The Walrus Said

Writing a sequel

2009-07-04T14:31:00.000-04:00

It's trickier than it looks. Or at the very least, trickier than I expected.

Finding the right place to begin a story is always a bit difficult for me. And I'm discovering that it's even harder when I have a previous story to build on. I have such a sense of who these characters are and what they've been through that I leave out information that new readers are going to need. And I throw too many characters into the mix too soon.

After thoroughly confusing my crit group with my opening chapters, it was clear that a simple tweak wasn't going to fix the problems. I had to start over, to a point where I could introduce the characters and situations in small doses. In my case, that meant actually overlapping with the end of Disenchanted, the first book.

Technically speaking, Suffer a Witch is not really a sequel. It is another story, set in the same world, following on the heels of the events of Disenchanted, but with no single story arc.

Can you think of any sequels where this kind of transition was handled gracefully? Or have you written one? What did you learn?

When reviewers hand you a lemon

2009-07-01T16:06:00.001-04:00

You can choose to get bitter and downright nasty, as Alice Hoffman recently did. She got so incensed about a mildly critical review that she fired off no fewer than 27 nasty tweets, including one that revealed the reviewer's address and phone number so that Hoffman's fans could protest directly. Um yeah. If you believe that no publicity is bad publicity, that was quite the stunt. Publicity it got her. Respect, not so much.

Or you could, like Brad Meltzer, make lemonade. His soon-to-be-released novel, The Book of Lies, got panned by a number of influential critics. And this was his hilarious response.

I don't know about you, but I know which book I am more tempted to read.

How's that Espresso machine working out?

2009-06-30T13:36:00.000-04:00

The book machine of course, not that I think coffee machines are insignificant. And yes, I have been obsessing about this machine, but I really think its impact on publishing could surpass that of digital publishing. And we all know how much press that is getting.

An independent bookstore in Vermont has had the EBM for a while now, and reports in on how that's working out for them. So far, so good.

They were hoping that there would be a wider selection of books available from the machine by now, but have been pleased to discover that in the meanwhile, self-published books have been taking up the slack for them.

While I always realized that self-publishing would be possible with the Espresso Book Machine, it never occurred to me that it would be that significant. It sounds like this will be a viable alternative for self-publishers, short-circuiting a lot of the scam artists out there. Not that it will make marketing a book any easier...

Thanks to Dominique Benoit for bringing this to my attention.

Digital Dragon Magazine

2009-06-29T11:25:00.002-04:00

There's a new kid on the Christian speculative fiction block. Digital Dragon has launched its inaugural issue, so click on over if you'd like a look at some free fiction. If you're thinking of contributing, they are not a paying market.

I've only read one of the stories and it was decent. I do note that the copy-editing could be a little more rigorous, but I'm kind of anal that way. I still think spelling mistakes look amateurish.

But draw your own conclusions as to the quality of the stories. I haven't read enough to have a firm opinion.

Latter-Day Cipher - a review

2009-06-25T15:02:00.000-04:00

I stand shamelessly in line when any of the ladies from Novel Matters starts giving away books. When they stop, I will even resort to buying them myself. In the case of Latter-Day Cipher I managed to snag a signed copy.

This is a murder mystery with a heavily Mormon flavour, not too surprising seeing as Latayne C. Scott is a former hard-core Mormon converted to evangelical Christianity. I don't read a lot of murder mysteries, so I'm going to try to tread lightly in this review. I neither love nor hate the genre, but for a mystery to really appeal to me, it has to be more than a puzzle in words. I want much more of an experience when I read than that. And Latter-Day Cipher delivered.

We find out in the opening chapters that a prominent - and virulently anti-Mormon - member of Utah society has been murdered, and the body arranged in a bizarre and ritualistic fashion. Selonnah Zee, a Tennessee journalist who thought she was going to Utah on vacation to visit her news anchor cousin, gets called on to cover the case. Other murders and weird incidents follow, in each case accompanied by messages written in an obsolete, 18th-century Mormon alphabet. Selonnah finds herself researching the connections between the murders and former Mormon practices, much to the chagrin of her cousin, a convert to Mormonism who becomes the spokesman of the Mormon Church in regards to the murders. At the same time, many of the characters are in a state of spiritual flux, and their questioning is an important part of the story.

Scott, as a former Mormon herself, treats her characters with respect. While Mormon doctrines are questioned, the people are never belittled.

