A Fact Of Life Is Readers Get The Facts Wrong

I always hate bad ratings and bad reviews, but what really irks me the most is when reviewers get facts wrong.  I'm never sure if it's deliberate or they just remember things wrong.  But they'll misstate something or exaggerate something or say things happened a way that didn't happen.

I probably mentioned one time where someone on Goodreads said about Chance of a Lifetime, "How could he think he could never be a cop again? He'd have to have worked with and met many female police officers, some probably further up the hierarchy than him?"

Which was utterly ridiculous.  Of course Stacey knew there were female cops.  What the book actually says is:

[Dr. Palmer]: “Well, you could always try rejoining the police force.”

I sniffle but don’t say anything. I could try to go back to the academy. Maybe I could make it through and become a beat cop again. In another five or ten years I might even make detective again. That hardly seems fair.

So it wasn't that she didn't know about female cops; it was that she wasn't sure if she wanted to put in the effort of starting over at the bottom.  And why should she instantly want to do that?  She has a new, younger body, why not explore the possibilities a little?

Then there's this Girl Power "review" that is just so full of wrongness.  It still irritates me every time I see this because so many things this person says are just so dumb that I have to question if he read the same book I wrote.  I realized that in his second dumb point he actually combines two characters:  Elise (Aquaman) and Allison (the Flash) into one character.  Here's the quote:

2. You abandon your family or loved ones... and sleep with lots of random people you just met. The married character decides to just have someone tell his wife and child - who he is constantly terribly missing and loves immensely (supposedly) - that he's dead. Rather than go home as a woman. Let that idea sink in for a minute. Do you have a family? Would you abandon them and tell them you were dead if you were hit by a magic ray that changed your gender? Then he/she proceeds to hook up with random people in a bar. Why? Because... um... well... the author thinks that's how marriage and parenthood work? Like, if an alien ray switched your gender tomorrow... you should just die? Your wife would stop caring about you? Or would rather you were dead? I don't know. It doesn't make any sense.

Allison doesn't sleep with a lot of guys.  She goes to bed with her wife once without actually doing anything sexual but after they argue about telling their daughter what's going on (it's Allison's wife who doesn't want to tell their daughter), Allison gets drunk in a bar in Paris and lets a guy take her to a hotel.  He sticks his thing in her but it doesn't do much for her.  They're interrupted by an emergency and while Allison considers going back to see if she can be a "normal" woman, she doesn't and her wife invites her back home.

Elise is the one who sleeps with a bunch of guys after her gay boyfriend doesn't want to be with her now that she's a woman.  Then she goes home to Atlantis Pacifica and meets a kind, sensitive artist guy and they fall in love and make a baby.

I don't know how this doofus smushed the two characters together into one, but it's a clear example of a reader misremembering the facts.

Lately I got a couple of bad reviews for Eric Filler books that keep mentioning "chapters" when there are no chapters.  One says, "Truth is I barely was able to stomach chapter one. Read about half of chap 2. Then I skipped to the last chapter."  Huh?  There is no "chapter one" or "chap 2" or "last chapter."  There are exactly 0 chapters.  So what are you talking about?

But this of course doesn't just happen to me.  Someone's blog focusing on Supergirl, the author really doesn't like Tom King's widely praised Woman of Tomorrow--soon to be a major motion picture!  At one point he said, "She isn't a sad drunk, crying in suns and bringing kids to public executions. (See Tom King's Woman of Tomorrow.) "

And I thought, well, that isn't true.  She wasn't a "sad drunk" in the book.  Yes, she is drunk at first but that's because it's her 21st birthday and so she takes a rocket to a red sun planet so she can actually feel the effects of alcohol like a normal person.  This is mentioned in two different places at least:

That doesn't make her a "sad drunk."  Lots of young people go out for drinks when they turn 21.  Even I got a bottle of wine or beer or something on my 21st birthday.  It's just being Kryptonian she has to do something more elaborate.  Drinking one time doesn't make her a drunk.

The "crying in suns" isn't really accurate either.  I rearranged a few panels but you can see that after finding some monks slaughtered by space pirates, she says she has to scream and then flies into the sun.  I think then it's pretty clear she's not "crying;" she's screaming with rage.

As I said before, I don't know if these mistakes are intentional or just an exaggeration or a misremembering.  I'm sure we all do it from time-to-time.  Part of it is probably if you don't want to like something, you might go out of your way to poke holes in it.  And that can lead to exaggerating something or just outright getting it wrong, like suggesting that Supergirl is a drunk/crying in a sun or that Stacey Chance doesn't know about female cops.

It stinks that you can't fact check reviews.  So people can say something dumb, blatantly get details wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it.  You have to just leave it on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever so anyone who stops by might think it's the truth--especially if you don't have a ton of other reviews to counter it.

You think people might be more sensitive about this in the age of "fake news" but still it's more likely the author will be shamed for arguing with people who get stuff wrong.  Arguing with opinions isn't a good idea but if I can show you chapter and verse or images from the book that prove you're wrong, why can't I do that?  It's unfair but then I guess so is life in general.

Of course opinions can be pretty asinine too.  Like this "review" of Derelict on the Amazon UK site that accuses the story of "very little in terms of R rated content, character development, or even plot."  Seeing that, I was like, WTF?  Yeah, there isn't a lot of R-rated content, nor is there supposed to be; I don't really consider that a valid criticism since I never said it was R-rated or filed it under erotica.  

As for "character development" Dirk, the main character, starts out as a gruff loner living on a boat and diving old wrecks for scrap by himself.  At the end, Dirk is a young woman who's in love with another young woman (who also used to be a guy) and they're going out together to explore a new universe.  So Dirk is completely different physically and spiritually.  But nope, no "development" at all. [eye roll]

And as for "plot" the book is over 100 pages, though some of that is promo stuff at the end and whatnot, but still it's not short.  Dirk is seemingly killed by a ghost ship, wakes up in an alternate reality, gets turned into a girl by the psychotic little girl running things, spends years as a baby, grows up again, rescues a new person, becomes really good friends with the new person, starts learning how to fight the evil girl, and then with the new person and one other person they launch a scheme to overthrow the evil girl.  But nope, no "plot" either. [eye roll]

But of course I can't say that on Amazon even if it weren't on the UK site.  And everyone would just think I'm "whining" by arguing how wrong this idiot is.  Because for whatever reason artists are just supposed to stoically take whatever moronic criticisms people throw at them or it's the artist who looks bad.  That just seems a little silly to me.

It's the same way for athletes too.  "Fans" can boo and jeer and probably shout sexist, racist, or homophobic things.  Yet if the athlete goes all Tie Domi in the stands on the "fans," it's the athlete who gets in trouble.  Why do we expect them to take abuse like that?  I guess because that's just how things are.  But it's not how things should be.  I'm just saying.

But if I had my way, I'd do like Jay & Silent Bob at the end of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back where they use money from their movie to beat up everyone making snarky comments about it.  Of course I'd have probably been beaten to death by now for all the comments I've made. 

Girl Power: How It Should Have Ended?

