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I had a helluva birthday this year.

Well, actually, I didn’t do all that much on Friday, my actual birthday. Went to yoga class. Did a 2 mile walk. Worked a little on UK marketing for The Painted Man. Dani gave me a plastic Spider-man web shooter, and the cats chewed up all the webs. Then Dani’s parents took us out for Peking Duck.

It was a nice day, nothing terribly special, but that was fine. I can’t say I was excited to turn 35, but I wasn’t dreading it, either. I have always been the oldest of my friends; the first to get my driver’s license, turn 18 and vote, turn 21 and drink, etc. Those, I was excited about. Once you top 30, though, it’s less of a thrill, as there aren’t many more milestones until you are old enough to collect Social Security. I think you need to be at least 35 to be president, so I have that now, in case the Democrats hand me the nomination like they promised.

Saturday was the day I was looking forward to, because Dani and I usually throw two parties a year: one for my birthday and one for hers. We have a large group of fantastic friends, and it is always great to get them all together. We had set this year’s party for Saturday the 9th, because no one comes to a Friday party in Brooklyn. That’s a lesson we learned long ago.

One of my best friends in the world, Amelia, was bummed this year, because she’s allergic to my cats, and can’t take Claritin or the like because she is pregnant. She suggested having the party at her Fort Greene loft instead of our place, which was a great idea. She has an amazing place, and she and her husband Craig are practically family. She and Dani started plotting the party incessantly, and told me in no uncertain terms to stay out of it. On Saturday, Dani disappeared for like 8 hours, and offered no explanations.

So I walk into the party that night, and all my friends are already there. Can there be a better feeling than to be surrounded by loved ones? I am frequently a wallflower at parties, because I suck at making small talk and meeting people, but put me in a room full of people I know (and love), and it’s a very different story.

Everyone was grinning stupidly at me, though, and I couldn’t figure out why. I looked from face to face, no one saying anything, and knew I was missing something.

“Go put your jacket on the bed,” Amelia says, clearly struggling to contain her excitement.

So I do, and turn back to everyone, and still don’t get the joke. “Is there something I’m not seeing?” I ask, and everyone laughs.

“Look up, dummy,” Amelia says.

So I do.

Allow me to explain:

In The Painted Man and its sequels, I drew little avatars to denote all the major characters. These are placed at the beginning of each chapter, so that when you read the books, you immediately know whose point of view the chapter will focus on. One of the characters, Jardir, has a warded spear as his avatar. Here is my crappy drawing of it:

I also describe the spear in great detail in the books, talking about the magical wards etched into the surface of the head and butt, and along the crosspiece. It’s a central icon in the story.

Unbeknown (unbeknownst?) to me, my friend Myke, had the idea to have a full-sized, battle-ready replica of the spear made by an armorer after the books sold. Myke has been reading my writing since college, and he and I discussed the spear at length when I was designing it in my head. Myke was an avid SCA member in college, and made his own armor. He spent a summer working in the Royal Armouries in the UK. He knew the huge size of the undertaking to make the weapon properly, but he also had the connections and and knowledge to make it happen. He contacted Ollin Sword Design and sent them my sketch and descriptions, as well as the wards designed by Lauren Cannon for my site.

Over the next few months, they went back and forth with design proofs and pricing. I don’t know how much it cost, but I know this sort of custom work ain’t cheap. Myke solicited Dani and Amelia and Matt for financial assistance, and they all went above and beyond the call of duty. Seriously. This is the best present I’ve ever gotten in my life. None of them ever needs to give me a present again so long as they live.

But enough of my yapping. Check out the detail pix of the wards and shit!

Now, if that was all they did for the party, it would have been amazing, but it didn’t stop there. Myke drove up from DC in secret after telling me he couldn’t make the party, and he Dani, and Amelia spent all day decorating. All of them did such a good job of lying to me that I would be worried if I wasn’t so pleased with the results. They made huge construction paper cut-outs of the wards and put them on the walls, and hand-drew wards onto dozens of paper lanterns to hang over the party area. It must have been a COLOSSAL amount of work, and I am totally flabbergasted by it and don’t know what I ever did to inspire such love an loyalty. Whatever it is, I should clearly keep doing it.

