Tor(a)! Tor(a)! Tor(a)!
This article on Tor is quite good, it examines the publisher from a anti-authoritarian perspective.
I have a confession to make. When I wrote Bunny Trouble, and typed the last page, my brain went like this:
YOU WANT TO SELL THIS TO TOR
Just like that.
Tor and Baen make up a fair bit of my speculative fiction library. In a little secret place in my heart that I will now show you a tiny little peek, I believe an editor at Tor would love my book, the entire book series. I don’t say that with arrogance, mainly with a fondness. My entire science fiction brain is a bunch of Tor and Baen books squished together to make one big Anthony sci-fi soup.
Oh man now I want to finish the Bunny Trouble final edits. Finish it bad.
Great moments in TV Sci-Fi
Capt. Kirk: Matt, where’s your crew?
Matt Decker: On the third planet.
Capt. Kirk: There IS no third planet!
Matt Decker: DON’T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT? There was, but not anymore!
Oh man. Embrace the horror of one man’s personal Hell.
Gah
- My crappy typing skills in conjunction with the silly laptop keyboard
- My general rustiness (writer’s block: 23 years)
- The fact that I probably would be better off writing in the morning rather than the evening
- My inherently poor proofreading skills on my own work
I’ve been going through Bunny Trouble making corrections based on the proofreading some of my Beta Readers did. For the first time in a long long time, I am embarrassed. I feel like I want to crawl under a rock.
I’m hiring a proofreader for my next manuscript before it goes out to beta. I’ve already started to look for one. I want to entertain my Beta Readers and get them to tell me what they think about the story, not put them to work.
Now the funny thing is I have proofread a manuscript and marked it up just as much as mine is marked up, and I personally didn’t mind at all. I am not a professional proofreader, but I’ve spent hours and hours doing it at work. With that said, professionalism is very important to me. Causal writing is a dime-a-dozen. I don’t want to be the dime. I want to be the magical, shiny gold coin.
Gah.
Chris Isaac – Wicked Game
The world was on fire
No one could save me but you.
Strange what desire will make foolish people do
I never dreamed that I’d meet somebody like you
And I never dreamed that I’d lose somebody like you
No, I don’t want to fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
No, I don’t want to fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
With you
With you
What a wicked game you play
To make me feel this way
What a wicked thing to do
To let me dream of you
What a wicked thing to say
You never felt this way
What a wicked thing to do
To make me dream of you
And I don’t wanna fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
And I don’t want to fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
World was on fire
No one could save me but you
Strange what desire will make foolish people do
I never dreamed that I’d love somebody like you
I never dreamed that I’d lose somebody like you
No I don’t wanna fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart
No I don't wanna fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
With you
With you
Nobody loves no one
Deep conversation
Anthony: Pick a date!
Tony: No!
Anthony: Pick. A. Date.
Tony: I don’t know!
Anthony: PICK A DATE. A DATE FOR A SETTING! PICK ONE! PICK ONE!
Tony: I can’t! I don’t want to!
Antony: Don’t be a pussy. Say the first thing that comes to your mind. Say it. SAY IT. SAY IT BITCH!
Tony: 1959! (sob)
Anthony: See, that wasn’t so bad.
Tony: I don’t feel so good now.
Anthony: Uh, whatever.
Technical Difficulties
One moment please while I get my laptop configured. I had forgotten the shear amount of customization I work with. It works, it just is not working the way I want it to because I have not told it who is boss yet.
It is a loaner so I really am so not enthused about doing it, but I am also anal so I am compelled to tweak it just right. Ha ha. I get to do it all over again.
This laptop, by the way, is bigger than my butt. It has a gigantic screen, but it is a pure multimedia laptop, so it is what they call “full sized”. I prefer petite laptops.
Speaking of not necessary petite—but more svelte—to recover this rant into an interesting post I bring you this amusing IM from Jessica:
Jessica [8:32 AM]:
Why are men such ASSHOLES?
