Real Life has, as it tends to, got in the way of the Absurdist Inc blog. The breakdown of a relationship, relocation, job-search and the death of a computer will tend to do that. However, writer-wise, there have actually been things Getting Done, and so it felt like a good time to blog here and flag up what I've been up to and what's incoming.
While my fiction has been a little thin on the ground, I have been expanding my writing horizons with columnist work over at Hub, a quite spiffy sci-fi/horror/fantasy webzine. And no, I am not just giving them props because they gave Chaos Magic its first proper review (and a favourable one at that), nor am I just giving them props because they persist in publishing my articles. :) Seriously, the back catalogue includes a piece on sexuality issues in Torchwood, the evolution of vampire in fiction (I really ought to have mentioned Ultraviolet in there, but maybe that can be another review someday; that's still out on DVD, right?) and a review of JC Hutchins' Personal Effects: Dark Art that some might find familiar. There'll also, I think, be an interview with Colin Ferguson (aka Sheriff Jack Carter on Eureka) soon enough, and I've written a couple of others that I think are on the slushpile. It's all building a portfolio and now I'm pondering freelance work.
November's coming up, and that means National Novel Writing Month. As is now tradition, I will start the next City of Complications novel during NaNoWriMo, and get it at least mostly done over the space of that thirty days. Last year's was Chaos Magic. This year's is Birth Rites, and is going to darker places than Chaos Magic did. It's all outlined and I'm looking forward to it. And I have to wait a week. *gnaws nails*
So those of you who've missed this particular blog (all two of you), take heart. It's ba-aaaaaack.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Friday, 26 June 2009
Personal Effects: Style and Substance
We are told throughout our lives that looks aren't everything, that you can't judge a book by its cover, that it's what's inside that counts. Later on, the world seems to prove the opposite. We are talking about a world where people can become famous just for being attractive, and where actors don't have to have any kind of talent to be big names; they just have to fill seats with oglers. So which theory is right? Is it all about the looks, or is it about what's within?
I tend to think the answer is somewhere in between. Sure, I love the pretty wrapping paper as well as the next person, but I'm not going to be so blinded by it that I don't want what's inside to live up to the expectation provided by the packaging. David Boreanaz may get hired for eight seasons of Buffyverse because he had 'the right look' as seen while walking his dog, but I was never interested because the man can't act. Give me the combined yumtastic abs, character-filled face and sheer acting talent of Alexis Denisof every time.
That said, I should probably mention that the household copy of Personal Effects: Dark Art by JC Hutchins and Jordan Weisman arrived today. And, to use the above example, three chapters in I am after deciding that this is a Denisof, not a Boreanaz - this one has both.
Print quality and layout is a thing that fascinates me ... probably because I'm no good at it myself. I may not know how to do it, but I know what I like. Personal Effects: Dark Art has an innovative look, somewhere between really attractive hardcover novel and new World of Darkness sourcebook. The 'lined notebook paper' effect helps with a sense of immersion and a nearly voyeuristic investment in the text in that it gives the feel of reading someone's journal. The artwork is at once minimalist and evocative, sparing detail except where it is most required and effective. This is a book that, if you're anything like me (occasionally childishly over-exuberant), you may want to hug. And, if you're inclined to do that, even the cover's finish is smooth without unnecessary gloss, and rather tactile for it.
There's not much to say about the 'effects' bundled in with the book that hasn't already been said, but there's no overstating the innovation here. Looking at the birth and death certificates, photographs, driver's licence, credit card, admittance papers and all the rest, one can't help but see the investment of time and effort, the sheer geeker joy it must have been to design these things. Beyond what they add to the story, these effects are inspiring, and the fact that they exist at all nudges a reader towards the story. The creators love it, and put so much into it; it stands to reason that the story between those covers must contain the same hard work, attention to detail and inspiring non-gloss minimal invasive-yet-not creepiness that the packaging and extras do.
So far, the story does not disappoint. I'm hesitant to say that Hutchins has improved since the 7th Son trilogy, because that worthy material was good to begin with, and I'm a sucker for good first person narrative voice. That said, first person is easy to do badly - the starting point for the story is generally harder to find and the balance in detail given can be hard to strike. This, however, flows effortlessly; Hutchins has streamlined his style since 7th Son, and it takes his writing from 'man, this is good' to 'Can't talk now. Reading. Go away'.
(Side note: the only reason I interrupted my reading to write this is because I couldn't contain the squee. There'll probably be more of this once I've actually finished the book.)
As with everything, there is a flaw to this masterwork, though it's relatively forgivable in the circumstances. Setting up operational telephone numbers that could be reached by international readers free or for a nominal fee is likely difficult, after all. So it stands to reason that the phone numbers provided to give readers further tidbits would be North America only, but as a London-dweller, it's a little whimper-inducing to see those numbers and not know what happens when you dial them. Transatlantic phone calls aren't cheap, after all. It's also not the most portable thing in the world - the book itself will fit into my handbag, but that's only because I could fit half Guam in my handbag, and there's a risk of losing the 'effects' if taking this book out to read on the commute. This is a book for home.
Right. I have evangelised on this eminently worthy bit of cross-media entertainment, and now the need to do so is no longer a distraction. So I'll say it: Can't talk now. Reading. Go away. Preferably to your local bookstore or wherever else you can get your hands on this thing. It's worth it.
I tend to think the answer is somewhere in between. Sure, I love the pretty wrapping paper as well as the next person, but I'm not going to be so blinded by it that I don't want what's inside to live up to the expectation provided by the packaging. David Boreanaz may get hired for eight seasons of Buffyverse because he had 'the right look' as seen while walking his dog, but I was never interested because the man can't act. Give me the combined yumtastic abs, character-filled face and sheer acting talent of Alexis Denisof every time.
That said, I should probably mention that the household copy of Personal Effects: Dark Art by JC Hutchins and Jordan Weisman arrived today. And, to use the above example, three chapters in I am after deciding that this is a Denisof, not a Boreanaz - this one has both.
Print quality and layout is a thing that fascinates me ... probably because I'm no good at it myself. I may not know how to do it, but I know what I like. Personal Effects: Dark Art has an innovative look, somewhere between really attractive hardcover novel and new World of Darkness sourcebook. The 'lined notebook paper' effect helps with a sense of immersion and a nearly voyeuristic investment in the text in that it gives the feel of reading someone's journal. The artwork is at once minimalist and evocative, sparing detail except where it is most required and effective. This is a book that, if you're anything like me (occasionally childishly over-exuberant), you may want to hug. And, if you're inclined to do that, even the cover's finish is smooth without unnecessary gloss, and rather tactile for it.
There's not much to say about the 'effects' bundled in with the book that hasn't already been said, but there's no overstating the innovation here. Looking at the birth and death certificates, photographs, driver's licence, credit card, admittance papers and all the rest, one can't help but see the investment of time and effort, the sheer geeker joy it must have been to design these things. Beyond what they add to the story, these effects are inspiring, and the fact that they exist at all nudges a reader towards the story. The creators love it, and put so much into it; it stands to reason that the story between those covers must contain the same hard work, attention to detail and inspiring non-gloss minimal invasive-yet-not creepiness that the packaging and extras do.
So far, the story does not disappoint. I'm hesitant to say that Hutchins has improved since the 7th Son trilogy, because that worthy material was good to begin with, and I'm a sucker for good first person narrative voice. That said, first person is easy to do badly - the starting point for the story is generally harder to find and the balance in detail given can be hard to strike. This, however, flows effortlessly; Hutchins has streamlined his style since 7th Son, and it takes his writing from 'man, this is good' to 'Can't talk now. Reading. Go away'.
(Side note: the only reason I interrupted my reading to write this is because I couldn't contain the squee. There'll probably be more of this once I've actually finished the book.)
As with everything, there is a flaw to this masterwork, though it's relatively forgivable in the circumstances. Setting up operational telephone numbers that could be reached by international readers free or for a nominal fee is likely difficult, after all. So it stands to reason that the phone numbers provided to give readers further tidbits would be North America only, but as a London-dweller, it's a little whimper-inducing to see those numbers and not know what happens when you dial them. Transatlantic phone calls aren't cheap, after all. It's also not the most portable thing in the world - the book itself will fit into my handbag, but that's only because I could fit half Guam in my handbag, and there's a risk of losing the 'effects' if taking this book out to read on the commute. This is a book for home.
Right. I have evangelised on this eminently worthy bit of cross-media entertainment, and now the need to do so is no longer a distraction. So I'll say it: Can't talk now. Reading. Go away. Preferably to your local bookstore or wherever else you can get your hands on this thing. It's worth it.
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Chaos Magic: Online, Offline, Fine Line
Before I finish with my editing job, here is all the news that's fit to print about HIPPIE, Chaos Magic and what I want to be my career one day.
