Ketchup

So I stumbled upon this today, which should be of great interest to any writer or editor or bookworm types.

I guess there has been much hue and cry and flamewars and hollering on the blogosphere, but I’m oblivious until weeks later. Typical. But I thought this analysis of the book chains was veeeery interesting in a grim, cold-eyed, nuts-and-bolts kind of way.

Labels: book ordering, Borders Books, Publishing, the writing life

More twists and turns with the property line battle on my street. All I can say publicly is that it’s good thing we’re not on a faraway lawless mountain peak or someone would have been whacked with a shovel by now, if you know what I mean. ;)

Labels: Drama in California

My short story “Snack Food,” a sly little tomato surprise originally published in Tales of the Unanticipated #24, has just been released as a podcast by the crew at Clone Pod.

This is one of those rare stories for which I can pinpoint exactly where I came up with the idea — in the SuperCuts in the Madonna Plaza in San Luis Obispo on the central California coast. Don’t you hate making small talk with somebody who’s got their hands in your hair? (Unless it's your lover, I mean.) It’s even worse when someone has their fingers in your mouth or your eyeballs, but chatting with a barber about inane things is not my favorite chore. Instead, I think weird thoughts!

Bruce McDonald does a nice job narrating the piece, and I encourage everyone to go give “Snack Food” a listen. It’s fun, it’s free, and, yes, it’s freaky. ;)

Their web site is right here.

Labels: audio, Clone Pod, podcast, Short fiction, Snack Food

Afghanistan Joe is not the only one to have asked some permutation of "When is the Brin collaboration coming out?" or "What are you writing after Mind Plague?" or "Tell us about Colony High," so here it is! Answers! Truth! Celebrity gossip!

In fact, the opening segment of Colony High has already been released in a gorgeous hard cover collector's edition from Subterranean Press under the name of Sky Horizon. Bonus points: It also won the Hal Clement award this summer. This is David's original novella and it works pretty well as a stand-alone. It's also a sweet high concept alien adventure exactly as you might expect.

When David was approached for a blurb for Plague Year, first of all he had wonderful things to say like "Riveting" and "One of the best debut novels in years." You can't beat that!

Secondly, he also asked me if I'd like to help him complete a project that he'd had a back burner for years. So I thought about that for about two seconds. Uh, yes?

I read the Sky Horizon novella and a stack of notes he'd put together, outlining the rest of the piece, we got our heads together, added some flesh to the plot and developed new, fuller arcs for the characters -- and a deal was born. The project plays to both of our strengths. David's very cerebral and I'm very gritty, though he does action well and I might have come up with a few nice concepts in my time. Also, for example, he said that he sometimes has a hard time killing off the people in his books. Not a problem for me, I said, ha ha, and the action really explodes out of the gates in the second part of the novel.

Colony High is meant to be a young adult novel, but it's YA in the same sense that Ender's Game is YA, full of meat and real-life. Minor plot points in Colony High involve sex, unplanned pregancies, political assassination, slavery, rebellion, and other small things like First Contact, exobiology, and astrophysics.

YA is dark these days, people! Just like the real world. Hooray.

Here's the surprise twist for Afghanistan Joe. The collaboration is 90% done right now. Colony High will not be my fourth novel. It was my third. Past tense. Mind Plague is my fourth, and the Big Secret New Thriller will be my fifth. We have 350 pages of manuscript in addition to David's original novella as well as detailed feedback on the entire enchilada from several topnotch pre-readers. There's a detailed outline in place for the big explosive finale... and you know I do big explosive finales with, well, big explosions and drama.

I don't have a release date to share yet. The trick is that David is even busier than I am, which is a psychotic thing to imagine, but, just to begin with, he has three kids, not two, and all of them are teenagers now. I shudder at the thought!

He's also eyebrow deep into his own next solo novel, just as I am with Mind Plague. He also does a lot of consulting and public speaking and belongs to interesting groups like the Homeland Security SIGMA anti-terrorism think tank. He's also fielding movie deals, game deals, anthology deals, and earning software patents in online communications. Oh, plus he was the host of a one-hour pilot for the History Channel. This is why you need a collaborator!

Basically the book is done. But other things come first.

Soon, I hope. Soon! Because we know where we're heading with two additional books to make it a trilogy, too, and I'd like to get back to that wild alien saga and those heroes and villians... Well, you know, the ones who are still alive.

Questions?

Labels: Colony High, David Brin collaboration

# posted by Jeff Carlson @ 8:59 PM 6 Comments

At this point I'm so far behind that I can't even catch up on my Catching Up entries. I meant to write an additional (shorter!) account of the other fun things that happened this week, but it's gonna have to wait. In the meantime, here is the real highlight:

Awesome news on the book front. Audible.com, the leading provider of digital audiobook downloads, is now carrying the Recorded Books audio version of Plague Year. So the book is no longer just on CD — it’s cybernetic! It’s from the future!!!

If you know someone who likes books on their iPod, for example, this may be exactly what they need in the gym or on their commute to work. ;)

The file can be found here.

Labels: Audible.com, digital download audiobook Plague Year

It's been a crazy week. The good news is that I'm turning the final corner into the big explosive end-game of Mind Plague, which feels great. I've said this before, but, man, do these people get into a lot of trouble! Ha ha.

I'm having a great time following this new adventure, but it will be a strange milestone in my life when this book is done. I really, really like my heroes and their supporting cast, so I'm both sad and excited to start thinking about wrapping up the trilogy.

The bad news from Bonerville, unfortunately, is that I've sunk waaay too much time and energy into a minor war on my street.

We live on a quiet dead-end road up against several square miles of open space, which is awesome. There are eleven houses here, most of them dating back to the early 1960s, and Diana and I are the newcomers on the block even after having moved here in 1998. Some of these families are the original builders who bought their half-acre lots in the now-pricey hot spot of the east San Francisco Bay Area for $3000. That's right. A half-acre in surburban SF Bay Area for three grand. W0w!

There are no less than three homes on our street where three generations have lived or even still live. Those roots go deep, and, of the other eight households, no one else has been here for less than twenty years now.

Except for one lot. About two years ago, a pair of brothers bought one of the old houses after the owner passed on. It was barely more than a shack, really, maybe 1300 square feet, one tiny building on a big, sweet parcel.

They swore up and down that they had no intentions of knocking it down and building a new house, to which we all wrinkled our foreheads and said, "Uh huh." Sure enough, they knocked it down and started building. Slowly. Painfully. It's been thirteen months and they're only now getting close to done. In the meantime, there have been endless trucks up and down the street, and, jeez, why are people so dull and inconsiderate? Often there were so many vehicles parked helterskelter on both sides of the road in front of the site that you were lucky to squeeze through at all. Sometimes we even had to stop, get out, and find the one particular boner who'd left his fender sticking out into the narrow lane. Duh.

In the meantime, the brothers also continued to lie to our faces about their plans. For instance, they explained that the house would be one-story so as not to affect the views of the folks uphill, except to say that "there will be some rooms on the second floor beneath the roof." Right. Aren't the rooms in a house typically under the roof?

They've put up a gigantic 5000 square foot two-story monstrosity. They also had the street ripped up (and badly patched) in three places while making upgrades to the sewer, gas, and water lines... but they say it's not their fault, it's the utility companies, as if the utility companies came along at random and the work is wholly unrelated to their new construction.

Some of the folks on the street are super pissed.

But it gets better. These guys have also run their landscaping out nearly onto the roadside, ignoring the easement requirements of our private little homeowners' association. Just about everybody has been down there talking to these guys more than once, explaining that they're creating a bottleneck in the road and that there really needs to be off-street parking available. They'll be asking $2.3 million for their mountain-sized mansion, which is big enough for at least two families, and we've pointed out that the buyers may have teenagers or maids or, you know, friends, not all of whom will be able to park in the driveway. So where will they park? Right in the street?

These guys are hilarious. They know exactly where the property line was found. It was surveyed and marked, but one of 'em must have had a bright idea afterwards. They extended well past their line into the common property of the thoroughfare.

All they want is a giant yard to help sell their boondoggle of a home, for which they're over-budget in a bad market, but they say there's no problem. They even suggested that the buyers of the house will just have their visitors park on the lawn, as if people who buy $2.3 million dollar homes would dream of rolling their Beamers through the landscaping! When I called them on this bullshit, they claimed that what they'd really said was that we (the other residents of the street) would park on the lawn, which makes even less sense. Why would I park on the mansion's lawn? I have ample parking on my own lot up the street.

At last, these turkeys graciously allowed that they'd run the landscaping out too far and that they would move it back one foot. Only one foot. And only if we dug up the sprinkler system ourselves and paid for the new PVC etc. ourselves. Moving five sprinkler heads back twelve inches would run about fifty bucks in labor and material, a nickles-and-dimes joke that they could absorb without wasting one breath, so it was nothing but a slap in our collective face.

You can imagine how well that went over.

