Randomness for 1/15

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1) “The Hatchet Job of the Year Award is for the writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months.” Read the nominated reviews here.

2) I’d say that the question of whether President Obama would rather fight a single horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses has been answered pretty authoritatively.

3) Movie plots done as pictograms. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t get all of these.

4) Minor characters get their own movies. I didn’t get all of these, either

5) Emotions for which the English language has no words. “Viitsima” is my new pen name.

6) A comprehensive list of things that made David Banner “Hulk out” in the TV show THE HULK.

7) Segway inventor patents portable bulimia machine, demonstrates that he’s one fucked up human being.

Can you guess how many of last year’s bestselling SF titles were published last year?

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One.

Actually, that’s not fair. I’m not counting the media tie-ins, of which there are four, three of which were published last year and made the list.

Of the rest, Ready Player One was published in 2011. Also, didn’t that one get a mainstream push? The other four slots were taken up with Ender’s Game, Dune, and two different editions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The only book that was a) original fiction and b) released that same year was the latest “Honorverse” novel from David Weber.

(A quick note: I don’t have anything against media tie-in novels. I wrote one myself last year for the Spirit of the Century rpg. They’re still not the same as pop art created outside a corporate structure, even ruthlessly commercial pop art like these lists.)

You may think it’s unfair to compare the books this way, because Ender’s Game, Hitchhikers and Dune are often assigned in school, but let’s look at the numbers. That OSC novel sold just over 100,000 copies. The tenth best selling novel on the mystery list is one of the “Dragon Tattoo” movie editions, with 127,000+ sales. Another edition of the same novel holds the fifth spot.

And the rest of the listed books are all original fiction, as long as you’re willing to throw stuff published under James Patterson’s name into that category, and I’m not sure I am. None of those books need to be assigned in school to reach six-figure sales.

If you look at the number one mystery novel, it would make #7 on the Romance list. I was tempted to leave any discussion of the Romance bestsellers out of this discussion because the 50 Shades of Grey + sequels have been the Big Cultural Thing this past year, which sort of skews the results.

Still, very few people are buying sf novels, and most of them are buying old favorites. I knew science fiction was a small part of the market, but I had no idea just how small it was.

I wish they’d included the bestselling fantasy novels, too.

This all leads me to three conclusions:

1) Science fiction is a genre in decline (obvs).

2) I am even more determined to reject the idea that fantasy should aspire to science fiction’s protocols.

3) I will never write science fiction. I don’t love it enough to move into that ghost town.

(Added later: John Scalzi confirms that Redshirts sold well enough to make the list, but most of those sales were ebooks. These lists only track pbooks. I wonder how including ebooks would change the comparisons of the books below.)

Twenty Palaces not for sale

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Some folks might have noticed that certain online sellers no longer show Twenty Palaces, my self-published prequel novel, as available for sale.

There’s a brief, frustrating story behind that: I lowered the price just before Giftmas and now some sellers don’t seem able to get the message that the price should return to it’s previous level. It’s the “channels” through Smashwords that are causing the basic problem, which of course means that Amazon is cutting the price on their site, as they do.

I’m not sure what the problem is. Sony, et al, got the update that lowered the price, but multiple attempts to revise it since have gone unnoticed.

So I’m in the process of pulling it from all of those stores. Once they’re all gone, I’ll begin listing them again, but at the price *I* set.

It’s frustrating and a waste of time, but I don’t have a lot of choice. In the meantime, B&N and iBookstore have been responsive and are currently selling the books. You’ll have to buy them from there for now.

On a more personal note

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This blog (LJ, DW, whatever) has been pretty much neglected lately. In truth, I’ve been battling a post-holiday case of the blues. A number of authors have been talking about this lately, including Danny Marks on his YouTube channel and Cat Valente on her LJ, and hearing about their symptoms and struggles makes me feel a bit of a whiner. I’ve never come to the point of collapse or been able to get out of bed, but I am frustrated, impatient, short-tempered and otherwise unhappy with human interaction. Even Twitter, which is a pretty easy place for me to hang out online, has been off-putting lately.

I wish I could say that I’ve been perfectly cheerful and charming with my family, but that isn’t true, either. I’m also not hitting my daily word count goals every day (and I should be working right now) which is frustrating. I’m not sure what I need, except possibly more reading time.

Anyway, this blog has never been terribly active but I’ve been neglecting it lately. That’s why. Things will get more active, I think. Maybe in the spring, if I can’t get my shit together before then.

Twenty Palaces, the tabletop rpg

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It’s no secret to anyone who follows me on Twitter (@byharryconnolly) that at one time I was talking about licensing the Twenty Palaces books for a tabletop rpg. It’s also no secret that I told the company they shouldn’t bother: the series had already failed and no new books would be coming out to support the game release.

What’s more, I wanted to move on. I was pretty bummed that Twenty Palaces didn’t do well (still am, in fact) and I had no desire to go in-depth on the way the magic worked or the history of the Twenty Palace Society. It felt like dragging a dying dog outside to force him to chase a stick.

What I suggested to them and to others, was that they should just file off the serial numbers and release something similar. It’s what I did with the books themselves; I dumped the tentacles and the consonant-salad names to recreate Lovecraft after all.

I’m extremely pleased to say they did.

Now, it’s not *actually* a Twenty Palaces rpg, but it’s as close as anyone is going to come. If you pop over to that Kickstarter, you can download the game rulebook for a donation as low as $1. The only thing the core rulebook won’t have is the artwork (which is what the Kickstarter is about).

Once you have that, you can also download the “Magic System Toolkit” which has just been made available today in Update 19. The toolkit is a short demonstration of how to create different magic systems (5 of them) within the Fate rules, and the last one, Void Callers, is very similar to the Twenty Palaces system. I even played a (very small) part in spitballing ideas for one of the listed predators malign creatures who can be summoned from the void.

So, there isn’t going to be a Twenty Palaces game you can play, but this is as close as you’re likely to get, and it only costs a dollar for the pdfs. Of course, if you pledge at a higher amount, you’ll also get a Fate book called “Crime World” from LEVERAGE co-creator/writer John Rogers about grifting and stealing, along with a lot of other stuff.

Check it out.

Randomness for 1/10

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1) The Macroeconomic effects of Smaug on Middle Earth. h/t James Nicoll

2) A Wikipedia hoax page about a fictitious war that stayed on the site for five years was not (NOT) the longest-running hoax page on the site.

3) Real astronaut tweets with Star Trek actors.

4) Visualizations of mass transit in major cities. This one is for Seattle.

5) Father hires in-game “hit squad” to kill his son’s PC.

6) Only sexy women in stylish boots can protect society from the threat of sharpened scissors.

7) Spagetti Gotham: Gotham City characters in the old west.

Randomness for 1/1

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1) The 50 Worst Columns of 2012. So many trainwrecks.

2) What would cities look like without light pollution? h/t Richard Kadrey

3) Outtakes for ST:TNG Season 2. Video.

4) Politics in 2012, in graphs and gifs.

5) WW2: Full of ridiculous plot holes. h/t James Nicoll

6) The lowest-grossing theatrical release of 2012 goes to Christian Slater’s latest. It was a one-week release, though, and averaged more than “The Oogieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure.”

7) Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil. An oldie but a goodie.

2012

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I’m going to keep this short.

The most popular entry on this blog is the one where I dissect the reasons why my series was cancelled. I’m not what you’d call excited about that, but the fact remains. With luck, I’ll have a post in the new year that will finally draw more attention.

The year itself has been tough. I’d hoped to sell A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark but my agent was reluctant to send it out and I took her advice. Thank god. Last fall I took another look at the manuscript and realized I’d blown it. The novel needs major revisions and christ but the moment for it has pretty much passed. I’ll still finish it, eventually, but that leaves a big hole in my schedule. I put out no new work in 2012.

As for 2013, the only novel I expect to put out is King Khan, the tie-in novel for Spirit of the Century. If Epic Fantasy With No Dull Parts sells, it’ll probably be scheduled for 2014. In any event, life is short. I am working constantly. I don’t have a lot to show for it right now.

On a personal level, my family life has only been getting better. I am a very, very lucky ugly fat man.

