Gadfly in the Ointment

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A great new way to experience Sarahdipity
I found a great new way to kill time and amuse myself. (Much better than killing myself and amusing time.) You can try this, too. First, search blogs for an anti-Palin article. Next, read the comments. I'm not sure whether it is funny or scary, but the people who leap to her defense (and who must have been trolling the web in search of negative articles) seem to write in the same non-sequitur-filled style as Ms. Palin speaks, stringing out sentences that start off in one direction and then often finish in a manner that has no logical link to the first clause or two.

Rory, Rory, Hallelujah -- an example of media consumption
A month or so ago, my wife and I began devouring The Gilmore Girls. We got season 1 (six disks) from Netflix. We were hooked. I had all the timing worked out to start season 2. But then there was a glitch. Disk 1 of season 2 was in high demand. We didn't get it. Netflix has a 3-day cycle. If I mail a disk on Monday, they get it on Tuesday, and I get my next disk on Wednesday. I have a three-at-a-time subscription, so it's usually possible to keep the media flowing with long delays. But there we were, hooked on the show, and in desperate need to start season 2. What to do? First, I checked to see if the episodes were available online either free or for purchase. I didn't mind paying a reasonable fee for each episode. The only links I found for streaming looked pretty sketchy. I had a feeling that if I went there, I'd end up with a virus or a stolen identity. Then, I checked my local library. They had season 2 on the shelves. We reserved it and drove right there. At that point, we found out our friend's daughter had season 3. So we borrowed it from her. By this point, I realzie I have to make sure my supply doesn't get cut. But there are more glitches looming. For some reason Netflix, which carries almost everything I'd ever want, doesn't have season 4. It's checked out at the library. Our friend's daughter doesn't have it. So I decide to buy that season. I got it new from an online seller, and will give it to our friend's daughter after we're finished with it. Consider the various ways I've gotten episodes: Renting (sort of what Netflix is), borrowing from an institution, borrowing from another person, and buying. I think there's a connection here with the whole issue of books, ebooks, and book prices. (One important aspect is that I was willing to pay money to avoid waiting. I could eventually have gotten it from the library.) I'd write more about this, but I have episodes of The Gilmore Girls to watch.

Side note -- let's not waste brain cells trying to come up with a retronym for books. Books are just books. (Not dead-tree books, paper books, traditional books, etc.) Ebooks are ebooks.

Beyond procrastination
I find myself in a state of nocrastination. eom

The Electric Kool Aid Amazon Test
Honestly, I almost don't care about the rest of this entry. I'm so happy with the title, I could stop here and feel smug all day. But I'll carry on, because I have things on my mind. One of the most interesting aspects of the Macmillan-Amazon conflict is the response in the comments section of blogs. A lot of people seem to have drunk the Kool Aid offered by Amazon, and now think the ebook universe is going to leap from "all ebooks were $9.99" to "all ebooks will be $14.99." I won't go into detail here since Andrew Wheeler did a great job discussing this and other myths of the kerfuffle. But I will mention the two things that leap out.

First, I'm amazed at how many ebook fans suck at spelling. (Of course, just by stating this, I'm dooming myself to at least two spelling errors and one grammar error in this post. Heck, lets get it over wiff.) While I'm more amused than amazed by the writing skills of people who post rants beneath political blogs, I'd like to think that book folks would know "lose" from "loose" and "your" from "you're." Second, I'm dismayed at seeing so many people suggest that Macmillan authors should find different publishers. I like my publisher. I'm not a Macmillan author. I'm a Tor author. (Macmillan owns Tor, but Tor has its own identity.) I have some books with other houses, but most of my books are with Tor, and I hope to be with them until the day I die at my desk (and long after). I've been with them for fifteen years. They build authors. They support the backlist. They take me to conferences. They took me to my first conference way back when all I had was a crappy little paperback story collection. Thanks to them -- to their belief in me and their passion for making things work -- I have several million copies of my books out there. I'd wager that authors at other Macmillan houses could tell similar stories. Years ago, when I first got an offer from Tor, I called Warren Murphy to see how he liked them. He said, "Great people from top to bottom." He was right. I've had the honor of chatting with Tor founder and publishing legend Tom Doherty in his office. My Starscape publisher and editor have driven out to PA from NY for a visit. I know the person who answers the phone. I know my publicist. I've met many of the sales reps. I love Tor, and nothing that Amazon does will change that.

