Better than the movie.

Saw Man of Steel yesterday.

Didn’t love it. Sorta liked it.

If I let myself, though, I think I could hate it.

There are some movies that are deeply flawed but I come out of them loving them anyway because what I remember about them is the good stuff.  The Dark Knight Rises was like that. It fails in some major ways, but it is audacious in what it attempts and gets so much right and is just so thrilling that I loved it (though not with the same passion as I love its immediate predecessor) .

Man of Steel flips that dynamic on its head. It gets quite a few things right, but what lingers in memory are its failures.

The casting is excellent (though Amy Adams, who I generally adore, isn’t as good a Lois Lane as I’d imagined she would be). Henry Cavil is a fantastic Superman. The villains are pretty great (especially Antje Traue as Faora-Ul, who seriously upstages central baddy Zod).

The action is all very good to excellent, if at times too frenetic and unclear.  The story is smart and restructures the story we all know all too well by now in interesting ways. Largely, the creator’s approach to making a Superman for our time is admirable and successful.

Except…

There is no heart here. There’s a virtual geometry of a heart, pumping away in predictable throbs, but there’s no blood in that geometry, no heat. No humanity. The only truly human moment in the film is when Jenny Olsen (Jimmy’s much hotter contemporary iteration) panics while trapped in a terrible situation…and Jenny is barely even a character in this movie. And it’s the actress who brings the humanity, not the script or the direction. Suddenly, in that moment, I cared for one of the characters on a visceral, rather than an intellectual, level.

The film has absolutely no sense of humor. None. Zilch. I don’t want comedy, I don’t want camp, and I hated those elements in the old Christopher Reeve movies. But I do want wit, I do want humor, I do want irony, I do want to fucking smile every once in a while.

And please. Please please please. Please spare us the Space Jesus crap. Sure, it’s easy to find all sorts of subtext in a Superman story  if you want to (he’s basically more Space Moses than Jesus anyway, and was created by a couple of Jewish kids to boot), but when you start making the subtext hamfisted text it’s just embarrassing. Bryan Singer was guilty of this in Superman Returns too. Don’t bash us over the fucking head with the allegory: having Superman spread his arms as if he’s on a cross isn’t clever, it’s just stupid and obvious, especially when paired with a line of dialogue like “You can save them all…”

Also, spare us the jingoistic military recruitment video before the film that uses heroic imagery of Superman to inspire more kids to enlist to die pointlessly in far off lands. How frigging manipulative and cynical can you get?

There have been a lot of complaints that the movie makers went too dark and gritty with the film, and for the most part I disagree. There could certainly be a bit more color on their palette visually, but it’s fine, and I don’t think the story or characters are too thematically dark. I like the uncertainty and humanity they bring to Superman, and I prefer a noble person struggling to do the right thing to a two-dimensional symbol of heroism who is unfailingly perfect. I don’t mind Superman killing occasionally if he sees the need, though the need has to be overwhelming and clear and earned by the storytellers (there’s at least one big failure on this point in the film).

Overall, I’d give Man of Steel a very shaky B-. I’m glad they’ve done well with it, because I mostly like the elements in the mix and am glad they’re getting to continue with those elements. I just hope that next time they address some of their failures and make a movie I’ll actually want to watch a second time.

ON SALE UNTIL JULY 1, 2013!!!

“Really. Totally. Awesome.” ­‑‑Book Nut

“Doc Wilde swings in on a jungle vine to raise the flag high for adventure. Infused with pace, fun, and all the two-fisted action a reader could ask for…” –Zack Stentz, screenwriter, Thor, X-Men: First Class

To the world at large, Doc Wilde and his family are an amazing team of golden-skinned adventurers, born to daring escapades and globetrotting excitement. Join them as they crisscross the earth on a constant quest for new knowledge, incredible 21st-century thrills, and good old-fashioned adventure!

Now, with adventurous Grandpa Wilde missing, the Wildes confront the deepest mysteries of Dark Matter, penetrate the tangled depths of uncharted jungles, and come face to face with the likely end of the world in the clammy clutches of an ancient amphibian threat…THE FROGS OF DOOM!

“Written in fast-paced, intelligent prose laced with humor and literary allusions ranging from Dante to Dr. Seuss, the story has all of the fun of old-fashioned pulp adventures.” –Kirkus Reviews

The Astonishing Adventures of Doc Wilde are written by Tim Byrd, lavishly illustrated by Gary Chaloner, and published by Outlaw Moon Books.

