Why am I still reading it if it’s a struggle? Because I find this latest book, like the last one in the series, A Feast for Crows, to be a fascinating example of a terrifically talented author who has almost completely lost his way.

On one hand, there’s no denying that, on one level, Martin is simply a fantastic writer. He prose is tight and clear and evocative, and his characters are incredibly real. The structure of the individual chapters is often about as good as structure gets.

But on the other hand, he seems to have lost complete control of his overall story.

As I understand it, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, which are both massive 900+ page tomes, were originally intended to be a single volume in this series: Feast includes half of the characters’ stories, and Dance includes the other half (including those of the series’ most interesting and likeable characters, Tyrion, Jon, and Daenerys).

So Martin is spending more than 2000 pages on what what was supposed to be a single point in the story. And boy, does it show. Talk about the Never-Ending Story!

In recent interviews, Martin has mostly given up the ghost: he’s basically admitted outright that A Song of Ice and Fire isn’t about a “story” so much as it’s about “atmosphere.”

These words are like icicles through my heart. In my opinion, virtually all stories are about “story,” or at least they should be.

Yes, yes, of course, stories are all about the journey, not just the destination. But if there is no real destination, or if the destination is a blank to be filled in later (usually by the seat of the writer’s pants!), then, for me, the here and now loses a lot of meaning. I feel like I’m being jerked around. It’s angst for angst’s sake, not for any particular “point.”

Martin’s attitude, of course, is common in  fantasy literature and paranormal series in general: they frequently seem to be mostly about atmosphere and world-building and beloved characters, not about narrative or story or satisfying “resolution” or a “point.”

In my opinion, there just aren’t that many stories that are so “epic” they actually require trilogies — or, worse, more than three books.

Usually, less really is more. (This, I think, is why cable TV’s 12-episode series arcs are so much more tight and satisfying that network TV’s often-meandering 24-episode series arcs.)

Still, if this is your thing, this is your thing. I just happen to disagree.

But I still find the case of George R. R. Martin to be fascinating. I honestly think he belongs in a very small pantheon of about five truly “great” fantasy authors. And the first three books in the Ice and Fire series are unqualified masterpieces, IMHO.

So how could someone who is such a great writer not see what a catastrophe the series has become?

He’s gone rogue, he’s lost “in country”: he’s fallen so in love with his world-building and his characters that he has also lost perspective.

Or maybe it’s a case of Black Swan-itis (named after the terrific Darren Aronofsky movie). With the first three books, he came as close as a human being can to “perfection.” Like Moses, he saw God. But like Moses, and like Natalie Portman in Black Swan, having seen such perfection, he’s forever ruined. There nowhere you can go from there but down. Like Moses, George R.R. Martin can’t cross the River Jordan.

In most cases, no one would care: most such self-indulgent writers are rejected by readers and audiences. But even lost in the infinite world of his own making, Martin is still a masterful writer (with a massive HBO-funded publicity campaign to boot!).

In short, a shitty, lost-in-the-weeds George R. R. Martin novel is still a lot more interesting than most of what I read these days.

(Oh, and the usual caveats apply: it feels stupid to critique a writer who is, I have no doubt, a far better writer than I. But hey, the whole point of a book is for it to be judged by its readers. I have as much as right to my opinion of Martin’s latest books as anyone!)

It’s funny: I’ve been hearing this all my life, how this writer or that is the “voice” of his or her generation. Whenever a YA author is under the age of twenty-five, someone always called them just that.

But here’s the thing: I never ever intended to be a “voice” of anyone other than myself or my characters. The whole concept seems really, really stupid to me — the kind of thing that someone who most definitely isn’t a member of the generation in question would say.

Simply put, you can’t boil something as complicated as a “generation” down to one voice. Or even ten voices.

And really, that’s not even the point of writing. It’s, like, the exact opposite of the point!

When I set out to write the Russel Middlebrook series, I knew my core characters were quirky: Russel is a (hopefully) lovable neurotic, Min is an over-achieving brainiac, and Gunnar is just plain “off” (or is he?).

They’re all very, very loosely based on myself and a couple of my core friends. I suppose you could say my books are the “voice” of me and some of my close friends.

But my generation? Any generation? That’s insane!

