The Second Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children Trilogy Is Spoiled By Bad Plotting

A few years ago I read the first three books in the Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series.  I even wrote an article comparing the first book and the movie, which strangely was made as a one-off with no real attempt to make it a franchise.  For the most part I liked the first three books.

Eventually I got the next three books on sale and so started to read these.  To set it up, the series is about a kid in Florida named Jacob who finds out that his grandpa was a "peculiar," which is sort of like a mutant in X-Men.  His grandpa's power was he could see and control evil monsters called "hollows" that no one else could see.  Jacob soon finds he has this power when he goes to Wales and finds a "time loop" where the titular Miss Peregrine and her peculiar children are living.  

Jacob falls in love with Emma, a teenage girl with fire powers.  She was also his grandpa's girlfriend until he left the time loop to have a normal life while she stayed and so never got any older than sixteen.

Then the loop is destroyed by Miss Peregrine's evil brother Caul and she's kidnapped (or birdnapped) and Jacob and Emma and the rest have to flee and go save her.  But except for Jacob the others can only stay outside time loops a very short time or they'll suddenly age rapidly until they pretty much turn to dust.  They go to various loops and ultimately a place called the "Library of Souls" where the souls of ancient peculiars are kept and Caul wants to use to make himself a god and take over the world.  Jacob and company stop him and in the process Emma and the other peculiar kids get their clocks reset so they will now age normally.

After Caul is defeated, Jacob goes home and starts wondering if it's all a dream...until Miss Peregrine, Emma, and everyone else shows up in Florida.

So the fourth book starts off with the fallout of this.  Miss Peregrine has to put Jacob's parents to sleep and then wipe their memories.  The parents then are implanted with a suggestion to go on a vacation to Asia for a long time--something I already did in the first Scarlet Knight book back in 2009.  Eat it, Ransom Riggs!  So this way we don't have to worry about the parents anymore.

Then some lip service is given to showing these kids from 1940 the modern world and getting them modern clothes.  About then the first book is almost half over and there doesn't really seem like a plot.  But then it finally starts in earnest when Jacob and Emma find his grandpa's secret lair and undertake a mission to go to New York to find a new peculiar girl.

The trip of course is not simple as they run across some highwaymen and take a detour back into 1960s America, which becomes awkward when they pick up a black kid and he can't go into diners because they're segregated.  Eventually they get back to the present and find an Indian (from Bombay) girl named Noor who has a weird power where she can swallow light to create darkness and then barf it back up or some shit like that.

There are people with black SUVs and helicopters and stuff who chase them and then they get captured by a creepy kid who turns victims into dolls and sells the ones she doesn't want into slavery.  Only with Miss Peregrine's help can Jacob and most of the others get free--except Noor, who remains captive.  So then he goes back to rescue her.

This fourth book was really poorly paced with things really slow in the first two-thirds and then hitting overdrive at the end.  But what really irked me starting with this book is the way the author sidelines Emma.  It's kind of like one of those sitcom things where something happens to sabotage her relationship with Jacob to set him up with someone else.  In this case Jacob finds out Emma called his grandpa when they were in the 60s.  They didn't see each other or kiss or anything, but still he takes this as a sign she's not over his grandpa and so they break up.

Which frees Jacob up to go after Noor in the next book.  And then Emma is relegated to a secondary character and really not given much to do the rest of the series.  I really didn't like it because it was so obvious what the author was doing.  Really I think there were a couple of factors here:

1. The relationship between Emma and Jacob was always a little creepy with her essentially being old enough to be his grandma.
2. Since this was not an erotica book, there was really nowhere for their relationship to go after they professed their love and made out.  And being only 16, they weren't going to get married or have babies.
3. And also Emma is just an ordinary white girl and there's not a ton of diversity in the original group of peculiars.

So maybe for those reasons (and others) Emma has to do something to poison her relationship with Jacob.  Then he can get together with Noor, who's the same age as him (literally), is a fresh relationship, and a person of color for added diversity.

It always bugs me when you can see behind the curtain to the author pulling levers and turning wheels to make the story work a certain way.  It takes me out of the story itself.

Besides that, there were a couple of retcons that made me think of the crappy Star Wars sequels.  

Something else that happens in the fifth book is all those dudes with black SUVs and helicopters and stuff chasing Noor turn out to be "wights," the bad guys from the first three books.  Which seemed like a retcon after someone mentioned in the fourth book there was a secret society of normal humans chasing after peculiars.  But, um, nope that's not really a thing now.  I guess the author decided that was going to make the plot too complicated, or else he decided to do something different.  Still, it was some Rise of Skywalker shit.

In the fifth book it's mentioned that Noor is part of "the Seven" who are prophesized to prevent an apocalyptic war and stop Caul.  Fast-forward to the last book and then it says that all of these Seven are like Noor.  OK, fine.  Pretty unoriginal, but whatever.

And then when we find out four of the Seven are dead, well, you only actually need one; the other six are just spares.  What?  So why did they even need to bother going through a hellish World War I loop to find these others when they didn't even need them?  And the two they do find get killed by Caul anyway because Mary Sue Noor has to be the one to defeat him on her own.  It was another really obvious retcon, like the author couldn't think of six other neat Peculiars so he just changed them all to the same thing.  And then he didn't want to juggle six new characters so he just used two and said the rest didn't matter.

