Nick Green's Blog: The Green Knight's Chapel
October 28, 2014
***** i couldn,t put it down
The author strode purposefully into the living room, which was the main chamber of residence in the house in which his family lived. His family were in there. Boldly the author stood before them and folded his arms in brazen fashion.
“My family,” he insisted. “I wish you to open multiple Amazon accounts and review my novel many times, giving it five stars. This way I will be able to sell many books and put food on the table for you, and also lord it over my so-called fiends in the IT department at work,” he explained curtly.
His wife looked at him curiously, full of questions.
“Why don’t you just let readers read the book and review it themselves?” She asked questioningly. “I may be soarly mistaken but isnt’ that how its supposed to work?”
The writer laughed scornfully, giving a disdainful shake of his head, to let his wife know what he thought of this strategy. His scorn spoke for itself.
“You don’t understand,” he demonstrated. “Amazon has a dirty trick up their sleeves that will put paid to my dreams of bestsellerdom. Customers can click on ‘Look Inside!’ and read the first few pages of the book before they bye it.”
His disdain spoke for itself.
“Isn’t that good?” asked his wife, with a frown of her deep brown eyes.
“No it isn’t good,” the writer exploded suddenly, in a rage of anger. “It means that people will see that I can’t write for coffee.”
“Toffee,” murmured the youngest member of his offspring, loudly under his breath.
“Not now, son.”
“I mean the word is toffee,” said the irritated child, blinking pale blue eyes like his mother’s. “You can’t write for toffee. Or coffee, come to that.”
Frustrated, the brooding writer looked in the mirror. He saw a tall, square-jawed man with windswept sandy hair, with some seashells in it too.
“What’s that man doing in here? Get him out,” snapped the writer, turning back to the image of himself in the mirror, a short and balding man with a beer gut, and sand in the turnips of his trousers. (It had been a windy day at the beach.)
“Now you’re meandering off the point,” his wife pointed out unnecessarily.
“My point is this,” bellowed the writer, raising his finger to point with. “Whom in their write mind would buy a book by someone so incapably with the English language as me? As I? As me? I don’t even know which it is. And as for getting a hundred suspiciously similar five-star reviews, forget it.”
‘I have an objection’ objected his middle son, sweeping back her luxuriant head of long cropped treacle-coloured blonde hair. [revise this bit]
‘What is it?’ asked his irasibcle father.
‘If customers see that you have a hundred five-star reviews,’ continued his daughter [son?] ‘but the prose style of a mole rat using Google Translate, then won’t the star system gradually become meaning less?’
‘Star system? This isn’t my sci-fi book. Which is even better, by the way.’
‘I mean the rating system,’ said his son, batting her eyelashes. He put down his cricket bat. ‘How will customers be able to find genuinely good indie books, that actually deserve four or five stars, if people like you go around devaluing the system? It’s runaway inflation, that’s what it is.’
‘Huh,’ harrumphed the author. His disdain spoke for itself. ‘That’s there problem, not mine.’
‘Fare enough,’ chorused his family.
The author excited the living room with a brisk stride.
“My family,” he insisted. “I wish you to open multiple Amazon accounts and review my novel many times, giving it five stars. This way I will be able to sell many books and put food on the table for you, and also lord it over my so-called fiends in the IT department at work,” he explained curtly.
His wife looked at him curiously, full of questions.
“Why don’t you just let readers read the book and review it themselves?” She asked questioningly. “I may be soarly mistaken but isnt’ that how its supposed to work?”
The writer laughed scornfully, giving a disdainful shake of his head, to let his wife know what he thought of this strategy. His scorn spoke for itself.
“You don’t understand,” he demonstrated. “Amazon has a dirty trick up their sleeves that will put paid to my dreams of bestsellerdom. Customers can click on ‘Look Inside!’ and read the first few pages of the book before they bye it.”
His disdain spoke for itself.
“Isn’t that good?” asked his wife, with a frown of her deep brown eyes.
“No it isn’t good,” the writer exploded suddenly, in a rage of anger. “It means that people will see that I can’t write for coffee.”
“Toffee,” murmured the youngest member of his offspring, loudly under his breath.
“Not now, son.”
“I mean the word is toffee,” said the irritated child, blinking pale blue eyes like his mother’s. “You can’t write for toffee. Or coffee, come to that.”
Frustrated, the brooding writer looked in the mirror. He saw a tall, square-jawed man with windswept sandy hair, with some seashells in it too.
“What’s that man doing in here? Get him out,” snapped the writer, turning back to the image of himself in the mirror, a short and balding man with a beer gut, and sand in the turnips of his trousers. (It had been a windy day at the beach.)
“Now you’re meandering off the point,” his wife pointed out unnecessarily.
“My point is this,” bellowed the writer, raising his finger to point with. “Whom in their write mind would buy a book by someone so incapably with the English language as me? As I? As me? I don’t even know which it is. And as for getting a hundred suspiciously similar five-star reviews, forget it.”
‘I have an objection’ objected his middle son, sweeping back her luxuriant head of long cropped treacle-coloured blonde hair. [revise this bit]
‘What is it?’ asked his irasibcle father.
‘If customers see that you have a hundred five-star reviews,’ continued his daughter [son?] ‘but the prose style of a mole rat using Google Translate, then won’t the star system gradually become meaning less?’
‘Star system? This isn’t my sci-fi book. Which is even better, by the way.’
‘I mean the rating system,’ said his son, batting her eyelashes. He put down his cricket bat. ‘How will customers be able to find genuinely good indie books, that actually deserve four or five stars, if people like you go around devaluing the system? It’s runaway inflation, that’s what it is.’
‘Huh,’ harrumphed the author. His disdain spoke for itself. ‘That’s there problem, not mine.’
‘Fare enough,’ chorused his family.
The author excited the living room with a brisk stride.
October 24, 2014
Doing the Editor’s job (or, how to commit PR suicide)
I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. I mean, it’s asking for trouble, isn’t it? People who live in glass houses and all that. But Amazon recommended me a young adult dystopian book the other day, and out of curiosity I clicked on ‘See Inside’. I won’t name the book or the author (I do have that much decency) – I will only say that this is no indie book, but a bestseller from a respected publisher, with actual paper and a jacket and stuff. Not to mention an Editor who gets paid money.
Anyway, I read the free extract. And in squared brackets below you can eavesdrop on my brain as it reacted.
CHAPTER ONE
Graduation day.
I can hardly stand still as my mother straightens my celebratory red tunic
[Ouch. Clumsy exposition in ‘celebratory’. We don’t say ‘celebratory academic gown’. Just say ‘red tunic’ and tell us the significance of it later.]
and tucks a strand of light brown hair behind my ear.
[And that’s clunky self-description. Makes me wonder whose light brown hair it is – yours, or your spaniel’s? And why is this a good moment to mention your unremarkable hair colour?]
Finally she turns me and I look in the reflector
[Reflector? Truly? They rename mirrors in the future? Of course they do, that’s how they know it’s the future. ‘Mirror’ just wasn’t doing the job.]
on our living area wall.
[They renamed ‘room’ as well. Excuse me, I think I need to visit the batharea.]
Red. I’m wearing red. No more pink. I am an adult. Seeing evidence of that tickles my stomach.
[Is this really your first evidence? You don’t look in that reflector much.]
“Are you ready, Cia?” my mother asks. She too is wearing red, although her dress is made of a gossamer fabric that drapes to the floor in soft swirls. Next to her, my sleeveless dress
[what happened to tunic?]
and leather boots look childish, but that’s okay. I have time to grow into my adult status.
[Does anyone really talk/think like that about themselves? What’s wrong with ‘I guess I’ll grow up properly in time’?]
I’m young for it at sixteen. The youngest by far in my class.
I take one last look in the reflector
[Thank God]
and hope that today is not the end of my education, but I have no control over that. Only a dream that my name will be called for The Testing. Swallowing hard, I nod. “Let’s go.”
