E.L.V.I.S. and the Trojan Horse

This is about your voice: your singing and speaking voice, not your writing voice. AI can steal either, or both.

As a writer, you may not have thought very much about your speaking voice, but if you are published, you have probably taken part in a vlog, or podcast, or been interviewed, or posted a recording of yourself reading a teaser scene, or a chapter of your book (aloud, obviously).

You probably have not copyrighted your voice. Voices cannot necessarily be copyrighted. Yet, banks and brokerage houses try to bully you into allowing your voice to be used as verification of your identity.

My advice is, never agree to it. Moreover --and I have said this before--never participate in any telephone call on a recorded line, unless you initiated the call and know with whom you are speaking. Don't answer polls on the telephone, especially if the self-described pollster wants you to answer "Yes" or "No" (and only those precise words will suffice).

They may tell you that the call is being recorded "for quality assurance", or "for your protection", or "for your convenience", don't speak up. Hang up. "Quality assurance" is to make you think twice about swearing, it's to protect the caller. "Your protection" is "their" protection at the very best, and could be the opposite.

Convenience is a Trojan Horse.

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. Or Greeks (a jingoist might say). 

Just to weave a little -- "weave" being a newly-envisioned synonym for an extended rhetorical digression which always returns to the original thought -- there are several stories in Greek mythology about toxically masculine men hiding inside a benign-seeming hollow statue in order to enter a fortress and wreak havok, and about one particular queen who was cursed by the gods with a specific taste for a love of animals and who is alleged to have hidden inside a hollow model of a cow in order to seduce a straight white bull.

The offspring from that mating resulted in the Minotaur, the labyrinth, and the ill fated flight of Daedalus and Icarus.

It has always baffled and amused me that a brand of short-term prophylactic wear is named Trojan... but not Trojan Horse. The mind continues to continue to boggle... and weave.

 

So, back to your voice, trojan horses, and E.L.V.I.S.; and, to be clear, ELVIS is an acronym. Elvis Presley probably inspired the acronym for a Tennessee law to protect an owner's right to their voice,

but I do not intend to imply that he had anything to do with Trojans or horses.

 

In E.L.V.I.S., the copyright cavalry may be coming, at least for Tennesseans.

Legal bloggers for the law firm Fredrikson & Byron PA , Luke P. de Leon and Anthony S. Mendoza

survey the legal landscape with a view to protecting your voice in the age of AI.

Protecting Voice in the Age of AI

Their interest was piqued, as they recount, when a client of theirs came to them with suspicions that this client's famously recognizeable voice had been snagged from other contexts, manipulated and published in a voiceover that gave viewers the impression that the client endorsed a cryptocurrency.

The article explains existing Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) "right of publicity" laws, which are state laws, not federal. Their article is worth reading for that alone. 

However, one's voice is not one's name or one's likeness. Enter E.L.V.I.S. in Tennessee.

"Tennessee’s Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security (ELVIS) Act of March 21, 2024, explicitly treats an individual’s voice as protected property in any medium. “Voice,” according to the act, means “sound in a medium that is readily identifiable and attributable to a particular individual, regardless of whether the sound contains the actual voice or a simulation of the voice.” The ELVIS Act guarantees post-mortem protection for 10 years if a voice is commercially exploited by the state; otherwise, protection terminates two years after death. The ELVIS Act provides for civil liability and equitable relief but makes exemptions for “fair use” — the right to use a copyrighted work under certain conditions without permission of the copyright owner — and for fleeting or incidental use."

Luke de Leon and Anthony Mendoza go on to examine other celebrities and public figures who live in other states, whose voices have been ripped off with impunity (my words). Or not!

They glance into Deep Fake territory, also music, and more. They also share potential legal avenues for their client in question, and the take-down of the advertisement... which I will not share. You will have to read their copyright-related blog. 

https://www.fredlaw.com/alert-protecting-voice-in-the-age-of-ai

With regard to anyone's voice, and the ability of AI technology to snag, misappropriate and manipulate it to mislead the many and profit the few, the lawyers conclude:

"From this experience, it is clear that the legal frameworks protecting an individual’s name, image, likeness and voice are inconsistent from state to state, and the advent of AI technology and its proliferation across the internet is going to test the effectiveness of those laws. We anticipate that there will be more legislation — and calls for legislation — in this evolving area. In the meantime, however, an individual should look to the right of publicity (if recognized in their state) and federal copyright law to protect their voice from being misappropriated in the age of AI."

Weave with the best of them!

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Timeline by Michael Crichton by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Timeline by Michael Crichton

by Karen S. Wiesner  

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

I confess I'm not a fan of time-travel fiction, other than The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, but that's a worthwhile exception. Basically, every other time-travel story tends to get very convoluted (as the second season opener of the otherwise enjoyable Loki proved to me almost beyond a shadow of a doubt), especially when these stories are usually accompanied by an impossible "convergence" which has to be perfectly timed to pull off. What are the odds? Too astronomical to calculate. The incredulity is more than I can believe, let alone bear, in almost every case. However, Michael Crichton's 1999 time-travel thriller Timeline combined the usual things I love about his books: scientific and technical authenticity, high action, incredible characterization, and (for this particular one) quantum and multiverse theory. Finally, I love anything medieval. My biggest regret as an author intending to retire by 2025 is that I never got to write a series set in a medieval time period. I had some ideas for one and had even named the saga and the individual titles in it, but I have no plans to ever write it, despite that I continue to collect books about medieval lore left and right. Sigh. In any case, given that Crichton almost never fails to live up to my expectations and that the medieval world he created in Timeline is so fantastic, there was really no way to lose in betting I would enjoy this story the first time I read it. 

Travelers through the desert happen upon an elderly man and take him to a New Mexico hospital, where doctors discover before his death that he's an ITC company employee and that all hell has broken lose in his blood vessels. 

Meanwhile in southwest France, a team of archaeologists and historians study fourteenth-century Castelgard and La Rogue. They make disturbing discoveries, including the very modern lens from their leader Professor Edward Johnston's glasses and a message from him that appears to be over 600 years old. Graduate students Chris and Kate, along with assistant professor Andre, and technology specialist David are flown to their funds' provider ITC's headquarters in New Mexico. There, they're told that Johnston traveled to the year 1357--an extremely dangerous medieval time period--using their quantum technology. They're forced to go back in time to retrieve him. 

