Editing: Unlikely Friends: James Merrill and Judith Moffett: A Memoir

I know, I know... Where have I been these past nearly two months? (Sometimes a guy just needs to veg for a while....) Anyhow, here I am! But let me also add a teaser: I've been busy reading a new manuscript from Charles Stross for the next volume in his Laundry Files series!

In this post, the book that I want to introduce you to is by Judith Moffett. Now if you've read this blog regularly over these past years you will recognize her name, as I have written about her on numerous occasions. In fact, if you scroll down just a bit, in the sidebar on the right you will see the cover for her Hugo and Nebula award-nominated story "Tiny Tango," along with a link to the four-part series on how we turned this story into an ebook. And one of my earliest blog posts on Ms. Moffett's work was back in February 2010 entitled "Aliens Have Entered Mainstream's Orbit." Feel free to search this blog (see Search field on the right) for "Judith Moffett" for a list of all the entries.

In 1988, Moffett won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in the field of science fiction and fantasy. But what you may not know is that, long before writing sf, Moffett was (and still is!) a poet -- and a helluva poet at that. Here are just a few of her awards and honors: (1971) First prize, Graduate Division, in the Academy of American Poets Contest at the University of Pennsylvania; (1976) First Ingram Merrill Foundation Grant in poetry; (1984) National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship Grant; and, even after launching a successful science fiction writing career: (1998) Presenter at the Nobel Symposium on Translation of Poetry and Poetic Prose. But enough of the kudos...you can read the complete list of "Awards, honors, and recognitions" in her Wikipedia entry.

Merrill & Moffett, 1993, International
Poetry Festival, Malmö, Sweden

I bring up poetry because that is the focus of her most recent publication, Unlikely Friends, a memoir of her near thirty-year friendship and correspondence with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Merrill. I had the honor of line editing and copy editing the manuscript: more than 200,000 words of diligently maintained journal entries from throughout that friendship, carefully transcribed correspondence, photographs -- and above all, the personal insight gleaned by the author upon looking back upon those decades.

For those readers in the book/publishing biz, you most likely know that a Kirkus review is difficult to come by: the publication is fairly stingy with its reviews. That being said, imagine how difficult it is to not only get reviewed by Kirkus, but to snag a starred review as well. And that's exactly what Unlikely Friends did: it garnered a starred review -- and, to top it all off, the memoir is self-published! Here's an excerpt from that review:

"Her Merrill scholarship is exhaustive, as she spent years writing a book about his work while finding success with her own poetry. She and Merrill were rarely in the same place, but she lovingly describes a 1973 trip to Greece and moments at his New York City apartment. Both eventually struggled with serious health problems, but they remained close due to their obvious reliance on each other's intellect and their lifelong dedication to their crafts. Moffett's painstaking memoir is epic in length but remains consistently engrossing. Particularly noteworthy is her desire to get to the root of her own fascination with Merrill, and she reaches some surprising conclusions about herself. She tells her own life story of struggle and success with undying fervor, and Merrill's letters show him to be urbane, witty, a bit fussy, and generous when it mattered. The two were different in many ways, but Moffett's account of what they shared is authentic and impressive.

An absorbing, indispensable portrait of poets."

–Kirkus starred review, January 23, 2019

If you have access to Facebook, Moffett has been publishing lengthy excerpts and photographs from the book on her FB page.

And as I was writing this, I remembered that in 2016 I had noted in a blog post the receipt of her most recent poetry book (at that time), Tarzan in Kentucky: about life on her farm, grief (the loss of her husband), and other poems of a more personal nature.

Both Unlikely Friends (print and ebook) and Tarzan in Kentucky (print only) are available from your bookstore of choice; the links here will take you to Amazon.com.

"By culling a trove of letters and journals, Moffett has written an account of her friendship with Merrill that somewhat suggests the vivid quality of a novel. In every chapter the events of particular years are given the importance they had when they happened—they are not simply bridges to some later, more important time, but events in their own immediacy. The dense braid of writing by the various Judys of those years, and the Judy now reflecting and summing up, gives her narrative the four-dimensional effect of deep time. It's a love story—love of literature, of friends, of idealized figures who were also real people. It will send you back to Merrill's poems, and Moffett's too."

–Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Mars Trilogy and

New York 2140

Book Received: Tarzan in Kentucky: Poems by Judith Moffett

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a poetry kind of guy. But Tarzan in Kentucky really isn't poetry...well, actually, it is poetry but not what I typically think of as poetry, if that makes any sense.

I know Judith Moffett as a science fiction writer. We worked together in 2014 to turn her Hugo and Nebula award-nominated story, "Tiny Tango," into a Kindle ebook, which I detailed in a four-part series of blog posts.

But Judith (though she prefers "Judy") isn't your typical science fiction writer: She has received three Ingram Merrill Foundation grants in poetry, in 1976, 1980, and 1991. In 1998, she presented at the Nobel Symposium on Translation of Poetry and Poetic Prose, and, most recently (2015), she presented at the James Merrill Symposium, held at Washington University in St. Louis. Indeed, not your typical sf writer.[1]

But getting back to Tarzan in Kentucky, from publisher David Robert Books: The cover photograph (taken by the author herself) is of Judy's farm in Kentucky, and from other pics I've seen, it really is that beautiful and lush. And obviously the ideal setting for writing.

But like I said, I'm not a poetry kind of guy, so I'm going to leave you with an excerpt of a review by Meredith Sue Willis on her Books for Readers blog; but do read the complete review:

Tarzan in Kentucky: Poems by Judith Moffett is a chewy, sinuous collection of poems by a living poet who went many years without writing poetry, but is—to our great benefit—writing again. Called "An effortless" virtuoso by James Merrill and "among the most accomplished of her generation" by Daniel Hoffman, Moffett writes brilliantly lucid everyday language contained—and freed—by tight forms like tercets and sonnets. You only notice the form if you are looking—you feel the emotion, see the picture, hear the voice and the story. The forms are certainly there, though, giving her poems a musculature that makes much of the free verse we are used to seem flaccid.

...a number of [the poems] are about her farm, and there is a long section called "Grief" in which she writes about the aftermath of her husband's death. The poet speaks to herself in one called "Broken Couplet":

Solutions, none. No cures.

This task alone is yours:

to make each day a quest

for getting through it best

when "best" cannot mean "well..."

