IndieView with reviewer Isabela Morales of The Scattering

Today’s IndieView is with Isabela Morales of The Scattering. I met Isabela through her forum on Amazon and later tracked her down to her website. Reading the reviews I realized I had stumbled across a real hard core Sci-Fi junkie – Great! This interview is really good, funny, insightful, and just downright interesting.  Here’s a little excerpt of what awaits…

It really is nice to have living authors to follow.  Is that a weird thing to say? Isabela Morales 1 February 2011

How did you get started?

I’ve been reading science fiction almost as long as I’ve been reading—I can trace my first knowledge of evolution, space travel, time travel, and counterfactual history straight to a science fiction anthology of the 1930s my grandfather gave me when I was ten (Before the Golden Age, edited by Isaac Asimov, of course).  That gift went over rather better than his attempt to teach me square roots at age four…  At age twenty, I’m a lowly undergrad college history student, and probably still can’t do square roots without my handy TI-83, but all this time later I still love science fiction.  And while I’m pretty sure that I’m a physics student somewhere out there in the multiverse, in this universe at least I’m content just talking and writing about Daniel Faraday (requisite LOST reference—sorry).

When I realized just how many people there were out there not only interested in science fiction but also taking the plunge and publishing their work themselves, I was flabbergasted.  When I realized just how many of their books I could get for free, I jumped right in and turned the Scattering (previously a sort of free market, space colonization, science fictional salmagundi) into a dedicated review blog—although I do digress for the occasional Ayn Rand rant.

How do you review a book? Is it a read first, and then make notes, or do you make notes as you go along?

I read books for the blog exclusively on my Kindle these days—which makes highlighting, note-taking, and sharing notes online as I read virtually effortless (and that’s my requisite plug for Amazon, my favorite corporate shadowy overlord).

What are you looking for?

I’m an eclectic reader—hard SF, soft SF, social science SF, military SF, thrillers, horror, paranormal romances, cyberpunk, steampunk, insert-punk-here.  I’m the same way about television: I watch an extraordinary amount of television, from Fringe to Boardwalk Empire to multiple permutations of the Real Housewives.  I just want a good story and memorable characters.  Mostly the characters drive narratives for me.  As a history student, I’m fascinated by people, and when an author gives me a range of dramatis personae I can either love or hate, I’m hooked.

If a book has a great plot, great characters, but the grammar is less than perfect, how do you deal with that?

I’m the sort of person who will like a friend’s Facebook comment purely because its author cleverly sidestepped a comma splice, or made admirable use of the subjunctive.  Good grammar is just aesthetically pleasing—and it’s something any author of any experience level can get perfect.  Plot twists and characterization are qualitative, but (unless you’re really postmodernist, or Emily Dickinson) grammar and mechanics are objective.  Enough said.

How long does it take you to get through, say, an eighty thousand-word book?

If my math is correct—and it probably isn’t—at 250 or so words a page an 80,000-word book would be a little over 300 pages, right?  I don’t mean to brag (actually, I do), but I’m a history student, and history is one of the most reading-heavy fields of study, period.  I’ll read 200-plus pages a day for class, not even counting the archival materials (digitized or no) I go through for my own research projects.  And then I come home and read to relax.

I’ll have to get in touch with Freud on this, but I think I’m compensating for those two terrible years when my older sister was in primary school learning how to read and I wasn’t.  I remember very clearly what it was like not knowing how to read—and wanting to so badly.  I had a small pink diary that I would “write” in, fully understanding that my squiggles had no internal structure and wouldn’t mean anything if I tried to “read” them again.  Now, my optometrist tells me I’m literally going blind from reading too much.  Okay, not blind—but definitely more myopic by the month.

Oh yes, the question: I’d say two days.

How did you come up with your rating system, and could you explain more about the rating system?

Like the genres and subgenres I review, my rating system is hardly standardized.  I usually write two reviews: the first is my attempt to connect ideas in the story to current cultural trends, other literature, or LOST.  The second is my “final verdict,” which includes a basic summary of the author’s strengths and/or weaknesses, as well as the target audience and reading time for those unlucky enough to be non-history majors.

What advice could you give to authors looking to get their books reviewed?

It seems crazy to me that I’m being asked for advice on… anything outside how to use a microfilm reader.  In terms of how to get books reviewed, I imagine I have less protocol than many reviewers.  If an author takes the time to write a personal email, I will put his or her book on the reading list, plain and simple.

Do you get readers emailing you and thanking you for a review?

I don’t know if I’m lucky or indie and self-published authors are as a group just lovely people, but I’ve received only the most polite and positive feedback from all the Scattering’s reviewees.  That’s the whole fun of the Internet—collaboration and community.  I’ve formed relationships with new authors from literally all over the world, and I continue to follow their bibliography after I review a book.  And when one of those writers comes out with a second novel, or the continuation of a series, I’m right there ready to review again.  It really is nice to have living authors to follow.  Is that a weird thing to say?

My advice to authors on getting a “bad” review (hasten to add that might mean a perfectly honest, well written, fair review – just bad from the author’s point of view) is to take what you can from it and move on. Under no circumstances to “argue” with the reviewer – would you agree with that?