Three reasons you might like this book
1. A deft use of language, especially in descriptions. Scott's prose is often beautiful, and her eye for unusual but apt metaphors is superb. She tries a little too hard once or twice, but the vast majority of the time, the effect is enchanting.

2. You get an insider's glimpse into the Mormon world. It almost reads like a novel set in an exotic locale. Scott's expertise shines through here, and if you like discovering new cultures, you will be well-served.

3. Well-rounded characters who do not conform to facile stereotypes. This delighted me, personally. Selonnah is a good reporter, but you wouldn't think of calling her hard-bitten or driven. Her cousin, Roger, while fitting the stereotypical image of a news anchor (but don't they all?) has a lot of complex undercurrents going on, particularly in the relationship with his wife. The only woman described as beautiful is nonetheless big-boned and convinced of her own lack of charm. The delightfully named and supremely annoying Lugosi has more in common with Dwight from The Office than Count Dracula, and the man with the over-charged sex appeal is no womanizer. None of them can be summed up in one cute sentence.

Three reasons you might not like this book
1. The reveal of the killer's identity is done in a rather unorthodox, almost anti-climactic manner. Now, I don't read many mysteries, so maybe it wasn't that unusual, but I found it a bit odd. Seeing as I had just come to my own conclusions, it didn't irritate me, but the shift at that point from mystery to thriller didn't quite work for me.
2. You might not like so much space being devoted to Mormon beliefs, although their impact on the story is direct. Spirituality, both corporate and personal, is an important part of this story, and some readers might say it's excessive.
3. No romance or love interest for the main character. Sorry. On the other hand, the marriage relationships of several characters are immensely important, but Selonnah is in town to visit her cousin and cover a story, and that's what she does. Personally, I rather preferred it that way, but your mileage might vary.

Three sentences from page 33

Lugosi wheezed a welcome explanation for why she'd been summoned. "You always wanted to use your criminology background with your reporting, Miss Society Page." His breathing sounded like leaking fireplace bellows pumped painfully through a bunch of hollow cocktail stirrers.

Other reviews
Gorelets (third of three, scroll down)
Christian Bookworm
Conniebrz.com

Too funny

2009-06-16T18:55:00.002-04:00

When was the last time a TV commercial made you howl with laughter? This one did it for me. Which might say disturbing things about me.

This story reeks

2009-06-12T21:37:00.002-04:00

How often do you look for themes when you're reading stories? Or watching movies? Not very often, I'll bet, unless advanced studies in literature permanently warped your ability to enjoy a story. I was already an avid reader before I got a degree in languages and literature (which I enjoyed immensely, I might add) so I never lost the ability to just roll around in a story for the sheer joy of it.

But one thing they were right about in those classes, every story around is just reeking with themes.

"What is a theme?" you might ask. (One thing I love about readers of this blog is that they always ask the right questions at the right time.)

The theme is the other answer to "what is the story about?"

Last night we sat and watched Back to the Future yet again and I suddenly was struck by it.

"This isn't a movie about time travel," I said to my long-suffering husband, "this is a movie about learning to have self-confidence." All I had to do was say it. It was like waving a magic wand. Self-confidence issues suddenly sprang up all over the movie like dandelions in spring. Both Marty and George had fears of being rejected, fears they expressed in identical language, in case you were tempted to miss it. Doc Brown gains the confidence necessary to push his research to a successful conclusion by the revelations of a visitor from the future. When George McFly reaches deep within himself to find a courage he didn't know he had, his whole future changes. The bad-guy vice-principal is a bad guy because he specializes in destroying self-confidence.

See what I mean about stories reeking with theme? Did the writers of the script sit down and say "Let's do a movie about finding self-confidence"? I sincerely doubt it. But it was obviously something that mattered to them a great deal, because it was everywhere in the story.

The Incredibles is, on the face of it, a story about super-heroes. But it's also a movie about finding your place in the world. The list of characters struggling with this issue comprises most of the main characters: everyone in the Incredible family (excepting the baby), the villain, the father's best friend... (Sorry, I forget the names. I'm bad for that.) If you've watched the special features, you know that even in the scenes that never made the movie this is an issue, as the mother becomes infuriated by the snooty neighbours who despise her decision to stay home with her family. When the main characters resolve their issues and assume their proper roles, the story is over.

