Sow Yoo Wunt Too Bee Uh Riter (Prologue)

As mentioned in a previous entry, I’m in the process of trying to find a publisher for my second book. (Yes, I’ve decided to market it as one 130,000-word volume instead of two 65,000-word books; the fantasy market these days is heavily slanted toward the thick side.) I’ve decided to chronicle my efforts here, at least in part because it’s something more than a half-dozen people might be interested in reading, as opposed to my normal rantings which apparently actually drive traffic away even from other sites.

There are plenty of resources online for information and advice on how to get published, but not too many that keep a running log of a close-enough-to-unknown-as-makes-no-difference author and his attempts to navigate the publishing industry maze. I was lucky enough to bypass several parts of the standard process with The Sillymarillion (it was a right place, right time kind of lucky break), so this will be a learning experience for me, and hopefully for anyone who happens by this little corner of the Web to read it.

Aaaarr! Avast, ye scurvy e-mailers!

Har! Sit back, me mateys, and let ol’ Round Don Silver spin ye a yarn of an e-mail gone bad; a tale of a sorry scallywag an’ the fools what followed ‘im inta the briny deep!

This mornin’ some scurvy dog sent out a missive ta all the ships at sea (where the sea be defined as most of th’ employees of the largest agencies of a government body) that did use a lot o’ words ta say, “Be happy, Jesus loves you – now send this to all yout friends!”

If tweren’t bad enough that landlubber lootin’ and pillagin’ me tax dollars ta send a chain letter on a government network, out o’ the woodwork came a bunch o’ sailors greener’n a virgin cabin boy who couldn’t tell th’ difference twixt the “Reply” button and the “Reply ta all” button. So there were dozens o’ global replies sayin “thanks”, or “please stop sendin’ this, or it’s the brig for ye!”, or “please take me off this list” – not realizin’ that the only way off th’ all-employees list was ta walk the plank. When one fella Reply-Alled ta say, “Stop replying ta all”, another fella Reply-Alled with “I agree, stop it!”

Ta the brig with all of ’em, says I! Remedial Microsoft Outlook fer ’em until they learn ta tell their aft from a hole in the ground!

Looks like I’ll have to do this the hard way…

As it turns out, that poetic obstacle I mentioned a while back was less a roadblock than a speedbump. After a brief period spent staring blankly at the screen, I put a couple of words together that managed to capture exactly the feel and rhythm I wanted to achieve, and the whole damned song just flowed into the keyboard from there, words and structure and all. It’s not Shakespeare and it’s not perfect, but overall I’m very happy with the way it worked out and how it fits into the story.

In weeks since then, I’ve managed to finish the manuscript for what I initially intended to be book 2 of a 2-part series, and even got through an initial round of editing and rewrites. Now, even as I rewrite and refine the text of both books, I have some decisions to make. Each volume is just slightly on the short side for what is considered appropriate for a novel these days – at 66-68,000 words, they’re just a tad below the oft-quoted “70,000-100,000” mark. Of course, fantasy books these days tend to run 500+ pages, even some I’ve seen from first-time authors.

So my choices, as I see it, are as follows:

  • Market the books as is, and just hope it’s true that size doesn’t matter.
  • Add more material to the story, running the risk of disturbing the pacing, introducing redundancies or continuity problems late in the game
  • Tack on a couple of appendices containing information about the history, languages, etc of the world I’ve created, running the risk of inducing excruciating boredom in most readers.
  • Combine them into a single volume. This probably makes the most sense and is likely the direction I’ll go, but it means a bit of rethinking over the title and structure of the work.

Now, as to “doing this the hard way”:

I contacted the publisher of my previous book to tell him that the project I had mentioned to him something like two years ago – which he had expressed interest in seeing – was finally ready for someone to take a look at it. His reply was that, for reasons I won’t go into here, his company was dropping its fantasy line altogether, at least for the present.

So much for the easy route! What that means is that I now have to go the route of writing query letters and synopses to send to long lists of agents to find one to represent me to publishers, following each separate agency’s submission guidelines and then, assuming one of them decides to represent me, following the same procedure with the publishers themselves.

First, though, I need to polish that manuscript. There’s a difference between sending a book to someone you’ve already worked with and saying, “Hey, here’s the draft – see what you think,” vs. the “Here’s an example of my best work – please send money!” objective I’ll be dealing with.

