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THE PROVISO
Jul
22
Common sense in publishing
July 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I was a reader long before I was a writer, and I’m still a reader more than a writer (’cause, you know, reading is a faster process than writing). So when I read Dear Author this morning, wherein Jane proceeds to give publishers advice as to how to help readers buy books and she didn’t miss a trick, I shouted hallelujah!
(Although the fact that she needed to defies winning models of doing businesses, but this is publishing we’re talking about.)
This one in particular caught our attention over at B10 Mediaworx (which website is in the middle of redesign to implement a better shopping cart than what we’ve got now):
Have a website where readers can easily find out about titles, where to get them, what formats they’ll be in, when they’re being released, and how they relate to other books with a link to an excerpt. Each publisher’s website should contain the information of title, release date and book description as early as possible along with the excerpt.
I can’t tell you how many times I have:
A. Gone to a website to purchase an ebook and had to spend upwards of a half an hour to do so because of all the extraneous steps required (or got tired or distracted or had a time limit and ended up not buying at all) and/or
B. Couldn’t find anything anywhere to tell me where I could purchase an ebook, even though I knew it was available (this included trolling authors’ sites, which helped little nor not at all) and/or
C. Read someone (or a whole lot of someones) on some blog complaining about A and/or B.
Quite often I read someone who goes, “Hey, Author A: Tell your publisher it needs to do X, Y, Z because I’d sure LIKE to buy your book, but I can’t. What’s up with that?” It doesn’t help anyone to request an author to help because s/he has no control over that—
—which is kind of the nice thing about opening up your own shop. (And some days, you have to scramble to rustle up any nice thing about opening up your own shop.)
Jul
20
Kansas City: your basic geography
July 20, 2008 | 5 Comments
So the people over in Kansas City, Kansas, got a little huffy over a Jeopardy! question somewhere in the early ’90s. “Kansas City, Kansas, is a suburb of what city?” That would be Kansas City, Missouri, dingdingding.
This post is not for those who live here because we know there’s a Kansas City in Kansas and one in Missouri, too. We’re just tired of having to conduct extemporaneous geography lessons to people who think they know what they’re talking about.
Jul
19
Movies post-apocalyptic
July 19, 2008 | 8 Comments
Last night’s fare: I Am Legend.
I don’t watch many movies because I’m usually obsessed with the ones playing in my head, begging to be laid on paper.
But I’ll roll over for post-apocalyptic tales (oh, 12 Monkeys and Waterworld come to mind and that reminds me, why [other than Kevin Costner's acting] is Waterworld so reviled?). I Am Legend is the best I’ve seen yet.
Jul
16
Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander
by Ann Herendeen
published by Harper Paperbacks
This book, whose tagline is “A man in love with his wife and his boyfriend,” wouldn’t normally catch my eye because m/m isn’t my kink. I bought it for an entirely different reason. So now that I bought it and read it and thoroughly enjoyed myself (oooh, have you noticed this trend about what I review?), I must speak my piece.
Here we are in Regency England (and those of us in Romancelandia are more or less completely and totally comfortable in Regency England, Heyer or no Heyer) and a sodomite wishes to marry to fulfill his duty to his family name while still continuing his unabashed lifestyle. He finds the right chick, marries her, figures out he so really doesn’t mind doing her, thinks she’s refreshing and falls in love with her blahblahblah (yeah, you know how it goes), then meets the male love of his life and we all end up happily ever after in the same bed with nary a menage a trois to be had. Of course, what would a Regency romance be without a little spying here and there?
Jul
16
The authorial beau monde
July 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Third person narrative: Limited, Omniscient, Objective
Third person limited, with a little modification.
According to Wikipedia (that most unassailable source), third-person limited is:
Third person limited is when the narrator is an outsider who sees into the mind of one character…In third person limited the narrator is outside of the story and tells the story from only one character’s view.
However, some authors use an even narrower and more subjective perspective, as though the viewpoint character were narrating the story; this is dramatically very similar to the first person, allowing in-depth revelation of the protagonist’s personality, but uses third-person grammar.
In my time writing novels, being in critique groups, chomped on by the creative writing professors at UMKC, this has been pounded into me as being The Correct Way To Do Things. Well, either that or first person, which has a literary cachet that is only beginning to gain ground in genre fiction.
Jul
16
Kansas City: le sigh…
July 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment
After viewing my KC photo gallery, a friend of mine said, “Oh, what a romantic city!”
Now, I love this town and yes, I have always thought there was a certain romance to it, but I never thought I’d hear someone not a native say it. I mean, that’s like saying Toledo is romantic. Maybe it is, but “romantic” isn’t the first thing I think of when I hear “Toledo, Ohio.”
Jul
12
Godspeed, Tony Snow
July 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Congratulations and good luck, Moxie.
Jul
12
Book Review: Always Listen to the Ravings of a Mad Woman
July 12, 2008 | 3 Comments
Always Listen to the Ravings of a Mad Woman
(A Story of Sex, Porn, and Postum in the Land of Zion)
by JulieAnn Henneman
published by Draumr Publishing
This book was mentioned to me as something different (especially as regards Mormon characters), so I went a-seeking. And boy, did I get.
Corinne Young is having an affair with her dentist. Kinda. Sorta. She’s not sure why, but there’s gotta be a reason, right? Her husband, Brent, holes himself up in his office with his computer all night long, working on the software training company he built. And then, well, all hell breaks loose. It doesn’t take long to understand why Corinne’s diddling the dentist, even if it takes her longer than the reader to figure it out. (Because, well, what does “husband holed up in his office with his computer all night long” say to you? Okay, after much thought, it occurred to me he could have been gaming.)
Jul
9
Genre romance as trailblazer (as usual)
July 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
In my wanderings around the ’net, one thing has become perfectly clear to me: However harried and hassled, looked down upon, sneered at, spit toward, and generally disrespected as a valid art form, genre romance (just after science fiction and Cory Doctorow) seems to be at the leading edge of the ebook revolution.
<donning pimp hat> Read more
Jul
9
Nekkid in public
July 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The owner of Sexy Little Outfits has asked me to contribute snippets (some clothing-related, some not) from The Proviso for the “Sexy Stories” part of her site. She’ll be putting up one a week for the next several weeks, so don’t miss out! Read more