Review: League of Superheroesby Stephen L. Rice

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League of Superheroes

By Stephen L. Rice

ISBN: 193428405X

Radiation explains so many superhero powers, it's refreshing to see a more unique method of creating them. And to find a superhero book that classifies as science fiction instead of fantasy is even more rare. If that interest you, you're likely to find this book a refreshing read.

It is an origin story, no doubt. But Mr. Rice does a good job of keeping it interesting. A mysterious girl named Genie starts talking to Clarice in a chat room. She ends up bringing in her brother Allan and his friends into the discussion. Next thing you know, this mysterious girl is shipping them suits that enable them to do as much and more than what their favorite comic book superheroes can do.

But the real questions are who is she, how can she do this, and why is she doing it? The answer to those questions leads them to discover whether being a superhero involves more than super powers.

This book is a fun read for people of all ages even though it is directed toward young adults. It is well written, and the characters are fun. The plot keeps you wondering what will happen next. On the book as a whole, I'd have to say I enjoyed it and would recommend it hardily to anyone seeking a book to give to a child, teen, or even an older "child" who enjoys superhero stories.

If I were to fault the book for anything, it would be sometimes the story gets too bogged down in the technical details of how everything works. For the geek, this is interesting. And I don't mind some of that myself, but I found at certain points wishing we could skip the explanations and get on with the story. And to that end, it seemed the distribution of the suits dribbled out. In some ways, that would be truer to life, yes. But it slowed the story down. Despite that, Mr. Rice kept the pace overall on a good foot. So while I had those problems, it didn't mar the story significantly.

It should also be mentioned that this book has Christian characters written by a Christian. Mr. Rice does a good job of not doing a lot of preaching through this story, though you will find some messages coming through here and there. However, those are natural to the characters and the story. Most people whether religious or not, will enjoy it for what it is: teens from various backgrounds dealing with the moral dilemmas of gaining such powers and how to use them.

I enjoyed reading this story. It makes a great stocking stuffer for the reader in your family. And who knows, you might find yourself picking it up and getting sucked into it. I look forward to more stories about these kids in the future from this author.

Buy League of Superheroes at:

Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Writer's Cafe Press (publisher), and other online and bookstore outlets.

Just Do It!

Of late, I've been following Dean Wesley Smith's blog. He is a writer who's published over 90 novels. A prolific writer who's doing exactly what I want to do as well, make a living at writing great fiction. In a recent post, he wrote:

The truth: Writing a story is fun. And those of us lucky enough to do it for a living have the best job in the world, period. I sit alone in a room and make stuff up and people pay me large sums of money to do that. What is so hard about that?

I feel the same way, and is why I wanted to focus, not only for any readers of this blog, but also for myself, on a spin-off thought from his most recent blog post, Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Book as Event. He certainly challenges the common assumptions people make about writing novels and getting them published, and I've learned a lot following his blog and his "Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing" thread. Worth your time to read if you're an aspiring novelist.

But this one is his big sacred cow to kill, and I can see why. So allow me to take some time from my National Novel Writing Month word piling to put my own thoughts down that his post inspired.

Most people assume that to write a best selling, or even good selling book, it has to be an amazing story, a heart-pounding read, flawless word usage, or as Dean Wesley Smith puts it, "art." And one might be led to believe that, if the facts corresponded with said theory. Just a look at recent best-sellers in the publishing world would draw the conclusion that there is not a one-to-one correlation.

Take Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Written by a teen, this book becomes a best-seller despite the fact it is criticized for the writing being wooden and full of trite plots and characters. But the end result? It worked for a lot of people.

And then there is The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Violating numerous writing rules for good stories, and roundly criticized among fellow writers, it topped the best-sellers list. Do any of my crit partners wish to say he could do that because he knew what he was doing? Ah, I thought not. Yet, apparently he did.

And we could no doubt go down the list and find others that if one were to listen to fellow writers and critics, should have never seen the light of day, much less made the best-sellers list. But what does this show us?

One, that a book doesn't have to be perfect to make it. It's one of the points Dean makes in his recent blog entry linked above. Browse your library fiction shelves sometime. You'll find great books, but you'll also find books that will make you say, "How on earth did this ever get published?" Or, "What was the editor drinking when he decided to send out this contract?" A lot of bad writing and poor-excuse-for-stories get put into print by major publishing houses all the time. And some of those stories actually make them money. People will really plunk down good money, read the book, and enjoy it!

