One Man Reviews and Discoverability

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One Man has been on sale for nearly two months, and while sales have not been life-changing, they’ve been holding fairly steady. And that’s mainly because of the reviews.

The reviews so far have been very positive, with a number of people saying One Man was the best fantasy they read all year. To which I have to say:

Wow, thank you.

I spent two years on this book. I’m not what you’d call prolific, and I thought it might be wise to stop trying to be. What if, I thought, I stopped streamlining and started dawdling. What if I gave it extra time and attention to make something complex? What if?

Well, publishers said Meh, which has me thinking that what I want to see in a second-world fantasy is not exactly in the mainstream. (Like all my other books, I guess.) But still! There’s space outside the mainstream if I can connect what I love to the readers who would also love it.

Which is why I’m so grateful for the reviews you guys leave, and why I keep asking for them. Last week, One Man passed the fifty review mark over on Amazon, which is a huge boost to discoverability. Amazon likes to prioritize books that get a lot of reviews, and I’m hopeful that One Man will pass the next level for Amazon’s algorithms, which is 100 reviews. Child of Fire has over a hundred, and so does The Way into Chaos.

However, Game of Cages, Circle of Enemies, and several other works of mine have not, so I have to keep coming here to talk about this and ask you to drop a review if you haven’t already.

Amazon makes that easy. When I enter the book title “One Man” into their search function, the results actually include books with that title. It puts them at the top, even.

It’s different for Goodreads, though. Goodreads’s search algorithm seems like it assumes you don’t actually know the title of the book you’re searching for, and throws up a lot of weird results. For example, when I type “One Man” into a search window, the auto-complete looks like this:

autocomplete includes book titles unlike the search string I entered

What you get before you press enter

I get that Camus is more popular than I am, but are they really putting in a book that I didn’t search for instead of one that I did?

What happens, you may wonder, after I press ENTER to see the results?

Search for One Man, get a lot of books with a different title

It’s like they’re ignoring the title I actually entered.

This shows the scroll bar on the side, and you won’t be surprised to hear that my book doesn’t appear on that first page at all. In fact, it doesn’t appear on pages two through five, either.

The reason I bring this up is that some folks have said they had trouble finding the book on Goodreads, especially when it first came out. You’ll have to throw my name in there to actually find the right page, at least until Amazon brings the search algorithms on Goodreads up to the standards of their online store. Or click this link.

And thank you again for the reviews you have already written. I’m incredibly grateful.

By the way, if you want a direct link to an online vendor to drop a review, see below:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Indiebound | Kobo | Mysterious GalaxyPowell’s | Smashwords

The One Man Post

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One Man is a superbly realised story set in a rich and fascinating world. The horror grips, the fantasy delights and the characters remain vivid and real to the end.” — Justina Robson

It’s been four years since I released a new novel.

Four plus, actually, and I’m a little embarrassed that it’s been that long. There was the Twenty Palaces novella, The Twisted Path, of course, but still. Four years.

This book is the reason.

I spent two years writing One Man. It’s is a big book, over 150,000 words. It’s complicated, with lots of POV characters and locations. The setting is limited–almost every chapter takes place in a single city–but it’s complex.

Which is another way of saying that a lot of time and sweat went into this novel, and I’m proud of the result.

Here’s the back cover description:

———–

One Cursed City. Two Dead Gods. Ten Thousand Murderers and Thieves. One Orphaned Girl.

As a child, Kyrioc was groomed to be the head of one of the most powerful noble families in Koh-Salash, a city built inside the skeletons of two murdered gods. Kyrioc himself dreamed of becoming head of the High Watch, the highest political position in the land.

Those dreams have turned to dust.

Presumed dead after a disastrous overseas quest, Kyrioc now lives in a downcity slum under a false name, hiding behind the bars of a pawnshop window. Riliska, a nine-year-old pickpocket who sells stolen trinkets to his shop, is the closest thing he has to a friend.

When a criminal gang kills Riliska’s mother and kidnaps the little girl, Kyrioc goes hunting for her.

