words

Pushing the Envelope in Urban Fantasy

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The book I’m reading right now (without much enthusiasm, I must say–it was published in 2008 and includes a glossary of Yiddish words at the front. Am I such a dumbass that I do no know what tuckus means? Or chutzpah? This book thinks I am) is very safe and uninteresting. The book next in queu just the opposite.

I’ve mentioned that I’m a slow reader–I often don’t get to a new book in time to help promote a new release with a positive review; yes, I’m useless that way. The next book on my tbr list is the first Amanda Feral novel, Happy Hour of the Damned, which author Mark Henry once described as “Undead bitches eat people.”

So… anti-hero! Also humor that pushes people’s buttons, risks offense, dares to be outrageous–Actually, let’s just say, as the subject header reads, “pushes the envelope.”

So I read with interest this writeup of the new book on the B&N forums. Is the book tasteless? Offensive?

The author himself talks about the difficult things he’s done, including working with the mentally ill and “medically fragile” populations, and how so much cynical and dark humor comes from a place of grief and self-protection.

It’s very interesting, especially in a genre like UF, which is becoming more formulaic all the time. What new things can writers try? How can they break through reader expectations to create something new?

I’m damn tempted to toss my current novel aside and jump to the next in line.

Randomness for 3/12

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This is my 666th post on my WordPress blog. Continue reading… if you dare!

1) Would you recognize Der Fuehrer?

2) Money as motivation: “It’s certainly true that motivated workers need to feel that they are being paid fairly and adequately. Pink’s thesis, however, is that beyond that threshold, performance bonuses may actually be counterproductive, particularly when the work requires initiative, judgment and creativity.” The article directly addresses Wall St bonuses, but it covers a lot of other interesting ground, too. I have the referenced book on hold for my wife, but maybe I should read it, too.

3) How to make an origami swan.

4) Nathan Bransford’s Choose Your Own E-Book Adventure.

5) A pseudonymous TV writer/producer on Florida’s new morality restrictions on filmmaking in the state. This link will expire within the next two weeks. Update: Link dead.

6) Korean man marries pillow. In all my life, I never thought I would be in a position to type a sentence like that, but this is the internet age, and we must share all manner of human oddity.

7) New book reveals evidence that infamous French hallucination epidemic was actually CIA LSD experiment. In school I did a report on MKUltra, but I never heard of this incident before (not surprising, since so many of the MKUltra files were destroyed.

The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

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Great title, innit?

Let’s say you’re reading a spy novel, and Our Hero is running for his life, having been framed as a traitor by someone “in the agency.” Flee! Find clues! Reveal truth! And let’s imagine that Our Hero discovers that there’s a shadowy agency within the agency, and that the person who betrayed him is his own partner!

Or, what if you had a fantasy about a farmboy who visits a fortune teller. “You have a great destiny,” the fortune teller informs him. “A terrible Darkness gathers in the West! You must find your true father!” The farmboy’s parents tell him it’s true–he was a foundling. The farmboy sets out for the big city to fulfill his destiny and find his biological father (Could it be… the king?)

Or you’re reading a mystery novel, and there’s one character who is so shifty and unlikeable that he seems very likely to be the killer. However, what do you find out at the end? The killer was someone else altogether!

So, these are conventions of the genres: the red herring suspect, the farmboy of royal lineage, the traitorous partner, and many others. In a way, they’re part of the basic appeal of the genres (although long time readers may grow weary of seeing them all the time). To outsiders, though, the appeal falls flat. It’s a bit like seeing a model dressed in a fetish outfit; you know it’s supposed to appeal to someone, but that someone ain’t you.

That’s how I felt reading through The Mystic Art…; I kept coming across things that I knew were supposed to intrigue me, but came across as flat. For instance, imagine you have a protagonist with a Terrible Mysterious Tragedy in his past. No one speaks directly about the TMT for a good portion of the book, building the mystery around it as the character struggles with the dysfunction that governs his whole life.

What you find out, though, is that the protagonist is a former elementary school teacher. In L.A. And he refuses to ride the bus.

Now, with those three clues, I imagine most of us can come up with a TMT that would be wholly generic and uninteresting… and you’d match what happened to the character in the book. It’s weird, because there’s so much build up to it and so much tension around it that the reveal left me feeling cheated. That’s it? The farmboy is really a prince?

But that convention isn’t supposed to be innovative, because the book is serving a different kind of audience. At least, it seems to be. When I open a novel and see that the dialog has no quotes around it–all dialog is a separate paragraph marked with an em-dash at the front–I mark it down as aiming for a literary audience.

And don’t get me wrong; it’s a terrific book. The protagonist started out so contemptuous and unlikeable that I nearly put the book down after the first 20 pages. I’m glad I didn’t have other reading material handy because I got past the nastiness and fell right into the protagonist’s story. The dialog is amazing. The characters are textured and three-dimensional. There’s something of a crime/noirish plot that doesn’t really come off, but that’s not the strong part of the book.

The best parts are the scenes where the characters dig into their families. Dysfunction, emotional abuse, neglect, screwed-up power dynamics… it was all there, and I loved it. If you have a taste for damaged characters trying to be a little less damaged, pick up a copy. It’s powerful stuff. Buy the book at Indiebound.org

Pleasant things

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A neighborhood library branch (not mind) is having a writers event tonight. It’s some sort of reading and talk, along with an open mike. I was seriously tempted to go, just to see what it was like. If it was fun and well-attended, I would have introduced myself to the library staff and offered myself for future events.

Then I decided to run the authors’ names through a search engine. They’re all poets.

