Who is Troglodyte Rose?
This little oddity appeared on the website, and has me fixed to see what comes next. Okay, I have to confess, I know what it is. It’s my website. Well, that’s only half true, or maybe a third true. Creative Director of Polluto and my housemate, Michael Dark, is putting together a rather delicious website for my upcoming novella from Crossing Chaos. This will be an illustrated book, half novella and half graphic novel, with heaps of gorgeous artwork from the Spectrum Fantastic Arts award-winning duo behind Teetering Bulb: Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon. There will be various items appearing early next week that will expand upon the wonderfully complex backstory of the book, as well as a couple of teasers about the artwork. Now, I don’t want to spoil anything, but you’ll love it!
Media Tie-ins: A Little More
A lot more discussion has been going on regarding media tie-ins, making me realize how big an issue this really is in the genre world. Lou Anders wrote a fascinating post here and in it he quoted someone else who likened the bias in genre fiction against media tie-ins to the bias of non-genre folks against genre. This has made me question my own bias towards media tie-ins. Am I no better than the literary academia who find joy in bashing us genre folks down for writing crap literature?And as I thought more about all of this I started to think about the wealth of literature I never got to read. You see, during high school I went through a period where I absolutely hated reading. Why? The same reason high school kids to this day hate reading: I was forced to read stuff I didn’t enjoy, that didn’t make reading fun or interesting, and because everything about literature revolved around standardized tests or annoying essays about stuff that was completely irrelevant, and still is, or annoying vocabulary tests of “what’s going on in the book” tests. None of this helped me become a person who loved books. For most of high school I absolutely hated reading. And that was anything. Only in freshman year did I actually read for fun, and those were media tie-ins such as Star Wars and Dragonlance, the former primarily because I was in love with SW through and through (still have some of my SW tie-in favorites, actually). But, then I was subjected to the horrors of our current educational system and that killed reading for me for several years–I got back into it when I started reading Star Wars yet again, and Dragonlance (and the works of Richard A. Knaak, who wrote for Dragonlance and then his own series). I wasn’t a reader before high school either, by the way, for the same reason.So, in a way, it was media tie-ins that made me a reader of science fiction and fantasy. I’ve always loved SF/F, because the movies were always awesome (mostly Star Wars, of course), but media tie-ins created my love for the literary form, where Star Wars novels allowed me to follow some of my favorite writers outside of the SW universe to original universes. And…that’s a good thing, right? If tie-ins drive us to read other things, what’s wrong with that? Nothing, but we’re not really talking about there.I’ll talk more about the crappy educational system in this country later. For now, I think I need to start realizing that I can’t be biased to media tie-ins as much as I used to be. I will always hate the Magic the Gathering stuff, because all of the ones I have read have been terrible, but I remember loving the SW stuff, so why shouldn’t I be able to pick those up again and maybe find new things to read?I think my biggest issue with SW is that it got too…I don’t know what to call it. I loved the stuff that followed ROTJ, showing us what happened to the Empire and our heroes, but then the whole thing lost me when they started delving into characters that just didn’t interest me (such as Han and Leia’s kids, who I couldn’t care less about…). But I can go back. I really can. And I think I will, some day.Additionally, this whole thing got me thinking about media tie-ins as something I should consider doing one day. When I was younger I wanted to write a Star Wars novel so bad that I would spend hours and hours figuring out what things I’d put into my story. I never write anything, but I wanted to. I don’t know when that desire left, but just in these last few days it has come back. In fact, here are the many shared universes I’d like to work in one day, and why: Star WarsThe obvious one. I love Star Wars. Always have. I don’t care much for the prequel stuff, mostly because it feels a bit tired and dull in comparison to the far future. And I’d like to work in the SW universe. I really would. I’m feeling a resurgence of love for the universe and all those childhood memories came flooding back, reminding me of why I wanted to be a part of the SW family. If I can, I’d like to write a SW novel, or two, or more. Star TrekI love SW more, but I do think there is a lot of fun stuff in the ST universe, particularly looking at it from a space opera perspective. I’d have a lot of fun showing the Federation at war and the politics involved. Imagine the complexity of such a complex situation as war within the Federation? Has it actually be done well? I mean the full political, social, and economical implications of interstellar war where allied worlds start fighting against one another? Sounds fun to me. X-men/MarvelI was in love with the cartoon show when I was a kid and wish all five seasons had been released on DVD, because I’d love to watch them again. Something about that gritty world of mutants was fascinating. I don’t know what I’d do with the X-men or any Marvel creations, but I know I’d like to do something with depth, drawing upon the social issues of a society where the minority are scared of the majority, and vice versa. WarhammerI’m not entirely sure why, but something about it makes me curious. It’d take a lot of research on my part to know what I’m writing about, etc., but I’d take a lot of joy in expanding on this militaristic war game’s universe. RiftsThe novels are dead, but dangit, this would be such a cool game to write for. Rifts is my favorite pen & paper RPG and there are so many fantastic stories to write about. It’s such an enormous “world”, with
Media Tie-ins: Good or Bad?
