I think if they had support groups for spending too much money on stupid Internet games like Candy Crush I would have to enroll. It's obscene how much money I've wasted on that stupid game through Facebook to buy the stupid little power ups to beat a level. I swear it must be a couple hundred dollars in the last few months between that, Angry Birds Star Wars, and Deer Hunter 2014.
The thing is you hardly even notice the money at the time. It bleeds you slow, a dollar here or two dollars here, kind of like gambling really. It's worse because you're not even going to win the money back, so it's just a complete waste of money. But hey, I can quit any time, right? Yeah, probably.
The thing is, those games are designed to continually generate cash for their designers. Like a drug dealer they might let you download the first levels for free, but then they'll start making you pay for the added levels. And they'll make the levels so annoying you spend money on the power-ups to beat them. And they only give you a small number of lives that recharge slowly to bilk you out of more money to keep playing. It's a total fucking scam.
Some people would oversimplify and say, "Well they're not making you spend money." Neither do casinos. But especially when you're playing these games on Facebook there's that pressure to get as far as your "friends" or get a higher score and so forth. And you get to that point where you only need one move to beat the level and it's almost midnight and you've tried it 15 times already, so what's $1.99 to end the hassle and go to bed a winner, right?
It reminds me of a report I wrote for one of my business classes in high school back in 1995 or so. It was about digital currency and one of the potential problems I noted is that when the money is digital it doesn't really FEEL like you're spending money. It's not like reaching into your pocket and taking a dollar out of your wallet, where you can then see how many more you got left. Thus there's no real weight to it.
Playing those games on Facebook or my Kindle Fire, I think my fear has come to pass. Because as I said, it doesn't feel like I'm spending actual money. Then I open my bank statement and holy shit! How did I spend $30 in three fucking days!!!?
I'm not going to single out Candy Crush and other games. It's really digital commerce in general. I can't even begin to contemplate just how much I've spent on Amazon in the last 13 years or so. It has to be well into the thousands or perhaps 10 thousands. It's a book here, an album there, a graphic novel there, and so forth. The financial death by a thousand cuts. But hey it goes on my credit cards so it's not REAL money, is it? Aye, there's the rub.
I imagine the problem is only going to get worse. I haven't looked into Bitcoins, but that and other such things are the next step in fully digital currency. I think recently in Europe some country declared Bitcoins aren't real currency, but it's only a matter of time before it happens. That will make fiscal responsibility even tougher. Another decade or so and even the bums will probably be sitting there with signs saying, "Will Work for Bitcoins."
In the meantime, maybe I should get a sponsor to help me get through Candy Crush withdrawal.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Monday, May 12, 2014
We Need Nabobs of Negativity
Nobody likes getting a bad review. I mean I gave Tony Laplume a bad review and he gave me the silent treatment for two months. But this blog article praising the banning of ANY negative book review is taking it a bit far.
I'll be the first to say I want to slit the throat of anyone who gives me a 1-star review. At the same time, giving someone else a one-star review sometimes feels really, really good. Because if a book sucks (ie it's so slow and dull that you want to pitch your Kindle out a window) it feels good to vent about it.
No, it's not nice to say bad things about a book, which is why usually I restrict such reviews to authors who can take it. I mean come on, Dean Koontz is probably never going to see my one-star review of Longest Evening of the Year. And other times someone just really, really deserves it because their book SUCKS. Not any of my books, of course. They all rule and you should give them five-stars on every website on the Internet...what are you waiting for? Go do it!
Anyway, as much as I hate getting bad reviews, simply eliminating every bad review ever makes book reviews in general worthless. To take it away from books for a moment, imagine if you buy a toaster on Amazon but it's defective and nearly shocks you to death. If Amazon had a "only nice reviews" policy, how would anyone know this toaster is a defective piece of shit? As much as we might not want to admit it, sometimes bad reviews serve a purpose.
But only if that bad review has substance. There are certainly some bad reviews that should be banned. Like if my whole "review" is a ten-page rant about how much I hate Tony Laplume, that's not a book review; it's a personal attack. Or like some people I could name, your "review" says "This isn't the kind of book I read. I read [authors who write completely different subjects.]" Well hello, if you usually read thrillers then you probably aren't going to like a cozy mystery about a crime-solving tabby cat. That's just common sense.
By all means get rid of the flame wars and the morons, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. That's as dumb as when Kobo banned all self-published erotica because a few titles had illicit material. Stuff like that is just damned lazy, not to mention overly reactionary.
(Despite what I just said, I still reserve the right to deck the next person who gives me a 1-star review. And I will do it with the boxing gloves I got from Amazon, which I rated at 3 stars because they're tight on my fat hands.)
I'll be the first to say I want to slit the throat of anyone who gives me a 1-star review. At the same time, giving someone else a one-star review sometimes feels really, really good. Because if a book sucks (ie it's so slow and dull that you want to pitch your Kindle out a window) it feels good to vent about it.
No, it's not nice to say bad things about a book, which is why usually I restrict such reviews to authors who can take it. I mean come on, Dean Koontz is probably never going to see my one-star review of Longest Evening of the Year. And other times someone just really, really deserves it because their book SUCKS. Not any of my books, of course. They all rule and you should give them five-stars on every website on the Internet...what are you waiting for? Go do it!
Anyway, as much as I hate getting bad reviews, simply eliminating every bad review ever makes book reviews in general worthless. To take it away from books for a moment, imagine if you buy a toaster on Amazon but it's defective and nearly shocks you to death. If Amazon had a "only nice reviews" policy, how would anyone know this toaster is a defective piece of shit? As much as we might not want to admit it, sometimes bad reviews serve a purpose.
