It’s that time of year again (5 links)

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The stellar bluejays and hummingbirds are back. To celebrate, here are some links.

A pretty cool book trailer for A Madness of Angels. Check it out.

Writers get so much respect: here’s a job opening for a screenwriter/office assistant. Because what you really want for your films is a writer who can answer phones in a professional manner.

How professional athletes lose all their money. I’m so going to use this in my current book.

Amazon rank. Hey, folks. If you’re looking for a good alternative to Amazon.com, consider Indiebound.org. They’re an online ordering system for a network of independent bookstores. When you order a book from them, the sale goes to an independent near you. And it’s not just books, either.

Finally, the Kinda Sutra. A short, partially-animated film about the screwed-up ways people are taught about sex. I think it’s SFW, but you might have different situation.

State of the Writer (and the writing, too)

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Taxes are done. Yesterday, I emptied most of our CD to cover the check (which is why I opened that CD in the first place) but it’s not going to be a hardship. We’ve been socking it away, just the way the internet recommends.

Page proofs are done. I actually finished them yesterday morning, and spent today’s writing time scanning the corrected pages and backing them up. If something goes wrong with the usps, I’ll have pages to resend or email. Paranoid? Moi?

Tomorrow I start back in on Everyone Loves Blue Dog, and I have to admit I had a little epiphany about one of the notes I’ve been getting. There’s a secondary character who’s not as… vivid as some of the others, and folks keep asking me to bring her out more.

For me, the problem is that she’s a reserved person and a bit of a cipher–she changes her outward personality to match the situation, and she doesn’t want to be too noticeable.

Earlier this week, I had a revelation while I was reading Bill Martell’s blog Sex in a Submarine (which is not a take on the SNAKES ON A PLANE film from a couple years back–the name of the blog comes from an entirely different clusterfuck). Bill writes low-budget movies, and one thing he’s always talking about is the pressure of getting a recognizable name for the front of the DVD box. It’s very difficult to market a movie without one.

What Bill does (and he talks about this often) is create a “confined cameo.” It’s a role for a name actor to play, with several scenes spread across the movie, but which all take place in a single location. So you have a general giving orders back at the command center, or the sexy barista at the corner coffee shop. Or whatever. The name actor has several scenes, but they can all be shot in a day or two because they’re all on the same set.

And while that keeps the price for that actor down, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll sign them. For that, you have to also make sure that it’s a juicy role. The actors are looking for ways to show their range and their skills.

I feel a little like a dummy. I spent so long studying screenwriting as a way to tell stories, but I never tried to translate this lesson from that form to fiction. Obviously, the character everyone wants to be stronger doesn’t need a confined cameo, but she does deserve a juicy, personality-defining scene–something that would startle and excite an actor reading for the part.

Now I just have to come up with one.

Finally, folks may have heard that Amazon.com has decided to stop listing certain “adult” materials on their best-seller lists, and the means to read that end was that they would no longer show sales rankings.

And one of the ways they defined “adult” was “gay.” Even YA novels with gay characters were too “adult” to be listed.

How could they be so stupid, you ask? I have no clue. See this post by an author affected by the change to read Amazon.com’s response, and Dear Author weighs in on the romance writers who’ve been affected, and finally here’s the start of a link farm to check out.

Proofs question

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Do other people stet their own corrections? I mean, make a correction on the proof, then decide that change is utterly stupid, scribble it out and write “stet” next to it?

Please answer yes.

I’m so damn tired I feel a little sick

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I really shouldn’t still be up. In fact, a smart person would have gone to bed two hours ago.

Not me. I’ve been zoning out in front of the TV–I haven’t even had time to read all the online stuff I’m supposed to read.

Ah well. Tomorrow morning I will finish the page proofs and maybe take it a little easy. I’ll skim through my sorta-final-I-should-be-so-lucky revision of Everyone Loves Blue Dog and dabble at it, then pop over to the library for some quality wireless internet time. That’ll catch me up.

Meanwhile, check out this comment from SF archivist Lynn Thomas (aka: rarelylynne on LJ) all about the best ways to organize and archive your writing work.

Meanwhile, it’s after 10:30 here, and I’m wiped. I’m going to bed before I pass out on my keyboard.

Proofs and Galleys

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As it turns out, I really will be going to San Diego Comic-Con. It’s not tentative at all anymore (barring personal or non-personal disaster). At this point I’m waiting for word on whether I’ll be going as a pro or not, then I can buy my plane tickets.

The proofs are interesting. I’m making many fewer corrections than I anticipated, and not because I’m told I’ll be charged for them if I make too many. I’d pay double for the corrections I’m making, whatever they charge.

And did you know Sheetrock is trademarked, just like Dumpster? Man, does that look dorky on the page.

Also, I have to remember that characters don’t need to break the same window twice within seven sentences. Once in plenty. (For some of these fixes, I’d pay triple.)

Finally, I have about 50 pages left and the sucker will be done. I expect to finish it tomorrow. Then everything about the book will be finished except for the hawking.