Not surprisingly, the time-travel transit pad is damaged upon their arrival to the place and time their leader was last deposited by the technology. Returning to their own time period might be impossible if it's not repaired. The locals are involved in political strife and war (the Hundred Years' War) that the time-travelers are inadvertently pulled into and become emotionally embroiled in with the key figures they meet. The only way to prevent suspicions that they're not who and what they say they are, which could get them killed in such a superstitious age, is to go along with the events as they play out, all while hoping the opportunity to get home comes soon. 

Crichton said about writing this story that it took twice as long to write as Jurassic Park, what he considered his last adventure story. What he found the most fascinating about it matches my own assessment--the medieval setting he wanted to be brutally authentic. When recalling the development process, he commented that he'd uncovered a world where you might be killed if you picked up a fallen glove, you risked death just by claiming you're gentle, where pastry was designed to look like animal intestines, where monasteries were utilized as tennis courts, where women were killed just for cutting their own hair short, and where wet gunpowder exploded. 

This story is tightly woven, the situations in the present and past fascinating, and the characters are ones readers can't help but root for. A film adaptation came out in 2003 but wasn't well received, though it's not bad--simply not as good as the book version. 

Whether or not you've read or watched this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, well-developed tale with depth from a master of the fantastic. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

An Authorized Fanfic Re-Visioning of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

Last week Cory Doctorow posted a review of JULIA, by Sandra Newman, which coincidentally I've just finished reading.

Novel-Writing Machines

Newman's novel is an authorized retelling of Orwell's dystopian classic from the viewpoint of Julia, the protagonist Winston Smith's lover. As Doctorow mentions, Winston thinks of the Party as omniscient and omnipotent -- "Big Brother is watching you." Viewing this society through Julia's experience, we realize it's as corrupt and inefficient as the bureaucracy of any other dictatorship. She knows how to take advantage of cracks in the system, for instance with bribery and tricks such as getting a break from her job by signing out under the category "Sickness: Menstrual." (After all, nobody checks up on that excuse.) As a mechanic who maintains novel-writing machines in the Fiction department of the Ministry of Truth, she has the skills to fix other things as well, e.g., the perpetually clogging lavatories in her dormitory. She's valued for her abilities and enjoys her work. She also enjoys frequent sexual flings despite her membership in the Anti-Sex League. I wondered how women who take those risks, aside from the danger of getting arrested for sexcrime, avoid pregnancy given that contraception is illegal. Well, there's a dodge for that, too. Many single women who suspect they're in the early stages of pregnancy seek artsem (artificial insemination). If they've actually conceived already, they're covered; if not, the procedure didn't "take." And it seems to be common knowledge that some women volunteering to bear children for the Party are already pregnant. Newman's perspective flip opens up Orwell's fictional world from these and many other angles. Everybody knows the proper behavior, language, and facial expressions necessary to stay out of trouble, and for most of them it seems to be mainly an act. In one of the few relaxed scenes, workers joke about the intricacies of Newspeak. Julia excuses her linguistic mistakes with the claim that she isn't a bit intellectual, which is true. Winston's fascination with forbidden political, philosophical, and literary topics bores her, although she maintains a facade of enthralled interest.

JULIA answers questions many readers of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR may puzzle over. Why does she initiate a love affair with Winston, a rather stuffy man twenty years her senior? Does Big Brother, as an individual, literally exist? (Yes.) Is there really an anti-Party underground, and was its demonized alleged leader, Goldstein, a real person? (Yes.) Is Oceania really at war? Yes, we witness the bombed sections of London, though we never find out if the enemy is Eurasia, Eastasia, or neither. We also learn about the lives of the proles, including the thriving black market with which Julia regularly deals. Newman's work delves into potential features of Orwell's fictional world that he either didn't consider or deliberately left outside the frame of his narrative.

Cory Doctorow reasonably classifies this type of novel as fanfic, or as he defines it, "writing stories about other stories that you hate or love or just can't get out of your head." Whether an amateur or professional publication, fanfic expresses the drive to explore shadowed or underdeveloped areas of canonical works, or speculate on how the world of the original looks from the perspective of a different character. ROSENKRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, which he also mentions, is a prime example of the latter.

Similarly, WIDE SARGASSO SEA, by Jean Rhys, a prequel to JANE EYRE, creates a personality and a backstory for Bertha, Rochester's deranged first wife. In Rhys's re-imagining, Bertha isn't even the name she goes by; Rochester calls her that for the sake of respectability. They arrive in Britain near the end of WIDE SARGASSO SEA. Rhys explores the question of whether she was ever in fact "mad" before being taken from her Caribbean home to England and relegated to nearly solitary confinement in a suite of upstairs rooms (not, contrary to popular impression, the attic).

Doctorow also refers to THE WIND DONE GONE, which a court decreed to be a "parody" of GONE WITH THE WIND. It really isn't, but that classification served as a defense against a charge of plagiarism. When I read THE WIND DONE GONE, I was mildly surprised that Mitchell's estate claimed copyright infringement at all. Alice Randall's book doesn't literally retell the classic novel. It tells the story of the enslaved narrator, Cynara, mixed-race daughter of Mammy and half-sister of Scarlett, with transformative references to the events of GONE WITH THE WIND. None of the white people from the latter are named in THE WIND DONE GONE. Cynara gives Mitchell's characters satirical nicknames, e.g. "Planter" and "Lady" for Scarlett's parents, "Mealy Mouth" for Melanie, "Dreamy Gentleman" for Ashley (I love that one). Scarlett is simply "the Other" or "Her."

Then there's GRENDEL, by John Gardner, wherein the monster reveals his side of the events in BEOWULF. Of course, creating variations on works in the public domain doesn't risk legal problems.

