I did an interview with my friend and fellow author L.S. Engler back in October, and one of the topics that came up was the second volume of her forthcoming anthology the World Unknown Review. I was lucky enough to have a story published in both volumes; my short story Nanos Khund and the Traveler, which has never appeared anywhere else, is in Volume II.
Well, Volume II is out— the Kindle version, anyway, and unless I miss my bet by the end of the day the print edition will be linked to the same page. There are nine stories and a novella in there, across all sorts of genres, and, again, one of ’em is mine.
The ebook is only 99 cents, which ain’t much at all, and I believe the print version is going to retail for under $10. I say you check it out.
…I’m not, really, but I suspect I’m going to get one anyway.
Go read this article. It’s okay, I can wait and the article’s short.
You didn’t click on the link, did you.
Sigh. People nowadays.
That’s okay, actually, as this article’s really easy to nutshell and isn’t very complicated: a high school in Philadelphia has decided to stop teaching The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in their eleventh-grade language arts classes, primarily because of the book’s repeated (over 200 times, apparently) use of the N-word. Predictably, folks are mad.
I feel like this is the part where I should start establishing my Twain bona fides. I’ve read Finn and Sawyer repeatedly. His Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses is one of the greatest pieces of writing in the history of the English language. And I have read a ton of Twain outside of those three pieces, although obviously those are the big ones.
(Takes deep breath)
I’m good with this, guys.
Lemme be real specific, here: I’m not saying whether Finn should or shouldn’t be taught in high schools. I’m saying that I’m okay with the decision made by this high school that the difficulties introduced by the language in the book outweigh the literary benefits of making the kids all read it. I note that the book will remain in the library, where kids who want to read it can still easily access it. And that, to me, makes an immense amount of difference.
Here is the thing, and it’s one of the most wonderful things about literature: I am absolutely certain that I will die without running out of things to read. Absolutely certain. I will die regretting never having had read something. And that’s speaking as someone who reads 125-150 books a year. The median number of books read by adults per year in the United States, a number in this case more useful than the average, is five.
In other words, there are lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of books that high school students could be reading as part of their English classes. Several of them are even by Twain. Even more are from the same time period as Twain, and cover similarly pedagogically-useful material! Relatively fewer guarantee that you’ll have to spend sizeable chunks of your class time debating whether your kids have to or should read the n-word out loud if for some reason they have to read something out loud.
(Yes, it’s still useful for high school students to have something read to them from time to time. Choral or turn-based reading, maybe not, especially at the class level, but even a class with no out-loud reading at all will surely have to repeat a passage every now and again while discussing it.)
Is Huckleberry Finn one of the foundational works of American literature? Hell yes. Should everyone– American or otherwise– read Huckleberry Finn? Yes. Eventually.
I have more trouble with the suggestion that everyone must read Huck Finn while 1) in high school and 2) under the auspices of an English teacher. Pull Huck from your library? Make it unavailable in bookstores? You and me, we gon’ fight. Pull it from a college curriculum? Less defensible, since those kids generally have a lot more leeway about what classes they’re taking.
But I just can’t get mad that a high school has decided that this one book isn’t worth the effort of the external issues it brings with it. I almost feel like it’s better taught in history classes anyway, where the social milieu of the book can be discussed more fully, and hopefully by people a bit more qualified to do so. (At this point I laugh, because I know full well that the first name of most high school history teachers is “Coach,” but I also know I had a couple of really good ones.)
So, yeah. Feel free to call me an asshole in comments now. I think I’m okay with this.
This is, I believe, the fastest I’ve ever written one of these things, as my son just discovered this terrible program last night. I banned it forevermore before he went to sleep, only to get up this morning and discover him watching it again, apparently because my wife overruled me. I shall have my revenge, I swear it. Because Special Agent Oso is godawful, and I will not have any of its stupid songs running through my head.
Lets start with the theme song, which is like 20 minutes long. First of all, Oso’s last name is Special. Oso Special.
GET IT IT’S A PUN DO YOU GET IT HE’S OSO SPECIAL THAT’S A JOKE DO YOU GET IT.
Oso is a special agent for some unnamed agency, and the names of the episodes always contain James Bond references, which is the only interesting thing about the show, because it’s not like any of the kids watching the show will get any of them so they’re clearly the result of the writers trying desperately to entertain themselves. This special agency hires stuffed animals– yes, Oso is a stuffed bear, and the theme song specifically describes him as such. He’s not a real bear. He’s an animated toy. What dark magic allows his limbs to move is also left unclear.
At any rate, the episode always starts with Oso doing some secret agent shit, which would be cool if it weren’t for the part where Oso does not know how to do even one thing. It’s amazing that he can even breathe given how dumb the show represents him as. But they’ve got him doing all sorts of stuff. He was in freaking outer space in one episode:
At some point the show will cut away from Oso doing his secret agent shit and find some kid on Earth who has a completely random problem. This problem is always terribly minor on a level reminiscent of Super Why. At that point the doohicky on his wrist will vibrate and Mr. Dos will let him know that he needs to drop everything and go solve this kid’s problem. This is true no matter what he is doing or where he is. Including outer space. Go help this kid find the library or tie his shoes or whatever. LEAVE OUTER SPACE FOR THIS.
