The tide comes in, the tide goes out

"Scrimshaw Man" is once again in submissions to Andromeda Spaceways In-flight Magazine. Good luck on the opposite side of the world, little poem.

Bells will be ringing the sad, sad news

So Roddy "the Bleep" Blagojevich is going to fight it out. And he just can't wait to tell the people of Illinois his side of the story, which he's going to do RSN.

Hey, Rod, see all those people with the cameras and microphones? You know about microphones, don'tcha? Yeah, those are called "reporters." They have these things called "news outlets." Yeah, those are the people you want to tell your side of the story to.

Hear that sound? Yeah, I know it's kind of hard to hear it over all the bells that are ringing for thee, but that was the last of your credibility doing a belly flop on the concrete from one of those bell towers.

Time to write your book.

Oh, and there's this Republican Senator (sorry, although you've been on the air a few times I haven't caught your name) going around "poo pooing" the Democrats because he thinks they're trying to avoid an open election to fill the seat because (gasp) a republican might win it.

1) Live that dream, pal. 2) No, that would be a Republican strategy, us Democrats actually believe in democracy and 3) Democrats also believe in the rule of law. It's something you republicans give lip service to, but obviously you don't know WTF you're talking about because it's the Law that the Governor appoints Senate replacements.

And while we're at it, you know, everybody involved with the investigation has cleared Obama and his staff of any tainted involvement with this case (most importantly the people who've heard all the tapes and are bringing the criminal case). And yet I continue to see and hear the right wing farting class try and make a link because, "We just don't know the whole story." Yeah, I'm sure there's something about Intelligent Design that links Obama to Blagojevich's criminal activity. Oh, I know, there's probably a link through Ayers. Better get Rush on that.

Boomerang Submission! And let me sleep on it.

Leah Bobet over at Ideomancer sends word that they're over bought with poetry and so will be closed to new poetry submissions for a few months. edited for clarification

There was that little voice in the back of my head that told me not to close out all those browser windows last night. Those windows included all my searches. Ah, well. I think I know where I'll send it next anyway. Just need to double check to see that they're still open.

This is okay, because on the way in today not only did I come up with two different edits for A History of Lightning (which solve two problems I was having last night, which I wasn't very happy with my solutions then, but I think these work better) I also had a different idea for the second stanza of the poem. Yes, they're all on a little scrap of paper right in front of me.

Unfortunately I need to start focusing on house work and I've got stories to critique for Sunday. Hmm. Think I might not be sleeping Friday and Saturday nights.

Lightning strikes again

Just finished the first full run through. Changed a character's name. Can't believe I missed so much before.

We're at 4521 words. Down another 158. Still more to go, but I'm not sure I'm going to make 4250. Maybe 4400 the next time. There are some darlings that I could cut, but they really do help set place and mood. I'm not saying this because they're my darlings, I'm going from comments during the critique.

Very tired. Go up before o'dark thirty this morning to drop things off before thinking I had a long commute to work because of weather. This morning wasn't so bad, so I was into work early. But eyes are droopy and I'm writing run-on sentences so I better sign off and get to bed before my head explodes.

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly

"Scrimshaw Man" is off to Ideomancer after some changes. It's still the same poem, slightly less "prosy" and fixed the last line from being such a clunker. Hopefully they'll agree.

General Random Thoughts

Amazon is one of my favorite shopping places. I don't know about you, but I tend to accumulate things in the shopping cart. When you log in and check the cart Amazon will inform you about items that have increased or decreased in price or have become unavailable. I tend to put things in that I find that might make good gifts or I might want to get, but don't need to buy right away. It's like a continuing notebook. That way I can surf for good prices. Sometimes I've got caught leaning the wrong way. Now that it's the last day for SuperSaver Shipping to arrive before Xmas, I was greeted with almost a full page of item price increases. Ain't that a kick in the pants.

