The Splitting of Bloodlines

Bloodlines has been split in two.  Now those of you who were wise enough to pick it up early for just a dollar, or those that were lucky enough to get it for free, congratulations.  Those of you who have yet to pick it up, the first part will be free Sunday May 6^th and the second part is only a dollar more.  This blog will explain the motivations for this split—and to insure to the faithful supporter that this was not done as a way to cash in twice on the same bet and to milk this for all it is worth, but for more practical reasons involving the publishing world.

                First reason for the split is because of the length of the novel.  Bloodlines weighs in at just under 700 pages.  When the novel was read by a higher up at St. Martin’s Press, he enjoyed the story but said the length was too long  Now 700 pages is short for  Stephen King, or  George R.R. Martin, but for an unknown like myself it is not a good way to secure a publishing deal.  The entertainment business is made up of the entertainers and the businessmen.  The entertainers, or artists, don’t want to compromise their art.  They want things the way they want them.  It’s the businessmen who put up the money to promote the work, so they can say “well that’s not going to happen.”  Once you are established with a secure fan base you can call the shots, but until then you have to play the game.  Look at Pearl Jam.  Now they answer to no one, tour when they want, drop an album when they want, but when they first came out they were doing gigs for MTV.  It is the way the game is played, and I accept this situation.  So being pretty much an unknown I have a better shot at securing a deal if a publisher just has to risk printing up 350 pages, instead of 700.  It is like asking for a two book deal, instead of just a foot in the door.  This is the main reason for the split.

                The second reason is because series is what is popular in fiction these days.  People don’t write one story then continue with a new setting.  Though I have said before I do not plan to be a part of this, and have many different ideas for novels, Bloodlines is not intended to be a stand-alone novel.  There is a prequel Bloodlines: 0, and a sequel Bloodlines Coda, that are both mapped out in my mind’s eye, and will be started once there is enough success for Bloodlines.  So I do not really have an objection to this split and becoming a series already.  When I do make it and get to call the shots, these two parts can be combined as one, and it can be the proper trilogy I had always intended.

                The third reason is more for my own purpose.  There has been over 1000 downloads of Bloodlines, but I want to know how happy the readers are.  My splitting it in two allows me to see how many people who downloaded the first part, continued on to read the second.  The split is not exactly halfway through the book, but at the end of the second of the four sections of the novel.  It ends on a cliffhanger that I will not delve into for the sake of those reading this blog who have not yet read the book.  However, it does end in a way that people who enjoy it will have no problem paying another dollar for the second one.  Also the full novel can be purchased for two dollars. 

                So this split was done for business reasons, but faithful supporter know that I still consider the whole of parts 1 and 2 the first novel of the Bloodlines trilogy.

Published Work or Porn?

There has been a trend developing in the publishing world, and I feel this trend is a major step back.  It is the rise of erotic fiction.  Nicknamed “mommy porn,” the success of Fifty Shades of Grey shows a paradigm shift for what is successful in the publishing world.  This is not good for those fans of quality literature. 

                Just a few years ago The Da Vinci Code was the number 1 book in the land—an intelligent, historical thriller.  Now we have the Twilight Saga, and Fifty Shades of Grey.  What happened?  Remember when intense suspenseful thrillers were the popular books—Thomas Harris with his Hannibal series, Stephen King, Michael Crichton.  Now it seems “mommy porn” is dominating the book shelves, along with young adult fiction.

                Now I have no problem with young adult, in fact I encourage it.  It’s getting young people to read, and opening up a whole new world of readers.  The problems become when adults are just reading Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Hunger Games.  Where is the audience for the mature thriller, with rich character development?  It appears it is no longer about young adult and R-rated books, but young adult and X-rated books.

                This trend of mommy porn started with Twilight.  For pre-teen girls to read about high school vampires and falling in love with it is fine with me.  It’s not my cup of tea of course, being a full grown male, but this is what 12, 13 year old girls should be into.  However, it is a little upsetting when adult women, mothers, are getting turned on by these stories.

