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Revenge is Best Served Cold

Aug20

Title: Best Served Cold

Author: Joe Abercrombie

Genre: Epic Fantasy

Length: 640 pages

Read: July 21-31, 2014

Summary: fun revenge fantasy

Best Served Cold is a stand alone fantasy set in the same world as his more ambitious First Law trilogy. None of the main characters or plot from that larger work appear in this novel, but a whole host of minor characters do, often in much expanded roles and the overall style and tone are very similar.

First a note about that. This is very adult fantasy with its share of graphic sex and a whole lot of gritty violence. In fact, one of the great pleasures of Abercrombie is his strength at describing combat. He loves both sieges (all four of his books I’ve read feature them), duels, and melees. He has a particular knack for blow by blow combat — literarily. He doesn’t spare you the crunch of bone, the spray of blood, but makes it seem very accurate and visceral. His protagonists take a beating — again literally — and come out worse for the wear (if sometimes swift recovering). Each battle has its clever turns and reversals. The only thing you can expect is a bit of the unexpected.

This is also fantasy without a ton of life saving, healing, resurrecting magic. What magic there is is mostly used for disguise, or more often as more amped up lethal methods of slayage. All this makes the stakes fairly high.

Abercrombie is also a very good prose smith. He has a particular style, full of stylistic word repeats, witty turns, and a sort of darkly comic tone. Don’t get me wrong, these are pretty serious books, but the tone is a bit ironic. His characters are extremely interesting, highly flawed, sometimes self aware, and often quite amusing. Best Served Cold‘s prose is just ever so less slick than the First Law, and somehow its tone just a tiny bit less sarcastic. Then again, maybe it’s just the absence of Glokta, a character from the longer books who really is exquisitely crafted (and darkly funny).

Like the bigger work, there are multiple POV characters. The story is told in rapidly shifting tight first person. Some of the characters are more likeable than others, but all are pretty fun to read. The opening chapters are very effective in particular with Monza, a female mercenary captain, who in the first few pages is betrayed and horribly maimed. Abercrombie loves a good crippling and swiftly builds sympathy for her this way — but then he throws it mostly to the side by avoiding her POV for quite some time. The story still focuses on her, but its told by others. This felt like a significant lost opportunity.

There are also a lot of reoccurring themes and even “types” of characters. Shivers, along with Monza the most important character, shares a great deal in common with Logen Ninefingers. Say one thing of Joe Abercrombie, say he’s consistent.

Overall, a fabulous fantasy action book with very human characters, but just a hair less great than the First Law trilogy. Also, while the novel is quite stand alone, it does explain/reveal elements of the world already explained/revealed in the earlier books, and certain major plot motivations could seem extremely mysterious to those reading it first.

For more book reviews, click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Books

Tagged as: Best Served Cold, Book, Book Review, First Law, High fantasy, Joe Abercrombie

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Mar11

Title: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Author: Stephen Chbosky

Genre: Coming of Age

Length: 224 pages

Read: March 2, 2013

Summary: intensely readable

To be clear, I actually saw the film before I read the book, but I’ll discuss the novel first as its the original. Perks is a teen coming of age novel set in 1991. It has no supernatural elements at all.

This is a compulsively readable book. Casually, before picking at the flaws, this is the kind of book you read in one sitting. Every time I run across something this engaging, I feel an intense relief — pleasure really — because so much of what I read is a bit of a chore. Probably just me being jaded. So while I’m going harass Chbosky on a few fronts, any criticism should be framed in context: This is a novel that really sucks you in and holds you.

As to voice. Technically, the book is epistolary. The protagonist, Charlie, writes letters to some imaginary friend. It’s a gimmick that neither adds or subtracts. This is basically a first narrative with a slightly confused back and forth between past and present tense. The writing is deliberately clunky. Chbosky is trying to sound like a 15 year-old boy — and a gifted one at that — but he does it by being wordy and stilted. I’ll give an example:

I am trying now to practice not to do that. He also said that I should use the vocabulary words that I learn in class like “corpulent” and “jaundice.” I would use them here, but I really don’t think they are appropriate in this format.

My inner editor would rewrite this as:

I’m trying to practice not to. He also suggested I use the vocabulary words from class like “corpulent” and “jaundice.” I would, but they might not be appropriate in this format.

This clunk-factor lessened after the first third, and I’m not sure if it was because I adapted or because the character was maturing. Either way, it does provide a bit of youthful feel and the frank honesty of the voice is highly engaging. Charlie is a straightforward reporter, cold even, rarely leaping to extreme judgement. He is most definitely not snarky.

For me, the early 90s setting was a big plus, as it’s free of some of the annoying distractions of the post internet age (cel phones, Facebook, etc). It’s also nostalgic, being closer to my own high school era, even if Charlie is a good seven years younger (my Freshman year was 1984, his 1991).

The character development is very good. Charlie, Sam, and Patrick are all very well crafted and distinct. Likable too.

In retrospect, after finishing the book, I feel several elements of the story construction are a little forced. It seems unlikely that two seniors like Sam and Patrick would take a Freshman under their wing and into their social circle quite so easily. Not impossible, just a bit contrived. More substantially, the major “twist” in the story feels a bit forced, unnecessary even. This is a book with a clear theme. The writer even states it, several times: “We accept the love we think we deserve.” Fine. But there sure is a lot of abuse flying around. Like 90% of the major characters experience it at some time or another in their lives. I don’t mind these themes, but to have the same “startling” thing happen to not one, not two, but many characters feels forced. All this thinking was only in retrospect. While reading, the novel just draws you in from start to end.

Having seen the film first, which is sexually rather tame, I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a bit of frank sexuality in the novel. I’m not sure why it was removed, and it’s presence provided punch. Nevertheless, it’s pretty incomprehensible that a smart well read 15 year-old like Charlie wouldn’t already know about masterbation. Again, a little forced. This book has a lot of forced moments, they just play off well.

So I must reiterate, these are intellectual nitpicks on a compulsively readable novel. One last observation: It’s odd that Chbosky published this in 1999, went on to sell a bundle, yet has never published another novel.

My review of the film can be found here, or

For more book reviews, click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Books

Tagged as: Arts, Book, Book Review, Literature, Perks of Being Wallflower, review, Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Reading in School Made Me Who I Am

Jan02

Reading doesn’t separate the men from the boys, it separates the educated from the ignorant. Seriously. There is no other conduit for absorbing information and broadening oneself that is so accessible and so efficient. Every medium has its advantages, but the book has it all in regards to breadth and depth. There are books on more topics, and more specific topics, than any other format. Probably by several orders of magnitude. And nothing holds as much information in as few bits.

So I read a lot in school.

But this doesn’t mean what you might think. I read in school. Literally.