On the contrary, I always felt that my friends and I didn’t really fit in with the rest of my generation at all. We were at odds with them in so many ways! In high school, I didn’t relate to my fellow students at all. Ditto for college. In my twenties, I thought most of my peers were nuts. Same for my thirties.

(Frankly, I’ve been surprised the Russel Middlebrook books ended up being as popular as they did. And, yes, I was also vaguely annoyed when they were called “representative” of gay teens, today or ever.)

But here’s a truth I’ve learned: fiction isn’t about the general. It’s about the very, very specific. Yes, good fiction reveals the truths that bind us all — but the truths that bind us all as human beings.

The specific fools us into believing that the story is “real,” at least long enough for us to care about the greater themes.

I do there think are occasionally books and other entertainment projects that are specific to a generation, or at least a specific place and time. To Kill a Mockingbird, with its mostly voiceless minority characters and white liberal main characters, perfectly captures the dawn of mainstream white racial awareness. S.E. Hinton arguably created the young adult genre with The Outsiders (and did give some kind of visibility to a previously ignored underclass, I guess). Less Than Zero is supposedly emblematic of the Reagan years.

Then there are all those projects that seem time-specific, because of fashion or slang, but that are mostly pretty timeless. If The Breakfast Club was really about 1985, or that particular generation, why would teenagers still be relating to it all these years later?

If the authors of all these works are anything like me, I bet even they bristle at their projects being thought of as representative of anything except themselves and their characters.

We’re just trying to create good stories! Don’t burden us with the ridiculous responsibility of having to speak for an entire generation, or any large group of people.

Good writers almost never say, “I’m the voice of my generation!” because they know they’re not. They also never try to be the voice of their generation, because they know they can’t be.

So who does say that? Mostly just critics and pundits who repeat trite, stupid cliches.

No, I don’t mean the FUTURE-future, like the actual events in The Hunger Games. Maybe we really will end up with a totalitarian government that stupefies its populace by forcing its teenagers to participate in games of senseless, exploitative violence.

But the predictions I’m talking about are the ones about the future of pop culture.

Last year, I argued that the success of break-out gay teen characters like those on the TV show Glee was predicted almost a decade earlier by the unexpected success of my first book, the gay teen novel Geography Club, in 2003, and a bunch of other gay teen novels that found similarly unexpected success that same year.

Here’s my thesis: for over a decade now, young adult literature has been in the midst of a fantastic creative renaissance where authors and publishers are encouraged to push limits and take chances. Plus, the lower production costs of books in general allows publishers to take these risks.

And then there’s the fact that, ahem, we young adult authors can be a pretty smart, prescient bunch. After all, it’s literally our job to predict what issues teenagers will find interesting and relevant in the years ahead. That’s how we sell books!

The success of The Hunger Games books, and now the movies, is proving my theory yet again.

It used to be publishing “conventional wisdom” that boys wouldn’t read books that feature strong girls in leading roles.

As a teen book author, I’ve known that that’s mostly been bunk for a while now. First, that’s just not how many teen boys think anymore. Today’s teenagers don’t see gender the way previous generations did: the idea of boys and girls being platonic friends isn’t just not weird, it’s the absolute norm. It’s just the way most teenagers now relate to each other.

Gender stereotypes obviously still exist, but (I think) this is by far the least sexist generation of all time.

And second (as much as this pains me to say): boys are now pretty much irrelevant to the success of most young adult novels anyway. Increasingly, the genre is primarily being driven by female authors — and, more importantly, female readers. (Indeed, this is becoming true for almost all literary genres, except maybe literary fiction.) Sadly, most boys are playing video games, not reading books.

The point is, anyone familiar with the YA genre knows that for at least a decade now, strong female characters have been the norm in YA literature. (Twilight, with its boring, passive, guy-obsessed Bella, is an exception to this rule, not the rule itself.)

But from Hollywood, I’ve heard almost nothing but the old, stupid conventional wisdom I used to hear from publishers: boys won’t go to movies or watch TV shows staring strong leading female characters.

Bah! That simply isn’t true anymore! It hasn’t been true for a decade or more.

But Hollywood couldn’t see it. They could’ve given us strong female movie leads on their own, but they didn’t, or they did so only very, very sparingly.

