Going on hiatus
February 19, 2012
Hello all,
I’m putting the site on a brief hiatus, as I’m in the process of re-branding and switching to a new domain name. This site will soon redirect to a new domain name, but most of the content and blog posts will be as they are now. This should take a few weeks at the most.
Thanks for your patience!
There’s more than just books, you know!
February 12, 2012
A lot of my most recent blog posts have centred on long-form writing like novels, memoirs, and how-to books. The reading challenge I’m doing is being monitored through Goodreads, and that site tends to consider the long-form book the primary unit of reading/writing measurement. It’s a major goal of mine this year to read at least 40 books and write reviews for all of them.
However,the world of fantasy and sci-fi literature contains much more than just novels! There are short stories in magazines, and a surprisingly vast array of podcasts too. So in the interest of showing that there is way more out there than just books (print or digital), I want to list off some of the short stories that I’ve read or listened to recently. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I know that it could become exhaustive if I decided to subscribe to at least half of the fantasy and sci-fi magazines I know of.
These lists are of stories I’ve enjoyed recently. The titles in bold are my favourites.
Source: Podcastle
I started listening to all 3 Escape Artist podcasts (including Escape Pod and Pseudopod, listed below) about 2 months ago, and have been burrowing through their archives since then. I enjoy all 3 podcasts because I think they all showcase quality writing, but I think Podcastle wins out because they have the most seamless combination of introductory music, hosting, feedback, and storycraft.
- Household Spirits, by C.S.E. Cooney
- Gone Daddy Gone, by Josh Rountree
- The Landholders No Longer Carry Swords, by Patricia Russo
- A Hunter’s Ode to His Bait, by Carrie Vaughn
- Five Rules for Commuting to the Underworld, by Merrie Haskell
- Stereogram of the Gray Fort, in the Days of Her Glory, by Paul M. Berger
- Zauberschrift, by David D. Levine
- The Duke of Vertumn’s Fingerling, by Elizabeth Carroll
- Doors, by Rajan Khanna
- Who in Mortal Chains, by Claire Humphrey
- The Parable of the Shower, by Leah Bobet
- Middle Aged Weirdo in a Cadillac, by George R. Galuschak
- Braiding the Ghosts, by C.S.E. Cooney
- The Gateway of the Monster, by William Hope Hodgson
- The Witch’s Second Daughter, by Marissa K. Lingen
- Still Small Voice, by Ben Burgis
- Beyond the Sea Gate of the Scholar Pirates of Sarskoe, by Garth Nix
Source: Escape Pod
This podcast needs only three words of introduction: Mur Fucking Lafferty. I’ve gone on and on before about I Should be Writing, but it is so incredibly comforting to hear her voice whenever she hosts or reads. I find that whatever the story is, her voice is so versatile and engaging that I nearly always enjoy what she reads, regardless of topic. Plus, it’s introductory music is pretty rockin’.
- Future Perfect, by LaShawn M. Wanak
- Shannon’s Law, by Cory Doctorow
- A Small Matter, Really, by Monte Cook
- For Want of a Nail, Mary Robinette Kowal
- Amaryllis, by Carrie Vaughn
- The Things, by Peter Watts
- Union Dues – Sidekicks in Stockholm, by Jeffrey R. DeRego
- Midnight Blue, by Will McIntosh
- Soulmates, by Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn
- Kill Me, by Vylar Kaftan
- Playing Doctor, by Robert T. Jeschonek
- Movement, by Nancy Fulda
- Honor Killing, by Ray Tabler
- Chicken Noodle Gravity, by J. Daniel Sawyer
Source: Pseudopod
Pseudopod has been sort of the odd duck out. Podcastle does fantasy stories, and Escape Pod does sci-fi stories. But rarely do I mention horror, although all three genres mix and comingle, and are in some ways indistinguishable from each other. A Holy Trinity of genre fiction, if you will. Pseudopod’s stories are good, but of the three, I find the non-story elements of the podcast to be the least engaging.
