Monthly Archives: July 2014

How I am Spending My Saturday

I’m signing signature sheets for the Subterranean Press limited signed edition of Unlocked. The amount you see there is what I’ve signed so far; subtract that from the height of the box to the right, and the height of what you have left over is how much I have yet to sign. So the day […]

Read More

Relevant to Recent Discussions

FTC alleges Amazon unlawfully billed parents for millions of dollars in children’s unauthorized In-App charges. To quote myself: “[B]usinesses and corporations are not your friends. They will seek to extract the maximum benefit from you that they can, and from others with whom they engage in business, consistent with their current set of business goals. This does not […]

Read More

My First Job and What it Paid

Via Jim Romenesko, a question from The Billfold Web site about what people’s first jobs were and what they paid, and what that particular job pays now. Romenesko’s spin on the question involves journalism (because his site is focused on that field) and as it happens, that’s where my first post-college job was. My first […]

Read More

The Big Idea: D.B. Jackson

There’s a system to things — especially magic. Why is there a system, and what is its function in telling a story? D.B. Jackson has a few thoughts on the matter, and how it matters to his latest colonial-era fantasy novel, A Plunder of Souls. D.B. JACKSON: Creating magic systems is to writing fantasy what […]

Read More

The Big Idea: Mary E. Pearson

The Beatles once said that love is all you need. This may or may not be the truth, but Mary E. Pearson certainly found love useful and applicable when writing her latest novel, The Kiss of Deception. She’s here now to tell you how love made this particular world go ’round. MARY E. PEARSON: I’ll […]

Read More

So Here’s What Arrived at the Scalzi Compound Just Now

And if you’re going, hmmm, that looks awfully familiar, but I can’t quite place it, let me refresh your memory: Yup, it’s the trade paper (and subsequent printed editions) cover to Old Man’s War, painted by John Harris, who has gone on to do all my subsequent Old Man’s War series covers. The painting went […]

Read More

The Ways the Scalzi Women Are Better Than Me: An Incomplete List

Last week, as part of my general “try to lose weight and get a little healthier because you’re middle-aged now and you don’t want to die” thing, I started going to the local YMCA to use its weight room and indoor track, with my daughter as my workout partner. She’s been on the powerlifting team […]

Read More

Question for the USA Folks, Re: Coins

Were you even aware they’re doing, like, a second set of state quarters? I got the one above in my change yesterday and at first quick glance I thought I’d been given a one euro coin. Which would have been an unusual thing in Bradford, Ohio, to be sure. I think I remember hearing about […]

Read More

Amazon, Hachette, Publishing, Etc — It’s Not a Football Game, People

And now, some thoughts on subjects pertaining to publishing. I’ll use myself as an example for much of this. 1. I am in business with Amazon, though its Audible.com subsidiary. As you might be able to tell by my post yesterday, I am deeply happy with my experience working with Audible (and thus, by extension, Amazon). […]

Read More

The Big Idea: Tobias S. Buckell

As the first named hurricane of the season wanders along off the east coast of the US, it’s perhaps fitting that today’s Big Idea book is Hurricane Fever, by Tobias Buckell. But the hurricanes of this novel take place further south, in the Caribbean — and that’s where its hero comes from, too. Buckell explains […]

Read More

San Diego Update

So, a quick update about my presence at San Diego Comic-con this year, in the form of a dialogue: Hey, Scalzi, are you going to be at San Diego Comic-con this year? Sort of. Define “sort of.” I’ll be at various off-site events, including a reading at the Grand Horton Theater on Thursday afternoon (July […]

Read More

The Lock In Audiobook: Two Versions, Two Narrators. Pre-Order and Get Both

I noted a while back that there would be an audio edition of Lock In, from Audible. What I had not noted, until this very second, is that Audible was planning to do something pretty neat with the audiobook: Namely, that it was recording two complete versions of the book, one narrated by Amber Benson, […]

Read More

%d bloggers like this: