Yum, sneak peek

I just got a sneak peek at the first chapter of Last Dragon by J.M. McDermott, which (plug time!) will be available February 2008 from Wizards of the Coast Discoveries. This is the new WOTC line of books, and judging from the chapter I read, it's going to be very successful. Last Dragon is sumptuously written, full of sensory detail and intriguing glimpses into the story's world. I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing. Oh, and it can be preordered here.

WOTC Discoveries is open to submissions here, so if you're thinking of sending something in and want to know what sells, the author said I could pass along the first-chapter sneak peek he emailed me. So just drop me a note and I'll forward it to you.

Of course, my own submission is 100% nothing like McDermott's, so I wish I'd read his chapter before I sent it. On the other hand, I now have a year to rework the book I was planning to rewrite back at the beginning of September in order to submit it instead of the book I did send, and I think it'll be a much better fit.

Yet more on eReaders

I keep thinking about the perfect ereader. I think I've got it all figured out now. It needs to feel like a book as much as possible. It needs to fold!

Maybe they do, I don't know. The only pictures of ereaders I've seen, though, look more like calculators. No, a good ereader needs to open up just like a book, with two screens facing each other. The pages display on both screens, two pages at a time just like a regular book. When you're ready to turn the page, hit the button and the next two pages pop up. When you have to stop reading, hit save and close the ereader just like a book. It saves your place and turns off automatically.

Simple, effective, and closing it up means the screens will be protected from scratches.

In other news, I totally made it to my writer's group and back without getting lost once. That's the first time I've managed it.

More on eReaders

Hmm, did I really post a raw-rough scene from an unformed project last night? It appears I did. Let me just post above it in case someone wanders along and thinks I post dull, badly written crap all the time.

Well, I do, but at least it's not usually fiction.

I did some more looking into ereaders, for ebooks. (How long until sticking e- in front of a noun sounds, like, so turn of the century?) The consensus is that they're all doin' it wrong.

Pardon me while I insert a lolcat here. This one slays me.



Anyway, there's a thread on Absolute Write that talks about ereaders some (I post there--guess which post is mine! Hint: it's the wordy one.), and a post on Booksquare that goes into even more detail. It sounds like the technology is there, but the people actually developing the products are not.

That reminds me of the Asus eee PC, a darling mini-laptop computer that is almost what people want but not quite. Not to mention that the price keeps goin' up and the specs keep goin' down and the release date keeps gettin' pushed back. The eee would be perfect to use as an ereader--small, lightweight, eminently portable, with wifi and browsing capabilities to find and download books--but it's not available yet and I don't know if I'll get one until the second wave comes out next year anyway (I want a blue one; right now they're only available in black or white).

But my poor old computer needs to be replaced with a real laptop before I start buying eees or ereaders anyway. My computer was once a blazingly fast gaming machine, but it's now over five years old and starting to have problems. And I don't do any gaming anymore (except tower defense and Boggle, of course, and the Kingdom of Loathing).

I've wandered away from my original topic, I find, but let's leave it at that. I still haven't critiqued the stories for my writing group tomorrow, and I still haven't finished the story I wanted to finish for the group, and I haven't eaten yet, and anyway there's a cricket hiding in the living room driving me crazy singing. Times Square this ain't.

A scene.

Dammit, this new book has really taken hold. I was ironing clothes for work tomorrow when I realized I was writing a scene in my head. Granted, it was based on a conversation I had with a really stupid coworker this morning (lifted almost word for word, which I never ever do, but this was too priceless to not use). So I went ahead and typed it up so I wouldn't forget it, and thanks to the miracle of semi-anonymous blogging, I offer it here for your enjoyment. Or not, whatever. I've changed the name of my coworker, and the underscore is how I indicate to myself that the other character doesn't have a name yet (when I name him, I can search and replace).

"How was your weekend?" I asked Brad. _ was within earshot. I wanted him to think I was polite, even to oafs.

"Did you see Family Guy last night?"

"No. I don't watch that show."

"You don't watch Family Guy?" Brad pretended to fall backwards in his chair.

"It's not my kind of humor."

"No, you have to watch it. It's great."

I checked the fax machine and threw away a real estate ad. "It's stupid," I said, and regretted it immediately.

Brad didn't notice the insult. "It's hilarious. Remember the episode with the giant chicken? Last night they brought the chicken back and there was this big fight, and in the middle of it they stop and go to a restaurant, and they can't remember what they're fighting about, and then after they eat they go back to fighting." He guffawed.

_ passed me and raised his eyebrows with a half-smile. I smiled back. Brad must have thought I was praising his narrative, because he launched into an account of another episode he liked.

I ignored him and followed _ to the break room. From the smell, Brad had already visited the bathroom that morning. I could still hear him talking from around the corner, apparently to himself.

_ poured himself a cup of coffee. "Does he do anything except watch TV?" he murmured.

I fought the urge to giggle and agree. I had to say something witty, something terribly intelligent and memorable, something that would make _ take new notice of me. "He must eat a lot of tacos too," I said. Bad choice.

But _ snorted into his coffee cup, grinning. "Depth bomb," he said.