- Lives, by John Grant
- Man Eat Man, by Mike Irwin
- On Being Mandy, by Sandra M. Odell
- Girls Gone Insane, by John Jasper Owens
- Association, by Eddie Borey
- Dearest Daughter, by Kate Marshall
- The Line, by Grady J. Gratt
- In Bloom, by Caspian Gray
- The 7 Garages of Kevin Simpson, by Alan Baxter
- Bruise for Bruise, by Robert Davies
- The Eater, by Michael J. DeLuca
- The Cord, by Chris Lewis Carter
- The Blood Garden, by Jesse Livingston
Source: Daily Science Fiction
I found out about DSF through a Facebook group that I’m part of. It’s always a pleasure to see a bite-sized piece of sci-fi or fantasy in my inbox every weekday morning. DSF also has a Facebook page, which provides a great venue for daily discussion.
- Inflection, by Tina Connolly
- Are You There? Are You Safe? Is the Flock Safe? by D. Robert Hamm
- Naughty or Nice? by James S. Dorr
- Ten Seconds, by Scott W. Baker
- Lists, by Annie Bellet
- Calling Down the Moon, by Diana Sherman
- Things Exist by Imitation of Numbers, by Benjamin Rosenbaum
- All or Nothing, by Nancy Fulda
- The Death and Rebirth of Anne Bonny, by Nancy Fulda
- +1, by James Luke Worrad
- The Long Con, by Megan R. Engelhardt
- Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Monkey, by Ruth Nestvold
2012 Reading challenge, book 4: On Writing
February 8, 2012
The name “Stephen King” has by now become a byword for “successful author.” He’s one of those authors, along with J.K. Rowling, that are always cited as the exception to the rule that most writers won’t be able to live solely off the fruits of their writing. He’s ubiquitous. In light of both this and my interest in fantasy and sci-fi, which often encroaches upon the borders of horror fiction, it might surprise you to learn that I didn’t read my first Stephen King book until nearly 4 years ago – that book was Insomnia and even he admits it was a muddled novel. So, what do I think of a book about writing, written by one of the titans of the industry? Let’s find out.
Title: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (10th Anniversary Edition)
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: 5 out of 5
About the book: Part memoir and part instructional manual, On Writing ties together King’s career as an author with more personal facets of his life. In an unusual move, the instructions about writing – arguably the biggest draw – are placed towards the end of the book, and On Writing instead devotes its first half to King’s childhood, adolescence, and attempts to break into the publishing world.
What I liked: From the start of this book, I felt that I was in the presence of someone who made me comfortable and welcome. More than that even, I felt a tremendous sense of self-assurance when I read it. King’s been there before, knows the pitfalls, and is happy to steer you around his memories with confidence. Every time I finished a section or chapter in this book, I told myself, “OK, it’s time to put the book down now.” And then, of their own accord, my eyes would snake down or over to the next page, and I would be held fast once again. This was, literally, the first book of the year that I could Just. Not. Put. Down.
Throughout the book, I got the sense that although writing was something he put effort into, he didn’t fall into the pretentious Byronic-hero hole that so many other authors, both beginning and established, fall victim to. (It’s a hole that I’m only now learning how to crawl out of.) Instead, he made it feel as natural, physical, and vital as chopping wood. If you have enough wood, your house stays warm. If you crank out enough words, you stay warm.
A lot of the time, I judge a book by how vividly I recall the images later, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t expunge from my mind the scene that King describes of having an ear infection as a child – one so intense that his eardrums had to be repeatedly lanced with a needle to drain the pus. I have tried and tried, with no avail, to stop imagining the looming needle coming closer to perforate my own eardrums. That is strong writing.
In the instructional section on writing, King unpacks the metaphor of a “writers’ toolbox” and runs with it. The advice inside is fairly commonplace – know your grammar, remove adverbs, etc – but they’re relayed in such a matter-of-fact manner that they acquire additional heft. He also provides an extremely useful glimpse into the revision process by including a “before and after” sample of his own writing, and then going step by step through the changes he made to tighten up his prose. Revision is an extremely important part of the writing process, but seldom is it actually demonstrated instead of discussed.
Besides all that, look at the cover. It’s got a Corgi on it! I love Corgis. Knowing that Stephen King owns them just makes him even more awesome in my book.
