I know this is late, but I went back and relistened to some parts, just to make sure that the ending meshed with everything that had happened.
It did. I will probably read (well, listen since I have it as an audio book) this one again. It made it really hard to start another book, whether reading or listening.
This book was satisfyingly Gothic. It was dark, it was eerie, it was creepy, even a little gory at times, but it was sooooo good. To me, it clocked in just shy of horror (which I don’t really like), so I loved it.
Set in the 50s in Mexico, it is written entirely in third-person limited, which is my favorite pov. It allows for the misunderstandings and guessing that plays such an integral part of this story. It wouldn’t be half as creepy if you knew things beyond the main character’s knowledge.
As an aside, I see the mention of fungi in articles and documentaries everywhere now, and that creeps me out a bit. Overlap into the real, so to speak. Still love mushrooms on my pizza, tho.
If you like the Gothic tales of the 1980s, you will love this story. It is even creepier, and more adult, but considering our advanced age if we enjoyed those 80s books when they were published…I think that’s okay. If your teen wants to read, I suggest you read it first to make sure the adult bits aren’t more than they are ready for. This isn’t a one up from R. L. Stine.
Since I listened to this on audio, I thought I would mention the narration. It was well done, the Spanish words clear, and the subtle British accents of some characters just as well done. The narrator made it easy to know who was speaking even before the text tagged the speaker.
This story has eerie overtones that reflect on current events and opinions, and I had an inkling as to what was going on…but it was so much worse!
I won’t write too much more, as I don’t want to give anything away, but there is sweet romance in it, too, as well as misogynistic bad guys and the strong female character that leads you through this tale.
A little late posting this, as I’ve already started this book. And no, it isn’t an independent-published book. Which is one reason I’m late posting…
Because I’d meant to only do this with indies..
And now I’m half way through (listening as I finally got a Libro.fm account) and I am just loving this. I’d forgotten how much I like Gothic novels (although, there are hints of Gothic in my own work).
And that Libro.fm supports indie bookstores, there’s still a hint of indie in this. Right?
Anyway, there are themes I love, so I figured I would do a book club post on this one, too, probably finishing next Sunday at the rate I’m going.
Then, I’ll get back to indie books if I can. I promise. 🤞
Have you even opened your fortune cookie, read the little slip of paper inside, and thought “wtf?”
Me, too.
I’ve also explained many to my kid (who is now 25!) I just finished doing so, and thought, why not share my analysis?
So the fortune is: Praise a fine day at night.
When I read it out loud, the kid gave me a side eye and asked “what does that mean?”
I think it means that at the end of an effort, you should thank those who helped you out. Or recognize a good job when it is done.
And not when you ask for it to be done again. That will only sound like a butter-up ploy.
And I probably is.
But by praising a job well done when it is accomplished, it will sound sincere. And if you are recognizing it when you aren’t asking for something more, it probably is sincere.
What interpretation might you give to these words?
Cut Her Out in Little Stars is by indie author Daniele Kasper, and it is available as a Kindle Ebook (purchase and download here).
Daniele lives in Central Michigan and is married to a horse trainer. According to her bio, she’s lived quite the traveling life; a part of me is so jealous. You can read more about Daniele here.
From the book blurb: A woman lost in time. A star system on the brink of war. A man haunted by past sins. Traitors lurk in the shadows while secrets threaten to put everyone’s life in danger in the cold depths of space. Can a woman trapped in a strange new future be the one to save them or will be she the spark that ignites the war?
I will admit, I’ve already started reading this book, so if you want to read along with me, I’ll wait to post my thoughts until next Saturday (May 29). I thought I’d just gotten the book for this “book club read-along” thing I’m trying to do, but it was part of a book swap, so I need to catch up and write a review.
On a recent Write Night episode (a Twitch TV stream and podcast hosted by author Travis I. Sivart–you can find it wherever you get your podcasts, including Pandora), Travis, Robert Turk, and I discussed our experiences on the different self-publishing platforms. I wanted to follow up a bit as I now have copies of the same book for examples from the three platforms I use: Ingram Spark, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (or KDP), and Lulu.
I use these three platforms for different reasons: Ingram Spark gains me a bit of creditability for bookstores to purchase titles, KDP is the best way to get my books on Amazon (though Ingram feeds in, I think KDP books gets higher placement on Amazon) and lets me take advantage of the Kindle Lending Library benefits, and I use Lulu to sell through the DreamPunk Press website.
First, a word of warning: I am very opinionated. You may not like what I have to say about your favorite platform.
From left: Trade paperback products of identical titles (Little Pink Book by Zahra Jons) from Ingram Spark, Kindle Direct Publishing, and Lulu.
Let me start with Ingram Spark. (Their product is above, far left (or top if you’re on a mobile device).)
This is the most recent addition to the three platforms I have experience with. John Hartness from Falstaff Books gave me the advice to use Ingram Spark. He told me this is the gateway to getting your books in bookstores and libraries (that’s how he did it) and this is why I use them.
The only reason I use Ingram Spark is for this access to bookstores.
To be perfectly honest, I do not like the print quality on the covers and though I don’t particularly hate the paper quality inside the book, other printers seem to use a better quality paper. The tones on the cover print out cool, instead of the warm, almost coral tones the artist intended. The sharpness of the graphics is also lost in the print.
There is a fee to set up your titles in Ingram Spark: $49.00 per title. Now you can bundle your physical book and ePub together for that price, but only if you publish them at the same time, and you will need an ePub file of your title (they do not make it for you). If you want to take advantage of some of the benefits of publishing exclusively in KDP for the first bit of your book being available, you need to be careful. There are ways to get a coupon for this fee, by becoming a member of IBPA or ALLI (I’ll put more about these in another post).
They are also on the expensive side to purchase author copies from. The cost for author copies is more than from KDP, but pretty much on par with Lulu. You are getting the exact same book that bookstores would get, so you would be offering an identical product, which can help with creditability. Shipping times seem to be the slowest among the platforms.
You can use your own ISBN or purchase a “publishing bundle”, which, I think, includes 2 ISBNs (one for physical book and one for digital), and some of the other tools they offer publishers to “help sell your book”. This is on par with what you would get from Bowkers purchasing a small set of ISBNs for a single book (in fact, since it might be just what you are purchasing, but I am not sure).
The Ingram Spark interface is the hardest of the three to use, but they have “higher standards” for your files. Though since they have my least-liked product, I’m not certain it does any good for the small or self-publisher. Their interface will hang for me on a regular basis, and I will have to close down my browser and log back in – though that may be due to a high volume in users.
Now, let’s move on to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP. (Their product is above, in the middle.)
**I just want to state from the outset that I loved Createspace and I do not understand why Amazon got rid of it and moved the whole thing to KDP (I mean, I know it was a business decision and they had a reason…I just don’t like the new interface and capabilities). This is a particular beef of mine. They got a big black mark in my books for that alone.
The biggest reason to use KDP is access to Amazon and all that readership the company has groomed over the years. It also offers the Kindle Lending Library, which has its own audience of rabid readers all by itself. And hands down, the Amazon Kindle paperwhite the best e-reader available on the market, and your Kindle book is easily accessed from one. I mean, a user can purchase your e-book straight from their Kindle.
The color quality on the KDP cover is the best and most true to what the cover designer intended. (I would say this is because I don’t have to do extra tinkering like I do with Ingram and can just use the file straight from my graphics person, but that wouldn’t explain Lulu’s cover.) You can see this in the photo, and in person it is quite distinct. The pinks should be warm, almost coral, like in the photo. The KDP copy is the only one that retained that warmth. Unfortunately, it lost graphic details, just as the Ingram Spark cover did.
There is no fee for setting up your title in KDP (a big +), and you can easily offer a Kindle version – just make sure you read the restrictions on offering digital copies elsewhere if you want to take advantage of the Kindle Lending Library. And of course, Kindle e-books only work in Kindles or in Kindle apps.