Just typing that make me shudder a bit. I don’t know if anyone out there has ever heard a poet reading their work on, say, NPR, but they always have the same unnatural, deadening cadence. Gah! Instead, I will go home to my family, share dinner with them, and maybe watch the last of the NOVA dvds we picked up at the library (“The Last Extinction!”). That will be pleasant.

You know what else is pleasant? Woolgathering for a new book. Everything is still made of potential and none of the characters have turned up dead in a burning orphanage. Yet.

Seven followup notes on previous topics

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1) As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve finished my agent’s revisions to Man Bites World. I have, in my backpack, a printed copy of the latest version. My agent prefers to read on paper, so I’ll be (priority) mailing a copy to her over lunch.

2) With luck, she’ll declare it ready to submit sometime next week. Without luck, she’ll point out a glaring problem I failed to address sufficiently or introduced in this draft, and there will be more changes make. Hopefully, I’ll have luck.

3) Have I mentioned this book was due on September 1st?

4) I won’t be attending Norwescon after all. My application materials were never received (which is probably my fault, somehow), and although they generously offered to squeeze me into a panel or two I decided not to go at all. I’ve spent the last several weekends working all day long on MBW, which means it’s way past time to stop skimping on Family Day. My wife and son have been neglected for too long. I’m thinking we should go to the Air and Space Museum–I moved to Seattle in 1989 and I’ve still never been. My first sf convention will have to be some other event.

5) 1989? Jesus, I’ve been here a long time.

6) I voted for SFWA leadership, but I’ve thrown away my Nebula ballot. Of everything nominated, movies included, Boneshaker is the only thing I’ve read or seen. No, I haven’t seen the rebooted STAR TREK or AVATAR or DISTRICT 9 or whatever. The short fiction is largely online, but I don’t like reading fiction on my computer screen.

What’s more, it felt like an obligation that I just don’t care about. I find myself doing these things once in a while–a couple weeks ago I made a stab at spreading word that I’m eligible for a particular award, but I felt stupid during and after, and I’m not doing it anymore. I’m not condemning people who self-pimp for awards–that’s their choice and I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t read those posts or click those links, but whatever.

7) Having finished this latest version of book three, I rewarded myself by getting a full eight hours of sleep last night. Crazy, I know! Tomorrow I’ll be getting up at my usual Unbearable O’clock to work on the goof for Project Number Next. I have no contract for this one and no clue if it’s a good idea or not (only that it intrigues me and would be refreshingly different than the Twenty Palaces books).

You know what feels best about this, though? No one knows a thing about this project but me.

Sales Rankings

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My agent has asked me to stop looking at Child of Fire’s sales rankings on Amazon.com. She knows I know that they don’t really mean anything, but she also knows that it’s one of the few tools a writer has to see how the book is doing. Are sale trending upward? Is interest fading away? How does it compare to book X, released at the same time (which is never always fun)?

Her point (and, as always, it’s a good one) is that Amazon.com isn’t representative of certain kinds of book sales. It doesn’t match well with them and I shouldn’t even distract myself with it because it could be suggesting something that’s the opposite of what’s really going on. And I’ve taken her advice. I only visit the Amazon.com page to see if there’s a new review, although I sometimes will accidentally allow my gaze to fall on the ranking. Oops! Utterly meaningless!

The reason it’s been easy to kick the Amazon.com sales ranking habit is that I found a new, better form of crack. See, Random House has a nice list of books on their website, and if I click “science fiction/fantasy” right there in the left sidebar, they will automatically sort them by how well they’re selling that week. And, since they only update once a week, I’m not tempted to obsess

Currently, I’m on page 20 out of 99 of all Random House sf/f. Not bad (probably)! The top slots are almost always Laurell K. Hamilton, Star Wars novels and Farenheit 451. Me, I’ve been as far back and page 30, and as far forward as 12 (I wish I’d known about this when my book first came out).

And of course, I always have to click back one more page so I can trash talk the books trailing me in the list. “Eat my DUST, Stephen R. Donaldson! With your 30-something year old novel that’s still selling strong! How do you like the bottoms of my shoes! HAH!”

I consider this healthy.

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.

Randomness for 3/4

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1) Admiral Akbar leading the votes to become new sports mascot at Ole Miss. Shockingly, this particular “rebel” has students threatening to transfer if he shows up at games. Because that’s what important about college: the sports mascot.

2) Major retailers caught selling used lingerie. Oh, Victoria’s Secret, you’re so sexy!

3) Another way to lower health care costs. Quote: “Only about half of patients who are prescribed a medication for a chronic condition are still taking the drug regularly after a year, says Daniel Touchette, assistant professor of pharmacy practice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.”

4) Comic artist accused of copying another artist, with added moral complications. Lightbox ftl.

5) All 137 years of Popular Science Magazine in a searchable online format.

6) Quote of the day: “The problem with hockey is that everyone has a stick.” From http://www.postcardsfromyomomma.com/

7) Movies condensed into six-panel comics. Spoilers for various and sundry.

As a followup to my previous post

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That comment I made about sending a book to a reader who has a grandmom with a blog? Totally not a joke. So I’ll have a contest. Post a link to your grandmother’s[1] blog and I’ll mail you a copy of Child of Fire, anywhere in the world. I’ll look at all the blogs, and whoever posts the most interesting one will win (Yes, I have Sekrit Reezinz for this).

Additionally, I’d ask that you review the book yourself online–positively or negatively, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s an honest opinion.

[1] It does not have to be your actual grandmother. Or a real grandmother at all. Just post a link to an interesting blog written by a woman over 65–it could be your own!–and you can consider yourself entered.

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.