After our previous “random acceptance” anomaly, we’re back in familiar territory, with a rejection letter from a literary agent I was hoping to get to represent Long Before Dawn:
Continue reading “Random Rejection: The Panettieri Agency, “Long Before Dawn””
A while back, I sent a copy of Dragon Stones to the artist in Italy. With his sharp artist’s eye, he noticed that the cover illustration of the dragon was not anti-aliased properly. This problem has now been fixed, and the cover art looks much better — the lines are smooth rather than pixellated and the details are sharper.
I’m of the mind that anyone who bought Dragon Stones with the pixellated cover art is deserving of a pristine copy that looks the way the artist intended. If you have a copy of the book and would like to get the updated version, please let me know and I will send you one free of charge. (Obviously you shouldn’t post your address information in a public comment, so feel free to e-mail me at the listed address.)
Now, some might say that this could be an expensive thing for me to do. But don’t worry. I know how many copies of Dragon Stones have been sold, and it won’t be. (Too bad …)
So I found out today that someone wrote a capsule review of Dragon Stones on Lulu.com. (My father, who keeps closer track of this sort of thing than I do, let me know about it.) With some trepidation I went to read the review, but I needn’t have worried — this is the best review I’ve gotten since M. Kenyon Charboneaux rated Night Watchman “1,000 on a scale of 1-5”. Although the review is anonymous, let me assure everyone that I didn’t write it myself; I was busy in the mountains all day today!
Dragon Stones6 out of 61 Jun 2008byThe story captures the reader right away with interesting characters and descriptive writing. The writer is, in fact, facile with words and the book is an easy read. While it follows the adventure genre of characters moving from situation to situation, one does not wonder, as with some novels, when the string of obstacles will end. I might add that the cast of characters is diverse and interesting. Although it is a lengthy novel, it was not overlong and kept my interest. While the ending ties everything up decently, there are enough strings left for a couple of sequels, and I, for one hope they follow soon.
It’s been a while since I did a “free software for writers” entry, mainly because I’m kind of running out of free software that I can label as specifically for writers; I may just switch over to doing “free software for anybody” posts. However, I do have at least one more program to write about, and that’s Audacity. Audacity is an audio recording, editing, and mixing program. I’ve mainly used it to fix glitches in audio files (such as MP3s with a skip in them) or to change sound levels; the local Arthur Murray uses it to change the tempo of songs without introducing distortion so that, for instance, a ridiculously fast samba like “Jazz Machine” can be slowed down so that mere mortals can dance to it. (My wife insists on the full-speed version.)
So now you’re probably thinking, “Well that’s just fascinating, Jim, but what makes Audacity free software for writers?” To which I reply with one word: Podcasting.
I’ve at last gotten around to Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend , which has been on my “to read” list for years. I’m liking it so far, but what’s most interesting to me is that (minor spoiler alert), in Long Before Dawn, I took the same approach to crosses and other holy symbols that Matheson did–i.e., a holy symbol only works on a vampire who practiced the represented religion when alive. As the main character in I Am Legend, Robert Neville, says: “… neither a Jew nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan nor an atheist, for that matter, would fear the cross.” He later goes on to explain that because the classic vampire legend arose in heavily Christian Europe, the cross became identified–wrongly–as the universal anti-vampire ward, which is exactly what I was thinking when I wrote Long Before Dawn.
Other than this little tidbit, of course, the two books are completely different. Matheson takes a rigorous, scientific, naturalistic approach to his vampires, whereas mine are supernatural beasties who can fly around and turn into mist. Still, I find myself pleased to find that my vampire book has something in common with one of the undisputed classics of the genre.
Now if I can just interest Will Smith in starring in an adaptation of Long Before Dawn, that would be another similarity, and one I could definitely live with …
Dragon Stones is now available direct from Lulu.com! I’m still putting the finishing touches on the formatting before submitting it for distribution via the usual channels, but at this point I think that further changes are unlikely. (And if I do change something after you buy it, then you will have a rare limited edition copy!)
As I’ve mentioned, Dragon Stones is a fantasy novel, so anyone who’s been a little squeamish about reading A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder or Long Before Dawn or (especially) Night Watchman needn’t fear — the goriest thing in Dragon Stones is a swordfight between a couple of the characters (but I won’t spoil anything by saying which). If you enjoy fantasy novels, check it out — I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!
In other news, I’m still editing and formatting my ghost story Father’s Books as my next release. Although it’s a horror novel (again), it’s not nearly as, um, intense (*COUGH* gory *COUGH*) as Night Watchman or Long Before Dawn, so even the squeamish might be able to read that one. I’ll have my wife look at it and report back; nobody’s as squeamish as she is!
