Censorship – credit card companies are burning our books

I received an email from Smashwords this week, because I publish erotica with them and they have received instructions from PayPal that they can no longer publish content with rape, bestiality and incest (including pseudo incest). Now, those of us who don't write those particular sub types of erotica may think, oh well, doesn't apply to me, so, ho hum, let's just ignore it. However, this is the thin end of the wedge! (BTW, I will add here, that it is not PayPal who came up with these new rules, it was credit card companies, banks and credit unions)

Where the hell did financial institutions get the idea they could introduce their own brand of censorship?! They don't make laws, they make money and last time I checked, writing about rape, bestiality or incest is not illegal (I won't cast my own moral judgement on it, because I haven't read every single book with it in, so I don't think I would make a fair judgement). These companies have no legal leg to stand on when trying to control the output of authors, so why should they get away with suddenly strong arming content providers like this? What next? Amex telling Marks and Spencers they can't sell skimpy lingerie because it may cause a gentleman to have improper thoughts?! 

What these companies are doing is censorship, pure and simple.

Smashwords is not to blame in this, they are being threatened with removal of their payment system if they don't comply: blackmail in any other terms. They are doing their best to negotiate the least restrictive outcome. Still, all this makes me angry, very angry, as you may have gathered from my tone above. When we allow a group of businessmen to go above the law and impose their own set of arbitrary restrictions, we are allowing some unknown puppet master behind these decisions to dictate what only elected governments should be able to control, freedom of speech.

Australia has laws about the age of participating individuals in erotica, over 18: being British, I may think they're draconian, but they are laws and I will respect them. These credit card companies have only profit driving them. These people didn't even try the SOPA route of getting their whims into law, they went the backdoor. Personally, I don't think this is right. They are using their position of relative monopoly in their industries to push a censorship agenda that it is not their place to be pushing. Given their current targets, we should be burning the Greek/Roman Myths along with the indie erotica, since dear old Zeus raped his way through his conquests and was known to take the form of an animal while doing it.

Anyway, whatever we think about the current censorship targets for these companies, censorship is still censorship, they're effectively burning books, just because they're made of virtual words does not make it any less barbaric than if they'd made a pyre outside the local library. We have to let these companies know we do not approve. We need to contact our credit card companies and our politicians and let them know we don't think financial institutions should not be in the censorship business.  We need spread the word far and wide that we, as readers and writers, do not want finance controlling our imaginations.

Tweet it, blog it, tell the media – we don't want business censoring legal works of fiction!


Edit - found a good post by Huffington Post about this. Plus a petition.

My GoodReads Review of BloodSucker Bay by Rachel M D'aigle - I wanted more plot

Bloodsucker Bay by Rachel M. D'aigle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think I like the idea of this book more than the execution. I like the characters, I like the story, but it needs some editing and more writing to make me love it.

This feels more like the start of a story, rather than giving me a satisfying conclusion. I understand it is part of a series, but this just doesn't feel like a whole story to be published alone, but the first section in a longer work. And, even then, I think it needs some rewriting to expand the characters, take out the overwritten explanations and provide more show don't tell.

I think the author had certain scenes clearly in mind, but not all of the ideas get onto the page, which means the pace is far too quick for my taste. Any suspense is left between stories, not in this actual story, which, since it is being presented as a standalone work, left me dissatisfied. Everything is in question-answer pairs and the only answer to be given in this story comes far too quickly, even episodes of TV shows usually take longer to get to the point.

So, I gave this book a three star review for the ideas, but I'd have liked more plot.

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Hammer's The Woman In Black - wow, just wow!

The Woman In Black - don't look behind you Arthur!

Just to set the scene: I've been waiting with bated breath for this movie to come out since I first heard Hammer were making their own adaptation of The Woman In Black. I have read the book, seen the stage play and I own the TV adaptation on DVD - this is one of my favourite all time ghost stories, so the film did not have much to live up to! I say now, I was NOT disappointed.

