Tag: Bote Manchas Metro

Facing the Music … errr … Review

January 13th, 2025

The review of my novel came in, so it’s time to face the music. I would have gotten to this earlier, but the fires in Los Angeles had me hopping around a bit.

Here’s the review:

In his exciting new novel, Bote Manchas Metro, Karl Fandkin brings to life his rendition of a Gotham-like city deeply entrenched in crime and violence. Instead of a masked vigilante, he employs seemingly unremarkable citizens and brings their distinctly remarkable lives to the forefront – a venture that is echoed in his author’s notes where he writes about being “interested in the accomplishments of more ordinary people”.

The novel opens with a brief history of how the city of Bote Manchas came to be – its evolution from a missionary settlement to the present-day iteration of a metropolitan – before making a neat segue onto route 36 and a bus carrying its first pick of passengers for the day. Each chapter delivers a peek into the life of all the people on that bus, one troubled individual at a time – a clever nod to the sentiment of nothing being as it seems on first glance.

Fandkin works an intriguing play of identities to portray what could easily be just another day on the commute for most of us, sitting beside office workers, professors, seamstresses, real professors, and a few we think we know nothing about, only to realize it’s everyone we know nothing about. Introduced as plain monikers from the perspective of a rude, misogynistic bus driver, all the characters (including the driver) come into their own over the course of the book with seemingly diverging trajectories eventually intersecting in the most curious ways.

The novel rejects the constraints of genre in an intriguing blend of satire, philosophy and thriller fiction. Using different voices from different strata of society, the writer presents the disconcerting reality of crime, workplace harassment, extreme prejudice and religious fanaticism – an ambitious undertaking that flows in an impressive balance for the most part, except for the tricky bit of the reader potentially losing track of plot events owing to the narrative choice of multiple points-of-view. But that’s only a minor setback for what is an exhilarating roller-coaster of a story.

I’d highly recommend this book to anyone who likes fast-paced crime thrillers that are much more than just fast-paced crime thrillers. I’d also like to mention a few trigger warnings for references of violence and sexual abuse in the book. On the whole though, this novel is a fantastic read, and I can’t wait for more readers to explore it.

By Abha S

Some of this is hype which is probably encouraged by Reedsy Discovery. They promote their review service as a way to help authors launch novels, so let’s take phrases like “In his exciting new novel” and “ this novel is a fantastic read” with more than a grain of salt.

When I looked at the reviewer through her website links, I saw that she has two books on her currently reading list, both are written in Sanskrit. Combined by the fact that this blog had several hits from India last week, I think it safe to assume a few things like: She is from India; she has come to this blog and may return and read this entry; English is not her first language and she is not familiar with American culture.

That said, she knows literature. Her perception that this novel ignores genre is spot on. I never really got a grip on genres and their features. Many novels today blend genres. I simply ignore them. Her comment “… echoed in his author’s notes where he writes …” shows the extent of how far afield I have gone.

Let me explain. I use Libre Office as a protest against MicroSoft wanting hundreds of dollars for Office each time I buy a computer. A downfall to Libre Office, however, is that it doesn’t seem to recalc as often as it should. I used the spreadsheet to keep track of word counts. As I neared the end of the novel, I thought I was too close to 80k words for comfort, so I wrote a “For those who have to know” section that reveals character’s fates beyond the end of the novel. Good editing usually cuts ten to twenty percent of the text. I also threw in some comments about how there could be a sequel, but that I was not interested in writing about gangster in a turf war and that I was more interested in more ordinary characters.

The developmental editor picked up on that line as well. He did not like the original final chapter. He thought it too anticlimactic. I did not feel the “for those who have to know” part was worth keeping, I was well over 80k words. The editor recommended that I cut the final chapter or at least cut it down. It contained an important plot point: The arrest of Ralph Batogne for the murders he committed before the story began. I ended up merging the two chapters and kept the chapter title “For Those Who Have to Know.”

The comment “ … Gotham-like city …” reveals a cultural divide. Bote Manchas is clearly a west coast city near the Mexican border, that is to say, a stand-in for Los Angeles. Gotham has been a stand-in for New York ever since Washington Irving.

