Okay . . . y’all know I’m a geek.
But even I feel vaguely ashamed to admit how funny I found this video.
Back to my writerly lifestyle, where two fonts encompass almost the entirety of my world: Times New Roman and Courier New. (But I can dream of more . . . .)
ETA: Also, snurched from ellen_kushner who got it from libba_bray,
EVERY TIME YOU POST WITH CAP LOCKS ON,
ee cummings kills a kitten.
This article explains so much of my condition these days.
I have been up for three hours, but I have yet to make it out the front door to run the errands I need to carry out today. Deciding on dinner is hard, and what’s easiest tends to win. I spend my free time reading mindless comfort books, and have no social life because making that happen requires decisions, and those take energy.
Could this be because I spend my days organizing and packing the house (and doing things like picking a moving company) and my nights writing a brain-intensive book? While also trying to assemble enough of a committee to walk out of here with my master’s?
Nah.
It doesn’t fix the problem to have scientists tell me “you’ve got a limited amount of decision-making capacity and it gets harder the more you do it,” but it makes me feel better about being a lazy slug for whom picking which Netflix movie to watch seems like an awful amount of work.
It’s funny, realizing just how long it’s been since I had to remember to turn the TV on at a particular time, on a particular channel, because I wanted to watch something current.
I watch a lot of TV, but 99.9% of it is on DVD, after the season is over. Commercials annoy the snot out of me; I like being able to hit pause and wander off to get a drink; I like watching the show at my own pace (which is often “marathon”). But when my mother was here a few weeks ago, we watched So You Think You Can Dance, and — gasp — I’ve continued to watch it since then.
Here’s why I like the show. (The dance thing, obviously, but there’s more to it than that.)
For starters, they’re doing a pretty good job of being open to all kinds of styles, from ballroom to ballet to street. Not only can you potentially get on the show whether you’re swing or crunk, once you’re there, they’ll make you operate outside of your safety zone. So we get hip-hop guys doing the foxtrot, and ballerinas grunging it up, and some of them adapt spectacularly. (It also, as a corollary, means that the show has a higher degree of racial diversity than I’ve seen practically anywhere on TV. I predict that once this week’s cuts are made, there won’t be any white guys left — and the only one remaining is a Hawaiian guy who looks like he has more than just Europeans in his ancestry.)
Also, until they get down to the last 10, the cuts are made by both popular and judge decision. That is, viewers vote, and then the bottom slice of contestants solo before the judges boot one guy and one girl. This guarantees that when you get to the final stages of the show, everybody left is actually good. You may have preferred someone who got cut, but the remaining dancers are at least worthy.
Which means that the later stages of the show are really friendly instead of vicious and cut-throat, at least as seen on TV. Tonight’s episode was one big love-in, with the judges raving about what beautiful dancers all of them are; even when they criticize, they often do it apologetically, with references to all the other wonderful things the dancer is capable of, even if they failed at the current routine. And since the contestants have to dance in pairs, whatever sniping may go on backstage, you don’t see it out front; trying to undercut your partner is about the stupidest move you could make. The best way to look good is to make the person you’re with look good. There’s no Donald Trump being an asshole at the contestants, no fake conflict generated to boost ratings.
So what you’re left with is a lot of friendly people creating beautiful and diverse art.
For that, I remind myself to turn on the TV every Wednesday at 8 p.m. It’s worth the effort.
2896. Because I am very bad at stopping in the middle of the ‘splody. And then another 39 more, because I’m also bad at stopping 37 words short of my next benchmark.
Well, I wanted to hit 60K before Conestoga. I just didn’t mean to do it tonight.
Wordcount: 60002
LBR quota: Blood. It goes well with ‘splody.
Authorial sadism: Well, I had to come up with a reason they couldn’t just solve all their problems that way.
Favorite bits: Yay for crispy moths, conveniently timed changes in the lieutenancy in the Tower of London, curious horses, cameo appearances by Scottish fae, and knowing that particular peep has your back.
