So . . .
Whoops! After recent fiction writers’ conference busyness, I got nothin’. Sorry. Instead I’ll turn it around on all of you: what are you reading right now and is it any good?
John Otte
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Sep 26, 2012
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ummmmm . . .
Huh.
Okay, so it’s my turn to post something this week and I fully intended to have something ready to go, but sadly, I think I dropped the ball here. I knew things were going to be tight schedule-wise, what with the ACFW National Conference just last week. So yesterday, I considered my options:
- A wrap-up of the Conference. This could be fun, but I mostly attended classes on marketing books once they were published that left me feeling inadequate and overwhelmed. I suppose we could talk more about what happened at the banquet, but that discussions seems to be generating more heat than light, and I think it’s better to just let it go and move on.
- The current crop of new TV shows. It is the new fall season, after all. Old favorites are returning and there’s a new crop of spec fic shows that are emerging. Small problem: I don’t watch most of the spec fic shows, so I’d only be able to discuss a few of them. Well, one of them, namely Revolution, and I haven’t seen anything worth ruminating on. Well, there was one thing this last Monday, but I haven’t had time to mull it over entirely. Maybe next time.
So basically, what I’m saying is, I got nothin’.
Sorry.
Instead I’ll turn it around on all of you: what are you reading right now and is it any good? Personally, I’m reading The Wool Omnibus on my Kindle and enjoying it (even if it’s leaving me with a few questions that I’m hoping will be answered before it’s done). How about you?
John W. Otte leads a double life. By day, he’s a Lutheran minister, husband, and father of two. He graduated from Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota, with a theatre major, and then from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. By night, he writes unusual stories of geeky grace. He lives in Blue Springs, Missouri, with his wife and two boys. Keep up with him at JohnWOtte.com.
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Just finished The New Recruit by Jill Williamson. Awesome! (And yes, I’m probably biased…) Plus, the copy of Jeri Westerson’s Veil of Lies I’d put on hold at our library just came in, so I’m looking forward to starting that. It’s billed as a medieval noir — private investigator circa 1380s. Coolness.
I read Jill’s book a while back and I’m looking forward to rereading it in a week or two. Veil of Lies sounds pretty fun too.
For my part, I’m re-re-reading The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by myself, and re-re-reading The Hobbit together and aloud with my wife. Yes, they are fairly good. 🙂 (We’ve also been enjoying a 1980s Dave Barry column collection.)
Meanwhile, The Superlative Stream and a couple of other nonfiction books are on the way from Amazon. Next I shall need to order a certain award-winner Broken Sight.
I’ve toyed with the idea of re-reading Tolkein sometime soon. My to-be-read pile is finally starting to dwindle, but then, I’ve got like half a dozen books coming in the mail, stuff that I bought at the Conference. So it may have to wait for now.
Oooh, what’d you learn about marketing? I’m sort of casually studying it right now, gauging the amount of work I actually want to do.
I just finished reading Prophet by R.J. Larson, and it was a pretty good story. Too many Bible story redos, though. It made the various outcomes predictable. Good characters, though. I’m also reading a ton of WIPs and ARCs, and I probably shouldn’t talk about those just yet. (I will say that Curse-Bearer by Becky Minor and Bid the Gods Arise by Rob Mullin are titles to watch out for!)
The chief thing that I learned is that it can’t be all about me. It can’t all be “this is what I’m up to as a super cool (or not) author.” It has to be about information that readers of my particular genre would find interesting.
The example that really stood out to me was Randy Ingermanson’s Advanced Fiction ezine. Randy keeps putting that out, offering a lot of “value” to the readers and little if not none of it is about him per se. It’s all free advice about writing fiction and marketing and time management and so on. Then, one day, he mentions that Oxygen is being re-released as an ebook and the next day, sales of Oxygen jumped so it was the 118th bestselling book on Amazon.
That’s great information, but harder to put into practice, I’m finding.
Well, I finished reading Aquasynthesis (which I keep trying to malaprop as Aquaculture) by Splashdown Books, It was a good introduction to that press’s authors. I have The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty Ninth edition on tap, because it’s been a bit since I’ve seen what the secular spec fiction has been doing. I need to get back into children’s and YA reading, and one particular series I want to finish is the Couplers series from RealBuzz studios. Christian manga is really rare.
And of course, the Avengers hit Blu-Ray yesterday…
Ah, yes. The Avengers. I actually broke my rule because of them. Actually, it’s a house rule. We start our Christmas lists early in the Otte house. I had put the Avengers on my list, and the rule normally is, once it’s on the list, you can’t buy it for yourself. I went ahead and did that anyway. I was told I can’t buy anything else on my list.
I’d definitely be up for any conference tidbits you care to pass along, John.
I just finished The Telling by Mike Duran. In fact we’re just finishing up the CSFF Blog Tour for that one today.
Like Steve, I’m reading The New Recruit by Jill Williamson. All of her books are such page-turners. I’m really enjoying it even though (or maybe, especially because) I worked with her on an earlier version of it.
As soon as I finish, I’ll start Stephen Lawheads’s The Spirit Well, and somewhere in here I need to squeeze in Brian Godawa’s Enoch Primordial.
Becky
I’ve reading Jasper Forde’s Thursday Next series–absolutely hilarious metafiction–Harry Potter, and Discworld.