Sunday, February 27, 2005

 

Stross on writing

Charlie Stross on Writing

A terrifically insightful view into the realities of genre publishing by one of SF's brightest burning stars, Charlie Stross. I very much wish I'd read something like this when I was 20, but like Stross I was forced to work it out from first principles. I suppose the vast majority of genre writers are well into their thirties before they work out how publishing really works. At World Fantasy Convention in Tempe this last October I was talking with Graham Joyce about how grateful I am about my fifteen years of abject failure--if I'd succeeded in selling my first novel right out of college, I would not now be the writer that I have become--when Graham told me that writers weren't supposed to be published before they were in their mid-thirties. Not a sentiment I'd heard expressed before, but having heard it, I thought it made perfect sense.

In an alternate dimension, somewhere out in the exfoliating worlds of the multiverse, there is an analogue Chris Roberson who sold his first novel to a big NY publishing house in 1992, and went on to a middling career as a pseudo-intellectual literary writer in the years that followed. I'm just glad I'm not him.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

 

Well, that took longer than expected...



This past week the final proofs were signed off, last minute tweaks made to the cover and indicia page, and by the end of March copies should be on bookstore shelves. The inaugural title from Robert Rodriguez's imprint Troublemaker Publishing, FRANK MILLER'S SIN CITY: THE MAKING OF THE MOVIE, which I edited, is a monster of a book at 272 full color pages. When I originally took the job of assembling the contents, I figured it wouldn't take more than a couple of months from start to finish. That was the better part of a year ago. Done with the help of designer Kurt Volk and prepress virtuoso Sean Lackey, the book is something of which I'm quite proud.

On Monday, we send to the printer the last of the five tie-ins we've packaged for Rodriguez's next movie, "The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3D," of which I'm quite proud as well (particularly the two young readers novels I cowrote). Then I've got a novel to write before I start working on MonkeyBrain's Fall 2005 lineup. And a pile of comic scripts to finish. I think I used to understand the concept of "free time," but if I did, I've long forgotten all about it.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

 

Locus Online: 2004 Recommended Reading

Locus Online: 2004 Recommended Reading

I've finally caught up with the most recent Locus, and was surprised to find my story "Red Hands, Black Hands" from the December 04 Asimov's on the list. Very cool.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

 

Message in a Bottle

I come from a long line of late adopters. My parents refused to have an answering machine in their house for years, and even after succumbing to the lure of the "machine," they steadfastly refused to add Call Waiting to their phone service for another several years, forcing their children to endure endless busy signals when trying to phone home on the weekends. They tried internet access at the house for a while, but it didn't really take, and in the end they decided they'd just use it at the office and let that be an end to it.

So you can hardly blame me for being one of the last people at the blogging party. I come by it honestly.

Seeing as we're already half a decade into the new century, I figured I might as well try to catch up with the end of the 20C, and start up an online journal of my own. Here, on Interminable Ramble, I'll mostly be writing about writing, and about those things that affect my writing--but, considering that virtually everything I encounter ends up in my writing in one form or another, so that's a pretty broad field. I'll probably end up ranting occasionally about things that I've read, or TV shows and movies I've enjoyed (or otherwise), or things about publishing in general. Of course, there's every chance that this will end up one of those blogs or journals that are updated once or twice in the early weeks, and then months and months pass before another update is seen again, if ever. Then again, I might update the damn thing hourly. Who knows?

In any case, this is the inaugural post, and we'll see where things go from here. Truly a message in a bottle, written at this point without any notion whether anyone will read it or not.

This page is powered by 

Blogger. Isn't yours?