Fields and Fence Lines (Part Four)

Geez, I got'a lot of limits, don't I?

This time around, let's talk about imagination. A rather essential tool in a writer's tool box. I have something of an imagination, but like everything else, it definitely has its limits; it's fence lines. And it's a pretty small pasture, in fact.

Now, I've written twenty-three books, so I'm not going to complain about my imagination. Still, when I hear of people filling notebooks with story ideas and bemoaning the fact that they'll never have enough time to write all the stories they have in their head, well, I'm not in their league. I've had just enough story ideas to fill my time writing for the last 15 years, with only a few to spare, and they're spares only because I couldn't get them to work.

The funny thing is that there is not a shortage of stories that you could put your own stamp on. Millions of them. The trouble is that almost all of those stories don't interest me. And that's the key. If I were doing this for money, i.e. producing a product, that wouldn't matter. I would write the stories that research would tell me were selling in the moment. I'd write to market, and call it a job.

But as an amateur, I can afford to be picky, telling only the stories that, for one reason or another, interest me. And, as I said in my last installment in this series, I have to live with the story I'm writing in my head for six or more months, so it has to be one that I don't get bored thinking about for that long. It needs to be at least a "B" story for me.  And given how picky I am as a reader, you can see how small this pasture is.

Another limit of my imagination, and my stories, perhaps because I'm a son of an engineer, is that the stories I write have to have at least one foot in reality. They have to have a solid element of realism in them. I have no interest in writing wild, mind-blowing, impossible, or absurd stories. And that pretty much includes writing pure magic. I'll sometimes hide a science-ish explanation behind something that appears to be magic, at least from the character's point of view, but I never wave my hand and just say it's magic. I feel that's cheating.  

Because I don't have a visual mind, my settings have to be vaguely familiar, at least to start with. I have to be able to envision them - not in any great detail - but get an "impression" of them in mind. For this reason, I'm not going to be able to invent weird, alien worlds, or characters for that matter. Instead, I strive to make my worlds realistic and relatable, familiar, and yet unexplored. While I have given my readers islands floating in the air, I usually find a way to make my settings similar to my favorite historical period; the fifty years before I was born. I like to mix the old with the new, the familiar with a twist. For example, my cars are usually an electric powered Model T (well a bit little more modern, but you get the idea) and societies are powered by solar energy and stored in high capacity capacitators. My weapons are mostly non-lethal. 

I usually write my stories set in modest utopias with a nostalgic air. I avoid religion in my stories and many of my stories are post-political; an united world administered by a bureaucracy with all the rules long established. One can say that when it comes to worldbuilding, I've imagined a world I'd like it to be and have largely ceased looking for something new. I just innovate around the edges these days, voluntarily limiting my imagination, having found what I want.

As for the details of my worlds, since I can't conjure up more than an impression of a scene, much less a world, I construct them from I know from life and perhaps more importantly, from some sort of impression of the real world from my readings. For example, I have an impression of the South Sea Islands of the Pacific from reading books set in them. I used those impressions to set my Taef Lang stories in, but I dotted my south seas with islands, so that you're never out of sight of an island or two in order to make it more interesting, and more convenient for things to happen. Plus, I used all those sea stories I've read for my settings on the boats. And this method, using what I know or have read, and then designing the world to suit the story I have in mind, is true for all my worlds. 

Once I have a world in mind, no more than an impression and mood, I proceed to build it out, one concrete object after another, as I, and my characters move through it. While I can't quite picture scenes, I can imagine what items might be expected to be on stage, so to speak, and add these items to the scene, not so much "seeing" them in my mind, but rather knowing they would be there, and then constructing them in concrete terms as I go along.  This is pretty much how I paint my pictures as well; constructing the scene as I go along, from little more than an "idea" rather than a picture.

Another limit is that I write the stories I want to read, the way I want stories to read. For example, I don't care to write dark, grimdark fantasy, or horror stories, if only because I don't want to live with them in my head for months. Nor do I have any desire to read them. And there are no doubt many other types of stories I either don't have an interest in, or the imagination to write. 

And on the other hand, there are some stories that would, in theory, require less imagination than I like to use in creating my stories. For example, contemporary fiction. For me it's a been there, done that (even if I actually haven't) feeling that doesn't interest me. Historical fiction falls into this category as well; though more because of the need to conform to known facts, and having to do the research necessary to make the story fit history accurately. I'd rather invent what I need for the story, unconfined by history, then be handcuffed in storytelling by existing facts, especially since my favorite period corresponds to the early 20th century, where too much is known. Plus, there are too many wars to work around.

Characters are also limited by my imagination and personality. I do not base my characters on any real people, and so, not being a student of humanity, my characters are rather limited. Save for my narrator, I don't go deeply into their thoughts and motivations, though I try to make them more than plot devices. Even my narrator is only pleasant, but bland character, without deep thoughts and powerful emotions. The variety of my characters is also limited. I look on them as actors under contract in the old movie studio model. Like it or not, I seem to have this stable of actors in my head. They play different roles, with different names, in different stories. But like the stars of the old silver screen, even as they play different roles, there remains the essential, individual character of the actor in every role. And thus, my characters and the narrator of my stories, no matter which one, are rather similar to every other ones in all of my stories. 

And while some people can see some of my attitude in my stories, I can assure you, I'm not the narrator, nor do I want to be. Any similarity between me and my narrators is a result of the limits of my imagination, and the fact that I approach writing organically; my stories are written as if by the person experiencing the story. Essentially I am telling the story as the character, but like an actor, that character is not me. Anything anyone might see of me in the character is just the residue of the actor playing the role.

