Archive for the ‘Book Promotion’ Category
It’s been a little more than 13 years since I self-published Mr. Olcott’s Skies, my amateur astronomy memoir. Since then, I’ve released 18 titles of various lengths, most of them full-length novels. Over that time I’ve changed as a writer – for the better, I’d like to think – and expanded my reach beyond the sci-fi genre with gratifying results. In June of this year, I celebrated the 13th anniversary of my first novel, The Luck of Han’anga (Book One of the War of the Second Iteration), by marking down all my work to a mere 99¢. My 13th year, in a month with a Friday the 13th – it seemed like a can’t-miss promotional activity. And it worked pretty well. Books were sold, more than five hundred all together – not bad at all for a month in which sales are usually very low.
It’s been a little more than 13 years since I self-published Mr. Olcott’s Skies, my amateur astronomy memoir. Since then, I’ve released 18 titles of various lengths, most of them full-length novels. Over that time I’ve changed as a writer – for the better, I’d like to think – and expanded my reach beyond the sci-fi genre with gratifying results. In June of this year, I celebrated the 13th anniversary of my first novel, The Luck of Han’anga (Book One of the War of the Second Iteration), by marking down all my work to a mere 99¢. My 13th year, in a month with a Friday the 13th – it seemed like a can’t-miss promotional activity. And it worked pretty well. Books were sold, more than five hundred all together – not bad at all for a month in which sales are usually very low.
The promotion was also something of an eye-opener. Of the sci-fi and fantasy titles that sold, the overwhelming majority were books two through five of the War of the Second Iteration series, with a handful of the coda Where a Demon Hides and the standalone novel All That Bedevils Us. Book One of the series, mentioned above, barely achieved double-digit sales. The only way to interpret that, really, is that a crowd of existing readers, who have over the years picked up that first book, decided to commit to the rest of the series when the price made that choice extra attractive. A good thing or a bad thing? I’m not sure it can be characterized clearly as one or the other. For the record, I’m delighted that so many readers have decided to commit to reading all five books, and that does raise the hope that they’ll go on to the two follow-ups, and possibly the unrelated titles. But that realization, that this large-scale reduction in price didn’t actually bring in a lot of new readers, did trigger an assessment of where things stand.
The result of that accounting wasn’t exactly encouraging, and came at an unfortunate time.
The writing year started out on an awkward note when the annual accounting revealed that book sales the previous year had fallen off considerably (I just broke even on expenses). The current year has shown little promise of reversing that trend. And then the current work in progress ran off the rails. It’s the third book in the Children of Rost’aht tetralogy, and its plot unfolds at the same time as the second book, The Best Laid Plans. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned out to be a much larger challenge than I expected (thus rendering the title of Book Two somewhat ironic). As I was working my way through this unexpected problem, news came of Meta stealing a vast library of books to train its so-called AI chatbot. Nor was the Meta theft an isolated incident. All these books were scraped from a pirate site that I thought had been shut down. Three of my books turned up in the database provided by The Atlantic and I have no reason to doubt that more – if not all – of my books have been used for AI training by Meta and its competitors. It seems to be S.O.P. to use pirate sites for chatbot “training,” to avoid at least getting permission from authors. Book piracy is an unfortunate fact of life, and one that is rarely open to permanent resolution, but being reminded of it in such a blatant fashion was unpleasant, especially considering the other ongoing matters.
So, the realization that my best efforts at book promotion were not doing much to increase readership, absolutely necessary to increase book sales, on top of these other situations, opened that box in my brain labeled Self Doubt. It’s the sort of realization that leads to heavy drinking and/or a change in life goals. Well, as it happens, I’m a cheap drunk, and I’ve never known drowning my sorrows to be very effective – the bastards being such strong swimmers. And I already know that giving up writing will do me far more harm than excessive alcohol consumption.
I never expected to find myself facing a “where do I go from here?” situation on the threshold of my seventh decade of life.
And yet – here I am, still working on that troublesome Book Three, pleased to find that it has finally developed a life of its own and is developing as I’d originally hoped. The breakthrough, when it came, provided a huge boost to my morale. Also, here I am sending out a new weblog essay. In other words, I’m still writing. And you might very well wonder why. What could possibly keep someone motivated to write, under such circumstances?
