Still a-novelling, so my blogging is minimal, but I thought I'd post link to some deconstructions of good query letters (query 1, query 2) posted some time ago by Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown Ltd. both showing impressive examples of what a good query should look like. The more examples I see, the more I wonder how my first query landed me an agent. (thx to La Gringa)
This pic from io9 has to be a sign of the apocalypse, or something.
Blogging is taking a back seat to the new novel (30K+ yea me!) And yes, I bumped up the total wordage of Valentine's Night, the spec novel I'm working on while waiting to hear back from Anne. Two reasons.
Presented for your consideration, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White of California. Whose attitude toward the free flow of information on teh interwebz seems cribbed from North Korea. Apparently a swiss bank is somewhat miffed at Wikileaks.org a website organized by a bunch of journalists and other activists whose primary mission is to give an anonymous platform for publicizing documents showing governmental and corporate wrongdoing in situations where the "leaker" would suffer serious reprisals. (i.e. it targets a lot of nasty regimes that could, for instance, kill you for blabbing embarrassing facts.)So what happens when lawyers working for the Swiss banking group Julius Baer, file for an injunction to suppress the site's publication of several documents posted on the site allegedly revealing the bank was involved with money laundering and tax evasion? Why, the judge issues a permanent injunction shutting down the whole effing site, with only a couple hours notice to the sites' owner. Now, within a few hours, someone must have pointed out to Judge White that he was not, in fact, issuing internet rulings in mainland China, and his injunction might be viewed as a tad extreme, because the permanent injunction was clarified with a temporary injunction focusing only on the documents in question.Way to uphold the bastion of freedom. Nice to know that any tin-pot regime and corporate scumbag can get a web-site sanitized just by filing suit in California.(But actually not, since no one can take back electrons. The site is mirrored up the wazoo all over the world, meaning the injunction is pointless and ineffective in addition to being draconian.)
Well my latest spec project is still rolling along quickly, quickly enough that if Anne continues being overworked at Bantam, I might get the whole thing done before I have to do any editorial revisions on Wolfbreed #1 (titles, I need titles). I started it a week and a half ago, and I have 23K words. The good news is, unlike Wolfbreed I do not anticipate going back and completely revising everything halfway in. (Of course, I just jinxed myself, as I didn't have any plans like that for Wolfbreed at this point.)For those curious, I have returned to vampires. However this is going to be unrelated to the pair of Blood & Rust novels. I'm trying my hand at an intentional paranormal romance. One that kicks most of the late 20th Century's contribution to the vampire mythos to the curb. No blood-drinking cabals conspiring in the darkness, no angsty goth heroes, and no supernatural vampire hunters of whatever dynasty.
No, I can't explain it. (blame the Smart Bitches)
If that didn't weird you out, maybe you want to watch this.Or not. (Blame Mrs.Giggles)
Reading Scalzi’s great posts on making a living as a writer got me to thinking about the worst piece of career advice I ever got:“Take some brainless low-paying job just to make ends meet so you can devote all your creative energy to work on your writing.”Do me a favor, next time someone utters this, or something similar, to you, slap them. Hard.The people making this asinine comment are either justifying their slacker attitude at their 7-11 gig, or are just in love with the image of the artist struggling for their art. Bullshit.First off, if you undervalue yourself for a third of every day, you’re going to undervalue yourself as a writer. Also, nothing saps writing energy as much as stress about money, food and shelter. Dreading waking up to go to the daily grind will not make you excited or give you more energy for the writing. Also, if you’re placed in the position of relying too much on a low income writing (voice of experience here) you can severely sabotage your writing career. If you have a decent income at a decent job, one you enjoy, you are in a much better position to see the merits of any offers that do come in.Say someone offers you two grand for world rights and a film option on your 150,000 word epic fantasy. It’s a lot harder to say "no" to a horrid offer like that if your paychecks come from Burger King, rather than Google. (See prior comment about undervaluing yourself.)You want to be a successful writer? Get a day job you like and that you’re good at. The worst that could happen is that you’re a bigger success at that. So what? If you make more money in IT, or sales, or real estate, than you do with your novel, it doesn’t make you a lesser writer.To paraphrase General Patton, “Your job isn’t to suffer for your art. It’s to make the other guy suffer for his.” Or, ah, something like that.
I've gone on at length about the replicator economy, what will happen to commerce as the cost of "stuff" goes to zero and the ability to copy anything becomes ubiquitous. Understanding the implications of this is going to make the difference between success and failure for whole industries. It also will help in drafting a post-Singularity tale that has logical economics. Well, I came across an absolutely magnificent article by Kevin Kelly on The Technium on exactly what you can sell when copies (of everything) are free. The premise is simple: if copies are ubiquitous, copies are worthless, so we trade in what cannot be copied. Think about that long enough, and you can leverage yourself out of the 19th century widget box much of the western world is still trapped in, and achieve, zen -like, an economy independent of things. This is the kind of article that will make an RIAA executive's head explode.