Here’s a picture of my agent, Joshua, under the spear and ward lanterns. His mother makes him wear that reflective jacket when he goes out at night:

Here’s me getting drunk with Liz, my editor from Del Rey. Next to her is Carrie. The guy who thinks he is Vanilla Ice is Steve, Joshua’s assistant and an agent in his own right, followed by Myke.

Here’s a pic of Dani and I late in the night. Amelia is dozing off behind us. It’s understandable. She worked her ass off for the party, and she’s like 26 weeks pregnant. I can’t wait to get her kid hooked on comic books!

Thanks, as well to everyone else who came to the party and helped make it so very special. This was the best birthday ever, and a great kickoff to all the amazing things that are coming this year!

Posted on February 12, 2008 at 11:19 am by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Events, Interviews, Life, Sales, World Traveler, Writing
7 Comments »

Happy Birthday to me

Happy Birthday to me

Happy Birthday to meeeeeeeee

Happy Birthday to me

Big three five today.

Zippidy doo.

Posted on February 8, 2008 at 10:37 pm by PeatB
Filed under Life
4 Comments »

There is a temporary hiatus on work on The Desert Spear these days, as I am once again editing The Painted Man. As I think I mentioned in my last post, I received line edits from both my US and UK editors on the same day, and of course, their edits are completely different. Somehow, I need to turn these two disparate edits into one unified manuscript, as I don’t want significant differences in the book between markets. I also don’t want to set a bad precedent of turning in 2 versions of each book I write.

Fortunately, both editors were kind enough to make all their edits electronically, so I can do cheats like comparing documents and cut/paste, rather than trying to decipher 1100+ pages of handwritten marks.

This was the first real editing round for the UK, as they came to the gate a little later, so I wanted to make sure they felt like they were being listened to. Frankly, a lot of their suggestions are great, because they are only minor tweaks that have significant ripple effects in strengthening the story.

I have to say, I am very lucky to be working with people who really seem to genuinely love the book and who commit themselves to understanding the world and the story while making their comments. It’s odd to be having in-depth conversations about what have up until now essentially been my imaginary friends. Of course, like any friends, I am very protective of them, so there have been a few times when I argue against edits, but that’s part of the process.

On Monday night, I handed in the version to Voyager to be typeset into uncorrected advance proofs for distribution to booksellers, reviewers, and the like, while I pound away at the final draft. It will probably take another week for me to finish this round, and then (hopefully) the only thing left will be checking the copyeditor’s changes for each market.

Lots of other exciting news on the publishing front, but I’m waiting for it to solidify a bit before getting into it.

Posted on February 6, 2008 at 11:08 am by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Writing
3 Comments »

My sister Maritza gave birth on Monday to my first niece, the beautiful Olivia Zoraida Torres, after a whopping 29 minutes in the delivery room. Dani and I went to visit the little bundle of joy yesterday, and took a few pictures.

I held little Olivia for about an hour while she slept peacefully. Even when she woke up to feed, she was as easy on the ears as she is on the eyes; at least until they needed to unbundle her to change her diaper. What a set of lungs on that little girl! Perfect diaphramatic breathing. She’s going to be an opera singer.

It’s interesting that babies love to be wrapped up tightly, since most adults hate it (unless it’s freezing and they’re snuggled in a warm comforter). I guess after 9 months in a confined space, they need to get used to the big, wide world a little at a time.

I’m a little ashamed to admit that I had never held a baby before. They scare the crap out of me. I’m a generally clumsy guy, and I always get scared I will break them or something. I need to get over that, though, and soon, since I will be holding one quite a bit in the near future.