In her introduction to Bird By Bird (a book absolutely all writers should read), Anne Lamott provides the answer to that question; I’ve never seen it stated more clearly. “Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do – the actual act of writing – turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.”
Every time I reread that passage, the truth of it rings more clearly. I write because it’s what I do. It’s too much a part of who I am to ever really give it up. If the words of Ms. Lamott don’t ring true for you as well, are you really a writer? It’s the truth for me, and so my answer was, and remains, yes.
So, about June…
Thirteen years ago this month I published The Luck of Han’anga, my first self-published novel. In the years that have passed since then, others have followed. I had no idea what I was getting into when I started. I had no expectations of either success or failure. The experience has been, by turns both, incredibly frustrating and deeply rewarding. And for all that it’s been more than a decade, now, it feels like I’m just getting started.
Something about this thirteenth anniversary coming in a month containing a Friday the 13th gave me an idea. How about a “Lucky 13” sale? Why not, indeed? Which is why all my books are priced at 99¢ each for the duration of this month.
Yes, all through the month of June.
Lucky you!
Imagine for a moment that you’ve recently climbed a long, steep mountain trail. At the top of that mountain you gazed out over the world below, filled with a deep sense of satisfaction that made your physical weariness worth all the trouble you experienced on the way up. You set yourself the goal to make this difficult climb, and it proved even more of a challenge than you ever imagined it could be. But you kept climbing until you were at the top. You’ve accomplished a thing not everyone can do. You climbed that mountain.
The next day, at a party, you meet a person proudly showing off pictures of that same lofty view. This person impresses the crowd by reciting numbers regarding the steepness of the slopes, the altitude of the summit, and what the view from the top revealed of the world. But this person didn’t hike the trail, much less scramble up and over the steeper, rockier portions. They bought a ticket from a helicopter tour company that flew them to the summit, and then back down. You’re prepared to shrug it off – to each their own, right? But then that person claims to be a mountaineer, just like you. When you point out the obvious difference between a mountain climber and a tourist buying a helicopter ticket, the reaction is filled with lame rationalizations as this person tries to make their accomplishment somehow equal to yours. What difference does it make, they eventually insist, how you reach the summit? You got there; that’s all that matters, right? The work and effort you put into your experience of the actual climb means nothing to this pretender.
As if this isn’t bad enough, there are people at the party who actually agree with this point of view. To them, you aren’t a successful mountain climber. You’re a braggart.
Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? Welcome to the world of the honest storyteller in the age of so-called “AI.”
The last time I wrote on this subject, I was asked what exactly I had against the idea of artificial intelligence. The truth is, I have nothing against artificial intelligence at all. I think meeting and interacting with such a being would be a fascinating experience. But so far as I know, the event called the “singularity” by researchers in that field has not yet occurred. Or if it has, the entity that evolved from it is quite wisely maintaining a low profile. Consider the popular assumptions regarding the likely results of such an emergence. Would you be in a hurry to announce your existence to a world that assumes you mean to destroy it? What we have, instead, are sophisticated machine-learning systems capable of manipulating and connecting data in extraordinary ways, and presenting the results (in certain applications) in a manner that effectively mimics human communication. These systems have enormous potential to aid such endeavors as science and medicine, and I surely have no qualms about their application in such fields.
But some of the systems popularly termed “AI,” and being marketed for public consumption, are quite another matter. My anger (let’s call it what it is) is directed at the misapplication of these tools. Generative AI systems are being used by writer-wannabes to avoid the considerable work and time involved with learning to write readable fiction.
I’ve lost track of the number of people I’ve met, in the twelve years since I first self-published, who decided to give writing a try – and then expressed utter dismay at how hard it is. Reading a book gives the false impression that it’s all just a matter of laying out the words, and spelling them correctly. That the book was the result of a year or more (often much more) of dedicated effort, during which it existed as a rough draft that would be no fun at all to read, is invisible to the average reader. It isn’t until you decide to start following such a path yourself that you realize, and perhaps appreciate, how steep the mountain before you really is. You soon doubt both your ability to stay on that trail, and your sanity for even trying in the first place.
