Lilith Saintcrow's Blog, page 236

You Were Expecting Maybe OMfrey Bogart?

I have laughed myself into hyena fits lately transposing Emeril into a Bugs Bunny cartoon–French Rarebit.

Today marks the anniversary of a terrifying, wonderful day in my life. True to form, I had trouble sleeping last night. This morning I feel pretty sanguine, though. It’s a nice change. I’ll take the occasional sleepless night.

ANYWAY. Dear Internets, I am turning to you for help. I’m wanting a good calendar program so I can glance at my upcoming deadlines–keeping them in my head is still worki

A Problematic Week

Three things:

* OMG! OMG! Volume 1 of Tanith Lee’s short stories is out! It’s called Tempting The Gods and I’ve been waiting for it for, I dunno, SIX MONTHS or something. I am so stinking happy right now. Must hold off reading it until I get the revisions done, though…

…who am I kidding? I’m already wanting another run through Tiger I and Anna Medea, both of which are in this collection. ZOMG.

* The morning started out problematically–you know, when the sales department starts overruling the editor

Ask The Working Writer, And Stealing

I’ve fallen into the rhythm of revision. It really doesn’t take that long to do when you can bring all your faculties to bear on a particular book. It’s like watching the jumprope on the playground, catching its beat so you can hop in. Which is about the only part of playing with other kids I ever liked, in school.

Anyway, we’re fifty pages or so into the second YA; second-draft revisions are going well. I halted last night just at the place where I had to make a significant architectural change.

Revision Hell

I’m currently in the wilds of revision. Can I make a book better in 18 days? Or will my head ’splode? We’re going to find out.

I’m also reading Outliers in between gulps of manuscript, and washing it all down with Foreign Affairs. Is it just me, or has the tone of articles in FA substantially changed with a new administration in Washington? (Bloodcult, I should email one of the articles to you; it links to what you were talking about the other day with the credit crisis. Or do you get FA? Oh, hel

Judgment, Rejection, And The Writer

Cross-posted from the Deadline Dames, where there’s even more writing advice. And pie!…Okay, I’m lying about the pie. But it’s still awesome. Go look.

I am still thinking about that epublishing post, guys. It might be done next week, if I’m not in the wilds of Novel Revision Deathmarch. This Friday’s writing post is brought to you by Reader A. C., who wrote me last week with the question:

How do you shut off the fear of being judged? I feel like if I was to release my writing to the world I would

yeah, and our breath smells funny too…

John Scalzi with Ten Things To Remember About Authors. I may not agree with him all the time, but I certainly agree with him more often than not. And, erm, if you’re wondering what he’s indirectly referring to, my thought would be this recent Internet Dustup.

Though, of course, I could be wrong. I probably am. For I am human and imprecise…

Spectacularly Missing The Point About TTS

Plenty more stuff about Roy Blount’s op-ed in the New York Times concerning Kindle’s Text-To-Speech function. (My initial take on it was yesterday.) I’m just going to point you at Wil Wheaton, who got together links to Scalzi, Gaiman, and Doctorow’s responses. Doctorow’s in particular seemed to go over the line into enraged. YMMV.

I am left wondering if these guys read the same op-ed I did. I saw it as Blunt saying: “We need to be vigilant about our rights here.” I really wonder if others read st

On Money, Or, Pay The Writer

Let’s talk, you and me. Let’s talk about money.

I like money. It makes it possible for me to feed my children and my book habit. I work damn hard every day for the money I get. Right now I’m on a jag of seven-day workweeks getting stuff done. I’m glad to have the work. I’m glad to have earned the work by being a professional.

But there’s something I’m having trouble with this morning. It’s the assorted silly and ugly responses to Roy Blount’s (president of the Author’s Guild) op-ed piece in the Ne

The Demon’s Librarian out in ebook!

Thanks to Brian, I just found out that The Demon’s Librarian is now available on Fictionwise! It hasn’t percolated through to Amazon yet, but traditionally my ImaJinn releases show up on Fictionwise about a week or two before they come out in paper.

I’ll keep you updated. I like this book a lot–and a most jaunty and sincere tip of the hat to Wendy the Super Librarian, who I blameTHANK for the original idea.

So, without further ado…the blurb!

[image error]When Francesca Barnes finds out demons are preying on sch

New Peter Beagle Book Out!

Today marks the start of seven-day work weeks until I get the third Strange Angels book finished. That means I’ve got round-one revisions on book 2, a couple of short stories, the first draft of book 3, and other assorted stuff to get done in a short period of time (like, seven-eight months for everything). Of COURSE I have spent a lot of time today procrastinating for all I’m worth before the madness truly begins. I really do work best like this, so I am forced to go into the onion-layers of th