My own all-time favorite professionally published fanfic, the book I'd always wanted to write, is Fred Saberhagen's THE DRACULA TAPE (1975), a retelling of DRACULA in which the Count himself sets the record straight.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Sphere by Michael Crichton by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Sphere by Michael Crichton

by Karen S. Wiesner  

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

I admit I've always been fascinated by submarines. Here we have a deluxe trailer with all the bells and whistles that's put on the bottom of the ocean where people live in it. Mind you, the fact that I'm claustrophobic and terrified of allowing myself to be encased in a tin can--regardless of how fancy it is--holds zero appeal to me anywhere except in my imagination. 

Michael Crichton's 1987 supernatural psychological thriller Sphere depicts the perfect storm in a book that ticks all the boxes for me with incredible characterization, the coolest setting ever, and a plot that absolutely blew my mind the first time I read it and all the countless times I've re-read it since. The United States Navy discovers an enormous spacecraft of unknown origin on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean--that has English writing on it. They put together a team of the best scientific minds in the country to study it. This group includes a psychologist named Norman Johnson, the main character in the book, along with a mathematician, a zoologist, an astrophysicist, and a marine biologist who ends up being too claustrophobic to make the trip down and is therefore returned to the surface. They're joined by military personnel as they travel to the deep sea habitat that's been constructed at the bottom of the ocean to study the anomaly. 

Figuring out how to get inside the spaceship is the first hurdle the team has to overcome. Once they do, they find inside a mysterious sphere that couldn't possibly have been made at any point in Earth's past. Upon making this discovery, they're contacted by an alien entity that at first seems friendly and eager to communicate. As the being that calls itself Jerry begins to display increasingly child-like, bizarre behavior and "manifesting" deadly,  seemingly impossible sea creatures that attack and kill the crew, its power over the humans on the submarine grows. But is there actually an alien entity, or is the culprit someone or something much closer to home aboard the submarine? Even the most brilliant minds would find it hard to cope with the isolation and claustrophobia involved in being trapped in such a confining, remote, and exotic environment. Their grip on reality slips until even the protagonist isn't entirely sure what's real or true. 

Norman conjectures that the sphere allows subconscious thoughts to manifest in reality for those who figure out how to enter it. The sanity of the team members quickly begins to unravel as their trust in each other erodes hour by hour. The power of the sphere is irresistible to all of them, alternately too awesome and terrifying for any human being to wield responsibly.

I won't say anymore because the spectacular ending needs to be experienced personally. Suffice it to say, I can't imagine anyone who picks up this book will be disappointed with any aspect of the story contained inside it. 

With Sphere, Crichton apparently wanted to write a story about the discovery of an alien artifact with its host intact that was distinctly different than anything "recognizably human" whether it was "9 feet tall with spike teeth and it wants to eat you" or "3 feet tall and it wants to hug you". I'd say he succeeded gloriously. The 1998 movie adaptation with an all-star cast including Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Stone, and Liev Schreiber didn't do particularly well in the theaters but is nevertheless a decently watchable rendition of the novel. 

Whether or not you've read or watched this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, deep and well developed tale of the fantastical variety. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

 

When the Proper Amount of Something Is Zero

Cory Doctorow on DRM, conflicts of interest, "bricking," the undermining of consumer privacy, collection of surveillance data, identity theft, and other abuses of consumers:

Thinking the Unthinkable

As one example of zero tolerance, he proposes, "We should order every data-broker, every tech giant, every consumer electronics company and app vendor to delete all their surveillance data." Not likely to happen, though, is it?

Concerning DRM, he half-seriously suggests products infested with it should be required to carry a warning that their advertised features are subject to "revocation without notice." When DRM began to become widespread, he observed that it "didn't just restrict how you used a gadget today, it provided a facility for nonconsensually, irreversibly field-updating that gadget to add new restrictions tomorrow." Also, "This device and devices like it are typically used to charge you for things you used to get for free."

I don't have much to say about this article aside from a general reaction of "good grief!" I'm opposed to DRM on e-books and grateful my publishers don't include it. From what I've read, any halfway competent hacker can disable that feature, which therefore just inconveniences legitimate readers. I already knew we don't literally buy software products such as word processing programs but only "license" them. I knew electronic files of music or visual media can be deleted from the purchaser's access at the whim of the seller, which is one reason I always buy such products on CD or DVD if possible. (I "bought" the live-action LADY AND THE TRAMP from Disney as a streaming movie because it wasn't available in tangible form; I'm still waiting for them to release a DVD so I can own the film permanently instead of provisionally.) I knew tech companies could "brick" gadgets such as phones or tablets, i.e., remotely render them inoperable. However, I didn't know powered medical devices such as wheelchairs and exoskeletons were vulnerable to the same abuse.

While I agree with most of Doctorow's rant, I'm not optimistic about solutions. The convenience of these kinds of technology would be too painful to give up, and the companies that produce it have probably grown too powerful to rein in effectively. Doctorow mentions the example of cars in the pre-seatbelt era, when the sensible rule would have been "don't buy a car." But how practical would that have been for most Americans? Must we simply fall back on "Caveat Emptor" (as an anti-regulation acquaintance of mine seriously declared way back in the late 1960s)? No wonder Doctorow's title includes the word "unthinkable."

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

In Praise of Swiss Cheesing It

I'll start with a disclaimer. This short post is about life, productivity, romance, and stress.  Before I started this hopefully-inspiring post, I performed an internet search, and it seems that the metaphor of Swiss Cheese appears in a very dark and different context.

Swiss Cheese is known for the holes. Varieties of Swiss cheese include Emmental, Gruyere, Sbrinz. The latter is not known for its holes.

There are other European cheeses with holes such as Gouda (Dutch), Jarlsberg (Norwegian), Havarti (Danish), Tilsit (German) to name a few.

Apparently, as global hygiene standards improve, the holes in cheeses shrink. The holes are the result of bacteria and whatever carries airborne bacteria into fresh milk, such as hay fragments in the milking barn. The bacteria survive for a while and emit gas bubbles which are set (as holes) inside the cheese.

My philosophy of "Swiss Cheesing" centers on facing an overwhelming task by picking holes in it. It could be a big hole, it could be a tiny hole. The point is to make a start.

