The Wonderful And Wacky World Of Publishing

From The New York Observer:

Once upon a time, back when blogging was about writing long, self-involved posts and sharing feelings and insights, bloggers got book deals to write novels or memoirs (ah, the good old days of 2005). Now there’s a different formula for web-to-book success: start a Tumblr or Twitter feed with some combination of puppies, fear of protracted adolescence, horrific Americana, text messages from your friends or photos of your parents; add a dose of nostalgia, regret or chagrin, promote it all over the Internet and wait for the literary agents to find you. And they will find you—there’s a whole crop of them, growing in number everyday.

Hence my new upcoming Tumblr: Guina Pigs Wearing Cute Hats Occupying PetSmart While Listening To Lady Gaga.

It's adorable while being politically and socially relevant at the same time!

Doubleheader Next Week

Think I'm going to do another live reading here at the website next week, December 20th, where I'll read some from Man of Wax and answer some questions about publishing or whatever and, if the mood strikes me, I'll even wear a Santa Claus hat. In the past I've done these readings with a preference for east coast time, because that's where I live. But this time I'll do two readings -- one at 7:00 pm EST, then one at 7:00 pm PST. That's two doses of me! Finally, have you entered to win a free paperback copy of Man of Wax? If not, there's still time, but not much, so enter now.

Monday Matinee

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cixMgLbfjQY]

This trailer was made by my friend Adam Perry, and I'm thrilled with how it turned out. If you'd like to share this trailer on your blog or Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr or restroom wall, please do. It will earn you 50,000 karma points. If you don't, 75,000 karma points will be deducted from your overall score. You have been warned.

I'm A Zombie Friendly Novelist

John Sears and the kind people at The Zombie Rights Campaign have nominated The Dishonored Dead for "Zombie of the Year." Here's a little of what they say:

Rare insight into the Zombie condition and an uncommon willingness to address the concerns of the Differently Animated earn Robert Swartwood a nomination for Zombie of the Year 2011. Even if, you know, technically I have no evidence he’s Undead per se.

Also nominated are Hannah Eiseman-Renyard and the cast and crew of "Z-Town: The Zombie Musical." The award will be announced next week. Good luck to my fellow nominees, and thanks to John and the ZRC for the honor of just being nominated.

Mamatas On Writing

From Nick Mamatas:

Here's a secret. This is what creative writers should be interested in doing. Writing their own best material. Not the most popular thing, or the most acclaimed, or that which will be part of some conversation or leave a mark on this or that genre (including bourgeois realism), but that stuff that is unique to yourself and the complex of life experiences and interests and prior readings and environmental factors of which your writing is an emergent property. Writing is orthogonal to publishing and marketing. It's also orthogonal to true mass culture. Mass culture only deals with aspects of writing—those aspects that can be reproduced according to the needs of either artisan creation or industrial manufacture. That, being the mass, is what an individual cannot control.