Hey kids. I know I've been remiss on the blogs and posts here. I'm locked down, trying to get a new book finished before the tour in February. I promise I'll start producing some web material soon.
For now, let me confirm the release date of the new book, Fool, will be February 10th. And that the next book (after Fool) will be -- well -- here's the first paragraph:
"The city of San Francisco is being stalked by a huge, shaved vampyre cat named Chet, and only I, Abby Normal, emergency back-up mistress of the greater Bay Area night, and my manga-haired love monkey, Foo Dog, stand between the ravenous monster and a bloody massacre of the general public. Which isn't, like, as bad as it sounds, because the general public kind of sucks ass."
So, there you go. Now, back to work for me. As always, you can email me at BSFiends@aol.com if you actually want to get a personal response. I try to answer my MySpace messages, too. I'm not able, however, to respond to all of the general MySpace comments (I have to draw the line somewhere or I'll never get any books written.).
Hey you guys, here's a live radio performance I did in Portland last month.
It's the July 5th LIvewire from Portland. It's a fun show, sort of like a Prairie Home Companion only more damp. If you're pressed for time, move the slider to 34:14. The piece runs about 7 minutes, with another 7 minute interview. The original "I Don't Read" is about 21 minutes long, but I had to cut it down for radio. When I get bleeped, I'm saying "phuque!" and "phuquetard"
Your Authorguy is going to be at Comicon in San Diego. It should be interesting, since I don't really know anything about Secret Societies or Lost Civiliations. But, there you go.
Panel: FRIDAY, JULY 25 5:00-6:00 Mythology, Secret Societies and Lost Civilizations. Room 2 (the actual length of panel is really about 50-55 minutes)
Autographing in the Comic-Con Autograph Area FRIDAY, JULY 25 6:00-7:00 Mythology, Secret Societies and Lost Civilizations. Table AA1 Authors whose books include Atlantis, Angels, and the Holy Grail: Alex Archer (Rogue Angel), Thomas Greanias (Raising Atlantis, The Atlantis Prophecy), Brad Meltzer (The Book of Fate), Christopher Moore (Lamb, A Dirty Job), Thomas Sniegoski (A Kiss Before the Apocalypse) and Michael Spradlin (The Youngest Templar: Keeper of the Grail)
Nother big one. There are a few dupes from the first batch as I used both my and Charlee's photos. Hopefully the different perspectives will provide some, uh, perspective. She took most of the flower photos. Here, toward the end, you'll see a lot more of the modern additions. Some try to stay with tradition, adding a modern frame to a classic motif, others just go nuts. Interesting thing, though. Although many of these, most of these, in fact, are original works of art, very few are actually signed - at least where it's visible. Interesting that the artists could get this good, yet be humble enough to do his or her work anonymously. Have fun...
See yesterday's blog for an explanation of what's going on here...
Here's the first 500. Probably will take quite a while to look at. Sorry, no music. (Put on some Sate or Debussy, or, you know, Metallica.) I had to go with a different server, but the pictures should look better. Some really amazing sculpture.
I was moved by the different portrayals of grief. Of the young wives grieving for the old husbands, of the parents giving their children up to the angels. People's values -- a guys dog, his car. Couples resting together, forever. There are lots of opportunities for funny captions, but I'll let you guys provide those in your own heads. There's some really great art here, and some really creepy representations of death. After a while I stopped photographing the Pietas, there were just too many of them and I was running out of daylight, but most of the rest of the monuments are here.
The graves go back to the mid 1800s, and you'll see all manner of artistic styles, from Classical, to Art Nouveau, to Art Deco, to Cubism, to a very modern, minimalist art as late as a couple of years ago. The great thing is that the styles outlasted their era in the outside world. While Art Nouveau lasted perhaps fifteen years, and Deco barely that, the monument makers stuck with the styles long after they had gone out of vogue in decorating. So you find Art Nouveau pieces made well into the 30s, where in the art world that era ended basically around 1910. You'll also see the art change with politics. The pieces done when Italy was fascist show burly, square-shouldered men looking very stern. Then as it goes socialist, you see farm workers, and men in work shirts farming or working in a foundry. I try to imagine the family meeting with an artist, trying to figure out what they want on the grave. Obviously that's why you have such profound expressions of grief and loss, faith and hope, and in some cases, horror and despair. (How about the one where the old guy is dragging the beautiful young woman back into the grave? Egads!) I just couldn't make up funny captions for these, as tempted as I was. It would be too much like grave robbing, which I totally draw the line at in my writing.