 August will mark 11 years since I first published Girl Power on Kindle.  I wrote it a few months before that as just a lark to combine the main concepts of the Tales of the Scarlet Knight series and the Chances Are series.  Because I was basically just goofing around with it, I didn't take it too seriously, which is in part why it ended up fairly short.  Later some people would bitch it was too short or not "deep" enough, but it really wasn't supposed to be really long or "deep;" I definitely didn't plan to write 2 sequels, some short stories, and a spinoff.

Anyway, the part I never really liked was the last couple of chapters.  I've always thought I should have done something a little different, to give our sheroes a chance to have a little bigger fight.  About six weeks ago I got toying with an idea that would sort of go like this:

Everything is the same until Robin is taken captive by Major Dalton in the giant robot dinosaur.  Dalton takes her to the control room where Dr. Roboto is waiting.  Instead of turning the alien sex-changing machine on before betraying Dalton, Roboto betrays Dalton first, hypnotizing her to be his dimwitted minion.  And then he grabs Robin to throw her into an arena along with Starla (Supergirl), Allison (Flash), and Elise (Aquagirl).  The arena is rigged with gamma radiation to eliminate Starla's powers and there's some kind of electric field on the floor and walls to keep Allison from using her powers.  And there's obviously no water for Elise to use her powers.

Roboto says that he's going to let them show the whole world how brave women can be by fighting his robot minions without any powers.  And then he unleashes robots into the arena.  Robin as the Batgirl character lays out a strategy.

Robin and Elise have never liked each other because Elise was a gay man and Robin was pretty conservative.  But now Robin has to ask her to take the lead against the robots because she's the most fit one even if she can't use her powers.  Starla will do what she can too to help fight the robots while Robin and Allison (being more sciencey) find a way to deactivate the traps in the arena and the robots.  

Meanwhile, Melvin (Robin's new sidekick from high school) is inside the robot also trying to deactivate the power.  Elise and Starla fight valiantly while Robin uses something to short part of the electric field enough that Allison can open an access panel.  Robin crawls inside since she's smaller.  Allison then does what she can to help the others.

Robin crawls around until she and Melvin find each other.  They work together to take down the power grid.  Things are bad for the other three.  Allison and Elise go down, though not fatally.  Starla does her best Captain America/Gandalf to stand up to the robots alone.  When the power goes out, Starla starts to get her strength back and Allison can use her power to heal quickly and help take down the robots.

Dr. Roboto congratulates the heroes on defeating him.  He says this proves his point about women being just as powerful as men.  So now he'll turn all men into women!  There's something in his cyborg armor that allows him to activate the sex change weapon.

Inside the robot, some stuff comes to life.  Robin is going to sacrifice herself to stop it, but Melvin pushes her to safety and does it instead.

In the throne room the weapon fizzles and Starla and Allison take Dr. Roboto out.  Robin appears later with the body of an unconscious teenage girl--Melvin, now Melanie.  Robin checks on Elise and thanks her for her help and Elise thanks her too.  Then there's a group hug or something.

The epilogue can pretty much stay the same.  

I suppose it'd help if you read the original and remembered it.  Maybe at some point I'd take a day or two and actually rewrite it for a "Special Edition" or "PT Dilloway Cut" or something.  But probably not.

If you've actually read the book, maybe you have suggestions.  Probably not.

In the 2020s, This Forgotten Batman Story Would Make A Good Movie

 Last month for no real reason I revisited some of my old movies.  I started with Watchmen just because I thought I hadn't watched it in a while.  And I still loved it as much as I did before.  To me, Zack Snyder has never topped it.  Sorry, Snyder Cut freaks.  The next night I watched The Dark Knight and I still like most of it, though the final act always rings a little hollow to me.  I always think, why didn't the Joker just give everyone a button to blow up the other boat?  If people could do it anonymously, someone surely would have in seconds.  But making someone have to come forward and do it in front of everyone allowed cowardice to creep in. Even in 2008 he probably could have just made it so someone could text a certain number and it would cause the other boat to blow up.

Then I watched The Dark Knight Rises.  Up to where Batman gets "broken" it's pretty decent.  But after that when it starts trying to echo the classic "No Man's Land" story from the late 90s-early 2000s it gets pretty silly.  And "fixing" Batman's back by punching him.  Oy.  And in the middle of all the stuff in Gotham, Bane flies off to a prison in Africa with Bruce Wayne to dump him there?  I mean so much of it doesn't really make sense.  But like Rogue One, the end really makes up for it.  That ending montage is just so awesome.  And every time for whatever reason the room starts getting dusty when it gets to that part where Bruce's will is read and they show that his old house is being turned into an orphanage named for his parents.  I guess because it just seems like such a great tribute; I mean here's Bruce the orphan helping other orphans in the names of his parents.  I dunno, I just really like it.  And then at the end where "Robin" finds the cave and I always think someone should whisper, "Rise," which is the name of the track on the soundtrack.

Anyway, now that I've vamped a little like a clickbait article, let me get to the point.  I was wondering, how could I make this less silly?  I was thinking maybe they should have done more of a Batman Beyond thing where after Bruce is crippled he trains "Robin" Burke as the new Batman.  But then I wasn't really sure how that fits into the whole rest of the story.  I suppose most of it could have been the same but Bruce could fly "the Bat" while being crippled or something.  Though a lot of it would still be kinda silly.

Then I thought of the Batman storyline in the 90s that came before "Cataclysm," that was the earthquake creating "No Man's Land."  It was called "Contagion" and was about a virus being unleashed in Gotham to destroy the city.  Robin is infected but I think most of the Bat-family of the time is OK.  Then Azrael gets to be a hero because the virus was based on something created by the Order of St. Dumas that created him.  I think he and Catwoman go to get a cure for it.

Anyway, especially in the 2020s, a story about a killer virus would actually make a really good movie.  Maybe it'd hit too close to home, but it'd be a lot less silly than "No Man's Land."  I haven't really puzzled the whole thing out, but basically Ra's al Guhl or whoever unleashes an ancient virus.  Batman has to find the cure before the city--and world--are destroyed.  I suppose that's a bit like Batman Begins only a more realistic virus than the fear toxin thing.  I mean it's more like Outbreak only if it had been in Gotham City.

Probably could have remade The Dark Knight Rises with this instead of the nuke thing.  The scientist guy Bane kidnaps could be the guy who weaponizes the virus.  Bane and Talia want to release the virus to finish Ra's al Guhl's work.  Bruce, Burke, and Selina Kyle work together to find a cure.  I haven't worked out all the details because I'm not sure the disease itself would keep out the CDC or army or whoever else.  I don't know if you really need Bane breaking Batman since the disease might not give him time to recover.

It's just something I was thinking about and since it's Memorial Day and no one cares about blogs, why not?

Amazon Is Your Frenemy, Episode XXX: The Battle Of Who Could Care Less

Since Monday is Memorial Day, how about a war story?  Yes, another thrilling story of a war with Amazon over publishing a book.  Or re-publishing a book.

Really starting last year after the failure of the "Kelly Counts" pseudonym to try to get into the "feminization" game, I decided to start moving books from old pseudonyms I wasn't using anymore under the Eric Filler banner.  Mostly so maybe the stuff would sell a few copies and get some pages read with Kindle Unlimited and make me some money.

