Child of Fire giveaway

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I have a post about breaking in to professional publishing (at least, how I did it) and why I’m writing about it, but I finished it so late that I knew it was an ugly first draft and would have to read it again before I posted it.

In the meantime, Suvudu.com is giving away a signed copy of Child of Fire as part of their sweepstakes promo. Lots of other books there. Check it out.

Also: the online press kit. I’m going to get me one of these, and I’ve already sent a couple notes to my PR person at Random House to see what he thinks I should include. Seen via LJ user marthawells.

While you folks are thinking about Worldcon

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And arguing about Hugo winners, I will continue with my lifelong quest to be behind the times by posting… San Diego Comic Con photos!

Most people see a person in costume and ask them to pose for the picture. Which they do. Me, I liked taking pictures of them while they were looking at their watches, impatiently waiting for a pal, or sitting in a corner for a rest. What I wanted most was a picture of a cosplayer eating one of those sandwiches out of the plastic clamshell, or maybe a hot dog, but it was not to be.

Candid!

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But here’s one picture that’s not candid:

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Yeah, that’s me posing beside a poster for the book

You can see pictures of my panel, my signing, and the people at the con by skimming through the set.

The Peter Parker

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I know. It sounds like a impolite euphamism, doesn’t it?

This weekend, bittercon is going on, and as part of my general desire to procrastinate on Man Bites World I’m going to write about a topic I’ve wanted to cover for quite a while.

It’s a type of protagonist I think of as a “Peter Parker,” the secret identity of Spider-man. For those who don’t read a lot of comics and have never bothered with the movies, let me make a brief list of qualities a Peter Parker would have:

* – always tries to do the right thing, usually at great personal cost.
* – does not receive just rewards for the good they do.
* – often have tremendous personal troubles unrelated to their do-gooding activities
* – while skilled or powerful, they aren’t the *most* skilled or powerful, usually getting by on cleverness or grit

Harry Dresden, to take one example, started off as a Peter Parker hero. He never backed away from doing the right thing, even when everyone else around him thought of him as a villain.

Peter Parkers stand in opposition to other hero types. There are the Clark Kents, who are quite powerful in their own right, extremely idealistic and concerned with living by fair and just rules, and who receive the accolades they deserve for the good they do. If they have personal problems, they stand in stark contrast to their near-invincibility in their realm of conflict. Captain America is a Clark Kent (in fact, I was tempted to call this type the Steve Rogers, but I figured Clark was more well known). Quite a few TV cops fall into the Clark Kent mold, too, including Swoozie Kurtz’s character in THE CLOSER.

Another type is the Bruce Wayne–a hero who is extremely skilled/ powerful and tremendously efficient in the realm of conflict. Whether they receive accolades or not is beside the point for this type, because they are an authority figure apart from other types of authority. The Bruce Wayne characters are less about admiring a character for doing the right thing no matter the personal cost as they are (often brutal) power fantasies about extreme competence in the face of terrible danger. James Bond is a Bruce Wayne type, for instance.

For them what wonder, I chose comic book character names for the label because they are long-lasting, well-known and relatively static.

What do you think? Any other heros you’d like to categorize or any other categories you’d like to create? Personally, I’ve been trying to decide where Indiana Jones would fit in, or whether he deserves his own category.

Here’s one for the ladies.

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You’re welcome.

I’ve been writing for 45 minutes

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And my wordcount on Man Bites World is currently lower than when I started. ::sigh::

In happier news, my email was correctly backed up, and I haven’t lost any of it. Yay!

Also, my website needs many changes. Many. Good thing I have so much free time. X___X

If you value your sanity

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do not watch this

Part of me hopes it’s fake.

Five things for a Friday

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1) For those who missed it, I posted the first chapter of Child of Fire on my site yesterday. You can read it here. If you like it, tell your friends. If you hate it, tell your enemies.

2) Woman getting married to fairground ride. According to the article, she says she has “objectum sexuality, a condition that makes sufferers attracted to inanimate objects.” I avert my gaze as I hurry past the obvious joke there.

3) “Nurse of the Year” in Connecticut, who gave injections and dispensed medical advice, not actually a nurse. Remember, all failures of private industry are individual cases, but all failures within a government program reflect badly on every government program.

4) Drug buyers call the cops on their own dealers. Not because they were ripped off or because the drugs were bad. It was because the dealers were setting up squirrel traps in the park where they operated, and taking the fresh meat home at the end of the day. The drug buyers didn’t like that and dropped the dime on them. Fun note: When I first moved to Seattle, I lived very, very close to that park. It’s a beautiful place. via matt-ruff

5) I’ve always had trouble remembering faces and recognizing people, but man, I have nothing on Ryan O’Neal.

Sample Chapter of Child of Fire

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Here is the first chapter of Child of Fire. It’s under 5K words, and I’ll put the bulk of it under a cut to spare the sensitive and uninterested.

CHAPTER ONE

It felt good to sit behind the wheel again, even the wheel of a battered Dodge Sprinter. Even with this passenger beside me.

The van rumbled like a garbage truck, handled like a refrigerator box, and needed a full minute to reach highway speeds. I’d driven better, but I’m a guy who has to take what I can get while I’m still alive to get it.

The passenger beside me was Annalise Powliss. She stood about five foot nothing, was as thin as a mop handle, and was covered with tattoos from the neck down. Her hair was the same dark red as the circled F’s I used to get on my book reports, and she wore it cropped close to her scalp. It was an ugly cut, but she never seemed to care how she looked. I suspected she cut it herself.

She was my boss, and she had been forbidden to kill me, although that’s what she most wanted to do.

Continue reading

Here’s a list of things I did not intend to spend two full days on:

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1) Migrating my profiles, files and settings from my old computer to my new one.

That’s it. That’s the list.

It’s weird to deal with computer problems. For me, at least. It just sucks the life right out of me. I want the magic box to keep doing magic, and I feel so betrayed when it fails.

Cross your fingers for me.

Busy busy busy

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Things are still crazy here in me-ville. I have so much crap to take care of, and no time to do it all.

Still, there’s always time for health care reform links: Just because we have really successful government-run programs doesn’t mean the government is able to run a program successfully.

More interesting commentary to come.