Back in the study

Woohoo! I wrote lots of sentences today. I'm a bit less than halfway through the first chapter of (please writing gods) the final draft of The Shadow of the Sun, and it actually feels really good. Unlike Russ, I lack the chutzpah to sign up for NaNoWriMo, because I am still trying to find a rhythm that will keep things humming both in the study and the office--but it is a delightful thing to be actually writing sentences that evoke what I mean to say.

Part of the reason I'm having fun with this one: crazy deep worldbuilding. I can't help it: I'm a worldbuilding geek. And I'm having a great time with the worldbuilding on this one, which feels like a cage match between J.R.R. Tolkien and China Mieville. (My money's on the steampunk guy, by the way. At least from the worldbuilding perspective. The old man may outlast that young geek in the long run...)

What the hell am I blathering about? Shadow is kinda sorta high fantasy...except that it isn't, of course. My protag is too flawed to be a hero of the high fantasy type. And I am intrigued by the idea of a world in which many of the problems we address scientifically are handled by magic--but in which magic is a scarce commodity, and those who lack the political clout to lay hands on it try to use tech as a substitute, and the whole universe is not stuck in some perpetual deodorized Middle Ages. (And in which the difference between good and evil is a profoundly relevant question, but there is neither a Black Hat nor a White Hat. But I digress, as usual.) I am not the first one to think along these lines, of course. But I've been tinkering with this novel for a long time, and tonight I feel as if I may actually pull it off.

There will be Talentless Hack moments along the way, of course. But for tonight I am enjoying feeling competent.

Having something to say

The Fabulous Russ Marshalek (yes, that is his official title) took his turn on a group blog today:

A Good Blog is Hard To Find: I think I may have something to say

and like most of the things Russ tosses off as if they are effortless, this latest installment of Russ-thought made me think. Real Thoughts. I'm up to my eyeballs in pre-release, and so I can't give this set of thoughts the time to percolate they deserve. "I apologize for the length of this letter; I had not time to write a short one." So it goes.

Russ and I have never discussed his Southern Identity. I'm a Yankee, after all: an exile on this side of the Mason-Dixon. But to my Yankee eye he seems less a Southerner than a sophisticated, literary person. Like so many educated southerners, he speaks and writes in much the same idiom as his northern friends. Likewise his tastes in music and literature don't have the effect of an "I'm from the South" t-shirt. He's passionate about southern lit, of course, and evidently about southern culture in general. But when we first met I took him for a fellow Yankee exile. Which of course just means I thought he was a lot like me & the people I usually hang out with. You know, he's an interstitial kind of guy.

I was forcibly struck, on reading Russ's blog post, by the universality of the angst experienced by interstitial artists. Russ stands between Southern and something bigger (American, perhaps? I can't say for sure) and feels uncomfortable about his perceived lack of Southern cred, just as the interstitial writers whose work Mercury Retrograde publishes struggle with the discomfort of our collective "one foot in *literary*, one foot in SFF" stance. In the company of the New Yorker set, we feel inadequately literary. At SFF cons we feel *too* literary, not sufficiently geared towards Entertainment. Who the hell are we, really? Where do we get off, trying to pass ourselves off as either serious writers or SFF geeks? Is the world ready for or even interested in what we feel compelled to share?

Actually, the world is hungry for it. Because there are an awful lot of us interstitial folk out there, and we are dying for stories and memoirs and art of all flavors that connects us to one another, that allows us to share and extrapolate upon the experience of being neither this nor truly that. So many of us are interstitial in far more than one way, and works like the memoir of a southerner who wants to love his southern roots and still connect with a larger community remind us that even in our interstitiality, our not-quite-belongingness, we are part of a community. I stand between art and science, between fantasy and literature, between past and future, between female and male, between maturity and eternal adolescence, between Real Publishing and the fringe. Sometimes--perilously often--I feel suspended between humanity and something Other. It has been astonishing and validating for me to discover so many others who live with each of these flavors of interstitiality, and to connect with them via our shared understanding of its mystery.

