Category: Random crap

What doesn’t fit anywhere else.

Don’t “flatter” yourself

Published by Pab on July 10, 2013

The other day I came across a blog entry from author P.T. Dilloway which all but accused me of plagiarism because I called my hero the Scarlet Knight, and so did he.

Basing the title for his entry on the old chestnut that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” he proceeds to tear Sidekick a new one essentially because he’s annoyed that I dared use the same hero name as he.

“Anyway,” Dilloway gripes, “I think what annoyed me the most by the end is there’s no fucking reason he had to call his character the Scarlet Knight.”

Actually, yes, there was. I’ve discussed that before. The “Scarlet Knight” is an homage to a failed sitcom project I undertook with Kris Leeds back in 2004. When I started writing the book I knew I wanted Bobby’s powers to be technology based and not a result of mutation, meta-genetics, or some other weird origin. I wanted his powers to be relatively believable for a teenager. Plus I wanted him to have a big, honking sword. So I took a name that I’d used before for a hero.

My manuscript (then called Squire) was finished on November 29, 2009. Draft manuscript was picked up by my publisher in March, 2012. Final edits were done in the summer of that same year, long before Dilloway’s book hit the shelves. The appearance of both of our books in that short space of time is nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence. And had mine hit the bookshelves before you, I wouldn’t have any right to gripe, either, because it’s a coincidence.

He continues: “[T]he name was just some random name the author picked that could have come from some superhero name generator.”

Not really. For this one you have to blame my buddy Jeffe Boats. When he read and critiqued our spec script in 2004, he suggested changing the hero’s name to “Scarlet Knight” from the original “White Knight,” because otherwise people might think he was a Klansman.

Anyway, the only people who have a right to bitch about either of us using that name are the Rutgers Athletic Department. They predate both of us.

Next: “It is slightly gratifying in an evil way to see it only has 1 Amazon review and a lower rating on Goodreads than mine.”

Well, I hate to say this, but Goodreads (while a wonderful social forum for book lovers) is not a way to judge quality. It’s too easy for someone to game ratings there. I’ve seen ratings for books that haven’t even been published yet, so it’s quite obvious that those ratings aren’t actually from readers. Goodreads can help you find your next book by helping you find people with similar tastes and seeing what they said about what’s out there, but you can’t go by star ratings.

As for Amazon, in the end it’s not reviews that matter but the bottom line. As of this writing, Dilloway’s A Hero’s Journey is ranked #416,374 in the Kindle store. Sidekick is at #158,487. I also have A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Columbine ranking in at #197,265. The only book of mine that Dilloway is currently outselling is the three year old Go To Hell. Those numbers will change and fluctuate, of course. But do not count number of reviews as the end-all-be-all.

Moving on, Dilloway says “Like pretty much all other superhero novels I’ve read, his is aimed at the mainstream people who still associate superheroes with Adam West’s Batman. He’s the Joel Schumacher to my Christopher Nolan in that I tend to take a grittier take on it.”

Actually, I prefer to think of myself as more Denny O’Neill to his Grant Morrison, but I’ll take the comparison as read.

The main problem with this comparison is one basic fact that too many writers overlook.

“Superhero” is not a genre!

It’s a character type. At best it’s it’s a category. Batman stories are not the same type of stories as Green Lantern stories, or Hulk stories, or Legion of Superheroes stories. They are aimed at different readers, different audiences, and different tones.

Sidekick is not a superhero story. It’s a young adult coming of age story where a boy finds his place in the adult world and tries to juggle responsibilities. Bobby’s being a superhero is secondary. That was just how I chose to develop the story. And Brothers in Arms is a young adult story about coping with loss and adjusting to fatherhood. It’s just that this new father wears high-tech longjohns and fights crime.

Dilloway’s A Hero’s Journey is an adult noir thriller with urban fantasy overtones. There is nothing wrong with that. But it’s a completely different type of story from the one I told. The two can’t be compared. Sidekick could not have been written as an adult thriller. The story would not work. And A Hero’s Journey could not have worked as a young adult novel as written. The two books deserve to be judged on separate terms.

One last topic to touch on, and while I’ve saved it for last it’s the first paragraph in Dilloway’s article. “There are a lot of books out there where I read them and say, ‘Jeez, how did this ever get published?’ Followed closely by ‘How did this [expletives deleted] get published and my book can’t?!’ There is a somewhat similar form of professional jealousy when you read a book that involves similar material to yours and while that book might be more popular you can’t help thinking, ‘OMG, this sucks!'”

I often feel the same way. I felt it myself recently. But the basic question of “how did this ever get published?” I’ll tell you in one word. Persistence. Okay, a second word. Synchronicity.

