Up this week on The First Book:  Misty Massey and her debut from Tor, MAD KESTREL, a tale of magic on the high seas.

A snippet:  “Dennis Wong of Tor was interested, but he wanted to see a rewrite, with another subplot woven in.  I cried for about half a day, then took a deep breath and got busy.”

Read the rest of the interview here:  http://thefirstbook.wordpress.com

Running the First Book blog has been fun.  Not only have I got to interact with lots of fascinating writers, in the process of searching for these writers I’m forced to keep up to date with what books publishers are putting out these days.  Traffic on the site has been steadily increasing, too.  That’s the great thing about the site — the interviews are permanently archived, so hopefully they’ll keep helping the authors even down the road.

A few minor things:

• I’ve decided to do an Internet Fast for three weeks, which is basically limiting my personal Internet time to less than fifteen minutes a day. Some mental toxins have crept into my system, and this is my way of clearing them out. The fifteen minutes will mostly be spent checking email and keeping up with writing-related business, but it will also be a challenge to see how much I can keep up on with those fifteen minutes. I’ve been doing it for a few days already, and it’s been good, but it is a challenge even dealing with all my email in that time.
• I turned in the mini-collection to PS Publishing: A Web of Black Widows and Other Stories of Love and Loss. Thirty thousand words. Six stories — four or which are original to the collection. Right now it’s scheduled for an early 2009 release, but we’ll see. I’ll be posting a page with more information about the collection in the coming months.
• Check out the First Book blog: Jennifer E. Smith and The Comeback Season.
• Read Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Hugo-nominated novella, “Recovering Apollo 8,” for free over at Asimov’s. Wonderful story. Plus if you want to see how a great writer can break the rules (not that there is such a thing in fiction), this is a good one to study. There’s only a few scenes and much of it is told in narrative summary, with the first third almost entirely exposition, but it works beautifully.  It works because it gives you a sense of a small story within the larger scope of history, which was the right tone and approach.

One of my frustrations the last couple years has been how hard it is finding time to read.  Any writer (heck, anyone) with young children can probably relate — there’s just not enough hours in the day anymore.  But a writer needs to read as much as he or she needs to write — it’s the creative fuel that keeps the fires of the imagination burning.

I’ve always liked audio books as a way to squeeze in more reading, but now that my daughter, Kat, accompanies me out to the university (where she goes to preschool), listening to them in the car isn’t much of an option.  Usually, we end up listening to one of her CDs:  “Head . . . and shoulders, knees, and toes, knees and toes . . .”   

I’ve had an iPod for a while now, but purchasing audio books is expensive and importing CDs checked out from the library is too time-consuming.  So I was happy when I stumbled across the Library2Go program, which allows library patrons to “check out” audio books to be downloaded to computers and MP3 players.  The iPod wasn’t compatible, so I sprung for the $35 (man, have the prices come down on these things) for a 1 gig Sansa.  I’ve been using it on my walks at lunch here at the day job, and it’s been great so far — tiny, easy to use, and even the 1 gig player fits three to four books at a time.   

While I’ve never been one to get excited about technology for technology’s sake — it’s always about what technology can do that matters to me — I have to say this has me pretty stoked. 

Up this week on The First Book Blog:  Anton Strout and his debut SF novel recently released from Ace, DEAD TO ME.

A snippet:  “For the past ten years, my day job has been working for Penguin Group (USA) in their paperback sales department and I’ve seen tons of books come through our doors.”

Read the rest of the interview here:  http://thefirstbook.wordpress.com

Up on The First Book this week:  Eileen Cook and her debut romantic comedy, UNPREDICTABLE. 

Cook writes, “I have a huge office supplies addiction, I can’t even go
near an Office Depot.”

Read the rest of the interview here:  http://thefirstbook.wordpress.com

Today we’ve got two great debut novelists up on The First Book blog: Jay Asher, with his edgy YA novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, and Rebecca Shelley (writing as R.D Henham) with her debut fantasy, Red Dragon Codex. Check it out:http://thefirstbook.wordpress.com

Up this week over on The First Book Blog:  Gerald M. Weinberg and his book, The Aremac Project.  Check it out.  I know Jerry from a number of writing workshops we’ve attended together (he’s a well-known nonfiction writer, but this is his first foray into fiction), and he’s a fascinating person.