This Book Will Save Your Life

I woke up this morning with the Pointer Sisters in my head. Now, I like the Pointer Sisters, to a point, but it’s been about four straight hours of “I’m So Excited” looping through my brain, and I am becoming weary of it.

I do not know why the Pointer Worm invaded my virtual ear. I woke up, and it was there, broadcasting tinnily, sounding remarkably like a monaural nine transistor pocket radio circa 1963. Why this song? Why now? Had I heard the song recently? Not to the best of my recollection. Had I encountered the words “I’m so excited” in some other context? I don’t think so. Was I excited? Am I excited?

Well, yes, I am excited, but not in a frenetic hot-to-trot Pointer Sisters sort of way. I have never been that excited. My excitement is more of the slow burn, rising tide, tight-chested variety. It is the familiar sort of excitement that comes with the approaching publication of a new book.*

Because every new book I write is the book that will save me.

It’s a writer thing that writers don’t often talk about, not even to each other. You see, we are all drowning, and that is the reason we keep writing, because every new book is the book that will float us above and away from (choose three) irrelevance, mediocrity, madness, obscurity, obloquy, ourselves.

And so, I blame the Pointer Sisters earworm on the fact that I have a new book coming out in a few months.

Several years ago I read a novel called This Book Will Save Your Life, by A.M. Homes. I picked it up in part because I’d recently heard an interview with Homes, and I liked what she said. Mostly, though, I was attracted by the title. I enjoyed the book—it’s a funny, smart, magical-realistic tale about a lonely, dissociated man who discovers that he is not alone. I would recommend it to some people. But—and this is not a bad thing—the title is the best part.

Why do I write? Why write when there are so many other things I could be doing with my one and only life? Why not become a savior, a saint, a martyr? Why not make a ton of money and surround myself with luxury? Why not raise a litter of children and propagate my DNA? Why not watch TV and drink beer all day? Why not stop breathing and maybe find out that I’m wrong about what happens next?

I write because the next book is always the book that will save my life. The book that will make sense of all that I have experienced. It is a rocket, a flare, a smoke signal, a howl. “Howl” is another great book title. “Call me Ishmael” is a great first line. “Only connect” is a great epigraph.

As I was writing this, my “I’m So Excited” earworm morphed into “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” by Daft Punk. Still the tinny 1960s era transistor radio playing through a single earphone. Same difference, I say.

*The new book is The Klaatu Terminus, the final book in the Klaatu Diskos trilogy. It comes out in April.

Fan Mail

I have written three fan letters in my life. One to Stan Lee, back in 1965. One to Octavia Butler shortly before her untimely death in 2006. And one to Elmore Leonard a few years earlier.

My favorite Elmore Leonard novel

Elmore Leonard died this morning, at age eighty-seven. I did not know him as a person, but as a writer he had a pretty good run. He was still writing until two weeks ago, when he suffered a stroke. He was an artist who kept getting better at his craft well into his sixties, and maintained that high level of quality until the end.

Back in the mid 1980s, when I was first getting serious about writing novels, I picked up a copy of Leonard’s LaBrava (1983) on the recommendation of Jeff Hatfield, then the manager of Uncle Edgar’s Mystery Bookstore. I immediately went on to read every other book Leonard had written. I learned more about writing from those books than I had from any other single author. A few years later, I wrote a series of comic crime novels. If you read the first three—Drawing Dead, Short Money, and The Mortal Nuts—you will see Elmore Leonard’s influence on nearly every page, just as you can see George V. Higgins’ influence in Leonard’s early crime novels, and James M. Cain’s fingers all over Higgins’ early work, and so on back to Sophocles.

My later work displays less of Leonard’s DNA, but it’s still there, tweaking the dialog, shoring up the characters, fine-tuning the timing, making me better. Every day I am aware of him. He was one of the great ones, and for me he was the right writer discovered at the right time, and I will be forever grateful for his example.

Elmore Leonard answered my fan letter. I still have his reply, a short handwritten note, classy and gracious. I must find it now, and reread it. Excuse me.

Nom Nom

Hundreds of thousands of science fiction stories and novels have been published over the past century, so it is inevitable that a few of them would have gotten a few things right about the future. Still, it's a fun game to play, and today's entry is The Space Merchants, by Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, published in 1952, the year I was born. The Space Merchants is set in the not-too-distant future, in New York, in a world where corporations run the government and advertising has saturated the collective consciousness. Some of it holds up, and some of it doesn't, but what made me think of it today is this article from the BBC.

In the novel, the vat-grown protein is an enormous chicken breast called Chicken Little, from which slabs are carved to supply protein for a vastly overpopulated city. The product grown by researchers at Maastricht University is cow-based. Maybe the research was funded by McDonald's and not KFC.

First Pass Pages

It’s been a dog eat everything week here at the Hautman-Logue-Gaston residence, and not a lot of work getting done. Mostly we have trying to convince the puppy to chew on things we want chewed, and to perform his evacuations outside. 

But I did finish reviewing the first pass pages of The Klaatu Terminus and making about a hundred small corrections.

“Pass pages” are the stage just after copyediting, when the copyedits have been incorporated into the manuscript, and the work is set in the font and layout that will appear in the final book. They look like this:

This page has one correction, of a typical pass page typo.

