Fantasy Fans Undie! - New Publisher Launches Line of Fantasy Novels

I know I've been buried in the lab, mixing up troll medicine for far too long, but I did need to Punxatawny my head out from the depths for an important message:

Marcher Lord Press launches three titles on October 1. If, on that day (and that day only) you buy two or more of their first three books off the press, and you'll receive a pair of really, really cool e-books for free.

Register now w/ Marcher Lord, and you'll be eligible for really cool prizes from them, including the Grand Prize: A Trip for Two to 2009 COMIC CON!!!! [HOLY SMOKE! Look at the huge list of prizes! I want the 50th ed. Deluxe LOTR - so back off!]

So, those of you (like me) who couldn't find the cash this year to go see Nathan Fillion, Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, Wil Wheaton, Joss Whedon and a cast of bajillions of authors and movie, comic and video game stars taking over the city of San Diego and turning it into a nerd wasteland, you have no excuse.

A chance at free tickets to Comic Con. Register this week at Marcher Lord.

Then buy the books on Day One, October 1!

Yum...Chimera jerky.

Rejection is Good

I rarely repeat myself, but I'm going to here:

I don't look at the fiction submission process as an interview where I am the candidate. I think of it as an editor search. An agent/editor is a book's first consumer. Write the right book and find the right first consumer and they'll be best positioned to match the book with a like-minded audience. A query letter isn't a "please love me" note - it is a ruthless way of culling out all the wrong people who aren't a good match for your stuff.

So, getting a lot of rejections doesn't mean you are a lousy writer, it means you are cutthroat and specific. You know what you are looking for, and you have the pile of rejected editors and agents to show for it.

Quick "no's" are critical. It's what the potential readers do all the time.

Agents/editors aren't evaluating you, you are evaluating them. You've got to rip through as many of them as you can in order to unearth the right one. Rejections are good.

Quick rejections are better.

Demon to Appear at Awards Banquet

My favorite modern weird book on the planet, Demon: A Memoir, just got nominated for a major award.

Okay, not that major award. A different one. One that, should an author win it, comes with a thingy that goes on the bookcovers of re-issues, a lot more attention in bookstores and, if I'm not mistaken, a compass in the stock.

Wait, that's Christmas Story again.

But, hey, this really is a Christmas story, because sometimes the good guys win at the end, sometimes no one sees you in the bunny costume, sometimes you do get the Red Ryder bb gun and sometimes, just sometimes, the publishing industry realizes it has something really great on its hands.

Congratulations to all the Christy nominees, including Tosca Lee, but special congratulations to the nominating committee for recognizing what a literary triumph Demon really is.

Soli Deo gloria.

Via Toscology

The Rise of "Liaries" - The Empty Profits of False Memoirs

I may have mentioned once or twice before that one of my favorite works of fiction purports to be a memoir. It is a dark and joyful work.

But it seems as if the publishing industry is interested in the awful opposite: fictional memoirs purported to be true.

The list of fake memoirs, or, as I like to call them, "liaries" grows every day:

James Frey, Mischa Defonesca, Ishmael Beah, Margaret Seltzer* have all published fabricated memoirs.

Every time new evidence comes out against a "memoir" so many commenters shake their heads and wonder why. **

It seems pretty plain to me. Liars lie, and buyers buy. I, for one, am swearing off memoirs until the publishing industry, en masse, works to re-establish my trust that they know how to check a fact or two.

No wonder people have such a hard time believing in the resurrection. The truth is a malleable commodity to our culture. I don't care how "betrayed" the editors of these books "feel." If they aren't cleaving heads and breaking bones, I'm unimpressed.

One memoir I would read is: Editor's Notes: How I Got Snookered by a Lying Author and Then Burned His House to the Ground.

Now, some criminal journalist has taken the conceit one step further: writing fictionalized memoirs of the recently dead. Esquire Magazine has applied their creative efforts to "imagine" and record, in first person, a diary of Heath Ledger's last days. I'm not linking to it, but it should be easy enough to find. Garbage usually is.

Hang them all.

*The Seltzer one is egregious. Everything in it, everything, is fiction.

**Some even try to continue to "support" the "underlying message" of the fake memoir. This is an impossibility for two reasons: a) a lie never has an underlying message and b) the concept is contradictory even if it could have an underlying message. Lies, even artfully crafted ones, cause people to believe in a counterfeit. Faith in a counterfeit is not measured as "good" faith, and, in fact, leads to a person's destruction. A liar with good intentions can destroy as many lives as a liar with bad ones.

...By Any Other Name Tastes Like Chicken

Lost Genre Guild popped off about novel titles today, so I thought I'd do my public service and offer up, free of charge to any human foolhardy enough to steal them from me, some of my all time favorite book titles that have not yet been used:

Barfing Giants

Clavicle Marrow

Wuthering Smashy-smash

Bloat in the Afternoon

The Introverted Warlord

I've got this title-marketing thing down. And bleeding.