The strains of John Darnelle’s Mountain Goats singing about Sax Rohmer (it always makes me think about Charles, who had all of the Fu Manchu novels), the girls sitting watching The Gilmore Girls (do they even get most of the humor? – lucky we’re still in season 2), an empty mail inbox, the vague feeling that some deadline is slipping by while I try to relax, and the knowledge that breakfast needs to be made shortly: such is my early Saturday morning.
I’m at the end of another week, faced with a hopefully relaxing long weekend. Today Jessica has her first real sleepover, Alisa’s coming over for coffee, and Sophie’s hoping for a ‘mom’n'dad’n'sophe’ day. Somewhere along the way I’ve got to try to find a suit for Howard’s dinner in San Jose (do not ask), perhaps do a little shopping, and generally just give my thoughts a chance to settle. I’ve been reading a lot of short fiction lately. Got to get on top of the year’s best stuff. BTW, did you notice that Kij Johnson is on a total tear right now, and that there doesn’t seem a lot of awesome hard SF this year?
What else? I seem to have fallen into a lengthy conversation offline about the merits and demerits of online publishing. I don’t see any material difference between putting a story on screen or on a piece of paper. The thing is, from a career perspective, is it either/or? I don’t think so, but I need to ponder the best way forward from here.
2010′s priorities are on my mind. I’ll be mostly out of contract by Easter if all goes well. The year’s best is signed up, Eclipse is ongoing, so is Locus (of course), and there are a few projects bubbling away, but something new? Maybe.
i thought the objective was to reduce the stress for next year? :P
Pleased you mentioned that, Jonathan. I was surprised to see that your Best and Eclipse series are available electronically through Baen’s webscriptions. But why can’t you buy them as once-off downloads? I don’t think it’s worth the subscription, which forces you to buy the equivalent of a book a month.
I would be perfectly happy to pay full price for an e-book, in return for the freedom control the expenditure.
I’ll tell you what difference this makes. I missed Eclipse 1, for example. If I could buy it now as a e-book, I would. But if it’s a matter of ordering a paper copy, I won’t bother. Instead, I’ll just keep up with current books. The instantaneous gratification does make a difference – for this consumer, anyway.
Are there enough 50 year writers out there still producing to be in an anthology? I can only think of three or four.
Probably not. To till a book you’d need a dozen: I can think of fewer than that. Make it 40, though, and it could be done.
All of the Eclipse series should be available electronically.
Hi Jonathan
The Conquering Swords, can you divulge the table of contents yet?
Cheers
Not yet. I’m not sure we’ll release it until next year, but we shall see. Thank you for your interest, though.
Then lets have a 40 year blowout celebration anthology. That would be fun. Showing my age I suppose.
The Eclipse books are available electronically at webscriptions if you subscribe, but I don’t want to subscribe. Nowhere else, far as I can tell.
Who the heck is Stephenie Meyer anyway? She sure made a simple googlig exercise diffeicult.
As, indeed, is the spelling of “difficult”.