Monthly Archive: June 2008

Guerrilla Reading

Over at the often forgotten Jeff Somers Rocks You Like a Hurrican Forums, a few folks were discussing reading at work (specifically, since this was, after all, the Jeff Somers Rocks You Like a Hurrican Forums, reading The Digital Plague at work). Work tends to be a big old package of wasted time no matter how you slice it — I’m convinced that people who complain about being busy at work simply haven’t figured out time management yet. Or perhaps that’s just my job, which can be done in about 3 good hours on a sunny afternoon while lying in the tall grass of your local park, daydreaming. When I had to troop into an office every day to accomplish my job it was a horror of wasted hours as I sat at my desk trying to look busy.

Anyway, reading at work is the Great Dream of all lazy, unambitious geniuses (like me). Before the Internet, which I know for a lot of youngin’s sounds about as far back in the past as The Great Depression, it was almost comically hard and you ended up doing a lot of things you would normally consider insane, like sitting in toilet stalls with a paperback, or photocopying a 1200-page book just so you could carry it around in a manilla folder and look busy while you were devouring a good potboiler.

The Internet made it easier, of course, as you could now find at least something to read on your computer and still appear to be borderline-productive. If nothing else you can find lots of classics at Project Gutenberg and the like. Now, today, I found this site: Read at Work. It’s a little weird, and I’m not sure if you can add content to it, but it’s a nifty idea.

There: I do my part to ruin your career and undermine the infrastructure of our great nation. Now, back to work.

The Eternal Prison

How Jeff DealsSo, I handed in the final manuscript of The Eternal Prison today, otherwise known as Avery Cates #3. My editor at Orbit is brilliant and a little frightening, but I think this story is kick-ass and I can’t wait to hear what she thinks. Besides, the very few people in this world I trust to read rough drafts of novels (i.e., The Wife and The Agent) have given it their seal of approval.

Still, makes me nervous. In a weird way I’d almost prefer to keep all my works hidden, just for me to gloat over. I think a lot of writers have this reluctance to release their work into the wild, and we all have different ways of handling it. Me, I drink. When I’m nice and liquored up I call my editor at 3AM and slur on and on about how genius I am, and then email the manuscript to her. Then I wake up 2 days later in Philadelphia. This process has worked pretty well so far.

Anyhoo, now we await the Edit Letter, which is where my editor tells me how ungenius I am and gives me her opinions. Sometimes these Edit Letters are thin and easy to deal with. Sometimes they are tomes of grave horror. We’ll see which way this one goes. If I am drunker than usual in a few weeks, you’ll have a clue.