September 2006 Blogs

The September Photo of the Month comes from my trip to WorldCon in Los Angeles. That's sci-fi author Connie Willis and I outside the convention center. Connie was the Author Guest of Honor and the Toastmaster of the convention, and she kept a crowd of nearly 6,000 people entertained at the Hugo Awards Ceremony.

Wednesday September 27, 2006
By chance, if you are attending Bouchercon this weekend, please be sure to come by my panel discussion Saturday morning at 9:00 AM. The panel is titled "Young at Heart," which you have to be if you're attending a panel first thing on a Saturday morning. I would love to see you there.

The hotel where I'm staying has free wireless internet, so I should be posting photos from the convention all this weekend Thursday-Sunday. Check back often, and tell your friends and family.

Stacey


Monday September 25, 2006
Okay, this is a funny news story. Apparently, this movie director decided he was so sick of the bad reviews of his horror movie, he decided to do something about it.

He challenged his critics to a boxing match. Literally. And the funny thing is, a number of them actually took him up on it. He ended up beating the crap out of them.

Stacey


Sunday September 24, 2006
It's been a very productive weekend. Aside from learning some very cool video-recording techniques, I've managed to hammer out a couple thousand words on the new mystery/suspense novel "Novel #10," bringing the word count total up to 9,408 at 52 pages. This novel is my most heavily researched novel since the Claws novels, and it concerns a professor of social psychology named Dr. Roman Phoenix who is drawn into a serial murder investigation, when his name appears scrawled in blood on one of the murder victim's car's windshield.

I love writing mystery/suspense novels based on good research and staring academic protagonists (Claws was about a wildlife biologist). I feel like if I do enough research, it creates a realistic setting from which to construct the novel. It's a little slower going and requires restraint to get the facts right, but the end product is much more easy to pitch.

Also tonight, I printed up the whole manuscript for Novel #9 Death Cabin. I was suspicious of this title earlier this summer, and I thought I'd grow tired of it. Tonight was the first that I've read some of the manuscript since completing it about a month ago, and I found I actually kind of like the title. It's minimal and effective.

I'll be reading through the manuscript the next week or two, cleaning it up as best I can. I've joined a new writing group, and it's possible that I'll workshop it there. I really like how much fun (and how genuinely frightening) the novel is. It's a fast suspense novel, full-tilt for 54,000 words (about 230 pages).

I'm going to be busy with class this week, and with getting ready to go to Bouchercon this Thursday-Sunday in Madison, Wisconsin. I'm excited.

Stacey


Saturday September 23, 2006
Hey, folks, sorry for the long break since my last blog update. It's been a busy week, and I figured the content from last weekend was good enough to sustain for 5-6 days. That said, I've got an interesting blog for you today.

What you'll find below are three video clips. In these clips I'm explaining how I record an audio book, how I edit in Audacity, and how I distribute the finished product through podiobooks.com.

WARNING: I have not shaved or showered in these videos (i.e., it ain't pretty). Also, these video clips are best viewed through a high-speed internet connection.

In the first video clip, you will see me recording through my podcast mic. I'm reading a segment from my novel The Colorado Sequence.

