Come Check Out My New Place

This is my new den.

The Nominee In the Soiled Drawers Category . . .

. . . . of the Amazon.com People Unclear on the Concept Award.

I'm fairly certain this is the first time I've come across a review of one of my books, positive or otherwise, that includes the phrase "pooped my pants."

Happy Matt-ers

Delivered my latest tie-in the other day (only three weeks late, which is a considerable achievement for me, these days.  I am taking a couple days off to do the sort of household tasks that fall to the wayside during bouts of Deadline Fever.

During this temporary tie-in hiatus, I am:

Working on the Barra & Co. books, in hopes that we might be able to bring them out as e-books and PoD type things later this year (finally!).

Organizing the notes & outline of His Father's Fist.

Getting my urban thriller past the outline stage, and the same for my historical(s).

Looking for a place where I can hit people and vice versa without any hard feelings or legal entanglements.

Looking into Pose/barefoot running, as it's supposed to take the stress off your knees, because mine don't have a hell of a lot of cartilage left.

That's all.

Have a nice day.

Happy 2010

That.

Holidazed

Happy Year-End Holiday of your choosing.

My primary Christmas present from the Fabulous Robyn is the Oxford English Dictionary -- this is the Shorter version, two volumes containing only 600,000 and change words (a vocabulary *cough* marginally larger *cough* than my own), which is also updated quarterly on-line, adding an average of 2000 words per update. So I could look up the derivation of, for example, flummadiddle.

And its variant spellings, including flummerdiddle and fummadiddle. And don't get me started on fustilarian fustilugs, not to mention funambulists.

Among the various gifts bestowed upon the Fabulous Robyn in return, her favorite (and mine!) is a black leather-look complete Batgirl costume, with cape, gauntlets, over-the-knee boot tops, and utility belt. To paraphrase Eartha Kitt: Me-friggin'-YOW.

Semi-intellectual rumination.

An anchor on CNN this morning was ruminating, in their typically middle-brow fashion, on the fact that December is the "final month of the decade," completely ignoring that the actual final month of the decade is next December (if one is speaking of the First Decade of the 21st Century, as opposed to the Decade of Double-Aughts), but who's counting. Other than me. As Fox Mulder once trenchantly observed, "Nobody likes a math geek, Scully."

It did, however, occasion a comparison with December of 2000. Does anyone remember the burning political question (other than whether the US Supreme Court should have stolen a presidential election) of the day?

It was whether we should use the Federal budget surplus to fully fund Medicare and Social Security, or use it to pay down the national debt.

Option three was apparently (as was actually accomplished, of course) to spray rich people with honey and let them run naked through the US Treasury.

I have just received an email from my agent, who informs me that Robert Holdstock has died.

I never met the man, but I have read his books. There are all too many people writing SFF these days who could -- and occasionally do --  leave us with barely a ripple to mark their passing; Robert Holdstock leaves us with a powerful body of work, and a RH-shaped hole in the genre.

Here's hoping to see you in the Wood, Mr. Holdstock.

Great Thought for the Day:

“No artist believes in escapism. And we secretly believe that no audience does. We have proved, at any rate, that they will pay to see the truth, for no other reason than her nakedness.”

--Emeric Pressburger  

Fifteen years ago this month, my agent sold Iron Dawn to Roc Books, an imprint of Penguin/Putnam.

Happy birthday to my career.

Pretty soon it'll be old enough to vote.

Hey.

SmartPop, the pop culture nonfic imprint of my friends at BenBella Books, has started posting selected essays online, one of which is mine, on BS:G:

The Gods Suck

It's worth nothing that I wrote that somewhere around the end of Season Three, so I literally had no clue how many sharks that show was going to jump before it finally wrapped.

Frankly, I think if they stuck with what I thought they were gonna do, it would have worked out better for everyone concerned. But that's pretty much how I feel about everything. Nobody should be allowed to do TV SF unless they check with me first.

Well, okay, not the folks at Stargate: Universe, which has been damn good so far. But everybody else. Except for Warehouse 13, which is fantasy anyway. And Supernatural . . . still fantasy . . . and Reaper . . .

All right, fine. No one has to check with me. Though Whedon should probably have run Dollhouse past me first.  Nobody bats a thousand, y'know?

By the way, the essay's is only gonna be up for a day or two, so if you miss it, you'll have to pay for the damned thing.

Here's a question:

What is it with people who feel they have to sign in to Amazon.com just to trash my stuff?

One guy posted a one-star review after reading LS&TSOM -- borrowed from a library.

