Cover Pose Calendar Auction (with Bonus Mary’s Angels Print!)

ETA: And the auction is now closed. The final bid was an amazing $375, which means we’re starting things out with a great contribution to the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation. Huge thanks to everyone who participated!

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I have two boxes full of fresh-from-the-printer 2014 calendars, packed full of cover-posing goodness.

Most of the calendars will be sold through the Tinker’s Pack website, because Pat Rothfuss has a team of wonderful employees who offered to take care of things like orders and shipping and all the rest. Whereas I have a team of ill-behaved pets and two children who think things like homework and playing are more important than packing and mailing calendars for Daddy.

As with last year’s fundraiser, all profits from the sale of these calendars will go to the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation.

It will probably be a week or two before I can get these shipped to Wisconsin and they show up on the Tinker’s Pack website, but if you don’t want to wait, you’re in luck. I’m auctioning off one calendar Right Now! I’ll even autograph and personalize it for you.

Not only that, but if the bidding goes past $50, you also get a download code for an audio book copy of Libriomancer.

If it reaches $100, I’ll throw in an 8 x 10  print of “Mary’s Angels,” autographed by all of us. That’s worth at least $100 all by itself, isn’t it? (Depending on how high the bidding goes, I may toss in some other goodies as well.)

To encourage you to bid, here’s a picture of Taz the cat hanging out with the calendar. (Note: cat is not included in this auction.)

HOW CAN YOU REFUSE THAT KITTY???

To Bid: Leave your bid in the comments at http://www.jimchines.com/2013/10/cover-pose-calendar-auction/  Bidding must be in whole-dollar amounts. Opening bid amount is $20.

Shipping: I’ll cover shipping within the U.S. If you’re bidding from outside the U.S., I’ll have to ask you to chip in a few extra bucks. Sorry.

Deadline: The auction will close in one week.

Reminder: All proceeds go to a very good cause.

Emotionally Manipulative Comment: If this doesn’t get lots of bids, Taz will be a VERY SAD KITTY!

Cool Stuff Friday

Happy Friday, all! I’m really, really hoping to have a draft of Unbound I can submit to my editor by the end of this weekend. If I do, I may reward myself by trying to put a costume together for Windycon. Don’t know if I’ll be able to pull it off, but there’s an idea that’s taken hold of my brain…

Fake Writer Girls!

By now, I assume most of you are familiar with the Fake Geek Girl phenomenon, in which women’s geek credentials are repeatedly challenged, because everyone knows girls don’t like geek stuff. (Isn’t that right, Big Bang Theory?) It gets even worse if the woman in question is traditionally attractive, because even if we acknowledge the possibility of the occasional female geek, we all know she has to be ugly and socially maladjusted, right? Fortunately, we have men who tirelessly volunteer their time to challenge and harass these wannabes.

Because do you know what would happen if we let Fake Geek Girls into the inner circle of geekdom? PURE, UNMITIGATED GIRL-COOTIES!

Well let me tell you, Fake Geek Girls have nothing on the Fake Writer Girls. You know the ones I mean. Those women who think they can write stories and books that are just as good and important and serious as the ones written by us men. It’s almost like they don’t even understand that their work is inherently inferior, because GIRLS!

One of the best ways to spot a Fake Writer Girl is by looking for Mary Sues, those unrealistically competent, know-it-all, oh-so-special characters who are the Best at Everything! They’re nothing but silly, estrogen-fueled wish fulfillment fantasies. Like a girl could ever be an active, competent character. Oh, those wacky Fake Writer Girls and their ridiculously super-special heroines. If only they could write realistic, heroic protagonists like Ender Wiggin, James Bond, Eragon, Lazarus Long, Clark Kent, Kvothe Kingkiller, Legolas…

And don’t get me started on how they’re ruining science fiction and fantasy with their romance cooties! Urban fantasy? Paranormal romance? Why don’t they care about the history of our genre? SF/F stories should be about spaceships! and swords! and fighting! and yes, the occasional hooking up, but only when it’s nubile young women throwing themselves at manly protagonists!