So, summing things up. I have just enough imagination to write a story or two a year, and no more. I keep my stories grounded in reality, using as much as real life imagery as I can to fill my stories and, hopefully, make them seem real, while avoiding enough everyday reality to transport my readers someplace else. And when I've found what I'm comfortable with, be it characters, the world, the technology, and the society, I don't go further. I'm content to graze within the pasture of my limits.

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (134)

                      

In this week's second episode we take a stroll down memory lane. Or rather a hike... or maybe a safari. We're traveling more than sixty years back down memory lane as I reread one of my pre-high school era's favorite books. I first read it as a library book, though I picked up a mass market paperback some years later, and reread it again. So, without further ado...

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. 

Starnan Jones by Robert A Heinlein  C (This time around)

A "C" is actually a fairly good grade for a juvenile written in 1953. As I said in the lede, it was perhaps my favorite science fiction story of my early youth, though when I reread it in my late teens, even then I can remember thinking that it didn't measure up to my memory of it. And knowing this, I went into this reread with muted expectations.

Let's get the story out of the way. It concerns an orphan in the Ozarks whose stepmother remarries a brutal man, and the title character, Max Jones, wisely heads for the hills, taking with him his late uncle's secret navigational books of the Astrogators' Guild, i.e. the people who navigate ships in space. His uncle had promised to nominate for that guild. (All work on Earth being controlled by guilds.) He meets Sam, a kindly hobo, who, while Max sleeps, steals the books and his ID. Max continues on to the space port and confronts the Astrogators' Guild. Though they are willing to help him find a guild and give him some money,  they won't accept him into the Astrogators' Guild. Plus, he learns he's not the first Max Jones who has just showed up. Rejected, he meets Sam again in the space port. Though he has some ill feelings towards him, he lets him talk him into using the money he was given to create false records so that both of them can join the crew of the passenger starship Asguard. This works and they become members of the purser department. What follows is the star-crossed voyage of that ship, and Max's advancement on board, due, in part to fact that he has a photographic memory, and thus can remember ever digit printed on those Astrogator's books he inherited.

Looking back now, I can see many aspects in this story that have remained a staple in my reading life. One can wonder what came first, the chicken or the egg, Starman Jones or a propensity for stories about ships.

Starman Jones is essentially a sea story set aboard a ship in space. In it are all the elements of a sea story, including (spoiler) a cursed ship and shipwreck. Ships in space - real ships, not little one-man UPS Trucks in space have always been in my wheelhouse. I wrote those stories myself. And I have always loved sea stories as well, though those came afterwards. I don't think there's a cause and effect; I think ships just appeals to me, though you won't get me on one.

The second element that this Heinlein book offered, that may have appealed to me back then, is just a hint, mind you, a hint of romance. These were written for young readers, and during this stage in his career, Heinlein had little use for, nor likely did his editor, for girls and romance. Nothing comes of it, and it's rather ham-fisted in its presentation, but it's there. A romance has always been a welcome feature in my favorite books - Edgar Rice Burroughs always had one in all of his stories.

In short, it was entertaining to see how closely this story hewed to my later taste in books.

Heinlein's Earth was also very interesting, in a strange way. At the start of the story we are introduced to "trains" that fly through the air, guided by rings on towers, as well as levitating 200 feet long trucks that travel at 200 mph, and yet Max was working the family farm plowing fields behind mules. There was something like TVs, but the star ships had nothing more complicated than cameras to take sights on stars and books of calculations used to navigate; values of which had to be fed to the astrogator who steered the ship to a certain "folded" spot in space to cross lightyears in an instant. While 1953 is a pretty long time ago, I am pretty certain that even in 1953 most farmers were using tractors.

It was also interesting to see that even at this point in his career, he was getting up on his soapbox and sprinkling his libertarian philosophy throughout the story; self-reliance, anti-government, or in this case anti-guild, honesty, at least when confronted, duty, and self-sacrifice. There were, however, no mention of female crew members at all, much less female officers. Women just were meant to be wives. That came through pretty clearly since Max's almost-girl-friend, a planet's junior chess champion's only goal was to get home and marry the man she loves.

By and large, it could've been worse, but I have no desire to revisit my youth again any time soon.

The Saturday Morning Post (133)

  

This week we have another Georgette Heyer book, however, this time, as I teased in an earlier post, we have one of her mystery stories.

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

Why Shoot a Butler? by Georgette Heyer  C+ 

This is a typical 1933 English country house murder mystery. Our amateur detective is Frank Amberly, a barrister, who is said to be the rudest man in London, and not without reason. One evening Amberly gets lost on his way to his uncle's country estate and discovers a young lady standing next to a parked car. A car with a bullet hole in it, and inside, a butler with a bullet hole in him. The lady, Shirley Brown, has a automatic in her pocket, but it does not seem to have been fired. She proclaims her innocent of the deed. Amberly believes that... but what was she doing just standing there? In any event, he leaves her presence out of his report to police, and begins to investigate just what happened and why. And so begins a rather long and elaborate murder mystery story.

