Richard Dansky

1-Fail To Know Or Care Who’s Going To Be There

Complete and utter unfamiliarity with the folks you might be talking with and their work is always going to go over well. If someone’s a guest – or especially a Guest of Honor – it’s probably for a reason, and “they’re local and they know someone on the con committee” only goes so far. Knowing why they’re guest-worthy and possessing a basic familiarity with the work that got them that exalted status isn’t hard, shouldn’t take long, and will keep you from looking like a complete piece of Samsonite should you actually find yourself conversing with someone whose work you should probably know.

Research can, of course, be taken too far – if you read everything by the GoH and half the attendee list have written on the off chance that someone might mention a flash fiction piece they did in an issue of “Cthulhu’s Unicorn: A Magazine Of Optimistic Cosmic Horror For Children” back in 1993. For one thing, that’s creepy. For another, all you’re really doing is gorging, and the second half of that equation is the verbal equivalent of a Roman Moment. The last thing you want to do if you actually talk with some of the professional folks at a conference is barf up the minutiae of their professional careers the moment they say hi. Doing this tends to freak people out and make them wonder if you’re going to boil their pet bunnies any time soon and this, as you might guess, is not something you want.

2-Say You Hate Rush

All genre fiction writers love Rush. It’s a law. Saying you hate Rush at a writers’ con is just asking for anyone in earshot to inflict their a cappella version of “YYZ” on you. So unless you’re ready for an endless stream of DUH nu NUH NUH nu NUH NUH nu NUH, play it close to the vest.

This, incidentally, also explains why most genre fiction writers don’t get laid much.

3-Loudly Accuse A Famous And Successful Author Who Is No Doubt A Personal Friend Of Any Number Of People At The Conference Of Being A Cheap Hack/Sellout/Lousy Writer

Contrary to popular belief, the appropriate response to this one is not “Who the @#$# are you?” It is to write you off as a loudmouthed jerkwad. The people who like or respect the author you’re slagging are going to assume you don’t know what you’re talking about, and not like you. The folks who might agree that Successful Author X actually does kind of suck are still going to think your “Sales = Lame” rant is jejune. (They’re also going to be familiar with the proper use of the word “jejune”) And fans of the writer in question – who will no doubt outnumber both your fans and you – may in fact make their displeasure known.

Having a well-reasoned and interesting take on why you don’t like a successful author, or genre, or anything, really, can be a conversation starter. It can be a way to establish that you actually think about the material you read, and thus, most likely, about the material you write. It can be a great way to figure out what the folks you’re talking to are into. But jumping straight to lame-ass jeremiads probably won’t do you too many favors.

4-Drink To Excess, Then Puke All Over An Author You Admire

Really, this one should be self-explanatory. The drinking to excess part is fine, of course. The trick is to find an author the one you admire doesn’t like, and then be violently ill all over them. Doing so will earn you all kinds of points, and possibly an anthology invite. Failing that, hotel fountains work, as do shrubs, potted plants, and any kind of tiled surface.

Alternately, one could choose not to buy quite so heavily into the stereotype of the drunken writer and manage to enjoy one’s self within vague moderation, but really, that’s just being silly.

5-Derail Panels By Asking Long, Rambling Questions That Really Aren’t Questions But Are Excuses For You To Show Off How Much You Think You Know About A Particular Topic But Probably Don’t And Which Will Only End Up With You Embarrassed By The Subject Matter Experts On The Panel Or With Time Thankfully Running Out Because You Talked For Eight Solid Minutes About Your Superawesome Point That Nobody Besides You Actually Thinks Is The Slightest Bit Clever.

People tend to leave panels during the Q&A. Don’t get yourself remembered as the reason.

6-Let Your Ambition Go Outside Without Pants

There are lots of reasons to go to a writing convention, and many of them have to do with business. This is an accepted fact. Business, after all, gets done at these things. So does networking. Manuscripts get passed off. Invitations to anthologies get issued. Collaborations get set up, sometimes even by people who haven’t gargled a fifth of Ketel One because their last nine drinks convinced them that unless they sterilize their tonsils right now, the Throat-Invading Spore Men of Galargnicax Six will assault them imminently.