Now in deluxe new editions, these novels recapture the magic of pulp cliffhangers for readers of all ages. Lost worlds, ancient ruins, cool gadgets, and evil villains and daring heroes, all brought into the 21st-century with contemporary themes, modern science fantasy, the wonders of family, and a deep appreciation of literature and of the thinking life itself.

 In the tradition of classic adventure stories, and modern tales like The Incredibles and Raiders of the Lost Ark, they’re great for kids and grown-ups alike.

To celebrate the return of Doc Wilde, Outlaw Moon Books is offering the ebook edition of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom at a special low price of $4.99 (regular $6.99) until July 1, 2013. To get the book, visit the links below at Amazon (Kindle format) or Barnes & Noble (for EPUB format):

DOC WILDE AND THE FROGS OF DOOM AT AMAZON

DOC WILDE AND THE FROGS OF DOOM AT B&N

ALSO AVAILABLE IN TRADE PAPERBACK!

For more info, visit Doc Wilde Adventure Headquarters at www.DocWilde.com!

It is Father’s Day, yet I do not honor my father.

My father was an abusive drunk who put me through years of hell and regularly did everything he could to crush my spirit. He did a hell of a lot of damage in that regard; I’ve struggled for years with chronic, enervating, soul-crushing depression that several shrinks have identified as deep post-traumatic shock pounded into my marrow and mind during my childhood.

So today, I honor my son.

Nathaniel is seventeen, intelligent, kind, thoughtful, socially adept and funny, loves his parents, loves being around his parents, and has never been a behavioral problem in any way. When people ask us how we discipline him, we always say we don’t. If there’s an issue, we talk it out, and it’s no longer an issue.

I attribute this mostly to his innate character, but also to the fact that from the day he was born, both his parents have treated him with respect and have never seen dealing with him as an innate conflict or power struggle. He is the way he is because we allowed him to be the way he is, not because we beat it into him or forced him to act certain ways or made him follow stringent rules. We always honored his right to be acknowledged, to be present, to be heard. We pointed out when he was in the wrong, but also stood up for him when he was in the right.

We gave him love and respect at every step along the way, and as a result, he has given us love and respect in return. He doesn’t have to rebel because we’re not holding him back from being who he is and living life on his terms, and because we trust him, which lets him know that he is worthy of our trust.

Because of who he is, and how he was raised, my son didn’t have to bother with being a surly teen. He went straight to being a man.

We see a lot of insult hurled at the indie publishing community. The fact that it has become so easy to publish has undeniably opened the gates to a lot of lazy, shoddy, unedited books. Some people refuse to see the other side of the equation, that a great many very talented writers who have either not been fortunate enough to break in with a traditional publisher yet, or who have opted to leave the old system as I have, now have the chance to share their work and possibly even make a living from it.

I’m not the first to set out to do things right, by any stretch. But I wanted to be one of the writers who prove that indie publishing can result in wonderful books, a group that gets larger all the time.

One of the most common complaints I see about self-publishing is that the books are terribly edited, full of typos and bad spelling. As a writer who slaves over his prose with a goal of not needing to be edited, I was determined that no one be able to sling that particular brickbat my way. Which brings me to:

The Frogs of Doom Typo Challenge

From Monday, June 17, 2013 through Monday, June 24, 2013, everyone who emails  me (at docwildekickstarter@gmail.com) identifying a typo or misspelling in  Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom will be entered into a random drawing to win an autographed first edition hardback of the book, an autographed copy of the new deluxe second edition, and my thanks for pointing out something I can correct to make my book even better.

This applies only to the new edition from Outlaw Moon Books, and doesn’t include the excerpt from the next book in the back (that book is still being developed, so the text of the excerpt is essentially still in first draft form).

Any submissions which arrive prior to noon on Monday will be deleted. Likewise, any typos pointed out beforehand (in comments here or elsewhere) will disqualify you; I want people to have a fair shot at getting their entry in when the time is right.

If anyone wins the challenge, I will update this post with the news as well as writing a new post to announce it.

Good luck, intrepid readers!

UPDATE: It was pointed out to me that I really wasn’t allowing much time for the contest, so I’m adding a week and a few hours to the starting time. It will now begin Monday, June 17, 2013 at 5:00 pm EDT. I had also originally said the first person to identify a typo would win; now everyone who enters between 6/17/2013 and 6/24/2013 will have a chance to win.

]]> http://tim-byrd.com/2013/06/08/announcing-the-frogs-of-doom-typo-challenge/feed/ 0 Tim Byrd DOC WILDE AND THE FROGS OF DOOM http://tim-byrd.com/2013/06/06/be-true-song-of-the-week-662013/ http://tim-byrd.com/2013/06/06/be-true-song-of-the-week-662013/#comments Thu, 06 Jun 2013 13:09:17 +0000 Tim Byrd http://tim-byrd.com/?p=5469 ]]>

Happy birthday, Nydia!

