The Journey of the Fool.

Leo Karchesky/flickr.com

I mentioned last week that I had started working on the new book. I'm pleased (and fairly relieved, to be honest) to report that as of the end of my writing session today, I'm 31,000 words in -- or in NaNoWriMo terms, the first draft is more than half done.

First drafts of even the best-planned novels offer some surprises to the writer along the way, and this book did not start out as one of the best-planned novels I've ever attempted. So I was surprised when I realized my protagonist, whose name is Julia, is on a Fool's Journey. I mean, I wanted to work a labyrinth into the story, and I intended for the action to stretch over the course of a year. And I had the setting all picked out (more on that in weeks to come). But when Julia first stepped into the labyrinth and found herself at the edge of a cliff, with a little dog nipping at her heels...well, I had to sit back for a minute. Because that's the scene depicted in Card Zero -- also known as The Fool -- of the Major Arcana in a Tarot deck.

A typical Tarot deck is made up of 78 cards. Fifty-six of them are split into four suits, similar to a regular deck of playing cards, and in fact you can match up the suits in a Tarot deck with the suits in a playing card deck: Wands (Clubs), Swords (Spades), Cups (Hearts), and Pentacles (Diamonds). Each suit in a Tarot deck has 14 cards: Ace through 10, Page, Knight, Queen, and King. So that, too, is similar to a deck of playing cards, except for the addition of the Page.

Those 56 cards are collectively called the Minor Arcana. The remaining 22 cards, the Major Arcana, have no corresponding cards in a regular deck -- except for The Fool, which evolved into the Joker.

Now, sometimes people get a little nervous when you start talking about the Tarot. The first thing they think of is gypsy fortune-tellers and "Cross my palm with silver" and all that junk. Yes, you can use the Tarot for divination, if you're so inclined. But the cards can also be used as a springboard for meditation, and as a tool for self-discovery.

That's where the Journey of the Fool comes in. Many folks over the years have strung together a narrative that likens the progression of cards in the Major Arcana to a journey through life. You can take the journey yourself. One technique is to pick a day each month on which you will sit down, clear your mind, imagine yourself in the scene of one of the Major Arcana cards -- starting with The Fool and taking each card in order, all the way to Card 21, The World -- and see what your subconscious spits out at you. (Fun fact: Going through this exercise is what convinced me to start writing seriously.)

I'm not going to step Julia through every card in the Major Arcana, but I am keeping the cards in order. It's been an interesting exercise so far, and it promises to get extremely interesting shortly. She hasn't gotten to The Tower yet.

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Speaking of life's journeys, I was saddened to learn this week of the passing of one of my favorite authors. Graham Joyce was a British author who wrote dark fantasy; I stumbled across his work in my local library one day and, once begun, gobbled his books as fast as I could. His work was better known in the U.K. than here in the States, and I've always thought that was a shame.

I met him at the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego in 2011. The Silent Land had just come out; he signed my copy for me, and showed me a cool thing about the dust jacket design (ping me in the comments, and I'll tell you what it is). Just a nice guy.

I loved The Silent Land, but my favorite book of his is probably still The Tooth Fairy. Really, all of his work is excellent. I'm so sorry that he's gone. RIP, Graham.

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These moments of Foolish blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Indies and ethics.

I'm writing this way ahead of time, so things have probably cooled down by now.  But earlier this month, there was a kerfuffle in the indie world over some popular authors who had done some pretty unethical things to promote their books. 

One guy, RJ Ellory, was caught writing glowing, five-star reviews for his books and posting them on Amazon under an assumed name.  Not only that, but he would use the same assumed name or names -- oh, let's call these alternate identities "sockpuppets" for short, since everyone else is -- to leave scathing, one-star reviews for books that he considered to be his competition.

Ellory is not the only guy engaging in this kind of stupidity.  A historian named Orlando Figes was caught doing the same sort of thing in 2010.  A well-known UK thriller writer named Stephen Leather has admitted to doing it, too -- and says he doesn't see a problem with it, if it builds buzz for his books.

Perhaps my favorite story, though, is that of John Locke, whose name has been held high as one of the few indies to sell millions of books.  He even wrote a book entitled, How I Sold One Million E-Books in Five Months.  Turns out he paid big money to a shady guy whose business it was to round up people to write glowing reviews of many Amazon products, including e-books.  I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I would guess Locke left this part of the formula for his success out of his how-to book.

In response to these bits of news, a group of authors (full disclosure: the group includes Graham Joyce, and I'm a big fan of his work) posted a petition online and encouraged others to sign it.  The petition says, in part, "We the undersigned unreservedly condemn this behaviour, and commit never to use such tactics."  I signed it.  I even put a link to it on my Facebook page.

Then, Joe Konrath -- whose blog I typically enjoy, particularly when he's bashing the traditional publishing business -- wrote a series of posts critical of the No Sockpuppets Here petition.  At first glance, Konrath seemed to be complaining that other authors were piling on, either out of some misplaced sense of judgmental superiority or out of jealousy that they hadn't sold as many books as the guys who had been outed.  But then later, Konrath admitted that he was personally acquainted with Locke and Leather, and in fact had discussed collaborating on a project with Leather.  So then it appeared he was sticking up for his buddies.

Well, okay.  I'd stick up for my friends, too, I guess, to a point.  But I have to tell you that I don't see anything wrong with having a personal code of ethics and sticking to it.  And I also don't see anything wrong with calling out someone who behaves egregiously.

Konrath is right that these guys didn't commit any crimes, and maybe he's right that no other authors were hurt by their actions (although you've gotta wonder about the effects of those fake one-star reviews).  But for gods' sake, please tell me this isn't our only yardstick for ethical indie behavior.

And in a world where indie authors' marketing options are limited, trashing the credibility of Amazon's star review system with sockpuppet reviews hurts all of us.
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I'm Lynne Cantwell, and I approve this blog post.