There is a time-honored saying in romance writing. You cannot edit a blank page. Therefore, you have to make a start, write a word, a sentence, a paragraph. When getting started, the first words absolutely do not have to be perfect. You may discard them later, anyway. "The Muse" tends to kick in later, when you are in the flow, or the zone.

I saw an article this last week (between power cuts and internet outages) about some research that found that the most prolific and speedy authors tend to also be the best. I want to say it was Margaret's.

Swiss Cheesing also works as a philosophy when you come out of your writing binge (or whatever else has occupied your attention for some time), and realize that your hallway is full of Amazon boxes, your kitchen sink is full of dishes, spiders have been breeding like fun in your recessed ceiling can lights, and the autumn leaves have piled up on your deck.

At this point, my own earworm would be the 1991 Michelob jingle, "Some Days Are Better Than Others", which is a cup-half-full take on a bad day.

Then, you pick a hole in your massive, mental "To Do" list, reject the temptation to play a game on your smart phone or to take a nap (procrastination city!), and do something. Not everything. That would be overwhelming to contemplate. Maybe just wash the spoons.

Happy Swiss Cheesing!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/  

http://www.rowenacherry.com

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Congo by Michael Crichton by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Congo by Michael Crichton

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

In 1980, Crichton wrote another scary book about ancient creatures inhabiting a forgotten world in the dense tropical rainforest of the Congo. The novel Congo starts when an expedition sent there in search of diamond deposits by Earth Resource Technology Services, Inc. (ERTS) is attacked and killed by unknown beats that look like gray gorillas. Instead of diamonds, this team apparently found the (fictional) lost city of Zinj.

Led by the independent and compelling Karen Ross, another expedition is launched to discover the truth. This time, they decide to bring along a female mountain gorilla named Amy, trained to use sign language, and her trainer Peter Elliot, hoping Amy will be able to communicate with the creatures. Ironically, after the book was published, reviewers found Amy's abilities too incredible to believe. Yet Crichton modeled his fictional gorilla after Koko, who'd been on the cover of National Geographic twice at that point and had done interviews on television using sign language. Apparently, she wasn't famous enough at that point to be a realistic example. Go figure.

I found everything about this novel binge-worthy and convincing. The characters, including lovely, funny Amy, were utterly beguiling, smart, and interesting. I truly enjoyed their journey from start to finish, rooting for them in the face of rival competitors also searching and set against a ticking clock--with a nearby volcano threatening to blow and bury the intriguing find under lava and ash for all time.

A bit of an aside, but while researching this review, I discovered that Crichton apparently pitched the idea of producing a "modern-day version of King Solomon's Mines" to a major film company, who bough the rights long before the book was written. Not surprisingly, the author found himself suffering from writer's block in the face of pressure no doubt instigated by the astronomical advance he was given to produce a novel, screenplay, and secure directing rights. Fortunately, he finished the book, which quickly became a bestseller. A year later, he started writing the screenplay, hoping Sean Connery (who starred in Crichton's The Great Train Robbery) would fill the lead role. The film was released in 1995 with neither Crichton or Connery involved. While enjoying a successful box office performance, the film version was ridiculed most notably with Golden Raspberry Award nominations for Worst Picture. While I found the film decent and worth watching, I strongly recommend that you don't judge the book by this movie. The story version itself is not to be missed.

Whether or not you've read or watched this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, deep and well developed tale of the fantastical variety. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

 

 

Quantity Versus Quality?

Are quantity and quality incompatible strategies or goals? Not according to the observations in these and other similar essays:

Quantity Leads to Quality

The Origin of a Parable

The second article concerns a ceramics class whose teacher divided students into two groups. One would be graded on the quality of the work produced, while the other would be graded solely on amount of output. "Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the 'quantity' group was busily churning out piles of work -– and learning from their mistakes — the 'quality' group had sat theorizing about perfection."

Similarly, we've heard of writers who endlessly polish the first paragraph, first page, or first three chapters to perfection, but when an agent or editor requests the full manuscript, the rest of the work doesn't measure up to the meticulously crafted opening.

The "quantity vs. quality" opposition seems to underlie the contemptuous -- and invalid -- dismissal of prolific writers as "hacks," as if high productivity automatically implies mediocrity. Stephen King used to publish two or three books per year and most years still produces at least two. Nora Roberts regularly releases two "J. D. Robb" mysteries per year and at least one "Nora Roberts" romance (probably more, but I don't keep close track of her output in that genre). Those figures may sound "prolific," but consider: A professional, full-time author, living solely on writing income, probably treats that vocation like a "job," writing several hours most days. Even a slow writer can produce at least 1000 words in two hours, and a faster one more like 1000 words per hour. Postulate only three hours per day, possibly a low estimate for a bestselling pro. 3000 words per day add up to 90,000 words in a month, a draft of a typical novel (if weekends aren't included, allow five to six weeks). A producer of "doorstops" like Stephen King, at that rate, might take two months for a first draft. With that time allotment, the writer could generate three novels in six months -- presumably not continuously, but with breaks in between -- with half the year free for revising, editing, polishing, marketing, and business minutiae. This kind of schedule, of course, assumes abundantly flowing story ideas, but from what I've read, the typical professional writer never has a shortage of those.

I'm reminded of Robert Heinlein's famous rules for success as an author: (1) Write. (2) Finish what you write. (3) Send it to an editor who might publish it. (4) Repeat number 3 until somebody buys it. I don't remember whether he addressed the question of when it's time to give up on a story -- maybe when you've exhausted all possible markets? However, I clearly recall the other "rule" he sometimes added: Never rewrite except to editorial order.

His point was that your time is better used in creating new stories than obsessively revising old material. He would probably agree with the "quantity over quality" proponents who maintain that each fresh project gives you a chance to learn something new about your craft. I would allow for one exception, though -- when you're deeply emotionally invested in one piece of work and have your heart set on getting it "right." My first vampire novel, DARK CHANGELING, conceived in embryonic form when I was thirteen or fourteen, went through multiple incarnations before I felt ready to submit it. After that, rejection feedback showed me its remaining flaws. Another extensive revision finally got it published. The protagonist, half-vampire psychiatrist Roger Darvell, continues to hold a special place in my heart. On the other hand, throughout that multi-decade process, I was writing and publishing other stuff, too.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Puff It Up

There are lies, damnable lies, and then there is puffery. This is true in all manner of advertising, and in all types of transactions.