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| The Smokey Mysteries...Coming Soon! |
By all means get rid of the flame wars and the morons, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. That's as dumb as when Kobo banned all self-published erotica because a few titles had illicit material. Stuff like that is just damned lazy, not to mention overly reactionary.
(Despite what I just said, I still reserve the right to deck the next person who gives me a 1-star review. And I will do it with the boxing gloves I got from Amazon, which I rated at 3 stars because they're tight on my fat hands.)
Friday, May 9, 2014
Formatting for Kindle: Advanced Tips
My books on Smashwords I always think look pretty good, but when I download one from Amazon they look like crap. I kept wondering why Amazon's program couldn't figure out how to center chapter headings or put the chapters in the Go To section. Now I know...and knowing is half the battle. I could probably charge some idiot publisher thousands of dollars for this knowledge, which is about the only reason I can see they charge so much for ebooks--other than people are dumb and buy them for $9.99 or more.
Anyway, here's the first thing: Headers.
Basically if you want Amazon to read your chapter titles as centered instead of left justified, ie:
Then you need to use the Heading style. It's pretty easy to find in Word 2007 or later: it's a big box on the right side of the home menu. Like this:
Ideally it'll already be set up to center and perhaps underline any words if that's what you want. If it's not then it's slightly trickier as you have to right click on where it says Header 1, go to Modify, and then change it to however you want.
Then you go through and change all your chapter headings to the Heading 1 style.
On top of that you can add more styles like Heading 2 or Heading 3. Say for instance your book has 4 parts and so you make Part 1, 2, 3, and 4 as Heading 1 and then the Chapters you make Heading 2. Or if you're doing a book of short stories and those stories have chapters then you can have each story title as Heading 1 and the chapters as Heading 2.
Pro Tip: Newer versions of Word have this stupid feature where it won't show Headings 3-9 until it thinks you need them. So if you want Heading 3 to show up, you have to have something in Heading 2 format first. And if you want a Heading 4 you need something in Heading 3 format...and so on.
Now why would you do that? For part 2 of this operation: Table of Contents.
In old paper books the table of contents is at the front and indicates what page numbers chapters or stories or whatever are on. That doesn't really come into play a lot in ebooks where you don't have page numbers, but the Table of Contents is important with ebooks if you want it so when people push "Go To" they can see the chapters. (This comes in handy when the Kindle starts freaking out and skips pages or I accidentally make it go back to the beginning or end or something.)
Making a Table of Contents is pretty easy. First you go to "Reference" on the menu and then on the far left is the Table of Contents icon. Like this:
You can just use one of Word's default styles, but you're better off scrolling down to "Insert Table of Contents" where it will bring up a screen of options. There's a check box on the left side for "Show page numbers" which you should turn off because duh you don't have pages. Like this:
All you have to do now is load your file on KDP and you're done. Now some people say to save it as HTML first but I tried mine as Word DOC files and they didn't have any problems, so I don't think you need to bother with that. Then you can look your book up on a Kindle and it will look pretty much like the pros!
Omnibus formatting: For my omnibuses I use 3 Heading styles. I make them all the same: TNR font, 12-point, single-spaced, centered, underlined. You can format them how you like. Anyway, the reason I use three is because when I make the Table of Contents I want three different levels so I divide as follows:
On my Kindle if you go to the Go To button the way it looks is each book title will be displayed with a little arrow next to it. Touch the arrow and it'll expand to show the Parts (if applicable) again each with a little arrow. Touch that arrow and it shows the chapters. Pretty sweet for navigating around.
See how easy that was? Again this is stuff that publishers probably pay someone thousands of dollars for and now you know how to do it on your own for free. Sweet.
Now I just have to reformat 40 fucking books...OK, more like 30 now after doing the Children of Eternity and Scarlet Knight ones. Still, it's a lot!
Anyway, here's the first thing: Headers.
Basically if you want Amazon to read your chapter titles as centered instead of left justified, ie:
Chapter 1
vs.
Chapter 1Then you need to use the Heading style. It's pretty easy to find in Word 2007 or later: it's a big box on the right side of the home menu. Like this:
Ideally it'll already be set up to center and perhaps underline any words if that's what you want. If it's not then it's slightly trickier as you have to right click on where it says Header 1, go to Modify, and then change it to however you want.
Then you go through and change all your chapter headings to the Heading 1 style.
On top of that you can add more styles like Heading 2 or Heading 3. Say for instance your book has 4 parts and so you make Part 1, 2, 3, and 4 as Heading 1 and then the Chapters you make Heading 2. Or if you're doing a book of short stories and those stories have chapters then you can have each story title as Heading 1 and the chapters as Heading 2.
Pro Tip: Newer versions of Word have this stupid feature where it won't show Headings 3-9 until it thinks you need them. So if you want Heading 3 to show up, you have to have something in Heading 2 format first. And if you want a Heading 4 you need something in Heading 3 format...and so on.
Now why would you do that? For part 2 of this operation: Table of Contents.
In old paper books the table of contents is at the front and indicates what page numbers chapters or stories or whatever are on. That doesn't really come into play a lot in ebooks where you don't have page numbers, but the Table of Contents is important with ebooks if you want it so when people push "Go To" they can see the chapters. (This comes in handy when the Kindle starts freaking out and skips pages or I accidentally make it go back to the beginning or end or something.)
Making a Table of Contents is pretty easy. First you go to "Reference" on the menu and then on the far left is the Table of Contents icon. Like this:
You can just use one of Word's default styles, but you're better off scrolling down to "Insert Table of Contents" where it will bring up a screen of options. There's a check box on the left side for "Show page numbers" which you should turn off because duh you don't have pages. Like this:
All you have to do now is load your file on KDP and you're done. Now some people say to save it as HTML first but I tried mine as Word DOC files and they didn't have any problems, so I don't think you need to bother with that. Then you can look your book up on a Kindle and it will look pretty much like the pros!
