14 Jul 2008

Unusual Book Signing Planned

posted in: personal news, Sunborn, writing | 0

This weekend, I was at my usual early-Saturday-evening haunt, which is the free and very friendly wine tastings at my local beer and wine emporium, Menotomy Beer and Wine in Arlington, Massachusetts. I was looking around, and had a sudden inspiration: why not a combination wine tasting /book signing? A natural, no? (Could be a beer tasting, too; they do those on Friday evenings.)

I suggested it to the management (“I have a crazy idea…”), and they loved it. Turns out they’ve been *trying* to get local artists in there to display their work for free, just to liven things up even more. I believe their exact words were: “You’re here. It’s a done deal.”

So if you’re in the Boston area, mark that on your mental calendar for sometime in November, when Sunborn is published. I’ll post more later.

12 Jul 2008

More On Free E-Books

posted in: blogging, ebooks, personal news, science fiction, writing | 0

There’s been a lot of interesting stuff written in just the last few days, fortuitously (some of which was brought to my attention by Charlza in his comment to my last post). Simon Owens has a long article about the Tor free e-book program on his blog, bloggasm. He notes several authors’ impressions that book giveaways have helped sales, and quotes extensively from Tobias Buckell, a newer writer who seems to be doing very nicely. There are some provocative comments from readers, on both sides of the question.

Rob Sawyer responds on his own blog with a much more analytical approach to the question. Pointing out that there’s really no hard data for us to base judgments on, he does a nice job of extrapolating some likely ranges for increased sales (and earnings) for writers. In his view, the benefits are probably far more modest than suggested by anecdotal reports. A key point in his argument is that Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi, who have reported such apparent good results, are not necessarily typical cases. Both of these writers have huge online presences, and probably got way more downloads than the average writer would. (Certainly they have far more active blogs and web sites than I do.)

So where does this leave me? I learned from reader Pascal that a fair number of my earlier novels are already up on Bit Torrent networks in pirated PDF editions. He got copies to me so that I could look at them, and I see that they range from barely readable hack jobs to thoroughly professional-looking work. I must say it was a shock to see how many novels by how many SF writers are floating around in pirated editions. I’m of two minds about it: On the one hand, it’s clear copyright infringement, and to a significant degree badly done infringement. On the other hand, it’s free publicity.

One of my workshop students suggested, why not find the pirate scanners who did the good job and see if I can get them to scan in the first three Chaos books for me. Then I could put at the top of the PDFs:

“This electronic edition, and no other, has been distributed with my consent and co-operation. Those who approve of courtesy (at least) to living authors will download it, and no other.”

(If you don’t recognize the source, it’s from Tolkien’s note in the Ballantine Books edition of The Lord of the Rings, following the Ace pirated edition, many decades ago.)

So am I any closer to a decision on whether to post Sunborn for free when it’s published? Not really. But leaning now towards putting the first three up to introduce new readers to the series, then letting the book carry it from there.

But we’ll see.

“Advice from this elderly practitioner is to forget publishers and just roll a sheet of copy paper into your machine and get lost in your subject.” —E. B. White

28 Jun 2008

Speaking of Free Books

posted in: ebooks, personal news, science fiction, Sunborn, writing | 0

I’ve been considering the possibility of making Sunborn available for free download, perhaps in installments leading up to the actual pub date (end of October). A number of writers, including Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi, have offered their books for free download and discovered that it seemed to increase their audience and interest in the novels, and thus sales of their books. While there are no doubt some readers who will read only the free version and skip the hardcopy, it seems that many more decide they’d like to own the actual book once they’ve read the electronic version. At least, that’s what these writers have reported. Past experience is no guarantee of future performance, though, as the mutual funds tell us.

I’d be interested in knowing what you folks think. This is new territory for all of us in the fiction world, and I’m feeling my way in the dark just like everyone else.

(I’ve already used this quote, but it just seems to fit, so here’s an encore…)

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow

28 Jun 2008

BSG Novel—Free at Tor.com!

posted in: Battlestar Galactica, ebooks, personal news, science fiction | 0

The e-book version, that is. This week only, you can download my novelization of Battlestar Galactica (the miniseries that began the new BSG) for free from Tor Books. And by the way, if you like e-books, Tor offers a weekly free book. If you sign up for their email newsletter, you’ll get a reminder notice each week when a new title becomes available. You have to act fast, though, because when a new one comes, the old one goes away. (Sort of like woot.com, but without the price and the funny descriptions.)

