Kelly McCullough's Blog, page 75

Things a Writer Thinks About*

One of the things my family and I did on Sunday as a sort of post-stripe (I got my first belt stripe in the martial art I practice) celebration was go to the bookstore to stock up on winter reading. We did our usual used book circuit, which includes HalfPrice Books and Sixth Chamber. I spent much of Sunday resting my aching muscles on the couch and reading various Avengers comics.

Since then I've been struck by a bunch of strange observations about various superheroes. Like, how many superheroes must smell like Icy Heat... or, how do you suppose Peter Parker explains all his bruises? Do you think he just does what Bill Henry -- who would occasionally show up to Wyrdsmiths with a black eye -- would do and mutter, "soccer" or "rugby," and lets people just assume he's not out crime fighting in the streets on his off hours? Or why is it that no one pulled this skinny, nerdy kid away from his Aunt May and asked him, "Do you need a SAFE PLACE???!"

Seriously.

I read one of Brubaker's Marvel Age issues about Pearl Harbor and the Invaders, and that just really got me thinking about my grandparents and about all the strange things Captain America probably says/does/eats because of the era he grew up in. My grandparents always had coffee after dinner ....and ate bread with butter, like as a side dish. I'm being told on FB that much of this is probably ethnic (particularly my example of liver and onions), but you've got to figure there's something that Cap used to ask Jarvis to make for dinner that had the rest of the Avengers groaning.

Also on FB, my friend and fellow writer Jon Hansen are having fun imagining the weak coffee he probably made at Avenger's headquarters and exactly how insane that made Tony Stark.




And does he smell like Old Spice?

I mean, you could not go into a grandparent's bathroom without seeing that white bottle with the blue ship on it. And old people just smelled -- not like "the man my man could smell like" -- but like my grandpa'a Old Spice!

So, yeah, this is the kind of thing I spend my days thinking about.

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*excerpt x-posted from LJ.

Ficcing Myself, In a Way

I was thinking, which is, of course, often a dangerous thing.

I was thinking that I should really do something fun to get people excited about the upcoming release of RESURRECTION CODE in March. And, it occurred to me that, because of the plot requirements of RC and the story I wanted to tell, there was a lot of Mouse history that didn't ACTUALLY make it into the book as scenes per se. Some of it ended up as pseudo-memoir or as commentary by Page or news articles or other things, but, the point is, there was all this stuff that I'd pre-imagined, if you will... some of it even got written out a bit.

So starting on Tuesday, February 1, 2011, I'm going to post one Mouse/AngeLINK original vignette my LJ once a week until the book comes out. I've already written two.

How about them apples, eh?

I can't promise they're going to be great literature or even entirely typo-free, but hopefully they will whet your appetite for what's to come.

Okay. Back to writing!

To Twitter or Not to Twitter...

On Twitter, Victoria Strauss linked to an article from the LA Times that implies that social media doesn't work for retailers.

I think that may be entirely true for people selling cans of beans. Personally, I can't imagine following a promotional link from a twitter from JC Penny to buy socks or whatever at half price, though I could see how some people might. But I think that to say this is an argument for not bothering with social media as an author misunderstands how readers interact with authors (as opposed to booksellers) these days.

I have to admit to finding an author not only through Facebook, but also through silly videos of cats on YouTube. I actually went out and bought books by these two people after my interaction with them (or their cats) on-line.

And I don't think I'm the only one.

I think that an author, these days, is expected to be available for the consumer almost like a product him or herself. You like my blog? Try my book! This may seem crass, but we -- at least in the science fiction community -- should be used to the concept of this. It's really not unlike the idea of going to a convention and being on panels so people can get an idea of who you are. It's the same, only a lot more international (and a lot harder to stand out.)

Also, frankly, I'm glad retailers haven't figured out how to dominate Facebook and Twitter entirely yet. I'd like to keep my social media fairly social, and leave the ads elsewhere.

