Posts Tagged ‘authors’

Trust me when I tell you, I read a lot. I average roughly a book a day and have for three-plus decades now, which works out to, you know, a lot. It would be even more (a lot squared?) but there is a small number of books I read again every year or so, because they continue to resonate with me. As I change, as I (ahem) mature, I find that my favorite books affect me differently in ways I simply wasn't ready to understand before.

One of those books is Stardance, by Spider and Jeanne Robinson.

The plot is simple. A gifted but overlooked dancer fights to overcome obstacles on Earth, above it, and beyond, to create the first zero-gravity dance. And this tells you absolutely nothing about the relationships and the anguish and the joys and the humor and the triumph of the people involved. Acclaimed science fiction writer Spider Robinson and his wife, dancer and choreographer Jeanne, crafted something about dreams, dance, perseverance, and humanity's message for the universe. Also, there's a telepathic waiter.
Then they did it again, twice, with Starseed and Starmind.

And none of that is why I'm writing this.

I'm writing this because Jeanne Robinson once had a shot at actually dancing in zero-gee. NASA got a look at Stardance and invited her into the Civilians in Space program. She was shortlisted for a shuttle ride, and the only reason it didn't happen was because the first Civilian in Space happened to be on the Challenger.

But now computer graphics have caught up to the writer's mind. Jeanne and an insanely talented crew are working on creating a short film to explore the possibilities of dance without gravity. The Stardance Project is already underway with a deadline of July 2007, and they need patrons.

If you loved the books, if you love dance and human expression, or if you just want to see what they come up with, please consider donating to the Project. Check out the website for more details, and help out iof you can.

C'mon. I want to see this.

I have made my very first contribution to a political campaign, ever.

Granted, it's for a candidate I can't vote for unless I move to the Lone Star State by next year – no plans in that direction, sorry – but I wholeheartedly approve of him, at least in a gubernatorial capacity. Also, he writes great mystery novels.

Kinky for Governor!

From the book description:

One of fiction's most audaciously original talents, Neil Gaiman now gives us a mythology for a modern age — complete with dark prophecy, family dysfunction, mystical deceptions, and killer birds. Not to mention a lime.

Anansi Boys
God is dead. Meet the kids.

When Fat Charlie's dad named something, it stuck. Like calling Fat Charlie "Fat Charlie." Even now, twenty years later, Charlie Nancy can't shake that name, one of the many embarrassing "gifts" his father bestowed — before he dropped dead on a karaoke stage and ruined Fat Charlie's life.

Mr. Nancy left Fat Charlie things. Things like the tall, good-looking stranger who appears on Charlie's doorstep, who appears to be the brother he never knew. A brother as different from Charlie as night is from day, a brother who's going to show Charlie how to lighten up and have a little fun … just like Dear Old Dad. And all of a sudden, life starts getting very interesting for Fat Charlie.

Because, you see, Charlie's dad wasn't just any dad. He was Anansi, a trickster god, the spider-god. Anansi is the spirit of rebellion, able to overturn the social order, create wealth out of thin air, and baffle the devil. Some said he could cheat even Death himself.

Returning to the territory he so brilliantly explored in his masterful New York Times bestseller, American Gods, the incomparable Neil Gaiman offers up a work of dazzling ingenuity, a kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth that is at once startling, terrifying, exhilarating, and fiercely funny — a true wonder of a novel that confirms Stephen King's glowing assessment of the author as "a treasure-house of story, and we are lucky to have him."

Amazon link
eReader ebook link (eReader also has a deal for Anansi Boys and American Gods together for $19.95)

Your chance for fame and immortality has come and, like all other such offers in legend, song, and story, it'll cost you. Probably not your soul, though, unless PayPal has changed its policies.

Next month, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Amy Tan, Lemony Snicket, Nora Roberts, Michael Chabon and 10 other best-selling writers will auction the right to name characters, items, and places in their new works. Your name could soon be read by millions on subways, listened to on iPods during long lines at Starbucks, maybe even assumed by Curtis Armstrong in the straight-to-DVD adaptation. It's every American's dream!

Profits from the auction will go to the First Amendment Project, which seeks to protect the free speech rights of activists, writers and artists. No word yet if any activists will follow suit with personalized protest signs ("Hell No, Glen Harbecki of Ponce Inlet, FL, Won't Go!").

The idea came from Gaiman, who previously parceled off naming rights to a cruise ship in his forthcoming novel "Anansi Boys" to benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Despite little advertising beyond his blog the naming rights still sold for over $3,500, and Gaiman suggested the auction to author and First Amendment Project board member Chabon as a way to raise needed funds.

