I Should Be Writing

All Write! #2 – Rock Into Mordor

Amazon/Macmillan: The Great Kerfuffle of 2010

Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object (Via Topless Robot)

It’s been fascinating to see the pissing war that’s been Amazon and Macmillan. If you’re an author and don’t know what I’m talking about, I recommend getting acquainted quickly. In short: Macmillan wants to do a ranged price of ebooks (new releases around $15, and older books much lower, like $6.) Amazon’s response was to remove all Macmillan products. Not just the ebooks, all the products. (The books still have pages, but there are no “buy now” buttons, you can get them only from third party sellers.)

There are many people who have better write-ups on this than I ever could. I recommend John Scalzi, Jay Lake, and Cheryl Morgan. If you want a one-stop shop for all the talk, you can’t do much better than Charles Tan’s Bibliophile Stalker blog.

The issue of ebook pricing is a big mess, I will fully agree with that. As a consumer and a kindle user, I love saving money. However as an author, I love having money to save in the first place. There’s a lot of arguing going on about the cost of ebooks, the perceived value, and money-grubbing companies.

But my main issue comes with the removal of the print books from Amazon. That was unnecessary. That makes everyone (incl. Amazon!) lose money, and it’s a **** move, akin to, “You don’t like how I play the game? Fine! I’m taking my ball and going home!” Also, Macmillan has written notes (Note 1, Note 2) to the public twice, both from the CEO, and Amazon released one statement, from the Kindle team, deep in the Kindle forums on Amazon. As I don’t know where I stand on the ebook pricing war, I do know that I respect straight forward talk and responses that don’t actively hurt authors, like removal of print books (many authors didn’t even have kindle versions, but they’re being punished too.)

This is an ugly war, and it’s been going on for nearly a week. I’m curious where it goes, but I gotta say, I’m not much of an Amazon fan right now. I did just learn about IndieBound, which seems to be able to support indie booksellers but also be a useful tool online. I’ll be playing with it more, and updating the links on my sites to show other options than Amazon. After all, I want my listeners to be able to buy Macmillan authors’ books. (Also, did you know that Barnes and Noble takes Paypal?)

(Full disclosure: I’m not a Macmillan author but I do draw a check from them as I blog and podcast for Tor.com. But my opinions are my own.)

Book Trailer: Peter Straub’s A Dark Matter

You can also enter a chance to win a signed first edition copy of the book at Straub’s Facebook page!

All Write! #1 – The Process

What’s this, you say? A webcomic on I Should Be Writing? Could you really be this lucky? Yes, yes, you could.

Featuring the fantastic artwork of Natalie Metzger, and me putting one silly word in front of another, All Write! is a comic about writers, their projects, their loved ones, and the ridiculous arguments they get into when put in a writers group together. It goes up at noon every Monday, and will continue until we run out of jokes.

And we have lots and lots of jokes.

RIP Kage Baker

Kage Baker from the SFWA site

Kage Baker, author of The Company novels and the brilliant The Empress of Mars novella, died this morning of cancer. More details can be found here.

I loved her work and always meant to read more of it. If you like science fiction, I highly recommend it. Check her books out here.

I’ll write more about her death and what it means to me later, but this is about her. I never met her and wish I had, and the loss to the SF world is bigger than a lot of people know.

News From Poughkeepsie – Day 163

Clothes Make The Character

Chau’s medium was fire. She sculpted it, with the help of two specially designed bracelets. The bracelets shot out flame from Chau’s wrists, and she moved her wrists–her whole body, really–in such a way that changed the shape of the flame. He sculptures were unique, etherial, and very much in demand.

Chau would say she bended fire to her will, and would then be surprised at the laughter this would cause.

Of course, they did not know about Chau’s fierce battle with the fire elemental that resulted in her bracelets…

News From Poughkeepsie – Day 162

Clothes Make The Character

Reggie’s mother had told him that his cape was not magic. It would not allow him to fly, despite being the same color red as Superman’s cape. He should not try to jump off the roof, or a tree, or the cliff face down by the river. The cape was not magic.

Reggie knew this. Of course the cape wasn’t magic. The ring he had found in the woods, however…

News From Poughkeepsie – Day 161

No comments or prompts for our historical detectives last week. Not genre enough, maybe? An easy enough fix….