The Podcast: For those of you who don't know (and I know there are a few, for one reason or another), I'm doing a little thing called the HIPPIEcast. You can find it on iTunes, Podcast Pickle, Podcast Alley (search for HIPPIEcast on those three avenues), Podcast Blaster, or just on the site:
Currently up on the HIPPIEcast are the first eighteen chapters of the first City of Complications novel:
Back Blurb
London is a city of complications beneath the surface - supernatural entities of all stripes lurk and plot or, in most cases, just try to make a normal life for themselves. Of primary importance is keeping the Mortal Way inviolate and ignorant of the supernatural. So when the magical community explodes into frenetic and dangerous activity, with untrained magic-users of all stripes causing some of the worst kind of havoc, someone needs to find what's tempting the young mages into throwing their magic around before other warding forces get angry, and time is running out. Therefore, there's only one group to call. They are the Headquarters for the Investigation of Paranormal Phenomena and Interdimensional Entities. Here to help; won't call you a lunatic.
And yes - they call themselves HIPPIE.
So there's the pitch and the whole of the pitch. Sorry if anyone's hearing this for the umpteenth time, but given what's going on at the moment, I want to be thorough.
I want to get the book onto Podiobooks, but there's a not-so-minor problem with formats and various other bits that means I'm going to have to rerecord the entire damn thing. Start to finish. At least the first eighteen chapters' worth. This, as you can imagine, doesn't thrill me, but I've tried every work-around I know and it hasn't worked. So there you have it - to get onto the top source for podcast novels out there, I'm going to have to entirely re-record the entire thing. This, as you can imagine, is a bit disheartening. However, I have every intention of finishing the podcast before I get started on re-recording anything, as we're in the home stretch now and I'd rather not keep people waiting on the finish longer than I already have.
The Writing: I'm two chapters from the end of this, people. It needs an edit, but that's not an issue. A really good part of the whole podcast deal is that reading it aloud gives me a great view of what works and what doesn't, where I've fouled up, etc. So I've been editing as I go anyway, but will give it another once-over with the blue pencil before I do anything else with it. I don't expect that to take long. Which means now's the time to start doing something with it.
The Publication: I've mentioned the Print-on-Demand business model before, and it's still the one I plan to go for; the issue now is interest and publicity.
I'm well aware that everyone's finances are in more or less shoddy shape these days. Mine suck. I've been screwed over more times than I can count on the financial side, and the mess just keeps on coming. Rent's been an issue, food's been an issue, and it's caused more stress than anyone with chronic migraines can take. I can only barely work part-time given my health issues, and I'd go on disability in a heartbeat if the NHS weren't so fucking keen on screwing me around - massive waits for specialist appointments, the eventual appointment rescheduled with no prior warning (DO NOT TRUST THE POST OFFICE WITH SOMETHING THAT IMPORTANT, KTHX), the total lack of interest in worrying symptoms and the prescribed medication that has been tried with no appreciable success when I did finally see the specialist ... and on and on. We're scraping by. Barely. And sometimes, not even that. It's a mess. Some of you knew this. Some of you didn't. Now you know. We're hurting. Badly. A lot of it's my fault, or at least down to my circumstances. I want to make good.
So I want to sell this book, and print on demand is the quick-return way of doing it. It doesn't involve hoping an agent will find it useful, it doesn't depend on a publisher liking it and handing over an advance, and frankly, it's a way of generating the interest of agents and publishers by proving the thing can sell, and would sell even better with proper marketing. However, there are a few issues on the POD side, and they're worrisome. Very, very worrisome.
My preferred option would be to publish through Lightning Source. There aren't tax issues cutting into royalties, for one thing, and all I'd really need to do is transfer the ISBNs we got from when we were doing Affils to Absurdist Inc. Except for one small problem: there are fees with Lightning Source, and I haven't got the cash to lay out for that kind of thing. We're looking at about £90 in set-up fees with Lightning Source, including proof copy. (£20 for a proof copy; dear gods. If we hadn't found a serious mess-up with the proof copy they sent us for the Affils GM Guide, I'd think that was a total pile of bullshit.)
There is another option, though it's one I'm really not sure about. There's Lulu, and others like it, that do this sort of thing without any set-up fees. However, they are total bastards about the manufacturing fees and retail mark-ups and a whole lot of other things, which means that the actual royalties are low or the book price gets jacked up like you wouldn't believe. I'd rather not jack the book price or it'll never sell, so that leaves the other option. If I'm really lucky, really persistent and have a lot of support, I might be able to sell enough to upgrade my recording equipment, upgrade to a paid account so that some of this mess isn't an issue and maybe even pay for my web hosting between 2010 and 2012. It's a risk. It's a gamble. And I'm going to need all the help I can get.
I'm insanely grateful for the support I've had in this so far. I'm particularly grateful to Dodgyhoodoo, who does my DTP work and a lot of the mathematical working because I'm so hopeless at it as well as for the retweets and blog posts and general pimpage. I'm grateful to CourtCat for the ever-present retweeting, and to Asmenedas for the offers of help with some of my technical issues, his occasional retweets and that one really nice review-thing on his LJ. I'm grateful to those of you who have expressed enjoyment of and appreciation for the work I've done - for the squees, for the LOLs, for the lot of it. Please don't think for a moment that I don't. It's all that keeps me going in the face of insane setbacks like this.
But now, as we're getting into the final stretch, I really need your help. There's going to be a lot of updates in the near future, here and on my personal blog on LJ, about how the route to POD publishing of Chaos Magic is going. If Lulu fails me, I don't know what I'll do, but as I don't have the cash for Lightning Source, there's not a lot of other choice. All I ask is the following:
- If you like audiobooks, or haven't tried them and might like to start, pick up the HIPPIEcast and start listening to the book as is. It's there so that you know what you might be buying, and so you have something to listen to on boring commutes or what have you. If you're really against the idea of audiobooks, don't worry about it, but if you think you might like to give it a try, please do.
- If you do choose to listen to the HIPPIEcast, leave a review someplace. Podcast Alley, Podcast Pickle, Podcast Blaster, iTunes, Podiobooks if I can ever get it there, your own journal, any and all of the above; talk about it. The only way this stuff works is if people spread the word. Word-of-internet is the most powerful marketing force anyone could ask for, if it works for you. Please help make it work for me.
- When and if the book comes out in print, and you end up purchasing it, tell your friends. Leave reviews. It's the same principle as the podcast reviews - word-of-mouth and word-of-internet is powerful, but it only works if it gets past that first degree of separation.
I'm going to mention the donations button on the City of Complications home page only for the sake of completeness. It's got no interest to date and I get that; as I say, I know times are tight for everyone. However, I am working on an incentive scheme, as it were: extra content for those who are kind enough to donate. One is The HIPPIE Case Files; case notes, contact dossiers, mapped sites of interest around the City of Complications, the works. The other is Tales of the Side Ways Market; I originally had this in mind as a fan project the likes of 7th Son: Obsidian but it's since evolved into an idea of a collection of short stories outlining not the HIPPIE Brigade but the lives and business dealings of those manning the stalls at the Side Ways Market, shopping haven of all supernatural types. These will start off in .pdf format, so computer only, but maybe someday they'll get collected into side books of their own - kind of like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages.
In any case, that's pretty much it from me. Sorry about the length of this post. Hopefully there wasn't too much tl;dr here. And once again, thank you to those of you who have been so great in terms of support on the technical and promotion side. I appreciate it more than I can say.
The Podcast: For those of you who don't know (and I know there are a few, for one reason or another), I'm doing a little thing called the HIPPIEcast. You can find it on iTunes, Podcast Pickle, Podcast Alley (search for HIPPIEcast on those three avenues), Podcast Blaster, or just on the site:
Currently up on the HIPPIEcast are the first eighteen chapters of the first City of Complications novel:
Image by Roomic Cube on Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution licence.
Back Blurb
London is a city of complications beneath the surface - supernatural entities of all stripes lurk and plot or, in most cases, just try to make a normal life for themselves. Of primary importance is keeping the Mortal Way inviolate and ignorant of the supernatural. So when the magical community explodes into frenetic and dangerous activity, with untrained magic-users of all stripes causing some of the worst kind of havoc, someone needs to find what's tempting the young mages into throwing their magic around before other warding forces get angry, and time is running out. Therefore, there's only one group to call. They are the Headquarters for the Investigation of Paranormal Phenomena and Interdimensional Entities. Here to help; won't call you a lunatic.
And yes - they call themselves HIPPIE.
So there's the pitch and the whole of the pitch. Sorry if anyone's hearing this for the umpteenth time, but given what's going on at the moment, I want to be thorough.