Or take Harry Potter. A recurring theme in all seven books is the value of marginalized people, from Harry's band of misfit followers to Severus Snape to Harry himself. The despised ones become the means of salvation. You can hardly turn a page without finding echoes of this theme. (Ironically, this is a theme you'll find all over the Bible too.)

The plot is the mechanics of a story, its bones. The theme is its beating heart. As a writer, you don't have to go looking for themes to "insert" into your story. It will be there, beating under the surface, whether you notice it or not. You'd be hard-pressed to keep it out.

Any other themes you've noticed in other well-known stories? Have you ever been put off by a theme?

Ever been surprised by the themes in your own work? Have you ever consciously tried to write a theme story?

Hm, I just noticed that ever single one of the stories I've cited fall under the banner of speculative fiction. I don't think this qualifies as a theme, but it's certainly a recurring motif. Make of that what you will.

Which fantasy writer are you?

2009-06-10T07:13:00.000-04:00

I don't usually do online quizzes, but sometimes one comes along that I just can't resist. I mean, I just HAD to find out which fantasy writer I was like, right?

Ursula K Le Guin (b. 1929)

31 High-Brow, -9 Violent, -19 Experimental and 4 Cynical!

Congratulations! You are High-Brow, Peaceful, Traditional and Cynical! These concepts are defined below.

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is definitely one of the most celebrated science fiction and fantasy writers of all times. Her most famous fantasy work to date is the Earthsea suite of novels and short stories, in which Le Guin created not only one of the most believable societies in fantasy fiction, but also managed to describe a school for wizards almost three decades before Harry Potter. Although often categorized as written for young adults, these books have entertained and challenged readers of all ages since their publication.

Le Guin is no stranger to literary experiments (see for example Always Coming Home(1985)), but much of her story-telling is quite traditional. In fact, she makes a point of returning to older forms of story-telling, which, at her best, enables her to create something akin to myth. One shouldn't confuse myth with faerytale, though. Nothing is ever simplified in Le Guin's world, as she relentlessly explores ethical problems and the moral choices that her characters must make, as must we all. While being one of those writers who will allow you to escape to imaginary worlds, she is also one who will prompt you to return to your actual life, perhaps a little wiser than you used to be.

I was positively popping my suspenders with pride. Then they added:

You are also a lot like Susan Cooper.

If you want some action, try Michael Moorcock.

If you'd like a challenge, try your exact opposite, C S Lewis.

Hold on just a minute! What are they talking about, Lewis is my opposite? I LOVE Lewis.

I am hurt, deeply hurt.

But you know, you really know, you want to try it, don't you?

Thanks to Grasping for the Wind for pointing me in the direction of the quiz.

Terminating textbooks

2009-06-09T15:55:00.003-04:00

It looks like I'm not the only one who believes that digital books will find their first mass market penetration in the classroom. Arnold Schwarzenegger intends to give a legislative push to market evolution and obligate California schools to buy eBooks for texts, in an attempt to save the state money.

"It's nonsensical and expensive to look to traditional hard-bound books when information today is so readily available in electronic form," Schwarzenegger wrote. "Especially now, when our school districts are strapped for cash and our state budget deficit is forcing further cuts to classrooms, we must do everything we can to untie educators' hands and free up dollars so that schools can do more with fewer resources."

The devil is in the details, they say, and I'm sure many jurisdictions will be watching to see if the Governator actually saves the state money. If he does, you can be sure that there will be many imitators. It goes to show that hard times tend to stimulate innovation, as the status quo becomes too uncomfortable to maintain.

I am cautiously favourable. I've thought for some time that the textbook industry was abusive of students, both in terms of expense and of weight, and if there's a practical way to change that - and if publishers are farsighted enough to embrace change willingly - this could turn into a win-win situation. If I were a smaller publisher of textbooks, I would be rushing to see if I could jump in ahead of the big boys and gobble up a significant part of the market ahead of them.

What do you think? Is Schwarzenegger visionary or deluded? Will the peripheral costs erase the financial benefits?

The Company - a book review

2009-06-04T12:38:00.001-04:00

Well. That was different.

It's really hard to say much at all about my impressions of The Company by K.J. Parker without giving away far more of the story than I generally like to in a book review. So if you want to read this book and like to go in with few preconceived notions, I suggest you read only the next paragraph and then quit.

