Kim Harrison's Blog, page 111

Happy Tired

Gaming night at the fair is always my favorite night–a night when I blow more money for stupid stuff than I do all year.  But it's not about what you win, though the feeling of winning is important, it's playing with someone, being silly and having fun with someone who is enjoying the time right along with you.  I have to say that the people running the games this year were seriously nice (they were happy when you won) and the prizes were cool. (No cheap plastic)  I really, really, really wanted a pink cowboy hat, and Guy won it for me.  (It sparkles!!)  He really wanted a white tiger.  I'm not sure who won that one, but we were both trying.  And yes.  –I– won the cards, pool ball, and the army guys at that stupid roll the coin/pusher game.  -grin-  I still have the army guys I won last year, guarding one of my orchids.  There are a few new fish in my fish pond, too.  (Love that game)  They went to the bottom to recoup, but here's a shot of one of two frogs that took up residence this last month, and grew, and grew, and grew.

The derby is over, and I've got a couple of shots of the door of car 31, driven by CJ and decorated with a burning bunny.  I'm thinking of auctioning it off if they let me, the funds to go to getting next year's car.  Do I hear any offers?   -grin-   (Click for a closeup)

Not sure why . . .

My hands are tired this morning, and I'm not sure why.  They don't ache or hurt, they're just tired.  I'm a bit loggy myself, and no it isn't because of the fair, though I did go last night despite the pop-up thunderstorms that plagued the area.  The first band of storms hit us when we were in the education barn, which was cool since I got to watch them sheer a few sheep while waiting for the rain to pass, which it did–for a few hours, anyway.

Last night was barn nigh, touring the animals and displays while eating a carmel apple.  Tonight I hit the games.  :-)  My favorite night is game night, but I have to work myself up to it.  I'm such a goober.

Worked on the Trent/Jenks novella yesterday, tweaking it so little that I think I'm going to let it rest until my editor sees it.  That makes two finished in the cabinet of awesomeness.  I want one more look at Meg before I call her done, and want the weekend to think about it, so today, I'm pulling out something I've temporally titled PET SHOP BOYS and get that reworked today, or maybe Tempson Estates.  Everything lately is in third person, which feels weird but is getting better.  I always write my dialog in third person, so shifting gears isn't as bad as you might think.  I still like first person best.  It's more of a challenge to tell the reader what's going on without making your protagonist look like an idiot for not realizing it.  I also get to spend more time with the big-bad-ugly.

Tempson Estates . . .  Yeah.  You guys need to see that one. . . .  That one is pretty cool.

Went to the Animal Fair . . .

I went to the animal fair,

The birds and the beasts were there . . .

The big baboon by the light of the moon, was combing his auburn hair.

At least, I'm sure that's what my mom was humming when she found out she got a blue ribbon for her cross stitch entry.  :-) (Yay Mom!) My daisies got a second place in crochet/other, and I'm already planning out what I want to enter next year.  -laugh-

We ate fair foot, looked at the poultry entries, and saw some junior horsemanship, but the highlight for me was the demolition derby.  My cousin had a car in it, and this year, he asked if he could put a burning bunny on it.  Of course!  Yes!

I was so jazzed.  Guy, Thing Two, and myself were allowed back in the pits for a meet and greet with some of the crew, and I got to sign it.  I'm trying to see if I can auction the beat-up remain to help with the purchase of next year's car, but we'll see.  :-)  Here I am with my cousin and the driver, CJ.

 

I also took some YouTubes of the actual event.  If you've never seen a small town crash-em-up, it's a lot of fun.

The guys and gals in orange–the crew of car 31!

Car 31′s entry into the arena.  I tried to get a closeup of the burning bunny on the door, but was a tad too far back.  :-)

And . . . we're stuck.  -grin-  Everyone gets stuck.  It takes a great driver like CJ to get unstuck.  That, and a bit of luck.

Burning bunnies do tend to, well . . . burn.

The fair had a lot of cars to go through, so this is one of many elimination heats.  The last two cars running move on, and car 31 is still going with three cars on the field. Yay!