This is a creepy, suspenseful, truly scary film. The cinematography captures the atmosphere of the book perfectly, but the adaptations made for the big screen make the film much, much more immediate than the book. I was hiding behind my hands, peaking at the screen for a good 50% of the time and that was down to the fabulous pacing and brilliant effects. They weren't overdone, no massive, obvious CGI, instead horror artistry at its best. I usually find myself in movies catching any computer graphics, noticing the tricks, but not in this movie. I actually have no idea how much was computer enhanced and how much was just camera angle, but whatever it was, those angles and blended tricks were brilliant (just look closely at the picture at the top of this blog entry and you'll see what I mean).

The director has to be praised for the way this film is put together. From the very first moment that Arthur steps in Eel March House, this film had me looking over Arthur's shoulder in every shot. Each time there was a gloomy corner, I was looking into it, wondering, is she there? And sometimes, eek, she was! I am sure when I watch the movie again, I will see more ghosts.

Dan Radcliffe does a magnificent job as Arthur Kipps. He is a broken man when we meet him and his eyes tell all. Considering that much of this film is just Dan, the camera and the ghosts in the background, Daniel had a lot to carry on his shoulders and he does it very, very well. You see his grief, you feel his fear, you stand with him when he resolves to beat that terror and yet, none of it was overdone. His is a subtle performance, believable and sits perfectly in the atmosphere of the whole film.

Hammer have made some significant changes to the plot, but then every adaptation I have seen has as well. The changes in this case were, I think, the best changes to I have seen to this story, As I mentioned above, the book is not as immediate as the film, it can afford more introspection, as writing often can. The changes to Arthur's circumstances, to the location, Crythin Gifford and to the story of Jennet, the woman in black, are understandable and work within the film, providing atmosphere and background that allow the watcher to sink very quickly into the plot and also add to the scares.

I would heartily recommend this film to anyone who is either a ghost story lover, or a Daniel Radcliffe fan, because you get plenty of both. But a word of warning, the creepiness lingers :). It was midnight when I got home from the cinema, a dark and windy night. Let's just say I didn't stay outside in the dark for long and I may have ducked under the covers when I turned off the bedside light!

My GoodReads Review for The Haunting of Pico by Patrick Kampman - very, very readable

The Haunting of Pico by Patrick Kampman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a good read. I liked the characters and the central character, Chris, is just a darling, and clueless about girls in an adorably bemused sort of way. SPOILER ALERT
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Chris stumbles through the plot (the book is told from his point of view, first person, so it is very intimate with him), from his first day in Pico, through making friends at High School, to the dramatic climax, and just occasionally I wanted to kick him up the bum, but then so did his friends for being a dufus, but, most of the time, it wasn't his fault. :)

I picked up this book in the morning and didn't put it down until I'd finished it at lunch time, it was that engaging.

The only reason I gave it 4 not 5 stars is that, given the pace of the rest of the book, which is steady and slightly longer than other YA books I've read, I was disappointed that the two plots that were running side by side were both dealt with in very short measure at the end of the book. I wanted more on both, not really much more plot, but more depth to the climaxes of both the plots. I also thought that Tim's fate was gratuitous to the point of being callous (which was fine, Rose was a callous bitch in the end, but there should have been some reaction from Chris, but it is rattled off in the epilogue without much depth) and I would have thought that killing someone and dealing with their dead body, even a vampire, and dumping it in your hidden basement would have had its effect on the teenagers, but no, apparently Strip Karts is much more distracting than the dead person in the basement.

Apart from that, great book :)

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My GoodReads Review of Ghost a la Mode by Sue Ann Jaffarian - an excellent book!

Ghost a la Mode by Sue Ann Jaffarian
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I adored this book, it is witty, touching and just a damn good adventure mystery in the end.

