Athena has had school two days in all of February so far, thanks to a combination of being ill and then several snow days. So today was supposed to be a makeup day, even though it was President’s Day, i.e., an official holiday. But then nature decided today would be the day it drops an additional six to nine inches of snow on the area, so — yet another snow day. Athena is currently spending it on my office couch, eating an apple and watching episodes of iCarly on Netflix streaming.

Me: I’m worried that everything you’ve learned is now just falling out of your head.

Athena: What? Like I will forget how to walk and breathe?

Me: No, like you’ll forget about the War of 1812. What do you remember about the War of 1812?

Athena: They ran through the briars, and they ran through the brambles. And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn’t go.

Me: Hmmm. I’m going to let you slide on that one.

Because, to be fair, what do you remember of the War of 1812? Yeah, that’s what I thought. And you don’t have the snow day excuse.

They get along quite well, actually. Oh, occasionally Kodi will chase Ghlaghghee and occasionally Ghlaghghee will whap at Kodi as she walks by, but most of the time it’s a peaceable kingdom. Which is as it should be. There’s a lesson for us all here, mostly involving the desirability of sleeping on the carpet, but maybe also about making the effort to live together in harmony. No, okay, it’s mostly about carpet napping. Sorry.

In real life, the sun pillar was a lot less diffuse than it looks here. But a mushroom cloud sunset is interesting in its own way, no?

Disclosure: I photoshopped out the top of my neighbor’s TV antenna. Because it was in the way, that’s why.

Hope your Valentine’s Day is full of love & chocolates, in the proportions most pleasing to you. Here’s some stuff I’m thinking about today, mostly not relating to love and/or chocolates:

* Jay Lake explains why you shouldn’t listen to him (and by extension any established author) if you’re a new author, as relates to breaking into the science fiction publishing field. His line of reasoning here is that his experience of breaking into the field is a decade old now, and what worked for him then isn’t necessarily going to be what’s going to work now, just as the advice that he heard about breaking in from old pros wasn’t necessarily applicable when he was the new kid on the block.

I think Jay’s got it about half right here. He’s entirely correct that the field is changing — and that the field has always been changing — and that the experience of breaking into the field is different at different times, and that aspiring authors should factor that in while listening to the old farts go on about how to break into the field, based on their own now outdated experience. On the other hand, while certain specifics change, there’s lots of general advice that’s applicable year in and year out, much of it relating to learning how to value your time and your work, and avoiding the type of folks who prey on aspiring writers’ lack of knowledge of the field. Newer writers put themselves at a disadvantage if they discount advice on that simply because the person offering it debuted a decade or two (or three) previous.

In short (and I think this is what Jay was aiming to say), filter the advice you get about the science fiction market with your own knowledge and experience. Also — this is me, not Jay — recognize that the person whose specific advice on the market may be shaky may yet still give you good general advice on selling you work (or vice versa). No one person is a 100% accurate font of advice. As an aside, I do think it’s more useful to get advice from the people who realize this fact, than the people who don’t.

* Related to this, this bit has been going around the Internets recently (I was pointed to it by Toby Buckell): No One Knows What the F*** They’re Doing, which is an examination of why even (and especially) competent people feel like impostors who are just faking it. The irony of this is of course while competent people feel like this, there are piles of totally incompetent bastards who wander about the landscape alleging to know what they’re doing, and completely screwing things up as they do so.

I find what this fellow has to say relatively non-controversial and also within my own experience of things, although I am personally a little less neurotic about the phenomenon than he is; while I still more than occasionally have the “who thought it would be a good idea to let me do this?” thought, I also see the fact that I have it as a positive sign that I haven’t in fact crawled up my own asshole in terms of ego and self-regard. Also, at age 40, I’m finally comfortable with the fact in most situations someone has to be the grown-up, and sometimes it will have to be me. Fair enough.

What I think the smartest thing this fellow has to say, however, is on the subject of education, and how it serves not only to expand the category of Things You Know, but also serves to expand your awareness of the vastly larger category of Things You Don’t Know, and with the expansion of that awareness comes a commensurate drop in the chance you’ll do something dangerous (or stupid), because you’re not aware that you don’t know what you don’t know. I think this is exactly right, and it’s something I also see in my own experience — the older I get the more I realize a) just how much I don’t know and b) how much better my life is when there are competent people around who can handle “a)” for me so I can do the things I do know and am competent to do.

This not coincidentally goes back to earlier conversations here as to why publishers will not go away anytime soon, and why so many of us who are actual working writers eventually get exasperated and irritated with people who blithely vomit gouts of nonsense about publishers being inessential middlemen and aren’t we lucky that in the future we’ll be able to do all those silly publishing tasks ourselves. “Lucky” isn’t the word most of us would use for that.

