Chris Howard's Writing Blog

Theme change

Sorry for the shift in theme for the blog--this is an old theme.  I'm working on a re-design for the site, something with even more oceany stuff than I already have.  Stay tuned.

Post 991

Okay, never really thought about the future when I started blogging in 2004, but I'm about to hit the 1000th post milestone, and...it seems like I should do something special, doesn't it? 

Skott at textiplication.com sent over a few cool ideas for the last ten posts, a countdown, some other neat things to do.

Any ideas? 

In the meantime...I jumped in the Wayback Machine to get a look at what my blog looked like in December of 2005.  Flippin' uggo, man.  But what's interesting is that top post talks about my latest work in progress that I labeled "CO."  That was Captive Ocean, the original title of Seaborn.  Crazy to think that I created the character of Kassandra in 2003--five freakin' years ago. 

The third post from the top I talk about subscribing the MAKE magazine.  Cool.

Anyway, click the image to see it full-sized. 

Book Link Widget builder v1

Super busy lately, but I did get to spend some time last weekend to put this together--and write two chapters, around 7k words!  Okay, so here's version 1 of the book link widget builder--generic version.  I made a Juno Books version here.  The idea is to get your readers, fans, friends, family, a good portion of the millions out there on the Web to post your link widget on their blogs, web pages, MySpaces, Facebook, etc., and make it easy for those who are looking for a good book to get yours.  That simple.

Here's an example with Tobias Buckell's, Ragamuffin, but it should work for any book.  Links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookSense and your publisher site.

Try it out!  Let me know what you think.

Want to create your own widget?  You can try it out here, but if you have a Web site and your hosting provider offers PHP, you can have complete control!  Bwah-ha-ha-ha!  </Diabolical Laughter>  Enough of that.  Here's the code if you want to host it, customize it, etc.  It's free under a Creative Commons BSD license, which means you can do pretty much anything with it.  Unzip the files and make sure the directory of writable.  There are still a few things to work out, some browser CSS differences.  Enjoy.  Email me if you have questions: chrishoward.author@gmail.com

bookWidget.zip

Here's what you get in the zip:

PHP files

index.php	Step 1 - add your book info
WidgetDisplay.php	Step 2 - Displays the widget
WidgetPublish.php	Step 3 - Publish your widget
WidgetHelp.php	Some really crappy help

Templates

GetWidget.txt	template for the "Get this Widget"
template.txt	Widget template

Images

amazon.jpg	a little Amazon.com logo
CoverImageHelp.jpg	Help stuff
ISBNHelp.jpg	Help Stuff
WidgetBack1.png	Widget background images
WidgetBack2.png	Customize these...
WidgetBack3.png
WidgetBack4.png
WidgetBack5.png

What's going on?

I'm heads down on Seaborn's sequel, even starting to look forward to the next book.  (Alice will be thrilled).

I haven't been checking MySpace, and just did, to find out that after accepting some libraries as friends, I'm up over a 1000...uh...friends!  Crazy.  I know there are many many authors and publishing industry people on MySpace, and I think it's worth it to keep a profile there.   Facebook is looking like the new new thing for editors, agents, and authors.

http://www.myspace.com/the0phrastus
http://www.facebook.com/p/Chris_Howard/605431666

If you haven't been here in a while--actually visited my blog (http://theophrast.us) if you're using a reader, then click by and check out the new extreme makeover.  I'm still tweaking, but all the dust has nearly settled.  Let me know what you think of it.

I've been posting (mostly cross-posting) stuff over on the Juno Books authors blog, Fiction Beyond the Ordinary.  Go check it out.

A web site for Seaborn

I've just started goofing with a web site (a page or two really) for my novel Seaborn.  It won't be in stores for months, but I figure I can't be too early for some things.  Got to start building a presence and momentum now.  As far as domain names, Seaborn.com was taken, but I've picked up SeabornBook.com, SeabornOnline.com, NineCities.com, and SaltwaterWitch.com, and I'll probably alias them all to one.