Many people have talked about how our arena sports are the modern incarnation of the Roman Circus and Blood Sport. Well, I disagree. Shows like "Funniest Home Video" and now "Destroyed in Seconds" on the Discovery Channel fill that roll. Crash Lab and Mythbusters may seem more like it, but the others show "real" acts and people really getting hurt. "If it bleeds it leads" maybe the cynics view of modern local news, but these are shows that use that as their whole business model.

You know how all those news reports talk about how low interest rates have gone. Um, have they all checked the details of those low rates. Ditech requires 2.5 points. Wellfargo which is 1% higher only requires 1 point, as does Countrywide. These aren't low rates. Of course it may just be where we live, which always has higher than normal.

Way to much of the current advertising herd totally pisses me off.

Lots of happenings at work, which is strange considering how slow we are. Although today was fairly busy.

And lastly I've heard on several interviews on TV and the radio about how going Xmas Shopping during these economic times is doing your patriotic duty (either as an admonishment or by people who are so happy to spend money and be patriotic at the same time). Oh yeah. You're patriotic by going to the mall and spending money. It's just like slogging through the sand box or stan hunting down al Qaeda.I think we should make Black Friday a national holiday just like Memorial Day. Please.

I write I'm sorry but my letter keeps coming back

(Cross posted on Genre Bender)

S. Andrew Swann points us (through his blog post which has a really good LOLcat) to a new publishing group at HarperCollins that's trying something different. Here is a Reuters article giving the basic overview and a NYT article with more details about the new group and what they maybe trying to do.

I think it's good that some publishing house has not only realized that the distribution and business model of book selling is broken, but is trying something new to fix it. The "share the profit instead of an advance" has me a little worried and sets off my "Scam" alarms, but with the HC name behind it, I'm willing to give it a little room to wiggle. For that part to work, accounting at the publishers and distributors will have to become simpler than the full work-up astrology charts they currently resemble. Really, there's a whole art to figuring out when advances earn out and how much royalty is due afterward. Go ask any published author who has actually earned a royalty check. Santeria has more straightforward rules.

The process of "stripping" is also something that should be abolished and this new venture goes a long way to plunge the stake into it's heart. For those of you not in the know, many moons ago the publishing houses realized they were losing money on return shipping (having started the process of full credit returns during the last depression IIRC) so for paperbacks, they allowed the stores to strip the covers off and return just the cover for credit. The store was then to destroy/pulp the book themselves. I'm sure you've all seen the warnings to never buy a book without it's cover. You wouldn't need such warning if it hadn't been such a widespread practice. Personally, I'd rather see the front side of distribution change with adding more actual people on both the handing books to the stores and the stores buying books (IMHO, this is where printed fiction has lost the majority of their audience, the automation of the process and the reduction of real humans who actually knew what people wanted to read in their local markets on both sides of the transaction).

How this will affect the whole life cycle of a book remains to be seen (publish, sold, shelved, returned, discounted, remaindered). And as you can see they're only tackling one part of this. That part is pretty important (constant shipping of one book can soak up more than the royalty), but it exists in a larger context of the business model.

Unfortunately I see this as becoming into a more traditional "partnership" with the publisher. And it still remains to be seen how the other aspects of publishing are handled (marketing, shelf space, printing complexities, art direction, etc) with this model. For some reason (call me a cynic) I don't believe the publisher will re-shoulder more of the marketing responsibilities. Although 25 books a year is considered "boutique" from what I understand, there are small presses which publish more books. So they may be able to give more in all these concerns.

In the overall scheme, I think this is a good new practice. I have some minor quibbles, but it doesn't even sound like they have it all together yet anyway. It'll be interesting to hear from the authors that sell into this new imprint. I hope they will share and can share their experiences. It'll also be interesting to see how this would stack up against other small press deals (who I would see adopting a business model close to this faster than the larger imprints).

It's beginning to look a lot like rejection...

Just finished up a lot of homework kinds of things and was thinking of starting into rewrites of A History of Lightning when "I've got mail!"