I want to get the book onto Podiobooks, but there's a not-so-minor problem with formats and various other bits that means I'm going to have to rerecord the entire damn thing. Start to finish. At least the first eighteen chapters' worth. This, as you can imagine, doesn't thrill me, but I've tried every work-around I know and it hasn't worked. So there you have it - to get onto the top source for podcast novels out there, I'm going to have to entirely re-record the entire thing. This, as you can imagine, is a bit disheartening. However, I have every intention of finishing the podcast before I get started on re-recording anything, as we're in the home stretch now and I'd rather not keep people waiting on the finish longer than I already have.
The Writing: I'm two chapters from the end of this, people. It needs an edit, but that's not an issue. A really good part of the whole podcast deal is that reading it aloud gives me a great view of what works and what doesn't, where I've fouled up, etc. So I've been editing as I go anyway, but will give it another once-over with the blue pencil before I do anything else with it. I don't expect that to take long. Which means now's the time to start doing something with it.
The Publication: I've mentioned the Print-on-Demand business model before, and it's still the one I plan to go for; the issue now is interest and publicity.
I'm well aware that everyone's finances are in more or less shoddy shape these days. Mine suck. I've been screwed over more times than I can count on the financial side, and the mess just keeps on coming. Rent's been an issue, food's been an issue, and it's caused more stress than anyone with chronic migraines can take. I can only barely work part-time given my health issues, and I'd go on disability in a heartbeat if the NHS weren't so fucking keen on screwing me around - massive waits for specialist appointments, the eventual appointment rescheduled with no prior warning (DO NOT TRUST THE POST OFFICE WITH SOMETHING THAT IMPORTANT, KTHX), the total lack of interest in worrying symptoms and the prescribed medication that has been tried with no appreciable success when I did finally see the specialist ... and on and on. We're scraping by. Barely. And sometimes, not even that. It's a mess. Some of you knew this. Some of you didn't. Now you know. We're hurting. Badly. A lot of it's my fault, or at least down to my circumstances. I want to make good.
So I want to sell this book, and print on demand is the quick-return way of doing it. It doesn't involve hoping an agent will find it useful, it doesn't depend on a publisher liking it and handing over an advance, and frankly, it's a way of generating the interest of agents and publishers by proving the thing can sell, and would sell even better with proper marketing. However, there are a few issues on the POD side, and they're worrisome. Very, very worrisome.
My preferred option would be to publish through Lightning Source. There aren't tax issues cutting into royalties, for one thing, and all I'd really need to do is transfer the ISBNs we got from when we were doing Affils to Absurdist Inc. Except for one small problem: there are fees with Lightning Source, and I haven't got the cash to lay out for that kind of thing. We're looking at about £90 in set-up fees with Lightning Source, including proof copy. (£20 for a proof copy; dear gods. If we hadn't found a serious mess-up with the proof copy they sent us for the Affils GM Guide, I'd think that was a total pile of bullshit.)
There is another option, though it's one I'm really not sure about. There's Lulu, and others like it, that do this sort of thing without any set-up fees. However, they are total bastards about the manufacturing fees and retail mark-ups and a whole lot of other things, which means that the actual royalties are low or the book price gets jacked up like you wouldn't believe. I'd rather not jack the book price or it'll never sell, so that leaves the other option. If I'm really lucky, really persistent and have a lot of support, I might be able to sell enough to upgrade my recording equipment, upgrade to a paid account so that some of this mess isn't an issue and maybe even pay for my web hosting between 2010 and 2012. It's a risk. It's a gamble. And I'm going to need all the help I can get.
I'm insanely grateful for the support I've had in this so far. I'm particularly grateful to Dodgyhoodoo, who does my DTP work and a lot of the mathematical working because I'm so hopeless at it as well as for the retweets and blog posts and general pimpage. I'm grateful to CourtCat for the ever-present retweeting, and to Asmenedas for the offers of help with some of my technical issues, his occasional retweets and that one really nice review-thing on his LJ. I'm grateful to those of you who have expressed enjoyment of and appreciation for the work I've done - for the squees, for the LOLs, for the lot of it. Please don't think for a moment that I don't. It's all that keeps me going in the face of insane setbacks like this.
But now, as we're getting into the final stretch, I really need your help. There's going to be a lot of updates in the near future, here and on my personal blog on LJ, about how the route to POD publishing of Chaos Magic is going. If Lulu fails me, I don't know what I'll do, but as I don't have the cash for Lightning Source, there's not a lot of other choice. All I ask is the following:
- If you like audiobooks, or haven't tried them and might like to start, pick up the HIPPIEcast and start listening to the book as is. It's there so that you know what you might be buying, and so you have something to listen to on boring commutes or what have you. If you're really against the idea of audiobooks, don't worry about it, but if you think you might like to give it a try, please do.
- If you do choose to listen to the HIPPIEcast, leave a review someplace. Podcast Alley, Podcast Pickle, Podcast Blaster, iTunes, Podiobooks if I can ever get it there, your own journal, any and all of the above; talk about it. The only way this stuff works is if people spread the word. Word-of-internet is the most powerful marketing force anyone could ask for, if it works for you. Please help make it work for me.
- When and if the book comes out in print, and you end up purchasing it, tell your friends. Leave reviews. It's the same principle as the podcast reviews - word-of-mouth and word-of-internet is powerful, but it only works if it gets past that first degree of separation.
I'm going to mention the donations button on the City of Complications home page only for the sake of completeness. It's got no interest to date and I get that; as I say, I know times are tight for everyone. However, I am working on an incentive scheme, as it were: extra content for those who are kind enough to donate. One is The HIPPIE Case Files; case notes, contact dossiers, mapped sites of interest around the City of Complications, the works. The other is Tales of the Side Ways Market; I originally had this in mind as a fan project the likes of 7th Son: Obsidian but it's since evolved into an idea of a collection of short stories outlining not the HIPPIE Brigade but the lives and business dealings of those manning the stalls at the Side Ways Market, shopping haven of all supernatural types. These will start off in .pdf format, so computer only, but maybe someday they'll get collected into side books of their own - kind of like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages.
In any case, that's pretty much it from me. Sorry about the length of this post. Hopefully there wasn't too much tl;dr here. And once again, thank you to those of you who have been so great in terms of support on the technical and promotion side. I appreciate it more than I can say.
Monday, 1 June 2009
The Business Model
Some time ago, when I first declared my intention to take Chaos Magic to the free podcast/print on demand business model, a friend of mine informed me that I was "worth so much more than that"; that 'vanity press' was not the way for an author to go if they had anything remotely like talent. Surely an agent would notice me eventually, and a publisher would accept my work. Talent will out, she said, and a turn to what she deemed 'vanity press' would 'hurt my career'. In her view, there is no other business model than "submit to The Establishment and hope". She's not alone; recently, a new Twitter friend and fellow podcaster had a conversation with a friend of his about the podcast/POD business model, where the book designer friend stated unequivocably that the model was economically unviable; "Why would anyone buy the book," he asked, "if they've already received it for free?"
Yes, both of these individuals were pointed at the stellar example that is Scott Sigler, who had his initial book deal scrapped, went to podcast, and is now one of the top sellers in his genre and out of it. Then there's JC Hutchins, whose first podcast novel trilogy 7th Son has not only gone to print but has been optioned for film adaptation by Warner Brothers. These two alone prove that the free podcast and print on demand model does actually work. But there's more to the argument than just examples of "If they can do it, why can't I?" Those examples just illustrate a few small parts of the wider benefits to the business model under discussion.
It's a format range thing, first and foremost. Podcasts are great for some settings - commutes and long car journeys, mostly - but poor for others. For waiting rooms, departure lounges, being put on hold in a phone call for ages or anywhere else that you need to be paying some sort of attention, a podcast won't do. You need a hard copy book, or maybe a Kindle, so that you can get your story fix and still be paying attention to the things you need to hear. Most people will want both, for the purposes of re-reading. The podcast gives readers the opportunity to experience the book in one format, and that takes the risk element out of buying a new book. Reviewers' opinions may differ from the readers', but knowing what's in the book before you buy it means that you know for sure whether it's what you want to read in those moments where podcasts won't do. Never underestimate the power of the need to re-read. Consider how many people ending up buying multiple copies of the same book because they've read the first to tatters and need to replace it so they can re-read it a few more times. There's more to a book than just knowing how the story ends.