Omnibus formatting: For my omnibuses I use 3 Heading styles. I make them all the same: TNR font, 12-point, single-spaced, centered, underlined. You can format them how you like. Anyway, the reason I use three is because when I make the Table of Contents I want three different levels so I divide as follows:
- Heading 1: Book Title. When you have 4-5 books in the file it's good to have something to separate them so people can skip to which book they want to read.
- Heading 2: Parts. If the book has a Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, etc I use this Heading style for that.
- Heading 3: Chapters. Also Prologues and Epilogues. Pretty self-explanatory.
On my Kindle if you go to the Go To button the way it looks is each book title will be displayed with a little arrow next to it. Touch the arrow and it'll expand to show the Parts (if applicable) again each with a little arrow. Touch that arrow and it shows the chapters. Pretty sweet for navigating around.
See how easy that was? Again this is stuff that publishers probably pay someone thousands of dollars for and now you know how to do it on your own for free. Sweet.
Now I just have to reformat 40 fucking books...OK, more like 30 now after doing the Children of Eternity and Scarlet Knight ones. Still, it's a lot!
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Indie Writers Monthly--Now With More ME!
The May issue of Indie Writers Monthly magazine has hit the virtual newsstand (by which I mean Amazon). It's 99 cents right now but it will be free for five times in the near future so you might want to wait until then if 99 cents is too rich for your blood or you hate the idea of me earning 7 cents in profits off it.
This month you can get a very non-inspiring interview with ME! I don't do interviews well; I find it hard to take questions seriously.
Anyway, you can find it HERE!
This month you can get a very non-inspiring interview with ME! I don't do interviews well; I find it hard to take questions seriously.
Anyway, you can find it HERE!
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Operation Omnibus
I've been going over the 8 books for another editing pass, which takes a while. I'm not changing a whole lot, mostly just taking out justs and thoughs and things like that. Plus changing the size of Emma's feet because certain people were unhappy about that.
Anyway, something I have been wondering is if instead of all 8 books in one set to maybe make two omnibuses. Which begs the thought: is it really an omnibus if it's not complete? Well according to the dictionary the word means a volume of reprinted works of a single author or of works related in interest or theme. So I guess I can have more than one, which is good.
The obvious idea would be to split it down the middle with 4 in one and 4 in another. But since I always have to do things differently, I was thinking of a 3-5 split. So we'd have:
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Omnibus Volume 1: The Call featuring:
- A Hero's Journey
- Time Enough to Say Goodbye
- The Hazards of Love
THEN
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Omnibus Volume 2: The Wrath of Isis featuring
- Change of Heart
- Betrayal Begets Blood
- Future Shock
- Living Sacrifice
- The Heart of Emma Earl
The logical reason is that in book 4 we set the whole big story wrapped up in book 8 into motion by introducing the multiverse, so it wouldn't see right--to me--to put that with the first three books. The first three books really do serve more as an introduction of introducing the Scarlet Knight, Black Dragoon, witches, and Isis and then the next five build on that while forming a more intricate storyline.
The other thing is I've noted a few occasions where someone will buy just the first three (or presumably they get the first for free and buy the next two) so maybe committing to 8 books is way too much. This way they could sample the first three books and (hopefully) want to read the next five. Plus the first three books are all shorter than the last 5, which are all near the 100,000 word mark or longer, especially books 6 and 8.
An issue of doing it that way is price. The first three right now only cost $1.98 because the first one is free. So really for it to be any kind of deal I'd have to make it 99 cents, which really is like paying for one book and getting 2 free. This of course means less money for me. This is the same issue I'd have with doing the Chances Are books as an omnibus. Since there are technically 4 Girl Power ones that would be slightly less of an issue.
I think the simplest solution for the first Scarlet Knight one would be to include the two prequels: Dark Origins (Volume 0) and Sisterhood, the one that focuses on Sylvia the witch. Then I could charge $2.99 and get the 70% royalty if anyone buys them. As for the Girl Power or Chances Are ones, I need to write a couple more books. I was thinking maybe a Girl Power prequel, but then I remembered prequels are boring so I came up with more of an Agents of SHIELD idea. The Chances Are I have that new idea I still haven't got to yet, so when I write that and maybe a sequel then I'll have enough.
I enrolled it in KDP Select for now since nobody hardly buys from Smashwords or B&N. This week you can get it for FREE! That's 4 books (almost 1000 pages) for nothing. Click the link!
It seems like most of my Blogger buddies don't have a series requiring an omnibus, though I suppose Andrew Leon could use it for all those Shadow Spinner stories.
I found a free program for making 3D boxes for covers. I'm not all that happy with the image quality, especially on the text, but I guess you get what you pay for. I've seen a lot of that style of cover on Amazon, so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm not sure if that's what I'll go with. Here are the prototypes:
Monday, May 5, 2014
Nostalgia Rules
Way back in April Michael Offutt railed against nostalgia in this post. I promised to write a rebuttal and today is the day! (Of course I wrote it a while ago.) And right now I've got the 90s station on Comcast's Music Choice turned on to set the mood.
The gist of Mr. Offutt's post is that newer things are better. That's not really something I agree with. While there are many things that have improved in the last 36 years in terms of technology, the arts are where I would disagree.
Is Captain America The Winter Soldier many times better than Superman from 1978? Duh, of course. But it's not mostly because of the effects or the acting. I mean I like Chris Evans as Captain America but he ain't exactly Olivier. (Which is good because Olivier is dead.) For me the main difference is that in 2014 filmmakers take their superhero movies more seriously than back in 1978. That makes for better stories. If they used 1978 effects well yeah it'd look lame, but I could probably still enjoy it.
