I recorded this last week. My book comes out TOMORROW, not next week. I’m not anxious at all. Just not sleeping much… This rambles a bit, but I do include Keys to Publishing #6 by Jay Lake! What do you do with the keys to publishing?

 

 ISBW #97 - Why I Do What I Do: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1753)

YOU ARE ALLOWED TO SUCK. Ira Glass says so:

Course, he says it in a more eloquent way. Cause I still suck in some ways. But that’s OK. I’m working through it.

• Playing For Keeps will be out August 25! Order on that day from Amazon.com!
• Hard drive crash. Whee.
• I said I was going to get the podcast out on July 4 - right after recording many bad plumbing things happened, so it’s going out on the 6th. Sorry.
• I wrote a story for JC Hutchins’ 7th Son Obsidian!
• I got Feedback to do a video blurb for PFK!
• I wrote a story for Matthew Wayne Selznick’s Brave Men Run. (And check out the promo)
• Support systems are nice - vital - but at the end of the day, if you don’t have the confidence in yourself, you’ve got nothing. That’s what I’ve been struggling with lately.
• Promo: Jody Whitesides‘ Practical Insanity
• WE HAVE VOICEMAIL! 919 794 8498
• I was interviewed on Adventures in SciFi Publishing, and we have some cool stuff going on very soon in tandem with that podcast! Stay tuned!
• I mention JC Hutchins’ Ultra Creatives interview with Cory Doctorow - excellent interview.

 

 ISBW #93 - Confidence [35:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3979)

Been trying to get my days more structured, which includes reading RSS first thing in the morning and writing blog posts. So rest assured that I do have an ISBW waiting for editing and posting, and it will go up today, but for now I am posting some interesting things I’ve found on the web.

Our guardian angel at Writer Beware, Victoria Strauss, investigated the US Copyright Registry email scam:

A few minutes on hold, and then he returned to tell me the good news–US Copyright Registry could indeed register copyright on my website! If I signed up today, I’d receive my certificate of registration from the Library of Congress within 6 to 8 weeks.

“Wait a sec,” I said. “Library of Congress? Your email said the US Patent and Trademark Office.”

“Oh,” he said, flustered, “well, you know, it’s both of them.”

“Both of them? You mean they both issue a certificate?”

“Uh, no, it’s just one certificate. But it comes from both offices.”

I decided not to torture him further. “So how much will registration cost me?”

“Based on your website’s size”–which he had no way of assessing, considering that all he’d done was access my Whois information–”it’ll be a total of $350.”

Read the full report at the Writer Beware blog.

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Locus Online reports that Minister Faust, a favorite interview here at ISBW, received a “special citation”  for his book FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF DR. BRAIN for the Philip K. Dick award. Congrats Minister!

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And our other guardian angel at Writer Beware, AC Crispin, writes a curmudgeonly (her word, not mine) opinion on query letters and how you shouldn’t seek considerable help to make you punch up your query letter, since if you can’t write a good query letter, you probably can’t write a good novel. Because if your query letter shines but your novel sucks, you’re still not going to get published. I don’t think  it’s a curmudgeonly look at all, I think it’s logical and a good point.

When I see a query letter written by someone who obviously never researched how to write one, rife with typos and grammatical errors, full of inappropriate personal ramblings, warnings that the work has been “copywrited,” (so don’t even think about stealing it, Mr/Ms Agent!), one that’s 2 or even 3 single spaced pages long, what’s the point of fixing it for the writer? The overwhelming odds are that the book the query letter is touting is every bit as depressingly bad.

Exit saint, enter curmudgeon. And I’m not going to apologize for it.

With all the information out there on the internet and in various writing guides, every writer who has the skills to write a publishable book should be able to produce a decent query letter. I can understand workshopping it with your writing workshop, or critique group. Or your beta readers. But to post the thing on a board full of strangers, some of whom are kind enough to just rewrite the thing in order to be helpful…well, it’s not doing the writer any favors.

No frills, no edits, no promos, just how my life is changing.

 

 ISBW #83: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (871)

I have railed against cute. I hate cute. I hate being called cute. But to be honest, when met with scenes from Cute Overload, I’m just as likely as the next person to say, “Oooooooo, lookit the cute widdle HANDS on that hamster! Lookit it eat broccoli! So CUTE!”

So I admit the power of cute. It is indeed powerful. And I found myself forced to tap into this power in a recent scene.

I am working on a new novel - project name UNDERGROUND. In the novel, I’m shooting for black humor. The kind of humor that makes you laugh and wince at the same time. It’s a tough humor to hit, as you need to tread that line - don’t have enough wince, and it’s not funny enough. Have too much wince and you’ve gone beyond funny.

I wanted a scene in a restaurant frequented by demons and other horrific creatures. And I wanted one of the demons to have a birthday. Where a waiter would, in our world, bring out a flaming cake, I wanted waiters here to attend to their customers. I wanted something sick and funny. I needed something terrible to happen to something cute.