Even if you win you won't necessarily get total control over the results. King will kill you off but only if you're female. Snicket will have your name uttered by a toddling adventurer. Andrew Sean Greer wants to put you on a soda shop sign, probably. Jonathan Letham will make you a professor in a comic book, and Dave Eggers will stick you into an illustrated story. John Grisham promises to portray you in a good light, Peter Straub promises just the opposite, and Rick Moody suspects you'd be "reasonably sympathetic." Gaiman will put you on a gravestone, possibly to commemorate your murder at King's hands.

Most of the authors have provisions against accepting inappropriate names, although it wouldn't surprise me to see a sudden influx of fictional characters named "Gold N. Palace."

Product placement used for the power of good. And it's hardly new. Patrons of the arts used to have likenesses of themselves painted into classics. Fully a third of the begats in the Old Testament were really just shout-outs. Shakespeare would never have used the names Rosencrantz and Guildenstern if someone hadn't paid him to. And besides, how many times can you horribly torture your boss, your ex-wives, and your childhood enemies in your fiction before it gets old? 10, 12 times, tops.

Had I the ready cash I'd be all over this. I'd love to pop up in the worlds of my favorite writers, and there are plenty more should the First Amendment Project ever want to do another set.

I want to be a Chuck Palahniuk character with an entirely new pathology, maybe something involving floss.

I want to be a mysteriously desiccated corpse floating through the works of Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry and/or Tim Dorsey. I'd even get a bizarre and ultimately significant Aztec tattoo if it would be integral to the plot.

I want Orson Scott Card to make me part of Ender's jeesh. I want Terry Pratchett to get me into (and possibly quickly back out of) the Ankh-Morpork City Watch whenever I'm not working the night shift at one of Spider Robinson's establishments. Allen Steele can put me on the moon, Robert J. Sawyer can put me in an alien ship, and Harry Turtledove can put me on whichever side of the Civil War he's got winning this time.

I would totally be in Ravenclaw. Or maybe Gryffindor. No, Ravenclaw, they go for the smart ones. But then, Gryffindor wins all the Quidditch matches, so…

I want to be robbed by Bernie Rhodenbarr, hunted down by Elvis Cole, insulted by Spenser, maced by Stephanie Plum, seriously boozed up by Kinky Friedman, and captured by Thursday Next.

Jennifer Crusie, Tom Robbins, Peter David, Christopher Moore, John Varley, Mark Leyner, Max Barry, Keith R. A. DeCandido, Audrey Niffenegger, Jeff Strand, Steven Gould … Do with me what you will. I can take it.

The auctions begin Sept. 1 in three 10-day events. Best of luck to everyone who bids! Especially if you have a name close enough to mine to be easily altered. That's the closest I'll get, unless PayPal changes their minds over that whole soul thing.

—————————-

On the Net:

eBay auction site: http://www.ebay.com/fap

First Amendment Project: http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=auctioncause

Science fiction author Andre Norton dies

Science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton, who wrote the popular "Witch World" series, has died. She was 93.

Her death was announced by friend Jean Rabe, who said Norton died Thursday of congestive heart failure at her home in Murfreesboro, a Nashville suburb. Norton requested before her death that she not have a funeral service, but instead asked to be cremated along with a copy of her first and last novels.

Well, damn.

Just noticed a new e-book collection by Nick Pollotta at Fictionwise: Tequila Mockingbird.

This makes me happy. Nick is best known (to me, anyway) as the writer of the Bureau 13 series, which could be described as X-Files commandos or, more accurately, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer strike force. Creepy crawlies, horrible monsters, funny characters, and serious events. And co-writer with Phil Foglio of "Illegal Aliens" and "That Darn Squid God."

But this is a look at his shorter work, some of which were previously available on Fictionwise already. "The Incredibly Civil War," "A Distant Moon" (fun Camelot story), "Millenium Knights" (of course rappers fought vampires, everyone knows that…), "The Really Final Solution" (Sherlock Holmes, of course), a fun Spenser parody, and more. Lighthearted, silly, and dead-on accurate parody.

Go get it. G'head. I'll wait.

There I was Sunday night, all ready to write my column on Academy Awards trivia. Basic Q&A format, some quick research, spoon in some funny, no problem. And then I heard about the passing of Hunter S. Thompson, and I became ashamed.