Tony [8:32 AM]:
Ha. I’m not an asshole.
Jessica [8:33 AM]:
Do you have a penis?
Tony [8:33 AM]:
Yes.
Jessica [8:33 AM]:
ASSHOLE.
Tony [8:34 AM]:
!!!
Jessica [4:17 PM]:
Sorry. I sux.
Alas, I am of no relationship help to anybody. I have been married for almost 15 years. I have been married longer than I dated! Isn’t that wild?!?
Veteran’s Day
But fame is theirs – and future days
On pillar’d brass shall tell their praise;
Shall tell – when cold neglect is dead -
“These for their country fought and bled.”
I am finally back on IM
I have a new loaner laptop while my new fancy laptop is on order. The old laptop died.
Anway, I was not able to get instant messaging running on the old skanky laptop, and now I am. If you would like to chat with me on IM, just drop me a note.
Book Cover Peek
Literary Agent Kristen gives a peek at how a book cover changed from one version to another.
I believe the people who say “I would not buy the second version based on the cover” may be exaggerating, but it is an interesting discussion.
I’ve taken fornal classes in layout and design, and favor the revision by far. The original, however, is certainly not dog chow by any means.
Me thinks yer smoke’n something, mate.
The Baby Dancers is a book that starts in Idaho (since Washington, Idaho and Oregon are the places I know) and eventually winds it way to someplace else. It is Young Adult Fantasy. I’ve noticed, however, my setting is very time period generic. So here I am plodding (1000 words a day is plodding for me) on The Baby Dancers and I write this:
Big Jim found a fallen log, brushed it off and sat down. “It was easy. I taught you that equipment to make a point. It is so easy that we learned only one thing: how to hunt with modern weapons. We did not learn other lessons, such as what happens when those modern weapons break down? The men who built those weapons are gone. Their technology outlasted them, but someday it too will die, and then what do we have? No understanding of the finer arts of the hunt—so we too will pass.”
“What about reverse engineering?” asked Josh.
“What about it? We know everything there is to know about making those rifles. We do not have the society to manufacture them in any numbers worth their cost to produce! Nano tube woven composite construction, adaptive software, advanced computer chip manufacturing, environmental agnostic superconductors, etcetera—the list is endless of things we know how to do but cannot do. Even the ammunition is too expensive to make.
“So, if we are to learn about the world around us, we must make do with the things we can make, not what somebody long dead left behind.”
??? Why why why why? Why did I write that? It’s not in my outline. It just came spewing forth. Was it too much wine? Am I tired? Was this a bolt of creativity, or ust silliness?
Inquiring minds want to know.
WOO HOO!
The Wife Unit made Bacon Apple Pie today. Here at the Pacheco’s, we just don’t talk about decadence, we wallow in it.
What did your wife do for you today?
Oh, don’t have one? I feel for you, I really do. My heart goes out in abject sympathy. No need to thank me, that is just the kind of guy that I am.
Sunday Reflections, 8
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.
“Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.
“Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”
—Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, Harvard University address (1978)
Sunday Reflections, 7
“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.
“Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”
—Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth President of the United States
Does your Work in Progress have these?
1 – At the end of the day
2 – Fairly unique
3 – I personally
4 – At this moment in time
5 – With all due respect
6 – Absolutely
7 – It’s a nightmare
8 – Shouldn’t of
9 – 24/7
10 – It’s not rocket science
Mine does not. But if I make an annoying character, I might not be able to resist temptation!
Every person you meet
Literary Agent Janet Reid highlights an interesting dose of reality by linking to It’s a Small World After All, a post reminding us that each industry—each community—has a power dynamic that is neither insular nor isolated.
Some people call it karma, what goes around comes around. I would take an end-to-end approach.