The story was fine enough for what it was; a classic English murder mystery with plenty of twists and turns. Perhaps too many, and too long for my taste. And it also cheats, as we are never told what Amberly is up to in his investigation, nor what he is thinking. We are left, along with the poor police sergeant, trying to figure out what Amberly is up to. It also has, what I consider, the great failing of murder mysteries in general; a series of connected murders. Three in total in this outing. If you have to keep tossing in a new murder to keep the story ticking, you haven't constructed a compelling murder mystery. But there you go; as I said a typical classic murder mystery. While it is well written with some amusing dialog, the characters are all just off the shelf, and Amberly, is indeed, rude and unlikable, and so it lacks some of the charm of the best of these classic stories. Still, it's better than any of the modern attempts to recreate this type of story. Perhaps simply because it is a product of the time, a contemporary story that the author didn't need to research Wikipedia to write. It gets the period right.

Bottom line; it was fine, but I could put it down at any time. I'll only add that I'm not much of a murder mystery fan, so you might want to factor that into my conclusion. If you are a fan of classic whodunits, you will probably not be disappointed by this story.

I might try one more of her mysteries. We'll see.

Auto-narrated Audiobooks; "Garbage?"

I recently watched an YouTube video by an angry self-published author/small press publisher, John G Hartness, on the current controversy concerning Amazon's new audiobook royalty plan. Long story short; it will lead to less money for authors. It's a convoluted plan that I'm not going to get into it here. However, in this video he called auto-narrated books "garbage" after trying one that he didn't like; it had wrong pauses and emphases. Plus, he apparently considers it generative AI, which he hates. He went on to paint a picture of AI generated books with auto-narration flooding the audiobook market.

I was tempted to comment, but decided against it, since he said he would delete comments defending generative AI. And well, it's his platform. This, however, is mine, so I'll post what would have said here, though in greater detail.

First, this fear of a flood of AI-written fiction is the "Yellow Peril" or "Red Scare" of book publishing is silly, in my opinion. Publishing a book is easy compared to promoting it. Getting a book seen by the thousands of readers needed to sell even a few copies is a very time consuming, social media focused, and expensive undertaking these days, which only works if the book is laser-focused on a popular sub-genre. How likely is it that people who churn out AI written books will turn around and spend their time and money doing what is necessary to sell those, theoretical, mass-produced books? Few people are likely ever to come across these books, if my brief experience with Kindle Unlimited is a guide, even with four million books the algorism serves up a few hundred, at most.

Though I recently came across a video where someone did review several AI generated books, so apparently some people do find them in the wild. And a few like them. So maybe I'm wrong...

... In any event, whether there are 4 million or 8 million books, it won't make any practical difference to either a reader or an author. If an author has the product, the skills, and the established audience to make money in the current market, that exposure and those skills will serve them just as well, no matter how large the pool of competing books is.

Second, is auto-narrated narration "generative AI?" I don't consider it so. Text-to-speech tech has been available for like four decades, long before generative AI was a thing. It just reads the words it is provided with, generating nothing on its own. I don't know about Amazon and Apple, but the people used for the voices on Google were hired and paid for their work. The fact that the technology has advanced to the point where it can create the impression of a human reading the text rather than a robot, is not a result of stealing anyone's work. No one owns language. It's merely a product of long research and development over decades.

As for the issue of quality, it's clearly subjective. Though I am not an audiobook "reader", I recently sampled the newly released audiobook version of the first Emma M Lion book. I found the sample all wrong. The narrator's voice did not match the one in my head, nor did her tempo, pauses and emphasis match the way I read the passage. These are the same complaints Hartness had with the auto-narrated book he sampled. In the case of the Lion book, Beth Brower, auditioned 70 people for the role of Emma. It is her Emma, and she is completely happy with the choice she made, and in the reviews I looked at, everyone else's is as well. (My daughter, however, agrees with me.) My point being that appreciating narration is every bit as subjective as appreciating a book. People love books that other people hate. I understand that many audiobook listeners speed up the narration by a factor of 1.2X to 1.8X, so it seems that many listeners don't mind Alvin the Chipmunk as a narrator. They value the story over the delivery of it.

Now this author and everyone else is welcome to their opinions. But is it "garbage"? I don't listen to audiobooks, so all i can say what is good enough, though Amazon, Apple and Google apparently feel it is.

While I don't have an opinion on the quality of auto-narrated books, I do have data. My data suggests that for my books, my readership, and my business model it is more than good enough. Over the last three years, I've sold more than 25,000 auto-narrated audiobooks. No one has complained about the quality of the narration. All of my auto-narrated audiobooks' ratings match or are higher their ebook versions. Moreover, on Audible, three of my books have ratings, which are split between the story and the "performance", i.e. the narration. They earned a 5, 4,& a 3, star performance rating, for a 4 star average. A small sample, but still, these are not free books; people paid a modest amount of money for them. A 4-star average performance is not objectively garbage.

But there was one other aspect of this video that actually angered me. In a comment, Hartness said that he wanted to "shame" writers into not using auto-narration for their books. Now, if you happen to be a cynic, heaven forbid, this sounds, well, a little self-serving. It is an example of what I'm calling "shadow gatekeeping" in the indie space these days. It's not just the hucksters, but successful authors, who are telling aspiring self-publishing authors that they really need to spend between $3,000 and $10,000 to publish their book the "right way". They need to hire editors, artists, designers, formaters, and human narrators, to insure a professional quality book. They tell them that they owe it to the readers and well, indie-publishers as whole, to put their best foot forward, otherwise they're letting down the side. Of course, if you're already successful self-publishing author, you're likely doing this already, and if you're rich enough to have that much cash on hand, which you can afford to lose, sure, go ahead, self-publish your book. Chances are you won't be around long... And don't let the gate hit your ass on the way out.

Oh, they might mention that there are cheaper ways to do this, but you don't really want to be one of the unwashed riff-raff of self-publishing, do you? As I said, this sounds very self-serving to me; the message is pretty clear; only the successful authors and the rich should release their proper books and audiobooks.

