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As noted before, we had to switch artists in mid-series. This was done by Mel Grant (who also did my goblin covers). The cover for Mermaid remains my favorite, but I think he did a great job making sure it was recognizable and consistent with the earlier books. # I also asked yesterday whether an anime-style Snoopy fighting cat ninjas would be awesome or terrifying. socchan took up the challenge, and the answer is: Awesome!!! # Page proofs for Red Hood have also arrived. I know how I’ll be spending my evenings for the next few weeks. (But this means I should be able to post a sample chapter from the book soon!) # Thank you to everyone who suggested titles for book four. After talking to my editor, the final title will be: The Snow Queen’s Shadow The Snow Queen’s Snare was a close runner-up, but didn’t quite fit the plot as well. Shadow was suggested almost simultaneously by two users on LJ and my jimchines.com blog, so I’ve decided to name them both winners. Congrats to miladygrey and Sewicked. I’ll be e-mailing you about your prizes! # Finally, because I haven’t done one in a little while, a LEGO piano by catarino. I used to play piano, and I love the detail on this thing. Check this closeup of the keys, or just click the image below for more shots of the piano and catarino’s other work.
1. At 10:00 p.m. last night, I typed “THE END” on the first draft of Snow Queen. First draft is done!!! So, time to start reading and marking things up for rewrite #1. 2. HUGE thanks to everyone who suggested titles for Snow Queen. You had some wonderful ideas, and I’ve e-mailed my top picks as well as a few crowd favorites to my editor. I’ll let you know what I hear back. 3. Catherine Shaffer believes I should be smothered with a pillow in my sleep for writing “The Creature in Your Neighborhood.” 4. The CEO of Macmillan explains their side of the Amazon incident: “This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site, and off Amazon.” 4b. Charlie Stross and Tobias Buckell offer two good essays on Amazon’s move. 4c. I don’t think I could offer anything more articulate than what’s already out there. But I did want to point out that my previous post has already generated one angry comment which reads, “will not be buy macmillan books. it is ridiculous to pay such a big price for virtual books. will look for other authors.” Brilliant. Let’s punish the authors for something they have zero control over. But it’s a good reminder that most people are pretty ignorant about how the business works, and a lot of those people are going to see Amazon as some sort of hero standing up for cheap e-books. 4d. I was happy to find a short YouTube clip which I feel better captures Amazon’s attitude toward these negotiations. This is my first-ever attempt at embedding a YouTube clip, so my apologies if I mess it up. Following up on yesterday’s post, for anyone interested in publishing industry numbers, one of my readers provided a link to Bowker’s 2009 industry statistics. This doesn’t provide numbers sold, but does show the number of new books in various categories. Worth a look, for anyone interested in this stuff. # So the princess series is going to be four books long. Three of these books have titles: The Stepsister Scheme [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] Book four doesn’t have a final title, and I’m almost out of time. We’re doing page proofs on Red Hood soon, and I want to make sure it includes information number four. So I’m turning to y’all for help. The final book is based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale The Snow Queen, as most of you already know. I need a title that will fit with the rest of the series, and will be so exciting, so vivid, that everyone is helpless to resist its allure. At the moment, the tentative title is Spell of the Snow Queen. It works, but my editor and I would love to find something that had a little more zing. Rejected titles include: Shards of the Snow Queen All suggestions are welcome. If we end up using yours, you’ll receive an autographed book and a shout-out in the acknowledgements. Last night did not go quite as planned, in that I didn’t plan to bring my wife to the emergency room at 11:30, or to stay there waiting for doctors and lab results until 5:30 in the morning. She’s fine (aside from bruises after five attempts to draw blood) — this was a scare that thankfully started to pass after the third hour of sitting and waiting in the E.R. But neither one of us are what I’d call fully functional this morning. So today we do random updates, ’cause it’s what my brain can handle. Snow Queen is on schedule. I’m still planning to have the first draft finished by the end of the month. And I had a happy-dance moment last night where more pieces of the ending fell into place. I love it when that happens! Conventions — I’ll be at ConFusion later this month (1/22 - 1/24), doing what looks like seven panels and an autographing session all on Saturday. (Including a fairy tale panel with Cat Valente and Peter Beagle — eep!) I’ve also committed to doing Millennicon in March. Diana Pharaoh Francis is planning to kill me, and it’s AWESOME! Click over and read the excerpt from her work in progress, Crimson Wind. And … um … yeah. That’s what I’ve got. Sleep now? • First off, a quote from author C. C. Finlay: “The third law of writing: For every fiction there is an equal and opposite re-fiction. For example, if there is The Hobbit, eventually someone will inevitably write Goblin Quest.” I am much amused. • The SF/F Humor Roundup is up to 22 short stories and 12 novels. So far, so good! I’m working on guidelines to try to cut down on blatant self-promotion. I don’t mind authors recommending their own work, but I don’t want a list of 30 stories from every online nook and cranny. I’m thinking of limiting self-promotional recommendations to one short story and/or one novel. What do you think? • I’ll be heading to Windycon tomorrow. I’ve got the Manly Baen vs. Womanly