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Superheroes and their costumes (longish)

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Is this really a good idea?

Spider-man

No, I don’t mean swinging high above the city from a thin strand that was liquid seconds before, and that you made yourself with a basement chemistry set. I mean the suit. Should Spider-man be wearing a suit with webs and spiders on it?

Hey, you’re thinking, it’s a theme. I get that. I get the theme, but as soon as you see a superpowered guy with a spiderweb on his clothes, don’t you immediately think “I’ll bet he has spider powers, like climbing walls and shooting webs.” The strength might be a surprise but come on, he’s wearing a costume. Better to assume he can throw a Prius at you until you prove he can’t.

And what about this guy:

Puma

Maybe if he shaved his mutton chops (and his shoulders) you might think “What’s this guy call himself, the Clydesdale?” But no, not with those bare feet and unclipped nails.

Next, imagine her:

Firestorm

And him:

Blizzard

Just before they started using their powers. If you saw people in those costumes committing a bank robbery on Action News, what would you bring with you as you raced to the scene of the big fight? That’s right–a fire extinguisher for the first one and a flame thrower for the second.

Even worse, their names are Firestorm and Blizzard.

This is what we call Giving Too Much Away. When I get superpowers and start fighting crime, I’m going to get a black and white striped suit, with a mane down the back. People will see me and think “Zebra? I’ll bet he’s pretty fast and can kick hard.” Which is just when I’d breathe fire on their asses.

In fact, I’d have a bunch of different suits to wear, and some of them would be identical to what the other heroes in the city wear. High-tech jewel thieves wouldn’t know if they were facing Meson Ray, Knifey the Stabber, or Captain Breath… until it was too late!

Seriously. Let’s try to use our heads here.

Why am I thinking about this? Because of one of the toughest edits to Man Bites World. The POV is, again, tight on Ray, and he doesn’t have a lot of people explaining things to him. He certainly knows more than he did in book one, all hard-earned info, lemme tell you, but not everything.

And my agent (who is my only beta-reader, remember) gave me a note saying that I needed to define the main antagonist’s abilities. Is he incredibly powerful like the guy from book 2? More? Less? What can he do?

Of course she’s right. I need to establish the boundaries and set the context here. Except, this guy, who does not have a friend in the world, has no one to tell about his abilities. What’s more, he has no reason to talk about them. He has several conversations with Ray in the course of the book, and he knows Ray is thinking about killing him, so why would he want to show his hand?

Antagonist: Me? Oh, I can generate large pulses of electrical energy and discharge them through my hands or teeth.
Ray: (writes in notebook: “buy rubber galoshes”)

So the only way to reveal what the guy can do is to show it happening, and by then shit is already going down.

This is the most difficult note she gave me, and I’m not sure I solved it completely. The change I made was this:

Ray: Why would you even do that to yourself?
Antagonist: Trying to find out more about my powers, eh? Hah! Forget it! (snaps fingers in Ray’s face)
Ray: (rolls eyes)

Okay, the revisions weren’t literally like this, but that’s the gist. Will it work? Hell yeah! I kinda love it. Will it work for anyone else? Well, that’s sorta the question. I’ll explain things to my ever-wise agent and see what she says. But sometimes you have to respond to a note like “What was in the box?!?! You never said!” by scrolling down to the last line of the document and writing “And we never did find out what was in that box. THE END”.

Because it wouldn’t be a blog without complaining

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I still feel like crap. My throat is still raw and I’m exhausted all the time. There are so many things around here that need to be done and I can’t keep up with them all, especially since I’m running myself ragged. If somebody doesn’t vacuum the living room carpet soon, it’s going to rise up and destroy us all.

I’m still doing my writing, because that involves sitting and being in a weird trance state. Raising a kid, though? I’m failing. Not that he minds doing whatever the hell he wants–most kids get to watch a lot of TV when they get sick. Mine pops in Three Stooges and Addams Family DVDs when I get sick.

Tired. Bed now, if I can get the kid to wash up.

Man Bites World Revise-down!

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Today I am a dumb person.

I started late this morning–waking at 6 am–and caught a bus to the Starbucks. I worked until 11, had a quick lunch, then hit the library at 11:45. I worked there until they closed at 6 pm.

