A Bookcase for My Blog

My blog has a bookcase! How incredible is that! (Now, if I were to make my blog look like my home, those books would be stacked on their sides, filling each shelf from top to bottom, and there'd be bookcases all around my blog posts, but this one is a start.)

On the top shelf are the two books I'm reading right now. One's fiction, one's nonfiction, so it works. Below that, you'll recognize Lick of Frost, which I just finished. After that, I'm trying to decide between Kim Harrison and Janet Evanovich for the next book I want to read after Neil Gaiman. It's like my own blog book queue! I love it! By far, it's one of the best things Cody's found for me in a while.

NON Author Awards

Just this week, I interviewed Jonathan Friesen on the NON blog about his first book, Jerk, California. His novel was released in September 2008, yet mere hours after I posted the interview, The Knight Agency blog posted that Friesen's novel won the American Library Association Schneider Book Award (someone was also kind enough to let me know in the comments section of Friesen's interview post on NON that Friesen had won this award, too).

Was this coincidence? I might have thought so, but then just hours after I finalized the interview with next week's author (Jamie Ford), awards for his books started rolling in, too. Apparently, NON's got the magic touch! How exciting!

Disjunction Between Length and Time

The first novel I finished writing, Areia, is 1,309 pages long, spans approximately eighteen years of my character's life, and is actually only 1/3 of the original book I intended to write--the other two will wait their turn, wait until 1,309 pages is trimmed down to at least half that. The novel was a learning experience and a story all in one, and I decided that for my next book, I wanted to drastically cut down the story's time frame as well as the book's length.

Hence, Conventional Demon, which is currently about 250 pages and spans about 1 week of Madison's life. Book 2 also takes place in approximately one week's span, though it is 384 pages long. The shorter time frame limited and inspired me, and ultimately made both stories better, I think.

Is there, however, such a thing as too much story in too short a time frame? I just finished Laurell K. Hamilton's A Lick of Frost, which is 342 pages long, but the character and storyline advanced a mere 12 or so hours. That's it. Not even a full day and night, if you don't count the time lapse when the main character was unconscious.

As only Hamilton can, every scene became an example of many writing instructor's advice: make it as hard on your protagonist as you can, then make it harder. There wasn't a scene where someone didn't argue, where someone's feelings didn't need to be explored, where something unexpected or awful didn't happened. I was marveling over this last night with Cody, and he asked me if it was painful and if I'd started skimming sections just to get on with the book.

Oddly, no. I loved it. I zipped through this book with record speed (3 days, I think). I wanted a longer book, at least double, though. Frost feels like a very long episode, but not a novel. As if it were a made-for-TV miniseries coming out before the season of the main show. Were I capable of waiting that long, I'd treat this series like I do many TV shows, and "Netflix" it, waiting until all the books were out before reading them all in one big rush. I simply don't have the patience, though. It's bad enough to wait for the books to be released in paperback.

Hand-fed Literary (Dis)Taste

My adventures in Borders started out well last night. I went straight to the books on writing section and immediately found and wanted more books than would ever be useful. I skimmed through many, decided which ones I wanted, and then wandered to the fantasy section, a soft hum of happiness buzzing through my mind.

My euphoric bubble was promptly burst.

I'd read several months ago that Borders was trimming down the number of titles they carried so that they could have more face-out books, which in test stores, increased sales. I'd not noticed a difference in my Borders since reading that article, and thought perhaps the changes had been subtle and sensible. Unfortunately, it appears my Borders was only late jumping on the bandwagon.

Last night, the shelves were gutted. Stripped expanses of bookcases and shallow protrusions of faced-out books dotted the bleak shelves where previously there had been spines pressed tightly together, hugging each case from side to side, top to bottom. Cut from the desecrated fiction sections were the lesser-known authors with their one or two titles. The isolated books that remained, now facing out, were the popular, New York Times bestsellers, the award-winners, and the televised and Hollywood success series.

Shell-shocked, I shuffled through the store, really paying attention this time, and my horror transformed to disgust. The tables I'd previously enjoyed perusing were stacked high with books only seen on TV (mostly Oprah--Dr. Oz was everywhere, as were the "Eat This, Not That" books), written by or about celebrities, and top sellers. A few tables catered to the new releases, but even those were of popular authors only, not debut authors. Hand-fed literature decided by TV personalities assaulted me from all sides, and creativity was smeared and sullied into a thing of marketing and not talent. Dazed, sick, and feeling manipulated, I found Cody and left the store as quickly as possible.