Additionally, podcasts provide the ultimate in word of mouth advertising. There are people who do not like audio books, usually speed-readers who don't appreciate having the pace of their reading dictated by a voice actor. But they have friends who podcast, or who listen to podcast novels, and thus they hear about all the new things that they're missing. They want to read this book because their friend is recommending it - likes it enough to buy the book even though they've listened to it on podcast already. So, particularly if the two friends don't live close enough for one to loan the book to the other, the non-podcast-listener will check for the book on Amazon, or wherever the book is available for sale. Good print-on-demand presses like Lightning Source will list with Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Blackwells and a number of other locations that may not buy and stock copies in meatspace stores but will certainly have them available to order. So the non-podcast-friend asks about it, recommends it to their friends, whether or not they listen to podcasts, and maybe they ask about it, and word of mouth (and word of broadband, perhaps) spreads the word until the book sells well. It's advertising of the cheapest, plainest and most effective kind; "We share similar taste in reading and you will like this; go find it in whatever format you can and support the author".
Another thing people often underestimate is how often people do want to support someone who has offered them free entertainment for so long. Take the case of Randy Milholland, who eventually broke under the strain of complaints that he wasn't updating regularly enough and said, "If you want me to update five to seven days a week like a regular job, pay me like a regular job. I will quit my job and keep a seven-day-a-week update schedule if I get a year's salary in donations". He did not expect to make as much as he did, but he did make it; he got his year's salary and took his year off, and kept his update schedule. It's been dropped since, as I think he had to go back to a day job, but the upshot was that his fans ponied up to support him. Consider all the webcomic artists who have received donations both financial and in the form of equipment when their computers/scanners have died, or when they've had serious medical issues that they've had to raise money for. Fan support is a very real thing, even in a troubled economy. And when you're getting an exponential expansion of the ways in which you can enjoy a book, what fan wouldn't shell out $10 for an article of proven quality by someone whose work they've enjoyed for months for no charge?
Looking at the world of professional publishing, there are few if any real benefits to having your work accepted by a publishing house. Yes, there's the advance, and there's not having to work your butt off self-promoting, but that's not exactly an advantage when you consider that an author is not being judged by their talent alone, or even primarily on the strength of their work. Agents and publishers accept authors and work that they know will sell. They are going on the strength of market trend sheets and no matter how good an author is, if it's felt that the book under offer isn't going to fit into that narrow demographic of "Will Make Us A Metric Fucktonne Of Money", it won't be accepted, end of story. Talent will not out; market trends will out.
Consider the piss-poor books that have not only been published, but have made it to the tops of best-seller lists. Consider Michael Crichton, whose pseudo-science-laden Jurassic Park had to be turned into a movie to save it. Consider Dan Brown, who more or less plagiarised his best-selling novel and whose plot pacing moves like a five year old with ADD but who still sold millions of copies of not only The DaVinci Code but Angels and Demons, which was an even weaker effort. Most of all, consider the Twilight saga.
The worst example of this, and why publishing houses can be seen as hideously overrated in terms of being published, is what happened with Breaking Dawn. According to the articles and discussions following the publication of that little slice of WTF, Stephenie Meyer's first three novels were heavily edited; the editors made as many changes as they could and demanded a lot of removal of subplots just so that the book would be remotely readable. She despised this - Meyer apparently has a history of not being able to accept criticism, however constructive - and when it came time to publish Breaking Dawn, complained that the editors were 'ruining her vision' and how she wanted this last book to be 'entirely in her own voice'. Likely because Meyer was Little, Brown's primary cash cow at the time, they acquiesced, and it appears that editors never so much as looked at her last, because it was full of spelling errors, repeated words, continuity errors and other very basic mistakes that no self-respecting author would (or should) leave in before handing it to an editor, much less for final printing. This is a large part of the reason why I fully approve of the "Don't Burn It - Return It!" campaign that even die-hard Twilight fans became a part of after Breaking Dawn launched; it's one thing to return a book because it didn't meet expectations or violated the author's own canon (which is cheap, but never mind), and quite another to return a poorly-made product that never came within five feet of quality control. Little, Brown published the book too soon because all they wanted was the money. They didn't do the job properly. Therefore, they shouldn't get the money.
Long story short: publishers are all about the bottom line. They don't care about the consumer, they don't care about the production team (in this case, the author) and they don't even care about the product; they care about the money. So good authors will get ignored in favour of people who are producing the same old tat because they are guaranteed a return. Anyone doing something truly innovative will not get a look in unless they are very, very lucky ... or unless the truly innovative thing has already proven popular with an audience. The sensible publishing houses are paying close attention to the podcast novels out there, and when they pick up a Sigler or a Hutchins or a Lafferty, they're doing it for the same reason that a listener will buy the book from Amazon in the first place; they know what they're getting. In this case, what they're getting is a well-publicised work of known quality, already written, already edited, with an existing fanbase to be expanded. The author's done all the work for them; they just need to add a bit of Emeril BAM!
So podcast/print-on-demand is a great business model for a new author doing something new and innovative. It gets an author noticed, allows new ideas to break into a static system that wants proven results and no risk. It's a lot of work, sure, but the sooner people stop thinking of it as 'vanity press' and start thinking of it as 'grass-roots indie publishing' or even 'guerilla publishing', the better off all us podcasters will be. Maybe then we'll see a change. Maybe then we'll stop seeing hacks like Meyer getting the attention that amazing authors like Phillippa Ballantyne and Matt Wallace should be getting.
Viva la Revolucion!
Yes, both of these individuals were pointed at the stellar example that is Scott Sigler, who had his initial book deal scrapped, went to podcast, and is now one of the top sellers in his genre and out of it. Then there's JC Hutchins, whose first podcast novel trilogy 7th Son has not only gone to print but has been optioned for film adaptation by Warner Brothers. These two alone prove that the free podcast and print on demand model does actually work. But there's more to the argument than just examples of "If they can do it, why can't I?" Those examples just illustrate a few small parts of the wider benefits to the business model under discussion.
It's a format range thing, first and foremost. Podcasts are great for some settings - commutes and long car journeys, mostly - but poor for others. For waiting rooms, departure lounges, being put on hold in a phone call for ages or anywhere else that you need to be paying some sort of attention, a podcast won't do. You need a hard copy book, or maybe a Kindle, so that you can get your story fix and still be paying attention to the things you need to hear. Most people will want both, for the purposes of re-reading. The podcast gives readers the opportunity to experience the book in one format, and that takes the risk element out of buying a new book. Reviewers' opinions may differ from the readers', but knowing what's in the book before you buy it means that you know for sure whether it's what you want to read in those moments where podcasts won't do. Never underestimate the power of the need to re-read. Consider how many people ending up buying multiple copies of the same book because they've read the first to tatters and need to replace it so they can re-read it a few more times. There's more to a book than just knowing how the story ends.
Additionally, podcasts provide the ultimate in word of mouth advertising. There are people who do not like audio books, usually speed-readers who don't appreciate having the pace of their reading dictated by a voice actor. But they have friends who podcast, or who listen to podcast novels, and thus they hear about all the new things that they're missing. They want to read this book because their friend is recommending it - likes it enough to buy the book even though they've listened to it on podcast already. So, particularly if the two friends don't live close enough for one to loan the book to the other, the non-podcast-listener will check for the book on Amazon, or wherever the book is available for sale. Good print-on-demand presses like Lightning Source will list with Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Blackwells and a number of other locations that may not buy and stock copies in meatspace stores but will certainly have them available to order. So the non-podcast-friend asks about it, recommends it to their friends, whether or not they listen to podcasts, and maybe they ask about it, and word of mouth (and word of broadband, perhaps) spreads the word until the book sells well. It's advertising of the cheapest, plainest and most effective kind; "We share similar taste in reading and you will like this; go find it in whatever format you can and support the author".
Another thing people often underestimate is how often people do want to support someone who has offered them free entertainment for so long. Take the case of Randy Milholland, who eventually broke under the strain of complaints that he wasn't updating regularly enough and said, "If you want me to update five to seven days a week like a regular job, pay me like a regular job. I will quit my job and keep a seven-day-a-week update schedule if I get a year's salary in donations". He did not expect to make as much as he did, but he did make it; he got his year's salary and took his year off, and kept his update schedule. It's been dropped since, as I think he had to go back to a day job, but the upshot was that his fans ponied up to support him. Consider all the webcomic artists who have received donations both financial and in the form of equipment when their computers/scanners have died, or when they've had serious medical issues that they've had to raise money for. Fan support is a very real thing, even in a troubled economy. And when you're getting an exponential expansion of the ways in which you can enjoy a book, what fan wouldn't shell out $10 for an article of proven quality by someone whose work they've enjoyed for months for no charge?
Looking at the world of professional publishing, there are few if any real benefits to having your work accepted by a publishing house. Yes, there's the advance, and there's not having to work your butt off self-promoting, but that's not exactly an advantage when you consider that an author is not being judged by their talent alone, or even primarily on the strength of their work. Agents and publishers accept authors and work that they know will sell. They are going on the strength of market trend sheets and no matter how good an author is, if it's felt that the book under offer isn't going to fit into that narrow demographic of "Will Make Us A Metric Fucktonne Of Money", it won't be accepted, end of story. Talent will not out; market trends will out.
