Day jobbing today

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During yesterday’s lunch break I had to hustle all over downtown picking up things I needed (toner cartridge! new bed sheets! large envelopes! tickets to see my friend’s movie at SIFF!) and returned to the office a bit… misty.

All right, I was totally sweaty. Hey, I’m fat. It happens. (It used to happen before I was fat, too, but never mind).

So, self-conscious! Meeting with my boss in which I had to explain an error I made, while completely sweaty! A full afternoon spent fretting over body odor. Great day.

Last night, plans to shower were thwarted by a severe shortage of hot water. We didn’t even have luke warm water, dammit. I took an Irishman’s shower (I’m Irish–I’m allowed to make that joke) and went to bed early.

Which meant I woke up early. Hey, I had time for that shower now!

But hold on a minute. I was up early enough the catch the very first bus of the day. Taking the 5:20 instead of the 6:10 means I get an extra (mumble mumble carry the two) fifty minutes extra minutes of writing time. Do I take advantage of that extra writing time, or should do I make a concession to my co-workers’ delicate sensibility? Book or B.O.?

You know I chose book. No one has complained yet, but what the hell, some of these folks are heavy smokers, with all the stinkiness that implies. Plus, the person who sits closest to me claims they can’t smell me. I’m not worried about it.

I met and exceeded my daily word count goal, though.

Quote of the day.

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“The hype never matches up with reality,” Mr. Norris said. “There’s money to be made in e-books. There’s money to be made in print books too. There’s no reason why publishers shouldn’t pursue both and just not let the hyperbole get out of control.”

— Michael Norris, senior analyst at Simba Information, a publishing consultant firm

Amazon Encore and midlist writers

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Recently, midlist mystery writer JA K*nr*th, announced proudly that he was going to publish the latest installment of his mystery series with Amazon Encore, the first “big name” (as he put it) author to switch to Amazon.com’s inhouse publisher.

Of course, many writers have been self-publishing on Amazon.com’s Kindle format, some with terrific success. K*nr*th himself feels his new contract is going to be a big deal, and that he’s going to get a strong marketing push from Amazon.

Me, I’m not so sure. For one thing, it seems as though his series was dropped by Hyperion because of flagging sales. The author himself states that his agent tried and failed to place it with a large NY publisher. So is this just a case of talking up a Plan C as though it’s been the winning strategy all along, or of finding a new, wonderful path only after exhausting the traditional choices?

It also raises questions about writerly self-promotion. From the time his first book came out, K*nr*th has been a proponent of promoting the hell out of your work, even when more experienced writers told him it was mostly a waste of time. So what does it mean that he’s… well… retreating from NY publishers to Amazon.com?

* That promotion helped drive sales of his early work, but readers weren’t enthusiastic about the books and it wasn’t sustainable.
* That promotion has very little effect and is mostly a waste of time.
* The downturn in his sales is mainly (rather than partly) to blame on the economy.
* The downturn in his sales is mainly (rather than partly) to blame on a genre slump.

Or none of those things. Or a mix of them. Whatever the cause, it makes me more dubious about hustling for readers than I ever was before. Once upon a time, reading this author’s blog made me feel like a dilettante. Now I’m thinking that I should keep doing the things I’m interested in and skip the rest.

NB: I’m using the asterisks in his name to thwart Google Alerts, because I’m not really interested in having him here. I wish him all the success in the world, but the way he talks online puts me off.

Good news

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Terry Rossio, who taught me so much about writing, made a new sale. Congratulations!

Randomness for 5/24

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1) “I am merely giving you your problem” Emma Thompson’s character in STRANGER THAN FICTION would have called this webcomic “fantastically depressing.”

2) An interview with indie comics writer Shawn Granger.

3) Awesome Lovecraftian furniture.

4) Shit my kids ruined. aka “The strongest visual birth control on the market today.”

5) “I’m 16. I got a book deal when I was 15. There are authors that were published at 13 and 14 and I always find myself thinking, God, must I fail at everything I do? They were published younger than me!” I posted that excerpt because it made me LOL, but it’s unfair out of context. The writer’s point is pretty much the opposite of what that excerpt implies.

I can only defend that quote one way: LOL.

6) Sixteen items Wal Mart sells only in China. via Jay Lake. Mmmm. Unpackaged meats. Vegetarians, you might not want to click that link.

7) @BPGlobalPR: a fake British Petroleum account. Topical, funny and very dark. “The good news: Mermaids are real. The bad news: They are now extinct. #bpcares”

Because of yesterday’s post…

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Folks are dropping “creepy nice guy” links on me. Like this one.

