L’esprit d’escalier

Marty went poking through search terms that led to his blog and found something a bit disturbing.  Curiosity started poking this cat, and I peeked at my own.

Some of them are questions I can answer!

1. what’s the counting crows song that goes ba da ba da da

That’s an easy one.  “Another Horsedreamer’s Blues,” based on the play Geography of a Horsedreamer by Sam Shepard.  Here, give it a listen:

2. what to say to a valued publisher when the price is too high

Uh.  Okay, this question is kind of vague to me.  I’m assuming this is someone upset over the price of a book or eBook.  It appears that by calling them a “valued” publisher, you have some respect for their other work and have purchased their titles in the past.  So, first of all, approach them respectfully.  Most publishers will have an address you can write to with concerns.  It might appear to be a generic customer service email address, but it will get filtered on to the appropriate people.  When you write to them, lay out the reasons that you believe a price is too high:  is the binding falling apart, or the paper quality poor?  Are they charging $25 for a 50-page book with lots of blank white space on every page?

Be honest, but be polite.  And, also, do  your research.  Do you think eBooks shouldn’t cost more than $9.99 or less?  Why?  If your answer is “because they don’t cost anything to make,” close your email program right now, do not press send, come here while I smite you. Someone finally talked about the cost of books, both e- and print, in the New York Times.  Go read that.  And go read Tobias Buckell, who posted about this a while back.  Also, Charlie Stross, who’s taking us step by step through how books are made.

Now, if you dropped $400 on a Kindle and don’t feel like shelling out $10 for an eBook because it’s too expensive omg, I’ll give you a running start.  Would you whine about buying a car and then having to pay to put gas in it?  Or buying a refrigerator and having to buy food to put in it?  No?  Then stop crying about having to pay for books to read on the device you bought for the purpose of reading books.

Another context for this question that occurred to me:  are you an author who feels that the price your publisher has set on your book is too high?  Do you have a literary agent going to bat for you?  Talk it over with your agent, first.  If you’re unagented, ask your editor (again, politely and respectfully) how the publisher came to that pricing decision, and if there’s any wriggle room with it.

3.  tales from the kitchen cannibal

I… what?  Okay, I can’t answer this one, but I feel like it has the potential to be a hilarious zombie story.  Someone write it and entertain me with it. GO!  In the meantime, there’s an episode of The I.T. Crowd entitled “Moss and the German” that might give you a giggle.

4. how to say roy in french

I believe that would be kind of like roo-wah.  Though, the way you say roi, meaning king, is more like rwah.  I could also be completely wrong, since it’s been something ridiculous like fifteen years since I took French.

5. stuff of legends ian gibson

Needs to come out NOW.  But, alas, unless I can scrounge an ARC out of someone at Ace Books, I’m stuck waiting six more months for it just like the rest of you.  However, in the meantime (and through some googling of my own), I see that fellow Feathermooninite Ian Gibson has a blog.  To which you should go.

6. all royalties are based on net amount received by publisher (wholesale price achieved)

I don’t get what the parenthetical statment at the end means, and I’m neither an agent nor a lawyer, but your standard royalties for print books from a commercial publisher should be based off of your book’s cover price, not the net.  I can’t really speak to ebooks, since the times, they are a-changin’ in that regard.

That’s about all the wisdom I have for today, though if you have any other burning questions for me, go ahead and leave ‘em in the comments.  I’ll see what I can do!

Hoo boy, did I ever not make it.  I broke 10k, which was good, but I let myself get distracted by other things, which is bad.  Other things being: work-travel, Under the Dome,Thanksgiving, and frothing at the mouth about Harlequin Horizons/DellArte.  I’m proud as hell of the posts about that fiasco, and intend to do a follow-up or two and expand upon a few points that came up.  But, time spent writing them was time not spent working on my NaNo.

So, I didn’t finish, didn’t even come close, and I’m okay with that; I was from the start.

But what have I learned?

Well, a few things:

• I really ought to outline. Not as in rigid, scene-by-scene bullet points and Roman numerals.  Just a more structured looking-ahead.  Hill and I checked in every so often on where we were with Nin: what happens in the next few chapters?  How far do we have to go and what needs to happen on the way?  I’ve never done it with my own writing, because, well, that’s a pretty one-sided conversation.  Have to find a good way to start.
• I probably get more done in the mornings. I’m still training myself to unplug while writing — setting gtalk to “Leave me alone, I’m writin’ here,” resisting the urge to see what the internet is up to when I get stuck on a phrase, etc.  But I’m also more prone to cat vacuuming at night, for some reason, both in meatspace and in the virtual world.
• Worldbuilding, worldbuilding, worldbuilding. I have this terrible habit of not committing to NaNo until the last week of October, which means I spend time on infodumps in the plot that are going to be cut out later, to the tune of “Oh god I suck.”

