SPFBO Observations; Reflections On My Writing

As I mentioned previously, having entered Beneath the Lanterns in the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off contest netted me a nice review by Liis. There were several things about the review that struck me as interesting. The great thing about reviews like this is that they allow you to see your work from a different angle, with different eyes. This passage struck me as something I never considered:

"Litka strikes me as a confident author. Confident in what he does and how he wants to tell this story. He doesn't need to rely on the shock factor to keep the hooks in the reader."

I never thought of myself as a confident author in the sense that other authors might be less confident than me. I would think most authors write their story and only publish it when they have confidence that the story is good enough, if not great. Undoubtedly a lot of authors struggle to some degree or another while writing that story, but I don't think that struggle is reflected in the finished work. What I suspect the reviewer to be saying is that I wrote, and entered, a book in the contest that does not, in story or style, conform to the current fashion in fantasy. If that is the case, judging from the reviews of other contestants I've glanced over, she would be right. There is reason for this; I am not a fan of current fantasy and have read very little of it, and this was even more true when I wrote the story in 2018.

But perhaps there is a more vague meaning, which may be boiled down to knowing what I'm doing. As an author you need to know what you're doing. You need to know your audience; what they expect, and then deliver what they expect and more, if you can. But the key to writing with confidence is knowing who you are writing for.

I do. And I keep it simple. My audience is me. 

This singularity of focus makes writing a whole lot easier. Knowing what exactly it is that I like to read means that it just becomes a matter of dreaming up a story that appeals to me and then writing it down. It's just that simple... Right. In any event, all this method then requires is a leap of faith that there are readers who like what I like. In the beginning that may have been a blind leap of faith, but over the years I know now that there are some people will like what I like. And that is enough.

I should mention that this is probably not be the best approach to take if you are aiming to write commercial fiction, i.e. stories designed to sell books in large numbers to a large audience, unless you yourself are very immersed in the large audience you are writing for, and thus, know that you and they want in a story. I am sure that there are authors who are lucky enough to find themselves in that position, but I suspect that for many others, to write books that sell in great numbers, they need to carefully study what sells, and then make themselves write books with the potential to sell. Writing for them, is a job. 

Since I don't need or want a job, I write what pleases me, accepting that my work will appeal to a limited audience. I don't know if this is confidence so much as accepting that what will be, will be. I think this in either case, it is a pretty good attitude for most authors. Writing what's in your heart and head, brings out the best your creatively, while at the same time, making writing so much simpler and rewarding, independent of sales numbers. 

This is not to say that I never take my readership into account. I do, sometimes. For example I set out to write the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure stories in part because they are set in the same setting as my most popular book, The Bright Black Sea. That said, I wrote them as mystery stories, using different characters and a different solar system, so they were not carbon copies of what I'd written before. I wrote them as mysteries, in part because I had something to say about mystery stories. The one thing I hate about mystery stories is that they almost always revolve around a murder, or two, or three... I don't know if mystery writers are just too lazy to come up with a mystery that matters that doesn't involve someone getting killed, or if murder is what the readers, i.e. the market, demand in mystery stories. Whatever. In my mysteries, since I still write for myself, none of them involve investigating a murder.

Liis also said in the review:

"What might not work for some readers? The Prose. I don't know what it is that makes readers shun lyrical prose these days. It's like an insurmountable mountain that masses, looking for quick and easy gratification, are unwilling to climb. But when you get into the prose, when you start to go with the flow, when you give it a chance the reward is worth it. I wouldn't say this title is overly descriptive, it is exactly what it advertises itself for - an old fashioned novel of adventure."

This was something of a head scratcher for me. I certainly don't think that I write with lyrical prose. Lord Dunsany writes lyrical fantasy. I don't. English for Liis, a Estonian who has lived in Ireland for a dozen years, is a second language, so that might explain it. I try to write in a conversational style, and I will admit that I often use two words where one will do, but I don't know if all that makes my writing "lyrical" as I understand the word, compared to modern fantasy writing.

Perhaps what she meant is that I have a distinctive narrative voice. I would like to believe I do. I try to make the narration flow as if the narrator was speaking to you, the reader. Plus, I am not concerned with taking "unnecessary" words out, like the writing advice I frequently come across tells me to do. So maybe my style is not as lean as the current style of writing, but I can't say for certain, as I've not read a lot of modern fantasy, especially self published fantasy. Most likely my writing reflects the books I love, and many of those were written in the first half of the last century which maybe what makes my writing different enough to comment about

However, this is once again a lesson illustrated in the last post; you write your book, your readers make it their own, and that version may not seem like the one you wrote. But you have to let go of your story. You have to let it, not you, speak to your readers. And the story may be better for it.

