewarding on its own merit, and Shawn concurs.

Here, Shawn sets up shop in a different state than Washington. His protag is decidedly unsympathetic, but nuanced and very much unlike previous protags, and we see other characters taking on balance and nuance as well. He proves that he can begin a story without teen romance. What Shawn does best is get the esoteric details right, point up the silliness of pop culture, and time his epiphanies well. ‘Write what you know’ means not to just wing it, but to present backdrop and experience informed by real life experience or strong research. Shawn’s sales experience, real estate career, and the career path leading to those things give him a wealth of authenticity upon which to draw. You can always count on Shawn to take an aspect of pop culture and present it in just absurd enough fashion to bring a knowing smile. And when his characters should have realizations, they often do. Not always, not predictably. But often enough, and often not the one the reader would have anticipated.

I do not know how many installments will comprise this series, but I liked the first one very well. I suspect you will too.

Editing/writing life

Problems in urban paranormal/fantasy fiction writing

2 Comments

It’s all over the place now: self-published urban fantasy/paranormal fiction. Lots of fantasy, too. If it has elves, I think of it as fantasy. If it has vampires, I consider it paranormal. If it is set in our modern day, unless it is set in Cletusville, I consider it urban.

This is the legacy of franchises: Anita Blake, Twilight, True Blood, and going farther back, Shadowrun, Tolkien, and D&D. And it’s fine, unless you hackney the hell out of it. Unfortunately, most people do so.

All right, if you insist on writing it, then do a good job:

Work out your world’s ‘science.’ You can’t ignore that. What is the biology of your elves, your vampires, your dragons? How long do your elves live? Is vampirism biological? Viral? What about lycanthropy? How does your magic work? Yeah, I know, you don’t care about all that crap; you just want to present this beautiful, thrilling, terrifying environment with compelling characters and a gripping storyline. Tough, because if you skip those basics, you will never get your reader to suspend disbelief long enough to buy in. It is not that you need to tell the reader all that stuff. It is that you need to know the ‘reality’ so that cues from it seep into your story as you go.

I have a hot tub. I don’t want to mess with bottles of chemicals, testing strips, and periodic changing of the water. I just want to soak in its soothing, scenic, healing warmth. However, if I don’t do the testing and treatment part, I will contract a rash that requires antibiotics to battle. It is no more feasible for me to duck out on tub maintenance than it is for an SF/fantasy author to just decide the nuts and bolts are too icky and she just wants to write a beautiful, scary story. The reader deserves better than the brain rash she will get from trying to follow a grammatically incontinent story.

Look at what’s been done. Tall, noble elves with sage wisdom and lifespans of centuries? Well, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen those. It may be the ten thousandth. How are your elves more interesting, fresh, new? Same for every non-human race you present, if it is a race concept for which your reader has a frame of reference.

Don’t throw in as many species as you can think of unless you’re prepared to give them all background. Okay, you decided that weredragons are really, really, really cool. How the hell does someone get to be one? If you just allude to them, you will leave your reader hanging, wondering what goes on with those. If you allude to too many, you will leave your reader not caring what goes on with any of them.

Consider lifespan, knowledge, and experience. If you are going to present creatures that are five centuries old, you must have some idea how and where they survived that long. They should have accumulated the knowledge of seven human lifespans. How do their brains cope with all that? Do they now speak forty languages, ten of them dead? Can they hold in their heads the active vocabularies to do that? What happens? Think it through.

Do not be pretentious. Pretense comes when you begin with the assumption that your world has certain qualities, particularly mystical and magical. You cannot merely tell the reader it has those, and be believed; you must show her that it does. Tolkien didn’t write an epic fantasy story by telling us that Aragorn was noble, or that hobbits were quaint and endearing; Tolkien gave us reasons to see them those ways. Not that he did not describe; he did describe. However, he showed more than he told.

