Illegal Downloads

Illegally downloading an e-book so you don't have to pay for it is, of course, stealing.  I don't approve of it, and I will never condone it.  However, if you are one of those individuals who has stolen one of my books, there are two ways you can partially make it up to me:

1. Enjoy it and mention it to people.
2. Leave me a decent Amazon review.

Villains

 For anyone who wants to write a villain but needs some ideas, here's a chart I made up about a year ago. 

If you have an additions, I'd be happy to hear them.  In any case, this chart is hardly complete, and it certainly doesn't cover every villain ever. 

Some villains also fall into multiple categories. 

Anyway, this is food for thought.

 

 

	THE PERSISTENT/ UNSTOPPABLE ANTAGONIST	THE GAME-PLAYING ANTAGONIST	THE SEEMINGLY ALL-POWERFUL ANTAGONIST	THE ONE-TRICK/ HIDDEN ANTAGONIST	THE NEEDY/ DAMAGED ANTAGONIST	THE INTERNAL ANTAGONIST
THE HUMAN MONSTER	General Zaroff, Jumanji hunter, Anton	Gollum in the Hobbit,* the Master from Doctor Who, Hannibal Lecter, Moriarty	The Emperor from Star Wars, abusive parents	Voldemort, Visser Three	Syndrome, Jack Torrance, Gollum in TLOTR, Carrie	“Harvey” from Farscape, Timmy/Malcolm from Identity
THE INHUMAN MONSTER	Dracula, T-1000 from Terminator 2, Aliens	Other Mother, the Fairy Queen, the demon from the Exorcist**	IT from A Wrinkle in Time	Hexxus from FernGully	Some vampires	Antagonist from the Hollow City
THE ANIMALISTIC MONSTER	Zombies, Mummies, Velociraptors	Cat-like creatures		The Minotaur, orcs	Cujo
THE COLLECTIVE/ NON-HUMAN MONSTER	The Borg	It from Stephen King’s It	HAL, Big Brother, Sauron,* haunted houses, possessive force in Event Horizon	The Birds and other plague-swarms, etc., the Langoliers	Some aliens, Audrey II	Legion (Mark 5:9)***
THE NON-MONSTER	The principal from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off		Aliens that have Superior Alien Syndrome	Future Cute Animal Friends	Professor Snape,*	Antagonist from the Bird’s Nest

*=debatably

** I haven’t actually seen the film, so I can’t swear to this.

*** From the Bible.  There was a possessed man who had a legion of demons in his head.  He clearly wasn’t happy about it, because he asked Jesus to help.

 

Motivations: power, programmed instructions, instinct, survival, greed, insanity, desire, best intentions/wish for autonomy, revenge/punishment

Meet Flora

Flora is a Blenheim-patterned Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.  She is three-and-a-half years old, 20.4 pounds, sweet, happy, healthy, rescued from a dog mill . . . and, as of yesterday, the newest member of my family.  She likes to curl up and nap by my feet or on my lap while I work on the computer.

Invisible Words

Although I’ve always written and probably always will write, my profession is editing.  I’m a substantive editor, which means that in addition to doing copy-editing to make flow all nice and pretty, I get to comment on things like characterization and continuity.  No book is without flaws (or typos, alas), and being a critic before publishing is in many ways more satisfactory than after, because it gives the author a chance to fix the problem.  Since I’ve been editing, I’ve begun to notice a few trends.

One of the most interesting of these trends is something I think of as “invisible words”—that is, words most people (including many editors) will never notice are overused but that nevertheless deteriorate the quality of writing. 

You can fix some of these over-usages with a simple find/replace search, but the phrasal repetition will require an external editor.

Almost every author has certain words he or she really likes to use.  When these are uncommon words (susurrus – I’m looking at you, Terry Pratchett), this is noticeable by even the average reader.  For example, I learned the word “bumptious” from Diana Wynne Jones.  She uses it twice in The Lives of Christopher Chant.  That’s all I needed – a single repetition, and it became noticeable. 

Bumptious is not an invisible word.  Invisible words are words that almost no one notices because they are so common.  They include:

really, just, very, even, all, so, well, oh, indeed, rather, little, bit, of course, now, right, still, already

I once wrote to delicately tell a superb internationally bestselling author that he used “little” on almost every page.  As you can see, invisible overused words are often adjectives or interjections.

There are also invisible sets of words, including:

all right, at least, at first

These are not, of course, comprehensive lists, and all writers overuse different combinations.  For example, in sentences and not including examples, I used the word “all” four times in this entry.  Did you notice?

Trilogies

Well, better late than never, I thought that I should announce that my latest book, Wizard: Deceased is out in Kindle and paperback.  You can see it here: On Amazon.