Many people, in this age of direct-to-readers self-publishing, seem to find the need to climb that mountain offensive. Publishing a book is so automated it takes very little effort to do so. It just seems wrong that the writing part should be such a painful and frustrating slog. This is especially true of those who have been misled into thinking of writing as a sort of side-hustle that can yield easy money. Surely we’re entitled to an easier way to get this thing done?
There is no easier way. All truly creative endeavors are the result of melding human knowledge, experience, and imagination into a form that can be shared with others through a combination of hard-won talent and willingness to work toward the desired result. Writing is no exception to this truth. But this is not what you get when you tell a so-called AI that you want a plot or story start that involves certain elements of your preferred genre of fiction. The machine will consider all the fiction it has scanned (sometimes illegally) that meets the user’s parameters, and cobble together something that fits the general formula for that genre. It really doesn’t matter how you use what it gives you. There was no creative effort from you to get this started, no exercise of the imagination that draws on a lifetime of experience, or a skilled effort applied after years of practice. What you’ve been given, with little or no effort on your part, are words and patterns absorbed by an algorithm, from stories someone else actually wrote once upon a time.
By the way, I am well aware of the ironic roll self-publishing plays here. Would we be having this discussion if publishing your own book could only be done the old-school way, requiring a publishing company and a contract? I don’t believe so. Irony, indeed, that the very thing that opened the door for my own work – and is still considered by many publishers to be cheating – has made so-called AI a viable product for those who want to have been a writer.
I write these words with a certain sense of resignation. I’m not so naïve as to believe my expressions of ire will stop people from cheating with AI, whether in the arts or in other fields. I doubt there’s ever been, in all of history, an innovation that wasn’t misapplied in some way. This one just happens to hit close to home. But I am what I am, a storyteller and a writer, things I can’t live without. Like our imaginary mountain climber, planning his next conquest in spite of what he experienced at that party, all I can do is to go on writing the tales I have to tell. I will always do so to the best of my ability, without input from machine-learning algorithms. That’s a promise. Every project I’ve taken on has challenged me, and never in the same way twice, but having climbed that mountain a dozen times now, I know I don’t need to cheat.
No, this writing thing isn’t easy, not at all. But it’s always worth it.
Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh, Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1982
There was a time when I made a point of reading Hugo Award winners as soon as a given year’s WorldCon results were announced. (Assuming I hadn’t already read that book – which was a rare thing.) That’s a habit I’ve lost over the past twenty or so years, and with a very few exceptions, I haven’t really been keeping up. But in the late 1970s, and all through the 1980s, I picked up copies of Hugo winners as soon as I could after the awards were made.
Award-winning novels did not, of course, make up the bulk of my sci-fi and fantasy reading. I was also, in that time period, beginning to pick up on authors I would follow through the years to come. This was facilitated by a relocation from a small town, with no bookstores in easy reach, to a major metropolitan area that held many such establishments. And so I was better able to indulge my appetite for fiction. Of the authors I discovered as a result of this easier access, few have provided me with as many enjoyable reads as C.J. Cherryh. I read Gate of Ivrel the year DAW Books published it, and in quick succession read Well of Shiuan, Fires of Azeroth, and The Faded Sun Trilogy. The author’s writing style and detailed depictions of exotic civilizations and their peoples had a very strong appeal, and so I was willing to take a chance on a new and longer work by this author when it became available. That’s how I came to read Downbelow Station before it won its Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1982.
Downbelow Station raised my interest in C.J. Cherryh’s work to a new level. The prologue that sets the stage reads like an excellent bit of narrative history – a genre of nonfiction that has always appealed to me. The story launches from those pages with an immediacy that drops the reader straight into the tension-filled plot while introducing the main characters as they each deal with a sudden, and then rapidly worsening, situation. The war between the Earth Company and the colonial worlds and stations of Union – which has raged for many decades – is coming to an end. The fleet of warships loyal to the Earth Company are too few in number to win, and Union is poised for victory. Star stations belonging to the Company are falling to Union, generating a flood of refugees for whom Pell Station (orbiting Pell’s World) is a final, if desperate, last stop. The station, overburdened by this sudden increase in population, is pushed to its limits. To make matters worse, the Company ship that led the refugees in warns of more to come. Each major character is introduced during this massive surge of refugees, their roles and respective subplots established, and the story expands from the event of arrival and the unrest it immediately creates.
