Reviews 15 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - A Few Good Men by Sarah A. Hoyt

Reviews 15
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
A Few Good Men by Sarah A. Hoyt

I have pointed you to other works by Sarah A. Hoyt.  Here's my review of a novel she wrote, and here's one about whether you as a writer need to make up a pen name.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/10/heart-of-light-by-sarah-hoyt.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/should-you-make-up-pen-name-part-i.html

Sarah A. Hoyt is one of the most versatile and accomplished writers you will find working in any field.

Her Feb 2014 title from Baen Books titled A Few Good Men had to have been written in 2012 or 2013, based on 2011 science.

At the beginning of 2015, a scientist made news by talking about the ambition of doing whole-head transplants, and immediately the scientific establishment jumped on him saying it can't be done.

The "jumping on him" just fueled the publicity of an idea that would have been ignored, but it highlighted a wonderful science fiction novel that you just have to read to appreciate. 

Here's the discussion from FORBES
Read the article here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurcaplan/2015/02/26/doctor-seeking-to-perform-head-transplant-is-out-of-his-mind/


---------QUOTE-----------
The neuroscientist Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy thinks the time has come to start transplanting heads. Canavero plans to announce his noggin exchange program at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons (AANOS) in Annapolis, Maryland, this June. His ambitions have gotten plenty of attention this week. They should. It is both rotten scientifically and lousy ethically.

Dr. Canavero is not trying to perfect an approach that is cosmetic. He does not seek to find a way to give you the body that you always dreamed of without the burden of diet or exercise. He wants to use head transplantation surgery to extend the lives of people whose muscles, bodily organs and immune systems have degenerated or wasted away.

Scientifically what Canavero wants to do cannot yet be done. It may never be doable.

To move a head on to someone else’s body requires the rewiring of the spinal cord. We don’t know how to do that. If we did there would be far fewer paralyzed people who have spinal cord injuries. Nor, despite Canavero’s assertions to the contrary, is medicine anywhere close to knowing how to use stem cells or growth factors to make this happen.

---------END QUOTE---------------

But the principle in science fiction is, "if we can dream it, we can do it." 

You may note that this attitude is the key attitude behind the whole Romance Genre, the driving fuel behind the pursuit of the Happily Ever After ending (the HEA) that is so scorned.

That "scorned" regard is something that Romance and Science Fiction have in common, a pivot point around which to build SFR, Science Fiction Romance. 

Every science fiction novel depicting something that hasn't been done has been derided as ridiculous because the story assumes humanity can do the impossible.

And then we do it, and ho-hum-yawn "we knew that all the time." 

Today, online dating sites and match-making computer algorithms are trying to duplicate the success rate of the Match Makers as depicted in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.  In the tiny, closed communities where everyone knew everyone for generations and generations -- that worked.  It even works today in tight-knit communities that are spread geographically but closely connected by technology. 

So science, fiction, and romance are really just one subject, and go together naturally. 

Remember Jules Verne's space-ship concept was considered silly fantasy? 

Right now, we're ranting about "climate change" -- and some people are talking crazy about controlling the climate by putting certain kinds of objects in orbit to inject more (or less) solar energy into the atmosphere.

Crazy, right?

Well, the best science fiction writers pick up the notions floating around among the 'craziest' scientists, put that together with bits and pieces of technology, some notions mechanics are playing with, and notice how the age-old arguments about politics and government are cycling at the moment. 

Heinlein did this. 

Asimov did this. 

Now Sarah A. Hoyt has done it -- and it's not the first time for her.

Her Darkship series from Baen Books starts with a novel titled Darkship Renegades,



and continues with Darkship Thieves


And you will enjoy a future history work titled Ganymede



All of these embroider creatively on various "impossible" premises toyed with by scientists for years, and just now being presented in the general media with a somewhat serious tone -- ideas about living on asteroids, about various satellites of Earth, about things we are only now discovering in our solar system.

A Few Good Men is Book 3 in the Darkship series, and the subject of this blog entry:



The title, A Few Good Men,  is a play on words.  In this far future Earth, climate and politics and science, and genetics, have changed everything.  I'm not sure I'd term it progress.

