Harry Connolly's Blog, page 178

Head, meet wall

I'm trying to get a package together for my agent (sample chapters and selling synopsis, basically) and sweet mole sauce, have I been struggling. The last couple of months have been stressful–I don't need to review, do I? Good.–and my daily word counts have been small. Now that I'm in the revision phase, I'm finding all sorts of repetitive and contradictory stuff in there. Characters are introduced twice, the protagonist discusses a clue with a character then decides to hide the info...

Randomness for 7/31

1) First Pacey-Con squelched by private police force. SDCC just isn't like it used to be, man.

2) Autoeroticism in America (in convenient graph form!)

3) Kermit Bale. Yes, poster, you do, in fact, have too much time on your hands.

4) What does Harvard have to teach YOU about vampires in film and literature? Take the online course and find out.

5) Captain Higgins, flatworm of power!

6) Photoshop Time portals. via Kurt Busiek

7) Job prospects for 2011 in the urban fantasy world. Pretty funny, ...

I try not to duplicate content on my blog and twitter feed

But I'm making an exception for this:

Tucker Carlson's conservative news site, The Daily Caller, has been trying to make hay with the Journolist story (refresher for folks who don't know the story: For a few years there was a private email list for left and center left professors, journalists, policy people, etc to discuss ideas in an informal, off-the-record manner. Recently, many of those emails have been made public, and conservatives have been Breitbarting quotes from them and trying...

Randomness for 7/28

1) Mom creates tableaus to illustrate what she imagines her sleeping baby is dreaming.

2) Via Sherwood Smith: Jane Austen's Fight Club. (added later: Yeah, this has been going around for the past couple of days, but I'm not going to yank it just in case someone here still hasn't had a chance to check it out.)

3) Introverts unite! (quietly).

4) Poppy Z. Brite, Tim Wildmon, and The Home Depot. I'm so tempted to send (anonymously) a copy of CoF to the AFA so they can boycott me, too. I could ...

The stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we live.

One of the most distressing things about my country and my culture is the contradiction between the way we view power in our entertainments and the way we view it in our real lives. We cheer movie heroes who take on the wealthy and the powerful to stand up for what's right, but what happens if someone in the real world tries that?

Well, they don't get treated like a hero. Sycophants to power pour out of the woodwork to declare them liars, scammers, whatever. Scarily, many many poor and...

Fan fiction (by me)

Remember the Scalzi/Wheaton benefit anthology, with the fan fiction contest? You may have noticed that I posted my son's (non)entry? Of course you do. Well, I thought I would post my losing entry.

No, the winning story hasn't been chosen. I'm just assuming.

Anyway, I dropped my son off at the day camp and have a few extra hours to myself. Of course it's gorgeous weather out there, but I'm going to spend it on The Buried King. I doubt I'll have something ready to send to my agent by the ...

Mid-career writing advice

One of the topics going around right now is advice for writers who are "mid-career." Check out Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Sherwood Smith, John Scalzi, and Jessica Reisman. And that's just skimming the surface.

First let me state this: I don't qualify as a "mid-career" writer. I haven't been publishing long enough, only have one book out (soon to be remedied!) and need to fail or succeed more.

However! Looking over these posts, I can't help but wonder why advice for a mid-career writer...

Randomness for 7/24

1) Can you spot the endangered species in this photo?

2) Want your kid to do well in college? Take them out of school! via Jen Busiek.

3) A book marketing idea I'm going to steal. For Child of Fire, I'm thinking flame-proof kiddie pajamas. For Game of Cages, I'm not sure. Doggie sweaters?

4) Slate discovers BBB is worthless. The rest of America says "DUH!"

5) Last time I linked to a funny post by Josh Freidman. This time I'm linking to a post that is just as true and wrenched tears out...

If you can read this, you're invited.

I'll be having a book signing for my new book, GAME OF CAGES, at Magnolia's Bookstore, on Saturday, Sept 4th from 1 pm until Tears of Loneliness pm. My signing hand will be limbered up and ready to scribble pithy remarks on the title pages of my second novel.

Here it is!

All are invited. I won't be doing a reading or anything, just sitting, signing and chatting. Hope to see you there.

Quote of the day

I feel like the last week has radicalized me in the worst possible way.

– Ta-Nehisi Coates

Context. Context continued.

This is important, folks.