Scarlet Letters

The hits just keep on coming for poor Borders. I've been waiting to see the bookseller go under for ages, not with anticipation, but with dread. We all know they are closing a zillion Waldenbooks , and while at first they intended to pulp the unsold books, apparently they are now donating them , so bravo there. But now CEO Ron Marshall is leaving (to head up the A&P? really?) after only one year on the job. His chief merchandising officer is the interim CEO. Meanwhile, Borders' holiday sales were dismal , even extending the definition of "holiday" from Nov. 1 to Jan. 16. Sales were nearly 15 percent below last year. Worse, they have been accused of delaying payments to small publishers , because small press has more shallow pockets and doesn't have the wherewithal to sue the hell out of them like Random House or Harper Collins. I might point out they still owe me a check for a signing I did in 2008, so clearly something is wrong here. This attitude toward sma...

So, if I were to write another story set in the world of THE COLD ONES, which would you prefer? A sequel, with the surviving character(s) facing new challenges? A prequel, with the original team before they met up with It? Not saying I'm gonna do what you say, but I am curious which would be of greater interest. If you delve into COLD ONES spoilers in the comments, please tag! Not everyone's read it yet, despite my best efforts. :)

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the Ottawa booksigning has been postponed. We're talking about late February or early March - the Facebook event has been altered to March 20, but that is NOT set yet, it's just that Facebook doesn't have a "maybe" button. :) My apologies for any inconvenience. I do intend to wend up Chicago way at some point this year!

Time to vote in the CultureGeek Readers' Choice Awards! Never heard of it? That's because we never did it before. Ah, the power I wield. Seriously, I got sick of the same old lists popping out on all my competitors, lists that made me think these guys were so not watching the same stuff I was watching the last ten years. AMERICAN IDOL is the best TV show of the 21st century? I do not think so. So regular CultureGeek readers nominated their favorite books, movies, TV shows and comics of the past decade, and I created a poll for them to vote. On day one we had hundreds of responses. I'm hoping for a lot more. :) I contacted as many of the authors as I know or could find to let them know they'd been nominated. Including Neil Gaiman's publicist, since at the moment he is trashing all the competition with AMERICAN GODS. I'm sure he is too busy to give a quote to a mid-size paper like mine, should he win, but it's worth a try. Go forth and vote. For the record, I...

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday with your families, or at least you resisted the urge to strangle your families. If not, please let us know how to raise your bail. In the meantime, the holiday sales are spectacular this year, and who are we to be any different? From now through Jan. 3, LiteraryUnderworld.com is offering FREE SHIPPING* on all orders! If you got a grand-opening code as well, you could really score some great books to offset those argyle socks you got from your aunt. Use the code HANUKWANYULEMAS to get your free shipping. Drop by LiteraryUnderworld.com and pick yourself up something good! And a happy new year to you all. * Offer good only in the U.S. Minimum $10 purchase required.

My son is right on the verge about Santa Claus. His faith has been severely shaken this year, because people tend to forget that despite his ridiculous height, he's only ten years old. I think he likes the idea of Santa and doesn't want to give it up, given his fondness for magic and mystery in the things he likes to read. When he asks me, I tell him the same thing for Santa as for the Tooth Fairy and ghosts and fairies and things that go chomp in the night: Just because I haven't seen something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Grammatically incorrect, but true. I've never seen a ghost, but plenty of people I know say they have, and who am I to tell them they're wrong? Last night as we drove home from the movies, he wanted to talk about Santa again. I told him that we put too much emphasis on the particulars of magic, and we leave aside the power of faith. I got a big "huh?" and so I tried again. I believe in magic. I believe in the power of things u...

Okay, I'm an idiot. My poor friend Sarah has already once extended my time for the Creative Memories online "party" I intended to hold. She is long-suffering and patient. So! Do you like scrapbooking? Sarah is a Creative Memories consultant, and I used to be a regular consumer of said stuff. I am about five years behind - wow, that corresponds almost exactly with the point where my writing career took off. Funny. Anyway, CM stuff is the highest quality and it is designed not to rot your pictures like those magnetic albums we all thought were so great in the 1990s. Like scrapbooks but lack the patience/time? They have template albums, predesigned pages, etc. Not interested in albums but looking for a creative way to display photos? Click on "Inspired Surroundings" for framed displays that would make a personal gift or memento. Also, they now have an extended digital component. You can assemble your digital photos into scrapbooks online and they print them for you...

