A few months back, I wrote a fairly angry post about men and rape. A little while later, I noticed the blog post had been referenced on StumbleUpon, with two comments. One comes from a woman who says, "An excellent post by Jim C. Hines on how our society treats rape as a womens' problem," while the other comes from a man who writes, "Pretty good explanation of it, I can't believe that he knows as many women that have been raped as he makes it sound like though."

You know, I've gotten used to guys accusing women of making up stories of rape, but I think this is the first time I've had such an accusation thrown at me. This isn't disagreement about rape statistics, which are hard to track. Nope, this is a guy deciding that what I shared about my personal experiences of watching friends and loved ones deal with sexual assault is an exaggeration.

Dude, did you read the comments to that post? Or did you just assume that in addition to me being a liar, everyone who shared their stories were also making it up. Apparently we're all just pawns in the Big Rape Conspiracy designed to make men feel bad about themselves. (Because of course it always has to be about the men!)

It gets old after a while. This is the same crap I've heard again and again for years, especially from guys. We accuse people of lying because that's more comfortable (for us) than admitting that they might be telling the truth. It's easier to think, "Sure, rape still happens occasionally, and real rape is of course a horrible awful crime and the rapists should be castrated. But most of those accusations are just girls who changed their mind, or who want to get back at some guy."*

Bored now. Could you and your privilege please go play in the corner while the rest of us discuss the real world? K thx bye.

This seems like a very good place to point to the Blogathon Fundraiser shadesong is putting together to raise funds for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. Starting at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, she'll be "Writing flash fiction in the persona of a psychometric xenoarchaeologist examining artifacts from the last days of Earth. Every half hour. For 24 hours." The objects she'll be writing about are up for auction. You can also donate directly to BARCC.

Not only do these centers provide hotlines where rape survivors can call and talk to someone who actually believes them, most of these centers also provide everything from counseling to community education to legal assistance to counselors who can accompany survivors to the hospital.

shadesong has already raised close to $1000, and from the sound of it, last year's blogathon took in a total of about $3500. Rape centers typically operate on a tight budget, and are often some of the first services to have their funding axed whenever the economy gets a little bumpy. As a result, a lot of their support tends to come from grassroots efforts like this. So please take a minute to check out shadesong's LJ and maybe browse the auctions.

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*If you're getting ready to comment about how false accusations really do happen sometimes, please go read my initial post first.

It's the 24th, which means it's my day to post over at SFNovelists. Today I talk about getting lucky ;-) It's something I've talked about before (work vs. luck, talent vs. skill, etc.), but from a different angle this time.

And with that, I'm pretty blogged out for today. So ... um ... here's a progress meter, and I'll try to be more entertaining here tomorrow!

First off, a quick announcement. will_couvillier is working on recruiting a few writers for James Gunn's online short story workshop. Information is here, and the class syllabus is here. The class runs about eight weeks, and the cost is $200.


So anyway, a few weeks back an editor e-mailed me asking if I would submit a story to a project she was working on. Invitations like this are always flattering, and I did have a story I thought would work, a reprint of a fun zombie tale I wrote a while back. So I sent the story off. She liked it, and things were good. I patted myself on the back, and went about my business.

Today, for some reason, I found myself thinking about that story ... and I realized it was one of the stories I had posted at Fictionwise. And Fictionwise asks for exclusive electronic rights. And the project I had sent the story to was an electronic publication.

Son of a crap!

Part of the reason I messed this up is because I had already reviewed the Fictionwise contracts a while back, since I was also including this story in my German collection. There was no problem there (with a print, foreign language publication), so obviously I could reprint it here as well (in an English language electronic publication). Um ... no, that's not how it works. Bad brain! I could probably blame it on deadline stress too, but in the end, it doesn't matter. I screwed up, and that's that.

I e-mailed the editor as soon as I realized what I had done, and explained that I was a shmuck. No contracts have been signed or anything like that, so technically I hadn't yet broken my Fictionwise contract. No, the only thing I had done was to make an editor's job harder, and to make myself look like an idiot. I apologized, and asked if she would be interested in an alternate story, or if there was anything else I could do.

Fortunately, the editor was very understanding. I've got another reprint in mind to send her, which I'll do later tonight -- once I've double- and triple-checked the contracts on that one.