From fourth grade on I had a novel shoved in my desk, hidden in the pages of my textbook, or propped on the floor. I read on the bus to school. I read in the library before school. I read in class. I read standing in the hall between classes. I read in the playground. I read at lunch. I read all the way home.

While the class slogged through fractions, I flew to different planets. While the teacher lectured on Jamestown, I crossed under Moria with Gandalf and crew. Everyone else had science, I had Science Fiction.

But, again, seriously, this worked. While other students memorized vocabulary, I read it in context. Instead of hearing about history, I lived it through characters. Instead of diagramming sentences, I saw them used: sometimes poorly, often well. Lectures on civil rights? I got to be a girl, an old lady, a slave, black, white, Asian, alien!

And besides, it was exceedingly good practice at multitasking. Try answering a teacher’s question when you’ve been reading a pulp adventure novel for the last hour! Or practice reading at the same time you proof the spelling homework, pencil in hand.

But joking aside, reading broadens the mind. It doesn’t always even matter what you (or your children) read, except that you develop the habit. When you read ten books a week there’s always time to toss War and Peace onto the pile. Actually, the pile is always hundreds deep, but if you keep digging at it, you make progress. Even a few minutes a day — every day — will move you along. If you’re willing to read, you can learn anything (well, once I tried to master breaststroke from a book — not so successful).

The bar is surprisingly low. When, in the mid 90s, I wanted to learn about wine, I read three hefty tomes. Suddenly, I knew more than people who had been serious for years! When I was building my house, I read a bunch of books on 18th century furniture and found I knew far more than the interior designers we interviewed. We hired the one who could tell Régence from Rococo.

Fiction — even genre fiction — has even more impact. You only get to live once. Perhaps you can try out a few things. But via novels you can almost become someone else. Again and again! Want to know what happens when you spend your whole life blitzed out of your mind? Read a Jim Morison biography! Been there, done that, no need to overdose on heroin. Time travel? Totally possible in literature, both the Science Fiction sort and the more metaphoric variety offered by Historical Fiction.

So, yeah, I learned a lot reading in school!

By: agavin
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Posted in: Books

Tagged as: Arts, Book, Gandalf, Moria, reading, School, Science Fiction

Untimed – Logo Faceoff

Aug29

A while back, Cliff Nielsen, the amazing artist who created the cover for The Darkening Dream, finished the amazing new cover painting for my second novel, Untimed. This is going to replace the stock photography clock cover to the left, but I’m not ready to reveal it (I will in a week or three) but I’ve been experimenting with logos and wanted to collect your opinions. As a side note, I’ve been doing my mechanicals myself. Not only is it cheaper, but my photoshop skillz have gotten moderately elite — at least for a programmer/author.

Below are three takes on the logo. You can even see just a hint of the cover illustration here, but I cut it tight to be a tease (and content aware filled out a bit of someone’s head!).

A fairly heavily “styled” version where the text is inspired by antique clock parts (this is after all a time travel novel with clockwork killer machines). Thanks to longtime friend Jason Rubin for help on an earlier variant of this logo.

A similar brass treatment, but using a more strait forward lowercase type treatment. The font is modeled after an 18th century typeface.

Same deal as above, but all uppercase.

Similar to the top-most one, but with arabesque tooling in the metal instead of brushing. This new variant was added 9/12/12, after most of the comments. Since people liked #1, I wanted to work in that direction.

So, dear readers, which version do you like? Let me know in the comments. None of the above is a viable opinion, but please give reasons.

The back of a Breguet watch, I was going for a similar sort of vibe with the arabesque tooling.

By: agavin
Comments (26)

Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Art Design, Book, Cliff Nielsen, Cover art, Fiction, Logos, Time travel, Untimed

More Awards

Aug19

The Darkening Dream has recently won a few more book awards for both the novel itself and the awesome cover. The full list can be found here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Arts, Awards and Bestsellers, Book, Darkening Dream, Literature

Brace yourself for Hardcover

Feb12

Glamour photo

My publisher might be small (one book released and another in the queue) but I was determined to produce a hardcover edition for my debut novel. Why?

1. As a consummate book lover, I’ve always preferred hardcovers. Sure they’re a pain to lug on vacation but they have real weight to them. And the paper doesn’t yellow or the binding fall apart after ten years.

2. Serious books always come out in hardcover. A straight to paperback book is like a straight to DVD movie.

3. Given that most independent books don’t come in hardcover, and it’s my goal with The Darkening Dream to hold production values to the standards of New York’s finest, I thought a hardcover would help make the book look like the classy publication it is.

4. Since the setup costs for a POD (Print On Demand) book are low, it seemed — erroneously as it turned out — that it wouldn’t be much extra work to create a hardcover edition. And even if I didn’t sell many, I wouldn’t be out much money.

5. They smell nice.

Enough with the reasons. How did I do it?

Finding a POD printer was a given. No way was I going to pay to print and warehouse an offset run. And as far as I know, LightningSource is the only mainstream POD printer that will do a proper black and white, novel-sized hardcover. Others do photobook hardcovers, but those have color interiors, and are way too costly. LSI is owned by Ingram, distributes through them and Amazon, and offers seven sizes of casebound (integrated color cover) and three sizes of color dustjacket hardcovers. All of them are priced well. A friend of mine had used them, so I ordered her book. The quality is good, very similar to most offset hardcovers. The cut of the pages is smooth and aligned, which I actually prefer, but you don’t have the option for that ragged sewn look that was popular in the 80s and 90s. The paper is heavy and comes in white or creme (which is what I used). The printing itself is about 5-10% worse than the best offset hardcover printing. It’s nice, but I can tell it’s not the world’s nicest. Still, it’s much better than a BookClub hardcover and more than acceptable. It’s certainly no worse than most of the hardcovers in my extensive (10,000 book!) collection (photo at the end of the article).

Inside. I used a professional book designer and had custom chapter headings commisioned

My book designer recommended that we choose the same paper size for both the trade paperback and the hardcover, that way they could share the print ready file. To that purpose, I went with 6″x9″ for both. The hardcover is actually slightly bigger anyway because the binding is thicker and overhangs the paper, so both feel about right. The hardcover is much denser and heavier.

But first I had to get an account with LSI. This proved to be one of the more subtasks. First you sign up on their site and fill out like a million pages of forms. Then days later they send you questions. Then you answer them. Then you fill out more forms online. You need to provide credit terms or a credit card to fall back on. The don’t take Amex — Grrr Arg! You need proper tax information (like an EIN). Then they insist that you print out about 75 pages of contracts, sign them, fill out lots of paper forms, and fax them back! This almost defeated me. I detest forms, paper, and fax machines. But I plunged on.

