Gun Slinging Gods

Aside from THE GOD EATERS by Jesse Hajicek being a sort of Western and following somewhat from the Cowboy theme of the last review (very shaky link - they are SOOOOOOO different!) this is the book that had me thinking about publishing for the first time in YEARS.

I gave up before I even tried you see?  I just couldn't be bothered.  Considering how much writing is a part of my life, a lot of people around me were astounded when I shrugged and said I have enough challenges and many things I want to do more.  Writing isn't going to disappear any time soon and I am not in the mood for investing time, effort and emotional involvement in finding an agent and then fighting with an editor.  It is not that I don't have experience in this.  I do.  And that is the part of the process that simply doesn't appeal.  I don't crave fame enough and I am finantially comfortable to the point I don't want and certainly don't NEED more... not for the sake of compromising something I like doing so much - like writing. I admire writers who have the strength and will do go all the way... I just don't envisage myself as one of them ... sorry >< .

Don't get me wrong - I think my writing is good enough - I have a big ego , I think it is great.  I have good reasons to believe people like reading my stuff too. I'd like to talk about the reason why but it is a looooong story and if you just want the review you might as well avoid the cut bellow. Anything below the cut is self gratified attempt to sort out the mess in my head so I can go on doing important stuff... like sort out the laundry! (AVOID - unless you have the stomach for internal searching, picking up scabs and endless musing upon what writing means for me).

THE NOT SO BRIEF HISTORY OF LAMASU AS AN AMATURE WRITER:


I was a slow starter.  Two years into school and at the age of almost 7 and I COULDN'T READ.  I just couldn't, something in there just refused to get it.  I really wanted to with all my heart, my parents are avid readers, my dad was a proffesional translator, both highly educated and informed and there was I - can't make those letters fit together at all.

Reading is a funny thing and everyone learn it differently.  With me it all clicked suddenly.  One moment I was looking at a page that seemed like it was crawling with Hebrew shaped ants and then next everything in my head slotted into the right pace and I was swallowing print with my eyes like there was no tommorow.  I never stopped.  I immediately picked up a pen and started writing all those day dreams I had.  I also kept a regular diary (which was honest at that time - by the age of 14 I started lying in it because it was stolen and read by my class mates... a long story for another time).  Since then I never found it difficult to pick up other languages as well.  The flood gates where open.

I have thick notebooks filled up in neat writting - my early novels.  Very Mary Sue-ish in nature since they heavily drew on my day dreams. I just kept them going with no regard to how good or bad they might be And then at boarding school I had a friend who was one day a little down and I promised I will write a book just for her.  This was the first time I thought about my readers and Mary Sue took her first vacation.

It took 3 years - I moved to another school and lost touch but I finished it and threw it in a drawer with many others. I started on a novel that will probably see me to my grave (my baby - The Temple Tree!)  Then at the age of 17 we had to do a final project.  It required a dissertation style research backed up with something practical.  I proposed to write about children literature and as a practical project - edit my book.

The head mistress hated me, WITH PASSION, I am still not quite sure why - possibly because despite being the most loathed girl in school (I had to hide from my class mates most of the time and the one time I didn't do it well landed me in hospital with internal bleeding and a broken broom stick... wonderfull stuff boarding schools!!!) I still had the gall to answer back to her...and to everyone else which is why I got beaten up so much I guess.  Fortunately the secretery of the school for some unknown reason which might be the same as the ones that set the headmistress against me - loved me A LOT and she secretly sent my proposition to the department of education who immediately approved it saying it is a very original idea.

Lucky, or un-lucky for me, one of the toughest poffesional edditors in Israel happened to live on the kibbutz the school was located in. And she was set up to be my tutor for this. I have no idea how much anyone outside Israel know about Israeli literature but she had on her resume big names like Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua... and she didn't spare me just becuase I was a 17 year old wall flower... oh no... SHE BUTCHERED MY NOVEL.  I fought with her tooth and claw over everything - from the title to character developement to plot twist and writing style... we met somewhere in the middle and I was exhausted but rather satisfied by the end of it.  Project submitted I forgot about it - even though the head mistress hissed that I am up to recieve a fat zero for it... well... I got TWO zeros... because there are two in a grade of 100% XD

I was eligable to enter the Gur-Arye national competition for final project but by then bullying got the better of me and I was struggling to keep alive and sane .  I had no steam left to fight school personel as well .  I finished most of my exams and got drafted to the army and life just took a dive just when I thought it couldn't get any worse - writting was the last thing on my mind for a while.

Then few months in uniform  and I got a letter from my school secretary.  Apparently she took the liberty of sending my project to the national competition a year later and I won the first prize for literature.  A glowing moment in otherwise dark times.  At the ceremony I had a publisher approaching me and asking me if I intend to publish my book?  Do I want to go on writing? I said yes to both and was very happy for a while. I didn't really think that much about what publishing means.