The multiple subplots never lose sight of each other, and the pacing is carefully balanced between rapid action and introspection. The characters are believable, and their actions and reactions drive the braid of subplots that combine to create the overall tale. Complications increase as the overall plot pushes the characters into ever more dire situations, creating a conflict that appears irresolvable. And yet, there is a resolution, one that not only makes sense but lays the groundwork for the many novels that have since been set in the Alliance-Union universe for which this author is so well known.
More than most of the Hugo winners I’ve discussed here, rereading this book really took me back to that time when science fiction was more than just escapism for me. It was more of a way of life, and had become the keystone of my social life, associated as I was with fannish groups in the Phoenix metro area. I was even involved, in a small way, with the running of a local sci-fi convention. In 1981, I found myself volunteering to be overnight security for the dealer’s room of this “con.” This involved spending the night in the room housing the various tables and their wares, a task that appealed because I couldn’t afford a room at the hotel. I first read Downbelow Station – almost all of it in the two nights I was needed as a guardian – instead of sleeping on the row of chairs that I was instructed to put in a line just inside the door to block entry. It was assumed that I’d stretch out and sleep there, or at least doze. It was, as I recall, the only way in or out of the room, so any thief would need to fall over me to get in. Sleep? I wasn’t even comfortable enough to doze very often. So I left a light on and read. The book with me was Downbelow Station.
When the event was over, the first thing I did was finish reading that book. Afterward, I recommended it so often I drove a few friends to distraction. (The tables were turned, a couple of years later, when one of these friends discovered Startide Rising by David Brin, and just would not stop talking about it.) Only a few months passed before I read it again, when in 1982, it won the Hugo Award for best novel. I was enormously pleased to see that a book that had hooked me so solidly took top honors that year.
In the decades since, the period during which I was so active as a fan has become a source of (mostly) pleasant memories. Except for participation as an author guest at local Tucson and Phoenix conventions, and a WesterCon held in Tempe a few years ago, I’ve left that part of my life behind. Rereading this particular Hugo Winner brought that time back to life for me, even as I enjoyed rediscovering the book that turned an interest in an author’s work into something more like admiration. Science fiction has seen few authors who have been as prolific, or produced such consistently fine work. And fewer still that I follow to the extent of buying and reading every book, as soon as it’s available. Downbelow Station found in me a reader, and turned me into a fan.
TusCon 50, November 10, 11, 12, 2023. Tucson, Arizona.
Friday, Nov. 10th
I will, indeed, be a participant in this year’s TusCon event. Below you will find my official schedule. In between these times, to quote the wizard, expect me when you see me.
No official functions on day one. I’ll be here and there, attending the odd panel discussion (the odder they are the more likely you’ll find me there). Also likely to be in the vicinity of the Dealer’s Room, where Mostly Books will have some of my books available for sale.
Unfortunately, the one thing I’m not doing this year is setting up a telescope. There’s apparently no place to do so at this location.
Saturday, Nov. 11th
Autograph Session #1
11:00 am to 12:00 pm at the designated Autograph Area, in the company of fellow participants Curt Booth, J.L. Doty, Mona Ventress, William Herr, and Robert Kurtzman. I’ll sign books, program guides, and the free stuff I’ll have with me. Almost anything that will take the ink from a ball point pen. I draw the line at body parts that require public disrobing. Don’t go there.
Kill your darlings. How do you keep character death meaningful?
In the Ballroom from 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm. “There are good ways to kill your characters. And there are bad ways to kill your characters. Come learn some of the best ways to kill your characters.” That’s how the program guide describes this one. So come and learn how writers kill, and why. In a fictional sense, I mean. Don’t be afraid, we won’t hurt anyone. Promise. Sharing this panel with Diana Terrill Clark, Marsheila Rockwell, Yvonne Navarro, Frankie Robertson, and Cynthia Ward.
Getting to Know your Characters.
