How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic Part 8 - What Do Readers Do

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic

Part 8

What Do Readers Do?

Previous parts of this series are indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/03/index-to-how-do-you-know-if-youve.html

There are moments in life when a writer is objective about their own work, really the best judge of its value.  Those moments are rare, and some people never experience one so they believe there are none.

But you don't have to attain objectivity to figure out the value of what you've written.  Of course, there's the hurdle of getting published by a publisher who has captured the market you are writing for, but after that there are still many confusing stages.

One way to know if you've hit your readership is the feedback you get from readers -- today, it's Facebook and Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, etc.  There will be a flurry of comments, and then they die down.  You've written a good book, but just one among many that readership enjoys.

Beyond just enjoying, and commenting, what can a reader do?

Well, in the old print-on-paper-snailmail days Star Trek invented the fanzine with fiction content.  Old Science Fiction fandom had lots of fanzines, many with commentary on current and older novels -- but it was essentially a non-fiction medium.

Star Trek, a TV Series, changed that.  The first Star Trek fanzine was published by Devra Langsam, who is still Trekking today.

From there, non-canon respecting Trekzines broke new ground, invented new categories, and even established the hetero-romance category,  I think this may be the first in that category

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/showcase/

This Star Trek Romance series likewise inspired and welcomed writers other than the one who first crested it.

My own fanzine series, Kraith, had 50 creative contributors to its alternate-universe vision of Star Trek.

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/

Star Trek inspired fans who created alternate universe Star Treks,  like Sahaj Collected, and Jean Lorrah's Night of the Twin Moons, which inspired and welcomed even more writers.

Classics have usually not done that before cheap offset printing and connected groups who hold conventions and sell each other fanzines.

Sherlock Holmes fandom picked up that cue and ran with it, and now we have a multitude of professionally published Holmes novels and spin-off TV Series, too.  It's a wonderful time we live in.

When I was researching for my Bantam paperback STAR TREK LIVES! about why fans like STAR TREK, before anyone but fans knew about Trekzines, I used my own first-published hardcover novel, HOUSE OF ZEOR, ...

 ...to illustrate the point about why people like Spock.

Simultaneously, fans were writing stories in my HOUSE OF ZEOR universe, dubbed the Sime~Gen Universe by Jean Lorrah (who became my collaborator and co-owner of Sime~Gen Inc.), and fanzines were proliferating.  As the internet just barely started to become the fanzine distribution medium, we moved online, and now you can find most of that early fanfic plus a lot of written-for-the-website fiction at

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/fandom.html

Meanwhile, Jean Lorrah sold a series of novels titled SAVAGE EMPIRE, and others have written in

that universe, including one Star Trek fan with his own series about Uhura, titled Captain Uhura.

https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Empire-Book-ebook/dp/B004NSVPO0/


And many years later, many of those early Sime~Gen fanfic writers had turned professional but were still thinking and creating Sime~Gen.  So the current publisher, Wildside Press, asked for an anthology of their stories set in the Sime~Gen Universe.  It is Volume 13

So, it seems to me the signature of a "Classic" is how it inspires other creative people to create, what they create inspires more people (who might not actually know the original source material) to create and capture the imaginations of yet another generation.

In other words, a Classic propagates.

In Part 5 of this series of posts, we noted the Classic Caine Riordan Novel, Marque of Caine,

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TMN61Z9/
written by a writing student of mine, nominated for the Nebula Award in 2020.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written_25.html

The Caine Riordan series passes this "inspire readers to write" test by having inspired professional writers to create stories set in the Caine Riordan universe, carefully moderated by dedicated fans keeping all the details close to canon.

The first anthology by those writers is on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Signals-Charles-Gannon-ebook/dp/B07RHPYXF2/

So you know if you've written a classic by how your readers react -- often over decades as they grow up and become professional writers (in various fields).  If they create in your world, you experience a thrill of recognition you couldn't duplicate in any other way.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

How do you know if You've Written a Classic Part 5 - James Clavell Move Over

How Do You Know If You've Written a Classic

Part 5

James Clavell Move Over 

Previous parts in "How do you know if you've written a classic?" series are:

Part 1 in this Series is about writing a "classic" illustrating the long time fan discovering new entries in a series.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Part 2, Spock's Katra, is a long answer to a request for material for an online blog.  My answer focused on Theodore Bikel and his roles in Star Trek.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Part 3 answers very insightful interview questions from a Podcast host.  The verbal podcast interview is very different, but here are answers done with some time to think of how to explain the invisible connections between Star Trek, my deep study of the fan dynamics of the TV Series, and my own original universe Sime~Gen novels.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/07/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Part 4 - Fifty Year Test
Best Sellers made into movies or TV from the 1960's, James Clavell's Tai-Pan
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Part 5
James Clavell Move Over
 Current Science Fiction carrying on the classic tradition.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written_25.html

--------

Tor.com posted the Nebula Award Finalists, and one of my writing students has a novel on the list (bang-up great novel, too!) Marque of Caine. 

2019 Nebula Award Finalists

Novel

• Marque of Caine, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK)
• A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (Tor)
• Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey; Jo Fletcher)
• Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing)
• A Song for a New Day, Sarah Pinsker (Berkley)

Romance novels have developed a signature "style" which infuses Historical, Contemporary, and Paranormal Romance with a certain comfortable reading "feel."  Each subdivision of Romance has embroidered on that underlying "style" (style includes pacing, plotting, Characterization, Dialogue, Conflict and Resolution, etc. as well as vocabulary, grammar, syntax, punctuation etc.).

Likewise Science Fiction has a "style" and so does "Fantasy."

Embedded in the choice of style are some implicit Worldbuilding components, most especially Theme.  Theme is the one element that appears in (and dictates) every choice a writer makes, whether the writer knows it or not.

Theme is what the writer is explaining about how the universe works, what life is, where it comes from, why humans are (or are not) important to all reality.  What is Love?  How do you recognize Love?  How do you recognize the absence of Love? Does Love matter?  And what has sex to do with it (if anything)?

Each such broad question begs an answer that is equally broad, and each novel in each genre, presents an answer for readers to think and argue about, or maybe apply to their own lives.

Yes, fiction writing is dangerous.  It could lead to your Soul being held responsible for life choices made by strangers you'll never meet.

Science Fiction is one of the genres founded on asking unthinkable questions.  That was what Gene Roddenberry always said - Star Trek didn't point viewers to particular answers to age-old questions of life, but restated and posed those questions in contexts that sparked rethinking the answers handed down from generations past. In other words, Roddenberry taught that science fiction was for posing questions, not answering them.

Science is, in fact, all about the art and craft of asking questions.  And so is fiction as it takes you on a journey in another's shoes, moccasins, sandals, or even barefoot over coals.

Historical Romance as a genre has added depth and breadth of Character to the ordinary Historical novel.  Focusing on a Romance plot, a writer can ask questions about our History that other story tellers can't quite get at, questions about the meaning of life.

So James Clavell, as noted in Part 4, cast the political strife of the mid-1960's to life in the historical setting of the founding of Hong Kong, and today we see the same forces advanced through decades re-enacting the same play.

That persistence through time gives us a way to recognize a Classic Novel.

The Rise And Fall of the Roman Empire is non-fiction about politics, economics, greed, and decadence.

The point of that historical non-fiction work was simply that the biggest, most overwhelming, unbeatable, solid and Eternal organizational concepts of civilization have a finite lifespan.

Like individual humans, whole civilizations die and leave a legacy.

In the case of Rome, the legacy included much of what Rome borrowed, inherited, copied, and absorbed from Ancient Greece.  Greece, in turn, had built on legacies that can be traced to Ancient Egypt.  Empires rise and fall over centuries (some much shorter lived).  But however far they expand, they eventually contract, shatter, and die -- and descendants pick through the rubble for valuable ideas.

Learning how to view humanity through the perspective of historical epics is easier than you might think.

But it does require a lot of reading.  Along with Clavell's novel Tai-Pan, read also James Michener's novel -- (also published in the mid-1960's and still selling strong) -- THE SOURCE.

https://www.amazon.com/Source-Novel-James-Michener-ebook/dp/B00FO60CHQ/

https://www.amazon.com/Tai-Pan-Epic-Novel-Founding-Asian-ebook/dp/B07HB94TBJ/

They both have love stories, love as a motivation for the heroic deeds of grand Historical Figures, and the way personal human relationships reshape the events of History -- the things some people considered worth remembering.

Romance, however, generally concerns the things such historians don't consider worth remembering -- even though romance itself, as it occurs in the lives of great heroes and forgotten work-a-day folks, is by far and away the single most important experience of human life.

Romance is the connecting tissue between the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Source, and Tai-Pan, and it is utterly invisible in these giant classic novels about the tsunami of History spanning thousand of years.

Yes, I do think today's headlines about Hong Kong are the early rumbles of a tsunami of history that will be written about, after they've scrubbed away all the Romance.

So what if Romance writers added that Romance element back into the crafting of the narrative of human history - that is the foundation of human destiny (if the Hellenistic concept of destiny is even real).

