M.K. Hobson's Blog, page 5

Launch Party Tomorrow!

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My Orycon Schedule

[image error]This weekend I will be participating in Orycon 34. My programming schedule is below. Please grab me and say hello! I’ll be carrying a basket of beautiful red orchid boutonnières and I’d love to give you one. (And keep in mind I am absolutely horrible both with faces and with names, so  if I don’t remember the long weekend we spent executing covert black ops in Ulaan Bator please don’t be offended.)

Also, my books will be for sale both at the BookUniverse table in the dealer’s room and at the party on Saturday night, and if you want them signed I’m happy to oblige.

Saturday, Nov. 3READING: The Warlock’s Curse (1:30 -2:00 p.m., Grant)Are Book Publishers Obsolete? (5:00 – 6:00 p.m., Jefferson/Adams)BOOK LAUNCH PARTY! (7 p.m., Suite 1450)Sunday, Nov. 4How to Write a Series (11:00 – 12:00 p.m., Hawthorne)Authorfest 6 (4:30 p.m., Powell’s Books Cedar Hills)

See you there, maybe!

Well, THAT didn't work ...

So my marathon Livestream reading has been called on account of rain. Lots and lots of rain. But if you want to hear an excerpt of THE WARLOCK'S CURSE, here's a YouTube video of me reading a passage and also announcing the winners of my Goodreads Giveaway!

http://youtu.be/ft7h3qgaT1U

Read more on M.K. Hobson's website >>

Well, THAT didn’t work!

So my marathon Livestream reading has been called on account of rain. Lots and lots of rain. But if you want to hear an excerpt of THE WARLOCK’S CURSE, here’s a YouTube video of me reading a passage and also announcing the winners of my Goodreads Giveaway!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft7h3qgaT1U

Launch Day Tomorrow

So tomorrow is the "official" launch day for my new book THE WARLOCK'S CURSE. For those of you keeping score, this is Book 3 in my Veneficas Americana historical fantasy series.

I'm sure you'll all be doing awesome Hallowe'eny type things tomorrow, but if you get a chance there are a few bits of excitement you can participate in:

1) Drop in on my Livestream reading of the whole book from beginning to end. Yes, that's right, I'm reading the whole damn thing. The fun begins at 7:30 a.m. PST. Note: You don't have to stay for the whole thing, no worries about showing up late or leaving early.

2) Enter my Goodreads Giveaway! As of the time of this post, you have about 7 hours left to enter for a chance to win one of 13 copies. I will be announcing the winners tomorrow LIVE during the aforementioned reading.

3) Purchase the book! I have spent much of today fussing around with the shopping cart on my Website, and all of the books (and most of the bits of Kickstarter swag) are available for purchase there. The main reason to buy through my site is if you want items signed. I'm charging a small handling fee for that service, sorry—but just think of how much easier it will be to fake credit card applications in my name! Of course, you can also purchase the book through Amazon.com and Powells.com. The Trade Paperback is currently available on both those sites, and I am reliably informed that the eBook versions will be available tomorrow on Amazon as well. If you're a fan of Barnes & Noble, it's worth noting that the book has a page up there but for some reason you can't actually order it. I guess Barnes and Noble has nothing better to do with their website than show pictures of books that one can't actually purchase. It's a fascinating business model, I must say.

4) Say stuff about the book. Tweet about it, review it, decry it from the pulpit, you know, the basics. I leave the specifics in your capable hands.

5) Come to my launch party this Saturday! I know, this isn't strictly a launch-day event, but I have invested a small fortune in egg rolls and apple pies and I am desperately afraid that no one will come and consume them and I will be stuck eating some kind of unholy egg-roll-apple-casserole for the next month. Also, the party's signature drink is going to be an honest-to-God black cherry phosphate. Have you ever HAD a phosphate, people? Aren't you just dying to taste one? Well, haul your butt up to Room 1450 (no, I did not get a damn suite, don't even ask) at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 3.

All right. While I feel I have done enough for today, there is still much, much, much more that needs doing. But before I light that midnight oil, I have earned a reward ... a couple of episodes of "How It's Made" with Nora. Perhaps at long last I will unravel the mysteries of how automobile thermostats are assembled! Well, I can dream, can't I?

 
View more on M.K. Hobson's website >>

Launch day tomorrow

[image error]So tomorrow is the “official” launch day for my new book THE WARLOCK’S CURSE. For those of you keeping score, this is Book 3 in my Veneficas Americana historical fantasy series.

