Jim C. Hines
  • Blog
  • About
    • Press Kit
    • Cover Posing
    • Privacy and Other Disclaimers
  • Bookstore
    • Autographed Books
  • Bibliography
  • Appearances
  • Rape Resources
  • Contact
    • Speaking Engagements
  • Patreon
  • Facebook
  • Bluesky
  • Tumblr
  • Goodreads
  • Instagram
RSS
January 7, 2015 /

Awards Eligibility Post

Yep, it’s that time of year again. Here’s what came out from me in 2014:

Two short stories:

  • “On the Efficacy of Supervillain Battles in Eliciting Therapeutic Breakthroughs” in Unidentified Funny Objects 3.
  • “Chupacabra’s Song” in Kaleidoscope.

InvisibleThen there was The Prosekiller Chronicles: Rise of the Spider Goddess: An Annotated Novel. Technically, this would probably qualify for Best Novel or Best Related Work categories, but let’s get real. Is there a “Worst Novel” category I should be campaigning for? 🙂

Finally, there’s Invisible, a collection I edited of 14 essays about representation in science fiction and fantasy.

#

While I’m proud of all of these things — yes, even Spider Goddess — it’s Invisible that I’d most like to share with folks. I was blown away by the powerful, personal, and important stories people shared. The anthology has also raised $500 for the Carl Brandon Society.

Almost all of the essays are available online:

  • Parched – Mark Oshiro
  • Boys’ Books – Katharine Kerr
  • Clicking – Susan Jane Bigelow
  • The Princess Problem – Charlotte Ashley
  • Autism, Representation, Success – Ada Hoffmann
  • Gender in Genre – Katie
  • I Don’t See Color – Michi Trota
  • Evil Albino Trope is Evil – Nalini Haynes
  • Options – Joie Young
  • Representation without Understanding – Derek Handley
  • Non-binary and Not Represented – Morgan Dambergs
  • The Power of Representation: SFF Saved my Life – Nonny Blackthorne

Invisible is eligible for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work.

I’d be happy to send a review copy to eligible voters (i.e., members of the 2014 or 2015 Worldcons). Email me, and I can send it along in .epub or .mobi format. If neither of those work for you, let me know and we’ll figure something out.

If you’ll be nominating and would like to consider something else I did in 2014, I can hook you up with the short stories and/or even Spider Goddess, too. But if you only have time to check out one thing, I’d love it if you’d give Invisible a try.

January 6, 2015 /

Unbound is Out Today!!!

UnboundIt’s been seventeen months since Codex Born was released, but Unbound is finally out today!

This is the third book in the Magic ex Libris series. There will be at least one more (Revisionary, tentatively scheduled for February 2016), but this one wraps up a lot of the plotlines I’ve been playing with over the course of the series. As Carrie at Smart Bitches Trashy Books said in her review:

I liked how the book wrapped up a lot of major character arcs. If there’s no more to this series, I’ll feel that the story reached a satisfying conclusion. On the other hand, the series is potentially poised to take off in completely new directions that could be incredibly interesting. So I’m down with that, too … I’m in an odd state of one hand feeling like, “OK, we’re cool, you may move on to other projects, thank you for this satisfying conclusion” and on the other hand I’m all, “More, please, nomnomnom”. It’s Schrodinger’s Series.

Summary:

For five hundred years, the Porters have concealed the existence of magic from the world. Now, old enemies have revealed the Porters’ secrets, and an even greater threat lurks in the shadows. The would-be queen Meridiana, banished for a thousand years, has returned in the body of a girl named Jeneta Aboderin. She seeks an artifact created by Pope Sylvester II, a bronze prison that would grant her the power to command an army of the dead.

Michigan librarian Isaac Vainio is determined to rescue his former student Jeneta. With no magic of his own, Isaac must delve into the darker side of black-market magic, where he will confront beings better left undisturbed, including the sorcerer Juan Ponce de Leon.

With his loyal fire-spider Smudge, dryad warrior Lena Greenwood, and psychiatrist Nidhi Shah, Isaac races to unravel a mystery more than a thousand years old as competing magical powers battle to shape the future of the world. He will be hunted by enemies and former allies alike, and it will take all his knowledge and resourcefulness to survive as magical war threatens to spread across the globe.

Isaac’s choices will determine the fate of his friends, the Porters, the students of Bi Sheng, and the world. Only one thing is certain: even if he finds a way to restore his magic, he can’t save them all…

Purchase Links: If you’re interested in picking up a copy, I’ve gathered up some convenient links. Because I’m considerate that way, you know?

