Hugh Howey's Blog, page 87
July 25, 2012
Making up Milestones!
Round number milestones are arbitrary, pointless, and loads of fun! Today we have two incredibly insane round numbers to celebrate. Over 10,000 reviews and ratings have been submitted on my books over at Goodreads. The average across all of these is 4.35. If you know GR reviewers, you know that this is beyond anything my works truly deserve. They’re just extra special nice to me for some reason over there.
The other kick-ass and completely made-up reason to celebrate is 100 Amazon reviews for THE PLAGIARIST! What an incredible and plucky little story. I wrote this as a final project in a college class I took for fun. It is similar to WOOL in length and tone, but while one has gone gangbusters, the other has enjoyed its quietude and slower burn. I love them both. (All parents say this, but we keep the truth to ourselves).
July 22, 2012
Wool Proof Giveaway!
Oh, the anticipation. Oh, the looming envy. Nearly 200 people have entered, only 1 will walk away a winner. It’s the Great Wool Proof Giveaway Spectacular Special Live Webcam Event Sensational, and it’s upon us. Tune in tonight at 8:45 PM and laugh with me at those who wait to tune in at 9:00 PM. There will be a reading, a teasing, a rolling of the dice, and the cries of agony as many win absolutely bupkis.
Here’s how to join us: Go to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/molly-fyde
That should bring up a webcam window. Now click on the “Chat” tab on the right (it’ll be on Social Stream by default).
You should be able to log in using your Facebook account, but if you want to create a uStream account, that’s another option. You will definitely want to engage in the chat tonight. If you win (when you win), you’ll be able to tell me who to sign the copies to (if anyone) and where I should sign the slipcase (if at all).
I hope you’re able to make it! This should be an epic event! I may even dress up for it!
July 21, 2012
Last Day to Enter!
At 9 or 10 tonight, EST, we will close the thread of entries for the giveaway. I’ll be rolling dice tomorrow night at 9:00 EST. It will be streamed live so you can join up, watch, chat, and maybe even partake in a little surprise. Should be fun.
http://hughhowey.com/forums/showthread.php?122-The-Great-Proof-Giveaway!
July 20, 2012
Shear Terror!
Need a WOOL fix while I’m writing about zombies? For a mere dollar, you can grab the best WOOL fan-fiction south of the equator. David Adams has crafted a tale of post-apocalyptic horror where you, the reader, are the thing to be feared.
It’s a short read that you can knock out over a cup of coffee. It’s only a dollar for you and poor David only makes a third of that. I absolutely loved what he did with this, and I think you will too!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008N8Z2WW/
July 19, 2012
Living the Dream
Tonight’s event in New York is all about the future and how inspiration leads to dreaming, which leads to puzzling out the best ways to realize those dreams. Neil Tyson Degrasse, the curator of the museum’s planetarium, will be speaking. Along with some of the technologists attending, Neil is one of those people who ushers us into the future. I suppose I’m part of the contingent who idly speculates and dreams about the future. Not quite as demanding, cerebrally.
It reminds me of HALF WAY HOME, how they had scientists in one camp and other specialties in different groups. I’m now classified as “other.” Which suits me just fine. I feel stoked to have been invited.
My Hemingway Moment
I spent Christmas in the year 2000 in Hemingway Marina, just west of Havana along the north coast of Cuba. My friend Douglas and I were helping a lady take her slow boat to China (long story). While waiting out the weather, we explored Havana and the surrounding area. I had a little tape recorder with me at the time so I could preserve the chats we had with locals.
One day, we chat up a guy at the bar, and this old man informs us that he was Hemingway’s boat captain. He took the old man to the sea all the time to fish. It was crazy to sit there, getting high on their version of coffee (laced with cocaine, I tell you), and having a connection to one of the masters.
Sitting in Cafe Havana in New York stirred up some of these memories. Strong coffee was being served, as well as the best Cuban food north of Key West. And as usual, I was eating at the bar and chatting up strangers. You never know what you’ll find out about a person until you strike up a conversation. The bartender, for instance, is 11-0 in her professional fighting career. She had a fight the next day, which meant cutting weight and picturing herself bloodying another human being. Pretty intense. The guy sitting beside me pulled up a picture of her championship belt. And then a picture of her having her hand raised while ringside doctors tended to her unfortunate foe.
My neighbor at the bar had stopped by to see how she was doing, check on her weight (I found this offensive for a nanosecond, then guessed she was a fighter. They were both suitably impressed). A bit later, we started talking about how you never know what a person does or who they are unless you chat them up. Kinda like that old man in Hemingway Marina all those years ago. At which point, the gentleman asked me what I do. When I told him I was a writer, he said one of his employees was a writer, got up every morning at 5 am and wrote, wrote on his lunch breaks, wrote all the time. I laughed and told him that I did the same thing for years. He asked how things were going, and I told him.
After checking the bestseller list on Amazon, this guy calls his employee and tells him to drop what he’s doing and hurry over (their business was on the block, hence the inter-employee connection to the bartender). When the aspiring author shows up, we get to chatting. I congratulate him on his work ethic and tell him how excited I am for him, what a great thing to pursue and be addicted to. And I hand him a card.
