Are villains more fun than heroes?

"Flawed characters are more interesting because they are forced to make a choice.  A conventionally good character will always do the moral, right thing.  Boring."

-- bestselling historical novelist Bernard Cornwell.

So (in an Amazon blog) remarked the author of such hugely popular books as the Sharpe series. Cornwell has published 54 books ... so far.  Or so I am told. I've lost count of the Sharpe books.  All I know is that I have read them all, some of them several times.

Is he right?  It could certainly explain why I so thoroughly enjoy writing about Lieutenant "Kit" Forsythe in the Wiki Coffin series.  In his own words, he is a "real bastard."  But that leads to a nagging worry.  Wiki Coffin is definite hero material -- goodlooking, clever, dry sense of humor.  On the other hand, he doesn't hesitate to kill, if necessary, and he's certainly adept at jumping ship.  Maybe that saves him from being boring. Let's hope so.

But let's have a look at Richard Sharpe.

Sharpe, a rifleman in the Napoleonic and Indian wars, could certainly be described as a "real bastard."  He's a gutter fighter, lethal when on missions behind lines, and is addicted to looting when he can get away with it.  Yet, he is intrinsically moral.  As the excellent TV series captured so well, he is a gentleman with the ladies, decent to his men, and awesomely brave. In a pinch, he will always do the right thing.  If you want to hate anyone in either the books or the TV films, then the venal, inefficient, terminally stupid officers who mismanage the battles and send Sharpe off on suicidal missions provide plenty of material. 

In a nutshell, he is complex.  And I think that is the answer.  You can't make a character interesting by simply avoiding the pitfall of painting him as "a conventionally good character who will always do the moral, right thing."

It's not as easy as that.

Why don't Kiwis buy Kiwi crime fiction?

Fixated on Hobbits, instead?

New Zealanders, I hastily point out, are great readers.  I have been told that the average Kiwi reads almost as many books per year as those winter-bound bibliophiles, the Icelanders. 

Yet local writer, publishing consultant, and general guru Geoff Walter points out, in an interesting article on the back cover of the current New Zealand Author, that "actual sales of NZ crime fiction haven't been meeting expectations."

There is even evidence that a couple of the big local publishers are pulling out of the genre.  Yet local crime writers Paul Cleave, Vanda Symon, Paddy Richardson and Alix Bosco (Greg McGee) are doing well overseas, Germany in particular.

Says Harriet Allan, who publishes fiction at Random House New Zealand, "local readers will buy overseas crime but very few will buy local titles."


So what is going wrong?

Harriet Allen theorizes that it is part of the "tall poppy" syndrome -- a perception that something local can't be good.

Geoff Walker's suggestion is that because crime fiction is essentially escapist, having a mundane local setting doesn't work as well as somewhere exotic like North Carolina, London, or New York.

Do I have a theory?  Of course I do. A LOT of Kiwis have read the Wiki Coffin series.  I know that, because they keep on nagging me to write another, or complain because it is so hard to get hold of an Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine down here. But that doesn't mean that they have handed out hard-earned cash for the books.

No, indeed.  They have borrowed them from the library.  New Zealanders are not just great readers.  They are are great patrons of their local libraries, too.

Digital security

What are you inadvertently including in that electronic manuscript?

A great deal could be lurking in the invisible background to documents that you send electronically -- particularly if you, like most users of MS word, use the autocorrect function.  And even if you have turned off the header/footer option, there is material lurking up (and down) on each page.  It is invisible, but it is there.

This is something I found out while publishing with smashwords.  More about them in another post, as right now it suffices to say that their vetting system is absolutely first-rate. 

The electronic manuscript first goes through a process rather unfortunately labelled the "meat-grinder," which converts your word.doc manuscript into all the electronic reading forms.  Then it goes through another computer process, the autovetter.  Then -- almost immediately -- you get an email telling you the results of this autovetting process. 

And my first email warned me that the manuscript had to be repaired and resubmitted, as there were "textboxes" embedded in the file.

