Joe Vasicek

Thoughts on writers, reviewers, and stalkers

The bookish side of the English-speaking internet exploded last week with an article in The Guardian about an author who stalked a Goodreads reviewer, showing up unannounced on the reviewer’s doorstep and going to great lengths to expose the reviewer’s identity. The crazy part–or crazier, I guess, since the whole thing is batshit crazy–is that the Guardian article was written by the author/reviewer herself.

It gets crazier, though. This same author, in another article published a little over a year ago, confessed/bragged to stalking someone else who she perceived as crossing her, this time assaulting her victim both physically and verbally. According to Jezebel, even after she was brought into court and censured for her brazen act of assault, she continued to stalk this person online, to the point where the police intervened a second time.

I normally do my best to stay away from drama like this. However, with the issues that this case raises and the way that it’s rocking the book world right now, I feel that I ought to add my own thoughts to the public discussion that’s happening right now.

First, I think that this author’s actions were completely inexcusable. Period. No book review, however critical, justifies hunting the reviewer down and showing up unannounced on her doorstep. Furthermore, when you read the original review that sparked the whole incident (and the subsequent Goodreads discussion thread), you realize that the author’s characterization of the reviewer is simply untrue. Was the reviewer “bullying” the author? Because she seems perfectly civil (if perhaps a bit enthusiastic) on that thread–much more civil than the author’s fans, in fact.

If there’s any bullying that happened in this case, clearly the worst offender is the author. She not only crossed the line of civility, but she also demonstrated herself to be both dangerous and unpredictable. And after all of that, to write about it in the Guardian–that is crossing a whole new line altogether.

It’s frustrating for me, because bad actors like this completely undermine the review space for all of us. Reviews–honest ones, critical ones–are an important part of a healthy book culture. They are helpful to readers in deciding whether or not to read a book, and they are helpful to authors in guiding our books to the readers who will enjoy them the most.

At the same time, reviews for readers and not for authors. When authors argue with reviewers, it undermines the review space for everyone. Arguing with a reader is not going to change their opinion of a book, and being public about it makes other reviewers think twice about posting anything less than a diabetically saccharine review.

And then you have a case like this, where one batshit-crazy nutcase goes over the deep end so spectacularly that she tarnishes the review space for everyone.

I have to be honest–this story pisses me off, not only as a reader and a reviewer, but as an author as well. Have I received negative reviews? Certainly. Does it sting when I get them? Of course it does–and the ones that sting the most are the ones that bring up good points. Do I engage with negative reviews? Only when I feel that there’s a point that needs clarification, and then only in the most non-intrusive and non-confrontational way possible.

Whenever I hear about reviewers bullying authors, it almost always turns out upon closer examination that the author is behaving just as badly, if not much worse. For that reason, I have very little sympathy for authors in these cases, especially when reviewers everywhere are made to feel unsafe. This narcissistic literary pettiness helps no one, at the ones who get burned the most are almost always the reviewers.

So that’s my $.02. Now time to do something productive with my time and energy–like, y’know, actually write or something. Take care.

What readers want

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what science fiction and fantasy readers want in the books they read. I’m in the middle of writing and publishing a series of novellas and short novels, so it’s definitely on my mind. After publishing twenty books and completing another novella series, I think I have a pretty good idea.

First and foremost, I think that readers want to have an experience. The exact nature of that experience depends on the genre, but for science fiction and fantasy readers, that experience needs to be out of this world. They want to be transported somewhere and feel that they’re immersed in the world of the story.

I think I’ve done a pretty decent job of this so far. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from readers who say that they really enjoy the worlds that I’ve created. There’s always room for improvement, but so far, I think I’ve done a pretty good job transporting my readers to other worlds.

Second, readers want characters that they can connect with somehow. That usually means characters that they can relate to, though it can also include larger-than-life characters as long as they don’t feel fake. The characters are especially important for science fiction and fantasy, since they make everything else in the book feel real and authentic. Besides, when you’re visiting a new and unfamiliar place, it’s always good to have a friend.

I think that character is one of my strong points. I love getting into my characters’ heads and showing how they uniquely see the world around them. I also love showing how characters change and grow as they struggle to overcome their weaknesses. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from readers on my characters, even in some of the more critical reviews, so that tells me I’m doing something right that so many readers can connect with them.

Third, readers (especially sf&f readers), want an adventure. They don’t just want an internal struggle as a character wrestles with difficult moral issues, or a transformative growth experience as a character faces a difficult challenge. Both of those can make a good story into a great story, and turn a reader into a fan, but more than that they want stuff to actually happen. They want the plot to move at an exciting pace–to get sucked into a story as they wonder what’s going to happen next.

With the series I’m writing now (Sons of the Starfarers), I’m trying to do just that. Star Wanderers (my other novella series) did pretty well, but I think the conflict was more personal and internal, or had more to do with the relationships between the characters than any sort of adventure that they were having together. There’s a place for that, but I think a lot of readers got bored midway through the series, or didn’t feel a compelling need to finish it. With Sons of the Starfarers, I’ve been careful to keep the action moving at a good clip with every book, and so far almost everyone who reads the second book goes on to the third book.

So those, I think, are the top three things that the majority of readers are looking for. But there’s something else that I don’t think I’ve been as good at, and it has to do with everything above.

I think that most readers, especially sf&f readers, are looking for longer books. They want everything above, but they want it in much bigger doses. The enjoyment they get out of a book doesn’t increase linearly with the page count, it increases exponentially. The longer the book, the deeper the immersion. The characters feel that much more real the longer they get to spend with them, and the adventure feels that much more thrilling.

As I’ve said before, I really enjoy writing novellas. But if my readers want something meatier, I’ll do what I can to satisfy them. I may love writing novellas, but I also love writing novels too. Since they generally take longer to write, with a lot more time between new releases, it’s more of a challenge to market them, but I have enough books out now that I can switch gears.

There are a couple of half-finished novel projects that I’ve had on the back burner for a while. I’ll keep working on Sons of the Starfarers until that series is complete, probably sometime next year, but I’ll also work on the novels in the meantime. Sons of the Starfarers will have nine books (three omnibus editions), and then it will be complete. After that, time to move on to longer books.

Why writing retreats and seminars make me uneasy

Writing retreats and seminars make me uneasy. I’ve never attended one, mostly because the prices tend to run so high, and that’s part of what makes me so uneasy about them. Yes, writing is a business, and yes, the author deserves to be paid, but paid for what exactly? For telling stories, or for telling other people how to tell stories?

There’s an unfortunate tendency in the writing world, especially the SF&F corner of the writing world, for us to elevate authors to a quasi-godlike status and take them as a definitive final authority on the field. Certainly, when Brandon Sanderson or Orson Scott Card gives an opinion, I give it more weight than an anonymous handle on a message board somewhere. At the same time, though, an opinion is just an opinion, no matter where it comes from.

You don’t have to shell out a lot of money to learn the craft of writing. There are lots of excellent books on the subject, as well as online communities, videos on Youtube–I think all of Brandon Sanderson’s lectures from his English 318R class at BYU are now up on Youtube. More importantly, there’s no one stopping you from sitting down in front of a computer (or setting out a pen and paper) and learning from doing it yourself. So why do we need all these huge, expensive retreats and seminars?

Perhaps my view on this subject is different because I’m an indie writer. One of the great things about self-publishing is that it tears down the walls, throws open the gates, and levels the playing field for everyone. Since we all can be authors now, the pedestals are a lot shorter. The old authorities are no longer quite so definitive, because there’s so much room for experimentation in this new marketplace.

In the indie writing community, there’s a very strong ethic of sharing. Hugh Howey is probably the biggest example of this. He repeatedly goes out of his way to help his fellow writers, putting together the Author Earnings Report and being very generous in sharing everything he’s learned. He’s also very modest about it, constantly putting other, lesser-known authors forward as much better writers than he is. Instead of capitalizing on his knowledge by creating artificial scarcity, he puts it all out there on his blog and the internet communities where he participates.