                Now Twilight has directly inspired Fifty Shades of Grey.  The writer, E.L. James, wrote a story titled Master of the Universe for Twilight fanfiction.  She then reworked it and made it into Fifty Shades of Grey.  While I do appreciate the success of James, to come from a small publisher and work her way up, I am more critical of the shift in taste of the publishing audience.  Years ago erotic fiction was laughed at, it was something for just lonely housewives.  Now it is becoming a juggernaut.  What I am afraid to see is new writers that are great at creating plot and suspense with deep characters like Dennis LeHane, not getting their due respect for the sake of basically porn in print.  Whitney Fink, a producer of Access Hollywood, is quoted of saying this book should not be regarded as, “anything other than the big step backward that it is.”

                Come on readers you are better than this.  Though it is not my taste, I totally respect the work of Nicholas Sparks.  A love story is a great, credible, read.  Romeo and Juliet is timeless, but these are not love stories.  These are stories with BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism).  This success is going to inspire more stories that are written just for shock value—no deep characters, rich emotions, and feelings that these characters might be experiencing true love.  It makes one wonder about the current taste of the book audience.  Did people like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because of the mystery surrounding the Vanger family, or for just the explicit sex scenes in it?      

Zimm Zimma, Who Got the Keys to the Prisa

               So George Zimmerman is getting charged for 2^nd degree murder.  I waited for most of this story to play out to make my own comment.  How do I feel about the events that happened?  George Zimmerman did commit a crime.  You cannot pursue someone—especially after being warned by a 911 operator—and then claim self-defense.   If someone broke into my home I should legally be able to shoot them.  If someone breaks into my home, I grab my gun, the intruder sees the gun, the intruder flees, I should not then legally be able to follow him and kill him.  That is the difference here.  You can’t claim self-defense when you initiated the issue.

                Now the issue comes up as to who initiated the issue.  We only have George Zimmerman’s story.  Trayvon Martin is dead.  We do have that he called his friend right before the shooting and said someone was following him.  We also have a phone call that audio forensics say is Martin screaming for help.  Now according to Zimmerman’s story Trayvon approached him—going against Martin’s friend telling him to run before the line went dead.  Zimmerman’s story of events just smells of bullshit.  I taught young black kids, they don’t just go up to full grown men, as Zimmerman has claimed and say, “Do you have a problem, well now you do.”  Common sense tells me this story is bullshit made up by Zimmerman to cover his ass, and show the Martin was the instigator.

                We have no evidence to the contrary of what initiated the conflict.  However, Zimmerman did have a gun on him that is a fact.  He could have shown his gun once Martin approached him, and I am sure then Martin would have backed off.  Instead, according to him he kept the gun concealed on him.  Then according to Zimmerman the 17 year old attacked him.  Again drawing on my experience of teaching young black kids, a full grown man still would have the upper-hand.  Zimmerman claimed he broke his nose, yet the video of him in the police station shows no blood on his shirt.  Anyone who broke a nose, knows two things: 1) there is a lot of blood coming out of your nose 2) you need medical attention, your nose has to be re-broken and then reset.  Zimmerman has produced none of these, yet we are too what, just take him on his word that his nose was broken?  But even so if, Trayvon got on top of him, Zimmerman felt the only option here was to shoot this young unarmed boy in the chest and kill him?  Shit all he had to do was show him his gun, or tell him he had one and I am sure Martin would have left him alone.

                I have no doubt that Martin’s death is solely the cause of the actions of Zimmerman.  His story has too many loopholes when looked under with logic.  At first I didn’t like the idea of Murder in the 2^nd degree because I felt that would give him a chance to get off, but upon learning the jury can convict him of a lesser charge like manslaughter 1.  I am almost sure Zimmerman will face justice.  However, this is still Florida and they did let Casey Anthony walk.      

