Writing

Novel and other writing updates

On Highest Authority from Soviet Russia: Sundman Novels “not shit Dan Brown”

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So, checking my Wetmachine referer logs this morning, I found that this livejournal entry has already sent me 54 visitors. Since the page is what appeared to be (and in fact is) Russian, I turned to Google Translate, which provided this wonderful text:

A good example for the present writer can become a success John Sandmena.

This is a modern writer, he wrote great novels of an action and distributes them for free. About how this is done you can ask from him, look at the website or call in at www.wetmachine.com kickstarter.com.

In place of, say, Lukyanenko, I have started to click links kickstarter.com. Sandmen requested for the next novel 5 000 dollars. Who? Yes to all. “Kick” it just for this purpose and is intended to collect money from the crowds of internet users in all sorts of interesting initiatives.

John had something to show his readers:

novels “Acts of the Apostles” and “Developing Obama”[Ed: ????] is not shit Dan Brown. “If Brown was Sandmenom, according to Jeffrey Zeldman,” he would have realized that this thriller is far from absurd, flat and one-dimensional. “

Credit confidence Sandmenu from the Internet community for the next novel, ”Science works” expressed in the amount of U.S. $ 8 059. Slightly more than requested by the author. And how much money you need to write this novel?

Note — my final Kickstarter tally was not quite as great as the amount pledged — about $900 did not clear when presented to credit cards; plus, Kickstarter.com and clearing house Amazon.com each take cuts (including on that $900, by the way). But still, not half bad. Or as we say in Russian, according to Google Translate, недурно.

Be the Geekoid Novelist's Guest on Martha's Vineyard

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Over on on Kickstarter, I’m seeking backers for my new project, a biotech thriller called Creation Science.

I’ve just added a new “reward”: You and a friend can be my guest for a weekend next spring or summer at my house on Martha’s Vineyard. Join me and my wife for three days and two nights at our tiny but friendly house in Vineyard Haven. You’ll stay in our guest room & we’ll provide breakfast; we’ll give you a guided tour of the island, lend you one of our cars for up to five hours, let you borrow our bikes, and you’ll be the guest of honor at a dinner party for which Dear Wife Betty will prepare a meal of at least 5 courses.

See the Creation Science page on Kickstarter for details.

Further Adventures in Self-Publishing

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In days of old when knights were bold, I wrote an article for a site called Kuro5hin article about my adventures in self-publishing. At the time, I had been a self-publisher for about two years. In it I wrote, “I recommend self-publishing for anybody whose temperament and objectives resemble mine. All others should beware.”

That’s still pretty my much point of view.

Below the fold, I’ve updated & revised that original story & added some additional reflections based on the eight years of self-publishing experience I’ve amassed since then (including six years of making my books available for free download under Creative Commons license).

[This is a cross-posting of a very similar version I put upon Kuro5hin yesterday.]

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Roland the Robot explains how publishing works today

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I met Roland Denning in the comment thread of an article that Cory Doctorow had written in the Guardian (UK) about “Why free ebooks should be part of the plot for writers.”. I wrote to Roland proposing a book swap: one of my self-published technoparanoid dystopian novels for a copy of his self-published technoparanoid dystopian novel The Beach Beneath the Pavement.

When his book came in the mail, I read two chapters & then set it aside for later, as I was in the middle of a few other books at the time. I haven’t finished reading beyond chapter two yet. All of which context will only make you laugh harder (and cringe more) when you watch Roland’s alter robot ego as he follows the path that leads him to self-published stardom.

Part 2 below the fold. This is simply the best thing on publishing and self-publishing ever. Watch it and cry. Watch it and weep. Watch it and laugh your ass off. Watch it and go buy a few copies of Roland’s book, and then a few of mine.

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Only You Can Save Creation Science

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Listen, I know that there’s a pretty good chance that you (yes, you!) are some kind of policy wonk who only reads Wetmachine for the insight & analysis of all things FCC/Net Neutrality/media hegemony/First Amendment provided by the inimitable Harold Feld.

And there’s also a pretty good chance that you don’t give a care about Harold Feld’s wonky analysis, because you read Wetmachine for Howard Stearns’s stunning and out-of-nowhere insights into software development in general and 3-d collaborative virtual-world software in particular.

Or maybe you’re a Gary Gray groupie. Stranger things have happened. Maybe you even come here to see what I might have to say.

Or maybe, like those men who were busted at the suburban New Jersey bordello a few years ago, you just happened to be here because you pulled your car into the driveway to make a U-turn & got trapped when the fuzz showed up. Maybe you were googling for “Ted Williams’ Frozen Head” and wound up reading this instead.

I don’t care.

Wetmachine readers come in all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life, even non-policywonk walks of life. Whatever. All is cool here. One love.