Of course, retreats and seminars are just as useful for the networking opportunities as they are for the actual instruction. The thing is, just how useful is that networking really? The market is open–we all have access to readers now. The gatekeepers no longer have the power to make or break anyone’s career. And if you’re in the business of writing and telling stories, what better way to network is there than doing exactly that? Sure, it can boost your career to be on a first-name basis with a successful author/editor, but if you don’t also have the writing chops to back that up, it’s not going to do you much good.

I don’t want to call in doubt the motivations of those authors who do put on retreats and seminars. I think that for the most part, their motives are pure. But the structure is one of artificial scarcity that props up this legacy model of gatekeepers and pedestals. It makes me uneasy, because it grants too much of an air of solemnity and authority in a field where the brightest new voices are often self-taught.

Perhaps the thing that makes me most uneasy about these retreats and seminars is the fact that I’ve received so much bad writing advice over the years. To the extent that I have succeeded at all, it has been in spite of the advice I’ve received, not because of it. When I see people turning around and selling their advice for top dollar, it makes me very uneasy, regardless of their motivation in doing it.

I never want to participate as an instructor in expensive retreats or seminars. I don’t feel comfortable supporting that sort of thing. If I ever do get to the point where people would pay to hear me pontificate, I’m going to be very careful not to put myself out there as a definitive authority, since I’m sure any of my advice will be just as harmful to the wrong person as it is helpful to the right person. As for networking, I’d much rather do that through collaborating, reviewing, guest blogging, and putting anthologies together.

Cooking with cast iron

So a little while ago, I mentioned how my parents had sent me their old cast-iron skillet. It had been sitting in the basement unused for the better part of a decade, and had gunked up pretty bad with rust and other stuff.

Well, I’m happy to say that I got it cleaned up! Toad, a friend from my short story writing group, helped me out with it. We poured a bunch of salt into the bottom as an abrasive and scrubbed it down with a rag and some oil. After that, we fried some eggs up, seasoning the skillet with oil both before and after (we didn’t even bother seasoning it in the oven, just did it all on the stove top).

Right away, we could tell that this was a good quality piece of cast iron. You can tell by how smooth the surface is. The cheaper modern and/or Chinese stuff has a fairly rough surface, so that food tends to get stuck in it. The good old-fashioned skillets are much smoother.

I’ve been cooking regularly with it ever since, and I can confirm that these things only get better with use! Here are a couple of things I’ve been cooking with it:

I love omelettes, but it’s hard to cook them in old teflon pans because the eggs tend to stick (or worse, the teflon peels off into the food). However, in my cast-iron skillet, it’s not a problem at all! In the picture above, I mixed two eggs with chives, red pepper, garlic salt, and a splash of milk. Later, I added a sprinkling of cheddar and mozzarella. To oil the pan, I used about 2/3rds tablespoon of butter.

I’m not very good at turning these things over, but as you can see it’s not really sticking to the pan at all. If it does, it’s not hard to scrape it off. I use only metal cookware with this skillet, so I don’t have to worry about melting plastic (ever notice how an old plastic spatula tends to have a sharp edge with bits of plastic peeling off?). And honestly, it doesn’t take much work to scrape food off of this thing, even when it does stick.

Another thing I love to cook in my cast-iron skillet is hash browns. I’ve got a small herb garden in my kitchen window, so I fry up my potatoes with rosemary, chives, and dill. It tastes FANTASTIC.

With my old second-hand teflon pans, I could never get the potatoes very crispy because they’d always stick to the pan if I cooked them for too long. But with cast iron, that isn’t a problem at all! As you can see in the picture above, these potatoes are browning quite nicely.

But that isn’t even the best part.

See that? It’s a selfie I took in the bottom of the pan after cooking all the stuff above! I didn’t wash it at all, I just dropped a little bit of oil on it and used a paper towel to wipe it down.

I’m telling you, this cast-iron skillet is AMAZING. I can cook whatever I want in this thing! Even better, I fully expect that this skillet will outlive me. It’s WAY more durable than any other piece of kitchen equipment that I’ve ever seen. And it’s versatile, too–I can hardly wait to go camping with it!

Just in time!

Orc Chieftain by Wulfgnar on deviantART

So yesterday was the deadline for the fourth quarter of the Writers of the Future contest. I’d submitted the Gettysburg time paradox story waaay back in July, but after workshopping it with some friends, I realized that it wasn’t quite up to par. On Monday, though, I workshopped another story with the same group of friends, and got some amazing feedback that helped me to turn a great story into an awesome one.

