Author: Edward Trimnell

Reading notes for November 2018: ‘Year One’, by Nora Roberts

A quick book recommendation for you, based on my current and recent  reading….

I decided to take a chance on Nora Roberts’ recent novel, The One.

I say, “take a chance,” because while I’ve been aware of Nora Roberts for years (she’s been publishing since the 1970s), I’ve always considered her to be something of a romance author.

Straight men and romance fiction. You know how that goes. Oil and water.

The One certainly has more romance content than this reviewer would like. But this isn’t a Danielle Steele novel. From the perspective of a male reader who generally prefers writers like Michael Connelly and the late Michael Crichton, The One isn’t half bad.

 

This is the set-up: A plague (a particularly virulent version of the avian flu that so terrified everyone a decade ago) sweeps the earth and kills most of the population.

Some people are immune, of course. (Otherwise, there is no story.)  Those who are immune have dormant magical powers, that are awakened in the aftermath of the catastrophe.

The One, then, is part post-apocalyptic, part urban fantasy, and (yes) part romance fiction.

On the whole: not bad.

Did this novel convert me into a raving Nora Roberts fan?

No. But then again, I’m not in Nora Roberts’s target audience, am I?

After The One, might I read another Nora Roberts title in the future?

Perhaps. It would probably depend on how intrigued I am with the description and opening chapters.

 

Ice storm in Cincinnati

No one moves to Ohio for the weather. It is only mid-November, and we’re already having honest-to-goodness-oh-man-this-sucks genuine winter weather, as pictured below.

 

If you look closely at the photo above, you can see the icy coating on the tree branches, and on the floorboards of my deck.

Or perhaps not. In any case, take my word for it. This morning we had .30″ of ice in the form of freezing rain. Just enough to make driving a pain in the neck.

Also enough to cause power outages. My power was out from 3:30 am until a little after 4. (Duke Energy, as public utilities go, is reasonably efficient at restoring services when they’re interrupted for any reason.

Bad weather days are good days for writing, however (provided the power stays on). I’ll be spending much of today working on the manuscript for REVOLUTIONARY GHOSTS. I hope to have it done by the end of this month.

The rebooted Magnum PI: mini-review

If you’ve been watching CBS in recent years, you’ll have noticed that many of the network’s top programs are reboots of shows from the 1970s and 1980s: MacGyver, S.W.A.T., Hawaii Five-O.

Now you can add a new one to the list: Magnum PI.

I’ll admit: I was a skeptic. The 1980s coincided with my high school and college years. I didn’t watch much television during that decade. But I did make time for Magnum PI. The original Magnum, starring Tom Selleck, is one of my favorite television programs from my youth.

I was sure that CBS would make a mess of the remake.

I was wrong. The new Magnum PI is just as fun and entertaining as the original.

I’m a conservative, and all conservatives are naturally nostalgic. We tend to believe that things were better in the old days, that previous versions of things were better than the new and updated ones. In this vein, there was a part of me that would have loved to have seen Tom Selleck star in the 21st-century reboot of Magnum. (Selleck presently stars in Blue Bloods, another  CBS staple, as the patriarch of an NYPD family.)




 

But another part of me knows that would have been ridiculous. Tom Selleck is very fit for his age, but he’s now in his seventies. The starring role in Magnum PI is one for an actor in early middle age: 35 to 45.

CBS has cast Jay Hernandez as Thomas Sullivan Magnum. And while Hernandez brings his own style and interpretation to the role, he pulls it off with as much flair as Selleck did before him.

The new show more or less ports the characters and the basic premise over from the original: with some necessary changes. In the original show, Magnum and his sidekicks (TC and Rick), were Vietnam War vets. In the 2018 reboot,  they’re veterans of the wars in the Middle East.

There is one fairly major character change: In the 1980s version, Higgins, the majordomo of the Hawaiian estate where Magnum lives (off the largess of the never seen Robin Masters) was played by British actor John Hillerman. In the reboot, Higgins is still British, but Higgins is a woman (Perdita Weeks).