When I first went through the publishing process I was amazed by how many rounds of edits, corrections, and proofs are necessary to produce a professionally published novel. The first edition will probably have been combed through by no fewer than six readers, multiple times. And still, there will be mistakes. There are always mistakes. The first edition of my novel Rash, for example, contained a spelling error in the first sentence.

First pass pages are a critical stage for the author, because usually this is the last time he or she will have any significant input into the content of a book before it goes out for review. After that, the book will go through one (or two, or three) more sets of pass pages, and then into ARCs, or “Advance Reviewer Copies.” These are the bound, paperback copies that will go out to Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and other industry publications for pre-publication reviews.

ARCs often contain errors that will be corrected in the actual book, but it is fervently hoped that such errors will be minor, because the pre-pub reviewers will be judging the book on the basis of the ARC.

Anyway, I am glad to be done with these first pass pages, and I’ll be taking them to the post office this afternoon. I think. It always feels a bit like stepping out of an airplane and hoping the parachute opens. Maybe I’ll give the manuscript another read-through. I’m sure I missed some stuff.                         

Gaston has Arrived

Gaston, four months old and weighing in at four pounds one ounce, arrived yesterday. He eats, he poops, he squeaks, he licks, and he is very fuzzy. So far, that is all we know for sure.

CONvergence

CONvergence is an annual convention for fans of Science Fiction and Fantasy in all media, held each July at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Bloomington, MN. It is insane, and you should go. You can register at the door. The costumes alone are worth the price.

Last year I went to CONvergence just to gawk and talk. I had enough fun to return this year in a more formal capacity. I'll be doing a reading, two panels, and a book signing. Here's my schedule:

Friday July 5, 2013 11:00am - 12:00pm

Reading

Pete Hautman reads from his time-travel novel The Cydonian Pyramid, Book 2 of The Klaatu Diskos.* Panelists: Pete Hautman

Friday July 5, 2013 11:00am - 12:00pm

Sofitel Lyon

*In fact, I will be reading from my NEW novel, The Flinkwater Chronicles. Or maybe I'll read a bit from both.

Saturday July 6, 2013 2:00pm - 3:00pm

Panel: Beyond SF 101

There's a lot of advice out there for the beginning writer, this panel is for those of you who have moved beyond that point. Panelists: John Klima, Michael Merriam, Monica Valentinelli, Scott Lynch, Pete Hautman

Atrium 2

Saturday July 6, 2013 7:00pm - 8:00pm

Signing: Pete Hautman/Rob Callahan

Pete Hautman and Rob Callahan will be available to sign his work. Panelists: Rob Callahan, Pete Hautman

Autograph Table

Sunday July 7, 2013 12:30pm - 1:30pm

Panel: Atheist Authors

How do authors' personal views influence their works? How does the atheist author approach writing the fantastic? Panelists: Melinda Snodgrass, Rob Callahan, Kelly McCullough, Aimee Kuzenski, Pete Hautman

Edina

I hope to see some of you there—especially at the reading!

Commercial Announcement

Drawing Dead, my first published novel, is now available on Kindle for a mere $2.99. I don't know how long this deal will remain in place—I'm guessing for a few more days. That is all.

"Apocrypha," not "Apocalypta!"

Last winter I spent about two months emailing back and forth with librarian and author Joel Shoemaker. Joel is an exceptionally entertaining guy to correspond with, and since the main topic of our emails was my books, I was doubly fascinated. Joel had undertaken the task of reading all of my YA novels, several of my adult works, and a book that featured my three wildlife artist brothers. That's a lot of books!

Our extensive interview, in the end, totaled nearly 15,000 words. Joel managed to cut it back by ninety percent, and the result is now appearing in the June issue of VOYA, a leading library journal dedicated to the promotion of young adult literature and reading.

You can access the article here. The interview begins on page 14.

The article's subtitle, BTW, is one of Joel's little jokes—he noticed in The Cydonian Pyramid I make reference to the "Apocalypta of Adrian the Sinner." The word I had intended to type was "apocrypha." Author fail. Copyeditor fail. It happens. We will fix it in the paperback edition.

Home Delivery

Over the past two decades, the publishing industry has been changing rapidly. The good news is that there are more good books to choose from than ever before. The reasons for that are many, but the biggest driver is that there are more people with an education and the free time to write a book, and more ways for them to get their work published. Ebooks, print-on-demand, and self-publishing have created a very crowded marketplace. Publishers are scrambling to remain relevant, and writers are becoming ever more desperate to get their books noticed.

One strategy that seems to be working is the rebirth of an old idea: the serial novel. John Scalzi’s most recent effort, The Human Division, was published in thirteen weekly installments as an ebook, at 99¢ apiece. After the final installment was released, the book was published in its entirety as both print and ebook. It seems to have worked quite well.

Mary Logue is doing something similar, but more old school. Her novel Giving Up the Ghost is being published in fifty daily installments in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, beginning on Sunday, June 9. That’s how Charles Dickens did it 150 years ago. Her complete novel is also available as an ebook.

I remember reading serialized novels in the paper back in the 1960s. (Ian Fleming's last James Bond novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, was published serially in the Minneapolis Star.) Waiting every day for a new episode was exciting! I'm glad to see the practice revived. In fact, I've just ordered home delivery of the Star Tribune for the first time in a decade. I have missed the solid slap of a newspaper landing on the front step every morning—so much more substantial than the electronic ping of an arriving email.