A Picture is Worth...

Flynn, Errol (The Sea Hawk)

Come on, someone, buckle his swash for us. 100-1000 words, directions here.

Immortal Symphony: Overture by SL Armstrong and K Piet

Title: Immortal Symphony: Season One: Overture
Authors: S.L. Armstrong and K. Piet
Cover Artist: Nathie Block
Publisher: Storm Moon Press
Genre: Paranormal, Serial
Length: 39 pages
Rating: 4 stars out of 5


You think you know the story of Dorian Gray, but you're wrong. The real story didn't end the way Oscar Wilde penned; in fact, it hasn't ended at all. The ageless beauty of Dorian Gray walks now in our world of cellphones and lattes and internet porn. His latest conquest is Gabriel Lawrence, a paranormal investigator with a secret or two of his own. But the trouble with a life as long as Dorian's is that the skeletons are threatening to overrun the closet... and not all of them want to stay dead.

Season 1: Overture introduces Gabriel to the truth of a world he had only suspected, where ghost hunting is the least of his worries. And at the heart of it all is the mysterious and fascinating Dorian Gray, as though he'd stepped out of the pages of the book bearing his name. But if he has, he hasn't come through alone. And this figure from a past Dorian had though long behind him bears a grudge nurtured for a hundred years and intends to tear down everything Dorian has built, a piece at a time.

Episode 1: A Meeting of Fate
Gabriel Lawrence, a paranormal investigator from America, finds himself in London chasing down a supposedly haunted artifact. While there, he meets a man who calls himself Dorian Gray, who may not match the description from that famous story, but certainly has the attitude. And the seduction. And because ghost hunting isn't exactly a lucrative venture, Dorian's invitation into his world of opulence, decadence, and wealth may just prove too tempting for Gabriel to resist!

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Serials are a sore point with me: they can be done right, or they can be done wrong. Generally the difference is presentation and disclosure. Storm Moon Press understands that, and they are labeling their new serials so that there is no question in anyone’s mind. Each installment can be purchased separately and clearly identified, or one can purchase the bundle and collect each section as it appears, plus additional materials that can’t be obtained any other way. They are up front about it, and for that I applaud them. It isn’t clear from the site how many sections to expect, but judging from this first, it would take at least 5 to make a novel length piece. Per private communication with the publisher, this one is the 'Radio Drama' format, where each episode (aka short story) must be read in sequence for the plot to make sense, and each episode ends on a little bit of a cliffhanger or substantial shift in the plot. They have other formats explained in that link.

And I’m fine with that. I’ve been warned, and I’ve also been given a nice hefty chunk of story, priced sensibly by the chunk. The bundle price suggests there are substantial goodies included. So bring it on!

For the no-lady-bits purists, back away now: we start out in a girl’s head, and she’s enjoying her debauching at the hands of Dorian Gray, he of classic, out of copyright memory. He’s still at his hedonism, and after close to a hundred years, he might be a bit jaded and having to reach for his pleasures. I don’t mind the use of such a character since the story he’s embroiled in is completely new and original, not another author’s text with sex shoehorned in. **applauds some more**

His opposing number, a young gay man with paranormal sensitivity and an unique relationship with his twin brother, is absolutely not living the high life—he takes menial jobs to feed himself in between his investigations. Dorian is a huge temptation physically and for comfort: who wouldn’t want a plush bed and lavish meals with a hot man for company, when the alternative is a hostel, a sandwich, and his right hand.

This first installment is more a set up, and as has been disclosed, ends on the brink of a major change. Gabe’s initial investigation may not be as complete as he’d like, and his twin doesn’t trust Dorian in the least. It’s going to make reviewing a real challenge for future segments, because not spoiling what comes before is going to be nearly impossible. However, I like the set up, I like the characters. Dorian is edgy and arrogant, Gabe is both cocky and ready for a bit of adventure, and there should be all sorts of sparks as they interact. This wasn’t a complete story arc, but I wasn’t expecting that, and I will be sniffing around for the next section. 4 marbles.

Dragon Touched by JB McDonald

Title: Dragon Touched
Author: JB McDonald
Cover Artist: BS Clay
Publisher: Torquere
Genre: fantasy
Length: 63 pages/17,500 words
Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Being called a demon and given suspicious looks has become old hat for Ashe, depressing as it is. But a mob attack leaves him shaken, aware of the danger he's in every time he walks out of the palace. With no purpose, no friends, and a culture that hates him, Ashe is barely putting one foot in front of the other. He wants to go home.

