How NOT to use Twitter

Social networking lesson #1: do not say anything on Twitter or Facebook you don't want repeated in The New York Times.

From said publication:

The novelist Alice Hoffman caused a stir over the weekend when she used Twitter to strike back at a mixed review of her latest novel, “The Story Sisters.”

Reviewing the book for The Boston Globe on Sunday, Roberta Silman wrote: “This new novel lacks the spark of the earlier work. Its vision, characters, and even the prose seem tired.” In a series of Twitter posts, Ms. Hoffman fired back with her own opinion. “Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron,” she wrote. “How do some people get to review books? And give the plot away.” Ms. Hoffman also lambasted The Globe and went so far as to post Ms. Silman’s phone number and email, inviting fans to “Tell her what u think of snarky critics.”

By Monday, Hoffman had deleted her Twitter account and issued a classic "non-apology" through her publicist:

I feel this whole situation has been completely blown out of proportion. Of course I was dismayed by Roberta Silman's review which gave away the plot of the novel, and in the heat of the moment I responded strongly and I wish I hadn't. I'm sorry if I offended anyone. Reviewers are entitled to their opinions and that's the name of the game in publishing. I hope my readers understand that I didn't mean to hurt anyone and I'm truly sorry if I did.

Best,
Alice Hoffman

I think it's a bad policy for authors to respond to critics at all. I've defended things criticized in print here on the blog and in interviews (which is pushing it), but I've never responded directly to a reviewer or publication here or anywhere else. I just think there's no profit in it. Even if you're somewhat justified (as Carolyn Kellogg argues of Hoffman in The LA Times) you always come off as defensive and petulant. I'm reminded of the genius author who decided to post a snippy rebuttal to a kid who had given his book a bad review on her mom's blog. (I'll link when I can remember who it was or where I read that.) Greg found it. Here's the link.

What do you think? Should writers be able to respond to criticism of their work? Should they remain silent? If they do respond, what's the best arena for it?

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Welcome to the Chicken Chateau

Meet our chickens! We are now the proud owners of five hens and one rooster. Here they are in the crappy old coop we inherited. They're waiting and watching while we build their new, deluxe accommodations:

We based our design on plans we found online (opens as a PDF) for an a-frame chicken coop, but we improvised a bit in the construction. We initially tried to use metal sawhouse brackets to join the top, but they didn't give us the wide base we wanted.

After the frame was built, we added a floor with a door cut in it. The gangplank to get inside would be added later.

Here's Jo, pretending to be a chicken as she comes inside.

On the other side, we put in slats to support a double chicken-wire floor. It's important for chickens to have a lot of circulation, so we didn't want to totally enclose the top of the coop. This will all have straw spread over it anyway, which will help insulate it in winter but still allow air to pass through. This is the side where the nesting boxes will go too.

One of the nice features of this coop we're building is that it's portable. Chickens will scratch and pick at ground until it's dirt and mud if you let them, so we want to be able to move the coop to different areas of the yard. We also plan to build our garden in raised beds that are the exact dimensions of the chicken coop's base, so our birds can till, clear, and fertilize the soil in each one!

The gangplank is added. The area on top is the coop where the chickens are closed in each night for their protection. The area below, accessible via the gangplank, is an enclosed, protected patch of ground where they can scratch around during the day.

The effect from the ground makes the coop look like a UFO.

To raise the gangplank, we added a pulley! I've held on to this pulley for a long time, waiting for a chance to put it to good use. Words cannot express how happy I am to have a pulley on our coop. I think it elevates it from clever to ridiculously over-engineered.

The gangplank cord runs up through the chicken wire to the pulley, then across to a hole in the frame. Jo's giving it a test run here.

But I had to get into the act too. Pull, Gilligan! (Note the inferior, non-pulley-equipped coop in the background...)

Pulling the rope all the way out raises the gangplank, securing the door to the coop. Later we add a cleat--one of those metal double-hooks you see on ships--to the side of the coop so the rope can be tied off and secured when the walkway is up.

Next up is covering much of the outside with chicken wire. The bottom sides and this end of the coop are completely covered.

