Writer's Grove

Titling this post makes me absurdly glad we don’t use the metric system; nobody would want to hear about kilometerstones.

Milestone one: I finished my edits to the typeset pages of HAMMERED, which are also called first pass edits or galleys. That itself is a milestone, because it means I’ve completely finished my first three books. But it gets cooler: in this third book o’ mine, there is a map! I drew it all by myself. This is a big deal for me because I purrrrrrr over hand-drawn maps. When I’m thinking about buying a fantasy book, I actually consider the map first and decide if it’s a world I’d like to get to know. If it looks cool, then I’ll read the first page and see if it grabs me. Having a map printed has me geeking out even more than usual.

Milestone two: This is sort of a dubious one, but apparently it’s something all authors endure these days. Some giant douche is selling an ARE of Hounded on eBay. Already. Another author told me, “Come for the anger, stay for the futility” in fighting the sale of advance copies. That made me laugh; I can certainly see how the situation could raise one’s blood pressure. After all, advance copies have a big sticker on ’em that says they’re NOT FOR SALE. And this seller (or someone he knows) is a reviewer who typically gets plenty of advance copies, because he’s selling a lot of other early editions, too—he even brags that he’s been selling books since 2000. He (or his source) must actually write reviews at some point or he wouldn’t keep getting books. But damn, I don’t think he even read mine! His description of my book is completely inaccurate. If the seller is the reviewer (which I doubt) he’s going to write a terrible review—and the fact that he’d rather make a cheap buck off a year of my work than read it really chaps my hide. He’s not just a thief; he’s an illiterate thief.

BONUS! Milestone three: I think it’s time to have a contest thingie, in order to promote literacy and good karma and so on. Every action (such as a skeezy person from Jersey selling my work without compensating me) must have an equal and opposite reaction (giving away books I’ve paid for and thus the author’s been paid for). I’m going to give away a couple o’ books from my personal library that I think someone else might enjoy also. It’s gotta be U.S. only, sorry. The first is WHO FEARS DEATH by Nnedi Okorafor:The second book I’m givin’ away is ZERO HISTORY by the inimitable William Gibson:Both of these are hardcovers.To win one (I’ll have two winners!), all you gotta do is comment. You can say, “Yay for maps!” or “Boo to evil book pirates!” or even “Suck it, metric system!” Or whatever you’d like, honestly. I’d just like to see comments. :) Contest runs till Tuesday, and I’ll announce winners Wednesday; winner chosen randomly, o’ course.

Peace and carrots and literacy…

This series chronicles all the stuff I’m finding out about the publishing business in the months leading up to my debut.* If you missed the first couple installments, #1 is here and #2 is here. Shall we on?

I don’t know how to make a book trailer.

And from what I can tell, few people do. The existence of book trailers escaped my notice until I saw other writers here and there talking about them on their blogs. There are a lot of bad trailers out there. There are also some pretty good ones—the high-budget stuff from this list of Moby Awards is fairly entertaining. But even those great trailers didn’t make me want to go out and buy any of the books. Exploding zombie brains, for example, look great on film (bring on the popcorn!), but that doesn’t mean the words on the page are going to be great. They might be, of course—I’m just saying that films and books are completely different mediums, and anyone who’s ever read a book and then been disappointed with the movie version knows all about the difficulty of translating the printed word to the screen. (Look at the difficulty of bringing The Great Gatsby to life. How can you ever take the deliciousness of Fitzgerald’s prose and do it justice as a dramatic production? It hasn’t been done right yet.) The screen version often falls short or misrepresents the book entirely—and honestly, I think that’s a danger of doing a trailer. I imagine a mediocre or poorly done trailer can actually depress sales, rather than encourage them. The trouble, of course, is that there is no way to measure the effect book trailers have on sales. If a marketing genius can provide proof that $2K invested in a trailer will lead to an extra $3K in royalties (or whatever), then I’m sure I’ll line up to make one myself. In the meantime, it’s tough to justify shelling out major bucks and time on an enterprise of dubious worth.

