Alive, well, just busy with other writing stuff and occasionally real life too (yes, it exists. Yes, I have one). Go have a good Sunday, people. See you tomorrow.

Chang not Chang, in his capacity as the spokesman for The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club, has this to say about the Hat-tastic picture:

O Wrong Scalzi, what is wrong with this picture?

Give up?

The Executive Committee of The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club is pleased to tell you:

Her Most Glorious Perfect Shimmering Radiant Perfection is nowhere to be seen in this picture.

This is wrong. Make it right.

Very well:

I’m not sure Ghlaghghee entirely approved of the chapeau, however.

I am completely and totally aware of how gobsmackingly lucky I was to meet and marry this person. Thanks for asking. Mind you, I don’t wait until Valentine’s Day to let her know that I know how fortunate I am. Every day is a good day to let those you love know you love them. Not that Valentine’s Day isn’t fun and all. It is. But in terms of letting my wife know how much I love and admire her, it’s just another day around here. I think this is a good way to do things.

So, let those you love know you love them today. And do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. And so on. This is one time where repetition doesn’t get old. Trust me on this one.

The lovely folks at JayMcCarroll.com sent along those buttons named after Zoe Boutin-Perry, and they also dropped into the box the above hat, which Athena claimed for her own and which does in fact look absolutely adorable on her. I also tried it on and regret to say it looks significantly less adorable on me. But I don’t suppose that’s actually all that surprising, is it.

Here’s the particular hat, if you’re taken with it. And while you’re there, of course, don’t forget to stock up on buttons.

Blowing down the houses of pigs I understand: How better to get at the chewy, bacony goodness inside? But taking it out on innocent children’s swingsets? That’s just mean.

However, in point of fact, it was not the big bad wolf who did this dastardly deed, but the big bad windstorm, the very same one which several hours later would cancel my flight out of NYC. This one barreled through Ohio and not only knocked down the swingset but also did enough damage to the roof that we’ve filed an insurance claim. T’was a nasty windstorm, it was.

As regards the swingset itself, it’s not as horrible as it could be, since we were planning to take it down this spring in any event. Athena’s gotten to an age where she’s not using it much, and time has taken its toll on its inherent structural stability anyway — which of course helps to explain its current condition. But it’s still sad. It’s not the way one wishes to see a beloved symbol of childhood go out. Athena’s been consoling herself with Wii, however. I think she’ll make it past this tragedy just fine.

A list of “the top 17 homo love songs.” Oh, go on, you nervous straight person, you. You know you want to see what that link is like, just this once.

Here you go: One of my preferred covers of one of my all-time favorite songs. Enjoy.

And totally knackered. See you all later.

Yesterday my flight out of NYC was cancelled due to high winds, which I believe is the cover story for UFO attacks or something. Nevertheless, I am about to try again to make my way out of the Big Apple. Wish me luck, and avoidance of inappropriate alien probings.

As I was at the Tools of Change conference yesterday, doing a panel in front of a bunch of movers and shakers in the digital publishing field, I decided that it was an excellent time to announce a project I, Bill Schafer and Yanni Kuznia have been working on for a couple of months now: BigIdeaAuthors.com.

What we’re doing is taking “The Big Idea,” the author spotlight feature here on Whatever, and spinning it off into its own site, where we can feature Big Ideas on a daily basis and also offer other neat features, interviews and content. The planned launch date is April 20; between now and then we’ll be busy banging our hammers in the background, putting together a site we think you’re really going to enjoy.

Galleycat ran the scoop about BigIdeaAuthors.com yesterday and followed up with a longer interview with me today; you can also visit the BigIdeaAuthors.com site, which currently features a static page with all the basic “who, what, why, when” information you might want to know.

Naturally, I’ll be telling you all more about this as we go along, but for the moment let me say this is something I’ve been tremendously excited about and couldn’t wait to tell you all is happening. I think it’s going to be a really excellent site, and a place you’ll want to visit every day. There are a lot of Big Ideas behind books, and we’re looking forward to bringing them to you.

