Christmas Eve

Soon to be Christmas morning. The little one is tucked in, the house is clean-ish, the food is ready for tomorrow. Not bad considering what a hectic, horrible month it has been.

Work, illness and stress are a mean combination. But tonight is the first night of my vacation, and I am already feeling better.

The Glenlivit 12 year old helped immensely.

So Merry Christmas everyone. May you have a good holiday season and a good rest, and if I don't blog again before that, a Happy New Year as well.

A Little Christmas Music

I think I have a new favourite Christmas song.

The singer is Tim Minchin, an Australian musician, actor, comedian and writer. And apparently, if you download the song from iTunes in December, half of the proceeds go to autism research.

Tip of the hat to Neil Gaiman, who posted this on his journal first.

And now, since it's 10:30 p.m., it's time for more editing.

Editing and Brain Rules

Charging madly forward. Reached page 267 tonight, removed another 1500 words or so, and am almost pleased with the progress.

So is Gabrielle, who has been giving me gems from the Dragon Moon Press December slushpile. Impressive stuff. Not in a good way.

At work we are putting together some videos and part of my research on it took me to the Brain Rules website. It's a fascinating website, built around the book by the same title, written by John Medina. I haven't had time to dig too deeply into it, but it looks like the man has done his research, and the website itself is a great example of marketing design. There's a lot of neat stuff that I intend to explore sometime when it isn't midnight.

Correction. After midnight. I'm going to get myself four hours sleep and see if I can manage a workout in the morning (or should I say, later this morning?). It's unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

The Last Edit - Night 1

Did 46 pages tonight. Not bad for a start back, but much more to do.

Here's the thing: My editor needs it back by Christmas so we can get copy set and ready to go for the first round or reviews. The book is still 10,000 words more than what it should be, and while Gabrielle and I have worked out what needs to be done, it still needs to be done before the end of the month.

No problem.

Really.

Tomorrow, the goal is 80 pages. Let's see how it goes.

Taking a Night Off!!!

Why, you ask?

Because last night my editor, the indomitable Gabrielle Harbowy, and I finished going through her notes for Cold Magics. They were good notes and we resolved them all, or marked where I have to fix things during my next task:

One more edit before Dec. 25.

That's right, I have to go through the entire book by Christmas if we want to get advanced copies to the reviewers. And I still need to take out 10,000 more words. Oy veh!

But tonight, I am taking a break. I am chilling out, relaxing, and generally doing nothing except getting to bed on time. My only regret is I don't have a nice bottle of red wine to do it with.

So have a good night. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow (and every day for the next 14) we edit!

I Wanna Go!

London Museum Opens Medieval, Renaissance Galleries

Sorry I haven't been around. I've spent the last month editing like a fiend and studying for my last exam, this Wednesday. After that, I promise to return to my regularly scheduled sporadic blogging.

The edit is moving well forward, and I should be done at the end of December (only slightly behind schedule). We are still on target for an April launch, of Cold Magics, which is excellent.

And since I haven't mentioned it in a while, have you read Small Magics? I recommend it, so you'll be ready for Cold Magics when it comes.

Happy Halloween

I have Cold Magics back from Gabrielle, and am going through her edits now. Great work.

Meanwhile, it's Halloween. Did the shell-out, took the little one trick-or-treating, had her Godmother over for dinner and cooked a damn fine meal if I say so myself. Now stuffed, happy, slightly buzzed on chocolate, and trying to get some work done before bed.

Also, daylight savings change-over tomorrow. Got to change the clocks before I go to sleep.

Happy Halloween

Win Free Tickets to Dracula - The Undead!

Remember that show I'm in? This one:

Well, now you can win Free Tickets to see it!

So come on out. It will be great pre-Halloween treat of an evening, and you'll be able to buy your own copy of "Dracula - the Undead," signed by the authors!

They've Done It...

Two in two days.

My editor Gabrielle Harbowy and my dear friend and reader Kim both finished going through Cold Magics. Excellent work in record time. Both are extremely insightful and each brings a different and extremely knowledgeably viewpoint to the editing process.

My thanks to both.

As soon as Gabrielle gets Cold Magics back to me, I'll be back at it. So far, we are running on time for our deadlines. Excellent!