I hope to chronicle my efforts here, up to and including publishing any interesting rejection letters I accumulate. So if any of you search engine bots who read this have ever been curious about the process of trying to sell a book once it’s been written, you might want to watch this space in the coming weeks.

Crocodile Haunter

Yes, Steve Irwin is dead, a fact that has been discussed to no end for several days now, starting late Sunday night when the news was first reported and reached someone in my WoW guild who shared it with the rest of us. Apparently so many people believed it to be a hoax that several news sites were swamped and were brought down under the deluge of web surfers trying to verify the story. It’s another celebrity death that will captivate the world for a news cycle or two, until the next bride runs away or some new clue is found in the Jon-Benet case.

Of course the loss will impact his wife and children for the rest of their lives in ways that can only be understood be people who have suffered similar losses. His death may also make the future of the various wildlife preservation initiatives he supported a little less certain. So please understand that if I seem a tad cynical over this event, my cynicism is directed at the media and public reaction, as opposed to the personal consequences it will have for those who were close to him.

BUT:

The man was a lunatic. Why does his death come as such a surprise?

(“Elvis is dead? No, it can’t be! He took such good care of himself!”)

Had he survived his encounter with the stingray, the voiceover on the documentary would very likely have gone something like this:

“The stingray is normally a docile crea-cha, but ‘e can get right nasty if you scare ‘im. So Oi decided to swim up to this buggah and poke ‘im with a shahp stick…”

A friend from out west offered what seems to me the best summary of the situation I’ve yet encountered:

“It’s like hearing Wile E. Coyote died!”

Hopefully more entries to come in the near future instead of these once-a-month-or-so blurbs. There are a number of minor items I’ve been meaning to post about, so maybe in the next couple of days I’ll throw together a big multi-subject entry.

Poetic License to Kill

That scene I mentioned in yesterday’s entry, the one I was really looking forward to writing? I haven’t gotten there yet. I’ve encountered an obstacle.

Obstacle, thy name is poetry.

In order to get to the site where that scene needs to happen, there’s some travelling to be done by some of the characters. Nothing terribly eventful happens along the way, but rather than simply saying, “and then they went to , an uneventful journey of three days”, I want to use this opportunity to introduce a little of the culture of the region, as well as clue the reader in to the general mood of the travelers as they set out. The vehicle I want to use for this is a song sung by a young girl who’s along for the ride; something a little childish and whimsical, but hinting at some deeper story behind its words.

That’s where the trouble begins: lyrics. Lyrics are poetry, and for some reason my brain just refuses to spit out anything resembling non-limerick, non-parody-of-somebody-else’s-work poetry. Seriously. I try to write a poem that explores the human condition and lays bare my deepest emotions for the world to see, and within three lines I’m looking for a word that rhymes with “Nantucket”.

There’s no reason this poem/song needs to be there. It’s in no way critical to the plot or story, but now that the idea’s in my head I really want it to work out. Those little glimpses into a larger world are what separate my favorite works of fantasy from the more generic.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a long couple of days as I spend what writing time I have staring at a blinking cursor trying to find a reasonable middle ground between “There was a young lady from Exeter” and some inadvertant ripoff of Tolkien’s “The Road Goes Ever On”.

(The “Exeter” reference, for those who raised an eyebrow in befuddlement on reading it, is from a limerick:

There was a young lady from Exeter,
So pretty the men craned their necks at her.
One was even so brave
As to take out and wave
The distinguishng mark of his sex at her. )

Checking In

Over the past month I’ve been dealing with a new job where internet connections are closely monitored (so no blog or forum posting from work), a dead PC whose replacement parts never seem to want to work together, and various other distractions, so there’s been little time and/or inspiration to add any updates here.

I’ve been learning the ins and outs of Microsoft’s .NET 2.0 lately, and tinkering a bit with the ATLAS libraries as well. I’m using both at the office now and am gradually working on moving the family web site over into 2.0 with a few changes along the way to take advantage of new features like master pages and menu controls. Watch for it… oh, I dunno… eventually. In the meantime, take a look at the recently reorganized and expanded Susan’s Art Gallery page.

While I haven’t been blogging, I have been writing. Not a lot, but I’ve made more progress on my work-in-progress in the last three weeks than I did over the preceeding several months. I found a way to make a tedious-but-necessary part of the story much more interesting and fulfilling, and in getting through that I’ve now gotten to a scene I’ve been eager to write – and not just because it involves naked people. With luck, I’ll be able to crank through that over the next couple of days. This book may actually get written if I keep this up!