KDP has the most affordable author and proof copies, but they now place a line across the proof cover indicating it is not for resale. True author copies cannot be purchased until the title is for sale on Amazon, so an author cannot purchase copies from KDP for a release party, unless they want to put it out for sale then spend some money on expediting printing and mailing. This doesn’t do any favors for an author trying to build buzz about their book with a release party that coincides with the publication. This is not a problem with Ingram Spark or Lulu.
KDP lets you use your own ISBN or use an Amazon ISBN (for free). If you use an ISBN from Amazon, bookstores can tell is an Amazon ISBN and may not purchase your title through distribution (after all, Amazon is a big competitor who has been responsible for many a book store closing); you can pay an additional fee to establish your own imprint (but bookstores can still see it’s an Amazon ISBN; Amazon just added an imprint to their account in Bowker).
The KDP platform is easy to use (I guess – it still isn’t as easy as Createspace), and certainly not as finicky as Ingram Spark (though the quality standards at Ingram may be one reason bookstores will buy indie books from them – but I caveat that as more hype than anything else). It also lets you create your Kindle e-book file from your print files (though I upload a pdf for print and a text file from Word for digital – again, that will be another blog post).
Last, but certainly not least, is Lulu. (Their product is far right (or bottom if you are on mobile) in the photos).
Now, I do not have my titles listed in Lulu’s book store; I use an app to link the title in the DreamPunk Press Shopify website to Lulu – and they print it when ordered and then ship it directly to the purchaser. Though I usethe app specially developed for Shopify, there is another app available for websites hosted on sites. If you contact Lulu, they will send you information (they gave me a lot of help when I set up the app on Shopify).
I love the copies I get from Lulu: the details on the cover are sharp and the paper quality is excellent. The only issue with the cover is that it too came out very cool toned, but even the cover designer conceded the detail still made it the best product.
There is no fee to set up a title in Lulu. You get the same opportunities for Global distribution as you do using KDP, including Amazon. If you distribute an e-book through them, it can get that same Global distribution. I do not know how bookstores regard distribution from Lulu (though Lulu claims it gets you into Ingram).
Author copies cost about the same as for copies purchased from Ingram (again, more expensive than from KDP). However, you can purchase copies from them before your book is available for purchase (which I use them for, since KDP now puts an author copy mark on the cover for copies purchased before it is published on the platform and limits the number of copies you can purchase before publication). CAVEAT: I don’t offer my books for sale via Lulu, I only use them to purchase those initial copies and to link to DreamPunk Press.
You will need your own ISBN. This can be expensive, but Bowkers now offers self-publishing ISBN packages that are more palatable for the self-publishing author. If you are a small press (like DreamPunk Press), you will be buying your ISBNs in bulk, anyway, and getting them at a discount.
Now – if you are putting something like a personal family calendar or a personal journal or personal photo book (yes, you can do these at Lulu) you do not need an ISBN. You only need an ISBN if you are going to distribute your book. So, if you are using KDP (and not Ingram), you COULD use Lulu for those early copies (just don’t publish them to Lulu’s bookstore and use the selection that they are for personal use only).
It is very easy to use Lulu’s platform (easier even than KDP!). The interface for the app is also easy to use, though a little different from their regular platform. The only downside is that the two are not connected, so I upload files to their regular platform to purchase author copies, then load the same files in the app for customers to purchase. NOTE: you need to supply your own bar codes if you want them on your books, adding them to the files before uploading them to Lulu (Amazon and Ingram put them on the books for you). You can get them free at several online sites; choose one that works for you (and yeah, this sounds like another blog post from me). If you want to load your book to their bookstore, you need to select that option at initial set up.
Overall – My favorite for quality of product is Lulu, and that is where I prefer to purchase my author copies, even if it is more expensive. My second choice is Amazon, simply because it is the most cost-effective for an author – I can offer a steeper discount for in-person sales and still make a buck or two – and they have built-in readership audience rabid for new books (as long as I can get them to notice mine). Ingram is good, but they seem to have the longest shipping times, and they are pretty much on par with Lulu for the cost of the books, but their cover quality fails my tests. However, if you want to get your title into a physical book store, Ingram is your best bet – but you still need to advertise to booksellers (and again, that will likely be yet another blog post from me).
These are not the only self-publishing or small-publisher platforms available, just the ones I have experience with. What are some others that you have used? I can always check them out and update my preferences if I need to. Leave your favorite self-publishing platform in a comment.
I finished this book and I think I need to schedule more time to read these. But that will come in another post
For this book, I want to continue the discourse on author voice, as it is quite distinct, and as I mentioned before, to me very Japanese.
I mentioned previously the shorter sentences and limited description. This makes the voice come across as young, but also, and more importantly I think, naive. It is not so much the voice of a child, but the voice of someone who has little experience in the world.
This is true for the main POV character in God’s Mountain. She has not left her small, poor village, and the amount of work it takes to survive means she has thought very little of the rest of the world.
There are religious and mystical undertones in the story from the outset, with the description of a man escorting his elderly father to the mountain to die so as to not be a burden on the family. It is not the young man’s choice, but the father’s. There is a dignity in the father’s words that dug deep into my emotions. For me, the emotion in this scene is palpable, even with the sparsity of description. In my opinion, the lack of descriptors for the mountain and the journey makes the reader focus more keenly on the emotional turmoil.
The naive and unworldly quality of the character voice lends to the mystical feel of the story. It sounds very much like a mythical retelling of folklore, which it is, in a way. But it is told close and first hand, pulling the reader closer to the turmoil in the story.
The simplicity in the telling also lends to the idea of innocence in the telling. That first scene hints to the reader what is coming, but leaves the main character unburdened by that knowledge. You feel for her from the beginning. It roots you firmly in her corner.
The author’s voice in this piece is so much a part of the story, that if you knew Midori, as I did, you would wonder if it was fable or fact. So much of the story is shared in the way that Midori would share stories in person.
This is a well-worth reading tale, even if it is hard to get into at first as the voice seems so foreign to what i would identify as the Western author voice. We all (I mean, we all should) know and love reading Haiku, and there is that quality to the words chosen in God’s Mountain, the dense compaction of emotion in very few, but highly measured, words.
If you read along with me, what do you think of the author’s voice? Is there another voice you would compare it to? Contrast it to?
I know I am late for a concluding post for this book, but…I am not finished reading it. I am struggling…not because there is an issue with the book, but because I am rereading it so close to Midori’s passing.
And the whole book is about the traditional, ritual sacrifice that Japanese elders would make for their families when they became older. It hits a little close to home when I think about Midori’s mind set when she told me she’d been diagnosed with cancer, and that she was simply going to put her affairs in order so that her children’ would not be burdened by it after she passed.
In that first post about starting this book, I mentioned that I expected a lot of Midori to be in this book, I just wasn’t prepared for how much would be in there. I have cried.
But I want to give you something, Make a start on discussion, and I think I would like to discuss the author’s voice, that elusive quality that editors and agents talk about so often but can never seem to really describe. They just know it when they see it.
Midori, in this book, uses a very distinctive voice (she also wrote as O. Snow). This voice, to me at least, is very Japanese. The sentences are short and to the point. Very reflective of Midori, the person.
When speaking to her in person, it is obvious that this is because English was her second language, and Japanese was her native tongue. And though you cannot read the Japanese accent she spoke with, having that personal, prior knowledge, I can hear her speaking the words to me. I think anyone familiar with the cadence of the Japanese, whether speaking in Japanese or English, would hear the words in a similar manner.
As an editor, when I first read this book several years ago, I cringed. I didn’t like the short, somewhat stilted sentences. My own writing, then as now, uses longer sentences and sometimes flowery wording. Back then, I had only spoken to Midori long enough at a writing conference for her to gift me a copy of the book. Back then, I thought I could help her tell her stories.
She didn’t need help.
This story is moving, and the somewhat formal, stilted language seems appropriate now. It adds an authentic quality, making it seem more memoir than fiction, though it cannot be. It makes the characters more Japanese, in a way, setting their language apart from the flowery, long-winded English so often used in Western story-telling.
