moi?

Spend money at Borders?

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I’m downtown today so I can work at the central library (my local branch is closed on Fridays) and of course I dropped in to the liquidation sale at Borders.

Borders was good to me, if you know what I mean. They ordered my books and stocked them, and judging by what I could see on the shelves, they took more than B&N. So I’m grateful that they stocked my books.

But I couldn’t bring myself to buy anything from them now. Once they’re in liquidation, you KNOW that nothing spent in that store will be going to the publishers or authors. Every penny is going to secured creditors and executive bonuses, and if I’m going to live with the guilt of that, I’m going to need 50% off, at least.

Anyway, in fun human games, today I witnessed a woman astonished to discover that she would have to buy something in the cafe if she wanted to site down in there and use their wireless internet. Shocking, I know.

Finally, I need to get off the web. For some reason I can’t connect to the library wifi, and I’m forced to log on with one of the library’s computers. And! since creepy motherfuckers use these computers to look at pron videos all the time, I feel like washing my hands.

Have a great weekend you guys. If you’re at SDCC, have a greatest weekend.

Stay hydrated!

Why make a book trailer?

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As promised, here’s a quick note about why I made the trailer, (Vimeo | YouTube) then I’ll let it lie for a bit. But first!

A big “thank you” to everyone who helped spread the word about the 99 cent promo price for Child of Fire. Yesterday was pretty great, and the book climbed to #159 on the Paid Kindle list, was #16 in Fantasy overall and made it to #3 in Contemporary Fantasy. In fact, it’s still #3 as I write this even as the main Kindle List sales ranking has slipped back. Now it’s up to word of mouth and momentum.

Anyway, I’m tremendously grateful, to the point that I’m a little befuddled by it all. It’s always difficult for me to ask favors, and now I find myself full of gratitude, and… that’s difficult. I don’t want to gush. I don’t want to be standoffish or brusque. Maybe if I’d been more in the habit of asking favors I’d have worked this out by now.

Trailer! Here’s the thing: Trailers are terrible for promoting books. Seriously, I have never bought a book because of a trailer, and I’ll bet you haven’t either. So why make one? Most importantly, why spend just shy of five grand on it?

Well, it’s not for the promotion, clearly.

But what if you knew someone who was an amazing painter, and you wanted to hang their work in your home? What if your friends were accomplished musicians and you wanted to commission a song? Wouldn’t it be cool to let them run with it?

Well, my friends are filmmakers–good ones, too. Everyone who’s seen LOVECRAFT, FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN knows that. So when I got a little unexpected money (French and German foreign sales) I thought Why buy a car? This will last longer and won’t make me fat(ter).

At first I considered asking them to make a short film–pick a scene from one of the books, dramatize it, the whole deal. But when I sat down to think about it, I was paralyzed with options. Which scene would be doable? How would we deal with stunts? How do we handle exposition?

I could have done the opening to Child of Fire, but there was some stuff there that wouldn’t translate well to film. So I decided to ask them for a book trailer.

And of course I’m treating it as though it’s a book promotion; that makes it tax deductible. Still, to me, it’s about hiring my friends to make something cool for me, about them showcasing what they can do (and maybe get some work out of it), about seeing Ray and Annalise onscreen, and sharing that with all of you guys.

Because you know what? A lot about this industry is changing, and people who think they know everything about it or think they can predict what is the right /wrong move to make are kidding themselves. It seems to me that the best thing to do is whatever seems cool. That’s what I take away from the way others have found success: they had their interests and obsessions, and they didn’t “promote” so much as create stuff they thought was cool.

Okay, I think I’m done talking about the teaser trailer for a while. Back to the usual natter later.

Forgot to mention:

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As I write this, the charity benefit auction of the Circle of Enemies ARC is already at nearly $150. Thanks to everyone helping out with this.

Also, the 99 cent promotion for the ebook of Child of Fire has pushed it to sales rank 254 on the Paid Kindle Store at Amazon.com. Yes, I’m obsessing about it. A little

We went here yesterday

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Card Kingdom. It’s a new board/card game store in Ballard, and I didn’t even realize they were opening. It’s big, with lots of space, and not only do they have Pokemon tournament events that my son can take part in, they have an attached coffee shop where I can do some writing while he turns his toxicroak loose (or whatever).

Cool place, which a big family game section. I foresee many trips in my future.