You feel here what rhyme is about: an arbitrary way of linking things that then makes meaning of what started out as arbitrary.

Tarzan in Kentucky: Poems is available in print form only from your bookstore of choice...even if, like me, you're not a poetry kind of person.

---------------
Footnotes:

1. You can read more of Judy's awards, honors, and recognitions on her Wikipedia entry.

The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Denouement

Finally, Tiny Tango by Judith Moffett was published as a Kindle ebook on Amazon. I had the idea for an ebook (Step 1), we obtained a cover design based on an original Janet Aulisio black and white illustration (Step 2), and after much cursing at the Machine (Step 3) we had a published ebook.

So why "Tiny Tango"?

"Tiny Tango" the novella was a finalist for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award; and as I mentioned in the first part of this series, had the James Tiptree Jr. Award been presented in 1990 (the first award was presented in 1991 so "TT" missed it by one year) I am certain that "Tiny Tango" would have made the short list, and quite possibly won the award for that year.

I first read "TT" in the February 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. It was one of those stories that, when you came upon a certain scene, you could be heard saying out loud -- to yourself, to no one in particular -- "You gotta be kidding me!" I don't mean that in the sarcastic sense, or the "ha ha" sense, I mean it in the sense of scratching your head, realizing no one had written of this, and in this way, before. As I also previously mentioned, Matthew Cheney, in a Mumpsimus blog post in 2009, included "Tiny Tango" in his list of twenty-one "Mindblowing!" stories; Matthew went on to say:

"Tiny Tango" is a story I read when it first appeared in Asimov's, and it completely blew me away and broke my heart. I was young and just learning what science fiction could do, and it was one of the key stories in showing me the breadth of emotional and conceptual possibilities.

And here's what Judy wrote about the story, which appears on the next to the last page in the published ebook:

"Tiny Tango" forms Chapter 3 of The Ragged World, the first volume in Judith Moffett's Holy Ground Trilogy; the other two volumes are Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream, and The Bird Shaman. The trilogy deals with the arrival on earth of two symbiotic alien races, the Hefn and the Gafr, whose technology enables them to take control of the planet in an effort to save it from environmental disaster. The alien takeover is important at this story's end, but the tale of Nancy Sandford and her struggle to survive HIV stands by itself, enriched but not enabled by the larger context formed by the trilogy. Writing in 1987, Moffett's educated guesses about the course of the AIDS epidemic, its treatments and social consequences, fall wide of the mark. But it hardly matters. What we have here is not a predictive study of medical and technical know-how, but the timeless tale of a particular individual's refusal to accept defeat, the means she finds and invents to cope with a desperate plight. "Tiny Tango" was a finalist in the novella category for the Nebula Award in 1989, and for the Hugo Award in 1990. Volumes I and II of the Holy Ground Trilogy were named New York Times Notable Books for 1991 and 1992, respectively. "Tiny Tango" is also included in Ian Sales's list: "100 Great Science Fiction Stories by Women."

How can you not want to read this story?

Note to book reviewers: If you have a book review blog and/or you review regularly on Goodreads and/or you review for the Kindle community, and you would like to review Tiny Tango, please send an email to: marty.halpern@gmail.com.

Include in the email a link to your book review blog, community, and/or your Goodreads book review page, and I'll be in touch. Keep in mind that you will be reviewing a Kindle mobi ebook.

Note to potential readers of The Holy Ground Trilogy: For those who may consider purchasing this trilogy, please be aware that signed (and inscribed, if you wish) copies of The Bird Shaman may be purchased directly from author Judith Moffett. Here's the link: you'll find the order form in the right frame of the web page.

The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Step 3

When last we saw (virtually speaking, that is) the intrepid ebook adventurers:

In Step 1 I came up with the idea to publish Judith Moffett's award-nominated story Tiny Tango as a Kindle ebook; and by the end of Step 2, we had the final design for the ebook's cover.

But even before we had begun work on the book cover, Judy and I had already copy edited the story itself, multiple times in fact. Judy provided me with a Word file of the "Tiny Tango" story, we each did a copy edit, comparing notes and edits until we were both satisfied.

Not having created an ebook from scratch prior to this, I relied on the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) "Simplified Formatting Guide" on the KDP website.

After reviewing KDP's suggestions for what to include in the book, I then asked Judy to draft a dedication page as part of the front matter, and, for the back of the book, an author bio page as well as a page that would introduce readers to "Tiny Tango," its genesis and how it is part of a larger trilogy of novels. I in turn wrote the copyright page. And, as we are wont to do, all pages went through a series of tweaks and copy edits.

When I entered this additional content into the "Tiny Tango" Word doc, I took advantage of the hyperlink capability of a digital ebook: I entered links to Jenn Reese's Tiger Bright Studios and my More Red Ink blog on the copyright page; I entered links to Amazon for all three volumes of the Holy Ground Trilogy, of which "Tiny Tango" is just a small part, in addition to a few other appropriate links; and on Judy's bio page I linked to her website.

I know there are a variety of tools available for creating and formatting files for ebooks -- I have one author friend who uses Scrivener exclusively. But I'm an MS Word guy all the way. Here are a few noteworthy points for aspiring ebook publishers who use Word:

• Use margin indents, rather than tabs or spaces, to set off each new paragraph.
• Use page breaks to separate parts of the book (e.g. title page, copyright page, dedication page, preface, etc.) as well as to separate chapters within the story itself.
• Use bold formatting and/or italics formatting when needed, as the conversion process will pick up these formats.
• Insert images into the document using the Insert → Picture option from the menu; do not use cut&paste to insert images.

Since "Tiny Tango" was just a single story, I didn't need an "active" (i.e. hyperlinked) contents page, nor did I need to set up "Go To" functionality (Kindle users will understand this).

The one question that I had, though (at least as far as I knew at that point!), concerned the relationship between the book cover and the ebook: Did I need to insert the book cover into the MS Word file manually? Or, did the KDP conversion process do this for me? The KDP site has a number of instructional resources and FAQs, but I wasn't able to find my answer. So, based on what information I did have at the time, I assumed that I had to manually insert the cover image into the MS Word file. This, of course, turned out to be an incorrect assumption, which I figured out later, after the fact.

So, I inserted the "Tiny Tango" cover image as page one of the MS Word file; and then I inserted the full black and white illustration by Janet Aulisio on page 3, the page after the title page.

