Prometheus Reviewed

Loco!

I read my first Robert Ludlum book, The Icarus Agenda, when I was in college and looking for a way to avoid reading Medieval Yarn Making (which is a thriller in its own right). Icarus was my first suspense novel and it led me to several other Ludlum titles: The Matarese Circle, The Rhinemann Exchange, the Bourne trilogy, etc. In my suspense genre driven stupor, I devoured as much Ludlum that I could find, which led, inevitably, to burn out.

If you have read a couple of  Ludlum’s books, you’ve read ‘em all. The books are entertaining, but the plots are all the same, the characters all the same, everything’s the same, save the name given to the big multi-national cabal that is really pulling the strings to the universe.

The writing also started getting on my nerves. What I originally found outstanding now became grating. Ludlum heightens the intensity of a situation by projecting his characters’ thoughts and emotions as exclamations:

Madness!

Insanity!

Bodacious! (not really)

He does this a lot.

For a decade I shelved Roberto and his Madness! until I was looking for something that would divert me from reading Battle at Bull Run. I decided to pick up The Prometheus Deception off the shelf and give it a drive.

For the most part, it is (tada!) much of the same. But after ten years of Halcyon!, I found I was enjoying him. There are twists and turns and turns and twists. At some points he is didactic, rehashing the most recent apostasy or previous chapter’s double identity: doubtless he suspects people are morons. Craziness!

The book picked up in the second half and I did actually have a hard time putting it down. Then it became a little ridiculous and the ending was a let down. It had been set up for a sequel, but Robert Ludlum passed away in 2001.

If you are only going to read one Ludlum, don’t read this one. If you are looking for a pretty good thriller, go ahead and read this one. Tres stars! Madness!

33 A.D. by David McAfee.......Fo' Stars

I’ll refrain from straining my vocabulary: vampire books are stupid. That is until one becomes listed as free in the Kindle store and you download it.  Mix in some Romans, irritated Pharisees, some “people” condemned to live eternally with grub worms eating their flesh and a pesky Galilean rabbi named Jesus Christ, and things can get interesting.

There has been an avalanche of vampire books, which I tend to avoid as rabidly as I avoid people condemned to live eternally with grub worms gnawing their flesh. This proliferation of vamp books has caused me to eschew the genre, more than I did previously, anyway, and regard it with derision. One caveat: I read Interview with the Vampire twenty-odd years ago and thought it was good, but that is the extent of it.

Until the freebie download, 33 A.D. I am familiar with David McAfee from a writing board and thought I would help his numbers with the free download.  I went as far as even opening the book and reading the first page. Then the next, and the next.

Serendipity: this was a good book. Well written and cleverly thought out. Strong characters that you care about (even the vampire bad guys, unless you yourself are a vampire, in which case they are the good guys) and characters you can identify with (who can deny their inner Roman legionary assassin?). I cared enough to turn the page - therein proving the author did his job.

McAfee knows the period well, at least to the extent he needs to know it. There is not so much detail that the book gets bogged down and there aren’t a hundred innocuous characters to keep up with. Except for a very few places where it seems he got a bit lazy, it is a smooth read. Even to an eschewer of vampire books.

If you are a writer of vampires and your book is not stupid, I apologize. But I probably won’t read it, unless your name has a McAfee at the end of it.

Yesteryear.....and Queso

Felix (see, no apostrophe S)

A friend sent me a link to photos of vintage Houston, and included was a 1962 picture of our favorite Mexican food joint, Felix Mexican Restaurant (do you see an apostrophe S at the end? No. It’s Felix, not Felix’s, just Felix.) Felix, hands down, had the best queso in town. It wasn’t the noxious blend of block cheese and a can of Rotel. For years I thought it was just a....well, I didn’t know what it was, except delicioso. Every once in a while, the Houston Chronicle would print the Felix queso recipe. The recipe listed a lot of ingredients that I found difficult to believe were in that boiling cauldron of goodness in front of me. After all, the queso had a thick layer of grease on top of it, so how did they get tomatoes in there? I never saw a tomato.

I think we were in college when we got the news (typical tyrannical procedure: wait until the adherents are away to make your move): they were closing our Felix. And they did.

I don’t believe in the incubus, the succubus, vampires or werewolves, but it has been said that if you look into the eyes of the Beast (the Beast being the former Felix location), you would turn to stone. I have not turned to stone, mainly because I have NEVER looked at the building since our Felix was ungraciously evicted. I have heard rumors that it has been a dress store, furniture store and the like, but I cannot confirm it for the obvious reasons. I wish any future tenants of the building only the worst. Nothing personal.

Urban folklore states that the only cure, once foolishly turned to stone by looking at the Beast, is to have Felix queso rubbed all over you. “But, Stonewall, how can....,” I hear you ask. I admit that it is a bit of a quandary: how does one, once foolishly turned to stone, apply Felix queso to oneself? Your wife or girlfriend? Husband or boyfriend? Maybe a really, really understanding friend? We are drifting here........