Thompson's deranged prose changed the face of journalism. Where other reporters crouched at the marble altar of aloof objectivity, Thompson helped pioneer "gonzo" journalism that demanded the reporter force himself into the story's bloody body cavity and cover it from the inside even as it died a horrible, spastic death from his thrashing. Reckless? Unethical? Sure. But his writing had a fever-dream intensity that plain old "accurate" reporting simply can't match.

His books astounded and inspired me with their sheer audacity. How could I sit there Googling for Oscar FAQs when he would have been out there savagely ripping the truth from the shrieking, Botoxed lips of Hollywood itself? Did I really want to settle for less?

By six o'clock Monday morning I was staggering out of Los Angeles International Airport where the truth was waiting at the curb, ready to mug me and leave me naked and helpless among the ferocious timber wolves of the Topanga hills.

***

"I don't know anything! I don't even like movies! I only watch public-supported television!"

It was obvious he was hiding something but I didn't have enough time to starve him properly. It would have to be torture. I used my fourteenth 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew to wash down another fistful of Flintstone Chewables, for courage. I could feel one of my eyes spinning, counterclockwise this time, but I couldn't let it distract me.

The Academy Awards ceremony was to be held at the Kodak Theater at Hollywood and Highland, an imposing edifice that has hosted such gala events as the Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet, the American Idol finals, and concerts by Celine Dion and Barry Manilow. Even in the parking garage below I could feel it sucking at my very soul.

There were no velvet ropes outside yet but hopefuls were already lining up in neat rows, just in case some celebrities might decide to swing by six days early. For a wild moment I considered trying to pass myself off as James Lipton but I feared kidnapping.

Instead I lured a valet with promises of free bowling passes and then duct-taped him to a column. I was prepared to spend days breaking his spirit, with ice water and jumper cables if necessary, but we both knew I was doing him a favor. His mind was nearly crushed already from the weight of oppressive actor egos and unyielding auteur demands. Who knows what sort of loathsome detritus he'd seen while parking celebrity SUVs? He'd have been dead by Thursday if I hadn't come along, dead and dumped in the Bahia de los Angeles where crab-covered personal trainers bump gently against the rocks by the truckload.

"Answer my questions and I'll let you go," I lied. I guzzled the rest of my Dew quickly before the quarter pound of Pop Rocks I'd poured in there could stop fizzing.

"I don't understand…"

The words on my question list were blurry but that might have been the vitamins. Apparently the Wilmas were stronger than the Barneys, an odd gender reversal I didn't have time to explore. "Who has the most acting nominations? Answer me, you fiend!"

"I don't know! You're crazy! Help! Police!"

I hit him with the Mountain Dew bottle. It was empty so it bounced, but the intent got across. "Tell me! I command you!" I raised the plastic bottle again for a killing strike.

Suddenly he looked at me with the stricken eyes of the damned. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I had connected to the intelligence controlling him, and now I had to ride the tiger before I was dragged to death behind him. "Most nominations," I urged through clenched teeth.

"Meryl Streep," he spat. "13. But Katharine Hepburn holds the distinction of most wins with four Leading Actress Oscars."

"And the first ceremony?" I demanded, relentless. It was working! This column would blow the cover off the Oscars and then all my editor's talk of expense account abuse and litigation would melt away like spring snow. "When was it? You must answer! The social contract demands it!"

"May 16, 1929, with Academy president Douglas Fairbanks, Sr handing out all the awards." The valet cackled slyly. "Things were different then."

I heard a rustle behind me and I spun to see the members of the Academy, all 5,700 of them, standing around me in gold and scarlet robes. I had miscalculated, badly. I should have remembered that there are no humans left in Los Angeles who are not in the entertainment business. Roaming bands of feral actors swarm through the city, fighting to the death to read for a bit part in a Jack Nicholson picture lest they be banished to dinner theater, never to be heard from again. And I had just poked the Beast underneath its own temple of self-worship.

"He almost got away!" I screamed, and pointed back at the snarling valet. "He was going to spill the beans about where the name 'Oscar' came from!"

As one they turned on the hapless flunky and I bolted, throwing myself down the hall to escape their slavering teeth and A-list claws. I heard explosions behind me but I dared not pause. Instead I leapt into my rental car and sped off towards the airport, leaving my notes, my pharmaceuticals, and my gonzohood behind.

I heard later from my sources that I had been inadvertently aided by Jim Carrey's daring kamikaze raid on the building, a bold attempt to take by force the statuette he feared they'd never relinquish peacefully. There was a story there, but it wasn't for me. Hunter S. Thompson was a twisted genius who made gonzo journalism look easy.

Me, I'll stick with Google.