The Bar For Publishing... O.o

The bar for publishing a successful novel is pretty damn low in my opinion. Take a look at some of these quotes (and points I have to make) from The Hunger Games (Hint: It's made mega-millions). And back off for a moment all you worshipers of Ms. Collins that think "OMG SHE'S AMAZING HOW CAN U BE SO OBTUSE?"

The author uses buckets of exclamation points. And I mean buckets!!!!! They must have been going out of style at the local Wal-Mart. My copy of the book had seven exclamation points on page 22 alone as part of the dialogue. It's almost unreadable. I'm surprised she didn't use capital letters too. But she did at least tell me someone was shouting. "'Look at her. Look at this one!' he hollers..." Thank you, Ms. Collins, I had no idea he was hollering but I'm glad you cleared that up. I mean, what the hell is the exclamation point for anyway, right?

Another point of mine: Dad's (read as "men") work in these brutal mines, yet the narrator states that there are people with lots of kids in town and they have trouble feeding them. How the hell does a guy get the energy to come home and have sex to make a big family after choking on coal dust all day for 18-hours with nothing to eat? The semen for these babies had to come from somewhere...

Yet another point: To accent the misery and to go with a starvation theme, our protagonist and her sister have no food to eat. "For three days, we'd had nothing but boiled water with some old dried mint leaves I'd found in the back of a cupboard." You can't eat boiled water...just sayin'.

"Starvation's not an uncommon fate in District 12. Who hasn't seen the victims? Older people who can't work. Children from a family with too many to feed. Those injured in the mines. Straggling through the streets. And one day, you come upon them sitting motionless against a wall or lying in the Meadow, ye hear the wails from a house, and the Peacekeepers are called in to retrieve the body. Starvation is never the cause of death officially. It's always the flu, or exposure, or pneumonia. But that fools no one."

Really? At left is a picture of a starving person.

At right is a person with the flu.

You're absolutely f*cking correct...I can see how no one is fooled at all.

My point in this post is that I think the bar for publishing a novel is pretty damn low in America. If you aren't getting published, it's because you fail at social networking, it's because you fail at query letters, it's because you fail at pitches, it's because your face is kind of ugly, or your novel is too gay for a straight audience or doesn't have enough "romance" to open the pocketbooks of the huge section of the publishing pie dominated by female readers. Or, it's because what you want to say (whether or not it is well written) is not what the people in power want to hear. It isn't because your writing is bad. Oh no...that is not the problem. A baboon with a talented editor could write like this.

I'm not here to hack on any author. This is not a review. This is to tell you, oh struggling author out there that lacks my unique precision to examine modern literature, that the reason you are not getting published is not because you suck. That may be what those who are published would like you to feel because as long as you suck, then they are geniuses in comparison...right? Who doesn't want to be looked up to and admired? I think that this is inherent within human nature. Nobody sets out saying, "Man, I'd really like to be seen as stupid by a lot of people today..." No, no, no... they want people to say uplifting words about them... "Did you hear that so and so is getting published by Scholastic? Wow...I always knew they were a genius..." Ayep. That's what they want to hear. But too much worship...too much of lifting these people up and setting them on a pedestal...it isn't healthy...and in my opinion, it isn't deserved.

Sure...someone wrote a book. It got published. It made millions of dollars. But you can too. You just need to have the right people behind you and to do that...honestly...from where I stand, it has nothing to do with the quality of the writing. Whew...I'm glad I got that off my chest. Now you can go back to worshiping Ms. Collins while I toss it in the pile of books of which I won't read the sequels. The movies will be out soon anyway and at least then, I can go with someone and talk during the movie.

Statistics On Gaming & A Little Warcraft Nostalgia

I play online games, specifically, World of Warcraft (although to be truthful...I'm taking a break from that and waiting for Diablo III to be released). I got into it because of my love for Dungeons & Dragons and decided that WoW was a way to indulge that desire without having to go through all the hassle of gathering players, coming up with stuff for everyone to do, and meeting once a week, etc. Online gaming is also extremely clean.

Basically, I could log on when I got home and play a few hours with friends who were also online and it was really fun. I like to think that a lot of what I know about life came from World of Warcraft. For example, it's extremely difficult to get people to work together but when they do, great things can happen. Additionally, another lesson that I learned are that people are innately selfish and only do something just so long as there is something in it for them. I don't think the world runs on generosity. Sure...there are one or two of those people out there...and the rest of the world sucks those people dry like a vampire starving for blood.

Anyway, here are some startling statistics regarding the gaming industry that I found particularly eye-opening:

1) 40% of computer and video game players are female. This is much higher than I would have originally thought.

2) The average social gamer is a 43-year-old woman. Again...not something I expected. However, I did have quite a few friends that were older woman that I played with (and they were fun to group with as well).

3) The average age of the most frequent video game purchaser is 40. More than 25% of gamers are older than 50.

4) 41% of social gamers work full-time jobs (I fit into this category).

5) 80% of females play the Wii as their primary console.

6) 42% of Americans play games on wireless devices.

7) Consumers bought $7.3 billion of virtual goods in 2010.

8) ROVIO has made more than $24 million selling more than $2 million Angry Birds plush toys.

9) 4,204 billion cans of Red Bull were sold in 2010 up by 7.6% from 2009.

10) $3 billion pizzas are consumed each year for total sales of $32 billion.

11) 39% of women said they would find it a "turn-on" if a man listed "video games" as a personal interest.*

So...do you play video games?

My guild that I belonged in was always number one on the server for like four years going and we held every record and achievement. Requiem on Ravencrest-US was also a top 200 guild at one point but it didn't last very long. Mostly we bobbed somewhere in the top 400 thereabouts. This was a great accomplishment considering that 12 million people played the game.  Here's one of the videos we made of a hard-mode achievement back in 2009 (this fight was extremely difficult and no other guild on our server completed this so we were the only 25 that unlocked Algalon...a super secret boss in the raid dungeon). If you learn nothing else from this video, take this simple lesson--standing in fire is bad:

*SOURCE: Entrepreneur Magazine

Abusing Your Reader - A Feast For Crows

I'm working my way through A Feast for Crows. This is the fourth and last book in the Song of Ice and Fire series until A Dance of Dragons is released next month.

This novel came out five years ago in 2006. Since then, there has been no follow up whatsoever by the author on any of the characters in this series. I liken this to the "Who Shot J.R." episode that occurred in the 1970's in the television show "Dallas" only far FAR worse. Additionally, this novel has none of the prominent characters that we've gotten to know up to this point.

There are no Daenerys chapters (she's the one with the dragons), there are no Tyrion chapters, no Bran chapters, no Jon chapters (the white walker storyline)... instead what we get is a prologue about dragons...and then no dragons in the rest of the 1500-page book...and a cliffhanger where Arya wakes up blind and no follow-up for five years.

Martin does give us a new enemy in this book as the other ones are basically destroyed. Plus he shoves us into Circe's head with her own chapters which are interesting. However, all of these new POV characters suddenly getting their own chapters seems like a big sellout. This smacks of a conversation between author and publisher that goes something like this: "Hey George, we are making millions off of these and you need to make the series longer.  Milk this for us baby." Response from Mr. Martin: "I think I can do that but in order to get more books out of this, I need a new enemy. But I know where to work on this...I'll spend a book building up the Greyjoys that no one gives a shit about and they will be a force to be reckoned with for at least three more novels."

The term, I guess, is "selling out" and I'm on the hook. I'm as powerless to the "sell out" as I am to iTunes hiking the price on songs to $1.25. I'm not going to stop buying music...so I guess I'll pay.

How does a writer get away with this behavior? How can you write a prologue that has nothing to do with the rest of the book? How do you suddenly depart from all the characters that you've been writing about to essentially produce a novel that "takes place in the same world" but essentially has nothing to do with the 6000 pages that came before it? And then to top it off...how on earth do you not provide a follow-up for half a decade?

Here's to you, Mr. Martin.

I'm intrigued by all of this. It's fascinating to me to see just how much the reader is willing to endure when the author decides to take a big steamy shit. Incoming New York Times bestseller...12 weeks at number one (or longer), anyone?

Oh we are all sheeple when it comes down to it, aren't we? And being that we are just sheeple...does it make any sense at all what agents blog about on how to get published? It all seems like such baloney.