  • HARDCOVER: Amazon | B&N | BAMM | Mysterious Galaxy | Schuler Books | Indiebound
  • EBOOK: Amazon | B&N | BAMM | Kobo | iBooks
  • AUDIO: Audible.com

Reviewers: If you’re a reviewer and would like a copy of Unbound, please contact my publicist at anixon -at- penguinrandomhouse.com.

Guest Posts: I’ve also done some guest blogging for the release, and will be linking those here as they go live. My thanks to everyone who hosted me!

  • My Favorite Bit, on Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog.
  • Isaac and the Doctor (Finding Magic in Our World), at Dark Matter Zine.
  • Unbound with Jim C. Hines. Talking about joy and hope and books at author Deborah Blake’s blog.
  • Writing with Depression, an older post I did about Unbound and depression at Special Needs in Strange Worlds.

Other Releases: Wait, there’s more! Today isn’t just Unbound day, it’s also book day for other awesome people like Karen Lord, Daniel José Older, Steven Harper, David B. Coe, and Irene Radford.

 

But my favorite thing about this particular release date is that author Sara Humphreys has a new novella out today … called Unbound. I feel like this calls for some sort of epic showdown, Unbound vs. Unbound. Sexy man-back vs. Smoldering librarian. Lion vs. Fire-spider.

vs.

So, yeah. Not only does Unbound come out today, so does Unbound. Mind … blown!

Anyway, where was I?

Events: I’ve got three things going on for this one.

  • January 8, 7 p.m. AMA (Ask Me Anything) at Reddit Fantasy.
  • January 13, 7 p.m. Booksigning at Schuler Books – Okemos location. Okemos, Michigan.
  • January 17, 1-3 p.m. Book launch with Karen Lord, at ConFusion.

My thanks to everyone who’s supported the series so far. Tweets, reviews, links, and other word-of-mouth are always appreciated, but mostly, I just hope you enjoy the story. I’ve been waiting years to get to some of the events in this one, and I can’t wait to share it.

January 5, 2015 /

2014 Writing Income

About seven years ago, I started doing a yearly blog post on my annual writing income. Yeah, it’s a weird and sometimes uncomfortable thing to talk about, but I also think it’s important to get some facts out there. It’s hard to get any real data on what authors earn, where the income comes from, and so on. Of course, I’m only one data point, so don’t go drawing any broad conclusions. But one is better than none, eh? And I’ll link to any other authors I see posting similar info. My background: I’m a U.S. author and have been writing science fiction and fantasy since 1995. My first novel with a major publisher came out in 2006. Since then, I’ve been averaging about one book/year. I have a few short collections and one odd novel project that I’ve self-published, but I’m primarily published through a traditional/commercial/whatever-you-want-to-call-it publisher. I’ve also got about fifty published short stories. I’ve hit the Locus bestseller lists, but I’ve never made the New York Times or USA Today lists. I still work a full-time day job, and I’ve got two kids at home, which means I probably devote about 20 hours/week to the writing career. My income posts from previous years are here: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. 2014 Income - Cumulative 2014 was a good year. Not my best, but I didn’t expect it to be — I had sold three books in 2013, and spent the next year actually writing two of them. This means I got a chunk of all three advances in 2013, but the rest of the money will be spread out through 2014 and 2015. All total, I earned $50,900 as a writer last year. This is after my agent takes his commission, but before expenses and taxes. Here’s how it roughly breaks down:

  • Novels (U.S.) – $39,840
  • Novels (Foreign) – $4130
  • Self-published Work – $1400
  • Short Fiction & Nonfiction – $2300
  • Other – $3200

2014 Income Breakdown The “Other” category includes the advance for The Goblin Master’s Grimoire, my short story collection from ISFiC Press, as well as things like honorarium payments for speaking engagements, a T-shirt royalty payment, and other miscellanea. Expenses for the year were probably between $3000 and $4000. (I haven’t calculated everything yet.) Mileage and convention costs, primarily hotel rooms, were the largest chunk, followed by hiring an artist to do the cover for Rise of the Spider Goddess (which I haven’t yet seen any income for, since that book only came out last month). I also paid another artist to do the banner art for my website. I’m very happy with both of these decisions. In the “Novels (U.S.)” category, I’ve got nine books in print with DAW. (Number ten comes out on Tuesday, but that’s another blog post.) Looking back, all nine of those books have earned out their advances and are now paying royalties. Those royalties account for a little under half of the novels income in the U.S. I should also note that because DAW purchased English language rights, the accounting for the UK edition of the Magic ex Libris series flows through them, and gets counted as part of the U.S. deal’s income. Novel advances are generally broken down into multiple payments. For my most recent books, they’re split into an on-signing payment, delivery & acceptance, and publication. For Unbound and Revisionary, the on-publication payment is further split into hardcover and mass market. What this means is that in 2015, I can expect to see the hardcover on-publication payment for Unbound, the D&A on Revisionary, and the D&A and publication payments for the Secret Novel Project of Doom. Though the on-publication payment for that last might not show up until 2016, depending on when exactly the book comes out. I’m also hoping to pitch and sell some new books this year, which would hopefully bring in some on-signing money and make sure I’ve got authorial job security for another year or two. I hope this was useful, and I’m happy to answer questions. Here’s to a successful 2015 for all of us. ETA Related Posts:

  • What I Get Paid For My Novels, or Why I’m Not Quitting my Day Job, by Kameron Hurley
  • 2014 Writing Income, by D. Moonfire
January 2, 2015 /

Cool Stuff Friday

Friday hopes your 2015 is full of joy, wonder, laughter, and really good back rubs.

  • Time’s Most Beautiful Space Pics of 2014.
  • Ian Spacek built a working LEGO zoetrope of fighting ninjas.
  • Beth Moon spent 14 years photographing the world’s oldest trees.
  • Artist Na Young Wu gives Western Fairytales a Korean Makeover.
December 31, 2014 /

Interesting Search Queries from 2014, Plus Smudge Fanart

Huh. Looks like I should redo my Top Posts list, as my response to Mr. Wright has jumped into the #6 place for the year over the course of 24 hours.

But it’s more interesting to look at some of the rather random search queries that brought people to the website over the past year.

  1. pills to make you happy – That would be my posts on depression and Zoloft, I’m guessing.
  2. neil gaiman facts – I have 20 of ’em! 🙂
  3. yeti he sniffed the air – Um…
  4. sexy guy photo poses – Why thank you!
  5. spoon theory is stipud – No comment.
  6. i farted kitten – Sounds unpleasant.
  7. jerry pournelle + jim hines – I think someone’s writing some very odd fanfiction.
  8. keep calm dave has just farted – Forget calm! Run for your lives!!!
  9. did miss piggy have sex with long john silver – It’s Tim Curry. Could you blame her if she did?
  10. hobbit – why do the goblins all die so easily – That’s what I want to know!
  11. fake agent jennie wikipedia – “Jennie Wikipedia” sounds like a geek superhero name.

Also, I received this delightfully cute sketch of Smudge the fire-spider with a fireproof Jig the goblin plushie, and I had to share it with the world. This was created by the obviously-skilled Ariela Housman:

smudge doodle

From me, Smudge, and the goblins, have an absolutely wonderful 2015!!!

December 30, 2014 /

In Which John C. Wright Completely Loses his Shit over Legend of Korra

ETA: Good morning, all! For the new folks, please know that while disagreement is fine, I don’t have much patience for trolling, sock-puppetry, and for showing up in my space to act like a douchewagon. Comments that can’t handle that will be fed to the goblins.

ETA2: And to forestall certain individuals’ whining about “free speech,” please see this post: Freedom of Speech 101.

ETA3: As of April 2015, it looks like Mr. Wright has deleted his post. It’s archived at the Wayback Machine, however.

#

To the shock of nobody who’s ever read his blog, John C. Wright is Very Unhappy with the ending of The Legend of Korra, in which Korra and Asami, two female women characters of the same girlish gender, hold hands while walking off into the spirit world together. Wright links to an article which confirms the romantic relationship between these two women, and writes:

“A children’s show, of all places, is where you decided to place an ad for a sexual aberration; you pervert your story telling skills to the cause of propaganda and political correctness.”

Sokka What

I assume Wright’s blog post was written over the course of several days, as he would have needed time to swoon over the horrific perversion of two women holding hands. Not to mention having to counsel his poor, traumatized children.

Keep in mind, this is a show that not only had explicit male/female smooching, but has also shown a woman being suffocated to death via airbending, the imprisonment and torture of Korra, the suicide of a season one villain, and plenty of other instances of brutal violence. But this is what Wright feels he must “protect” the children from.

Wright continues:

“You were not content to leave the matter ambiguous, no, but had publicly to announce that you hate your audience, our way of life, our virtues, values, and religion.”

The delusionality is strong with this one. Watch as he attempts to speak for an entire audience, many of whom were screaming with happiness at the Korra/Asami revelation.