I mean, seriously: People hate my books so much they feel compelled to register with Amazon just to piss on them. The very first review they've ever posted in their lives . . . just to talk about what a shitty author I am? Really?

Seriously: what the fuck? Did I run over their dog?



In view of the first couple of comments, I think it's worthwhile to post the following clarification:

I'm really not complaining about the shots at my own books so much as I am just wondering about the phenomenon. The whole concept doesn't make sense to me.

I'm hip to critics, and reviewers, and people who just want their opinions heard. I guess what I really don't understand is why somebody would even READ a book that they hate so much . . . unless they're getting paid for it, I guess.

One guy (I don't remember for which book) posted a lengthy review in which he was sorry Amazon wouldn't let him give the book zero stars.

I mean, holy shit . . . and the really freaky thing is, he apparently read the whole book.

I guess I'm just unclear on the concept. I get the whole contrarian thing, where you feel compelled to stand out from what you think is mainstream. But this just doesn't make sense to me.

It's like sticking your hand in a fire so that you can complain about how much it hurts.

This is AWESOME.

Really.

Those of you who can't get the NYTimes, it's an article about a couple of physicists who have hypothesized that the Higgs boson (one of the last not-yet-discovered elemental particles in the Standard Model) might be so unlikely -- or so dangerous, or whatever (I believe the phrase was "abhorred by reality") that any projects to discover it will be sabotaged by their own success.

Literally. The later success of the Higgs creates a backward ripple in time to prevent itself from happening. Hence the cancellation of the SSC in the US, and the famous "random breakdown" last year at CERN . . . for example.

They have apparently proposed a way to test this hypothesis.

They're sort of kidding, but only sort of.

And one of these guys is regarded as a founder of string theory.

And I can hardly wait.

Hey, Lunatic Fringe. I know you're out there.

I have been overcome with a sudden desire to see Caine/Overworld-related fan art. Anybody who's got a dusty image or two, please post links in the comment section. (I'm looking at YOU, Greg . . .)

Oh, and only post your own shit; if there's an image that you think should be posted but wasn't done by you, encourage the actual artist to drop by and stick it up. Er . . . you know what I mean.

There are a variety of Stover-related things in the offing, including a New and Improved Web Presence.

Watch this space for details.

A proposed slogan for the 2010 mid-terms:

Vote Republican, because we're BATSHIT INSANE.

First:

Heroes Die is the Book of the Month over at Joseph Mallozzi's very popular blog. He's providing a forum for reader Q&A, as well as providing a darn nice write-up of his reactions to the story. This came about through the good offices of John Scalzi, so any of you rabid Caine fans can blow kisses in his Hugocentric direction for helping to Keep the Dream Alive. But no biting.

And no jumping up and down on the heads of people who didn't like the book. I mean it.

Second:

Yeah, I play the casting game too. Though if this were to ever become a film or a TV series, I strongly suspect that it will be cast with people

1.) I've never heard of, or

2) I can't stand, or

3) both.

And I've never come up with strong picks for the three female characters.

Now, this is interesting . . .

Related to the conversation a couple of posts back about the Department of Veteran's Affairs, it appears we have some Actual Numbers, courtesy of the Rand Corporation and the Congressional Budget Office.

Not that I've waded through all these; I'm just sharing the links so that those who are interested in Actual Numbers know where to find some.

Holy Shit, it's working. Do you realize we have attracted an Honest to Jesus Right-Wingnut?

I happened to check the profile this "A Truman North" -- the "crimmigrants" guy . . . his email address, no lie --

conservativedigest@yahoo.com

It seems a reasonable guess that the other two tongues-in-search-of-rimjobs were either him, or his friends.

(Is "tongues-in-search-of-rimjobs" too harsh? Should I just call them Seekers of the Dirty Sanchez? Is there any truth to the allegation that Dirty Sanchez is a crimmigrant? We report. You decide.)

These people spend their free time Googling things like "public option," and then drop in to spew whatever Limbaugh and Boehner have been spoon-feeding them.

Honestly: I'm flattered. Keep it coming, scumballs.

The more time you spend trolling on blogs like mine, the less time you have to wave Obama-is-Hitler signs at town meetings.

And here I am.

There have been some developments in Stoverland, one of which is that my day job and I have finally parted company on a (semi-)permanent basis, which leaves me giving writing my full attention for the first time since 1996. This is a good thing on one front -- having two tie-ins to deliver before the end of the year, and His Father's Fist not long after that -- and I am producing fiction at something like quadruple my usual rate.