The Company is purportedly fantasy, but the only "fantastic" element is the fact that it takes place in an undefined country in an undefined time, although the culture and technology are clearly that of late medieval Europe, minus any mention of religion. That might be its greatest claim to being a fantasy as opposed to an alternate history. The book is more a psychological drama, centered on General Teuche Kunessin and four men who are the survivors of the A Company, an elite group of pikers, legendary for their skills in a military role close to that of a suicide squad. The war has been over for seventeen years and Kunessin returns to his home village to reassemble his former mates and found an idyllic colony on an island he has managed to procure. Once on the island, things do not go as planned. The long-forged bonds between fighting men who faced death together countless times are powerful, but they are tested to the limit.

Parker's writing is powerful, especially in the beginning, when he (I'm assuming it's a he, because the writing feels masculine to me. Parker is a pseudonym.) evokes the bonds between men in a marvellously indirect way. He creates an enormous amount of sympathy for the men and Kunessin in particular and made me very curious as to what would come of them and their project to form a colony. He then takes the rather unusual tack of whittling away that sympathy, by gradually turning over one rock at a time and exposing the nasty creatures underneath, until about two-thirds of the way through, I had pretty much lost the motivation to read on. I stalled, quite frankly, and if had been a library book instead of a purchased one, I don't know that I would have picked it up again. Your mileage may vary. I eventually did get to the end, wondering how the author would recreate sympathy for the characters. Suffice it to say he didn't.

Three reasons you might like this book
1. You like a dark, gritty, complex read. Having said that, if you're looking for explicit sex (or any sex for that matter beyond a couple of oblique references) or gory violence, you're not going to get much. The grit here is all located in the human soul. Don't look for facile stereotypes; you won't find them. Even the women, who are secondary or tertiary characters and therefore painted with few strokes, cannot be reduced to single characteristics.

2. You admire a writer who is in command of his craft. Parker evokes emotions, he doesn't name them or wallow in them, thereby making them all the more powerful. I found his descriptions well-done too, never glaze-inducing. A sentence or two of carefully chosen words create the picture of a character or a setting in our minds, without ever over-loading the tolerance of description-averse readers like myself. If anything, it could have used more, and that's not something you'll hear me say very often!

3. You appreciate accuracy in technical and military detail. Parker has done his homework, and it shows. He doesn't go into the interminable detail that Tom Clancy does, but I suspect that you'd be hard-put to find errors in his engineering, science, or military technology. Not that I checked, but it had the ring of truth.

Three reasons you might not like this book
1. You like a happy ending. You won't get it.

2. You want to really engage emotionally with a character. This might be the book's greatest weakness. Parker systematically demolishes the connections you might feel with the A Company till you hardly even want them to succeed. The women had huge potential here, but he failed to exploit it. His tendency to understate emotion did him a disservice, as he shied away from emotional issues that could have provided powerful fuel for the plot. Judging from the obvious skill that Parker writes with, I can't help but think that this was a conscious choice. I think it was ill-advised.

3. One or two of the plot points felt rather contrived to me, in particular the events that centered around a mentally imbalanced wife. I can't say more without giving away too much, but it felt pretty gratuitous to me, no matter how much it had been foreshadowed.

Three paragraphs from page 33

"You do that," Kunessin said. "Tell him it'll be cash, no bills or letters, just silver money. That ought to make a difference, I'm sure."

The old man studied him for a while. "I thought you said you were in the army," he said. "Where'd you get that kind of money?"

Kunessin smiled. "From dead people," he said. "A great many of them. I'm at the Glory; leave a message for me there as soon as you've talked to this man, all right?"

Other reviews
Fantasy Book News and Reviews
SFF World
Blogging for a Good Book
Grasping for the Wind

Crafty author

2009-05-28T07:34:00.001-04:00

I was twitting Patricia Wood over on her blog a while back, informing her that she was not allowed to die because she had not yet signed my copy of Lottery. No, I cannot remember the context for that particular piece of idiocy and I can't find it either. And yes, you should go buy her book, not just because she's a webfriend of mine, but because it's a fine piece of writing. Don't take my word for it; it was short-listed for the Orange Prize.

Anyway, back to the point. She immediately rectified that terrible oversight by offering to send me a bookplate. (For the uninitiated, a bookplate is basically an autographed sticker you can put in your book to instantly turn it into an autographed copy.) Through a series of confusions on my end, it took me a while to get it, but I finally got my hands on it yesterday. Except it was a them. She sent me one personalized bookplate and several others with generic greetings.