In my view the advice misses on two main points; books are sold by promoting them, all the editing, covers, etc. does nothing to address this. And second, the ebook market is not the traditional publishing market; it is the pulp fiction market, with different priorities. Story, not grammar rules the pulp market.

Of course, I'm sure that all their advice is good and well meaning. Don't let the cynic in you say otherwise.

A footnote; one comment on the post that original blog, was from a person who makes audiobooks. Amazon offered them a chance to try a beta program that would clone their voice. Presumably an audiobook could be produced with a press of a button in their own "human" voice. And then, I suppose, the human narrator could go through it to edit it to their liking, a process that I would guess would be a lot less time consuming for the narrator, who can spend 5 to 6 hours to produce one hour of narration. With this technology available, we will likely hear a lot more "human" narrators that have been at least partially produced by computers, just as we now have a lot of "human" cover artists who use generative AI as a tool to produce elements of their work and speed up production. Time is money, no matter what you do. A fellow's got'a eat. Art is a very poor career choice. 

It seems that in the 21st century, anything can be real. And anything can be unreal. You have options.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 132) EXTRA! EXTRA!

                            

In our second review this week, we have another book suggested by a neighbor. I had put a hold on it as an ebook, but since I had to drive down to the library to pick up yesterday's book, the paper version was on the shelf so I picked it up instead. After a long streak of so-so new books, and yesterday's clunker, it proved to be a winner.

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. 

News of the World by Paulette Jiles  A

The story is set in Texas of 1870, round about the same time and place as Lonesome Dove, just for context. It also tells of a journey, in this case, one from Wichita Falls in the north of Texas to San Antonio in the south. And if you have read any of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove novels, you will be aware that Texas during this time period was not a safe place. Not safe at all. And this journey is not a safe journey.

Our protagonist, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, is a former soldier. As a young man he fought in the War of 1812, and again, thirty years later, as a captain in the war with Mexico that proceeded the American Civil War by a decade or so. When not a soldier, he was a printer by trade. Now 71 years old, and having lost his printing business after the civil war, he travels from one small town in Texas to another reading stories out of newspapers from far away, for a dime admittance a head. 

At the start of the story he is asked by some old wagon driver friends, to take charge of returning a 10 year old girl, Johanna Leonberger, to her aunt and uncle. She had been kidnapped by the Kiowa Indians six years prior, in a raid on her family's homestead. The rest if her family had been killed, and  since then she has lived as a Kiowa. The Army had forced the Kiowa's to return these kidnapped children, whether they wanted to be returned or not, and she did not want to be returned. The wagoneers had brought her out of Indian Territory to the north of Texas, but did not want to go any further. They offered the money they'd been paid to deliver her family to Captain Kidd if he would take her with him and deliver her to her relatives himself. He reluctantly agrees.

Johanna, growing up a Kiowa and being ripped away from her Kiowa family and life to be taken by strange people was bitter, sullen, and strange. This was common in many children taken by Indians and then later returned to their birth families. The story recounts Captain Kidd and Johnnna's adventures during the 400 mile journey south as they slowly come to form a bond of trust. One that the Captain knows will be broken once he delivers her to her relatives - if they make it that far.

Not wanting to go into spoiler country, I will leave the story here. It is an adventure filled journey across Texas in a wagon Captain Kidd buys for the journey.

Jiles did not use quotation marks in telling this story, a choice that, I think, does it no service. The lack of quotation marks around conversations is something to be endured while reading it, sometime making it hard to decipher just what is actually being said out loud. I have heard rumors that she's not the only author that does this, but she is the first I've encountered. Still, as you can see from its grade, that quibble did not lessen my enjoyment of the story too much. I have referenced Lonesome Dove, as they are set in the same locale and time-frame. Whereas Lonesome Dove I found to be grim, even nihilistic, News of the World is hopeful and sweet, without compromising on depicting the harsh realities of that time and place. It's not a long book, and gets a high recommendation from me.

I believe that some of the other books Jiles wrote feature some of the characters we encounter in this story. However, (spoiler) having gotten out of Texas alive in this one, I'm in no hurry to go back.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 131)

 

This week we have a new book by an award winning (Nebula and others) author who has been writing novels since 1982. I discovered this book on Rich Hortons's blog, Strange at Ecbatan. He was enthusiastic about it, and it sounded interesting to me. Plus, it was available from the library, so off we go... out the window.

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 Adventures of Mary Darling by Pat Murphy  DNF 42%

I hate books of fiction that attempt to educate me. I don't like being treated like an idiot. I love to learn about the past through works of well researched fiction, for example the Patrick O'Brian novels or the Georgette Heyer romances, but I hate it when the author basically steps out of the story to lecture the reader on some aspect of the historical time their story is set in. There is fiction and there is Wikipedia. Both have their uses, but different uses.

I didn't start reading The Adventures of Mary Darling to learn about some quack doctor's treatment of rich women with nervous conditions in the late Victorian period, one of several  pages long mini-lectures in this book. If the information was woven into a conversation or actions relevant to the plot, fine. Bring it on. But in this case, the author brings the doctor into the story simply as an excuse to launch that mini-lecture on the horrible treatments, and the utter lack of agency women had in the matter. She simply stopped telling the story, and turned to the reader to tell us all about this monstrous evil. Nothing comes of it; it's just an excuse to lecture us. Oh, and where you ever curious about the ABC Tea Houses in London? She has you covered there as well.

