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Mary Rosenblum
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Welcome to our Professional
Connection live interview.
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Tonight we're fortunate to have
a return visit with Jay Lake, who is simply a LOT of fun as a guest. :-) As
many of you know.
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Jay Lake has been the Writer
Guest of Honor at MisCon 21 as well as Toastmaster at Westercon 60. His
short fiction has been published in 'Year's Best SF', 'Realms of Fantasy',
and 'Subterranean'. He has edited Polyphony 6, and TEL: Stories, as well as
Spicy Slipstream Stories. Now he has moved into the novel form with
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Rocket Science, a fun gee-whiz
SF nostalgia novel out from Fairwood Press last year, and Trial of Flowers
due out from Night Shade Books in September. Mainspring, a fantasy, will be
released by Tor in July of next year. Visit his website at: www.jlake.com Visit his blog at http://jaylake.livejournal.com/
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I really enjoyed Rocket Science
and I recommend it. So what have you been up to?
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Jay Lake
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I've been a busy boy.
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I think I have shortest
career arc EVAR as a novelist, I swear...
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made a deal spring 2005 for
ROCKET SCIENCE...
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that hit the stands Sept 2005
with a starred review from BOOKLIST...
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which helped get me a deal
from Night Shade Books for TRIAL OF FLOWERS...
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which, when I turned it in
last spring, the publisher said,..
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"That was much better
than I expected it to be"
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(it's due out in September)
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meanwhile, with two contracts,
Tor came calling last December --
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got a two-book deal from them
in February
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Mary Rosenblum
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That's a fantasy yes?
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Jay Lake
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yes
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High concept fantasy called
MAINSPRING about a clockwork earth orbiting the sun on a brass track
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Mary Rosenblum
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So who's your editor there?
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Jay Lake
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Beth Meacham
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who's been wonderful.
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Stephan Martiniere will do the
cover art, btw.
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Mary Rosenblum
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Oooh, cool. Do they have a
concept yet?
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A sketch?
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Jay Lake
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It’s going to be a two
book series, maybe more.
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Well, they showed me a sample
he'd done for a Daniel Abraham book
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said "this style"
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and told me which scene
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The world has a 100 mile high
wall around the equato
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where the Earth's gear ring is
located to mesh with it's orbi
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and there's a long sequence in
the book where one of Her Imperial Majesty's zeppelins is making the ascent
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with Our Hero aboard
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and they visit a bamboo city
which stretches vertically for mile
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completely abandoned.
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That’s going to be the
cover, a low angle view of the zeppelin and the city with the Wall towering
above.,.
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Jay Lake
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I'm pretty stoked
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Mary Rosenblum
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Oh, cool. :-) Sounds like a lot
of fun.
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Jay Lake
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oh yeah
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The Night Shade book...
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is a decadent urban fantasy
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think Mieville or VanderMeer
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they've asked for a sequel too.
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Mary Rosenblum
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What makes it decadent, Jay?
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Jay Lake
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So I have two books delivered,
and sequels for each contracted.
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Oh, gosh, the setting and the
tone of the language I guess.
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It's ginned up from a short
story of mine which was recently reprinted online at the Fortean Bureau
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if anyone wants to check that
out.
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"The Soul Bottles"
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The city in the story is a
combination of 19th century Paris and New Orleans with a dash of declining
Rome.
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Mary Rosenblum
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I'm prodding you on this a bit
because 'decadent whatever' gets tossed about rather blithely...I've never
quite decided on a definition.
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Jay Lake
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in this context it refers to a
mood of the fiction -- word choices, plot elements.
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That's how I interpret it
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I didn't know I was writing
decadence until after I'd finished it, tho
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Mary Rosenblum
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That seems to be how it's used.
Ha...the reviewers will tell you what it is. :-)
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xana
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Paris with levees and
hurricanes?
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Jay Lake
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No, more like Paris with
syphilitic dwarfs and swamp magic.
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Mary Rosenblum
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LOL that's the decadent part.
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Jay Lake
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Lots of running around in the
sewers, heavily armed clowns riding giraffes, that sort of thing.
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xana
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The Seine floweth over
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Jay Lake
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More like inSeine in this case.
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janecj333
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Tell us how you approached
Fairwood Press and got accepted there.
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Jay Lake
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Hey Jane...
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Well, I'd sold Patrick a short
piece for Talebones a while back.
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Then I'd pitched him back in
2003 or so on doing a chapbook for me
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of my RUSHES cycle which ran
on STRANGE HORIZONS
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so we'd worked on a couple of
other things together.
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I'd been fishing for a novel
market
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had an agent but no deals
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when Patrick approached me and
asked me if I had anything.
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He’d done well with a
book by James van Pelt, BEGGARS AND STRANGERS
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and he wanted to do something
else with a new writer with decent name recognition
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(which I seem to have)
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I pitched him on this real
dark stuff I have called DARK TOWNS
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had 5 or 6 of those in print
as short fiction.
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Wanted to do a fixup...
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He was too squicked.
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So I pulled ROCKET SCIENCE out
of the drawer.
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It was too short for what my
agent wanted to represent
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but it was a good length for
Fairwood.
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Patrick took it with some
rewrites
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so it was a relationship sell,
in a way, but the relationship was a professional one of prior sales and
projects worked
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and of course, the book.
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A good relationship is
irrelevant if the book doesn't hold up. (I'm big on the value of
networking...it's one thing I talk about a lot on panels and interviews)
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Mary Rosenblum
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Yeah, I think that's important
to mention her
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that it wasn't because you knew
Patrick that he bought Rocket Science.
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Jay Lake
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Not at all.
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Believe me, if you start
publishing in genre fiction -- fantasy/SF -- it will take you about two
years to meet 3/4 of everybody
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but that doesn't sell
anything.
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The work sells. What does help
is being known as someone who's easy to deal with...
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janecj333
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squicked?
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Jay Lake
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Um, grossed out?
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It was pretty dark stuff --
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right on the line with horror
fiction.
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It's all about the work, guys.
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Trust me, I have a very boring
life.
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I write, a lot.
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Mary Rosenblum
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Has working in long form been
different for you than doing shorts? You're a write and send it off writer,
mostly, aren't you?
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Jay Lake
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Oh yeah
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that's been a real issue for
me
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I shall elucidate...
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as Mary said, I've been a
write-it-and-send-it-off guy for some years...
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done pretty well with that...
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finally started slowing
down...
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and long form work has really
pushed me.
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TRIAL OF FLOWERS was written
in a very short amount of time...
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rewritten over six weeks...
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then turned in.
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The sequel, MADNESS OF FLOWERS
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I'm working on right now (was
typing on it right before this session)
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so I can wrap it up by
WorldCon
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put it in a drawer for six
months
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then rework/revise before
turning it in next year.
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The reason for the change
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is the first Tor book,
MAINSPRING
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was something I wrote 2, 3
years ago
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so when I got the editorial
direction from Beth
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and hauled it out of the
drawer
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the experience of revising at
such a distance from the original effor
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was new to me.
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The book wasn't in my head
anymore.
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Made it much easier to see
both the flaws and the strength
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and I went: "duh, this is
what everybody's been yelling at me for fifteen years about"
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My process evolves all the
time
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Mary Rosenblum
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So hold on a a sec here, Jay.
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Jay Lake
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ok
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Mary Rosenblum
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What do you mean by that? That
'this is what everybody has been yelling at me about...' comment? What did
you see?
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Jay Lake
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Well, I've been workshopping
seriously since about 1990 --
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made my first short fiction
sale in 2001...
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have been walloping along
since...
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and I have been pounded and
pounded all those years...
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about not taking enough time
with the story, not rewriting, not revising...
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My point of resistance was
always this:
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I CAN'T write slow.
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It’s like trying to ride
a bicycle at walking speed, for me.
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So revising felt like slowing
down, getting in my own way.
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I finally got good enough to sell
without good rewriting habits
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because my drafts got good
enough.
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I'm a 'voicy' write
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and strong voice often comes
through best in fast drafts, where the internal editor isn't active
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but the missing piece
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was realizing I could write as
fast as I wante
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then hide the mss from myself
until I forgot it
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THEN rework it.
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xana
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Just today Doris Booth
(authorlink.com) told us the same thing: to put the manuscript aside for a
couple of months and then take it out and revise it - BEFORE sending it out
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Jay Lake
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ya
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It took dumb old me fifteen
years to figure it out.
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I can tie my shoes now, too!
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And it took novels to teach me
that
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Mary Rosenblum
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LOL, so has this changed your
short fiction writing? Are you...gasp...revising?
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Jay Lake
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Well, I might be if I were
writing more short fiction right now
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heh
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so far I've written TRIAL
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revised TRIAL
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revised MAINSPRING
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am now writing MADNESS
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janecj333
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Yeah, but can ya get the tongues
into the proper position??
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Mary Rosenblum
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That's after his next novel.
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Jay Lake
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Wow. So many answers to that
question
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Mary Rosenblum
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Yeah and some of them don't
belong on a 'family channel' LOL
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Jay Lake
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I have to write another novel
this year, too
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xana
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I see why you are using the word
- madness
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Jay Lake
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eh?
