Tagged: masq2
My Interview with Katie Hamstead
Katie Hamstead Teller is the author of Kiya: Hope of the Pharaoh as well as an upcoming book called Branded. After seeing her tweet about my 5 star review of her book, we struck up a conversation and I asked to interview her via email. Below is the interview in which we discuss research, depictions of Akhenaten and how she fell in love with ancient Egypt.
1. What was your research process like for Kiya? Were you always interested in ancient Egypt or did you stumble across her story and then do the research?
As a young girl I loved reading about Egypt, Rome and Greece, (the big three!) and in high school I elected to study Ancient History to further this interest. It was during this time I developed my curiosity for the Amarna period. So, in a sense, I’ve been reading and learning about it for years.
Time passed and I decided to write the story. This meant a lot of research, even as I wrote. I pulled books from the library, and journals from universities and wove together the theories which best suited the story I wanted to create, and I filled in the gaps with my own personal interpretations. I’d also studied Hebrew culture a few years ago, so my understanding of the twelve tribes was much strong than it was as a teen, and again I pulled books and university journals about early Israel and somehow, using the later period theory of Israel in Egypt where the exodus was during the reign of Ramses II, I meshed the two clashing cultures together. Continue reading
An Apology to Self-Published Writers
Remember one of my first articles I ever did? It was exactly one year ago to this day and it was called Self-Publishing: A Reviewer’s Perspective. While I didn’t exactly say self-publishing was a terrible thing that was ruining literature, my feelings about it were generally negative.
So, first off, let me say I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for judging self-published writers before I really knew what self-publishing involved. I’m sorry for judging self-published writers based on my very limited experience reading self-published books and a few big media incidents. I’m sorry that I jumped to conclusions and pretty much lumped all self-published authors together.
You’ll probably be wondering how I came to my new perspective on self-publishing. Let me say it wasn’t easy and it’s certainly not easy to admit on your public blog that you screwed up. But it’s the right thing to do. So here’s sort of how I changed my mind:
1. I read some amazing self-published books.
Before I wrote my piece I had very few good experiences with self-publishing in general. From reading books with tons of mistakes to watching self-published authors explode at reviewers who gave them bad reviews, you could say I had only seen the ugly side of self-publishing. That’s why I didn’t exactly support, but didn’t exactly dismiss the possibility of self-publishing having a good side. I just didn’t have the experience necessary to see the good side.
In the past year I’ve started reading a lot more self-published books and I found some great ones. Prophecy of the Most Beautiful by Diantha Jones, There Comes a Prophet by David Litwack and Starlet’s Web by Carla J. Hanna, just to name a few. Part of what helped me come to this stage of acceptance was reading awesome, well proofread and well-written books like these. The other part is that I realized no publisher would have even considered publishing these. Some of them are too unique and have unconventional stories, others are books that don’t conveniently fit into one category and thus could never be marketed easily.
And you know what? It would have been a terrible shame not to read any of these simply because I lumped all self-published authors together.
2. I actually spoke to a wide variety of self-published authors.
In a psychology class I took I learned that one of the most effective ways to end prejudice towards certain groups is to expose the prejudiced person to that group more frequently. It’s hard to hate something if you put a face to it. That’s why it was so easy for me to completely dismiss self-publishing as an absolute last resort: I didn’t really know that many self-published authors.
But then I started interviewing self-published authors and saw the reasons why they self-published. Some of them submitted their books to every publisher in the entire country and others just wanted to have control over the entire process. As a blogger, I can completely understand that. Here on The Mad Reviewer, while I generally stick to my book mandate I do occasionally stray from it if I feel like it. I might do a post about my vacation or on my birthday every year I’ll rant about something I feel passionate about but isn’t book-related. I love being in control; I completely understand how authors might want to control what their book cover looks like because some traditionally published authors get horrible book covers. It’s just little things like that that it’s nice to have control over.
Talking to self-published authors and hearing that some of them had been trying to get published for 10 years before they decided to self-publish really changed my viewpoint. I mean, most of these authors were great writers who should have been published in the mainstream. I’d read their books and loved them, but publishers either didn’t see the value in them or didn’t see a market for them (not that the two are mutually exclusive).
3. I learned more about the self-publishing community.
I’ve had some really bad experiences with self-published writers, but 99% of my experiences have been good. Obviously not all self-published writers are crazy people that will attack you online if you give them a bad review.
What I didn’t realize for a while is that the self-publishing community really, really hates when one of their own presents a bad image to the media by acting out. One entitled writer attacking a reviewer reflects badly on the whole self-publishing community. I applied that to my own life: what if one person in Saskatchewan was an alcoholic and suddenly everyone in Saskatchewan was perceived as being alcoholics? That’s not even a very good comparison because there are far more self-published authors than there are people in Saskatchewan.