Anyway, I'd love it if you took a look at my first pass and commented here on what you think.  If you click the pic on the left, you'll see a screenshot of the site.  Click the link below to see the latest--which may or may not have changed:

New:  http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/

http://the0phrastus.typepad.com/saltwater_witch/index2.html

One of the things I'm particularly interested in knowing is how it appears in different browsers.  I'm checking with IE7 and FF2, but I don't have Safari, Opera or others.  Let me know how it looks Safari users!

Off to WFC 2007

I'm taking my camera.  I'll post when I can.  Hope to see you at World Fantasy 2007!  I'll see if I can get Chloe to write something about her first con experience.

http://www.lastsfa.org/wfc2007/

Fiction Beyond The Ordinary

Fiction Beyond The Ordinary is the new blog by the authors of Juno Books.

Check it out:  http://fictionbeyondtheordinary.blogspot.com

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deviantArt

deviantArt is a huge 7+ year old artist's community at www.deviantart.com.  There are so many communities, social nets, collaboratives, and services you can join out there (thousands of smaller communities, but I'm thinking of things like, MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Gather, StumbleUpon, etc.)--and each one takes some amount of commitment to make work, to belong, to really become part of the network.  Some of these services require more than others, and benefits vary.  Some make the time you spend adding to the community feel worthwhile, and with time your page/profile/presence/notoriety/usefulness to the community grows.  Others seem to make it a chore--or have little or no upside. 

I recently joined deviantArt, and having belonged to more than a handful of groups over the years--and knowing that it takes time to cultivate a presence, to fit in, I regret not joining a long time ago.  Better late than ever, I suppose.

Here's my page:  http://the0phrastus.deviantart.com/

Question:

What social networks or similar services do you like, spend time on, feel most welcome participating in?  Which ones don't work, or have no apparent benefits?

A Chat with 31 Top YA authors

I just passed this along to Chloe:  Join ReaderGirlz for a chat every evening for the entire month of October with 31 top YA authors from Meg Cabot to Stephenie Meyer!  Hosted By the readergirlz divas and YALSA on the readergirlz group forum:

http://groups.myspace.com/readergirlz

ReaderGirlz site: http://www.readergirlz.com/

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Domain Names

I'm trying to come up with some good available domain names for Seaborn.  I have time, but it's never too early to get things off the ground.  Of course, Searbon.com is taken, and I don't really want to spend a pile of money to bid for it.  Here's my list so far:

SALTWATERWITCH.COM 

NINECITIES.COM 

SEABORNBOOK.COM 

SEABORNONLINE.COM

What do you think of these?  Do they work?  What's your favorite?  Can you think of any others?

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As you can see, my blogroll is a little slim

Just look down the right side column, and then scroll about a mile into the ground.  You can see that I'm always on the lookout for exceptional blogs to read.  Okay, I don't have endless hours to fill with blog reading, but I also don't want to lose track of the great blogs out there.  Justine Larbalestier has pointed us--her readers, because all of us--everyone--should be reading Justine's blog--to Kathleen T. Horning's blog on GLBT books, Worth the Trip. 

http://worththetrip.wordpress.com/

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It was the best of times...

No, that's it.  Best of times.  As far as technology and communication go, we live in a universe changing era.  A million examples of this, but let me give you one tiny detail that somehow makes all of this technology glow:  I got an email from Terry Martin, the managing editor of the new British quarterly magazine Murky Depths, thanking me for subscribing, telling me that issue 0 (promo) and issue 1 were in the mail and should be in my hands shortly.  And then to thank me for posting about MD here on the blog.   I paid for the one-year subscription with PayPal, which--of course--handled the conversion to British Pounds seamlessly.  I found out about Murky Depths from an article I read online at SFScope, to whose RSS feed I subscribe, and through my feed reader, Bloglines, I read articles when the reader tells me there's something new.

Trite tech commentary aside, the whole world really is right outside my door, on the other end of the Internet pipe, etc.  And with everything else going on here and around the world, I still wouldn't trade living in this time for any other.

So, go order that two pound Spanish Cheese Assortment from Amazon.com, have it delivered to your door, browse the art at the Met, and you better go pick up a sub to Murky Depths.

Konrath on what works

A great post by JA Konrath:  What Works? Everything from MySpace to mass emailing to store signings and launch parties.  A bunch of ideas, services, events, many many things you, me, we can do to make our books a success.

Novel News

The mass market paperback edition of my novel SEABORN will be out in July 2008 from Juno Books, an imprint that specializes in "a variety of fantasy featuring strong female characters."   Juno Books is an imprint of Prime Books/Wildside Press. 

I completed a YA fantasy SALTWATER WITCH in July, and it's with my agent.

Working like a whole hive of bees--super coordinated writing bees who like the sea--on The New Sirens, working title for the sequel to Seaborn.

http://www.juno-books.com

Murky Depths

Issue 1 of Murky Depths is available with Steve Stone's very cool cover art.  If you're in the states, it's 84 pages of pure murk for £8.90, promo issue + annual four-issue subscription for £33.

I Just ordered the promo issue and next four.  Go get yours!

Writers guidelines here: http://www.murkydepths.com/substxt.html.  They're also looking for art, poetry.

• Links
• SFScope article
• Murky Depths on MySpace
• MurkyDepths.com

Redesign time

Yes, this is a bit different, a bit more water, still three column, but with both sidebars on the right.  Let me know what you think.  Colors work?  Readability?  Still tweaking, playing with locations of sidebar widgets and link lists.

Put me squarely in Seth's camp

Tobias Buckell posts quotes from Seth Godin and Peter Watts.  Sure, there's a context difference, but there's also a clear here's-my-view-of-the-world in each of these, and it's interesting how wholeheartedly accepted and different the two are.

Interview with Richard Morgan at The Agony Column

The Agony Column interviews the author of Thirteen, the Takeshi Kovacs novels. (In MP3 and Real).

Full URL: http://trashotron.com/agony/news/2007/07-30-07.htm#MorganRichard

Where do I think I will be in five years?

I posted my "Where will you be as an author in five years?" question here and on MySpace, and the first two comments on my blog on MySpace made me step back and take a second look at my own goals. 

The first comment from Lorraine C. Ladish was more along the lines of my own response, a general view of the future with some details sprinkled in, but then WriterGal76 commented with twelve very specific goals, including, "submit a book-length collection to the Yale Series of Younger Poets" and "teach a college course in poetics or literary novels/analysis and any other aspect or form of creative writing."

So, I went back and rewrote my follow-up post to be somewhere between Lorraine's and WriterGal76's level of specificity.

I'll start by saying that the one thing I don't see me having more of in the next five years is time.  Always need more time.

I know I can complete at least one novel a year for I don't know how many years.  I have enough ideas, outlined novels, first three chapters of stories to last me a decade.  I come up with several story ideas worth pursuing every year, so I'm set for a long long while.  Again, it's that time thing that will always get in the way.   

I've created a few fiction writing lessons for my own kids called Saturday Morning Writing Club, but teaching or participating on the panel side of a writing workshop would be something new and fun.

I will continue to go to conventions, even more than I do now.  I can't see myself ever missing Boskone or Readercon unless something more urgent comes up, but I'd like to take in more cons, world and regionals.  I don't know how things might change.  I mean, right now, I'm like, OMG!--no way, there's Elizabeth Bear!  Okay, I don't say OMG, but it is really cool to see authors walking around, talking to fans, talking about their experiences.

I would love to win an award, say a Hugo.  Just one, thank you.

I will continue to draw and paint, and I'm going to work on a graphic novel or three over the next five years.  Has to happen.

Movies?  Yes, lots of them, my stories turned into screenplays and big screen productions, red carpets, tuxedos...Really, I'd be overjoyed to get an option or two in the next five.