Why am I sharing this? I'm not sure, exactly. Maybe as a reminder to read your contracts. Maybe to show that we all screw up occasionally, and it's not the end of the world. Or maybe just to demonstrate that most editors are decent, understanding people.

About 8 months back, we enrolled my daughter in a Sanchin-Ryu self-defense class. I didn't know much about this style, except that they worked through community education programs instead of through a dojo, they're affordable, and they work on safety issues as well as martial arts.

For the first few sessions, I sat and read while my daughter worked out. Each time, the instructors invited me to join the class, which included students from age 6 to 60. My daughter liked the idea of me taking the class with her, so I joined in.

Fast forward to this year. My daughter has her green belt, I've got my orange, and I'm really happy about this school. Case in point: last night, my wife showed up a little early to pick us up. She had my three-year-old with her. Being a three-year-old, he didn't feel like just standing around. Oh, no. He broke away, ran through the line, circled past the instructor, and ended up running to me while I was trying to practice a new combination move.

I cringe to think about the reaction this would have earned in the Tae Kwon Do dojo I attended twenty years ago. But last night the instructor just smiled and said "Let him run. It will help the rest of the class work on their concentration." He then went on to tell my wife how his own kids used to run through the classes in their diapers.

I love this group. There's no pressure, no hard-core militant discipline. I practiced a few moves one-handed last night while holding my son in the other until he was ready to go back to Mama. (Which is good exercise, by the way.) But all along, it's been such a supportive, fun environment. In one of the very first classes, the instructor told everyone that they were going to mess up, and then had us all repeat back to him, "I will mess up!" Last week, while explaining flurry attacks, that same instructor explained to my daughter how a flurry attack is like an ice cream Flurry with a combination of different things working together, and therefore Dad should go buy her a Flurry after class to help her remember.

This is what I want out of a martial arts class. My daughter is a long way from taking on Chuck Norris, but I did watch her knock a black belt on his butt last night. More importantly, she's working on balance and coordination, learning how to protect herself both from attackers and in other safety situations. Not to mention her self-confidence -- she outranks her Daddy, after all! As for me, I get to spend time with her and get some much needed exercise. It also does a marvelous job of de-stressing me. For an hour or two, I don't have to worry about home repairs, work troubles, or how to fix that next scene in the book. I find I'm in a much better mood after class.

It's especially good for me as a writer. My day job and my writing both involve me sitting on my ass, so it's very good to get out for a few hours and work up a sweat. Not to mention I've picked up a few new moves for Talia to use in the Mermaid book ;-)

My story "Goblin Lullaby" is now available as a free podcast over at PodCastle. I think this is my favorite of the goblin short stories, even though Jig only has a small role. (Ha - I amuse myself.) This story first came about when I got to wondering why the goblins would have bothered to keep a runt baby like Jig alive. You also learn about Grell's history with Kralk, and you see the seeds of some of the human/elf backstory from Goblin War [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].

ETA: I love the description PodCastle gives of this one, too: "Contains not necessarily overlapping groups of heroes and good guys."


And as long as I'm mentioning podcasts, you can also get the goblin story "Goblin Hunter" over at ClonePod. This one was originally published as "Goblin Hero" (back before I decided upon the title of book two), and tells how Jig met his faithful fire-spider Smudge.

Enjoy!

My agent Joshua Bilmes reported some of his recent foreign sales over at SF Scope. Get this bit. "Jim C. Hines, who Bilmes says 'has become the most successful author in Germany for JABberwocky Literary Agency,' had a short story collection picked up by his German publishers Bastei. Polish rights to his Goblin War went to Fabryka Slow."

Wow. Considering JABberwocky represents Tanya Huff, Simon Green, Elizabeth Moon, and lots of other people who are much more impressive than I am ... just wow.

Fortunately, slogging through the latest rewrite was more than enough to bring my ego back down to earth.

Who was the comedian who talked about memory being in our backsides? When you get up to go do something, you end up forgetting what it was. But then if you sit down again, Bam! You remember the moment your butt hits the chair.

Writing works the opposite way. You can sit at your desk for an hour, staring at a silly little one-page scene that just doesn't want to work. Then at the end of your lunch break, you get up to use the restroom, and by the time you've walked thirty feet, Bam! Of course the scene doesn't work. You have to move the silly thing to the end of the chapter!