He doesn’t care about the forbidden magic the gangs are fighting over—the severed ear of a glitterkind, a creature whose flesh contains astonishing healing powers. He doesn’t care about the bloody, escalating gang violence. He doesn’t care about the schemes of power-hungry nobles.

In a raging city on the verge of civil war, Kyrioc only wants to save his friend. He will risk anything for her, even awakening the powers that murdered the gods so long ago.

———–

See, I wanted to try an experiment. Most fantasy novels have huge stakes: A Dark Lord trying to conquer all. A usurper seizing the throne, pushing a kingdom toward civil war. A world-shattering magical cataclysm. Invasion of monsters. Return of monsters. Whatever.

But what if I wanted to create a fantasy story about a quest for something small. Something important, but not world-shattering. For instance: the life of a single little girl. Not even his own, just someone he knows.

I wanted to see if I could make a story like that as compelling as one where millions of lives were at stake. The consequences of the protagonist’s actions were wide-ranging. They had ripple effects. The other POV characters have their own quests, and as the status quo of the city crumbles, the dangers escalate.

But for the protagonist? He just wants to save one life.

If I’m being honest with myself, I felt sure that NY publishers would really respond to this novel. I expected the mix of genres, characters, and setting to hit the bullseye. Probably, you could say that I was being ambitious.

I was wrong. One Man was on submission for over a year and a half and, while it earned me the nicest rejection I have ever seen (or even heard about) no one wanted to publish it.

It’s probably a mistake to admit that, but fuck it. I think it’s a good book. A thriller with strange magic, desperation, betrayal, and murder. But it’s an odd book, too, with bourgeois hobbit vampires, and sleeping giants whose flesh can heal you, and a sprawling city built inside the skeletons of two gods who were murdered while fucking.

What I’m hoping, if you’ve read this far down the page, is that you’re interested in a big, odd, ambitious book about crime and magic and a screwed-up guy who has one last chance to do something decent in this world.

Cover for One Man

The trade paperback should be available to order from Ingram, if you want to buy from your local bookstore, but obviously you could also buy from one of the online vendors below.

Sample chapters here.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Indiebound | Kobo | Mysterious GalaxyPowell’s | Smashwords

Randomness for 8/16

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1. The Low-Frills Genre Fiction of 1981. What amazing covers

2. What It’s Like To Own an Electric Car.

3. Almost Every Bob Ross Painting in Existence Lives in a Virginia Office Park.

4. Brewery unveils six-pack ring that will feed sea turtles instead of killing them.

5) My son followed this recipe for making NY style pizza at home, and whaddayano? Video

6) Shipping firm automatically dispatches truck to haul freight, successfully pricing, tendering, booking, then picking up and delivering the shipment without any human interaction at all.

7) Trying to rebuild civilization? This dude is trying to open-source the blueprints for 50 essential machines.

 

13 hours left to back this:

The Iron Gate, a New (Break) Kickstarter Campaign

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Kickstarter is running a “Break Kickstarter” campaign, which invites creators to use the platform in unusual ways. Not to break their rules, but to organize a campaign in an unusual way.

Until I saw that promo, I hadn’t been planning to use Kickstarter again. To be honest, I was gratified that my 2013 campaign for The Great Way did so well, but it was a crapton of work, and I’m a naturally disorganized person. I screwed up a few times while fulfilling that campaign, and that was extremely embarrassing. I didn’t want to put myself into that position again.

But if there’s an opportunity to flout the usual expectations? I’m signing on for the next Twenty Palaces story, The Iron Gate.

Here’s what’s going to be unusual in this campaign:

No video
No stretch goals
One reward: an ebook (although you could decide not to take a reward if you prefer)
One pledge level: (although KS lets you pledge more if you want)
You decide how long The Iron Gate is going to be

The Twisted Path was a novella, and some readers really wanted me to go back to novels. I’m not sure how much demand there is for this, but let’s find out.

For every $50 pledged to this campaign, I will write a thousand words. That’s the minimum professional rate, established by SFWA, of five cents a word.

In practical terms, I’ll look at that as a minimum word count.