On nearly every other front, it's a bad thing -- unless some miracle happens and I sell a movie . . . and Congress really does pass a health care reform bill that includes a robust public option.

And, in a side note to all those people who actually, in the face of all evidence, still believe that "The public option is just a socialist plot to destroy private health care" and "Obama wants to kill my grandmother," I'd just like to say,

FUCK YOU, SHITHEELS. FUCK EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU.

I HOPE YOUR FUCKING LUNGS ROT WITH CANCER AND YOUR FACE FALLS OFF AND YOUR BALLS SWELL UP BIGGER THAN YOUR POINTY HEADS AND YOUR OVARIES EXPLODE LIKE HAND GRENADES AFTER BLUE CROSS CANCELS YOUR INSURANCE, YOU HOPELESS SACK-OF-SHIT BRAIN-DAMAGED ASS-MONKEYS.

There. I feel better.

The public option, in point of fact, exists for people like me. I cannot get private insurance coverage at any price. Believe me: I've tried. My state does have a "high-risk pool," to which I can apply at roughly double the normal private rate, once my already-overpriced COBRA coverage expires.

So . . . anybody know someone looking to hire an artist-in-residence or a freelance writer or editor or other paying job remotely related to my field and is willing to interview a surly undisciplined sub-genius with chronic health problems?

[On the comments regarding my previous post -- this is, I think, of sufficient general interest to warrant its own Front Page Treatment]

It's worth remembering my favorite paraphrase of Nietzsche: When you judge a work of art, the art also judges you.

That is to say: what you get out of a book depends more on what you bring to it than on any skill of its author (though I well understand that this is heresy to most of the LitCrit crowd, whose entire worldview -- not to mention income and careers -- is based on the indefensible contention that not only do objective signifiers of literary quality exist, but that these supposed signifiers can be reliably identified by critics. And that identifying and sharing these signifiers in various rhetorical arguments about various works' inherent quality is not only a worthwhile occupation, but one for which they should be paid).

What Really Good Critics do is create and deliver an entertaining and persuasive narrative of their own experience; they understand that the only defensible form of criticism is a report of how the work in question affected (or failed to affect) them. What Really Stupid Critics do is smugly repeat shit like "Show, Don't Tell" and, oh, I don't know, maybe "This is how it feels to read crap," in order to pretend they're smart.

Look: there are some people who are open to the idea that a book like Revenge of the Sith might actually be a Good Novel -- even people who generally despise Star Wars, like (for example) my wife, the Fabulous Robyn. In fact, she still hasn't forgiven me for seducing her into actually giving a damn about Anakin Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi (she listened to the Unabridged Version read by the estimable Jonathan Davis, and it made her cry. More than once). But these are people who are already susceptible to the heroic epic; a Henry James fan who considers the mark of Great Literatue to be the delicately filigreed tale of how the Cruel World ultimately Destroys the Beauty of the Sensitive Soul, is just never gonna get it, no matter how hard you push it. There are plenty of James fans who will insist that The Iliad is Real Literature, as is Hamlet or many other narratives based on outside sources -- and in the same breath say that RotS can't be Real Literature because it's based on Star Wars. I could be the Second Coming of Leo Fucking Tolstoy, and still none of these people would be persuaded that a Star Wars book can be anything other than (at best) an entertaining diversion.

Not that I'm claiming to be in the same league as Homer, Shakespeare and Tolstoy, you understand. I'm far from convinced that my SW books will still be read ten years from now, let alone 400. Or 2500. I would, however, just once like to copy out Homer's capsule bios of each of the slain heroes at Troy, then pants one of these Show Don't Tell fucktards and shove that copy up his ass.

KF1138:

Thanks for the great review. Sorry about the gender misapplication -- the -trix suffix is usually applied to female examples of persons engaged in occupations that end in -tor. Hence the mix-up. Sorry.

I have been ruminating lately on how certain genre writers broke out into the mainstream after making the acquaintance/coming to the attention of certain influential critics -- specifically, Bradbury meeting Christopher Isherwood, and Cormac McCarthy becoming the (strictly metaphoric, so far as I know, and generally literary) love interest of Harold Bloom.

So here's the question:

How do I get this person a job at the New York Times Review of Books? And why isn't she already famous?

Now, don't get me wrong: I know I've received a great deal of love from various and sundry Individuals of Stellar Taste who may very well be on their way to Influential Criticosity within (at least) Our Genre . . . but I need somebody who's already big.

Dang it.