You may wonder how they find the kids who have the problems, because these kids never actually contact the agent themselves. It’s because this horrifying organization has the entire world under drone surveillance. Think I’m kidding? I’m not kidding:
The drones, who are always watching you, tell a floating space station that there’s a kid with a minor inconvenience, and then Oso is notified. He finds the kid and then begins asking questions that make it clear that he has no idea what the hell he’s doing and shouldn’t be a secret agent. For example, on TV just now, he asked what a circle was. Secret agents should be able to identify circles.
And then the worst part happens. He asks his chest computer, who is called his Paw Pilot, what his “three special steps” are to solve the kid’s problem. There are always three steps, and, underpants gnome style, the second is always “do the thing.” For example, if the problem is you need to find a book at the library, the second step is “find the book.” Need to wrap a gift? The second step is “wrap the gift.” It’s fucking weird.
Also fucking weird? The floating animated head that is the Paw Pilot sings a terrible song and looks like nothing so much as Mystique giving birth:
You see it I KNOW YOU SEE IT
Let’s pause for a moment to let that image sink in.
…
So, yeah. Initially he will know literally nothing about how to solve the problem without help, but spoiler alert: he’s gonna solve the problem, whatever it is. He solves the problem, Paw Pilot sings another terrible song, and then something about whatever he just did helps him with whatever his special agent shit was at the beginning of the episode.
They also always manage to contrive some way to have a 10-second countdown at the end of the episode as Oso is trying to solve the problem. Is Oso trying to write his name on a library card? 10 SECONDS UNTIL THE LIBRARY CLOSES. Is Oso trying to wrap a present for someone’s little sibling? MOM WILL BE DOWNSTAIRS IN 10 SECONDS. Kite Day starts in 10 seconds. It’s never anything where could ever possibly matter if the thing he’s doing takes 12 seconds. Ever.
If we were having coffee, we’d be talking Star Wars. There’s little or nothing else to talk about. I’ll be seeing The Force Awakens Friday afternoon– granted, after many people have seen it already (oh, were I just younger; I spent three days waiting in line outside in costume for Phantom Menace tickets, and there were widespread roars of delight when it was reported that the then-fledgling-technology MoviePhone was crashed as hell) but I have a kid now and that means I don’t get to go to late evening shows on weeknights anymore.
But: there are six days until I get to see a new Star Wars movie, and given what Disney plans to do to the franchise this is probably the last time that that feeling will ever get to be special. I’m honestly kind of surprised that there isn’t a trailer ready for Rogue One yet. Six days is a rather convenient number, as there are also six Star Wars movies and I’ll be watching one a day until I see the new one. Hopefully sometime over winter break we’ll be taking the boy to see it; I’m still concerned that it’s going to end up being too scary for him, and that’s one of the few ways in which the film could end up genuinely disappointing me, because I’m really invested in taking my son to see his first movie soon, and that movie needs to be Star Wars.
I’m trying to decide exactly how much I need to be restricting my internet access this week. I haven’t been avoiding spoilers, particularly, but I have decided that I know enough about the movie and don’t really need to know or see any more until I see it. Wanton theorizing with friends is fine, but I don’t want to know any more and so I’ll probably need to be turning the computer off and writing some posts early toward the end of the week.
How about you? You’re going to see the movie, or you wouldn’t be having coffee with me. Any big preparations for Star Wars?
Know someone who would love an autographed science fiction book for Christmas? Did you know you can order autographed books directly from me?
(There’s two weeks until Christmas. Order by a week from today– let’s call that the 18th– to come closest to ensuring pre-Christmas delivery. I make no guarantees on timing one way or another.)
The books are priced a bit cheaper than you can get them on Amazon, shipping and handling are $4. If you want them shipped faster than that or shipped outside the lower 48, email me and we’ll work something out. Make sure to include who you want the books made out to and if there’s a special note you’d like included.
Sale goes until I run out of stuff to send. SKYLIGHTS and SANCTUM are not in danger of a sell-out but I only have a handful of copies of BENEVOLENCE ARCHIVES. MALUMBA is not included in this because I have no copies on hand and can’t get more from CreateSpace in time for Christmas; if you don’t particularly care about the Christmas part, again, email me.
This, much like my blogwanking posts, will be of some interest to a handful of you, but the rest of you may end up wanting to skip it.
I’m at about the 40% mark on Sunlight, just underneath it, in fact. And when you count snippets of later parts that I’ve already written (the final scene is done, for example) the bit that I’m at is probably right at the 1/3 mark of the actual book. I’ve gotten the action in Sunlight moving a lot faster than Skylights did; a slow start is one of the more common criticisms of that book and I wanted to make sure that dangerous/scary shit was happening to my characters much more quickly this time.
