Writer's Grove

For the uninitiated—and a reminder for everyone—I just do these to share what I’m reading because I’m a happy nerd who can’t stop himself from geeking out in public. You can assume I’m going to like these books without me delving into details. Now that I’m an author, I feel kind of squidgy about critiquing the writing of others. (The exception to this is Charles Dickens. He deserves every critique I can muster.) I do occasionally put something up on Goodreads, but these are usually exceptional bits of praise; you shouldn’t expect me to smack anyone down (apart from the aforementioned Mr. Dickens). These are books I’ve either spent my own dough on or I’ve specifically requested from the Holy Vault o’ Sci-Fi/Fantasy Treasure at Del Rey/Spectra, which is guarded by two gnome paladins and an editorial assistant named Mike. So here’s what I’m enjoying these days:

You might notice that this particular composition is profoundly lacking in fruit. There is an excellent reason for this: I need to go to the grocery store. But I found a jar of this jelly substance in the fridge called Simply Fruit, and apparently it’s composed of naught but smooshed strawberries and sugar, which is clearly the way nature intended us to eat strawberries. To balance things out, I put a cuppa hot chocolate in there. It has schnapps in it to make it edgy.

The books are all continuations of series I’ve been enjoying. The River of Shadows is the third book in Mr. Redick’s epic at sea. If you haven’t heard o’ him yet, start with The Red Wolf Conspiracy—and you’re welcome. :)

I just finished Moon Over Soho, the second book featuring Constable Peter Grant, a London copper who’s out to catch some mighty creepy buggers. You know how you get all worked up sometimes by the events in books or movies and you start talking to the characters like they can hear you? Like “GET OUT OF THERE OR YOU’RE GONNA DIE, YOU FOOL!” or “JUST NUKE IT!” or “WAIT FOR BACKUP, FOR THE LOVE O’ CHRIST!” There were a couple of those moments in this book and I scared the hell out of my wife when I shouted the first line unexpectedly in my house. That got me in a wee bit of trouble, because she was in another room and thought I might be talking to her. I had to explain that no, she wasn’t a fool, and if there was any danger to be faced in our home office then I would run in there to face it and not simply shout at her from a place of safety. I think this is a fun series.

Look at that cover for The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man! I freakin’ love it! I enjoyed The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack so I’m looking forward to this too. I think the chubby dude kind of looks like the Kingpin a little bit. What do you think? And what are you reading these days?

My publisher does this neato-schmeato thing where you can read the first fifty pages (or more) of selected books online. For FREE. It’s like grabbin’ a book off the shelf at the bookstore and just readin’ it for awhile, except without anybody walking by and asking if they can help you. And reading it at home is probably infinitely more comfy than standing in the fantasy section. I mean, you can fix yourself a sandwich and everything.

This sneak preview feature is called 50-Page Fridays, and as of this particular second, you can go on over to Scribd and read the first fifty-nine pages of HOUNDED for free! If you can’t make it over there today, no problem—it will still be there tomorrow (and for many moons afterward), STILL FREE. On Suvudu, they have a button at the top of the site page called 50-Page Fridays, and if you click on it you’ll see a whole list of books you can check out for free in addition to mine. Fabulous books, too, like Peter Brett’s The Desert Spear, The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V.S. Redick, and Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovich. There is also a little sidebar doohickey on the right side with the same title…find what you want, click, and read!

Enjoy! And I hope you make yourself a really good sandwich to go with it.

I’m probably a bit late to this particular game, but I console myself that plenty of people haven’t figured out cell phones yet and they have yet to hop on the Internet(s).

I’ve discovered Pandora. I read an article about the site in Rolling Stone months ago, but then forgot about it completely until my Twitter peep Hillary Jacques reminded me. I tried it out and DAMN. This is awesome.

I created a bunch of different stations and have been really surprised at the quality and variety of new music it pulls up, especially on a station I made based on Rodrigo y Gabriela. I really like to write to instrumentals because there aren’t any lyrics to distract me from the words trying to escape m’head. Guitar instrumentalists don’t get a lot of publicity, however, so I’ve never heard of most of the artists Pandora is pulling up. Coolest new find for me is Strunz and Farah; their music is a world beat sort of thing, some Middle Eastern rhythms mixed in with flamenco and other neato stuff.

Of course, I have also have a DragonForce station for those times I need to write fight scenes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym5TTqPY2sk&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1[/youtube]

Because of that station, I’ve learned about bands like Hammerfall and Kamelot. Kamelot’s latest album cover, Poetry for the Poisoned, is some pretty messed up stuff. I want to write a short story about these undead clockwork snake ladies:

Have you tried Pandora yet? Who have you discovered?

