I was going to hold off on this until Wednesday night (or Preview Night for those SDCC-bound), but after 1) talking to James Lucas, and 2) seeing Matthew's inks for Stumptown #1, I'm rather impatient. Add to that a large amount of pure geek-joy at the work Matthew and mercuryeric did, and I'm feeling in a sharing mood.

Besides, I haven't posted a graphic in a while. Beware, the file's a little on the big side, and you'll want to make with the clicky-clicky to zoom in and get all the detail.

( Here's the promo poster we'll be giving out at the con. )

We'll have about 200-250 of them to hand out on Saturday.

Those of you who've been following this blog for a while may recall me soliciting the names of fictional PIs about a year or so back. Now you know why.

Thanks to everyone for their considerable help in compiling the list.

Edited to add:

In the interest of full disclosure, I stole this idea shamelessly from ( this )

Jim Rockford being the patron saint of all modern-day PIs, as far as I'm concerned.

Non-spoilery review of The Dark Knight:

I didn't think it was possible to make Batman Begins look flimsy and slight, but they may just have managed it.

Jeebus. My head hurts. In a good way.

Amazon UK has an item listed called Midnight Never Come: And Ashes Lie: Bk. 2, which apparently is 384 pages long and coming out next June.

I would like to know where they buy their crack.

***

Apropos of that, though -- today my editor gave the go-ahead for this book to be longer than the last one, because I feel like I'm short-changing my own story, trying to cram it in too small of a sack. The pros reading this will have already leapt ahead to the immediate corollary concern, which is what that means for my deadline. Answer? Heck if I know. I intend to still make it.

I'd better, if the book is supposed to be out by June 4th . . . but they'll have to shrink the typeface to get it on 384 pages.

***

Also, I just spent ten minutes wandering around my house trying to find the reference book I needed. That's the Royal Exchange, that's Pride's Purge, that's Whitehall, that's the wrong book on Westminster . . . . I think one of the next packing stages will be clearing off the bottom shelf of my research bookcase and letting these books just annex it already, because the piles around the house are getting stupid.

Mush!

As I mentioned before, my niece is visiting for the week. I should mention about the previous post that while it might have been a little annoying, it was still barrels of fun and I wouldn't pass it up.

Yesterday, though, I was on my computer and she saw the background image I have on it...a drawn picture of Doug by tarq on the City of Heroes LJ community. Of course, being a curious six year old, she pointed at it and said "What's that?" So, I explain the game of City of Heroes (as basic as I can for a six year old) and Doug. I leave out the origin of the superdrug that he was forced to take that turned him into this, and stuck with what everyone knows and loves about Doug: he's big, he's silly, he smells and talks funny. I told her a couple of classic Doug stories (like the "This am look like job for..." SuperDoug transformation and the "Doug is here. Hamidon is screwed, now!" and most especially his epic battle with syrusb's villain, Lord Volf Alteron) and suddenly, she's turned into Doug's biggest fan.

So, I go into the game and show her Doug running and jumping around. I beat up a couple of bad guys, answering her questions about the game, etc. Well, after that, she wanted to make her own character!

And...we did! But, we also had a big outing around downtown with my mom.

( Behold, the cut of less than a thousand pictures! Some text, mostly pics. )

For San Diego Comic Con International 2008.

(And by "The" I mean "My")

Panels:

Thursday, July 24th:
5:30 to 6:30 - Dark Castle: Rocknrolla (Whiteout will be discussed; the poster shall be unveiled, and a release date given). Hall H.
6:00 to 7:00 - DC Nation. Room 6A.

Friday, July 25th:
6:00 to 7:00 - Final Crisis Management. Room 6A.

Saturday, July 26th:
12:45 to 2:00 - DC: A Guide to Your Universe. Room 6B.
5:00 to 6:00 - Oni Press Panelmonium 2008! Room 3.
5:45 to 7:15 - Gays in Comics Panel: 21 and Legal! Room 6A.

Scheduled Signings

Thursday, July 24th:
3:00 to 4:30 - DC Comics Booth.

Friday, July 25th:
11:00 to 12:00 - Bantam Booth (we'll be giving out copies of Patriot Acts!)
1:30 to 2:50 - Oni Press Booth.
3:30 to 4:30 - DC Comics Booth.

Saturday, July 26th:
10:30 to 11:30 - Oni Press Booth.
11:30 to 12:30 - DC Comics Booth.

Sunday, July 27th:
10:00 to 11:30 - DC Comics Booth.




You will note that there are, already, several conflicts, mostly amongst panels. If you are looking for me in Location A and I am not there, the odds are very good that I'm en route from Location B, or trapped in Location C. I will be updating the blog at the show -- no, not from the floor, I'm not nearly obsessive enough to manage that -- and will note any changes in the schedule.

Couple other things to note. First, wherever and whenever I am signing, it's perfectly acceptable to bring works from other publishers that I've written for my signature. This may seem obvious to some of you, but I've met more than one person at a show who has feared causing offense by bringing, say, Oni books for me to sign while I'm sitting at DC, or copies of the novels, or whatever; don't be, it's not a problem.

