Hugh Howey's Blog, page 51

Criminal Neglect of Word Counters

You know you’re busy when you don’t even have time to update the signals of how busy you are. The word counters haven’t budged for the past three weeks, as I’ve been on the road with less-than-reliable internet and working my butt off both on book tour stuff and some writing projects. Finally got around to updating the counters for two of my works in progress, and I’m very close to announcing an exciting project that I think you’ll be very happy about.

On the comic side of things, the first issue is absolutely gorgeous, and I’ve been sent some sketches for issue two, and I can’t believe the detail and skill Jimmy Broxton is pouring into this work. His art is magnificent. I wish there was a way of sharing some of these sketches without spoiling anything. But I know you’re going to be stoked to see this for yourself. Still can’t believe Amazon is selling all 6 issues in digital format for $4.99. I love their attitude toward pricing. For the cost of a cup of coffee, you practically don’t have to weigh the decision. This is what a single issue would cost from most outlets!

Finally, a huge step forward in the film adaptation that I keep telling myself will never get made. And I’m sticking to that belief, even as I hear that the screenplay has been finalized, is absolutely awesome, and may be heading my way in mere days. I haven’t bugged anyone to read this during the revision phase. It’s been killing me, as my time with J Blakeson has me convinced that this man is a singular genius. I can’t wait to see what he’s come up with.

Oh, and NaNoWriMo is about to begin. Brace yourselves.

The Finnish Edition

So, I’m going to do the ultimate mash-up in a few weeks by taking the jacket off the Italian edition and wrapping it on the Finnish edition. Pure genius!

Dude, Where’s My Car?

It was a long day of travel, interviews, and a bookstore event. I get back to the hotel room I have not really seen, and I collapse into bed around 11:00. Before I know it, my phone alarm is going off. And there’s my father calling me on Skype. We try to connect, but the signal is too weak. I need to get ready, anyway.

I jump in the shower, get dressed, pack everything away. Glancing at my watch, the minute hand is at only half-past. The car is coming for me at 7 to take me to the airport. Enough time to fire off a few emails, so I sit down and do that, my brain in a fog.

I’m so exhausted that I almost feel jetlagged, even though I’ve been in this time zone for three weeks now. I could so easily go right back to sleep. But it’s time to get downstairs and head to the airport. I’ve got three flights today: Barcelona to Madrid, Madrid to Copenhagen, and Copenhagen to Helsinki. I feel like the crazy lab assistant at the end of 12 MONKEYS.

I check out of the hotel, turn in my room key, and the guy behind the front desk rushes around to get the door for me. “I can get it,” I assure him. Then he shows me the key. The front doors are unlocked. He has to stoop down and open them manually for me.

Outside, the car isn’t here yet. Strange. They are usually 15 minutes early. No matter, I sit down on the curb and read the paper. I wait. Taxis drive by and look at me beseechingly. Unbelievably, people are still staggering home from bars. I glance up and down the street for some place to grab a cronut, but the cafes aren’t open yet. Damn, I’m tired. I could seep on the sidewalk. The minute hand has swung around, and now the taxi is late.

Wait a minute.

It’s two o’clock in the morning.

My half-asleep brain starts piecing it together.

I went to sleep exhausted, dreading the early alarm. My father called me via Skype. I thought it was the alarm. I tried to talk to him, tried to call him back, then jumped in the shower, got dressed, packed up. The man at the front desk had looked at me strangely. The hotel had been eerily quiet. The key to open the door. People staggering home. So tired. And I’ve already checked out of my room!

I bang on the door, desperate. Thankfully, the doorman not only lets me in, he gives me a new room key. My heart is racing, and I feel that pressure to get back to sleep. Jumping in the bed, I figure the alarm will come for me quickly again. Though not as quickly as last time.

Love you, Dad. Call me back.

Placing Literature

Have you ever watched a movie and then found out it’s based on a true story, and somehow that retroactively heightens your enjoyment of the film? It’s true for me, and I suspect it’s true in general. As much as we love fiction, there’s something about grounding stories in the real world that make them more tangible and more impactful.

That’s why Placing Literature kicks so much ass. You’ve got to play around with this site (and contribute to it!) to see how much fun it is. To me, it’s as addictive as that first time I discovered satellite views in Google Maps. My wife and I searched for all the homes we’ve lived in and zoomed down to spot gardens we planted, even our cars in the driveway. That sense of place and memory are tied together in powerful ways.