I can blame the fire if I want to. Today was the Illinois-Missouri Author Fair, as organized by the marvelous Cheryl Eichar Jett. She coordinated with the Metro South Arts Council to get us a mall space on the Saturday after Thanksgiving to hawk our books. First of all, I love the concept behind this mall. Crestwood Court in St. Louis is one of those mid-city malls unfortunately not located directly on an interstate, and Americans are too lazy to drive anywhere more than fifty feet from a highway, so it died. Most of its anchor stores are gone, along with nearly all the little stores that keep a mall alive (Aeropostale? Foot Locker? Things Remembered? People still go to these stores?). The food court is on a lower level reminiscent of the bowels of Mordor, with only a solitary Subway surviving. We had a running gag about Subway; resist the Subway! Find other sustenance! But they took us for a few sandwiches anyway. Some mad genius began converting the mall into indie art space. (Parade...

And we'd really like to be in the black. :) Go shop at The Literary Underworld and use the code "welcome1" to get a discount on your first order. I'd just like to point out that THE COLD ONES makes a heckuva gift at six bucks. Also, we've fixed the glitch with shipping costs. If you have any problems, please let me know ASAP.

We have returned from Contraception Kansas City, and just save all the cracks because I've heard them all. It was a lovely time, and I enjoyed getting to meet new people. Sales were pretty good for a small show, though I seriously overplanned the coffee - I've never seen a crew drink so little coffee as this one! On the other hand, the leftovers will be very tasty for the next, um, three months. We sold out of our room, an arrangement I find I like more and more as time goes on. It's like running a low-key room party for 48 hours straight. I did bad tarot readings to amuse passers-by and sang to myself when I was alone, which wasn't often. I talked shop with some pros, watched Selina Rosen do an Elvis act (must be seen to be believed), and enjoyed the hell out of the Vegas theme. Apparently one of the traditions for this show is to decorate your door, and so I threw together a sort of Vegas-crime scene thing, with a glittery door curtain, crime-scene tape, creepy fabric...

Just got home from a really nice signing at Afterwords Books in Edwardsville. It was such a pleasant time, I think it's rehabilitated me on bookstore signings. Big-box booksignings are a real crapshoot. Much of the time, I'd find out they hadn't told anyone I was coming, there was no sign or display to drum up interest, and they sat me at a card table by the entrance so people would most easily avoid me. Seriously, an author at a table in a bookstore is no better than the perfume salesgirl in Macy's at Christmas. They avert their eyes so quickly you'd think they'd get whiplash, unless they need directions to the bathrooms. You can try to engage them in conversation, you can bribe them (I used a bowl of chocolates) but it's still a crapshoot. A lot of the time you just end up sitting there like an idiot for two hours, trying to make eye contact and feeling like an asshole. There are exceptions, of course. The last signing on the NOCTURNE tour was at a Borders...

Yesterday's word count: Overall this month: And the book to date: And not even half done. I keep moving the total wordcount higher. That is bad. I was just mocking a fellow author last night because the box of his books in our inventory is damn heavy. "Omit needless words!" I scolded him. The language edit next round will be brutal. Last night I got to play with maybe my favorite scene in anything I've ever written. It's a sparring scene, where Torrance, Reyes and Crawford fight each other in various combinations. I love it for so many reasons. I love the way Torrance and Reyes snipe at each other. Jealousy in real life sucks like a Hoover. Jealousy in fiction is marvelous fun. Best of all, Crawford is spared the discomfort, because she is pathologically oblivious to human emotion. I love the way the fights reveal their personalities. Each of them fights in a slightly different way, and it shows who they are. They're all good, but each has a flaw that will sho...

Okay, I am a crazy busy woman and I keep forgetting to approve comments. So for the time being, we're going back to unmoderated comments. Hopefully everyone will behave themselves and I won't have to go back to playing nursemaid, right? Right? I know y'all are good. It's always just a few apples that ruin it for everyone. The letter verification is still on, which should keep out the @#$! spammers. And thank you all for being here.