I originally wanted to submit that story to Tor.com, which opens up to submissions again today, but after finishing it up I wondered if maybe I could withdraw the Gettysburg story from WOTF and submit the better one instead. The thing about Tor.com is that they have a ridiculously long wait time–145 days average, up on The (Submission) Grinder. Since WOTF has a much shorter wait time (no longer than three months, since they announce the winners each quarter), I wasn’t too keen on taking this story out of the loop for more than a quarter.

So I emailed Joni yesterday afternoon, just a few hours before the deadline, but I didn’t think she’d respond in time to submit it. To my surprise, she responded in fourteen minutes (fourteen minutes!) and told me that the old story was withdrawn, so I was free to submit the other one! Awesome!

So now I’ve got a story in the contest that I’m super super proud of and think might actually have a shot at placing. And even if it doesn’t, the sooner I can run it through WOTF, the sooner I can run it through the other markets I want to submit it to (there’s only three more after this), which means the sooner I can self-publish it and get it up for you guys to read. It’s kind of hard talking about a story when none of you guys can read it, but trust me, I think you’re really really going to like this one.

Workshopping it Monday gave me an AWESOME idea for another short story / novelette in the same universe, about a runtling orc who uses his wits to free the hero from the dungeon and get him to kill the orc high commander, freeing all the disgruntled warriors to desert the Witch King’s army and return to their clans (which is what all of them want to do anyway). I am super super excited to write this story!

For those of you waiting for the next Sons of the Starfarers book, though, don’t worry, that’s coming along as well. I’m about halfway through Book IV: Friends in Command right now, and it should be finished (the rough draft, anyway) by October 15th. If all goes well, I’ll have it up for pre-order sometime in November, with a release date of January 1st.

Brothers in Exile

eBook: free!

Author: Joe Vasicek
Series: Sons of the Starfarers, Book 1
Genres: Action & Adventure, Military, Science Fiction, Space Exploration, Space Opera
Tag: 2014 Release

Isaac and Aaron are nothing if not survivors. Their homeworld lost and their people scattered, all they have left is each other. Then, in the Far Outworlds, they find a dead colony with a beautiful young woman frozen in cryostasis. She is also a survivor—and she needs their help.

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Get the ebook FREE from my online store!

Get the audiobook FREE from my online store!

Also, I’m happy to report that Book I: Brothers in Exile is now free on the main Amazon store! If you haven’t read it yet, feel free to pick up a copy, and if you have read it, I would appreciate it immensely if you could post an honest review. In order to feature it on a couple of sites, I need to get at least ten reviews, preferably with a high-star rating, but more than that I think it’s important just to have reviews that are honest and thoughtful. Anything you guys can do to help with that, I would appreciate it.

And that’s just about it. I have a lot of writing to do, so I’d better get back to that. See you guys around!

Strangers in Flight — excerpt 9

The deadbolts retracted with a clang, and the hatchway creaked open on its old, squeaky hinges. Two men stepped through: one of the strong men, wearing the same black beetle-shell skin covering as before, and the doctor’s apprentice. The young man regarded her in silence for a moment, his cheeks reddening just as before. He knelt down by her side and spoke to her, holding out another fluid pack with a one-way straw.

There’s no way I can get out of here with both of them watching me, Reva thought, her mind racing. But if there were only one …

She glanced apprehensively at the strong man, who waited just inside the doorway. It took the apprentice a few seconds to get the hint, but when she ignored the fluid pack, he spoke to the strong man and waved him out of the chamber. The man hesitated a moment, but shrugged and stepped outside.

The apprentice smiled at her and nodded. He put a hand on her shoulder, his eyes wandering involuntarily to her breasts. Pervert, Reva thought. You’re all perverts in this place.

Fortunately, she could use that to her advantage.

She rose smoothly to her feet, her eyes meeting and holding the apprentice’s gaze. He stood up unsteadily, but before he could react, she slipped a hand around his waist and pressed her body close against his. If her captors could break all the rules, she’d show them that she could, too. She pressed the young man up against the wall and locked her lips against his in a wild and ferocious kiss. His body stiffened and he gasped a little through his nose, but he made no move to resist her and soon melted to putty into her embrace.

Just as he let out his breath, she snaked her arms around his neck and took the fabric of his skin covering in a vice-like grip. With the edge of her palm pressing up against his windpipe, she rotated her wrists and squeezed.

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Strangers in Flight

$9.99eBook: $2.99

Author: Joe Vasicek
Series: Sons of the Starfarers, Book 3
Genres: Science Fiction, Space Opera
Tag: 2014 Release

When Reva went into cryosleep, she wasn't prepared to be the sole survivor of a people that history never remembered. Isaac wants to help her, but he carries a secret that may decide the outcome of the war. Little does he know, the Imperials aren't the only ones hunting him.

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$1 off the ebook with coupon code: BUY DIRECT

FREE ebook when you buy the audiobook direct!

Print, pre-orders, and points of business

For those of you who are reading the Sons of the Starfarers series, I have a few updates and points of business that I think you may be interested in.

First, Sons of the Starfarers: Omnibus I-III is now up for pre-order on most of the ebook sites. It will go live on November 1st, but the print edition should be available on Amazon and CreateSpace about two weeks before that. All I have left to do for the print edition is the typesetting, but that takes a lot of time, so I’m shooting for October 15th to have the print edition ready.

Now, here’s the interesting part. Amazon has a program called MatchBook where people who buy the print edition can get the ebook edition for cheap or free. For the omnibus edition, I’ve set the discount ebook price for $.99, which means that if you buy the print edition, you can get the ebook for just $.99 extra.

The big question is how this applies to pre-orders. If you pre-order the ebook and buy the print edition before the ebook comes out, will Amazon charge you the full $5.99 or the $.99? I don’t know yet, but I plan to ask an Amazon representative to clarify. Because if ordering the print version while the ebook is still on pre-order means that you get the ebook at the discount MatchBook price, I will do everything I can to get the print version out in time so you can do that.

For links to the omnibus, keep an eye on the front page: I haven’t added it to my blog yet, but I plan to do that shortly. Or you can just go over to your favorite ebookstore and search for “sons of the starfarers omnibus.”

Finally, I’ve decided to drop the price for Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers: Book I) from $2.99 to $0 and make it permanently free. The trick now is getting Amazon to price match with the other retailers, since you can’t technically set the price of an Amazon book to $0 (you have to mark it down on a competitor and let them know). So if you have a few moments to help, I would appreciate it! Just follow these steps:

Go to the Amazon page for Brothers in Exile and look for the link that says “tell us about a lower price.”
When you click the link, it should bring up a submenu that asks you where you saw the lower price. Click on “website.”
Where it asks for the URL, copy and past either the link to iBooks, the link to Nook, or the link to Kobo (or all three!).
Where it asks for the competitor’s price, enter “0” and click “submit feedback.”

That’s it! If you could take a few moments to do that, I would greatly appreciate it. And if you haven’t read Brothers in Exile yet, here’s a great way to get it for free!

For those of you waiting for Friends in Command (Sons of the Starfarers: Book IV), I’m happy to say that progress is coming along very, very well with that one. I hope to have it up for pre-order before the end of October, and the tentative release date will be January 3rd. It’s going to be a bit of a crunch to get it all done in time, but I’m really eager to write this story and I think I can get the first draft done in the next couple of weeks.

That just about does it. Back to writing!

A cast iron birthday!

So my 30th birthday is this month, and my parents gave me what may quite possibly prove to be the best birthday present ever: the family’s old cast iron skillet! These things are AWESOME for cooking–they heat evenly, hold warmth for a long time, have a better non-stick surface than teflon (if you care for it properly), can be used on anything from ovens to electric stove tops to campfire coals, and are virtually indestructible. I can’t wait to start using mine!