This book, as far as I got into it, seemed to be written more as vehicle for education about the various evils of the world a hundred years ago than an "adventure". She highlights such subjects as the treatment of women and non-white races in the late Victorian period, issues that I, and I suspect most, of not all, of the potential readers, are well aware of. Moreover, since they are historical ills, they can not be retroactively cured. So what's the point, then? With "Adventure" on the tin, this tin is, in my opinion, clearly mislabeled.

Murphy has been writing for 40 some years and has won awards, and yet this story has far more "telling" than it has showing. I found it tedious reading, even without the lectures. Moreover, in the modern style, she has taken her story, and, with a hammer, smashed it into little crumbs. She then tells the story using those little crumbs; constantly jumping between POVs, time, and space in scenes often just a few pages long. Everyone seems to have secrets that are revealed in the small crumbs throughout the part of the story I read, more than that I can't say, since I didn't get further. 

Usually, in a mystery story, the mystery is unraveled by the main character(s) in a sequence of discoveries. In this story the reader is told bits and pieces of each of the secrets well ahead of the main characters, with no coherent sequence or timeline, just to keep the tedious story seemingly moving along one tiny step at a time, I guess.

The many points of view characters come and go so fast, and so inconsistently, that I, at least, found it impossible to care about any one of them. 

Not that we are meant to, except for perhaps the title character, since the author seems to have set out to deconstruct the familiar characters, tarnishing or destroying the magic of the stories that this novel is a rift on in the process. Which seems to have been her intent.

"Stop ranting, Chuck! What about the story?" you yell.

Right. Well, the story is about Mary Darling, the mother of Wendy, John, and Michael who went off to Neverland with Peter Pan, and her efforts to recover her children. In this novel, she happens to be the niece of Dr John Watson, so that Sherlock Holmes is brought in to investigate their "kidnapping." What follows, in the first 126 pages, is that we are introduced to Mary, her husband, an iffy old friend of Mary's in the rat-skin glove making business, Mrs Hudson, Watson and Holmes, Peter Pan, and various crumbs of their backstories. My reading ended with Mary, disguised as a man, sets sail to Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean - where have we heard of that island before? - because of a leaf found on the windowsill. And maybe because of a crumb that hasn't been revealed yet. Who knows?

It sounded like a charming idea for a story, which is why I rushed off and ordered it up from the library. However, as you will likely have noticed, I had a few problems with this book, on many levels, not the least a resentment of its attempt to drain any and all magic out of the stories it is based on. I found it a great disappointment, actually annoying, hence my ranting about it. A charming idea, but a book with a very clear agenda, no charm, and no magic.

However, given my negative views on this book, here is the link to the much more positive Rich Horton review. While he notes the same tendency as I did to teach us things, he didn't mind it half as much as me.

While I really disliked this book, and thought it very poorly written, your milage may vary. It is fairly well regarded on Goodreads.

Rambling about Historical Fiction

Several weeks ago, I talked about being a nomad reader roving the range of historical fiction. To me "historical fiction" is such a broad category that it should be not be considered a genre at all. I view all stories set in the past as historical fiction. And for me, the "past" means stories set before I was born, i.e. before 1950.

This is not strictly speaking its proper definition. In a recent post on historical fiction by Audrey Driscoll, HERE, she defined it thus;

"Historical fiction must be set in the past, at least twenty-five years before the writer’s present, but some say it should be fifty or more. Novels from past decades or centuries that were contemporary at the time they were written are not historical fiction."

Her definition is similar to one of the Wikipedia definitions, however, the article does mention that some people read novels written in the past as historical novels. People like me.

"Historical fiction" being such an open description, I see no need to make a further distinctions. All stories set in the past, including those written as contemporary accounts of the life at the time. They have evolved into historical fiction with the passage of time. And indeed, they're likely more authentic than contemporary writers' accounts of those times by nature of their familiarity with world they are writing about. I realize, however, that many contemporary stories are idealized representations of their world, and so they can not be taken at face value. Still, they get the everyday details right as well as the contemporary attitude of the author and/or characters, and thus, more likely the authentic.

As broadly as I define historical fiction, I do make one distinction; fiction written in the 20th century vs stories written in the 21st. I find several characteristics of 21st century fiction that do not appeal to me. Though having said that, my favorite series of the year is a 21st century written historical fiction/fantasy series. It is an exception to my experiences with modern historical fiction.

One of the things that, well, annoy me about modern historical fiction is many historical fiction writers seem to settle for doing their research online, mostly, it  seems by using Wikipedia. They're content just to work in the nuggets of information they found online into the story, just to make it seem historical. Plus they often feel the need to include explanations of the artifacts of the time that are no longer familiar to modern readers. This might be because these authors are considerably younger than me, and so the pre-cell phone, pre-internet world feels far, far more distant to them than it does to me, and so the need to explain this remote world to the reader.

However, because they don't immerse themselves in the period, you get "historical fiction" that has little to no historical flavor to it. The history is just window dressing for a modern story. Indeed, I once came across a mystery story set in the 1930's England, where the author had the characters look at the "screen" of a hotel registry! 

Another trend I have noticed is the desire to teach us about the evils of the past. I recently read a historical fantasy novel where the author essentially paused telling the story to turned to the audience to give mini-lectures on the injustices of the society she wanted to educate the reader about. We, the reader, were told about the importance of ABC Tea Rooms for women of the Victorian age, or how little agency women had, illustrated by the fact that women could be shipped off and confined for treatment for a perceived mental condition and held without their consent. (I see that review is coming up this Saturday. Stay tuned.)