I went back to being a soldier and then got so messed up, life catching up with me to such a degree I needed medication just to get out of bed in the morning - eventually even the IDF couldn't cope with me (depressed solidier + M16 = not a very good idea) and I got the ceremonial kick in the butt which, believe it or not scared me. 

Luckily I had James, who helped me put some of my pieces together but I was more or less broken for many years after that (much wandering from one country to the next until we married and settled in England).  I made a half-arsed attempt to submit the book to a couple of publishers and they both said that there is something there but they can't quite place it.  Is it for children?  Is it for adults?  Is is fantasy? Is it symbolism ? It fell between too many chairs and I just didn't want to edit it again ... EVER. I gave up. By that time THE TEMPLE TREE was 3 years in the witing but I stopped writing all together. Somehow the publishing world convinced me there is no point writing if you don't plan to publish and publishing lost its appeal.  It spelled compromise to me and I ended half dead in school and drugged up to my ear in the army because I refused to compromise... the price of seing my book in descent binding was just too fucking high!  I came to see writing as something that would demolish my soul.

Years later - during my brief flirt with Wicca - during an archaeological excavation in the south of Israel I woke up in the middle of the night because the light of the full moon fell on my eye. There was a great significance to that then and it was a beautiful moment besides. I got up, killed a couple of cockroaches that scattled around our wooden hut and found a scrap of paper and spent 4 hours writing the revision to The Temple Tree... I more or less forgot to drink in the excitement of having my inspiration re-kindled which led me to dehidrate and had everyone mocking me for the rest of the dig "Are you sure you are from the desert? How come you are the first to end up on a intraveinous drip!"  HAHA! very funny!!!  Bastards.  But I got back to writing... however... I lost the motivation for publishing.  The only way to go on was to see the two as seperate entities.

I wanted a to finish my degree in England, have a family, become a professional dancer and maybe  do a master in Linguistics and ancient languages (the only things I haven't achived yet from this list). Publishing didn't fit anywhere there... writing barely fit in there to be quite honest.

I got it back... but in a warped way... I don't gives a monkey's arse if anyone buys my book or if they like it that much... I want an ISBN simply because I never had one before... and  I want to hold one of my books - poperly bound in my hand.  A shrink could have a field day on this but aproaching an agent came across my mind once and I bought the publisher hand book and promptly was violently sick for no apparent reasons for days.  I figure i picked up publisher phobia. The only thing that makes me feel inadequate and stops me writing is when someone tells me I should publish my book... I get a rash and STOP!!!

Two years ago I made the mistake again and let some people beta read the first 5 chapters of The Temple Tree.  They told me to tone down my writting, get rid of a couple of characters, make the plot more obvious, add a dialogue here, do something else there... I thanked them, told them they help me and I am gratefull... but I wasn't.  I wasn't enjoying it like I pretended.  I felt compromised, I felt my art was soiled.  I couldn't cope with it, wasn't built for that and I wanted to quit again.  I didn't quit.  I just took a step back and re-assesed.  The secret is in ignoring anyone who patronise me and tell me it is ok to write this way if I want to be an amature... well... I do!  I really really REALLY do.  Because the only difference between an amature and proffesional is the money.  So I decided I rather not make money or make just a little... maybe... some day...just ...not... murder my writing anymore.  I am not an angsty person, my life now is good, but any poinking at my writing beyond grammar and spelling and I recoil. It isn't the bad criticism - it is the notion that I would be criticised for something that is so modified it is no longer my own.  I rather be bombarded by readers AFTER I publish utter crap... that is THAT.

at least it used to be the case until recently... until I picked up the GOD EATERS and suddenly there was a way... a chicken way out you might say... but still a way to hold a book with an ISBN in my hand.  Honestly - that would be more than enough ^_^.

THE ACTUAL BOOK REVIEW:


If you think now that I don't have what it takes to be a published author... you are probably... no... definately right. 

Thank goodness others have the courage and talent for this ordeal... what would I do otherwise ^_^

In Israel you are expected to pay the initial cost of your book if you are a first time author. The market for books in Hebrew is small and sales on the book are never high unless it gets translated.  In England you don't pay a penny which on one hand nice but on the other, make the whole prospect a lot more complicated and un-approachable.  Some publishers in the 1920s coined the phrase "Vanity Publishing" to discourage small prints from putting up a competition AND WE ALL BOUGHT INTO IT! Nowadays this is slowly fading.  Small press is blooming, the price of Print of Demand is slowly going down due to the wonderful world of computing taking over the expensive process of producing plates for every book. And yet self publishing is still frowned upon.  Which is a shame... not for me because I just don't mind that much but because some of the self published stuff is simply wonderful, in my opinion.

Like the above - WOW!  We finally go to that *wipes forehead*  (good books always make me sweat out buckets of Nostalgia >_<).