In the science fiction genre, the most you can expect today is a Love Story, usually from the male point of view, and about what a man will do for the love of a woman.

Helen of Troy is a Classic for a reason.  Half the readers in this world are male.

So, to craft an epic future history out of Romance, study the mere Love Story and how such a story can encompass the view of History styled in such works as Clavell, Michener, etc. have used to create their Classics.

Now consider a new novel, easily viewed as a Future History such as Heinlien wrote, but with the scope and depth Edward E. Smith incorporated into his Lensman Series.


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TMN61Z9/

Marque of Caine is the 5th in the series about Caine Riordan, a Polymath tumbled into the sudden opening of Earth to the interstellar civilizations out there already.

This 5th entry in the series has the style of James Clavell, the scope of James Michener, the depth of Edward E. Smith, with a heroic main character driven by a love as potent as Paris's for Helen of Troy.

In case you don't recall, Helen was desperately loved by a true Hero, but was not a woman of strong character such as we would admire today.  She just messed up the plans of great men.

Google "Who loved Helen of Troy" and find summaries such as this:

-----------
 Known as "The face that launched a thousand ships," Helen of Troy is considered one the most beautiful women in all literature. She was married to Menelaus, king of Sparta. Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, fell in love with Helen and abducted her, taking her back to Troy.

During an absence of Menelaus, however, Helen fled to Troy with Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam; when Paris was slain, she married his brother Deiphobus, whom she betrayed to Menelaus when Troy was subsequently captured.

---------

Whether the women of the past were as heroic as women of today, or not, the men who wrote History often showed little respect for anything female.

Charles E. Gannon has brought the Helen of Troy character into a Heinlein style heroic woman.  Many commentators today regard Heinlein's writing as sexist -- it was, but in the way of glorifying the heroism of woman.  That, in its time, was a defiant and dangerous way to portray women, so very often Heinlein's style edges into sexism.  Charles E. Gannon faces no such restriction.

The female aliens and human women in the Caine Riordan series are portrayed freely as Characters with strengths and weaknesses as varied and unpredictable as real people.

Caine Riordan fell in love at first sight, had a brief fling with his woman that resulted in an unplanned pregnancy, and then he was swept away into the vortex of time and history.  He then spends years trying to reunite with this special woman, who is just definitely the only woman for him.

Meanwhile, she is swept away by Aliens who allegedly are trying to heal her mortal wounds.

In Book 5, Riordan plunges into the interstellar civilization tackling test after test the Aliens fling at him until at last he finds out why they are testing him, and experiences a dubious encounter with his woman which inflames his determination to rescue her.

Along the way, during all 4 previous novels, Riordan's character has been illuminated by the quality of friends he has made.  Eat this point, it is not surprising this cohort assembles to help Riordan in what seems to be just a personal quest.  The reader now understands the scope of the challenge facing Riordan.

Riordan has to win through for the sake of all humanity -- and probably a whole group of Alien species.

The haunting questions posed by the Caine Riordan novels center around why civilizations, human and maybe non-human, both rise and inevitably fall.

Why is stability so unstable?

In other words, the Caine Riordan series is addressing the issue of whether there is, or maybe could be if only we knew how, such a thing as a Happily Ever After.

The Caine Riordan series is not a Romance, but its central, core theme seems to echo Clavell, Michener, Smith, "Should there be such a thing as a Happily Ever After either for individuals or for whole civilizations?"

The Caine Riordan series is woven of the stuff from which everlasting classics are made.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Guest Post by Julie E. Czerneda - The Clan Chronicles

Guest Post
by
Julie E. Czerneda
Author Of The Clan Chronicles From DAW Books

--------Introduction---------

I've been reading Julie E. Czerneda's novels for years and just finished The Gate To Futures Past (Reunification #2).

It is a sequel to This Gulf of Time and Stars (Reunification #1).

The Reunification novels are part of The Clan Chronicles.

Julie E. Czerneda is one of the few writers like Charles E. Gannon, the absolutely-must-read writers.

Julie has blended good science (physics and genetics) with imaginary science with theories of souls and the spiritual significance of Time, and added in a whopping dollop of amazing Romance that fuels the blistering hot plot.

Without the Romance, there would be no story here! That is the very definition of Romance Genre.

So I was delighted to get this Guest Post from Julie on the occasion of a new novel in The Clan Chronicles -- a series that explores the farthest reaches of alien and human biology, genetics, romance, and the structure of the universe, the nature of Reality, and what is important (and what is not).

Most writers would flub this blend, putting too much of one or the other, getting too abstract, inserting indigestible lumps of exposition about nothing relevant, or just cutting to the sex scene and forgetting the oddities of the carefully built logic of the world surrounding the characters.