Of course a lot of people probably liked Superman II more than Man of Steel. They could probably give a bunch of reasons, but mostly it would come down to nostalgia. The people who still like that movie probably remember when they saw it as kids or teenagers and thus they associate those good feelings with that movie, whereas they have no feelings to associate with Man of Steel.
For a lot more people--including me--the downfall of the Star Wars prequels was largely because of our love of the originals and it's going to be a problem for the new movies too. The original Star Wars movies were some of the first I can remember ever seeing in a movie theater. My brother and I had most of the toys at one time or another. I had an Empire Strikes Back lunchbox. I even dressed as Yoda for one Halloween--and I'm sure my sister will probably load that picture on Facebook at some point to irritate me. There was this huge spiritual connection for me to the movies. Then the prequels come out and it's just not the same.
(But also those movies suck on an artistic level. The biggest sin is they marginalize the greatest villain of all time--Darth Vader--turning him into a whiny bitch who hardly kills anyone and could only beat a couple of feeble old guys in lightsaber duels. And yes Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were not great actors but Hayden Christensen was a whiny brat and Natalie Portman was a block of wood and let's not even get into Jar-Jar Binks or the Viceroy. Then there's the story, where the first movie was essentially useless and the second, why was it called "Attack of the Clones" if they were the good guys? And those dreadful "love" scenes that seemed like they were written by a third grader. Yeesh.)
It was the same thing with the second Michael Bay Transformers movie. I enjoyed the first one, but the second was so gawdawful. The worst part for me was when they used Jetfire mostly as a comedic prop, turning him into some old geezer whose biggest contribution was giving parts to Optimus Prime. That would not stand for me at all. The 80s Jetfire was so awesome! He was based on a Robotech Veritech fighter, which looked so badass. I still have an original Jetfire in the box along with the original I got. Getting that one for Christmas back in 1985 or 1986 was probably the happiest moment in my childhood. That was my Red Rider BB gun. So no I could not stand them using my favorite character like that; Michael Bay might as well have come over to my house and raped me.
Then there was the reboot of Star Trek. I still remember the part in the ice cave or whatever where I finally said to myself, "You are not Captain Kirk and you never will be!" On the whole Chris Pine is a better actor than Bill Shatner, but he's not Kirk. And yes I suppose nostalgia plays a big part in that. Star Trek II was another movie that was one of the first I remember seeing--in a drive-in theater no less! My dad took us to see Star Trek IV in theaters like five times. Now I'm supposed to just forget all that and accept this other douchebag is Captain Kirk? No thank you.
(Also that movie sucked on an artistic level. There were the gaps in logic, like Starfleet promoting a kid from trainee to captain and giving him the flagship? Spock dating Uhura? And conveniently the Romulan ship that went back in time was hanging around for 25 years before they got their asses in gear to strike. Gimme a break. Then there's the second one that's largely worse. I'm sorry ladies, but I do not get the love of Benedict Cumberbatch. He looks like a prep school kid who'd frequently get wedgies and stuffed in a locker. If even a slob like me hit him once he'd probably run crying to his mommy. I'm supposed to believe he's Khan? Yeah, right. It must be the accent.)
The thing is, I think nostalgia is only natural. Maybe a psychologist could explain it better, but our brains learn to associate movies, songs, TV shows, foods, smells, etc with memories. So when I bought the soundtrack to Transformers the Movie (the 1986 animated one) from Amazon recently and played it in my car I could remember crying in the theater because the bastards killed Optimus Prime off. (Seriously that movie traumatized a whole generation of suburban kids.) A lot of couples have a special song they refer to as "their song." I can remember playing Journey's "Faithfully" and "Don't Stop Believin'" a lot when I was writing the First Contact stories back in 1995 or back in 2008 when I was writing Heart of a Hero, the first story to feature Emma Earl as the Scarlet Knight, I kept listening to "Dream" by Priscilla Ahn.
So we build those associations and if they're good associations then we associate good feelings with that thing. When I watch Star Wars or Empire Strikes Back or the animated Transformers or GI JOE I associate it with pleasant childhood days and thus I'm willing to accept the faults in it. That's just only natural. Reboots usually suck because they change too much from the original, though on occasion a few manage to improve on the original. I would say the Nolan Batman movies, but other people would disagree. And I'm sure everyone has their favorite Bond after all that franchise's reboots.
I think nostalgia makes for a better experience. It makes whatever you're watching, listening to, or reading more emotionally satisfying. Not that that should be an excuse to never try anything new, but on occasion it's nice to revisit those old things; it's like visiting an old friend. Why on Earth would anyone want to condemn that?
Contrary to what Mr. Offutt said, I do not "live in the past." Sure I still have a box of old stuffed toys in my closet and I have my old Jetfire and some other toys, but I don't go around in parachute pants or drive around in a "classic" car; my car is a 2010, so there. (I did once drive around in a 1977 Nova but that was not by choice.) I grudgingly accept new technology, though that's largely because I'm cheap and hate spending a lot of money on a new TV or computer when the old one is still working.
With that being said, I have no problem with nostalgia so long as you aren't going overboard. If you are wearing parachute pants and driving a Fiero then you've got issues. Otherwise it's pretty harmless.
There is one area where I'm anti-nostalgia: the fashion industry. It seemed recently they tried bringing back those awful fluorescent colors from the early 90s. Yuck. If they try bringing grunge back I might have to find a bunker to hide in for a few years. And those stupid kids wearing shirts for bands that broke up long before they were born? Posers! Come on, fashion industry, try something original that isn't terrible. I suppose that might require some work, though, so let's just bring back Elizabethan era gowns and corsets! And powdered wigs for men! That would be totally awesome. Which really kids, "awesome" is OUR word. Get your own fucking word! And rappers, stop "sampling" old songs. Like creating your own beat is that freaking difficult; if you can't do that then get the hell out of the music business!