A day later, I realize my naivete. I was seeing what had always been there--the raw commercialism that is necessary for the remaining Borders stores to stay in business. Those celebrity-driven books have never bothered me before, when the rest of the selection was there, and I understand the need for prominent displays of (and usually enjoy) good fantasy stories adored by the masses--but not at the cost of new talent.

I now understand the people who've sworn off chain bookstores in favor of their local stores. I understand the aversion and even hatred of these larger stores. The blatant catering to the highest-grossing novel smacks of Borders attempting to lower the expectations of its customers, not of a wise marketing move. And yet, even with this clear bid to appeal to the masses and ignore the individual interests of their customers, large book chains aren't surviving much better than the smaller, individual bookstores.

There has to be a happy medium. There has to be a way to make money and still stock copies of lesser-known authors. There even has to be the demand for this. I can't be the only one who hunts down new authors, new stories, new talent. And I'm highly insulted by the idea that Borders will now order for me the books that they previously carried in store, so that I can wait for what should have been an instant-gratification purchase. No, thank you. If I wanted to wait, Id' just order it from Amazon myself.

Even worse, there are no individual new-book bookstores in the area. It looks like I'll be buying even more of my books from the used bookstore, which carries a small selection of new books but a gazillion used books by authors of all popularity levels.

Lee Adama Puzzle Pieces

A few days ago I posted about my desire to dislike Lee Adama (from Battlestar Galactica) because he was a character who never had to achieve anything on his own; he has every promotion handed to him and never strives for a higher position of power, though he still makes it to presidency. I want to dislike him for his passivity, but he also possesses many of the traits I consider heroic. I finally realized the core of my conundrum.

It goes back to my childhood, in which I was never allowed to watch cartoons...

No, wait. Scratch that. This one is about plot versus character.

We've all read plot-driven novels and character-driven novels, or seen plot-centric movies which are very different from character-centric movies. I'm a big fan of character-driven novels and movies. I think that there's so much more enjoyment in following a well-thought-out character through a tale, discovering their dimension and personality as defined by their reaction to events than there is enjoyment derived from watching a two-dimensional character placed within an exciting plot element/scene.

Think Ironman vs. Spider-man. Ironman is an interesting character who uses his knowledge to change and grow throughout the movie/story. Spider-man is a rather two-dimensional character who gets placed in some pretty amazing CG scenes, which make decent video games. Both are comic book characters, but what a world of difference!

Think The Princess Bride vs. Made of Honor. The Princess Bride relied on strong characters to flush out scenes and bring the story to life. Made of Honor relied on generic genre characters and predictable plot points to push through a Hollywood "chick flick" during the wedding season.

Think Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark vs. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In Raiders, Jones was still being developed as a character. The story was still formed around him, and the choices he made as a character directed the action (to a point). In Crystal Skull, there was no character development whatsoever. The director/producer/writer expected you to be familiar with the characters, to expect certain actions out of them, and the movie was one plot gimmick after another, each seemingly contrived to get the characters to the right CG point.

Which brings me, a bit belatedly, back to my point. Somehow, Lee Adama is a character who functions like a plot. He's too flat. Too bland. There's no development happening with him. All his storylines are plot-driven, not character-based. That is the root of my distaste for him. He may be part of a heroic plot line, but he's not a three-dimensional hero.

First Query Sent

I submitted my first official query this weekend! This was the query letter I mentioned in the "Hungry Monster" post--the query which wouldn't let me sleep until I wrote it down...and was actually still good in the morning. I didn't send it to a literary agent in hopes that she would take my book, but to a literary agent who critiques the actual query letters. Some of you might know of the blog on which she posts the queries with her critiques, but I'm not saying the name for those who have no idea what I'm talking about in case she A) doesn't post my query or B) posts it and reams it. However, if she has good things to say about it, you bet I'll be posting a link and doing a silly dance around my office. For now, I'm pleased to have another feeler "submitted."

NON Interviews Jonathan Friesen

The newest author interview is posted on the Number One Novels blog. This week: Jonathan Friesen, an YA author with a humorous story of how he got published:

I attended a writer’s conference in California. It was my first, and for whatever reason I arrived a day early. Around dinnertime, I wandered around the grounds searching for food. I heard the distant tinkling of silverware, and unaware that I was a day early, walked into a room filled with people I assumed were fellow conferees. Turns out they were faculty. But as I didn’t know, I sat down at a table with literary agents and authors and started eating. They assumed me to be a new faculty, and I figured they were aspiring writers and we all got along famously.

Read the rest of his amusing story and the entire interview at numberonenovels.blogspot.com. Not only is the interview great, there's also a trailer for his novel!