My contributor’s copies are here. I feel extremely jazzed just now.
Feel free to pick up your own copy on B&N, Amazon, or McFarland’s own site.
Category Archives: Now and Then We Time Travel
All hail my awesomeness! (#SFWApro)
Filed under Now and Then We Time Travel, Writing
Parties for Christmas, Sex for Dinner: the week in review (#SFWApro)
So last weekend was the writer’s group Christmas party. It’s the fourth year we’ve held it, and I really enjoy doing it. We don’t entertain much, so this is easily the biggest social event actually held at our house.
This year, due to TYG’s intense work schedule, I decided not to ask for her help unless I had to. I didn’t have to, other than a couple of minor things, but that did add a lot more to the cleanup and prep. Fortunately I knew from the writer’s work day that my chili was a big hit (credit goes to the veggie chipotle sausage and Penzey’s southwestern spice blend) and chili is both simple, easy and scales up. Plus cornbread, toffee bars and chocolate chip scones. So I did most of the cleaning Thursday, then the shopping and cooking on Friday.
The party was great (photo by William Stolley, all rights remain with him). We had lots of guests, lots of tasty food, and good conversation. The party ran until around 12:30, and included a game of improv though I passed—my brain was getting a little worn (I’m so not a night owl) though I was still having fun. There was talk about writing, day jobs, politics, holiday plans, family members …And this time we let the dogs run around, which they thoroughly enjoyed, as did everyone else. And nobody accidentally fell over them, stepped on them, etc., which has always been our worry.
Best of all I could talk because I wasn’t losing my voice like last year. I did come down with an unpleasant sore throat midweek, but I took good care of it (lozenges, fluids, hot baths) and it seems to be mending without getting really ugly. Sunday TYG had things to do so I pretty much crashed at home with the pups. Much nicer than spending Sunday morning in Urgent Care last year.
And then the work week began. This week’s big accomplishment was completing the proofing of Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast. While I intend to give it one more look-see next week — some of the changes were extensive enough I could easily have introduced new errors — in every other way the text is done. What remains is finding a cover image, which hopefully I can manage next week. I’m going through Draft2Digital for this one (I tried Smashwords for Philosophy and Fairytales; let’s see how they compare) and they require a cover photo. There’s certainly no shortage of free photos on the web, but I need one that’s suitable for a Bond book, which will take thought. Haven’t thought enough yet.
But getting the body of the book done still pleases me much. I wasn’t sure I’d manage it.
I also went over the various notes people gave me for the beta reading of Southern Discomfort. I’ve discerned some broad, consistent criticisms, which I’ll blog about next week; there’s also lots of individual points only one person made, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth considering (some of them I already know are).
My work schedule was slightly off this week: TYG was out a couple of nights, so I tried working the evenings, then taking off in the morning after. This turned out to be fairly productive, except the dogs got very needed — they’re used to play, play, play for a bit in the evenings after TYG comes home, and expected me to substitute. And because doggy day care is full up with holiday boarders, we only took Trixie in this week (because of Plushie’s back, we want him boarded in his own separate cage, and they had none). He was surprisingly quiet and laid back when left to himself.
Oh, and Now and Then We Time Travel went to the printer on Wednesday. Soon, very soon, it will go live …
Indexing ended. What happened next will shock you! (#SFWApro)
(If this post generates a few thousand hits, expect more clickbait titles).
So after I got the index and the proofs off to McFarland, I took Tuesday off, and it felt great. The rest of the week, work got disrupted by all sorts of surprises and tasks. And just when I thought I’d mastered them all, another popped up — which once again put me in mind of this cover, where Luke Cage has the same problem (art by Billy Graham, all rights to current holder).
Wednesday I went to the library to print up Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast. Working on Now and Then We Time Travel convinced me I’ll be better off going over a hard copy than reading it off the screen (I’ve no idea why that makes a difference, but it does). Then I hit the dentist (teeth are doing well, thanks for asking), came home … and felt kind of possibly sick. So I didn’t do much. Whether I was still wiped from indexing or just had a slight possible sickness that went away with rest, not doing much did the trick, but more challenges awaited.
Thursday, I hadn’t planned to do much anyway. We have the writers’ group Christmas party here on Saturday, so I devoted the day to cleaning, taking advantage of the puppies being in doggie day care. In addition to my own straightening and sweeping, I also booked a carpet cleaning.
