Jim C. Hines

On Turning a Blind Eye

2009-07-13T12:41:54Z

Before I left on vacation, I was planning to do a post about the sexist aspects of Transformers 2. I enjoyed the movie, but it has some seriously problematic aspects, from our opening shot of Megan Fox on the motorcycle to the Decepticon pantybot* to the Infinite Dorm of Gorgeous Girls.

But as I was reading other reviews and commentary, I kept coming across the same reactions. “It’s just a summer action flick. What did you expect from a Michael Bay movie? Stop analyzing and just have fun! Why do you have to suck the fun out of everything with this P.C. garbage?”

I find it interesting which stories people believe are worthy of literary analysis and critique. The attitude seems to be that critical analysis is best left for dusty old tomes in the ivory tower. Joyce, Melville, Shakespeare, and so on. If we’re going to think about movies, we’re supposed to limit it to the highbrow art-house films.

Maybe I’m crazy, but that seems backwards to me. How many people actually read Joyce these days? Compare that to the number of people who went out to see Transformers. So wait, we’re saying discussions of racism, sexism, and so on are fine, so long as they’re not about the stories most people are actually reading or watching.

I don’t write deep literary fiction. My books have flaming spiders and nose-picking injuries and Sleeping Beauty & the Little Mermaid kicking the crap out of each other. Because my stories are “bubblegum fiction,” as one reviewer described them, does this mean I should be given a free pass on issues of race, sex, and so on? Because I find that a little insulting, to be honest. When I screw up–and we all do sometimes–I expect to be called on it.

I understand these discussions can be uncomfortable, especially if we’ve enjoyed the story in question. I’m still struggling with major dissonance over Transformers. I have serious problems with the stereotypes and clichés in this thing. I also had a lot of fun watching it. What does it say about me if I enjoyed a movie while at the same time finding it problematic on so many levels?

Personally, I believe it’s important to examine and challenge popular culture, whether that’s movies, TV, books, music, or whatever**. It’s important because it’s popular. Because racism and sexism have survived and thrived in large part because we make excuses and turn a blind eye.

—–
*Decepticons can create perfect human doubles, and the best plan they can come up with is to send her to hop into bed with Sam?

**I say this as a man who wrote about Darth Vader in my Master’s thesis.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Vacation and LOLPrime

2009-07-01T15:15:18Z

Tomorrow morning we head off on vacation. I’ll be away from cellphone signals, wireless … not even reliable land lines to dial out and connect.

I’m sure I’ll be sneaking out with the laptop to hunt the Wild Wireless Signal of Northern Michigan from time to time, but there will be little blogging for the next week and a half, and if you e-mail me, don’t expect an instant response.

In the meantime, negative reviews or other complaints should be directed to my friend Optimus.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Bookscan

2009-06-30T18:28:24Z

Busy day, so this is gonna be quick.

Agent Andrew Zack blogged the other day about Bookscan, a service to track and report book sales: The Lie that is Bookscan.

My own agent, Joshua Bilmes, has posted his own thoughts, disagreeing with Zack’s assessment: A Bookscanner Darkly

Personally, I tend to agree with Joshua, and not just because he sells my books. As far as I know, most writers, publishers, and agents know perfectly well that Bookscan represents a percentage of total sales, and that percentage could be anywhere from 70-80% for one author but under 50% for another. Bookscan seems to capture a lower fraction of mine, since I do better with independents.

I don’t think Bookscan ever claimed to report ALL sales. It’s more data than anything else I’ve seen, save from the publisher itself, but it’s definitely not 100% of my sales.

A publisher using Bookscan as the sole criterion for rejecting an author (as described in Zack’s post) is troubling, but I see that as a problem with the publisher, not with Bookscan.

(I do still track and graph my Bookscan numbers every week to fulfil my neurotic validation needs, of course. They don’t tell me actual sales, but they do help me see trends.)

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Transformers 2: The Defacing

2009-06-29T13:34:54Z

Amy and I snuck out yesterday to see Transformers 2 while the kids were at their cousins’ place. (Please note - this was Amy’s suggestion, not mine. Because my wife is that cool.) Currently, the movie is getting trashed in the reviews. 21% at Rotten Tomatoes as of this morning.

But you know what? I liked it. It’s silly, over-the-top, with problems ranging from a cartoon plot to Prime’s face fetish, but like the first movie, that’s not the point. You go in with low expectations, turn off your brain, and enjoy the spectacle of giant robots pounding the crap out of each other. I thought some things worked better this time around. It was nice to actually get some personality from Starscream. On the other hand, sometimes Michael Bay’s idea of “personality” is problematic in the extreme.

Next up: the spoilers, including points that worked and didn’t, and a deeper look at Mudflap and Skids.

Optimus Prime kicks ass, and it’s about time. I was disappointed in the first film when he gets his tailplate handed to him by Megatron. That ain’t the Prime I remember. This time, he’s got his double-swords going and he’s taking on all comers. This doesn’t always turn out too well, but overall, he seemed much more heroic this time around. None of which changes the fact that, “Give me your face!” is one of the worst lines ever.

The Fallen, on the other hand … this was supposed to be one of the original Primes, so powerful he rebelled against the rest and came out alive. So he sits around on his ass, finally hops down to Earth, and promptly gets his face ripped off. Bored now. More Megatron please.

Megatron and Starscream - Booyah! There’s the snippy little S&M dom/sub pair I remember from childhood. So much better than the first movie.

Sam’s Webgeek Roommate - Bored again. Please replace his scenes with a few minutes to maybe give us the names of the rest of the new autobots?

The Plot was dumb as rocks in socks, but this is a movie based on a cartoon made to sell toys. Draining the sun of its energy is exactly the sort of scheme 80’s Megatron would have loved. Can’t you just hear Frank Welker’s voice gloating about his plan to destroy the fleshlings and conquer the universe?

Devastator should have been awesome. Instead we get this clunky, slow, sand-sucking monstrosity who can’t stand upright. I get that the mass of a robot so huge could cause serious structural problems (see the square-cube law), and that realistically, it makes sense to give Devastator some back issues. But really? This is the part of the movie where you suddenly worry about making something realistic?

Sam and Mikaela - Meh.

Wheelie - Why in the name of Primus would a robot express his loyalty by humping someone’s leg? That said, he was still less annoying than Wheelie from the cartoon. I’ll take it.

Jetfire rocked. They captured his Decepticon past, gave him a new personality, and he was probably my favorite character in the film. A bit like Grell the goblin if she were an ancient 40-ton robot. A little over-the-top, but I thought he worked well, and I wish the rest of the ‘bots could have gotten similar development.

Mudflap and Skids - The New York Times described them as racist caricatures, robot versions of Jar Jar Binks. They certainly serve the same role as Jar Jar did, bringing childish humor and attempted comic relief while spouting pseudo-urban slang and, in one case, sporting a massive gold tooth.

Personally, I found them annoying, offensive, and totally unnecessary. (I did like the “Decepticons, suck my popsicle!” bit in the beginning, though.) Most interesting to me were the responses to accusations of racism. Reno Wilson, one of the voice actors for the twins, said “he was told that the alien robots learned about human culture through the Web and that the twins were ‘wannabe gangster types,’” going on to add, “If he had uploaded country music, he would have come out like that.”

The thing is, from a more skilled director, that might have worked. We’ve already established that the Transformers learned our language from the Internet. Think of the quirks and misinformation they could have absorbed. We’re lucky Optimus Prime didn’t leap onto the Fallen shouting “On ur back, takin’ ur face!” (Or worse, “All ur face are belong to us!”)

Only there were no country music bots. No LOLbots. No caricatures whatsoever, save our gangster twins. They played it straight with all of the Transformers except the black caricatures. But that’s all right, because according to director Michael Bay, “It’s done in fun. I don’t know if it’s stereotypes — they are robots, by the way.”

Oh Michael Bay no.

All right then. They’re just robots. That doesn’t count, right? Good to know. (Do you think Hasbro used the same reasoning back in the 80’s when they decided the black character in G.I. Joe would speak only in rhymes? They’re just cartoons, right?)

And sure, the characters aren’t literally black. They’re green and red, so that makes it okay. Except you’re still taking elements of racial stereotypes and associating them with bumbling, illiterate idiots.

In the end, Bay’s motives were pure. “I purely did it for kids.” The sad thing is, it works. My 4-year-old will love this level of humor, the infantile bickering, the roughhousing, the endless idiocy. As a bonus, he’ll get to absorb another 2.5 hours of racial caricature. Thanks a lot, Bay.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Day in the Life

2009-06-28T00:43:08Z

I talk about wanting to quit the day job some day and write full time. Every once in a while I get a weekend with nothing planned, and I get to see what that might look like. It ain’t pretty, folks.

Done so far:

Wake up to a little boy crawling into the bed with us.
Take care of dogs and cats.
Quick home repair job, thanks to dog’s chewing habit. Grumble.
Front lawn mowed. Back lawn procrastinated until tomorrow.
Lunch for kids. Lunchtime already? Dang.
Finally, some actual writing! 3000 more words on the final (for now) rewrite of Red Hood’s Revenge.
Dinner break, courtesy of my wonderful wife — thanks, babe!
Short story feedback for the writer who won my critique in the Brenda Novak diabetes auction.
Start working on an interview with a tight deadline.
Break to watch old Transformers episode while doing the 4-year-old’s nebulizer.

Still to come tonight:

Page proofs for The Mermaid’s Madness.
More work on the interview, hopefully.
Read through notes on Red Hood to figure out the next chapter so I can do it all again tomorrow

Can someone please explain how 8:45 pm snuck up on me like that? Seriously, what just happened? Where did Saturday sneak off to?

On the bright side, I’ve got 12,000 words on Red Hood after four days. If I keep up this pace, I should have no problem making my deadline. On the down side, this is not my natural pace. if I keep it up for a month, I’m likely to go a little nuts. But I want to get a head start before we head up north on vacation. I’ll be taking the laptop, but I doubt I’ll be doing 3000 words a day while we’re there.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Taunting the Internets

2009-06-26T12:51:12Z

Two quick reminders first:

1. BSC Review will be giving away a set of Goblin Quest miniatures on June 29. Enter now! You know you want ‘em.

2. I’m giving away a copy of Stepsister over at SF Novelists.

Dear Anton Strout - I seem to have sold a werejaguar story. With zombies in it (sort of). You wish you were as cool as me.

Dear John Scalzi - Cherry Coke Zero is far superior to regular old Coke Zero.

Dear Catherine Shaffer - Didn’t I ever tell you I was polycatherous?

Dear Alethea Kontis - <Dr. Drakken>You think your feet are all that, but they’re not!</Dr. Drakken>

Dear Cory Doctorow - Information does not want to be free. Information wants to be bound, gagged, and spanked hard.

Dear Robert - Hey look, I found you some legs!

Dear Wil Wheaton - I know your secret. I know why you keep missing Penguicon, and why Amazon still won’t ship me my copy of Just a Geek after three freaking months. “Wil Wheaton” is just a Pixar-produced computer animation!