Jim C. Hines has recently been berating himself over his bias against media tie-in novels here and here. I think he’s being a little hard on himself. Granted, it’s probably “unfair” to have this bias, but he’s not the only one.I’ve had this bias for years. When I was younger I used to read media tie-ins all the time: Star Wars and Dragonlance mostly. Now, I don’t read any media tie-ins and here’s why: I’m mostly uninterested in the worlds they are presenting. I don’t care about the Magic the Gathering universe, or Star Trek, or Forgotten Realms, or any of it. I don’t. They’re old news to me and boring. There are too many damn books in those series anyway. I think of media tie-ins as lesser forms of literature. Yes, I understand this is silly, much for the same reasons that Mr. Hines stated about his own relationship with this particular form of bias. My problem is that I’ve read quite a few media tie-in novels, and only a small handfull have even been worth my time. Yes, there probably are many great media tie-in novels, but I’ve never read them and I don’t have the patience to wade through the crap to find them. I got turned off after reading three or four horribly written books in a row. Think of it like food: you eat something that looks good, but it tastes like crap, and every time you try a different version of that something, it’s crappy; would you keep eating that food or eventually pass it off as something you’re just not going to eat? Yes, this is probably a terrible bias to have, because there are likely dozens of great authors who write media tie-ins, but it has a reason to exist. I like original worlds better. I get the impression that authors who create their own worlds subsequently create better stories. The exception might be the Star Wars stuff set in the future (cause we all mostly hate the milking of the prequel era stuff). There’s a lot of room for originality there because, for the most part, none of that story has been told or established, and Star Wars has hundreds of planets that were never written about or discussed in the movies. There are quite a lot of good Star Wars books (I’ve read four that I really enjoyed and then one about Han Solo which was crap, but I was younger and I just loved it, so it has a special place in my heart). There’s too many of them. The most popular shared universes are flooded with stories by dozens of authors. Where do I start? Who is good? Who isn’t? Which series are more interesting? There’s just too much there. Even the Star Wars universe is flooded, and now with a lot more stuff I really don’t want to touch anymore. That all said, I understand that I probably have a rather silly bias towards media tie-ins. Authors who write in shared worlds probably put a lot of work into it, or at least I hope they do, because that wouldn’t look good for media tie-ins if they didn’t do any work at all.At the same time, however, I don’t think it’s all that silly to have a bias, or to dislike a particular form of literature. If you just don’t like something, you can’t force yourself to like it. I don’t like practically all literary fiction novels, because they put me to sleep, and you can’t really force me to like them (the occasional few novels will wow me, but most of them make me wonder how it got published). Disliking media tie-ins doesn’t make you a bad person. There are plenty of people reading such books, so it really doesn’t matter if you’re one of those who doesn’t read them–there will probably be a market for them for a long time. There are loads of people reading literary fiction, even though I mostly don’t like it (some of it is growing on me though). This is just the way it is. Some of us only read mystery novels, while others only read mainstream fiction, or romance novels, etc. It can’t possibly be expected of all of us to read everything, can it?So…What forms of literature are you biased against?
Publishing: The Big Change?
