KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN OR GET OUT OF DODGE

Lots of players and itchy trigger fingers in today's romance world.

When people ask me how long I’ve been writing, I often answer, “All my life.” I think it’s that way for most writers; we can’t remember a time when we weren’t creating stories and putting them to paper (or screen). Writing isn’t just something we do, it’s something we are. 

And yet so many of my fellow authors are experiencing a kind of existential crisis right now. After five or ten or fifteen years of professional publication—either through traditional means or self-pubbing—they are giving up. Those who went the trad route made it through the gauntlet of contests, querying, rejections, the thrill of “the call,” more rejections, winning the contract at last, cover squabbles, revisions, release day, and anxiety over sales—sometimes multiple times. Those who went the self-pub route had to find an editor, find a cover artist (or do it themselves), format the manuscript, pay for all that, pay for promo and agonize over sales—sometimes multiple times. But despite overcoming all those challenges many authors are realizing the gain is no longer worth the pain. From author after author, the publishing world is hearing, “I quit.”

You can’t blame them, really. Institutions that used to encourage newbie writers, indie authors, niche genres and slow, but steady performers are drying up like ponds on the African savannah. RWA® is eliminating the Golden Heart® contest for unpublished manuscripts after having tightened requirements for membership in its Professional Authors Network to the point that only high-performing pro authors need apply. We almost lost the most comprehensive website for SFR book listings, SFR Station, until a “retiring” SFR author stepped in to take over from its founder. 

RT Reviews, a digital romance magazine that was a trusted source of reviews for SFR and other romance novels, folded without notice this summer, taking with it the RTBooklovers Con. That convention’s “replacement,” the BookLovers Con, which still focuses on romance, limited author participation in next spring’s event in New Orleans to “invited” authors only. As you might guess, those invited authors are the big names who can post the big sales numbers.

But even more discouraging is the kind of gold rush mentality that has overtaken the self-pubbing world in general, and the romance community in particular. It's common knowledge that you can use certain skeezy techniques to manipulate the sales and promo algorithms on Amazon, especially as relates to Kindle Unlimited. Scamming the system is apparently easier and a lot more profitable than actually writing decent books and trying to promote and sell them legitimately. 

With the encouragement of certain “gurus” like John Konrath, who promise untold wealth via self-pubbling, and the meteoric rise of new adult erotica in romance bringing in hordes of wannabes hoping to cash in on the latest craze, self-published romance on Amazon is the Wild West right now. Gunslingers, card sharps, scalpers and carpetbaggers of all descriptions abound, and it’s damn hard to find a place at the bar with all the bullets zinging past your ear.

So, what to do? Well, there are only two ways to go. Get the hell out of Dodge. Or keep your head down and write. Me, I don’t have a choice. I’m a writer. I’ve been doing this all my life.

Cheers, Donna

A very local alien

A couple of curious youngsters eye us off. That's Fraser Island in the background.

I'm lucky enough to live close to Fraser Island in Queensland, Australia. The tour people will tell you Fraser is the largest sand island in the world – and they'll also tell you Hervey Bay is one of the best places in the planet to interact with humpback whales on their annual migration from the ice of Antarctica to the warm waters of the tropics. Up there the females have their calves, and then meander back down to the cold south, stopping regularly to feed their babies. The youngsters need to grow and fatten up on their mother's milk to survive the cold temperatures. 

The calm waters of Hervey Bay between mainland Australia and Fraser Island provide an ideal stopping off point. The juveniles come in to hang out and do some people-watching, the males pop in to fight for mating rights, the mums come in with their babies to get in a few large feeds.

The migration takes place between early July and early November and the whales you'll see in the Bay will depend to some extent what month it is. The early arrivals in July and August are mainly juveniles. Whales become sexually mature at around six or seven years. Before that, they're like teenagers - curious, wanting to explore.  They'll come right up to the boats. to people watch. They're like teenagers exploring their world. They can see very well through both water and air, and they can hear, too.

This one is doing what's called a spyhop, hanging vertically in the water with its snout above the surface. It's looking at the people on the boat.

The whales are curious and they're attracted to sound, movement, and colour. Visitors are encouraged to wave and call out to them.

They're happy to perform for an audience, slapping their pectoral fins, their tails, or performing spectacular breaches.

This picture gives a bit of perspective. Whales are BIG.

This whale spent about an hour checking us out. She's on her side, looking at us. Her eye is just in front of that large white blob on her side. You'll see her underside is mainly white. That's a characteristic of southern hump backs. In the Northern hemisphere hump backs are mainly black all over.

September and later the adult whales arrive. Males are interested in sex with as many females as they can manage and they'll fight for breeding rights, using the barnacles on their heads as weapons, pushing and shoving and making a lot of noise. 

Fighting males. There are three in this pod and the churned water, shoving, splashing and spraying (with sound effects) is amazing.