Here's the perfect song to cap off this entry by the only true Captain Kirk:
The gist of Mr. Offutt's post is that newer things are better. That's not really something I agree with. While there are many things that have improved in the last 36 years in terms of technology, the arts are where I would disagree.
Is Captain America The Winter Soldier many times better than Superman from 1978? Duh, of course. But it's not mostly because of the effects or the acting. I mean I like Chris Evans as Captain America but he ain't exactly Olivier. (Which is good because Olivier is dead.) For me the main difference is that in 2014 filmmakers take their superhero movies more seriously than back in 1978. That makes for better stories. If they used 1978 effects well yeah it'd look lame, but I could probably still enjoy it.
Of course a lot of people probably liked Superman II more than Man of Steel. They could probably give a bunch of reasons, but mostly it would come down to nostalgia. The people who still like that movie probably remember when they saw it as kids or teenagers and thus they associate those good feelings with that movie, whereas they have no feelings to associate with Man of Steel.
For a lot more people--including me--the downfall of the Star Wars prequels was largely because of our love of the originals and it's going to be a problem for the new movies too. The original Star Wars movies were some of the first I can remember ever seeing in a movie theater. My brother and I had most of the toys at one time or another. I had an Empire Strikes Back lunchbox. I even dressed as Yoda for one Halloween--and I'm sure my sister will probably load that picture on Facebook at some point to irritate me. There was this huge spiritual connection for me to the movies. Then the prequels come out and it's just not the same.
(But also those movies suck on an artistic level. The biggest sin is they marginalize the greatest villain of all time--Darth Vader--turning him into a whiny bitch who hardly kills anyone and could only beat a couple of feeble old guys in lightsaber duels. And yes Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were not great actors but Hayden Christensen was a whiny brat and Natalie Portman was a block of wood and let's not even get into Jar-Jar Binks or the Viceroy. Then there's the story, where the first movie was essentially useless and the second, why was it called "Attack of the Clones" if they were the good guys? And those dreadful "love" scenes that seemed like they were written by a third grader. Yeesh.)
It was the same thing with the second Michael Bay Transformers movie. I enjoyed the first one, but the second was so gawdawful. The worst part for me was when they used Jetfire mostly as a comedic prop, turning him into some old geezer whose biggest contribution was giving parts to Optimus Prime. That would not stand for me at all. The 80s Jetfire was so awesome! He was based on a Robotech Veritech fighter, which looked so badass. I still have an original Jetfire in the box along with the original I got. Getting that one for Christmas back in 1985 or 1986 was probably the happiest moment in my childhood. That was my Red Rider BB gun. So no I could not stand them using my favorite character like that; Michael Bay might as well have come over to my house and raped me.
Then there was the reboot of Star Trek. I still remember the part in the ice cave or whatever where I finally said to myself, "You are not Captain Kirk and you never will be!" On the whole Chris Pine is a better actor than Bill Shatner, but he's not Kirk. And yes I suppose nostalgia plays a big part in that. Star Trek II was another movie that was one of the first I remember seeing--in a drive-in theater no less! My dad took us to see Star Trek IV in theaters like five times. Now I'm supposed to just forget all that and accept this other douchebag is Captain Kirk? No thank you.
(Also that movie sucked on an artistic level. There were the gaps in logic, like Starfleet promoting a kid from trainee to captain and giving him the flagship? Spock dating Uhura? And conveniently the Romulan ship that went back in time was hanging around for 25 years before they got their asses in gear to strike. Gimme a break. Then there's the second one that's largely worse. I'm sorry ladies, but I do not get the love of Benedict Cumberbatch. He looks like a prep school kid who'd frequently get wedgies and stuffed in a locker. If even a slob like me hit him once he'd probably run crying to his mommy. I'm supposed to believe he's Khan? Yeah, right. It must be the accent.)
The thing is, I think nostalgia is only natural. Maybe a psychologist could explain it better, but our brains learn to associate movies, songs, TV shows, foods, smells, etc with memories. So when I bought the soundtrack to Transformers the Movie (the 1986 animated one) from Amazon recently and played it in my car I could remember crying in the theater because the bastards killed Optimus Prime off. (Seriously that movie traumatized a whole generation of suburban kids.) A lot of couples have a special song they refer to as "their song." I can remember playing Journey's "Faithfully" and "Don't Stop Believin'" a lot when I was writing the First Contact stories back in 1995 or back in 2008 when I was writing Heart of a Hero, the first story to feature Emma Earl as the Scarlet Knight, I kept listening to "Dream" by Priscilla Ahn.
So we build those associations and if they're good associations then we associate good feelings with that thing. When I watch Star Wars or Empire Strikes Back or the animated Transformers or GI JOE I associate it with pleasant childhood days and thus I'm willing to accept the faults in it. That's just only natural. Reboots usually suck because they change too much from the original, though on occasion a few manage to improve on the original. I would say the Nolan Batman movies, but other people would disagree. And I'm sure everyone has their favorite Bond after all that franchise's reboots.
I think nostalgia makes for a better experience. It makes whatever you're watching, listening to, or reading more emotionally satisfying. Not that that should be an excuse to never try anything new, but on occasion it's nice to revisit those old things; it's like visiting an old friend. Why on Earth would anyone want to condemn that?
Contrary to what Mr. Offutt said, I do not "live in the past." Sure I still have a box of old stuffed toys in my closet and I have my old Jetfire and some other toys, but I don't go around in parachute pants or drive around in a "classic" car; my car is a 2010, so there. (I did once drive around in a 1977 Nova but that was not by choice.) I grudgingly accept new technology, though that's largely because I'm cheap and hate spending a lot of money on a new TV or computer when the old one is still working.
