Say what you will about the Twilight series, but it must always be conceded that the books have been successful in the six years that they've been out. With the rising popularity of self-publishing and the ready availability of resources for such, lots of sad, sad clones of Twilight have appeared on the digital bookshelves of the Kindle store.
Shattered, by Sophia Sharp, popped up as a "YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS" sort of thing in my Amazon account, while I was poking through author pages. It was 99 cents, so I thought "heck, why not" and downloaded it to my Kindle app. (The app was free. Awesome.*)
The book started out okay, but it felt a little first draftish, and the wording tended to be a little juvenile. The male lead (Logan) brooded and mystified the girl (Laura) in an all too familiar way.
And then people begin to disappear.
No, really. Entire sets of characters disappear, including all of Laura's friends. Though the dialogue among them could be stiff and unconvincing most of the time, the characters didn't deserve the horrific fate of being erased from reality altogether. As far as her family, though they are mentioned, you never meet them. Even the dog is a faceless entity that exists, apparently, to underscore the All-American main character.
An unlikely situation involving Laura's soon to be former crush which could totally get the jerk arrested is lifted straight off the pages of Twilight and solved by Logan and mixed martial arts. Very little is described in the book, except for a detailed view of a river-powered mill somewhere in the boonies and Logan's distinctive pale and emo look. The conversations between Laura and Logan aren't badly done, but like the rest of the book, they do need some work.
It's a clone of Twilight, so the SUPRISE I'MA VAMPIRE moment is pretty obvious before it comes, though the "visit the dream world" concept that Sharp includes is interesting and not something I was expecting, though it does make the vampire element seem a little more intrusive and contrived. Logan goes to high school, and Laura first meets him when he transfers to hers. However, he is a 400 year old vampire and travels alone, and there's never given any reason for him to keep up appearances as a high school student. Maybe he fears arrest by a truant officer even though he's totally old enough to drop out and get his GED.
On the bright side, Shattered only cost 99 cents, and the grammar and spelling were clean, something not seen much in a self published novel. It's also refreshingly free of that dreaded pair, Mary Sue and Gary Stu. Sophia Sharp is a 19 year old college student, so writing this novel, however flawed it is, is a commendable effort. I won't be reading the rest of the series, but feel free to check them out yourself in the Amazon Kindle Store.
*Seriously, get it. The app is free for all devices that it's available on. Your iPad could be that much more awesome, my friend.
Showing posts with label Feather Book Series. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Feather Book Series. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
The Friday Night Death Slot
Once upon a time, there was a hit television show that was moved to Friday night.
The end.
No, really.
The original Star Trek's cancellation had a lot to do with being moved to Friday night. Why is Friday night so fatal for television shows? That one's easy. Most people have a lot more exciting things to do on Friday nights than sit at home and stare at a screen, no matter how good the show is. Today, things like DVR and Tivo are close to making the death slot a non-issue (but not quite.) The concept is still true, though. Watching a good show at home is good; dinner and a movie or a party or whatever is better. Want an alternative to shows? Movies on cable. Aw yeah.
The best way to slip into obscurity is to be just good enough to have readers. Not readers who are particularly interested or pulled in, but readers. They picked up your book because Books-a-Million or Barnes & Noble slapped a label on it claiming that it's "for fans of [insert famous book series with tons of subsidiaries]" and stuck it in a special bay for two weeks. They want their fix of something and their paperback version of whatever has either been lent out to a friend, read too many times, or come apart at its dry, gluey seams. They buy your book, they read it for a taste of their obsession, and possibly never pick it up again. You've given them exactly what they want, and unless you were memorable about it, they're not going to bother when the next installment hits the shelves.
So what got me thinking about this? Well, it was actually Abra Ebner's blog. (You remember I've reviewed three of her books in the past.) On the right side of the landing page of her blog is a little picture that says "Books Like Twilight" and leads to a website that I believe is no longer working. But really, all I needed to see was the name of that link. Apparently, there are people who are looking for some lovely, good enough fiction that will give them their Twilight fix. And there are also authors who will provide that, just to get readers. Just to be good enough, in terms of sheer concept.
So what would you rather be? Good enough? Riding on the coattails of a swiftly passing fad and fading into obscurity before you ever had any notoriety? Having young reviewers on Amazon ranting that your book, your baby, wasn't as good as Twilight/The Hunger Games/Percy Jackson?
Be the best, always.
The end.
No, really.
The original Star Trek's cancellation had a lot to do with being moved to Friday night. Why is Friday night so fatal for television shows? That one's easy. Most people have a lot more exciting things to do on Friday nights than sit at home and stare at a screen, no matter how good the show is. Today, things like DVR and Tivo are close to making the death slot a non-issue (but not quite.) The concept is still true, though. Watching a good show at home is good; dinner and a movie or a party or whatever is better. Want an alternative to shows? Movies on cable. Aw yeah.
