Randomness for 7/31

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1) First Pacey-Con squelched by private police force. SDCC just isn’t like it used to be, man.

2) Autoeroticism in America (in convenient graph form!)

3) Kermit Bale. Yes, poster, you do, in fact, have too much time on your hands.

4) What does Harvard have to teach YOU about vampires in film and literature? Take the online course and find out.

5) Captain Higgins, flatworm of power!

6) Photoshop Time portals. via Kurt Busiek

7) Job prospects for 2011 in the urban fantasy world. Pretty funny, and let’s just pretend she didn’t use the phrase “tramp stamp.”

I try not to duplicate content on my blog and twitter feed

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But I’m making an exception for this:

Tucker Carlson’s conservative news site, The Daily Caller, has been trying to make hay with the Journolist story (refresher for folks who don’t know the story: For a few years there was a private email list for left and center left professors, journalists, policy people, etc to discuss ideas in an informal, off-the-record manner. Recently, many of those emails have been made public, and conservatives have been Breitbarting quotes from them and trying to play it off as a conspiracy of the liberal media. At the forefront of the conspiracy-mongering have been Sarah Palin and The Daily Caller).

It’s driving traffic to TDC, so I guess they’re doing well with it. However, there’s nothing in the world worth the self-humiliation of posting this hilariously stupid editorial about the attractiveness of the Journolist members.

Nevermind the usual juvenile obsession with liberals as filled with resentment and rage. The amount of time the editorialist spends talking about high school cliques is enough to get him laughed off staff of any decent news site. I don’t expect it from The Daily Caller, though.

Here’s a quick tip: Andrew Sullivan doesn’t live in San Francisco. Yes, he’s a gay man, and yes, he’s gotten older over the years, just like all of us. I’m sorry you don’t think he’s sexy any more–I suggest checking out Rentboy.com. I understand you can find some sexy young men on that site. Thanks, though, for mentioning the San Francisco waterfront, though. I wonder where that reference comes from.

Here’s another: being left or center left does not make a person an atheist. Thought you should know.

Last tip, because I don’t know how many more you can absorb: You’re a grown man. For fuck’s sake, get over the high school thing already.

God, it’s a whole new level of “pathetic.”

Randomness for 7/28

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1) Mom creates tableaus to illustrate what she imagines her sleeping baby is dreaming.

2) Via Sherwood Smith: Jane Austen’s Fight Club. (added later: Yeah, this has been going around for the past couple of days, but I’m not going to yank it just in case someone here still hasn’t had a chance to check it out.)

3) Introverts unite! (quietly).

4) Poppy Z. Brite, Tim Wildmon, and The Home Depot. I’m so tempted to send (anonymously) a copy of CoF to the AFA so they can boycott me, too. I could use the publicity.

5) Random House and Andrew Wylie clash over ebook publication.

6) How self-absorbed people behave: political columnist writes open letter to his ex on her wedding day and reacts badly when he’s criticized for it.

7) And we mourn the end of an era: No more blowing up Michael Jackson zombies with your cornapult.

The stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we live.

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One of the most distressing things about my country and my culture is the contradiction between the way we view power in our entertainments and the way we view it in our real lives. We cheer movie heroes who take on the wealthy and the powerful to stand up for what’s right, but what happens if someone in the real world tries that?

Well, they don’t get treated like a hero. Sycophants to power pour out of the woodwork to declare them liars, scammers, whatever. Scarily, many many poor and powerless people have a knee-jerk sympathy for the wealthy and powerful.

So, I wondered what comments people would leave on a news site like CNN.com if these movies had actually happened in the real world, and were covered by the media. So:

Bedford falls

Mr. Smith Goes to WA

ET

Duck Soup

Fan fiction (by me)

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Remember the Scalzi/Wheaton benefit anthology, with the fan fiction contest? You may have noticed that I posted my son’s (non)entry? Of course you do. Well, I thought I would post my losing entry.

No, the winning story hasn’t been chosen. I’m just assuming.

