Jim C. Hines's Blog, page 179

First Book Friday: Sherwood Smith

Welcome to First Book Friday, with today's guest star, Sherwood Smith (sartorias on LJ).

How to introduce Sherwood … I've never met her in person, but we've been chatting online for years.  She's a delightful person, warm and genuine, and if you're not reading her blog then you're missing out.

She's been a writer pretty much her entire life.  Read on to learn how she went from writer to published writer.  And when you're done, see here for my review of her book Once a Princess [B&N | Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].

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I started typed up my novels and sending them out in eighth grade. I knew zip about quality—I was writing the sort of book I liked to read, so they were all kid adventure stories, heavy on the castles, princesses, sword fights, and pie fights . . . kid drama and kid comedy. No romance! There were plenty of boys, but only as friends. Or rivals. But girls got the lead roles.

The very first one was written with a friend. We wrote it in secret code, trading off bits and delivering chapters each day to one another's locker. It was set in the Netherlands around 1700, so that there were not only castles and princesses but wigs that could be lifted on fish hooks, a comedy plus to thirteen-year-olds. We were so thrilled with our masterpiece that we learned how to type, and typed it up. I illustrated it copiously—still have some of the drawings, and most of that first submission.

We submitted it to the eighth grade writing contest at our junior high. It was 400 pages long. I remember one of the teacher judges turning pages over with her fingertips, and looking down at it with this peculiar expression . . . rather as one might regard a fish long since gone to its reward. We did not win, needless to say—some kid who wrote inspirational poetry did. I bet her poetry was good. Our story was . . . *ahem* . . . enthusiastic.

By that point I'd already been writing about another world for some years, but I knew from my reading that "they" would never publish anything in which kids from Earth went to the world and never came back. Never grew up, either, but had great adventure lives. For hundreds of pages! (In those days, kidzbooks were max 60k words. It was hard to find a good long adventure until I started reading adult historical novels.) So I knew that if I wanted to actually get anything published, I'd have to write "they" books as well as my "me" books.

So, to the first published book. When I was seventeen, a friend said to me, "I wish all the heroines weren't blond with blue eyes." So I told another friend that I was going to write about a brown-skinned, brown-haired, brown-eyed heroine, but that friend got quite angry, saying that I ought not dare to write about minorities as I was a WASP and didn't know how minorities suffered. (We were in high school at the time, remember.) I got the idea for Wren, and blithely began writing it—and I found my way between the wishes of the two friends.

The first line was: "The phone rang." The title, which I thought so cool at age seventeen, was Tess's Mess. Since I knew no one would publish my real secondary world, I thought I'd make one that publishers of kids' books would like. It would have some of the fun stuff that I loved, but it wouldn't break the "rules" I perceived in children's literature at the time. I also wouldn't commit the error of presuming to write about a minority; I might mention Wren's brown skin, but she would have blue eyes, and the brown and blond striped hair, so she'd be in between.

I submitted the first half, as was (handwritten into a notebook) to a local contest—and won! So I thought, fame and fortune here I come! Finished it, laboriously typed it out on my Mom's WW II-era typewriter, with its fading ribbon, sent it out . . . and it came back. And back. And back.

So when I turned nineteen, I figured I needed to learn something about writing, and I pretty much stopped trying to send things out for another fifteen years, though I never stopped writing. Every five or six years I'd take out Wren again and try a new rewrite, and in the late eighties, I was lucky enough to catch the eye of Jane Yolen, who taught me a whole lot about rewriting by having me give it three or four more drafts before she published the first one, Wren to the Rescue, at Harcourt, under her own imprint, Jane Yolen Books. By then I'd actually already gotten published, but these were work-for-hire without my name on them. Wren was the first with my name, and one of the first ones I'd tried to get out there.

The last of the Wren books just came out as an e-book. It pretty much stands alone. It's available at Kindle and Book View Café.

Amazon Now Offering Bookscan Access to Authors

Amber Stults tweeted a link to an article in the L.A. Times, announcing that Amazon is now offering access to Bookscan data through the Amazon Author Central program.

