man bites world

Five things for a Friday

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1) Important indicator of an improving economy: The line at Starbucks is getting way long. I had to skip my refill this morning to get to day-job on time.

2) Remember that editorial note I mentioned before? The one that’s kicking my ass? I skipped breakfast today to get extra time to work on it, and I’m still losing. I’m doing something wrong, but what I don’t know.

3) Medical and dental insurance costs for my family and me for the year: $23,381.28. One year. Three people. Core plan. And that’s just the insurance–it doesn’t include what we’ll be paying for copays, deductibles and care that’s covered at less than a hundred percent. Outrageous? You bet it is. I hope Obamacare does something to bend the curve, but if it’s not enough, Congress should get back .

4) I’m collecting recipes for the Week of Pizza (aka, the week my wife is out of town). Cream cheese, sugar and fresh fruit? Check. Olive oil, capers, pepperoni, salad fixin’s? Check. Olives, pineapple and ham? Check. Bacon and eggs? Check. It’s going to be an odd week.

5) Currently, the Amazon.com sales ranking of Game of Cages is better than the ranking of Child of Fire by a factor of two. Yeah, I know the rankings “don’t mean anything” but I wonder if it’s time to switch my most prominent user icons from the CoF image to the new book:

Game of Cages

In other news…

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My editorial notes on Man Bites World were really simple and straightforward–ambiguous dialog! contradictory description! repetitive narration!–right up to the last one. The very last comment I had to deal with bowled me over.

It’s a line of dialog that makes sense in my head, but none of the meaning it’s meant to imply comes out on the page. It is, essentially, a declaration of war on the status quo in the Twenty Palaces setting, and that’s not something you clarify in a ten-minute revamp.

For four days I’ve been trying to make this work. I’m going for a nice walk now to think about it.

Dreams

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Don’t worry, I’m not going to describe my dreams to you. I am going to point out that I’ve had three days in a row of rest and rehab and paying back my sleep debt. Yesterday, for instance, I woke at my usual alarm-clock time (just before 5 am) and went into the living room with no writing work on my plate. Man Bites World is turned in and awaiting editorial notes. My proposal for Project Number Next is in the mail. I even shipped off a couple copies of Child of Fire for reviews. I could have revised an old short story I never sent out, but I didn’t feel any urgency on that front at all.

And this complete lack of any kind of deadline pressure must be why I dreamed the opening of a new short story, in text, just as I woke up.

I’m not ready to write the story because all I have is the opening lines, but it’s sitting on a back burner cooking down. In the meantime, I read the end of my current book, then took a nap on the couch. Does it count as a nap at 6:15 am, or is that technically “going back to bed”? It doesn’t matter. I read, relaxed, slept, and even played a little bit of computer game later. Nice! A day off.

It’s also nice to remember my dreams. Usually, my alarm clock drives them out of my memory.

Does anyone else dream in text? I only do it sometimes, but I’m curious.

I still get notes, of course, but…

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MBW

What happened to the day?

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Having gotten in way past bedtime last night (I didn’t get to sleep until almost 1 am) I naturally overslept this morning. By an hour and a half.

Now I keep finding myself looking down at the clock on my computer and thinking “break time already?” “How can it be lunch when I haven’t been uncomfortably hungry for the last 20 minutes?” In fact, I clock out in half an hour. Huh!

More Jim Butcher news. You know he cut off his long hair, right? It’s a big improvement, but I couldn’t find any pictures on flickr. Yet.

Now that his Codex Alera series is done, he’s planning to start a new project with a co-author–set in a world where the plucky band of heroes quested to overthrow a Dark Lord and failed.

Apparently, he pretty much planned out all 20 Dresden Files books when he wrote the first one. I can’t imagine doing that, or even wanting to do that.

Okay, back to me. I spent part of this morning going over the first chapter of Man Bites World for Betsy. Yeah, Game of Cages is going to have another teaser chapter in the back, and wow, I will never get over the fact that, no matter how vigorously I revise, I always miss the most bone-headed errors you can imagine. Jeez, but being edited is a humbling experience.

And now it’s snowing outside. WTH, day?

Right here

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Right here in the room with me is a woman in a sparkling satin dress, with a crumpled sash over her right shoulder and a tiara in her well-sprayed hair. Her face is streaked with tears, and she can’t stop saying Thank you! Thank you!. She has to steady herself by clutching the hand of the friend next to her.

That woman is me.

I just sent Man Bites World to my editor at Del Rey. And it’s only seven months and two days past deadline! Why, that’s practically early!

Okay. Not really. In fact, this book was really difficult to write. Add that the revisions for Game of Cages were extensive and time-consuming and you have me missing my target like a blindfolded man in a gun fight.

But it’s turned in and I’m ready for revisions. How do I feel?

So.
Frigging.
Relieved.

To finish the post, here’s a list of the words that MS Word for Mac did not recognize during that final spell check: hitman, baster, motherfuckers, meh, berm, lynchings.

Now I get to work on the next thing.

Fun with words

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How do you guys feel about “spasm” as a verb?

Yesterday was supposed to be a day off.

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I was supposed to take all of your advice and spend the day hanging out with my son, playing the new used Wii games I bought (verdict: De Blob=awesome. The Incredible Hulk=WTF were they thinking?) and general relaxing fun.

Instead I received my second round of notes from my agent on Man Bites World and spent about an hour and 15 reviewing the galleys for the last corrections to Game of Cages.

As I mentioned in my picture post yesterday, All the notes (there are only eight) are tweaks to bring out the stakes, fix pacing, or establish context. No prob. The plot and characters are solid (afaict). There’s still one important scene that isn’t quite pulling its weight, but it’s meant to be an oddball. If I can finesse it, I will. Otherwise I’ll just do what my agent suggests and shorten it.

And the Game of Cages galleys just needed straightforward correcting. After the copyedits are entered, a pair of proofreaders will read it, and I’ll have additional fixes to go over. I should have taken some notes about some of the errors they caught; I could have done another self-Thogging post. (For instance, trucks do not “skid on their brakes” omg no, not unless the brakes drop out of the bottom of the vehicle and get wedged beneath the tires.)

Anyway, my agent takes a little vacay starting tomorrow. I have a week to finish the revisions and prep the pages for Key/Egg/Remark. I suspect K/E/R has stalled out because I went off the rails. I’ll need to come up with a way to skim over the unpleasant scenes I’ve been trying to write to get to the fun stuff.

In unrelated news, my wife brought home her CPAP machine last night. I fully expect her to say it was too uncomfortable to sleep in, but I hold out hope that she had a good night.

Off to start the day.

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churchsign

In my ongoing effort to make sure no one ever thinks I’m cool…

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I’m going to post a couple sentences I just corrected in my latest draft of Man Bites World. See, I always give a copy to my wife to read. She’s severely dyslexic, and if I screw up a sentence she can’t just glide over it. She also catches plot dumbosity. For now though, a sentence or two:

“Take of this, would you, Ray?”

which of course is missing the word “care”, making it sound as though Rays reluctantly taking communion.

Remind sometime me to tell you the story of how I got into this life

Apparently, Yoda makes an appearance in this book.

Finally:

I made long vertical slashes six inches apart, then I stepped up onto the ceiling and did the same to it.

No, Ray doesn’t really become Spider-man in this book.

Now I get to go to bed and stare at the ceiling, imagining all the screwy sentences we’ve missed.