Speaking of image files, a couple other pointers: Amazon charges for digital transfer services, so you need to have your ebook file as small as possible. This means using the best image format, which is JPG, ensuring that the image size is no larger than absolutely necessary, and using image file compression as well. KDP also has dimension requirements for the ebook cover, but I wasn't worried because I knew Jenn Reese had our backs. She provided a cover image of 2250 x 3000 pixels, along with a smaller (600 x 800 pixels), thumbnail-size graphic.

At this point I was ready to save my completed MS Word file in the format that Amazon required: a "Web Page, Filtered" htm file. So far so good.

The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Step 2

To recap Step 1: Last fall I suggested to my friend, the author Judith Moffett, that she publish her Hugo and Nebula award-nominated story Tiny Tango as a Kindle ebook.

Of course, I knew up front that by making this suggestion I would be doing most of the technical heavy lifting on this project. And, for the most part, I thrive on this type of tech stuff, as Judy well knows. Except, that is, on those rare occasions when the hardware and/or software seems to be getting the better of me. Then it comes down to Man (me!) vs. Machine -- and I'm not going to lose to a machine! [And it would probably be best to not be within hearing range of me when such occasions arise.]

At this point in the process we had a full-size (2164 x 1755 pixels) JPG file of the "Tiny Tango" artwork by Janet Aulisio that graced the story's opening pages in the February 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Our task was to somehow fit this two-page illo onto an ebook-sized cover -- with the appropriate typography -- and make it intriguing enough that readers just might want to purchase the ebook itself. So, I needed to find a quality graphic designer.

The first person I thought to contact was author Bradley P. Beaulieu. I worked for Brad on his self-published short fiction collection, Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories (which I blogged about here). Brad recommended Jenn Reese, of Tiger Bright Studios: "She has a great eye for covers, charges a reasonable fee, and would have all the answers your friend needs in terms of direction for the cover." I couldn't ask for a better recommendation than that. Plus, when I checked out the Tiger Bright Studios website, I discovered a number of book titles by authors whom I knew personally, so that influenced my decision as well.

I made the initial contact with Jenn Reese, explained our need, and provided her with the b&w JPG file. Shortly thereafter, Judy took over the discussion, since she was the one to agree to terms and make all the final cover decisions.

Jenn first provided us with three options for how we might tackle the cover, keeping in mind that the graphic was much wider than a standard ebook cover. So to fit the entire illo on the cover, the graphic would have to be reduced in size considerably. Here are the three initial mockups that Jenn sent us:

Mockup #1

Mockup #2

Mockup #3

Though we wanted the full illustration on the cover, we certainly couldn't have all the white space that would entail; plus, all the fine detail that Janet Aulisio crafted into the illustration would be lost at this smaller scale. So, Judy opted for mockup #1, but with a change: the cover would feature just the reaper, but needed to include the reaper's scythe in full. And I then suggested that we include the full illustration within the ebook itself, after the title page.

The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Step 1

Occasionally, I'll come up with a fairly cool idea. Not one that I've necessarily thought through completely, of course, but a cool idea nonetheless. The most recent instance of such a cool idea occurred this past fall when I contacted author Judith Moffett and suggested she publish her Hugo and Nebula award-nominated story "Tiny Tango" as an ebook.

[Additional award note: And I have no doubt that, had the James Tiptree, Jr. Award been presented in 1990 (for works published in 1989), "Tiny Tango" would also have made that award's short list, if not won the award outright.]

I blogged about Judith Moffett and her novels and stories back in 2010 (here). At the time I referenced -- and quoted from -- Matthew Cheney's Mumpsimus blog post in which he wrote about "Mindblowing" stories that affected him as both a reader and writer. One such story was "Tiny Tango."

Then, most recently, writer/critic/reviewer Ian Sales posted his list of "100 Great Science Fiction Stories by Women," which also included "Tiny Tango." And that list was what pushed me over the edge, so to speak, and into said cool idea.

If you click on the Tiny Tango cover graphic pictured above, or the text link in this sentence, you will be swept away to Amazon's World of Kindle and to the Tiny Tango ebook listing: we were, in fact, successful in our efforts to publish the story as an ebook. But the path to get there, well, that's the story I'm about to tell you....

When "Tiny Tango" originally appeared in the February 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, a black-and-white illustration by Janet Aulisio accompanied the opening pages of the story. Judith informed me that she owns the original illustration, which is currently mounted on the wall above her desk. She purchased it from the artist shortly after the story was published -- and assuming she can obtain permission to do so, she wants to use the illo for the cover of the Tiny Tango ebook.

So began our task of tracking down Janet Aulisio in order to obtain her permission. Following a lengthy online search on both our parts, we discovered that Ms. Aulisio has no online presence whatsoever: no website, no blog, no Facebook page, no storefront. Judith then contacted ASFA -- the Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists -- only to learn that they were unable to help either: Janet Aulisio was not a member and they had no record of her contact information. A further web search yielded a 2012 interview with Ms. Aulisio, conducted by Scott Taylor for Black Gate magazine. So I emailed John O'Neill, the BG publisher, who put me in touch with Scott Taylor, who in turn passed on my contact info to Janet Aulisio. After Janet contacted me, I forwarded her email to Judith, and she obtained the artist's permission to use the illustration for the cover of the Tiny Tango ebook.

Judith then had the original b&w illustration scanned into a PDF, and I used a conversion tool to covert the PDF to a JPG file. So far so good.

copyright ©1989 by Janet Aulisio

Then one day, maybe a couple months or so after that cool idea first hit me, the light bulb finally lit: I have a black-and-white illustration to use for the book cover, an illustration that encompassed two facing pages when it appeared in Asimov's. But an ebook only has a front cover; there is no wrap-around cover art on an ebook, no landscape layout. How was I going to fit this illustration on the cover? And even if I could figure that out somehow, I didn't have the appropriate tools (e.g PaintShop or its equivalent), nor do I know how to use such tools, to create such a cover, and with the necessary typography, too. I will be the first to admit: I am not a graphic designer.

Though I didn't know how to do this myself, I did know people who could help me, or at least who could point me in the right direction.

To be continued:
The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Step 2

February Links & Things (This Post Not Quite Past Its Sell-by Date)

To say that my February wrap-up of Links & Things is a bit late would be a gross understatement. After spending two separate weeks in February in Southern California (see this previous blog post for some background), I was just too overwhelmed with catch-up in the first half of March -- and then preparing for my next (and hopefully last) trip to SoCal in the second half of the month -- to deal with February at that time; and now, here it is April 1! But there were some excellent resources in February and I didn't want to simply overlook that month entirely, so here they are, February's Links & Things: better late than never.

