116 hours.
677 pages.
184,000 words.
I re-sequenced the beginning and three other spots that had me scratching my head on how the first edition had gotten it wrong. I added a chapter to the ending to make it flow as it should. And tightened small things on almost every other page.
Now it’s off to my copy editors.
The cover is progressing.
Very soon, Precious. Very soon.
I now turn to the editing of CURSE.
You can read the transcript of my remarks at the American Librarian Association (ALA) conference in Chicago on July 11 below as well as the supporting information.
I am so happy to be here. And I’m happy share some good news. David McCollough, the Pulitzer prize winning historian shared this fact in his commencement speech at the University of Utah this spring. “There are yet “more public libraries in America than there are McDonalds.” [Cheering]
We have not yet been assimilated!
Of course, this is due in a large part to you, the librarians who care for the collections and take care of the patrons. Which is why I think you deserve a big round of applause. Give yourselves a hand. [Applause]
I want to start my remarks with two quotes.
Ray Bradbury was recently interviewed in a NY Times article He said, “I don’t believe in colleges and universities.” This is what he said, “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries.” He said this because when he graduated from High School he didn’t have enough money to go to college. So he went to the library three days a week for ten years.
The next quote is from the great poet Dylan Thomas–“Do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light”–that guy. He said, “My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.”
If you look at Bradbury and Thomas, they read, not because there was some grade involved, not because someone went after them with a stick—they read from hunger. From thirst. They read with wild abandon because they found in reading something they couldn’t find elsewhere.
I want to suggest one thing they found was a drug. [Laughter] I’m not speaking in metaphor. I’m talking about real physical response. As real and physical as the response you get when you or I take aspirin, brandy, or crack. Well, I hope we’re not taking crack. [Laughter]
When we think about drugs we think about pills, smoke, injections. But those are simply one set of delivery mechanisms for chemicals that trigger a physical response. There are other delivery mechanisms. Other triggers. One of them is fiction.
Now I don’t have time today to detail how this works. But I will write it up on my website for those who are interested. The key thing to remember is that fiction, the kind of fiction we love, the kind that keeps us up at night sitting on the edge of the tub or locked in a closet with a light, the kind of fiction goes beyond cognition, beyond data and facts. We find it so pleasurable precisely because it triggers and guides a physical response.
So how does all of this apply to science fiction and fantasy? Here’s the deal. And here’s where we come to our topic. Science fiction and fantasy is, for our youth, one of the most powerful gateways drugs into the fictive experience. Of course, there are ideas in science fiction and fantasy that ripple out to the society. But even if there weren’t, the happy side-effect of an addiction to this drug is improved literacy. And we all know how much that impacts.
Now I know those of you who work with young adult circulation have seen this. But I thought it might be interesting to get some actual numbers so we can start to gauge the scope of the science fiction and fantasy effect.
My interest in this began when I saw the results of the latest NEA survey. They have this graph showing reading rates in all age groups dropping horribly since 1982. By 2002 the graph is taking a nose dive. Then in 2008 everything turns around. And among the young adults (18-24), we see the biggest increase—9%.
I saw they had a genre preference question in this survey. Of course, I wondered about science fiction and fantasy. So I contacted the NEA and dug into the details. It appears that 34% of the 18-24 group say they like to read science fiction and fantasy. That’s a big number. That’s 1 in 3.
Of course, I wanted another data pont, so I went to BookScan and asked for data on book sales. Because the wonderful people there love librarians and Tor Books, they said of course. We looked at juvenile fiction sales from 2004-2008. What we saw was that science fiction and fantasy grew 144% during that period. All the other genres only grew 23%. We also saw that science fiction and fantasy currently make up almost 30% of the juvenile fiction market. So about 1/3.
Now there are some problems with the BookScan data. Yes, it only cover 60-70% of the market. It’s not in Wal-mart, grocery stories, and a few other places. But what’s more problematic for this issue is that they don’t break up the juvenile sales by age. It includes everything for folks one month old to age eighteen. So I’ve got books like Go Dog, Go in the dataset along with Twilight and Go Dog, Go isn’t categorized as fantasy. [Laughter] My suspicion is that if we narrow it down to the middle grade and YA group, we’ll see more science fiction and fantasy.