As far back as the early 1600s (Shakespeare's day), the doctrine of caveat emptor existed. "Caveat Emptor" means "Buyer Beware". In law, there is an assumption that the populace is not made up of entirely gullible folk, and that there is a responsibility on the part of the buyer before buying a bill of goods or a pig in a poke, to do some research, and to accept whatever the seller says with a grain of salt.

My goodness, what a lot of idioms!

In discussion of the historical background of "puffery", advertising and marketing expert Barry M. Benjamin tells the tale of a superstitious man with a medical problem of some sort, who bought a so-called "magic rock". This was in 1603. If the transaction had been in America, after the 1800s, the vendor might have been dubbed a snake oil salesman, except of course, he was selling the hard stuff (rock pun).

The man whose symptoms were not alleviated by ownership of the magical stone decided to sue the purveyor to get his money back. Whatever the salesman could have been proven to have said, the court of the day found that it was entertaining patter, perhaps much exaggerated, but not so blatantly deceitful that a reasonable person would have swallowed it hook line and sinker.

'Tis the season for a great quantity of exaggeration in advertising. As legal blogger Barry M. Benjamin writes for the law firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, 

"All advertising is intended to persuade, to induce a sale, to prompt someone to buy. The nonsensical chatter of the stereotypical salesperson should be viewed skeptically...."

He offers some useful suggestions for the novice skeptic to assist in evaluating claims made by an advertiser, such as to look at

"... the context of the claim, [i]s it reasonable to rely [on], were there measurable attributes mentioned, did the statements go beyond any standard of vagueness, or are the statements truly mere opinions...?"

One possible takeaway from the advice is that it may not be unlawful to exaggerate or to offer a subjective option that one's offering is the biggest, or the best, but the trick is to keep the pitch as vague as possible.  One cannot fact-check vagueness.

Find the full article about puffery here: 

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=493f9140-dabb-49f6-9ef5-468a6044f79d

By the way, my title, "Puff It Up" was inspired by "Pump It Up", a song by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. 

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

The original title of Eaters of the Dead, a1976 novel by Michael Crichton, was Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in AD 922 {gasp!}. At some point, that was wisely shortened to just Eaters of the Dead and, to coincide with the wonderful film adaptation starring Antonio Banderas in the lead role, to The 13th Warrior. The focus of the story is the journey of a 10-century Muslim Arab that traveled with Viking warriors to their settlement. In the book's appendix, the author states that the book was based on the first three chapters of Ahmad ibn Fadlan personal account. Beyond that, the story is touted as retelling of Beowulf, the Old English epic poem that's a forerunner of supernatural literature, and an all-time favorite of mine. 

In this historical supernatural fiction novel, the main character confronts many different worlds from his own, as he and the Vikings clash culturally yet danger creates a permanent bond between them. Along the path there are lethal creatures that also transform the protagonist in ways he could never have imagined previously. Aptly described as "an epic tale of unspeakable horror", I devour this story every few years, unable to put it down once I delve into its pages. The characters, settings, and scenarios are so vivid, authentic, and terrifying. Crichton left nothing out of this nearly perfect tale that may give you nightmares, just as the movie adaptation will.

Whether or not you've read or watched this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, deep and well developed tale of the fantastical variety. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

Delayed Gratification

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column deconstructs the "science fictional" idea of "the right’s confidence in the role of individual self-discipline on one’s life chances. . . . Poverty, we’re told, is rooted in an unwillingness to save, which is to say, in the childish inability to defer gratification." Likewise, a career of crime is attributed to poor self-control, resulting in the inability to make a legitimate living, on the assumption that "the causal arrow runs from 'personal defects' to 'poor outcomes'."

Marshmallow Longtermism

The title refers to the famous (or, as Doctorow says, infamous) Stanford marshmallow experiment on delaying gratification. Children were left alone in a room with a marshmallow for fifteen minutes. The experimenter told them if they didn't eat the marshmallow, they would get two instead of just the one. Follow-up studies showed that the vast majority of the kids who ate the marshmallow instead of waiting had poor futures socially and economically, whereas the "patient" kids grew up to prosper. Hence the value of self-control in predicting life outcomes was supposedly validated.

Personally, in my opinion the experiment was intrinsically flawed. How many people, even little kids, consider a boring old marshmallow an irresistible temptation? I would have held out for chocolate. But that's beside the point. Later replications of the study revealed that most of the "impatient" children came from poor backgrounds, while the "patient" ones belonged to secure, well-off families. In short, the "causal arrow" ran in the other direction. The "impatient" test subjects, having experienced numerous disappointments and broken promises from the adults in their lives, decided quite rationally to take no chances and chose the treat in front of them, a bird in the hand being preferable to any number of imagined birds in a future bush. "Which means that the 'patient' kids weren’t demonstrating 'self-control' -– rather, their willingness to wait for a second marshmallow reflected a charmed life in which adults came through with the goodies they promised." That same "charmed life" resulted in their adult success. Doctorow concedes that of course self-control and hard work have positive effects on one's chances in life. On their own, they don't guarantee success, though.

As he summarizes the issue, "Self-control is a virtue, one that we could all stand to cultivate. The difference between the rich and the poor isn’t who has self-control. It comes down to whether your life has such thin margins that single lapse kicks off an avalanche of devastating consequences, or whether you have the kind of cushions that allow you to recover from your slips."

I first encountered the concept of "discounting the future" in Steven Pinker's HOW THE MIND WORKS. People tend to heavily discount the future in their decisions when they lack any certainty of having one. If you see many of your contemporaries dying young, you don't have much incentive to avoid risks or accumulate wealth for a hypothetical old age. You might as well live fast and hard, enjoying the fun while it lasts. What looks from outside like a "childish" habit of pursuing instant gratification might be a logical choice in terms of that person's experience.

In Aldous Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD, instant gratification is a way of life. Conditioning its people to think of a carefree, pleasurable existence as the highest good, this society views delayed gratification as purely negative. A character in the opening scene asks a group of young adults whether they've ever had to wait for anything they wanted. The responder who admits having endured that experience describes it as horrible, and everybody else agrees with him.