This end was a bit taller than our wire, so Wendi did a bit of metal sewing in addition to our work with the staple gun, just to be sure.

The other end needed a bit more work, as we wanted another door on the bottom to let the chickens out into the yard if we were going to be out there with them. We framed the hatch with 1x3s, but we ran out of the store-bought chicken wire. Luckily (if that's the word) the previous tenants left a huge pile of crap in the yard, including some old metal fencing. Call in the salvage team!

And there we go. A hinged door to let our chickens roam free when we're with them. (We've just put the coop on blocks to be able to work on the lower parts of it better. It actually sits on the ground.)

Above the lower hatch is another access panel--this one so we can sneak a hand into the nesting boxes and steal eggs.


Like the rest of the doors, this has latches we hope will keep out some of the more clever predators our birds are likely to attract.

Once the ends were finished, it was time to begin adding the metal roofing pieces. Once again, we were pleased to be able to salvage this material rather than have to buy anything new. These are scraps from the metal roofing on our own house. (Or the "human coop," as we've taken to calling it lately.) There's only a half row here because we're going to put on another hinged door--one that will go all the way across the bottom to allow us to add straw and to occasionally rake the coop clean.

Cutting this metal for the roof pieces was easily the worst part of this entire build. We bought a metal-cutting blade for our circular saw, but the thing threw hot burning sparks all over us as we cut it. I still have red marks up my right arm and on my chest. Wendi had hot sparks burn holes in her shirt! And the metal-cutting blade disintegrates as you use it too, so that by our third panel it was so small it was no longer usable. Reluctant to burn ourselves further, I put a metal blade on the jigsaw and gave that a try. It was slower, and shook me so badly I was vibrating like a cartoon character with a jackhammer, but at least it didn't throw hot molten death at us. We could have gotten away with fewer cuts if we had bought new panels and not tried to salvage what we had, but we were bound and determined to recycle as much of our building waste as we could, and we're pretty proud of the result.

Because the bottom half won't join the top half, we wanted to make sure rain didn't run right behind the bottom hinged door, so we created a bit of an awning up top with a 1x3 turned on its side.

After adding the hinged door at the bottom and the flat panels along the back side, we were finished! And it only took us a week. Working four and five hours a day on it. Seriously. This took us FAR longer than we ever expected, keeping us busy until nightfall more than a few times.

We tried to come up with a name that would match the coop's luxuriousness, and we eventually settled on "The Chicken Chateau"--but you have to say the "ch" in chicken like the "sh" sound in chateau. Also considered: "Chicken Chalet" and "La Maison de Poule"--"The House of the Chicken."

Check out the chickens down below, enjoying their courtyard!

Lots of places for Jo to feed them greenery too. Welcome, chickens!

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I Should Be Writing - 005

We've had a bit of a dry spell here at Gratz Industries as a combination of wireless router disconnectivity and marathon chicken coop building have conspired to keep us from blogging. But we're back with a vengeance with a new I Should Be Writing vlog! This week, I'm helping my friend (and internationally renowned potter) Michael Kline fire his kiln.

WATCH as I stoke a 2100 degree fire!
SEE amazing pottery issue forth!
HEAR a great tune from Jeff Barbra and Sarah Pirkle!

It's a delight for the senses this week on I Should Be Writing! (Well, at least two of the senses.)

Read Michael's pottery blog at Sawdust and Dirt
Hear Jeff and Sarah's music at jeffandsarahonline.com

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Summer of the Samurai

Dad sends in this pick from his iPhone--a summer reading display at the Knoxville, Tennessee Books-A-Million.

Key thing here: my dad has an iPhone and I don't.

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Blogging beneath the stairs

Around three o'clock on Friday our wireless router decided to stop working. It does this once every blue moon or so, and usually I can stumble my way through reconfiguration screens or, when push really comes to shove, I can get an answer from a Linksys helpdesk. This outage, unfortunately, proved to be beyond my understanding, and so I knew I would have to call Linksys customer service.

This outage happened during a particularly busy weekend for us--Wendi had her studio open to visitors on the TRAC tour, and since we were tethered to the house for eight hours a day we decided to finally screen in the downstairs porch. We've had the screen and the wood for some time too, so it was a project we'd already paid for, just not finished.

