Another note about my super exciting OMG I can’t believe it’s actually happening book launch:
How to help authors:
Buy their book. This one is a duh, but it bears repeating because it gives me the chance to throw these links on the page. (Amz) (BN) (Indie) (Waterstones) (Audible) – check Amazon or Audible in your area of the world for the book, it should be available in the US, Canada, and UK. Or listen to the podcast if you’re not sure you want to buy yet.
Tell a friend. Word of mouth is still the best marketing an author can get. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc, all of those things can help.
Semi related, review the book. Toss a review on Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads. They really do matter. They matter a huge deal.
How not to help authors:
Pirate their book and then donate a couple of bucks to them via PayPal. I know you are justifying it by saying my publisher will only give me $X of royalties, while you’re giving me $X+$Y and that is therefore more and better. However, if the publisher doesn’t make money, they have no incentive to get me to write more books for them, which means I will have to write different books and hope I get another publisher. (Many people have asked what has happened to PFK II, and it’s the fact that I don’t have a contract for that, while I do have a contract for other books.)
Review them based on the price of the book, whether the book is available in your area, or anything else that has nothing to do with the content of the book. Seriously, how many one star reviews are on Amazon because someone got their shorts in a wad over a “too high” ebook price, or how many authors get an email stating that the reader is going to pirate the book because it’s not available in their territory? Not the author’s fault and the book sales shouldn’t suffer because of your hissyfit.
Buy anything from that hack Chuck Wendig. Oh all right, I’m just bullshitting now. Chuck is delightful and a damn good writer, and you should totally get his books. He has one out today. So do Emma Newman and Merrie Haskell.
August, 2005 is when I started podcasting about my trek to build a career writing. And nearly eight years later my first book to appear in book stores hits the shelves.
I could write and argue about how I’m not a debut novelist because I’ve self published a lot, via podcast and ebook, and I had a small press book out in 2008. But honestly my books have never before been in book stores, in front of people who never would have found them otherwise. It’s a big deal to me.
Coverage today that makes me squee: BoingBoing, where Cory Doctorow calls me “one of the worst-kept secrets in science fiction and fantasy.” and I got to write The Big Idea on John Scalzi’s awesome blog. (I wrote it the day the hubby had his accident, so I was kinda scattered. And I did get the birds out of the house.)
I’m nervous and happy and excited and want to hide under the desk.
Tonight there’s a live video chat with me at Shindig! You can drop in any time (it starts at 6:30 Eastern) but they would appreciate an RSVP. I’m very excited about this event!
Come to my shindig! (Pretty dress not guaranteed)
—
Balticon is this weekend! I’m hitting the train tomorrow morning, arrive in Baltimore late afternoon, and will be shouting obscenities at Scott Sigler by 9pm. Watch me.
Also at Balticon: LIVE ISBW with a NINJA BOOK LAUNCH will happen at noon on Saturday. Be there. There will be giveaways. Also Myke Cole.
FABULISTS AT BALTICON- tell me you’re coming, I’ll do a thing. Possibly involving donuts.
—
So I’ve got a book coming out next week. Yeah. A little tense about it. Preorder (Amz) (BN) (Indie) (Waterstones) if you’re interested. Or listen to the podcast if you’re not sure yet. You can also preorder via Audible.
I’ve been absent from blogging and podcasting this week thus far because my husband was in an accident this past Sunday (his bike vs. a car.) He’s got many of the minor injuries one would expect (bruising, road rash), plus a broken collarbone. So my priorities have drastically shifted in the past four days to make sure he’s seen doctors and gotten meds and is comfortable, and, outrageously, the kid still gets to school on time and in clean clothes and with lunch and stuff.
But after coming out of all of that we looked at the situation and thought, well shit, it could have been so much worse. So we’re just glad he’s OK, and the break isn’t a bad one.
That said, he and Princess Scientist were planning on coming to Balticon, but he needs to stay home and rest. Sad face.
—
TL; DR – shut up about bad books getting published.
With the release of Dan Brown’s new book, I expect to be getting more email from people complaining of HOW could he have gotten a book deal if he writes so poorly? How in the world did EL James make a shitton of money off of fanfic BDSM? Then undoubtedly they will point out why the books are so awful. Or mock them.
