Release day!

It's release day for The Wicked Instead! You can purchase it at the Hard Limits Store. It's also searchable on Amazon, but I try to encourage people to buy it from the publisher's website. It's easy to do and Amazon doesn't take a cut, which is always nice. If you sign up for the Hard Limits newsletter here, you'll also be entered to win awesome swag. The more subscribers they have, the more swag they'll give away, so sign up! You'll love what you can get.

It's hard to believe my novel has been released into the wild at last. It's a little terrifying (oh no, what did I forget to add/delete? what if people hate it?) but also a mix of relief and that weird pressure I put on myself. After all, now I have to write the sequel. For now, I'm allowing myself a little burst of success. I've been at this for a long time. I wrote my first "novel" when I was 12. I never really pushed for publication but I always had it in mind, knowing that I wanted to polish my skills first.

I knew when I started writing The Wicked Instead that this was THE novel that I was going to get published. I didn't exactly look at it and think "OH MY GOD THIS IS BRILLIANCE!" (though I was and am pretty proud of it overall). I determined that this was going to be a book that people wanted to read and engage in. The concept was good enough and marketable enough to capture people's attention, and then it was up to me to draw people in.

Mythology nerdery

Something a little more academic for you. I don't remember exactly what made me want to write about Hungarian táltosk. I'd had it in my idea notebook (yes, I have one) for a while as a high concept, but I'm not that great at writing about high concepts. I had to wait for characters to form. As it turned out, those characters were the two unlikeliest táltosk ever, which just made the concept that much more interesting.

I won't get into the details of character and world creation in this post. Instead, I'll briefly discuss the aspects of Hungarian mythology I chose. There's really not a lot out there about this "old world" mythology and a lot of it is foggy. Which is great for me, because I got to take a lot of artistic license.

The táltos and World Tree myths are obviously the most important in this world. They're universal in a way, because almost every culture has shaman-like figures and many have some version of the World Tree. Hungarian mythology is rooted in old pagan beliefs which were then (like many pagan mythologies) transmuted into Christianized Hungary. The most important god, Isten, created the world with the help of Ordog. Isten became the Christian God and Ordog became (you guessed it) the devil. The main female figure became the Virgin Mary. The structure of the World Tree (Upper World, Middle World, Underworld) is about what you'd expect, with Isten at the top and Ordog at the bottom.

The táltosk were originally supposed to have missions from God, but when Hungary was Christianized by Stephen I, they were, to no one's surprised, considered evil and hunted down. Interestingly, folklore apparently maintains that Jesus was a táltos. Hungary seems like one of those places where Christianity and "old world" beliefs weave together in a unique way, and that's what I really wanted to capture. One of my favorite parts of the táltos myth and one of the things that made me want to write about it was the táltos horse. I've only ever found English references to it on Wikipedia, but come on. Magical horse. How could I not? I took the most artistic license with this aspect of the myth, but that's half the fun.

Two more important parts of Hungarian mythological history that I had to work in were the Turul bird and the stag. These are two more very archetypal symbols. The Turul is especially important to the Hungarians as a national symbol (it's still the emblem of the Hungarian Army). It sits on top of the World Tree. In yet another archetypal myth, the Turul impregnates a woman, immaculate conception style. The formative Arpad dynasty was descended from her son, Almos.

The other is the stag myth, which is archetypal and fascinatingly cross-cultural. This page demonstrates just how cross-cultural it is. Probably the coolest part about this myth and about Hungarian mythology in particular is the intersection between both of those things and Middle Eastern myths, particularly Persian Zoroanastrianism. If you know anything about ancient Middle Eastern history, you might recognize the name "Nimrod." Yeah, that one. He had two sons, Hunor and Magor, who chased this stag into the land that would eventually become Hungary.

As an amusing and awesome aside, when I met Tiger Gray, I was already deep into the first draft of The Wicked Instead. One of the important features of Tiger's novel world (which was created before we even met) is Zoroanastrian mythology. We didn't find out about the Magyar/Persian connection until much later. You can bet we're running with this in future projects.

As I mentioned, there's very little out there about old Hungarian mythology in English past the basic stuff. I've done some digging and here are a few pages for you mythology geeks:

Hungarian Mythology, by Fred Hamori
HunMagyar.org
Of Hungarians' Old Religion in Brief, Avraham Sándor and Turgut Aslan
"The Way of the Táltos: A Critical Reassessment of a Religious-Magical Specialist," by Laszlo Kurti (academic article, yay!)