I’m sure you’ll all be doing awesome Hallowe’eny type things tomorrow, but if you get a chance there are a few bits of excitement you can participate in:

1) Drop in on my Livestream reading of the whole book from beginning to end. Yes, that’s right, I’m reading the whole damn thing. The fun begins at 7:30 a.m. PST. Note: You don’t have to stay for the whole thing, no worries about showing up late or leaving early.

2) Enter my Goodreads Giveaway! As of the time of this post, you have about 7 hours left to enter for a chance to win one of 13 copies. I will be announcing the winners tomorrow LIVE during the aforementioned reading.

3) Purchase the book! I have spent much of today fussing around with the shopping cart on my Website, and all of the books (and most of the bits of Kickstarter swag) are available for purchase there. The main reason to buy through my site is if you want items signed. I’m charging a small handling fee for that service, sorry—but just think of how much easier it will be to fake credit card applications in my name! Of course, you can also purchase the book through Amazon.com and Powells.com. The Trade Paperback is currently available on both those sites, and I am reliably informed that the eBook versions will be available tomorrow on Amazon as well. If you’re a fan of Barnes & Noble, it’s worth noting that the book has a page up there but for some reason you can’t actually order it. I guess Barnes and Noble has nothing better to do with their website than show pictures of books that one can’t actually purchase. It’s a fascinating business model, I must say.

4) Say stuff about the book. Tweet about it, review it, decry it from the pulpit, you know, the basics. I leave the specifics in your capable hands.

5) Come to my launch party this Saturday! I know, this isn’t strictly a launch-day event, but I have invested a small fortune in egg rolls and apple pies and I am desperately afraid that no one will come and consume them and I will be stuck eating some kind of unholy egg-roll-apple-casserole for the next month. Also, the party’s signature drink is going to be an honest-to-God black cherry phosphate. Have you ever HAD a phosphate, people? Aren’t you just dying to taste one? Well, haul your butt up to Room 1450 (no, I did not get a damn suite, don’t even ask) at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 3.

All right. While I feel I have done enough for today, there is still much, much, much more that needs doing. But before I light that midnight oil, I have earned a reward … a couple of episodes of “How It’s Made” with Nora. Perhaps at long last I will unravel the mysteries of how automobile thermostats are assembled! Well, I can dream, can’t I?

 

Einstein on the Beach

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So here I am back at my computer after my whirlwind trip to Berkeley to see the Pomegranate Arts revival of “Einstein on the Beach”, Philip Glass’ seminal 1979 avant-garde opera masterpiece. I have listened to the soundtrack literally hundreds of times over the years and was so excited about seeing the West Coast premiere that I was willing to plop down $150 for a single seat (yes, that’s American dollars) plus the cost of plane fare and a hotel. That’s not a cheap night out at the theater, folks. So was it worth it?

Oh my God, it was SO worth it.

Walking out of Zellerbach Hall at 7:30 p.m. (after sitting riveted for four-and-a-half hours) I was dazed and disoriented and completely uncertain as to what had become of me. All I recall of the bewildering half-hour that followed (before the existential elation subsided enough for me to realize that somehow I’d come to rest outside a Papa John’s which I took as a sign from my newly-expanded universe that I should go in and get a couple of slices of pepperoni) was a deep, intense regret that I couldn’t have seen the show when it premiered in 1979. I can only imagine audiences at the Avignon Festival walked out  in the supreme confidence that they’d just seen every struggle in art and music and theater definitively resolved, and perfect beauty had won—and would now continue to do so for all eternity. Seriously, it was that incredible.

In several places, the production actually moved me to tears (but then, just about every musical I see makes me cry—shit, I think “American Idiot” made me cry, so take my tears for what they’re worth.) “Train” in Act 1 was an incredible juxtaposition of movements at different tempos and angles, the components all suggesting the mental imagery running through Einstein’s head as he worked through his famous thought-experiment involving trains moving at relative speeds. That scene was the purest and  most moving depiction of the interior process of genius that I can possibly imagine. And the tears I shed over it were QUITE different than those I shed at “American Idiot”, I promise you that.

Other blindingly brilliant moments came from violinist Jennifer Koh, who spent the whole performance in an over-the-top white wig suggestive of Einstein in his later years. She executed the score’s famously intricate violin passages with superhuman speed and accuracy, all the while maintaining a characteristic Einstein-ian slouch. And the saxophone solo by Andrew Sterman in “Building” (though not one of my favorite passages of the score) brought down the house.

