Like George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss is struggling to finish his book and struggling to deal with the impatience of his fans.
There’s been quite a few blog posts around the internet on this subject, but Rothfuss’s includes cartoons. Funny ones.
publishing
Sites for Readers
StandardIs anyone reading this active on one of these sites?
LibraryThing
GoodReads
Shelfari
LivingSocial
RedRoom
WeRead
I find that Child of Fire is already on Shelfari and I am already on LibraryThing under my short story name.
But are any of you folks active on these sites? If so, what do you like about it?
I’m allergic to the idea of joining a social networking site solely to promote my book (although I received this list of sites from a how-to-promote document from my publisher)–in fact, I’m tempted to drop my book cover as my default user icon on LiveJournal because I’m thinking it’s a little tacky. But I’m not averse to joining an interesting site.
What do you think?
Well! What have we here?!?!
StandardSo, I surfed over to Amazon.com to look into setting up a (new) associates account for myself, and what should I notice in “Your Recent History” section but cover art! For my book!
Who knew??
Here it is:
::ahem::
I likes it!
I’m already off course for the day.
StandardWe had a slushing of snow last night (which is like a dusting, but sloppier) which we weren’t expecting and only discovered when we received an automated call telling us school would be starting 2 hours late.
Now I’m behind on everything I need to do today. For instance:
I have to finish up the chili I put in the crockpot last night and jam it into our refridgerator somehow.
I have to vacuum. A good half hour was spent fixing the damn thing yesterday, and that’s after more than a week of struggling with it. Our carpet is really, really in need of a vacuuming right now, and that’s what I’m going to do next.
Recycling needs to be done.
And so on.
But before I get to the vacuuming and writing my words for today, I have to post this for geniusofevil:
When I came back to writing as an adult, and decided to pursue it seriously, I was trying to write for the movies. I wrote thrillers and zombie space comedies and alien invader scripts and so on. Twice I tried to make the move to L.A. but punked out both times. Once back in Seattle, I got together with a friend to make our own low budget horror films, but that didn’t work out well for me.
And I realized I had changed in the last few years. I now preferred books to movies and so I went back to writing fiction.
So! When I received a note from my editor that I should hold off on writing book three because she had a concern about the proposal, I felt a little sick. I couldn’t help thinking of that scene in SUNSET BOULEVARD where the producer wants to change the writer’s submarine thriller in a comedy about women’s baseball. And I was remembering going through the script I wrote for our horror film with my director, and all the changes he wanted me to make.
But I was startled by the notes I actually received. It wasn’t “Make sure [supporting character x] appears by page fifty and stays through to the end. We like that character.” Nor was it “This setting won’t work for us. What else do you have?”
It was all suggestions about making the book work. Very polite suggestions, too, (which makes me want to take them all the more). “This sounds interesting and should make a good contrast with the previous books.’ “Will this character be appearing?” “Be sure to tell us if [minor character y] survived book two.” “I’d like to see more exploration of the group they belong to.”
And so on. All good ideas, even if I’m not sure I have room in the book to implement them, and all designed to make it a deeper book than I would have written otherwise. Not once did she suggest that I add a sexy, sexy love interest or a zany chimp, and Pikachu help me, I don’t know why I expected it.
Okay. I’m off to work.
I’m posting this the night before, just because
StandardI have a bit of a day planned for tomorrow. First thing in the morning I have to delete a bunch of the work I’ve done on Man Bites World, then try again. As I mentioned, I received my notes for this one, and they were not what I expected.
After that, I have to run some errands, eat lunch, and then the family and I will head out to REI’s flagship store. I’ll dig up a new backpack (hopefully a Wegner’s–thanks for the suggestions!) and the boy will get new shoes.
Then we’re all off to dinner to celebrate the one year anniversary of my publishing contract with Del Rey.
Holy crap. Has it really only been a year?
Two quick writing links
StandardFirst, I’m sure Nick Mamatas will mock this article as soon as he hears about it. I haven’t finished it yet (I’m at work) but so far it looks interesting.
This Letter to an MFA is a very interesting little treatise on creating a story. It’s short, too. Check it out.
Both links above are from here. You’re welcome.
And, because I know you’re all dying to know, I received my notes on the book three proposal today. They’re good, too, and not at all what I was expecting. I can’t respond to them here, though, so I have a lot to do tonight.
Writing and my everyday life
StandardFirst, a link: Donald Maas’s The Career Novelist is now available as a free download. I’ve only skimmed it so far, but it looks pretty interesting, despite being from 1996.
