Harry Connolly's Blog, page 201

The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

Great title, innit?

Let's say you're reading a spy novel, and Our Hero is running for his life, having been framed as a traitor by someone "in the agency." Flee! Find clues! Reveal truth! And let's imagine that Our Hero discovers that there's a shadowy agency within the agency, and that the person who betrayed him is his own partner!

Or, what if you had a fantasy about a farmboy who visits a fortune teller. "You have a great destiny," the fortune teller informs him. "A terrible Darkness g...

Pleasant things

A neighborhood library branch (not mind) is having a writers event tonight. It's some sort of reading and talk, along with an open mike. I was seriously tempted to go, just to see what it was like. If it was fun and well-attended, I would have introduced myself to the library staff and offered myself for future events.

Then I decided to run the authors' names through a search engine. They're all poets.

Just typing that make me shudder a bit. I don't know if anyone out there has ever...

An unhappy reminder

For those folks who change their clocks twice a year, this is a friendly reminder that Daylight Savings Time starts this Sunday, March 14th. Set your clocks one hour ahead.

Because we all need an hour less sleep at the end of winter.

Seven followup notes on previous topics

1) As I mentioned yesterday, I've finished my agent's revisions to Man Bites World. I have, in my backpack, a printed copy of the latest version. My agent prefers to read on paper, so I'll be (priority) mailing a copy to her over lunch.

2) With luck, she'll declare it ready to submit sometime next week. Without luck, she'll point out a glaring problem I failed to address sufficiently or introduced in this draft, and there will be more changes make. Hopefully, I'll have luck.

3) Have I...

Randomness for 3/10

1) For once, it's a good idea to read the comments: "Dear Prudence" gives some unfortunate advice about a sexual fetish, and readers take her to task.

2) A woman enters a comic book shop and asks for recommendations…

3) Venus de Slusho. That snow woman give me impure thoughts.

4) Bayonet 2.0

5)

Godzilla Haiku

6) Social networking site allows you to register a credit card number and automatically post every purchase (with the price!) online. In other news, satire passed away quietly at home...

Now I go home

Now I go home and prep the latest version of Man Bites World to send to my agent. Once she gives it a once over, she will (hopefully) give me the go ahead to send it to Del Rey.

God, I'm so ready to turn this thing in.

Watch the green lava!

I did my first voice-over job today. The writer/director trusted me quite a bit when he gave me this role, and I hope I did a good job.

My son made his first Lego stop-motion animation all by himself. He even did the editing; I'm planning to ask him for tips on using iMovie later. Comments on YouTube are disabled because he's eight, but any kind words would be welcome here.

Sales Rankings

My agent has asked me to stop looking at Child of Fire's sales rankings on Amazon.com. She knows I know that they don't really mean anything, but she also knows that it's one of the few tools a writer has to see how the book is doing. Are sale trending upward? Is interest fading away? How does it compare to book X, released at the same time (which is never always fun)?

Her point (and, as always, it's a good one) is that Amazon.com isn't representative of certain kinds of book sales. It ...

Five Things Make a Friday Post

And today it's all about me me me!

* As of last Monday, I am officially six months overdue on delivering Man Bites World. My agent has given me firm instructions: Do not panic. The deadline for production is August, but I'm going to be turning it in that late. I'm just about finished with a round of revisions for my agent (she had a couple little notes) and once she reads and approves them, I'll turn the book in.

Looking back, I can see it was damn smart of my editor to hold off the...

Reader, I lol-ed

I'm pretty critical of Republicans and conservatives on this blog, but I want to give a fair shake to the whackawoowoo Democrats we see.

For instance! Democrat Kesha Rogers won the primary for 22nd District of Texas (covering Galveston and some surrounding areas), running heavily on a single issue: President Obama must be impeached.

Candidate Rogers is a proud Larouchite. May I quote the statement her campaign made after her victory? Wonderful.

The victory in the 22nd Congressional...