The Clan Chronicles are a must-read for Science Fiction Paranormal Romance writers trying to blend genres.

The Clan Chronicles gives the eerie feeling of reading Asimov genetically spliced to Heinlein mothered by J.D.Robb (Nora Roberts).

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

------------Guest Post by Julie E. Czerneda------------

Author Bio:

Julie E. Czerneda photo by Roger Czerneda
www.photo.czerneda.com

Since 1997, Canadian author/former biologist Julie E. Czerneda has shared her boundless curiosity about living things through her science fiction, published by DAW Books, NY. Recently, she began her first fantasy series: Night’s Edge with A Turn of Light, winner of the 2014 Aurora Award for Best English Novel. A Play of Shadow followed, winning the 2015 Aurora. While there’ll be more fantasy, Julie’s back in science fiction to complete her Clan Chronicles series. Reunification #1: This Gulf of Time and Stars, came out in 2015. #2: The Gate to Futures Past will be released this September. Volume #3: To Guard Against the Dark, follows October 2017. An award-winning editor as well, Julie’s latest project is editing the 2017 Nebula Awards Showcase, a singular honour. Meet Julie at Acadia’s Dark Sky Festival, Bar Harbor, Maine this September and at Hal-Con, Halifax, this November. For more, please visit http://www.czerneda.com.

About the Clan Chronicles Series:

Cover art by Matt Stawicki www.mattstawicki.com

The Clan Chronicles is set in a far future where a mutual Trade Pact encourages peaceful commerce among a multitude of alien and Human worlds. The alien Clan, humanoid in appearance, have been living in secrecy and wealth on Human worlds, relying on their innate ability to move through the M’hir and bypass normal space. The Clan bred to increase that power, only to learn its terrible price: females who can’t help but kill prospective mates. Sira di Sarc is the first female of her kind facing that reality. With the help of a Human starship captain, Jason Morgan, himself a talented telepath, Sira must find a morally acceptable solution before it’s too late. But with the Clan exposed, her time is running out. The Stratification trilogy follows Sira’s ancestor, Aryl Sarc, and shows how their power first came to be as well as how the Clan came to live in the Trade Pact. The Trade Pact trilogy is the story of Sira and Morgan, and the trouble facing the Clan. Reunification will conclude the series and answer, at last, #whoaretheclan.

And what will be the fate of all.

Cover art by Matt Stawicki www.mattstawicki.com

GIVEAWAY
2 sets of 2 books. 1 mass market of A GULF OF TIME AND STARS and 1 hardcover of GATE TO FUTURES PAST. US/Canada only.
RAFFLECOPTER FOR TOUR WIDE GIVEAWAY:
a Rafflecopter giveaway 

To Smell Me Is To Love Me

If you’re built that way. The means by which living things communicate has been my passion since I knew what a biologist was—and, wow, what a great thing to be. Living things communicate regularly for all manner of important reasons: don’t eat me, hold still while I eat you, learn or be eaten/or starve, that way lies death/this way less death, status/age/and oh, yes.

Reproduction. That’s a handy one for biologists to study, in part because unlike Humans, most species have a specific time when they are in the mood, being not-so-much for the remainder. Sex as a time-limited activity, usually tied to a season. Sex as the end of life, so it happens only once. There are wonderful variations on these themes, but generally speaking? You’re all in, or not interested.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Affection, even love, for those living things who enjoy it, isn’t the same as sex drive to a biologist. For us, sex is about results.

The Clan Chronicles, which started with A Thousand Words for Stranger, is at heart about sex and results. I deliberately created the Clan, the aliens we meet in the books, as having no capacity for love or affection. Their reproduction neither requires nor rewards it. Males compete with females to create a pairing able to produce offspring. Lose?
The male dies. The female? Waits—literally, in a physiological sense, her body immature--for the next contestant for her Choice.

Simple and not that far from spider sex.

The Clan have reached a point where they are losing males faster than they can be born. In other words, extinction looms. One individual, an unChosen female named Sira, has waited long enough. She’s determined to find a solution and save her kind.

How being the tough part. Oh, there are “other” humanoids within this multi-species Trade Pact. Not to breed with—biologist remember, so inter-species fecundity is right out for me--but what if one, say a Human, could successfully compete and pair with a Clan female, in order to invoke the reproductive maturation of her body? Sira, despite Clan loathing for the non-Clan, decides to try.

So far, I’ve a textbook mental experiment in reproductive behaviour, breeding for extreme/risky characteristics, and a cool alien species about to crash. A problem, but not yet a story.

