Rights and Wrongs

I'm one of the administrators over at Destroyer Club, a site dedicated to the series created by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. There have been over 140 books in the series since 1972, many of which have been written by ghost writers. Some background material before my rant.

When I first found the series, it had just gone over to Signet, and Murphy & Sapir were still writing it (for the most part). Then Will Murray took over as the main writer, with an occasional book by Murphy, Sapir, or both. I didn't realize back then about ghost writers. M&S's names were still on the books, and if they were a little different, they were still entertaining and featured the characters I had grown to love.

Signet gave way to Gold Eagle, and a few years later Murray gave way to Jim Mullaney, and still the series went on. But Gold Eagle didn't advertise it very well and didn't seem to care about selling as many of the books as they could. Jim Mullaney was made an offer he needed to refuse during his last contract negotiation, and a new writer took over. Sales plummeted, and as it stands now, Warren Murphy has refused a new contract with Gold Eagle and is shopping for a new publisher for the series. Since then the books have taken a nosedive in quality with the new writer, and GE has never promoted it, it's going to be a bit of a task.

Jim Mullaney, who continues to love the series, has been trying to help get the series back in the public eye a bit. Last week, National Review Online (the web branch of a conservative magazine) published an article by Jim. It posited that one of the reasons for the series' sliding popularity was that the conservative slant that had been in place since Murphy and Sapir's books had been sliding toward the left. He also happened to mention that the ghost writer before him, Will Murray, had also in his opinion not stayed true to the series' conservative roots.

Now, agree or disagree, it did get the series a bit of publicity, much more than it's had since Murphy and Sapir's Destroyers were mentioned in the New York Times Book Review. Sales (on Amazon.com) of the Assassin's Handbook 2, a privately published reader's guide to the thirty years of the series, even went up a little in the days after the article appeared.

However, Will Murray took it rather badly. Which is his right. However, he used this as the occasion to join the Destroyer club and make his first post there -- not to answer fans' eager questions, or give them a chance to say how much they loved his books, but to rant against Jim Mullaney. As one of the administrators, I can't take sides on the forums, but my blog is my own.

What an honor! After over a year of the club's existence, another one of the ghost writers finally shows up and it's to do nothing but spew venom against a fellow writer. Makes me wonder, if he cares so much about the Destroyer, why it took him so long to find us. It was pretty quickly rectified once he'd got a bug up his butt.

Contrast his behavior to that of Warren and Jim's, who have been posting on the Destroyer Club since the beginning. And while both of them have expressed their opinion about Gold Eagle, they haven't attacked the latest ghost writer or dissed other writers of the series. Even with Gold Eagle, they've never named names.

The Destroyer club is supposed to be a site for the fans to talk about Remo and Chiun and Smith and CURE, ask Warren and the ghostwriters questions, and just get together to talk. It is not supposed to be a site for one of the writers to slam another of the writers, no matter how justified he might think he is. The other admins aren't happy about his little temper tantrum either.

It really bothers me how he's gotten people's hopes up. Finally, another of the ghosts is on the forum! Several members responded eagerly to his post. They didn't give him the angry reactions he wanted, but were excited to see him there. The more cautious ones didn't weigh in; they probably read the message and found it disturbing. But I would bet everyone's hoping he'll be dropping in on us regularly now he's found us. I feel that since he's done his spewing and didn't get the indignation and support he craves, he won't be back. Which stinks for the fans. It's sure to occur to them that he could have found this site easily a year ago and didn't bother. And the site is for the fans, not for him to spit venom at Jim or engage in vendettas.

Twelve days to...

nanowrimo. Now I have the song from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown running through my head. The one about The Book Report on Peter Rabbit... Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five... I'm glad Microsoft Works and Open Office come with automatic word counting. And I also wonder if contractions count as one or two words. Maybe I'll I will not use any, just as a little bit of a word count booster.

Rather ordinary day. Good news on the Destroyer front. Jim Mullaney wrote an article about the decline of the series that was on The National Review Online. Anything that will get the series in the public eye now that Warren Murphy's shopping it around to publishers. Caused a bit of a controversy on the Destroyerclub (but what doesn't).

Yesterday was the twelfth anniversary of my mother's death. Got through it better than last year. Don't know what happened last year that made it so hard. Maybe a convergence of that, hormones, and God knows what else. Though it may not have hit me on the exact day. Last year I had a bad two days, then for some reason my mood broke suddenly. The only reason I can pinpoint the day is that I suddenly felt better about halfway through the seventh game of the world series. Not because the Red Sox had a chance of winning that for the first time in 87 years (or so). I remember sitting there, feeling miserable and wishing I could enjoy something I probably wouldn't see again, and suddenly I felt better. Hormones. Go figure. But I think the last game of the world series had to be later than the 18th.

To get back to nanowrimo, I'm wondering about the hyphens. Do hyphenated words count as one or two? Vital questions for a very important issue...

NaNoWriMo

I've signed up for the national novel writing month. I'd heard about it last year, but couldn't think of anything to write. This time I have an idea; whether the novel will turn out well isn't the point. In fact, since it's probable there will be no time for editing, I should make up my mind before I start that it'll be total crap. Although I still hope that somehow there will be something worthwhile somewhere within it -- enough that I can work on it and maybe have something better than I thought.

While I'm waiting to start, I'm plotting out characters and what's going to happen and breaking that into chapters. I won't have time for planning when I start writing. There may be a lot of: he was a very, very, very, very, very tall man. Hmmm... note to self, don't use italics too much, takes too long to italicize words. I could probably type five of six words in the time it takes me to highlight and hit the little "i" button on top of the box here.

I'll also try to write something every day, sort of as a warmup. Can't go from no words to 1700 a day. I'll continue my entries about The Witching Hour on my Live Journal and My Space, try to post more on Destroyerclub (though I'll have to keep on topic there). Too bad these places don't give you a word count.

One good thing has come from signing up for nanowrimo, but I can't say what it is yet. I don't want to write that something is going to happen and then it doesn't pan out.