How much work did I do? I was five pages from the end of the stinking book when they threw us out. I couldn’t wrap up for the day so close to the end, so I went *back* to the Starbucks, bought a little food, and finished writing the new (much less dark) ending.

Success! Finish! All I had to do was note the changes I made in the change file, and cross off the notes I’d accomplished in my revision file, and I could call it done!

Except I opened the revision file and found one last note I need to address. One huge note. It’s not something I can fix in one scene; it’s spread throughout the whole book.

This shit wasn’t almost done. I still have an assload left to do. And I worked nearly 14 hours today. Jesus. I don’t mind having work to do on the book, I just wish I hadn’t convinced myself I was almost at the finish line when I came around the bend and saw a long stretch of road ahead. That shit is demoralizing.

I’ll try to post something interesting tomorrow.

And I’m back

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Thank you, Mac Freedom! At about 8:45 this morning, I set it to block internet access from my laptop for 6 hours. Then I got down to work.

With interruptions, of course. My local library branch is closed on Fridays due to budget cuts. I ended up working at home instead, which was fine because I’m still not feeling so hot. And for once, my family let me work relatively undisturbed. Also, the Mac Freedom timer stops when the laptop goes into sleep mode, so I get a genuine six hours of temptation-free work time. :D

Also, our local atm no longer uses envelopes when making a deposit. Who knew? You slip the check into the machine, it scans the numbers and asks you to confirm the deposit amount. Easy, right? Except that it’s slow as hell and completely annoying.

Anyway, I tore off a big chunk of the end of this book. I also rewrote 8 critical pages that my agent told me weren’t working (and she was so very right). I kept a lot, changed a lot and generally wrote a spookier, crazier scene than what I had before.

Tomorrow, the ending. Well, as much of the ending as I can manage. I have a bunch to change there, too.

Obsessive behavior

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I’m at the library, working on my book at the moment. (I just couldn’t stay in my apartment any longer). The guy sitting at the table with me is apparently concerned about hanging boogers, because he has been exhaling sharply ever 5-20 seconds.

And he’s been doing it for 45 minutes oh I am so not even joking. Time to get the hell out of here.

(NB: I had a productive day.)

Not day-jobbing today

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In truth, I feel like crap. Yay! The sun is bright, though, and I’m told it will be warm later. I’ll try to spend a little time outside in it.

Instead, I’m plugging away at Man Bites World. Why not? What else am I going to do with my time, read Facebook?

Let me put a question or three to you before I log off: How do you guys feel about a book that has the same title as another book? Does it matter if they’re in different genres? If the previous one is out of print? Still in print? And how would you go about judging the popularity of that older book to determine how well-remembered that title is?

Ugh. Not braining well today, but it’s time to log off and get back to my revisions.

Progress

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I mailed the galleys for Game of Cages back to Del Rey this morning. Done!

… until I get a call to go over the pages one more time. this time I was less dumb and I scanned the whole galley before I mailed it, so if when the call comes, I’ll be looking at the correct text. By the way, individually scanning every page on a flat bed scanner? Takes a while. Yeah, I realize they make home scanners with automatic document feeders, but I’m pinching pennies at the moment.

What that means is that I got to spend this morning working on Man Bites World again. At this point, all the easy stuff is fixed along with some of the not-so-easy stuff. The really hard stuff? A couple of those decisions still have to be made.

Oh! Just writing out this post made me realize how I can fix one of those broken plot points. I’m going to take some notes and then head home.

Whoa. Also: Sheesh.

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Things have been mighty busy this week. I’m way behind on my blog reading, and we all know how important it is for a writer past his deadline to read blogs, yes?

I’m making good progress on my latest revision to Man Bites World, though. Of course it’s taking me longer than I would like, but it’s also more straightforward that I’d originally thought. It’s amazing how different things look when you think them out, yeah?

Which means, naturally, that my galleys for Game of Cages arrived yesterday. Tomorrow will be galley day. Fun!

Also, (to expand on a comment I wrote yesterday) I’ve been seeing a lot of people treating the Macmillan/Amazon.com conflict as the first step in the collapse of “Big Publishers.” I’ve also seen a number of people say that writers will soon be able to break away from their publishers and Do It All For Themselves! Hire an editor, pay for cover art, pay for a copy edit, buy a program that lets people design their own books.

Interestingly, there are very very few established writers who are eager for this to happen. A couple, but very few. Most established, professional writers don’t want any part of this business model.

Take me, for example. Do you think I could do this kind of revision to commissioned cover art?. Hell, no. I don’t have the skills or the talent. I’d have to hire an expert, which I can’t afford.

Consider also: After my agent (a former editor at Penguin) gives me notes, I send my book to Betsy Mitchell, editor-in-chief at Del Rey. I get two rounds of fantastic notes before the copy chief and copy editor even gets near it.

If Betsy were freelance, do you think I could afford to hire her? Do you think she’d have a window in her schedule for me, Newbie McFace-PunchingBook? Hell no. She’d charge a fortune for her services, and the people who could afford to work with her would be the doctors, lawyers and stock brokers of the world–people with high-paying day jobs who could afford to shell out the bucks for their hobby.

Besides it seems to me that ebooks are not the poison pill that will kill Big Publishing. Not when BP does so much that “indie” authors–even indie authors with a pro track record–would never be able duplicate all the things a big-time publisher does.

Doesn’t anyone remember when POD publishing was going to be the death of traditional publishers? Did Stephen King jump ship and start his own press, with editors and publicity staff he paid out of his own pocket (to keep the profits for himself!). He could certainly afford it. James Patterson has three people at his publisher who work exclusively on him and his books–has he hired them away to Patterson Publishing to run his own shop? Has J.K. Rowling, who could afford to pay her staff in six figures, including the receptionist?

No, they haven’t. NY Publishers add value. Maybe people want books to be cheaper, and maybe they hate rejection letters, but that doesn’t mean the companies themselves are going to fail.

Back to work.

As far as the writing goes…

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… today was a very productive day. I didn’t have very much internet time, but I guess that’s why it was productive.

I did end up consigning one character to the lonely limbo of my memory when I cut her completely from the book. Too bad. I liked her very much.

I also ended up with a net loss in words, despite adding a couple short scenes. Revising the sequence without the character sped things along quite a bit, although I personally still feel her loss.

The book will be better for it–simpler and more unified.

Five things make a post, again

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This isn’t a randomness post because it’s mostly about me.

First: This is an interview with me over at Sci-Fi Bookshelf, a new book review site. Check it out.

Second: You know that trick where people add absurd sub-titles to the scene of Hitler having a tantrum in DOWNFALL? The first person who did it had a brilliant idea. Subsequent versions were mildly funny and a good way to mock other people’s sense of entitlement. Now, though, it’s played out. Let’s stop, okay?

Third: Amazon.com is pulling some major bullshit once again, this time in their dispute with Macmillan over ebook prices.. No, I don’t want to have a discussion about what price points are “fair” for ebooks. I’m not even all that interested in hearing what you’d be willing to pay. However, Amazon.com is using the 9.99 price to push their $400 Kindles, and if they achieve the market dominance they are aiming for in the ereader device market, they will be able to set the price as high as they like, and dictate revenue splits to the publishers. This isn’t about holding down costs for readers; it’s about being the one who sets the price.

Amazon.com is looking at long-term benefits, which is why I’m looking more and more at Indiebound.org. You order the book and have it shipped to you at home–or if you want to avoid shipping costs, you can pick the book up at your local independent bookstore.

Fourth, via Laura Ann Gilman: Google founders plan a stock sale that will surrender their controlling interest in the company. Whether they have lived up their company motto of “Don’t be evil” or not (and with the Author’s Guild book settlement, I say most emphatically not), they’ll have to change the motto to “The shareholders have certain expectations of short-term profitability.” Even if you think Google can be trusted with the IP they’re confiscating now, can you trust the shareholder-led company they’ll shortly become?

Fifth: After three days of waking early (and starting my writing early) due to morning nightmares, I was finally tired enough today to fall back to sleep after a bad dream at 4:30. Damn. And I’d been so productive, too.