• Consumers in greater numbers are finally questioning the source of their food (and what is in it), which has led more and more people to begin growing their own. So I wanted to take this opportunity to inform you that the long-out-of-print (1995) book Homestead Year: Back to the Land in Suburbia, by author (and my friend) Judith Moffett, is now back in print courtesy of the Authors Guild Back-in-Print program. [Note: I appear, though not by name, in Homestead Year, in a paragraph on "September 4" (page 258 in the original hardcover edition) in Judith's journal; she refers to me as a "[book] collector in California."]
• What was undoubtedly the biggest news of the month (and yet I've seen no further details on this since): On February 6 Reuters reported that Amazon "plans to open a physical store in its home town of Seattle in coming months to showcase and sell its growing line of gadgets, including the Kindle Fire tablet..." (via mediabistro.com's @galleycat)
• A website entitled BookBub has recently come to my attention, and if you are an avid eBook reader, then you'll want to sign up at the site's home page. BookBub describes itself as "an alert service that keeps you updated on great book deals. We only notify you about deals that meet the following criteria: Free or Deeply Discounted, Top Quality Content, and Limited Time Offers." When you register for BookBub's newsletter, you can select the categories of books in which you have an interest. View the latest BookBub Deals.
• Author N. K. Jemisin (@nkjemisin) shares with her readers an essay she wrote for a forthcoming anthology entitled The Miseducation of the Writer -- essays by writers of color on genre literature -- edited by Maurice Broaddus, John Edward Lawson, and Chesya Burke, to be published by Guide Dog Books, the nonfiction imprint of Raw Dog Screaming Press. From the essay: "Not so long ago, at the dawn of the New World, black people were saved from ignorance in darkest Africa by being brought into the light of the West. This is bullshit." This is a must-read essay for all writers (and editors, too).
• James L. Sutter's guest post on SF Signal (@sfsignal) deals with "Technology in Fantasy." Sutter writes: "Some people prefer technology that precisely matches that of a given real-world historical era. Others see nothing wrong with mixing and matching, combining swords, laser pistols, zeppelins, and dinosaur-pulled chariots. Some feel that technology itself should be the defining feature of the world (hence the ever-popular steampunk genre). Yet whatever path you choose when designing worlds for your fiction or RPG setting, there are a few important technological issues to consider." And he deals with each of these issues: 1) Anachronism; 2) Multiple Technology Levels; 3) The Question of Magic; and 4) Common Technologies, in which he covers these specifics: Airships; Sanitation; Medicine; Printing Press; Steam Power; and Firearms.
  

Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #13

You may want to begin here....

"The First Contact with the Gorgonids"

by Ursula K. Le Guin

This story was originally published in the January 1992 issue of Omni magazine, and is approximately 2,800 words in length.

I had a subscription to Omni in the late '80s, and I had also obtained random issues from the mid '80s and from the early '90s. Some of the absolutely best genre fiction was published in the pages of this magazine during the course of its lifespan.¹ I couldn't find my copy of the January 1992 issue (if you saw my workroom you would understand; maybe one of these days, when I'm not feeling too self-conscious, I'll post a pic), so I pulled this Ursula K. Le Guin story from a copy of her collection, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (HarperCollins, 1994).

As I was planning this anthology, I set out to include this story by Ms. Le Guin. She has mainstream name recognition but, unlike some authors who write SF, Ms. Le Guin actually admits to being a science fiction writer. In my June 6 blog post, I quote from (and link to) a two-part essay Ms. Le Guin wrote on "genre" vs. "literary" fiction.

Toward the end of 2008 (that just shows you how long I've been working on this anthology) I learned that Ursula K. Le Guin would be attending Potlatch 18 in Sunnyvale, California. Her book, Always Coming Home, was one of the convention's two Books of Honor. (Potlatch doesn't have Guests of Honor, but rather Books of Honor.) Also on the con's membership list was another author whose story I had wanted to include in the anthology as well. (However, she shall remain nameless for now, but all will be revealed in story #23.) So I attended Potlatch² on February 28 and March 1, 2009, with hopes of being able to speak to both authors personally, to introduce myself and to request permission to use their respective stories in this anthology. Opportunity was with me as I was able to speak with both authors together as they entered the lobby of the hotel, having just returned from lunch. Ms. Le Guin granted permission and said to contact her agent (with whom I had already been in contact) to let her know that we had talked; the other author also granted the use of her story, and provided me with her email address so that I could contact her directly. At that point all was right with the world.

I had been sharing my progress on this anthology with my friend, the author Judith Moffett. I would mention authors' names, but I hadn't as yet provided her with any specific story titles (or at least not very many titles). On February 19, I received an email from Judy in which she wrote: "...I just read the Le Guin story 'The First Contact with the Gorgonids' and thought, what a perfect little story, is that the one Marty's trying to get into his anthology? And then of course I couldn't find the list. Anyway, is that the one? ...I saw the story in a little story collection I got out of the library, called A Fisherman of the Inland Sea: Stories, all by UKLeG." And, of course, I responded that it was in fact the story that I had acquired for the collection.

Judy's five words: "what a perfect little story" says more than I could have in a lengthy paragraph. "The First Contact with the Gorgonids" is sardonic wit at its finest. I'll set the scene in the story: Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Debree -- he's a businessman, she's a businessman's wife -- are on vacation in Australia with hopes of taking in a corroboree, an Aborigines ceremonial meeting. Unfortunately, Jerry is far from being impressed with what he has seen so far, and he's quite expressive about it, too. So a couple locals, both named "Bruce," talk Jerry into going to a place called Grong Crossing, "way out in 'the bush' where they were certain to meet real abos really living in the desert." "Few hours' drive, that's all," one of the Bruces said. The story doesn't actually state how long they drove but we get a sense that it was far longer than a "few hours' drive." In fact, it's possible that the Bruces were simply jiving Jerry in the first place and that Grong Crossing may not even exist -- but the exchange between husband and wife during the long drive is priceless. Finally they spy a huge rock out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by what they initially believe to be "bushmen," and stop the car.