LSI’s interface is also a bit obtuse, nowhere near as easy as CreateSpace. But it was manageable. You need your own ISBNs too, which wasn’t a problem as I’d bought a block of 100 from Bowker. The hardcover, paper, and e-book editions all need separate ISBN’s, but the various e-book versions all share the same one. An additional tip with this is to make sure that all of your ISBN’s are listed on your copyright page with the edition names (i.e. hardcover XXXX paperback XXXX). That way the same interior PDF will work for all.

The hardcover mechanical in all its glory

Now the only thing that is really different is the mechanical. For those of you who don’t know, a mechanical is the big carefully assembled CMYK PDF used to print your cover. The above hardcover mechanical has the front, spine, back, and both flaps, plus the ISBN bar code and the proper crop marks. There are websites/programs to generate you barcodes (pro mac one or a free web one).

LightningSource has a nice (but buried) tool that generates PDF or InDesign templates. You pick the size of your book, the type of paper, and the number of pages (which affects the spine) and it will generate these files and email them to you. Then fire up Photoshop or InDesign and carefully layout the elements on top of the template. The second mechanical (say after the paperback, which is similar) doesn’t take too long for someone skilled with these programs. I’m excellent in PS and decent at ID, but I still hired an experienced jacket designer to do the layout. I didn’t want any element of my book looking amateur. Having at least some basic skills with both these programs saves you a lot of money and time.

But you do have to decide what goes where and develop all the copy for the hardcover layout. The synopsis on the left flap is typically longer than the one on the back of a paperback, plus you’ll need the author photo and bio for the right.

You also have to be careful to use LSI’s template. They will not accept the mechanical if it’s not on their EXACT template file, even if the dimensions are otherwise correct. My jacket designer used his own template for the first pass (although he matched the sizes perfectly) and I had to swap it out underneath the layout in ID to get LSI to take the file. Also be very careful not to project any important elements like text outside the safety zones. LSI spends some care examining your mechanical and will bounce it if it isn’t perfect.

Plus, unlike CreateSpace, they charge some money for the setup. About $125 + an optional $35 for a printed proof. You’ll want to pay it too because the digital proof doesn’t tell you anything about how your alignment actually looks on the book.

Everything at LSI runs a bit slower than at more automated companies like Lulu or CreateSpace. A day or two instead of hours. But they do pay more attention. I received multiple emails about exactly what issues my first mechanical had, including zoomed jpegs of the problem areas. The LSI agent responded rapidly and helpfully to what was probably a fifteen email exchange. This even included some complicated discussion about the CMYK “ink density,” a subject about which I knew nothing. Now I know just a tad more. Apparently, black areas can have too much ink coverage for certain printing processes. Who knew? But we got it sorted. I built a new mechanical and a day later it passed. About two days after that they overnighted me the paper proof.

It looked pretty much perfect. The only problem is in the alignment of the text on the spine, which on this particular proof is about 1/16″ off center. It’s not in my file, but they folded the dustjacket slightly off center. POD has a bit of variation from book to book and supposedly some of them will be perfect and some will be a little off. It’s not really noticeable unless you are looking for it and a large percent of “regular” books on my shelf have off-center spines.

Also, in keeping with the slower pace, it takes LSI some mysterious time between one and eight weeks to propagate their information to Amazon. Eventually, it’s supposed to just show up there, and a few days after that, merge itself with the Kindle and paperback editions. Likewise changing your description and price via LSI takes forever. And this brings up the whole pricing issue.

LSI allows you to set the “discount” on the book. CreateSpace has a hardwired 40% discount but on LSI you can move it to 20% which forces Amazon to take a lower percentage. I chose $24.99 as my list and set the discount to 20%. We’ll have to see how this works out and what Amazon does with it.

Like most of publishing, building the hardcover is made up of a variety of subtasks that while individually not too significant, end up taking considerable time. Still, holding the gorgeous fellow, it’s worth it.

NOTE: This post was original written as a guest post for NovelPublicity and can be found here.

The flaps and the blue fabric cover. You can pick blue or gray.

In case you’re curious about the book behind the pretty cover:

The Darkening Dream

An ominous vision and the discovery of a gruesome corpse lead Sarah Engelmann into a terrifying encounter with the supernatural in 1913 Salem, Massachusetts. With help from Alex, an attractive Greek immigrant, Sarah sets out to track the evil to its source, never guessing that she will take on a conspiracy involving not only a 900-year vampire, but also a demon-loving Puritan warlock, disgruntled Egyptian gods, and an immortal sorcerer, all on a quest to recover the holy trumpet of the Archangel Gabriel.

Relying on the wisdom of an elderly vampire hunter, Sarah’s rabbi father, and her own disturbing visions, Sarah must fight a millennia-old battle between unspeakable forces, where the ultimate prize might be herself.

Find it here on Amazon!

Just one of the 9 shelves in the Fantasy/Sci-fi section of my library

By: agavin
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Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, Andy Gavin, Book, Darkening Dream, E-book, Hardcover, New York, Print on demand, The Darkening Dream

Hardcover Proof & Paperback Giveaway

Feb01

Glamour shot of my hardcover edition

The hardcover proof came in yesterday and it looks awesome! Now I just have to get it up on Amazon. As it’s printed via LightningSource this might take a few days. The trade paperback went through CreateSpace which is owned by Amazon, so it was fast.

This edition was more work than I thought — although it does look great — for a number of reasons. LightningSource has a rather peculiar and unintuitive process, although they make a nice book. Also getting the mechanical all finished was at the far end of a long chain of about seven contractors.

Anyway, it’s mostly done now. A whole set of pictures of the hardcover from every angle can be found at the bottom of the post.

For other The Darkening Dream related news: First of all, the book is now officially $4.99 and enrolled in Amazon’s Kindle Select program. This means the Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and Google versions are no longer for sale. Sales were 60:1 higher on Amazon, so it’s a bit of a no brainer and I’ll see how KDP Select goes and revaluate at the end of April.

I’m also running a quick “Vampire Valentines” giveaway on Goodreads. You can enter to win one of twenty copies of the paperback (sorry, if you want this sexy hardcover you’ll have to buy it, the manufacturing cost is almost triple the paperback). Winners will be decided by Goodreads on February 14th. The giveaway can be found here:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Darkening Dream

by Andy Gavin

Giveaway ends March 01, 2017.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

By: agavin
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Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Amazon, Andy Gavin, Book, CreateSpace, Giveaway, goodreads, Hardcover, LightningSource, Paperback, The Darkening Dream

Goodreads

Oct30

In my latest move to further build up my social online presence I’ve moved onto goodreads.com. You can find my new profile here. It’s also installed permanently on the righthand sidebar via the icon.

Those of you who use goodreads, link to my profile and friend me. If you read and haven’t signed up for it, you might want to. Basically it’s Facebook for books. You can easily find rate and review books and then share them with your friends. I posted up about 50 book reviews (mined from this blog) and rated another 70+. Of course I’ve read over 10,000 novels so I’m not about to go back and do them all, but I’ll add them as I see them.