I am in New York

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Actually I’m in a Starbucks on the upper west side, near the American Museum of Natural History. My wife and son are meeting me here and then we’re going to see some dinosaur bones and maybe some of the guys who hassled Ben Stiller that time. Starbucks! Ubiquitous meeting place of the phoneless.

We’ve been here less than 24 hours and already my son is asking about rent in the city. I think it’s safe to say that he likes it, although it requires a little more walking than he’s used to.

My wife is absolutely stunned by how clean and nice the city is. We’re staying downtown, where her old stomping grounds were, and she just keeps saying “It’s changed so much! My god, I’m old aren’t I?”

Me, I just had lunch with my agent at (checks card) the dici–a place that loves big knives and lower case letters. My food was really good, even though the humidity took the edge off my appetite. But omg rare beef with sweet peppers! I’m happy. We talked about a lot of interesting things and I have a ton of thinking to do. More on that later, maybe.

Still haven’t had pizza yet. (See first paragraph about >24 hours) There’s a little place near our hotel that looks like it would be nice to try, so we can sample some Real New York Pizza(tm). What’s the name of it? Sbarro’s, I think. Can’t wait!

(Just kidding, New Yorkers, I swear. I know Sbarro’s is airport pizza.)

Anyway, this morning we did the tourist thing and went to the top of the Empire State Building. It was a challenge for my wife to have been a New Yorker for so many years and now play tourist (and that place is highly concentrated tourist time) but I eased her through the experience by exclaiming things like “So many tall buildings!” and “The trains run under the ground!” and other things sure to make locals think we’re cool.

We’ve ridden the subway several times; as I’ve told my son, the sights and sounds are soooo recognizable from a million movies and TV shows. Just about anyone in the developed world knows the NY Subway sound. That weird metallic EEEeeeEEEeeEEEEE! we always hear.

My family has joined us, so I’m logging off. Hope you guys are enjoying your week.

That last hypothetical? That one stung a little

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Maybe it’s completely dorky of me, but I haven’t replied to any of the responses to my question about the magic jewel that would change your personality because frankly, I found it to be a little upsetting. Okay, that’s absolutely a dorky thing, but while it seemed interesting however many weeks ago I wrote it and scheduled it, when I started seeing responses (blog, LiveJournal) I got these weird… I don’t know… pangs.

I, too, would like to never forget anything I don’t want to forget! (my poor wife). I would also like to eat only when I’m hungry. I hate my own procrastination so much. That led to other things that weren’t mentioned in comments, like being wildly bored by exercise and cleaning. And so on. It was like a sudden tide of self-recrimination–which is usually fine for me, but I really wasn’t expecting it.

So of course I went to my wife. If I’m going to consider changing one major aspect of my personality, I’m going to check in with her. She may, er, have her own ideas about things I should change.

After joking that it was so hard to choose just one (har har) she settled on an umbrella change that she thought would address most of them: being disorganized. She’d want me to be more organized, not just about my living space or my cooking, but also with my time (and apartment clutter, too, I’m sure). I’m not sure how to phrase that in the context of the hypothetical, but there you go.

I think I’m going to leave self-improvement out of these for a while.

A short, happy story

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The tale of my very first book sale is up on Jim C. Hines’s blog and LiveJournal. For new readers here, it’s not the usual book sale story: It’s a tale of quitting and shame.

Of course, I’m typing this on four hours of sleep so ‘asli lkasj mnfsi lasl jfasi back to bed. Hope everyone is enjoying their day.

Attention Seattleites

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Last reminder for serious. The indie horror movie I wrote, THE DEAD FEED, has its world premiere tonight at 7pm at NW Film Forum.

And sometime in the next few days I’ll post pictures of the event.

Second-to-last reminder:

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Tomorrow (Thursday) night, the indie horror film I wrote will have its world premiere at NW Film Forum at 7pm. The title is THE DEAD FEED; it’s about a group of friends who receive video feeds showing one of them being murdered… before it happens (dum dum DUM!!!)

Be there or be somewhere else.

Interview

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Emily Blake, who teaches high school in South Central L.A. and will soon be breaking into the screenwriting world (she found representation recently and has just begun showing her work to buyers) did an interview with me earlier this week, and it’s just gone live on her site:

If you’re curious about my working relationship with my agent, whether I planned the Twenty Palaces books as a series from the start, how my writing methods have changed since I became published, (and more), check it out. She’ll be doing more interviews in the future with writers in different fields.