That being said, if your too-naked ambition makes a mess on the carpet, odds are none of those deal-type things will be happening for or with you. Persistence is good. So is professionalism, and dedication, and taking advantage of your opportunities, whatever they might be. Stalkerish fervor that makes it clear that you only see the other attendees at the conference as walking slabs of meat whose sole purpose for existing is to help your career, not so much. A little grace and respect can’t hurt, and it just might help.

 

A while back, I got a pretty positive response to an essay about questions that you should never, ever, under any circumstances ask a writer. (I’m serious. Like, not even if they’ve got zombie plague and you’ve got the antidote, and it can only be administered through a ritualistic makeshift quiz show. Trust me.)

But with that in mind, I thought it was worth exploring the questions that you should ask a writer, the ones that will generally provoke an interesting and interested response. The ones that won’t cause a writer to transform into a snarling ball of maniacal fang-toothed fury. The ones they’re liable to answer in complete sentences, stone cold sober and with at least a faint hint of enthusiasm.

1-Tell Me About Your Book

This never fails, largely because almost all writers have enthusiastically and emphatically inscribed something into their latest book that nobody besides them – not the readers, the reviewers, the critics (and no, they’re not the same beast; cross-breeding them mules you out the dreaded Two-Starred Amazon Kvetcher), not anyone has teased out of the text. This is the one thing that (almost) every writer is dying to tell you about, the clever thing they did that they’re balloon-burstingly proud of.

Mind you, it often is clever, or subtle, or well-hidden. It is often worth hearing about, and knowing about it can often make the reading experience richer and more rewarding. Alternately, it can be where the author snuck the name of his favorite watering hole into the text (to be fair, I only ever did this in roleplaying books, not fiction), but even that can be fun, if taken in the right spirit.

2-Who Are You Reading?

Not “Who inspired you?” or “who are your favorite authors?” It’s “Who are you reading now”, with an implied “and can you tell me about the cool stuff.” Most writers actually like to read, and often do so voraciously. Being asked about what they’re reading lets them share the stuff they like – which everyone, writer or not, likes doing – and also presents an opening for the writer to talk about what he likes in someone else’s work. Rarely will you get something like “I’m reading [insert book title here], and it’s pretty good.” No, writers are an educated audience, and just like baseball stat geeks wanting to discuss the latest pitch data analysis they’ve seen, or Lost fans wanting to discourse on how precisely the series finale let them down, writers like to talk about cool writing they’ve seen and explain why it’s cool. It’s analysis and a show of appreciation and, every so often, an insight into the writer in question’s work as well.

3-What Are You Working On Now?

This one can be double-edged. Some authors prefer not talk about a current project, for fear of disrupting their mojo or getting it out in words instead of on the page, or having someone sprint down the hall and compose a similar-themed piece on their sparkly new iPad.  And that’s fine.

On the other hand, lots of authors do like to talk about a current project. Seriously. Check their blogs. The word count meters – 2045 words today on “The Vampire’s Ukelele!” Score! – alone are staggering in their omnipresence. So ask. Maybe the writer wants to talk about it because they’re looking for feedback.  Maybe they’re stuck on something and want to talk it out. And maybe they’re just doing something really cool, and can’t wait to share it because they’re xcited.

4-Which Book Do You Wish You’d Written?

If only to see how many variations on “The one that sold a zillion copies” you’ll get as a result.

5-What Were You Going For With This Thing In Your Book? (where “This Thing In Your Book” = something coherent, thoughtful, and actually evidentiary of the fact that you read the furshlugginer book with something approximating attention.)

Asking a question that indicates you actually read the book tends to go over well. Asking a question that indicates you actually read the book, liked it, and thought about it goes over better. And asking a question that indicates that you read it, liked it, thought about it and came up with something new and interesting to ask will make you a friend for life.

There is danger here, though. Asking a question that’s been heard a million times before? Asking a question that indicates you didn’t get further than the first paragraph of the back cover text (which was written over lunch by an overworked intern who had only the cover art to go by, and who has a psychological condition whereby they must use the word “mordant” at least twice per sentence or else become convinced they’re George S. Kaufman risen from the dead)? Asking a question you already know the answer to? And worst of all, asking a question that’s not really a question, but rather a chance to show off how brilliant you are when it comes to the author’s work. These don’t go over so well. Trust me on this one.

6-Can I Buy You A Drink?

