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News, Fiction Updates & General MusingsThe Walking Dead Season 3: Why it’s the Best Show on TV
SPOILER ALERT: This blog post may contain spoilers up to Episode 5 of The Walking Dead Season 3. If you haven’t yet watched to this point, here’s your warning.
I’ll confess something, right up — I wasn’t actually that fond of Season One of AMC’s The Walking Dead. After hearing rave reviews all round and being a general lover of all things horror, particularly all things zombie, it pretty much became essential viewing.
I was wowed by the opening episode and its 28 Days Later-esque doom and gloom, and the characterisation of Morgan and Duane – a single man with a child forced to hide away from his zombified wife every evening – was touching.
The remaining five episodes of Season One didn’t really do much for me, mainly due to the supporting characters. We had the clichéd Deep South racist, Merle, the Chinese pizza delivery guy, an African-American called ‘T-Dog’…it all just seemed a little, well, over-stereotypical for comfort, as it blazed through its first six hours killing characters whose names we hadn’t even had the chance to pick up. Season One felt like more of a pitch of what the show could cover over the space of a few seasons than a coherent season.
Season 2, on the other hand, began by attempting to address the problem of characterisation by slowing everything down to snail pace, with a tiring search for a little girl called Sophia. The group wound up on Herschel’s farm, which seemed to have some sort of protective shield around it from all things ‘walker’ and the rest of the outside world for half a season.
The group seemed too safe. The characterisation seemed forced. The show became…boring.
The Mid-Season Revival
And then, almost by magic, producer Frank Darabont left the show and along came Glen Mazarra on his trusty steed. The second half of Season Two was all about picking up the pieces and clearing up the mess of the first half. It improved the speed of the pace somewhat, and slightly improved characterisation, but it was still pretty clear that Season Three would be the season where things were really put to the test and given a shot.
After five episodes, I can proudly say that Season Three has propelled The Walking Dead to the dizzy height of ‘best show on TV’ right now.
How has it achieved such a status?
Should Writers Blog About Writing?
I’ve seen lots of opposition to the idea that writers should blog about writing since I started blogging about writing back in June.
The main argument against is that everything that can be written about writing already has been written, and by much more established sources at that. If you’re after comprehensive walkthroughs on marketing, The Creative Penn has it covered, whereas The Writing Bomb provides a useful first-hand insight into the world of publishing.
Kristen Lamb, the founder of MyWANA, recently argued in favour of this point on her blog. She states that ‘we don’t need another writing blog, and it isn’t helping that other social marketing experts are encouraging this nonsense.’
Now, to some extent, I agree with Kristen — she’s a great blogger who has earned a lot of success through her somewhat unconventional stance on social media and blogging. She fights for something that I am definitely in support of — restoring the ‘social’ side to social media, after it has become somewhat lost under piles of link-spam.
However, I partly disagree regarding writers blogging about writing. In fact, I think that blogging about writing can be a useful tool to reach out and connect with fellow writers. That said, I do think it can alienate readers somewhat, and that is something I will discuss later in the post.
Write for Pleasure, Not for the Pennies
It’s something of a cliché that writers don’t make any money. Of course, it is a myth, because plenty of writers out there are rolling in their millions, guaranteed a new bestseller regardless of the quality or standard of the prose.
Then again, that probably accounts for 1% of writers, maybe even fewer. Writing as a ‘career’ is one to shy away from, a hobby that grows out of control. ‘You’ll never make any money,’ people say. ‘What if it doesn’t work out?’
I just want to provide a little bit of context so this whole thing seems more legitimate–I’m a 20-year-old writer studying for a degree in English with Creative Writing at university. I’ve wanted to write for as long as I can remember, prose fiction being the area that has always appealed to me. But writing seemed to have something of a celebrity status as I went through my teenage years–my dream seemed to fade away the more I realised that becoming a ‘successful writer’ is just as lucky a break as, say, a successful actor. It isn’t just a case of writing a good story.
At first, the realisation scared me. It terrified me, in fact–now my career of choice was pretty much off the list, what did I try? Journalism was, and probably still is, an option. I wrote for a few music websites, and as much as I loved my time there, the world of fiction still called my name. I thought about a few other potential career paths: teaching, criminal psychology, etc. But still, it was my stories that gave me the most pleasure.
