1) The fully compiled results of Jim Hines’s First Novel Survey.
2) Marriage vs. PhD. via @ccfinlay.
3) I’m sure this guy can get a divorce at the same court appearance when his wife gets her conviction.
4) President Obama’s Facebook page, HCR edition. “I smell Democrat.”
5) Literary troll is trollish.
6) What can surprise Werner Herzog? “It’s not a serious wound.”
7) The future of text?. They’d like you to think so.
I’m going to post a couple sentences I just corrected in my latest draft of Man Bites World. See, I always give a copy to my wife to read. She’s severely dyslexic, and if I screw up a sentence she can’t just glide over it. She also catches plot dumbosity. For now though, a sentence or two:
“Take of this, would you, Ray?”
which of course is missing the word “care”, making it sound as though Rays reluctantly taking communion.
Remind sometime me to tell you the story of how I got into this life
Apparently, Yoda makes an appearance in this book.
Finally:
I made long vertical slashes six inches apart, then I stepped up onto the ceiling and did the same to it.
No, Ray doesn’t really become Spider-man in this book.
Now I get to go to bed and stare at the ceiling, imagining all the screwy sentences we’ve missed.
1) I finished up chapter one of Key/Egg/Remark this morning. Actually, I was slightly late to day job because of it. But doesn’t it feel good to start a new project? Hell yes. I’ve been writing Ray Lilly stories for years (and I hope to write more of them–buy my book) but it’s such a relief to go into another voice, another setting, another tone.
2) And yeah, as the previous point demonstrates, I have a working title for the next project. The plan is for it to be lighter in tone, much less violent, much more conversational, and slightly closer to the urban fantasy mainstream (although tweaked in the ways I like to tweak things–most of the characters, and especially the villains, will be human beings). I hope the working title does what it’s supposed to do, which is keep the tone light and the story clever; it’s too easy for me to go dark.
3) A few weeks ago, someone pointed out that Kindle owners were putting one-star reviews on books that didn’t have a Kindle edition, or that were priced above ten bucks. The reviewers even said, in the review, that they hadn’t read the book and weren’t going to until the price and format were to their liking. I clicked the “report this” button and within a few days the review was gone.
Well, Amazon.com has stopped taking those reviews down. I guess it’s because they think those angry Kindlegarteners are doing something useful for them. They could, if they wanted to, limit reviews to people who have bought the book from them. They could, if they wanted to, post a request in the forums asking people to stop, and to use the link under “Tell the Publisher!” But they won’t.
Because they’re dicks.
4) Back to items one and two: Key/Egg/Remark is totally on spec right now. I haven’t even run the idea by my agent yet. In truth, I suspect it has some… let’s call them “non commericial elements”
Am I a fucking moron? You bet! But it’s what I want to do. And rather than talk about the idea with my agent, I’d like to try to win her over with the story.
God, I’m an idiot. I should just write a steampunk YA about a teenage inventor and track star who teams up with his roboticized girlfriend to steal a military dirigible and raids an arctic lab to recover her human body. And the villain would have an implanted monocle-like eye piece and a hyper-intelligent talking cat who switches sides at the last minute.
5) I forgot to mail my taxes today. Duh. I’ll do it tomorrow.
I’d like to thank everyone for giving their input on the title. It’s appreciated.
1) This makes a school bus trip seem like a delight. Actually, I’d probably homeschool.
2) Guys who pay women to play video games with them.
4) And, as an antidote to those of you who were annoyed by the critique of police procedure in CASTLE: A show that get’s the procedure right. FYI, I don’t post these links to harsh peoples’ buzz on their favorite shows; there’s a lot to learn here for writers and readers.
If you saw this:
A KEY, AN EGG, AN UNFORTUNATE REMARK
as a book’s title, what inferences would you draw about the content of the novel?
This book has a better sales ranking than mine.
In my continuing attempts to be useful to people, here are three things I’m glad I know.
1) If you feel the urge to sneeze but need to hold it back (because, say, your beloved spouse is sleeping right there in the room with you), tickle the roof of your mouth with your tongue. It won’t prevent every sneeze, and sometimes it will only delay it, but it works.
2) If you are sick of having the whole roll of aluminum foil pop out of the box when you pull on it, check the sides of the box. There should be a bit of perforated cardboard there. Just punch it in so it sticks into the center of the roll and the problem is solved.
3) This I got from an emergency room doc (who posted it online–I didn’t go to the hospital for it): if you have persistent hiccups, here are three steps to stopping them. First, take a tsp of sugar. That should stop 95% of hiccups. If it doesn’t work, try remedy two: half-tsp of salt. That covers up to 98%. If neither of those work, go with one tsp of vinegar. That should polish off the last two percent.
I should mention that I’ve never had that three-step remedy fail. The only iffy part is getting my son to take it.
2) “… Bloggers aren’t real writers…”
3) The Strange Sad Death of Alan MacDonald.
4) How to take surreptitious photos on the planet Belvedere.
5) The lonely life of a super-hero.
6) Casting call for Pirates of the Caribbean 4: No fake boobs.
I was going to drop this into the latest random link compilation, but it’s too cool to be buried there. Check out this news report on a story from more than fifty years ago in Scotland.
Yes, hundreds of children hunting vampires in a graveyard after dark–a vampire “with iron teeth” no less.
The story ideas that little news piece prompts are undeniable. The two simplest ideas would be to tell it from the POV of one of the children, if only for the chance to write about kids high on adrenaline because they’re doing something forbidden and dangerous. Some other writer might be able to write it from the POV of the vampire as it’s being hunted, frightened by the attention being drawn to it and indignant at being threatened by children.
It’s the POV of the parents that I find most interesting, naturally. A village where every kid has to be home by dark, and no one will talk about the local undead nasty, but what happens when the little ones find out on their own, and decide to be heroes?
I wonder if I can steal this for my next project.