I slapped my hand over my mouth, afraid I'd bray instead of laugh. A moment later I controlled myself enough to say, "It's more an explosive decompression, I think."

This time _ slopped coffee over his shoes. I went back to my desk, triumphant, and only then realized that my first real conversation with _ had been about shit.

Old and New

I've had an idea for a book kicking around for a while, and now--when I really don't have time to work on it--it's starting to gel. I've been trying to put it in the back of my mind to simmer some more, but I've got the main character's voice now and she's starting to get talkative. As of today, I know she's been living in L.A. for nearly ten years, her parents are new-age flakes who live in Montana, and she's recently divorced and wanting to start over in her old hometown. And I know she's going to run into her old best friend (a successful lawyer, divorced with two kids) and that she's going to get a crush on a coworker. I still don't have names, and I haven't worked out the murder (or even who's going to get murdered--yeah, it's a mystery), but that'll come later once the characters are worked out. And the characters won't leave me alone, dammit.

This is all rather distressing, because even though I've decided to jettison the rewrite-from-the-ground-up of the fantasy novel I was planning to sub to Wizards of the Coast (I sent a different manuscript instead), I've got another project all set up for Nano. I've done Nano two years now and had a blast both times; I want to start working on plot for this year's project in October so I'll have my outline ready by November 1. But I can't plot that project if I'm plotting a different one; I've tried working on two novels at once and it doesn't work.

I think my only recourse will be to start plotting my Nano book now. With luck I'll get so excited about it (and it's going to be a lot of fun) that it'll push my new mystery to the back burner for a while.

Your book, I have eated it

I went to the good B&N today, the one that always has the books I can't find at the bad B&N. (Around here, my choices for buying books are B&N, Walmart, and online.) They had Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman.

It's awesome. I read all day and just finished it. But my reading was almost interrupted by hobbits; I was invited to a Baggins birthday party today, but I called off at the last minute, citing as my reasons A) I don't know anyone at the party except the hostess and my sister-in-law, B) I have way too much to do this weekend--which is true, especially since I spent the whole day reading, and C) I don't actually like Tolkien very much. I like the movies.

So the Grossman book. I loved it. It wasn't precisely what I expected, but it was beautifully written and hugely entertaining--so well written, in fact, that I literally did not notice it's written in present tense until I was already to chapter three. Ordinarily I don't read anything written in present.

What I like most about the book is that Grossman's focus is on the main characters, evil genius Doctor Impossible and insecure cyborg heroine Fatale. It would have been easy to camp it up, to turn the book into a prose version of the old X-Men comics (which I used to read religiously, gawd help me), all heavy-handed melodrama. But Grossman's characterization is nuanced, sophisticated, and very human.

I had expected to find the book in the SF/fantasy section, but it was shelved with the non-genre stuff. Now that I've read it, I agree. Non-genre lit has a feel to it that's hard to define but easy to recognize, a sort of bleak reality and almost joylessness--even in a book that, like this one, made me laugh out loud more than once. It's not a style I care to emulate in my own writing, and I don't read it often, but when I do I appreciate it. And I like Grossman's clean, crisp writing (although his dialog tends to be a bit too writerly to be believable). I do think the book badly needed more continuity editing--I kept noticing little things, like someone speaking up a few paragraphs after we're told that character wasn't in the room.

Now it's bedtime, and I didn't get anything done today except laundry and grocery shopping (and I see that all I bought was soup). Tomorrow I have three stories to critique for my writing group, plus two stories of my own that I must finish, one a new story I want to have ready for the group on Wednesday, one an already-critiqued story I'm rewriting as my Writers of the Future contest entry. It's a good thing I didn't go to any stupid hobbit party after all.

Books without pages

My quest to find a copy of Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman is not going well. I think I may have to order it off Amazon.

This morning I got up early because I wanted to put together a new CD, which I persist in calling a "mix tape." I downloaded a few new songs (from Napster, people, I pay for my music) and listened to them and some old favorites* on the way to work.

That made me wish I could download Soon I Will Be Invincible so easily, but my immediate answer to that thought was, "Oh, I don't want to read a book onscreen."

Why not? I had to think about it. I read my own writing onscreen all the time. But I must admit, having a printed copy makes things a lot more pleasant. It's more than just convenience, it's just easier to read a printed copy. Physically turning pages is an important part of the process of reading for me; so is the smell of ink (in newer books) and paper (in older books), and having a cover to look at whenever I want to without losing my place (because I can stick my finger between the pages while I turn the book over).

On the other hand, I remember back when music came on great big plasticky things called records, that had a lovely unique smell and a great big cover and back cover, and the sound you got from a record had an extra depth from the phsyical contact of the needle tracing over the record's grooves. But now I buy a lot of my music directly online--no records, not even a CD case to look at. I got used to the convenience pretty darn quick.

So maybe it's time to look into one of those ebook-readers. Instant gratification, that's my watchword!


*Gorillaz, Garbage, Concrete Blonde, Joe Jackson, Billy Joel, They Might Be Giants, and that new Kanye West song with the Daft Punk sample.