Anyone played Uncharted 2?
I have a question about Uncharted 2 for PS3. Warning -- there's a small Uncharted, Drake's Fortune spoiler in this. Anyhow, I decided to get some late-night gaming in last evening. So there I was, happily shooting bad guys and jumping around ancient ruins when, at 3:00 AM, in a dark room, I found that Uncharted had made the dizzying leap from action-adventure game to survival horror. Instead of human adversaries, I was fending off really fast neck-chomping beasties while walking through dark corridors with a shaky flashlight. I got through it, but I didn't completely enjoy the experience. So, here comes the obvious question: Are there survivial-horror segments in Uncharted 2?

Jockeying for position
In recognition of his cooperation with authorities, the government has agreed to grant a request by underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for a new "American style" name. He was given a variety of helpful suggestions, and chose the one that appealed to him the most. As of today, he will be legally known as Dick Hertz.

Dear Steve Jobs
Okay -- you're a business genius, so you don't need suggestions from me. (I had lunch with Ted Nelson yesterday, and he confirmed the genius part.) But I have a suggestion. Amazon loses about $5 every time someone buys a $9 ebook for the Swindle. (Oops, I mean Kindle.) Apple has skidillions of dollars. So, if Apple bought a ton of ebooks from Amazon, that would sort of hurt Amazon's bottom line. Obviously, not the best use of Apple's money, but you can't blame a guy for daydreaming. And you have to admit, it would be sort of fun.

The Shadow knows
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning, meaning we are doomed to suffer through 52 more week of annoying requests from PETA that Phil be replaced with a robot.

Unlink to the past
I don't have many commercial links on my web site. At the bottom of my book page, I had links for Indie Bound (which still strikes me as a bit too kinky and frisky a name), Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Powells. I removed the Amazon link this weekend. Amazon won't notice. They don't get much traffic from my site. I'm also not going to buy anything from Amazon right now. Again, they won't notice. But that doesn't matter. I'm not doing it to hurt them. I'm doing it to make myself feel better. Basically, I'm doing this for two reasons. First, I'm annoyed that they took my books off their site. (Yeah, I know, you can still get them through a third party by way of the Amazon site, but what they did still sucks.) I didn't fly to Seattle and play hardball with them. My readers don't own Kindles. They're kids. None of the authors involved in this deserved what happened.

As for the second reason -- I've been a lazy consumer. I've looked to the internet for the easiest and cheapest source for products. But, as Amazon's actions this weekend demonstrate, huge deep-discounters end up hurting anyone who produces any sort of unique or creative product (or humdrum widgets, for that matter). So, shame on me, I've been saving a couple dollars -- dollars I can afford to spend -- by being too cheap and lazy to hop in the car and drive to my local book store, my local electronics store, or any of the other places in my area that I should be patronizing. I'm realistic enough to know that I'll be fairly lonely in this decision. Sure, a couple of you will stop buying from Amazon. But convenience and price will win out. My decision won't make a difference to anyone except me. But that's good enough.

Beware the Tor nado
Okay -- almost everyone knows that Amazon played bully with Macmillan by stopping the direct sale of all Macmillan books in response to an attempt by Macmillan to renegotiate ebook prices. (If you don't kow this, you're not wasting nearly enough time on the Internet during the weekend.) Blogs are awash with various aspects of this. A many-headed debate is frothing across the Internet. But I believe one potential backlash against this muscle flexing hasn't been part of the discussion.

