Over the past month or so I have been really enjoying David Wellington’s Thirteen Bullets, a serial novel being published via RSS. With the impending release of his novel Monster Island, Backstory gives him a chance to voice his inspiration for writing it. If you like action packed horror Wellington is definitely worth reading as his writing is crisp and his characters flawed and believable. Good stuff.
Archive for the 'Books' Category
Often I think my sister is too generous in her praise, likely she is stroking my ego and bolstering my confidence as recently she floated the idea that maybe I should seriously pursue my dream of writing and pontificating on a more serious and hopefully paid basis. I, however, have no illusions about my talent as a wordsmith and do not see that as a viable venture beyond thinking about it in that smiling twilight state just before sleep. If I had any illusions about my success the recent write up about profit and loss in the publishing industry, “P&Ls and how books make (or don’t) money: part the first: the mass market original complete failure“, will anchor me to reality, especially when read with “The life expectancies of books” which will remind any aspiring or working author that the memory of your works will fade quicker than O-Town’s last single. [For those of you playing at home it was "I Showed Her" from their sophomore follow-up, 02, and yes it sucked but it's O-Town. What did you expect?]
Don’t get me wrong, I certainly think it is commendable that there are people willing to take the plunge and make their livelihood off writing–those people have a greater drive and are less risk averse than I. For me, it is a nice fantasy to have in that I really do enjoy writing and the sites have given me an outlet and an opportunity to think critically and creatively, something I was sorely lacking after I finished grad school. But writing for a living takes a thick skin and a will to see your product through to the end. I get distracted easily, often running after the next shiny thing that glints in the corner of my eye–never did find a way to reign that monkey in–so the idea of a steady flow of income being dependent on my attention span is a frightening notion.
I would like to branch out into more creative writing and I did try that briefly here but scrapped it before long for a lack of time and focus. The GMing experience sort of dredged up the desire again and got me thinking about how I might do it with an eye on keeping things short, tight, and focused. I’m at a loss though seeing as my workdays are long and my nights even longer, finding time to grind out three reviews at Pop and a handful of posts here is challenge enough let alone pounding out short stories as well. However, if it is something that I want to try I really should at least make an effort to even capture scraps of thought and ideas. Letting them flit away seems like such a waste.
Maybe I’ll return to the more creative aspects to 0.333, as long as my attention can remain focused long enough. It was exhilarating conceptualizing a world filled with characters and intersecting plotlines while I briefly GMed, which if anything showed me that I’d would make a better writer than GM–focus thing again. So I suppose I should thank my sister for the gentle kick in the pants to think a little bigger than I normally do but I won’t be quitting my day job anytime too soon.
Conceptually, I loved this book. The notion that high technology could offer portals into alternate universes where science was magic and that millennia would pass by in seconds is an intoxicating blend. However, where things fell short in execution was in the overall layout of the narrative.
The main tale spans some fifty plus years twining about the lives of three main protagonists and several peripheral characters all the while straddling a world of high fantasy while dipping its toe into the realm of science fiction. The trouble is that this grand narrative sweeps over on a scant 600+ pages which means that Franklin is darting through time, often making leaps of a decade or more. The leaps, in of themselves, are not a bad narrative device but I was left with the feeling that I was losing out on the background of the characters. What were they doing? What was shaping them, driving their motivations, or crippling them with inhibitions? It removes the reader from the evolution of each character and in the end reduces their personality to something less than paper thin.
Overall, I enjoyed the Taormin but was left with the feeling that Franklin should have taken more time to explore the narrative of each character. In particular those from the science fiction setting who presence at the start of the second half was jarring only to have the memory of them fade until the very last few pages where she introduced some of more mind twisting concepts about the actual reality of the world she had put into words. If you can track it down pick it up as it is a solid read and a good way to pass the time and I do sincerely hope to see more of her work in the future.
