Archive for February, 2009
In Her Name Makes Reviewer’s Top Ten List for 2008
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Book News on February 28th, 2009
If you happened to read the BookLoons review of In Her Name, you might have noticed that the reviewer was Elizabeth Schulenberg, who also has her own blog. I hadn’t realized it at the time (and only did after she had commented on the BookLoons review post), but Elizabeth did a wrapup of the top ten books she’d read in 2008.
I was shocked – and incredibly pleased! – to learn that of the 144 books she read that year, she placed In Her Name at number 4! Wow!
Here was her list (although she has more details for each book):
- The Lions of Al – Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
- Bikeman by Thomas Flynn
- The White Mary by Kira Salak
- In Her Name by Michael R. Hicks
- The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
- Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi
- Run by Ann Patchett
- Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
- The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan
- The Host by Stephenie Meyer
Any time I might find my work compared favorably with any of these authors – particularly John Scalzi – I have to humbly whisper, “Wow…”
But check out Elizabeth’s site and all the other great book-related information she has there!
Corporate Gibberish Generator
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Reviews on February 27th, 2009
If you’ve worked in corporate America or for the government, you’ve no doubt encountered your fair share of corporate buzzwords. Where I work, it was so bad at one point that during our (informal) morning meetings, I used to hand out bingo cards so we could play that classic game of “corporate buzzword bingo” (no, I’m not making this up).
Well, somebody tipped off my wife to a site that has a “corporate gibberish generator” that just has to be seen to be believed! You type in a company name and it spits out – as the name implies – corporate gibberish. Here’s just a short sample:
MyCompany practically invented the term “paradigms”. It comes off as unbelievable, but it’s true! Without applications, you will lack versioning. Your budget for synthesizing should be at least one-third of your budget for enabling. We will morph the term “C2B2B”. We understand that if you embrace intuitively then you may also mesh intuitively. We think that most value-added entry pages use far too much SVG, and not enough CSS. We pride ourselves not only on our feature set, but our simple administration and newbie-proof operation. We have come to know that it is better to redefine virally than to iterate magnetically. Without research and development, you will lack iteration. A company that can implement correctly will (at some point) be able to engage faithfully.
And I’ve read actual documents that are almost exactly that ridiculous! The corporate gibberish generator – check it out!
Self-Published Books: Turning The Tables
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on February 26th, 2009
In an earlier post I went through a bit of a painful discussion of some of the reasons it’s so hard for self-published authors to make as much headway as they’d like. The bottom line is that the literary world, for lack of a better term, looks upon self-published work as crap. And, let’s be entirely honest with ourselves about it, that opinion isn’t undeserved.
The question, then, is can we change that perception? I believe the answer is yes, and here are a few ideas on how we might work toward that goal.
I think there are two main, inter-related issues:
The first is quality. We want “our” books to look like “their” (the big houses’) books. We want them to look like them, be priced as close as we can to them, and have the same literary quality (or at least mechanical accuracy) as them. If you walked into a bookstore and put your book on a shelf of books of the same genre and size/type (e.g., paperbacks), the customers wouldn’t know the difference from the cover, from the interior appearance if they picked it up to browse through it, or from the grammar or punctuation. Maybe they’ll like the bit of the story they read, maybe not – that’s more subjective – but there won’t be anything about the book that says “amateur.”
Second, we want to gain access to “bigger” reviewers and promoters than the typical blogger, or the local newspaper that tosses a bone to a local author with a sidebar on page twenty. But to do that, we need to give them confidence that the book they receive is of commercial quality. They need to know that their time will be well-invested, and that their reputation isn’t going to suffer if they review this thing.
I’m sure what I’m going to suggest here isn’t original, and it’s certainly not going to be without some controversy, nor is it a “silver bullet” that’s going to solve all our problems as self-publishers. But I think that this is one possible way to get where many of us collectively want to go.
One. We need to clean up our act as individuals. If you’re serious about your writing, if you’re serious about competing with the “big boys,” then you need to put the time, effort, and – in some cases – money into making your book pro quality.