So I needed someone who did break it up by age. Well, who does that? You do. Libraries do. Besides, a lot of youth don’t have the $ to buy lots of books. So I went to some libraries in Utah and Ohio and got their YA fiction circulation stats. Here’s what I found: 60-80% of the YA fiction circulation is science fiction and fantasy. This does not include graphic novels or magna. It’s text fiction.
Folks, this is a big drug. I don’t know what part science fiction and fantasy played in the rise in reading rates, that would require a larger and more rigorous study. But I can tell you this: We want to see the impact of science fiction and fantasy on our society? We’re seeing it right now.
This large effect makes sense because science fiction and fantasy deliver experiences that are intersting to and matter to youth. It’s chock full of and encounter with the strange, weird, and wonderful; adventure and danger; doing something meaningful; being someone special, someone desireable, someone wanted in the group. All that coming of age stuff. So no wonder it’s a huge gateway drug.
I know that it was in my case. I wasn’t a reader. I don’t think I read more than twenty or twenty-four book from kindergater to sixth grade. I look at the little fellows in my local school today and they read that many titles in the first six months of the first grade. But I didn’t. I wasn’t a reader. I do remember loving the look and feel of these small chubby books. [Laughter]
I would take them them up to the librarian to check them out. She’d look down at me. “Are you going to read all that?” she’d ask. “Yes,” I’d say. Of course, it was lie. [Laughter] It was a huge lie because I would take them home and put them up on my dresser and just look at them. Just loving the look and feel. And then when it was time to check them in, I’d take them back and give them to the librarian. “Did you read all that?”
“Yes,” I’d say. And that’s how I became an author–lying to librarians. [Laughter]
Now in sixth grade my sister, we were in the car, I had four sisters and we had one TV, and so you had to reserve the time for your programs. So my sister says, “I have to watch The Hobbit for school.” Now I don’t know anything about The Hobbit. It sounded like a romance. [Laughter] I protested. No, way–we’re not going to watch some dumb kissing thing.
“No,” she said. “It’s got dragons.”
“You’re lying,” I said.
I was convinced I was doomed. But it didn’t matter. We watched it. It had dragons. And I loved the experience so much I wanted another hit. Shortly thereafter my mother and father went on a business trip. I went over to my buddy’s house. So the first day we come up out of the basement to go to school and I said, “Oh, I’m feeling sick.” So my buddy went off to school and I went back down into the basement and played hookie for two days and read The Hobbit.
It was amazing. More amazing than the movie. I had to have that experience again. And so I read Ursula LeGuin, Patricia McKillip, Donaldson, Terry Brooks. I kept reading because it delivered a cognitive-physical experience I loved. Of course, I didn’t put it that way back then. It was more along the lines of, duuuude. [Laughter]
Now I got a BA in English and a Masters in Accounting. Those degress required a lot of reading. But I didn’t develop the requisite literacy skills in school. I developed them in science fiction and fantasy.
And so when I started to write I was naturally drawn to fantasy. Having experienced this wonderful thing, I wanted to produce that and share it with others. So this novel that’s coming out has the gosh-wow I still love. It’s set in a world were humans are ranched by beings of immense power. There’s a young man and young woman in terrible trouble. So it has monsters, magic, and mayhem. But I also found fantasy big enough to let me explore other things that have become more important to me as I’ve aged. Like family, sacrifice, and redemption. And I hope people enjoy all that. But ultimately, I hope this book does for someone else what The Hobbit did for me and opens a door to a wonderful addiction. And, of course, as a powerful side-effect, improves the literacy of some rascal or rascaless. [Laughter]
I want to end where we began with that Thomas quote.
“My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.”
That kind of wild abandon will happen when the drug takes effect. And for many of our youth, probably at least one in three, that’s going to be when they ingest a few ounces of SF & Fantasy.
Thank you.
[Applause]
Emotion is not a cognition, although cognition plays a part. It’s not just in your brain. It involves a physical response, which means it involves chemicals.
We sometimes forget that our bodies produce a staggering number of chemicals. Sometimes they produce in response to external stimuli—the sun triggers the creation of vitamin D, ingested sugar triggers the production of insulin, the sight of a ravening lion standing not five feet away with nothing between him and me produces, among other things, adrenaline.
Lots of these reactions, we don’t notice. But there’s a whole group of these physical responses that we do. We lump them together and call them emotions.
Jenefer Robinson in her wonderful book Deeper Than Reason, explains, “Emotions are our way of responding to events in the environment (either external or internal)” that matter to us. They are “physiological changes that register the event in a bodily way and get us ready to respond appropriately.” Fight, flight, pursue, woo, investigate. They focus our attention, get us ready to take action, and communicate all this to others.
So while I might not feel the production of vitamin D, I do feel the fear of the lion. Fear is a wonderful thing—it keeps us alive. It raises our heart rate, pumps us full of drugs that prepare us to flee or fight. The emotion writes itself on our faces in order to, among other things, communicate the situation to those around us, warning others and calling for help. It is a physical response. Yes, there are cognitions involved, but there are also chemicals.
The latest research on emotion shows that emotion is a process that involves three things. (1) An affective appraisal of our environment that signals something important to us—a threat or opportunity. (2) This triggers an immediate physical response (chemicals, galvanic skin response, accelerated heart rates, facial expressions, etc.). (3) At this point cognitive (conscious thought) appraisals kick in and help us monitor the situation and moderate the physical response.
For example, I go out to the yard and step on this thing that slithers through the grass. The sensory signals immediately trigger a physical response to get me ready to flee or fight–heart rate, adrenaline, etc. Then I notice the snake is far too long. I look closer. It’s the garden hose. My physical response changes. I laugh, feel relief. Research has shown that when we read text, the same process occurs. We do indeed have the same types of physical responses. In some cases they’re more intense.
Now here’s the thing. This physical response is triggered not just by threats and opportunities we perceive with our senses, things out there. It is also triggered by thought. Thoughts deliver a physical response just as surely as crack does. We have the research to prove it. In fact, sometimes thought delivers a more powerful physical response. Here’s but one example. Did you know that people with a phobia of snakes have a stronger reaction to reading a passage about snakes than they do to the actual critter?
This is where fiction comes in. As I stated in my speech, fiction, the kind of fiction we love, the kind that keeps us up at night sitting on the edge of the tub or locked in a closet with a light, the kind that lingers in the fabric of our clothes and our hair long after we close the book, that kind of fiction goes beyond cognition, beyond data and facts. That kind of fiction triggers a physical response.
It does this, and this is one difference from emotion triggered by our own thoughts or the sensory data we pick up from the world, because fiction, by its very nature, its very structure, is actually guiding our emotional response. Our physical response. This management of the response is in fact one of the things that we find so pleasurable about it.
To find out more, please read:
You may then want to search out texts by Dolf Zillmann, Jennings Bryant, and Peter Vorderer.
Yup. Interior formatted and finished. 
As soon as we put together the cover, I will announce to the early bird sale for my newsletter subscribers.
Now, do you remember the illustration to the side? Back in April I told you to look at it and see if you could find the issue. I will now direct you to Talen’s leg. Click on the image to see it full size. In a post this week, I will explain just what this is all about.
Because of so many reader requests, I think it’s time to explain.
Alas, I must report that she ran off with a no-good tramp. I’m sure she’s realized her error. Either way, I’ve formed a posse. We’re hunting her down.
That’s the true story. For those that want the boring press release that obscures the facts, you may read what follows.
The first draft of Curse of a Dark God was delivered to the editor in August of 2009, two months before Servant of a Dark God was released. That draft had some issues with a few of the story lines. These issues crept (they did not run or slouch) into the text because the author, stressed about an aggressive deadline, decided to adopt the fix-it-when-you-finish-just-get-er-done-you’ve-got-a-freaking-deadline methodology of writing.
But a book of 230,000 words is a big old momma. And if something in a beginning chapter is off, it wankers a whole heck of a lot of story that follows, much like a line of dominoes. But it’s not just one story line. This book had multiple interconnected story lines. So issues in one line rippled out into others. What this meant was that the changes that needed to be made weren’t wee things that could be dealt with in a few weeks. When the dust settled, it was clear the book required a substantial rewrite, even though the draft contained gobs of cool story.
So much for that fix-it-later experiment. You can be sure the author won’t be using that on large books again.