Consider the piss-poor books that have not only been published, but have made it to the tops of best-seller lists. Consider Michael Crichton, whose pseudo-science-laden Jurassic Park had to be turned into a movie to save it. Consider Dan Brown, who more or less plagiarised his best-selling novel and whose plot pacing moves like a five year old with ADD but who still sold millions of copies of not only The DaVinci Code but Angels and Demons, which was an even weaker effort. Most of all, consider the Twilight saga.
The worst example of this, and why publishing houses can be seen as hideously overrated in terms of being published, is what happened with Breaking Dawn. According to the articles and discussions following the publication of that little slice of WTF, Stephenie Meyer's first three novels were heavily edited; the editors made as many changes as they could and demanded a lot of removal of subplots just so that the book would be remotely readable. She despised this - Meyer apparently has a history of not being able to accept criticism, however constructive - and when it came time to publish Breaking Dawn, complained that the editors were 'ruining her vision' and how she wanted this last book to be 'entirely in her own voice'. Likely because Meyer was Little, Brown's primary cash cow at the time, they acquiesced, and it appears that editors never so much as looked at her last, because it was full of spelling errors, repeated words, continuity errors and other very basic mistakes that no self-respecting author would (or should) leave in before handing it to an editor, much less for final printing. This is a large part of the reason why I fully approve of the "Don't Burn It - Return It!" campaign that even die-hard Twilight fans became a part of after Breaking Dawn launched; it's one thing to return a book because it didn't meet expectations or violated the author's own canon (which is cheap, but never mind), and quite another to return a poorly-made product that never came within five feet of quality control. Little, Brown published the book too soon because all they wanted was the money. They didn't do the job properly. Therefore, they shouldn't get the money.
Long story short: publishers are all about the bottom line. They don't care about the consumer, they don't care about the production team (in this case, the author) and they don't even care about the product; they care about the money. So good authors will get ignored in favour of people who are producing the same old tat because they are guaranteed a return. Anyone doing something truly innovative will not get a look in unless they are very, very lucky ... or unless the truly innovative thing has already proven popular with an audience. The sensible publishing houses are paying close attention to the podcast novels out there, and when they pick up a Sigler or a Hutchins or a Lafferty, they're doing it for the same reason that a listener will buy the book from Amazon in the first place; they know what they're getting. In this case, what they're getting is a well-publicised work of known quality, already written, already edited, with an existing fanbase to be expanded. The author's done all the work for them; they just need to add a bit of Emeril BAM!
So podcast/print-on-demand is a great business model for a new author doing something new and innovative. It gets an author noticed, allows new ideas to break into a static system that wants proven results and no risk. It's a lot of work, sure, but the sooner people stop thinking of it as 'vanity press' and start thinking of it as 'grass-roots indie publishing' or even 'guerilla publishing', the better off all us podcasters will be. Maybe then we'll see a change. Maybe then we'll stop seeing hacks like Meyer getting the attention that amazing authors like Phillippa Ballantyne and Matt Wallace should be getting.
Viva la Revolucion!
Sunday, 3 May 2009
Women, in 'General'
I was challenged recently by Matthew Wayne Selznick to discuss how women are represented in fiction outside the fantasy/sci-fi/horror genres. In terms of podcast, I can't legitimately comment (unless you count JC Hutchins' 7th Son as thriller rather than sci-fi, for which there's a legitimate case - genre's hard to pinpoint, as I'll discuss another time). I'm relatively new to listening to podcasts, mostly because I tend to get sidetracked when sitting in front of my computer and end up missing half the story because I'm reading something at the same time. When I started doing my own, I thought I should listen to other people's, and therefore I started with the genres I favour, and which fit in best with what I write. So I haven't listened to 'general fiction' podcasts.
In terms of hard-copy books, however, I've got a wider range, so some thoughts about women in fiction in general, with random books taken from the 'non-geek', if you like, sections of my bookshelf. I haven't even heard of some of the authors Selznick mentioned, so I'll have to make do with my own selection. I'll categorise between the good and the bad, by which I mean the most representative and the most stereotypical and horrible. Honestly, I am not trying to damn all male authors, nor am I trying to laud all female authors. Women authors are just as guilty of shafting men as men are of shafting women, character-wise.
The Good
Margaret Mitchell: Gone With the Wind. Male and female equally represented, more or less, despite mostly being told from a woman's perspective. Neither the women nor the men get short shrift, unless they're disposable villains - and I think every author has to have a few nameless, faceless plods doing the dirty work somewhere along the line. Mitchell runs the full gamut in terms of motivation and character types on both sides of the equation, and generally points out where the flaws are in both genders as well as the laudable points.
Warren Ellis: Crooked Little Vein. Sure, there aren't a lot of women in that book. However, there aren't a lot of characters in that book; it's short and there's a lot of secondaries but only three or so main characters. The woman who is there is true - a little warped, but true nonetheless. She has motivations, she has opinions, and she can love without being clingy. That's a rarity, and a pleasure.
Haruki Murakami: Dance Dance Dance. Again, the women in this book, even the somewhat scary or weird ones, have motivations and react to things and are an important and integral part of the story for more reason than someone is mooning over her or getting screwed over by her.
Douglas Coupland: I've read most of his work, and while every single woman he writes is mentally screwed up, so is every man, so it evens out. At least all the women are realistically screwed up, and act as support system for the screwed-up people around them instead of leaning on the nearest man.
Jacqueline Susann: The Valley of the Dolls. Women outnumber the men, yes, but when Susann does deal with men, she does it well. There are good men, and bad men, and they're important in their small ways, and even the outright miserable sods have reasons behind what they're doing beyond 'he's a man, they do bad things to women'.
The Bad
Zoe Heller: Notes on a Scandal. The men in this book, despite being more or less central as catalysts to the drama, are seldom if ever seen. While this is a first-person perspective from a somewhat malicious, stuffy busy-body of a woman, one would think that the author might at least try to throw one sympathetic male in there somewhere along the line, instead of tossing out an endless parade of insensitive brutes who seem to be out for little more than their own comfort and convenience.
Alex Garland: The Beach. The women in this book have no depth. They are manipulative, controlling, passive-aggressive bitches or background noise. There is no in-between.
Donna Tartt: The Secret History. This is a great book, and I really adore it, but the one female lead in it - one, mind you - just serves as a catalyst for jealousy and twincest. The others are background ditzes.
Irvine Welsh: Again, just about everything he's written leaves out women completely, but Trainspotting is particularly bad as you've mainly got a Lolita and a couple of mothers, one of whom loses her baby to SIDS while she's stoned, and that's the end of it. Most of the characters in Trainspotting are thoroughly reprehensible people but surely there's more to women than sex and yowling over where they went wrong with their kids.
Richard Adams: Watership Down. Yeah, they're rabbits. However, it would have been nice if we had seen one sensible doe in the entire thing, instead of having a lack of breeding stock be a plot point and females not mattering beyond that.
Virginia Andrews ... well, she doesn't get either gender right. Virtuous Woman is Done Wrong by Evil Man who is actually her brother or something equally ridiculous, and is also Horribly Abused by Evil Grandmother/Stepmother and Evil Sister. Generally it's less about gender and more about Rich People = Bad. I know it's her ghost-writer now, but honestly, perhaps a little less being beaten about the noggin with the idea, please?
I could go on - for all I focus on a genre for preference, I've read a fair bit. Some can be excused because of the time frame in which they were written - I wouldn't rant about Charles Dickens, Miguel de Cervantes or Alexandre Dumas not giving women equal time on-'screen', for example. Others ... well, I could go on all day about Lolita. But that's still a fairly good cross-section. To sum up, I like every book listed above, or I wouldn't still own it. However, I do have some problems with how some of them treat women. This isn't a male author versus female author thing exclusively, either. Whether it's Stephanie Meyer or Virginia Andrews, women denigrating their own gender in prose annoys the hell out of me, same as it does when George RR Martin or Irvine Welsh do it to women. So maybe this is less a gender thing in the broader context and more a thing where I should simply say 'bad characterisation annoys me' and leave it at that.
In terms of hard-copy books, however, I've got a wider range, so some thoughts about women in fiction in general, with random books taken from the 'non-geek', if you like, sections of my bookshelf. I haven't even heard of some of the authors Selznick mentioned, so I'll have to make do with my own selection. I'll categorise between the good and the bad, by which I mean the most representative and the most stereotypical and horrible. Honestly, I am not trying to damn all male authors, nor am I trying to laud all female authors. Women authors are just as guilty of shafting men as men are of shafting women, character-wise.
