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“Hands of an Angry God”: My Final Indie Book Recommendation for 2018

"Hands of an Angry God" cover image

I’ve been doing more editing and book production than writing this year, and have been so impressed by the quality of some of the books I’ve worked on that I wanted to bring them to my own readers’ attention.

Douglas Martin’s Hands of an Angry God is the last in this series on exceptional indie novels.

Set in a remote wilderness inn at the start of the American Revolution, Hands of an Angry God is a dark, compelling tale of mystery, suspense, murder and, ultimately, Grace and redemption.

The novel’s protagonist, Dayne, the innkeeper’s eleven-year-old son, does not speak. In the author’s own words, Dayne “withdraws inward in search of voice and a family root, but the cruel death of a brother and repeated emotional failures with his father deepen his isolation. Bitter social and political adversaries trapped by a blizzard snarl the inn with danger and war. A conniving peddler riles all and brings ancient grudge and reckoning.”

Three things make this novel extraordinary, and one I believe you should read.

First, the story is one of the most resonant and visceral I’ve ever read. This is a gut puncher of a book, with fully rounded characters driving the action to its explosive climax in a way that would have made Shakespeare smile.

Second, the author’s depth of knowledge and research of the period renders the story utterly convincing in historical and social detail. And his portrayal of the dangerous wilderness that was upstate New York in 1776 is spellbinding.

Third, Douglas Martin’s writing style is pure prose poetry. His unique use of language, along with the points mentioned above, make this an absolutely unforgettable book.

All that said, this novel is a dark and dense read: if you’re looking for fluffy and happy, it’s probably not for you. But for those who like intense, visceral fiction, and who love to savour unique prose and dialogue that crackles with tension, Hands of an Angry God is a must-read. If, like myself, you enjoy historical fiction as real as it can be, all the better. Here’s a sample:

Dayne rocked back and forth, arms closed tight to his body. The water and woods carried unspoken rhythms, life as it came, yet also unseen spirits, omens and unkind nature. Over recent months ill change crept close along edges of the forest and into his father’s fields. Disturbance, violent upheaval would follow. The arrowhead proved it.

The lonely bird called again and an answer came from dense laurel thickets on the slope across the stream.

Alarmed, Dayne glanced up. His father said Indians sometimes made such sounds and often he ran afraid through fields and forest to escape unseen enemies. He peered uneasy, unsure among barren woods. Only the waterfall, the push of the creek and scratch of windblown leaves on the ground disturbed the quiet.

Dayne placed the arrowhead in his coat pocket. He would hide it in the fields far away from his eyes and thoughts. Cloth and hole covered over he gathered the kitten, turned along the path and crested the upper bank to overlook a narrow knobbed valley.

Scattered crop remnants poked uneven farm fields and a distant road creased wilderness beyond. Forbidding mountains loomed over all, stark and unforgiving, giant bony beasts buried restless and angry in the earth.

You can find the book on Amazon in both eBook and print by clicking here, or on the book’s cover image on this page. I first read it two years ago in draft, and think about it to this day.

That’s probably a wrap for me for the year. As for myself, I’m contemplating starting on a new novel in 2019. Thanks as always for following this blog, and I wish you the happiest of holiday seasons, and all the very best in the coming year.

Dario

 

 

 

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The Made in L.A. Anthology is here!

We at Made in L.A. Writers have been working like crazy to put our first anthology together since deciding on it late last year. The anthology is now available in print and releases in digital format on the occasion of the L.A. Times Festival of Books (April 21-22), where we’ll have a booth. If you’re in L.A., we’d love to see you there. My own fiction contribution to the 300+ page volume, a 45-page novella titled Dry Bones, is set right here in the City of Angels, as are all the other stories. I’m very excited about this anthology! Here’s a peek at the cover and the list of fabulous authors. 

Cover of the Made in L.A. anthology, vol.1

cover design by Allison Rose


CONTRIBUTORS:

Amy Sterling Casil
Dario Ciriello
Jude-Marie Green
Andre Hardy
Gabi Lorino
Bonnie Randall
Allison Rose
Cody Sisco

Readers in Los Angeles are thirsty for stories that bring their city to life. This anthology features a diverse range of voices and genres. Like the City of Angels in which these stories were born, nothing is off-limits. Literary or contemporary, noir or ghost story, fabulism or science fiction, each story in this volume will forever change the way you look at this iconic metropolis.