Now, a couple of things worth mentioning quickly. In the video, you may notice that I pause sometimes or cough out loud. There's a lot of stuff that won't show up in the final edited audio version. In fact, having done this for about a year now, I've learned to make a point of coughing, clearing my throat, pausing a moment to deliver a line of dialogue well -- all of that gets edited out in Audacity. Which brings us to our second video clip. In this second clip, you'll see my laptop computer and, open on the screen, Audacity -- which is an audio record-and-edit program that is freely available for download on the internet. Once I've edited a file in Audacity, I "export" it into a compressed MP3 file. There's a couple of other post-production aspects that follow. For example, I "ID tag" the file with all the copyright information, the artist information, etc. Once the file is edited and tagged, it's ready for me to send it to my audio publisher/distributor podiobooks.com Which brings us to our third video clip. In this third video clip, I give a brief explanation of what podiobooks.com is. One thing I don't mention in the video clip is what kind of audience podiobooks.com has in terms of size. At one point this past winter (2006), podiobooks.com was getting close to a half-million page views on their site per month. A successful book at podiobooks.com will get maybe 5,000 subscribers (i.e., people who have downloaded the recording of the book). Right now, everything is free at podiobooks.com for audiences. Compare this with a bestselling novelist like Michael Crichton, whose audiobooks sell for 30-50 dollars, and you can see why the site has become so popular so quickly. Another thing to mention about podiobooks.com. For the time being, the staff actually does a lot of post-production work on the books they receive. I send them a chapter at a time by uploading to their server. One of the staff then takes the file, cleans it up even more in terms of sound quality, adds background music, and prepares it to go live. Once a book (or chapter from a book) is live, anybody with good internet access can subscribe for free, download it to their computer, iPod, MP3 player, or even burn a copy to CD. In the past few weeks, I've just gotten to the point technologically where I'm able to burn my audiobook to CD. This is really cool because I can burn an entire book on two CDs (or half a book on one CD) and then I can hand that out as a sample at conventions, bookstores, libraries, anywhere. Bought in bulk, I've found inexpensive CDs for less than 25 cent per CD. The CDs can be played on just about any CD or DVD player. Stacey Sunday September 17, 2006 Hey, folks, I've got a treat for you tonight. This afternoon, I attended a bookstore event at Quail Ridge Bookstore in Raleigh for the Best New Stories from the South anthology. Several of the contributors read from their work, and they were introduced by series editor Kathy Pories and guest editor Allan Gurganus. Below, you will find a couple of video clips, as well as photographs from the event. The video clips work best on a high-speed internet connection. The first clip is series editor Kathy Pories introducing the anthology, its history and its purpose. Enjoy... Here's a photograph of guest editor Allan Gurganus... The anthology included several real heavyweights this year. Daniel Wallace, whose novel Big Fish was adapted into a successful movie version directed by Tim Burton, read from his story "Justice." I was fortunate enough to get a pretty good video clip of his reading... One of the big draws of the event, for me personally, was contributor Luke Whisnant. Luke's story "How to Build a House" was included this year, and it marks his third inclusion in the annually-published anthology. Luke teaches Creative Writing at East Carolina University and was one of my first mentors, while I was a student there. Pictured below is Luke, during his reading... Afterward, I managed to get the group to pose for a photograph... Pictured above from left to right is Allan Gurganus, J.D. Chapman, Luke Whisnant, Daniel Wallace, Quinn Dalton, and yours truly. It was a lot of fun to catch up with Luke and to see this group of excellent writers and editors. Stacey Saturday September 16, 2006 I've got a couple of things to report today. This afternoon, I attended the first NC Lulu Authors' Meet Up. We met at the Cameron Village Regional Public Library at 3:00 PM, and our discussion lasted about an hour and forty-five minutes. All total, eleven attendees came, and we discussed our books and various marketing strategies associated with them. Afterward, I asked the group to pose for a photograph, and we snapped this great picture.... I learned a lot by listening and talking about our books, and I'm grateful to everyone who came. On the writing front, I've been chipping away at a new mystery/suspense novel, as yet untitled. The word count total is up to 7,322 at 41 pages. I'm doing some really interesting research to coincide with this novel, primarily using the library at NC State. The novel centers around a young social psychologist at the University of North Carolina named Dr. Roman Phoenix, who is contacted by the FBI when his name shows up scrawled in blood on a murder victim's windshield. The victim is the ninth murder victim attributed to a serial killer known only as "The Highwayman." The background research on road rage, aggressive driving, and social psychology has been very interesting, and it's given me a plausible platform from which to write the novel. I'm having a lot of fun. Tomorrow, I'm planning on attending an author event at Quail Ridge Books, so check back Sunday night for photos from that as well. Take care, folks. And thanks for reading. Stacey Tuesday September 12, 2006 Alrighty, folks. I have a treat for you tonight! This evening, I went to my first author event at Quail Ridge Bookstore in Raleigh. The event was for Alex Sokoloff, whose first novel The Harrowing has