So, if the campaign meets its goal of $500, I’ll write a 10,000-word novelette, which is about the length of “The Home-Made Mask”. If all twelve-hundred-ish people from the Great Way campaign pledge $4, that’ll be about enough for a novel.

I’ve set an upper limit, too. If you want to know what that is, or have other concerns, please check out the campaign. Also, if you’d like to take part.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/harryconnolly/the-iron-gate-break-kickstarter

For Every Failure, an Opportunity

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If you’re backing my Patreon, you may have noticed that it has been switched back on. That is, it’s back to a monthly basis, charging credit cards at the start of every month. I’d turned it “off” because I’d started a new job. As of this week I’m no longer working there, so it’s on again.

I’ve never been fired for being bad at a job before, but you know what? It was the right thing for them to do. I absolutely should have been let go. And I’m glad for it.

In previous posts I was a little cagey about where I’d been hired because it was a six-month contract at a game company, and I was sure how it would go. I’ll say now that it was the Valve Corporation over in Bellevue. I’ll also say that they asked me not to talk about the games I worked on/heard about/whatever outside of their offices, even to my own family. I haven’t done that and I won’t start now.

How it happened was this: Gabe, the founder of the company, liked my books and invited me to lunch. This was back in, I think, 2012? 2013? Several months before my Kickstarter for The Great Way, at least. I’d heard of Valve’s games but hadn’t played any, and I honestly thought he was going to ask if I would write a novel for the company. But lunch wasn’t just me and Gabe, we were joined by a bunch of writers already working for the company, and I was all What am I doing here? Nobody needs me to write a novel when they already have Marc Laidlaw sitting right there.

It turned out the offer was to work at the company on the actual games, which I had to decline. I didn’t play many video games because a) they were often asking me to do shit that was illegal and immoral, which I hate and b) too many games were boring, making me quit early, and most of all c) if I did like them, I could be obsessive about it. I mean, Freedom Force and its sequel were scads of fun, but playing them, I spent hours with my back to the living room, and every other aspect of my life suffered. I’m not exactly Mr. Moderation. My wife was especially unhappy to be ignored evening after evening while I shot pretend ray guns at cartoon people.

After that lunch meeting, I started playing (and enjoying) games a lot more, and Valve was a big reason for that. I love the Portal and Half-Life games–like, genuinely loved playing them–because they didn’t ask me to run errands, murder innocent people or navigate lots of high places without railings (seriously the worst). As my son got older, he started recommending games that suited me better, and so I felt I understood them a little better. I never became good, but they made sense in a conceptual way

Then we came to the end of 2018. I’d taken a big gamble after The Great Way and Key/Egg came out. I put two years into a fat fantasy with a cool setting, a plot that was a little out of the ordinary, and badass characters. The plan was simple. Write a book that stands out, place it with NY publishers, and let the backlist bump spill some extra coins into our savings accounts.

Except it didn’t work. Publishers passed. The book was too different, or too something, and there was no new contract and therefore no bump.

At that point, we’d been living off the money from The Great Way for too long and our savings was getting low (not to mention rent increases and a possible eviction in the coming months), so my wife asked me to find a day job, and I thought about Valve, and I reached out. Did, maybe, I have something to contribute there?

Nope! But I didn’t know that at the time.

Gabe and his people were nice enough to give me a chance though, working on a multiplayer team-fighting game that was in the very early stages. I was to do worldbuilding for them.

Which meant: Where and Why.

Where are they fighting?

Why are they fighting?

Those were the two questions I was supposed to answer, and over the course of two months, I couldn’t make a suggestion that both matched the criteria they’d given me and also made the rest of the team excited. Two full months! Of course they let me go.

As a writer, I’ve had my share of one-star reviews. And you don’t grow up in a family like mine and get all tender-hearted about what people think of you. But when you’re sitting in a meeting, and everyone looks miserable because of you–because of the mouth-sounds you’re making–well, that suuuuucks.

You guys should have seen some of the body language in the room for that last meeting. Picture, if you will, a person sitting on a bench at a bus stop at night. They’ve forgotten their jacket, and it’s sleeting. That’s exactly some of those guys were sitting: hunched over, head down, waiting for all this to just be over.