Clearly writers keep our brains in our behinds, and sitting for too long cuts off the blood flow. That's why it's important to get up and walk around every once in a while.

11 days until deadline. Just in case anyone else wants to count along with me.

LOL books like to color with an octarine marker. Previous LOL books are available at http://jimhines.livejournal.com/tag/lol.

Today's book is The Magic Toybox [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], edited by Denise Little. This is another of the DAW anthologies, and is actually a collector's item -- if you visit the Amazon link, you'll see that this book actually boasts a four-star review from Harriet Klausner.

(Wikipedia link, for anyone who doesn't get the LOL.)

Some time last year, Simon Haynes (halspacejock) sent me an ARC of his next book: Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy]. My reading stack being what it is, I ended up reading the book earlier this month while I was up north. Well, it's my loss for waiting.

Anyone who's read this blog knows I'm a very serious, somber fellow, so normally I wouldn't be caught dead reading one of those humorous SF/F books. But, well, I was on vacation, you know? And every once in a while it's fun to lighten up a bit.

The Hal Spacejock books are satirical action tales about a not-entirely-competent freighter pilot (Hal) and his too-serious robot partner (Clunk). I've reviewed the other three books in the series, and my sense all along has been that they're entertaining reads, but that the silliness was sometimes a bit too strong for my taste. There would be scenes where the jokes felt like they interfered with the stories, or broke my suspension of disbelief. Enjoyable, but each time I ended up giving four stars out of five over on old Amazon.

Hal IV, ironically, is a five-star book. Haynes has improved with each of his novels (which is exactly how it should work). This time, Hal joins up with a young peace force officer on her first assignment, while also trying to deal with a rival freighter pilot. Hal makes an interesting deputy, and I was surprised at how well the romantic subplot between him and the peace officer worked. Naturally, the assignment uncovers all sorts of nastiness, and things roll along at a good clip. If you've read any SF at all, you'll probably figure out some of the mystery long before our investigators, but the book also threw in some twists I wasn't expecting.

This book works. The humor flows with the story, and the story is the most cohesive and engaging of all four books. At least one of the twists at the end did feel a bit too coincidental for me, but that was a minor thing. I won't tell you how it all wraps up, but it left me curious to read book five.

Haynes is with an Australian publisher, so U.S. readers might have a slightly harder time tracking down the books. (Also, you'll have to accept that those Australians just don't know how to spell. "Tyres" indeed!) On the other hand, Haynes has made the first Hal Spacejock available as a free download, and you don't get much more convenient than that.

Holy crap, I've been Boing-Boinged! Thank you, Mary!

If you enjoyed Modern SF Novelist, I would ask that as a favor to me, you consider visiting the Tom Smith Fundraiser. Tom (filkertom) is an incredibly skilled filker, and writes some of the funniest songs I've ever heard. (My favorite is House at Cthulhu Corner.) He's also a very nice guy, and the one who sat down and recorded "The Song of Jig" in the hallway at a convention for me. (MP3 here).

Tom ended up in the hospital this summer, which means no performing and lots of medical bills, so every donation helps.


On a different note, does anyone know what's up with Amazon? Seems like more and more over the past few weeks, I've gone over to obsess about my sales ranks review the upcoming releases, only to get an error message that Amazon.com can't be displayed. Personally, I would rather see people shopping at the brick & mortar stores anyway, but it's still bizarre to see Amazon down.

ETA: Okay, it's starting to sound like this is just my problem. Hmph. I wonder what I did to offend Amazon...

ETA2: Or maybe not. Data in the comments is contradictory. Jim is confused.

This turned out to be a little more challenging than I expected when I started, but I perservered. Why? Because I love you. And also because I'm stubborn :-)

If you enjoy, please feel free to share. All I ask is that you credit me as the author, and maybe include a link either here or to my web site.


I am the Very Model of a Modern SF Novelist

I am the very model of a modern SF novelist,
I've manuscripts space opera, anime, and fantasist,
I know the kings of fandom and the best flamewars historical
From Andrew Burt to LiveJournal, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted too, with matters editorial,
I keep my cover letters brief and never too suctorial,
About rejection etiquette I'm teeming with propriety,
With many cheerful facts about your online notoriety,
I'm very good at worldbuilding and proper use of ansibles;
I know the hyphenated names of beings unpronounceable:
In short, in matters space opera, anime, and fantasist,
I am the very model of a modern SF novelist.

