Bryce: Road Warrior

 Back on the planes today. Hoping that they go more smoothly than last time. Actually, by the time you read this, I should (theoretically) already be on the bus to Portland. Taking the red eye from Salt Lake to Charlotte, then the normal eye from Charlotte to Boston.

Rumor has it no Colombian soccer teams will be on the flight, though there might be one from Ecuador.

You never know.

Sometimes I really hate the cheap Bryce who buys the plane tickets. Can I just have that on the record? When I'm nice and comfy in my living room, looking at ticket prices, I'm willing to commit future Traveling Bryce to just about anything. Five stops in three countries? And I save $15? Where do I sign?!

Then it comes time for me to actually fly that crazy route, and I wonder what in the world I was thinking. I swear never to do that again.

And then a few months later, I'm back to doing it. Because I'm cheap, folks. We all know this fact.

I must say--I'd like to get to a point where I have enough money that I can start taking direct flights out of cities that are close to me.

One day.

One day.

Sci-Fi/Fantasy Conventions: CONduit Summary

The conference is over and done now, and I thought I might report back on how it went. What panels I was on, what I did with my time out here--that sort of thing.

A lot of people have asked me what exactly these conferences are like. The simplest explanation is that they're one of those conventions where the people dress up in costumes. That usually clicks with non-geeks, and they get an idea. (Of course, some people like to make fun of those costumes. I personally think they're awesome. A lot of them clearly took a ton of time and effort to perfect. CONduit had a guy walking around in an eight foot Chewbacca outfit, complete with bow caster. He looked incredible. We also had a Batman, storm troopers, Darth Vader, Ghostbusters--just a ton of great outfits.)

But no, not everyone dresses up at these. Actually, often there are quite a few authors at them, come to talk to people about their books or about the craft of writing. They also do signings and readings. I was on eight panels this year, which was perhaps a tad much. In order of appearance, here are the panels I did:

• Adaptations/Novelizations--Discussing the processes and pitfalls that go into both. I love talking about adaptation, and I could do so for hours at a time. Unfortunately, they stopped us at an hour. It was a fun panel.
• e-Publishing--How and why to e-Publish. Advantages and disadvantages. Lots of good audience questions on this one. I think many people are turning to e-Publishing because they're giving up on getting traditionally published, or they think it's easier. I could say a lot on this topic (and I did at the panel), but that's a blog post for another day.
• 100 years of Dinosaur Films--I'll admit: I was out of my league on this one. I've seen a number of dinosaur movies, and I had some questions for the other panelists, but I was by far the least qualified person on the panel. Not a good feeling when you're up there. Not that I made an idiot out of myself (I think), but still . . .
• YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy You Should be Reading--This was a great panel staffed mainly with professional YA librarians (and me). We went over as many book recommendation as we could in 55 minutes. Lots of fun.
• Raising a Proper Geekling--I thought I would really like this panel, and I did in many ways. But at the same time, I felt like it became a bit too preachy at times, with people on the panel and in the audience presenting things in a little too "you MUST do this" sort of a way. I raise my kids the way I raise them. Yes, I think it's the *right* way, but I also try to refrain from telling other people that it's the *only* way. You do what works for you, and chances are, you shouldn't be taking too much advice from a sci-fi/fantasy panel. Though this kind of heavy-handed advice only accounted for maybe 5% of what was said. Enough to make me uncomfortable a few times, though overall it was a fun panel.
• Lord of the Rings/Hobbit Movies--A blast of a panel. We got to discuss why the original movies worked and what was happening with the two Hobbit movies. I was totally in my element for this, and I had a great time.
• Summer Movies--A very sparsely attended panel. We sat around and discussed upcoming movies for the rest of the year. I had a great time. More people should have come. :-)
• Fantasy Not Set in White/Medieval Europe--My last panel was the highlight of the conference for me. It was packed with about 40 or 50 people, and I was on the same panel as Tamora Pierce. The topic was right up my alley, and I had a great time. We ran through a series of recommendations of books to check out beyond the standard stereotypes. Good times.

Of course, going to a con isn't just about what panels you present on. I attended panels on podcasting, top YA books, creating memorable characters, and more. I hung out with awesome people, saw old friends again, and just had a great time. It was a busy three days, but well worth the trouble and effort of flying out here to go to the con. (Although next year I'm thinking I might shake things up a bit and go to LTUE, instead. Maybe the flights will go more smoothly in February? (Riiiiiiiiiiiiight).)

Anyway--any of you at the con? Have any insights to share? Speak up!

Movie Review: Men in Black 3

I managed to see Men in Black 3 on opening night, even in the middle of my con schedule. That's dedication to movies, folks. Look at what I do for you?

I'll be honest. (As always) This wasn't a movie I was too jazzed to see. The first one was good fun. The second one had some big flaws, and that was years ago. What were the odds that a third one--so much later than the last--would be halfway decent?

This has "bomb" written all over it, and I hadn't heard much in the way of good buzz to make me think otherwise. So my expectations were quite low. It shouldn't be a surprise that the film exceeded them.

What should be a surprise is that's it's actually a really fun, well-done movie. It's got its share of plot holes, sure, but it's a great summer movie.

Smith goes back in time to save the life of Tommy Lee Jones, played in the past by Josh Brolin (who is downright uncanny in the role). The movie is consistently funny, with Smith churning out his one liners one after another. The action scenes crackle. The acting is all solid. The effects are a ton of fun, too. Really well done.

Not to like? Some of the plot twists are a bit much. I also felt like they could have done more with the Will Smith in 1969 set up. They do a few token stabs, but that's about it--and that could have been a real highlight of the movie, I thought.

But really, with a sequel to a sequel, you shouldn't be expecting the next Casablanca. It focuses on doing with the MiB movies did before: being a fun alien romp. It's well worth the price of admission, and seeing it on the big screen would be much more fun than on a small screen at home.

Three stars. Give it a whirl.

Movie Review: New in Town

On the bus ride to the airport yesterday, they had a movie I probably never would have watched otherwise. (Amazing what we can be willing to do when we're a captive audience.) New in Town wins the award for Most Formulaic Movie Bryce Has Seen In A Long While.

It's not a particularly bad movie. It's just that it's executed with clockwork precision, and when it comes to a RomCom, you don't want to feel like you're watching something run by the German Transit Authority.

Rene Zellweger is an up and coming ruthless white collar head honcho, sent to Wisconsin to downsize a plant, where the union head is Harry Connick, Jr. So. Think about that for a minute. There's the premise. You can tell me the whole movie without even thinking, can't you? Like the fact that Zellweger starts out as a heartless witch--until she gets to know the great people of the little town. How she and Connick don't get along at all, but end up falling in love, only to have something jeopardize that happily ever after. But then it all comes together in a big romantic swell at the end.

Sorry. Did I just ruin the movie for you?

And every other formulaic RomCom while I was at it?

My bad.

And actually, the more I think about this movie, the more cringe-worthy it becomes. Like how Zellweger is portrayed as being cold and cruel--until she gets a man, at which point she's suddenly a caring woman. Because single women are dangerous harpies. Gotta get 'em married up, quick. Or how the business people are all heartless, trying to fire at least ten people before breakfast each day. And the small town folk, they're all great people. They have their warts, but they're quality.

Reductive tripe.

You can miss this one, folks. Two stars. Maybe. So unless you're stuck on a bus with nothing better to do, why not go do something else? Like watch a slug marathon, or paint your grass green. You know--something productive. I actually like RomComs, believe it or not. I've seen quite a few. This is one you can miss.

