The last day of the year and I just found out that Mark Owings, a Baltimore fan, bibliophile and sfictional historian, died yesterday, of pancreatic cancer. (http://file770.com/?p=2711#comments)

I first met Mark in the late 1960s, and he later spent enough hours in my Owings Mills apartment at various BSFS and Baltimore in 80 meetings (and parties and fanzine collations) to add up to days if not weeks. Over the years we talked some about science fiction, about fantasy, about books, editions, authors, and about the minutia of publishing Mark was so fond of. He helped me on a number projects when I was Curator of Science Fiction at UMBC, he supported me when I ran for Baltimore In 80 office, and was often an uncredited general assistant, gofer, and presence at cons in the years when I was an artshow guy, and later, when I was huckstering. We had several ongoing conversations, one that was threaded through Worldcon and major convention consuites, and another threaded through con huckster rooms. He brought books of interest to me to my attention, and gave good advice and contacts on selling some of my rare editions... and had unexpected jokes, witticisms, and ironies to share as well. I saw Mark looking somewhat harried in the dealer's room at BaltiCon this year, and there was a book he was going tell me about. He was taken ill during the con, but it was assumed to be a sugar problem, requiring some rest, and I didn't see him anymore that weekend. I still thought I might see him at an East Coast con in the next months....

And there you have it: some conversations are never finished, some cites never confirmed. Condolences especially to Jul and those who had care of him.

Wow, what a ride. At least we survived the living of it.

At the beginning of the aught-somethings, I was, serially, executive director, vice president and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, necessitating several years' recuperation.

George W. Bush ascended to the presidency of the United States of America -- twice. And I did not move to Canada, though the news of the second election reached us while we were in St. John.

Sixteen novels were published of which I was co-author or author; two collections; ten chapbooks; nine shorter works in venues other than chapbooks. Meanwhile, we-or-I wrote a dozen novels and nineteen shorter works.

Steve and I were honored guests at ten conventions; and panelists at seven WorldCons. I managed to get to our "local" con, Boskone, five times in nine years, and to AlbaCon four times.

We replaced the roof on the house, and also the windows. I serially owned three cars: a 1990 Plymouth, a 1998 Altima, and 2000 Subaru.

I played chauffeur and moral-support while Steve heroically undertook the rebuilding of his mouth.

We had two publishers die under us. In 2006 Embiid folded; followed by Meisha Merlin, in 2007.

In January 2007, I went "back to work" as an academic secretary at Colby College.

Baen picked us up in 2007 (making the third time our career has risen from the dead), while Webscriptions took up the electronic rights.

We lost four cats (Nicky derFluffer, Kodiak Felicia Browne, Hypatia, and Max!). We also gained four (Mozart, Scrabble, Dulsey, and Hexapuma), one of whom (young Dulsey) was subsequently established elsewhere.

Steve and I celebrated the 20th through the 29th anniversaries of our marriage, and the 22nd through 31st anniversaries of merging our households together.

I somehow went from being 48 to 57 years old. Funny 'bout that.

I’ve written and read a fair amount about authorial promotion, what is and isn’t effective.  Anyone who’s tired of book sales talk can feel free to skip this one, but I figured some of you might appreciate a little raw data to go with the conversation.

This is a graph of the sales for The Stepsister Scheme (purple line) and The Mermaid’s Madness (black line).  Stepsister has been selling for just over a year now, and Mermaid has been out for about three months.

The sales data comes from Bookscan, which isn’t exact, but it’s the best measure I’ve got for week-to-week sales.  All five of my books have followed the same pattern, starting with that nice big spike in the beginning.  After the first three months or so, many of the books are stripped and returned to make room for new releases, and we head into the long plateau.

With all of the signings, conventions, and other events I’ve done, only two factors have ever caused a visible spike in sales.  The first is Christmas.  Having a book on the shelves in December is a good thing!  (Thank you to everyone who bought books for presents!)

The second is the release of the next book in the series.  You can see where sales of Stepsister more than doubled when Mermaid came out.  I saw that same bump with the goblin series as each new book was published.