I've also made a new cover for Swallowgate, and one I'm finally proud of.  I've made the cover for all of my books, using Creative Commons images and free fonts.  Although I'm neither an artist nor a graphic designer, I enjoy both.  Writing is far from my only artistic endeavor: I knit, cook, and paint with oils.  I can cross-stitch and sew as well, although I don't particularly enjoy it.  I can play oboe and flute well but also a bit of piano, clarinet, and a half a dozen other instruments.  I just seem to pick up new artistic endeavors, sometimes for only a small while, sometimes long term.

None, however, can compete with writing.

My first ever book that I remember writing was actually a trilogy.  Alas, I have now lost it.  I was six years old and did the illustration myself.  The title was a thing of both shame and beauty, its scatological references scandalous and avant-garde to my six-year-old self, who suggested the title as a daring joke and then was shocked when my mother approved it.  Once she had, wild horses could not have made me change it. 

The titles of the trilogy were as follows: The Poop Monster, the Poop Monster Returns, and the Poop Monster's Aunt.

(Even in those days, I wished to avoid cliché, and so made the relative an aunt rather than father or son.)

That was the first trilogy I ever wrote.  Currently, I'm writing my second.  It will be considerably longer, I won't do any illustrations, and it quite possibly will never once use the word "poop."  Despite these many flaws, I hope it might still engage readers as much as the Poop Monster Trilogy once engaged my mother, who helped with the spelling.

Ridiculous Word Counts

I was recently discussing middle grade books (approx. ages 10-13+) with some literary agents, and discovered to my astonishment that many of them won’t accept a book if it’s over 60,000 words because they consider it unsellable. 

How short! I thought.  Personally, I feel cheated when a book is that short.  But more than that, I was confused.  In my experience, children will happily read a book that is absolutely massive – the longer the better, sometimes, for bragging rights.  Children will devour books.  They’re not like adults, who never seem to have time for that sort of thing (and other silliness).  What has gone so wrong with the publishing industry that they think this?  Moreover, what are they basing it on?  It can’t possibly be experience, because that makes no sense. 

When I think of internationally bestselling fantasy for middle grade readers—books by either first time authors or previously not widely recognized authors—I think:

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling: 77,000 words.

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy: 67,000 words
The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud: 122,000 words
Percy Jackson: the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan: 87,000 words
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien: 95,000 words*

 /*I know it was written decades ago, but it’s still on Amazon’s top 10 bestselling children’s fantasy books/

At the moment, under Amazon’s “Children’s Fantasy and Magic Books” the top ten bestselling books (that I could find the word counts to – so not the Frozen movie tie-in books) have the following word counts:

101,182
101,564
95,022
129,312
43,617
129,725
89,124
132,818
83,432
90,942

 I’d categorize a couple of these as young adult, but most were middle-grade (including some of the longest ones), and the 43,617 I’d call juvenile.

 So . . . why again do agents not want middle-grade fantasies above 60,000 words? 

Stanford Prison Experiment Alive and Well in Reality TV

About a week ago, I returned from a two-week vacation in New Zealand.  Whilst there, I watched an episode of MasterChef: New Zealand.  The next day, I saw an episode of MasterChef: USA.  I had never seen either before.  The difference between the two was stunning and so enormous that I actually plan to watch one again often and plan to avoid the other like the plague.  The reason why?  For the answer, we can look to the Stanford Prison Experiment.

There are plenty of books to read on the experiment, if you’re interested, and it’s part of every major psychology text book.  You can also read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

In short: twenty-four male students were chosen at random to take part in the experiment.  Half of them were assigned to be prison guards, half were prison inmates.  All were normal people.  The point of the experiment was to see how fully and quickly the participants adapted and changed to fit their roles.  From the wiki article:

 “The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo's expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture.  Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it.  The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue.”

In many ways, people tend to act how they’re treated as if they act.  And nowhere, for me, was this more clear than watching the two episodes of MasterChef. 

MasterChef New Zealand: the judges treat the contestants firmly but with respect and as adults with worth and skill.  In return, the contestants respect the judges and treat them as an adult student in a university would treat an admired professor.  They treat their fellow contestants with respect and friendship. 

MasterChef USA: the judges act like abusive parents, constantly belittling and publically humiliating the contestants and otherwise psychologically torturing them for fun.  In return, the contestants act like abused children, crying and apologizing and groveling cringing for the slightest mistake.  The very few who don’t grovel enough are further abused by the judges and given further hurtles to overcome when not outright and unfairly pushed out of the competition.  These contestants regularly scorn and backstab their fellow contestants and are constantly nasty and abusive. 

Is this what television thinks American audiences want?  I can hardly express how deeply ashamed I am to have Kiwis and the rest of the world think of us like that.