Salt Lake City Pride Fest 2011

This past weekend was Gay Pride weekend here in Salt Lake City, Utah. Despite being a super "red" state it made me happy to see so many folks out for the Gay Pride parade to support diversity and equal rights for everyone. I didn't end up going to the actual festival this year because last year when I went, I spent two hours in line for a snow cone and it was hot and miserable. Plus you have to get in line for food and then a separate line for a drink and if you want alcohol, there's a designated drinking area which I think is dumb.  Here's some pictures I took along with captions (the weather was gorgeous):

These are the swimmers from QUAC.

One of the many political advertisements in the parade.

Well's Fargo

This was a Realtor's float left over from Burning Man.

Queen of the parade was Roseanne Barr. That's her in the car there.

Song Of Ice And Fire Book Covers

Okay, so I've been on a huge George R.R. Martin kick. As much as I've said about his books, there's just so much more I could talk about (yes, he's definitely one of the most talented writers I've ever read).

Here's the covers for the Japanese editions of the books and I have to say...they look completely badass.

Are these seriously awesome or what?

The book covers for the American versions of the mass-produced paperbacks are boring in comparison.

I Got Awarded And Then Tagged

D.U. Okonkwo gave me the versatile blogger award because my blog essentially has no theme. I explained that at first I was going to blog about writing, however, that didn't work out because there was absolutely nothing I could say that could add to the discussion of available knowledge already online. That and I have no publishing credentials so any talk of agents, query letters, and synopsis stuff holds no weight whatsoever. Then I thought about doing a blog that approached fine dining and realized that fine dining was making me fat. I stopped going out to eat so much and started going to the gym. Hopefully my weight starts to come down and I get more energy and feel healthier. So what was left? Blog about film maybe? Well that's also covered by everyone online so there's not much I can add to that discussion either. So one has to blog about something. I chose to blog about anything that pops into my head.

Award Rules:
1) Thank the person that gave you the award.
2) List seven random facts about you.
3) Pass it on to three other bloggers.

Seven Random Facts:
1) I live in Utah.
2) I love fresh oranges.
3) I love coffee with biscotti.
4) I love comic book movies and see every one that hits the theaters.
5) I read a lot.
6) I drive a car that's 11 years old.
7) I read all of my books on my iPad.

I'm passing this award onto:

1) Brian Pagel at Thinking The Lions.
2) Cindy Borgne, author of "Vallar" at her blog Dreamer's Perch.
3) Dominic de Mattos at his blog Writes of Passage.

Please accept this wonderful award and pass it on to three other lucky people :).

TAGGED, YOU'RE IT!

On Friday, 5-27-2011, my online friend Hart Johnson over at her blog Confessions of a Water Tart "tagged me" with a "meme". Additionally, I was also tagged by my other online friend Brooke R. Busse at her blog called Paper Mountain with the same "meme". So in the sport of "tag, you're it" I'm going to answer the questions and then pass this on to eight blogger friends: 

1.) Do you think you're hawt? Not in the least bit. I think blonds have got this cornered, personally, but that's just me.  

2.) Upload a picture or a wallpaper that you are using at the moment. 

This is Jake Abel who plays "Adam Winchester" on the CW show Supernatural. I like his smile so he's been my wallpaper on the ole iPad for a little while. He also played the villain in the theatrical adaptation of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and a villainous sub-character (probably closer to a bully/douchebag) in the theatrical adaptation of I Am Number Four. I honestly wish he'd stop being cast as the asshole in movies. I think he could be a good hero for some YA adaptation/flavor of the month.

3.) When was the last time you ate chicken? A couple of weeks ago when I bought a pound of deli-sliced chicken for making sandwiches.

4.) What are the songs you've listened to recently? "The Edge of Glory" and "Judas" by Lady GaGa, "On The Floor" by Jennifer Lopez, "E.T." by Katy Perry, "Party Rock Anthem" (featuring Lauren Bennett & Goonrock), "Blow" by Ke$ha, and "Iridescent" (from Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon) by Linkin Park<== I love Linkin Park.

5.) What were you thinking as you were writing this? I was thinking how much cooler the song by Linkin Park is going to be than the movie Transformers 3 which is probably going to be horrible but which I'll end up seeing anyway.