This mother and baby were very comfortable with the boat. She's brought the calf over to see us. In the past mothers would put themselves between the boat and the calf, but increasingly the whales know the boats here are not a danger.

They also know the big males are a risk to their calves. Whales don't play happy families. A big male will shove a calf out of the way to get at mum for sex. But we did get to see a courting couple (so to speak). BTW, the females are bigger than the males.

Females with calves are only interested in feeding and protecting their calves. A humpback calf is about fourteen feet (about four and a half metres) long at birth, but it needs to put on weight quickly to survive the cold waters of Antarctica. Hump backs are baleen whales (filter feeders) and they eat krill and very small fish. (As an aside, this is why I object to 'wild krill oil' being sold at 'health' stores. It's whale food. Why save whales if you're going to deplete their food source?) /rant.

Back to baby whales. Whale milk has the consistency of yoghurt, with a very high percentage of fat. The baby drinks about one hundred pounds of this stuff per day, putting on weight fast. Apart from feeding, caves have to learn how to do whale things, like what to do with those enormous pectoral fins and how to breach. Mum will show how it's done once or twice, and then the baby practices. Late in the season visitors will often see a calf doing breach after breach. In contrast, Mum hasn't had anything to eat since she left Antarctica. Breaching expends quite a bit of energy, so she's not going to do repeat performances.

 This calf has flung itself right out of the water in a spectacular side breach.

This little lady was only about three weeks old, trying to work out what to do with her pectoral fins. Her mum was just under the surface nearby, having a whale version of a nanna nap, secure that her baby was safe with the boat so near.

The whale doesn't spray water from its lungs. It is expelling breath from its blow hole. The air is travelling at 200kmh and vaporises the water above the blow hole. But there's plenty of water vapour to make a rainbow.

Well... that had better do. This is a compilation of many trips up to Platypus Bay. I could go on but it'll get a bit long. I wrote about my most recent whale-watching trip over at my own blog. Every trip is different, every trip is worthwhile. If you're ever in this part of the world in the months when the migration's on take the opportunity to meet an intelligence very different to ours. Quite alien, in fact.

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION

The family is here this week--my oldest daughter and her two kids. That means trips to see the great-grands; jigsaw puzzles on rainy afternoons; a rewatching of PUSS IN BOOTS with my four-year-old granddaughter; a rewatching of READY PLAYER ONE with my 16-year-old grandson; big family dinners and board games afterwards. And not much time for blog-writing.

Besides, with all the discouraging news in the publishing world lately, I'm not sure I'm up to the task of opining without ranting just now. So, why don't I show you this highly entertaining YouTube video that my grandson found. Pippa, particularly, should enjoy this! See you next week.

 Cheers, Donna

The book or the movie?

Last week I wrote a glowing review for Ready Player One. This week, I've read the book.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's ever said the book is soooo much better than the movie. Sure, it's understood that a movie is a visual medium (duh), whereas in a book you create your own images, and therefore the story-telling can be inherently different.

An excellent example is Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. He starts with a prologue which shows what was narrated by Gandalf at the council of Elrond. You don't want long narratives in a film. 'Show don't tell' is absolutely the rule. Jackson added a few bits that I could have done without, other bits added explanation that I felt worked, but all in all the adventures of the ring bearers were pretty much the same as Tolkien's novel.

Ready Player One the book is a very different animal to Ready Player One the movie.

The basic premise is the same. James Halliday has left an easter egg in his Oasis gamer universe. The players have to solve a series of riddles and pass tests to win the prize. IOI, a vast conglomerate that owns most of the internet and the hardware that allows players to use Oasis, is cast as the Evil Empire, with Nolan Sorrento at its head. Sorrento will do anything to reach the egg first, using all his massive resources to keep other players out. But Wade Watts, through his avatar, Parzival, outsmarts Nolan - at least at first. Parzival is supported by his friends, Art3mis, Aeich, Shoto, and Daito.

So far so good.

But the challenges the High Five face in the movie are not the same as in the book. A couple of additional villains are added and the relationship between the five heroes proceeds in different ways. It's a very, very different narrative. I could say much more, but spoilers.

I enjoyed the book. A lot. It's written in first person, from Wade's POV. Of necessity, we never get into the heads of Aeich, Art3mis, Daito, and Shoto, or, for that matter, Nolan Sorrento. A lot of the book lovingly explains the tech to gain entrance to the Oasis and I liked that, too. But it's not great viewing.

Spielberg's movie is faster paced, edgier, and a bit more whizz-bang. There are more explosions and lots more real life. I can understand Spielberg adding in scenes from the villain's perspective so we can see what's going on with the opposition. In a way the screen writers have come up with a story that captures the essence of the book. The credits do say 'based on' a book by Ernest Cline - and that's the truth of it.

The nice side of that is you get to see a terrific movie - and then you can get a more intimate view - with a heap of deleted scenes - by reading the book. Oh - and I'd suggest you see the movie FIRST.