It took us all weekend, but we got the screened in porch finished, and it's awesome. Pics to come as soon as all these tech issues are resolved--which may be a couple of weeks now. Here's the sordid tale: it was Monday before I had time to sit on the phone for hours with Linksys, but at last I girded my loins and made the call. About three months ago, we had an issue with always having to reset the new laptop's internet connection whenever we moved it from place to place in our home (which we do, a lot, to watch TV on the internet). I got that situation resolved through marathon calls with Bellsouth (our ISP) and Linksys--both of whom were helpful, knowledgeable, and fairly efficient. Linksys charged me $40 for 6 months of service, which, at the time I was happy to pay--particularly as I anticipated there might be further problems.

There weren't further problems--not with that issue--and I was happy. Then when the router went out, I at least had the six month thing to fall back on for help again. Or so I thought. When I called up on Monday, I learned that what I had bought from Linksys was not six months of service on all my Linksys products (a router, a wireless access point, and two wireless cards for pre-wireless-world computers) but instead six months of help on just ONE of those items--the wireless access point.

First of all, that's a load of crap. The woman on the phone before did not tell me what I was purchasing was attached to one device. I was told I was buying a six month service plan, and that was it. Further, she helped me work through issues with BOTH the wireless access point AND the router. So imagine my surprise--and my frustration--when the new person I talk to tells me I'm going to have to pony up another $40 so he can work on the router. (The wireless access point at least, he tells me, is still covered by my previous fleecing.)

I said no. I said I would go online to the help forums and seek my own answer. But of course the online forums are hit and miss, and this time was a miss. About this time, when I was ready to hurl the router out the window, Paul called, and I gave him an earful about my travails. He agreed that $40 for service was a rip-off, and said, "You could buy a new router for that price and get a year of warranty in the bargain!"

Cue the light bulb.

So after I got off the phone with Paul, I hooked the laptop directly into the modem, got online, and priced out new routers. Which now, it turns out, come with wireless access points INSIDE them! (Shows you how long we've had this router/wireless access point--I think it's going on eight years now.) And sure enough, for $50 I can buy a brand new (and faster!) wireless router/access point that comes with a one-year warranty.

It's truly a disposable culture we live in when it's cheaper to buy a new item than it is to fix the old one. There's something disturbing about that, and the fixer in me shudders at the thought. If something breaks or goes wrong in the house, my first inclination is to repair it, not replace it. I'm still using an electric razor I've had for a decade, even though the clipper attachment--which I, as a bearded fellow, actually use--broke about five years ago. Instead of replacing it, I opened the thing up and fixed it. A little plastic part had broken, and I couldn't replicate that, but I was able to create a work-around fix by drilling a small hole in the outside of the plastic shell and screwing in an eye screw that took the broken part's place. Ta-da! Years more service.

So while I hate to throw in the towel on the router, no drilled hole and eye screw are going to fix it. It's beyond my abilities. So a new router was ordered last night, and will be shipped in 5-9 days. In the meantime, our laptop sits underneath the stairs, hooked by an ethernet chain to the modem. (Because of course we don't have a phone jack anywhere near where we have our computers. How last century!) So for the next week or two, all of our surfing and blogging and tweeting will be done beneath the stairs, hidden away like Harry Potter in his cupboard.

I'm off now to straighten out my back and sit in a chair...

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Patchwork Pals? Maybe. . .

One more piece for the collection I think I might call Patchwork Pals. Maybe. Maybe it's kind of generic? I don't know - I've never been a big fan of the word pal. And technically the animals aren't patchwork - I just incorporated patchworkish elements into each design. I'm probably overthinking this.
Anyway - the collection is finished and sent off. You can see the first pieces I designed here. Think greeting cards, photo albums, baby books, gift bags, wrapping paper, etc. All that cute stuff people buy when they have a new baby. . .

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Letter-writer I picked wins national writing competition!

A few months back I was one of a few authors asked by Humanities Tennessee to judge student letters submitted in the Center for the Book's Letters about Literature contest. Each student writes a letter to an author of his or her choice, explaining how one of the author's books meant something special to or had an impact on the student's life.

I judged Level I: Grades 4-6, and chose 12-year-old Caroline Hoskins' letter to Cynthia Lord, the author of Newbery Honor-winning Rules, as the best letter in her age group. Today, I learned that Caroline's letter has won the national competition in her age level too! Congratulations, Caroline! I'm thrilled to play a part in your amazing accomplishment!

Here's Caroline's letter, reprinted from the Humanities Tennessee page:

Dear Cynthia Lord,

It often seems to me that nobody understands my problems, that I am the only one in the world who has difficulties, and I am trapped in a cement box with no way out. Reading your book Rules helped me look at these situations in a different light.

Just like Catherine in Rules, I have a sibling with Autism. Just like Catherine, for pretty much all of my life, I have had to face therapy sessions, sacrifices, and being embarrassed to have my friends meet my sister, Julia. I was worried that Julia would make my friends think I was weird. All the time, people of all ages would come up to me and ask me the same question: "Are you Julia's older sister?" This really bothered me. I felt like a nobody in a world circulating around Julia. It seemed to me that I didn't have my own identity. I told myself that I didn't care, but I lied. Reading Rules helped me realize that I am not the only person in the world that has these kinds of problems.

No, the therapy won't stop. No, I won't ever stop sacrificing, but after reading your book, I realized that having Julia as a sister is amazing, and I wouldn't trade her for anything in the world. I realized that if my friends can't accept my sister as she is, then they aren't really my friends. But most importantly, I realized that I am my own person. My identity is not "Julia's older sister." I am Caroline Hoskins. I am me.

Thank you, Cynthia Lord, for writing such a beautiful story that includes problems that kids these days actually face. You are an amazing author, and Rules is a simply wonderful story. It helped me through my problems, and I am positive it helps kids all over the world every day.

Yours Truly,

Caroline Hoskins

Caroline's letter beat out almost 55,000 other letters to win a $10,000 community grant provided by Target. Way to go, Caroline!

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Live in Tokyo: Alan Gratz!

Last week I got to talk live to a group of students in Tokyo, Japan, about Samurai Shortstop! Not live in person, unfortunately, but live via an online Skype connection. At 10:30 p.m. my time (11:30 a.m. the next morning Tokyo-time), select students from the American School in Japan sat around a computer in their classroom and posed questions to my Max Headroom-like mug on a screen.

The virtual visit was the culmination of a month of online interaction between me and the students. The entire seventh grade at ASIJ read Samurai Shortstop for class, and then posted to one of six different creative blogs set up to test their knowledge on the book. The students could come up with chapter titles, write haiku, compare figures in modern baseball to figures in Meiji-era baseball, write the opening of a Samurai Shortstop sequel, write a newspaper article about something that happened in the book, or pitch a new novel idea to me. I checked in to read the blogs throughout the month and replied to their posts, and at the end selected what I thought were the best entries in each section. One of things I got to do in the Skype chat was to announce the winners.

Chris Rose, the great guy who put all this together at ASIJ, also edited together a side-by-side video of me and the students doing the Q&A, starting with the video above and continuing in the videos below. The picture on my end is grainy--I don't know what's up with that, since I could see them just fine, and every time I practiced this with my dad in Tennessee he told me I looked crystal clear. Maybe it's something to do with it being an overseas connection--but why one would look sharp and the other not is odd. Anyhow, with schools being even more strapped for cash lately, I think this might be a really viable way to do school visits here and around the world on the cheap. If you want to arrange a virtual visit with me, drop me a line! In the meantime, check out my Skype chat with the students at the American School in Japan....

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Cute and Cuddly

These are some little guys I've been working on for a Tigerprint competition.It's characters for a New Baby collection. I wanted them to look like little stuffed animals. It's a bit of a departure for me - edpecially the colors. They're still hand-drawn and "colored" with papers I painted and colored (with abit of fabric throuwn in for the neutral background) but the colors are softer than I usually choose. I designed this batch to be appropriate for birth announcements, greeting cards, photo album covers, gift bags, etc.
Next up I need to make a repeat pattern for gift wrap. I like the quiltish border on the sides and I'm going to run with that for the repeat pattern. I know exactly what I want to do - I just need to find the time. . .

