The Saturday Moring Post ( No. 183)

 

Back to historical mysteries again this week.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Death in Delft by Graham Brack  B

I'm going to address the elephant in the room right from the get-go. The cover of this book will likely trigger a feeling of Deja vu in regular readers of this series of book reviews. This would be due to the fact that in my Saturday Morning Post No. 176  I reviewed another historical mystery book, Men of Bone by David Penny, who's book cover bears a striking resemblance to this cover, at least in design and colors. So you're no doubt wondering, as I did, what book copied the other? Well, rest easy, I've done the research for you. I can state that this book was copyrighted in 2020, while Men of Bone was copyrighted in 2021. This book cover is the OG.  Q.E.D.

With that burning question out of the way, let's get down to the review. As keen observers will note, we have, this week, a book that is solidly above average, with a grade of "B". Thank goodness. As one might deduce from the cover, this is a historical mystery set in the city of Delft in Holland during the year of 1671. The narrator, the 33 year old Master Mercurius, is a scholar at the University of Leiden. He is an ordained Protestant cleric and secretly, an ordained Catholic priest as well. The Reformation had made being a Catholic rather iffy in Holland, plus he could not be a scholar as a Catholic, so, with permission from his bishop, he takes orders as a Protestant minister as well, while keeping his ordination as a Catholic priest a secret. 

In this story, he is given the task of assisting the Mayor and officials of the city of Delft in solving a mystery involving three young girls who have gone missing, one of whom has been found dead already. In Delft he meets two of the most famous residents of that city, the painter Vermeer, and the scientist Von Leeuwenhoek, who help him solve the mystery. There's plenty of history and period atmosphere in the telling of the story, though the telling of it, especially since it's a first person narrative, "feels" a little modern, but not enough to detract from my enjoyment of the story.

I will say this, I would've given my kingdom for a period map of Delft, as there is a lot of going here and going there, walking along this canal and that canal. It really would've been nice to have some sort of sketch map of the city in order to follow what was going on. As to the mystery itself, I don't want to say too much. Suffice to say I found it interesting, more from the setting and characters than the mystery itself. This is not really a who-done-it with a selection of suspects to choose from. You're along for the ride as Master Mercurius slowly unravels the threads that tie the missing girls together.

I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the character, and the setting, enough to have downloaded the second book in this series, of which I think there are nine books to date. I still have a couple of weeks of KU, so hopefully I will be able to get to it.

The Herds of Readers

There are tens of millions of readers of literature in the English language, even if, as an author, you would be forgiven for being completely unaware of this fact when looking at your sales. The reason, well, one of the reasons, why you can be forgiven for being unaware of just how many potential readers there are out there, is because readers are divided into, markets. Or as I prefer to view them; into herds. Herds that roam their own regions of the sprawling book savanna, consuming only the books whose flavor pleases them, leaving those other, the unpleasant tasting books, the "weeds", untouched.

Here, I'm going to talk about the herds of readers of fiction, ignoring all the varieties of non-fiction, from histories to self-help to plumbing and beyond.

Fiction readers can be first divided into two large herds; readers of traditionally published books, and readers of indie published ebooks. This is a very important, and I believe, often overlooked, distinction, for while there is some overlapping of herds and the books they consume, the two herds are significantly different.

The herd of traditionally published readers are mostly composed of what I like to think of as "book people", which is to say, people who appreciate both the story and the paper machine that delivers that story: books. Book people like books, as books, perhaps as much as the story the books deliver. In some cases, it seems more so, given how popular very expensive special edition books are these days, and how many different editions of a single story some people own. There are even people who collect books! This herd likes to talk about books on social media, write long reviews of books on Goodreads, attend conferences, book signings, and even shop in actual bookstores. Some have their own YouTube channels devoted to books for people like them.

The other large herd are "the readers". These readers don't give a hoot about books as books. They want the stories that books deliver. They borrow books from the library in paper and ebooks. Sometimes they buy cheap, second hand books, if necessary. They buy, though more often borrow stories in intangible electronic files from on-line retailers to just read stories. And they usually read a lot of stories. Most commonly romances, along with thrillers, fantasy, SF, litRPG, and erotica. To them, books are just the medium, the story is what they want. They are the 21st century readers of pulp fiction. In general, they are less likely to write reviews, watch YouTube videos on books, but they may be as active in social media as book people.

