Category Archives: General Writing Things

I’m not quite sure what to think of Working On My Novel.  On the one hand, it looks pretty funny, and also sad and horrifying.  It also seems to say something about the novel writing process, and the weird way some people are desperate to put it off, or to brag about it, or to try to force themselves to do it by making it public.

It also says something about the publishing industry that a ten-dollar book with one tweet that someone else wrote per page will probably be very successful.  I’m just not sure what.

Personally, for my author photos I plan to stage a series of photobombs.  Oh, sure, it may take readers a while to figure out that the guy who keeps showing up in the back is that author, and not smiling family or the wedding party, but once it hits them they’ll have that warm feeling of satisfaction that comes with figuring out a puzzle.

But Szilvia Molanr has come up with a pretty fun take on author photos, too, and all it took was some cigarettes and very serious expressions.

Given all the horrible Kickstarter projects run by wealthy celebrities who shouldn’t need help from the little people like you and I, it is nice to see some proper literary projects, like a children’s book by Zach Weiner, of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal fame, and some kick-ass Lovecaftian action figures from the 70’s and 80’s TV show Legends of Cthulu.

It is also worth noting that Augie and the Green Knight has already raised so much money that it will include an audio book read by Ellen McClain (that’s the voice of the Jaeger AI in Pacific Rim, if you didn’t know, and more importantly GlaDOS in Portal).  Now go and pledge, so my book gets printed on acid-free paper!

I was hoping this would help me figure out how to diagram sentences.  My hopes were dashed.

It seems Neil Patrick Harris is coming out with an autobiography, but not one of those boring kinds that only turns out one way.  I think this is an excellent idea; I just hope it isn’t as depressing as Inside UFO 54-40.

Guess now you can only buy certain things from them, too.  I rather doubt much will be done about it, legal-wise, since US law is a lot more concerned with monopoly than monopsony, but this strikes me as the kind of thing everyone was worried about when Amazon first started undercutting bookstores, then going after publishers.  Seems a little early to make the big move, though.  I thought the plan was to drive all the other sellers and publishers out of business first, then put the squeeze on the customer when it was too late for them to go anywhere else.  So maybe Bezos never planned on rising to be the only bookseller/producer in existence.  I don’t know what the plan is, given all this, of course.  I kind of thought the idea was that Amazon could start making a profit once they could set whatever price they felt like, but I guess the idea is to just make things harder to buy without actually making more money doing it?  Man, this is why I’m not a captain of industry – I just don’t understand this customer-focused business model.

So I got a speeding ticket today, and I discovered upon arriving home that my certificate of completion of the defensive driving course had arrived.  Obviously, you have failed to design a proper driver safety course, National Safety Institute.  Ironically, had I taken the course one week later, it would have neatly expunged all the points on my license I just picked up, but since it has been years since I last got a ticket, it did me no good on that score (though clearly, I should get a refund of my course fee, since it didn’t take).  As an author, I try to live these bits of irony whenever possible.

Oh, and this is pretty ironic, too

Well, there goes my idea for a story about a time-traveling zombie mermaid with a clockwork tail that finds herself in a parallel world, bound for revenge against the incestuous, rapist bridge-dwelling troll responsible for her own bizarre birth.  Just as well, because I hadn’t managed to come up with a proper twist ending.

I’m a bit out of the loop, so it was only recently that I became acquainted with the “New Adult” genre, though I confess I don’t quite understand it.  I guess it is for people who are over eighteen, but only want to read about people their age or something?  Are there lots of them?

At any rate, since I tended to read regular old adult books as a teenager and even younger, I am more interested in children’s books, and specifically the intersection of children’s books and adult books.

And I’ve run across two sets of these intersections lately: Poorly advised amalgams of children’s books and literary fiction, as well as several classic children’s books retold for adults.  Personally, I think this is the way to go, since it doesn’t talk down to anyone, and cashes in on nostalgia to boot.

Much of my writing, I do with a collaborator, and I think it may be time to find a better one.  He considers himself quite the thinker – “I’m the idea man, he likes to say, sort of a big-picture guy.”  He gets rather smug about the elevated themes he comes up with, and the clever ways he develops to weave together complex plot elements. And sure, I suppose without his help things would go pretty slow, and I might fall into my old habits of writing “and then” plots – just sticking a few characters in a room and waiting to see what happens.

But here’s how he works – he heads out to walk the dog, or drive to the store or whatever, and these ideas pop into his head.  Then he comes back, all excited, and drops crumpled-up notes in my lap that say things like “Hey!  That scene with the vicar would be better if he had some sort of connection to the Trambly estate!” or “Maybe cut out chapter six and replace it with something that ties into that scene in chapter four better!”

Then he strolls off, whistling a happy tune and content in his brilliance, and leaves me sitting in front of the keyboard saying “Yeah, but how?”  Jerk.