Update for Thursday, March 1, 2012

"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. " -- Gustave Flaubert

Regular and orderly is fine, but this ruthless dispatching of long-held goals (some much too long) is fun, too.  Check out The Update for the story on that and...AND...something special.  And sometimes less is more, and The Helper describes how that might be applied to the share buttons in your blog.  And in honor of some courtroom work being done tomorrow, a little legal lunacy in The Wind-Up.

The Update

A very productive week here overall.  I managed to block Chapter 8 of MGC and it turned out very well.  On to Chapter 9 on Sunday.  The really cool thing about the week is that I finished a long-awaited re-release of my e-book Turning Springs on Smashwords dot com.  No editorial changes, but just some format things that I wished I'd done to begin with.  They changed a few things in their publishing process which made some nice new features available (like a Table of Contents).  I'm so pleased about this that I'm offering a coupon for $1 off the price of the book through March 9th.  The non-case-sensitive code for that coupon is:  BL67B.  If you haven't read it, now's a good time to jump in.  Or at least download the first half of the book for free.  Go get it here, and enjoy the read!

The Helper

We've all seen it.  A nicely done, intriguing blog post that makes you want to maintain contact with the writer.  And you get to the share button line and it's a regular conga line of possibilities.  Pinterest?  Facebook? Google+? Twitter?  How do you choose?  Don't let your social networking riches embarrass you.  Check out this post from Pushing Social about being choosy about your buttons.

The Wind-Up

From Fark comes this story about an unfortunate fellow who wasn't there.  Memories of the TV show "Soap".  Don't miss:  his previous record.

Thanks for reading.  Back next week. 

Update for Thursday, February 16, 2012

 
“…Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger." – Pico Iyer

Which I thought was apt for a post-Valentine's Day edition of The Update, which deals with both love and loss, appropriately enough.  Because I'm fond of my readers, I included two (count 'em, two) items for The Helper.  And in The Wind-Up, a case of "malicious recycling" from the art world.

The Update

It took me much longer to complete the blocking on Chapter Seven of MGC than I first suspected it would.  I was so caught up with the idea of what it would become that I almost completely ignored the nuts and bolts of how to get it there.  I call that What Happens Between Syndrome.  It's all good now, but there were a few tense moments. 

I also received some comments on OSV, which I am busy revising.  Never fails...when I think that a passage is iffy, that's the one everyone wants to change.

And I put Knews Not News out of its misery.  Great fun, but really, not enough time to do it justice.  The Wind-Up is coming out of that, and I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out.  Comments on that or anything else are always welcome.

The Helper

I'm a sucker for Best Of lists, like this one from Time magazine, which lists the magazine's best web site choices for last year.  Like all such lists, some I use already, some I'm not interested in, but some I just said "Oooo."  Used immediately?  DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn't link your identity with your searches.  Slapped that sucker into Firefox as soon as I saw it and I am using it already.  Also, I'm putting together a track list for 8tracks on behalf of Turning Springs.  Lots of springpunk-y music.  Looking forward to that.

One thing that wasn't on Time's list and should have been?  The blog Brain Pickings.  Go there.  Again, "Oooo."

The Wind-Up

Remember the last time you wanted to clean something that you thought really needed it, and it ended up as something completely different than what you thought it was?  Click here for the Grand Bull Moose of mixed blessings.  Kind of like the plot of the first "Mr. Bean" movie (oh yes, I saw that and liked it), but with more competence and a much different disaster. 

Thanks for reading.  Talk to you next week.

Re: "Can Steampunk Look Toward the Future?"

Information about a new documentary about the steampunk "subculture" (or "not") and a New York Comic Con panel discussion at this Tor Publishing blog page.

My answer?  It will have to look toward the future, just like all the rest of genre fiction, and non-genre fiction, too, for that matter.  Relevance requires that the elements of all fiction, including genre fiction, speak to the current consumers of those works and their lives, needs and desires at the current time.  That doesn't change no matter whether you're talking about Tolkien-esque fiction, the latest Terminator movie, or The Brady Bunch (see my Knews Not News post on why that works).  You have to reach your customers with the things that matter to them or they won't buy what you're selling.  But is that really about the future?

Sure it is, especially for adherents of the steampunk movement.  These are folks who take great interest in modding current technology to a visual standard that doesn't exist in most current design elements of consumer goods.  See, if product designers tap into that DIY/make-it-yours-alone element and allow for ready modification of their products, that's the Holy Grail of design:  the personally designed and adapted tool that practically guarantees satisfaction.  You don't have to dig goggles and airships to want that, do you?

Relating this to a work of fiction involves the same design considerations.  A book has to end at some point in order to be printed (electronically or physically), so the content is fixed.  The design, however, really doesn't have to be.  Offering the consumer a choice of differing elements that they can mix and match (fonts? cover art? page colors?) to "create" something more pleasing is an interesting possibility.  But how does the author/designer know what their consumers want?

Sounds like a job for social networking.  Ask your market.  Offer samples.  Pick your favorite, and release it, but be sure give your customers what they want.  That always makes for an interesting future, don't you think?