personal

I am rushed to the Emergency Room, and other news tidbits

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Most of you know I’m working on the final book in the Twenty Palaces series, and I keep telling people that part of the reason I’m doing that now is because I’m not going to live forever, so I might as well get it done. I don’t want to die with the series unfinished.

Just so you know, it’s over 100K words right now, and I’m writing the climactic action scene. 

Just so you know, redux, it’s going to need a lot of revision, so don’t expect to read it soon. Certainly not this year. 

Anyway, the point to all this rigamarole is that I started having chest pains just before midnight on Friday night. 

I posted about it on Blue Sky, then tried to go to bed. Except the pain didn’t go away.

I thought about my dad, who had pain in his side for quite a long time before he told his wife about it. That gave time for his cancer to spread and that cancer killed him. Then I pictured my wife waking up early and seeing me lying breathless and gray-skinned, and I thought maybe I shouldn’t hide what was going on.

So I got up and called the consulting nurse, and she called 911. 

My poor wife was sound asleep but my son was, as he put it “rage debugging” some code he has written. They helped get me together and we moved outside to wait for the ambulance. 

Spoiler: I didn’t have a heart attack. I also didn’t have a hole in my lung. I also didn’t have pneumonia.

What I did have, when the paramedics started checking me out, was a blood pressure of 210/110.

In the end, I got a ride in an ambulance. I got two nitroglycerin pills to put under my tongue (which dropped my bp by a ton). I got so many sensors stuck to my body that I was still pulling them off mid-day Saturday. I got carried down the tall concrete stairs in front of my building in a special chair with treads on the back that was designed for a 310lb guy like me. 

I mean, at first I asked those guys if I should start down on my own because I’m pretty fat, but they showed me the chair and strapped me in, instead. And the chair is great… when they lean the patient back. Once at the start, they accidentally tipped me forward and–did I mention that there are a lot of concrete steps between me and the street? Yeah, that moment of panic wasn’t a great feeling for a guy whose blood pressure was running wild. But (here’s another spoiler) I lived.

In the end, they kept me in the ER for about four or five hours. I was sick and wrung out enough that I managed a little sleep–and so did my wife–but my son was great about staying awake and keeping watch.

At one point, while I was strapped down on the ER bed and feeling pretty sure I wouldn’t die before sunrise, I told him that I didn’t want my unfinished work to be completed or published. I said he should just look into the notes I wrote on the final 20P book, because I put a summary of the ending to the whole series there, and he should just post that online. 

Which is not as good as a finished book, but better than an unfinished one.

So, I spent Saturday sleeping and feeling feverish. I woke up Sunday (today) feeling tired but mostly fine. Now I’m telling you guys about it, and about how glad I am that I made a little note about the ending of Twenty Palaces, just in case. 

Some side notes: When I was a kid, I saw so many TV shows where heart patients put a little nitro pill under their tongues. So many! In fact, when the emt gave me one and was telling me how to take it, I almost cheered and said I know all about this from TV! 

Weird how I never see that on TV any more. When I mentioned it, the emt said, “It still works!” And it really did. 

Pro tip, from my son: If you ever find yourself deep into rage debugging, just have a family member rushed to the hospital. I’m told that makes all that rage evaporate, and you can return to your project with a clear head the next day. 

Apparently, what I had was a virus of some kind. Supposedly. There are still many mysteries in the world that we can only guess at.

Also, the ambulance had a digital clock above the back door, but the time was wrong, and the emt told me they didn’t know how to set it for the correct time. 

Well, it was lucky they had me strapped in, because I fucking love setting other people’s digital clocks to the correct time. I would have been opening cabinets and pulling panels back and wandering all over that little space, trying to set that right for them.

Finally, I’m lucky to have the family that I have. They looked after me more than I am comfortable with but to exactly the level I needed. I feel extraordinarily lucky for a guy who had to be rushed to the hospital. 

Take care. 

Authorial Self Sabotage: first in an informal series

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The common wisdom is: if you publish in the genre, go to conventions. Here:

Now, to clarify (because this has bitten me in the ass before) I’m quoting Kameron Hurley to talk about her assertion, not to blindly agree with it.

I’m going to relink the article she’s linking above because it’s worth reading, and I’m going to quote it, too.