And that was my fault.

See, it doesn’t matter if it’s a great company, or that the money was good, or that there was a free salad bar at lunch every day with chick peas you could scoop right into the bowl (seriously, so fucking delicious). None of that shit matters if the work itself is a waste of time to everyone on the team, including the person doing it. That’s demoralizing as hell.

Me, personally, I think the setting I created for that last meeting would be a home run in all sorts of media–books, animation, whatever–but not in computer games and certainly not in the game they’re working so hard to create. It just didn’t fit. And at this point, I don’t care where my proposals came up short or if they went too far or what was actually wrong. All that matters is that it wasn’t successful, and Valve owns it, and I hope they can cherry-pick a few things out of it that they find useful. And if they can’t, sorry, guys.

Where does that leave me? Not unemployed, exactly, since I’m working for myself again.

Those two months helped refill our bank accounts a little, and I have three completed, unreleased novel manuscripts. One is that big gamble. Another is a mystery/thriller with no supernatural elements. Another is the fun fantasy adventure that needs a little bit more tweaking before my agent takes it to NY publishers.

I’m composing this during the time I’m supposed to be writing a novelette for an anthology I’ve been invited to, but I put that off because I feel like I owe you guys an update on where things stand, fiction-wise. I’ve spent the last two months squeezing my own projects into the hour before I went into the office, but now that I’m back on my own time, things will go faster.

My fun fantasy will go out to publishers (“Funpunk”! You heard it here first, folks). My big gamble book and the thriller will be self-published. Kickstarter maybe? We’ll have to see. I also have to write the next Twenty Palaces novella. And at some point soon, we’ll look again at our bank accounts and maybe I’ll grab another day job.

So I wanted you to know that, even though I haven’t published a new novel since 2015(!) I haven’t stopped writing. I haven’t stopped working hard. There’s new stuff on the horizon and, you know, maybe I won’t try those big gambles again.

Thanks for reading.

The Pressure to Continue the Story After the Story

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That video below? Worth watching, like Ellis’s other work.

(Actually, I’m sort of assuming the video shows up, since WordPress’s new “block” system doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.)

If you’ve watched it (and let me say again, you should) you already know that it’s a discussion of some relatively recent critical schools of thought about literature, namely, does the author have any authority over the story and characters outside the published text? Or, to use the examples in the video, does the author get to tell us what happened to the characters after the last page? Do we have to take seriously the secret things they tell us about the characters that’s not in the text (such as, that Dumbledore is gay)?

Like John Green in the video, I’m of the opinion that readers get to choose for themselves, and at least should be able to extrapolate from the story.

As a personal example, a number of readers asked me what happened to Lar Italga after the end of The Great Way. Me, I thought it was so obvious that I didn’t even bother to write it. But that wasn’t good enough for some, and they seemed annoyed when I turned the question around and asked what they thought happened to him. They didn’t want to extrapolate. They wanted the authoritative word.

A number of people also wanted authoritative insight into how the names were pronounced, and “however you like” was apparently not an acceptable answer. I’ve read I-don’t-know-how-many fantasy novels with goofy pronunciation guides and I’ve learned to ignore them. In the privacy of my own head, I think of the characters’ names however I like, but a significant number of readers want the “correct” form.

The video takes JK Rowling to task for many of her pronouncements about the world of the books and the future of the characters. Is it especially laudable to make Dumbledore gay if you don’t include it in the actual book where it would have counted? Do we need an apology about who Hermione ended up with? Do we need to be told that, before indoor plumbing, wizard students crapped on the floor and them magic-ed the mess away?

Lots of people had a laugh at that last one, but it seems she knows what she’s talking about. Click the tweet below to see why I will never ever time travel back to the middle ages in Europe.

I’m lying here being sick while @seraph76 reads me bits of a history of French royal court poisonings and I think we need another terror— rahaf mohammed al-qanon (@AliceAvizandum) January 5, 2019

I know it starts off talking about poison, but it quickly moves to sewers (or the lack thereof) and no, please, authors, do not try for this level of realism. Just click the tweet to open and read. It’s hair-raising.

