All the Billion Other Moments

Well that’s done

WIP Novel

[progpress title=”First Draft” goal=”97778″ current=”97778″ previous=”86446″ label=”words”]

Just a quick post to note that yesterday I finally typed “THE END” on the first draft of this latest novel. I’ll post about it in more detail soon, but I wanted to thank all the folks who offered encouragement and support throughout the process. You know who you are. I’d list you all, but I’m sure I’d leave someone out ((and I’m already running late this morning)) (but if you can always list yourselves by leaving comments).

Writing Updates: April 2008

May already? I feel like I just posted one of these. Sorry for the lack of other content around here, but I’ve been pretty much spending any and all time I carved out to write on the novel. How did I do on the “write every day” front? Well, I missed two days in April: my eldest daughter’s birthday, and my wife’s birthday. I’m happy to excuse myself in those cases ((thereby avoiding the feeling I let myself down, which can derail things if I let it.)).

I cranked out 12,926 words, making April an improvement on last month. While I did miss two days I was more consistent in my output I’m pretty sure this comes down to having a daily goal of 550 words, which I didn’t always make, but it seemed to work better than “some words”. Read on for the breakdown

Links of Interest (April 10th 2008 through April 22nd 2008)

Matthew Wayne Selznick Signs Book Deal: Author and Podcaster Matthew Wayne Selznick signed a deal with Swarm Press to re-issue his novel “Brave Men Run” in paperback. Congratulations Matt!
Tags: [tag]books[/tag], [tag]Matthew Wayne Selznick[/tag], [tag]Swarm Press[/tag], [tag]Brave Men Run[/tag],
Take notes during phone calls with friends and family: One of those “that should have been obvious” suggestions. I’ve conditioned my brain to filter out most things that aren’t useful to me right now. This doesn’t mean I’m not interested in people’s anecdotes, and schedules, it just means I’m unlikely to remember them without some reminder.
Tags: [tag]lifehack[/tag], [tag]notes[/tag], [tag]friends[/tag], [tag]family[/tag], [tag]memory[/tag],
Ajaxian Featured Tutorial: Hacking transparent PNG support into IE6 with IE PNG Fix, CSS and jQuery: Ah, IE6. I’m pretty good at getting it to do what I want, but it’s very existence makes most of the things I have to do harder than they should be. This tutorial deals with one of the harder issues, PNG transparency in positioned background images.
Tags: [tag]hacks[/tag], [tag]Javascript[/tag], [tag]jQuery[/tag], [tag]ie6[/tag], [tag]png[/tag], [tag]ie[/tag], [tag]webdesign[/tag],
YouTube – Sigler Book Tour (Seattle Q&A) Part2: In the second part of the video Scott covers such diverse topics as Sci-Fi Channel’s lack of foresight and how when it appears he has made a mistake it is actually sabotage by J.C. Hutchins.
Tags: [tag]video[/tag], [tag]Natalie Metzger[/tag], [tag]Scott Sigler[/tag], [tag]books[/tag], [tag]QandA[/tag], [tag]Sci-Fi Channel[/tag], [tag]JC Hutchins[/tag],
Sigler Book Tour (Seattle Q&A) Part1: I’m not lucky enough to live near any of the book stores Scott Sigler was signing at, but luckily Natalie Metzger captured this video of one of the Q & A sessions.
Tags: [tag]video[/tag], [tag]Natalie Metzger[/tag], [tag]Scott Sigler[/tag], [tag]books[/tag], [tag]QandA[/tag],

Writing Updates: March 2008

March was not a great month for me. I got pretty sick, and on March 24th I was too out of it to write. But I did manage to go eighty three days straight without missing a day. I’ve also been working long hours, which caused me to somehow miss another day as well. I’m still not feeling 100%, but I’m getting there. I wrote 11,781 words this month, making it my worst so far this year.

Links of Interest (February 21st 2008 through April 1st 2008)

INFECTED Trailer: Amazing film-style trailer for Scott Sigler’s novel Infected (available now in hardcover).
Tags: [tag]Scott Sigler[/tag], [tag]Infected[/tag], [tag]trailer[/tag], [tag]Kevin Capizzi[/tag], [tag]Earl Newton[/tag], [tag]Tom Krymkowski[/tag],
OverDrive to offer DRM-free audiobooks via Borders: Time to try unshackled e-books, too?: This can only be good news. OverDrive has an interesting history with DRM. They have always claimed to be unable to work with iPods due to Apple’s proprietary DRM, while failing to make clear they were using Microsoft’s proprietary DRM.
Tags: [tag]OverDrive[/tag], [tag]audiobooks[/tag], [tag]DRM[/tag],
garfield minus garfield: Take Garfield (the comic strip) and remove the title character, and you’re left with something darker and disturbingly funny.
Tags: [tag]comics[/tag], [tag]humor[/tag], [tag]Garfield[/tag], [tag]mashup[/tag],
‘Lego Universe,’ a brick MMO, is in development: I haven’t been real interested in Massively Multi-Player Online games in a while, but the idea of a Lego based MMO might change that.
Tags: [tag]Lego[/tag], [tag]MMO[/tag], [tag]Lego Universe[/tag], [tag]games[/tag],

