Stupid internet

If you tried e-mailing me and got a DNS error, do try again. At least one person has, and it doesn't seem to be permanent. If the @marissalingen.com addresses don't work, try my hotmail, which is mris22.

More later. I'm still in "update mode," I'm afraid, but I think it'll go away after today, and I will disappear entirely for a portion of the late week.

Independence

I like specialty bookstores best. I like going in and knowing that the clerk has read some stuff I've read, that the clerk has some idea of what kind of books they're trying to sell, that even if we have different opinions, the clerk will have opinions about the stuff I have opinions about.

Some people keep trying to claim the virtues of specialty bookstores for independent bookstores, though, and I just haven't been buying it. I go into "mainstream" or "general" independent bookstores, and for the most part I don't see the diversity of stock they claim. Some manage it. Most coast by on the same bestsellers you can find everywhere else. Most have clerks who are more into the indy cred of working at an independent bookstore than they are into knowing all their sections well. (If I was into a local poetry scene, I probably wouldn't feel this way, as local poetry seems to be one thing a "non-specialty" independent bookstore will have that's different from the chains.) I've felt that it's all nonsense, this "independent bookstore" thing.

But. I found some things at Schuler's, which is a large general independent, that I haven't seen elsewhere. They had a good big stock of Albert Goldbarth poetry, and they had The Latvians: A Short History. I got those. I also saw the middle book in the K.J. Parker series I'm reading, which is a British import. I'll buy it at Uncle Hugo's instead, but it was good to see something genuinely different in the stock. And they had YAs divided into mainstream and SF/fantasy/mystery, and their "genre" section was large and well-stocked.

So there were things to like at Schuler's. It was doing the independent "general" bookstore well. Maybe the ones I've run into before have just been poorly done, or maybe they've been too small -- Schuler's is the size of a Borders or a B&N, and it has music and a cafe, so it's competing with the big stores on their own turf. It makes me a little more willing to listen when people talk about independent bookstores as though they're the same thing as specialty bookstores. I'll still probably point out that many independents are not the way they describe them at all, but at least I won't have to give people the "what are you smoking?" look.

Where do you buy your books?

How I keep going

So shamaneyes asked me:
( A question about writing at this stage of my career )

Short answer: I don't know if you're telling yourself a lie about what will be hardest for you, but selling a novel is not easy. Not in general, anyway. Not unless you get phenomenally lucky. Not even if it's a good novel. Not, not, not.

And if you're telling yourself that it would be easy for you because your theoretical books would be good, please don't say that to me. (Not you-specific, shamaneyes, a general-you.) Think of what it says by extension about my books. If you're thinking that it's taking awhile to sell the books I've actually written because they suck and the books you hypothetically might write would not, do not say it to my face. If you have actually read my books and have some suggestions for how to improve them, that's good. But if you're assuming things will be easy for you because you'll lack the suckage of the rest of us, do not say it to us; it will not be appreciated. And if you give us a list of your favorite published authors, it will probably be demonstrably untrue; at least some of them will have struggled. Odds are you will, too. It's certainly something to plan on. Then you can rejoice at your good fortune if you're wrong.

( How I keep going anyway )

Olympics and more

That last entry now sounds a bit testy in my own ears. I'm sorry if I was cranky at you folks. I don't feel it, just a bit worn. Book kicking my butt. Rest of life offering many rewards and a few concerns, some of which are fairly immediate.

But hey, I've got the Olympics. timprov theorizes that if, say, slalom kayaking and women's saber fencing were on ESPN2 every weekend, I'd never want to watch them. He's probably right. But having a dose of unusual sports once every four years is about right. Even if it does feature Shut-Up-Bob Costas. (If only we lived far enough north to watch on CBC....)

When I was in junior high, we watched the Olympics with one of my best friends at the time, and when the people she didn't like would figure skate, she would shout, "Fall on your butt! Fall on your butt!" I don't want that. I don't want my favored athletes to win because of bad luck on someone else's part. I want them to be more inventive in their tumbling, to find a burst of speed at the end of the race, to be better, not to win by default. Rivalries that trickle off are no fun at all. This is why fantasy writers have climactic battles of good and evil in the first place: because evil losing because it steps wrong and sprains its ankle at a crucial moment is just not any fun to watch. (Or to write about.)

Fun to write about. I'd like to find that in the home stretch of Sampo. Here's hoping, I guess.