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Han Solo, P.I.

Check out this really outstanding remix of the "Magnum, P.I." intro as "Han Solo, P.I." opening credits. It's all the more amazing when you watch both side by side and see how expertly YouTube user The CBVee mirrors the actual cuts and scenes from the real "Magnum opening credits!



Genius!

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Two Brooklyn Nine reviews

Sarah at The Reading Zone gives The Brooklyn Nine a rave review. Thanks, Sarah!

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Something Rotten nominated for NC school library award

Something Rotten is one of ten titles nominated for the North Carolina School Library Media Association Young Adult Book Award for 2009-2010! Students from across the state will read Rotten along with the other nominated books next school year, and then in March or April of 2010 they'll vote on their favorite. Last year's winner was Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer. At least she's not among the nominees this year! But the competition is just as tough:

The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal	Michael Scott
Chosen	P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
City of Bones	Cassandra Clare
Eon: Dragoneye Reborn	Alison Goodman
Impulse	Ellen Hopkins
The Juvie Three	Gordon Korman
Lock and Key	Sarah Dessen
Paper Towns	John Green
Something Rotten	Alan Gratz
Thirteen Reasons Why	Jay Asher

Hrm. Tough competition indeed. Well, at least it's an honor to be nominated! Thanks to all the NC school librarians who've been so supportive of me and my books.

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Made of Awesome (and Felt)

Thanks to Beth for the link to this bit of awesomeness! Heidi Kenney at My Paper Crane has made a plush tauntaun with a zipper in the stomach so you can insert and remove the half-frozen Luke. I wonder if the lining is the color of entrails. . .

Now I need to go find out more about this Stitch Wars.

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What If We All Disappeared?

Back when I was a sales rep and spent countless hours driving the interstate system of the southeast, I often found myself envisioning grass growing through cracks in those roads while kudzu crept in from the sides. I can't explain why - but I found those images really appealing and I spent an absurd amount of time wondering how quickly those roads would grow over if nobody were driving over them. And how long would it take for the trees to spread back into those grassy clearings beneath the power lines?

Now there's a book that answers all of my questions! Check out this fun graphic (well - fun for me - in an admittedly weird way) showing a progression of events beginning with the sudden disappearance of all humans. There's also an animation showing the slow decay of a house. When I was a kid we sometimes found remnants of houses on our hikes - part of a foundation or the remains of a stone wall or - if we were really lucky - a standing fireplace and part of a chimney with just a foundation around it. So this isn't a newly-developed interest. But for those out there who may share it - here are some photos of abandoned cities in the former USSR. And here are some in the US. Have fun!

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A Kiss from Tokyo

"A Kiss From Tokyo" Theatrical trailer from Stephane coedel on Vimeo.

Check out this amazing faux 1964 movie trailer put together by Kevin Dart and Stephane Coedel to promote the upcoming release of Dart's Seductive Espionage, seen below. The book is a collection of art Kevin created around the fictional super-spy Yuki 7, evoking book covers and movie posters of a bygone, groovier era. Can't wait to get my hands on the book--and perhaps one or two of the poster prints. In the meantime, enjoy the preview...

And I'm drooling over this 20,00 Leagues print from Kevin's shop--but it's already sold out!

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Kids book cakes

Three posts in one day? Sure. Why not. Check out the Cake Wrecks blog for this and other scrumdiliumptious cakes inspired by children's books. (These NOT being cake wrecks, of course, but great works of art...)

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Terrible Yellow Eyes

So much awesomeness in one place! Terrible Yellow Eyes is a collection of artwork inspired by Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (recently voted "Best Picture Book Ever" by Gratz Industries). Thanks to Elizabeth Dulemba for the link.

I think this one by Pascal Campion is my favorite so far.

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Japanese baseball managers, shame, and "kyoyu"

Wayne Graczyk, sportswriter for the English-language Japan Times, explains Yokohama BayStars manager Tatsuhiko Oya's decision to take a "kyuyo," beginning yesterday.

[W]hat is a kyuyo?