But you all should click on the above video, dammit. And you should chip in at least a buck to support Creation Science, the nifty new novel by moi, the Ur-Wetmechanic. I’ve been bringing you this site for 8 years now. Ain’t that worth nothin? Show me your love! At least watch the flippin video! It’s short!

N.B. Even if this is your first visit to Wetmachine, you can still show me your love. Click on the video! Join the family!

Creation Science has been Kickstarted

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So there’s this site called Kickstarter, and it’s supposed to be used by artists and writers to raise money to support specific artistic endeavors. Because I am out of my mind and don’t have a brain in my head, I have undertaken to write another novel, this one another thriller along the lines of Acts of the Apostles. It’s called “Creation Science”. So, today I launched a Kickstarter project to try to raise some $$ to support me as I do it.

As I documented in my kickstarter project blog, I’ve already had a near encounter with Murphy’s Law, but for the moment, (with some help from Wetmechanic in chief Gary Gray), things seem to be back on track. (Thanks, Gary!)

Below, my project description. But please do go to the kickstarter site, and if you have any love at all for me or even for Wetmachine, chip in a dollar or two. Even better, chip in a dollar or two & help me spread the word.


Creation Science, already about 1/4 written, is a technothriller about scary science– like designer DNA, brain hacking & mind control, computer viruses and biological viruses. It’s about the phony politics of the so-called war on terror, it’s about fundamentalism and anti-science, about transhumanism and hypercapitalism and other modern delusions, and it’s about decent people trying to save humanity from itself.

In it you’ll find the stuff of all great thrillers: conspiracy, duplicity, double-crosses, dispensational Christian fascism, misunderstandings, confusions, car crashes, megalomaniacal villains (in and out of government), explosions, gunplay, Russian Mafias, neuroscience, coincidence, mysterious islands not far from Cape Cod, information theory, disease cowboys in Central Africa looking for the cause of Lassa Fever in the 1970’s, Jane’s Addiction, Mission of Burma, love, regret, remorse, nostalgia and sex. So Creation Science is a thriller. But it’s not just a thriller. Like many writers of thrillers, I get the science right and I get the technology right. But unlike most writers of thrillers, I aspire to create literature.

This is what Andrew Leonard of Salon said about my book “Acts of the Apostles”: “it’s also a book infused with a sensibility that you don’t normally expect a ”hard science fiction“ novel to have: real emotions, real heartbreak and a real sense of the craziness at the core of the human condition.” And that’s exactly what I’m going to try to put into Creation Science too.

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Julie/Julia/Johnny

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I saw the movie Julie & Julia last week & liked it very much. It interweaves the story of how Julia Child, the wife of a USian diplomat stationed in Paris, came to write Mastering the Art of French Cooking with the story of how Julie Powell, a twenty-nine year old woman who worked on a telephone hotline for people affected by the World Trade Center attack, came to prepare all 524 dishes in Child’s book over the course of a year and blog about doing it.

Over coffee the morning after seeing the film I noodled around the internets reading reviews and was surprised by a theme that cropped up in many of them–that the parts of the film featuring Meryl Streep as Julia Child were engaging, as was their subject, while the parts featuring Amy Adams as Julie Powell were a bore, and their subject (Powell) was at best negligible, and at worst, a narcissistic leech. Many of these reviews (some of them written by “professionals” on major sites, others by bloggers on less well-traveled sites) were distinctly snotty in tone. Roger Ebert, for example, started his review

“Did you ever want to take a three-day bus trip sitting next to Julia Child?”

and the guy at Cinema de Merde entitled his review “Get your own life” and summarized Julie and Julia thus:

[It compares] a modest woman of inner resources who accomplishes something monumental through hard work, and another who feels a lack in herself because she’s not as accomplished as she thinks she should be, and ends up accomplishing something entirely trivial that is made possible by our culture of paying attention to meaningless personal drama.

Robert Wilonsky’s review in the Village Voice is called “In praise of the Julia half of Julie and Julia”; in it he praises Streep & Child and deposits mild scorn on Powell (while tossing a crumb or two to Adams). In SFGate, Mick LaSalle goes gaga over Streep/Child and says things about Powell that I consider too churlish to repeat here.

Unlike many reviewers, I liked both the Julia story and the Julie story; I liked the entire movie, and indeed I liked both women.

Below, a few observations on the Julie/Julia story (but not a movie review proper) intermixed with some grand philosophical musings on The Meaning of Life, Snotty Reviews, Reactions to War, George Plimpton, My Own Delusions & Narcissistic Compulsions & What They Have Cost Me and Others, Roger Banister, and Writing.

UPDATE: Since originally posting this I’ve made a minor edits for clarity and emphasis. I may make a few more.

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