What is a girl supposed to do with extra bookplates? As it happened, I was in a bookstore that afternoon, and what should I spy but a stack of her books on a table of bestsellers near the door? (See, I told you it was good.) My natural brilliance asserted itself, and I said to myself, "There's a good place for those extra bookplates." The manager was equally struck by my brilliance. Okay, I'm assuming. He said that the bookplates would be welcome, or words to that effect.

Very pleased with myself, I emailed Pat to tell her of my brilliance. She was very impressed. Okay, so she told me that's why she sent them along. So she was brilliant before me. I am still brilliant, right? (Somehow this story isn't going quite the way I meant it to.)

Anyway, I am impressed with her brilliance too. She didn't ask me to do anything, but let me think of it on my own. Now those books will sell more quickly because most people are very pleased to get a signed copy of a book. And I have stowed away another gentle marketing technique for the future. And I have an autographed copy of Lottery. Thanks, Pat.

By the way, there is still no Wikipedia entry for Patricia. Any Wikipedians around who can do something about that?

And now for something totally cool

2009-05-12T07:03:00.000-04:00

I don't know if I can quite rise to the idealism of the Playing for Change people, but this is still a very cool project and some very, very cool music. I present "One Love", Song Around the World.

More thoughts on the Espresso Book Machine

2009-05-11T16:04:00.001-04:00

The more I think about this machine, the more I feel it will ultimately be good news for the publishing industry and especially for authors.

With print-on-demand arriving in retail outlets, we could soon see a seismic shift in the publishing industry. The whole notion of print runs could become obsolete, and the publisher's role become one of gatekeeper, designer, and promoter, with production and distribution concerns falling away altogether. I actually think that this could mean that the publishing house name could become more important, not less. It would become a guarantee of excellence, or of catering to a specific niche, much like Tor Books now.

A bookstore could be a simple home for the machines, or a larger retail outlet, with local favourites already pre-printed for the convenience of customers, looking much like present bookstores. The choices would certainly be fewer, but that wouldn't matter, because they would be backed up by the almost infinite choice of the book machine. I am assuming here that there would be a unique digital distribution channel, with all retailers having equal access. That is a huge assumption. Publishing houses could try to restrict distribution to their own retailers, which would create a very different dynamic.

In either event, I think it is good news for authors. There would be less need to sell immediately, with the current paleolithic returns system no longer distorting sales pressures. An author's reputation could be built slowly, gradually picking up speed, without a publisher feeling obliged to abandon debut authors who don't burst out of the gate quickly enough.

With this greater freedom to take a long-term view, publishers' promotion efforts could be both more focused and more spread out. More focused, because it would be easier to track where and when a book is selling (with up-to-the-minute statistics) and adjust promotion accordingly. More spread out, because we would no longer be dealing with a narrow window of opportunity and a publisher could continue marketing efforts for years, tailoring promotions to specific groups. We get a glimpse of what this could look like in the newsletters put out by AbeBooks, the online "clearing house" for thousands of used book sellers. AbeBooks will respond to current news and interests, featuring books - many decades old - that speak to the same issues. Because they are not restricted to recent releases, they can do thematic promotions much better than retail outlets.

For more information on the Espresso Book Machine, check out OnDemandBooks. I notice that the 2.0 version is already much prettier than the machine seen in the video, although I think they should have chosen coffee colours, myself. The word Espresso and the colour blue just don't go together.

How do you think book machine would change your reading and buying habits if it becames the industry norm, or at least a common utility? And if you are involved in the publishing industry, what changes do you think it will bring to what you are doing? Do the possibilites excite you or frighten you?

Poll results on book trailers

2009-05-05T16:46:00.001-04:00

There were 20 votes and this is the breakdown:

<0 They made me decide not to buy. 9 (45%)
1 and I regret it. 1 (5%)
1 and it was great. 4 (20%)
2 or more. I look for them. 1 (5%)
2 or more. It just happens. 0 (0%)
It's complicated. 5 (25%)

Now, this isn't a large enough sample to be scientific in any way at all, BUT did you notice that almost half the voters said that book trailers had prevented them from buying? This seems to tally pretty well with informal discussions I've seen elsewhere.

Elsewhere like on Alexander Field's blog (nice redesign, by the way), or on Jessica Faust's blog, and a couple of other places I don't remember.

What I am taking away from all this is that book trailers are risky, like book covers. They can alienate readers more easily than they can draw them in. Unlike book covers, trailers are not an essential part of the process. I personally am not going to attempt one unless I've got a killer idea that could go viral.

