News & Blog

I probably mentioned this before, but I am Toastmaster at this year’s Northeastern Writers Conference, or NECon, which is taking place this weekend in Rhode Island. One of my duties as Toastmaster is to interview the two Author Guests of Honor, New York Times and USA Today bestseller Heather Graham and two-time Bram Stoker Award nominee Jeff Strand.

So here’s the deal. If you have any questions you’d like me to ask either of them, feel free to post them here and I’ll bring your questions with me. When I’m back, I’ll make sure you see their answers.

Serious questions only! Questions along the lines of “Ha ha, yer books blow, waddaya think a’ that?” will not get a place at the table. Also, Leroy the Giant Fire-breathing Hedgehog will be dispatched to your home to teach you manners.

So, if there’s anything you’d like to know about Heather or Jeff, straight from the horse’s mouth, ask away! Just keep in mind that the deadline is Wednesday because I’m leaving for NECon Thursday morning, so you’ll need to act fast.

I got back from Readercon last night still high from the experience. It really is a great convention, filled as it is with interesting, knowledgeable people participating in extensive, in-depth, and widely diverse programming. But the people are what make or break any convention, and it was wonderful catching up with friends I don’t see very often and hanging out with the ChiZine Publications gang. I wish I saw these folks more than once or twice a year.

The “At School with Peter Straub” panel went magnificently. As leader, I printed up a quick bibliography cheat-sheet of Straub’s novels, collections, and poetry books for the panelists to refer to, either to get their juices flowing about which of Straub’s works influenced them most, or as a safety feature for anyone who, like me, tends to blank on titles right in the middle of sentences. I also came up with a list of questions to fill the hour, but it turned out I didn’t need most of them. The conversation flowed freely and neatly. Peter and Susan Straub actually showed up and sat right in the front row. He just beamed at us the whole time. I was delighted that he was so delighted, and in the end it just may have been the best panel experience I’ve ever had. (I also kept as a souvenir the table tent that read, “Nicholas Kaufmann, Leader,” because come on.)

The “What Writers Want” panel was a lot of fun, too. We all seemed to agree that ultimately what writers want is to be remembered and appreciated long after we’re gone. I made John Crowley laugh, too, so that’s good enough for me.

The ChiZine Publications group reading was well attended, and managed to fit snugly within its hour, despite there being eight readers. I was psyched to learn that Michael Marano has joined the ChiZine Publications family. More on that as news develops, but I’m very, very happy about it. Dawn Song was a remarkable novel.

My own solo reading went pretty well, too. It was during the dinner hour on Saturday, so I didn’t expect many people. About ten showed up. I didn’t personally know five of them, so I take that as a win. (Of course, I think two of them just wanted an air-conditioned room to relax and knit in, but still.) People seemed to like the chapter of Not Dead Yet I read from. It gives me hope that the publishers who are currently sitting on it will, too. When they eventually come back to work after Labor Day, I mean.

In other news, I rediscovered how much I like Dewar’s on the rocks; I took a picture with a life-sized cardboard cutout of Scott Edelman so he could feel like he was there (I’ll post it soon); I enjoyed meeting several people I only knew previously through Twitter, LiveJournal, and Google+; I signed copies of Chasing the Dragon for a few people (and an old copy of Walk In Shadows for one fellow!); we got to eat at Legal Sea Foods in the Burlington Mall on Saturday; and Alexa completed her collection of pressed pennies from the Burlington Mall Rainforest Cafe!

I’ve had my Kindle Fire e-reader since December, but the only things I’ve read on it until now are short stories. Ernest Cline’s debut novel Ready Player One is the first full-length novel I’ve read, ever, electronically. It took a bit of getting used to. Short stories are easy to focus on, but with novels I’m far more likely to want to flip ahead to see how many pages are left in a chapter, or read the back cover description again, or the front page blurbs. You can’t do that with an e-book, really, so I had to unlearn that behavior. The good news is, unlearning it doesn’t take as long as you might think, and by the end of the novel reading on the Kindle Fire seemed like second nature.

It’s fitting, too, that Ready Player One was my first e-book because so much of the novel takes place in virtual reality. The plot in a nutshell: In the near future, our teenaged hero, Wade Watts, better known by the online handle Parzival, goes on a treasure hunt through the virtual reality world of OASIS. At stake is a huge amount of money and what basically amounts to ownership of the Internet. The novel’s hook, and its main draw for readers of a certain age, is that all the challenges that await him are based on 1980s pop culture.

You’d think that would be great fun, but alas, for the most part it’s not. At least, not in Cline’s hands. Imagine standing next to someone at a party, and all night all they say is, “Ha ha, remember Ladyhawke? Ha ha, remember Galaga?” and you pretty much have a feel for most of the novel. There’s no emotion behind the nostalgia on display, it’s all just name-checking. There’s no sense of wonder at the creativity of the past, or loss at the ephemeral nature of things we used to love. Put another way, there’s no there there.

Cline also has a frustrating habit of telling instead of showing. For example, one of the challenges Wade faces is to play through a life-sized, virtual version of the legendarily difficult Tomb of Horrors D&D module without dying. Pretty cool, huh? Except we don’t get to see it. We’re simply told that because Wade has studied the module so thoroughly he is able to play it through to the end while avoiding all the lethal traps. And so he wins the challenge. That’s it. It’s as if it never occurred to Cline that the reader might like to see some of this cool stuff go down, too. Later, Wade plays a perfect game of Pac-Man. What’s that like? We don’t know. Most of us never will, so it would have been nice to actually feel it here, but instead we’re simply told that because he practiced for endless hours beforehand, he won. Hooray. You know, when your character is the best at everything, there’s no suspense to speak of, and no character arc to follow him on. I call it the 300 syndrome. The movie 300 ultimately bored me, despite all its bombast and awesome battle rhinos, because it pits the best 300 warriors Sparta has to offer against the invading hordes. Since we already know they’re the best, there’s no arc. It’s yawnsville. Of course they’re going to smack down those battle rhinos without blinking an eye. But give me the same movie with 300 inexperienced warriors fresh out of Warrior Academy, or warriors who were ranked the worst in the land, and I’m much more interested. Writing lesson 101: When your characters have something to prove, there’s much more at stake. When they’re the best at everything, nothing’s at stake.

Cline definitely has a good imagination, and the climactic battle got me excited for reasons I don’t want to spoil (okay: Mechagodzilla!), but he really fumbles the ball when dealing with anything even remotely emotional. There’s an enormous tragedy in the first third of the novel, but it’s hardly acknowledged or dealt with in the remaining two-thirds. Later, another character’s death should be shocking and horrible. Instead, it barely affects us because, again, we’re simply told that people feel bad. We’re not led to feel it ourselves. And when it comes to Wade’s budding romance with another character, Cline tries way too hard to convince us of his feelings for her.

It’s rare when a book simply doesn’t work for me, and I’m sorry to say that Ready Player One falls into that category. Interestingly, though, the film rights were sold right out of the gate, and I have a feeling it’s going to make a much better movie than book. Provided they can get the rights to all the cool ’80s games, movies, and TV shows mentioned. And if they get a screenwriter who understands that the audience wants to play, too.

Readercon 23 starts tomorrow! In case you missed it, here once again is my schedule of panels and readings. (Yes, I’m doing two readings!) Hope to see you there!