Something else that was Star Wars like was the fourth book didn't really set up a new villain of note.  There were just those random highwaymen and bad guys with SUVs and helicopters and then the evil Peculiars near the end.  So then just like the Star Wars movies it goes back to the villain of the original trilogy.  But to Riggs's credit, at least he established in book 5 that they were trying to free Caul from his prison.  He didn't just start book 6 saying, "Hey, Caul's back!"  I mean, that would be about the stupidest thing ever, right?

Stuff like that really ruined this second trilogy of books.  With the messy plotting, I start wondering if this was just a cash grab because the first three books were pretty successful.  And maybe the author didn't have anything else going on.  So just throw together some more books in this successful series.

Like someone ranted about Second Chance, I call betrayal!  Betrayal!  Because with Miss Peregrine and the kids coming to Florida you'd think they would stay there and join the modern world, but nope.  Most of them are in another time loop called "Devil's Acre" in Victorian-era London most of the time.  And you have to think those sort of MIB-type guys would have tied into a plot about the conflict between peculiars and normals in the modern world...but nah, let's just get back to wights and Caul and all that.  Why try anything new?  Which again is like the Star Wars sequels, only instead of Rian Johnson fucking it up the author kind of fucked things up himself.  Or maybe his editors fucked it up.

And in the end everything pretty much goes back to where it was at the very start, except Jacob and Noor are in Miss Peregrine's old house with the other kids.  So what was the freaking point?  They're in practically the same loop and while Caul is defeated, most everyone is just doing what they were doing before.  I'm sure people considered that a happy ending, but it made it all kind of pointless.

Anyway, it just didn't work as well.  So you definitely don't need to read those three books.

What Does Misogyny and Racism Cost You?

 On Twitter one day there was a Tweet about something all too common, and I would have favorited it or something but I didn't and now I can't find it because Twitter and Facebook algorithms make finding stuff all but impossible sometimes.  Anyway, a woman who works for the horror magazine Fangoria was wearing a T-shirt for the magazine.  Then a guy comes up and starts questioning whether she knows what that magazine is and goes into the whole "women can't get horror movies" despite that it's 2022 and women have starred in horror movies, written horror movies, and directed horror movies.  But work for a horror magazine?  Nope, inconceivable!

Unfortunately the woman's story is pretty common so it didn't stick with me as much as it should.  Another person's comment, though, really stuck in my brain.  That was that this guy really missed a chance to have a good conversation and learn something because he was such an asshole.  By going straight into judging the woman and mansplaining and generally being a dick, he lost the opportunity to actually have an interesting discussion with someone who maybe has a pretty cool job.

That's a problem with misogyny and racism and discrimination in all its other forms in general:  it robs you of the chance to really broaden your knowledge about the world and just to have some cool experiences.  Approaching someone hostilely just because of their gender or skin color or religion takes away the chance for anything good to happen before you even open your mouth.

And really you could also include objectifying women.  I mean if you're a guy and you see a cute girl and instantly start throwing out lame pickup lines, it doesn't give you a chance to actually talk to her.  More than likely she'll get annoyed by your lame advances and it'll spoil her evening.  Instead of going right into horn dog mode, maybe try acting like she's a human being.  Once you know her a little better, then maybe she won't mind you being a horn dog. 

In the example above, if the man had gone in with an open mind and just said, "That's a cool shirt."  Then the woman might have said, "Yeah, I work for Fangoria."  And the guy could have said, "Really, that's awesome!"  And then they could have had a pleasant discussion about horror movies and books and whatever.  Instead of it being a hostile encounter that ends up with a lot of hurt feelings and outrage.

On Facebook, the Chive posted someone's Instagram story from 4 years ago.  It's about a black guy and his son who invite a lonely old white guy to sit with them during March Madness:

I think you can see the difference between this story and the other one.  When you approach people with kindness instead of hostility, the result is much better.  You get more flies or bees or whatever with honey and all that.

There was another similar story recently when racist "fans" took to social media to attack Moses Ingram playing Inquisitor Reva in Obi-Wan Kenobi.  It's really stupid, not just because of the obvious racism but because her casting was probably announced a year or more ago and the show is already in the can, so why bother attacking her now?  What good can come of it?  All I can think is it's to get attention and so the next time they're casting a Star Wars show maybe they'll have all white people. [eye roll]  It got to the point where star and executive producer Ewan McGregor had to record a message to basically tell "fans" to STFU.  And like with that first example, it really distracts from what could have simply been nice conversations about a TV show.  Instead we had to twist it into something awful and ugly like Darth Vader when he's not in the armor.  Why is this the world we live in?  Why can't we just live and let live instead of trying to control people all the time?

Really as writers we should try to approach people with an open mind because learning about people helps to make better characters and give you more ideas for stories.  It's something we should do online as well as in person, not just attacking someone because they're a woman or black or Muslim or a Trump supporter.

After all, what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

Why Doesn't Book Success Equal Movie Success?

 On Twitter Forbes movie critic Scott Mendelson was talking about how 2012's The Hunger Games was the last "new-to-cinema" franchise.  I read the article mostly because I was confused what "new-to-cinema" means.  I guess it means something that hasn't been made into a movie before.  Though really a lot of the Marvel and DC properties like Ant-Man, Black Panther, Aquaman, and Shazam never had a movie made before, but I guess we're counting the larger MCU and DCEU in general.

