Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad listens to some REM

A reader reacts to Green — I think they liked it.

A reader reacts to Endurance — I think they liked it.

Gianmaria Franchi on sliding book advances — (Via a mailing list I am on.)

Getting It Wrong — sandratayler on the value of getting it wrong,

How the craziest f#@!ing “theory of everything” got published and promoted

Psychics Say Apollo 16 Astronauts Found Alien Ship — Also, there is an alien base in the trunk of my car. Don’t tell anyone.

New drone has no pilot anywhere, so who’s accountable? — The Navy is testing an autonomous plane that will land on an aircraft carrier. The prospect of heavily armed aircraft screaming through the skies without direct human control is unnerving to many. What could possibly go wrong?

US plans Mid-East ‘mothership’

Jobs, Jobs and Cars — Krugman on economic geography and Republican idiocy.

GOP Hates Citizens United, Too — Tough cookies, GOP. You wanted this as tool to bash Democrats, you celebrated the SCOTUS decision. Like many of the beds conservatives make, they don’t want to lie in it.

How Newt Gingrich Gets Away with ‘Class Warfare’ and ‘Race Baiting’

The Great Right Hope — The conservatives who hate Mitt Romney the most have it wrong. Why they’d love him in the White House.

What would Mitt Romney’s offshore account filings show? — It’s called ‘tax avoidance’, and just about everyone with Big Money does it. Also, millionaires avoiding paying taxes is completely consistent with Republican principles, so why is anyone complaining?

?otd: Is that you there in the corner?

1/28/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.5 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.75 (solid)
Weight: 226.8
Currently reading: Scourge of the Betrayer by Jeff Salyards

Tags: Books, Culture, Endurance, Green, Iraq, Links, Personal, Politics, Process, Publishing, reviews, Science, Tech, weird

Posted: 7:32 am Sat January 28 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad staggers toward the weekend

A reader reacts to Green

Protocols and The Spectacle of Reading Fantastika

These 24 Books Have Actually Been Published

Academic Competitions – State of Jefferson Academic Scavenger Hunt 2012 – Middle School — Holy Pete, these are tough questions. (Via tillyjane, a/k/a my mom.)

Embracing the Mothers of Invention — Financing the stuff of dreams through Kickstarter. (Thanks to Dad.)

Current social networks may have been present in the earliest modern humans

Global warming felt in gardens — Who are you going to believe? Rush Limbaugh or that lying data?

The Obama Memos — The making of a post-post-partisan Presidency.

Obama: Republicans will struggle to defend record — Or at least they would be if anyone in America was capable of remembering the Bush administration.

Space experts ground Gingrich moon plan — Sigh. I wish we had a visionary who wasn’t also a venal lunatic.

How Newt Gingrich pulled this one off — Somehow—miraculously—the philandering former congressman is at the front of the Republican pack

The three big lies of Newton Leroy Gingrich — (Via David Goldman.)

Gingrich’s Constant Contempt Is His Fatal Political Flaw — It’s also his strength. The politics of resentment have peculiar fascination for conservative voters, and Gingrich plays them as well as Palin or Nixon.

Romney Failed to Disclose Swiss Bank Account Income — I honestly don’t think Romney’s wealth should be an election issue, any more than his religion should, but in in a time when concern about income inequity and Wall Street excesses has become a major sociopolitical flashpoint, how could it not?

?otd: Friday again?

1/27/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.75 hour (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.75 (solid)
Weight: 228.4
Currently reading: Scourge of the Betrayer by Jeff Salyards

Tags: Books, climate, Culture, Green, Links, Personal, Politics, Publishing, reviews, Science

Posted: 6:11 am Fri January 27 2012 | Comments(0) |

[conventions] I will be reading at SF in SF, February 11th, 2012

Ok, not really a convention, but I don’t have a tag for ‘events’ or ‘readings’. I probably should, huh?

At any rate, I’ll be reading at SF in SF on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, along with K.W. Jeter, hosted by Terry Bisson — two of the more interesting people I know. My appearance there is being sponsored by my publisher, Tor Books, as part of a tour for the recent release of my second Green novel, Endurance [ Powells | BN ].

We’ll be appearing at The Variety Preview Room at 582 Market St. @ Montgomery, 1st floor of The Hobart Bldg. [ Google Maps ] Doors open at 6:00 pm and the event starts at 7:00 pm. I believe I’ll be reading something connected to Sunspin. If you’re in the Bay Area, come on down for an evening of live science fiction reading and discussion.

Hope to see you there!