All in all, I've found that historical fiction written prior to the 21st century is usually not only better written, but far more thoroughly researched. Writers prior to the internet needed to work harder to research the period they were writing about, and perhaps because of that, they became more immersed in it, becoming experts in the period. From having read many and a variety of contemporary accounts, those authors picked up more than the facts, they picked up the spirit of the age, the way characters would think, speak, and act. As a result, those books offer a greater sense of the age than most modern historical fiction.

As I said at the top, my view of historical fiction includes all fiction set and/or written in the past. The Cadfael medieval mysteries set in the twelfth century are historical fiction. The Aubrey and Maturin nautical stories set in the early 19th century are also historical fiction. Georgette Heyer's Regency Romances are not only romances, but historical fiction. As are westerns, most war stories, sea stories, Regency Romances, many spy stories, and even historical fantasies that have been written in the last 100 plus years.

Up to now, I've talked about mostly works by 20th & 21st century authors writing about their past. But there is that second aspect of historical fiction, stories originally set in contemporary tines that have become historical by lasting. Most popular fiction goes out of print and is forgotten, but some endure, and remain in print. For example, D E Stevenson's or Miss Read's domestic stories set in Britain. Sherlock Holmes, of course, Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, Agatha Christie's and her contemporary mystery writers' stories can still be found in print. You can still find Compton's  Monarch of the Glen set in the highlands of the 1930's. and a number of H Rider Haggard adventure stories set in distant lands, as well as Kipling's stories of India under the British Rah, just to name a few more that spring to mind. And as I said, being written as contemporary fiction, they bring that forgotten contemporary life back to life. And while they may include many unfamiliar things, social norms, and attitudes, that only adds to their authenticity.

And, of course, we can not forget all the writers of now classic literature, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Tolstoy, and all the rest who wrote stories set in the world of their times; historical fiction several layers deep.

I have thousands of historical stories remaining to be explored, though the less famous may need a visit to a used book store or the Gutenberg Project to be discovered. With this vast range, to wander, I expect to find many more entertaining books without ever leaving my historical fiction range behind. As I said in the first post, historical fiction is a wide, wide, range to roam over. Some readers find a home on that range, but I have a feeling I'll just keep roaming.

Sorry; I really need to learn how to write clearly and concisely. I've edited this piece down for the last several days and it's still too long and rambling.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 130) EXTRA! EXTRA!

                           

After two old favorites, I am once again stepping out of my usual cow path of reading material. This time to sample a book written by one of those many authors that have YouTube cannels. She was offering this book for free for the month of July, and that's a price that I'm willing to give a book a try by someone who seems quite nice.

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 Sorcerer's Concubine by Lidiya Foxglove  B-

Lidya Foxglove is a full time self-published author of romance fantasy, much of it probably what they call, spicy romance. Starting out as a traditionally published YA author, she shifted to self-publishing adult romance fantasy that were written to market. Which is to say, writing books whose tropes she felt were trending, such as "Fairy Tale Heat" Like Beauty and the Goblin King, plus, reverse harem, A Witch Among Warlocks, magic school story, and Fae Bride stories and darker Vampire Clan stories... Well you get the idea, writing books that sell, writing up to ten book a year, for some years.

Tired of writing to market, and eager just to write the stories she really wants to write, set in a world that she's been imagining since she was a girl, she started a YouTube channel to hopefully supplement her income so that she can write quirkier stories that she knows will be harder to market. This story is set in her world, but was written, apparently in several forms, this being the truest. It is the first book of a trilogy.

As for the story itself; the protagonist, Velsa, is literally a "doll person", an animated-by-magic life-sized living doll made of wood, stuffing, and fabric heavily modified with the use of magic. They are said to be animated by the souls of people who did not make the cut to get into heaven, and are being given a second chance to earn this reward by serving humans in various roles as slaves. In Velsa's case, she was made to be a concubine. These living dolls are not considered persons, have no rights, and are looked down on by the humans of the land, and treated like things with no feelings at all. 

Velsa, does have feelings, and as it turns out special powers - including teletherapy, for which she wears a golden collar to suppress, as it is a power that is feared in that land - though it is common in their enemy's nation. She is purchased by Grau, a young sorcerer who is instantly attracted to her. The story then follows them over the next six months as they fall in love, as Grau takes her to the military camp on the border where he is to do six months of duty to get some money to continue his study of magic.

As usual, I won't go into the details of the plot, though this is mostly a character centric novel focused on Velsa's experiences once she leaves the house she "grew up" in, and all the discrimination, hate, indifference she experiences as an animated "thing" that was built for one purpose; the sexual gratification of the man who buys her. Foxglove is a seasoned writer who brings Velsa, the living doll fully alive. And this story is clearly a work of love. Grau, who buys her, is more or less the ideal man, kind, considerate, very honorable. Someone who not only treats her as a real person, but has honorable ambitions for her, protecting her as much as he can throughout this story. 

As a story, it is a pretty cozy story mixed with some brutal moments. The pacing is pretty leisurely, with some time spent world building, but not over much. It is fairly episodic, the string of incidents leading to a climax of sort, but clearly book one of a trilogy. While I enjoyed it, I'm not it's target audience. Both romances and fantasies are genres that are not high on my list of preferred reading, and a combination of the two is rather far from my well trodden reading cow path, so I doubt I will continue with the series.