DAW panel Saturday at 10, an autographing session Saturday at 2, What are Kids Reading on Sunday at 10, and I’ll be reading my muppet werewolf tale on Sunday at Noon. Hope to see some of you there! # I realized I haven’t done an actual writing update in a while. After finishing the revisions for Red Hood’s Revenge, I started back in on Snow Queen. I struggled through the current chapter, but it was painful. The whole thing felt like it was stuck, and I had no idea where to go from here. Some of the more experienced writers probably know exactly where I’m at in this manuscript. That’s right, it’s the dreaded 30,000 word slog. Every book I’ve done for the past five years has hit this same point, where my outline falls apart and the story crashes and burns. Fortunately, I’ve done this enough times to recognize it. The solution for me? Step back and rewrite the outline. When I’m first planning a book, my brain can’t hold the whole thing. So I outline and do the best I can, but by the time I’ve typed 25K-30K words, I’ve changed enough that the outline no longer works. I’ve spent the past week outlining, and I’m just about ready to dive back in. I’m not going to start over from the beginning, because I’ve found that just wastes time for me. But I’ve made notes about what to change in the rewrite, and more importantly, I’m excited about some of the new ideas and directions I’m taking in the rest of the story. I’m also surprised to realize I don’t know how this book is going to end. I honestly don’t know whether or not certain characters will survive. That’s kind of fun So there’s where I’m at with the writing. Book three is done, book four is underway, and the back of my brain is quietly percolating ideas for the next series. Cry havoc, and let slip the plotbunnies of war! Today I wrote the first 660 words of Scourge of the Snow Queen! (Title may change between now and 2011.) I had hoped to post a celebratory snippet. Unfortunately, anything from today’s writing would completely spoil the ending of The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy]. Stupid ongoing plot threads. This is the first book in the series where I feel like I need a prologue, or at least some sort of “Previously on the Princess Action show…” introduction. I did that sort of thing in the goblin books and had fun with it, but I’d really rather not do it again here. Ideally, I want brand new readers to be able to pick up the book and dive into the story just as easily as those who have read the first three books. That means no introductory crap that will bore new and old readers alike. Just start the story and give the background details as they become necessary. Whereas the first three books have their own storylines, this one relies more heavily on what came before. It’s a new challenge, one which I’d like to say I look forward to conquering, but to be honest, right now it’s a pain in the ass. Fortunately, I’ve got 13 months and change to figure it out :-) For now, I’m just enjoying that new-story smell and looking forward to everything I get to play with in this one. One of the earliest pieces of writing advice I remember was that writers — especially new writers — shouldn’t try to write to trend. In other words, don’t look at today’s hot books and set out to write whatever’s currently leaping off the shelves. There are problems with aiming for trends, not the least of which is the glacial pace of publishing. Say Cyborg Unicorns are the hot new thing, so you set out to write your own cybercorn book. You spend a year writing your book, another year submitting, and then if you actually land a deal, it could be yet another year before the book comes out. In this highly optimistic scenario, you’re already three years behind the trend, which means there’s a decent chance the rest of the world has moved on to Shakespearean Cthulhu*. Of course, an established writer can go directly to the publisher saying, “Let me write you an awesome cybercorn book.” If you’re a fast enough writer, you might have more luck riding the current trends. But that leads to the other objection, one which I admit is totally bogus**, and that’s the idea that a real author writes from the heart without worrying about trends or popularity. The best stories are the ones the author loves. The thing is, I have no proof for this. I think my writing is better when I love the story, when I’m excited about the ideas and the characters and so on. But can a skilled writer churn out a tale he doesn’t care about and still make it good? Why not? I don’t think of writing as a mystical art, inspired by divine muses. It’s a craft. A good carpenter can produce beautiful bookshelves even if she doesn’t particularly love shelves — or even if she doesn’t love this particular set of shelves — right? Why doesn’t the same apply to writing? Doesn’t a writer who refuses to write anything she doesn’t absolutely love risk falling into the same trap as the one who refuses to write until the muse gives him the perfect story idea? None of which changes my deeply held conviction that I write better when I love what I write. Maybe the love doesn’t make it better; maybe it just makes it easier. All I know is that I try to write what I love, and while this approach hasn’t made me a New York Time bestseller, is seems to work for me. All of this is a long-winded way of talking about my drive to work this morning, where I was brainstorming more ideas for the fourth princess book and realized how much fun it could be to write to one of the current trends: Princesses vs. Zombies. Sadly, I don’t think I’m going to do it. The idea isn’t right for the series, and doesn’t fit with everything else I want to accomplish in book four. But wouldn’t it make one hell of a story? Danielle, Talia, and Snow kicking undead ass together. Who knows, maybe I’ll have to do a fifth book after all…. — |
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Copyright © 2010 Jim C. Hines - All Rights Reserved |
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