P.S.: That awesome big idea author illustration at the top of the entry? Courtesy of Jeff Zugale.

For the AMC column this week, I’m sharing some further thoughts on the 3D process that’s becoming the rage in films (its use in Coraline being the most recent example), and what needs to be done to make it an experience that’s more than just a gimmick. As usual, your thought and comments on the column will we welcome — nay, celebrated — over at the AMC site.

Busy day wondering around NYC, talking at the TOC conference, meeting editors and fighting crime. So you’ll not see too much of me today. But before I go:

* I was asked over on Twitter what I thought about the Authors’ Guild contention that the upcoming Kindle 2′s “text to speech” software violates copyright, apparently on the reasoning that it creates a new derivative work. My thought: Meh. Since I’m not committed to busting down doors and shooting people when they read a book to their kids, worrying about a montone computer voice bleating out the words to a text on a kindle is not something I’m going to stay up nights thinking about either.

My major question is, leaving aside people who are blind or have poor eyesight, and therefore for whom such a thing is manifestly useful, why someone would bother. Computerized text reading is really not the way to experience a novel in audio fashion. I pity the person who thinks a bland computer text reading of Zoe’s Tale is an optimal experience, especially when Tavia Gilbert’s spectaular reading of the book exists out there to get. Yes, one is free and the other isn’t, but you do get what you pay for.

* A very silly article in the New York Times about the new-found angst corporate-type people are having these days about who picks up the check at lunch. Are people really this stupid? Corporate lunches = dates, i.e., whoever asks the other person to lunch pays. If rather than doing business you’re just getting together with colleagues, split the check. There, we’re done, go and sin no more.

* For those of you trying to follow the link in the last entry and having trouble, the big news there is my friend and current Campbell Award winner Mary Robinette Kowal just got a two book deal, the first book of which is tentative scheduled to hit bookstores in spring of 2010. Very exciting stuff. I’m hanging out with her here in NYC and having a lovely time; the two of us got to see Paul Cornell (of Dr. Who fame) and his lovely wife last night at the City Winery, where Mary’s husband works as a wine expert. It’s fun knowing people with interesting lives.

And how are you today?

Who? And for what? Click here for the answer. Seriously, this involves one of my favorite people, so follow that link. I suspect most of you will be happy you did.

No, I’m not RickRolling you. Click the damn link, already.

While I’m winging my way to New York City, a poll for you all:

And when one of these really happens, we’ll blame you. Oh yes we will.

Yes, it’s been an awards-riffic day here, but hey, you know you love those award thingies. So shiny. And even if you don’t vote for the Hugos or Nebulas or Audies or any other award mentioned here today, here’s some awards you can vote for: The 2009 Locus Awards! And why can you vote on them? Because they’re totally free for you to vote on — and they’re online, so it’s just that much easier.

Here’s what you do: Go to the online ballot, enter your identifying information, and then select your favorite works/people in each category. There’s a drop-down menu pre-populated with books from the Locus Recommended Reading List, so you can use those, but if nothing there strikes your fancy you can write in a nominee. Fill the slots in order of preference, the number one slot being your most preferred. Then do the Locus survey at the bottom and you’re done. Simple.

In the interest of disclosure, you’ll find me in the drop-down menus in two categories: Best Young Adult novel (for Zoe’s Tale) and in Best Short Story (for “After the Coup”). Vote for me if you want, or vote for other people/works. There’s lots of good stuff in the menus to choose from (or for you to ignore and do write-ins, if you prefer).

Have fun!