Well, I take that back. I think Harry Connolly is making one for the right reason: He thinks it will be cool, and since he’s got some people working for him who know what they’re doing, I’m willing to bet he’s right. Since I already know Harry’s writing is awesome, I don’t need to watch the trailer to be convinced to buy his book, but I’m going to watch it when it’s ready anyway. The world can always stand to get a little cooler.

Comparison is a stepping stone to dribbling, babbling, madness.

No one ever told me that I’d be neurotically compelled to compare my word counts to other authors. (I don’t think there’s a pill for it yet, but I have no doubt it’s in development and side effects include self-flagellation, runny nose, and glossolalia.) Before I got my deal, I didn’t give a damn if I wrote three words a day or three thousand. Now I feel unworthy if I don’t write a couple thousand a day to keep up with the fast kids, and since I don’t make it most days, there’s a certain amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth going on. I’m fully conscious that it’s silly of me; if I average just 500 words a day, that’s two novels per year. I can do that without burning out, and I am doing it, and it’s fine. But still. I wasn’t expecting this sketchy little gremlin to land on my shoulder and whisper that I don’t have an awesome author beard like that one guy, or that I should have finished my epic already, etc. I’m aware that these are nice worries to have in comparison to worrying that I’ll never be published; I’m just warning everyone that getting published will not cure you of  your neuroses. You will always worry about something, so gird your mental loins.

Mental loins? Clearly I need to stop writing now. I promise the next installment will be loin-free.

*Since the calendar flipped, now I get to say I have three books coming out this year!

Until this year, I’d never walked into a Waffle House. Inexplicably, they decided to build one in the midst of a fairly suburban neighborhood; I don’t know what sort of nightlife they thought they’d be catering to, but there it was. Open 24 hours. I went in there to get some papers graded one night, and discovered that I didn’t mind their coffee at all. I was also mildly entertained by the employees yelling at each other and complaining about their lot in life. It reminded me of my years as a waiter; when you’re in food service, complaining about customers and schedules and other people not doing their side work is de rigueur.

Next time I went in, I enjoyed not only the coffee and the employee side show, but the other customers as well. There was an intense young professional talking to his Bluetooth the whole time he was shoveling eggs into his mouth; he was trying to track a shipment of something to Ohio. A couple chairs down from him was a massive individual covered in tattoos and wearing sunglasses. He didn’t move for fifteen minutes; he might have been asleep, or he might have been practicing Zen meditation. Or perhaps he was trying to stay very still so that the two cops in the joint wouldn’t notice him. Three emo kids with hoodies and sullen expressions commiserated in a booth about how stupid everybody was in the whole world. “If only they weren’t so effing stupid,” one of them said. “Yeah, man,” his friend agreed. “I feel ya, bro,” the last one assured him. If only! In another booth, two geeks were taking a break from playing World of Warcraft by talking incessantly about World of Warcraft. A retired couple sat some distance away, saying nothing to each other, but occasionally chuckling at the same time I was smiling to myself at something I overheard. They were people watching, like me.

Here’s comedian Jim Gaffigan on Waffle House:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz1cfwFmv1w[/youtube]

And apparently the chili is good, though I have yet to try it. Some guy named Bert made it…and some pop rockers wrote a song about it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZYrWcgX3-g[/youtube]

It’s actually somewhat frightening to see how many musical tributes there are to Waffle House. Not sure why somebody thought it would be a good idea to take ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man” and turn it into “Southern Classic Cooking”—that doesn’t even scan—but here’s the result:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx21Fv12UDk&feature=related[/youtube]

Cheers.