I do thing that a book trailer is probably wise to use a lot of words. After all, anyone allergic to reading text is not going to buy the book anyway. And many readers resent having a visual interpretation imposed on them. One of the reasons they enjoy reading is the freedom to imagine characters and settings on their own. How often have you been disappointed by the casting in the movie version of a favourite book? You see the danger.

However, if you hit the sweet spot, and manage to produce a really catchy trailer that people are scrambling to link to, you've got a winner.

As for me, I read one book because of a trailer. The trailer was better.

Anybody have trailer stories to share? Ones you loved? Ones you hated? The one you keep running in your head for the book you're writing?

It takes skill

2009-04-29T19:29:00.003-04:00

... to mess up this well. But I am up to the challenge.

Tonight I was supposed to go to Robert J. Sawyer's book launch and birthday party. Pretty cool. One of Canada's most successful writers, and a science fiction writer at that. A potent combination. (OK, so I was a preteen science fiction geek. And a teen SF geek. And... well, you get the idea. Sometimes I go into remission, but the symptoms will reappear with only the slightest provocation.)

I checked out the bus schedules, and decided to take the route that would get me out and walking a bit. I transferred all my things into a purse big enough to hold the autographed book I would be coming home with and headed out the door just a couple of minutes late, meaning that with my short legs I would have to make the 15-minute walk to the bus stop at something just short of a jog. That's fine, the weather was lovely and I always need the exercise. Besides, I hadn't memorized the itinerary for the closer bus and there was no time to check.

About a block shy of the bus stop, I saw a bus coming off the exit ramp. I panicked and broke into a sprint. If the light changed at the wrong time... The light changed at the wrong time. Despair. But wait, it wasn't the one I needed. Relief. A brisk trot brought me to the bus stop just seconds before the bus I really wanted. That sprint turned out to have been a very necessary thing. Happy at how everything had worked out so well, I reached for the outer pocket of my purse where I keep my bus tickets.

You see where this is going, don't you?

There was no pocket on the outside of this purse. And I had, of course, being a certified member of the so-absent-minded-we-wonder-how-she's-still-alive club, forgotten to transfer the bus tickets to one of the inner pockets of the new purse. I could pay cash, but my smallest bill was a twenty, and bus drivers don't make change. Um, no.

I walked back home. It was a lovely evening for a walk.

The Espresso Book Machine has arrived

2009-04-28T15:28:00.003-04:00

And the gadget geek in me is in awe. The machine is still hideously ugly and looks like a prototype, but if it catches on, I'm sure that will change. If it does become popular, it will change the way the whole book industry works, but I can't even begin to imagine how. If I were a bookstore owner, I would go have a quiet nervous breakdown in the corner, and then order me a couple.

Hat tip to the Harper Studio blog via Twitter and @MariaSchneider.

Aggressive ignorance is hurting the American image and a lot more than just image

2009-04-23T10:10:00.000-04:00

There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Unless it’s aggressive stupidity coupled with power. For this reason, aggressive stupidity exercised by Americans in positions of power is arguably the most dangerous in the world. Obama’s much-vaunted promises of change have unfortunately not taken effect. We still are faced with high-ranking American officials whose ignorance of the outside world and their own portfolios is absolutely devastating.

Take Janet Napolitano, Secretary for Homeland Security, for example. (You may have guessed that’s who I wanted to talk about all along.) She has gone on record equating the Mexican and Canadian borders, for starters. That’s not even comparing apples and oranges. That’s comparing Blackberries and oranges. The problems to the North and to the South are vastly different. To the South you have illegal immigrants flowing in; to the North you have congestion slowing down the world’s most vigorous trading partnership. Canadians are not crossing the border in isolated places hoping to find a better life in the US, at least not in numbers significant enough to matter. And those are probably neatly counter-balanced by illegal American immigrants in Canada.

On Monday, Ms. Napolitano took her foot and stuffed it into her mouth all the way up to her hip.

In an interview broadcast Monday on the CBC, Ms. Napolitano attempted to justify her call for stricter border security on the premise that "suspected or known terrorists" have entered the U. S. across the Canadian border, including the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack.

All the 9/11 terrorists, of course, entered the United States directly from overseas. The notion that some arrived via Canada is a myth that briefly popped up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and was then quickly debunked.

Informed of her error, Ms. Napolitano blustered: "I can't talk to that. I can talk about the future. And here's the future. The future is we have borders."

