Ive never quite liked the first four chapters of my current trunk novel SMARTASS OF MARS. While starting slow is traditional for the genre and style and thus appropriate for an homage, its still starting slow (e.g. John Carter takes a while to get to Mars). And Ive resisted cutting them because I slammed all 15k-odd words of them out in the space of one evening and dont much relish the idea of trying to work in all that backstory and character development in the course of the later events of the book. Also because I am a goddamn genius and I hate to cut awesome zingers of metaphor and dialogue/monologue out. But John Carter didnt spend THAT long in Arizona, I think it was maybe one chapter. And just because its hard doesnt mean you shouldnt do it -- in fact if I keep thinking about it I probably SHOULD. I want to be done with the damn book, of course. But then theres the other thing. Bad Robot has opened their books again. If I can wrap that shit up by the end of the year I can drop it in their slush pile. And while I figure I dont stand much of a chance, I want to try, just because that way I can say I tried. It worked for James A. Moore, who tipped me off about this thing and led me to keep an eye out for the next time it rolled around. My thoughts about it are mixed. On the one hand, Im skeptical of publishers in the digital age and would rather keep all my money instead of getting pennies on the dollar. On the other hand, they got at least one of their books (AGE ATOMIC) reviewed on NPR, not that my book ever would be but then you never know. So I figure its worth a shot. I figure there are dumber hobbies than writing books. Like maybe cave diving.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 11:58:11 +0000
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