There is also a growing herd of people who dispense with both paper, and the written word. They want to be simply told stories. Audiobook readers is the fastest growing herd on the vast savanna of books. Like the ebook readers, they don't need physical medium, and then go one step further; they don't need written words either, just someone reading the words to them.

These large herds are further divided by the types of books they read. Very often what they read is rather limited. Like fussy eaters, they read only a narrow range of books, one or two genre, or subdivisions within a single genre. This is especially the case with the ebook herd. While they are often avid readers, they're diet of books is often limited to what they know and like. Both herds travel as herds with a similar taste in stories. Book people can be, though not always, more omnivores when it comes to stories, so there are more smaller herds, stragglers, on their range of the savanna. 

While all this seems pretty basic, authors who aspire to sell books in any numbers above two digits, need to understand that they are going to have to create books for a specific herd. Usually, a very specific herd, by knowing its very specific literary diet. And realize that the large herds have more than enough to eat, while smaller, but hungry herds may be (relatively) starved for books. There are even, a few free roaming readers that will consume anything, and often look for something different, but these readers are mostly found on the range of the savanna roamed by the traditional published book herds. To write books that have the potential to sell, a writer has to write a book that meets the specific dietary requirements of their target herd, be it the slush-pile readers of agents and editors, or the avid readers of reverse harem stories. 

Still, you can, of course, write the stories you want and tell them in your way. Which is what I do. But you shouldn't expect to sell more than a few dozen copies, unless you're very lucky because the stories you want to write happen to match the reading diet of one of the large herds. Or, as in my case, blindly stumble into a herd that you hadn't really known existed. 

In my case, my herd is the readers of free books. Obviously not as lucrative herd, nor is it the largest. Still, it has proven to be a herd large and broad enough to allow me to write a variety of stories in the style I want and without having to tailor the stories to fit one of the more specific herds. Plus, it is one of the more "starved" herds grazing on a much smaller range, and with less books to choose from my books stand out more, and they are more willing to give them a try, as they are also voracious readers.

I firmly believe that if, eleven years ago, I had not stumbled into this herd I would have sold over the last eleven years, maybe a couple of hundred books and probably less, as I don't think, and didn't think then, my books would be eager fare for the large science fiction consuming herd. Discouragement would've taken its toll, and I would've never written twenty some books. 

You need to find your herd, and then they need to find you to sell more than a few dozen books. That last part is the hardest part. Luckily for me, the free books are not too numerous and the herd is composed of avid readers, so that I've been able to rely on them finding my books, instead of me searching for them.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 182)

 

Another KU pick this week. This time a Regency romance from a contemporary self-published author.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below

Guinea-Gold Hair by Florrie Boleyn (Jane Page Walton)  C+

This was a nice, pleasant book. All the characters were nice and pleasant. The story was nice and pleasant, not challenging at all. It moved along at a pleasant pace. I had no issues with the quality of writing. It was hardly spicy at all. And I dare say that if I was in the target audience, I would've likely rated it higher.

The story concerns Jenny, the seventeen daughter of a miller whose financial position is perilous due to the economic conditions of the time. Jenny is offered a chance to work in the big house of a local gentry as a nursery maid by the steward at that house who is her late mother's brother. She takes it. Jenny is a hard worker, whose job includes not only looking after the children, but washing the dirty cloths of the baby of the family. When she gets a chance to do up the hair of the bright sixteen year old young lady of the family, Marianne, hey become friends, despite their different statuses in life.  Then, for various reasons, Jenny becomes her maid when the family goes up to London for the season, where Marianne is expected to land a suitable husband. The bulk of the story takes place in London as Jenny gets involved in Marianne's prospects for marriage.

Boleyn has written four books in this series, and clearly has done her research, though the story presents the life and times of the period at a pretty basic level, so says I, an old hand at reading the Regency romances of the writer who is considered the originator of the genre, Georgette Heyer. The difference in the details of the period and the characters and their depths is quite noticeable. I don't know if this reflects the extent of the author's research, or if it represents  the level of accessibility to the intricacies of the period that she expects her readers desire. I have to wonder if she has ever read a Heyer Regency romance.

For me, it read to read like a middle grade book version of a Heyer Regency romance. It lacks the fine details of that time and social order, the language of the time, the depth of characters, as well as the clever and witty writing of Heyer, which are all the things that I read Heyer for, rather than the romance, which is the focus of this story. But, as I said, this may be a feature rather that a flaw, since I am not familiar with the expectations of contemporary Regency romance readers, and thus, this is not a criticism of the book, simply an observation.

