Jim C. Hines's Blog, page 201

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Given all the buzz about Avatar, I really wanted to see this in the theaters. Of course, thanks to that same buzz, I had a pretty good idea what to expect: beautiful effects coupled with a relatively unoriginal story.

There's been a lot of criticism about this one.  Over at i09, Annalee Newitz  criticizes it as a white man's guilt movie. Others describe it as a mutant love child of Ferngully, Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, and the Smurfs.

Valid points, but they miss one very important...

Zombie Rhymes: Hey Daddle Daddle

Hey Daddle Daddle

by Jim C. Hines

Hey daddle daddle, the cat went to battle

the werecow beneath the moon.

The zombie dog drooled to see such flesh,

and ate the cat's brain with a spoon.

Killing Characters

Normally, I don't repeat announcements here if I've mentioned them on Twitter or Facebook.  This one deserves an exception.  Seanan McGuire was kind enough to e-mail me last night, and — after the prerequisite taunting — informs me that The Mermaid's Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] is #1 on the Locus Bestseller list!  It's Snoopy-dance time!

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So lately, I've been thinking about killing characters. Not the redshirts who die to remind us how dangerous the story is.  Not the villains who...

Link Roundup

Some links that have come up over the past few days…

Writing and $$$

Lynn Viehl: The Reality of a New York Times Bestseller

Tobias Buckell: First Novel Advances

Kimberly Pauley: A Challenge for My Fellow Authors (more royalty/sales information)

Realms of Fantasy Follow-up
Catherine Valente, Sarah Monette, Kat Howard, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Barbarienne weigh in on the All-Women themed issue.
Why Film Schools Teach Screenwriters Not to Pass the Bechdel Test
I Didn't Dream of Dragons: Fallacies...

Realms of Fantasy's All-Women Issue

Realms of Fantasy is doing a "Women in Fantasy" issue.  For this issue, they'll only be accepting stories by female authors.

I've got a number of opinions on this, but for once I'm going to keep those to myself, at least to start with.

A deliberate women-only issue of Realms.  What do you think?

PS, That's right, I can write short blog posts!

PPS, Do read the Realms post for further details from Douglas Cohen.

2009 Writing Income

This is the third year I've posted about the income I make as a fantasy author.  (See the Money Posts from Year 1 and Year 2.)  Money tends to be a taboo topic, but given all of the myths and illusions about writing, I think it's important to get some actual data out there.  Because knowing is half the battle!

The background: I've been writing and submitting my work since 1995.  Goblin Quest was my first book with a major publisher, and came out in the end of 2006.  2009 saw the publication...

Winners and Sherlock Holmes

So the book giveaway ended up with 66 comments on LJ, 15 on Facebook, and 26 on the Wordpress blog.  I used a random number generator to pick three winners.  Congratulations to:

Heidi Santavuori

seldear

sweetlycorrupt

I'll be getting in touch with the three of you about the details.  Thanks to everyone who entered!  (And for those who want to check out the books but don't want to wait for my next giveaway, might I suggest putting in a request at the local library?)

Anyway, on to the movie...

Sales Info (with Graphs!)

I've written and read a fair amount about authorial promotion, what is and isn't effective.  Anyone who's tired of book sales talk can feel free to skip this one, but I figured some of you might appreciate a little raw data to go with the conversation.

This is a graph of the sales for The Stepsister Scheme (purple line) and The Mermaid's Madness (black line).  Stepsister has been selling for just over a year now, and Mermaid has been out for about three months.

The sales data comes from...

Zombie Rhymes: Jack Sprat

Jack Sprat

by Jim C. Hines

Jack Sprat will drink your blood.

His wife will eat your flesh.

And so betwixt the two of them

They never leave a mess.

Hey — Free Books!

As people may or may not know, every time someone clicks on one of my Amazon links to buy a book (or anything else from Amazon), I get a small percentage back as Amazon gift credit.  This is why I usually list book titles like so: The Mermaid's Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].

For a while now, I've used that credit to buy and give away books.  Thanks to everyone who's clicked on those links over the past month or two, it's time to hand out some more.

[image error] [image error]This time, I'm going to offer three...