Violent Book Skulduggery: Does It Make a MG Book Unsuitable?

    The family lending library left me puzzling over why  Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant series isn't as popular in the USA as it is in the UK? [judging from the number of reviews] The story has lots of things to appeal to older kids and adults--action, magic, twisting plots, and humor. Death Bringer, book six of nine so far, hooked this old lady...in spite of her thumbs threatening to give way from the weight of the trade paperback after two chapters.

   The Death Bringer plot explores the rivalry of two candidates to become the catalyst starting the "Passage", aka the end of the world, each competitor supported by a different faction. The fights between the Necromancers' candidate and Skulduggery's sidekick, Valkyrie Cain, provide much of the book's action. Other entwined plot lines, exposure of past treachery and a nosy human reporter who has discovered the hidden world of magic, just tighten the rope. Bloodshed and mayhem jump from the pages.

   The biggest irony: Darquesse, the true Death Bringer, possesses Valkyrie...and only the teen's good conscience controls the demon. The temptation to unleash the demon power provided extra tension in the book. This makes up for the repetitive fight scenes. But, I assume there're only so many ways to depict them. Movie action scenes tend to get boring too.

   Minor tension comes of Valkyrie's romances between a good guy and a vampire who loves her. At least, the vampire keeps saying he loves her and would never hurt her. Yeah, this is a fantasy with some very pointed observations to make about human behavior in the real world.

   What I found most interesting is how Landy doesn't talk down to kids. This is a dark, dark story, even darker than the last Harry Potter books. I think the Brits have a greater sense of the nastiness of unbridled evil. Us USAans tend to forget the truly soul destroying sins of greed and power in order to shield our children from social picadillos.

    Most highly recommended, even for sour adults like me, for all of the above reasons. I can't wait to give this to my granddaughter to see what she thinks.

Read excerpts and reviews of Death Bringer at Amazon and on Barnes & Noble.

~~#~~

My Marketing Rut

    Hey, On the Run is developing an entirely new chapter with new material, not a revision of previously drafted manuscript. I'm also getting a better idea of Pillar's abilities and thinking how to incorporated the mage dogs of Showdown at Crossings into the chapter.

   Yeah, the writing has progressed in spite of my plodding pace this week. Like the direction, which makes me suspect I'm forgetting something amidst all the plot stuff I'm adding to flesh out the short story.

   On the other hand, marketing, in the  form of my website, has me gnashing my teeth. Just thought to change the background color, only to discover a bunch of font glitches and overlays and other pesky gobble-de-gook. I think I've spent $100,000. worth of time [at professional rates] on the site, and it still isn't fixed.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

   Still why not take a look and tell me what you think of the color scheme. There a new snippet of On the Run up, too.

Which brings me to another question. 

Should I make the snippets longer, like 1000 words? 
Whatcha think?

When is Enough, Enough?

Scrounging for  Books Reviews:

To market, to market to sell a fine story or two. Unfortunately, selling a story to a publisher isn't the end of a writer's efforts. Whether you self-publish or are publisher-published, you still end up having to create some buzz about your book. One of the best ways of creating buzz is having your book reviewed ... especially if your social networking platform is on the small side -- like mine.

Slow me took a while to learn enough to implement the book reviewing process, and I thought I'd share what I learned. If you got a publisher who's free with the ARCs [advanced reading copies] and a marketing department, your efforts will be supplemental. If you are the sole marketeer, like me for Taking Vengeance, you're going to end up creating your own buzz.

One of the best ways to create book-buzz is to have others give your work four and five star reviews. To find book reviewers, you can Google-search book bloggers, and you can drag Twitter, Goodreads, and other networking sites to find people who accept requests for reviews. These places will also help you jump beyond your immediate social network into larger circles.

For me, the simpler way was to look for lists of people who review e-books. Then I took several weeks sending review requests to likely looking reviewers/book bloggers. This took time because each reviewer has their specific requirements as to the type of books they review.  I then checked out their audience and a few of their reviews.  All told, I sent out about 60 requests. Ten/eleven reviewers have emailed back to say I'm in their queue to be read/reviewed sometime between now and Christmas.

What was my magic procedure? There weren't none. I gave the details of the book I was requesting a review for [title, genre, number of words], gave an elevator-type pitch for the book, and explained I could send a PDF or text file if they were interested. Of course, some reviewers hated PDF files, so I didn't send a request to them. The reviewers I liked best were the ones who had a request form on their site.

Who were the best lists? I think Simon Royle's list was the best, mostly because he updates the list. Step-by-step Self-publishing has a good list too, mostly of people who will review indie works in several genres. Another useful list: Lauri J. Owen and Pippa Jay offer a Comprehensive List of Book Reviewers at Owen's blog "Embers". There are others of course. Google indie book reviewers and who knows who'll show up in the links.

How many contacts are enough? Only you can decide based on the time available and any writing deadlines you might have.

One word of caution. You'll find duplicates on the above lists so you need to keep track of who you email your requests to.       