As an author, Goodreads is supposedly a great place to market your books, which is my nefarious ulterior motive in joining yet another social network. Muhaha!

For my book reviews, click here.

For my posts on writing, click here.

By: agavin
Comments (6)

Posted in: Books, Writing

Tagged as: Author, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, books, Facebook, goodreads, goodreads.com, Literature, marketing, reading

Follow The Money

Oct14

Any business is about the flow of money. This is a keystone for understanding them. Dean Wesley Smith, one of self-publishing’s very vocal bloggers has an excellent article on the subject of the differing flow of money in both the traditional and self-published worlds:

But so many of the discussions about indie publishing vs traditional publishing don’t take into account a very important, and sometimes critical aspect of money for a freelance fiction writer. And that’s timing of the cash flow. In other words: How Much? And When?

And trust me, this is complex and will seem odd to many, especially newer writers. But I will do my best to be clear and let you each decide on the path that is right for each of your books. And when you do decide on a path, you might understand the cash flow of that path.

…

–-Both traditional and indie publishing have time lags in the money.Indie publishing, given the same quality book, the same level of cover, is a much shorter time lag. And with indie publishing stores reporting in so many different ways, it takes some work to see how many books in a certain time period a book actually sold.

For example, if an author had a book up and wanted to see how many copies the book sold in January, the author might have to wait until June to get some of those exact numbers.

However, discovering sales is far worse in traditional publishing. There the author is lucky to be able to figure out royalty statements for how many books sold and were held as reserves against return in a six-month period a year after publication. And that’s if the author can get the agent to send the royalty statements.

At least with indie publishing, with a little patience, an indie author can find out how many books sold exactly in any given month.

The full original post can be found HERE.

For more of my posts on writing, click here.

By: agavin
Comments (2)

Posted in: Writing

Tagged as: Amazon Kindle, Author, Book, Dean Wesley Smith, E-book, Publishing, self-publish, Writing

Sophomore Slump – Delirium

May28

Title: Delirium

Author: Lauren Oliver

Genre: Dystopian YA

Length: 114,500 words, 441 pages

Read: May 17-21, 2011

Summary: Big disappointment.

ANY CHARACTER HERE

Earlier in the week I read Lauren Oliver’s debut novel Before I Fall and loved it. So I eagerly downloaded her second book, Delirium, on my Kindle/iPad and set to reading. Ick.

She’s a very good writer, and the prose style is nearly identical, being first person present from the POV of a 17 year-old girl. For all it’s flaws (I’ll get to those), the voice is still very good, and makes for compelling reading at first. Oliver’s still great at inner monologue.

But everything else falls pretty flat.

Let’s begin with the premise. First of all, it feels like someone told Oliver that “dystopian is hot” and she jumped on the bandwagon. As far as I can tell, she shows no knack for it whatsoever. And worse, she pushes in this direction at the expense of her considerable talents elsewhere. This version of America exists an ill-defined period in the future, probably around 2050-2075. The central premise of the society is that LOVE has been diagnosed as a disease and the source of all societal ills. But fear not, a cure exists, some kind of magic brain surgery that gets rid of most feeling and desire. Everyone gets this at 18, because conveniently, that’s the age “the cure” works at.

Now besides this ludicrous premise, which involves a drastic about face of human tenants consistant since the dawn of time, we have to accept that in 50 years almost no technology has changed. Sure there are a few nasty totalitarian rules and such, but they still use cell phones, they still text. The book has absolutely NO description of anything different other than attitudes. Hell, there was probably more innovation between 1300 and 1350 than shown here! I just completely didn’t buy the world. Not one bit. There’s no way we could get from here to there. And it’s been done to death before. Better. Delirium is like a lame The White Mountains crossed with Uglies. Both books are far better (particularly the first). The whole thing felt entirely forced, like it was all derived from the high concept premise without any other consideration.

In Before I Fall, Oliver showed herself adept at painting peer groups. This is hard stuff, and fascinating when done well. But we don’t have it here. We have a protagonist, who isn’t bad, albiet a little generic, but then we don’t have too much else. Next up we have the romantic interest and best friend — both okay also. But that’s it. The other characters are like cardboard cutouts. I find this hard to jive with her first book where even the minor characters are deftly drawn.

Also in her first book was an intricate and cleverly woven progression of plot and character, while not perfect, it formed a lovely little puzzle unfolding across the length of the novel. And most importantly, giving a sense of emotional depth.

So what happened? I’m forced to conclude that either: 1) she spent much much longer writing her first book and really polished the hell out of it (nothing wrong with that) or 2) that she should have stayed more firmly rooted in the familiar early 21st century as the complexities of world building (even this minimally) sucked her focus.

Or both.

Still, I do have to give her credit for prose skills. They pulled me enthusiastically through the first third, then groaning and moaning through the rest. If it hadn’t been for this I would have chucked it in the middle and you wouldn’t have seen the review (I rarely review the many books I give up on — doesn’t seem fair).

I’m sad. It could have been so much better. I have nothing against dystopian — I am after all a hard core sci-fi reader — I’d have read nearly anything she gave me and enjoyed it if she just provided some reason to care.

For a review of Before I Fall, click here.

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Books

Tagged as: Arts, Before I Fall, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Dystopia, Fiction, Literature, romance, Science Fiction, uglies, White Mountains, Young-adult fiction

Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing

May26

Title: Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing: A Novelist Looks at His Craft

Author: David Morrell

Genre: Writing Guide

Length: 240 pages

Read: May 21-22, 2011

Summary: Very good.

Having just finished the first draft of my second novel I did what I always do after a draft: take a little time to consider my craft (and not look at the book). So I pulled this puppy off my stack of books on writing. I’ve read a lot of such books, and this is one of the better ones in it’s category.

They fall into a number of broad groups: books on specific components like plot or character, books on sentences, books on editing, books on selling your books, books on summarizing your books, windy pontifications on the nature of creativity, and this type, the bit of everything, with a dose of personal experience thrown in. Lessons is a lot like Lawrence Block‘s Telling Lies for Fun & Profit. Both cover a bunch of the big areas quickly like plot and structure, and also include the author’s personal perspective on his career (Morrell’s best known for First Blood, on which the first Rambo was based) and the writing business. It does not focus heavily on sentences or editing.

There were a number of interesting insights. He has a technique for getting past sticky points in your story construction I might try (next time it happens). There were also some interesting technical thoughts on the structure of scenes and chapters. He has a perspective on selecting POV that I hadn’t come across, which was interesting. Although he is slightly dated in his opinion of first person stating that he feels it always needs a reason why the narrator is telling the story. This used to be the case, but in the last few years the rise of first person (particularly in YA) was sort of negated this.