I can't wait to see Russ's memoir. The chapter with dragons in it, especially, of course, but--even more than that--the part in which Russ reminds all of us who stand between worlds that it is our common alienness that makes us human together, and that it is in the unique and bizarre parts of our histories, our lives, and ourselves, that we have the most in common.

On Writing--Or Not

I am not writing right now. I cannot express how much this pains me; the writers among you will understand. It's not that I'm *blocked* or that I don't know what to write--it's that I can't find the time. I'm in a crunch period that began about two weeks ago and is likely to run two more, and I don't even have time to make dinner consistently or return phone calls not related to work (and I'm really sorry about that, btw. You know who you are.)

It's work, of course. The beautiful business of publishing. I am still the person responsible for most everything Mercury Retrograde does, and I don't want to complain about that: this is my brainchild, and I love the work. Well, except the filing and bookkeeping. In case you haven't heard, we have a book scheduled for official release on October 1st, and we are busily finalizing final things, scheduling Larissa's book tour, and doing truckloads of publicity. All very important and enjoyable stuff, and in many cases the first time I've done the things in question--which means there have been false starts and mid-course corrections, and just generally that things have taken longer than they will for the next book and the one after that. I understand all this, and it's not so hard to be philosophical about it, because I love the work.

But just the same there is a certain defrocked wizard on the verge of getting sucked into things it will take him years to fully understand, waiting for me in the study...and I know exactly what the next hundred pages should be. It's hard to be patient.

Must dig in and make the final push, down here in the office. Soon there will be things to read and see: a book, details of an author tour, a new Mercury Retrograde website, Mercury Retrograde's close-to-finalized catalog for next year. Right now it's insanity on the inside and pretty boring from outside. I'll be back in the study soon.

Decatur Book Festival: Dragon*Con Annex

From high atop the eyrie of the Flatiron Building, the Great Eye of Tor Books cast Its glance across the landscape--and Its attention chanced to fall upon the Decatur Book Festival. It had been looking for Dragon*Con, but what the hell. Criteria were considered: expected attendance of 75,000. Check. Book buyers and author panels. Check. Major metropolitan area. Check. Worthy of attention. Minions should be dispatched.

Later, some of the aforementioned minions came by and redirected Its attention to the actual Dragon*Con, only a short (according to the timetables) ride away on public transport, and breathed a collective sigh of relief when It blinked understanding and fixed Its gaze on the larger prize. Still, in some place on which it is perilous to speculate, a plan was forming. Why not take over two festivals at once? Mwahaha.

There is something about Tor which we SFF geeks cannot resist. Perhaps it is some sort of geekish pheromone. We don't even know what has lured us into these places in which It can enrapture our attention and make us buy books we didn't realize we needed. This is, I believe, similar to but not the same as the glamour by which It forces the corporate buyers at B&N and Borders to bow to Its whims. All I really know is that when I looked at the program for the Decatur Book Festival, having (for reasons I didn't understand until too late) decided to direct my attention there rather than Dragon*Con this year, there were several panels full of SFF authors. I confess it: my programming kicked in. I decided these panels were of interest.

Oh, yes, they were entertaining. I enjoyed listening to Kevin Anderson, Tobias Buckell, Cherie Priest and John Scalzi on Saturday morning. I was immediately intrigued by the similarity between this panel and a hundred other such panels I had attended at SFF cons. Perhaps author panels are the same everywhere, yes? Perhaps. When I realized all four authors are under contract with Tor, and that a couple of Tor editors were in attendance as well, I merely thought, Well, good for them. Decatur Book Festival is big enough to merit the attention of a New York house, after all.