Locations from the novel

I'm a big fan of Google Maps street view/Google Earth to fact check myself or to visualize a scene. Because I'm quite familiar with the area I'm writing about, I often have particular locations in mind when writing. I used to have a folder full of photos of said locations, but when my old computer died in combat (it lost to a clumsy dog and a water glass), I lost the folder. So I created a Google map.

As much as I'd love to share every location (because you know I know exactly where everything is in the novel--I'm anal like that), I've narrowed it down to the more notable ones. Some locations are approximate, obviously.

Here is the map. If you're a local, I hope you get a kick out of it. If you're not, I hope it helps you visualize some of these locations.

The Wicked Instead playlist

The Wicked Instead comes out in 12 days! As a somewhat self-indulgent celebration, I'm going to be posting some extras leading up to release day.

I'm one of those writers who uses character/story-based playlists as inspiration. Here's the playlist for The Wicked Instead. All song titles link to Spotify.

"Pet," A Perfect Circle [lyrics]
"Dust," Augustana [lyrics]
"Secure Yourself," The Indigo Girls [lyrics]
"Awake My Soul," Mumford and Sons [lyrics]
"Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise," The Avett Brothers [lyrics]
"Shake it Out," Florence + The Machine [lyrics]
"I'm an Animal," Neko Case [lyrics]
"R-Evolve," 30 Seconds to Mars [lyrics]
"Chocolate," Snow Patrol [lyrics]
"The Kill (Bury Me)," 30 Seconds to Mars [lyrics]
"Learning to Fly," Tom Petty [lyrics]

I think these songs in particular capture the theme of this novel, which is the characters slowly learning to stand on their own and direct the course of their own lives.

Stay tuned for more extras!

How Amazon AND indie booksellers can succeed without trying to murder one another

I found an infuriating link on Twitter this morning entitled "Don't Support Your Local Bookseller."

I'll let that sink in for a minute.

Obligatory shot of a bookstore. Image by Polifemus on Flickr.

I was and will probably always be an advocate for indie booksellers because a) I always believe in supporting local businesses and b) I've enjoyed being an employee and a patron of indie booksellers for years. However, I'm also a huge fan of Amazon. It's convenient, it has a lot of great interface features, I can get books that would be impossible to find otherwise, etc. etc. etc. So I find it difficult to compare the two. It's kinda-sorta-but-not-really analogous to comparing, say, Wal-Mart and your local clothing store. Wal-Mart sells convenience (okay, they sell cheap plastic crap) in large quantities; the local clothing store may buy small quantities of quality product. Amazon and indie booksellers generally sell very similar or identical products, but the difference is the venue and the experience.

Customers of indie booksellers often don't go into the store with targeted intent. They go to browse, to see what's on the shelves, to handle the books. It's a tactile experience. Customers on Amazon may browse too, but more often I think people go on the site in search of something specific. They may find impulse buys and recommendations, so to speak, but mostly it's a targeted experience. I have to speak anecdotally, of course, since I haven't done any consumer studies.

There are a few factors working against indie booksellers. The first is, of course, Amazon's ability to stock huge quantities of millions of books and distribute them internationally. Indie stores are limited to a smaller, local group of patrons. The second and maybe more salient point is that Amazon can do a passable-to-good job of emulating the brick-and-mortar store experience. Notice the very slick visual displays of products and recommendations based on your purchase and browsing history (creepy but useful). It's super easy to browse, but importantly, super easy to find what you want. An indie store can't compete with Amazon in that regard. Customers have to rely on the booksellers themselves to find a certain item or to recommend books. This is hardly a travesty, but as the linked article mentions, human employees can't match computer accuracy.

A notable exception to the indie seller's local patronage is its seller's ability to distribute through Amazon's marketplace. Both the stores I worked in did up to 10-15% of their daily business this way (very rough estimate based on personal experience). All of these books were used copies of mostly out-of-print books that Amazon didn't stock. This is the indie seller's strength. Amazon's Marketplace virtual storefront is driven largely by these indie sellers. Amazon makes a tidy profit from commission on these items. I think this is actually a great concept: out-of-print and rare book distribution in one central location. Indie sellers can (and do, to a certain extent) use the Power of the Amazon Megalith (tm) to their advantage.

