from Yahoo! Answers:

Books for teenagers are not works of art, they are products designed for a market. Discuss-?

It's all sexy vampires or glamorising suicide/death or spies (genre fiction, generally) to appeal to the stereotypical teenage brain and one series is much like another, all to get $$, movies etc.

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Hazel:
 

Just because they are successful in the market, does not mean they were designed for it. It also does not mean the author only had money on their mind when they wrote it.

I'm sure some of them perhaps saw an opportunity, knew what the market needed (or what would sell), and wrote a book based on the success rate of others.

This however does not lessen the challenge that is writing a book. Regardless what an author decides to write about, it's not easy. It still takes time and determination with the knowledge that there could be no payout in the end anyways. Writing is art, regardless of the topic and whether or not certain individuals appreciate it.

Furthermore, this occurrence in which you see a huge fluctuation of similar novels being published around the same time after successful sales in that genre, are not limited to teen fiction. 

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Jonnie Comet:

I'm going to agree with and disagree with Hazel's response. Just because they are successful in the market doesn't mean they were NOT designed for it. There's not much difference between a book being successful as literature and one being successful in the market. Personally I prefer the former; but maybe that's why I'm broke.

The philosophical definition of 'art' contains two major elements:

1. All art must be deliberate. It is done on purpose. Accidents are not art. Works of nature are not art. Art is what Man creates; Nature is what God creates. This is the classical Renaissance definition and, to those who are intellectually mature, this still stands up.

2. All art must make a statement. This is its purpose. It doesn't matter what the statement is, so long as it attempts to make a point about something-- really, anything. This is included in the twofold purpose of all literature and art-- 'to delight and instruct', or 'to educate and entertain'. As entertaining as all art is, it is merely a pretty picture or a chanted mantra without a purpose. Mere aesthetics is not art.

Now look at the teens' and children's books. Does the vampire story entertain you? Was it written deliberately (as opposed to by accident)? Does it have a message, attempting to make a point about something? No matter how banal, no matter if you disagree with it, no matter if you can't stand its style, genre, author's haircut or anything else, if it fulfils these basic criteria it is, essentially art. Taste isn't the issue-- purpose is.

Don't cloud the issue by contending it's designed to make money. There are many ways to make money. Making pipes makes money. Paving roads makes money. Reporting news makes money. None of these are art unless they fit the above definition. Literature that makes money is still literature. Maybe it's just distasteful literature.

(NO; journalism in its strictest, properest essence is only facts reporting. It is NOT 'art' per se.)

* * *

from Yahoo! Answers:

What type of female characters aren't there enough of?

-- e.g., personality and appearance wise and what they can do. Are action-type female characters rare? What are cliches that need to be avoided? What would be a refreshing character?

Jonnie Comet:

In my opinion (as a novelist) I don't see enough of what I call the 'triple threat'. In fact I raised my daughters to be triple threats, and both truly are.

The triple threat has three distinct attributes: beauty, brains and virtue. The fascinating sociological context of this is that about 90% of men, whilst attracted to the triple threat, can't handle more than two of those attributes. Beautiful and virtuous, but stupid? --good. Virtuous and intelligent, but ugly? --they expect that. Beautiful and intelligent, but an utter trollop? --they'll take that (actually prefer it!).

As a novelist I tend to write these characters all the time. I began it, after writing plenty of rather normal (humanly flawed) female characters, with the teenaged au pair in Pamela, or Virtue Reclaimed. I had a (female) friend read it and she asked, 'Why did you make her so beautiful?'

I said, 'If she weren't beautiful, she would have no power.'  Men flock to Pamela, because she is beautiful. (She has a knockout figure in fact.) But once they learn the other two things about her-- she is very bright (genius IQ) and very committed to premarital chastity-- they can't cope. Since they can't deny her beauty (since men are all essentially visual), they attempt to take down her brains, by debating at length with her (the book is full of these arguments, many based on reality), usually about why she won't go to bed with them. In the end, of course, Pamela marries beyond her expectations-- and I won't reveal more than that.

I have sort of kept to this heroine type in Deirdre, the Wanderer, essentially a foil to Pamela. Deirdre messes up just about everything; but at least she keeps (most of) her virtue. She is rather normal in brains and appearance, which is to say she is much more in both than she believes she is. Another heroine, in a very different context, is Janine, a first-person narrator in a fantasy-world series. Janine is more beautiful than Deirdre, normal intellectually, and less virtuous; but she is still essentially unattainable unless the boy of her dreams rises to meet her on her pedestal.

Most of what I write is very old-fashioned-- even chivalric literature. But this is what isn't being done today, in film, TV or novels. Much of what we see or read today (Hunger Games, Revolution, Pretty Little Liars) may start out well but fades into banal normalcy. I think we need heroines who are sharp, witty, resourceful and chaste whilst still able to look and act like ladies in ALL situations. THIS is the kind of girl character that would make guys read the book.

* * *

The Initiation of Janine

After a long wait (both by me and by some readers), this series is properly launched.  The novella The Initiaion of Janine is, if not the first ever, the first of the ‘A Tale of Two Paradises’ tales to be offered in both e-book and printed-book form.  It’s set in the fanciful world of the British Paradise Islands, a ‘long-forgotten arm of the British Empire’, somewhere in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (west of the Galapagos, north of Easter Island, east of Tahiti, south of Hawaii.  You figure it out).