Yes. Yes, you can. Next question.

7-What’s Your Process For Writing?

Not “How do I become a writer?” Not “Please tell me I’m doing the right thing with my own quirky, convoluted approach, any criticism of which will provoke an angry blog post and possibly an assault with a sock filled with quarters.” A genuine inquiry into how a writer works – really works, as in “puts butt in seat and starts typing” – can deliver valuable insight into how the act of writing happens for a particular author. If you’re lucky, you’ll get an honest answer along with some explications of the whys and wherefores of that process. If you’re not, you’ll at least get a story of how Famous Writer X was rude to you for no reason whatsoever, and you’ll be able to cadge drinks at conventions on that one for years.

Obviously, these are not hard and fast rules. Rather, they’re suggestion based on years of observation, discussion, and having to bail out writer friends from local holding cells after they beat one too many over-eager interrogators senseless with rolled-up convention programs. But if you do want to talk to a writer – really talk to one – you could do a lot worse than to start here.

Back when I was working in tabletop games, we had a fairly well defined social hierarchy of appropriate geekness. Because I worked in tabletop RPGs, tabletop RPG players were of course at the apex of the pyramid. Beneath them were the miniatures gamers, who at least knew how to paint. Below them were the LARPers, and below them were the wargamers, and lowest of them all were the collectible card game players, who cluttered up the hallways of our precious conventions with sudden outbreaks of Magic: The Gathering and suchlike. It was all very cozy, really. Everyone who’d been sneered at had someone else to sneer at, except the CCG players, who, I have it on good authority, turned around and sneered at those weirdos who played games with books and couldn’t finance a new stereo system with proceeds from selling off a couple of unopened booster packs.

It wasn’t until much, much later that I realized that what we’d been doing could best be described as “more gamer than thou.” Our way was the true way of gaming, and everyone else was lesser because they weren’t doing it right. It was ludicrous, of course – the archetypal schoolyard bully wouldn’t care if you were a Nosferatu or a Snorlax-hugger – but it was a way of comparing ourselves to one another and finding affirmation that we were doing things right. And of course, we couldn’t be doing things right unless that guy, over there, was doing things wrong.

That’s WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, and let’s wave some torches and pitchforks while we’re at it, shall we, folks?

Scroll forward now. Years pass, and I’m a writer. I meet other writers. I work with them. I bump into them on message boards and mailing lists, collaborate with them on projects, and generally find myself increasingly immersed in writer socialization networks.

And far too often, I find myself stumbling across – and recoiling from – a single notion that remains as ridiculous now as it was when it was being applied to rosy-cheeked forty year olds clutching their Atogs and Llanowar Elves for all they were worth.

I refer to, of course, the dread disease of “More Writer Than Thou”, the older and equally pernicious sibling to “more gamer than thou”.  MWTT (as I shall call it from henceforth) is as hard to define as the coastline of an amoeba and as hard to eradicate as the common cold. There’s medium-driven MWTT – “Oh, he’s just a game /television/comics/soup label” writer. There’s content-driven MWTT, as witnessed by the Sisyphean struggle of tie-in writers to garner any respect for their work. There’s genre MWTT. There’s education-based MWTT; “real” writers sneering at those who dared go get college degrees in writing for being weak and formulaic, while the college grads pooh-pooh right back at what they view as non-Euclidean grammar and unenlightening subject matter. There’s regional  denigration – think about the term “regional writer” for a minute, won’t you – dismissal of writers who don’t sell and writers who sell too much, and the list goes on and on. And all of it washes up in endless angry, masturbatory emails and forum posts and drunken convention rants and God knows what else.

Digression time.

My wife once introduced me to an acquaintance of hers, whom, she explained, was a writer. Of course we had to meet, because, well, we were both writers, and thus we had to meet. This, incidentally, was well before either my wife (also a writer) and I had gotten wise to the ways of writer socializing, and understood that a strange writer is best approached with a chair and bullwhip until proven friendly, housebroken and unarmed.

Within three minutes of our introduction, this person (I’ll call her May) had told me that her proudest writing achievement was a piece of Justice League fanfic wherein she had, and I quote, “re-invented Batman as a really dark character”. She had also gone on a lengthy and vicious rant against a particular fantasy writer of immense popularity, to the point of wishing him grievous bodily harm.