Anyway, why is it that there hasn't been another big franchise adapted from a book or (gods forbid) original franchise since 2012?  As I commented, it wasn't for a lack of trying.  I mean, after Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games, Hollywood greenlit a lot of successful YA books and series like Divergent, The Maze Runner, Percy Jackson, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, The Girl With All the Gifts, Mortal Engines, The Golden Compass, The Giver, and older series like Narnia or A Wrinkle in Time.  None of those really became huge franchises.  Divergent and Maze Runner probably came closest but fizzled after two movies.

The only explanation I can come up with is none of those books/series were quite the global phenomenon of Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games.  I mean they were obviously successful books, especially Narnia or A Wrinkle in Time that have been staples for decades, but they weren't really the kind of books where people were lining up around the block the day the latest book came out.  The thing with those other three series is they were popular enough that not just teens and kids were reading them but adults too.  And so when the movies came out, a large proportion of those readers would go watch the movies.  A book/series that's successful but not wildly so has less of an audience to draw from.  And one that has been read for decades probably just doesn't have the rabid fervor to generate a lot of ticket sales.

That's my theory at any rate.  Maybe if I felt like doing a lot of research I could prove it.  Another factor is since 2012 the MCU exploded with a bunch more franchises.  DC came out with its ill-conceived universe.  Star Wars and Jurassic Park made ill-conceived comebacks.  It kind of makes it harder for other properties to get successful.  There's only so much time and money available.  

Maybe if another YA series gets wildly successful, it can become a huge success--provided it doesn't get scooped up by Netflix or another streaming service first.  I think studios might be more willing to go that option as a "safe" alternative because you can spend less money and it's easier and less quantifiable to be "successful" on streaming than in movie theaters these days.

Besides YA, Hollywood has tried adapting other successful series like 50 Shades of Grey and those Lisbeth Salander books but those really fizzled after one movie, though I think they did make all those stupid 50 Shades books into movies.  Some books like Gone Girl were adapted successfully but were not franchises.

The most successful series in this century really have been based off comic books, toys, and one or two originals like the Fast and Furious movies.  Not a lot based off actual non-comic books.

Be Careful Where You Dump Your Liberal Guilt

[Note:  I wrote this before the Uvalde massacre, which only makes this seem even more relevant.]

I don't want to seem like a Trump supporter or an apologist for idiots who bitch about "Critical Race Theory" or really to whine about "both sides" but when I see something like this on Facebook, I get a little irritated.

NOTE:  I added the apostrophe to "ITS" because it bugged me.

This seems as paranoid a delusion as the people who talk about "Pizzagate" or JFK Jr. is alive and supporting Trump.  What it suggests is that every teacher you had in grade school, junior high, and high school was a racist or friend of racism.

Which is utter, complete bullshit.  I think about my history teachers and sure they were all white but I don't think any of them were racist.  They didn't have Confederate flags and use the "n" word and stuff like that.

If you think practically--which many fellow liberals have a hard time doing--teachers have a hard enough time of it as it is.  Too many kids, not enough money for supplies, ancient textbooks, annoying parents, dumb administrators--and that was before mass shootings and Covid.  The last thing they need is some jerk dumping liberal guilt all over them like the pig's blood on Carrie.

What it reminds me of is when soldiers were coming back from Vietnam and jerk protestors would throw paint or blood on them and call them "baby killers" and shit.  Most of the troops back then were drafted and didn't even want to be there but unlike Trump or George W they couldn't get a doctor's note or hide in Canada or Mexico like other "brave" souls.  They didn't start the war or really have any power to stop it, so why dump on them--literally in some cases?

Thinking back to my schooling, my teachers barely had time to cover all the basic shit like Columbus, the colonies, the Declaration of Independence, Revolutionary War, Constitution, Civil War, Great Depression, World Wars, Cold War, Watergate, and shit like that.  There wasn't really a lot of time for nuanced shit.  It was even harder in World History where there's all the ancient cultures and Dark Ages and Renaissance and whatnot to cover.  For the most part, teachers are just trying to give you the basics so you can pass standardized tests.  Maybe you should blame the people who write those tests that they don't put enough nuanced black history on there so schools would have to teach it.

Part of the problem with outrage culture on social media is it's so easy to make memes like these.  Then your followers Family Feud clap and say, "Good answer!" and no one really considers what's actually being said.  But for the record I did NOT learn about Helen Keller--not even a showing of The Miracle Worker.  I DID learn about WEB Dubois and Booker T Washington and the difference between them.  I think "states rights" were mentioned but we also talked about slavery.  Since I was in junior high in the early 90s of course we talked about the LA Riots that happened during that time.  As for Washington's dentures, that was mentioned but just like a stupid folk tale like the chopping down the cherry tree thing.

On Pluto TV there was an ad from MTV about women's history and it was the same thing as that meme only about women's history.  Bringing up all this stuff about women's rights organizations and how "pages are missing" from history books about them.  And again it's largely idiotic.  Just because your teacher doesn't talk about every women's rights group that ever existed doesn't make them sexist or mean they're trying to "erase" something.  That's just another paranoid delusion.

But maybe I'm looking back at it with rose-colored glasses to some extent.  Still, the point is, when making a meme, maybe consider who you're actually insulting with it.  And think about what it actually means before sharing it with your "friends" online.