What I found out with the Kelly Counts ones were they don't like it if you just change the author name on the cover and on the listing and on the interior.  So, fine, I put "Eric Filler Writing As Kelly Counts" and that seemed to placate them.

So I did all six of the Kelly Counts books and a couple of Ivana Johnson books without too much of a problem.  But when I wanted to update Roomie Swap, published under "Naomi Caged" in 2019 as an experiment to see whether a new name doing erotica could sell more than a new name doing age regression, for some reason Amazon's minions dug in their heels.  They insisted that it would be "confusing" and ruin "the reader experience" and I had to change back to the original.  Seriously, how "confusing" is this:

I mean the cover clearly says, "Eric Filler Writing As Naomi Caged."  The listing features both authors.  The interior also says, "By Eric Filler Writing As Naomi Caged."  What the hell is "confusing" about that?  I mean, for those who can actually read English.

So when they unpublished the book instead of approving it, I just resubmitted it.  And we went through the dance again.  So I resubmitted it a second time.  Then they left it in "In Review" status for 3 days!  Meanwhile, when I would contact them, the smartasses would send a boilerplate email explaining what "In Review" status means.  Which only irritated me more.  I mean, really, I've been doing this for 15 years, much longer than you clowns in India have.  I don't need you to explain that to me.  I need you to get the fuck out of my way.  And really, the story is 32 pages so in three days I could have flown to India and read the thing to them (several times) and flown back home.

Then of course they unpublished it again.  Some genius named "Natalia" claimed:

During our review, we found that the title and author] listed was significantly changed which may cause a misleading customer experience.

We found that your book(s) are misleading because:

• The author name is completely different.

Original author was: Caged, Naomi (AUTHOR) and current author is Filler, Eric (AUTHOR); Caged, Naomi (AUTHOR). Original title was:

Roomie Swap (Gender Swap Erotica) and current title is Roomie Swap.

Um...really?  "Completely different?"  Caged, Naomi is completely different from Caged, Naomi and Filler, Eric.  And Roomie Swap is completely different from Roomie Swap.  Uh-huh.  Sounds legit!

Like with my Vine, it's pretty easy to see why Amazon flunkies stick to vague boilerplate, then shouting "WE HAVE SPOKEN," and finally ignoring customers entirely because when they try to explain the idiotic things they do, it just exposes that they're idiots.  It was very clear and obvious that this was not "completely different" or "confusing" if anyone with a functioning brain cell and basic grasp of English looked at it for more than two seconds.

I fired off another salvo then, listing some of the big-name authors whose publishers have done this same thing and Amazon has no problem with it at all:

Before you reject my book again, maybe you should take a look at all these books that are doing the same thing: 

• https://www.amazon.com/Scratch-One-Michael-Crichton-ebook/dp/B0BV99R7T7
• https://www.amazon.com/Grave-Descend-Michael-Crichton-ebook/dp/B0BV94HWDG
• https://www.amazon.com/Odds-Michael-Crichton-ebook/dp/B0CNR2NT7C
• https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Cool-Michael-Crichton-ebook/dp/B0BV92FFY6/
• https://www.amazon.com/Binary-Michael-Crichton-ebook/dp/B0BV8XRMVP

So why is it you can sell these books but when I do the same thing my book is being rejected and I'm told to keep using a name that hasn't sold a book since 2021?  You wouldn't tell Blackstone Publishing and Michael Crichton's estate they have to keep selling his old books as "John Lange" because that's how they were first published.

And that's just one example.  Here's another one:

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Off-Novel-Violence-Crime-ebook/dp/B004LROX9M

Again, you have no problem with Hard Case Crime and Lawrence Block doing this.  

And of course you have no problem with Scribner putting Stephen King's name on Richard Bachman's books: 

• https://www.amazon.com/Long-Walk-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B018ER7IPK
• https://www.amazon.com/Blaze-Novel-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B000QRIHSO
• https://www.amazon.com/Running-Man-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B018ER7JWW
• https://www.amazon.com/Regulators-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B018ER7JOU
• https://www.amazon.com/Thinner-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B018ER7JVS/
• https://www.amazon.com/Roadwork-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B018ER7INW

Why do you keep discriminating against me?

You can go look up any of those books and you'll see where the publisher was doing the same thing I was trying to do.  Why?  Because "John Lange" doesn't sell as many books as Michael Crichton.  "Richard Bachman" doesn't sell as well as Stephen King.  By the same token "Naomi Caged" doesn't sell as well as Eric Filler.  I mean, pretty much by default since no one had even bought a copy since 2021.  And it was only 99 cents!

This is one of the most annoying things about publishing with Amazon.  There is such a double standard between "real" books by big publishers and books by indie authors.  It's OK for Amazon to sell Game of Thrones, Flowers in the Attic, American Psycho, and probably millions of other books featuring rape, incest, bestiality, and other things that if I do it, my account could be suspended, if not completely shut down.  It's not that I want to write about rape, incest, or bestiality, but it is a double standard that GRR Martin, VC Andrews, or Bret Easton Ellis can write those things and be sold by Amazon and I can't write about those things.

In that case, I think a big part of it is that with indie authors, Amazon can be considered the publisher.  So if some "parents' rights group" gets pissed off and wants to sue, Amazon faces more of a liability.  Whereas with a book published by a "real" publisher Amazon can pass the buck to the big publisher.

In this case, Amazon was trying to stop me from using a tactic that big publishers have used to try to pump up sales of books written under a pseudonym.  That doesn't seem fair, does it?

While they didn't directly reply to me, they did finally publish the book, so that was something.  I can't do a Virtual Voice audiobook but there's no way I'm going to press them on that.  One war is enough.

But it didn't take long for a second skirmish to start!

I published this book May 6th without really any problem:

But it wouldn't do an audiobook and I realized I had left my table of contents in.  So I thought I'd reload it with one created in their stupid Kindle Create program.  I uploaded that that night and waited and waited.  The next morning I check at ten or so and they rejected it.  Why?

Well, it took like 4-5 hours for their email to show up.  They whined that the cover could violate a copyright.  Um, so why did you approve it yesterday?  I didn't change the cover; I only changed the table of contents.  And the cover is two images, so which one do you have a problem with?  Though by then I had already resubmitted it without any changes since I had no idea what they wanted to change.

So of course the smartasses sent me their "In Review" boilerplate again.  Ugh.  Fortunately this time they just approved it the second time.  Hopefully they just leave it at that.

Buuuuut of course not.  About 10 days later I published a bundle of old books.  

I published it without a problem but the next day realized when I copied the table of contents for the description listing the books, I left "Part One Part Two" in one's description.  So I take that off and resubmit the thing.

And the next day get the same bullshit message about the cover.  Um...why?  You approved the cover already and I didn't do anything to the cover.  It's not relevant.  And when they do it twice in a row it's creating a pattern of harassment.  Really it's like cops pulling over people of color in rich neighborhoods; it's hassling people for no actual reason other than to bother those people so they don't go where some assholes think they should be.  I mean I've used stock images for about 15 years now; why are you hassling me about this now?

