A British dude in a blue police box turns to and offers to take you anywhere you want in time and space. Yes, the TV show is real and the blue box is a TARDIS–except you don’t have to worry about unarmed speechifying in front of armed, violent aliens, since that’s just to add drama.
You can have three stops in time and space. Where do you want to go and what do you want to see?
Actually I’m in a Starbucks on the upper west side, near the American Museum of Natural History. My wife and son are meeting me here and then we’re going to see some dinosaur bones and maybe some of the guys who hassled Ben Stiller that time. Starbucks! Ubiquitous meeting place of the phoneless.
We’ve been here less than 24 hours and already my son is asking about rent in the city. I think it’s safe to say that he likes it, although it requires a little more walking than he’s used to.
My wife is absolutely stunned by how clean and nice the city is. We’re staying downtown, where her old stomping grounds were, and she just keeps saying “It’s changed so much! My god, I’m old aren’t I?”
Me, I just had lunch with my agent at (checks card) the dici–a place that loves big knives and lower case letters. My food was really good, even though the humidity took the edge off my appetite. But omg rare beef with sweet peppers! I’m happy. We talked about a lot of interesting things and I have a ton of thinking to do. More on that later, maybe.
Still haven’t had pizza yet. (See first paragraph about >24 hours) There’s a little place near our hotel that looks like it would be nice to try, so we can sample some Real New York Pizza(tm). What’s the name of it? Sbarro’s, I think. Can’t wait!
(Just kidding, New Yorkers, I swear. I know Sbarro’s is airport pizza.)
Anyway, this morning we did the tourist thing and went to the top of the Empire State Building. It was a challenge for my wife to have been a New Yorker for so many years and now play tourist (and that place is highly concentrated tourist time) but I eased her through the experience by exclaiming things like “So many tall buildings!” and “The trains run under the ground!” and other things sure to make locals think we’re cool.
We’ve ridden the subway several times; as I’ve told my son, the sights and sounds are soooo recognizable from a million movies and TV shows. Just about anyone in the developed world knows the NY Subway sound. That weird metallic EEEeeeEEEeeEEEEE! we always hear.
My family has joined us, so I’m logging off. Hope you guys are enjoying your week.
I’m leaving for my trip as soon as I finish and rinse this cup of coffee, but here are the three books I’ve packed for my trip:
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. This is very very good, but I’m having a hard time stealing reading time for it.
The Fox by Sherwood Smith. I stopped reading this ages ago because of the craziness of getting an agent. It’s past time I dove back in.
Sacred by Dennis Lehane. Someone I’ve wanted to read for a long time.
I won’t have time to read all three, but still: books!
1) Curious about the plot of Twenty Palaces, the prequel to Child of Fire? Well, some years ago I ran the query past Evil Editor for their advice way back in 2006. Over the weekend, EE brought it back as an Evil Editor Classic. (Here’s the original, with amused commenters.)
It’s interesting to note that I’ve cut 9K words since then, but that query most definitely sums up the plot of book zero.
2) So! Authors have a lot of outlets to obsess over their sales, but one of the ones I like is the Random House website. See, I can go there, click on “Science fiction/fantasy” on the left sidebar, and it will show you a list of their available books, sorted by how well they sell.
I know, right?
Well, today, for the first time ever (not that I check often, but still) Circle of Enemies was the first book listed. The ebook, actually. Can I say “Yay!” For the series to continue, CoE is going to have to do quite well, and I’m tentatively taking this as a hopeful sign.
3) How is THE DARK KNIGHT rated PG-13? Jesus, but it was dismal, disturbing, and intensely violent–all things I like, mind you, but I’ve taken my son to a couple of PG-13 movies, and I think this one would have been a bit much.
4) However, as this is the summer of my son’s ninth year, I’m back to seeing films in the theater again. We saw KUNG FU PANDA 2, and yeah, it was just as great as you’ve heard. PIRATES 4 was a complete mess, though. When the main villain, Blackbeard, is introduced, he magically ties up a big crowd of mutineers, then stops himself from punishing them because his daughter asks him to. Nothing like a villain not acting villainous to win the audience over.
Then there was the “SHE HAS A NAME!” thing, which confused me at first because I thought the mermaid really did have a name. Turns out it didn’t matter if she did or not, or what it might have been, because the supposed good guy hangs one on her himself without caring one whit how she felt about it.
Finally, it turns out that Barbossa got a peg leg because he’s too much like the KGBeast. You know, the next time I get some tape stuck on my finger, I’m just going to cut off that finger.
5) I still have a lot to do to prep for my trip to NY, so off I go.
I’m way behind on this, but the Moby Awards were just given out a short while ago. What are Moby Awards? They’re given to book trailers, of course.
This may seem a little silly (and it is) but the award givers seem to understand this: Here’s a list of the winners over on the Galleycat site. They’re fun to watch, especially the bad ones. The winner of the “Worst Small/No House” is particularly special, what with the delightful animation, the empty corner of an attic repurposed as a secret waterfront back room, the pirate costumes made from what appears to be shower curtains, and of course “Dubloooooooons!”
And when they give an award called “Most Monkey Sex” they aren’t kidding. Jeebus.
I don’t really understand the “Worse Music” selection. The song isn’t to my taste, but it seems to be a mediocre version of that sort of song.
Anyway, you may have heard that I’ve hired some friends to make a trailer for the Twenty Palaces books (since I’ve only mentioned it about a billion times, but I enjoyed watching these. They’re basically commercials, I know, but some are clever.
It’s the funny ones that work best, don’t you think?
Let’s make this a quick list of items of interest, okay?
First of all: Hey New Yorkers! I’m going to be in New York City next week, visiting Manhattan with my wife and son. Yes, I’m also going to meet up with my agent (first time face to face) and my editor (not first time). And others, too, if things go well.