The best way to slip into obscurity is to be just good enough to have readers. Not readers who are particularly interested or pulled in, but readers. They picked up your book because Books-a-Million or Barnes & Noble slapped a label on it claiming that it's "for fans of [insert famous book series with tons of subsidiaries]" and stuck it in a special bay for two weeks. They want their fix of something and their paperback version of whatever has either been lent out to a friend, read too many times, or come apart at its dry, gluey seams. They buy your book, they read it for a taste of their obsession, and possibly never pick it up again. You've given them exactly what they want, and unless you were memorable about it, they're not going to bother when the next installment hits the shelves.
So what got me thinking about this? Well, it was actually Abra Ebner's blog. (You remember I've reviewed three of her books in the past.) On the right side of the landing page of her blog is a little picture that says "Books Like Twilight" and leads to a website that I believe is no longer working. But really, all I needed to see was the name of that link. Apparently, there are people who are looking for some lovely, good enough fiction that will give them their Twilight fix. And there are also authors who will provide that, just to get readers. Just to be good enough, in terms of sheer concept.
So what would you rather be? Good enough? Riding on the coattails of a swiftly passing fad and fading into obscurity before you ever had any notoriety? Having young reviewers on Amazon ranting that your book, your baby, wasn't as good as Twilight/The Hunger Games/Percy Jackson?
Be the best, always.
Friday, November 5, 2010
I Almost Totally Forgot!
November is National Novel Writing Month. Every year, seriously, I tell myself, "hey, I'm gonna get some good work done on my book. Shoot, maybe I'll finish a first draft." And guess what happens every year?
Pretty much I either just work, have homework (during college), and make cookies for Thanksgiving.
Okay, so what am I going to start today? Besides vacuuming my kitchen and living room, I'll be committing to the first novel in the sequence I'm writing, for at least an hour each day. I'm also going to be finishing up Raven, the third book in Abra Ebner's Feather Book Series. Also, my regular work (copywriting) is picking up quite well, so that's exciting. With that encouragement, I am going to dive into my work.
How, you may ask?
Pen and paper, my friends. I write with Pilot gel pens in those black and white speckled notebooks. Why such archaic methods? I mean, I finally got a new shiny Dell Studio. Why use an arguably slower way of writing?
Answer: for me, it's a whole lot faster.
When I write something on a computer, and I am able to see print in front of me, my proofreading reflexes go nuts, and I edit everything I write that instant. I type fast, but all the "must edit now!" feelings slow me way down. (Seriously. I find a typo in a paper or a book, it's like finding Waldo without even trying. At least for me.) Writing in my messy handwriting on a blank paper with lines is nice. I don't have to edit it, unless I want to cross something out or add in a sentence in the margins. I can make notes to myself for future reference when I'm copying the text into my computer. This strange attachment to the speckled notebooks means that any purse I have must be able to hold a notebook in it. (Yes, I do try the notebook/purse combination before buying. Thank you for asking.) The good news? I've started a new notebook that is designed to be tacked onto (not literally) the notebook that contains what was originally the first part of my story.
So that's what I'll definitely be doing this month. If I finish by the end of the month, great. If I don't, well then, I'll keep working at the same pace because I want to finish this project soon. (It's been about nine years in the making.) It has begun already, in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny village, with a rather strange occurrence.
How will you be spending National Novel Writing Month? Feel free to discuss, and thanks for stopping by today! Coming soon: a review of the final installment in the Feather Book Series, the novel Raven.
Update: I did write today, for about half an hour. My wrist cramped, so I took a break.
I'm such a wimp. But I did write.
Pretty much I either just work, have homework (during college), and make cookies for Thanksgiving.
Okay, so what am I going to start today? Besides vacuuming my kitchen and living room, I'll be committing to the first novel in the sequence I'm writing, for at least an hour each day. I'm also going to be finishing up Raven, the third book in Abra Ebner's Feather Book Series. Also, my regular work (copywriting) is picking up quite well, so that's exciting. With that encouragement, I am going to dive into my work.
How, you may ask?
Pen and paper, my friends. I write with Pilot gel pens in those black and white speckled notebooks. Why such archaic methods? I mean, I finally got a new shiny Dell Studio. Why use an arguably slower way of writing?
Answer: for me, it's a whole lot faster.
When I write something on a computer, and I am able to see print in front of me, my proofreading reflexes go nuts, and I edit everything I write that instant. I type fast, but all the "must edit now!" feelings slow me way down. (Seriously. I find a typo in a paper or a book, it's like finding Waldo without even trying. At least for me.) Writing in my messy handwriting on a blank paper with lines is nice. I don't have to edit it, unless I want to cross something out or add in a sentence in the margins. I can make notes to myself for future reference when I'm copying the text into my computer. This strange attachment to the speckled notebooks means that any purse I have must be able to hold a notebook in it. (Yes, I do try the notebook/purse combination before buying. Thank you for asking.) The good news? I've started a new notebook that is designed to be tacked onto (not literally) the notebook that contains what was originally the first part of my story.