Anyway, They weren't happy with me saying their question was irrelevant and I take being harassed seriously.  So they didn't approve the changes, so at least for now I left it for sale with the extra words on the description.  Whatevs.

I don't know if someone has been making a fuss about illegal use of stock photos or they just want to steer people to use "AI" or their very limited supply of template images.  It's just another hassle I really don't need right now.

Anyway, have a pleasant Memorial Day weekend.

The Worst Movie Ever Shows The Danger Of Too Much Digital

 There's a new leader in the clubhouse for "Worst Movie Ever Made."  Forget Plan 9 From Outer Space, Creeping Terror, Eegah, Things, Birdemic, or many, many others.  Last month Rifftrax finally released a riff of The Amazing Bulk and it instantly rose to the top of the chart for me.

As you'd expect, The Amazing Bulk is a ripoff of The Incredible Hulk.  It was made in 2008 when the MCU movie came out, but it wasn't actually released until 2012 according to IMDB.  Besides not very good actors, the movie features an overreliance on virtual sets and really awful computer effects.  Imagine if Sin City or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow had used backgrounds that looked like they were from an early 90s PC game.  And used digital props like cars with no steering wheels that look like they were drawn in MS Paint.

And then there's "the Bulk" that's a weird naked purple dude.  And yes the movie shows his ass and wang.  Closeups of his hands literally use toy Hulk hands that were painted purple.

Even the pug in the bad guy's incredibly fake castle lair is animated!  They couldn't find a real dog?!  Or a real rat for the laboratory scenes; I kept waiting for it to say, "Rattrap, Maximize!"  Which would have made for a much better movie.

The silly thing is a lot of this wasn't so out-of-this-world that it needed to lean so heavily on computer backgrounds--especially these computer backgrounds.  I mean a lot of it takes place in alleys, a science lab, and an apartment.  They couldn't find an alley in Los Angeles to film in?  Or a middle school lab that wasn't being used?  Or even the director's apartment or something for the main character's apartment?  

I guess they wanted to save money by using the crappy backgrounds and effects.  But it just looks so crappy and fake.  Ridiculously so.

With all this "AI" stuff going around, there is of course going to be the temptation for would-be filmmakers to use it to create everything from backgrounds to cars to actors.  But one look at Amazing Bulk is why maybe you should take it easy on that stuff.  If you don't have the money to really do it right, it's probably going to look laughably bad.

The same probably already applies to a lot of "AI" generated books.  Just because something is cheap and easy to do, doesn't make it better or even a good idea.

I'm just saying.

Food Fascism Can Be Annoying Or Even Dangerous

 As someone with a lot of dietary conditions and digestive problems, I have to be pretty careful anymore about things I eat and drink.  The problem though is so many food products make decisions for people based on how the company thinks something should taste.  For people like me, those decisions can be just annoying or they can be dangerous.

Take something simple:  ginger tea.  I like to get ginger tea to help with digestion.  But the thing is, most of the "ginger" tea you can get from your local supermarket is not really ginger tea because some company decided you don't really want ginger tea that tastes like ginger.  No, we have to cut it with "sweet orange oil" (Walmart "organic" ginger tea) or with lemongrass, licorice root, peppermint, and a few other things (Yogi "Ginger" tea).  So what you get is bland to sweet with absolutely no ginger taste.  I got some organic ginger from Amazon Vine that was 100% ginger and I could definitely taste the difference between it and the crap in the supermarkets.

Similarly companies that make breakfast sandwiches or burritos will decide that turkey sausage needs to be spicier than pork/beef sausage.  Why?  I guess they figure it won't have enough "flavor" otherwise.  Just like if you buy canned peas, a lot of brands will add sugar because "sweet peas" have to be sweet, right?  I bought a chicken patty TV dinner that didn't say it was spicy but when I bit into one of the patties it was a little spicy.

The thing is, these decisions are basically irreversible.  I mean, I can't really unsweeten the ginger tea if you put sweet orange oil in it.  I can't extract the lemongrass and whatever else if you mix it up with the ginger.  I can't make the turkey sausage or chicken patty un-spicy after you make it spicy.  I can't filter out the sugar you add to sweet peas.

By contrast, if I wanted my ginger tea to have less ginger kick, I could easily add sweetener or mix it with another tea.  If I wanted my turkey sausage sandwich to be spicy, I can just add some sriracha or salsa or some damned thing.  If I want my peas sweet, I can add my own sugar.

The problem with this food fascism is if I have diabetes, I don't want peas with sugar.  I really don't want tea with sweet orange oil either.  If I have acid reflux problems, I don't want some company unilaterally deciding to make turkey sausage spicy.  At best that's annoying and at worst it can give me serious problems.

Then you get things like where a frozen pizza will be fine until some fascists decide they need to make the sauce "zesty" and add a bunch of spices.  Or where they just blatantly lie and call their coffee creamer "sugar free" by replacing sugar with a bunch of corn syrup--which is worse for diabetics than sugar.

Really, I'm an adult; I should be able to make decisions for myself whether something is spicy or sweet.  Some company shouldn't be dictating to me that ginger tea can't taste like ginger or peas can't taste like peas.  

And the problem is sometimes you can't really tell how spicy something might be just from reading a label.  Or there's just so much added crap that you might not even notice some spicy ingredient.  Or it might be something generic like "added spices" or something.  One brand of turkey sausage might have virtually the same "ingredients" and taste spicier than another.  

It's the same when ordering fast food.  One pizza place's wings might not be spicy at all if you get them "naked" or they might still have some residual spice.  The same for chicken tenders where some plain ones might still be a little spicy.  Or also for chicken patties in sandwiches.  There's no real indication of how spicy it is and a little can still be enough to create problems because some company decided to add more "flavor" to the recipe.

(As an aside I've always thought spiciness is the laziest way to add "flavor."  It's really easy to just throw some hot peppers or sriracha or something in there and make something spicy.  And then it usually overpowers anything else, so really who needs any actual flavors?  Just make it hot and people won't notice anything else.  Yawn.)

You can virtue signal by saying, "I make all my food myself."  Hey, awesome.  But I don't always have time (especially in the morning) to make everything from scratch.  So it'd be nice if I could trust that prepackaged foods aren't going to be unnecessarily sweet or spicy.  Isn't there enough to worry about already?

Anyway, what food fascism have you noticed?

#AtoZChallenge Reflections: Dishonorable Mentions

 With the many, many video games that have existed since the 70s there have been some truly great ones but also some stinkers.  So let me mention a few that wound up pretty bad.

ET The Video Game

This one became infamous for not only its terrible gameplay but selling so poorly that thousands of units wound up being hauled to a dump in Alamogordo, New Mexico for internment.  I watched a documentary on that a few years ago where they actually dug up some of the old cartridges for the Atari 2600.

There are plenty of clickbait articles that will probably call this the worst game of all time.  After the success of the ET movie, it was rushed into production.  The programmer basically had about 5 weeks to make a game so it could be on shelves for Christmas.  As you'd expect, the finished product was not very good.  Instead of replicating the movie (at all) you jumped into holes to look for stuff so ET could phone home.  A Federal agent would chase him, I guess.  It was weird and confusing and any kid who got that for Christmas probably wanted to take it back on Boxing Day.