Honor and Integrity is not just something for a samurai movie. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Dave Matthews Band – Crash Into Me
You’ve got your ball
you’ve got your chain
tied to me tight tie me up again
who’s got their claws
in you my friend
Into your heart I’ll beat again
Sweet like candy to my soul
Sweet you rock
and sweet you roll
Lost for you I’m so lost for you
You come crash into me
And I come into you
I come into you
In a boys dream
In a boys dream
Touch your lips just so I know
In your eyes, love, it glows so
I’m bare boned and crazy for you
When you come crash
into me, baby
And I come into you
In a boys dream
In a boys dream
If I’ve gone overboard
Then I’m begging you
to forgive me
in my haste
When I’m holding you so girl
close to me
Oh and you come crash
into me, baby
And I come into you
Hike up your skirt a little more
and show the world to me
Hike up your skirt a little more
and show your world to me
In a boys dream… In a boys dream
Oh I watch you there
through the window
And I stare at you
You wear nothing but you
wear it so well
tied up and twisted
the way I’d like to be
For you, for me, come crash
into me
A reminder
The Young Adult Science Fiction blog is updated every Friday, with today being no exception.
Anybody who writes Young Adult speculative fiction should put this on their read list. It’s like a free box of bon-bons every Friday!
In the Wink of a Young Girl’s Eye
Your Daughter
Day 1: Big eyes
Day 2: Smile
Day 3: Giggle
Day 4: Momma, up!
Day 5: Where do babies come from?
Day 6: Can I borrow your nail polish?
Day 7: Where are the car keys?
Morgan Page Feat. Lissie – Longest Road
Giddy up and gold mine
Different place, different time
All the stars are in their prime
Pastel trailer park, stars so bright to hide the dark
All is quiet in the yard
Giddy up and gold dust, all the cars turn to rust
You’ve got no means for wanderlust
Pastel trailer park, stars so bright to hide the dark
All is quiet in the yard
If you are so frequently in love
If you prefer it all to me then my love
You go down the longest road to nowhere
You pull it apart and you’re just left there
Giddy up and gold mine, horse dust down time
It’s my life, it’s my time, we’ve been gettin’ nowhere
Gold mine, different place, different time
Hold me down, hold me down
Hope will be found, follow me
If you are so frequently in love
If you prefer it all to me then my love
You go down the longest road to nowhere
You pull it apart and you’re just left there
They’re waiting for it, you’re waiting for it
And you’re waving in it, and you’re craving in it
If you fill my cup with all you must
To speak from something
If you are so frequently in love
If you prefer it all to me then my love
You go down the longest road to nowhere
You pull it apart and you’re just left there
You go down the longest road to nowhere
You pull it apart and you’re just left there
ZOOM down the highway, ZOOM down the highway
It is not very likely that a musician can develop an “Ear Bug”. With interesting music, I immediately start to deconstruct it in my head. What is the key? What, if any, are the cord changes? Etc., etc.
Inadvertently, however, cuteness will get stuck in my mind.
Today I was heading to the Kirkland office for a power lunch. If there is no traffic, the two offices are only ten minutes apart by a cleverly designed highway transportation system.
There was no traffic today; I noticed I was zooming down the highway.
And that’s when the baby song hit me. I remember bouncing Thing One on my knee and singing:
“ZOOM down the highway, ZOOM, down the highway, ZOOM down the highway… STOP!”
At the “STOP” you would then let the baby “fall” to the floor, only to be “caught” at the last minute. Thing One really thought that was funny. He would giggle and giggle.
How do you get that out of your mind? You do not. I just sucked it up, turned off the radio and started singing!
“ZOOM down the highway, ZOOM down the highway, ZOOM down the highway… CHANGE LANES!”
Soon I was bouncing in my seat.
I am sure anyone looking at me must have thought I was crazy man.
I am a sucker for cuteness. The Hack Writer brought this cuteness overload to you; no need to thank me, that is just the kind of guy I am.
Perhaps tomorrow I will compensate by talking about the relative merits of jacket hollow point 9mm ammunition at 124 grains instead of 147.