But that morning, I noticed the water in my bathtub didn’t seem to be getting any lower after I finished. So I had to call the plumber. Fortunately, he was able to come and get it taken care of that morning. So by afternoon, everything seemed to be going smoothly … but then I decided to self-clean our oven for the first time ever. I couldn’t do it for a long time, because the childproof lock our home’s former owners installed prevented the oven from locking completely.
Unfortunately I thought it was simple: close the lock, clean the oven, unlock the oven. Nope. You’re not supposed to unlock it until it’s completely cooled; when I pushed the lock on the still-hot oven, I broke it. As I type this, I’m waiting for the repair guy to come, so I can do some baking for the party (I’m also thinking up backup plans in case it isn’t fixable).
Oh, and this morning I discovered the lock on the shed holding our circuit breakers wasn’t working — as in, I couldn’t open it. So I had to call the locksmith, because if anything should trip a circuit breaker, I’d like to be able to turn things back on, particularly heating (it’s getting down below freezing today and early tomorrow). Fortunately, there was a genuine problem, not just me not knowing how to oil the lock. Fixed now, thank goodness.
And all of this left me stressed enough today that I wound up petting the dogs a lot. Not so much because I needed the stress relief as because I find it much harder to resist their demands when I’m off their game. And as TYG could only give them a short walk this morning (it was around 20 degrees), they felt needier than usual.
Despite which, I’m now about nine films into the proofs of Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast. It’s quite enjoyable making notes on the manuscript and not worrying whether my editor can read them clearly. I’m pleased how few spelling/grammar errors I’ve found (but I did find a couple); on the downside, a lot of cumbersome sentences have “fix this” by them, a sign I’ll need to play around with them later. So the work’s far from done. But it’s getting there.
Update: The oven is fixed. Christmas-party baking will proceed on schedule tomorrow!
Fun stuff about indexing (#SFWApro)
First, let me note that the index and the proofs did indeed go out Monday, as planned. And although proofing and indexing was necessary drudgery, I now feel up to mentioning the fun side.
The thing about indexing is that it brings together lots of facts that I might not otherwise register, particularly about actors. Jason O’Mara, for example, is in both Terra Nova and the American Life on Mars. Catherine Hicks appears as Mark Harmon’s wife in For All Time, but she shows up as the wife and girlfriend in several other movies, including one I really like, Running Against Time. Malcolm McDowell is in Time After Time, of course, but he’s also in the 2012 Philadelphia Experiment remake, Just Visiting, Star Trek Generations and a couple of others. Kevin McKidd of Journeyman (which I wasn’t able to see, but remember well) plays alt.Batman in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. Christopher Plummer has supporting roles in 12 Monkeys, The Lake House and Somewhere in Time. Second Doctor Patrick Troughton (below in The War Games, all rights to image with current holder) is also in the kids’ film A Hitch in Time and in one adaptation of Box of Delights. Voice actor Yuri Lowenthal seems to be in everything. The same is true of a lot of Japanese voice actors, but I’m too busy obsessing over getting the names right (because I don’t register “that spelling can’t be right” the way I can with English names) to really notice. Though Riisa Naka, who stars in the 2006 anime Girl Who Leapt Through Time also appears in the sequel Time Traveler — The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
And then there are the odd numerical patterns. A movie that I reference on p.26 and then give the film credits on p.226. Or 27 and 217. I know perfectly well such patterns have no significance, but at the same time a part of my mind goes OMG every time. It makes me appreciate how easily we can fool ourselves into seeing omens or destinies that aren’t there.
Despite all those little wonderful details, I’m quite happy to be done with it.
Filed under Now and Then We Time Travel, Writing
You probably think indexing is all bright lights and glamor, don’t you kid? (#SFWApro)
It’s neither. It’s utter drudgery, relieved by odd little moments (I’ll get to those). But most importantly, it’s done. Everything goes off today, barring a blanket of ice on the roads (all rights to cover and image reside with current holders).
In short bursts it’s not bad, but at 130,000 words, I couldn’t do short bursts. I worked on it all week, then finished up on Sunday. The main body of the book was pretty speedy, but when I got into the lists of film credits, pretty much every word on the page was indexable. So I slowed down. A lot. And the stress and eyestrain (to say nothing of the difficulty of working around the pups with a sheaf of papers and a computer) didn’t help. Or the fear that I’ve missed some crucial typo somewhere.
What makes it really tough is that it’s often not just entering the name and page number. For example, if I have a Frank Tuttle and a Frank Tuttel in the index, that automatically suggests one of them is a typo. But which. Pause to check that out … And then correct the right one. Or I discover that Frank Tuttle is really Frank Ruttle, so I have to find “Tuttle, Frank” and relocate him to the right place in the R’s. All of which is more complicated dealing with foreign names, particularly Asian. I can’t read Japanese or Chinese or Korean, so I have to check out the names online. Not everyone spells them the same or uses the same accent marks, and I don’t have a sense of what a wrong spelling would look like. So I have to be extra careful.
I’d finished up the actual indexing Friday. But I put in nine hours Sunday going through and seeing if any names didn’t have a page number by them. In which case I had to figure out why: had I just missed the name? Usually, yes, but sometimes it was a misspelling I’d corrected in the text. Or a name I’d cut from the text. Or some other quirk.
After I finished that phase I drew up a typed list of every correction I made. That will serve as a reference if they lose the pages, and it’ll help if my execrable handwriting isn’t legible.
So not a very relaxing weekend. My brain was way too fried for the usual Monday political post.
But it’s worth it. And now I can take some time off to make up for it.
Filed under Nonfiction, Now and Then We Time Travel, Writing
This week, in two images (#SFWApro)
Working on the index, most of the time, I felt like this. Spider-Man, not the giant hands about to crush him (art by John Buscema). They’re the index.
But I’d catch my wind and then I’d feel ready for a project to flatten! Art by Chuck Patton.
And now it’s done. Just a little tidying up to do and the whole book’s done. But I’m too fried to detail my struggles now, so I’ll postpone that until another post.
All rights to images reside with current holders.
Filed under cover art, Nonfiction, Now and Then We Time Travel, Writing
Here’s why proofing my time-travel book doesn’t happen overnight (#SFWApro)
And no, my Christmas cactus has nothing to do with the book, but it is blooming so prettily!
I’m now well over p.150 in proofing Now and Then We Time Travel. No indexing—there’s no point until I correct all the names and spelling errors. Given that unlike the previous three books (listed on my non-fiction page), I don’t have to wrap the work around a day job, I think I’m in good shape. Certainly I’m less stressed about it than last week. And I think I’m doing a better job than I’ve done before, precisely because I have less time pressure.
The most basic part of the gig is spelling and grammar errors. Then comes writing choices — long sentences I want to chop in two, better phrasing, rewording for clarity, etc. But then there’s the stuff that’s unique to a book like this, which is where things get really slow.
Let’s say I have Generic Time Travel Movie in the text with a release year of 1994. I look it up in a reliable source such as Leonard Maltin’s movie guide, it says 1995, I change the text. I look it up online and find a reliable source — a New York Times review from 1995 — I do likewise. If it’s somewhere crowdsourced such as Internet Movie Database, I try to find confirmation — other sites, the studio, etc. A lot of times the disagreements are errors of definition, not fact: a film may have played at a movie festival two years before it was released to theaters or DVD.
Or let’s say Generic Time Travel Movie‘s director is given in my text as Pompous McArtyPants. I have to check that, and the screenwriter names, and the actor names. If IMDB says his name is really Pompeii McArtyPants, I then have to search online until I find some sort of confirmation which of us is right. It’s more likely to be the website, but it’s not guaranteed. For a minor example, the 1993 film Official Denial identifies Chad Everett’s role as General Spalding, but every online source says “Spaulding.” I had it right. Very minor, but I prefer having the facts right to having them wrong, even in details. It’s one reason I actually watch every movie whenever possible: what’s on the screen is decisive. Lots of sources spell out the title of +1 as Plus One but that’s not what’s on-screen, so in my text it’s +1.
Plus I’ve never done a book with so many foreign films. That requires checking twice as hard because spelling mistakes in Japanese or Finnish names (yes, I have Finnish films) don’t leap out at me as easily as, say, Jjohn Smiht would (of course even then I’d check that the guy isn’t spelling it with two J’s). And with cyrillic, Korean or Chinese lettering, I can’t get the names off the screen so I have to rely on good sources and hope they got it right. And then double-check.
So it’s not a snap. But I am making progress and I will be done in time. Even if the dogs get periodic needy attacks at my focusing so much on work. Even if the practical challenges of handling a manuscript and a computer and sitting around two dogs are sometimes difficult.
Even if I do sometimes feel I’m in some kind of a—a two-way deathtrap (cover by Carmine Infantino, all rights to current holder).
Necessary, but not entertaining (#SFWApro)
So as I mentioned on Tuesday, the proofs for my time-travel book (all rights to cover and cover image remain with current holders) are now here. So until they are proofed, and then indexed, they rule my writing life.