It wasn't until I wandered into Brandon Sanderson's panel (I hesitate to call it that; the poor guy obviously ran all the way from Dragon*Con, and then was expected to handle a session invented by a teen literary group all alone) and recalled that he, too, is a Tor author that I began to understand. Props, btw, to Mr. Sanderson, who did a lovely job with the topic they threw at him, engaged the audience in lively discussion of SF and Fantasy and the relative merits thereof. Only at one moment did he begin to get all Literary (thus perking up my little ears in hopes of Yet More Interesting Discourse) and started talking about the Hero's Journey as documented by Joseph Campbell. But he caught himself immediately and brought the discussion back to the arena his fans desired.

That was my favorite moment of the entire festival, because I am a SFF geek and it reminded me of the difference between the things we talk about at literary cons (of which I am an unabashed fan) and the things we talk about at more fannish events.

But I am not sure I experienced the true Decatur Book Festival, because aside from those panels that turned out to be a part of Tor's plot to annex the Decatur Book Festival to Dragon*Con, I saw little besides the schmoozing, the power lunching, and the fans circulating among booths, drenched in their own sweat--all of which was pretty much like the rest of Dragon*Con. I had planned to attend both days, but (due, I suspect, to the Ungodly Heat, the Atlanta smog, or some unholy combination thereof) I spent the day working up to a migraine and most of the next day trying to recover.

I'm disappointed that I missed out on the True Decatur Book Festival. Next year I will make a point of attending some panels that have nothing to do with SFF and perhaps even hold some sort of power lunch with someone who doesn't really understand the difference between SF and F or what all the fuss about the distinction is. But I must say that there is one way in which Dragon*Con has it all over the Decatur Book Festival, and it has nothing to do with the proximity of a proper tiki bar in which to broker publishing deals.

Air conditioning.

Yes, Virginia, there is a difference

I am adamantly opposed to gender roles. I believe that, in any situation, the role a person adopts--should it be *necessary* to adopt a role at all--should be determined by aptitudes and inclinations, not a person's role in the reproductive process. As a parent, I have worked hard to give my children as gender-neutral an upbringing as possible, and to imbue them with the attitude that any path for which they have the ability is open to them. As a small child Daniel had and loved toys supposedly intended for children of both genders; Rachael has always been just as interested in playing some game involving mayhem and death as any of her male friends.

But it is an inescapable truth that certain things do lurk on our sex chromosomes that are different from things on the other flavor. And some of them are funny as hell. Here's my new favorite:

Last night my mother sent this joke to all the women in our family (a group which is understood to include my brothers' wives):

THE PERFECT DRESS

Jennifer's wedding day was fast approaching. Nothing could dampen her excitement -- not even her parents' nasty divorce.

Her mother had found the PERFECT dress to wear and would be the best dressed mother-of-the- bride ever! A week later, Jennifer was horrified to learn that her father's new young wife had bought the exact same dress as her mother! Jennifer asked her step mom to exchange it, but she refused.

'Absolutely not. I look like a million bucks in this dress, and I'm wearing it,' she replied.

Jennifer told her mother, who graciously said, 'Never mind, sweetheart. I'll get another dress. After all, it's your special day.'

A few days later, they went shopping and did find another gorgeous dress.

When they stopped for lunch, Jennifer asked her mother, 'Aren't you going to return the other dress? You really don't have another occasion where you could wear it.'

Her mother just smiled and replied, 'Of course I do, dear. I'm wearing it to the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding.'

When I read the joke, I laughed so hard that both kids came in from the living room to see what was so funny. I pulled back from the monitor to let them read. Rachael (who is 13) HOWLED. Daniel (one of the most perceptive people I know, particularly for that late-teens demographic) just looked bewildered.

"So where's the punchline?" he said.

And that is today's lesson in the real differences between men and women. :)

Must make time for knitting

It's the Anticraft. I'm in love.

Hmmm...

This little bit of synchronicity amused me greatly... It's Yet Another Internet Quiz:

What Planet Are You From?


this quiz was made by The Autist Formerly Known As Tim

Robot Russ vs Robot Zach! It's AWESOME!!!