Made in L.A. Writers is a collaborative of Los Angeles-based authors dedicated to nurturing and promoting indie fiction. This 2018 volume is the first of the annual Made in L.A. anthology series. While our styles, themes, and story locales differ, our work is both influenced and illuminated by our hometown and underpinned by the extraordinary, multifaceted, and often surreal culture and life of the City of Angels.

From my colleague Cody Sisco’s introduction to the volume, here’s the scoop on how this anthology series came to be:

“In 2017 four indie authors first came together under the Made in L.A. banner to support each other and share a booth at the Los Angeles Festival of Books. We passed out bookmarks, watched as kids made away with our candy, chatted with a few questionable characters, and found many new fans. We expected all of that.

“What surprised us was how many people approached our booth with a version of the question: Are these books all set in L.A.? Our reluctant though truthful response, “Not really,” didn’t satisfy them and it didn’t satisfy the four of us, who saw a missed opportunity to “give them what they want.”

My own novella, Dry Bones, set in the Altadena foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, revolves around the breakdown of relationships, reality, and even time in the face of L.A.’s haunted past of cults and occultism.

The Made in L.A. anthology is already available in print at Amazon, and will release as an Amazon eBook on Saturday April 21. If you prefer the digital copy, please pre-order it now, since every pre-ordered copy will help us immensely by building momentum and interest on release day. Either click on the book cover image above or follow this link to the book page for either edition.

We had a lot of fun putting this volume together, and I know you’re going to love it. And don’t forget — if you’re in L.A. that weekend, do stop by our booth at the festival and say hello!

 

 

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When Ink Runs Red

The unfolding debacle with regard to eBook pricing is both fascinating and, in some ways, bewildering. So for those who’ve not been following the issue, here’s a quick recap:

Ebooks have been around  for well over a decade. Although there were several—and some would say better—eBook readers on the market years before Amazon introduced the Kindle in 2007, the lure of instant eBook downloads via the Kindle’s unique, built-in wifi, added to Amazon’s vast inventory and ultra-prominent brand, quickly made Amazon the main player in the eBook business; even today, with competition from the Barnes and Noble Nook, the Sony Reader, Apple’s iPad, and numerous apps that enable one to read on a smartphone, Amazon still claims some 60% of the eBook market.

The action kicked off last summer with a class action suit filed against Apple and five big publishers, accusing them of eBook price fixing. Back in 2010, Amazon had been selling eBooks at $9.99 in a drive to grab as much market share for the Kindle as possible. With the introduction of the iPad, Apple and the publishers reacted with a covert deal to set their own eBook prices so that no bookseller could undercut Apple (déjà vu of Apple’s policy over individual song pricing, anyone?). As a result, eBook prices jumped overnight. Amazon wasn’t about to give up: in February of this year, Amazon dumped some 5,000 titles from IPG (Independent Publishers Group) because they refused to go along with Amazon’s pricing structure. And yesterday the US Department of Justice opened its own suit, simultaneously announcing that 3 of the 5 big publishing houses had agreed to settle, leaving Penguin and Macmillan to fight alone.

Although one can certainly have some sympathy for the Publishers’ and the bookselling industry’s assertion that once Amazon cements its monopoly this will quickly turn into a Pyrrhic victory for consumers, it’s very, very hard for me to have any sympathy for the book publishing industry as a whole. Not only has it clung for decades to a truly awful business model, but the industry is well-known for its historic lack of transparency over authors’ royalties and for its often onerous contract clauses; like the music industry before it, book publishers have only themselves to blame for their utter failure to adapt to a rapidly-evolving marketplace and new technologies. It’s not as if someone changed the rules overnight: the writing has been on the wall for at least a decade, and the book publishing industry simply sat on its hands and showed the same fatal complacency that the music industry did several years ago.

