Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

One of the odder and most disappointing things about sff publishing in particular, and the industry as a whole, but particularly our genre is how often it reaches back to touch its past. I’ve heard or seen innumerable times editors and publisher that they were looking for “Phillip K. Dick” or “Heinlein” or the like or “the next” whoever they fell in love with when they were introduced to the genre.

If the genre were still in its infancy, this would be fine. But depending on when you date the from it is well over a century old. That’s more than old enough to have a pair of overalls, a business suit, and to dress slutty whenever it likes as long as the story is good. I recently bought a zombie novel to research a publisher. I A: don’t have any real affection for zombies B: don’t much care for the “and then s/he falls in love with the non-human on page 24 trope but still enjoyed the book because (mostly) it was handled well, and the story had both internal consistency and solid characters.

This book wasn’t from one of the big names in SFF, but still a respectable house. Even this house has its own taint of the “just like” disease. As this post reminded me, speciation sometimes happens among odd members of a population. Sometimes those oddities rise to being a new and potentially dominant group, or simply the dominant type within a species. Other times they separate only to die off from too small a gene pool. Aurochs don’t exist today because they couldn’t compete. They didn’t think about their environment, they just failed to adapt.

The collective mindset that sees the genre of limitless horizons constantly caught in public with its hands at work south of the equator seems odd. Yes, a reverence for history is important. Ancestor worship is probably not a good business model however. But the great thing about societies, and environments is that they change. So must businesses. Farmers are known for a operational meme that tends to eschew change unnecessarily yet still adapt. Nowhere in the western world is slash and burn agriculture the most common method of soil renewal. The stock market isn’t run on little pieces of paper and rushed across the room, you will not find many schools have their students using chalkboards. Each of these example enterprises looks outside itself for its maintenance and growth, they look forward.

As with certain religious groups that chose not to reproduce, and social groups that became severely inbred over time the consequences of not adding new blood will eventually come to the fore. Neither the inbreeding nor the willful desire not to mix your genes with another is in the end any different from flying solo, and as someone once infamously quipped at a writers workshop: flying solo might feel good but it doesn’t produce anything.

Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

I keep telling people an important thing about my blog:

I am not a writer.

Really. I don’t have that urge to create. If i blog I have something to say. If i don’t blog reason number one is that anything that occurs to me to write is likely to bore me to sleep before I can open up my blog much less spew it into the text box.

I am three things, that I think are useful to writers. First I’m an analyst, I can pick apart patterns well enough to recognize what will and won’t work, and what eventualities I can expect. I’ve actually only failed to pick one president in my life at least three months out. Second I’m a voracious reader. I read across types of fiction, half a dozen scientific disciplines, tech manuals, cereal boxes, and marketing material of nearly anything. This feeds into the first. The third is: I’m an opinionated cuss. Yes, anyone can bee an ass, but being able to back it up with a reasonable database to draw from is fairly useful.

One of the things I noticed in science fiction and fantasy over the last three decades versus the previous four to six is the shift in what type of science(s) the writers were interested in. Most of the early science fiction was based on physics, maths, aerospace design and similar “hard sciences”, about the late seventies the shift was on. People started getting degrees in all sorts of things and writing science fiction. Medical doctors, marine biologists, began joining the ranks. Then there were that odd mix of cross genre writers, various humanities, sociology and other religions.

One of the things that stuck out is that you can almost always tell which general area a writer comes from. Irene Radford’s writing is influence by her love of dance. Dave Freer’s knowledge of fish, and certain social orders comes through strongly. James Enge is much to the utter lack of surprise of anyone who’s ever met two classics professors among that number himself. Just read Chuck Gannon’s work, you’ll probably guess for yourself what his background is if you don’t know already.

One prevalent issue for a lot of writers is a lack of distinct voice. It’s a hard issue to overcome because “voice” as a term is as hard to nail down as the difference between two musicians. I can identify Whitney Houston’s voice, and Prince, but describing the difference between a voices is not easy. One of the two is male, both have good range. Beyond that almost everything is highly subjective except that you can pick up either voice almost instantly.

