interesting things

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Today, I pored over Everyone Loves Blue Dog, and accomplished nothing. Also, the book my wife gave me to read couldn’t be renewed. I had to strip out all her bookmarks and slip it into the conveyor belt at the library.

As for the LiveJournal feed for Nathan Bransford’s blog, it turns out that Mr. Bransford himself ask that it be suspended. I have no idea why; LJ syndication is just another kind of RSS, but whatever. No more “This Week in Publishing” I guess.

At work, I discovered that the intranet policy book pages I’d spent a good part of last week working on were completely useless now. The manager copy and pasted them into .mht files elsewhere on the network, breaking all the links. There were good reasons to move them to another part of the network–our system is criminally slow–but damn.

Finally, do you know what my company and I both pay, per month, for the basic health insurance my wife, son and I have? Not just what I contribute, but everything?

Over $1,600. Per month.

We need reform in this country, and we need it now.

Links! The Top 16 Worst Movie Quotes to Utter During Sex. Is it wrong of me to laugh so hard at this?

Next, another amazing animation, this one done with stop-motion. Sorta. Check it out.

Finally, tweenbots, a video art project via Jay Lake. His link described it as teh cute, but I think that misses the point. The really, really cool thing about this is that the robot is a cute, nearly helpless little thing that relies on complete strangers to help it get where it needs to go. Even if you can’t watch the video at that page, the write up is fascinating.

It seems that a lot of my posts lately have been straight link farms. I feel boring. Is there something I should post about? Something I said I would talk about but haven’t? Let me know.

A post on a sunny day

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Agent Nathan Bransford is running an Agent for a Day event. Basically, he’s posted 50 queries in his blog, and his commenters get to reject or ask for more. Three of the queries are for books that went on to be published.

It’s pretty interesting stuff. I could never be an agent, because I would reject everything. Still, I wish the LiveJournal feed for his blog would be fixed.

Today I went back (yet again) to Everyone Loves Blue Dog. The changes that need to be made are pretty straightforward and shouldn’t take more than a week or two, depending. And for the future, I’ll have to be aware that I need to prompt the reader’s memory when a character re-enters the story after being out of it for 200 pages or so. An unusual name simply won’t cut it.

It’s that time of year again (5 links)

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The stellar bluejays and hummingbirds are back. To celebrate, here are some links.

A pretty cool book trailer for A Madness of Angels. Check it out.

Writers get so much respect: here’s a job opening for a screenwriter/office assistant. Because what you really want for your films is a writer who can answer phones in a professional manner.

How professional athletes lose all their money. I’m so going to use this in my current book.

Amazon rank. Hey, folks. If you’re looking for a good alternative to Amazon.com, consider Indiebound.org. They’re an online ordering system for a network of independent bookstores. When you order a book from them, the sale goes to an independent near you. And it’s not just books, either.

Finally, the Kinda Sutra. A short, partially-animated film about the screwed-up ways people are taught about sex. I think it’s SFW, but you might have different situation.

Making Marriage Work–John Gottman

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Some years ago, John Gottman video taped couples to examine the way they behaved with each other. He claims he learned to tell, with a 94% accuracy, whether a relationship would last or whether the couple would break up.

What makes a strong, long-lasting relationship? Listen to the talk he gave a the Speaker’s Forum in Seattle to find out more.

It’s great stuff.

Two animations

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First one: No kids around? In the mood for some sick, disturbing humor? Watch Silence of the Lambs: The Musical animated with Legos.

Second one: Lots of kids around? Want to watch an amazing artistic and technical achievement? Watch an animation done entirely out of graffiti.

Actually, if you only have time for one, don’t miss that second one.

Links and Galleys

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First the links:

Writers, Do not call a publisher, even if you’re “calling on behalf of an agent”. ::Rolls eyes::

And, here’s a list you didn’t know you absolutely had to read: Twenty Ridiculous Complaints Made By Tourists. The first one, about the aroused elephant, is priceless.

From Failblog.org: Child safety: You’re doing it wrong.

From Failblog.org part 2: Is this really a bag of Doritos?

I love the serene look on the yellow guy’s face. Crotch-stomp=bliss.

Finally, Former Project Runway contestant charged with Assault for throwing a cat (among other things) at her sleeping boyfriend.

And now, galleys: I’m told that Del Rey will be printing over 500 bound galleys for Child of Fire, and 300 of them will be given away at San Diego Comic Con. They’ll also be the only fiction advance reader edition they’ll be giving away at the event. Pretty cool, thinks me.

TV channel has chance to be popular; can’t afford hang out with geeks anymore

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I’m sure this will be all over by the time I post it, but check it out.

Sci-Fi Channel to change it’s name to SyFy this summer.

No, that’s not The Onion. And today isn’t April 1st (I checked). Despite a double-digit increase in earnings, they really are changing the name because they think it’s been holding them back.

“The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular,” said TV historian Tim Brooks, who helped launch Sci Fi Channel when he worked at USA Network.

Mr. Brooks said that when people who say they don’t like science fiction enjoy a film like “Star Wars,” they don’t think it’s science fiction; they think it’s a good movie.

“We spent a lot of time in the ’90s trying to distance the network from science fiction, which is largely why it’s called Sci Fi,” Mr. Brooks said. “It’s somewhat cooler and better than the name ‘Science Fiction.’ But even the name Sci Fi is limiting.”

But wait! Turn off your outrage machine! There’s also this:

It also positions the brand for future growth by creating an ownable trademark that can travel easily with consumers across new media and nonlinear digital platforms, new international channels and extend into new business ventures.

That’s right. Hidden beside the bashing of its core audience (you know, people who like science fiction) is a smart business decision. They want a trademark they can paste onto projects in other media, including a long-rumored MMORPG (did I get that right?) that will tie in to a TV series.

They’re also planning to launch Syfy Games and Syfy Kids. I think they were smart to change the name. They’re going to have branding that is uniquely their own.

Although they should have gone with “Skiffy”.

Raiders Story Conference

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This is a link to a blog post about the recently released full transcript of the many story conferences George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan had about Raiders of the Lost Ark. All those phone conversations, transcribed.

The post is just the highlights and some lessons learned (about point 4: um, yeah. It sure puts Wesley’s time as the Dread Pirate Roberts into perspective) but I thought some folks here might be interested in reading how one of the most popular stories of the last several decades was conceived.

I haven’t read the transcript myself, since I’m supposed to be working on my book right now.

Seen via matt_ruff

Followup to previous post

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As a follow up to my previous post about Flycon, if you want to sign up for a panel, you can do that right here.

Have I mentioned this?

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I’m going to be taking part in Flycon next weekend. What’s that, you ask? Well, it’s a virtual science fiction convention being held on LiveJournal and sff.net, in which people from all over the world can get together online at an appointed hour and post about specific subjects.

Jeez, I really did forget to mention this before now, didn’t I? Well, let’s just say that for a long time it seemed really far off in the future, and now suddenly there’s a preliminary schedule for next weekend.

I’ll post the times and places of my discussions when the schedule is finalized. Hope to see you all there.