Lakeshore

Got my royalty statement today from Tor anent Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon thb | Audible ].

Without going into the gory details, it was very satisfying. I had to call arcaedia to confirm a few details, but we've got good sell through, while the hardback has very nearly accounted for the advance all on its own even before the paperback began warming the shelves. A big smile for me amid a week of buffeting.

If I'm going to die soon, it will be of laughter. kehrli, criada and kaerfel show me what Mainspring is really all about.

I laughed so hard it upset lasirenadolce's dog Spike. Laughed my ass off, so to speak.

Then csinman met them on the field of honor.

Those guys are so totally for the win.

...is photos of the paperback of Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon thb | Audible ] in the wild.

Phone cams ready, people. We'll have a voting poll for the best image, with valuable prizes.

(Why yes, I am shameless. Why do you ask?)

I am extremely pleased to report that this week's issue of Publisher's Weekly has a starred review of Escapement [ Amazon ].

I'm not sure if I can reproduce the whole thing here, but I'll quote my favorite bits:

This lively and thought-provoking sequel to 2007's Mainspring expands Lake's alternate 19th-century world of baroque politics and gothic clockwork. ... Lake effectively anneals steampunk with geo-mechanical magic in an allegorical matrix of empire building and Victorian natural science.

(Thanks to arcaedia for the original tip, and thanks to another benefactor for forwarding the review itself.)

Spent most of today engaged in damage control from the credit card fraud issue of yesterday. This has not become a fiasco, but it certainly qualifies as an annoying distraction. I did take a couple of hours off for lunch with my parents, who are officially moved to Portland now that they've sold their house in Dallas and bought a brand new Prius this week.

Laying low tonight, baking ginger chocolate chip cookies in the morning, then off to an OSFCI board meeting. lasirenadolce is back tomorrow, which will be very nice.

Finished The Houses of Time by Jamil Nasir [ Powell's | Amazon ] yesterday on the plane. I was frustrated by that book — it somewhat reminded me of Ted Mooney's Easy Travel to Other Planets [ Powell's | Amazon ], or to be more accurate, my years-out-of-date memory of that book. A very cool idea, or set of ideas, enshrouded in a slow-paced miasma of prose. I strongly suspect this is a matter of taste rather than objective judgment, but I think Nasir could have written a world-beating novelette with this exact material, and it's rather a shame he didn't.

Andrew Vachss' Flood [ Powell's | Amazon ] impressed the hell out of me until the last couple of chapters. The ending felt a bit forced, telegraphed even, without bearing up to the grim and glittering promise of the first 90% of the book, as well as the layered, post-noir style. This book hits a lot of the dystopian cyberpunk buttons, without actually being cyberpunk, or truthfully all that dystopian. You can quite clearly see where SF stole noir from in reading Vachss. While I found the ending a bit weak, trite even, the ending after the ending was just silly. All of which annoyed me because I wanted his punch between my eyes to carry me right out of the last pages of the book.

Right now I'm reading Presumed Innocent [ Powell's | Amazon ] by Scott Turow. I am having a bit of double vision on this one. The plot is gripping me very well, I'm deep inside Rusty's head and his fears (about halfway through the book right now), but the narrative voice and prose style rubs me the wrong way. I'll report back when I'm done.

So I wrote (or revised) just about every single day between 12/10 and 3/31. Drafted Green, wrote (then revised) "The Baby Killers", revised Madness of Flowers, revised Green, knocked out a handful of other short stories.

I gave myself April off from writing. I mean, I've done an article and a flash piece, "The Inertia of Corpses", and several substantial pieces of critical reading, but that hardly counts. I told Fred he could skive off, and I've spent the month largely reading, both unpublished stuff for critique, and actual books with bindings and stuff. (Just today finished The Houses of Time by Jamil Nasir[ Powell's | Amazon ].)

Meanwhile, because Not Writing was starting to make me twitchy, last week I began a short story called "The Speed of Time." After a page and half, I stopped. Three times since then I came back to it. Nada.

I was blocked. As the_flea_king said tonight in chat, Fred was fishing somewhere. I mean, I had given him the month off. Still, this was freaky.

