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The Kid Curates His Own Homeschool Reading List (thx to reddit)

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A couple of days ago, I tweeted this:

Here’s the list of reddit’s 100 favorite books. There’s some good mixed in with a lot of not so good, just like reddit, but he wanted to know which of those books we had in our apartment. That, naturally, led me to search through my bookshelves, which lead to this:

My wife is an enthusiast. When she sees something exciting, she commits, and the idea that our son would return to reading in a big way had her tearing through our shelves looking for books on the list to give him. And if there we didn’t have a particular book but did have something else by the author, that got tossed into the mix, too.

It’s dangerous. As much as I love her passion, I know it can over run someone else’s tentative interest in a thing in the same way a hurricane will blow out a camp fire. So we don’t have The Unbearable Lightness of Being but that doesn’t mean you can toss The Last Temptation of Christ on the pile. And you don’t just add some Marshall McLuhan because you think it’s worthy and he ought to be interested. And I’m sorry, but you can’t substitute Dhalgren for Dune.

Anyway, while she’s at work, I’ve gone through the stacks she’s put together and set aside the books that aren’t on the list. Books not on the list by authors who are have been placed nearby, but except when they aren’t. And LOTR… well, I’m not going to bother.

For a few years, he’s hated the idea of reading anything, and did so only for homeschool assignment. Resentfully. Recently, he’s been reading ebooks of Japanese “light novels.” Then he found the list, realized we had the #1 book on the shelf, and grabbed it.

When I gave that book to him a couple years ago, he rolled his eyes, read a few pages, then pushed it away. When reddit recommends it, he’s in love.

And that’s fine. I knew he would turn around at some point. Now we just have to nurture this interest instead of vomiting a reading list on him.

Guest post for Jim C. Hines, re: replacing willpower and discipline with apps

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Just a quick note that I wrote up a blog post for Jim C. Hines’s space, about apps people use to block the internet while they work.

Jim is leaving his day job soon, and a few of us are writing about living the life without other employment. Like a lot of writers, I produced less when I first went “full time” (not that I was ever full time) until I worked out a new system that replaced my rigidly structured days. Check it out.

Three Things Make a Post

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1. There’s less than 24 hours to take advantage of this Humble Bundle of books funded through Kickstarter. It’s an embarrassment of riches. Don’t miss out.

2. I have a Facebook page, where readers can keep up with my blog posts and other new, and a Facebook account, which is (mostly) for family and friends I know in real life. At this point, the account is utterly moribund. No one comments, no one shares or clicks “like”. As far as I can tell, no one sees what I put there.

That might be because FB is hiding my stuff. It might be that they’ve “hidden” my updates because they’re sick of my bullshit. Hey, half the time I’m sick of my bullshit, too. It doesn’t really matter. I’m going to scale way the hell back on what I post there.

3. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m working on a new book, called One Man. Unfortunately, the writing schedule that has served me so well over the last few years has to be ditched, and I haven’t found a new one that works. In fact, I don’t have any set schedule at all, just random day and hours when I can grab writing time. That’s fine for the short term, but it won’t work for me long term.

It still feels good to be moving forward on something new.

HumbleBundle Progress

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So, the books/Kickstarter Humble Bundle that started last Wednesday is creeping up on $55K. That’s pretty good, I’m guessing. They also gave me a widget to post:

[Widget and link removed, because the Humble Bundle is over.]

Hmf. I don’t know that I like that one much. I mean, it shows the number of backers and the countdown, but not the work that’s being offered. It’s funny, adventurous, political, and simply beautiful to look at. And on the 22nd, more books will be added.

Also, the cost of the “average” level is continually going up. If you’re not getting the top tier stuff, it’s cost effective to buy in now.

The Kickstarter Humble Bundle is live

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[Update: links removed because the Humble Bundle is over.]

Hey, you guys, did you know that my Great Way trilogy is part of a Humble Bundle devoted to Kickstarter projects?

Also included:

    That Julie Dillon fantasy art book.
    The Choose-Your-Own Adventure Hamlet
    Issue #33 of John Joseph Adams’ Nightmare Magazine
    A new Michael J. Sullivan novel
    A Steampunk anthology that focused on protagonists from outside the US and Great Britain
    A humorous Greg Pak comics anthology
    A superhero comics parody
    A zombie apocalypse comic set in 1943 Soviet Union

And more. I mean, obviously, there’s much more there.

Several of these were projects I wanted to back but couldn’t, for a variety of reasons. Now is my chance to grab a copy, and help charity, too.

If you’ve been meaning to try my work, or if you just like really sweet deals, check it out.

Outside the Protection of the Law

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Nowadays, an “outlaw” is someone whose behavior is not bound by the rule of law. They’re criminals. Rebels!