just been published by St. Martin's Press. If you've visited the "Books & Writers" section of my website, you should recognize Alex. Here's a picture of Alex and I shortly after she signed my copies of The Harrowing this evening. And here's a picture of her signing the book. (Both of these photos were taken by my good friend Jeanne Ketterer, a local author in her own right.) Here's a photo I took during Alex's presentation... It was a really great event. In addition to getting to chat with Alex and Jeanne, I met store owner Nancy Olson who suggested that I bring in copies of Amber Page in order to sell on consignment. I also met author Diane Chamberlain who has published sixteen novels. Of equal coolness tonight, I made a couple short videos during the event, which you'll find below. The first video is a brief segment of Alex reading from The Harrowing, and the second is Alex's introduction by store owner Nancy Olson. Saturday September 9, 2006 Today was an interesting day writing-wise. I spent most of the afternoon working on an article that I promised to the editor of the YALSA newsletter. This was my first experience in a long time of having to write to meet a deadline. I wrote the first draft of the article in two parts starting two weeks ago and then finishing last weekend. After spending a couple days on it, revising, I handed it over to my wife to read. We both agreed that the second half of the article needed major re-writing and re-thinking, and so I finally got around to doing that today. The deadline is tomorrow, so I'm feeling a little bit of pressure. It's exciting. Then, this evening, I printed up a full manuscript for a literary agent who requested to see Claws, and a partial manuscript for another literary agent who has requested to see The Colorado Sequence. I'm thinking of querying another literary agent whom I met and spoke with at length at WorldCon regarding yet another of my novels Maggie Redcrest, Alias Inferno. Additionally, I am building up towards a massive 430 literary agent query that I'm planning for sending towards the beginning of October. Mailing out 430 letters at one time takes a lot of planning to achieve. It's really exciting, and I can't wait to see how all this unfolds. I also added the final chapter to the podiobook version of my novel Amber Page and the Legend of the Coral Stone. The ball is now out of my court, and the novel could go live any time in the next two weeks. When it does, I'll begin burning CDs. In the past 24 hours, I've added a new 320 GB external hard drive and a new printer, so things are ready to roll here at Stacey Cochran HQ. Stacey Thursday September 7, 2006 What an incredible day! Well, I had my first really full writing day in a long, long while. I wrote 2,556 words on what I'll be calling simply "novel number ten" for the next couple months. It was hard work, and I started early (around 6:30 AM) but it felt really, really good. I think I've had some genuine concern that I may not be able to write as much because I'm teaching this fall, and I haven't done that (live in a classroom) in about five years. However, what I'm finding is that if I can stay on top of the course work teaching, it actually makes me want to write more. I think last year I was beginning to get a little stale writing-wise because I was doing it full time and I was having difficulties on the agent front and on the finding-a-major-publisher front. Teaching reminds me that there's more to life than a first book deal, and it makes me appreciate the days when I do get to write that much more. That said, I also spent about six hours today putting together address labels for 429 literary agents. I now have a major list of literary agents, their names and addresses, saved on a series of .doc label lists, so that I can send out mass query mailings more efficiently. Basically, I was in front of my computer today from 6:30 AM until 7:15 PM, and I feel like it was all very productive. Tomorrow, I may work a little bit on this short story I've started, while I let my brain refresh with regards to this new novel and the next few scenes I'd like to write. I also need to add one more chapter to the podiobook of Amber Page and the Legend of the Coral Stone. And then I really will be done with it. Sleep now... Stacey Monday September 4, 2006 I uploaded the last chapter tonight to the podiobooks.com server for Amber Page and the Legend of the Coral Stone. I'm going to see if I can re-record the opening two chapters and the introduction for the novel, simply because I have learned a significant amount about how to record in the process of doing the whole novel. And those first few chapters sound a little rough. Also today, I managed to revise a little bit on the short story I've started writing titled "Pressure." So far, I have the first scene done. I learned something very eye-opening while at WorldCon. John Kessel said on a panel discussing the difference between writing a short story and writing a novel, "A short story typically has five scenes." As simple as this seems, my problem for the last two years with writing short stories was that I wasn't thinking about how many scenes they had. And invariably they ended up running too long, which makes them impossible to sell. When I look back prior to two years ago, when I wrote some of my more effective short stories, I realize that those short stories that sold alway remained inside of five scenes. In the case of "Into the Wind," which I sold to North Carolina Literary Review, it had four scenes. "All That Changes When You Kill" had four as well. I just never thought about it consciously back then. You know, "Okay, keep it to four or five scenes." I didn't think like that. I just wrote what felt right, and what "felt" right came from reading a lot of short stories. He also mentioned that in the short story form, a writer has to break the rule "Show, Don't Tell" which is commonly taught in Creative Writing classes. In the short form, where