But alas, if you can't keep your car going, or fail to hit someone in a specified time period, you are eliminated.  There's always tomorrow night, right?

And yep, I'm still managing to get some work done.  I finished the Grace short and worked through my first revision to clean it up.  I like it, but I'm going to have Guy read it.  I think the ending is too up and down, and I'm too close to see right now.  Today I'm going to jump back over to the Trent/Jenks novella and finish my second revision of that.  I have until the end of August to get my stories together for next year's anthology, and it looks like I'm going to make it!

Signs of Fall

Last week I mentioned that I couldn't smell fall yet, but I could hear it in the shift of insects.  The tree down at the end of the street is starting to turn, but that might be the one that got hit by lightning.  My pumpkins are finishing up, and I don't think I'll get any new ones started–the first ones to set fruit are already in.  But the surest sign of fall is the fair.  If you remember last year, Guy and I went to the fair (they have a crash-em-up car derby that I enjoy.  (grin)  I also enjoy the games and cotton candy and fair food, as awful as it is.  (yum)  And I always take a day to stroll the green barn where the entries for canning, photography, flower arrangement, and "weird squash" are on display.

This  year, my mom put her very determined  "I want to do something new" shoes on, and she kidnaped me, forced me into the car, and drove me all the way out there to enter some of her needlework and my yarn twiddles into the fair.  It was an adventure getting organized, but the smiling, eager ladies there walked

us through it, making sure we got into the right category.  (I'm in other.  How very . . . typical. )  I don't have a picture, but when I get them back on Sunday, I'll show you the vase of crochet/knitted daisies that I entered.

I also managed to get a picture of the gallynipper mosquito that I was telling you about.  Dude.  The first picture is the grass mosquito that we usually have.

M-m-manic Monday Mugs!

As promised, we are clearing out Guy's shelves as we prepare to shut down Vampiric Charms.  This week, we have a variety of mini mugs, each one promoting one of the first six books.  These are NOT the signed and numbered larger mugs we have every year, and will not have my signature on them.  They hold 10 oz.

Guy will begin taking orders for these at noon today, EST.  (Don't email him now.  Wait for noon.)  One mug per person, please.  The cost covers the shipping and handling, and of course, once they are gone, they are gone.  We don't know which title you will get, but I will say there are only like 4 DWW, so good luck!  USA shipments will take two weeks from when we ship, International will be a bit longer.  Turn around is going to be slower than usual because there are so many of them and they all have to go through my kitchen before they can get to you.

Shipping and Handling is USA (East of the Mississippi) $6.95.  USA (West of the Mississippi) $9.50.  Canada $9.95, International $15.90.  (Sorry, no shipments to Germany.  They get hung up in customs.)  To make this as painless as possible for Guy, we are taking Pay Pal only.  Unfortunately we can't combine any other merchandise in with this, but you will get a collector card that is promoting both THE HOLLOWS INSIDER and A PERFECT BLOOD (It's got the cover on it.  Bea-u-tiful!)  They will be coming parcel post.

If you are interested, at noon, EST today, (no earlier) send an email to Guy at vampcharms@comporium.net with the words Mini Mug in the subject line.  If you are among the first one hundred, he will send you an invoice for shipping, so please include your shipping address in your initial email.  If you do not include your shipping address in the initial email, he can not ship you a mug, and your order will not be acted on.  PayPal doesn't always put the address in, and it's frustrating.  We don't do anything with your address but ship you your mug.  We don't have the time to do anything wicked, and I hate it when people sell mine, so . . .

These will not go as fast as the manic monday books, (I'm thinking the window will be a few hours) and as usual, I'll update this post when they are gone to help avoid confusion.  If you miss out, I'll be having more shipping and handling give aways.  We also still have the Pale Demon Freebies available for the price of two stamps.

On a more personal note, the fair is this week . . .  And I've got an entry!  More tomorrow.

Friday wrap-up (and thank you!)