So, after reading my earlier posts, you were probably wondering what I was doing in Milan, considering I don't care about shoes or big sunglasses. I was there to see the cemetery. One of the most amazing collection of sculpture I've ever seen. Here's a 3 minute sample. Let me know if you guys want to see more. Like I said, this is just a sample. There are some really creepy/cool/freaky statues that didn't make it into this slide show. (My first time with a web slide show.)
Let's face it. I'm a gadget guy. I like shiny new machines, sometimes because they are shiny and new. I have an Iphone, an Xbox360, 2 Playstations, two Macs, five PCs (4 of which I built), 3 flat-screen TVs, 2 Tivos, 4 Ipods, 3 Digital SLRs, 4 digital point and shoot cameras -- well, you get the idea. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a luddite, or anti-technical. I am not averse to change, nor am I nostalgic for the "old days" that never really existed. Neither am I evangelical about technology – I don't have any unnatural affection for my Macs, and I don't have any built-in revulsion for my PCs, or vice-versa. I like stuff that works, and I get pissed off at stuff that doesn't. Okay. Just so we're clear.
So, despite my misgivings about E-books, which I'll go into in a whole different blog, I bought a Kindle from Amazon. My history with the electronic book reader is this: I tried to demo the Sony reader three different times in
various book stores and there was never one that worked long enough to actually tell what it was like. But it was obvious that electronic paper had some possibilities.
Then, about two months ago, Amazon's Kindle PR division contacted me and asked me to do a blog for them, which I linked to here. I started looking into the Kindle machine, reading reviews, asking friends, checking out the specs. After all, you couldn't sign on to Amazon without being hit in the face with another Kindle promotion, and I sign onto Amazon a lot. (Note ridiculously long gadget list above.) So, even through Amazon had sent Kindles to my friends Neil Gaiman and Daniel Handler for review, and not to me, and I had done a blog for them (for fucking nothing, despite the fact that I actually get paid to do this – a lot) I ordered a Kindle. And eight hours later (I'm not kidding, eight hours) they lowered the price by $50.
So, you know, good start. So, here are my observations. And yes, this does go on a bit.
First, the good:
Kindle delivers available books in about 60 seconds through a free cellular data network, anywhere in the country. It's fast, there's a pretty good selection, and the screen is easy to read, with scalable fonts. It's light, and the battery supposedly lasts a pretty long time, as power is only required to turn/change a page, not show text (it's not back lit). They ship it with a very nice leather cover, that almost completely negates the size and weight advantage, but does protect the Kindle if it's strapped in, and you can surf the internet, search Amazon products, and subscribe to and read blogs, magazines, and newspapers that are available from Amazon. You can also mail Word or other text documents to yourself and for ten cents a piece, Amazon will convert them to Kindle format and send them to your Kindle. These are all cool things. With a cheap SD memory card, you could easily carry 200 books with you in this little machine, and it highlights, clips, makes notes and bookmarks text.
Which means that the Kindle is not a complete P.O.S. It is, however, at least in this generation, a partial P.O.S.
The Not So Good:
1. No place to hold it. Every place you grab it does something -- activates some function.
2. No page numbers. They have reference numbers, but not actually page numbers. There's no way to find something or tell someone else how to find it. If you change font size, the reference numbers change. So, for instance, you might say,
"Oh my God, there's the funniest line in that new Sedaris book!"
"Really, what page is it on?"
"Uh, 2023 of 4432 in the second biggest font."
"Oh, yeah, that means something to me."
3. There's no place to clip the light they sell you to clip on it, and without the light, it's dark. Of course you can clip it to the cover they sell you but...