Conservatives like me are supposed to hate it when rebooted shows arbitrarily change the genders of characters. I don’t necessarily hate this practice in a knee-jerk sort of way, but I’m always skeptical of it, often with good reason. (The reimagining of Boomer and Starbuck as female characters in the rebooted Battlestar Galactica produced uneven results.)  But in the case of Magnum PI, the distaff version of Higgins works perfectly. I think–sorry, Mr. Hillerman–that I even like the Perdita Weeks interpretation of Higgins better.

The show includes lots of fun details that were crucial to the 1980s Magnum, like the dogs Zeus and Apollo, and Magnum’s habit of thinking aloud to the audience. TC and Rick (Stephen Hill and Zachary Knighton) don’t get much character development. But then, they were little more than affable sidekicks in the original version.

The Magnum PI reboot is as good as any purist could have asked for, 38 years after the start of the original series (and 30 years after it went off the air).

Sometimes the networks botch things, but sometimes they hit home runs, too. The new Magnum PI is a home run

David Gaughran’s post about the Amazon “also-bought apocalypse”

David Gaughran is a constant source of valuable information for anyone publishing in this brave new world of indie publishing. One of his recent blog posts concerns the Amazon “also-bought” apocalypse.

If you’re a writer/indie publisher, the post is well worth reading in its entirety.

But here’s my quick take on the  matter:

For years now, thousands of indie authors have made themselves wholly dependent on the Amazon ecosystem. This trend has accelerated nonstop since Amazon established the KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited program in 2011.

At least one of the indie author “gurus” now states that indie authors no longer need individual author websites.

Why? Because the only thing that matters now is gaming the Amazon algorithms!

Many indie authors no longer think in terms of any kind of “platform” beyond Amazon.

Rapid release into KDP Select….

Rapid release into KDP Select…

Rinse and repeat…

I’m not anti-Amazon. (I rather like them, in fact.) But as David Gaughran’s post illustrates, it is dangerous to build a consumer-focused business that is solely reliant on a single channel of distribution.

What is the solution? Forget about silly “boycotts” and online petitions. Those things don’t mean squat, at the end of the day.

The solution is to spread the risks: Go wide, and work with other retailers–in addition to Amazon: Apple Books, Kobo, Smashwords, etc.

Let me make clear: Amazon is not evil. But Amazon is a large company that will, like all big companies, act in its best interests.

How do you think Amazon got to be the world’s largest retailer?

If you’re an independent author, you need to act in your best interests, too.

And acting in your best interests doesn’t mean relying solely and entirely on Amazon.

A Column of Fire, by Ken Follett (mini-review)

Get it on Amazon!

 

I just finished reading Ken Follett’s mammoth historical novel, A Column of Fire.

The novel opens in 1558, just as the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary is coming to an end. Mary has reversed England’s Protestant shift, which began when her father, Henry VIII, decided that he couldn’t make due with one wife and a mistress.

Mary, who is also known to history as “Bloody Mary”, occasionally burned Protestant dissenters, and this is depicted in one of the opening chapters of A Column of Fire. Hence the name of the book.

This is the opening historical backdrop. The hero of the novel is Ned Willard, who is a young man in love as the story opens. The object of Ned’s affections is Margery Fitzgerald. Ned’s affections are returned, but—of course—there is a problem.

Margery hails from a devoutly Catholic family that has prospered under the reign of Mary. Through the connivances of Margery’s fanatically papist brother, Ned loses Margery to Bart, a member of the local Catholic nobility.

And so Margery enters into a loveless marriage with Bart (who is an uncouth, insensitive, and blundering brute), while Ned goes off, forlorn, to seek his fortune in London.

Ned is a lukewarm Protestant who abhors the intolerance of Mary’s reign. Ned longs for a monarch who will allow the British people to worship freely (or as freely as possible, according to 16th-century standards of “freedom”.)

Just as Ned is reeling from the loss of Margery, Mary dies. Elizabeth takes the throne. A chance connection to Sir Francis Walsingham (principal secretary to Elizabeth) enables Ned to enter the service of the Crown. Ned is greatly impressed with the young queen. With the option of a married life with Margery closed off, Ned devotes himself to the service of Queen Elizabeth I, and the implementation of her (initially) tolerant ideals.

