Defamation in progress

One of my favourite quotes attributed to Voltaire is, "If you would converse with me, you must first define your terms."

 

Of course, this exact wording is almost impossible to find, firstly because Voltaire wrote in French, so every quote of his has been translated, and then, his use of "would" is archaic, and has been simplified into "wish to" or "want to" (which might subtly change the tense), and "you must" has been dropped.

https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1308665

 

Just to go a bit further into the weeds of translation, there is an advertisement for a foreign language learning course where the leading character gets into a taxi in Paris, and the taxi driver says to her in French, "Where would you like to go?" using the verb "vouloir". 

The passenger ought to use the same verb, and reply "je voudrais aller..." but instead, she changes the verb and says that she "would like" or "would love" to go to the hotel.

Some would say that if you use the verb "to like/to love", you stress your enthusiasm or passion for what you are about to do, and if you use vouloir (want/like/will), your emphasis is on the rest of the sentence.

 

For would-be tourists, precision with language is not a priority. It is enough to convey meaning. For lawyers, precision is of the essence. For authors, it is probably somewhere in the middle, especially if one has a deadline. 

My terms for the day are as follows:

Defamation

Libel  (If you write it... from the Latin, LIBER, a book)

Slander ( If it is oral and transitory, as in spoken)

 

Writers, authors, novelists, bloggers, journalists have to worry about libel. Standard contracts with publishing houses put the liability firmly with the writer if something in the work should offend, and a libel suit should be initiated.

Occasionally, it is tempting to "anchor" a novel by making explicit reference to a celebrity or public figure or institution or event. Even if the author does not specifically name the famous person, but makes it obvious to any reasonable reader to whom they are referring, the famous person could sue if they feel that the author was deliberately malicious. Mentioning the name of a well known corporation (or its iconic product) can also get a writer into hot legal water.

 

Legal bloggers Alexandra Perloff-Giles, Amer S Ahmed, Connor Sullivan and Erica Sollazzo Payne for the law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, recently compiled a very thorough report on defamation claims in the USA which is presented in a Q & A format (which is always an easy read and very helpful for finding what one wants to know, and skipping over what one doesn't.)

Find it here:

https://www.lexology.com/gtdt/tool/workareas/report/defamation-and-reputation-management/chapter/usa

 

When thinking about defamation in the USA, it is important to recognize that different States and territories may have different standards --for instance, whether defamation is treated as a criminal matter or a civil one-- and also, sometimes, different standards apply depending on whether the allegedly libelled plaintiff is an ordinary person, or a public official or celebrity.

"... the Supreme Court held that a defamation plaintiff who is a public official – in addition to establishing that challenged statements are false – must prove, with ‘convincing clarity,’ that the defendant published the statements with ‘actual malice,’ meaning awareness that the statements were false or reckless disregard for whether the statements were false."

The passage explaining the five legal tests for whether or not published words are defamatory is eye-opening.

They also discuss the similarities and differences between Libel and Slander, and not all States make a distinction.  

In fact, this remarkable article covers almost everything a writer ought to know about defamation, and buried in the middle of a very long and useful work, is the most vital information:

"What key defences are available to a claim in defamation?

• Substantial truth. In most states, it is a complete defence to prove that a statement is ‘substantially true,’ regardless of the defendant’s degree of fault. ‘Substantial truth’ does not require exact accuracy, so long as the ‘gist’ of the statement is true.
• Opinion. In most states, it is a complete defence to establish that a statement expresses an opinion rather than asserting a fact. States may distinguish between ‘pure’ opinion and ‘mixed’ opinion, with only ‘pure’ opinion statements protected. Courts typically find that statements containing loose, figurative or hyperbolic language are non-actionable pure opinion, so long as speakers disclose all facts on which they rely and do not imply the existence of other, undisclosed facts.
• Consent. In most states, it is a complete defence to prove that the plaintiff consented to the publication."

Find it all here:

 

All the best,

 

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/   

http://www.rowenacherry.com

 

 

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Rooks and Ruin Trilogy by Melissa Caruso

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Rooks and Ruin Trilogy by Melissa Caruso

by Karen S. Wiesner

Per my usual, I came into author Melissa Caruso's high fantasy work through the back door. In other words, I read the second trilogy before realizing there was even a first, also set in the world of Eruvia where there are two main established powers. In the first trilogy, Swords and Fire, the Serene Empire has an elected doge, a Council of Nine, and a general assembly. Raverra is the central city-state there. The second trilogy, Rooks and Ruin, the one I read, which takes place 150 years later, is set in Vaskandar, a domain ruled by Witch Lords (essentially, mages). These two empires are in conflict. However, the author intended for the two series to be "largely unrelated" aside from taking place in the same setting. She made sure there were no spoilers for the first trilogy within the second. She's said that the focus of Swords and Fire is "more political intrigue and fancy balls" while Rooks and Ruin has "more magical secrets and spooky castles". Caruso recommends reading the trilogies in order, but says either way works, which I did find to be the case.

Rooks and Ruin features Ryx as the main character. She's the Warden in her home domain, Morgrain, ruled over by her grandmother. Four hundred years earlier, the Nine Demons came into the mortal world and thrust humanity into chaotic horror and suffering. Since then, the creatures were trapped behind a gate in the Black Tower of Gloamingard Castle, which ended the Dark Days. Ryx's family are caretakers of the gate the demons are trapped behind. Not surprisingly, someone wants to open the magically sealed Door and bring forth what was banished.

