Following up on yesterday's post about writers who are jumping into the web feet first, GalleyCat had a post about writer Dennis Cass' book trailer. Cass spends the whole video talking on his cell phone with an unseen someone who seems to be urging him to tackle the plethora of technological outlets an author can use to publicize his book. The ironic thing is, it's a YouTube video about how little Cass wants to make a YouTube video. I loved the line about not needing a face to be on FaceBook.

On a related note, GalleyCat also mentioned this Granta article on "The Web Habits of Highly Effective People." They quoted author A.L. Kennedy: "I avoid going anywhere near YouTube because that can eat up a day. I don’t blog or Facebook. If I want to write, I’d rather do it to some kind of definable end."

True, but blogging has its own rewards. The trick is not to get addicted. Me? I can stop blogging anytime I want to....

One thing that's great about the web is it can provide a source of feedback for writers who have no other place to turn. Case in point, there's a new LJ Community called Query Eagles; basically, it's blog where aspiring authors can post query letters and get some unbiased feedback.

Technology can be a wonderful thing!

I'm well into The Yiddish Policemen's Union now. I'm enjoying it, in spite of the present tense. I don't entirely understand why Chabon went with present tense, as to me, it doesn't add anything, but I forgive him. This book is clearly alternate history, a subgenre that science fiction claims as its own, and Chabon handles it well. Sometimes when non-genre writers commit genre, to use Ursula LeGuin's phrase, they fall into pitfalls that genre writers learn to sidestep.

LeGuin points out an example in her review of The Stone Gods, a science fiction book by literary writer Jeanette Winterson. LeGuin refers to the phenomenon known here in the U.S. "As you know, Bob" (although she calls it, "As you know, Captain") in which one character explains something to another so that the reader will understand it, even though it is in fact something that everyone in the invented universe already knows. LeGuin forgives Winterson for falling into this particular pitfall because she is witty, but Chabon needs no such excuse. His story unfolds in its own time and space, and the reader learns his invented history by inference or by his characters' actions or reminiscences on their past lives, not by reading info dumps. Also, apparently Winterson has her characters vocally despise science fiction, something for which LeGuin chides her.

I must say, as complimentary as LeGuin is in her review, I had no desire to rush out and buy The Stone Gods. There are lots of well written science fiction books; I don't have to give my money to someone who trashes my genre while trying to make a buck (or a pound, in this case) out of it.

While Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union didn't win the Edgar, it did win a Nebula, and it is still up for a Hugo. Since I am going to Worldcon and voting in the Hugos, I decided I should read it. How often does a book get this much multi-genre buzz?

So I started it last night . . . and it's present tense! Argh! How can you do this to me, Michael Chabon! I don't care if a book is first person or third (although I find second person annoying for anything except short works), but I loathe present tense.

And it's 411 pages long!

Having blogged about my favorite new comedy, I feel I should mention another new favorite—New Amsterdam. Unfortunately, it looks like it might get canceled, but I really like some things about this show. It's the first show I can remember that really addresses the pain of immortality—of outliving the people you love.

I lost a brother already. I can't imagine what it would be like to outlive a child. The protagonist of New Amsterdam has outlived dozens of children and grandchildren. His dog is named 36! That's a lot of grief. The writers (and the actor) have done a good job making the character realistically optimistic. He'd have to be, to keep going day after day, year after year, century after century.

If freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, then immortality is just another name for loneliness.

I hope they don't cancel this show! It might be speculative fiction, but it's a hell of a lot better than so-called reality-TV.

The Pikes Peak Writers list serve has alerted me to the fact that Congress is still considering the Orphan Works bill which appears to make it easy for people/corporations to appropriate any work not explicitly claimed as copyrighted. It's got photographers in a big stew, and now apparently authors, too.

Anyone out there in the Blogosphere know anything about it?

An item on GalleyCat tipped me off to the new 2008 TIME 100 list of the 100 folks Time magazine considers "most influential." GalleyCat noted some of folks were authors. I wasn't that excited to see Suze Orman or Elizabeth Gilbert there, but number 74, was Stephanie Meyer, is the author of Twilight, a teenage vampire series that is wildly popular. I'm not a fan of vampire fiction, in general, but it is spec fic, and so I cheer to see that she made the list. Although, truly, I fail to see what makes Robert Downey, Jr., "influential."