It’s been slow going. I’m reading every line, checking every entry, so that typos get caught and any errors in the credits — names, dates of movies, spelling of actors’ names, etc. — gets fixed. It’s particularly tough because sources can make mistakes. Several movies have multiple different release years, depending which website or book I’m looking at (when in doubt, I go with a reliable print source such as Leonard Maltin’s movie guides). If I spell a name wrong (when compared to IMDB or Turner Classic Movies’ websites) I have to check whether I’m wrong or they are. For example one site lists Chad Everett’s military officer in Official Denial as “Spaulding” but the credits give the name as “Spalding,” which is what I have. And what’s on the screen is always the deciding factor.
And there are lots of places where the phrasing is not as smooth as I thought. I’d planned to polish everything up in the last couple of months, but guess what? With all the movies, TV series and last-minute oops-didn’t-know-about-that entries, I didn’t polish as much as I’d anticipated. C’est la vie.
On the plus side, I did find one obscure film, 50,000 BC (Before Clothes) on YouTube, and I think I’ll be able to work it into the book after all.
And my short story The Savage Year sold to Lorelei Signal, to come out in a couple of months.
Oh, and Thanksgiving was great. I spent the morning reading, then at noon TYG and I went to Cafe Parizade, which hosts the largest vegan Thanksgiving in the South. The food is invariably awesome and we came home quite stuffed. On the downside, the vegetarian society that organizes it was using a different booking system this year, which resulted in us sitting at a table by ourselves, rather than with friends. It was still fun, but not quite as much fun.
Then we came home, TYG took a nap, and I watched some movies.
I’d originally planned to take today off, but with the proofs in, that wasn’t an option. But I had a solid night of sleep and work on the book is going well. If only there wasn’t so much to come … Yes, I know, first world problems.
Time is about to kick my butt (#SFWApro)
The proofs for Now and Then We Time Travel arrived Monday. By email, which is a new approach, but makes sense: I only print out the pages that need fixing, rather than McFarland printing out the whole manuscript. Hopefully it won’t be too many. Fingers crossed.
And then comes indexing. Even with the index already alphabetized, that’s going to be a job. It always is.
So everything I’m working on is now on hold until the book is done.
Of course it’s hardly my first rodeo, but I’ve never had a book cover quite so many films before. So I have a lot more work to do–checking out each name for accuracy is a lot tougher than just checking every paragraph for spelling errors (and with names, it’s easy to miss a spelling error). So I’m a little nervous. But only a little.
The good news? It’s due at the printers 12/22. So the pressure’s on, but that means it’s so very, very, very close to being an actual finished book that I hold in my hands.
Woot!
Filed under Now and Then We Time Travel
Uncertain and Unfinished (#SFWApro)
That’s sort of how I’m finding the challenge of deciding what to work on while Southern Discomfort sits with the beta-readers and the galleys for Now And Then We Travel In Time are still with McFarland (all rights to cover and to the image reside with current holders)
The uncertainty is that, as I’ve joked before, I’m at the level where nothing I do is particularly more successful than anything else. This does give me a sort of freedom — I never have to choose between the magical realist story about Dadaists in Zurich that I really want to do or the werewolf raunch comedy I can sell for serious money. But right now knowing that one story would be more profitable or marketable would make it easier to focus. Normally what I’d do is go whichever story was in best shape, but at the moment everything is still in relatively early drafts. So nothing’s going to get down soon, even if I do prioritize it.
And of course, I spent a lot of Wednesday and Thursday distracted by the election aftermath. Now my feelings seem back to normal, pretty much. Though for various other scheduling reasons I didn’t get much done. Plus Trixie is getting a little upset at times that Plushie gets the prime snuggle position in my lap. She’ll stand at the far end of the couch, wagging her tale in the tentative “don’t you want to play with me?” way, and I’ll have to stop and arrange things so both dogs are happy. This isn’t always the best position for me, but I’m getting better at it.
I worked a little on Brain From Outer Space, then some on Let No Man Put Asunder. Neither got very far. I did get quite a bit done on the next draft of Trouble and Glass. This required changing a lot of stuff — the villain’s plan really didn’t make sense — and I haven’t got the whole thing worked out yet. For example at the point in the story I reached when I stopped for the week, I can’t see any reason not to smash the McGuffin (the thing everyone’s chasing after) to keep it out of the bad guys hands. But that’ll come.
And I did get some more done on Martinis, Girls and Guns (soon to be renamed Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast) — watching one of the Bond films was about the most I could do Wednesday morning.
Bring on the weekend.