Ryx is an intriguing character. From an early age, her magic has been "broken". She drains life from everyone and everything she touches. Her home is as much a prison as it is a haven--and a lonely one for her at that. Rooks and Ruin begins with the villain succeeding in unlocking the gate and Ryx, along with the Rookery (a "magical troubleshooting squad"), having to clean up and contain the mess made. A lot of destructive, twisting secrets are revealed along the way to this goal. The cast is compelling while the world building caused me to seek out previous stories set in this world. That's when I found out about the first trilogy I'd somehow missed.

In truth, the first book, The Obsidian Tower, is the one that captured me the most with the magical mayhem I'm always on the lookout for, compelling me to want to finish the trilogy. The two novels that followed, The Quicksilver Court and The Ivory Tower, were well-written in every regard. However, I found my attention less transfixed with them. I suspect this was the case, in part, because of what one reviewer called "empire politics and political intrigue" dominating subsequent entries in the trilogy. Since the author self-described Swords and Fire as also being focused in the same way, I do worry I might find myself withdrawing from them as well, but I do intend to read them at some point. In any case, lovers of quality fantasy should love all the related books in this series.

Check out my latest novel!

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series.html

https://www.writers-exchange.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series/

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/

AI Compositions and Their Influence on Letters as Signals

In Cory Doctorow's latest column, he brings up a potential unintended byproduct of overusing "large language models," aka chatbots such as ChatGPT:

Plausible Sentence Generators

He recalls a recent incident when he wrote a letter of complaint to an airline, threatening to sue them in small claims court, and fed it to such a program for rewriting. He was surprised at the high quality of the result. The site changed his pretty good "legal threat letter" into a noticeably stronger "vicious lawyer letter."

Letters of that type, as well as another of his examples, letters of recommendation from college professors, are performative. They transmit not only information but "signals," as Doctorow puts it. A stern letter from a lawyer sends the message that somebody cares enough about an issue to spend a considerable amount of money hiring a professional to write the letter. A recommendation from a professor signals that the he or she considers the student worthy of the time required to write the recommendation.

One of Spider Robinson's Callahan's Bar stories mentions a similar performative function that shows up in an oral rather than written format, spousal arguments. The winner of the argument is likely to be the one who dramatizes his or her emotional investment in the issue with more demonstrative passion than the other spouse.

In the case of written performances, Doctorow speculates on what will happen if AI-composed (or augmented) epistles become common. When it becomes generally known that it's easy and inexpensive or free to write a letter of complaint or threat, such messages won't signal the serious commitment they traditionally do. Therefore, they'll become devalued and probably won't have the intended impact. The messages (like form letters, though Doctorow doesn't specifically mention those) will lack "the signal that this letter was costly to produce, and therefore worthy of taking into consideration merely on that basis."

I'm reminded of the sample letters to congresscritters included in issues of the MILITARY OFFICER magazine whenever Congress is considering legislation that will have serious impact on members of the armed services and their families. These form letters are meant to be torn out of the magazine, signed, and mailed by subscribers to the presiding officers of the House and Senate. But, as obvious form letters, they clearly don't take much more effort than e-mails -- some, because envelopes must be addressed and stamps affixed, but not much more. So how much effect on a legislator's decision can they have?

Miss Manners distinctly prefers old-fashioned, handwritten thank-you notes over e-mailed thanks because the former show that the recipient went to a certain amount of effort. I confess I do send thank-you notes by e-mail whenever possible. The acknowledgment reaches the giver immediately instead of at whatever later time I work up the energy to getting around to it. So, mea culpa, I plead guilty! However, the senders of the gifts themselves have almost completely stopped writing snail-mail letters, so in communication with them, e-mail doesn't look lazy (I hope), just routine. Context is key.

Margaret L. Carter

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

For Art's Sake

I don't like gold.

I'm not talking about precious metals, investments, gilts, natural colours of Autumn, excessively ostentatious flakes  of soft metal in over-priced soups... but the colour in paint. I'm not keen on gold teeth or gold toilets, either.

However, I did purchase a fully furnished condo last week, and the previous owner loved gold. Very Auric. The gold cushions have zippers so can be stripped of the covers. Some of the gold wall decorations are obviously fair game to be taken down for a three minute squirt of chrome spray, but then there is a painting.

Am I allowed to over-daub the gold bits in it? Or must I store it?

I bought it. It is private, not public. It does not appear to be signed, but it does not appear to be a print. It is modern, so it is highly doubtful that it could be war-time loot. This brings me to the legal blogs about VARA. I doubt it (VARA) applies, but it is interesting, and it is copyright related.

Art Law blogger Nicholas O'Donnell seems to be an expert on all things Art.

https://blog.sullivanlaw.com/artlawreport/if-it-aint-broke-ninth-circuit-announces-curious-test-of-applied-art-under-vara#page=1

He says,

"a “work of visual art” is defined as:

(1) a painting, drawing, print or sculpture, existing in a single copy, in a limited edition of 200 copies or fewer that are signed and consecutively numbered by the author, or, in the case of a sculpture, in multiple cast, carved, or fabricated sculptures of 200 or fewer that are consecutively numbered by the author and bear the signature or other identifying mark of the author; or

The Copyright Act also defines, interestingly, what a work of visual art does not include (emphasis added):

(A)(i) any poster, map, globe, chart, technical drawing, diagram, model, applied art, motion picture or other audiovisual work, book, magazine, newspaper, periodical, data base, electronic information service, electronic publication, or similar publication;..."

The case that the amazing Nicholas O' Donnell is discussing relates to a the Burning Man festival (that was in the news this week for being dramatically rained out, and before the delude, for the "climate" protestors who blocked the only road into/out of said festival, and who were dramatically removed by a local police officer.) However, the case in question is about a school bus that was creatively modified some years ago to look like a Spanish galleon, and -- I assume -- was not street legal owing to its size, and was therefore stored, with permission, on a nearby property.

Unfortunately, the willing host passed away, and the subsequent owner of the property upon which the land-galleon was stored did not honor the preceding owner's agreement, and demolished the work of alleged art. The artists sued.  It's a good story, and not mine to tell.

My painting is not a modified school bus, thank goodness. It is also not a a mural. 

Murals seem to be particularly tricky propositions for the owner of the wall on which they are ingrained (which is probably the mot juste for a mural, because I believe the technique for the mural involves paint becoming part of the fabric of the wall. Or maybe I am thinking of frescos.)

Legal blogger Vincent Li, PhD of McDermott Will & Emery writes a very interesting analysis of what happens when a mural in a public building becomes an inconvenience to the hosts, but the artist is offended by the concealment of his/her/their work.

https://www.ipupdate.com/2023/08/cover-up-isnt-covered-under-vara/#page=1

https://www.lexology.com/blogs/181

"The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed that the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) does not prohibit covering an artist’s mural where there is no damage to the mural."

This is an interesting copyright-related saga, as told by Vincent Li, but the bottom line is (as I understand it) that, regardless of complaints that the artwork offended the local community served by the public building, the artist sued that his rights were violated because his art was prevented from offending people.

"Under the relevant part of VARA, the author of a “work of visual art” “shall have the right”:

(A) to prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation, and any intentional distortion, mutilation, or modification of that work is a violation of that right, and

(B) to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature, and any intentional or grossly negligent destruction of that work is a violation of that right."

Under VARA, an additional brush stroke (among other things) would be a modification of a work of art. In the case of this mural, modifications do not include concealing the entire work behind a barrier.

So, it might seem that if the owners of the wall had changed the skin pigment of some of the depicted persons, that would have been an intentional modification and therefore a VARA violation. 

For me, that is a little worrying because I would like to overbrush the gold with silver or chrome. I probably shouldn't be blogging about this!!!!!

 All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Do This, Not That

I am posting half a day early because there is a 24-hour, short story contest opening today run by Writers Weekly, a publisher and one of my favorite sources of "what-not-to-do" examples of bad query letters.

https://24hourshortstorycontest.com/

Danielle Hampson of The Authors Show (a fantastic promotional venue) shares some great "what-to-do" advice for navigating Facebook.

"Create a Captivating Author Page

Establish a professional Facebook author page with an engaging profile picture, cover photo, and concise bio. It should exude your unique writing persona and a link to your book interview.

 

Engage through Meaningful Content

Craft compelling and shareable posts. Include posts that mention your interview each time it is featured in a broadcast. Pose thought-provoking questions, share book excerpts, and host Q&A sessions to foster engagement with your followers.

 

Leverage Facebook Groups

Join and actively participate in relevant Facebook groups. Engage in book-related discussions, provide valuable insights, and subtly introduce your book interview when appropriate.

 

Host Facebook Live Events

Arrange live author readings, behind-the-scenes glimpses, or interactive Q&A sessions on your page. Mention your book interview and provide a link if appropriate. Live events can enhance your connection with readers.

 

Encourage User-Generated Content

Motivate readers to post reviews, share their reading experiences, create fan art related to your book or post comments about your interview.  Acknowledging and sharing user-generated content builds a loyal community."

 

More tomorrow... perhaps.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Bird Box by Josh Malerman

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Bird Box by Josh Malerman

by Karen S. Wiesner

Bird Box is a post-apocalyptic horror thriller published in 2014. Most people know of the story because of the 2018 Netflix movie starring Sandra Bullock, something that is actually a very worthy adaptation of the novel. However, being a proponent of "the book is usually better than the movie", I had to read it before I watched it. Discovering that this was the debut novel of a singer/songwriter in the Detroit band The High Strung was a bit of a surprise to me. Josh Malerman wrote 14 novels between shows on the road with his band. A high school friend of his in the book business encouraged him to submit something, and the rest is history.

The main character in Bird Box is Malorie. The present story--4 years into the situation referred to as "The Problem"--is woven with flashbacks from two other time periods. The first is when Malorie discovers she's pregnant from a one-night stand. This happens alongside international news reports of people seeing some undefined creature outside that causes them to go mad, then kill others before killing themselves. The second time period is after Malorie is forced to leave the home she'd been living in with her sister in order to seek shelter with other survivors. One of the other women in the safe house is also about four months pregnant (a bit unbelievable, if I'm honest, especially when the two women go into labor almost exactly at the same time). While sequestered with all the windows covered, they discover they can use birds in a box as an alarm system in case anything comes near the house.

