Putting a name to the numbers

I finally relinquished one more iota of my remaining privacy by joining the Goodreads eco-system. And now I've discovered that two of those low ratings that have been haunting my review scores on Amazon come from actual people. Who didn't leave reviews there, either. So I still don't know what it was they believe I have done badly.

It reminds me not a little of Booktube, anyhow. I've watched a bit of what flies around Booktube. It really seems like a small circle; all these people discussing books that I've never heard of, but they all seem to think are the hot topic of discussion. And a great many of the authors being reviewed also have a YouTube presence, making it even more incestuous.

The thing that hurts most, I think, is that I feel that the London book is probably the best thing I have written and might be the best thing I ever write. Not that it is great, mind you. I mean the best that I am capable of. History, culture, the human interactions, the underlying mystery, the action sequences; all organically link and support each other.

The Kyoto book limps, really.

(Plus I'm not sure I am happy with the directions my protagonist is going. But that's a different discussion.)

So I'm sick at home all week with something that feels so much like COVID that, with the lack of available test kits or the strength to wait in line for two hours, I am choosing to be careful about. Staying home, hoping to get by without grocery shopping even. If it wasn't for the brain fog this would be a good time to get some productive work done.

And I've completely come around to the idea that I'm writing too much. I mean too much care, too much research. And above all too much time. I love doing this stuff. I love I was able to come up with a plot for the London book that wrapped up the Aux Units, the Underground Shelters, and Crossrail/the Northern Line Extension. I had great fun with maps and calculators working out if Penny could survive the night in the Adriatic but still beat the ferry back to port.

But nobody is going to check that. My dad once told me of following along in the long chase that ends Stoker's Dracula with map in hand, but this is rare. Most people are going to read casually enough they won't even remember which city the story is in if they've put it away to go to work and didn't pick it up again until the weekend.

And with all my cleverness, I still had to change dates, change weather, change geography. And half the lovely things that drew me to the locations and things and people wouldn't fit in the book anyhow. (Shirawaka-go was actually the setting for a horror manga and anime. But there was no good way to work that detail in, and it didn't involve yokai anyhow. But that was one of the reasons I chose to locate a major sequence there.)

And as I said last post, the readers don't care. Mostly. There will always be a crank but they rarely get structural, as in discussing the idea of secret histories. Instead they'll be pedantic about whether a particular Roman coin should be considered "small change."

(Pedantry in free-form discussions of history almost always revolve around semantics. You really have no choice but to call a formation "effective" or the testudo "rare" or a gladius "short" within the context of a lively discussion. And that is all the opening someone needs to ride in their hobby-horse about how long the gladius is in context with medieval weapons or something.)

So you don't turn off the majority of your readers if you play loose with history or geography. The reader is generally getting...well, "sophisticated" would not be my word. Educated, perhaps? In any case, their expectations are greater so if you show Mexico City as a sprawling bodega of ignorant peasant farmers you are going to take flack. But at the same time, if you name one distinctive landmark, they will feel fulfilled, they will feel as if they are learning something. Getting the true "vibe" of the city isn't necessary.

Faking it with Wikipedia is good enough for most readers, in short. But that's just the research side. I think there is something else standing in my way and it might be something I was trained into over a short history in role playing games. And that is that the real world isn't convenient for heroes. It is one thing to say, "we'll sneak into the bank" or "we'll surprise the two guards" or whatever. It is yet another to actually do it. Humans have a long history and they learn from their mistakes and in the real world if you throw a rock you don't get a single guard leaving their post to check it out.

So there are certainly remaining obstacles. I am even more focused on the goal, though; to learn how to write books FASTER.