With junk like that, the video game industry soon had a near-fatal crash until the NES came along.

Speaking of...

Friday the 13th

I never tried to play this when I was a kid but it was on one of those fake Gameboy or SNES machines I got from Vine.  This game came out before games like Doom and Mortal Kombat with blood and ripping out spines and stuff.  NES games were pretty bloodless so a game about a serial killer who murders teenagers seems like a pretty bad idea from the start.

The gameplay is more like Legend of Zelda than a fighting game.  You walk around and look for stuff and basically waste a lot of time not murdering people.  You play as some kids and complete important tasks like lighting fireplaces.  The "gameplay" is so ridiculously repetitive, as is the soundtrack, which also for some reason periodically features loud beeps.  Basically you walk down paths and about every two inches zombie things pop up that you throw crap at.  You can go into buildings and blunder around and find Jason, who's wearing a purple tracksuit or something.  

While not as infamous as ET, it was still pretty bad.  Though weirdly none of these "worst of" lists mention it, though most were written by Millennials or Gen Zers who weren't even born when games like this came out.  It was, like ET, a really lame attempt to cash in on a property. 

Speaking of...

Superman 64

This N64 game was based on the animated Superman series--supposedly.  It is on pretty much every list of terrible video games.  Basically the gameplay was difficult and confusing and the graphics were murky, which was explained away with "Kryptonite fog" or that it was a virtual reality simulation.  No matter what, it wound up being pretty awful.

I tried playing it for a few minutes on Retrogames and the controls to make Supes fly were so confusing that I gave up pretty quick.  Of course I didn't have a manual, which might have helped a little bit.  But probably only a little bit.

This wasn't the last time a Superman game disappointed.  The tie-in game for Superman Returns was delayed so it couldn't come out until the fall of 2006, after the movie had already pretty much flopped in theaters.  Was it worth the wait?  Um, no.

Custer's Revenge

My parents wisely never bought this one for the 2600.  This off-brand game features a naked George Custer navigating a battlefield so he can fuck a Native American woman tied to a post.  That was probably cringey back in 1982, let alone in 2024.

Yes, someone really made this and sold it.

Reading a few articles there are some common entries I haven't heard much of:

Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust

I think we had the first of these games on the old IBM PC.  It was pretty great for teenagers in the early 90s.  This eighth title in the series is apparently notoriously bad.  It's basically like that old guy who still wears a leisure suit and gold chains and stuff and tries to hit on young women at a bar.  The humor and graphics are dated and the story is pretty lame.

Shaq Fu

This 1994 game features Shaquille O'Neal but has nothing to do with basketball.  Instead, it's a fighting game.  Shaq is beamed into another dimension and has to fight his way to a kid and return.  It's a pretty vanilla fighting game with a story that makes little sense.  Just in case you thought Steel or Kazam was the worst thing he ever did.

Plumbers Don't Wear Ties

This 1993 game was made for the short-lived 3DO system.  Apparently this "interactive comedy" just used still photos and bad voice-acting as a plumber tries to get laid.  Kind of explains why this system didn't last.

Big Rigs Over the Road Racing

There have been tons of racing games but apparently this is the worst.  You're supposed to haul cargo without getting caught by cops and beat a rival truck, except apparently nothing works except your truck just drives around in vague scenery.

Aliens: Colonial Marines

This game was a victim of its own hype.  Apparently the demos were really great but the finished product was not.  The graphics weren't as good and the gameplay was filled with glitches--or bugs.  Interestingly, a random user examined the code a couple years later and found a typo in the code that caused some of the problems with the alien AI.

#

In my A to Z entries I mentioned some games I didn't really like such as Age of Empires II, Super Conflict, or NHL 2005.  Generally I don't think there are a lot of them I bought that I really hated, except maybe if they were in a bundle of other stuff.  Because games are expensive, I couldn't really throw my money at every dumb tie-in game that came out or every hyped-up new game to hit the market.  Mostly I think when I was trying to find something for the Wii other than the Wii Sports games was really when I bought/rented the most stuff that wasn't great.  Like I said, there was just a lot of stuff that didn't really take advantage of the system.  Most I rented but I bought a couple and resold them later.

So I don't think I really had a lot of duds in my library.  Although I did buy my sisters a couple of cheesy Burger King XBox games.  Those were pretty stupid but then they weren't supposed to be real high-class games.

What bad games have you played?

#AtoZChallenge Reflections: Honorable Mentions

I guess you're supposed to answer a bunch of questions for the official Reflections entry.  Whatever.  A few people commented trying to get me to comment on their blog, but they were blogs I had no interest in.  Like advertising anything, if you advertise your blog on my blog it should be something I might be interested in, not plants or crafting or whatever.  People like that would do better to focus their efforts on more similar blogs.

Of course no one commented on all 26 entries.  I think my brother probably had the most comments.  Generally it seems like people can't be bothered to muster the effort to follow more than a few entries.  So really 26 entries is about 23 too many for most people.

Meanwhile no I didn't really go to a bunch of other blogs or even try to look through the list.  I'm about as lazy as the rest of you when it comes to that.  So sue me.

Anyway, now that that unpleasantness is over, here's a little supplementary entry.

Someone could have made the generic comment, "You sure play a lot of video games."  Which is patently false.  For a poor like me, video games were always expensive, thus my family and me separately never owned a lot of them.  If you look up all the games on RetroGames or something like that there are literally tens of thousands of them, though a lot on that site are different foreign versions of the same game.  Still, I probably never even played 1% of Atari, NES, and SNES games and none for Sega Genesis, GameBoy, or any console after the SNES except the PS2 and again probably not even 1% of the games for the PS2 and maybe 0.00001% of PC games.

Because games were so expensive and we didn't have a lot of them, usually I'd play them quite a few times instead of taking a "one and done" approach.  A lot of Atari and NES games especially I never actually beat because I'm not sure you really could beat them.  Others, like sports games, I'd play through seasons even if there wasn't a dynasty mode.  That was getting more value for my money.

Anyway, the A to Z format makes it hard to fit everything in I might want to talk about.  So here are some that didn't make the cut.

RealSports Baseball (Atari 2600)

The original Atari baseball game was called Home Run and we had that for our 2600 in the early 80s.  It was a pretty silly thing where there was a batter and pitcher and maybe like 3 fielders.  It was not a very accurate game.  RealSports Baseball we got I want to say from Odd Lots (what was later Big Lots, though not in the same location) for not very much.  It was a far more accurate game in that you had the right number of players, though of course they were just pink blobby guys and yellow blobby guys.  Or whatever.

My brother and I would make lineups on notebook paper with players named after old stuffed toys or just stupid made up names like "Ty Lenol."  We'd keep score on the paper and all that, though in reality all of the players in the game were exactly the same.  The game itself wasn't great but we made it more fun than it should have been.

There was a similar game for the Atari 7800 that had better graphics but I don't think we played that one quite as much.