The Good
Margaret Mitchell: Gone With the Wind. Male and female equally represented, more or less, despite mostly being told from a woman's perspective. Neither the women nor the men get short shrift, unless they're disposable villains - and I think every author has to have a few nameless, faceless plods doing the dirty work somewhere along the line. Mitchell runs the full gamut in terms of motivation and character types on both sides of the equation, and generally points out where the flaws are in both genders as well as the laudable points.
Warren Ellis: Crooked Little Vein. Sure, there aren't a lot of women in that book. However, there aren't a lot of characters in that book; it's short and there's a lot of secondaries but only three or so main characters. The woman who is there is true - a little warped, but true nonetheless. She has motivations, she has opinions, and she can love without being clingy. That's a rarity, and a pleasure.
Haruki Murakami: Dance Dance Dance. Again, the women in this book, even the somewhat scary or weird ones, have motivations and react to things and are an important and integral part of the story for more reason than someone is mooning over her or getting screwed over by her.
Douglas Coupland: I've read most of his work, and while every single woman he writes is mentally screwed up, so is every man, so it evens out. At least all the women are realistically screwed up, and act as support system for the screwed-up people around them instead of leaning on the nearest man.
Jacqueline Susann: The Valley of the Dolls. Women outnumber the men, yes, but when Susann does deal with men, she does it well. There are good men, and bad men, and they're important in their small ways, and even the outright miserable sods have reasons behind what they're doing beyond 'he's a man, they do bad things to women'.
The Bad
Zoe Heller: Notes on a Scandal. The men in this book, despite being more or less central as catalysts to the drama, are seldom if ever seen. While this is a first-person perspective from a somewhat malicious, stuffy busy-body of a woman, one would think that the author might at least try to throw one sympathetic male in there somewhere along the line, instead of tossing out an endless parade of insensitive brutes who seem to be out for little more than their own comfort and convenience.
Alex Garland: The Beach. The women in this book have no depth. They are manipulative, controlling, passive-aggressive bitches or background noise. There is no in-between.
Donna Tartt: The Secret History. This is a great book, and I really adore it, but the one female lead in it - one, mind you - just serves as a catalyst for jealousy and twincest. The others are background ditzes.
Irvine Welsh: Again, just about everything he's written leaves out women completely, but Trainspotting is particularly bad as you've mainly got a Lolita and a couple of mothers, one of whom loses her baby to SIDS while she's stoned, and that's the end of it. Most of the characters in Trainspotting are thoroughly reprehensible people but surely there's more to women than sex and yowling over where they went wrong with their kids.
Richard Adams: Watership Down. Yeah, they're rabbits. However, it would have been nice if we had seen one sensible doe in the entire thing, instead of having a lack of breeding stock be a plot point and females not mattering beyond that.
Virginia Andrews ... well, she doesn't get either gender right. Virtuous Woman is Done Wrong by Evil Man who is actually her brother or something equally ridiculous, and is also Horribly Abused by Evil Grandmother/Stepmother and Evil Sister. Generally it's less about gender and more about Rich People = Bad. I know it's her ghost-writer now, but honestly, perhaps a little less being beaten about the noggin with the idea, please?
I could go on - for all I focus on a genre for preference, I've read a fair bit. Some can be excused because of the time frame in which they were written - I wouldn't rant about Charles Dickens, Miguel de Cervantes or Alexandre Dumas not giving women equal time on-'screen', for example. Others ... well, I could go on all day about Lolita. But that's still a fairly good cross-section. To sum up, I like every book listed above, or I wouldn't still own it. However, I do have some problems with how some of them treat women. This isn't a male author versus female author thing exclusively, either. Whether it's Stephanie Meyer or Virginia Andrews, women denigrating their own gender in prose annoys the hell out of me, same as it does when George RR Martin or Irvine Welsh do it to women. So maybe this is less a gender thing in the broader context and more a thing where I should simply say 'bad characterisation annoys me' and leave it at that.
Androgyny
It's interesting to get actual debate on this blog - in the good way, lest it be overly ambiguous. It's good to get called out when I haven't made myself as clear as I would have liked, or perhaps when I'm just dead wrong, or missed the point. Therefore, I now leave the 'being a girl geek sucks' rant aside and look at women in podcasting without genre coming into it. (The difficulties with even having genre divisions, which I've also considered ... that's another rant for another day.)
So, women in podcasting - or authorship in general - leaving aside genre questions. They're still out there, as I stated in the first couple of paragraphs of my last post. The list of female podcast authors given is no less valid just because they're genre writers, and there are more outside of those genres that I predominantly wrote about because that's what I listen to. And the ratio of male and female podcast authors still pretty accurately reflects the ratio of male and female hard copy authors. Read: there are more male authors just in general, though there's a heavier concentration in some pigeonholes than others. There it is, point blank: men write more, or at least are more successful at it. Definitely not saying they're better, but they certainly seem to get more books on shelves. So maybe the statement should be: "I rue the dearth of female authors".
Or maybe it shouldn't even be that. What's more important - the story, or the gender of the person writing it? Take for example KJ Parker, or even JC Hutchins; does it matter what the initials stand for, if Devices and Desires or 7th Son: Descent are stellar books? Does it matter that Kim Newman is male? (Seriously; I read a good four of his books thinking Kim Newman was female before someone told me otherwise, and my reaction was, "Oh. Okay".) Leaving aside the personal stake - being a female writer and podcaster with aspirations to getting paid for it one day - would it matter if I was male, at this point? I'd still be there, telling a story. Maybe it'd be a different story. Obviously from a different perspective. But I'd still be a writer struggling to get a decent story out, one I think is worth something and that I want to share, and that has nothing to do with what equipment I've got in my underpants.
There are so many people out there with a story to tell, and some of them could tell it very well but don't because they haven't got the time, or the patience, or the attention span, or the guts. I know people who'd love to write but don't because they freeze up after the concept-forming stage. Does it matter if they're male or female if there's this great story out there that's never getting told because the person who came up with it can't or won't write it down? So maybe the issue of gender ought to be cast aside along with issues of genre and we should simply say, "More writers, please!" There are dangers inherent in that, of course, as not all the people who think they have a worthwhile story do, or can tell it well, but no one has to read them so arguably, that doesn't matter either. Everybody who wants to write should do so, and strive to make their dream a reality. End of statement.
Thinking about it, it's a bit like those 'equal opportunities' policies that end up making sure they have a certain number of people of various genders, ethnicities, faiths and so forth so no one can accuse them of prejudice. It's a stupid system because the people who can do the job best might not fit into the slot some employer needs to fill according to their hiring policies. And, just as an employer should pick the person who can do the job the best, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, race or faith, so should publishers and readers pick the story that interests them most, regardless of anything about the author bar the story they've told. So maybe it doesn't matter so much that there aren't as many women authors, podcast or otherwise, as there are men. Maybe they're out there, these women, and we haven't heard about them much because they're not as fearless as some of the guys we share the podcast universe with. That's down to the individual, not the gender. Unfortunate, but true.
So in summary - to hell with gender. Everybody who wants to write, get writing. Sign up for National Novel Writing Month if you need support and a good swift kick in the rear to get started. Podcast if you want to. If you don't like having your voice recorded and heard by all and sundry (and believe me, I can get behind that one), there are options: like find one of the friendly folks who will read your novel for free at Voice Acing UK.
Make no mistake - it's going to be scary. This is the internet, after all. And even if you don't podcast, writing is scary. It's always going to be scary. It's never going to look as good to you as it might to someone else. You cannot see the splendour of your own work because you are too close to it. Keep telling yourself every day, every chapter, every paragraph - hell, every sentence if you have to - that it is not as bad as you think. It is never as bad as you think.
Male, female, white, black, religious, atheist, rooster-worshipper, I don't care - WRITE, DAMNIT! If only so that selfish little buggers like me who read too fast can have entertainment. Podcasting is good because it means I can eke it out over days rather than devouring a 400-page book in an hour or so.
So, women in podcasting - or authorship in general - leaving aside genre questions. They're still out there, as I stated in the first couple of paragraphs of my last post. The list of female podcast authors given is no less valid just because they're genre writers, and there are more outside of those genres that I predominantly wrote about because that's what I listen to. And the ratio of male and female podcast authors still pretty accurately reflects the ratio of male and female hard copy authors. Read: there are more male authors just in general, though there's a heavier concentration in some pigeonholes than others. There it is, point blank: men write more, or at least are more successful at it. Definitely not saying they're better, but they certainly seem to get more books on shelves. So maybe the statement should be: "I rue the dearth of female authors".
Or maybe it shouldn't even be that. What's more important - the story, or the gender of the person writing it? Take for example KJ Parker, or even JC Hutchins; does it matter what the initials stand for, if Devices and Desires or 7th Son: Descent are stellar books? Does it matter that Kim Newman is male? (Seriously; I read a good four of his books thinking Kim Newman was female before someone told me otherwise, and my reaction was, "Oh. Okay".) Leaving aside the personal stake - being a female writer and podcaster with aspirations to getting paid for it one day - would it matter if I was male, at this point? I'd still be there, telling a story. Maybe it'd be a different story. Obviously from a different perspective. But I'd still be a writer struggling to get a decent story out, one I think is worth something and that I want to share, and that has nothing to do with what equipment I've got in my underpants.
