harvest of fire

Ha ha! Startling!

Standard

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.)

Reviews

Standard

I keep forgetting to mention this: I’m not planning to link to reviews, good or bad. I’m grateful to the people who write them (tremendously grateful), but I think it’s intrusive for a writer to comment or link to it.

Just my opinion, naturally.

Book signing…

Standard

… Was a success!

I signed 27 books for people in two hours, and caught up with a lot of old friends. Thank you, everyone, for coming down.

Oh! I forgot to mention…

Standard

The podcast of the radio interview is available with Sohaib Awan is available right now. Give it a listen. Unlike the chat I posted previously, there are no embarrassing pictures of me, but you do get to hear me stammer and abandon perfectly good sentences.

Before you click and listen, though, I’d like to make one comment. This is the book I’m reading right now:

It has a female protagonist and sex, too. It’s also damn good. Just saying.

Game of Cages, Man Bites World, Child of Fire

Standard

Today’s a triple book day–the copyedit for Game of Cages arrived late last night (so late that I didn’t find it until this morning), I’m hoping to write the last two scenes of Man Bites World today and then there’s the signing for Child of Fire later this morning.

Busy day. You know what worries me most? My wife and son haven’t been sleeping all that well. Will they have the reserves for two hours at the store and socializing after? dum dum DUMMM!

After that, I’m concerned about having the copyedit back to Del Rey in only ten days. Have I mentioned that I’m a poky reader? I do believe I have.

Btw, for folks reading this on LiveJournal, I’m still at skip=90 or something, and it’s been hard to find the time to catch up. Sorry.

To work.

Yes, I am that sort of person

Standard

It’s the fourth day that Child of Fire has been on sale. Yes, I am still visiting Amazon.com twenty times a day. Yes, I’m still checking for new reviews. Yes, I’m still glancing at the “sales rank.”

No, you don’t need to tell me that Amazon.com’s sales rank numbers are pretty much meaningless. Really, don’t. I already know that. But it’s one of only two ways I have of judging public interest in my book (all copies at my library are checked out or on hold) so I keep looking at it.

Before the release, the sales rank was in the low six-figures. On release day and after, it hung around 3K. At this point, it’s ping-ponging between 10K and 15K. I don’t care that it isn’t a good judge of how the book is selling. It’s the only input I can look at.

Am I the sort of person who makes an excuse to wander into Borders to see if there are fewer books on the shelf? (Apparently.) Am I the sort of person to linger by the shelf because a guy is standing right next to my book with a paperback in hand? (Yes.) Did I see a complete stranger carry my book to the register? (No. Congrats on the sale, Seanan McGuire!) Am I the sort of person who buys other books to hide the fact that I’m basically skulking around the store? (Oh, hell yes. And Mastercard is damn grateful). Were there, in fact, fewer books on the shelf? (Yes!)

Anyway, it’s weird. As Betsy, my editor, mentioned in the chat I linked to earlier in the week, Del Rey acquired my book with a pre-empt–before financial deregulation sent the economy into a nosedive. There are expectations for this book, and it has come out at a time of nearly 10% unemployment.

Which… okay. Perspective: millions of out-of-work people around the world is a bigger problem than the possiblilty that my book will underperform, but I can’t help but link them.

I keep wanting input but it’s slowly fading. I’m going to have to shrug it off soon and put it behind me. Soon. Don’t I know that it’s pretty much out of my hands now? (Yeah, in fact, I do.)

In other news, I hope to finish the rough draft of book three tomorrow morning before the signing. We’ll see.

Question re: book signings

Standard

Last night at dinner, my wife and I went back and forth over a question of protocol for tomorrow’s book signing, and I promised I’d try to settle the matter by asking you, O Internet, for your opinion.

After tomorrow’s book signing, I have a couple of people who want to have a nice lunch. Friends I only know online or haven’t seen in years–that sort of thing. After lunch, my wonderful wife wants to be prepared to invite folks back to our apartment for a little socializing.

Me, I expect to have run out of extrovert by then. Flip side to that is that I expect the signing and lunch to interfere with socializing, and I’d like to spend a little time with these people.

As for my wife, she has been having trouble sleeping lately, and I do *not* want her to spend today cleaning up our small, dark, cluttered apartment in anticipation of socializing tomorrow. She’s exhausted enough as it is, and I can’t do a damn thing to help her from my chair here at the ole day job. Did I mention that our living room has been taken over by fort-building?

On the flip side for her: She’s an extrovert and doesn’t socialize as much as she needs to. Having people over might actually energize her, even while it enervates me.

What do you think, O Internet? “Party at my house!” after the signing and lunch, or is that Simply Not Done.

Update: Thanks everyone. I’m convinced. We’ll be out of the apartment for our socializing.

Quick reminder for Seattle area folks

Standard

I’ll be signing copies of Child of Fire at Magnolia’s Bookstore on Saturday, 10/3, from 11 am to 1 pm.

Anyone reading this is welcome, of course. I plan to have my extrovert face on the whole time.

Hope is the mind-killer

Standard

The last few days of ZOMG BOOK! have been crazy, but pretty soon I’m going to go back to griping about my WIP and posting links to mrsa cats, health care reform neepery, and DIY nerd coolness. But I’m still in a writing-post mood, so here goes:

This is going to sound weird, but I am anti-hope.

I don’t mean in some kind of “Don’t hope for it! Get out and grab it!” sort of way, in which hope is supposedly some kind of layabout’s daydream. I mean hope in that desire for something that is so strong you can taste it.

I hate hope. Continue reading

I promised pictures of yesterday’s trip to the bookstore

Standard

I would have put them up last night, but when I got home I pulled the plug on the internet and hung out with my son. We had a blast.

Here are the pics:

Continue reading