It's been talked to death, and everyone's irritated as hell, and I have better things to do. Fortunately, because we live on a private street and in a tight neighborhood, the homeowners' association is passing a new addendum to our bylaws to specifically deal with this parcel's infractions of the easement requirements at their expense. Democracy in action. If they don't comply, they'll find themselves in civil court, which isn't going to help sell that monster, either.

Did I mention that I have better things to do? I'm glad we're finally closing down on this b.s. How was your week!?!?

Labels: Catching up, Mind Plague

It’s finally happened. Someone I don’t know has called me at home after reading one of my books.

Previously, I’ve written here about the Mysterious Postcards, yes? Now that was fun and exciting. The first came from Australia, unsigned and with no return address but with a unique-to-me wallaby stamp. In careful handwritten caps, it read, simply, “Plague Year was great. Please write more books, and faster.”

Well, I can’t argue with the sentiment… but the card came to our home address, which is unlisted. I only know one guy Down Under, and he swore up and down that he didn’t know anything about it. Sure, it’s the 21st Century. Everyone is easy to track down. But still. A little weird, right?

A few months later, we received a second postcard from a museum of industry with a giant forging press on the front. The same careful handwriting said, “Such massive machinery sits idled by the power of nanotech… Can’t wait to read Plague Year.” I assume that was a typo. The dude meant War, right? Gosh darn confusing titles!

But the main thing was that the second card was mailed from Nova Scotia. They’re getting closer! If another one arrives from Denver, we going to start hammering spare lumber over the windows like Ben in The Night of the Living Dead... ;)

Back to the phone call. It’s my own fault. When I autograph books, I usually put a business card in them sort of like a book mark, and I’m hardly such a big shot that I have a dedicated business line or even a P.O. box for that matter. Jesus, who has the time to drive somewhere for their mail? Not me!

The guy on my answering machine was very friendly. In fact, he had an intriguing business offer. He’d picked up War without having read Year, liked it a lot, and suggested that we team up to write his stock market insider fear and mayhem tell-all nonfiction book.

Truth to be told, it sounded very cool, and timely, although there must be eight hundred other people rushing to market with their Wall Street exposes at the moment. I called him back and thanked him for his interest – I was flattered – and talked him through basics of editors, agents, query letters, and nonfiction book proposals. This is an excellent problem to have, but my schedule is booked up through 2010 at this point.

Aha HA ha ha ha. Booked up. That’s writing humor.

My hope, of course, is that some day I’ll be knee-deep in bodyguards and screaming groupies. And limousines, cocaine, and shrimp cocktails. Yummy.

Labels: Stalkers And Fans

This week I was hoping to bang out my world-changing blog about juggling multiple projects versus focusing only on one, but, well, I've been so focused on one project, there wasn't time for anything else!

I've been away. Imagine a business trip to a parallel future. Mind Plague. It's rather dark there and the body count is steep, but the people are interesting as hell, wounded and tough and smart and active. I am really having a good time with these characters and in a lot of ways I'll be sorry to move on when the book is a wrap and it's time to start and/or resume other projects.

More on that soon. I promise. How was the rest of your week?

Labels: Mind Plague, the writing life

Hot off the presses is this mock-up of the Romanian cover for Plague Year, which I'm told is translated accurately as Anul Molimei. The tagline is "Breathe... and you die!" Very, very cool.

In fact, I'm going to go so far as to say that I think this is the strongest cover I've ever had. Sure, I've only published two books so far, but with foreign editions, this makes five covers. And this one rocks! I love the color scheme and the artwork. There's a nice mainstream thriller feel to it.

In other exciting news, my Romanian editor says he's going to give the second book its original title, War Day. That's Ziua Razboiului to you, of course. ;)

Anul Molimei is slated for March 2009.

Labels: Anul Molimei, Millennium Press, PLAGUE YEAR, Romanian edition

A buddy of mine forwarded this gag to me, which I absolutely love, because when I was growing up the Cylons were the coolest thing on TV... with the possible exception of the short-lived Planet of the Apes series or, well, The Dukes of Hazzard.

I was seven years old, all right? ;P

Yeah, I really am that old. And I’m still writing exactly that kind of wild, big idea action-adventure today. How about you? What shows were your inspirations?

Labels: Battlestar Galactica, Planet of the Apes, Television

Editorial director Lou Anders over at Pyr Books was the man who began the bidding war for Plague Year, so we know he's a visionary of exceedingly awesome literary taste, yes? Pyr has also fast become known as the hot "brand" of books, meaning that no matter what sort of individual titles they're publishing, cyberpunk, fantasy, space opera, et cetera, it's all satisfying stuff.

Late as usual, I just got wind of Pyr's new freebie program in which they're offering up sample chapters at no charge on a regular basis. Check 'em out!

