Monthly Archives: February 2008

A Gut Check Moment for SFWA

(Note: this is a long rant about SFWA. If you don’t care about SFWA, you can skip it. If you do care, get a snack.) A question from the peanut gallery: Since you’re not running for SFWA president, do you mind sharing your thoughts about that race this year? Not at all. Basically, this is […]

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Registration Changes at Whateveresque

Because of the immense number of attempted spambot sign-ups at Whateveresque, I’ve decided to change the way I do member registrations there. From now on, I will register people for memberships there on the 1st and 15th of each month, rather than on a rolling basis, as I had done. This will accomplish two things. […]

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Congratulations Holly Black and Steven Gould

It’s a good weekend for writers of my more or less general acquaintance: The Spiderwick Chronicles, based on the book written by my pal Holly Black, came in 3rd in the weekend box office with a healthy $19 million (which is right about what I told a friend of mine it would gross, so I […]

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A Couple of Nice Things

A quick note of some accolades sent my way recently: * The Last Colony popped onto SFSite’s Reader’s Choice Best of 2007, along with Axis, Brasyl, The Name of the Wind (which took top honors) and six others. The Ghost Brigades was on this list last year, so it’s nice to see the series continue […]

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“Zoe’s Tale” Auction to Benefit the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust

The Short Version: I have recently completed my newest book, Zoe’s Tale, and am offering a special pre-publication bound manuscript version of the novel to auction to benefit the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust. This is an exclusive and extremely rare version of this novel (only four other copies of this edition exist) and […]

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Reminder: Free eBooks from Tor

I mentioned last week about how Tor was giving away free eBooks of popular titles (including Old Man’s War) to those folks who signed up to receive a newsletter; well, the e-mail about first of these titles, Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris Mistborn, just showed up in my mail queue. It’s a PDF file, and it looks […]

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Kaboom

Windows updated today, automatically, and then as it was installing the update (“do not restart or unplug the computer!”) it crashed, offering up a blue screen of death and forcing a reboot. Now this picture represents as far as it will actually go in the signing on process — I can’t even access the boot […]

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My Gothy Valentine

For your Valentine’s Day pleasure, allow me to unload unto you a classic-yet-underrated slab of late 20th Century goth romantic mopery: “Stand Inside Your Love,” by The Smashing Pumpkins: This is actually one of my favorite Smashing Pumpkins songs, because for as much as Billy Corgan is an object lesson in how overcompensating neurotic self-importance […]

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Customer Service Question

So, in my neverending quest to keep Whatever interesting to all y’all, a question: The Whateverettes (over there on the sidebar): Are you aware of them? Do you click on the links from time to time? Are they a valuable addition to your daily Whatevery? Please let me know. And remember, this is for posterity, […]

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The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem

To begin, know that for reasons too tiresome to recount here, I started the morning with trauma involving a cat.  This occasioned me standing in front of my bathroom mirror and observing all the various places I was bleeding from the head. My first thought was not “let’s get out the hydrogen peroxide.” It was, […]

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Gaze Upon its Gazeuponableness!

Look what just arrived in the mail: Yes, it’s one of five printed and bound copies of the completed manuscript of Zoe’s Tale that exist in all the world. One copy is mine, one goes to my wife, and two are gifts. As for the fifth copy… well, some of you will recall that I […]

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Also, Since People Have Been Asking

Of the $164,000 I made from writing last year, about $120,000 of it was from writing fiction. The rest is from other sources, including non-fiction book advances and royalties, blogging for AOL and various one-off projects. Of the fiction money, the most significant chunk came from royalties from Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades […]

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Three More Links About Writing and Money

In addition to the Jim C. Hines link about writing and income I posted earlier: * Catherine Shaffer is talking about non-fiction freelancing (NB: Up until last year, this sort of freelancing was the largest single chunk of my income); * Agent Jennifer Jackson breaks down what new writers can expect out of their first […]

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Various & Sundry 2/13/08

More bits and pieces: * First, dig this: The super-mega-ultra deluxe versions of Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades: These things are wrapped in so much leather that when I took them out of the shipping box, I thought I’d stepped into a boot store. The insides of the tray cases you see here […]

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More Writing “Advice”

Not from me, from Stephen Granade. Here’s a sample: Here’s the thing that you, the would-be fiction writer, have to understand about writing and publishing: it’s a big conspiracy. It’s a cabal. There are probably robes and secret handshakes and driving around in tiny cars while wearing fezzes. You can tell because every published writer […]

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