Most of the time cringe at the thought of having to give a “bad” review—if as I read I get the feeling that it’s going to be very difficult to put a positive spin on a book, my stomach just sinks.  But there are two distinct times I can think of when I gave memorably negative reviews, and found that I derive an unhealthy enjoyment from periodic conflict.

Of course, I use “conflict” in the broadest possible sense.  Some time ago I reviewed a novel on the premise that it was, as the author told me, good old-fashioned “hard sci-fi.”  When it turned into a Creationist allegory, I felt betrayed—and said so in a review that was probably more vitriolic than I needed to be.  What followed was probably the most polite atheist-Creationist debate in the history of the Internet, with me posting quotes from Sam Harris on the blog, and him writing a thoughtful response to the review (which I also published on the Scattering).  In the end, I think he decided that I’m not necessarily going to hell.

In cases like that, when I fundamentally dislike a book for its content rather than quality, I’m completely willing to hash it out in cyberspace with an author—and will always give writers a chance to defend their brainchildren.  But that’s happened only very rarely.

About Reading

We talk a lot about writing here on the blog, and possibly enough about reading, which is after all why we’re all here. Why do you think people love reading. We’re seeing lots of statistics that say reading as a past-time is dying – do you think that’s the case?

You know what they say about statistics—83.59 percent of them are made up on the spot.  But in all seriousness, reading isn’t going anywhere.  Language, and in particular written language, is the greatest invention of homo sapiens, and the reason for that as I see it is because people have always and will always want to communicate with each other.  That means thoughts, feelings, business proposals, and plain good stories.

About Writing

What are the most common mistakes that you see authors making?

Besides comma splices?  My biggest pet peeve is excessive exposition.  When the setting is a future world, or an alien planet, or something that would be unfamiliar to readers, the tendency is to think oh my gosh, I need to explain this in a dense, technical introductory chapter! Have confidence in your readers: we’re smarter than we look.  The greatest pleasure in reading about the unfamiliar is the element of unfolding revelations—the best science fiction writers work the strange setting, the new technology, the fantastic innovations into the plot and dialogue without huge breaks for detailed description.  I have no doubt that sort of seamless integration is crazy hard; and I’m not a fiction writer so I always feel a little awkward giving advice; but as an avid reader, that is the most noticeable difference between excellent and just passable writing.

We’re told that the first page, paragraph, chapter, is absolutely key in making or breaking a book. Agents typically request only the first five pages of a novel, what do you think about that; if a book hasn’t grabbed you by the first five pages, do you put it down?

No.  Are you kidding?  No one walks out of a movie because the opening credits are boring, and it’s pretty common for a tv show to need a season or more to warm up.  For me, the cut-off point for making or breaking a book is halfway to halfway in—the 25% mark.  By then, the reader should have a feel for the characters and where the story is heading.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the Page 99 concept, what are your thoughts on that idea?

The idea that one page can tell you anything about a book besides the author’s general writing style is ridiculous to me.

Is there anything you will not review?

Vampires.  If there are vampires in your book, do not send it to me.

About Publishing

What do you think of the oft quoted comment that the “slush-pile has moved online”?

Oh, pish-posh.  I have neither time nor patience for elitism of any kind.  I’m a bit of a populist at heart, and the Internet is all about democratization of information—while that does mean that there’s junk to wade through, it’s made the good, the interesting, and the creative more accessible as well.  Many of the books I review are written by individuals who don’t make their living selling science fiction novels.  They have day jobs, and write for pleasure just as people like me read for pleasure.  A decade ago, these authors may never have become authors—their manuscripts would be gather dust on top of the refrigerator, if they ever were written at all.  But now, thanks to the Internet, they have a global readership accessible at a single click—which benefits authors, obviously, but readers as well.  The amount and diversity of material to peruse out there on the Internet is virtually infinite, and doesn’t take a library card to check out.  It’s a reader’s dream.

Do you think attitudes are changing with respect to Indie or self-published titles?

My attitude certainly has.  I remember reading the first indie book I ever reviewed for the Scattering, and then setting my Kindle down once I’d finished to exclaim: “It’s just like a real book!”  I think a lot of people probably share that idea—that a “real” book is one with that big-name publishing house’s stamp of approval on the spine.  I recommend the books I review to friends all the time—it just takes one good experience with a self-published author’s work to turn that mindset upside-down.

Do you have any ideas or comments on how the industry can “filter” good from bad, asides from reviews?

As much as I’d like to say that judging good from bad is an intuitive, subjective process that resists quantification and digital analysis, I know that’s not entirely true.  Fundamentally, a review shouldn’t be a plot summary, gold star, or demerit.  Reviews are either recommendations, or they’re not (a very quantifiable binary code: 1, or 0).  Sites like Amazon have this down pat: when I buy a book for the Kindle, that purchase, a recommendation, feeds into the whole database of every other customer’s purchase, ever.  Associations are made, algorithms spark, and the result is a page just for me filled with books I might like based on not only my history but everyone else’s.  The results are so good that I’ve pretty much stopped choosing my own reading material—the group mind knows best.  The way I see it, when it comes the filtering the wheat from the chaff, the more input the better.  Praise be to the Internet, right?