Eagles Over the Kennebec

I've got a lot to do today, and I thought maybe you'd like something to do, too!

So, here you are -- an essay question.

Who is your favorite character in the Carousel books so far -- and why?

Remember to insert spoiler space, if you need to discuss specific scenes from the books.

See y'all on the flip side.

This is a continuation and expansion of a discussion started over on Facebook, which was kickstarted by this summary of Carousel Sun:

Urban fantasy novel, sequel to Carousel Tides (2010), about a woman who returns to a small town in Maine and becomes involved in a faerie war. (Locus Monitor -- New Books, 4 February)

There are a couple of things wrong with the above.  Most notably, Carousel Sun isn't Urban Fantasy, because it takes place in Maine, and it does not take place in Bangor, Lewiston-Auburn, or Portland, which are the three "urban" areas in the whole state, according to the Federal Government.

I'm also wondering where they got this "faerie war."

We thought we'd be OK by calling the Carousel books "contemporary fantasy," but apparently "contemporary fantasy" means something Very Definite to some people.  (To me, "contemporary fantasy" means "a fantasy story that takes place Right Now.")

So, I've been giving some thought to how best to describe these books, as much in order to guide readers who would like this kind, as warn away those readers who come in thinking they're getting A Specific Thing that the books don't deliver.  (Like, oh, "faerie wars.")

Now, the best I can come up with as a sub-genre is "mundane fantasy." Kate, after all, doesn't get a free pass on anything for being Guardian -- it's Added Responsibility for which she goes uncompensated (cue Superman's Song). Fercryinoutloud, Gaby collects returnables, and I don't see Borgan flyin' no yacht. Felsic's crew -- wait, do you guys have Felsic yet? Anyhow, it's not like any of these folks are living high in the fancy condos; they're working people, doing their jobs.

So, like I said: "mundane fantasy" or maybe "blue collar" fantasy, though there has been some concern expressed that, while these come close, they don't quite Nail It.

Summing up, the points for discussion are:

1.  What are your expectations of "contemporary fantasy"

2.  If you had to tighten the classification for the Carousel books (Tides and Sun), what phrase would you use?  Please try to avoid spoilers for the books.

Have at it!

One of the most frequent questions we get, and which popped up several times on the tour is, "What can we do to help you guys?"  This sometimes breaks down into component parts, such as,  "Is there a venue where I can buy your stuff which will give you more money than Those Other Places?" and "What does it take to make you guys famous?"

First of all, and as always, thank you! for thinking of us; and for everything you've done for us and our work.  We wouldn't be where we are without you; without your support and your interest.

To the specific question, "What can we do to help you guys?", the answer is pretty much the same as for any other of your favorite writers:

1.  Buy our books.

At this time, our audiobooks are available exclusively from Audible, which makes it easy.

If you're buying paper or ebooks, the source doesn't matter; we get the same piece of the action no matter where you buy.  Our percentage of each sale is set in our contract with the publisher, so sale prices in stores don't negatively impact our earnings.

That said, we'd prefer, if you possibly can, that you buy books from indie bookstores and from Barnes and Noble.  The reason for this is two-fold.

One -- indie bookstores have been very good to us, personally, throughout our career.  Also, we just personally believe that readers and writers are better served by having a number of smaller retailers, owned, operated and staffed by people who have a passion for books, rather than having to run all our purchases through one megamonster store that only cares about its own bottom line.

Two -- many indie bookstores, and BN, too, contribute numbers to the various bestseller lists.  Hitting (and staying on) bestseller lists gives us some leverage in terms of negotiating a raise with the publisher when it comes time to talk about a new contract.

Bonus Reason Three -- even after a title is listed as OOP, and is not accessible to Amazon or BN, you may find it at Uncle Hugo's, or Mysterious Galaxy or another indie store (sometimes even signed!).  Indie bookstores tend to hold onto backlisted titles longer than chains.

2.  Pre-order our books.

Pre-orders help retailers know how many books to order, so they won't run out in the first two days after a new title is released.  Which, admit it, would be a Tragic Thing Indeed.

Also!  All pre-orders count toward first-week sales, for the purpose of those lists we were talking about, up in #1.

3. Proselytize.

If you have friends who seem to be a good match for our work, please introduce them to our books.  Let me just say here that Friends of Liad are particularly good at this.