Go Listen: PodCastle

Not a hoax! Not a dream! PodCastle, the fantasy audio magazine from the folks who bring you Escape Pod and Pseudopod, launched today. The first story is Come Lady Death by Peter S. Beagle, read by Paul S. Jenkins (of The Rev Up Review). Check it out.

Amazon vs. Print-On-Demand

Apparently Amazon is making moves to drop any POD books not printed by their own BookSurge service. I’m not sure how long this was brewing, but stories are popping up all over.

I can see how this makes sense, from a certain point of view. Asking Amazon, who is now in the POD business, to sell POD books from LuLu (for example) could be seen as similar to asking Wendy’s to sell you a Whopper.

Unintended Consequences

To me this sends a message to all other book sellers that it’s ok to not consider POD books as real products, and refuse to carry them. I can envision all the major chains having their own in-house POD setups at some point, and they’ll follow suit by refusing to carry anything “not printed here”. This will include those books printed by Amazon’s BookSurge service.

Maybe I’m missing something more obvious, but it really seems that Amazon has set back the legitimacy of a certain class of books based solely on how they were printed and bound. I’m fully aware that there’s a lot of junk out there, because with POD anyone can “publish” their own book, but at the same time there are some wonderful works that perhaps would not be available in print any other way.

As a consumer, books in this situation might as well be mythical creatures. If I like to shop at a big chain, and they tell me “We don’t have a listing for that. We can’t order it,” then that’s it. Anything more requires jumping through hoops, meanwhile there are thousands of other books I can walk home with right now. Online it’s even worse. If a book isn’t up for order at your preferred online book seller it might as well not exist at all. And to many consumers, it won’t.

A Business Opportunity?

I foresee a lot of gloom and doom while this shakes out. There’s a change it will come to nothing in the end. It’s also possible Amazon is hoping to use this to get more favorable agreements out of POD houses before letting them back in. As such I’m just speculating here.

What if things play out like I suggested earlier, with each book seller having their own POD house, and not taking books from other POD houses. Assuming that the different POD services don’t have exclusivity agreements, the best option would be to offer you book through all of them. It’s obvious. Then wherever folks are they can get your book.

Simple, right?

No, not really. Having put together one book for LuLu I know it can take a great deal of time to prep the book to look good when they print and bind it. I’m sure other services have their own pitfalls. The idea of learning them all fills me with dread. Who has time for that?

But what if a someone started up some sort of aggregated POD service, where you get them your manuscript and they go through the process of getting it up on all the POD services for you? Could such a thing work? If you’re a POD author, would you use such a thing?

I’d be interested to hear other folks thoughts, so please comment.

Download Scott Sigler’s “Infected”

Your first hit is free

On April 1 Scott Sigler‘s thriller novel Infected will be released in hardcover to bookstores. But why wait? Thanks to a special arrangement with Scott and his publisher you can download the entire novel in PDF right now, but only until March 31.

Infected is the first major print release from Internet phenom Scott Sigler, whose podcast-only audiobooks have drawn an immense cult following, with more than three million individual episodes downloaded. Now Sigler storms the bookstore shelves with this cinematic, relentlessly paced novel that mixes and matches genres, combining horror, technothriller, and suspense in a heady mix that is equal parts Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Crichton, and Stephen King.

Does that sound at all interesting? Go on, give it a try. Just this one time. Download it already, and tell your friends to do the same. There’s no risk here, unless you’re afraid you’ll like it so much you’ll feel compelled to purchase the book. Go on, risk it.

But wait there’s more

Want to learn more about Scott Sigler? You’re in luck. J.C. Hutchins just released the latest episode of his UltraCreatives interview series with Scott as his guest. Yeah, that’s free too. Old One-eye Jack knows how to treat you.

Another Moment: “At the End of the Day”

So I joined Bitstrips...

X-UA-Compatible: Sensible Defaults

I’ll keep this short((well, short-ish)), because last time I rambled, and basically failed to make clear what I thought the problem was. In the end, my problem with the whole X-UA-Compatible concept was really in what IE8 planned to do when it was absent, which was to pretend it was IE7.