And I get it. I feel the jealousy, I get all Christmasy green and red with jealousy and rage. “So all I have to do is shit on a page and send it in and they will buy it? Is that it?” I say through a gin-soaked olive. (Then my editor calls me and tells me under no circumstances am I to send her feces.)
Tobias Buckell recently had an amazing blog post where he was talking mainly of book bloggers and pro reviewers, but it applied to authors as well.
1) When you get to a point where you’ve read an amazing number of books, you change. You’ve read so much that what may seem new or interesting to most (and even to the writer of the book you’re reading) is just a variation to you. Your expectations regarding the work change.
Due to subjectivity being what it is, many writers can mistake what’s happening and view it as the books getting worse, not their own aesthetic changing. Two things can happen. One, despair at what they perceive is the dying of quality. You see this a lot with people who hit a certain number of books read: they begin to rail against the dreadfulness of everything. It can lead to bitterness, cynicism, and outright hatred of something they previously loved.
This hit home so hard. I know the “rules” of storytelling, I can spot lazy sexist writing (Hello, Jim Butcher, hanging a lantern on Dresden’s lecherous eye doesn’t make it any better), the lack of a strong conflict, cardboard characters, weak motivation, and the classic “let’s save the big gun till the end instead of using it at the beginning and saving us all this trouble” (hello Iron Man 3, Babylon 5, and every episode of Power Rangers ever.) This distracts and annoys me. And I want to stand up and shout, “Does everyone else not SEE that Bella is suffering from emotional abuse? Why can’t you understand that Harry Potter telling us something “dully” in every goddamn chapter is weak writing?”
They won’t listen. My friends and colleagues will listen, toasting me with their drinks or their tubes of cookie dough or their drug of choice, and will sit and wonder why the “good” books go unnoticed. But the world at large? They won’t listen. Because they’re enjoying themselves.
And now we come up against the common battle between entertainment and art. But we have to admit that book selling is a business, and the publishers wish to make money. And, frankly, so do artists. Entertainment is what fits the majority of people. There will always be a place for the “important” literature, don’t get me wrong. But the entertaining stuff sells whether it sticks to the rules or not.
Because people want to be entertained. And the average person is not going to critique a book or a movie, they’re just going to watch, experience, and probably tell a friend if they loved it or hated it. If it didn’t move them at all, then you’ve got a problem. But Brown, James, Meyer, and whatever other author would sit accused in the court of your authorly opinion, only they’re busy counting their money so they didn’t answer their subpoena, they move people. And that makes people buy books.
So crap is getting published. Yeah. Happens all the time, and will continue to happen. What can you do about it?
Shut up and write.
Whine to people about how bad books get published. Which accomplishes both jack and shit.
Get one of these “horrible” books from the library and find out just what it is that caused the books to sell in the first place. Brown spins a good, tense yarn with kick ass pacing, I understand. Stephanie Meyer learned how to perfectly encapsulate the feeling of being fifteen and in crazy love, and put it on the page. Rowling built Hogwarts and a ton of fun characters. They each hooked people and made them pay attention to their books, flawed or no.
Did I mention shutting up and writing was an option?
Here’s the horrible secret: if your book follows every rule, gets rid of adverbs and passive voice, has grammatically perfect sentences and a solid three act arc, no one will care* if the book doesn’t grab them in some way.
I’m going to go all stream of consciousness on you right now. Hold on tight.
[Something happened, which I will explain after I discuss the emotions involved.]
Huh. That happened. That’s interesting. I should blog about it. It’s a look at the writing life I’ve not experienced before.
No, I shouldn’t blog about it because it’s bragging.
What the hell is wrong with you? You’re only allowed to blog about your fears and anxieties? You can’t proudly say that you feel good about something? DON’T YOU SEE THAT THIS REACTION IS WRONG IN SO MANY WAYS?
…You’re right.
So here I go.
I was solicited to do a novella. I spent the last week researching and brainstorming, and last night I wrote my outline. As I was writing it, I felt good, it went a lot smoother than any other outline I’d experienced. So i have a character in a setting. What happens to her? What next? What next? What mistakes does she make? What next? How does it end? BOOM- 1000 word outline. Done. LIKE A BOSS. (link NSFW)
I checked it over a couple of times, all the while feeling a slow sinking feeling. This was drivel. It was predictable and weak and trite and lacked any depth at all. They were going to hate it and regret asking me to write for them. They would take my gin away. And my puppy.
Then I had an epiphany. I realized the following things:
The text was predictable because I FREAKING WROTE IT. Of course I knew what was going to happen. The damn thing happened in my head. I knew the beginning, the end, the twists, etc.
It was trite because I had to write it in my own style. I don’t think my own style is exciting just like I don’t think I’m particularly pretty and I think my voice is lousy. This is the same me, same face, same style, that I wake up with and go through my day. Of course it’s trite, contrived, and appallingly boring — to me.
And lack of depth? It’s a freaking OUTLINE. Outlines don’t have depth, as a rule.
So once I remove the watermark of MUR WROTE THIS THEREFORE IT IS SHIT that I place over every story I write, and look at the story as a standalone, it might, you know, be good.
Half an hour later one of the editors contacted me. He really liked it. Mur the gladiator got a THUMBS UP and lives to fight write another day!
So this thing I wrote might actually be OK.
And the crowd goes wild.
And then Mur stressed about whether she should blog about this newfound confidence.
I know in your world, my “next book” is The Shambling Guide to New York City. (io9 calls it one of the “astounding summer books not to miss” – and you can preorder it now! – not that I’m squeeing like crazy or anything.) But in my world, I’ve been soaking in the Palmolive of New Orleans and Zoe’s next adventure. I just finished The Ghost Train to New Orleans, the second book in The Shambling Guides.
So many sequels, so little time! I’m on book 4 of Carrie Vaughn’s awesome Kitty series. I can only dream of such a successful series.
Sequels are hard. There are so many things that can go wrong:
The beginning. You have to balance the first chapter carefully to appeal to both new readers and people familiar with the series. If someone just picked up the book, the story must stand on its own while it can’t deny the plot points of previous books. You also don’t want to deluge existing fans with boring backstory that they already know. (Small shoutout to the legendary Liz Hand and the incomparable Jim Kelly and my fellow students at Stonecoast who helped me deal with starting a sequel.) What I eventually did: Picked up one of Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty books and read the first chapter again (I’d read the earlier ones; I’m a fan.) Then I wrote down what happened, roughly, in the chapter. I literally wrote down, “Emotion. Setting detail. Emotion. Backstory nugget. Detail.” This established the character in her emotion, a small piece of setting, and the backstory that put them there. Then I wrote my chapter one using the same broad road map. It helped out a lot.
Sophomore efforts are often weaker than freshman efforts. You can spend years writing a first book, because no one is waiting on you. You submit it, get it rejected, tweak it, then submit again. You constantly polish it. Then, if you get a 2-or-more book deal, the time given to write the sequel(s) is much shorter. Unless you build in ample time for beta readers (I didn’t this time around, except for early chapters I workshopped at Stonecoast), you won’t have the failure/feedback/rewrite step that, while painful, was so important for the first book. You spend years trying to write a book and work toward pro, and then when you get that coveted deal, you realize that often pros are expected to turn a book around a hell of a lot faster than you wrote book 1. What to do: trust in my editor that she will help me make it as strong as possible.
Expectation. Now I know I’m sounding like I’m complaining that my diamond shoes are too tight (that saying is from this scene, not this one), but here is an emotional response that I had to a recent event.
Kirkus reviews on SGTNYC: “The hip, knowing and sometimes hysterically funny narrative, interspersed with excerpts from the guide of the title, lurches along in splendid fashion.”
Me: “Hot damn! I’m hysterically funny! Yay!” … (1 minute later) “Oh SHIT that means book 2 has to be funny and it’s not funny it’s awful there’s not a damn funny thing in this** oh shit oh shit oh shit!”
/me falls down
/me cries into the gin
What I did? /me takes the compliment and gets over my damn self and writes the damn book.
All of that said, I’m pretty happy with the book, except when a rush of overwhelming fear comes over me and I think it’s absolute crap. But I’m pretty sure I am experiencing a very common feeling*** to being done with a book, so I just tell myself it’s natural and have another cookie.
** I admit that yesterday I wrote a scene that made me laugh out loud, which I figure was a good sign, but still, for someone like me, I suppose any early review of book 1 can paralyze your work on book 2. If someone says something bad, then OH SHIT I AM A SHIT WRITER WORTH SHIT I MAY AS WELL QUIT AND SAY SHIT AGAIN. SHIT. If someone says something good, then OH SHIT I HAVE TO DO IT EVEN BETTER THE SECOND TIME. PRESSURE! PRESSURE! You can’t win. And by you I mean me. Perhaps this has something to do with my own psyche. Huh.
*** I just spent 20 min searching Neil Gaiman’s blog for something he wrote about feeling like his books are shit every time he gets about halfway through them, but the guy has such a huge blog and I can’t remember the appropriate keywords, so I’m at a loss. If your Google-fu is better than mine, knock yourself out.
It’s done! Now I don’t have to freak out that the cover was done before the book was.
Now, I suppose from your point of view, since I’ve been mostly on a blog and podcast hiatus, I’ve already been taking days off, but I’ve been working hard to finish The Ghost Train to New Orleans and then edit it. (see yesterday’s podcast for more on editing)
But I’ve been writing thousands of words a day, or rewriting, and I’ve been burning myself out. And the writing doesn’t stop; This month, I have two novellas to write, a project to finish, and marketing for The Shambling Guide to New York City (insert preorder reminder/plea/beg here.) Also podcasting again. Remember podcasting?
I’m struggling with this day off. First, I can’t take the day 100% off, since today will be my 150th day writing in a row, per the Magic Spreadsheet. Second, I have a lot to do to get ready for the next things on my list. Lots of guest blog posts this month! But I need a day. Just a day. This afternoon I’m taking the kid to the comic book store and then we will get ice cream so I can remind her what her mother looks like when her face isn’t bathed in the glow of a monitor. This morning perhaps I will play a video game, or nap, or watch True Blood. Maybe I’ll take a bath. Or finish listening to John Scalzi’s The Human Division, since I’m on the final episode and was cursing the fact that the drive home from fencing wasn’t longer yesterday because OMG drama. (And hey, if you want to join Audible so YOU can listen to awesome The Human Division, then follow this link and you will be supporting the podcast!)
Coming up in May:
The release of Chapter 1 of The Shambling Guide to New York City podcast! Free! Early! Holy shit! (May 2 – THAT IS TOMORROW)
The release of the print and ebook version of The Shambling Guide to New York City. (May 28)
Complete and utter sloth as I watch marathons of the new Arrested Development and Season 5 of True Blood. (Oh, crap, I forgot, you don’t care about that. BUT I DO.)
Also, I’ll be writing more in May, and working on a game project for school, working on my Torment novella, and planting vegetables and flowers. But you won’t see those things yet. You’ll probably never see the tomatoes. Sorry.
Lastly, this month I will be blogging about some things I’m involved in that I should have been talking about already, but have been too freaking busy. Such as:
Season 2 of Leviathan Chronicles, some parts written by me, and my voice returns as Lorelei.
The Walk the Fire Kickstarter campaign, a shared world anthology that I will write for if you are kind enough to support it.
Orbit has informed me of some really interesting reviews about The Shambling Guide to New York City lately:
Kirkus Reviews: STARRED REVIEW AW YEAH: “The hip, knowing and sometimes hysterically funny narrative, interspersed with excerpts from the guide of the title, lurches along in splendid fashion. Combine wit, style and acute observation: The result is irresistible.”
Library Journal: STARRED REVIEW AW YEAH: “… Lafferty, a 2012 nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer, introduces a spirited, indomitable heroine who is bound to be a favorite of urban fantasy devotees.”
Romantic Times: TOP PICK AW YEAH: “…a refreshing departure from the dark and sexy face of so much urban fantasy.”
Publishers Weekly: “A charming debut”
Funny thing is, although PW wasn’t a starred review (though it was quite positive), today I learned that SGNYC is on PW’s “Best Summer Books of 2013” list. Right beside Connie Willis’ new collection. “Podcast host and blogger Lafferty is known for her sharp wit, which is in evidence here.”
O_O So, uh, yeah. Wow. All I gots to say is…
[NOTE- I don’t blog a lot about current events because I’m commonly raw, numb, upset, and withhold opinions until I have information. But my heart is hurting for all of the horror that the world has experienced this week, and I hope everyone reading this is as well as they can be.)
I’m angry today and I don’t have time to be angry. So I’ll blog about it and hope that will blow off some of the steam. Or blog off some of the steam. Whatever.