I added some scenes from SHIFT to the Placing Literature site. Donald and Helen’s home in Savannah (which I remember locating for the book using Google Maps, so that anyone who lived in the area would know that Highway 17 really turns on to the street mentioned in the novel). I put a marker at Donald’s office and Thurman’s office in the Dirksen and Rayburn buildings in D.C. And a marker at the fictional RYT hospital in Boston where they got their nano treatments. But the best was placing the silo itself in Fulton County. It helped that I flew out of Atlanta a few weeks ago, and I saw where the trees could be cleared and the skyline spotted. (Sorry state park!)

I also played around with scenes from L. Ron Hubbard’s BATTLEFIELD EARTH, one of my favorite all-time books, and one that truly spans the globe. Seriously, I can’t explain how connected to the story I felt by placing markers on Denver and Karibe and describing scenes from this book. It made it more real. If you try it for yourself, I think you’ll see what I mean.

There’s another great way to use the site, and that’s just to explore stories being told around you. I zoomed in to Charlotte, N.C., and there’s a book by Maggie Bishop, my friend from Boone! John Hart’s books aren’t listed yet, but it would be cool for people in the Davidson area to see that these stories take place in their back yards. The site appears to be very new. Once there are thousands of books added, I think people will enjoy discovering local authors this way, or at least authors writing about nearby locales.

If you add a recent book you’ve read (or written), let me know about it in the comments! The link again: Placing Literature.

Do you not believe in yourself?

I know I don’t. Not most of the time. Neither did this guy.

Yes, there are cases where people put their work out there, and it isn’t good enough. There are also voices that will never be heard, because we see others failing and we assume the same will happen to us. You have people in your life saying you have talent, and you want to think they are biased. You want to ignore them. You have other people saying you don’t have what it takes, and you think this is tough love, that they know the truth of it. It’s easier to listen to the latter than the former, sometimes.

Dare to fail, people. I dare to fail every day. Sometimes I do fail. But stuffing that application into an envelope and tearing it up year after year like this young man did is a far greater travesty. If you make a fool of yourself, the world will move on. And so will you. But if you succeed . . . well, the world will stop for a moment and take notice. And neither you nor them will ever forget that.

The Future of Books

What you see above is Augmented Reality, or AR. Unlike Virtual Reality (VR), which replaces what we see with a new world, AR blends the real and the make-believe into one seamless whole. As young as this field is, it already achieves mind-blowing results. The first time I saw anything like this, it was in the Lego store in NYC. There, you can hold a Lego box set up to a monitor and watch the finished Lego set hover over the box. It’s freaky and cool. I think it’s the future of picture books.

But why not more than picture books? The end-goal for AR is to have the camera and screen mounted in front of the user’s eyes. This creates a paintable canvas out of everything you see. Your vision is completely blocked — much as the iPad in the above video blocks you from seeing the actual book — but it is replaced with a high-quality screen that shows you what you would be looking at. On top of that image, you can add anything you want. And what completes the illusion is that these added objects “stick” to perceived objects captured by the camera, which means they respond to all the jitters and shakes of the viewer’s head, lending the illusion that these objects are real. Look again at how you can wobble the iPad, and the graphic on the book follows along perfectly.

Donning an AR headset to read a picture book will be as common twenty years from now as putting on 3D glasses to watch a film can be today. But imagine this scenario: You put on a pair of AR glasses and grab a copy of Gulliver’s Travels. The glasses recognize the cover of the book, and it knows you’ve purchased the AR version of Gulliver. When you open the book, the story comes to life all around you.

Not just on the pages of the book, but on the floor in front of you. There’s Gulliver being washed up on the beach. You might pull your knees up to keep your feet from getting wet. There are the Lilliputians staking Gulliver to the sand. Maybe one of them asks you to place a finger on a knot while they tie a bow. Perhaps they look up at you warily as another giant to tame. The point is, you have to keep reading to find out.

Inward-facing cameras could track your eye movement (we already have this tech), so the book knows what word you are reading. A narrator could read aloud with you. Or maybe you just hear the dialog in the voice of the characters’ when you get to it, leaving you as the voice of the chorus. Or if you are in learning mode and you linger on a word for a long time, it reads the word aloud, flashes a pronunciation guide on your wall, and shows you examples.

