Tag: Tyson Adams

Book review

Book review: Dexter is Delicious – Jeff Lindsay

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Do I really need to review this book? Or did I just want to say that I got Jeff to sign my copy of the book at the Perth Writers Festival? Or is it that adding Jeff Lindsay to my tags will raise my search profile? Who can really tell.

The reality is that all I need to say about this book is that is was very good and is a worthy edition to the Dexter series. Jeff continues to be one of my favourite authors, it may be time he became one of yours too (if he isn’t already). Also if the reading that Jeff delivered from his next book at the Perth Writers Festival – tentatively titled Double Dexter – is any indication of what Dexter fans can look forward to in September this year, then the series will continue strongly.

Now it would appear that I never have anything negative to say about the books that I read. I must love everything I read. I bloody wish!

The reality is that I have a very strict set of rules that I abide by in order to read a book.

  1. The book must be interesting enough for me to pick it up and start reading it.
  2. The book must maintain my interest enough to continue reading it.

Thus many books never make the grade to get to the review stage. It would be pretty strange to offer up a review of a book that I’ve never really read. It really isn’t the author’s fault that their books sucked so much that I never finished them. They can’t help if they spent so much time with mindless exposition that I’ve stuck my thumb in a meat slicer to prevent myself falling asleep. The author isn’t really responsible for spending so much time talking about the protagonist’s relationship with their cat and other meaningless crap. Thus when I fail to get more than 10-50 pages into a novel it is clearly my fault and denies me the right to reviewing the offending book. Which brings me to expanding my second rule:

  1. The book has ten pages to impress upon me the need to read further or else the book is mulching my fruit trees.
  2. The book then has until page 50 to convince me that the book isn’t mulch material with a passable first 10 pages.
  3. A third of the way through I’d better have been convinced to finish the book.

You see there is nothing worse than “sticking with a book” through sheer bloodymindedness. If the reward for ~400 pages of boredom is finishing the book and feeling that little tingle of accomplishment then really we could all do better. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t have time to waste on finishing mediocre books (yes Stieg Larsson, I am talking about your incorporeal ass).

Fun Articles, Humor, Reading

Going For Broke

Everyone will have now read, seen or heard the news that Borders and Amazon have been heading up a fetid creek for far too long. In the land of Oz (the non-magical and not infested by Munchkins version) the media are now weighing in.
See this article

You see I’m to blame. I brazenly buy books from places other than big chain stores. I have a Kindle and enjoy reading e-books. I am, in short, the devil incarnate and will be sacrificed on a pyre of celebrity biographies, cookbooks and other non-selling book store stock.

A Recent Photo of Me.

Lets take a look at some of the points that were made.

I’ll play devils advocate here and talk about taxes first. There are only two sureties in life; taxes and whining about them. In the non-Munchkin land of Oz we have a 10% goods and services tax (GST) on everything except food. This means that imports don’t have this tax, because they aren’t Australian. I guess we evil overseas book buyers paying taxes to a foreign country should pay another tax for daring to participate in the global economy. That way I can be more involved in the global economy with taxes in multiple countries.

Recently we also had a change in the Aussie dollar, it reached parity with the US dollar. For those who haven’t studied economics, this means that if I have one Australian dollar I can trade it for one American dollar, I know because I saw an article on it – tricky stuff that economics. Now that means that if I wanted to, say, buy materials that are needed to print books they would have gotten cheaper. Equipment upgrades, cheaper. Printing ink, cheaper. So clearly a stronger Aussie dollar must mean that it is harder to compete…………

The threat from online sales is, of course, just terrible. How dare our country sign up to a fair trade agreement and actually have its citizens abide by it. Who’d have thought that when you have a business competing in an international market it would mean that you would have to compete with stores all over the globe?

Of course this means that me and my evil kind are killing retail jobs.

One point that Bob Carr (former politician – which means dodgy) makes is about how it is all the government’s fault that books cost so much. He states that they would be 33% cheaper if only his benevolent company Dymocks was able to buy their books from overseas instead of locally. 33%? I think it is basic maths time for this particular businessman.

As an example I will use the latest action-thriller by Andy McDermott. His book Empire of Gold (which I’m looking forward to getting my fiendish hands on) has just come out recently and is available from Dymocks in Australia, or for the evil book buyers, from Amazon.
Dymocks Australia online price: $24.79 (paperback)
Amazon: $9.99 (paperback) or $24.63 (hardcover)
So let us take 30% from the Dymocks price:
$24.79 – 30%(7.44) = $17.35

Well, I’m not a maths genius, but at a guess I’d say that being able to buy a hardcover at USA retail prices for the same price as the paperback retail in Australia is not exactly a 33% difference for a paperback. In fact, to buy it would be more like a 60% difference between the paperback prices. So I’d have to say that I’m not looking as evil as I first thought.