But enough of SPFBO. Next week... Writing Season. Stay tuned.

SPFBO Observations, Reviews in General

Having entered the Self Publishing Fantasy Blog Off, 9th edition (SPFBO 9), I've been reading the reviews of the other books entered. I was struck by the diversity. Not only in the books, but with the diversity of reviewer reactions to them. I've always known that you can't please everyone, and shouldn't try, but it's been eye opening to see just how personal stories become once they are in the hands of readers. 

To illustrate this point, I'll use the story that sunk Beneath the Lanterns in the contest; Deceit by Sharon Rivest. It was chosen as a semi-finalist by Liis over my entry. The blog has to narrow down their selection to just one book, so the other members of the blog's reviewing team read and share their own views on each semi-finalist for their blog. You can read their entire reviews; here. But here is a sample of what everyone thought of Liis' chosen story.

Liis said of Deceit:

Sometimes, and it doesn’t happen often, you start reading a book and it just works. Everything is exactly the way you like. The story flows, the writing is smooth, the pacing is perfectly unhealthy for your heart rate but this is what we want! Every word, every bit of dialogue, every scene has captured you and before you know it, the book is finished. Deceit was that book for me. I read a page and I just knew I was going to enjoy this. And I did, all the way to the end... 

Deceit is structured to follow the main character in two timelines, the present and the past. This structure is imperative for a story as grim and brutal as this. This!… is the perfect example of what I want my main character to do to me – sink his teeth in me so deep that it’s as if I live through every disaster and tragedy right there with him. The character development – the internal conflict and guilt (man, I do love a bit of guilt!) strike me as the perfect tools to make any story interesting.

What it did incredibly well, for my tastes, was the mental anguish, the torment of regrets, the heaviness that lies upon the soul of that very one character. If the author has managed to put that on paper, in written word? Magnificent! 

Then we have Bjorn who only read half of the book before DNFing it:

The book begins in the future, with a battle where the best men have been schooled by Mace personally. In the second chapter – one of the strongest, but completely confusing to me (I didn’t know there would be multiple timelines)  little Mace is sold by his father, who’s mostly concerned about whether the pouch of coin he receives contains as much coin as he was promised. It’s too late for me to be heartbroken, though, because I already know Mace will do quite well for himself. In chapter three, we return to the future from the first chapter, while in chapter four we move to earlier future than the later future from the chapter before. When I am starting to develop interest in someone, I have to re-shuffle my brain to the other timeline, and by the time I’m back I either forgot why I cared for the character, or they left. Also, it’s possible for a character to die a dramatic death, only to reappear, younger and in perfect health, five pages later.

Thing is – Deceit is not a bad book at all. It’s a semifinalist, because it was one of the judges’ favourite, after all. It just doesn’t work for me... But the real reason for my low score is that I could never forget I was reading a book. I was not in the author’s world, neither did I identify with any of the characters. I was very much reading a book and the ever-changing timelines sometimes made it feel like work.

Every chapter of the future builds into a mystery that somewhat plays off the past...The past chapters let us understand Mace’s early life – where he was sold as a boy to apprentice in one of the houses, working its way up to the reasons behind his exile and finally – his need for revenge...Every chapter in the past was like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion. Seriously, in my notes for him I wrote, “Dammit! Why does his every decision make me dread finishing the chapter?”

Olivia read 40% of the book, and her take away was:

I would probably describe Deceit as a low fantasy grimdark road trip novel… Road trip novels are, by their nature, incredibly difficult to pull off; because characters are often coming and going, an author needs a really deft hand in order to flesh out those new characters in a hurry, over and over...As a grimdark book, Deceit never really managed to gut-punch me, and I spent more than a little bit wondering why this was. For a while, I wondered if I’m just jaded by several years of grimdark stories one-upping each other on the gritty violence scale—but I think this problem also comes down to the road trip formula. Because the book never allows characters to linger on-screen for more than a chapter or two, I’m not very attached to them as a reader by the time bad things happen to them.

Paul's take after having read the entire book: 

Based on the synopsis alone, Deceit is a book that I expected to really enjoy. It promises a large amount of grimness, an intriguing revenge plot, and casts a grizzled older mercenary as its main character. Sadly, though, the promised elements themselves didn’t quite come together, and it just wasn’t something that I could entirely connect with...As a character, Mace wasn’t one I ever found myself engaged with. All of his problems stem from his constant bad decisions, so it was hard to sympathize with him to any degree, and we don’t actually see him actively develop (physically, skillfully, or emotionally), he just becomes the greatest warrior off-screen. There aren’t really any solid characters outside of Mace, so I found myself meandering through the story rather than being pulled. One point I would have to mention, given that I have mentioned it with other books, is surprisingly poor handling of the female characters. From what I can recall, there wasn’t a female character who wasn’t beaten, murdered, raped, or threatened with rape (sometimes multiple times). 