Workshopping A Meme

 Someone in a Facebook group posted this meme:

I agree with the sentiment, but the actual way it's worded is not great.  First, not all "Chosen Ones" are teenagers.  Neo in The Matrix and Frodo in LOTR are examples that quickly come to mind.  

When I said this, the person on Facebook said, "This is referring to YA fiction."  To which I said well that's because those books are aimed at younger readers, thus the hero is someone they would identify with.  And then he got huffy about me "explaining the joke back to him."

As I said, I like the sentiment of the meme:  there should be more Chosen One heroes who are older, fairly normal, responsible adults.  But the way it's worded doesn't work.  It starts with a question that's obviously false.  Some people might not think better of that or just go with it but other people (like me) are instantly going to take issue with a question that's clearly false.

And that really then obscures the whole issue, which I actually agree with.  So really, what this meme author should have done is throw out the question and just make a statement:  "Instead of teenagers, I want more Chosen Ones who are adults who've seen some serious shit and have zero fucks to give."  As a statement you either agree or disagree that you want more of that.  

You can still have a question but you have to take out the obviously false "always" part and say like, "Why are so many Chosen Ones teenagers?"  Though even then like when the person on Facebook said this was about YA fiction, the answer is obvious:  YA fiction and PG-13 movies target young audiences, so the characters should be relatable to them.  Which is why I'd just leave the question out and go directly with the statement.  Is it as funny?  I think it's funnier because it's less distracting.  But maybe that's just me.

Does this relate to anything besides meme writing?  Of course it does!  I'm sure when I've edited stories on critique sites or whatever someone has asked a question that's obviously false.  And then probably got huffy about it being a joke.

Or as I've said in the past, if you have a factual error in your manuscript (my go-to example being the Pulitzer-winning Middlesex saying they made B-52s in WWII and Al Kaline played first base; the latter was true but he played far more in the outfield while the former wasn't built until the 1950s) then it makes me start questioning everything.  In the same way, you start with a question that's obviously false and it's going to make me start examining your entire premise instead of focusing on the joke.

So basically sometimes it's better to just say what you mean than try to couch it in an observation that's not true.  A far more general and simplistic point is that sometimes it helps to look at things from another perspective.  That's why it's good if you can get people to look at your work privately before putting it out there to a general audience.  If it bombs at least then it bombs less spectacularly.

(Fortunately no one reads my blog so I don't have to worry about that.)

Kindle Vella Needs Some Tweaking to Work for Most Authors and Readers

After giving it the old college try, I gave up on Kindle Vella. If you don't know, Kindle Vella is Amazon's attempt to replicate a host of phone apps where people buy chapters of a story instead of a whole book and read them on their phone.  It's been a huge deal especially in Asian countries.

Last October I tried really using it for the first time under the Eric Filler banner.  Inspired by the Marvel What If...? show, I wrote a 21-chapter story about characters from different Eric Filler stories being brought together to fight a menace destroying whole universes.  It was really more of a sci-fi action thing than a traditional gender swap story, but I thought it was a fun way to get my feet wet in the format.

The results were pretty lackluster.  Only one person read the thing all the way through.  The reads went from over 30 for the first episode to about 20 for the second and 10 for the third.  Those episodes are free, so it's kind of surprising that 2/3 of readers didn't bother to read the remaining two free episodes.  And of course after that it drops off to just a couple until you get only 1 reader for the last 9 episodes.

Despite that, it made a lot more money than some of my regular books because the first few months Amazon handed out some fat bonuses even to people like me who didn't really sell that much.  I think a lot of that was trying to encourage authors to use Vella more.  The problem with that, like when the government sends out a "stimulus" payment is the benefit is very short-lived.  The rewards completely dried up--along with readers--by February.

I even put the first 12 episodes into a bundle to give away to newsletter subscribers who clicked a special link.  To avoid Amazon pulling the story on Vella because it's "published" elsewhere (like they did when I tried copying my Scarlet Knight flash fiction series over to Vella) I only distributed this bundle by email.  And did anyone read those 12 episodes and go on to read the rest?  Nope.  Not a single fucking one.

I could only upload the picture of the woman; the rest of the cover was made by Amazon in their format, so don't say that I'd get more readers with a better cover.

Since that wasn't a "normal" Eric Filler story, I decided to take another swing and do something more like a regular Eric Filler book, only serialized.  Night at the Swapping Mall was built off the Swapping Mall franchise.  The core of that is a woman with magic powers bought an old mall in the suburban Midwest (I think of the malls in Saginaw, Midland, and Bay City where I grew up for inspiration) and converted it into a one-stop gender change shop.  Basically the stores are largely the same only they're not really for buying stuff; you pay to change into a female body and then the stores full of clothes and other stuff are like accessories to use.  If someone pays enough money they can stay that way forever, or otherwise they change back after about a day.

Maybe I just don't think enough of my readers, but I figured most of them weren't going to read on after the first 3 free chapters no matter what I wrote about, so I decided to make those a sort of prologue that is pretty much a self-contained story.  After the mall closes down, a boy goes to paint graffiti on the walls and the new owner sends him back in time to 1972--as a woman!  And there he meets another woman protesting the mall's construction and they end up fucking before he warps back to the present, having learned a lesson.

Then the paid episodes are a separate story about a thief who breaks into the mall.  When he tries to go into one of the shops to plunder it, he's warped back in time to 2008--as a woman.  Once he sort of does a Quantum Leap thing there, he's brought back to the present, but he's still stuck in the mall.  Trying to escape, he goes into the mall's movie theater and warps back to 1977 at an early screening of Star Wars, where he's a woman cosplaying Princess Leia.