I head off to Conestoga in Tulsa this weekend. For those who will be attending, here’s my schedule of events:
Fri 03:00 PM – Researching the Fantastic
Sat 09:00 AM – Teaching Science Fiction
Sat 12:00 PM – Broad Universe Rapid-Fire Reading
Sat 01:00 PM – Creatures: Faeries, Demons & Zombies
Sat 03:00 PM – Signing
Sun 11:00 AM – The Pen vs. the Sword
Sun 01:00 PM – Don’t Dumb it Down: Writing for Young Adults
This is the busiest con schedule I’ve ever had. I hope that by the end, I’m still capable of saying interesting things.
So the auction (which has raised over forty-three thousand dollars, at last count — good god!) included an offer from the inestimable yhlee: an original music composition, to a prompt of the buyer’s choosing.
I jumped on the “Buy It Now” price like a rabid weasel three minutes after the auction opened, and chose as my prompt . . . the Onyx Court series.
That’s right: my books now have a theme song.
Want to hear it? You can download the recording from my website. (Right-click and save, natch.) If you would like to hear the early draft, that’s available, too. Share as you please; just make sure to credit Yoon Ha Lee as the composer and artist, and my series as the inspiration.
***
This seems as good a time as any to mention my policy regarding fan work. It hasn’t really come up yet, but someday it might, so for future reference, here’s my stance.
If you want to compose your own music, or draw some art, or write a story, or whatever, based on Midnight Never Come or anything else of mine, then so long as you aren’t using it for commercial purposes or trying to lay claim to the original work itself, I say have fun.
If commercial profit comes into the picture (you’re a musician who wants to record the song on your next album) or you might be stepping on the toes of a right reserved in my contract (a student film), then please contact me so we can work something out. Even if what we work out is just a thumbs-up to whatever you had in mind in exchange for a link to my site, it’s better to make that clear. I’m unlikely to object or to charge you some exorbitant fee. (Unless you’re a major Hollywood studio, in which case I’m getting a media agent and instructing that person to take you for all they can. (I should be so lucky.))
In the case of things like music and visual art, I’d be flattered if you let me know this is happening. If it’s fanfic, I’m unlikely to read the work in question; legal twitchery aside (what if you write something and then someday I use a similar idea?), it would probably just hurt my brain to see other people’s takes on my characters. But I do believe that fan work is a sign that readers are engaged with the story, so I don’t mind people playing around with my ideas. If you feel so inspired, then by all means, go right ahead.
Word is in from matociquala (author Elizabeth Bear) that a clerical error, made when her most recent novel Ink and Steel was put into one major distribution system, may be the reason why it isn’t showing up in a lot of bookstores, nor in their computers when booksellers search for it by her name or the title.
Which is threatening to kill the series, because unsurprisingly, when your book isn’t there, and isn’t easily findable in the system, your sales figures don’t look too good.
First of all — god, that’s scary. Somebody types something in wrong, and there goes your book. The situation may be salvageable, but right now, things aren’t going well.
So the other purpose of this post (besides saying what is wrong with our industry?) is to make a quick rec for the book. I’ve been too busy to keep up with my website recommendations, and I’m slated to write a proper review of I&S and its second half Hell and Earth in a little while, but a decent number of people reading this journal would probably be interested in her novel. How do I know this? Because this is, as she said in her comment on my book, the summer of the Volcano Asteroid Impact Alarmingly Well-Researched Elizabethan Faerie Novel. Ink and Steel takes place three years after Midnight Never Come, with a different selection of historical figures (we only overlap in a few small places), but it, too, has faeries and espionage in the streets of London. And if you’re reluctant to pick it up knowing it’s only the first half of a very large novel, Hell and Earth is coming out next month, so you don’t have long to wait.
If that appeals, then, go now — not later; there may not be a later — to your bookstore and check for it on the shelves. If it isn’t there, ask for them to order it. And if they can’t find it in their system, give them the ISBN (978-0451462091), since that’s the only way to get around the error. (Also think about looking for the earlier books in the series — earlier in terms of publication date, that is. Blood and Iron and Whiskey and Water are set in the modern period, and you may be able to find them in trade paper still, or mass-market paperback where B&I is concerned. I recommended that one here.)
