How to REALLY Help an Author Out

So The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] is one day old.  At this point, a lot of authors will talk about the things readers can do to support the book.  You’ve probably seen lists like:

  • Review the book in your blog, at Amazon, at GoodReads, or wherever, because word of mouth is the biggest factor in a book’s survival in this cold, cruel world.
  • Buy books right after they come out, because the publisher and the bookstores pay attention to those early sales.
  • Ask your library to get a copy in stock.  Better yet, tell ’em to get two!
  • If you like the book, recommend it to your friends, family, and that guy down the street with the weird lawn gnomes.

Those are decent suggestions, I guess.  But you want to know what most authors really want?  How to truly support your favorite writers?  Read on, my friend.

  • You see that guy carrying the huge manuscript and jogging after our author friend?  That’s Bob.  Bob doesn’t actually know our author, but he’s nonetheless going to fling that manuscript at the author’s feet and demand a critique, a blurb, or a referral to the author’s agent.  If you could run Bob over with your car, that would be very much appreciated.
  • Authors aren’t supposed to respond to bad reviews.  It’s tacky, and it just leads to more bad publicity.  But there’s no rule against you tracking down the person who posted that review, following them to their house, kicking down their door, and screaming “Nobody expects the Goblin Inquisition!” as you beat them with a dog-eared paperback.
  • Mow my lawn.  (I know it’s a long shot, but I thought I’d throw it out there.  I despise lawn mowing, and it’s going to be a few years before my kids are old enough to take over.)
  • Accept the crazy.  Authors are nuts.  Peek inside my brain right now, and you find me wanting to refresh Amazon (even though I checked the rank 30 seconds ago), an ego that’s simultaneously huge (I am Published Author) and fragile (Why isn’t my book selling as well as Random Author’s? I must suck!), and the emotional scars left from 500+ rejection letters.  Just smile and nod and slip the meds into our drink when we’re not looking, just like Murdock and BA from the A-Team.
  • Finally, taser anyone who asks the following questions*:
    • When’s the movie coming out?
    • When are you quitting the day job?
    • Where do you get your ideas?
    • Can I have a free book?

Please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments!

—
*I don’t actually mind when people ask most of these, but the questions come up so often they start to show up in my dreams.  I lay there in my sleep mumbling, “Can’t quit.  Need benefits and steady paycheck.”

Happy Mermaid Day

It’s here!  Today marks the offical release of The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy]!  Which means I’ll be pretty much useless for the next few days, as I go through the hyperactive bipolarity of book launch insanity, checking Amason rankings, Googling reviews, preparing for the book launch party (Thursday evening at Schulers-Eastwood in Lansing), and so on.

This is going to be a crazy week.  I’ll do my best to avoid getting carried away pointing out awesome reviews or linking to giveaways or the 10/12 contest at Bitten By Books where you’ll be able to win one of 12 DAW anthologies or a grand prize of a complete set of painted goblin miniatures.

Likewise, I promise not to spend the entire week linking to my web site, where you can read the first chapter of the book online, or plastering the synopsis over every post like so:

There is an old story — you might have heard it — about a young mermaid, the daughter of a king, who saved the life of a human prince and fell in love.

So innocent was her love, so pure her devotion, that she would pay any price for the chance to be with her prince. She gave up her voice, her family, and the sea, and became human. But the prince had fallen in love with another woman.

The tales say the little mermaid sacrificed her own life so that her beloved prince could find happiness with his bride.

The tales lie.

(I also promise most entries won’t be as long-winded as this one.  But hey, I’ve got a book out today!  I’m allowed one day of excited babble, dammit!)

My thanks to everyone who participated in the one-question interviews.  I’ll be adding questions and links as they go live, and you can click over to read the answers.

  1. In the Princess series, what makes you choose certain characters as protagonists, and certain characters as antagonists? What princess have you enjoyed working with the most thus far? (-Catherine Shaff-Stump)
  2. What do you know now—about your characters and world, about writing, about yourself—that you didn’t know when you started writing these books?  (-Rose Fox at Genreville)
  3. 5 Quick Questions, including who would win in a fight between the three princesses? (-Lexie Hamilton)
  4. Where did you get the name for your most difficult to name character? (-orcaarrow)
  5. Will ninjas be making an appearance in this book, or will we have to wait for book five: The Ninja’s Nemesis? (-socchan)  Includes a special visual aid!
  6. 3 questions, including “In a tag-team match, televised to the entire world, who would win? Goblins or Princesses? And would the Goblins cheat?” (-Jaime Moyer)
  7. Before you started writing this series, what fairytale Princess (Disney or not) did you most identify with personally? (-Philomena Hill)
  8. Princesses vs. Transformers: who would win? (-guinwhyte) I think this was my favorite silly question!
  9. What inspired you to create Jig?  Did he come from your gaming experience or did you have some other kind of inspiration?  Or did he just pop into your head? (-Dave Roy)
  10. Have you ever been worried that someone would see themselves (or think they saw someone from real life) in your work? (-Steve Saus)
  11. I’m wondering about your feelings/thoughts/actions on putting a “message” in novels. Like when 9/11 happened, was it time for novelists to jump on the soapbox about the evils of fanaticism/war/whatever? (-Jenn Simmons)
  12. When you realized that The Stepsister Scheme could be the start of a series, did that realization come complete with ideas for the other fairy tales you’d like to use, or did the later books develop as you looked for new fairy tales? (-dragovianknight)
  13. Do you now, when you encounter a new or old folk tale, find yourself mentally rubbing your hands together and thinking ‘hmm, I think I can use that’? Are you incapable of ‘turning it off’ at this point? (-b_writes)

Finally, as long as you’re going book-shopping, check out these other new releases:

Flesh and Fire [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Laura Anne Gilman.
Dragon’s Ring [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Dave Freer.
Memories of the Future, Volume 1, by Wil Wheaton.
How Not to Make a Wish [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Mindy Klasky.

Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman: Book Cover Dragon's Ring by Dave Freer: Book Cover  How Not to Make a Wish by Mindy Klasky: Book Cover

Contest Voting

Thanks to everyone who entered the latest caption contest with me, Vader, and the Stormtrooper. It’s been a stressful few weeks, and I very much appreciate the laughs.

I meant to open voting up on Saturday, and it completely slipped my mind. I blame the zombie raccoons. But I’ve gone back and picked my favorites, and threw in a few randomly selected wild cards just because. Please vote for as few or as many as you like, and I’ll contact the winner later this week after the voting has died down.

I’m trying to keep the voting in one place, so you’ll need to head over to my LiveJournal to see the finalists and cast your ballot. If you don’t have an LJ account, you can contact me with your vote and I’ll add that into the final tally.

DAW’s Zombie Rabbit Cover of Doom

Yesterday, Mr. Coke Zero himself, John Scalzi, took my publisher to task for the cover of Zombie Raccoons and Killer Bunnies [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].  Others have offered up alternate covers, or just chimed in about how bad it is.

Disclaimers up front: Zombie Raccoons is the latest DAW anthology.  DAW is my publisher as well.  I was invited to write a story for this one, but the editor decided that my tale (“Mightier than the Sword”) fit better in her other project, Gamer Fantastic.  So I’m hardly unbiased.

This is not my favorite cover from DAW.  It didn’t really work for me, and I was happy to end up in Gamer Fantastic, which had a cover I liked better.

That said, I think the criticism is over the top.  Scalzi says he’s genuinely offended that a major publisher would produce such a thing.  (He also claims it will make blood shoot from your ears, but I’m chalking that one up to hyperbole.)

Is it a bad cover?  The editor loved it.  It certainly stands out, and it’s stirred up more buzz online than any DAW anthology I can remember.  On the other hand, the raccoon’s mouth gave me nightmares, and I find myself wanting to delete the Photoshopped rabbit and raccoon and see what’s behind ’em, which seems to be a totally different piece of art.

I wanted to make a few other points, though.  Starting with the fact that, to my knowledge, DAW is the only major SF/F publisher still putting out a monthly anthology of short fiction.  These aren’t moneymakers; very few short fiction anthologies ever earn out.  But DAW continues to produce them, more reliably and consistenly than most SF/F ‘zines.

Does that excuse a bad cover?  Of course not.  But no publisher gets it right every time.  Sooner or later, no matter how good the publisher, they’re going to have a stinker.  I could fill the rest of this post with examples of bad cover art from Baen, Tor, and the rest.

That’s no excuse either, of course.  It’s not supposed to be.  It’s supposed to be a reminder than nobody’s perfect.  That when you’ve put out thousands of books over the years, you’re not going to hit it out of the park with every one.  It’s easy to sit around online and boast about how you could whip up a better cover in five minutes on Photoshop.  And hey, maybe you could.

Now do it 99 more times.  If you think they’ll all be brilliant, you’re sadly deluded.  Even award-winning artists produce the occasional stinker.

I wasn’t in on the meetings at DAW.  I don’t know what they were going for here.  Maybe the original cover didn’t work, so the bunny and raccoon were an emergency fix at the last minute.  Maybe they wanted to try something different, and they went for the over-the-top kitsch angle.  Maybe the artist backed out at the last second, leaving them only a week to whip something together.  Maybe, like the editor, they just liked this cover and thought it worked for the project.

I’m not saying Scalzi’s out of line in his critique; he’s not.  I like John a lot, and folks have every right to express their distaste.  No cover will work for everyone, and this one does seem to have failed for most.

But to say you’re genuinely offended by that failure?  That bothers me a little.  By all means, hold publishers to a high standard.  But people also say they want publishers to try things that are new or different, and every time you do that you risk failure.  High standards, yes.  Perfection?  I prefer my publisher to be human, thanks.

Bad Book Publicity

I’ll probably be talking about book-release stuff next week when Mermaid’s Madness comes out, which got me thinking about some of the really bad publicity strategies for authors.

I’m not claiming to be perfect.  In the past five years, I’ve tried any number of things to promote my work that make me wince to think about ’em now.  Bad home-printed bookmarks, obnoxious begging for reviews, etc.  But I’ve tried to learn, and I do my best to keep my promotional efforts in check–trying to model them as the occasional commercial break as opposed to an infomercial, if that makes sense?

Anyway, I figured this might be a good time open things up for a discussion of some of the most annoying, ineffective, or downright bizarre promo efforts you’ve seen.  Starting things off with five of my personal favorites:

  • If a bookstore isn’t carrying your work, sneak in and leave a copy on the shelf.  When someone goes to buy it, they’ll be forced to add you to the computer.  Voila!  Now you’re in the system, and sure to sell millions of copies.
  • Stick your book cover on postage stamps!  (This one comes courtesy of Writer Beware.)
  • Run around posting five-star reviews of your own work.  In your own name.  (Yes, I’ve seen this done on multiple occasions.)
  • Spam.  Including e-mail, message boards, blog comments, and so on.  ‘Nuff said.
  • And my all-time favorite, Photoshop yourself into photos of successful authors.  (Related: make up sockpuppet accounts to harass anyone who calls you on it.)

What else have you encountered that makes you cringe?  What bad advice have you come across?  (“You must spend your entire advance on promotional efforts, or your book is DOOMED!”)  What annoys you to the point where you’ll deliberately avoid buying, reading, or even being in the same room with a book?

Thursday Bullets

Not feeling so great this morning. I don’t have time to get sick, dangit! But this means you get the bullet-point blog post today.

• My agent e-mailed me my latest royalties statement, and all three goblin books have earned out their advances!  Can I get a Booya?  To everyone who bought and shared the books, thank you so much!  It looks like Stepsister will likely follow suit, but not until the Reserve Against Returns decreases a bit more.

• The caption contest is still running strong, and there are some seriously entertaining entries already, mostly on the LJ post.

• I donated an autographed copy of The Stepsister Scheme [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] to an auction to raise money for MSU Safe Place, the local Domestic Violence shelter where I used to work as the male outreach coordinator.  Bidding starts at $15 here and runs through October 9.

 • Since I’ve gotten into the habit of wrapping up these random blog posts with LEGO, have a LEGO Star Wars chess set, courtesy of icgetaway.  Click the picture below for the full photo set.

Polanski Apologists in Translation

I’ve been reading a lot of justifiably angry posts about those who would defend Roman Polanski, who was convicted of raping a 13-year-old thirty years ago.  I did a bit of research, trying to understand the mindset and the concerns of the people arguing against Polanski’s arrest.  What follows are the most common reasons I’ve found, as well as my translation of those reasons.

Polanski is a charming, intelligent man – We should only arrest scary-looking, deranged rapists, preferably the dirty homeless types.  Bonus points if they’re a racial minority.  Arresting “nice guys” forces us to consider that many rapists do appear charming, intelligent … even normal!  This disturbs our simple view of the world and makes us uncomfortable, so please cease at once.

The victim’s mother pushed the child at Polanski – He shouldn’t be blamed because men are helpless to resist a 13-year-old girl.  Remember, rape is always the fault of the women!  If we can’t blame the victim, we’ll blame her mother.  Even when that girl is saying “No,” and trying to get away, men are helpless to control our urges–the male penis forces us to drug and rape the girl.

It was more than 30 years ago – Accountability comes with an expiration date, and if I can avoid taking responsibility for my actions for a certain period of time, I should be absolved of that responsibility.