There are so many people out there with a story to tell, and some of them could tell it very well but don't because they haven't got the time, or the patience, or the attention span, or the guts. I know people who'd love to write but don't because they freeze up after the concept-forming stage. Does it matter if they're male or female if there's this great story out there that's never getting told because the person who came up with it can't or won't write it down? So maybe the issue of gender ought to be cast aside along with issues of genre and we should simply say, "More writers, please!" There are dangers inherent in that, of course, as not all the people who think they have a worthwhile story do, or can tell it well, but no one has to read them so arguably, that doesn't matter either. Everybody who wants to write should do so, and strive to make their dream a reality. End of statement.
Thinking about it, it's a bit like those 'equal opportunities' policies that end up making sure they have a certain number of people of various genders, ethnicities, faiths and so forth so no one can accuse them of prejudice. It's a stupid system because the people who can do the job best might not fit into the slot some employer needs to fill according to their hiring policies. And, just as an employer should pick the person who can do the job the best, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, race or faith, so should publishers and readers pick the story that interests them most, regardless of anything about the author bar the story they've told. So maybe it doesn't matter so much that there aren't as many women authors, podcast or otherwise, as there are men. Maybe they're out there, these women, and we haven't heard about them much because they're not as fearless as some of the guys we share the podcast universe with. That's down to the individual, not the gender. Unfortunate, but true.
So in summary - to hell with gender. Everybody who wants to write, get writing. Sign up for National Novel Writing Month if you need support and a good swift kick in the rear to get started. Podcast if you want to. If you don't like having your voice recorded and heard by all and sundry (and believe me, I can get behind that one), there are options: like find one of the friendly folks who will read your novel for free at Voice Acing UK.
Make no mistake - it's going to be scary. This is the internet, after all. And even if you don't podcast, writing is scary. It's always going to be scary. It's never going to look as good to you as it might to someone else. You cannot see the splendour of your own work because you are too close to it. Keep telling yourself every day, every chapter, every paragraph - hell, every sentence if you have to - that it is not as bad as you think. It is never as bad as you think.
Male, female, white, black, religious, atheist, rooster-worshipper, I don't care - WRITE, DAMNIT! If only so that selfish little buggers like me who read too fast can have entertainment. Podcasting is good because it means I can eke it out over days rather than devouring a 400-page book in an hour or so.
Saturday, 2 May 2009
Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves
An interesting lamentation came up on Twitter recently, and inspired a great deal of thought and debate: JC Hutchins and Matt Wallace both lament the dearth of female podcast authors out there. Which made me dubious and curious in equal measure: is there a dearth of female podcast authors out there? Admittedly, most of the ones I listen to are male (Hutchins, Bennett, Wallace, Doctorow, Bartlett etc) but there are at least two female podcast authors on even my admittedly small podcast update list. Three, if you count myself. And there are more out there that I just haven't subscribed to for one reason or another. At which point, I started researching, not just for female podcast authors, but for female genre fiction authors in general - specifically, in terms of science fiction, horror and fantasy.
There really isn't that much of a dearth of female podcast authors if you compare the numbers to female novelists, really. In the arena of the genres I predominantly listen to alone, there's Phillipa Ballantyne, Kimi Alexander, Lisa Wright, Abigail Hilton, Arlene Radasky, Christiana Ellis, Gloria Oliver, Leslie Anne Moore, Michele Roger, Karen Marie Moning and the inestimable Mur Lafferty, to name but a few. And those are only garnered from a couple of subgenres and a quick scan of Podiobooks.com, and not counting those with gender-neutral usernames instead of full on author names. If that's what one can come up with in five minutes, it shouldn't take long to find more.
The men do outnumber the women, that much is true. There are likely a lot of reasons for this, but I think a fairly telling one is that broadly speaking, there's not a lot of inspiration for a woman in the sci-fi/horror/fantasy arena, unless it comes from other women ... and even then, it's not taken as seriously as it could be by the industry and the fan base at large.
Say what you like about equality and so forth, but the fact remains that the 'geek genres' are predominantly a boys' club. Particularly in the mainstream TV and film arena, women get a raw deal a fair amount of the time, even when the main character is a woman. The best example I can give of that is Underworld, where the leading lady was once described to me as 'a sword attached to a catsuit'. The recent explosion of superhero movies in the media underlined the fact that women are predominantly eye candy who either kick arse or are damsels in distress (preferably both) in the eyes of the target audience. Electra and Catwoman, films that deal with some of the major female stand-alone bad-arses of the comic book world, were box office flops and poor films to boot, mainly an excuse to have women in skimpy and/or skintight costumes stretching their nubile bodies in fight scenes. Much as Seline in Underworld, in fact.
Speaking from the point of view of television, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was not the bastion of female empowerment that many people made it out to be. Every woman in the piece with the exception of Cordelia Chase and Anya (her replacement in the Insensitivity Squad) turned to absolute mush the moment there was romantic strife in their lives. Buffy can carry on slaying after her mother dies - hell, after she dies - but can't function without bursting into tears when Riley leaves her? What kind of an example is that to set for women? Losing your man is more traumatising than losing your mother in the Buffyverse, which seems to defeat the purpose of female empowerment. On the whole, while there are a lot of women in Buffy, they aren't particularly realistic women for the circumstances; by the point at which they're getting dumped, they should be more or less case-hardened to little disappointments like a relationship not working out, seeing as how they're in constant danger of losing their lives. But no, apparently heartbreak trumps all, if you're a guuuuurl. Angel was similar, if not worse: there were two female leads in all that time, and while both Fred and Cordelia started well, both turned into yet another excuse for Joss Whedon to air out his fetish for pretty girls who can fight. Firefly was more hopeful than Angel ever was, with women who could do without men but chose to have a relationship, or who manipulated them for a living, or who did what was considered 'a man's work' but maintained their femininity (Zoe, Inara and Kaylee respectively), but the movie more or less put paid to that. In terms of female-based action, the entire thing focused solely on either River's sudden and unique arse-kicking abilities or Inara being all conflicted about Mal in a far less subtle way than the TV series managed.
In short - women are there to kick arse and look pretty, or they're there to moon over a man. Or both. That's the message that we get from film and television. It's not really inspiring to women. Unless they're writing Twilight.
Authors - including podcast novelists - do not help any of this. Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files tries, and has been doing better of late, but in the beginning it was a serious sausage-fest; the girls were stereotypes at best. Murph was the Scully - the believer who still insisted on doing things by the book when it was clear that 'the book' wouldn't do. And then there was Susan - the romantic liaison that seemed to come out of nowhere. And that was it for females for awhile, at least until the Fae courts started in and Bianca got a better role. It has to be said that for predominantly hard-copy male novelists dealing with female roles, Jim Butcher is one of the best, and even the girls get short shrift in the first few books. Simon Green seems to have Buffy Syndrome; the girls are either little kick-arses, damsels in distress, little sisters or PURE EVIL (and dumb as posts). Stephen King, too, has issues with writing believable women, and tries to write a female main character perhaps once in a blue moon.
Podcast novelists? In terms of males dealing with female characters, Matt Wallace beats them all. That's discussed in a recent review, so that glowing exception can be passed over in favour of the rule - male podcast authors don't write women well, if at all. While JC Hutchins' 7th Son trilogy is a very good listen, it does not deal with female characters particularly well. Of the ones that show up most frequently, nearly all of them have been hijacked by a male psyche, so they do not count. Scott Sigler's Infected deals with women only out of necessity, though at least in that case the plot does call for a certain amount of inward thinking by a male protagonist. Mike Bennett's Underwood and Flinch does have female characters, but they are predominantly incidental, and only well-written in that they deal with the worst facets of 'woman' ... but then again, every single character he's written in that podcast novel are reprehensible, so that shouldn't be a surprise either. Any way you look at it, however, female characters are underused, underappreciated and poorly written on the whole by male authors.
That leaves female authors, who do pick up the slack. Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking and the other books in the series has a female majority in the character list, whereas Rachel Caine's Weather Wardens series is heavy on male characters but still shows a good rounded female protagonist. However, for every Mur Lafferty or Kim Harrison or Rachel Caine, there's a Stephanie Meyer and a JK Rowling; women who subjugate their own gender according to the rules set out by male authors since time immemorial. Bella Swan is seen as someone to emulate, as are Ginny Weasley and Nymphadora Tonks - the first is a whiny, clinging, self-absorbed airhead with serious codependency issues, and the latter two were a good strong character who turned to mush the moment they 'got their man'. While there are wonderful 'geek genre' series, predominantly fantasy, written by women, half the time the female characters they write are not to be taken seriously, as the whole thing has turned to paranormal romance - 'Mills and Boone with fangs'. Perhaps Buffy, with its 'Slayer/Vamp Doomed Romance' scenarios, can be blamed.
