Kelly McCullough's Blog, page 44

Friday Cat Blogging

Do you have foodz?



Ima take a lil nap, 'kay?



Stitches cat can haz napz too?



Speaking of napz…



Napz or snackz? Tough call…



I want snackz!



Zzzzzzzzz…




The Pignetti/Cochran Guest Cats

You're not my real people, I hate you!



What Dexter said, hating you!



Not my real people, I may have to burn you with lazerz!



Don't know who you are, but I love you anyway.

Weirdness... Sells?

One of the things I did over the holiday was read the page proofs for the mass-market paperback edition for Tall Dark & Dead (my first Garnet Lacey book). My editor sent it as a .pdf, and so I mailed it to my partner's fancy new Kindle Fire, and spent a day reading my book on the Kindle. I found several typos, much to my surprise. The good news is that they'll be corrected in the paperback version. The other thing that was kind of awesome about that is that I discovered that one of my best selling books is also one of my quirkiest.

I don't know if you noticed, but Garnet is kind of a slut. There is a LOT of sex in that book, and sexiness. Sebastian is also surprisingly dark, and Parrish is... a total hustler, like literally, in that book. It's kind of amazing... and Garnet's friends are odd, a lot like my real friends, and the interactions in that books are very *me*.

Thus, one of the things that re-reading that book has done for me is made me a bit more confident about my quirkiness as a writer. You see, in most cases, I had no idea if my personal brand of weirdness was a plus or a minus to sales. The AngeLINK books, which are very *me*, are all out of print.

This "failure" has caused me to believe that maybe I had no idea how to write to a popular market. But, TD&D is going to mass-market. It's the only book I've ever had that's changing format like that. As a trade-size book, it's well into its sixth or seventh printing. I've easily made as much money in royalties from that book as they paid me in an advance, probably twice as much... if not more.

My point is, I can now say, with confidence, that my quirkiness is _not_ a detriment to sales. IN FACT, a person could make a pretty strong case that... maybe, just MAYBE I know what I'm doing.

Well, we probably shouldn't go THAT far. But, at least, it seems to be true that a book that has a lot of my extra special weirdness smeared all over it isn't automatically headed for the remainder pile.

This was kind of an epiphany... during the Epiphany and everything.

Cat Vest: The Video

A small bit of fuzzy cuteness is my Hogmanay present to the world, Cat Vests: The Video:

Where is the Future We Were Promised?

At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was farther out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured above, was floating free in space. McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an "untethered space walk" during Space Shuttle mission 41-B in 1984. The MMU works by shooting jets of nitrogen and has since been used to help deploy and retrieve satellites. With a mass over 140 kilograms, an MMU is heavy on Earth, but, like everything, is weightless when drifting in orbit. The MMU was replaced with the SAFER backpack propulsion unit.

You can see bits of future in Singapore and Shanghai, at CERN, maybe in Tokyo. But I grew up in the Midwest on the edge of the future, and while I am still in the Midwest, the future has receeded. We are told we can't afford it.

Friday Cat Blogging With Bonus Cats

The rare chocolate walrus-seal sunning itself.



Wake me if…actually, no. Just let me sleep.



Ahhhhhhh…



I kill fish with my mind.



Shadowy cat blogger is shadowy.



Where iz mah snaxz?



You do know you can't outstare a cat, right?



Watch this next trick!



Of course I'm not that into you. You don't have food.

Friday Cat Blogging

It's a bag and I'm a cat, duh. Wait, glitter, you say?




If you do not pick me up and snuggle me
RIGHT NOW, I will die of the sads.



I looked out the front window, that's why!



The view out the front window:



You say eyelid stitches. I say BIONIC WHISKERS!



I'm too sexy for my books, too sexy for…



Pour me 'nother nip, barkeep, I'm fine.

Friday Cat Blogging

The committee for feline domination board meeting



THIN cat.



WIDE cat.



There, all snuggly for nap time.



Character is what you are in the dark!



Not a cat, but still devilishly cute.



The OTHER committee for feline domination

Book Club Weirdness

Last night I was invited to take part in the local Gaylaxicon reading series, as they had all read (or at least been assigned to read) Resurrection Code. I will be the first to admit I find these kinds of visits especially... awkward.

I had a great time, don't get me wrong. (There were cookies! Pop! A fellow Hogwarts scarf wearing fan!) But, I mean, in my mind, the point of a book club is so that you can have rousing discussions about all the things you loved and HATED about the book you just read. It's a lot more difficult to really get going --especially about all the flaws -- when the person who wrote it is sitting right there... at least, in Minnesota, it is. I'm usually the first person to admit that there are a lot of things that people might not like about my work, but no one wants to bring that stuff up. Conflict bad! (Not for me, of course. Conflict = interesting).