The fine editors over at Goblin Fruit sent me a very nice rejection email for "Scrimshaw Man." Sent a thank you note (the rejection was very nice and I think it was close). I took a few rounds through the poem to see what I could refine. Deleted a word, added another word. And then I went to go look for resubmission while I pondered other edits.

That's when my brain sort of went, "sprung!" There was a fleetingly short burst of information across the synapses, a detailed plan of what I needed to do to find another market. Then blankness. The shoulders slumped. As I tried to recreate the process of resubmissions I didn't so much hit the wall of sleep as it came crashing in on me.

I've been burning the candle at both ends and having the emotions/expectations played to a limit for the past few days and it's caught up with me. Time to go to bed. Heck, I might even read a little (it's been over a week). Then go comatose until tomorrow morning when I need to get up even earlier than normal.

Shoe in the air, shoe in the air!

(transcript of Secret Service command channel on Sunday, December 14 - edited for date)

Voice 1: "Cut the chatter, Shrub is on the podium. Eyes on the crowd, guys."

Voice 2:"I have a mark that looks agitated in the fourth row on the aisle. He's fidgety and doesn't seem to be paying attention. Should we collar him?"

Voice 1:"Negative, probably just has to go to the bathroom."

Voice 3:"Everybody's been wanded and hand patted down, right?"

Voice 4:"Roger that. Nobody has so much as a toothpick."

Voice 1:"Let's focus on the job, folks."

Voice 2:"My marks getting worse, he's going to pull something. I suggest we put a hand on him now to calm the situation."

Voice 1:"Negative on that, we're guests in this country. We can't just willy nilly snatch..."

Voice 2:"He's taken off his shoe!"

Voice 1:"Protect POTUS!"

Voice 3:"You take the shoe for the Shrub."

Voice 2:"Shoe in the air. Whoa, did you see that? Good toss. I didn't think POTUS could bend that fast."

Voice 4:"He's dropping the other shoe. Nab him now!"

Voice 1:"Wait, give him a sec. Double or nothing on the second shoe hitting."

Chorus of voices:"Bet, bet, bet"

Voice 1:"Damn, went wild. Okay, now nab him."

But in all seriousness, the Secret Service is trained to step in front of the President in a shooter situation. Wasn't anybody there willing to take a shoe for the Pres?

Storm's Wake

This evening I ended up rewriting the ending in a continuous improvement process. I lost count of how many times I've gone through it. There's a lot of new stuff, and most of the old is said in a different way. I needed to change it to be more of a Temptation of Ben Yoder that it was. I think I made that. And Ben still says, basically, get thee behind me.

If I say, "His doctor was surprised, but ended up giving him advice about gift horses," you all know what I'm talking about, right? That one was a way of cutting about twenty words. We're at 4679 words. Down 90 some, and I haven't looked back through the whole story. Yet.

Only two links (so far - more later?)

Jeff VanderMeer returns to the Land of the Living(tm) after cranking out his latest novel. And he brings pictures of the novel process (is that the process he uses is novel, or that it's the process he uses to make a novel, I'll let you decide). Anyway, it's always good to see someone else's process if only to make you realize you just aren't all that organized. Or something. As someone who posts his manuscript markups, I should make fun should I?

Justine Larbalestier gives her opinion on writing a blog as book promotion (with a follow-up here) and I have to say I agree with her. When I started blogging, it was because I didn't have any place to say what I wanted to say (well, I could say it to Bette, but then she gives me that look that says, "Why are you telling me this?"). So, yeah, I blog to annoy the rest of you. Because I care.

Via Colleen Lindsay at the Swivet, a a post with links to the state of the publishing industry vis a vis the ZOMG We're Going Down in Flames attitude. Edit it appears that the link to Juno Books that Colleen had doesn't work (thanks Camille). Here's S. Andrew Swann with some figures from the story and here's a post at Juno Books that explains the article's disappearance.

Have a holly jolly piece of toast

For your Xmas gift giving pleasure the printing toaster. (thanks to Dan for the link)

I wonder if it duplexes?