A Review of The Canterbury Tales, Volume I

Here's a review of a book I'm dying to read. The review is by M Joseph Murphy, co-founder of Suckers Guild and author of the paranormal novel Council of Peacocks:

Have you ever read a book that was so well-written you kind of hate the author? That's pretty much my feeling for Canterbury Tales. It's brilliant.

Amazon Synopsis
Every ten years each spacer pilot must make the pilgrimage to Vale, where the mighty and all powerful Federal Galactic Spaceflight Licensing Authority resides. From all corners of the nine galaxies they come, on ships such as the GSS Canterbury.

To pass the time over their three nights journeying through the void each traveller tells their story. Volume One features the tale of the Smuggler, the Merchant, the Assassin and the Knight. Join them to hear their tales of rivalry, revenge, piracy, insurrection, daring escapes and adventure in this all new re-imagining of the original Canterbury Tales.

This is what Geoffrey Chaucer might have written if he'd owned a ZX Spectrum when he was 12 and wasted his formative years playing video games through the 1980's.


If you're not familiar with the original, here's an overview:

What I liked

The first thing I noticed was the very literary and witty writing style. I was hooked by the first few paragraphs. I also like that each story has an element of social commentary just below the surface. That's what science fiction is supposed to do: use fantastical situations to make us look at ourselves.

Each character is unique and interesting. You also get the sense of a much more complex world in the background without the author wasting page after page in useless worldbuilding exposition. There are moments of horror, adventure, romance and intrigue. It hit all the right buttons.

What I didn't like

I have to wait til next year to read the second part. Seriously. That's my only negative reaction.

Links:

Luke Bellmason's Website
Luke Bellmason on Goodreads
Luke Bellmason on Twitter
Buy the Book: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk

Suckers Guild

Late last fall, I got into a conversation on Twitter about how much better things would be for both writers and readers if there were an indie writers' guild. It started out very light-hearted - an offhand comment and a couple of joking responses - but very soon we realized we were onto something.

The Premise

The idea was that as much as we may want to, no one writer can ever produce a truly professional book all alone. It's not that we can't teach ourselves anything we would need to know. It's that no one of us could teach ourselves everything we would need to know, at the necessary level of expertise. And then there's the fact that you just can't edit your own work. To produce a truly professional book requires at least a few different pairs of eyes.

There are only three possible ways I can think of that an author can get a book out there, without compromising quality:

1. Traditional publishing. I mean really traditional publishing, with the full editing and marketing force that goes with that. This option is like the lady's slipper I found this morning: we can't exactly pick that one, because it's an endangered species.
2. Extremely expensive self-publishing. You pay for four, or at the very least, three expert editors, in addition to experts in layout, graphics, electronic formatting, printing, marketing and distribution. I've probably forgotten a job or two. Obviously, most writers simply don't have the money for this one.
3. Collaboration. Like bees in a hive, each of us has a specialty, or develops one, and we all work together to publish and sell books we're not ashamed to put our names on.

The Plot

So that's the idea behind the Suckers Guild. We looked around and didn't see any writers' group already out there that worked like this, so we started one. To learn more, you can visit the Suckers Guild site.

The Title

I know you're wondering why we named it the Suckers Guild. It came from the half-joking remarks that began the whole conversation, about how we don't want our books to suck, about how our lack of access to publishing resources sucks, and even about PT Barnum's famous saying, that there's a sucker born every minute.

In the end, we chose it because it reminds us that while we strive against all the odds life throws at us, there's no need to be stuffy and take ourselves too seriously. Because -  yup, I'm going to say it - that would suck.

Why Do We Need Yet Another Writers' Group?

Yesterday our new indie writers' group Suckers Guild opened its doors and began accepting applications for membership.

Photo: catnkitten.com

But with so many writers' groups already out there, why did we start another one? And why should you consider joining it?

Different groups have different missions, and while others may exist for purposes like meeting like-minded hobbyists, providing services for a fee or even boosting self-esteem (all of which I applaud), Sucker's Guild's mission is more exclusive. Sucker's Guild exists to fill two important needs that we don't see being met effectively elsewhere:

1. An easy way for readers to sort the real authors from the dabblers. Indie doesn't have to mean low-quality, and certainly shouldn't mean you pay ten bucks for 90,000 words of rambling drivel. But there's plenty of that out there, and it's giving the rest of us a bad name. The Suckers Guild entrance exam is designed to weed out people who aren't serious about writing, and books will have to meet certain quality standards before they can be endorsed by the Guild.
2. A way for authors to get the editing, proofreading, design, formatting and marketing services that are essential to success, without having to pay cash for them. My hat is off to the professionals in these fields, but the reality is that few writers can afford them. Suckers Guild offers a peer-to-peer barter system in which each member provides services in his or her area of expertise and receives services in other areas.

Here's co-founder M Joseph Murphy explaining it another way:

For Fiction Writers: Suckers Guild Now Accepting Members

I'm happy to report that the Suckers Guild is now established and ready to accept new members.

