Newsletter #57 — Literary Coincidences
April 15, 2023
Newsletter #57 — Literary Coincidences
Birds of a Feather — On April Fool's Day I woke up to a big surprise. I thought it was a joke, but no: fellow blogger and fellow Earl Derr Biggers fan Lou Armagno mentioned two of my books in his blog, The Postman on Holiday. I think you might enjoy reading "Birds of a Feather: Tony the Parrot and Cookie the Cockatoo."
By further coincidence (??), a bird plays a major role in Exit Velocity, the novel that I've entered in two contests and which is with two publishers who are, presumably, considering it.
Incorrect Information in Fiction — A few weeks ago I started to read a novel set in 1907, small-town USA. Within the first fifty pages of the story, the author had a baseball player who played in the Negro Leagues. Nope. The Negro Leagues were created in 1920 by Rube Foster.
Also within the first fifty pages the author had a teen thinking about how people feared Bolshevism. Nope. The Bolsheviks came to being in 1903, but weren't their own political party until 1912, and were not talked about in US newspapers until 1918.
I stopped reading the book. Here's why. It so happens that I know about baseball and I know about the Bolsheviks and so, I could, if I wanted to, ignore these errors. But what about other errors the author might have made, on subjects I don't know about? I would have read the novel and absorbed this information as if it were true. I would have "false facts" floating around in my brain. Which is why I am unforgiving about many factual errors in fiction. I do not stop reading all the books that contain such errors: it depends on the importance of the error and also on how easy it would have been for the author to check and correct. In the case of the Negro Leagues and Bolshevism: super easy to check and correct.
About a week after I put down this particular novel, I was reading Amazon reviews of another novel, one I was considering putting into my cart. One reviewer gave the book only two stars because he felt it contained many factual errors. Such as that in 1917 somebody is looking out of a hotel window in San Francisco and sees the Golden Gate Bridge . . . which was constructed during the 1930s. I crossed the book off my list.
Mule Consultations — I've finished the main work of Draft #6. There's one little "subsection" that I want to fine-tune, and in order to do that I need to consult a few experts. I wrote a letter to an organization, explaining what info I need. And I wrote a similar letter to a Facebook friend. The Facebook friend has responded, the organization has not yet done so. (And AI isn't up to the task, in case you're wondering.)
As soon as I hear from both parties, I should be able to rework the subsection in two or three days, and then I'll hand the manuscript to Phil, who will be reading it for the first time . . . red pencil in hand.
Quoting Myself — Quoting myself required re-reading blogs and looking for something pithy.