LiveJournal isn’t feeding feeds, so this will be a short one:
1) A reader likes Child of Fire.
2) I could totally do all this stuff, too. I just don’t want to.
3) Robin Hobb-quoting amnesiac identified.
4) How to get people to take the stairs. I love this one. via madrobins
More reviews, including an online copy of the starred PW review. Oh, and if you were to pop over to Amazon.com to post a review of your own there, I wouldn’t exactly object.
Reviews:
Continue reading
Then back away again.
Lots of vivid, awful dreams last night which I will not relay in detail but which I interpret as health anxiety. I had a salad for lunch today. And never mind that I woke up four minutes before the last non-tardy bus was going to arrive. Yeah, I’m a real fashion rebel at work today.
But I swung by the downtown Borders to buy my son a welcome home toy, and what should I see but new, unsigned copies of Child of Fire? It seems the fourteen they ordered originally were down to three, and the five new ones were just sitting there waiting for me to scribble in them. Which I did.
On top of that, the book is now up to 49 reviews on Amazon.com, and a few of the most recent are quite-sensible 5-star reviews. Such good people, really. But who will be number 50? The suspense is so strong that I’m tempted to make a contest about it. (Okay, not really. Did I mention that I overslept and almost missed work? I’m too damn tired for a contest.)
And I no longer feel like a miserable failure. So there’s that.
And the 50th review has been posted! It’s yet another “This isn’t a Jim Butcher novel!” comment. Ah, well.
All the books I currently need to send went out this morning. The AREs Del Rey asked me to sign are signed and on their way back. I have dedicated time to revise Man Bites World this week, and the more I work on it, the more I like this book again. Also, the on-publication payment for Child of Fire arrived today. Nothing like a few thousand dollars to lift your spirits, eh?
Then why am I so fucking miserable?
I’ve spent the last several days in a fog, unable to concentrate or exert myself in any serious way. It’s taken me a while (as it always does) to acknowledge that I’m depressed. Not only that, but I’m depressed with my family on the other side of the country.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I always have a bit of depression when I finish a project, and having a book on actual shelves in actual stores is pretty much the finish of this project. The thrill of the early release has subsided as the book slid back in the Amazon.com sales rankings like a Yugo on an icy hill.
And, worse, I feel like crap. I have some kind of stomach bug, and it’s making me weak and queasy.
But now that I’ve named it, the depression is going to recede. That’s what it has always done in the past, at least. Tomorrow I’ll have more control.
Time for bed.
Upon further thought, I’ve decided to change my policy about reviews. As some folks (ie: Josh Jasper) have said, it can help drive traffic to review sites, and it’s part of the conversation. I’ll put links and excerpts behind a cut, though, and I still have no plans to comment directly on review posts.
Continue reading
This is my 400th post on my blog, and the 2,222 post on LiveJournal. Those numbers don’t come around every day, so I’m going to do a giveaway.
Josh Jasper (aka sinboy) once suggested I make a replica of a ghost knife (just a replica, of course, you couldn’t cut through steel with it) but my efforts at making the sigil came out crappy. So I’m going to give away copies of Child of Fire.
So it’s post 400! And that second number up there has four twos, and if you add two twos together, you get four. And you get to do that twice. So I’m going to give away four copies of my novel (that’s how much brown paper I have left, anyway).
Here are the “rules.” The first two posts on the blog and the first two comments on LiveJournal get them. WordPress holds new comments for approval, so don’t fret if your comment doesn’t appear right away. I’ll tell you you’re getting one, you’ll send me your address, and it’ll ship it. You can keep it, donate it, gift it, whatever you want. You don’t have to read it right away, and you don’t have to review it online (although come on, people, I live and die by this stuff). It doesn’t matter if you already have a copy and just want a second. You ask and I give, no strings attached.
The books will be signed and inscribed any way you like and I’ll ship it anywhere in the world.
I got the idea for this because Del Rey sent me ten copies of the Advance Readers Edition to sign and return to them to use as prizes. I was surprised that they still had some lying around, especially since I asked them to send a bunch to this or that reviewer, and I know several didn’t get it.