The Suckers Guild is an organization of indie fiction writers. Tomorrow I'll cover why we started it and how it's unique. Today I'll tell you how to get in and what happens after that.

To apply for membership go to the How to Join page on the Guild website (SuckersGuild.blogspot.com) and follow the instructions. You'll find an entrance exam consisting of two writing/rewriting assignments. Simply put, we're looking for members who are serious about writing and strive to produce quality fiction.

Once you're a member, we'll send you a placement questionnaire. This will help match your needs with other members' expertise and vice versa.

You'll also receive a ranking based on your accomplishments so far, and you'll be able to increase that ranking by doing work in your field of expertise for other members. In return, you'll be entitled to have other members do work for you, in their fields of expertise.

Learn more by visiting the Suckers Guild website or liking its Facebook page.

Status Update

Years ago when blogging was new and I first heard of it, I imagined that a 'web log' was the online equivalent of those fascinating logs kept by the travelers on the American frontier. In case you haven't had the pleasure, here's an entry from James and Nancy Coon's log of their 1847 Oregon Trail journey:

Photo: jacksonholejournal.net

Mon Jun 14th

Buried Turner's son, three years old. Left south fork of the Platt at 12 o'clock. Camped on the prairie eight miles from the river. Here we used buffalo chips for fire for the first time.

Cold. Seventeen miles.

Daily reports of exciting adventures sounded like a wonderful thing to read, and was it true that I could actually just go on the internet and read them for free, once I'd learned the secret of which characters to type into that little space at the top of the screen?

The first several times I actually saw a blog, I didn't know what I was looking at. I thought I had been directed to a blog, but what I found didn't look like a daily log of anything, much less of an exciting adventure. I figured I just didn't know what I was doing, and hoped I would learn eventually.

Then one day I stumbled across an article about art blogs in Spanish and finally got the point of what a blog was. Now I have my own blog, and guess what? I make daily entries. I guess that's the only thing I have in common with James and Nancy Coon. I don't even mention the weather, usually, or how far I've traveled. But if you're curious, Cold rane. Zero miles.

I'm guessing the Coons didn't do guest posts, either. I did a guest post on South Wales Shorts about someone dying of exposure in a desert. Thanks to Damian (@shortstoryblog on Twitter) for having me. The Third Sunday Blog Carnival (@thirdsundaybc) ran my story "Euthanasia" in December, and has accepted another story for their February 17 issue. This one's about genetically engineered humans.

I have some more stories I'd like to post here, especially "The Suitcase Man" which inspired Bronwyn Cair (@bronwyncair) to come up with the plot for next year's NaNoWriMo project Sixteen Thousand Nights. Unfortunately, my hard drive crashed, the backup is on CD's, I can't seem to find my external optical drive, and both computers with integrated optical drives are broken. Sometimes I wonder why I bother with fiction; real life is strange enough.

I'm editing Resist the Devil again in preparation for a relaunch in April.

I guess I'm about a quarter of the way through the second draft of my novel An Analysis of the Cardassian Language, and really enjoying it. I've posted what I've done so far; see the links above. I may finish this draft around August. Then I'll need to do a third draft to refine the details of Cardassian architecture, mannerisms, social life, etc. After that will come copyediting and proofreading. This book is not a quick one to write by any means because it requires intensive research (but I love doing research). More on that tomorrow.

Photo: northlandchurch.net

Sixteen Thousand Nights is still a twinkle in its mothers' eyes. It won't officially get started until November, but we've already got a basic outline for it. Sometimes it's wonderful to have the luxury to let ideas mull, to let our subconscious minds get a whack at them, and that's what we're lucky to have with Sixteen.  It's going to be a suspense novel about waking up on the wrong side of the American criminal justice system.

The Suckers Guild for indie writers is building up steam. We still have a few more preparations to do before we can start accepting members. Thanks to M Joseph Murphy (@windswarlock) for all your hard work on this, and for being so easy to work with. Every group needs a difficult member, though, and since you don't seem to be any good at that, I'm going to try hard to be as difficult as possible. Sorry if I've been slacking in that department.

Meteors, Mariners and Monkeys

It's been a while since I told you what I'm up to, so here's a quick update:

Reading:

I'm currently reading Behind the Ruins by Michael Lane. It's about life in southern Canada after meteors destroy life on earth as we know it.

Next in line is Walker, a horror story by Steven Ramirez, then a historical novel written in Spanish, La Muerte de Los Trece Bomberos (The Death of the Thirteen Firefighters) by Dante Romero Siña. 

Writing:

Progress on my novel, An Analysis of the Cardassian Language, has been slow for the past month, but I'm starting to pick up the pace again. One part I'm looking forward to writing is a series of short stories the main character writes for her children, about a race of lab-created humanoids who live at the bottom of the ocean. 

Other Things:

Along with M. Joseph Murphy, I'm working on starting up Suckers Guild, a way for indie writers to barter for the expert services we need, to produce truly professional books. For more on that, see these posts, and please help make the guild better by taking the survey. Thanks!

Helping Indie Authors Find Readers

Indie Writer Professionalism

Indie Writer Survey