Janine is a sweet little girl, indubitably cute and rather ordinary except for a few standout attributes which she will tell you about in her narration.  She is young– only second form, at the start– but is appreciably intellectual and tends to be a little more mature than most of her friends, who really are the embodiment of ‘normal’ girls in the BPI at this time.  They giggle and tease each other, play on swings (though they are ‘too big’), visit the beach, shop, and look at or dream about boys.  They are also sweetly affectionate with each other, and– at least to (too) many Western minds– extraordinarily ladylike, even prudish.

Janine’s story is about how, by degrees, she gradually comes to balance her own native prudishness with the desires and needs of the mature young lady she is, perhaps too rapidly, becoming.  It’s worth noting that part of the magic of the Paradise Islands is that the standards for maturity are younger and more comprehensive than they are in England or in the ’States.  As it says in the Foreword:

As a vestige of the formerly indigenous Polynesian culture, the age of majority for most milestones is young; at fifteen a Paradisian citizen may marry, enter into labour or tenant contracts, leave school, or engage in consensual sexual relations.  Though precocious, this right of young people to initiate and conduct their natural lives on their own is inextricably conjoined to the unwavering sense of propriety as established and regulated by the British– for example, education and job training are comprehensive, there is little public-assistance for the able-bodied, and judicial penalties for abuse of decency statutes tend to be harsh and an adequate deterrent to transgression.  Therefore it is vital to not judge too quickly on appearances; or, if one does, he had best assume all is much saner, safer, more modest and more dignified than it seems at first glance.

For those who have read more of my work, the theme of the eager ingenue embarking, not entirely by choice, on a course of social enlightenment will seem familiar.  It’s a favourite because it reminds us of the sad inevitability that all innocence is fleeting; that, once lost, some degree of innocence is lost forever; that it is true that you can’t un-ring a bell so we'd better appreciate what we were like before we knew what it sounded like.  But there is also a great opportunity, even for the one undergoing such profound and irrevocable change, to consciously retain the most important elements of virtue.  Growing older does not mean losing all goodness; it merely means one must develop an independent sense of what’s wrong and what’s right and to conduct oneself with a responsibility to one’s self and to those who matter.  Janine’s story is the story of one who, having realised she may have flung herself ahead rather earlier than she may have liked, regains her self-control and self-respect and learns to conduct her own behaviour on her own (eminently respectable) terms.

I wrote in The Absolutist: ‘Absence of commission or experience is not equal to virtue, which is the responsible and deliberate exercise and restraint of free will. ’  (http://jonniecometsabsolutist.blogspot.com/p/the-tenets-precepts-belonging-to-neo.html)

I always seem to come back to virtue as a principal theme in all my work.

For the curious, a preview is available.  This excerpt represents the first chapter of a ten-chapter work, somewhere about 11% of the total.  This should be sufficient to give an idea of the novel’s pacing, plot and character development, style and substance, as well as to introduce the unique story setting.  The paperback version of the book contains an addenda, edited by Colin and me, including footnotes for local ‘lingo’ and specific terms that won’t be familiar to people who don’t live in the BPI (which, if you think about it, is everyone in the real world!).

This is from someone else's book but it's funny.

A preview is available here– https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1175206

The paperback will be available shortly (mid-August-?).  The novella edition contains the glossed terms and the manga-styled artwork.

A ‘deluxe compilation’ is coming out as well; this contains The Initiation of Janine and also the next three episodes in Janine’s story, with addenda including glossed terms, maps, other documents and the artwork.  This shall be the model for further stories within the JOP and other ‘T2P’ story arcs: about 250-270 pages, amounting to four, five, maybe six separate but sequential episodes, with interesting add-ons such as maps, diagrams, lingo terms and cool (almost-saucy) artwork.

The Kindle e-text is available now–  http://www.amazon.com/Initiation-Janine-Paradise-Form-20010107-ebook/dp/B002JCT1NE/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8  This contains endnotes (not glossed in the body of the text; you have to scroll back and forth, the only way Kindle allows one to publish it) but no maps and no artwork.

  

As ever I appreciate all relevant and considerate comments and look forward to seeing this get popular.  Now it’s all up to you! 

* * *

On Hemingway, whom I cannot stand

from Yahoo! Answers:

Is Ernest Hemingway for children?

Or does he write for both?  :)

...



Jonnie Comet:

Emotionally, Hemingway was very immature; so I'm not surprised someone might ask this question. He was an emo coward who feared losing his own ideal of manliness. For example, he shot himself in the mouth because he hated how he felt that he needed, emotionally, the love of his ex-wife and sons, who had all grown distant from him (probably from feeling emotionally neglected by him all those years of the past).

