January 2022 - deus ex magical girl

Return of the ‘Rags and Muffin’ Hardcover

I earlier reported that an Amazon order of my novel Rags and Muffin resulted in a delivery of the volume printed by IngramSpark. I had no explanation for this and still don’t.

I needed some additional copies recently and ordered them, again from Amazon. What I got this time resembled the test printing I originally got from Amazon, which in my opinion is superior to the IngramSpark version.

I do not know why I got IngramSpark books before. I do not know what will arrive in the mail if you order a hardcover.

However, the difference between the two versions might not be noticeable to most readers. The Amazon version appears to have sturdier binding, though whether it actually holds up better over time or whether that’s merely a cosmetic difference, I can’t say. The image on its cover is also clearer, but only slightly.

I think this is a good-looking book. Amazon only recently began offering hardcovers through Kindle Direct Printing, but the product they produce is of high quality. The printing is clear, the paper is bright but not too bright, the cover is good, and the book overall is solid, with a lot of heft.

It happens that Vellum, which I use for formatting, updated right before this book went live on Amazon, so I was able to give the internal formatting some slight improvements over what I originally planned to release. Because the cover was already made, I couldn’t change the page count, so it was too late to use some of Vellum’s newer, more creative layout options. But you nonetheless get a fine-looking interior with large, clear type.

Vellum is expensive, but it’s one purchase I definitely don’t regret: I can format my books myself without hiring a pro, which means I can instantly correct any lingering typos if I become aware of them. This novel did (yet again) get an additional proofread recently from a generous reviewer, and all he found was a missing quotation mark—which has now been added where it belongs. I can’t claim it’s perfect, but it is a very clean manuscript, unusually so for either indie or tradpub.

The only downside to the hardback is that Amazon forces a starting price that’s decidedly high for an indie book. Naturally, I make most of my sales in eBooks, so I’m debating whether continuing to offer hardcovers for my future titles is worth the expense.

The Pulps: ‘The Greek Poropulos’

Continuing where we left off with the stories in The Pulps, we move onto the the second story, “The Greek Poropulos” by Edgar Wallace. This is most notable for being an early story by a man who became a prolific and best-selling mystery writer. He is also in the book as an Example of an English writer whose work was edited and published in America without the author’s consent or possibly knowledge, a common practice in many of the early pulps according to Tony Goodstone.

“The Greek Poropulos” was originally published in 1910 but was reprinted in Green Book in 1933. The narrator is an Englishman who, with his wife Lillian, moves to South Africa for his health. Ridiculously naïve, he falls in with a huckster who first cheats him out of all of his money and then seduces his wife. Meanwhile, the titular Poropulos sympathizes with the narrator and attempts to help him, but the narrator is too thick-witted to recognize the charity. But as the story progresses and avoidable tragedy befalls him, our narrator ultimately wises up. In the end, everyone involved pays for his stupidity, duplicity, or other vice.

Diverting and well-written, this story is not especially memorable, but it has a few points that make it worth a read. First is its depiction of South Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the second is the darkly comical stupidity of the first-person protagonist, who ultimately becomes wiser but sadder. Third, of course, is the famous author.

But the story, while good overall, does not quite work as well as it should. There’s a touch of mystery toward the end, but the twist is unsurprising and also largely irrelevant to the way the overall plot plays out. As a result, the final line, meant to be a sledgehammer blow, lacks its intended force.

The Pulps: ‘The Resurrection of Jimber-Jaw’

The other day, I came across the anthology The Pulps. Edited by Tony Goodstone and published in 1970, it is a nostalgic look back at the heyday of pulp magazines in the 1910s through the 1950s. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss each of the stories it contains, one at a time.

The Pulps is an oversized hardback designed to have dimensions roughly similar to a pulp magazine. In addition to a collection of stories (chosen to be representative rather than for quality, Goodstone tells us), it contains a smattering of vintage ads and excerpts from letters to the editor and other back matter. The presentation of the stories preverves illustrations and mimics original layouts, though the font has obviously been standardized and modernized. The book also contains a collection of full-color magazine covers.

The Pulps features a decent explanatory apparatus. An introductory essay traces the history of pulp fiction, arguing that it has its origins in the moralizing chapbooks of the 1840s. The book is then divided into sections dedicated to adventure, sports, war, westerns, detectives, and so forth. The book offers one great disappointment: Toward its end is an essay about The Shadow and Doc Savage, but it contains stories of neither.

I’ll take these stories one at a time, in the order presented.

Continue reading “The Pulps: ‘The Resurrection of Jimber-Jaw’”

Next ‘Rags and Muffin’ Project

Although I’m working on a planetary romance, to keep the momentum going, I think I can deliver a collection of Rags and Muffin short stories much sooner.

So, my current project is under the working title Running Ragged: Casefiles of the Ragamuffin, and it’s over a quarter complete.

Running Ragged

Phase:Writing

Due:2 years ago

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