What I learned from Barnes & Noble and The Mark of Ran

Today has sucked. Way too busy, so no time for a big links post. All I got for ya is a pirate novel update.

I've had Paul Kearney's The Mark of Ran (the first book in his Sea Beggars series) on my To Read list for a while now, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. Yesterday, a friend sent me a link that linked to this announcement on Kearney's message board: "Things have been rather busy as regards the future of the Sea Beggars series. I'm sorry to say that sales of both books have not been brilliant, both in the UK and the US, and so both the UK and US publishers have decided to pull the plug on the series. In the conventional sense, there will be no more books..."

He goes on to talk about his plans for the series and his feelings about the publishing business and it's heart-breaking. It also adds to my thoughts from a couple of weeks ago about the viability of publishing a pirate novel.

My friend's reason for sending me the link was to get me to go buy The Mark of Ran and review it here in hopes that if enough people did that, maybe we could get some kind of buzz going for it and save the series. And because my friend asked, I was happy to scoot over to Barnes & Noble on my way home last night and pick up a copy. Only guess what? No copies. Which is really the problem, isn't it?

It's not that the book's sitting on the bookstore shelf and no one's buying it. It's that the bookstore didn't buy any copies. Or, if it did, they didn't sell so now they've been sent back to the publisher. It sucks.

And it again brings up the question: considering how popular the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are, why aren't pirate novels selling? The closest answer I can come up with is that there's no crossover appeal. Just like everyone who likes the Spider-Man movies doesn't go looking for their nearest comic book store, people who like Pirates of the Caribbean aren't necessarily going to go looking for novels that are similar to it. First of all, the novels wouldn't have Jack Sparrow in them, and Jack -- or Johnny Depp anyway -- is the big attraction with the Pirates movies. Sure, there's a small group of pirate fans (like me) who'll eat up whatever piratey goodness you put in front of them, but they're a niche market.

Barnes & Noble did have a whole display of pirate books right on the main aisle between the front entrance and the Starbucks in the center of the store. All of it was non-fiction. You'd think that Mark of Ran and Crystal Rain would've gone nicely on that display, but nope. And honestly, I'm not complaining. I'm just making an observation that I can hopefully learn from. I don't blame Barnes & Noble. Obviously, it's in their best interest to sell books and for whatever reason, they don't think that pirate fiction, even old pirate fiction that they publish themselves, will sell off of that display. I don't get it, but I accept it.

And part of accepting it means that I've got to lay off Le Corsaire for now. It's time to think about something else as a first novel. 'Cause like I said before: lots of other ideas.

Reading List

So, after my mini-freak-out yesterday I went to Amazon and quickly decided that it's not a great resource for what's current in the marketplace. I absolutely love Amazon and it's my primary source for buying books, movies, and music, but for browsing? Not so hot. Nothing is categorized by genre and there's not an easy way to search for, say, recent pirate fiction. There's not even a great cross-referencing section so that I can find books similar to ones I already like.

Take Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell, for example. I mentioned it yesterday because it's got a pirate theme to it, even though it's set on another planet. Amazon will show me other books bought by people who also bought Crystal Rain, but that's of limited use. Those recommendations are all for other scifi books. Not at all what I'm looking for. You can also search for other books with particular Key Phrases, but those tend to be proper nouns or what Amazon calls "statistically improbable phrases." "Pirate fiction" isn't a statistically improbable phrase.

A little more useful is the Customer Tags feature, but if I search that for "pirates" I get 229 items including Pirates of the Caribbean movies and a book called The Alphabet of Manliness. There are also reference books, pirate dictionaries, The Goonies... but it's hard to drill down to what I want.

A quick Google search for "pirate novels" was also unhelpful. There's actually a book called Pirate Novels, so I got a lot of links for that. Wikipedia has an entry on Pirates in Popular Culture, but of the six books they list, only three of them were written in the last decade: a Tween series, a self-published print-on-demand deal (not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not a good indicator for what publishers are currently buying, you know?), and a series that looks absolutely hilarious but isn't at all like what I'm trying to do. Of the six books on Wikipedia's Pirate Books page, the most recent was published in 1988 (although that one sounds very much like what I'm trying to do with Le Corsaire).