I missed a lot of action at “work”, though, while we were out in the Bronx playing with Olivia. There was a flurry of e-mails from book publishers about The (Artist Formerly Known As The) Painted Man, and I missed all of it until after the business day was long over. Voyager is set to print the UK hardcover in August to go on sale in September ’08, and they sent me all their editorial comments. At the same time, Del Rey, who are planning to release the US version in Spring ’09, sent me their detailed line edits. I’ll be spending the rest of the day today (and probably several more) reconciling the two, in hopes that in the end the only differences between the two manuscripts will be whether “color” has an extra “u” in it, or “realize” is spelled with an “s” instead of a “z”.

Both publishers had a lot of kind words and praise for the book, which was immensely gratifying. When you spend countless overcaffeinated late night hours working on something in a vacuum, it’s very hard to know what people are going to think of it. Even after the book was sold and I was handing in the second draft incorporating my editor’s comments, I was half expecting them to say, “You ruined it. Deal’s off.”

Shows what I know.

Posted on January 30, 2008 at 10:02 am by PeatB
Filed under Life, Musings, Writing
5 Comments »

In negotiations, one of the most difficult things to do is the walk-away. When you tell the seller their price is too high, and you turn to go. Even if you REALLY want what they’re selling, you need to be prepared to turn your back on it and walk off, or you run the risk of being taken advantage of.

So they say, anyway. I grew up in suburban New York. We didn’t practice a lot of haggling at the Galleria Mall or the Gristedes where I worked. In corporatized, homogenized America, haggling is obsolete.

But the walk-away has another use, and that’s in writing. It’s when you write something, put it away for six months, and then read it again with a critical eye. It is an amazing shift of perspective, because you are never in the same mental/emotional place you were when you wrote it, and flaws that didn’t even occur to you at the time leap off the page at you after the time off.

This has always been the case with my writing. I spew out a story, thinking it’s great, put it away for a while, and then come back and make massive changes. I frequently lament the loss of some plot thread or another, but the end result is always MUCH better than the first draft was. As my college writing professor, Raymond Federman, used to say, “Writing is not writing. Writing is REWRITING.”

There is a long section (6 chapters) of book 2 that I wrote last summer. It is a more-or-less complete story arc, telling the life-story of the book’s protagonist up to the point in time where book 1 left off, so that I can then begin to synch up the characters with the readers understanding everyone’s perspective.

When I wrote it, I was elated, thinking it was some of the best stuff I had ever written. But when I gave it to my agent, editor, and test readers, their response was more or less “Meh, it’s okay.”

Huh.

So I took all their comments and put them aside, along with the chapters themselves, and moved on to write other sections until I had covered all independent parts of the book. The remaining chapters will bring all the myriad characters and their solo adventures together, so I need to finalize those solo parts.

Re-reading those earlier sections has really opened my eyes to a lot of things. I saw what worked, what didn’t, what created good tension, and what diffused it unnecessarily. I edited every chapter right after writing it, but this was different. It’s like how reading a trade paperback (TPB) collection of a comic book is different from (and far better than) reading the monthlies. You get to see how the story as a whole works, as opposed to individual chapter arcs, the subtle details of which are lost by the time the next issue comes out. When I was a kid, I had the time to read every issue six times so I was always up to speed, but time is more precious as an adult.

After I had covered the pages in red ink and notes to improve the section, I finally went back and looked at the comments from my test readers. I think it’s really important to form your own opinions before looking at the thoughts of others, but as always, those opinions are invaluable to me. Some were in line with my own assessments, and others weren’t; some I agreed with, some I didn’t.

I am gearing up to start rewriting the section now. It’s going to be a LOT of work, unraveling some plot threads and weaving in others, but I know the end-result will be FAR better than what I have now.

I’ll never understand how authors like Piers Anthony, who write like a book every 4 months, do it. Do they rewrite at all? Judging by the state of Xanth when I stopped reading (around book 16 or something ridiculous like that), probably not.

But everyone’s writing process is different, I guess.

Posted on January 23, 2008 at 10:52 am by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Writing
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