By that point I realized a problem with my original idea:  why would the guy keep going into stores if he knows they're going to warp him back in time?  It might have been better if I'd gone with my original thought and had like 3-4 guys and they all split up and hit different stores and go to different times.  At least two might have worked better because then they could learn valuable lessons and maybe hook up with each other.

But to get around that the guy goes to the bathroom, because that wouldn't be booby-trapped too, would it?  Of course it would! 

I dropped the episodes pretty much as I wrote them...and literally no one read them.  I advertised them on my website and Facebook and that got a couple of people to read the first episode.  One or two read the second episode.  No one read anything after that.

The next time I did my newsletter I made sure to mention the Vella story.  And like 15 people read the first episode...and maybe a third read the second story...and one or two read the third story.  And no one read any of the episodes you have to pay for.

Since no one has left any comments, I'm not sure why people don't read all three of the free episodes at least.  Why quit after one episode?  I wonder if it's because there's not sex in it but do they really expect there will be sex right off the draw?  I mean you might need a little wind-up before getting into that.  I thought they'd stick with it at least through 2 episodes, but they couldn't even do that.  Maybe they're so unfamiliar with the serial format that they think an "episode" is going to be a complete story?  I suppose some people could use it that way, but I just use them like chapters, so each episode is a piece of the greater whole, not an entire story unto itself.  I also put a poll at the end of the 3rd episode asking if people want to go on but no one could even answer an anonymous poll. [eye roll]

So I guess I'm done with Kindle Vella.  Though like the mob or Hotel California, getting out can be hard.  If you click the "Unpublish" link, it doesn't just unpublish the story.  Nope, you have to send an email, which means going to another page and selecting a category for the email and so on.  And then, some idiot named "Mustafa" probably in India just sends back a boiler plate email asking for more information.  As if what browser I'm using has any bearing on this at all.  He clearly didn't understand (probably only has a faint grasp on English) and so was just trying to stall or pass the buck to someone else.  That was I think for my first Kindle Vella story.  For Night at the Swapping Mall, a different customer support moron named "Alexander" just blocked the book.  Which is not what Amazon's own site says.  It says:

To remove content from the Kindle Vella store, contact us. It’ll be removed 60 days after receiving your request. This provides current readers a chance to finish reading story episodes. Note: once your story is removed, it cannot be undone.

So apparently their own staff don't know their own procedures.  

When I emailed about that, of course they tried to cover with more boilerplate nonsense:

Hello,

When we find that publishers are out of compliance with a Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) policy, we let them know so that they can address the issue. This helps ensure a better experience for customers.

For security reasons, we can't provide details about our internal procedures. 

OK, "Jack," the idiot didn't block it because of "content;" he blocked it because he didn't know what the fuck he was doing.

Someone named "Junaid" did at least send me the proper email when I asked about unpublishing my other story, Guardians of the Swapverse:

We received your request to unpublish Guardians of the Swapverse. We’re sorry to see you go. Since Kindle Vella stories are read one episode at a time, we unpublish Kindle Vella stories 60 days after we receive a request to provide active readers the chance to finish reading a story they may have started. We received your request on 04/21/2022 and I’ve scheduled your story to be removed from the Kindle Vella store on 06/21/2022 We'll send you an email confirmation after your story has been removed.

If you change your mind and want to keep your story live, you can contact us (https://kdp.amazon.com/contact-us) to cancel this request.

To let your readers know your story will be removed, you can include an Author Note at the end of your episodes.

Quick reminder: You do not need to unpublish your Kindle Vella story to publish your story as an eBook. You can publish your Kindle Vella story after the last episode has been available to readers in the Kindle Vella store for at least 30 days. You can see the latest publication date for episodes on your Story Manager page.

To learn more about our content guidelines, check our Help:
https://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/G3DJY2Z5WSX5U6WL

Enjoy the rest of the week, Stay safe and have a pleasant day!

Thanks for using Amazon KDP,

Junaid

Interestingly, I guess you can put your story out as an ebook 30 days after the last episode posts--provided the idiots at Amazon actually know their own procedures, which clearly they don't.  I mean it took 4 people just to get 1 right email.  Why not then just let me hit a button and do it myself?  

I know some people are making money off of it, but I guess my readers are too cheap for it.  And that is in large part Amazon's fault.  The model of charging 1 token per 100 words makes stories too expensive versus regular books.  And there's no Kindle Unlimited thing to let people pay so much a month to read however much they want.

Then there's that people have to buy tokens up front.  If you want to string people along, that doesn't really work all that well.  It would be better to let them pay just a little to buy enough tokens for the next story.  And then a little more...and a little more...and a little more...until they've spent $15 to read a book that could cost $3 on regular Kindle.  But you can't do that when they have to make a minimum $2 purchase up front.  People see that $2 and they rightfully balk.  I mean, invest $2 in reading this story?  No way!  They might spend that precious $2 and not even use all those tokens and then they're up Shit Creek, aren't they?

(Meanwhile those same people probably think nothing of paying $1 or $2 for a candy hammer in Candy Crush to beat a troublesome level.  Or like me in Empire & Puzzles when I spend $1 or $3 to buy some gems to summon some worthless characters or buy something I need to level up characters.  I'm just saying that model might be skeevier, but it's much more profitable than up-front pricing.)