Hunger Lames pt. 2

In the last blog I discussed the premise of Hunger Games.  For this blog let’s do as Jules from Pulp Fiction said, “Get into character.”  The main character is Katniss Everdeen.  A girl from District 12 who is poor, and has learned how to hunt with a bow and arrow when her father died to support her family.  This character sucks, and it’s really hard to believe her emotions are that of a 16 years old girl.  Oh and she is also a virgin.  Apparently in the future people no longer like sex.   She is self-serving which is understandable in this situation and in the middle of a love triangle which is completely unbelievable.  

One point of the triangle is her pseudo-boyfriend Gale.  I said pseudo because they never hook-up.  Apparently in the future teenagers are not curious about sex either.  But they do hunt together.  The other end of this triangle is Peeta.  Also in the future people get weird names.  He is a sap and in love with Katniss.  And unlike in reality the sap will ultimately end up with the girl.  However, throughout the entire series Katniss acts like she doesn’t like Peeta.  In fact she really acts like she doesn’t like either.  This love triangle is about as steamy as dull steel.  I can only explain its purpose in the series to fulfill this young adult cliché of love triangles—Harry Potter, Twilight.  But unlike how those triangles were believable and passionate, this one just goes through the motions, with her ending up with Peeta and the reader asking what?

There are other characters and they are also cliché—the drunk mentor, the superficial host for the game show, the evil president, the innocent sister.  Do not expect any surprises from this group or even any character development throughout the series.  In fact Katniss herself after all the hell she went through in these Hunger Games, votes to put the children of the Capital in a similar Hunger Games once a year at the end of the third book.  This is equivalent of after reading a novel that focuses and expresses the horrors of a war, the main character then saying he loves war.  Charlie Sheen’s character in Platoon re-enlisting for Vietnam.   

So enough with the lame characters lets finish this blog up with the plot.  In the first book Katniss of course wins the hunger games.  She is never confronted with having to make a difficult decision and having to kill someone she doesn’t want to—which would be the obvious moral conundrum in this premise you would expect, but alas it never takes place.  She befriends a young girl Rue (again weird names like we have left Earth and are now in Mordor).  Now if Katniss killed Rue this could have been a scene to make this trilogy immortal.  Like George and Lennie in “Of Mice and Men,” you know a real tough decision.  But no, one of the “bad” competitors kills her, and of course only these bad competitors Katniss kills.  Throughout the time in the arena Katniss has had to act like she genuinely loved Peeta, so that they could get the support of sponsors that drops off medical aid and gifts.  Peeta of course genuinely loves her so he is being played for a sucker, but it also saves his life.  When it gets down to just her and Peeta, and the dramatic conclusion, she gives Peeta a handful of poisonous berries that she also about to take for herself.  They say they love each other too much to kill one another.  Katniss’s real strategy is that she believes the capital needs a winner and won’t let them both die.  And of course this is true.  The capital stops them from killing themselves and allows them both to live, because there has to be a winner.  Really?  Throughout the entire time in the “arena” the capitol has sent these man made destructions: fireballs, mechanical animals, etc, to kill the competitors if the games got boring but now they can’t do any of them to at least kill either Peeta or Katniss?  They have to have a champion.  This logic doesn’t hold up to, well, logic.  But then again neither does the rest of the story.

In the second book it becomes apparent that since Katniss refused to kill Peeta, and they both attempted suicide instead of killing each other they have stirred rebellion in Panem.  Really?  75 years of Hunger Games, dirt poor living conditions, no freedom that doesn’t stir a revolt, but two teenagers about to eat berries does?  What the hell kind of people are living in Panem?  So Katniss becomes the symbol of the revolution, the “Mocking Jay” and now she is a threat to the capitol.  So for the 75^th Hunger Games,  old champions are returned and of course that means Katniss and Peeta—also Panem thinks Katniss and Peeta have a real love story going—and this also means you will be reading the same book twice.  Most of the book again is in the arena.  This time Katniss will let Peeta live and kill herself if it comes down to those two.  But this again never happens.  Instead at the very end via deus ex machina (something in storytelling that I really hate) Katniss and a few others competitors escape the arena thanks to a few members of an underground revolution.  It comes as a surprise to the reader because even though these other members knew of it along with her drunk mentor no one told Katniss or Peeta about this planned escape on the third day of the Hunger Games.  Sure this allows the reader to be surprised, but it again doesn’t hold up to any logic.  If Katniss is so important to the revolution’s cause why not let her in on this planned escape?  She will be prepared, she will avoid killing someone who is also in on the plot, and generally for something so important to be this successful you would not leave it to just dumb luck that she survives.  But that would not allow for such a surprise.  So for the sake of suspense—which is the only thing these novels carry through on—logic is again sacrificed. 

