So the plumber came, and Friday afternoon I will be the proud owner of a new water heater. Yay. Closer examination of the old water heater with the plumber's help revealed that the tank was leaking down onto the pipe, which is why it looked like the pipe was leaking. It's also leaking from the top, and the back, and many other places. It's a bad time to have to do this, but the old one lasted twenty-one years, so you can't really fault it, especially since it's (knock on wood) holding on long enough to be replaced and didn't just burst at the first opportunity. And it's apparently had a lot of opportunity.

I'm not getting a tankless, because after looking up more details online, I think they'd have to rebuild half the garage and the gas system to install it, and it's not going to be that much more efficient than a new not-21-years-old water heater to warrant the price tag and rebuilding the garage.

hellblazer pointed this out, for Jason Momoa fans (like me): Jason at the wrap party for George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones


***

Patrick Rothfuss' Worldbuilders Charity Fundraiser for Heifer International has started, and runs until January 15th. Last year SF/F fans raised $110,000 for Heifer International. That's a lot of Heifers. This year could top that goal.

There's a lottery, auctions, and some items you can just buy directly. Over 1000 books have been donated, so more will be posted each day, plus a lot of other items, including professional critiques. (I contributed three signed hardcovers, so I'll keep an eye out and try to post when they show up.)

The FAQ is here.

The main Worldbuilders page is here.

Please pass the word.

Last week before we left for Thanksgiving, I noticed there was a pool of water collecting around our hot water heater. I'm not an expert, but I knew that wasn't good. (At some point, I want to replace it with a tankless heater, but not, you know, today, as we have no money for it.) But after lying on the concrete and staring at it, I finally spotted the slow drip coming from the end of the pipe that connects to it, so hopefully it won't be too expensive a fix. The plumber is coming tomorrow, so we'll find out.

I opened Word this morning and had nothing to work on. That's a weird feeling. I need to come up with something else to start working on.

It's a very gray day, in the low fifties and raining. I remember why it was such a good idea last summer to replace the front door with the cracks in it, as there is no longer a cold draft filling the entire downstairs.

Just finished a new book, the young adult fantasy I've been working on. I'm going to do a little more proofing on it tomorrow then hopefully send it out to my agent.

70783 / 70000 words. 101% done!

Now I need to finish three loads of laundry and take a bath.

Patrick Rothfuss' Worldbuilders, a charity fundraiser, will start on Monday Last year I thought I'd try to raise a couple thousand dollars for my favorite charity. However I underestimated the awesomeness of my fans and the geek community at large. Things quickly spiraled out of control, and in the end we raised over $110,000 for Heifer International. That's a lot of money. This year there will be fabulous prizes, auctions, and tons of stuff to buy.

***

We had a great Thanksgiving, with a trip to the zoo, plus a day of much eating. Today we're probably going to an Indian restaurant for lunch and hit Murder by the Book.

Harlequin Horizons: A Bookseller's Perspective This is a bookseller explaining why bookstores won't carry/can't afford to carry vanity press-produced books. Basically, if you’re writing to sell books, you need a product that is roughly equal in quality and retail pricing to a traditionally published book to meet the expectations of readers. To meet the expectation of booksellers, you need an attractive wholesale discount, inclusion in Ingram or Baker&Taylor and returnability.

That's just to get a book into the stores. What makes a book sell is when the publisher not only gives wholesale discounts and allows returns (so the stores might actually order it), but pays for the book to be placed face-out in the front of the store in the "new book" tables or racks, where it gets much better visibility. (There was a trend for a while where a few romance writers were asking their street teams to move their books from the back shelves to the front of the store whenever they visited a bookstore. Chain bookstores usually rent out that space to publishers, and if the publisher's rep comes by and find the space they paid for is being occupied by other books, the store can get into big trouble. The solution was usually for the bookstore to immediately remainder any books that had been placed in the front by customers.) Publishers also have sales reps who will be presenting their current list of books to the buyers for the chain bookstores, and talking them into ordering them. Vanity presses don't do any of that.

On that depressing note, happy Thanksgiving to everybody who's celebrating this week!

Video: What Earth would look like with rings like Saturn. Awesome, is what it would look like. Earth should get one of those.

Commenters have posted some good world building site links in my previous post.

If you liked the Imaro books by Charles Saunders and are looking for more African-inspired heroic fantasy, or just more heroic fantasy period, check out this review of Meji by Milton J. Davis.


I was talking to a friend last night about Nanomorwrimoing, and we got into world building, and places to start. I tend to want to start with the characters, and what kind of people I want them to be, and then come up with a world, culture, etc that will provide the elements and environment that would create those people. It also helps to know a little bit about where you want your plot to go. Are you going to be staying in one place, a city or forest or island or whatever that you can create in more detail, that you're going to need to know more about how it functions, what resources the inhabitants have, level of technology, and so on. Or are you going to be moving around, passing through places that you can paint in broader strokes, that your characters won't need to know much about. You can spend as much or as little time as you want with world building, as long as you've got what you need for your story. A fantasy with a gritty realistic tone may need more detail than a surreal fairy tale.

Are there any web sites that talk about world building? I keep thinking that I've heard about some, but I may be misremembering.

Got some good news this morning: Just found out our friend Ruth got through her surgery for appenicieal cancer yesterday and is awake and doing well this morning. That's a huge relief.


