Jim C. Hines's Blog, page 216

Diabetes Update

Brenda Novak’s auction for diabetes research will be wrapping up at the end of the month.  Looking at my two items, bidding has reached almost $100.  My thanks to everyone who’s bid so far.

Following mizkit’s lead, I think I’m going to up the ante.  Bidding on the book is currently at $23.  If that crosses the $40 mark, I’ll throw in a signed copy of The Faery Taile Project as well.

Critique of a short story or novel chapter

Autographed copy of The Stepsister Scheme

I’ve lived with diabetes my whol

Tuesday Miscellany

Q: How did Sleeping Beauty invest her gold?

A: Hedge funds.

I’m sorry.  That joke popped into my head right before lunch.  In a just universe, my nemesis would plot a horrible demise for writing it.  My brain is still recovering from the long weekend of lawnwork, back pain, hospital visits (a friend with an injured arm), and family time.  So it’s popping about rather randomly right now.

Today marks the release of Kelly McCullough’s latest book MythOS [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].  I reviewed and e

Parenting Thoughts

I’m not always a great Dad.  I understand that, and I try to work on it.  Like anyone, some days I do better than others.  For the most part, I think I’m a good Dad.  And every once in a while I feel like I get it right.  Joining karate with my daughter was one of those victories, giving us something to do together every night, an hour of working out and the drive to and from, just the two of us.

Another was with my four-year-old son a while back.  He had been having trouble settling down to bed.

Nemesis Wanted. (Must have own black cape.)

So yesterday on Facebook I wrote, “I need a nemesis.”  Because that’s just the sort of thing you write on Facebook, you know?  But the enthusiastic responses got me thinking … a nemesis could be a lot of fun.  Anton Strout has Pat Rothfuss.  Jeff VanderMeer has Evil Monkey.  Why not me?

I am therefore holding auditions for the role of nemesis.  Please post your qualifications below, including any superweapons developed or nefarious schemes carried out.  Extra points will be given for all goatees.

Nightmare, by Steven Harper

A while back I finished reading Nightmare [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Steven Harper. This is the second book in Harper’s Silent Empire series, in which certain individuals known as Silent have the ability to enter The Dream, a kind of telepathic linking of sentient minds.  The Dream provides instant communication between the stars, and as a result the Silent are highly valued.

It’s been a while since I read Dreamer, the first book in the series.  So it threw me a little to realize this book

Writing is Hard

Practice is supposed to help you improve, right?  The more you practice a process, the easier it becomes.  Yet I’ve talked before about how each book seems to be more challenging than the last.  From speaking to other published authors, I know I’m not the only one hitting this apparent paradox.

So just for fun, I thought I’d break down the books and figure out some of the major challenges and lessons I had to learn from each one.

Goblin Quest: 1st published book.  Just trying to write a publishabl

The Author-Reader Contract and Backseat Writers

I was originally going to call this entry “Neil Gaiman is my bitch,” but decided against it. Controversy is fun, but I don’t know if I could survive the hordes of Neil fans coming to rip me apart. There’s also, as cissa* pointed out, the misogynistic/sexist aspect of the whole “my bitch” slang.

Anyway, last week I linked to Gaiman’s post about readers and entitlement when it comes to things like completing a series on time. Being an author myself, my first response was “Hell yeah!” I haven’t miss

Testing Wordpress

After getting a few estimates on Wordpress work, I’m going to take a shot at doing this myself. 

The work-in-progress is at http://www.sff.net/people/jchines/blog if anyone wants to check things out.

Mostly though I just want to test the LJ crossposter… which didn’t work.  Ptui.

Test Post

[image error]The Czech edition of Goblin War has Oakbottom on the cover! At least I assume that’s Oakbottom. Okay, it could be just a normal tree. But I’m saying it’s Oakbottom. We also get Darnak, Jig (of course), a much truer take on Bastard the wolf, an orc who may or may not be Billa the Bloody, and a random elf. Click if you want a closeup.

Reminder, Oakbottom, and Your Friday Quiz

1. Today's the last day to vote on the caption contest! Currently the Wonder Twins are winning, but Dear Mom is a not-too-distant second.

[image error] 2. The Czech edition of Goblin War has Oakbottom on the cover! At least I assume that's Oakbottom. Okay, it could be just a normal tree. But I'm saying it's Oakbottom. We also get Darnak, Jig (of course), a much truer take on Bastard the wolf, an orc who may or may not be Billa the Bloody, and a random elf. Click if you want a closeup.

Friday Quiz: Your