I hate doing the dishes.
It’s tiresome, repetitive, and the damn things just make themselves dirty again. I swear I have nothing to do with them getting dirty again. But dishes are the bane of my existence, and as soon as I can figure out an elegant way of having people over for dinner and serve them with paper plates I’ll be a millionaire.
But doing the dishes is a lot like copy editing. You have to make certain that everything is clean before you eat off of it, or else it just doesn’t come out right.
Editors are, by and large, a very odd bunch of people. They are the ones who read through internet threads, denouncing someone when they mix up the “their” for “they’re” and drawing the wrath of people who really don’t give a crap. But those same oddsters are the ones who save you from yourself while you’re reading the latest novel of your favorite author. Because there’s nothing like being thrown out of your reading reverie by a typo or line which will make you scratch your head. But then again, how does an editor know what line to keep and which one to take out?
The best type of editor is the one who can recognize your voice and style and adjust the edits accordingly. Too often have I seen examples where and editor has effectively neutered an author’s style and voice with a few changes per line. Good editors know what to look for when editing, and can make the right changes.
After all, editors need the authors as much as the authors need editors.
Going in for surgery tomorrow morning for the infected wisdom tooth. Apparently it’s ready to cause the entire jaw to become infected.
Swell.
Tomorrow night (less than 8 hours after surgery) we’re opening My Fair Lady to a sold out house.
Oh God.
I’ll have a full post, titled Surgical Precision, up by Saturday talking about the odd ways editors and publishers chop apart your book. It’s strange just how heartless they nip and tuck your baby, but how necessary it is at the same time.
So… anything interesting going on in your publishing life?
Tooth is cracked and infected. I am in pain.
But on the plus side, we open in two days for My Fair Lady. Professor Zoltan Karpathy be pleased; he be me.
Open mic night. What do you want to know about publishing, my writing, my opinions of other writers, my favorite type of hot dog, my least favorite germ, etc.
Bring it.
I finished the most recent edits of Corruptor and it’s now back in the hands of the publisher. Still not sure how to finagle Kurt Miller to do the cover art, don’t think it’s going to happen. Also… wondering just how long it’ll be until I can ask Arnold over at Webscriptions to sell the e-ARC of Corruptor for the readers who simply can’t wait.
Also, I think Buckley over at the Fifth Imperium has agreed to post snippets of Corruptor up on his site. Since Joe’s a cool guy, I was going to let him snippet to chapter 10 of the book. That’s an extra 4 chapters more than what I posted.
Nifty, no?
Just got back the second (third?) round of edits from the publisher. Not nearly as bad as the first time (I can learn!), and the new editor understand my writing style and voice a lot better than the last. This is a good thing!
Off to save the cheerleader by finishing these edits.
There’s something that is markedly dystopian in Suzanne Collins’ book The Hunger Games. It’s evident early on that this book is set in the former United States in the future, after a short period of rebellion by the thirteen districts against the Capitol in the nation of Panem. It’s dark, brooding and starts off with our narrator and heroine, Katniss Everdeen, struggling to keep her family fed and alive.
The lack of food and hunger throughout the early parts of the book are a haunting theme in where the author does not hold back regarding the fears of starvation. The world Collins paints in the novel is not one sugarcoated for kids, as she talks plainly about death, life, struggling to stay alive and those who simply gave in and died. She pulls no punches and I, for one, am grateful that the author does this. Life is not fair, and Collins makes sure that the reader knows this.
The Reaping is when the book really gets going. The Reaping is a time, once per year, when the Capitol demands that each of the twelve districts (one district was destroyed) give them a boy and a girl to compete in what is known as the Hunger Games, a horrible reality TV combination of Survivor and Dirty Harry. Katniss, terrified she’s going to be chosen, is shocked to discover that her little sister is randomly chosen instead. She leaps in front of her sister and bravely (maybe desperately) volunteers to go in her stead. This is highly unusual in District 12, and many of the town’s people give her a silent gesture of honor. A boy she knows (and feels obligated to repay for a past kindness) is Peeta, who becomes her friend as they travel to the Capitol.
