My old friend and colleague from the Hong Kong days, Bruce Humes, has just had a book he translated from Chinese to English long-listed for a nice award.
Bruce says:
I’ve just learned that Last Quarter of the Moon, my translation of Chi Zijian’s 《额尔古纳河右岸》, has been nominated for the “Mountain Fiction and Poetry Award.” Winners will be announced November 6, 2014 at The Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival in Banff, Alberta
You can read his post about it here. Bruce and I toiled for the same publishing company for a few years and I am happy for his success with this book and wanted more people to know about it.
Living in the great out there.
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Continuation Literature
Emerging trends are slippery things. Some are driven by a demand for whatever is trending, others are an attempt to fill a demand with a substitute. I am reminded that heroine was introduced to the Western world as a substitute of morphine, and I worry that some other unfortunate substitutions might have bad results as well. After all, these things aren't thought out, except my marketers, whose only criteria, by definition, is that it sell.
An article on BBC discusses continuation literature, which is basically the idea that there is no reason a popular writer shouldn't continue producing new books simply because they are dead. In a way, this is a bit like fan fiction. You put known and beloved characters in new situations and enjoy the result. The difficulties I have with this are twofold: first, the books are chained to a static world. The living writer was free to change things, kill off characters or change their nature if that suited them. The best another writer, a good and well-intentioned writer can do, is stick with the establish characters.
The second issue is that it tends to make a mockery of the whole idea of being a writer. If I've never heard of a book, I might buy it based on who wrote it. I love series, but if I am new to Miss Marple, and get hooked, and see there are fifteen in the series, I will be rather pissed if halfway through I find they are written by someone else. And author isn't a brand, folks (I do know it is popular to think so) but a voice. A unique voice and another writer, regardless of skill isn't going to write the same. I love Sherlock Holmes but should point out that the Holmes of Conan Doyle is not the Holmes of Laurie King. Personally I love Laurie King's approach of continuing the saga, extending a character but in a new and different way. And there is no pretense that it has much to do with Doyle.
If writing books by a dead person is wonderful, why not extend it. I rather like the books of Milan Kundera and Haruki Murakami and wouldn't mind writing one in the style of each. Hell, why don't we swap around? They can write my next two books and I'll write one under each of their names? To keep things fair, seeing as they have a few more fans than I, they'll probably want the royalties collected for the book under their names, so we need to chat. I'm good with that. Milan, Haruki, give me a call.
While I wait for the calls I am starting a new project in which I write books by dead people who never actually wrote any books but would have had a damn good yarn to tell if they had. Watch for my coming novel FATAL ATTRACTION by Mata Hari.
An article on BBC discusses continuation literature, which is basically the idea that there is no reason a popular writer shouldn't continue producing new books simply because they are dead. In a way, this is a bit like fan fiction. You put known and beloved characters in new situations and enjoy the result. The difficulties I have with this are twofold: first, the books are chained to a static world. The living writer was free to change things, kill off characters or change their nature if that suited them. The best another writer, a good and well-intentioned writer can do, is stick with the establish characters.
The second issue is that it tends to make a mockery of the whole idea of being a writer. If I've never heard of a book, I might buy it based on who wrote it. I love series, but if I am new to Miss Marple, and get hooked, and see there are fifteen in the series, I will be rather pissed if halfway through I find they are written by someone else. And author isn't a brand, folks (I do know it is popular to think so) but a voice. A unique voice and another writer, regardless of skill isn't going to write the same. I love Sherlock Holmes but should point out that the Holmes of Conan Doyle is not the Holmes of Laurie King. Personally I love Laurie King's approach of continuing the saga, extending a character but in a new and different way. And there is no pretense that it has much to do with Doyle.
If writing books by a dead person is wonderful, why not extend it. I rather like the books of Milan Kundera and Haruki Murakami and wouldn't mind writing one in the style of each. Hell, why don't we swap around? They can write my next two books and I'll write one under each of their names? To keep things fair, seeing as they have a few more fans than I, they'll probably want the royalties collected for the book under their names, so we need to chat. I'm good with that. Milan, Haruki, give me a call.
While I wait for the calls I am starting a new project in which I write books by dead people who never actually wrote any books but would have had a damn good yarn to tell if they had. Watch for my coming novel FATAL ATTRACTION by Mata Hari.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Rainy day blogging and publishing
Thanks to those who responded to the story about the creative assistant. Pat confirmed that it was a Tokay gecko. I have to find out if this one is a mongo Tokay or just on the large size of normal. Uncle Steve reminded me that Carlos Castenada was taught divination with lizards and suggested that I not limit the new friend to the duties of an assistant. That merits investigation as well.
My apologies to those who tried to leave comments and found that they couldn't. I didn't realize that this software defaulted to letting only registered users leave comments and that has been fixed now.
Other things going on... My coauthor Jim Beckett is taking his turn on the final draft of our novel THE INVENTION OF CLAY McKENZIE, which we will be publishing in ebook and paperback. The publishing empire grows and FLOAT STEET PRESS now has four paperbacks out through CreateSpace. The first two were THE LEGEND OF RON ANEJO and FLOAT STREET NOTES, then we published an adult crime/suspense story A BURGLAR IN MALAY
by Kurt Dysan, a fellow traveler in these parts, who has been writing for years but need encouragement to publish.
Unlikely Stories: Fatal Fantasies and Delusions
working on getting them linked together but all are available through Amazon. The ebooks also find their way into Barnes & Noble, Diesel, Kobo, Sony, iTunes and so on through Smashwords and you can always find the books in almost every ebook format there.
This will build up slowly. It has taken most of a year to get to this point, but there are many good things in the works. And SE Asia is a wonderful place to work, even if now I need to go into town and muster enough Khmer words to get someone to find and fix an intermittent problem in one of the motorbikes.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
A New Creative Assistant
Everyone knows that writers need all the help they can get, so I was pleased to find that a local has volunteered to help me with my struggles. It is good to have someone who not only appreciates the struggle of making art but also has an extensive knowledge of the local environment.
I don't know my new assistant's name, or even if he or she has one (yes, the CV was a bit sparse in places but there have been remarkably few applicants and this one seemed of good character and rather fearless -- two admirable qualities). Perhaps some of you could make a suggestion. Now bear in mind that this is a rather large lizard and I doubt some cutesie gecko name would be appropriate or appreciated. Since the pay for this position is paltry, showing the proper respect will prove important in retaining our first staff member here at Float Street Press.
The new assistant has many virtues, not the least of which is being somewhat indifferent to gravitational forces. I can only hope that this provides a certain immunity to depression.
So any names that come to mind would be appreciated. And despite the rather distinct coloration, management here has already discounted "spot" as being too saccharine. But I look forward to your ideas.
I don't know my new assistant's name, or even if he or she has one (yes, the CV was a bit sparse in places but there have been remarkably few applicants and this one seemed of good character and rather fearless -- two admirable qualities). Perhaps some of you could make a suggestion. Now bear in mind that this is a rather large lizard and I doubt some cutesie gecko name would be appropriate or appreciated. Since the pay for this position is paltry, showing the proper respect will prove important in retaining our first staff member here at Float Street Press.
The new assistant has many virtues, not the least of which is being somewhat indifferent to gravitational forces. I can only hope that this provides a certain immunity to depression.
So any names that come to mind would be appreciated. And despite the rather distinct coloration, management here has already discounted "spot" as being too saccharine. But I look forward to your ideas.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Finishing a book means you get to write the next one
I just finished writing a book with my good friend Jim Beckett. It was largely a long distance cowrite, with him in the US and me in Asia, which produced its own challenges, but overall it was a fun experience. I have written with other writers before, but on nonfiction projects, mostly about computers and voice recognition. So Jim and I needed to work out a method that let us collaborate, push each other, and then agree on some final choices.
As I said, it went rather well. Jim and I were always both focused on what made the book better, with little regard for who was doing what (which generally depended on who had the idea and energy for the task). My agent, Rebecca Pratt, is reading it now, and will give her thoughts on how marketable it is, but that is, and always has to be a separate issue for me.
Jim and I had bounced several story ideas off each other when we launched this project, sitting in his living room in Silver City, New Mexico, and perhaps we will pick up one of those to tackle in the future. More likely, we will take the lessons learned in writing this one and come up with something new altogether. Time will tell. In the meantime, I am working on another book project that is moving along nicely. I can't keep from writing, and usually have several stories in some stage of development, so there is never a problem in having something to work on.
I find it an interesting contrast to write one story with another writer, and then go back to work on one that is entirely mine. When it is all yours, you have the freedom to do almost anything, but you have to provide all the effort, the ideas, and inspiration. Both are good and interesting ways to work. And working, keeping writing, is the important thing; although I want to finish books, get them published and see them being read, I want to be deeply involved in the next one.
As I said, it went rather well. Jim and I were always both focused on what made the book better, with little regard for who was doing what (which generally depended on who had the idea and energy for the task). My agent, Rebecca Pratt, is reading it now, and will give her thoughts on how marketable it is, but that is, and always has to be a separate issue for me.