Speaking of e-books, here’s a reminder that many of my novels are available as e-books in various formats. Go to e-reads.com for a complete listing. And, of course, you can also order new, bound-paper codices (books) directly from me.

“The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.” —John Steinbeck

2 Jun 2008

Sunborn Galleys Done, and Other Updates

posted in: personal news, public affairs, science, Sunborn | 0

It’s been a busy month. I got my name landed on Mars, and I’ve put my characters deep into the Orion Nebula. In other words, I just finished correcting the galleys (page proofs to check the typesetting) for the hardcover edition of Sunborn. That’s pretty much the end of my work on the book. I’d promised my editor, Jim Frenkel, that I’d have them in the mail by end of day on Friday—and I got to the post office literally about thirty seconds before they were going to close the windows. Package sent, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. I like this book, but I may have read it as many times as I need to, for a while.

To help decompress, last night I wrote a letter to the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, both praising and protesting this month’s cover story, The Sky Is Falling, by Gregg Easterbrook, about the hazard to Earth from wayward asteroids and comets. Seriously, it would take just one good-sized rock from space to kack most of human civilization. So NASA’s gearing up to protect us, right? Ding. Nope. NASA’s head’s in the sand. So far, I’m with the author.

Where we part company is where he dismisses our planned return to the moon as a waste of money detracting from our ability to do other things in space, like defend ourselves from big rocks. In fact, I believe returning to the moon is the next step toward building a permanent infrastructure in space, which among other things will give us the ongoing capability to do such things as capture or divert asteroids before they can divert us (from our future).

If they don’t publish the letter (and the odds certainly are long), I’ll post it in its entirety later.

“Every morning between 9 and 12 I go to my room and sit before a piece of paper. Many times, I just sit for three hours with no ideas coming to me. But I know one thing. If an idea does come between 9 and 12 I am there ready for it.” —Flannery O’Connor

2 Jun 2008

Phoenix and Me

posted in: personal news, public affairs, science, science fiction | 0

The successful landing of Phoenix on the northern polar region of Mars was a sensational event (which live coverage by the Science Channel managed to make dull; how could they do that?), being the first rocket-powered soft landing on Mars since 1976, when the Vikings landed. You’ve all seen pictures from the Mars surface, no doubt–but you might not have seen this picture, the first time any craft has ever been photographed landing on another world:

If you go to the full image at Astronomy Picture of the Day, you’ll see the magnificent crater near which Phoenix landed.

Phoenix is not just a national and international triumph; it’s a personal one, as well. I was reminded by the Planetary Society that my family and I are personally represented on Mars by this craft: it carries a DVD that bears our names, along with those of 250,000 other people who signed up for the mission. It also bears a library of science and science fiction works about Mars, to be recovered and enjoyed by future explorers. Here’s a picture, taken by Phoenix itself, of the DVD on Mars.

Now that’s a good feeling, knowing that a part of me is up there on Mars right now.

20 May 2008

Bread Loaf Conference

posted in: personal news, science fiction, Sunborn, writing | 0

As I hoped and expected, the New England Young Writers Conference at Bread Loaf was a great time, and entirely too short. My daughter Julia attended the workshops led by another fiction writer, while I worked with a talented and extraordinarily open and enthusiastic group of fourteen high school students on their fiction writing. That was just the core of it; there were also readings (from the podium where Robert Frost used to hold forth—I did one myself), additional writing sessions open to all, conversations with writers of all stripes, good food and good company, and—wonder of wonders—sunshine on the mountain. I was sad to leave. But I’ll tell you this: there are some excellent writers coming up in the years ahead! Be warned. Be heartened.

The Sunborn galleys arrived for my inspection and correction just before the conference, and I didn’t have time to so much as glance at them over the weekend. Now I’m working on them, but I’m also getting ready to leave on another trip, this time to meet with another group that wants to pick the brains of SF writers.

I hope you’re all enjoying your spring.

“I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.” —Peter De Vries

8 May 2008

Sunborn Available for Preorder

posted in: personal news, science fiction, Sunborn, writing | 0

For years, readers have been sending me emails saying, “When is the next Chaos Chronicles book coming out?” or, “I’m not getting any younger—will there ever be another Chaos Chronicles book?” or even, “Thanks a lot for leaving me hanging, because it’s obvious there’s never going to be another book, you jerk.”

Readers of this blog have known for years that Sunborn, the new Chaos book, was coming—or at least it’s been my word against the doubters. (Sometimes, I’ve been among the doubters.) Well, you no longer have to take my word for it! It’s up on Amazon. And you can even preorder it. Now. Today. Go ahead, click the link! It won’t hurt.

