reasons i suck

Five Things Make a Friday Post

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And today it’s all about me me me!

* As of last Monday, I am officially six months overdue on delivering Man Bites World. My agent has given me firm instructions: Do not panic. The deadline for production is August, but I’m going to be turning it in that late. I’m just about finished with a round of revisions for my agent (she had a couple little notes) and once she reads and approves them, I’ll turn the book in.

Looking back, I can see it was damn smart of my editor to hold off the publication of Child of Fire for as long as she did. And I’m sorry that Game of Cages was switched from May of this year to August. Hopefully, the path in the future will be more smooth.

* In MS Word for Mac (I know. You don’t have to say it), the word count appears at the bottom of the window… unless the count goes into six figures, at which point it disappears. I hate that. I like maps, clocks, WYSIWYG, and word counts. I like to know where I am. That’s why I feel a certain joyful satisfaction when I trim a manuscript below the 100,000 word mark and the total count suddenly appears onscreen.

Yesterday, I was tempted to stop revising ten minutes early so I could write “I’m at 99,999 words now!” in this post, but I resisted. See point one.

* Am I going to Norwescon? I don’t know! I received an invitation around Christmastime, filled it out and sent it in, but I haven’t heard back. It’s less than a month away and my name isn’t on the long list of “panel participants.” Now, I’ve never been to a convention before, so maybe it’s commonplace for a confirmation to arrive less than a month before the event. Maybe it’s common for an invitation to be rescinded (which would be understandable, since I can only go one day) without notifying the attendee. I dunno, but I’ve sent an email to registration to inquire.

I’m half-hoping they’ll tell me I’ve been struck from the list. Saturdays are supposed to be family time for me, but revisions have been eating all my time, and then there’d be a convention, and the following week…

* I’m going to have a signing at the Tukwila Barnes & Noble on April 10th at 1 pm. It won’t be a reading (Ixnay on the Eadingray!), just a signing and talk with four authors: Gayle Ann Williams (Tsunami Blue), Jessa Slade (Seducing the Shadows), Mark Henry (Battle of the Network Zombies), and little ole me. If you live in the Puget Sound area, swing on by.

* You know what amazes me? I can revise a book three times and, on the fourth runthrough, discover an incredible number of word echoes, clumsy sentence constructions, responses to sensory input before the sensory input, and dialog that would register as “eyeroll” on a Turing test. It still astonishes me that my own errors can be so difficult to see.

* Only two entries so far in the Child of Fire giveaway contest (Here’s the LiveJournal version). Just sayin’. This is the last giveaway I’m going to do for a while. I have a small stack of books I’m going to save for late summer, in case CoF isn’t available in stores when Game of Cages comes out.

Wha? “Sponsored Reviews?”

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Even though it’s been five months since Child of Fire came out, I’m still contacting reviewers, hoping to get a little more exposure. I’ve slowed down quite a bit, but I still mail off the odd book now and then.

So, as I was looking over N.K. Jemison’s new book on Big River dot com to see if it’s a hardcover (and thus too spendy to buy at my local shop) I saw a review posted there by sacramentobookreview.com.

Interesting! So I pop over to their site and poke around. No they haven’t reviewed CoF before. Yes, here are there guidelines for authors who want to send them a book. And here are their prices for a sponsored review.

Cue needle-scratching-an-LP sound. A “sponsored” review?? Well, yes. You can pay to have a review “expedited” which costs $99 for a Standard Turnaround (9-12 weeks) up to $299 for an Expedited Turnaround (2-4 weeks).

They don’t promise a positive review, only a “professional” one, and they don’t promise that a paid review will appear in the paper. However, if they don’t, the author will receive an advertisement instead and the size of the ad depends on which “turnaround” price they pay.

They also promise to put the review into their “publication pipeline” which apparently means Amazon.com, their syndication service, and their website.

As I said above, there’s nothing on the site (that I could find) that promises a rave review. I also didn’t find a disclaimer specifically explaining that cutting a check is no guarantee of a positive review. Still, it strikes me as fishy; I wouldn’t send them anything simply because a reader might wonder if I slipped a couple of bucks into the book, and jeez, people, I’d send a copy to your sickly grandmother if she had a blog.

Vaguely uncool. I’m going to email writer beware about it.

Oh, and because I should make this clear, I am in no way suggesting that N.K. Jemison wrote a check for the review they gave her. In. No. Way.

Ten writing rules not published in the Guardian

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A couple of days ago, I linked to the Ten Rules for Writers in the Books section of the Guardian. They’re fun to read, completely contradictory, and simultaneously wonderful and irrelevant. (Wanna make a sour face over them? Head over to the Globe and Mail.)

