[Worldwalker]

I read part of 'Fatherland' and then, I'll shamefully admit, skipped to the end. As much as I like alternate history, for some reason that didn't resonate with me. It was a good book, just not one for me. I definitely recommend it as an alternate WWII book, though.

The big problem with Karl's book isn't actually the premise (heck, I read fantasy, so if you word it well, you can convince me, at least temporarily, of almost any premise) but the writing. I strongly suggest that you read the sample before you take on the book. I am not kidding about it being an 80,000 word book squeezed into 440,000 words. It's entirely possible that, somewhere in there, he can convince me that the dirigible is possible. I question, however, whether it's actually possible to get that far.

That's what I've been talking about with regard to the need for an editor. Going back to Tom Clancy, there was the whole cement mixer subplot. These guys had a cement mixer full of explosives that they drove around with. In the end, nothing happened; the perfect example of "goes nowhere, does nothing." Back in the days when he wrote his first few books, an editor would have blue-penciled that section. It was just a distraction from what was really going on, and an author's job is to serve the plot, not random distractions which have nothing to do with it. But by then, Tom Clancy was a Big Name, and editors were either unwilling or unable to touch his words. So that bit of text stayed in, to the detriment of the story. It would have been a cleaner, tighter piece of prose without the cement mixer, but Tom Clancy was Tom Clancy, and a cement mixer he wanted, so a cement mixer we got.

I've seen this happen repeatedly with professional writing. An author+editor combo turn out some really good books, then the author thinks it's all him/her and refuses to allow any further editorial comments or changes. The results promptly begin to suck. There have been some discussions in this thread of prominent examples. You can never edit your own stuff. Even if your initials are LKH, you can't edit your own stuff. Having a dramatic public meltdown doesn't change this. (just ask Anne Rice)

That's basically what Karl Klein's problem is. He's written a book, and it's Good. Just ask his friends and family. Since it's Good, nothing in it should or could be changed. Thousand-word recitations of secondary characters' military resumes? Essential, or how will anyone know how much research he's done? Like a lot of writers with names like Rice, Clancy and Hamilton, he knows what he's got is Good and nobody is going to tell him otherwise. And, like those writers, his sales are going to be in decline. Unfortunately, having started out (before someone told them their writing was Good) quite a bit better, their sales started a whole lot higher.

Laurell Hamilton's statement about how she's going to write the things she wants (and not kill any characters because they're her imaginary friends) and anyone who doesn't understand is just not Good Enough is a sad thing to see from a published writer. It's a sign of someone who has lost the point. Except possibly in literary fiction (and I'll probably get someone from that genre disagreeing, too) there is no fiction written to be published that is not written for a market. Or, rather, there should not be. Certainly there is, but the people who write that are generally more prone to public acts of violence than to best-sellers.

In the long run, it's all about who, and how many of them, are going to buy something. If something's written to sell, sell it; if it isn't, don't publish it. There is no middle ground that will produce anything but a frustrated author and an annoyed audience.