Two. There is safety and power in numbers. The big houses hold almost all the cards, but there are enough indie authors and self-published authors out there now to start making a difference. We need to band together in an effective, cohesive manner behind a set of uniform goals.
Three. We need a set of standards. We need templates, if you will, to help authors ensure their books follow the same accepted format standards as “real” books. Margins, type faces and size, the leading pages – all of that sort of thing. Again, we want our books to look just like those of the big houses!
Four. We need a review body that awards a quality seal to books that meet commercial standards. This is likely where things will run aground, because – being indie authors – we tend to want to do our own thing because, well, we’re independent! But I strongly believe that this is really the golden key, because with this mechanism in place, I believe we stand a reasonable chance of convincing at least some major reviewers (among others) to give our books a try. It also shows that we as a group are taking ourselves seriously and are self-correcting our own shortcomings. And, hey, that we are a group – an increasingly large group – rather than just a bunch of unconnectd individuals.
So, there’s some food for thought. I’ll post some more ideas on the details in the next post in this series…
Self-Publishing And Quality: Mutually Exclusive Terms?
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on February 25th, 2009
Self-publishing your book, like everything else, has its pros and cons. In my view, the biggest of the pros is that you have complete control over your work; the worst of the cons is that no mainstream reviewer – someone who might really be able to help get your book in front of a lot of people – will touch your work with a ten-foot pole.
Some self-published authors may claim that there’s an evil cabal led by the major publishers that’s dedicated to keeping out the little guys. There may be some truth to that, even if it’s in the form of momentum in the relationships between the publishers, bookstores, and so forth. The big houses have been doing this for a long time, and they’ve certainly got the inside track, not to mention big bucks to spend on marketing and promotion (not that they’ll necessarily spend it on any given author).
But let’s set that argument aside for a moment. You see, before we – as self-published authors or even small press publishers – can throw stones at the big publishers’ glass houses, we need to take a close look at our own.
To do that, let’s start with looking at self-published books from a reviewer’s perspective, because they’re generally seen as a critical factor in spreading the word about your book. If your book is self-published, virtually every major reviewer (and by “major,” I mean someone who has a following of thousands of people, if not more) won’t even consider looking at it. Even many blog reviewers – and there are lots of them across the different genres – with much smaller (but collectively significant) followings won’t look at self-published books. Why?
The answer, my friend, is that the quality of much of what we self-published authors put out is – to use that highly technical publishing term – crap. Many reviewers have gotten tons of self-published books, only to be repeatedly disappointed and disgusted by them. Many reviewers have a stated policy up front that they won’t review self-published (or small press) books. Others will accept them, but send them to the bottom of the review pile. Still others happily accept them, and then expose all their flaws (to the author’s dismay – but what did the author expect?).
The fact is that we can’t expect to have our work viewed in the same light as the major houses unless we can polish the inches-thick tarnish from the term “self-published” and stop producing reams of crap.
Before your head explodes with righteous indignation, let’s go over a quick check list to see if we can further define “crap” in this context, starting from the outside of your book and working our way in:
- Would the cover (front, back, and spine) of your book stand out – in a bad way – on the shelves of a bookstore?
- Is it outrageously priced compared to similar books (genre, length, etc.)?
- Do the first pages leading into the main body of the text – the title page(s), copyright page, etc. – follow the general norms for “real” books? Do you even have any of those pages?
- Are the margins, font face and size, leading, and headers/footers consistent with the norms for “real” books?
- If someone were to flip to a random place in the text, would they find a typo or grammatical error in the first five minutes of reading? The first thirty seconds?
- Assuming we’re talking about a work of fiction, is the story good? That’s something that only folks who don’t have a vested interest in your ego can properly answer.
- And if the story is good overall, are there any major breaks in logic, sequence, etc. – anything that jars the reader’s experience and kills suspension of disbelief?
Now, I will stand here and tell you face to face (in a very virtual sort of way) that I’m not going to claim that my first novel or any of my other writing is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or that I’ve “passed” all of the tests above with the proverbial flying colors. This is not about me saying, “Hey, I know what I’m doing, bub, how about you?”