You may have no trouble at all; it may be on the shelves. But if not, please consider putting in the extra effort. It’s a good book, very full of plot and characterization and faerie lore, and I’d hate to see it killed by a clerical error.
MOLOKOV: The man is utterly mad! You’re playing a lunatic.
THE RUSSIAN: That’s the problem: he’s a brilliant lunatic. You can’t tell which way he’ll jump. Like his game, he’s impossible to analyze. You can’t dissect him, predict him — which of course means he’s not a lunatic at all.
–from the musical Chess
The Joker is a lunatic, of course, but that quote came to mind while khet_tcheba and I were discussing why Heath Ledger’s take on the character was so disturbing. And it made me realize that you can’t triumph over his Joker: you can capture him, or you can thwart his plan, but you will never get the satisfaction of a psychological victory. There is absolutely nothing you can do that will make him react with real chagrin and acknowledge that you have bested him, not because he’s too egotistical to admit his own defeat, but because he’s too chaotic; defeat can only happen if he’s invested in a particular outcome. And he isn’t. Anything you do, or don’t do, is equally amusing to him, equally a demonstration of the chaos and meaninglessness he sees.
. . . and that’s creepy.
1410 tonight. It’s hard to stop at quota when you’re about to blow up one of the conventions of faerie fantasy.
Whee!
Word count: 53,379
LBR tally: Rhetoric, finishing off yesterday’s scene, followed by impending blood.
Authorial sadism: Finding your blind spot. Then realizing how long it’s been there.
Non-spoilery review of The Dark Knight:
I didn’t think it was possible to make Batman Begins look flimsy and slight, but they may just have managed it.
Jeebus. My head hurts. In a good way.
Amazon UK has an item listed called Midnight Never Come: And Ashes Lie: Bk. 2, which apparently is 384 pages long and coming out next June.
I would like to know where they buy their crack.
***
Apropos of that, though — today my editor gave the go-ahead for this book to be longer than the last one, because I feel like I’m short-changing my own story, trying to cram it in too small of a sack. The pros reading this will have already leapt ahead to the immediate corollary concern, which is what that means for my deadline. Answer? Heck if I know. I intend to still make it.
I’d better, if the book is supposed to be out by June 4th . . . but they’ll have to shrink the typeface to get it on 384 pages.
***
Also, I just spent ten minutes wandering around my house trying to find the reference book I needed. That’s the Royal Exchange, that’s Pride’s Purge, that’s Whitehall, that’s the wrong book on Westminster . . . . I think one of the next packing stages will be clearing off the bottom shelf of my research bookcase and letting these books just annex it already, because the piles around the house are getting stupid.
Mush!
Today I got started working before five, and knocked out about 1400; then, against my better judgment (I know that slow and steady wins the race), I came back for a second sitting. 2,458 today — and all before midnight! The first overrun was excusable; I mean, I was three paragraphs away from Jack finally making his entrance. I’ve been looking forward to him all book. But did I really need to write the rest of that scene today? No. (Not to mention it’s a stupidly long scene. Though heck if I know how I can trim it. The tree may have to go away. <sad face>)
I am, however, being vindicated in my decision not to work on revising the earlier parts yet. As I suspected, I am getting to know Antony much better in this part, which will benefit me in the revision. Apparently he’s one of those guys who accomplishes more the less you give him to work with. Who knew?
Word count: 50521. That landmark is the other reason for the overrun.
LBR tally: 2,458 words of nearly pure rhetoric.
Authorial sadism: You know what happens when you give somebody a young son in Part I? They’re all growed up by Part III, is what.
I’m all over the internets today — my usual SF Novelists post, this time on the notion of “hard fantasy,” and a more open-ended piece on FFF about romances with a big age gap. Come on by and toss in your two cents’ worth!
It isn’t even 8 p.m., and I’ve already done my writing for the day. Because I just felt like doing it, instead of reading or whatever.
That’s a nice feeling, and not one I’ve had much of lately.
