1) In a Mass Knife Fight to the Death Between Every American President, Who Would Win and Why?
2) Little kittens battle each other in B&N review section: “Will you make an alliance with tigerclan?”
3) The Proper Way To Lock Your Bicycle.
4) Bat Man of Shanghai. Video.
7) Over-the-counter DIY witchcraft from the 19th century: The (annotated) Long Lost Friend. Available on Amazon.com
Occasionally, I suffer from hope.
See, I write these books that some readers (and me) like, but I occasionally get this idea that this or that particular story is going to be a big hit with a very large readership.
That’s hope, and it’s an awful thing. It distracts and disappoints. It makes me take my eye off what matters most. It tricks me into thinking there’s some external standard that I need to meet.
I was just discussing this elsewhere in another author’s private space: there’s this sense that we’re writing the wrong thing, and readers turn away from us and our work as if we were beggars shaking a tin cup at them. We get a few sales, a few reviews, then our books fade away because everyone moves on to some other thing they’re excited about. It goes without saying that no one “owes” a writer anything, but it also goes without saying that we can’t help but give in to that four-letter word when we release something new.
I can say from experience that it is incredibly painful to put a year of work into a book only to have it widely ignored. It’s not as painful as that time no kids showed for my son’s birthday party, but it’s still pretty bad.
But there’s one thing I can’t compare it to: I have no idea how it feels to write something because you think it must be “the right thing” for commercial success, and have it fail anyway.
Here’s a true story that I’ve talked about here once or twice: My editor wanted me to change the ending of Game of Cages. Specifically, she wanted me to change The Sentence (if you’ve read the book you know the 500+ word sentence I’m talking about). She knew it was a powerful scene, but it was not a commercial choice at all. Too dark.
She suggested, quite sensibly, that I revise it so the protagonist could be more of a hero. Readers like heroes.
Now, I was seriously torn over this. Child of Fire wouldn’t come out for months, so I wasn’t even a published writer yet, who was I to disagree? Besides, I loved that scene–the whole book was aimed to create it.
My agent (who is awesome) said my editor was right about that creative choice being anti-commercial, but she was ready to support whatever decision I made. The truth is, I could have changed that ending, and no one would have known by my editor, agent, and me. No one would have had a clue.
But what I told her, finally, was that I was afraid that I would replace that dark, harsh scene with something more Indiana Jones-heroic, but the book would fail anyway. Then I wouldn’t even be failing with my book.
It was almost certainly a stupid decision, career-wise, but I made it and I’m still living with it. You know what else I’m living with?
Hope for the new book I’m revising.
Check this blog post out: An Unexpected Ass Kicking. It’s worth reading, for real, especially if you use computers and/or care about elder wisdom. The OP’s takeaway is:
1. Nothing is withheld from us which we have conceived to do.
2. Do things that have never been done.
Me, I’ve tried to be original in my work, but I’ve never felt I was original enough. I’d really like to do better in that area.
As for what I “have conceived to do,” I have conceived to be my own marketing category, to write books are are uniquely mine, and to have a large readership who want to read them as soon as they’re available. Not because those books make the smart commercial choices or they are about the right subjects, but because I think they’re cool.
But seriously, read the linked post. It’s short.
Anyway, I have to pursue this stupid goal of mine, but I have to do it without killing myself hoping it will come true.
I’ve been pretty busy–too busy to do a lot of blogging–but I thought I should point this out:
I didn’t realize that, for some time, Mitt Romney has been quoting from Guns, Germs, and Steel to explain his view of the world and the way to develop healthy economies.
Normally when I talk about a book I put up a buy link for interested readers, but not this time. While Diamond’s book is interesting, it’s not something you want to base an economic policy on.
I have a short story available in the anthology Tales of the Emerald Serpent, which is now out as an ebook (Amazon) and in paper (Lulu). I posted a teaser for the story (title: “The One Thing You Can Never Trust”) when the anthology was doing the Kickstarter thing, and now the whole thing is available.
I don’t know if there’s a Harry Connolly “type” of story–I kinda hope not–but if there is, this one is it. It’s plotty, kinda dark, full of ruthless characters, and a bit like a crime story.
You know, in case you wanted to read something else I wrote.
On her blog, novelist Ally Carter wrote a letter she wished she could send to herself back when she was just starting out. I thought it was funny and interesting enough that I stole the idea. Being me, this particular letter might not have the wide applicability that Ms. Carter’s does but I’ll share it anyway: a letter to myself in 2008.
First of all, old self, today isn’t the day your agent sent your first book on submission. That was back in mid-January some time. So yeah, this is late. Then again, you’re the guy who received a birthday card that his sister had bought for his birthday the year before then never got around to sending. You’re a Connolly; you’re used to it.
Second of all, Twenty Palaces was not rejected because of the story. It was the writing. You haven’t realized this yet, but you’d be better off not sending it to your agent or editor. The truth is, you made a big leap in your understanding of the language while you were revising Harvest of Fire, and you haven’t realized yet how rough that earlier book is. Seriously. Keep it to yourself until after you have a chance to revise it.
Third, don’t bother scrounging for reviews. Interviews are great. Definitely do that Big Idea piece for John Scalzi. Guest blogging is also cool (in fact, ask around if anyone would like you to guest blog).