Katsu wants to go home, too, but first he has to fulfill his duties. The problem is that every time he finishes one thing, something else needs his attention. If Ashe will just be patient, Katsu will figure it out. But Ashe is running out of patience, and the boys are learning that sometimes, love isn't enough. Katsu knows the solution is there, if he can just find it... before everything falls apart.

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I’m invested enough in this undisclosed serial to keep reading, but that may not last. Again, we don’t have a complete plot arc—it feels like we left off at an inciting incident last time. (For a more complete discussion of three act structure, look here.) Here the stakes get higher, but resolution? What resolution?


The writing is smooth, and the characters vivid, particularly if one has been reading all sections as I have. Should you stumble on this one cold, it will be unsatisfying, because the dragon is an established fact, Ashe’s fish out of water state is clear but has no background, Katsu’s divided loyalties are clear and even have context for part but not all of it. The state of the relationship is seen only as “troubled,” with no build up, no resolution. You need at least 3 of the previous six installments to know, or care, about what is going on.

If you have that background, this is a wonderful section. If you don’t, quite a lot of this is pointless.
This would be much less of a problem if anyone was being upfront that this IS a serial. The author is coy about it, the publisher’s site says nothing about it, not even installment numbers, though you can find them at Goodreads. Supplied by readers. The lack of honesty, transparency, and continuity here bothers me greatly. The assumptions by author and publisher that we are patiently following along and not noticing how things are being strung out is apparent from the blurb, which doesn’t bother to state that Ashe is an elf and Katsu is a deposed prince amongst his human folk. Readers are assumed to know something as basic as species from having followed so far, and not need any explanations.

Katsu, who started off with grumpy as the new charming, here is only harried. If it’s for good reason, it’s still only a fragment of his former appeal. Again, without the background, the question is open as to why Ashe has stuck around this long, because the city is slowly killing him. Everyone, from Ashe, to Chieko, (Katsu’s beloved sister) to the queen (Katsu’s mother) to Daisuke (a figure from Katsu’s past and Ashe’s guide to local culture) is working at cross purposes, all pulling Katsu one way or another, and that part is beautifully portrayed. How this resolves is yet to be seen,  although the battle lines between factions are growing clear.

What I’d like to do is wait until the complete story arc is available to rate this. It would probably be a 4.5 to a 5. What I have to look at in this one file is approximately a third of a story arc, and that, no matter how well done, is incomplete and being sold without disclosure that it’s incomplete. So, JB McDonald and Torquere, get honest about what you’re offering and I’ll read the next part, otherwise, I’m done. 3 marbles
 

A picture is worth...

Poker face, hmmm. I think his mouth might just give him away. Have a story, 100 to 1000 words, for him, send it on. Directions here.

Guest Blogger Angela Benedetti on Serials

Please welcome Angela Benedetti, who has graciously allowed me to repost her well reasoned discussion of serial fiction, originally on her blog, Angie's Desk. This was timely for me because I have serial fiction in my review queue, some offered well, some offered poorly.

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Can we talk about serials for a minute?

I know serialization is supposed to be the hot new way of sucking extra money out of readers. (Oops, was I not supposed to say that out loud?) But you know, most readers can actually do the, like, second grade math required to figure out how much the whole story cost them. If your short novel is coming out in five two-dollar parts, or your normal sized novel is coming out in ten two-dollar parts, a lot of people are going to do the above-mentioned math and figure out that you're ripping them off. 'Cause seriously, ten bucks for a short novel in electronic form is ludicrous. So is twenty bucks for a regular sized e-novel. If this is how you price your "serial," then you (either the writer or the publisher, whoever came up with the scheme in any given case) has absolutely no moral ground to stand on when readers start complaining, in print, on their blogs or on Goodreads or wherever else. Because that? [points up] That's a major rip-off.


Better yet is when the writer/publisher/whoever fails to let readers know up front that a story is, indeed, a serial. When a reader has bought what they think is a short story or a novelette and is reading along only to find that the story cuts off abruptly at the end, leaving them hanging, needing to wait..wait...wait for the next installment, and fork over another chunk of cash to get it? Yeah, you're going to get complaints about that, too. And again, you'll have no grounds whatsoever to whine about those complaints, even when they're made publicly. The reader who posts to their blog or leaves a comment on a vendor site or a social reader's site to complain about your stealth-serial isn't being mean or sabotaging you or whatever. They're making a legitimate complaint about your lack of up-front disclosure that you were selling them a fraction of a story.

Let's look at an example. I don't usually call out specifics when I'm writing about a general trend, but this one's unfortunately perfect.