It's now easier than ever, by the way, to hook friends on our books, especially friends who have ereaders.  Baen, BN, and Amazon (at a minimum) offer both Agent of Change and Fledgling as free downloads.

Also!  If you know of a podcast/blog/magazine where we might fit as interviewees or guests, do suggest us.

In that vein, if you are on a con committee -- or know someone who is on a con committee -- suggest us as guests. We also willingly appear at libraries and bookstores, but those are trickier to pull off, since we often need a whole string of bookstores/libraries/cons bridging us with a far-away venue.  And do remember:  We live in Maine; and Maine is Far Away from Everywhere.

4.  Review our books.

On Amazon, Audible, BN, Goodreads, LibraryThing, and other places where readers congregate and discuss books.  I hear from my colleagues that 50 reader reviews on Amazon is a Magic Number, but, like many things Magical, the "why" has been lost in the Misty Depths of Time.

5.  Don't download our work from, or upload it to, pirate sites.

Really, this should be self-explanatory, but, having recently seen (through the wonder that is the Google autosearch) a. . .person of no melant'i solicit Necessity's Child for warez$ on a pirate site bare hours after the eArc was made available for sale by Baen -- with the comment that they just couldn't wait to get the new book from their favorite authors -- apparently the below needs to be said.

Authors don't get paid for books downloaded from pirate sites.  If you want your favorite authors to be able to afford to keep on writing, you need to buy their books for real money from an actual retailer.  There's no way around it.

Also, pirate sites are unsavory places at best; and it personally gives me the Cold Grue just thinking about exposing my computer to one of those places, much less accepting and opening a file from one.

6.  Don't write and post fan fiction of our work.

The following is Lee and Miller specific, and it has been our stance for more than a decade.  It's not new, and it's not a secret.  Other writers have other stances and opinions.  When in doubt -- ask.

I know it's a popular belief among many of the fan-fiction community that fan fiction does not hurt the parent work, that it provides much-needed publicity to the parent work, that it does not infringe the copyright or trademark of the parent work, and that the authors of the parent work can't stop it, anyway.

Three of these four beliefs are just that -- beliefs.  They can no more be proven than can our belief that fan fiction materially harms the parent work -- especially a parent work which is still evolving -- provides no useful publicity, and does, indeed, infringe on the copyright and the trademark of the parent work.  Note that we are talking about our own works here -- see disclaimer, above.

To the fourth point, that authors are powerless to prevent fan fiction authors from ficcing whatever they want to -- that's perfectly true.  Common courtesy would seem to dictate that the wishes of the author of the parent work be respected, however.  So, we would ask for common courtesy.

. . .and that's pretty much it, really.

Thanks for asking -- and again, thank you for your support and your care.

#SFWAPro

Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer yesterday's Idle Question.

From the Idle Question came two Rebound Questions, one having to do with the importance of blogging to a writer's career (this was more of an assumption than a question, but I'm making it a question because I want to Say Something About That), and one asking what the blogger gets from blogging.

So, the assumption that one must blog or do some other sort of social media in order to be a writer is...a perception born of the frenetic age we live in, and the lack of willingness to accept that, in O So Very Many Ways, success as a writer is a crap shoot.

The Number One Thing that you need to do if you want to be in future, or are now, a writer is -- WRITE.  Write, send out what you write, pay attention to your craft, write, study the markets sufficiently to insure that you don't get cheated, write, and, ohbytheway, WRITE.

Everything else -- everything else -- is an extra.  You do not have to have -- what was the magic number? -- 1500? Facebook friends before you start in writing your novel.  You don't need to set up Whatever or Boing-Boing and tend it for a decade before you write your novel.  All you  have to do is open up your word processor, turn to a clean sheet in your notebook, go outside with a nice thick chunk of tailor's chalk in hand,  find a clean place on the sidewalk, or whatever else rings your bell -- and start writing.

That's it.  Personally, I think that starting a writing career by writing seriously (by which I mean with serious purpose and a goal) every day is hard enough without putting the burden of an active blog on the list, too.

Now, if you're a sociable sort of person and you like to blog -- then by all means go for it.  In fact, if you're the sort of person who likes to blog, you're probably doing it already.

Pro Tip: People can tell if you like doing something.  If you like to blog -- if it's fun for you, regardless of any other input -- then folks will read your blog and they'll comment and feel comfy with you, and cheer you on in your endeavors.

