Libriomancer

ABSTRACT: While the DSM-V does not recognize the condition of Undifferentiated Authorial Pre-release Anxiety (not to be confused with Authorial Prepublication Neurosis), this is a well-known if unofficial diagnosis in the field of Bibliopsychology. Our research presents a detailed portrait of an author in the days before the publication of his next novel, in the hope that our observations and insights might point the way to future research. While there is at present no proven treatment for UAPA, our data finds some hope for cognitive therapy, traditional reinforcement, and clinical doses of mint chocolate chip ice cream.[1. Based on early experiments, we advise against the use of a placebo, as this tended to result in heightened states of violence and aggression in the subject.]

SUBJECT: Jim C. Hines is the author of seven novels and approximately 40 short stories. His 8th novel Libriomancer [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] will be published on August 7 of this year. (See figure 1, right.) This marks the launch of his third series, and will be his first hardcover with DAW Books. At the time this article was written, the book had received generally positive blurbs and reviews. Hines is 38 years old and married. He is employed with the State of Michigan. His medical file lists a diagnosis for type 1 diabetes in October of 1998, and he recently began treatment for depression. According to one family interview, he is “a goofball.”

INITIAL OBSERVATIONS: In the past 30 days, subject has displayed an increasingly obsessive tendency toward Google searches and visits to sites such as Goodreads and Amazon.com. Below is a graph of the subject’s visits to Amazon.com to check his sales ranking over the past nine weeks (figure 2).

A statistical analysis of this trend suggests that the subject will soon devote all available time and energy to clicking the refresh button. In week 12, he will reach the singularity, merging his brain with Amazon’s database and algorithms. We predict increasingly negative outcomes in social interaction, employment, and hygiene.[2. An intervention was attempted in week 8, at which point the subject threatened to ‘dump a nest of fire-spiders in our drawers’ if we didn’t restore his Internet access. Further interventions are negatively indicated at this time.]

The subject has also shown signs of neglect toward email and even his blog. The majority of his time and energy seem to be devoted to interviews and guest posts. On the surface, this behavior appears consistent with the need to promote his work and generate a false sense of control, but we believe he may also be sublimating his anxiety into these projects. In layman’s terms, he appears to be “freaking the hell out.”

TREATMENT OPTIONS: It would have been unethical to ignore the subject’s clearly worsening condition. Several treatments were attempted, without success.[3. EBear Treatment was not possible due to the unavailability of a Giant Ridiculous Dog.]

1. The Scalzi Protocol – Subject was fed approximately three pounds of bacon (cooked) each day. We found no visible improvement in mood. Subject began to record more erratic blood sugar readings, and was found taping bacon to his children. Protocol was cut short after four days.
2. Kowal Therapy – Subject proved resistant to puppet-led counseling.
3. The Grant-McGuire Treatment – Guided meditation was attempted with the standard protocol and script. Subject became distraught during the zombie velociraptor sequence.
4. The Wheaton Cure – The lead researcher informed the subject that he was being a dick. Subject promptly punched the lead researcher in the fiddly bits.

CONCLUSIONS: While Undifferentiated Authorial Pre-release Anxiety is believed to be incurable, nearly all subjects recover within 2 to 12 weeks after the publication of their book. We believe there may be a neurochemical element to this recovery, and will be taking samples of the subject’s brain fluid during and after the release of Libriomancer, in the hope that these neurochemicals can be synthesized and artificially stimulated. For the time being, however, we recommend the standard precautionary steps as documented by the Gilbert & Wollheim 1998 study: preordering massive doses of the book in order to mitigate the worst symptoms of the disease.

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Announcement: I’m delighted to say I’ve been invited to be the Toastmaster at ICON in Iowa this November. ICON was my very first Guest of Honor gig back in 2009, and I guess this means I didn’t do too bad a job 🙂

Boundaries and “No”: One Shade of Grey: A Feminist Fantasy (from Sinfest).

