Since I'm taking the month off from writing, I'm free to do all the reading I want. And in a massive coincidence, my shipment of books from Amazon just arrived yesterday.
I'm reading Dead to Me by Anton Strout first. It's an urban fantasy about a psychometric paranormal investigator in Manhattan. I got it because of the psychometry angle. Good hook, and I've always been interested in psychometry. Unfortunately, the book is short on psychometry readings except for boring stuff; instead, it seems to follow lock-step in the Dresden Files mold. That's fine if you happen to like the Dresden Files books. I read the first three and found them competent but not terribly interesting, and was actively put off by the clumsy characterization and transparent plotting. Same with Dead to Me, although I am enjoying it enough to keep reading it. It's just not my thing, I guess.
Next up will probably be Dog Days by John Levitt, but I may not be up to another urban fantasy so soon after this one. We'll see.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
why, dammit?
I have my main characters' names, Hilda and Justice, so that if I have to, I can title it Hilda and Justice, although I'd rather not. And I know how they're going to play off each other, and what they want (or think they want)--but I don't know WHY.
Why why why whywhywhy? Why does Hilda want terrible revenge against the guy I haven't invented yet? Why is Justice living on the outskirts of the drake colony after being brought all the way to the city at great expense? Why can't I dredge up anything except the most banal of plot points?
Ice cream might help. Ice cream, or a really long walk around town so I can think. And then ice cream.
Why why why whywhywhy? Why does Hilda want terrible revenge against the guy I haven't invented yet? Why is Justice living on the outskirts of the drake colony after being brought all the way to the city at great expense? Why can't I dredge up anything except the most banal of plot points?
Ice cream might help. Ice cream, or a really long walk around town so I can think. And then ice cream.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Preparations
I finally beat Exile III. For a change, I didn't have to fight my way to Rentar-Ihrno more than once because I actually pressed all the buttons the first time without missing any.
So that's out of the way. I'm finishing stuff up to get ready for the 3-day novel contest, incidentally. That's part of the reason why I cleaned the house this weekend. Of course, I've still got four weeks before the contest starts. Mom thinks I should enter, and I do have a kickass idea for the book. I'm allowing myself to spend August plotting and worldbuilding (and cleaning house), so I'll be rested and ready when August 30 comes.
I think I'll have a bowl of ice cream and curl up with a notebook to jot down notes. Or--even more fun--I'll browse through The Baby Name Wizard (my favorite name book evar) and name my main characters.
So that's out of the way. I'm finishing stuff up to get ready for the 3-day novel contest, incidentally. That's part of the reason why I cleaned the house this weekend. Of course, I've still got four weeks before the contest starts. Mom thinks I should enter, and I do have a kickass idea for the book. I'm allowing myself to spend August plotting and worldbuilding (and cleaning house), so I'll be rested and ready when August 30 comes.
I think I'll have a bowl of ice cream and curl up with a notebook to jot down notes. Or--even more fun--I'll browse through The Baby Name Wizard (my favorite name book evar) and name my main characters.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
A new pleasure!
I bought a fantastic new book yesterday, The Search for the Last Undiscovered Animals by Karl P.N. Shuker (formerly titled The Beasts That Hide from Man). It's a cryptozoology book written by an actual zoologist, so it's not overly credulous like so many cryptozoology books; instead, it's well-researched and open-minded and it covers obscure cryptids, like the Mongolian Death Worm, instead of rehashing the same old Loch Ness Monster sightings and so forth. It reminds me a lot of Willy Ley's wonderful essays from the 1940s and 50s, and in fact Shuker covers some of the same ground as Ley did (like legends of man-eating trees), but much more up-to-date.
It just goes to show that reading nonfiction is at least as important as reading fiction for generating story ideas. Within pages of starting this book, I realized I had the perfect plot for my NaNoWriMo book. Sorry, Charmed Circle, you've been pushed back yet again.
It just goes to show that reading nonfiction is at least as important as reading fiction for generating story ideas. Within pages of starting this book, I realized I had the perfect plot for my NaNoWriMo book. Sorry, Charmed Circle, you've been pushed back yet again.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Cleaning Up
I just updated my website slightly because one of the editors of Every Day Fiction noticed that my earlier stories were published under Katherine Shaw and the most recent under K.C. Shaw. So now they're all bylined K.C. Shaw, which is just awesome!
