Worldbuilders

The auction for The Wooden Man and the ghost knife prop has ended but the Worldbuilders fundraiser will continue until February 7th. It’s a lottery system; for every $10 you donate, you get a chance to win any one of hundreds of prizes.

Most are books, signed by the author. Some are ARCs of unreleased novels. Some are graphic novels. Look at this!

An ARC of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust
A “Best of” collection by Caitlin R. Kiernan
A full set of Tad William’s SHADOWMARCH
An ARC of Seanan McGuire’s newest novel

And much, much more stuff.

What’s more 50% of your donations will be matched.

Don’t miss your chance for some terrific books.

Twenty Palaces fading

Twenty Palaces, the prequel to Child of Fire and the other Twenty Palaces novels has been doing fairly well in online sales, but the numbers are going down, as I expected.

I often have people tell me that the series will become popular once enough people find out about it, but the numbers say otherwise. When I see writers posting about their self-publishing success, the month-by-month numbers always go up. Yeah, I know: December. Also: First month of release of a book with a built-in audience.

Still, January sales are less than half what they were the month before, and they’re slower at the end of the month than the beginning. What’s more, Del Rey still has Child of Fire at the 99 cent price point.

If the series was ever going to take off, it would have happened by now. I’ve decided that is vindication for my decision to move on. We’ll see how the next thing does.

Much ado about fifth edition D&D

So much ado, in fact, that Forbes Magazine even did a piece on the new “crowd-sourced” rule set.

Me, I was disappointed that this was the big news. For a long time now, I’ve been waiting to hear that Wizards would work out a licensing deal with Lego to create a Dungeons and Dragons line of figures, with swappable accessories and armor. Hell, they already have many of the humanoid creatures. How hard could it be to create a few Yuan-Ti, amirite? And everyone would buy a Lego beholder, just because.

I mentioned this to my son, and he immediately began to put together a tableau. Here are some high-level heroes taking on a red dragon and its minions.

Skeleton kebob!

More pictures at the flickr set.

By the time you read this, my internet fast will have begun

It’ll just be a few days. I have a couple of blog posts scheduled to go up, so there’ll be something to read here, but I won’t be doing much responding.

On obsessing over email and twitter

It’s amazing how deep I can get into checking email over and over, not to mention refreshing my Twitter client. The deadly thing about Twitter is that it contains links. Many, many links of tremendous interest, and before I know it, an hour has passed.

With emails, it’s more complicated, but there are some things I need to respond to right away and I feel guilty about waiting. These are not good choices.

Anyway I did a little test: I promised myself I would do 300 words before I checked email again. I turned off my wifi, wrote 500 words instead, then got back online.

No emails had come in. On Twitter, I had 11 new tweets, two as part of a conversation I was having. It took me all of three minutes to get through them, and I was ready for another 500 words.

In this way, empires are built.

Reminder: 24 hours left

Pat Rothfuss is auctioning off a signed copy of The Wooden Man to benefit his Worldbuilders fundraiser, and to sweeten the deal, I’ve included a ghost knife–the only ghost knife prop I kept from the book trailer shoot.

And there’s only 24 hours left to bid.

The “Implied” Author

Posited: When a critic says “George R.R. Martin is a conservative authoritarian who believes monarchy is a great system of government,” they’re not referring to the real George R.R. Martin. They’re talking about an imaginary George R.R. Martin they dreamed up while reading one of his books. If you confuse the real GRRM with that imaginary one solely because the critic is referring to the imaginary one with by the real author’s name, that’s only because you’re insufficiently knowledgeable about criticism.

I’m agnostic about whether this is true or not, but if it is, that rule would be just as stupid as if it’s a made up thing.

By the way, if you’re not reading James Nicoll’s LJ and comment section, you’re missing out.

Five Things on a Friday

1) I have a number of things to take care of in the upcoming week, so I will be offline for much of that time. I have some posts that are scheduled to go up, but I’m going to be focusing on family and my WIP.

2) Often times, when I’m online, I don’t have access to all my online “stuff.” Sometimes I’m on Twitter but not email. Sometimes I’m online but not ready to reply to a comment on my LJ. Don’t ride me about that, please. Everyone controls their online time in the ways they think are best.

3) I like asparagus with my breakfast. I also need to create a new map for my WIP. These things are not related in any way.

4) I have figured out the “ending” of my book, and my word counts are going to start piling up again. Hopefully the time coming up this week will allow me to finish by the end of next month.

5) My son wanted to play Neverwinter Nights, so we started it up. (I “received” the anthology for Getmas, which means I bought it for myself and thanked my family for their thoughtfulness.) He played it for his entire computer time, and he really enjoyed it. Watching the LOTR movies has given him a love of dwarven fighters. After he finished, he asked me to take a turn. And omg, I really like it and want to be playing it again right now. I recognize this feeling and I fear it. Computer games can make me obsessive, so I’m hopeful that I can keep this thing at arm’s length.