Here it is, at last, with the gracious permission of Chris Hamer, concept artist extraordinaire.

It's AWESOME!

There is a linkable version of the image on Mercury Retrograde's Flickr photostream. Go here.

And definitely check out Chris's Myspace. Thanks for letting me share this, Chris!

The Biggest Robot Event EVER

With apologies to Zach Steele, I've gotta say it one more time: last night at Wordsmiths, Night One of the Save our Bookstore weekend at Wordsmiths, was AWESOME.

As Zach points out on the Wordsmiths blog, everybody who was there is a bit beyond the word, which we beat to death (including the infamous Pee-Wee's Playhouse wave that Alice instigated every time Jack Pendarvis read the word). But in typical Wordsmiths style, everything about the event was just fantastic! Jack Pendarvis gave the best reading I can recall attending, ever, period. It transcended *reading*. It was more like "performance art with books". Unforgettable and hilarious, which does not explain why both Tim Frederick from Baby Got Books and I look so bizarrely quizzical as we listen in this photo.

There was a way cool silent auction of Robot Items, some of which I tried and failed to win, as I generally do at silent auctions. (If one of you knows some secret of Silent Auction Winning, please tell me. Uh, privately. If you put it as a comment on the blog, well, then it won't be a secret anymore, will it?) But I still got the Big Score of the night: one of the infamous Robot Sketches which Chris Hamer, Ted Murphy and Andrew Bellury so graciously drew at their crowd-pleasing table at the back of the room. I asked for (and received!) a -- Say it with me, now -- AWESOME sketch of Zach & Russ as robots, which Chris drew and titled:

Russ VS Zack
Wordsmiths 4 EVER!!!

I am in the process of (I hope!) getting permission from Chris to publish the sketch here and in my other usual web haunts. I'll share it here ASAP--or else you'll have to come to my house to see it.

Wordsmiths 4 EVER!!!

A friend in need

If you've been hanging out here at all, you know how I love Wordsmiths--and with good reason. Wordsmiths is a rare gem among bookstores. Many of us are finding interesting ways to keep things going right now--but the little bits (or, in some cases, the generous donations) we can afford to share can make a huge difference. Please click through to Wordsmiths and hit their DONATE button, which will take you to PayPal. Be as generous as you can.

Thanks. Everyone who loves books and the independent arts scene thanks you.


Wordsmiths Books

We need your help to save
our bookstore.

Beginning today, August 4th, and leading through a weekend fundraising event August 15th-August 17th, I am opening myself to your assistance. It doesn't matter how small your contribution is--with enough help it will all add up in the end. If you want to offer $25, $50, $100, $200, anything at all, it can help. My greatest hope is to not only save our bookstore now, but to offer in return for your help some sense of benefit when we are once again stabilized.

The fact is that Wordsmiths Books is, as an idea and in execution, a great bookstore and it can be so much more given the chance. We are not fighting declining sales, nor are we fighting customer apathy, or even a lagging book market. We are fighting only the debt created by starting in the wrong location. Despite the depths of our need, despite the fact that it leaves me no alternative but to seek your help, we still see the opportunity that lies before us here, on the Square and in the welcoming home of Decatur. We wish to have the opportunity to survive here, to grow and continue to bring to you the same level of entertainment and literary merit that you have come to expect from us. We just need help to get there. We need your help to survive today. If you are willing to help, you can call the store at (404) 378-7166, you can stop by or you can visit www.wordsmithsbooks.com and click on the Donation button on our home page. If you prefer to utilize the mail, then our address is: 545 N. McDonough Street, Decatur Georgia 30030.

There are questions that you have, I am sure. Please ask them. Email me at zach@wordsmithsbook.com, call the store (404-378-7166) or stop by. I am not averse to discussing the matter on any level to anybody. Simply put, we--the entire Wordsmiths Books family--are at your mercy. I will be blogging daily (or as close to daily as is possible) with updates and further information. Again, no amount is too small. We want nothing more than the opportunity to continue to be the bookstore we have been all along. Your help is greatly appreciated and will not be forgotten.