It would be nice if these Fake Writer Girls could just stay in the romance section, because we all know romance isn’t a real genre. I mean, sure, romance makes up 55% of all fiction sales, but a real man wouldn’t be caught dead reading that stuff, so it doesn’t count. Besides, ALL ROMANCE NOVELS ARE JUST FORMULAIC, UNIMAGINATIVE HACKWORK! (On a totally unrelated note, I just remembered that I have to write a review of this awesome book I read last week. It’s just like Lord of the Rings, except instead of a ring, it’s a cursed dagger! Brilliantly original stuff.)

You might laugh, but Fake Writer Girls present a real threat to real writers like me, writers who write while also being guys. Just look at this report from VIDA that shows how lady writers are stealing review space from hard-working men! They took 33% of the book reviews in The Atlantic, 36% from Harpers, 26% from the London Review of Books, 19% from the New York Review of Books, and 34% from the New York Times. And they want to take even more review space away from real (i.e., male) authors! Why can’t they be happy getting slightly more than half of the reviews in Romantic Times and leave the rest to us? Why do they have to hurt men’s careers with their Fake Writer Girl Agendas?

Here are just a few known Fake Writer Girls, authors whose work you definitely should not immediately go check out and buy and read and tell all of your friends about.

Please feel free to suggest others in the comments. Because the more you know…

Known Fake Writer Girls

  • Jaime Lee Moyer – Wrote a perfectly good book about vengeful ghosts, then ruined it with relationships and romance!
  • Seanan McGuire – Prolific and popular. Stole multiple spots on the NYT Bestsellers List from deserving boy authors.
  • Nalo Hopkinson – Her first book was Brown Girl in the Ring. Yeah, right. Call me when you write Brown Alpha Male in the Ring, amirite?
  • Elizabeth Bear – Not only does she sneak relationship-cooties into her work, I’ve even seen her brag about doing it!
  • Laura Anne Gilman – Sure, she’s been an editor as well as a Nebula-nominated author, but she also wrote some books for Luna. Romance! Fake Writer Girl! Unclean!
  • Nnedi Okorafor – We all know she’s an award-winning novelist, but she’s also writing a Disney Fairies book. Need I say more?
  • Kameron Hurley – Not just a fake writer girl, but a militant fake writer girl who actively blogs about girl stuff like sexism in addition to writing books.
  • Mary Robinette Kowal – Her work has been described as Jane Austen with magic. That’s another dead giveaway right there. And if that’s not enough, she also plays with puppets!
  • Alethea Kontis – She’s doing fairy tale retellings. Hmph. Fairy tale books are only worth reading if they’re written by a man!
  • Tansy Rayner Roberts – That’s right, even Australia has Fake Writer Girls!!!
  • Amal El-Mohtar – Yep, Canada too!
  • J. V. Jones – Sure, she was writing grimdark fantasy decades ago, but do we really have to mention her when we talk about grimdark fantasy? Can’t we just talk about the men?

Kaleidoscope Guest Post: Chupacabra’s Song

I have a guest post on the Kaleidoscope blog today, talking about “Chupacabra’s Song,” the story I wrote earlier this year about Nicola Pallas, who would go on to become the Midwest Regional Master of the Porters, back when she was teenager.

From my post:

Nicola Pallas didn’t start out autistic. In the first draft of Libriomancer, the character was named Nikos, a weary, arrogant man described as looking ‘like an accountant in his plain suit and tie, gold-rimmed glasses, with thinning black hair.’ He was also neurotypical, which raises the question, Why did I go back and make the character autistic?

There’s another, equally valid question, albeit one I rarely hear. Why did I make the character neurotypical in the first place?

Check it out. And if you’re so inclined, head on over to the Kaleidoscope Fundraising Page. A $15 donation earns earns a Twelfth Planet Ebook and an ebook copy of the Kaleidoscope anthology. You could consider it a pre-order that supports an anthology of diverse YA fantasy.

Picking Winners

I had two winners to pick, one for the giveaway for people who donated to help Eugie Foster fight cancer, and one for the cover reveal post over on io9 where we asked people to caption the cover of The Goblin Master’s Grimoire.

