First of all, I am atheist. This story is not faith based, but takes place during winter holiday time. I got an idea for a story featuring my dog. As I thought more & fleshed it out more, I realized it had a lesson to teach. Ultimately, the lesson is that when you bring a pet into your home, it is part of the family. I see the story more of a 'family lesson', rather than a child's book lesson, but would work either way. Now my question is: Have you ever seen a commercially viable book be sold, using the same story while changing the faith of the holiday taking place in the house? There are no religious/cultural things that will bother anyone except fundamentalists, but they ain't buyin', so I don't care about 'em. The images of the insides of the houses would be what is changed. Basically, homogenized christian, jewish, muslim, families in a middle class setting.
Like... you'd tell the story of a dog going to a Christian family, then tell the story of a dog going to a Jewish family, then tell the story of a dog going to a Muslim family?
No. One story. But publish it in three books, each book aimed at a different faith. Like the christian one takes place in a house celebrating christmas. The reason faiths came to mind was simply a commercial idea. Try to sell three times as many books. Short story- dog is forgotten about, moves through house looking for play, family tries to figure out what happened and 'rediscover' the dog, play, things go back to normal. The faith is the window dressing images on the pages. Literally identical text on different backgrounds.
Nope - even moderate Muslims would be bothered by such a glaring inaccuracy. Islam forbids the keeping of dogs except for guarding or hunting and in those exceptions they are strictly kept outside the house. This applies to all Muslims not just extremists, so a story where a Muslim family have a dog wandering through the house wanting to play during Ramadan is at best not going to fly and at worst could be found extremely offensive. ETA - the idea of the dog being forgotten about isn't going to fly in Judaism either - Jewish law requires that you feed your animals before you feed yourself, and while you can say "oh but these people aren't that observant" if they are observant enough to be celebrating a Jewish holiday they'll be obeying Jewish religious law in doing so The problem here is that it seems you don't know enough about those faiths, their customs and their holidays to portray them realistically - and a realistic Jewish or Muslim family festival is not just Christmas with the decorations changed You'd be better off just trying to get it published for Christians - then if its a run away best seller you could look at licencing it for adaptation to other faiths by a writer who knows enough about them to do it convincingly.
In Vietnam they still enjoy a nice meal of dog, though it is a rare treat for them these days. @antlad IDK what to say when it comes to an atheist writing about theology just for the sake of selling more books. Though I think the poor Christians have been swindled enough by their own televangelists that is just feels wrong to use their gullibility to line your pockets. By no means am I a man of faith, but I do have some ethics when it comes to matters of faith. It kinda falls into the same problem that I have with using laser weapons in Sci-Fi, but I digress. That being said, at the end of the day you can do as you please regardless of what any one else thinks. But on the off chance that there is a god (way off chance mind you). It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than it is for a rich man to enter heaven. -Somewhere in the Bible. On the final question I have to ask of sheer morbid curiosity: Why?
In reference to a hole in a wall in Jerusalem that some used as an entrance, that a baby camel could pass through, btw. See? makes no sense. I will explain this & most everything else up there with this- Practitioners of faith pick and choose what to believe and what to follow, and these choices change as their lives change. In relation to Islam and dogs- It is estimated that over 50% of muslims worldwide own dogs. Where I live, many muslims live, most have dogs. If you travel through muslim countries, what do you see? Dogs, everywhere. People and dogs go together, it transcends all. A number of years ago there were riots in Tehran. People rioted when they found out that the president of Iran had pet German Shepherds running around the palace, a holy site. They rioted over hypocrisy. It is illegal for a muslim to have a dog inside a house, walk on a sidewalk, walk on a street, in Iran; yet the president is above the law while living on a holy site. There are more dogs in Iran than people. On top of that, a society run on muslim law is also run on class system. Lower classes are as 'dirty' as dogs and the dog laws don't apply to them, a higher class would never be set foot in that class's home. As far as 'forgetting' about the dog- It is holidays, people are caught u[ in their 'new stuff' and 'forget' about the dog for a day or two. 'Forget' = ignore. To me, most of this is cultural preconception/misconception. People are people. This is like saying, 'you can't write a book about a christian person that steals something because the bible says not to steal so it would be wildly inaccurate.' I live in reality. I see what people do. I really do know a lot about various faiths of the world. One thing you find with a lot of atheists is that most of us study faiths. It helps us to make sense of society and why people are so f'd up. Simply, I thought of a story that warmed my heart and thought it would warm the hearts of others. I forget how uppity people get over faith. I should have asked in a different way, like this- I came up with a story about a hippo. I think it could do well, it teaches a lesson. Not just a lesson for kids, but for adults too. I thought about putting out 3 editions, one that takes place in NYC, one in London, and one in Australia. Identical text, but each edition has different backgrounds to reflect where the story is taking place. Have you ever seen a commercially viable book be sold, using the same story while changing the city where it takes place in the background?