After reading yesterday's post, my friend Shara suggested that I also search LibraryThing, which is a great idea. Searching their tags is going to be a little easier than searching Amazon's because there aren't any movies and CDs to filter out, but it'll still be challenging.

All is not lost though. I went to Barnes & Noble yesterday to do some browsing. I checked out the Young Adult and the Fantasy/SciFi sections to see if there's anything new there that looks like me, but there isn't. What I did see though, in the Fiction and Literature section, was something that reminded me of an Arturo Pérez-Reverte book, and everything clicked for me.

Comparing myself to Pérez-Reverte is pretty frickin' arrogant, so let's just say that he's the guy that I dream of sitting next to on a bookshelf. I may never be that talented, but he's writing exactly the kind of stuff that I want to write. A little swashbuckling, a little mystery, a little fantasy... I've already got The Club Dumas and The Flanders Panel at home, so I left the store with a copy of Captain Alatriste. And that reminded me that there is actually a sub-genre that's doing what I want to do. For the last year I've been Wish Listing what I call Historical Mystery titles off of Bookgasm. Stuff like Napoleon's Pyramids, The Conjurer's Bird, The Poe Shadow, and The Historian. And as I'm perusing my Wish List to remind myself of these books, I also remember that if I want something specifically pirate-themed, there's always The Mark of Ran. And, of course, Crystal Rain.

So now I just have to start reading them.

My genre (or "I need stuff to read")

Speaking of marketing, Lit Agent X has a great post on the subject as it relates to prose. The whole thing is worth reading, but this bit especially stood out to me: "Knowing where your book fits into the marketplace is very important. Good writers are readers. For fiction, you should read as much as you can in your own genre."

Which got me thinking about what my genre really is. For the last few years I've been of the opinion that genre doesn't matter; that I should just write the story I want and let the marketing people figure out how to label it. The problem with that view is that it's extremist. If I don't figure out how to attract an agent or sell my book to a publisher, there won't be any marketing people to put labels on it. A more balanced approach -- and I'm a huge fan of balance -- is to be aware of the kind of people who'd be interested in my book, but not to the point that I feel constricted by a bunch of creativity-stifling genre "rules".

To that end, Lit Agent X has a follow up post to the above in which she says, "You should know where your book fits into the marketplace. I'll believe you if you name two or three books that truly would be on the same shelf as yours. I won't believe you if you compare your book to Catcher in the Rye, 1984, and Harry Potter. Comparing your work to bestsellers or classics that don't have much in common with yours won't serve you.

"But if you list three recently published authors/books and I know them all or I can quickly look them up, then I get a better sense of where your book fits and I know you're savvy enough to see your book as a product on a shelf sitting next to similar products."

The problem is: I don't know any recently published authors or books who's stuff my work-in-progress might sit next to on a shelf. Tobias Buckell maybe? But not really. Le Corsaire has a fantasy element to it, but it's very much set in a version of our world, rather than a completely fantastic one.

I haven't exhaustively researched this to know if they are or aren't, but if no one's currently writing anything remotely like my book, does that make me avant-garde or just really, really out-of-touch? Some superficial similarities between my book and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies make me suspect that it's the latter. Considering how popular the Pirates movies are, why is no one publishing books about pirates and supernatural creatures? It can't be that they're too derivative, because though the artiste in me rebels against that label, the publishing industry certainly wouldn't. I mean, look at all the Harry Potter and DaVinci Code look-a-likes and tell me that publishers are afraid of cashing in on a hot fad.

Here's something else that tells me how out-of-touch I am. Lit Agent X says that "good writers are readers." And I am a reader. But I'm reading old Conan novels and re-reading Burroughs and Robin Hood. Those are fun, but they're not teaching me anything about the current marketplace. I need new stuff to read. Hell, maybe there is a whole pirate-fantasy sub-genre that I don't know about because I've been too focused on the classics. I don't want to be the literary equivalent of the guy who quit listening to any music released after Boston's last album.

So, that's my mission for this week. I'm going to start surfing and searching Barnes & Noble for new stuff to read that looks like it might be in my genre. And if there's really nothing out there, I need to rethink whether Le Corsaire is a marketable first novel. 'Cause Lord knows I've got other ideas.