I’m a fan of George R.R. Martin, and I’m a fan of A Game of Thrones, both in its original literary and its more recent filmic iterations. And not only do I consider Martin’s epic work to be some of the best fiction I’ve ever read, I’ve been on board longer than most because, through unlikely fortune, I got an early copy of the first book in hardback, signed, well before it went on sale…

And yeah, I’m showing off my library…forgive me.

Of course, I’m not alone in my love for this series. But such love is far from universal, and some folks downright hate it. Some hate it because it’s brutal and dark and filled with not-happy endings. Some hate it because it’s loaded with sex and nakedness, and if you’re uncomfortable with the human body and the things people choose to do with it, that can be a turnoff. (If I seem dismissive of people’s discomfort with nudity and sex, that’s only because I am; there is plenty of entertainment available for more chaste tastes, and not everything needs to be appropriate for eleven year olds.) I will say this: the series should show more naked men, both because it would be more fair and because it would head off some of the arguments of misogyny.

Some people’s hatred of this series, though, is starkly political, pardon the pun. I see frequent attacks on it as being misogynistic, or, in an oddly more flippant term, “rapey.”  Of course, “rapey” is a word that seems to cover everything from actual rape porn to fictional rapes in a story to pictures of pretty models in swimsuits, and, at its most zealously inhuman, includes under its umbrella men’s simple desire for women (they are inflicters of the terrible “Male Gaze”), and women’s desire to be attractive to men (it’s not that they actually want to be attractive, it’s that they’re naive and brainwashed by the patriarchy into thinking they want to be…because nothing gives a woman agency like telling her she’s too stupid to decide how she really thinks about such things because she doesn’t play by your rules).

The world of Thrones is a brutal world for everyone in it, yet I’ve seen people say that Martin should basically make the choice to be nicer to the women, and have the setting be more enlightened than our own medieval past, in order to reflect modern attitudes. “Its not historical,” they say, “and he has the freedom of making his world less misogynistic, so the fact that he doesn’t is, itself, misogynistic.” Or rapey. So, horrifically brutal primitive culture, fine, just as long as the women are treated with respect and care.

As a writer, a reader, and a grownup, I know that depiction is not the same thing as endorsement. There is misogyny in Thrones without a doubt, but it is the misogyny of the cultures and the characters. The books depict it, but they in no way glamorize it, and are not, in themselves, misogynistic. Nor do I think their author is. I know that people who think that depiction is, itself, unacceptable may disagree. C’est la vie. I don’t think all fiction should be written to soothe and reinforce people’s favored notions of the world-as-it-should-be.

Also, the female characters in the books and show are very well developed, and cope with the horrors of the world they exist in in complex and varying ways. Most of them are very strong and admirable women, self-defining and full of agency. Two of my favorite characters are female, Arya Stark and Daenerys Targaryen. Do bad things happen to them? Sure, just like to pretty much everyone in the stories. Are some of those bad things really not nice things that people in an enlightened society wouldn’t do to each other? Of course. This world is far from an enlightened, nurturing, or friendly place. Expecting the author to treat the women with kid gloves while otherwise inflicting horror and torment on his characters (or, I guess, just on the men) is ridiculous.

Not everyone will enjoy the darkness, or the violence, or other aspects of the series, which is fine. Harsh dark medieval realism isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. And frankly, though I see Martin accused of filling the stories with actual rape, he really doesn’t. Also, whenever there is violence, sexual or otherwise, it isn’t depicted in any sort of appealing way; only someone already off in psycho land could read the brutalities in these tales and think, “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

Just to be clear: I’m not in any way unsympathetic to, or dismissive of, concerns about “rape culture” or misogyny in media or even people’s feelings on such matters. I definitely recognize that there are problems to be addressed (for some reason, recent decisions by DC Comics spring to mind, as does the day-to-day news out of the GOP).  I just think some of the more stringent arguments about such things have a tendency to spill beyond reasonable boundaries and focus on things that really don’t qualify for such attack. And I think that these particular criticisms of A Game of Thrones are like that.

Of course, I’m a guy, so to some my opinion, input, and viewpoint-of-privilege are instantly to be dismissed, unless I wholeheartedly embrace the arguments at hand. Fortunately, there are women saying the same sort of things that I’m saying…

This may be the Year of the Sitcom Woman, but the biggest, most vibrant group of women on TV today can be found in a brutal, self-serious war drama set in a made-up medieval world — just the kind of story, it so happens, that’s often assumed to be the sole dominion of dudes.