As a reading public, we need to stop judging self-published authors by the loose cannons. One person going crazy shouldn’t ruin it for a generally well-behaved and supportive community. That took a long time for me to realize, but I’m definitely glad I did. It’s absolutely not right to judge a whole group by a few people.
In general, I’d say that the reading public is starting (very subtly) to shift toward something like acceptance toward self-publishing. Will it ever be on the same level as traditional publishing? That’s hard to say. There will always be the lemons in the community that ruin it for everyone else, but I think self-publishing is getting better. By ‘better’, I mean that there are way more resources out there for self-published writers and far more ways for them to get the word out.
We’ll know self-published books are mostly accepted when self-published authors are able to submit their books into big name awards like the Nebula, Newberry or Booker Prize. Will the mainstream accept self-publishing? In time, perhaps. For now, although I’m a relatively small-scale reviewer, everyone out there in the self-publishing community should know that you have one convert. Maybe in the future there will be more.
Some Advice for Book Bloggers
I’ve only been blogging about books for a year, so that makes me both qualified and unqualified to give advice about it. I figure I’m as qualified as most people out there when it comes to giving advice to random strangers on the internet, but please, take it with a grain of salt. There’s no way I can know your exact personality and set of circumstances, therefore this is more of an article with general guidelines rather than strict book blogging rules.
So why am I even writing this? Well, before I decided I would blog about books I went looking for advice specific to book bloggers. There was a shocking lack of it, especially for a newbie with virtually no knowledge of the industry and community. I don’t wish that feeling of flying by the seat of your pants on anyone, which is why I’ve compiled this article. Here are some bits of ‘wisdom’ I learned the hard way.
1. Be polite and flexible when you work with authors, but know when to put your foot down.
Being a book blogger who accepts indie and self-published submissions, I get to work one-on-one with a lot of authors. This is probably one of the best parts of my ‘job’ (aka volunteer work/hobby). However, there is one particular incident that I’m ashamed of and I want all new book bloggers to avoid.
A couple months into blogging I was sent a book by an author and gave it a not-so-great review initially. About 3/5 stars, if you’re curious. Since I let authors get hold of a copy of my reviews a week in advance of the publication date, this author asked if I could change the wording around a little bit to make it less ‘harsh’. She pressured me because she had spent the money to ship me a print copy of her book all the way up to Canada. I felt guilty about this and changed the wording and the rating so that it was a little less harsh, but never an outright lie.
This was a mistake I’ll always regret.
Honestly, being polite and accommodating is important when working with anyone (especially authors), but you have to know when to put your foot down. You have to set moral and ethical limits for yourself that you will not cross under any circumstances. I crossed that line once and vowed never to do it again; I’ve kept that vow. That is why I am always extremely open in reviews about when an author sends me a book in exchange for an honest review, whether it’s a print or ebook edition. And that is why I am telling all you new (and old) book bloggers out there that you need to stand up for your right to your opinion. It’s okay to give a mediocre, even negative review. What’s not okay is to lie. Don’t learn that the way I did. Continue reading
My Interview with Carla J. Hanna
Carla J. Hanna is the self-published author of Starlet’s Web (and the rest of the Starlet series), a novel about a child actress who wants to get away from the Hollywood lifestyle of booze, drugs and sex. Read on to see our discussion about media messages, Hollywood and the dark side of publishing.
1. I’ve heard some interesting stories about the publishing industry from your comments here on the blog, but what would you say was your worst experience in the industry?
I was wiped out when I first learned that my coming-of-age fiction with romantic and spiritual elements had no commercial chance at being represented by a traditional publisher or widely read if I self-published. Every publishing expert told me that the teen coming-of-age market is too small to be profitable.
“Surely readers aren’t so shallow?” I protested. It wasn’t about what readers choose to read… Continue reading
My Interview with Diantha Jones
Diantha Jones is the author of Prophecy of the Most Beautiful and many other books that I have yet to read, but she agreed to do an interview with me via email. So join us for a lively discussion about inspiration, hog-tying time and what aspiring writers should really do.
1. Where did you get the idea for Prophecy of the Most Beautiful from?
When I decided that I was going to start my series, I already knew I wanted it to be about Greek mythology. I picked the Oracle of Delphi as my focus (because you’ve gotta have a focus when dealing with Greek myth or your brain will explode). From there, I decided that each book would be a different prophecy that fed into a larger overall prophecy. The name itself (Most Beautiful) just came to me one night while writing and I was like, oh yeah. That’s it, baby. Continue reading