No. This is about stepping back and critiquing ourselves to improve the standards of our work, with the end objective being to make our books indistinguishable from those by major publishers.
Let me repeat/rephrase that: we want our self-published books to look just like “real” books. We want them to read just like “real” books (is my use of “real” annoying you?), or maybe even better (hey, I don’t know about you, but I’ve read my share of books from the big houses that were stinkers with bad stories, typos and bloopers, etc.).
As self-published authors and small press publishers – independents (indies!) – we have a lot of things standing against us (anybody remember David and Goliath?), but we also have some significant advantages over the big boys. We have complete control of our work, and we have the freedom to explore fresh ideas that offer readers something more than the same-old, same-old (which essentially is another form of “crap”) churned out by the big houses. Technology – primarily print-on-demand (POD) and ebook platforms such as the Amazon Kindle and Mobipocket Reader – is our friend, and allows us to get into the game with at least the major on-line retailers wth almost no out of pocket cost and, for the most part, reasonable pricing for our books.
Quality. It’s all about quality, and remaking the term “self-published” into something that’s sought after – or at least respected – and not shunned.
How do we do that? I don’t claim to have any magic bullets, but we’ll take a look at some ideas in the next post on this topic, so stay tuned!
ChaLEAN Extreme Review: The Big Picture
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on February 24th, 2009
While I’ve never considered myself an athlete (with good reason – ha!), I’m also no stranger to exercise and the principles of fitness. I spent many hours in college riding my road bike (usally averaging 100 miles or so per week), as well as doing physical training – PT – in Army ROTC, which was pretty grueling: I was always in “remedial” PT, and had to spend a lot of extra time grunting and sweating!
But I’ll tell you, my friend, that pales in terms of intensity to what hit me when my wife and I “graduated” from Beachbody’s P90 Master series to ChaLEAN Extreme from Beachbody!
Now, before you shake your head at my lunacy and head off somewhere else, check this out: this is not a program for masochists. It’s a program for people who want results. It’s very challenging, but I believe that if you put your best into it and follow Chalene Johnson, you’ll see some spectacular changes.
Like some of Beachbody’s other programs, it’s built around three month-long segments that are designed to keep your body adapting. Unlike a lot of other programs, however, ChaLEAN Extreme emphasizes strength training as its core – yes, even for women! – with cardio really as a secondary, but essential, component. Why? Simple: as Chalene’s mantra goes, “Muscle burns fat!”
One of the many nice things about this program is that Chalene debunks the myth that women will bulk up if they lift weights. This simply isn’t true, because women have so much less testosterone than men (and men, of course, will bulk up, which most guys want!). People think of female bodybuilders, but don’t realize the incredible amount of effort that goes into building those physiques! But the workouts in this program will firm you up and slim you down! And by building up muscle in your body, you’ll burn more calories even just resting than you would otherwise.
The program is broken down into three phases: Burn, Push, and Lean. The workouts for all three phases are broken up to focus on specific muscle groups, plus a couple of dedicated aerobic workouts (Burn Intervals – which still kicks my bootie – and Burn It Off) and two ab workouts.
Burn focuses on building the foundation you’ll need for the later phases. You’ll be using weights that are light/heavy enough to make twelve reps, plus aerobic elements to build your aerobic conditioning and get a jump on whittling down your body fat.
Push moves you into a lower-rep (six to eight) higher-weight phase that really focuses on building muscle. Chalene really homes in on maintaining proper form and pushing it until your muscles fail. And then she makes you do some more. You’ll hear the phrase “Go heavy or go home!” a lot during this segment!
Lean moves you back toward higher reps, but you’ll be pushing heavier weights than you did in Burn (although generally not as heavy as in the Push phase), combining upper body movements with simultaneous lower body movements. And you will do a lot – a lot – of reps for the target muscle groups. This phase is also a bit extra challenging because some of the exercises force you to concentrate hard on your concentration. But there are modifications to help you through them if your balance isn’t quite there.