I know our genre history, from H. G. Wells to Arthur Clarke,
I've read so much time travel, I've a pretty taste for paradox,
I quote in panel talks the wise advice of Crispin and Miss Snark,
I study wormholes, galaxies and theories about matter dark;
I can tell a work professional from books Publish America,
I know the Eye of Argon from Conan of Cimmeria!
Then I can hum the melody from every last John Williams score,
And whistle all the airs from that infernal film Fantastic Four.
I'll write you books of goblin war and princesses who won't conform,
And tell show you every detail of a goblin warrior's uniform:
In short, in matters space opera, anime, and fantasist,
I am the very model of a modern SF novelist.

In fact, when I know what is meant by "grok" and "droid" and "FTL",
When I can tell at sight the sword Excalibur from Anduril,
When twists in stories I perceive by reading just one paragraph,
And when I know precisely how to pen a clever epigraph,
When I have followed breakthroughs yearly in e-book technology,
When I know more of grammar than my profs from University--
In short, when you run out and buy and read every last book by me--
You'll say a better novelist has never writ a fantasy.
My works even appear in many dialects European,
Thanks to the perserverence of my agent JABberwockian;
In short, in matters space opera, anime, and fantasist,
I am the very model of a modern SF novelist.

1. Backstory is nice. Frontstory is good too, though. Sigh ... Between drafts 2 and 3, I changed the captain of the queen's ship into a character with (in my opinion) a much more interesting background. I needed more non-human characters, and this one's fun. Or she would be, if she actually did anything. She can't just be there to show off what a nifty backstory idea I had. Sure, she's a relatively minor character, but as they say, every character is the hero of his/her own story. They all have desires and needs motivating them to act, and figuring those out -- even for the minor characters -- makes them all much more interesting to read about. Unfortunately, this clicked in the middle of the current revision, which means I'll get to go through the book yet another time to edit her scenes. Fortunately, she doesn't have that many :-)

2. Don't ignore plot threads. There's a romantic plot thread in The Stepsister Scheme which I absolutely love. It's a minor bit, getting maybe one page at most, but it's one of my favorite things about the book. While writing Mermaid, I realized I couldn't just leave that romantic thread where it was. Stagnation is annoying. I never thought about where I might go with this potential relationship, but anything I do with it is better than doing nothing. And now that I've been thinking about the possibilities, I really like what I could do with this over the next few books.

3. The ideas never stop coming. I continue to think up fun ways to change this book and make it better. Right now, I'm still racing to incorporate as many of those ideas as I can. The thing is, I suspect I'll continue to think of more ideas after the book is turned in. In other words, the thing is never going to feel done, nor is it ever going to be perfect. So I shouldn't aim for making it perfect. Instead, I think making it Damn Good is an acceptable alternative :-)

4. Escalate. The early drafts had a huge problem. The first 3/4 of the book centered around my princesses solving a particular crisis, which they did. Yay! And then we found a new, bigger crisis, and spent the last 1/4 of the book solving that. That doesn't work. The book felt done at the 3/4 mark. Instead, I had to rework things so that even as we're resolving smaller parts of the crisis, other pieces are escalating, increasing the tension throughout the book until we get to the real ending. Structure is a good thing.

I've already worked on this book for a year or so, and I'm sure there are many more lessons, but none of them spring to mind. So instead I'll just post a quick progress bar, mostly for myself, showing how many pages I've got left in this latest go-round with the book. Whee...

So I'm late to the William Sanders party. An awful lot has already been said, and well, by others. I'll point to Tobias Buckell as one of many good, well thought out responses to some of the nastiness. Me, I thought I'd talk about one piece that's been bothering me a lot -- that being the way in which some people have leapt to defend Sanders.

Look, let's say I run out and kick your puppy. You might find yourself upset by this. You might even then go post a video of me kicking your puppy, in order to show the world what an asshole I am.

And then some of my friends come to you to say, "But Jim has two dogs, and he never wears fur, and he donates all of his royalties to the humane society, and also his house was just bombed by Buddhist terrorists so he's really stressed right now."