I want to see my novels translated and published all over the world.

I've made one novel, Nanowhere--a YA thriller, available for free reading and downloading (CC licensed), and I can see myself doing it again.  I've already written a short story that I plan to post for free when my novel Seaborn is released sometime in 2008.  Also planning a short graphic version of the story.

There's my list. Where's yours?

www.lorrainecladish.com
http://www.myspace.com/writergal76
http://www.myspace.com/the0phrastus
http://www.elizabethbear.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award

Links, glorious links!

Oh, what would the blogging world be like without links?

Okay, trackbacks are pretty cool, too.

Con at Collateral Damage has linked to me with some answers to a couple of my thorny trash bag marketing questions.  http://collateraldamage.wordpress.com/2007/08/10/glad-provides-recipes-for-trash-bag-use/

And, NWSFS - Northwest Science Fiction Society has linked back to my "How do you write" post.

Cooler than cool.

breastsummer

This week's theme at Wordsmith.org A.Word.A.Day is red-herring words, and today's word is:

breastsummer

It's not a word with which I'm familiar, and my first impression was that it was going to be something sunnier, more uplifting, maybe even with a nice tan. 

breastsummer (BRES-sum-uhr, BREST-, BRES-e-muhr) noun; A horizontal beam supporting a wall over a large opening, such as a shop window.

A bit of a let down, really.

Free Jodi!

If you missed the 2007 BEA/Writer's Digest Writers Conference with Jodi Picoult's wonderful keynote and a pile of writer-focused seminars and panels, then it looks like you can do a make up.

Writer's Digest, Booksurge and Write Bros are offering video webcasts of some of the popular sessions, "viewable on your own schedule for a fraction of the cost of the attending the conference itself."

However, the keynote with Jodi Picoult is FREE.

Check it out, along with webcasts of Writing the Breakout Novel with Donald Maass, The Six Usual Suspects: Fiction Writing Conundrums with Peter Selgin, and How to Write an Irresistible Nonfiction Book Proposal with Rita Rosenkranz.  These three run $20 US.

http://www.writersdigest.com/bea/index.asp

What not to eat

Skott's posted the third episode, Human-Shark Hybrid, Episode 3: What Not to Eat, with some very important sales lessons for the junior shark-hyrbid salesperson.

Sometimes you forget about things...

I have this old novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2005 called DOA (Death-Magic Open Access) and I've had a link to a couple chapters in the bar on the left forever, but apparently it didn't go anywhere and I've never checked it.

So, DOA is...

My plot's a classic rivalry.  Two death-magic scholars, one the editor of the prestigious Journal of Death Magic (JDM), the other about to startup an Open Access journal (DOA - Death-magic Open Access) with his new business partner, Ottaviana Scoto, a vampire who looks no older than twenty, although she knows more about the printing and publishing business than anyone, having been born in 1442 into a family of Venetian printers.  I have a crazy lineup of secondary characters, one who's famous for once saving Christmas (He also owns a refrigerator that follows him around).  Another who can't do anything for himself, although he has no trouble building machines that can take care of his everyday tasks.

Read the first two chapters now:  DOA Chapters 1 & 2

What time do you write?

I was up at 3:30 this morning with a whole chapter floating around in my head.  I put down three pages longhand--and that's with tiny writing up and down the margins with arrows and lines and big asterisks telling me that that paragraph in 4 point bad handwriting at the upper right side of the page gets inserted here.

That's how I write.

I wake up in the middle of the night with characters talking, crying, running, dodging bullets in my head--it can be a calm conversation.  Sometimes it's more like My Dinner with Andre meets Rollerball, or a bright hazy noisy metallic ball of Das Boot (Director's Cut), The Princess Bride, and On Golden Pond, which is exactly how I describe my last book, Seaborn. 