I asked her if she’d read any of the author in question’s work. She hadn’t, not past a quick skimming of one of his titanic fantasy slabs. I asked if he’d ever done anything to her personally. Again, no. Befuddled, I asked why she hated him so much, then, if she’d never met him and hadn’t read his books.

“Oh,” the answer came back. “He sells too many books. He’s not a real writer.”
Now, I pass no judgment here. If May was happy writing fanfic (though reinventing Batman as a “dark” character is a lot like reinventing chocolate ice cream as a dessert), more power to her. But in unleashing her torrent of sheer hatred on the one unfortunate bestselling author, she’d indulged, nay, wallowed in, More Writer Than Thou.

Let’s think about that one for a second. Leaving aside the fact that this demonstrates MWTT to be a universal complaint – after all, if one of the least original fanfic writers this side of Krypton is denigrating one of the leading lights of her supposed favorite genre as “not a real writer”, it’s pretty clear that everyone’s a possible purveyor or target (or both) – one must ask, what good did it do?

The answer, I suspect, is not much. It certainly didn’t affect the bestselling author in question, who went on to continue writing books, selling gobs of copies of them, and cashing the immense checks that came along with doing so. Nor did it benefit May, who spent oodles of time denigrating said bestselling author instead of, well, writing. And the false sense of achievement that she got out of it, because she had somehow decided that she was a “better” writer than this particular individual, was a sop to any lingering inclinations she had about improving her craft.

That’s the real danger of More Writer Than Thou, I think, the false injection of egoboo, as exciting and destructive as anything that ever went into Roger Clemens’ pasty buttocks.  The false comparison with another writer or group of writers, always favorable to the one doing the comparison, is a diversion from the actual task of writing. It’s a way to feel good by putting down what others have or haven’t done, instead of based on what the writer themselves has done.

In other words, it ain’t about the writing. It’s a dangerous, pointless habit to get into, and if you find yourself doing it, stop it immediately. You are not a really more true bona fide grade A writer type  than anyone else because you A)sold more books than they did B)sold less books than they did C)got a degree from the University of Iowa’s writing workshop D)did not get a degree from the University of Iowa’s writing workshop E)wrote novels instead of short stories F)wrote short stories instead of novels G)wrote short stories and novels instead of video games H)didn’t write a particular book you didn’t like I)had an idea for a book you liked but the other guy wrote it before you did or J) don’t sully yourself with Twitter, only blogging, Facebook, Myspace, a website, a podcast, and innumerable small convention panels.

To be blunt, none of that crap matters. What the other guy does doesn’t matter, except in the sense that if the other guy writes a better book than you and gets it to the publisher first, then you’re probably out of luck. What does matter is not wasting the time building a little pillow fort of the subconscious to make you feel better about your writing instead of doing the one thing that can actually affect it.

Which is, of course, writing.

Or, to steal a page from my day job, you don’t level in writer. There’s no objective comparison, no hard and fast set of qualifications, no way to quantify who is “more” of a writer than anyone else. Time spent trying to figure it out – or more accurately, to come up with reasons to put down other writers instead of doing more of your own writing – is as useful and productive as trying to count angels on the head of a syringe.

Which is the sort of image that no real writer would ever come up with, and the guy who just wrote it is a worthless hack. Right? Right.

One of the consistent excuses given for the quality (or lack thereof) of videogame writing is that we are, and I quote, “a young industry”. While it’s a lovely and convenient excuse for the endless parade of stubble-jawed ex-space marines out for interstellar vengeance that haunt the shelves, it’s hogwash. I know. I write the bloody things for a living[1], and that means playing them – good and bad – as they come along, to see how high the professional bar has been raised[2].

For one thing, there’s plenty of good writing out there, and there has been for years. Doubt me? Go back to the classic Infocom adventure games like Planetfall or Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, twenty-five plus years ago. Check out the King’s Quest adventure game series, or decade-old gems like System Shock or Tim Shafer’s Grim Fandango. Then follow the lineage to today’s titles, games like BioShock or Mass Effect. There’s good writing out there in games, in every genre. What’s more, there always has been.