What I disliked: The length – it’s too short! I could easily have read another 200 pages. In particular, the move away from the memoir section was too abrupt, as it stopped nearly right after the acquisition of Carrie, his debut novel. King did write about his substance abuse problems, but I would have appreciated greater insight on what led him down that path and why he felt he needed to self-medicate. Yes, it’s not a topic that really lends itself to a discussion of the writing craft, but it is something that a lot of writers end up dealing with anyways.
The verdict: I originally gave this book 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads. Then I started reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and that book paled in comparison to this one so much that I retroactively bumped it up another star. Whenever I read this book, I felt I was in good hands. What better can be said about an author than that?
Next up: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.
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Should eBooks have DRM?
February 4, 2012
I bought myself a Kobo Touch last year for Boxing Day, as I figured that reading eBooks would give me a better understanding of changes within the publishing industry. I chose the Kobo over other eReaders for a number of reasons, but I liked the fact that it supported ePub, the (current) industry format, and that you could expand your library by inserting a MicroSD card into the device. A homegrown alternative to Amazon could do all that and get excellent reviews from Wired in the process? Sign me up!
Once I started using the Kobo, though, Digital Rights Management (DRM) software reared its ugly head, and things weren’t so simple. Books bought through the Kobo store can’t be transferred onto a Micro SD card – instead, they are automatically stored on the Kobo eReader itself. The innate storage capacity of the Kobo Touch is 1 GB, which is good, but not great, hence the allure of being able to expand your library through the Micro SD.
However, books from the Kobo store are normally formatted with Adobe’s DRM, and the Micro SD can store eBooks only if the stored files contain no DRM at all. This means that I can’t save space on my Kobo by transferring Kobo’s ebooks to the card. Sure, I can delete the Kobo books once I’m done and then download them again for free if I wish, but that’s an unpleasant solution at best.
Isn’t having a huge number of books at your fingertips one of the biggest reasons why people buy eReaders? Maintaining a large collection is rather hard to do without the extra storage capacity the Micro SD provides, and the Micro SD card is incompatible with Kobo’s own store. This is critical to understand.
So, here we come to today. The next series of Canada Reads debates starts in a few days, and I haven’t read any of the books in the lineup. I want to read at least a few of them, so I researched what eBook options were available. Here are the results:
- All 5 books are available at the Kobo store
- One of those books, Carmen Aguirre’s Something Fierce, was available only from the Kobo store
- Two of those books, Ken Dryden’s The Game and Marina Nemat’s Prisoner of Tehran, were available for purchase from the publishers’ websites
- Wiley, publisher of The Game, explicitly stated on the purchase page that the eBook had Adobe DRM enabled
- Penguin, the publisher of Prisoner of Tehran, didn’t state whether the eBook had DRM, but a subsequent search of the site revealed that Penguin books do have DRM enabled
The result? I didn’t buy any of the five books promoted by Canada Reads, and placed eBook holds through the Toronto Public Library instead.
This evening I encountered something completely different. Quite by accident (thank you, Strange Horizons book reviews!) I stumbled upon The Bone Spindle published by Aqueduct Press. I hadn’t heard of either the book or the publisher, but the review was so intriguing that I bought the book once I found out that Aqueduct Press specialized in publishing feminist science fiction.
It turns out that Aqueduct Press sells ePub books without any sort of DRM. Finally, a publisher whose wares I could buy without using up my Kobo’s limited storage!
Poking around on Aqueduct’s blog led me to Fantasy Magazine (now merged with Lightspeed Magazine). And Lightspeed led me to Weightless Books. Let’s take a look at Weightless’ About page, shall we?
We sell DRM-free ebooks because we believe those who buy ebooks here should be able to move them around between their devices at will.
What we’re hoping to do here is to make this the first site to go to for interesting ebooks from independent presses.
Let’s go over that a bit more slowly:
- None of the books or magazine subscriptions that Weightless Books sells contain any DRM.
- They sell books from independent presses, meaning that the books have gone through some sort of editorial process before publication.
Weightless Books is okay with selling quality books without subjecting me to the anti-piracy hassle that traditional publishers would typically force down my throat? You mean to say that because of this policy, I can buy as many books as I want and store them without any fuss on my capacious Micro SD card? How amazing! It’s difficult to explain how much peril my credit card is in now.