A Good Man is a little King, an owner-proprietor-boss-chief-executive of a section of Earth where people live.  There are about 80 such sections, and these Good Men are anything but good. 

There's a feudal element involved.  If there is no heir to the title, those who worked for that Good Man may be subject to a purge when another Good Man takes over the territory - it's all about loyalty.  Loyalty is keeping secrets.  Loyalty is not-noticing there's a secret that needs keeping. 

Each Good Man rules with his own personality, shaping the forms and cultural norms of the area he governs. 

The heir is supposed to take over with a seamless continuation of policy and style.  The secret is the reason for the seamlessness.  And it has everything to do with extrapolating the science developing behind that claim of being close to doing whole head transplants -- or body-transplants, depending on how you look at it.  Hoyt has taken a grand leap into an all-too-plausible direction.

In this Book 3 in the Darkship series, we learn the secret the Good Men have been keeping for centuries. 

We follow a younger son of a Good Man whose father and older brother have been assassinated, leaving him unexpectedly heir.

The Good Man's retainers don't even know that this heir is still alive when he shows up on the palace's doorstep.

The story of how he takes over, and what he learns both in his official briefings and unofficially -- the infiltration of the household and office staff by opponents of the Good Man rule - why they oppose and what they do when an unexpected heir shows up creates a page-turner of a story.

Really, this is a "can't put it down" read. 

I was delighted to learn from Sarah A. Hoyt (who gave me a copy of A Few Good Men) that there will be more of these delicious books to come. 

As with last week's discussion of Charles Gannon's Trial By Fire, this is not strictly speaking a genre Romance, but in Sarah's novel the love story is integral to the plot, to the story, and to the world-views that clash. 

Doing a contrast/compare of these two series will give you a broad platform for displaying a genuine Science Fiction Romance where the Science and the Fiction are not weaker components than the Romance.

Here's what Sarah told me about the future of this Darkship series:

-----------Quote from Sarah A. Hoyt-------------
The series is a series of revolutions against the Good Men, as the revolt fans out over the Earth. I was going to make it one book, and then realized not all revolts would be the same or end the same.

Some of them end badly indeed. The next book, Through Fire, is the revolution in Liberte Seacity, the domain of Simon St. Cyr.

I'm disgracefully late with it, because Lucius' voice STUCK in my head, and I thought I'd need the services of an exorcist to write a book from another POV ever.

The series doesn't have other books in his voice, but it will have a book (probably fourth. I'm a pantser so there's wiggle room) Blood Brothers which is the story of Luce and Nat's twin sons.

(It's the future. Yes, they're assembled in a lab.)

And the last book in the series will be from the point of view of their much younger (than her brothers) daughter, Abigail Keeva Remy.
---------- END QUOTE-----------

There you see the genetic engineering of the future -- not-so-far-future either -- as two guys have children together. 

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/uk-allows-ivf-using-dna-three-parents

Times chance so fast, science fiction writers can't keep up -- Sarah A. Hoyt is leading the pack here. 

And Sarah gave me a glimpse of the opening of the next book in the revolts against the Good Men, When Worlds Collide:

---------quote------------
When Worlds Collide

A spaceship mechanic has no place in a fairytale, not even when she’s dressed in a flowing gown and being courted by one of Earth’s most powerful men.

I was designed to be able to repair spaceships and to navigate them home safely. I had calluses on my hands from working with heavy tools on delicate machinery. I was strong enough to kill a grown man with a casual blow. And I had burner strapped to my ankle under my ball-gown.

The man courting me was a scoundrel, a dictator, and likely a murderer. And we were dancing at a spun-sugar palace, atop a fairytale island. It was his ballroom, his palace and his island. He was my only protector on Earth and my host for the last six months. He wanted me. He had been gentle and caring and solicitous of me. I wanted to escape the happy-ever-after fairytale ending.

You should be careful what you wish for. It was a relief when the palace exploded.

-----------END QUOTE------------

You want to read this book. 