I've checked my Author Central page, and what do you know — I've got pages and pages of shiny, wonderful sales data.  This appears to be pretty much the full Bookscan data for all of my books, not just the Amazon sales.

ETA: Amazon is providing a four-week window of sales data.  Meaning you'll be able to see how your books are doing over the past four weeks, but won't be able to check back to see sales from six months ago.

They're also providing more information about Amazon ranks tracked over time for your books.

If you need me, I'll be having a datagasm…

Assange's Rape Charges

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, was arrested in Britain on charges of rape and sexual coercion for a warrant issued in Sweden.  Given the timing of the arrest, coming so soon after WikiLeaks posted a large number of U.S. diplomatic cables, combined with the fact that rape charges are so often disbelieved anyway … well, it's no surprise that the discussion has gotten ugly, and fast.

A Slate article quotes a Washington Post blog, claiming that the actual charge is "for violating an obscure Swedish law against having sex without a condom."

Right.  In Sweden, it's illegal to have sex without a condom.  This is why the Swedes died out after a single generation, and their land was immediately colonized by sentient ninja velociraptors.

The Swedes are making it up as they go along, proclaims another news story, describing the charges as "absurd" and talking about how the victims went to the police for advice, "a technique in Sweden enabling citizens to avoid just punishment for making false complaints."

I'm having a hard time finding many official documents or sources about the case.  It's getting buried under the conspiracy theories and the attacks against Sweden and/or the alleged victims.  But according to a report by The Press Association:

[T]he first complainant, Miss A, said she was victim of "unlawful coercion" on the night of August 14 in Stockholm … Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner.

The second charge alleged Assange "sexually molested" Miss A by having sex with her without a condom when it was her "express wish" one should be used.  The third charge claimed Assange "deliberately molested" Miss A on August 18 "in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity". The fourth charge accused Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on August 17 without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home.

I'm neither judge nor jury, and I can't say what actually happened.  But it strikes me as rather telling that all this outrage about condoms completely ignores the parts of the charges where he allegedly used force to hold one victim down, and assaulted another in her sleep.

As for the condom issue, let me put this as clearly as I can: consent for one action does not imply consent for another.  If I consent to kissing, it doesn't mean it's okay for you to grope me.  If I consent to mutual masturbation, it doesn't mean I consent to intercourse.  If I consent to intercourse with a condom, it does not mean I consent to intercourse without one.

Meaning, if Miss A did consent to sex with a condom, but Assange didn't use one, then he was committing a sexual act against her which she had not consented to.  Remind me, what do we call it when one person commits a sexual act against another without the other person's consent?

There may be other issues here, political and otherwise.  And if I'm understanding the chronology correctly, Sweden didn't do itself any favors by flipflopping on whether or not to charge Assange with rape.

However, I'm getting awfully damn tired of yet another round of Smear The Rape Victims.  Of the assumption that women lie.  Of the myth that if you tweet about hanging out with cool people at a party, then nothing that follows could possibly be "real" rape. (After all, you went to the party, right?  Doesn't that equal consent to be assaulted?)

I don't know if Assange is guilty or not.  But I'm disgusted with how we so often and so quickly leap to attack and condemn the alleged victims in cases of rape.

More What You'd Call Guidelines…

Over at Making Light, James MacDonald explains How to Get Published.

Before I go any further, let me state for the record that MacDonald knows his stuff.  He contributes good writing advice at Making Light, Absolute Write, and elsewhere.

That said, I'm gonna argue with a few of his points now, 'cause what fun would it be if we all agreed with each other?

To be a writer, you must write.  Absolutely, 100%, yes!  However, MacDonald goes on to give the oft-repeated advice, "Write every day."  Good advice, but not an iron-clad rule.  I write five days a week, but generally don't write on weekends.  I believe writing every day is a good goal, but ultimately, it's important to find the schedule that works for you.  The important thing is that you're writing.