I’ve just kinda come to the realization that 2011 is going to be a banner year for entertainment. It’s like all the creative minds in North America are trying to release something before the great (zombie/Mayan/pasta) apocalypse of 2012. Let’s take a QUICK look at the first half of the year—and this isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, just the stuff that pings loudly on my personal radar:

January: Bloodshot by Cherie Priest. The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie.  Tempest’s Legacy by Nicole Peeler. The Warlord’s Legacy by Ari Marmell.

February: I don’t know, because I’m going to spend the entire month marking off the days until we get to…

March 1! The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss! Gimme! In the theaters, I’m going to see Sucker Punch, a movie full of imagery that nerds will love. Dragons? Check. Robots? Check. Hot girls with samurai swords? Check. Mechanical suits? Hell yeah. Also coming later in the month is River Marked by Patricia Briggs and Ghost Story by Jim Butcher.

April: The River of Shadows by Robert Redick, coming out on the 19th, same day as…Hounded, my debut! Also coming out—Rage, by Jackie Morse Kessler, sequel to Hunger.

May: The movie Thor. See what happens when Marvel and Hollywood get hold of Norse mythology! And at the end of the month, my second book, Hexed.

June: Now you’ll see what happens when I get hold of Norse mythology! Book 3 of The Iron Druid Chronicles, Hammered, releases at the end of the month. The Thor in this book is quite different from the one you’ll see in the movie.

July: Another Kind of Dead by Kelly Meding. And there’s this movie franchise, maybe you’ve heard of it? Harry Potter comes to an end.

What are you looking forward to in 2011?

I’ve been waiting a long time for the world to meet Atticus O’Sullivan, last of the Druids. April 19 (the release date for Hounded) seems sooo far away right now. But just in time for the holidays, Suvudu has posted a free short story called “Clan Rathskeller” that you can enjoy by clicking right here. (And clicking is free, I might add.)

Set ten months before the events of Hounded, the story will introduce you to Atticus and Oberon and give you a little glimpse of their world. I hope you enjoy it, and please tell everyone you know—because everyone you know likes free stuff, right?

I’m cheating a little bit with this one and including some science fiction. This is a good thing; ’tis not often anymore that I’m able to find science fiction that grabs me. But here goes, stuff I’ve recently read or will be reading shortly:

Amongst the grapefruit, apples, grapes and bananas you will find: The Human Blend by Alan Dean Foster, The Native Star by M.K. Hobson, Zero History by William Gibson, The Mage in Black by Jaye Wells, and Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler.

Foster’s near-future world where the icecaps have melted and Miami is gone doesn’t seem all that far-fetched right now. I enjoyed this first installment of a three-book series, but since I’m a Foster fanboy, what else would you expect? I’m always entertained by his writing.

I haven’t read The Native Star yet—and I have to say that normally I wouldn’t pick up a book that has a romance-looking cover—but the old-west-steampunk-magic premise grabbed me. I’m looking forward to reading it…but probably not in public. There’s always that one guy in Starbucks who will check out what you’re reading and raise an eyebrow. I hate that guy. He’s usually reading an economics textbook.

Gibson’s Zero History was full of his delightful sentences. I wrote a post about them here. I mourn a little bit for the death of cyberpunk; its spawn are thriving (steampunk, et. al) but grandpa punk is either dead or gasping away in an iron lung. This novel, like the other Bigend novels, are set in the modern day.

I’ve just begun The Mage in Black (which inspired the apples here), and I’m digging it so far. I tried to find Jaye’s first book (Red-Headed Stepchild), but it wasn’t in stock at the store I visited, so I had to start with book two of her Sabina Kane series. Action! Explosions! Apples! And some funny bits, too! I’m not lost at all, so don’t be afraid to start here if you can’t find book one either.

Hunger was extremely moving and not. Fair. At all. Maybe I was in a vulnerable state of mind because of that guy at Starbucks—sure, let’s blame it on him, he’s a dick—but I got all weepy at the end and it took me by surprise. Highly recommended. I’ve already pre-ordered the second book, Rage, and a box of tissues.