Instead, it took a young adult novel to force Hollywood to give us such movie characters. The Hunger Games was so popular, and so obviously perfect to be adapted for film, that Hollywood simply had no choice but to put a strong female in an action movie lead.

Now it’s a huge, huge hit, a major movie franchise that will dominate pop culture for years to come.

All of us who labor in young adult literature could have predicted this: in fact, we did predict it! These strong-female stories are exactly the kinds of books we’ve been writing for decades.

But up until the very end, Hollywood couldn’t see it. The optimistic prediction was that The Hunger Games movie would gross $90 million, not the record-setting $155 million it ended up grossing. These eye-popping numbers violated their conventional wisdom, so they simply couldn’t be true.

My greater point remains: if you want to know where the greater pop culture is going, don’t look to Hollywood movies or television. They’re reactive, not predictive.

No, look to young adult books. We’ll tell you where society is going, not where it’s already gone.

When I was a kid, the country went through a full-fledged Dungeons & Dragons hysteria, where the fantasy role-playing game was accused of everything from turning kids onto Satanism to encouraging them to kill themselves.

Decades later, we’ve now reached a point where D&D is seen as sort of a harmless, if incredibly geeky pastime.

But isn’t there a third option? Dungeons & Dragons isn’t a dangerous, evil force in the world, nor is it just harmless fun; it’s actually one of the most worthwhile activities ever created, and there is literally nothing better for turning a kid into a thoughtful, creative, passionate, open-minded adult.

Almost everything I know today I learned from Dungeons & Dragons. And almost everything I’m passionate about, I first discovered while playing the game.

I started playing Dungeons & Dragons at age twelve, when my friend Tim asked for, and received, a “starter” box set of the game for Christmas.

I immediately loved it. It gave a focus to all those lazy afternoons with my friends. It was something for us all to be passionate about, an endless countryside for us to discover and explore — endless because we made it up ourselves.

But it didn’t just focus those afternoons with my friends; it focused the rest of my life too.

Before the game, I’d had little interest in reading for pleasure. For me, books were something that were assigned in school — staid, musty tales that said nothing about the things I was interested in and had absolutely no relevance to my life.

But because I was so enamored with the world of D&D, I started reading fantasy books. For the first time in my life, I realized, “Hey, books aren’t necessarily boring! Sometimes they can even be really, really interesting!” It was a revelation. In months, I was devouring every fantasy book I could get my hands on — even long, complicated sagas that I wouldn’t have looked twice at before (Stephen R. Donaldson was, and still is, my favorite author).

In school, I’d always hated history. It had always been presented to me as nothing more than a long list of dates to be memorized.

But in the world of D&D, in the adventures we were concocting for each other, history came alive. And why wouldn’t it? We were literally living it! And like almost every virgin D&D player, I immediately embarked on my own extracurricular study of weaponry, of myths and fables, of medieval life — even castle-building.

Philosophy and ethics? At my Catholic grade school, that meant just another list to memorize, this time of picky little rules to follow.

It was while playing D&D that I discovered the notion of “alignment” — the idea that everyone has a point-of-view in life, and that few people think of themselves as “evil.” Instead, ethics necessarily follow from one’s perspective. This acknowledgment of the obviously relative nature of all things made my head feel like a balloon; I could almost feel it expanding on my shoulders.

Even better, by implicitly granting me the right to make my own ethical choices, and by having me role-play different choices and then forcing me to accept the consequences of my actions, I think the game made me a much more ethical person. It definitely made me a far more broad-minded one.

In school, I had absolutely no interest in debate or public presentations. My sixth grade presentation was on Bolivia, and I literally could not have cared less.

But because D&D involves such an elaborate set of rules, many of which are, uh, ambiguous, an essential part of Dungeons & Dragons means arguing a case, both to your fellow players and to the dungeon master.Year later, in college, professors would always say, “You did debate in high school, didn’t you?” I never knew what they were talking about — until it finally occurred to me that I had, in fact, spent every weekend of my high school years engaged in passionate debate with some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met.

Before D&D, I’d never thought of myself as a storyteller, or a performer in any way. But when you’re the dungeon master, you’re required to be a performer, acting out the role of the narrator and dozens of other characters — and you’d better be an incredibly quick-thinking performer at that, since most of what you do is improvisation in response to something your players did that you didn’t expect.