No matter. Want one? Lemme know.
Update: All taken. You can still buy one, of course.
How’s that for a clever subject header?
On her blog, Justine Larbalestier talked a bit about blurbs, how she got hers, whether they matter, and how much people should fret over them (her conclusion: not at all). I was going to post a comment about the process of getting blurbs for Child of Fire but I thought I’d post it here instead, especially since the story features a moment of deep, personal humiliation for me.
Justine says she got all her blurbs herself, but it was my editor who got the one from Jim Butcher, and good thing, too, because a number of people have read the book because of it. Me, I’m surprised by this–I never read a book based on a blurb. I don’t know why, but I don’t. I don’t listen to music much either, so what can I say? On some things, I’m an outlier, apparently.
My editor also got the Rob Thurman blurb, but the others (on the book) came about because I asked the authors personally, and my god how I fretted over those emails.
Here’s the embarrassing story: For those who don’t know, one of the blurbs on the back cover came from a screenwriter named Terry Rossio. He’s written the Johnny Depp Pirate movies, ALADDIN, MASK OF ZORRO, and many other films, usually with his writing partner Ted Elliott. I’d spent six years on their (mostly Terry’s, I guess) website learning to write film scripts and arguing story. I don’t hang there any more (which would be a separate post) but I thought it would be great to have a blurb from the writer of POTC on the cover of my book, so I sent an “I don’t think you’ll remember me…” note to Terry, asking him to read and possibly blurb my book.
He did remember me (and he didn’t even mix me up with the other Harry on that board–a much more memorable character than I am–and the result is the quote on the back cover. I do have a .jpg file of the Child of Fire cover with Terry’s quote on the front, but it was bumped when Jim Butcher’s came in at the last moment. I’ll admit that I was a little chagrined. I’ve learned a lot from Terry and I owe him. I’d have liked to have his name right on the front with mine.
But that’s a digression. I also wanted to ask Ted Elliott, Terry’s usual writing partner, for a blurb but I couldn’t find his email anywhere (which I’m sure is how he wants it). He was still listed as a member of a private email list I’m on, although I don’t think he’s posted anything there in years and years, and the Yahoo! software offers a way to send a private message without revealing the person’s address.
I worked hard on that email, maybe a little harder than on the others, solely because he seemed more remote. I thanked him, letting him know how grateful I was for the time he spent online yakking about story with a pack of noobs, and how much it meant to me.
But when I sent it, it didn’t go to him. It went to the entire email list instead. I was mortified by every groveling word. Stupid Yahoo! Stupid self!
Anyway, a lot of the comments I’ve seen about Child of Fire compare it to Jim Butcher’s work, which is reasonable since his name is right there on the front. Some compare it favorably, and quite a few don’t. And while I’m a fan of his books, I don’t think they’re all that similar to mine, for reasons I explain here. And god bless him, this guy agrees and understands. I was sorely tempted to click the “This review was helpful to me” button, but I restrained myself.
Then again, I can picture the way people would have responded if it had been Terry’s name on the cover: “This isn’t like Shrek at all!”
Yesterday after taking my son on our usual swimming trip, we bought ourselves bus transfers and headed out to a few local bookstores to sign copies of Child of Fire.
Details and narrative behind the cut, along with a little talk about public transportation. Continue reading
The folks at Genreville are planning a Book Club discussion for next month, and there’s a poll to select which book it will be. Child of Fire is one of the options, so if you think you’d like to take part in the discussion, go on over and vote for it.
However, if you don’t want to join in the book club talk, please don’t vote. I’d hate for my book to win only to have absolutely no one show up to chat about it. It’d be a wasted opportunity.
Or you could vote for a different book. I guess. I mean, that option is there for you. If you want it.
I’m about to drag my son out of bed to catch a bus, then we hit a few bookstores in town to sign stock. I would have done this last week if my copy edit hadn’t been due, but whatever. Things to do! Abouts to be rushing!