Monty Gets Arrested is up on Goodreads with four ratings and a 3.0 average. This isn't a lot of ratings, and the average might improve with time. But what's significant here are the comments. One commenter, who left a one-star rating, says, "It's not even half a story." Another, who left two stars, says, "Not bad, just .. way too short. More like a chapter than a book." A third said:

Ok I am not rating this right now cause I'm mad. I didn't realize that this was a short story to be continued.... And not continued soon, but a whole month away. I just read Anitra Lynn McLeod series Seven Brothers for McBride and I had to wait a whole 7 seven days for the next installment. And let me tell you that was a raging 7 days and each Saturday Anitra came through with the story. Now I have to wait a month for the next installment? This was ok but I don't know that I care enough to 'post-it note myself' 30 days out.


Wow, great marketing strategy this turned out to be.

Someone came along and commented to one of the reviews, explaining that Monty is a five-part  series, with parts to be released once a month. I'm assuming this person knows the writer, or works for the publisher, or whatever. Okay, that's good information to have. Why didn't the publisher give it to us? Because this good information should've been given to the readers before they spent their money.

Monty's page on ARe (a popular e-book vendor site specializing in romance) says nothing at all about the book being the first part of a serial. The full title is Monty Gets Arrested (Marshall's Park #1), but that's also how series books are often titled; it looks to a savvy reader like there are going to be more books about Marshall's Park. Which is fine; if you like Monty, you'll probably be interested in  reading more books set in the same place, by the same writer. But nowhere on this page does it say "Serial," or "Story to be continued," or anything similar. The reader (potential customer at this point) is given no hint that they're not buying a complete product, or that they'll have to pay more money to get the rest of the story.

Obligatory statement that I'm not writing this to rag on the author. I have three of her books on my to-buy shelf on Goodreads, which means at the very least she can write good summary blurbs. Her total average rating on Goodreads is 3.82, which is very good; she can clearly write stories that readers enjoy, and I expect to enjoy a few of them when I get around to it. For that matter, the summary blurb on Monty makes it sound like a fun story. I'm betting the problem here is with a publisher who thought they could make an eventual $9.95 for a 57K word novel (assuming all five parts cost the same and are about the same length) instead of the more usual $4-5.99 a novel that length would bring in if sold as one book, and who apparently hoped no one would notice or complain about their shenanigans.

I'm not going to say that serialization is a bad concept entirely. Rather, I'll say I've never seen it implemented well, in e-book form. Serialization goes back to the days when newsstands were full of magazines carrying fiction (heck, it goes back to the days when there were newsstands) and many of those magazines serialized novels a chapter at a time, or a chunk of chapters at a time. Purchasing the magazine got you a lot more than that issue's serial, though. Even if the serial was the major selling point of the magazine (as magazines with Dickens's work often were, as I understand) the fact is that there was still more to read once you were done with the serial installment. Even if the only effect was psychological, it's the psychological effect of realizing that you just paid money for a fifth or a tenth or a fifteenth of a story that I'm talking about here. A reader who'll pay $2.99 for a 12K-word novelette -- a complete story -- might well balk at paying $2.99 for a 12K-word chunk of a longer novel, when they realize that the whole novel is going to cost them $15, and that they're used to paying $5.99 at most for a single (complete story) e-book of that length. The psychological effect is exactly the problem, and saying it shouldn't be that way doesn't make it vanish.

What it comes down to is that serializing a longer work and selling the parts individually is a sales and marketing strategy. The publisher is trying to make more money selling the parts separately than they'd make selling the work as a whole. Wanting to make money isn't a problem -- everyone who doesn't consider this a hobby wants to make money. The problem is when you're doing it so blatantly that your customer can't help noticing your hand rooting around in their pocket.

Some readers like serials, and are maybe even willing to pay more to get each chunk of story as soon as possible. Okay, that's great; selling serials to people who like them is a good idea. If you're targetting readers who like serials, then let the readers know up front that you're publishing a serial. There's no excuse for letting someone buy what they think is a complete short story or novelette, only to spring the surprise on them at the end that the story is incomplete. Announce in the marketing material -- within the summary blurb would be a good place -- that this is part of a serial, with more parts to come (and previous parts if it's not the first). Give the readers the information they need to make a valid decision whether to hand you money for your product. Some people will decide not to buy, yes. But the alternative is to deal in bad faith, and have people complaining about you in public afterwards. This kind of behavior might make you a few more dollars now, but it'll lose you customers in the long run.

If you're going to sell a serial, act in good faith. Let people know what they're buying before they give you money, and then see how many do. However much money you make when everyone knows what they're buying? That's the measure of whether serials are successful.