Ninja Golf

This game for the Atari 7800 is exactly what the title suggests:  you're a ninja playing golf!  You start each level teeing off and as you run to where your ball lands, you have to fight ninjas and groundhogs or something that throw mud.  

When you get to the green, you have to chuck throwing stars at a dragon thingy. 

It behooves you to hit the ball well so you have fewer ninjas to deal with.

It's a silly game and yet pretty fun too.  It's the kind of thing I'd love to see in real life.  Then I might actually watch golf.

Super Empire Strikes Back

As you'd expect there are a lot of Star Wars games for the various consoles, starting I think with Empire Strikes Back for the 2600 where you flew a snowspeeder and tried to kill AT-ATs though eventually they'd overwhelm you and destroy the shield generator.

The Empire game for the SNES I played a bunch of times for no real reason other than it's my favorite movie and I was bored.  You play through pretty much the whole movie, mostly as Luke.  It's mostly running and jumping in Luke's pilot suit with his pistol and lightsaber (see picture above), which you get to select between.  In the opening Hoth levels you sometimes get the Tauntaun to ride.  You can jump on things that give you different Force powers and health and whatever as well.  There are levels to pilot the snowspeeder and probably the Millennium Falcon.  Of course you have to fight Vader in the epic duel, which was awesome when I won.  I tried the games for the other two movies but didn't really like them as much.

Bully

The people behind the Grand Theft Auto games basically translated that experience to prep school, which sounds weird and yet was still pretty fun.  You play as Jimmy Gates, a tough kid who's sent to a boarding school.  At first you run around the school and you can pick fights and go to classes and do other stuff.  Later you can go outside the gates and even into the nearby town, where you can steal bikes to get around.

Instead of guns, you have a slingshot and for your BFG you get a potato gun.  There is some kind of campaign but I forget exactly what it is right now.  Like The Godfather, Simpsons Hit & Run, Need for Speed, or even Spider-Man 2 you can do the missions or just fuck around if you want.  It's a pretty fun game, especially if all the violence and drugs and whatever in GTA is too much for you.

Rocky Legends

For fans of the Rocky movies, even those who came late to it like me when AMC used to show those all the time, this game is pretty awesome.  It has pretty much every boxer in the Rocky universe from the eponymous Rocky to Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago, Tommy Gunn, Spider Rico, and you can even unlock a younger version of Rocky's trainer/manager Mick!  There are also some characters just made up to fill the ranks.

You can do random bouts or there's like a campaign mode where you try to move your boxer up the ladder to become heavyweight champion of the world.  While it is Rocky Legends you can be Apollo or Clubber Lang or Ivan Drago or Tommy Gunn or whoever, though I don't think there was a Create-A-Character generator, which would have been cool.  At first you fight crappy boxers in crappy arenas--even makeshift ones on the docks or in prison if you're Clubber--and eventually you get to fight in big sports arenas against major opponents.  You have to train to increase your stats and master combos and all that stuff.  It was pretty neat.

F-15 Strike Eagle

My brother and I had fun with this one when we rented it a couple of times for SNES.  While I think there is a one-player mode we did it more realistically by sharing the workload.  My brother would pilot and I'd drop the bombs and stuff--which is how they did it in real life.  I don't think we ever bought the game, just rented it a few times.  I forget what the missions were but basically your F-15E Strike Eagle would have to go bomb stuff and dogfight enemy fighters.  By itself of course, unlike in real life.

My brother was more into the flight simulators both the more realistic ones and sci-fi ones like X-Wing and TIE Fighter and their various spinoffs.  I tried those but wasn't all that good at them.

Fury3

This was one sorta-flight simulator I played.  I got a demo somewhere that let you play the first 3 levels.  I thought it was fun so eventually I bought the whole game.  I think I got the control stick to go with it too.

The game was made by Microsoft for Windows 95 and has you fly around in a ship to blow up alien bad guys.  I don't really remember that much about it and I don't think I still have a copy, but I did rip an MP3 of the theme song that came with the game.  I still have that on various MP3 players and discs.

Star Fox

Another sorta-flight simulator that at the time was revolutionary for its 3D graphics on the SNES.  You play as Fox McCloud, who is obviously a fox, and a few other anthropomorphized animals like a falcon, rabbit, and frog.  You have to blow up bad guys on the ground and go through rings and stuff.  I think my brother and I beat it or at least came pretty close to it at some point.

This seems ripe to have a movie or TV show or something made for it though maybe it's not the most popular property in the Nintendo empire.  There were I guess a few sequels for the N64 and GameBoy and whatever but I never played those.

Sim City

Long before The Sims in the 2000s there was Sim City.  You simulate a city, hence the name.  You got squares of Residential, Commercial, and Industrial zones along with power plants, police stations, and fire departments.  You also had to build roads, railroad tracks, and power lines.  And manage pollution, crime, taxes, and other issues like the occasional tornado or Bowser attack.

Your assistant is this green-haired Groucho Marx-Troll guy who'd tell you about problems or congratulate you on doing an awesome job--usually the former.  The goal was to go from a village or whatever to a metropolis and stay there.  But that's really hard to do because you only have so much land and you'll need more and more power and if you use coal plants that creates pollution while nuclear plants can melt down.  And residential zones near power plants and industrial areas won't amount to much.

Far more fun was to build your city a little and then rain down all the disasters at once:  fire, flood, tornado, plane crash, and the aforementioned Bowser who is the bad guy from Super Mario Bros  standing in for Godzilla.  The disasters would leave your neat square zones all ragged and stuff.  Or if the disasters aren't working, you can just bulldoze shit yourself.

If you try to play normally it's pretty annoying in that you'll probably run out of money fast.  The Catch-22 is you need money and you can basically only get it from taxes.  But if you raise taxes over 7% people and businesses leave.  If you lower taxes you get more people and business but you won't have the money to maintain your roads/tracks, power lines, and emergency services.

Like Age of Empires, I always liked using the cheat that gives you $999,999 which is the maximum amount you can have.  It's a little complicated but I found it on Google.  Anyway, with that you can then lower your taxes to 0% and your city will grow a lot faster.  The problem then is like Monopoly it starts to get boring once you develop most of the land.  There's not a lot then to do except watch stuff grow--or not--and usually it'll get stuck around 150,000 people because the rent is too damned high and there's too much pollution and you really have no way to deal with any of it.  At that point, I'd usually start triggering disasters to tear it all down.

One neat little thing is as your city grows, the music changes.  At first it's this really sleepy New Age type stuff.  By the time you get to a metropolis, it's this hard-driving synth track because your city is so busy and stuff, right?

We had this for SNES but there was also a PC version and probably other platforms.  They made Sim City 2000 which was a more futuristic version and then some other Sim games, but I never really played those until The Sims on PS2 and The Sims 2-4 on PC.  I think you know all about those. lol

Roller Coaster Tycoon

This was similar to a Sim game only it's focused entirely on a theme park.  You have to put in rides, booths for games/food, and facilities like bathrooms.  You can design roller coasters.  Like a Sim game you have to keep your customers happy and keep the park growing.  And while you can't trigger disasters like a Bowser attack or tornado, you can take bits out of the roller coasters so people will fall off or pick people up to drop them into water or something.  Like a Sim game that can become more fun once the park is about as developed as you can get it and the game plateaus.  We had this for PC but it might have been for consoles too.