@antlad First off, no I have not seen a comm. viable book that changed city to gain that audience. As for this lesson you make mention of, you sure do keep it under lock and key ( a mystery if you will). This only adds to the curiosity of what you seem so passionate yet secretive about. It is better to ask for help when you share your thoughts, than simply dancing around the main focus of what you are asking. Sorry if I come off as obtuse over this matter, but when it comes to asking of another's thoughts, it is a give and take thing. No one here is going to steal your ideas, so why not just come out with it already? The more you lend to aid, the easier it is to be given aid. So it is not so much about your questioning of the matter to others, but more in your cloak and dagger style approach.
No cloak and dagger, just a simple business question. If you meant story- The dog travels around the house from room to room looking to play, gets ignored each time, as he leaves each room the room chills, family gets together to find out why house is cold, (figure I can stretch it to two days, dog is fed but ignored), find dog sulking in only warm room, family and dog all play and warm up the house. Then I thought- Hey, this could be set at christmas time. Then I thought- Other faiths celebrate during the cold weather too, maybe I could place the story in different houses celebrating different faiths. (Thus reaching more eyes) Instead of faith, it could be simply different places in the world . Eskimos in their igloo, royals in a castle, midwest family, a family living in a cave etc. I am really just wondering if anyone has seen the same text used in a book over different settings in the background?
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say you're just with style and trying a new concept to make a story more applicable to different people. And I do applaud your willingness to switch things up and involve different religions than the norm. But at first glance, this idea looks like straight pandering for money. I've seen the same story sold as different books when told from different first person POV, which can add something to the story. There are dovetail books, in which they take place at the same time and in the same setting as the original, but follow different characters and expand that particular fictional universe (the fandom usually loves them). But to have the same basic storyline sold as three different books to get more people to buy them is a little....hinky. Don't get me wrong, I was a Christian for years and I met a ton of people in that faith that will limit their reading/watching to Christian media alone. But a lot of time, they expected an overt Christian theme (talking about Jesus, someone converting, a church service etc.). So just having it set at Christmas with a Christian family wouldn't necessarily catch their eye either, unless you had someone quote the Genesis verse about being good stewards of the earth or something. I would also agree with you that not everyone is devout in their faith. My parents are currently hosting two practicing Muslim exchange students who wont touch pork, but will openly pet and play with the dogs in the house. But if they're open-minded enough to not adhere that strictly to the old laws of their faith, then they're usually open-minded enough to read books outside their own religion. I know you said you're not worried about fundamentalists, but they're really the only ones that would require the book be connected to their specific religion. In the end, it's a heartwarming story about a dog. People live for that stuff, they make a family-friendly movie about a dog every other year. I would say trying to make different versions with different religions is probably more trouble than its worth.
@malaupp , it is a money based thought. Think this way- You live in an alt earth, you write the beloved book Goodnight Moon, you pay someone to illustrate it with a vaguely middle class setting. Someone else comes along and says, 'you know, you should hire that artist to do a set of pages with tree dweller setting and mud hut setting, those are the other 2 main groups, you could reach them too. Just put your neutral text over the different settings.' Would you? Remember, your goal is more eyes and more sales. @Cave Troll , no problem. You helped me figure out what I am going to do. I am now bowing out, hopefully.
If my goal was more sales, maybe. But my goal will never be more sales. If it was, I would hate libraries for letting people read books for free.
This concept reminds me of the books you can order for children where parents fill out a form and a book is produced from a template using the child's name, hair color, pets, etc. Like writing via Mad Libs. I like to sell books as much as the next person, but I'd rather spend my time coming up with and working on new, original stories.
I've always wondered about the distribution of royalties between the author and illustrator for children's books. I'm sure I'm underestimating the amount of time it takes to write the stories (I assume children's books are like poetry in that each word counts for a lot and requires a lot of effort?) but it still seems as if the illustrations must take at least as much time/effort as the words, if not more... in which case I agree with @Laurin Kelly that it'd probably be a lot more satisfying to illustrate a whole new story rather than re-illustrating the same one over and over?
To a professional artist it's all just work. Sometimes the work is more inspired, sometimes less so. Having worked years in the realm of Theatre, where revivals are popular, I was asked on many occasions to rework a classic play and design sets that had some freshness to them. Also, I can tell you guys that if you think writers are poorly paid for their efforts, you can't hold a candle to us artists. We're whores too. Producing artwork to accompany a story, or any medium, takes longer than the creation of those works, believe me.
So what we're saying is that a dog is not just for Asalha Puja .... with luck it will do Khao Phansa too
