E-Books, Dead Trees, and Writing

Woohoo! The box from Writers' Digest arrived yesterday, and I now have my own shiny new copy of Characters, Emotions and Viewpoint to pore over, mark up, and learn from (as well as the other 4 books in the "Write Great Fiction" series. Now to make sure that the task of writing up the exercises doesn't actually interfere with getting started on learning to actually write creatively...

We went shopping this weekend, and took a look a the Barnes & Noble Nook line of e-readers. B. and I are quite happy with our Kindles (though we're seriously considering getting a second one each, tied to each other's Amazon account, since sharing isn't particularly easy on the Kindle...). I picked up a copy of the first book in Jim Butcher's "Codex Alera" series, B. picked up the first of Jeanne C. Stein's Anita Blake novels, and then we went to Tattered Cover to cleanse our souls a bit.

Sadly, we found that we're just not liking Tattered Cover nearly as much as we used to. I've had this conversation with other book lovers and TC fans, and the theater space just isn't quite as cool as the old space in Cherry Creek. The downtown branch still has a lot of that atmosphere, but the Colfax branch is closer to us. The business of selling books is rough even in the best of times, and the pressure of e-books and online sales is taking its toll, sad to say. Thing is, keeping the kind of inventory on hand that got us hooked on Tattered Cover in the first place is nearly impossible for a brick-and-mortar store anymore - which creates a really vicious circle for bookstores, as customers who used to be able to pop in and trust that they'd be able to find at least one copy of any given book in a fairly extensive series (say, the Martian Tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs or the Company novels by Kage Baker) find that this is no longer the case and turn to Amazon. We found a number of books on writing, style and grammar - but it was a much smaller shelf than we were expecting, honestly. I replaced my missing copy of Strunk and White, and found the parody version A Manual of F*cking Style (which I'm loving). B. picked up a grammar workbook, and I found The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time, which looks like a great deal of fun.

I'm also finding that I like my Kindle a lot more than I thought I would. The advantages of electronic copies of books have long been obvious to me (my back still twinges at the thought of carrying a weekend's worth of so-called "light reading" around in a backpack), but I hadn't realized how quickly some of the quirks of book handling would seem to be irritating - marking your place with a bookmark, turning pages, keeping a stack of current reading by the bed, schlepping half of it into the den or downstairs, etc.

Books on Writing

One of the books that I checked out for perusal on our Moab trip was one of the Writers' Digest "Write Great Fiction" series - Characters, Emotions and Viewpoint by Nancy Kress. After giving it something of a quick skim to see what Ms. Kress covered and what sort of writing exercises were included, I'm now in the process of typing up a set of worksheets with each of the exercises so that I can start working my way through them, once I get to the point of doing actual writing.

And my lovely wife has decided to purchase the entire "Write Great Fiction" series for our edification and instruction, so I'll be working through the rest of them eventually, as well!

Vacation Reading

I'll probably write up the long story version later, but for now I'll just outline it - after Plan A for Thanksgiving went out the window, we settled on Plan B and were about to lay in supplies when we wound up going to Plan C, then ditched that and wound up in Moab instead (Plan D). Since I'm saving up my allowance for a side project, I only bought one book for the trip (Sandman Slim) after previewing several possibilities, and hit the library to fill in a proper holiday reading basket:

• Jailbait Zombie, Mario Acevedo
• The Blight Way, Patrick McManus
• Just After Sunset, Stephen King
• Mercy Thompson: Homecoming, Patricia Briggs
• Welcome to the Jungle, Jim Butcher
• Dreamsongs, Volume 1, George R.R. Martin
• Characters, Emotion, & Viewpoint, Nancy Kress
• Copy Editing, A Practical Guide, Karen Judd
• The Writer's Path: A Guidebook for Your Creative Journey, Todd Walton & Mindy Toomay
• The Everything Guide to Writing a Novel, Joyce & Jim Levene

And because no trip is complete without buying a book while on holiday, I acquired the Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library volume American Indian Myths and Legends, Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz.

Didn't actually finish all of them - I'm one story away from the end of the George R.R. Martin volume, and most of the craft books will require actual study rather than the somewhat cursory reading I gave Characters, Emotion and Viewpoint (though that was enough for me to decide I'll need to own a copy, possibly of the entire Write Great Fiction series, and probably subscribe to Writers' Digest sometime in the near future).

Two Down...

Finished up two volumes on my "in progress" list - Stephen King's Everything is Eventual and Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft. I borrowed the former from a friend of mine after reading King's On Writing and realizing that I'd gotten fed up with Stephen King during the height of his issues with drugs and alcohol. Somehow, this makes a certain amount of sense - Cujo was not a favorite of mine (King admits to not really remembering writing that one), but it was really the sex magic scene in It that really had me closing the book and deciding enough was enough - I'd read my fill of King for a good, long while. I'm still not going to leap right into his novels - I'll stick with the short story collections until I've really started to enjoy him again.

Everything is Eventual is a good re-introduction, though - one of the stories was initially started as an exercise to demonstrate draft vs. first editing for On Writing, and it makes a good yarn once finished and polished. When King has to keep his word count down to short story format, he's very, very good - and these stories are as good as the ones I remember from Night Shift, Different Seasons, and Skeleton Crew. The short story featuring Roland the Gunslinger may eventually get me to read the Dark Tower novels...

I bought Shop Class as Soulcraft during a trip to Washington, D.C. earlier this year, and got a few chapters in before setting it aside. It's an interesting combination of philosophical exploration and discussion of educational policy, along with a spirited defense of the validity of trade work in a largely service-based economy, but it bogged down in places. I finished partly out of sheer bloody-mindedness - his opinions on current trends in gifted education don't sound like anything I experienced back in the day, so I'm guessing things have shifted too far in the other direction since I and my little brother went through very different versions of our district's "Challenge Program" - our programs had an emphasis on math and science, as well as more 'creative' endeavors, but Crawford rails (briefly) about a sort of hand-holding and ego stroking that were (perhaps mercifully) nowhere in evidence when I was in school...  He does have a number of good points about the intellectual value of work that's judged largely by whether or not it works, or whether it works well, rather than on more nebulous sorts of metrics, but it wasn't quite what I'd expected when I picked it up.

Back Catalog

As I mentioned earlier, my wife and I both have Kindles, and associated Amazon accounts. Since we have several devices each now that tie into said accounts, we decided to each use one of our devices (in my case, my Android phone) to access the other's Amazon accounts. Since sharing Kindle books is not particularly intuitive, it seemed the easiest way for me to read, say, Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series, and for my wife to (eventually) read The Dresden Files.

So - another urban fantasy/paranormal romance quick list. These are the books that I've read from her account:

• Soulless, Gail Carriger
• Blameless, Gail Carriger
• Changeless, Gail Carriger
• Heartless, Gail Carriger
• Moon Called, Patricia Briggs
• Blood Bound, Patricia Briggs
• Iron Kissed, Patricia Briggs
• Bone Crossed, Patricia Briggs
• Silver Borne, Patricia Briggs
• River Marked, Patricia Briggs
• Alpha and Omega, Patricia Briggs
• Cry Wolf, Patricia Briggs
• Hunting Ground, Patricia Briggs
• Magic Bites, Ilona Andrews
• Magic Burns, Ilona Andrews
• Magic Strikes, Ilona Andrews
• Magic Bleeds, Ilona Andrews
• Agatha H and the Airship City, Phil & Kaja Foglio
• Hexed, Kevin Hearne
• Hounded, Kevin Hearne
• Hammered, Kevin Hearne
• Tempest Rising, Nicole Peeler
• Tracking the Tempest, Nicole Peeler
• Tempest's Legacy, Nicole Peeler
• Eye of the Tempest, Nicole

Plus three of the Sookie Stackhouse True Blood novels, which series I've given up on. Can't stand the main character, so why waste time reading her story?

