harvest of fire

Child of Fire Reviews, Part 12

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More reviews behind the cut: Continue reading

“I write it because I want it to come true”

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A few discussions and comments online have prompted me to revisit some old ideas. For instance, Charles Stross recently brought up the whole fantasy-is-a-pro-monarchy genre idea, and James Nicoll touched on writers working in genres where the “core political assumptions” (such as contempt for the rule of law in UF) went against the writer’s personal beliefs.

Leaving aside the Stross comment, which I’ve sniffed at before, let me throw a question out to you: Do you read/watch/consume entertainment because you want your real world and real life to be modeled after it?

I think of this as a specifically science fictional protocol: Writers creating worlds in which they want to live (or, conversely worlds they don’t want to see come true, as in “If This Goes On…” stories). I don’t read or write that way, personally. I don’t read war stories because I want to spend time in a bunker. I don’t read gritty crime fiction because I want to have a knife-fight in an alley. I don’t read fantasy because I think hereditary heirs really make the best tyrants.

I think most people feel this way. Does the true thrill of a Spider-man comic come from the way he circumvents the judicial system? Not for me.

Still, sometimes a book will go in a direction that pushes my political buttons. Nick Mamatas has said he will not cheer for a cops who catch the bad guys by breaking the rules. That’s fair enough, although I enjoyed the hell out of the first Dirty Harry movie when I was younger and less aware of the implications. But does that mean I wanted a real-life Harry Calahan? Not then and not now.

So, is it just that we, as a culture, have certain blind spots to iffy political assumptions in our entertainments? Do our individual subcultures have institutions or norms that we like to see rejected or portrayed as baddies (like environmentalists, or the military, or government bureacrats)? Do writers have an obligation to create stories that are true to their belief system? Rule of law=good thing. Flouting rule of law=not so good thing? Or are we free to do something else entirely with our fiction, and to hell with the so-called message?

Because lemme tell you: I may write about vigilantes, but that doesn’t mean I’m pro-vigilante. But do you see Child of Fire (if you’ve read it) as a pro-vigilante novel?

I’m curious what others think.

Sales Rankings

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My agent has asked me to stop looking at Child of Fire’s sales rankings on Amazon.com. She knows I know that they don’t really mean anything, but she also knows that it’s one of the few tools a writer has to see how the book is doing. Are sale trending upward? Is interest fading away? How does it compare to book X, released at the same time (which is never always fun)?

Her point (and, as always, it’s a good one) is that Amazon.com isn’t representative of certain kinds of book sales. It doesn’t match well with them and I shouldn’t even distract myself with it because it could be suggesting something that’s the opposite of what’s really going on. And I’ve taken her advice. I only visit the Amazon.com page to see if there’s a new review, although I sometimes will accidentally allow my gaze to fall on the ranking. Oops! Utterly meaningless!

The reason it’s been easy to kick the Amazon.com sales ranking habit is that I found a new, better form of crack. See, Random House has a nice list of books on their website, and if I click “science fiction/fantasy” right there in the left sidebar, they will automatically sort them by how well they’re selling that week. And, since they only update once a week, I’m not tempted to obsess

Currently, I’m on page 20 out of 99 of all Random House sf/f. Not bad (probably)! The top slots are almost always Laurell K. Hamilton, Star Wars novels and Farenheit 451. Me, I’ve been as far back and page 30, and as far forward as 12 (I wish I’d known about this when my book first came out).

And of course, I always have to click back one more page so I can trash talk the books trailing me in the list. “Eat my DUST, Stephen R. Donaldson! With your 30-something year old novel that’s still selling strong! How do you like the bottoms of my shoes! HAH!”

I consider this healthy.

Five Things Make a Friday Post

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And today it’s all about me me me!

* As of last Monday, I am officially six months overdue on delivering Man Bites World. My agent has given me firm instructions: Do not panic. The deadline for production is August, but I’m going to be turning it in that late. I’m just about finished with a round of revisions for my agent (she had a couple little notes) and once she reads and approves them, I’ll turn the book in.

Looking back, I can see it was damn smart of my editor to hold off the publication of Child of Fire for as long as she did. And I’m sorry that Game of Cages was switched from May of this year to August. Hopefully, the path in the future will be more smooth.

* In MS Word for Mac (I know. You don’t have to say it), the word count appears at the bottom of the window… unless the count goes into six figures, at which point it disappears. I hate that. I like maps, clocks, WYSIWYG, and word counts. I like to know where I am. That’s why I feel a certain joyful satisfaction when I trim a manuscript below the 100,000 word mark and the total count suddenly appears onscreen.

Yesterday, I was tempted to stop revising ten minutes early so I could write “I’m at 99,999 words now!” in this post, but I resisted. See point one.

* Am I going to Norwescon? I don’t know! I received an invitation around Christmastime, filled it out and sent it in, but I haven’t heard back. It’s less than a month away and my name isn’t on the long list of “panel participants.” Now, I’ve never been to a convention before, so maybe it’s commonplace for a confirmation to arrive less than a month before the event. Maybe it’s common for an invitation to be rescinded (which would be understandable, since I can only go one day) without notifying the attendee. I dunno, but I’ve sent an email to registration to inquire.