Thank you,

Zachary Steele, Owner/Operator Wordsmiths Books

The Breaking Dawn Prom at Wordsmiths

I've been a blogging delinquent since the Shorn launch. Same old story: when I'm getting ready to be away from the office for a sustained period, the period leading up to the trip becomes a frenzied attempt to prepare the world for my absence. And when I come out the other end of something that requires all my attention (frex: launch party, hosting a mini-track at a con, the publication of a book, etc.) then my return to the office becomes a huge exercise in catching up. So basically what I did between the Shorn launch and today was (a) catch up on stuff that got shouldered aside by the all-encompassing launch event and (b) prepare to be gone again, for my writing retreat.

But last night, between the frenzy to stay on top of things and the impending bliss of time alone with the muse, I got to go to a party. A way cool party. Doubtless the coolest of its kind on this side of the Mason-Dixon. (Hey, gotta give the launch party Stephanie Meyer attended the Coolest ranking, right? I just wonder whether they had Crepuscular Cookies.)

The Breaking Dawn Prom at Wordsmiths: what a blast! I can't remember the last time I was in the same room with so many female people and so few males. Nobody seemed to mind--especially not the males. :) Ferosha Akoustika was awesome, as one might expect. And there was no hair-pulling in the line while all those fans waited to buy the book.

Now I just have to wait for Rachael to finish reading our copy.

Semi-famous

Last week I had a really amusing talk with Phil Kloer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was working, but for me it was just an opportunity to chat about Stephanie Meyer's books and why females of all ages are obsessed with them. Phil also talked to Rachael, and to a significant percentage of the literate female population of Atlanta, it seems. Fortunately he seems to enjoy Ms. Meyer's books as much as the rest of us...

After he talked to everyone, Phil wrote an article about the Stephanie Meyer Phenomenon and all the Breaking Dawn parties taking place tonight. Yes, I'm in the article. Rachael looks so cute in the picture!

We'll be at a Breaking Dawn party tonight, with the Cool Kids at Wordsmiths. If you're local, stop by. We'll be looking very Goth and pulling for Team Edward.

Mercury Retrograde and Wordsmiths had a party...

And tons of people came! We had a blast, thanks in large part to the exuberant hospitality and warm professionalism of the crew at Wordsmiths. Larissa read from Shorn; Ari Warner exhibited a few of his wonderful works; Todd shared a delightful tasting menu.

It was also a historic event: the first time all the Mercury Retrograde authors were ever in one place. Here we are:

In back, from right: Zach Steele, whose novel Anointed will be coming out in March; Brett Shanley, whose novel is nearing completion and who will be editing Anointed; Geoff McVey, who is at work on a novel I can't wait to share with everyone. In center, from right: Ari Warner, the artist who drew the map for Shorn; Larissa Niec, author of Shorn; and yours truly. In front is Russ Marshalek, Zach Steele's creative partner, who is responsible for the "new media" aspects of the Anointed project.

So far I cannot find a single picture in which it is possible to see Brett's entire face. This is the best of a bad lot in that regard.

But you can go see for yourself, on our flickr set from the launch weekend. And you can also see (some eerily similar) photos taken by the crew at Wordsmiths, also on flickr.

It was a huge thrill to see so many friends at the launch! Tim Frederick of Baby Got Books stopped by and was a delight as usual. What a pleasure to get re-acquainted, and how sweet of him to make a fuss over us on the blog! Ron Savarese of Home Planet and his delightful wife Mary stopped by to share the love; and Sonja Benjamin, to whom goes a very high percentage of the credit for this whole crazy thing being possible, was a radiant presence. And did I mention that Dr. Jenn Angerami drove all the way down from Woodstock?