Yesterday I got some links to an interview and some reviews revolving around Blood Work, and I want to pass them on to you.  Along with them, I want to pass on my heartfelt thanks to all of you who have gone out to find BLOOD WORK.  As I mentioned when it came out, it hit the number one spot on the NY Times Best Seller list for hardcover graphic novels.  It dropped that second week, and I thought we were moving off, but I found out that it's back at the number two spot for the week of Aug 21, so that is very, very cool.  Thank you.  I spent a summer trying to figure this new medium out, and I learned a lot.  Knowing that you, the readers, appreciated the results, is gratifying.

So, the interviews!  This first one I remember giving at Comic Con.  She transcribed my words verbatim, it looks like, so you can almost hear the background noise and chaos of the crowd in my words.  Ain't it Cool News  (review and interview)

Huntington News review

Arts Beat New York Times review

Tulsa World review

 

Monday we're having a manic monday for mini-mugs.  I'll have info at 8:00, but don't order until noon EST.  I've got 50-100 of these to move out, so we should be able to keep taking reservations for at least an hour or two.  :-)

Gallynippers . . . We've got 'em

Woke up to a loud thunderstorm approaching, shut the house up, (Okay, I made Guy shut the house up) went back to bed, and listened to it get closer.  Found myself thinking about my work today, and fell back asleep–until the tree at the end of the street got hit by lightning.  -laugh-

So the yard is watered, and the street quiet.  It's going to get busy in a week or two as school starts back up and little girls in pigtails and new dresses, and boys in pants with uncomfortable creases and clean shoes start going by my window with a pace both eager and slow.

The apples I've been watching on my new trees are ripening, and Guy and I shared our first harvest.  I've been torn if I should spray for mosquitoes or go natural in an effort to find another gallynipper mosquito.  They are HUGE, and the eggs can lay dormant for up to ten years until conditions are right.  I want to put one of these little suckers in plastic. Gallynipper  They can get through heavy canvas and their feet span the size of a quarter.  And they hurt!

 

 

Hopeful

I'm hopeful that I can get the Grace short finished before the end of the week.  It's looking good at this point.  I've got the last chapter at dialog to finish, and probably a tiny epilogue after that, then to go back and fix everything.  One thing I found was that Grace here is quite a lot younger than I thought she was going to be.  In the possible series coming from this, she's going to be much older and dealing with issues that a 25 year old wouldn't be thinking of, but I unexpectedly found a chance to show the beginnings of those issues, and I took it.  Interestingly enough, her personality is about the same, and I'm enjoying seeing the seeds of disillusionment that I'm going to harvest someday being sown.  Working in such a A-B-C manner is not my usual format.  I'm usual a B-C-A kind of a girl.  Grace is not as happy as Rachel, but more like Ivy.

It's started to cool off, and even though it's only Wednesday, I'm already starting to think about the weekend.  Fair is coming up, and the Ren festival, too.  Mums are showing at the farmers' market.  Apples. It's about time to start thinking about what I want to put in before I call it quits in the garden.  Long-term planning–I gots it.

Who do I write for, and who do I read?

Today is the last chunk of the extended interview I worked up for Harper Teen a few months ago.  I hope you've enjoyed the little piece of "behind the scenes."  I also hope something interesting happens between now and tomorrow, because if not, you might get a picture of my dogs. -grin-  Not much going on right now apart from me working on Grace.

Chapter two is in the cabinet of awesomeness, fermenting.  I'm already seeing things I need to change to make the entire story work better, but instead of opening the file back up and tweaking it now, I'm pushing into chapter three as if I already made my changes.  A lot of people find it hard to move forward until the previous chapter, paragraph, sentence is perfect, but writing in a bulldozer fashion of never-look-back has saved me several times when a change I thought needed to be implemented turned out to be a bad decision.  (Once ti saved an entire week's work) Everyone writes differently, though, and there is no wrong way to write except not to.  :-)

 

Who is your target audience for your books?

If I look at my Facebook Fan Page breakdown, 63 percent of my readers are between the ages of 18 and 44, most of them female though the percentage is shifting as the covers begin to take a more mainstream look.  I think that that's a fairly accurate description of what I've noticed at signings.

