Just a quick note about hardcovers of The God Engines: Subterranean Press tells me they’re down to the last 150 copies or so, and that since the book is now available in e-book form, there’s no plan to reprint the physical version of the thing. So if you want a copy to put on your shelf, now is a good time to get it. Also, if you want to get it you should probably think about ordering it from SubPress directly, since the copies are sitting in their warehouse at the moment. After these copies are gone, that’s that for the physical versions.

Also, as we’re sort of on the subject of Subterranean Press, publisher Bill Schafer tells me the press is planning a new edition of The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, a three-volume omnibus of Barry Hughart’s fantastic tales from a China that never was. The first of those tales, The Bridge of Birds, is one of my all-time very favorite fantasy novels — such a great balance of wonder, humor and adventure — so if you want some good reading, here you go.

It’s a garden snake Krissy found in the yard; she picked it up rather than mow right over it, which I think was the karmically correct thing to do. Shortly after the picture was taken, Krissy released it again into the yard, also the karmically correct thing to do. We like small snakes; they eat small bugs that would otherwise bother us. So, go, little garden snake! Get those bugs!

Just been away from keyboard for most of the day, spending time with family. Because one is supposed to do that from time to time, rather than be online all day long. See you all tomorrow.

Still without DSL. Have conquered the “computer not finding my mobile hotspot” problem by using the USB tethering option. Nevertheless, preparing for the zombie apocalypse, because clearly this is all a precursor. First the zombies cut the phones, then they cut the rest of the powe

Having my landline and DSL go down once? Fine, things happen. Having it down twice in a week, after it’s been repaired once? Rather less fine.

And no, no cable/WiMax/4G where I am. There’s satellite Internet, but you would get bored with me detailing why I hate it after the first 45 minutes. I have my mobile hotspot but it is cranky and less than optimal.

Which is my way of saying I will likely be scarce here until the landline is fixed. AGAIN. Sigh.

Says what it does, does what it says. Be back when I clear the decks.

The French version of The God Engines showed up today, and it looks fantastic. I suspect, just as Shakespeare is better in the original Klingon, that TGE (now entitled Deus in Machina, which works very well, all things considered) might be even more moody and dark in French. Someone who actually reads French will have to let me know.

If you’re interested in getting it, here’s my French publisher’s page for it, here it is on Amazon in France and in the UK. Sorry, North Americans, it doesn’t seem to be on this side of the Atlantic yet. Now you know what it’s like for everyone else.

And it is thus:

Sorrow in my soul.
Death is bound to everyone.
There’s no point in life.

Heavy, man. Just… wow. Note to self: give daughter a good long hug.

(Athena adds: “Of course none of this is how I actually feel but I just felt like writing it. Hope you enjoyed.” Whew!)

Add your own goth haiku in the comment thread. See if you can out-goth a 12-year-old. I dare you.

Thanks to its location in the house and its inherent poor air circulation, in summer (or late spring, whose heat and humidity makes it feel like summer), my office is regularly ten to fifteen degrees hotter than the rest of the house and, sometimes, hotter than it is outdoors. As it is currently 90 degrees outside (at 7:53pm), these are not optimal work conditions. So yesterday I performed my annual ritual of dragging my window-seated air conditioner out of the basement and hauling it back up into my office. Now my office is a constant and entirely tolerable 75 degrees at all times. I keep the thing on “Energy Saver” mode at all times to be ecologically friendly but I have to admit at a certain point I just don’t want to sweat while I type. I’m a bad green person that way. I plan to recycle extra hard through September to make up for it.

Since it’s a topic of discussion these days.

Scenario: You’ve just done something physically and/or emotionally intimate with another consenting adult human being who is not your spouse/partner.

So, gonna tell your partner?

a) Yes.

b) Any other response.

If the answer is “b,” then there’s a really excellent chance you’re cheating.

“Cheating” is not about whether you’ve physically met someone, whether they’re in the same room with you, the levels of dress you or they are wearing, or whether what you’re doing with them can be quantified on a baseball diamond. Cheating is allowing another person into a level of intimacy your partner expects to be theirs alone. That level of intimacy is not uniform from person to person. There is no guarantee that your partner’s expected level of intimacy will be entirely congenial to you; in that respect what qualifies as “cheating” is not up to you.

Most people get that. Most people also don’t want to hurt their partner and/or don’t want to get caught doing something they know their partner will consider cheating. Which is why any other response than an unqualified “yes” to telling your partner about an intimate encounter with another consenting adult human being is a good first indicator you’ve just done yourself some cheating.

(If you’re having intimate encounters with someone who is not consenting and/or adult and/or a human being, you have other problems as well, which we will not delve into now.)

Note that in my formulation, what anyone else other than your partner thinks is cheating (or not) is immaterial, because those other people are not in the same relationship you are with your partner. Friends/family/workmates/strangers may choose to think you’re a cheating horndog; they may choose to think your partner is being entirely unreasonable about what constitutes “cheating”; they may think you both are idiots. They can have any opinion they want. They can also go fly a kite. In the end, the opinion you need to be concerned about is your partner’s.