If you write your dungeons yourself, as we usually did, you’re also forced to confront the notions of character motivation, the importance of a good antagonist, of theme, of rising tension and resolution.

In short, if he’s going to keep the attention of his players, a dungeon master must quickly intuit all the elements of dramatic structure.

Best of all, you tell your stories in direct engagement with your audience. If that doesn’t tell you exactly what does, and doesn’t, work when it comes to storytelling, nothing will.

Finally, there’s math. I didn’t like that either as a kid — more memorization, natch. Truthfully, I still hate it, but when you spend countless hours adding up dice-rolls in your head, you’re suddenly a whiz  — and when your character’s life is at stake, you pick up statistics pretty quickly too!

Dungeons & Dragons would have been worth playing even if it built no “character” whatsoever — if it did nothing but entertain. And maybe this essay will do nothing but make today’s generation of kids less likely to play it; that’s probably how I would have reacted.

But the truth is, the game does so much more than entertain, and it’s about time it got credit for it.

As an adult, I’ve done a number of things for a living: teach at the high school and college level, edit two websites, and write novels, plays, and screenplays.

If it weren’t for Dungeons & Dragons, I couldn’t have done any of these things well.

If I hadn’t found D&D, would I have discovered some other passion as a kid? Video games? Sports? Horticulture? It’s possible. But it’s almost impossible to imagine that any of these activities would have given me such a long and varied list of skills and interests.

As an adult, I occasionally run into parents who mention that their children have discovered Dungeons & Dragons. They usually roll their eyes and shrug, as if to say, “At least they’re not out robbing liquor stores.”

I always tell them they’re wrong to dismiss the game so casually; I try to tell them all the things I’ve written here.

They never listen to me. They always say something stupid like, “What kind of game is it if you can’t ever win?” The stereotypes run too deep. To them, D&D means being silly, dressing up like an elf and rooting around in sewers. They can’t dismiss it fast enough.

In a way, I’m sad — sad that they don’t appreciate and support the passionate, creative, intelligent, interesting kid they’re probably raising (no thanks to them).

But mostly I’m sad that they themselves have to go through life with such a narrow, limited perspective. That wouldn’t be the case if one of their friends had ever introduced them to D&D — but now, of course, it’s probably too late.

A great book has all four of those things. Writing, character, plot, and concept are all essential elements for greatness, IMHO.

A good example of the kind of book I love is Jumper, the 1993 novel by Stephen Gould (that became a terrible movie starring Hayden Christensen in 2008). In the novel, the main character discovers he has the ability to teleport.

Cool, right?

The latest such book I’ve read that checks all the “writing,” “character,” “plot,” and “concept” boxes is Ready Player One by Earnest Cline.

Ready Player One is set in 2044, a future that is in total social collapse (but while I suppose this is technically a dystopian book, this is not yet another Hunger Games rip-off, thank God!).

In 2044, most people have retreated, at least mentally, to a beautiful virtual online gaming world called OASIS. There things remain okay, mostly because of principles and precepts put in place by OASIS’ creator, James Halliday.

But Halliday has died, and in his will, he has left ownership of the entire virtual world to anyone who can solve a series of riddles — all involving Halliday’s love for the pop culture of his youth, which happened to be in the 1980s.

For years, many people have tried to the solve the riddles, but no one has yet succeeded.

Enter teenage Wade, who goes by the name Parzival (after the knight who found the Holy Grail) in OASIS. He’s determined to solve Halliday’s riddle once and for all. But he better do it quickly or the evil corporation Innovative Online Industries (or IOI) just might do it first, using all manner of deceit and subterfuge to succeed — and totally destroying everything that makes OASIS great in the process.

Some things never change, it seems.

Wade is helped in his quest by a collection of online friends who he has never even seen (he only knows their avatars), and who may not be exactly what they seem.

The novel does many, many things spot-on, but I especially enjoyed how Cline found a way to geek out on, even celebrate, what is clearly his own love for 1980s pop culture, while at the same time having the book seem forward-looking, not entirely lost in the past.

The book also has an interesting take on the internet and on cyber culture in general: most books and movies that concern themselves with such things end up being lazy “cautionary tales,” warning about the horrible dangers of virtual reality.