Speaking of the people who make it possible, Mark and Rachael and the whole unsung crew at Wordsmiths were instrumental. A million thanks would only be a start.

Shorn launch weekend!

Already they are arriving. Soon my house will be full. Tonight: the open house. If you're local, stop by. Tomorrow: brunch for our out-of-towners, hanging around watching Todd cook (drool!), and THE LAUNCH at Wordsmiths.

Larissa will give a reading; Ari will exhibit some of his works that are *not* in the book and sign repros of the one that is (oh, yeah, Larissa will be signing books, too); Todd will feed us wonderful foods; and we will all drink champagne.

Oh, yeah, and did I mention that there will be an exciting Announcement?

Cause there will.

See you there.

Sweet, Beautiful Words on Wordsmiths.com

Wordsmiths is just the coolest. They are the hippest bookstore in the ATL, and hugely supportive of local and independent artists of all flavors. Not just writers, mind you: on any given month you can catch local and not-so-local independent musicians, poets, spoken-word artists, and events that defy reduction to soundbytes, all hosted with genuine warmth, enthusiasm, and respect. And it is rapidly becoming an unmissable book tour destination. I knew when I asked them to host a first-ever launch from an unknown small press, I'd at least get a respectful hearing. Instead they have been wildly supportive, not only welcoming our little group but making it possible for us to stage a launch as interstitial as Mercury Retrograde and as big as a little press's dreams.

And now, this. Russ has put up this lovely entry in the Wordsmiths blog about the launch, Larissa's book, and Mercury Retrograde. Read all the beautiful things Russ said. Then come to Wordsmiths on Saturday night and shower him--and all the Wordsmiths crew--with confetti.

One of the nicest beatings ever

So, yeah, Wynette read my draft of the first two acts of Affairs. Her take:

"This would be a really good book from anybody but you. You can do better."

Uh, thanks? Uh, uhm...really. How am I supposed to feel?

Let's be clear: she's right. The things she bitched about were things that have been troubling me as I've been writing: some serious flaws in Deaclan's motivation which--were I to address them--would derail my trip towards that plot point this novel had to hit; the way plot had to keep giving way to the weight of backstory and worldbuilding this novel was trying to carry. There's other stuff I would like to improve, too, but those are the things that can't be addressed within the current framework. The bottom-line problem is that I am a character-driven writer and I've been trying to write to a plot point. Which is to say that I've been writing a plot-driven novel. Of course I can do better than that.

So, where do we go from here? The headline: this book won't go to press this year. Oh, it *could*: I'm the publisher, after all. And it wouldn't be an embarrassment in the scheme of things...but it wouldn't be my best art. And that would be sorta pointless. Instead I will dig back in and attack this story (which, as those of you who've been playing along know, will have numerous volumes by the time it's done, mostly because the idea is Too Freakin Big) from the other possible angle of entry. Which will obviate (no, who am I kidding? alleviate) the worldbuilding problem I've been fighting. I'd actually had a hard time deciding which of these two points of entry to use, and now I have sufficient data to be certain which is the way to go. It's going to be easier, and probably better, this way.

Why, then, the perpiscacious reader asks, if trying it the other way will be easier and better, didn't you just damn well do it that way in the first place?

That would be because I had made the mistake of attempting to think like a publisher.

Oh, sure, I've got to think like a publisher. But when thinking like a publisher gets in the way of thinking like an artist, I will succeed as neither. I'd chosen Affairs as the starting point for the series because it's got a better hook. It will probably be easier to sell. All things being equal, that's better, obviously. The problem is that all things aren't equal. The other approach, beginning with The Shadow of the Sun, is more art and less hook. Hamlet meets the Tain Bo Cuilagne meets Paradise Lost. How the hell do you soundbyte that? Who besides Irish mythology geeks has even *heard* of the Tain Bo?

Don't glaze over. It will be a good ride, nay a great one. It just doesn't have that nice *hook*.

Back to the study for me, right after the launch.