4. It falls out of the cover. There's a tiny "ledge" that's supposed to keep the Kindle in place, but it doesn't work. Yes, I could put a piece of stick-on velcro on the back and solve this problem, but I just paid $400 for this thing, I shouldn't have to add velcro to make it functional.
5. It shuts down. I took it to Los Angeles for a weekend trip. I'd charged it before I left, and it's supposed to be good for 7000 "page turns" on a charge, but even with the wireless off, it just stuck on a page on the second day, so I had nothing to read. I've never had a real book, "lock up".
6. Reading on the screen is disorienting. I read a lot on a screen, more than I read on paper, but reading a novel on a screen is disorienting. The screen is still pretty small, and a full page of text from a book isn't displayed. You never have a feel of how far along you are in a book. You don't know how far from the end of the chapter you are. There is a little line of "progress dots" along the bottom of the page that's supposed to indicate how far along you are, but it doesn't feel "real". I think if you could make it default to page numbers that mirror the real book, and you knew you were on page 44 of 400, you'd have a better idea. The progress numbers aren't always right, either. I loaded the manuscript of my new book into it. The reference numbers keep showing things like, 2483 out of 98. Which, you know, is confusing.
So, the Kindle, in my opinion, just isn't quite there. And understand, I think there's a certain inevitability to electronic books, so this is not a rant against the form. For some things, particularly college courses, I think e-books could rock hard. But until there's a generation who has never read or worked with paper books, the "analog" aspect of the reader has to be a lot better. You've got to somehow simulate the good things about paper books (and I don't mean the smell or the fact that you can tear the pages out and wipe with them if you're stuck dropping dooky in the woods), while taking advantage of the assets of e-books.
I'll have a whole new blog on e-books soon, in which we'll explore how you can decorate your garage to accommodate your own homeless author guy, who just got Napstered out of a job.
Meanwhile, e-book owners, (and those thinking about it) share your thoughts.
So, people are always asking me what I'm reading. And usually, I'm reading something for research, or some book someone has sent me for a jacket comment. (I have a two-foot stack of books on my desk right now that I'd love to read and comment on, but then, I would never be able to write another book.) It's an occupational hazard or just a hazard of life, I guess. There are more books to read than you'll ever have time to read. But when I was in Europe last month, doing a whole month on a couple of carry-on bags, I could only carry one book at a time, and since I was in Italy most of the time, there were very limited English language titles I could buy. So I got to read some books for fun that I might not have picked up otherwise.
First, I was in Siena, a very cool Medieval City in Northern Italy, when I ran out of reading material and so I picked up Northern Lights, the first book in Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series. It's a young adult fantasy, and I have some trouble getting engaged in some YA titles, but I absolutely loved this book. (The Golden Compass film was adapted from it, but I hadn't see it yet, fortunately.) I was never able to finish a Harry Potter book for some reason, although I could certainly see the appeal. But here, for the first time in a long time, I was completely lost in the story. (Perhaps because I was trying to drown out the sound of Italian guys talking .. phones on trains. Travel note: Italian guys never shut up. Ever. If they are awake and there's not food in their mouths, they are talking. Especially if there's a woman around. I wanted to have a T-shirt made with the letters S.T.F.U. and point to it in these situations, because clearly, even with 3000 years of civilization, they have never learned to Shut The Fuck Up.) Anyway, giant armored talking polar bears. Yes! Northern Lights creates a very rich, alternative world that looks much like early 20th Century England, only more steam-punky, but the main thing you need to know is: Giant Talking Armored Polar Bears. Sure there's a cute and spunky little Pippi Longstockingesce girl, there are Dickinsean street urchins (which you can now order n sushi bars in London - they are served with English hot mustard instead of wasabi) and a hydrogen-stealing zeppelin pirate, (a species rumored to have once existed in the Castro in San Francisco), but they had me at Giant Talking Armored Polar Bears. Hijinks ensue. (I'm reading the second book in the series now on the Kindle, which sucks ass in so many ways I don't have time or room to enumerate them, so I don't know if it's any good or not because I can't get past dealing with the stupid machine.)