Labels: Free Sample Chapters, Pyr Books

It’s a mixed bag this week. I had an email from my editor to say that Plague Year has gone to its third printing, which is excellent! The book has legs. Obviously we’re all very excited. In fact, with the new run, I’m now very close to having 100K books in print.

That’s not a huge number, and it includes the Spanish and German editions overseas. I know plenty of writers whose print runs for a single novel just here in North America are two or three times that much, so my head still fits easily through the door... but, hey, I’m just starting out. My second novel is only two months old, and the six figure mark will be a nice milestone.

Our quest to close the last small gap to 100K may have taken a brief detour, however. It looks like it'll be another foreign edition that takes me to that mark. My editor here in the U.S. also said that, due to some “scheduling Sudoko,” Mind Plague is now slated for a December release. In 2009. No, that’s not a typo. We’re not talking about this December. We’re talking about next December.

That sounds scary, but it's only a jump of two months. Originally, they were talking about October 2009. Publishing books is akin to landing planes at LAX. You’ve got a lot of traffic and only so many runaways. Sometimes the books, er, planes stack up.

I have a killer blog to write about the turning of the wheels in publishing and why I'm off the summer schedule that saw both Year and War out in August. I’ll try to get to that next?

In the meantime, I see this as good-news-bad-news. We’re excited to have the book out during that time of year when people need to grab a lot of Christmas stocking stuffers for family and friends... Ooh! How about some nice paperbacks? On the other hand, I also worry that everyone will have completely forgotten about me by then. That's a long wait!

Maybe next fall just before the book is out, if I light myself on fire, naked, with Paris Hilton, also naked, on Wall Street, while throwing out free $10 bills stuffed inside fire-seared blueberry muffins... we’ll scrawl the title of the book on the money... well, you can’t beat publicity like that, right? With puppies. And music by Van Halen. Stand back!

Labels: Mind Plague, Publishing, the writing life

Here's another photo from Spain. I think this is a different store, because my super sleuthing skills have noted that the floor poster is peeling at one corner in this picture, which it was not in the other... and it's hard to imagine they'd have 40 books stacked up just to the right of the floor stand, which holds 30 copies itself... but the tables and the tile floor look much the same. Maybe this is the standard decor of the Spanish equivalent of Barnes & Noble?

All I can say is, "Gulp, look at that heap of lonely, unsold books!" This is an excellent problem to have, but, please, if you know anyone in Europe, tell 'em to hoof it over to Spain and grab several copies of La Plaga. We'd like to keep those units moving, please.

Labels: La Plaga, Minotauro, Spain

…or, Jeff Bares All Without Losing His Pants!

For you cultureless heathens who don’t already know, Towelie is the intelligent super towel developed by the military in South Park. He’s also fond of bong hits. Hence the dull, bloodshot eyes and one of his catch phrases: “I’ve got no idea what’s going on.”

My buddy Joe Jordan, a fellow writer and Writers of the Future winner who is currently far away in the paradise known as Afghanistan, was among several folks who’ve asked about the foreign deals for the Plague novels, how it all works, what’s the money like, and whether or not Diana’s quitting her job and we’re buying a pair of Porsches.

Well, no. Even worse, sometimes I feel like Towelie. I have no idea what’s going on.

For one thing, remember, I’m still very new at this. For another, keep in mind that publishing is insane. I’m not going to get into specific numbers because I’m long way from being enough of big shot that I can wow y’all with lots of zeros, but here’s what I do know so far:

My advance from Ace was modest to say the least, but it earned out immediately. We saw a decent royalty check after the first accounting period, which wasn’t even a full six months, and we’ll be seeing another royalty check again shortly. Why? They got behind the book in a good way: embossing on the cover, some ads, and, most importantly, Plague Year really was a “mass market” mass market paperback. The initial print-run was solid and, for the first month, they had me on front-of-store display towers and tables in the major chains. Possibly even better, I was in airports and bus stations. The book went to a second print run to meet demand and by now, I’m pleased to report, we’re into a third edition.

By comparison, my German advance was hefty indeed. Partly that was because it was for three books, rather than one-by-one as Ace is doing, and you get half of the money for each title up front. Partly that was also because they’re paying in Euros, and some of the checks converted at upwards of 1.6 dollars per Euro. Shazam. The weird part to me is that the print run there was non-hefty. Of course, Germany and Austria are a much smaller market than North America, and my editor at Piper Verlag tells me that our run was quite good for a first novel by a foreign author… but I can’t see how they’re going to earn their money back. Not immediately. Possibly their business model isn’t so tightly screwed down as the American one, which seems to be make-or-break right out of the gates. The Europeans are wiser and calmer, and I have to assume they know what they’re doing. I write. They publish. That’s how it works. But I worry a bit.