Like it or not, we live in a Darwinian, capitalist world, and Amazon has achieved dominance by serving the book-reading public with truly phenomenal efficiency; if they’ve sometimes done so by taking a loss on individual book sales to cement their market share, so what? It’s their money, not the taxpayer’s.

From a writer’s point of view, Amazon has also—so far—proved benign: indie authors publishing their own titles electronically get to remain in print indefinitely, have near-complete control over their work, and keep a far, far greater share of the net. Yes, they’re forgoing marketing, cover design, copyediting, and the rest… but given that traditional publishers offer most new authors just about zero marketing help and often appallingly poor covers on which they have no input, this is a debatable loss. Nor do I buy the ‘ocean of dreck’ argument which argues that  publishers have been the industry’s shining Guardians of Quality: although they may have screened out the worst—manuscripts of  third-grade level literacy—the truth is that a large percentage of published works have always been and will continue to be crap, per Sturgeon’s Law.

The nightmare scenario that the book publishing industry and many indie authors warn of is that once Amazon has run the competition out of town and achieved a monopoly, it’ll start jacking up prices and chipping away at author royalties. While the second is a distinct possibility, the first is unlikely. Why? Because (i) the market won’t wear it; and (ii) capitalism abhors a vacuum. Even if all the big five publishers were to fall—and they won’t, because some of them show signs of ‘getting it’ and adapting—other players will appear to compete with Amazon. Who would that be? Why, Apple, Google, and maybe even Mr. Zuckerberg (Facebook Publishing, anyone? Ugh.). All these have the muscle to go head-to-head with Amazon, though it certainly won’t be easy.

The bottom line? No monopoly endures for long, and modern capitalism tends to duopolies at worst; the free market is a Darwinian arena where the blood never dries. And whenever a Goliath appears, there’s always going to be a David to challenge them.

See also WIRED magazine, DOJ Announces Terms of Stettlement

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On Self-Publishing

As someone who put out his first eBook (the novella anthology, Panverse One) back in 2009, I suppose I’m something of an old-timer in the field. And even in the eight months since I published my own book, Aegean Dream, the eBook revolution has gathered steam. Though there’s still some stigma–rather too much–attached to self-published eBooks, I see cracks starting to appear, as more self-published books break from the shadows onto bestseller lists, or are snapped up by traditional publishers for big money. One day, who knows, self-published authors may even be able to get reviewed in a mainstream venue.

One thing bothers me though: a lot of strong writers who self-publish simply aren’t prepping and polishing their manuscripts well enough. Without agents and editors involved, too many people are simply throwing books out there that are still in draft condition and definitely haven’t been copyedited or proofed, even if they often have decent (but rarely more!) covers. And the fact that they’re offering the reader a novel for $2.99 instead of $12.95 absolutely does NOT excuse them. Shoddily-produced eBooks hurt us all, but most of all they hurt the writer and their future sales.

Yeah, yeah, I know–you can’t afford to hire a cover artist at $75/hr or a copyeditor at a cent a word or so; fair enough. So get together with other (good) writers and swap critiques and copyedits. Proofread for one another. Because the truth is that any writer is way too close to their own work to see its flaws, and certainly utterly unable to proofread for typos etc.

It’s painful to me as a writer to read an otherwise strong book, especially one written by a friend (and I’ve seen a few now) that really should have had AT LEAST one more revision pass and then been proofread. Plot logic holes, changed character names, radical shifts in tone and diction, awkward paragraphs, typos by the score, this is all stuff that will kill you in the market. Yeah, I know that traditional publishers have cut back on copyediting and proofing too, but agents and editors between them still provide a great screening and polishing process for the traditionally published writer. And that’s who you’re competing with if you choose to self-publish. If nothing else, your own sense of professionalism should spur you to take the extra time and effort to ensure that your manuscript is the best it can be and at least as good as anything else out on the market in terms of presentation and polish. And since the royalty earned from a self-published book at $2.99 is roughly equivalent–often more!–than we’d get from a $12.95 book traditionally published, there is simply no excuse other than laziness. As for the cover art, find a graphic designer, even a student,  who wants to beef up their portfolio, and give them cover credits and a mention in the acknowledgments.

In short, behave like a publisher. Only better.

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