I think the advantage and disadvantage for Amazon is that they are big and sell traditional books.  The market share and brand familiarity is a bonus, but there's a downside too.  Because they sell traditional books and ebooks, that's what people using Amazon are accustomed to in a way that people using Wattpad or Dreame or whatever else aren't.  Amazon users might (rightfully) ask why they should use this and not just read a normal ebook?  Many are probably savvy enough to realize this isn't cheaper; if anything it's more expensive.

Thinking about it, even the name of this sucks.  "Vella," what the hell does that mean?  It's probably supposed to be short for novellas, but that doesn't really tell people what it is.  It's like when Netflix wanted to call their DVD rental service "Qwikster" or whatever; it might sound cool but it's meaningless.  They should rebrand it as "Kindle Serials" or something like that to give readers a better idea of what it's supposed to entail.

For people like me, I would say to give authors more discretion about pricing, eliminate the up-front pricing, and come up with a Kindle Unlimited thing so people can binge easier.  Or maybe let people pay a flat fee to unlock all the episodes of a story.  Instead of paying $2 for tokens, maybe let people pay $3 for a Binge Pass to read the entire series.  That would still be about the same price as a normal eBook, so readers might be more comfortable with that.  If they could make it so you could use real covers, that would be nice too.  These lame template covers kind of suck; it makes everything look cheap and lazy.

I'd love to know how other authors are doing but the only other person I know who's using it is Tony Laplume and he's such a pouty baby he won't talk to me. [eye roll]  I can see some potential in this format, but it still needs some tweaking.

Disney Should Have Kept Han & Leia's Twins for the Sequel Trilogy

 In the first three "expanded universe" books--Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command--Leia is pregnant and then gives birth to twins Jacen and Jaina.  And then the kids grew up over the course of the books.  Then Disney came along and replaced them with Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren.  And that was a mistake for a number of reasons.

One big problem was they never really gave Ben much of a backstory.  As previously noted, there was more backstory in a Lego Star Wars Halloween special than any of the movies.  He went to Luke's academy and turned to the dark side for...reasons and recruited the Knights of Ren to kill everyone.  That's about it.

One day a couple of months ago I had one of those idle thoughts that really they should have kept the twin thing.  Because that could have provided some motivation on how and why he turned to the dark side.  My basic idea is pretty simple:  Ben and his twin sister both go to the academy and train.  One day they're out in the woods or whatever and his sister is badly injured.  They get to Luke, but he's unable to save her.  And so Ben gets all pissed off and bitter and turns to the dark side.  I suppose you can complain about "fridging" in that the girl mostly exists to provide motivation, but it's still better than what they did.

The deluxe idea would have been to replace Rey with his sister, only we the audience wouldn't know they're related right away.  The backstory is that they both went to the Jedi academy but Rey was much better at the Force than Ben.  He got jealous and that led him to the dark side.  He tried to kill her, but Luke helped her get on a ship to escape and she crashed on Jakku.

You could even take it a step further and have her lose her memory in the crash.  And then it's kind of a Bourne Identity thing as her memory starts coming back when Ben, aka Kylo, shows up on Jakku trying to find her because this "dyad" thing would make them super powerful.  Or just that he wants her out of the way because she and Luke are the only ones powerful enough to stop him.  Basically then it's like his own personal Order 66 as he hunts down Force users.

This idea actually helps with motivation for other characters.  Instead of Luke going to the Jedi temple and being a whiny bitch, you could say he was out looking for his niece.  At one stop, Kylo found him and there was a fight and Luke was badly injured.  He found the Jedi Temple place so he could learn knowledge to pass on when his niece found him, because he wasn't able to take Kylo on himself.  And he didn't tell anyone because he didn't want Kylo to find him.  And losing one child to the dark side and with another one missing would put a strain on Han and Leia so they break up.  Han reverts to his smuggling ways in the hope that he can find some info on where his daughter might have wound up while Leia stays with the New Republic to work through official channels until the First Order shows up.

It is of course too late to do all that, and it's probably too much serious human drama for a Disney movie, but it's just a thought I had and it's Memorial Day so it's not like anyone's reading anyway.

The Quick & Dirty Way to Make Paperbacks is Back!

 For a while I used Draft2Digital's format to make my paperbacks.  They weren't always the best format but they were quick and easier than doing it myself.  The header and page numbers always looked better than when I made them myself because Word is such a pain in the ass about it even after 35 years.

Then one day their print book option was relegated to one of those endless beta tests (like the "new" KDP Reports that had been on beta for about 3 years and only this week went online as the main reports--unfortunately) and you had to ask to get in, which I wasn't going to do.  So I went back to formatting myself for a little while.

Then one day I put a book I was doing for free (a collection of Kindle Vella stories I have to give away since I can't publish them or Amazon will cancel my story on Vella) on Draft2Digital so I could get the Mobi, ePub, and PDF files.  When I downloaded the PDF, I saw there are a variety of sizes available.  Check this out:

The 6x9 size corresponds to the default on Amazon.  So it's pretty easy then to just download that and upload it on Amazon for your paperback format.  There are other sizes too if you want one that's not the default.  D2D does all that formatting with the headers and so on so you don't have to.  Like before it's not always the best, but it's quick and easy.