In the present, Malorie is alone, raising another woman's child and her own and not distinguishing one from the other in any way. In fact, the reader doesn't know for most of the story which one is her kid. In order to keep them save, she's used harsh training techniques (one being the use of a blindfold) that have heightened the senses of the four-year-olds. She refers to the children as only "Boy" and "Girl". When they have no choice but to seek out a refuge Malorie has heard of that has medical supplies, food, and safety, they venture out into the world again--blindfolded the entire time they travel, even while in a boat.

This is a very intense, suspenseful novel centered around an unlikely scenario that wouldn't have worked at all if it wasn't written as a character driven story. The plot would have fallen apart in a second if not for that, in large part because, as one reviewer said, "The reason for all the bloodshed is never explored or explained."

The main character's choices do prove to be problematic for me, as do some of the scenarios that stretched belief a little too far. First, the "harsh training techniques" give me pause. Malorie is only once shown to be physically abusive toward the children. Outside of that, she's just cold with them, withholding affection. I'm bothered by this because, of course, it makes no sense to me why someone would think that treating others poorly actually makes them physically safer. Maybe it selfishly makes Malorie emotionally safer because she's lost a lot and it would be hard for her to trust again after that. That would have been a better motivation for her than that she actually thought it made the children safer. Additionally, after four years raising these children completely alone--raising them from newborns--I find it 100% unrealistic that she wouldn't have developed a strong, loving, affectionate bond with them. She must have had to hold and feed (breastfeed, I'm sure) both of them. It would have been nearly impossible for her to separate herself from the tenderness a mother feels naturally doing that. Also, because she can't draw attention to herself, she must have had to soothe them both often to prevent excessive crying. But the other part that didn't strike me as realistic is how she managed to keep them safe all by herself for so long. She would have had to either leave them alone or bring them along to get supplies. How she did that was skirted over by telling instead of showing, so it didn't play a large part in the tale. But I found it more than a little unlikely.

Still, as a whole I bought the premise of Bird Box and went along with it because it really is a well done story. I was caught up with Malorie's life and the situation, regardless of the dubiousness of the minor moot points I mentioned earlier. Many times while I was reading the book and watching the movie, I thought it worked extremely well that the source of the horror wasn't revealed in more than fleeting glimpses. Often, when a shadowy corner has been brought into the light, we discover there's nothing to fear lurking in it. Instead of heightening the terror by seeing it fully, sighting it dissolves the tension. In this case, it was much better to almost see the monster through the cracks between our fingers--or, more aptly, in peeks stolen through the top or bottom of a blindfold. That puts the reader on a constant knife-edge of uncertainty.

Incidentally, while writing up this review, I discovered a sequel was released in 2021 called Malorie, which I'll be buying ASAP, and hopefully reviewing here sometime in the future. It sounds like with that follow-up, "the reason for all the bloodshed" is finally explored and explained. Additionally, a spin-off sequel called Bird Box Barcelona debuted on Netflix in July 2023. It doesn't star the same cast, though it has exactly the same premise as the previous movie, only with a male parent and his child searching for a refuge from The Problem. I do intend to watch that as well to see if it's any good.

Bird Box is a unique take on horror that should have readers not wanting to put the book down.

Check out my newly released novel!

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series.html

https://www.writers-exchange.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series/

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/

SF Terminology Goofs

I've started watching the second season of MY DAD THE BOUNTY HUNTER, a cartoon series on Netflix. Some dialogue passages reminded me of a few of my "pet peeves" concerning language too often found in science fiction print and film stories.

The most annoying and most common: "Intergalactic" for "interstellar." There's no indication in the Netflix series that the characters ever leave this galaxy. Careless writers commit this mistake in far too many works I've read or watched. In J. D. Robb's "In Death" series, "intergalactic" sometimes appears even when "interplanetary" is clearly meant. Maybe those books should be pardoned, however, because they're narrated mainly in the viewpoint of homicide detective Eve Dallas. She seems to take the same attitude toward scientific facts as Sherlock Holmes, who famously says he doesn't know whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or vice versa and doesn't want his brain cluttered with that knowledge.

The kids in MY DAD THE BOUNTY HUNTER get all excited to discover their mother is not only an alien but an "alien space princess," and she doesn't correct their terminology. Her family lives on a planet. Her parents don't rule a sector of space; they rule part of a planet. She's no more a "space princess" than Queen Elizabeth II was a "space queen." Moreover, there's a tendency for the dialogue to refer to anyone not from Earth as an "alien" even in contexts where that usage makes it sound as if they think of THEMSELVES as aliens.

Although it's not in this series, there's a glaring error I've noticed in some speculative fiction by writers not trained in science, I hope a result of carelessness rather than ignorance, but still: Referring to light-years as a unit of time rather than distance. Even C. S. Lewis does this, in THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS.

Not an error, but an example that strikes me as lazy worldbuilding, is the widespread habit of labeling units of currency "credits." Sure, because it's so commonplace, it's immediately recognizable as a convenient shorthand for money. But don't creators of alien societies have any more imagination than that? Or do they think civilizations on other worlds don't have enough imagination to give their monetary units a non-generic name? Nations on Earth have words for their money grounded in tradition, history, and politics; extraterrestrial societies should follow similar patterns.

