Random House and Hydra/Alibi/Flirt/Loveswept

John Scalzi has been doing a splendid job of chronicling the problems with Random House’s new e-book only imprints and the evolution of same: index post here, with updates here and here.

He’s already covered most of what I might want to say on those matters, but I do want to pull out one particular thread and swipe it a few times with highlighter:

Random House is referring to this model as “profit-sharing.”

Which isn’t false: it does involve sharing profits. But so does the standard model. That’s what royalties are; they’re a share in the profits earned from sales of the book. I’ve been sharing in my publisher’s profits since the first royalty accounting period for Doppelganger, because that book earned out its advance in a couple of months. And the advance, let us note, is an advance on royalties — meaning that the publisher shared with me some of their profits before they even earned any. The math for how an advance gets calculated is complicated, and not every book earns out, but the point is that we’ve always been splitting the proceeds, in one fashion or another.

Calling this “profit-sharing” is a bit of marketing speak, designed to make the author feel like the publisher is offering something that you don’t get under the advance-first model. Which may be true in degree (the royalty percentage), but not kind (the existence of royalties in the first place). As for the degree, it depends on the extent to which Random House hammers out the egregious flaws in the initial contract, such as charging production costs against the author’s share of net (not even gross). As many people have pointed out, that’s called “Hollywood accounting,” and it’s why no reputable Hollywood agent will ever recommend accepting net points as your compensation. The studios’ accountants will make sure that translates to nothing whatsoever. Not to mention that charging the author for production is what vanity presses do . . . but I digress.

One more time with the highlighter: don’t get suckered in by the terminology. All (non-scam) publishers share profits with their authors, one way or another. Random House’s way started out as insanely bad, is somewhat better now, and needs watching in the future. But whatever language they dress it up in, it is not some brave and generous new world.

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more thoughts on the epic fantasy thing

My post on writing a long epic fantasy has been generating some interesting discussion in a variety of places: the comment thread, Twitter, etc. I wanted to come back to it long enough to highlight a few lengthier responses that I think make very good points.

The first comes from C.E. Petit at Scrivener’s Error; scroll down to the third bit to find his thoughts. I tend not to talk about “theme” because the word has been so badly treated by high school English classes, but his point is a sound one, and can provide guidance as to how the author might gauge whether their story has begun to grow out of control. Are you diluting your thematic message by adding in all these other subplots? Or, conversely, are you hammering your reader too energetically with that message, by playing through sixteen variations on the motif? (Which is not, of course, to say that the work will have only one thematic message, especially if it stretches to four books or more. But a central line is still vital.)

The second, or rather the second and third, is Patricia C. Wrede’s two-part response to my own argument, which digs further into the question of why authors fall into these traps, and what they can do about them. I want to say that she is 100% right about the arbitrariness of your opening structural decision: even if you base it around some kind of pattern (as she suggests in the second post), ultimately that’s a framework you then try to pour your story into, rather than a natural outgrowth of the story itself. You don’t set out to write seven books because that’s precisely how much character and plot and so on you have to tell; you write seven books because you decided to build each one thematically around the seven deadly sins or chronologically around the years Harry will be in school, and then you try to scale everything else to match.

Note that we do this all the time in fantasy: it’s called a trilogy. You sign a contract for three books, okay, and so you plan your story based around that arbitrary decision. I’d venture to say that the vast majority of series that are planned as trilogies end up as exactly that. There are exceptions (Terry Goodkind, as discussed in Zeno’s Mountains; George R.R. Martin; the Hitchhiker’s series), but it seems that most of us are capable of sticking to three books when that’s what we said we’d do. It’s only when we go beyond three that our control seems so liable to slip — because we have so few models for how to do it right, and because one more book is much less expansion when it’s ten instead of nine than when it’s four instead of three. And, maybe, because if you’re selling well enough for your publisher to support nine books, they’re eager for you to make it ten instead.