This is just a short note to let all who may be breathlessly waiting for Dragon Stones know that it has entered what might be called the “galley” phase, where I order finished copies from Lulu.com and go through them with a highlighter to fix any remaining formatting or style issues (at least, things that I consider formatting or style issues). I’ve already been through this process with Long Before Dawn and it probably took about two months, but I expect it to go faster this time now that I’ve already done one. I expect to hit my target of releasing Dragon Stones some time in June, though it won’t be available from book stores until 6-8 weeks after that due to the ISBN lag time.
In the meantime, I’ve started editing my next release, Father’s Books, a ghost story (of sorts) that I wrote after A Flock of Crows. By now I’m sure everyone realizes that I can’t write a “normal” ghost story, but that’s the easiest way to label Father’s Books right now so I’ll stick with it. More information will surely follow!
Last month, it came out that Amazon.com is instituting a new policy that print-on-demand publishers, such as Lulu.com and Hard Shell Word Factory (publisher of Night Watchman), must use Amazon.com’s own POD service BookSurge* or have the print editions of their books dropped from the main store (though they can still be sold by third parties through the Amazon marketplace). Some companies, like Lulu, quickly caved … uhhh, agreed to use BookSurge; others, like Hard Shell, are taking a harder line and refusing to accede to Amazon’s new rules. The net result, for me, is that Night Watchman may be disappearing from the Amazon.com store in the future. I will be watching to see if this happens; so far, it’s still there, but they only have one copy left (“order soon — more on the way”).
I haven’t quite decided yet what I think of this whole thing. I’m not really sure that Amazon doing anything differently from Wal-Mart, which is notorious for beating up suppliers to cut costs and lower prices. I don’t think Wal-Mart runs its own factories and requires its suppliers to use them, though. (I could be wrong; if I wanted to do stuff like “research” and “fact-checking” I would be writing non-fiction.) I guess I’d have to say that on the face of it Amazon is being anti-competitive and the ultimate upshot is likely to be higher POD costs, but we’ll see how it shakes out. I don’t have much to lose whether my books are on Amazon or not. The ones who do have something to lose are, I think, the small publishers; a lot of folks in the small press and self-publishing world are extremely agitated about Amazon’s move, and some are calling for a boycott. Will a boycott succeed? Probably not; it’s likely to be more symbolic than anything else. After all, Amazon has been boycotted before, notably over their one-click patent. The Internet was a smaller place then (fewer tubes) and the boycott still had no noticeable effect. The current issue at hand is about as arcane as the one-click patent issue, and just as few people care about it; I think Amazon will just get away with it, until and unless it attracts attention from regulators (i.e., never). In any case, I am neither an economist nor an MBA, so my opinion on such matters is probably worth about as much as I make on sales of my book from Amazon.com — i.e., next to nothing.
Anyway, if you’re looking for a copy of Night Watchman and you can’t find it at Amazon, you can always buy it directly from any number of places, like Barnes and Noble or directly from Hard Shell. Or you can just swing by the house and pick up a copy; I’ll even sign it, too.
Somehow, an interlocutor has managed to interview T’Sian, the dragon from Dragon Stones, without getting burned, eaten, or squashed. Perhaps that’s because the interviewer is a very cute chow-chow mix. You can read the interview at Cody Bear Asks. Don’t worry, the interview is spoiler-free!
Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth is one of my favorite books (even before Oprah featured it), so when the quasi-sequel World Without End came out, I immediately wish-listed it over on BookMooch. A few weeks later it arrived in an enormous package — this is one massive book, just like its predecessor. I’m not that far into it yet so I can’t do a full review, but I can say that it doesn’t hook the reader immediately the way that Pillars did. However, it does seem to be better than the last Follett book I read, Night Over Water.
One thing that is obvious already, though, is that the author’s breast fetish is operating at full tilt — pretty much every single female character who wanders across the page has her breasts stared at, felt up, fantasized over, or otherwise put front and center (so to speak) of her character’s description. Some would suggest, accurately, that all this indicates is that Ken Follett is a dude. But come on, Ken! We’re supposed to at least pretend to occasionally raise our gaze above chest level! You’re going to make the ladies paranoid, and that’ll just make it tougher on all of us …
Having said that, I have of course written my share of such descriptions, especially in my vampire book, Long Before Dawn (available now!). But you know how vampires are; being dead and all, they don’t have many amusements besides stalking humans and drinking blood (Spike’s addiction to the soap opera Passions notwithstanding; most vampires don’t have television in their crypts), so they spend a lot of time being horny. Which, I guess, makes them not so different from Ken Follett and the rest of us guys … 😉
Viscosity 