In Panel Room #1 from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm. From the program guide, “Who is your hero really? Does he vibe at all with the person you think he’s going to hook up with in the 3rd act? And why is he opposing your villain? And speaking of your villain…” Some insights into how we create the characters that populate our fiction. How we make these imaginary people seem real? And why do we need that resemblance is coincidental caveat at the beginnings of our books? In the company of Catherine Wells, Jay Smith, and William Herr.
Sunday, Nov. 12th
Thomas Watson Reading
In Panel Room #2 from 10:00 am to 11:00 am. No, you will not be sitting in a room watching me read. That would be weird. I’ll be reading something out loud. Something I wrote, of course. Could be almost anything, really. After more than ten years of writing and publishing fiction, there’s certainly plenty to choose from. And that’s a thought that makes this author smile.
In an effort to increase the availability of my books in eBook format, I have now made most of them available through Google Play. Because their website does not effectively segregate my work from another author of the same name – an English preacher who has been dead for 337 years – searching for my books by author name is an effort in futility. You can search by each title, but it would be more convenient to have all the links available in one place. So, if you’re in the habit of reading on your phone and buy books through Google Play, allow me relieve you of the need to search for mine at all. A list of links follows.
The Astronomy Memoirs
Mr. Olcott’s Skies: An Old Book and a Youthful Obsession
Tales of a Three-legged Newt: Essays and Anecdotes for Amateur Astronomers
War of the Second Iteration
The Luck of Han’anga
Founders’ Effect
The Plight of the Eli’ahtna
The Courage to Accept
Setha’im Prosh
Tales from the Second Iteration
Where A Demon Hides: War of the Second Iteration – Coda
All That Bedevils Us
The Chimera Multiverse
The Gryphon Stone
The Lesson of Almiraya Bay
Fantasy
Variation on a Theme
Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1981
History is a pageant of changes, recorded both in the events that create and drive those changes, and in the lives of the people caught up in them. Some of the changes are cyclic, and some are one and done; some of those can break the cycles. I’m a sometime student of history, and one of my favorite nonfiction genres is narrative history. A good narrative history details the events recorded and the changes that come in their wake, but goes further by depicting in detail the lives of those associated with the events. These are stories of people who are in equal measure caught up in and driving the events that we call history. I find such narratives compelling.
This interest in the cycles of history may explain why The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge held my attention as strongly as it did. A novel, and definitely not a future narrative history, it still detailed a story of changes, both cyclic and a one-off event destined to alter that cycle. Strongly character-driven, the tale is centered on the people coping with changes, some of them devastating, in a world as clearly realized as any depiction of our own world you might find in a narrative history. In much the same way as a well-told narrative history, I found this novel to be a compelling read. Of the Hugo Award winners I’ve read so far, this one really stands out.
Set on a world called Tiamat, a world with more ocean than land (the name is that of a sea goddess from Babylonian mythology), the story is of a cyclic change that occurs every century and a half. Other worlds have access to Tiamat through a stargate created by a black hole. When Tiamat’s star system is positioned just right, the gate works, and this access exists for 150 years. Following this period is one of equal length during which the world is lost to the rest of interstellar civilization. Two human cultures exist on Tiamat: the technology-dependent Winters, who control things when the planet is open to the off-world visitors who provide the technology, and the low-tech Summers, who according to tradition take over when access is cut off. To maintain control of Tiamat and its resources when that world is next open to them, the off-worlders have rigged the tech tools they provide to essentially self-destruct during the time the Summers rule. The change from Winter to Summer rule involves an ancient ritual, involving the sacrifice of the Winter queen to the sea when her Summer counterpart ascends.
The current queen intends to change this cycle, seeking a way to keep the technological tools running and herself on the throne – and among the living. That plan becomes ensnared in schemes involving interstellar smugglers, a belief system among Summers regarding their goddess, people called sybils who are flesh-and-blood data delivery systems, and a native species that is harvested for its blood. A drug is refined from the bodily fluids of these creatures that can extend a human’s life almost indefinitely. The drug is at the heart of all the character motivations, one way or another. Few things are as they seem, and if they are, they don’t stay that way for long. And just when you think things couldn’t get worse for the protagonists, they do. I was guessing at where this was all going down to the last handful of chapters, and when I had it figured out, I wasn’t quite right.