It already made the rounds a couple years back, but… yeah. Another creep.

edit: The goodness doesn’t stop! This one is a link farm criticizing the “Nice Guy” phenomenon. Personally, I like the “Something Positive” comic; it’s a quick read and I’m supposed to be writing.

The dreaded “nice guy.”

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Today’s writing session was cut short by a “nice guy.”

As I’ve mentioned several times, I usually do my writing out of the apartment–fewer distractions and it helps to get my work finished if I have a set time I have to stop. There’s a Starbucks close to my house that I used to visit all the time, but it became a pain in the ass. A lot of folks with serious issues began hanging out there. Sometimes they would carry on loud conversations in that small room. Sometimes they would do wound care right there next to me. It was distracting and gross.

Today I thought I’d give it a try again. Unfortunately, someone sitting nearby decided that he and I should have a pleasant chat. He kept trying to start a conversation with me, even after I told him several times that I was sorry, but I’d come to work and didn’t want to talk. It would go like this:

“Nice computer you have there. Apple right? Is it an eye-something? A MacBook?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, but I can’t talk. I really need to work.”
“Work? You’re working, huh? I got my Master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. Where did you get your Masters in Computer Science?”
“I never said I had a Masters in Computer Science.”
“Oh, so insurance or bank, huh? Which bank do you work for? Wells Fargo? B of A?”
I don’t answer. Three minutes of silence.
“You get movies on that thing? What’s your favorite movie?”

For an entire hour. He managed to keep a wide-eyed and polite tone through the whole thing, almost to the end, as though he was being perfectly friendly and polite. But there was something off about the guy. I still managed to meet my small word count goal, but not my usual Sunday goal. I’m not going back there again.

Also, yesterday I received a really crazy PM on LiveJournal from a complete stranger. He was trying to enlist me in this project to do something nice for a Third Party (who shall remain nameless). If this had been a quick “So and so needs X. Would you like to help?” I would have been tempted. Instead it was 800 words of how Third Party irrationality and inability to make sensible decisions, and how Third Party wasn’t letting the stranger offer the necessary help, so stranger wanted to do it through me as a proxy.

Ugh. It was creepy as hell, and a perfect example of the “nice guy” who thinks they’re entitled to steal someone else’s agency because they know better and they’re being caring and polite about it. It didn’t have the undertones of a criminal looking for a mark, but it made my skin crawl anyway.

This morning, in the Starbucks, the creep eventually became irritated with me. “I’m trying to be nice, here!”

“No you’re not!” I answered. He looked surprised. “I’ve been asking you not to interrupt me while I work, and you’ve been interrupting me anyway. That’s the opposite of nice.”

(added: Sadly, I’m pretty sure this isn’t parody.)

As promised, pictures

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Here are the pictures from the premiere of THE DEAD FEED last Thursday night. There are no videos. It didn’t seem appropriate at the time.

So, if any other members of the cast were there aside from Kate (in blue), who played the protagonist’s older sister Beth, I didn’t see them.

Kate Szperski & friend

A few more at the Flickr set.

Every film is created three times

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The first time is when the writer writes the script.

The second time is when the cast and crew shoot the film.

The third time is when the editor assembles the final edit.

Each time the script is recreated, it’s made from a narrow range of materials. The writer has a concept and some characters in mind, plus what they know can be done on film. The cast and crew have the locations and characters in the script. The editor has the footage and sound recording.

And that’s why the movie I wrote, which I saw last night for the first time, was interesting but didn’t really work. I know there were troubles in production–trouble with sound, with actors not showing up for calls, all sorts of things. It occurs to me (much too late to do anything about it) that Terry Rossio’s advice to never write a thriller screenplay in which everything is super-tight and the plot is built scene by scene. If your script is so taut that it comes apart if some scene is changed or dropped, then it’s going to come apart in production because stuff gets changed all the time.

So, the movie isn’t successful. It’s interesting, and I think it would be interesting to people who weren’t involved in the production. Not what-an-interesting-story interesting, but this-weird-shit-is-affecting interesting, if you know what I mean. Because you can’t really follow the story: big chunks had to be dropped, including an establishing scene for a very important character. In this edit, the protagonist’s sister doesn’t turn up until the third act, and you have no idea who she is or why the protagonist is searching her house.

And there are more issues. It’s flawed but interesting and affecting.

When the film gets distribution (even if it’s only on Netflix) I’ll post the script online. Folks might be interested in seeing the changes between the script version and the final film.

And I’m really glad I’m a novelist now. It makes things so much simpler.

And I’m off!

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The family just arrived. I’m about to catch a cross-town bus to have dinner and then go to see “my” movie. Usually, I go to see “a” movie. Not tonight.

::gulp!::