The Saturday Morning Post (No.129)

I've grown rather weary of my recent run of what sadly has turned out to be books that did not greatly appeal to me. So, what's the use of having a wall of books, if not to read an old favorite? Or two? And that's the course I'm steering this time around. We start this journey in old favorites with the fourth and fifth book of a favorite series, since I believe I've read the third one since I starting this series of posts. No matter, since I've read these books at least three times already.

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 Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian  A

As I stated in the lede, this is the fourth book of the series. I happened to have picked up this book at a library sale - a first American printing edition - around the time that the Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin series caught fire, sometime in the late 1980's. I don't remember how I discovered that the series was being reissued, but starting in 1988 I have vol 11 and the nine volumes that followed in hardcover, again in first American printings, all the previous one save for this one in trade paperbacks. Needles to say, I was a big fan, as what my father, who collected them as well.

I also have C S Forester's Horatio Hornblower series as well, but for my money, Patrick O'Brian's tales stand head and shoulders over Forester's because O'Brian's stories are so much better written, in my opinion, and written with a broader view of the world than Forester's. Not that Forester's are badly written, it is just that O'Brian has his own way with words that I greatly appreciate. He creates the time period in the way he tells the story, without making it a chore to read, as well as offering many thoughts and observations on human nature.

Well, if I haven't said anything specific about this story, it is only because it being the fourth book in the series, this is not the book to start with, as I did. The Aubrey-Maturin series is one of my favorite top six series of all time, and high on that short list as well. It is a series I strongly recommend, as it is far more than a series about the British Navy in the Napoleonic wars. It takes the reader from the Mediterranean Sea to the France and the Channel, to Calcutta, to the Baltic, to the far side of the world, the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and Boston during the War of 1812, centered around the small world of a ship, but far from confined to ships and combat.

In this story Captain Aubrey, just scraping by on half pay without a ship, is sent to Cape Town and appointed a Commadore, a sort of temporary admiral, to lead a squadron of frigates to put a stopper on the activities of a squadron of French frigates operating out of the Indian Ocean Mauritius Islands, off the east coast of Africa. O'Brian introduces his fictional characters into a carefully researched real life episode where nothing important in the book describing the campaign is invented. You basically get the historical campaign with only the names changed.

My only negative comment is on me; as I have written elsewhere in this series, I have a hard time following action, in this case the maneuvering of ships and such. I have to believe, that I once was able to follow things more closely than I do these days. I've gotten too old and too inpatient, I guess. As always, on me.

Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian  A

This story takes place a year or so after the previous book. Captain Audrey's fortunes have been restored from his share of the ships captured in the Mauritius campaign. Plus, he had been give a shore job as a reward. At the start of this story, he is given an old ship in the line, the "horrible old Leopard" and ordered to sail to Australia to deal with problems regarding Captain Bligh, or rather the problems Bligh is having as governor of New South Wales. 

Meanwhile Dr Maturin is having a tough time; he finds himself addicted to laudanum (a tincture of opium) after being dumped, once again, by the woman he desperately loves and is making mistakes in this both roles as a doctor and intelligence agent. To give him time to recover his spirits and perhaps usefulness, he sails with Audrey aboard the Leopard along with a female spy being transported to Australia rather than hanged, with the idea that perhaps Maturin can extract some useful information about her connections with the French, and Americans. 

This story is a return to the usual form of stories O'Brian writes for Jack Aubrey; he is on a solo mission in some distant part of the world, allowing O'Brian to write a tale that focuses more on people and places, as well as the life of the sailors and ships of that period, rather than the headline events of the naval aspects of the Napoleonic wars. This a story of a long journey, with the usual trouble, strife, and desperate adventures common in these stories. 

O'Brian is a much more literary writer, compared to the many other writers of this type of story in this era, Including Forester. He explores a variety of characters in all of his books, and writes with humor, an ear for period dialog, and a eye for details and settings. I think these stories can be enjoyed for many reasons unconnected with naval warfare.

Clearly I don't know what I'm doing.

Literally.

I know that, since, for a while now I have, out of curiosity, been reading posts and watching YouTube videos instructing aspiring writers on how to write novels. And I must admit, I don't recognize the process. What the hell am I doing? 

Their approach to the writing of a novel involves so many considerations, so many moving parts, and processes, that it makes my head hurt. It seems you need to construct a story out of hundreds of components and considerations, all aimed at snaring the "reader" and keeping them reading. You must hook'em right from the beginning to get them into the book, and keep the action flowing to keep'em reading, chapter after chapter. To do so, you build your story on proven structures using standard patterns, large and small, including, the expected tropes and story beats in order to serve reader expectations. Your characters must have their own distinct voices, vices, and each, their own character arc showing that they are different at the end of the story from who they were at the beginning. Dialog must be snappy, but authentic, but neither too much, nor too little. Show, don't tell. Everything must then fit together seamlessly into a carefully crafted consumer product designed for a specific audience. 

Phew.

They suggest that every element in the story should be based on a standard, proven blueprint. The process treats writing as product design, not art. Which, I suppose, makes sense for most writers, since most authors write their books to sell them. Books are, after all a product. So it makes sense to construct their "story" to meet the current, sales-proven standards of the day. It makes writing books a customer-driven rather than author-driven process, creativity harnessed as a carthorse, pulling a heavy load. With no guarantee of any bag of oats at the end of the day.

No wonder I often hear that writing novels is hard, grueling, and thankless work. No wonder there seems to be so much angst involved in writing novels. Writing is a demanding job, with little real hope of it paying off for the vast majority of aspiring writers. No wonder writers drink.

What is not mentioned is talent. It would seem that talent is unnecessary, if one just follows the blueprint they set out.