Today I got a new book spam. This has come to me via Media E-Blast, a company whose name was coined by someone in a desperate attempt to make unsolicited spam and e-mail harvesting all respectable and Web 2.0ish.Here's my first piece of advice: Paying some "consultant" to make you a fancy JPEG ad and send it to a "carefully targeted" e-mail list doesn't make you look any better than someone using broken English to peddle erectile-dysfunction medication. Just because they can use Photoshop and have a mailing address in the continental US doesn't make it less sleazy, it just means it's a little less likely they're using hijacked zombie PCs as mail servers. (Mmmm zombies. . .)Second bit of advice: If you're self-published, seriously consider paying someone else to write your ad copy. If you rely on borderline ludicrous sentence constructions like,
"Sleepless nights, anxiety attacks, drug or alcoholic addiction, sexual addiction, murder, losing a loved one, broken marriages, are many things that we sometimes face."
According to Reuters, Random House is trying an experiment:
Random House ... is planning to test selling individual chapters of a popular book to gauge reader demand. [They] will sell the six chapters and epilogue of "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" for $2.99 each according to the report.
So I finished and turned in the Prophets draft. My next project is Wolfbreed #2 (Still need titles for those) but I can't really start until Anne at Bantam gets back to me, approving the outline for the next book. Since I didn't want to jump into the next Apotheosis book and have to interrupt it, I was just taking a short break. . .My Muse didn't like that. Like the attack that resulted in Wolfbreed #1, I was sitting, minding my own business, and my muse bitch-slapped me with an idea I just had to start on. As of right now, after about four days, I have nearly 10K words. It's deja vu all over again.I even went and added a counter for it.
Periodically I check out what people are Googling when they come across my site. Sometimes it makes sense (all the folks checking up on Cassie Edwards, for instance) but often, it, well, doesn't. . .
Hong Kong Actor Edison Chen. Who, through a critical mass of sleaze and stupidity worthy of certain toe-taping senators is embroiled in an internet sex scandal. Apparently Mr. Chen liked to watch himself, so he took pictures of himself getting busy with a bunch of actresses. Ok, I'm a Libertarian, I don't have a problem with consenting adults filming themselves.My problem with Mr. Chen starts with the fact that he apparently liked to share these pictures without the consent of his partners, and worse, he had the bonehead stupidity to leave these 1000+ dirty pictures on his laptop's hard-drive (God does that sound dirty) when he sent it in to get it serviced. (Eww, that's even worse.)Here's a clue to all you celebs out there. The techs working on your computer are going to look at your photos— You're a fucking celebrity!So these photos found their way on to the internet, and Chen's all dumbfounded, first denying it all ("they're all photoshopped!") and now all tearful and apologetic saying, "The lives of many innocent people have been hurt by this malicious and criminal conduct and in this regard I'm filled with pain, hurt and frustration." The malicious conduct he refers to in this case is posting the pics on the web. And the fact that he includes himself with the "innocent victims" is just gag inducing.(Thanks to Mrs Giggles.)
Because I am not going to post about "Super Tuesday" I've decided to celebrate the return of my favorite TV series. Lost has, IMO, managed to do just about everything right so far, and the premiere last Thursday seems to indicate that this won't change. As a fan since the pilot episode, I thought I'd delve into the series so far and highlight some of the storytelling elements within that are worth emulating:
I suppose this will come as a surprise to everyone, but apparently Bob's been duped. All that Enzyte he's been taking hasn't done squat to enhance his maleness. In fact, according to the Cincinati Enquirer, when former Enzyte exec James Teegarden Jr. got before a judge:
He said employees of the Forest Park company created fictitious doctors to endorse the pills, fabricated a customer satisfaction survey and made up numbers to back up claims about Enzyte’s effectiveness.“So all this is a fiction?” Judge S. Arthur Spiegel asked about some of the claims.“That’s correct, your honor,” Teegarden said.
For those interested, and who're in the area:I'll be signing books at the Gray & Co. booth @ the Cleveland Home & Garden Show at the IX Center (directions) on 2/8/08 from 7:00pm to 8:00pm.BOOTH LOCATIONBooth #379. Enter from the West Entrance. Head to the leftthrogh the fountain area towards the Bella Italia Bistro (or followAisle 300 to CBG Cleveland Magazine Feature booth). Head towards theGardenArea, we will be the last booth on the left (after ClevelandMagine, and WDOK; across from Petiti's Garden Stage) before youenter the Garden Area -- Next to Garden G1 for Soeder Landscaping.
Thanks to The Smoking Gun website, I now know that Tops is including presidential candidate trading cards in their sets of baseball cards. . .
But now that I do, I'll share: American Idol Slashfic.I wonder if I should be worried that this doesn't really surprise me?
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