Dear Elizabeth Bear - Actually, never mind. I’ve seen those climbing muscles. You could kill me with your toes. No taunt for you!

Dear Paul Abbamondi - Don’t think I’ve forgotten. Your time is coming, goblin-hater!

Dear Random Person who’s feeling left out because you didn’t get a taunt - Maybe that omission is the taunt! Ha! Bow before my meta-taunting skills!

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Series vs. Standalones

2009-06-23T14:01:56Z

Why are all the SF/F writers doing series these days? What ever happened to the good old standalone novel?

I can’t give you a thorough answer on that one, but part of it is simple economics. Let’s start by comparing Goblin Quest and Stepsister Scheme, and please forgive me for geeking out with math and graphs. Nothing here is all that complex or life-changing, but I tend to obsess a bit.

In the first six months, Stepsister is kicking goblin butt. This is a good thing. We want every new book to do better than the last, so this should make my editor happy. But with Goblin Quest, DAW released the sequel six months later. So lets extend our graph and see what happens next.

There’s a clear jump in sales of Goblin Quest when the second goblin book came out. That jump and slope back down to previous levels indicates hundreds of extra books sold. The same thing happened with Goblin War.

The release of Stepsister Scheme did not have the same effect on sales of the goblin books. I’m sure some people read Stepsister and gone out to buy the goblin series, but it wasn’t the dramatic spike you get with the release of a new book in the same series.

Nothing profound or exciting. If you have a choice between a new standalone book that will sell X copies or a sequel which will sell X copies and also sell Y copies of the previous book, it’s a pretty straightforward choice. But what about people who aren’t willing to start in mid-series? That sequel actually sells X - Z copies, where Z is the number of folks who would have picked up an original standalone but don’t want to dive into the middle of a series. So long as Y > Z, you’re still coming out ahead.

Eventually, one of a several things will happen. Sometimes sales fall off, and the publisher ends the series. A lot of my friends have had series cut short after 3-4 books because the publisher thought something new would sell better. On the other extreme, you get the Harry Potter phenomenon. The first book got a lot of attention, but it wasn’t until you had the cumulative momentum of the first 3-4 books that it became so obscenely successful. In my case, I think the goblin books were somewhere in between. The third book did seem to build some momentum, but it obviously wasn’t Rowling levels of success. Heck, I doubt my sales add up to a milliRowling.

Everything up to this point has been about sales and numbers. Much as I’d love to someday achieve a centiRowling with my sales, I’m more worried about story. In the case of the goblin books, I had three stories I wanted to tell, showing the development of Jig and the goblins. A fourth book might have helped the sales snowball, but I didn’t have another goblin story I felt I needed to tell.

As a reader, I like novels better than short stories because I’m able to get more invested in the characters and their situations. I suspect a lot of people enjoy series over standalones for the same reason. Greater investment, greater payoff (hopefully), and familiarity with the characters and the world.

I’m running out of time, and I suspect I’m just rambling now anyway. So I’ll leave this with a question for everyone. Is the series as different from the standalone novel as the novel is from the short story form? (And yes, I know there are different kinds of series. Run with it however you’d like.)

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

The B Team

2009-06-22T12:23:02Z

Dear Hollywood — what do you think?

Love,
Jim

—–

In 2009 a crack fiction unit was pushed to the backlist for a crime they didn’t commit. These characters promptly escaped from low print runs to the Internet underground. Today, still wanted by fans, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you’re really desperate, maybe you can hire the Blue Team.

Goblin Quest miniatures are from Garden Ninja studios. Want your own set? Check out their site for unpainted, patina-finished, or custom painted minis. Or head over to BSC Review, where they’re giving away a free set of patina-finished goblin miniatures.

Tick figure is from a garage sale. You’re on your own for that one.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Rape Posts & Resources

2009-06-20T01:10:21Z

I’m angry with myself.

Years back, I posted a page on my site with articles I had written about rape, as well as a link to a resources page I put together for a local crisis center. (The crisis center hasn’t updated the page in several years, unfortunately, so those resources are now out of date.)

Anyway, this was right about when my career as a writer started to take off. I revamped the web page to be more businesslike and focused on my writing. I left the resource page posted, but it was no longer linked from the main page. Looking back, I think I was getting all caught up in being a “professional.” I was worried that including rape resources would take away from my image.

Looking back, I want to smack myself. It’s the same sort of thing I’ve vented about: men not speaking out because it’s easier that way. Because we’re afraid of what people will think. Afraid of alienating potential readers, maybe. I don’t know. All I know is that in this particular instance, I chose silence, and I’m disappointed in myself for that choice.

I’ve updated the rape page on the new site, and I’ve put the link back in the menu bar. I’m working on adding more links and resources. (I’m open to suggestions if you have any.)

So, yeah. Disappointed and angry with myself. And grateful to the reader who indirectly kicked me in the pants to do better. Thank you — you know who you are.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Updates from Around the Writersphere

2009-06-18T13:01:49Z

A while back I reviewed Steven Harper’s book Nightmare, the second of his Silent Empire series. The books have been out of print for a while, so Harper is making the first book available for the Kindle as an experiment. You can pick up Dreamers for the low price of $1.79 $1.43! (significantly cheaper than any of mine ).

Greg Wilson, a friend of mine, just had his first book come out from Five Star. The Third Sign [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] is fairly classic epic fantasy. As some of you know, Goblin Quest started out as a Five Star release, so I’ve got a soft spot for them. You can read the first three chapters of Wilson’s book at his web site.