I didn’t include the goblin data here, because that would have gotten too messy.  But I’ll note that the release of the two princess books did not cause a similar spike in sales of the goblin books.

Does this mean all of those other efforts are ineffective in terms of sales?  Not necessarily.  For one thing, Bookscan isn’t as good at capturing data from independent book dealers and such, which means there’s a good chance all of those dealer sales from conventions aren’t showing up.  And while any individual event or effort doesn’t show up on the graph, they could still be having a cumulative effect over time.  There’s really no way of doing a controlled study to prove it one way or the other.

And that’s it for 2009.  Happy 2010, all!  No resolutions here, but I am setting a goal to finish rewriting the outline (version 3.0) for Snow Queen by the end of the day, and to finish this @!#$^ first draft by the end of January.  Wish me luck!

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

1. First off, this is not the end of the first decade of the new millennium. The last year of the first decade is 2010, just as the last year of the last decade was 2000, not 1999. Still, happy new years and all that rot.

2. I'm getting some really...delicious...answers to the post I made last night. The one asking: If you had me alone, locked up in your house, for twenty-four hours and I had to do whatever you wanted me to, what would you have me/you/us do? Please take your time with the answers (which are screened so that only I can read them). I already have several good ones that will appear in Sirenia Digest #50. You can go to the post here. I'll keep reading these for at least a few more days. But, just so you know, it's going to be hard to beat having my nude body covered in crested geckos.

3. And here is my list of my twelve "Top Ten Favorite Fantasy and Speculative Films of 2009" (in order of how much I loved them):

1. The Road (John Hillcoat)
2. Avatar (James Cameron)
3. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Terry Gilliam)*
4. Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonez)
5. Moon (Duncan Jones)
6. Watchmen (Zack Snyder)/Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)** [TIE]
7. Star Trek (J.J. Abrams)
8. 9 (Shane Acker)
9. District 9 (Neill Blomkamp)/Knowing (Alex Proyas)*** [TIE]
10. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (David Yates)

* No, I have yet seen this film. But I am sure.
** Do not try to tell me that a film wherein WWII is ended by a successful attempt to assassinate Hitler isn't sf.
*** One of the year's most underrated films.
Please note that I have not included The Fantastic Mister Fox, even though Wes Anderson is one of my favorite directors. I've not eyt seen it, and have misgivings. But when I have seen it, I may be revising the list.

A very good year for film.

4. Yesterday...well, we spent many hours dealing with line edits on The Ammonite Violin, and then for "Untitled 34." The latter will be appearing in Sirenia Digest #49. Yesterday I saw the rough pencils for Vince's illustration for the story, and it's going to be gorgeous. Anyway, by the time we were done editing "Untitled 34," I was too tired to deal with the edits to "Pickman's Other Model," which will have to wait. Instead, I renewed my membership to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and lay by the fire for a while.

5. Yesterday, the Amazon.com sales ranking for The Red Tree went to 1,831, so far the best I've ever seen for any of my books. My great thanks to everyone who has supported this novel. I know it's my best one yet.

6. Presently, it's snowing here in Providence. Spooky has to get to the market before it closes. Goodbye, 2009. You were neither my best nor my worst year. You were just sort of a pain in the ass. I have higher expectations of 2010 (not to be confused with having hope). A toast. 2009, may it rot in peace.

Wow, welcome to the last day of 2009…or the first day of 2010, depending on where & when you’re reading this!

2009 was quite the year for the ladies Moira Rogers. This marked our first full year as authors, and really it seems like we’ve been published for more than 17 months now, but that’s all it has been!  Which means we have been busy little bees.

Stats for 2009:

• Novels Published: 1
• Category Length Novels Published: 3
• Novellas Published: 3
• Stories Published: 6
• Freebies Published: 3
• Books that went into print: 2

…and this was the year we were taking it easy. (Since about 6 of those happened around or before March, we were taking it easy in the latter half of the year, I swear!)

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at Moira Rogers = Bree + Donna. You can comment here or there.

Cory Dotorow on how to destroy a book by fiddling with copyright and keeping people from owning the books they purchase: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/doctorow-how-destroy-book

Well worth the read.

While you're there, consider joining the EFF. They fight the good fights.