With that being said, I have no problem with nostalgia so long as you aren't going overboard. If you are wearing parachute pants and driving a Fiero then you've got issues. Otherwise it's pretty harmless.
There is one area where I'm anti-nostalgia: the fashion industry. It seemed recently they tried bringing back those awful fluorescent colors from the early 90s. Yuck. If they try bringing grunge back I might have to find a bunker to hide in for a few years. And those stupid kids wearing shirts for bands that broke up long before they were born? Posers! Come on, fashion industry, try something original that isn't terrible. I suppose that might require some work, though, so let's just bring back Elizabethan era gowns and corsets! And powdered wigs for men! That would be totally awesome. Which really kids, "awesome" is OUR word. Get your own fucking word! And rappers, stop "sampling" old songs. Like creating your own beat is that freaking difficult; if you can't do that then get the hell out of the music business!
Here's the perfect song to cap off this entry by the only true Captain Kirk:
Friday, May 2, 2014
Must Be the Money
Much like every superhero ever, this blog has returned from death--or almost death. At this point I'm just going to do Monday-Wednesday-Friday but no set features. If you want a feature back, let me know! Thanks to the A to Z Challenge, I do have a couple of things that have been percolating for a little while.
First, over a month ago now I watched the latest Coen Brothers movie "Inside Llewyn Davis" which deals with the folk music scene in the early 60s. The movie itself is good, though I think like "A Serious Man" this was something the Coens made more for themselves than for the general public. The lack of buzz it generated with the movie-watching public and critics fits with the titular character, who is a folk singer at a loose end when his former partner jumps off a bridge for whatever reason.
At one point in the movie Llewyn undertakes a perilous journey from New York to Chicago to meet a club owner/promoter played by F. Murray Abraham (the guy who killed Mo Zart as they say in Last Action Hero). He starts off bumming a ride with a weird old jazz musician (John Goodman) and a younger guy who hardly says anything. After they pull off the road to sleep one night the younger guy gets busted by the cops and Llewyn has to make his way alone through cold and snow the rest of the way.
He gets to the club early one morning and waits around for the owner to show up and then manages to get a meeting. He gets out his guitar and sings a pretty folk ballad. And afterwards the owner says, "I don't see any money in this." Boom. After that he offers Llewyn a chance to be part of a trio, basically to be the background guy to help provide harmony, though only if he shaves his beard down to a goatee.
The lesson here is: it's about image and money. Talent is really an afterthought. And obviously this does not only happen in folk music in the early 60s; it still happens today in music, movies, and yes even in book publishing. When they talk about "a platform" they are basically talking about your image and how you need to fine-tune that to cater to mass audiences.
What's frustrated many writers for years and drawn them to self-publishing is this infuriating system that disregards good ideas for profitable ones. You can have a wonderfully written book and not get a single offer from an agent because they don't think it will make them any money. "I don't see any money in this," is what they would tell you if they had the guts, but that's the gist behind all those form rejections. If an agent wants to tell you differently, remind them of all the terrible celebrity books that they've published. (Though naturally that's not always the case; some people are just terrible writers.)
Especially nowadays when there have been all these mergers and profit margins are getting thin, money is far more important than art. So maybe the next time you get a form rejection it wasn't because of your writing; it might be that there wasn't any money in it.
On a side note, in the movie Llewyn Davis might have had more success if he weren't such a Grumpy Bulldog all the time. By the end of the movie he's pissed off pretty much all his friends and family; he's certainly not the affable hero you'd "root for." In the beginning of the movie he gets beat up for heckling a guy's wife during her performance. What confused me was this was shown at the beginning but we find out later it's actually the end of the movie. I hate when that happens.
I suppose the irony is if I had pitched that movie to the studios it never could have got made because they couldn't see any money in it, but when it's the Academy Award winning team behind "Fargo," "No Country for Old Men," and "True Grit" you get a bit more slack. Funny how that works, right?
First, over a month ago now I watched the latest Coen Brothers movie "Inside Llewyn Davis" which deals with the folk music scene in the early 60s. The movie itself is good, though I think like "A Serious Man" this was something the Coens made more for themselves than for the general public. The lack of buzz it generated with the movie-watching public and critics fits with the titular character, who is a folk singer at a loose end when his former partner jumps off a bridge for whatever reason.
At one point in the movie Llewyn undertakes a perilous journey from New York to Chicago to meet a club owner/promoter played by F. Murray Abraham (the guy who killed Mo Zart as they say in Last Action Hero). He starts off bumming a ride with a weird old jazz musician (John Goodman) and a younger guy who hardly says anything. After they pull off the road to sleep one night the younger guy gets busted by the cops and Llewyn has to make his way alone through cold and snow the rest of the way.
He gets to the club early one morning and waits around for the owner to show up and then manages to get a meeting. He gets out his guitar and sings a pretty folk ballad. And afterwards the owner says, "I don't see any money in this." Boom. After that he offers Llewyn a chance to be part of a trio, basically to be the background guy to help provide harmony, though only if he shaves his beard down to a goatee.
The lesson here is: it's about image and money. Talent is really an afterthought. And obviously this does not only happen in folk music in the early 60s; it still happens today in music, movies, and yes even in book publishing. When they talk about "a platform" they are basically talking about your image and how you need to fine-tune that to cater to mass audiences.
What's frustrated many writers for years and drawn them to self-publishing is this infuriating system that disregards good ideas for profitable ones. You can have a wonderfully written book and not get a single offer from an agent because they don't think it will make them any money. "I don't see any money in this," is what they would tell you if they had the guts, but that's the gist behind all those form rejections. If an agent wants to tell you differently, remind them of all the terrible celebrity books that they've published. (Though naturally that's not always the case; some people are just terrible writers.)
