D. L. Keur – Page 34 – To Infinity & Beyond Forever

On Dolts Offering Writing Advice

Posted on February 22, 2016July 2, 2024 by D. L. Keur

QUOTETH: “50-75% of blog posts with ‘Tips’ for writing are really marketing posts. They have nothing to do with writing at all.”

I have a friend, who shall remain anonymous, who shared this with me. It’s totally right on. And, yet, this friend refuses to say this publicly…because of all the flack that comes back to bombard him/her/it.

Yet, it’s completely true, and one of the HUGE irritants that I find with authors, indie and trad pubbed, alike.

Most of these posers–yes, I said posers–ain’t gotta clue what makes good writing and good novels, and have absolutely NO business trying to share their under-educated, all but illiterate advisements with anyone. And the only reason they do is to try to game up their own books and ‘brand’.

There. I said it right out loud, because it’s true.

Want to know what’s sad? The real experts who DO have valid and valuable insights on writing now mostly stay mum. That’s because what they have to say isn’t going to be swallowed well by the striving ‘wanna-be’s–that writing well means years of learning how to do it right by reading, by doing, by being harshly critiqued by in-the-know, usually caustic-as-hell editors.

In the Span of a Rat’s Whisker Twitch

Posted on February 19, 2016July 2, 2024 by D. L. Keur

I can dream up plots and stories in the span of a rat’s whisker twitch. I can map that story out in a few hours. Writing up the draft, if I’m selfish and tell the world to take a hike, takes a few weeks. Then comes the rewrite, which can take another few weeks. I rarely get that far. I usually just park the concept in a folder on some storage media, put a printout in a groaning filing cabinet, and move on. Why? Because, honestly, most stories bore me. The ones that I may pursue, I pursue because their characters have depth and purpose, because they have intrinsic worth as individuals. I love to see them thrive.

Inevitability

Posted on February 19, 2016July 2, 2024 by D. L. Keur

They float on surface tides, siphoning whatever they can harvest for free, never sharing, never giving back, never caring of those who they, in their lustful greed, are starving. I watch them, safely protected from their undying appetites, and I marvel at their ignorance of the vortex soon to swallow them into extinction.

Canyon Forbes watched his streams, aware that, at any moment, he’d be told to shut them off, his duty station shifted to security. Glad that he was ‘inside’, glad he wouldn’t be among those stranded, he wondered at the ignorance that had, decades past, permitted this kind of exploitation, and decided that he wasn’t smart enough to figure out that answer.

It didn’t really bother him that millions, even billions, would perish. It was inevitable. Leadership had known the consequences for a century…longer, if one believed interpretations of the organization’s founders’ writings. And, logically, there could be no other outcome.

(To be continued…or not. I think this one is too dystopian for my liking.)

That Pesky Infinity Symbol with My Morning Coffee

Posted on February 19, 2016July 2, 2024 by D. L. Keur

Every morning…save mornings where I haven’t slept (which happens), I face this: ∞ This is the start of my online day. (Offline starts way before, but that’s another topic.) Dutifully, I sift and sort through all the postings of my followers, opening in new tabs on those posts which bear full attention, dismissing those which don’t, plussing and sharing the ‘quickies’ that warrant it. Then starts the reading. Today, I have over thirty tabs open and I’m not even close to done with my initial sort. There are a lot of noteworthy articles to read. There are a lot of people to respond to. Morning coffee.

Top Ten Novels get Nine ‘No’s from Me

Posted on February 18, 2016July 2, 2024 by D. L. Keur

There was a shared around link in varied posts on G+ about readers’ habits that got some comments–some snide, some honest, some haphazard. In other words, normal levels and types of replies. As the conversation moved forward on several of the iterations of the link share, I said this in response to one gentleman who said that he reads any book he buys all the way through, regardless, because he paid for it. He also said that he’s very forgiving of editing errors. This was my reply:

Hey, I’ll read books that have atrocious editing…and do, because the story is good. Very good. But I won’t sit through, even a well-edited, well-presented book that bores me. Once my eyeballs roll up in my head three times, through boredom or disgust, I’m done.

And, now, because I think it’s pertinent, I’m going to take the top 10 best sellers from over on Amazon, and I’ll tell you why I either won’t even crack the cover or, having read all or part of the excerpt, why I would or would not read on.

Let’s start: (Numerical order of the top ten best sellers on Amazon was stable throughout the day and a lot of these books have been on the first page for awhile, now…but, by the time you check they could have since changed.) RED and strike-through means NO WAY! White (normal text color to this interface) means, not interested, but I could recommend it to readers in search of that type of story. Green means “yes.”

1. The Next Always: Inn BoonsBoro Trilogy (The Inn Boonsboro Trilogy Book 1) by Nora Roberts — Nora Roberts is a good writer, always has been. I don’t read her, though I did manage two of her books during my time belonging to a book club. I cracked the excerpt on Amazon on this one and the novel starts out very well. Then we get to the boring stuff — leading man and leading lady, with all the modern day trappings that so do not intrigue me. So, nope. But, were someone looking for a nice contemporary romance, yes, I might suggest it. Nora Roberts can be counted on to deliver a good read for those who enjoy that kind and style of story.

~~2. Ghost Gifts by Laura Spinella~~ — “The sky cartwheeled overhead.” <– first strike. “Black spaghetti” <– second strike. Read on…and, by the end of the second page in the Kindle version, my eyes dried up, which is my way of saying ‘my eyes glazed over because I was completely bored’.

~~3. The Last Girl by Joe Hart~~ — Read the description. That sent off warning bells. So, I checked the reviews. First up on the page was the one star review by F. carillo, posted on February 2, 2016. Then came the 4 star review by Bill Anderson (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) on February 1, 2016. (That was a four star review? Read more like another one star review to me. And it went on that way. So I didn’t even crack the cover to read the excerpt. Auto-nope, mostly because it’s yet another dystopian-horror book that features the completely unrealistic.

~~4. Roomhate by Penelope Ward~~ — NOPE. Won’t even look at the excerpt. Here’s why: ” Due to …sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 18.” I’m over 18, but, sorry, not into explicit sexual content, and the reviews suggest that this book is more about heating up readers’ crotches than about delivering an actual story.

~~5. Some Sort of Love: A Happy Crazy Love Novel by Melanie Harlow~~ — An excuse to deliver explicit, graphic sex. The whole focus seems to be the guy’s large penis. Nope.

6. A Shade of Vampire (New & Lengthened 2015 Edition) by Bella Forrest — I’m not a fan of teen fantasies or vampires, neither one. For this exercise, I did check out a bit of the excerpt and the story delivery seems smooth and well-written through the first few pages of the prologue and chapter one. But, no. Not into vampires and teenage love fantasies.

~~7. Winter Men by Jesper Bugge Kold~~ — No, no, and no for several reasons — sex, historical fallacy about the SS and culpability, and dwelling in the horror of an era that makes me shudder, similar reasons of which you can find from readers in the one-star reviews.

8. Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman — It’s Neil Gaiman. Of course it’s a ‘yes’.

~~9. Guarding His Obsession by Alexa Riley~~ — Blatant erotica. Nope.

~~10. The Lie by Karina Halle~~ — Nope. More erotica, this one with a warning: This book contains sexually explicit scenes…. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

What is most disturbing to me is the number of sexually explicit or erotic books that are top ten. And then there’s the dystopian, teen vampire romance, and Nazis-as-victims books, some also with graphic sex. Does NOT say good things about American tastes in novels. Not good things, at all.