But we manage it with trilogies, and TV writers manage it almost without fail when they write shows with season-long arc plots. Absent the network jerking them around, they finish their story in twenty-two episodes of X minutes each, period, the end, no “please just one more ep” or “sorry, this one ran twelve minutes long.”

Is that kind of discipline detrimental to the story? Sure, sometimes. But so, manifestly, is allowing one’s discipline to falter. And I say — with the spotless virtue of an author who has never yet had a publisher throw stacks of money at her, begging for a bestselling series to continue — that I would rather make myself find a way to tell my story more efficiently, with fewer digressions and wasted words, and end it while people are still in love with the tale, than risk losing sight of the original vision in a swamp of less productive byways.

(“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” Speaking of tales planned as trilogies, and delivered that way, and in my opinion all the better for it.)

It isn’t easy. As Wrede points out, it requires frequent check-ins with your plan, however you may have built said plan. It may require you to murder some very beloved darlings. But just as a sonnet’s structure can force you to make really good use of your fourteen allotted lines, so can a fixed length to your series.

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Books read, February 2013

The Devil in the Dust, Chaz Brenchley ([personal profile] desperance). On one of the flights for my book tour, the woman in the seat next to me apologized for not alerting me that the drink cart had come by. “You looked so wrapped up in your book,” she said. And I was. Sometimes in a disturbed fashion, since Brenchley really gets the pathological, Stockholm Syndrome extremes of medieval Christianity, but sometimes in a good way. I was fascinated by the not!Christianity of the setting and the utter weirdness (only partially explained thus far) of Surayon, and I want to know more about the djinn. Clearly the solution is to obtain the next book.

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison. Advance uncorrected manuscript, read for blurbing purposes. Intrictate political fantasy about the half-goblin son of an elven emperor, who inherits the throne when everybody ahead of him gets killed. Maia does not have an easy time of it, but watching him learn the hard way how to run a country was satisfying.

Spirit’s Princess, Esther Friesner. Part of Friesner’s “Princesses of Myth” series; this one follows Himiko, a figure in prehistoric Japan. I sort of wanted this either to be shorter, or to be combined with the sequel to make one fat book, because so much of its length is spent on “Himiko can’t have the life she wants.” Obstacles are good, but you don’t actually get the results of Himiko overcoming/bypassing them in this volume.

Kat, Incorrigible, Stephanie Burgis. AKA A Most Improper Magick. A fun fantasy-Regency YA. I think my favorite thing in this was the sisters: the first couple of pages primed me to see them as Evil (Not-Step-)Sisters, but they’re nothing of the sort. Kat’s relationship with them is complicated, with them getting along on some matters and not at all on others — which is entirely realistic. And I’m a sucker for good sibling relationships. The second book of this series is about to come out in paperback (in the US, I think? Already published in the UK?), with the third in hardcover next month, so I’ll probably zoom through the rest of these soon.

The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, Deborah Blum. Read for a book club. Basically about the invention of toxicology as an investigative art during the early twentieth century, in the face of opposition from New York’s massively corrupt city government. Full of grotty details about “wet chemistry,” so if you’re squeamish, consider yourself warned. But also very interesting, and horrifying — as much or more for all the ways you could accidentally get poisoned by everything around you back then as for the actual deliberate murders.

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Ides of March Book Giveaway

It’s better than a dagger in the back . . . .

I’ll have the usual book tour update for you all tomorrow, but I wanted to put this one out on its own: the Ides of March Book Giveaway, in which I join forces with sixteen other authors to reward the winners with a whole stack of books. To quote the official description:

Do you love books that take you somewhere you’ve never been before? Books with a unique sense of history or a fantastical premise, dark thrills or the sparkle of your favorite fairy tale–or perhaps all of these rolled up in one? Seventeen of your favorite, award-winning and best-selling authors have teamed up to offer this giveaway:

  • THE LANTERN by Deborah Lawrenson – NY Times bestseller modern gothic novel of love, secrets, and murder—set against the lush backdrop of Provence
  • THE FIREBIRD (ARC) by Susanna Kearsley – A twin-stranded story that blends modern romance with 18th-century Jacobite intrigue, traveling from Scotland to Russia
  • THE TWELFTH ENCHANTMENT by David Liss – In Regency England, at the dawn of the industrial era, magic and technology clash and the fate of the nation rests in the hands of a penniless young woman
  • COLD MAGIC by Kate Elliott – An epic adventure fantasy with a decidedly steampunk edge where magic – and the power of the Cold Mages – hold sway
  • THE MAPMAKER’S WAR by Ronlyn Domingue – Set in an ancient time in a faraway land, The Mapmaker’s War accounts the life of an exiled mapmaker who must come to terms with the home and children she was forced to leave behind.
  • DRACULA IN LOVE by Karen Essex – “If you read only one more vampire novel, let it be this one!” -C.W. Gortner, author of The Last Queen & The Confessions of Catherine de Medici
  • RED, WHITE AND BLOOD by Chris Farnsworth – High-octane supernatural thriller, a sequel to The President’s Vampire
  • THE HOUSE OF VELVET AND GLASS by Katherine Howe – The House of Velvet and Glass weaves together meticulous period detail, intoxicating romance, and a final shocking twist in a breathtaking novel that will thrill readers
  • THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL (ARC) by Carolyn Turgeon – An inventive, magical fairy-tale mash-up about Rapunzel growing up to be Snow White’s stepmother
  • THE BOOK OF LOST FRAGRANCES by M.J. Rose – A sweeping and suspenseful tale of secrets, intrigue, and lovers separated by time, all connected through the mystical qualities of a perfume created in the days of Cleopatra–and lost for 2,000 years
  • THIEFTAKER by DB Jackson – Combining elements of traditional fantasy, urban fantasy, mystery and historical fiction, Thieftaker will appeal to readers who enjoy intelligent fantasy and history with an attitude
  • GLAMOUR IN GLASS by Mary Robinette Kowal – Follows the lives of the main characters from Shades of Milk and Honey, a loving tribute to the works of Jane Austen in a world where magic is an everyday occurrence
  • DEVIL’S GATE by FJ Lennon – Exhilarating urban fantasy, with first class writing and characters that are unforgettable beyond the last page
  • THE MISSING MANUSCRIPT OF JANE AUSTEN by Syrie James – “A novel within a novel honoring what we love most about Austen: her engaging stories, rapier wit, and swoon worthy romance. Pitch perfect, brilliantly crafted.” —Austenprose
  • THE CROOKED BRANCH by Jeanine Cummins – “Wonderfully written, with strong, compelling characters, it is a deeply satisfying combination of sweeping historical saga and modern family drama, a gentle reminder of the ever-reaching influence of family”–Booklist
  • A NATURAL HISTORY OF DRAGONS by Marie Brennan – The story of Isabella, Lady Trent, the world’s preeminent dragon naturalist, and her thrilling expedition to Vystrana, where she made the first of many historic discoveries that would change the world forever
  • THE RECKONING by Alma Katsu – In the tradition of early Anne Rice, a gorgeously written sequel to The Taker that takes readers on a harrowing, passion-fueled chase that transcends the boundaries of time

    • We’re giving away one set of books per 500 entries, so how many winners there will be depends on the number of entrants! To enter, fill in the form below — you have until March 15th. Please note that this contest is open to residents of the US, Canada and the UK only and by entering, you agree to be added to the authors’ mailing lists (don’t worry; you can always unsubscribe from any mailing list at any time).

    a Rafflecopter giveaway

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How to write a long fantasy series

It took three years and two months rather than the two years I initially planned, but I have, at very long last, finished the Wheel of Time re-read and analysis. And as I promised quite some time ago, we’ll end with what I’ve learned.