Publishing people! Who use the subjunctive correctly! And who probably also know how to use the nupative, even though that doesn’t even exist, except in last night’s dream about condescending NY grammar fundamentalists. (See subject header)
Anyway, I’m also planning to attend the KGB Fantastic Fiction Reading Series on June 15th. I don’t know either of the authors who’ll be reading there, but that just makes it more exciting.
Are you in New York? I’d like to meet there, and maybe do something after. I look like this. If you see me there, don’t hesitate to introduce yourself.
Second: I mentioned this on Twitter last week, but haven’t here; Twenty Palaces, the prequel to Child of Fire, is 100% done! Well, unless Del Rey buys it and my editor has notes. And except for the copy edits. And galleys. And another polish, if I want to give it one, (and I always do).
Still: One. Hundred. Percent. Done. I’m back at work on A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark (aka: The Auntie Mame Files). I like this book, although I suspect it’s going to be a stand alone. We’ll see.
Third: On the advice of a friend, I’ve started polishing up some old short stories to self-publish them. I mean, why not? Several have been published before and several will need substantial rewriting, but it will be nice to have something new to put out into the world.
Fourth: Look what came in the mail over the weekend?
It had this in it:
I’m going to assume he meant “this book,” to mean “the book for Harry Connolly.” Seems obvious, right?
I sorta expect a significant proportion of this text to be right out of his LiveJournal, but with luck I’ll pick up some extra tips for writing short work for small checks, rather than doing these months-long projects on spec, which sucks.
Fourth: Is it completely ridiculous for me to record all the Bookscan numbers I get from Amazon.com into a spreadsheet? I mean, I can’t even keep my characters’ names straight, but I’m fastidious about this?
Fifth: I still have a lot to do before I head to NY. Good thing I finished those Dungeon Quest books (by Joe Daly). Now that the hilarity is over, I can get some shit done.
1) Artist buys cheap landscapes at yard sales, then paints monsters into them.
2) Eel Noir, a webcomic by filmmaker Jonathon King.
3) Does anyone else think it’s really odd that people tape themselves watching TV? How is this even a thing? Anyway, the new BREAKING DAWN trailer came out, and this dude edited together a whole bunch of ecstatic reaction videos. Video.
4) Woman gets a tattoo of 152 profile pics of her Facebook friends. Quick note to everyone reading this on Facebook: I don’t care about you enough to get a tattoo of your face.
5) “It’s not a weasel, it’s a marten!”
6) The best of Anti-Joke Chicken. This made me laugh.
(I’m posting this to share my experience, not to solicit advice. If others want to share their experiences, too, I’d love it, but no advice, please.)
“It’s called willpower,” Colson Whitehead says in this PW article about… well, about many things, only one of which is the need some writers have of hiding themselves away in a hostage pit because they can’t handle distraction.
I’m one of those writers, and I freely admit that it embarrasses me. When the writing gets really difficult, I find it very difficult to focus on the problems and opportunities there, and all too easy to check my emails, or Twitter, or my LiveJournal friends list.
It used to be that I could hide at Starbucks. They charged for wi-fi and I’m too cheap to pay for my procrastination… then they backed down and offered it for free. Soon I was checking my emails, just in case something important came in, and are there new posts on LJ? Oh, what crazy shit has so-and-so said about books this time? An article on health care reform! It’s my duty as a citizen to stay up-to-date on politics, and besides I can read it while this funny video loads.
And don’t forget that I need things to blog about other than the usual I’m-tired-my-butt-itches crap. Links for the Randomness posts! Op-eds to disagree with! Movies to pick apart!
Except that I didn’t really need any of that. What I needed was time and quiet space to work. I don’t need a physically quiet space, but I do need one where my jump-around brain won’t latch onto something interesting and easy, like my Twitter timeline or the book I’m reading.
There was a Radiolab from a while back that talked about the bargains creative people have to make. It’s worth listening to, maybe while you’re doing dishes or something. For me, it’s helped me work out a new plan to increase my productivity: just like all those people who put A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE in their Netflix queue as something they’ll watch someday way out in the future while continually picking THE HANGOVER or DRIVE ANGRY for what they want to watch right now, it’s easy for me to plan virtue way in advance, but nearly impossible to grasp it in the moment. If I could be trusted to back up my own material manually, I’d crack the case of my laptop and pith my wi-fi connection. Since I can’t, I use Dropbox.
So I turn my laptop on the night before and set Mac Freedom for six hours. Maybe eight, but usually six.
That’s long enough for me to do my pages, then revise one of my old short stories for a self-pub collection I’m considering, and that’s it. I can reboot if I want to check my email at the library or whatever, or I can come straight home and wait for the timer to run out, at which point the household wi-fi handles all the backing up.
But that’s the best work around I can come up with at the moment. My brain has a hard time staying on task, and talking about willpower misses the point. If I’m hungry, tired, cold, or depressed, I can write. Adversity I can handle. What I have a hard time with, apparently, is fun, luxury, pleasure, and comfort. Those are the things that will ruin me.
If you could bring one extinct species back into the world, what would it be?
Elseweb I saw someone ask about tips for creating a selling synopsis for the book they were about to start querying. The thought of typing up my advice yet again made me feel all tired, so I decided to just link to the post on my blog. Easy, right?
Except, I’ve been so reluctant to do the writing-advice thing here that I never actually put it on my blog. Duh.
So! I’m going to type up my personal methodology for writing a selling synopsis, and when I come across this question in the future I can respond with a link. (I know I’ve promised a post about my personal writing shame; it’s coming.) I’ll put in a cut, because this crap is boring. Continue reading