Tags: Books, California, Conventions, Endurance, Green, Sunspin

Posted: 6:44 am Wed January 25 2012 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad looks toward the weekend

A reader reacts to Green — Rather much with the liking.

The language of stamps — A little bit of lost culture. (Via David Goldman.)

Pass the Large Grain of Salt — I found this article on cuisine to be hilarious.

Old, million-dollar violins don’t play better than the new models

US Cancer Deaths Continue To Fall, ACS Report

Cubelets Are Modular Programming in Meatspace — I still love this concept.

How researchers learned to stop time (and maybe enable hackers)

“Nobody has the right to take another life” — Roger Ebert on the death penalty. Worth the read, as most of his posts are.

Petitioners Ask Portland To Stop Regarding Corporations As People

Boehner: Richard Cordray appointment ‘unprecedented power grab’ by Obama — Right. Because no Republican president ever made a recess appointment. Not ever. Nope. No way, no how. No, no, don’t go look up the facts! Believe my opinion!

Could a mystery candidate for GOP race still emerge? — “Anybody but Romney” is still a powerful force in GOP politics. And in a party that has made a fetish out of mixing religion and politics, specifically Christianism, his Mormonism will always be an issue.

Gingrich is out for revenge — Ah, the Newt we know and love, long time GOP standard bearer.

Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies

?otd: Cheese, Grommit?

1/5/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.5 (fitful)
Weight: 213.2
Currently reading: A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Tags: Books, Cancer, Culture, Food, gay, Green, healthcare, Links, music, Occupy Wall Street, Personal, Politics, reviews, Science, Tech

Posted: 6:21 am Thu January 05 2012 | Comments(0) |

[personal|writing] 2011 productivity, a bit on 2012 writing goals

In 2011, I spent May and June, and September through December, on chemotherapy, six months out of my year. I also underwent a liver resectioning in July to remove a metastatic tumor. In August, along with kenscholes, I co-hosted the Hugo awards ceremony at Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention. In September, I had the “A” interview and cover of Locus magazine. Those were pretty much the high points of my year.

However, even with spending eight months under serious medical care and running around on stage in the middle of all that, as well as holding down a full time job from which I never took a leave of absence, and parenting my daughter, I did manage a little bit of writing and marketing. It’s been a fairly thin year by my standards, less than I would usually expect from myself, but I did produce a total 243,100 words of first draft fiction and related nonfiction. That’s 198,500 words of first draft on my Sunspin project, along with 38,200 words of short fiction and 6,400 words of nonfiction. I also executed revisions to much of this material, including both Sunspin‘s outline and manuscript, and the revisions and final turn-in of the third Green book, Kalimpura. Plus seeing the release of Endurance, the second Green book.

This is far short of my original goal of 600,000 words on Sunspin first draft this year, but cancer pretty much ate my life and stranded me at the 243,100 mark. Likewise it interfered with my marketing of short fiction. Nonetheless, I managed 26 submittals of original short fiction, with 10 acceptances, 14 rejections and 4 outstanding. (The math doesn’t quite add up because of year-to-year overlap.) I also managed to submit 12 reprints for consideration, of which 7 were accepted, including two Year’s Best. 4 nonfiction pieces were accepted as well. In addition there were various foreign rights sales, the most notable of which was a three-book deal in the German market.

My 2011 convention and conference schedule was severely curtailed by my medical issues, but I did make it to Rain Forest Writers Village, Norwescon, the Locus Awards, ReaderCon, Worldcon, and (briefly) Orycon.

For 2012, if I can stay out of the oncology unit, I plan to write the other 400,000 words of Sunspin, revise the first two volumes for submittal and publication, and write several requested novellas and short stories. For financial reasons, my convention attendance will be severely curtailed except where I’m being sponsored to appear, unless fiction sales pick up enough to refill my travel budget. I do currently expect to be at Confusion, RadCon, Rain Forest Writers Village, Norwescon, Orycon and Surrey. Additional appearances to be confirmed/announced as time and resources permit.

Even if I do go back into cancer treatment, experience shows I can still be reasonably productive. If I metastasize yet again, I still plan to write another 100,000 words of Sunspin, as well as revise the first two volumes and write the requested short fiction.

I’ll be discussing 2012 goals and my thoughts on them in more detail with another post. For now, this is the 2011 round up. I hope it’s been informative.

Tags: Books, Child, Conventions, Endurance, friends, Green, Kalimpura, Personal, stories, Sunspin, Travel, Writing

Posted: 8:52 am Sat December 31 2011 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad for New Years’s Eve

A reader reacts to Green — Mostly with the liking.

Alone in the Old Republican Crowd — Ta-Nehisi Coates on writing in the coffee house.

