But not this time. I’ve stacked a table on top of a table and I’m working on my wip while standing. The usual pain I’ve been used to has become much too intense lately. I’m hoping a change in position will make things easier on my legs.
Which puts me in the odd position of reducing knee, ankle, and muscle pain by getting up. What the hell. Variety is the spice, right?
I was gone most of the day taking my wife and son to BrickCon (and the library). The displays were, as usual, amazing. The vendor prices were, as usual, appalling. When we left, we were not wearing rain barrels for clothing. I’m calling that a win.
And of course I took pictures: Continue reading
I used to be immersed in paper and dice role playing games, but lately not so much. The social groups I used to play with broke up, then I moved across the country. I expect it would be trivially easy to find a gaming group here in Seattle, but I barely have time to be a writer, husband, and father anymore.
But I’m not looking for help in finding a gaming group. I am looking for help in finding a game. I have the chance to turn some portion of family time to game night. Here are my requirements:
1- Relatively simple game mechanics, esp character creation. If each character has 12 stats and every attack needs six calculations to determine a hit, my 8 yo son (and adult wife) will be bored.
2- Family-friendly. No ultra-violence. No cyborg hookers. No nihilistic grime-topias.
3- It shouldn’t have too much moral ambiguity in the setting. My son, he’s not a fan of that. When he role-plays, he’s the good guy only. His mom will be the same.
4- Nothing too elaborate for the GM, either. I don’t have a lot of time as it is, but it will be difficult for me to work up elaborate scenarios for them.
5- Not too expensive. A $45 sourcebook is like a BMW–it may be gorgeous, functional, sexy, and fun, but I can’t afford it. It’s not a question of value, but one of cost.
Here are my preferences (as in would be nice but not required):
1- Something with monster-hunting or superheroes.
2- Uses lots of different kinds of dice.
3- A setting that is familiar to extremely casual fans of the genre (such as my wife). Modern day, medieval fantasy, old-time space opera will not have a steep learning curve. Fluffy Cthulhu will require a lot of explanation before we start the game.
4- Specifically designed to be played by young kids/newbies.
I wish I could find my old source books for Metagaming’s The Fantasy Trip; that’s what my friends and I played while everyone else was playing AD&D (yes, I’m old). I’m not even sure I still have them. Most of the old game books I have are Champions (too complex), Call of Cthulhu (not newbie-friendly) and the Pacesetter/Mayfair Games versions of Chill. I’ll be using the Pacesetter ed. if I can’t find something else. A previous short runthrough of the Chill 1st ed. went over pretty well.
Any ideas?
Did you know there’s a new drink product called “Vacation in a bottle”? And that it comes in a can?
I know, doesn’t it sound great? I have never tasted it but I wrote an absolutely, completely, totally serious review on Amazon.com. I encourage you to do the same.
Yesterday (the day before? omg–must get handle on life) Sherwood Smith linked to and discussed Sarah Prineas’s rant against authors who market their books (titled: “I will be your friend but I won’t be your fan”). I recommend reading both, including the links comments (corrected).
And yeah, I get it. I do a little marketing here and there: I’ll retweet a nice review, or give books away on my blog. I try not to be obnoxious about it, but everyone has different tolerances and I’m bound to annoy someone.
That said, I know very well that there’s little I can do to affect my own sales beyond write a book people want to read. The number of copies I’ve given away and whatever effect that might have, is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of books I’ve sold. But I do it anyway; don’t ask why.
I have my limits. This blog will never turn into all hard-sell all the time. First of all, because it would annoy me even more than it would annoy you. Second of all, because that’s not my job. Third of all, because even if it was, that job would suck and I’d quit. I won’t be sponsoring complicated contests where you have to type out a long string of book titles. I won’t be sending Facebook “fan” requests.” I don’t plan to do any readings. I won’t be asking people to give my 5-star reviews on Amazon.com or anywhere else. I won’t be asking people to call all their local bookstores and ask if they have have my latest in stock.
I will do other things, though. I’ll keep sending my books to reviewers (anyone want to recommend some? I don’t want to duplicate efforts from the first round, but I’m interested in finding new review venues). I’ll still donate books to charity auctions; this is my favorite thing to do, because it does a slight bit of good for the world at large. I’ll still sign bookstore stock. I’ll still have giveaways. I’ll still mention that most people can ask their libraries to stock certain books, hint hint.