A good chunk of the book is about his career, optioning books to Hollywood etc. This was amusing as well. He started in the early 1970s so he’s a product of that different era in publishing. The book was written in 2002 and while none of the writing advice is dated, the advent of ebooks and changes in the market are shifting the business side. Still, good writing is still good writing, and even writing style itself doesn’t change all that fast. Books I’ve read by authors whose prime was the 1950s still have plenty to offer. Last weekend I read The Postman Always Rings Twice, published in 1934, and that hardly seems dated.

So if you like books on writing and plan to read many, I’d check Lessons out. While that doesn’t sound like spectacular praise, I do like this book. Many writing books I read are total drivel. This one was worth the time, and that says something.

Some of my favorites are:

By: agavin
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Posted in: Books, Writing

Tagged as: Arts, Author, Book, Book Writing, David Morrell, Fiction, First Blood, Hollywood, Lawrence Block, Lessons From a Lifetime of Writing, Literature, novels, Postman Always Rings Twice, Rambo

Bleeding Violet

Mar24

Title: Bleeding Violet

Author: Dia Reeves

Genre: Paranormal YA

Length: 84,000 words, 454 pages

Read: March 14-20, 2011

Summary: Unique, good, and very different.

This is a weird weird book, and I mean that in a good way. Nominally, it’s about a schizophrenic girl, Hanna, who’s dad has died and who decides to move in unannounced with her mom she’s never met. But her mom doesn’t live in a normal town. She lives in some kind of weird place in Texas where gates between universes have let all sorts of strange monsters and realities in. A town with its own supernatural police.

The voice here is really fun. It’s first person past, but with a sort of cavalier devil-take-care crazy-girl style. I liked it. Some sentences were fantastic (both literally and figuratively). Not exactly in the lyrical kind of way that you might expect, but because of their deft wit, and quick and creative way of describing utterly fantastic goings on.

Because this book is FILLED, PACKED, STUFFED, with weird monsters and magic. Reeves uses the protagonist and POV character very deftly to explain it, or mostly just show what happens. She doesn’t feel the need to combine herself to easy concepts either. For example, sound sucking, student grabbing, invisible squids live inside the high school windows and one of the characters defeats them with a deck of playing cards! It’s a tribute to her skill that I could follow nearly all of this stuff. And it’s compact too, not being a very long book and containing dozens of strange encounters. The descriptions are lean but vivid. Occasionally she violates POV slightly on the side of clarity because the protagonist is new to this stuff and she explains it with a bit more understanding than she might be expected to have. But this isn’t very noticeable. Now I do wonder if someone with less experience reading speculative fiction in all its forms might have trouble with this novel. I mean, I’ve read A LOT (5000+ speculative novels), and played hundreds if not thousands of video games with magical systems etc. We won’t even count the movies and TV shows. Certainly someone who likes their reality… well… real, would be put off by the book. I wasn’t. The supernatural flavor was really interesting and unique, reminding me ever so slightly of something like the eerie Lost Room, or the wonderful but very out of print Marianne series by Sherri S Tepper.

The choice of using such a fractured POV character was interesting. There could be an argument that the entire book was some sort of delusion. I myself just treated Hanna’s view point as literal, and everything she saw as factual. The protagonist, and some of the other characters for that matter, don’t feel entirely real. They aren’t cardboard per se, as they feel well rounded, they just have a bit of surreal style to them that comes from their rather depressed moral compass. There’s a lot of killing and murder in this book, often horrifically grisly in fact, and no one seems to care too much. One of your best friends has been impregnated by evil demon spawn who are eating her from the inside out, well, just cut them out and leave her bleeding to die. That sort of thing. It works in the story, but if you stop and thing about the reactions any non psychopathic person might have… These characters just move on. It didn’t really bother me in the context of this story as the narrator’s view point tends to whitewash away the consequences.

There’s also a good bit of cavalier sexuality — a welcome break from the self censorship that seems to be the norm since the 90s. Hanna is certainly open minded in that regard, and likes to take off her clothes. Unfortunately 🙂 there isn’t a lot of detail, like most everything else in the book a lot is left to the imagination. This is also part of the trend. To tell the truth Judy Blume’s Forever (1975) is still the most explicit teen book I can remember.

Overall, this is a great book, but it’s much more FANTASTIC than your typical paranormal. Being a fantasist, that was more than fine with me.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Books

Tagged as: Bleeding Violet, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Dia Reeves, Fiction, Forever, Judy Blume, Lost Room, Marianne, Narrative mode, Paranormal, Paranormal romance, Playing card, Protagonist, Texas, YA, Young-adult fiction

Tithe – A Modern Faerie Tale

Mar19

Title: Tithe – A Modern Faerie Tale

Author: Holly Black

Genre: Paranormal YA

Length: 66,000 words, 310 pages

Read: March 13, 2011

Summary: Well written and evocative.

This is the second Holly Black book I’ve read. I enjoyed White Cat (REVIEW HERE) a lot and so I went back to read her debut novel. And liked it even more.

The similarities are striking. Both are short YA books, with nice prose and likable main characters thrown into ‘weird’ paranormal situations. Both have the action so condensed as to occasionally be confusing. Both wrap themselves up in the last quarter in a way that compromises the believability of the secondary characters. Both have unhappy but not completely tragic endings. While White Cat’s premise is perhaps a tad more original, I found Tithe‘s creepy fairy flavor more to my taste. Not that I didn’t like the first, but I really liked certain things about the second.

Tithe is written in third person past, with the protagonist Kaye dominating the POV. Mysteriously, approximately 5-10% is from the point of view of her friend Corny, and about 2% from the romantic interest. These outside POVs felt wrong, and at least in the Kindle version, no scene or chapter breaks announced the transitions. Every time one happened I was confused for a paragraph or two and knocked out of the story. Still, said story was more than good enough to overcome this minor technical glitch.

Kaye is an unhappy 16 year-old with a loser mom. When they move back to New Jersey she is rapidly involved with the Fey, discovers she’s a green skinned pixie, and gets drawn into a conflict between the Seelie and Unseelie (rival fairy) courts. It’s a fun read, and the prose is fast and evocative of the fey mood. Ms Black seemed to have done at least some research and the feel is quite good. The loose descriptive style sketches some rather fantastic creatures and scenarios, and that works. There is some darkness (which I like), and wham bam death of secondary characters without the proper emotional digestion. There is sexuality, but no sex (boo hiss!).

But I really like the way she handled the fairies. There isn’t a lot of description, but what there was left me filling in my own detailed, sordid, and mysterious collage of imagery.