So this morning I wrote another flash, "Shard". That seemed to clear the pipes a bit, so I went back and put about 2,000 more words into "The Speed of Time," and lo, I had a complete short story draft.

I'm telling you, giving Fred a vacation is spooky. Having him back is heaven.

Well, at least three cool things have happened this week in my writing life. None of which I can announce yet. It's a funny old world, this.

In honor of the mass market paperback edition of Mainspring [ Amazon | Audible ] coming out in about another week, I offer this interview of Hethor Jacques, my main character, by author jackiekessler's cat and her muse.

Back to Portland tomorrow.

Just lately, coming off a 3-1/2 month novel-writing jag, I've been doing a lot of reading, mostly novels. (Well, and Blue Highways [ Powell's | Amazon ].)

I've made another one of those sky-is-blue observations. Ie, stupidly obvious in retrospect, and probably apparent to most of the rest of you, but an eye opener for me.

Some books are bubbles, some books are fossil beds.

Bubbles are books (or stories) which exist almost entirely on their surface. The characters, the plot, the setting all work together in a coherent whole, but there's not a lot of subtext or deep texture. The Cater Street Hangman by Anne Perry [ Powell's | Amazon ] reads that way to me.

Fossil beds are books which have layers within layers within layers within layers. Pieces move inside parts, and almost everything carries the implicature of other elements, many of them hidden or distant from the surface of the story. I'm currently reading Flood by Andrew Vachss [ Powell's | Amazon ], which is very much a fossil bed to my eye.

Most of the spec fic I love falls in the "fossil bed" category. My taste leans very strongly that way, both as a reader and as a writer. At the same time, I'm coming to appreciate bubbles. They have a strong value to many readers, and an important place in the commercial market.

Like most dualistic distinctions, the truth almost certainly lies somewhere in the middle. Perhaps there's a fossil-bubble continuum. Perhaps I'm full of it. (Wouldn't be the first time.) But now I'm gnawing on this observation to see if it takes me anywhere important, or at least interesting, with respect to my own work.

What do you think? Does this characterization make sense to you? How would you elucidate it?

Recent triviata:

Said by me at tillyane's birthday party: "Dystopian fiction isn't meant to be aspirational."

Incorrectly recalled by me at one of karindira's birthday parties: Allen Drury's novel, The Throne of Saturn [ Amazon ], which I read when I was about 12. Anyone remember this?

Observed today: Mystery is a weird genre. More about that later.

I've been first reading novel manuscripts lately. kenscholes' Canticle, plus two more from other writers. Halfway through the third of those right now.

At the same time, I've been reading books. You know, ones that were already published. I just finished Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon [ Powell's | Amazon ], and have now started The Cater Street Hangman by Anne Perry [ Powell's | Amazon ].

I've always done a lot of reading of unpublished work throughout my writing career. That's what workshopping is, after all. Plus co-editing Polyphony under mme_publisher, and my other editing projects. Plus courtesy reads and manuscript swaps and convention workshopping and all that. It's been a long time since I've been able to read more published work than unpublished work.

For me, being a writer (more to the point, being a busy, committed working writer) comes out of almost exactly the same time budget as being reader. When I am committing novel, it all goes by — that's why I took up the habit of reading on the exercise bike: to ensure some reading time even in those portions of my life.

Because it's dangerous not to read. And unpublished work just isn't the same. The qualitative experience is different, first off — I'm almost always reading with a pencil in my hand (or the Word comments feature turned on). Which is to say, I'm reading critically, and not staying inside the flow of the story much, if at all. The expectations are different, too. A sheaf of printouts, or .doc file, are simply not the same physical or mental experience as a book.

A book is a finished artifact. (Yes, I know better, but you know what I mean.) My experience of a book is conditioned by a childhood of loitering in libraries and among my parents' substantial shelves. This is why electronic readers are not ever likely to displace dead trees for me — print on paper is practically hard wired into me. I cannot influence the book's outcome (unlike manuscript feedback), I can only experience it.