The other Felix location has now closed, too, and we are left with only our grease riddled memories. So to reminisce, I did what any devout Felix parishioner would do: I waited for Mom to go out of town and made a batch of Felix queso with the kids.

Felix Queso:  Dog Approved

Like any self-respecting restaurant that has their recipes published, Felix went ahead and left out some of the key ingredients (though I am still confused by the tomato). Or they changed the proportions. Or I just messed up. It wasn't exact, but it was close. And in a world devoid of authentic Felix queso, close was good enough. (If you can believe it, my version needed more grease).

Big Publishing: Desperate or Not?

I have given this caveat a couple of times on other threads, but let me say it so you understand my viewpoint. I have not finished a book, so I have not tried to be published and I do not know anything about the inner-workings of publishing companies. Some of my information has come from various boards, Joe Konrath’s blog, or other blogs/websites/conversations. My assumptions may not be exactly accurate, but they are the assumptions that I am working under. I am looking at this from an emotionally detached, business perspective.

First assumption: out of every five books, two make money, one breaks even and two lose money. The break even book will help them with G&A (salaries, real estate facilties, amortization, etc.), so actually forty percent of their products lose money.

Second assumption: publishers and bookstores have to sell a LOT of books to make money. Your local 25,000 square foot Borders (say in San Antonio) was probably paying $35/sf/year just in rent (this does not include any percentage of sales that they may have been obligated to pay to the landlord). Let’s call their annual lease obligation $1mm, which does not include salaries, benefits, inventory, etc. Borders obviously did not sell enough books.

Let’s also keep in mind that if one of the innocuous Big 6 leases 100,000 square feet in Midtown Manhattan, their office lease may cost then $7.5mm/year (an assumption).

Third assumption: definition of mid-list author. I don’t have any idea, but let’s ascribe mid-list authors as producing the books that only break even or lose money, for this analysis.

Fourth assumption: companies are in business to sell products or services to make money. (Can we all agree on this one?)

Fifth assumption: there is an ebook revolution happening.

Sixth assumption: when you are working with upper management in large corporations (publishers, energy companies, engineering companies, etc.), you are working with very intelligent people. They may be dinosaurs, but they are not stupid. Large corporations are not terribly agile.

Seventh assumption: there is an exception to every rule.

Let’s look at it from the publisher’s perspective:

Bookstores will downsize, meaning less shelf space and less product we have to produce to fill those shelves. Which authors should we renew and which ones should we cut? Well, let’s cut the ones that lose money first. And then let’s cut some of the mid-list authors that break even or  make marginal profits. What do we have left? Tada! Authors that write books that make a profit.

Pssst, Mr./Mrs. Publisher, hey, uh, there’s an ebook revolution going on by the way. Oh yeah, sure we’re dinosaurs, but so are a lot of the bestselling authors that are signed with us. Besides, we have 15 out of the top 20 in the Kindle 100, some of them at $14.99! The audacity! AND we don’t even have to print a book! More audacity!

Yeah yeah, there are some of these indie authors out there that are making some sales. Let’s pick the top sellers and we’ll wallet whip ‘em with a big ole check. John Locke? He sells a lot, but at ninety-nine cents?? Where’s the ROI in that?

Overall, this doesn’t sound like too poor of a plan. Scrap the authors that lose money, pick up some authors from the minors that can make money, streamline along the way (thus cutting G&A) and keep printing money.

It’s the agent of mid-list authors that are desperate, because their authors are getting iced. Whatever the opposite of desperate is, that is what the boogeyman publishers are.

Just my thoughts, go ahead and punch holes in it. But Brother Bluto, what about the revolution? What about the publisher’s degringolade? They may be slow, but they are smart and will adapt.

Viva la revolucion! Incoming....................

Procrastination......it's making me wait

Several things happen when you are writing a book, at least for me. My closet is suddenly organized. My car is clean. The pantry is miraculously converted to the Dewey decimal system for canned goods. Basically, anything to not sit down and write, including all of the tasks my wife has been (patiently) asking me to do. But that’s me: I am not a natural writer, if there is such a thing.

A new found distraction has proved to be most valuable in procrastination: creating book covers.

Being a collector of books, I have consequently become a collector of book covers. And seeing that scads of book jackets are terrible, I decided that I can do it better myself, along with wasting scads of time.

I made a cover for my current work-in-progress, which is probably not a true waste of time. It did allow me to not write for a while, but then I was again faced with the blank page. To keep the time wasting streak alive, I opted to go ahead and make covers for the sequels in my series, which have not only not been written, but have barely even been conceived.

I needed more outlets, so I did a few covers of another series (first book: not completed) that I work on when I am trying to avoid working on my work-in-progress. Still not enough! I did a cover for a manuscript that was hidden in a box in my garage (where it will stay). Finally, I did one for a screenplay I wrote and am converting to a novel (a project I dally with when I don’t want to work on Series A or Series B).

My wife wants me to change some light bulbs. Will I? You bet.