Another failing, although more my own, is shown in the comment “The novel opens with a brief history of how the city of Bote Manchas came to be …” The actual title of this chapter is: Boring Background History Most People Skip Over which was written as a high school essay by one of the novel’s characters. I couldn’t figure out how to make it a preface with page numbers in Roman numerals. I hoped the chapter title would cue readers in and they would start reading at the next chapter.

The comment: “… sitting beside office workers, professors, seamstresses, real professors …” shows the problem of having two very similar characters. Dr. Jeremiah Tyler is called The Professor of Practical Philosophy. His foil is Dr. Jefferson Ford who the bus driver calls Real Prof. The poor reviewer got caught making a list of characters based on the chapter titles without realizing that real professors are professors and do not need to be listed twice. Had she paid more attention and wanted to show she read the book thoroughly she would have written “self proclaimed professors and real professors,” or something like that.

Her comment: “Introduced as plain monikers from the perspective of a rude, misogynistic bus driver …” The first chapter introduces Ralph Batogne. The original title for this chapter was Misanthropic Bus Driver. He seems particularly mean to Angelic Choi (That Face) and Eunice Underwood (Proselytizing Bitch), but he is also hostile to Hector Manning (Mumbling Bob) and pretty much indifferent to everyone else. To finish the line, “… all the characters (including the driver) come into their own over the course of the book with seemingly diverging trajectories eventually intersecting in the most curious ways.” The word “curious” has me concerned. Given the cultural divide, it could be a good thing.

“… an ambitious undertaking that flows in an impressive balance for the most part, except for the tricky bit of the reader potentially losing track of plot events owing to the narrative choice of multiple points-of-view. But that’s only a minor setback for what is an exhilarating roller-coaster of a story.” Here the reviewer gives me too much credit. Bote Manchas Metro doesn’t have a plot in any conventional sense, or it has too many. I put the novel through a developmental edit two years earlier. That editor treated it like a copy edit. It was an awful experience and I scrapped the novel for a year. That editor, however, couldn’t decide if the book was a story-cycle or a collection of short stories. It aint exactly either. There a some stories that need to be read in order, and some that don’t. In my mind, it is a mix-tape of characters. Well, mostly. There are a couple of framing chapters. One chapter introduces the characters and it is not named for any of the characters. Another chapter brings most of the characters together again for the stories climax, again not named for a character.

For the most part, each chapter is a short story, or would be, except not all chapters end where a short story would end. If I wrote them as short stories, they would have a better resolution. Some chapters are resolved in a later chapter, and at least one chapter resolves in the For Those Who Have to Know chapter.

Well, time presses. I need to get bottled water and the lines are long. Please forgive me not proofing this entry, not even trying.
Trepidation

December 21st, 2024

Fact(mostly)

I am nervous. A couple weeks ago, I submitted Bote Manchas Metro to Reedsy Discovery. Reedsy Discovery is a promotional website started by Reedsy. Okay, Reedsy is a site where anyone can hire writing professionals most of whom have actual publishing experience. For amateur authors, like me, hiring editors from Reedsy gives me access to good editors. They have some good advice. Unfortunately, my writing may never meet publisher criteria for actual publishing. That’s okay with me. I am not trying to write a mass market best seller. It would be nice, but I have trouble choosing which genre label applies to my work. Not a good sign. I write because I have something to say, a story to tell and/or a way I want to tell a story.

I have been lucky. Most of the editors I’ve hired through Reedsy understand and appreciate what I’m trying to achieve. At some point, however, their training and experience want the effort to be more publishable, more accessible or just plain better. I make a few adjustments, but I want it to be more true to my goals. Eventually, the relationship with the editors breaks down. As the author, I am responsible for the work. It is mine. The editors did their best to guide the effort, and I thank them for it.

Reedsy Discovery helps … well … all sorts of people. As an author, it helps me launch my book. After submitting your work to Reedsy Discovery, any of a large pool of reviewers read your novel and write a review. Authors are allowed to use pull-quotes and put the review in the Amazon listing, so unless the review comes in before this entry gets posted, look forward to an entry about the review.