In my own ever-thrilling life, I figured out how to rotate quotes on my web site, so I’m putting up quotes from my various books and stories. Will the excitement never end? If you’ve got a favorite line from one of my characters, please let me know and I’ll try to get it added to the rotation.

Finally, just to dispel the myth that we famous authors (ha!) get it right the first time through, here’s a glimpse of page one of Red Hood’s Revenge. Please remember this is the second draft, marked up in preparation for the third.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Get a Real Job

2009-06-17T15:01:31Z

It’s an interesting paradox. As a writer with four novels in print, one of the most common questions I get is “When are you going to quit your day job?” On the other hand, take a writer who has done just that and runs into financial trouble. One of the first questions they hear is “Why don’t you just get a real job?”

Writing “professionally” is a real job. It’s more work than any day job I’ve had. There’s the actual writing, the rewriting, the communication with editors, agents, and fans, the paperwork (contracts, taxes, etc.), and that’s before you decide to go to that convention or booksigning, or try to do some publicity for your work.

The real question is “Why don’t you get a safe job?” One that would provide you with stable income, health insurance, and everything else you needed to avoid this mess.

Of course, “safe” jobs aren’t all that safe, especially these days. I work for state government, one of the most stable employers around. My first unpaid layoff day is Friday. Right now, we’ve only got six of them, but next year’s budget is ugly, so we’ll see.

There’s also the assumption that anyone can find a job if they try. Having watched motivated, intelligent, educated people try for years to find full-time employment, I can’t completely agree with this one either. Moving to where the jobs are isn’t always the answer either. I watched a friend in college move 2000 miles to find the job he had been promised was now gone, leaving him stranded.

It feels like victim blaming. “It’s your own fault you’re struggling financially.” If your problems are your fault, I can feel better about my life, because I would never make the bad choices you did. Yay, I’m safe! As a bonus, I don’t have to feel guilty for snubbing you.

Some people do make mistakes and bad choices. Others make all the “right” choices, and things fall apart anyway. Much as we’d like to believe we can predict and control everything, life doesn’t work that way. It used to be that auto factory jobs were some of the best out there. Great pay, great benefits, with multiple generations working in the plants. Living in Michigan, I can tell you these safe jobs are now disappearing all over the place.

I’ve yet to meet a writer who quit their day job on a whim. I’m not talking about people who sell one story and rush off to tell their boss they quit. These are people who have spent years developing their skill and thinking things through. They ask other writers for advice, and they ask themselves questions like:

Do I have a partner with a stable income?
Do I have preexisting health conditions? Can I get coverage for myself if necessary?
How stable is my writing income, and have I made a budget? (Remember that your $10,000 advance will be divided into several payments, spread out over a year or more, reduced by 15% for the agent commission, and taxed.)
Am I disciplined enough to go full-time?
Do I have other outlets to get me out of the house so I don’t go crazy?
Is my writing important enough to be worth the risk?

It occurred to me that these are the same sort of questions a couple might ask when trying to decide whether one parent can stay home full-time with a new child. Another thing people tend to think of as not being a real job. (Having taken several weeks to play single Dad while my wife recovered from knee surgery, stay-at-home parent is harder and more draining than either of my jobs.)

I’m currently working both the “safe” job and the writing career. That’s the choice I make to provide for myself and my family, based on my situation (diabetic, young kids, writing income which is decent but not yet stable). It’s the choice that’s right for me. I look at my peers who have ditched the day job, and I envy them for what looks to me like a luxury, one I might never be able to afford. But does this gives me the right to look pass judgement on their choice when they have trouble?

The Internet makes us more aware of writers hitting bad spots. We hear about health bills wiping out this writer, a laid-off spouse making that writer the sole income source, and so on. But as we’re blaming these people for their ill fortune, what about those writers who made the same choice and won? I remember reading about Piers Anthony deciding to go full-time, talking over the risks and deciding to go for it. Whatever you think of the man’s work, he’s a highly successful writer. The risky choice appears to have been the right one in his case.

Maybe I’m the one who made the wrong choice. Maybe I should have moved to Canada and started the citizenship process so I could get my health benefits and write full time. Maybe had I done that, I’d have a much more prolific and satisfying writing career ahead of me. But if you come along and second-guess my choice, trying to tell me what I should have done, I’m likely to sic a goblin on you.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Another LOL Book

2009-06-15T14:44:58Z

Since the last one seemed to go over well (and since I spent all of my brain on the short story rewrite this weekend and had nothing left over), how about another LOL Book?

This one is from Spell Games [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by T. A. Pratt.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Friday Five

2009-06-12T16:32:25Z

1) After spending all that time working on Red Hood’s Revenge, it’s amazing how quickly the short fiction goes. One week from short story seed to finished first draft? I could get used to this! Now to go back and make the whole thing coherent and cohesive. (Right now it’s 3700 words of themeless mess, but that’s okay. It’ll get better.)

2) A lot of you have already seen this, but author Cat Valente is writing a book-in-a-book as a way to help get through some tough financial times. Cat’s a great author and human being. Please check out her announcement for details, or visit the adopting cat community which has been set up in LiveJournal.

3) I try not to obsess. I really do. But I want to know who stole one of the Amazon reviews for The Stepsister Scheme! 14 reviews last week. 13 today. Amazon’s just doing this to mess with my head, aren’t they*?

4) There is no four. Or is there?

5) Apropos of yesterday’s post on weight issues, what are some SF/F books that deal with the issue in a decent fashion, whether that means addressing it head on or simply including non-supermodel characters who are portrayed well and not just as villains (fat=evil) or comic relief? The first one I think of is the Such a Pretty Face anthology Lee Martindale did almost a decade back. What else is out there?