Have We Met? Tracing Face Blindness to Its Roots — Some cool perceptual psychology here. (Via David Goldman.)

The Joy of Quiet — Hmmm.

Antarctic adventurers race against history’s clock

Ice Varieties along the Antarctic Coast

A history of the Earth in 24 hours — A nifty graphic. Not valid for Young Earth Creationists and others among the wilfully ignorant, of course.

Prior Visions of Star Flight — Interesting from an SFnal perspective as well as a historical technology perspective.

In Panama City, Colorful Red Devil Buses Yielding to Paler, Safer Kind

Energy giant hid behind shells in “land grab” — A perfect example of why the conservative rubric of “industry self-regulation” is total crap. Which, of course, is obvious to anyone with a junior high school education and intact critical thinking faculties who isn’t too invested in their ideology to think about the role of self-interest in corporate decision making. (Via Steve Buchheit, who got it from Tobias Buckell.)

2011: End of US Hyperpower & its War with Islamdom

The Price of ‘Victory’ — The war in Iraq is over … just not for the Iraqis. Lest you are somehow ignorant enough to believe that Iraq war was in any way good for Iraqis or their country. (Via Eunomia.)

Newt Gingrich: “I’m A Middle Class Person” — Right. Because all us middle class people have half million dollar lines of credit at Tiffany’s. Sadly, millions of low-information GOP voters will nod along to this tripe, as they always do.

?otd: Partying tonight?

12/31/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 10.5 (fitful)
Weight: 209.4
Currently (re)reading: The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey

Tags: Antarctica, Books, Culture, Green, Iraq, Links, Panama, Personal, Politics, Process, reviews, Science, Tech, Writing

Posted: 8:46 am Sat December 31 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad looks toward the end of the year

A reader reacts to Green — Mildly with the liking, damning with faint praise one might say.

Blast Off! 36 Retro Sci Fi Book Covers — (From willyumtx.)

The Muses of Insert, Delete and Execute — Writing in the digital age. (Snurched from crowleycrow here.)

Navigating Love and Autism

Earth has two ‘moons’ right now, theorists say (Via David Goldman.)

The Mystery Behind Anesthesia — Mapping how our neural circuits change under the influence of anesthesia could shed light on one of neuroscience’s most perplexing riddles: consciousness.

The Underwritten States of America — 19th century medical insurance rate maps. Really?

Should Medical Journals Print Info That Could Help Bioterrorists? — Scientists are butting heads with the government over whether scientific openness trumps national security. The fact that we’re asking the question means the terrorists have won. Closing an open society is a victory for oppression.

FBI agent’s journey from pulpit to prison — Darin McAllister’s life unraveled as the housing crisis revealed inflated figures on his loan documents. The former LAPD officer sees his four-year sentence for fraud as another of life’s tests. Why are we reading stories about fraudulent mortgage applicants when we should be reading stories about fraudulent mortgage executives?

Newly recovered court files cast doubt on Gingrich version of first divorce — I am beyond baffled at Newt’s attraction to the GOP base. I think I understand why they liked Bachmann, for example (regardless of my own opinions of her, I mean), or even Romney, but Gingrich? Serial adulterer, serial liar, multimillionaire with a Trump sized ego who nearly wrecked the Republican revolution he helped launch? What’s in him for them?

Springtime for Toxics — Mindless opposition to “job killing” regulations is now part of what it means to be a Republican. Most conservative stances require mindlessness these days, not just opposition to environmental regulation.

?otd: Planning on any bonfires?

12/27/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 9.25 (solid)
Weight: 204.4
Currently (re)reading: The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey

Tags: Art, Books, Cool, Culture, Green, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Process, reviews, Science, Tech

Posted: 5:49 am Tue December 27 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad on the edge of forever

William Bentrim’s Reviews > Green — A reader reacts to Green, much with the liking.

Dear Santa Letter sent 100 years ago found up chimney

Santa’s Christmas Eve Workload, Calculated — With graphs! (Via Freakonomics.)

Dawn spacecraft sending back new close-up views of asteroid surface

6 reasons why aliens would NEVER invade Earth

600-Million-Year-Old Microscopic Fossils Upend Evolution Theory — The headline is a tad misleading, but the story is cool.

Turns Out, Pigeons Are Just As Good As Monkeys When It Comes To Math

Mitt Romney: Merging business and politics, vowing to be a CEO who’ll fix ailing economy — Dubya was supposed to be the CEO president, and his presidency turned out to be an economic, political and military disaster. Haven’t we learned anything?

?otd: Is Mr. Spock obviously Chinese?

12/24/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 15.0 (solid plus napping)
Weight: 207.0
Currently (re)reading: The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey

Tags: Books, Cool, Culture, Green, Links, Personal, Politics, reviews, Science

Posted: 8:01 am Sat December 24 2011 | Comments(1) |

[process] Writing the second (or third) book

Greg van Eekhout (who has one of the coolest names, ever) is launching into writing the sequel to his novel The Osteomancer’s Son. He made an observation that:

I’ve never written a sequel or a continuation of a series, so this is new territory for me.

My response to this was:

I have been quite surprised by the change in my technique and internal thought processes brought about by writing second and third books in series (or at least in continuity). You will be too, I am confident.

This has got me thinking about those second and third books. Last year while I was drafting Kalimpura, the third book in the Green cycle, I made a passing observation on this topic [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]:

This is the second time I’ve written a third book in series. (Pinion being the other, of course.) As I believe I observed while writing Pinion, it’s a rather different experience that writing a standalone or initial book. So much of the worldbuilding, characterization and discovery is in place. I have to touch on bits of it so a reader who’s starting with this book won’t be lost, but I have it internalized. That means that writing this book is a different experience for me. I am far more focused on plot and inter-character dynamics because that other stuff is already in place and not crying for attention. And much as I had this experience with Pinion, I think it’s likely to make a somewhat different kind of book.

Now if I could only figure out how to deliberately leverage this phenomenon in future projects.

Well, since then I’ve outlined all three volumes of Sunspin in one go, deliberately designing them to work as a three-book project. Which is, or should be, me attempting to deliberately leverage this phenomenon in a future project.

In a nutshell, I think it does come down to what I said before. After a first book has been written, much of the worldbuilding, characterization and discovery are in place. Unless the plot of the second book is “our heroes sail over the horizon to discover new, alien worlds”, it’s probably operating from much the same geography, culture and politics as the first book did. That means one’s focus as a writer actually narrows rather than broadens. We don’t have to do everything in the punch list for book 2 (or 3, or 23). There’s still a bit of obligatory effort to bring new readers up to speed, but mostly we can assume that anyone reading book 2 knows what the Castle of Inordinate Doom is, and what happened to the Lord of Bright Shadows in book 1. That means we don’t have to set all that stuff up again.

Fine. So far, so obvious. But what does this do the writing process, to address Greg’s not-quite-a-question?

I think first of all we have to make different kinds of promises to the reader. Book 1, any book 1, is in part saying, “Hey, look at me!” They usually begin with something sharp and memorable, a clash of cymbals to grab the readers’ attention and say, “Hey, I’m worth the next few hours or days of your free time.” Book 2 is saying, “Welcome back, old friend.” Reader trust already exists, at least in principle, and while it needs to be sustained, it doesn’t need to be re-established from scratch. That allows a lot more room to maneuver in building the opening scenes, which can serve different purposes in a book 2 than in a book 1.

Likewise how the characters are introduced and what is done with them. Subtlety and depth come to the forefront, in favor of the broad strokes often used to establish a brand-new protagonist. A book 2 character has a shared history with the reader, an account balance of well-established words and deeds and emotions that can be drawn on. They enter the stage differently.

Finally, as alluded to above, the need not to explain so much is powerful. The tapestry is already woven from book 1. We can assume so much more, and only introduced those things which are changing, as well as those things to either elucidate or camouflage the changes. It shifts the art and craft of world building significantly, allow tighter focus on selected elements, given what can be assumed the reader has brought forward from book 1.

Emphasis and focus can make book 2 as different from book 1 as book 1 was from some discovery short story that originally introduced the character and setting. It’s a softer, subtler art. The character and plot loom larger in the writer’s mind, written as they are across the established setting and tone.

Greg, does this make it any easier?

Tags: Books, Green, Kalimpura, Pinion, Process, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 9:09 am Fri December 16 2011 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad ignores Black Friday

A reader reacts to Green — With decidedly mixed feelings.

The Dubious Perils of Pac-Man — I think my opinions on video games are fairly well known.

Kinect for Windows to offer ‘Minority Report’ computer control

A Glimpse of CLIMSO — APOD with a striking photo of a French telescope.

Humans were catching tuna 42K years ago

The Poor, the Near Poor and You

Counting Really Small Blessings — A rundown on the distortions and idiocies of the most recent GOP debate.

?otd: Going shopping today?

11/25/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 13.5 (solid sleep plus napping)
Weight: 209.8
Currently (re)reading: I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Cool, Culture, Green, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, reviews, Science, Tech

Posted: 9:28 am Fri November 25 2011 | Comments(1) |