There were a few disappointments—most of them environmental. I was extremely frustrated with the behavior of the audience, which at times bordered on the simian. Instead of coming in and sitting down quietly (and paying attention to the performers already performing on stage in an act of performance) everyone stood around talking loudly and taking goddamn pictures like they were at the goddamn zoo. Boy, that irked me. And I’m afraid the rude phone behavior didn’t stop once the performance got underway. People in front of me kept lifting their cameras to take pictures (and I swear to the Gods of my Ancestors, I was just itching for a flash to go off so I could vault over multiple rows of seats and issue an old-school beatdown on some monkey-brained asshole) but the worst, the absolute WORST was after the incredibly beautiful “Aria” at the end of Act 3. After this moving and emotional piece, the whole house goes dark for a moment. And what happened in that moment of pure darkness, I ask you to guess? Not one, not two, but THREE phone screens lit up around me. Oh, those fuckers! I wanted to commit acts of justifiable homicide but it was too dark to see.

Most people seemed to do OK with the show’s very long running time. Several audience members around me realized that this just wasn’t their cup of tea and bailed—and good for them. The couple next to me left about 30 minutes in, leaving me lots of lovely legroom. I much prefer that approach to the one taken by the couple in front of me, a husband and wife, who seemed visibly bored and uncomfortable but were determined to stick it out. The husband seemed worse off than the wife (either he was really extra bored, or maybe he had a bad back or something) and the wife kept fussing over him in loud whispers, “Are you all right? Do you need to go? Do you want to go?” And it was just driving me buggy.

And another thing. Einstein on the Beach is a pretty challenging piece when it comes to audience response—vis a vis, applause. The whole score really is one long continuous piece of music. One section leads into the next seamlessly. Unlike more traditional theatrical productions (where pauses can be extended to accomodate thunderous applause after a showstopper number) that didn’t always work out so well in EOTB. Several times the applause (while gratifying and genuine and heartfelt) absolutely ruined an important and or delicate musical transition. It was very frustrating—and all the more so because I feel just the tiniest bit responsible for getting the whole thing started.

See, during the whole first act, the audience didn’t make a sound. Not a peep. No applause. But after the incredible violin solo in Knee 2 (the first major violin solo in the whole work) I was so amazed by Koh’s rendition that I did a wee little mime-clap, without any sound. (And seriously, listen to this piece of music and imagine it being performed live about twice as fast by a woman in a white Einstein wig and then tell me you wouldn’t have mime-clapped.) Anyway, apparently the lady beside me saw me, and she started really clapping, then the whole house started clapping. And it was great, and all …. but after the dam burst, as it were, the audience clapped at everything. I mean everything. Gah. Unintended consequences indeed!

Beyond the environmental irritants, there were a few aspects of the production I didn’t care for, or which I thought weren’t pulled off as well as they could have been. The whole Act 1 “Trial” sequence was an utter snooze. I’m sure they were being faithful to the original production but … meh. That whole section of the score isn’t my favorite either, with its weird, dated, quasi-misogynistic monologue. That was the only time during the whole performance that I was seriously in danger of falling asleep.

The biggest disappointment, however, was the lackluster performance of my favorite passage, “Spaceship,” at the end of Act 3 (you can hear it here). In traditional theatrical terms, “Spaceship” is the show’s “grand finale.” It should just absolutely flatten you–and every recording I’ve ever heard of it delivers on that promise. But alas, this production got “Spaceship” really wrong. The stagecraft was staggeringly brilliant, consisting of a lighted grid in which the whole company stood feverishly working out equations while a gruesome victim (of an atomic blast, one assumes) mimics the parallel dance from Act 1′s “Train” beneath the child-version of Einstein and the young-man version of Einstein floating overhead in glass elevators. Absolutely mind-blowing. The picture up at the top of this post gives you just the tiniest hint of how incredible it was. But the music was slow, mushy, low-energy, and undifferentiated. The piece’s significant base elements were terribly murky, and yet at the same time they drowned out the beautiful treble of the singers. I thought maybe the problem was that the singers were singing with their backs to the audience, but since they were all wearing head mics, I’m not sure how that could have made much difference. The whole thing was so out of line with the incredible energy of the rest of the performance that I hung around outside the theater afterward, laying in wait for a totally random guy I’d overheard before the performance saying he’d seen all 3 Berkeley performances. I just HAD to ask him if there was some kind of sound problem with “Spaceship” because the difference was (to my ear) so egregious. But no, he said that that night’s performance was in line with the others he’d seen–but he added that he’d also seen a couple of the New York performances and that they were done with much more gusto and crispness.