The Plane Trip from Hades

I'm finally in Utah, at the conference right now. Yesterday's trip ended up taking 22 hours, due to a variety of reasons--some normal, some more exotic. There were thunderstorms in Newark, which delayed the plane I was supposed to be on. And then there was that Colombian soccer team.

What--you've never been delayed because of a Colombian soccer team before? You're missing out.

They were being rambunctious at the back of the plane (sort of like the kids who were always rowdy at the back of the bus). And right before we were going to take off (after taxing and all that jazz), we turned around to boot them from the airplane.

That tacked on another two hours to my trip, as we had to wait for a gate, then wait for security, then wait for them to argue, then wait for them to find their bags, then wait to taxi again.

Have I mentioned how much I love flying?

But I'm here at CONduit. And maybe even on some panels today--it's still kind of up in the air. Look for me if you're here--I'm wearing the glow in the dark Vodnik t-shirt (on sale, but supplies are going fast. I've got 2 XL, 5 L, and 3 S left. If you wear medium, you'll have to wait for the next round of orders).

I'll try to update with how it's going later.

Toodles!

Entertaining Yourself at the Airport

So I'm off on another grand adventure. Sitting in Boston airport right now. Terminal B, if you're stalking me. I wasn't looking forward to this travel schedule today. Seven hours of airport time, plus seven hours of flight time? Blech.

However, my mood has brightened considerably for two reasons. First, a friend was online and available to play Magic the Gathering. That took up a goodly amount of time, and they were some really epic games. Second? The free wifi is fast enough to play Diablo 3. Mwa ha ha ha!

Anyway.

Not sure what my posting schedule's going to be like over the next few days. I'm at CONduit for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then off in the mountains, and then down in Provo before heading back to Maine on Wednesday night. I'll try to post when I can, but you all know how it is.

Try to get by without me. And everybody please leave Maine in one piece until I get back.

Back to Middle School: My First Author Visit

I had my first author visit yesterday afternoon--taking a trip to speak with a class of sixth graders at the local middle school library. I have to admit it: I was nervous. Some of this had to do with having never done one of these before. Some of it had to do with the audience. I haven't been back to middle school once since I left it as a student, and I wondered if the less-than-thrilling time I had a student would continue on as an adult. (No--I wasn't really terrified or anything, but I think the inner-middle-school kid in me was still doing its darndest to not go back.)

Kids can be mean. They can be cruel. I think it's because they sometimes feel like they're living in a dog eat dog world, where the only way to feel good about yourself is to make sure someone else feels worse. I'm not saying all kids are like this, but there are some out there. Who didn't go through middle school--and maybe a lot of junior high--feeling insecure and on tenuous footing?

Or was that just me?

(It wasn't until high school that I felt I started to come into my own. Figure out who I was as a person, what my likes and dislikes were, etc. And then it wasn't until after my mission--and well into college--that all of that started to be cemented. I think this might be a big part of why I write YA fiction. The process of finding out who you really are is just something that interests me. But you didn't come to this post to read about that. You want to know how the visit went.)

I'm a big fan of winging it, despite what my hyper-prepared church talks might seem to portray. I do little in the way of preparation. I just have confidence in my ability to talk about stuff I know well, whether it's one on one or to a whole group. So I didn't have a powerpoint ready. I didn't have notes. I just stood up there and talked about what I'd been asked to talk about: all the effort that went in to writing Vodnik.

Usually, I rely on my audience becoming engaged by my charming personality--hoping that they'll start actually asking me questions. (You can't rely on this when you're teaching a freshman library class at 8am. Then you get a bunch of bored, blank looks. I have a lot of practice with those looks by now.) I had no idea how middle schoolers would treat me. JK Rowling I am not.

But you know what? It went really well. They were listening--even the guys on the back row. They asked me loads of great questions (How much did I have to pay to get my book published? How much do I make on each book? Where is Slovakia? Where can I get an awesome T-shirt like that? (Yes, they really did ask that.) How do I know when a story is finished? How old do you have to be to get a book published? Where do you find out who to send it to? Just a ton of questions, and not just from one or two of the students, either.

I answered all of them happily, and I even had to cut things short, since we were out of time. Afterward, a ton of them wanted to come up and look at the book and ask questions about it. I've never seen a group of people so excited to get business cards before (though they are pretty cool cards, I must say. Vodnik's cover looks great at any size).

I was even happier when I found out from the librarian afterward that some of the kids asking a lot of questions were students who were usually just silent during class. That made me feel like a million bucks.

So it was a fantastic experience. I would love to do it again, and I hope to be able to often.

If you have a class you'd like me to visit--or even to Skype in to (though I'm not sure Skype would be as easy to really engage with students)--let me know. I'd be happy to set one up, as long as you don't live too far away.

Why the School District Meeting was an Exercise in Futility

So as promised, I attended the school board meeting tonight, foolishly thinking rational people were going to be involved in a decision making process.

Boy, was I wrong.

Impassioned people were involved in a public display of willful ignorance. I'm sorry, but I just call it as I see it. It turned out that the purpose of the meeting was not--as had been understood by most people there--to reject or accept the budget. It was to jump through a legal hoop that would then let the public accept or reject the school budget on Thursday. At this meeting, legally all that could be done was reduce the budget to a smaller amount. No funds could change categories. Essentially, this was the meeting people could go to to object if they felt the overall budget was too high. If they felt like people were getting paid too much.

Well, when you have a huge group of people show up, wanting to vote "no," it appears they're not satisfied unless they get to vote "no."

For 3/4 of the meeting, it looked like the people in attendance were going to pass a school budget of about $16. No million there, folks. Sixteen dollars and zero cents. For the year.

Why? Because they wanted to "prove a point" to the people. To show how displeased they were with how things were being run. Never mind that if--by some freak of chance--the towns had accepted that budget, then the entire school district wouldn't be funded for the next year, which in turn would have put all those impassioned people out of a job. Never mind that fixing such a huge clusterbomb of a decision would have inevitably made things worse, which would have meant more jobs cut.

They were explained all this by a lawyer, the superintendent, and several school board members.

Didn't matter. They wanted blood, and they were going to get it, come hell or high water.

Now I didn't go because I wanted to cut jobs. I went because I believed that hard decisions have to be made. I didn't go to attend a figurative mobbing.

It was nasty, folks. Downright nasty. And I get that people felt threatened, but this wasn't supposed to be personal. The school board was faced with tough decisions, and they'd done their best to make those decisions in the interest of the public good.

Suffice it to say, it wasn't a fun meeting. And no, I didn't get up and make an impassioned plea for sanity. You might as well jump in a lion's den and start persuading them to become vegetarians.

Thankfully, the $16 budget didn't pass. The full budget passed, with the promise that the school board would go back to the bargaining table with the custodians.

In my opinion, this sets a terrible precedent. It shows that all people need to do to bully the school board into a decision is get enough like-minded individuals in a room and try to vote a $16 budget through. What's worse, the superintendent made it sound like there'd been money they had squirreled away for contingencies, and that they could find a different way forward. He made it sound like all these impassioned people had it spot on--the school board really did have it in for the custodians, and had just been trying to cut their positions out of spite.

What's incredibly frustrating to me is that people will lose their jobs over the decision that happened tonight. Either that, or students will suffer from getting programming cuts. But the people who lose their jobs or the students who lose their programming won't have a chance to be willfully ignorant in the face of rational thought. They won't have the chance to speak out in their own defense. Because it's all going to have to happen at the last minute.