Genre fiction of this type doesn't tend to deal with sexuality much, unless that's the driving force of the tale - romance tends to go by the wayside when you're fighting for your life, unless it's heat-of-the-moment post-apocalypse-aversion sex. LGBT is rarely touched on in 'geek genre' stuff unless it's in passing or two women getting it on - note George RR Martin, who admits that Loras Tyrell and Renly Baratheon are an item but never showed them having sex before Renly's untimely demise, whereas there are at least four lesbian scenes within the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Likewise, gender issues are more or less ignored, with authors writing what they know. On the whole, it seems as though women writing men have a marginally greater success rate than men writing women, which is telling in and of itself, but the fact remains that when even female authors are turning their female leads into soppy puddles and that's nearly all male authors do when the girl's not dressed in leather and kicking your arse (or citing the rules and spoiling your fun), there are few places for a female author to turn for inspiration.
If you are a male author and you are lamenting the dearth of female authors, podcast or otherwise, take note: at least part of the reason is that the genres you're talking about do not take us seriously. We're fluff. We're eye candy. We have to be there because we make up half the population but we are not important to most male authors. Often, we feel shut out of the whole genre. Why the hell would we bother? Read over your own work and see if there's any single point where you indicate that you care what a woman thinks. If you can't find one, you're part of the problem.
There really isn't that much of a dearth of female podcast authors if you compare the numbers to female novelists, really. In the arena of the genres I predominantly listen to alone, there's Phillipa Ballantyne, Kimi Alexander, Lisa Wright, Abigail Hilton, Arlene Radasky, Christiana Ellis, Gloria Oliver, Leslie Anne Moore, Michele Roger, Karen Marie Moning and the inestimable Mur Lafferty, to name but a few. And those are only garnered from a couple of subgenres and a quick scan of Podiobooks.com, and not counting those with gender-neutral usernames instead of full on author names. If that's what one can come up with in five minutes, it shouldn't take long to find more.
The men do outnumber the women, that much is true. There are likely a lot of reasons for this, but I think a fairly telling one is that broadly speaking, there's not a lot of inspiration for a woman in the sci-fi/horror/fantasy arena, unless it comes from other women ... and even then, it's not taken as seriously as it could be by the industry and the fan base at large.
Say what you like about equality and so forth, but the fact remains that the 'geek genres' are predominantly a boys' club. Particularly in the mainstream TV and film arena, women get a raw deal a fair amount of the time, even when the main character is a woman. The best example I can give of that is Underworld, where the leading lady was once described to me as 'a sword attached to a catsuit'. The recent explosion of superhero movies in the media underlined the fact that women are predominantly eye candy who either kick arse or are damsels in distress (preferably both) in the eyes of the target audience. Electra and Catwoman, films that deal with some of the major female stand-alone bad-arses of the comic book world, were box office flops and poor films to boot, mainly an excuse to have women in skimpy and/or skintight costumes stretching their nubile bodies in fight scenes. Much as Seline in Underworld, in fact.
Speaking from the point of view of television, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was not the bastion of female empowerment that many people made it out to be. Every woman in the piece with the exception of Cordelia Chase and Anya (her replacement in the Insensitivity Squad) turned to absolute mush the moment there was romantic strife in their lives. Buffy can carry on slaying after her mother dies - hell, after she dies - but can't function without bursting into tears when Riley leaves her? What kind of an example is that to set for women? Losing your man is more traumatising than losing your mother in the Buffyverse, which seems to defeat the purpose of female empowerment. On the whole, while there are a lot of women in Buffy, they aren't particularly realistic women for the circumstances; by the point at which they're getting dumped, they should be more or less case-hardened to little disappointments like a relationship not working out, seeing as how they're in constant danger of losing their lives. But no, apparently heartbreak trumps all, if you're a guuuuurl. Angel was similar, if not worse: there were two female leads in all that time, and while both Fred and Cordelia started well, both turned into yet another excuse for Joss Whedon to air out his fetish for pretty girls who can fight. Firefly was more hopeful than Angel ever was, with women who could do without men but chose to have a relationship, or who manipulated them for a living, or who did what was considered 'a man's work' but maintained their femininity (Zoe, Inara and Kaylee respectively), but the movie more or less put paid to that. In terms of female-based action, the entire thing focused solely on either River's sudden and unique arse-kicking abilities or Inara being all conflicted about Mal in a far less subtle way than the TV series managed.
In short - women are there to kick arse and look pretty, or they're there to moon over a man. Or both. That's the message that we get from film and television. It's not really inspiring to women. Unless they're writing Twilight.
Authors - including podcast novelists - do not help any of this. Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files tries, and has been doing better of late, but in the beginning it was a serious sausage-fest; the girls were stereotypes at best. Murph was the Scully - the believer who still insisted on doing things by the book when it was clear that 'the book' wouldn't do. And then there was Susan - the romantic liaison that seemed to come out of nowhere. And that was it for females for awhile, at least until the Fae courts started in and Bianca got a better role. It has to be said that for predominantly hard-copy male novelists dealing with female roles, Jim Butcher is one of the best, and even the girls get short shrift in the first few books. Simon Green seems to have Buffy Syndrome; the girls are either little kick-arses, damsels in distress, little sisters or PURE EVIL (and dumb as posts). Stephen King, too, has issues with writing believable women, and tries to write a female main character perhaps once in a blue moon.
Podcast novelists? In terms of males dealing with female characters, Matt Wallace beats them all. That's discussed in a recent review, so that glowing exception can be passed over in favour of the rule - male podcast authors don't write women well, if at all. While JC Hutchins' 7th Son trilogy is a very good listen, it does not deal with female characters particularly well. Of the ones that show up most frequently, nearly all of them have been hijacked by a male psyche, so they do not count. Scott Sigler's Infected deals with women only out of necessity, though at least in that case the plot does call for a certain amount of inward thinking by a male protagonist. Mike Bennett's Underwood and Flinch does have female characters, but they are predominantly incidental, and only well-written in that they deal with the worst facets of 'woman' ... but then again, every single character he's written in that podcast novel are reprehensible, so that shouldn't be a surprise either. Any way you look at it, however, female characters are underused, underappreciated and poorly written on the whole by male authors.
That leaves female authors, who do pick up the slack. Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking and the other books in the series has a female majority in the character list, whereas Rachel Caine's Weather Wardens series is heavy on male characters but still shows a good rounded female protagonist. However, for every Mur Lafferty or Kim Harrison or Rachel Caine, there's a Stephanie Meyer and a JK Rowling; women who subjugate their own gender according to the rules set out by male authors since time immemorial. Bella Swan is seen as someone to emulate, as are Ginny Weasley and Nymphadora Tonks - the first is a whiny, clinging, self-absorbed airhead with serious codependency issues, and the latter two were a good strong character who turned to mush the moment they 'got their man'. While there are wonderful 'geek genre' series, predominantly fantasy, written by women, half the time the female characters they write are not to be taken seriously, as the whole thing has turned to paranormal romance - 'Mills and Boone with fangs'. Perhaps Buffy, with its 'Slayer/Vamp Doomed Romance' scenarios, can be blamed.
Genre fiction of this type doesn't tend to deal with sexuality much, unless that's the driving force of the tale - romance tends to go by the wayside when you're fighting for your life, unless it's heat-of-the-moment post-apocalypse-aversion sex. LGBT is rarely touched on in 'geek genre' stuff unless it's in passing or two women getting it on - note George RR Martin, who admits that Loras Tyrell and Renly Baratheon are an item but never showed them having sex before Renly's untimely demise, whereas there are at least four lesbian scenes within the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Likewise, gender issues are more or less ignored, with authors writing what they know. On the whole, it seems as though women writing men have a marginally greater success rate than men writing women, which is telling in and of itself, but the fact remains that when even female authors are turning their female leads into soppy puddles and that's nearly all male authors do when the girl's not dressed in leather and kicking your arse (or citing the rules and spoiling your fun), there are few places for a female author to turn for inspiration.
If you are a male author and you are lamenting the dearth of female authors, podcast or otherwise, take note: at least part of the reason is that the genres you're talking about do not take us seriously. We're fluff. We're eye candy. We have to be there because we make up half the population but we are not important to most male authors. Often, we feel shut out of the whole genre. Why the hell would we bother? Read over your own work and see if there's any single point where you indicate that you care what a woman thinks. If you can't find one, you're part of the problem.
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