I spent over two years shopping Sidekick. I sent out 112 queries during that time. This was the nicest response I got:

I think you have a fun premise, but I’m afraid I didn’t quite find myself connecting with the narrative as I would have liked, and I’m just not confident enough that I’m the one to make this stand out in such a competitive marketplace.

What happened is that along the way I’d done some networking. I worked with my friends at YALitchat to fine tune the query and pass it past a couple of agents there. When Month9Books was just starting up, one of the founders remembered my discussion of the manuscript and asked for it. That led to the sale and publication.

Publishing is a very competitive business, and a lot of it is timing. Sometimes good manuscripts get squeezed out by the success of something else. If I’d written Mall Bats a year before Stephanie Meyer published Twilight instead of a year after, for example, I might have had a better chance of selling it. Instead, Meyer’s creations saturated the market for vampire novels and a quirky one like mine just didn’t fit in. So Mall Bats will probably sit in the bottom of my virtual desk drawer forever because the timing was wrong.

To be honest, Dilloway’s A Hero’s Journey is not a bad book. He’s a good writer. And if he tries his hand at Young Adult I will happily refer him to my publisher. But the lesson is not to wallow in professional jealousy. Keep writing, keep pitching, keep networking. The cream really does rise to the top, although sometimes it takes longer than we would like.

Something I never could throw away

Published by Pab on June 28, 2013

The concept that became my novel Go To Hell took 19 years to reach fruition. It started as a TV sitcom idea thrown out over Italian food with three friends during my senior year at college, morphed into a screenplay, then a novel, then a stage musical, before settling down as a YA novel when I needed a concept I could develop fast.

The first time I tried Go To Hell as a novel, it was going to be a very different story from the final product. Instead of a teenager, the protagonist was going to be an advertising copywriter in Manhattan. I wrote four pages before I shelved the project once again.

But I could never bring myself to throw out those four pages because I loved the way I tried to channel Douglas Adams in my hubris. I thought I might find a place to use some of the description again, but it never really presented itself.

So here, for those who are curious, are what almost became the first four pages of Go To Hell.

It was your typical summer day in New York City, which is to say it was hellish.

During the weeks that fall somewhere between Memorial Day and the Autumnal Equinox, creation makes its annual attempt at getting it right this time. Around the first of June, a thick haze will gather over the city which (if one could view it from the proper perspective) would resemble the primordial ooze from which all life sprang billions of years ago when a bolt of lightning stuck two amino acids and formed the first protein. Some misguided people believe that smog, carbon dioxide, and other signs of pollution are manmade things. Untrue. They are nothing more than nature looking humanity in the face and saying “go away.”

Unfortunately, since the construction of the Empire State Building, lightning has found much too easy a path to ground to have much of a chance of striking the proper chemicals. As a result, around August the magic moment is gone, the haze disappears, and everyone gets really, really, hostile.

In short, New York City gets its period.

Add to that chemical stew the hopes and dreams of the City’s inhabitants. Add every baby’s cry and every corpse’s death rattle. Add the bride’s giggle and the battered wife’s scream. Throw in the child’s laugh and the gunshot. Stir in Rush Limbaugh and Al Sharpton. Top it all off with irony, and when the summer breeze plots a southward course through Jersey, New York becomes a city smothering itself.

* * *

If New York City is hell, the Long Island Expressway is the River Styx. While the aptly-named LIE does not contain some of the Transportation Gods’ more interesting gifts (such as bridges that terminate in parking lots or exits that feed back on themselves) it is still probably their greatest practical joke. That is, of course, if it can even be attributed to them. Some modern metatheologians have theorized that the Transportation Gods cannot be involved in the design and maintenance of the LIE, since ‘transport’ implies movement along a route, which the LIE does not achieve of its own free will.

Driving along the LIE anywhere between 6:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. on a given day is much like wading through a swimming pool filled with catseye marbles; you can do it but it takes a lot of patience, much more effort than it is worth, and you won’t want to look at yourself in the mirror when you are done. Those who have come to know and respect this roadway will often opt for paying the ferryman Charon, disguised as the tolltaker on the nearby mass-transit system, to escort them instead.

This would be a perfect analogy if it were not for two problems. First, New York City is not hell any more than California is Los Angeles. The latter is only the best known division of the former. Second, one creature knew and respected the LIE more than anyone else, and as a result decided to use it that day. As a result, he was late.