The new QUANTUM LEAP series explains how the leaper sort-of-replaces the past-time individual as a function of "quantum entanglement." That hypothesis deals with subatomic particles, however, and has only the most tenuous resemblance, if any, to what the leaper experiences. But I feel justified in giving the QUANTUM LEAP writers a pass on this point, even if they have no idea what they're talking about. Most likely, even if they do, they don't expect more than a tiny fraction of the audience to know what "quantum entanglement" means; they probably just chose a science-y sounding term. Like the STAR TREK "doubletalk generator," as author David Gerrold calls it (as in, "Captain, that last photon torpedo destroyed the doubletalk generator, and the Enterprise will explode in nineteen minutes!"), the phenomenon might as well be labeled "magic."

Margaret L. Carter

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

Rocking Like A ...Windstorm

Do you rock your blog? I'll get to reportage on the most interesting, copyright-related issue of the last two weeks, but first I should like to share a shout out to Karen Lange's article "8 Ways Blogging Boosted My Freelance Career" as published on Writers Weekly this summer.

https://writersweekly.com/this-weeks-article/8-ways-blogging-boosted-my-freelance-career-by-karen-lange?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=writersweekly-com-112119_67

At the bottom of Karen's piece, Writers Weekly shares some excellent links to must-know information, such as How Re-Writing "News" Can Get You Sued...

Rocking, social networking, sharing other people's stuff, and getting sued segues into my windstorm-related, great thought of the day.

Advertising law blogger Brian Murphy of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz PC (fkks) tells an interesting tale of how a car dealer got carried away by the sight of a sturdy truck being lifted up by a high wind beneath its wings (wings being a British automotive term). 

The red Silverado survived the tornado, but in the eyes of the law, the dealer put too much effort into "sharing", got himself sued for copyright infringement, and was creamed in court. 

(Disclaimer: sometimes, I favor alliteration over accuracy. I cannot resist a bad pun, either.)

In an edifying, and highly entertaining article, Brian Murphy explains why the car dealer failed to persuade the court on three of the four factors of what constitutes infringement and not fair use or factual reporting of news.

https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102imme/car-dealer-shared-viral-video-of-truck-in-tornado-and-then-got-sued-for-infri

Mr. Murphy adds three insights; one of how the dealer might have stayed on the right side of the law if he had embedded a link using the social media platform's proprietary tools, and two on how much worse his plight might have been if the rock star had gotten wind of the use of his song, or if a customer had bought a similar vehicle on the strength of the video-plus-soundtrack-plus-context, and had not fared well in a windstorm. 

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/   

http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Karen S. Wiesner {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

by Karen S. Wiesner

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke is an epic "alternative history" fantasy that was the author's debut novel. Clarke spent ten years writing the book, which has an interesting history of its own. Clarke first developed the idea while she was teaching English in Spain (lol). She'd had a waking dream about a man in 18th-century clothes…and felt strongly that he had some kind of magical background--he'd been dabbling in magic, and something had gone badly wrong."

Shortly after returning to her home country, she signed up for a writing workshop, co-taught by a man she would eventually become romantically involved with. Students attending the workshop were expected to come with a short story they'd written, but all Clarke had were "bundles" of materials for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. As the tale goes, she'd extracted a piece of it about three women secretly practicing magic who are discovered by Jonathan Strange. (Later, this tale was published in the Starlight 1 anthology as well as included in the author's own collection called The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.) The workshop co-host was so impressed by this work, he sent an excerpt to his good friend, fantasy author Neil Gaiman who was astounded by the author's "assurance": "It was like watching someone sit down to play the piano for the first time and she plays a sonata."

Interesting to note that Clarke's agent sold the unfinished novel in 2003 to Bloomsbury. They were so impressed with and certain it would be an international bestseller that they gave her a £1 million pound advance as well as printing an unheard of number of hardcover copies in three separate countries simultaneously while having 17 translations begun before its first English publication.

Learning how Clarke went about writing this book explained a lot to me. Apparently, she didn't write it start to finish but in fragments that she then had to "stitch" together. I found everything about this long novel meticulous and well-written, if a little slow moving and, at times, lacking in finely honed purpose and action. It was also written in the style of many 19-century books, like those written by Jane Austen. Not surprisingly, I love stories like these, and Clarke's felt authentic to me right from the first page, as it's set in a 19th-century "alternate" England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. At the time the story opens, magic use has faded into the past, but Mr. Norrell intends to bring it back. How he does that involves raising a woman from the dead in a highly public way that puts magic back in fashion, as well as summoning an army of ghostly ships that terrify the country's enemy. Another novice magician (introduced much, much later in the book, other than in a footnote in the first chapter) emerges in opposition to the first, and one who is the very antithesis of Norrell.

In what I consider a stroke of genius, the author puts her own invented magical history in 200 footnotes throughout the book, something that apparently Clarke didn't expect to be published but which added an authenticity that the story might have otherwise lacked without it. The author believed that grounding magic in real life surroundings was what produced realism in the fantasy aspects of her story.

I don't deny that some reviewers and readers were put off by how "the plot creaks frightfully in many places and the pace dawdles" and insisted that trimming was necessary. Still, others like myself found it an engaging read filled with imagination and style. The origin and/or the source of magic has thus far almost always been left uncredited in countless works of fiction, as if somehow magic just appears in the fingertips of some people. How can that not beg a thousand questions about where it came from and what was done to put it there? Here in this novel, we're at last clued into the fact that magic is given or bargained for from beings that exist in another realm. That's one of the things I liked best about this book. Additionally, there's an exploration here concerning how magic sometimes manifests in ways the wielder isn't intending. These two concepts make Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell the logical favorite of mine because there's an eerie backdrop that questions the morality and lack of responsibility magicians give their art as a whole.