Textboxes?  I was astonished.  The only time I have ever used them is when creating powerpoint slides.  So what did the mysterious message mean?  I hunted through their style guide, and learned about this hidden, lurking material.

So how do you get rid of it?  If you use MS word, it is easy.  With your file open, you go to the office button at the top lefthand corner, hit it and go down to "Prepare."  Second down in the menu that comes up is "Inspect Document."  Hit this. Click all the boxes, and then hit "Inspect."

You will be amazed at what comes up.  Remove all, inspect again, to make sure, and close the program.  Then check your document, just to make sure that nothing dire has happened.  In all likelihood, you will find that it looks just the same.  The difference is that it is now clean.

I now do this to every document I send, because who knows what might be lurking in the unseen background?

Tupaia a fave

Women's Bookshop Faves & Raves for 2012

Negotiating eBook rights

What royalty is your publisher offering for digital rights?

As Digital Book World points out, it is too easy to be trapped in an out-of-date arrangement

Publishers and authors are shaping new standard contracts as the industry shifts toward digital-first and e-original book publishing.

As opposed to big publishers, which are thought to pay authors a standard ebook royalty of 25%, new independent ebook publishers like The Atavist, Open Road Media and OR Books, can and do pay authors substantially more. But, on what terms? And, royalties aren’t the only issue at hand as a new publishing landscape emerges.

There are six basic issues at stake in an ebook contract negotiation:
1. Duration
2. Territory
3. Consent
4. E-functionality
5. Medium
6. Royalty

The world is moving on so fast that duration is a major issue. Many authors and agents, as DBW comments, are now putting a five-year limit on digital rights.

Territory is more difficult, in my opinion. It is common for big publishers to ask for world rights, even if they have few facilities for translation or selling foreign rights.  This makes it easy for them to sell digital books, as they don't have to vet the origin of the purchaser.  If you limit the territory, the publisher will say that there will be a bar on the sales page -- but how do you check this?  Does it really work?

Consent means what input the author has in the actual form of the book.  If there is a clause saying something like "at the Publisher's discretion," then your book can look very different in digital form than it does in print.  I fell into this trap myself.  One of the great features of the print version of Tupaia, the Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator is that it is a beautifully illustrated, beautifully designed book.  The digital version is totally unillustrated.  Be warned.

E-Functionality is the clause where you need a crystal ball.  What are eReading devices going to look like in the future? The possibilities offered by interactive reading are hugely exciting, and mostly still on the horizon.  So keep this as open as possible.

Medium also addresses the world of apps. Does the author want to retain the right to put out an eBook that is replete with links and video clips? This, obviously, is an expensive proposition.  Nevertheless, it should be carefully debated.

Royalty.  This is a major, major reason why so many established authors are heading for the Indiesphere. As one commented to me, "Why should I give a publisher 90% of what I am making?"  In the old days, author's royalty from digital sales was set at 20%.  Then it moved to 25%.  Indie authors get up to 70%.  Obviously, this clause is open to energetic negotiation before the contract with a traditional publisher is set in stone.  And it is another very good reason for limiting the duration of the eBook rights.

For more information on ebook royalties, contracts and negotiations, attend Digital Book World 2013 in New York in January.

Interview with Historic Naval Fiction

Questions and answers, and Beckoning Ice

Created on Tuesday, 04 December 2012 03:00

Last Updated on Tuesday, 04 December 2012 00:22

By David Hayes

Historic Naval Fiction is pleased to have obtained an Interview with Joan Druett whose new novel in the Wiki Coffin Mystery series, The Beckoning Ice, will be available on Amazon shortly.
What can you tell us about The Beckoning Ice, without spoiling the plot for readers?
In this, the fifth book in the Wiki Coffin mystery series, it is February 1839, and the ships of the United States Exploring Expedition are thrashing about dreaded Cape Horn, on their way to a rendezvous at Orange Harbor, Tierra del Fuego, on a crazy mission to be the first to find Antarctica. A sealing schooner hails the brig Swallow with a strange tale of a murdered corpse on an iceberg- surely an impossible case for Wiki Coffin to solve, especially as he is soon distracted by a violent killing on board. Threatened by vicious murderers himself, he is forced to voyage as far as the beckoning ice before the double case is concluded...