I’ve hit a stall point, though, and I suspect I won’t be adding to the word count for a little while, and part of the reason I won’t be adding to the word count is because of the way I write. I don’t do multiple drafts. I write a thing, and then I take another tinkering/editing pass at it– correcting grammar and typographical errors, fixing clunky sentences, occasionally adding short scenes or deleting others (most frequently when I realize that characters have a conversation in Chapter 6 that they just had in Chapter 5, because by the time I got to Chapter 6 I’d forgotten they had it) and all that, but rarely the type of large-scale modification that I’d call a full-blown draft. I know I’ve called that phase “second draft” in the past, but it really isn’t. It’s mostly cleanup.
Once the book is out of first draft, it’s basically done. This isn’t because I have such supreme confidence in my writing process that I think I’m perfect. It’s because my first draft is so slow, and so roundabout and circular. It’s because sometimes I go two weeks and don’t write a single word, because I’m stuck on the next scene and I can’t write it if it’s wrong. While I tell other people “just do it, and fix it in second draft,” I can’t actually write that way myself.
I finally figured something important out about writer’s block: it’s not that I can’t write. It’s that what I’m about to try and write is wrong. So my brain won’t even let the wrong stuff come out of my fingers.
I’m at a point in this manuscript where, if I do this wrong, Sunlight will end up just basically being a remake of Skylights, and that’s really not what I want. The stakes need to be higher in this book, and they need to be higher in a way that I haven’t quite wrapped my head around, and the structure of this book needs to be different than the first book. And I’m at the point where those raised stakes need to be made clear quickly. So until I figure this out, I get to sit and stare at a blank screen, because I can’t write another word until I know what the right ones are.
Kinda want to bury myself in Fallout 4 today, but I have stuff to do around the house, and the wife and I have a dinner date tonight, so I need to be productive this afternoon.
With that in mind, have this:
Gonna go see what sort of trouble I can get myself into before it’s time to pick the boy up.
(Actually, this sounds like it could be fun: I love Creep. I hate every single other song Radiohead has ever done, but Creep is awesome. What’s your favorite song from your least favorite band?)
As an independent author, there are some things that I’m good at, or at least I think I’m getting good at. There are some other things that I’m not as good at, and that I need to figure out.
One of those is getting reviews for my books. As of this exact moment, since The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1came out in May of 2014, at least 2810 copies of my four books have been downloaded or purchased by someone. That is, to me, a hell of a nice-looking number. I’m perfectly aware that lots of people have done lots better. For me, right now, I’m happy with that number.
Those 2810 downloads or purchases have resulted in 42 reviews on Amazon. That’s 1.4% of my downloads leading to a review. That number, I’m somewhat less than completely happy with. There have been some more on Goodreads and some folks have done nice reviews on their own sites. Some of them have UK or B&N reviews. But I want to see them on Amazon US, which is where the huge majority of my readers are.
(Incidentally, on reviewing books on your site: I get this, especially from authors, and I do it myself– I’d rather review someone’s book on my site than on Amazon because Amazon occasionally decides people know each other for no clear reason and deletes reviews.) Similarly, I know a handful of reviews for The Benevolence Archives have been deleted from the site. One of them was a troll review and should have been, the rest not so much.
But I’d kinda like to see The Sanctum of the Sphere with more than four reviews, seeing as how it came out in April and has three fewer reviews than Searching for Malumba, which has seven and hasn’t been out for two months yet. Skylights, out since September 2014, has thirteen.
(Possible: my books all suck, and my reviewers are the minority of people with terrible taste AND a desire to spread it around. I don’t think that’s what’s happening, mind you. But if I suck, I need to know so I can work harder at getting better!)
I’ve gone so far a couple of times as to offer people a free book of their choice if they just review it, no strings attached. The giveaways happen but so far the reviews don’t seem to be materializing.
I’m going to try a slightly different tack now, and just blatantly beg. If you’ve read any of these books, and you haven’t reviewed them, and especially if you liked them, could I please beg you for just a couple of sentences on Amazon? Pretty please? I’m not asking for a dissertation or anything. Just a few sentences. Here, have the links again:
Thanks, folks. I really do genuinely appreciate it.
(NOTE: If you actually do know me IRL, and especially if you live in the same town as me, thanks, but don’t bother. I’m pretty sure Amazon automatically removes any reviews coming from the same town as the author.)
I did an interview with my friend and fellow author L.S. Engler back in October, and one of the topics that came up was the second volume of her forthcoming anthology the World Unknown Review. I was lucky enough to have a story published in both volumes; my short story Nanos Khund and the Traveler, which has never appeared anywhere else, is in Volume II.
…I’m not, really, but I suspect I’m going to get one anyway.
This, much like my blogwanking posts, will be of some interest to a handful of you, but the rest of you may end up wanting to skip it.
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