Thursday Quick Notes

Today Oliver looked at me, said "Hi," and smacked me in the face.

My David Foster Wallace/Lovecraft story Hideous Interview With Brief Man is one of the Notable Stories for the Million Writers Award. This round is juried; then there's a popular vote to narrow the ten down to three, then another judge takes over. At least that's what I remembered. Given that everyone has surrendered to the idea of pounding away online for votes, despite the fact that it led to this past year's Hugo Award hilarity, I will pound away for votes if I make the final ten. You made this world, I just live in it.

One of the great horrors of freelancing is that expected checks are always late. One of the great joys is that sometimes you get paid more than once, by total surprise. I've had essays in something like thirteen different Ben Bella/ smartpopbooks titles, and only House Unauthorized has ever paid out. The Star Wars and Lost titles haven't, despite being more popular in the US. Thanks to international syndication though, the House book sold to Poland a couple of years ago and thus the book earned out and all the contributors made a little more money. Seventy-seven bucks. Now it's sold to a much bigger market, Germany, and the surprise payout was much larger—just as much as the original essay fee. So one, gig, 2.25 payouts, over seven years. Nothing to bank on, but nothing is sweeter than money for nothing.

BN.com finally got it sufficiently together to have a pre-order page up for the Nook ebook of The Nickronomicon. Five smackers, cheap. Pleased with pre-orders in general so far. We blew past our month pre-order goal of sixety for the hard copies on the fourth day, and it's got a couple dozen Kindle orders as well. If you're a Nook-o it's five bucks at the link, cheap!