* On the subject of author exasperation, Seanan McGuire has it, as regards people (primarily those with eBook readers) who in the wake of the Amazon/Macmillan thing are up in arms about “greedy authors,” as apparently all us authors are unspeakably rich jerks who like nothing better than to take money from the sort of people who will pay hundreds of dollars for an eBook reader but are then outraged if the cost of an eBook exceeds an arbitrary but low price point. McGuire reminds all and sundry that in fact the vast majority of authors aren’t rich (or even making a living off their writing), and that to many of us on the writing side of the equation, the hissy fits certain readers are having at the moment, much of it based on ignorance of the author’s role in publishing and pricing, are just plain frustrating.

To which, of course, those particular readers are perfectly entitled not to care, since at the end of the day their concerns aren’t the concerns of the authors’ — they want something to read at a price they’re willing to part with, and they don’t want to have to wait until the publisher drops the price to that level. It’s the difference between being a producer and a consumer. I think one of the really interesting things about the Amazon/Macmillan scuffle is that it exposed to the public not only the tensions between those two corporations, but also between authors and (at least some) readers.

Here’s some music for it.

From this album, by this artist.

In a very unique setting over Earth’s colorful horizon, the silhouette of the space shuttle Endeavour is featured in this photo by an Expedition 22 crew member on board the International Space Station, as the shuttle approached for its docking on Feb. 9 during the STS-130 mission.

It’s nice to live now sometimes.

Larger versions here.

And yet, if you are of an age, also terrifyingly right:

Seriously, these dudes have got to be high all the time to do stuff like this.

Today I went to Jay & Mary’s Book Center, my local indie bookstore, to get some new books with Athena. I came through the door, saw a display for the Halo Encyclopedia, said “hey, cool,” and made a beeline for it, because I knew Toby Buckell advised on it and I wanted to take a look at it. I was so engrossed in it that I didn’t notice that the folks at J&M had a whole stack of God Engines right next to it, and continued not to notice the presence of TGE in the store until I was paying for Athena’s books at the register, looked up and noticed they had copies in a wall display. At which point Athena mocked me for missing the previous stack despite it being inches away from my nose. I have to admit it’s not like me to miss something like that. But, hey: Halo, man. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

All of which is a long way of saying that Jay & Mary’s Book Center in Troy, Ohio now has about eight signed copies of The God Engines on sale ($17!), and I suspect if you called them and asked to buy one, they’d probably ship it to you for a reasonable price.

Update, 2/12: They’re sold out now, but are ordering a new batch for the store and will take your order for those. And, yeah, if you make an order with them in the next couple of days (say, by Sunday, 2/14), I’ll go down to the bookstore and sign your copy.

This week’s AMC column: Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Winter, I Learned From Science Fiction Movies. I offer up “useful” tips on cold and snow from The Empire Strikes Back, The Thing, The Day After Tomorrow and others. And yes, “useful” is in quotes for a reason. Go on over.

Yes, like all forward-thinking folk I have switched on Google Buzz, because what I need more than anything else in the world is to have yet one more social network to be on. That said, my reaction to it so far seems to be similar to the reaction of most of the people I’ve seen on it, which is “okay, now what?” Because to be blunt about it, if GBuzz is just replicating what I already have going on Facebook/Twitter, I’m not going to end up using it much, because I already have Facebook and Twitter accounts, and GBuzz porting itself into my GMail isn’t enough to make it special or convenient. So we’ll see how to shakes out.

I will say that I think Google may eventually have to accept that short of actually buying either Twitter or Facebook, they’re not going to make a huge amount of headway into the social media sphere. Their other attempts in this direction don’t seem to have amounted to anything, unless you’re Brazilian, in which case Orkut rocks your socks. Good for you, Brazil; I celebrate your social media lifestyle choice. But otherwise, meh. Again, we’ll have to see.

Anyway, if you want to follow me on GBuzz, after you sign in to the service, click the “find people” link and then type in my name, and it should be pretty easy from there.

Oh, look: I’ve cracked Technorati’s overall top 100, holding the anchor position, situated directly below Perez Hilton, which, I assure you, is a surprise to us both. This won’t last; last week due to Amazon/Macmillan I had a massive spike in readership (and linkage, which is what Technorati really tracks). It’s since come down to my normal levels, plus a small overall lift in people who’ve showed up for the first time last week and then decided to stick around, and linking will follow that path as well. So soon enough I’ll slink back down to the 300s or wherever it is I usually am these days — Technorati’s ranking system has become frightfully opaque outside of specific category rankings.

But, you know. I’ll enjoy my stay on the blogging A-list while I can (i.e., until tomorrow), and promise to remember where I came from, and to keep it real, etc. You want any souvenirs from the A-list club house? I think I see some coasters they won’t miss. I’ll just move Perez’s drink off one. Shhh. Don’t tell him it was me.