One other slightly off-putting aspect of this story is the way it ends. To me (and other reviewers and readers), it felt like the story was started here; by no stretch of the imagination was it finished. After I read it, I was fine with that because I assumed the author intended either a sequel or a series. I've since learned that Clarke had begun a follow-up novel in 2004 (the year the first was published) set a few years after Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell ended, continuing the tale. Because it took her ten years to complete the first, it made sense that the second might also take at least that long. But, with Clarke being plagued by chronic fatigue syndrome, she chose to write a simpler story that required less of her, and that became her second novel in 2020 (16 years after her first). As to the fate of the sequel, the author herself says it's still “a long way off” completion. Or it may simply not be forthcoming at all. I've made my peace with that, even if I hope the author has the strength to complete it someday. I suspect part of my disappointment with the way the novel ended was that I simply didn't want it to end. I wanted more of the characters and their story. However, that doesn't make the novel any less tremendous. It's one that lovers of magic and fantasy would be remiss if they didn't pick up. If the 1000-page-plus novel intimidates, the book was very faithfully adapted for a BBC miniseries in 2015, and that is also definitely worth watching.

Check out my newly released novel!

 

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series.html

https://www.writers-exchange.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series/

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/

On Character Growth

There's an essay on the WRITER'S DIGEST website called "The Importance of Character Growth in Fiction," by bestselling author Annie Rains:

Importance of Character Growth

She lists and discusses vital elements in showing the transformation of a character over the course of a story: Goal and motivation; backstory and the character's weakness or fatal flaw, arising from features of the backstory; the plot and how its events force the protagonist to struggle, plus the importance of pacing so that growth doesn't "happen in clumpy phases"; the "ah-ha" moment when the character realizes the necessity of taking a different path; importance of showing through action how the character has changed to be able to do "something that they never would have been able to do at the book’s start."

As vital as all these factors are, and as much as I love character-driven fiction myself, I have slight reservations about Rains's opening thesis: "If your character is stagnant, there is no story. . . . Your character should not come out of your plot as the same person they were before their journey began." Doesn't good fiction exist to which this premise doesn't apply? Classic detective series, for example. What about Sherlock Holmes? Hercule Poirot? Miss Marple? What about action-thriller heroes such as James Bond? Through most of the series, Bond survives harrowing adventures that would kill ordinary men many times over, with no discernible change in his essential character. (In the last few books, he does begin to change.) Even in stand-alone novels, as mentioned in the WRITER'S DIGEST essay to which I linked in my blog post on July 20, static characters (as opposed to the negative term "stagnant") have their place. In A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Charles Darnay doesn't change, whereas Sidney Carton does. In THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, the Russian submarine captain has already made his life-changing decision before the story begins and never veers from his goal. In A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Scrooge transforms, while Bob Cratchit is a static character. So, arguably, is Romeo, who's still the same impulsive, emotion-driven youth at the end of the play as at the beginning, thereby possibly triggering his own tragic end.

I'd maintain that, while Rains is self-evidently correct that a character's circumstances have to change in the course of a narrative, he or she doesn't necessarily have to undergo a transformation, depending on the genre. The character must either attain the plot's stated goal or fail in an interesting, appropriate way. Without a change in his or her situation, whether external, internal, or both, there's no story. But an internal transformation isn't a necessary feature without which "there is no story."

Margaret L. Carter

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

Wrack and UAIN

There's "wrack and ruin", which means destruction and is somewhat tautologous (it says the same thing twice), and there is "rack and ruin" which means stretching torture and subsequent uselessness, and then there is wrack and UAIN, where the latter is an acronym... and not a good thing.

For an absolutely delightful (and not at all pompous) peroration on the relative merits of "wrack" or "rack", see Steve Finan's article.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/columnists/837471/wrack-and-ruin-is-not-rack-and-ruin/

I agree with him about the difference between "discreet" and "discrete". No doubt since AI is unavoidable, fewer and fewer people will know the difference, and "discreet" will simply acquire a fourth meaning, or even up to eight additional meanings if one is mathematically inclined.

So what does UAIN stand for, and why is it bad?

Legal blogger and senior counsel Douglas J. Wood of Reed Smith LLP, writes briefly but powerfully about the unsung environmental harms caused by AI in promiscuous (third and fourth meaning) online advertising.

https://viewpoints.reedsmith.com/post/102iig0/unfettered-waste-when-will-it-stop#page=1

U is for Unreliable

A is for Artificial

I  is for Intelligence-generated

N is for News-and-information-websites

Newsguard's Misinformation Monitor goes into much greater detail in a very long, comprehensive and damning article written by Jack Brewster, Zack Fishman, and Elisa Xu ... et alia. Apart from the waste of energy, the carbon footprint, the heat, the damage done by UAIN includes the proliferation of allegedly bogus and potentially harmful health advice, a lack of human editing, and a great deal of copyright infringement and piracy of reputable writers' articles.