Two, I hear far too many of my writer friends and fellow National Novel Writing Month buddies lament that their stories are not that good. And maybe some of them aren't. It may be that they are just tossing in words, detailing everyday, boring events in the lives of their characters with no real story, plot, or even character development/interaction that is not worth anyone ever sloshing through. They only care about getting a word count. End of story.

Great, more power to you. But I suspect there are also a great number who try to get something down on paper that works. They know it won't be perfect, but they hope it will be something they can edit into shape, maybe become the seed for other stories, novels, or a future rewrite. But as Dean says, most of those stories end up getting thrown into drawers, rarely to see the light of day again, much less an editor's desk.

I can relate to Dean's writing style, to write quickly. Every novel I've written I did within a month's time. At the end of this NaNoWriMo, I will have six novels done. How many have been published? One. It was, just like Dean, my third novel I'd ever written, Transforming Realities. Before that was my first published book, a novella, Infinite Realities, but I don't count that as one of my novels.

My 2006 NaNoWriMo novel is fairly polished. I thought I'd do a little tweaking, but it is nearly ready to go. The rest are either rough drafts or in the middle of edits. And my edit process has been long and drawn out. I write in a month, but take a year or more to edit and get it ready. So each NaNo I add to the novel count waiting to go out.

Now, it isn't that I don't think these stories aren't good enough. As a matter of fact, I'm sure they are all good enough to be published. I have no doubt. But I will admit that I've fallen into the idea that I needed to get my book, if not perfect, near perfect before I send it to the big editor or agent who will be reading the first lines, and stuffing it back in the envelope with a rejection slip before he/she gets to the end of the first page.

My goal to this point for the next year was to get the third and final book in the Reality series published, The Reality. I also wanted to finally get Mind Game, that near-ready novel, out to someone, start shopping it. But that was about it.

Now Dean has inspired me to pull the stops out. Don't worry about getting it perfect. These are good stories, and need to get into the hands of editors so people can read them. And who knows, one of them might sell well. One of them might become a best seller. I might actually end up, to the protesting of my bosses, be able to quit my job and make a living at this writing gig I enjoy. I might be able to get paid well for making up stories. But I'll never know if I allow myself to think my story has to be just right to make it.

What really needs to happen is it needs to be a good story. People vote with their money, and that is, in the end, the vote that counts if one's goal is to write so people enjoy what you write. The lack of sales doesn't necessarily mean its a bad story, mind you. There are several factors that come together, but great sales does validate one fact: people enjoyed the story. If they didn't, no amount of marketing would get people to buy it in sufficient quantities.

And that's what stories like Eragon and The Da Vinci Code were. Good stories despite their imperfections, and people voted with their wallets. My stories are just as good, maybe even better. And I need to release them to see if they fly or not. If I keep them in the nest, we'll never know.

And so I'm making a new year's vow, pledge, whatever you call it, a little early this year. I'm going to get out to editors as many of these books sitting on my hard drive as possible during the following year. I'm still going to do NaNoWriMo. I've too many stories needing to get out to stop writing, and I may write in between! But my focus will be to get these stories out into hands, first the editor's, then the public's.

And how about you? If you have a story sitting on a hard drive, don't tweak it to death. Do the edits, then send it out. Then start on the next one. Dean's inspired me, and I hope he's inspired others to do the same.

Enjoy the journey!

New Flash Fiction Published!

My flash fiction titled Life Intruders has been published by the on-line science fiction and fantasy magazine, Resident Aliens!

This is a space opera story involving the crew of the Neptune 2, a ship I created as a teenager in a comic strip. This time frame actually takes place in the world I created with the novel I first wrote (not yet published) titled World's Apart, but several hundred years after the events in that series (I have two more books planned for that series, but haven't started writing them yet).

I'm hoping to create a series of these stories, so this is only the first to come of what I hope will be many more. If I'll just get busy and write them!

Thanks to Lynn for publishing this first entry. And enjoy the story. Be sure to check out other stories in the magazine, it is a good one to read.

The Muse: A Fun Read

The Muse, by Fred Warren, takes the reader into the world of muses, thus the title. Stan is a writer who's having trouble figuring out where to go with his story. His writer's group, consisting of Davos and Jilly, are also struggling. Then along comes Leila, and suddenly they're able to not only get their stories back on track, but find buyers and break into the big time. But how? And more importantly, why?

That's the engine for this story as the seemingly innocent events grow to dangerous proportions. Our trio, along with Stan's wife, Charity, and his daughter, Hannah, are thrown into the world of a Muse intent on destroying them along with many others.

There is a Christian element to the story, but that is due to the characters being Christian, not an attempt to preach. Most anyone would be comfortable reading this, no matter what religion or non-religion they are. But you'll not find an attempt to deliver an overt message or belittle anyone else in these pages.

The strength of the story lies in Mr. Warren's well developed characters. He has a great cast, and they are well written. Their interaction provides much of the story's spark. The only character I felt who could have used more nuance was the antagonist. She starts out interesting enough, but by the end, she evolves into the typical, arrogant villain. But the rest of the cast had depth and interesting interaction, and was what kept the story vibrant.

I read this rather quickly. On my limited schedule, reading a book takes a month or more, but I found myself sitting in the chair, late into the night, with a cup of tea or coffee, reading yet another chapter. I finished it within four days of starting. Would I call it a page turner? Plot wise, not really, but the writing and characters were so well done, I had to find out what would happen to them, and that kept me reading.

Which is good, because for me, it was a slow burn on discovering that there was a danger to confront. Mr. Warren takes his time building to the point where we fully realize the danger Stan and his friends are in. I found myself wanting to "get there" much sooner than we actually did. That coming from a guy who likes fast-paced narrative. Your mileage may vary.

Related to that, I had watched the book's trailer. I knew at some point, our heroes would end up trapped in an alternate reality and have to fight their way out. If I hadn't been looking for it, I may not have felt this way, but the entry into this alternate reality doesn't happen until the last third of the book. I not only grew impatient waiting for them to get there, but wasn't ready to leave when they did. Mr. Warren introduces several characters once in the new world who I would have loved to learn more about. If I had my say, I would have preferred more time in the alternate world and less in the real.

The plot is a mixture of both original concepts and predictable moments. It isn't complicated, and I did feel more could have been done with it. Yet, the world of the Muse held interest, and I can tell Mr. Warren had invested the time in their back story. While the plot had a couple of holes, I had fun reading it. He paints the world, both real and alternate, so you feel you're there. The plot adequately displays his strength: the characters. If you don't need cliff-hanger action on every page, and prefer characters who you find interesting, my bet is you'll enjoy this novel as well as I did.

Can be found at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or other bookstores.

Trite Is As Trite Does

One of the pitfalls writers attempt to avoid is being trite. Being trite, first on the writing level itself, and then being trite in a story plot.

There are, however, some forces that work against that.

First, we should probably define trite. In reality, people tend to think of the term too rigidly. They say if it's been done before, then it's trite. But there is another golden rule contradicting that: there is nothing new under the sun. No matter the phrasing, the story line, etc., most likely you can find someone who has said it or written that story before.

Okay, so some might narrow that down a bit to say, "if it's been done frequently before." That hits closer to home. But still is too formulaic. Here's why I say that.

What is trite is more subjective. What is trite to one person isn't to another. Depends on what they've read and how many times they've read it. So my definition of trite is any writing or plot that makes you say, "Oh, this has been done to death," or "I've seen this a million times."

I ran across that the other night. On the TV was a movie about a ragtag soccer team from  a hick town that was formed by a teacher at the school. Of course the kids know nothing about soccer, and the first thing they do is go play against a championship team and get slaughtered. Right then I told my son, "Here's how the rest of this movie is going down. They will practice and get better, and at the end of the movie they will go to the championship game and barely defeat the team that's won it for the past several years.

Predictably, that's how it went. But it gets better. They predictably tie the game at the end, and each team gets five tries to get a ball into the goal, and whoever gets the most in wins as a tie breaker. The last of the five they chose for their team was the runt and least likely to pull it off of the team. So I told my son, which players would miss, and that it would come down to the scrawny runt winning the game. Sure enough, it happened just that way, even those missing the goal that I predicted would miss it.

But despite that and some unbelievable moments both in action and plot, it wasn't all that bad. I watched the whole thing. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. It had its moments. But it had all the predictable elements of the ragtag sports team type story.

Now, if someone had never read or seen one of these type stories, they wouldn't consider it trite. I would. And there have been things I've written that I didn't think were done all that much, that I later found out was.