Consider this. Amazon has pissed off Macmillan's authors by removing their books (both paper and ebook) from sale. Among Macmillan's many houses is Tor (my publisher). Tor has a strong stable of science fiction witers. Among those science fiction writers, you'll find some of the smartest, most tech-savy people on the planet. So, Amazon might be the 500-pound gorilla. But there's probably a 100-pound geek out there right now building a 600-pound taser. Really, you shouldn't use the Internet to mess with science fiction writers. Someone's going to bite back. I don't have a clue who, or when, or how, but it's going to be interesting.

Tor's talent pool also includes people who have a huge Internet readership. John Scazli and Corey Doctorow come to mind. These are not the sort of people you want to antagonize. They don't just have readers -- they have fans, they have influence, and they have great powers of imagination.

I doubt Amazon will keep the Macmillan titles pulled for long. I also doubt those of us who've felt the collateral damage will be quick to forgive and forget.

Holden steady
According to a spokesperson for the late author's estate, the death of J. D. Salinger will have no effect on his interview schedule.

Soft(ware) palate
Inspired by programs such as Wii Fit, I've decided to create some dieting software that uses the WiiMote in a unique manner. I'm calling my program WiiGurgitate. It comes with a decorative drop cloth.

The pirate in the mirror
We're all law breakers. Have you ever driven above the speed limit? Have you ever jay walked? Have you ever littered? Unless you are a saint, you've knowingly broken the law many times. (If you are a saint, I don't want to hang out with you. Please go away.) Of course, you only break the laws that don't matter, or are stupid, or don't hurt anyone. Me, too. I ain't no saint. And, arrrgg, me hearties, we're all pirates. Have you ever given a friend a copy of a song or a movie? Have you ever posted a photo or piece of art on the web without permission? It's all a matter of degree, and a matter of what we can justify to ourselves or avoid thinking about. The thing is, as much as non-commercial piracy is bad for anyone who makes a living from royalties, it doesn't bother me all that much, with one exception, which I'll get to in a minute. (Commercial piracy is another matter. In that case, we need to break some knuckles. Yes, China, I'm talking to you.) I've been pirated for years. I can go online and find copies of just about every video game I've ever created, along with emulators that allow you to run the games on a PC. I can find some of my humor pieces posted on web sites, sometimes without credit, and, more amusingly, sometimes complete with my copyright notice. It's part of the equation. And it's part of human nature. If a thousand people steal my book, I haven't lost a thousand sales. I've lost something, but I just write it off as spillage. It's good to try to get people to realize that electronic theft is still theft, and any effort to educate folks about this is a worthy cause, but I consider piracy a fact of life. Sometimes, its just too easy to take something. "I'll pay later." "I'm just borrowing it." The excuses are endless. It's nice that there's a stamp-out-piracy week. But I suspect it will have as much impact as abstinence-only education.

So, mostly, I don't get angry about piracy. But we all have our sore points. Years ago, during a school visit near Pittsburgh, a teacher invited me to his classroom. The kids were reading Hidden Talents out loud, with each speaking part assigned to a different student. The teacher was thrilled to have me sit in. When I got to the classroom, he handed me a photocopy of the current chapter. Each student also had a photocopy. I glanced at the librarian who'd brought me to the school. We had a brief conversation through through facial expressions. She knew it was wrong. We talked about it afterward. She'd tried to explain the law to the teacher, but he'd ignored it. I've encountered photocopies many times. It's dismaying to walk into a classroom and be handed a copy of my work. I suspect my books are especially vulnerable to this since I've written so many short stories. You'll often hear photocopying excused as fair use. But that is a bogus excuse. Most people who claim this have never read the fair-use laws. (That's a topic for another post.) Fair use doesn't mean fair game.

Enough. I need to go finish my book. Someone out there wants to copy it, and I'd hate to keep him waiting.

'Twasn't pirates sunk our ship, 'twas crap
I think this week is some sort of anti-piracy thing. Or maybe it was last week. Today, a bit about piracy in the game industry.