Wow. I mean - wow.

Is it really only a year ago that I sat here reading like crazy trying to hang onto my position in the top 5 at Authonomy? It seems so.

Oh boy, a lot has happened since then. Well, actually, it hasn't, but it's been a solid, productive year, in which I feel like I've come a long way. Someone said the other day (I'm never very good at remembering who says what, so apologies if it was you) that if you look back at something you've written last year and can't think of a couple of things you could do to improve it, you haven't grown as a writer. That's how I feel about this past year.

OK, you learn the basics of style. Then you learn how to plot a decent story. But then... you find out there's so much more. Yet, if you asked me what that 'more' was, I wouldn't be able to put a finger on it, much less give it a name.

Reading slush, getting a feel for how a magazine operates, getting some things published, getting lots of rejections, but also getting a couple of very detailed comments on my work from respected editors. It says: listen up, writer, pay attention. I hope that's what I've been doing.

A gathering of things I've learned in the past year:

- you are never going to get published if you don't submit

- you are not likely to get published if you only submit a few things, either. The very act of submitting and analysing the rejections helps you: 1. evaluate where your own stories are, 2. get a handle on matters of taste

- it is indeed almost all about story and much less about style. You can edit a story that doesn't work until you're blue in the face, but it will never become a good story. If the plot is broken, fix the plot, not the sentences.

- there comes a time when a workshop format no longer holds any benefits in terms of your growth as a writer. I'm guessing that time is after a few years. I think if you do hang on, you risk getting stuck in permanent mundanity. In short: you need readers who will grab your plot and whack you around the ears with it. You need people to challenge your thinking and lift your writing to a higher level

- self-publishing a previously unpublished novel is not a good idea, at least not when you're an unknown writer

- unfortunately, the percentage of people who don't honour their promises is higher in writing than it is in any other pursuit I've engaged in.

- chocolates of the year go to the small magazines M-BraneSF and Semaphore. They have been a pleasure to deal with.

- when someone wants to buy your stuff, make sure you agree with their terms. If not, for crying out loud, let go of that despair to get published, and don't sign.

In 2010, I'm planning to keep going pretty much in the way I have in the past year. That means:

- I will continue to make sure all of my work that I still believe in (meaning that things may drop off, or be edited at times) stays in circulation.

- I will submit only to pro and semipro venues, unless...

- the project tickles my fancy or is edited by a writing buddy (or both). This is a rubbery caveat, I know.

- I plan to polish Hearts and maybe start marketing it

- I will continue to work on short stories in the Charlotte universe until I get to the core of what the novel is going to be about. By that time, it won't take me long to put it together. Don't know if that is going to happen this year

- I also solemnly pledge to allow my mind to be led on wild goose chases, drop what I'm doing in favour of The Idea, and write something completely unplanned and unforeseen. This is the fun of writing, after all.

Anyway, enough now. See you on the other side.

http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2009/12/swivet-is-changing-places-changing.html

Stay tuned for details. In the meantime, have a fabulous New Year!

hey everyone!
i want to start going to the gym more but i have no idea what i'm doing when it comes to weights; do any of you know of good websites with info for beginner lifting routines etc? (especially helpful would be those that are geared toward those of us who might be a little less in shape :))


and/or

anybody in the university city area in philly looking for a [woefully out of shape but cheerfully optimistic] gym buddy?

An OWW Challenge for January 2010. If you're not on the OWW, feel free to challenge yourself to write this anyway.

And you thought I had forever laid down my mantel of your friendly neighborhood volunteer OWW Challenge Dictator?!

BROOOOHAHAHAHAHAHHA

You thought wrong.

As I once more take up the task of prodding folks to unfetter their words by taking a different look at the things they write about and prod them to write differently about the things they look at I am reminded that the last time you saw a challenge from me, I challenged you to write a sap free hopeless parting.

Now, it is time to write the unexpected reunion. Bring two people/things/pigs/flies back together that you sundered without hope or expectation that they'd ever see each other again. Make it sap free. Remember, it is just as likely that that tear filled embrace is
followed by a knife in the back - revenge at last, thought I'd never have the chance....

