Reading Rambo

 The biggest advantage to traditional publishing is you get someone else to do all of this. Meaning editing, cover design, advertising...and chasing reviews.

I've been working the Pubby carousel. As a side effect, I've been reading a lot of fiction. I always have trouble focusing on the research I'm supposed to be reading. I have samples of several books here on the shinshukyo -- that is, the New Religions of Japan, plus a few on UFO religions and a few cults that went famously bad (like Heaven's Gate). And a couple books on ninja, and papers on the Imperial Regalia and on magatama in general...

At least I picked my first Japan location. Found a nice ryokan in the Gion district of Kyoto, that even hosts a Maiko performance on weekends.

***

So the reviews have been helpful. One reviewer wasn't fond of the "six sticks of pocky" voice that Penny had during much of Hounds. I'm with him there; part of my goal in Wedding is for her to be forced to play a more reflective, assured person...and for some of that to rub off.

Reviewing has also been interesting. I've left long and detailed reviews, not just on the books I contracted via Pubby, but on several other books in my digital library. I read widely anyhow but what I've been reading via Pubby is a bit different.

Once again I am thinking there are two nations here. That is, down here at the "not as good as Sir Pterry or a popular as JKR." Which, actually, aren't bad exemplars. Wait, can you say "bad exemplar?" Isn't that like "slightly magnanimous?"

Anyhow! For the purpose of this mini-essay I'm going to call it right brain v. left brain. Not just the writers, but the ecology of the writer and the readership. The right-brainers are all about the emotional gratification. I see them working and learning on Quora, at Fanfic dot net, in the self-published glut at Amazon. Cliched situations and characters, well-worn furniture of your basic space opera or fantasy setting.

And they get strong support from their readership. And I'm not saying any of this is bad. Look, if four hundred years of itinerate poets could be telling and re-telling the same bronze age siege and make a living doing so... And there are "good" authors (I mean those get both mainstream success and are lauded for their craft), like Brian Sanderson, who came up this way.

Then there's this group that I suspect usually turned to mysteries in the past. Thoughtful, even cynical. Educated. Interested in the craft. In a word...older. The main complaint is that they have been thinking too hard and too long and it is hard to cut through to that living heart of story.

There's both types at Pubby but you can guess which I ended up selecting to read and review. And why these weren't fast skims that could be finished in a couple hours and left with a, "Loved it all, Kaylah and Wolf are meant for each other, loved the pink dragons...!"

Again I'm not being negative. That's dancing about architecture there. This is complaining that your haiku doesn't fit iambic pentameter. These are different art forms for different audiences.

***

So my goal...the second of my goals...among my many goals...is to avoid as much as possible the temptation of giving the Japanese names of everything. To take even further what I did in the Germany part of Knows and have Penny generally not knowing. And there's some deeper themes going on with her being in Old Kyoto but still encountering mostly rebuilds and recreations and revisioned history, plastic cast veggies at Toei's Edo-Machi and concrete castle in Osaka. And then being yanked away to go clubbing in Tokyo when not working out around glass and stainless steel.

But the discomfort, both fish-out-of-water but especially spy-undercover, hits hard in the first couple of scenes and one of the big reasons to give her a room at the ryokan is so she can stumble around in the pink toilet slippers getting soap in the tub and otherwise getting it completely wrong.

So I'm trying to keep the history at a low ebb, resist the temptation of using Japanese equivalents for everything and keep that to the words that are interesting or plot-significant -- but at the same time give in to a bit of Japan's Greatest Hits as far as maiko and kabuki and castles and onsen and...

Slowly my memories of Japan are returning. Not just the time I spent there, but all I absorbed through a lot of reading, a lot of watching daytime dramas and other Japanese movies and television, and a lot of studying the language (not that I got very far.) But there's a lot I want back before I feel comfortable depicting the places and culture.

Definitely, the Paris book would have been faster to write. (And there's a running gag in the Paris book. The underlying plot is what looks like clues to a Templar treasure, except Penny is quite sure all the Templar conspiracy theories are total shit. So there are many conversations of, "Then in 1250 Jacques de Molay secretly visited..." "I don't care." "...leaving the secret Templar sigil in the artwork of the famous..." "Not. Listening.")

Just found a new research trick, essential in this time of lockdowns and business failures. Using the Wayback Machine to roll back the website of a museum or hotel to pre-COVID days.