There is a lot more to A Column of Fire, of course. This is a 900-page book, after all. There is also a storyline set in France, where Protestants are a minority in an officially Catholic country. Still another set of characters has adventures in Spain and the New World. (All of the storylines converge before the end of the book.)

The overarching theme of A Column of Fire is the religious strife that gripped Europe in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation. As noted above, the story opens with anti-Protestant burnings in England. Follett later weaves into his plot the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris, and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The book covers around half a century. (Ned Willard is in his eighties in the final chapter.)

I loved this book. I have read almost everything that Ken Follett has written to this point, and A Column of Fire is hands-down my favorite.

I like stories with complex twists and turns, and physical threats; and A Column of Fire has all that in spades. There are sea battles, and opposing rings of Catholic and Protestant spies.

The majority of readers seem to agree with me. A Column of Fire is highly rated both on Amazon and Goodreads.

But even a really good book has its flaws. Most of the criticisms of A Column of Fire come from one of two angles, which I’ll address briefly.

Ken Follett seems to harbor a secret desire to be an author of Harlequin romance novels. Almost every movie, novel, and television series has a love interest (or multiple love interests), and I’m not suggesting that this, in itself, is in any way a drawback.

Follett, however, tends to go overboard on his sex scenes.

Now, before you ask, I’m no prude. I’m a fifty-year-old, very heterosexual man with right-leaning libertarian tendencies. I have an equal loathing for leftwing political correctness, and anything that smacks of goody-two-shoes censorship.

That said, there is only so much detail that I need when an author describes a romantic coupling. To be blunt about it: Once the author has described the male protagonist’s erect penis, or the heroine’s moist nether regions, the author has given me more detail than I actually need.

Follett does this on multiple occasions (and in more than a few of his novels). There are some lacunae that an author should trust readers to fill in for themselves.

Secondly, A Column of Fire has something of an anti-Catholic bias. Almost every Catholic character is portrayed as a bloodthirsty fanatic, an amoral schemer, or a deluded simpleton.

(This may be a thing with baby boomer British authors who write historical fiction, as I’ve noticed a similar tendency in the historical novels of Bernard Cornwell.)

These flaws, however, are minor ones. On balance, A Column of Fire is a great read.

A final word before I end: You’ll appreciate A Column of Fire far more if you already have a basic knowledge of European history in general, and the Protestant Reformation in particular. But then, if you don’t already have some interest in history, then it’s unlikely that you’ll be strongly attracted to this book.

Remembering those Burger Chef ‘Star Wars’ posters of 1977

I was part of the original Star Wars generation.

I remember being nine years old in the summer of 1977, sitting with my dad in the cinema, watching that first epic Star Wars opening crawl.

I became a total fanatic for Star Wars. And yes, that meant Star Wars action figures, Star Wars trading cards, and much else. During that first two years of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, I wasn’t thinking about stagflation or the energy crisis, or Jimmy Carter’s “malaise”. I was thinking about Star Wars.

Among my favorite Star Wars memorabilia of that era were the four Star Wars posters issued by Burger Chef. (Burger Chef was a once popular fast food chain that went out of business in 1996.)

I had all four posters, and they were hung all around my bedroom. (I can still recall the exact placement of each one, in fact.)

These are now collectors’ items, of course. But they were just delightful children’s bric-a-brac in 1977.

 

1977 Burger King Commercial

Star Wars replica posters you can buy on Amazon:

The original Burger Chef posters from 1977. (I can vouch for their authenticity, because I was there!)

There is only so much money within the indie authorspace

There is a predictable evolution that can be seen in all online communities.

I’ve witnessed it over the last fifteen years, in at least four online communities that I’ve been a part of.

At first, the online community is comprised of a small group of individuals who have gathered to share their enthusiasm for a specific topic. They freely exchange advice.

And then the community reaches maturity.