Graduation is held in the colony square
[They renamed mirrors and rooms but couldn’t dream up a name for the colony square]
among the stalls filled with baked goods
[curiously unspecific]
and fresh milk because the school isn’t large enough to hold all the people who will attend. The entire colony attends graduation, which only makes sense since everyone in the colony is related to at least one of the students crossing over to adulthood or celebrating their promotion to the next grade.
[Did you really have to bore me with that?]
This year is the largest graduating class the Five Lakes Colony has had. Eight boys, six girls. A clear sign the colony is thriving.
[How small is this damn school if you can’t fit in the relatives of 14 kids? Should you maybe have given us a better reason for using the ‘colony square’ for this ceremony? Or, heck, just asked us to accept that this is where it happens. Because we would have, y’know.]
My father and four brothers, all dressed in ceremonial adult purple,
[Ceremoniously colour-coded for our convenience]
are waiting for us outside our dwelling.
[Dwelling! Is there some sci-fi/fantasy taboo against saying house or home?]
My oldest brother, Zeen
[named after a batharea cleaning product?]
shoots me a smile and ruffles my hair. “Are you ready to be done with school and get out into the real world with the rest of us slobs?”
[I pity the up-and-coming heart-throb who has to spout that exposition – no wait, it’s not even exposition, it’s just hammering home exposition already laid on with a shovel – in the inevitable movie adaptation.]
My mother frowns.
I laugh.
[Now you’re just wasting paper.]
Zeen and my other brothers are definitely not slobs. In fact, girls practically throw themselves at them.
[And that was literally a cliché.]
But while my brothers aren’t immune to flirting, none of them seems interested in settling down. They’re more interested in creating the next hybrid tomato plant than starting a family. Zeen most of all. He’s tall, blond, and smart.
[Being tall and blond makes you that much more keen on hybrid tomato plants.]
Very, very smart. And yet he never got chosen for The Testing. The thought takes away the shine from the day. Perhaps that’s the first rule I will learn as an adult—that you can’t always get what you want.
[Ah. You were a spoilt child.]
Zeen must have wanted to continue on to the University—to follow in Dad’s footsteps. He must know what I’m feeling. For a moment, I wish I could talk to him.
[He’s your BROTHER. And you told us you live in a miniscule community. Has he had headphones on for the past two years?]
Ask him how he got through the disappointment that most likely is awaiting me. Our colony will be lucky to have one student chosen for The Testing — if any at all.
[Just think about the arithmetic of that for one second. Or any at all.]
It has been ten years since the last student from Five Lakes was chosen. I’m good at school, but there are those who are better. Much better.
[There are just 14 in your class. You said you were good. Did you mean average?]
What chance do I have?
[The suspense is killing me.]
Oh, I could go on. But life is too short. Why have I stooped so low as to do this? It’s not for any pleasure I get in ripping apart the work of some other writer, who’s no doubt only doing what they love. I have written far, far worse than that in my time. The only difference is, those early books of mine were never published. Thank God.
I just find it… interesting. I mean, with that book having an Editor, and that Editor being paid money an’ all. I can’t help wondering whether that Editor was maybe uploading their favourite recipes to Pinterest when this book passed by their desk. Either that, or they just thought: ‘Futuristic book about teens in dystopia killing each other. Yup, that’ll probably sell by the bucketload on both sides of the Atlantic, however poorly it reads.’
And you know what? They were right.
Nick Green
Anyway, I read the free extract. And in squared brackets below you can eavesdrop on my brain as it reacted.
CHAPTER ONE
Graduation day.
I can hardly stand still as my mother straightens my celebratory red tunic
[Ouch. Clumsy exposition in ‘celebratory’. We don’t say ‘celebratory academic gown’. Just say ‘red tunic’ and tell us the significance of it later.]
and tucks a strand of light brown hair behind my ear.
[And that’s clunky self-description. Makes me wonder whose light brown hair it is – yours, or your spaniel’s? And why is this a good moment to mention your unremarkable hair colour?]