There is another side to me, of course. The romantic. The dreamer. I love stories of space travel, of daring starship captains and crew, of the whole messy business of getting along when your biology doesn’t.

The driving force of the story of the Clan Chronicles may be their predicament, and Sira’s involvement of Captain Jason Morgan, a Human telepath. The heart of the story—its warmth and passion—arrives when Sira learns what her kind has forgotten.
How to love.

--------Excerpt from This Gulf of Time and Stars by Julie E. Czerneda 2015 DAW Books-----

      A lock of red-gold rose from the mass tumbling down Sira’s back, curling towards him like a languid finger. Warm and sensual, that hair, strangely willful, and the mark of a fully mature Clanswoman. She’d become that by being near him. By being attracted.

      By falling--that unforeseen consequence--in love with an alien.

      As had he. For he wasn’t, Morgan thought, the simple trader he seemed either.

      When he’d met Sira he’d been a telepath of respectable skill, for a Human, with enough potential to make him uncomfortable around the noisy minds of others and wary of the Clan, who disapproved of such power in others. Since?

      Suffice to say, he no longer noticed crowds. Sira had honed his abilities, trained and tested them to Clan standards, wanting above all else to protect him from herself. For Clan thoughts and bodies moved outside the known universe, through a dimensionless space they called the M’hir. It was real. He’d almost died there, when she’d lost the fight with her own instinct. Sira had honed his abilities, trained and tested them to Clan standards, wanting above all else to protect him from herself. For Clan thoughts and bodies moved outside the known universe, through a dimensionless space they called the M’hir. It was real. He’d almost died there, when she’d lost the fight with her own instinct.

      Almost. Instead, he and Sira had managed the formerly inconceivable. Not only had her body matured into its natural—and glorious—adult state before Choice could take place, but their minds and hearts had forged the permanent Clan pair-bond called a Joining.

      While he remained wary of the rest of her kind, even the most xenophobic of Clan couldn’t argue with that.

      Not that he cared. What mattered? He was no longer alone, no longer empty and courseless. The clear brilliant sanity of Sira’s thoughts, her passion and goodness, filled him. Each shipday he woke to the joy of discovering the universe with her. And when they made love—

      Her head half turned, hair lifting to reveal the sweet curve of her jaw, the blue of the airtag adhered to her skin, and, yes, a coy dimple. We could leave, you know.
      He came close to tripping over his own feet. Witchling.

      You started it. With distracting warmth.

-----------End Excerpt-------------

Oh, the hair? Sira—all Chosen female Clan—have opinionated hair. I did that because it gave me an instant reality check. She isn’t Human and never will be. Also, it’s a wonderfully sensual seduction device. Read the books.*

So the Clan Chronicles is a love story between aliens. It’s a science fiction examination of a biological question. It’s a lark and an epic, with dark places and some truly hilarious moments. It’s all those things at once, my dreams, for you to share.

Enjoy.

*I’ll admit Sira’s glorious locks had their start in personal aggravation. I’d been trying to get a curl in my own hair and failed miserably. What better than fabulous self-curling hair? Naturally, I immediately made that hair a nuisance; it’s what authors do to their characters.

------- End Guest Post---------------

OK, you have your homework assignment -- go read The Clan Chronicles with special attention to the blend of science and romance.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Marketing Fiction in a Changing World Part 18 Amazon Makes Some Bad Marketing Decisions

Marketing Fiction in a Changing World
 Part 18
 Amazon Makes Some Bad Marketing Decisions
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Amazon has a rule against writers "reviewing" books by other writers.

I'm an Amazon Vine reviewer, and a writer, and of course I know a lot of writers on Facebook, Twitter, etc. It's almost impossible for me to read a book by anyone who isn't a friend, friend of a friend, member of one or another writer's group -- somehow connected online.

Amazon's snoops can find those connections.

So they assume I'm just shilling for my friends' books.

Well, a lot of beginning, self-publishing writers do get their friends to post 5-star reviews, so they can amass 500 5-star reviews to brag about.

But guess what? If you know a person and are friends with them, if you LIKE a person, chances are very good you will indeed like the books or stories they write -- even if they aren't very well written, but just great stories that thrill your bones.

That is the nature of fiction. Fiction transmits from the subconscious of the writer to the subconscious of the reader -- when there is some sort of harmony of the notes between you, you LIKE each other's fiction.

I've spent a lot of time on this Alien Romance blog talking about writing craft, and how the writers' perspective on "headlines" and especially politics, and social movements, is vastly different from the perspective someone just living in our civilization experiences.

Writers see the universe as differently as Graphic artists do.

Writers experience reading fiction differently than non-writers do.'

