Karen Sandler

Tag: book

  • RTW – Best January Read…and a Dilemma

    I can dispense with YA Highway‘s Road Trip Wednesday prompt, What was the best book you read in January? pretty quickly: a tie between John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and Neal Shusterman’s Bruiser. I read them in close succession, which is probably why I can’t seem to pick one over the other. Bruiser surprised me because I’d forgotten the book description and thought for the first quarter or so of the book that it was just a wonderful contemporary YA (then we got to the really cool stuff). My misapprehension was partly the consequence of having just read the very real-life The Fault in Our Stars and also because I’d spaced the fact that Neal Shusterman doesn’t really do non-spec-fic books (if he has, someone please point that out).

    With John Green’s incredible book, the timing of my reading it could have been better. I’d just lost my dad (on January 9th). So reading about doomed teenagers just tore the grief right out of me in a flood of copious tears. I can point up no “fault” in Fault. It was hilariously funny and heartbreaking in turns.

    On to the dilemma. Book reviews. I’m a published author, and someone who works hard getting my book, Tankborn, and my name out there. Like many of you, I’m also a member of Goodreads. When I remember, I put up the book I’m currently reading, although more often than not, I either don’t put it up until I’m partway through a new book or I never add it to my list at all.

    But when I have put a book up, then finished it, Goodreads of course wants my rating and a review. If I loved the book, no problem. I give it four or five stars, sometimes write a few lines of a review, then go on my merry way.

    But what happens if I really didn’t like a book? It could be that it was just not my cup of tea. It might have started out great for me (love those Kindle samples), but then I realized it wasn’t what I thought it would be.

    In other cases I end up reading a book that really sucks. To my author eye, it’s lacking in basic craft, the voice is blah, the plot turns are silly, the ending is kinda stupid.

    If a book just wasn’t to my taste, if it was otherwise good but went in a direction I just didn’t like, I try to be fair. I’ll rate it maybe a 3-star, then state in my review that it’s a personal thing, no real judgement of the book. But if the book is in my view really dreadful, I don’t say a thing. I don’t rate the book, I don’t review it at all. Why? Because I know as an author how awful a scathing review can be. Why should I contribute to another author’s angst? Why risk having readers come across that review and thinking, Man, this Karen Sandler is a real witch?

    So I hold my tongue. It’s not like the world is waiting with bated breath for my opinion. There are plenty more people out there willing to review the books I don’t like. Let them speak their mind.

    So, am I being prudent? Or cowardly? Should published authors review other authors’ books on sites like Goodreads?

    Or should we just keep our mouths shut?

  • Why God Made Editors

    I’m not writing this to kiss up to my editor. Really. I’m writing it in response to that “wall-banger” book (which shall remain nameless) that I abandoned last night.

    You know what a wall-banger is. It’s that book in which you invest some time reading. You try to plow your way through it and maybe even read it all if you’re one of those people who feels compelled to finish every book you pick up. But at some point in that process, the lack of writing craft or the poorly structured plot or weak characterization or crappy ending gets to be too much and you fling that book against the wall in disgust.

    Of course, since the book in question was on my Kindle, I didn’t literally fling it against the wall. Those suckers are pretty sturdy, but I’d hate to see my Kindle meet its end due to my fit of pique.

    And I should mention that there are readers out there who considered at least one of my books a wall-banger (they didn’t like how one of my characters met his end). So I’m not guiltless in enraging readers.

    But the thing is, the wall-banger I gave up on last night was actually a pretty good book. That is, it had some great world-building, a fascinating premise and interesting characters.  About the first third of the book kept me riveted.

    But then a peculiar literary affectation started jumping out at me more and more. The author seemed to be enchanted with gerunds in lieu of verbs. Many, many sentences started with a gerund, and never got around to becoming a complete sentence by use of a verb. Going on and on. Running one sentence after another in this way. Driving the reader a little bit crazy. Creating an irritating narrative.

    You get the picture. If the author had used this literary device only occasionally, interspersing it with sentences with nice, active verbs as he did in the first third or so, he wouldn’t have gotten on my last nerve. As it was, I started editing his prose in my mind as I read. I’m pretty quick with mental editing, having written a fair number of books, but it does get tedious. It didn’t help that about the time this gerunding was going into hyperdrive, the plot slowed to a crawl.