Amazon Removing Reviews: Why it’s Bad for Indie Authors
Notice your Amazon page looking a little… well, barer than usual?
After a number of controversies surrounding sock puppet book reviews in 2012, Amazon have decided to go nuclear and remove thousands of book reviews from their website. We’re talking everything from legitimate reviews to fake sock-puppet cases.
Let me get one thing straight from the off–it’s kind of good that Amazon have finally addressed a flawed review system whereby anybody can create a number of accounts and post multiple reviews. It’s also good that authors are now unable to leave scathing reviews for the books of competitors just to boost their own rank.
However, the goodness pretty much stops there.
Amazon removing reviews
I first heard about Amazon removing reviews when a reviewer of mine, who received a copy as a gift, informed me that they were having trouble submitting a review. It wasn’t a raving 5-star arselick, but a middling 3-star critique. It was honest, well put together, and exactly what I was looking for when I submitted the book to several trusted reviewers around the web. Strange, I thought.
The next thing I heard of Amazon removing reviews was over at Joe Konrath’s blog. Konrath has put together a good argument of why the move is a negative one from his perspective, and has submitted a great protest email to Amazon. I urge you to head over there and check it out–it’s well worth a read.
Why Amazon removing reviews is a bad thing
For the likes of J.K. Rowling, Amazon removing reviews will be barely noticeable because of the sheer number of reviews they have.
However, for new authors, acquiring reviews is a much harder process. I’m not talking about fake, sock-puppet reviews where one sets up multiple accounts to sing their own praises–it’s good that those reviews are being weened out. I’m talking about the honest book reviewers who are now required to have purchased the book on Amazon to share their thoughts.
Twitter Spam: What is Spamming & How Do I Avoid It?
There is a brutal four-letter word out there that nobody likes to be accused of. The sort of word that can cripple confidence and force one to rethink entire marketing strategies. It’s a silent word, a word often whispered about in small groups before somebody finally finds the balls to hit you with the accusation. Of course, I’m talking about spam.
But what is spam, really?
I’ve seen many definitions of the word banded about. Is spam the regular posting of updates? Is it relentless sales-talk and link sharing? Is every link-share spam, for that matter?
According to the Twitterverse, it’s all of these and none of these.
The Twitter Spam Witch-Hunt
Straight up, I’d just like to clear my conscience and say I’ve never been directly accused of spam, whether that be Twitter spam or any other form. I like to think that I share a variety of types of updates that cover myself in that respect. If you want some advice on doing the same, then this and this article should point you in the right direction.
However, I’m almost certain that 90% of you good, law-abiding writers (myself included) have had that paranoid fear of spamming at least once in your Twitter careers. The fear that the spam police are going to ignore all of your updates and pull you up for that one link you share, tarnishing your reputation forever. Sound familiar?
It is a witch-hunt at times. This is probably due to the fact that actual spam, which I personally define as doing nothing but blowing your own trumpet every hour, is so widespread that an eyebrow is bound to rise at any link or promo shared.
The Common Mistake 99% of Writers Make With Their Book Description – Guest Post
The following is a guest post from author Mark Edwards.
I spend a lot of time reading and analysing book descriptions on Amazon. Last year, when Killing Cupid was stuck just outside the top 100 on Kindle, I became convinced it was because of the description. So I studied the books in the top ten and tried to work out what it was that made those descriptions work so sell. Then I rewrote the Killing Cupid blurb.
An hour later, sales had doubled and the book was in the top hundred. A week later, it was in the top ten.
Now, as a book description writer for hire, I get a lot of clients asking me to critique their current description. And there is one mistake that nearly everyone makes. It’s not surprising at all. Before I was a novelist, I was a marketing manager and part of my role involved training new marketers in how to write good copy. They made exactly the same mistakes that novelists make when trying to write sales copy – because that’s what your book description is. It’s purpose is to sell.
When you are so close to the material, when you’ve spent months or years working on your book, you know it inside out. You live and breathe it. You inhabit the minds of your characters, you know where they live, understand their world and their motives. You created the plot and know the cause and effect, the ebb and flow. It’s your baby, and you love it.