Have a great weekend, all!

—–
*A brand-new 14th review popped up literally minutes before I posted this. Amazon is totally messing with me! Jerks.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Screw You, Death Clock! Signed, Fat Jim

2009-06-11T14:40:34Z

So I was killing time, following a link from Michael Brotherton to the Death Clock, which supposedly predicts how much time you have left. Apparently I’m going to die in 2048. (At my current rate, this means I should be able to churn out about between 30 and 40 more books. Yay!)

Anyway, I know this is just as reliable as any other online quiz, but what stuck with me was the basis for the prediction:

1) I don’t smoke.
2) I’m 5′7″ and 161 lbs.

This, along with my gender and birth date, is the total data collected by the site*. #1 is the “healthy” answer, but according to the site, #2 means I’m overweight and heading for an earlier grave.

Screw you, Death Clock. Screw you and your “Lethal Danger of Being Fat.”

Of course, deathclock.com is owned by Life Extension, a site whose front page is plastered with ads for vitamins, supplements, and — you guessed it — weight loss products. It’s a brilliant industry. Make people feel like crap, then promise them they can be skinny and happy again, and isn’t that worth an obscene amount of money? Of course they want to warn me of the deadly dangers of being 161 pounds. How else can they convince me to rush out and send them all my cash?

I do understand that obesity can have an adverse effect on your health. Yes, I’ve heard that we have an increasing trend toward obesity in this country (though you wouldn’t know it wandering down to my daughter’s school and glancing at the kids). Heck, I’ll even admit I’m in much worse shape these days than I used to be. More exercise would be a very good thing. But overweight? Give me a freaking break.

I am so sick of my country’s attitude toward weight. We don’t give a damn whether you’re healthy. We care about whether you’re “pretty”. And if you’re not? If you’re heavy? Congratulations, you’re a 21st century leper, and the rest of us can feel free to mock you and look down on you, because it’s your own fault. Because you made yourself unhealthy. You did choose to be fat, didn’t you? So by reminding you how fat you are, by making sure you know exactly how grotesque the rest of us think you are, I’m helping you! I’m motivating you to get past your unhealthy habits and become healthy! Because if you didn’t want to be fat, you wouldn’t be.

If that was the way things worked, I should weigh about 300 pounds. Tonight I’ll eat almost an entire large pizza for dinner. Healthy? Definitely not. But I was fortunate enough to be born with my mother’s metabolism. I can hit the ice cream for a snack before bed, and I’ll still be 161 pounds at my next checkup. I know people who eat far healthier than I do, exercise daily, and they’re still heavier than me. Their bodies simply won’t lose the weight. But it’s so much easier to assume fat people are all lazy slobs gorging themselves on ice cream every night.

If it was really about health, we wouldn’t have diabetics deliberately going off insulin so their bodies would cannibalize themselves for fuel. It’s effective — I lost about 30 pounds that way when I was first diagnosed. It’s also toxic and potentially deadly. But hey, better dead than fat, right?

I’m sick of it. You don’t even want to know how young my daughter was the first time she came to us worried about her weight. And don’t get me started on the ever-popular Hollywood “Fat = Funny!” formula.

There are some seriously beautiful people out there who would be labeled heavy or even obese. I don’t mean that feel-good “Everyone’s pretty on the inside” stuff. I’m talking about Garcia from Criminal Minds being one of the hottest characters on TV. I’m talking pure, physical, completely shallow sexiness.

As a kid growing up, I couldn’t see that. I was an idiot. As I can’t go back in time and kick my own ass, I’ll settle for venting on the blog.

Be beautiful. Be healthy. The rest of it can go to hell.

—–
*I forgot that they also ask if you’re optimistic or pessemistic, and yes, I recognize that the site gives a lot of emphasis to your attitude. Which doesn’t change the fact that their numbers label me overweight and then present me with nothing at all about attitude, but a nice little treatise about how being heavy is LETHALLY DANGEROUS!!!

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Drive-by LOL Book

2009-06-10T12:31:56Z

As some of you know, I used to post regular LOL Books. Sadly, I eventually chose to stop doing them because it was taking too much time, and it was becoming work rather than fun.

However, as I was browsing Amazon yesterday, I came across a book just crying out for a LOL…

(The book is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], for anyone who might have missed the buzz.)

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Oakbottom’s Revenge

2009-06-09T11:33:38Z

Trees. Lurking in gangs, watching in silence.

Trees! Their resentment simmering after millenia of abuse, remembering every log cabin, every paper factory, every sawmill, and every indignity left by your dog.

Trees … fanning the coals of their hatred. Luring us into complacence, until they STRIKE! Suddenly and without warning. Sacrificing themselves in true kamikaze spirit.

It’s my own fault. As a paperback writer, I should have realized I had a special place on their enemies list. How many of their kind have I killed, building a career on their pulped corpses?

But even as I was writing about Oakbottom, the man-tossing oak in Goblin War with heartwood of stone, never could I have imagined how truly evil these creatures could be in their pursuit of splintery vengeance, striking not at me, but at my children’s playsets.

I mean, come on! That’s just cruel!

Thankfully, nobody was hurt. The playsets are history, but damage to the house itself was minimal. The kids were pretty shaken up, though. Not looking forward to working with the insurance company, tree removal, fence repair, and the rest of it. Still, it’s only stuff. All in all, it could be so much worse.

Pictures behind the cut.

Tree: 1, Fence: 0

The playset was a Christmas gift to the kids from their grandparents.

My daughter has decided she doesn’t like trees. I can’t argue with her.

The older swingset took a hit as well. Not as bad, but I’m afraid it’s still fatal.