I was recently reading this post regarding what might be a change in the way publishing works around these parts (these parts being everywhere) and it got me thinking: maybe there will be a change, but that change might actually be a bad thing.The author of the post I linked sites examples within music (Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead) in which the musicians bypassed the traditional route (record labels) and recorded/published their work themselves. The problem I see with the argument is that these aren’t good examples of “self-publishing” within the music industry. Both NIN and Radiohead were popular before they broke from their labels. Granted, NIN had a lot of issues with the music industry from the get go, but they were still popularized while with a label. They’re not good examples of folks bypassing traditional routes and becoming popular. But that’s really not directly related to what is being argued.The argument is that the introduction of services like Lulu and Amazon’s version of self-publishing (plus loads of other sites offering free publishing services using a POD model) now allows a lot of folks to publish without incurring the cost during the process (mostly, since you do have to pay a small fee to be able to distribute via Amazon and what not). But will this become a means by which everyone goes to bypass publishing traditions? Even a better question is whether it should?Well, for obvious reasons the first question is pretty much answered. Folks are using Lulu and such. They are self-publishing their work and distributing it. This is good and bad at the same time. It’s good because there are authors who simply can’t get with a traditional publisher because they write niche stuff, and now such authors have a place they can publish without paying a year’s worth of wages for printing. I just finished a book that had this very issue that was self-published and it was actually a fantastic read, in all honesty. But that also means that loads and loads of horrible garbage is printed that wouldn’t be picked up by a real publisher even if it were the proper genre/style. I’ve been exposed to this too. In fact, there has been a recent feud over at YWO regarding this very subject: one young author published his book and could not take the criticism offered by those that did not share his enthusiasm of greatness. This author has, of course, gone off the deep end and begun attacking me on Twitter as well, seeing how I was apparently the most brutal of the bullies, when really I only submitted that his book was horribly written, because it was (it was practically unreadable and just because you self-published something doesn’t make you a great writer).I have a lot of issues with the inclusion of the ease of self-publishing. My main problem is that it’s a self-damning process. Yes, there are going to be a few fantastic books done through Lulu, and likewise there will be many good books, but for every one fantastic book there are about two hundred wretched books, and that leaves it to the customer to wade through all the crap just to find something that is even readable. At least when you go to Borders or B&N you know that the vast majority of things in the store are at least edited, copy edited, and basically readable. But with self-publishing you’re basically taking a wild gamble no matter what you buy. Maybe you’ll get a good book, but most likely you’ll end up with something under-par, something you’d rather not have wasted $17 on in the first place.So, I see problems with the self-publishing model, especially the fact that it is so easy, and I see the change as more negative than positive. If more folks were spending the appropriate time and cash to edit their novels, it might be different (and Lulu offers these services for a fee, by the way), but practically nobody is doing this. We’re left with unedited tripe that floods the self-pubbed market and makes it impossible to wade through. I’ve never bought anything directly from Lulu because of this very problem.Perhaps we’ll see more authors taking control of their work, but will this be a good thing overall? Perhaps for popular authors, ones who already have a following, but I don’t see the self-publishing model improving in quality, just in quantity. Yes, Lulu is a great service. It’s wonderful if you need a printing for something you want to put out and don’t want to spend thousands of dollars. Lulu has also made it tremendously easy for folks to print works as the “publisher” rather than the author, which is fantastic for the rise of independent presses. The problem, however, is that such things are a rarity, and that is perhaps because many of the folks who would be up for such a thing are burdened by the negativity that comes with vanity presses and even Lulu. Lulu is great, but we all know it’s a self-publishing firm and that there are thousands of hopelessly terrible books floating around in its catalogue.The question now is whether I truly feel there will be a change in publishing. Yes, and I’m very much against it. I fully and totally agree that the current publishing models adopted and desperately clung to by the larger publishing houses is outdated and is in great need of adjustment not only for the sake of publishing in general, but for readers and writers alike. But, and this is a big but, if changing means reducing the quality of literature–and by quality I mean simple things like writing that is readable both stylistically, grammatically, and spelling based–then we are going to deal with what might be the first actual death of literature. Do any of us honestly believe that people will keep reading if all they get is garbage? None of us like wading through trash to find something we’ll
Helix Authors Unite
Apparently given William Sanders’ horrible behavior, several authors published in Helix have decided to post their work online for free with the intention of giving us a way to view their stories without supporting the editor from hell. It’s called Transcriptase (discovered it from SF Signal).Give it a look. You might find some nice stories there (I can almost guarantee you will as there are some good authors there). Anywho. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
More J. K. Rowling to Read
You know, it couldn’t have hurt Rowling to have told all of us that she was planning to do this all along. Seriously. You couldn’t have just said “well, I’m making a few that only special people can see, but soon all of you will get to see a print version and the proceeds will go to charity”.Except, I don’t think this was her idea in the first place. I think she got reamed enough times to realize that if she wanted to save her credibility she should do the smart thing and give her readers a piece. Yeah, clever ploy. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)