Ready Player One definitely argues that online gaming can be taken too far. At the same time, any interest can be taken too far: football, or cooking, or playing chess, or even reading books. There is nothing inherently bad about the internet or online gaming, the author says (and I agree). And in fact, there might be plenty of things that are inherently good.

It’s a subtle difference, but it’s an important one, at least for a geek like me.

Is Ready Player One a “great” book? I can’t say the writing sings, and the characters are functional, but maybe not fantastic.

Still, even if it’s not a “great” book, it’s still a very, very good one.

It’s that he has yet another glowing write-up in Entertainment Weekly.

I’ve met John a few times, and I remember he once told me how much more excited his publisher was about a “B” review of an earlier book in EW than they were about a starred review in one of the big industry publications.

Basically, in terms of actually moving books, EW is the big-time.

And let’s face it, Green’s success is absolutely surreal: at least two Prinze Awards, glowing reviews everywhere, break-out bestsellers, movie deals, and on and on.

In other words, he’s at the absolute top of the game in terms of both critical and popular success. Even Suzanne Collins can’t really say that.

And John is young-ish and handsome and thoughtful and generous, with legions of adoring fans. And here’s the really infuriating part: he’s also a fantastic writer!

Grrrrrr!

The thing is I’m actually telling the truth when I say I’ve never, before today, felt any jealousy toward John.

But this is as good an excuse as any to talk about something that I think every writer knows a little something about: jealousy of other authors.

These are the kinds of authors other writers can be jealous of:

(1) Writers Who Deserve Their Success.

These are the folks like John Green. And while I might sometimes be envious of their talent (and their fourth EW write-up!), I’m almost never jealous of their success. Hell, they deserve it! And when they find it, it means the world is working the way the world is supposed to work.

(2) Writers Who Don’t Deserve Their Success.

This is a little trickier. There are a number of wildly popular writers who I think are flat-out frauds. I feel like they don’t have any real idea what they’re doing as writers, and their success is mostly just a fluke. Either that, or they just happened to be the first to stumble on or create a trend that, for whatever reason, caught the world’s imagination, and their books were just not-terrible enough that they were able to ride the wave.

Sure, maybe they’re simply speaking a language with their books that I don’t speak — tapping into something that I just don’t relate to.

Fine, whatever. Either way, I just don’t respect their craft.

(And no, I’m not naming any names — but Suzanne Collins is definitely not one of these “fraud” writers!).

In my first few years as a published author, I used to feel terribly jealous of these writers, mostly because it didn’t seem “fair.” There were so many other writers — um, yes, myself included — who were so much more deserving!

After a few years in the business of the arts, I now understand that “fair” has very little to do with anything. So many things have to line up for a book to be a success that sometimes I think it’s extraordinary that any books ever break out at all.

And what is “good” anyway? It’s all so subjective.

If I dwell on it, I can still get mildly annoyed by these writers who I don’t think “deserve” their successes. But hey, people win the lottery all the time too, and I don’t get all bent out of shape about that, so what’s the point?

(3) Writers Who May or May Not Deserve Their Success, But Who Are Just Plain Jerks.

Of the many, many writers I’ve met, the vast majority seem to me like really decent folk — much more likely to be cool than the average person on the street, that’s for sure.

But over the years, I’ve met a handful of authors who just haven’t been my cup of tea. They say jerky, stupid things, usually behind your back. Or they’re arrogant, acting like they clearly think they’re better than others.

Basically, they act like, well, they’re still in high school. And I’ve always said that I write books about high school because the themes speak to me — not because I want to go back to high school and spend time with rude, petty, or obviously insecure people.

How do I react when these folks find great success?

There was a time when I definitely let it get to me. But truthfully? Now I’m pretty good at just ignoring these folks completely. The good thing about being an adult, about not actually being in high school, is that it’s quite easy to avoid the people you don’t like.

I also helps to think about the concept of “karma.” What goes around comes around. This isn’t always true in the arts — sometimes good, talented people really do never get a break. But it seems to be true in everything else. If I’m right that someone really is a jerk — if I didn’t just happen to meet them on a bad day — they’ll get what’s coming to them eventually.