Hey, this is very cool news: Metatropolis has been nominated for an Audie, which are the awards for audio books, handed out by the Audio Publishers Association (here’s a pdf link to the entire Audie nomination slate). We were nominated in the “Original Work” category, which of course makes perfect sense. Here’s the entire list of nominees for the category:

• Brainstorm, by Mariette DiChristina, Narrated by William Dufris, Macmillan Audio
• Louis Vuitton Soundwalk, China: Beijing, by Stephan Crasneanscki, Narrated by Gong Li, Soundwalk
• Many Things Invisible, by Carrington MacDuffie, Narrated by Carrington MacDuffie, Blackstone Audio, Inc.
• Metatropolis, by John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell and Karl Schroeder, Narrated by Michael Hogan, Alessandro Juliani, Kandyse McClure, Scott Brick and Stefan Rudnicki, Audible, Inc.
• The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, by Various Writers, Narrated by Stacy Keach, Blackstone Audio, Inc.
• Sugar Pop Thoughts, by Shayna Lance, Narrated by Shayna Lance, CoolBeat Audiobooks

Naturally I’m very happy about this, and especially happy for my fellow Metatropolitans Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Jay Lake and Karl Schroeder. A bit closer to hope, I hope this helps convince folks to at least consider Metatropolis for the Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form category for the Hugos this year — those don’t have to be all movies, you know.

If you haven’t heard Metatropolis yet, here’s a link to the audio version (it’s also on iTunes) — and for those of you who prefer text, remember there’s an upcoming hardcover edition as well. See: We’ve got you covered.

A question in e-mail:

Love to get your feedback on the blog if you thought the Coraline box office was any good. Does it bode well for my Gaiman movies in the future? Or stop motion for that matter?

For those of you not aware, Coraline brought in an estimated $16.3 million over the weekend, from 2,300 theaters, for $7,100 per theater.

Those are pretty decent numbers, actually. In the stop-motion sub-genre of animated films, it’s the third best opening, after Chicken Run and The Corpse Bride, slightly edging out Wallace & Gromit’s feature-length adventure. If it has the same sort of legs as Wallace & Gromit, then it should end up in the $50 – $60 million domestic gross area, which is sort of the sweet spot for stop-motion theatrical releases, since Wallace, Corpse Bride and The Nightmare Before Christmas all ended up there in their original domestic releases (Nightmare’s added more through additional limited releases). IMDB says the film cost $35 million to make, which seems reasonable, and it was probably another $25 million or so to market (at least), so if it ends up in the $50/$60 million range, that’s a good sign, since it means the film will likely earn out when it hits international markets and especially home video, while it will likely do well and do well over time.

So: Not a monster hit, but I expect it’ll be a profitable film in the long run.

What does it mean for Gaiman films? Well, if indeed it ends up in the $50/$60 million range, I expect it solidifies Gaiman as someone whose work does sufficiently well domestically and earns out in international and home video markets, since this is the story of his previous big-budget films Stardust and Beowulf as well (he was source material for the first and co-wrote the screenplay for the second). This doesn’t make him the hottest property in Hollywood, but it sure as hell doesn’t suck, either. And it bodes pretty well for the recently-announced film adaptation of The Graveyard Book, which gets an additional bump by the fact that it just won the Newberry Award, which is a nice marketing hook. So, yes, Gaiman’s doing just fine. Expect more film adaptations of his work and/or original film work from him.

(What would punt Gaiman into the stratosphere, as I’m sure he knows, is if there is ever a Sandman movie, since a) Warner Bros would spend $100 million minimum making it, because it’s the sort of comic book franchise tentpole summer spectacular insert-your-own-studio-executive-salivating-description-here that movie studios live on, especially these days, and b) two decades worth of pale spiky-haired, kohl-weaing Sandman fanboys would camp out for weeks to see it. And this is even before any discussion of whether you can actually make a good movie out of it (I say yes, but you’d need filmmakers who really get the property — it’s more than a jackass concept, like, say, Transformers). But I have no idea what the status of anything involving making Sandman into a movie is at the moment.)