    And now back to why God made editors. I took a peek at who published the book after I’d abandoned it. Best I can tell, it was self-published. This is not a commentary on self-publishing, because I do see that as a perfectly respectable way to get your book into the hands of a reader.

    But I firmly believe that without an independent professional editor laying eyes on that manuscript, it’s going to have problems. This book’s author might have had writer friends give him feedback (I’m guessing yes, because much of what I read was quite well-written). But I’m guessing a professional, working editor never worked on the book.

    If she had (and I say she because all but two of my editors have been women), she would have noticed the author’s overuse of gerunds. She would have suggested he be more sparing in his use of that method of laying out the narrative. She would have cut back on those long, overwritten paragraphs that caused my eyes to glaze over, would have showed him ways he could cut to the chase and allow the gem that lay beneath his verbosity to come to the fore and sparkle.

    The book seems to be doing quite well on Amazon, if its ranking is anything to go on. So maybe I’m just full of it in my opinion that an editor can make a difference. Maybe the quality of your prose doesn’t matter as long as you sell books. But I doubt I’ll ever pick up another book by this author. And I doubt I’d recommend it to anyone.

  • Author’s Serenity Prayer

    Well, I don’t exactly have a prayer. Other than, “Please God, let me finish this re-write by the deadline.” I’d really like to reflect on the things in my writing life that I can and can’t control. Be forewarned–this is a bit of a rant (the complaining kind, not the English Country Dance kind).

    First, the “cans,” using TANKBORN as an example. I can come up with a nearly infinite number of ideas (note 1–I have plenty of my own ideas and thank you, but I don’t need yours). I can settle on one idea and expand it into a compelling, full-fledged story like TANKBORN (note 2–this, and not ideas, is the hard part).  I can create what I hope are appealing characters. I can write and re-write the resulting book into something I think is so wonderful my agent will be ecstatic and any editor in her right mind would be crazy not to buy. I can submit to my agent. And wait. And re-write based on her suggestions. And wait.

    Once the waiting is finally over and we sell the book as I did with TANKBORN, I can work hard on the re-writes requested by the editor who bought the book. I can swallow my pride when my editor notes some bone-headed or confusing element in my manuscript, and fix said problems without whining.

    Once I’ve polished TANKBORN to my editor’s satisfaction (said satisfaction is a “can’t control,” btw), the book is out of my hands in its journey to publication. What I can do next is start on another book. Meanwhile, I can count the days until publication.

    Finally, once TANKBORN is on the shelves, I can tell everyone I know. I can go to booksignings and conferences where I’ll talk up the book with an enthusiastic rapture usually reserved for those in houses of worship. I can e-mail everyone in my fan database, I can post blogs about it, I can lurk in the young adult sections of bookstores at Christmas and Hanukkah and shamelessly beg people to buy TANKBORN.

    The above is what I have control over. The things I can do.

    Now, what I can’t. I can’t guarantee that my agent will indeed love everything I’ve written. I can’t force an editor to buy it. If an editor does buy it, I can’t dictate what the cover will look like. For my covers on previous books, I’ve had everything from zero input to making cover art suggestions that have largely been ignored (no mutant heroines, though). For TANKBORN, I’ve been lucky enough to see the initial cover concepts, but my editor and not me has the final say.

    I also can’t be sure that the book will be perfectly typo-free. A million pairs of eyes can look at that sucker and still miss a misspelled word or misplaced punctuation mark somewhere. Sorry, we tried our best. And once the book is printed, I can’t go back and fix it. Please don’t e-mail me to let me know that you found “there” instead of “their” on page 233. It’s out of my hands.

    And once my book is published, I can’t make readers buy it. Ah, that it were so. If I could, I’d probably hypnotize every reader in the U.S. and beyond to buy multiple copies of TANKBORN when it comes out. But I can’t, nor can I put something into the water supply or wave a magic wand to start a buying frenzy. The former would be illegal and the latter would be impossible in a non-magical world such as Earth.

    I also can’t force people who have read my book to like my book. I can’t insist a reviewer give me a sterling review. There are huge bestsellers that many people loved that I thought were drek. Everyone has different tastes in what they enjoy.

    Sometimes I despair that the “cans” are too hard and the “can’ts” are too frustrating. But if I wanted easy, I’d have never become an author.

    How about you? Is there something in your professional life that everyone assumes you can do, but you can’t? Feel free to comment.