I like ghosts and murder mysteries, so this book had two pluses for when I read the blurb. Add to that the style and engaging characters and I was in love. I was thinking this would take me four session on the exercise bike (my reading venue of a morning), but I was so into the book this morning, that I kept on reading until I had finished it!

A 40-something divorcee is not usually my idea of an engaging main character, but I liked Emma a lot, and the strong, somewhat bombastic Phil was a winner from the moment I met him in the pages of this book. Not to mention Granny Apples. The town of Julian is also described well, the author knows her location.

This is chick lit with a paranormal twist and I will be looking up more Granny Apples mysteries for sure.

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Writing Diary #59 - Book Series vs Book Serial

I think I'm a fairly patient person in most aspects of my life, but one thing I really can't stand is cliffhangers. I hate watching/reading works in progress and I dislike being left in the lurch by any plot. I'm the kind of person that, if a TV show has a two-parter, I'll save up both parts to watch at the same time. That doesn't mean I don't like continuing plot arcs that go through a series of books or episodes on a TV show, even through a series of movies, but when those arcs are stronger than the plot of a book/episode, such that I feel like I've been dragged along for the pure purpose of extending an arc, not getting any payoff in that book/episode, then I get pissy and stop watching/reading.

I did this with Babylon 5, which became a slave to its overarching arcs to the point where if you missed one episode you hadn't a hope of understanding the next. I've also been bitten by book series as well, professionally published, not self-published I hasten to add, which just didn't finish, the final books in the series were never published, namely, The Power of Five Series by Anthony Horowitz. And I know he's starting releasing them again, but he's changed them so dramatically that I hated the last one I read and have no plans to carry on reading the rest, ironically, it's the one I finished on the first time I read them and then I was desperate to find the next one.

The reason this all came to mind again is that I read a book this weekend that read on the blurb like a start of a standard series of YA paranormal books about a girl discovering the demon world. Nice premise, I thought, and duly started reading. Well, after a couple of hours, I wanted to keep on reading to the end of the plot, only problem was, the book had finished, minor subplot addressed, major plot (a murder), left hanging. As a reader, I was left dissatisfied and not in the, I want to read more now way.

Now, I know I'm a bit more sensitive to being left hanging than some readers, who would probably like this book, but I was left ticked off and just peeved enough not to look for the second book, the story just wasn't good enough for me to get over my own hump. So, I then slept on it and started thinking about the structure of stories and the duty a writer has to their reader.

Tash and I both have series of books just beginning and plans for other series and I began to think on these and what we have planned for them. My main one at the moment is The Haward Mysteries, a contemporary fantasy set of books and short stories. Ignoring the short stories, which are meant to be interludes, windows on to the world of the Haward Twins, each novel is a police investigation murder mystery and has a beginning, middle and end, but there is a strong subplot arc relating to the protagonists' back story that will develop through seven books and this subplot will have a strong influence on the final book. There are also other minor arcs that pop in and out. No surprises here then, the reader can expect a complete story from each book with some, hopefully, tantalising tendrils of subplot thrown in to encourage them to read the next book. I see the delivery of a complete story, with investment, development and paypoff to be part of my contract with any person reading my book; I won't waste their time and mine with prose that just pads out an arc that gives them no resolution at all in that piece.

The planning for The Haward Mysteries is complete, Tash and I (we are writing these books as a team), have the premises and arc points worked out for each book. However, for a few months, I and my muse have been pondering over another, very different set of stories, in fact, on the surface, it could break my own rules, because I am looking at it as one long story, but to be released as a serial in a set of short stories, a la the old fashioned Penny Dreadfuls. However, unlike classic Penny Dreadfuls, which relied on cliffhangers (you only have to read Dickens to spot the cliffhangers) I want each part to have a strong story of its own as well. Unlike Haward, they would not be standalone stories that can be read ostensibly in any order (ignoring subplot), they would have to be read one after the other, but I want to make certain there is a payoff for the reader in each part, I want to obey my rule, no arc builders. Since plots don't and shouldn't develop in completely equal length chunks, that means some of my short stories will be longer than others, no 1000 word limit like Dickens had for his serial parts, and I hope my readers will forgive me for that in favour of getting a good, substantial read.