Making Marriage Work–John Gottman

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Some years ago, John Gottman video taped couples to examine the way they behaved with each other. He claims he learned to tell, with a 94% accuracy, whether a relationship would last or whether the couple would break up.

What makes a strong, long-lasting relationship? Listen to the talk he gave a the Speaker’s Forum in Seattle to find out more.

It’s great stuff.

I’m sure no one will find this the least bit upsetting…

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Texas state lawmaker Betty Brown (R), during a debate on a voter ID bill, suggests that Asian-Americans ought to change their names to something “simpler” so they will be easier to pronounce.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?”

Man, those Asian-Americans! Always making things hard for real Americans.

The video is here. Money quote! The expert’s response to a particularly dopey question: “Well, there aren’t a lot of elections in China.”

In defending Brown’s comments, her spokesman Jordan Berry blamed–who else?–Democrats. ““They want this to just be about race.”

Query/Agent Fail (long)

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So many people have spent the last two weeks talking about queryfail and agentfail that I can’t bear to ignore it any longer.

If you want a little background , Making Light has a fine linkfarm on queryfail right here. As for agentfail, it took place right here.

Prefer a short summary? Several agents spent one day on Twitter posting all the queries they received that were full of fail, in one way or another. Snark was involved.

Many writers got pissed off and promised various kinds of retaliation, such as not querying those agents ever again. In response, we had agentfail, a post on the Bookends blog where writers could gripe about everything they hate about agents.

And man, it goes on and on. Over 300 posts right now.

Now, I don’t have much to say about queryfail. Is it a good idea for professionals to gripe publicly and sarcastically about the awful business solicitations they receive? Maybe not. But they did, and for everyone out there trying to create a solid query letter, it was an opportunity to learn something. Maybe a painful something, but still.

The agentfail comment section, though, is a disaster. I simply do not understand why writers gripe about the way agents reject them. So many people seem to think (at this point I’m basically rewriting a comment I made on Justine Larbalestier’s blog) they are the customers in this relationship.

“Too impersonal!” “I didn’t hear back quickly enough!” “I heard back too quickly–she didn’t spend enough time on me!” “I wanted more help!” “I never heard back!”

Sometimes I just want to blow an air horn and, in the ensuing quiet, explain that writers are not the customers. They’re artists/craftspeople with something to sell.

It’s really not complicated. A query letter is a sales document–an attempt to interest a book lover in your book. If the answer is “No,” then that’s the answer. Venting about it online certainly isn;t going to get you closer to a “Yes.”

But I understand that it hurts. Rejection sucks. I’ve been furious, despondent and… actually, furious and despondent pretty much covers it. Here’s the thing, though: I can control everything that happens right up to the point I drop a story or query letter into a mail box. I can’t control what an agent is going to say or do. I can’t force them to like my work. All I can do is work like crazy to write something they can’t resist.

And that’s what I wish more people would focus on. Put your energy and attention into the things you can control–your writing and your behavior. Brush off, as best you can, the things you can’t control. In fact, it’s damn useful to pretend those things you can’t control don’t even exist.

Inborn talent? Doesn’t exist. Agent’s sour stomach when she reads your query? Doesn’t exist. Market failures or saturation? Doesn’t exist. Luck? Doesn’t exist. All that exists is what you can do and what you can learn.

And there’s a lot to learn, because it turns out that almost everything those people were complaining about have perfectly reasonable justifications.

For instance: Ginger Clark explains why she only responds to queries she’s interested in. I mean… Cripes, reading that makes me a little sick inside. Seriously. One thing I’ve spent a lot of energy on was the idea that my personal emotional responses to the world are the “correct” ones–in other words, that people should be upset by the things that upset me, or they should shrug off the things I shrug off.

That’s taken me some time, but calling an agent an asshole because she rejected your query is inexcusable. Worse, it’s poison–for you, for the agent, and for everyone else trying to break in.

And the wannabe who struck an agent off her query list because she blogs about her dog (and other personal topics)? Get some perspective. Just because a person is an agent doesn’t mean they don’t have lives of their own. Remember when you were a kid and you ran into one of your teachers at a movie theater or summer fair? Remember how weird it was to see them outside the context you were accustomed to? Yeah. Take a hint from that memory.

So, don’t act like a customer. Don’t freak out about things you can’t control. Learn everything you can about the business. Treat every rejection as a goad to improve your work. Nurse your wounds in private (meaning: with your loved ones).

Jeez, that’s kinda long. I probably should cut it down or something, but my lunch break is over.

eep!

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I may be attending the San Diego Comic Con this year, signing the galleys they’re giving away and possibly going to an author/bookseller party.

IIIEEEE!!

Hey, want to see some page proofs?

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I have permission from my editor to post the first couple of pages of my proofs online. For those out there who have never seen them (like me before last Thursday) click on the link below, if you’re curious.

Assuming the cut works. (eta: it works!)

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