Especially nowadays when there have been all these mergers and profit margins are getting thin, money is far more important than art. So maybe the next time you get a form rejection it wasn't because of your writing; it might be that there wasn't any money in it.
On a side note, in the movie Llewyn Davis might have had more success if he weren't such a Grumpy Bulldog all the time. By the end of the movie he's pissed off pretty much all his friends and family; he's certainly not the affable hero you'd "root for." In the beginning of the movie he gets beat up for heckling a guy's wife during her performance. What confused me was this was shown at the beginning but we find out later it's actually the end of the movie. I hate when that happens.
I suppose the irony is if I had pitched that movie to the studios it never could have got made because they couldn't see any money in it, but when it's the Academy Award winning team behind "Fargo," "No Country for Old Men," and "True Grit" you get a bit more slack. Funny how that works, right?
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Ziggy, Chet Finley vs. the Machines of Fate
First off, Ziggy is not human. He's a robot "angel" who is part of a group of robots who secretly monitor the population of Earth for the gambling consortium known as RIGGED. (Because the house always wins, right?)
For years poor Ziggy has been assigned to watch the bumbling human called Chet Finley. Then one day Chet's bumbling with an old computer fries Ziggy's circuits, making him visible to Chet. It gets worse for Ziggy because RIGGED is going to going to kill him and Chet for the breach of security. Which means Ziggy has to throw in with Chet to escape the planet. To do that, they have to find the shapeshifting black widow Sadie and convince her to help them.
The nightmare doesn't end for Ziggy even after they get into space. At the galactic library his programming gets reset to its default mode, which is as a battle drone. On the plus side he gets to help Chet and Sadie escape from a RIGGED prison and then meets up with a hot robot assistant to an astrophysicist. Yup, there's robot sex! (Also Care Bear sex, both of which I talked about on my first blog back in 2011 or so.)
For me Ziggy is a combination of C-3PO, Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy, and Bender from Futurama. He's kind of snooty, kind of downbeat, and kind of a jerk. He and Chet might not exactly become friends, but Ziggy does hate him far less than he first did. If you're wondering, he's not named after the comic strip character; his name comes from the computer on Quantum Leap. Plus it sounds funny, which is always good when you're writing a sci-fi comedy.
This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site!
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Young Hearts
Some people might have trouble with Y but I don't. I didn't have much trouble with Z either; didn't hardly have to fudge that one.
Anyway, Young Hearts is the third one in the Children of Eternity series. Like the third Scarlet Knight book and the third Girl Power book I decided to raise the stakes by getting Samantha Young and her friends off the island and onto the mainland, a small town in Maine in what was then present day, ie 2006. Before I explain what the book's about, here's the one-star review this one lady wrote (and note I didn't go and stalk her afterwards or [until now] whine about it in public):
I really couldn't bear this. Again, I loved book 1. I had high hopes for this series. I don't know what this book had to do with anything.
They go to the mainland and coincidentally meet Pryde's relatives. I was thinking, could there be more to this? Are the links going to be revealed somehow? (Answer: no.)
Mr Pryde is uncannily understanding and helpful, basically taking them all into his home after knowing them for all of 2 minutes, letting them wear his dead wife's clothing, etc. His son then randomly stumbles upon a potion in a cave, which brings out his Mr Hyde side. He supposedly falls in love with Samantha, yet decides she needs this potion too, to be prettier, and they go a bit mental and do some pretty hefty crimes, and yet get let off the hook for all of it and everyone understands? And in the end, they're still in love, despite what an utter ass he is to her. Do I understand it? No. Does this have anything to do with the island of Eternity? No.
And what on earth was going on with that random dream sequence thing with Prudence and what's-his-name where she was literally a fat pig and he rode on her back and they somehow fell in love that way!?
Meanwhile, there's another story going on at Eternity, which frankly I didn't care about. This book was nonsensical from top to bottom. But more than that, this book was WHINY! Every other line (literally, no exaggeration) was someone calling someone else 'fatty' or 'baby' and the other person whining, 'Shut up! Don't call me that!' I actually found it offensive, after a while, the number of fat comments were in this book. I don't know, does the author feel fat and have some kind of complex about it? Because it was just constantly 'fatty' 'fat' 'pig' 'snort snort' or something along those lines. It was actually disgusting. I wanted to slap every character in this book after the first ten pages.
I also need to note: how many flipping times are they going to become babies again? Who cares?
So the first sentence of the second paragraph is right. Samantha and her friends take a boat they made to the mainland and get picked up by the evil Mr. Pryde's not evil great-something-or-other grandson. As for the third paragraph, he does help them because duh they're kids and they're dressed in wet, dirty, torn Amish clothes to boot. Basically she's complaining that he's nice enough to help them--she must be in the Tea Party.
The rest of that third paragraph is misstating the facts. Pryde's son
Joseph does find some weird potions in a cave. He's examining them when
he meets Samantha for the first time. He's smitten with her but he feels
really insecure because he's nerdy looking, not a jock or anything. So he
tinkers with the potions to make a sort of super-steroid to make himself a
hunk. The side effect is that he becomes a jerk. At the same time,
Samantha likes Joseph but she too feels insecure about herself because she's
only like 15 and dark-skinned unlike everyone else. So he makes her a
potion that over time turns her into Barbie, the side effect being that it
makes her into a total bitch.I don't know about "hefty crimes." They steal some beer and later try to rob a bank for seed money. I suppose they do try to kill Samantha's friends Prudence and Wendell, at least until they come to their senses. As for the end, they do still love each other because they realize they only took those potions because they liked each other. The whole thing was a big misunderstanding.