Conversely, if you hate blogging and only force yourself to do in order to Build Your Brand?  People will pick up on that, too.

The same principle applies to doing book signings and going to conventions; tweeting and facebooking.  Do what you like, and what makes you happy; don't do what you don't like.  And for ghod's sake, don't just do things in order to Sell Books; that's lame.  And pretty often it doesn't work.

Second question!  Why do I blog; aka What's In It For Me?

That's easy; I'm a writer, and I like to tell stories.  I'm an introvert, but I like to interact with people.  Blogging lets me do both things -- tell stories, and benefit from human interactions -- without exhausting myself by having to physically be in a roomful of people, read all that body language, and protect myself.  Blogging lets me limit interaction, when I need to focus elsewhere; I can read and answer comments in my own good time.  For me, blogging is dern near the perfect medium of communication.

* * *

In other news -- this is a long blog because you're going to have to do without for a couple days; we have a buncha stuff on this week's schedule -- a while ago, I got interested in Doc Holliday, and ordered in a well-regarded biography (Doc Holliday, by Gary L. Roberts).  Now, I like biographies -- they're my Reading Matter of Choice when I'm actively writing fiction -- and I've read a bunch of them, but I've gotta tell you -- I'm going to give up on Doc's book, here.

See, the primary reason I read biographies is to learn about people; their motivations; their movements; how they conformed to, or failed to conform to, the mores of their time -- and I'm getting none of that with this book.  What I'm getting is the author's speculation, a bunch of facts supported by newspaper reports and filed legal papers, and a review of the Civil War, as seen from Georgia and the Deep South.

Now, the author does say in his introduction that Doc left virtually no papers.  He had a lifelong correspondence with his first cousin, who had entered a convent, apparently because her religion had led her to refuse Doc's hand in marriage (they were first cousins).  The cousin had saved the letters, but upon her death, a family member took it upon himself (I assume the masculine pronoun here) to burn them (pause for a group banging of heads on desks).  I can understand that it would therefore be difficult to piece together much about Doc's private life.

While I applaud the author for getting a 400-plus-page book out of such flimsy stuff, that isn't what I read biography for; if I want speculation, I read fiction.  So, Doc's book goes back on the shelf.  Maybe I'll find more patience with it, later.

* * *

Frequent readers of this blog will recall that I have some. . .Interesting Cognitive Quirks apparently brought into my life when the Good Sisters switched my primary hand from Left to Right.  In order, so my grandmother told me, to make my life easier.

I've been living with the effects of this for quite a number of years, naturally, and I thought I knew all the Funny Places, but yesterday I discovered another one.

Compass.

Have you ever seen one of these things?  A dial marked N-E-S-W with degrees between, and a needle in the middle, the red end magnetized so it will always point more-or-less North, no matter how you turn the dial?  Yes?  Holy bananas, what a brain-bender!

No, seriously.  You hold the thing in your hand so that the red pointer points North, and then, if you want to go, say, East, you squint along the dial and pick out a tree or a mailbox or something along that line and you walk to it?  This is how its supposed to work?  Phew.  Steve spent an hour, maybe more, but it's not looking like a skill I'll be -- forget mastering -- understanding any time soon.  I hope to Ghu I'm never lost on a mountain in Maine.

Or anywhere else where there aren't street signs.

* * *

Y'all have a good Beginning Of A New Week.

* * *

Progress on One of Five
8,062/100,000 OR .81% complete

"Have I finally reached the captain of the pirate vessel Dutiful Passage?" The voice was high-pitched and clealy angry. Priscilla felt a jolt of her own anger.

"This is Captain Mendoza of the trade ship Dutiful Passage out of Surebleak," she said coolly. "To whom am I speaking?"

"Retribution Officer Blix," the angry voice snapped; "Law and Decency. In accordance with Chesselport Regulations 928A through 977M, pertaining to known pirates on-port, your vessel and its cargo are forfeit to this office; your officers and crew will be interrogated by this office, and those who are found guilty of piracy and related crimes will be placed in appropriate labor programs."

#SFWAPro

To put the questions in context...Back when Agent of Change was first published -- by which I mean 1988 -- publishers actively discouraged writers and their cover artists from speaking to each other.  It was felt, by the publishers, that writers weren't artists, had no idea what image would sell a book; and would just confuse the artist if they started talking about what the characters looked like, or what the setting was, or what the most interesting scene in the book was.

