Updates and observations

Randomly, and if I don't produce links...well, I have my reasons.

+ I am well into Book Nine. (Am I being psychotically paranoid about releasing titles? Maybe.) It's a mystery, I can tell you that much.

+ I know what Book Ten will be about. A short story, and think Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography (kind of). And it just might be released before Book Nine, which would really make this Book Nine, and Book Nine Book Ten. (This is why someone came up with the brilliant idea of titles.)

No titles, but here's a little clue

+ Remember when Amazon Publishing and its imprints were all the rage, circa 2012? Authors wanted to sign with them and observers condemned the potential possibility for collusion (including me)? Um, don't. I'm underwhelmed (and that's a huge understatement) with the quality of their marketing and editorial services. If anyone thought they were going to revolutionize publishing...let's not worry about that anymore.

+ And remember when people were recently bitching about Amazon Vine? Not sure yet what it means, but the pickings are much slimmer than they used to be.

+ As I'm cleaning up my social media experience, I get the sense that others are doing so as well. Not leaving but contracting.

+ Speaking of which, I'm now on Tumblr. Right now it's a lot of food porn, but there will be more Boston and more...whatever else I want :-) If you're on Tumblr look me up.

Back to the books!

There *is* such a thing as bad publicity

I mentioned, in places too numerous to link to, that I originally went the "traditional" route and queried agents. Although I wanted to go indie for a while, I was cognizant of the benefits of traditional, most of which were in the areas of editorial and marketing services. One of the things that convinced me to finally take the plunge was that there is almost no marketing support these days unless you're already really big or unless, for whatever reason, your publishing house takes a shine to you. Because the category I write in doesn't command a lot of shelf space in bookstores (that would be New Adult Romance, FYI), I realized I would not be one of those authors who would get a lot of support, if I got picked up at all.

I am happy with my decision, but we indies are very aware of how much work we have to do to generate our own publicity. I love writing for other blogs, but I realize that those don't have the same reach as a print magazine or newspaper. I am not the only indie who fantasizes about having a big platform to shout from so I could convince people that they should buy my book.

It's just that I always figured if I did, I'd be giving you good reasons to buy from me, not telling you all of the reasons why someone who doesn't like my stuff is so deficient. In fact, if I had a really big platform, I wouldn't want to tell ANYONE about the people who didn't like me. So the actions of two authors last week leave me not only disgusted, but puzzled.

I am not going to write out the name of the first author in question, nor am I going to put her name in the tags. Here's a link to some of Dear Author's coverage of the story. I am not going to give this woman anymore publicity because what this author did falls under the definition of stalking. I don't mean online stalking- I mean real-life stalking. I don't understand why the blogger she stalked hasn't brought criminal charges against her, because I would. And how did this start? Because the author could not handle that this blogger and reviewer didn't like her book.

People are crazy; what else is new? But what has been making me blink for the last few days is that the Guardian, a respected news outlet, published the story the author told about her obviously criminal behavior. It also astounds me that her publishing company, Harper Teen, has said nothing in response to what their author did. Until they do, I can only assume that their silence is cover for their approval.

Slightly less disturbing is the tantrum author Margo Howard wrote for the New Republic. Her book was given to Amazon's Vine Program for early review. She seems to find the idea of pre-publication reviews in and of themselves offensive, never mind that most authors (traditional and indie) long for such pre-publicity. Apparently, the Vine Reviews she received were unflattering, and she in turns feels that these unprofessional reviewers are uneducated mouth-breathers who are only reviewing so they can get free stuff and don't understand that books are different from "pots and creams".

Ah, that again. As a long-time reviewer and a member of the Vine Program, I would like to point out that it is extremely difficult to review the product if we don't have it. And since we are being asked to review it, it just doesn't make sense to charge us for what we review. Hence, what we get is free.