Like I said earlier, the money has to come from somewhere. Fact.

So I'm trying to think of how a situation like this could be avoided in the future. I think it all comes down to the fact that people thought they were choosing between cutting jobs or saving jobs. There was no alternative given. If a real set of alternatives had been presented to the public from the beginning, I don't think one special interest group would have been able to ramrod their opinions down the throat of the board.

What I mean to say is that if it had been publicly stated that "either A loses their job or B programs get cut," then you would have seen more of a real debate. Suddenly the decision isn't "cut jobs or save jobs"--it's "which jobs or programs get cut." (Yes, theoretically you could argue that all staff at the school could take a pay cut or something like that--but with the number of unions involved, I highly doubt such a course would ever be feasible.)

If the choice last night had been "Outsource Custodians or Cut Special Education," it would have been a very different meeting. It's easy to argue against a single bad option. But when you have to actively choose between a variety of bad options? That's difficult.

And that's what the school board had to do. They did their best to look at all the options on the table--did what they had been elected to do. And they spent hours and hours--weeks and months--doing that. The outsourcing option was what they came up with.

The public didn't have to make that choice. They could just sit back and take pot shots at the "vendetta" the school board had against the support staff.

That has to change in the future, if we're to avoid a debacle like this. Maybe if the public is forced to see the difficult decisions that have to be made, then some rationality will return to the debate.

Enough. I've wasted enough of my life being irritated about this.

Deep breaths, Bryce.

Deep breaths.

Why I'm Going to Be a Jerk This Evening at the School Budget Vote

Tonight (7pm at the high school gym) is a vote for the local school budget. There's been no small amount of debate locally, as the district has proposed cutting custodian positions in favor of contracting out those positions to an outside agency. This will save money, but might well result in local people losing their jobs. It will certainly result in local people getting paid less to do those jobs (assuming they get hired by the new agency).

I have no idea if this will pass.

But I'm all for it.

That's right. I'm a jerk--if you listen to all the chatter online on local news sites. By voting to outsource, I'm supposedly sticking a knife in the back of all our hard working custodians.

I don't like thinking of myself as a jerk. I certainly don't want to stab anyone in the back. So why would I vote for something like this? Because we don't have enough money.

That's right. There are not enough coins in the piggy bank. And Americans--it seems to me--have gotten really good at spending money that isn't there. Heck--the world has gotten great at it. And for me, it all comes down to wise budgeting.

I have a budget. I live according to it. Pretty strictly. Would I love to be able to take the family out to eat at nice restaurants, go out to the movies all the time, buy even more expensive gadgets, take trips to Europe more often, save more money, donate more to the poor? You bet. Why don't I? I have a credit card. I have several, actually. I could use the credit to live pretty large for a few months--maybe even a few years. You could argue that--since I am technically capable of withdrawing a large sum of money on credit and donating it to the poor, for example--I'm a total jerk for not doing so.

Don't those people need the money more than I do?

Maybe.

But I don't have the money.

Wishing I had the money doesn't make it any less a figment of my imagination.

True, some say. But why take this out on our poor custodians? Again--I'm not trying to "take it out" on anybody. I have friends who are custodians here in this school district. For me, it comes down to what the school district is supposed to be doing best. Is it educating students, or is it employing our local friends? Both worthy endeavors, certainly. But in a school, which should be the priority?

What will suffer if we outsource? Local workers might get laid off. They might get rehired at a lower rate. The cleaning of the schools might change. They might get worse. I don't know for certain.

What will surfer if we don't outsource? Most likely the following cuts:

• elementary math interventionist teacher
• literacy specialist (teacher)
• behavior specialist
• $30,000 of the technology budget
• $84,000 more dollars back to tax payers
• With more teachers on the block next year.

So either way, people are losing jobs. That's unavoidable. But as a consequence of these cuts, students' learning will be affect. That's not an "if."

If I have to choose between kids getting a quality education--even in a slightly dirtier building--and them getting a poorer education in an immaculate building where you can eat off the floors . . . education comes first. If I have to choose between local people getting less money, and local students losing education opportunities--in a school--again, education comes first.

Can we cut other things? Maybe. Sports is a popular punching bag. Music programs. Special needs. But our district has cut deep into other areas already.

To me, the choice is an easy one. Unfortunately, it sounds like most people disagree. I'm going tonight, planning on being in the minority. Planning on being the jerk. And it would be really easy to come out fighting for the people who would lose their jobs. I certainly would look like a much nicer person. But I think that by so doing, the education of our area will be harmed. Not broken and shattered, certainly--but harmed.

It's just too bad people can't see that and recognize it for what it is.

School districts don't exist to employ people. They exist to educate students.

Ramping Up the Tension: Vodnik Chapter Six

We're up to the commentary for Chapter Six of Vodnik this week: the chapter where Tomas has a bbq and then almost turns into one himself. I've got two main things to say about this section. The first concerns the plot, and the second is on the food and the setting.

Plotwise, it took me a bit to find where this section was in the original draft. That's because it used to occur a full quarter of the way into the book. Here's a rundown, chapter by chapter, of the first draft up to this point (Warning--I'll be touching on some spoilers here. And some things that seem like spoilers, but ended up getting changed through the revision process, so they aren't actually spoilery):

1. Tomas and his best friend Peter discuss Tomas's upcoming move to Slovakia--and how less than enthused Tomas is about it.
2. Tomas packs for the move and confronts his parents about how unhappy he is. They ask him if he remembers anything from his childhood there.
3. They travel to Slovakia, and Tomas complains about the cars and the apartment. He glimpses the castle. That looks cool.
4. Tomas has his first water vision, and then he goes to the joust.
5. Katka takes Tomas on a tour of the city. He sees Death at the end of the chapter.
6. Tomas and Katka go and confront Lubos about Tomas's vision. Lubos doesn't believe them.
7. Tomas talks to his parents about how he's not having a great time. Lubos offers him a job at the castle.
8. Katka takes Tomas shopping and to the movies. He has his second water vision. Katka gets her first seizure.
9. Katka and Tomas talk about the seizures and Tomas's water visions
10. Tomas and Katka have the barbecue--and we find out Katka is Lubos's step daughter (there was a whole subplot in the original as Tomas and Katka had a developing relationship. Alpha readers found this too blechy--they didn't like Tomas and his cousin being a thing, even if she was a step-cousin. Also, this conflicted with later Lesana plot lines.)
11. Tomas meets Ohnica

So there you have it. The tour of the castle didn't even show up until later. Reading that over, I think it's pretty clear why I ended up changing things as much as I did. Too much sitting around and talking, and not enough actually doing anything. Plus, in the first draft there was too much doubt for too long--Tomas wasn't sure he was having real visions or not until Ohnica. That was lame, and didn't work as a source of tension.

For me in my early drafts, a large part of the effort goes into getting the plot and the voice down. Plot is something I've struggled with. I'll write something out on paper, and then it doesn't work in practice. Nothing's worse than having your character refuse to do something you thought they'd have no problem doing. You can't force it--that results in a lame book. So you have to change your character or your plot. By that point, I typically choose changing the plot. Find out a different way to get to B from A.

Anyway.

My second point was on the food. Mmmm . . . barbecue. Slovak grilling is a very different beast compared to American grilling. You're not doing burgers and bland hot dogs, for one thing. Awesome sausages--and have you ever barbecued a slab of bacon? Think about that for a bit. It's epically awesome. One of my best memories about my first trip to the country was grilling by the castle tower late into the evening one night. I was happy to be able to get that memory its spot in the book.

Why I Think Firefly Failed as a Show--and How that Impacts Me as an Author

Let me be clear: I love Firefly. I think it's a fantastic television show, and it's an absolute travesty that it didn't get the years of success it deserved. That said, Denisa and I finished rewatching it a few days ago, and I've been thinking about the reasons why the show didn't take off an flourish as quickly as it needed to in order to, you know--still be on the air today (or at least make it past season one).

Also note that I'm not concerned with the actual reasons here. What Fox did or didn't do, how negotiations broke down and all that jazz. Because you know what? I don't think any of that matters. In the end, a home run is a home run, a single is a single, and three strikes always means you're out.

What I mean is that if Firefly had had a stronger beginning, the show would have lasted longer than it did. I feel like it took a few too many episodes to get its groove going, and in these days when shows have to fly right off the bat, that just was too long for it to last.

Look at it for a bit. Episode one introduces the characters, but it doesn't really do a good of being a great episode of Firefly. The humor is there, but not quite up to speed yet. Jayne isn't at Full Awesome. The banter is missing some of the oomph. The romance between Mal and Inara isn't sparking. Add to that the fact that there's no really good overarching mystery or plot element to get viewers hooked, and it's no surprise that the pilot didn't hit it out of the park.

Episode 2? Train heist. Cool, but again--the puzzle pieces aren't quite fitting together. It's only once episode 3 & 4 roll around that the show starts to shine. By that time, Fox was already looking at cutting the show, because TV executives have all the attention of a cocker spaniel.

If episodes 1 & 2 were up to snuff, things might have gone a whole lot better for the series.

Of course, Joss Whedon has a history of this with television shows. I don't feel like the first season of Buffy was up to snuff, and in many of the subsequent seasons, it would take a few episodes before the season snapped together and started churning along nicely. Dollhouse was the same.

Some of this has to do with the fact that his shows don't typically fall into a single genre. Horror/Comedy/Drama. Sci-fi/Western/Comedy. They're mutts, and it takes an audience a bit to understand how the show's working, when there aren't pre-established tropes for them to fall back on. This concerns me quite a bit, because one of the reasons I really like Whedon's shows is because they're similar to my writing. I like to bend and break genres myself. I like to step outside of conventions.

Does that mean my books will have a harder time selling?

Possibly.

But I also think that pop culture is developing a way to embrace creators like Whedon. Standard television contracts are on the way out. Shows can spread like wildfire through the web and instant streaming. Fans latch on to a creator, and stick with that creator through the bumps and jostles of contract negotiation. In a few years, I think a show like Firefly would do just fine if it were to come out today. DVD and streaming sales provide a source of income beyond the standard ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox line up.

Thank goodness.

Now the question is what will happen to the book world. I can't help but think the same sort of situation will evolve, though I'm not sure what exactly it will look like when it does.

In the meantime, I just write what I like to read. That's all I really can do, anyway. Hopefully people (and editors!) end up coming along for the ride.

Bacon, Ruffles, and Milk Shakes Proven to be Miracle Cure

That's right, folks. You read it here first. Bacon has finally be proven to fix just about anything that's wrong with you. The trick, scientists say, is that you have to couple it with a precise blend of chocolate milk shakes and Ruffles potato chips.

"No one's quite sure why it has to be Ruffles," Dr. Chondriac said in an exclusive interview with the author. "We tried Lays, Pringles, Wise, Utz--they all just made us put on about fifty pounds. But when the Ruffles, milk shake, and bacon hits your stomach? BAM! It's like your body unlocks a cheat code. Pure awesome."

The study, which is going to be released next month in The New England Journal of Medicine, used the worldwide population of World of Warcraft players as their subject base. Chondriac explained that the methodology was obvious. "Most of them only eat potato chips and bacon anyway. We paid them in milk shakes, not explaining that was actually part of the test. Still, I think they might have done it just for the free bacon. I mean--who doesn't want free bacon, you know?"

Dr. Chondriac and his associates became convinced back in the early 90s that if anything was going to solve just about every ailment known to humanity, bacon would have to be a part of it. But their early studies proved fruitless. In fact, their infamous "Bacon Only Diet" resulted in a wave of lawsuits that just about brought the doctor to his knees, financially speaking. But somehow he managed to pull through that dark period. True, half the test subjects had died in the experiment, but a few of them had somehow not just remained alive--they'd prospered. Flourished. Dropped weight. Gained muscle mass. Lost their allergies. You name it.

Dr. Chondriac knew the answer was out there.

He studied those few subjects closely for years. "At first I thought it had more to do with leading a sedentary lifestyle--and eating bacon. Maybe the key was in not exercising." But applying that hypothesis on a wide scale proved fruitless. "And it makes sense. Lots of people eat bacon and sit around all day. You don't see them turning into Superman."

The breakthrough came when he discovered that the few had been sneaking junk food on the side. (Junk food other than bacon.) From there, everything just snapped into place.

Dr. Chondriac won't reveal the exact proportions of each ingredient, although he admits that the ratio is key. If you eat just an ounce too much or too little bacon--a few chips more than you should, or half a milkshake less--then the result is just your typical weight gain. You have to eat the right amounts, at the right times, in the right order. "It's kind of like the old Konami code," he said. "Up up down down--you know. There's a big difference between that and just hitting the buttons in any old order."

Sources close to the doctor claim that the secret formula has already been sold to the US government, and indeed, this reporter has found evidence that the government has suddenly been purchasing bags of Ruffles by the crateload, and military pig farms have started springing up in the most unlikely of places. Couple that with the fact that Dairy Queen has received a confidential standing order from an anonymous entity in the Washington DC area, and it's clear something is up. (In after hours trading, Dairy Queen and Ruffles stock has shot through the roof, as has bacon futures.)

Still, with so many dedicated bacon eaters out there, it's only a matter of time until the ratio is discovered. Estimates say millions of people have already been working for years, trying to discover a cure just like this. Now that it's been proven by science, those efforts can only increase. Rumor has it the Chinese government already has over 50 million people working on the problem around the clock, and the Germans aren't far behind.

Truly, we live in exciting, marvelous times.

Returning to Diablo: Life Changes and Video Games

Ah, Diablo. I spent so many hours of my life playing you back in 2000 and 2001. (And 2002. And 2003. And--you get the point). Now that the third installment is finally out, it's been a lot of fun to go back to that world and that style of game and find that so much is still there. I'm totally loving the new version, by the way. It was everything that the beta hinted at. You click things. They die. You get multicolored loot, and then you go click more things.

Denisa wonders what in the world the appeal is. She looked at the game and said, "Yup. Looks like the last one." (It's a sign of how much I played the last one that she can recognize that it looks the same this much later.) I think the game's designed much like a slot machine. Just a slot machine that takes a bit of skill to run use properly. You never know what awful baddie will blow up and give you the perfect new weapon. Or maybe it won't be a baddie at all. Maybe it'll be that barrel over there. Or that pile of bones there. It's like this virtual Easter egg hunt.

Of course, as much as the game feels the same, I've had to confront a singular fact: I am not the same person I was twelve years ago. Back then, I'd just gotten back from my mission to Germany. I wasn't married. I was living in an apartment with a bunch of other guys, and going to school. I could stay up until 3 in the morning any time I felt like it, and not have to worry about anyone's schedule buy my own.

Those days are gone.

Do I miss them? Not really. When Denisa was gone with the kids in Slovakia over the summer, I hated it. (Of course, if she'd gone when Diablo 3 had just been released, maybe I would have had a better coping mechanism.) Yes, this means I don't get to play video games until my eyes bleed. But I get to do other rewarding things like raise a family.

It's just interesting to me that in the intervening years, I somehow got older. I don't feel like a different person. Not really. But a 21 year old college student is one thing, and a 33 year old father of two is a very different thing.

I wonder where I'll be when I'm 75. Still clicking things to kill them in Diablo 7? Who knows.

In the meantime, that's enough waxing philosophical for now. There are demons to click. Or rather, first a day job to finish. Then demons to--no. Then kids to help with homework, and THEN--no. Then dinner to make and an Elder's Quorum Presidency meeting to run, and THEN . . .

Check with the wife. Make sure she doesn't need anything else.

AND THEN.

Those demons are going down. :-)

Online Storage and Backup Solution: CrashPlan

NOTE: This post is also mirrored over at my library blog. Just wanted to remind you all that it's there. And awesome. Because that's what libraries are.

So about a week ago, I got the urge to start taking backup more seriously. Not because I had a close call with losing all of my information. (That's a good reason to start backing up, but it's not really a great reason. I'd rather not get that close, thank you very much.) I already use Dropbox for my personal files, and I added all of my wife's files to it, too. That's very convenient, and I like it--as I've mentioned before. I have 3GB or so of space over there, and that's more than enough for my text files.

But I have more than just text files. I have a whole lot of music I've ripped from my CD collection. I have a slew of digital pictures. And I have a growing collection of digital video (quite large, since I transferred all of my mom's home movies of my childhood to digital format a year or so ago).

How large?

450GB worth.

That's a lot of gigabytes, for those of you who don't know. I've backed it all up locally to a 2TB external hard drive, but with the advent of the cloud, I had to wonder if there was a better way of going about storing it all. I love how with Dropbox, I can access all of my information from anywhere, at any time. I can get it on my iPad. On a friend's computer. Anywhere.

But storing over 400GB of storage with Dropbox is going to set a guy back $795 per year. I like my data--but that's just too much. SugarSync would cost $400. Google Drive would be $240.

I back up my music to iCloud and iTunes match. That costs me $25 a year, and I'm very happy with it.

For a while, I was thinking I'd have to just go with backing up my photos only, and letting my video just sort of wait for now. Not a perfect solution, however. I'm using my iPad more and more as a video recorder, and HD video takes up a lot of space. I wanted a way to transfer stuff off my iPad and into the cloud. Wasn't going to happen, it seemed.

50GB would be a more manageable $25 per year through Microsoft's SkyDrive. Then again, I also considered piecing together all the free offerings out there--you can get about 25GB without too much trouble, though then your data's spread out all over the place. Again, far from a perfect solution.

Then a friend pointed me toward the online backup service CrashPlan. Through their CrashPlan+ offering, I could store an unlimited amount of data in the cloud, for $50/year. Unlimited. Including video. I could access it from any computer, as well as from my iPad and other iDevices.

Unlimited.

$50.

Sold.

I've been using it for around a week now, and I'm happy with it so far. It's more limited than services like Dropbox, in that it backs up one computer (and connected drives), no more. So there's no free wheeling storage option, where you add a file from a different computer via the cloud. But you can always email that file to your main computer, and then add it that way. So upload from only one place, but download from anywhere. That works for me.

Honestly, the biggest hurdle is the fact that 426.9GB of data is an awful lot of data. I've been uploading almost constantly since I signed up, and I'm at 150.4GB done so far. That's at a speed of around 2mbps. I was going faster for a while, but my network seems to have bogged down some since. If you don't have a fast connection speed, then uploading to the cloud isn't a super idea. (Though CrashPlan does have an option where they send you a drive and you backup directly to it, and then send it back. It's fairly costly, though--something like $200, although that's just a one time fee.)

Anyway--that's what I have for you today. Anyone out there have questions, or use a different service they prefer? Speak up!

Trencin Castle: Vodnik Commentaries--Chapter Five

So here we are at last (as far the ongoing chapter commentaries for Vodnik go)--the introduction of Trencin Castle. I approached the castle almost as a character in and of itself in the book. It has its own subplot, it's very much in danger, and it's has a big impact on the story line.

As I've mentioned in past commentaries, I went through the same tour Tomas goes through in this chapter. One of my favorite memories of my first trip to Slovakia was going around the castle with my brother in law, with him pointing out all the stupid things Communists and architects had done to his castle over the years. I'm the sort of guy who goes straight for the castle in whatever European city I end up in. Castles get explored first. Ruins are just as acceptable.

One of the things that has disappointed me over the years is the fact that some castles are just, well . . . phony. I'm looking at you, Neuschwanstein. Absolute poser of a castle. It was built to look like a fairy tale castle, not to actually be a castle. That might cut the mustard in Disneyland, but when you're in Europe, you need a whole lot more than that.

Trencin Castle represents almost everything I love about authentic castles. It's utilitarian. You can tell that it was built to be used, not to be pretty. This is no chateau. It's old, with a ton of history stretching back over the years. It has a bunch of interesting stories connected to it. It has a large park out back (which Tomas never really explores in Vodnik). And it sits high up in the middle of the town like some kind of watch-dragon.

Of course, a large part of my great impression was due to my tour guide: Milos "Lasky" Krizan. My brother in law is pretty much the best resource an author could ask for when it comes to Slovak history, folklore, and anything medieval-related. Not only does he take part in jousts and gladiator combat, he's a blacksmith (here's his FB page for arrowheads he makes) and the night watchman at the castle. He's also much more extroverted than I am. On one trip to Slovakia, we went on tours of a ton of castles and palaces around western Slovakia. Milos came with us, and he pretty  much got us in anywhere we wanted to go. Everybody knew him or knew of him. I don't know if we paid a single admission on that trip. Everybody just waved us through when they saw him.

Any time I had questions about a matter of folklore or history, I'd get on the phone to Milos and work things through. His English is about as good as my Slovak, but between the two of us, we manage to be pretty well understood--though every now and then we'd have to resort to using my wife as a translator.

What can you expect if you go to visit the castle? Well, no tours in English, for one thing. (At least not last I checked.) They have an information sheet in English that you can take around with  you, but all the tours are in Slovak only. (This might be a bit different in the summer. I'm not sure.) And the only way to see the tower and the palaces are by tour guide. Still--you don't need the guide in English now, right? You've read all about it in Vodnik. :-)

Note the Communist star on top of the castle in this picture.

Milos is the one in the middle surrounded by the harem. Typical.

A closer up shot.

And . . . him dressed up like a vodnik. Because hey--why not?

Vodnik T-Shirts are Officially Here

I'm happy to announce that my Vodnik t-shirts are here, and that they turned out awesome. The glow in the dark is really nice and crisp, the images are clear and well done, and the shirt itself is high quality. The one bad thing? They ended up costing more than I thought they would, due to inadvertently ordering a higher quality shirt than I thought I was, and only getting 24 of this first run. (I have 3 smalls left, 2 mediums, 8 larges, and 8 extra-larges. I hope to be able to order a wider variety of sizes if I sell out of these--if you'd like a particular size that I don't have right now, let me know, and I'll reserve one for you out of the next batch if/when I order them. My son, for example, wants an extra-small.)

I've debated quite a bit how to sell these, and I think I've come up with an approach that's as fair as I can afford to be. I'm mainly doing the t-shirts as a way to promote the book--and to give fans a way to support the book and be fashionably awesome at the same time, both during the day and at night. (GLOW IN THE DARK!) The shirts cost me about $13.00 each, total. I'm going to sell them for an introductory price of $20 each, with shipping and handling costing $5 in addition to that ($25 total). I'll have them at signings for $20 (no shipping and handling, obviously).