https://www.newsguardtech.com/misinformation-monitor/june-2023/

Please note that there are several banners that split up this article, but keep scrolling until you reach the literal and metaphorical bottom line which is:

"NewsGuard considers a site to be Unreliable AI-Generated News if it meets all four of these criteria: 

1. There is clear evidence that a substantial portion of the site’s content is produced by AI.
2. Equally important, there is strong evidence that the content is being published without significant human oversight. For example, numerous articles might contain error messages or other language specific to chatbot responses, indicating that the content was produced by AI tools without adequate editing. (It is likely that now or in the future many news sites will use AI tools but also deploy effective human oversight; they will not be considered UAIN websites.)
3. The site is presented in a way that an average reader could assume that its content is produced by human writers or journalists, because the site has a layout, generic or benign name, or other content typical to news and information websites.
4. The site does not clearly disclose that its content is produced by AI."

By the way, and nothing to do with wrack and UAINs, it is good internet security advice to change your passwords every 90 days!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/  

http://www.rowenacherry.com

Stop and Smell the Roses by Karen Wiesner

Stop and Smell the Roses

by Karen Wiesner

A memorial for a dear friend who passed away recently, including some of my colored pencil flower artwork.

A dear friend of mine passed away recently. I'd known her for over 20 years, and our children grew up together. They remain best friends to this day, even as she remained mine up until the end. Throughout the years I knew her, she endured multiple health issues. For the last year or so of her life, she was made aware by her doctors that her time in this world was short. When I look back now, I realize that I don't remember ever hearing her complain. I'm also struck by the fact that she didn't live like a person who was dying. She lived her life. Period. Impending death wasn't an obstacle to joy for her. She got through the bad periods, and she enjoyed the good ones. She took everything as it came. Even in her final days, she focused on what was important to her, the things that truly mattered: her husband, children, grandchildren, friends, and making the most of every moment, finding pleasure in those simple things, and never failing to let those around her know how grateful she was for their presence.

I understand the meaning of the phrase "Stop and smell the roses" (something my dear friend loved) because of her example. When an oncoming collision is headed straight for you, it's easier to close your eyes and shut down, shut off, hide inside yourself. It's impossible to enjoy life when you're concentrating on the advancing doom. So she did the best thing she could have done in the face of the inevitable: Although it was always there and she never forgot it, she found a way to turn away from it and focused instead on the roses blooming in the garden of her life. This is a lesson I hope I never forget, no matter how close I come to life's unavoidable finish line. My desire is to emulate such a beautiful standard. In honor of someone I'll miss, VJW, 8/13/23, here are some of my own floral creations.

@Rose colored pencil by Karen Wiesner

@Hibiscus colored pencil by Karen Wiesner

@Scarlet hibiscus colored pencil by Karen Wiesner

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/

Posthumous Unfinished Writings and Whether Characters Have a Life of Their Own

Last week I read TERRY PRATCHETT: A LIFE WITH FOOTNOTES, by Rob Wilkins, who worked as the Discworld creator's personal assistant for many years, right up to the end. Two points in this biography distressed me, as a reader, writer, and occasional literary critic. (Well, aside from knowing in advance about the sad conclusion, Pratchett's premature death from a rare form of Alzheimer's disease.) I reacted most strongly to the ceremonious crushing of the hard drive from Pratchett's computer, purposely obliterating his unfinished works. Pratchett ordered that his unpublished writings should stay unpublished and that there would be no posthumous Discworld fiction from other authors. Of course, an author has a right to express that wish and have it obeyed by his heirs. But utterly destroying every trace of those uncompleted stories? Very well, as per the author's instructions, don't publish them. However, I shudder at the thought of the loss to SF and fantasy scholarship. A library could have preserved them in an archival collection for academic study of Pratchett's work.

Some readers of Harper Lee's prequel to (or first draft of) TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD declared it should not have been published, that it only tarnished the reputation of her classic novel. "That isn't the point," I mentally screamed at the time. The point is the value of that prior work to scholars of her writing. Consider the abundance of posthumous publications and unfinished works by C. S. Lewis available to fans and academics. I would hate to have missed all that. And then there's the case of J. R. R. Tolkien, whose son spent decades compiling, editing, and releasing Tolkien's many surviving stories and fragments. What a loss to scholars and readers the withholding of that material would have been.

In one of my second-tier favorites of Stephen King's novels, LISEY'S STORY, I of course sympathize with the fictional bestselling author's widow, who has been constantly pestered since his death by academics demanding access to his manuscripts and other files. I also feel for those fictional scholars, though. While reading the book for the first time, I did wonder what the heck was taking her so long to get around to the obviously necessary task of releasing his papers for study. Granted, most of the people making those demands were portrayed as pushy, presumptuous, and often downright contemptuous of Lisey herself. I trust Pratchett scholars wouldn't act that way, and I mourn that we'll never know the contents of those destroyed files. If publication had been allowed, I would have paid a considerable sum to read even a fragment of a story about Susan Sto Helit as headmistress of her old school (one example mentioned in the biography).

