Tate Hallaway's Blog, page 37
October 20, 2010
What is Midlist?
The ever thoughtful Jim C. Hines has another excellent post over on his livejournal. Today, he's wondering what does it mean to be mid-list?
I think most of us think of ourselves as mid-list, even though it's a term that's very nebulous and has never been defined for me by any professional, like my editor. We writers tend to talk to ourselves about such things, and make a lot of educated guesses. I think as long as I'm not, as Jim echoes, not J.K. Rowling, Stephen King or other obvious multi-millionaire type writers, I'll probably think of myself as mid-list, right or wrong.
October 19, 2010
Goodbye?
It's time for me to leave the coffee shop and go home. I have a synopsis for the third book in the vampire princess of St. Paul to finish writing.
I've been struggling writing this synopsis for several months now. I finally realized that one of the reasons may be because I've become very once-bitten-twice-shy about the last book on a contract. When I sold ALMOST TO DIE for, the publisher bought three books. Now that I'm sitting down to plan out the third, I find myself wondering: should I prepare for "goodbye"?
I was very casual about Garnet, and that ended up leaving me in the lurch... with a lot of unfinished business for her character. So I'm thinking that for this last contracted book, maybe I should assume the worst and tie up loose ends JUST IN CASE.
That makes it slightly more difficult to plan, however. Because I don't want to imply to the editor that I'm done and that they should feel free to terminate this series, you know? So, I need to tread carefully. Wrap stuff up, but also leave a new storyline open so if they think I've been selling well enough, they can go for another book or two.
Sigh.
Wish me luck!
October 18, 2010
Green Man Review
October 14, 2010
Oh noz!
My beloved planet Gilese 581g might not exist! Man, this depresses me BEYOND words.... it's like, like someone decided Pluto wasn't a planet! Oh, wait. Dang.
October 13, 2010
A new gig and a delivery!
My alter ego got a new volunteer gig reviewing graphic novels, comic books and more over at the Science Fiction and Other ODDyesseys! Check out her first review! Angels and demons and superheroes! It couldn't get any better than that, if you know anything about what my alter ego writes....
In news about ME, I am happy to report that I delivered my revised manuscript to my editor for ALMOST FINAL CURTAIN (the second book in the vampire princess of St. Paul series.)
October 12, 2010
WTF??
....We were JUST missed by an asteroid this morning!* Apparently, TD54 came within 28,000 miles of us.
Um, eek?
*Unnerving knowledge brought to my attention thanks to an SF Signals tweet.
October 7, 2010
Harris Poll
A new Harris poll shows that of the people who read fiction, a surprising percent (surprising to me, anyway,) read science fiction. Maybe there's hope for my alter ego's comeback, after all!
October 4, 2010
Royalties and Backlist*
Over on his blog, Jim C. Hines analyzes his royalty statement. The charts and his discussion are plenty interesting all by themselves, but he just casually says a couple of things in his blog that really resonate with my experience.
First of all, I have to say that I'm impressed that Hines has so many books that have earned out. It apparently takes me a lot longer to do that (perhaps I'm slightly better paid). However, I'm only JUST NOW getting royalties for my second book, Dead Sexy, which was originally published in 2007 (and had a Romance and Science Fiction Bookclub h/c edition.) So, of five books, two of them now earn royalties.
But, on the flip side (and knocking liberally on wood) at least all of my books are still IN print, which by five years into Lyda Morehouse's career all her books were out of print.
Which is why I agree that having in-print back list is really important. It's tough to encourage readers to pick up book #4 in a series (even if you wrote each to stand alone) when #2 is already out of print, which happened to me as Lyda.
Secondly, Hines says, "Some authors who get that bajillion-dollar advance for their first book. I'm not one of them. The slower but steady approach seems to be working for me though, at least so far."
This is something I think about a lot. I have had fits of absolute jealousy over other authors' advances, but one thing I try to keep in mind is that it's much harder to earn out a "bajillion" dollars than it is ten thousand. And, while a bajillion dollars would be nice to have in pocket, I have to imagine that unless you happen to actually be the one-in-a-million that actually earns out the bajillion, your editor/publisher will have to be disappointed in your sales figures. Whereas, if you at least break even for them, they might be more likely to keep hiring you for those midlist jobs that someone's got to fill, right?
Though I still dream of a bajillion dollar advance, I think I'd continue to trade it in for a long and glorious career.
* X-posted from Wyrdsmiths blog.
September 29, 2010
Howling Hiakus
Okay, this is too cool not to pass on... if I were more creative in the poetry department, I'd totally enter this: Werewolf Hiaku Contest over at Bite Club Blog.
September 28, 2010
What I've been reading...
I've been working steadily on my editorial revisions for the second vampire princess of St. Paul book, ALMOST TO DIE FOR, and doing a lot of cold-weather reading. You know what I mean by cold-weather reading, right? It's the kind of reading that involves a couch, cats (if you have them,) a roaring fire (if you have one), and a lot of blankets.
What I've been snuggling up with has been a wide range. I read CATCHING FIRE by Suzanne Collins, the sequel to HUNGER GAMES (which I loved). I ran out and bought MOCKINGJAY, but things were left in such a depressing place that I found I bounced out of the book almost as soon as I sat down to read it. So my restless fingers lighted on one of the books in our bathroom bookshelf. We intentionally keep a lot of cheesy classics in the bathroom just for those moments when you want to read a chapter or two of something you don't necessarily need to finish. So I picked up TARNSMAN OF GOR.
There are slave girls and manly men and... well, if you don't take it too seriously, a great deal of adventure.
What about you? What are you reading?