Because of the lack of DRM on both sites, I bought both The Bone Spindle and a year-long subscription to Lightspeed Magazine. Those purchases cost just over $30 total. And it was precisely because of the existence of DRM software (and what DRM meant in terms of my eReader’s storage capacity) that I decided against buying bestselling books offered by the traditional publishing establishment.
This leads me to wonder: How many others are there like me with the same concerns about DRM, and how much do we represent in lost sales? More importantly, will publishers ever regard DRM software as a limiting factor in the way that I do?
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Book statistics, genre love, and genre hate
January 28, 2012
Last week I started an additional side project related to my reading efforts. Spurred on by an article in Salon talking about gender bias in book reviews, I have decided to keep a spreadsheet of my own reading efforts with the intention to derive some nice statistics at the end of the year. Will I end up giving print books higher ratings, on average, than eBooks? What about female authors versus male ones? There are so many questions to ask and answers to seek, and so many ways from which to view this information, that this project is impossible to resist.
Regardless of this, one thing has become obvious despite the small pool of books I’ve read so far this year: I really don’t like crime/detective fiction.
My chief complaints about both Zoo City and Empire State (oddly enough, both published by Angry Robot Books) had to do with their attempts to blend sci-fi/fantasy story elements with crime/detective story elements. The combination didn’t work for me, and in Empire State in particular, I found that the author’s application of sci-fi elements was used to wallpaper over some glaring inconsistencies.
This raises an interesting question, then: do I dislike the crime genre as a whole, the mixing of genres, or just the way those two books handled said mixing? Well, now that I’ve got my handy-dandy spreadsheet, the question will be a little easier to answer come December 2012, won’t it? Assuming, that is, that we don’t blow up in some Mayan calendrical apocalypse.
Anyways.
I read Old City Hall near the end of 2010 and really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much, in fact, that when I went to Word on the Street in September 2011 and told the author, Robert Rotenberg, how much – oh my god, can I tell you what an intriguing character Albert Fernandez is? – he gave me an autographed copy of the book for free.
OCH is about a crime, and one of the main characters is a police detective. Does the book fall, then, under the rubric of crime fiction? Or rather, since many of its most important events take place in a courtroom, should it be classified as a legal thriller? Where does one draw the line dividing genres? In this case, is there even a line to be drawn? I have no idea. All I know is that I found the book’s analysis of coutroom behaviour fascinating, and wanted even more of it.
On top of that, I also enjoyed the movie Children of Men when I saw it, and that was based on a book by noted detective fiction writer P.D. James. Would I like her Adam Dalgleish books just as much if I tried one? I don’t know. Part of me doesn’t want to read mysteries because my knowledge of the genre is so poor that it will feel like work – the literary equivalent of eating broccoli (make sure to read at least 5-8 servings per year!). However, another part of me knows that I’m missing out on some amazing fiction because of my own wariness.
This is another issue that I hope tracking my reading on a spreadsheet will be able to rectify: If I can analyze my reading habits and figure out what patterns and holes there are in said habits, I’ll be closer to improving them and to becoming an even better editor.
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2012 Reading challenge, book 3: Empire State
January 25, 2012
Title: Empire State
Author: Adam Christopher
Publisher: Angry Robot Books
Rating: 2 out of 5
Well, it was bound to happen – I came across a book that I didn’t like. Empire State by Adam Christopher will no doubt please some readers, but I am not one of them.
About the book: It’s New York in the 1930′s, and a catastrophic fight between two superhero-like figures has inadvertently caused a rift in space-time. This rift begets a parallel version of New York known as the Empire State. The Empire State is grey, gloomy, rainy, and isolated, perpetually dealing with rations due to a never-ending war with a nameless, faceless Enemy.
However, private detective Rad Bradbury has stumbled into what could be a lucrative case – a girl whose disappearance the police won’t investigate. Things become even more puzzling when her body turns up and the police still refuse to get involved. Combine this with an unusual occurence at the docks – a ship has returned from a fight with the Enemy for the first time ever – and Rad finds out that he’s stumbled upon the most important case of his career: one that could lead to the destruction of the Empire State itself.