The third book is by far the most disappointing of the three.  Apparently there is a district 13 that has been allowed to survive since their failed rebellion just as long as no one knows about them because they have nuclear weapons.  Yeah, really process this: one district has all the nukes for what reason we never now because we have no idea about other countries, if a nuclear war caused this holocaust, and why the hell if they are the only ones with nukes they just don’t just nuke the capital.  But whatever, we suspended common sense after the first chapter of the first book so why stop now.  Katniss escapes to District 13, but not Peeta, because no one told him there would be an escape.  So he is prisoner, and in this book she spends most of the time with Gale, who was mostly absent from the first two.  But these two have about zero chemistry between them romantically.  Again, worst love triangle ever.  Collins should have checked out Bull Durham.  And now the revolution is full on, and the leaders of the crusade are Katniss and Gale.  Now I know she was awesome being in the arena but I tend to believe the best soldiers would be 25-35 year old men with extensive training.  A team of prom queens didn’t kill Osama Bin Laden, navy seals did.  Yet they are leading the revolt, but yet whenever something big happens, she is knocked out or we are told through other people.  While the most explosive shit is happening in the trilogy on the outside, most of the book is Katniss dealing with her emotions internally.  Peeta is captured, and when he returns he is broken.  Yet the events play out were a group of the arena’s combatants that escaped travel to the capital for the final death blow.  People die, but not Katniss, Gale, or even Peeta who as deranged as he is, is also on this important mission.  They capture President Snow, and Katniss’s younger sister Prim dies in the attack.  Prim was originally chosen for the games in the first book but Katniss took her place to save her—a hollow sacrifice, but this is the only hard part to read that makes this series to have not too much of a happy ending.  Snow gets captured, and Katniss is set to execute him.  It is during this that Katniss votes to have a Hunger Games for the children of the capital now that they are defeated.  A move that goes against any type of character development throughout the series and just makes the reader again ask what?  When she goes to kill Snow, Katniss instead kills the leader of the revolution President Coin, because it was her plan to drop the bombs that had killed Prim.  Yeah read the book for a better explanation of events but again it’s just cruel, to have Prim die, and again makes no sense.   So then Katniss is taken away, put in a room, then her mentor who has battled alcoholism comes and tells her that her trial for killing Coin is over, and she is good to.  Can I get another what?  Fifteen years later she is married to Peeta and they have children.  The ultimate what. Most readers thought she would at least end up with Gale, and Peeta was just a sap. 

The books ends with the sentence “There are much worse games to play.”  True but there are also much better series to read.  My recommendation is to get into the Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin, otherwise known as the Game of Thrones series.  Just fucking awesome.  Not written for kids, and although this takes place in another universe, these characters are much more human than anyone you will find in the Hunger Games.  

Hunger Lames pt. 1

I have spent a lot of blogs on political rants.  And while I am very political and do not regret, or withdraw any of my comments, I am still an author—not a pundit or someone working in government.  So I should write on what I am an expert in—writing.  On this blog I will abandon the risk of sounding pompous or conceited and write my first blog criticizing another novel.  I will not be careful in exposing spoilers.  I am not trying to sell this book, I am trying to caution against it.  So be warned.  I will also end every criticizing blog with a recommendation of something good to read that is not my own work.  Think of it as a zero sum gain.  So this is not my vehicle to just put something down.  I will spend my first “review” on one of the most overhyped phenomena occurring right now—The Hunger Games.