And finally we have Timmy's reaction, having read 52% of the story:

I’m going to be upfront and say right out that Deceit is not a book I would have picked up for myself if I had the choice. Simply because it’s not my jam. I’m not a huge fan of epic fantasy, and I don’t have much interest in books centered around fighting and traveling. I fully expected to dislike Deceit, and I think I was the most surprised by the fact that I didn’t. I actually think it’s pretty good all things considered, and I can see it finding its audience. So why, could you ask, did I not finish reading it? I just wasn’t invested in the story enough to continue... I found young Mace’s timeline more interesting personally, despite the many training/fighting scenes. But then adult Mace has enough fighting so there is that too. If you ask me, there is way too much fighting and not enough character-building for my tastes. Either way, Mace’s background story was at least interesting, if a bit way too gloomy. Poor man rarely had any joy in his life – far as I could tell, that is. Too bad the plot in the present timeline was dragging. By the 50% mark, I really couldn’t tell where it all was going.

So there you have it. Four takes on one book. I should also note that all the reviewers for the contest make a point to cut your throat as positively and politely as possible; balancing the positive with the negative, and pointing out that what doesn't work for them might work for another reader. 

Next week, some more thoughts on what I learned from the contest, and Liil's review.

My SPFBO 9 Experience

I regret to report that if you had any money riding on Beneath the Lanterns making it to even the semi-finals of the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off No. 9, you've lost your bet. Once again, all I got of one of these contests was the thrill of hope and anticipation, the agony of defeat, and a nice review. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, as it was a thoughtful and positive review. You can read the review here or on the Goodreads page for the book here. Statistically, making it to the final 10 was a 1 in 30 chance and winning the contest was a 1 in 300 shot. But given that part of the fun for me of writing this story was avoiding all the fantasy tropes I could think of, the odds were likely a wee bit longer. 

For the record, I did write Beneath the Lanterns as an attempt to widen my readership by appealing to fantasy readers. You can read my thoughts on how I came to write the book here in two parts; Part One and Part Two  Suffice to say that it is a post-apocalyptic story with its science fiction backdrop so remote in time and unexplored in the story that it reads as a fantasy story. Mark Lawrence did a similar thing in his first fantasy series setting it in our post-apocalyptic world, and he's the founder of SPFBO, so I think it passes muster as a fantasy. Still, I must confess that part of the fun of writing this story, as I said above, was tweaking the nose of fantasy expectations. For example, it is probably the only fantasy book written in this century where no character dies in the story. Heck, there's not even a real sword fight, not to mention you'll find no dragons, no folklore beings, no teen princesses/assassins, no evil kings, no epic quest or endless battles, no nameless evil to fight, and no magic system in it. It is not modern fantasy. So, in short, I have only myself to blame for Beneath the Lanterns washing out of SPFBO 9. I can live with it. In the end, it is far more fun to have fun writing what you want rather than what you think readers want you to write.

You may recall a previous past blog in which I reported that I volunteered to write one quarter of a four part short story for the blog that was reviewing my book for SPFBO. The complete story has now been published and you can find the final part here along with links to the first three parts, if you care to read it. I wrote the third part, followed by Jean Gill, who took the story in her own way with her own twist, bringing it back around to the beginning. I haven't looked back on my manuscript, but I have a vague feeling they tweaked my ending just slightly to make her ending work. In any event, I told you how I would've ended the story in that blog post so you can compare it to Jean Gill's and decide which one you like better. 

One final note; I didn't bother to enter a book in the science fiction version of the contest for self published authors (SPSFC), this year, as I have in the last two years, nor do I have any plans to do so in the future. It appears they received only 221 entries this year, short of the target 300. (Compare that to the fantasy version that filled its 300 slots in something like 47 minutes.) I'm not surprised, since there didn't seem to be a great deal of interest in the SF version of the contest outside of the authors who had books entered in the contest - if that. So, with little to gain, and a risk of receiving a bad review, entering another of my books didn't seem to be worth the bother. Besides my most straight SF book would be my space opera, The Bright Black Sea, and it is way too long for the science fiction version of the contest. Though I must say that the fantasy version routinely has books of that size. fantasy being fantasy. The fantasy version of the contest is six year older, and since there is a much larger fan base for fantasy, there seems to be a lot more involvement and interest in the contest - at least amongst the reviewers. Even so, I didn't see any bump in sales from it either. I suspect that for any book to see a significant jump in sales it would have to be one of the 10 finalist. 

I will offer some more thoughts about my experience in the SPFBO in the coming weeks.

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