Second, July 27th is Nicola Scott's birthday. If you see her, wish her a happy birthday. I want nothing so much as to see her unable to take a step in the convention hall without people wishing her the best of the day. *cackles gleefully*

Third, on Friday at 3:30, there's a spotlight panel on Geoff Johns. Geoff is not only incredibly talented, not only a good friend, and not only a terribly nice guy, but he's a wealth of information about the process of writing. I doubt I'll be able to attend myself, as I've a signing conflict, but if you do go, and you have questions for him, try asking him about writing, and not whether or not Wally is faster than Barry or whatnot. He is, most definitely, a writer people can learn quite a lot from.

Fourth, I'm trying to get a signing in with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. In addition, the plan is to deliver both a signed copy of the new The Question: The Five Books of Blood hardcover, along with one of the only remaining copies of the Montoya Journal, to the fund for auction. Those of you hoping to hold a copy of the journal in your sweaty little palms, here's your chance!

Fifth, Matthew Southworth (and follow the link, by the way, and give Matthew's music a listen; I think it's quite good) and I will have some promotional material for Stumptown on hand at the show, in the form of an 8-page introductory short. As currently planned, some copies will come with bonus gimmick. Wait and see. There'll also be an -- in my opinion -- very cool promo poster at the booth, designed by mercuryeric and Matthew that is, in my opinion, a triumph of PI geekdom. I'm actually hoping we can run off a slew of them for sale.

Today I got started working before five, and knocked out about 1400; then, against my better judgment (I know that slow and steady wins the race), I came back for a second sitting. 2,458 today -- and all before midnight! The first overrun was excusable; I mean, I was three paragraphs away from Jack finally making his entrance. I've been looking forward to him all book. But did I really need to write the rest of that scene today? No. (Not to mention it's a stupidly long scene. Though heck if I know how I can trim it. The tree may have to go away. <sad face>)

I am, however, being vindicated in my decision not to work on revising the earlier parts yet. As I suspected, I am getting to know Antony much better in this part, which will benefit me in the revision. Apparently he's one of those guys who accomplishes more the less you give him to work with. Who knew?


Word count: 50521. That landmark is the other reason for the overrun.
LBR tally: 2,458 words of nearly pure rhetoric.
Authorial sadism: You know what happens when you give somebody a young son in Part I? They're all growed up by Part III, is what.

The good thing about traveling while sleep-deprived is that disorientation and hallucination start to bleed into story and form connections.

The bad thing is that most of them will make no sense once I am thinking coherently again.

I'm all over the internets today -- my usual SF Novelists post, this time on the notion of "hard fantasy," and a more open-ended piece on FFF about romances with a big age gap. Come on by and toss in your two cents' worth!

It isn't even 8 p.m., and I've already done my writing for the day. Because I just felt like doing it, instead of reading or whatever.

That's a nice feeling, and not one I've had much of lately.

(Mind you, the desire was born of pure sadism. Last night I started an Antony scene that I've been dying to write, because it's just so mean.)


Word count: 48090
LBR tally: Blood, of the metaphysical kind.
Authorial sadism: I've had enough time to think through the consequences of some of the things I've established in this and the previous book. Much to Antony's detriment.

Probably you won't be seeing much of me for the next week or so (unless you'll be at ReaderCon Yay!), but since I haven't seen many people linking to it, it's worth pointing out that Act One of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is live. Neil Patrick Harris is killing me, and Felicia Day SIGH. Next installment goes up Thursday.

As a bonus, here's a link to Donald Soffritti's blog, where he posts occasional portraits of superheroes in their old age. The blog is in Italian, but the pictures--like this one of Doctor Octopus--need no translation.

Dangit -- I forgot to post a last reminder about livelongnmarry before bidding closed. But thank you to everybody who offered or bid for something, or just spread the word; turns out it raised over ten thousand dollars, all told.

Not bad for a little online fandom effort.

So I'm reading Neil Gaiman's journal, and he mentions that he's friends with Jane Yolen, and I think oh my god, he's friends with JANE YOLEN. Which is more or less the reaction I get any time I see/hear somebody mentioning their friendship with someone I consider to be a Big Name. (It still takes a while to sink in that Big Names are ordinary people, too.)

Sometimes we dream of striking up a friendship -- a real, honest-to-god, going to their place for dinner kind of friendship -- with the luminaries of our fields. But out of nowhere, my brain pointed out to me that what's really boggling is, thirty years from now, we will have those friendships . . . because some of the people who are real, honest-to-god, going to their place for dinner kinds of friends of ours right now will have become the Big Names of the field.

And for some reason that really made my head spin around for a moment.

Which is to say, all y'all newbies and neopros I call friends these days? I'm TOTALLY name-dropping you once you're famous.

You know...it's really hard to watching wrestling when your niece always has something, anything to say.

