This won’t be news to any of you who have kids in college, or who are in college yourself, but it sure came as a jolt to me: When you’re applying for financial aid for colleges and universities, you basically have to do your income tax return, BANG, at the start of the year, instead of waiting to go into a panic the first and second weeks in April. That’s what I’ve been busy doing, and am still doing. No doubt it’s good discipline. It better be; it looks like I’m going to be doing this every year for at least the next seven years.
They’re Gonna Put Me in the Movies, Revisited
I finally heard from the fellow whose small film I acted in about a year and a half ago (as Pops the Bum). He’s having a premier showing for the cast in a couple of weeks, and will be showing it in his theater (the Regent, in Arlington MA) a few times. And then he’s sending it off to some film festivals, to see if it generates any interest. Good luck to him!
Speaking of movies, my wife sent me a link to this interesting story in the NY Times about James Cameron’s new film, Avatar, currently in production. One more step in the gradual merging of live actors and CG animation. One interesting thing is that they’ve developed the technology to let them see some of the virtual world while they’re filming the actors. That has to help the director and others realize the vision they’re after.
And speaking of technology, our friend Youngmee referred us to this story about a pretty emotive and lifelike robot developed by the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology. Her name is EveR-2 Muse.
Sunborn Update
Since Sunborn (Chaos Chronicles Book 4) has been delayed until Winter 2008, it got pushed back on my editor’s desk while he dealt with a couple of other books. This is frustrating in that I haven’t heard any reaction to it yet, but at the same time it’s giving me some additional time to continue the editing at my end. So I’m still going through it, doing polish and cleaning, and fixing some problem spots pointed out to me by my intrepid writing group and by my wife. (Well, okay—I didn’t do diddly on it for about 3 weeks during the holidays—but I’m back to it now. When I’m not doing taxes; see other post on that.)
On the one hand, I feel pretty good about the way the book came out. On the other hand, I’m ready to kick it out the door and move on to something new. Like Chaos Book 5, which I’ve written the first page of, just to get it started. Or maybe finding a new business model for being an SF writer. I think I feel a post coming on that subject. Later, though.
BSG—It’s Everywhere
I finally decided to take a few minutes to switch my Blogger account over to the “new” Blogger, whatever that means. I was amused by their informational page, which explained the upgrade by comparing it to the difference between the old Battlestar Galactica, with Lorne Greene, and the new Battlestar Galactica, with Edward James Olmos. (Their link to the Wikipedia article on BSG then led me to squander an hour figuring out how to add information about the book series to the BSG article. So much for just taking a few minutes.)
I’m amazed at how thoroughly Galactica has permeated popular culture. I mean, it doesn’t even play on a broadcast network. If it weren’t for the recent move to free On Demand rebroadcasts, I wouldn’t be seeing it on my own cable box. And yet, I frequently see references to it in print, it turns up in comic strips like Sheldon, and here it is, being used as a point of reference on Blogger. It’s fun to be associated with it, even if the association is small. Last night we watched episodes 8 and 9 of the current season (boxing episode and food-crisis episode), which weren’t at all bad, if not up to the level of the preceding 7. I’ve been asked not to give spoilers, and I won’t, but I’ll say that while there was great backstory in #8, I was less drawn in by the front story; and #9, about the food crisis, showed once again that they’re better at writing stories about human drama (or melodrama) than they are at anything involving science. (Even so, it had a powerful ending.)
Speaking of Wikipedia, check out the new article on star rigging created by blog reader Kitty. (Kitty is a relative of mine, but I’ll be danged if I can explain how we’re related. Can you, Kitty?)
Holiday Greetings, Everyone!
I hope all of you out there are enjoying your holidays. Hope you had a great Christmas, or Solstice, or Hanukah, or Kwanzaa, or whatever you celebrate. We had a wonderful Christmas here, with family and friends visiting. Which is just one reason I am, typically, offering Christmas greetings a few days after the fact. (I’ve hardly been online at all in the last few days, much less writing blog entries.)
One of my favorite comic strip discoveries of last year was Sheldon, which I started reading on comics.com, then subscribed to after it moved to its own web site. The last couple of days, Sheldon has been doing a riff on Battlestar Galactica, which has been very funny—and accurate. If you’d like to read it, start here and move forward. (Sheldon is the kid; the talking duck is Arthur.)
We’re actually a few episodes behind in watching Galactica, so I don’t know yet exactly what’s happened in the mid-season cliffhanger (though I glimpsed a bit of it while recording from free On Demand on our Comcast cable). But in general the writing on the show this season has been superb—the best yet. I wish I could say that sales of the book have been equally superb, but it would be a lie. There have been various screwups in distribution, including a long delay in getting the mass market paperback listed on Amazon.com and into bookstores. (Borders still doesn’t seem to be carrying it in most stores.) If you don’t see it, by all means ask for it.