Go to this page and on the left, under her picture, click the "follow" button to be notified when new books are released.

http://www.amazon.com/Sarah-A.-Hoyt/e/B001HCVAX6

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Should You Make Up A Pen Name? Part I

Last week we talked more about changes in publishing, and how long established, famous writers are retrieving the rights to their own novels from the big publishers and issuing them as ebooks on their own.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/doranna-durgin-on-changes-in-publishing.html
The organization that Duranna Durgin (oh, you gotta read her books) founded is Backlist Ebooks, just for writers trying to learn the ropes of self-publishing.  The dues are steep but worth it, as with any organization of professionals. 

Yes, famous writers with big followings are self-publishing!

And in fact, some writers just now breaking into print are having a problem selling titles they post themselves, or titles published via indie or e-book-only publishers because the big publishers are now flooding the market with the newest books by big names, while the big names are posting their own backlist titles.

It's sometimes hard to tell the difference when shopping an ebook catalogue, so various entrepreneurs have launched various projects to re-engineer the fiction delivery system.  Everything is changing so fast that new writers -- and even long established writers -- need to think carefully before wading into the chaos.

Not all members of Backlist eBooks are using Kindle. Some just post their novels on their own website. Some distribute to a lot of formats through smashwords, and hit Kindle that way.

Doing all this self-publishing work requires climbing a very steep learning curve, and takes a lot of time away from producing actual new novels.

Along with covers, and ISBN numbers, and formatting for this-and-that system, and other such mysteries, comes the decision of whether to republish a novel under the same byline it was originally published under.

Many writers have several bylines, or pen names, as they were called in the days of pens.

How does that happen? If you've never published anything yet, should you create a bunch of bylines?  Do you have to do it? Should you stop doing it?

The name you put under the Title of your work is a "brand" -- as marketers are teaching writers to call it these days. Writers have to be branded as well as genre'd!

For example, my Agent decided I needed a different byline for my Military Science Fiction novels just when he read them. He decided to market them with the challenge to the editor, figure out who wrote this from the style. The editor who bought the two couldn't figure it, then decided I should pick a male byline for them.

They are Hero and Border Dispute, which came out as Ace Mass Market novels at the peak of the military SF boom under the byline Daniel R. Kerns (before Daniel Kerns made a name for himself - that Daniel is not me).

So because of the similar and confusing byline issue, when I reissued the two novels as an omnibus Kindle edition, I put my own byline on them even though they're not the usual science fiction romance I write. They are relationship driven, human/alien stories. The problem that drives the relationship is an interstellar war -- but not against an "enemy." That's the SF twist that's so Lichtenberg -- rethink the entire meaning of "war" and "action."  Find them here.

Hero & Border Dispute

So that's an example of a science fiction byline bleeding over into a sub-genre, military science fiction. Many wouldn't consider military science fiction a "sub" genre at all since science fiction started as a male-action sub-genre. Do you need a new byline for a sub-genre?

Can one byline work over many genres, and for fiction and non-fiction as well -- for non-fiction in different areas (such as Biography vs. say, Tarot)?

This is an especially sensitive question for writers of SFR, Science Fiction Romance or PNR, Paranormal Romance, vs. plain contemporary Romance, vs. Historical Romance.

My main topic on this blog has been how to raise the level of respect for the various Romance Genres in the minds of the general public -- even people who don't like or read Romance should view the genre as a high precision, demanding genre that arouses the thirst for education in a wide variety of highly regarded professions.  Today, though, a byline known in the Romance genres carries a stigma that is not honorable.  So should you use your own legal name?  Or make up a name for your byline? 

Publishers have a "legacy wisdom" from the days of printing presses, that insists one byline famous for Romance simply will not sell to Mystery readers. A byline famous for Mystery might sell to Science Fiction (Asimov comes to mind as the exception that proves all these rules) but a byline famous for Science Fiction will never, ever make it in Westerns or Romance.

The more famous your byline in one area, the more resistant publishers are to using it in another.

Take Nora Roberts for a big example of how that legacy wisdom is not applicable any more.

