Still here, still alive

Spooky ghost window of the house I visited last week.

Thought 1: Not to get all Scalzi on you, but I am actually here, alive and kicking, just with little to report. The personal writing seems to be going well, but I’m realizing that the two projects I’ve chosen to do next require some intense research. To prevent myself from freaking out completely, I’m telling myself that a) I tend to over-research and need to stop that right now, b) I can get by reading just a few nonfiction books, and c) those few books do not have to be read in their entirety since I’ll be going forth and immediately fictionalizing the hell out of those worlds anyway. All easy to say, hard to do. I’m also falling behind on the fun novels and stories I’ve been wanting to read for months. So be it.

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Thought 2: You wanna laugh? Here’s a glimpse into the trad pub world, via my ghostwriting window. (See above.) I’ve been working for a year on a book that was slated to be pubbed late July 30. Understand that typically once that date is set, everything in the trad publisher’s world with respect to that book revolves around that date. That date is golden. Yes, they’ll tell you, we can change the date but you don’t want us to because it confuses retailers and contradicts what we put in the catalog, and so on.

So late Friday comes news from the publisher that they’re accelerating the pub date for this book. It’ll be in stores early June now, not late July. Virtually a two-month acceleration. Why? Because they just heard that the buyer for a large retail chain wants the books for sale on Father’s Day. Very strong father component in this book, they think. Which is actually freaking true.

Two questions: Why didn’t the the rest of us—myself included—figure that out a year ago when we started having endless conference calls about the book? And why is it suddenly so easy to pub a book early? I heard it took months, and every single month was precious, once set in stone. Why is another major memoir that my wife is ghosting going from final edit to press in two weeks?! (I know, that’s three questions; sue me.) Gee, I guess these guys can really get a book out when they put their minds to it.

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Thought 3: Why is it that as soon as I got my sweet new standing desk apparatus all tricked out in the office do I suddenly develop a need to do all my work from the couch in the living room? Seriously, all my junk’s piled on the coffee table. And I show no sign of leaving. I’m camped out here, now. I’m staying. To hell with my health.

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Thought 4: Finally took down the Christmas tree. Good. More room for me.

Video: Denise talking about THE GIRLS OF ATOMIC CITY

Simon & Schuster put together a video of my wife, Denise Kiernan, talking about her upcoming book, THE GIRLS OF ATOMIC CITY. It’s about 4 minutes; I hope you’ll check it out. The book pubs March 5. Good reviews so far from the book trade magazines.

Affiliate Ass Clown

A friend sent me this link to a video on YouTube that references one of my books. Only it’s not really a video. It’s 1:40 of the following image, which invites you to click at the link below to “legally download” my book. 

When you click on said link, it takes you to Amazon’s top 4-star Kindle books:

The YouTube account user is hoping you’ll buy something and they’ll make some money off the affiliate link. I’ve seen a lot of affiliate link sites but this is the first time I’ve seen people using YouTube accounts to get people to click.

The funny thing? This book of mine, Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci, is only available as a children’s hardcover picture book. I never licensed the e-book rights.

Denise Kiernan. That's me.: The Next Big Thing

denisekiernan:

Recently, my husband, author Joseph D’Agnese, “tagged” me in his “The Next Big Thing” blog post. “Next Big Thing” works like this: one writer answers some questions about her next book and then passes that blog post along to other writers she knows, “tagging” them. (See end of this post for…

How I spent 2012

So: 2012 happened. The holidays were a blur and then the two of us were down and out with a cold and/or flu, so I didn’t have much time to write the obligatory Best Books of 2012 post, or even the obligatory Resolutions post. Truth this, I hate that stuff. Which is why I haven’t done it. 

Last year I compiled a list of things I did in 2011 that were somehow noteworthy. And while I was sick, I combed through my calendar and notebooks to see what I actually achieved in 2012. It’s a lot, but it’s still somehow disappointing, which I’ll explain shortly. I’m trying to keep this post short so I’ll just hit the highlights.

WORD COUNT: Near as I can figure, I cranked out 258,111 words on writing I hoped to sell as a book or e-book. This figure does not include journalistic work, which only amounted to about 2,000 words. Of the 258K figure, 80,000 represents a ghostwritten project that I wrote for someone else. (During a marathon writing period in February 2012, I wrote write 70,000 words of that nonfiction book in 21 days. I’m weirdly proud of that. Just wish I could do the same for my own work.) The rest of my 2012 output—the remaining 175K words—consisted of a novel, 13 short stories, and the start of a children’s book. 

SHORTS: That said, I wish I hadn’t wasted so much of my time on short stories. In some cases, I was writing them because I needed something to clear my head while I working on various ghostwriting and editing projects. Ghost projects often feel like they’re going to go on forever; writing short stories became a way to help me break up the monotony. Thanks to this habit, I got back into the groove of submitting those stories, and saw four of them accepted in some way in 2012. (Look for another 2012-written short to appear in AHMM this year.) Going forward, though, I don’t want to devote much time to shorts in 2013. I would have been able to finish a second novel if I had focused solely on novels and novellas.

FICTION: Early 2012 saw me proofing and polishing The Mesmerist. I pubbed that book in spring. I wrote most of Marshal of the Borgo in 2012, and polished Arm of Darkness, which pubbed a few weeks ago. Marshal will take some more time, maybe another month. Going forward in 2013, I’ll be working on two novels and at least one novella.

GHOST PROJECTS: I coaxed three of these projects into being this year. This is where the bulk of my income comes from, so I can’t ignore this sector. But it’s really hard to write books for other people. You’re constantly doing things by committee, consisting of your “author,” your editor, agent, publisher, and an army of production people. And when the publisher wants a memo on the “author’s” platform, guess who is expected to crank that out? By contrast, work-for-hire books are infinitely preferable, but by definition don’t come with a percentage of the royalties. If these ghostwritten books do well when they come out, I’m contractually owed a sizable cut of the royalties. So yeah, I may not talk about them in much detail on this site, but you better believe I’m rooting for them to succeed. I’m still in the trenches on three of these ghost books, and no doubt there will be more of these in the future. If I had a resolution in all this, I guess it would be to move beyond ghostwriting. Hence my commitment to self-publishing.

HOLLYWOOD: One of these ghost projects actually led to a bonafide Hollywood option, which was a hilarious process. Maybe they’ll actually get the thing made, but who knows. I regard it as something of a joke. More on this if it develops into anything beyond a signed piece of paper.

ATOMIC: I spent a lot of time traveling with Denise to collect last-minute research. And I spent a lot of time editing and proofing that book through each of its stages. Thankfully, her book is two months from pubbing. Good to see it off our plates. She’s now mired in the pre-pub marketing stuff trad publishers ask you to do.

BLOGS: I moved to the Tumblr platform, which has made it easier to interact with all three or four of you. I now have three blogs: Daggyland, Honor the Bookman (which focuses on book covers), and Reubenologist (which tells you at a glance why I’ll end up with a cardiac arrest one of these days). The last two are quasi-anonymous and they’re done more for fun than self-promotion.

That’s about it. 2012 was also about hanging with friends, getting a new deck, doing more gardening, eating and drinking tons of food, traveling to a few new places for work or fun, losing more old friends, and meeting quite a few new ones. All said, I think I’m really lucky to be able to support myself as a freelance writer. And I’m very grateful for those of you who’ve helped me pull it off.

Humorous T-shirt

There’s about three of you who understand why I’ll be buying this shirt.

(The buy link’s below, or click the photo.)