Judith Moffett's Pennterra: Going Native

During my one year as an acquiring editor for Fantastic Books, two of my acquired titles saw publication: Judith Moffett's long-out-of-print first novel Pennterra, and gonzo novel Fuzzy Dice by Paul Di Filippo, which had been previously published only as a limited edition by a British small press.

Recently Pennterra was reviewed by a British print magazine, H&E Naturist. Since the review is not available online, I've taken the liberty of entering the full review below for your reading pleasure.  I'm posting this review on More Red Ink because the author is currently involved in writing a memoir, to which she is devoting all of her writing time; thus her blog and website have not been updated for quite some time. If you don't know who Judith Moffett is, or you are curious what she has to write a memoir about, you may want to check out her Wikipedia entry: Judy is not your typical SF/F genre writer! You can also read my previous blog post about Judy's published work entitled "Aliens Have Entered Mainstream's Orbit."

Before posting the review, I would first like to reiterate the quote from Nebula Award-winning author Michael Bishop that appears on the cover (pictured above) of this reprint edition of Pennterra: "Stunning... the best first novel I have read in at least a decade... dangerous and breathtaking to behold."

August Links & Things (Part Two)

Part Two of my "August Links & Things" blog post is of a more personal nature, primarily on authors with whom I have worked, books I have edited. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern -- but here, in addition to the links themselves, I include more detail and occasional comments.

• RTBookReviews.com [Romantic Times] has "Kage Baker Remembered" -- heartfelt memories of the author as seen "through the eyes of her younger sister, Kathleen Bartholomew." I would like to add that in all the years I've known Kage -- and through lunches, dinners, bookstore readings, convention panels, hotel lobby chats, etc. -- she and Kathleen were inseparable. Reading about Kage through Kathleen's eyes is a pure joy. [Note: I have written my own remembrance of working with Kage Baker.]

Kage, age 6, with her first typewriter,
and her godfather, Irish actor Sean McClory

• And if you are a reader and/or fan of Kage's writings, then you'll want to be following Kathleen's blog: Kathleen, Kage and the Company, in which Kathleen is -- to use her word -- "channeling" Kage. In between her fiction writing, Kathleen tells many wonderful stories of growing up with Kage, the two of them living together in various locales, their travels, their hobbies, the food they loved, and more. Kathleen has tons of Kage's notes, and years and years of long discussions with Kage about her stories and characters -- and Kathleen plans to write the novels that Kage was unable to complete. She is currently working on the sequel to The Women of Nell Gwynne's.
  

July Links & Things

I've lost a week of work this month with a trip to Southern Cal to visit the mum in hospital rehab. She entered the hospital the morning of Friday, July 9 (about the time I arrived in Boston for Readercon), and she should be home, finally, by the end of this week. Then we'll have to see how she does on her own, though I suspect she'll have some in-home care for at least the first week.

Thus my recap of July's Links & Things will have less entries than normal due to time constraints. I do want you to know that I review all the links I pass on to ensure that they will be worth the time spent to read them (or in the case of video, to view them); if my readers aren't going to gain something that I feel is of value, then I don't include the link. It's as simple as that. Of course, I do have my own personal preferences and prejudices, but then who doesn't?

So, here are my links and such for the month of July. I've listed them here, with a bit of additional detail and comment. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern.

• SFSignal.com reviews Hespira, the third volume in Matthew Hughes' Henghis Hapthorn series, which I edited for Night Shade Books; the first two volumes in the series are Majestrum (2006) and The Spiral Labyrinth (2007). In his review, John DeNardo writes: "...Hughes' writing style is the real star, using a pitch-perfect delivery of stylistic prose that sets the mood and dry humor that is sure to elicit a few smiles.... The usual caveat of a latter-series novel applies here: you do not need to read the previous Henghis Hapthorn stories to enjoy Hespira, but you will gain even more enjoyment out of it if you do."
  

• Of all the books that I've edited over the years, the most-reviewed are undoubtedly the Laundry Files titles by Charles Stross: The Atrocity Archives (2004) and The Jennifer Morgue (2006), both from Golden Gryphon Press, and the recently published The Fuller Memorandum from Ace Books. I could fill an entire blog post with blurbs from all the TFM reviews I've read over the past two or so weeks, but for the sake of brevity, I'll only refer you to one of those reviews, which I felt was especially astute and articulate -- and that would be the review by Russell Letson, posted on Locus online on July 16, 2010. I've linked to the review for your reading pleasure, but what I wanted to do here was include a quote from the novel itself that Russell quoted in his review. Here are geekish demonology hacker extraordinaire Bob Howard's thoughts on the iPhone: "About the only smart phone that doesn’t stink like goose shit is the JesusPhone. But I've steadfastly refused to join the Cult of Jobs ever since I saw the happy-clappy revival tent launch." Unfortunately, before too long, Bob succumbs to the shiny. [I've written a lengthy blog post about my working with Charlie Stross on this series.]
  

• New eBook publisher Weightless Books (catch phrase: Books That Don't Weigh You Down) -- a branch, or subsidiary, or imprint, or whatever of Small Beer Press -- has published an eBook of the definitive edition of Judith Moffett's first novel Pennterra. This is the edition of Pennterra that Judith and I worked on over a period of weeks last year (published in a trade paperback edition in 2009 by Fantastic Books) to ensure that it was indeed the definitive version. And while you're at it, you may as well snag the eBook edition of her latest novel, The Bird Shaman, volume three in her Holy Ground Trilogy; but as with volume three of the Hughes trilogy above, you do not need to read the previous two volumes to enjoy The Bird Shaman.
  
  If you're into physical books, you can also purchase a signed (or signed and inscribed) copy of The Bird Shaman direct from the author's website. [And last, but certainly not least, you can read my earlier blog post on Judith Moffett and her various books and stories.]
  

• As long-time readers here know, I'm a fan of the axed-by-Fox-before-its-time TV series Firefly. Well, io9.com (@io9) felt that the introductory credits sequence that opened Firefly needed a bit of sprucing up. To use io9's words: the intro needed "a kick-ass, old-school, synth-happy, guitar-solo" and "Spaceships, 1980s-style." So, click the io9 link above, click the vid, sit back, and enjoy. Oh, and turn the sound up on your monitor! (via @charliejane)
  

May Links & Things

My May links and such are not as numerous as in months past as this has been a busy month for me, which left little time for twitter- and blog-gazing. And yet, I had more blog posts in May than in any other previous month, with the release in their entirety of two stories (so far) from my anthology Is Anybody Out There? co-edited with Nick Gevers, and released today -- June 1 -- by Daw Books. I also attended BayCon this past Memorial Day weekend, and as anyone knows who has attended a panel on which I participated, I always try to prepare ahead of time for my convention panels, with reference material, visual aids, etc. This weekend I participated in three excellent panels -- one being the Iron Editors panel, in which I (along with 3 others) edited/copyedited and commented upon manuscript pages from the audience for two straight hours. On another panel, on books and cover art, I had the opportunity to meet artist guest of honor Lee Moyer -- a knowledgeable and personable individual; and here's hoping I have an opportunity in the very near future to meet up with Lee once again.

Here are my links and such for the month of May. I've listed them here, with additional detail and comment. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern.

• Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association has named The Good Humor Man (Tachyon Publications, 2009) by Andrew Fox one of the Top 10 SF/Fantasy books of 2010. Congrats to Andy Fox, and to Tachyon for their willingness to publish an over-the-top book such as this. I've written about my involvement in the publication of The Good Humor Man; and I'm extremely pleased to see the book recognized by the ALA. But let me tell you, the two-sentence blurb that you'll find on the Booklist Online page truly does not do this book justice. Read my previous blog post, and then read the io9 review of The Good Humor Man by Chris Braak; it's always a thrill ride to read a solid review such as this!



• Don Sakers reviews Judith Moffett's novel Pennterra in his column "The Reference Library" in the July/August issue of Analog magazine (you'll need to scroll down the page to find the review). Sakers concludes his review with: "Pennterra packs a thousand pages of first-rate science fiction into its scant 288. The hrossa are finely drawn aliens with their own language, culture, philosophy, and even sexuality (all of which figure into the story). The clash between the Sixers and the Quakers, with the still-largely-unknown hrossa taking their own side, is compelling. If you think you hear distant echoes of Le Guin, you're right: Moffett is a stylist as well as a good storyteller." [Note: I acquired the reprint rights for Pennterra for Fantastic Books in 2009; and in a previous blog post, I wrote about Judith Moffett, Pennterra, and her Holy Ground Trilogy.]



• With great sadness I note the passing on May 10 of artist Frank Frazetta, whose iconic work graced book covers, movie posters, magazines, comics, record albums, and more. In an homage to the artist, Unreality Magazine (@un_reality) showcases 20 of Frazetta's best known works.



• Writer, blogger, and book reviewer Maud Newton (@maudnewton) shares with her readers "Notes on eight years of book blogging" -- "If you'd told me in 2002 that I would keep at it for so long or that so many people would know about this site or care what I had to say, I probably would've reacted the way I did to two boys in elementary school who said I was pretty: decided you were mocking me and head-butted you to the ground, shouting, "Why do you have to be such a jerk?" Eight years... Whew!...



• And speaking of Ms. Newton, she was named one of "40 bloggers who really count" by the UK's TimesOnline. Whether it be Celebrities, Fashion, Feminism, Food, Health, Law, Politics, Pop Culture, Sex, Technology, War, and more, you'll find the top bloggers on this list.

Aliens Have Entered Mainstream's Orbit

After joining Warren Lapine's Fantastic Books imprint as an acquisitions editor¹, a bit less than a year ago, the first book I acquired for reprint was Judith Moffett's novel Pennterra. This was her first novel and had been out of print since 1993. In an email to Warren on February 27, 2009, in which I introduced Judy (virtually speaking, that is) to him, I described her as follows:

...Judith Moffett is not your typical sf author! She is an award-winning poet with a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, a couple of Fulbrights under her belt and grants from both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is also a world-class translator of Swedish poetry, and presented at the 1998 Nobel Symposium on Translation of Poetry and Poetic Prose held in Stockholm.

Now I know that when Judy reads this, she'll be all "Aw, shucks," and the like, but how many science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream -- hell, even mainstream fiction -- authors do you know with this kind of street cred? Just check out all her awards and recognitions on Wikipedia and then come back here and leave me a comment if you're not totally knocked out!

What influenced my decision to blog about Ms. Moffett and her fiction was a recent online review of Pennterra. The review is by Sam Kelly on a blog entitled Cold Iron and Rowan-Wood. But first, a bit about the novel itself: A group of Quakers colonize a planet -- Pennterra -- already inhabited by the alien hrossa. In order to live in peace and harmony with both the planet and the natives, the colonists are restricted to a single valley, and they must limit their population and forsake all heavy machinery in their building and farming. Not exactly what they had in mind when they left a devastated Earth for a new home amongst the stars. Without the use of machinery, the colonists' days are completely filled with exhausting, backbreaking work, and consequently they have had little time to study the hrossa -- until now. A small group of scientists are sent to live with, and study, the natives, and this is detailed in a large section of the novel through the use of field notes and personal journals; the hrossa have a very interesting set of sexual mores, which has a direct impact on the scientists themselves (sorry, no spoilers here). There is a particularly fine "first contact/coming-of-age" story arc involving the son of one the scientists. The main conflict arises in the novel when another colony ship arrives on the planet and these folks are not so inclined to limit and forsake.

Now, what makes Sam Kelly's review of Pennterra interesting is that he makes little mention of the aliens, but he does comment on the Quaker religion portrayed in the book: "Moffett does a good job of showing us how they find the nature of the planet out...making no distinctions between biological research, botanical studies, practical anthropology, and conversation between friends. At the same time, we see the characteristic painful Quaker honesty about themselves and their reactions to their work. The pacing of discovery is good, without playing I-know-something-you-don’t-know tricks on either reader or characters; it might have been good to have seen the author coming down less heavily on the Quaker side, but then I may well be seeing more of that than is there as a Quaker myself." [Note: I believe the reviewer is sensing more of the Quakerness of the story than a typical reader (myself) would.]

All of this, of course, is to encourage you to read Pennterra. Judy and I spent approximately two weeks copyediting the page proofs, discussing each and every correction during very lengthy (two to three hours) telephone conversations. The Fantastic Books edition of Pennterra is indeed the most accurate text of the novel and thus the author's preferred text. However, copies of earlier editions are available through secondary markets, or you can purchase the Fantastic Books edition directly from the FB website, or via Amazon or other booksellers. (And yes, I'm shilling books here; what can I say...)

July Links and Things

Since I just posted a new blog essay on the 31st, I thought I would wait a few days before posting July's links. And there are indeed a lot of them -- hopefully something to satisfy even those who think they've seen/read it all! In fact, to cut down on the number of these links in the months ahead, beginning this month (August, not July, as this is still July, so to speak) I'm no longer going to post any ongoing serializations. So if you are reading the serialized fiction being posted online by Cory Doctorow, Tim Pratt, Catherynne M. Valente, and John Shirley, then you may want to subscribe directly to those blogs/websites. I'll still tweet when new pieces are posted but I won't list them in my links listings in the future, only if it's a new serialization. You can receive all these links in real time by following me on Twitter. I have listed all of the July links here, all in one post, and with additional detail and comment.

The first July links entry is the publication of the reprint edition of author Judith Moffett's first novel, Pennterra. This was my first acquisition for Warren Lapine's Fantastic Books imprint, which, by the way, now has a new website. I had the pleasure of meeting Judith for the first time at ReaderCon in Boston last year, and we've become virtual friends, I guess you could say. Judith Moffett is not your typical SF author! She is an award-winning poet with a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, a couple of Fulbrights under her belt, and grants from both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is also a world-class translator of Swedish poetry, who presented at the 1998 Nobel Symposium on Translation of Poetry and Poetic Prose. The list of accomplishments in her Wikipedia entry is awe-inspiring. When Pennterra was originally published in 1987, Nebula Award-winning author Michael Bishop wrote: "Stunning... the best first novel I have read in at least a decade... dangerous and breathtaking to behold." Ms. Moffett has a new novel available as well, Bird Shaman, that was published to coincide with her ReaderCon appearance; you can read about the new novel on her website and even order a signed and inscribed copy directly from the author (and at a discount, too). So am I plugging both of these books (and the author)? You betcha!

Here are the rest of my July links and things:

• Author, geek, futurist Bruce Sterling gave the closing talk at June's Reboot 11 Conference. Video available. According to boingboing.net: "In his closing talk from last month's Reboot conference in Copenhagen, Bruce Sterling guesses at what it will be like to live through the next ten years: 'It is neither progress nor conservatism because there's nothing left to conserve and no direction in which to progress. So what you get is transition. Transition to nowhere.'" Ya gotta love Bruce! (@bruces)


• CrunchGear headline: "Indie Kindle author lands book deal." Boyd Morrison, self-published author of the Kindle ebook The Ark lands a two-book contract with publisher Simon & Schuster; the contract is for The Ark, to be published in hardcover in 2010, and the sequel. Morrison became a member of the Kindle Boards and did all his own self-promoting. This is the first reported instance of a self-published Kindle author scoring a book contract with a major publisher.


• Author John C. Wright (The Golden Age et al.) shares his writerly expertise with new writers in his "Ten Commandments for How to be a Writer." Actually, there is an Eleventh Commandment that John refers to as the "unwritten rule": "When you get a rejection slip, be thankful." His insights on rejection slips are quite inspiring.


• The Deadline Dames (@DeadlineDames) are a group of nine urban fantasy & paranormal romance authors. Dame Devon has posted an essay entitled "A Forest Full of Trees," in which she discusses rewriting/revising one's manuscript. Good stuff, for writers and editors both. She lists twenty-one "Big Picture Revision Questions" to ask yourself about your manuscript. #4: "Are the senses fully employed? (Sight, smell, touch, taste, sound)" #10: "Is the dialogue working to move the story forward in ways the narrative can't?"


• Author Holly Lisle's (@hollylisle) blog provides a lot of step-by-step material for writers. A recent entry, "How To Create a Character," lists six bullet points, followed by a lengthy discussion on -- you guessed it -- character creation. The last bullet point is: "Do write from your own life." At the end of this blog post, you'll find a link to a "Character Creation Workshop," which links to a "Dialogue Workshop," which links to a "Maps Workshop," which links to a "Scene Creation Workshop"... Also at the end of the "How to Create a Character" post is another link on "How To Finish a Novel," which links to "How To Revise a Novel," which links to "How To Collaborate," etc. You get the idea. You could probably spend days, if not weeks, on this site.


• Author Kim Wilkins steps us through "The Science of [Self-] Editing" -- the author doesn't include the word "self" in the blog title, but I feel the need to do so, since "self-editing" is far different from what I term "editing." Regardless of the nuances, Kim has some good stuff to say about the self-editing process: "For those of you embarking on a self-edit, the most important thing to remember is to be methodical and detached.... I do this, all the while imagining that I'm not the person who has to fix it. Makes it far less overwhelming (though a little more pathological)." She goes on to explain her own [self-]editing process.

George Alec Effinger - Part Two

My apologies for such a long delay since my previous blog post. I enjoy this enough that I would love to do it full time, but it doesn't pay the bills, unfortunately. I've had two very big projects that I've been working on that have occupied these past two weeks. I've just completed copyediting The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (approximately 152,000 words) for Tachyon Publications, scheduled to be published in 2010. I also completed my copyediting review of novel Pennterra (approximately 135,000 words) by Judith Moffett; this is the first reprint title I acquired for Fantastic Books (an imprint of Warren Lapine's Wilder Publications). The book had to be scanned from the original hardcover, and there was a huge amount of copyediting work, plus the author has made some text changes to update the book from the mid-'80s to 2009. I'm now waiting on Judy to finish her review of the last portion of the book. My next project will be copyediting vampire anthology By Blood We Live (this one's a monster 245,000 words!) edited by John Joseph Adams for Night Shade Books. Now, on to the purpose of this blog post...

This is the second of three essays on author George Alec Effinger -- one for each of the three collections of his work that I acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press, between 2001 and 2007. Part One of this series focused on Budayeen Nights.

Once Budayeen Nights was complete and in the hands of the typesetter, I began thinking about the next collection of Effinger's work. But now that George had passed away, I didn't have his input on this second book as I did for BN. All I had was my commitment to him to help bring his work back into print, and his email of August 30, 2001, in which he suggested a collection featuring "a hefty selection of my 200 stories, with introductions to each one, and calling it GAE: The White Album or GAE Live! At the Village Gate or . . . GAE: The Prairie Years." When George and I were communicating by email (albeit sporadically, due to his health and domicile issues) between 2001 and 2002, I had asked him to put together a list of the stories he would like to include in a "best of" collection, but time just wasn't on his side. And George wasn't kidding when he referred to his "200 stories" -- I know, as I've tried to track down a goodly portion of them! In fact, I probably have the largest "collection" of George Alec Effinger short fiction, only second to Barbara Hambly, who now has all of George's files and books in her possession.