I finished entering in my reading list over at Reader2 and was surprised to see that I had grossly underestimated the amount, which clocks in at 109 books while slightly overestimating what I had actually read in the past year, only 22. Needless to say I have plenty of reading ahead of me and really ought to think about taking some days off work to at least make a bigger dent in the 84 books that remain.
On the right hand side are the two feeds for my Read and To Read lists, which leads to some of my gripes with the RSS feeds over at Reader2.
- Why do the links point to my profile? They really ought to go to the page for the book.
- Why is the data set so limited? Author, Status, Type, and Tags would all be very nice editions and would greatly enhance its functionality.
- The ad crammed into the first record’s description field is a tad abrupt and would be better placed at the end of the file. For people using the feed on their site it can cause formating issues, in my case it breaks apart the sidebar and seriously fugs things up.
Seeing as the project is run by one guy (I think) and some of these gripes are on the To-Do list so rest assured that they’ll get addressed sometime. Overall, I am finding the service fairly valuable and I love the ability to get suggestions on what to read next as well as see what others have been reading. Good stuff.
As of late, my reading list page here has been feeling unruly, sprawling in different directions barely contained and not really searchable. I had looked to standalone solutions like Alexandria and while that works well for personal use it didn’t quite meet my needs for sharing its contents. Eventually, I stumbled on Reader2 (I think someone mentioned it on Monkeyfilter) and while it is taking an extraordinary amount of work to import my current list–ISBN numbers be damned!– a list is beginning to take shape. Here’s my Reader2 library.
The nice features are tagging, commenting, rating, and the ability to export the list or share it out via RSS. As a quick and dirty cataloging system it does the job very well and my only real complaint at the moment is that there is no feature for mass import, granted, they do state that Reader2 is not intended to be a comprehensive collection manager so that would explain its absence. Instead you add books one by one, though once I enter in the 80+ books on my list it won’t be an issue as I’ll likely just add them in fits and spurts as I acquire them.
Now, I just need to think of a way to integrate it into the site.
There are some who would have you believe that the only fiction to be found on the Internet is either on political blogs or fan fiction posted on LiveJournal. Do not believe those people as there is more to the Internet than Kirk on Spock love and self-aggrandizing political musings. In all actuality, I have discovered some truly compelling literature from both established and aspiring authors.
Thirteen Bullets, by David Wellington, is one book that has really drawn me in and I find myself gnashing my teeth in frustration if a day or two goes by without an update. The story is a straight ahead action horror novel about vampires and their hunters. Unlike most of the work involving vampires the ones contained in these pages are brutal monsters that rend their victim limb from limbs when feeding. That and the existence of them seems pretty commonplace enough that people do not seemed surprised when reading in the morning paper about a town whose inhabitants were chewed up and spit out. I am definitely looking forward to his novel, Monster Island, due out this spring.
Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town, I know little to nothing about short of the fact that I have appreciated Doctorow’s essays and postings on Boing Boing and Craphound. His earlier book, Eastern Standard Tribe, seemed intriguing enough that I picked up a hard copy although it can be downloaded for free. Note to publishers, music and movies included, giving something away for free does not always lessen its value. In this case I see enough in the value of Doctorow’s work to purchase a hard bound copy of his book even though I can read and pass around a digital copy.
War of the Gyro is my favorite of the bunch because Dowler is an average person who has screwed up his courage and is making a go of self-publishing his work as he writes it. He isn’t a graduate of Columbia’s MFA program nor did he attend a Clarion Writer’s Workshop, as far as I know. He is just someone with an incredible amount of imagination and it has been enjoyable to watch his work grow over the past weeks. His novel is based in the RPG universe of Talislanta, which I suppose would classify it as fan-fiction, but even though he is drawing on existing work he has the vision to supply a compelling story and the skill to create worthwhile dialog. Honestly, Morrigan Press should consider extending him a contract to pen a few more novels to generate interest in the game; novel product tie-ins works for WotC, just ask R.A. Salvatore.
There is some good stuff out there if you take the time to look. Give the above a chance and you might find something you like.