Come on, you can do it.

Remember: Challenges are supposed to be fun, but don't forget to stretch yourself. If you normally write fantasy, try SF. If you've never tried space opera, here's your chance. It doesn't have to be great. It's all about trying new things. There's no word limit, no
time limit, no nothin'. Just have fun. Just remember not to post your work for review until January 2010 or later......

Hi all, I'm wondering if you can give me some advice about brands/types of co sleepers that you'd recommend.

I'll be breastfeeding my son and want to co sleep with him, but our bed's a little crowded as it is (long,tall husband and long, tall, big-bellied me). I'd love to get a bigger bed, but our room is oddly shaped and won't accommodate a king sized bed. My solution is a co sleeper, but I don't want to spend a lot of money on something my son - who is not likely to be small - will outgrow in 6 months.

What kinds of co sleepers have worked for you? What brands are good quality/value?

TIA!

x posted

Because It Feels So GOOD

This is not the “ticking time bomb” scenario beloved of so many torture fans.

So why the calls for torture?

*

Thanks to those who wrote to let me know that neither Carousel Tides nor The Agent Gambit appears in the Webscriptions list for September 2010.

This is because. . .

*drrrrrummmmmrrrrrrolllllll*

The schedule has been adjusted.

Carousel Tides is scheduled for November 2010

and!

Rolanni has been introduced into the Mysteries of the Simon & Schuster Publication Year, in which there are no "quarters" but "seasons," which means that:

The Agent Gambit is scheduled for January 2011

Hi, I'm Erin and I'm new. I am very unexpectedly pregnant with my second child, currently almost 8 weeks along. I joined this community because I am doing everything I can to plan for a natural birth this time. I really wanted one with my daugher, but I was induced at 35 weeks for supposed pre-E (which we now think, after talking to other OB's, was unecessary. great.). I handled the contractions well for awhile, but I was on mag and in bed and not allowed to move, so I gave up and had the epidural. The entire experience was hella traumatic and I really didn't think I was going to have to deal with it again so soon, but here I am. I am hoping that having the natural delivery I wanted with this one will undo some of the trauma of the first one.

All that being said, I am looking for a new OB. My mother is a nurse and has a couple that she wants me to interview, but I've been searching the internet for recommendations and can't find any so far. I'm a big girl too, so fat friendly is good. I'm in Maryland, about 30 minutes outside of Baltimore City, in Harford County. Homebirth is not an option for me, but midwives are. We really liked the hospital staff before, so that wasn't the problem. My overly cautious fat-phobic OB was the problem. If you know of any good OB's in the area, please let me know. 

Thanks everyone, hope to learn a lot here.

With the third Temple of Luna story coming out tomorrow, we’re having a little fun revisiting the first two this week! Unlike some of our other current series, our Savage Temple stories are meant to be short, naughty and fun.  They’re one place we mostly manage to keep our desire for twisty supernatural politics under wraps.  So enjoy an excerpt from Savage Need today and don’t forget, you can win a copy here!

(This series is still a bit on the naughty side, though this first excerpt is less explicit than some. Still, if you’re at work, browse ahead with caution!)

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at Moira Rogers = Bree + Donna. You can comment here or there.

Today, Elizabeth would have been 39.

There was a seizure late yesterday afternoon, the worst in months, so if this entry is a little off, that's what you blame. I still feel as though I'm thinking through a film of cheesecloth dipped in Vaseline. Fortunately, all I have to do today is attend to line edits.

Monday (12/28/09)— We drove to Attleboro, Massachusetts late in the day. I was looking for a CD, which I didn't find. As a consolation, we stopped at Yankee Spirits, or as I prefer to think of it, the Boozery (on Washington St./Rt. 1). We came away with French absinthe, Russian lager, and a bottle of Dogfish Head's Pangaea. The place really is a marvel. On the way home, the sun was setting, and the sky was like the last moments before apocalypse. I took photos, because lately I seem obsessed with the sky. In Atlanta and Birmingham, the sky is an entirely different beast. The photos are behind the cut, below. There was rain Monday morning, and a few slushy snow flakes as we were leaving Providence.

