Reading

FYI - if you ordered a signed Dresden Cold Days hardcover from Barnes and Noble, you might have a defective book. Mine has a double-feed leave from 345-376, and then it jumps to page 409. Obviously I found this out when I got to page 376 for the first time, but it took me a minute. Like, wait. Harry's taking a shower again? Lacuna is saying she has no clothes again? I'm so confused...

Then I realized. So.

And if you buy the book from a store, check you have pages 377-408 ...

I couldn't spoil the book for you folks if I wanted to. I haven't read chapter one of the preview even, and apparently my book is arriving by quadriplegic hobbit. They took a full day to package the book after I bought it. Wake up Barnes and Noble! Amazon would get it in a box on the same dang day.

Why me?

Let alone the new format and spending ten minutes trying to find... create new post.

--Brian.

I'd rather be reading Cold Days. Dangit. ...

Really? I haven't posted from September yet?

I owe you one September book report.

(Nanowrimo ate my soul, no idea what happened in October.)

--Brian.

Two.

Two.

Now, what were they?

Well, one of them was Novelist's Boot Camp.

Search me. What was the second one?

Well, after consulting my calendar, turns out it was the not particularly good Empire.

So what was my problem with Empire?

Spoiler:

Well, the whole thing. First the writing wasn't particularly good. Second, the "blurb" on the back pretty much didn't match the book. As it turns

...

"Make no mistake, this story is one of my ten best favorite stories of all time." - name withheld.

"Make no mistake, this story made me wish it was over from the first minute, and keep on wishing it would end for the next thirty minutes." - Brian.

Can anyone guess which podcast?

Four.

Which compared to the last few months is a gain.

(As a side note, when the "stock market" -- more accurately the Dow Jones Industrial Average-- drops 500 points, out of 10,000 or so, as a percentage, that's five percent. I wouldn't quite call that a "free fall" or a "death spiral" and how is it that the "business" Vulcan brained hyper intellectual --so they say--WSJ is the one using these terms?) The phrases self-perpetuating ...

Apparently it is being sent through FedEx by a camel.

Ship date

Jul 25, 2011

Estimated delivery

Aug 2, 2011


It was in Wisconsin yesterday, it is in Brooklyn Park today -- still NOT delivered.

Borders also canceled two of my other orders, so, mucho thanks fellas. Plus membership my eye.

Seriously, it's going to take three days (Saturday, Monday, and finally Tuesday) to get here from ...

Paperback Original - William Rhode. Well, I have a self-professed weakness for advance copies. I got this one at a used book sale and just had to have it. Especially with all the "NOT FOR SALE" stickers on it.

Book wise, the concept sounded fun, India, drug deals, and so on. The execution wasn't there, however.

1 Dead in Attic - Chris Rose. I got it to learn some about Hurricane Katrina (I was trapped in a design office planning out a composite steel floor ...

Aug.

Two.

Haunted - Chuck Palahniuk

Reasonably good. As a study in a different form of a novel (there are chapters of the actual main line, mixed with poems by one of the characters, then a short story by one of the characters) it's been educational.

Chuck also does a good job of "going there" into the gross and disgusting, if you like that kind of thing, and there's very little flinching and leaving things to the imagination. ...

Not a lot to report.

Allison Hewitt is Trapped, Madeleine Roux - At some point, you get the urge for epistolary fiction that doesn't try to modernize the form with instant messages, blogs, or email, or whatever else. Twitter? Anyway. This would be one, as Madeline has to invent some odd military (yet strangely unencrypted) wireless network that's somehow working from, I guess, space. Which is how the blog manages to exist in the first place--let's skip over a slight problem here--in ...

My story, my first sale, "Lubbock or Leave It" is now available in State of Horror: Texas.

Think zombies and humor.

Anyway. Here are some links. No obligation.

on Amazon Kindle $2.99

on Lulu - print version $7.99 and eBook $2.99

eBook on SmashWords $2.99

Looks like all the links are good. Hope nobody minds the .. well. You know.

Anyway, if you're looking for a sample of my ...

Nothing quite says joy like a free book. (Of course I'd since forgotten it was coming so I had an extraordinarily implausible scenario for why someone at HarperCollins was writing to me with a thick package....

Anyway, I now have an "Advance Uncorrected Proof" of My New American Life by Francine Prose.

Off to start reading what is probably the 26th book I'm "currently reading."

Yeah, right.

Taxes? What taxes?
...

Well...

If you're tuning in regularly (why, god Why? Why do you torture yourself thus and 'fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way'?) you know it's been a hectic few months. And while I finished a few books, I added more than I finished (although some of them I'd started reading months and months ago and only now am remembering I am "reading" them. Yeah, right.

I did manage to finish a few books this month, although it's looking more and more likely ...

Penguin has put up chapter 1 of Ghost Story.

Read it.

It's fun to see this taking shape, I was thinking it was going to go this direction, and after the first few pages, the next "reveal" is hinted at enough I knew it was going that way. And the next "reveal" after that also was nicely hinted at and felt obvious once you got to it, and I'm also noticing I can feel the chapter approaching an end. Maybe I'm getting used to Butcher's style or I'm ...

Not a good month. If you're following my blog closely you know why--I started about a dozen books and progress is proportionally slowed.

I did finish Sanctuary - William Faulkner. On the last day of the month.

I posted some comments over on goodreads, I might post a link when there's time or I'll paste the review if there's more time.

There's another book, too. What was it?

Hmmm.

--Brian.

Got a submission ...