That’s not to say all of the writing in games is good. Indeed, far from it. Some of it comes from bad writers, some of it comes from competent or even good writers who haven’t wrapped their heads around the unique demands of video games, and some of it even comes from marketing insisting that a focus group in Tuscaloosa has convinced them that the hero of your epic fantasy game needs to be a hard-bitten, stubble-chinned space marine. I’ll be the first one to call out bad game writing when the situation calls for it, because to pretend it isn’t there is to avoid doing what’s needed to rectify the problem. But there’s a bigger issue that depresses the overall quality of game writing, one that I’ll get to in a bit.

And before we dismiss all game writing as bad, it’s worth looking at this in perspective. Are there badly written games? Of course there are. Then again, there are also badly written books, and lots of them. Surely you, Gentle Reader, have read one or two in your time[3]. That certainly doesn’t mean all books are bad, though, just as the presence of the infamous Zero Wing[4] means all video game writing is irredeemable.  But the possibility and the proof of good writing is there, in games as it is in books, and each title deserves to be judged on its own merits.

What people are really getting at when they say “we’re a young industry” is that we are, in fact, an immature industry. That, more than anything, has been damaging to the quality of writing in games, because we’re still figuring out how to do writing in games. Not the words, but rather the process is the question.

Part of the issue is technology. A book is a book is a book – cover, spine, pages – and apart from the invention of the pop-up, the core technology really hasn’t changed much since Gutenberg. We know how to write a book, we know how to put a book together, and we know how to get a book out there. It has, after all, been done before, and the methods for doing so are time-tested and proven.

Video games, on the other hand, change, and change constantly. The technology that comprises them doesn’t stand still, and I’m not just talking consoles here. Successive titles, even on a single, stable platform, will show remarkable technical improvement as the developers learn the ins and outs of the box, and put that knowledge to good use. And use it they do, with consequences for everyone, even game writers.

Doubt me? Then think about this. When you get a better set of facial animations for the characters in your game, the list of things you can do with characters suddenly changes – and so does the necessary writing to go with it, because now you can write sequences focusing on people’s faces when before you couldn’t. Get enough storage space on your disc media to support a fully fleshed out branching campaign, and that’s more and different writing. Able to put more characters onscreen? That’s more and different writing, too, and so it goes from development cycle to development cycle. And because the technology is advancing during the development cycle, the plan for the writing can change from the beginning of the cycle to the middle to the end.

The bigger part of the problem, though, is process, or the lack thereof. While the video game industry is nearly forty years old, in that time we’ve reinvented the way we do games time and time again. We’ve gone from “one guy in his garage” to multi-hundred person teams spread out across multiple continents and reinventing agile development techniques on the fly, but with very few exceptions, we still haven’t figured out where the writing goes in the schedule, and how to give it the love it needs.

Video game development is, in large part a cascading chain of dependencies, which is a nice way of saying that in many cases that the other guy’s got to get done with his stuff before you can take a swing at it. You can’t write the dialogue for level 14 until level 14′s been at least designed, and in many cases built. And you can’t tell if the dialogue you’ve written for level 14 actually works unless you record a version of it, drop it in the game, play it through and see how it plays as part of the larger experience.[5]

In a perfect world with perfect process, this happens, and then the writer has time to do rewrites, re-records, and re-tests, working on things iteratively until it’s as good as it can be (budget and schedule permitting). That’s how we do other game elements, after all. We build levels iteratively, with multiple passes and polish phases and critique sessions. We test gameplay iteratively as well – is that jump too long? Are there too many guys in this encounter? Can we add an objective because it’s over too fast? – much to gameplay’s benefit. We do the same for characters and sound passes, we build them and test them and polish them until we get them right, and we know how to do that.

With the writing, not so much. Because writing is so heavily dependent on other aspects of the game to get nailed down, it’s often not nailed down until very late in the project, when there’s precious little time for iteration. Because voice recording (not to mention studio time and post-production) is so expensive, it’s often not an option to keep going back to the well to re-record as desired. And because game writing is still finding its feet as a game discipline, there isn’t necessarily someone at the higher levels of the project – or of the company – who can fight for the time that the writing needs to get that polish that brings it up to the level of the other elements of the game. So we don’t quite have the proper safeguards and steps in place to give writing the time and institutional support it needs to have a chance to get done right more consistently.