Go watch this video of fan reactions. Look at the joy on those people’s faces.

These are some of the people he’s trying to speak for. Do they look like people whose way of life, whose values and religion and virtues, are so incredibly fragile that they can be hurt so badly by a several-second clip of two women holding hands, or the idea of two women falling in love?

Mister Wright, you do not speak for the audience of this show. You speak for yourself, and perhaps for a small group of intolerant bigots who can’t accept the slightest acknowledgement or recognition of relationships you personally disapprove of, for whatever twisted reason.

“Mr DiMartino and Mr Konietzko: You are disgusting, limp, soulless sacks of filth. You have earned the contempt and hatred of all decent human beings forever, and we will do all we can to smash the filthy phallic idol of sodomy you bow and serve and worship. Contempt, because you struck from behind, cravenly; and hatred, because you serve a cloud of morally-retarded mental smog called Political Correctness, which is another word for hating everything good and bright and decent and sane in life.”

The Phallic Idol of Sodomy. Also known as the Ypsilanti Water Tower:

YpsilantiWaterTower

I went to grad school in Ypsi. It’s amazing I escaped with my heterosexuality intact, spending two years in such close proximity to the PIoS!

A part of me wants to ask what happened to Mr. Wright that a couple of bisexual cartoon characters could send him into such an apoplexy of hatred and rage. What happened to make you so afraid, sir?

But before we get into that, I have to ask how you came to the conclusion that a relationship between two women was all about phallicism and sodomy. I think you might be a little confused as to how things work. Does someone need to sit you down and have “the talk”?

Sokka Facepalm

Wright concludes his rant by saying:

“I have no hatred in my heart for any man’s politics, policies, or faith, any more than I have hatred for termites; but once they start undermining my house where I live, it is time to exterminate them.”

Right. There’s nothing hateful about calling people “disgusting, limp, soulless sacks of filth,” or comparing them to termites and calling for their extermination.

Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra are shows about overcoming hatred and violence and fear. How can you claim to be “a lifelong fan” when you hold so much hatred and intolerance in your heart?

Aang would be so disappointed in you. I suspect Korra would simply turn her back on you and your irrelevant, close-minded views.

I know I’m not going to change your mind. I’m not going to break you out of your little world, or get you to see that the rest of the world is moving on without you. I doubt I’ll make any difference in helping you to see how much Korra and Asami matter to people, how important a step this was. I doubt you’ll recognize LGBT people as human beings with as much value and right to love and happiness as you or me.

But I can damn well make sure you understand that you do not speak for the audience of this show. You are not the mouthpiece for fans. Speak your poison in your own name if you must, but don’t tarnish the rest of fandom with your bile.

On that note, I’ll leave you with a couple of fan-made gifs.

Korrasami2

Korrasami1

December 30, 2014 /

One Week to Unbound

UnboundCongratulations to Ariela, who won the audio book of Libriomancer in last week’s giveaway.

We’re down to a mere seven days until Unbound [Amazon | B&N | Indiebound] comes out. It’s possible the book might already be showing up in some brick & mortar stores. Eep!

Coincidentally, Sarah Chorn at SF Signal just posted her 2014 look back for her excellent Special Needs in Strange Worlds column about disability in SF/F. She lists her top ten posts for the year, and coming in at number two is my post about Writing with Depression, in which I talk about both my own depression and that of Isaac Vainio in Unbound:

“In the beginning of Unbound, [Isaac is] on the verge of losing his job at the library. He’s not sleeping or eating enough. All of his time and energy go into trying to undo certain mistakes from the last book. He’s irritable and angry at himself, his loved ones, his friends…pretty much everyone and everything.”

Given the events of the first two books, it made sense to me that Isaac would be struggling hard at this point. He’s won some impressive victories, but each one has come with a cost.

To be honest, writing Isaac as depressed scared the hell out of me. Characters are supposed to be likable, right? Well, on those days when I’m losing the battle against the Depression Brain Weasels of Doom, I don’t like myself that much:

“Isaac’s depression is truer to my struggle. I worry that he’ll be too unlikeable…because that’s how I felt at the time. I worry people will say he’s too weak, that this character should just man up and get over it, because that’s how I felt. That’s what I expected to hear if I talked about it. I worry about readers who don’t understand that depression isn’t something you just snap out of.”