Monday evening, Spooky baked kielbasa with apples, red potatoes, red onions, garlic, and bay. We drank the Russian lager with it (Baltica No. 4, which ellen_datlow introduced me to last November, in NYC). I read more of the Rapetosaurus paper, and more of Alan Weisman's The World Without Us (a Solstice gift from David Szydloski). The latter is a brilliant book. It's almost enough to inspire in me some weak spark of hope. We watched an episode of Fringe. There was WoW, and we both made Level 75.

Tuesday (12/29/09)— A windy and very cold day. Maybe the coldest day I've felt since coming to Rhode Island. There was a vicious wind. We saw Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, and I thought it was delightful. When we got back home, a package was waiting for me, the ARCs for The Ammonite Violin & Others, which is now that much closer to being an actual book. Also, I discovered a very nice review of The Red Tree at SFFWorld.

There was Chinese takeout for dinner. I read more of Weisman's book, and we watched three more episodes of Fringe (which we're watching entirely out of order, and I think that's making it more interesting).

Tomorrow I will post my "Top Ten" list of fantasy and science-fiction films from 2009.

Today will be a day of line edits. But I said that already. Final corrections to The Ammonite Violin & Others, and "Untitled 34," and "Pickman's Other Model" (on the last one, actually, all I need to do is to copy the list of line edits into an email to send to Joshi). It should be easy. I just have to keep squinting through the cheesecloth and Vaseline. And here are the photos from Monday:

( 28 December 2009 )

Jack Sprat
by Jim C. Hines

Jack Sprat will drink your blood.
His wife will eat your flesh.
And so betwixt the two of them
They never leave a mess.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

So, I just got back from the movie Sherlock Holmes . . . and it was a GREAT movie! I knew going into the movie that it was not going to be "true to the books" in any sense, but I have to say that it certainly had the same spirit of the books.

And that's what was so great about the movie: spirit. Both Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law played their roles with great spirit and good humor and just the right touch of seriousness. So while they did have their little spats and their own personal stories throughout the movie, those stories didn't subsume the main plot. I'd say that everything was extremely well balanced: personal stories along with main plot, as well as the larger plot. There weren't so many twists and turns that you got completely lost. You could follow everything and they explained nearly everything that dealt with the explanation of how the "crime" was committed. I only say "nearly" because there were a few handwaving moments when they didn't explain exactly how things worked . . . but I wouldn't say that was a problem. They explained exactly what they needed to in the detail they needed to. Any deeper explanation would have amounted to a science lecture and that's not what you go to the movies for.

And here's the thing: there weren't any movie tropes here. Oh, sure, good guys win in the end and such, but unlike Avatar I couldn't guess where things were going in the plot sense. So I was riveted to the pillow screen and kept involved during the whole movie. There were no slow points.

And the best recommendation I can give the movie is that at the end, I REALLY REALLY wanted to go immediately to the next movie. And there will definitely be a next movie, simply because I WILL IT! But just in case, I highly suggest that EVERYONE go out to see this movie.

And bring your pillow.

PS--Thanks to Joshua B for the last minute gift of some spare tickets!

Here it is then, as promised. I'm not really going to do a review, since it would be very short:

I freaking loved the movie.

I'd just like to comment on some aspects of people's discussions about it, and try to extrapolate about what messages there could possibly be for fiction, or for SF.

Some caveats:

1. For me, first contact stories are the equivalent of hot chips in fiction: you can wake me up for them. Any book that has some form of alien-human contact I simply *have* to read. I love that stuff.

2. I am a dreamer

3. I am not a Trekkie, and apologise in advance for some stuff I may say below.

So yeah, let's not repeat all that's already been said about the wonderful worldbuilding. I just love that stuff. This aspect actually reminded me of Dinotopia, a movie with a non-existent plot that goes on forever, but that's so incredibly pretty you just have to keep watching. Avatar was clearly made to be pretty. Other movies with that secondary aim come to mind. Dances with Wolves, Out of Africa and Australia.

The plot. Yeah, yeah, enough with the bellyaching about the standard plot. The plot worked, and that is important for something pitched at a large audience. You cannot take undue risks. I think they took a bit of a risk with the overt environmental message, but probably judged the time was right for it.