It’s getting better, of course. More and more companies are realizing that good writing helps them make good games. In their own ways, they’re trying to find ways to make that good writing happen, which means finding time in their development cycles for the writing to occur. Some of the steps are slow, some are in the wrong direction, and some are quite frankly, backwards. But they’re steps, and we’re taking them.

Because we’re not young, not any more. We’re just a late bloomer.

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[1] And before you ask, no, I’m not referencing anything in particular, or anything I’ve specifically worked on here. Furthermore, I have never written a game featuring a hard-bitten ex-space marine.

[2] Or, on occasion, lowered.

[3] Or three, or four, or a half-dozen during a particularly heinous vacation to Disneyworld when it rained all weekend and all the hotel gift shop had available was a stack of murder mysteries about a winsome spinster who solved bake-sale poisonings with the aid of her suspiciously intelligent ginger cat, who is named Basil. Not that this ever happened to me, of course

[4] Of “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” fame. If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, then this probably isn’t the essay for you. Check back tomorrow.

[5] Side note: There are a million ways for game writing to go bad above and beyond the quality of the writing itself. Sound design, voice acting, timing of lines, timing of action sequences – all of these and more can affect how the writing comes across in the actual game in ways the writer can’t control or affect

The most important lesson I learned while working in a bookstore was taught to me by smut-loving nuns. In so many words, they taught me that people enjoy reading what they enjoy, and that trying to “elevate” them to your particular taste was a foolhardy and condescending endeavor.

The second most important lesson I learned had to do with betting against a sure thing, particularly where a waiter at a downtown bar and a lovely undergrad majoring in massage therapy are involved, but that’s another story.

The third most important lesson, though, is one that is pertinent to being a writer, and is in several senses a corollary to Lesson #1. Specifically, it’s the idea that it’s a lot easier to get people to expand their reading habits one step at a time than it is to change them, and that people are in fact genuinely interested in having someone else give them a reason to read a book.

Sound strange? It seemed strange to me, too, until I realized that the first part of that could be summed as “if you like X, then you’ll like Y”. Amazon.com, among others, use this to great effect, but it’s most important at the personal, and thus interpersonal level. After all, Amazon’s approach is an algorithm spit out of a faceless supercomputer buried somewhere beneath the Martian North Pole and guarded by an army of zombie space wombats[1], while a recommendation from a bookstore clerk comes from someone you theoretically stand a chance of having at least a conversational relationship with.

In practical terms, what this meant for me back in the day was waiting for my regular customers to plow through all of a particular author they liked, and then recommending someone else in a similar vein. If they were Stephen King readers who’d at long last come to the end of our immense King collection, I suggested Brian Lumley or Dan Simmons (and I’d specifically recommend Simmons’ Summer of Night, which in my humble opinion is about as King-like a book as one might find in his oeuvre). Why? Because it was a relatively safe bet to extrapolate their tastes in that direction once I’d been observing their purchases for a while, because they were genuinely good books I thought they’d like, and because they were both authors whom we stocked fairly extensively, so the readers could work up a good head of steam and get excited about their new author without needing to find another one too soon.

And it worked. Even if those same readers had pulled a Necroscope book off the shelf, looked at it, and put it back, once I talked to them and made the connection to what they already liked, they went back and picked it up. Nine times out of ten, they liked it, told me they liked it, and kept reading that author.

All of which was great, of course. It made my manager happy, because we were selling books. It made my regulars happy, because I was finding them new authors and keeping them fed with new books. And it made me happy, because, well, it was fun playing bookshelf alchemy, mixing and matching and generally coming up with gold.

I did realize, however, that what I was doing and what they were getting were two different things. What I was doing was extending their reading and purchasing habits through observation and extrapolation, relying on their trust of my taste and the fact that I “knew” them as readers. What they were getting was, in many cases, something that could only be called a benediction, someone else’s blessing to check out the book and a second opinion when they didn’t entirely trust their own.

Digression: While working in that bookstore, the other clerks and I observed what we jokingly called the Pattern of Picking Purchase

1. If the book was face-out and the cover was appealing, the reader might pick it up.
2. If they picked it up, they might scan the front cover for the title, the author, and any blurbs that might have made it to that side of the spine.
3. If they liked the cover, they might flip it over to read the back-of-book blurb.
4. If they liked the back-of-book blurb, then they might be interested enough to crack the book open and read a few pages.
5. And if they liked those few pages, they might then buy the book.