You know you're a writer when you have lost all enjoyment from reading books, and then all of a sudden find yourself enjoying books again, but seeing something totally different.

Writers enjoy well crafted stories that shine with artistic brilliance.

Non-writers never get to experience that brilliance full on.

CAUTION: there are people, readers, who have never written or never published a story, who are nevertheless writers in this sense. They see, and revel in, the technical craftsmanship of novels.  Many such people end up working as editors. Even more are professional reviewers, librarians, teachers, and personal friends with lots of published writers.

So production of stories in text format is not the criterion I use, but it is the criterion that Amazon seems to use to purge the comments on a novel of any really useful information you might want before you buy a book.

If you're a professional writer, editor, publisher, etc. Amazon doesn't want you to inform the public about the brilliance or the flaws in a work someone might want to buy.'

But as it happens, the ONLY people capable of both enjoying a friend's works and judging that work objectively enough to inform a general reader are the very people Amazon prohibits from performing that service.'

In other words, Amazon has made a very bad marketing decision.

On the other hand, Amazon does own Goodreads.com, where writers and readers can interact.

So there is method to their madness, but it does not serve the general fiction reader browsing for something to read.

One of the most informative bits of information a prospective book buyer can have is a list of which other writers this new writer is friends with.  Who hangs out with whom.  Which new writers have been inspired by the writers you grew up loving most?

The generational hand-off of traditions in writing is one thing Librarians taught me to look for, when I was learning to browse a public library.

So today, I'm giving you a book series by a writing student I started on a long and varied career who is now garnering top awards attention.

Here is what I wrote on Facebook (back in February 2016) about the third book in his award winning series:

---------quote-------
Here is Book 3 in a Series that is garnering vast amounts of Award attention, and with good reason. It's about a human polymath from Earth who because of a labyrinth of political machinations ends up leading a First Contact and First Deep Contact mission into a well populated (and war-torn) Galaxy.

The worldbuilding is detailed, the space-war-armament development superlative, the aliens suitably strange and amazing (and mysterious), and I'm smitten with the portrayal of a polymath at work. Anything more I might say could be "spoilers" for some, so take a good look at this novel and dive right in. It's easily readable even if you haven't read the previous ones.

This series is getting Nebula attention. In some ways it reminds me of Cj Cherryh 's galaxy-building visions, or Janeen O'Kerry - in fact the galactic history building in Janeen's series on THE SALIK WARS and THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY is similar, though Janeen is known for her Romance novels.

I can only wonder if Robert J. Sawyer has read this whole series. In a way, the concept reminds me of Jack McDevitt with overtones of Jack Campbell Taylor Anderson - Author of The Destroyermen carrying on in the tradition of Keith Laumer and Poul Anderson.

So far the series is not a Romance, and does not feature a Love Story -- BUT Caine as a character is one grand hunk, and like Spock will become a focus for many Romance style stories.

http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Caine-Riordan-Charles-Gannon/dp/1476780935/

---------end quote----
You will note that is Book 3 -- there is a 4th coming soon -- and if you have been following my series on Worldbuilding, you will find the Caine Riordan series extremely interesting.

Now, to an example of what kind of information Amazon wants to deprive shoppers of.

Here below is a comment made on Facebook by Charles Gannon after reading the anthology of stories written by writers other than Jean Lorrah and I -- contributing new characters and new angles to the Sime~Gen Universe.

Here is the book I gave him a copy of in exchange for a copy of his Raising Caine --- a common practice among writers, severely frowned upon by Amazon.



---------from Charles E. Gannon --------
If you are a fan of series and universes that unfold themselves over the course of multiple books and stories, creating a world in which you get immersed, then you need to be aware of this if you are not already:

The Sime-Gen series launched by Jacqueline Lichtenberg. Intrigue, exploration, adventure, house politics, and under it all, much larger, lurking questions of where different societies are able to find synergy--and where they are likely to tumble into devastating conflict.

Does this sound like a paid-for advertisement? Well, in one sense it is...because, you see, I have a debt to (gladly, joyously) repay that I will never be done repaying: Jacqueline Lichtenberg, for reasons I will never fully understand, took me under her writing wing when I was 12 years old. The attention and enthusiasm she lavished on those early efforts of mine was nothing short of Herculean. In a file cabinet not more than 25 yards from where I sit writing this, I have her first 7 pg (single space, Corolla type-written) critique of a story that was, maybe, about 80 % as long as her critique.

I knew at that moment what good fortune had descended upon me in the form of her mentorship. Or so I thought: until you actually are working in this field, you cannot fully appreciate the way a good mentor's initial lessons keep paying dividends, kept showing up to guide you like a footman's lantern down the better path.