On the day you reach THE END, put the book aside for six weeks.  Let me put it this way: I wrote, revised, and started submitting Goblin Quest [B&N | Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon] over the course of six weeks, and that seems to have worked out pretty well for me.  Distance can be a very good thing, and these days I usually try to do a short story or something else between drafts/books as a palate-cleanser.  But once again, writing is like the Matrix: some "rules" can be bent, while others can be broken.1

Now find a publisher.  This is exactly what I did when I finished Goblin Quest, actually.  It's not the path I'd follow if I had to do it all over again today.  Publishers are slow to respond (2.5 years in one case), and they ask for exclusivity.  Personally, I would go directly to querying agents, and let them submit to the publishers.  Authors have sold books both ways, as you can see in that First Book Survey someone did earlier this year.

I remember being a new author trying to break in, and assuming that Advice = Law.  If a pro said I had to sell short stories before selling a novel, then by Asimov's Sideburns, that was what I must do!

It messed me up more than once.  So while I think it's incredibly important to listen to authors who have this sort of knowledge and experience, it's also important to remember that none of us have the Gospel of Getting Published.  (And I don't believe MacDonald is trying to preach Publishing Gospel, but I know how easy it is for new writers to take things as such.)

That said, MacDonald gives some good advice, and those working to break in could do much worse than to take a few minutes to read his post.

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With most rules, things generally turn out better if you make sure you understand the rule before you break it. ↩

E-book Experiment, Part 2

I've updated the Reporting Sexual Harassment in SF/F page with a link to the Geek Feminism Wiki's Sample Convention Anti-Harassment Policy.  I particularly appreciate the internal guidelines for convention staff.

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Months ago, when I was talking about how my e-book sales were about 3-5% of my print sales, a champion of self-publishing said my problem was that my $6.99 e-books were too expensive, and if I dropped the price to $2.99, I'd have better sales.

[image error]So in mid-October, I put my mainstream novel Goldfish Dreams [B&N | Amazon] up for sale as a $2.99, DRM-free e-book.

I posted my first week's results, and said I'd follow up in a month or so.  Well, over the past weekend I came across a post that mentioned the "great success" authors like Jim Hines and others have had putting their own work out through Amazon, which told me it was definitely time for a follow-up.

I've got about six weeks worth of data now.  Are you ready to see what my great success looks like?  B&N doesn't give a nice week-by-week breakdown, but here are my weekly Amazon Kindle sales.

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All total, I've sold 21 copies through Amazon.  Add in the 4 copies sold through Barnes & Noble, and I've made about $70, selling an average of about 4 copies a week.

For those keeping score at home, this would not even cover the conversion costs for having the files prepped.  (You can do this yourself, of course, if you have the time and the know-how.  I suspect I could have taught myself the tech side, but time is another issue…)

I should note that I've done nothing to promote this particular book.  I've been busy attending cons, working on short stories, revising Snow Queen, and also doing the day job and taking care of the family as my wife recovers from knee surgery.  But it's pretty clear to me that simply putting a book out there isn't enough.

By contrast, I haven't really been promoting my books with DAW very much these past weeks, either.  In those same six weeks, my books with DAW sold around 2000 print copies (averaging about 300/book), which translates to about a thousand dollars in royalties … $850 for me after my agent takes his cut.  (I have no access to the weekly e-book sales for the DAW books.)

I know there are people making self-pubbed e-books work for them.  My friend Sherwood Smith has been successfully selling some books this way.  I suspect that if I released one of my fantasy titles, either a reprint or an original goblin/princess book, I'd do a lot better.  But Goldfish Dreams is a mainstream title, so doesn't necessarily tap into my preexisting audience.

I also know that an ongoing, persistent sales effort can drive sales.  I have friends who keep up a pretty constant sales push to sell their e-books, and it does seem to help them sell more books.

But I barely have time to keep up with the blog.  I'd rather keep writing new books and the occasional short story, and let my publisher do most of the work to actually get my books into the hands of readers.

I'll keep checking in with further data, but my conclusions so far?

Simply putting an e-book out there ain't going to accomplish much.


Having a preexisting audience helps, but may not do much for cross-genre e-books.  Brand new authors with no audience — you've got a steep climb ahead of you.


You are your own sales force.  You can improve your sales, but it will take time away from something else.  (I would advise you to make sure you're not being obnoxious about it, as author self-promotion can get annoying pretty fast.)