I find most of his work, even that which people like to claim is his 'deepest', intellectually immature. 'Francis Macomber' is a good example. It's typically read in years 7-8-9 because the themes resonate best with adolescent, or pubescent, males. Big macho lion hunter falls for good-looking girl whose husband is a wimp. Big macho lion hunter is even more of a 'real man' because he can satisfy a woman whose husband isn't macho at all. All women want big macho lion-hunter guys. Women are frustrated if they marry white-collar city men. They need a good fast tumble in a tent to show them what a real man is. They can even get city women to shoot their wimpy husbands in the back 'accidentally' just so they can live their fantasy of having big macho lion-hunter guys.

This is a typical theme for Hemingway. Couple this with his absolutely awful moral messages (Islands in the Stream, Old Man and The Sea) and-- and I do not mean this as an insult to anyone-- it really takes an immature mind, such as that of a 13-year-old boy, to 'get' him. I've sat with (and learnt from) intellects, scholars and lecturers who claim I'm not getting it, that there's more to him than that. But after seeing Message in a Bottle, the film based on Nicholas Sparks' book, I realised all over again that I'd been right about EH after all. You see, Sparks is the new Hemingway, with the same sort of immature, tearjerking, and thoroughly pointless ending, showing not a drop of usable morality, that EH pioneered for him. Maybe if you admire shallow losers, you get it. I'm sorry; but I don't.

The fact that 'most' people admire Hemingway, just as they rave over Nicholas Sparks stories, may be saying something about the modern book/film audience that I don't want to put too fine a point on here.

* * *

A book is not a cake

from Yahoo! Answers:

Can you accurately determine if the plot of a book is good if you only read one chapter?

I'm asking about books in general.

Answer:

from Jonnie Comet


A good book should be good all over.  That said, many times the prospective reader/buyer isn't aware of the further content of the book from one chapter.  It may not be the style or skill of the author he notices or dislikes; it may just be the plot or theme of the book that he presumes to have assessed from the first chapter.  So it's entirely possible that a really well-written book with a truly gripping plot may just not appeal to someone who examines only one chapter (like an agent or publisher); and so that party drops the book and says 'Ta; but I won't.'

It's another case of how so many these days are looking for immediate gratification. We want the first seven words of the book to be good; and if they're not we claim to be already 'bored' with it.  If some will only read the first chapter, imagine when that begins to be only the first page, or first paragraph, or first sentence.  Can any of us truly judge a book on so little a sampling of it?  And, if so, what is the point of generating any work of literature at all?  (Maybe we should just sell our Tweets from now on.)

In John Boorman's Excalibur, Merlin compares life to a biscuit: 'What do you know if it, till you have tasted it? And then, of course, it's too late.' But for those who would say 'You don't have to eat the whole cake to know that it's good,' I would contend that a book is NOT akin to a cake.  A cake should be homogenous all the way through.  A book is full of varying tasty bits in diverse places, some of which are meant to take you by surprise-- so you won't have any inkling of them from the initial passage anyway.  The best way to decide if you'll like a book is to know something of its theme, characters, style and plot beforehand; and that's what good back-cover and promotional blurbs are for (and why we pay those who compose them the good money, after all).  If, after believing the book will grab, respect and arrest your interest, you find the book is nothing but abject naff, that's what 'bad reviews' are for.   :)


* * *

On writing cross-gender narrative

from Yahoo! Answers Canada:

Open Question

 

Help with a short story question..?

I read 'The Groom Service' by Michael Dorris but there is one question that I'm stumped on.  It asks: 

'What impact does a male author have on the content of the story?'

The short story is basically about a Native boy in a society where woman rule and ultimately in order to marry his prospective wife he needs to do things like hunt in order to see that he is worthy.

The author of this short story is male but I'm not sure how he would have any impact on this woman-dominated society. Any ideas?

First answer (still-open question)

Jonnie Comet

I think it is vital for any author to develop a sense of himself, or herself, OUTSIDE that of the characters he or she writes. In other words, the author must not automatically identify himself or herself with characters, even the principal ones-- and especially when it comes to gender.
 
I have always written fiction, since I was 15. This is a very long time now. For the first 20 years I tended to write in the first person, when telling a story with a male protagonist, and in the third-person omniscient when it came to stories about other principal characters. The male narrators were easy-- they were like myself. I now view this as essentially immature for a writer; but in those days I was immature as a writer and it was all I knew. In writing with female main characters, I was essentially an outsider, an observer of female points of view but not an actor of them. (I mean, how could I have been otherwise? I am male-- always have been.) Even when I got married, my wife was still a separate person from me.
 
Then two things happened-- I got America OnLine in the 1990s, and I raised two daughters (no sons). I learned female points of view by observing them much more closely, and I developed a few online novels in which I posted the mentality of a female character and allowed readers to interact with it (in today's terms we would call this a 'blog'). I learned how other men, other than myself, treat women, almost as though I were in the place of the women, and was able to incorporate that into my work. The prime result was my epistolary (first-person, in journals or letters) novel Pamela; or Virtue Reclaimed. 
 
Virtue Reclaimed was modelled on the 1740 epistolary novel Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded, an epistolary novel by then-53-year-old Samuel Richardson who drew on his experience as a teen reading novels to girls in sewing circles (and hearing all their chatter and gossip) and his later experience in writing etiquette guides. From reading his Virtue Rewarded I learned not only that a male writer can depict a female POV credibly (the book was a best-seller in the 1740s and the first novel printed in America) but that it just may appeal to female writers all the more. Everyone who read bits of my Virtue Reclaimed has adored it-- their most common question being, 'However did you get that young girl's POV so perfectly?' 
 