I think writers need to feed their voice on different styles as much as they need to feed their hind brain on different fodder to produce intriguing worlds and characters. When I ran across this today I realized how few writers even mention sports in our genre, and usually only with derision. I’ve mentioned it before but how people play is a huge part of what they are. Who they turn to for information is very interesting as well. One distinct thing across any form of commentary be it hockey, baseball, politics on any part of the spectrum, or even tech blogging is that the most distinct voices that don’t make a fetish of it are the most successful.

Love them or hate them Bill Maher and Rush Limbaugh stand out. Neither is trying to obscure their commentary in allusions and hat tips to something irrelevant to the average audience member. Oprah Winfrey wasn’t the most powerful takshow host on the planet for decades because she was a shrinking violet. More importantly the three are all authentic. None of them is imitating anyone, and no matter how many clones competitors rolled out they’d bounce off the juggernaut and fall aside.

So here’s the bottom line: Writers need to find their voice, and going outside your comfort zone to do so is a good thing. For publishers, there’s no real point in having six imprints in the same genre if a committee votes on every acquisition for each of them. You aren’t building six brands, and despite the best efforts of the weak witted to convince people otherwise universal appeal is a bad thing, it waters down distinctive qualities.

Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

The publishing industry has undergone a number of big changes over the last century. Publishing went from a country club for intellectuals to a mainstream way of aiding education and information, and then entertainment. Like television it went from a number of major sources that could be counted on one hand to a large lumber, then much like television or the “baby Bells” there was contraction into major powers, and a second wave of specialists to fill in the gaps.

And then came ebooks. When Jim Baen pioneered DRMfree ebooks long before other major publishers even considered it as an option, he said he did so because he wanted to be around in 15 years. Like many things in business, the doom and gloom and quick demises aren’t as cut and dried as the loudest voices would have you believe. This year other publishers large publishers have gotten (slowly) aboard the good ship Non-Crippled Content.

At a recent convention I spoke at, some of the most popular panels were on using the new independent boutique publishers like Open Road Media, Naked Reader Press, Bookview Cafe and others to get books into the hands of readers. The climate seven years ago when I entered the business was that these outlets (or their predecessors really, none of the examples were extant at that point) were non viable.

That is both true and untrue. The boutique publishers don’t have the financial clout to buy endcaps in the top 200 Barnes and Noble stores. They don’t have the brand recognition of Tor, DAW or EOS. They do however have the ability to identify, and quickly act upon an emerging or underserved market. At this point in time, the Mil-SF fans are greatly underserved by the major publishers.  Steampunk is still getting a large portion of it’s push from anthologies and small presses, and not from any of “the big six”.

It’s time for the culture at the big publishers to change too. While they still hold the advantages of brand recognition, reach, organization, distribution, and cash they need to use them. Main stream publishing, certainly in fiction, and likely in general runs the risk of going the way of AM radio. Sure it’s still there but how relevant is it? Where is it actually used? Where and who prefers it to other sources?

While I’m pretty much neutral on Amazon, this article points out that the reason the revolution will not be televised is that it is going to be webcast and streamed to a couple score million handheld devices. How-to-books on getting published and using a distribution system other than that of the big publishers themselves are the hammers bringing down the walls. The walled gardens that “mobile internet” had smashed down years ago are not going to last another decade for publishers.

“The Big Six” and the other larger publishers have a very small list of options, and only two really outcomes. With the advent of the Cult of The MBA the latter is the more important for the bean-counters: Outcome 1: Flourish at the highend survival as a minimum, Outcome 2: Extinction. Neither will be quick, it will almost certainly take two to three years to fully adapt to a reasonable projection of where to line up for the entertainment income of readers will be in five years. But it needs to happen.

Any publisher that is not better serving the consumer by offering a higher percentage of what they want to read in easy to find, easy to consume, and reasonably durable format in two to three years, well anyone under 45 won’t have to worry about retiring from that company.  One of the not so secret ingredients to success in any consumer driven business is pretty simple, and increasingly overlooked; have a product people want to buy. This means having writers who are producing enjoyable entertainment. And not all the same thing. The movie industry has room for Avengers and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

The market for readers is and always was fragmented. Universal appeal doesn’t exist, never has, never will. The Harry Potter series was popular because it touched a lot of emotional responses for a lot of people. But there are still millions more people who never read one of the books or saw any of the movies than did either or both, much less those who saw all eight movies and read all seven books. McCormick certainly sells more pepper and basil in America than lemon grass or roasted sesame seeds, but they have all on the shelves because they will sell. The key for publishers is first to have the product and second to make consumers (aka money sources) aware.

