Stacia Kane

Oh, man, what a fun con, seriously. I had a great time. It didn’t start out that way, but it certainly ended up that way.

Why did it not start that way? Because of a train derailment. I was supposed to travel from London Euston to Chester, and from there catch a train to Prestatyn, where the con was being held. Yeah. Nothing was going out of Euston on Friday, so instead of my happy little three-and-a-half-hour or so trip I ended up spending seven and a half hours either standing in crowded train aisles or perched on the edge of a seat (my suitcase took up most of it). Or just standing around in the freezing cold; the train out of Derby I was told to take was so full some of us had to wait an hour for the next one.

But I finally arrived, and after some confusion found where I was supposed to check in (which I did, along with the female Holley from Red Dwarf, who was so nice. Then I went back to get my key–they had to cut me a new one–who did I find standing there but the male Holley, who was also very friendly and nice and we had a lovely little chat. So I met both Holleys in my first half hour there, which was pretty cool).

I don’t know what it is about me and cons, but I always seem to end up rooming with these gorgeous curvy brunette sex goddesses. First, of course, there is my wonderful friend Caitlin Kittredge, with whom I room because we plan it that way. But Caitlin wasn’t at this one (and I missed her!) and SFX was handling my accomodation, so they had me rooming with Maria Dahvana Headley, who–guess what?–is a gorgeous curvy brunette sex goddess. Seriously, the woman could stop traffic. See how stunning she looks on her website? Doesn’t even come close.

Anyway. The con was held at a Pontins, which for those unaware is a “holiday camp.” It looks like a gulag with exclamation points. But our “chalet”–actually just a pretty standard little one-bedroom apartment in a block of them–was clean, which was more than I expected, and the electric radiators worked fairly well, although there wasn’t one in the bathroom. And the bathroom door wouldn’t stay closed. And the smoke alarms beeped randomly and irritatingly, at least until Maria, um, fixed them.

We did not have a mirror in the whole place.

I ended up staying in the room Friday night–I didn’t know anyone there–and doing some work. Or, well, I was supposed to be working but I ended up watching The Untouchables. Oh, and standing up every fifteen minutes or so to lean over the radiator and warm up.

Saturday was the Big Day. Of course, I totally forgot about the shiny red jeans I bought specifically for that con, so they languished in my suitcase, dammit. And it was COLD. So very, very cold. It also rained. And the “chalet” was so very far away from the main building.

My first panel was “What is Urban Fantasy?” And dude. Most cons I go to have maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty people at each panel. This one (and the later one)? In a huge room. A huge full room. I saw someone estimate the capacity at a thousand, but I think it was probably closer to half of that; then again, I wouldn’t know, because the room was dark and we had lights aimed right at us so I couldn’t see the audience (that’s important later; I couldn’t see beyond the front row).

So “What is Urban Fantasy?” was me, Paul Cornell, Ben Aaronovitch, Benedict Jacka, and Sam Stone. And it was awesome. A really interesting, in-depth look at the genre, and not one person suggested it was just chicks in leather fucking vampires. We talked about the nature of monsters and the darkness inside all of us and whether UF is sort of like horror where the protagonist lives (I LOVED that definition, as you can probably guess). Just such a cool panel, and so much fun to be a part of. I felt a little weird being the only American there, but it didn’t seem to matter at all. (There’s a picture of that panel on the Orbit blog.)

Next I signed books at the Forbidden Planet booth (Forbidden Planet is a huge UK SFF bookstore chain) with Maria. We had a great time, and she fixed my lipstick. Somewhere there should be a picture of us together but I don’t know where or if it’s up yet. Unfortunately–or fortunately, I’m not sure which–FP ran out of our books in the first 15 minutes or so. I’m hoping that’s a good sign but for all I know they only had five copies of each, so who knows. And what matters is that it was fun; Maria and I had some laughs, we got to meet some great readers, and it was just cool all around.

Then we had the “Ready Steady Flash!” panel. Okay. This was basically, the moderator–Lee from Angry Robot Books, what a cool guy–gave us a topic and we had five minutes to write a flash story about it. I have never written flash fiction before, but figured hey, why not? And it meant I got to be at a table with Juliet E. McKenna, Paul Cornell (again, and let me tell you he is awesome), and Tony Lee. One of these things (read: me) is not like the others…

(My flash pieces and the rest of the con under the cut) Read the rest of this entry »

So. Yesterday I ranted a bit, and I’m going to do it some more now. As with yesterday’s post, I’m not entirely sure where this is going to go. As with yesterday’s post, this is my attempt to get some things straight in my head and to explore this subject, so I may be a bit harsh; I may say things as part of playing Devil’s Advocate; I may go off on little tangents (probably will, because let’s face it, that’s what I tend to do).

First, a couple of things I forgot or didn’t get to say yesterday. First, authors? Don’t review your own books, either on Amazon or Goodreads or anywhere else. Don’t rate them on Goodreads, even if your “review” says something like, “Well, I wrote it so obviously I think it’s good!” Like that’s funny or charming or something (hint: it’s not).

I was going to say that reviewing/rating your own books under your own name just makes you look like a tool, rather than being actually sleazy, but then I realized that your rating shows up as part of the book’s overall rating; I can think of a couple of books (all by the same author, what a shock) who have pretty decent overall ratings on Goodreads, but then when you look at them you realize that’s only because the author and his/her (not giving you clues as to who it is) “agent” and/or editor have all given the book five stars, whereas the two readers who rated/reviewed it gave it two or three. So, sorry, reviewing/rating your books under your own name is sleazy. Having your agent or editor review/rate them is also sleazy, and honestly, I’m not aware of any editors with major houses or the big epubs who do so (there could be some, but I’m not aware of them).

I do have my own books on my Goodreads and LibraryThing “shelves.” I didn’t intend to do so, but both sites said specifically that I should. So I do. I’m not entirely comfortable with it, but it does seem to be standard and expected. I rarely visit Goodreads, to be honest (more on that in a bit) and as I’ve said before, I *never* visit/read posts in the “Terrible Fever” Goodreads group or the Downside Shelfari group. Those are reader spaces, for you guys to discuss the books; they’re not for me and I actually think it would be creepy for me to lurk over them watching you all. And might make you feel uncomfortable or inhibited. So I stay away. I believe that’s the right thing to do.

I don’t think I have to say that reviewing your own books under a sockpuppet account makes you scum just like pressuring/begging your friends and family to do so does. Anytime you’re lying to readers, anytime you’re attempting to jerryrig your reviews or rankings, you’re doing something unethical. And, you’ll probably be caught, and that will be bad. Really bad.
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Oh, man. I hardly know where to start.

I’ve been thinking about this post for about a week now, and still don’t know what exactly I’m going to say. I’m just trying to make sense of some things, basically. So forgive me if this is a tad rambly.

The thing is, I’ve been involved in the online writing/reading community since 2005 now. And in that time things have gotten–in my view, at least–more and more antagonistic and upsetting. I wonder why. This post–this series of posts planned for this week–is my attempt to figure it out, I guess. To express my thoughts and see what yours are, and perhaps to offer a potential solution. And in order to do that I’m going to be very honest, and perhaps harsh in some places, but I’m trying to express my full thought process here. So we’ll see how it goes.

In the past nine days or so the internet–at least the writer/reader part of it–seems to have gone kablooey. Specifically, the writer part of it, in that we’ve had a rash of writers deciding it’s their place to tell readers A) How to review books; B) What is and is not okay to say or think; C) Why their opinion is totally wrong; and D) whatever other ridiculous shit they come up with.

I’m aware of five separate incidents, the latest being a self-published author who, in response to a reasoned but negative review, took it upon himself to leave 40 comments–yes, forty–on the blog quoting the fawning letters he’d received about the book from family and friends. And then many more comments insisting that what he did was totally professional and reasonable and why is the reviewer in question so full of hate, yo? And that’s nothing compared to the others, the writers ranting on their blogs and leaving nasty or argumentative comments on Goodreads and blah blah blah.

Guys…cut it out. Just, seriously, cut it out.

Readers have the right to say whatever the fuck they want about a book. Period. They have that right. If they hate the book because the MC says the word “delicious” and the reader believes it’s the Devil’s word and only evil people use it, they can shout from the rooftops “This book is shit and don’t read it” if they want. If they want to write a review entirely about how much they hate the cover, they can if they want. If they want to make their review all about how their dog Foot Foot especially loved to pee on that particular book, they can.

Why?

Because, and I’ve said this before, reviews are for readers. Because they purchased the book (or it was sent to them specifically hoping they would express an opinion) and so can say whatever they want about it. If you buy a shirt that falls apart in the wash, do you keep your mouth shut about it because you don’t want to hurt the manufacturer’s feelings?

Authors, reviews are not for you. They are not for you. Authors, reviews are not for you.
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Yes, once again, it is my birthday, another year further into the depressing process of aging and another year closer to the inevitable end. Groan.

So once again, I’m going to try to cheer myself up a bit and take my mind off the curse of mortality. Or rather, I’m going to try to force you all to cheer me up and take my mind off of it.

This worked pretty well last year, so we’ll try it again. Here’s what I’d love you to do:

Delurk, if you lurk, and say hello!

Ask me a question. It can be about anything; me, any of my books, any of my characters, publishing, society (although please no religion or politics), whatever. You can ask anything you want, and I’ll answer it to the best of my ability.

Suggest something. Tell me what you’d like me to blog about in future. Tell me what you think about things, about anything at all. (The only caveat there is please don’t suggest possible plots for future books, because if you’ve thought of something similar to something I’ve already planned or written…yeah, that could be a problem later. You can, however, make basic comments/requests like “More sex!” Heh.)

Suggest books, for me and for my readers. Or movies you liked. Tell me (us) why.

Anything at all; anything you like. We had a good time with this last year, so here’s hoping we will again.

I will be watching the comments, though, in case any troll-type people are out there rubbing their nasty little hands together. I will delete those. Just FYI.

Have at it, folks! I’d love to hear from you!

Yes, we arrived safely in England, and all is well. Amazingly well, in fact; touch wood, but we’ve had gorgeous weather, even. Warm, mostly sunny, but with enough drizzle to make us feel at home. I’ve had fish and chips twice (aaah!) and we’ve rented a car that, although it’s not the Vectra we had before (how I loved that car), is very similar (Vauxhall isn’t making the Vectra anymore, which makes me sad inside). We’ve done some wandering around and some loitering, and hubs has been pounding the pavements and his job hunt is looking *very* promising at the moment, so please keep your fingers crossed for him!

I missed a few things while I was away, sigh. First, and most importantly: L.A. Banks has been diagnosed with adrenal cancer. It’s serious and it’s awful, awful news, and her medical bills are and will continue to be astronomical.

An auction–several auctions, actually–are being held to help raise money for her. I heard about it/got involved too late so couldn’t offer anything; fortunately many, many other people did hear in time, and there’s lots of awesome stuff available to bid on. Please, I urge you all to go have a look. Leslie is really a fantastic person and writer; one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

Nowhere near that in importance is the fact that SACRIFICIAL MAGIC is now up for pre-order on Amazon (I don’t see it on B&N.com yet, and Book Depository has it but with the incorrect release date [though you can still pre-order it]) and Amazon UK! So if you’re planning on buying the book anyway, you could pre-order it now, and that would be frankly awesome.

I understand that while I was away there was something of a kerfuffle about this whole pre-order business and the “How you should buy my books” thing again and that whole business. I’ve already made my position on such things clear, but since people have a tendency to forget, let’s just go over it again quickly, shall we? Let me make clear too this particular comment isn’t directed at any one author, or at least not at the one this mess seemed to be directed at.

But I do have issues with authors who think it’s okay to scold people and make them feel guilty for buying her book on the Monday before it comes out rather than the actual Tuesday release date, which is such bullshit. First of all, the NYT counts book sales for the week. They tally numbers Sunday night, which means, unless no book ever sold on a Monday ever counts, that a “week” in those terms runs Monday morning-Sunday night. So a book bought on Monday? Fucking counts, so shut up. Second, shut up anyway, because your arrogant assumption that your listing should matter to your readers grosses me out. You want to grumble privately? Fine. But to make them feel guilty and bad? *gag*

Sorry, but I can’t see myself ever having the ego-driven nerve to assume I’m going to make any kind of list. Perhaps that’s because I’m barely midlist, sure, but either way. And even if I did… Seriously, dude, do you really think that if your sales are going to be big enough to give you a shot at the NYT, those ten or twenty copies people managed to buy early is going to keep you off it? Really? Especially when it’s a day early, which I remind you again, still counts?

Also, pre-orders count, and pre-orders matter. Pre-orders help determine print runs and convince bookstore buyers to place bigger orders. Pre-orders count as first-week sales. Again, even were that not the case? Pre-orders are fucking sales. They count. Every fucking sale counts. (When the previous “Buy my books this way so I can hit the NYT” thing broke out I actually had a chat with my editor about it; she confirmed that yeah, every single damn sale counts as a sale, and that–ta da!–helps our sales numbers, and those determine if we get to write more books or not.)

Getting to write more books or not is what matters to me. Would I love to hit a list one day? Of course; what writer wouldn’t? But honestly? What I care about is getting to write more books. Please, please let me get to write more books. If I could get paid a little more for them that would be great, sure. If I could get a bit of recognition beyond the circle of incredible awesome people who’ve actually read my books and are kind and wonderful enough to talk about them that would be pretty cool, too; I’d love to have a bigger audience. But really, I just want to write more books. I dream about getting to write more books. I can’t imagine being so secure in myself and my sales that I think I can totally hit a list as long as those damn readers don’t fuck it up for me, and worrying they will fuck it up by exercising their rights as a consumer to buy available products.

You know what I worry about? Whether or not they’ll like the book. Whether it’s as good as the last one. Whether they’ll understand why Chess did X in that scene or if I didn’t make it clear enough; whether they’ll see the changes being made or not and like them or not. I worry I’m not giving them a full enough experience, that this book will be a let-down, that I haven’t made it exciting enough, sexy enough, thrilling enough. I worry I’ve failed them–you. That’s what I’m crying about in the weeks before release. That’s where my focus is, what’s on my mind. Not “Will they buy it on the right date?” but “Will they love it?” I honestly, again, can’t imagine being in a position where worrying about what on what day the book was/is bought overrules my absolute terror that my readers will hate my new book, or be disappointed by it.

I just can’t explain how furious I get; not when I see the initial posts about “How you can help me hit a list,” because really, they bug me but oh well. Read it or don’t; follow it or don’t. I dislike the implication that it’s the reader’s job to care about such things or that they exist to serve the writer, yes. As I said above, I dislike the sort of arrogance implied by “My book is going to sell big numbers, y’all, so let’s get me some accolades for it.” The initial posts annoy me. But those aren’t such a big deal to me; it’s the follow-up comments about how no one is following instructions or how they’re obviously not reading the posts because if they were they wouldn’t be behaving so damn badly by buying the book when they see it/in the format they’re buying it in/whatever or how they’ve just made the author cry and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing that when I get angry. That’s what infuriates me; that’s where I start to get that sort of deep raw burning rage inside me that makes me want to start screaming and punching people. That’s where slight rudeness or even innocence of tone becomes real arrogance.

Why am I saying all of this now, when the current little internet mess is over? Well, because I’ve just posted pre-order links, that’s why. And I want to make it clear that while I would love you to pre-order the book, I really would, because I need every sale I can get and a sale is a sale, you’re under no obligation to do so. My sales numbers are not your problem; you are not required to do shit for me, my career, or my sales, frankly.

Yes, maybe it is the case–as I’m sure will be pointed out–that it’s easy for me to say all of this because I’m not in a position where I could hit a list, the implication being that because I’m not a big success I don’t have to worry about growing that success, I only have to try to hang on with my fingertips, whereas these people actually are successful and what do losers like me know about that. But I also know writers who have hit the NYT–quite a few of them, in fact–and none of them made a stink about buying the book the day before release or tell their readers they’d made them sick by buying the book a day or two early. And again, oh well. Maybe I’ll never hit a list. I don’t really care. I care about having a long career, and selling enough to make my publishers happy and make them keep offering me contracts. I care–deeply–about writing books my readers love, books that make them happy and make them want to see more books from me.

I got into this business so I could write books. I stay in this business because I still want to do that. That’s all I want to do. I want readers to like my books. That’s all I worry about.

So pre-order my book or don’t. I hope you do. I’m not worried if you don’t. I just want you to LOVE the book, and be excited by it and not feel let down, and that’s what I’d much rather focus on: you, the reader.

I’m sending out a longer excerpt from this scene to Downside Army members later tonight or early tomorrow, but I thought hey, why not post a little bit here, too?

I hope you enjoy it, and that you’re having a wonderful holiday! I’ll be away for the first few days of next week, but I’ll be back before the new year. (Not that you asked or anything, just that you–oh, never mind.)

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Which I hope you’ll like, though honestly it’s not a big deal or anything. I feel kind of silly saying it’s a gift, like “Oh look, I’m so great my mere words are presents to humanity,” or something, but I wanted to do something for you guys and this is what I came up with.

Back in October, if you recall (or if you don’t) I did a guest blog on the Paranormal Haven blog. And rather than do a “This is why I like Halloween,” I wrote a very short little story about the beginning of Haunted Week. Of course, not too long after I wrote it I thought of a new, better ending for it, so I’d always meant to change it.

Anyway, last night I got a little bee in my bonnet about it. I expanded the story and gave it a new ending (it’s about 2300 words now, so still very short). Then I went to stock.xchng and grabbed a free image, took it to Picnik, and made a cover, of which I’m hugely proud, to be honest. Check it out:

Isn’t that cool? I know it’s rude to brag, but considering how challenged I am in the visual arts–seriously, I’m not good at them–I’m totally impressed with myself.

So. I tried to load it to Amazon for the Kindle and Barnes & Noble for the Nook, but neither of them would allow me to offer it for free, and there was no way I was going to charge. For a present? Nonononono. Besides, it’s only 2300 words! Even 99 cents is too much to pay for that.

So I loaded it onto the site, on the Books page (it’s near the bottom, under “Other Titles”) as a PDF. You can download it there or here: The Brave Tale of Maddie Carver

I also put it up on Smashwords, which took hours. I mean, I got it up very quickly (heh heh, that’s what she said) but it took hours for Smashwords to get it converted. You can get it here, though.

Then I popped over to Scribd to offer it there, too.

(Incidentally, I also made a new cover for BE A SEX-WRITING STRUMPET, which I’m also pleased with; that’s on Scribd as well, and will be on the Nook, and I’ve changed the cover file in the Kindle store.)

So there you go, a free story for you. Merry Holidays! Thank you so much for everything!

Also, I’ve just discovered we have some more award nominations! Paranormal Haven is doing its Best of 2010, and if you click the Vote Now link it will take you to the actual voting, where Chess is nominated for Favorite Kick-Ass Heroine and the Downside series is nominated for Favorite New Series. So if you feel like voting, do! Heck, vote whether it’s for Chess and the Downside series or not; Paranormal Haven is a great blog, and you should take a look at it/participate! Voting ends tonight!

And of course, there are still the Goodreads Awards! Best Paranormal Fantasy and Best Goodreads Author.

…so I think that’s it for today! Enjoy the short, everyone, and of course feel free to let me know what you think!

For pre-orders, which I will explain in a minute.

First, now that I have your attention, have you all heard of A Glimpse of Darkness? It’s the multi-author story I’m participating in on Random House’s Suvudu blog, and it’s enormously fun; it’s a choose-your-own-adventure! Well, not choose your OWN, but the readers vote on what happens next, and we poor writers get less than a week to then write what happens next. I know!! It’s me, Lara Adrian, Kelly Meding, Harry Connolly, and Lucy A. Snyder, and we have a great story, and I’m so excited to get to participate. So please, come on over and get involved! Vote! Read! Make fun of me! Whatever you want.

Chapter One, written by Lara Adrian, is here.

Harry Connolly’s Chapter Two will be up today.

I hope to see you all over there, commenting and playing along!

Now…*drumroll*…

We have a web store! The Downside Market is open for pre-orders!

And, as a special pre-order, opening special thank-you giftie you guys rock blahblahblah, we’re offering 10% off ALL orders between now and October 8 (when the pre-order period ends).

Simply enter the coupon code PREORD10 at checkout.

Now, why pre-orders? Well. Because I want to be able to keep prices lower for you guys, and that’s the way the company I’m working with works. (Southern Promo, to remind you all.) Because I want to keep those prices reasonable while at the same time offering really high-quality items–name brands–which the pre-order period will enable us to do.

But mostly, it’s so we can see what you guys want and what you don’t, and so we can change and update things to respond to that. Remember, this isn’t some big automated company where machines pick your generic item from a pile of other generic items. This is a small company run by actual people, who will be working to make sure everything is the best it can be, and helping out if by some small chance people aren’t satisfied. To me that’s worth a lot; certainly it’s the kind of experience I think you deserve.

Right now we don’t have as many items for each individual design; again, that’s so we can adjust to what you guys want. So please, if there’s something you’d rather see in a different style shirt or something, use the contact form here (the one there isn’t up yet) and let us know! If there’s something you don’t see at all, let us know! Comments? Complaints? Compliments? Please, do say something. This is all new to me–and frankly rather scary, as I’m convinced that we’ve done all this work and we’ll end up selling four shirts and that’s all–so I really want to hear opinions!

I think we have a pretty good selection up, though, Lots of colors and sizes; I made sure of the sizes, especially. And again, high quality is very important to me, and being able to offer good, affordable prices is even more so. Of course there are a few tote bags and other swag items, too, as well as a selection for the gentlemen (although that selection is admittedly smaller, since several of the designs are, well, for girls. You’ll see what I mean).

Something else is important to me, too. I think all of you are aware of my feelings about urban fantasy as a genre, how much I love it and love writing it. To that end, we designed several urban fantasy t-shirts; shirts not specific to my world or books, but which celebrate the genre itself. Because you know what? It should be celebrated! So please, check those out. And tell all your UF-fan friends! I’m planning/hoping to add more of those as well if they prove popular, and I really hope they will be. I’d love to see us all being proud, and saying it loud (ha, see what I did there)!

We’ll be adding new designs and items periodically, as well, and of course each time I’ll mention it here.

So…that’s it! What do you think!?

(I don’t know why I bother capitalizing my titles, since the website blog puts them in all caps anyway. But then. livejournal doesn’t. Anyway.)

I spent like 4 hours last night going through all of the shirt designs and picking which items and in what colors to offer them. Most stuff is going to be black, white, red, gray, or pink, with a few baby blues thrown in there. There are a few items that are Girls only (I seriously doubt a man is going to walk around in a few of these) but most stuff is unisex. Everything will be available in babydolls and ringer babydolls, and almost all of those will come in plus sizes up to 2XL; I tried to do the widest range I could, but some clothing items just aren’t offered in as wide a range as I would like. There will be tank tops and spaghetti-strap tanks too; they offered a tank with a shelf bra but I figure my readers are the type who like to show a little strap, heh heh heh. (I certainly do.) And hoodies, since people asked for them.

We’re still on track to get things going by the end of the week. So I’ll be mentioning this again, but let me just say it now first: if you have a logo idea you don’t see, let me know. If something isn’t available on an item you would like, let me know. As I’ve said, I went with Southern Promo rather than a place like Zazzle because I have more control, and I want it to have stuff people will like and want, and I want it to be available at a price people can afford, or so you can even maybe afford more than one thing. That’s worth paying a small monthly fee for it to me.

Also, and this is important. The stuff in the store isn’t the only stuff there will be! I’m working on stuff like bowling shirts and jackets and stuff too, and there will be more designs, and if you’ve done a design and want to see it on a shirt get in touch with me. So please, any thoughts or ideas, anything you’d like to see, let me know. Yes, I’m doing this because it’s fun and everything, but the main reason I’m doing it is because you guys asked for it.

Also, I’m thinking of cutting my hair. While internet shopping last night–without buying, which sucks, I hate shopping when I can’t get anything–I saw a girl with the most adorable hair ever. It’s short, which is different for me (my hair hasn’t been short since my early twenties), but I think I’m going to give it a go. So look for pictures soonish.

Also last night, while I was making the huge long list of products and colors, I was watching the “ID” channel. Does anyone know this channel? “Investigation Discovery.” Really interesting; they most air shows on forensics, or 48 HOURS specials on murders and stuff like that. Shows like that fascinate me, they do. But yesterday I had the ID channel on all day in the background, and right around two am I suddenly realized that I was just creeping myself the fuck out. I went outside for a cigarette and heard a noise; it was probably a bird landing on the porch but in my mind it was a crazed serial killer trying to jump the fence to slaughter me, probably after raping and beating me for good measure. I practically jumped out of my skin; I threw down my smoke and ran back into the house, where I locked both locks.

That’s when I decided maybe it was time to stop watching the ID channel for a little while. Twelve straight hours of murders–usually murders of women–was a little much even for me. So I put in Goodfellas instead, because Goodfellas is fucking awesome. (I worked in a movie theater in high school–one of the best jobs I ever had, seriously, at Wehrenberg Des Peres 4 “Cine’” [which is apparently now some sort of monstrous 24-screen place, but back then it was 4, and I loved it]–and we got Goodfellas when it was released. One day I went in to check the theater for loudnicks–we used to throw them out, the way theater management is supposed to do–and got totally engrossed in it. So I came in on my next day off to watch it. And ended up watching it twice. I’d go up after school to hang out with friends–we all hung out together all the time–and decide to go sit in Goodfellas for a while. I think I must have watched it thirty or forty times before we finally lost it. So, yeah, you could say I like Goodfellas a lot.)

I should play another round of Review Roundup, but I’m not in the mood, and this is just a quick one anyway.

Just a quick one today, because I’ve been dinking around all morning and now have to go do stuff in like half an hour. Plus, I’m still not feeling great. Just a general sort of queasiness which hit me late yesterday afternoon (NO, contrary to what certain dorks named Brigwyn said on Twitter, I am not pregnant).

So. I was asked this morning by Anilu, the genius behind many of the t-shirt logos which you guys will hopefully be able to see soon (and things are moving along with that, more slowly than I would have liked, but they are moving along and again, the end result should be less expensive stuff plus a much wider variety), if Terrible had fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror of the Chevelle. My immediate thought was that he did. But I wasn’t entirely sure.

So I grabbed my copy of UG (since I’m writing the 4th book–and it’s coming along!–I keep copies of all three by the couch in case I need to double-check something) and started looking. And I popped onto Twitter to ask if anyone could remember, did he have fuzzy dice, and if so, where in the book did I mention it?

About eight people replied that yes, he definitely did. But we couldn’t find the reference. This went on for, oh, ten minutes, with all of us convinced that Terrible did indeed have fuzzy dice but with none of us able to find anywhere in the books where they’re mentioned. Finally I opened the original mss and searched for “dice,” on each of them.

Guess what? No dice.

So now I have to decide if I want to give him dice. On the one hand, he’s really not the kind of guy who would buy them for himself. On the other hand, it is exactly the kind of thing, say, Katie might buy for him, or that he might think are kind of funny/cool to have, so they’re totally the kind of thing he would have. I mean, they’re dice. he has a belt buckle with dice on them (yes, he does, I just never mentioned it; he has lots of different ones), so why not fuzzy dice?

But the crazy thing is that when I asked the question, everyone, even me, was convinced that he already had fuzzy dice. All of us. We just knew he did.

So what do you say? Shall I go ahead and give him fuzzy dice?

Also, we’ve done another round of updates! Check the Fun Stuff page in particular; there are some CITY OF GHOSTS deleted scenes (especially the two scenes which ended up becoming the burning slaughterhouse scene)! And some reader-made wallpapers and buttons for you to copy and use for whatever you like! And links to the Goodreads and Shelfari groups readers have set up, if you’d like to join in the discussions. There are a few new interviews linked on the media page. I’d meant to have a page listing all of the books I read but that page didn’t get made, and my weblady is on vacation. So I may try to set that up myself.

Anyway, go have fun with all the new things. I hope you enjoy them. And, if you’ve created anything based on the books–wallpapers, buttons, livejournal or webforum icons, whatever–and you would like to share them with other readers here, just let me know. I’m happy to add them.

So…fuzzy dice, yay or nay?