New OK Go video
StandardHard to believe these guys started with a choreographed treadmill dance routine.
They played their song with a car. I love it.
The Fox by Sherwood Smith
StandardIn 2007, I had just started reading The Fox by Sherwood Smith (the mmpb will be rereleased in April) when I signed with my agent. I’d enjoyed the hell out of Inda, the first in the series despite the long section set in military school. I’m not a big fan of school stories, but Inda won me over.
The Fox is even better. I don’t want to go too deep into it, but it’s a fantasy set mostly on sailing ships with lots of politics and action. The best thing is that the characters are so very real.
You hear a lot about gritty/realistic fantasy, and it’s always so cynical, as though realism is people behaving really badly. The characters in these books cover a wide range in a way gritty fantasy usually doesn’t–using omniscient POV, which isn’t used often enough.
And the world-building is terrific, yes, and there are so many characters it sometimes is hard to keep track. The hero is one of those super-capable types that make fantasy fun, but he has enough quirks that he rises above the generic hero stereotype. The whole thing is terrific.
There are two more books (which I’ve already bought) and the series is complete. You should totally read it.
Internet fast has become an internet diet
StandardI still have a lot of work to do and I need to be offline as much as humanly possible. However, at this point I can steal time to look at email and reply to LJ/Twitter messages.
However, I can’t keep up with my blog reading. Sorry.
In the mean time, please read this: One Town’s War on Gay Teens.
Worldbuilders
StandardThe auction for The Wooden Man and the ghost knife prop has ended but the Worldbuilders fundraiser will continue until February 7th. It’s a lottery system; for every $10 you donate, you get a chance to win any one of hundreds of prizes.
Most are books, signed by the author. Some are ARCs of unreleased novels. Some are graphic novels. Look at this!
An ARC of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust
A “Best of” collection by Caitlin R. Kiernan
A full set of Tad William’s SHADOWMARCH
An ARC of Seanan McGuire’s newest novel
And much, much more stuff.
What’s more 50% of your donations will be matched.
Don’t miss your chance for some terrific books.
Twenty Palaces fading
StandardTwenty Palaces, the prequel to Child of Fire and the other Twenty Palaces novels has been doing fairly well in online sales, but the numbers are going down, as I expected.
I often have people tell me that the series will become popular once enough people find out about it, but the numbers say otherwise. When I see writers posting about their self-publishing success, the month-by-month numbers always go up. Yeah, I know: December. Also: First month of release of a book with a built-in audience.
Still, January sales are less than half what they were the month before, and they’re slower at the end of the month than the beginning. What’s more, Del Rey still has Child of Fire at the 99 cent price point.
If the series was ever going to take off, it would have happened by now. I’ve decided that is vindication for my decision to move on. We’ll see how the next thing does.
Much ado about fifth edition D&D
StandardSo much ado, in fact, that Forbes Magazine even did a piece on the new “crowd-sourced” rule set.
Me, I was disappointed that this was the big news. For a long time now, I’ve been waiting to hear that Wizards would work out a licensing deal with Lego to create a Dungeons and Dragons line of figures, with swappable accessories and armor. Hell, they already have many of the humanoid creatures. How hard could it be to create a few Yuan-Ti, amirite? And everyone would buy a Lego beholder, just because.
I mentioned this to my son, and he immediately began to put together a tableau. Here are some high-level heroes taking on a red dragon and its minions.
Skeleton kebob!
By the time you read this, my internet fast will have begun
StandardIt’ll just be a few days. I have a couple of blog posts scheduled to go up, so there’ll be something to read here, but I won’t be doing much responding.
On obsessing over email and twitter
StandardIt’s amazing how deep I can get into checking email over and over, not to mention refreshing my Twitter client. The deadly thing about Twitter is that it contains links. Many, many links of tremendous interest, and before I know it, an hour has passed.
With emails, it’s more complicated, but there are some things I need to respond to right away and I feel guilty about waiting. These are not good choices.
Anyway I did a little test: I promised myself I would do 300 words before I checked email again. I turned off my wifi, wrote 500 words instead, then got back online.
No emails had come in. On Twitter, I had 11 new tweets, two as part of a conversation I was having. It took me all of three minutes to get through them, and I was ready for another 500 words.
In this way, empires are built.