So the author wrote another draft of 245,000 words and delivered it in August of 2010. The story rocked. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication on size (and there’s no use in having a drama about what was said and who was at fault and why fairies are always tiny hot chicks; despite our best efforts, life is full of bumps; the best thing to do is learn from them and move forward). The book actually needed to be in the 170,000 – 180,000 word range. Same as Servant of a Dark God.
In a 10% edit, you’re tightening a story, cutting out the fluff. In an edit designed to reduce the book by 30% or more, you’re cutting off arms and legs and removing things like livers. The story can’t survive such cuts unless the thing was obese to begin with and just needed to go on a diet. Unfortunately, Curse of a Dark God draft 3 was fairly lean, given the amount of story it contained. It was NOT a candidate for Biggest Loser.
The upshot is this third draft is going to be another major rewrite. Which means, given publishing lead times, that it’s going to take a number of months to get it on the shelves.
(fricken, ricken, grumble, frag a friggen nack)
Because I’m just starting on the outline, we don’t have a delivery date yet. As soon as we do, I’ll post it.
I apologize to all of you expectantly looking forward to the next book. When I started this series, I promised myself that I would not leave my readers hanging. I was determined that my books would come out in a timely fashion. And I have been working like a devil to do just that, but sometimes things happen. What I can promise you is that this draft will go quickly. Furthermore, I already have book 3 outlined. It should go quickly as well.
I know some of you are asking why? Why, the word limit? Aren’t there are plenty of monster books out there?
There are. In fact, about half of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books are roughly the length of draft 3. Publishers do sell fat books. However, the bigger the book, the harder it is to make it profitable.
First, bigger books cost more. There’s the cost of the additional paper and editing, but there’s also the extra money to ship and store.
Second, you can’t put as many copies out in the stores. You can’t because they take up more of the space that might be allotted to an individual book. So instead of being able to have stores stock four or five copies of a 120k novel, they can only stock two or three of a big old momma in that same space.
Third, bigger books cost you, dear reader, more money. Sure, the publisher might eat some of the additional costs, but some of those costs will be passed onto you.
So because of the increase in cost, the publisher needs to sell more copies; however, the limit on display space and the higher price make it harder to sell those additional copies and actually may lead to selling fewer copies.
Do you see the bind?
This doesn’t mean big books can’t be profitable. It just means that it’s not as easy. It’s a bigger risk. Part of me would want the publisher to take that risk. But the other part of me knows that slow and steady usually wins the race. Neither I nor the publisher want to gamble the long-term viability of the Dark God series. Now, if Tor was doing this all in paperback, this might not be such a big issue. But we’ve got the sweet hardback/paperback deal. And business projections have to be done in that world.
So the short of it is that we’ve run into some business limitations, and it’s going to take me a bit more time to deliver.
I wish I could announce a date at this time, but I can’t. I’ll finish up the outline for this draft and run that by the publisher around Christmas. Then it’s back to work. I promise that what you’ll get will be my best. And that’s what you want, anyway, even if it takes a bit longer to get it into your hands.
The Dragon Award winning novel Gun Runner, by Larry Correia and me, is being adopted into a graphic novel by Hound Dog Media. The writer is the legendary Mike Baron (The Punisher, Nexus) and the art is by Marcelo Salazar.
This is a story about a smuggler crew who specialize in stealing battle mechs and selling them to worlds that aren’t allowed to have them. The book is great. I can’t wait to see it as a graphic novel.
This is going to be awesome. Check it out. There’s even a pledge level to get yourself drawn as a member of the crew.
Raveler is now up on Audible! The other two books are getting excellent reviews so far for both the story and performance by Alex Wyndham. So happy to have these up in audio. Many readers have been asking for audio versions for years.
Make someone happy with 624 AWARD-WINNING pages of thrilling ACTION, cool MONSTERS, & wicked MAGICS.
This book makes crowds cheer*. Only $7.99. Read the first chapter.
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Awesome!
Can you post the first chapter now?
…unless you already have. 🙂 I’m not sure if the chapters 1-4 that you have up are from the new line-edit version, or from some older draft.
You impatient thing! 🙂
It still needs a copy edit. But know that the first chapter is what I have on the sample page–the hunt converging on Sugar’s house. You won’t notice huge changes in those first chapters. Most of the edits there were indeed line edits, fixing spots to make the sentences and action sequences flow a bit better.