I also have to--MUST--get to a keyboard quickly or I will be unable to read my own handwriting.  It's like it bleeds into another language if I let it sit too long.  Tragic, the pages I've lost, the good ideas that have become indecipherable, because I waited a few days to put them down in a doc.

I wrote for an hour and a half and never did get back to sleep.  So, what time is your creative time?  I stay up late, too, but I find the early morning hours best.

Northern New Hampshire Roadtrip

We need some help with names, a German Shepherd female with a name that begins with "L."

Me and Alice and the kids spent most of yesterday driving up the far reaches of I-93 to the Littleton area of the Granite State, to see the beautiful White Mountains of course, but especially to see a German Shepherd breeder.  I'm a total dog lover, even if some of them really are alien invaders decanted into dogs and bent on seizing control of our world.  I just can't help myself.

So, the plan is to have a German Shepherd pup by the end of the year, something with an "L" name.  My first choice is Lysistrata, but we've started lining up a bunch of them, including Lykeia, Lydia, Lucenza, Lysandra. 

Thanks, Dave, for pointing me to Lori Lemaris, Superman's mermaid girlfriend from Atlantis.

Man's best friend conspiring with aliens to seize control of our planet!

Some pics of the area, Cannon Mountain, Littleton:

Typepad Pages

I know it's easy enough to create a web page, upload it to Typepad, and serve it, but they added the Pages feature a while back to make it a bit easier--and then anything published under "Pages" will be served inside my blog frame, etc.  I guess it takes any hassle out of the task.

So, I just created my first page by cannibalizing ( + editing) an old post, Saturday Morning Writing Club, in which I developed fiction writing exercises for my kids, Chloe and Christopher.  Check it out.

http://the0phrastus.typepad.com/the0phrastus/saturday-morning-writing-club.html

digg it    del.icio.us

Flipped

I just signed up for an account at Flip.com because it seems like an interesting service and because I sign up for absolutely everything.  (See right column top).  I saw Marureen's link to a flip book for her latest novel, [Alien] Girl at Sea, and thought knowing about Flip may come in handy at some point. 

http://www.flip.com

Main Jane

I don't usually go for the what-are-you? quizzes, but come on, I had to find out which Plain Jane I am.

Which PLAIN Jane Are You? Main Jane

As the leader of the pack, you are always looking out for your friends and working to make your group pretty tight knit.

Take This Quiz

First three chapters, fast and what-the-hellish

Explain...Explain later.  You don't have time for explanations.  Don't stop to smell anything.  Do use the sense of smell, but don't dawdle.  You have to move.  Action and dialogue!  Now!

Okay, I'm describing standard writing strategy.  I have just gone back and edited the first three chapters of The New Sirens (working title for the sequel to Seaborn) readying them for critiquing by the really wonderful writing group to which I (thankfully still) belong even though I have been too busy to make the in-person meetings for months.

So, it's that show don't tell, don't info-dump, crisp dialogue stuff again...

I know, I know.  It's common sense, but I'm looking at paragraphs I've written that just shouldn't be in the first three chapters. There's narrative, telling too much, all the crappy stuff writers shouldn't be doing, but it ends up flowing off our fingers onto the keyboard anyway.

You have to make it short and mysterious, don't explain anything, use one line of dialogue instead of ten, just enough to make the reader think, this is just the surface of something a whole lot deeper.   

I think that after chapter one, you have to get the reader/editor/agent to think, "What the hell just happened?"  And after the first three chapters, think "I must have chapter 4!"

You also need a crit group to tell you, "You think this is fast? --yeah, if your walking" or "It wasn't so much what-the-hell as why-the-hell am I reading this?"

I'm into chapter 13 of The New Sirens, not quite halfway done, and it's been a good exercise for me to go back and strip the first three chapts down to the essentials, action, motion, dialogue that adds to the plot. 

And nothing more.

