Jim C. Hines's Blog, page 208

Dedications

I'm still taking interview questions.  I've got a dozen or so good ones, but nothing silly yet.  Knowing y'all, this surprises me.  If you're interested, e-mail a question at mermaid@jimchines.com and I'll add you to the drawing to win a copy of Strip Mauled.  All I ask is that you post the Q&A on 10/6 when Mermaid officially comes out.

This was what I saw Sunday afternoon in the SF/F section at Schuler Books in the Meridian Mall.  Isn't it a beautiful sight?*  That little hand belongs to my s...

Arr! Google Update Ahoy!

"The proposed settlement gives Google rights to scan and provide online access to millions of books, many of which are out-of-print or otherwise not commercially available."  (Note that out-of-print =/= public domain.)

"The Settlement Agreement uses the term Commercially Available, which generally means that a Book is in-print. If a Book is not Commercially Available, that means, in general, that it is Out-of-Print. Google is authorized to make Display Uses and Non-Display Uses of each Book...

Anthology Invites

Like I did last week, I'm rerunning this piece from 2006 (with minor edits) to get it into Wordpress.

For a long time, invitation-only anthologies were my Holy Grail, a goal only one step below actually selling a novel to a major publisher.  I drove myself a little loopy trying to crack the invite market, and thought I'd share those experiences for anyone trying to do the same.

The first invite-only anthology I got in to was Turn the Other Chick. I had seen a note on Esther Friesner's website t...

Bechdel Testing

Hey, guess what showed up in a big ol' Fed Ex box yesterday.  I'll give you a hint–it wasn't The Tick

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Because it came up in the comments yesterday Tuesday, I thought I'd talk a little about the Bechdel Test.  For those of you unfamiliar with the test, check out the Wikipedia link.  In brief, a story has to meet the following three requirements to pass the test:

It has to have at least two women in it

Who talk to each other
About something besides a man.

The Angry Black Woman posted a...

Diabetes Details 3: $$$

• SciFiChick is giving away a copy of The Mermaid's Madness. Deadline to enter is 10/16.

• Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work. I absolutely love this piece.

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So apparently this is the week to talk about invisible diseases/conditions.  I don't know how invisible my diabetes is … the insulin pump is kind of obvious, and I don't try to hide when I'm checking my blood sugar.  On the other hand, it's not like my pancreas has fallen out in the middle of a convention panel or anything l...

Three Weeks to Mermaid!

• I don't link to many reviews of my work, but I'm going to make an exception for this one.  sigelphoenix has posted one of the most thoughtful reviews of The Stepsister Scheme [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] that I've come across.  Some spoilers, but worth reading: http://sigelphoenix.insanejournal.com/168038.html

• Balancing this out, Andrew Wheeler glanced at a copy of Mermaid and warns readers to "Expect a lot of singing Motown into shampoo bottles, or whatever the fantasy-novel equivalent...

PublishAmerica's Twittery

If you're bored by publishing talk, go learn how to build TRON lightcycles out of LEGO  instead.

PublishAmerica has been around for a while.  You might remember them as the publisher who offered to buy Atlanta Nights, an educationally awful book designed to demonstrate that Publish America would accept just about anything.  Nor does PA pay much attention to things like cover art, as you can see in one of my old LOL books.

PA claims to be a traditional publisher (a term with no actual meaning).  ...

Self-Publishing Myths

I wrote this piece two years ago, but wanted to get it reposted to the new Wordpress site, especially after reading a few of the comments over at Genreville's post on self-publishing.

I have absolutely nothing against self-publishing.

Let me say that again. I don't hate self-publishing. I don't hate self-published authors. I'm not interested in keeping anyone down, bashing authors, or mocking people who have accomplished the difficult and impressive job of completing a novel.

I do have serious p...

Thursday has a Prize Inside

• Holy crap!  Some time this week, I hit the 1000 friends mark on LJ.  This calls for a book giveaway!  I used random.org to pick a winner: #676.  I then realized that counting through the list to figure out who #676 was would be a major headache, but fortunately, plugging 'em into Excel proved to be quicker.  Congratulations, patesden!  Would you please e-mail me at jim -at- jimchines.com to let me know which of my books you'd like and where to sent it?

• dragovianknight made two LJ icons...

Twilight, Part II

So I finished reading Twilight [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].  It was a better book than I expected, though I certainly wasn't blown away.

In brief, Twilight is the story of Bella Swan, a high school girl who falls in love with a vampire.  Then about 80% of the way through the book, some other stuff happens.

That structure was odd.  For 400 pages, this is a fairly typical teenage romance, except the boy happens to be a vampire.  Suddenly we have evil vampires chasing Bella and everyone's...