Check this part out:

Here’s another wrinkle: at least in SFF writerdom, there is really no meaningful distinction between friends and colleagues. Which, sure, is true of a lot of fields. But these relationships are particularly close, and the professional utility of these friendships can be very high. There are costs to missing out, to not being at the right place at the right time to meet the right person. Missed connections are a real thing. Because here’s another wrinkle: it’s not just about being talented. It’s about being noticed.

Which calls back to some other, previous posts of mine about luck. (Don’t roll your eyes, people, I’m going to be brief this time.) If you maximize your interactions with other people and with new experiences, and you remain open to new opportunities, you increase your chances of a “lucky” break. That’s why people who say you can’t control luck are wrong. You can’t control luck in any specific situation, but you can increase the chances that something lucky will happen over the long term.

Therefore: conventions, where you meet colleagues who become friends. The benefits of that are unpredictable but they’re there. The costs are there, too.

See this post by Chuck Wendig listing the upside and downside of attending. As Chuck says, the point is to meet people you like and be liked in return. It’s a professional opportunity to make pals, not to cynically acquire names and resumes who will give your career a lift. Chuck also makes an extensive list of the downsides, one of which is cost. Marko Kloos broke down the cost of attending Confusion, an event he really enjoyed and which is apparently the cool new thing.

Clearly, $1,888 isn’t chump change, and it’s clear that no one is going to make back that money on the weekend itself. The money I just paid to Bookbub was not tiny, but the extra sales more than made up for the cost. But that’s short-term thinking. That almost-nineteen hundred dollar ConFusion expenditure will pay off, if it pays off at all, in the long-term benefits that come from the friendships formed at the event.

For example: we’ve all seen writers pushing their books on social media, and most of us know that, while it works once in a while, it’s not an effective way to sell. You reach your core followers, they buy the book, and the positive effects of future promotion nosedives.

But being promoted by other writers to their followers, with a personal recommendation? That’s gold. Meeting an editor who remembers you as smart, funny, and sensible the next time your agent submits your work? Making a good impression on a handful of fans who decide to try your books, then love them so much that they evangelize for them? Also gold.

And it can’t be predicted or forced. It’s like the old saying: “If you want to find someone to love, be someone worth loving.” Authors just have to go, spend the money, the energy, and the time, and hope good comes of it.

For those who have found benefit that way, great. I’m glad Kameron Hurley’s career is doing well and I hope she becomes a best-seller (or whatever her goal is). But it’s important to be wary of Survivor Bias. My own experience at big meetups is not all that positive. Usually I leave feeling that I should have spent that time writing.

And then there’s this:

No conventions. Hear that? They don't attend many conventions

Excerpt from ‘The Career Novelist’ by Donald Maass

That advice is more than 20 years old and it’s the exact opposite of what authors are told now. Conventions may have been around for a long time, but could things have changed so much?

I’m open to the possibility that social media magnifies the effects of creating a F2F friendship with your colleagues; it’s possible that folks who witness fun and funny online exchanges between pros would be willing to sample the work of a whole clique. I also suspect that’s where “cool kids” rhetoric comes from (as in “I’ll never be one of the cool kids”). In social media, casual expressions of camaraderie are a public act and it’s easy to feel excluded when it looks like everyone but you gets to take part in the fun (Not to mention getting the reviews, the blurbs, the nominations…)

Then again, what looks widespread and pervasive on social media is usually neither. The ongoing drama in one person’s circles goes completely unnoticed by the world at large. And those people that look like they’re among the “cool kids” are struggling with their books and their insecurities just like any other writer. The only difference is that their circle of friends has a high(ish) profile.

Still, the idea that long-lasting sales comes to those who don’t waste time on the social stuff is very very tempting.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Is it worth the time and money? How many cons does it take to start making friends? Is it even worth it for me, a guy who hates to be jostled, who can’t hear in noisy environments, and is terrible at recognizing faces? (also names?)

Maybe it would be worth it, but feh. I’m terrible at that stuff. We only get 52 weekends a year, and I don’t want to use one of mine on socializing when I could be working on a book.

I could be shooting myself in the foot with that decision, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

You may have noticed that the blog has grown quiet

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In truth, I’m a little under the weather. It’s nothing serious, but while I’ll probably be skimming through my social media whatevers, I’m not sure I’m up to an actual blog post.

Besides, I have a bunch of work to finish this month, not least of which is to come up with a worthwhile title for EPIC FANTASY WITH NO DULL PARTS.

I hate titles.