Probably the most effective thing I’ve done is contact folks I know online who have large followings and offer the book to them in the hopes that they’ll review it. I try to emphasize that it’s at their convenience and I wouldn’t ask them to gin up a fake positive review. That doesn’t always work, of course. Sometimes they never get around to reading it. Sometimes the review is middling. That’s fine by me–I’m grateful for their time. But when they really like the book, that’s a big deal.
I mean, basically it’s all about word-of-mouth, but when we’re talking about online reading communities, some mouths have access to more ears than others. For ex: According to his figures, John Scalzi’s blog gets 35-40 thousand unique visitors a day. My blog? 52, and that’s on a pretty good day.
Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to leave everything up to other people. Maybe it’s just that I want to do my part in making the book succeed.
What do you guys think? Is there a level of promotion you like and expect (“You have a new book out? Why didn’t you tell us?”) and where do you get exasperated and turned off? Was there a particular author promotion you thought was effective? Have you ever bought a book because of an author’s marketing?
And just because, if you want two copies of Game of Cages leave a comment on my main blog or LiveJournal saying so. I’ll choose a random winner sometime tomorrow morning. The extra copy is so that, if you like the book, you can give it to a friend; if you don’t like it, you can give it to an enemy.
Education historian and former Bush administration official Diane Ravitch will not be joining the chorus of raves for WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, the much-anticipated anti-teacher screed documentary about the problems in modern education.
Even if you don’t have kids, or don’t have kids in the education system, I’d urge you to read it. If you’re American, I’d guess. People outside the country might want to check it out for yet another opportunity to shake their heads and thank whatever fortune/good choices have placed them outside the U.S.
To summarize Ravitch’s point (and the point others have made) WFS distorts the problems is purports to address in order to demonize teachers, principles and teacher’s unions. Anecdotes about some bureaucratic difficulty are held up as examples of wide-spread problems. Instances (and there are many) of reforms unions have brought to education (smaller class sizes, anyone?) or have been instituted with unions as full partners are omitted. Everything is laid at the feet of “bad teachers,” with test scores held up as proof.
Ravitch’s article neatly and cleanly demolishes the whole standardized test canard, but it doesn’t matter. It’ll never matter. People can’t hear the criticisms and refuse to acknowledge them, because they’re demanding a way to rate schools and teachers. Sure, standardized testing doesn’t work, but people will never give it up until a more-effective, more-culturally-acceptable alternative comes along.
So the politicians are ramming testing (and “fire bad teachers!”) down our throats. It’s yet another way Obama has failed this country. And Ravitch, a long-time conservative who began to refute conservative education policy after studying the data on it, gives quite clear reasons for this. Another meme she evicerates is the union-bashing.
Because let me be clear: I believe the biggest reason that the education debate has gone the way it has is because of the continuing efforts to destroy unionization in the country. No, unions aren’t perfect. Yes, there are problems. Guess what? There are problems with corporations, too. And NGO charities. And religious congregations. But there isn’t a concerted effort by influential powerbrokers to completely destroy those other groups. WFS, for instance, regularly compares the U.S. to Finland, who has much better education system than we do. Does the film mention that the Finnish system is heavily unionized? Of course not. That would undermine the cartoon baddie they created for the film.
Ravitch nicely wrecks the usual union-bashing arguments in the linked article, but what good will it do? “Unions protect bad teachers!” is already a prevailing meme, pushed by raving assholes. “Get rid of the unions!” “Think of the children!”
Please.
The last time unions were strong in this country was the post-war period, and the nation was doing very, very well.
You know what is the biggest indicator of a child’s educational success is? Parental involvement.
How do we get parents more involved in their kids’ education? We give them economic security, and time at home with their families.
The way to improve education in this country is to reduce the out-of-control economic inequality we’ve been building up over the decades, and the best way to do that is more unions.
/rant
I really need to go back to the outline on this thing and flesh out the next few chapters. But not yet. I still have to write out the current home invasion scene, then sit down and work out the protagonist’s plan of attack.
This isn’t a Twenty Palaces novel, though; I’ve mentioned that, haven’t I? After bouncing around between a couple of projects I’ve settled in to write A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark which is the working title, I guess.
However, I’m a little annoyed that I’ve been tagging this project “project number next.” So I’ve created a new tag, based on the way I described it to my agent.