Thanks to Janine Bruce for sharing the link.

Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

There will be spoilers in this post and discussion.

There will be spoilers in this post and discussion.

There will be spoilers in this post and discussion.

I think my favorite lines are:

Black Widow: I don’t see how that’s a party.

Hulk: Puny god.

Did anyone else notice the continuity error on the Stark building sign? When the fighting first starts the “A” is the first thing knocked off. Later the A is back in place and every other letter is gone.

I loved the movie, it nailed pretty much everything. Including Hawkeye being mostly useless. I also like the balance and humanization of all the characters. All the Avengers are shown as remarkably human. All get a good amount of face time and having holes poked in their egos. I think Thor and Hulk came across a lot better than they did in previous movies.

Tom Hiddleston as Loki looks like the love child of Brent Spiner and Alan Rickman.

So what did you like?

What did you not like?

Lines?

For those who haven’t commented here before you can login to Disqus with Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, or setup a Disqus account. Neat service kills spam, and blog owners don’t see your info.

Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

Either I installed the wrong plugin here, or I annoyed someone (or several someones) with some hacking ability. Since the first of the year, my website has been hacked three or four times affecting everything from the contact form at Onyxhawke.com to  email, and even this blog. There will be more updates later, but obviously if you’ve gotten or get a suspicious email from any address on either domain (and there shouldn’t be any on this site unless you’re signed up for the post notification) don’t open it. If you haven’t gotten an email from me your spam/malware filters may have killfiled something.

Client, and slush news coming as soon as the last gator is whacked.

Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

I love Ravencon.

You should come.

Chuck Gannon is here, and busy paneling. Go look for him.

Some really good panels this year, even by Ravencon standards.

Morality of Magneto with the brilliant and lovely Day Al-Mohamed who is at her first Ravencon, Alhen Moin, Joan Wnedland, and Christopher was a blast. Lots of interesting discussion on:

• is Magneto a victim?
• a villain
• antihero
• is he hopelessly practical or just a mirror image of the Nazi’s

And a few other permutations.

Allen Wold’s workshop has Phil Kahn, and Darcy Wold on board to balance out my ah, proactive verbosity. Some really great stuff being done by the people participating under a time constraint. Anyone looking to improve their writing and pick up instant feedback on their work should get to a con Allen is running a Workshop at and make sure they sign up early.

Teenage Wasteland

Fun panel, Davey Beachamp did a great job moderating. We talked about some of the better YA both dystopian and other and some of the trends. Diane Bastine, Leila Tayler, Warren Rochelle, and A.J. Hartley kept me a: from talking too much and b: from revealing exactly how tired I was by gamely pretending I made sense when I did speak.

More tomorrow!

Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

Friday: 10pm Morality of Magneto in New River

Saturday: 11AM to 1pm Allen Wold’s Writers Workshop (You may need to sign up in advance,.)

4pm Teenage Wasteland Room F

Sunday:
9am Is interstellar travel possible Room e:
Fair warning Mike is not a morning god, snark will be in higher concentration than usual.

11am -1pm
Allen Wolds writers workshop part 2

Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

The fabulous Irene Radford came across a review of her Chicory Up. That we both kinda dig. Here‘s part:

Human or pixie, Thistle Down is a wise conscientious person who fulfills her obligations by going the extra kilometers. The Pixies bring plenty of amusing havoc unless you happen to be the human whose life is disrupted by the mischievous tribe. Filled with magic, intrigue and romance, readers will enjoy the latest entertaining lighthearted Pixie Chronicles woodland fantasy. Irene Radford is one of my favorite authors.

And in case you’re forgotten, the kickass cover is here:

Pretty spiff, no?

Also it is release day for Dave Freer’s Dog and Dragon if you haven’t already gotten yours, it’s not to late!

Which brings me to the Contest!!

USA and Canada only: First nine entrants to email a link to their review of either Chicory Up by Irene Radford or Dog and Dragon by Dave Freer posted somewhere on the net (Amazon, GoodReads, BN, Powells, pretty much anywhere) will be entered to win the next book by by either Dave or Irene, your choice. Reviews must be 150-words or more as counted by MS Word. Send to Contact/at/onyxhawke/dot/com,

No I won’t spam you, it’s against my religion.

Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

This is possibly the most important discovery in biology since DNA itself. In very short it may give us some of the answers to why genetic variation within and between species can create so many similarities and differences. For example the black fur in canines is believed to have originated in domestic (prehistoric) animals, and then moved back out into the wild. It also could be part of the mechanism that controls changes in humans across the course of their life like the emergence and regression of allergies, or the changing of hair color. Absolutely fascinating.

This is probably my next fun non-fiction read. It looks like a refreshing divergence in psychology.

Is actual immortality around the corner? If so will we become more virus like than animal? Are we destined for a Face of Boe like existence or will we remain much as we are?

Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

I’m going to start off with a shocking and possibly even blasphemous fact about the publishing industry.

The Publishing industry is an entertainment enterprise.

Just like comic books, movies, television, major league sports and music. People turn to fiction, and some forms of non fiction for entertainment. A handy definition of entertainment is:

“something affording pleasure, diversion, or amusement, especially a performance of some kind: The highlight of the ball was an elaborate entertainment.”

What’s notable in that definition is the absence of words like “preach”, “educate”, or “inform”, also conspicuous by their exclusion are phrases that imply some sort of moral drum beating. This isn’t the 15th century. No one needs anyone publishing fiction today to teach them how to behave or remind them of the “the right” way to think about any given issue. The job of entertainment is to entertain. I’m sure I’ve gobsmacked a few folks reading this and I’d apologize if it hadn’t required me to reach up your backside in order to land the blow to your head. Given the residue on my hands I think we’re even. For the rest you well, those choir uniforms are spiffy.

One of the biggest failings of the publishing industry is a failure to pay attention to what other industries are doing right and make some inroads with the trends that are driving those success. Some of the biggest movies of the last decade have been Iron Man, Batman Begins, The Pirates of the Caribbean series, the Harry Potter series and the Fast and the Furious series.

Here’s some things all those movies have in common:

• FUN!
• Action
• Characters you can root for
• Simply, softly expressed and uncrossed morals
• Plots (in the loose sense that anything out of Hollywood does)

In fact you have to go back all the way to 1998. To find a movie that topped the box office sales that wasn’t fun, action filled, with characters you can root for, simply, softly expressed morals and some fashion of plot. That movie back in 1998 was Saving Private Ryan. Which did have most of those elements, and was flawlessly executed.

I’m not saying the publishing industry can’t have strong ethically driven stories, far from it. But just as a baseline comparison Thor which I thought was not so great, not terrible but not great was the tenth highest grossing movie of 2011. In Time which I enjoyed more, and was definitely well into the artsy, moral pulpit pounding end of the spectrum placed 81st. Sure Thor came out earlier in the year and that helps, but I Am Number Four (#64) had a good deal of hype around it, came out when there weren’t many action flicks in the theater and was largely ignored, still managed to rake in almost twice the cash the more meaningful, In Time did. In fact In Time was 6th of movies opening the same month, and of the ones ahead of it, pretty much all were engaging. They all had some charm, and more accessible.

Just a hunch, and without looking up the numbers I’m gonna go out on a limb and suppose for a few seconds that Medal of Honor and Sonic The Hedgehog 4 each made more money than any of the math tutors or block breaking games that came out the same time. This should be a wee tiny sign. Ok, wee-tiny is an understatement (I’ve been practicing!!) It should be a sign too big for Godzilla to smash, and King Kong to climb that fiction publishing is doing it wrong by pushing the preachy, dreary, angst riddled, pulpit pounding dreck that gets pushed over things that are entertaining. Another fun definition to print out and hang on the bulletin board or maybe use as the background on your smartphone or desktop monitor is:

a divertingly adventurous, comic, or picaresque novel.

 

If people are clamoring for boards, hammers and nails ahead of a storm, you’ll make money by selling them boards, hammers and nails. If someone needs to clean their floor, attempting to sell them nail polish is a tiny bit silly. And not many people who expect to shuffle off the mortal coil in the next few days are interested in long term investments, green bananas or magazine subscriptions? Why would any sensible business try and sell something people don’t really want? Why would they not look at what else is working? Aren’t businesses in the business of making money? If people are asking for a sweet confection made with sugar, flour, eggs, and a dash of salt let them eat cake.