The Snow Queen is a wonderful example of what, in science fiction and fantasy writing, we call world building. As measured in terms of depth and detail, it’s right there with Frank Herbert’s Dune. There is a large cast of characters from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, with both characters and cultures clearly developed and believable. The ocean-dominated world of Tiamat, much like the world-encompassing deserts of Arrakis, is very much a character in its own right.
Like the world they inhabit, the characters in the story have depth and complexity that make them believable, however extraordinary their circumstances. There are no clear stereotypes. The heroes are ordinary mortals, flawed without always being actually dysfunctional. And the chief villain isn’t exactly a truly evil person, incapable of love or compassion, but someone caught between the contradictory motives of preserving her culture and saving her own life. The combination of pacing, world building, and character-driven plot makes this a story that deserves to be a classic of the genre. The ending satisfies, even if it puts a chill up your spine at times. And while there are enough questions unresolved at the end to justify the sequel Vinge wrote, I didn’t feel as if the ending dangled there, awaiting a true resolution.
It all adds up to a story that I will pick up and reread someday, after I’ve read its sequels. I’ve read Hugo winners that had me wondering “What were they thinking, voting for this one?” But not this time. Had I been given a vote to cast in 1981, I would quite likely have cast it for this book. I can say that in all honesty, having read the other nominees for that year. All were very good. The Snow Queen was extraordinary.
Let’s get something clear right from the start. This thing they call Artificial Intelligence, currently being discussed and promoted in a big way? It’s a misapplication of the term. These systems are not conscious entities, certainly not in the HAL 9000 or SkyNet science fictional sense. To the best of my understanding these are machine learning algorithms, designed to respond to requests in ways that mimic human interactions. They search the vast online resources out there, do so in an astonishingly short amount of time, and come up with a response that meets the criteria set by the user. That response is given in a way that reads (or sounds) like something almost human. AI systems get better at this the more often they’re used, and in that sense, at least, they do learn.
They respond according to their programming which, to be honest, is almost mind-boggling in its sophistication and ability. But Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term that has been appropriated by those who see “gold in them thar hills.” It serves them well as a marketing buzzword. These systems are not intelligent in the sense of being capable of independent thought, which would make it possible for them to be creative. (Not yet, anyway.) They don’t think. They don’t create. They harvest, organize, and present information in what seems a personable manner. They are computer tools to be used – or misused.
And misused they will be. Nothing special about AI as far as this goes. It’s a short list that contains only technologies that have never lent themselves to abuse. It always comes around to whether or not the risks inherent in deliberate misuse of technology outweigh the benefits. With AI this remains to be seen, although there certainly are signs of trouble ahead. One example, relevant to what I do, is the application of so-called AI to the world of writing.
While I believe that a time will come when true AI “wakes up” and develops its own sort of awareness and creativity, I don’t see it happening in the immediate future. The idea that a machine of any sort will be able to do what I do, and do it well enough to compete effectively with flesh-and-blood writers, while not entirely far-fetched, doesn’t worry me. These systems, when asked to start a story or write an essay, sift the virtual world and cobble together things found out there to fit the request. They create nothing new in the process. I don’t see the novelist or short story writer being replaced any time soon by such systems.
What I do see happening, with ever increasing frequency, is the use of so-called AI to “aid” the writing process. I’ve heard of writers who, for various reasons, have turned to these augmented search engines for story ideas, opening paragraphs (and even chapters), and for evaluation of stylistic elements in their writing. All of this is done to make the process easier or more efficient, or to save money by eliminating editorial expenses. Such use is frequently described as being on par with the employment of grammar programs. Some of those experimenting with AI seem to be looking for a way to jump-start a writing career that has faltered, for whom motivation has been undermined by a lack of success as defined by book sales. Such a measure of success is an expectation too many aspiring writers carry into their effort right from the beginning. Lack of fulfillment of this expectation is understandably frustrating, and that frustration can suppress the motivation to write.
