Monthly Archives: February 2010

It’s getting easier and easier to sell self-published books even through mainstream dealers like Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com, largely thanks to the e-book “revolution.”  However, I’d warn my fellow writers against doing such a thing unless they are already well-established and guaranteed good sales. (Wil Wheaton self-publishes through Lulu, and though he has a niche fanbase, it is well established and he already has reliable sales-numbers.)

It may be incredibly gratifying to finally see your name on the cover of a book, in a store, but for an unestablished author, this may be shooting yourself in the foot. Say you self-publish that first book and it sells a few copies, mostly to friends and family, of course, and a few others. Then, miracle of all miracles, your next book gets picked up by a Big Name Publisher. Big Name Publisher has more resources at its disposal and wants to make money from your book, so it will go out and promote it heavily.

However, the bookstores they try to market your book to pull up your name as the author and look at how many of your other books it has sold, and the number of books it buys is based on that. Big Name Publisher sees that the bookstores aren’t interested in selling your books, and that’s that.

There have been authors who have had to change their names just to get away from the low sales figures attached to their initial self-published books. This is not the path to a spot on the Bestseller lists, it is actually likely to work against you ever having that opportunity, no matter how good your writing is. If you choose to self-publish in spite of the problems with it, I’d recommend using a pseudonym. You can always come back and “reclaim” the book under your real name later if you do get the real big break, as Stephen King (aka Richard Bachman) and Anne Rice (A. N. Roquelaire) have done.

Offering writing for free over the internet to gain an audience is, however, a good way of promoting yourself, but even then you have to be careful. The same easy self-publishing platforms that authors are beginning to take advantage of are being used by unscrupulous publishers to steal content and offer it for sale.

Creative Commons offers an easy way to protect and license your content, but be careful that you do not accidentally sign away your rights to any money that is made from it.  If you choose to license your work with Creative Commons, make sure to choose a license that ensures that your work can only be used and shared non-commercially – that is, people are free to download, read, and share, but not sell, your work.  You can still offer your books for free over the internet with a full copyright rather than a CC license without giving up any rights to it at all.

Like I say, though you earn nothing from it, offering free samples or even complete books for free can be an excellent way to begin to gain an audience, as well as giving you a place to direct potential agents and publishers to so that they can easily see what you’ve done. The trick is to be careful and to keep a watch on the most popular self-publishing and e-book publishing websites to ensure that your work does not get stolen.

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Occasionally, I hear despair about how horrible the world is, how filled with bigotry and hate, how so many people are more interested in reviling others for their differences rather than embracing them for their uniqueness.

People don’t like change. As Terry Pratchett’s benevolent dictator, Patrician Vetinari said, “‘They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today.”

This is why big, revolutionary changes never go over very easily. For big changes, it takes fighting and protests and arguing and, yes, revolutions. Sometimes it seems like everyone gets so bogged down in the arguing that there can never be any change, that people can never change, and things can never get better.

But you have to take stock of the small victories, the things that have happened quietly and slowly, without much notice from anyone. The changes for the better that sneak up and whisper in such little ways that people accept without question, because they’re so small that people barely realize anything has changed at all.

Today I saw two young men walking through a store holding hands.  They couldn’t have been more than high-school age, and they did this as if it was no big deal, rather than the declaration of defiance and rebellion that it would have been for anyone my age. To be out-of-the-closet, much less to be seen holding hands and being affectionate with one of your own sex in public, would have been unheard of in my area when I was in high school.

What a difference in the space of a decade. I wanted to cheer them on, thank them for being so brave, to do such a thing in what is still, at least here, a very hostile public. So simple, holding hands – unless you’ve experienced being told that you can’t, that it’s wrong, that you’re wrong for being what you are.

The changes between age-groups and generations was just as evident with the election of President Obama. It was a great victory for equality, with this first black president, but the youth and children being interviewed about it almost universally seemed to be shrugging and saying “So what?” It’s not a big deal. They’re the beginning of true color-blindness.

These aren’t symptoms of apathy, of a “don’t care” attitude, but children and teenagers who never thought that such a thing was near-to-impossible, who never thought that they had to hide who they are or risk everything, who it never occurred to to be afraid of being different.

These are small victories in the way people think about the world and each other, small victories that are barely noticed. It means that there is progress. That people can change. That bigotry and hate can be conquered, even if in small steps.

This kind of goes along with my previous post concerning the way censorship and ratings in the US tends to be heavy-handed when it comes to nudity while allowing all sorts of violence to be branded “kid-friendly.”

There’s a phenomenon that I come across fairly regularly where people will ignore the ratings on a piece of media, buy the piece of media for their children, and then complain that “OH MY GOD, SUCHANDSUCH HAS NAKED PEOPLE/LOTS OF BLOOD AND GORE/HORRIFIC IMAGERY THAT MY PERFECT CHILD SHOULD NEVER SEE WITH THEIR INNOCENT EYES!”

At which point I tend to want to take the package, point at the rating (which inevitably is M, R, NC-17, etc.) and go “Yeah? That’s why it’s rated for ADULTS ONLY!”

At which point I get a blank look, and/or: “But it’s a cartoon/video game/comic book/etc. and cartoons/video games/comic books/etc. are meant for kids.”

Where did this come from, this automatic assumption that just because something drawn, either with traditional animation or art media or digitally, it therefore is intended primarily for children?  This is almost certainly a purely Western notion, because Japanese anime doesn’t seem to make that assumption (though I have seen Westerners assume thus in regards to Japanese anime).