Katniss realizes early on while in the Capitol that while they may have better living standards, there is a filthy undercurrent in the city, something that speaks of an uncaring society only interested in the blood and excitement offered in the Hunger Games. She puts on a brave face, determined to not let the Sponsors (people who, for large wads of money, donate items during the games to help the contestant of their choosing) see that she is disgusted by the blatant display of civic gluttony going on around her.
The Games themselves are something you must read. I cannot do the setting and story justice in a simple review, and the absolute suddenness of characters you had just began to get to know and their deaths are jarring, frighteningly realistic. No brave last words, just there then… gone. It’s disturbing and, honestly, quite wonderful.
Now, that may seem like a very horrible thing to say, but Collins (purposefully or not) uses this to make you love the main character even more, and root for her and Peeta both to win, despite the rules of the Games that only one can survive (Highlander began this, Collins mastered it). Katniss is quite a bitch, maintaining a cold interior while staying friendly for the camera to ensure that people still like the “Girl of Fire” and will giver her the things she needs in order to survive. But because of her reactions to the deaths around her, including the loss of a friend right before her eyes, you can’t help but cheering for the girl to win it all, despite your unease with her attitude.
There are a few problems with the book, but they are minor. Sometimes the narrative voice slips from present to past tense, which can throw you for a sentence or two. And the ending is a definite setup for the sequel, Catching Fire, which I hate when authors do this (re: Jim Butcher, Changes).
All in all, my favorite read thus far this month. It’s a wonderful tale and, as I mentioned before, gritty but solid. Definite must-read.
…I’ll be doing two books reviews here in the next few days, as well as uploading a new interview with a NYT bestselling author (yes, you can probably who I coerced into doing an interview… that poor bastard).
I’ll be reviewing “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, and “Under the Dome” by Stephen King. Guess which one I liked? Guess which one made me retch? Guess who did the amazing characters and believable plot? Guess who made me think that society is a lot like living in an ant colony and God has a mgnifying glass and is slowly, one by one, torching us as we struggle to simply survive?
*sigh*
Yeah, King’s effin’ depressing sometimes…
Have you noticed I’ve been quiet?
No? Damn…
Just about to start tech week for My Fair Lady right now, so my brain has been in “acting mode” and not “creating literary crap known as Cordoverse” mode. I have done some writing, not a terrible amount, but enough to make me say “Damn, I suck when distracted”.
So my question to those out there is this: what distracts you, and what do you do to try to work your way past said distractions?
In the immortal words of a fictional character only hardcore MilSF geeks would get, my muse is a “modderpocker”.
I swear that this isn’t fair. I am done with Corruptor and the sequels. I never want to see those damn books again in my life. Really. Okay, I might want to see the cover but I definitely don’t want to read them again. They were a pain in the butt to get out of my head, and since I no longer have any desire to work in that universe I really bid thee adieu.
But I was lying in bed, sicker than a dying dog, and my muse slaps me across the face and says “I know how to sell Vindicator to Lida.”
You see, Lida is my publisher at Twilight Times Books. She has exclusive first-rights to any book in the Crisis Universe, as per our contract. So whenever I write a short story or book in that universe, she gets first dibs. Now, she rejected the original Vindicator back in 2008, which is fine with me. I was going to send it elsewhere but, upon review, realized that not many publishers would want to put out the sequel of a book belonging to a separate publisher. So I held back Vindicator (named Violator originally) and thought about rewrites. Then I thought some more.
Then I shelved the whole damn project to focus on cooler projects, like Christian Cole and Wraithkin. You see, I’m a practical man sometimes. I know when a project is dead.
Well, the Crisis universe is now a modern day Frankenstein. Thanks Shelley.
Actually, thanks Mary Wollstonecraft. You really created a monster there, didn’t ya?
Great, great post by Dave Freer over at the Mad Genius Club about the realities of royalties and the coming e-book revolution. Have a gander!
I completely agree with Dave on this, by the way. I’ll have more on this later, once I get my head wrapped around the legal complexities of this. But my initial reaction is “Viva le revolooooooooooooooooshun!”