[In case you're wondering, the buzz about Taking Vengeance is more like air fizzling out of a flattening tire. I'll report if sales increase once reviews start appearing. Of course, the ebook may get universally panned. I'll tell you that too. So far, one four star review is out by a guy who liked my different take on elves.]

This Week's Fantasy Review:

Finished three more Skulduggery Pleasant books, one after another and didn't get sick of them. The Skulduggery books are written by award winning, Irish author, Derek Landy. While I wasn't as happy with Mortal Coil as I was with the others, the book stood head and shoulders above most books I read. I'll nit-pick that Landy is letting the character development of his villains slide. All too often they appear, do their thing, and go away to come back and fight another day -- twirling their mustaches as they go.

Why do the books hold up after reading six of them? The same mordant sense of humor and  snidely named characters doing dastardly things, some of them even unexpected, keep the reader entertained. Of course, the various villains all want to conquer the world. The old and new villains try their best, but Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain are there to get beaten up while they save the day. The duo may be powerful magicians, but they get clobbered enough to let the reader know that saving the world is dangerous business.

Valkyrie's still making the wrong decisions but now is often getting out of the jams without being rescued by Skulduggery and her other friends, as she was often in the early books when she was younger. Mortal Coil has some minor shifts in allegiances which may cause some greater emotional conflict in the future than was previously contained in the story line. 

The next book in the series, Death Bringer, came out September, 1. Cheapo here is going to see if New Yorkie kids will buy it and send it on.

One of the things I like best about the series is its delicious darkness. The books have been translated into Spanish and German, but the last three don't seem to be published in an American edition. I wonder if the Mrs. Grundies got to the sales reps?

PS:

I've joined the e-reader revolution and am now the owner of a Kindle. It's a Kindle because it was given to me and the price was right. 

First thing I loaded? One of my critique partner's story published by TRW Press, Just Desserts. It's a funny little story well worth a buck to watch some kids outsmart the devil ... who also wants to take over the world. [You'd think the bad guys would have better things to do with their time.] Whatever, look up Steven A. Benjamin and preview the story on Amazon. A novel of his is a finalist at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer's Conference.

PPS:

Sorry to be late with the blog this week, 

but had too many doctor appointments between the old man and me.

Dark Is, As Dark Does

Fantasy Review: Skulduggery Pleasant, Dark Days by Derek Landy

YA fiction's getting too dark, complained an article in the Wall Street Journal a couple months back. The debate for and against spread across the web.  I wonder what they'd think about dark middle grade fiction. At least, I've always thought the Skulduggery books were middle grade. Though I guess you can use the same reasoning as for J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books. They start out rather innocuous at the beginning and grow darker with each subsequent volume. 

At the end of Landy's last Skulduggery book, The Faceless Ones, the detective was sealed in the Faceless Ones' alternative world. Valkyrie is determined to rescue him, and she does after surviving another attempt by the Sanctuary, the organization that supervises the use of magic, to arrest her.  Other factions besides the Sanctuary seek to kill Valkyrie. Skulduggery, too rattled by being tortured by the Faceless ones to pick up all the clues, puts Valkyrie and their friends in needless danger. 

Dark Days starts out with various villains out to kill Valkyrie Cain, not as collateral damage, but as the focus of their murder plots. The ending of the first paragraph clues you in. Dreylan Scarab, the primary villain in this book, had two interests walks and murder. During his imprisonment for assassination he "... kind of lost interest in walks. His passion for murder, however, burned brighter than ever." The days are indeed dark.

The next chapter is the attempted murder of Valkyrie in her Stephanie persona ... but she is saved by a necromancer. I don't think I even knew what a necromancer was when I was twelve even though I read every issue of the comic Tales from the Crypt I could get my hands on. I even hid the comics under the stack of Disney comics so my mother wouldn't see them.  All this by way of an illustration that kids have been reading "dark" subject matter for generations ... in spite of bans by parental or others. Bans don't work.

Landy uses the necromancer as a means to an end -- saving Skulduggery from an alternate universe where he was lost in the last book. In reaching that goal, Valkyrie makes decisions that the adults around her object to ... but she uses her own judgement to amass all the magical power she can gather. Valkyrie is growing up. Even though she takes direction from Skulduggery, she begins making her own decisions before adults can tell her what to do.

This fourth volume is fast moving ... with many of the surviving villains of previous books not always behaving as you might expect. Also, Landy has come up with some innovative magical devices to cause the maximum about of destruction if our heroes can't save the day. 

One thing lacking in this book, though, was the humor. I missed it.  Still, I'm champing at the bit to read the next book to see how Skulduggery and Valkyrie avoid her doomsday future -- which was well planted in the course of escaping all the plots against the duo.

Just for Fun:

What's your potential of becoming a murder victim? You might want to take this quiz to see how much danger you live in ... or it might even be useful in profiling one of your characters. Ken Pence has a questionaire rating Rate Your Risk of Being Murdered. 

Pence is a former cop and his home page has other information that could prove useful. Even before I had settled into a dark story streak, I had thought about how the average civilian might encounter a "street disaster" or "home invasion". Pence's info might help you make such a situation more real. -- Thanks to Jordan Ellender for the tweet that alerted me.

Oh, my potential of getting murdered is very low ... unless maybe I smear the old man's dinner with mayonnaise ... and don't duck when the plate gets thrown at me.

Is Your Writer Bio Shopworn?

Is Your Writer Bio Shopworn?

Still using the same bio you wrote last year or the year before? If yes, shame on you. According to Duolit, your author bio is a key plank in your author platform, It doesn't pay to neglect it ... like I've been doing. [*cringes*]

My bios have been static since I sold Taking Vengeance to WolfSinger Press over a year ago. Though I had thought about rewriting my bio recently, I hadn't done anything about it because I was drowning in other marketing junk, ... sorry, duties.  Then, I read Robin Sullivan's blog about bios, asking "Is Yours [Bio] Working for You? Talk about a kick in the pants!

Her premise is you need three bios: short, medium, and long. Plus, you should change them often. Wondering what to put in them? She gives you a good example from one of her clients for your long bio. More suggestions for medium and short [Twitter] bios is to come.

Why not check your bio? According to Sullivan, your bio should (1) give your readers some insights into you, (2) be engaging, (3) be truthful/heartfelt, and (4) tell a story.

But your task doesn't end there.  The other parts of your author platform need polishing too. The Duolit team did a blog that can help you create a More Cohesive Author Brand. Their five tips threatens to give me two weeks worth or more of work to build my coherent online author image. Just what I need since I'm still scrounging for bloggers to review me ebook, Taking Vengeance.

Where do I stand? Neck deep in do and do more.  I don't think I've changed my bio in over a year. Granted, I don't have much to brag about, but marketing is all about presenting a polished image. My online image is totally haphazard. The good news? I found two links that'll help me polish my image ... if I ever get ambitious.

Fantasy Book Review: 
Derek Landy, The Faceless Ones

Found Derek Landy's third Skulduggery Pleasant, The Faceless Ones, while cleaning out some boxes under the table last week. My reward was great in new reading because I found two other books in the series, the ones that were published in Britain. I'm looking forward to a Skulduggery read-a-thon over this weekend without even attempting to progress on The Game of Thrones, no matter how much I like George R. R. Martin's character sketches. For my reading enjoyment this weekend, it's Skulduggery all the way.

Yeah, YA print books conquer the might of the TV series. The Kirkus review summed it up so beautifully I think I'll just quote them. "A high-intensity tale shot through with spectacular magic battle, savage mayhem, cool outfits, monster, hidden doors, over-the-top names, narrow escapes, evil scheme, and behavior heroic ..."  

I'd add double crosses and false trails or is that red herrings? Whatever, Valkyrie aka Stephanie and the reader are left hanging on her own devises when Skulduggery saves the day in a way Valkyrie doesn't expect.  How can I not read on to the next book, Dark Days. Skulduggery Review, continued. Look for the next episode next week ... if I'm diligent.

This book is dark enough and moves so fast, that even adults who don't groove on fantasy will enjoy. Hey, the series even tickles your funny bone. Best yet, the Mrs. Grundies haven't started complaining about this middle grade book's darkness ... yet.

Trivia:

Have a Facebook page up for Taking Vengeance, but don't really know what to do with it yet. At least I figured out what kind of stuff to add to it.  

Think I'm going to change the page to the Far Isles Half-Elven though. 

As I said, I don't know what I was doing. 

Incidently, I'm looking for people to like the Taking Vengeance page.

Action Speed or Character Depth

The Read ...

 My middle grade reading continues with Derek Landy's action filled Playing with Fire, the second Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain book.  Landy keeps the action rolling here, a great achievement for the second book in a series/trilogy(?).  But ... can't really see much character depth.  While Landy creates a host of fun characters -- especially villains, they pop in and out of the action as needed.  Who they are is left up in the air.  --  Maybe an exercise in minimalist character development?

Not even Valkyrie Cain grows much in the year between stories -- though I think there was a paragraph where she muses that her parents are good people instead of just another annoyance.

Still the book's a great read for light amusement.

Web Stuff ...

 As I struggle to get an ending on the Voices draft, I keep wonder why I'm spending so much time on the web, social networking ... or whatever you want to call it.  Today, Kris Tualla wrote a blog on publicizing your work in her blog "What's an Independent Publisher to Do?" on 1st Turning Point.  Don't trip over the term "independent publisher".  Click the link to find a nice checklist of stuff to do to get the word out about your work.

Now if I only had an email list.  [Actually, I do.  But I don't think I'd get many sales out of 20 people.]  I'll be muttering more about publicity in the future as I try to make my web-time more efficient.  I think my first step will be to blog only two times a week.

Progress ...

 Still grumbling about getting an end on my draft of Voices.   Last night, I got all wet in the flood.  Tonight, I get to confront social services and the neighborhood busy-body?

I also seem to remember I was going to clean off my desks before NYC son arrives.  Need to clean it off since I'll be working from a paper draft when I revise.

Trivia ...

 Turning carnivore at a local steakhouse for the old man's birthday.  A 40+ year tradition -- though now we split a meal so we don't stagger back to the car.