publishing

“a holocaust of prose”

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seen via Justine Larbalestier:

The Worst Review Ever, a blog where writers, actors, musicians, etc, can submit the worst review they’ve ever received. Personally, I think some of these are extraordinarily cruel (Hello, “a candy-coated turd”), but I’ve been known to hate on a book or two in my time.

I do disagree with Justine Larbalestier when she says its “awesome” that people react so intensely to her books. When I have a powerful negative response to a book, it’s not because of its engaging qualities, any more than Charles Manson should feel warm and snuggly inside because he’s evoked strong feelings from me.

Hey, authors, have anything you want to send?

“George R.R. Martin is not working for you.”

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I’ve been thinking about Neil Gaiman’s post on this subject for a little while, and prompted by Jim Hines’ discussion of it (and Gaiman’s followup), I thought I’d toss in my two cents, which no one asked for.

Continue reading

Bad day

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Yesterday was a bad day, despite a bunch of good things happening.

It started with me at work on … Blue Dog (still). I had hopes of wrapping it up, but I was working very carefully over a sequence of pages that haven’t been as strong as it could be. Okay. I guess I’ve become a little obsessive about it, but I really want to do this right so I can be done with it. Probably I’m giving it too much time, but if it makes the book better…?

But that wasn’t what messed up my day.

Late in the morning, I had a conversation with the assoc. copy chief at Del Rey about last minute questions about the galleys for Child of Fire (Amazon.com or Indiebound.org).

No problem! I thought. I’d scanned all the galley pages I’d marked up before I sent them back, just in case. How clever I felt! Nevermind that my corrections must have been unclear somehow. I was ready.

Except, not. The questions weren’t about the notations I’d made on the galley. They were additional mistakes caught by the proofreader.

God, this stuff is mortifying. How many times have I read this damn book? Shouldn’t I have noticed the phrase “in the front” appearing in back-to-back sentences? Shouldn’t I have noticed that a character does not need to walk up to a door twice? Shouldn’t I remember that a very important item is not in the character’s pocket because not fifteen pages before he was grinding his teeth in frustration that another character was keeping it from him?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for every note. Improvement is improvement, and I want the book to be as good as possible. But I feel honestly ashamed that I never noticed these problems myself.

Luckily (for you guys), immediately after the call my wife and I ran out the door for a very nice lunch with an old friend I don’t see as often as I should. When my son got home from school later, we had a great time together. All of that gave me time and perspective to truly absorb the copy chief’s wrap up to our conversation: “This is a perfectly normal list of corrections we’re talking about. I’ve worked on books with many worse than this.”

So, yeah. I was too busy to post this yesterday, which means you get this lesser degree of whining. And I have it in perspective now, and I’m ready to finally finally kill off this second book.

Still humiliating, though.

I was planning to post about the 2008 bestseller list

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But hey, something else came up. What was it, you ask?

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Why, it’s the advanced reader’s editions of my book!

Holy crap! I am holding my first book in my hand and I am walking on air. When I took them out of the envelope, I was stunned to see that they had covers on them. I don’t know why I assumed they’d have plain covers like those stacks of books I saw that time at The Strand, but I just stared and stared at it.

And I thought Christ! It’s huge!

I seriously thought it was the biggest mass market paperback I’d ever seen, and I had to compare it to the books on my shelf to convince myself it was the normal size.

Oh, hey! Wanna see the whole cover?

Child of Fire All Cover

It’s a little hard to read that text, but if you want to read the back cover text, check out this larger version of the file. It’s three copies of the book photocopied together, but I’m not tearing one apart for my blog. At that link you can see the blurbs from Jim Butcher, Terry Rossio and Sherwood Smith, and the back cover copy, too.

And now I’m going to bed. I have a scene to revise tomorrow, and suddenly it doesn’t feel daunting at all.

:-)

More lol-ing at trainwrecks.

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I’m going to keep this one short so you can get right to the WTF?/gape-mouthed expressions of astonishment/guffaws.

Literary agent Janet Reid: What not to say when you’re pitching an agent. Number three is the one that really dinged my bell.

Quick links and notes

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First: I’ve mentioned before that I cut my writing teeth on Wordplay, a screenwriter’s site, and I maintain a friendship with many of the people I met there. Well, another Wordplay alumnus, Keith Calder, has a movie coming out this weekend: Battle For Terra. His previous film was The Whackness, and if that doesn’t say “this producer has a wide range of skills and interests” what would? It opens this Friday, and I’m planning to take the whole family.

Next: this is what the term “office hijinks” was created for.

Next: I passed the halfway point of the revision of Everyone Loves Blue Dog, and I’m about to start a scene that will need heavy changes (for the better, I suspect). As soon as I finish this post and a little more kitchen work, I’ll be back at it.