Hope you all are reading something fabulous!

I realize I’m extremely late to this particular party, but somehow this movie flew under my radar when it came out last year. My friends Alan and Alissa just made me aware of its existence and I’m still laughing over it. It’s a buffet of absurdity served with a side of cheese, and if you’re a writer or in the writing biz, or just a fan of absurdity and awkward social situations, this is a good time.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdpFpfIBkXc[/youtube]

The opening titles alone are priceless—they’re old sci-fi covers with painfully bad art. But the story young Benjamin Purvis writes—YEAST LORDS—that’s truly hilarious stuff. Battle stags, surveillance does, backup nads—ha! Oh, man—I’m going to watch it again!

Completely, utterly thrilled to announce that The Iron Druid Chronicles will be published by Klett-Cotta in Germany! Not only do they have the coolest griffin logo I’ve ever seen, but they also publish fantasy titans like Tad Williams and—wait a second. I want to try something. Here goes: Klett-Cotta also publishes J.R.R. Tolkien, Patrick Rothfuss, and…me. *eep!*

Whoa. Since a thunderbolt from the literary gods has yet to destroy me for associating myself with Tolkien and Rothfuss in the same sentence, the only possible conclusion I can draw is that the literary gods don’t read my blog. As such, I am completely free to say heinous things like “I can’t stand Charles Dickens!” or “My life would be better if I hadn’t read Dostoevsky at such an impressionable age!”

I’m very grateful to Klett-Cotta, of course, and I am excited for a former exchange student of mine who helped me by translating some passages in Hexed. (You can see and hear her awesome work on the Goodies page; the phrases are read by another German exchange student currently at my school). She was hoping she’d be able to read the books in German, and now her wish will come true. In one of those cosmic coincidences, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the German language lately, because I’ve recently rediscovered Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. Rilke himself wasn’t German—he was born in Prague—but he’s one of the premier poets of the German language, and what he has to say about the nature of creativity in Letters is just as inspirational to me today as when I first read it twenty years ago. What I’ve been wondering is what’s been lost in translation. I suspect that German readers will get the best of it, but still, it’s an amazing work in English.

Other news: I have a light little end-of-year thingamabob posted up on Suvudu now. If you click on over and read it, you will be confronted with (among other things) an excessively cute puppy and an excessively drunk miniature dwarf.

The other, other news: Though I still don’t have a date yet, there should be a free short story coming soon on Suvudu. It might be really soon…I’ll let you know.

Tech news I figured out five years or so after everyone else: If you register an email address with Gravatar.com, then use said email in the comment field, you’ll get a cool little avatar to show up alongside your comments! It’s not really important AT ALL, but neither is much of what we do in the name of Cool.

News I can use: Almost time for Winter Break. Looking forward to making progress on book four; I’ve had to leave it alone for a week or two because of finals and I need to get back into the groove. The Kid is looking forward to baking cookies with Grandma and the dogs are looking forward to anything that falls on the floor.

Continuing the series about stuff I never found out until after I signed the contract. If you missed part one, here’s the link for it.

First, I’d like to give a shout-out to A.B, who commented on the first post—your suggestion was great and the backstage look at creating the cover is in the works. It’s a collaborative effort because it was a collaborative project; you’ll hear not only my side of things, but also my editor’s and maybe the designer’s as well. That’s coming sometime in January. For now, on with the goodies.

Laws in other countries actually apply to writers.