I was loving the first two third of the book, and then it pivoted a bit and lost me a little. Don’t get me wrong, I still liked it, but the last third felt sketchier. The author had a bunch of double takes and betrayals on her outline, and it felt to me that it didn’t really matter if the secondary characters got to be true to themselves — they just followed the script. The protagonists best friend dies in like two seconds, and there is barely any reaction. Everyone also seemed to roll way too easily with the rather gigantic punches (as in Fairies are real). And to be darn good at picking up new powers in no time at all. This is a typical issue, and very hard to address perfectly, but it always bugs me when magic seems too easy. White Cat had the same final act issues.

It’s still a fun book — way above average — with nice prose and breakneck pace. But the potential for great gave way to merely very good.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Books

Tagged as: Amazon Kindle, Arts, Book, Book Review, Fairy, Fiction, Holly Black, New Jersey, reviews, Tithe, Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, Tithing

Book Review: White Cat

Mar17

Title: White Cat

Author: Holly Black

Genre: Paranormal YA

Length: 76,000 words, 310 pages

Read: March 12, 2011

Summary: Well written, fun, but a little contrived.

This is yet another foray into the world of paranormal YA (I am, after all, doing research for my own writing). Holly Black is a but best selling YA and MG author. This book, unusually, has a male protagonist, and he’s part of a family of “curse workers,” although he himself doesn’t do any magic. He lives in an alternative reality where a small minority of people are able to “lay on hands” in a bad way and curse people. They are known to society, it’s even illegal, and formed into criminal gangs in the 1930s just like the Mafia.

The premise is decent, although I’m not a fan versions of our reality with outed paranormal groups. I didn’t really buy the changes at a social level. The whole existance of this kind of power in volume would throw everything off, and here the only real social change is that everyone wears gloves (because it’s through bare skin that the magic works). We are reminded often of the glove factor.

The writing is very solid and straightforward, in first person present. So straightforward it took me awhile to even notice the tense. Or maybe writing it myself is acclimating me to it. The protagonist is likable and felt fairly real, although maybe not all of his decisions did. And I didn’t really feel the proper weight of his emotions. Big things happen, but without big feelings. By page three or thereabouts we discover he murdered his girlfriend. We’re supposed to still like him. And we do, but mostly because it’s totally obvious that he didn’t REALLY murder her, he only thinks he did. Oh and we quickly hear about the one flavor of curse worker that’s REALLY rare. And guess who’s from a magical family and doesn’t have any power…

But I enjoyed the book — quite a bit — I read it in half a day after all. Another book I attempted to read that same morning was so execrable that I only made it to fifty pages, so this was a vast improvement.

A couple other beefs. At times the writing was so lean that I felt like I missed something in the action and had to page back to find it — but it wasn’t even there. Now, it was then obvious moving forward what had happened, it just seemed that the attempt at leanness and/or agressive editing had taken the edge off the clarity. Then as we moved into the second half we hit the “after the big reveal” syndrome which many books with reveals often suffer from. I’ve mentioned this before (like HERE or HERE), but basically this is where after the big shocker no one really seems to act with appropriate emotional gravitas. I’m used to it, and it’s a tough problem to solve, so I moved on to the ending.

Which was the weakest part. Everything juggled into place such that the people were served the plot rather than their character. The plot wasn’t bad, it’s just that I didn’t really see some of the characters acting like they did.

Overall, the story was fast and fun. As I said Ms Black is a skilled writer, and the prose zipped along, with nice quick descriptions, and she isn’t afraid to be a bit dark or sexy (considering it’s YA). The gratuitous twist on the last two pages bugged me, but I ordered the sequel (which the Twitter/FB buzz says is very good) and another of the author’s books.

How different these neat little package YA books are from a meaty tome like The Wise Man’s Fear (which I finished the same day). There are subplots in that book about the size of this entire story.

For a review of Holly Black’s first novel, Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Books

Tagged as: Book, Book Review, Fiction, Holly Black, Paranormal, Paranormalcy, Protagonist, The Curse Workers, United States, White Cat, Writing, Young-adult fiction

The Wise Man’s Fear

Mar14

Title: The Wise Man’s Fear

Author: Patrick Rothfuss

Genre: High Fantasy

Length: 380,000 words, 1000 pages

Read: March 4-12, 2011

Summary: A worthy sequel.

The Wise Man’s Fear is one of 2011’s two most anticipated Fantasy novels, the other being George R. Martin‘s A Dance with Dragons (due in July). WMF, however, can be all yours right now. It’s the sequel to The Name of the Wind (which I REVIEW HERE). This is High Fantasy of a rather less epic sort. Not that it’s any less fun to read, even weighing in as it does at 1008 hardcover pages. Although, who thinks about pages these days, as I read the Kindle version on my iPad (wouldn’t want to mess up that nice hardcover first edition I had signed by Mr. Rothfuss last week!).

Despite the length, it’s well worth it. This book is seamless with the first in the series, despite the four years gap between their publication. I read The Name of the Wind a second time last week, and WMF picks up and continues with exactly the same style and pace. There is still the box story in the present, but this accounts for no more than 5% of the pages. The action mostly takes place in the past with our hero, Kvothe, continuing on for a bit at University and then venturing out into the wider world. While we sense that some bigger events are in the works, this is still a very personal tale. And it defies all normal story telling expectations in that it just meanders along. My editor’s eye says that whole chunks and side plots could be snipped out without effecting anything. And to a certain extent this is true. But would the novel be better for it? Perhaps it could have lost 50-100 pages in line editing, but I’m not sure I’d take out any of the incidents. As the novel itself says, it’s not the winning of the game, but the playing of it that matters.

That is very much what The Wise Man’s Fear is about. It’s a story about stories. It’s rich and lyrical, a luxurious tapestry of world and story, without the distraction of the intricate mechanism of plot. The little glimpses into different sub-cultures show a deft eye for details and invention. This feels like a real place, not so much explained, but revealed through the narrator’s eyes.

As Rothfuss said in an interview, Kvothe is older now, and he gets himself into more trouble. There’s more sex and violence this time out, although the main romance is still endlessly unrequited 🙂 Kvothe it seems, is a hero of many talents, and that includes those in the bedroom. Rothfuss doesn’t focus on these details gratuitously, it’s not a book filled with battle (or bedroom scenes).

I’m curious to see how Rothfuss wraps this up in the third book (and I suspect the trilogy might expand). Things still feel early. We find out barely anything new about the main villains. In fact they don’t even show in this volume. Just like the first book the end is completely limp and anti-climatic. Kvothe just wraps his story up for the day and we wait (hopefully for slightly less than four years).

But I’ll be waiting. Probably for so long that I’ll have to read book one and two again. I won’t mind.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Books

Tagged as: Arts, Book, Book Review, books, Fantasy, Fiction, George R. Martin, High fantasy, Literature, Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss, Wise Man's Fear

Done Again, Hopefully

Mar07

My freelance editor, the awesome Renni Browne, has officially declared my novel, The Darkening Dream, done, and ready for agents!