It’s 2013. And people are still trying to put women, and in particular to the points of this blog post, SF writers, in their place. Wherever that may be.
Item #1: prolific, talented fantasy and SF writer Seanan McGuire recently broke the record for the most Hugo nominations in one year. The woman has five. FIVE. Best Novel and Best Novella (under her psudonymn Mira Grant), Best Novelette (twice), and Best Fancast (the Squeecast, which won last year.)
I believe she also is the first person to get nominated for a self-published work, as one of her novelettes is from her blog.
So of course people are speculating about her skill, and whether she’s “really that good” and how she must have leveraged her fan base or self-promoted too much. The undercurrent is there is no way she earned all of those nominations, and she needs to be brought down to her place. I don’t even know how she is dealing with it (well, she blogged about it, but you know what I mean) – last year I was a gibbering mess whenever I saw a blog post stating how I was unworthy of the Campbell nomination. The thing is, I saw a lot of people, all of them men, doing lots of promotion for a Hugo nod. I did not see Seanan do that. But she is the one getting the shit.
I haven’t read her fantasy, but her SF is engrossing and fascinating and I’ve loved everything I’ve read by her. She’s got serious talent (she won the Campbell in ’11), and she’s prolific as hell.
And if you think just having a huge number of online fans is the clear track to awards, tell me why BoingBoing blogger Cory Doctorow hasn’t won a Hugo, or John Scalzi hasn’t been nominated for every book he’s written? Hell, I’ve got a larger online following than a lot of beginning writers and I came in 4th for the Campbell last year. So sure, Seanan has a lot of fans, but one needs more than that for awards.
(For the record, I think Cory and John are talented as hell, just saying that there’s a lot more to winning these things that just “lots of online fans.”)
Item #2: self-publishing sensation Hugh Howey recently had a blog post called “The Bitch from WorldCon.” (no, I’m not linking it.) This is a fascinating and bizarre blog post, seeing as how WorldCon was EIGHT MONTHS AGO. He tells a story about how a woman was rude to him when he said he self published. And I’ll agree, if the events happened the way he said, she was really rude. But his blog post is written so offensively that he ends up looking like the bad guy by the end. He uses misogynistic charged words like “bitch” and dreams of his Hugo speech where he tells the story of her rudeness, grabs his crotch, and ends the post with “suck it, bitch.”
Then he complains about the “PC Police” in the comments and claims he isn’t a sexist.
If you use these words to describe women, you are doing it to put yourself above them, imply their opinions and/or anger are irrelevant and to put them back in their place (which his blog post was dedicated to, essentially saying how awesome and successful he was and how stupid she was for a) thinking self-pub was pointless, and b) not knowing who he was).
The amazing thing was, he started out as the sympathetic person here! He did encounter a rude person at WorldCon! He did get dismissed by her when she found out he self-published! And yet, by bringing in her looks, calling her a bitch, and the obviously sexually degrading crotch grab fantasy and “suck it, bitch” comments at the end, he has presented himself as so much worse than she was.
The blog post went out on the 3rd, but today is when it exploded.
So who’s making “I Am Not Hugh Howey’s Bitch” t-shirts? They’d be this year’s must-have Worldcon attire.
UPDATE: So, in the middle of me writing this, apparently he has apologized. Some think it’s good. Some think it’s bad. Me, I can’t read it because his site has crashed.
All of this shows how deeply sexism is ingrained. No man stood up and said, “Seanan McGuire is too uppity, she needs to be taken down a peg like a proper woman,” or “I’m going to call that woman who bothered me eight months ago a bitch just so I can make myself feel good” – well, I am betting the second thing happened. But the language here, the commentary, the fury in how dare she get five nominations/speak rudely to me? It needs to stop.
Women are here and we’re writing and we’re getting nominated for awards and we’re going to keep doing outrageous things like building fan bases and having opinions and perhaps even being rude at conventions or even WINNING awards. The thing to do when you’re angry? Call someone out on their rudeness, right there. Don’t nominate or vote for the works you don’t think are worthy. It’s that fucking simple.
And if that’s not really the problem, if the problem is that you truly think that women should know their place in SF, then, well, fuck it. I don’t have time for you.
Courtesy of The Oatmeal. It just makes me so happy. And I need a happy.