Second and less important was a casual remark of Pratchett's quoted in passing, which nevertheless I felt like protesting. Once a fan asked him what Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork city Watch was doing in between two particular novels. Pratchett answered, "Nothing. I made him up." If a fictional character becomes vivid enough for readers to imagine he or she has a life outside the printed pages, isn't that a good thing? Pratchett himself certainly must have understood the fanfic-creating impulse, for he admits to perpetrating fanfiction at least once: As a teenager, he composed a PRIDE AND PREJUDICE rewrite set in the world of LORD OF THE RINGS. (It involved orcs.) Not only fanfic but also professional fiction attests to the irresistible desire to expand on the imagined lives of favorite characters.

I know of at least one novel speculating on what Heathcliff did in his years away from Wuthering Heights and how he made his fortune. A recently published book explores the wartime service of the March girls' father during the early chapters of LITTLE WOMEN. So many classic works leave gaps and unanswered questions. What was the full backstory of Bertha, the mad wife in JANE EYRE, and was she actuallly insane before Rochester locked her in an upstairs suite (not, as commonly said, the attic) with only one companion (THE WIDE SARGASSO SEA)? What happened to Ishmael after his rescue at the end of MOBY-DICK. (Jane Yolen recently published a YA novel spun off from that question.) What's the story of Captain Ahab's wife, fleetingly alluded to in Melville's book? There's a novel about her. In A CHRISTMAS CAROL, how do the events look from Marley's viewpoint? Several works have addressed that question. Why did young Ebenezer Scrooge's father detest him? (Ebenezer's mother couldn't have died in giving birth to him, as one classic film states, because his sister Fan is younger; if Scrooge senior was that bitter about his wife's death, he wouldn't have remarried.) Why is Ebenezer too "poor" to marry Belle right away? His father must have been prosperous, since he enrolled Ebenezer in an apparently respectable boarding school and eventually sent a carriage to bring him home; what happened to the family money? What happened to Fan's husband, the never-mentioned father of Scrooge's nephew? What is Tiny Tim's illness, which has to be something chronic but ultimately fatal and yet curable by nineteenth-century medicine? At the time of Scrooge's death in the future scenes, where is his nephew? It's hard to believe Fred, as portrayed in the present-day scenes, would ever give up on Uncle Ebenezer.

These are the kinds of questions deeply involved fans of stories ask. Speculating on the answers is a vital part of the fun of being a reader.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Right Buzz

One really should not exploit someone's name for the joy of word play. But, I just did, so I apologize. 

It's four months until the Holiday Season, so it is high time for those-with-books-to-promote to develop a promotional countdown.

There is a name for what I did there, a compound noun. One of the many things that I love about the German language are their compound nouns.

Legal blogger Jan Buza of the international law firm Trama (which I am pretty sure I have never quoted before) has penned a very good article explaining the top five strategies for a successful product launch on Amazon.

https://www.tramatm.com/blog/category/ecommerce/5-top-strategies-for-a-winning-amazon-product-launch

Normally, I'd summarize some of it, but an obviously late-breeding mosquito kissed me on the back of my left hand, and now my whole hand, fingers included, is swollen up like an old fashioned boxing glove and it is hard to write.

The explanation took longer than a precis!

Please follow the link. Most of his five strategies have sub-categories with excellent advice on executing the strategy. I will just quote Jan Buza's takeaway.

"Winning Amazon product launch requires a combination of thorough market research, strategic product listing optimization, pre-launch promotion, effective advertising, and trademark protection. By following these top strategies and utilizing the benefits of Amazon's Brand Registry program, you can increase your product's visibility, credibility, and long-term success on the platform. Remember that continuous monitoring and optimization are key to sustaining your product's performance in the ever-evolving Amazon marketplace. Good luck with your product launch journey!"

On the IP Brief blog, lawyer William J. Hurles, of Dickinson Wright has published a comprehensive and useful guide to help sellers navigate intellectual property law on Amazon.  

A Seller’s Guide to Navigating Intellectual Property Law on Amazon

https://intellectualproperty.dickinson-wright.com/2023/04/19/a-sellers-guide-to-navigating-intellectual-property-law-on-amazon/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-sellers-guide-to-navigating-intellectual-property-law-on-amazon#page=1

Here is a small tease.

"The key for Amazon sellers to avoid copyright infringement issues is to utilize only original content with all aspects of their products. A common pitfall for Amazon sellers is copying and pasting content from other websites or products (e.g., pictures or descriptions) for use on their own materials. This should be avoided at all costs, as it can lead to product takedowns and expensive copyright infringement lawsuits."

Finally for today, Nick Usborne suggests the five most important words to use on your web site. The words are: Free, Sign Up, Buy, Now, Thank you. Of course, the point of looking up the book and reading the excerpt is to know the secrets of what to do with those words.

The article can be found in the book, Mastering the World of Marketing, by SelfGrowth.com's Founder David Riklan and Eric Taylor.  https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-World-Marketing-Ultimate-Training/dp/0470888415 

I think it would be fair use to share part of one example (from an email that David Riklan sent out to his subscribers): 

 

"Now is good. "Later" is death. If someone digs deep enough into your site to find the product or service they want, and then just makes a mental note to come back again some time, you've lost her.

The Web is an easy-come and easy-go environment. If you can't get people to act immediately, forget it.

So ask people to do things NOW:
• Sign up NOW
• Buy NOW
• Tell a friend NOW

Go further still with some incentives:...."

I would just add, that with regard to incentives, maybe read some of my recent articles, because the FTC has updated the law on the offering of and giving of incentives as it relates to reviews.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/  

http://www.rowenacherry.com