Because a number of e-mails I’ve gotten in the last week are similar to other e-mails I’ve gotten this week from other people, rather than respond to them privately with more or less the same responses, I’ll go ahead and answer them generically.

Why haven’t you been talking about [insert particular political thing here]?/You should talk about [insert political thing here].

The answer to why I haven’t been talking about it, whatever it is, politically speaking, is that a) I was recently busy commenting on the Amazon/Macmillan thing, which took up a fair amount of my brain, b) I did several days of travel, which keeps me out of the loop with the news, and c) at the moment I’m not hugely engaged in the day-to-day political scene because I personally have other things to think about, including stuff that doesn’t get put into the blog. It’s been an extraordinarily busy few weeks for me, actually. So short of a coup, at the moment what’s going on in Washington hasn’t been grabbing my interest. Don’t worry, I’m sure eventually I’ll come around to it again.

Have you seen [insert late-breaking commentary regarding Amazon/Macmillan kerfuffle]? It shows why Amazon won/why Macmillan won that fight.

Yes, I’ve probably seen it; no, I don’t suspect it does in fact show how one or the other the two companies won. In a very narrow sense Macmillan “won” this particular corporate negotiation because it appears to have gotten Amazon to accept a distribution model Macmillan prefers; likewise in a very narrow sense Amazon “lost” a PR battle because its PR strategy was to say or do nothing, which allowed others to define Amazon’s position. But the implications of the negotiation are far-reaching rather than truly lending themselves to an immediate “win”/”lose” formulation, and in both cases life goes on and both companies will adjust their strategies to incorporate the results. Now that the drama is done I sort of strongly suspect that in another week even the people most engaged in the Amazon/Macmillan thing will move on, just like we’ve all moved on from the Conan O’Brien/Jay Leno thing. Doesn’t the Conan/Leno fight seem so long ago now? Yes, exactly.

However, in the immediate aftermath of the A/M kerfuffle, I got a lot of these e-mails:

Just to let you know, I won’t buy one of your eBooks unless it’s at [insert desired price here] or less.

My response to this one has been pretty consistent: So don’t buy my eBooks until they are at a price you desire. That makes perfect sense to me, and I suspect my publishers will eventually pick up on that message as well, which, frankly, would suit me just fine. And for most eBook owners, that’s as far as the conversation goes or needs to go. They have legitimate concerns about book costs and I want to assure them that I’m fine with them buying my work electronically at the right price for them. I think everyone comes away happy with that sort of exchange.

That said, there’s a rather smaller percentage of eBook owners who attempt to use that statement as a threat; i.e., I won’t buy your books unless you jump through this particular hoop so you better jump through that hoop if you don’t want to be poor. To which my response is: Dude, fuck off, already. I know how many eBooks I sell, both as a raw number and as a percentage of my overall sales, and I can say this with some authority: I won’t much miss your ass, and at the moment, neither would most authors. Even Amazon knows this: There was a reason Amazon delisted Macmillan’s paper books as well as its electronic books — it knew perfectly well which of the two was going to hurt Macmillan (and tangentially, its authors) more.

I think inside the eBook tunnel it’s hard to remember that these really are the early days of this manner of distribution. A lot of things militant early adopters apparently thought were settled (such as the ideal price for an eBook) are still well in play, as we have just seen. The folks thinking that the eBook market as it is now is as it should/must/will be in the future are like Internet folks in 1994 unilaterally deciding that the online world was going to be USENET and gopher servers forever, because really, what else was there. Surprise! There was more. There will be more in the eBook market, too.

I offer up a rather substantial amount of work online, for free, and have done so for over a decade, and otherwise have a history of being quite friendly to the concept of electronic distribution of my work. So I feel entitled to be less than impressed with that (thankfully small) percentage of eBook fans who believe that their purchase of an electronic reader makes them an instant expert on the market segment, or obliges me or any author to put their desires and demands ahead of everyone else’s, and who presume to lecture me on either or both. Yes, Mr. Techy McLecturepants, I get that having an expensive, shiny gadget makes you feel entitled. But this is not my problem, and if you try to make it my problem, I’m likely to be rude to you.

How’s the SFWA election coming along?

It’s proceeding with a genuine minimum of drama, actually. Which is boring for you, the outside observer, but for which I think I, the other candidates and most of SFWA’s membership are grateful for.

Why were you in LA? Huh? Huh? Huh?

I was in LA because a year ago I got bounced off a flight and got a free round trip out of it that was going to expire, so it seemed like a good time to go out there and eat Double-Doubles. Oh, and to take some meetings with my film agent and my non-fiction agent, both of whom are located there. Be aware that “take some meetings” sounds rather more mysterious and exciting than it was. Sorry to disappoint. I’m secretly boring. Don’t tell.