The “wheel” of success in the arts is particularly unforgiving to jerks: people will always excuse “diva” behavior when a person is on the way up in their career — when there’s money to be made off them. But when the wheel starts to turn and their careers start to flag? Their “friends” will scatter like cockroaches. Why wouldn’t they? There’s no other reason to stick around.

Anyway, the usual advice I read about author-jealousy is: “Don’t do it! It’s a waste of time!”

And I guess that’s true. But it’s also kinda stupid, because no one really chooses to be jealous. You either are or you aren’t. (I guess we have some choice about how much we give into darker emotions, but let’s face it: the times when we’re feeling darker emotions are usually the times when we’re least able to resist feeling darker emotions.)

Nutshell? If you’re an author, it’s pretty normal to sometimes feel jealous of other authors’ success. Don’t celebrate or dwell on your resentment, but it’s okay not to fight it to the death either.

And as for John Green? I’ll have what he’s having. Please?

I have no idea if anyone except me is interested in an update on my experience, but here’s how it’s going so far.

These are the (very reasonable!) prices of three of my e-books: Poison Oak is $5.99, Double Feature (which is two books in one) is $6.99, and Grand & Humble is $3.99.

Since these are all older titles, I’m pretty pleased with how they’re selling. I’m not grossing the tens of thousands of dollars that some indie authors report, but I’m making much more from these books than when they were still in print with my old publisher (and I’m getting paid instantly, not a year later). Such is the beauty of the 60-70% royalty rate that self-publishing pays, compared to the 10-25% from traditional publishing.

The sales are particularly strange because I’m used to really flogging my books: doing a zillion interviews, sending out dozens of review copies, and dragging myself all over the country to do readings and speaking gigs. But I haven’t done much of that lately (because I don’t have any “new” titles out), and I haven’t done any particular marketing for these old titles (except redo my website), and they’ve sold pretty consistently anyway. In fact, my totals have risen for each of the three months they’ve been available.

I’m not the first indie author to say this, but for whatever reason, Amazon and the other online retailers do a pretty good job of connecting me with my readers. It’s arguable — and I really hate to say this — they do a better job than actual bookstores. They definitely do a better job than Barnes & Noble, which hasn’t even seemed to stock my last few books on their actual shelves.

But the really interesting part of my indie e-publishing experience is my experiment with “free” pricing. I made my book The Last Chance Texaco free for a couple of weeks. It had only been selling about 15 copies a month at $2.99, for a total monthly income of about $25. But it was a crowd-pleaser at the time of release (in 2004), so I figured, “Why not?”

Not surprisingly, it sold a lot more copies “free”: about 20,000 in all between all the online outlets. This isn’t quite as many copies as it sold when it was traditionally published, but those 20,000 copies sure sold a lot faster. I’m sure I’ve never had any title move so quickly.

I have no idea how all those people found out about the free book because, as I said, I haven’t done any real marketing.

After two weeks at “free,” I upped the price to 99 cents, where it still is. Since then it’s continued to sell at a rate of about 150 copies a week which, when all is said and done, is netting me about $100/week — $375 per month more than it was earning. I’m really curious to see how long that lasts.

Plus, I would like to think at least a few of those 20,000 buyers will read the book, like it, and hopefully buy copies of some of my other books.

That said, despite having moved 20,000 new copies in two weeks, I haven’t received any particular bump in fan email for The Last Chance Texaco, which is weird, because I usually receive dozens of emails right away when a new book comes out, and the dozens more in the weeks that follow. I think I’ve received two emails or Tweets on Texaco total in the last month.

This has me wondering if a lot of people buy “free” e-books, but don’t necessarily read them, or at least don’t read them right away. I suspect the reader’s engagement with a “free” book is lower than the engagement with a book that was paid for. (But I have got about eight more Amazon reviews, all very positive.)

No matter. This is all a grand experiment for me, like it is for a lot of other authors: a way for me to make even my older books available to anyone who wants to read them, and also even out my income in between traditional book advances and other writing gigs.

So far, in that respect, it’s been a great success. And I gotta say, the best part is that I personally feel like I have far more control over my writing than ever did being traditionally published: I get to decide the covers, the pricing, the titles, the jacket copy, and all the rest. And once a decision has been made, I can change my mind later, experimenting with different strategies.

I also feel much less obsessed with, and much less neurotic about, marketing and huckstering than I ever have before: there’s no frantic worry that I have six weeks to get people aware of the book before bookstores start to pull it off the shelves.

And as much as I’ve appreciated the support from the “gatekeepers” in the publishing industry over the years — critics, award committees, librarians, booksellers, and all the rest — it’s a really good feeling knowing I can now go directly to my readers. In order for the book to be available, I don’t need to convince someone to make it available, that it’s “worthy”: it just is, to anyone who wants to read it.

At this point, there’s nothing new or original that can be said about e-publishing, so I’m just repeating what others have said. But the revolution is definitely real.

Yes, it’s the story of a teenage Victor Frankenstein, and normally I’m not a fan of these “before they were famous” retellings of classic figures from myth or literature (for that matter, I’m not a big fan of reboots and reimaginings in general). But I’m making an exception in this case, if only because the book is so masterfully plotted and written.

Victor Frankenstein has always lived in the shadow of his twin, Konrad Frankenstein. To make matters even more infuriating, Konrad is a genuinely great guy. It just makes sense that their mutual friend Elizabeth would be more attracted to Konrad. One point, not quite intending to be cruel, she says outright that although Victor and Konrad are identical, they’re nothing alike.

So it also stands to reason that when Konrad falls victim to a mysterious illness, Victor would be particularly driven to explore the secret library in the bowels of his father’s castle searching for a cure. Finally, he has an opportunity to both win Konrad’s respect and Elizabeth’s love.

This being the foreshadow-y retelling one of the most tragic figures in all of literature, things don’t go quite as planned, of course.

And this is perhaps what I liked most about the book: it gives us a plausible, yet mostly unexpected explanation as to how Victor ended up where we all know he does. He wasn’t born to play God — he had to be driven there. The book does a smashing job of showing us, in big and small ways, how Victor, a very flawed character to begin with, does things that, well, make a lot of sense at the time.

Like the best flawed characters, he’s sympathetic. There but for the grace of God (and hopefully a little less ego) go I.

There are two big twists in the book, the first of which caught me completely by surprise — even though it had been telegraphed strongly and cleanly. I love it when that happens.

Oppel is perhaps most well-known for the steampunk Airborn books (the first of which won the Printz Award). This Dark Endeavor isn’t quite steampunk, although it takes place in a sort of an alternative 19th century Switzerland, at the cusp of the age of science (directly after an age of alchemy). This was a wise (but subtle) artistic choice: writing in 1818, Mary Shelley, of course, set the original Frankenstein in the “real” world, but science soon eclipsed the novel. The only way the story can be taken seriously now is in exactly the alternative dimension described here, which is perfectly executed.

One quibble: as much as I think the title is evocative and wonderfully representative of the genre, I can never remember the damn thing!

The story continues in Such Wicked Intent, coming in August, and a major movie version (from the producers of the Twilight films, alas) is reportedly in the works.

Speaking of which, do you have a question for the brain? Ask it here! (Be sure and include the city, state, or country where you’re writing from, though that can be obscured if necessary.)

Hey Brain: Well I’m a wannabe writer, I am currently in the midst of producing a manuscript and sending it around. My question is: when should I use my real name or my pen name? Because my books are usually from the point of view of gay youth, and are usually boys — and there’s that whole thing where people say, “People mightn’t read the book because it’s written by a girl and she knows nothing about a teenage boy.” But there’s also a nagging feeling in the back of my mind saying if I use my pen-name and people find out I am not male, then will the readers ‘rebel?’ — Girl Who (Hopefully) Writes Like a Gay Boy

The Brain Responds:

There are a lot of different reasons writers use a pen names, but the most common is probably because authors want to keep their “brand” clear. A book by “Nora Roberts” means a very specific thing, as does a book by Tom Clancy and Stephen King and Dean Koontz.

So when these writers have written books that are in different genres than what they’re readers are used to, they’ve sometimes chosen to use pseudonyms in order to not confuse the reader. With the new name, they’re trying to create an entirely new brand.

As an author who’s written in many different genres (and totally confused my readers), I can say I don’t necessarily think this is a terrible idea. As a reader, I have some pretty strong genre expectations of authors I like too.

But you’re talking about something a little different. You’re talking about the other reason why writers and publishers often use pen names: to hide the true gender or identity of the author.

Most of the times this has been done, it’s usually women pretending to be men so as to not scare off male readers. One of the most famous examples of is The Outsiders author S.E. Hinton — who is actually Susan Hinton, although her publisher worried a female name would confuse critics and readers, since the book is told from the point of view of a teenage boy.

And of course J.K. Rowling made exactly the same choice for exactly the same reason.

I’m not going to name any names, but this still happens a fair bit in gay male publishing. Whether it’s initials (which are a tell-tale sign of a female author) or a complete pseudonym, it goes on a lot, especially in gay male romance.

Should you do it? I’d love to be able to tell you that you shouldn’t — that we’ve long since moved on from such necessities. But the fact is, I suspect a female name on a book about a gay male teen might have a negative effect on sales and critical reaction. (I’m absolutely positive minority-themed books are considered more “authentic” when written by a member of the minority in question.)

On the other hand, a big (and growing!) part of the market for gay teen books, especially romance, is women and girls. So maybe you can start a whole new trend!

I also think you put your finger on a very real concerned: pissed off fans who feel a little tricked, at least if you have an entirely different pen name.

Bottom line? Perhaps using your initials is something to consider, at least when circulating the manuscript to editors and agents. Then once you’ve landed one, you can decide together what the best marketing strategy might be.

Dear Brent’s Brain: This sounds terrible, but here goes: I hate my good friend’s friends. They’re not necessarily “evil” people, but they’re just not people I relate to in any way: they’re often kinda judgmental and superficial, but mostly they’re just plain boring. I know this sounds harsh, I know this doesn’t really affect me, except that I often have to spend time around them. But I’ve tried to like her friends, and I’m just not into them. Part of me thinks my friend is not quite the person I think she is — frankly, around her friends, she’s judgmental, superficial, and boring too. But another part of me thinks my friend just has low self-esteem and, therefore, low standards in friends: if someone expresses and interest in her, she’s too flattered to not be a friend in return. Anyway, does all this mean my friendship with my friend is doomed? Should I say something? And for what it’s worth, I’m not a teenager: I’m 35, she’s 34. — Non-Teen Drama Queen

The Brain Responds:

We all have that friend whose partner we can’t stand. What in the world does he or she see in that person?

Sometimes those relationships don’t last (and we’re thrilled when they don’t!). But sometimes they do. Does it make your friend any less of a friend?

Actually, sometimes it does. A person’s choice of a partner, just like your friend’s choice of friends, is a reflection on her: it’s a part of her identity, of who she is. These friends you don’t like are telling you something important about her.

But it’s not the only part of her identity. A friend might also like cilantro and I can’t stand the stuff, but so what? I focus on the things I have in common, minimize the cilantro-related parts of our friendship, and I carry on.

But for some reason, you can’t. Her friends are more important than her like of cilantro, after all. This is clearly bothering you, so ask yourself these questions:

Why did you become friends with this person in the first place? Is that still intact? When her friends aren’t around, do you still like this person? Is this a symptom of a bigger problem with your friend: namely, that she has no solid identity of her own and she tailors her personality to be like whoever she happens to be around at the time — you when she’s with you, her friends when she’s with them?

But it’s also worth asking: are you a judgmental person in general? Does this kind of thing come up with in most of your friendships and partners? If so, the problem might really be you and your uncompromising standards, and not your friend at all. If so, you might be the one who has to change.

I can’t answer these questions: only you can.

But in the end, friends should be friends because they genuinely like and respect each other. Staying friends with someone out of guilt or obligation does no one any favors: it just makes you feel resentful in the long run, and the friend (usually) senses it on some level anyway, creating many more problems than it solves.

If you’ve got a history together, you owe it to the other person to try to work this through. If you do decide to bring up the topic, tread gently — and put the onus on you, not her.

But if you’re ultimately not feeling it, you’re not feeling it. It might finally be time to move on — or at least downgrade her status from “friend” to “acquaintance.”

Now do you have a question for the brain? Ask it here! (Be sure and include the location where you’re writing from, though that can be obscured if need be.)