As I implied at the start, this is a nice, harmless story where even the villains have a heart of gold. I like pleasant stories, I like peasant characters, I liked this book. But is is not quite my cup of tea. I am not its target audience, and that is reflected in my slightly above average grade. If it sounds like your cup of tea, you will probably grade it higher.

The author has written three other books in this Walcott Manor series, and a series of Victorian mysteries as well.

Two New Covers

The Poison-Pill Will and The Pawns' Game are currently out to my beta readers, so I thought I better get on the stick and create a cover for the stories. Since my simple black & white cover didn't seem to hinder the sales of The Isle House Ghost, I decided to go with that style for this one as well, plus convert The Founders' Tribunal cover to the same style, once this story is released. That, however will not be until some time in June or early July. These two stories however will be available in paperback form sometime in May, when I release an anthology of all the Red Hu/Wine novellas and short stories under the title of The Red Wine Dossiers. I still have to paint that cover, though right now, I am planning on using a version of this scene done in paint using colors that will match The Darval-Mers Dossier cover so the two books will share a common look.

I like the way this cover turned out. I could've placed the figures lower so that the title box would not cover up part of the umbrella, or just made the figures a little smaller, but I actually like it better this way. It ties everything together. And I could've moved the image over to the right just slightly so both umbrella tips were equally away from the bordered. But I didn't. Blame that on laziness. And well, who wants perfect symmetry, anyway? 

Below will probably be the new Founders' Tribunal cover. It's rather stiff, but figure drawing, and dog drawing, are another one of those many things that ain't in my wheelhouse. I should've pulled out my How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way book, but once again, I was too lazy. I don't think my readers are all that concerned about covers. 

Below is the complete set of novellas. I don't think I'm going to change the ebook cover of The Darval-Mers Dossier to this style, as not only is it novel, but it has a print edition as well.

Next on my agenda is painting that cover for the paperback version. Stay tuned for that in the coming weeks. 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 181)

 

My what's on Kindle Unlimited quest continues. This week we have a book by a French author, that is set not in France, but in England, Canada, and America in 2016 and 1980. What could go wrong?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Last of the Stanfields by Marc Levy DNF 28%

You might well like this book. It is by a French author, and is written in a lively fashion. It is, however, one of them modern books. I don't like most modern books. 

The basic plot is that in 2016 our first person narrator, Eleanor-Rigby Donovan, living in London, receives an anonymous letter stating that her late mother was both a very good, and a very evil person, and it might pay to discover her past. About 25% of the way through, we have another first person narrator in the character of George-Harrison Collins, living in Canada who receives a similar letter. His mother is in memory care and this father left before he was born. However, interspersed with this time line, we have a story set in Baltimore Maryland in 1980 about two women who set up a newspaper to speak truth to power. Obviously, at least one of these two women is Eleanor-Rigby's mother - there is a mystery involving her and her father - and given the name of George-Harrison, whose father left before he was born, we have a connection there as well. The mystery then is just finding out what happened in 1980, which could be told as a straight story without the "mystery" the letters create. 

I had the best intentions of giving this book a chance, and I think I did. But, alas, I can not get interested in any story if I don't have a character in the story to travel through it. This jumping around in time, and narrators just derails any interest in the story for me. I need to be on the ground with the characters, not above looking down on them. And even in the "present" time period told by the first person narrators, the narration shifts to third person for the scenes when the narrator isn't present, which is at least an interesting way of working around the limits of a first person narrator. However for me, the inability to get interested in the 1980 story, and the rather sentimental 2016 story, was too much for me. But, for the right reader, this might be an enjoyable story.

A Special Guest Contributor on the Uniqueness of Writers

I came across this introduction by James Payn. I have slightly edited it. I found it quite timely.

A Vanity Fair Caricature 1888

"In these days, when every man and woman becomes an author upon the least provocation, it is not necessary to make an apology for appearing in print...  Neither sex nor age seems to exempt from the universal passion of authorship. My niece, Jessie (ætat. sixteen), writes heart-rending narratives for the "Liliputian Magazine;" her brother, whom I have always looked upon as a violent, healthy hobbledehoy whose highest virtue was Endurance, and whose darkest experience was Skittles, produces the most thrilling romances for the "Home Companion." Even my housekeeper makes no secret of forwarding her most admired recipes to the "Family Intelligencer;" while my stable-boy, it is well known, is a prominent poetical contributor to the "Turf Times," having also the gift of prophecy with reference to the winner of all the racing events of any importance. And yet, I believe, my household is not more addicted to publication than those of my neighbours.