I dunno. Have you ever watched a movie where halfway through, the plot went in a way where you would have just stood up and walked out? I remember one. I watched this movie called A Japanese Story. The beginning was a lovely, and rather edgy, tale of a Japanese middle manager pretending to be on a business trip to NW Australia (he wasn't; he'd been sacked). His guide (Toni Colette) drives him around and gradually peels away the truth. It turns into a sightseeing holiday (lovely scenery). And then the dude drowns (I presume it was suicide, but it didn't think that was adequately supported by the preceding scenes). And I was going WTF WTF WTF WTF?? No resolution, no nothing. Just lengthy grief scenes from his wife and the guide. Total crap for my level of movie enjoyment.

The 'best' (most provocative, most emotional, whatever) movie I saw this year was Gran Torino. It, too, ends sadly. I took my daughters, who also had a bit of a WTF reaction to the ending. I thought it was bitterweet, but it's not a movie which leaves you happy, or, for that matter, satisfied. I thought it was very good, but didn't enjoy it as much.

Avatar was never intended to be an edgy drama. The plot was risk-free. People said it resembles Dances with Wolves, and that there was a large amount of native American resemblance. I dunno about that. I saw Fern Gully and a large part of the plot had Rio Tinto (a mining company which is screwing people in the highlands of PNG) all over it. It doesn't matter. This stuff has happened before. This stuff is still happening. This stuff has been the subject of many plots. It was done well enough that: 1. the story worked, 2. the story left a large majority of the audience to walk away so happy that days later, they are still talking about it.

To me, fiction, of any sort, is about immersing the reader and making the reader feel happy. The best books are those where you have an insane wish to dive in and BE one of the characters. For a large percentage of the audience, this movie does just that. I wrote about that here.

This plot speaks to a lot of people on a very basic human level. It's chockers with messages, but to most people, the messages are either justified or not noticeable enough to be annoying. Humans rape and pillage. Good on the ones who stand up and put an end to some of it. Show it at Christmas time, and people will love it. Stroke of genius, really. All that was missing, I think, was a donation box outside the cinema with 'Save the Rainforest'. They would have made thousands.

Anyway, some of the gaffes (which were not many, and not as important as I thought they would be).

The dead brother switcheroo. What is it with film makers that they insist on putting insufficiently educated characters in important roles without any justification? (James Kirk anyone? Oh man! As if the military would allow that sort of cock-arsery). There was no need for the dead brother, plot-wise. I cannot believe that any scientist would accept a non-trained person with an attitude problem in a vitally important project. The solution would have been as easy as enforcing an equal-opportunity law that says that disabled people should make up a percentage of any workforce. The dude's been injured, can't be in the regular forces, so he gets a steam course in science and gets slotted into a program three months after it's started when someone decides to have himself killed. Easy.

Unobtainium. Yeah. The editor who let that placeholder name through deserves to be shot. That said, the element that shall not be named was mentioned only twice in the entire movie, and wasn't half as cringe-worthy as Star Trek's red matter (for crying out loud dudes, read the definition of BLACK HOLE before you come up with something as stupidly insane - and store it in a freaking glass cylinder).

The sex. Oh, you say, what sex? Yeah - well, that's just the problem. It isn't as if this is a kiddie movie. It's rated M for crying out loud. If these two blue aliens were mated for life, and you show some scenes that suggest they're having sex, for crying out loud, show them having sex. Unless, of course, the nerds who programmed this animation don't know where the bits go. Come on, ya prudes! It was a scene lasting a few seconds. Long enough, because the point was made, but make the freaking point properly.

What I thought was very elegant, plot-wise, was the fact that the military are rent-a-guns. It was the weaselly guy named Parker, with the fat tie, who made the final decision. Now he's going to have to justify heavy losses to the shareholders, he'll be sacked, the military will move elsewhere, and the company will lick its wounds. They won't be back in a hurry, or at least not in that form. Yeah, I loved that, in terms of a lasting solution.

Then again, I'm a dreamer. I love happy endings. And I wish I had a tail.