Jim and I had bounced several story ideas off each other when we launched this project, sitting in his living room in Silver City, New Mexico, and perhaps we will pick up one of those to tackle in the future. More likely, we will take the lessons learned in writing this one and come up with something new altogether. Time will tell. In the meantime, I am working on another book project that is moving along nicely. I can't keep from writing, and usually have several stories in some stage of development, so there is never a problem in having something to work on.
I find it an interesting contrast to write one story with another writer, and then go back to work on one that is entirely mine. When it is all yours, you have the freedom to do almost anything, but you have to provide all the effort, the ideas, and inspiration. Both are good and interesting ways to work. And working, keeping writing, is the important thing; although I want to finish books, get them published and see them being read, I want to be deeply involved in the next one.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Writing--the tough racket
Writing well is a tough racket and good writing often doesn't come easily.
I think that literature, which to me means good and important writing, should be about life. The treatment can be humorous or serious, but it should provide some insights into life. They don't have to be profound, but they have to be there. But insight first demands sight. That means that the writing job begins with observation. The observations are digested, then used in writing. With luck the subconscious provides some better thoughts based on the observations than our dull conscious mind comes up with, and that the writer manages to tap into those while getting the story down. When the writing accurately represents honest observations, and demonstrates true human qualities on a fictional stage, there is a chance, a small chance, that we have produced something worthy of being called literature.
As an aside, it's just another damn word, of course, that literature term, but you have to believe in something, and if you want to communicate, you need to express it somehow. The idea of literature as something that provides a bit more than other writing, has persisted for a long time and I hope it holds its meaning for a while longer. I think I need it.
So it is quite a rough racket, this business of writing literature. All this seeing and thinking and trying to understand cuts into the limited time available for thinking and writing, and so it competes with itself for the only resources a writer has--a brain, energy and time. I find it all too easy to wrap myself deep inside a novel or story and forget to come up for air, much less to observe.
I suppose it is possible to write entirely from a strictly intellectual perspective, to write well, to write accurately and honestly, relying on nothing but your own logic and emotion. Yet, it strikes me that such a limitation will flatten the work. An author might produce one such work, but subsequent books would be imitations of the first--the same material written about as freshly as possible. It gets difficult not to repeat yourself.
My theory is that we who write to sell, write to be read need to dig deep enough to offer the reader characters with a variety of emotions and feelings. It isn't easy, but a book must honestly represent characters and ideas that he or she disagrees with or even finds disagreeable. And it is in honesty that so many of us stumble. When the reader encounters a two-dimensional cardboard representation of something complex and astoundingly three dimensional, it is because the writer hasn't taken the time (or had the interest, perhaps) to explore and understand what he or she is writing about.
Exploration and understanding are two writing tools that don't get used nearly enough. But then writing is a tough racket.
I think that literature, which to me means good and important writing, should be about life. The treatment can be humorous or serious, but it should provide some insights into life. They don't have to be profound, but they have to be there. But insight first demands sight. That means that the writing job begins with observation. The observations are digested, then used in writing. With luck the subconscious provides some better thoughts based on the observations than our dull conscious mind comes up with, and that the writer manages to tap into those while getting the story down. When the writing accurately represents honest observations, and demonstrates true human qualities on a fictional stage, there is a chance, a small chance, that we have produced something worthy of being called literature.
As an aside, it's just another damn word, of course, that literature term, but you have to believe in something, and if you want to communicate, you need to express it somehow. The idea of literature as something that provides a bit more than other writing, has persisted for a long time and I hope it holds its meaning for a while longer. I think I need it.
So it is quite a rough racket, this business of writing literature. All this seeing and thinking and trying to understand cuts into the limited time available for thinking and writing, and so it competes with itself for the only resources a writer has--a brain, energy and time. I find it all too easy to wrap myself deep inside a novel or story and forget to come up for air, much less to observe.
I suppose it is possible to write entirely from a strictly intellectual perspective, to write well, to write accurately and honestly, relying on nothing but your own logic and emotion. Yet, it strikes me that such a limitation will flatten the work. An author might produce one such work, but subsequent books would be imitations of the first--the same material written about as freshly as possible. It gets difficult not to repeat yourself.
My theory is that we who write to sell, write to be read need to dig deep enough to offer the reader characters with a variety of emotions and feelings. It isn't easy, but a book must honestly represent characters and ideas that he or she disagrees with or even finds disagreeable. And it is in honesty that so many of us stumble. When the reader encounters a two-dimensional cardboard representation of something complex and astoundingly three dimensional, it is because the writer hasn't taken the time (or had the interest, perhaps) to explore and understand what he or she is writing about.
Exploration and understanding are two writing tools that don't get used nearly enough. But then writing is a tough racket.
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