You know how every so often a series of coincidences will start to freak you out a little bit? Like, “Why is everyone talking about Scooby Snacks all of a sudden?” or “What is up with all these references to the use of Splenda in everyday kitchen magic?” One such series happened to me yesterday.

Apparently, the universe wants me to pay more attention to birds. So I’m giving them a blog post.

First, one of my Twitter peeps, A.B., turned me on to this site called Myths Retold where this dude takes old stories from mythology and retells them in crude English vernacular. They’re pretty funny, but fair warning, the language can get pretty foul. I read this one, which tells the story of how Tereus, Procne, and Philomela got turned into birds.

Then I drove up with the family to see my mom in Payson and we were playing “Which radio station is playing the least crappy music right now?” and came across three bird-related songs in a row. “I’m Like a Bird” by Nelly Furtado, followed by “Broken Wings” by Mister Mister (I KNOW!) and then “Down in a Hole” by Alice in Chains. If you’re wondering how that last song relates to birds, there’s a lyric in there that goes like this: “I’d like to fly/but my wings have been so denied.” SO denied, dude. I commented on this odd string of songs to my wife and she said, “Oh, yeah?” and I thought that was going to be the end of it—but it was only the beginning.

We drive up to my mom’s house and the first thing she says is, “I’m so glad you’re here! I need help refilling the bird feeders.” And she wasn’t kidding at ALL, because the birds were lurking in the trees and staring at us with tiny black Hitchcock eyes, waiting for us to get their grub on. She has four different bird feeders and different mixes of seed; one feeder just has this nasty stuff called suet inside, and it’s supposed to attract titmice (horrifying name there) and nuthatches. The nuthatches are kinda neat. They look like this:

The birds are going crazy in the trees while we’re filling up the feeders. They’re fighting over branches to perch on and chirping angrily at each other.
“No, I’M gonna eat first!”
“No way! You fell out of the nest!”
“Oh yeah? Your mom was a dodo!”
“So? Your mom was a titmouse!”

The deck in Payson is surrounded by shaggy-bark juniper and cedar trees. There are a couple of regular seed feeders, one that’s full of black flax seeds, a suet feeder, and a hummingbird feeder. All of’ ’em get love.

Once we were finished filling the feeders, I set up my computer on the deck there and enjoyed a beautiful day of writing while the birds swooped in for seed.

I saw a rufous sided towhee. They look like this and they’re darn pretty. I also saw a white crowned sparrow, which is a bit prettier than the common house sparrow I see all over the place. (And I love the picture at that link because the sparrow is nomming on a tasty bug of some kind.) There were black-headed grosbeaks and lesser goldfinches, and the hummingbird visitors were all broad-tailed hummingbirds, though I’ve seen other species there in the past.

I finished up that female POV short story and sent it off to my editor. We’ll see if it passes muster.

Today marks exactly one month until I’m officially published! Can you hear my squee? :)

Quick update: As expected, the release date for Hammered has been moved back as well, to July 5. I’m very sorry to delay the story a bit for everyone, but the reason for it is to help introduce Atticus to the widest possible audience. Barnes & Noble will have spiffy little cardboard display thingies (Alas! They are properly called book dumps) for each book now.

Apologies to book bloggers and readers who have been following along and waiting so patiently! The final, settled release dates are May 3 for Hounded, June 7 for Hexed, and July 5 for Hammered.

I first learned that Hounded‘s release date would be moved on February 23. A couple of weeks later I learned about Hexed. And now, on March 30, I learn about Hammered. I am not sure why it seems to take two weeks to make these moves, but I’m kind of enjoying not knowing. It is a delicious mystery that allows me to craft dramatic explanations. I imagine people in trench coats and pork pie hats making deals in posh restaurants, trading code phrases and surreptitiously handing over briefcases full of non-sequential unmarked bills. I tend to dwell on the code phrases.

“The carpet is smoother under the refrigerator,” one trench coat says. The reply is quick and biting.

“It’s shag carpet, you dumbass. There’s nothing smooth about shag carpeting.”

The identity of his contact thus confirmed, the first trench coat nods and says, “Right. So there’s this guy who wrote some books about a Druid living in modern-day Tempe. Can we get him a spiffy cardboard display thingie?”

Second trench coat replies, “We call them book dumps. But let’s order a bottle of something French and pretentious and have them slaughter a hog for us before we talk business.”

You can see why it might take two weeks in a situation like that. If I got to wear a trench coat and order pretentious French things at lunch, I’d take my time too. :)

I’m sure the truth is much more prosaic and entirely safe for hogs. It probably involves polite emails and contracts. Contracts make everything last longer, including gum, which is why I always chew a contract along with my Juicy Fruit.