Just what does that mean, exactly?

Even Rush Limbaugh knows better. For the record, the 9/11 terrorists all had papers in order, issued to them by the American government, and not one of them entered the US through Canada.

She has since retracted the statement, claiming she was misunderstood. Judge for yourselves.

The furor began when Napolitano was asked to clarify statements she had made about equal treatment for the Mexican and Canadian borders, despite the fact that a flood of illegal immigrants and a massive drug war are two serious issues on the southern border.

"Yes, Canada is not Mexico, it doesn't have a drug war going on, it didn't have 6,000 homicides that were drug-related last year," she said.

"Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country or suspected or known terrorists have entered our country across a border, it's been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there."

When asked if she was referring to the 9-11 terrorists, Napolitano added: "Not just those but others as well."

Misunderstood, eh? How many ways are there to understand "just" and "as well"?

Is it any surprise that Canadians are upset?

In February, the former Arizona governor--criticized as weak on security along her state's Mexican border during her term--ordered a review of 49th parallel security, saying the terrorist threat was greater there than on the Mexican border. Last month, she said Canada should be treated the same as Mexico--as if there were any real similarities.

As long as she repeats this rubbish, the corrections that follow are unpersuasive.

Canadian Ambassador to the U. S. Michael Wilson does his best to sow truth in hard soil, but this needs to be dealt with at the top. It is now for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to deal directly with Obama, to ensure the border remains open to visitors and convenient to trade.

Unchecked by higher authority, Napolitano's vaulting ignorance is capable of serious harm to Canada.

American friends have sometimes asked me where Canadian anti-Americanism comes from. There are a lot of answers to that question, some of them not too flattering to Canadians, but Napolitano’s shenanigans are an example of the kind of thing that creates a lot of ill will.

Will somebody please send the woman home to Arizona and find somebody competent to replace her? (So much for the stereotype of Republicans being rubes, and Democrats being urbane and sophisticated.) Anybody who believes for ten seconds that the Mexican and Canadian borders are in any way equivalent has no credibility. And she’s had considerably longer than ten seconds to catch on to that fact. If it hasn’t dawned on her in the months she’s held her position, there’s no hope of her ever understanding. This is a fundamental reality that she should have grasped at her very first briefing. It is one thing to be ignorant; it is another altogether to cling to that ignorance in the face of massive evidence to the contrary. And it is sheer insanity to give this kind of person the authority to act on their ignorance. The damage she can do to the American-Canadian trading relationship - and thus to the American economy - is unthinkable. We are, after all, the USA’s biggest trading partner, far eclipsing Japan, the European Union, and even China.

Yeah, I'm steamed. Sorry. And when you find somebody else, make sure it's somebody who has actually crossed the border at least once? Napolitano has flown over it, but has never set foot, or even car tire, in a Canadian border crossing. For crying out loud...

Music for Good Friday

2009-04-10T06:01:00.000-04:00

Personal update

2009-04-09T20:19:00.003-04:00

I have had all kinds of wonderful ideas for blog posts this week, but my head has been elsewhere, I'm afraid. I know that it severely disrupted your lives. I'm sorry.

After a lot of thinking and mulling and praying, I've decided to accept an offer of representation from Jan Dennis of Dennis Literary. Jan is the man who, as an editor, first published Frank Peretti and Stephen Lawhead, and who, as an agent, first represented Ted Dekker and Donita K. Paul. In other words, he is a huge figure in the world of Christian speculative fiction. I am deeply honoured that he has been willing to place his confidence in me and my writing. And still having a little trouble believing that he did.

OK, next major hurdle to overcome is to win the heart of an editor. But before I get there, I'll probably have some more revising and polishing to do. Jan will be bringing the first set of professional eyes to this manuscript and I imagine he'll have a good number of things to say.

In the meanwhile, I am going to celebrate Easter and the supreme mystery of the Incarnation.

Fun mob in Antwerp

2009-04-08T14:43:00.006-04:00

I had a very odd emotional reaction to this video that I really didn't expect. Tell me how it affects you.

The Global Village is here

2009-04-01T22:19:00.000-04:00

I love the social network sites, truly I do. I have met some truly incredible people there, ones that I had no hope of meeting in "real" life. Some are passing acquaintances, others are becoming fast friends. Between blogs, MySpace, Facebook, forums, and now Twitter, the opportunities are amazing. I've conversed with CEO's, assistant district attorneys, renowned intellectuals, journalists, experts in various fields and all kinds of wonderful "ordinary" folk. Am I going to give this up? No way!