(Mind you, the desire was born of pure sadism. Last night I started an Antony scene that I’ve been dying to write, because it’s just so mean.)
Word count: 48090
LBR tally: Blood, of the metaphysical kind.
Authorial sadism: I’ve had enough time to think through the consequences of some of the things I’ve established in this and the previous book. Much to Antony’s detriment.
Dangit — I forgot to post a last reminder about before bidding closed. But thank you to everybody who offered or bid for something, or just spread the word; turns out it raised over ten thousand dollars, all told.
Not bad for a little online fandom effort.
So I’m reading Neil Gaiman’s journal, and he mentions that he’s friends with Jane Yolen, and I think oh my god, he’s friends with JANE YOLEN. Which is more or less the reaction I get any time I see/hear somebody mentioning their friendship with someone I consider to be a Big Name. (It still takes a while to sink in that Big Names are ordinary people, too.)
Sometimes we dream of striking up a friendship — a real, honest-to-god, going to their place for dinner kind of friendship — with the luminaries of our fields. But out of nowhere, my brain pointed out to me that what’s really boggling is, thirty years from now, we will have those friendships . . . because some of the people who are real, honest-to-god, going to their place for dinner kinds of friends of ours right now will have become the Big Names of the field.
And for some reason that really made my head spin around for a moment.
Which is to say, all y’all newbies and neopros I call friends these days? I’m TOTALLY name-dropping you once you’re famous.
The Minneapolis trip derailed me from posting in a more timely fashion about William Sanders of Helix, who made offensively racist comments in a rejection letter (thus sparking ickiness elsewhere), and subsequently responded rudely to yhlee when she asked for her story to be removed from the Helix archives — but if you’ve missed the storm about this one, follow those links and you’ll get the gist.
The purpose of this post is to spread the word that Sanders will be accepting requests for removal from the archives for a limited time only. I can actually understand that — though it would be nice if he specified an actual time limit — because it’s annoying to have to field those kinds of things, and technically the Helix contract (I am told) grants him the right to keep it non-exclusively in the archives.
On the other hand, any tiny modicum of professionalism exhibited in that message (and it was small to begin with) was obliterated when he replaced yhlee‘s story with the message “Story deleted at author’s pantiwadulous request.”
So. Y’know. Helix apparently was invitation-only anyway, but it’s officially a place I don’t want to be invited to.
ETA: Nevermind. Scratch anything positive I said or even implied about his decision to confine deletion requests to a narrow window. He’s apparently decided to charge forty bucks to any author asking for their story to be pulled down on account of his recent behavior.
Sweet gibbering monkeys, I thought Part Two would never end. 2549 tonight, and I’ve been batting well over a thousand for a week now in an attempt to put paid to this thing before I go to Minneapolis.
Antony’s way over on word-count. It’s his fault Part Two is over quota. But that’s a problem to fix in revision — somehow.
It came so very very close to “rocks fall, everyone dies” tonight. Or at least one character dying. But dropping the ceiling on him would have raised the question of why all the problems couldn’t be taken care of that way, so I had to use another method.
Two dead people in the first part; three in this one. (And one in the Prologue.) Will the number keep going up?
Word count: 45767
LBR tally: Blood. Blood, blood, and more blood.
Authorial sadism: This is one of those “all of it” moments.
Normally I would wait until I have a few more things to post, but two of these, fresh as of today, are the ones I was waiting for before, so what the heck.
***
I’m today’s Big Idea over on John Scalzi’s blog “Whatever.” It’s a feature he runs, where authors lay out what story/setting/conflict seed they started with, and how it developed during the course of writing.
Also, Fantasy Book Critic has posted the world’s most in-depth interview with me. The Midnight Never Come-related parts are probably familiar to those who have seen or heard me talk about it before, but Robert asked a lot of other questions pertaining to academia, short fiction, the future of publishing, and more.
***
In more review-like territory, I made yhlee cry. (In a good way.)
***
There will, I think, be an awesome piece of news to relate soon, but that’s still sitting in the box of Things For A Later Post.