A book is also something which has already been acquired, edited, copy edited, printed, bound, distributed, and sold. It's done, the end product of the pipeline that the manuscript is the beginning of. Rather like the difference between looking at a cow and eating a hamburger. I'm in the cow business, really, I need to look at a lot of cows, but all my cows become hamburgers. If I don't eat a lot of hamburgers, I lose touch with the other end of the process.

So I'm trying to read more books. In spec fic, out of spec fic. Mystery, because I'd maybe like to go there in a few years. Non-fiction to feed my head. Random genres just to learn new stuff. I can't spend all my time in the grazing meadows of science fiction and fantasy, talking to cows.

More better hamburgers, that's the ticket for me. And it takes a lot of discipline to find that time.

Had a nice time this evening at the MHCC Library Week science fiction do. joshenglish sponsored a bunch of us chickens, so we met for dinner beforehand — him, me, the_child, davidlevine, kateyule, camillealexa, and newroticgirl. David Goldman joined us at the library, along with Mrs. joshenglish, one of the librarians and an actual, random audience member. We had a great discussion that ranged quite widely about writing, process and publishing. Then we all went home.

:: yawn ::

In other news, ecbatan seems to have liked "The Fly and Die Ticket".

And finally, I have been vouchsafed a glimpse of the preliminary cover sketch for Green. I am quite impressed with the conception. While I didn't have anything in particular in mind (not that it's up to me in any case), Tor is threatening to outdo themselves on this one. That would be 3-and-0 for the win on my covers from irenegallo and the mighty Tor machine.

the_child and I will be attending this National Library Week event this evening, hosted by joshenglish at the Mount Hood Community College library. (Where AH works as well.) A number of local luminaries will be present, and we will be discussing things SFnal.

criada hath just pointed out to me a serious (albeit trivial to the plot) error in Escapement [ Amazon ]. I refer a number of times to the island of Java as being north of the Equatorial Wall, when in fact I meant Sumatra. I simply flipped them in my head.

This little detail — which was entirely and solely my doing (it's my book, after all) — escaped all the readers who looked over the book in various official and unofficial capacities. It's far too late to fix the hardback now. So when you buy your copies of Escapement (as you all are planning to do, right?), please take a blue pencil, and wherever you see the word "Java", gently cross it out and write in "Sumatra".

Ah, the bliss of geographical ignorance. I am so damned embarrassed.

Happy Tax Day!

Me, on numbers — From last night. And yes, I am very mildly synesthetic. I wonder how many writers are?

A review of my recent Clarkesworld story, "The Sky That Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and Into the Black" — Some folks have liked this story a lot. You can read it here at Clarkesworld.

Bethesda Start-Up Makes Writing a Little Less Lonely — Crowd-sourcing fiction? Hmm... (Thanks to danjite.)

Toward a Quantum Internet — Entangled photons over distant fiber. I always thought "Spooky Action at a Distance" was a great name for a rock band.

What is the value of space exploration?

The ice man sitteth — More historical goodness from Shorpy. That's a hell of a photo.

A Renegade Against Greenpeace — One of the co-founders of Greenpeace talks about why he is pro-nuke. (Thanks to danjite.)

Craigslist and eBay: Terrorist arms bazaars of DEATH — The Register takes on the GAO's fear-mongering over online arms sales. Certainly it's much more efficient to have the national security folks handle it directly. Anyone remember Oliver North? Anyone?

Obama would ask his AG to "immediately review" potential of crimes in Bush White House — Say, promoting torture? Nah, that's unpatriotic of me to suggest that behaving in profoundly unAmerican ways is unpatriotic. Remember kids, it's ok if you're a Republican.

Cheney, Torture and the Chance to Restore the Rule of Law — I'm sympathetic to this argument, but as I recall, our courts have been pretty consistent in holding that Constitutional rights do not automatically apply to non-citizens. Hence, torturing non-Americans is certainly illegal, but I'm not sure there's a case to be made for it violating the 8th Amendment. But I'm neither an attorney nor a constitutional scholar. Nor a Republican. (Thanks to my Aunt M.)

Dick Cheney was never a "grown-up" — A fascinating look at the history of one of modern America's greatest villains. (Thanks to my Aunt M.)

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4/15/08
Time in saddle: 18 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 272.0
Currently reading: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon [ Powell's | Amazon ]