Ketchup

Here’s the cover art for Antídoto, better known to you and me as Plague War. It’s nice and freaky, and matches the first book perfectly. I like where Minotauro is going with the trilogy. La Plaga. Antídoto. Maybe the third book will be called New Outbreak, but in ultra-cool Spanish, of course.

In more somber news, my editor reports that the global crisis of the economic downturn is affecting the book world on the other side of the Atlantic, too. Minotauro looks strong, which is welcome news, but a rival publisher is laying off 500 people. Ouch. Sales numbers are tanking worldwide. This is not good for folks like myself who depend on consumers’ disposable income.

"Hmmm," you're thinking. "Should I pay the rent or buy a new book? Pay the rent or, uh..." Tough call, right?

And yet Team Minotauro has an evil plan which fills me with excitement, gratitude, and hope. They’ve put a rush on Antídoto. The book will be out in January, their intent being to capitalize on the success of La Plaga. Also, as a major coup, because of Minotauro’s support for both titles, book stores across Spain have agreed to maintain their floor displays and/or prominent shelf placement of La Plaga well after the normal promotion period would have ended, all the way through the holiday shopping season, at which time Antídoto will join La Plaga in those eye-popping front-of-store displays.

Wow. Just wow. I freaking love these guys, and I have to say that packing up the family and moving to Europe suddenly seems like a viable option again.

Habla español, dude?

Labels: Antídoto, book sales, La Plaga, Minotauro, the writing life

On this morning's drive, I saw a young teenage boy on the other side of the street. He was walking in the same direction as I was driving, so his back was to me. There are plenty of kids on their way down this particular road every weekday to the junior high school. What drew my attention was that I thought he might be injured. His walk was a broken, shambling thing. Night Of The Living Dead.

I slowed down slightly, then sped up again. He wasn't hurt. He was a victim of the Gangsta BeeYotch Fashion Style affected by so many white suburban kids here in northern California. The poor idiot's jeans were so huge and saggy that the waistline was -- I swear it -- hanging down to the middle of his thighs. If his shirt hadn't been large enough for three of him, I suppose his butt would have been hanging out. It's a sharp look. No doubt it makes the girls crazy. Alas, with the waist-line below his ass, the crotch of his jeans had fallen to the space between his knees, which greatly impeded his ability to move his feet.

But it looked cool. I guess. If you were under sixteen and your frontal lobes still had yet to fully develop. My friends and I rebelled, too, trying to look tough in denim jackets and longish hair, but at least we never intentionally crippled ourselves.

I must be getting old.

What is that look really about? Conspicuous consumption of textiles?

Labels: The Cutting Edge of Fashion

Here’s a freak twist of fate for you. I can see Alan Jacobson’s house from my front yard. He lives on the street across from us, and, through bad fortune, is also much closer to the new construction than I am. The 5000 sq. ft. monster-mansion is basically done… but the shack on the next property down the hill has also sold, and someone else is knocking it down as well as cutting out a lot of brush and trees. Welcome to the war zone! Chainsaws! Bulldozers! Hammers in the sky!

In the meantime, Alan is writing kick-ass, bestselling, twists-and-turns murder suspense novels -- no doubt in response to the nonstop antagonism directly over his back fence. I mean, you wouldn’t want to run into Alan in a dark alley.

The funny part is that we lived here for years without meeting. I only learned about him because one of my neighbors, who knows I’m a novelist, reported that there was another writer in the area after his teenage sons were caught whacking apples with a bat into the side of Alan’s house. My neighbor and Alan got talking. My neighbor relayed Alan’s occupation to me. But I never quite got around to knocking on his door. What do you say? “Hello. You write, I write, we… write?”

I read his books, though. False Accusations was particularly good, like John Grisham meets Fatal Attraction. Fun. Scary!

Then we met by coincidence in the local B&N. I’d come in to sign stock and recognized the manager with some guy. I stopped to say hello, and she introduced us — two miles from our homes, which are probably two hundred yards apart. Life is funny.

Long story short, if you’re up for some nail-biting suspense that luminaries such as James Patterson and Nelson DeMille call “compelling“ and “an impressively researched novel about serial murder packed into a tightly twisting plot,“ Alan is your guy.