But this isn’t to say that you have to be an Olympic athlete to do ChaLEAN Extreme. To be honest, I personally am glad that we took the road that we did, starting with the basic P90, then P90 Master, and then moving into ChaLEAN. We weren’t complete couch potatoes, but if you haven’t exercised in a long time, or at all, I’d probably recommend that you start with P90 or one of Beachbody’s other programs first. That got us in good condition where we could really take advantage of what ChaLEAN offers.
But if you really like the sound of the program and want to give it a try, that’s cool, too! A couple of the people in the workout demonstrate modifications to make things a bit easier. And once you get into it, you won’t want to stop!
Another thing Chalene hits on – and this is a huge factor – is nutrition. My friend, it doesn’t matter how much you work out or what you do: if you don’t eat lean and nutritious food, you won’t see the kind of results you’re hoping for. There’s no point in putting the amount of effort that you’ll want to put into this if you don’t eat right! ChaLEAN Extreme comes with a nutrition guide that will help you get started (and there’s tons more nutrition information on the Beachbody site), but you really need to adopt a “clean eating” lifestyle. Think of it this way: it’s not a diet, it’s just a different way of eating. And you have to eat a lot, too! No starving yourself on this program: you need to eat a small, nutritious meal about every two hours to give your body what it needs to build that muscle and burn fat. It seems counterintuitive, but danged if it doesn’t work!
I also have to comment here on Chalene Johnson herself. I’m not big into “motivational” stuff in general (sorry, but I tend to be cynical – years of federal service will do that to you!), but she brings something special to the mix and really is motivational, even to a jaded curmudgeon like me. Even after you’ve done a given workout several times, she still somehow makes it fun and fresh as you’re grunting and groaning, trying to squeeze out another rep!
So, my bottom line opinion is that ChaLEAN Extreme should definitely be among your workout arsenal: this is a must-have. It might not be the right thing for you to get started with if you’ve been stuck in your La-Z-Boy too long (in which case start with the basic P90 or one of Beachbody’s other “building block” programs), but once you can do a dozen pushups on your knees, can handle five pounds of weight or more, and can maybe walk a mile at a good clip without getting out of breath, you should definitely start thinking about it, and start out using the modifications so the exercises aren’t too hard. And if you’re already in fair shape, jump in with both feet! Either way, you will see lots of positive changes to your body with this program, so check it out at Beachbody!
In Her Name Reviewed by The Book Smugglers: Wow!
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Book News on February 23rd, 2009
When I woke up the other day, I headed straight downstairs to my Mac with one purpose: to see the review of In Her Name that was scheduled to be published by The Book Smugglers. This site is run by two book-obsessed women, Ana and Thea, and they do some of the most in-depth reviews – particularly of speculative fiction and romance – that you’ll find anywhere on the web. Like the other reviewers I had submitted the book to, they looked to be fair but tough. And since they frequently do joint reviews, it was even more of a challenge.
I wasn’t disappointed. In fact, I was totally blown away. Here are excerpts of their first impressions:
I wish I had read In Her Name as soon as we got it because once I got past the first few chapters , I got sucked into the story and couldn’t stop reading it until I was done. And there is only one work I can think of using to describe it right now: Awesome. [Ana]
In Her Name is a stunner of a novel: an Epic blend of space opera and fantasy, with impressive world building, a beautifully conceived plot, and wonderfully alive characters. One of the most enjoyable books I have read in a while. What Ana said: Awesome. [Thea]
When discussing the plot, here are a few words I pulled from the review that I think hit their bottom-line impressions:
The first few chapters do not give a measure of the scope that the story will have and it’s not until Reza is taken into the heart of the Kreelan Empire that the book really got me by the guts. That was when the story truly became alive and riveting and utterly unlike any other hero journey because of the choice Reza ultimately makes. [Ana]
The best thing is–the plot is wonderful from beginning to end. The dramatic ending to this operatic journey is perfect, not a cop out and feels like the only way that serves the Kreelans and Humans justice. I loved it. [Thea]
They both rated the book an “8 out of 10 – Excellent!” And Thea noted that she likely would have given it a 9 or 10 had the book been broken down into a trilogy (which I’ve been considering for some time – I guess it’s time to do that!).
So, please take a look at the review and see what you think!