Read more.

Scientific Advent Calendar

A spectacular way to count down the days to Christmas

Slow motion chemistry -- the scene for 5 December.

Fascination research - count down the days to December 24 with our advent calendar with a difference! Starting from December 1, the embedded link, above, will open a door for you each day to reveal an image from science. It will also bring you the many stories behind the images. Enjoy browsing and feast your eyes on science in the lead up to Xmas!

With thanks to Thomas Gaitanos.

The Agony of a Copy-Editor

Can you hang a washcloth inside out?


‘We’re freaks,’ one said. ‘Why are we still talking about typos?’

‘Are we ever going to be normal ever again?’

‘Have we been ruined . . . for life?’

-- Conversation in a restaurant, after the marathon copyediting of Granta 121: The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists

We were sitting at the pub down the street from the office. We’d just printed out the Book – a whole manuscript of The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists – and sent it off to the proofreader for final checking. It was Friday afternoon, and we were ready to celebrate. We’d spent weeks glued to our desks until all hours of the night, poring over pages and staring at our screens, fielding queries from fact checkers and comments from translators and changes from authors. We’d met our deadline. The issue looked good.

Still, my head was full of tiny, miscellaneous, lingering concerns: Would ‘upon’ be better if capitalized in a title? Should a washcloth be described as hanging inside out? What’s the best translation ‘Why are we still talking about typos?’ for xoxota: ‘cunt’ or ‘pussy’? Can a city be dust-covered and windy at the same time? Have we been consistent in the way we punctuate maté, Sugarloaf Mountain, the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, the Candidates Tournament for chess and every one of the numerous international airports mentioned in the stories? Is it possible for a headless chicken to stare at you? Does ‘shithole’ have a hyphen in it?

For the weekend, at least, I could put all these thoughts aside. It was lovely to be able to relax with colleagues.

There was talk of ordering some food. I looked down at the sandwich menu: kiln smoked salmon and horseradish chive creme fraiche in toasted wholemeal bread. ‘Kiln smoked’ probably should be hyphenated, I thought – it’s acting as an adjective modifying smoked salmon – and ‘creme’ needs the accent. Also, does ‘in’ make sense here? Wouldn’t it be better if it was ‘on’? Was this some kind of innovative sandwich that involved salmon being placed inside the bread?

‘Why don’t we share some appetizers to start?’ one of us suggested.

‘Redundant,’ I muttered to myself. Appetizers are starters; either cut ‘to start’ or change ‘appetizers’ to ‘plates’. Then again, in some cases, people order only appetizers, and don’t go on to have a main course. So was it actually essential to say ‘to start’, to clarify that, in this instance, everyone should feel free to order more food after the first sharing course? I wasn’t sure.

I tried to concentrate on the actual conversation. The topic, it seemed, was the new Batman film.
‘It has a spelling mistake in it,’ someone said. ‘There was a shot of a newspaper headline. Spelled “hiest” instead of “heist”.’

‘Christ. Multimillion-dollar movie.’

‘Seriously. It was pretty hard to concentrate on the scene after that.’

...

There is a danger to copy-editing. You start to read in a different way. You start to see the sentence as machinery. You focus on the gears and levers that connect words to one another; you hunt for the wayward semicolon, the unintentionally ambiguous phrase, the clunky repeated word. You even hope they appear, so you can kill them. You see them when they’re not even there, because you relish slashing your pen across the paper. It gets a little twisted.

As with any kind of technical knowledge or specialization, it is possible to take copy-editing too far, to be ruled by it, to not quite be able to shut it off when it ought to be shut off.