So, yeah, Rowling has a history of coming up with a bunch of extraneous stuff about the Harry Potter books–seemingly without giving it a lot of thought–and not to the benefit of her books or herself. To which I have to say: Can you blame her?

The Harry Potter books were such a gigantic hit that she has been deluged with questions, many from very young readers. Is she supposed to tell a ten-year-old Hermione fan that the character is a fictional construct with no life or existence outside the text? Yeah, that would go over well.

It’s entirely unsurprising that she launched an entire website (literally “More Potter”) which lists a bunch of character biographies and other bullshit that Rowling (or one of her interns/social media hires/whatever) threw together in an afternoon. That it draws in the hardcore fans (and tries to sell them stuff) is an entirely reasonable way to avoid all those earnest questions flooding the author’s social media.

And then, when a new Fantastic Beasts movie comes out, superfans get upset because the backstory in the movie doesn’t match the extraneous BS listed on Pottermore. Not that it matters. The Hogwarts Cinematic Universe is different from the books, obviously.

So yeah, I get why John Green and other authors (like myself) don’t want to add more story once the story is done. I also believe that Rowling’s circumstances are unique to her, and the pressure on her to drop these little bits of extraneous story must be incredible. I don’t always like what she says, but she has my sympathy.

The State of the Author Address

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Let’s talk briefly about where things stand for me as an author in the fall of 2018. There’s some personal stuff here and an update on new books.

First of all, my wife and I have been living in this apartment for 24 years come Oct 3. And sometime in the upcoming months we’re going to be evicted.

The eviction will come in one of two ways: a massive rent hike, or a straight order to get out so the building can be demolished. Our landlord passed away, and his heirs would rather sell than collect rent, so the building is up for sale. (And no, I can’t afford to make an offer.)

My entire marriage has played out in this apartment. It’s the only home my son has ever known. But we don’t own it, so we don’t control it. That means we’re going to be moving on.

In a way, it’s fine. Moving will suck but at least it’ll force us to deal with our clutter, and the unit was old when we moved in, so it’s in a bit of disrepair. Still, I’ve never lived anywhere as long as I’ve lived here and if you stay somewhere long enough, the rent sometimes lags behind the market, so a new place will cost.

And yet, move on we must. That means higher rents and longer commutes, probably from a brand new neighborhood.

To that end, I whipped up a resume and submitted it to a video game company who had expressed interest in hiring me about five years ago. At the time, I thought they wanted to talk to me about writing a book for them, but then I met the novelists they already have working for them and I was all What am I doing here?

But I actually play some video games now (thanks to decent recommendations from my son and the fact that he’s old enough for me to have more free time) whereas I did my best to avoid them when he was small. And while the writing has been going pretty well over the years, this year has been tough. If I have to move, too, it’ll be day job time.

Books what about those books?

Let’s take a look at where things stand:

City of Fallen Gods has made its rounds among the major NY and UK publishers without generating any interest. I need to do another revision and decide whether to send it to small presses or just self-publish it and let it out into the world.

When my agent took this one to the market, I told myself (and a few others) If this book doesn’t sell, I’m not going to write fantasy any more. Well, it didn’t. However, I am already in the middle of…

Untitled WIP, which is over 90k words in a first draft. It’s meant to be a light-hearted adventure, similar in tone (if not in plot) to Key/Egg, but I confess that I’ve been struggling with it. Soon enough, I expect to finish first-pass revisions on it and then I can return to City….

Hard Choices, previously titled Jack of Angels, Tiger Things, The Llewellyn Report, and One Last Favor, is a mystery/crime thriller I wrote last year as a sort of break from magic and monsters. It’s the sort of old-fashioned mystery novel that you can only self-publish now, and I intend to do exactly that as soon as City… is out in the world.

The [Adjective] [Noun] is the next Twenty Palaces novella I’ve been meaning to tackle. Earlier this year, I was saying I expected to get to it before the end of the year, but City… has bounced back at me and the WIP… has been fighting me with every word, so that’s got to be pushed into 2019.