Donkey Kong Country

I think I only rented this a couple of times, but it was a really fun game.  It was similar to the Super Mario World only you play as Donkey Kong on a jungle island.  While originally Donkey Kong was a villain, in this game he's the hero.  I forget what exactly your end goal was but you had to go through different worlds.  You jump on things and over things and swing from vines and stuff.  Instead of coins there were bananas because monkeys and bananas, right?  

Instead of Luigi you had Diddy Kong who is sort of the Robin to Donkey's Batman.  You could play single-player with both characters and basically tap one in or out sort of like tag team wrestling.  Donkey was obviously stronger but Diddy was faster and more agile so sometimes you might want him.

Another neat feature was you could ride animals like a rhino that would knock bad guys and other stuff out of the way.  There were other animals that might let you swim or fly or whatever.

Like the Mario games there were also minigames at some point.  You could talk to other characters like Grampy Kong or whoever.  In levels there were hidden letter blocks to spell "KONG" or something; if you got the whole word you'd get an extra life.  I tried playing it on Retrogames but didn't get too far.  I've never been great at those reflex games where you're always jumping or punching or whatever.

There was a sequel where Donkey Kong is captured and you have to play as Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong to rescue him.  I don't think I rented that as much but it was good too.

Some of the stuff from these games made it into the 2023 Mario Bros movie.

Robocop vs The Terminator

This is another SNES game I rented once or twice.  The idea would actually be a pretty cool crossover movie that could revive both franchises.  The story of the game is that in the future, the resistance finds out that Robocop's mind becomes merged with SkyNet and that's how it creates Terminators and stuff like that.  So the resistance sends a human named Flo back to Detroit to kill Robocop.  But of course she doesn't and eventually Robocop finds out what's going on and gets sent to the future to destroy SkyNet.

The game itself is just a basic side-scroller where you walk and jump as Robocop and use a variety of weapons to kill punks and eventually Terminators.  And fight ED-209 and stuff.  I played it a little on Retrogames and was stuck on the first level until I found out this weird trick where if you climb a ladder and hold down X & A as you go, you can climb up, up, and away!  Basically into the sky.  So then you can jump off the ladder and get above a lot of what's going on.  It didn't work so well in the next level when I accidentally got stuck in a crevice and had to restart.

Anyway, I like the story of the game better than the actual game itself.  There was a four-issue tie-in comic book that I haven't read and is probably only available in paper.  I suppose the timeline of Robocop and timeline of the original Terminator movies wouldn't really work since Robocop is supposed to be "the near future" and "Judgment Day" was supposed to be 1997.  Though with all the crap they've done with Terminator since the second one it probably wouldn't matter anymore.  If they could solve the licensing issues and such it could be pretty awesome.

Grand Slam Tennis

Probably my most favorite Wii game after the Wii Sports one.  It's the game that helped me (sorta) understand tennis.  Basically you can make a player and play in the grand slam tournaments:  French Open, Wimbledon, US Open, and Australian Open--I think.  I made one male player (Spot Mutt II) and one female player (Emma Earl) and I think maybe the female one did better.

I actually did pretty well in the Australian Open with Emma I think.  The caveat was I had to use the simplified mode where the computer did the running so I didn't need to use the stupid "nunchuk" which I never really got used to.

Popstar

This was a goofy little DOS game on the PC.  It was only text, though like a Sims-type game.  You could enter a name and then some song names and you'd try to conquer the world of music.  Sometimes you might have a hit song and be top of the charts and other times you'd pretty much be in the gutter and have to try to fight your way back up.  You also had to manage your dude's health because if you tour and/or record too much he/she would get ill.  There were things where you could go to a rest home for a few weeks or to "Froggyland" the amusement park.  I don't think you could do some stuff real popstars do like drugs or screwing groupies.  For a silly little DOS game it was pretty fun.

Friday we'll get into the other end of the spectrum with some Dishonorable Mentions.

How You--Yes, YOU!--Can Pick My #AtoZChallenge Next Year!

Here was an idea I had for next year's A to Z:  Greatest Hits!  Not the music type.  I mean from my A to Z Challenges over the years.  Then I thought it'd maybe be better to just focus on the toy ones I did because they're the most similar.  Maybe call it "The Toys That Made Me" or something.

I made a crude ballot on Google Forms.  One vote per letter!  The numbers correspond to 2017, 2018, 2021-2023 as follows

1. Transformers
2. GI Joe
3. Star Wars Black Series
4. Marvel Legends
5. DC Multiverse

So there we go, the complete list.  Some of those are pretty lame and some would be a hard choice.  I was thinking if there's a tie or maybe just for the hell of it I might mix up a couple of entries.  Like I could have Bats vs Boba Fett or Wolverine vs Wonder Woman or something like that.

It's a silly way to waste a little time anyhow.  Vote for your favorites.  If the form doesn't work, vote in the comments.

The Catch-22 Of Book Marketing

 Last month Michael Offutt's IWSG post ruminated on book marketing and how most of us are on our own when it comes to that.  It reminded me of a post I wrote not quite 2 years ago after reading Donald Westlake's The Hook.  

That book, written in 1999-2000 or so, was about a struggling midlist author who ghostwrites a book for a famous author who's blocked.  And then mayhem ensues.  One point I made in my blog post was that the struggling author was in part struggling because publishers didn't want to waste resources backing a loser so they'd pretty much just back their biggest clients.  "Midlist" authors or smaller fish had to find ways to do the marketing themselves.

In other words, this isn't a new phenomenon.  It's something that's been happening at least 25 years now and probably longer.  Then I wondered why this might be.  This was obviously long before "AI," smartphones, and even blogs.  The answer is pretty simple though:  in the 80s and 90s big conglomerates were buying publishers and larger publishers were merging to make even larger publishing conglomerates.

The thing is when you're part of a big conglomerate or just a big company on your own, you're going to have executives who probably don't really care about the creative stuff.  They care about the bottom line.  And with mergers and stuff you're going to have managers wanting to show how efficient they can make things so they can get promotions and bonuses--or at least not get fired.  (The latter is sort of the topic of another Westlake book from around the same time called The Ax where a guy gets laid off and starts murdering people he thinks are ahead of him for a job.  In case you're wondering why middle managers might want to keep their jobs or get promoted.)

The unfortunate side effect of all this "efficiency" and cost-cutting is that the marketing departments are going to focus on the winners.  They're going to focus on the big-time authors like Stephen King, James Patterson, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, or whoever else was big back at the start of the new millennium.  That means that A) midlist and smaller authors are basically set adrift and B) It leads to this system where the rich get richer and most everyone else gets screwed.

There are still ways around it of course.  One way I actually talked about in Where You Belong back in 2008:  get your book on Oprah!  (Or Today or wherever these days.)  Frost Devereaux edits the book of an African writer and when the book is chosen for Oprah's book club, it becomes a smash hit.  Meanwhile, Frost's books that aren't featured on TV talk shows do OK but not well enough where he's going to be independently wealthy.