Growing up, most of us learn to put off some pleasures in anticipation of greater rewards in the future. To persist in that habit requires that we have a sound basis for trusting in the future reward. College students who witness seniors only a few years older graduating and moving on to financial security and fulfilling jobs can believe in their own prospects of similar success. The connection between some kinds of delayed gratification, though, such as dietary changes and weight loss, is less obvious, especially given seemingly random day-to-day fluctuations in the number on the scale. Dropping enough pounds to notice a real difference takes a long time. Abstaining from favorite treats long enough to achieve that goal often feels futile. With our brains fighting us at every step, we fall back on strategies to trick ourselves. Don't keep the treats in the house at all. Or if we're eating them but strictly rationing ourselves, store them in a location where impulsive consumption isn't easy, forcing ourselves to stop and think first. In the financial realm, we trick ourselves into accumulating money for the future by setting up automatic transfers into a savings account or withdrawals directly from our salaries into retirement funds. However, before people can devise or implement such strategies, in whatever area of daily life or long-term planning, they have to make a rational decision that the desired outcome is worth the short-term deprivation.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

It's My Life

Colour me suspicious, but I never trusted certain social media sites and loyalty-rewards-offering retail stores, so I have always lied about my date of birth.

I never felt that I needed a meaningless greeting once a year from an automated program that could not care more, or less, about my birthday. One could not open an account without inputting a date, but there was no fact check. I think on MySpace, one could even claim a vampire's date of siring.

I just saw proof --or what I take to be proof--that Mr. Sugarmountain (you have to understand basic German to follow the code) leaks.

On Pentester, you only have to enter your year of birth. Nothing more. So, if the full birthdate that you revealed to some site or another shows up, you know that National Public Data acquires information from Mr.SM, or wherever. If your true D.O.B. shows up, you need to worry.

https://npd.pentester.com/search

Pentester has mediocre reviews from subscribers, you do not have to subscribe to see how far and wide your info has been disseminated, and what that info is. What you pay for is for them to scrub it. 

Finding out which old addresses are linked to your SSN for free, is useful. It might also give you a heads up if an identity thief has bought a new property in your name, so, all in all, I would bookmark that site and check it monthly.

Here is a second source:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/is-your-ssn-in-the-national-public-data-breach-heres-how-to-find-out

 

Duck Duck Go has a subscription service for just under $100 a year to remove your info from data broker sites

https://duckduckgo.com/pro?origin=funnel_pro_paidsearchgoogle_prosearchtest_pirkeyword3&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw6JS3BhBAEiwAO9waF3nlHB5N9ZZrCrtaqAjf9ILDhLvABzqHVl-eygT90RVXT9o-nHAkCBoCLvkQAvD_BwE

There is a site similar to the name of my title of this blog article. For a subscription price that seems very reasonable, it claims to be able to remove contact information from multiple "people finder" sites, but the trouble in my experience is that one removes the stuff one day, and it is back up the next, rather like some of the ebook pirating sites of the Oughts (2000s).

Whackamole with your identity, IMHO!

https://erinarvedlund.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/is-mylife-com-a-scam-site-makes-you-pay-to-find-friends-then-makes-your-life-hell/

Experian's advice

https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/what-to-do-if-information-is-found-on-dark-web/

Reddit discussions tell you that anyone who tells you they can actually remove your social security number etc from the dark web is not being straightforward.

The trouble with Lifelock, Discover, Bank of America, and others, is that they will tell you over and over again for decades about the passwords revealed ages ago by the old romance-novel focused site Fresh Fiction.

Talk about crying Werewolf!

Here's a convenient site with comparisons of the for-subscription sites that will tell you when your information might be exposed.

https://www.consumersadvocate.org/id-theft-protection/lp/best-identity-theft-protection/?pubid=371&skip_geo=1&link_type=go&pd=true&keyword=personal%20information%20protection&gca_campaignid=285629702&gca_adgroupid=154195761789&gca_matchtype=b&gca_network=g&gca_device=c&gca_adposition=&gca_loc_interest_ms=&gca_loc_physical_ms=1023640&gca_creative=677414853974&gad_source=1

The trouble with all of them is that you have to give them the very information that you don't want all the world to know in order for them to monitor it.

The simplest solution, which costs nothing but an hour of your time, is to put a freeze on your credit reports on all four credit reporting sites. You then have to keep in PIN in a safe place, so that you can temporarily remove the freeze if you need to borrow money... and of course, have an "official birthday" like King Charles III for your admirers, and a secret and private real one.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton

by Karen S. Wiesner

   

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs! Seriously, with both dragons and dinosaurs, I'm interested instantly in anything, everything. From the time I was a little kid, dinosaurs fascinated me. I devoured whatever I could get my hands on when it came to them. I was like the kid Timmy in the movie. Every bit I got made me want more, more, more! Even as an adult, I'm drawn to them. Michael Crichton's two books on the subject, Jurassic Park and The Lost World, are some of the best fiction available on this topic. Note that the posthumously written novel Dragon Teeth, though it deals with dinosaur fossils and paleontology, isn't set in the same world as the two I'm focusing on in this review (but is nevertheless worthy of being read on its own considerable merits). 

Jurassic Park was published in 1990 with the sequel, The Lost World (as you'd expect, an homage to Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel that had the same name), coming in 1995. The follow-up title included familiar faces from the original as well as all new characters. In 1993, a blockbuster film adaption directed by Steven Spielberg was released to critical and commercial acclaim (at the time, it became the highest grossing film ever). It spawned numerous sequels, all fantastic in various degrees, though there were some cringing burps that could have been avoided altogether if the books had been followed closer. Eventually, in the first three movies, the basic, most intriguing scenarios that took place in the books are covered, so I was appeased. My husband cringes whenever a new installment comes out in the movie series, saying sarcastically, "Hmm, what are the odds that the dinosaurs get loose and try to kill everyone?" Okay, okay, we know what's going to happen from one movie to the next, but dinosaurs. Dinosaurs!!! And, in each film adaptation, they get bigger and badder. I implore you, what's not to love?