If you’re like me, not only do you enjoy a well-designed tie, but you are also anxiously awaiting the next IRON MAN film. While I do not own a necktie made of steel and LEDS–though who knows what may happen between now and Balticon–the idea of “power clothes” is nonetheless an appealing concept. Clothes do not necessarily make the man or woman, but they are extremely important to a character. And, if they have added features like a television screen or a taser blast, so much the better!

I should point out that this week is your last chance to get a free News From Poughkeepsie T-shirt. All you have to do is write a story with a beginning, middle and end, that’s inspired by one of the prompts in January. You can put your story, or a link to it in the comments or send it right to me at newsfrompoughkeepsie (at) gmail.com. My favorite gets the shirt.

Next week, everything changes!

Clothes Make The Character

Gwenna had worked extremely hard on her hat. Most anti-grav helmets were bulky, lumpy affairs. But Gwenna was a woman of taste. While she understood the safety concerns, she knew that most of the helmet’s bulk was padding. Gwenna promptly ripped out the small, discrete circuitry in her newly purchased helmet, and lovingly placed it inside her favorite felt fedora. The lack of stabilizers meant that outright flying was out of question, but Gwenna found that she quite enjoyed floating a few feet above the ground. And the anti-gravity assist to her jumps was thrilling.

As that mugger realized when Gwenna easily kicked him in the face….

Working in a vacuum

Steampunk Vacuum Cleaner by SteampunkGrue BY-NC-SA

Writing is a lonely business. Even if you listen to this podcast and even if you have lots of friends or collaborators and even if you have a writing group and an agent and an editor, it’s still best for 99% of you to write alone, in a quiet area, with no distractions.

Last week I took a Twitter break. I dunno if it’s my current mood of, “Oh please January will you stop sucking now?” but it seems like someone on Twitter manages to anger me every hour or so. So I figured I didn’t need actual voluntary angst, so I decided to cut it out. And wow. I can think clearly now.

The problem with being online and blogging and tweeting and podcasting and spending time with this awesome community is that it does affect how I look at my work. I can’t put it more concisely than that, I’m afraid. But I think removing some of the noise is helping my concentration. There’s also the distraction of research, Wikipedia, asking a friend a question and ending up talking for 20 minutes, and more.

And of course, now that I say it out loud (or in blog form) it seems to be so obvious… but next time you sit down to write, really do turn off Twitter and IM and all those distractions. Don’t write with a buddy. Don’t even write in public where things could distract you. (Although there may be more distractions at home, your mileage may vary.) See what happens when it’s just you and the story.

News From Poughkeepsie – Day 159 & 160

Twice the prompt!

Great Detectives – Gladiator

“Do you miss it, Gaius?” Titus raised his hands to the empty coliseum, receiving the cheers of thousands of imaginary spectators. “The roar of the crowd? The thrill of victory? The feel of a sword in your hand?”

“I used a trident,” Gaius said, his arms folded. “And I am quite happy to have reached a point in my life where I no longer have to wield one.”

“You were a glorious fighter, Gaius.”

“I was a slave,” Gaius gave the old man a look that could cleave stone. “If the only reason you brought me here is to wander down memory lane….”

“No, no…down here, by the lion gate.” Titus motioned for Gaius to follow, and pointed to a dark spot on the ground. “My man Taro was found here. Beast of a man, he was right here. Battered and bleeding.”

“Hardly news, Titus. A gladiator dying in the coliseum.”

It was Titus’s turn to glare. “You might say that. But Taro did not die in contest. He died here alone, without an eye on him. He died in the dust, like a dog. And he was not the first.”

“Someone is killing gladiators off-stage?” Gaius put a pensive finger to his lips. “Fascinating…”

Great Detectives – Cavewoman

Mara circled the body of Grun, her keen eyes never leaving the corpse as she walked. She was looking for a wound, an injury, anything that would have caused one of the strongest men she knew to drop dead. The rest of the tribe blamed the gods, but Mara had trouble accepting that.
With eyes as good as hers, Mara had trouble believing in what she could not see.

And all she could see now was a world without Grun.

Mara gently kicked the dead man’s head with her barefoot, causing it to loll to one side. The folds in Grun’s neck smoothed, revealing tiny wound that was once hidden my a crease. Mara stretched the skin tight with her fingers and stared at the hole with her magnificent eyes. This was the killing blow, here. As unlikely as it sounded, it had to be. All other options were exhausted.

And now Mara had a mystery to solve….