Um ... so what? None of this changes my behavior. None of it makes what I did okay. At best, it provides some context for why I chose to act like an asshole at that particular moment in time. It doesn't excuse what I did. (On the other hand, me kicking the puppy led to my friends talking about how wonderful I am. That's what we former psych majors call "positive reinforcement".)

Telling me that someone isn't behaving in a racist/sexist/whateverist way because "He's a good person" or "He's always been against racism/sexism/whateverism" or "He's published non-white authors, and he did that all-female issue of Helix" or "He's not even white" is utter crap. It's like we're playing a game where you can score Ally Points and Racist Points, and as long as you have a few Ally Points, you can spend them on indulgences to get away with racist and sexist bullshit.

Of course, there are people who see it exactly that way, and I'm not talking just about the Sanders mess. Working in the rape education/prevention field, I saw a fair number of men who realized they could get involved and score points with women. "Look at me, I'm a sensitive nice guy. Can I have a cookie now? Also, look how safe and trustworthy I am ... don't you want to invite me in to your dorm room?" Or in the case of the all-female issue of Helix, I recall a statement by Mr. Sanders along the lines of "I published the women! Now if you all don't donate lots of money to the magazine, you're a bunch of hypocrite assholes."

If you want to stand by your friend, that's understandable. But making excuses for bad behavior does two things. It encourages that bad behavior to continue, and it makes you look like you're saying such behavior is okay.

Finally, a quick tip: if you're trying to respond to accusations of racism and sexism, lashing out at people and accusing them of having their panties in a wad might not be the best approach.

I'm back, and I have no idea where to start with the blogging. There is too much. I'm half tempted to turn it into an informal poll. Actually, why don't we run with that and see how it works. I'll make this more of a summary post, and y'all can let me know what, if anything, you want me to expand on.

The Mermaid Book: 3rd rewrite was finished before I headed up north. While there, I got through a little over half of the fourth revision, incorporating a few more thematic changes, switching a character around, and pushing toward a final, submittable manuscript. 17 days until deadline. So far, so good.

Other Writing News: Came home to a delivery and acceptance check from DAW for Stepsister, a contract from Poland for Goblin War, and a letter that my German publisher had sold the goblin books to a book club over there. This is my first book club deal, but it basically means Germany continues to like the goblins. I also got a note from my German editor that he really liked the introduction for the collection -- thanks to everyone who made suggestions on that. If this is the kind of mail I'm going to come home to, I'll be taking a lot more vacations thank you very much! (Okay, I also got a rejection letter, but the rest more than makes up for it.)

From the Blogosphere: There's no way I'm going to catch up with everything I missed over the past week. However, I wanted to congratulate Pat Rothfuss, who apparently would have won the Locus award for The Name of the Wind [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] if Locus hadn't decided after the fact to change the way they counted the votes. As for the William Sanders rejection letter flap, well, read the letter. For my own reasons, Helix has never been on my list of places to submit to. Lines like "most of the SF magazines are very leery of publishing anything that might offend the sheet heads" confirm that I made the right call.

About the Trip: Overall, I had a good time up north. Avoided scalp sunburn! Didn't seem to forget anything important*. Son nearly impaled my left eye with a dart. (Yay for glasses, which now have a tiny chip dead-center in the left lens.) Saw Wall*E and loved it. Drunk driver who clipped our van in the parking lot didn't do much damage at all. Got to watch the kids swimming and jetskiing and trying to protect their food from the beagle puppy. Read two books, which will get more in separate entries. (Hey, halspacejock -- No Free Lunch [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] is your best yet. Longer review to come.) Ate lots of good food. Visited a small bookstore to find four goblin books - yay! (Also saw lots of books by paulskemp, as well as a copy of brainstormfront's and a few others.) Saw my cousin-in-law and her son, which is always fun. My wife confirms that I was much more relaxed by the end of the week.

I'm sure I'm forgetting things, but that's some of the highlights from the past week of blog-silence. The most important thing, of course, is that I still managed to get a LOL book posted this morning. You've got to have your priorities, after all!
So anyway, if there's anything you're curious about, whether it's my son's subconscious desire to have a cyclopian father or the nuts and bolts of how German book club deals work or the current status of my own mermaid stress, let me know.

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*I may still award a prize or two from the "Guess what Jim will forget" contest I posted last week, though.

LOL books have a serious case of post-vacation brain lag this morning. Previous LOL books are available at http://jimhines.livejournal.com/tag/lol.

Today we have The Long Look [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Richard Parks (aka ogre_san). I have a soft spot for Five Star's books, since they were the first publisher to put Goblin Quest out there. Clearly a small publisher with great taste and an eye for talent :-)

Add to this the fact that Richard Parks is a heck of a storyteller, and this should be a very impressive novel. (I believe this will be his first full-length novel ... but I could be mistaken. See the note about brain lag.)

It's been a productive five days. I turned in the intro for the German collection earlier today. I started my final (for now) revision to The Mermaid's Madness. Not only that, but I sent a short story out this morning. I can't remember the last time I did that.

I will still be bringing the laptop along on the trip. I'm hoping to get some more done on the book tomorrow on the drive up, assuming my brother-in-law's beagle gives me any peace in the car. And I'm sure I'll take some time over the next week to work on the book. But I won't be obsessing about it the way I would have if I hadn't stayed behind.

I haven't exactly enjoyed the past few days, but I'm feeling much less stressed, and I think I'll have a better time up north as a result. I'm looking forward to actually seeing my wife again, and being able to take my kids out in the paddleboat, or just watching them run around and play in the water.

So, any guesses what I'll forget to pack? Who knows, if someone gets it right, I might even toss out a little prize. How about a sneak preview of the first part of Stepsister Scheme? Only one guess per person, please.

Have a great week, everyone. And thanks for the comments and chatter over the past few days -- virtual company is far better than no company at all. I'll see you next Monday.

1. As many of you have probably seen by now, four student laptops were stolen from the Clarion West writing workshop. This is awful on two levels. There's the financial side, since students at the workshop take six weeks off of work or else quit their jobs entirely, not to mention the cost of attending. There's also the loss of your work, both what you've already written and the potential work still to come during the remainder of the workshop. If you've ever watched a junkie go through withdrawal, you have some idea what it's like to be a writer who loses his/her ability to write. Cory Doctorow has more information in this post, including a link to donate and help the students.

2. Public Service Announcement: As of 1:30 this morning, it was no longer the 4th of July, which means y'all probably could have quit setting off firecrackers in the street and let us old farts get some sleep. M'kay?

3. Today I writed many words, including a rough draft of the introduction for the German collection. I decided to go with a short introduction by me in the beginning, and then to do a brief dialogue between Jig, Veka, and Grell to introduce each of the individual stories. Some of those bits work better than others, but I think I like this approach. I miss writing for my goblins ... they're such fun characters.

4. Does anyone know why the arm where they missed the vein hurts more than the one where they actually got the vein and drew blood? That seems backwards, somehow. (This was for my regular labwork to make sure the diabetes hasn't killed me yet.)

Draft three is done at 87,700 words. Looking back, I did the last chapter backwards and I need to flip two scenes, and there's a lot of work to be done between now and 8/1, but still... ::Insert Kermit-style cheer here::

Part of the problem with being a "full time writer" is that you don't actually get to spend the whole day writing. Taking the past few days as an example, my full-time writing has also included lawn mowing, gutter cleaning, setting up my parents' computer*, running a check to the bank for my wife, chasing down and medicating one neurotic dog who is already so freaked out by the firecrackers that she won't even let me use the bathroom in peace, cleaning the house, and oh yeah, minor things like meals.

I've settled into a routine with three writing stints: one stretch in the morning, one after lunch, and one in the evening. If I do 1000-1500 words each time, I come out with a respectible day's work. But it's a nice little reality-check to the daydream about quitting the day job.

Thanks for all of the comments and suggestions about the collection intro. Sorry I haven't been quite as responsive as usual, but if you've been reading, you know why.

Finally, I noticed that the "Friend of" list just crossed the 600 mark. Which doesn't actually mean anything, but it's fun to see the numbers turn over. I know a few people de-friended me the day of the pig/frog post, which I kind of expected, but it's nice to see more new people stopping by.

And now I'm off again to:

A) Start re-reading The Mermaid's Madness
B) Start writing that introduction
C) Start writing a letter of reference for a friend

But before I go back to the writing, I have to:

D) Clip a dog's toenails so she stops tearing up our door**

-----
*They fed me dinner, so I'm certainly not complaining!

**Because the cats have already been vaccuumed.

1. The flaming clowns from yesterday were dispatched through a number of clever devices built with skateboards, model rockets, roofing tar, marbles, and the old baby monitor. Once that was all taken care of, I managed another 3000 words to finish up this chapter, leaving only the wrap-up to go. There are a lot of loose ends to deal with in this book, but the fighting is done. Call it another 3-5K and I should have a third draft.

2. Ever repeat a word so much it starts to lose its meaning? Writing a book is like that, only with 90,000 words.

3. I need a little help from the LJ mind. In addition to the novel, I also told my German editor I'd try to write an introduction for my collection. The trouble is, I've got no idea what approach to take with this. So I thought I'd ask all of you. What sort of things do you like to see in the opening pages of a collection or anthology? What approaches bore you to tears? What special insights would you want into either the stories or the author?

4. In the first chapter of the latest Simon Green book, our hero shoots several demons with a gun that fires projectiles made of frozen holy water. It's a brilliant idea ... or rather, it would be, if I hadn't seen the "ice bullet" myth so conclusively busted on an episode of Mythbusters. Maybe this is supposed to be a magic gun, I don't know. But I think Mythbusters should be required viewing for would-be authors.

Well, my wife and kids are off to the cabin up north. I'm alone in the house. If years of Hollywood education are to be trusted, I'll soon be embarking on all manner of zany adventures. Given the timing, I'm sure fireworks will be involved.

For now though, I'm working on what I think should be the penultimate chapter of Mermaid. I got a later start than I hoped. We had to run my son to the doctor this morning before they could leave. It was a little thing, but after his surgery last month, we wanted to be careful. The doctor prescribed another round of antibiotics to be safe, but also said my boy was healing better than the doctor had expected, and that the permanent damage we worried about might not happen. We'll still have to wait and see, but that was good news.

Gotta run. There are some clowns on stilts in the driveway, and their hair seems to be on fire...

Happy bookday to Sherwood Smith (sartorias), whose third Inda novel King's Shield [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] comes out today!


Today I ought to hit 80,000 words on the rewrite of Mermaid's Madness. The 3rd rewrite, for those keeping score at home. This is pretty good, considering I started over again on May 14. Unfortunately, it's not good enough.

Another week of writing should see this draft finished, at which point I get to go through it one more time, a process I expect to take a few more weeks to do right. My deadline is exactly one month away, so this is still doable.

Problem: My family is going up to the U.P. for vacation starting tomorrow.

Solution: I will probably be staying at home and going up early next week.

In other words, about half of my vacation is now going to be spent alone in the house, fixing this book. This was actually my wife's suggestion. She's been amazingly supportive about all of the extra work I've been putting in during the evenings and on weekends to get this book done.

I've struggled with writing before. I've talked some about the depression and the emotional ups and downs. But I think this is the first time I've resented being a writer. I've been frustrating at not being able to spend more time with the kids in the evenings lately, but usually I can still take some time to play and roughhouse and such. This is different. I've been away for conventions and such before, but this is our vacation, and I'm missing more than one or two nights.

It's been suggested I just tell my editor I'm going to blow the deadline, and ask for an extension. That's ... not something I'm willing to do at this point. I understand authors miss deadlines sometimes. However, I've started to build a reputation as someone who's reliable about getting things done and in on time, and I prefer not to damage that reputation if I don't have to. There's also the fact that pushing back deadlines probably means pushing back the rest of the schedule, and I'm at the point in my career where I'm working (a little desperately) to build an audience. Delaying books is not going to help that.

It's always a choice, thus the subject line*. I don't have to like the alternatives, but I still recognize it's a choice. Even as I was struggling to make the choice, I kept thinking about the next book, which is due August 1 of 2009 ... once again, right after our July 4 U.P. trip. The whole situation has me thinking a lot harder about what I will and won't sacrifice for the writing career. (Boundaries that grow harder to set now that the writing career is paying a significant portion of the bills ... sigh.)

Please note that I'm not asking for advice here. But y'all had damn well better like these books. That's all I'm saying :-P

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*There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, for the handful of readers who aren't familiar with Heinlein.