HOWEVER.

I'm willing to lop off money for fans. That's right. If you'd like to get the shirts for cheaper, there are two things you can do.

I'll take 4 dollars off if you recommend the book publicly online--however is best for you. This could be on Facebook or Twitter. It could be by emailing a bunch of your friends. You could recommend it via Goodread's "recommend this book" function. You could blog about it. However you choose. Heck--do all of the above. If you've already recommended it, all I ask is that you recommend it once more. A book like mine coming out from a smaller press needs all the help it can get to gain some traction.

I will take off another 3 dollars if you've written a review for it on Amazon, Goodreads, or Barnes and Noble. No need to review it again. :-) And it doesn't have to be a good review. Any honest review will do. I'm not trying to bribe people to write good reviews of the book. More exposure is the goal.

So if you do both, then I'm basically selling the shirt to you at cost. You can also do either/or. Or just pay for the whole thing with no discounts. Shipping will still apply if I have to mail it to you, of course. However, I'll be out in Utah at the end of this month, and I should have the shirts with me. To get the discount, all you have to do is let me know what you've done when you order the shirt (whether in person or online).

To order, just let me know. Twitter works. Facebook. A comment here. An email. A phone call. Tell me in person. Whatever. We'll see how this experiment goes.

Refinancing. Again. And Thoughts on Ninja Researching

Today was supposed to be a morning spent going to DC's preschool graduation. And it was. Her class sang for the group, we had punch and cookies. A fun time had by all. But I also came across a tidbit of information: interest rates had dropped to a new low for house loans again. And so I started looking into things, and next thing you know, I'm applying for a refinance. It's lowering my rate from 5.25 to 3.875, which used to mean absolutely nothing to me, but now means a whole lot--in terms of actual money I'll be saving each month on my loan. When you pay interest on something for 30 years, every little quarter of a percent matters.

One of the things I like most about my job is how it forces me to stay current on how to research information quickly and effectively. When you're sitting at a research desk, you have no idea if the person who's coming up to ask you a question is just going to want to know where the bathroom is (often the case) or if they're going to have a deep question about laws in Maine in the 1850s. Or maybe the genetics of moose. Who knows? And maybe they ask you an easy one--anything on literature or linguistics, in my case--but maybe you're suddenly helping them research medical studies. You just never know.

But the thing is, you don't need to know everything. You just need to know the basics of how to search. When you have those down, you can find out anything these days--very quickly. That's how I taught myself the basics of TV antennas. It's how I analyzed what kind of car would be best for me, and what a fair price to pay for it would be. It's how I helped my son decide which Beyblade was "the best". It's how I researched what backup/cloud storage solution would be best for me. And it's how I taught myself all about mortgage rates, refinancing costs, and the like.

Some of it is Google. (Although even Google can be tricky to use right--something I'm reminded each time I help someone find something on Google that they just. couldn't. find.) Some of it is knowing who to call or email (my brother in this case, and a realtor friend). Knowing the answer is "out there" and knowing where that is in each specific case is a huge difference.

If you have access to the internet, you can find just about any information you need. Whenever you want. The trick is sifting through all the garbage to find the right information. Reliably. That's what librarians are great at. And now I'll stop bragging about my profession. Sorry.

In case you were wondering, if you can drop your interest rate by about a percent or more--and you're planning on staying in your house for another couple years at least--then it's often a great idea to refinance. Especially if you're like me and have a ton of time left on your loan anyway. Rates are low right now. If yours is 4.75 or higher, you should look into it, at least a little.

And now, back to the rest of my day.

Family Pics--and a Baptism Boy

Last Sunday we had a big event--TRC got baptized. (For those of you who don't know, Mormons don't get baptized until 8 years old at the earliest. Doctrinally, we believe children younger than 8 are innocent and incapable of sinning. (Long story short)) He's been really excited for this for quite some time, and it was nice to see how seriously he took it all.

I look at him and see a lot of myself there. He's a real perfectionist with things that are important to him, but kind of loosey goosey with things that aren't. (Get him going about the pro's and con's of various types of Beyblades, and he can talk all day. But try getting him to practice the piano some days. I'm the same way. When  I get into something, I forget anything else exists. If I'm not into it, it can be a struggle to stay focused on it. I think this runs in my family genes. Particularly in the men.)

Anyway, we had a really good turnout for the baptism--somewhere in the range of a 100 people or so, I'd guess. (Another of TRC's friends was baptized the same day, which helped make the crowd bigger.) I performed the baptism myself. Very proud of my boy and the way he chooses to live his life. He's a very good kid.

In other news, we went exploring some over the weekend. Off to Popham Beach and Fort Popham. (Did you know they had Civil War forts up in Maine? Well they did.) Much fun was had by all--we had family in town for the weekend. Here's a smattering of pictures for you. And now, I must get back to work.

iPad 3 Review

Okay. I've had my new iPad for a while now, and I feel like I can finally review it. I know you've all been waiting breathlessly for this. My opinion could totally make or break Apple.

In a nutshell, the new iPad is a fantastic piece of hardware. The screen is just as amazing as you've heard. (Going back to use my iPad 2 makes me feel like I'm looking through a screen door at the screen. Seriously.) The camera is tons better--especially in lower light. The videos look great. The battery life hasn't dipped, and it zips along just fine through anything you throw at it. I'm really happy with mine.

Should you upgrade?

If you have an original iPad, and don't mind shelling out another couple hundred then I'd say yes. You should. Original iPads still go for about $200-$250 (when I last checked). If you sell yours, then that makes the upgrade less steep. I know there were some apps on my iPad 1 that were much slower than on the other iPads. That will only continue to increase. Not a big deal if you don't use those apps, but if you're an app fiend like myself, then it becomes more problematic.

That said, if you're primarily using your iPad to check email and the internet and play a few games, then you don't need to upgrade. If you would like to use it to take some pictures and video, then obviously an upgrade begins to look more appealing.

If you have an iPad 2, there's less incentive. You can already take okay pics and video. The awesome screen is awesome, the zippy speed is great, but worth hundreds of dollars? Probably not, unless you're an Apple fanboy (self-confessed--right here). That said, having such a significantly better screen really is helpful. It impacts everything you do on the device. Reading (for me) is much easier on the eyes, and that's a big plus.

If you don't have an iPad at all, then you really ought to buy one. :-) I've said it before and I'll say it again--I use this thing for everything. It goes with me everywhere. I've started using it instead of my old video camera. I'm taking more and more pictures with it. (Now the problem I'm facing is how to figure out a way to back up all that video when I don't have cassettes or discs that it's stored on. Still thinking about that one.)

I know plenty of people who didn't buy an iPad at first, claiming they didn't see the point. Many of them have since caved, and none of them have said to me, "I wish I hadn't bought one." It's something that once you have, you find out how many ways you could really have used it all along.

Anyway--if anyone has any questions, I'm happy to answer them. That's all I've got for you today.

Vodnik Commentaries: Chapter Four

A short little chapter this time--and almost all of it is new, compared to the first draft. First off, let me just warn you that there are some SPOILERS in this commentary, so don't read this unless you've finished the book. Got it? Okay.