For some, this use of AI might turn out to be just what they need to regain their motivation and start writing again. Having your personal well of inspiration cease to generate story ideas must be a horrible feeling. If AI helps someone to bounce back from such a dry spell, it could be considered an example of proper use of the technology, and it would be hard to hold that use against them. But to my mind, the current application of AI to get the actual work of writing done amounts to a steep and slippery slope. For no matter what “tools” you employ to make writing seem easier, the problem of finding and cultivating readers will not change. And it is this problem, more than anything else, that interferes with commercial success. Finding an “easier” way to write fiction will surely create a temptation in some to let the machine do ever more of the writer’s work, possibly increasing their productivity, but with a decline in quality. This is already happening; as a result, a few short fiction and poetry periodicals are now closed to unsolicited work because they are being inundated by lackluster, machine-generated material. If this trend continues, the independent book-publishing world risks being swamped as well, as increasing numbers of frustrated writers release books they have “written” using AI. Books that are, to an ever-increasing degree, the work of machine learning systems that become more adept at imitating human expression with each iteration – books with stories lacking the spark of true creativity that gives good fiction its emotional power.
Even if human readers of fiction recognize the soullessness of such material, there’s nothing to stop it from being published and promoted. The market is already seriously over-saturated as it is, and piling more – possibly substandard – books into the mix will help no one, writers or readers. This, more than the possibility that a machine might replace me, gives me nightmares.
For my own part, I won’t be using these so-called AI tools in my writing. This isn’t a purely ethical decision on my part. I won’t be tempted to try the AI writing tricks I see ever more people embracing because I don’t find them useful. Coming up with ideas or story starts? Seriously, I’ll die of old age before I run out of story ideas. As for reducing the “grunt work” involved with writing (whatever it is people really mean by the phrase), I enjoy the actual process of writing too much for that to have any appeal. And I don’t believe for a moment that AI can edit a book for me as effectively as a human being. So, when you read a story or a book by me (or even a weblog essay), you can be assured it was produced by 100% organic methods.
Sorry about that, HAL.
I was once told, by a reader, that she was not going to read any further into the War of the Second Iteration series because the second book – Founders’ Effect – had ended in a cliffhanger. She loathed cliffhangers, considering them a cheap way to insure that readers went on to the next book. Instead of seeming defensive of my writing style, I observed that she must not be a fan of Tolkien. This comment produced a puzzled frown. The Lord of the Rings, as it happened, was one of her favorite works. And so I reminded her of the last line of The Two Towers: “Frodo was alive, but taken by the enemy.” A valiant effort was then made by the reader to tweak the definition of “cliffhanger” to exclude its use by Tolkien. The effort was abandoned when the ending of the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back came into the conversation. (A third party in the discussion pointed to similarities between the ending of my book and that film.)
To be sure, there are cliffhangers and there are cliffhangers. Like any technique applied to writing fiction (and here I am speaking of the creation of a multibook series) cliffhangers can be use well or badly. A good cliffhanger actually ends a story, providing closure for that portion of the story arc of the series. The characters are in a bad spot, but you close the book (or watch the credits roll) with at least some clue as to where things are going. You know Samwise is going to go after Frodo, and that Han Solo’s friends will not abandon him. This is exactly what I was trying to do at the end of Founders’ Effect. Apparently most readers have found my use of a cliffhanger in that book acceptable. According to the sales of the remainder of the series, better than 90% of the people who read Founders’ Effect go on to read the next three books.
I find that cliffhangers, like adverbs and adjectives, are best used sparingly, but not necessarily avoided entirely. As a reader, I’m not usually troubled by them. If the writer displayed enough skill to keep my attention all the way to the last page of the book, a cliffhanger at the end will more than likely have been handled properly. (The story has ended – but wait! There’s more! And I want more.) If the writer isn’t sufficiently skilled at this art to hold me all the way through a book – well, in that case, how the story ends would be a moot point. Very rarely, I find myself at the end of a book in a series that feels as if an arbitrary page limit had been reached. Something bad happens, the heroes are imperiled, and it just dangles there. I find that annoying as a reader, and I’m aware that it happens often enough to give the concept of a cliffhanger a bad reputation.