For George R.R. Martin, the novelist who created this world in his “Song of Ice and Fire” series, the medium is the message. The things that make the story so daunting and so off-putting to some — its sheer massiveness and its huge cast of characters — are part of what makes it so thrilling to me, as a woman who likes to see other women on-screen. It’s not just that the women in “Game” are strong — and the primary females are, in both figurative and literal senses — but that there are so goddamn many of them, each one fighting to exercise power over the world and her own life. They’re far from a sisterhood (one of the main themes of the show is that trusting others is a rube’s game) but as a collective, they make an unavoidably huge impression.

Fantasy stories, like all genre narratives, are built on archetypes, and “Game of Thrones” seems to leave no trope of feminine power unexplored. There are mothers, like the noblewomen Catelyn Stark and Cersei Baratheon, who are driven by their fierce, lioness-like love for their children. There are a wide variety of warrior princesses and any number of women who use their sexuality to get ahead. There are at least two witchy women (mysticism being a kind of power reliably granted to female and minority characters): Mirri Maz Duur, the Lhazareen who uses “blood magic” to destroy her people’s conquerors, and Melisandre, the priestess who brings a fiery new religion to Westeros and becomes the force behind a fearsome army in the process. These women don’t always win the games they’re playing — they get slapped down as brutally and as often as the male characters do — but they sure know how to fight, week after week… (“TV’s Best Show About Women” by Nina Shen Rastogi, Salon)

And (major spoilers in this, if you’re not up to date with the TV show or corresponding events in the third novel):

Of course, as Rowan Kaiser argues in The American Prospect, one really cool aspect of the Stark family’s downfall is that it also functions as a sharp critique of the patriarchy….from a male point of view.

The metaphorical potential of a speculative setting helps—Game of Thrones, with its lords and kings battling for supremacy, is inarguably patriarchal. It uses an agnatic-cognatic primogeniture system where only men can inherit titles unless only a woman is the sole successor. This is obviously bad for women, who are used as political pawns and very rarely wield institutional power on their own. But what Game of Thrones manages to do is demonstrate how it damages men as well.

That is why Robb Stark is dead. In the world of Westeros, Robb’s innate goodness was at odds with his job title. As heir to Winterfell, and then as King IN The North, he had obligations that had to be fulfilled, which included marrying for strategic gain—obligations that he didn’t keep. Marrying Talisa Maegyr instead of Roslyn Frey wasn’t his only shirked responsibility. His inability to maintain relations among his vassals led directly to his death as well, in large part because he was unable to punish his mother after she worked against him. So Robb didn’t just die because he’d married for love; he also died because he’d been kind to his mother. Both of those actions seem like they should be no-brainers, but because of the world he was in, they combined to ruin the hero.

I couldn’t agree more with Rowan. I’ve found “Game of Thrones” to be a fascinating deconstruction of the romanticization of medieval patriarchy, a romanticization that is used as a rhetorical weapon to this day in order to prop up modern patriarchy. (For instance, it’s common for sexists to defend unfair treatment of women by citing “chivalry” as a value, but as “Game of Thrones” brilliantly and correctly posits, chivalry is just a series of futile, meaningless gestures to pretty up systems that treat women like disposable objects.) I will tweak his point a little, however. While I agree completely that “Game of Thrones” shows how patriarchy hurts men, too, it also shows what makes patriarchy so attractive that many men will defend it, often with their own lives. (“Game of Thrones Offers A Complex, Nuanced Critique of Patriarchy” by Amanda Marcotte, The Raw Story)

Both women’s articles are good reads. Marcotte’s story is particularly insightful. (Avoid the comments sections, though, if you’re concerned about spoilers for future episodes/books). Of course, some might dismiss these smart women, and say they’re brainwashed and speaking as agents of the patriarchy and defending rape culture and such. In that case, who is actually hurting women here, George R.R. Martin for writing books that include fictional depictions of abuse of women, in a very human and thoughtful manner? Or those who would deny a woman her own opinion because it clashes with their political ideas?

Sexy cosplay + piano = GENIUS.

On his blog, author Tobias Buckell has posted an interesting counterpoint to some of the HUZZAH! of self-publishing out there:

I love this quote from the recent marketing guide that Smashwords published:

“we cannot promise you your book will sell well, even if you follow all the tips in this guide. In fact, most books, both traditionally published and self-published, don’t sell well. Whether your book is intended to inspire, inform or entertain, millions of other books and media forms are competing against you for your prospective reader’s ever-shrinking pie of attention.”

(From Smashwords — Smashwords Book Marketing Guide – A book by Mark Coker – page 7.)