It was also only later on that I fully realized what an extraordinary craftsperson she is, and how far-sighted her vision was of attempting to tell a story across a variety of media, over time: an exercise in world-building that preceded the gaming industry's discovery of just how many ways you can sell world-expansion and development products that create a total narrative in which the once-focal adventure products become small specific events that subtly push the warp and woof of the much bigger world-tapestry that has been created.

So, as advertisements go, this one sucks. It's too long, too personal, too gushing...yeah. I know all that. I worked in advertising. But you won't forget it--and that's the point. Because until you go and see what I'm talking about in the form of Jacqueline's extraordinary Sime-Gen saga, you won't know the extraordinary voice and vision that gave rise to this long paean of praise.

So: go here--and find out what I'm talking about.

http://amazon.com/author/jacquelinelichtenberg

And here's the Amazon page that is your gateway into this incredible world:

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=sime%2Fgen&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=75077217077&hvpos=1t1&hvexid&hvnetw=g&hvrand=446465704877823808&hvpone&hvptwo&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_5unxioq485_b

The newest entry in the Sime-Gen series Fear and Courage is at the bottom of the page, and features some of the other many persons who Jacqueline has mentored, who have brought the voices she helped them find and refine back to this wonderful world in order to expand it even more.

Don't miss out.

------end quote-------

So you see, tracing the connections among writers can give you an amazing amount of information about whether you will enjoy a book or not -- all having little or nothing to do with the blurb on the book, the content, story description, spoilers, or other readers saying "I liked it" or "It was a page-turner."

As a beginning writer, cultivate connections with writers whose work you admire.  I learned from the generation previous to me. It is a long-long tradition going back to cave dwelling days and stories around camp fires.  We are bards.

Here is a permalink to Chuck's post on Facebook.  Glance through the comments for mentions of other writers his fans read.

https://www.facebook.com/chuck.gannon.01/posts/10205509232271667/

And here is a permalink to my Facebook post about RAISING CAINE so you can see the comments there.

https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg/posts/10153341607837548/

It turns out I made a mistake picking names from the FB dropdown, and Janeen O'Kerry corrected me, adding Jean Johnson to the list of writers you should check out.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Depiction Part 11 -- Depicting Complex Battle-scenes by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction Part 11
Depicting Complex Battle-scenes
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Here's the index post for this series on Depiction:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

The big secret of writing Award Winners and Best Sellers is more about what you leave out than what you put in.

But to know what to leave out, you have to think through every tiny detail, from within the point of view of your main character and know what it is you are leaving out, and why you are leaving it out.

Within the main character's point of view, you know what that character knows -- and you don't know what that character does not know.

It sounds so simple when you say it.  Not simple at all.  It's another craft technique, and a tool for your toolbox.

Mastery of that writing tool - leaving OUT the most interesting part - is the hallmark of the great writers.

The great writers engage the creative imagination of readers, luring them into creating their own version of the story, bringing the characters alive within the reader's mind.  That is done by leaving room for the reader to insert themselves into the story - to think like the character.

If you detail every thought in the character's mind, or go into long conversations or arguments about whether to do something anyone who is an expert in the choices being discussed would KNOW would not be considered -- just the explain to the reader why you didn't write a thing a certain way -- you lose your primary audience, and repel any casual reader who will read anything.  In other words, you write boring stuff.

So a big chunk of characterization lies within what a character does NOT think, not simply within what the character does think.

I found a beautiful example of this in a book I was reading because the author had been one of my first writing students.

He is Charles E. Gannon - Chuck Gannon on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/chuck.gannon.01
(don't shorten that link - there's another by the same name)

His publisher put up on Amazon the following bio:

About the Author
Charles E. Gannon is a breakthrough rising star in science fiction with a multiple short story and novella publications in Baen anthologies, Man-Kzin Wars XIII, Analog, and elsewhere. Gannon is coauthor with Steve White of Extremis, the latest entry in the legendary Starfire series created by David Weber. His most recent novel is 1635: The Papal Stakes cowritten with alternate history master, Eric Flint.  A multiple Fulbright scholar, Gannon is Distinguished Professor of American Literature at St. Bonaventure University.

When he brought his first attempt to write a story to me, he was just a kid -- really young kid.  Look what he grew up to become! 

Chuck Gannon's first novel in his Tales of the Terran Republic, Fire With Fire, A Caine Riordan Novel...



...was nominated for the Nebula and won another award. 