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It's the title of the sequel
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TRIAL OF FLOWERS
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then MADNESS OF FLOWERS
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onepozy
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You were writing and sending
short fiction, no queries?
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Jay Lake
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I'm sorry, onepozy, do you
mean no novel queries?
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(it is possible to query short
fiction)
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Mary Rosenblum
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I think pozy isn't sure of how
fiction is marketed.
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Jay Lake
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ah
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ok
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Mary Rosenblum
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Not like NF where you do query.
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Jay Lake
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Well, let me make a couple of
comments on that.
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In genre fiction, you
generally submit short stories unsolicited
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as long as the market's open
for reading.
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There are some great resources
to find market listings
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like ralan.com
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but in general genre short
fiction has a pretty healthy scene
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(genre in this case being
SF/F).
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Novels can be submitted
unsolicited, but that's rare.
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You generally query novels
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aiming for agents and editors
at the same time
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seeking to break in from
either end.
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Does that help?
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Mary Rosenblum
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I think that's pretty clear.
:-)
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janecj333
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Why are you writing so much now,
or have you always produced a lot?
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Jay Lake
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Well, basically I'm kind of
manic
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I'm only half-kidding.
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I've always been very
productive, whatever I did.
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In school, in my professional
life (I still have a day job)
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so when I got focused on
writing, it became an increasingly strong focus
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at this point it's a habit
which I have no desire to break
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grayalien
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Is it possible to make a living
as a SF writer?
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Jay Lake
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but really, anyone who's
successful writes LOT
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Mary Rosenblum
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Yeah, no kidding.
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Jay Lake
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Hey grayalien, yes it's
possible, but not easy.
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I know people for whom it is
their sole income
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but that's rare.
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Lots of people do it with a
pension, or a working partner, or something.
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If I were single and 21, I
could probably live on what I'm making now
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but I'm middle aged with a kid
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so my idea of "making a
living" has changed a lot.
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Remember, SF is about 4% of
all fiction sold. Romance is 55% or so.
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Mary Rosenblum
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It also depends entirely on
your popularity with readers...your sales numbers. And it may depend on
whether you want to write what YOU want to write or what will sell.
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Jay Lake
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What Mary said.
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Stuff that sells big = big
money for writer.
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There's some big money fantasy
writers out there
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and a lot of big money romance
and mystery writers.
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Yeah, what Mary said, what YOU
want to write.
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I don't relate well to romance
fiction
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as a reade
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so I'm not very interested in
writing i
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and the readers would know if
I was faking it.
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I need passionate commitment
to my work.
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Mary Rosenblum
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I think that's really a key
issue to that 'make a living issue'...
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Jay Lake
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Remember what I said a minute
ago about writing a LOT?
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I don't go to movies, clubs or
parties
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I write 5-7 nights a week
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It's what I DO.
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xana
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What is the average income per
book in the genre?
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Jay Lake
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That varies wildly, xana.
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ROCKET SCIENCE had no advance
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that means I was given no
money upfront.
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Not unusual for a tiny independent
press.
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Most established pros would
turn down a deal like that
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but I've made pretty good money
off it.
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The other books got advances
against royalties
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which I'll know in a year or
two how well that went
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but for independent press
books for larger houses, a few thousand dollars
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big New York houses,
higher but not a lot.
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Until you're established.
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In that world you're only as
good as your last book's sales figures.
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xana
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The average shouldn't vary
wildly :-) What's the range?
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Mary Rosenblum
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You're right, xana...the range
varies wildly, depending on your previous sales and track record from low
thousands to six figures.
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Jay Lake
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Really.
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I know someone who got $115,000
for their first book.
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Trust me, I got a small
fraction of that
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it does vary wildly.
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Mary Rosenblum
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That wasn't in SF was it Jay?
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That sounds more mainstream to
me.
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Jay Lake
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No, it was South Asian themed
women's lit
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though she's an SF writer
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so I guess that's not a fair
comparison. With writers like Arundhati Roy tearing up they're starving for
that.
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Mary Rosenblum
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Advances in mainstream are
highest.
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Thriller is a lot bigger than
SF/fantasy.
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Mystery is about like
SF/fantasy.
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Jay Lake
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A little bigger, mebbe?
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Mary Rosenblum
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And romance is generally very
low at the bottom, very high at the top.
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Jay Lake
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Romance is the 900 pound
gorilla for upside.
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There's a lot of romance
advances of $3000
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for these little tiny category
books with a four week shelf life
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but if you break up from that
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it's a much wider field than
SF or mystery.
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I was talking to a romance writer
and her agent recently.
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We were hanging out after a
conference.
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She mentioned one of her early
books had sold out the printing but they didn't think it was worth another
run
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preferring to market her more
recent stuff.