It is an authentic voice that many an editor may have destroyed if given the opportunity, believing it needed to become more “westernized” for the American reader.
With this reading, I don’t think it does. I have learned an appreciation for the Japanese “voices” made truer by the sentence structure and formality.
If you are reading along with me, what are your thoughts about the “voice” of this story? Do you think it lends to the story, or takes away from it because it is so far from what we would usually read?
The sun is out and the temps are above freezing and I’m sitting outside the tire shop while the technician puts two new tires on the kid’s van. Well, its my van, but its what the kid drives, so…
The back end of the vehicle has been repaired with a hatch that doesn’t match, and there are visible rivets along the edge of the patch alongside. Hence the moniker “Frankenvan”.
I think the kid was six when we bought the van new to replace the old Dodge I’d been driving. That van’s radio didn’t work anymore and the hatch used to stick midway closed so I’d have to jump on it to get it down. I’m sure that was funny to watch, especially if I was in a skirt and heels for work.
It was strange to buy a brand new car. It was the first time I’d bought one new.
My very first car was a used Chevy Citation hatchback, bought just after I’d graduated high school and started working a pretty much full-time job. My grandfather helped me get a good deal. I got a loan for the 2500 bucks it cost. I’m not sure you can buy a drivable car for that much nowadays.
That first Dodge van was bought soon after the kid was born. It was difficult getting the car seat into the little 2-door Mazda 323 my husband had. We still kept the 323, so we became a 2-car family.
Well, 3 car actually–my husband had a ’68 Javelin to drive around in, too. Still has it in the garage waiting to be made drivable again. But that car story is for another musing.
The technician working to put the tires on the Chrysler is an older man, a little stooped. My husband knows him, just as my husband knows a lot of small-time car guys. We bring our vehicles here because we know him. And he does a good job, though it might take him a little longer than a younger man would take. I watch him inspect the underside of the van when he takes the first tire off, checking for too much rust and holes. He sighs, but seems satisfied that it’s okay.
He’s the only one working here; he’s the only one ever. If he’s sick, the place is closed. But I don’t recall him being sick much.
Because of the pandemic, the chairs are set outside for those waiting for their car. You always have to wait. It’s a small lot and there isn’t really room to drop off a car and come back later. He’s working outside, in the sun, a single jack holding up the back of the van. He chats with me, asking how my hubby is, how the kid is, telling slightly off-color jokes. Nothing to make me upset.
He’s almost finished with the van, putting the last lug nuts on the wheel, when another customer shows up to have work done.
I dig out my credit card to pay, and we wait–and wait–while his contraption finds the internet and finally completes the sale. I ask how his sister is; he chuckles and tells me another joke. I offer a tip in cash (my hubby made sure I had it when I left the house) and he laughs and accepts it.
It was a pleasant just-over-an-hour stint in the sun. I started this post on my phone, finishing when I got home, just to get all the thoughts down.
You don’t get the visiting and camaraderie at a big shop. You sit in their cold waiting room, watching horrible gossip TV on mute, keeping three chairs away from anyone else (it’s a pandemic!).
This was a nice break in my day; it got me out of the house. I got to talk with someone other than my hubby (in person, no less). And I know my business went to help someone local keep their shop doors open.
For this next book I’m going into a slightly different direction with God’s Mountain by Midori Bamba. This is another novella, since so many of us are getting busy again right now and finding time to read can be hard.
I knew Midori (and honestly, I know most of the writers I’ve read books for these book club posts). Midori passed away last September from cancer. I wasn’t able to go see her before she died because of the pandemic.
She didn’t want to give me COVID just because she had cancer. I think she was bitter about her diagnosis. That came across in her emails and socially distanced conversations. I think anyone would; she was diagnosed at stage 4. It was basically a fait accompli that she was dying.
She was also conscious that this brought back memories of my mother’s diagnosis of stage 4 lymphoma back in 2012. My mom died in 2018.
Midori was deeply religious, but also deeply Japanese (she was born in Otaru), and I think this book will reveal something of that. Please join me in this read. You can find God’s Mountain at Amazon.
Tara Moeller 