Princess Mononoke is on. Dude. This is some good stuff.
So, there’s plenty to update. First, I gave the website a new look, including the title and official description of the December Dirk & Steele book. Look out, Eye of Heaven! Second, A Taste of Crimson has made it into the RITAs, which is fantastic and unexpected. Congrats to all the other finalists, who I’m sure are thrilled. Also, congrats to all the wonderful writers like Scalzi, Cory, Ian, Kelly, Picacio, and others, who have been nominated for Hugo awards. You guys rock.
Here’s a very short excerpt from The Red Heart of Jade, set for a release in July 2006.
Some other stuff:
Hal Duncan (who I think I met outside the bar of the Concourse when I was in Madison), has this to say about writing:
There is really only one way to be a writer: start writing, carry on writing, and keep on writing until it’s five in the morning. A mix of uppers (e.g coffee) and downers (e.g. cigarettes) can keep you balanced for an indefinite period on the knife-edge between consciousness and complete collapse. This is known as “the Zone”. Remember: sleep-deprivation is the poor man’s hallucinogen.
That is so true (though I’m not a smoker).
PBW has been writing a series of great articles about publishing that should be required reading, at least as a jumping off point. Just go to her blog and scroll down and down and then go back a week or two.
And here’s the Novel as Dictator by Douglas Clegg:
Just got a question from a reader who expressed that it must be a joy to write for a living because I get to do it in my jammies and on my own schedule, and I have no boss, and the usual myths.
First, I have the harshest boss in the world: a novel. And every time one is done, I get a new boss: the next novel. And no two bosses are alike.
It doesn’t matter what a publisher or an agent or a reader or a reviewer or I want. The novel wants more and better and stronger and is happy to do me bodily harm in order to get it.
I have readers and reviewers who tell me I should only write one kind of novel. But I don’t have a choice in the matter: whatever novel is there wanting to be written is what gets done. The novel is a tyrant and a dictator. I’m just the writer trying to keep up with it. No matter how I feel about a previous novel and what it meant to me, the current novel wants more and better and finer and smarter and a new journey for itself. I can’t return to five-books-ago to recapture that past; the current book wants none of it. The current novel wants me to push forward into new territory.
Second, no jammies.
Personally, I’m all about the jammies. I mean, what’s the point of working at home if you have to get dressed in the morning and, like, bathe? Sheesh. But I’m with him all the way about everything else.
And last, for all you Gargoyles fans, this should be enough to make you squee your pants. I present to you, an interview with Greg Wiseman!!!