Fun Facts about the Tolkein Family

You can knock Wikipedia all you like, but I discovered some truly interesting information about the descendants of J.R.R. Tolkein, just by doing a bit of research on the Mabinogion.

To wit:

  • Christopher Tolkein deserves all the credit in the world for the existence of The Silmarillion. It was he who edited his father’s chaotic papers and drafts into the grand manuscript of the First Age. Plus, Christopher was actually part of the Inklings, the club of scholars and writers who included C.S. Lewis. J.R.R. called Christopher “his chief critic and collaborator”. He also drew many of the original maps of Middle Earth.
  • Simon Tolkein, Christopher’s son, is a novelist in his own right, and publicly broke with his father over the reaction of the Tolkein estate to Peter Jackson’s films. There was rumor that Christopher even disowned Simon over it, but they have supposedly since reconciled. His most recent novel, set during WWI and published coincident to the Battle of the Somme, is at least a partial homage to his grandfather’s experience in that battle.
  • Nicholas Tolkein, Simon’s son, is a playwright and director in Los Angeles. His first play premiered this past summer.

Quite the lineage, if you ask me.

 

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If You Want to Write a Story, Write a Story…

Good post at The Green Study:

My writing tip #234: Don’t read books on writing while trying to write a novel. First of all, it usually sheds bad light on whatever you are writing and secondly, it can make you overly ambitious.

I agree. What you need when you’re working on something is Inspiration. It doesn’t come bottled, but in my experience, it comes in paperback form. So what you should be reading is what will make you want to write.

The cusp of the post is the writer giving herself permission to write the novel she’s writing, rather than the epoch-shaking political work she feels like she’s supposed to be working on.

I also agree. Writing is art, and art is more important than poltics. As I have above my Twitter feed: Politics is now; Art is forever.

I’m going through something similary with Last Tomorrow. I’m torn between wanting to polish its rough corners and letting it be the little postabpocalyptic homage to Mask of the Red Death that it is. It’s a novella. I’m not going to turn it into a novel. I’ve got an actual novel I’m working on, plus shorts for the next issue of Unnamed Journal. But I want it to be the best it can be.

And how do I know which way is right? I won’t until its over.

This is why writers drink.

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Tumblr Jazz

I may not have mentioned this before, but I have a blog on Tumblr that is devoted to a somewhat geeky and idiosyncratic project: reviewing every music CD I own. It’s called Every. Damn. CD. and it’s got quite a history. I’ve been working on it for a long time, because I have long spells of being unable to work on it. And the structure – by genre, in alphabetical order – makes sense for the blog, but doesn’t always inspire work flow.

ANYway, I’m in my jazz cd’s right now, and I’m currently working on John Coltrane, who I’ve never been as devoted to as other people who like jazz are. The fault is doubtless mine.

http://everydamncd.tumblr.com/post/165045776223/118-john-coltrane-blue-train

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The Downside of Pantsing

As I’ve announced before, a good bit of Last Tomorrow was written on the fly. Like the US  Navy in WWII, I simply went around difficulties. That’s fun, but at some point, you have to force those little hidden Japanese jungle plot holes (I’m getting all the elasticity this metaphor has, thank you very much) to surrender. And I just hit a big one in the second chapter. Something happens and I don’t know who caused it to happen. It’s not super-important plot-wise, so I could just get rid of it, but it’s kind of important thematically, so I don’t want to.

And I need to decide who caused it to happen, otherwise it doesn’t make any sense. And I’m really not sure who it would be that did it. So I’m going to have to figure it out, or rework the event so that it makes sense.

Whatever, I’ll figure it out.

Here’s a post at Live Write Breathe that may have been useful to me when I was in this process before. Ah well. it’s never too late.

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How to Publish Stuff on iBooks, using Tablo…

I laid out the steps some weeks ago on my Ello page. If you like having your stuff iBooks, Tablo takes much of the work out for you. Here’s the basics:

Step 1 – Put Your Book on Tablo. You can write (or copy-paste) your work there with their Bookmaker software, which is intuitive and very easy, or you can upload a Word document. I’ve only done it the first way.

Step 2 – Publish. Having your book on Tablo, even available to read there, is separate from it being published to iBooks. When you click on your book, you will see three links at the top of the page: “Write,” to continue working on a book, “Publish on Tablo”, to allow it to be read on the web site for free, and “Sell on Bookstores,” which will send it to iBooks. You can have all, some or none of your book available on Tablo to read. You can select and deselect individual chapters. You can post chapters as you write them, to build a readership. Or you can skip this step entirely and go straight to:

Step 3 – Sell. Setting your book up for sale is all done on a single page. You will need to input the following:

  • Title
  • Subtitle
  • Description
  • Author Name (pseudonyms permitted)
  • Language of Book
  • BISAC Category (there’s a clickable drill-down to find yours, so don’t worry)
  • Tags
  • Pricing for US, UK, and Australia (there will be a suggested price point for each, but you can set them to be whatever you want)
  • Paypal email (Yes, you need a PayPal account to play)
  • Book Cover (Upload any high-res image)

Then just click the button and wait. This is the downside: you will wait.

I didn’t end up waiting as long as I thought I would, because as of a few days ago The Devil Left Him is up on iBooks. It has an alternate cover from the Amazon version but is otherwise the same. It’s also cheaper.

Devil3

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