And that’s it. I don’t do New Years’ resolutions, because they carry the cultural baggage that no one keeps them, and I never wait until Jan first to make the changes in my life I think I need. But I’m going back to work now, and I’m going to keep working on a sequel to a book that hasn’t even sold yet and which probably won’t come out until 2015.

I don’t even know what to say about this except that I can muddle through it.

Giftmas report

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Let’s start by saying this was a Card Kingdom Giftmas. Between the three of us, we must have dropped almost $600 there for card and board games, plus the never-ending Pokemon purchases.[1] Curious what we got? Here’s a pic.

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Except that’s not everything. We forgot to include HIVE, which is a two-player game best described as “nature chess” except with fewer pieces and no board. The other game we forgot is FRIDAY, a solo deck-building game about a Pacific Islander who finds himself saddled with a hapless European shipwrecked on the island. You have to teach him how to survive and defeat pirates (by building the deck) in order to rid yourself of him. [2]

Also, the pic does not include the Pokemon stuff we go, including an entire booster box which went over… well, see footnote 1.

We haven’t played all the games yet, but there isn’t a dud among them. Some of the new Dominion cards are brutal, Munchkin Apocalypse is just as funny as the base game, and Guillotine is a surprise favorite.

Dixit is great but will play better with four players. 7 Wonders promises to be great fun but we shouldn’t have tried to play it when we were so exhausted. And even though Gloom promises to be great fun, I would have never bought it if I’d known the cards smelled like perfume. It’s a sunny day today, maybe I’ll air them out outside.

We finally replaced our ailing 19″ CRT television with a 32″ flatscreen; that’s not as large as most families have, but to us it’s a huge treat. Naturally, the first thing we watched on the big screen was the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (I received the extended editions last year)[3]

After that, we hooked up the Wii. My son got DJ Hero 2 and I got Lego LOTR. Yes, we’re hardcore gamers over here.

The two best-received gifts were (first) the Sensu iPad paint brush we bought for my wife. Theoretically, the art programs on her tablet should let her make art anywhere and anytime, but she hated using her finger because she couldn’t see the mark she was making. With the brush, that’s all changed. It will be a challenge for her to work on such a small surface, but that’s a challenge she’s willing to face.

The second gift was the laptop my son received for his birthday. He was born on Boxing Day, and we do our best to carefully separate the two celebrations. Anyway, his new computer is better than either of mine and he’s already pushing for Call of Duty or Skyrim for it.[4] In it’s way, this is also a gift for me, since he won’t have to do his schoolwork on my desktop all damn day.

So that’s why this blog has been dormant lately: holidays and birthday. Plus I’ve been working hard on EPIC SEQUEL WITH NO DULL PARTS. Sorry if I’m not around as much as I normally am but there’s work to do and fun to be had.

[1] Or is there an end? The boy is taking a break from Pokemon; he’s bored with his deck and bored with the game. As much as he likes the kids he plays against, it’s just not doing it for him the way it used to. We’ll see if he’s permanently moved on or if he just needs some time off.

[2] I’m convinced there’s another game that we left out, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it would be.

[3] I’ve decided I prefer the extended editions. There’s more room for nuance in them. Boromir is not just this desperate, untrustworthy character, he’s also the hero who offers words of kindness to Frodo when their needed. And he has scenes with Aragorn, a ridiculous omission from the theatrical releases. However, I could have done without the avalanche of skulls bit and the orcs who use grapple attacks in the middle of a battle.

[4] As if his mom would let an 11yo sit in his room playing first person shooters. As if.

Gingerbread house exhibit that benefits Juvenile Diabetes (pics!)

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One of the things we do every year is pop down to the Sheraton hotel in downtown Seattle and check out the gingerbread houses. They’re always huge, beautiful, and intricately done.

And I never do them justice when I take pictures. My little one-shot camera can’t really capture the translucent sugars and…

Anyway, this year had a Disney theme. Here’s Beauty & The Beast and remember, everything you can see (but the lights) is edible.

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I have a bunch of detail shots on Flickr but the closeup of the candle guy didn’t come out.

Here’s the mastershot of Aladdin

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Those domes are gorgeous and look as delicate as cotton candy. Over at the set I have a closeup of the elephant and the genie.

Here’s a detail of Aslan and the White Witch in her sleigh pulled by polar bears.

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See more at the set.