Anyway, if you’ve pre-ordered any of the books, those are the real release dates now. Some booksellers are better than others about updating their sites to reflect this. Thanks again for your patience n’ understanding!

Since I’m not a “trained” writer, but rather a self-taught novelist, I never took the class where the teacher made me write outside of my comfort zone. I always “wrote what I knew” and “wrote what I wanted to read,” because I figured doing that well would be challenging enough without adding any extra obstacles.

But now I’m outside the ol’ zone. There are no sports. What I’m wearing suddenly matters. My beer is wondering what the hell I’m doing with that wine cooler in my hand. For reasons my conscious mind does not want to explore too deeply, I’m writing a short story from the first-person point of view…of a woman.

Now, maybe it’s not that big a deal for you, but it’s undiscovered country for me. I have plenty of female characters in my books, but they’re all filtered through my main character’s POV, and he’s male. I’m comfortable inhabiting his headspace. But the head of this new character is really different. I feel challenged, horrified, ebullient, seductive, empowered, and depressed all at once. Thinking like a woman is hard. Has anyone else tried switching teams like this? Is there a trick to it? How did it go?

Not sure how this one is going to turn out yet. If it goes well, you’ll be able to see the results at the end of June. :)

I generally look upon the traditional vs. self-published ebook debate as I would upon a pit of esurient alligators: once you get in the middle of it, you’re gonna get your ass chewed. I’ve been carefully avoiding the topic as a result, since I’m rather attached to my ass and would like to keep it a while longer.

Still, I thought I’d point out something that folks might start to see more of from the Big Six: bonus content. The Big Six aren’t going to be lowering their prices down to ninety-nine cents anytime soon. They might occasionally run limited-time specials on certain titles (like Orbit is doing right now with Nicole Peeler’s debut, Tempest Rising, sellin’ it for only $2.99), but they can’t afford to lowball everything and still pay the editors and spiffy cover artists and the utilities and such. So how do they compete? By giving ebook buyers a little extra bang for their buck. Del Rey is doing it with the ebook edition of Hounded, bundling two bonus short stories along with the novel for the same price.

One of those stories, “Clan Rathskeller,” is already up on my Goodies page for free. It’s gonna stay free for EVAR. The version being packaged with Hounded is only slightly tweaked in terms of some phrasing, because writers just can’t leave stuff alone until an editor says “ENOUGH!” but if you read the free version you’re not going to miss anything in terms of content. The other story, “Kaibab Unbound,” is a really neat little yarn that delves more deeply into Atticus’s relationship with elementals and his official duties as a Druid. Plus, there are naked witches! (Or, if you prefer, nekkid witches.) It takes place two weeks before the events of Hounded, so you get to see what Atticus’s life is like before his world goes kablooey.

I have no idea if the bonus content is going to make a difference in my sales or not. But I imagine that providing extra value in the ebook format is one strategy (among others) that traditional publishers will employ to compete against people offering their books for less than a buck. I doubt anyone knows yet whether it will be an effective strategy; all I’m saying here is you can expect to see more of this until publishers figure out if it does work. If it doesn’t, then bonus content will be rare; if it does, it’ll become de rigueur.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the appeal of bonus content—would it make you more likely to buy an ebook, or would it make no difference?

One of my favorite websites these days is Good Show Sir, a UK site dedicated to the absolute worst sci-fi and fantasy covers. The best bit about it is that the content is generated by random people snapping pictures of bad covers that they find in used bookstores. You can contribute too: take your camera phone next time you’re in a used bookstore and have a blast.

I am inordinately proud to have contributed to the site today. My submission of Red Flame Burning, which I found at Bookman’s in Mesa, is now up on the site, and I’m delighted that it’s rated as quite a good show indeed. When you submit, you get to have some fun imagining what the art director told the artist, or make some other pithy comment. And then, of course, people get to make all sorts of comments after that and pile on.

Want a practice one? Here’s the cover for In the Cube, a novel of FUTURE BOSTON!

See, apparently, in future Boston, several things have happened: mullets are back, Bill Belichek’s game plans (or something else equally valuable) are being stored in the Cube, and said Cube is guarded by a woman equipped with a Shoulder Mounted Assault Beaver. Also, there are no more bras.

Do you have a favorite bad cover—maybe one lurking on your own bookshelf, gathering dust?

Dudes. Once in a while, I cook. If you are like me, then you like a chicken wing now and then, and you like some decent heat but not so much that it destroys flavor and burns a hole in your stomach. And what you don’t like so much is the royal mess of buffalo wings. Sometimes the sauce is everywhere, makes the wings kinda mushy, and ruins with its texture what should be a tasty repast. So I’ve recently discovered the joy of wings with a dry rub on ’em instead of slippery sauces, and I’m here to share the love.