What will probably happen is:
1. Send WIP to my agent
2. rough draft The [Adjective] [Noun]
3. revise City
4. revise Choices
5. revise [Noun]

And somewhere in that timeline is a pause to execute my agent’s notes on the WIP so it can go out to publishers, plus another Bookbub promotion for The Way into Chaos, plus cover designs for Choices and City, plus scheduling copy edits and so on and so forth.

Plus looking for a regular job (hopefully not simply more temp work, although I’m not exactly brimming over with marketable job skills) plus shedding extraneous possessions in anticipation of our move plus packing things for our move plus plus plus.

It’s a busy time, is what I’m saying, but I’m planning to do everything I can to get these books to you guys (especially the 20P novella).

Last note! I have that Patreon going (which you can see in the sidebar of my website) because of recent rent hikes and dips in book sales but, if I land a regular full-time job, I plan to shutter it, for the obvious reasons.

Some Books I’ve Read Recently

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These include Amazon Affiliate links, so don’t be shocked if a couple of pennies come my way if you decide any of these books are interesting.

Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero.

I was surprised to discover that this was a bestseller, since I had not heard of it before it turned up on a “What to read now that you’ve finished watching STRANGER THINGS” list. The author is from Spain and while English is his second language, he brings a beautiful fluidity and a welcome playfulness to the book. Well, mostly welcome. He experiments with the language, and not every experiment is a success, but I was still pleased by it.

Plot: Thirteen years before the events of the book, in 1979, four teenagers (plus one dog) were amateur detectives in their rural Oregon town, uncovering real estate swindles and smugglers in true Scooby-Doo style. Then, during their last mystery, they uncovered actual Lovecraftian evil (and the youngest teen read from the Necronomicon). They awakened something dangerous in their sleepy little mountain town, and at the same time utterly destroyed their own lives.

Now, as twenty-something screwups, they’re determined to return to the scene of their last mystery and solve it for real, in the hopes of putting the madness behind them.

This was fun, and light-hearted, but not as funny as I’d hoped. It quickly turns into a Lovecraftian thriller with a decidedly easy touch. Recommended.

The Hike, by Drew Magary.
This was a fun and funny contemporary fantasy that mixed fairy tale story structure, Stephen King(ish) frights, and some point-and-click video game plotting. That sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it really really does.

Plot: The protagonist, Ben, is a husband and father who has gone out of town on a business trip, but decides to spend the free hour before his meeting taking a brief hike through the woods near the hotel. Except that he gets lost, then he gets chased, and things begin to get really weird. He’s attacked by a giant cricket, captured by a friendly giant that wants to eat him, and finds support–moral and otherwise–from a talking crab.

What keeps the story from being meaningless fluff is that Ben himself is so engaging. A man who seems to be a short-tempered everyman at first quickly begins to show his flaws. Ben has a lot of damage, and he’s not managing it well in his real life. On this mythical hike, he starts to come apart and then puts himself back together again.

The book is funny, breezy, and at the same time, emotionally powerful. And I loved the ending.

The Outsider by Stephen King

What an odd book. For the first 200 pages, it’s a murder mystery. There’s a horrific crime, compelling evidence against an unlikely suspect who has an iron-clad alibi, and an investigation that circles around and around collecting conflicting evidence.

Has the suspect orchestrated the perfect crime? Will the cops crack his perfect alibi?

And just as I became convinced that King was going to give us a straight mystery this time, the story makes a u-turn toward the supernatural, when the characters realize they can’t pick apart either evidence or the alibi, and begin to recognize that Something Else must be going on. From there, it pivots to a King-ish members-of-the-community-come-together-to-fight-evil plot, and on those terms it works well. The ending was a little soft, but overall, a terrific book.

Also, it’s apparently a pseudo-sequel to a set of books I haven’t read, but while that’s obvious in the way the characters talk about their past experiences, it’s not a deal-breaker for the story here.

Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale

This one is a thriller and coming of age story without a supernatural element, but it might be my favorite of the bunch. Lansdale seems to specialize in mid-twentieth century east Texas poor folk, when they’re caught up in crime or supernatural evil. (He also wrote some of the best episodes of Batman: The Animated Series)

Voice. Voice is an important part of any book, and Lansdale has the voice of his characters down. For all the time they spend solving mysteries and fleeing from those who want to rob and/or kill them, the real appeal here is the way the narrator draws you in.

A fantastic book. Highly recommended.


Looking these over again, I realize I’ve they were a string of white dude authors. That’s an old, bad habit, and when I finish the book I’m currently reading, I’ll find a way to mix things up a bit.

Slapstick and New Fiction: Sharing Some Personal Stuff Here Instead of on Social

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My Saturday was supposed to be fun. I was going to finish up my day’s writing, then pop over to the Summerfest celebration, which is basically the weekend when our local chamber of commerce rounds up food trucks, a beer garden, and some local musicians/cover bands. Not tremendously fun, but it’s outdoors and the beers are excellent. I’d planned to try some overpriced food truck treats, buy a fancy red ale from a nearby microbrew, and read in the shade for a few hours.

Hey, my wife was going to be away until the evening, so I could have all the fun. But did I have fun?

First, before I got within 100 yards of a fancy beer, I fell. I had no excuse; my foot landed half on the edge of the sidewalk and half off, which threw off my balance and, like a lumbering ox, I toppled over onto the sidewalk and scraped the hell out of my leg. (And laughed at my own clumsiness)

Second, once I arrived at Summerfest, one of the hot dogs I’d picked as my food truck dinner (not that fancy, maybe, but lines are also a consideration and they were more like big brats than supermarket dogs from a pack) came apart as I was eating it and smeared mustard down the front of my shirt. I hate being a fat guy with food on my shirt, but by then I was already in the beer garden, beer in front of me, with tickets for two more in my pocket. Sunk costs came be tremendously powerful.

Also, this was the first time I’ve ever had a hot dog “Seattle style,” which apparently means sauerkraut and cream cheese. (Verdict: surprisingly good)

Third, when there was only two fingers of beer left in my cup, a strong breeze ruffled the thin plastic table cloth and toppled the cup into my lap. For the rest of the night, I was sporting a soaked crotch. Worse, some splashed onto the bag holding my library books. (Luckily nothing was damaged.) Still, wet pants in the front. wtf, natural elements?

Later that night, when I had arrived safely at home, I couldn’t figure out why my left leg was aching. Sure, I’d fallen and scraped my calf, but that was just a little thing, right?

Then my wife reminded me that I’m old now, and I don’t just bounce back from a little tumble, even one that had me sitting on my ass laughing at my own stupidity.

That’s what I get for trying to have fun. But I know what you’re thinking: What about new fiction?

Well, the new novel I’m writing has been surprisingly challenging. I make progress every day, but it’s been unusually slow.

A few weeks ago I had revisited the mystery/crime thriller I wrote last year, and I’d thought it was unsalvageable garbage. Earlier this week, I realized how to fix it, just by moving a few lines of dialog around. Hmf. So, look for that before the end of the year, if the WIP doesn’t do me in.

I have another big fat fantasy that’s still making the rounds at publishers, but none have bitten so far. That doesn’t look hopeful at this point, but it only takes one.

Finally, I have a new Twenty Palaces novella to write, once I square away a few other things. The story is coming together in little bits and pieces while I work on other projects, and I’m hopeful that I’ll have a rough draft done before the end of the year. However, with a balky WIP and other projects crowding for my attention, that might be too optimistic.

So there you go: a one-man slapstick routine and a bunch of fiction. That pretty much sums up where things are for me.

Randomness for 7/31

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1) The Legend of John Arthur, the Toughest Man in America.

2) Don’t Feed The Trolls and Other Hideous Lies.

3) What the Data Says About Producing Low-Budget Horror Movies.

4) Raising the barre: how science is saving ballet dancers.

5) What Happened When I Tried To Talk To My Twitter Abusers.

6) Ten Changes Made in the Lord of the Rings Novelization.

7) A ‘beer sommelier’ explains how pouring a beer the wrong way can give you a stomach ache. Video