Currently I am promoting Deirdre, the Wanderer, a series about a teenaged runaway who hitchhikes the world on a shoestring. All the reviews have praised the accuracy of details and the believability of the character herself. Deirdre is as real an ordinary teenaged girl as ever there was in literature-- 'modest, lovably imperfect Deirdre, who may well be one of modern literature's most engaging protagonists' (from the publisher's press release for the second instalment of the series).
 
It all comes down to the writer's skill, not only with words and writing but in his or her empathy for the human condition. For example, in my series, Deirdre isn't described in terms of her hair colour, height, lips texture or bra size, like many physically-minded men might have done. In fact that stuff is never even mentioned at all. That's too subjective and irrelevant anywhere. If I called her blonde and shapely, slender brunettes might not want to relate. The more important point is that Deirdre is any girl, anywhere, suffering the same stuff as any girl would in the same situations-- and you fill in the details about what she looks like with your own impressions.
 
If I have to say so myself (which I don't), I am apparently pretty good at this. I lay it down to my inherent and intuitive respect for all girls and women everywhere. And I believe it's this kind of consideration that can make any writer ascend to some higher level in being an observer of human interaction-- as Jane Austen always claimed one must be.
 
'If you can do it, do it.' --from Love Me Do, by Jonnie Comet (that's me!).


* * *

On having a personal library

from Yahoo! Answers

Open Question

I want to start a mini library- where do I start?

Something in between $150-200 is my price range for buying books.  What size of bookshelf do I need?  Is it easy to find bargain books?  Is it cheaper in Indigo/Chapters or online?


Jonnie Comet

I can't answer this question because I didn't 'plan' my 'library'.  I just acquired books I wanted to read and read them. Now I have probably a thousand books, mostly paperback versions of major literature (chiefly 18th-C novels of manners), young teens' lit (because I taught it), young and self-published authors' works (because I encourage them), and philosophy and history works (because it is tangential to my major). Shelves came because I needed them.  This collection, including several hundred antiques, is probably worth six or seven thousand US dollars.

That said, in the 18th C. it was common for people to 'plan' household libraries. In a great house, a gentleman with no particular desire for reading would come into a room called 'the library', and he would have to furnish it. People bought books by the running foot-- 'I need 147 running feet of books for these shelves' --and then hire a guy to go into the city and procure them. The gentleman didn't care what they were-- he would never read them. They were just wall dressing.

Flash forward to The Great Gatsby (1925) in which Owl Eyes is wandering about JG's great library and takes down a few volumes, observing that the pages have not been cut. Books were printed in multiples of 16 pages so that the paper of the pages could be folded first and bound into the book. Then someone would have to slice the folded ends that remained on the outside (which is why some 'old' books have rough-edged or ripped pages). Owl Eyes marvels at this. 'What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too-- didn't cut the pages.'  He applauds Gatsby, who was trying to make a great impression with this library of books he would never read, for being honest enough to have not cut the pages to make it look like he HAD read them. It was phony and Gatsby let it look that way.

It sounds to me you want a Gatsby library. The best libraries are NOT impressive collections of the 'right' books. They are just collections of what we readers like to have about us, so we can savour seeing these books over and over, and savour reading them over and over. Get the books YOU like, ignore everyone else, and don't call it a 'library' at all. It's for only you.

(That reminds me-- as I am moving onto my boat I can no longer keep all my books. Anyone want to peruse MY library and take home a few? --wink)

* * *

How long does it take to become a good writer?

from Yahoo! Answers--

How long does it take to become a good writer?

My writing skills suck, and that's putting it nicely. I was wondering how long it takes to become a good writer and how to become a really good writer?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Jonnie Comet

It takes decades.

Start by reading.  Read all the literature you can.  Enjoy and understand the stories; but pay attention to the authors' craft-- how they use the language, how they describe things, how they set up the plot and provide suspense, and so on.  There is nothing wrong with sort of copying another author's style, at least when you are getting started.  Many people have begun this way.  I wrote Love Me Do as a modern (1970s) take on The Great Gatsby.  My style is/was very different from Fitzgerald's; but even when I teach Gatsby in the classroom today I am sort of amazed at myself for having understood (and sort of copied) his book so well... when I was 17.  And Love Me Do is not at all a bad book.

The second thing, as you begin to read a lot, is to try to discern good writing from bad.  Avoid Nicholas Sparks and Stephanie Meyer.  They tell great stories but their craft is not worth emulating.  They write after their audience-- 8th-year girls.  Move on from that. Read Vonnegut, Rand, Delterfield, Trollope. Explore stuff you never thought you would like. Again, study craft. 

