Susan Kelly's Blog

I don’t often re-read books, but I am temporarily bookless. A perusal of the home library turned up American Captain, by Edison Marshall, copyright 1954. It’s February, we expect the return of winter after our two weeks of Spring-in-January. What could be better than a rollicking tale of adventure on the high seas?

I first read this book some long-ago summer after finding it on my dad’s bookshelf at the lake. My copy of this book (which I picked up at a rummage sale somewhere) is inscribed “February 1955” Mrs. Ida Schuler. Ida, I hope you enjoyed this book. I hope it transported you away from your 1950s life in north-east Calgary for a few hours.

This book was no doubt printed on a linotype press, with hot metal and ink at rather a high decibel level. It’s probably just my overactive imagination, but the pages seem to reflect the care, the skill, the craftsmanship of that era of book publishing. They are fine, full pages of 10 point type, Century Schoolbook, or something similar, resting easily on rough-cut paper that has mellowed to a soft yellow with the passing years. It smells like old libraries.

It’s a 1950s book, so it has a Hero. Homer Whitman is young, handsome, stronger than his fellow sailors, and so assiduous in performing his duties that he is soon promoted to Second Mate.

Sometimes I miss being able to uncomplicatedly identify with a Hero. Was life really simpler once upon a time? Or did we only write what was held to be ideal, hoping to fend off chaos and vulnerability and failure?

Edison Marshall had a long and successful career as a writer, stretching from 1920 to 1965. I wonder what he’d think of modern novels?

If you like your stories through the lens of the slightly weird.

http://www.sfwa.org/forum/index.php?app=readinglist

Changes underway at Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. They will need the world’s biggest army of proofreaders, unless, of course, they can do it with an algorithm. Which it kind of sounds like they can. Overall, I think this will be a good thing. The slush heap will benefit from some curating, and freelance editors will get some work. Not sure how they will distinguish between dialect and outright spelling mistakes. My book had 35 “spelling mistakes.” Ooof, gonna, mmmumph, slickwith, and the like. No actual spelling mistakes, I am happy to say!

http://johndopp.com/writers/amazon-kindle-spelling-mistakes/