I’m not going to be around much today

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The family is heading out to the Apple store and Barnes & Noble so my technophobic wife can test drive some ereaders. She won’t like them, I already know it, but what the hell, right? I get to check them out, too. What I really suspect will happen is that my son will fall in love the the iPad and want one for himself, and that’ll get him off my damn computer every day.

Frankly, we’re more likely to come home with a bag of books than a gadget.

(And yeah, I though the iPad 2 was going to drop yesterday, not tomorrow. My wife doesn’t care about size, cameras or gyroscopes, though–she plans to be disappointed by it no matter what.)

Update: My son tells us that we will also be visiting The Gap so he can buy some new Tshirts.

Me: “All right, son. If you want to, we’ll take a look. Is this about a girl? It’s totally cool if it is.”

Son: “No. I just don’t want to look ramshackle.”

Me: “God dammit! If you’re going to be a member of this family, you’re going to look ramshackle!”

Followed by much laughing. Considering the glasses frames he chose (kinda fancy), the shoes he likes and the pants he asks his mom to make, it’s pretty clear that he’s going to be a dress-up person. It’s like Alex Keaton being born to hippie parents.

No cell phone

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I often talk about how I don’t have a cell phone, and this morning demonstrates why. My son had a problem with a piece of software I bought for him, and damn if he didn’t throw a fit at me like I’m his personal tech support. When I had an office job I routinely got personal tech support calls from home–long, involved conversations in which I had to say things like “What do you see in the upper left corner of the screen?” and “Don’t pound the keyboard!” while sitting at my desk.

This is why I don’t have a cell phone; if my family wants to struggle with the computer, let them. Either they’ll learn on their own or they’ll do something else with their time. But constantly calling me to explain the same things over and over? No.

It might be different if there were other people who called me occasionally, but there aren’t. And I’m okay with that.

Hit a roadblock on the new project

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It was unexpected, but unavoidable. I’m trying to figure out how to fix it within pre-established parameters, and I think I just about have it handled.

It’s funny, though. I used tear my hair out over this stuff, but today it looks to me like a pleasant little puzzle (more fun than the Minecraft obstacle course my son designed for me, at least) and I know it’ll be stronger for being fixed.

Anyway, I put up a couple of posts over the weekend. I suspect you guys saw my joke post about Pat Rothfuss (I’m just trying to help the guy get his name out there), but I’m surprised no one wanted to talk about the super-low pricing on ebook backlist titles–prices set by a publisher, not an author who’ve had their rights reverted.

I think it’s potentially a great thing for midlist authors and may cement price windowing as a professional publishing business model. It could also hit very hard against indie authors who have been hoovering up all the ultra-low priced impulse-buy ebook sales.

If you are writing a series, would you ask your publisher to release an ebook of book one for $0.99 to help promote book four?

Three things I’m thinking about

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First, we were due to get 2-6 inches of snow last night, but something crazy apparently happened and the snow fell and stuck everywhere but right here in Seattle. I know there are some of you out there who are sick of snow, but I have a little boy here who wants to slide down a hill on a flattened cardboard box. We need some kid weather.

In fact, it’s snowing right now but nothing is sticking. I should probably bring him home a treat.

Second, I’m working on this thing, and it’s taking way longer than it should. Even when I devote hours and hours to it, I only plod through a couple thousand words. Tim Pratt, on the other hand, just kicked out an 8,000 word day (yes we are supposed to compare ourselves to other people, so hmph on you). It’s frustrating and annoying.

Third, with regard to the second point, I’m seriously considering a week-long internet fast. It wouldn’t be enough to finish this project, but it would help. Has anyone done it? What did you think?

Game night

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Inspired by James Nicoll’s regular D&D posts, I thought I’d write up the session of Truth & Justice I just GM’ed. I’m doing it now because it’s late and I’ll forget if I wait until tomorrow.

Truth & Justice is a superhero paper-and-dice rpg. The heroes were:

  • Pressure, a gadgeteering scientist with the ability to control air pressure. The player is a 9yo boy.
  • The Black Monkey, a primate scientist, engineer, window-washer who was bitten by a monkey that he himself irradiated and who can now transform himself into a big, bulky human with a monkey tail, except that his eyes are glowing green and his body is a silhouette. Powers: Super-strength, -agility, -speed. The player is a 9yo boy.
  • Shait, a 12-year old daughter of archaeologists who is possessed by the spirit of the goddess of the Nile/flooding season/all water everwhere (courtesy of a shabbily-researched web site. If the GM had known they were looking up mythological figures, he would have advised them not to rely on a site with green text on a black background). Powers: Super-armor, Immortality, Water Control. The player is a middle-aged woman and non-gamer.

The player running The Black Monkey had never played any kind of rpg before, which put him one session behind Shait’s player and two behind Pressure’s. The session started where the previous had left off: Pressure had slipped out of his university lab and Shait had climbed out the window of a fleeing school bus and had defeated a villain called Nemesis. They were standing over the unconscious body when Black Monkey ran up, too late to join the fight.

Introductions were made, and Shait informed the other two that she was a goddess searching for lost relics. She also informed them that they would be helping her in this task. Despite their inexperience with gaming, I thought the expressions on their faces pretty closely matched the expressions the adult male characters they were playing would have. Sirens approached and all three left the scene, confident the police would be able to contain the villain.

Shait, of course, discovered that her school bus was long gone, having fled the appearance of a super-villain. She rolled well, found a discarded transfer and took a city bus back to her school. Her parents were called and she was grounded. The life of a pre-teen superhero is never easy, and it was going to get worse. Continue reading

Quiet? I haven’t been quiet

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Charles Stross asked me to guest blog on his site while he is traveling across the Atlantic to attend Boskone and accomplish various other things. (True fact: the first time I heard about it, as in: “How was your weekend? I heard Boskone was great!” I assumed it was some kind of pastry).

Anyway, my first post is live over there. It’s an expanded discussion of low and high thrillers. Check it out.

Dinosaur, me

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The Chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers puts the brakes on expectations for ebook growth. Not to say that ebooks aren’t a growing segment of the market–that’s obvious on its face. But the audiences are so large (even for something as supposedly marginal as books) that each percentage point of change represents a whole lot of people, all of whom seem to rush to the internet to proclaim their love/disdain for their new readers.

But the people still reading in print still make up the bulk of the book buyers and they will be for years yet. As Nelson mentions above, more than 50% of music buyers still buy their music on CD.

I’m one of those people. I don’t buy very much music, but when I do it’s not through iTunes or other download sites, and I don’t put it on an iPod or other mp3 player. My wife has an iPod, but she uses it to listen to TED Talks, Planet Money podcasts and other NPR shows, when she uses it at all. There’s no music on it at all.

But I’m a dinosaur. I admit it. I don’t even have a cell phone. I don’t have anything against Kindles, et al; in fact I love them, because they allow my sister, the person who turned me into a sf/f lover, to read my novels. Her stroke had left her unable to hold a paper book open, but that’s not a problem with her new Kindle.

Paper and electronic books will eventually reach a balance, and no one posting to the internet right now knows when we’ll reach it. They’re only able to guess (and claim prescience if they hit the target) and the final figures will be determined by factors that no one can predict.