Finally she turns me and I look in the reflector
[Reflector? Truly? They rename mirrors in the future? Of course they do, that’s how they know it’s the future. ‘Mirror’ just wasn’t doing the job.]
on our living area wall.
[They renamed ‘room’ as well. Excuse me, I think I need to visit the batharea.]
Red. I’m wearing red. No more pink. I am an adult. Seeing evidence of that tickles my stomach.
[Is this really your first evidence? You don’t look in that reflector much.]
“Are you ready, Cia?” my mother asks. She too is wearing red, although her dress is made of a gossamer fabric that drapes to the floor in soft swirls. Next to her, my sleeveless dress
[what happened to tunic?]
and leather boots look childish, but that’s okay. I have time to grow into my adult status.
[Does anyone really talk/think like that about themselves? What’s wrong with ‘I guess I’ll grow up properly in time’?]
I’m young for it at sixteen. The youngest by far in my class.
I take one last look in the reflector
[Thank God]
and hope that today is not the end of my education, but I have no control over that. Only a dream that my name will be called for The Testing. Swallowing hard, I nod. “Let’s go.”
Graduation is held in the colony square
[They renamed mirrors and rooms but couldn’t dream up a name for the colony square]
among the stalls filled with baked goods
[curiously unspecific]
and fresh milk because the school isn’t large enough to hold all the people who will attend. The entire colony attends graduation, which only makes sense since everyone in the colony is related to at least one of the students crossing over to adulthood or celebrating their promotion to the next grade.
[Did you really have to bore me with that?]
This year is the largest graduating class the Five Lakes Colony has had. Eight boys, six girls. A clear sign the colony is thriving.
[How small is this damn school if you can’t fit in the relatives of 14 kids? Should you maybe have given us a better reason for using the ‘colony square’ for this ceremony? Or, heck, just asked us to accept that this is where it happens. Because we would have, y’know.]
My father and four brothers, all dressed in ceremonial adult purple,
[Ceremoniously colour-coded for our convenience]
are waiting for us outside our dwelling.
[Dwelling! Is there some sci-fi/fantasy taboo against saying house or home?]
My oldest brother, Zeen
[named after a batharea cleaning product?]
shoots me a smile and ruffles my hair. “Are you ready to be done with school and get out into the real world with the rest of us slobs?”
[I pity the up-and-coming heart-throb who has to spout that exposition – no wait, it’s not even exposition, it’s just hammering home exposition already laid on with a shovel – in the inevitable movie adaptation.]
My mother frowns.
I laugh.
[Now you’re just wasting paper.]
Zeen and my other brothers are definitely not slobs. In fact, girls practically throw themselves at them.
[And that was literally a cliché.]
But while my brothers aren’t immune to flirting, none of them seems interested in settling down. They’re more interested in creating the next hybrid tomato plant than starting a family. Zeen most of all. He’s tall, blond, and smart.
[Being tall and blond makes you that much more keen on hybrid tomato plants.]
Very, very smart. And yet he never got chosen for The Testing. The thought takes away the shine from the day. Perhaps that’s the first rule I will learn as an adult—that you can’t always get what you want.
[Ah. You were a spoilt child.]
Zeen must have wanted to continue on to the University—to follow in Dad’s footsteps. He must know what I’m feeling. For a moment, I wish I could talk to him.
[He’s your BROTHER. And you told us you live in a miniscule community. Has he had headphones on for the past two years?]
Ask him how he got through the disappointment that most likely is awaiting me. Our colony will be lucky to have one student chosen for The Testing — if any at all.
[Just think about the arithmetic of that for one second. Or any at all.]
It has been ten years since the last student from Five Lakes was chosen. I’m good at school, but there are those who are better. Much better.
[There are just 14 in your class. You said you were good. Did you mean average?]
What chance do I have?
[The suspense is killing me.]
Oh, I could go on. But life is too short. Why have I stooped so low as to do this? It’s not for any pleasure I get in ripping apart the work of some other writer, who’s no doubt only doing what they love. I have written far, far worse than that in my time. The only difference is, those early books of mine were never published. Thank God.