I'd also like to add that I'd been reviewing on Amazon by choice for about six or seven years before I was selected to be in the Vine Program. I have a decent rank, but I wasn't in the Top 1000. To this day, I'm not entirely sure why I was tapped, but obviously Amazon felt I offered something that they wanted for their program. This would, therefore, be the case with all of the other reviewers in the program. In other words: we were asked.

I'm an author; I get how much a bad review can sting. But if we're serious about not just writing but publishing our work, I fail to understand why we would not act like professionals and not narcissists. I also don't understand why the Guardian and the New Republic want to perpetuate the idea that reviews, which are really opinions, and perhaps books in general should only be available to those who are qualified.

Here is my list of qualifications: literacy. Yep- done. All those who qualify are invited to read books and share their opinions.

The Children of Henry VIII by John Guy

This is neither an exhaustive history of the final years of Tudor England nor a full biography of either Henry or his children. This is more a tale of Henry's efforts to maintain his dynasty and the varied, conflicting ways in which his children tried to preserve his legacy, however fraught their own relationship to it might have been.

Guy offers a cause for the start of Henry's troubles: one of his blood factors was probably in conflict with Katherine of Aragon's and later Ann Boleyn's. (He doesn't specify, but perhaps he means the Rh factor.) This would explain why, untreated, both queens were "lucky" to be able to bear one child with him. It was just their misfortune that those children happened to female.

It doesn't need to be belabored that Henry's perspective that a woman couldn't rule was sexist. In his defense, there was little precedent for it at the time, and at least in this treatment his primary concern seems to be what will become of the monarchy after the queen marries. It seemed impossible for Henry to imagine that a queen would be strong enough to dominate her husband, and upon reflection, given the times it seems unlikely that anyone would get that close to power and not be tempted to consolidate it. At the worst, the new king would dominate his wife; at the least, a marriage would run the risk of splitting the government into factions (and certainly this is what happened to Mary when she was married to Philip). Elizabeth, who ultimately decided it would be imprudent to marry, also noted that marriage to someone of her rank created an equal number of vulnerabilities that marriage to a commoner would.

While this does cover some of the highlights of the biographies- Ann Boleyn may very well have been an evil stepmother; Mary's devotion to her Catholic faith may have been as much an act of defiance as it was genuine piety; Edward was closest to Elizabeth of all of his siblings; their half-brother Henry Fitzroy entered into a marriage agreeing not to consummate it; and Elizabeth learned her survival skills at an early age, beginning with the scandal between Thomas Seymour and herself- what it goes into greater detail about is the way their educations and households were organized. In all cases, by the time the royal children were four months old, their households were established away from their parents. However, both Katherine and Ann went out of their way to see their daughters beyond what was proscribed by royal protocol. (Jane Seymour, Edward's mother, never had the chance as she died shortly after his birth.) While Henry wanted to see his daughters educated, he did not see any reason for them to be educated in a way that would prepare them for rule. However, it seems that both princesses applied themselves well- better, perhaps, than their brothers.

Interestingly, Guy argues here that both Mary and Elizabeth were far more merciful than they have been recorded elsewhere, particularly in the cases of Jane Grey and Mary Queen of Scots, respectively. Mary- later known as Bloody Mary- was inclined to spare Grey's life out of loyalty to her mother, but was moved to execute her after the first of many Protestant rebellions. Elizabeth, while seeing the need to imprison Mary (of Scotland), was reluctantly talked into executing her but apparently changed her mind at the last minute. Her counselors, however, had her executed anyway. Regardless of her personal feelings toward Mary, Elizabeth was devastated by this decision because it set a precedent for the weakening of the legal monarch of a country, and she was wise enough to know that English rulers would not be spared. (And in the cases of  Charles I and James II, she would be proven correct.)

The tragedy of Henry's family is that while he was obsessed with continuing the dynasty, his actions and pronouncements made it impossible for his children to do so. While England became a stronger country under Elizabeth, her death ended the Tudor line. James, Mary's Scottish son, was the grandson of Henry's sister Margaret, but thereafter the rulers of England would be Stuarts, not Tudors.

Recommended for those interested in English history.