The numbers grow, and people inevitably start marketing books, courses, etc. to other members of the same online community.

We’ve definitely reached this point in the indie authorspace. (We reached it several years ago, in fact.)




 

Let me say, first of all, that I see nothing intrinsically wrong with this practice. I’m a proud capitalist, after all.

Moreover, I’ve benefited from a handful of these courses and books myself.  I’ve especially benefited from the work and advice of Dean Wesley Smith, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I am also a weekly listener of several indie author podcasts, including: the Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast, The Creative Penn, The Sell More Books Show, Mark Dawson’s Self-Publishing Formula, and—most recently—The Career Author Podcast.

These are all great sources of information, and I recommend them highly.

 

 

But the indie authorspace is—to put it bluntly—overcrowded, and the market is oversaturated. (Even Joanna Penn, once endlessly optimistic that “there could never be too many books”, has belatedly recognized this.)

There are now over 3.4 million books in the Kindle ebook store. 

Ten years ago, the challenge for indie authors was to prove (to themselves and to others) that indie publishing is a legitimate alternative to a reliance on the New York-based legacy publishers.

Much has changed over the past decade. We’ve seen the big-time success of Andy Weir, Mark Dawson, Blake Crouch, JA Konrath, Amanda Hocking, and numerous other indie publishers.

Meanwhile, the collapse of brick-and-mortar bookstores has made New York’s stranglehold on traditional methods of distribution less significant.

We also see the rise of the so-called “hybrid author”. More traditionally published authors are either self-publishing, or going with small, entrepreneurial presses. (This is especially prevalent in genre fiction, as the New York publishers are systematically jettisoning any title that doesn’t have the mass-market appeal of the latest John Grisham or James Patterson thriller.)


 

Okay, so self-publishing is no longer a stigma. (And for what it’s worth, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen an impassioned argument on either side of that debate. The fundamental legitimacy of self-publishing appears to be a settled question.)

But if obtaining the permission and resources to publish is no longer a problem, discoverability is now a massive challenge, in a market that can only be described as over-saturated.

Discoverability still isn’t a major problem if you write ultra-niche fiction. I recently learned that there is actually a category called “billionaire reverse-harem romance”. The (exclusively female) readers for these novels congregate in online communities dedicated to this topic, and they’re easy enough to find.

But this doesn’t describe the situation of most indie authors.  Suppose you write generic legal thrillers, in the tradition of John Grisham. Your online reader community is far more difficult to locate.

 

All indie authors, however, are aware of one concentrated, relentlessly passionate online community: the indie authorspace. 

If you go onto Twitter and identify yourself as an indie author, you will immediately be followed by other indie authors whom you’ve never heard of. (And they’ve never heard of you, either.) There are Kboards, 20Booksto50K on Facebook, Authortube on YouTube.

Lots of author communities. Easy to find online. We all know where they are.




 

This is what makes it so tempting to say, Hey, I’ve learned a lot about self-publishing. Maybe I could monetize that knowledge! 

And so you write a nonfiction book for authors. (Whenever a fiction author talks about “branching out into nonfiction”, you can bet that the author is talking about writing a nonfiction book about some facet of self-publishing.)

Or maybe you start yet another podcast. Or you attempt to host your own convention for indie authors, as many of the established podcasters are now doing.

And if you’re really business-minded, you bill yourself as a consultant to other authors. This seems to be the latest trend. As newbie authors become increasingly desperate for any leg up in the crowded marketplace, more and more second- and first-tier indie authors are hanging out their shingles as fee-based marketing consultants.

 

I reiterate: I am a capitalist. I therefore have no moral or ethical objection to any of this. I would much rather see indie authors coming up with innovative business models, versus petitioning the government for subsidies.

At the same time, though, there is a fundamental economic constraint to keep in mind: There is only so much money in the indie authospace. This is not a community of stockbrokers and heart surgeons. This is a community of artists, most of whom are making less than what an ambitious Walmart employee could make.

 

I interpret this trend of authors scrambling to sell their books/advice/services to other authors as a sign that the indie author community is due for a major shakeout. A shakeout is the inevitable consequence in any market that is oversupplied, vis-a-vis the demand.