Washington and Idaho

We flew into Seattle last week, spent a couple days drinking coffee, riding the elevator to the top of the Space Needle, touring the Pacific Science Center, trying to follow the lines of the wavy colorful metallic amorphous structure of the Gehry-designed Experience Music Project, drinking coffee, walking along the wharf with my sister's family, eating at Ivar's...more coffee.  We stayed at the MarQueen Hotel on Queen Anne Ave., a really cool old (1918) brick apartment building that's been turned into a hotel in the last decade.  It was like staying at your grandmother's house, but with a doorman and someone to park your car and with really comfortable beds and a secret guest-only back door into Caffe Ladro.  Yes, more coffee consumed there.

Then the party really started.  We caravanned across the state of Washington with my sister's family, my brother's family, and my uncle and aunt from Texas, and met my dad at Stoneridge, a resort in northern Idaho.  Then it was three days at my aunt and uncle's place on Spirit Lake, a stunningly beautiful house right on the water with a dock and jet-skis and kayaks.  Three days of reminiscing, boating, eating really good food, meeting new additions to the family, cousins I hadn't seen in decades, and I can't remember the last time we got together with my sister's and brother's family at the same time--but I'd guess the late '90s.  It's been a while, too long really.  My Aunt Sharry put it all together, and we had a wonderful time.  (I'm not going to post family pics because there's a mix and I'm not sure how everyone feels about having their pictures--or their kid's pictures posted on the Internet).

We were there at the Coeur d'Alene Borders to get Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, showed up around 10:15 PM and didn't get out of there until 1:45 AM.  All worth it, of course.  Chloe finished around 10:15 the next day.  I think this is the best of the whole lot--and I like them all.

On the way back to Seattle, we stopped off to see the Columbia River and petrified Ginkgo trees.

a few of the cool Seattle Pigs on Parade:

Way out northwest

We're packing today, heading out of Logan early tomorrow morning for Seattle for a few days, and then it's a drive across the state to Idaho for another four or five days.  We're going to see brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins--some we haven't seen since our wedding in 1990, some we haven't seen for longer.  Going to be great.  I'm also looking forward to getting a bunch of writing in, some editing of a complete YA book that I'm sending off in August, and reading.  I'm reading Richard Morgan's Thirteen at the moment, but I've packed a few others.

I'll get some blogging in when I can.  Cheers!

I had this crazy dream...

...that someone called my name and I had to get up on this stage in front of a bunch of brilliant SF writers and industry luminaries and aerospace pioneers and Heinlein fans, and say thank you.  Of course, I couldn't see a thing with all the lights, but I knew they were out there, you know, Frederik Pohl, Ben Bova, David Gerrold, John Scalzi, James Gunn, Allen Steele, Eleanor Wood, Robert Charles Wilson, Spider Robinson and countless more.   

I'm walking back to my seat, gripping my framed certificate, and one of the writing contest judges calls my name, I turn, stunned--deer in the headlights sort of stunned.  He shakes my hand, and says something really nice like "Great job.  Keep writing" and I say something lame like "okay!" or "I plan to."

And then...

Oh, wait, that was Saturday night in Kansas City. 

The Heinlein Centennial was a blast, with great panels, and a tremendous gala dinner and ceremony.  Arthur C. Clarke up on the big screen with some personal Heinlein stories, and Peter Diamandis passionately telling us to get off planet, explore the wide worlds out there--and make money.

My dad flew out from California, met me at KCI on Friday.  We took in Peter's full preso and hour before the dinner, and he stepped through the history of the Ansari X Prize, and some of the cool projects he's rolled out, like Zero G--zero gravity experience on a Boeing 727--how cool is that?

The gala reception ended beautifully with a raised glass from LTC Chuck Coffin, "2107 in Luna City. See you there!"

Susan Satterfield, author, teacher, organizer extraordinaire, and contest coordinator, handed out the writing contest awards. 

Of course, there was a blood drive, and I gave a big bag of it--and got my pin.

Note:  I had no trouble bringing the framed--with glass--award through security at the airports.  I showed it to them, and a few were Heinlein fans, we chatted and they thought the whole thing was cool.