I also cleaned my entire house today, top to bottom. My mom came over to help. She said my house is so small she felt like she was playing with a dollhouse. After all the upheaval of vacuuming and moving furniture around and so forth, the dog is asleep, one of the cats is drowsing in a window, and the other cat is drugged out on the new cardboard scratcher thingie that I put way too much catnip in. I think I'll take a quick shower, change into clean pajamas, and spend the evening reading and eating ice cream.
Oh, and Mom also bought me some tennis shoes. They're black and make me run really fast!
I also cleaned my entire house today, top to bottom. My mom came over to help. She said my house is so small she felt like she was playing with a dollhouse. After all the upheaval of vacuuming and moving furniture around and so forth, the dog is asleep, one of the cats is drowsing in a window, and the other cat is drugged out on the new cardboard scratcher thingie that I put way too much catnip in. I think I'll take a quick shower, change into clean pajamas, and spend the evening reading and eating ice cream.
Oh, and Mom also bought me some tennis shoes. They're black and make me run really fast!
Friday, August 1, 2008
Generic Publishing Rant
I walked downtown to get the mail--my new nightly activity--and meant to do some thinking about my 3-day novel idea. Instead I kept thinking back to the closure of WOTC Discoveries and working up to a rant about the state of publishing today.
Never mind that the rant hasn't changed in decades, no matter who's ranting, and never mind that anything I say about publishing is sour-grapes flavored since I'm just a tadpole in the publishing pond (how's that for a mixed metaphor?). I can't stop myself, so here it is.
A prospective author used to have to rely on Writer's Market and word of mouth to find out where to send manuscripts, which had to be mailed through the actual mail. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't cheap. These days, anyone with a minimum of Google-fu can find up-to-date information about markets, which increasingly accept electronic subs. Click click boom, the manuscript is in the slush pile, along with thousands and thousands of other people's manuscripts.
At the same time, and probably as a result, fewer publishers accept unsolicited subs. The smaller publishers have either been eaten by bigger ones or gone out of business. The big publishers only release so many books a year. Look closely at the books in your local bookstore next time you're there, and in the SF/F section at least, you'll see the same half-dozen or so logos on almost all the books.
And the economy is not just in the toilet, it's been flushed into a decaying and overfilled septic tank. People don't have extra money to buy a lot of books, even people who love to read.
And even people who love to read spend a lot of their free time on the internet, or playing video games, or watching movies or TV, or downloading music (I know I can happily while away weeks doing nothing but mixing CDs), or, um, blogging. Know how much time I spent reading books today? About five minutes. I used to read a book a day when I was in high school. Yes, okay, I read during class, which is why I don't know any algebra and didn't learn how to study until I was a sophomore in college, but that's not the point. If I'd had the distractions in high school that are available to people now, I would have been texting friends during class, not reading. And my thumbs would be as big as Volkswagens.
Now head back to the SF/F shelves of your local bookstore, this time with a measuring tape, and take a look at the length of those books. I just checked DAW's guidelines, and they don't generally consider manuscripts under 80k words. Baen likes books at least 100k words long. When's the last time you picked up a slim volume that wasn't a reprint of something published a few decades ago? No, the emphasis is on brick-thick paperbacks. They're expensive to print and ship, which means a higher cover price, and they require a lot of dedicated time from readers.
To sum up:
1. More people sending submissions to fewer publishers.
2. Fewer people buying books.
3. Even avid readers spending less time reading.
4. Publishers publishing great big long books that no one can afford and no one has time to read anyway.
4. Kate hasn't had any stories accepted since May, and she seems bitter about it.
5. Also Kate doesn't actually text people, she just wanted to get the thumb joke in.
6. It wasn't very funny, was it?
7. In the time it took you to skim this post, you could have read several pages of a worthy novel.
Never mind that the rant hasn't changed in decades, no matter who's ranting, and never mind that anything I say about publishing is sour-grapes flavored since I'm just a tadpole in the publishing pond (how's that for a mixed metaphor?). I can't stop myself, so here it is.
