reasons i suck

Randomness for 4/2

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1) Quentin Tarantino is playing a smurf? Um, okay, I gues.

2) Protecting IP the stand-up comic way. One of my friends was (unfairly) accused of joke-stealing. It was painful to see him (voluntarily) ditch a ten-minute routine about sitting at the big table over Thanksgiving because someone else had a single joke about it. This probably deserves its own post, but I’m not the one to write it.

3) I liked Speed Racer, too. However, I don’t have to call it an “art film” to justify that. It was definitely inventive and non-realistic, and it had a powerful emotional affect on me. I’ve been meaning to rewatch the ending to examine that a little more.

4) Insectophobes, do not click! That sucker is two and a half feet long. If you drown in deep waters and your corpse sinks to the bottom, that thing will be one of the creatures feasting on you.

5) Batman goes to jail for stalking L&O actress. Fate of his two daughters, Harleyquinn and Batgirl, undecided. (More seriously, if you’re a famous person, you get stalkers–freaky, creepy ones–and the only way they hit the news is if they’re colorful in some way or it’s a slow news day.)

6) Beautiful new library in Battery Park.

7) Big house vs short commute time: Which will make us happier? It’s interesting how this just assumes people will be in cars. I wonder what variables public transit adds in? Personally, I like my bus time; it’s pretty much the only dedicated reading time I have left.

April Rules

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FYI: As a general rule, April Fools Day pranks suck. The truth is, too many people are nasty when they think they’re being funny. So this isn’t a “holiday” I like much.

If I can find good examples of AFD jokes, I’ll post them tomorrow. But there really ought to be a set of guidelines for people to follow when thinking up pranks.

Yesterday was supposed to be a day off.

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I was supposed to take all of your advice and spend the day hanging out with my son, playing the new used Wii games I bought (verdict: De Blob=awesome. The Incredible Hulk=WTF were they thinking?) and general relaxing fun.

Instead I received my second round of notes from my agent on Man Bites World and spent about an hour and 15 reviewing the galleys for the last corrections to Game of Cages.

As I mentioned in my picture post yesterday, All the notes (there are only eight) are tweaks to bring out the stakes, fix pacing, or establish context. No prob. The plot and characters are solid (afaict). There’s still one important scene that isn’t quite pulling its weight, but it’s meant to be an oddball. If I can finesse it, I will. Otherwise I’ll just do what my agent suggests and shorten it.

And the Game of Cages galleys just needed straightforward correcting. After the copyedits are entered, a pair of proofreaders will read it, and I’ll have additional fixes to go over. I should have taken some notes about some of the errors they caught; I could have done another self-Thogging post. (For instance, trucks do not “skid on their brakes” omg no, not unless the brakes drop out of the bottom of the vehicle and get wedged beneath the tires.)

Anyway, my agent takes a little vacay starting tomorrow. I have a week to finish the revisions and prep the pages for Key/Egg/Remark. I suspect K/E/R has stalled out because I went off the rails. I’ll need to come up with a way to skim over the unpleasant scenes I’ve been trying to write to get to the fun stuff.

In unrelated news, my wife brought home her CPAP machine last night. I fully expect her to say it was too uncomfortable to sleep in, but I hold out hope that she had a good night.

Off to start the day.

Dammit

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I’ve lost my focus.

I’ve lost my discipline, drive and willpower. And I don’t know how to get it back.

In my ongoing effort to make sure no one ever thinks I’m cool…

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I’m going to post a couple sentences I just corrected in my latest draft of Man Bites World. See, I always give a copy to my wife to read. She’s severely dyslexic, and if I screw up a sentence she can’t just glide over it. She also catches plot dumbosity. For now though, a sentence or two:

“Take of this, would you, Ray?”

which of course is missing the word “care”, making it sound as though Rays reluctantly taking communion.

Remind sometime me to tell you the story of how I got into this life

Apparently, Yoda makes an appearance in this book.

Finally:

I made long vertical slashes six inches apart, then I stepped up onto the ceiling and did the same to it.

No, Ray doesn’t really become Spider-man in this book.

Now I get to go to bed and stare at the ceiling, imagining all the screwy sentences we’ve missed.