This post, unlike the others, is not WoT-specific. I’ll be referencing the series, because it’s the primary source of my thoughts on this topic, but the point here is to talk about the specific challenges of writing a long epic fantasy series — here defining “long” as “more than a trilogy, and telling one ongoing story.” (So something like Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books wouldn’t count, since they’re a conglomeration of multiple trilogies.) My points probably also apply to non-fantasy series, but other genres are much less likely to attempt multi-volume epics on this scale, so I’m mostly speaking to my fellow fantasists.

I do not pretend this is in any way, shape, or form a recipe for commercial success with an epic fantasy series. After all, most of this is a checklist of errors I feel Jordan made, and you could paper the walls of Tor’s offices in fifty-dollar bills with the cash he made for them. Nor am I claiming artistic failure awaits if you fail to heed this advice; you might squeak through on luck, or just really good storytelling instinct. But I do feel that bearing these points in mind can help the would-be writer of an epic series avoid falling off some of the more common and perilous cliffs.

With all of that intro material out of the way, let’s get to it.

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time for more dragons!

But first, a reminder: only a few days left to get a letter from Lady Trent. (If you’ve already written to her, the reply will be on its way shortly — I delayed a little bit in order to get something cool to include with the note.)

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New interview at The Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia, another interview at Short and Sweet Book Reviews, and a guest post at Head Stuck in a Book. There were supposed to be a couple of others, too, but the scheduling of those appears to have gone astray.

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I do, however, have my usual biweekly post up at BVC: “It happened to my cousin’s best friend’s roommate,” wherein I discuss legends. Comment over there!

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recent media

You get rambly thoughts. Yay!

Revenge: A bit muddled here and there, but still interesting, especially because of the extent to which (at least at the beginning) it’s framed as this faceoff between two women, both powerful in their own way. Because of the aforementioned muddling, it doesn’t quite stay that way, but it was still nifty while it lasted. And I kind of love the relationship between Emily and Nolan — all the more so because the show is unafraid to make Nolan a physical wimp. When somebody holds him at knifepoint, he gets scared. And then he turns around and calls Emily on her errors, and she generally admits he’s right.

[profile] kniedzw called it a “soap opera” at one point, which got me thinking about the extent to which a soap opera can be defined as a drama that caters to a female audience. There are other aspects, too — the daytime slot being a shallow one; the constant plot churn being a more substantial one — but “soap opera” has a connotation of “ridiculous,” and really, I don’t think Revenge (at least in its first season) is any more ridiculous than various evening dramas that cater to a male audience. So there’s that.

Lost Girl: The werewolf guy is hot, but the tone of the show really doesn’t do it for me, and I can’t help but roll my eyes at the extent to which the protagonist’s nature seems like an excuse to have her make out with people every episode. Not my cup of tea, I think.

The Vampire Diaries: Also not my cup of tea, but I watched the first two episodes out of curiosity (yay Netflix streaming!), and have to applaud the way Stefan goes against the stereotypical grain of the YA paranormal boyfriend. Which is to say, he’s not an asshole. In fact, he is an anti-asshole in some ways I can’t help but read as a deliberate response to Edward in Twilight, whether that’s the case or not. I still don’t find him that interesting, but at least I don’t want to deck him.

Coriolanus: And now for something that isn’t TV. Not one of Shakespeare’s better-known tragedies, but after watching this adaptation, I have no idea why. It’s been too long since I read the play (my sophomore year of college, I think) for me to recognize whether it’s a matter of how they edited the script, or just the bloody fantastic performances from Ralph Fiennes and Gerard Butler and Brian Cox and James Nesbitt and oh my god Vanessa Redgrave, but it fits all but seamlessly into a run-down, militarized present day, with weary politicians and some conspirators who are, when I think about it, weirdly honest. I think I may have to buy a copy of the movie and add it to my library of Good Shakespeare Adaptations.