space is limited, the author has license to tell more than show -- at least in comparison to the novel form, where the more "showing" you do, the more engaging the form is. Hearing him say that, it was like a light bulb went on in my head. I was like "That's why I've had so much trouble writing effective short stories the last two years." I've trained myself to write novels, and the way the two forms are achieved are different. At any rate, now, that I'm armed with the knowledge of "Keep it to five scenes, man," I'm excited to write a couple short stories to see if it works. I've heard of people saying that once they start writing novels, they forget how to write short stories. I think what I learned by going to WorldCon and hearing John Kessel on the panel made me realize that part of why I forgot how to write them was that I wasn't consciously aware of the rules, of how the form was achieved. Stacey Sunday September 3, 2006 Okay, so some more WorldCon photos from last weekend. First up is an overhead shot from the Tor Party taken last Friday night... Kneeling in this second one is Tim Powers. The fellow with his back to the camera, to whom Tim is talking is Jay Lake... Random shot from inside the Tor Party... Here's a picture from Saturday night at the SFWA Party. That's Gardner Dozois and yours truly... And here's a random shot from inside the SFWA Party... Well, that wraps up my fun week of WorldCon photos. In the next few days, I should get back into a regular blog cycle with word counts and tales from the daily grind. Today, I had a breakthrough with creating audio CDs of my podiobook of Amber Page and the Legend of the Coral Stone. It still hasn't sunk in because I've just figured out how to do it in the past hour or so, but basically I now have an audio book on CD of Amber Page. I am really excited about this because it gives me a way to put my book into people's hands less expensively, and in a way that they can listen to, rather than having to read. I'm not sure yet what I'll charge for these, but it'll probably be less expensive than the printed book. I only have two more chapters to go in the uploading process at podiobooks.com, and my goal is to have audio samples of the book to hand out at BoucherCon, which I'll be going to at the end of this month. And speaking of BoucherCon, the panel schedule has been published. My panel will be Saturday at 9:00 AM. I'm excited to be on a Saturday panel, and I already know two of my fellow panelists, Pete Hautman and Kathleen Ernst. So, that's going to be a lot of fun. I've started chipping away at a new novel, as yet untitled. It's a mystery-suspense, and I have the first chapter done. Also, I've begun work on a new sci-fi short story. That's what I'll be working on writing-wise the next few days. Man, I'm jazzed. There's a lot to be excited about. Stacey Thursday August 31, 2006 Okay, so some more photos from WorldCon in Los Angeles... In addition to going to a lot of parties, attendees at WorldCon can go to a lot of different panels. Panels consist of well-respected people in the field speaking for an audience of fans, writers, other well-respected folks in the field. The largest audience I saw for a panel was probably a couple hundred people, and the smallest was about five. While the panelists are the focus of panels, I've learned that you can actually connect more (sometimes) with people in the audience. For example, at one panel, I happened to sit down next to a well-respected literary agent whom I had not previously known. We ended up chatting, I gave her my postcard for Amber Page, and then after the panel, she asked me to pitch my novel The Colorado Sequence to her. Based on the pitch, she asked for me to send her the first three chapters of the novel. And she wasn't even a panelist. Just a member of the audience, like me. At another panel, I heard one question from a fellow who introduced himself as an author who had published with Five Star Press. He was sitting in the audience just like everyone else, not on the panel. I actually got a positive response from Five Star Press about a month ago, asking to see my full manuscript for Claws, and so instead of rushing the stage afterwards to speak with the panelists, I went over and introduced myself to the guy. His name was Mark Hoover, and his novel with Five Star Press is Fevreblau. We ended up striking up a conversation, and he later introduced me to another writer James Van Pelt who I found out was having dinner with ten other people Saturday night. I met a friend of James Van Pelt's Saturday morning and asked her if I could have dinner with them. She was like, "Sure." And so I got enough cell phone numbers to make sure the thing was going to happen and to make sure that I was a part of it. All of this because I went over and introduced myself to Mark Hoover, who was just in the audience at one of the panels. Also, I hung out with Mark a little bit at the Tor Party Friday night. Incidentally, I managed to get the dinner group to pose for a photo. I'm at the end of the table in the brown shirt... I guess the point of all this is, panels are a great place to meet people. But you don't have to only meet the panelists. Sometimes the audience members might actually be the better folks to connect with. I remember Ray Bradbury saying as much at a panel I went to a couple years ago at ComicCon. He was like, "The real people you want to connect with are sitting all around you. It's the people of your own generation." At any rate, here's some more photos from a couple panels I attended. Pictured above, you'll see Sheila Williams, David Hartwell, Ellen Datlow, and Stan Schmidt. Just barely leaning in on the right is Lou Anders, publisher of Pyre Books. Sheila is the first professional fiction editor that I met in life. She edits Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and one of my earliest short stories was a finalist for the 1998 Isaac Asimov Award. As a result of being chosen as a finalist, I was invited to attend the IAFA Conference in March 1998, which is where I met Sheila. She's one of the kindest, most compassionate people I've ever met, and I believe the magazine is going to thrive under her editorship the next decade. David Hartwell is a senior editor (maybe executive editor) at Tor Books. I met David at that 1998 conference as well because he sat next to me at the awards banquet. Ellen Datlow is in the purple shirt, and to her her left is Stan Schmidt. Stan edits Analog Science Fiction, the longest-running continually published science-fiction magazine. They've been in business about seventy-some years. Ellen used to edit SciFiction, before executives at the SciFi Channel let the magazine go. Below, you'll see another group of panelists. From left to right, that's Eleanor Wood, James Patrick Kelley, Mike Shepherd, and Jaime Levine. Eleanor Wood is a literary agent at Spectrum Literary Agency. Jim Kelley is the author of the Hugo-nominated Burn. Mike Shepherd is the author of the Kris Longknife series of sci-fi novels. And Jaime Levine is a senior editor at Warner Books. Check back tomorrow for photos from the Tor Party and the SFWA Party, which were held respectively Friday and Saturday night. Stacey Wednesday August 30, 2006 Hey, folks. Okay, so I've got some more photos from WorldCon this past weekend to put up on the blog. Like I said in the previous post, I got in to LA on Thursday. I met my roommate Matt Peterson at 2:00 PM Thursday afternoon, and then we hit a bunch of panels that afternoon. I met the editor of SFRevu, and got my photo taken for his website. That evening, Matt and I hit the Podiobooks Suite on the fifth floor of the Hilton Anaheim, where they partied every night of the Con. If you're a sci-fi fan, you may recognize a couple people in the picture above. Jay Lake is the bearded guy on the right, sort'a looking back and to his left. Jay won the Campbell Award a couple years ago. Right in the middle of the photo is Jack Skillingstead in the plaid shirt and the hat worn backwards on his head. Jack is a regular in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. This next picture is also from the Podiobooks Party on Thursday night. Pictured here is Matthew Peterson (R) and Matthew Wayne Selznick... Matt Peterson was my roommate for WorldCon, and he's got a great new book coming out next year from Windstorm Creative. His book is titled ParaWorld Zero, and you can find out all about it at his website. Check it out! Matthew Wayne Selznick's novel Brave Men Run has been a podiobooks.com favorite and is available in a print edition as well. Buy your copy today. Last up for today is yet another photo from the Thursday night party at the Podiobooks Suite. This one features Evo Terra, Jack Mangan, and Paul Fischer. Evo is the fellow in the purple shirt, chillin' in the patio chair. Evo hosts a great podcast titled The Dragon Page with author interviews, book reviews, and mindless gossip. It's great, so check it out. Evo is also on the staff at Podiobooks.com, where he acts as front man and general ambassador of good will. In the world of podcasting, Evo is a respected authority and he has published Podcasting for Dummies with Tee Morris who also works behind the scenes at Podiobooks.com Jack Mangan in the green shirt on the left is the author of Spherical Tomi, a successful podiobook at podiobooks.com. The other fellow is Paul Fischer. Paul runs the Balticon Podcast as well as ADDCast.net and operates Dancing Cat Studios. Paul's in the T-shirt and black hat. Well, that's enough photos and info for one blog. Check back tomorrow for even more WorldCon photos. We still have the Tor Party and SFWA Party photos to come! Thanks for reading. Stacey Monday August 28, 2006 What a weekend. Okay, so I'm back from Los Angeles and the World Science-Fiction Convention. I had a very good convention, met a lot of folks, and made a few really good friendships. Probably the best way to process all this is via photos. I flew from Raleigh to LA on Thursday morning. My flight left Raleigh at 8:00 AM, so I was up around 5:30. And I just got home last night (early Monday morning) about 1:00 AM. Are you ready for the slideshow? First up is probably my favorite photo of the bunch because of what it means to me personally. Below, you'll see me and science-fiction author Larry Niven. The reason that this photo is significant to me (besides the fact that Larry is a luminary in the science-fiction community) is the fact that the very first book that I ever bought with my own money was Larry Niven's N-Space. I bought it at Cary, North Carolina's Waldenbooks in the Cary Town Center Mall. I chose the book because it had a really cool cover. I had no way of knowing at the time that I would go on to learn my craft through the lens of science-fiction. Nor did I know, at the time, that the book's editor was David Hartwell. Truth is, at the age of sixteen, I had no real grasp of how books were produced. Writer, Editor, Publisher, Cover Artist and all the folks behind the scenes that make books happen, get them on shelves, and sell them to customers -- I just didn't know. Nor did I know that one day I would actually make friends with Larry's editor on N-Space, David Hartwell... Pictured above is editor David Hartwell, who won a Hugo Award this weekend in the category Best Professional Editor. At the convention, I also had the opportunity to meet science-fiction author Connie Willis. In addition to winning the Hugo Award for Best Novella this year, Connie was the toastmaster at the Awards Ceremony and kept the audience of approximately 6,000 people entertained. Here's me and Connie a few hours before she took the stage Saturday night... There are really just too many photos to put in a blog for one day. So instead of trying to cram it all into one day, I'll spend the rest of this week's blogs putting up all the photos and commenting a little bit on each one. Should be a good week. It's good to be home. Stacey