Next: Tonight we have a taste test of the three pizza crust recipes posted in my LJ last week. The family decides tonight!

Next: Andrew Wheeler posts the genre bestsellers of 2008. Hmm. If each hardback sale earns about two bucks for the author…

Next: The deadline to opt out of the Google/Author’s Guild settlement is May 5th. Find out more about it.

Next: I’m on Dreamwidth as burger_eater. Currently, I have no idea what I’m going to use the account for, but once a WordPress cross-poster comes into the world, I may start copying everything over there, too.

Finally, on Saturday we took a couple buses across town to check out the final weekend of Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur. It was beautiful, and I loved the idea of paintings where the same characters appear several times in different places, each different image coming together to tell a story. Amazing stuff.

You’re the expert

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Typing this quickly, because it’s sunny and I want to go for a walk on my break.

This morning’s work session was terrible. I read a particular sequence in Everyone Loves Blue Dog over and over, trying to find ways to trim or improve it.

But you know what? I think it works pretty damn well just as it is. I’ve decided to take the stance that I am the expert on my own story. It works, and I’m not going to break it.

Hell, I even have the T-shirt, which isn’t available any more (but other items are). I think I’ll take that T-shirt out of my bottom drawer for my trip to San Diego Comic-Con.

Have I ever mentioned that I started off in screenplays? Most of my learning-to-make-story training happened on screenplay forums (ask me why if you’re curious) and I spent years on it. That’s why my IPSTPW Day offering was a horror script. I learned a helluva lot on the Wordplay site, back in the day.

Tomorrow, I’ll be up extra early and start on the next section of book. I’m already giving Important Supporting Character additional juice in her scenes, and I have a couple of other changes in mind.

Now, I’m off to the sunshine!

Quoting agent Amanda Urban

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“When [Toni Morrison] finishes it, you know, a very polished first draft, which means it’s probably her seventh or eight or tenth draft, she gives it to Bob Gottlieb, her longtime editor and me, and we read it, and amazingly she is always open to comment. The best writers are. They want reactions and if somebody has something smart to say about the book, they’ll go back and rework it. It’s very interesting. She’s great to work with – she’s very easy to work with and she’s so brilliant and she’s so much fun.”

#Agentlove

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Remember that self-aggrandizing goofball I linked to earlier? (Hmm. I guess that one was LiveJournal only. Anyway…) Some of the commenters there, at the Agentfail blog, and elsewhere has been full of anger and resentment. In that first link, you can read a comment from agent Nathan Bransford stating that the amount of anger he’s been seeing lately makes him very nervous.

So. Author Beth Bernobich suggested an #Agentlove post. I think it’s a great idea.

Except, you know, I’m not going to talk about “love” because I’m a married, she’s married, and we have a business relationship. And I know very well that the author/agent relationship can be fraught–some writers can be a little crazy about it. So I’m skipping over the word “love” here.

Let me start off by saying my agent is a former editor–I get fantastic notes. Seriously, I have two editors working with me to iron out the trouble spots and check for flubs. And one thing I learned with the back and forthing over the end of ELBD is that, even if she disagrees with the choices I want to make, she’s on my side.

I’m really, really lucky to be working with her. When she sold my book last year, I about fell over at the deal she got me. It was utterly outside of my expectations, and I’ve been trying damn hard to be worthy of the work she’s done.

Another great thing about working with her is that she always gets back to me quickly. When I have a question about how the publishing business works–Is this a good thing? How rare is this? Should I try this or not?–she gets me the info I need promptly.

And she laughs at my jokes, mostly.

For the record, I didn’t sign with her because a pal of mine got me an in. I didn’t pitch to her at a conference. I didn’t do any of the crazy things people say writers should do.

I wrote the book. I wrote the query. I revised both thoroughly. Then I queried widely and carefully. Out of sixty I sent out, eight responded with a request to read more. Of those, three offered to sign me. It was all textbook, people. I went to Miss Snark’s archives and followed her directions step by step. And now I’m doing this professionally.

My agent is made of awesome, and I’m damn lucky to be working with her.

Hey, if you want to talk about how great your agent is, or if you want to sing the praises of an agent who did right by you, please do so.

A post on a sunny day

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Agent Nathan Bransford is running an Agent for a Day event. Basically, he’s posted 50 queries in his blog, and his commenters get to reject or ask for more. Three of the queries are for books that went on to be published.

It’s pretty interesting stuff. I could never be an agent, because I would reject everything. Still, I wish the LiveJournal feed for his blog would be fixed.

Today I went back (yet again) to Everyone Loves Blue Dog. The changes that need to be made are pretty straightforward and shouldn’t take more than a week or two, depending. And for the future, I’ll have to be aware that I need to prompt the reader’s memory when a character re-enters the story after being out of it for 200 pages or so. An unusual name simply won’t cut it.