Another obvious way is if you can win a major award like the Pulitzer, National Book Award, or Booker Prize in the UK.  Then the publisher might want to put some money behind your book just for the prestige.

Bringing up another path to success:  Hollywood!  A lot of adaptations get stuck in "development hell" or fail but if your book gets made into a big-time movie or streaming miniseries then you'll probably sell a bunch of copies and probably get on the talk shows and such.  And obviously the publisher will want to put out a new edition with a sticker proclaiming it's "Now A Major Motion Picture" or streaming series.

Of course the chances that most authors can do any of that is pretty remote.  You can always try to do what Eric Filler did:  find a niche in somewhat the right time and exploit the hell out of it.  You won't win awards or get on talk shows, but you might make more than most indie books.

The 2002 Lawrence Block book Small Town has another way to succeed without a lot of marketing:  get accused of a crime!  When an author (kind of a Block surrogate, I assume) is accused of murdering a woman, he ends up getting a publishing contract worth over $3M!  You don't want to actually commit a crime, but remember what they say:  There's no such thing as bad publicity.  Maybe people think you're a murderer, but at least they're thinking of you!  And a sharp publisher will take advantage of that to get your books on shelves.

Those are ways to succeed if you're not good at marketing.  You might be good at marketing though.  If you can be an "influencer" and get on "Book Tok" and all that, these days you really don't hardly need a publisher.  You can do just about everything yourself and keep most of the money.  But the obvious problem is the reason a lot of authors are authors is that they're not perky and cute and thus not suited for the Book Tok crowd.  Which is why most authors are screwed.  

Not to sound too perky or cute, but something to remember is perseverance.  A lot of authors didn't succeed on their first book.  It took four books until my hero John Irving found success with The World According to Garp.  John Grisham had a couple of books before The Firm was a success.  Michael Crichton wrote a bunch of books (some under pseudonyms) before Jurassic Park made him a superstar author.  And so on.  Point being, maybe your first book doesn't hit right away, but you plug along and get one success and people might start looking into what else you have available.  So don't get too discouraged right away...wait a few books and then get discouraged. 

Anyway, I think it all goes back to corporatizing the publishing business.  It's unfortunate but really it's not much different from movies, TV, or music.  For most creators then it winds up being a Catch-22 where they need to promote themselves but how can they promote themselves when they don't have any money because they can't sell any books/movies/episodes/songs without decent marketing?  You have to hope the piddly low-cost marketing options available to you (newsletters, social media, websites, review sites, etc) will do something.  Or you luck into one of those scenarios above.  Or maybe you'll win the lottery and can pay for it with that.  The odds are about as good.

Next week is A to Z Challenge Follow-Up Week with 2 "Reflection" entries and how YOU can help decide next year's posts!

When It Comes Down To It, Reboots Top Prequels and Revivals

 Way back in March I read the middling reviews for the new Ghostbusters movie and finally watched Men in Black International and thought, "You know, not everything needs to be a franchise."  Both of those "franchises" started with one good movie and then a crappy sequel.  In MIB's case there was an OK second sequel while Ghostbusters had a reboot people didn't care for and I never watched.  Then they did revival movies that were...meh.  Only Ghostbusters got a sequel to its revival that from the reviews is also meh.

So really they could have each just made one movie and people wouldn't have missed a lot.  Then I got thinking about other revivals like Star Wars Episodes VII-IX.  I actually liked Force Awakens when it came out as a palate cleanser to the lame prequels and because I thought it would set up something better.  But then thanks to Rian Johnson and the panicky studio the whole thing imploded.

Other revivals like Scream 4-6, Halloween-Halloween Ends, Terminator Dark Fate, Indiana Jones 4-5, Blade Runner 2049, and the ones mentioned above didn't do much for me either.  I'm not sure there really has been a big franchise revival I actually liked.  Maybe I'll think of one before this posts.

Meanwhile, prequels also don't have a great track record to me.  Star Wars Episodes I-III really got the prequel train running--and it almost instantly derailed.  Yet studios haven't stopped trying with crap like X-Men Origins Wolverine, GI Joe Origins Snake-Eyes, Terminator Salvation, Prometheus, and a slew of horror ones like the recent First Omen.  About the only "prequels" that weren't terrible were X-Men First Class-Dark Phoenix, though by the end it was hard to even call those prequels since there was no way in hell they could actually connect to the original 2000 movie.  Fox's Planet of the Apes movies from Rise to the current Kingdom are also good prequels though similarly I'm not sure at this point how much they really line up to the original movies.  Besides Episodes I-III, Solo was meh but Rogue One was OK--especially the end when Vader brings the pain.

To my surprise, it turns out reboots actually have a better track record.  The Nolan Batman movies were great and I liked The Batman too.  The Spider-Man reboots were OK, though the second Garfield one got sidetracked by the studio wanting to jam too much in.  Similarly, Man of Steel was an OK reboot but the studio got greedy and the franchise lost its way.  I'm not a fan of the Roger Moore James Bond but On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The Living Daylights, and Goldeneye were good reboots and the Daniel Craig ones weren't awful, especially Skyfall and No Time to Die.  The 2014 Ninja Turtles movie surprised me by not being utterly terrible and the recent Mutant Mayhem wasn't bad.  There have been less good reboots like Terminator Genisys, Nightmare on Elm Street, or the recent Road House.  Some like the 2019 Hellboy or Rob Zombie's Halloween are basically a push.  I didn't like the first two Star Trek reboot movies but other people did.  Beyond was decent though not as many people watched it.

Anyway, I think if you look at the averages, reboots have a better track record than prequels and revivals.  So why do studios keep doing prequels and revivals?  Prequels I suppose it's when they've run out of ideas for sequels and in the case of The First Omen it'd be really hard to do a revival since it was so long ago.  Or like with the Star Wars ones I doubt Lucas could have gotten all the original actors to do a sequel even if he'd wanted to in 1997.

Revivals I think there's this idea that having familiar names involved will be comforting to people and get them to watch the movie.  The problem though is if you say Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher are in a Star Wars movie, I really don't want these geriatric versions who can hardly do anything.  Same for Ghostbusters:  I don't want old Bill Murray who's obviously just cashing a paycheck; I want the original, good version.  The problem is until deepfake gets better or someone invents a time machine where you could scoop those actors out of the 80s to make a new movie, it ends up not being very satisfying.  The "legacy" stars are too old to do much most of the time and the new characters wind up being underdeveloped so they end up not being memorable.

I guess the good thing with reboots is the directors/writers have more of a blank canvas.  That gives them more freedom to create characters.  They don't have to shove a bunch of old-timers in while making sure they don't tax the geezers too much.  They also don't have to line up to events that have already happened or have that weird thing where stuff looks better in the past than in the original movies.  If you're doing a Batman, Spider-Man, or Bond reboot there are of course certain things you have to do, but still as we've seen there are different ways to do it.

So really, while making actual new stuff would be best, of the three alternatives, reboots are the best.  And I don't think it's even that close, but maybe you disagree.  What are your favorite prequels, revivals, and reboots?