From the Dept. of Things I Never Thought I’d Say

As uncomfortable as it is to find myself in something resembling agreement with the fundamentalist-nutjob Jack Thompson/Family Research Council types, I’ll have to give credit where it’s due: even though the “Left Behind” game I mentioned in my last entry is Christian-themed, these groups have strongly and apparently almost universally denounced it. It seems they’ve decided that violence is violence, even when it’s done in the name of that big invisible overlord of theirs. Perhaps that sort of violence is even worse than the run-of-the-mill non-denominational kind, at least when it’s confined to video games.

Just in case anyone besides the search engine bots has noticed that I haven’t posted anything lately, I’ll offer my explanation: I’m in the process of training my replacement at one client site in preparation for my move to a new one on monday. That, plus children’s birthdays, sick family members, and the desire to get outside once in a while have been absorbing my time. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks, things will settle down into a pseudo-routine.

Praise th’ Lawd and Pass th’ Ammunition!

Coming in time for this year’s holiday season is Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a new strategy wargame with a twist: you’re a Christian leading your forces against the infidels, and in the loving, charitable spirit of Christianity, your goal is to kill anyone who won’t convert. Shouting “Praise the lord!” as you smite your enemies, you march down the streets of New York City amid the rotting corpses of the impure.

Violence in video games is of course, nothing new, and games with a religious slant have been around too, though they’re seldom of the high-profile, mainstream variety. I’m not one who’s inclined to believe that video-game violence is responsible for all the ills of our society, but I am one of those who gets a bit disgusted when I see parents buying a copy of Grand Theft Auto for their 8 year old. But I’m wondering how this game will play among the “Focus on Family” type wannabe Taliban-for-Jesus groups who regularly condemn any sort of imaginary violence that might somehow, someday, have an effect on straight white male Christians. Will they defend this game? Will they condemn it for its violence in spite of its religious background? Or will they, as they’ve done so far, continue to remain silent on the subject, realizing that to open their mouths in favor of either solution might cause the public to smell the hypocracy on their breath?

Now, in defense of LB:EF, it does also allow you to play as the bad guys. In the guise of Satan, I suppose, or one of his earthly minions, you’re able to raise demons to fight against the armies of light. Demons which one would presume to be some combination of gay, jewish, liberal, or muslim – you know, to make them really seem frightening and evil to the target audience.

What ratchets up the fright level about this game for me is that it is apparently being backed and promoted by one of those mega-churches. You know, the ones where the preacher flies into town in his private jet, climbs out of his limo, enters a packed arena-sized building, and delivers a sermon to thousands (or millions, live via satellite, or send $29.95 plus shipping for a copy of the DVD!) about how Christianity is under attack in America?

The marketing plan? Send free evaluation copies to churches all over the country. Yes, to Christians nationwide, the message will be clear: Thou Shalt Not Kill, Unless the Victim’s Dogma Differs from Yours.

I described the game to a co-worker who’s big on making bible-based moral stands while he’s not busy surfing the net for porn, a guy who can’t be made to see the little ™ sign alongside the phrases “War on Christianity” or “War on Christmas”.

His reaction to the game? “Good! It’s a counter to all those other games!”

“Other games?” I asked. “You mean ones where the goal is to kill Christians?”

“Yeah, those!”

“Like which one?”

[Sound of crickets chirping]

“Well, I don’t know, but they’re coming!”

At first I wrote his response off as run-of-the-mill paranoia, but the more I though about it, the more I realized he was right. Now that the far-right lunatic fringe of the bible-thumper set has opened the floodgate of kill-the-infidel gaming, what’s to stop the violence-endorsing sects of other faiths from creating wargames of their own?

Many more details on LB:EF are available in Part 1 and Part 2 of an article by Jonathan Hutson.

And no, there’s no word yet on whether the Holy Handgrenade will be available in-game.