One such story was my flash fiction The Wheel of Curses which Everyday Fiction accepted and published back in 2008. It is a story of Josh, a young wizard in training, who gets turned into a fly and for a while it is written from the fly's perspective. While they accepted it, they did mention in the comments that "although we get many of these fly perspective stories..." I thought, "What? They get a lot of these? I'd never guessed." But they liked my take on it enough that they accepted mine.

And that is a good segue into the next point. Even if you have a trite story line, if you still can write a good story that captures people's imaginations, it won't matter that the plot line is tired and worn out. A good writer can take a tired and worn out plot line and give it life.

There are two ways to do this. One, is to have some unexpected elements in the plot line itself. This lends itself to trite plot lines because then everyone thinks they know how its going to go down, and when it doesn't go where they expect it to, then suddenly it's not trite any longer.

The other way is to make the characters and their exchanges interesting. Mainstream stories rely upon this, because in mainstream it is much harder to find an original plot line. Practically everything has been done before. Speculative fiction gives you a little more freedom to create original plots, whereas mainstream is more limited to this life in that regard.

The way that most mainstream stories keep from reading trite is the unique and interesting characters they infuse into the story. So say you take the story of the divorced man raising a kid or kids. Predictably the plot centers around one or all of the kids feeling like dad doesn't pay them enough attention. That same plot line appears frequently in marriage situations as well. "The Santa Clause" movie is a good example among many with such a plot line in it. But if you can write good dialog, provide deep characters that the reader can care about, even if they know the dad or mother will come to their senses at the end and become the best dad in the world, it can still be interesting and not so trite if the characters are compelling.

Then there is the final point: sometimes trite sells. When Anne's "Dragon Riders of Pern" came out, it was fairly fresh. It became very popular. So what do publishers do? They want to ride that wave, and so acceptances of dragon rider stories grew. Everyone wanted to write a dragon rider story. So, after a while, the plot became a little trite.

Then along comes Eragon, about a boy who finds a dragon's egg and ends up becoming a dragon rider. The book in literary circles was denounced as too trite and predictable. It had all the cliche elements of such a story in it. But yet, it became a best seller, people loved it. Why? Because it had a good story and interesting characters...even if the writing was a bit "wooden" as I recall on reviewer putting it.

Trite goes in cycles. For instance, it's not like no one had written about wizards and such, but when Harry Potter came on the screen, it was fresh. Likewise, I don't know how many times I've seen sites say they don't want anymore vampire stories. They get too many of them that are apparently pretty bad. Yet, Twilight hits the shelves and sells well. As a matter of fact, I can predict at some point we'll see another story like Lord of the Rings sell well sometime into the future.

In the end, it's much like what the judges often say on American Idol and the like: you've got to put your own stamp on it. That's what really makes it unique, even if the subject matter has been dealt with a thousand times before. If I were to write the Star Wars book, it wouldn't have the same feel as someone else might do it. If Tom Hanks had directed the first Star Wars movie, it wouldn't be the same as what we have now. In the end, if your story sounds like every other story out there, doesn't have your unique voice in it, then it will tend to sound trite.

So, keep writing, keep developing that voice, and eventually you can write the next "we need to destroy the evil object before it falls into the wrong hands so we can save the world" type story, and actually have it sell well.

Novel Preperation Presentation

That's right. Yours truly will be doing a 30 minute presentation for the Austin region National Novel Writing Month group about how to plan to write a novel. Following that I'll be moderating a panel for another hour.

It is open for anyone to attend, you don't have to participate in the National Novel Writing Month to come. Shoot, you don't even have to be a writer. If you're interested and are in the Austin, TX area, plan on being there!

Here's the info from the Austin region's NaNo calendar:

Novel Planning Presentation
When: Wed, October 21, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Where: Pflugerville Community Library, 102 S. 10th St., Pflugerville
What: Are you a planner or a seat-of-the-pantser? Wrimo RLCopple will present a useful planning technique, and then our panel will discuss the merits of different planning - and not-planning strategies. Panelists are: ballyhoot, NicoleMD, DaShlom, and Lady Eshen.
Who: Suitable for all ages; everyone is invited!

Come if you can. Pray if you can't! Thanks.

New story accepted!

I wrote a flash fiction back in 2006 called Life Invaders. After a few attempts, it has finally found a home at Residential Aliens Magazine. Look here for the announcement of when it comes out in the next two to three months. And visit the magazine; they have enjoyable genre fiction.