Here’s where it gets extra strange.

The advance from my Spanish publisher was minimal. Neither I nor my agents expected anything more than a nice trade paperback release from Minotauro, just one book among several. We never even heard anything about when it would be published. What happened, of course, in the industry terminology, is that they went completely ape shit. The print run was fantastic for a first-time foreign author, in that gorgeous hard cover, with a promotion campaign that beats anything I’ve ever heard of. If my American publishers were duplicating that effort, we’d be millionaires.

So I have no idea what’s going on.

The only people who have shown any sense to date are the Romanians, bless ‘em. Small country… small advance… a small print run is planned… but with HUGE enthusiasm. My editor there loves what he’s doing and he’s going to play the books to the hilt, and I admire that in a big way.

Does that answer any questions or just open us up to more???

Labels: La Plaga, NANO, PLAGUE YEAR, the writing life

Here's another shot sent from my publisher Spain. The mind croggles. In fact, if I wasn't already happily married, I'd probably have to fly to Europe in order to begin dating this floor stand... or would I be more interested in the floor poster?

Hmm. They both seem to have every quality you look for in an inanimate object. Supportive. Eye-catching. Doesn't talk too much.

I'm a good, honest guy and I don't like to two-time anybody, but still, maybe a little trial period of dating *both* displays would really be in everyone's best interest...

Labels: La Plaga, Minotauro, Spain

Pimping other people’s work is something I’d like to do more on this blog—a lot more. The irony is that I first started to write because I love to read and wanted to play, too, but as a full-time pro I barely read at all anymore. I’m too busy trying to keep up with my own projects, life, etc.

For anyone who isn’t reading Crais, you’re missing out! I was lucky enough to discover him when he was still in mass market paperback (ahem) way back in the mid-1990s. He was good then. He’s gotten outrageously better, even though I don’t think it’s unfair to say that his detective thrillers are fairly straightforward. For example, his best hero, Elvis Cole, is a wisecracking P.I. who’s a dead shot and good with the ladies. Where have I seen that before? Sure, he gives great action and reversals and dialogue, but where Crais truly excels is with VOICE. Voice is not dialogue. Voice is how the narrative flows and how the pages turn. Holy cow, are these books a lot of fun!!!!

The most recent Crais novel I’ve read is The Watchman. It’s your typical Kung Fu Terminator Meets Paris Hilton, Paris Falls In love, Terminator Kicks Ass On Bad Guys sort of detective novel. Wait. What did I just write?

Seriously, this was the rare book that I could not put down and I was pleased as heck that I brought it with me to Denver for WorldCon so that I could read it uninterrupted on both plane flights. Yes, that was in August. I’ve been meaning to bang out 500 words of high praise and finally made time for it.

Go. Go forth and buy Crais. It’s for good reason that they’re making Bruce Willis movies out of his stuff, you know… ;)

Labels: Recommended Reading, Robert Crais, The Watchman, topnotch

Today we have a shotgun blast of small good bits of news!

First, my short story “Long Eyes” is a part of Pyr Books’ prestigious new Fast Forward 2 anthology, which hits stores this week. A far-future space adventure, “Long Eyes” may be the most “sci fi” story I’ll ever write, and it’s only one part of an impressive collection of fourteen mind-bending tales by many of the hottest names in the genre today. Wow!

FF2 is also available online, of course, for example on Amazon.

On the novels front, Plague Year is finally available as an ebook in all three major digital formats.

Kindle.

Mobi.

and Sony eBooks.

Also, just for fun, this week I learned belatedly that my short story “Exit” appeared in Greek, in July, in Issue #404 of Ennea, a weekly, full-color sci fi and comics supplement of the major newspaper in that country. Their main page and the current cover of Ennea can be seen here.

Take a peek!

Labels: Fast Forward 2 anthology, foreign sales, Kindle, Mobipocket, Plague Year ebooks, Sony eBooks, wow

Well, if I was in Spain, I'd be walking through a book store one day when I'd suddenly have a coronary from sheer explosive joy. Holy cow guts, dude!!!

Last night my publisher at Minotauro forwarded another giant pack of jpgs, some of which I'll be inflicting upon you because, well, they're like baby photos to me.

Here, for example, is that gorgeous hardcover of La Plaga hanging out in copious numbers with the likes of John Grisham and James Patterson... ;)

Labels: Holy cow guts, La Plaga, Minotauro, Spain