In the future, I should come more prepared. Have a quiz ready to go. Or, trivia (with prizes!) Or, maybe just a few, pointed, serious questions about some of the meatier issues, like, "How badly did I represent the transgender character? Discuss!"

Thus, the conversation didn't stick on Resurrection Code for very long. We ended up talking about TV shows, sharks, and other people's books. As I said, I had a great time, but I left wondering if, you know, I should have been more willing to talk about my own work. Especially since I resisted reading from it too.

Though, as you know, I am one of the guests of honor at Gaylaxicon this year (along with Wendy Pini... I wonder, should I bring along my fan art? I have a ton of ElfQuest fan art from my youth in the basement.) Anyway, Don K. asked me if I would be willing to write something short for their program book/chapbook. I said yes, of course, and I had been thinking of giving them a re-print of something, but now am thinking I should write something NEW, a short story in the AngeLINK universe. What do y'all think?

I need to come up with a plot, though. A gay plot. The plot must be very gay.

Any suggestions?

Revision Neurosis

On Friday I got my editorial letter from Penguin for Tate's newest novel Precinct 13. Shawn and I were off celebrating "anniversary observed" and so I didn't really see it in my in-box until yesterday. Today is the first day I'm sitting down and really looking at it. First of all, it's seventeen pages long. That's pretty long, though my editor didn't send back an electronically marked-up document, so it's not as line-by-line detailed as some of the others have been (though there is *some* of that.)

My editor is always very reasonable in her expectations, but regardless, I seem need to spend the first day of "revising" actually fuming, and not (re-)writing at all. I get over it. I usually get over it in a matter of hours, and then get down to the work of making changes that she will appreciate and I can live with. More often than not, I come out the other side very grateful for her suggestions.

I suspect that'll happen again... any minute now.

However, at this very second, I just want to whine that "no one understands my GENIUS!!"

It's something I've noticed a lot about my writing process: it's very manic depressive (or maybe just... neurotic). For instance, I just finished a short story that I'm submitting to the second Biblical horror anthology that Dybbuk Press is putting out. I HATED the story at several points during its creation, but, on Friday, when I finished going over my writers' group's comments and revising it, I thought it was the most awesome thing anyone had written eVAR in the history of writing. If/When it gets rejected, I will, at first, decide that the editor was the biggest fool in the universe not to recognize my genius. I will immediately send it off to someone else who might appreciate me more. Then, after it's gone back into the mail, I will suddenly believe that I suck, and that none of my writing has ever been worthy of publication.

Technically, I skipped a step in here, where I will love the story just before I print it out to handout to my writers' group, and then, the moment they have it in their grubby little hands, think of everything that's wrong with it and why they're going to tell me it's dumber than the dumbest thing ever uttered. And, then the subsequent roller coaster of emotions at the writers' group itself where I'm insanely happy that they found things to like, and mortified by the things that need improvement. Weirdly, I don't tend to blame Wyrdsmiths for not recognizing my genius, and I no longer go through a period, not even a millisecond, of thinking, "Wow, they just don't GET me," probably because my brain pre-filters comments as I'm listening to them, ie, "Oh, that was a good catch, I'll write that down," vs. "Well, that wasn't my intention, but so-and-so doesn't like horror, so I'll note that impression but not dwell on it other than to make sure that part is toned down in revision so no other reader goes there."

I think that just shows that there's a lot of trust built up in Wyrdsmiths over time. You'd think I'd have that same trust with my editor, but I see Wyrdsmiths every other week. I talk to my editor usually only when working on a book's revisions with her, once or twice a year. Also, face-to-face is ultimately different than receiving a seventeen page critique (even though my editor is always very good to mention the things she likes as well.)

I guess I just needed to articulate that, because I have no one here at home to complain to besides the cats.

Not that I'm a crazy cat lady.

Spontaneity and Honesty

I have been reading Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones. Goldberg is very much self-identified as a writer. Most of her work has about the process of writing. She is a writer who writes about how to write. She has also published poetry, which I don't find especially interesting, and a novel I didn't like. Her best work is either memoir or how-to writing books or a combination.

She studied Zen with Katagiri Roshi in Minneapolis, and what she describes is very much writing as a Zen practice. In fact, Katagiri told her writing was her practice.

She emphasizes spontaneity and honesty, writing that comes straight from the heart. I enjoy reading her and think about using her writing exercises. But in my own writing I value control and lying. My writing, especially my prose fiction, is not spontaneous; it's worked over, revised and refined. Most of my writing is fiction and untrue. In fact, it is is not even realistic. It is science fiction and fantasy. I keep thinking about the line from Hamlet: "By indirections find directions out." Using fiction, one finds or says the truth.

I draw on my own life, my experiences and feelings, but I don't show them directly. They are hidden in the tale. And my stories wander into unplanned places. In that sense, they are spontaneous. But control is always present. I am not going to become enlightened working this way. But I am reasonably happy with the stories.