Picture this. 1982. I'm at my new job designing video games for the Atari 2600. My boss starts talking about how piracy is killing the business. On his desk is a stack of video tapes, hand-labeled with movie titles. I point to them "Isn't that piracy?" He shakes his head. "That's different." The game industry took a nasty dive a year or so later. But it wasn't piracy that killed it. It was crap. Dozens of small companies got into the business of making Atari games, and they flooded the market with junk. (Some of the big companies pumped out crap, too. Hundreds of thousands of copies of Atari's ET game are slowly decomposing in a landfill.) Consumers got tired of paying money for badly designed games that weren't any fun. The appearance of the Nintendo Entertainment System helped revive the industry. Nintendo and Sega required all games for their systems to be approved by them. Ironically, despite this system, the current state of Wii software (from vendors other than Nintendo) makes the crapfest of the 1980s look like a Renaissance in comparison. Perhaps the strategy is to produce games that are so bad nobody wants to copy them.

Tomorrow -- some of the worst pirates. You might be surprised.

I dropped the ball
Near the beginning of this year's football season, I decided I needed to find a team to root for. The Saints were definitely contenders. Had I actually followed through on my whim to be a true fan this year, I would have had an amazing season on the couch. But I dropped the ball. I didn't even watch any games until yesterday. But that one was a heart stopper. I definitely have a side to root for at the Super Bowl. I wish I'd invested more effort into following the Saints through the season.

Fairy Rock Mothers
Somebody needs to tell Dwayne Johnson that the role of tooth fairy has already been claimed by Eric Cartman.

Keeping abreast of my problems
While I was at the local upscale supermarket, my wandering eyes fell upon a box of sliced duck breast. Beneath the small cut-out window which displayed the meat, I saw the words, "Contains up to 15% solutions." That was great. If I bought the box, I'd only need to solve 85% of my problems from now on.

In which I briefly care about others
Lots of nice news out there. Carrie Jones made both the NY Times Hardcover (Captivate) and Paperback (Need) kids' best-seller lists. See what happens when you stop writing about duct tape? David McSomething Gill made the final BBYA cut for Soul Enchilada. I was especially happy for that because it sucks to get nominated for something and not make the final cut, and I would have hated to see that happen to him since he crafted a dandy novel and he's a super great guy. So, yay for him. Okay, enough about other people.

Luke, I am your coffee
I am atoning for a terrible sin. Somehow, I managed to reach 2010 without ever seeing a single episode of The Gilmore Girls. That is now being rectified. Penance is sweet. So is Netflix. And so is season one, so far.

Add vice, stir, bring to a boil
I asked for topics, and got the following:

"Dear David, I am a writer but still unublished. I have written a few novels as well as non-fiction outlines/chapters. I think I'm much better at plots and reseach than characters and scene setting. Should I bother trying to slug out the novels? Or just concentrate on the nonfiction for kids?"

The first thing that comes to mind is that I'm really bad at giving advice. I usually have no idea what I'm talking about. This, however, has never stopped me from offering an opinion, so here goes...

Conventional wisdom holds that nonfiction is easier to sell than fiction. If nothing else, it's easier to market to a publisher. And you might be able to sell the book based on the outline and chapters. (Bear in mind I've never sold any book-length nonfiction, so I'm just making this up as I go along. Coincidentally, that would also be my approach to writing nonfiction, which might explain why I've never sold any.)

Conventional touchy-feeliness holds you should write what you love. What do you like to read? If you prefer novels, write novels.

Experience tells me that the best way to write a wonderful novel is to write a bunch of practice novels. So the fact that you've already written a few novels is encouraging. This is better than writing one novel and then turning all attention to selling it so you too can have your book turned into a movie starring a guy with really nice eyebrows. (Disclaimer -- some writers knock it out of the park with their first effort.) Keep writing. I wrote five novels in the late 1970s. They weren't great, but they were good practice. A couple of them were probably publishable. I might have gotten lucky.

Okay, that's enough bad advice for one post. Let me end with this: There is no retirement age for writers. Hang in there. And try to find a better source for advice. I'll just get you in trouble.