Le Corsaire update

I'm tearing Le Corsaire apart so I can look closer at the pieces before I build it up again.

The way I first came up with it, the story was too big. I was going for this grand, piratey epic of a thing, but I wasn't enjoying it. Too much focus on themes and building characters; not enough action and just enjoying the setting. So, I started simplifying and reorganizing. Taking out or merging characters and plotlines. I know, I know. I've talked about this already.

But now that I've got the story boiled down to its essence, I'm realizing that I've also been telling it about the wrong guy. The guy I had figured for the hero has some interesting dilemmas, but the story gets bogged down in his sorting them out. By switching the focus to another character and letting the first guy deal with his crap without our having to watch, the story will move faster.

I've also decided to play up the supernatural aspects of the story. They were always there, but I think I was afraid of celebrating them for fear of drawing Pirates of the Caribbean comparisons. That's still a concern, but the story really is completely different, so I'm going to opt for the more fun way to tell it and try not to worry about superficial similarities.

Incidentally, Maxine Cantway has nothing to do with this post except that she had the good taste to dress like a pirate.

Tarzan the Ape Man; project update

Really busy day today, so this is going to be short and kind of scattershot. Sorry.

Finished watching Tarzan the Ape Man last night. Johnny Weissmuller, as much as he isn't the literary Tarzan, is Tarzan. He's sort of to Tarzan, I guess, what Connery is to Bond. After all, Johnny's yell is a pop culture equivalent of Connery's "Bond, James Bond." And Maureen O'Sullivan, as much as she isn't the literary Jane, is so very very hot.

Someone asked in the comments to the LJ feed how far along I am on Le Corsaire. I've got fifteen chapters done and my chapters average about ten pages. That's pretty much the halfway mark for the first draft, but there's a lot in those first fifteen chapters that needs to be reworked. In addition to beefing up the action, I've got some serious cutting to do as well. There are a couple of characters who should really just be one, there's another character who I follow for way too long instead of concentrating on the hero, and there's yet another character who just needs to be changed completely because I've realized that he's a horror/fantasy stereotype and a pretty dull one at that.

So, yeah. I'm pretty far along, but I've got a lot of work to do. It'll be fun work though.

And nobody asked, but as long as I'm talking about work, I'm ready to start researching potential publishers for Kill All Monsters!. I've got a list of nine right now, but the other creators involved may want to add to or subtract from that list. My hope is to have a final list by this weekend and spend next week compiling the various submissions guidelines.

Writing is Hard: Project Update

I haven't done a project update here in a while, but someone asked me in the comments on the LiveJournal feed for this blog what I've been up to, so I'll share it here too.

A little over a year ago I put aside a pirate novel I was working on called (tentatively) Le Corsaire. I wasn't really happy with how it was going, but I wasn't sure why, so I decided to focus on other stuff for a while.

One of those things was the Robots vs. Monsters comic I'm doing with Jason Copland, which has been an educational experience for me. The editor on that book, Jason Rodriguez, showed me that I was holding myself way back on the action. I'd wanted to make sure that the story was strong, but I'd sacrificed a lot of the coolness factor to do it. Once I realized that I was doing it on the comic, I understood a big piece of what was wrong with Le Corsaire.

I've always been pretty comfortable writing dialogue scenes. I think I'm good at it and they come pretty easily. Action, on the other hand, I have to stop and think about. Folks who've read "Completely Cold" tell me that they like the action in it, but I've got to choreograph that stuff out in my head. I imagine the entire fight or chase scene in slow motion and describe it as it's happening. I think it works out okay when I'm done, but it's a long, slow process and I don't particularly enjoy it. As a result, Le Corsaire tended to jump from dialogue scene to dialogue scene while skipping over most of the action. In fact, the place where I put it aside was right before a big pirate attack that I just did not want to have to choreograph. It's a crucial scene, so I knew I couldn't skip it, but I didn't want to have to write it either, so I stalled out.

What I've learned from Robots vs. Monsters is that I can have fun choreographing and writing action. I don't need to let it overwhelm me. So, I'm picking up Le Corsaire again with the intention of having the first draft done by the end of May. I'm going to have to re-work a lot of what I've already written, but now I know how to make it the book I want it to be. I mean, who ever heard of a pirate story without any action?