So that's what I'll definitely be doing this month. If I finish by the end of the month, great. If I don't, well then, I'll keep working at the same pace because I want to finish this project soon. (It's been about nine years in the making.) It has begun already, in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny village, with a rather strange occurrence.
How will you be spending National Novel Writing Month? Feel free to discuss, and thanks for stopping by today! Coming soon: a review of the final installment in the Feather Book Series, the novel Raven.
Update: I did write today, for about half an hour. My wrist cramped, so I took a break.
I'm such a wimp. But I did write.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Guardian: A Book Review
So you've probably read my review of Feather, by Abra Ebner. Feather is part of the Feather Book Series, which has a total of three books, the other two being Guardian and Raven. I finished Feather for the second time and decided to read the sequels for purpose of review, and to see what happened next. I bought the remaining books, plus one other, and anticipated beginning Guardian.
If you've read the first review, you already know my feelings on the potential of Feather. That potential carries through the whole series. In Guardian, Estella is trying to come to terms with the events of the first novel, and is trying to move on, with the sometimes help of her guardian angel, Sam. (Sam's story is pretty interesting itself.) She visits her former college to see her friends Scott and Sarah, and to see the decoy of Edgar that was left behind to teach Edgar's classes. She finds out where Scott and Sarah are staying and, after some inconsistent snarky inner thoughts about the "slightly British" nurse, meets up with Scott and Sarah, who are engaged and living in her old cabin. Estella, trying to tell the other two that she is a hybrid (of what, I'm not sure), manages to tell them that she is a Wiccan (which she is not; I looked up the definition of Wiccan to see if there was one I didn't know; there isn't.) Scott and Sarah think it's just peachy keen that Estella's a Wiccan (she tries to correct them with hybrid; I get confused); Sarah starts jumping up and down and clapping her hands. (Again with the junior high behavior. How did these people get to grad school?) After talking to her human friends, Estella returns to her home and goes on a quest to find Edgar (spoilers...oops) in the City of the Gods, somewhere under the earth. She is accompanied by Sam and another character; if you read the book, you'll see who it is. (Or you can wait until my analysis; either is good.) At the end, Estella returns empty-handed to her home, and sometime later helps Sarah and Scott with their wedding, getting a surprise visit from a certain someone at the end.
Pretty interesting, but it failed to captivate me.
When the three characters are traveling in Heaven (which is under the earth; according to the text of this novel, Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth is accurate. I've read Journey to the Center of the Earth; subterranean earth in Verne's book is not anything close to what it is in Guardian.) This series is self-published, self-edited, and full of grammar mistakes and typos that may have been avoided had anyone else read the book. The story is quite interesting, though I will disagree with the author as to the "mystery" surrounding Edgar Allen Poe's death; it isn't a mystery, and I think someone attending him on his deathbed would have noticed the icy skin he possesses in this book (he's a guardian angel.) Again, Estella sees fit to remind us that she is perfect, beautiful, and powerful. This lack of flaws is not what keeps her from being a likable character; it's the fact that she's rather mean and can be self-absorbed and a touch bi-polar. Her actions tend to be passive ("I noticed" rather than "I saw"), and once again, we get a play-by-play of her facial expressions and the tone of her voice. Estella often cannot decide whether she resents or appreciates Sam and often thinks some pretty mean stuff about people that she calls friends; she then goes on to say how much she treasures that person. When she meets the council of gods at the end of the book, Estella even has the nerve to say that a goddess who is closely scrutinizing her face is less beautiful. In the first chapter, Estella admires her face in the reflection on the kitchen counter. Honestly, when I read that, it made me want to shut the book and not pick it up again. Unless the point is to make this character very unlikeable, she's not put together well. With a little more work, I think she could have been a great character, but I think Ebner wrote this book too quickly to really give her characters the justice they deserve.
The book's grammar is also off and she uses the word "butt" way too much, and it's not really comical. (That word belongs in movies like Shrek and others that are meant to be funny on different levels. In a fantasy romance like Guardian, it looks awkward, immature, and first-draftish.) The editing is lazy. I say this because it may be hard to edit your own stuff, but it is possible. Sure, a book's huge, but taking it chapter by chapter would have alleviated some of the glaring problems that I found. The writing gets repetetive. Here's a paraphrase of one short passage. "...the wall. 'It's a wall,' I said. But it wasn't just any wall." The second two sentences were redundant, uneccessary. Describing the wall would have told us that it "wasn't just any wall."