But that’s not the original meaning of the word. It used to mean a person who was no longer receiving the protection of the law. They’d been, essentially, banished from civilization. Anything could be done to them because they were outside the law. That was their punishment.

Supposedly, civilized people don’t do this anymore. When someone does something awful, we might punish them, but they deserve the same protections that everyone gets.

Especially when it comes to doxing.

If someone is committing a crime, it’s reasonable to share their real name and personal information with the authorities, but posting it online? No. Even if that person is an abusive asshole and an all-around shithole of a human being. Even if you hate that person with the power of a million cats hating a million dogs. Even if that person seems like the embodiment of evil.

No to doxing your friends. No to doxing your enemies. No one deserves to be outside this rule.

And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, consider yourself fortunate and look at some cute animal pictures.

Kindle Unlimited Switches to Pay Per Page

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Cue surprised reaction.

I’ve been arguing for a while that Kindle Unlimited is a bad idea for writers. Instead of taking a commission on book sales (don’t bother calling it a “royalty”, because it isn’t), they set up a fund and divvy it up among the authors.

That fund has been getting smaller. And that makes sense, since Amazon has long been in the business of squeezing other people’s margins. For authors who have been paying 30% or 65% commissions, it’s difficult to work out why they would agree to bigger cuts. Amazon’s idea of creating a subscription library that paid a share only if the reader read 10% of the book.

Naturally, authors began to game that system right away. Why dump a 400-page novel into the KU marketplace when you could drop in, say, 50 eight-page novels? If a reader merely opened to page one, that was enough to reach the 10% threshold and trigger payment.

That was clearly not a situation that was going to last (although it lasted much longer than I expected). Now Amazon has switched to a “pay per page” system. Instead of dividing their (arbitrarily-designed) kitty among partially-read books, they’re going to distribute it according to the number of pages people have read.

That improves a terrible program somewhat, but I still wouldn’t put my work in it.

Randomness for 6/16

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1) One-bedroom home for sale in Minneapolis: $150K. Every picture is weirder than the one before it.

2) Eight of the best D&D modules of all time. Warning: gallery.

3) I have 227 browser tabs open, and my computer runs fine. Here’s my secret.

4) Things to never order at a fast food restaurant.

5) Beautiful hand-carved skateboards from Mumbai.

6) Like movies and reading screenplays? Simon Barrett’s shooting scripts for the films THE GUEST and YOU’RE NEXT are online.

7) The worst fucking shoes on the planet: Cowboy sandal boots.

Author’s Big Mistake (or is it?)

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Way back in the misty dawn of 2010, the denizens of the Absolute Write fora (which is still an ongoing concern, but without me, because busy) folks used to talk about the ABM: the Author’s Big Mistake. What was it?

Responding to reviews.

Supposedly, arguing with readers who left reviews was one of the worst things an author could do, because no one ever changed their minds, no one was ever impressed, and it made the author look like a slow-motion train wreck. So much drama over one unhappy opinion!

Also:

Also, this guy and this guy.

Which leads to this review on the MilSF novella by [asshole author who self-Googles], called Big Boys Don’t Cry. Dude gets a negative review, dares the reader to lower it to one-star (which, if you have a bunch of five-stars, is better than the “meh” of a three-star review) and later goes all troll apoplectic on the reviewer.

Normally, I’d think the guy was being a fool, but in this case? Nope. [Asshole author who self-Googles] is busy marketing himself as an anti-feminist culture warrior; what better way to rally the troops than to have a public argument with someone on the other side? What better way to bring attention to his work than with a big, public stink?

(And yes, I know I’m “helping” him get more attention, but whatever. the author himself seems like a real creep, but maybe there are readers out there who would like it? Who knows.)

With books, you don’t need a huge readership to be a success. Even if badmouthing lefties drives away some potential readers, it will probably bring in even more on his side (plus, the ones he brings in are likely to be in his target audience). “So-and-so is being an asshole… for our side!”

Controversy! It’s not always a bad thing.

Why is Frodo so mopey all the time? Paying attention and critical response

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It’s pretty common for readers to write reviews that get basic facts wrong.

It’s not surprising. If the reader doesn’t like the book, isn’t engaged with the characters or the plot, they start to skim. Skimming means they miss character motivations or plot details. Missing those details means the reader thinks the story is full of flaws, and lowers their interest further.

As an example, I read a review of Peter V. Brett’s The Warded Man that one of the main characters inexplicably became a great fighter even though he spent all his time studying in a library. The only problem with that assessment? The text explicitly states that he spent hours every day learning to fight. It’s right there in the book, but a skimming reader missed it, so it might as well not be.

Anyway, this is why I stop reading books when I find myself skimming. Continue reading