Ugh, hardly anything in the bookish blogosphere irks me more than authors whose only writing motivation is to make money.
TELL ME TUESDAY is a feature that oozed from the brains of Brittersweet from PLEASE FEED the BOOKWORM, and myself, after a mind-melting Armchair BEA Twitter party. It is a weekly, or bi-weekly feature depending on your reading style, where we ask you what you are reading now, and why, and what you will be reading next from your TBR pile, and why. Pili from In Love with Handmade is our *only child* feature follower and we luff her so much! We are all so curious why people read what they read.
ME
LET ME TELL YOU...
I first became interested in this book because of its cover after seeing it on Netgalley, and I still love it, the cover, that is...
I think everyone who requested it was approved, so a lot of people have this eARC. I started reading it soon after I received it in September. The beginning was lack luster and left me scratching my head in a few places, but I have a three chapters before DNFing rule, and it started to get interesting right before I had to bench it for other ARCs with closer publishing dates. It is about Sleeping Beauty's daughter.
Because I love the cover art so much I entered a giveaway for a hardcover edition for my bookshelves. One of the entries was for following the author on Twitter. A day, or so, after I added PoT back onto my currently reading Goodreads shelf, I saw a tweet from the author saying this was most likely going to be her last book.
I asked her why, thinking there was a health issue or something similar, and she directed me with a link to another author's blog post. This author/blogger was basically saying that the internet was destroying the Arts, and ebooks were making it impossible for authors to have a career in writing (being able to support yourself and family with just your book income).
Very few writers were able to do that before the internet and ebooks (maybe even less). Then he started comparing publishing to the music industry (which I have worked in at least part time, at any given point, for 42 years) and I can tell you, he was way off base with his comparisons. He then proceeded to say he was turning off the comment section on this particular blog post because he didn't post about this saddening subject to get sympathy comments. Ha!! I think he knew readers were going to tell him he was full of shite! But that is not what we are talking about here, so I will get back to my main subject.
After reading the guy's blog post, I went back to the tweet thread and commented that I felt calling something one creates for the sake of making money only, art, was not right. She fired back that she has a family of four to support. I then said I wished I could have supported my family with only my music, but I never quit writing songs and playing gigs. That's when she started back peddling to save herself. She snapped back that she is a hard worker, and was being forced to stop writing in a genre she loves. If she loved it she would ccontinue to write it even if she didn't make a dime. Funny she didn't mention how important this genre was to her in her original tweets.
SO HERE IS MY MAGICAL VIOLIN PLAYING MY HEART BLEEDS FOR YOU...
Now after going back and re-reading the conversation I am angry all over again. She at one point said she was still going to write, just not this genre anymore, and I gather from what I saw on her blog it is those formulaic drugstore romances I saw advertised on her sidebar. So I tweeted that she had just invalidated her original tweet of saying she wasn't going to write anymore books at all. She said she invalidated nothing.
Me thinks the lady thought she would get sympathy purchases of her book due out tomorrow...
She should be overjoyed she was published and people liked her book.
I need a martini...
*UPDATE*
After reading one of the comments below, it dawned on me; how does she know how much or how little the book is going to make if it hasn't been released yet? She certainly can't be basing it on pre-orders if it is the first book in a trilogy. Makes me think even more that the tweet's intention was to gather sympathy purchases.
Anyway, not all is lost in the author feels department. The other book I am reading was written solely because the author wanted there to be a YA Fantasy story with a wheelchair bound MC for his walking impaired son.
Xyz is the sequel to Napoleon Xylophone which I rated four stars and you can read my Goodreads mini-review, HERE. Again, I was lured in by the cover. Don't you just love it? I found out about Napoleon X from looking up this book.
LOVE IT!!!!
About this author
Frank Lambert always wanted to be a Zangulator, but had to settle for being a Chartered Engineer. He lives in North East England with his family and a Jack Russell who always looks guilty. Frank has two main projects on-going right now, Napoleon Xylophone and Witching Hole. Both of these trilogies have a young disabled school boy as the main protagonist. Frank was inspired to write these stories by his young disabled son, Mikey, who is absolutely perfect. Mikey wanted to read about disabled hero’s he could look up to and dream about becoming one day. Without Mikey, Xylophone and Witching Hole would not exist. Without these two stories, Frank Lambert the writer would not exist.
