Interesting occurences at the Book Expo

[ivyfic]

A friend got me a pass to the Book Expo of America (BEA) at the Javits Center. This is the biggest trade publishing show in the US. So I spent the afternoon cruising the aisles and snagging free goodies. Somebody tried to give me a hideous free yellow ceramic piggy bank, but I said no to that.

-I swung by the Harlequin booth and said hello to the editor of Luna. For those of you following at home, this is one of the two interviewers that fell asleep during my interview at Harlequin. She greeted me cheerily and said, "Haven't seen you in awhile!" Just after the words left her mouth, I could see the dawning horror on her face as she remembered who I was and that the only reason she hadn't seen me in awhile was because she didn't even have the courtesy to tell me when they hired somebody else for the position. I didn't comment on that and asked her about the new books at Luna. She very quickly made her excuses and all but ran away. I am evil. EEEEEEEvil. But that was so much fun.
(And as a sidenote, just to prove that I don't get bitter about these things, I do freelance work for another one of the many editors who haven't hired me. In this case I just kind of wanted to see what her reaction would be to seeing me again. Obviously she has more issues about rejecting people than I do.)

-I am very proud of myself. I saw Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta at the DC booth and did not go over and talk to them. I was so torn. I was thinking, do I politely ask him what crack he was smoking when he decided that lightsabers would shatter on lava beasts? Or that escape pods could escape from beyond the event horizon of a black hole? Or that if one cooled matter to absolute zero so all the atoms collapsed in on themselves it would work as a shield? Or that Mulder and Scully could watch an H-bomb explode with no eye-protection and keep their retinas intact? Or that the HAL-like computer in the Death Star II was on the verge of launching a droid revolt to take over the universe when Lando blew it up? Do I go over and compliment him on his work, then laugh smugly to myself as I walk away? No. I was good. If you don't have anything nice to say, and all that. At least now I know what he looks like *cough* combover! *cough* *cough* so that I won't accidentally talk smack in front of him in the future.

There were also a giant Pillsbury Doughboy, a large pile of small bean bag dogs, men in Civil War outfits, women in corsets, a giant Darth Vader and Dr. Ruth at various places in the 300,000 sq feet of exhibitor space.

The highlight of the outing for me was stopping by the Portable Press booth. I introduced myself to the publisher there, and since he reads everything that goes into the Uncle John's books, he remembered my articles. We chatted about their plans for books and such and he gave me a really spiffing tote bag with "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" embroidered on it.

Now my feet hurt. Especially since I had to walk the however many miles (two?) over to the Javits Center because there is no good way to get there by subway. What the hell they were thinking when they built the convention center way out there, I will never know.

Comments

[katertoticus.livejournal.com]

dude my publisher friends are there!

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Oh! I need to remember to ask you for their name again. So email me their name again. I unfortunately will not be returning to the BEA, so that boat has sailed.

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Nice restraint with Anderson. I was perusing a pile of books left over by the trash bins at work when someone shoved a book into my hands and told me, "You might like this." It was called The Martian War by Gabriel Mesta, and it looked mildly interesting...until I opened the back flap and saw the author bio, which began "GABRIEL MESTA is better known as his alter ego of KEVIN J. ANDERSON." Okay, stop right there. This book is clearly crap. And why oh why would you use a pseudonym then tell everyone who you really are, especially if you're really Kevin J. Anderson?

To be fair, I haven't read his stuff, but looking at his list of credits, I wasn't particularly interested, and the fact that I recognize his name as someone to avoid, well...

Anyway, I did hold onto the book, if you'd like to read it. Apparently the cover claims that it's a "thrilling eyewitness account of the recent alien invasion as reported by Mr. H.G. Wells". Then, the first page is an author's note that says "During extensive historical research undertaken by the author in writing this book, it became sadly but abundantly apparent that the events as set fort in this novel did not, in fact, occur. However, with the benefit of more than a century of hindsight, one can see that this is indeed how history should have happened." Right. So even the author warns us not to bother. Nice work, "Mesta."

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, Kevin J Anderson = impossible plots. I actually thought of what I should have asked him: *holds out microphone* "Mr. Anderson, how do you feel about the fact that large parts of your Jedi Academy trilogy and subsequent books have been made completely incongruous by the Star Wars prequel movies? Your Death Star origin story, specifically, is now no longer canon."

Or something like that. That would have been not mean but still not complimentary, which was the tone I was trying for.

That's a bizarre intro, which I'm hoping is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, because, well, duh. The psuedonym makes sense if it was an early publication of his that he used a psuedonym for but now he's made a name for himself. He does almost exclusively tie-in stuff, but that's not the reason he's awful. I know quite a few completely respectable authors who write only or mostly tie-ins. What makes him awful is that he breaks the rules of the world he's writing in routinely.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Or he breaks the rules of the world we live in in ways that can't maintain a suspension of disbelief, which I think is much more the key to your complaints above. I think if another writer had put in an escape pod escaping a black hole with a semi-believeable excuse (a one-shot faster-than-light emergency drive, mayhaps), you'd have breezed right by it. Lightsabers aren't really possible, but we've got a suspension of disbelief until they, well, shatter.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Yes - I was trying to explain this to my roommate, who doesn't like sci fi, and she said, "Wait. You're watching a show with aliens and you're bothered by a lightsaber shattering?" So I was trying to explain that you build a world with certain rules and you have to stay within the rules of that world. Christian Bale in Equilibrium walking into a pitch black room and shooting twenty gunmen without being hit is OK because the world has this concept of gun kattas that explain it. Having a bullet hit his chest and bounce off would not be OK because that violates the rules of that world. Both are equally "unrealistic," but one shows internal consistency and the other shows an author's flagrant disregard for his own narrative framework in the quest for a cheap gag.

But Superman has that power and he's in the same genre, one might object. If you add that capability to Christian Bale's character, though, it changes the world of the movie. That attribute would have ramifications that would change the plot and the characters involved. Bale's gunfighting abilities are a fundamental part of the framework of the world of that movie. It's not just because it is cool; his abilities put him in a seperate social class. The author has taken this capability, applied it to his world and examined what that would mean for the entire society of that world. It is well thought-out and internally consistent. Giving him an ability, such as invulnerability, that was not addressed anywhere else, only showed up when convenient for the plot and without its presence being extrapolated into the world of the film would be completely irresponsible and just plain bad writing.

I am using Equilibrium as an example here purely for illustration; I know full well that the movie has some serious problems with its world-building and its internal consistency. It overall fails the test I am putting forth. But in the instance of the accuracy of Bale's shooting, it works.

I am not being nit-picky. Being nit-picky would be to complain about Alcmene mentioning Hercules' genes in Hercules: the Legendary Journeys and ignoring the fact that they're, you know, speaking in English instead of Ancient Greek. I get nit-picky too sometimes but I don't think it's too much to ask that one author not go into the canon of other people's creations and add capabilities or laws of physics that make it completely impossible for other author to write decent stories. And Kevin J. Anderson does that. Damn him.