I can reassure readers that Isaac does end up in a better place, and that there’s still plenty of smart-ass humor, not to mention Smudge the fire-spider doing his thing with flair and style. And I’ll say that I’m proud of the book. I’m proud of Isaac’s personal journey, as well as that of Lena and Nidhi. (Nidhi gets one of my favorite scenes early in this one.) I’m also proud of where Unbound ends up, which is a place I’ve been working for three books to reach. But I’m still scared of how readers will react.

I’ll end with one last quote from my column:

“Unbound is a book about battling monsters. Some of them are human. Others less so. Isaac has spent two books fighting monsters out there in the world, but sometimes the toughest monster is the one inside your own head.”

December 29, 2014 /

Top Blog Posts of 2014

Half of my most-visited posts from the past year were actually written in previous years. I’m not sure what to make of that. Actually, I’m not sure how significant a list like this really is, or how seriously to take it. Particularly as I don’t have any way of filtering out the troll spoor on at least three of these.

Mostly, it’s just interesting to me to see what brought folks to the blog…

  1. Rape, Abuse, and Marion Zimmer Bradley.
  2. Striking a Pose. My second most-visited blog post in 2014 was written in 2012. Hm…
  3. 2013 Writing Income.
  4. Fiskception & LC on Rape and Self-Defense. In addition to my normal traffic, I had the subject of these two posts sending his not inconsiderable number of followers to the blog, which boosted the numbers.
  5. Sexual Harassment Conversations in Comic Form. A comic from 2013.
  6. Posing Like a Man. From 2012. The cover poses will never die! No matter how much some people want them to…
  7. Facts are Cool. Also from 2012.
  8. Who Controls Your Amazon Ebook Price. Another one from 2012. This is starting to get weird.
  9. Another Day, Another Mansplainer.
December 28, 2014 /

Flop: 1997 – 2014

Flop 1We had to put our cat Flop down today. He was seventeen years old, the last of the three kittens I got back in 1997 before starting grad school.

He got his name because he tended to hold his head tilted to one side when he was younger. I don’t know if there was a neurological problem, but if so, it didn’t slow him down. He was very much the alpha cat. He wouldn’t fight much, but every once in a while if the other two cats got too obnoxious, he’d thump ’em once, just enough to remind them who was really in charge.

I’m pretty sure he’s the one who taught Pod how to shred paper. I came home once to find both of them sprawled out in the living room, surrounded by shredded toilet paper and napkins and anything else they’d managed to find.

He started out as my cat, but I think he really became my daughter’s. Or maybe she was his kitten, I’m not sure. When she was little, he’d go upstairs every night to check on her and help tuck her in at bedtime. They’d snuggle together while she was going to sleep.

Flop 2

He’d come curl up with her when she was older, too.

Flop 3

I remember a night when she was little, and she’d woken up and started fussing. Flop jumped up on the table where we had the baby monitor set up, and he started yowling at it, then at us. You could almost see him thinking, “The little girl has gotten trapped in this tiny white box! Come fix it, hairless monkeys!”

I used to joke that he was autistic. Like my son, he would run laps through the house, literally bouncing off of the walls at times. Like my son, he hated change, and tended to freak out when overstimulated by too many people or too much noise or whatever.

He was quite patient with my son too, as you can see.

Flop 4

He’d developed some arthritis over the past few years, and lost a bit of weight. Mostly he just wanted to curl up in a warm lap, and if he couldn’t find one, he’d stake out a spot in front of the heat vent.

I’m really going to miss that cat.

December 26, 2014 /

Cool Stuff Friday

This marks one year’s worth of Cool Stuff Friday links. 52 posts of animals, LEGO, and anything else that caught my eye.

I hope you’ve been enjoying it. Shall I keep going for another year?

  • Adorable Animals in the Snow.
  • The U.S.S. Enterprise, in Gingerbread.
  • Baba Yaga’s Hut, in LEGO. Click through for other angles and pics. (::Waves to Deborah Blake::)
  • Bioluminescent Fungus Gnat Larvae and their Awesome New Zealand Caves.
«< 90 91 92 93 94 >»

Coming Oct. 21

Slayers of Old
Amazon | B&N | Bookshop | Audible

Blog Archives

Free Fiction

  • Stranger vs. the Malevolent Malignancy, at Podcastle
  • The Creature in Your Neighborhood at Apex Magazine
  • How Isaac Met Smudge at Literary Escapism
  • Gift of the Kites at Clarkesworld
  • Original Gangster at Fantasy Magazine
  • Goblin Lullaby (audio) at PodCastle
  • Spell of the Sparrow (audio) at PodCastle

Banner artwork by Katy Shuttleworth.



↑

Jim C. Hines