You know what the main reason I love the book above so much?  IT FALLS BETWEEN TOO MANY CHAIRS CHAIRS... haha... just like the publishers in Israel told me.  It is not quite sure what it wants to be and it is absolutely , totaly, utterly , wonderfully , BRILLIANT.  I ... don't... CARE, how rough around the edges it - it just adds to its "round the bonfire" charm.  The writer sweeps me with enthusiasm.  I feel I am sitting there and the story is told to me in person, no time to edit, no time to go back endlessly and polish and correct, it sweeps and suck me in.  I love it.

It is a fantasy and a western and a romance and it goes from one theme to another with ease and abandon. I think publishers would scratch their heads trying to place it so I am happy LuLu press took it into their print to order hands and allowed this to come out into the light because it made my day... hell it made my YEAR.  I was enamoured.

Now enough superlatives for a few moments whilst I try to summarize the plot. 

It is set in a world where magic manifest in the form of talents.  Those are either drafted by the strict totalitarian government and harnessed or, if practiced unlawfully, the subject is taken into incarceration and experimented upon.  The setting is a Western like reality, steam trains and wide-scope desert, gun slinging and a land taken from the natives that for all intents and purposes are not un-like native americans.  The main villain is presented as the ruler of this regime and there is some talk about him absorbing all the gods into himself... all apart from three - one is incaptivity and the other two escaped him by means of re-incarnation.

Enter our protagonists:  A nervous and helpless underground propaganda writer (who is freckled - something I have a HUGE weakness too - I confess... connect the dots with one's tongue as one web-comics once put it ^_^) and a rough and tough native gun-slinging outlaw (WHAT a spectacular character!)... both on their way to a secret top security jail, where the first part of this story takes place.  They share a cell and our rogue makes successful attmepts of intimidating our bashful and weak propaganda writer... until they begin to be mentally experimented upon and he is taken by an un-explained urge to protect him.  This is mostly prison drama where strength and weaknesses of spirit explored and relationships forged tentatively in confined spaces on the backdrop of restraint violence and blunt degredation.  Always, ALWAYS a good setting for springing an unlikely romance.  Close walls make barriers brittle and facades crumble as the inner self claws its way to the surface. 

I am trying hard not to get into details here so all I will say is that by the harvesting of certain supernatural and intelectual abilities our heroes join forces and make a spectacular break for freedom.

The second part of the book sees them on the run from the law and slowly getting closer and closer in body and soul.  Love blooms under pressure and sex explored under open sky as tough gunslingers discover their sensitive side and sensitive bookish weaklings learn to be tough.

This is where this book is really magnificent - the character developement is so gradual and two sided - it blossoms before your eye as they start on two sides of the casm and slowly build that bridge that meets in the middle.  They are truely two halves of the same thing and when they join you feel as if you are completed as well.  This is how much this book made me feel a part of it - I lost myself in it somehow.

A lot of things happen on their way to freedom, there are all the markings of a western - a whore house and an ambush in a canyon, a priest in an abandoned church and chases through the desert. and then comes the third part in which our protagonists realise that if they want to stop running they have to face the enemy and fight back.

This is when the fantasy gathers force and the plot takes a twist into the heavily supernatural.  Gods are awakened in abandoned temples.  Storms summoned.  Souls possesed.  All leading to that final battle and the conclusion.

You might find this all a bit rapid.  But since Strom Constantine hit me with that whirlwind finale to the first Wraeththu trilogy and had me groveling at her feet in admiration despite that - I learn to accept those kind of endings... providing the journey to them is filled with treasures. And here - it is crammed with them.

Yup - this book seem to change its mind as to what it is... I wish it was permitted more.  I wish authors weren't so scared into branding their creations and categorising them so much. 

Masterpiece?  When did I ever care for masterpieces that much (OK... OK... stop throwing Moby Dick in my face... I like it because at the heart of it - it can't make up its mind either... And Far From the Maddening Crowd is just a romance under all the layers and Tom Jones is smut and The Hunchback from Notredame is a gothic tale with hot gypsies crammed in!!!).  Maybe not a masterpiece - just a lot better than that - a bloody good read.  Before I picked this one up (because I loved the cover actually - I am really shallow sometimes) I didn't think I like westerns... I love them now.

This book made me write in frenzy.  I can't go a day without spewing at least three paragraphs. (often too busy to do more than that though xD).

Will I ever publish?

Maybe I will do something about it this year... maybe never... maybe I will save my pennies and set myself as a publisher, buy few ISBN numbers and make a hobby out of printing my own books one day... as long as I enjoy writing - it desn't really matter.

I have this book to thank for inspiring me, for sorting the mess in my head and above all - for providing me with hours of enjoyment. 

I don't care if I am the only one in the world who loves it this much!  I just doooo. LOVE <3<3<3

Originally posted in my LJ on 6.2.2006