Dracula - The Undead - A Dramatic Reading at the Bathurst Street Theatre, October 28, 2009

I'm on stage! And with a great group of talented people for a great show!

Wednesday, October 23, 2009, at the Bathurst Street Theatre.

My friend Alex is putting on a performed reading of the new novel, "Dracula - The Undead," by Dacre Stoker (yes, he's a relative of Bram) and Ian Holt. This is part of the publicity for the novel and is going to be a lot of fun. And I'm reading Count Dracula!

Alex directs good shows, and I have not doubt this will be another one. Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt will both be joining us on stage, as narrators.

Click on the picture above to go to their website. And do come out to see us if you get the chance. It will be a great show, a lot of fun, and copies of the book will be available at the performance!

Book Promotions: Brain Storming

So, working on the publicity for Cold Magics (and a Zombie movie!) for the last few days. Been brainstorming possible tactics I could use to promote Cold Magics. Came up with an interesting list. Thought I'd share it:

www.erikbuchanan.ca

Amazon Author Page

Amazon Forums

Writing Forums

Book Forums

Blog Tours

Virtual Book Launch

Online Media

Traditional Media

Podcast Interviews

Book Fairs

Sci-Fi Conventions

Book Store Signings

Online Reviewers (other than Amazon)

Traditional Media Reviewers

Awards

Library Tours

Book Clubs

Online Bookclubs

Book-lover Websites (Shelfari, iRead, etc.)

Just looking at the list you can see that everything needs flushing out. What can I do with each venue, how do I make contact, who do I make contact with, when do we make contact? There's about a dozen questions to ask for each one, but having the list means having a place to start.

Zombieland

Rocks.

The opening was mighty gory, as one might expect from a zombie movie set after the zombies have taken over. It looked like the director and special effects team had watched hyenas fighting over a still-squirming zebra decided that it wasn't enough.

But once I got past that, and it took a few minutes to get past, I laughed my ass off. The movie is funny, fast-paced and even had a couple of moments that actually tugged on the heart strings.

Plus a whole bunch of zombie-killing that was a whole lot of fun.

And there's a brilliant cameo.

Highly, highly recommend this movie.

Time to Start Working on Publicity

Yep. Cold Magics is in the hand of the mighty talented Gabrielle Harbowy, who is editor in charge at Dragon Moon Press (excuse the mess; they're building a new website). We're looking for a short turn-around time on this one, and that means getting together the publicity plan.

Now, for those who don't know, there is are differences between publicity and marketing.

Marketing gets you a guaranteed audience through traditional advertising, pay-per-clicks, paid interviews, infomercials, etc. It costs money and studies have shown that, for book sales, it isn't that effective, unless you have massive reach and say... a movie deal.

Publicity is cheaper, but does not have a guaranteed audience. Instead, have to build an audience by persuading them that what you have to sell -- in this case, Cold Magics -- is worth talking about. If you can do that, proper publicity can lead to interviews, articles, book reviews, word-of-mouth and from them to sales.

Interestingly enough, good publicity can far outweigh good marketing as a tool for getting audience (people listening to your message) and sales. Especially now in the days of social media.

So, step one is building a publicity plan. We're looking at a six month plan at this point, to promote and get interest before launch (launch date will be announced soon). There will also need to be a post-launch plan to keep attention on the book over the summer, through the convention and book fairs, and then into the fall season, when it's a great time to convince people they want to be buying my books as presents to give to others.

And I cannot tell you how cool it is to be able to say "my books."

So, this weekend is about getting the plan together (plus cleaning and laundry and all that fun stuff). I've been doing research for a fair while, have the concept going and the lists I need to get made, and from there it's a matter of putting the pieces together.

I'll put up more details about the plan going forward because I did say this blog would be about book marketing, and I haven't done much of that lately.

So, off to get groceries, then work on the plan.

And because I haven't mentioned it lately, now is an excellent time to read Small Magics, so you'll be ready when Cold Magics comes out.

Gabrielle Says Smart Things About Queries and Submissions

Gabrielle Harbowy is the highly talented and highly intelligent Editor-in-Charge over at Dragon Moon Press. On Monday she sent me a link to a great podcast interview she did about queries, submissions, and pitches on the Irreverent Muse.