As a writer, aware of how badly readers might react to a clunky cliffhanger ending, few techniques I use cause me as much second-guessing. Does this segment of the overall series story arc really end here, in this deep pit of adversity currently occupied by the characters? Or would the larger story be better served by a resolution here, in this volume, that sets up the next book? In other words, does ending the book at this point, with the protagonist tied to the proverbial railroad tracks, actually make sense? In approaching such a decision, I’m usually going more on gut feelings than some sort of nuts-and-bolts analysis. A story has a way of evolving what I like to call an internal logic, a pattern that could also be called an emergent property. That logic or property can soon direct the story in ways that make sense – and should be followed – even when the writer started out with some other idea in mind. In my case, when it came time to end Founders’ Effect, the way that book had evolved, and what it suggested about the next book in the series, made a cliffhanger the most logical way to end it and set up The Plight of the Eli’ahtna.
If the cliffhanger feels right, thought must of course then be given to picking up the next installment in a way that repays the reader for their trust. That’s not always a simple thing to pull off, and this might explain why some cliffhangers misfire – and why I don’t often employ such endings in my books. I clearly did so in Founders’ Effect, and to a lesser degree in The Courage to Accept – and so far, those two books are my only examples. After all, it’s quite possible to leave a reader with the knowledge that there’s more to come, without leaving a character dangling from the edge of a cliff by their fingernails.
That being so, why use one at all? To my way of thinking, used properly – and sparingly – cliffhangers can be an effective way to increase the tension within a multi-book series, keeping the reader engaged in a way that avoids the dreaded middle-book syndrome. Cliffhangers raise the stakes, so to speak, and done well keep the flow of the story strong enough that the reader remains motivated. It really can work that way. The thought of Frodo in the hands of the orcs took me straight to The Return of the King. And guess where I was the day after they released Return of the Jedi? Yes, like so many of you, in line at a theater, eager to see that cliffhanger resolved.
“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
I was often criticized, as a youngster, for my reading habits. This was especially true when I was in my early to mid-teens. The truth is, outside of assigned reading for classes, about all I read was escapist fiction, science fiction in particular. I read some nonfiction on my own, of course, on matters to do with natural history and astronomy, but when you think about it, those interests – which were anything but mainstream in my small home town – were a sort of escape in their way. But when it came to reading fiction, science fiction (available fantasy having been limited to Tolkien’s work at that time) was literally all I read. And reread – books of my own being hard to come by, lacking any real income of my own. The town library was hardly well endowed with such fiction, and one of the librarians was among those who expressed “concerns” over my steady diet of escapism.
Pick a dearly held habit by any teenager, and a rationalization for it will be supplied – by that teenager. Or by the person that teenager grew up to be. It won’t always be simply self-serving, much less flat-out wrong. I had mine, being in general a misfit. Those less-than-mainstream interests cited above were shared by very few of my classmates (in the case of astronomy, by none at all), and in a small, conservative town, my corresponding lack of interest in sports and automobiles was viewed with suspicion. The things that interested me set me apart. Lacking much of a social life, as a result, I read books. The stories offered an escape from the often painful awkwardness of not fitting in, and at first, that was all that I needed. But they also fired my imagination, and awareness of the power of storytelling slowly grew. Looking back, it now seem inevitable that I would try to tell stories of my own.
And in the fullness of time, I did. It took a lot of time and practice (and life experience) to take me to the point of telling tales with any degree of ability, but I got there. And with the advent of modern self-publishing, I now have something of a readership. I still read a fair amount of fiction, mostly science fiction and fantasy, but without the feeling that I need to dive undercover and pull the lid over the top. (The recent exception to this being the so-called “Pandemic Year” of 2020, when I indulged heavily in “comfort reads.”) But where I most often find an escape from the real world these days is in the writing I do.
It’s every bit as possible to escape into an imaginary world of your own creation as a storyteller, as it is to become so involved with the tales of others that the real world fades away. To nonwriters, this sort of escape may seem to verge on the pathological, but if you’re a writer of fiction, you know to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to lead you back home. (And hope there are no mice following behind, of course.) I often get so wrapped up in my work that I lose track of time, and frequently walk around the house thinking out loud on some aspect of a current work in progress. When the work is done and published, it then has the potential to become an escape for anyone who comes along and reads what I’ve created. That’s an interesting feeling, and a pleasant one, to think that I might be giving some stressed-out soul, somewhere out there, a few hours of respite from whatever troubles them. It’s a motive to keep writing, all by itself. And why not? We’re all in this together. Every now and then we should get away from it all, and do so in good company.
Under Desert Stars 