Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 215
March 13, 2011
How to get a book deal in the 21st Century
From CBC Books' Rosie Fernandez:
Gone are the days of submitting pages and pages of heartfelt work to publishers (well, sort of) as now the publishers come courting you. Selling yourself as a brand online has led to all kinds of book, television and film deals for creative, inventive entrepreneurs.
Ten of Crime Fiction's Leading Ladies
I am always on the lookout for great female characters in crime fiction. Few things will turn me off a book faster than the cliché damsel in distress or the bumbling idiot who solves a mystery by tripping over the answer while simultaneously gossiping on her cell phone and putting on make-up. Come on, you've read them too.
The Greatest Book Review Ever by The Writers - The Morning News
Not everyone can be a judge in the Tournament of Books. Not every novel deserves a rave. But what if the world's best books were reviewed all at once? The TMN STAFF create the ultimate Frankenstein of reviews.
Great stuff.
March 12, 2011
A Record Year for Rainfall
A Record Year For Rainfall is a book about becoming unstuck from your own mess. Bret is a paparazzi in Las Vegas, but he's not from there and doesn't like what he does. He fell into the work while on vacation from his regular life. It wasn't supposed to become a thing he did for more than a few weeks. But then his girlfriend left him and he fell in love with someone else and everything went to hell.
There's a gay politician, only he's not out and he's a republican. Bret's girlfriend worked on his campaign. Bret found out, and took a picture of the man in the act. He gave it to his boss, who put it on the internet. Bret's girlfriend left him, which makes him dumped, twice, in a city he hates.
The narrative of the book begins here, with Bret on the couch of his employer, a bastard of a celebrity blogger. He wants to leave town, but he already ran away from his life. What would running away from this accomplish?
Bret's first ex, she's still in town. She works promo in the clubs. She doesn't know what the hell she's doing with her life, either. Her best friend keeps pushing her towards easier money with just a little bit more skin.
Bret's second ex, the republican, she's still in love with Bret, and wrestles with what he did to her boss.
There's lots of drugs, running from the police. And there's a stalker, this creepy guy who won't leave Bret alone, who keeps taking pictures of him. People get hurt. There's consequences to every action, and a few of them involve wet, ugly fistfights in alleyways. Bret smokes. He drives around. He figures his shit out.
A Record Year for Rainfall is about getting out of your lazy life and falling back in love, if only for the drive home.
That's the book.
March 11, 2011
Adam Engst on iPad and ereaders
In the past few weeks, in fact, we've figured out a sneaky process to create our own EPUB files via Pages, which allows us to make them look a lot more like our PDF originals (previously we were forced to outsource the task and put up with what we got back). And we're coming close to a site design change that will make it easier for readers to download various formats from their accounts on our Web site, and even to read online.
It's actually a great workaround. Pages and Scrivener are fast becoming my only tools.
Seriously, I can't say that working with Amazon has ever been easy for publishers (and we haven't done much with it), but working with the iBookstore has been the most amazingly horrible, opaque, and frustrating experience I've had. Apple's software is terrible, the iTunes Connect Web site is lousy, and support questions often aren't answered for - and I'm not kidding here - months. It's gotten a little better over time, but mostly it makes my stomach hurt.
That's the reason we don't do iBooks on Gredunza Press yet. We sell PDF and Epub files, which you can import into iBooks, but there's nothing in the store from us. It's a lousy marketplace at this time.
March 3, 2011
March 1, 2011
Fear and Gaming: Muumuu
I try my lines with someone more age appropriate and fall a little bit in love with the new person and yet… it's almost as if there is a princess in a castle somewhere… and that's you and if I could only get to you then we would be perfect together. But in order to get to you I would have to somehow not be me. In this world (with its rules of causality) I can never jump the tracks of time. I'll never reach Castle Somewhere. Yet I'll never be truly content with this new love I've found. The possibility of you and the memory of Emily are dissipating shadows. Refracted images in a shattered multiverse.
And that's what it feels like to play Braid.
Braid is the only game I've purchased twice, for good reason.
"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able..."
- David Foster Wallace; This is Water (via wordpainting)