If you’re an indie author (and I suspect that you are, if you have read this far), I’m not going to attempt to play dictator here, and tell you that you can’t become the next Chris Fox, Joanna Penn, or Dean Wesley Smith by rebranding yourself as a writing advice guru.

I would, however, suggest that you do some soul-searching before you go this route. As a fiction writer, your focus should be on readers, not other writers. Let’s not forget that Stephen King had been a best-selling author for twenty-five years before he wrote On Writing.

Furthermore, you may already be too late. It is only a matter of time before the marketplace of authors selling expertise to other authors becomes oversaturated, too. I repeat: There is only so much money within the indie author space.

Binge-watching ‘The Sopranos’ in 2018

 

I have always loved mafia movies. I am one of those guys who has seen The Godfather more times than I feel comfortable admitting.

I also watch all the documentaries about the mob. I know the name John Gotti, of course, but also Paul Castellano, Carlo Gambino, and Aniello Dellacroce. The Italian mafia made an appearance in my first novel, Blood Flats. I’m sure I’ll write more stories about the Italian mafia in the future.

I was therefore a natural audience for the HBO series The Sopranos (1999 – 2007). But for various reasons, I didn’t get around to actually watching The Sopranos until this year, when I binge-watched all six seasons of the series over several months.

Yes, I’m a little late to this party. (It wouldn’t be the first time.) Pages and pages have already been written on the Internet about The Sopranos, dating back to the aughts. I will therefore keep my comments brief. (Er, well, fairly brief.)

The Sopranos is probably best categorized as a drama, but it’s a drama that’s loaded with plenty of physical threats and suspense. (In this regard, The Sopranos is similar to The Americans (FX), my all-time favorite television series.)

The Sopranos  employs a great deal of black humor. Murders are often committed with a smirk.

Black humor is completely absent from The Godfather. But 1972 moviegoers didn’t expect a film about the mob to have a laugh track. By 1999, however, incessant “irony” was thoroughly embedded in our culture, and it would probably have been difficult for The Sopranos to be played completely deadpan for six seasons. Black humor is not usually my thing, but in The Sopranos, it mostly works.

It is important to consider just how difficult this high-wire act was, from the moment of its conception through the last scene of its execution. The creator of The Sopranos, David Chase, faced a two-sided challenge:

When conceiving characters who were mafiosos, Chase had to portray his subjects’ amoralism and brutality, without turning them into unsympathetic monsters. If a main character (even an antihero) is completely unsympathetic, audiences don’t become emotionally invested in him, and don’t care about his fate.

But at the same time, Chase had to make his characters sympathetic, while never allowing the viewer to forget that they’re ultimately criminals. Crooks. Thugs. Bad guys. So it really was a very difficult balance.

Chase pulls this feat off brilliantly. The Sopranos is filled with cynicism, violence, and betrayal. And yet…Each major character is complex and distinct.

Before you finish the first episode, you feel like you know these people, and you want to see more of them. And that’s as much as anyone can ask for.

All of the major characters are also expertly cast. I did a little research, and it seems that a majority of the actors were Italian-Americans who had some connection to the New York/New Jersey area.

Not just James Gandolfini, but also Edie Falco, Lorraine Bracco, Michael Imperioli, Vincent Pastore, etc., etc. The list goes on and on.

Did that have an impact on the authenticity of the show? I think it may have.

But there’s one character, of course, who is the tentpole, the central pillar, the focus for the entire series…and that’s Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini. Without the character of Tony Soprano, The Sopranos would have been a mildly interesting Godfather knockoff that would have lasted a season or two, and then would have been quickly forgotten.

I would also speculate that without James Gandolfini, Tony Soprano would not have been nearly as effective.

I’ve seen James Gandolfini in a few other films. He played a junior U.S. Navy officer in Crimson Tide (1995), for example. Gandolfini is unspectacular in his pre-Sopranos roles. But as Tony Soprano, Gandolfini is a giant. He seems to have been born for this role. (It is also unfortunate to note that Gandolfini met an untimely death, at the age of 51, about six years after The Sopranos ended.)