Here's my discussion of that one:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

The second Caine Riordan novel, Trial by Fire, with much more of a "Military Science Fiction" tone (an invasion of Earth by recently contacted Alien coalition) garnered a Nebula Nomination and lots of Hugo attention just like the first.  And there are a lot of reasons for that.



In short, Trial by Fire is a fabulous Mission: Impossible TV episode, or better, movie, writ large.



The plot of the novel unfolds a massive, complex, (beautiful) piece of psychological leverage, of Assumption Judo used against non-humans and featuring the best of human nature.  Trial by Fire is a jaw-dropper just like the Mission: Impossible TV Series episodes, especially of the First Season.  So it has my highest recommendation - with the caveat that it is not a Romance genre novel.  But Romance readers who love Relationship plots will not be bored. 

This blog is about Science Fiction Romance, but just as with the Romance element in World War II movies, Science Fiction Romance often includes long, intricate, complicated, battles. 

In fact, Fantasy Romance does, too, when vast armies on horseback deploy to fight for a Kingdom. 

So a Romance writer who leaps into the science fiction field has to know how to do this kind of thinking, how to lay out battle tactics, how to choose weaponry, how to think like a soldier or a Commander -- and most importantly how to know what to leave out, and why to leave it out, even though it's interesting to a big part of your audience. 

The skill-set is termed Selectivity in many books on writing, and it is a key to all forms of Art.

Selecting what to put in requires precision handling of the Theme. 

Selecting what to leave out requires precision handling of the Characterization. 

In the case of Charles E. Gannon's Trial by Fire, the armies and armadas of Earth are fighting for control of Earth. 

The main character we follow, among many, Caine Riordan, is a "polymath" -- he doesn't think the same way most humans do.  He doesn't think the way anyone else in the novel does. 

There are a couple of good, solid Love Stories twined through this plot -- the Hero is deeply (and oddly) involved with two women, with a lot of heroism and angst, but those relationships don't drive the invasion or the counter-strike of this plot.  It's a good read, and if you study the battle scenes, it will teach you a lot about what to put in and what to leave out of a sex scene. 

So as I was reading the Kindle version of this novel, I took some notes using the Kindle note feature. 

Then I thought about it all, went back to a note I dropped into his Chapter Fifty-Two (they are short chapters, but this is a very long book) and decided to drop a grain of sand onto Chuck Gannon's Facebook Wall, and see if he made me a pearl.  Sure enough, he did.  I can be very irritating at times.  So I posed my question from my note in the most provocative way I could imagine. 

I wrote on his wall:
---------QUOTE--------
A question: when communications are all out in the Jakarta region and they have to instruct troops about the action, why don't they send out loudspeaker trucks and guys with bullhorns? Is this so far in the future nobody has such things or are they all destroyed? Or did I miss something?
---------END QUOTE-------

CHUCK ANSWERED ON HIS FACEBOOK WALL

---------QUOTE---------

Chuck Gannon
Lots of reasons. In no particular order: (and I speak of trucks, but same would apply to runners with bull horns)

1) counter targeting invite. Audial triangulation would find snipers easily by this time; Speaker trucks would be like "shoot me" signs.

2) difficulty with centralized control relaying to trucks. Control net by subsurface fiber optic, in absence of any ability to use airwaves, or to trust that you could safely signal in the clear, means you have to go for secure hardwire/fiberwire.; Trucks would have to get messages, return for more. Turnaround time fatal for contemporary MOUT scenario depicted.

3) centralization trackback of source of truck messaging: a half witted adversary will realize the trucks are having to get updated with messages. Find, observe, follow messenger or truck path to update point, and you take out a commo nexus. Given difficulty of insurgent C4i environment, it is probably a command and control nexus. Hi value target; crippling blow to insurgents.

4) trucks not historically used in front line engagements as passing info; usually preop marshaling, often for civilians, not troops. Useful for issuing mass directives to masses. The more closely orchestrated or tightly sequential an operation is, the more its communications must be inaccessible to the threat force, swift, clear, coded. None of that is possible with speaker trucks.

There are more reasons (having to do with logistics, inability to get immediate ping backs to determine yes/no on receipt of message and therefore op timing confirmation, etc.)
--------END QUOTE-------------


That is a precious pearl for beginning writers to study in the context of this high profile novel. 

A few fans of his jumped on the discussion, and one who is involved in creating a wiki for the Universe Chuck is writing in captured his response for the wiki -- and put my name on there. 

http://tales-of-the-terran-republic.wikia.com/wiki/Command_&_Control_Considerations

The discussion thread is:
https://www.facebook.com/chuck.gannon.01/posts/10203596444013156

So get these two books and start following the adventures of Caine Riordan, the Polymath. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com