The only caveat for me is the ebook usually has some stuff I wouldn't want in the paperback, like the dreaded ad, the table of contents, and more "Also By" stuff.  So I might want to trim that out in Word, save a separate file, reload it, and then run it through D2D.  Or not.  I'm lazy sometimes.

When you're putting your book in, you can find the page above by clicking the "View Book" link under the PDF preview on the Preview page:

Otherwise, if you exit out and log back in and click on your book it should bring up the "View My Book" page so you can get the PDF in whatever size.  It's a lot easier but if you want a little better formatting, my guide to making paperbacks in MS Word is still really useful--at least for me.

It's the Little Things That Chafe the Most

A couple months ago I rewatched Due South on my cheap DVDs.  The third season (or sometimes like on YouTube they call it 3rd & 4th seasons) featured some major changes as the show moved from CBS to CTV in Canada.  I never really liked this third season.  The last time I rewatched the show in 2018 I didn't even watch it but I decided to give it a watch this time to see if I liked it any better.

The answer:  not really.  It's more than just casting changes.  There were little things that bugged me.  A lot of it had to do with the main character, Benton Fraser of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  In the first season the character comes to Chicago from the Northwest Territories and so is a bit naive about how things work in a big American city.

In the second season it starts to get sillier but then in the third season, by which time the creator and other major producers and writers had all left, it goes even farther.  For one thing, Fraser often seems like he's on the autism spectrum now.  I mean every time someone asks who he is, he starts saying, "I came here on the trail of the killers of my father but for reasons that don't need explored I've stayed as a liaison at the Canadian embassy."  He never said that in the previous two seasons, so why is he doing it now?  And when he wanted to get his partner Ray's attention, he would say, "Ray, Ray, Ray..." like he's the freaking Rain Man or a little kid.  And what happened to his brown uniform?  It shows up in one scene but otherwise he's always wearing his red uniform, which while recognizable would be like a Navy/Marines/Army/Air Force officer wearing his/her dress blue or white or black uniform everywhere.  Which they don't do.  I mean that would also be like you or I wearing a tuxedo or cocktail dress when going grocery shopping or to the gas station or whatever.  It doesn't make sense.  

Then there's the way everyone in the police station yells, "Gun!" every time someone pulls a gun.  They never did that before.  And just the overall tone of some stories.  The two-part episode "Mountie on the Bounty" uses an actual Scooby-Doo plot where some polluters create a fake ghost ship to scare other ships from their dump site.  Jinkies!

That's the problem not just with this show but a lot of sequels or prequels or revivals.  In TV, movies, and books.  Because so often the property is changing writers and/or actors and are taking place sometimes decades apart.  There are all these small differences that make these things annoying to watch or read. 

Like the Star Wars prequels or Star Trek Enterprise or the Star Trek reboots where it's supposed to be the past from previous stuff and yet everything looks better.  Or in Discovery where the Klingons and uniforms and displays all looked a lot different than the original Trek that was supposed to be just a few years later.  That's a pretty massive leap backwards.  Or in The Last Jedi where suddenly we were going by Neil deGraase Tyson rules of space travel and Luke could use a power no Jedi had ever used before.  In the old Star Wars and Star Trek novels it was frequently a problem where a new writer would take over and their characterization would be off with people doing things out of character.  Or like Dave Wolverton's infamous Courtship of Princess Leia where the Rebels suddenly had dozens of captured Star Destroyers they were using and shit like that.

Common sense fails can be annoying too.  Like when I was watching an episode of the quirky Canadian drama Being Erica.  The titular character and two friends (one of them very pregnant) go to a movie.  the pregnant friend has been complaining about having to piss a lot...so she sits in the middle of the row.  Then she ends up pissing herself because she can't get out in time.  Um, wait, if you knew you had a weak bladder, why the fuck didn't you sit at the end of the row?  So you could easily get out and go piss?  Duuuuuh.

Maybe I'm just too anal but the little things matter.  When characters act different or the sets or technology don't make sense in the context of what already exists or people just act like morons, I get annoyed.  Maybe it's just my accounting brain that wants things to add up.  Or maybe it's my writer brain that wants stories to be consistent.  No matter what, this kind of shit really irks me and I wish they would stop.

Marvel has been less guilty of this stuff than most.  Though sometimes it's annoying how plot points from the solo movies and Avengers movies don't really fit together all that well.  Like at the end of Spider-Man Homecoming where he rejects the offer to be in the Avengers and then a couple months later in Infinity War he's hanging out with Tony Stark in space in the "Iron Spider" armor he had rejected.  Or like at the end of Dr. Strange he's still a novice at magic but in Ragnarok and Infinity War he's suddenly a Sorcerer Supreme.  Maybe he used the Time Stone to learn faster?  There's other stuff I've probably noted in reviews.

I think what helps Marvel is they have been making these movies consistently for 14 years now without any huge gaps.  And a lot of the same people like Kevin Feige have been involved from the beginning so there's at least someone around who might be able to manage some consistency.  It's too bad other franchises can't do the same.

(On a side note about Due South Season 3, it's also pretty stupid how they replaced Fraser's partner Ray Vecchio.  They say he had to go undercover and then bring in a guy to pretend to be him who looks nothing and sounds nothing like him.  And then it's confusing because some people would know him as Ray Vecchio but other people would know him as Stanley "Ray" Kowalski and so wouldn't they blow the secret?  Especially since Kowalski as a rookie was involved in a high-profile case that went to death row and was getting a lot of media attention.  The whole thing was dumb and pointless.  They could have just said Ray Vecchio had gone to Washington or something for some big task force or something and this other guy was transferred in to cover his cases without taking his name or anything.  Fraser and new Ray work a case and become friends and everything else just works normally from there.  That's just another thing that stuck in my craw.  But then I have a pretty sensitive craw.)