So there are two big reasons this section earned itself an chapter, and they both come down to characters. The first one is pretty obvious: Vitazoslav. In the original version, the vodnik doesn't show up until Tomas goes down the well. He's alluded to, of course. Lesana shows up and warns Tomas about him. He's told to watch out for him by Ohnica. But the vodnik doesn't make an actual appearance until page 188 (in the current book). For a main character--one which the book is named after--that's just way too late. And it didn't make sense, either. Why in the world would the vodnik just sit back and never try to contact Tomas? So I added this scene with him in Vitazoslav disguise here in Chapter Four.

To a Slovak, this scene would be rather less spoilerific. As soon as I describe Vito as dripping water, a Slovak would totally know he's the vodnik. It would be akin to me mentioning offhandedly that there was a guy who had no reflection in a vampire book. My wife was worried enough about it when she read the revision that she questioned whether it was a good idea revealing so soon who the vodnik was. I told her not to worry. Was I right? I've had a couple of people guess early on, but a lot of others had no clue. And in the end, I don't mind if the audience guesses/finds out before Tomas. The trick is making sure that Tomas doesn't appear stupid for not getting it earlier.

That's a fine line to walk. When you have a mystery, how and when do you reveal it? How many clues do you put in? When? What do you leave out? Put in too many, and your audience all gets it too soon, and they might get irritated that your main character doesn't get it earlier. Put in too few, and your audience can get angry that it was too hard to guess. Too obscure. You want just enough to string the audience along--keep them guessing at all times--but still make the reveal clear enough that they feel like they should have gotten it all along.

So far I've heard few people complain that it takes Tomas too long to figure out who the Vodnik is. I think for the most part it worked quite well. What did you think?

The other main difference is that I gave Adam a bigger part, so that when I killed him halfway through the book, his death would have a bigger impact on Tomas and the audience. I know. I'm a total jerk. The thing was, in the first draft, Adam's a friend of Lubos, but he's no one really identifiable. So he dies, and it's sort of like, "Meh." I didn't like that response. So I had Tomas totally relate to the guy. Had him be awesome.

And then I still killed him.

Being an author is having to make the tough calls sometimes. Sorry Adam. It wasn't personal. It was business.

Movie Review: The Avengers

I'm not even entirely sure why I'm reviewing The Avengers. I mean, from the numbers, it looks like everyone in the world has already seen it, so that makes a review like this kind of redundant. But hey--I like to review things, and this is a movie that demands a review. Even if it's only to say, "Everyone is right. This movie is awesome."

Because it is, of course.

But the thing is, it could easily have been awful. Think about it for a moment. So many big name actors in one place? Huge stars and story lines forced to interact? It could have been a train wreck. It should have been a train wreck. How do you keep that many balls in the air for 2 and a half hours, and have them all come together at the climax in a believable, moving fashion?

I was blown away by how well Joss Whedon pulled it off. Each hero remained distinct. Each story had its own development and growth. Better yet, it all made sense! I had read a quote before about how they were using Transformers: Dark of the Moon as a pattern for Awesome. Um . . . no. Transformers has a lot of robots fighting, yes. But you don't really care about any of them. (I didn't, at least.) Seeing a bunch of special effects is worthless if you don't actually care about the characters involved.

If this movie had been all about superheroes battling, it would have stunk. Instead, it's about characters--and that's what really sets it apart. I love that it took its audience seriously. It treated the characters as people, not pawns. Sometimes when awful comic or fantasy movies are made, I wonder if the creators ever even talked to a fan. Ever treated the audience like thinking people. That's definitely not the case here.

Really, the only thing that caused me any concern through the whole film was, "When will we ever get the chance to see something like this happen again?" I'm just not sure if The Avengers 2 can be pulled off, with all the same characters. The stars had to align just right for this one. Then again, with all the money it's taking in, maybe I don't need to be concerned. They certainly set up a sequel well--while keeping the film contained to a single movie.

I also loved how they pulled off the Hulk in this film. He's not broody and conflicted through the whole movie. He has some great action scenes, and is a lot of fun to watch. A+ for that.

In any case, if you haven't seen the movie, go and watch now. It's such a great fun comic book movie. The Dark Knight was a great dark comic book movie--and I love how we're starting to see different types of these films. (Not sure if I really want another Spiderman, though. They had the preview for the next one in front of The Avengers . . . meh.)

What did you all think?

Writer Q&A: How I Edit My Novels

Trevor Green over at Beyond Dragons and Wizards wanted to know a bit about how I go about the editing process. I thought this would make a great blog post, so I'm answering his questions for you all to see right here. Hope this helps some of you!

Q: First off, how long do you generally wait before coming back to a first draft? Do you wait until you've practically forgotten what the book is about, or do you just want to forget the sentence structure, etc.?

A: I give it a while, honestly. As long as I can. Back in the days before I was published and working on deadlines, I'd like to wait at the bare minimum for a half year or so, especially when I'm gearing up for the second draft. For me, second drafts still have a great deal of discovery left in them. Things aren't nailed in place. I'm not worried about refining sentence structure--I'm worried about changing plots and characters. Massive, big changes. Because sometimes something looks great in an outline, feels great while you're writing it, and then . . . isn't great. Your writing group and alpha readers just can't stand it. I like to have enough distance from the book to be able to tell for myself if I agree with them or not. When I'm still too close to the writing, that's hard to do. I'm inclined to like it--I just wrote it. Also, I like to distance myself from criticisms. Just because somebody didn't like it, doesn't mean that it needs to change--at least not the way they said it should. Sometimes someone might just be noticing that something feels off. They think they've found the solution, but when you read it over yourself, you discover it's something deeper that's wrong, which is causing some symptom problems elsewhere.

Q: What's the first thing you do? Do you read it through without picking up the red pen? Or do you dive in and just go for it? For that matter, maybe you do a lot of prep work: note cards, diagrams, character sheets, scene rundowns, etc. What works best for you?

A: I print that puppy out on paper. Then I grab a red pen and start reading. No character sheets. No diagrams. I toss out everything I've done, backstory-wise, and just read it like I'm reading someone else's work. I note what works, what doesn't. I write down ideas for changes. Where I get bored. Again--it doesn't matter if I built the world a certain way in the planning stage. If it ain't working, it ain't working. I try not to be wedded to any one thing in the book.

Once I'm done reading and marking the whole thing up, I look over my comments. That's also when I look over comments my alpha or beta readers had, as well as my writing group. I compile everything into a big honking TO BE CHANGED list, and I start going at it.

In many ways, I edit in layers. I'll note that one character wasn't strong enough, so I'll go through and find all the instances that character appeared, and I'll change accordingly. I'll note that I need to add or change a subplot. I'll do all of that at once, too. It's just too difficult to go through and try and make all the changes chronologically as I go through from start to finish. I start to forget what I changed, and how I changed it. I keep my marked up copy of the book handy throughout all this, to remind myself not just what I wanted to change, but why.

Q: I know a lot of people talk about their tendency to change character personalities halfway through their first draft (I have a quote from Brandon that Isaac gave me last night saying just that), and I know I do that myself. How do you go about changing the previous chapters of that character's personality? It seems incredibly tedious and overwhelming. Do you have any tips?

A: It is tedious and overwhelming. But it needs to be done. I typically don't know my characters all that well when I start writing a book. By the end, I know them much better. By the end of the fourth draft, I'm an expert on all of them. It's really not as hard as it seems at first, to go back and fix all the places where they're inconsistent. Also, a big piece of advice I'd have for you is to not make the mistake of thinking your second draft will be your last. Vodnik went through at least six substantial drafts, as I recall. Revision is hard work. (That said, this only goes for me. It's certainly possible the way you write and revise will be different. But I was really surprised by how much more editing and revising I had to do to get the book to a publishable level. Be prepared for that. Embrace it.)