Five steps, each of which required time, each of which had attrition along the way. It was much easier, then, and more effective, to talk to the customer[2], get a sense of what they were after and provide, as needed, a summary and a recommendation. In other words, we jumped to the end, gave them the condensed version of what they were in many cases looking for.

On one level, it was a hard sell. On another, it was a genuine attempt to connect people with books they would enjoy. And on a third, it was a basic recognition of the fact that a lot of our customers simply didn’t know where to go next with their reading, and appreciated guidance from folks who were presumably experts.

There’s nothing new there, of course. After all, that’s why they put blurbs on the cover; it’s advice from experts. If you like what I write, it stands to reason that you’ll probably like what I blurb, or so goes the theory. Again, though, there’s something much more immediate and telling when the recommendation comes from a bookseller the reader knows. Book buyers tend to be regulars, and that means that they potentially form at least nodding acquaintances with the folks at the stores they frequent[3]. They trust those booksellers to know their tastes and to know what’s on their shelves, and to be able to put those two things together. Tap into that as a reader, and you have a reliable, personal source for good books. Tap into it as a bookseller, and you have happy repeat customers who keep coming around, because you rarely steer them wrong. And if you can tap into it as an author, you’re doing something very smart and potentially expanding your voice in a thousand different places where you can’t be.

Because if the booksellers know and like your work, they’re that much more likely to recommend it to their regular and valued customers. And from where the customers are sitting, if their trusted booksellers are recommending a book, it’s because it’s damn well worth the read.

So mock the lowly bookstore clerk at your peril, would-be authors near and far. For all the whiz-bangery at online booksellers’ disposal, it is still the individual bookseller – one who is not lowly at all – who has the direct and trusted line to the reader, one that has been slowly and carefully established in a million different cases. It is far better to go to as many stores as you can, to talk to the booksellers there as the respected professionals who will in fact be purveying your book to the public, and to get them interested in what you are doing.

After all, if they’re good at their jobs, they’re going to be asked by their loyalists, “What should I read next?” There’s no reason the answer can’t, or shouldn’t – when appropriate – be you.

There are lots of terrible things you can do with books, should you be so inclined.

You can maltreat them. Spill coffee on them, bend the spines back, read ‘em in the bathtub and drop ‘em in the lavender-scented suds. Then you can try to fob them off on the local used bookstore, claiming they’re perfectly readable, and get all shirty when the clerk points out that the spine has a waveform like radio emissions off the poles of Jupiter.

You can burn them. This is a long-time favorite of various flavors of fascistic and theocratic ignoramuses, though it must be noted that while burning books may give you more shelf space, it also adds to your carbon footprint, and that’s bad. All that soot goes somewhere, you know.

(True story: Whilst I was employed at a publisher who shall not be named, we supposedly got a phone call from a group looking to stock up in anticipation of a book burning. And, since our material was so obviously satanic, they thought they’d give us a call to see if they could get the kindling wholesale, instead of retail. We cleared more slow-moving material out of the warehouse that day than…but I digress.)

You can ignore them, stack them up unread and leave them in a corner. Let the dust gather and the spines warp under the weight of all of the other “gonna get to” titles you’ve got lined up, lose them and leave them unread, only to be discovered when it’s moving time and there’s only so much box space for books to go around.

Worst of all, though, is what I do. I review them.

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Why do book reviews? After all, I could be writing my own stuff, instead of commenting on someone else’s. And why on earth would I, a writer trying to establish myself, run the risk of horking off the people whose books I review? I’ve asked them myself a time or two, but I find that there are good reasons for me to take up my pen in the service of reviewing, and to devote words that might otherwise have gone elsewhere to the noble craft of saying “Hey, that one’s pretty good.”

Let’s start with the practical reasons for me to write reviews, not the least of which is that I spend a lot of time on planes and in hotel rooms. If I’m going to have that time, I’d rather spend it reading than playing my DS, hearing my fellow passengers discuss their symptoms of gastro-intestinal distress, or watching the endless episodes of “Two and a Half Men” that seem to have replaced the in-flight movie as airborne entertainment of choice. Furthermore, since airplane seats are not designed for anyone who isn’t shaped like Bernini’s Aeneas to work on their laptops in-flight, writing on a plane is right out for me.