How Long Should You Keep Your TV Security Blankets?

Like a lot of little kids, I had a "security blanket" that I had from pretty much when I was a baby, until I was probably 6-8 years old.  Then I think my mom finally gave the thing to the cats or dogs or something like that because it had become pretty worn by then.

After FXX announced new seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Archer, I got thinking that so many of these TV shows that have gone 10+, 20+, or even 30+ years (or 42 "seasons" like Survivor) manage to do so because they're like security blankets for viewers.  No matter how much else changes, there's always The Simpsons or South Park, or Always Sunny, or Survivor, or The Bachelor, and so on and so on.  In the bad old days when TV schedules were more crowded, networks were like our moms, ripping our security blankets away once they started getting worn.  But now that there's so much more competition, they seem to be coddling us, letting us keep these shows until apparently everyone involved in them dies--and then they'll reboot them.

I got thinking, how long should we keep these security blankets around?  My answer:  10 seasons maximum.  Why?  Because I can't think of any show I watched that got better after its 10th season, except for Archer and that's just that the 8-10th seasons were  so fucking awful that it was hard not to improve on them.  Simpsons had started to drift into meh by the 10th season and by the 10th season of South Park and Family Guy I was barely watching.  Always Sunny still had some good episodes in its 10th, 11th, and 12th seasons but when Glenn Howerton went missing for some episodes in the 13th season to do AP Bio and maybe some other stuff it kind of fucked up the chemistry and it just hasn't really recovered.  And with a live action show like that it just kinda gets sad after a while.  I mean when they were 20-something or early 30-something their antics were fun but when you're 40-something and doing the same shit it's just kinda pathetic.  Which is probably why it's good Seinfeld quit after 8 years, because them doing the same shit in their 50s or 60s would have just been sad.

By and large I don't think any show has really been so great after 10 seasons where I would desperately miss it.  Most shows don't need to hang around even half that time; a lot of them have pretty much strip-mined the premise bare by the time it gets to season 6.  In family sitcoms you get that problem where the kids start growing up, so those definitely don't need to be on long enough that the kids start having kids of their own.  And really, with streaming and DVDs and whatnot you can always revisit those old friends whenever you want.  You don't need them to basically do the same shows from 10, 20, 30 years ago over and over calling it "new."

I'm sure I mentioned before my breaking point with The Simpsons was seeing the episode description saying Selma was going to marry some rich guy.  Which they had already done at least once, if not more times before.  How many more times is she going to get married?!  How many more times can Lisa do something desperate to fit in?  How many stupid pranks can Bart pull?  How many more times can Homer quit his job and get a new one and then go back to his old one?  How many more careers can Marge try?  I mean, Jesus God, we've been over this same ground six hundred times by now!  How many more times can you watch the writers of South Park take some headline from the previous week and have the adults overreact to it and the kids be far more sensible?  Or for Cartman to play the adults overreacting to some stupid shit?  Or everyone overreacts to something until Kyle and Stan learn something?  Or have Family Guy basically do a lot of the same shit as The Simpsons with more R-rated humor and stupid cutaway gags?  How many times can you watch people bickering on these dumb "reality" shows?  The talent show ones at least you have slight differences, but isn't every season of Survivor just a bunch of bickering and stupid "challenges" until someone wins?  And isn't every The Bachelor just skanks throwing themselves at some hunky dude until someone wins--though they never actually get married because the show wraps months before it airs?  What the hell is wrong with you people?!!!  You have all these options and you keep watching the same shit, year after year after fucking goddamned year!!!

[OK, I'll calm down now.]

I suppose some people would say, "What's the big deal?  Wet me keep my bwankie if I want!"  But the reason your mom doesn't let you keep your security blanket forever is it retards your growth.  You can't grow up if you keep leaning on a security blanket.  In the same way, you can't really grow if you're just watching the same stuff forever.

Unfortunately, networks aren't responsible like your mom and all they really care about is making money.  So as long as there are enough babies clinging to these security blankets, those shows will keep making money and networks will keep them on the air.  And that makes it harder for new content to be successful.

I guess the other way to think of it is like an addiction.  So long as they churn these seasons out, people won't break away from them.  But it is pretty easy to just not watch something.  Especially with streaming, where you physically have to select something.  So, you know, don't.  Just because they keep making The Simpsons or South Park or Family Guy or NCIS or Blue Bloods or Law & Order SVU doesn't mean you have to watch it.  Just say no.  And don't worry about "FOMO;" you're not missing anything important.  They're just TV shows.

You can make the same argument for books.  Everyone has a favorite author or two who's like their security blanket.  But if you only read Stephen King or James Patterson or John Grisham or whoever's books, you're only going to get their perspectives.  You need to read other books by other authors to get new perspectives.  I do try to mix up my authors a little bit so I'm not always reading Lawrence Block or Donald Westlake or John Irving books.  I will usually find my way back there, but just reading a couple of authors all the time would get boring.

But apparently a lot of other people don't feel that way.  So, what's your security blanket for TV and books?