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Event Recap: Angry Robot Books Showcase & Giveaway!

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Outside of professional conferences, I get to attend very few author or book events. I live in the middle of no where, and to get to even the nearest chain bookstore is nearly an hour drive. But last night, I decided to suck it up and take the long trip down to Chicago to the Angry Robot Books Author Showcase.

For perspective:

I spent two hours on this train, both ways. That’s a really exciting picture, isn’t it? I kept myself entertained though and on the way down to the city, I finished reading Emily Murdoch’s 2013 debut If You Find Me.

The Book Cellar, where the event was located, is an indie bookstore in a really nice area of Chicago. I wandered around a little beforehand, but the place was stuffed — not just full of books but of people. There was a really nice turnout for the event. When I sat down, I kept looking over at a woman sitting on the other side of my row who looked really familiar. But I’m not the kind of person to go wander up to a stranger, so I didn’t say anything to her.

The Showcase itself was about what I can handle in an author reading event: each of the four authors, Adam Christopher (author of Seven Wonders), Chuck Wendig (Mockingbird), Gwenda Bond (Blackwood) and Kim Curran (Shift) each read a small excerpt/teaser from their novels and then answered audience questions. It was enough to give a good taste of what their writing was like without being a lengthy reading session.

Here are Chuck and Gwenda reading and talking about their books. Fun fact about the authors: three out of the four of them had really delightful accents while reading.

Each of the authors was asked to talk about one of their favorite reads in the last year, and Gwenda’s answer involved pointing to the woman in the audience who I thought looked familiar. Turns out, my intuition was right: it was Rae Carson, author of The Girl of Fire and Thorns.

After the reading, which only lasted an hour, I went and picked up two copies of Blackwood. Part of why I’d made the trek down was because Gwenda and I thought it’d be a great opportunity to meet each other. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her prior to the reading, so I made sure to be one of the first up to get books signed. When I told her my name for the signature, she looked up, asked me how to spell it, then signed. There was absolutely no recognition at all. She had no idea who I was. I was trying to figure out a non-awkward way to bypass that, but after she finished signing, it clicked. It was a relief since she and I had made plans for after the event that she knew who I was.

I then went and approached Rae because the last time we met, it had been really briefly and in a dark, crowded room when I was leaving. She had had the same “I think I know her” thing toward me I had had toward her. We made sure to block the walkable area of the bookstore chatting, and then I purchased a nice paperback edition of her book and had it signed too.

When the bookstore cleared out, a nice Mexican dinner and frozen yogurt (!!) were enjoyed by Gwenda, myself, Erica of The Book Cellar, Gwenda’s husband Christopher Rowe (we bonded over Jillian Michaels), and a pair of Gwenda’s former workshop partners. It was worth the long, late train ride back.

I mentioned that I bought two copies of Blackwood, right? And that I got both signed? That’s because I’m giving one of those copies away to a reader who’d like one. You can read about the book and the Strange Chemistry imprint of Angry Robot Books here, as well as here. I’ll draw a winner at the end of the month and this is open to US/Canadian residents only.

Personal Effects by EM Kokie

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It’s been over six months since Matt’s brother TJ died in Iraq. Now more than ever, Matt wants to make sense of what happened to his brother, but he hasn’t had the opportunity. With the return of his personal effects in the form of a few footlockers, he’s got the chance. The only thing standing between him and rifling through his brother’s things, though, his is father. Dad wants to do away with the things completely and move forward from TJ’s death. He doesn’t want Matt meddling with TJ’s things either. He wants Matt to pull himself together, get his grades up, and follow the path he’s meant to follow.

When Matt gets the chance to escape his father’s watchful eye, he goes through those footlockers and discovers that his brother was a lot more complicated than he ever knew. After finding a pile of letters from someone named Celia who lives half a country away, along with pictures of her and her daughter (with whom TJ has posed more than once), Matt’s convinced he needs to go find this girl. He’s going to get to the bottom of the millions of questions now popping up in his mind: did TJ have a girlfriend no one knew about? Did TJ have a child? Do those people know TJ isn’t alive any longer? Thanks to his friend Shauna, Matt gets the chance to have those questions answered — and have many more raised in the mean time.