Sting, the bass player for The Police, once said, 'Whenever I run out of song ideas I go back to my craft.'  He sits and plays the bass for hours on end, for days on end. And we thought this guy was good; and still he practises.  Why? --because there is truth in the adage that one learns well by doing.   So, do.  Write everything and anything that comes into your mind.   Read, think of something, write that down.  Critique films, TV, the books you read-- decide what is bad and good about each.  Criticise your own writing from days/months/years ago.   Improve it.  This is not playing for an audience; it is practice.  But it's the only way you can grow.  To avoid attempts, even when they (will) end in failure, is to choose to not improve.  You can't pitch a ball till you try to do it.   So, try.  Fail.  Learn.  Try again.  Fail again.   Learn more.  And repeat. 

As you write, go back to the books you liked, read alternate passages, and compare them.  Is your grammar/mechanics/spelling/usage equivalent to that guy's?  If not, why not?   Evaluate and improve.  This is called editing.   It's been said that there are no great writers; there are only diligent editors.  All writers are editors before they are 'famous published authors'. Get out of your head the idea that the first endeavour is the purest, the sweetest, the most valuable because it's so pure and sweet and original.  That's Romantic; and whatever they write, no good writers are purely Romantic.   They believe in hard work-- and that lies in editing, revising, critiquing, really looking judiciously at what they have written. There is nothing accidental or innocent or 'pure' about it.  All art, including literature, must be deliberate.  It's what makes it 'art' (artifice: that which Man creates).

During the editing process, I take my work in a 3-ring binder to the beach.  (It's where I live.)   I sit there reading like it's someone else's work, like it's from a student or someone, with a blue pen in hand, and truly beat up the whole text.  'Stop repeating,' I write.   'Delete this,' I write.  'What idiot wrote this?' I write.  I put myself into the mindset of the reader.  Then I fix it so 'he' will like it (even when it's just me). It's all about the reader.   If you don't serve the reader, why are you writing?  You write to be read-- that is the definition of an author.  So think of how it reads when you read it.  If it rots, fix it.   That's your job.

I'm sorry for preaching at you but there is really no easy way to do this without just doing it.  There is no app for your iPhone that you can buy and install and *become* a good writer.  You have to just start doing it, like riding a skateboard.   And you will fall on your bottom and become injured-- in this case, in your ego-- and you deserve to get slapped about a bit by it and then you will learn.  And you will go at it again, and again.  And then you will have succeeded, because you will have succeeded.  And no-one can ever take that from you.

There are plenty of easier things to do.  You could sell flowers in a shop.  You could flip burgers at McDonald's.  You could deliver newspapers (does anyone still do that?).  But you want to write.  So what are you reading this drivel for?  Start writing. 

* * * 

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

I thank you for giving your time to help me and help me realize that it's not going to be an easy process, more like a difficult one. This was a good answer, thank you.

This question about "How long does it tak… " was originally asked on Yahoo! Answers United Kingdom

  

Which Hurqhada? --on 'period' research.

I have been doing a edit of Deirdre, the Adventurer, essentially a content edit on a text that was ‘more or less’ done in 2008 (I had got involved with SCS by then and devoted effort to ‘new’ paperback editions of Wanderer, Vol. 1, and Oyster’s Pearl, Vol 2).  It needs a bit of fleshing-out as well as some clarification (and elimination!) of details and so I have been revisiting some of the particulars of the story, especially as it progresses through Greece, Egypt and India.

At this point of Vol. 3, Deirdre hitchhikes south along the Suez road and winds up in Hurqhada on the Red Sea shore.  This episode takes place in October-November 2000.  But what I have found was that there is no real information available on the Internet about Hurqhada during that time period.

Unfortunately this is typical of the Internet these days-- everything is so focussed on the newest and latest that history itself is becoming irrelevant (witness Facebook’s ‘Timeline’, in which nothing before a member’s joining FB is mentioned).  I am put in mind of how ubiquitous the Atlantis resort at Nassau’s ‘Paradise Island’ is (just Google ‘Nassau’ and see how many of the first ten images are of this monstrosity).  Note that nothing is ever mentioned any more that, as late as the 1980s, Atlantis was just a sand-dune island covered in beachgrass where pigs were herded-- and it was called Hog Island.  (Enjoy your stay at Hog Island, friends.)

This is not a war zone-- this is construction.  The whole town looks like this.

In doing this sort of research I have identified two major issues (problems) with researching a ‘period’ piece of fiction:

1. Most information available through modern means (i.e., the Internet) is only current.  This is a problem when you need information from 10 or 12 years ago about entities that were there then but are not now (the Straw Market in Nassau, which burned down in about 2003) or must avoid entities that are there now but were not then (the big outlet mall at the end of Nassau’s East Bay Street, itself recently rehabilitated, that was built in 2005).

2. Most-- nearly ALL-- information about exotic places is meant for the tourist, not the researcher.  This is a problem if you need to know which day the rubbish is collected, or how much two-bedroom flats cost, or what the high-school term schedule is like, in, say, St John’s, Antigua.   All you get are airfares, hotel rates, and leisure activities.  You get nothing about the very real people who live, work, learn and pay taxes there.

Originally I had bought a really good road map of the region (at Borders!) and later looked up the place on Google Earth, where I was gratified to see that Hurqhada was represented by a satellite image from about 2003.  This was sufficient for Deirdre’s time period (she is there in October-November 2000).  Since that time development has increased exponentially, to where Hurqhada is now the prime Disney World-like resort of the whole Middle East.