The problem is that indies just can't compete with Amazon when it comes to the biggest part of the market, which is new and recent releases. Indie booksellers do not "mark up" their product. They sell books for the list price, which is set by the publisher. Amazon marks products down. For every indie that can sell one copy of Dean Koontz's new novel for $25 (which they bought for not much less), Amazon can sell it for, say, $17, because they bought a bajillion and they have a distribution agreement with the publisher and so on.

All this means that indie booksellers are going to have to evolve. I'm not arguing that they're in some ways outdated and outmoded. I'm saying they shouldn't have to compete directly with Amazon. Why not work with the ways they can be successful? There will always be room for second-hand books and out-of-print books. Why not also take a cue from indie clothing stores and acquire small quantities of quality books--from, say, indie publishers? Wouldn't that be a match made in heaven? What if every indie bookseller only acquired books from indie publishers? Potential exposure and business for everyone. Indie booksellers can carry beautiful special edition hardbacks--pieces of art for book lovers who enjoy having physical books. There's a market that hasn't yet been tapped, and Amazon hasn't made special efforts to do so.

I'm really not here to debate the worthiness of Amazon as a business entity. I'm wary of it. I have a lot of problems with any company that seeks to create a monopoly. But I also think that because of its size and frankly genius business policies, it's provided some fantastic opportunities for consumers. I mean, you can get a Kindle for $79 now. A lot of people can benefit from this: people who don't live within easy driving distance of a bookstore, for example. They don't have to pay shipping on an e-book. A more significant example is visually impaired people who can't read print books. E-readers, Kindles in particular, provide a viable, cost-effective alternative to traditional book distribution. They make it so people who may not otherwise have opportunities to do so can have access to readable material.

I don't understand the Slate article writer's claim that consumers should not support local businesses like bookstores. Buy from corporations, fine, but the idea of avoiding a small business because hrr drr they're not Corporation X wrongheaded and frankly stupid. As an author, I would rather you buy my book from a local business or (gasp!) directly from my publisher. Supporting small/local businesses is better for the economy and better for you--ergo, better for authors.

Don't get me started on his last line, which claims that Amazon is "saving literary culture." Literary culture is not just one entity. It is possible to enjoy the convenience and accessibility of Amazon while also purchasing quality product of a slightly different kind from your local bookstore. Literary culture will evolve, survive and thrive even in a terrible economy because people need books. It's true that consumers require different things now and indie bookselling is a little slow on the uptake--but it needn't always be that way.

Balancing personal taste with a critical perspective

A lot of students tell me that they don't like a certain piece of writing because it isn't their preferred style of reading or writing. To quote one student, "If the style of writing is not what I prefer to read or write, I can’t handle it."

I'm all for allowing students to dislike certain pieces. They ought to form opinions about literature. Hell, there are some styles of lit that I just can't stand. I think what annoys me about the student's mindset is the implication that because the student doesn't care for something, or if it doesn't fit the student's definition of "good," it isn't legitimate and it lacks quality. Last year I taught Push, the novel by Sapphire. If you've never heard of it, look it up. It's grim. It's dark. Some students didn't like it for those reasons and didn't think it was "real literature," so they shut off, they complained to my boss, and I even had two people drop the class because they didn't want to read it.

To a certain extent, that's legit. It's their choice what they read and what they don't read. But to use a metaphor from Tiger, you can't say that a well-cooked corn dish is bad because you don't like corn. If it is technically, objectively well-cooked, then it's well-cooked. The same goes for writing. There are objective aspects of writing and reading--maybe not the same ones as cooking, granted, but a reader/editor can (and should be able to) acknowledge that a piece of writing has value and quality even if it is not to the reader's taste. Take Faulkner. I'm probably un-American in my dislike of Faulkner, but his writing is simply not to my taste. However, I still teach a couple of stories that are, objectively, very good. That is, they fulfill the purpose the author intended them to fulfill. They're not to my taste, but they're still fine examples of how a short story can be written.

I find that many (too many) people analyze stories on a completely subjective level, absolutely without any effort at critical thinking. They think that being a critic will take the fun out of it. Or something. I find exactly the opposite. Attempting to analyze theme and meaning deepens the experience for me and opens up new levels of appreciation for stories I like on a subjective level as well as stories I wouldn't otherwise like.