The top struck the gutter, but the rest of the tree pretty much broke apart there. House: 1, Tree: 0. That’s what happens when you attack an opponent with too high a Challenge Rating.

I’m starting to think Durkon might have a point…

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Monday Bullets

2009-06-08T13:15:04Z

I hadn’t realized the Find Smudge contest was going to be quite so frustrating for folks. I apologize for that. I think I miscalculated the Challenge Rating on ol’ Smudge. We did have four people who managed to find him, and the random number generator has picked a winner. Congratulations, Sean! I’ll e-mail you about your book.
For everyone else who wants the answer, go to your web browser and type in the following URL: www.jimchines.com/[Your Name], replacing [Your Name] with — well, you get the idea.
As noted on my Facebook page, the bright side of your dog eating all the crayons is that it’s much easier to find and scoop what she leaves in the lawn. (This discovery brought to you by our dork dog Jasmine.)
As of Saturday evening, Red Hood’s Revenge 2.0 is finished, at 74,000 words and change. Woo hoo! Time to read the manuscript, write a short story I promised to do, memorize a big ol’ tome about desert life, and then start in on Red Hood 3.0.
Finally, what better way to celebrate progress on book three than by giving you all a sneak peek at book two, which comes out in just under four months. The first 5000 words or so of The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] are now posted at: http://www.jimchines.com/Files/MM.pdf

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Workshop Wisdom

2009-06-07T01:01:03Z

Okay, “wisdom” might be an overstatement. But at Penguicon this year, it occurred to me that I’ve been doing writing workshops for a long time. As a participant, I’ve done creative writing class discussions, the Writers of the Future workshop in ‘99, Critters, and then several years with a local group until they dissolved. Eventually, I started cofacilitating workshops, helping to run them at ConFusion, ConClave, and now Penguicon, among others.

That’s a lot of fiction feedback, and after a while, you start to notice patterns. I figured it might be helpful to list some of the more common feedback I’ve given and received over the years. Like all “rules,” some of these can be bent. Others can be broken. Our job is to learn them well enough to know when and how.

Begin at the beginning. I don’t know how many times I’ve read a story, and it takes several pages or chapters before things start moving. As a writer, my first drafts often include a lot of brainstorming at the beginning. I’m laying down backstory, trying to figure everything out, but the story doesn’t get moving until later. As a general rule, your story doesn’t start with your hero getting up, making breakfast, and brushing his teeth. It starts with the werejaguar that carjacks him on the way to work.

Your protagonist must protag. Your protagonist wants something. The story is about how she tries to accomplish that goal, struggling and eventually failing or succeeding. If your protagonist sits around, passively describing what’s happening while never taking part in the action, you might want to consider either making her an active participant in her own story or else switching to another protagonist.

Who are you? Why am I against this wall? Why won’t my arms move? Where’s Buttercup? It’s one thing to toss your readers into a scene, but you also need to orient them. Where are we, and why should readers care? I’ve learned that at the start of any scene, chapter, or story, I need to answer most or all of the following questions: Who is the POV character? Who else is here? Where are we? How much time has passed since the last scene? What’s going on?

Meet the twins, Bweryang and Bob. Names are important. Make sure yours are culturally consistent. Unless you’re deliberately going for humor, your ogres named Grok, Flargh, and Kandi are going to throw me right out of the story. Also make sure your names aren’t going to resonate with other culturally popular names. Your story about OB/GYN medical droids where the head ‘bot is named O.B.1? Yeah, that’s not gonna work.

The mysterious man and his mysterious quest. As authors, we want to build suspense. What better way than by keeping secrets from the reader? Hide everyone’s horrible pasts, their true motivations, even their names! You’d be amazed how many workshop stories don’t give the character’s name until well into the tale. The problem is, it’s hard to care about someone we know nothing about (not to mention the convolutions the writer had to go through to keep things hidden). I still find myself hiding too much in my early drafts. But the more I share, the more the reader can empathize and get invested in the story.

I think I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. A lot of early drafts meander, until the reader starts to wonder if the author knows where the story’s going. One character is on a quest to rescue his cat, but then it turns into a story about the veterinarian, and suddenly we’re preaching about animal rights, and in the end the vet’s kid wrecks the truck. Lots of action, but totally disconnected. For me, what’s helped is to boil each book, story, chapter, or scene into a single sentence to help me focus.

A certain point of view? I’d say at least half the workshop stories I read have point of view trouble. Sometimes it’s minor. We’re in third person limited PoV, staying strictly within the mind of our protagonist, and then there’s a paragraph that tells us what some random character is thinking. Other times it’s messier, jumping from one person’s head to another with no rhyme or reason, and no indication of when or why we’ve switched perspectives.

Prologues. Prologues are not a requirement of fantasy novels. The fantasy police will not break down your door and taser you if you fail to include one. If you do decide to use a prologue, know why. What does the prologue accomplish that you couldn’t do with a regular old chapter? I’d say less than 20% of the prologues I read in workshops really help the stories. Is this the most effective way to give your readers whatever info you want them to have? If you want to give the full history of your world, great. But you might be better off waiting until it’s relevant to the story rather than opening with 8 pages of infodumping. (See also Begin at the beginning.)

That’s what I was able to come up with off the top of my head. I hope it’s helpful. I’m sure there are more, and I’m happy to hear other tidbits from folks.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Contact Form Fixed

2009-06-06T01:12:45Z

Booya! The contact form is fixed!!!

I am a sexy, shoeless god of PHP!