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It had done only 80,000 copies,
and so wasn't worth t he trouble.
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Mary Rosenblum
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They don't do a lot of
reprinting in Romance except at the very top. :-)
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Yeah, the Romance numbers are
very large.
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Jay Lake
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Trust me, in SF, an early
career book that does 80,000 copies would be cause for celebration
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not yawning
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write what you love, guys --
that's what makes it genuine and interesting.
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janecj333
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Why do you think your short
fiction was published early in your career? Any particular trait/element
that makes it stand out?
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Jay Lake
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Yeah, Elizabeth Bear talks
about "the box it came in"
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meaning everybody gets certain
strengths in their writing for fre
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as their natural abilitie
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(as opposed to those things
they have to learn)
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My "box it came in
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included good ability to
describe settin
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and a powerful if somewhat raw
voice.
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As it happens, decent setting
and powerful voice aren't all that common
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so I got away with lousy
characterization and bunch of other stuff
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because my stories were
readable and interesting already.
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speckledorf
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Is your "box" what got
you your agent?
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Jay Lake
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I like to think I've gotten
better.
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To some degree, speckle.
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I have had an unusual career
path I don't necessarily recommend to others.
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Early on I did a bunch of
reviewing (within SF/F)
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which meant all the editors
knew who I was
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and name recognition has value
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(this is distinct from social
relationships as mentioned earlier
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Reviewing has a lot of traps
in it, which is why I stopped
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but I also had a collection
very early, thanks to a somewhat nutty publisher
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who saw more than I did in my
own work.
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I was introduced to my agent
by one of her clients who'd read my collection and thought it was really,
really good
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and by then I had some
credible sales.
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But that was before my Hugo
nom or before I won the Campbell.
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She was focused on my writing,
some of which was still in that box
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but mostly I'd already written
and sold a lot, which demonstrated I was productive, and proved people were
willing to pay money to read my work.
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pthib
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How do you juggle promotion with
your day job and writing or does your publisher do most of that for you?
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Jay Lake
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heh
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that's an excellent question,
pthib
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um
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wow
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Promotion isn't very well
managed for newer writers.
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No one has the budget for it.
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If you go into the economics
of a book, you can see why..
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(Digression, Anna Louise
Genoese, an editor at Tor, keeps a livejournal blog.
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A couple of months ago she
broke down book economics in excruciating detail.
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If you really want to
know, go to her l
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and track back to that series
of posts)
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So a newer writer needs to
have some self promotional skills.
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Promotion doesn't sell bad
writing, but it can help good writing get recognized.
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My day job is in marketing.
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So I am fairly good at
promotion.
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one reason I have high name
recognition
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So the juggling
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comes just like the writing.
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A lot of careful time
management.
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A lot of energy.
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But in my case, not much
malice aforethought.
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My entire career has in some
sense been an improv performance in front of hundreds, and now thousands,
of people.
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There is no Master Plan
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Mary Rosenblum
|
Is there ever? Maybe a few
writers do that.
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Jay Lake
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hwh
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I don't know Mary
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but not me...
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that's why god invented
publicists, I guess -- not that I ever plan to have one.
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pthib
|
Do you recommend small press
publishers to those who write outside the norm?
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Jay Lake
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Depends on what you mean by
"write outside the norm", but, basically, yes
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Small press can take a lot
more risks than big press.
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Simply because of the numbers
involved.
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An independent press can make
a profit on one or two thousand books being sold in a title
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where in New York that would
be a miserable failure.
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So books which might not
appeal to a mass audience
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can prosper in the small
press.
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There’s more to it than
that, but it's not a bad way to think of such things.
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Mary Rosenblum
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But let me break in here for a
moment, Jay, and make a distinction between serious small press like
Fairwood
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and the 'quantity publishers'
who simply publish any marginally readable book they get and make THEIR
money on a few sales of every title in inventory.
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Jay Lake
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Oh yeas
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vanity, too
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yah, be very thoughtful about
small presses
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Mary Rosenblum
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The serious small presses are
respected and Jay
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is an example of a big NY
publisher who paid attention because of a small press publication.
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But they do NOT look at the
quantity publishers.
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Jay Lake
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yah, what Mary said.
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One way to tell is by looking
at who gets strong reviews in LOCUS, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, etc.
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But rule number one...money
always flows to the writer.
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You pay nothing, ever, except
postage.
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If there's any fees involved
anywhere in getting published, run, don't walk the other way.
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Mary Rosenblum
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Absolutely.
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Jay Lake
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ditto for agents
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Mary Rosenblum
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And a BUNCH of scams exist.
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Jay Lake
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No reading fees.
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Mary Rosenblum
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Predators
and Editors
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Jay Lake
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cool
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