I can also keep track of people I already know so much easier. How else could I watch my niece growing up from 3000 miles away, give or take a few hundred? Or read the out-of-town newsclippings about my various offspring?

But there's a downside to all this connectedness. You've probably all heard about the fellow on Twitter who lost his job before he even started. Or the fact that human resource personnel will often check out your Facebook profiles before even making the offer. On a more personal level, I suspect my kids had mixed feelings when they got my friend requests on Facebook and I was more than a little bemused to find my own mother had got there before me. Not that I mind. But there's no way I can tell her I was busy with X, Y, and Z if she can see my status updates there, now can I? (Just FYI, I don't lie to my mother... She reads my blog too.)

My isolated semi-suburban existence is taking on some of the quality of village life. The support is there: I can launch a prayer request and have friends and churches from Georgia to Australia praying for me. One of my online friends had his house burn down and with a couple of days his cyberfriends organized a blog accepting donations for the rebuilding. So many of us rallied to his cause that it attracted newspaper interest.

On Jessica Faust's blog, it is becoming rather evident that a lot of aspiring authors are having a hard time squaring literary agents' claims that they are too swamped with work to respond promptly with the fact that some of them spend a lot of time posting their thoughts on Twitter. They like even less what some of those thoughts have been. That was yet another cyberstorm that made its way into the mainstream media. For the record, I think a lot of those complaints are unreasonable, but not all of them. In any event, agents are also discovering that they have to weigh carefully how they express themselves online. Online communities are displaying that other characteristic of village life - you can't set a foot outside without all the neighbours knowing.

I myself am becoming a little more circumspect. I had a rather strange thing happen to me recently which I can't tell you about. I'm becoming all too aware of who might be watching. No, it wasn't anything bad or creepy or shameful, just yet another thing to make me realize my voice could carry further than I think.

So now I'm curious. As this realization sinks in, will we see a withdrawal from the social media? Will people prefer to abandon them for the sake of greater privacy? Or will we learn to live with greater transparency, too smitten with the advantages of connectedness to give it all up? Will we become like the inhabitants of real villages, constantly aware of the eyes on our back, reflexively close-mouthed, yet often comforted by that constant presence?

Are your habits changing?

Overcome the first marketing hurdle

2009-03-31T16:22:00.002-04:00

Beyond the enormous hurdle of actually writing a complete novel and then revising and polishing it till it shines, there comes a series of hurdles between the manuscript and the market.

I've now jumped the first hurdle. A literary agent thought my premise was interesting enough to ask to see the entire manuscript or, in the industry jargon, "request the full".

This is akin to making it through the first round at American Idol. I haven't won anything yet, but at least I'm in the competition. Unlike AI, it would be much better for me if I could get waved through this round more than once, by having several agents express an interest. If I'm extremely fortunate, more than one of them will offer representation, and I'll have a choice between agents rather than a choice between one and none. Or no choice at all.

I'm not going to bore you with all the details of this as I go along, but I will post the occasional update. Feel free to chime in with questions, comments, or stories of your own.

Frank Zappa's moustache

2009-03-30T16:08:00.003-04:00

OK, so I don't feel like tackling anything heavy today. Enjoy.

Book trailers

2009-03-27T10:57:00.004-04:00

Have you seen them floating around YouTube? Little one- or two-minute clips, designed to make your mouth water for a particular book: book trailers.

It seems logical, doesn't it? Like movies, novels are a form of story-telling. A good hint at the story should make people want to buy the book, right?

But how many people you know browse YouTube looking for books? Do you?

How many people buy books as a result of viewing a trailer? Do you?

Is it worth the time and effort and financial outlay to create a book trailer? Will anybody see them who is not already a fan?

Please answer the poll at the top of the left-hand sidebar, and then tell me why I should or shouldn't make a book trailer when the time comes. Or if you've made one, tell me what you've learned.

Nothing happens when I double click

2009-03-25T18:19:00.000-04:00

Students wrestle with unfamiliar technology.

In all seriousness, I think it's time we gave students eReaders instead of paper texts. The texts are obscenely expensive and student backpacks obscenely heavy. It doesn't help that the publishing industry has followed an aggressive bigger-is-better policy regarding textbooks for years.

From the Practical Theory blog. Hat tip to Christa Allen.