Ahem. Don’t mind me. I’m just feeling way too smug about this right now. (The fix required a manual tweak of a php script in the plugin. Since I don’t know PHP and this is, as far as I can tell, a completely undocumented issue, I think I’ve earned some smug points.)

So, way too many hours fighting with this plus more hours getting through another chapter of the book means it’s time for ice cream!

Real post coming soon, I promise.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Busted Contact Form

2009-06-05T13:11:27Z

So apparently the contact form on my site isn’t working. I’ve done some preliminary troubleshooting (with several different plugins), and I’m guessing either my own PHP broke it or else it was the permalink change. If you’ve used that form lately, I didn’t receive your message.

Unfortunately, this includes any contest entries from yesterday. I’ve had one correct entry so far (that I know of). If you found Smudge, please e-mail me at jchines42 -at- hotmail.com.

My apologies, folks.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Free Book & New Books

2009-06-04T13:14:38Z

For a while, I’ve been using the gift certificates from Amazon to fund my book giveaways. Readers click on my Amazon links to buy things, which leads to gift certs for me, which I turn around and use to have Amazon send out free books. Sounds great, right?

Only I had a minor case of dumb. Shipping one book from Amazon runs $3-4 in shipping, so every winning copy of The Stepsister Scheme eats about $11 from one of those gift certificates.

It suddenly occurred to me that I could use Amazon’s 4-for-3 deal, which also qualifies the order for free shipping. Suddenly each book is $6. I order the books to me, and even with paying shipping myself to send them to the winners, it’s still cheaper than buying them individually through Amazon.

So from here on out, I’ll be ordering those in batches and shipping prizes myself.

What better way to celebrate my triumph over the dumb than by giving away another book! When I was still setting things up in Wordpress and playing around with layout, some of you said I should find a way to keep Smudge on my web site. As of this week, I’ve done just that. All you have to do is find him.* It’ll be just like Where’s Waldo if Waldo was a spider and would set you on fire.

E-mail me at jchines42 -at- hotmail.com ~~or by using the Contact form on my site. ETA: I apologize -- it looks like the Contact form on my site isn't working.~~ ETA2: Contact form is back! Woo hoo! Please make sure you include the web address where you found Smudge.** I’ll pick a winner at random some time next week and send her or him an autographed copy of The Stepsister Scheme [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy]. Have fun, and remember, Smudge is pretty good at hiding.

To keep this from being all about me, here are some of the books my friends have released lately. ‘Cause I have awesomely skilled friends :-) And I’m sure I’m forgetting some, so I apologize in advance for that.

—–
*You’re looking for Smudge as he appears in this post, so the images on various goblin covers don’t count.
**No, this blog post doesn’t count either, smartass.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Canon Fodder

2009-06-03T13:31:40Z

Terribly Twisted Tales [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] came out last month. This is an anthology of twisted fairy tales, so I’m sure you’re all shocked to learn I contributed a story. But for some reason, I’ve been nervous about this one. I wrote “The Red Path,” which gave me a chance to explore the origin story for Red Riding Hood from my princess books, but I wasn’t sure it really worked. So I was happy to find a review listing it among the best stories in the anthology. (Kelly Swails also gets a shoutout.)

I’m left with another question, however. I wrote “The Red Path” a year or so back, before even starting Red Hood’s Revenge. Now that I’m writing the book, I find myself adjusting details of Roudette’s (Red Riding Hood’s) backstory, particularly when it comes to the hunter’s role.

So here’s the question. Having published this story and written in the author’s note that this character will appear in Red Hood’s Revenge, how bound am I to keep the details of that story? Given sales numbers on most anthologies, far fewer people are going to read the short story than will see the novel. Am I allowed to alter published backstory if it improves the book? Or am I pulling a major Lucas here, violating my own canonical history? (Red Riding Hood shot first!)

I could use the unreliable narrator approach. Roudette was a child at the time of that whole wolf/hunter incident, after all. She probably missed a lot that was going on. But even then, I find myself adding wordage to the book to explain why her original account was wrong … wordage that doesn’t need to be there for anyone who hasn’t read the short story, and thus will be dead weight for most of the novel’s readers, and should probably be taken out.

I don’t know. I think my obligation is first and foremost to make Red Hood’s Revenge the best book I can, and if that means compromising the short story, well that sucks beanstalks but I still need to do it.

What do you think? How would you feel knowing the hunter in “The Red Path” isn’t the same as he is when we get Roudette’s “real” backstory in the book? What would you do as a writer, and what do you prefer as a reader and fan?

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

The Sleeping God, by Violette Malan

2009-06-02T12:29:09Z

The Sleeping God [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Violette Malan is a nifty book.

As heroic fantasy goes, this book has a fair amount going for it. Well-built world and mythology that fits together rather well, badass mercenary protagonists who are more than just caricatures, a sprinkling of secrets and intrigue, and of course, a sleeping god. Our heroes are mercenary brothers* Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane, who take a job escorting a young girl back to her noble house but soon find themselves targeted by an ancient menace.

This is not the nifty I want to talk about.

What I loved about this book is the portrayal of Dhulyn and Parno’s relationship. This is a partnership in every sense of the word, built around a core of love and trust. As mercenary brothers, the two of them are bound to one another in a relationship as sacred as marriage.

Most fiction tends to show us the beginning of relationships, the eagerness and the passion and the fumbling and clumsiness as people learn more about one another. All too often, this leads to fairly predictable tension and conflict, misunderstandings and mistrust. The Sleeping God brings us a more mature relationship, and one of the healthiest relationships I’ve encountered in fiction. They talk to each other. They trust one another. They’ve got each other’s backs. They’re romantically involved, but the romance isn’t a neverending font of angst and drama.

I asked Malan about Dhulyn and Parno, and she responded:

“So often relationships, especially in fiction though not limited to that, seem to be based on the people not telling each other things. This is so often the basis of the relationship in romance novels and soap operas, for example (and consequently on the part of living people who think that’s how they’re supposed to act). My idea was to have two people who simply told each other what was on their minds instead of making a hullaballo about hiding things from each other. Of course, it did mean that the tension and the conflict had to come from elsewhere, but I think the story was the better for it.”

Don’t misunderstand. Malan doesn’t spend the whole book preaching about healthy relationships. What she does is show us the advantage of Dhulyn and Parno’s partnership. Individually, each of these fighters is pretty bad-ass. But put them together and they’ll whoop anything you care to throw at them.

I also liked that the characters go beyond being “just” fighters. Dhulyn is also a scholar, hunting for new books and theorizing about the evolution of children’s songs. Parno is … well, that would be telling. Suffice it to say, he’s also more than he first appears.

It took me a chapter or two to really get into the book, and the plot itself may be familiar to long-time fantasy fans. Mercenaries and ancient gods, dark priesthoods and scheming rulers … there’s almost an old-school fantasy feel to the book. But then, I enjoy old-school fantasy ;-) I’ll definitely be grabbing a copy of book two, The Soldier King [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].

For those of you who’ve read Malan’s work, I’d love to hear your thoughts. To the rest, what do you think about relationships in fiction? What are you tired of, and what would you like to see more of?

—–
*Brothers is used as a gender-neutral term. Dhulyn is female, while Parno is male.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Why Books as Children is Just Plain Creepy

2009-06-01T12:24:29Z

From a random author interview:

“My books are my children. I love them all, and could never pick a favorite.”

Same author, different interview:

“Oh yes, I trunked several of my children back when I was starting out.”

The author at a booksigning:

“Psst. Hey, you. Want to buy one of my kids? Take two, the older one and the newborn!”

The bookstore staff three months later:

“Time to clear some shelf space for the new arrivals. Get out there and start stripping children.”

The library, where anyone can– On second thought, I should probably stop. I think we all get the idea.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Wordpress 101

2009-05-29T15:40:38Z

I’ve gotten a few questions about Wordpress lately, so thought I’d share the bits and pieces I’ve learned as a relative newbie. For those of you who aren’t into web stuff, feel free to skip this one.

I knew almost nothing about Wordpress going into this, but there were a few things I wanted to accomplish:

Maintain all of the content from my old site
Host my blog on my domain and mirror it to my other sites
Create a theme that could be easily tweaked or updated without a lot of work

At this point, I’ve accomplished most of those things. The initial setup took several weeks. One of the hardest things was finding and customizing the theme, which sets the look and layout of the whole site. I found the Atahualpa theme, which is highly customizable. This means more work, but it also meant I could make it look the way I wanted. Atahualpa supports a fluid layout (meaning it should work on small and large screens), and gave me an overwhelming number of options. I even got to create a little Jig icon that should show up in your favorites menu if you add my site to your favorites

After that, it was all about the plugins and widgets. These are basically modules that you upload to add various functionality. Some work better than others, and most of them are provided “as is”. Here are the ones I’m using so far:

JournalPress - allows me to mirror the blog to LiveJournal and Dreamwidth.
Google Analytics - lets me track site stats through Google. (So far, I seem to be my #1 visitor! Go me!)
Akismet - spam buster! It’s blocked five spam comments already.
Easy Contact - creates the Contact page on my site.
Global Translator - inserts those nifty little flags on the right that allow you to translate the site into various languages.
Sociable - adds a button at the end of my posts allowing folks to share them on Facebook, Digg, E-mail, etc. (These only appear on the jimchines.com posts, and don’t mirror over to LJ or DW.)
Subscribe Me - creates the button on the right to let you subscribe to the blog.
Subscribe to Comments - exactly what it sounds like, letting folks subscribe to the comments on a particular post.
Exec-PHP - this was the scariest one I added, which allows me to execute PHP code within the body of a page. I needed this in order to add the “Latest blog post” excerpt to the home page.
MySpace Crossposter - in theory, this crossposts my blog to MySpace. In reality, the dang thing crashed my blog posts and doesn’t work.

The “Latest Novel”, “Find Jim Online”, and “Free Fiction” bits on the left sidebar are all done with the built-in Text widget in Wordpress, which lets you code in whatever text or HTML you’d like. The “Recent Posts” and “Archive” on the right are also built-in widgets, as is the search option.

Creating “pretty” permalinks required an e-mail to tech support, since the modifications required were beyond what I could do. (This changed my web links from things like http://www.jimchines.com/?page_id=2 to http://www.jimchines.com/about/ ).

Everything else was details. I created the banner in Photoshop, working on something that would still look good even with the ends chopped off on smaller monitors. I manually edited the CSS code to make the horizontal lines (see the Bibliography page) a little smaller and color coordinated with the rest of the site.

Overall I’m fairly pleased. I miss having all of the cover art on my bibliography (see the old Bibliography), but I don’t see a way to make that work. Image layout gets a little ugly when mirrored to LJ, so I’ve had to edit a few LJ posts to make them look better. I haven’t decided what to do about the “What I’m reading” and word count meter I used to append into LJ, since that doesn’t work as well now.

So there you have it. Not as flashy as Jay Lake’s professionally designed site (I love what Jeremiah Tolbert put together there), but as a total amateur, I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve managed to put together.

I’m no expert, but I am most certainly a geek, so I enjoy this stuff … except when I change a setting and crash the whole site, of course.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.