Another idea: You will never dogear or bookmark a novel again. The camera scans each page you read, and it even knows what word or sentence you left off on! When you pick up the book, it sees the cover and announces what page you’re on. Even niftier, if you glance at the edge of the book, it can light up the approximate page location with a gold bar, like the first down marker in an NFL game. Start flipping the pages, and a green arrow will show you which way you should be turning. Maybe a little character is there on the page waving you along, telling you to hurry, raising the sense of danger and excitement.

Of course, because this is new technology, there will be complaints. People will say that reading is all about the imagination and that we shouldn’t add anything concrete to take that away from people. Which is just about the most unimaginative response anyone could possibly have. Audiobooks add professional voices to the page, and anyone who is addicted to them will tell you that for some readers, a great narrator makes a story even more enjoyable. I would argue that making books fresh and exciting in these ways can only add new readers to the fold. Those who don’t enjoy these features won’t purchase them or will leave them turned off. People like me, who grew up on The Neverending Story, will go bonkers over the chance to enter our favorite books and interact with the characters.

One quick caveat: Building these books would be very expensive and only affordable for the bestsellers and the classics. Graphic design doesn’t come cheap. The most practical use will be for learning, picture books, textbooks, and the like. But imagine a new edition of the Sherlock Holmes novels where you can walk around your room and look for clues. Or read on your bed while Holmes and Watson stand over a body, checking out a murder scene.

Despite the costs, some features like reading aloud in those ever-improving computer voices, remembering your place in the text, and looking up and pronouncing words might be universal features that even self-published authors implement. Turning to the back of a book would have more than an “About the Author” page. The author might pop up in the room with you and introduce themselves. Or dance a bit of ballet for you. Instead of an Acknowledgements page, the author would be able to thank people personally with video. Self-pubbed authors will of course come up with myriad affordable enhancements to their books once this tech is in place.

If it all sounds too science fiction, I urge you to watch the video below in its entirety and then go see Gravity in iMax 3D. Take these rough concepts and keep in mind that the video blow is two years old. Then look at Gravity and how far CGI has come in a just a few decades.

What will books look like 100 years from now? They’ll hardly be recognizable. But they’ll still be stories that we immerse ourselves in, which will never change. And they’ll only be bounded by our collective imaginations, which means not one of us can say where all of this will lead. I just know that I’m excited to get there and see it for myself.

The World of Books

If you love books, I can’t recommend highly enough that you become an international bestseller. Really. There’s no better way to get a tour of how manuscripts become novels. For nearly two years now, I’ve felt like one of the kids who found Wonka’s golden ticket. I’ve been inside the major publishing houses in New York (I’m sure the people who work there can’t imagine the thrill this brings an outsider). I’ve worked with some of the top agents in the industry. I’ve met with Hollywood people and been given a peek at how novels are adapted to film. But nothing beats a tour of foreign publishers and bookstores.

So many things are done differently overseas. The Frankfurt Book Fair sizzled my little brain. It was eight times the size of BEA, the American equivalent. I’ve spent the last three days with my French publisher, Actes Sud, and seeing how they operate has been a blast (they have tiny spiral staircases in their offices that lead up to where I interview. How apt!)

One of the things I discovered today is that authors here rarely have agents. Writers submit their manuscripts directly to publishers! My acquiring editor receives dozens a week out of the 400 or so that arrive to the publisher. That’s 400 a WEEK. Normally, agents perform this job, but not in France. I find it fascinating. It makes the role of publisher as curator of talent even more arduous and important.

Another big surprise today is that French bookshops have the same hesitation about signed books as German bookshops. You would never drop into a bookstore here and sign whatever books of yours they have in stock. (My German editor said that bookstore workers would assume you were crazy. My reply was that these are authors we’re talking about; so, of course!)

Naturally, after learning this, I went to a bookshop to find out more. I spoke with a bookseller in the SF area and one of their most loyal customers (who was wearing a Celtics jacket and lived in Boston when he was young). They confirmed what I’d been told and seemed confused about why an author would sign books in a bookstore unless the customer was there to buy them. It’s just not done here. Makes me wonder how much trouble my mother and I are going to cause in Italy in a few weeks!

Paris Meet-Up!

This Thursday, the 17th of October, Actes Sud is putting on an event here in Paris that is open to the public. If you are in town and you can stop by, please come! The event will be at the bookshop Le Merle Moqueur at 7:00pm. Hope to see you there!

Twitter’s Andrew Fitzgerald on TED

I would totally be sharing this, even if WOOL wasn’t mentioned. Andrew is right-on about new forms of storytelling.

