My Blog

Give the Gift of a Threeway

by

The Waking Vixen laments that some people just don’t appreciate the opportunity she gives them to have group sex.

There’s a place in space that Jefferson and I share. We talked about it a bit
the other evening, when we talked about his sex parties, the lovers I’ve brought
to them, the lovers he’s involved, the taboos we’ve broken, the windows we’ve
opened for the people we care about…

Life After Death?

by

Bill Crider pointed me to this interesting publishing experiment…

Lawrence Watt-Evans, who has written dozens of books, recently had his series Legends of
Ethshar dropped by his publisher after eight novels. So he started shopping the series around…

Alas, no major mainstream publisher is interested in continuing the Ethshar
series at present. On the other hand, I had several readers saying they
desperately want to see more. I decided to see whether enough of them were
willing to put their money where their mouths are to finance more Ethshar
stories — and perhaps eventually continuations of other series that no longer
have major publishers.

To my surprise, there were enough. My fans came through, and I have
now written the ninth Ethshar novel, financed entirely by reader contributions
rather than an advance from a publisher.

How has his experiment fared? It’s hard to say based on what he reports…

From April to October I posted the first draft of The Spriggan Mirror,
the ninth novel in the series, chapter by chapter. The last two chapters, along
with the epilogue and some endnotes, were posted on October 16, 2005. Below
you’ll find some options for making donations; each week, if I’d received
another $100 in donations (as I always did), I posted another chapter.

If I hadn’t received $100 to pay for a given week’s chapter, it
wouldn’t have been posted — but that never happened. If more than the $100
target came in, as it usually did, the extra was credited toward the following
chapter. No one needed to worry about ”wasting” a payment if I received more
than was needed for a particular chapter. At this point the entire novel has
been paid for, but the more money that comes in, the sooner I’m likely to start
a new serial.

So how much did he make? Was it comparable to what he would have received in advances and royalties if Del Rey had opted to publish another book in the series? I don’t know because he doesn’t say. For now, you can read the entire book for free on his website…until New Years Eve, when he’s signing the rights over to an e-publisher.

UPDATE: In a related story, GalleyCat reports that novelist Diane Duane is making the unpublished third volume in her TO VISIT THE QUEEN series available using POD:

she’s willing to consider satisfying her earlier fans’ desires by using
print-on-demand to bring The Big Meow out… if the market will bear it.
"Let’s just say that a ‘trade paperback’… is going to cost you hardcover
prices, not paperback," she suggests. "If I’m to make any money at all on the
deal (by which I mean, at least recoup my publishing and labor expenses), you’re
going to be paying $20-25 for a copy of this book." And then she invites her
readers to tell her whether they’re prepared to do that.

…Even Duane acknowledges that the demand remains to be measured, and she’ll be
waiting at least until next spring before she decides if there’s what we used to
call on Usenet "A Great Need."

Been There, Done That

by

Army Archerd finds it "hard to believe" that on two successive nights in Westwood two 2005 remakes
of "vintage pix were preemed." —  CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN and FUN WITH DICK AND JANE.  I don’t know why he’s so shocked. YOURS MINE AND OURS opened a couple weeks ago and KING KONG is opening soon. And in coming weeks, we’ll see movie remakes of  vintage TV shows, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and MIAMI VICE.  And the studios wonder why movie going is declining… so much of what’s being released is either stuff we’ve seen before   or don’t want to see at all.

The November Man

by

I didn’t take long for Pierce Brosnan to try renewing his license to kill. Variety reports that Brosnan is slated to star in THE NOVEMBER MAN, based on the 1986  novel "There Are No Spies" by Bill Granger. The book is actually one of a series featuring a spy named Devereaux, aka The November Man (not to be confused with the 1976  novel "The November Man" by Brian Freemantle)

Comment Spam

by

Because I have been swamped with porn spam over the last few days, I am reluctantly forced into delaying the posting of comments pending review.  Have no fear — I will continue to allow posts that harshly criticize me, my opinions, and my general lack of talent. I’m only going to delete the spam.

Hopefully, Typepad will soon upgrade their "comments" feature to better filter out the spambots (though I understand that people posting comments through AOL hit a Typepad security filter).

For Those Who Think Being a Novelist is Glamorous

by

My brother Tod’s Fucktards of the Year" list includes this:

5. The Various Fucktards Who Scheduled Book Signings For Me In Their
Stores And Then, You Know, Forgot To Order My Books, Put Up Signs Or Advertise
My Event.

This should not be confused with the stores who simply had
distribution issues when my book went into a second printing and copies simply
were not available. That sort of thing happens when you’re wildly successful,
so, you know, how the cookie crumbles and all that. No, I mean the people who
actually booked events for me, confirmed them, confirmed that they had plenty of
books and promoted the event and that signs were "already up" and "the writing
group can’t wait for you to get to the store" and "I really loved your book,"
and who, actually, "Oh, gosh, I didn’t know you were coming. Did we speak?"

"Yes. Three times. Including yesterday."

"Well, I looked and all your books are out of print. Are you self
published or something?"

"No, all of my books are in print — in several printings, in fact —
and I just had a signing in your store across town and they had all of my books.
All of them."

"I don’t know what happened then."

I know what happened. You’re a fucktard.

Sadly, he isn’t making this stuff up. I was at one those signings. Okay, two of them.

Do I Write Scripts or Advertising Copy?

by

More and more commercials are creeping into the narrative of TV shows. Here’s an example mentioned in Wired magazine:

The use of product placements has increased 84 percent on television in the last
year, according to the WGA’s call for regulations. "There is no clear line
separating a TV show from an advertisement anymore," said Carrie McLaren, editor
of Stay Free
magazine.

In a recent episode of the NBC series Medium, writers had to
work the movie Memoirs of a Geisha into the dialogue three times
because of a deal the network made with Sony earlier in the season. They even
had the characters go on a date to an early screening of the movie and bump into
friends who had just viewed Geisha to tell them how good it was.

It’s one thing to have James Bond drive a BMW  (or, going back a few decades, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. drive a new Ford around D.C. landmarks each season during the end credits of THE FBI), or Monk using a particular brand of disinfectant wipe, but it’s quite another to create whole scenes purely for the purpose of pushing a particular product. The MEDIUM example strike me as particular egregious…and something a writer should be additionally compensated for.

Sweet Dreams

by

A screenwriter in Finland dreamed about me last night.

Lee Goldberg was a
performing magician and was giving a show at a stage somewhere. It was a big
outdoor stage and there was quite a big audience. I was his apprentice. Lee
Goldberg said he was going to do a big trick, but it required the presence of
President George W. Bush.

At least I wasn’t naked… and it didn’t involve me helping the President discover the joys of hot hunky man love.