I just find it… interesting. I mean, with that book having an Editor, and that Editor being paid money an’ all. I can’t help wondering whether that Editor was maybe uploading their favourite recipes to Pinterest when this book passed by their desk. Either that, or they just thought: ‘Futuristic book about teens in dystopia killing each other. Yup, that’ll probably sell by the bucketload on both sides of the Atlantic, however poorly it reads.’
And you know what? They were right.
Nick Green
September 8, 2014
‘Sir, may I see your artistic licence?’
I’m generally a good driver. Meaning, I try always to remember that I’m inside a fast-moving tonne of steel, possibly the most efficient accidental murder weapon ever designed. So if I happen to get stuck behind someone who maybe isn’t going as briskly as they could be, I hang back and tell myself that they might be old, or a newly-qualified driver, and I only overtake if it’s safe. I’m good that way.
BUT…
If you’re that guy who drives right up behind me when I’m in the fast lane and already at the speed limit, and flash your lights to command my immediate removal from the path of your precious Audi, then I’m afraid you’ll unleash my inner maniac. Trust me my friend, you will sweat blood before I let you past.
Because this is what driving tests are for. I must say, I struggled with the whole car thing, probably a shortage of testosterone in the womb, blame my mum’s crash diets, but I took meticulous note of everything my instructor told me (except for his claim about cannabis not affecting your driving), and after I did pass my test on the second try, I continued to drive pretty much by the book, two-second-rule and all. The only exceptions occur when some Alpha Male has a problem with this (see above).
I see this as a metaphor – albeit a slightly creaky one – for the way an author traditionally had to get the go-ahead first from an agent and then from a publishing house, before heading out onto the highways of commercial fiction. That’s how it’s been for many years. Then something happened. Ebooks, Smashwords and Amazon KDP. Suddenly, anyone moderately computer-literate could publish a book without stirring from their sofa. There need be no more humble submission letters, no more parcelling up of the synopsis and three chapters (the photocopier! The envelopes! The stamps! Oh God, the stamps), no more waiting one month, two months, three, no more walking-on-eggshells gentle reminder letters (‘I know you would probably have told me by now if you were planning a multi-million pound franchise based on my book, but just in case you forgot to get in touch…’), no more crushingly brief and unspecific rejection letters, no more pulverisingly specific rejection letters, no more grinding through the whole Sisyphean cycle yet again, no more despair. You can be published. Just power up your laptop. Utopia is here.
There’s a funny thing about Utopias.
Imagine our Prime Minister saying: ‘From tomorrow, no-one needs a driving licence.’ That’s a wonderful thought, but not if the result isn’t David Cameron being straitjacketed off to a quiet but secure retreat on the Isle of Man. No, imagine that they actually pass that legislation. Oh, and they’re also scrapping insurance and road tax, and all driving offences, and the age limit, and wow! They’re giving out free cars as well. I’m sure plenty of frustrated learner drivers would vote for that… for about five seconds. Until they make it out of the driveway onto the road.
It’d be bad enough for those impatient kids who just longed for a car. But what if you’re someone who spent time, money and a tonne of stress actually learning to drive? Well I’m sorry, but you’re royally stuffed as well. And since the metaphor is creaking again, I’ll spit it out: publishing your own ebooks isn’t the short cut we hoped it might be.
Really, little has changed. Only that, instead of fighting to escape the slush pile on the publisher’s desk, you’re in the thick of a slush pile that’s skidding out into the world. Out here it’s arguably worse for the old-school writers, the ones who bothered to learn a few manoeuvres and where to put, commas, because at least on the editor’s desk it’s only book versus book – it’s about the content. But not out there. Out there you’re up against people whose actual writing might be all over the road, but who have nitro-injected marketing savvy that can leave yours in the dust. All that time you spent alone in your room, honing your craft, why! – they were out there making friends, forging networks, raising their profile. Most serious writers can’t compete with that, given that by definition we’d rather be curled up at home with a book.