I Spy With My Little Database

I don’t have a fundamental problem with records of our phone calls – not the actual conversations, mind you, just the records of who called what number and when – being put into a searchable database so that in times of genuine danger (not the manufactured color-coded danger they’re trying to sell us most of the time), some court-appointed investigator can run some pre-approved query along the lines of:

select CALLER_NAME, CALLER_DATE
from PHONE_CALLS
where RECIPIENT='OSAMA BIN LADEN'

I don’t find this to be a terrible violation of my privacy and it does, in fact, have some chance of helping to track down some of the folks who may be genuinely trying to cause us harm. I have less objection to this, in fact, than to the various for-profit organizations that keep the huge databases from which this information is culled.

No, my problem is that this data has been collected and analyzed in secret, with absolutely no oversight, by an administration that shuns the rule of law, subverts constitutional rights, illegally backs out of treaties, and in general likes to think it has the power to do as it pleases, and seems to have a congress that agrees. There is absolutely no mechanism in place to prevent this data from being used criminally for political purposes.

You want free access to all that phone call data? Fine, but in exchange I’m gonna have to ask to be able to go The Light of Other Days (a favorite book of mine) on your buh-tocks. You can have my info, on one condition: make all that publicly accessible via Freedom of Information Act requests. That way, people like me can write queries like:

select count(*)
from PHONE_CALLS
where CALLER_ADDRESS='White House'
and CALL_RECIPIENT='Jack Abramoff'

Or, better yet:

select count(*)
from PHONE_CALLS
where CALLER_NAME='Rove, Karl'
and CALL_RECIPIENT='1-900-TEENSINBONDAGE'

For that privilege, I might just be willing to let ’em log my phone calls. The telemarketers get more use out of my phone than I do, anyway. I think they’re the real terrorist threat we should be sending troops after.

Wii3

The internet is abuzz this week with news from E3, the annual get-together that is to the electronic gaming industry what the Republican convention is to gun-totin’ fundamentalist “librul”-hatin’ rednecks named Jeb, or the Democratic convention is to, oh, I dunno, maybe people looking for a market where they can sell replacement spinal columns?

Now, for me, the biggest news out of E3 is the announcement that signups for the beta of Lord of the Rings Online have begun. But what the press seems to be focusing on is the rivalry between the Big Three of console gaming. While I’ve owned a few consoles and currently have a Playstation 2, I’ve always preferred PC games for the most part. All the PS2 has been used for in over a year is to entertain children (and occasional adults, myself included) with “Eye Toy” games. So a while back when the trio of next-generation consoles was announced, I was interested from a detached point of view, but shrugged off questions of “which one will you get”; at the time I figured, “probably none of the above.”

I’m beginning to rethink that opinion. Not because of the possible tremendous strides in graphics and processing power (the PC has or will soon pass the consoles by once again), but because of interface innovations on the new machines. The XBox 360 and the Playstation 3 will both have Eye Toy -like peripherals available. I like the PS2 Eye Toy, but it is limited in resolution, is vulnerable to low or changing light levels in the environment, and has a very limited selection of software to support it. Microsoft has already demonstrated a camera type peripheral for the XBox360 that displays in a higher resolution and recognizes such minute movements as hand gestures, and likely Sony’s product will follow suit if they ever get their act together on the PS3 in general. In any case, it remains to be seen what kind of software support these devices will have, and unless someone figures a way to coordinate 2 cameras from different angles to map a player’s movement in 3D space, they’ll always be limited to 2-dimensional gameplay.

Enter the Nintendo Wii. Dumb name, yes, I agree, but it certainly has drawn a lot of attention to the machine. (I dare Nintendo to produce a portable version called the Wee Wii!)

Way back when the machine, then code-named Revolution, was announced, the pictures of the simplistic, rectangular TV-remote-like controller made a lot of folks scratch their heads and wonder aloud, “What were they thinking?” Since then, of course, we’ve learned that this controller can in fact sense its position in space, so it can be swung like a sword, aimed like a gun, etc, and the game environment will react to the player’s movements through three dimensions. I wonder if there is the possibility of using multiple controllers to say, wield two weapons in-game, or to attach similar devices around one’s ankles so the game could track leg movements like kicks?

The Wii does in fact trail the other two new consoles in terms of sheer raw power, but based on the information available now, it’s the one I’d choose. The fact that the 3d-sensing controller comes with the system means that pretty much every Wii game will make use of it, and it will enjoy much more support than the Eye-Toy-alikes ever will.

Price is also a concern, of course. The Wii looks to be a lot less costly than the XBox360… and for the price of a PS3 (if and when it ever gets here), a person could by an XBox and a Wii!