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last few days for Con or Bust

Just as a reminder, the “Con or Bust” auctions close this Sunday. Bidding on the double-signed copy of A Natural History of Dragons (autographed by both me and Todd Lockwood, with a bonus sketch from him) is up to $48, while A Star Shall Fall is at $15 and With Fate Conspire is at $20. Proceeds go to a good cause, and the books don’t suck either, if I do say so myself. 😉

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(Re)Visiting the Wheel of Time: A Memory of Light (analysis)

[This is part of a series analyzing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time novels. Previous installments can be found under the tag. Comments on old posts are welcome.]

I pretty much covered my reactions to this book with the two liveblog posts. So now it’s time to set aside the straight-up “Oh my god I can’t believe this series is finally done I’ve been waiting for this for more than half my life”> stream of consciousness, and talk about this in a more sensible fashion.

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Dragons had a nice long weekend; how about you?

Two new giveaways popped up over the weekend: one at Short and Sweet, and one at WORD for Teens.

New interview over at Literary Escapism, where I’m asked about writing historical fantasy vs. secondary-world fantasy, and writing British-style stuff when I myself am American.

I also have a post up at Sci-Fi Songs wherein I talk about the soundtrack of the book. (Don’t tell anybody, but I always wish somebody would ask me about the soundtrack. I put so much work into it, and then I’m usually the only person who ever hears it — my music choices are too obscure for me to be able to put it together in a way that can be shared online.)

And, unrelated to dragons, it’s time for my usual post at SF Novelists. This time it’s An Open Letter to the Creators of Sexist Fantasy and Comic Book Art. (Comment over there; no login required.)

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Writing Fight Scenes: Sentence Structure

NOTE: You can now buy the revised and expanded version of this blog series as an ebook, in both epub and mobi formats.

[This is a post in my series on how to write fight scenes. Other installments may be found under the tag.]

Step up one level from the nouns and verbs you’re going to be using over and over and overandoverandover again in your fight scenes, and it’s time to consider how you’re going to string them together into sentences.

There are two main schools of thought on this, and I’m going to give you the one I disagree with first.

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Talk to me about tablets, part 2

I made that post the other day in a hurry, hence not going into detail about what I’m looking for and how I’m using my laptop right now. But in a way, that made it more interesting; I got a broad array of answers. Thank you all!

So now comes the detail, and if you have other advice to offer, please do.

First of all, I have a desktop computer, which is where I do 95% of my writing work — maybe more. Also a lot of e-mail, websurfing, listening to music, and most of my game-playing. That’s still working fine.

My laptop mostly gets used in front of the TV, where I deal with e-mail and surf the web while watching TV. Sometimes I write blog posts. It also gets taken along when I travel, and that’s where its deficiency really starts to show: it’s too large, too heavy, too inconvenient. It takes too long to wake up and reacquire a wireless signal, which is partly a function of its slow degeneration from age — but not entirely.

Ergo, I want something that is smaller, lighter, and more responsive, as well as something that can function as a better ebook reader than the tiny screen of my phone. Netbooks are generally too small; I don’t have large hands, but it’s still a bad ergonomic idea for me to try and type a lot on such a small keyboard. I think I’d be better off with a Bluetooth keyboard for a tablet, which will be about the size of the one on my current laptop. An ultrabook is a possibility . . . but I’m not sure I really need something on that scale, for the use I make of it.

On the other hand, I’m not a fan of the restricted environment of an app market, whether Android or iOS, which is a point against tablets. (The Surface would be a compromise on that front, but it has other things against it — price for one, and apparently it’s a nightmare to repair.)

Anyway, I’m likely to go test-drive some prospects soon, as this laptop is having an increasing amount of trouble finding our wireless network and maintaining a connection to it. Without that, it’s nothing more than a very hot brick. So if you have advice to offer, get it in fast, ’cause time is running out!

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Dragon roundup

Before I get to the new links, remember that you, too, can receive a handwritten letter from Lady Trent! That runs through the end of the month.

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(You thought I was exaggerating when I said I would be EVERYWHERE ON THE INTERNET this month. It ain’t even done yet, folks.)

The Books and Things post, by the way, includes another giveaway. That’s the only new one I’ve found in the last few days, though.