Now it’s up to readers to sift through the morass of self-published ebooks, and many must be at a loss to know what to choose. If you aren’t already familiar with an author through their traditionally published fiction, then how are you ever going to spot the occasional diamond amid all that broken glass?
History shows us that things like this have a way of sorting themselves out in the long term. In the end, readers will decide what they do and don’t want, as they always have. But in the meantime… drive carefully out there.
BUT…
If you’re that guy who drives right up behind me when I’m in the fast lane and already at the speed limit, and flash your lights to command my immediate removal from the path of your precious Audi, then I’m afraid you’ll unleash my inner maniac. Trust me my friend, you will sweat blood before I let you past.
Because this is what driving tests are for. I must say, I struggled with the whole car thing, probably a shortage of testosterone in the womb, blame my mum’s crash diets, but I took meticulous note of everything my instructor told me (except for his claim about cannabis not affecting your driving), and after I did pass my test on the second try, I continued to drive pretty much by the book, two-second-rule and all. The only exceptions occur when some Alpha Male has a problem with this (see above).
I see this as a metaphor – albeit a slightly creaky one – for the way an author traditionally had to get the go-ahead first from an agent and then from a publishing house, before heading out onto the highways of commercial fiction. That’s how it’s been for many years. Then something happened. Ebooks, Smashwords and Amazon KDP. Suddenly, anyone moderately computer-literate could publish a book without stirring from their sofa. There need be no more humble submission letters, no more parcelling up of the synopsis and three chapters (the photocopier! The envelopes! The stamps! Oh God, the stamps), no more waiting one month, two months, three, no more walking-on-eggshells gentle reminder letters (‘I know you would probably have told me by now if you were planning a multi-million pound franchise based on my book, but just in case you forgot to get in touch…’), no more crushingly brief and unspecific rejection letters, no more pulverisingly specific rejection letters, no more grinding through the whole Sisyphean cycle yet again, no more despair. You can be published. Just power up your laptop. Utopia is here.
There’s a funny thing about Utopias.
Imagine our Prime Minister saying: ‘From tomorrow, no-one needs a driving licence.’ That’s a wonderful thought, but not if the result isn’t David Cameron being straitjacketed off to a quiet but secure retreat on the Isle of Man. No, imagine that they actually pass that legislation. Oh, and they’re also scrapping insurance and road tax, and all driving offences, and the age limit, and wow! They’re giving out free cars as well. I’m sure plenty of frustrated learner drivers would vote for that… for about five seconds. Until they make it out of the driveway onto the road.
It’d be bad enough for those impatient kids who just longed for a car. But what if you’re someone who spent time, money and a tonne of stress actually learning to drive? Well I’m sorry, but you’re royally stuffed as well. And since the metaphor is creaking again, I’ll spit it out: publishing your own ebooks isn’t the short cut we hoped it might be.
Really, little has changed. Only that, instead of fighting to escape the slush pile on the publisher’s desk, you’re in the thick of a slush pile that’s skidding out into the world. Out here it’s arguably worse for the old-school writers, the ones who bothered to learn a few manoeuvres and where to put, commas, because at least on the editor’s desk it’s only book versus book – it’s about the content. But not out there. Out there you’re up against people whose actual writing might be all over the road, but who have nitro-injected marketing savvy that can leave yours in the dust. All that time you spent alone in your room, honing your craft, why! – they were out there making friends, forging networks, raising their profile. Most serious writers can’t compete with that, given that by definition we’d rather be curled up at home with a book.
Now it’s up to readers to sift through the morass of self-published ebooks, and many must be at a loss to know what to choose. If you aren’t already familiar with an author through their traditionally published fiction, then how are you ever going to spot the occasional diamond amid all that broken glass?
History shows us that things like this have a way of sorting themselves out in the long term. In the end, readers will decide what they do and don’t want, as they always have. But in the meantime… drive carefully out there.
The Green Knight's Chapel
A blog by Nick Green, YA and children's author of books including The Firebird Trilogy, The Storm Bottle and The Cat Kin Trilogy.
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