Personal Effects tackles the topic of grief head on, and it does so while developing a believable male protagonist in Matt. Matt is aching; even though he and TJ were never close, Matt is incredibly proud of his brother. He wears that pride loudly, too. When one of his classmates openly defends his anti-war stance and wears a shirt bearing the names of those who had died in combat, Matt becomes very angry. To the point he swings his fist and earns himself punishment. Aside from being sensitive about what other people say, he’s also letting his grief impact his education. He’s getting terrible grades. The thing is, he doesn’t care. He has bigger worries, and where he ends up in the future isn’t one of them.

For the most part, I found Matt a good character. My problem with him, though, unraveled later on in the story. It’s impossible at this point not to spoil a big plot point, so if you don’t want it ruined for you, skip on down to the next paragraph. When Matt heads to Madison from his home in Pittsburgh, he’s expecting to meet Celia and expecting to learn that his brother may have had a child he told no one about. Except that’s not at all what Matt learns. Instead, he discovers that the “C” signing off in all of the letters he read was from Celia’s brother Curtis. Matt had been gay, and because he was in the military, he kept it completely secret. He didn’t feel safe telling anyone, due to don’t ask, don’t tell. More than that though, he didn’t feel safe revealing that to his family, either, especially given his father’s abusive streak. Where this pertains to Matt, though, is this: Matt is angry about this, maybe even a little bit repulsed his brother was homosexual. I don’t have a problem with him having his feelings — and frankly, I found them rendered believably — but I did have a problem with this being the problem Matt finds. He’d developed an entire fantasy involving his brother being married and having a child. Matt never has a problem with this. In fact, he seems almost excited by the idea. But the second Matt learns his bother was gay, that’s when he flips a switch. It was hard for me to believe he’d be excited by one thing and so disappointed in another, especially as it seems knowing his brother had an entire family in secret would somehow be more angering than him being gay. Each person decides their own views on these issues, of course, and Matt can believe what he wants. The thing is, I need to understand Matt’s thinking to believe it, and I never felt I got the opportunity to know him well enough for this to happen. He’d felt very protective of his brother, and in these moments, he felt cold and angry with him instead. The switch flip didn’t work for me, and I had a hard time through the rest of the novel buying Matt’s reactions to different events.

Through the story, Matt attempts to take his friendship with Shauna to more of a romantic relationship. While I believed his feelings, I found them to be a little bit boring. Shauna wasn’t interested in him, and it was obvious. He spent a long time offering us physical reactions to being in the same room with her and for the most part, I found this didn’t advance either character and it dragged the pacing. Shauna, for me, was a well-developed character and she was the kind of person Matt needed in his life. She was an advocate for him, even when his mind sometimes went elsewhere. She was, if you will, the exact opposite of what Matt’s father was: where dad wanted to continue holding Matt back and continue hurting him, Shauna offered him the tools to move forward, even if it meant getting herself in trouble.

My biggest holdup with the story — and this is a personal issue, not something most readers will struggle with — was that TJ was an automatic hero. Because he’s dead, we don’t ever get the chance to evaluate him for who he is. We’re instead in Matt’s shoes and we’re forced to judge him through Matt’s eyes. And Matt, despite some of his feelings and reactions while in Madison, sees his brother as a hero. I don’t ever doubt that TJ was brave and deserved the sort of respect he was given, but I have a hard time with books where a dead character is the central device in moving a plot forward and he’s got some sort of status that keeps him from being a full or flawed character. More than that, though, the fact his death came through war, which is such a heavy topic and one which readers bring their own experiences to the story with, furthered this. The responsibility of judging TJ comes on the reader, since it’s not there in the story. It’s tricky then to look at a character who doesn’t get the chance to tell his story or offer himself completely, knowing his life ended during the Iraq war, and make a judgment about him. It makes the reader feel either good or bad about themselves in that assessment. That said, the secret TJ harbored didn’t make him flawed. It made him more respectable in my mind. But I felt a little led into believing only that about him. I couldn’t get beyond what he had against him.

