When Book Sales Attack and other Adventures

Feeling SO much better today. Slept a lot better and took a Claritin just before heading out.

For the third year in a row, emmalyon and I went to SF Library's Big Book Sale over at Fort Mason, and spent a decent amount of money on random fun things we found. Emm definitely found a lot of good stuff, but I managed to find some neat things too:

Kate Elliott, The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars v3)
Kate Elliott, The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars v5)
Kate Elliott, In the Ruins (Crown of Stars v6)
Mercedes Lackey, The Free Bards
The AP Stylebook and Libel Manual, 1992 ed. (yeah, it's out of date, but a good reference book nonetheless)

and the following CDs for $1 each:

Erasure, The Two Ring Circus
Madonna, Ray of Light
O-Positive, toyboatToyBoAtTOYBOAT
The Sundays, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
Matthew Sweet, Girlfriend
Toad the Wet Sprocket, Fear

We then made a trip to the Target down in Daly City to return something and also pick up some more "Blood Orange" Jones Sodas (unlike the disgusting Holiday Packs, these are quite good and have a pirate cat on the box)...then over to BevMo to buy some of the indie sodas they have there (I'm currently drinking an AJ Stephans' Birch Beer. YUM!).

We were going to stop at In n' Out to have lunch, but alas it looked like everybody else on the entire peninsula had the same idea and it was PACKED, so we passed. We did make up for it by going into the completely empty Krispy Kreme in the same parking lot (some people have no taste, I tells ya...) and doing a doughnut run instead. No In n' Out burgers...is teh sad... :(

So! What else is on tap this weekend?

Going to see The Bonesetter's Daughter at the Opera House tomorrow afternoon--one of my somewhat delayed birthday presents to Emm (the other was tix for Rock n' Roll). Should be fun! :)

Also, before we put some of these new books away, we're probably going to do another book purge--which means sometime in the next few weeks or so we may be posting another giveaway list. Stay tuned!

And that's about it for now...more soon!

The Eden Cycle Trilogy

The Eden Cycle Trilogy
(this section x-posted to jonchaisson--sorry if anyone's seeing this twice)

First off, after reading a certain passage in John Scalzi's You're Not Fooling Anyone You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop about his posting Old Man's War on his website before it got published, it's kind of made me think about possibly doing that myself. And yesterday bonniers mentioned the same thing on her LJ. Out of all the writing I have, I believe the Eden Cycle Trilogy is prime for this same thing.

Of course, it's a double-edged sword: there are those who are going to say that this will nix any possibility of it being professionally published (read: it's free on the internet, why should we lose money publishing it?), but at the same time there's the possibility (like Old Man's War, actually) where it does eventually get picked up and published.

I'm going to be blunt and honest here--as much as I love the trilogy and think it's one of my favorite projects I've ever written, it's far from being my best work, and I doubt I'll ever be able to find the time to completely rewrite it to the point of it being picked up by a major publisher. I've come to the conclusion that if I do end up publishing this online, then it will have found a good home and others will be able to read it. Many of my writing friends out there have already read at least the first book, and while it still needs work, they did enjoy it, so I know at least someone out there would check it out.

I also want to bring up the fact that the trilogy has a considerable amount of backstory, worldbuilding, maps, notes, reference and outtakes (its original idea, The Phoenix Effect, included). Utilizing these things as multimedia "extras" would be a lot of fun to work with. I could even keep an ongoing separate blog tied in with it, explaining how the scene was written or thoughts and memories about writing it. If you haven't guessed already, I could easily see the whole trilogy project as the online version of a Special Edition DVD--a director's cut with commentary, outtakes, pictures and other fun easter eggs. I mean, why not?

Am I annoyed that I possibly wouldn't make one thin dime out of it? I was for awhile, and to an extent it still feels like I'd be giving up in a way, but I've been over it for awhile now. Am I shooting myself in the foot, effectively throwing this ginormous project away, all this work for nothing? Maybe, but that's looking at it from the point of view of novel-as-potential-paycheck. I don't think I'm throwing it away; in fact, this is more along the lines of giving it the outlet it desperately needs. It's not doing anything, its paper versions gathering dust on our bedroom bookshelf and closet, and the digital version sitting around doing nothing on my hard drive (don't worry, kids--I have it saved elsewhere too).

I would love to hear what people think about this idea...