PULLING OVER

At eighteen, I was sitting at a red light in the pouring rain when I was hit from behind, the impact shoving my Volkswagen Beetle into the intersection. The light turned green, and cars began honking. A face appeared out of the darkness. It belonged to the man who'd hit me. He motioned to the side of the road. "Pull over!" he shouted, rain pelting him. "I'll be right behind you!" He ran back to his truck. I didn't think, I just reacted. I pulled out of the dangerous intersection, then watched my rearview mirror for his headlights. They never came. At the moment he told me to pull over, I was unable to adequately assess the situation, and I simply did what I was told to do. Since that day, I've encountered various degrees of my own failure to properly read a highly charged situation. But I think we all want to believe what people tell us, even when deep down we're afraid it's not the truth. I'm not sure that kind of faith in humanity is a fault or weakness. And now, years later, I still find myself pulling over and waiting for headlights that I know will never come.


tobacco smoke enema device

VISUALS

I put together a few visuals. Once I come up with a pub name, I will hire someone to design the logo, but this gives me some ideas. I do like the way Black Tupelo lends itself to the tree image.

PLEASE VOTE!

Please take the time to vote for a publishing house name.


update: two new awesome suggestions:

Tupelo Press
Belfry Press

love Belfry Press. Would like to add that to poll, but I don't know if I can without losing current votes.


Due to the premature death of Quartet Press, I will most likely publish my blacklist. I don't need a publishing house in order to do that, but why not? I feel it would be better to establish a name now, because there's no telling what the future holds. I often daydream of starting a house that would be equivalent to a small indie record label where I would publish one or two books a year. I would do the content editing and line editing, but I would use freelancers for the copy editing, proofing, and epub formatting. For the writer, it wouldn't really be much different from self publishing. The only difference would be my editing and guidance, and my name and publishing house backing the material. Oh, and I'd take a small percentage.


All of the possible publishing house choices have personal significance.

Perley Station was a village that burned down in the late 1800s. The only building left standing was what is now my church/writing studio.

Tuonela was the fictional Wisconsin town in my books Pale Immortal and Garden of Darkness.

Black Tupelo was a bar/whorehouse in Play Dead.

But maybe it's best to be totally straightforward and use names.

I like them all, so I need help!

update: suggestions welcomed and appreciated!

QUARTET PRESS CLOSES BEFORE IT OPENS

Bad news in the world of ebook publishing. Just got the news that Quartet Press has disbanded. I have no idea what happened, and we might never know, but pay no attention to my reissue release dates in the left column. Very sad, because I know everyone at Quartet Press put in a tremendous amount of work and effort into building what they'd hoped would be a quality ebook publishing house.




GOODBYE FROM QUARTET PRESS

update: PW article. I suspected it was a shaky business model. I worried that they'd created too many paying positions before the launch:

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY


I strongly suspect the editorial department killed them.

Here's my idea for a startup:

Begin with reissues only. In that way you completely eliminate the need for an expensive editorial department. Maintain rights one year, two years max, with option to renew. Pay writer 40 - 50%. Build business, then release a couple of amazing new titles that everybody is going to be talking about. Hire outside freelance editors and copy editors.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

I've wanted a netbook for about a year and a half. I'm a big woot fan, so when I saw the Asus Eee 900 for 174.00 including shipping and handling, I jumped on it.


Eee PC 900

The little darling arrived about a month ago, and it's been a battle ever since. Here is the problem: I've owned nothing but Macs for ten years and I expect to be able to use a computer right out of the box. No tinkering. No hacking. Just open it and use it. So anyway, this arrives with Linux which takes the hard drive to 98% full. You can't remove any of the totally unnecessary software, which means the browser cannot be updated. This was confirmed by the Asus hotline. You have to attach an external hard drive or remove Linux and install a different operating system. There is a third choice which involves moving some software to another area, but this takes super powers. A new OS would be the best choice, but I know nothing about this stuff and I don't want to deal with it. So I'm thinking of trying to sell it right here. An online auction. Starting bid $50. I'll pay shipping and insurance. So anyway, if you think you might be interested, google the Asus Eee 900. There are blogs dedicated to this little netbook. People who know how to tweak them seem to love them. And love messing with them. Not me. It's like a car. I just want to get in and drive.

At this point anybody can buy it from me for 150ish. I'll pay shipping (US) and insurance. Might take a bit less than 150. Make an offer. I would also trade it for an iPod touch. If nobody bites, I'll be auctioning it off right here on my blog.

CREATING A THREE-COLUMN BLOGGER TEMPLATE

I'm pretty excited to have found directions for adding a third column to my template. I wanted my blog to be a little more like a website, with more space for current info, but didn't want to switch to Wordpress or Typepad. You can find directions here:

BLOG BUSTER

WHAT I'M READING

WAIT UNTIL TWILIGHT - LITERARY HORROR





ABOUT THE BOOK:

Not long after his own mother's death, sixteen-year-old Samuel discovers a set of deformed triplets hidden behind closed doors in his sleepy Georgia community. The babies—whose shut-in mother believes they were immaculately conceived and whose menacing brother is a constant threat—take control of Samuel's every waking and sleeping thought. His only escape, he realizes, will be to save the monster children. But to do so, he must rein in his darkest impulses as he undergoes a profound transformation from motherless boy to self-defined man—because sometimes the most terrible monsters are those that live inside us all.

MY COMMENTS:

This is a debut novel, and I think we'll be seeing a lot more of Sang Pak. It was hard to come up with solid comments for this book, because in some areas it is excellent. If I were to give it a rating, it would look like this:

writing: 5 out of 5
structure: 3 out of 5
total: 4

The title suggests that the publisher was trying to ride the Twilight craze. I'd love to know the original title. Wait Until Twilight is something I would classify as literary horror, because the horror elements, when they appear, are very strong.
Buy it: Indie Bound

Bill Crider's review