What creature? Oh, I don’t know. Some stone mountain that wakes up to reveal itself a sleeping dragon, maybe, though I’ve used the dragon motif before.
The monster pestilence? Why, man, of course.
Will I write it?
No. No point.
Author: D. L. Keur
“A Great, Raging Bloodbath”
“…A great, raging bloodbath….”–that’s what a reader gloated about in a review they publicly posted. Those were the first words of their review.
I blinked, a crinkle furrowing my brow. My brain did a cross between a ? and an !, not so much in surprise at the fact of it, (I know graphically depicted sex and gore sell very well, thanks.), but because it was a gloat–an adamant one. And not just by one reader. Many readers of the same book and the same series of books expressed those exact sentiments…just not quite as concisely.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to that one review that brought me pause.
The reader/reviewer only gave the book four out of five stars. Why? Because of “unbelievable scenes” and “too convenient” plot answers. Plus, the reader admitted that the end was a “cheat.” In other words, the story was poorly written, but that didn’t matter much–one star subtracted–because of the visceral satisfaction the writing delivered to that reader.
Reading other reviews of this highly popular book, both the positive and the negative, I found similar sentiments among those ranking the book three stars and above. The positive reviews outweighed the negative by far, and all of the positive ones had one common thread: the one element that drove readers’ ecstasy was what that one reviewer succinctly summed up as one “great, raging bloodbath” of a book.
Checking the rest of the novels in the series, I discovered that, yes, that one element drove all the books in that series to crest the best sellers lists, and the reasons given were that the books all satisfied readers’ tastes for pain and misery vividly and viscerally portrayed, fulfilling their fascination with the depraved, their obsession, even craving, to witness hate mercilessly enacted in the worst kind of viciousness and violence, all very graphically rendered.
The genre was Science Fiction, a genre I like to read a lot, but now find myself either avoiding or, at least, exercising extreme caution and care when choosing a next novel for reading. …Because the genre is filled, first, with Sword & Sorcery dressed up like SF, and, second, because it is now laden with what I call ‘gruel’–gore and cruelty–and, of course, right with it, perverse sexual depredation.
These are not the kind of books I read. They are not the kind of books I write, either. But what makes my brow furrow isn’t that my preferred reading, that my own writing and published novels, can’t draw that same level of popularity among readers. (I’m not writing for those kind of readers.) No. What bothers me is what this signifies about where the prime time tastes of the culture of which I am a part has taken itself. I wonder about my fellow humans and my fellow citizens, a large majority of whom embrace this kind of ‘entertainment’ as preferred.
It’s the Possibilities
One of the questions I’ve asked most in my life, from the time I could first form the word, is ‘why’? Drove my mom nuts. Drove my bad teachers nuts. Gave my good teachers a thrill, and they delighted in spurring on my curiosity. I was reading adult newspapers at three years of age…and comprehending them. I was doing algebra before third grade, quadratic equations and calculus by fourth. I read the Encyclopedia Britannica from Vol 1 through the addenda the company sent each and every year. I explored…and I’m still exploring. I’m still asking ‘why’.
For me, it’s not the answer that’s most important. It’s the question and where that question leads…to other questions. It’s the potential possibilities inherent in those questions that most intrigue me.
How Not to Sell Me on Your Novel
Authors, really.
Do I care that you’re having a “huge sale”?
No. I’m not a bargain basement book shopper, willing to spend my time on anything that comes my way because it’s cheap or free.
I also don’t care if you’ve won some award or contest with your book. I know how contests and awards work from the inside, so I know that, chances are, the only reason the book won is for reasons that have nothing at all to do with its actual quality and value as good reading. Likewise with professional reviews.
Next on my list of “I don’t give a damn” is whether or not you made some best seller’s list or, worse than that, some “pop” list voted on by Joe and Josepha Public. BS lists are just that–bullshit lists–manipulated by skill and subterfuge, and “pop” lists rank even lower, being manipulated by cliques and back-scratchers.
What will convince me to buy your book? Good hook, good writing, and a riveting story I can’t put down, written in a genre I like…which is most anything that, A, doesn’t dwell in the dreary, disheartening, perverse, stupid, insipid, banal, and/or trite and, B, which lacks any descent into gratuitous sex, gore, and/or violence.
How do you catch me? First off, a good slag-line. Second, a good description. Third, a first page that makes me want to read on…and that continues to pull me along all the way through the excerpt provided by Amazon. Then, yes, you’ve just made a real sale, and, despite being a KU member, I will actually pay you your full asking price…because I believe GOOD writers should be paid.
Image by D. L. Keur with base image By Raúl Ruano Ruiz – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22768706
Experiential Distortion
by D. L. Keur writing as herself and/or one of her numerous pen names
Stepping into the shower, she listens to the giggling in the walls, watches light refracting in the streaming spray, smells the fragrance of freshness. Tastes it, too. She closes eyes, lessening visual stimulation. While spatially disorienting, this decreases distraction.
Narrowing focus, she concentrates upon sensation. Sound and odors fade; touch, the lesser skill, can now dominate attention. She revels in sensation: tingling, stinging, punctuated hot; dripping, streaming flow sweeping all around, swirling at her feet. Immersed in movement of the stream, her mind explores vectors and trajectories.
“Raynie, did you take the garbage out?”
The sound explodes around her. The world spins, threatening to topple her.
She extends a hand, but can’t find ‘solid’.
Concentrating, she manages to still herself enough to hold stability, despite the violent buffeting of tidal swirls that threaten to upend her. She trues to that hold, but the effort is immense. Still, she knows it’s necessary. Doing less will bring unending queries and more violent disturbances.
With a will, she splits attending from single- to multi-dedicated focus. She seeks and finds ‘speech’, the least of her capabilities, but the one most critical to maintaining comfort levels within those with whom she shares experience.
The effort makes her breathless. She coheres the necessary communication from conceptual instance into distributed linear stream, making sure the energy within that stream congeals into: meaningful, simple, concise.
Once sure, she finds, then engages mouth and tongue, that finding and engagement also requiring of her immense concentration.
“Raynie?”
“No, Mom. I’ll do it when I’m finished showering.”
“Well, hurry up. The bus will be here.”
Dedicated concentration fractured, she struggles to stabilize herself as every sense goes overload. She struggles and, with a breath, just manages appropriate response—“Okay”—then she hopes that Mom will go away so she can regain control.
Silence answers, and, as the metasphere around her calms, the skirls and buffeting exponentially diminish until they become mere ripples dissolving into echoes as they fade off down the here-now’s timeline.
