Only for a bit. The novel is still on track, and I've got an expert reader going over my second revision, pointing out any huge, nasty, gaping, sucking wound in the prose. We caught a big one, and I'm churning out what I hope is NOT filler to make the points richer and more salient.
The truth is the book is becoming more of a murder/mystery set in the post-apoc world. Not what I intended to write from the beginning, but it just began to morph into one. Through the course of the first draft I had the characters moving all around the Circuit, but the central focus of the second revision is keeping everyone in town. This works well with me creating the world, as I can spend more time establishing the locations to make them more "real" and also to make them more integral to the story instead of just backdrop.
Of course, that also means I'll have to get them out of town eventually, so another few books are entirely possible, and I've got ideas for them already. (Publishers just LOVE to hear that the book, although a good stand alone, can lead to other stories. They see dollar signs for successful authors, since the sequels are almost guaranteed to sell).
So that's it. The characters haven't changed appreciably, and the plot hasn't either, but the format in which it is told has matured. I hope you'll still stick around, even if mysteries aren't your thing. It will still be (I pray) post-apoc goodness.
On another note: I'm really looking forward to Fallout:New Vegas, if only to see what the oldies music selections are going to be (and it comes out two days after my birthday, yay!). My parents had some of this music come out during their child/teen years. They actually saw the Inkspots perform live! ("Maybe" is playing. Mom: Hm, that sounds like the Inkspots. You know, your dad and I saw them when we were young. Me: jealous, sheepish grin). Its great to have the GNR station switched on, singing along with the cheery, sunny music while splattering a raider's head against the back wall with a well-placed .308 round from 100 yards away. Its even better when my parents pop in for a visit and realize what kind of game I'm playing while said music is played.
As for the other music: has anyone else turned off the background music in Fallout 3? Post-apocalyptic settings shouldn't have a background soundtrack. Silence is more effective. And Inon Zur's compositions are lukewarm at best. His music failed hardcore with Fallout:Tactics (which wasn't all that great a game, and didn't mesh with the FO canon as far as I'm concerned). If they wanted quality thematic sound, Bethesda should have called Mark Morgan and had him recreate the moods from FO1 and 2.
I swear, the music for the Glow location in the first Fallout is still the creepiest piece of music I've ever heard.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
From the Vault:
Not THAT Vault. And certainly not the Disney vaults. These are two reviews I did for Amazon on PA Books, which are two that I have at the bottom of the Fiction list marked with an X. Generally, when it comes to reviewing books on a major site like Amazon, if the book is good, I give it 5 stars and be done with it. I want to let people know that its good but discover their own reasons for liking or even loving the work. When a book is very bad, however, I like to state why I thought so, instead of being a simple-minded naysayer, and warn people away from truly horrible work. To that end, the reviews I leave behind tend to paint me as little more of a naysayer, which is entirely not the case. Here are the reviews:
DIES THE FIRE, by S.M. Stirling (Reviewed January 12, 2007)
I tend to agree with more of the negative commentary regarding this book. To reiterate the major points for consideration:
1) Why are all military-background protaganists in fiction from one of the elite groups? I served my country and I vouch wholeheartedly for the capability of the "normal" forces. Any Marine would be more than capable of possessing the needed survival skills, and could even instill discipline and order in civilians. There's no need, on this scale, to revert to the "Special Forces fallacy" that authors tend to lazily embrace to make their characters "special" or "exotic." Let's try "real" next time.
2) Related to the previous comment... I strongly suspect Mr. Stirling has had shallow or no experience with real Marines, elite forces or not. So much of Mike's character doesn't ring true to me and personally, I find him insulting and difficult to like as a protaganist. I could identify more easily with the character of Thomas Covenant in another novel...
3) Juniper is simply annoying. A good-hearted wiccan in the midst of evil Christians spouting Gaelic and spewing gooey songs. (Heavy-handedness will become my favorite phrase in this review; this time I think it was to impress some woman in Mr. Stirling's circle of real life friends). I see Julia Roberts in this role, using the "prostitute with the heart of gold" approach, such as in Pretty Woman. Another character who is difficult to like.
4) The author's prejudices seeped into the work, and the heavy-handedness shows. There is a difference between using it as a character flaw and an extreme pervasiveness throughout the work. Did someone comment that this was the political/theological antithesis of Left Behind? I would vote that as accurate, especially on the positive coincidence aspect (see comment 6).
5) This book has science on the order of Star Trek: "We use what works and what doesn't, we change the laws of physics to make it fit." Simple machines and solutions are ignored, or receive horrible treatment because letting them creep into his post-Change world would tip the balance of his authoring capability of actually having to research and deal with it. Another example of heavy-handedness.
6) So much coincidence! I am a Jane-of-all-Trades, and possess many and varied skills that would be useful for surviving this kind of aftermath. However, for as many years as I have or had been involved in Renaissance Faires and the SCA, I have yet to encounter as few people who comprise the vast majority of skillsets a mere handful of these folks cover. Heavy-handed, anyone?
7) Overall, I got the impression this was either A) written with the intention that it would be a TV Series or B) snippets of ideas badly stitched together. There were a lot of unnecessary TV-show filler interludes (like the inanely placed "love" scenes that do little or nothing for character development and are too demure to titillate readers who must have their erotica wedged in otherwise decent fiction). Too much chronological jumping also. Time tags can be overused in fiction, but here they would have worked throughout instead of at the beginning.
8) I WILL give Mr. Stirling kudos for the concept of a new way of turning society upside down. Personally, my favorite genre is "ye olde post-nuclear-attack" world, but I do enjoy something new, and I give it the two stars for that at the very least. (Edit, I changed my mind. Down to one star).
I'm done ranting. Where's my tea?
Edit: I'm revisiting this review two years later, and I wonder why I even gave it two stars? Maybe because I hoped somewhere along the way someone would come along and be inspired enough by Stirling's drivel to say to themselves "I can do better than that" and write another sci-fi novel in this same vein with plausible characters and rationale for the startling loss during this SHTF type scenario. I won't lie; it inspired me to start writing a PA novel. If this excrement can get published, then I have a more than decent chance of getting my own work printed and on the shelves.
THROUGH DARKEST AMERICA, by Neal Barrett (Reviewed 21 JAN 2004)
This novel began to flesh out a "real world" of a post-apocalyptic nature, but so much is left dangling that I have to wonder if a series of novels was intended. Even if one feels a little pity for the protaganist in the beginning, in the end there was no genuine justification for the reasons and the methods he used to get even with the murderers. The ending was more of a punchline to one long and horrific joke -if you read the first few chapters and the last few pages, that's all that is really necessary for understanding the world Barrett created.
I added a comment to this review that I found out later there was indeed a sequel, but a story needs to be self-contained in a single volume with very few threads left dangling, otherwise the intention of it becoming an obvious "buy the next book to find out what happens" publishing scam. Even comic books, while they may have a single unifying story arc throughout the series, contains a complete story in an issue or two. It is inexcusable in a novel.
DIES THE FIRE, by S.M. Stirling (Reviewed January 12, 2007)
I tend to agree with more of the negative commentary regarding this book. To reiterate the major points for consideration:
1) Why are all military-background protaganists in fiction from one of the elite groups? I served my country and I vouch wholeheartedly for the capability of the "normal" forces. Any Marine would be more than capable of possessing the needed survival skills, and could even instill discipline and order in civilians. There's no need, on this scale, to revert to the "Special Forces fallacy" that authors tend to lazily embrace to make their characters "special" or "exotic." Let's try "real" next time.
2) Related to the previous comment... I strongly suspect Mr. Stirling has had shallow or no experience with real Marines, elite forces or not. So much of Mike's character doesn't ring true to me and personally, I find him insulting and difficult to like as a protaganist. I could identify more easily with the character of Thomas Covenant in another novel...