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My thanks to everyone who entered the Libriomancer [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] giveaway. I very much enjoyed reading your entries, both the serious and the silly!

Selecting the winners proved to be surprisingly difficult. There were roughly 150 entries. I picked one at random, then started reading through them to choose my favorite as the other winner. Y’all made me want to laugh and cry and eventually gnash my teeth in frustration.

Dear Head Beagle,

Please let me win the lottery tomorrow so I can send books to EVERYONE who hangs out here!

Love,
Jim

I eventually narrowed it down to a few funny ones, a few clever ones, a few heartfelt ones, and two very tempting bribes. I then found myself utterly unable to decide between the finalists, so I made a list of the top contenders and went back to random.org, where I used the amazing technological advancements of the 21st century to essentially roll a die.

The winners are:

Steven Schend and sylvanstargazer.

For everyone who didn’t win, you’ve got a few days left to put your name in for one of the 20 copies available over at Goodreads.

The miscellaneous stuff first.

• Author Saladin Ahmed asks for help as he’s fighting with with various physical, financial, and mental health issues. He also offers up a “Conan pastiche” short story, “Iron Eyes and the Watered-Down World.”

• This cover for Catwoman #0. I don’t even … the only character I know of who could pull off that pose is Sergeant Schlock from Schlock Mercenary. However, enough people have dared me that I’m considering trying the pose myself to see how close I could get. I need to check my health insurance coverage first, though.

• The Parent du Jour has an interview with me where I talk about being a Dad, my strengths and weaknesses as a parent, and some of my best and worst moments.

• We watched the first two episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender last night. Aang is tremendous fun. Note to self – do not watch this with my son right before bedtime, because he gets too worked up and has to run around pretending to be a bender.

• There are close to 250 comments on my post about boundaries on my website and LJ. Thank you for some great discussion. All of this says to me that we really need to talk about this stuff more.

• Libriomancer [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] Tidbits
  • The Goodreads Giveaway is still going strong, with 20 copies available.
  • And Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, saying it was, “amusing and action-packed from page one; Isaac is sure to be an instant fan favorite, and the secondary characters are vivid and multidimensional.” ::Happyauthorbounce::

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I’ve got two more advance review copies of Libriomancer sitting at home, and I want to give them away. If you want one, all you have to do is leave a comment telling me why you should get it. (If you’re commenting anonymously, please make sure I have a way to get in touch with you if you win.)

Be as serious or ridiculous as you want.

• “I want it because I’m Tim Burton and I want to make a Libriomancer movie starring Johnny Depp as Smudge!”
• “I want it because librarians are sexy-awesome!”
• “I will review it everywhere and tattoo the first chapter on my body!”

I’ll pick two winners on June 20. One ARC will go to whoever leaves the best (in my opinion) reason, and the other will be drawn completely at random from all the entries.

This is not limited to U.S. residents. I’ll mail the books anywhere in the world.

Have fun!

It’s been a pretty good week so far!

• Yesterday, I finished and submitted LIBRIOMANCER to my editor. One day ahead of my deadline, no less! There will be at least one more round of revision once she’s read it, but for now, it’s DONE!!! It came in at just over 100,000 words, and they’re all PERFECT (except for one spot where I wrote Timon instead of Pumbaa.)
• As if to mark the occasion, my agent e-mailed yesterday to let me know we had sold rights to the first two Princess books to Turkey. Woo hoo!
• I have an essay called “Writing About Rape” in the latest issue of Apex Magazine.
• LIBRIOMANCER bookmarks arrived yesterday, and they look great. I shall commence handing them out at ConFusion, and will probably be offering/asking to mail some out to folks as we get closer to the release date.
• I got an e-mail yesterday with a picture of STEPSISTER SCHEME on the shelf at a college bookstore, where it’s listed as a required text for a class. That’s pretty darn cool!

It’s strange to be done, to not know what I have to work on during my lunch break today. Should I start planning book two, or should I dive into that short story that’s due in a few months? I don’t know. I could do either one if I wanted to! Whoa … I don’t know how to handle that kind of freedom!