She wanted to write a series of sort-of-SF-Romance novels set almost in the future, called the IN DEATH series (I really like that series a lot!) So the publisher and/or Agent, or someone, decided she needed to avoid sullying her prominent Nora Roberts brand name with that icky science-fiction crap.

I don't know if it was her idea or theirs, but they put the J. D. Robb byline on the In Death Series and hid the Nora Roberts attribution from most readers.

IN DEATH didn't sell well at all, even though it was Nora Roberts style and made it into most libraries in paperback.

That's an object lesson in marketing. Content doesn't matter to sales. Brand does.

So after a few In Death novels, they "came out of the closet" (rumors abounded online about "who" J. D. Robb really was) and put the Nora Roberts byline on the front covers.

And they sold.  Are still selling, big time.

Isn't that interesting? Against all legacy wisdom of publishers, science fiction romance sold to an enthusiastic Romance readership -- not so much at all to the science fiction readers, and not to the fantasy readership.

Something changed, and I think it's an important something.

Now, I have to be a nasty critic here and state that the IN DEATH series is really crummy science fiction, if you judge it as SF. (I don't, so I actually like those novels!)

It's plain vanilla Nora Roberts romance, hitting the middle of the Romance market - nothing much to talk about except "I keep buying these things and I don't know why."

So is IN DEATH different enough to warrant another byline? Apparently not. And that was in 2004. Note IN DEATH #1 is now on Kindle, and has over 200 reviews on Amazon.

Here's Treachery in Death

Note the high price on the Kindle edition whereas many members of Backlist eBooks are posting their own novels for $2.99 (and many write as well or better than Nora Roberts in my not-so-humble opinion)..

Byline and branding is all marketing, not supply and demand. After all, ebooks come with unlimited supply. Stores don't run out of copies!

Now, about the byline problem.

Which brings us back to the stigma problem.

I think the major publishers have the computerized sales results to substantiate their insistence on separate bylines for separate genres, but especially for authors who sully their brand with SCIENCE FICTION.

So I'm going to talk about a friend of mine, Sarah A. Hoyt -- we're friends on facebook. She's been sending me review copies of some of her books for a while now. Her publishers don't understand why a reviewer for a New Age Magazine (me) would rave about murder mysteries, steampunk, historicals, etc etc. But I can find something esoteric in anything because the reality behind the art is all about Love Conquers All.

I reviewed some historical mysteries Sarah A. Hoyt wrote under a different byline Sarah D’Almeida about the Musketeers:

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2009/

and in 2010
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/

Death of a Musketeer by Sarah D’Almeida, Berkley Prime Crime Mystery, 2006

Dying By The Sword by Sarah D’Almeida, Berkeley Prime Crime Mystery, 2008

There are a couple more and Sarah expects to get them out as ebooks with new ones in that series. (see the problem? Sarah who?)

Here's a note from her about bylines:
----------
The mysteries are an open pen name. Also, the first musketeer's mystery has been re-released with a small press: http://nakedreader.com/

Amazon it should have this version up by now. If it does well, I will finish novel #6, The Musketeer's Confessor. I've just delivered A Fatal Stain (the third of the refinishing ones.) I'm now working on Darkship Renegade, which apparently will have a "sister book" that takes place on Earth with different characters. (I didn't know this. The character mugged me one fine morning... :/ so now I have to write him.)
-----

That's how writers keep up with each other's work -- notes on facebook.

And then there's a series of well, Steampunk-ish novels Sarah did that I loved -- more or less fantasy, maybe.

Heart of Light is one of the titles.

Here's a whole list of Hoyt titles:

Sarah A. Hoyt

I've just read DARKSHIP THIEVES by Sarah A. Hoyt, and it's REALLY GOOD SF-Romance in the Linnea Sinclair tradition -- a lot of running around in space ships and space stations, but no non-humans. This one is a break-off human colony with genetic modification issues. And a really good star-crossed lovers story.

FULL DISCLOSURE - you all know I'm a reviewer, and I get free copies. I don't review everything sent to me, only 5-star worthy items.

However, there's a bit of a brag on this one - there's a quote from me on the back cover of DARKSHIP THIEVES.

(Totally aside, in Amber Benson's new Ace Fantasy, Serpent's Storm (a Calliope Reaper-Jones novel), there's a quote from me on the front-inside-page with many other reviewer quotes, but that one only credits The Monthly Aspectarian, the magazine I review for. -- the point being reviewing is not an "objective" business.  You can get my attention by quoting me and by giving me freebies. As far as I know Amber Benson doesn't have any other bylines. This is the actress/director/writer Amber Benson, a brand name in itself.

As Sarah A. Hoyt says above, she's working on a sequel for DARKSHIP, and that too would be for Baen.

Oh, and I'm not done with Sara yet. Hold your hat.

She's ALSO a mystery writer with byline Elise Hyatt!!! That's the reference to "refinishing" above. (and yes, this, too is great stuff you ought to read, and nevermind the genre label).

Elise Hyatt publishes with Berkley Prime Crime mass market paperback, two titles I've seen so far,

Dipped, Stripped and Dead,

and

French Polished Murder

The series, subtitled A DARING FINDS MYSTERY is contemporary setting, ho-hum yawn normality -- but the lead character is a woman who's divorced and raising a boy from her first marriage as she gets involved with a new boyfriend.

I think these 2 books made me a fan of "Cozy Mystery" -- there's nothing hard-edged, and a lot of character depth. The Relationships while dramatically charged, are more "normal" than I've been seeing lately.

Here's the thing - DARING FINDS is science fiction in disguise.

Why? Because this lead character, Candyce Dare, is living on subsistence income from refinishing furniture and selling it on the "antique" market.  Her attitude is pure SF-Hero stuff.

Trust me, there's more than one science involved in her body of knowledge. It was a hobby she cultivated while married, and now is making a living from it, learning the hard way, gaining associates in this industry, and showering us with the science of it.  This is the oldest, classic SF motif of a young person without format education in a subject becoming an expert with "outside the box" thinking. 

Without the extraordinary skill at science fiction worldbuilding and information feed (topics I've discussed at length in these blogs -- you can find most of my blog entries on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com by searching for the tag Tuesday), these Elise Hyatt mysteries would be incredibly boring. Instead, DARING FINDS is a series with a luscious hook, and page-turning fascination, sizzling romance angle, and lots to learn.

The DARING FINDS mysteries is the very best science fiction romance with a mystery plot. Both books satisfy on every level.

OK, you don't get to the HEA because it's a series, but you know you will get there. The writer's hand is so firm and disciplined, it's like riding with a supremely accomplished rally driver.

Good grief, by now you're so confused you don't know which writer I'm talking about.

See?

Brand. Byline. Stigma. 

Readers want to grab hold of a SYMBOL and know that anything sold under that symbol delivers what the other things under that symbol deliver.  And that's the re-engineering of the fiction delivery system that Backlist eBooks is participating in.  How can a reader navigate this avalanche of ebooks and find just what they want when they want it? 

Publishers want to know which readership to spend money promoting a byline to -- mystery, SF, Fantasy, historical -- marketers see these as separate readerships. My contention is that this was true, but is less true with every passing year.

So here we have Sarah A. Hoyt, Sarah D’Almeida (also from Berkley Prime Crime, notice?) and Elise Hyatt, and there are other bylines of this author.

On the Elise Hyatt byline, she says:
-----------
I wanted to use Alice (my name pre-citizenship was spelled Alice, pronounced Elise, hence Elise Hyatt for Daring Finds, because I will answer when called that.) Alice Rye... because they asked for "white bread" -- I'm a horrible woman. Mind you my pre citizenship name was Alice Maria da Silva Marques De Almeida, (my grandfather spelled it D'Almeida) which means there is A LOT there to use. But... no. It had to be "white bread." Ugh.
-----------

But - (hold your head and groan) - she's starting yet another byline! Here's what she says about the new one:

----------
I've also just sold (but not announced yet) a series under Sarah Marques which also has the musketeers but very different musketeers than the mysteries (like alternate versions of them. Yes, it's weird to have both in my head, but no, it's not confusing) I don't have samples up, yet. The first book is called Sword And Blood.

SWORD AND BLOOD: the first in a series in which the Three Musketeers battle vampires in an alternate France where Cardinal Richelieu is one of the undead. In order to "save" France, a deal has been made to turn the churches and a good deal of the power over to the damned. Athos himself has been turned by the wife he thought he'd killed, who is in fact one of the vampires, and must fight his bloodlust while battling for his soul.

They'll come out under Sarah Marques simply because I think my Baen sf fans would choke if they picked that book up by accident. What do I mean choke? Well... it has a lot of sex. Woman-on-top (well, vampire on top) sex. Which hasn't been in my other books. Because of THAT I think it's fair to give fair warning. As it were. So I'll let people know it's mine and it's coming, but why it's under another name. THAT one was my choice. (The book also features a pagan priestess, the battle of evil having forced the good sides to unite, as it were, and forget their differences -- she's Madame Bonacieux and the religion is meticulously researched and reconstructed, not the least from the local workings I grew up with, which, while not in France, had a lot of the remains of Celtic religion [I come from a region known as Heights Of Maia -- Alto da Maia -- which was a Cultic center of the Celtic Common Wealth as well as the site of an annual bardic festival in pre and I presume early Roman times.] Although there's still humor in this book, it's quite different from the humor in the Musketeer Mysteries. One of my friends called this the "laughing in the teeth of H*ll" type of humor.

As for why I write so much? Heaven help me if I know. Rumor has it I'm compulsive. Of course, I never believe rumors.

-------------

This multi-byline author has also been discussing in public a Marlowe and Shakespear guy-on-guy thing she wants to write but doesn't think anyone would buy it. If it sells, though, that would likely need yet another byline.

Academics discussing this writer are going to have several Excedrin Headaches at once.

To help you track down some of these items, the author gives us a whole list of URLs with samples and descriptions:

----------

Here's a web page with her novels and she gives us a list of URLs with sample chapters.


----------------
http://sarahahoyt.com/novels.html

Samples of Darkship Thieves: http://darkship.sarahahoyt.com/dst-excerpt.html

Magical British Empire: http://empire.sarahahoyt.com/

Musketeer Mysteries: http://musketeers.sarahahoyt.com/

Daring Finds: http://daringfinds.sarahahoyt.com/

Shifters -- I have a third one due this year, and so far what I know for sure is that by the end of the book, Kyrie is pregnant (whee) -- http://shifters.sarahahoyt.com/

My career started with this, which now reads incredibly clumsy to me: http://shakespeare.sarahahoyt.com/

-------------

IT'S ALL GREAT STUFF YOU SHOULD READ!!!

Now, this byline musical chairs thing is a marketing ploy that the big guys have been very successful with.

This is very old traditional methodology, and there are times when it makes perfect sense if you understand byline as brand.

In fact, in the Science Fiction magazines of the 1930's and 1940's -- you'll see a table of contents with 4 or 6 bylines, and it's all by 2 people.

Pen Names are one of the oldest inventions in publishing, going back to hand-copied manuscripts.  

Are they still a relevant marketing tool today, in the world of Amazon, Kindle, Nook, B&N, etc. etc.?

If you're starting a writing career, consider carefully.

Is it cheating your reader to change the book title and re-issue it? (believe me, that's an old tradition in science fiction publishing!) Is it cheating your reader to change the byline and reissue it? Will you have to do that at some point in the distant future?

Do you want to be known for doing that?

Will you ever want to tie your body of work together under one byline?

Asimov and Heinlein, and now C. J. Cherryh and some others write "future history" -- a single universe, many novels with different genre-signatures, but hidden underneath it all, a single vision, so they all need a single byline.

Sarah A. Hoyt admits she, too, has constructed a "future history" but only because she thought it was required.

How will your fans find and follow you?

And what happens if fiction delivery system technology changes in ways you can't anticipate now?

For more considerations and dilemmas of other writers forging the way ahead, see Part II next week.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com