Despite the flaws, I really enjoyed Personal Effects — Matt’s story kept me engaged, and the writing itself worked with the story, rather than against it. While I felt myself emotionally distanced, I definitely see other readers finding this the kind of book they connect with on that level. This book has great guy appeal, but it certainly will work for female readers, too. I’ve talked before about Dana Reinhardt’s The Things a Brother Knows before, and I think for readers who may not be ready for that story, Kokie’s book will be a great starting point. That’s not to say it’s weaker, but it’s a bit of an easier read and a little easier to digest. The pacing is faster, too. As more teens deal with the reality of having a brother or sister in combat, these sorts of books take on greater importance and I am glad that they’re less about sending a message about war itself and more about the after effects and emotional, human issues around war. Aside from working well for teen readers, Kokie’s novel will have great adult appeal. This is a strong and believable portrayal of grief and loss without ever focusing on those as key elements of the story. Matt never sets out to tell us how he grieves. He just does it.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Personal Effects will be available September 11.

The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy

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I’m really picky about the middle grade books I will read. They need to be smart, not talk down to the reader, and – perhaps above all else – funny. While the YA books I read and love can all be sorts of dark and depressing, I have found that I require humor in middle grade novels. The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom has it in spades, plus it’s smart and well-written, so it’s no surprise that I loved it.
The premise is pretty simple: we all know a lot about the princesses from our favorite fairy tales, but how much do we know about the princes? You know, those guys so vaguely-described that we just refer to them all collectively as “Prince Charming.” Healy’s book tells us the stories of four of these Princes Charming (note how the term is pluralized), and it should come as no surprise to you that they don’t all live happily ever with their princesses. Some of them don’t even live with their princesses, period.
The book begins by describing just what scrapes the princes have gotten into that have won them their princesses’ disfavor. These events get all the princes cast out of their homes in disparate kingdoms and, naturally, they eventually run into each other. That’s a good thing, too, since they soon discover that the bards of the various kingdoms have been kidnapped, and it’s up to them to rescue the bards (and their own kingdoms in the process). 
The standout feature here is, obviously, the humor. The princes are all goofballs of different varieties, and their characteristics are clearly exaggerated, but not so much that they become caricatures. The princesses, although they don’t occupy a starring role, are also easy to differentiate and run the gamut from nasty to, well, charming. All the characters have large personalities, and when they collide, it creates an explosion of adventure.
Healy has a lot of fun with traditional fairy tale tropes, poking fun at what we as readers blithely accept in a fairy tale, even though it’s patently ridiculous. He’s also full of some great puns. A certain professional review felt that the premise grew thin and the humor old, but I couldn’t disagree more. This is not a short book and I laughed my way through the entire thing – it’s so clever and fun. It’s a great read for kids who enjoy twisted or re-told fairy tales, particularly those told from “the other guy’s” point of view. It’s also a much-needed bit of levity in a fantasy field that is crowded with the dark and depressing.

Starry River of the Sky by Grace Lin

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I adored Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin’s Newbery honoree, when I read it in 2010. I loved the stories within a story and I especially loved the artwork. Reading the ARC of Starry River of the Sky, its companion book, is both wonderful and sad – wonderful because I get to experience it that much sooner, and sad because the artwork is almost completely missing. I will be sure to pick up a finished copy of the book to pore over the art when it’s released in October.
Rendi is a runaway, but we don’t know from what he runs until much later in the story. He ends up in the Village of Clear Sky and is taken in by an innkeeper as a chore boy, though Rendi is far from grateful for it. At the inn, he meets a motley group of individuals: the innkeeper’s daughter, whom he loves to taunt; the widow next door, who is always arguing with the innkeeper; crazy Mr. Shan, who dines at the inn every day but never stays the night; and the regal Madame Chang, who is much more than what she seems. Of course, in this book, everyone is much more than what they seem.
Each of these characters has stories to tell, which means the style of River mimics that of Mountain – the mostly realistic main story is broken up by fantastical folklore-ish stories. As the book progresses, these shorter tales turn out to have greater meaning for the larger story than initially thought. I love this idea, and I especially love how important it makes the simple act of telling a story. Rendi initially holds back, not wanting to tell stories as the others have. Eventually, though, after a bit of coercion from Madame Chang, he opens up, and that’s when his world begins to change.
Starry River of the Sky is a much quieter book than Mountain. Unlike Mountain, which followed Minli across a country, the main story in River takes place all in one village – and mostly all in one building within that village. This doesn’t make it less interesting, but it’s much less of an adventure story because of it.
I also found the story to be a bit preachier. The lessons Rendi is meant to learn are pretty obvious. It’s not a bad thing for the protagonist to learn something in a novel, I just thought it was more subtly done in Mountain than in River. The lessons Rendi learns in River are more overt,  more obvious. This could just be because I had read Mountain and therefore knew the style going in, but I don’t think that can account for all of what I noticed.
A difference that I did appreciate was Rendi’s attitude at the beginning of the book. Wow, that boy is a brat, and it was very refreshing to read. Usually the true brats are relegated to supporting characters or villains in books, but not here. As the story progresses, we see where the brattiness comes from, and we also see him change gradually. Rendi follows a true character arc.
Despite the differences, fans of the first book will be delighted at this offering, which is entirely Grace Lin and therefore wonderful. I myself am eager to get my hands on the finished copy – this is the kind of book that is so beautiful, it’s worth having your own personal copy.

Review copy received from the publisher. Starry River of the Sky will be released October 2.

Authenticity, Paying for Play & The Core of Libraries

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Liz raises a number of vital questions in her post from this weekend, Buying Your Way Into Libraries. Go read it if you haven’t.

I’ve been thinking about these two pieces she cites since both popped up. The second article caught my attention a couple of weeks ago with it first emerged: three library systems have recently purchased an agreement with Smashwords, one of the leading ebook/self-publishing services, wherein for about $100,000, each of the systems will acquire roughly 10,000 of the best-selling titles. Note that there are over 45,000 authors who use Smashwords and they do not know whether or not they are part of the Library Direct program until it shows up on their sales/payment report.

For anyone out of the loop, a number of the big publishers do not sell or license ebooks to libraries. Or, in the rare case one of these publishers does allow library ebook acquisition, there are either restrictions (such as no more than 26 total borrows) or the prices are inflated to the point that purchasing an agreement for them makes a huge financial strain on the library budget. That means the stock of ebooks available for libraries is limited, and with the demand going up, libraries are looking for ways to meet it. It’s not that they do not want to offer ebooks; it’s that their hands are tied and they can’t.

The Smashwords agreement looks like a fantastic option for libraries. It’s access to ten thousand ebooks for readers to choose from, fulfilling patron demand while also fleshing out a collection of books that are best-sellers. It also has the added benefit of not restricting usage and the cost spread out among each of the titles is low. The downside to this agreement, though, is that libraries don’t have control over what titles they’re purchasing. They’re relying instead on whatever best-selling titles are according to Smashwords (and as I mentioned above, even the authors who have books through Smashwords don’t know they’re part of that program either).

Buying into an agreement without control over titles isn’t necessarily earth shattering, but it does raise questions in my mind about collection development and what libraries are willing to give up in the name of providing a resource. In other words, to meet the demands and interest in pursuing ebooks, libraries are giving up the ability to build and sustain a collection built to suit the interests of their communities in the best way possible. More than that, libraries buying into agreements like this undermine the core skills and knowledge set the librarians have. It bypasses human knowledge — both of the classroom-gained kind and the touchy-feely kind acquired by being on the front lines of public service in a library — in favor of giving it over to a company who is interested more in making a deal than in connecting a person to a resource. They’re a business, not a public service.

