Baffled crows and book #21

[thistlechaser]

165 icons and not a single bird one! I guess a dinosaur with feathers is nearly close enough.

I've been hoping for a bigger bird to come to my bird feeder, maybe a blue jay. I should have been careful what I wished for!


(Taken through the window/screen, forgive the quality!)

That crow spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to get by the squirrel baffle and to the seed, then came back a second time to try to figure it out. He hops to the lower part of the fence and then leans waaay down so he can see under the baffle (which is clear) and tilts his head back and forth.

Ellie doesn't care much about the little birds anymore (except when the window is open), but the crow and squirrels still drive her crazy.

Book #21 was the one I mentioned in my last post. Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos.

Despite my dislike of Kloos's stance on guns, I have to admit that I liked this book. Was it perfect? No. But it was self-published, which makes this only the second self-published book I ever liked.

I found five typos in it, which made me unhappy, but on his website I saw that when readers submit typos they find, he fixes them and re-uploads it to Amazon. So, while I wish he or an editor had found them before it went out, I'm glad that at least he cares enough to fix them. (Unfortunately I read that when I was nearly finished with the book, otherwise I would have marked them down and let him know.)

I'm pleased that he wrote this as one book; he could have easily stretched it out into a trilogy.

Part one was the best part. His world building was great. The book was set in the near-ish future, where the poor have gotten much much poorer. They're kept in government owned/run areas, they're fed by the government (man-made proteins, tasteless bars of protein, X calories of it per week). The water they drink is recycled from waste water, and rumor has it the protein is recycled from "waste" as well. We're introduced to the main character, who understandably wants to get out of this area.

The only way out is to join the military. Unlike today's world, everyone wants to join up -- there are hundreds of people who apply for each recruiting slot, and recruiters are paid based on how many people they turn away instead of how many they get to sign up. (The military offers real food and pays soldiers, so all the poor people want to get in.)

Unsurprisingly, the main character gets accepted, which leads to part two: The army.

This part of the book was somewhat less interesting for me. All rah rah military we run 20 miles for fun and piss manly man piss. And guns! Lots of guns! (By this time I had known the author's feelings on things, and it colored this part for me. So maybe if I hadn't known, I would have liked it more. And it wasn't all bad by far.)

Part three of the book was a first-contact with aliens situation. I liked his idea for them, and I mostly believed how it played out.

So all in all, I enjoyed the book. I feel bad I can't see it through neutral eyes -- I suspect I'm being harder on it than it deserves, especially since it's self-published. (I knew going in it was, and I usually don't buy them, but it had so many good ratings on Amazon I gave it a chance.) I think I would buy another book by him, if he puts another out. (The ending of this one was certainly open enough for another, but it wasn't one of those annoying ending-on-a-cliffhanger trilogy ones.)

Unfortunately my next book, Zoo (The Enclosure Chronicles) by Tara Elizabeth is self-published as well. I don't know how I missed it, it's marked clear as day ("Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform"). It's... not as good. The writing is rough. I hope it's good enough to finish.

Comments

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Um, self-published means no editor, line or copy.

Speaking from years of experience it's very difficult for the writer to catch all the typos and mis-spellings and all the rest. We see what we intended not what got on the page. The eye-mind cycle is like that.

Professional copy editors are beyond price. Nobody thinks it's a price they can afford these days. Even trade publishers stopped with a copyediting department years and years ago to cut costs. It's all outsourced now -- if, indeed, a writer gets a copy editory at all -- to freelancers, and has been for a long time. A lot of them aren't very good.

Love, C.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I'd hope they'd get an unpaid editor to look it over, for just that reason! Sort of like people use beta readers for fanfic. It's so hard to see errors in your own writing.

It's sad to hear that the ones left that they use aren't good (but not surprising, I find errors in books on a regular basis).

Unfortunately it's not just the world of fiction that's lacking in editors. I'm a tech writer for a multimillion dollar software company. We have no editors. We write, check it ourselves, run spellchecker, and publish it. It's a money thing, too.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Except if you are a copy editor or editor, for that matter, that's your job -- how you pay for home, food and everything else. Why would a professional be expected to devote their talent to strangers for nothing? Speaking from experience doing either one is hard work. It takes a lot of time too.