Lately, though, I've been seeing families coming up to the signing table together, either mother/daughter teams, adult sisters, or even Mom, Dad, and daughter, all of them excited over the next release or chatting about the Hollows over dinner.  That is one of the best feelings ever—being able to give a family something other than grades, job, or chores to talk about, exchanging ideas and thoughts where there's no right or wrong answer, just conversation together.

But if you want to know who I target the books for?  Readers who are looking to read about down-to-earth people who make mistakes, try to make better choices, fight against injustice, and who are afraid–but do what they see is necessary, finding they are stronger than they think.  I like my happy endings.

 When not writing, what are your favorite books/authors to read?

Unfortunately I don't get a lot of time to read, especially in my genre.  I've always enjoyed reading Jocelynn Drake for her dark, non-sparkly vampires, Vicky Petterson for her complex female characters with more baggage than an intercontinental plane, Rachel Vincent for her characters who make worse decisions than mine and survive. Richard Kadrey for his gritty storytelling, and Bram for his lyrical writing.

What can we expect from you in the future??

Right now, I'm developing a handful of story ideas that I've been kicking around in the back of my head for a while, but it remains to be seen how fast I get to act on them.  I still have several Hollows books that are scheduled to be published, so we will see a Hollows graphic novel (Blood Work) in July 2011, and a Hollows world book (Hollows Insider) in late October 2011.  The next regular Hollows book (A Perfect Blood) will be released spring 2012, followed by one or two final Hollows books over the next couple of years to round out the series.  Intermixed in there somewhere, I'm hoping to get one of my "heart" books on the shelf, something that might be harder to drop into a marketing hole but is rich in character development and is something I'm yearning to get on paper.  I'm comfortable right now in simply concentrating on the next story, whatever it might be.

To E or not to E?

Had a great weekend working in the dirt, ripping out one very overgrown bush and moving three from another part of the property into its place.  It was doubly satisfying because the three we moved were crowed and going to have to come out anyway, and now they're in the ground, not the dumpster.

Working too hard on the weekend is part of my master plan to get things done during the week.  If I'm too achy and sore to do anything but sit for three days, then I'm more likely to ah . . . sit for three days.  Grace is moving forward.

I've got a bit more from that unused interview for you today concerning my thoughts on the pros and cons of electronic books.  Enjoy!

 

What do you feel are the benefits of the new electronic readers such as Kindle, Kobo & Nook to the environment?

This is a hard question to answer as the benefits in avoiding chopping down trees, the enormous impact on the environment turning said trees into books, and then trucking them across the country only to then relocate unsold books into the waste stream can't be dismissed.  However . . . there's a largely untalked about problem in the toxic waste generated in simply making electronic readers, compounded by the problem that many are made to last only a few years before needing to be replaced, either because of designed decrepitude or that sparkles of the next model are irresistible.  These toxic compounds are likely going to end up in a landfill where, when compounded with others in huge techno dumps, can damage the environment from cradle to grave.

I've not investigated the pros and cons with enough depth to give a solid yes or no to the benefits of e-readers, but it seems to me that the consumer should purchase what form of book works best for him or her.  Me, I like my tactile paper books, but the benefits of having your library at your fingertips is hard to dismiss.  It's a personal choice and I don't see a problem in having both.  Perhaps some effort should be spent in redesigning a new production and marketing system for paper books that doesn't involve quite so much waste.

What impact do electronic readers create on the bottom line for authors in the end? Do you feel they have a negative impact or positive, or no impact at all that you can see?

It has been my personal experience that electronic books have had a positive impact on my sales, not just from established readers tired of agonizing over where to put their new book shelf, but for garnering new readers as well.  That a lot of my readership stems from romance and science fiction, both of who are computer and Internet savvy, doesn't hurt.

It's far easier for many people to take a chance on a new-to-them author if the format is electronic.  It's not always about the price, but the space that an unwanted book takes up and the decision on what to do with a book you don't like.  Most people who read love books, and the thought of throwing a paper book away, even one they didn't like, is akin to nails on a blackboard.  Giving your friend a book you didn't enjoy isn't likely to happen, either.  Tossing electrons back into the ether is a lot easier on the soul.