How true.  Intrigued?  Read the rest.

New Wiki Coffin Mystery

The Beckoning Ice

It is February 1839, and the ships of the United States Exploring Expedition are thrashing about dreaded Cape Horn, on their way to a rendezvous at Orange Harbor, Tierra del Fuego, on a crazy mission to be the first to find Antarctica. A sealing schooner hails the brig Swallow with a strange tale of a murdered corpse on an iceberg--surely a case for Wiki Coffin, half-Maori, half-Yankee "linguister," who is the representative of American law and order with the fleet.

 

But circumstances are against him. As Wiki has been banished from the Swallow to the Peacock,where he is forced to battle racism in the wardroom, and vengeful sealers on the decks, the puzzle is surely too much even for this experienced sleuth. Then Wiki is tested even further when he uncovers a brutal murder on board. To solve this double mystery, Wiki is forced to make a dangerous voyage to the utmost fringes of the beckoning ice.

Available now at Smashwords

It will available soon at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and so forth. However, until December 30, 2012, it can be bought on the Smashwords site for $3.50 -- a 50% saving -- by quoting coupon EV36B

Wiki Coffin and the Historical Novels Review

Deadly Shoals and a belated rave

Mea culpa.  Until prompted by Linda Collison, author of Barbados Bound and Surgeon's Mate, I had never heard of the Historical Novel Society.

I first joined their Facebook group, and then the Society itself. They have a very swish website, which I scanned, but I was really too busy working up the fifth Wiki Coffin mystery, The Beckoning Ice, to have a proper look. Then a magazine arrived unexpectedly in the mail -- The Historical Novels Review.

I had a look. It has seven interesting articles, two notables being a masterclass in self-editing by the ever-admirable Cindy Vallar, and another a background to Georgette Heyer, by Jennifer Kloester.

The rest is packed with reviews.  Well, I suppose it calls itself a review magazine, but still I was surprised -- partly because I thought all the reviewing was done on the website, and partly because there were no Indie or digital books reviewed, as far as I could tell.

So I commented on it on the Facebook page, and received some very interesting replies.  HNS is supportive of Indie and digital publishing, I was told, but those reviews are on the website. About a third of their members are readers, not writers, and they find the magazine an excellent source when making up their reading lists. And authors and publishers respect the review magazine for their professional reviewing.

So why had I never heard of it?  Why had none of my stellar array of publishers ever mentioned the magazine? As far as I knew, none of my books had been sent to HNR, and they had never been reviewed.

Not so, I was told.  My books have been reviewed, though some of the reviews are not on the website yet.  So why had my publishers never used the reviews for publicity, let alone told me about them?

They must be awfully bad reviews, thought I, and braced myself before searching.

I found only one -- for Deadly Shoals, and to my amazement, it's a rave. Which makes publisher silence even more amazing.  Read on, and tell me what you think.

Off the coast of Patagonia, January 1839: William “Wiki” Coffin, Maori son of a Yankee sea captain, serves as linguist for the U.S. South Seas Exploring Expedition. At the age of twenty-four, he already has an enviable reputation as naval officer and successful detective.

In this, the fourth of Joan Druett’s Wiki Coffin mysteries, Wiki’s orders are to find a stolen ship. Whaling captain Stackpole has paid $1000 for a ship he has yet to see. He and Wiki trek inland along the Rio Negro to find the elusive sales agent, Adams, who, along with the ship, has disappeared. Each step of the investigation is laid out, chapter by well-constructed chapter, to the surprising and satisfying conclusion.

It’s hard to imagine that the author has not spent years sailing on tall ships, so detailed is her description of the vessels and so fluid her maritime dialogue. She spins a great yarn laced with rich landscape detail, character observations, and a wealth of ethnological information – none of which is intrusive or pedantic. There is also a little sub-mystery to solve in Deadly Shoals: who really is the querulous and fiery first mate of the trading vessel, Osprey? This one will make you smile. Actually, the whole book makes you smile appreciatively.