Overall, Guardian had the same potential as Feather. The plot was more involved, but quite linear. The characters were passive and never changed or grew. The main character is not one that readers can relate well to; not only does she exhibit Mary Sue-like tendencies, she also can be unjustifiably mean towards those she considers to be "the little people" (quoted directly from the book, I swear.) Guardian could have been a good story, but like the book that came before it, it fails to live up to what it could have been and is plagued by the same problems as the first one.
Right now, I'm working my way through Raven (spoilers! Edgar's point of view gets some air-time) and I am looking forward to posting a review of it on here. If you can, try to take a look at the text, and I'll be posting an analysis of the book with tips on writing based on what I've read.
If you've read the first review, you already know my feelings on the potential of Feather. That potential carries through the whole series. In Guardian, Estella is trying to come to terms with the events of the first novel, and is trying to move on, with the sometimes help of her guardian angel, Sam. (Sam's story is pretty interesting itself.) She visits her former college to see her friends Scott and Sarah, and to see the decoy of Edgar that was left behind to teach Edgar's classes. She finds out where Scott and Sarah are staying and, after some inconsistent snarky inner thoughts about the "slightly British" nurse, meets up with Scott and Sarah, who are engaged and living in her old cabin. Estella, trying to tell the other two that she is a hybrid (of what, I'm not sure), manages to tell them that she is a Wiccan (which she is not; I looked up the definition of Wiccan to see if there was one I didn't know; there isn't.) Scott and Sarah think it's just peachy keen that Estella's a Wiccan (she tries to correct them with hybrid; I get confused); Sarah starts jumping up and down and clapping her hands. (Again with the junior high behavior. How did these people get to grad school?) After talking to her human friends, Estella returns to her home and goes on a quest to find Edgar (spoilers...oops) in the City of the Gods, somewhere under the earth. She is accompanied by Sam and another character; if you read the book, you'll see who it is. (Or you can wait until my analysis; either is good.) At the end, Estella returns empty-handed to her home, and sometime later helps Sarah and Scott with their wedding, getting a surprise visit from a certain someone at the end.
Pretty interesting, but it failed to captivate me.
When the three characters are traveling in Heaven (which is under the earth; according to the text of this novel, Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth is accurate. I've read Journey to the Center of the Earth; subterranean earth in Verne's book is not anything close to what it is in Guardian.) This series is self-published, self-edited, and full of grammar mistakes and typos that may have been avoided had anyone else read the book. The story is quite interesting, though I will disagree with the author as to the "mystery" surrounding Edgar Allen Poe's death; it isn't a mystery, and I think someone attending him on his deathbed would have noticed the icy skin he possesses in this book (he's a guardian angel.) Again, Estella sees fit to remind us that she is perfect, beautiful, and powerful. This lack of flaws is not what keeps her from being a likable character; it's the fact that she's rather mean and can be self-absorbed and a touch bi-polar. Her actions tend to be passive ("I noticed" rather than "I saw"), and once again, we get a play-by-play of her facial expressions and the tone of her voice. Estella often cannot decide whether she resents or appreciates Sam and often thinks some pretty mean stuff about people that she calls friends; she then goes on to say how much she treasures that person. When she meets the council of gods at the end of the book, Estella even has the nerve to say that a goddess who is closely scrutinizing her face is less beautiful. In the first chapter, Estella admires her face in the reflection on the kitchen counter. Honestly, when I read that, it made me want to shut the book and not pick it up again. Unless the point is to make this character very unlikeable, she's not put together well. With a little more work, I think she could have been a great character, but I think Ebner wrote this book too quickly to really give her characters the justice they deserve.
The book's grammar is also off and she uses the word "butt" way too much, and it's not really comical. (That word belongs in movies like Shrek and others that are meant to be funny on different levels. In a fantasy romance like Guardian, it looks awkward, immature, and first-draftish.) The editing is lazy. I say this because it may be hard to edit your own stuff, but it is possible. Sure, a book's huge, but taking it chapter by chapter would have alleviated some of the glaring problems that I found. The writing gets repetetive. Here's a paraphrase of one short passage. "...the wall. 'It's a wall,' I said. But it wasn't just any wall." The second two sentences were redundant, uneccessary. Describing the wall would have told us that it "wasn't just any wall."
Overall, Guardian had the same potential as Feather. The plot was more involved, but quite linear. The characters were passive and never changed or grew. The main character is not one that readers can relate well to; not only does she exhibit Mary Sue-like tendencies, she also can be unjustifiably mean towards those she considers to be "the little people" (quoted directly from the book, I swear.) Guardian could have been a good story, but like the book that came before it, it fails to live up to what it could have been and is plagued by the same problems as the first one.
Right now, I'm working my way through Raven (spoilers! Edgar's point of view gets some air-time) and I am looking forward to posting a review of it on here. If you can, try to take a look at the text, and I'll be posting an analysis of the book with tips on writing based on what I've read.
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