Second, my editor asked me to hold off working on Man Bites World until we can straighten out the proposal. She has some concerns with it. Which is fair and, you know, that’s why she reads the proposal. She wants to make sure that the fantasy thriller I’m supposed to write isn’t going to be a daring homage to my two favorite movies, PORKY’S 2 and THE BICYCLE THIEF.*
But I worked on it anyway. It was just a few hundred words, but I couldn’t leave it alone.
And, because I’m not trying to meet a daily or weekly goal at the moment, I took some time to finish the book I’m reading. After three or four false starts, I dug into Murder Among Children by Tucker Coe (a pseudonym for Donald Westlake). It’s a mystery novel written in the mid-sixties, with all the racial and gender issues that implies, but the writing was appealingly bleak and the protagonist engaging. I’m tempted to dig up the rest of the books (I know there are only five, with a personal closure of sorts) to see if and how he deals with his personal demons.
And now I have to sign off, do some research here at the library (my wife found some green mold growing on the wall behind a piece of furniture, and I need to research the best way to deal with it. Seattle, you annoy me.) and then hit a couple of stores. I need to buy a couple of things for the Superbowl/Puppybowl party my son and I will have tomorrow, but not so much that I leave a bunch of food lying around the place.
See, on the Monday after the game, my wife and I will be doing a fast. It’s not one of those crazy lemon juice and cayenne fasts I used to do (she hates those); it’s this thing with specific foods you’re supposed to eat and so on. Anyway, I don’t do these to lose weight (although that happens). I do them because it’s a stark way to look at the way I eat and my emotional connections to food. The first fast I ever did was a revelation, and I’m curious to see what insights I’ll get this time.
I plan to write about it over the next week and a half, though, so be ready to skim if that sort of thing doesn’t interest you.
Off to the reference shelves. Hope you guys are having a nice day.
* Quick note: I haven’t actually seen either of these movies.
Five things make a post
Standard1) My back is still painful, but I expect to be able to go back to the day job tomorrow. Heating pads, ice, and body work have me doing pretty well. Although I still wouldn’t try to climb a ladder.
2) On the web, James Enge takes the latest episode of Criminal Minds out to the woodshed. Don’t miss that one.
3) Elseweb, Agent Barbara Poelle posts five story ideas she wish someone would submit. Obviously, I’m not going to be working on any of these–I have an agent already and a contract, too–but it’s interesting to see what people want. Her list is nothing like mine would be–in fact, number 2 sounds like it would be appalling. Still, it’s pretty interesting to see how people think about they books they’re looking for and how they frame their interest.
4) and 5) While I was trapped at home on the couch, I had a chance to watch two of the movies I borrowed recently from the library: WANTED and HANCOCK. Weirdly, one was adapted from a comic book and one was about a superhero, and they weren’t the same movie.
Now here’s a chance to see if my WordPress plugin can put in the LJ cut. Spoilers!
WANTED was actually the stronger of the two movies, as sad as that seems. It was based on a comic book of the same name, which I’ve read in trade paperback. From what I’ve heard, producers bought the rights to the story after the very first issue, which ended with the scene where the shlub shoots the wings off a fly. In the comic, the next story beat was that the protagonist learned he was the son of a supervillain in a world where the villains has defeated the superheroes years before, and now ran everything in secret. He came into his powers, embraced evil and consolidated his power through a whole lot of killing.
In the film, his father was a superhuman assassin from one of those millennia-old assassins guild that movies seem so full of. Our Hero learns to use his powers and hunts the dude who killed his father.
It was mostly an excuse for ridiculously over the top action scenes, which are decidedly out of style now. And it was kinda fun. I just wish they’d left out the fat snark.
HANCOCK is the superhero movie that came from a spec script titled TONIGHT, HE COMES, which I haven’t read but have heard is amazing and wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that it had to be made, and had all the misery and desperation drained out of it.
Really, as soon as Charlize Theron turned out to have superpowers, too, the whole thing comes apart. It’s like the scene in DEJA VU where the protagonist climbs into the time machine–the reality of the story came apart and stopped making sense.
Disappointing, both of them.
Copy talk
StandardTomorrow, the associate copy chief at Del Rey will call to review a couple of choices I made on my copy edit. I’d better drop her an email to let her know I wouldn’t mind if she waited until after Obama’s inauguration speech.
Also: testing, testing.
Okay. How about: testing testing.