The past few months have been pretty hectic, and I want to say publicly how much I appreciate all of the support and understanding my wife and kids have given me. Hopefully I’ll be able to pay some of that back now.

As for the book … well, you’ll be able to decide for yourself in August whether all of that time and work paid off, but personally, I think it’s pretty darn awesome, and I hope you will too.

Yesterday, I received some dust jackets for Libriomancer [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] in the mail. Oh yes, there was squeeing. Embossed text, and it’s oh so shiny! Naturally, I immediately had to stick it onto a book to see what it looked like.

Yes, after more than a year of working on the story, I am getting rather excited about this book 🙂

And this means I have the final cover copy, the summary of the book which shall appear on the flaps of said dust jacket. I assume cover copy doesn’t require a spoiler warning…

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Isaac Vainio has spent the past two years working at the Copper River Library in northern Michigan, secretly cataloguing books for their magical potential, but forbidden from using that magic himself  . . . except for emergencies. Emergencies like a trio of young vampires who believe Isaac has been killing their kind, and intend to return the favor.

Isaac is a libriomancer, brilliant but undisciplined, with the ability to reach into books and create objects from their pages. And attacking a libriomancer in his own library is never a good idea.

But vampires are only the beginning. This was merely the latest in a series of attacks against members of Die Zwelf Portenære, a secret organization founded five centuries ago by Johannes Gutenberg to protect the world from supernatural threats. Among the casualties is Ray Walker, Isaac’s friend and mentor in magic.

Complicating matters further is the arrival of a dryad named Lena Greenwood. Lena packs a pair of wooden swords and proves to be quite adept at helping to beat down various magical threats. She also seems to be a little too interested in Isaac  . . .  not that he minds. Yet Lena’s nature could make her a greater threat than any vampire.

Along with a neurotic fire-spider named Smudge, Isaac and Lena set out to find and stop whoever is behind the attacks. But things are worse than Isaac imagined. An unknown killer of unimaginable power has been torturing and murdering humans and vampires alike. And Gutenberg, now more than six hundred years old, has disappeared.

As Isaac searches for Gutenberg and the murderer, hoping they aren’t one and the same, he uncovers dark secrets about magic’s history and potential. Secrets which could destroy Die Zwelf Portenære and loose a magical war upon the world. If Isaac is to have any hope of preventing that war, he will have to truly master the magic of libriomancy.

Assuming he doesn’t lose control and wipe himself from existence first.

English was one of my worst subjects as a student. I remember bracing myself when I’d get a paper back, hoping it wasn’t marked up too badly. This was especially true in college, at least as an undergraduate.

After spending this weekend marking up the third draft of Libriomancer, I’ve come to the conclusion that those teachers and professors with their Red Pens of Doom had nothing on me. Not a single page of my manuscript escaped unscathed.

Hopefully this is a good thing, because the fourth draft is the one I’ll be turning in to my beta readers and, with a little more tweaking, to my editor.

Yes, I’m nervous.

Seven books in print, and I’m still nervous. I have a pretty good idea how to write a goblin book or a princess book, but the Magic ex Libris series is something new. It feels bigger — my publisher is more excited about this one, readers have been more excited about the idea, and the overall storyline I’m looking at is more ambitious than the things I’ve played with before.

I’ve been working on this thing for close to a year, and these next two months or so will be the home stretch. I’m shifting a bit more of my time and energy toward the book, which may impact things like blogging and e-mail. I’ll do my best to keep up with everything, but there are only so many hours in the day, ya know?

(Short Version: Welcome to Jim’s traditional freak-out over the final draft of his book.)

Freak-out aside, I’m excited about this one. I think there are a lot of fun ideas, some nifty characters, and scenes that are simply awesome. And even as my mind runs in panicked circles, I’m really looking forward to being able to share this story with readers.

For those who want a peek, I’ve posted the first two paragraphs behind the cut.

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