This and That
Yes, an inconsequential post. A mere update. The kind of thing for which the weblog was invented, but whose current home is on Facebook and Twitter where ideas are few and gibber rules the roost. But I’m in a nostalgical state of whimsy and the urge to talk trivia is upon me.
Why this mood, you may ask (the three of you who have read this far). Maybe I’ve just caught Convention Fever and can’t say anything that isn’t giddy and vacuous. Maybe it’s because I’ve had a couple of crap days and need to go outside and skip in the sunshine (metaphorically and physically) to revive my spirits. Maybe it’s because I’ve just finished writing one book and I’ve just started a new writing project that I’ve been thinking about and planning for more than two years – the sequel to TimeSplash. Maybe it’s just lack of sleep. So, here’s some stuff.
I came across this in a Reuters piece on the Republican Convention:
Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate and former consumer crusader Elizabeth Warren gave an impassioned attack against corporate greed. She criticized [Mitt] Romney’s statement that “corporations are people.”
“No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people,” Warren said. “People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die. And that matters.”
If anyone from Massachusetts is reading, would you please let Ms Warren know I’d like to have her babies.
And what’s with all these Big 6 publishers starting up digital-only imprints? Now Harper Voyager is in on the act. If anyone gets to see a contract from these guys, I’d love to know what the royalty rate is. (I bet they don’t pay advances.) And I’d love to know what kind of rights they try to lock in (e.g. print). Does anybody have a good idea why this would be significantly better than self-publishing?
And then there’s my new kitten – Minsky. He’s beautiful. Disturbingly beautiful. No creature with balls should be so beautiful. And crazy, and fearless, and like all those guys from the Cirque du Soleil stuffed into a tiny Tonkinese fur suit and fed crystal meth. I’m still astonished that he crept up on me the other night and woke me up by biting my lower lip.
And I’m reading a load of self-published sci-fi ebooks at the moment (as well as a great collection of commercially published old SF short stories). The quality is very variable but the good ones are at least as good as most commercially published books I’ve been reading lately. It suggests to me that some good writers are not sending manuscripts to publishers any more. This must mean that the overall quality of the publishers’ slush piles is taking a nose dive. Yet maybe all the poor quality material that is also going straight to self-publishing instead of polluting the slush piles is evening things out (maybe even improving quality). If the publishers hadn’t laid off so many staff lately, it could have reduced workload at any rate. Any publishing insiders care to comment?
You should probably just sit down with your favourite feed reader and make the rest up yourselves. I promise you, it will be more fun in the long run.