Performance Anxiety

Last night the vast majority of Affairs, which I have designated Acts I & II (because, structurally speaking, that's what they are, even though there is no explicit designation in the novel) went to my alpha readers. Now it is time to write Act III, which will be relatively short. I know what *must* happen in this act, e.g. the climax & conclusion: I feel confident of how I will write them. But there is a small set of plot points which, were time and word count no issue, I would also include--and I am dithering over whether to include them or push them into the next volume.

I use the word "dithering" advisedly. I am in my full-on neurotic-writer place this morning. I've had to get out my magical Writing Earrings and Writing Mug which I bought up in the mountains during last year's writing retreat. (How did they get to be magical? By association. I bought them in my Writing Place, during a week--a WEEK--when I slammed out 75 rather kick-ass pages. Have I mentioned I can't wait to get back up there next month?)

I don't have time to dither. The Shorn launch is next weekend, and one of the Mercury Retrograde authors plans to bring me a ms. while he's here for the event. It will make today's neurosis look like a quiet afternoon at the beach if I have not finished this novel, which I planned to finish in May, by then. And I'll be damned if I will be STILL WORKING on this novel at this year's retreat. What's a neurotic to do?

Well, I know what comes before that decision point. I will go write that this morning, and trust the muse to know what he's doing, as usual. I'm fairly certain he already knows exactly what to do, and the reason I'm dithering is that I'm applying the wrong side of my brain to the problem.

Must go write.

I just broke Myspace

Gah. All I wanted to do was look at some stuff Kortnee did on the Mercury Retrograde Myspace page. I accidentally clicked the "Myspace Latino" button down at the bottom of the page-- I SWEAR, it was an ACCIDENT-- and now I can't get the damn thing to stop speaking spanish to me.

How do I get back to the English-speaking Myspace? Help.

Nerves...of steel

The closer I get to the end of Affairs, the more ways it finds to make me nervous. Today I am writing a scene that must be there for structural reasons--but it is turning out to have a surprising emotional charge, complete with elements I must keep under control lest I pull in thematic stuff that belongs in the next volume, because it is the first time Lesle and Deaclan have been alone in the same room since he pulled the rug out from beneath me *again*. I am once again walking the tightrope of being true to what these characters would really think, do, and say about everything that has happened of late--and controlling the flow of the novel.

This is complicated by the sheer mechanical issue of page count, which in turn is complicated by Mark.

Mark has been upper management for the vast majority of his career, which means he's got finely-honed methodologies for attempting to control things beyond his power. Since he helped me arrive at appropriate pricing for Shorn in the UK and European markets, one of those things has been Affairs. Suddenly he's gone from simply being proud of my artistic achievements to seeing the business side of it-- and he asks me questions like "When will you be done?"

(That all depends how much help I get on my mundane tasks, doesn't it?)

And "How long is it now?"

This is because he has learned to calculate the cost of producing a book. So rather than finally going to sleep last night, he's doing page-count math in his head and telling me that if I go all the way up to the 240K-word-count limit Wynette assures me I must observe if I am to keep the book under $20 on the cover, I will never make any money on this.

Now, which of my two advisers has published books before? Sigh.

I am trying not to take this personally. I know this is just a sign that he's fully on board and engaged in the emotional process with me, and it is simply a fact of his personality that things beyond his control make him crazy. But now, as I sit in the study writing this two-scenes-from-the-Act-3-break moment, I keep finding my eye on the little window in the menu bar that tells how many words I've used up, my attention distracted by the page count in this chapter.

Yeah, you've gotta have nerves of steel to be a writer-publisher.

This looks interesting

Wonderlands on Ning

Wonderlands, apparently, is a social network devoted to the fantasy genre. They aim to be wide-reaching. It looks potentially quite cool.

This is my weekend to dig back in to the final section of Affairs, so I can't go play on a new social network right now...but this intrigues me. If any of you take the plunge, please let me know what you think.