The 7th Victim is gruesome, gripping, and lightning-paced. How’s that for a nice jacket blurb!?! ;)

Labels: Alan Jacobson, Recommended Reading, The 7th Victim

My one regret is that the only people I know who speak (much less read) Romanian are the two editors whose names run across the top of this book, which is the debut edition of a showcase anthology series by Millennium Press. It features short fiction written by their novelists.

Check out this line-up! And I'm the anchor, dude! They're running me first. Which is a first. Ha ha.

My story for the Millennium showcase is "The Frozen Sky," which is beginning to give "Pressure" a run for its money as my most-successful piece of short fiction. For those of you with Romanians on your Christmas shopping list, the anthology will be out in three weeks. ;)

Labels: Millennium Press, Romania, short fiction sales, The Frozen Sky

I don't think I'll ever get tired of gorgeous book porn like this, but fortunately I'm almost out of pictures like this. ;)

In the meantime, I'm afraid it's true. The La Plaga tie-in vacation contest is over. It's won! José Garrido Calero will be enjoying an all expenses paid, seven days, six nights extravaganza for two all the way from Spain to beautiful Aspen, Colorado, where he and a companion of his choice will have a nice head-start over the rest of us to safe elevation when the machine plague breaks loose. Aieeeeeeyaaaargh! Run for the hills!

I want to thank the team at Minotauro for organizing such an incredible promotion campaign. Seriously. The mind croggles.

Labels: book contest, La Plaga, Minotauro

No email. The horror! The horror... I've been out of town, and the only ISP within reach was an excruciatingly slow dial-up. So I was off the grid. The good news is that I wrote 7500 words and got some editing done, too, so all in all it was a most productive time. How are you?

Labels: the writing life

For those of you who don’t already know, November 1st marked the start of this year’s National Novel Writing Month, a fun if gimmicky event designed to motivate people to crank out an entire book in four weeks. Why? Beats the heck out of me. Most writers could make more money working at Burger King than banging away at our keyboards -- and you get free food, too! For years I considered this career change myself. It's only through insane persistence and good luck that I'm not asking you if you want a large fries with that.

The goal of National Novel Writing Month is 50K words, which is actually just half of a book unless you’re writing YA, but their catchy acronym is NaNoWriMo. If it was National Half-A-Novel Writing Month, they’d be left with NaHaNoWriMo. Or NaThirNoWriMo if you’re writing those door-stopper epic fantasy novels, in which case 50K is barely more than a third of your manuscript.

Anyway, it got me thinking, and I ran some numbers to see if I could compete -- and I can’t. Even when I have a week without interruptions, which is exceedingly rare, my personal best is 30K words in a month. Typically, I’m more like 20K, and my surprise for you today is that I actually prefer the 20K months.

One manuscript page is 250 words, btw. My daily goal is 6 pages minimum. I shoot for 8, 4 is considered mediocre, and I’m usually mad at myself if I don’t hit the 6 page mark, although if I only achieve 3 or 4 pages in a day but write a particularly evocative or technical scene, I’m glad.

Yes, it’s a fun, heady feeling to crank out 10 – 12 pages in a single day. Yeehaw! But I’ve found that what I write on those big days is often the same stuff that needs the most work later on, so it comes out the same. Either you blast it out fast and do more editing later, or you find a happy medium and get it mostly right the first time. My editor considers me a “clean” writer, which is flattering. She means that my manuscripts aren’t full of typos, unclear sentences, continuity lapses, or plot snafus. Naturally I hope to keep it that way, so my preference is a quick but steady pace, not sprinting.

20K words is a fifth of a book. After five months like that, you’ve got a complete novel, although I typically need at least another month to clean up the manuscript, add a few nuances here and there, and brightly polish the line-by-line writing.

So why aren’t I publishing two books a year? Well, this year I wrote two books, more or less -- 80K for Colony High, and 115K for Mind Plague, despite the distractions. I have family, and a house and a yard, and the business part of writing seems to be encroaching more and more on my time; contracts; interviews; research; conventions; preparing for panels and classes at conventions; fan mail; outlining future books; etc.

I know, I know -- these are EXCELLENT problems to have!!! I’m not complaining. But for me, at least, 50K a month just ain't realistic.

Labels: Mind Plague, National Novel Writing Month, the writing life