Q: How many people do you think read your first draft before you begin hacking away at it?

A: Not a set number. As many as I can get to read it. These days, my agent for sure. A few trusted friends. My writing group. But the biggest one is definitely me. What I think of the book after I read it again--see the answer to question 1. I don't think there's a set number of people who have to read it. One or two great readers are much better than 10 or 15 okay ones. Who do you trust? Go with them.

Q: Do you do separate read-throughs for all the different things that need to be fixed (character vs plot vs pacing vs logistics vs tone), or do you try to manage them all at once?

A: In a perfect world, I'd do them all at once. In reality, I end up doing them in stages, continually improving different things with each pass through. Maybe I'll get better at this and be able to take short cuts, but I doubt it.

Q: How do you manage and compile all your reader's feedback? Do you combine them into one Word document as notes alongside your manuscript, or do you juggle them separately? Maybe you ignore them completely.

A: I keep them in whatever form I compiled them the first time. For people who read the whole novel at once, I keep their annotated copy. For writing group, I keep my notes on their comments. But all of that goes to the master annotated copy I make as I'm doing the read through. In the end, it all funnels to that single copy, and then I ignore the other notes, unless I suddenly forget why I wanted a certain change, or something like that.

In the end, editing is work. Very different work from what goes into the first draft. It can be really tempting to just give up on it and go write something new, but if you keep doing that, you'll only be developing half of the talent you need to make it at a higher level. It's going to take time, and it's not going to be easy. But it's definitely worth it. Also--remember to hold some fresh readers back from reading the first or second draft. Once you revise enough, it'll start getting very difficult to know if what you're doing is making things any better. That's when fresh beta readers are an absolute must.

Good luck!

On Getting One Star Reviews

Yes, it's true. I've gotten a couple of one star reviews since Vodnik came out. Both over on Goodreads. (Well, technically there are 3 one star reviews over there. But two of them are the same review by the same person, one for her review site, and one for her personally. I'm only counting that as one.) They came out a while ago, and I didn't really mention them. Mainly because one doesn't typically go about highlighting reviews that didn't like your book (although honestly, a lot of that review seemed pretty positive to me. "One thing I did notice was that this book has the same feel as Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Now, I absolutely hated the Percy Jackson series, so there could potentially be a lot of fans of this novel." I'd be through the roof ecstatic to have a book as well liked as Percy Jackson. Also--"This book has a silly feel to it that the younger generation, and fans of the Percy Jackson series, would greatly appreciate." Not the worst recommendation a book could get, you know?)

In any case, I always knew that there would be people who wouldn't like my book. There are certainly plenty of books out there that I personally don't like a whole lot--or at all. (I just don't shout it from the rooftops. Because . . . it wouldn't feel right to me, somehow. I know--I give some movies terrible reviews. Scathing even. And it can be a lot of fun to really tear down a piece you loathed. I do that with movies, because I watch a ton of movies, and I'm not a creator of movies. Once you start creating what you're reviewing . . . I'm not sure you can really impartially review it anymore. Does that make sense?)

So like I said--I knew the dislikes would come. I just wasn't sure how I would respond to them. Would it be soul crushing, to have strangers say they hated my book? (Or worse--to have friends say it? I have yet to have a bad review from a friend, but I can't imagine there's not some of you out there--friends who read the book and thought it was just okay. Or thought it was pretty crummy. I understand. It's okay. And thanks for not sharing your views with everybody else. :-)   )

I haven't been crushed by the reviews. Haven't even really been phased by them. Art is subjective, and writing is art. It's a matter of taste. Go to any Amazon page you want, and you're almost bound to find some one star reviews. Yes, some are written by boneheads who are reviewing the price, not the product. Or who have an agenda and are trying to promote themselves by tearing other people down. But you'll also find plenty of people who just disagree about how good something is.

That's okay.

I think it helps me that I've had my fair share of arguments over what movies are good and what movies are bad. There's no right or wrong when it comes to taste. (Well, if you can't justify your opinion, or you're using a crummy system to evaluate it, then maybe--but there are going to be some people who think chocolate ice cream is awesome and vanilla is just too bland and boring, and others who hate the cloy sweetness of chocolate and love their smooth creamy dreamy vanilla.)

So I'm relieved that I was okay with the bad reviews. I hoped I would be. Maybe it would be different if most of my reviews were bad, with just a few positive ones here and there. But they haven't been. Overwhelmingly positive, is how I'd phrase it. I'm really happy for that. But at the same time, I'm two books removed from working on Vodnik now. My agent is sending Tarnhelm out to editors next week, and I'm coming up on 20,000 words into The Valentine Affair (title likely to change). So there's quite a bit of separation between me and Vodnik now. I would love love love to write a sequel (get all your friends to buy Vodnik! Buy Vodnik for all your friends!), but right now, I'm busy trying to figure out what in the world happens next in my current project. (Speaking of which, I really ought to go finish today's word count. I still have 690 words to go.

How about you--have any of you out there had works reviewed already? Poorly? How did you handle it? Thoughts in general? Please share! And if you haven't written a review of Vodnik yet, why not give it a try? (If it's going to be a good review, that is. If it's negative, I think you should think it over some more. Like for a year or two.)

:-)

Adventures at My First Magic Prerelease Event

Last Saturday was the prerelease for the latest Magic the Gathering set: Avacyn Restored. I've been playing Magic online against my good accordion playing bud down in Philly, and thoroughly enjoy it. But I haven't played competitively, or against strangers. For those of you who don't know, at a prerelease, you go and play in a tournament for prizes, essentially. I'm quite the introvert until I get to know someone, so the idea of going to play against strangers . . . didn't really fill me with glee. New environment? Nobody I know there? Not my comfort zone. But my friend really said I should give it a try, and so I went.

Thoughts?

First off, I have to say that I really enjoyed the experience. I'm a big game player, and there's something to be said for playing games with people sitting across from you in real life, as opposed to playing them remotely. The people at the store were nice and welcoming, and I didn't end up feeling too out of place, which was a relief. I got to play Magic for an afternoon, and I had a good enough time doing it that I'd really like to do it again sometime.

That said, it was a lot of Magic at once. I think the thing lasted something like 5 hours, which felt long. I wish it were in the evening, instead of in the afternoon--there are just so many other things I have to do that can be done at 1 on a Saturday. Then again, I regularly give up 4 hours of my life to BYU football each week when football's in season, so I suppose this isn't much different. Just not as socially acceptable on a wide scale. Prerelease events are only four times a year.

Building a deck with real cards and a hard time limit was stressful, but I got it done. Playing games where it mattered if I won or lost . . . also stressful, but in a fun way. In the end, I played five rounds. I lost my first 0-2, won my second 2-0, lost my third 1-2 (but really should have won--stupid mistakes on my part), lost my fourth 0-2, then won my fifth 2-0. Over all, 5-11. Could have been better, but not bad for my first time, I felt. For those of you who know/care, my deck was a green/blue with a lot of bounce. It worked more or less like I planned it, except I misinterpreted the rules on a few cards, which got me in trouble in the actual application of the deck.

What did I like most about it? Playing a strategy game. I love games that make me think, and when you're handed a jumble of semi-related cards and told "Make a deck out of these that can beat someone else's deck," it involves a heck of a lot of strategizing and thinking.

So all told, the experiment was a success. Maybe next time, I can have an actual winning record.