Anyway, I dropped my son off at the day camp and have a few extra hours to myself. Of course it’s gorgeous weather out there, but I’m going to spend it on The Buried King. I doubt I’ll have something ready to send to my agent by the end of the day, but I should be able to take a big bite out of it. Especially when I turn off my modem, as I’m about to do.

Then I get to vacuum.

Anyway, here’s the story (about 800-words worth), behind the cut. Continue reading

Mid-career writing advice

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One of the topics going around right now is advice for writers who are “mid-career.” Check out Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Sherwood Smith, John Scalzi, and Jessica Reisman. And that’s just skimming the surface.

First let me state this: I don’t qualify as a “mid-career” writer. I haven’t been publishing long enough, only have one book out (soon to be remedied!) and need to fail or succeed more.

However! Looking over these posts, I can’t help but wonder why advice for a mid-career writer has to be so idiosyncratic, while advice for new/trying-to-break-in authors is so general.

Yeah, I know, there are some basic things to learn. Follow guidelines. Don’t be a crazy jerk. Write better.

Those are basics, and they shouldn’t really take up a few million words of blog postings and internet articles, but they do. When I was trying to break in (yesterday? last week? seems more recent than that) I read the same things over and over again. Sure, sometimes I’d find advice that flipped the on switch for the invisible light bulb over my head, but usually it was same same same same same same same.

I dunno. Maybe I’m an unusual case, because I spent a lot of time searching out craft advice and inside tips on publishing norms. A lot. It didn’t take long for every issue of Writers Digest to seem identical to the last. I’ve abandoned several message boards and blogs because people kept having the same damn conversations over and over. It was all general, basic stuff and I was hungry for something that addressed my own particular problems.

(Digression: One thing that struck me as nutso was the length of time some people needed to absorb those basics. Some people were so resistant to instruction that they had to be told over and over how things work, and often still refused to adapt their thinking.)

Eventually, after years of learning from others, I started looking for answers inside myself. That’s when I started to really do good work. I’d internalized the basics and I knew how to put them into action. It’s not enough, not really, to make my books as good as I want them to be, but I’m not looking to other people for answers anymore.

Anyway, to sum up: Yes, mid-career writers need individualized advice that won’t apply to everyone. But new writers and writers trying to break in professionally need the same thing, once they get past a few basics.

Randomness for 7/24

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1) Can you spot the endangered species in this photo?

2) Want your kid to do well in college? Take them out of school! via Jen Busiek.

3) A book marketing idea I’m going to steal. For Child of Fire, I’m thinking flame-proof kiddie pajamas. For Game of Cages, I’m not sure. Doggie sweaters?

4) Slate discovers BBB is worthless. The rest of America says “DUH!”

5) Last time I linked to a funny post by Josh Freidman. This time I’m linking to a post that is just as true and wrenched tears out of me. Incredibly powerful writing. Jesus.

6) And, to move from the sublime to the ridiculous: How to pay for a Death Star.

7) Science fiction writer profiled in NY Times. I hope it gets him new readers.

If you can read this, you’re invited.

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I’ll be having a book signing for my new book, GAME OF CAGES, at Magnolia’s Bookstore, on Saturday, Sept 4th from 1 pm until Tears of Loneliness pm. My signing hand will be limbered up and ready to scribble pithy remarks on the title pages of my second novel.


Here it is!

All are invited. I won’t be doing a reading or anything, just sitting, signing and chatting. Hope to see you there.

Quote of the day

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I feel like the last week has radicalized me in the worst possible way.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Context. Context continued.

This is important, folks.

Randomness for 7/21

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1) The Creative Process, in graphic/maze form.

2) This is pretty exciting: BLU has a new stop motion video out!

3) I’m sure many of you know that there’s a new storyline in the Superman comics where he walks across America to reacquaint himself with regular people. Well, now The Mighty Thor is doing it too!

4) Baby eats his way out of a watermelon. This one isn’t very interesting, but it is awfully cute.

5) Parkour from 1930.

6) Serial book thief gets three and a half years.

7) When Josh Friedman posts to his blog, we read. It’s long, but it’s amazing. He combines development notes, TV trends, and true crime, coming out the other end with belly laughs.