The publisher had a marketing department and an art department to address these matters.  The Art Director gave instruction to the artist, who pretty often hadn't read the book, but who worked off of either a synopsis of the scene the Art Director wanted, or who were provided with a portion of the book to give them a feel for the story and/or characters.  I think we've discussed the fact that Mr. Hickman was given exactly half of Agent of Change to work from -- and he was one of the lucky ones.  As we were, when we got recognizable characters standing in a street we had described on the cover of our novel.

This was not, I repeat, the norm.

The prevailing thought at that point in publishing history was that what was on the cover of the book and what was inside the book really didn't have that much to do with each other.  It was the art's job to tell potential readers what kind of story was lurking between the covers.  By the late 1980s, covers were getting a little more representative of content, though still tilted toward SF's perceived market -- 14 year old boys.

Let me say here that we've been very fortunate in our covers over the years.  Starting with Mr. Hickman's portrayal of a Big! Freaking! Turtle! and a woman in fighting leathers that were actually functional, pulling a gun that she seems to know how to use, with a scarf tied around her arm exactly as we had described it!  The male lead is possibly even golden-skinned, as described -- it's hard to tell in the underlighting.

There are a few of our covers that I'm not in love with, but, for the most part, characters we've described as brown -- Meripen Vanglelauf, Jela, Shan, Nelirikk -- or golden-skinned -- Val Con (who also became Asian for a run of covers, that being the result of the authors talking to an artist who had been in Vietnam, and knew exactly what golden-skinned people looked like), Aelliana, Daav, Er Thom -- or pale -- Theo, Miri -- have been painted as described.

Do the characters look exactly as I see them in my head?  No, of course not, though some renditions have come closer than others.

Do I expect the covers of our books to accurately reflect the characters as described?  Well, yes, within a range; after all, I wrote those descriptions for a reason.

When a cover falls outside that "range" is it a horrible cover?

Well, no...not necessarily.

Case in point:  The covers for the Carousel books.  I adore these covers, despite that I have no idea who the humans depicted are meant to be.  They're great covers -- dynamic and intriguing, and true in a way that mere accuracy can't convey.  They're covers that really ought to sell me some books.

So, with all that being said, here are my questions:

1.  Do you, as a reader, expect that cover art will accurately reflect the accompanying novel?

2.  Do you become upset when/if it turns out that the cover does not accurately represent:

2a. The main character

2b. The setting

2c.  The kind of story inside the covers

3.  In 2, above -- which misrepresentation bothers you the most?  Why?

4.  If you are upset about inaccurate covers, how do you think change can be effected?

4a.  By writing to the author

4b. By writing to the publisher

4c. By boycotting authors and publishers who publish inaccurate covers

4d. Nothing will change, so why try?

5.  Other thoughts on the topic?  Tell me!

All righty, then!  Settle your thinking caps and riddle me this:

What are the five main Liaden Universe® story threads?  Please show your work.

This morning's mail brings the delivery money for "Landed Alien."  After deducting 33% for taxes , there's enough left over to pay the plumber's bill for the timely rescue on August 3, which invoice also arrived today.  That's what you call your perfect timing.

In other news, the laundry's doing, I have chicken marinating for this afternoon's stir-fry, and I think I heard the dirty dishes muttering the opening lines of  the "Wreck of the Hesperus" a little while ago, so...better deal with that rsn.

Still lookin' for a home, one (used) but perfectly wearable size MEDIUM t-shirt from BaltiCon 43, art by Kurt Miller. If you can use this t-shirt please write to me (at rolanniATkorvalDOTcom) and let's work something out*

How's your Saturday?

-----
*"work something out" means that I'm open to barter, trade, or purchase. It also means that I am willing to mail you (or a party designated by you) the t-shirt because you (or they) will enjoy it and/or get use out of it.  In the latter case, I will ask you to reimburse the postage.

As we’ve seen in discussions here, opinions about cover art, what’s good, what’s not, seem to vary by the beholder.  I can’t recall ever being so embarrassed by a book’s cover that I couldn’t read it on the bus or at the park or at work, but I’m demonstrably not as sensitive as some.

Anyhow!  A friend has put together a poll about genre cover art over here.  If you have an opinion — and you know you do! — go on over and weigh in!