I might as well read, then. And if I’m going to read, I might as well take advantage of the opportunity to try something different, material I wouldn’t necessarily have picked out on my own but which my editor feels I can comment on cogently. In other words, when that reviewing packet comes in from the fine folks at Green Man Review, I generally have absolutely no idea what the hell is in there, and look forward to the discovery with horribly jejeune child-at-Christmas glee. After all, there’s new books in that there box, just waiting for me. Whee!

As a result, my reviewing then becomes a way to discover new authors. Susan Palwick’s short story collection, The Fate of Mice, gobsmacked me as I sat in an uncomfortable airport chair, waiting to board an endlessly delayed puddlejumper. I confess now that I never would have picked it up on my own. Howard Waldrop had always been in my “I need to read him someday” pile until Things Will Never Be the Same dropped in my lap. Now I’m a stone fan. John Gordon. Storytellers’ own Elizabeth Bear. The list goes on. For that alone I’d say I’ve gotten more than my money’s worth out of reviewing.

Then, beyond that, is the challenge. As far as I’m concerned, there are two things a book review should do, two questions that it should answer for the reader.

1) Is the book worth a reader’s time and/or money?

2) If so, why? If not, why not[1]?

The first seems straightforward, and it can be. Is the book good? Is it worth reading? It’s not quite a yes-or-no system, but it’s close. And if that’s all a review does, providing a good, honest, and consistent answer to that question, then it’s done enough of its job to be considered a keeper. After all, that’s why most folks read reviews – to get advice on whether something’s worth their attention. A definitive “no” from a reviewer you trust is more than a short read; it’s a rescue from the waste of time, money, and good humor that comes from being trapped on an airplane with only the adventures of Glognorf the Axe-Hewer amidst the Lizard-Kings of Sknarf to read (which you picked up because the cover art looked intriguing in the airport bookshop and you didn’t know any better, doncha know).

If you find a reader whom you can map your tastes against with reasonable accuracy, that’s valuable. Even if it’s not someone you agree with, that works – if the matters of disagreement are consistent, then you’ve got a working referral metric in place that ought to do you just fine. A reviewer who hates everything you like and likes everything you hate is 100% accurate. You just have to learn how to read them, and once you do, you’re set.

The second question, though, is the more interesting one for me, and the part that makes reviews interesting for me to write. I can generally figure out my gut reaction to a book fairly quickly, but understanding why I have that reaction is what requires thinking. Doping that out and then trying to distill that understanding for the reader then becomes the challenge that makes the whole thing interesting, and useful to the reader.

It’s not enough for me to say that I liked the graphic novel 21 Down but had some reservations. Laying out what those reservations were gives the reader a better look at both the content and the approach of the material, and lets them make a more educated decision. It also lets them decide whether my objections are ones they might share, and therefore whether they should heed or ignore what I’m pointing out. As for me, I get the challenge of framing those concerns while making them readable, instead of just listing off a Recitation of the Kvetch. If I don’t figure out why I liked or disliked something, then I feel I’ve failed as a reader, and I haven’t taken everything away from the book that I could. If I do dope it out, however, and can express it, then I’ve taken more away than I might have if I were just reading for myself.

It is, dare I say it, fun writing to do. So long as there’s something in the reviewed material to think about – good or bad – then digging deeper and presenting that unearthed material to the reader can be a lot of fun to do.

Buried in all of that is the other reason for me to do reviews, one that relates to my own writing. As noted above, reviewing gives me the chance to read a great many different authors. Doing good[2] reviews forces me to read closely, and to analyze what all of those diverse authors are doing. In other words, it’s a crash course in modern fiction, one where there’s no final exam but my own work and the syllabus is ever-changing. Not everything I’ve reviewed, I’ve enjoyed. Not everything has offered something more than a pleasant read (or an unpleasant one). The sum and total, however, has been a mandatory thinking about writing, complete with often superb examples, and curriculum that always provides something new.

Occasionally, I’m even paying attention.

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[1] And don’t even think about emailing me with “that’s three questions”. It’s a Boolean condition. You get one or the other. Two total. So nyah.

[2] At least, I hope they’re good.