We're going to the traditional Monkey House pre-Thanksgiving party today (Monkey Giving), for former members of TAMU's science fiction and fantasy club Cepheid Variable and its annual convention AggieCon, and their friends and relatives. (I was chairman of AggieCon 17, back in 1986 when I was a student.) It's raining, and since there's so many people there (the club has been around since the 1960s), there's usually a lot of seating outside the house, so this may be an interesting day. (The event even has its own cookbook available here on Lulu.)


Something nice to look at this morning: Webecoist.com 32 Stunning and Spectacular Sea Arches

More from Jackie Kessler: The Day After: Harlequin Blinks Just because your book wasn’t good enough for Harlequin to pay you for it, that doesn’t mean it’s not good enough for you to pay us for it!


ETA: A friend posted this link on Facebook, and it's great if you need to see something happy: A soldier's dog greets him when he returns from Afghanistan.

Couple of publishing links:

Jackie Kessler explains in detail how Harlequin Horizons is a vanity press, not a self-publishing service: Harlequin Horizons versus the RWA:
A-ha! Here’s a big clue that aspiring authors better have their eyes open. Yes, the press has the name “Harlequin” on it. But even though you may think this means you’re a legitimate Harlequin author, you’re not. Oh, and Harlequin won’t distribute Horizon books. Horizon books won’t appear “in stores next to your books.” Well, gosh, if you’ve written a romance, and you get it printed through Horizon, it won’t be shelved in romance! Want to know where it will be shelved? Simple: It won’t.

They won't be sold online through the publisher's site, either.

Keep in mind:
- Self-publishing: author keeps all the money after paying expenses.
- Vanity publishing: publisher keeps majority of the money and the writer pays all the expenses.

Now self-publishing isn't easy; a self-published book usually sells less than 200 copies, even if the author promotes it like crazy. But it's still a better option than a vanity press.

***

A link pointed out by beth_gis: Revenue Reality of a Bestseller If I published only one book a year, and it did as well as this one, my net would be only around $2500.00 over the income level considered to be the US poverty threshhold. This was a book that was on the New York Times Bestseller list.

I'm hoping today is a better day than yesterday.

Links:

jimhines is doing his yearly book drive for a domestic violence shelter.

Terrible Yellow Eyes a collection of fan art for Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are

Gargoyles, from all over the world.

Found this link on Facebook: Ruins of Japan Photographs of abandoned buildings, theme parks, "love hotels," and ruins in Japan.

Book Rejection Bingo Card I find this one kind of depressing. Like, lie down in a hole in the back yard and let someone shovel dirt over you, depressing.

Speaking of depressing: Revised Google Book Search Settlement Filed

My internet connection's been down for most of the day, so that's been a lovely source of irritation. Also, I think my bad shoulder is heading for another bout of badness, probably triggered by the cold front that came in last night; usually the weight-lifting aerobics makes it feel better, but this time not so much.

But we had a great time at Renfair on Saturday. (I'll post some pictures whenever I can stay logged on long enough.) Among other things, we listened to a fabulous band called Wine and Alchemy, with a great bouzouki player. Their web site is here, and they've got some free music samples.

I haven't been doing much of anything except writing. I'm about 10,000 words away from finishing the YA fantasy I'm working on, so that's good. We've also got free tickets to the Texas Renaissance Festival tomorrow and I'll be taking a break to go to that.

Some interesting links:

scottedelman posted this one: WWII Classic From Here to Eternity was originally considered too gay to be published. As the nation marks another Veterans Day with gays still barred from serving openly, Kaylie Jones, daughter of From Here to Eternity author James Jones, reveals that a major gay sex storyline was cut from her father’s famed novel. Plus, view the original manuscript.

Bookends, LLC: Who Does This? Not too long ago somebody thought it would be a good idea to send an angry diatribe of an email to roughly 400 publishing professionals.

Ecstatic Days Blog post by Lavie Tidhar: Excited About International SF

DearAuthor has a reader recommendation post for Multicultural Books


Troyce has another job interview today, so everybody think lucky thoughts.

Someone just sent me this link for the Anne Taintor page. The magnets give you the best overview. Some of my favorites:

"she was one cocktail away from proving his mother right"

"I believe we have an opportunity to make some extremely poor choices"

"it would, of course, have to look like an accident"

"the secret ingredient is resentment"

Hoping hurricane Ida doesn't cause much trouble.

We had a great weekend, and got to spend Saturday night and Sunday morning with a friend who came into town unexpectedly. She's going into surgery for cancer towards the end of this month, so if you have any positive vibes to spare, please send them her way.


Something fun:
Stormtroopers 365 A year in the life of tiny plastic stormtroopers.

My email is down, I don't know for how long. So that's a great start to the day.


eldritchhobbit's new book: The Intersection of Fantasy and Native America: From H.P. Lovecraft to Leslie Marmon Silko Now an international, multi-ethnic, and cross-disciplinary group of scholars investigates the meaningful ways in which fantasy and Native America intersect, examining classics by American Indian authors such as Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, and Leslie Marmon Silko, as well as non-Native fantasists such as H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling.

Fun for the Whole Family: Traversing the Texas Book Festival "They fuck you up, your mum and dad," Philip Larkin once famously wrote, and, yes, I suppose mine did me, if not in particularly interesting ways. But what my parents indisputably did right was put books in my hands at an early age.

For marycrawford: Tantor Audio Readies Four Sherlock Holmes Titles

From WebUrbanist: Ten of the Most Chilling Haunted Castles in the World

Today I had jury duty in municipal court. ( again )