Rejected for Reviewing

I am a professional reviewer, having worked for AuthorLink for nearly 10 years, and a consumer reviewer since nothing is purchased without someone emailing to know what I thought of their product, service, or opinions. I have reviewed several books for NetGalley over the years and haven denied access to books to read and review, but this is the first time I have been rejected and specifically asked to apply for access again. No such option is available to me on the NetGalley website. The FAQs mentioned that I could request the book from the publisher, which I have just done, but I thought I'd put my opinions out in the world for everyone to read, learn, or comment about. Why not? Is this world not a connected world where all opinions are debated, denied, calumnized, and laughed at by everyone? I might just get my wish to read an advance copy on my Kindle reader to see whether or not I will enjoy The Rules of Magic as much as I enjoyed Practical Magic or the numerous other books I have read by Alice Hoffman, even books I didn't think I would like and discovered I thoroughly enjoyed.

Hoffman is a consistently good author and her subject matter of practical magic for the characters in her books is endlessly fascinating without the over hyped sexual aspect of paranormal books and authors dabbling in the paranormal genre over the past few decades. In spite of my personal views of PDAs and the avoidance thereof, Hoffman does not go that route with her books or her characters and I do like that.

Simon and Schuster is one of the Big Six Publishers that many indie and Big-6 published writers deal with when they decide to enter the publishing world, but I will have to wait until some unknown publicist for this book here in the USA decide to read and respond to my query regarding an advance copy. Until then, I will continue to plan on reading the book when it is published in October or contact one of my contacts to do me a favor. Either way, I will of course get the book, read it, and review it here or wherever (Amazon, Good Reads, newspapers, magazines, or here on my own blog) and whenever I may. That's life and the way the pages fall.

This rejection is not the end and I still have other authors to fill my time in the meantime and beyond until this 3rd density existence is either upgrade by the Cosmic Sneeze or the Grim Reaper comes for me at length.

I wonder. Will I be able to read books -- or care about them -- when I have ascended?

That is all. Disperse.

What Are You Worth?

I keep reading and hearing people say that if people can get the book, and hence the writing, for nothing then that is all the book is worth -- nothing. Every time I think about that point of view I keep coming back to: if payment is the only measure of what something is worth no wonder the world is screwed up.

I do believe in a world and a society that is driven by money the only measurement available is money, but is that really valid? Story tellers throughout the ages have wandered from place to place telling their stories, some invented and some told and retold for centuries like Homer. Homer was a blind storyteller and his version of The Illiad and The Odyssey have become immortal and last through the ages. They will probably last for many ages to come. Storytellers and minstrels and bards and wanderers received payment in the form of shelter and food and help and often not even that because the communities where the wanders landed could not afford more than a bite of food and a post by the fire to sleep. Richer towns and wealthy landowners paid more for the wanders' services but did the amount of remuneration mean the rich enjoyed their stories and songs more or that they were more generous? That is the trap I believe we fall into today.

We have come to believe the amount of payment is equivalent to the product, in this case a book. But is it? I've read some truly awful books that cost me far more than I thought they were worth and wonderful, magical books that I would've paid three times the price to read again and again. It's not, in my estimation, the price that defines excellence but the story and the author of that story. If you write because you love writing and want to tell stories why debase that desire by counting coins?

Yes, we all need money to live because that is the way the world works, but are we happier when we have more money, more things, more everything or are we merely following the crowd?

If you write because you must, because telling a story is as necessary as breathing, then write. Demand payment from those that can pay, but be willing to give your work to those that cannot. Paid or free, it is not the coin that defines worth, but the writing itself.

As for me, I look forward to the day when the world no longer runs on money but on community and the worth of art and literature and even ditch digging is determined by its value to the worker, the artist, the writer, and the person. 

That is all. Disperse. 

Bounced checks

When a writer begins a story, play, teleplay, book, or series, the writer writes a check, a promissory note, that will be paid in full during the course of the work. I remember hearing that if a lead pipe (or other prop) appeared in Act 1 Scene 1, it had better be used by Act 3. The same is true for books and stories. If a writer introduces a character or a other plot point, the writer had better make it good, sooner rather than later.

I finally finished A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin a couple weeks ago. I really like George's writing and enjoyed the journey but felt, as many other readers have, that there was no forward movement. I even discussed this with one of my like-minded best friends the other night, and she said that George had written more checks than he had cashed throughout the series. Now I hear that George is writing a sidebar about the first Targaryeans to hit the shores of the Seven Kingdoms. While all that is well and good, where is the end to the currently 5-book and counting series of The Song of Ice and Fire?

One of the biggest checks George wrote was the white walkers. Although there have been glimpses of them and talk about them, how many of you have read anything about the white walkers -- or the coming of winter, outside of the numerous references to the cold? The white walkers are supposed to be dangerous, to be the reason the Wall was built and manned, and the whole point of the Starks' words of "Winter is coming." There have been references to long winters in the past and the current crop of children and some adults are referred to as the children of summer, but where are the white walkers and why has George gone through five very large and wordy tomes without showing them?

The wildlings are running scared from them, scared enough to assault the wall in an attempt to get on the other side of it. They're not after plunder. They are running terrified. The dead walk but no white walkers have been seen clear and in focus or in force and there is no hint of when or where they will be appearing. That's a major bounced check.

And there are others, the biggest of which is why is Danaerys still fooling around in playing mother to slaves when she should have marched north and taken sail for the Seven Kingdoms, her rightful domain? She was all hot for it when she was married to Kal Drogo and pregnant with the Stallion that Mounts the World, but now she's wandering in the desert and there is no talk of heading north. I had thought by book 5 there would be some movement toward the ports to buy ships and head north with her slaves and dragons, but . . . nothing. Another bounced check.

I can understand why so many fans have been outraged and giving Dance poor marks. It's not the writing because that is as good as George gets. It's the lack of forward movement. It is what the negative comments have made issue over: "Nothing happens." That's not quite true. A lot happens, but none of it advances the story or hints at a light at the end of this really long and action packed tunnel. No forward movement is what they really mean and it is another bounced check.

As an editor, I'd have to say that A Dance with Dragons needed to be pruned and a whole lot of wasted space thrown out. We don't need to know about every time someone went to the bathroom or what they wore. We need to know when the white walkers are more than a myth or scary fairy tale to make children hunker down under the furs and when this battle will be enjoined between dragons and the coming of the winter with no end where the white walkers will walk in truth instead of in hearsay.

For all I know, Dany is waiting for a ride. But, wait, she already got one. It burned her clothes and skin and all her hair off, but she has a ride. She needs to stop playing waiting woman and be action woman with dragon and get the hell out of harpy territory with her forces intact and move north to the Seven Kingdoms, which are currently being torn apart by Lannister & Company.

For all of George's brilliant scenes and good writing, there needs to be some money in the bank to pay off all those bounced checks. I don't think readers will wait impatiently for another ponderous tome with no forward movement and no sign of pay off. I stopped a little past midpoint in Dance because I was a bit disgusted with the endless minutiae. Even the best written story has to have a point and I think George has lost sight of his point -- or points. A sidebar about the first Targaryeans could wait until after we have achieved the goal promised in the first book, A Game of Thrones. How about it, George? Is there an end in sight or should we write off those bounced checks?