A prospective author used to have to rely on Writer's Market and word of mouth to find out where to send manuscripts, which had to be mailed through the actual mail. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't cheap. These days, anyone with a minimum of Google-fu can find up-to-date information about markets, which increasingly accept electronic subs. Click click boom, the manuscript is in the slush pile, along with thousands and thousands of other people's manuscripts.
At the same time, and probably as a result, fewer publishers accept unsolicited subs. The smaller publishers have either been eaten by bigger ones or gone out of business. The big publishers only release so many books a year. Look closely at the books in your local bookstore next time you're there, and in the SF/F section at least, you'll see the same half-dozen or so logos on almost all the books.
And the economy is not just in the toilet, it's been flushed into a decaying and overfilled septic tank. People don't have extra money to buy a lot of books, even people who love to read.
And even people who love to read spend a lot of their free time on the internet, or playing video games, or watching movies or TV, or downloading music (I know I can happily while away weeks doing nothing but mixing CDs), or, um, blogging. Know how much time I spent reading books today? About five minutes. I used to read a book a day when I was in high school. Yes, okay, I read during class, which is why I don't know any algebra and didn't learn how to study until I was a sophomore in college, but that's not the point. If I'd had the distractions in high school that are available to people now, I would have been texting friends during class, not reading. And my thumbs would be as big as Volkswagens.
Now head back to the SF/F shelves of your local bookstore, this time with a measuring tape, and take a look at the length of those books. I just checked DAW's guidelines, and they don't generally consider manuscripts under 80k words. Baen likes books at least 100k words long. When's the last time you picked up a slim volume that wasn't a reprint of something published a few decades ago? No, the emphasis is on brick-thick paperbacks. They're expensive to print and ship, which means a higher cover price, and they require a lot of dedicated time from readers.
To sum up:
1. More people sending submissions to fewer publishers.
2. Fewer people buying books.
3. Even avid readers spending less time reading.
4. Publishers publishing great big long books that no one can afford and no one has time to read anyway.
4. Kate hasn't had any stories accepted since May, and she seems bitter about it.
5. Also Kate doesn't actually text people, she just wanted to get the thumb joke in.
6. It wasn't very funny, was it?
7. In the time it took you to skim this post, you could have read several pages of a worthy novel.
Another one bites the dust
Well, I guess I can mark down an attrition reject for Evil Outfitters, Ltd. I subbed it to Wizards of the Coast Discoveries during their open call last fall, and in December got a request for full. But now Discoveries has been closed after only one year.
This sucks on any number of levels, and not just for me and other agentless authors who had a shot at making it in on the ground level of a new large publisher. It sucks in a big way for the authors signed by Discoveries--including J.M. McDermott, whose book Last Dragon came out this spring--and especially for authors who were signed but haven't had their books released yet. I hope they all got at least part of their advances.
The most monumentally crappy thing about this is that Discoveries was doing really well. Its first releases got great reviews and deserved them. But from what I hear, Hasbro--which owns WOTC--wants to focus marketing on their new edition of D&D, and apparently they only have about fifty bucks allocated to marketing and just can't do two things at once. It probably cost more to start and shut down Discoveries than they will save in the next ten years by not having the imprint.
Now where am I gonna send Evil Outfitters, dammit?
This sucks on any number of levels, and not just for me and other agentless authors who had a shot at making it in on the ground level of a new large publisher. It sucks in a big way for the authors signed by Discoveries--including J.M. McDermott, whose book Last Dragon came out this spring--and especially for authors who were signed but haven't had their books released yet. I hope they all got at least part of their advances.
The most monumentally crappy thing about this is that Discoveries was doing really well. Its first releases got great reviews and deserved them. But from what I hear, Hasbro--which owns WOTC--wants to focus marketing on their new edition of D&D, and apparently they only have about fifty bucks allocated to marketing and just can't do two things at once. It probably cost more to start and shut down Discoveries than they will save in the next ten years by not having the imprint.
Now where am I gonna send Evil Outfitters, dammit?
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