Novels receiving the most up-votes are promoted in Reedsy Discovery publications like a weekly email promoting those books. They also have a good search engine for readers to find something they’d like to read. As a reader, I’ve picked up several books on Reedsy. I leave my reviews on Amazon. Since I do not like the vast majority of books I read, I don’t think my reviews would be well received on Reedsy Discovery.

As a self published (KDP) author, I think supporting other striving authors (found on Reedsy Discovery) is a good idea. I may leave critical reviews on Amazon, but they a sale and an honest response to their work. So far, it doesn’t look like they return the favor. If they did, they could find much in my novels apart to rip.

Bote Manchas Metro is not an easy novel. It was not meant to be. Three things motivated its creation. First, the failure of my previous novel. Not sales failure, I didn’t expect much, but there were flaws in the novel that I never could work out. Frontal Lobe Override was an experiment in structure and I wanted another attempt at that structure. Second, headlines. The issues addressed I the novel reverberated in the media and in personal conversations with friends, neighbors and family. Third, I had a spark, a concept.

As I said, I wanted to write a novel as a mix tape of characters. In FLO I felt the need to have deejays introduce and tie together the chapters/characters/songs. In that book, a couple of lawyers preparing their case served that role. Editors kept pushing me to develop the lawyers more, but to me, they were just a narrative device. Moreover, I’m sorta sick of the limited type of people featured in American fiction. It’s always cops and criminals, doctors, lawyers, politicians, entertainers, soldiers and spies. There are a few businessmen, but they generally fall into the criminal category. FLO had florists, computer programmers, real estate agents and the heroine was a forensic epidemiologist.

In Bote Manchas Metro, there are seamstresses, a secretary, a radio show producers, a college professor, think tank fellows, a homeless person, and the spark, the genesis, a misanthropic bus driver. More importantly, there are no deejays in Bote Manchas Metro. I did use framing chapters, so it’s not a pure mix tape, but the frames are more like medleys, so I think they work just fine.

This time the editors wanted less dialog especially between two characters, known by the bus driver as The Professor of Practical Philosophy and Real Prof. On a radio show, they participate in a discussion of abortion. In a special lecture, the discuss the existence of God. These are the two extended dialogues all the editors disliked most.

I tried my best, but it’s hard put two philosophers together in a discussion about important topics without reverting to my take of a Platonic dialog. As I said, there is stuff in Bote Manchas Metro for reviewers to dislike.

It’s been over two weeks since I submitted the novel to Reedsy Discovery for review and eleven days since a reviewer picked up the assignment. There is a lot to like about the novel. All of the editors like several chapters, especially the Mumbling Bob chapter. Mumbling Bob is the bus driver’s name for Hector Manning, a homeless former materials and processes engineer whose job was off-shored to India. Anyways, I’m nervous.

FLO received a five (out of five) star review on Reedsy Discovery. Back then, five star reviews were somewhat common. Now a days, most favored novels receive four stars. Perhaps Reedsy Discovery made an effort to curtail star inflation. I would be happy with a four star review, but I sit here, nervously, preparing myself for anything even a one star review.

In my mind, Bote Manchas Metro is much better written than Frontal Lobe Override. It should get a five star review as well.

Let’s see.
Been Away Awhile

August 20th, 2024
Fact (mostly)

A couple of years ago, I started writing another novel, Bote Manchas Metro. I finished the first draft about this time last year. A couple of read-throughs and many revisions later, I sent it off to an editor for developmental editing.

The editor proofread Frontal Lobe Override and went well beyond proofreading. I loved that she was opinionated and forthright. I wanted her to be the developmental editor for Bote Manchas Metro, so I contacted her. She agreed even though she no longer accepted new clients (I counted as an old client).

I wish I had followed standard editor hiring procedures. Had I hired her the correct way, we would have agreed on the process and I would saved thousands of dollars and three months. The project went off the rails from the start, but I had not done the work to find out. A month went by without a single word or note. I sent a message asking why? She sent assurances that everything was fine. Another month, another inquiry, another assurance. In the end, and a day before the project end date, she dumped an oblique letter which referenced her extensive manuscript markup. It was a mess.