I've also figured out the other thing that was bothering me about Le Corsaire when I put it down. I was working too closely to my outline. Or maybe it was that my outline was too detailed. Either way, I wasn't leaving myself enough room for sudden inspiration and it was taking a lot of the fun out of the experience. This time, I have a basic idea of where the story is headed and I'm just going to write in that general direction and see what the journey looks like once I get there.

As far as Robots vs. Monsters goes, it's almost completely inked. I wish I could share some of Jason's stuff with you here, but you're gonna have to wait until it comes out. It's awesome though. It's got giant monsters, giant robots, airplane dogfights, a hidden jungle city, and a flawed, but sympathetic hero with an impossible goal to achieve. And did I mention unbelievable art? Oh, and a new name. This is subject to change again, but for now the working title is Kill All Monsters!.

It's weird how things work, but as I've been thinking over the problems with Le Corsaire and changing titles on the comic like I change clothes, I've also been running across posts on writing blogs that deal with a lot of these same issues. If you're interested, here are the links:

On the need to start stories with some action, instead of boring backstory.
"Splat splat splat. You've got a big fat wad of information in the first part -- a dreaded prologue I fear. First of all, no one talks like that. Shorter sentences will help. Second, you've told us there's a corpse, then you go back to Boston to let us know that Zoe is on her way to Sydney in six months?? I KNEW that. Get to the story. Prune ruthlessly."

Another opinion on where to start your story. (Just to show there's never any, one, right answer.)
"There is/used to be a thought that you should always start the story where the action is -- which lead to a lot of stories being started in the wrong place. Like, in the midst of a heated argument or at a really sensitive scene -- which sounds like it would be ok, but more often than not we are interested in heated/sensitive scenes because we feel a connection with the character. If that's how your story begins, it is often harder for the reader to get that connection right away -- even if it's a scene designed to make the character seem more sympathetic. Usually you should back up the story a little bit -- and start earlier."

On balancing dialogue with action.
"...have you mistaken dialogue for action or scene building or for characterization? Remember, there has to be a balance. It can’t be all dialogue at the sacrifice of the other stuff. Some folks are great dialoguers. Don’t rely on your strength to carry a whole novel."

On titles.
"Decent titles take a while to cook up, so I generally use place-holder or working titles until I read a couple tons of poetry, hit the Library of Congress Online Catalog a few million times to see if any of my title ideas have been done before, and settle on the one I want. It doesn't have to be the title, just a title."

Got It

I don't know if this is smart or not, but I'll find out soon enough, I guess.

I've decided to start another novel. Gav's busy enough illustrating the Quartet of Crime one-shot I already wrote without my adding to his pile with more stories, and I can't see anyone else drawing a QoC story but him. So I went through some old outlines and found one for a murder mystery in a fantasy setting.

I don't have any interest in writing in the Fantasy genre, incorporating all the formulas and cliches that go along with that, but I like the idea of creating a world in which anything is possible. It's very research-free and that's something I need as I work through the pretty dry memoirs of a famous sea captain.

So, this book that I'm starting isn't a Fantasy Book, but a Mystery Book, only with Elves and stuff. 'Cause I like Elves. It's just to keep me writing while I'm stalled on Blades and I plan to drop it when I'm able to get back to the pirates. Then maybe after that I can finish up and solve the Elf Murder. Or write more pirates. I'm not planning that far ahead.

Anyway, I wrote one page tonight on the Elf Murder and it's off to a good start. So, yay.

I Knew This Was Going To Happen

I've hit a roadblock in writing Blades of Bragadini (aka "The Pirate Novel"). One of my major supporting characters is an actual, historical person and I'm at a point now where I need to know more about him before I can keep writing. I knew this was going to happen, but I've been procrastinating about doing the research and now I can't procrastinate any more.

So, while I get that done, I need something else to work on. There's something coming up that I'm going to be helping out on (hi, Jason!), but I need something now, so I'm digging through some old ideas and outlines to see if anything grabs me. Maybe a new Quartet of Crime short story. I'd like to get those guys some more exposure.

Novel Progress

Just added a progress bar to the page that tells how far along I am with the first draft of my pirate novel, The Blades of Bragadini.