Tony Soprano is capable of both nobility and venality, loyalty and ruthlessness. Flashback scenes suggest that his parents were both sociopaths. Tony, by contrast, seems to legitimately care about his wife and children. But that doesn’t stop him from engaging in a string of extramarital affairs. He is, after all, a mob boss. Philandering comes with the territory.

One of the more interesting subplots involves Tony Soprano’s (nonsexual) relationship with his psychiatrist, Jennifer Melfi (played by Lorraine Bracco). Tony is tortured by crises of identity. He suffers from panic attacks. He has a spiritual side (several episodes are dedicated to explorations in this regard), even as he’s capable of being petty, greedy, and violent—exactly what you would expect a mid-level mob boss to be.

And this is, I think, why the character is so appealing. Almost no one who watches The Sopranos knows firsthand what it is like to be a mafia capo. And yet, we identify with Tony Soprano in a thousand ways.

I know that I do: I see a lot of myself in Tony Soprano, the fundamentally flawed and short-sighted human being who nevertheless harbors aspirations of doing/being better.

The Sopranos takes some dark turns in the final seasons. This may partly be related to the changes that were happening in the real world between 1999 and 2007. The first few seasons of The Sopranos has a buoyant fin de siècle feel, despite the subject matter.

Let us not forget that in 1999 and 2000, the mood of the country was optimistic. Everyone was captivated by the ever-rising stock market, and the then novel wonders of the Internet. By 2007, American politics had taken a sharply partisan turn, 9/11 had happened, and we were embroiled in two quagmire wars in the Middle East.

And so the last few seasons of The Sopranos focus—perhaps more than necessary—on the dark sides of the characters’ lives. Not just the killings, but also various personal traumas.

One of the main characters develops Alzheimer’s. Much time is devoted to the troubles associated with Tony Sopranos ne’er-do-well son.

Tony and his wife, Carmella (played by Edie Falco), separate for an entire season, when she decides that she can no longer tolerate his extramarital adventures. (Spoiler alert: Tony and Carmella eventually reconcile.)

Some of the arguments associated with the marital split are almost too realistic. While watching these scenes, I actually felt that I was an unwilling witness to the breakup of a real marriage. There were several moments when I felt physically uncomfortable.

And what about that final scene of the final episode? After a flareup of factional mob violence that leaves many of Tony Soprano’s friends and associates dead, he meets with his wife and children at a restaurant, for what is supposed to be a quiet family dinner.

The family members arrive separately. Tony has been in hiding.

While Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” (a deliberately chosen song, of course) is playing on the jukebox, Tony surveys the other diners, speculating that one of them may be an assassin sent to kill him.

First Carmella arrives. Then his son, AJ.

Finally, Tony’s young adult daughter walks in. Tony looks up at the sound of the bell above the door (the restaurant is a neighborhood diner).

And the screen goes instantly silent and black.

The ending is wonderfully ambiguous and ambivalent, downright spiritual for a show about organized crime. (I have a confession here: I hated the ending the first time I saw it. But after I re-watched it on YouTube several times, I found that I recognized and appreciated what David Chase had done here.)

And now The Sopranos is over, for me at least. If you haven’t binge-watched this show, find a way to do so now. The Sopranos is among the best drama ever to see the screen.

Amazon earnings and indie authors

Today Amazon missed it’s earning estimates, leading to a fall in share prices.

Many indie authors are entirely reliant on Amazon. They are Amazon-exclusive, placing all of their titles in KDP. (Amazon makes this tempting, by dangling various cookies.)

I’m not anti-Amazon. On the contrary: I love Amazon–both as a reader and as an author. And under the current structure of the market, it would be virtually impossible to avoid any reliance on The Zon.

Nevertheless, as today’s news demonstrates, Amazon–just like any other company–has its ups and downs.

Amazon has also been known to make abrupt policy changes.

This is yet one more argument for “going wide”–or for making one’s titles available across multiple retailers.