Thursday, June 21, 2007

NOT A MILLION MILES!!

At Amazon.uk, an online reviewer said this about Daniel's and my alternate history novel, Dawn Crescent:

THIS PLOT IS NOT A MILLION MILES FROM WHAT HAS ACTUALLY OCCURRED!!

Well, er, that would be because it's alternate history.

7 comments:

John A. Karr said...

Whoa.

Is there a minimum age for posting a review in Amazon. Or sobriety test ...?

David said...

Or minimum IQ.

A few years ago, Wildside reissued the novel The Ghost and the Bonesetter by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, the 19th Century writer. As sometimes happens, the Amazon listing for that book mysteriously includes the name of a current Wildside author as a coauthor - me, in this case.

Some bozo "reviewed" the Le Fanu novel by saying that no one should buy it or any other novel by him because his coauthor, that Dvorkin guy, has leftwing essays on his Web site.

Poor Le Fanu! He died 70 years before I was born and a century before the Web.

My response to that review is still there, but Amazon removed the original review I was responding to, making for an odd effect.

Daniel Dvorkin said...

Based on the one star the guy gave it, I'm guessing he didn't like the politics, but I'm still kind of confused as to what his complaint was. "Not a million miles" -- does that mean he thinks it's too realistic? That can't be it.

Or, as John suggested, maybe he was just drunk.

John A. Karr said...

David,

Interesting, you and Le Fanu coauthoring and him dead 70 years earlier. Spidey plot-sense is tingling ... make him one nasty s.o.b. of a ghoul who can write like a muther, knocking off a few people in the city while the living writer gets greedy with a certain "bestseller" from the collaboration.

If you and Daniel don't want it, maybe I'll take it.

David said...

John, I toyed briefly with the idea of doing some sort of time-travel thing involving a contemporary author going back in time and coauthoring a novel with a famous writer of a previous age. But I don't think that would go anywhere worthwhile.

I like your idea a lot. I don't think Daniel is doing any writing or expects to have time to do so for quite a while yet. And I'm still stuck in The Time Travel Novel That Will Never Be Finished, so I think you should take that nifty idea and run with it. Maybe the writer ghoul could turn out to be, I dunno, a terrifying demonic creature that lives beneath a creepy hospital.

Speaking of which, I need to post a comment your blog. Wow, we're living in the future!

John A. Karr said...

David,

It occurred to me the other night that going after such a plot would have to avoid appearing as King's
The Dark Half.

It can still be done, however.

Envision employing two styles to contrast the two writers. One, short and declarative a la Hemingway. The other, more expansive, darker by degrees, more suspenseful, citing a good number of historical figures for an arcane feel, perhaps like Poe.

Mmmm. It could be done.

But who would the audience be?

Can ease up on the purely supernatural, but The Ghost and Mrs. Muir it will not be.



Doable.

David said...

Here's a twist that just occurred to me. The bad guy could be an anti-muse, a kind of literary vampire, possessing writers throughout the ages, living through them. That way, he could have a history involving some famous but odd writers of the past, but the story could be set in the present.