So then I read Heat, by Bill Buford, which is sub titled: An Amateur's Adventures ans a Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. It's about working in restaurants, but it's also about learning about food, about obsession, about the restaurant business, a biography of Mario Batali, and an overall history of Italian cooking. This is a terrific non-fictuon book that I probably would have never finished if I hadn't been traveling, and I would have been poorer for having missed it. Buford is a talented writer, but also has the ability to humble himself as a student, which makes him a good teacher. I learned a lot about food, abound restaurants (and I used to work in them) and about Italy. If you eat, you should read this book.
I picked up Michael Chabon's book, The Yiddish Policeman's Union in Verona. Chabon doesn't need me to sell his ability as a writer, he's won tons of awards, including a Pulitzer for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. This book, however, I think is my favorite. It's a noir mystery, so Chabon gets to show off his ability to turn a phrase, but it's also a very high-concept alternative-history, wherein the state of Israel was not established in 1949, but the Jews from the post-war diaspora were relocated to a colony in Sitka, Alaska. So you have a detective story peopled entirely with people who speak in a Yiddish idiom, intermingled with Tlinglet Indians, one of whom, a giant, is raised at the adopted son of the main character, and so is a practicing Jew, right down to his yarmulke and the fringe of his garment. It makes for an extraordinarily interesting story, peppered with Judica and hard-boiled kvetching. If you're Jewish, you really need to read this book, but if you're not, you'll probably learn something in addition to being entertained.
Finally, I read a book off of my "read for comment" pile that I chose because it would fit in my computer bag. Captain Freedom, by G. Xavier Robillard, is a very funny send-up of the super-hero genre. I won't go into detail because it won't be out until early next year, but leave it at: "it's a hybrid of The Tick and Mark Leyner's, Et Tu Babe. Very sharp, funny social satire. Meanwhile, you can check out G.'s Blog at http://www.alldaycoffee.net/
Every year booksellers, publishers, and authors meet in an agreed upon city and talk about why the book business is going to to hell in a handbasket while eating, drinking, and standing next to each other for photos. It's my chance to have brushes with fame!
Shortly after arriving, I ran into Neil Stephenson, author of Snow Crash, the Diamond Age, a bunch of others, and the upcoming Anathema. (Or somthing really close to that, they wouldn't give me a copy.) Here I am tilting my head by Neal, who has to stand there because we have the same publisher and they will fire him if he's mean to me.
Later I tried to convince people that by rubbing Neal's head they could become smarter, because he is a genius. The plan failed, however, because I tried to charge $20 bucks a rub and it turns out that people won't pay that kind of money to be smarter. Then we went out to dinner with a bunch of people from my publisher and I was allowed to go because I am the slow kid and they have to be nice to me.
Here is Neal Stephenson's appetizer. It contains nanobots that go through your system and give you a hand job from the inside. I didn't order it because it was $29 and I thought that was a little steep for a nanobot hand job.
But, little did I know, that the nanobots would actually turn Neal into an evil genius super-villian, and migrate over to my plate of raw fish shaped like bacon to turn me into a super hero.
As a super hero, I was able to hang our with all kinds of famous people,
even dead ones...
Then it was the next day, and I had sort of pooped out my super nanobots and was normal again. But I got to stand next to some more authors.
Here I am with James Rollins, author of many best-selling thrillers as well as the novelization of Indian Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
I am wearing his cool hat. I want one.
Here's T. Jefferson Parker, or T-Jeff, as he's known in the hood.
He writes terrific crime novels.
Then the guitar player for Guns and Roses and famous shagger of porn stars, Slash, came to the booth and chatted.
I talked him into signing a copy of the a book with a tiny dog butt on it.
Here, my friend, author, Michael Spradlin, holds the tiny dog butt book, which is going to bring a fortune on Ebay.
OMG! How many of these do you think there are in the world? I'll tell you: ONE! I have more nostrils than that! It's priceless:
But we will trade it for a Van Gogh or a signed Lou Gerig rookie card.
Slash was a pretty nice guy, which sort of surprised us, because he used to be seen around Axel Rose.
It doesn't really get a whole lot better than that, so I have to leave it you with a priceless tiny dog-butt book.