As for what it means for stop-motion films: I expect it means it’ll continue to be a niche market, since it doesn’t make huge amounts of money. Which suggests that we’ll more likely see it more out of places like Focus Features (the art-house, boutique arm of Universal Pictures, which produced Coraline) than one of the major studios proper. Inasmuch as they all end up on the same silver screen, it’s all the same to me as a viewer.

One final thought about Coraline, which is that while it’s opening weekend gross was in line with other popular stop-motion films, it was almost certainly seen by fewer people because a) inflation of ticket costs from year to year and b) 70% of the gross, as I understand it, came from 3D showings of the film, and it costs more to see those than regular movies. My cost to see Coraline came to $12.50, as opposed to the standard $8.50 ticket for that particular theater; there was a surcharge both for the 3D nature of the movie and for the 3D glasses.

I hesitate to say the 3D artificially bumped up the gross, since the 3D aspect was always part of the plan. But it does present some special challenges going forward. There are only so many theaters/screens ready to play 3D, and in a couple of weeks Coraline’s going to lose quite a few of those to the Jonas Brother’s 3D concert extravaganza. It will be interesting to see if Coraline will slip into 2D screens at these multiplexes, or simply disappear entirely. Either way, I expect it will have a significant effect on the box office take that weekend, above and beyond the natural weekend-to-weekend declines the film would see. But perhaps by the 27th the film will have made enough for this not to be a real big issue. We’ll see.

Update, 2/15/09: Coraline’s second weekend grosses are in and they are very healthy — the film’s gross slipped less than 10% from the first weekend to the second, which means it’s getting very nice word of mouth and/or repeat viewings. To give context, a 40% dropoff from first weekend grosses is pretty much standard these days, and if you drop off 25% or less from your first weekend, you’re doing well. The film’s gross now stands at $35.5 million in two weeks; it will almost certainly cross $50 million before the end of its run and $70 million is not out of reach. It’s doing nicely, in other words. That said, we’ll have to see how the loss of 3D screens will affect it in a couple of weeks.

As of today there are about three weeks left to nominate people and works for this year’s Hugo Awards, which as you know are science fiction’s premier literary awards. Nominations are open to members of last year’s Denvention 3 Worldcon, and to members of Anticipation, this year’s Worldcon, which takes place in Montreal, August 6 – 10. So basically, if you went to Worldcon last year or are going this year, you have a chance to say who and what you want on the Hugo ballot (incidentally: still time to register for this year). At the same time people will also nominate for the Campbell Award, which while not a Hugo goes to the best new writer in the science fiction and fantasy genres.

Because I believe that people should nominate for the Hugos, but that people don’t always know or at least remember what works they should nominate, every year around this time I like to put in a recommendations post, in which all of you gleefully remind people of what novels, stories, people and so on you’d love to see nominated for the Hugos this year. Since a lot of people who nominate for the Hugo also happen to read this site, I figure it’s a good way to get out the word to folks still trying to figure out what they want to put on their ballots.

If you want to make a recommendation for the Hugos/Campbell this year in any category, please put them into the comment thread for this entry (and yes, if you or your work is eligible for a Hugo or the Campbell, you may remind people of such a thing). I have three rules:

1. Make sure what you recommend really is eligible for nomination (i.e., was published in the 2008 calendar year (or for the Campbell, published for the first time in 2007 or 2008); also, know your categories);

2. Do strive for quality (i.e., don’t recommend someone just because they’re your buddy);

3. Don’t recommend me or my work; I already did my award pimp for the year, and it seems doubtful anyone who reads this site doesn’t know that I have works out there. This is for everyone and everything else.

So: Your recommendations for the 2009 Hugos and the Campbell? Share with the people!

The Interstitial Arts Foundation needs a cover for its upcoming anthology. Could you provide it? Could be! Here are all the details on submitting.

Happy Birthday to Mary Robinette Kowal. Who is awesome.

Here, listen to her short story “Evil Robot Monkey,” which she performed at our recent dual reading, and which is eligible for a Hugo nomination, hint, hint.