Oh and, one important thing to me, because I've just been caught out like this: when I'm publishing this serial, I'm going to make it clear what it is, the short stories will be listed as Part 1, Part 2, not Book 1, Book 2, and the description will tell them it's a serial section; I don't intend to surprise my readers, they will know exactly what they are getting.

I'm looking forward to trying out this format, I am in the planning stages at the moment, splitting up the plot I have into cohesive sections. It has a totally different feel to developing a novel-format story, where I don't worry too much about chunking my plot up, I tend to find it just sort of flows when I'm developing a novel. This time, I'm finding that I am having to examine my plot hard to find the draw in each chunk, the thing that will keep a person reading, while still keeping the chunks to a reasonable length for a good, quick read. That's the opposite to a novel, in a novel, I find myself ripping out bits of the story that maybe interrupt the pace, sacrificing pieces to make the whole reading experience work. With short story chunks, within reason there is a bit more space for those extras, because, in some cases, they are what makes the short story a story in its own right.

I am finding that plot and subplot are much more equal in this type of format, little things are more important, because the horizon at the end of the over-all plot is further away, thus the characters, and therefore the reader are more focused on the next step, not the complete journey. Each subplot needs a beginning, a middle and an end as well as the overall plot, but neither can supersede the other. I think it is maintaining this balance between plot and subplot that will make this format succeed or fail for me: languish too long in a subplot and the reader may get bored and not care about moving on, but make it too light and the short story will break the no arc builders rule and, if the reader is like me, leave them dissatisfied.

One final point about this type of serial: I know the end before I start publishing the beginning. This is no work in progress, the subplots have to be carefully strung together to build towards the climax of the overall plot. That leaves the other type of serial, the one that has no obvious end, akin to a Soap Opera style of overlapping mini-plots. It sounds kind of fun :) and it has its own unique challenges (I personally think writers of Soap Operas are damn clever, being able to present and represent multiple plots in every episode so that any viewer, new or old, can pick up and enjoy in that episode without 20 years of back story). Maybe one day I might try it, but one challenge at a time. :)

My GoodReads Review of Demon Girl by P S Power - well it was an okay part of a story

Demon Girl by K L Byron
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Be warned, this is not a complete story, it leaves more plot lines hanging than it concludes in this first book of what I would term a serial, rather than a series, since it really isn't much good reading this book stand alone.

I don't mind a book with a main plot and then a continuing arc subplot, but I was left after reading this book feeling cheated that I'd read a concluding subplot, not a major theme.
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Apart from the heavy Christian bashing that goes on throughout the book, which was verging on the uncomfortable at times, I really liked the character of Keeley, she's not depressive, or ponderous, she's practical, if a little bit sociopathic. I even liked Darla, although every time she was mentioned, I kept seeing Julie Benz thanks to the demonic Catholic Schoolgirl of the same name in Buffy. Most of the other characters are thinly, but sympathetically written.

My big beef with the book is the fact that it doesn't end, there is no payoff for the reader. We spend long enough with Keeley for her life to be turned upside down, a murder to be committed and some strange, possibly dangerous background characters to be introduced and then that's it, we're left without much of a resolution to anything. The only plot line that got anywhere was the lesser demon round up, which was clearly a red herring for the murder from the outset and I was left feeling cheated out of a plot. The book goes as far as the change of direction that normally comes before the final chase/climax in a movie, the bit where the protagonist discovers they've been barking up the wrong tree and needs to refocus and then, it just stops, rather gratuitously making it very clear there's everything left to solve.

I wanted at least something to be sorted, and the lesser demon did not feel big enough, a distraction, no more. This book gets its stars for generally good writing, although I did find the plot a bit flighty at times and interesting main characters, but it lacked a satisfying conclusion.

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