This just does not get emphasized nearly enough. And it’s something I’ve been thinking about a great deal since I published The Apocalypse Ocean. One, because so many rah rah eBook advocates have been indicating to me that if I’d only just publish digitally first I’d keep 70% of the profits and *obviously* make more than I would with ‘traditional publishing.’

Since 2001, I’d been involved in selling eBooks…I lay down my bonafides, because usually the first thing I get is a lot of ‘booksplainin,’ by which I mean people lecturing me about what to do as if it’s self evident, obvious, and usually based entirely on their own anecdotal experience.

In fact, the self assured expertise of anecdotes drives me nuts…

I recommend reading the piece. Buckell makes some solid points, and his larger point — that big success in self publishing is rare, and we tend to hear only about the outliers who win big — is true. Of course, that’s also the case with traditional publishing. Even for those who score a publishing deal with a big New York corporation, most make relatively little when compared to “real” jobs that grown ups have. And the average result for them is skewed just as much by the big successes in traditional publishing.

His figures, provided by Smashwords, are interesting, but are themselves only anecdotal evidence because the numbers all come only from Smashwords, not from the far more successful ebook venues like Amazon, B&N, iTunes, and Kobo (all of whom are stingy with such data). And every self-published author I’ve talked to, or who I’ve seen write on the matter, has said that the number of books they sell on Smashwords, as compared to the other venues, is so small as to be nearly insignificant. Some of them say it’s barely worth publishing to Smashwords (I’ve only just begun this journey, so I have no opinion on that; I want my books up everywhere they can be).

Also, when looking at publishing figures like this, and comparing results between traditional and indie publishing, the comparison is meaningless unless the figures you run for traditional include all the authors who are attempting to publish traditionally and failing to do so. There are many traditionally focused authors who are making ZERO dollars, but they will never be counted. Their counterparts in self-publishing, however, *are* getting published, because they’re doing it themselves, so they get counted, and the vast majority of people who don’t actually make anything off their self-published book, for quality or whatever reasons, skew these figures just as much as the highly successful folk at the other end of the charts.  The extreme low-performers in traditional publishing don’t get counted in statistics like this, whereas the extreme low-performers in self-publishing do.

And if you have a thousand authors on the traditional path who make zilch, and a thousand authors on the indie path who publish their own book and make just a dollar, you know what? The indies are doing better. Something is better than nothing.

I learned something yesterday.

For those who subscribe to both this blog and the Doc Wilde blog, who may not want to get the same stuff in their inbox twice, I’ve been trying to keep from replicating content on the two blogs. This also helps with what’s known as “SEO,” Search Engine Optimization, which is “the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s ‘natural’ or un-paid (‘organic’) search results.” Posting identical content in multiple places puts you in competition with yourself with internet search engines and can make your pages appear farther down in search results, thus diluting your signal.

My approach, of late, has been to post most of my stuff here, but to focus the Wilde stuff mainly to that blog. Then I’d post a short note here linking to the post in question, but not repeating the information.

But, and this is probably common knowledge to those who care to spend time on such matters, apparently doing things that way doesn’t work all that well. Yesterday, I posted a blog post at the Wilde site which gave a lot of specific info about what’s happening with our current attempts to publish Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom to various venues. I put a note here that said, essentially, “There’s news, go to this link for all the juicy details.”  Exactly 25% of folks who read the note here clicked over to actually read the post.

75% didn’t bother.

I assume that most or all the people who read the note here did so because they were interested in what was going on, but they missed the information. The note here said “Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom is DONE, the epic battle raging across the world in both digital and print form. Read the news in the latest post of the official Doc Wilde blog,” and perhaps I erred not just in requiring an extra click, but also in not being clear with the message here. Maybe people read the short version and thought it meant the book is actually out, when in fact we’re working our way through the obstacle course thrown up by the various vendors, from the persnickety formatting of the Kindle files for Amazon to the recalcitrant uploading process for Nook.

People who read the post over on the Wilde site know the particulars, but maybe folks who read the post here all thought “Great! The book’s available!” Which is annoying to me and probably to them, because if they go to buy it, they won’t be able to just yet.

Whatever the case, this isn’t the first time I’ve noticed that click-through on links tends to be low. It’s even the case when a post says something like “You really should go read THIS, it’s funny and fascinating and incredible.” Few people actually bother to go have the experience or get the information or whatever.

So I should probably replicate info between these two blogs, at least when it’s the essential info, so folks who read only one or the other will actually get the information. And with posts in general, I should get as much of the info into the post itself, even if I’m pointing to an interesting article elsewhere, because most people just won’t bother jumping to the article under discussion.

Lesson learned.