5 Things Make A Friday Post

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1) I finished up chapter one of Key/Egg/Remark this morning. Actually, I was slightly late to day job because of it. But doesn’t it feel good to start a new project? Hell yes. I’ve been writing Ray Lilly stories for years (and I hope to write more of them–buy my book) but it’s such a relief to go into another voice, another setting, another tone.

2) And yeah, as the previous point demonstrates, I have a working title for the next project. The plan is for it to be lighter in tone, much less violent, much more conversational, and slightly closer to the urban fantasy mainstream (although tweaked in the ways I like to tweak things–most of the characters, and especially the villains, will be human beings). I hope the working title does what it’s supposed to do, which is keep the tone light and the story clever; it’s too easy for me to go dark.

3) A few weeks ago, someone pointed out that Kindle owners were putting one-star reviews on books that didn’t have a Kindle edition, or that were priced above ten bucks. The reviewers even said, in the review, that they hadn’t read the book and weren’t going to until the price and format were to their liking. I clicked the “report this” button and within a few days the review was gone.

Well, Amazon.com has stopped taking those reviews down. I guess it’s because they think those angry Kindlegarteners are doing something useful for them. They could, if they wanted to, limit reviews to people who have bought the book from them. They could, if they wanted to, post a request in the forums asking people to stop, and to use the link under “Tell the Publisher!” But they won’t.

Because they’re dicks.

4) Back to items one and two: Key/Egg/Remark is totally on spec right now. I haven’t even run the idea by my agent yet. In truth, I suspect it has some… let’s call them “non commericial elements”

Am I a fucking moron? You bet! But it’s what I want to do. And rather than talk about the idea with my agent, I’d like to try to win her over with the story.

God, I’m an idiot. I should just write a steampunk YA about a teenage inventor and track star who teams up with his roboticized girlfriend to steal a military dirigible and raids an arctic lab to recover her human body. And the villain would have an implanted monocle-like eye piece and a hyper-intelligent talking cat who switches sides at the last minute.

5) I forgot to mail my taxes today. Duh. I’ll do it tomorrow.

Randomness for 3/25

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1) This makes a school bus trip seem like a delight. Actually, I’d probably homeschool.

2) Guys who pay women to play video games with them.

3) Alien vs. Pooh.

4) And, as an antidote to those of you who were annoyed by the critique of police procedure in CASTLE: A show that get’s the procedure right. FYI, I don’t post these links to harsh peoples’ buzz on their favorite shows; there’s a lot to learn here for writers and readers.

5) What happens when a critic really hates a movie.

6) Carrie Vaughn explains why she and her best-selling series will not be published by Grand Central any more, by her choice.

7) Take the Cruel Epiphany poll.

What does this title suggest to you?

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If you saw this:

A KEY, AN EGG, AN UNFORTUNATE REMARK

as a book’s title, what inferences would you draw about the content of the novel?

I try to be useful

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In my continuing attempts to be useful to people, here are three things I’m glad I know.

1) If you feel the urge to sneeze but need to hold it back (because, say, your beloved spouse is sleeping right there in the room with you), tickle the roof of your mouth with your tongue. It won’t prevent every sneeze, and sometimes it will only delay it, but it works.

2) If you are sick of having the whole roll of aluminum foil pop out of the box when you pull on it, check the sides of the box. There should be a bit of perforated cardboard there. Just punch it in so it sticks into the center of the roll and the problem is solved.

3) This I got from an emergency room doc (who posted it online–I didn’t go to the hospital for it): if you have persistent hiccups, here are three steps to stopping them. First, take a tsp of sugar. That should stop 95% of hiccups. If it doesn’t work, try remedy two: half-tsp of salt. That covers up to 98%. If neither of those work, go with one tsp of vinegar. That should polish off the last two percent.

I should mention that I’ve never had that three-step remedy fail. The only iffy part is getting my son to take it.

Taxes done and turned in

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I e-filed for the first time this year. I’ve been on computers for over 15 years, but I’m still nervous about sending such and important document over the internet. I’m still paying by check, though; there’s no way I’m turning over part of my taxes to a frigging credit card company.

Last year I used Turbo Tax for the first time, and I accepted its advice that I would not need to pay estimated taxes this year.

On this last return, we had to pay a $105 penalty. Looks like we’ll be getting a pro this year.