I wonder where that other 33% is going? It certainly isn’t into royalties for writers. I’d just like to be reminded what the wonderful companies that have just left a hole in the heavenly book retail world went bankrupt not paying (analogy: imagine that the authors are Marsellus Wallace, the publishers are Butch, the retailers are Zed and Maynard, and in this version Butch just does a runner). While we are on the subject, I’m unsure whether Dymocks is a discounting chain store driving every other book store out of business or The Coalition for Cheaper Books.

Clearly I’m so evil and my kind are the cause of all problems in the publishing world. It could never be the fault of antiquated business models forgetting that there are only two important parts in the publishing industry, namely the readers and the writers, everything else is clearly expendable. Excuse me while I pay a 70% royalty to a new author for a book that you can’t buy from a publisher or store.

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Write what you know

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Who hasn’t received this sage advice?
What a fantastic way to make a new author feel comfortable writing a story. So in the interests of writing my first thriller I decided I needed to experience a few things.
In any thriller you have to have a hero. So my first stop was Man-Ville. For those unaware what Man-Ville is, basically it is a chain store catering to people who look like they just stepped in from the great outdoors and shave to leave a days worth of stubble. At this store I picked up several necessary supplies: boots, because no man wears anything but; pants that can actually hold a wallet, a pristine condition, SharpenedKnife brand pocket knife and a set of keys that would undoubtedly unlock every door ever made; and a button up shirt that can have the sleeves rolled up. Clothes maketh the man, so now I was a hero. Of course I could have waited to be rescued from a natural disaster and have the media bestow the title of hero upon me for surviving, but I felt it was easier to shop.
With my new attire I am now ready to go to a bar. It is very important to know the ins and outs of every single bar, pub, drinking spot and speak-easy around the area in which your novel is set. It is also a very good chance to pick up some valuable research in one of the key aspects of any thriller, physical violence. I wanted to start out easy and only take on two guys in a pub brawl before working myself up to the impossible odds scenarios expected in fiction.
The next part of my experience necessary for thriller writing came very quickly. Pain in the form of broken bones, bruising and a nasty knife wound were all particularly good experiences. Now when my hero gets hurt I can actually tell that tale from first hand experience. I tried to get someone to shoot me as well, but apparently most people seem more content kicking you repeatedly whilst you are laying unconscious on the ground.
The next step is to be in a car chase, preferably at ridiculous speeds whilst being pursued by ‘bad guys’. Unfortunately I don’t know any people likely to chase me, short of stealing a police car and taunting some traffic police I can’t see a genuine chase ensuing. So I decided to do some high speed driving along the city streets in my Toyota Prius. I really enjoyed taking corners as quickly as possible, driving through intersections with narrow misses all around, and out running an elderly gentleman on his bike.
Now my thriller is partly set in a neighboring galaxy where my hero’s knowledge and skills of current society proves invaluable in a far more advanced alien culture. Obviously space travel is inordinately expensive and time consuming for a first time author, this leaves very few options to suitably experience alien cultures. So in order for me to fully appreciate space adventures, other worlds and live amongst an alien culture, I moved to Siberia. This was a great break from sunny Australia. Siberia also proved a suitable chance for me to tread in the footsteps, or thrust in the manner, of Captain Kirk. Any space hero is required to emulate the ultimate in masculine space heroes. Admittedly Siberian women are not green, more a pale white to light blue.
So now I’m ready to write what I know. Much better idea than doing research.
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A bit about me.

Hi everyone and welcome to my blog.
I suppose I should start off with a little background about myself.
I was born in a small town in rural Western Australia. After spending my formative years growing up on the family farm I was abruptly packed off to boarding school to learn about why the city doesn’t like to spend money on rural schools.
Once at boarding school I discovered my love of being hung from balconies by my feet and being tormented for having an IQ in excess of 100. It was also here that I picked up the invaluable life long habit of procrastination.
After deciding that I didn’t have enough education I gave university a go and diligently proved that you can graduate from a science degree whilst either drunk or hungover. It was during a sober moment at university that I met my future wife and editor when she inexplicably didn’t run away when I introduced myself.
Not satisfied with punishing my liver with a mere Bachelors degree I signed on for a PhD before realising all too late that a PhD wouldn’t grant me the power to write prescriptions. Now highly over-educated and in need of a job I proceeded to move out of the city in order to lower my chances of employment. But, as fate would have it, a job in the government sector hunted me down and has since trapped me in paper work.
It was only then after crawling out from under a very important piece of triplicate I was burying for the requisite ‘filing time’ that I decided to turn one of my hobbies into a career. Since Metallica didn’t need a lead guitarist, and at 1.82m I’m too tall to be an Olympic weightlifter, I decided upon writing.
My first story was written at the age of 9 after discovering Douglas Adams. Like any other preteen, my writings reflected the last thing I had seen on TV. It was in year 7 that my teacher, Mr Melhuish, would encourage my writing further by actually praising it. It only took 22 years for this praise to overcome my diligent procrastination efforts.
I hope this blog will be of interest to some as I journey towards my first novel and beyond. Subscribe, comment and generally tell me how wonderful I am. I’ll try to return the favour.