Cover Up by K.C. Burn

Title: Cover Up
Author: K.C. Burn
Cover Artist: L.C. Chase
Publisher: Dreamspinner
Genre: contemporary, police
Length: 236 pages


Detective Ivan Bekker has hit rock bottom. Not only is he recovering from a bad breakup with a cheating boyfriend, he’s also involved in a drug bust gone bad. Ivan had to kill a man, and his friend was shot and is now fighting for his life. Though Ivan is under investigation for his part in the shooting, his boss sends him on an off-the-books undercover operation to close the case. The timing is critical—this could be their chance to plug a leak in the department.

Off-balance and without backup, Ivan finds himself playing a recent divorcé and becoming Parker Wakefield’s roommate. He finds it hard to believe that sweet Parker could possibly be a criminal, much less have ties to a Russian mafia drug-trafficking operation, and Ivan lets down his guard. His affection is unprofessional, but Parker is irresistible.

When Ivan comes across clear evidence of Parker’s criminal involvement, he has to choose: protect their relationship, regardless of the consequences, or save his career and arrest the man he loves.
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I turfed this book at the 15% mark, and wasn’t planning to come back to it. Objecting to the absolute lunacy of the setup on Ivan’s behalf, I didn’t think I could bring myself to read an entire novel that worked with that sort of logic. Curiosity got the better of me, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.


Starting from an incident towards the end of Cop Out, a book where Ivan was a minor character, we get to follow him into an undercover operation that makes no sense whatsoever. His superior doesn’t even let him clean another man’s blood from his face before sending him into a totally inappropriate operation, using the sort of rationale that barely makes sense even to a traumatized officer. At this point I was snarling and muttering about “Where’s Internal Affairs when you need them?”

So, when Ivan goes to be Parker’s roommate without so much as an interview because someone else picked him for the housemate, it was more eye-rolly—the question of why a budding Mafia man needs a roommate does occur to Ivan, but why anyone bright enough to pound sand wouldn’t even meet first before inviting a stranger into his home does not. Then, their first interaction has Ivan treating Parker like a child, and that’s where I put the book down.

I found Parker to be an infuriating character, partly because he does act so childlike that it was squicky that Ivan, or anyone, be thinking of him sexually. Much was made of the May/December issue by other characters, mostly by trying to insult Ivan for his extreme age of thirty four, but since Parker was only intermittently coming across as twenty two instead of thirteen, it was not Ivan who was the problem.

This was made even more infuriating because Parker was portrayed as sheltered, socially awkward, and frankly clueless because he’d been a caretaker for his dying mother and her financial affairs. That’s a scenario that grows you up fast, IMHO, but not here. His pudgy adolescent phase was used to justify his social backwardness even more, and as excuses for why he put up with the odious Neil, his alleged best friend. Parker meekly puts up with any shit Neil hands out, which only encourages him to take further advantage.

The few instances where Parker shows any strength of character seem peripheral to the story—while it’s admirable that he volunteers in a trauma center, it’s also irrelevant except to allow him a flash of insight later, which frankly wasn’t a great leap. Otherwise he’s either letting people push him around, beating himself up for perceived flaws, or mooning over Ivan, who blows hot and cold as he alternately remembers and forgets that involvement with a suspect is a bad idea. Aside from Parker’s extreme good looks, which he is entirely unaware of, (really, I can’t make this stuff up) there isn’t much besides being a warm body to explain Ivan’s attraction to him. His big moment of maturity comes late and doesn’t last:

...but it might explain why Ivan was so laid back. Unless, of course, that hadn’t been real either. He hated, absolutely hated, not knowing which bits of Ivan were the truth, or if any of them were.

He flings this insight to the wind to make the HEA work.

Since Ivan is doing something he knows to be bad police work, he gets to angst too. Having an instance of his angst-driven bad behavior be pivotal to solving the crime was a nice touch.

Between the irritations from an immature character, a poorly designed mission, shoddy investigation, and an unmysterious mystery, the first two thirds of the story were an exercise in frustration. That last third had some really good moments, and seeing Kurt and Davy from Cop Out was nice—Kurt at least was still capable of functioning as a cop. Watching Ivan unravel during this section was one of the better sequences. The ending scene had some LOL lines in addition to Parker again demonstrating that he hasn't thought things through.

The resolution to the investigation made partial sense of the beginning, but had I not returned to the story after swearing off, I would never have known that. And given what else lurked in there, I’m not happier for the knowing. 2.5 marbles

A picture is worth...

Happy Valentine's Day to all, and may everyone be able to rejoice in their love.

Anyone with a story of 100-1000 words (Honest, I like drabbles!) send it on. Directions here.