This week is a mad posting of stone soup–a mini-review and a couple of gems with some insider publishing info and tips.
First up, a quick glance at A Flash of Hex by Jes Battis, the second in the Tess Corday series. Tess is an occult investigator in Vancouver. It’s an urban fantasy and has all the right elements; a forbidden romance, a tough, young female investigator and an alarming body count. For whatever reason, this series is a bit flat to me. Perhaps it is because I’m not big on the whole “forbidden” part of the romance–most of the rules that make such a thing forbidden are kind of arbitrary and when used as a setup–well, they’re just props. The love interest in the novel is a necromancer and apparently they aren’t supposed to mix with upstanding investigators. My reaction is, so he’s a necromancer? In this age of urban fantasy, while a necromancer may not be the most attractive character trait, it just isn’t all that alarming either. Some of the story at the beginning is told entirely too much through dialogue, which really slowed it down. Just get to the crime scene already and start with the body count.
There’s nothing wrong with this series. It’s got all the right technical parts–there’s good scenes, there’s average scenes, there’s a decent premise/plot. It may be that the characters don’t leap out at me or have enough depth for me to empathize with. It’s not a bad book; if you like urban fantasy, it’s worth a look because some people are going to be drawn in where maybe I wasn’t.
I posted about this earlier in the week, but it’s worth another mention for anyone curious about what it’s like to be an editor–deciding what makes the cut and what doesn’t. There’s a really great interview conducted by Jeremy L. C. Jones in the latest Clarkesworld magazine. Jeremy interviewed the editors of probably the top ten speculative fiction magazines out there, including Weird Tales, Baen, Black Gate and so on. While a lot of the ground covered isn’t new to anyone who has been submitting for a while–there are some gems to be had.
Author J.A. Konrath has posted some very interesting numbers on his Kindle sales. This is a treasure trove of information–Konrath posts info not just on his popular thriller Jack Daniel‘s series, but on some of self-published works, and his lesser known Jack Kilborn horror novels. He talks pricing, reasoning and opinions. There’s some interesting follow-up in the comments trail as well.
I think what surprised me most was the sheer number of sales. Granted, he’s offering an awfully good deal–most of his novels are in the 2 dollar range–but that’s still a lot of downloads!
These and other fascinating picks (including fresh vegetables, stories, and miscellany) can be found at Maria’s blog at Bear Mountain Books.