When I first have Deirdre land in Hurqhada, she remarks that the place looks like a war zone.  This was evident to me from Google Earth; I later discovered that it was evidence of massive development going on all over the region.  Streets are being made or torn up, construction supplies are everywhere-- and yet the photos, aerial and otherwise, show no details about the people doing the work, their vehicles, their work schedules, and especially not where they live.  The reality behind the promise of new resort space is kept hidden, the unattractive underbelly of a region in transition from a sleepy fishing village to a first-class, world-renowned resort.

In part due to my own frustration I made sure to have Deirdre make comments about this; in her idealistic, youthful pseudo-liberalism she wonders what changes will be imposed on the locals whom she admires and cares little for the paying guests who invade Egypt and who have no care at all for the locals’ ways (which she respects and studies at length).

This recent aerial view of Hurqhada shows the developed waterfront busily entertaining tourists whilst 300 metres west, a new resort will rise upon the huge clearing of sand.  Imagine the dust, concrete powder, noise and ugly earthmovers disturbing your (expensive) holiday in the sun.

So we novelists are left with a dilemma: how to depict a location during a time period of the past without being able to ensure we’ve got it accurately.  Now I know there is a simple solution to this: we write fiction; therefore we just make it up.  Fortunately, in the case of Hurqhada, no-one will be able to tell.  Since the information about what the place was like in 1999-2001 is not available to me, it’s probably not available to anyone else either.  The only people who could debate with authority would be those who were there on holiday in that time period; and that’s just about no-one, since no-one had holidays there back then.  And of course I don’t have to be so particular as to state something that couldn’t be considered credible given even the least bit of latitude.  That's only the novelist's job, after all: to depict a reality that isn't real, yet 'feels' real, without confusing it for the reality that really is.

I just prefer to have it right, when I ever can, that’s all.  But… oh, well.

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On narrative quirks

As much as I enjoy the telling of a story, especially through copious use of dialogue and characters' internal monologue, I have a personal peeve about using sentence fragments in the narrative of a novel.  I fear it looks amateurish-- having seen plenty of eighth-year writing like that-- and believe that a narrative should stand as universal, as the one constant of the story, and as such it should be respectably and even formally presented.

Now I know there are exceptions of this rule.  One is when the narrative style is set up from the start to be a kind of internal monologue by a character.  This character does not have to be one in the story; the narrator, even a detached third-person one, can be a kind of character for the telling of the story.  Even Jonathan Swift, that proponent of a strict 'language police', has done this and with good effect.

Another exception, of course, is when the narrator is an active character in the book, such as in my own Deirdre series and in countless other works.  In such examples the narrator's discussion style can either make or break the whole story.  (I will boast that the one consistent observation of especially female readers is about how 'right' I seem to have got the heroine's thought processes.  So, it works.)  But a narrator with charisma and, even more important, something of merit to say, will win over the readership every time.

A very personable narrator, even a detached one, can be effected by the use of narrative and even grammatical devices. In Deirdre the first-person narrator is essentially articulate and perhaps of above-average education for her age, and she does use some fragments but certainly not to any excess. The story is about events and information, not about her personal reactions to what happens (those come through in her actions and words themselves) and so frags like 'Maybe not.' and 'In my face.' do not occur as a rule.

In dialogue the matter is quite different.  Few people speak habitually in absolutely-correct SWEE (Standard Written and Edited English)  and the use of fragments, unfinished thoughts, interjections such as 'um' and 'uh', verbal quirks and other shortcomings in usage and grammar can be very deftly used to reinforce the uniqueness of the characters.  But the rule here must be one of consistency.  Many writers make the error of making all their characters talk the same way, with the same (the author's, usually) idiom, grammar and vocabulary.  Keeping character's speech patterns distinctive can also help in eliminating the too frequent repetitions of 'he said' and 'she said', as the separate speaking styles of the characters will differentiate them from each other.

Sadly, as with dialogue, it is all too easy for an author to fall into his own verbal style when writing the narrative.  It's too easily overlooked or taken for granted; and the all-too-common post-romantic self-focus deludes many writers into believing that how they use the language as individuals is how best to communicate a novel's story to the world at large.  This is akin to constructing a house with poor foundation and framework-- no matter how prettily you dress it up inside and out, and no matter how workable the form and function of the design, no-one will be able to long ignore the inadequacies of the fundamental structure because they will affect every other part of the visit.

I believe the story should have its own 'character', sort of like I said above.  The whole 'feel' and 'mood' of a novel comes across by how the narrative is presented.  For my part I choose to hold the narrative itself somewhat elevated from the dialogue, insisting on SWEE as well as it can be done.  One of my projects (still long in the future) is a series of 1740s novels of manners in which the narrative is given in 20th/21st-C English, to ensure accessibility to modern readers, but lines of dialogue appear in the mid-18th-C English of Johnson, both to be historically accurate and to illuminate readers as to how people really talked then.  This is almost the opposite of what I did in a book like Love Me Do, in which the narrative is in the same reliable Queen's English but the dialogue appears very much in 1970s middle-class American vernacular.

Of course there are as many approaches to narrative as there are authors.  For what I write, I do not have value for too conversational a style.  I view a novel as much more sacrosanct than that; and, for most novel-length endeavours, writing like a comprehensive-school eighth-year with slang, jargon, abbreviations and numerals, phonetic spelling, grammatical imperfections and sentence fragments will not do.  This is not just an academic point to be read and disregarded over time.  I would make the entirely unequivocal submission that in such inadequate writing the whole point of the story itself can become lost.  And, if anything, the prime directive of all writing should be to not irritate and disinterest an otherwise eager reader through an  author's misuse of the language.  After all, an author is writing to be read and to be published; and to have his work to die a premature death due to poor editing and preparation with regard to basic grammar and usage has got to be the worst way to go. --and the most easily avoided.

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Jonnie Comet on writing & novels

from a PR flyer, 12 September 2011--

Who, or what, is a Jonnie Comet?

One of my professors once asked me this, seeing it on some piece of text, and even some of my students have been stumped by it, which I suppose was part of the intention. Actually the name was a suggestion by my brother Rino for the name of a new band in 1978 or 1979. I thought it sounded too 1950s and rejected it out of hand.

Sometime after that I altered the spelling to appear androgynous and created an on-stage persona, some cross between Luke Skywalker and Robin Hood, a naïve though effective futuristic do-gooder featured in the songs of the Archer In The Wood and Shoot For The Stars LP projects.  By the end of the 1980s I had gone to work for corporate America and made something of a name for myself in a very specific industry; and so, when it came time to hawk Love Me Do to publishers, I chose to retain my old band’s name as a nom de plume to keep the two career paths from converging.   In each discrete circle, in order to maintain the separation, I do not mention the other name except, if it comes up, as a third-person entity.

When did you first become interested in writing?

As a child I read copiously, early and well-- in kindergarten the teacher used to have me bring in books, sit me on a table and have me read to the class since no-one else could read at kindergarten in those days. I was two or three reading levels ahead by the time I started 7th year. In critical-writing assignments I was an original voice that most teachers didn’t know what to do with. If they were mere pedants they would nitpick my grammar and spelling; if they had any sort of vision as educators they got used to just giving me an A if it had my name on top of it.

The earliest original story I can remember writing was in 5th year when a friend suckered me into doing a standup comedy routine for the class (not for an assignment, but just because) and gave me the job of writing copy for a mock news report (like a 5th-year version of SNL’s ‘Weekend Update’!). By the time I was 15 I was into the habit of writing down really cool dreams I had; one of them actually became the core of Love Me Do.

What did you do before writing novels?

I have written fiction with the aim of developing novels since I was about 15. But throughout my adult life I really have worked as a draughtsman, a liquor salesman, a boatbuilder, a delivery skipper, a private tutor, a warehouseman, a janitor, a carpenter, a skateboard assembler, a surfboard shaper, a purchasing agent, a designer of yacht hardware, a bookshop clerk, a teacher of secondary English, and of course as a working songwriter, producer and musician with a variety of outfits before and after The Jonnie Comet Band in the early 1980s.

What experiences have you had that you believe contribute to your voice as a writer?

At the age of 19 I found myself dispensing advice to younger friends (who were mostly girls, essentially groupies of the band) in Surf City. I cannot say that I had any more knowledge than they did about their personal social-life matters; but they trusted me enough to consult me with them and I did my best to rely on common sense, moral propriety and good will in helping them through them. The experience taught me two things: that I cared about people, especially young and impressionable ones, and that I had some skill as a communicator of concepts and ideals.

This sensitivity for the whole prospect of being a teenager was further nurtured when I began teaching secondary school and discovered I had students who often took me into their confidence with issues they would not mention to their own parents. They trusted in my guidance because they already knew for sure that I was a staunchly moral adult who knew how to listen and truly cared. I have always regarded their faith in me as a sort of sacred trust and a very high honour; and I like to believe I have been of great comfort to them all.

I realised that the reason I wanted to teach school was the same as the reason I wanted to be a rock-and-roll star: because I believed I had a message of honesty, decency and unconditional love to convey to other people. If I did not make much money in this pursuit, I did gain some peace of mind that having followed a course of virtue I may have helped people be happier and healthier along the way.

Aside from my worldly experiences in work and play I think this getting to know myself and what made me tick as a person is the crucial key to the relevance and uniqueness of Jonnie Comet’s voice as a writer.

What do you think is the most important feature of any novel?

All good stories are about characters. The definition of a ‘character’ can be very broad; good books have been written about animals (The Bear), computers (2001), or places (Ringworld). But what we look for is the development of some entity with whom we can feel empathy. Even when stories are inherently plot-driven, such as those Clancy writes, there are still people within them to be affected by, and to affect, the course of the events. When we recognise the humanity within the characters, we put ourselves in their places, feel what they feel, enter their struggles and cheer for their successes. We then realise that it’s been the book that does this to us, that gives us this gift; and that’s a book we consider a success at having entertained, enlightened and enlivened us. It's what I hope people will see in [Deirdre, the Wanderer].

What do you think makes a story worth reading?

Every ‘good’ story has some combination of good characters, good plot, and good style-- including good mechanical use of the language. Details are well-researched and sensibly presented.   There is a balance between narrative and dialogue-- some things are better told through action and some through the characters themselves.  Most of all the story needs a voice.  A first-person narrator should be engaging, inviting and then keeping us in the story. I like to think Deirdre is one of these-- you will read the story because she’s the one telling it. But a third-person ‘voice’ can be just as engaging, a character in itself that keeps our interest.  My favourite ‘voices’ come from 18th-C authors such as Henry Fielding and Ann Radcliffe; but that’s my taste and others will have other preferences.

Ultimately a good ‘story’ needs a good message, some theme to leave us with when it’s come to the end. This is vital, sort of the raison d’etre of the whole book. Absent this, we will wonder what we were supposed to have got out of it; its worth will have seemed purely superficial.

In your opinion what makes a book a work of ‘literature’?

All literature must have at its core this two-part rationale: to educate and to entertain. In no small part the proportion of these two determines the style and genre. For example all good lectures and sermons are literature, because they must do both, perhaps more so to educate than to entertain. Comedy sketches are literature but may be in the reverse proportion. By this definition straight news reporting is not literature; its purpose, though to be interesting, is not to entertain but to inform. Conversely a story with no underlying educative message is only fluff.

The worth of a given book as literature depends on its author’s management of this proportion.  DTW is literature that entertains the reader with a clever story most engagingly told; but beyond that it is a lesson in the necessity of having to face negative circumstances of your own making. The reader is subtly cautioned throughout that an exciting concept such as striking out on your own might finish up being fraught with yet-unforeseen difficulties, which, perhaps due to pride or naïveté, no teenager ever wants to admit could actually exist, let alone befall her personally.

Is it true you live on a boat?

In season my home base is my sailboat. It is not big but it is an extension of both my need for limitless freedom and my need for a cosy cave to curl up in. In the off-season (or when it just gets too cold, rainy, or otherwise awkward) I will crash on friends or family. For some reason they tolerate me. Though by nature I am a ‘free spirit’, I have often found myself tied-down by circumstances and so the writing of Deirdre, the Wanderer has been a catharsis for me, a way of living vicariously through a fictional narrative-- the same impression I hope readers get from the book.

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On back-cover blurbs

In the writers' circle to which I belong I have often mentioned that the 100-word blurb (the one on Amazon and on the back of the cover) is one of the most important parts of book marketing. It is painfully ironic that the people who publish and distribute books don't like to take a lot of time to read much about them. They are as lazy as many other readers.  So as an author or book promoter you have to be quick, interesting and unique.  You have to interest someone as early as possible, even to get him to read till the end of your 100 words.  And you need to make him want to pay $19.00 for the book (or $6.95 plus $79.00 for the Kindle).

I actually enjoy writing an introductory blurb.  It's an exercise in brevity (something I could always use) and it's fun to try to depict the book accurately and as efficiently as possible.  Andy Warhol once suggested that each of us will be famous for 15 minutes.  (I don't know if I've got to my 15 minutes yet.  Maybe I am just an optimist.)  Imagine, now, that you were granted one minute of your fame to depict your book to people who, if they liked how it sounded, would buy it, read it and rave about it till you became a millionaire from the book sales.  This might be your one chance at stardom.  What would you say to such an opportunity?

At the risk of appearing self-important here, I shall pose my opening chapter to Deirdre, the Oyster's Pearl as a pretty good example:

http://www.amazon.com/Deirdre-Oysters-Pearl-Jonnie-Comet/dp/1448635799/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_11
Please don't count the words; it won't flatter either of us!

Here is the one for the forthcoming Sylvia:

http://authorjonniecomet.blogspot.com/2012/01/sylvia-or-revenge-of-slave.html

This is longer, intentionally so; but it sets up enough of the story itself that you have an idea of what to expect.  This blurb may be edited later as the book nears completion.  As yet I have not wholly addressed some of the plot elements this blurb hints at and so I maintain this blurb as a kind of guide to what has to be covered by the text proper.

I won't claim that my blurbs are anything terrific; I view them as mere tools to accomplish what I need for them to do, no differently than I view the clever little tools I have made to facilitate the restoration of the boat.  The tools are not the boat; they are the means for me to benefit from the boat and for the boat to earn its keep.

And so goes for the blurbs we have to write for our books.  For my part I believe that these blurbs are adequate to introduce the book in such a way that the book itself appears interesting.  To do this I prefer to pose questions or to leave cliffhangers that can only be satisfied by reading more than the first third of the actual book.  And I do aggrandise or exaggerate certain plot elements in order to make them seem more like the core of the story-- the same as the preview does for the feature film.  Watch the 'trailer' feature on some DVD film you have to see how often it distorts or even misrepresents the film you know so well.  This is part of salesmanship; and, though we are all much more artists in our writing, we must learn some degree of marketing in order to survive-- and, perhaps more importantly, ensure that our work survives our efforts in promoting it during our lifetimes.  So don't be afraid to really pump up your work in those 100 words.  Make it seem like the greatest thing there ever was-- so long as it's really representing the story you really wrote and not the one you only should have done!

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