At its heart, these two stories are cautionary tales about unregulated genetic engineering. In Jurassic Park, a zoological park (or, maybe more aptly, a biological preserve) is designed showcasing genetically recreated dinosaurs via amber preservation and DNA extraction in an authentic environment. The owner is a billionaire named John Hammond, who founded the bioengineering firm InGen. Investors become wary when strange animal attacks are reported in Costa Rica, where the theme park was built on an island called Isla Nublar. To silence them, Hammond decides to give a tour of the park to several people he hopes will endorse it in advance of it opening. The guest list includes a famous paleontologist Alan Grant; his graduate student Ellie Sattler; a mathematician and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm; the lawyer Gennaro that represents the investors; along with Hammond's own grandchildren Tim, a dinosaur enthusiast, and his little sister Lex. In a fine bit of foreshadowing, while trekking through the park, Grant finds a velociraptor eggshell. This is the proof that pessimistic Malcolm's assertion of dinosaurs breeding in the park is true despite the geneticists' fervent denial. 

A series of unfortunate events with a bad storm, a bad and traitorous employee, and all-around bad planning collide in rapid succession. The guests and staff are separated, the park safeties and redundancies for keeping the dinosaurs safely behind fences are disabled, and there seems to be no way off the island. 

This author in particular nearly always creates a larger-than-life scenario and populates it with living, breathing people that you find fascinating in every way, that you cab trust their expertise because Crichton builds believability and utter veracity in right from the start of each book, and you care desperately about these well-developed characters. You want them to survive. You want them to kick the mean dinosaurs in their armored fannies and send 'em back where they belong. Even Crichton's villains are fully fleshed out and understandable, which doesn't mean you're not also rooting for them to fall into the nearest big ol' pile of dino doo-doo. 

Following the events in Jurassic Park, we're brought back into the world created there. Though most readers believed Ian Malcolm had been killed in the first book (and he was--you're not crazy), the movie Jurassic Park became such a hit, Crichton was asked to write a sequel (notably, something he'd never done up to that point, and never did again), and that meant resurrecting one of the most beloved characters from the original story. According to Crichton, "Malcolm came back because I needed him. I could do without theothers, but not him because he is the 'ironic commentator' on the action." How he made the transition from sure death to life anew was with little more than a Mark Twain-ian sentence to the effect of, "The rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated." Even if some might call "Foul" about this, I loved Malcolm, and I was thrilled with his return. For one thing, he's hilariously sarcastic and so quotable in the process, frequently in an thrown-over-his-shoulder sort of way as he's already moving on to the next issue. Indulge me as I post a few gems from the mouth of Ian Malcolm taken from both the books and movies: 

"If Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists."

"It's fine if you wanna put your name on something but stop putting it on other people's headstones."

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

"Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun."

"Oh, what's so great about discovery? It's a violent, penetrative act that scars what it explores."

"Let's be clear: The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't go the power to destroy the planet--or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves."

"Change is like death. You don't know what it looks like until you're standing at the gates."

In any case, to get back to the review of the sequel book, four years have passed, Malcolm is alive, and strange animal corpses are washing up on the shores of Costa Rica. Malcolm and wealthy paleontologist, Richard Levine, discover there was actually a Site B for Jurassic Park on nearby Island Sorna. This was the production factory while the theme park on Island Nublar became the sterilized, seemingly harmless front face. When Levine goes missing, Malcolm had no choice but to go after him. With a brilliant team, he launches a rescue to find Levine and explore this "lost world" filled with dinosaurs who have escaped the lab facilities they were being held in and are now creating their own environment. In the process, two young kids who assisted Levine at the university stow away in a pair of specially-equipped RV trailers and end up having to join the expedition--becoming value resources that assist in the team's survival. 

The group discovers that others are on the island: 1) Geneticist Lewis Dodgson (introduced in the first book as the employee of InGen's rival company who sabotaged the theme park and led to its disaster there) and a biologist side-kick to steal dinosaur eggs the company they work for intends to use to start their own theme park, and 2) Dr. Sarah Harding, an ethologist and close friend of Malcolm. Note that this character in the book was nowhere near as annoying as Julianna Moore was in the film version (frankly, she ruined the movie for me with her utter stupidity in every situation, including that foolishly pegged-on, "King Kong" fiasco at the end of an otherwise pretty good movie). In the book, Harding was actually inspiring and a role model for the girl stowaway Kelly (who was a student of Levine's, not Malcolm's daughter, as she was portrayed in the movie). 

Both of these books have literally (pun intended) everything you could ever want in great fiction--amazing characters placed in unforgettable settings, forced to act in situations that challenge them internally and externally. I've read both books countless times over the years since I first discovered them. If you've never read them or haven't read them in a while, I highly recommend you do so at your earliest convenience. You won't regret it. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie (or two) you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

 

Dog Buttons

This isn't about fastenings for canine clothes. It's about electronic buttons dogs use to communicate:

Talking Dog Buttons

The article explains the electronic sound board isn't meant to replace the natural canine modes of communication. It offers an additional way for owners to interact with their pets. How it works: "The sound boards for dogs have circular buttons with words on them, each pre-recorded to say the word when pressed." Dogs push the buttons with their noses. Regular, consistent training is required for an animal to learn the which button corresponds to which word and what the words mean. A dog will grasp the significance of "food," for instance, only if the human consistently says "food" when offering a meal. The technique consists of "basic operant conditioning," no different in principle from "training a dog to ring a bell to go outside."

Does the dog understand the words, though, or simply associate a particular stimulus (the sound of the word) with a specific object or outcome? This question arises especially with an expression such as "love you." How can the meaning of an abstract concept like that be demonstrated to an animal? It's not like opening a door in response to the sound "outside." While the dog might learn to link an affectionate action (e.g., licking) with the sound "love," it's quite a stretch to assume he or she "knows" the word's "meaning."

The world-famous Border Collie Chaser could identify over 1000 toys by name.

Chaser

Her trainer claimed she had the "ability to understand sentences involving multiple elements of grammar." But did she actually "understand" the words she recognized?