How are you going to narrate? Fantasy tends to contain a lot of flashbacks, lookbacks, and so forth. Is the protagonist the memoirist? The only one, or will there be another narrator at some point? How long after the story events was the memoir composed? Here’s the thing: character death. If writing after the fact, the minute you say someone ‘is’ such-and-so, you convey that s/he survives the story. What if there’s a gender reveal? It will take major gymnastics to avoid doing that without pronouns, and a single slip blows the reveal. Consider the person–first, second, third, and tense, present or past. Are you writing in first person? Then you can present only that which your protag sees, feels, knows. On the easier side, your narrative has the freedoms mostly allocated to dialogue; on the harder side, you have to be careful with tense.

That’s another area where one simply cannot just say: “grammar is icky. I just want to write and this is my process.” Then I will say the sentence that has gotten rid of more ‘will you look at my writing’ folks than any other: then your process is wrong, and you should fix it. Most people who seek out freebie writing advice from me do not really want my honest opinion. They want me to approve of what they are doing. Well, if you do not think through the person and tense of your narration, I disapprove of what you’re doing. Here are examples of problem sentences:

I go to the store for some milk and ran into David. While first person narration of an uneducated or poorly spoken protag doesn’t have to be perfect, it needs to be better than this. Even a poorly spoken person would almost never mix tenses quite this way.

So I called up my friend Bertha. Bertha is about six-two and 275. And we now know that Bertha survives the story. Which, if you don’t mind that, fine and dandy. But what about everyone else in the book?

Some of this applies to genres other than urban paranormal/thriller/fantasy, but that’s where I’m seeing the most of it. People can do much better.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Newly published: Awacha Nay–For My People, by Heidi Ennis

Leave a comment

This Native American historical fiction novel is now available, paperback and e-version. I was substantive/developmental editor.

Heidi originally came my way thanks to Shawn Inmon, author of a number of successful fiction and non-fiction tales, who gave me the kind of buildup I’m not sure I could ever live up to. She had a novel long in the works, begun two decades prior, about pre-contact Native Americans in Washington and Oregon, and was I interested in editing it?

I’m not sure she would consider this a stroke of luck, but it so happened that I had lived a good portion of my life in the regions her story covers. I went to junior high and high school with the descendants of the people she portrayed, had read some of their history, and so on. I also knew the ground, its flora and fauna and climate. This made me rather more exacting in my critique than another editor might have been. Or as she said more than once: “You kicked my ass.”

Yeah, kinda. I suppose most editing involves some form of compassionate ass-punting.

After the sample edit, which satisfied her that I could help her, I did the initial read and commentary. With some mss, I can begin editing; in other cases, I prefer to give the author a shot at fixing the issues using her own creativity. That was the case here. I was blunt: I likened the portrayals of emotion to an ongoing Lifetime movie, and suggested that she dig deeper into the terrain and its Native languages and cultures–especially Sahaptin, the Yakama language, and Chinook Jargon, which was a Columbia Basin trade patois incorporating English and French into a mix of Native languages. “You also need to develop the economics and geopolitics of the region. Oh, and please draw a map and provide some family tree and language glossary stuff, if you add in significant amounts of actual native culture. And one last thing: how about dumping your last thirty pages, and ending the book with a bang at this specified spot?”

There was the possibility she might not like that answer, and might instead tell me: “You know what? My posterior is sore. I think I’ll find an editor who doesn’t kick it, thanks.”

Not Heidi. She expletive did it. Everything I said. Conscientiously.

Months passed. I next received a ms version of similar length, but peppered with well-chosen Sahaptin and Chinook Jargon words that explained the complex relationships that characterized Native trade and culture. The economic flow of goods and exchange, along with the importance of political relations, now helped drive the story. Cultures were richer, based in better research, and more complex. There was emotional balance now, yet without eradicating the ability to inspire a reader to feel. Villains were more nuanced and flexible, as were heroes and sidekicks. It felt much more textured and balanced. All that remained to fix were a couple of plot points I considered to stretch credibility a little far.