Thoughts and comments are welcome, as always!

Holiday Bookplates and a Book Giveaway

Part I: Each year, I offer free autographed bookplates for anyone who plans on giving one (or more) of my books as presents.  This year is no different.  If you'll be tucking goblins or princesses into somebody's stocking–

Wait, let me rephrase that.  If you're giving goblin or princess books this year, and would like signed bookplates, please contact me.  I have different bookplates for the two series, so let me know which books you're giving, and how many.  I can squeeze a name in too, so if you want it autographed to someone, tell me that too.

U.S. residents only, I'm afraid.

Part II: One of the books I received at World Fantasy was The Secret History of Moscow [B&N | Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] by Ekaterina Sedia.  It's a beautiful book, but I already own a copy.  So it's time for a book giveaway!

You can read my thoughts on the book here.  If this sounds like the kind of story you'd enjoy, leave a comment, and I'll draw a winner in a week or so.  (Make sure I have a way to reach you if you win.  If you're on LJ or DW, I can contact you through your user ID.)

No geographic restrictions on this one.  Everyone can enter.

Part III: Dang it, I'm going to visions of have stocking-clad goblins stuck in my head all day…

No More Disney Fairy Tales?

[image error]Back in 2004 or so, I started toying with the idea for a different kind of fairy tale retelling, one which went back to the original stories and put the princesses squarely in charge of their own stories, kicking ass and saving princes and all of that. This was, in part, a response to the princess phase my daughter went through, wherein the house was invaded by Disney princess merchandise.

I'm currently finishing up final revisions on the fourth book in my series, and I just learned that Disney is getting out of the fairy tale game.

I'm not sure, but I think this means I win!

First Book Friday: Diana Pharaoh Francis

Welcome to First Book Friday !

Today we have Diana Pharaoh Francis  ( difrancis on LJ), author of several different fantasy series.  Her book  Crimson Wind [B&N |  Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon] comes out later this month, and–

Wait, what???  She does what in that book?  I'm sorry, just give me a minute.  I'll be all right.  I just … I never thought … How could she?

I think I need a hug.

Just read her story.  Or go read my review of her book The Cipher from a few years back.

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Hello there everyone!!! I'm delighted to be here and want to thank Jim for having me.

My first book was Path of Fate [B&N |  Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon], the first in a traditional fantasy trilogy. It began as a Book In a Week. That's a sort of a precursor to Nanowrimo, in which you take a week and try to do nothing else but work on a book in the hopes of really jump starting it. By the end of the week, you have either created a real foundation, or you've found out that the book isn't something you want to spend time with. Luckily, I did want to spend time with it and so I was off and running.

I wrote the rest of it over the next 7 months, at which time I wanted to immediately send it out. Luckily, I wrestled myself down and instead sent it out to some beta readers who gave me fabulous feedback. I revised and then put together a query letter and synopsis (which took a couple of months all by themselves. But I wanted to get this right.)

In the meantime, I had started making a list of agents and editors I wanted to submit to. On the top of the list was Roc Books. They were publishing a lot of the novels that I was reading at that point and I thought I would be a great fit in their house. Coincidentally, they had recently published a short story of mine in a collection for the Best of Dreams of Decadence. I thought that would give me a great connection and a reason to be elevated above the slush pile. (That story is called "All Things Being Not Quite Equal" and you can read it on my website.)

When I thought I was ready, I sent query packages out to my top four agents. I sent a quick query to Laura Anne Gilman, at that time senior editor at Roc, asking about the submission procedure as Roc's guidelines had been changing and I wanted to be sure of them. I included most of my query letter so that I could show that I knew what I was doing. She quickly got back with me and said she'd forwarded my query to her fellow editor, Jennifer Heddle, and I would hear from her soon.

Jen soon requested the entire manuscript, which I sent off immediately, and that meant I couldn't send it anywhere else until I had a reply. So I promptly sat by the phone like a sixteen year old waiting for someone to call and ask me to the prom. That got old fast. And then the agent rejections started rolling in. That got old too. Imagine that.