But that thing where you spend hours and hours looking for reviewers, working out what sort of books they review, try to judge their readership, contact them and mail off books? Just don’t even bother. You’d be better off spending that time working on new books or being funny online.
In fact, being funny and/or interesting online is really the best marketing you can do. Have fun with that and skip the reviewers. The ones that find and review your work on their own will be good enough, but beyond that it’s too big a time sink.
Fourth, you aren’t really going to find yourself joining a new community of writers and genre fans, the way so many others seem to. Don’t worry about it.
Fifth, and last, I’m not going to spill the beans about how well your books are going to do, but I will say this: Write the books the way you think they should be written, and don’t agonize about it too much. Whether you succeed or fail, you’ll at least be doing it on your own terms.
Okay, that wasn’t the last. Here’s the last: You’ve worked pretty hard to get to this spot, but you’re going to have to work even harder to stay there.
1) The Avengers in 15 minutes. <-- FUNNY 2) The best Google search term ever.
3) To celebrate their 50th anniversary, Lego has created a life-size forest. via bedii
4) Superhero Economics: The Batman v Spider-man
5) Non-Euclidean Legos! Very cool.
She has notes for me (of course) but they are surprisingly light. And there’s no rush.
Can I just let out a huge PHEW! here? It’s sort of an odd book, and I’m glad she’s enthusiastic about it.
Now to work on King Khan so I can start Epic Fantasy With No Dull Parts 2.
1) If you’ve played Minecraft, this will crack you up. Assuming you have a soul. Non-Minecraft players might also be amused. Video.
2) A picture book you hope you’ll never have to give to a little kid in your life.
4) What filesharing studies really say.
5) R-rated movies re-imagined as children’s books.
6) I’ve never worn a hoodie, but I’d be tempted by this, no matter how stupid I’d look.
7) Investors sue movie producers for fraud over “One of the Greatest Box Office Flops of All Time”
I was in the second grade when I discovered epic fantasy, and I discovered it through Lloyd Alexander. Our school teacher had a shelf of books we could borrow, and being a fan of Dr. Shock’s Mad Theater and Horror Theater (old-fashioned host-in-makeup monster movie shows back in the Philly area–yes, I’m old) I really wanted to read The Black Cauldron.
But it was part of a series, which we were required to read in order, so I picked up The Book of Three first. It was my first exposure to epic fantasy and I loved it. I’ve never looked back.
That’s why I backed this Kickstarter project: It’s a documentary on the author’s life, and I’d really like to see it funded. If his books meant something to you, too, take a look. It might be something you’d like to support as well.
I’m about to respond to a post that’s nearly a week old so that makes me totally behind the times, right?
I’m always behind on everything.
Anyway, last week N.K. Jemisin wrote a post about magic making sense (her take: it shouldn’t have to because it’s magic and not science). I think it’s a great post and I agree with much of what she says. There must be space in the genre for magic that is inexplicable, that is ill-defined or not truly understood.
Yeah, I know: the natural first response is to assert that magic needs limits because hey, if everything is possible, nothing is interesting (check out the first comment on Jemisin’s post). But that’s not the same thing at all. Yes, magic can be mysterious or non-rational without being omnipotent. It’s just a matter of how it’s written.
To be clear, I don’t think we should do away with so-called “mechanistic” magic. I haven’t tossed my Pat Rothfuss books into the donation bin, after all, and I certainly enjoy that Harry Potter fellow. But I continually see an emphasis on the rules and limits of this magic “system” or that one–or even the idea that there has to be a specific system–and I agree that too much emphasis is put on it.
The one place I disagree with Jemisin’s post is where she lays the blame for this at the feet of Dungeons and Dragons. First, the idea that magic was a super-complicated but vaguely-mechanical process where people drew certain symbols, said certain works, used certain objects with the plan to get a specific outcome predates Gary Gygax’s great-great-grandfather. Hell, Conjure Wife beat The Players’ Handbook by a couple of decades.
Which isn’t to say that D&D hasn’t had influence. It most definitely has. I mean, it’s a fun game and a lot of folks in the genre play it, how could it not have an effect?
But I think the real culprit here is science fiction.
SF and F have been lumped together for years, with science fiction getting most of the respect and cultural cachet while fantasy gets most of the sales. They’re in an odd relationship, with a lot of crossover among the readers and writers, and from what I can tell as an outsider to fandom, devoted science fiction fans largely holds fantasy in contempt.
Fantasy is “playing tennis with the net down”. It’s supposed to be anti-progress, pro-monarchy, reactionary, irrational… blah blah blah. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that, if that’s the tenor of the conversation inside that community, it’s no surprise that fantasy readers and writers would start to adopt the idea that the best sort of fantasy would be “hard.”
Since I’ve been online, I’ve seen two separate movements to push so-called “hard fantasy.” The first was fantasy that stuck close to the original folklore. The second was fantasy with world-building that felt so solid you “knew that the sewers worked”.
Both times it came up I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would want to emulate a niche genre like hard science fiction. My best guess–once again, talking as an outsider here, so I am open to correction–is a version of Stockholm Syndrome.
Still: more of the numinous! Less talk about “magic systems.”
Regarding the book giveaway: The response has been amazing. Thanks, you guys. The winner, selected by a roll of many-sided dice, is Mark Martinez. Your book will be thrown into the U.S. Postal Service in a few days.
Thanks again.