The Concept
I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, considering it was six years ago, but if ye olde memory still serves me, I came up with the basic idea for the second collection during a telephone conversation with author George Zebrowski. Unlike archived email, I'm not able to replay and quote six-year-old telephone conversations, so memory will have to do. (Maybe AT&T has the conversation archived in some illegal-wiretapping file? GeorgeZ and I may have mentioned the words "Budayeen" or "Islamic" or "Arab" in the course of our conversations about GAE!)

I had worked with GeorgeZ on his short story collection entitled Swift Thoughts (Golden Gryphon Press, 2002). During that project, and for some time afterward, we spoke quite often on the telephone. George had unlimited long distance at the time and enjoyed calling and chatting with his many author friends and editors. It was the "author friends and editors" that gave me the idea. Since GAE was no longer with us, to select the stories for his next collection, I decided that I would ask his peers -- friends and fellow authors, and editors -- to select their favorite GAE story. And then, once they told me their favorite story, I would ask them -- as a tribute to GAE -- to write a mini introduction to the story. I wanted to first hook them on the story suggestion, and then seek their cooperation to write an intro. GeorgeZ wholeheartedly agreed to contribute, as did many others.

Fantastic Books Acquisitions

In a previous blog post I announced my new working relationship with Warren Lapine and his imprint Fantastic Books. Well, since that annoucement was released to the press on February 3, I just wanted you to know that I haven't been resting on my laurels (what a ridiculous phrase -- this particular genus of evergreen contains black berries, not something I would choose to rest on!).

Here is a list of titles, and authors (in alphabetical order), that I have acquired reprint rights to for Fantastic Books:

Paul Di Filippo
Fuzzy Dice

Judith Moffett
Pennterra

Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The White Mists of Power
Facade
Heart Readers
Traitors
Sins of the Blood
The Devil's Churn
The Fey #1: Sacrifice
The Fey #2: Changeling
The Fey #3: Rival
The Fey #4: Resistance
The Fey #5: Victory
Alien Influences

Dean Wesley Smith
Laying the Music To Rest

In addition to these authors, I am also in talks with four others, who shall remain nameless until (hopefully) contracts are signed.

Our goal at Fantastic Books is to help authors make their out-of-print backlist available once again, so that the authors generate some income from the sale of their titles (whereas authors make nothing from the used book market).

I'm looking for OOP backlist genre fiction, preferably novels, but I will also consider collections (especially if you have been recognized for your short fiction) and even previously unpublished fiction. If you are an author and have out-of-print work that you would like to see in print again -- or new fiction in search of a POD publisher -- please do contact me.

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Rightly Reconsidering (Book) Reviews

Are book reviews (and by default, book reviewers) so sacrosanct as to be above reproach?

Authors -- and yes, editors and publishers as well -- are taught at a very young age in their professional careers to ignore reviews, to not take them personally, to turn the other cheek, so to speak. And why is that? Why can't we respond to reviews?

Because we will give the impression that we are unprofessional, that we are whiners. At least that's what our peers -- and possibly readers of the review -- may think. But from our own perspective, we also have to worry that we'll piss off the reviewer by our response, and then that reviewer will take it out on us a hundredfold in the next review, if in fact there even is a next review. And then others may not want to review our work for fear of receiving such a response as well. And as Cheryl Morgan (a book reviewer and critic) just pointed out to me: "...if an author challenges a review, his fans will go after the reviewer, whether he wants them to or not."

Reviews/reviewers and authors are sort of like the separation between Church and State. Yet the incoming president takes the oath of office with his hand upon a Bible; and the coin of the realm all proclaim "In God We Trust."

So where does that leave us?

Some authors I know truly don't care about reviews, reviewers, or what others think of their stories. Once they've completed a work of fiction and it's been accepted by the editor, they then move on to the next project and never look back. While other authors are deeply concerned -- and affected -- by reviews and what others think of their fiction.

I worked with an author on her short fiction collection, and after the book was published we stayed in contact with one another for a bit. The following year her next novel was published, and it was reviewed in Locus magazine -- a mediocre review at best, but at least it wasn't blatantly negative. (Locus, though, doesn't typically publish blatantly negative reviews; I assume if the book is that bad, they simply choose not to review it, so a mediocre review in Locus, when all is said and done, is definitely not a good review.) What upset the author the most, however, was that the reviewer missed a key element of the story -- and that key element would have explained the reviewer's primary issue with the novel (and maybe then the review wouldn't have been mediocre). Locus, at the time, was considered a highly influential publication (though not so much anymore, now that we are solidly in the digital age, and readers, book buyers, and book collectors get the majority of their information and reviews online), so even a mediocre review could have a strong, negative sales effect on a book. But we'll never know, will we: missed opportunities -- aka sales -- cannot be measured.

But the question(s) remains: Did the reviewer blow it big time by missing that key element of the story? Or, did the author -- and, let's be honest, the book's editor shares responsibility in this as well -- blow it big time by not communicating that key element more effectively to the reader/reviewer? If every review of the novel contained this same "omission," then yes, we could agree that the fault lies with the author, and the author's editor. But if only one review were guilty of this oversight, then the finger would indeed point to the reviewer. If the review was on Joe's Friendly Neighborhood blog, then I don't think the author (and editor and publisher) would be particularly concerned; but when that mediocre review shows up in the Washington Post Book World or Publishers Weekly (before Reed Business Information tried to sell the publication, and, to reduce costs, began paying freelance reviewers $25.00 per review; read more about PW's freelance fees), then we know sales will most likely be affected.

Unfortunately, given the Church and State dichotomy, the author has no recourse but to grin and bear it -- or to hit his [the generic use of "his," implying both male and female authors] head against the wall and scream, if he tends to not be the silent type.

And yet, I'm encountering more and more reviews of late where the reviewer just doesn't seem to get it! Why is that? [Notice I keep asking this same question a lot.] Is it the reviewer's lack of experience and knowledge in the genre? It's difficult to say, unless one knows the reviewer personally, or the reviewer provides a professional bio alongside the review. And all of this places even more pressure on the author who cares about what others say of his work.

Here's my take on the three main issues with genre reviews; they are like the plague, and they are spreading...