The victim doesn’t want to put herself or her family through this ordeal anymore* – If I can intimidate my victim enough, I can get away with it!  Note: I have a great deal of sympathy for Polanski’s victim, and I’m torn about this one.  Polanski has been on the run for 32 years.  I’ve read commentary about how hard it’s been for him–he couldn’t even get his Oscar, he poor man.  But what about the survivor?  She’s also lived for 32 years with no closure, and wants to be done with it.  *My research might have fallen short on this point.  See this comment thread for clarification and further discussion.

He didn’t know she was thirteen – All girls should be required to tattoo their ages in a visible location in order to protect men from accidentally raping them.  Also, it would have been perfectly okay for him to drug and rape her if she had been sixteen.

Nobody would even care about this case if Polanski weren’t famous – Who cares about rape anyway?

Sadly, there’s some truth to this last one.  According to RAINN, 1 in 6 women will be raped in her lifetime.  (My sense is that the numbers are even higher.)  Yet only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail.  As a society, we don’t care.  At least, we don’t care enough.

Caption Contest

• Only one week until the official release of The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy]!  Eep.  (And if you’ve been thinking about posting a review of Stepsister Scheme, might I humbly suggest that this would be a perfect time?)

• Congrats to Harry Connolly (burger_eater) on the release of his debut novel Child of Fire [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], which comes out today.  Read the first chapter on his web site here, or check out Sherwood Smith’s interview with Connolly.

• Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions yesterday about bleeping out certain parts of my reading.  At this point, I’m thinking either the cardboard speech bubble or a squeaky rubber duck, depending in part on whether or not I can find a suitable duck.

#

Steve Buchheit took one look at the picture below and offered up the following:

“What, no new goblin book this year? You have failed me for the last time, Hines.”

“You are part of the Princess Alliance and a goblin sympathizer. Take him away!”

This has inspired me to run a caption contest.  Keeping it PG-13 or better, post a caption in the comments below no later than Friday, October 2.  On Saturday, I’ll pick my favorites and put them up for a vote.  The winner will receive a signed copy of one of my books — your pick.

Have fun!

Diabetes Details 4: Embarrassing Pump Mishaps

Help please!  I need a small device I can use to make the “bleep” sound of censored swearing.  I’m hoping to do a reading of “The Creature in Your Neighborhood” at my book launch next week, but there’s one scene that wouldn’t be appropriate without the bleeping.  Any ideas on a device that might work?

#

I debated whether to share this one, but I decided what the heck.  My ego can take it, and everyone can use a laugh on Monday mornings, right?

My insulin pump is a pager-sized device which contains a plastic vial of insulin.  It sends out a low base dose of insulin, and I can program it to deliver more as needed for meals and adjustments.  That vial is connected to a tube, which goes to a small catheter in the belly (or wherever else you stick it.)

Photo from Minimed (this is not Jim’s belly):

I use the 43″ tubing, which gives me plenty of … um … maneuvering room when changing clothes, etc.  Extra tubing gets tucked in, and life is good about 98% of the time.

Last week I had a 2% night.  I was getting changed for bed, and the tubing got tangled with my pants.  I didn’t realize this until it was too late, and the pants/tubing mess was tugging the catheter and sticker on my belly.

I couldn’t straighten up without ripping the catheter out.  (And there’s a sentence you don’t read every day.)  I tried to yank the pants back up, but they were binding my knees, and I started to fall.

Graceful as ever, I turned the fall into a hop.  My other foot came down square on the edge of the laundry basket, wrenching my little toe.  At this point, some primitive self-preservation instinct in my brain screamed Just surrender to the inevitable before you destroy half the bedroom hopping about like a one-legged kangaroo on an LSD trip!

I fell.  There was an earth-shattering kaboom.  My wife rushed out thinking … okay, I don’t know what she was thinking as she saw me sprawled on the floor, pants at the ankles, rugburn on one knee, still doubled over to protect the pump tubing, and clutching my throbbing toe.  I don’t want to know.  At least she was kind enough not to laugh too hard after she saw I was okay.

Grace?  Dignity?  I used to have these things, once upon a time.

This is the sort of thing they don’t warn you about when they’re teaching you how to use your insulin pump.

Durand Fantasy Expo

Back from the Durand Fantasy Expo. For a new event, it went pretty well.  Not only did I sell a decent number of books and get to chat with some cool fantasy folks, I also got to hang out with the 501st Legion, aka Vader’s fist.

I love my job.

Two pics behind the cut.

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