Here is the interview.

Gabrielle knows that of which she speaks. For those aspiring writers out there, I suggest taking a listen and taking what she says to heart. Because nothing makes your submission end up in the garbage faster than not following the submission guidelines.

And to add to the coolness, she plugs Small Magics! And she likes my elevator pitch!

Geek Link!

Saturn's got another, enormous ring!

Courtesy of NASA, who always have the cool space pictures, by way of the CBC, who always put NASA's cool pictures where I can find them.

A Hat Tip (and apology) to Molly

This is the first of three posts tonight. Why? Because I can! I'm not editing!

(This is a state of affairs that Gabrielle, our editor in charge over at Dragon Moon, assures me will end shortly)

This post is for Molly who sent me a couple of great pictures she took over at Worldcon. If I look a little dehydrated, here's why.

Me at the signing table, my name gloriously misspelled.

Erik with Ursula Pflug.

Ursula Pflug is another author with two novels out and a whack of short stories, including the collection which she was promoting at WorldCon.

And Molly, my apologies for the delay in putting these up.

Molly sent me the pictures September 6 and, alas, it's been a busy month or so for me and I haven't been able to get them up until now.

Great shots both, and for many more great shots of authors at WorldCon, have a look at Molly's photo album on Picasa.

Done

I finished the edit of Cold Magics last night. I just sent it off to my publisher, Dragon Moon Press.

The ending was stunningly anti-climactic. I finally made the last changes, ran the spell-check one last time, hit save and I'm done!

And it's 11 p.m. on a Monday night and everyone is asleep and I had to be up in a few hours for work.

So this weekend, I will celebrate. Last night, I had a quiet glass of Glenfiddich, sat at the table and wondered what I was going to do with myself tonight.

Apparently, the answer is blogging and laundry.

And by the way:

I'm done! Squeeeee!

I Am the Coolest Dad Ever

We have movie nights with our daughter Maggie every Friday night. Usually this consists of watching one of her cartoons, then starting to watch one of our lighter movies like Charlie Chaplin or Mr. Bean, and her saying, "Noooo. I don't like this. It's scary! I don't want to watch it! No!!!!"

But not tonight.

Tonight, I got Maggie to sit down and watch her first full-length, grown up movie. From beginning to end. And what did we watch?

The Princess Bride.

We skipped over the ROUS's in the fire swamp, and we put on the mute for the yelling and torture scenes (though she wouldn't let me skip them) scenes, and we skipped over the holocaust cloak because that's loud and scary. And there were lots of explanations before each fight scene and I explained to her how blood works in the movies and all of that.

But she watched it. Beginning to end.

And you know what she said to me as we were going upstairs to brush our teeth?

"When I'm big, I'll go to your class and sword-fight with you and your friends."

And I said, "Yes. You will."

I am the coolest dad ever.

Neat Little Website

At work, I'm part of the team designing and building the new website. One of the things we need to do is ensure our website is accessible for those who are colour-blind, which led me to searching the internet for a tool to check it, which led me to snook.ca.

Snook.ca is the website of web designer and developer Jonathan Snook. It's nice little website with some interesting information, including his Colour Contrast Check. This handy tool allows you to put in any two colours (a foreground and a background) and see how well they fare in meeting standards for web accessibility. Alas, the piece I was working on didn't fare well at all, so it's back to the boards for me. Argh.

A great, very handy little tool.

And now, I'm going to... wait for it...

All right, it's editing Cold Magics.

Anyone surprised?

A Little Night Music

Friday night and I have nothing to say.

So how about some music?

This is a Soundie featuring Matthew Barber, produced by Athens Soundies

For those reading this on facebook (and there are some...), here is the link to the video.

And what is a soundie, you might ask? In this case it is the pet name for a single-take, live music video. For the history of the name, have a look at the Athens Soundies website.

Also, check out some of the bands. They've got some good stuff out there.

Tonight I am editing Cold Magics again. Then I'm to sleep well before midnight if I have to use a bottle of scotch and a meat tenderizing hammer to get there.

(exact method of using these two devices left as an exercise for the reader)