It was a disappointing performance of my favorite scene of the opera, but I can’t say that it ruined the whole thing for me—rather, it made me want to buy a plane ticket to Mexico City (the tour’s next port of call) to see if they do it better down there. [image error]

Was it worth it? Every single penny. I mean, it would be worth it just for the sheer  spectacle of watching the musicians, singers and dancers put themselves through this incredibly grueling Ironman of performances. (The dance sequences? OH MY GOD. Twenty minutes of continuous jettes and pirouettes left the dancers absolutely sopping with sweat by the end. It made me wonder if they had oxygen tanks waiting for them in the wings.) I feel honored to have seen it.

 

Announcing my big crazy launch-day stunt …

[image error]So it is now exactly ONE WEEK until the official launch date of THE WARLOCK’S CURSE. Books are winging their way to my Kickstarter backers and the paperback is already live on Amazon.com and Powells.com (though I’ve been waiting for the ebook to go live before really publicizing those links, feel free to go ahead and order if you’re itching to get the book.)

Anyway, to celebrate the official launch day, I have cooked up a crazy, Lucy-esque stunt. It does not involve conveyor belts full of chocolate (more’s the pity) … rather it involves me, a microphone, a webcam, and lots and lots of Rockstar.  On Wednesday, Oct. 31 (Hallowe’en!)  I am going to do a Livestream reading of THE WARLOCK’S CURSE in its entirety, from beginning to end, pillar to post. All 398 pages, with snarky author asides and everything.

I expect this insane endeavor will take about ten hours. And of course you don’t have to watch the whole thing; you can pop in and out as you like, it won’t bother me.

The fun starts at 7:30 a.m. PST and goes until … whenever. The reading will also be DVRed by Livestream (though I have NO idea if they will actually record the whole thing … my guess is they’ll cut off the recording at some point, but who knows when.) Anyway, this is your chance to 1) hear me read 2) probably hear me swear 3) possibly see me pass out and or expire.

So mark your calendars, peeps! The Livestream link is here.

 

 

The books have arrived!

So yesterday I came home and found six HUMONGOUS boxes waiting for me. And they were full of this crazy book that apparently I done wrote & Kickstartered called THE WARLOCK’S CURSE! It took me aback for a moment, as I racked my brain trying to recall having done so (yes, the process of repression has already begun.) Through the dreamlike opiate-tinged fog, vague memories began to suggest themselves. One mysterious, overriding compulsion stood out strongly–namely,  that I must now take these books and start sending them out to people all over the world. Excelsior!

In other news, SAVE THIS DATE: Saturday, November 3, 7 p.m., at the Portland Doubletree Hilton in Portland, Oregon. That’s when I’ll be throwing the Launch Party, and if you can possibly attend I’d love to have you. It’s being held during Orycon, but you don’t have to be a member of the con to attend. It’s an all-ages party (no booze) and there’s going to be an old-fashioned pharmacy soda fountain with actual teenage soda jerks.

That’s it for now … more updates very soon, including an announcement about a launch day event that might actually kill me. But hey, what good is publicity unless it’s potentially fatal?

Channeling my internal velociraptor

[image error]So last week I put in the final copyedits on THE WARLOCK’S CURSE and reluctantly, grudgingly, declared it good to go. I have to say, letting go of the book was the hardest part of this indie publishing adventure I’ve yet encountered. You just want to keep fiddling with it! I was terrified that I’d missed something. I fretted over every copyedit I stetted (as it turns out, my copyeditor and I differ significantly in our approach to hyphenated compounds. Which is to say she prefers to do them correctly, and I prefer to do them the way they look right to me. It was a battle royale. Unsurprisingly, I ended up winning most of the time.)  Finally, I had to channel my internal velociraptor and say “no more futzing!” It was very liberating, but also very scary.  I finally got past the fear with a little mental trick: I promised myself that I could do a second edition of the book (correcting any errors, etc) when I publish the next book in the series (THE UNSTEADY EARTH) in 2013. This little bit of psychological hacking made whole process seem a bit less final, which allowed me to get past my anxiety.

Thus, the final ebook versions went out to backers this week and I also put in the order for the trade paperback copies. I’m taking preorders through my Website, if you’re interested in having me send you a copy when I send out the Kickstarter packages. You can also enter my Goodreads giveaway, which runs through Oct. 31

And just a reminder, I’ll be doing my first public reading from the book on Monday, Oct. 15 as part of the SFWA reading series. Details here. If all goes according to plan, I will be reading from the first printed copy of the final book, then signing the copy and giving it away to one lucky audience member. If you want to be that lucky audience member, brush up on your 19th century trivia is all I’m sayin’.

Happy Friday, everyone!