Skip forward a couple of months. I had made plans to go to World Fantasy Con. I daringly (for me anyhow) decided to contact Jen and ask if she'd have time to meet for a few minutes. I told her I totally understood that she probably hadn't read Path of Fate yet, but that I would love a chance to just talk to her. Shockers! She agreed. So we met and I had a chance to pitch the novel along with the rest of the trilogy. Two weeks later, she bought all three.

And that, kind gentlefolk, is the story of my first book, and thank goodness, because how else would you be able to read about the murder of Jim Hines in my forthcoming book, Crimson Wind?

Distilling the Blogosphere into its Purest Form

Yes, I'm totally laughing at myself here.  But I take comfort from the fact that I'm laughing at all the rest of us, too.

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(Feel free to copy  and repost, should the urge strike you.  Credit would be nice, but I'm not about to go all DMCA on your ass over a cartoon that took me a half hour to throw together.)

Responding to the TSA

Amidst the discussions about the new TSA "security" procedures (the scare quotes are both deliberate and, in my opinion, appropriate), I've seen some responses that made me uncomfortable.  I've been working on putting into words exactly why they bother me.

1. Let's make the politicians watch while we put their kids through the grope-downs and naked scanners. I understand the thinking here — that we need to force the people in power to recognize exactly what they're signing off on.  However, I just the other week wrote about how these new "security" procedures are far too close to sexual assault for my comfort.  If you're so opposed to these procedures, how can you advocate inflicting them on children while their parents watch?

2. I'm going to groan in pleasure/fake an orgasm while getting patted down. The point being, I presume, to try to make TSA staff as uncomfortable as they're making others.  I get that people are feeling sexually harassed/violated/assaulted by this process … but I don't see how turning the tables and sexually harassing the screeners is going to help.

3. Every TSA employee should refuse to have anything to do with this. Because it's so easy to quit your job, particularly in a recession?  I'm also seeing a number of folks talking about how, if they were working for the TSA, they'd never do this.  Which, to me, suggests that they've never heard of the Milgram experiment.

4. TSA screeners are a bunch of Nazi thugs. It's easy to imagine evil TSA screeners hidden away, masturbating to our backscatter scans (that particular story is apparently false, by the way).  There have certainly been many horrific stories of poor treatment at security checkpoints.  But while there will always be evil individuals, my sense is that the larger problem is not malice, but ridiculous policies combined with lack of training.  I'm not saying it's okay for TSA screeners to grope the groin of a menstrating Army vet and rape survivor. But rather than villainizing all TSA employees, it seems like some of our anger could be better directed at the people who a) thought these policies were a good idea and b) implemented them without making sure people were properly trained.  (Though the more I read, the more I wonder where the TSA is finding some of these people.  School janitors in Michigan get better background checks than TSA employees do.)

5. We should just adopt Israel's techniques! Consider that "surveys of Palestinian Arab citizens, who comprise one-fifth of Israel's population, show that most have suffered degrading treatment when flying with Israeli carriers."  Is racial profiling a "solution" we really want to try?  Another article points out issues of scale and training.  While I believe there are good lessons we could learn from Israel, and from other nations with more experience dealing with terrorist threats, I don't think simply adopting Israel's processes is a good or feasible solution.  (Thanks to Saladin Ahmed for the links.)

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On that note, here are some responses I've seen suggested here and elsewhere:

Write to your airline, letting them know how you feel.  (And if you will not be flying as a result of these policies, tell them.)
Let the TSA know what you think of their new policies at tsa-contactcenter@dhs.gov.  (Apparently, they claim to have received very few complaints.  Thanks to Lynn Flewelling for this one.)
Contact your elected officials.
Talk about this.  Many newspapers are taking the "Shut up and be groped" viewpoint, quoting studies that claim the majority of Americans don't mind these new processes. I wonder how many of those people simply don't fly, and/or don't know the new procedures.  After all, look at the response on Capital Hill when folks there actually saw a demonstration of the new TSA patdowns.  (To quote one staffer, the TSA "shot themselves in the foot" with their demonstration.)
pixelfish linked to an ACLU petition to the DHS and Janet Napolitano.  (If you sign, a copy is also sent to your senate and house representatives.)