Here’s what went wrong. I wanted developmental editing to be an iterative process. For Frontal Lobe Override, I hired an editor for an editorial assessment. A couple of weeks later, he sent a detailed letter and a minor markup (editor, it seems, just can’t help themselves). I made several revisions, and hired the same editor to look at the novel again concentrating on the revisions. He did and we discussed, via phone call, the project. I thought developmental editing would be similar just with out having to go through the hiring process twice.

The editor for Bote Manchas Metro, thought developmental editing was just advanced copy ediitng. I pointed out the editing guidelines from Reedsy.com, the site I hire editors through. She back tracked a little. Her editorial letter read like a throw together meant to meet the bare minimum of the guidelines and mostly served to point to the markup.

It took me two months to disentangle the copy editing from more developmental observations. It was frustrating and tedious work. Going through a markup is a destructive process. The idea is to work off all the revisions, accepting some, rejecting others. In my word processing software, it takes a lot of right clicking, regular clicking and occasional typing. The worst part, the editor decided to reformat the entire novel which, in my editor, meant that I had to accept or reject every paragraph and alomost every sentence. In the end, I scrapped Bote Manchas Metro.

Headlines brought the novel back. In particular a Los Angeles Times article about California corrections officers are looking at the Norwegian prison system (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-09/how-do-you-reform-california-prisons-to-be-more-like-norway-hire-more-guards). A year earlier, I wrote the Professor of Practical Philosophy chapter. The character works in a think tank. He proposes a prison reform plan called the Individualized Judicial Release Plan.

The idea came from a discussion with a neighbor. Her husband was in prison. I’m not sure why he was incarcerated, I never asked. As she described what her husband was going through, I brought up my long term observation that Americans do not know what we want from out justice system. The typical response is that prisons should be punitive. A slightly more enlightened view is that prison sentences should provide sufficient deterrence to committing crime. Both notions have proven false.

A just society wants our justice system to provide us with good citizens who are unlikely to commit crimes again. America has tried various reform programs with little success. About the best thing we can say about our prison reform efforts is that it has turned some repeat offenders into law students, some of whom have even passed the bar.

I based the IJRP on education’s Individualized Education Plans where parents, their child and educators get together to develop a plan that all believe uses school district resources to best suit the child’s skills, goals and needs. Although IEPs are only available for Special Education students. Pitty. They could make America’s lagging schools much more effective for every student. But then again. It would cost a tonne. And that’s the problem.

Growing up, there was a meme, “Death Penalty for Parking Tickets (it cuts down on recidivism).” In order to keep costs down, IJRPs would have a termination date. Prisoners who failed to make progress on their IJRPs would be executed. I didn’t bring this up with my neighbor. She already said that her husband simply cannot resist temptations for long. She still loves her husband, so telling her that he is not fit for society wouldn’t go over well.

My novel just touches on this subject. It does not delve into larger questions such as:
- Can our society afford to keep people unfit to productively participate?
- Is it alright to export problem members of society to other societies (think Britain’s penal colonies in America and Australia)?
- Is it moral to execute recivid criminals? “Death Penalty for Parking Tickets” is absurdum ad reductio but drawing actual lines on what is executable or not is difficult, and judicial systems can, and often are, corrupted. Factor in increased incarceration costs and decreasing resources and it is easy to see how things reduce to death penalties for parking tickets.
Interesting issues, but my point was that I was a year or more ahead of the headline. Another topic in my novel is treatment and attitudes of homelessness. A recent Supreme Court decision allows states to make homelessness illegal. Within a week California’s governor ordered counties to remove homeless encampments. In my novel, the mayor of Bote Manchas was systemically sweeping away homeless people. The lack of an appropriate dustbin posses real life problems. There are many issues here, but the important thing is that I was two years ahead of this issue.

Anyways, I prepared Bote Manchas Metro for developmental editing, again. This time I followed hiring procedures and the developmental editing went well. The novel is now off to copy editing. In the mean time, I can drop a blog entry or two. I owe a book review on Freedom’s Just Another Word by Len Joy. I also need to arrange for reprint permissions for six songs whose lyrics I snipped for the novel.

Tag: Bote Manchas Metro

Facing the Music … errr … Review

Trepidation

Been Away Awhile