I feel a cold coming on (people around me have been dropping left and right with colds and flu), so this might be my last entry before the new year. If I don’t see you before then, have a great one!
Jeff
Water on Mars and a Cool Historical Link
In case you’ve been living on the Moon and haven’t heard, they’ve found evidence of possible liquid water on Mars—water that flowed, not in the geologically recent past, but over the lifetime of one of our probes. If it proves out, that’s just plain cool. Maybe next we’ll find a Martian frog.
Also, a friend sent along this link, to a Flash display on the Maps of War web site showing all of the various empires that have controlled the Middle East over the last 5000 years (including a few I’d never heard of). It takes 90 seconds to play, and is well worth it.
SUNBORN Is Still…(probably) SUNBORN
Okay, I didn’t mean to not follow up for a week and a half, but I sort of crashed and burned after turning the book in. I still have some editing work to do on it, even before my editor comes to me with comments, but all the things I’d been putting off while finishing the book came rushing back at me.
Meanwhile, my editor and his assistants started saying they liked another title better. (After saying, all this time, “They’re all good—just pick the one you want.” Aaaiieee!) But I think we’re holding firm. I ran it past some more writing colleagues, and they preferred Sunborn.
I’ve been doing stuff like rewriting dust-jacket copy and coming up with a sort-of synopsis of the first three Chaos books, for the benefit of new readers. That’s a lot harder than you might think. It has to be short and enticing, and not a boring plot summary. It’s probably a good thing that this came right after we talked in the SF writing workshop about writing good query letters, and the importance of keeping it short and not writing boring plot summaries. I needed a dose of my own advice, and it was helpful.
Meanwhile, I just got word that scheduling changes at Tor are forcing a delay in the pub date. Auugghhh! Now it’s scheduled for winter of 2008, just a little over a year from now. The good news is that it’ll allow more time for proper preparation, by which we mean getting (we hope) nice quotes from other writers, in time to get the sales and marketing people excited about the book. (You probably thought publishers put all of those quotes on books to entice you to buy them. That’s partly true, but they do it even more to entice sales and marketing to get excited about the books.)
That about all I have on Sunborn right now. But I’ll sign off with the news that wrestling season has just kicked off for my daughter, and she started off with a pin in her first meet. That’s the way to start your senior year!
SUNBORN becomes…SUNBORN
Yes, I have decided to stick with the original title! And I have just five minutes ago emailed the completed manuscript to my editor. (Long, long sigh.) And now…I have been up all night, and I am going to bed. To bed, to bed, to bed….
More on all this later.
Chaos Book #4 — Major Rewrite Done!
Earlier today, a friend asked me by email how the chaos of my Chaos book was coming. Here’s how I answered: “You remember the movie Dr. Strangelove? At the end, where Slim Pickens rides the A-bomb down to its target like a rodeo rider, waving his cowboy hat like a maniac? He shrinks away and the ground rises up fast? That’s where I am in the book.”
Well, a short time ago, I finished up the 2nd major draft of Sunborn—I mean, Cradle of Stars—I mean, Crucible of Stars—I mean, no I don’t know yet what the title is! Who cares? Chaos Chronicles Book 4. Ya-ya-ya-ya-yah!!!
What a killer! But in the end, I started enjoying it and having fun again. I think I straightened out all the insane chapters that made no sense in the first draft, and I cut out maybe 140 pages outright, and added in 100 pages of new. This draft is about 40 pages shorter than the first.
(You understand, don’t you—when I say “2nd draft,” I mean second time through from beginning to end. Pick a scene or chapter at random, and it’s probably had 5 or 8 or 10 drafts.)
Now…I have approximately one week before the date I promised it to my editor, do or die. I start a final pass tomorrow, from page 1. There’s stuff I have flagged for further attention, and I’m sure the early chapters (not looked at in a year!) will benefit from tightening. That’s to get it into good enough shape to send it in, and hopefully for him to say, yeah, we can send this out to people and hope we get some quotes.
Then the real editing begins. But more on that later.
Cradle of Stars? Crucible of Stars? In Search of the Lost Star? No, no….
Jack Williamson (1908 – 2006)
One of the towering giants of the SF field has left us. Jack Williamson, who traveled in a covered wagon as a boy in the American Southwest, and on many a starship in his fiction, died today at the age of 98. His first short story was published in the Dec. 1928 issue of Amazing Stories. His novel The Stonehenge Gate was published in 2005. He won many awards over the years, but most recently he won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards for his novella “The Ultimate Earth.” That was in 2001, and I was proud to be on the same ballot with him (for a novel; I didn’t win).
I didn’t know him well personally, but we served together on the SFWA Awards Rules Committee (formerly the Nebula Awards Committee), and had many email exchanges in the course of that business. I was proud to be on that committee with him, too.
There’s a good summary of his life and career on wikipedia.
Jack, you’re in a greener place now, where royalty checks never come late! Smile down on us and wave!