Another Person to Listen to

I'm finishing up my copy of Crystal Rain by Tobias S. Buckell tonight, which signifies another landmark in my summer of books I'm finally getting around to. I've been hearing a lot about Crystal Rain and its author since it came out last year, "Carribbean Sci-Fi" being the operative term in most of the buzz--Mr. Buckell was born in Granada and lived in the Virgin Islands for a time as well, and suffice to say that the book speaks to that in its flavor as well as its setting.

A lot of the people who ask me to recommend books these days are fans of The DaVinci Code and/or Harry Potter--all books that "you can't put down"--who have run out of reading material. Starting now, Crystal Rain is on the recommend list; like those pop-culture favorites, the adventure narrative is engaging and moves fast. I finished it in four days while working full-time and looking for an apartment and a car, so there you go.

Of course, there are hundreds of books that meet those requirements; what sets Crystal Rain apart is the shiny new setting it adds to the mix, a Carribbean-like island culture on an alien planet originally colonized by humans traveling through wormholes. As the story progresses, we learn that the original colonists lost their advanced technology in some kind of military disaster, and their descendants are just starting to build themselves back up by studying the remains of lost technology they find. Unfortunately, they do this under constant threat from the militaristic, human-sacrificing Azteca culture that lives across the mountains, and an invasion by the Aztecas forms the inciting incident of the story.

Thus the timing places us squarely within a steampunk world (steampunk being a subgenre that mixes the trappings of science fiction with 19th century technology: steam engines, lighter-than-air craft, and *gasp* electricity), and one which holds up consistently and well, and which you can see constantly in motion to boot.

The focus of the story involves John DeBrun, a classic adventure hero (with a hook for a hand, no less) if ever there was one, who washed up on a beach about a dozen-odd years ago with no memory of his past. Which complicates things his forgotten past becomes a key component to the use of an artifact that may be instrumental in deciding the victor of the battle against the Azteca.

I don't want to give too much away, so I'll let those details serve as the basis for my recommendation. I'm hoping to get into Ragamuffin, the sort-of-sequel to Crystal Rain, in the near future. Buckell has reported on his blog that three more sort-of-sequels are in the works, so between these and those he's an author to watch for readers who enjoy the fast, fun, and original.

On the professional side, I recommend aspiring professionals to keep an eye on Mr. Buckell too. Of course nearly every author on the planet, professional or not, has his or her own wisdom to dispense about the craft of writing, but Buckell's blog goes a step further every so often; he's done some fairly comprehensive research on authors' salaries, as well as the chances that a person's first book will sell, versus a second or third or even sixth book.

The results of his surveys are enlightening too, most of all in the way they evidence facts that a lot of aspiring novelists are missing. For instance, the median advance for a first novel is $5,000--not exactly a living wage, and when you cross reference the results, it's doubtful that that first sale will even be an author's first finished manuscript.

Luckily, he has some things to say about freelancing (which appears to be his primary source of income) as well, for those invested in writing as a career.