It's All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses.

There's a novel put out by PublishAmerica (which essentially makes it a self-published vanity title) that's getting a lot of attention right now in newsgroups and on the blogosphere. The title is Night Travels of the Elven Vampire, and it's by LaVerne Ross. It would be nice to be able to say that it's getting attention because of its superior writing, but alas, that's not the case.  It's being held up as one of the worst novels ever written, particularly in the sf/fantasy field. It's about a psychic vampire and her true love, a motorcycle-riding, alien elven werewolf vampire who is also a prolific author and pirate. To make things just a little bit worse, the original cover is a manipulation of a picture of Orlando Bloom as Legolas, modified to look vampiric (elven, but vampiric). This cover has since been pulled, as has the book itself, ostensibly for revision.

The main concentration of commentary about all this seems to be on a LiveJournal post reviewing the book. (Fair warning: the reviewer is unfettered in her use of vulgarities.) Much merriment is derived from quoting passages of it, with numerous errors in punctuation, usage, sentence structure and story logic. The reviewer is correct: the book is a mess. Exposure to even brief passages of it is certain to reassure an aspiring writer of even moderate competence that his or her own work isn't as bad as the writer sometimes suspects while lying awake in the wee hours of the night.

Half a paragraph of the novel should suffice to give you a preliminary idea of its problems:

He walked over to the bookcase choosing an old book covered in reddish brown leather with beautiful etchings on it. He held it as though it were precious to him, he opened the pages that were starting to crumble and looked at the small hand-painted picture within. He glanced down at the family in the picture. His parents, brother, and there by his brother's side was himself. The way was he changed, before that fatal night. He didn't want to thing of the time that hadpassed since he had last seen the sun. Felt its warmth on his skin. He closed the book and replaced it, no one thought him strange, not anymore. Because he was a writer, and all knew that writers were strange.

As I commented elsewhere, I don't understand how someone can write this, even if she typed it in a rush and never looked at it again. It makes me want to explain patiently to this person how English is supposed to work--except that I'm certain she'd never listen. She's a published novelist, sort of, and I'm not, yet.

This is all fine and dandy, a great negative example to show beginning writers what to avoid, and fun for all ages. But as I read through four pages of comments at the bottom of the review, I found myself feeling sorry for the book's author.  I wrote:

Subject: I feel sorry for her. Is that wrong?
No, really. Anyone so obviously self-deluded, so utterly lacking in critical faculties, proofreading skills or knowledge of basic punctuation and sentence structure is to be pitied, especially if she knows that hundreds of people are laughing at her awfulness. I heard once in a news story that incompetent people usually lack the competence to realize their own deficiency. If that's the case, coming across an entry like this would probably be a bit of a shock for her.

But I linked to this anyway. Seeing the worst of the worst (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) is valuable for competent but insecure writers.

I later added:

I forgot to pass along my own favorite bit of bad writing, from a local Star Trek fanzine circa 1974. This is from memory, but it's probably pretty much verbatim:

"Everything was exactly the same, except now the entier crew including the Captian, were now dead."

*****

Rather than defend this person as I sort-of intended to do, I find that I've just piled on with everyone else. It's true that the prose itself is indefensible, although, as one person commented, there may actually be a decent story premise at the root of the thing. The author herself has posted in the Amazon reviews that editing was promised but not delivered. I would just say that no manuscript should ever be delivered to a publisher, or to an editor, in this condition, but I can understand her frustration if editing was indeed promised. She feels that a handful of people have passed around a single copy of her book, and used it to attack her personally all over the Internet. She's not entirely wrong, although nearly all of the criticism is directed at the writing rather than at her. For many writers, an attack on the writing feels like an attack on the writer. Obviously, most of the people who commented have not purchased it, but are riffing off the posted excerpts and descriptions.

Nevertheless, the book should never have been published without (at least) a thorough edit, and possibly not at all. [Warning: bad segue coming.] Correct grammar, punctuation and so on are important, not just for published novels, but also for blogs. As it happens, there's a good little rant I read over the weekend on the subject of observing good English in blogs.  Here's the link: Eats, Blogs and Leaves.

But still, I worry.  Is it fair to make fun of this writer's incompetence? How would I feel if a few hundred people were to spread a whole jolly meme about how bad my Mâvarin books are

I hope I never find out.

Karen