I, however, believe in talent. I believe talent is a necessary ingredient in storytelling and in writing. Without it, or with very little of it, writing would be dreary, uninspired work.

Maybe my belief is old fashioned. I've held it all my life, after all. Back, after the dinosaurs had died out, people had moved out of the caves to the 'burbs, and I had just finished my freshman year in college, I decided that journalism wasn't for me. I had originally chosen journalism for my major because I wanted to learn to write, not how to read, as one does when majoring in English. But I felt I could give up journalism and still learn to write, because I believed in talent. I felt that if you have it, you have it. It only needs to be developed. And you could do that all on your own by observation, practice, and self-evaluation. So I changed my major to international relations, and trusted that if I had the talent to be a writer, I could learn to be a writer all on my own.  

Along with this belief in talent, I approach writing as art; an unique creation of an individual. Art is Art. Commerce is Commerce. And sure, art can be turned into a product, and art can be a ensemble creation of many people; published books being an example of that. But the heart of writing, of storytelling, I believe is art, art for the sake of creation, for bringing something a little new to life. And for this, talent is the key ingredient. 

This view of writing as art, art as an expression of talent, informs my approach to writing. For me storytelling feels organic. I dream up a world, and a premise that I can use to explore facets of that world, alongside characters who are gently propelled through the world by that premise to a natural end of one story. What happens along the way comes about organically - realistically - from their actions driven by the premise, but without a design or structure imposed on the actions. What happens, happens because of what happened before it. One step at a a time. And what can happen is what I find interesting to think and write about. My focus is on my characters, my world, and my amusement. Readers play no part of my vision. I know that if I enjoy my story, there will be others who will as well. My novels are, at best, only tangentially, a product. And only after the story is completed.

Given my organic approach to writing, allowing my story grow as it goes along, you can see why I find the art of writing reduced to an artificial construction, built according to a blueprint by apparently anyone who can follow directions, actually rather creepy. It is the opposite of my approach. But in view of this approach, I can easily understand why so many authors, aspiring and otherwise, find writing a novel so hard. Between having to fit every element of their creation, their story, into some sort of standard mold to meet some sort of standard expectation with an impatience to reach a desired destination, and perhaps a destination beyond their talent, or reached only by a long journey, the process of writing can be an exhausting exercise in frustration. 

Writing for me is organic, so natural that the process is instinctive. I truly don't know exactly how I do it, but I credit it to having a talent to write. A talent that I have developed over a lifetime. I have no interest in trying to disassemble it. It is what it is and I'm content to leave it a mystery.

In short, I don't know what I'm doing. But I'm doing it. And having fun doing it.

.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 128) EXTRA! EXTRA!

 

Lots of books this weekend! Once again we have two classics to talk about. One a mere attempt at reading it, the second, a bit more successful attempt. 

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.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy  DNF 1%

Okay, I did not give it a fair chance. But while the writing seemed inviting, the story's opening, a husband affair with his children's governess has been discovered by his wife, devastating her. His hopes of reconciling with her seem futile since she is too devtered to even consider it. All this even before the title character has come on stage. I decided that the prospect of eight hundred plus pages of domestic affairs and intrigues of this sort would be just too daunting, or tedious, for me to push further. It's scope, too limiting, its subject, something that I find  uninteresting. What was I thinking? 

Besides, I've read his War and Peace. I've nothing to prove. 

Onward!

Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy  C

As with most of my reviews, this book's grade is more a reflection on me than on the book itself. 

Thomas Hardy is, I believe, a popular author among the fans of classic English literature. Like the first book here, this was also suggested by Tristan, the BookTuber I go to for suggestions of classics, or at least, old books to read. He suggested this book in his video on short classic stories, as this is one of Hardy's shorter works. Also going for it is the fact that it is one of his apparently rare works that is quite upbeat. I gather Thomas Hardy's novels are generally quite grim. This was the longest story of the the suggested books, coming in at 66K words, but one that you could read in a two days. It took me several more than that, but I soldiered on and did finish it.

The story is set in rural Victorian England. It is a romance written as an ode to the old ways that were disappearing in the 1870's when this story was written. The romance plot centers around a new, and pretty, school teacher, who quickly gathers three suiters, a well-to-do farmer, the young new Vicar, and the son of a local hauler of goods, a waggoneer of sorts. The main subplot, relating to the decline of the old ways, is that the new Vicar intends to introduce an organ into his church services, replacing the string instruments and boys' choir that for ages had been used to provide the music for the church service since time immortal.

The story was a study of characters and rural life, neither of the two plot lines being overly dramatic. Yes, there were ups and downs in the romance, but everything grounded in the ordinary customs of the time. Nothing to write home about. I'm a fan of romances, but I, at least, never got close enough to the characters in this story to care all that much about them.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to my enjoying this story is the 19th century writing style, the denseness of it - one sentence had to be a page long, and the authenticity of the dialog, that 150 years later, whose meanings requiring both familiarly with the period writing and patience, neither of which I can claim to possess. I certainly have read, and enjoyed, books (Miss Read, D E Stevenson) that did not have any more plot or drama than this story offers, perhaps because they were much more accessible. There were some witty observations by the characters and writer, but I fear I missed much of the little details, meanings, and implications of what was said, and this greatly diminished my enjoyment of the story. Nevertheless, I plowed through to the end, without any great enjoyment. I had nothing better to read at hand.

Still, I can now say that I read a Thomas Hardy novel. It will be the only one, but still... I (now) have nothing to prove, when it comes to Hardy as well.