I’ve been invited to the Random House party in Comic-Con. I’m still trying to get used to the idea–for a lot of the things that have happened with my writing, I’ve been able to imagine it first. I know what a book signing looks like. I know basically what I’m supposed to do when I see cover art.
But I have no context for this party–which is actually kinda cool. It would be interesting to go in without expectations for once and see what plays out.
1) Child of Fire is now at 340K in sales rank at Amazon.com! What is that, one sale a month? Not too shab for a book that won’t come out for more than three months.
2) I’m already checking Amazon.com sales rank numbers! I’m doomed!
3) The Best Discount Gun Shop for Kids in Seattle–which is too bad, because that is a rocking park. Mango Eater and I had a blast there one day, just walking the paths.
4) A bookseller meets with a Random House sales rep to discuss orders from the fall catalog. Strangely, my book wasn’t mentioned. I know! Crazy! (seen via pubrants)
5) To wrap up the most narcissistic five things post ever, I’m now on Facebook. No, I won’t play Mafia Wars. No, I won’t take a quiz to find out how girly I am. I didn’t want to join, but my sis-in-law puts pics of my nephews there, and the only way to see them is to fork over my identifying information. Grrrrr, Facebook. Hate.
1) In about an hour, I’m going to have a yearly performance review for day job. Good thing I’m posting to the internet right now. (Update: not fired)
2) I wish I could find the spot in WordPress that would let me capitalize the first letter of my name. It’s so annoying seeing it that way. Of course I find it as soon as I post about it. Of course I do.
3) Last night, I asked my wife to sit down next to me and I said “I have to tell you something you’re not going to like.”
For most husbands, the next line would be something like “There’s this woman at work…” or “I spent the grocery money on a new Playstation” or whatever. My wife knows better. She knew it would be either about our son’s school or something I’d done to cause pain to my own self.
In this case it’s the latter. After being fine for 10 years, I’ve started having wrist pain again. When I told her, she immediately grabbed my arm and started working on me.
(Digression: One of the physical therapists in town has started telling people that my wife is one of the best massage practitioners in the state. The boy and I had the same reaction, separately: “Only the state?”)
She started to traction my wrist immediately, turning it this way and that, and the way it cracked as it released startled the hell out of me. Wrists shouldn’t do that. She also worked on my forearm for a while, and lemme just say that shit hurts. Yes, I’m a big wimp, but it still hurts like hell. She just about had me ready to confess to anything she wanted.
It’s better today, but I can still feel it. I see ice in my future.
My self-directed training to learn to be insufferably condescending continues today, and the variety of texts to choose from is astounding. Thank you, internet!
For instance: A woman who has apparently never heard of slash fiction writes an article about m/m romance novels targeted at women readers. I knew I was sitting at the feet of a master when the lede began “The romance novel, a static and predictable genre…” but it was the quote in the subject header above that really taught me the most.
I must say that I share Ms. Harris’s bemusment over the appeal of this subgenre. As a hetero male with an internet connection, I had no idea a person could thrill to same-sex carnal urges of their opposite gender. How baffling!
If my WIP suddenly lunged through my computer screen and started strangling me, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. Christ.
My head is too full of other things right now. Some of it is other people’s business, which I can’t talk about. Some is my business that I don’t really want to go into. It’s frustrating and infuriating, but this is the process.
I just wish I had more time. I’m struggling with a really difficult scene, and it keeps wanting to go in three directions at once. I’d be happy if I could find something true to the characters, and I’ve just realized I should have spent an hour or two yesterday on research.
More time. I need it.
Back in April, I posted about and linked to Mary W. Walters, the writer who couldn’t find an agent and considered them all horse-riding snakes who were ruining publishing for everyone else.
Well, last night I upgraded to WordPress 2.8, and it promptly pinged her website. She posted in the comments, putting up her query pitch and first chapter for my comments.
Maybe it was the shock of seeing an actual comment on my website (as opposed to my LJ), but I thought I’d give it a swing.
I don’t write this note because I want folks to rush over and give her advice. She asked me, specifically, and while I suspect it was as much of a “let’s see what you’ve got” request as “how could this be better” I hope I was useful. If you want to post a comment disagreeing with something I said, that’s great (in fact, I really really want people to disagree with me–if we can be polite to each other, I may learn a little something). But please don’t offer a crit unless the author specifically requests one.
No, I write this note because damn, that took a long time, and I didn’t even clean up the crit after I wrote it. I keep forgetting how much energy those take. I don’t think I’m going to be doing a lot of that in the future.
I’ll upload a new, functional theme later.
Like I have time for this…
ETA: Fixed it.
While reviewing an old scene for continuity, I came across this piece of classic dialog:
“It’s like saying I went to grade school with new Mariners quarterback. People are talking about you.”
For them what don’t know, the Mariners are a baseball team. Yes, I changed it to “new Seahawks quarterback” and god am I an idiot.
Also: Laser Obama!
I’m not around much today. I’ve taken a break from my daily goal to get a cup of coffee and skim my friends list, when I found this.
My wife is sitting behind me, working on her latest canvas. It’s a good life.
Lee Child has a fiction excerpt on the NY Times editorial page. It’s pretty good, too. I read Child’s debut novel and found it interesting but curiously airless–everything that happens turns out to be related to the overall plot, and the coincidence that kicks off the story strains even my credulity. But this was fun. I may have to give him another try.
One thing I never read, though, is those LiveJournal posts that are just collections of Twitter posts. If I wanted to read tweets… well, the rest is obvious.
Normally I don’t mention posts I skim over, but the clutter is getting to be a bit much.