Hmm…that probably didn’t sound right. What I meant was, TAXES. Oh, and ROYALTY RATES. Both are going to be different from the United States if you get a foreign contract, and before you say, “Well, duh,” think about trying to keep track of them all if you sell rights to your book in, say, ten countries. Or, heck, pretend you went the full Rothfuss and got sold in thirty or so. And say that they’re releasing different editions in each one—mass market paperback in Australia, trade in Thailand, hardcover in Russia, etc. What surprised me is that you’ll have to fill out a tax thingy for the IRS to tell all those other countries not to worry, the U.S. will tax you on all that money just fine. If you don’t fill out the tax thingy—well, I’m not sure what would happen, but I’m sure I’d rather not find out. Something to make you rue the day you didn’t fill out the tax thingy. The point I’m trying to make (because I did want to make a point eventually) is that A) I’d never be able to keep track of this without my agency, B) I’d have no sense of what’s a good deal and what isn’t because I don’t have my finger on the pulse of Poland’s economy, and C) I’d probably never have any foreign contracts at all without my agency. I wonder how many foreign contracts unagented authors manage to secure. My (uneducated) guess is close to none. To people who say, “Dude, 20% commission on foreign sales is so whack,” I say, “Dude, I’ll happily accept 80% of any money that I never would have had otherwise.” So, in addition to these excellent reasons why you should get an agent from an editor’s perspective, an agent will open locked doors in faraway lands and prevent foreign revenue agents (also known as ninjas) from confiscating all your worldly goods.

There are known knowns and then there are known unknowns, and it all means we don’t really know

One of the things I’ve found astonishing is that there’s no efficient method in the industry to keep track of book sales. Months go by—yea, even a year sometimes—before people get a semi-clear picture of how your book is performing. All those Bestseller Lists are based on incomplete data and a lot of guesswork. It makes me wonder what arcane system “the people in Accounting” are using. (They are almost always called “the people in Accounting,” by the way, with a sense of mystical dread, and for me it evokes a picture of gray spectral figures huddled around an abacus.) I am sure there are good and sufficient reasons why this hasn’t been modernized; I confess that I’m not sophisticated in accounting practices and any discussion of numbers that lasts more than thirty seconds will send me screaming to find a happy place. Still, I’m suffering a bit of cognitive dissonance here. On the one hand, you have that calm, intellectual guy on the UPS commercials doing magic shit on a whiteboard and casually suggesting global domination using his company’s real-time tracking system; on the other, we won’t know for six months if your book got sold in a Kentucky Walmart.

I’m not going to worry. Every other author has dealt with it and survived because that’s just the way it is. But, um, why does it have to stay that way? If there are any smart cookies out there looking for a place to build a better mousetrap, tracking book sales could use the attention of a genius or two.

That’s all for this go-round. Hope that shed a scintilla of light on the business for the uninitiated. :)

Today I turn the big 4-0.

It’s on a Thursday, though, and like Arthur Dent, I never could get the hang of Thursdays. Oddly, I don’t feel like partying. I feel like I should get to work. It’s as if a wayward dungeonmaster dropped off a package this morning, and inside was the Cowl of Frickin’ Seriousness or the Cloak of Plodding Diligence. I’m wearing it now, and it has magically grafted itself onto my sternocleidomastoid. It won’t come off until somebody throws cake at me.

But nobody throws cake anymore. I haven’t seen anyone throw cake since 1976, and that’s damned peculiar if you think about it, because cake throwing is (if my nostalgia-colored memory serves) an exercise of almost unbridled joy. You get the satisfaction of throwing something messy at someone else, the entertainment value of wayward crumbs vectoring off mid-flight, and if you do it correctly there’s the pleasant chore of licking dollops of frosting off your fingers afterward. And then you duck, because once you throw cake, chances are someone will throw it back. These people in Las Vegas still throw cake, but the problem is that they’re in Las Vegas and I’m not:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61fYJVttpEs[/youtube]

Perhaps I will be ambushed by a bakery today. One can always hope. :)

Newsy things: I will have something of mine up on Suvudu.com on December 15. It’s the beginning of several somethings that will appear on that site. There will be a short story, available for free download, though I don’t have a date yet, and there will also be a behind-the-scenes look at developing the cover for Hounded before the end of January (I think).

Today’s subversive thought: Cake Fight Club. Talk about it.