Stephanie Meyer is an observant Mormon, and one thing that sets her vampire fiction apart (aside from huge sales numbers) is that there is no sex. There is lust, yes, there is heavy breathing, but there is no actual sex. Interestingly, Orson Scott Card wrote her bio for the Time list. He compares her to Jane Austen. I'm not sure I buy that comparison, but that might be because he's messing with my literary pantheon. But also, Austen's heroines, eve the quite young ones like Emma, were plainly women—old enough to marry, and by the end of the story, ready to marry. Meyer's heroine in this series is plainly an adolescent—more Dawson's Creek than Pride and Prejudice.

Her next series, however, is out and out science fiction—alien parasites invade the earth. The heroine is a grown-up woman with a job. It will be interesting to see if Meyer can draw the same level of audience with an adult story.

In other words, will she be on Time's list next year?

If not, you might want to check out the auction supporting diabetes research that's running on author Brenda Novak's site. The page that lists critiques and feedback from agents has some bidding over $300 already but there are some bargains there, too,

Of course, the auction has only been going on for today so everything will probably go up. It looks like most of the evaluations are up for bid until the end of the month. I'm glad I already have an agent or I would be glued to my screen poised to bid.

Why should I follow all the publishing/author/book trade blogs when GalleyCat does it for me? Today's issue has a good example, an item on how John Scalzi has posted some of his one-star reviews from Amazon.com, perhaps in reaction to the mad stalker.

Or maybe he's truly mature enough to understand that tastes vary and there's no such thing as universal acclaim. Or perhaps he's got an odd kick in his gallop that says, "Maybe I can make other people think it's cool to show off their bad reviews." Because that's just what happened.

Then again, maybe he's Mark Twain reincarnated. Sure reminds me of Tom Sawyer and the fence that needed whitewashing.

Some days I feel like a grammar Nazi.

I have Google as my home page for my home PC, and one of my iGoogle tabs displays topics that relate to science fiction. This headline grabbed my eye:

"Lizard Hunting Styles Impact Ability To Walk, Run"

First let me state that I was taught that "impact" should be a verb only if you're talking about wisdom teeth. I realize language changes over time, and the jargon-speak in modern offices makes pretty much any word into a verb (anyone care to transition with me?). But still, it grates on my ear when I hear "impact" used in place of "affect."

Second, my first thought was that this referred to some arcane study that looked at human ability to hunt lizards. Only when I clicked through to the article in Science Daily did I discover it was about a study that assessed various species of lizards and their styles in hunting food. I suspect this is a case of a copy editor fitting the space available, but still it struck me as an imprecise headline for an article about science. It's an online publication. Does it really take that many more pixels to say:

"Hunting Styles Affect Lizards' Ability To Walk, Run"

Ah, well. It's not as annoying as going to the grocery store and seeing a sign on the end of the aisle that says "Can Fruit." How lazy/sloppy/just plain wrong can you get?

Don't even get me started on "Twelve items or less" when it should be "Twelve items or fewer"!

The Pikes Peak Writers Conference is this weekend. It's a great conference! If I lived closer to Colorado Springs, I would be there, especially because Carol Berg is on the faculty this year. Also, I placed third in the Paul Gillette Memorial Writing Contest, in the romance category (for my novel Kruegger's World).

But Maryland is just too damned far from Colorado Springs, so I will have to wait for Worldcon in August to see Carol. And I will miss hearing my name called at the Saturday night awards banquet. Meanwhile, congratulations to all the other contest winners!

We speak of "not judging a book but its cover," but actually we tend to evaluate lots of things by how they look, even people. An item in yesterday's GalleyCat mentioned a webite with a article on the overlap between art shows and cons, including a cool quiz on whether folks are at an art fair or comic con. It's kind of fun to do, and I cheerfully admit I was right only a little over half the time. Of course, it's also true that the art fair in question wasn't anything like, say, a Georgetown art gallery, but it was still a fun quiz.

One of my favorite new shows is The Big Bang Theory. I already blogged about liking the link between genius and science fiction. But last night's episode reminded me that I also like the way they have a smart woman as well as smart guys. Yes, it's only a 1-to-4 ratio, but at least Leslie Winkel got her chance to shine last night. And also, Leslie seems a good deal better adapted to society than our four very bright but socially clueless guys, so that's a kind of balance.

But really, I love the show because of the writing—clever, witty, fun, and loaded with in-joke science fiction references. What's not to like?

Who is in charge at Amazon.com, Bill Gates? They seem to be trying really hard to make people NOT like them. First there was the Booksurge thing, and now GalleyCat reports they're backing a crazed author against a harassed book reviewer.

Maybe Amazon should check out their own wares?

I'm not entirely sure how this is supposed to work, but here is the picture david_bridger posted on his blog based on what he knows about me.