Links:
http://www.heinleincentennial.com
http://www.gozerog.com/history.htm
http://www.scalzi.com/whatever
http://www.frederikpohl.com
http://www.benbova.net
http://www.gerrold.com
http://www.allensteele.com
http://www.spectrumliteraryagency.com
http://www.robertcharleswilson.com
http://www.spiderrobinson.com

I'm off to Kansas City

The Robert Heinlein Centennial kicks off tomorrow, and I'm heading out of Boston at 6 AM to get to Kansas City around noon--with a stop over in beautiful Atlanta.

A bunch of new stuff up at the centennial site.  Here's the latest schedule.

Last thoughts?  I need a damn clone!  I really wanted to get to Readercon this weekend.  If you're in Burlington Mass. for it, stop by the Withywindle Books booth, buy books, and say hello to Cynthia!

Links:
http://www.heinleincentennial.com
http://www.readercon.org
http://www.withywindlebooks.com

Yes, that's her tail...

IF: Twist.  It all started in watercolor, but ended up being a mixed-media piece.  Started with a pencil sketch, moved to watercolor, scanned and worked on it digitally.  I've completed two novels--working out publisher contract details on one--with an undersea world, and although there are "mermaids," I rarely draw them with tails--caudal fins.  (I draw and paint many of the scenes about which I write.  Click here for more of my work).

Title: Dexithea

Do you think of merchandising when you're writing?

And what about after?

Frank Herbert's Dune is one of those early-on influencers that I haven't read in years.  Nevertheless I have managed to make references to Dune in a couple stories--and not really on purpose, and only one was direct.  The other involved a girl with deep cuts in her shoulders and the medic thinking that they reminded him of something he'd read about drowned fishermen with similar claw marks (You know, one fisherman saved himself by standing with his claw boots on the shoulders of the less fortunate fellow).

Anyway, there are pieces of culture, old stories, folklore, and other interesting bits of information floating around my head--along with all the other crap--when I have my fingers on the keyboard, and some of them manage to surface at just the right time--just in time to make the perfect connection with the words that happen to be running through my fingertips. 

Sometimes it's on purpose.  I think to myself, I need to make a reference to Aristotle somewhere in here, or Boston, or how different army posts are from the houses and streets right on the other side of the fence.  And there's a purpose to this.

I have given my characters t-shirts with something written on them, something I picked up somewhere, thought cool, worth telling--or retelling.  (Surf New Hampshire!)

So, I'm wondering if anyone has ever taken advantage of this?  Have you thought of purposefully showing--writing in--one of your characters wearing a t-shirt with something cool on it--tough girl wearing a shirt with "I HIT LIKE A GIRL" (with the obvious implication that you don't want to know what that feels like)--or your book title, or some reference to your story or characters?

And then making t-shirts and giving them away for publicity?

The thing about t-shirts is that people wear them over and over.  And people read what's on them.  There are blogs dedicated to critiquing t-shirts.  There are t-shirt companies that produce form-fitting cotton versions of sandwich boards (Reactee).

Okay, even if you don't think of it when you're writing (I have to say, I don't), what about putting a little something in after the fact.  A couple words, a phrase, something short enough to put in big letters on a shirt...

Links:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)
• http://reactee.com/
• http://tcritic.com/

The Wall

Check out the posts and pics from Gabriele at Lost Fort on Hadrian's Wall.

http://lostfort.blogspot.com/2007/06/wall.html
http://lostfort.blogspot.com/2007/06/and-for-fun.html
http://lostfort.blogspot.com/2007/06/more-wall-pics.html

 

What's your rating?

I found this interesting:

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• knife (3x)
• sex (1x)

What's weird is that I can't remember ever using the word "knife" in a post.  Three times?  It's not that I have anything against knives.  I'm just not a knife sort of fellow.

(Saw this on Cocktail Party Physics). Get your own blog rating here:  http://mingle2.com/blog-rating