The guy knows of me. He has been following my story online. How weird is that? I’m geeking out over the bartender being undefeated, and this guy is geeking out over meeting me, and we’re all geeking out over the awesome shit you learn about people if you just chat them up.
July 17, 2012
Life Should be More Like Metroid
My phone is still not ringing. I find this confusing, since I cleverly hid my cell phone number inside one of my books. I fully expected by now that some random reader would figure it out, give me a call, and want to chat for a bit.
I hide things like this inside my print editions. Little clues, games with the page numbers, changing the size of some of the font to make a word or number stand out, and I’m probably the only one who knows or cares. I think it goes back to my 8-bit fantasies. I used to dream of beating a difficult NES game and finding out that I’d done it in record time, and the programmers had left a bit of code just for such an occasion. A phone number would pop on the screen and tell me to call and claim my reward.
I’ve found out since that I’m not the only gamer to harbor such delusions. In fact, the lure is so common and universal, it was once the subject of a film, THE LAST STARFIGHTER. We didn’t get the idea from the movie, of course. The movie and our ideas were a part of a general zeitgeist. We wanted to be a real part of the action. We wanted a direct connection to the invisible strangers who created the font of entertainment we held so dear.
Life should be more like Metroid. This was the first game to truly celebrate the connection between gamers who hacked and explored and their fellow geeks who coded the games. Sure, Zelda had trees you could burn and walls you could walk through, and Super Mario had shortcuts to skip levels, but in Metroid, you could stand in one of those blue bubble doorways, allow the door to close on your head, become well and truly stuck (this was before true save games, mind you), and then hit up and down on your paddle and jitter through the ceiling.
Well and good, but then it becomes awesome: the programmers not only allowed such a bug, they provided treasure for those who exploited it. You could jitter past obstacles, and even better, you could worm your way into hidden rooms. This wasn’t an accident. Subsequent Metroid games featured the same “bug.” This was designers rewarding the gamer for taking a chance and getting off the beaten path. And this reward mechanism gave me, as a consumer of their product, a direct link to them. A friendship.
This is one of the many geeky reasons I hide things in my books. It’s also why I hide in bookstores, surprising unsuspecting fans. I think life should be like Metroid, with hidden rooms full of treasure, with links between creator and consumer, with surprises around every corner.
Last week, I got an email from an awesome mom. Her son really, really, really wanted whatever book of mine was coming out in the UK. I knew exactly what she was talking about (the kick-ass proof copies), and I hated to break the news that he could only hope to win them, that she couldn’t purchase them. It made it doubly hard that the boy’s 18th birthday was coming up, triply hard that he is an outstanding kid, a product of home-schooling, and quadruply hard that he was an Eagle Scout by the time he was thirteen.
Damn. How do I tell this kid’s mother that the thing she wants for him isn’t for sale? But then I notice something. She mentions where she lives in North Carolina and that her son, Tyler, was stoked to see that I used to live in Boone, even though I’ve now moved to Florida. So I wrote back and let the mother know that I just happened to be in Waxhaw that week and would she like to meet for lunch, maybe give Tyler a signed book since the proofs aren’t available?
This awesome mom jumped on the chance. I told her I’d bring my father, who was also an Eagle Scout, and she said she would bring her husband and daughter as well. We planned to meet at J.D.’s in Statesville, which looked like an awesome Deli online. It was, but it was inside a mall. Since my father and I got there early (we are cut from the same cloth), we killed some time in the bookstore. Which is when I got an idea (a goofy one, Metroid-style). I texted the plan to Tyler’s mom. She heartily agreed.
It was an awesome lunch. I think we spent an hour and a half hanging out. The food was to die for (incredible Reuben and Cuban sandwiches. I wish this place was in Jupiter, FL). We chatted about everything, what the kids were studying, what they were doing with their summer, what Tyler was planning to do for school, scholarships he’d won, scouting, movies, books he likes (he’s also met and gotten signed works from my nemesis, Mr. Card).
And this I can guarantee: I got more out of the experience than Tyler did. It was a blast being on the other end of my 8-bit dreams. I get to do things like hide my phone number and wait for a call from a curious hacker. I get to spring surprises on people. I can reward someone for taking a chance, see their face light up, and marvel at the strange and surreal notion that anyone would get a kick out of having lunch with me.
What an incredible ride. What an incredible family. From the very beginning, the best part of taking up writing has been the chance to connect with an audience, to get to know fellow readers, to forge a bond between creator and consumer. It was the thrill I used to get from playing games like Metroid, where living on the edge often meant getting a glimpse over it, down to a magical vista below, hidden and out of sight from anyone who followed worn paths, anyone who played it safe or simply by the rules.
July 16, 2012
Fantastic News!
I get emails all the time from readers who want easy access to an epub version of WOOL with no DRM. Well guess what? It’s finally here! Kobo has gone live with their new indie publishing tools, and WOOL went up the very first day! I used the new Jasper Schreurs cover; there is no DRM on the book; same old price; and all the Goodreads reviews are going to be linked up!
Here’s where you go to get a copy (or gift a copy or share the link with a friend).
Here’s what you’ll see:
