News – updates on books, events, appearances, etc.

  • ALA conference–wonderful!

    ByJohn Brown

    Holy cow, ALA was simply wonderful. The summary is below. You can find my speech here: http://johndbrown.com/2009/07/gateway-drugs-and-fiction/

    Got to go to dinner, ride in cabs, and chat at length with:

    1. A bunch of librarians who were complete characters. One guy named Milton Wolf who has written a lot on SFF and has been known to ski cross-country naked. Another gal named Diana Herald who had over 40 foster kids (official and non), and lives in a tire house. Then another named Edith Helbert, with whom I literally shared my meal (she had a fab pork burger, I had bbq beef brisket: I got half of her burger, she got half of my bbq). She is also in the Society of Creative Anacronism and was telling me about some war between two kingdoms she attended where the archers shot tennis ball/tube arrows at each other. Finally, Christy Donaldson introduced me in the meeting. Later she and I talked and I found out that not only is she a librarian in Happy Valley, but she loves the Sundance film festival. I’ve never gone, thinking it was probably going to be too artsy-fartsy for me, Mr. beef and bologna man. But she said I had to go and offered to go with me. So Nellie and I will probably be watching a Sundance documentary in the near future.
    2. Kathleen Doherty (One of Tom’s daughters) who runs the children’s division. Very smart. But the thing that stood out most was how warm and personable she was. She showed great affection for her librarian friends. Respects her dad immensley. Forgives new authors their fau paux. And is, among other things, a true blue capitalist. She made an argument for capitalism I hadn’t heard before, but rang true the moment she said it–there will always be corruption, but capitalism is the only structure that allows you to mitigate it because it spreads the power around. There was more, but I found it compelling.
    3. Jim Frenkel, editor who did Goodkind etc. He’s a total crack up. And seems to always get caught speeding by the cops. He threatened to tweet on me when I ordered a Shirley Temple to drink.
    4. David and Joelle Lubar, very nice folks. David tried to lead us on a goose chase, but was ultimately prevented.
    5. Ken Scholes. We love Ken.
    6. Robert Charles Wilson. Very, very nice guy. Humble. And so freaking accomplished. He’s won just about every award out there. I loved his Darwinia. Need to read his latest.
    7. Margaret Weis. Here’s someone who has written so much. It was interesting hearing about how she and Tracy go about their projects.
    8. A cabbie from Haiti who told me all sorts of nifty things about how it used to be down there. Like how cell phones are like chocolate because land lines were so bad and rare that you’d often have to call a phone station (where the phones were), have someone run down to your house and tell your family you’d call back. Then they’d have to come back on time and hopefully be there for your appointed call. Then sit in a phone box with no AC and sweat, sweat, sweat.

    Saw Alethea Kontis briefly, which is always a lovely thing.

    Then I got to be one of five speakers to a huge crowd. There were 300 seats, people were sitting and standing in the back. There was a lot of energy in that group and I just ate it up.

    Tor made up 200 bags with a book from each author and handed them out. Of course, we ran out. And, no, I had no book, but Tor printed up ARCs. And so SERVANT OF A DARK GOD was in there with all the grown up books.

    Then I got to sign. Now, I’m just a new guy. A few people had read my stuff, but most hadn’t. Nevertheless, it was simply wonderful to be inbetween Ken and Margaret putting the old John Handcock on books for a line that queued up from the table at the front of the large room to the doors in the back.

    This was my first signing. How sweet was that? Being the clueless man that I am, I didn’t bring a pen. I thought they would be provided. So one of the organizers found one. It was pink. It’s going in my book of remembrance.

    I should have brought all the nifty bookmarks I have printed up and am sending to various cons. Next time.

    What a great experience.

    Oh, and we were in this Omni hotel (on Michigan ave). I totally lucked out and got a sweet room in the 17 floor in a corner. So my bedroom had two windows out of which I could gaze at the lake, two blocks away, and all the fabulous architecture. I’ve never really spent any time in downtown Chicago. What a fantastic place.

    People everywhere. Brown people, black people, white people–so many interesting people. I’m telling you, after living with a huge population of cattle, it’s nice to see a variety of homo sapiens.

    And I found a blue Eddie Bauer shirt for 20 bucks.

    Like I said–fabulous.

  • Press Release – SF/Fantasy Key to Teen Literacy

    ByJohn Brown

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    IS SF/FANTASY KEY TO TEEN LITERACY?

    Findings presented at national American Library Association conference reveal science fiction & fantasy literal gateway drugs to youth literacy

    CHICAGO, ILLINOIS |  July 11, 2009 | Utah’s newest author, John Brown, summarized statistics and research at the 2009 national American Library Association (ALA) conference held in Chicago which suggest that science fiction and fantasy are two of the main gateway drugs to literacy for youth. Data provided by Nielsen BookScan, public libraries, and recent studies published by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), suggest that at least 1 in 3 youths read for the effect produced by Science Fiction and Fantasy. “However,” says Brown, “given library circulation statistics, that number may well be 2 out of 3. These are incredible numbers, and have important implications for youth reading programs.”

    According to Brown, “the latest research in emotion shows that reading fiction produces a physical response, as real and physical a response as when we take aspirin, alcohol, or crack. The good thing is that while stimulating pleasure centers, it doesn’t change the brain the way hard drugs do. Furthermore, it also carries the powerful and desirable side-effect of improving reading skills. The key is in finding the type of fiction which appeals to the given age group. And for youth it appears that drug of choice is science fiction and fantasy.”

    John Brown’s epic fantasy for teens and adults, Servant of a Dark God, will be released in October 2009 by Tor Books, the largest publisher of science fiction and fantasy in the world. For more information see the links below.

  • First draft done!!!

    ByJohn Brown

    Holy schmoly, has this been a ride. I projected the CURSE OF A DARK GOD to be 140,000 words. When I blew by that, I projected it would be 170,000. Today I just typed the last word of the first draft. It’s 230,000 words. For reference SERVANT OF A DARK GOD is 170,000 words.

    The bad news is that while I’m really happy with this draft, it IS a first draft and needs some editing. I’m also behind schedule. I hit 140k words just a few weeks after my original deadline (in March), so I pride myself on knowing how fast I can write, but at that point I had, unknowingly, about a normal novel’s worth of material left to write. Obviously, I haven’t quite figured out yet how to estimate the size of these bigger works. The problem is that instead of getting a month or even two to revise, I’ve got two days. Then I have to turn it in to my editors.

    The good news is that my editors haven’t canned me, yet. 🙂 And that they have great insight into story. And that I should have plenty of time to fix and polish this thing to make it shine. I just don’t like turning in first drafts. My goal with book three is to get back on schedule.

    Having told you my scheduling woes, I am very excited about the characters and storylines and expect readers to enjoy this as much or more than the first in the series. However, I do wish I could get this process down so that I was 99% of the way there in one draft. There are some authors who can do that. Perhaps that will come with more experience. Until then, I get to enjoy revision.

    Here are my stats:

    • 550 hours to write, from pre-draft to the end, not including thinking thinking on walks and drives and discussion time with my wife who saved me thrice.
    • The bulk of the writing was done in a 24 week period. I averaged 17 hours per week during that time. This is on top of my day job.

     For those who don’t know, an average young adult book as from 40,000 to 80,000 words. An average adult novel is from 70,000 – 120,000 words. I’m very pleased I was able to finish this monster. I might not be the fastest writer, but what this tells me is that I should be able to finish two big novels a year if I should ever be so lucky as to go full time.

  • Goodies from Curse of a Dark God

    ByJohn Brown

    Bow to the dark god, ye minions. Here’s some of what’s coming in book 2:

    • The dogmen of Toth and their maulers
    • The Ungar and the one they call Ruin
    • The tanglewoods of the woodikin
    • Firesteeds
    • Gloryweaves
    • Nashrud the hunter
    • And last, but not least, the Orange-eyed priest of Mungo

    The end is in sight on the first draft of book 2 in the Dark God series, and because this one has been a roller coaster, I had to post some of the coolness before I have to go back into frantic mode. My word count estimates for this book have been so consistently off it hasn’t been funny. Literally. It’s made me panic and stress. It should clock in around 220k. And then it’s going to be cut, cut, cut.

    In the meantime…dogmen of Toth (give it the James Earl Jones).

    Oh, baby.

  • CONduit report & some interesting numbers

    ByJohn Brown

    CONduit is a conference for speculative fiction writers. This year’s conference was great. I was able to see and talk to a bunch of writer friends (Dave Wolverton, Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, Howard & Sandra Tayler, Eric James Stone, Ami Chopine, Darren Egget, Skipper Ritchotte, Mette Harrison), make some new ones (Lee Modesitt, James Dashner, Julie Wright, Aprilynne Pike, Larry Correia), plus chat with a multitude of others who are trying to break in. I also got to record with the Dragon Crawlers Radio guys. Nothing better than spending a weekend with a swarm of friendly and talented folks.

    I’m amazed at the success some of these people are having:

    • Aprilynne Pike had an initial print run of 200,000 hardback copies and was #1 on the NY Times Best Seller list.
    • James Dashner is going to be one of the main events from Random House this fall. I’m expecting an equally large print of his Maze Runner.
    • Brandon Sanderson just signed a contract that was announced on Publisher’s Lunch for somewhere around 2.5 million for four books. Folks, this is amazingly large for our genre.

    Of course, we already know Dave Wolverton and Lee Modesitt are some of the biggest sellers for Tor. Dan Wells is going to be big as well. And the Taylers have already got tens of thousands who read them regularly. They threw a great release party at this con.

    Larry Correia has had some interesting success as well and came at it from a side alley. He self-published Monster Hunters International. He sold a few thousand copies (no mean feat, especially for a self-published book), with many of the readers coming from the armed forces in Afganistan and Iraq. The book was so good the owner of a large independent store in Minnesota, Uncle Hugo’s, called the editor of Baen Books up and told her that she was an idiot if she didn’t buy Larry’s book because he could sell the heck out of it. So she took a look, agreed, and Larry’s now under contract with a real publisher. It’s coming out in July.

    In one conversation I learned the following about the Science Fiction & Fantasy genre.

    • 4,000 hardback copies for a title in a year is the rough break even point for Tor. You sell more than that, you’re okay. You sell less and Tor might have to drop you.
    • 10,000 hardback copies would be considered a very good seller.
    • 15,000 – 30,000 hardback copies and you are hitting the top of the midlist
    • Robert Jordan sold around 600,000 of each of his titles in hardback.
    • Depending on the time of year, 4,000 – 5,000 hardbacks sold in a week will put you in the top ten, even the top three, on the NY Times bestseller list.

    As for me, I printed up some posters and book marks using Swanland’s art. The cover got a great reaction there. And that’s huge for me because, looking at that Gallup Poll blog I wrote, the cover is going to drive a lot of sales for a new author. I had a wonderful time giving my workshop. And I think I finally figured out which part of my novel I can use for readers. Oh, and if you get a chance to hear Eric James Stone read any of his short stories, take it. I’ve listened to him twice now and both have been well worth the 20 minutes.