Note: The spoilers start here.
What I liked: The sci-fi elements were intriguing, but the only standout passage I can recall is the sequence where Rad, our protagonist, comes face-to-face with the fissure connecting New York to the Empire State. The interdimensional rift and its surrounding mechanical paraphernalia were the only part in the book where I felt awe and wonder at the proceedings. Everything else was a wash.
What I disliked: Here’s the “everything else” I’m talking about. There were so many problems that I had with this book that it’s hard to enumerate them all. Take it as a very telling sign that it took me a full week to read this book, and almost another full week to write this review. However, in the interest of being thorough, I will go through some of the problems I perceived:
- The rift-causing cataclysmic fight between the two superheroes occurred at the very beginning of the book, but the one person who saw one of the superheroes survive is mentioned in the first two chapters and then dropped completely (as is all mention of the original NYC) for the following 10 or so chapters. Talk about whiplash.
- It is revealed that the Empire State occupies a pocket universe. Fair enough. But on top of that, the pocket universe and the rift that connects it to the original New York already existed in unrealized form, and it was already occupied by the faceless force that the Empire State calls the Enemy. It turns out that the Enemy is somehow both a reflection of both New York and the Empire State. Because what the hell, why have a single parallel universe when you can have two, right?
- All of the people in the Empire State are copies of people in New York, except for the prime villain behind it all. Instead, both he and his double occupy the Empire State within the same body, and the hosting body manifests split personalities. How is this possible, you ask? Why, because the villain (an influential judge in New York) somehow managed to enter the pocket universe before the Empire State was even created, and seize control of it at its moment of birth. No explanation is given for how he was able to find the rift and not be subsumed by the Enemy in the intervening period.
- The rift (also known as the Fissure) has time dilation properties. This provides a rather handy excuse for people who wander into it to go missing for 19 years. Despite all this, there are people on the New York side of the Fissure who can predict the events of the Empire State timeline; this makes it incredibly easy for people to pop in and out of the action when a daring rescue is most convenient.
The case that Rad is asked to solve goes off the rails immediately and becomes tied to something much larger – the potential destruction of Empire State as other characters attempt to merge it back into the prime reality. So far, so good. But the final 50 pages are non-stop action of a bewildering sort, as everyone and everything moves, people get repeatedly injured, and characters change allegiances like a person with OCD washes hands (Captain Carson, I’m looking at you).
Speaking of flip-flopping, it’s never truly clear what will happen if the Fissure is tampered with. Some characters believe it will result in the two realities merging. Others believe that it will result in annihilation – a meeting of matter and antimatter writ large. Of course, when the Fissure actually is tampered with, it results in the tenuous connection between the two realities being strengthened, not diminished. This, along with almost all of the other phenomena the Fissure exhibits, is casually explained by the excuse that the Fissure is so unusual, almost anything is possible.
The verdict: This novel was a strange and frustrating beast. The noir/crime elements of the story– missing girls, corpses, down-on-their-luck detectives, crusading journalists, and lots of both booze and beatings – were so haphazardly blended with the later sci-fi elements that I was left scratching my head.
I gave this book 2 out of 5 stars on Goodreads. This is the lowest my GR ratings tend to go – I like to believe that I’d be smart enough to ditch any book deserving of a 1-star rating before I finished reading it. However, this book frustrated me because a lot of the time, it felt like the author was breaking the rules of his world whenever he thought it convenient – it felt like I was reading a less egregious version of the book described in this article from the Onion. I really wanted to like this book considering all of the effort publisher has spent building buzz around it, but I just couldn’t overlook its flaws.
Next up: On Writing by Stephen King
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2012 Reading challenge, book 2: How to Win Friends and Influence People
January 20, 2012
Title: How to Win Friends and Influence People
Author: Dale Carnegie
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: 3 out of 5
My 2012 reading has continued apace. Here are my thoughts on the first non-fiction book I read this year, which I finished over a week ago.
About the book: This was one of the books, if not the book, that launched the self-help genre. The title pretty much says it all. However, the subject matter is deeper than the title suggests, as it also talks about effective leadership skills, and talks about interpersonal skills in greater context.