The captions at io9 were a lot of fun. Some of my favorites:

  • “I’ve heard of handbooks, but this is ridiculous!” –Doxx
  • “Not in the face!” –bewareofgeek (A very in-character comment for Jig.)
  • “IT’S OVERDUE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” –A Wild Comment Appears

And the winner is:

  • “Klaatu Barada N… Necktie… Neckturn… Nickel… It’s an “N” word, it’s definitely an N word! Klaatu… Barada… N…[coughs] [pause] Okay then… that’s it.” –LongCorpse

Because I’m a geek who appreciates a well-placed Army of Darkness quote.

I also very much wanted to thank everyone for supporting Eugie. (You can still help – details are here.) I picked a winner at random from everyone who commented or emailed me.

I’ve contacted both winners.

That is all. Thank you, and please carry on with your normal Sunday activities.

Cool Stuff Friday

Happy Friday, all! Have some cool stuff!

 

Giveaways, Cover Art, Diverse YA, and More

Welcome to this week’s grab bag blog post, wherein I try to fit in a bit of everything.

Thing one: Kaleidoscope is a YA anthology edited by Julia Rios and Alisa Krasnostein that will be published by Twelfth Planet Press, and will feature teen protagonists from diverse backgrounds. They’ve already accepted stories from Sofia Samatar, Ken Liu, Vylar Kaftan, and me.

My story is “Chupacabra’s Song,” and is about Nicola Pallas (from the Libriomancer books) discovering magic and trying to save a group of chupacabras. This is the story I asked for help with earlier this year. I received some very helpful feedback and suggestions.

The fundraiser page for the anthology is here, and they’ve already raised more than 25% of what they need to make this project happen. Once they reach the $7000 mark, they’ll open the anthology up for general submissions.

Thing two: io9 has posted the cover for my upcoming collection The Goblin Master’s Grimoire. The artwork is by Emily Fiegenschuh, and if you head over to the io9 post quickly enough, you can suggest a caption for the cover and be entered to win a copy of Libriomancer. The collection will be available as a hardcover and e-book. The hardcover is up for pre-order from the ISFiC Press site.

Here’s the full contents of the collection:

Introduction by John Scalzi
Goblin Lullaby
The Haunting of Jig’s Ear
Goblin Hunter
School Spirit
The Blue Corpse Corps
’Twas the Night of Midwinter: A Goblin Christmas
Sister of the Hedge
Corrupted
In the Line of Duty
Heart of Ash
Daddy’s Little Girl
Original Gangster
Ours to Fight For
Gift of the Kites
Blade of the Bunny
Spell of the Sparrow
Over the Hill
The Creature in Your Neighborhood
Untrained Melody
Mightier than the Sword
Kitemaster
Jim Hines: The Wizard We Deserve by Seanan McGuire
A Jim C. Hines Bibliography by Steven H Silver

Thing three: I’m part of the SF Signal Mind Meld today, talking about media tie-in works. (Yeah, I misremembered the title of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. It’s been decades since I read that book, and I was working from memory 😛 )

Fundraising for Eugie Foster

In yesterday’s blog post, I commented that several people I knew had recently been diagnosed with cancer, or had loved once who had been diagnosed. One of the people I was talking about is author Eugie Foster.

I’m gonna do a little boasting here and say I was the editor who published Eugie in her first DAW anthology, back when I was editing Heroes in Training. Because her story was awesome, that’s why!

Like so many of us, Eugie’s finances have been rather tight. She has a fundraising post here. You can buy her short story collections or individual stories. She also – after being prodded to do so – posted an email address where you can donate directly via PayPal. Which gave me an idea…

If you PayPal a donation to eugie@eugiefoster.com and let me know, either in the comments here or by emailing me directly (jchines -at- sff.net), I’ll enter you in a drawing to win your choice of either Heroes in Training (with Eugie’s story Honor is a Game Mortals Play”), or Unidentified Funny Objects 2 (with my story “Stranger vs. the Malevolent Malignancy).


I’ll pick a winner at random next week. This is open to anyone and everyone. And thank you.

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