What becomes of authors by profession in such a state of things literary as this, I shudder to think; I feel it almost a sin to add one more to the long list of competitors with whom they have to struggle; but still, if I do not now set down the story which I have in my mind, I am certain that, sooner or later, my nephew will do so for me, and very likely spoil it in the telling. He writes in a snappy, jerky, pyrotechnic way, which they tell me is now popular, but which is not suited to my old-fashioned taste; and although he dare not make, at present, what he calls "copy" of the stories with which I am perhaps too much accustomed to regale his ears, he keeps a note-book, and a new terror is added to Death from that circumstance. When I am gone, he will publish my best things, under some such title as "After-dinner Tales," I feel certain; and they will appear at the railway book-stalls in a yellow cover bordered with red, or with even a frontispiece displaying a counterfeit and libellous presentment of his departed relative in the very act of narration."

I've lifted the piece from the "Prefactory" of James Payn's novel, Lost Sir Massingbert: A Romance of Real Life, published in England in 1864. James Payn was a  prolific novelist and editor. I came across him and this novel via one of my booktube fellows who is conducting a read along of bestselling authors of the Victorian period who are now forgotten. Payn and this novel is the April selection, which I felt like giving a try, as he sounded like something of a character. As for the novel itself, I'll be reviewing it in a month or two, so stay tuned.

Besides finding this introduction to his most famous novel amusing, it think it serves to illustrate an important, and often overlooked point; creativity is a very common human trait. So common in fact that it is not a commercially viable trait for most people in most areas of creative endeavors. And, in what is recognized as "The Arts", only the good-and-very-lucky few may be able to produce commercially viable products, usually only for a time, as careers in the arts usually fall well short of a "career". The arts are ruled by both fashion and scarcity, neither of which are conductive to long careers.

Still, modern society and technology has allowed far more people the opportunity to practice, perform, and display their artistic abilities than ever before. It has created many more opportunities to turn those talents into some sort of income, though rarely at a professional level income. And as I mentioned, rarely a lifelong professional income. 

Being essentially an amateur, or a part time performer of one sort or another, is not only in the arts, the norm, but realistically, about the most anyone can expect to be, at least from my observations and in my opinion. I also think it's enough. The beauty of being an amateur is that it is impervious to market conditions, since it is all about the personal pursuit of beauty, meaning, art, and not fame and wealth, neither of which has proven to bring happiness.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 180)

 

What can I say? It was available on Kindle Unlimited, I hadn't read it, and after such a rather rocky start...

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below

The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer  B

The premise of this story, set immediately after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Stuart pretender to the English throne in 1746, is that because a lifelong con man, and his two children chose the wrong side in that civil war, they are now in danger of having their heads on spikes on London Bridge. Their resourceful father, whose moto is "I contrive" pretty much sums up his approach to life. He contrives. And his two children are often involved in many a wild scheme of his invention, the result of which, they are both very adept at intrigue and playing roles. In this case, they cross dress. Robin, the boy plays Prudence and Prudence plays "Peter" her brother.

The story opens, confusingly, (which seems to be a characteristic of a Heyer story) with the brother/sister pair saving a young heiress from a ruthless toff in need of a fortune as she is being dragged off to Gretna Green to be married against her will, after changing her mind. This, in turn, drags them into London Society, with Prudence play a young man and having to do all the things a young man about London did at the time, gambling in clubs, fighting duels, etc. Luckily her father once ran a gambling house, so she hold her own an any game. In saving the heiress, they meet a noble man, who befriends the pair, and takes the fresh "young man" into his care... and, who begins to suspect...

This is another of her light hearted stories, not strictly a comedy, but not one to take too seriously either. It was written in 1928. Stories written prior to 1940 were often set before the French Revolution, as this one is. After 1940, she began writing Regency Romances exclusively, and I think for the most part, those later stories were her best stories. While this is a good story, it's not peak Heyer for my taste, i.e. comedy.

Well, it's back to exploring KU once again with a contemporary story next week. Stay tuned.