Well documented in Robert Whiting's 1977 book, "The Chrysanthemum and the Bat," a kyuyo is truly a Japanese concept, whereby a manager takes a rest with the theory being the team members are ashamed they played so poorly, their manager had to step aside.

The interim manager jumps in to revive the team and, if all goes according to plan, the players suck it up, perform much better, and the original manager returns from his "rest" period to lead the team and continue its winning ways — even as far as winning a championship — and everyone supposedly lives happily ever after.

It's an odd concept. In America, a Major League manager would just quit--or be fired. The idea of taking a break from the team until they can turn things around by themselves is an odd one. And what about the poor fellow hired as interim manager who turns the team around, and then has to give up his job when the old manager decides he's ready to return?

It does not always work out that way, of course, and often the manager never returns from his "rest." It is likely Oya is done as the Yokohama skipper and, if Tashiro does a halfway decent job over the remainder of the season, he may be retained for 2010. If not, the BayStars will just get somebody else.

Well, there's some justice in that, at least.

Read the full article here.

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Selling short fiction as Kindle and PDF downloads

Over the past week, John August has had an original short story he wrote available for sale both as a Kindle download and as a PDF download. The price: 99 cents. John's a screenwriter by trade, but he was asked to write a story for a print anthology that may or may not materialize, and wanted to do something with his story. Rather than submit it to national magazines, he thought he'd try this online experiment with it instead, and the results are fascinating. Numbers and a blurb from his blog:

"Short version: I sold more copies than I expected, with fewer technical issues. I had picked the Friday of Memorial Day weekend precisely because I hoped it would be slower-paced, allowing me to fix whatever disasters struck without a crush of weekday traffic. But I could have been more ambitious, and a mid-week launch would have made more sense."

Yes, he makes only .35 out of .99 for Kindle sales! Even so, he made more money selling through Amazon because three times as many people downloaded his story for the Kindle than did for alternative eReaders. (I, who own no Kindle, bought one of the PDFs and read it on my computer.)

The New York Times wrote an article about John and his experiment today, in which they report that "[a]s of Friday, 'The Variant' was ranked No. 69 on Amazon’s list of most popular Kindle offerings, right behind 'My Sister’s Keeper,' by Jodi Picoult." That's not too shabby. But as John will be the first to point out, his sales at that level may not be as sustainable as Picoult's. Amazon doesn't give him any kind of breakdown on his sales--not even by day!--but he was able to use the PDF downloads from e-Junkie to make some observations. John sold 171 downloads of The Variant PDF on the first day, but was selling only 17 a day by week's end. More than half his sales came in the first two days. He'll no doubt continue to sell The Variant over time as new readers find him, but probably never again in those early, bestselling quantities. John again:

"It’s a fine number of sales for a short story that would have likely been buried in some specialty magazine. But I’m not sure I can offer any meaningful analysis of the publishing model, partly because I started with a higher profile than many fiction writers might."

And therein lies the rub, as Hamlet might say were he in the publishing industry. (And not fictional.) Could I acheive the same kind of numbers he did in one week offering up an original short story on Amazon and on my website as a PDF? No. I don't have his audience. Could I sell those numbers over time? Perhaps--and since uploading a story to Amazon is free, it wouldn't cost me anything to try it. And though I'd be selling directly through the Evil Empire (as far as the Rebel Alliance, er, independent bookstores, are concerned), I'd be selling something there that indies couldn't sell. It's not like they have a section for short story chapbooks, and it's not like I can afford to print up short story chapbooks anyway. These would be middle grade and young adult short stories that would have no other venue. (And don't tell me Cicada; they're closed to submissions from authors they haven't worked with before, and they can't pay their contributors right away either.)

So I'm considering it. I hate that Amazon would take such a bite, but you can't argue with sales figures of 3 to 1. I'd still want to offer my stories as PDF downloads on my own site using a service like e-Junkie, but there's a pound of flesh to pay there too--it costs $5 a month to post up to ten items for sale. Would I, over time, be able to make back the cost of the cart service, and then profit on top of that? Even with ten stories up for sale?

Aye, we're back to that rub again. More thoughts on this as I tinker.

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