So, I decided to pop in the newly bought Rey Mysterio DVD that I bought used at Blockbuster. So, I'm watching it, loving the old school 6-man Mexican wrestling match. Victoria, who is visiting for the weekend, decides to join. See, I had introduced her to wrestling around Christmas time last year, so she likes wrestling now.

Of course, she had something to say about everything going on. Not just questions about who's a bad guy and who's a good guy or why this guy wears a mask or something like that. No, no. She has to tell me what she would do, in full detail, if she was a wrestler.

Every sentence would start with, "Nick! Do you know what I would do if I was fighting that guy? I'd wrap him up in a blanket and he'd start walking around and be like 'I can't see! I can't see!' And then I'd punch him right in the face because he can't see!" or
"Nick! Do you know what I would do if I was fighting that guy? I would wrap him up in a blanket so he couldn't see...and then I would run away!"
"Do you know what I would do if I was wrestling that guy? I'd jump into the crowd and hide behind the people! And if he came over to get me, I'd throw the people at him like RARR! And RAAAAR!"
"Do you know what I would do if he tried to hit me? I'd kick him right in the privates!"
"Nick! Did you know that in gymnastics class, we do a lot of flips and stuff just like this? Like, if a guy was coming at me, I would roll away from him like this!"

And so on and so on and so on and so on. Seriously, she wouldn't stop even for a second. She had about twenty billion (maybe not an understatement) ways to beat one guy or another.

Then, I decided to watch RAW while it was on. Oh, well, this was just all new material for her. She wanted to know who all these guys were from Kane to CM Punk to Edge (in clips for Smackdown) and John Cena, everyone! And she had all sorts of ways to beat every guy, there, too! At one point, I wanted to hear someone that was cutting a promo (Cena, I think, because it was starting to sound pretty damn intense) and she kept talking.

"Victoria, I want to hear what this guy is saying, okay?"
"Okay!" *five seconds later* "But do you know what I would do if I was wrestling? I would blah blah blah blah blah blah..."
"Victoria, please. Can I listen to what he's saying?"
"Oh...okay!" *five seconds later* "But blah blah blah blah blah blah..."

You get the idea. She wound up conking out about two thirds of the way through the show, so I carried her up to bed.

Here's the funniest part of the whole thing. She wasn't even watching the wrestling for about 90% of the time. She was running around, jumping off the couch, rolling on the floor, and talking about a million miles a minute. I kept trying to show here cool things going on TV and she'd watch it for a microsecond before having something to say about how to beat a guy.

Nieces: They make watching something as simple as wrestling hard to watch.

Andrew & Xtie, better known as the dynamic writing duo of Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir, are writing a new weekly manga entitled The Ninja Diariesfor Metromix. There'll be a launch party for the comic held at Secret HQ, in Silverlake, this Thursday (that's the 17th for those of you numerically impaired).

As to why this is cool, witness:

Free. Weekly. 1-Page Comic.

With NINJAS.

I mean, c'mon, what do you need? An invitation?

Oh, fine, fine, all right.

( Here, have one. )

And if you're going to attend, make sure you RSVP to Metromix! I'd do, but unfortunately, I'm stuck in Stumptown, thigh-deep in pre-SDCC preparations.

The Minneapolis trip derailed me from posting in a more timely fashion about William Sanders of Helix, who made offensively racist comments in a rejection letter (thus sparking ickiness elsewhere), and subsequently responded rudely to yhlee when she asked for her story to be removed from the Helix archives -- but if you've missed the storm about this one, follow those links and you'll get the gist.

The purpose of this post is to spread the word that Sanders will be accepting requests for removal from the archives for a limited time only. I can actually understand that -- though it would be nice if he specified an actual time limit -- because it's annoying to have to field those kinds of things, and technically the Helix contract (I am told) grants him the right to keep it non-exclusively in the archives.

On the other hand, any tiny modicum of professionalism exhibited in that message (and it was small to begin with) was obliterated when he replaced yhlee's story with the message "Story deleted at author's pantiwadulous request."

So. Y'know. Helix apparently was invitation-only anyway, but it's officially a place I don't want to be invited to.


ETA: Nevermind. Scratch anything positive I said or even implied about his decision to confine deletion requests to a narrow window. He's apparently decided to charge forty bucks to any author asking for their story to be pulled down on account of his recent behavior.

I should have loved this movie. I loved the first movie, I love the Hellboy and BPRD comics, and pretty much everything Guillermo del Toro does is amazing. None of those things are going to change in the wake of this film, and yet.

( The word here is uneven. )

*("Doesn't he know bones are crunchy?" Yes, I saw "Get Smart" recently, too. Sadly, it may have been better than this movie.)

The first half of hard-working genius writer Meghan McCarron's story is up at Strange Horizons. I was lucky enough to read the story a while ago, and I think it's my favorite of hers yet. Check it out.

For the Superman fans among us, and you know who you are: Studio 360 has a whole mess of audio stories relating to the Big Blue Cheese, with everyone from Art Spiegelman to Michael Chabon to Bryan Singer.