Plodding, With Occasional Smites From the Heavens

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Hailstone1We’re kind of at the point where nothing is happening, but that nothing has to happen in just the right way. By which I mean that I’m well into the book and at the stage, which lasts just about until, oh, the time that stage ends, when I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what’s going to happen except perhaps in broad strokes, and I still have to figure out how to write this book. And to those who say, you damn well should know how to write a novel by now, I can only answer (cribbing from a colleague of mine), “Of course I know how to write a novel. I know how to write the one I finished last. Ask me anything about To Break the Demon Gate and I can tell you. Ask me about The War God’s Son, and I can only stare at you, and possibly drool a little. One of the few things I know for certain is that I’m approaching the 10,000 word threshold. Why is it a threshold? Because I say it is. Or a mile marker. Kind of the same thing in this context.

None of this is especially worrisome to me. I don’t know how everyone else does it, but I go through this every time I write anything, be it short story or novel or blog post. It’s just that with a novel it is far more obvious, and the stage lasts longer. I’m not worried, but if I had any sense I would be. Sometimes sense isn’t your friend.

As for the picture, that’s what the sky dropped on us Monday. I’ve got a couple of big dents in the truck roof and a thoroughly cracked windshield. Other people got worse, though we’ll have to let the insurance adjuster inspect our new roof to make sure it wasn’t totalled. Real life waits for no novel. I don’t think ‘real life’ is a reader.

Tor.com Yamada Monogatari Sweepstakes

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Final-Cover

I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t mention that Tor.com is now giving away copies of Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter to ten (10) lucky winners. All you have to do to enter is go to the Sweepstakes Page and leave a comment. You have to be a resident of the U.S. (I know, sorry) but otherwise that’s pretty much it. A chance at a free book and all you have to do to enter is post a note attesting to your existence. Even I could manage that on a bad day, but the contest closes on March 18th at 12PM Eastern Time, so get your posts in before that.

Processing…

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Yoshino-1I managed about 1000 words on Monday, then about 2000 yesterday. Today…well I guess I’ll find out when it’s time to take stock. Writers love word counts. Writers hate word counts. Or rather, love having them or hate not having them. Even if you’re not working on something, you feel like you should be, and why the heck aren’t you working, you lazy worthless slacker??? Where’s your word count??? Continue reading →

SO Not the Star of this Little Play

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SleepingBuddhaEveryone who publishes short fiction knows that we have to write a lot of bios. Some just repeat, but every so often they have to be updated. The first few are fun. “Talk about the glory of ME? Sure!” But somewhere around the 40th or 50th you realize “OMG, I’m even boring myself!”

The work’s never boring to me, and I hope to (almost) no one else, but talking about me? That gets old quick.  I totally understand the impulse to just make s*%t up (“Richard Parks’ hobbies include breeding racing slugs and teaching Tai-Chi to polar bears.” You get the idea). Interviews, on the other hand, are a bit different. Especially when the people conducting them have done a little homework and ask interesting questions. I’ve written a lot of bios in my time but I’ve done very few interviews for obvious reasons. So it was a bit disconcerting when, over the space of a week, I wound up doing three: one general and one story-specific interview for LightSpeed and another for SFSignal.com. Mercifully short ones in both case, and I’ll put a link up for anyone who cares once they’re online. One of those for LightSpeed  will be in conjunction with a reprint of “The Man Who Carved Skulls,” probably in the May issue. They asked such good questions that even I, the sole living authority on that story, had to really think about it.

Sure, it’s flattering and all when someone pays attention to us as writers, but what really floats our little boats is when someone pays attention to the work. Otherwise, we’re just talking to ourselves.

Another Giveaway!

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Step3-YamadaThere will be another (and possibly one more, but this is all for now) giveaway of Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter, this time at SFSignal. Follow the link for the official rules, but it’s not complicated. You don’t even have to answer any questions, other than whether you’d prefer hardcopy or ebook. You have a choice! It can’t be much simpler than that. SFSignal will also be runing an interview of me at some point in the near future, so watch this space. Unless you already follow SFSignal–and why wouldn’t you?–in which case you’ll see it there no matter what I say or don’t say here.

Ugh. Spent all day Sunday doing taxes. Well, almost all day. From about 9:30AM until 6PM. And then had a glitch with the state forms which had to be redone. Even with good tax software, it was a trial. Nothing like self-employment income for two members of the household and Federal and State forms with different rules  to complicated an already ridiculously complicated ritual. And frankly, my brain doesn’t work anymore. I’m hoping it manages to reboot soon, because I’ve got books to write.