I have to admit the premise is badass.  Of course it is not completely original, no premise is—except maybe Pulp Fiction in recent years.  This story is set in the future.  North America is now one country called Panem.  It is divided into 12 districts.  After a failed rebellion it is now decreed that once every year one boy and one girl from each district must compete in the “Hunger Games.”  These games are a battle to the death leaving only one survivor as the “champion.”  C’mon that is cool.

What is uncool, immature, is how this scenario is all explained.  Basically the author only gets away with her lack of explanation because it is young adult fiction.  There is almost zero plausibility as to how this premise actually exists.  We never really learn what happened to America, Canada, and Mexico respectively.  Or what the state of the rest of the world is.  Even Wikipedia lists it as “some unknown apocalyptic event.”  As a writer this is lazy.  Nuclear holocaust, superflu, natural calamity, give me something to help me suspend belief.  Maybe Suzanne Collins didn’t want to come with an idea because then she would have to follow some type of canon or logic throughout the series.

Even these 12 districts aren’t believable.  The entire continent—remember it is not America, it is North America—is cut into 12 areas, I would expect them to be big fucking areas.  Like the size of the Bible Belt for one of them, or the size New England.  District 12 where are heroes comes from is about the size of a town—a small town. It would be totally believable if this was a town that is part of district 12, but it is not.  It is referred to as the entire district.  In the square of the district, which is more like a town green, is the “reaping”—it is actually a scene that reeks of Shirley Jackson’s Lottery.  Our heroes are chosen to do battle. 

From there the combatants travel to the capital where the games are held to be televised all over Panem.  Now district 12 is described as poor, with horrible living conditions, yet when we get to the capital it is almost a utopian future right out of an Asimov novel.  This only hurts the believability.  If you are going to give me a setting like a post-apocalyptic world like Mad Max, then the whole world should be like Mad Max.  That was Max’s lesson to the children in the third one—there is no great land, everything is ruined.  You can’t have the entire continent in ruins, and then one city loaded with technology.  It just doesn’t vibe.  Either the technology is out there and the world can become better, or it was all destroyed in whatever possibly apocalypse there was.  It’s not just as simple as have and have nots.  Even if the people of the other districts were enslaved, technology would still be used for them to do their work.  It can’t be that simple, but everything about this series is simple. 

It’s supposed to be believed that this oppression by the capital on all the other districts is why there are these hunger games.  Apparently 75 years earlier the 13^th district that no longer exists, led a revolution against the Capital because of their oppression.  The revolution was squashed and as a punishment now every year 2 children from each district must compete in these games.  Not only is this very cruel, but this is also very stupid and aimless.  Wouldn’t this situation just help encourage another revolt?  How many parents could led their kids just go off to die?  Wouldn’t a lot of parents die trying to protect their kids?  If things were so bad before and there was a revolution, how could now with these sick, twisted games not be enough for another revolution?  But for 75 years the people of Panem just accepted this fate.  But this reality of the people of the capital cheering on watching children kill themselves is far too sick for this reader to believe.  Collins said her inspiration for this story was from the Minotaur who the Athenians had to send 14 children to die each year.  But there was at least a point to this—they had to appease the Minotaur.  The reason Collins gives is not just for the district to be cruel.  It is also explained as a way to show the other districts that the Capital is in charge because they can send their kids away to these games.  Like the fact that the people in the capital live like kings, while everyone else is dirt poor, the people in the districts have no chance to improve their lot in life, no freedoms, no democracy just an overall horrible quality of life doesn’t get that point across?  And again for the capital to have such power in the land where modern-day representative democracy was born without any explanation to how this transition occurred is far too easy of an out for me as a writer to respect.

But this is the world of The Hunger Games.  This is the setting.  In my next blog I will get into more the actual characters and the plot, and my recommendation of what you should be reading.