Happy Birthday Tolkien*

We decided on a whim over this vacation, on Friday, to start watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD. Mason wasn't interested at first, but got caught up when Aragorn fights the ring wraiths and Frodo gets stabbed. When Boromir dies we all wept like dogs, and Mason was totally hooked. After that, it kind of became a thing. We met upstairs in the afternoon and sat down to watch the next one. Which went along fine until Sunday night, when --right at the point when Frodo is stung by the giant spider queen, Shelob -- the DVD flaked. We washed it. We tapped the DVD player. But the disc would spin no more.

So began my quest.

I drove out to Target just up the street on University, but they didn't have it. I called Borders on University, but they only had "Two Towers" in Blueray. Moving northward, I tried Barnes & Noble at Har Mar, called HPB in Roseville, went to Best Buy, called the Borders in Roseville Mall... NO ONE had it.

The guy at Barnes & Noble thought that there might be a copy in Maplewood, but he wasn't sure. I was losing hope. Then, I remembered who I was. I am a proud geek, member of the nerd herd. I got the phone and started calling my friends. Someone that I know must be a fan of the LotRs enough to have a copy! Or at least, maybe they would know someone who knew someone. I mean, come on, this is fandom, I figured I was probably only seven degrees of separation from Peter Jackson himself.

When I called around, my friend and fellow writer, Naomi Kritzer happened to be talking to friends who had a copy. I could meet them at their place and they would "but lend it to me." (Remember the scene in Fellowship with Boromir and Frodo? "If you would but lend it [the ring] to me...")

Hooray!

So we were able to watch the end last night. Now Mason is thinking we might do a "Harry Potter" with the Lord of the Rings -- which means read each book out loud and at the end of each book, watch the movie again. I'm totally up for that. I'd forgotten how much I loved the movies and how well I remember the first book. Speaking of fandom, it is my utter shame that I have, in point of fact, never read beyond Fellowship. What can I say? I was thirteen and dyslexic... still, I've always been embarrassed by this and usually deny it, if pressed.

Kind of cool, too, that today is J. R. R. Tolkien's birthday. It's almost like we planned this (only we didn't.)

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Excerpted from my LJ.

SF in Trouble

This is from an interview with Ted Chiang, though this quote comes from Gavin Grant:

"Science fiction is one of the biggest threads in popular entertainment," Grant says. "There are lots of big movies, lots of TV shows based on science fiction premises, but science fiction is having this real trouble looking into the future and imagining what will happen. To look a decade or a hundred years in the future is very difficult, and there are a couple of outs that writers have been using. One, they say it's too difficult to look into the future so we don't have to, we can just write fantasy. Or they just look in the past and write steampunk and things like that. Don't get me wrong, I like these things, but I think one of the things Ted does is to extrapolate rigorously and somewhat harshly, in a way that people can recognize from the life they're living."

The quote interests me, because it answers part of my question, where is SF going? What has been happening in the field?

ST in Trouble

This is from an interview with Ted Chiang, though this quote comes from Gavin Grant:

"Science fiction is one of the biggest threads in popular entertainment," Grant says. "There are lots of big movies, lots of TV shows based on science fiction premises, but science fiction is having this real trouble looking into the future and imagining what will happen. To look a decade or a hundred years in the future is very difficult, and there are a couple of outs that writers have been using. One, they say it's too difficult to look into the future so we don't have to, we can just write fantasy. Or they just look in the past and write steampunk and things like that. Don't get me wrong, I like these things, but I think one of the things Ted does is to extrapolate rigorously and somewhat harshly, in a way that people can recognize from the life they're living."

The quote interests me, because it answers part of my question, where is SF going? What has been happening in the field?

Friday Cat Blogging

Look, I'm a skinny little Halloween cat



A study in gray



All shall love me and despair!



Can I climb you? Pleasepleaseplease!

Look What I Found!

Amazon.com has ALMOST FINAL CURTAIN up and ready for pre-order! Whoot!

An interesting article from the New York Times about post...

An interesting article from the New York Times about post-apocalyptic/dystopian young adult novels and their appeal, with contributors including Scott Westerfeld and Paolo Bacigalupi: The Dark Side of Young Adult Fiction

Friday Cat Blogging

Suave and debonair.



Now can I be centerpiece?



Have to figure out how to immobilize the hand too…



Shh, I iz a seekrit!