Now bear in mind that “done” is a highly subjective term, and that as soon as anyone gives me an idea worth doing, I’ll probably do it, and that agents and editors are bound to ask for changes. Which as long as I think the ideas make the book better, is a good thing.

The new version is 5.00i, but this is my ninth full major draft. Woah.

I remember reading Sol Stein‘s awesome book on writing, where he mentioned that The Magician took 10-11 drafts (I was then on my second) and thinking: that’s crazy! I guess not. Totally coincidentally, Renni also edited that novel, published in 1971!

So it’s been a busy week, working only on The Darkening Dream (I’ll get back to my new novel shortly). In the last 10 days:

1. We finishing our big line edit

2. I rewrote the ending again.

3. I read the entire book and made minor mods.

4. Renni and Shannon (her additionally awesome co-editor/assistant) reread the beginning and the ending and did another quick line edit.

5. I went over that.

6. I got back a critique on the beginning of the book, and made some changes based on that.

7. This inspired me to write two entirely different beginnings.

8. We eventually decided the original was better, although I moved a few nice tidbits from the new stuff over.

9. I reread the whole first half of the book, and the ending again, and made some more improvements.

10. On Sunday I rested.

So now I return to the agent game (referrals very welcome), and to the agonizing internal debate about the relative merits of self publishing in the modern (and very rapidly changing) market. And back to the first draft of my new novel (about 25% done).

If any of you beta readers want a copy of the new improved 95,000 word The Darkening Dream, drop me a note.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Art, Book, Darkening Dream, drafts, Editing, Fiction, Novel, Proofreading, Sol Stein, The Darkening Dream, Writers Resources, Writing, Writing and Editing

The Name of the Wind

Mar04

Title: The Name of the Wind

Author: Patrick Rothfuss

Genre: High Fantasy

Length: 255,000 words, 720 pages

Read: May 2008 & Feb 28-Mar 2, 2011

Summary: Best new fantasy of recent years.

In 2008, I read this 722 page novel in Xian China during a single sleepless night, and I reread it just now for the second time in preparation for the sequel (released this week): The Wise Man’s Fear. NOTW is a beautiful book. Of all the Fantasy I’ve read in the last 15 or so years, this is perhaps second best after The Song of Ice and Fire. But that’s not to say that they have much in common, other than both being good Fantasy. George R. Martin‘s books are full of characters, POVs, violence, politics, and a darkly realistic sensibility. NOTW is much more focused and relies on more traditional Fantasy tropes. How focused can a 700 page novel be? Not very, but it is good, and it concentrates on a small number of characters and a single (albiet meandering) storyline.

Kvothe is the protagonist. He’s a young man of many many talents, of no means whatsoever, who winds his way from the actor’s troupe to the mean streets to the magical University and to (implied) great and terrible things.

If I have any beef with the book, it’s that the meta premise of the tired hero telling his story is too drawn out. This volume opens in the “present day,” where very little happens except to set us up for the life story of the hero, which is brilliant. Much like Lord of the Rings or Hyperion, the reader must slog for a bit to get to the gold. In this case about 50 pages in. But the slogging isn’t exactly painful because Rothfuss’s prose is lyrical and masterful. Seriously, it’s a wonder given the tangents, bloated conversations (the dialog is great but not efficient), and the like that this book is so easy to read — but it is. Damn easy, even the second time.

The world and the hero juggle uniqueness and heavy — but delicious — borrowing from classic Fantasy of the best sort. I sniffed out a bit of Ursula K. Le Guin (think Wizard of Earthsea), Raymond Feist, Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time), and who knows how many others. The world is extremely well developed, and feels big, but it doesn’t doesn’t have the camp and cheese of Wheel of Time (although it does pay homage). I love origin stories and I very much enjoyed Kvothe’s journey. He’s a great character: humble, proud, skilled, lucky, unlucky all at once, but in a fairly believable way. Perhaps the most important relationship in the book (and there are actually relatively few) is the romance, and it has a tragic quality that feels very refreshing, and slightly reminiscent of the best of Orson Scott Card (think his old stuff like Song Master) or Dan Simmons.

The magic is very unique and interesting, and we focus on it quite a bit, as this is a story that spends a lot of time in the Arcane Academy. This ain’t no Hogwarts either, it feels altogether more mysterious and dangerous. There are several different magic systems interwoven in what is a world overall fairly light on magic. But this is also a world that feels a bit more technological than most Fantasy, with larger cities, a little more like antiquity than the Middle Ages. The “magical bad guys” have a nice character and bit of mystery to them. I don’t like all my mystery explained. There is a lot of music and theatre in here too, and that just helps heighten the lyricism.

But what exactly makes this book so good?

Proving my geek-cred, swapping some Crash Bandicoots for signatures with Patrick Rothfuss

Fundamentally I think Rothfus is just a great writer, and a very good world builder. I don’t think he’s a great plotter. The story drifts along, relies a bit on coincidence and circumstance, and the end fizzles then pops back out of the interior story and waits for the sequel. But that doesn’t really matter, because the prose, world, and characters keep you enjoying every page.

CLICK HERE for my review of the sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Books

Beginnings and Endings

Mar03

The first thing I did after getting my line editing back over the weekend was work on the ending of my novel. Beginnings and endings are so important, and as is probably typical, I’ve changed them a lot.

The ending is important because it’s what has to wrap everything up, and what leaves the aftertaste in the mouth of the reader. But it isn’t going to do you any good unless they get there.

Which brings us to the beginning. So important in so many ways. First of all, agents and editors glance at the beginning,and if it isn’t awesome, they’ll just put it down right there. Second, so do many readers. They browse the first couple pages in the bookstore (or on Amazon), or even if they buy it, if it doesn’t grab them right away they might just move onto to another book. I know I do.

During revision, The Darkening Dream has already had three different beginnings. But I’ve never been totally satisfied with them. I took a new high level crack at rearranging the flow of my story’s first crucial day, and ended up whipping out two new takes on the first ~7,000 words. That puts three beginnings on the table if you include the current draft. Each have their plus and minuses.

Do I start with the violent supernatural event that kicks everything off? Do I start with character development on the protagonist? How do I introduce my large cast of characters?

Now that I have a couple takes I’m trying to decide which one to pursue. IF YOU’RE ONE OF MY BETA READERS, HAVE READ THE BOOK ALREADY, and are interested and throwing your opinion into the ring, drop me a note and I’ll send you some options 🙂

The good news about my new novel, is that before I even started writing I found a totally awesome place to start the story. I LOVE the start of that book, and so does everyone I’ve showed it to so far. Lessons learned.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andrew Gavin, Andy Gavin, Arts, Beginnings, Book, books, Creative Writing, Endings, Fiction, Novel, Novel Writing, The Darkening Dream, Writing, Writing and Editing

Book Review: The Road to Tyburn

Feb28

Title: The Road to Tyburn

Author: Christopher Hibbert

Genre: Biography / History

Read: Feb 18, 2011

Summary: Really fun glimpse into a sordid little world.