A Global Meet-Up

Well, that was a Meet-Up I won’t soon forget. Last night, my agents (Jenny Meyer and Kristin Nelson) hosted an event here in Frankfurt so I could meet my foreign publishers in person. Really, it’s the reason Jenny and Kristin suggested I come to the Frankfurt book fair in the first place, as so many publishers are now on the eve of launching WOOL in their territories, and most of them would be in town for what is the largest book fair in the world. I had no idea what to expect from last night’s gathering. It will go down as one of the absolute highlights of my life.

Jenny, Kristin, and I took the train from the book fair to the venue. We were the first to arrive, which gave us time to toast the end of three hectic days. The venue itself was amazing (kicking myself for not taking pictures of the space), and wonderful food started flowing out just as publishers began to arrive.

I’m totally going to leave someone out, but I met my publishers from: Korea, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Israel, the UK, Romania, France, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Finland, the Netherlands … and I’m definitely missing one or two. There were forty or so people there, including Jon Fine from Amazon and the fine journalist Porter Anderson. Can I tell you how crazy this was for me? I was chatting with people from all over the world, and they seemed really excited to be there and to chat with me. The event went on for FOUR hours! My Korean publisher whipped out their copy of WOOL (my first time seeing it), and I can’t wait to show you this one. Freakin hologram effect on the front wrapper. Truly a gorgeous book. The Croatian publisher had a stack of books to sign for giveaways, and everyone had amazing plans or news about the book launch.

The Spanish edition just went live a week ago, and that’s a language I’ve been getting a ton of emails about. In Finland, they launched last week and sold (not sure if I’m supposed to say) a number of copies that left Kristin’s jaw sagging. The buzz in Brazil is already strong, and the book doesn’t come out until February! Quite a few of these publishers are experimenting with releasing the e-book ahead of the print book in order to build some excitement before launch. Some are serializing the release and keeping the prices as low as they can. These publishers are really being innovative. The excitement in the room was intense. I met so many wonderful people, and several were asking when I was going to come visit their countries (my poor passport).

Several times, I just had to take stock of the room and pinch myself. How crazy lucky can one guy be? I’m working in a bookstore, writing stories in my spare time, and two years later I’m at a party in Frankfurt meeting fifteen of my foreign publishers. Two years! It was just in October of 2011 that I noticed WOOL taking off. All that existed back then was that first short story. It went on to sell 1,018 copies in the month of October, and on November 1st, two years ago, I started writing the rest of the series. Hell, if I was simply a normal amount of lucky, I would probably be landing an agent right now. We’d be shopping the book around to publishers. If I was lucky!

I don’t know what can be learned, if anything, from such a wild and fortuitous sequence of events. Which is why I have to remind myself and others that I was writing all those years ago simply because I loved to write. Sure, I would allow myself in moments of weakness to dream of being a bestselling author. I would dream of having a work discovered and appreciated by hordes of readers. But then I would go back to my perfectly happy state of making up stories for my own delight. I would continue to publish them for the dozen or so people who cared to partake. And I was saying the exact same things to college classrooms and middle school classrooms and on message boards and to whomever would listen back then that I’m saying right now: There’s never been a better time to be a writer or a reader. A revolution is underway. Anyone can be an author. Write because you love to write. Don’t listen to the doubters. Get your work out there. Be brave and be proud. Trust your work.

Heh. People thought I was crazy two years ago. After last night, I think they were half-right. I’ve been crazy lucky. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t on to something. I had discovered a passion for telling stories that was magnified by seeing them available on the marketplace. I had discovered a passion that was expanded a thousandfold by hearing back from one satisfied reader. Here is the feedback loop that no query-and-rejection cycle can hope to replace. Here is a much stronger and healthier reason to hone one’s craft than being told your work isn’t good enough. Here is learning by doing—learning by practicing—like artists in every other medium are celebrated for. Here is the cost of printing and distributing your work plummeting to zero, which is what the digital age has brought us. Here is democratization. Here is the reader in charge. Here is the chance, however slim, to be crazy lucky. Because luck doesn’t happen unless you put in the work and then get the work out there. I’m so crazy lucky that I decided to get my work out there.

Happy writing, everyone. Move that masterpiece forward one more sentence today. And please feel free to say crazy things, to dream, but most importantly to be happy in the now. It’s the best time we’ve got.