David Lubar's Blog, page 22

First day of summer!

For me, that is. Yesterday, I did my last school visit of the 2009 - 2010 season. It was for students attending a summer-school session at Academy Street School in Dover, NJ. The kids and staff were great. I have two months before I start traveling again, and I'll be finished with my only pending deadline within a week or two. So I get to set my own pace -- which is a dangerous freedom. Ambition and sloth are already wrestling in my skull like the shoulder-perched angels and devils of o...

The refutes of one's labor

In all the buzz about Sarah Palin using "refudiate" when she meant to use either "repudiate" or "refute," we shouldn't lose site of the fact that neither of the offered words would be a correct choice in her example. She said, about the plans for a mosque at Ground Zero, "Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate." To repudiate doesn't mean to reject in general, but to reject the validity of something. I can reject your offer to buy me a sandwich. I can't repudiate (or refute) it. I can try to refu...

Titles that don't suck

The title hunt for the next Weenies book is finished. The title story is about vampire wanna-be kids and a younger brother who tries to warn them that vampires aren't cute and cuddly. We brainstormed for a while with titles involving the phrase "blood sucking" but it didn't seem wise to emphasize the latter word. I thought "blood glugging" might work, but it was a bit of a tongue twister. (It is generally unwise to twist your tongue in the vicinity of fangs.) In the end, we went with Atta...

I'm strangely pleased

I did the thing everyone is doing that analyzes writing and here's what I got:

I write like
Chuck Palahniuk

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I was hoping for Katherine Dunn, but this is pretty close.

And I'm not even dead

I was tickled to see that Hidden Talents was listed as the "modern classic" selection for the Cherry Hill School District's summer reading program. Pretty nice for a book that features the world's largest lit fart. Okay, there are some other things going on in the book, too, like coping with rejection, finding your worth as a person, and standing up to bullies of all ages, but if you want to book talk that novel in sixty seconds, you can't go wrong with explosive flatulence.

Speaking of dead...

Good news and a good solution

One writer was nice enough to inform me that her agent had gotten the deep-discount clause removed from her contracts. It is great to hear that the clause is negotiable. I urge every writer to look for this clause in all future contracts. As incentive, here are the total sales of one of my books at deep and regular discount for the last four royalty periods. (Translation, sales that earned a maximum of 20 cents per book vs. sales that earned 48 cents.) Dec. 2009: 19,372 vs. 1,239. June,...

This just in -- an answer on the deep discounts

I finally talked to someone at Penguin who explained that the books being offered at a deep discount were from a mixed pallet of hurt books (i.e., books damaged in the wharehouse or at the store). So there shouldn't be a large supply of them. I also asked him about the unfairness of the deep discount clause (where a single extra penny off the wholesale price can gain the publisher 28 cents from the author). He said I was the first person who ever mentioned this, which worries me, because i...

Desert Horse?

After trying in vain to enjoy the super-popular Red Dead Redemption, I had a realization. This game is not the offspring of Grand Theft Auto. It's the stepchild of Desert Bus.

I guess I should explain the joke for those of you who aren't rolling on the floor. Desert Bus was a game designed by Penn and Teller. It involved driving a bus for eight hours. The bus pulled slightly to one side, so you had to constantly tweak the steering. That was the game. Granted, it was sort of a funny id...

It's slimbo time

Slimbo? That's what I just decided to call the state of sliding limbo a writer enters when one book is pretty much finished and the next is not really started but possibly percolating. The end point for working on my current book (tentatively titled Vampire Weenies Party Time and Other Warped and Creepy Tales), is a bit fuzzier than the end would be for a novel. With a story collection, there are lingering chances to swap in a story most of the way through production. I believe I've even ...

Down for the discount

I promised to come back when I had more information about the books being sold at a deep discount. (Or maybe I promised to drop the subject. I can't remember.) Anyhow, to recap, there are tons of books being sold on Barnes and Noble for deep discounts, including many books that are fairly new, and that are also being offered, in the same edition, for a much smaller discount. One thing that puzzled me was the deep-discount versions had different ISBNs. So I ordered a couple books. They j...