That part was hard. She had to kill her darlings, as Faulkner advised us. She didn’t want to draw that blade. I prevailed upon her that she was at the risk of contrivance, which is what happens when the author wants a certain thing to happen so badly she lets the strings show in setting it up. By that time, I think she considered me a darling–in the sense that if she threw a grenade rather than using a sniper rifle, she might have the joy of getting both me and the plot darlings in the blast radius. But again, she did it.

My pace on the edit was glacial. Part of it was the need to keep many characters and locations straight in a 500-page book, but part was of my own doing. Every time I needed a Native American word, I had to refer to a glossary. If it was a name, to a character listing. Most of that extra detail was stuff I had advised Heidi to add. What was I going to do now, start complaining? However, it did slow things down. There was no point beginning a work session unless I was prepared to open up four documents, and when I came to a decision point, often I needed to step back and consider with eyes off for a while. But in time, I did finish my work.

A writer this coachable is one for readers to watch, and editors to treasure.

I think her characters are a bit better than those in the O’Gear books, on a par with Shuler’s. That’s the league I see Heidi playing in. And she has it set up masterfully for a sequel.

Editing/writing life

A fallen ‘Lancer: Richard N. Côté, 1945-2015

6 Comments

Today I learned of the sudden passing of a good friend and fellow traveler in the writing world: Dick Côté. Evidently he fell on some steep steps at his home office, hit his head, and suffered major brain trauma. When brain death was determined, those close to him let him pass in peace, as he would have wished.

I first came to know Dick through my Amazon reviews, perhaps ten years ago, perhaps longer. I believe he sent me a review solicitation, and I accepted. I found him a highly competent social historian, and continued to review his books out of my interest in the subjects. We became friends, and I can remember many of what I fondly called Chardonnay conversations. He was a tremendous source of knowledge about writing and publishing, and I listened more than I talked. He always called me “my fine young friend,” which I found bemusing up to my early fifties.

Dick had an interesting life. A Connecticutian of French descent, by the time I knew him, he was living in South Carolina. His views were not largely mainstream in Charleston, but Dick was the sort of man who looks past such differences and inspires others to do the same. We have too few of his kind today. After college, he served in the Air Force in Vietnam, a role that troubled him all his days. He was a freelance writer who ghosted a great many books during the days when one could make better money doing that. The most notable might be Safe House, the autobiography of defector Edward Lee Howard. He flew to Moscow and spent several weeks mining Howard’s memories, then set forth to turn those plus Howard’s notes into a credible book. He later learned that it had all been a setup (unsuccessful) to lure Howard back to US custody. Dick was forgetful, so he retold me the story during nearly every phone call, which is why I remember it so well.

His last really major book project nearly broke him: In Search of Gentle Death. This was his social history of the global right-to-die movement, spurred in part by friends of his who were active in it, and in part by his memories of his mother’s unpleasant passing due to ALS. It was a first-class job of writing and research, and an absolute money sink from day one. I had the privilege of serving as proofreader, which was exhausting, invigorating, and fun. That’s how it was when one rode with Dick, those three adjectives. A man of perpetual good humor, no matter what the hour of the day, he always advised me to take the rest of the day off. A passionate hard worker, I know he understood the comedy inherent in that good wish.

Dick was a fairly outspoken atheist, so he did not believe that he is still with us in any spiritual form. (Think about the oddity of those verb tenses.) I, however, am not an atheist. I know this: I have lost a good friend, a fundamentally decent and caring fellow, and a source of wisdom about our line of work. I also know that if Dick was wrong, and is in fact eating crow watching us from an afterlife, he’s laughing at himself. He is also, in that case, breathing an enormous sigh of relief that he never had to face the question of how to end incurable earthly suffering, nor were his loved ones confronted with Schiavoian agony.

He has a Wikipedia page under “Richard N. Côté.” I am not sure the accents will work with a link, and I admit that I am not exactly in the frame of mind to twiddle with technical details. You can find it easily enough.

Dick, my fine old friend, take the rest of the day off.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life, Sports

No one who refuses to read this book should ask me for book marketing tips any more

1 Comment

The book in question is the autobiography of Bill Veeck, Veeck as in Wreck.