3) Juniper is simply annoying. A good-hearted wiccan in the midst of evil Christians spouting Gaelic and spewing gooey songs. (Heavy-handedness will become my favorite phrase in this review; this time I think it was to impress some woman in Mr. Stirling's circle of real life friends). I see Julia Roberts in this role, using the "prostitute with the heart of gold" approach, such as in Pretty Woman. Another character who is difficult to like.
4) The author's prejudices seeped into the work, and the heavy-handedness shows. There is a difference between using it as a character flaw and an extreme pervasiveness throughout the work. Did someone comment that this was the political/theological antithesis of Left Behind? I would vote that as accurate, especially on the positive coincidence aspect (see comment 6).
5) This book has science on the order of Star Trek: "We use what works and what doesn't, we change the laws of physics to make it fit." Simple machines and solutions are ignored, or receive horrible treatment because letting them creep into his post-Change world would tip the balance of his authoring capability of actually having to research and deal with it. Another example of heavy-handedness.
6) So much coincidence! I am a Jane-of-all-Trades, and possess many and varied skills that would be useful for surviving this kind of aftermath. However, for as many years as I have or had been involved in Renaissance Faires and the SCA, I have yet to encounter as few people who comprise the vast majority of skillsets a mere handful of these folks cover. Heavy-handed, anyone?
7) Overall, I got the impression this was either A) written with the intention that it would be a TV Series or B) snippets of ideas badly stitched together. There were a lot of unnecessary TV-show filler interludes (like the inanely placed "love" scenes that do little or nothing for character development and are too demure to titillate readers who must have their erotica wedged in otherwise decent fiction). Too much chronological jumping also. Time tags can be overused in fiction, but here they would have worked throughout instead of at the beginning.
8) I WILL give Mr. Stirling kudos for the concept of a new way of turning society upside down. Personally, my favorite genre is "ye olde post-nuclear-attack" world, but I do enjoy something new, and I give it the two stars for that at the very least. (Edit, I changed my mind. Down to one star).
I'm done ranting. Where's my tea?
Edit: I'm revisiting this review two years later, and I wonder why I even gave it two stars? Maybe because I hoped somewhere along the way someone would come along and be inspired enough by Stirling's drivel to say to themselves "I can do better than that" and write another sci-fi novel in this same vein with plausible characters and rationale for the startling loss during this SHTF type scenario. I won't lie; it inspired me to start writing a PA novel. If this excrement can get published, then I have a more than decent chance of getting my own work printed and on the shelves.
THROUGH DARKEST AMERICA, by Neal Barrett (Reviewed 21 JAN 2004)
This novel began to flesh out a "real world" of a post-apocalyptic nature, but so much is left dangling that I have to wonder if a series of novels was intended. Even if one feels a little pity for the protaganist in the beginning, in the end there was no genuine justification for the reasons and the methods he used to get even with the murderers. The ending was more of a punchline to one long and horrific joke -if you read the first few chapters and the last few pages, that's all that is really necessary for understanding the world Barrett created.
I added a comment to this review that I found out later there was indeed a sequel, but a story needs to be self-contained in a single volume with very few threads left dangling, otherwise the intention of it becoming an obvious "buy the next book to find out what happens" publishing scam. Even comic books, while they may have a single unifying story arc throughout the series, contains a complete story in an issue or two. It is inexcusable in a novel.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
I'll Be Back
...Actually, I am already back. Let's just say the hiatus I've been taking is due to a project of my own. Namely, a post-apocalyptic novel of my own. I've gotten it written, and am into the revision process, which is much more time consuming than the writing itself. I have a deadline of submission to an agent or publisher by 15 APR 2010. That's right folks, Tax Day.
In the meantime, a lot has come to pass which I mentioned in earlier blogs, especially the release of many movies. I went to see 9 and I loved it. No specific critique here, as I hope to get some time to review it in the near future. I have not gone to see The Road or The Book of Eli. I am waiting to see them for the first time with my boyfriend when he returns, because I'm quirky/romantic/nostalgic like that. So shoot me. If you can get close enough before I take out your miserable existence with a headshot from my Reservist's Rifle. (I really miss the targeted eye shots from FO1/2!) When I see those films, I will include those in my reviews as well.
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