Does it have to do with the island of Eternity? Not so much. The potions were used by the Reverend Crane to help keep the kids in line on the island. There is a subplot where Samantha snoops around town and finds some damning information that she might have been a thief and possibly a murderer before she lost her memory. Which is another reason she feels insecure and takes the potion.
The "random dream sequences" were not random. Basically Joseph mixes a potion that causes Prudence and Wendell to trip balls. Prudence has always been mocked about her weight so in the dream she goes from a skinny cheerleader to literally a fat pig. Wendell is often called "Wendy" on the island because he's short and wimpy, so in his dream he literally becomes a girl. Their dreams end up merging so they can fight the Freddy Krueger-ish Samantha trying to kill them. They don't fall in love because of this; they were already doing that but surviving this together helps to put them over the top.
She really should have cared about the story on Eternity because it sets up the fourth book. An archenemy of Samantha's (who is connected to the Pryde family) sneaks onto the island and befriends a little girl named Molly. With some help from the Fountain of Youth, the archenemy becomes one of the children and starts planning for how to take revenge on Samantha.
So you see how when it comes to book reviews exaggeration can be very damaging? It also demonstrates the need for patience, because the mystery of Samantha and Eternity wasn't all going to unwind in one book--or three. It's probably the closest I ever came to doing something like Lost, which was on for how many years? And sure people got impatient with that too--and then the solution was pretty easy to figure out and pissed people off. Which may be how people would feel about this too.
Anyway, for me the point of this wasn't as much to advance the mystery as to advance the characters. In this book Samantha and her friends have become teenagers at last and with that there are of course all sorts of new feelings and changes in relationships. So for me it's really about Samantha and her friends growing up, a process completed in the next book.
This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site!
Monday, April 28, 2014
Xenophobia
For this A to Z challenge I had one rule--to talk about books I'd published--but now I'm going to break my one rule. Because I am Batman and the Joker all rolled into one. For the hell of it I'm going to talk about my only X story (though it's not X-rated) Xenophobia.
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| Not bad for 1997 tech, right? |
When other people wrote alternate universe Transformers stories they'd always take the apocalyptic approach (even the comics did this) about the Autobots have lost and the Decepticons have won and yadda yadda. I decided to do the opposite. What would happen when the Autobots and their human allies actually defeated the Decepticons?
The answer is they turn on each other. With the Decepticons gone, the humans start to see the Autobots less as liberators and more as conquerors and pretty soon (with some prodding) they start demanding the Autobots leave Earth. Meanwhile, with the war over Optimus Prime has decided to step down as the leader and go off exploring the galaxy and such, which is I guess the Transformer equivalent of playing golf and fishing. This opens the way for an unstable Hot Rod to take over leadership of the Autobots.
And of course while Megatron is dead, the Decepticons aren't entirely gone. A new leader rises up--a female one no less who claims to have been Megatron's "consort." (Because even psychotic despot Transformers have needs.) She gathers together the remnants of the Decepticon empire and begins work to rebuild it.
My favorite Transformer has always been Jetfire, the one based on a Robotech Valkyrie fighter, so of course he gets a subplot. Jetfire and his former assistant--the "consort" mentioned above--have figured out how to make Transformer babies. The thing with Transformers is that the "spark" or soul of a new one had to be created by Vector Sigma or the Matrix or Primus or some damned thing (really there is no one Transformers continuity) but Jetfire's figured out how to take two Transformer sparks and make a third, akin to how human babies are made. So yes this involves Transformer sex. Sweet.
Jetfire's "daughter" is serving as Optimus Prime's bodyguard, and when he realizes they're in for trouble, he takes off after them to try to save them. And then there's something about opening a wormhole to another part of the galaxy populated by aliens and a stash of nucleon, which is a powerful energy source, much more so than anything currently in use by the humans or Autobots.
Most of this is based on the Timothy Zahn Star Wars novels if you think of the Autobots as the New Republic and Megatron's consort as Thrawn. And Jetfire's daughter as Mara Jade. So who's Luke and Han and Leia? Hurm. This was supposed to be a trilogy but I never got around to writing more than a couple chapters of the second one. I think in the second one the Decepticons wrest control of a mysterious new energy source and in the third one they're using it to kick ass on the Autobots and humans, who thanks to unstable elements on both sides are having trouble working together. Which is pretty much how the Thrawn novels worked out for the most part. I am nothing if not unoriginal.
An Autobot character left behind on Earth is actually one I created to use in the Doom video games. Back then you could create mods for the weapons and scenery and stuff. I only changed the face and maybe the guns a little. I did another one for a Beast Wars character based on a fox. His tail became the shotgun in the game. Those were the days. Now all I have are my Sims. If only I could create Transformers Sims!
While I didn't finish this trilogy, I did write another shorter series of Transformers-related fanfics. It was more of a Star Trek Voyager kind of thing where Skyfire (a Beast Wars version of Jetfire) gets stranded far from home but finds an Autobot ship that was likewise stranded. Together they start to make their way home and have some adventures along the way. I was planning as many as 12 stories but quit after 8 because I got busy with school and work and/or stopped caring. The first book or two in the series are actually a crossover with the Doom game as Skyfire battles the alien creatures from that. Then there was a trilogy in which they find a planet of Transformers who are distant ancestors of them and they have to work together when the planet goes all Unicron and tries to kill them.
All those stories are written like shit because it was 17 years ago and I probably never bothered to edit it. Still if you're a Transformers fan you might enjoy it more than any of the stupid Michael Bay movies. It's only on a blog right now because I haven't ever published it because obviously there are rights issues and stuff. Maybe if they ever added it to Kindle Worlds I'd publish it through that. So the good news is it's FREE to read!
The rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site!
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