Today's work: 4,118 / 2,000 (205.9%) This month: I'm slogging along until I reach the end of Part Two, then we switch to the new project. I don't think it will go along at nearly this pace. Nothing ever does. God, I love this book. I'm under no illusions that it's the great American novel, or even that it's something new or different. I just love it anyway. It's also standing at 72,495 words and we're not even halfway done. When I finish and edit it, I will have to take the drastic step of *gasp* CUTTING words. Usually I'm fleshing them out. But yipes, this thing's going to be the magna carta before I get it done. It's my STAND, my opus, the book that wants to kill me and very well may... And I love it anyway.

You know, I keep forgetting about this blog. When you update three blogs, Twitter and two social networks, sometimes things fall through the cracks. However, I am unofficially doing Nanowrimo. No, I do not like the idea of uploading my stuff to someone else's server to prove my wordcount. So I don't. I also don't like some of the "tips" they offer for increasing wordcount, like un-hyphenating words that should be hyphenated, or pumping up the adverbs and wordy sentences just to inflate wordcount. Yes, we make words, but we should not encourage bad habits. But the "just keep swimming" part of Nanowrimo appeals to me, because self-discipline is my worst flaw as a writer. Writing some every day, regardless of whether you feel inspired - that's a good habit, and one far too many writers ignore (myself most definitely included). I have a new project in mind, but it's a few days before I can get it started. In the meantime, I'm wrapping Part Two of...

Well, for 15 minutes, anyway. Local author is living the dream. Go forth and click! Drive up the hit counts! Leave comments (nice ones, behave yourselves)! Now I better really have a good speech on Thursday...

I am happy-ish to announce we have to postpone next week's booksigning at AfterWords Bookstore in Edwardsville because we're out of books! As you've probably heard me say 491849 times in other fora by now, THE COLD ONES sold out its first printing in about 48 hours flat. We will not have the second printing in hand in time for the scheduled signing next week, so it has been postponed to, I kid you not, Friday the 13th (November). I'm looking forward to it! Mark your calendars, it's gonna be a great time. Don't forget I'm at the Glen Carbon (Ill.) Centennial Library at 6:30 p.m. next Thursday, to talk about things that go chomp in the night. Whether or not I do a reading will depend on the crowd: if little kids can hear me, I can't read from THE COLD ONES. It's definitely adults-only. We'll have my stuff available for sale, too. Next month I also will visit with the Ocular Voices book club, but sorry, folks - that one's closed to the public. I...

So. Guess who sold out the entire first printing of her new novella in its premiere weekend? Yup. That would be me. Thank you to all the wonderful Archon denizens who bought THE COLD ONES! We had a nice turnout for the reading, most of whom I didn't even know. :) The emergency zombie bite kits were a big hit, too! And I didn't get arrested. Always a plus. I love reading THE COLD ONES aloud - it really works verbally. I got laughs in the right places and no one ran screaming from the room with hands clapped over their ears. (It is so not for children. I'm just saying.) So we sold out the entire print run, setting aside copies for those who reserved copies in advance. See, I always tell you guys I can't guarantee anything if you don't reserve in advance, and nooooobody believes me... If you reserved a copy, you'll be getting an invoice shortly and instructions. Your book will ship as soon as your payment clears. If you've changed your mind, tell us ASAP so we ...

It's early! THE COLD ONES is now available on GenreMall. It looks very shiny! I don't know that it's going to be available on Amazon, so if you're not buying from me, buy it from them! If you're excited about it, go to their blog post and thank them for carrying it! And spread the word! Anywhere and everywhere. Let people know it's available! Yes, I get paid if you buy it from them, so feel free. Support small press, buy THE COLD ONES and aim for the head!

Before I had this blog, I had the Scarlet Letters. I wrote a regular column in college and later for my first paper. Then I went online, writing my own webzine with a weekly column, news roundup, quote of the week... sound familiar? :) Anyway, I recently found the Scarlet Letters. Wow, I was YOUNG. Because I live to humiliate myself, I think I'll share some of my columns from the dim dark years of my youth. Dr. Mom, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Rain (c) 1998 Rain makes me think about my mother. Whoa! Stop, don't run away yet. I swear, this isn't a whiny, Freudian, weirdo-on-the-analysis-couch rant about my mom. I have a point here. Bear with me. When I was a kid, I noticed that my mom was always in a good mood when it rained. I'd be sitting at the kitchen table after school, staring out the window with that woe-is-me expression that can only be mastered by bored kids, and she'd be baking something and humming perfectly in key (Mom is a musician) an...