One of the challenges about collection development that’s becoming a bigger issue is that of self-published works. There’s no doubt there are great self-published books out there, just as there’s little doubt there is a host of crap out there, too. Those who self-pub do so for any number of reasons. The problem, though, is that there are very few reputable review sources. Librarians who practice good collection development rely on trade reviews for purchasing decisions (as well as other factors, including awards or personal reading/knowledge, as well as blogs, consumer reviews on sites like Amazon, and other media sources).  They read Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and other big name journals, depending on their specialty, and those reviews help them determine whether an item is a good fit for their collection. It’s true — a bad review in a trade journal can keep a librarian from acquiring a book, just like a good review can convince them to purchase more than one copy.

When it comes to self-pubbed books, there are few, if any, places to turn to for reviews. At this point, the only trade publication involved with reviewing self-pubbed books is Kirkus; however, it’s vital to note that Kirkus’s self-pub review model is based on the author paying for a review and then choosing whether or not that review may be published through the traditional journal (though they will make that review available on BN.com and other sites, including Kirkus’s website). You can read the way it works here. There are blogs that also review self-pubbed books, but again, it’s not easy to determine which are best resources for librarians to use for collection development. And the truth of the matter is, there is so much being published through traditional means that even delving into the self-publishing world in libraries is more than overwhelming.

Backtracking to the first article Liz mentions that popped up this weekend. Todd Rutherford created a system wherein authors — self-pubbed, primarily — could pay to have him and his team write glowing reviews of their books. Those reviews would then flood the internet, on big sales sites and more. As the article notes and Liz pulls out, “One of Mr. Rutherford’s clients, who confidently commissioned hundreds of reviews and didn’t even require them to be favorable, subsequently became a best seller. This is proof, Mr. Rutherford said, that his notion was correct. Attention, despite being contrived, draws more attention.”

Through developing these fake reviews and flooding consumer sites with them, buyers were left with the idea that these books were worth purchasing. And they were not only purchased, but they were purchased at times in such quantities that those books became best sellers. The article goes on further to talk about how these sorts of pay-for-review situations have shed a light on consumer reviews all together, with some questioning whether they can believe any sorts of reviews they read outside of a traditional source, including blogs and sites like Amazon, BN.com, and others.

By paying for fake reviews, authors were seeing sales.

By paying for fake reviews, authors were becoming best sellers.

By starting a way for authors to do this, Rutherford made a lot of money.

What Rutherford did was remove the middle man, that human-knowledge aspect of reviewing and promoting. It became a business, rather than a service. Through this business, many saw themselves achieving their publishing dreams, and, as has been rumored, it helped at least one self-pubbed author gain a traditional publisher and make their way to the NYT Bestsellers list.

Smashwords, in the business of making money in the self-publishing industry, is taking away the control from libraries of collection development by offering them books that are best sellers. Best sellers that may or may not fit a community’s needs or interests. Best sellers that may or may not be well-written, of merit, or, hell, even edited. A self-pubbed ebook priced at pennies over the course of a few days could sell hundreds of copies and become a best seller. A self-pubbed ebook priced at what would be a standard price could also sell hundreds of copies and become a best seller — through the services of people like Rutherford.

The more we want to reach out and provide, the more we’re giving up. I think in the cases of some libraries, it’s less about providing a true service to readers and instead, it’s about “sticking it to the man,” as it were. In other words, they’re entering agreements like this in order to show big publishers they’re not needed anyway.

Except, in doing that, they’re also removing any control over quality, over content, and over authenticity.

Beyond being frustrating and beyond overlooking the library’s greatest resource, the question arises again over reviews and what a valuable review is. For self-pubbed authors interested in getting their name out there, doing it quickly and in the best possible light, there are two options: work hard and hope for the best or pay someone like Rutherford to stroke your ego and get your buck.

As a reviewer and as a librarian, both of these stories made me stop and consider the purpose of both of these activities. The first because it’s clear that there are people making this a business and doing it at the expense of those like myself and so many others who make reviewing a thing of blood, sweat, and tears; the second because it’s unfortunate that there are other people in the field who undermine what it is that individuals bring to a library: their knowledge, their critical judgment, and their interest in serving their communities to the best of their ability.

Services, not businesses.