Cute is a dangerous track. In the early days of Cute Overload, they discussed what made the pictures cute. Little paws looking like hands. Sleepy animals. Young animals. A large animal coupled with a smaller animal looking just like it. And so on. And I realized that there are levels of cute. There are the cute you cannot touch: kittens and puppies.

And I’m sure many of you geeks will point out  that in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, demons played poker for the chance to win delicious kittens. However, we never saw harm befall the kittens. I needed a scene where the terrible thing was happening.

Hedgehogs.

Hedgehogs are grumpy creatures whose cuteness is magnified by the fact that they’re grumpy and prickly and prefer to hide in a dirty tshirt rather than come out and play. The do not bat at string. They do not fetch balls. They do not follow their mother in an adorable straight line. They crouch, nocturnally, and grumble.

Hedgehogs became, what I thought, the perfect target to test my black humor on. In the demon restaurant, the customers pop live, rolled up hedgehogs in their mouths as if they were fat marshmallows. They do so with great relish as if it were a special occasions.

Hedgehogs are like pumpkin pie, you see. Everyone likes them, but they only eat them on special days. You don’t just step out of your door one day and think, “Hey, a hedgehog sounds real good right now.” No, it’s for special occasions. Which makes it funnier.

I could be talking out of my ass here. But suffice to say, my new book places hedgehogs in great peril, the grumpy prickly bastards turn out to be just the right sort of delightful that demons are looking for, especially in an upscale restaurant. And thus cute has served its purpose.

Persistence

The Way of the Bushido Writer is met with many obstructions. In
matters of road blocks, we cannot heed the immortal words of Janis
Joplin, for our load is always a heavy one. Whether a ton of bricks
dropped from on high by the Muse, or the equally oppressive weight of
those bricks’ absence. An outline is not a shield against these
blocks. The Bushido Writer is reactive, adaptive, and merciless. He
pushes through, toward the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next
chapter, the end, the deadline.

The Way of the Bushido Writer is also found in rejection. Meditation
on inevitable rejection should be performed daily. The Bushido Writer
should imagine every insult, every criticism, every superlative barb
in the editor’s arsenal. He should expect one hundred requests to be
met with one hundred refusals. Victory is always found in the hundred
and first.

The publishing industry is not his master, it is his battlefield. He
serves only the craft of writing. His struggle is to make himself
heard, to see his work recognized. He wields story and manuscript with
deadly, singular purpose. The Bushido Writer knows that rejection is
neither a slight nor a defeat. It is only another cut, another blow to
be deflected. The Bushido Writer meets every form letter, every pass
from an agent, every platitude from an editor with cold steel. His
counterattack is resubmitting. His strategy should be many-fold.

And in this combat, defeat cannot be dealt by his opponent. Shelving
one’s story, capping one’s pen, closing one’s Word document is
tantamount to laying down arms and giving your throat to the hungry
blade of the gatekeepers who wish you to quit, for good and for all.
Relenting is the ultimate anti-virtue for the Bushido Writer.

The second virtue: Persistence.

[written by Matt Wallace, used by permission]

Write

The writer writes because she has to. It is a moral obligation to everyone in her life: to her parents, who wish her to live to her fullest potential. To her loved ones, who wish her to be fulfilled and whose lives will be less than perfect with an unproductive writer in their house. To herself; an unwriting writer is living a shadow life, with no spice, no salt: an overcooked piece of beef. She owes also to the idea: if an idea sits around within, it begins to rot and fester. If it is released, it has a chance to fly or fall; both are better than rotting and festering.

Writing an idea will release the writer to move on to the next idea. If she does not, then the unrealized idea becomes a roadblock and will not allow for more to flourish.

It is dishonorable to allow ideas to rot, to not fulfill one’s own potential. The Bushido Writer knows this, and accepts her duty to write. It is far more honorable to bring a bad story to page than to never write it in the first place.

The first virtue: Write.

I love the Writer Beware blog, and lately AC Crispin has let us know that Hollywood doesn’t just mess with our view of love, but that of the relationship between writer and agent or editor. If you hope to be published, this is a must-read.

I am tired of racism/sexism handled clumsily in speculative writing. Otherwise fascinating books that manage to entrance me with their deft world creation and magic systems, politics, etc. And then they have to introduce the fact that a race or sex is discriminated against by saying, “but [as you know, Bob] women can’t own property!”

Bigotry is an ingrained thing, deep within the layers of society. You do not describe bigotry by saying outright, “Women can’t work outside the home,” you describe it be the lead never assuming that a woman COULD hold the position. And if she happens to be in such a position, he will look for someone else to talk to, or be otherwise rude. If someone is convinced another race is violent, they will lock their doors when someone walks by, or cross the street, not say, “well goodness, I’d never go there because of the [race] who are so violent!”

Normally people do not outright discuss their bigotry. They assume that everyone around them - even the people who they discriminate against - agree with them. Yes, it’s harder to write this, but let’s just attribute this to “show, don’t tell.” Show us the bigotry, don’t tell us that women can’t own property.