As you can see from the photo, though, it needs quite a bit of work. There’s a lot of old gunk and rust that needs to be scraped off, and it needs to be tempered and seasoned. Tempering is the process where you heat up the iron to let the oil soak into the pores, so that when it cools down, you have a thin layer of oil bonded to the surface. That’s what gives it the nonstick properties and keeps it from rusting. If you wash a cast iron skillet in soap, it scrubs off that all-important layer of oil, leaving it exposed to water which makes it oxidize and rust. That’s what happened here.

Fortunately, these things are so indestructible that a little bit of rust isn’t going to ruin it. It’ll take some work to get it cleaned up and functional again, but I could use a fun side-project to keep me busy. Besides, I have a writing buddy down the street who can help me out with it. He’s a pretty interesting guy: he has a 3D printer, grows most of the food he eats, worked on film sets for a few years, does some gunsmithing on the side–like I said, he’s an interesting guy. I believe the Grantville Gazette has bought a couple of his stories, though they have yet to come out in print. We’re thinking about collaborating together, or maybe starting a podcast.

In any case, this is going to be an AWESOME project that I’m sure will keep me occupied for the next long while. I can hardly wait to fry some bacon in this thing! Bacon, and baked beans, and cornbread … mmm!

Strangers in Flight — excerpt 8

Meditation always helped Reva to calm herself and focus on the problem at hand. She sat cross-legged on the cold metal floor with her hands folded palm-up in her lap. By shutting out everything around her and focusing on her breath, she was able to fight back against the panic and find a place of peace in her mind to serve as an anchor. Time became fluid and mutative, but it didn’t seem like long before her mind was clear and the confusion was gone.

A wave of revulsion passed through her as she remembered how the man in white had touched her. Back home, such an obscene act would have been unthinkable. A whole host of taboos and social mores governed how people could and couldn’t touch each other in public, and in the space of just a few seconds, that man had violated almost all of them. But the thing that disturbed her most was the total lack of shame with which he’d done it. To him, she might as well have been a robot. He’d shown absolutely no regard for her as a human being, and that scared her most of all.

It was clear to her now that the people in the hallway hadn’t been staring at her tattoos, but at her uncovered body. It wasn’t normal in this culture to go bare, and that meant that these people had all sorts of perverse notions of what going bare actually meant. None of them had touched her, but all of them had wanted to. They had all groped her with their eyes. The realization sickened her almost as much as if they had touched her.

She had to escape—that was abundantly clear. But how?

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Strangers in Flight

$9.99eBook: $2.99

Author: Joe Vasicek
Series: Sons of the Starfarers, Book 3
Genres: Science Fiction, Space Opera
Tag: 2014 Release

More info →

$1 off the ebook with coupon code: BUY DIRECT

FREE ebook when you buy the audiobook direct!

Strangers in Flight — excerpt 7

As thoughts like this raced through her mind, heavy footsteps sounded outside on the grated floor. A man entered her cell, this one different from all the others. He was tall and balding, with sunken eyes and a hooked nose. The fabric of his second skin was crisp and white, and his expression was cold and impassive, his mouth downturned in a frown that seemed like a permanent fixture.

The strong men stood by the hatch, clearly deferring to him as some sort of leader or administrator. He ducked through the hatchway as he entered, but once he was in, he regarded her coolly with eyes that seemed to penetrate right through her.

“Hello?” she said, struggling to sound confident. “My name is Reva. Who are you, and what do you want with me?”

He said nothing, but walked around her, taking in everything from her toes to the top of her head. At first, she thought he was admiring her tattoos, but from the glint in his eyes she wasn’t quite so sure.

“I asked, what do you want with me? Why are you treating me like this?”

He spoke a single word, calling for silence. Even though she didn’t understand the language he spoke in, the meaning was clear from his tone. She took a deep breath and stood awkwardly as he finished circling her.

Without warning, he reached out and pinched her breast. She gasped in surprise and knocked his hand away.

“Hey! What the hell are you—”

Stars flashed across her vision as he slapped her cheek with the back of his hand. The force of the blow nearly sent her to the floor, and the pain stretched across the whole side of her face. She rubbed her cheek as her shock turned to fear.

The man reached out and felt her again. She tensed and tried weakly to push him away, but he took her firmly by the wrist, squeezing just hard enough to make it clear that struggling against him was a very bad idea.

Stop! Please, stop!

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