What I liked: I liked the sense of Dale Carnegie’s voice that shone through the text. Yes, the tone is a tad fusty (the book itself is over 75 years old), but I got a more authentic sense of the author’s voice here than I did when reading other famous self-help books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or Getting Things Done.
Those other books sounded fake because the anecdotes used to illustrate key concepts were so heavily paraphrased that they ended up sounding like the authors themselves. They also packed a lot of fluff – GTD, in particular, could have been just as useful at half the length. In contrast, How to Win’s chapters were succinct, and the letters and anecdotes that Carnegie quoted really did sound like they were written by other people.
I also liked that this book had such practical information; it contained little jargon or technical-sounding acronyms. Instead, there was just good, old-fashioned psychological insight, the most important of which can be boiled down into five words: people like to feel important.
What I disliked: Yes, the book explicitly states on the cover that it’s all about how to influence people, but I was still uncomfortable with some of the pieces of advice offered – they felt downright manipulative. On top of that, I’m unsure whether the now-dated references to celebrities and captains of industry detract from, or add to, the book’s charm.
The verdict: I liked it, and felt that a lot of the book’s suggestions were practical and easy to implement. It says a lot of true things about human nature, even if the book’s method of attack is flowery and old-fashioned.
Next up: Empire State, by Adam Christopher.
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2012 Reading challenge, book 1: Zoo City
January 15, 2012
One of my goals for the year is to read at least 40 books (at least 25 of which must be fantasy or sci-fi), either on paper or in digital format. So far, I’m off to a good start, as I’ve already completed two books and am partway through a third. After that, there are at least three more books (all non-fiction, all about the process of writing) that I want to read. With that in mind, I’m going to posting reviews of my 2012 books. So here goes: my thoughts on the first book I read this year.
Title: Zoo City
Author: Lauren Beukes
Publisher: Angry Robot Books
Rating: 3 out of 5
The plot: Zinzi December is a disgraced pop journalist with a Sloth on her shoulder who pays off the debts she incurred as a junkie by writing 419 scam emails. Like all residents of “Zoo City,” a slum in Johannesburg, she’s been “animalled” – that is, she’s done something so awful that she’s now been spiritually conjoined with an animal familiar.
Like all “zoos,” her animal has also given her a unique power, or mashavi. Normally, while Zinzi uses her mashavi of finding lost things to earn some money on the side, she refuses to find lost people. However, the shady associates of a music producer have asked her to find a missing teeny-bop starlet, and the payment for doing so is too great to turn down. When she digs deeper into the girl’s disappearance, she gets tangled up in a world of drugs, lies, and black magic…
What I liked: I loved the merging of fantasy aspects with real world ones. No one knows what first caused the mysterious “zoo plague,” but interstitial chapters within the book flesh out the world of Zoo City by providing snippets of academic and pop culture material written about the “zoo” phenomenon. Cleverly, one of those snippets contains a citation to an academic article reinterpreting Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy in light of the zoo plague.
On top of that, the setting of Johannesburg is both familiar (in that it’s wonderfully textured and realized) and strange (in that the only other major spec-fic story I can think of set in Johannesburg is District 9). Finally, Zinzi December is a marvelous character. She’s smart, tough, self-serving, and able to think on her feet. She’s hard to like but easy to admire, and I take my hat off to Lauren Beukes for writing a main character that is so complicated. I wouldn’t want Zinzi to be my friend, but I would want her to have my back.
What I disliked: I feel that the book’s chief misstep was the mystery itself. Of course, as with many crime/detective stories, nothing is as it seems and the people asking Zinzi to take on the job have ulterior motives.
Ultimately, the resolution of the story – involving murders, kidnappings, blackmail, and a heck of a lot of black magic – seems too bloated and frenetic to appreciate. Although I’ve muddled my way through some of the unspoken motives of the perpetrators, now that I’ve finished the book I feel that there are a lot of plot holes I still can’t patch over.