While I was there I also saw some friends, because as most of you know I grew up in LA. One highlight was having lunch with my friend Kyle, who was my best friend in second grade and who I had not seen since then. 30 years is a lot to catch up with, so it was a long lunch. And I’m delighted to say that even after a 30-year hiatus, the friendship is still there. Seriously, how cool is that.

And that’s all the generic e-mail responses I have for you today.

There’s a new review of The God Engines at the book review site Blood of the Muse, and I couldn’t ask for a better recommendation. An excerpt:

A vastly rich tale set in a theocratic universe, The God Engines is a modern sci-fi classic, an intriguing examination of faith and worship and godhood. Intelligent and provocative, the narrative reminds me of a classic Twilight Zone episode, well-written, multi-leveled and rich with ideas. The God Engines is the best thing yet from John Scalzi and worthy of award consideration. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

And there you have it. Remember that you can read the first chapter of it here.

One problem that we’ve had with The God Engines is that it initially sold so quickly that retailers had a difficult time keeping it in stock; if you looked at the Amazon page for it, for example, it often said that it would be available in “3 to 6 weeks.” Well, Subterranean Press ordered up more printings and now they’ve made their way to retailers; Amazon now lists it as “in stock,” and you should be able to order it from your local bookseller. Remember also that Borders took an order of copies, so if you have a Borders in your neighborhood, it’s entirely possible you’ll find the book on the shelf there. Which is awesome. All of which is to say: Now available everywhere. Enjoy.

Our excellent neighbor Bob plowed our driveway yesterday afternoon, as he is wont to do when there’s lots of snow, but then snowdrift overnight covered the driveway once more, and deceptively so, as Krissy found out when she drove into snow she thought was a couple inches deep at most but turned out to be several inches deeper than that (the snow shovel there, with its blade completely buried in snow, is there for your visual edification). We ended up spending a fair portion of our morning digging out the car and guiding it back into the garage. So much for any plans we might have had to go anywhere. Not that I go anywhere, mind you. But the other people in the house do, from time to time. Not today.

By the way, the German up there in the title is totally fake. Real Germans are wincing at it.

Icy stalactaciousness fail, on my very own roof. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Our dog in her natural habitat:

Photo by Krissy, who took it whilst I was away.

Hey, kids, look! It’s Hugh, the Hugo-Impaled Headcrab! And he has something he wants to say to us all! Let’s lean in close (but not too close) and listen to what he has to say:

“Hello, geeks of Earth! Did you know that this is science fiction awards nomination season? Well it is! Hugo nominations are due within the next month, and for those of you humans who are also members of SFWA, Nebula nominations are due by the end of the week! There’s no time to lose! So don’t just stand there like a headcrab impaled on a Hugo! Get nominating!”

What wise and telling words, Hugh. Yes, indeed, it’s time to make those nominations, and in doing so let the world know what you think is the best science fiction of the year.

But wait: You say you know what you’re going to nominate in some categories but not in others? You say that you wouldn’t mind hearing suggestions about what to read so as to consider it for nominations? You also say that you wouldn’t mind sharing your own suggestions for Hugo and Nebula-worthy work in the past year?

Excellent. Because as it happens, I’m creating this very thread to be a repository for science fiction award nomination suggestions. Geeks of the world, fill this thread with the novels, stories, movies and other stuff you think is worth nominating for the year. There are only two rules:

1. Make sure that what you’re suggesting is actually eligible for nomination (for the Hugos, that means it was released in the 2009 calendar year; for the Nebulas, released from July 1, 2008 through December 31, 2009), and fits in the current categories for the Hugos and the Nebulas, and their associated awards (the Campbell Award for Best New Writer; the Andre Norton and Bradbury Awards);

2. Don’t suggest anything by me, because I’ve already done my own award pimpage post, and this is for everything else.

Also, if you are someone eligible for an award, don’t be shy: Feel free to recommend your own work. You’ll note I did an award pimpage post of my own, so clearly I’m not opposed to people tooting their own horn. And, you know. 40,000 folks visit here daily. Some of them nominate for awards. Tell ‘em about your stuff.

So: What do you suggest for the science fiction awards this year? Tell us all in the comments.

The last two days in LA were really nice and clear and gorgeous, but I am told that more rain is arriving today, so I escaped that… to come back to my house basically being encased in snow, with more snow falling today (and indeed, you can see that falling snow in the picture). To be sure, we’re not getting the same volume of snow the east coast is currently getting, which are historic amounts. But we’re getting our share. School was canceled today, as it was yesterday, and may yet be tomorrow, confirming February once again as “That Month the Kid Don’t Get No Edumacation.” She’s downstairs at the moment watching Phineas & Ferb. That’s educational, right? It does feature a mad scientist.

Anyway. Hi, I’m home.