Back to work.
The latest reviews.
1) Andrew Wheeler liked Game of Cages very much: “And, if Harry Connolly can keep his plots this gripping and Ray’s dilemmas this compelling, he’s on track to be one of the important fantasy writers of the next decade, someone who can help lift urban fantasy out of its wish-fulfillment rut.”
I can’t say how happy I am to being compared to Dennis Lehane(!)
2) Screenwriter Bill Martell says he couldn’t put it down. “Okay, I’ve finished reading Game of Cages, and it rocks!”
3) Ophelia at Karissa’s Reading Review gave Game Of Cages four out of five stars, although she thought it was too fast-paced. She’s still planning to pick up the next in the series, though: “The action is again very well written and relentless. This is a book that is hard to put down, it shoves you from one action scene to another and leaves you breathless.”
4) LiveJournaler firstfrost give Child of Fire 4 stars: “… it was definitely creepy.”
5) Beth at Library Chicken (!) gave Game of Cages a B+: “The characters in Connolly’s stories seem very real, especially Lilly.”
6) I will break my moratorium on Amazon.com reviews for this one by “M. Soar” who gave the book 4 stars but thought it was a little violent. However, the quote I’m offering is this one: “Kindle review – no errors in format on my K3: a nice clean copy. Thank you, Del Rey Books!”
Yes, thank you for that, Del Rey. I haven’t seen my book on the Kindle, but I do know the physical book is beautiful to look at. It’s really a well-designed package.
7) Nicholas Kaufmann gave Child of Fire a great big thumbs up: “The worldbuilding in this novel is wonderful. Connolly manages to avoid getting overly expository, which is hard to do with a world this rich, and lets the reader piece things together for him- or herself.“
You’d think a writer, who worked his whole life to be a published novelist, would be aware enough to mark the first anniversary of his first published novel.
You’d be wrong. It’s only because Nick Kaufmann mentioned in his review (linked in my previous post) that Child of Fire came out exactly one year ago today that I’m even aware of it. Yikes! Way to not commemorate things, Self!
I think I’ll celebrate by getting up super-early and writing before my day job. Then, later in the day, I’ll hang with my family and do some writing business that needs doing.
A lot of people have been linking to this story, about a survey that shows atheists and agnostics are more knowledgable about religion than religious folks.
Me, I’m not sure why this would be a surprise. Few people are raised as atheists in this country; most of them come by their lack of belief after much reflection and many challenges from their loved ones. From strangers, too. When’s the last time you heard the phrase “No Jews in foxholes!”
That would be never (I hope). I also hope no one reading this has been told “How can you be a Lutheran (or whatever)?” by your boss.
The truth is, religion is such a powerful force in this culture that atheists learn about it as a matter of self-defence. In fact, I took a shortened form of the test online (which I can’t find now, being at work). I scored a 93%, getting one answer wrong–sorry, all Jewish people everywhere–and I’m not even one of those people who thinks religion is some kind of dangerous delusion that needs to be refuted point by point. Personally, I think it’s mildly interesting in short doses. Mostly I don’t care. Still, I’ve felt the pressure to study up.
And this is why atheists even bristle at the term “atheist.” Even our language is biased to consider religious belief the standard.
By contrast, many religious believers, including many of my friends, are believers in what I think of as Culture-God. Not necessarily the God of [Religious Text], but the version of God that suits their view of the world–the supreme being that will intercede in hospitals, reward whatever deeds the citizen considers good ones, supports whatever political positions seem most reasonable, and absolutely disapproves of Those Guys Over There.
It’s not so much about the sacred text, or religious traditions, or the history of their faith. It’s about the cultural undertow that assumes every person has some sort of belief in a higher power–that assumes that people who don’t have such a belief are untrustworthy, damaged or incomplete in some way. A few months back I linked to a survey that showed more Americans would be willing to vote for a gay person for president than would vote for an atheist.
Now, one thing I am absolutely not saying is that all religious people are religious only because the culture expects it. That would be silly and wrong on its face. Of course people hold to their faith with deep and powerful convictions, often after careful consideration.
What I am saying is that it’s so tremendously easy to be a believer in our culture that many many people do it with barely a thought. How knowledgable would you expect such people to be?
Added note: This is my 1,000th blog post. Hmph.