I was surprised it was up this soon (the pub date is October of this year, from Tor Books). In fact, I didn’t even know it was up until a kind reader in Germany sent me a note telling me about it. I quickly discovered that they’d misspelled my first name on the dustjacket, at least as displayed on Amazon, but a note to my editor resulted in that being fixed pretty quickly. (I hope it stays fixed. I’m sure it will. Nothing can go wrongg.)

That’s the news from here. I might not get this written up before I go, so I’ll just mention that next week I’ll be heading up again to the Bread Loaf writing center near Middlebury, Vermont, to teach at the annual New England Young Writers Conference. If you are, or are the parent or teacher of, a young writer of high school age, you really should look into this for next year. It’s a terrific program. I’ll tell all about it, after I get back.

And did I mention? You can preorder Sunborn from Amazon.

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” —Red Smith

25 Apr 2008

Spring Is Here!

posted in: Battlestar Galactica, blogging, personal news, quirky | 0
Spring has sprung here in Massachusetts! And most welcome it is! I don’t know why, but this last winter felt like the longest I’ve ever known. I’ve been counting the interesting species of wildlife I’ve been seeing right around our house here in the Boston ‘burbs: cardinals, bluejays, black-capped chickadee (I think), mockingbirds, crows (making a comeback after nearly being decimated by the Nile virus), a cute little rabbit, a toad, and—just a few days ago—a wild turkey. (It practically cut me off as I was coming up on my moped; it was flying up the street at an altitude of about six feet, then landed in a neighbor’s driveway.) Oh and, yeah—termites.

Blasted termites ate a piece of wood paneling in our downstairs rental apartment. So now I’ve got to hire a Terminator. Jeez, that’s an expensive proposition! And it’s not just a matter of getting estimates and picking a terminator; I have to decide which approach I want to take—pesticide injection into the ground (the tried and true method), or bait trapping (much less pesticide, but newer, less tested, and more expensive).

Which reminds me that my wife and I have become big fans of the new show, Sarah Connor Chronicles. I just read that it’s been renewed for next season. Yesss! And BSG has started up again. We’ve only watched one episode so far, but clearly they’re going to be messing with our minds for the rest of the series. And I mean that in a good way, of course.

I haven’t had as much time to pursue my Roomba hobby as I’d hoped, but I did bring an ailing Scooba back to life! Turned out have some defective soldering inside. I never would have found it if someone on Roombareview.com hadn’t suggested that I solder a couple of leads for a voltmeter in there, so that I could see what was happening. Lo and behold, the act of doing that solved the problem. And I just got a very nice note from someone in Italy, telling me that my method worked for him, too! (No, he didn’t put leads in, but he did remelt the solder on the crucial connection—and that fixed his Scooba, too.)

In keeping with the theme of BSG and Roombas, I present here a couple of funny videos I stumbled across on youtube. The links will open new windows in your browser.

And I, Roomba, a Roomba love story, of sorts (a little long, but cute):

(I tried embedding the videos, but they played erratically for some reason.)

“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.” —Cicero

2 Apr 2008

Sunborn Copyedit Finished

posted in: personal news, Sunborn, writing | 0

For the last seven or eight days, I have been up to my ears in Sunborn again. The copyedited manuscript arrived for my review, and as usual, they wanted it done yesterday. In case you’re not familiar with the process, when a book manuscript goes into production, after it’s left the editor’s hands, it goes to a copy editor. This person does all the fine marking up for typesetting, plus proofing of all the fiddly little details, querying the author if something seems wrong or unclear, and checking spelling, hyphenations, commas, all the little stuff that can drive you crazy—and make the book look unprofessional if it’s missed or done wrong. Copy editors are absolutely essential to the bookmaking process, and a good copy editor is priceless to an author.

The problem is that the author then has to go over everything, approving or not approving of changes, and reconsidering every little comma and word choice, pulling his or her hair out over things that he thought (ha ha) had already been settled. It’s also a chance to make last-minute revisions if a passage doesn’t seem right. It’s my least favorite stage of writing a book, it’s excruciating, and it’s necessary to do it with great care. Usually by the time you get to this point, you’re sick to death of the book and the last thing you want to do is read it one more time. But you do. For one thing, even the best copy editor will make some changes you don’t like, and this is where you catch them and fix them.

Anyway, I did all that, and have just shipped it off to my editor. Now it goes back to the production department and off to typesetting. I’ll have to do it all one more time—when the page proofs come for checking. But for now, I can rest. Sleeeeeeep!

“You don’t know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.” —Gustave Flaubert

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