Basil was starting to regret spending the weekend in the Hamptons. Granted, his job description pretty much called for regrets to be sidelined, but sometimes you just can’t control it. Sure, he had a wonderful time at the beach and had caught up on some sorely-needed relaxation, but now he was going to be late for work. He knew the system, but foolishly he thought he could beat it. He had woken early, gotten dressed, climbed into his car, and pulled onto the LIE at precisely 5:59 a.m.. Fate, however, was having none of it. One minute later, the little toggle switch at Expressway Control was thrown, and every vehicle and living being on the road ground to an immediate, unforgiving halt.
Damn it, damn it, damn it, he muttered in the literal sense, but it was no good. Despite his best efforts, inertia ruled the day. It was nearly forty five minutes until the traffic started to move, and then it crept along at a snail’s pace.

* * *

Those who live within the City have developed a more sophisticated (the anthropologist within us would call it “civilized,” the genius “insane,” and the lunatic “still insane, yet aesthetically pleasing”) technique of getting from one place to another. Those of you who are curious may want to give it a try, but should not. It is, in fact, quite dangerous for novices, much like learning how to suck a brick through a straw without taking the time to contemplate what will happen when it pops out the other end.

But for the endlessly curious, I will give you a sample illustration. Take a piece of paper. Mark a point in the lower left-hand corner. Now mark a point in the upper right-hand corner. Finally, take your pencil and draw a line from the first point, and do your level best to not make it reach the second point. When you have finally reached the second point in less time than it would have taken you to get a ruler and draw a line straight through them, you will be ready to navigate in New York City. Until then, leave it to the professionals.

New York hath no fury like a map maker scorned.

“Boys Don’t Read.”

Published by Pab on March 31, 2013

My name is Pab Sungenis, and I write books for boys.

That may surprise you. If you look at the “young adult” shelves at your local bookstore, how many books do you see there that are aimed at boys?

Not many, I’ll bet.

You know why that is? Because boys don’t read.

Stop laughing.

I’m serious. Stop laughing.

I know that for a fact because I’ve been told it on good authority by people who supposedly know. I’ve been told it by a number of literary agents (including one who once signed me, then told me she couldn’t sell one of my novels because, and I quote exactly, “boys don’t read”) and at least one editor from a major publishing house.

That’s why all you see on shelves are romances with female protagonists. Or if there’s one with a male protagonist it’s actually a male that’s designed to be cuddly and non-threatening because they want girls to read it and fall in love with the boy. They do this because, of course, “boys don’t read.”

Never mind that the first young adult novel ever, The Catcher in the Rye, featured a male protagonist, was written by a man, and has a reader base that is largely male. Then there’s The Chocolate War, where you can count the female characters on one hand. Critically acclaimed novels that created modern young adult literature.

And neither would get published today, because “boys don’t read.”

Of course boys read. But they don’t read young adult literature. And do you know why?

Because no one will take a chance on books for boys. Because “boys don’t read.”

This is called a vicious circle. If you’ve never heard it before go look it up.

Boys don’t read YA because there’s almost no YA published for them. So publishers look at the sales charts of YA titles and see title after title all aimed at girls. So why aren’t there any titles for boys on the charts? They don’t think it’s because they don’t publish any books that boys want to read. It’s easier for them to assume that boys don’t read.

Even when a publisher takes a chance on a book for boys, guess what happens then? Bookstores don’t stock it. Libraries don’t order it. No one gets a chance to buy it. Why don’t they order it and stock it?

Because “boys don’t read.”

Well, guess what? Boys do read! I used to be a boy (back in the dark ages before the internet) and I read everything I could get my hands on. There are boys out there right now who love to read, but their choices are limited because agents, publishers, and bookstores have all bought into the stereotype that boys don’t read.

So how do we break them of this misconception? We have to show them the uncomfortable truth they refuse to accept: that boys do read.

First, let’s give them some visual evidence. If you’re a boy who reads, and are between the ages of 12 and 17 (the target audience for young adult literature) I want you to to snap a photo of yourself holding whatever book you’re reading at the moment. If you’re reading it on a Kindle or Nook, photograph yourself with the title page on the screen. Then post it to Facebook, or anywhere else you hang out on-line with the caption “I’M A BOY AND I READ.” Feel free to E-mail it to me here or post it as a comment, too. Let the publishers and agents know that you want them to give you something to read.

Then we need to give them something even harder to deny. On Saturday, April 27, 2013, I want every boy who reads to descend upon the nearest bookstore at 1 PM local time. You don’t have to buy anything (although it might help our argument if you do) but I want you to make an appearance. If you can make yourself a T-shirt that says “I READ” to wear while there, all the better. Let those bookstores see that you want them to stock books for you, too.

Reading is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not something to hide away from everyone else. And until all you book-reading boys come out and show your faces, your reading options will continue to be severely limited. So show your pride. Shout it out loud.

Just don’t shout it while in the library, please.