I’m half-hoping they’ll tell me I’ve been struck from the list. Saturdays are supposed to be family time for me, but revisions have been eating all my time, and then there’d be a convention, and the following week…

* I’m going to have a signing at the Tukwila Barnes & Noble on April 10th at 1 pm. It won’t be a reading (Ixnay on the Eadingray!), just a signing and talk with four authors: Gayle Ann Williams (Tsunami Blue), Jessa Slade (Seducing the Shadows), Mark Henry (Battle of the Network Zombies), and little ole me. If you live in the Puget Sound area, swing on by.

* You know what amazes me? I can revise a book three times and, on the fourth runthrough, discover an incredible number of word echoes, clumsy sentence constructions, responses to sensory input before the sensory input, and dialog that would register as “eyeroll” on a Turing test. It still astonishes me that my own errors can be so difficult to see.

* Only two entries so far in the Child of Fire giveaway contest (Here’s the LiveJournal version). Just sayin’. This is the last giveaway I’m going to do for a while. I have a small stack of books I’m going to save for late summer, in case CoF isn’t available in stores when Game of Cages comes out.

As a followup to my previous post

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That comment I made about sending a book to a reader who has a grandmom with a blog? Totally not a joke. So I’ll have a contest. Post a link to your grandmother’s[1] blog and I’ll mail you a copy of Child of Fire, anywhere in the world. I’ll look at all the blogs, and whoever posts the most interesting one will win (Yes, I have Sekrit Reezinz for this).

Additionally, I’d ask that you review the book yourself online–positively or negatively, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s an honest opinion.

[1] It does not have to be your actual grandmother. Or a real grandmother at all. Just post a link to an interesting blog written by a woman over 65–it could be your own!–and you can consider yourself entered.

Wha? “Sponsored Reviews?”

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Even though it’s been five months since Child of Fire came out, I’m still contacting reviewers, hoping to get a little more exposure. I’ve slowed down quite a bit, but I still mail off the odd book now and then.

So, as I was looking over N.K. Jemison’s new book on Big River dot com to see if it’s a hardcover (and thus too spendy to buy at my local shop) I saw a review posted there by sacramentobookreview.com.

Interesting! So I pop over to their site and poke around. No they haven’t reviewed CoF before. Yes, here are there guidelines for authors who want to send them a book. And here are their prices for a sponsored review.

Cue needle-scratching-an-LP sound. A “sponsored” review?? Well, yes. You can pay to have a review “expedited” which costs $99 for a Standard Turnaround (9-12 weeks) up to $299 for an Expedited Turnaround (2-4 weeks).

They don’t promise a positive review, only a “professional” one, and they don’t promise that a paid review will appear in the paper. However, if they don’t, the author will receive an advertisement instead and the size of the ad depends on which “turnaround” price they pay.

They also promise to put the review into their “publication pipeline” which apparently means Amazon.com, their syndication service, and their website.

As I said above, there’s nothing on the site (that I could find) that promises a rave review. I also didn’t find a disclaimer specifically explaining that cutting a check is no guarantee of a positive review. Still, it strikes me as fishy; I wouldn’t send them anything simply because a reader might wonder if I slipped a couple of bucks into the book, and jeez, people, I’d send a copy to your sickly grandmother if she had a blog.

Vaguely uncool. I’m going to email writer beware about it.

Oh, and because I should make this clear, I am in no way suggesting that N.K. Jemison wrote a check for the review they gave her. In. No. Way.

Foreign rights

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The announcement just went up on Publisher’s Marketplace, so I guess I can announce it here: My agency has sold French language rights for Child of Fire and Game of Cages to Bibliothèque Interdite! Whoo-hoo! That makes two foreign language sales (so far) Russian and French.

Profitez des bons moments!

Child of Fire Reviews Part 11

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I finally collected seven more. Behind the cut!
Continue reading

Very important announcement

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I will not be going to see that werewolf movie premiering this weekend. Werewolves freak me out (which is why they appear in the Twenty Palaces universe when pretty much no other “classic”/folklore creatures will be) and I do not want to see a movie where people get torn apart and eaten.

That’s right, I skip zombie movies, too. (Give me unicorns anyday).

Maybe I’ll see it someday, on the smallest screen possible… like my wife’s iPod Classic.

Meanwhile, here’s a fun list of classic werewolf movies.

Well don’t I feel all special

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Now that I’ve joined SFWA, I can follow the Nebula Awards nominations, tracking them as they pile up. It’s like a horse race, but the people involved move very slowly.

In case anyone asks, I’m not on there, of course, and I didn’t expect to be. I’m also not asking people to nominate my book or whatever. I’m not writing the sort of work that wins awards, and I won’t be any time soon. It’s not a concern. In fact, I posted my joke bio on the Campbell Award page. I won’t win and I don’t care.

One thing I *do* care about is that I haven’t nominated anyone yet. I’ve only read one new sf/f novel this year–I’ve bought a bunch, but only read one. It’s already near the front of the pack, but maybe my nom would do it some good.

But is that fair? My sample size is one–shouldn’t I keep out of the whole mess? There may be ten or twelve novels that deserve the award more, but how would I know? I’m still reading mystery novels from the sixties and Planet Hulk.

So, should a person nominate books for an award if they’re not well read in the field?