First of all, as the first generation of at-home gamers (of which I am a proud member) grew up, video games grew up with them. Right now, the vast majority of gamers are ages 25 and up, both male and female. We’ve long ago outgrown shiny happy fairy-tale castles with a pretty pink princess inside, and most of us look for darker, grittier, more cynical, and yes, more realistically violent games.  For those of us who are parents, of which there are no small number, most of these games are such that we would never allow our children to play, though we may play them ourselves.

These video games are rated “M”, which is clearly marked on the video game package, along with the translation “For Mature Players.”  These are video games that are made for adults. Why, then, do some parents buy these games for their children, ignoring the rating, and then complain about the content?

The same seems to go for any animated cartoon, though shows like Beevis and Butthead, South Park, etc. have made a dent in it, I still see and hear of parents letting their children watch “cartoons” and then throwing a fit when they find out that it has some sort of inflammatory not-for-the-kiddos content in it.

Again, the ratings for these “cartoons” are clearly displayed on the television during the opening credits, are clearly available over the internet for anyone who wants to see them, and yet the parents are raising hell over these shows containing more mature content when they’re clearly marked as being not for kids.

But… but…. but… they’re cartoons.

Yeah? There’s been dirty pictures drawn all over the place since the first caveman picked up a stick of charcoal.

The same “but it’s made for kids” philosophy extends to comic books and any movies based on comic books too, as we all saw with release of Watchmen and the Legendary Blue Wang. I saw plenty of moms and dads leading their little kids into that movie, and then leading them right back out with hands over their eyes.  I had to wonder if they had completely failed to notice, on purchasing the ticket, that the movie had a great big “R” next to it?

No, because you see the thing is that these people who ignore the ratings on things and then end up burned inevitably turn on the distributors, the creators, the writers, the artists.  They are EVIL EVIL people for exposing their precious children to these things!

But it’s not the creators’ or the distributors’ fault. They made a product that was intended for adult consumption, and clearly marked as such on said product. This mark is a warning for parents, it says “This is not for kids.”  If the parent then chooses to ignore that warning, then it’s the parent’s own fault for what they have chosen to expose their child to.  You were warned. You chose not to heed that warning. It’s not our fault if you get burned.

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Will You Be My Valentine?

This Sunday is Valentine’s day, and I thought I’d be a bit silly and romantical and mushy, so if you want to skip the kissing scenes, you might want to click another tab.

This May, I will have been with the same wonderful man for 12 years. We got together near my senior year of high-school, and as such, in a lot of ways, we have grown up together, though, admittedly, we’re still sort of figuring this whole grown-up thing out.

I’ve already gotten my valentine this year, because he was too excited about it to wait. It was a first edition copy of Who Killed Amanda Palmer, signed by Neil Gaiman, which now has a place of honor on a book stand in my living room.  His (as he requested) will be a dinner consisting of Nigella Lawson’s Pizza Rustica and some kind of fancy pastry of as-yet undetermined type, because I’m a pretty good baker, when I put my mind to it.

Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you, my Goob.

Image via Wikipedia

I was reading this article on Literary Classics that should be made into Video Games on Wired this morning and it got me thinking.

Alice in Wonderland has already been adapted in several different (and sometimes incredibly frightening) ways to video games. Dante’s Divine Comedy is a game now (Dante’s Inferno).  Almost every fantasy-based RPG gives a nod to Tolkien (as does nearly every fantasy-based novel). However, I can think of some classics and should-be classics that would make wonderful games.

Wired mentions Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which would definitely make an interesting and very surreal game, but rather than an old-school 8-bit platformer, I’d see it more as an adventure throwing the protagonist into that surreal world where he wakes up one morning as a cockroach. He’d have to suddenly learn to defend himself against humans, including his own family.

Wired‘s list is a good one, but there are a few that I would add to it.

Milton’s Paradise Lost would make an excellent game, with the ultimate Antagonist that you can’t help but sympathize with, just a bit. In fact, I would almost propose having Satan be the player’s character (if it wouldn’t bring down the wrath of the fanatics on the developer’s head), or perhaps shifting points-of-view as the poem does.  You’d start out playing the Satan, in Hell, and go on to play Adam once the setting switches to Eden.  Something between an RPG and a dungeon crawl would be a good format, especially with all the wonderful setting descriptions, and you’d have a built-in sequel with Paradise Regained.

While we’re on the subject of gothic anti-heros, why not games based on Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage or Don Juan? What better fodder for an adventure game than the adventures written by Lord Byron, an anti-hero himself?  Byronic heroes have appeared quite commonly in video games quite often already, isn’t it about time someone featured the originals? There’s certainly enough sex and violence between the two to titillate even the most prurient of minds, too.

How about a horror game set in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s dark version of New England? Pulling from his entire catalogue, you could create a game filled with the terrors that ordinary humans are capable of inflicting on their own kind under the pretense of “doing the right thing.”  Imagine our game’s hero traveling through a forest only to find that all the people he trusts are doing horrible things in a satanic ritual, or wandering innocently into a town only to be the winner of a lottery that means his death?

We’ve already had plenty of games influenced by Poe and Lovecraft, but no major games entirely based on their work, when you could hardly ask for more game-friendly stories. Why not put Lovecraft’s monsters where they belong, in the stories he created first? Or work your way through Poe’s many traps and puzzles?

Finally, though not exactly accepted as canon literature, games using the stories written by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett would make wonderful games.  The Max Payne series already ventured into Noir territory, with an original story but definite influences by Chandler in particular. They’d make excellent first-person shooters, and noir-esque lighting effects would make for some interesting graphics.

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