The verdict: I liked it, but not as much as I had hoped to. I came to this book with high expectations based on some interviews with the author that I listened to and on the book’s surprise win of the Arthur C. Clarke Award. However, I’ve never been a big fan of detective fiction, and the book’s melding of it with speculative fiction/magical realism left an odd taste in my mouth. I wanted to see more of the slums of Johannesburg, hear more South African slang, and read more about how zoo people have become a new global underclass. I also wanted to see more of Zinzi’s backstory, which I think has been left too much to the imagination. Instead, I got a detective story mixed into all of it, and it dampened my enjoyment of the book.
Next up: How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.
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The obligatory New Year’s post
January 1, 2012
Hello to all, and a happy 2012!
I’ve got a lot of plans for this year, and I’m encouraged by the response I’ve received so far towards my new plan to focus on writing and editing fantasy and science fiction stories. This will involve a lot of reading and a lot more writing than I’ve done in the past. NaNoWriMo was just the warm-up to what I’m planning this year, although one that was necessary to build my confidence.
In any event, the arrival of World Fantasy Con to Toronto this year has provided much-needed motivation to get my butt in the chair, my fingers on the keyboard, and my nose in my (very new, very shiny) eReader. The sheer variety of eBooks on sale through publisher’s sites, bookstores, and independent distributors will prove to be a very sore trial on my wallet, but all growth requires sacrifice. I’ve given myself a limit of how much money I should spend each month on eBooks and mp3s, so that will (probably, hopefully) help.
This year I’m also going to track what I’m reading more carefully in the past. Goodreads has been a godsend to my reading list, and now that the new year has started, I will be able to get a better sense of how many books I read on average in a month, and how long it takes me to finish a book. I’ve set myself a goal of reading at least 40 books this year – a number I consider doable in light of the writing and WCDR stuff already in the works. No doubt as the year progresses my “to be read” list will grow longer and longer – but, knowing other readers and writers, that’s to be expected.
Overall, I’m optimistic. Will the stories I plan to write shatter the world with their loveliness and precise prose? Probably not. Will I win any contests or awards? Who knows, maybe if I’m lucky some will. I’ve heard it said that a writer has to write 1,000,000 words of crap before they write anything good. My hope this year is to write around 250,000 words, so if I manage to write anything worthwhile, I’ll be ahead of schedule. Maybe you’ll follow me as I walk down this new path, and maybe not. But at least I’m finally doing so after years of fear and mental hibernation.
An eBook-shaped hole in my education
December 30, 2011
In a recent blog post I talked about my writing and editing goals for 2012. However, I forgot to add one very important goal to the list: I need to learn more about eBooks.
The course I took on electronic publishing in 2010 didn’t help me. In fact, it was downright misleading. It contained absolutely no mention of eBooks or eReaders at all. This is rather odd, all things considered – shouldn’t students entering the fast-changing world of publishing be given at least a rudimentary understanding of eBook formatting, eReaders, digital rights management for eBooks, or eBook piracy? This information is becoming increasingly relevant to both self-published authors and publishing houses. Ryerson will have a course in the summer of 2012 called “Publishing in Transition” which I hope will bridge the gaps in my knowledge, but that’s still a way off, and I want to start paving over the holes in my education right now.
So, here is a very basic sketch of how I plan to do that:
- Bookmark websites and blogs that discuss ebook production, distribution, and marketing, and follow their content.
- Buy lots of eBooks. (If there’s one thing that’s wonderful, it’s rationalizing entertainment consumption as a form of professional development!)
- Understand how eBooks work in action and get a grasp of what formatting issues are unique to them. (I just bought a Kobo, but that’s fodder for another post.)
- Learn about other facets of the self-publishing industry, like price points, royalties, and budgeting
The plan sounds simple in theory, but the amount of information about self-publishing and ePublishing is increasing so quickly that it’s easy for anyone, especially a newcomer like me, to get overwhelmed. Here are some sites I’ve found useful so far:
- Chamber Four – Reviews of eReaders and eBooks
- Catherine, Caffeinated – A successful self-published author, blogging straight from the trenches
- The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing – Self-explanatory, really. However, I feel they’re a tad too liberal with their exclamation marks
Oddly enough, a number of the blogs I’ve been following have talked about the importance of good cover design for eBooks. Synchronicity or not, the news is welcome.
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