I use a chipotle rub—chipotles are dried, smoked jalapenos, so they’re flavorful and fairly mild in terms of heat. Get yourself two or three dried chipotle peppers and crush ’em up, then mix with a half teaspoon of the following: garlic powder, onion powder, salt, cumin, and coriander. Add a full teaspoon of paprika and pepper to taste. Melt  some unsalted butter—enough to coat a pound o’ wings—and then brush that onto the wings once you wash n’ pat ’em dry. Then you slap on your rub, deposit the lovelies on your grill (medium or medium high heat), and bam! You have tasty, crispy wings with no Sauce Apocalypse. You can pick up your beer glass without smearing it with orange goo. You can use one napkin instead of fifteen. And you can text without destroying your keyboard. It is the future of wings, my friends, and it is here! Enjoy.

This continues a series I’ve been writing for authors who are breaking into the biz or will be doing so soon. If you missed any of the previous posts, you can search my blog (in the sidebar to the right) for Stuff They Never Told Me About Publishing and you should generate the whole list. OK, onward!

It wasn’t until after Hounded was accepted, about three months after the deal, that it occurred to me that someday, somebody was going to review my book. A fleeting smile crossed my face and then I thought of it no more, because I had two more books to write.

After I wrote Hexed and Hammered and settled in for the long wait before publication, I got around to thinking about it again. “Somebody’s going to review my book! Hee! What a trip!” But I had no idea who, how those sorts of things got done, etc. So here’s what I have learned up to this point—I’m sure I’ll be learning plenty more in the next couple of months, but this is a good place to start:

First, the publisher will print a buttload of ARC’s or ARE’s. They will then give ’em away in various places, and this is where your marketing budget goes instead of into things like signing tours. You get much more mileage out of giving away a few free copies in advance of your release than you do from sitting down in a bookstore where no one’s heard of you. They give them away on Goodreads, Facebook, Library Thing, and Amazon’s Vine program, then they also send them out to a SUPA SEKRIT list of reviewers, and often provide some copies to bloggers who’d like to run a giveaway on their blog. They also take boxes full o’ your books and give ’em away at conventions. RIGHT NOW, they’re giving away a couple hundred copies of Hounded at C2E2 in Chicago. They’ll doubtless be giving some away at San Diego Comic Con too (because I’ll be there, and I’ll sign ’em if you’re going!) and maybe another convention or three. All of these giveaways will translate into online reviews. Hardly anyone gets printed reviews anymore…but apparently, those few printed reviews carry a lot of weight!

I have one (1) printed review so far. It’s a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, and it’s only a paragraph long. I’ve read some long, thoughtful, and extremely kind reviews online—the Vine folks on Amazon have been very nice—but lovely as they were, they didn’t cause my editor and agent to email me with congratulations. The starred review from Publisher’s Weekly did.

It kind of rocked my world a bit. Why was this anonymously written paragraph such a big deal? I found out the very next day. I got an email from a producer in Hollywood, inquiring about whether the film rights were still available. (Why, yes, they are!) Said producer hadn’t read the book, mind you; he/she had only read that wee paragraph in Publisher’s Weekly. Now THAT got my attention. Publisher’s Weekly isn’t read much by the general populace, but it’s read religiously by people in the industry, and a good review there can generate some buzz. (I wish there was a better term than that. How did we ever start equating humans talking about entertainment with the flapping of insect wings?)

So I am very grateful for that starred review, and not only because being contacted by a producer is insanely fun. It’s the review that gets used on Amazon (and Barnes & Noble too). If you get a meh review from Publisher’s Weekly, it’s still going up on those sites and will stay there FOR EVAR; PW is thus the alpha dog of reviewers, because its review is printed first and will stick with you wherever you go.

But I’d also like to stress that I really appreciate those thoughtful reviews that customers (and serious bloggers) write—especially in these early days. I finished Hounded in June of ’09. Aside from maybe (?) six people including my editors, no one has given me any feedback on it until now, so it’s fun for me to see what sorts of things people are enjoying in the books. They tend to be amused by things that I never expected, like my dedication and parts of the pronunciation guide. Some of them focus on the action and the pace of the plot, others are swooning a bit over Atticus, still others are entertained by Oberon’s antics. That’s the miracle of writing: once it’s out there, readers get to have their own experience, and each one is as unique as every reader.

A couple of bloggers are currently running giveaways for Hounded in conjunction with a guest blog I wrote (and there will be more of those coming in the future), so I’d like to point you to them so you can enjoy. On Tynga’s site I wrote a St. Patrick’s Day blog about the Druids and how very, very little we know about them, and I talk about alpha readers on Suzanne McLeod’s blog, where she’s giving away Jim Butcher’s new one as well as Hounded.

Cheers, and many happy reviews!