Also -- these are skills and talents, and not everyone has them, any more than just anyone can be singer, house builder, electrictian, jockey, writer, carpenter, etc.

Love, C.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oh! No, I don't mean a professional doing it for free. I mean getting a nonprofessional (or even better, multiple nonprofessionals) to do a read-through.

I'm basing this off loupnoir's experiences. (She's the only other person who has written a self-published book that I enjoyed.) Once she's done writing, she sends it off to a reader (readers? I can't recall), to have them check it over.

Is that as good as a professional editor? Unlikely, but it's still better than nothing.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

And professional or not -- it's very difficult if not impossible to reach perfection.

In some ways it's even more difficult in a very clean ms. Because your eyes get used to things being right and slip past the very occasional typo or revision and re-write artifact hanging in from previous versions.l

OTOH, a very dirty ms, is so full of mess, that all the errors cannot be fixed by a single person -- or maybe, anyone.\

Love, C.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

For sure. I enjoy editing more than writing, but I miss things as well, both in my own writing as well as when reading someone else's.

[loup_noir]

I've been very lucky in that I have friends with very good grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills, plus they give feedback. If you wait a few months, read a lot of other things that you haven't written, when you go back to read your MSS, it's much easier to find problems. Of course, that means waiting and that seems to be a lost art.

Most of the self-published books I've picked up read like they were written in a rush, much like a lot of fan fiction. Self-publishing places make it so very easy these days. Really, the hardest part is getting your document massaged to fit their template. There are cover-generators on the web, too. And, if someone finds a problem with your work and notifies you, with Amazon at least, you can just re-edit and reload, without generating a new edition. I know one woman who's been using her readers as editors.

Seems like cheating to me.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

And, if someone finds a problem with your work and notifies you, with Amazon at least, you can just re-edit and reload, without generating a new edition.

Timing. I just got an email about the book I'm currently reading.

An updated version of your past Kindle purchase of Zoo (The Enclosure Chronicles) by Tara Elizabeth is now available.

The updated version contains the following changes:

Typos have been corrected.
Significant editorial changes have been made.

You can get the updated version of this book by going to Manage Your Kindle...

Agreed that it's cheating. I'm glad they care, but I'd rather the errors be caught before I buy it, not after.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Even when there's money, presumably even lots of money as with NASA: recall that incorrectly labled navigational file for the lost Mars Lander in 1999? The columns of figures were in inches, feet, miles and so on, while it was labeled as being in the metric system? Which is why the Lander was Lost!

Love, C.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

But how do you pay for this? You haven't received an advance even.

The direction seems retrogressive for all the arts these days, returning to the earlier centuries when only already wealthy people could afford to practice the arts -- or you have to brown-nose and coddle a patron of some kind. Which further depended on connections -- how do you get access to a patron? Who do you know who can introduce you? Which again brings up a certain kind of privileged connection not available to everyone -- depending even on what kind of clothing you can afford to even be present where a patron might be.

Whichever model -- independently wealthy or patron -- the practice of arts and intellectual pursuits become increasingly confined only to the privileged classes, with very little opportunity for those who aren't a member of those classes.

That's why the novel was such a revolutionary form: it was relatively inexpensive to do in terms of space and supplies, unlike music and painting. In other words, it was a democratic form -- all you needed was literacy and creativity. It's not an accident the development of the novel as we understand the form began in the era of Revolution. And it proved so popular that the patronage and independently wealthy author couldn't fill the demand -- and even, since originally the primary audience for such works were also members of the lower classes, the privileged didn't have the 'touch' or even experience to provide what was wanted and desired.

So, in some way, the producer had to get paid, a distribution system had to be contrived and all the rest that made up what we understood as publishing for a very long time. All that cost money and the industry was the means for those various flows of finance. It also led to the imposition of copyright laws to protect both creator and distributor (which as always, the distributor tended to profit more from, but that's argument for marxism which nobody probably feels like doing right now! :) That's all broken down now -- as in this nation and elsewhere we've nationalized intellectual and creative property of every kind.

Love, C.