Now, my stalling out on NaNo doesn’t mean I didn’t do other writerly things in November.  Matter of fact, I dedicated the time that would’ve been spent on the NaNo stuff to editing Nin this past week.  I started a bit of a character bible for us to refer to, since it has a pretty big cast.

I’ve also been doing a lot of heavy thinking about Grailchild and whether or not it’s the book I should be writing right now.  (The sequel to Nin is a given, that’s in the works already.)  I’m talking more about solo projects, and trying to determine whether my feelings about this book are just general silly jitters about Getting it Right, or whether the fact that I’ve been waffling about it for the better part of six years is a sign that I ought to concentrate on something else.

Another way to ask the same question: have I managed to intimidate myself with the scope of it? I love the characters and the concept.  I know what needs to happen.  So am I disinterested, or just plain lazy?

I’m not quite sure how to answer that, yet, outside of seeing how I feel during Butt in Chair time.  I mean, writing is still happening.  There are other things I’m excited about and working on.  I just feel incredible guilt over the idea of abandoning this particular project yet again.

Enough whining from my camp.  How did the rest of you NaNoers do?  What did you learn over the last month that will carry through while you finish your current projects and start the next ones?  Yes, that’s right.  Writing doesn’t just happen in November and then go away until next year’s NaNo.  Keep writing!

Some photos from Sydney, Australia after yesterday’s dust storm.

I know the air pollution levels were probably high enough to kill Greg, but I can’t help but think how cool it would have been to walk around and see that first person.

We just had a very brief rainstorm.  Just before it ended, the sun broke through the clouds.  Self, I thought, go see if there’s a rainbow.

And lo, there was.

Shiny!

via John Scalzi’s Whateverettes: big kittehs, pumpkins, omnomnompounce!

TIGERS LEOPARDS Vs Pumpkins!

Holy hell, it’s been a while. Apologies! Work travel has kicked me in the ass, but I’m still around.

Currently reading: Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind.  Review to follow in a couple hundred pages.

What’s on your nightstand/in your backpack/hidden under your pillow?

Just got a whiff of something — someone’s hand cream, maybe, or a perfume, I’m not really sure, can’t quite identify what I’m smelling.  Vaguely floral, maybe, I think.

Whatever it was, it sent me reeling back more than ten years, to the late spring/early summer days when I first started gaming, flipping through the pages of Mage: The Ascension (2nd edition 4-eva!), and trying to wrap my head around the rules of this incredible new world, the anticipation of what kind of character I’d play, who she’d be.**

I can’t even identify why that particular smell makes me flash back to it — maybe there was some kind of shampoo or lotion or soap I used to use, or… I dunno.  Something, from the where and when of those days.

But yeah, I’m sitting here, on a February day suddenly feeling like it’s May or June, like I’m at my parents’ kitchen table trying to explain the whole concept of table top gaming to my mother, insisting that no, I’m not going to end up in a ditch in six months’ time, sacrificed to some dark D&D gods.

I’m cramming the concepts of avatar and sphere and gilgul and Tradition into my head, hoping I get the idea of quintessence right, and don’t fuck up so badly on my first night that I accrue enough paradox to be sent into Quiet.

Turns out, I didn’t need to worry about any of those things, really, though they were all important in different ways.  Those first few sessions were vastly different than what I’d imagined they’d be, and thank god, really.  If we’d started out by diving into a world filled with Tradition politics and intrigue, I’d have been in way over my head.  Instead, we started small, just the PCs getting themselves in trouble, chased by the bad guys and getting away, getting into more trouble the next time, the world slowly expanding as I figured it out.

In later years, we’d get into the bigger picture — not just affected by Tradition politics but eventually affecting them ourselves, sometimes with those same characters, but mostly with others (though those original ones had cameos in other games, long after those first adventures were finished.  We could never quite let them go).

Anyway, whoever it was that smelled all flowery has walked away.  Scent’s gone, memory remains.

**And, to be honest, I look back at her concept and /facepalm a bit, amazed that the gents didn’t take one look at the character sheet and backstory and declare me unfit for their troupe.  She had a lot of potential to be a Mary Sue.  I think I managed to keep her from being one entirely, but eek.

So adorable your head might asplode.  Fair warning.

Tiger Cubs in the Snow