Black Gate

Blood of Ambrose has been out for a while now and it’s starting to be reviewed, rather generously on the whole (a not-uncommon reception for first novels, so I’m trying not to be an egomaniac about it). The reviews somehow make the publication more real to Enge-the-reader (as opposed to Enge-the-writer; these guys aren’t usually on speaking terms). I was looking at the review in Romantic Times Book Review and found myself wondering whether I should trust the reviewer’s judgement and buy the book, when I realized that there were already a few copies of the thing scattered around the house. Presumably these surreal “oh, yeah, that’s me” events will taper off after a while.

I’ve been bracing myself for the inevitable Memo to Morlock: YOU SUCK!!!! sort of review. It’s axiomatic that snarling at critics just makes the writer look worse, so I’m trying to figure out in advance ways that I can cope. (We’ve all seen how these things go. The writer begins by politely justifying his use of colons on p. 58, and before long the whole business resembles an informal colonoscopy of a wholly different sort.) Coincidentally, I ran across a link to this essay on “How to Handle Criticism” (mentioned, with comments, by Jeremiah Tolbert here).

Both of these guys have good advice, but they don’t touch on a potential coping mechanism: pay close attention to how better writers have been slagged in the past; it lends a certain perspective. And, as it happens, I was recently reading an old issue of The New Yorker (1926 vintage) where I came across a dismissive review of a book that some people (including me) still sort of like and which, unlike many a book published in 1926 (or for that matter 2006) is still in print: Dunsany’s The Charwoman’s Shadow.

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Last week I had no figures at hand regarding children and teen reading rates. A 2007 National Endowment of the Humanities report on the topic is available here in pdf format (number 47). The short version is that the reading rate is not declining for children, but that as teenagers increasing numbers of kids stop reading. The 20-page executive summary does not define what they mean by “literary reading,” but in the summary for report 46, it’s given as “The reading of novels, short stories, poetry, or drama in any print format, including the Internet. Any type was admitted, from romance novels to classical poetry.”

Also, I inadvertently posted an outdated bestseller list. Here is the most recent PW children’s fiction list online; the ABA’s indie children’s bestseller lists overlap but are not identical. Both are heavily weighted toward fantasy, and this is even more true of the series lists.

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Yesterday (my yesterday; I’m 8 hours ahead of EST) Theo asked about subgenre preferences. I write in several different subgenres ranging from mythological fantasy to hard sf, and all writing is difficult, as far as I’m concerned. I do think there are differences, but first, a quibble, terminological or semantic as you prefer: all fiction is fantasy. Those of us of Indoeuropean linguistic and cultural affiliation participate in a set of related literary traditions who knows how many millennia deep, in which there are major narrative genres consisting of stories not considered true. This isn’t so in all other parts of the world. …

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I live about a half hour from the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia, where the spring season opens with interrelated performances of Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead, which features two minor characters from Shakespeare in Godot-like circumstances. If you’ve never seen the Stoppard, there’s a movie version from 1990 featuring Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfuss. (and if you’ve never seen Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, get thee hither to Netflix.) Shakespeare, of course, was a great fantasist, and is himself sometimes a character in  reimaginings of his historical period, if not outright fantasies involving a cast of faeries and ghosts.  Harry Turteldove, he of vast historical reimaginings, has a story up at Tor.com which imagines a future acting troupe that is somehow transported to Shakespeare’s time and puts on a performance of Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead. It’s an amusing tale that sets you up for a half-expected punchline, but anyone interested in Shakespeare or theater or absurdism will appreciate the jokes.  And, since it is a fantasy, I won’t even complain that Shakespeare would no more understand modern English than the players from the future would be able to converse with true Elizabethan accents.

First, something which might seem like a naked shameless plug, but which is in fact a plug modestly garbed in news that might be of interest to Black Gate readers. As part of the run-up to the release of Blood of Ambrose, Pyr has put the complete text of a couple of Morlock stories on their “Sample Chapters” blog: “A Book of Silences”, which originally appeared in Black Gate 10, and a new novelette-length sequel, “Fire and Sleet”. Read and enjoy; no salesman will call. Send before midnight.

Anyway.

After several weeks of reviewing Nebula nominees, I was somewhat at a loss in trying to figure out what I should write about this week. Mulling it over, I decided I should publicly commit heresy.

My heterodoxy (not as interesting as it sounds): I believe that adjectives and adverbs are good things. Not just good things, in fact, but essential.

More shocking confessions beyond the jump.

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There’s recently been a bit of discussion here about kids reading sf/f. I spent some time this morning looking up sales figures for children’s and YA speculative fiction, to discover that the most detailed information is in market reports that you have to pay for. Still, a few points.

First, no argument that gaming is a huge and growing market. I recall hearing recently that it has now surpassed movies in the entertainment hierarchy, but whether this was in terms of total dollars or percentage of people who consume, I can’t now remember.

The percentage of kids who read is still in decline, though I haven’t seen recent figures. As population grows, the total number of kids who read seems to be going up, however, or the kids who do read are reading more, as book sales are rising.

“In recent years, children’s books have emerged as a welcome bright spot in the world of general bookselling”; children’s books are helping to keep indy bookstores afloat.

And here is relatively recent publishing market data: “Total unit sales fell 6.7% in the week ended Dec. 7, 2008, compared to the week ended Dece. 9, 2007, according to BookScan. The adult segment had the worst week; adult nonfiction units were off 20.9% at the outlets that report data to BookScan. Juvenile fiction continued to be the strongest segment, with units up 24.1%.”

The most recent overview I could find was a couple of years old; the gist is that kids are not getting tired of fantasy and in fact are demanding more. “HarperCollins children’s publisher Susan Katz points out what she sees as a key difference. ‘It’s not our experience that the kids are saturated [with fantasy],’ she says. ‘It’s more that book buyers are.'”

The most recent children’s bestseller lists show a bunch of fantasy titles in every number category. …

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Apologies to David Soyka and all for posting off my usual day, but I thought I should keep finish what I started (for once in my life). It’s been a busy week, but I did finally manage to acquire and read the remaining Nebula-nominated novels.

And I’m glad to say that my preliminary generalization in the first installment of this post holds up: these books are not all created equal, but they are, in their way, all worthwhile reads. And none of them is genre-lite. Space squids could get freaked out reading some of this stuff.

Below the jump you’ll find the usual what-passes-for-thoughts.

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