Game of Cages has an Amazon.com listing already. The publish date is listed as August 31, 2010, which is a month later than I’d heard. It’s not surprising, though, considering how late Man Bites World is.
There’s no cover art yet, but jeez, there it is.
Because I’m going to link to myself.
I’ve spoken before about Wordplay.com, and how much I learned there about writing and storytelling. Well, after a friend posted a note there about my PW Best of 2009 listing, (I’ve linked to that list enough times, haven’t I? I don’t want to seem like I’m self-promoting feverishly) a couple of regulars had questions about novel-writing and publishing.
What could I do but answer? The thread is here, but it’ll age off the main message board after a while, so I’ll try to update this link when the thread hits the archives. They’re long answers, too, with a lot of detail I don’t normally write about, and with all that detail collected into one place.
Anyway, I post this not just so people can read it, if they’re interested, but so that people with more experience than I have can post contrasting experiences, or point out where I’m wrong, or even add to the general knowledge base. It’s a terrific site, with an interesting mix of professional screenwriters and serious amateurs, and I’m sure any additional information that folks can add would be more than welcome, I’m sure.
I’m trying to come up with some back cover copy for Game of Cages. This is a little rough and a little too long, but what do you think?
In the wilds of the North Cascades, near a small town called Washaway, a secret high-stakes auction is taking place. A select wealthy few have gathered to bid on a captured extradimensional entity known as a predator.
The peers of the Twenty Palace Society, powerful sorcerers all, are dedicated to protecting the Earth by destroying predators–as well as anyone who would summon or possess one. Left unchecked, a single predator could scour the earth of all life. But none of the peers are near enough to raid the auction, so it falls to Ray Lilly, an expendable “wooden man” with a few stolen scraps of magic and an investigator with no magic at all to surveil the event and identify the winning bidder for later sanction.
They arrive too late. One of the losing bidders has released the predator in an act of sabotage and it has fled to the nearby town to feed. Now all the bidders are tearing apart the town, trying to capture the creature for themselves. And unknown to Ray, one of them is a powerful magician the society has been hunting for decades, and more dangerous than any single predator. Even worse, he’s taken notice of Ray, and knows who and what he is.
Can Ray and the investigator hold out until help arrives? Or will they, and the entire town, be swept away in the conflict of these terrible powers?
Any input would be appreciated.
Update: copy sent. Thanks for your help, everyone!
I won’t be taking part. I’m still editing Man Bites World (finished one of the difficult parts today) and I’ll have galleys for Game of Cages soon. After that, it’s new project time, so I’ll have brainstorming and outlining to do. I may not write another word of rough draft until Christmas.
However, even if I weren’t knee-deep in edits, I’d probably skip it. I’ve never joined in and probably never will.
Fly like the wind!
I just dropped the copy edit for Game of Cages off at the downtown Seattle post office. It ought to arrive in NY tomorrow, which is good because it’s due on Tuesday and Monday is a federal holiday.
::crosses another item off list::
Tomorrow is a family day, and Sunday I dig into the rough draft of Man Bites World.
I have a copy edit due on Tuesday, 10/13. It has to be there, inside the publisher’s offices, on that day. Express overnight mail, people!
Monday, 10/12, is a federal holiday, and all the post offices will be closed!
Luckily, I should be able to put it in the mail tomorrow.
ETA: (because I didn’t want to put this into a new post) My Amazon.com sales ranking for Child of Fire seem to be following a steady routine, at this point. Early in the day, about 8 am PST, the rank is around 14K. Later in the day, (say, about now) it’s up to 28K.
I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I wonder what it means. (I know: Nothing.)
I was so close to finishing my copy edit this morning. This evening, maybe. I also have to work up the dedication and acknowledgements.
Still. So close. Ah, well. I expect I’ll make a couple last decisions after work today and put it in the mail tomorrow, well before deadline.
Also, there’s nothing like a rigorous copy edit to make you question the strength of your relationship with your mother tongue. Apparently, I need to work a bit on the difference between “each other” and “one another”.
I hope you do.
Anyway, I wrote a post about a book called Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, which was not only about the way real fights differ from what we expect, but is also about how we deceive ourselves about what we can do and what we can’t. My original post is here: blog / LiveJournal.
Well, last night I had another “Meditations” moment: For quite a while now, I’ve been a morning writer. Physically, I’m a night person, but I could never get anything accomplished at the end of the day–too tired, too distractible, too many other things to do. For years, I’d come home from work and get nothing done on my projects. Once I started waking early and writing before work, I was much more productive.
But why, exactly, was that? Did I say tired and distractible? That’s just me defining myself as a person who can’t do some perfectly reasonable thing, and last night I walked out of my day job after a full day’s work and my usual morning writing session to head to the library.
There, I put in another two and a half hours on the copy edit. I expect to finish the whole thing today.
Can’t write/revise/whatever at the end of the day? Why do I tell myself these things? And how long is it going to take for me to break that habit?
Responding to a copy editor’s queries is a whole different kind of thinking than revising my own work.
I could not finish Man Bites World this morning before the signing. The end was just too far away.
After the signing, the socializing, and the lunch with an online friend and her family, my family returned home to the site of the copyedit of Game of Cages. It’s due back at the Random House offices on October 13th, which is a Tuesday. And if it’s going to arrive on time by express mail or whatever, I’m going to have to send it on Saturday.
That means I have one week. Did I mention that I’m a slow reader? That I’m trying to teach myself speed reading?
My poor wife is sick of her absent husband, not least of all because shortly after I deliver the copyedit, she’s going to be flying back east to spend some time with her parents. There’s talk of home upgrades for them. Who knows? I’ll be staying here.
However! I did not want to jump into the copyedit with MBW so close to finished. So that’s what I did.
Yep, Man Bites World is now complete in rough(est) draft version. A bunch of story beats need to be spackled over, there’s one section where Ray is too passive for the story to work, and one location that–surprise, surprise–turned out to be the scene of the climactic conflict. I have to go back and change the earlier scene to match them up.
And there are a lot of small changes to make. Plus, I should iron out the text. I’m not exactly Mr. Gorgeous First Draft (although blogging helps). Still, I solved that story.
So, a full copyedit in only one week is a challenge for me, but I’m going to do my best. But not tonight. Tonight I’m going to have another beer out of the celebratory six-pack of Dead Guy Ale my wife bought us, and I’m going to spend some quality time with the Internet.