It's now known that parrots do more than "parrot" the sounds they've learned. They use words in context. The grey parrot Alex is a well-known example:

Alex the Parrot

According to his trainer, he displayed intelligence on a level with great apes and dolphins. Does that behavior imply understanding in the human sense?

In cases such as these, the crucial question is how we define "understanding."

I once read a comment about an ape who "talked" through a computer keyboard, declaring that when she typed, "Computer, please. . ." she didn't know what "please" meant. She was only pushing a button that she'd been trained to use for introducing a request. How does that differ from the way a human toddler uses "please," though? To him or her, it's probably just a vocal noise required to induce adults to listen favorably. (As some parents say, "What's the magic word?")

A traditional hard-line behaviorist (if any exist nowadays) would maintain that nobody, animal or human, "understands" anything in the popular sense of the term. All behavior ultimately arises from stimulus and response, whether on a simple or complex level. Consciousness is a meaningless epiphenomenon. Free will doesn't exist.

If, as most of us believe, consciousness and the ability to choose do exist in humans and some animals, where do we draw the line to say certain creatures do or don't possess these traits? Maybe understanding is a continuum, not a sharp binary.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Complete Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Complete Spiderwick Chronicles

by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

There are a number of young adult fantasy series that feature children who discover a hidden world of supernatural creatures all around them--Fablehaven (Brandon Mull) and The Last Apprentice (Joseph Delaney) are two of my favorites, but you could include many others like Twilight Saga, The Immortal Instruments, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and on and on. Regardless of how often it's been done before, that doesn't necessarily make it any less enjoyable. 

Another of this type that had me enthralled when the first came out in 2003 was The Spiderwick Chronicles that was said to be written by Holly Black and illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi, though the Wikipedia page confusingly states a quote by DiTerlizzi (who tends to always be listed first) that "due to the collaborative effort he and Black put into the books, there is no individual credit as to who did the writing and who did the illustrations." Whatever that means. I get the feeling there's a deeper story there I'm too lazy to sniff out. 

In any case, the first set of Spiderwick stories had five entries with the first three released in 2003, the last two in 2004, including The Field Guide, The Seeing Stone, Lucinda's Secret, The Ironwood Tree, and The Wrath of Mulgarath. A spinoff series called Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles came out in 2007, 2008, and 2009 with the three stories: Nixie's Song, A Giant Problem, and The Wyrm King. Additionally, companion books were published in 2005-2007, and these include Arther Spiderwick's Notebook for Fantastical Observations; Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You; Care and Feeding of Sprites; and A Grand Tour of the Enchanted World, Navigated by Thimbletack. 

In the original series, after their parents' divorce, the Grace family, now headed by the mother Helen, is forced to move to the decrepit Spiderwick Estate where the children's long lost great-great-uncle disappeared. Simon and Jared are nine-year-old twins while their older sister Mallory is thirteen. Their first night there, a dumbwaiter that goes to the secret library on the second floor is discovered but later a door to the library is found in a hall closet. In an attic trunk, Jared finds the handwritten, illustrated field journal of Arthur Spiderwick that contains information on the various types of supernatural creatures, especially fairies, that live in the estate's surrounding forest. A brownie named Thumbtack is roused to anger by their meddling and punishes them by trashing rooms in the house and assaulting the children. But, once they realize what who and what he is and what they've done to his home, they make amends. From that point on, he aids them, though he wants Jared to destroy the field journal because he knows what happened to Arthur--and could easily happen to them as well--if Mulgarath, an ogre who wants to rule the world, finds out about them. 

The characterization pulled me into this book from the first. Jared is angry about the divorce and he's gotten in a lot of trouble lately because of it. So it makes sense that he's blamed for the problems Thumbtack causes in retaliation for them destroying his nest inside the walls of the house. Simon is the bookish one of the two, the opposite of his twin, and loves animals. Mallory starts out the story in the usual way you'd expect of a teenager girl who's relied on by parents to care for her younger brothers--and also feeling the sting of what her cheating father did to their mother. She's crabby, judgmental of her brothers, always assuming they're causing trouble without justification. Whenever she gets a rare moment to herself, all she wants to do is practice her fencing. Despite the first impressions we get of her, she learns to become a caring, protective sister and her role in the events that follow is pivotal. In the course of the story told through the first five books, we also eventually meet Arthur Spiderwick and his daughter Lucinda, finding out through the twins' and Mallory's investigations what caused the trouble in the first place. Thumbtack is initially disgruntled, and he does often seem amusingly in a bad mood. He's a complex being, one the Grace family couldn't have survived without. 

Given that these books aren't really intended for those over 12 years old (I read what I want, regardless of limitations), they're not really scary. They just skirt the edge of frightening. The movie and videogame released in 2008 based on the first five books are both slightly scarier than the books, and apparently the April 2024 RokuChannel TV series is supposed to be much, much darker than either. 

The spinoff Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles gives a glimpse of former characters but mostly follows a new protagonist, 11-year-old Nicholas Vargas, accompanied by his stepsister Laurie and big brother Julian in brand-new adventures with supernatural creatures. In a bit of unprecedented, crazy self-insertion that I'm reluctant to call genius but also can't help chuckling about, the three meet up with the authors of Spiderwick Chronicles, DiTerlizzi and Black, at a booksigning. Tony and Holly don't believe their wild tale, but not long afterward they meet Jared and Simon, who agree to help them. 

Thanks to how fast the five books in the original series came out, I read them equally fast, purchasing them as soon as they were published in hardcover. I also read Nixie's Song, but the next two books took a long to come out, comparatively (releases were spaced apart by about a year each). I admit I wasn't as enamored of the first entry in the spinoff series and never purchased the final two, something I intend to rectify with the promise of the TV series coming out soon (at the time of this writing). I'm not sure I will like Nixie's Song any better this time or if the two books that followed will make a difference in my initial impression, but I do know I thoroughly enjoyed the film made of the original series and the idea of a reboot as an ongoing series is equally exciting. 

Whether you read this series at the height of its popularity or if you've never before read it, now might be a good time. Don't let the reading age recommendation intimidate you. Whatever your age, if you're a fan of supernatural literature populated with a wide range of complex, fantastical creatures, this has everything you're sure to love. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/