Kelly McCullough's Blog, page 129

Secrets of a NYTimes Bestseller

This is a fascinating, yet sobering post from L. Viehl whose book Twilight Fall made the New York Times Bestseller list. Keeping to a promise to her writer friends, she posted her royalty statement and detailed all her publicity efforts, etc., here: http://www.genreality.net/the-reality-of-a-times-bestseller.

For me, the sobering part is the shear volume of books sold. I've never seen numbers like that in my entire life. And her advance? Holy sh&t![image error]

What Are You Up To?

It's Monday, and, honestly, I'm having kind of a crappy one. First of all, it's raining in that drizzly, dreary sort of way, which always sort of brings me down. Secondly, my beloved fish are sick (again!). On top of that, our one and only car is in the shop getting some very, VERY expensive, yet necessary work done. (The dumb car and its dangerous struts also caused me to miss Kelly's party on Saturday: All Hail the Red Currant Jelly!)

The only good part of the day is that I'm somewhat stranded

Friday Cat Blogging

Spring!



Spring!



Spring!



Spring...ooh, camera...spring...camera...



Feed me damnit!

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Query Info Dump

I got a question about queries and collaborations and figured that the response I put together might be of some interest to folks here. So, with all identifiers removed:

Start with the collaboration stuff:

An agent will deal with a two-author book in pretty much the same way they'd deal with single author book: Does the query make me want to read the material? If so, does the book make me want to represent this(these) client(s)? Then they'll go from there.

My agent reps at least one pair of author

Newest Internet Kerfuffle: CandleFAIL!!!!

Check out the newest Internet kerfuffle: CandleFAIL!!

Yes, I'm poking fun at myself. Thanks for noticing.[image error]

"Amazon Fail"

Since all you kids are on Twitter, I'm sure this is old news, but, if somehow you missed it, check out: Amazon Fail. In a nutshell, Amazon.com is apparently removing the sales ranking from books it deems "adult," though read how this has actually played out (ie only queer-friendly books are getting hit) and how it's supposedly "just a glitch."

My thoughts on the matter are pretty simple. Censoring never stopped anyone from being queer (or "adult" for that matter.) We were queer before the Interne

Kindle, Text to Speech, and the Author's Guild

It is with extreme caution that I dip a toe in these waters, but several people have now asked me what I thought of the Author's Guild position on the Kindle II, and particularly how it may cause real harm to blind or visually impaired readers, and...I do have an opinion. I know that's a shocker, isn't it.

To begin with and just to be absolutely clear, I'm in support of the Kindle's voice feature being generally available. I feel that the benefits to those who have difficulties reading are greate

Friday Cat Blogging

Watch me do a bunny shadow next!



Okay, now bring me a bucket of fish!



It's my chair now, buddy.



See! I do too fit under here...I just can't get out.



I'm paused. Now, what?



Guess where?

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Faith

Back when I started 'Hawthorn Queen' (my current WIP), I got together with Lyda over coffee to do a bit of brain-storming. What I didn't realize at the time was that Lyda did the majority of her surfing/blogging/e-mail at coffee shops, since she was limited to dial-up at home. This meant that Lyda was a bit distracted as we chatted, what with her reading and posting and the like, while I was trying to generate, you know, Ideas. It must have shown, because at one point, Lyda looked up at me and s

New Paying Market That Made Me Smile

I just spotted this in my newest issue of Gila Queen's Guide to Markets, and it made me smile:

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Brain Harvest, An Almanac of Bad Ass Speculative Fiction—See Web site. Weekly. "Brain Harvest will publish electronically and can be read right [at the Web site:], or dispatched to your iPhone, BlackBerry, or whatever other mobile device—and maybe, one day, straight into your brain."

Lofty guidelines: "We are those jaded m*f*s who've seen everything. We worry about fiction. Where are the new idea