In the last 2-3 weeks I’ve read at least 8-10 books on 18th century London, many on the criminal element of said city. Lest one think I’ve got an unnatural fascination with antique crime this is research for my new novel (more on that here). This book, however, was a standout, and despite being long out of print is well worth mentioning.

It’s short (160 pages), and very lively, reading as fast as a novel. It does a very good job characterizing the bizarre underworld of 1720s London, pretty much that which is depicted in the engravings of William Hogarth. London of this time was a city unique on earth, transitioning out of the 17th century’s religious zealousy and into the head long rush toward industrialization. It was a place of great freedom, great crime, great industry, and an infrastructure and society nearly overwhelmed by change. Pretty damn fun, and why I chose it for my novel.

Jack Sheppard — not to be confused with the protagonist of Lost — is a colorful character I hadn’t previously encountered. More or less just a charismatic young house burglar, he entered the public eye in a huge way — foreshadowing today’s media fascination with crime and criminals — by being a prison breaker of staggering talent. Nothing could keep the guy down, tied, barred, locked, or whatever. He broke out of the notorious Newgate prison no less than three times! (and several others as well).

As a working class, non-violent, handsome, achem… thief, seemingly able to escape punishment at will, he captured the hearts and minds of his fellow Londoners. For me, one of the book’s great moments is the description of his insanely daring and audacious fourth escape, known even then as the “Great Escape.” The guy used only a single bent and rusty nail to extract himself from a huge pile of irons, fetters, and chains, broke open a masonry chimney, climbed up, picked and opened five heavily fortified prison doors, leapt across rooftops, and descended great distances on a rope made of bedding. If anyone ever earned an escape, it was this guy!

Too bad they hung him when they caught him the last time. But he seemed to enjoy the attention and show.

The book does a great job telling Jack’s life story intermixed with really vivid and quick background sketches. The story of the the infamous Jonathan Wild, self proclaimed “Thief-taker General of Great Britain and Ireland” is also an eye-opener as to the origins and history of organized crime. As the book states, no other criminal mastermind in 300 years has ever had London crime (a pretty notorious city) so well organized!

By: agavin
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Posted in: Books, History

Tagged as: Book, Book Review, books, Christopher Hibbert, Crime, England, History, Jack Sheppard, Jonathan Wild, London, Newgate Prison, non fiction, Prison Break, reviews, Tyburn, William Hogarth

Scrivener – Writing the old way is crazy

Feb25

For my first novel, The Darkening Dream, I started in word and then switched to Scrivener about 60% of the way through the first draft. I’ve never looked back.

Scrivener is a specialty word processor designed for those who write large documents or books. It totally and utterly rules in nearly every way, and anyone writing a long structured document (any book) is pretty crazy to be using a flat editor like Word. And it only costs $45.

Here are just a few reasons why it’s so great:

1. Scrivener is about 50x faster. It starts instantly, it remembers where you are instantly. It scrolls instantly. It searches instantly. Word counts are instant and live. It never spins the beach ball. It saves continually. It crashes about 1/10 as often as Word. I write 8-16 hours a day too, all the time. I’ve written a book that was at one point 186,000 words in it, so it’s no toy.

2. Most importantly, Scrivener is structured. You break your project down as you like (I use folders for chapters and documents under those folders) as scenes. This allows you to SEE the structure of your book in a tree like binder on the side, and to instantly hop around between different sections, or put multiple sections up against each other. Reorganizing the structure (dragging scenes between chapters, reordering chapters, splitting scenes and chapters) takes seconds instead of many error prone minutes.

3. Scrivener has meta data on the “object” (document) level. You can assign fields like the POV, notes, arbitrary custom fields etc etc to scenes and chapters. You can view these in outline form with various filters and even “live” calculated metadata like scene or chapter word counts. You can even color tag fields. This allows you to again SEE your book at the high level, to know that a 3,000 word chapter by Character A follows a 1,500 word chapter by Character B, and evaluate how that will feel to the reader. If you want to reorder, you just drag. There are all sorts of additional meta data too, like synopses which you can add to scenes, and are easily viewed.

4. Scrivener allows multiple custom views. You can test out multiple ways of ordering scenes, chapters etc, without actually changing the document. Or you can create lists of particular scenes that you want to edit as a whole.

5. You can select structured parts and instantly bind them all together into a single “virtual” document you can read and edit all together. For example section 2 non consecutive chapters, or just a couple random scenes, and virtually edit them as a single continuous document. Once you get used to this, it’s incredibly fast and convenient. You just click what you want to see.

6. You can have documents and data that are part of the project (planning, research, character sheets, changelogs etc) that are easily accessible in your tree, but are not generally printed/exported out when you send to others. It has some very extensive features in this regard, but I won’t get into them.

7. Scrivener has a huge host of other organizational tools like the cork board that I won’t get into. It’s spotlight-like find is 10,000x more useful than Word’s, and because of the chapter/scene metadata will show you where you have words or phrases in your book. It has a full screen / no distraction mode.

8. Incredibly importantly, it separates format from content and structure, like the division between HTML structure and CSS formatting. Documents (scenes) DO NOT generally have formatting (except bold, italics etc). Separate compile templates can be used to output the whole book or parts to different targets. Want to get the whole book as a PDF to put up on Lulu. CLICK compile. Want just 2 chapters in double spaces MS format for your editor. CLICK compile. Super fast, no loading up the giant word doc and carefully cutting blocks out and reformatting them. I whip off versions of my books 5-10 times a day.

9. It’s much easier to have good backup habits in Scrivener, and you can automate backing up the entire project. If you are technical, you can even use SVN or another fancy version control system.

10. The interface is much simpler, with the things writers need and not the incredible clutter of Word.

11. Scrivener can directly output EPUB and MOBI files (although there are some limits on how sophisticated your formatting can be).

12. Lots and lots of reasons I left out.

There are a few things that Scrivener is worse at:

1. Elaborate formatting, tables, graphs, equations, full styles etc. Although you can use it with Multimarkdown and Latex if you are hardcore.

2. Track changes. This is fairly minimal, but i just output to word and do that there.

3. It’s footnote, page layout, table of contents type features are more minimal. It isn’t really intended for final press layout.

This all being said, you still need Word for occasionally interfacing with others, or possibly for final layout. I basically use Word for track changes and compare documents. It’s trivial to compile out scrivener revisions and use “compare documents” in word to build like deltas.

Currently Scrivener 2.4.x is out for the Mac and fantastic. You PC dweebs (I weep for your lost souls) can use a 1.x version which is still good, but is in beta. The betas are very stable. I spent 6 months writing full time in various betas last Summer/Fall with almost no problems.

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