If you’re not an idiot (or brand new to the relationship), then you probably should have a good idea what constitutes “cheating” in your relationship. If you don’t know (and aren’t content with being branded an idiot), you should probably ask. It will be a clarifying discussion, if nothing else. If you don’t want to ask, a) you’re an idiot, and b) here’s a tip: if you ever find yourself in a situation where you ask yourself, “this thing I’m doing, it doesn’t really count as cheating, does it?” then the answer is probably “yeah, it does.” Because if you have to ask, etc.

You’re welcome.

Over at FilmCritic.com this week, I go into detail about the various types of sequels you get out of science fiction and fantasy films. Because they definitely slot into types. Oh yes, they do. And don’t worry, we cover the three-quels and more-quels too. And yes, I’m aware that neither  “three-quel” or “more-quel” is a word nor should they be in any sane world. I used them anyway. Because that’s the sort of crazy rebel I am. As always, when you have thoughts and comments, leave them over there at the column site. They like comments over there. It makes them feel alive.

I was on the home phone with my agent earlier today when the line went clickity-click-click and then dropped out entirely — entirely being where the line was completely dead, no dial tone included… and no DSL, either. So now I am once again using the fallback of the cell phone mobile hotspot. But even that’s weirdly wonky: I can connect to it with my iPod Touch and iPad and netbook, but not with my desktop or Cr-48 (which means that particular piece of equipment is entirely useless to me at the moment). And the netbook connection is a bit spotty.

I am informed by the folks at my landline provider that someone will be out within 24 hours to fix the line. So until then, assume I am mostly out of pocket.

It’s savage living this way. Savage, I say.

Whenever I announce a book, I get grousing from people who can’t legally buy or access that book, mostly because it’s not available in whatever country they are in. To explain the details of this, and to give myself a document to which I may refer people when it comes up again, allow me to explain now how this all works.

I live in [insert country here]. Why won’t your publisher let me buy the book here?

Probably because legally, “my publisher” can’t.

First, be aware that “my publisher,” changes from country to country, and that even in the United States I have more than one publisher. In the United States, books of mine still in print are published by Tor, by Subterranean Press, by Rough Guides (a division of Penguin), and by Portable Press. Worldwide, I have over twenty publishers, each focused on one territory and/or language.

When most people think of “my publisher,” they’re thinking of Tor. Well, generally speaking, when Tor buys a book from me, what it’s buying is a license to publish the book, in English, in the US and Canada. I usually retain the rights to sell the book in the rest of the world, including in English in the UK and Commonwealth countries (excluding Canada). Tor doesn’t typically have the right to sell the book, in any form, anywhere else on the planet. So they quite naturally don’t. There are ways to get around this, even without pirating the book, but Tor itself quite naturally sticks to its contract to avoid a) voiding the contract, b) pissing me off.

(Note: See the update below, where my Tor editor makes a correction to the above struck-through assertion.)

Why don’t you let your publisher sell the book in [insert country here]?

Because I want to generate as much money as possible from my writing, since this is how I make my living. Typically speaking I make more money by piecing out the rights to various publishers than I would make letting one publisher sell the books in every territory, both because that second publisher will offer me advance money (which usually is a good deal for the writer) and because that second publisher is better tuned into its own market and will make a better case for the book with the local readership.

It’s not to say I won’t sell further rights to the same publisher if I think it there’s good reason to do so, but at the very least it makes sense to try to sell local rights first.

Your publisher has the right to sell the book in [insert country here]. Why won’t it?

You’d have to ask them. If I had to guess I would expect it’s that often selling a work in a new country — and/or through a distribution arm specific to that country — is more work on the back end than people expect and the publisher has to ask whether it will be worth the time/effort/money to do so. Yes, that sucks. Sorry about that.

You could just put up an electronic version on your site and then I could buy it, even though I live in [insert country here].

Actually, I probably can’t; most of the publishers I work with now take electronic publishing rights in their territories/languages as a matter of course. Even if I could, that would require me to make my own e-versions of the books, which I’m not particularly good at nor have much interest in investing my time/energy. I wouldn’t want to put out an e-version if it’s not at least as good and usable as a professionally published version.

By not making your book available in [insert country here] you are driving to me to possibly illegal measures that will profit you nothing!

Well, no. You might be using it as an excuse, but that’s an entirely different thing. As noted there are ways to work around these things in ways that do not deprive me of royalties. I would prefer you do that, obviously.

That said, if the vagaries of the publishing industry conspire to convince you to do something drastic, here’s what to do: When it becomes possible for you to buy the book in [insert country here], please do so, and then we’re square. If you can’t do that for some unfathomable reason, then take the amount that it would have cost you to buy the book and donate it to a local literacy charity, or to your local library. That would be fine by me.

None of this is to say that I don’t sympathize with your plight, my dear friend in [insert country here] — there are books and other such things I want, not in the US, and I get frustrated when I can’t get them in an easy and convenient manner. I feel your pain. Until we are all one big happy planet together, this is the way these things work.

Update, 6/8/11: Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor at Tor, writes in to tell me I’m wrong about Tor not being able to sell the book elsewhere in the world aside from the US/Canada:

Leaving aside the fact that our standard North American contract also gives us those all-important Philippines rights (an artifact of long-ago imperial possession), there’s also the phrase “and the same rights, but non-exclusively, in the Open Market, i.e., the rest of the world, except for the territories listed on the Schedule of Excluded Territory attached as Exhibuit A.” What this means is that we can sell our English-language edition all over the world except in a bunch of countries that were once part of the British Empire; for instance, we can sell our English-language edition all over Europe, in Japan, in almost all of  North and South America, etc. The only catch, for us, is that we don’t have an exclusive license to sell in those territories; if you sell the same book to a London-based publisher, chances are that their deal will give them the same non-exclusive access to those countries.

Since English is the third most widely-spoken language in the world, it will not surprise you to hear that books in English are sold everywhere. Some English-language books sell very well in parts of the world that are neither the US-and-Canada nor the former British Empire. In the Netherlands, for instance, where English is spoken by practically everyone except for very young children and older rural people, many retail bookstores routinely interfile English-language books from both the UK and the US in amidst books published in Dutch. I have seen our editions of your books for sale in bookstores in Amsterdam and Utrecht–and, for that matter, in Japan’s Narita Airport and in the central train station in Rome. I would hate for anyone who read your post to think that we were breaking the law or disrespecting our contract with you when they come upon such instances of your books’ availability.

There you go, then.

Some time ago I happened to make the Internet acquaintance of Mark Nevin, genuinely first-rank songwriter who came to prominence as the guitarist and primary songwriter of Fairground Attraction (he wrote most of their fabulous album The First of a Million Kisses) and then went on to write or co-write songs for Morrissey, Kirsty MacColl, Lloyd Cole and others. And when I say “made the Internet acquaintance of,” you should understand it to mean “squeed in an unmanly fashion at him, to which he thankfully did not then run away,” and we’ll leave it at that.

As Mark knows I am a fan of his songwriting, he recently and very kindly sent along a copy of his latest solo album, Stand Beside Me in the Sun, which precipitated another bit of unmanly squee (and a reciprocal gift of Fuzzy Nation from me to him), and pointed me in the direction of this rather winsome and amusing video of the song “I Know Where Ray Davies Lives,” which I now pass along to you.

No doubt some of you will note the prominent display of a ukulele, which I myself have recently picked up. They are everywhere, people.

I’m not so lacking in vanity that I won’t admit to this being nice:

Coffee Shop at the moment is the number one writing book on Kindle (and #3 writing book of any sort on Amazon). It’s nice while it lasts. And it’s gratifying to see this much interest in a book this far along in its life cycle (it was originally released in 2007, after all). So, thank you, folks. I appreciate it.

Seriously, dude? You’re not some frat boy, you’re a congressional representative. You shouldn’t have to be told “no sextweets for you,” you should know it on your own. And if you didn’t know it, that other congressional representative — from your own state! — who made an ass of himself on Craigslist earlier this year should have been a warning. But, I don’t know. Maybe you thought this was the sort of thing that only happened to Republicans. Surprise! Married Democrats probably shouldn’t do certain things either, and mailing around pictures of your swaddled member is one of them.

Ugh. I’ve been waiting for this particular announcement since Weiner admitted that he couldn’t be sure the picture wasn’t of him. I’m going to say it again: One probably does know one’s own package, and at the very least one also knows if one makes a habit of sending ill-advised pictures of one’s self of the Tubes. As soon as Weiner employed that particular hedge, the clock was on the play and it was just a matter of time until he either he admitted it, or the evidence piled up at his door. Weiner picked the more honorable route in terms of dealing with it (that is, after having lied about it to begin with), but once more: Dude. What were you thinking. And the answer, quite obviously: He wasn’t thinking at all, or more aptly wasn’t thinking with his brain.

For the record, I have no real issue with people sexting or sextweeting or sex-whatever-ing their little brains out; if it gives you joy, go ahead. Everyone has their hobbies. That said, this particular hobby does come with repercussions and responsibilities. Toward the former, as suggested earlier, this is one of those hobbies contraindicated by high-profile public service, especially if one has no stomach toward owning up to it when caught (and one would be caught sooner than later). Toward the latter, the relatively newlywed Mr. Weiner should have disclosed to his wife his little hobby, which he apparently did not until this morning, which was no doubt the least comfortable conversation in the history of the Weiner-Abedin breakfast nook.

If she had been fine with it — and who knows? There have been stranger things — then, well. Still not smart for a congressman, but then it would fall under the “hey, their life” category. But, look: When you’re married or otherwise in a deeply serious relationship, all the cards are out on the table. No one likes surprises, and more to the point, your spouse (or the equivalent) deserves better than to get a surprise like this.

In sum: Stupid. Just plain stupid.

Athena’s first official day of summer vacation? Sick, and heading to the doctor’s for an appointment. Hopefully it will get better from here. I may take her for ice cream in any event. Because, come on. Ice cream fixes everything.