This brings me to editing. I've been a professional writing critic for a number of years on several different levels in several different capacities. I've read a lot of writing that was shitty objectively, and I've read a lot of writing that I struggled to appreciate but accepted anyway because I could see that the writer was achieving his/her/zir purpose. This capacity to appreciate that which you may not subjectively enjoy is a key skill for an editor to cultivate. If you edit professionally, you will read genres/styles/stories you don't care for. It's vital to understand the difference between aspects of a work you don't like and aspects that aren't successful or effective.

The best advice I can give in order to understand this difference is to assume that the writer is doing everything on purpose. Assume that the writer meant to choose that particular word or make that shift in authorial distance or twist the plot that certain way. You can question whether the author's choice is effective overall--that's your job as an editor, after all--but consider the author's purpose first. Does it fulfill that purpose? Does it fulfill the story promise? Then consider getting over it.

I've struggled with this myself. Some of my students/editing clients have written pieces that I absolutely would not read if I had the choice. They're just not the type of stories I enjoy reading for pleasure. I've had to train myself to consider what the author is trying to do and to help him/her/zir do it more effectively, for his/her/zir intended audience. Yeah, this is difficult, but as a teacher it's unfair of me to dock points because a story is not to my taste, and as an editor it's unfair of me to ask the writer to write what I want them to write.

Feel free to make a note of what you like/don't like/aren't sure about, because your input as a reader counts, but if you ever think, "I don't like this story/I think it's a crappy story because I hate zombies" (yeah, sorry, I really do hate them), take a step back and question yourself. Do you think it's crap because you find it cliche, or are you having a knee-jerk reaction to your hatred of the shambling horde? If I hadn't let my then-boyfriend talk me into watching Dawn of the Dead because of my unreasoning hatred for zombie movies, I wouldn't have grown to appreciate the parody aspect of the movie and understand its message. I grant that my skepticism of zombies in general lead me to question what possible value this 90-minute romp into absurdity had. That's not a bad thing. It made me a more critical viewer, which then likely allowed me to experience the movie in a deeper, more meaningful fashion.

I'm not saying that a reader/editor can't have opinions or can't dislike something on a subjective taste level. I'm advocating critical thinking. There's a lot of literature out there that is not to my taste, but some people like it and I can objectively understand why they like it. I found my intelligence constantly insulted while reading The Da Vinci Code, but I can understand why a bajillion people bought it and loved it. Many readers liked it for exactly the reasons I hated it. I wasn't Dan Brown's intended audience and that's okay. I would still have edited the fucker to death, but in the service of helping the author fulfill his purpose, not making the book into what I would rather read.

Whether you love or hate something you read, I think it's important to consider why you had that reaction. Understand that you may not be the author's intended audience, but consider whether the piece of writing works before you pass judgment.

I can has publisher!

I have the Best News Ever. My novel, The Wicked Instead, has a publisher! It will be the first publication of Hard Limits Press, an awesome new speculative fiction indie publisher. You should follow them on Twitter (@hardlimitspress) for info on the unveiling of their logo and the launch of their website at the beginning of December. There you’ll be able to check out an excerpt from the novel.

For now, though, here’s the awesome blurb from Hard Limits:

Cary and Lindsay Delaney have always known they were special. Warriors for God, their father said, meant to bring about the Rapture, and every moment in their family’s isolated Ozarks compound was spent preparing for that day. Cary’s paraplegic injury put an end to that dream, however, and the brothers, now estranged from the father who once exalted them, find a different kind of magic in the streets of Springfield, Missouri.

Dubiously blessed with the title prince and heirs to powerful táltos magic, the brothers find themselves embroiled in a struggle for the health of the World Tree, the structure that supports not only their world, but every world. The Tree is rotting, and it’s only a matter of time before the corruption reaches its heart. Can Cary and Lindsay make their own way despite those who would use them for their own ends?

A coming of age urban fantasy with a twist, The Wicked Instead combines the voice of a redneck haint tale with an unerring modern sensibility and sensitivity. As much about struggling to survive and the bonds forged between unlikely friends as it is about fantasy, The Wicked Instead will change the way you think about the genre.

Doesn’t that make you want to read it? I know it does. The e-book release is scheduled for early next year, with print following shortly after.

Stay tuned for the cover image as well as an excerpt that will be released in conjunction with the launch of the Hard Limits website. I’m so excited!