Didn't think that all the way through

Oh, a little forethought goes a long way. And I'm not just saying this
because I have a heater that blows directly into the refrigerator when
the door is opened. The set up is less than efficient but I don't
think the person who installed the heater knew we would be putting the
fridge there. I mean, who else has their fridge in their back entry way?

But that is not the lack of pre-thinking that is driving me crazy
today. I mean, in a week when things start to thaw around here because
Mother Nature gets back to dumping snow further east where it belongs,
the aforementioned heater will go back to being unused. I am fuming
about the lack of planning ahead on the part of a previously admired
author. If you think you're going to write a serialization of novels
revisiting the same characters, you should put a little thought into
their development as individuals and the evolution of the group
dynamics, to name but two important realms.

Book six came out recently so I went back to page one of book one and
started there before jumping into the latest offering. I listened to
all five books consecutively. This byte-cramming revealed the text in
new way. In the staggered, dragged out initial read, literary devices
such as the rehash of previous events worked well to get the reader up
to speed and make current events more sensical. Part of me gave the
author credit for allowing newbies to the series multiple entry
points. Alas, I now see that the rehash is there because the author
does not know how to move the characters forward from their springing
mostly fully-formed from her head for book one. I know that only two
years have passed in the lives of the characters and so situations
like living arrangements may be the same as they were in previous
books but the events of the characters' lives have been major and
their beliefs challenged and their perspectives impacted yet none of
this is revealed in the writing. I'm distraught about this because I
enjoy visiting their world and I like checking in with them to see how
they're getting on but I have better things to do with my time if the
answers to "how you doing?" are always the same. I don't spend time
with stagnant people here in meatspace and I'm certainly not going to
waste my time with similar folks in a fictional dimension.

This latest book in the series is so poorly written, so full of rehash
and so lacking in development that I think the publisher has pulled a
fast one. I honestly believe that the franchise has been handed off to
a room full of monkeys at typewriters and the original author does
nothing but contribute her name to the cover. This is the Chihuley
(sp?) method of artistic mass manufacturing: one person has the
initial vision and sets the groundwork for the form and then
apprentices crank it out on a mass scale without receiving any
individual credit and without the original artist ever touching the
final piece. I think this is what happens with many book series. I
read that one murder mystery author practices this. He sketches an
outline then a peon fleshes it out and-voilà!-instant best seller with
the known name slapped on the cover.

Of course, it may just be the case that the author was a one hit
wonder. She is up front about her lack of any formal training or
previous practice of the writing craft. Her first book was a gem and
the world she created is an amazing place. But now she doesn't know
what to do next to go forward from fantastic. The lack of thousands
pages of practice behind her is very evident in her current pages
reading as the road already travelled.

Oh well. I've moved on. I'm well into my next fictional work and
thoroughly enjoying it. And since the release dates for subsequent
titles by the same author are spaced out in 18 month intervals rather
than six month intervals, I believe he may actually be the author of
every title. The jury is out on whether or not he can reach the bar he
set rather high in title one.

Sent from my iPhone