How-To Books

So this weekend, I finished up reading The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing a Novel, by Thomas Monteleone, and purchased Stephen King's On Writing. And then proceeded to read all of On Writing on Sunday evening. 

I heard about Monteleone's book from Mario Acevedo at MileHiCon 2011 - Monteleone was one of Acevedo's instructors, and his book does have a lot of very practical advice, not only on the craft of writing, but on the business of writing (which is just as important, if one plans to make any money from one's prose). Stephen King's book, in turn, was mentioned by Monteleone as another good resource, and was also recommended by a friend of mine who is willing to be one of my early readers (in exchange for me providing a similar service). So far, so good...

I'm finding that reading about the process of writing is fairly interesting, though I suspect I'll have the same problem writing as I do with any other hobby - making time to do it regularly. It's one thing I'm seeing in every interview, blog post, or book on the craft of writing - regular practice and time management are critical in developing one's talent/skill. And time management is not high on my list of skills - it may be time to do something about that.

More Literary Popcorn

Still working out how to label things for future reference, sorting, etc - but "popcorn books" is definitely going into the mix. An awful lot of fiction writing is, for me, the equivalent of popcorn - I can chew through a ridiculous amount of written material (with a high degree of comprehension and retention) very quickly, if it's well-written, engaging, or otherwise fun to read. If it's highly technical, I can still get through it, but getting the data into short-term (and then long-term) memory takes some effort - and if it's just turgid, dull, or hard to "identify with" (I hate the phrase, but I haven't yet come up with a better one), I'll just give up (like I did on the True Blood series, whose protagonist has me rolling my eyes every couple of chapters).

So - this weekend, my popcorn bucket included the Nice Girls novels, written by Molly Harper - Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs, Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men, and Nice Girls Don't Live Forever. They cross the line into Paranormal Romance, with not only a romance arc to each book, but an overarching romantic arc across all three (and a lot of loose ends tied up neatly in the third) - but they're still a lot of fun to read, even as a not terribly romantically-minded guy (INTP for those who buy into Meyers-Briggs typing). I'll probably plow through her Naked Werewolf series over the next couple of days, and then I'll be relaxed enough for another foray into Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.

Working Backwards: The Dresden Files

I've set up a list of current books I'm reading (technically, there are more than three, but the other one I've actually started reading is for research purposes, and I've put that particular project on hold for a little while), but I'd also like to start listing the other books I've read recently. My wife and I picked up Kindle readers this year (after using the free software on our various phones and computers), so I'll probably start with the titles I've read there, along with the books we picked up on our vacation trip to DC this summer.

So - first up is the entire run of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novels, plus the short story collection:

1. Storm Front
2. Fool Moon
3. Grave Peril
4. Summer Knight
5. Death Masks
6. Blood Rites
7. Dead Beat
8. Proven Guilty
9. White Night
10. Small Favor
11. Turn Coat
12. Changes
13. Ghost Story
14. Side Jobs (short stories)

I chewed through these pretty quickly - Butcher's protagonist, Harry Dresden, is a fun character to read. The series is selling well enough that Butcher can get away with cliffhanger endings (at least on the last 2 novels), so I'm looking at the short-lived TV series to fill in part of the gap while I wait for the 14th novel.

Raison d'Etre

I was going to add "Books I'm Reading" to my general Steampunk blog, but as my reading interests are

1. not restricted to Victorian SF, Steampunk stories, or even fiction in general
2. crossing over with a developing interest in actually writing (beyond the blogs)

I figured that I'd split the literary stuff off into a separate blog area.

Mostly, I'd like to start tracking what I'm reading, with notes and general impressions, and I'd like to have a central place to put any other musings on lit, writing, etc.  So here it is...