I can't tell which Jane Austen heroine she is! She could be Emma, or perhaps she's Elinor, the sensible sister from Sense and Sensibility. I truly am an Austen fan, so I'll take the spiritual kinship as being spot on, and ignore any minor differences in our physical appearances. -)

GalleyCat had an item about the winner of the 2007 Tiptree Award. The book sure sounds a lot like Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale to me, but one thing I found interesting was that the book was published last year in the U.K. as The Carhullan Army but in the U.S. it's Daughters of the North.

The cover shown in the GalleyCat item is what I would call a literary fiction cover—a soft focus close-up of a woman's face. That combined with the fact that the publisher ditched the U.K. title in favor of one with no unfamiliar words (I think Carhullan is a place in Britain but if you don't know that, it sounds made-up) suggests the publisher (HarperPerennial) wants a book that says "shelve me with the mainstream books, please." I wonder if the publishers will be pleased to win a speculative fiction award or not?

Be interesting to see if they even mention it. Although to be fair, the author herself seems quite comfortable with the spec fic designation.

Okay, really it's just one author. The Dear Author blog has had a lot of chatter (as in 477 comments!) lately about the recent attempt by a romance author to whip one of her her readers into line (and I don't mean that in a nice way) after the reader dared to give her less than a stellar review. Seems counterproductive to me. Why go online if all you're going to do is make people dislike you? It's not like there aren't other books and other authors. And if you can't restrain yourself in calling a reader to task, for crying out loud use a spell checker and edit your comments before you post!

Sounds like someone needs to cash a reality check. Very appropriate on April 15 (at least here in the USA).

Events have conspired to make me think about the writing process in terms of "the writer as introvert."

First, I just finished a draft of a YA novel and alerted my wonderful critique group, affectionately known as The Writers' Group From Hell, that I would be submitting it. One reason they are wonderful is they allow the writer to choose to submit an entire draft (which is the way I work) or to submit the book in chunks as it is written (some other writers in the group like this).

Second, yesterday my husband and I went to a "Daffodil Party" hosted by one of the founders of WGFH, scottedelman. The daffodils were lovely, the weather cooperated to produce blue skies and a warm spring day, and the company included other writers as well as Scott & Irene's neighbors and old friends. That and lots of yummy food made for a pleasant social experience interacting with other writers.

Third, my e-mail this morning including a note on the PPW list serve about an article in Publisher's Weekly. A company called WEBook has started an effort to encourage writers to collaboratively write books which they plan to publish using an American Idol (or ABNA) style voting process. The company plans to POD publish the winning books and pay the writers (all of them!) a 5% royalty.

Looking at the WEBook site, though, I have to say the model isn't American Idol, which starts with a huge net but distills down the contestants to individuals with talent. It sounds more like karaoke—encouraging people to try something they wouldn't ordinarily do by having them do it in a group ("Me? Write a Book? Really?"). And, of course, WEBook wants to cash in on the enormous number of people who would like to get published, any way they can.

I confess the idea of letting other folks write parts of a book with me makes my skin crawl. The other reason WGFH is so helpful is that I get to decide what specific criticism I want to act on. Anything else is unacceptable. Social interaction is great, feedback is critical, but it's MY book!

I browse the Why I Write section of The Guardian every now and then, just to hear how other writers got started and how they think. I noticed crime novelist Reginald Hill had some interesting answers, especially these three: questions

How do you survive being alone in your work so much of the time?
You are never alone with a novel. The characters become as real to me as real people. But I don't shut myself away, incommunicado. I've got my laptop in front of me and you've just interrupted me in mid-sentence. I'll finish that sentence, but I will never be sure that it's sentence I'd have written if you hadn't phoned at that moment. That is part of the excitement of writing.

What advice would you give to new writers?
When I was young, I was full of good advice. Then after a while I realised I knew nothing. The only bit of advice I would give is: when you finish that first manuscript and send it off to a publisher, start your second immediately. It will be infinitely better and you will have it finished by the time you get a reply about the first.

Is there a secret to writing?
It's just perseverance and hard work. If you've got something to say or a good story to tell then the greatest problem is writing to the end of it. If you can do that, then even if it's not that good you have got something to work at.

I love that first sentence, "You are never alone with a novel"! And I also like that he says frankly it will take as much time to get an answer from a publisher about a book as it will to write the book in the first place!

If you are a registered member of Denvention, you can vote on the Hugos. And according to this GalleyCat item, that means you can download four of the five nominated novels for free! John Scalzi appears to be honching this effort. Details are on his blog.

No luck getting Michael Chabon's publisher to participate. Now if Chabon wins anyway, that's kind of a slap in the face to this kind of effort. Oh, well! I'm glad I sent the check for my registration in the other day.