Clients ask me for marketing tips all the time. Of course, a cynic might think: “If he were that good at marketing, he’d probably be writing and pushing his own books.” Most authors hate marketing and think it’s icky; they just want to write, publish, and let their work rise on its merits. Well, it is icky. It’s like picking up after your dog icky. However, if you do not pick up after your dog, your back yard is not a fun place.

Other than how to approach Amazon reviewers, there is not a lot of useful stuff I can tell people about marketing books. The cynic above? S/he is quite correct about me.

The author who refuses to embrace marketing, and who insists that it’s a commercial rather than a vanity book, should be writing fantasy. That’s because that stance is indicative of a very active and fertile imagination, an ability to suspend disbelief in the face of obvious evidence. This should enable him or her to come up with some amazing alternate realities.

I believe that all projects should begin with a fundamental mindset. Winston Churchill knew it. His six-volume WWII memoirs, which are some of my favorite reading, began with a Moral of the Work:

“In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.”

One may debate the moral, its applicability to the telling of history, or whether Churchill lived up to it in life. He did establish a mindset, and one supposes it guided him. Thus it is with writing, or the marketing of writing. If the mindset toward marketing is that it’s icky, I see a high probability that the result will reflect the mindset. That means the author doesn’t sell very many books, and perhaps even takes a net loss after all the initial expenses are considered.

So; mindset before all. And that’s why authors seeking marketing tips must read Veeck’s book.

  • It is about growing up around and operating baseball teams.
  • It is about breaking attendance records, even with lousy teams.
  • It is about one’s approach to the public.
  • It is about just enough chicanery.
  • It is about an unconventional mentality.
  • It is about marketing without fear, shame, or guilt.
  • It is about how to treat those with whom one works.
  • It is about having fun, and plenty of laughter, while practicing all of the above.

If authors let some healthy portion of Veeck’s rollicking, fun-loving, generous, brass-balled, loyalty-building, establishment-defying, disability-defying, fiscally savvy, opportunistic mindset sink into their marketing approach, there is further point in discussing strategies. They will have a mindset, a guiding attitude, and will thus be able to carry out those strategies without feeling like they are picking up dog turds.

If they decline to read it, or read it and decide that marketing is still icky and they just want to write, I will be delighted to serve as their editor and will not bother them any more about reading Veeck’s book. However, they should know that I’ve already given them my best marketing advice, from my limited storehouse of same, and that I may not have much else of use to tell them about how to get people to buy books.

 

*I can’t finish a discussion of a book written with Ed Linn without a shoutout to his efforts as co-author. I have read several sports books written ‘with Ed Linn.’ Mr. Linn has passed on in recent years, but he happens to be one of my best examples of voice. All of Veeck’s books with Mr. Linn sound consistently Veecky. Others, with other autobiographists, sound like those persons. When I edit multiple POV first person fiction, I remind myself that those voices must, must, must differ, must match to the developed characters, and must further the speaker’s development.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: Second Chance Love, by Shawn Inmon

Leave a comment

This novel, originally released as five serial short stories, is now available in a compilation volume. At various points, I was substantive and/or developmental editor.

If you never had a look at any of the individual stories, and you like romance, you’re in for something good. Shawn likes romance and isn’t afraid to present it with a gender-balanced point of view. He also isn’t afraid to bust stuff up. I had not known, until this series developed, just how willing he was to knock a storyline onto its side with a major event. This is someone who could and would kill off a major character. I love that.

I’d always figured Shawn would eventually compile the parts into a whole, and it made sense, because Shawn did a good job of developing interesting characters throughout the work. Layers kept coming away as familiar characters gained more nuance. Even the arch-villain, in the end, was revealed in part as a pitiable figure.

If you bought some of the stories and didn’t get around to others, Shawn often runs deals. At this writing, it’s $1 for Kindle. For 244 pages, that’s a lot of reading for your buck.