But why should those writers have all the fun (just because they’re all incredibly successful)? I can write a contradictory list of rules for writers, and so can you. So, I’m going to whip up ten useful and useless “rules” that work for me (except when they don’t) and I recommend everyone do the same.

(It’s a meme!)

By the way, I’m using second person in these rules, but the “you” I’m addressing is the confused-looking guy in the mirror, not any of my readers.

1- You can’t “find” time to write; you can only steal it. In short, you have to give something up. If you find you can’t give anything up to make time for your book, good for you! Your life is too awesome to be wasted writing books.

2- People are more interesting than monsters. Sometimes the person is monster-shaped and sometimes the monster is person-shaped, but the rule holds.

3- No rituals. Try to avoid having any habits you associate closely with writing. If conditions change and you have to drop the habit–even if it’s something as innocuous as “play quiet music”–you may find it hard to put words on the page.

4- Blame yourself. If you get a rejection, always assume it’s because of something in your writing, even if it’s not objectively true. The person who takes the blame is the person who has authority and responsibility, and when it comes to writing, that should be the writer. Blaming others gives away your power.

5- Don’t cheat the concept. If the reader is thinking “Oh my God, is he going to go there?” The answer should be “Yes! He went there!” Don’t shy away from uncomfortable implications of your concept.

6- Cheat the concept sometimes. Don’t be an asshole about rule 5. If “going there” means being lurid, tedious, cliche, or repulsive, figure out a better way.

7- Text is very linear and artificial. Use that to your advantage.

8- Never put the word “into” immediately after the word “and” except in the dialog of an annoying character.

9- Talent is accuracy. In writing, talent is accurately predicting what effect a particular string of words is likely to have on a reader. The more rare the string of words, or the more rare and powerful the effect, the more talent the writer will be thought to have. And yeah, by my definition, it’s the reader who determines whether a writer has talent, and the thing people call talent can be learned. (Isn’t that good news?)

10- If you feel mildly bored with a scene you’re writing, stop working and go do something you hate as punishment. The only real “rule” in writing is Be interesting. All the rest are tools to be used or discarded as needed. (Tools, not rules!)

So, write and post your own ten rules. Why not? They don’t have to be useful to anyone except you.

Dear book

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Stop being a pain in the ass.

Thanks.

Well, we didn’t go to watch the tsunami come in

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Mainly because there was nothing happening. So instead, I published my son’s website.

He made it with his buddy, and it’s all their own (with one or two extremely minor assists from me). Check it out… if you dare!

Incoming Tsunami

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The Chilean tsunami is expected to reach Seattle around 4:30 this afternoon. It’s also expected to be about 6-feet high according to one source, but the BBC is saying it could be either nothing or 10 meters.

Of course, Seattle is on Puget Sound, not the Pacific Ocean. We have a huge peninsula between us and the sea, and while we get waves, their tiny little lapping waves, not the relatively strong crests you can see in a place like Ocean Shores.

So how crazy would it be to go relatively close to the water’s edge and watch the wave come in? I know better than to actually stand on the shore: six inches of running water can sweep a person off their feet and two feet of water can carry away a car. I don’t want to see my son swept out to sea, obviously.

And yeah, we do live close to the water, but well uphill. Our home wouldn’t be in any danger. We could go to either a bayside spot well over six feet above the typical waterline, or we could go to a cliff-side park at the top of a hill.

It’s something I’d like to see, and that I’d like my son to see; I just don’t want my tombstone to read “He was stupid.”

edited to add: The National Weather Service says there won’t be any tsunami in this area, only slightly higher tides and “dangerous currents”. Nothing to see here. No need to head out.

Ah well. At least this means there’s no danger to the city. Maybe we’ll find some video online to show my son what a tsunami looks like.

Child of Fire Reviews Part 11

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I finally collected seven more. Behind the cut!
Continue reading

I think parents around the world would find this word useful.

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Per this thread on Making Light, I proposed a definition for the word “darf”. I re-post it here to secure my place in the glorious history of the English language.

“Darf” v. to claim to be engaged in and winning a non-existent fight or contest against a more powerful opponent. Usage: “That’s when I discovered my son had been darfing me in a potato chip-eating race.”

Yes, I’m aware that there are a couple of “definitions” (picture air quotes here) at urb*nd*ct**n*ry.c*m, but the misogyny and trollish excess on that site makes me sick. Therefore, I pretend it doesn’t exist.

As a side note: anyone reading this who works for Random House… warning! Click that first link above!

As an other-side note: I’m still mildly sick, but I’m at work today. What the hell; I might as well be miserable here as at home.

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.

Quick note for Mr. Headache

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Drink some water.