6.) Do you have nicknames? Nope. I discourage the use of nicknames as they always ended up sounding insulting. Seeing as I have like three real life friends this is easy to do.

7.) Top eight blogger friends who shall be tagged by this:

Patrick Dilloway a.k.a. Rogue Mutt.

Charity Bradford at Charity Writes.

Gina Blechman at Kaleidoscope Thoughts: Life, Love, and Dystopia. 

Munir at Focus.

Steph Schmidt at her blog The Non-Sequitur Ramblings.

Misha at My First Book.

Rachael Harrie of Rach Writes...

Lucinda Bilya at Missing Link in Writing.

8.) Who's listed as number one: Patrick Dilloway, author of "Where You Belong", a novel similar to "The Cider House Rules" and just as good. He uses a picture of a bulldog as his avatar. The ebook version of the book is .99 and is worth a purchase so buy a copy and read it.

9.) Say something about number two: Charity knows how to write query letters and three line pitches. 

10.) How did you get to know number 3? Through Rachael Harrie's second crusade. She also runs the blog Everything LGBT.

11.) How about number four? Munir found my blog somehow and started commenting and I followed the breadcrumbs back to her blog. She's a deeply spiritual person and very wise. I like popping over there to see what she has to say quite often.

12.) Leave a message for number six: Misha, post some of your maps so I can see them! She lives on the other side of the world from me so I often see her say "good morning" on Twitter when I'm about to pass out for the day.

13.) Do number seven and number eight have similarities?: Rachael and Lucinda...hmmm...both are women and both are intelligent. They also both have similar things to say about writing. So yeah, I'd say they have lots of stuff in common and maybe they should get to know each other.

14.) Why does number five's blog interest you? Steph has an enormous amount of common sense. That's saying a lot because she knows exactly what to do given any situation (and how to respond in a way that is politically correct for all interested parties).

The Eyrie

This is the first post of a compare/contrast series that I wanted to talk about regarding artistic interpretation of George R.R. Martin's world as presented in his epic Song of Ice and Fire. Basically, I'm going to post artist drawings of these places and then how they appear in the HBO series and ask you, did HBO get it right?

Here is everything that I know of a castle called the Eyrie:

Essentially it is the ancient seat of House Arryn, one of the oldest lines of Andal nobility. It is situated in the Mountains of the Moon astride the mountain known as the Giant's Lance. It is reachable only by a narrow goat trail that takes Caetlyn 12-hours to climb, guarded by the Gates of the Moon and three small waycastles; Stone, Snow and Sky. It is supplied by means of a massive dumbwaiter that extends down to the topmost waycastle.


The Eyrie is the smallest of the great castles, consisting only of a cluster of seven slim, white towers bunched tightly. The castle is made of fine white stone. The towers encircle a garden, which had been meant as a godswood, but the soil was too poor. The Eyrie is also unique in that it lacks a godswood; no weirwood tree would take root in the stony soil. The barracks and stables are in the mountain.

Okay, first up here is Ted Nasmith's version (Ted Nasmith is an award-winning professional artist more famous for his works on Tolkien than anything else):

Click to make bigger.

Okay, here in this painting Mr. Nasmith gives us all the elements. Seven slender towers, white stone, the dumbwaiter thing that goes to one of the keeps that isn't featured in the painting, and a sense that this beast of a castle is really super high (because there are clouds actually beneath the castle in the picture).

Also featured are the sky cells that Tirrion gets thrown into plus I could see it taking a full 12-hours to get to this place using a goat path. I'm no professional climber but getting up to this thing has got to be terrifying (which it was for Caetlyn).

Okay, here I give you a screenshot of the Eyrie as it appears in the HBO series. Right off, you see a bridge that goes over to it and it isn't surrounded by mountains like in Nasmith's version. Additionally, if you look closely, the bridge is just a road that winds up underneath the actual Eyrie and then up to the castle on top. Furthermore, it's kind of round which isn't how I visualized it. As well, if the slender towers are there, they're so small I can't even see them.

Which one got it right? HBO or Ted Nasmith? Please let me know in a comment.

See my second post in this series entitled Harrenhal HERE.