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Was it really only a week ago that I was in . . . where was I on Friday? San Diego. Wow. And barely more than a week since the book came out! But so far, it seems to be going pretty well.

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Happy Retcon Day

Once upon a time, there was a guy who was interested in a girl. He’d been interested in her for a month or two, and they had recently gone out to dinner on (theoretically) non-romantic grounds, so he was intending to ask her out.

He faced a choice, though. The aforementioned dinner had been on February 12th. Should he ask her out on Valentine’s Day? No, he decided; that would be (his choice of words) “cheesy.” He baked her cookies on the 14th, though, and ultimately asked her out on the 16th.

The two of them dated for many years, and eventually got married. But along the way, a small problem developed.

You see, this guy — sometimes known to the internet as [profile] kniedzw — decided, in direct contradiction of his own reasoning before, to declare Valentine’s Day their anniversary. The girl — sometimes known to the internet as [personal profile] swan_tower — is perfectly happy to celebrate the fourteenth of February as Valentine’s Day and also their Cookie Anniversary (a very important occasion!), but she objects strenuously to this blatant ret-conning of their past.

(She attempted to settle this matter more firmly by proposing to him on the sixteenth of February seven years after they started dating, in the hopes that it would give that date greater historical weight. No dice.)

At this point, of course, she suspects he’s sticking to the point simply because arguing over it has become tradition. But in the meantime, she is celebrating her Cookie Anniversary (nom nom nom), and wishes you all a very happy Retcon Day.

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Talk to me about tablets

My laptop is, after nearly six years of good-to-middling service, tottering along on its last legs. I’m thinking that at this point it makes the most sense for me to pick up a tablet instead of a full laptop, but I don’t really know what to look at.

What’s out there right now, that isn’t an iPad? (I’m considering that too, but A: I’m a PC user and B: my brother worked on the iPad, so if I need proselytizing and/or information, all I have to do is walk down the street.) What do you recommend? What do you recommend I stay away from?

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Writing Fight Scenes: Word Choice

NOTE: You can now buy the revised and expanded version of this blog series as an ebook, in both epub and mobi formats.

[This is a post in my series on how to write fight scenes. Other installments may be found under the tag.]

One of these days, I will actually finish this series of posts. 🙂 Today, we come one step closer to that goal!

Fight scenes, oddly enough, have certain technical challenges in common with sex scenes. Namely, both of them are primarily concerned with describing physical movement, and in the course of so doing, they have to refer to certain objects and actions again and again and again and again. And if you try to get too creative in the avoidance of repetition, you very rapidly slide down into the abyss of purple prose.

So how do you get around this?

Giveaways, as far as the eye can see!

Update on the Con or Bust auction: bidding is up to $35 dollars, having just opened on Saturday. Remember that this copy of A Natural History of Dragons is signed by me and by Todd Lockwood, and furthermore that he drew another dragon on the first page! It’s shiiiinyyyyyy . . . .

(I should mention that I’m also auctioning off signed copies of A Star Shall Fall and With Fate Conspire. We now return you to your regularly scheduled ANHoD update.)

Other giveaways: good lord, you can’t throw a rock right now without hitting one. I’m probably missing a few, but so far I know of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight underway.

Three new bits of content as well. At Bookish, I talk about how I came up with the different dragon types, and at My Bookish Ways I answer various interview questions. Also, over at No More Grumpy Bookseller, I discuss why Victorian-ish fantasy is so popular right now (or at least, why I like it).

Finally, don’t forget that Letters from Lady Trent is underway! I may delay my responses just slightly, to see if I can obtain something Extra Awesome to include in my replies . . . I need to go look into that.

Anyway, there’s a few things to entertain you all, and I promise I’ll be back soon with non-ANHoD-related blogging!

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End of the (tour) line

Just as a reminder, I have one final stop on my tour, this one local to me. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ll be reading and signing at Borderlands Books starting at 3 p.m. I hope to see some of you there!