{"id":2577,"date":"2011-12-13T10:19:55","date_gmt":"2011-12-13T18:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=2577"},"modified":"2011-12-13T10:19:55","modified_gmt":"2011-12-13T18:19:55","slug":"fans-favors-finance-fur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=2577","title":{"rendered":"Fans, Favors, Finance & Fur."},"content":{"rendered":"

Evidently Starfish<\/em> has sold in Russia.\u00a0 I know this because I\u2019ve just received a bunch of questions from a Russian translator.\u00a0 You might think that I might have heard earlier \u2014 at the offer stage, perhaps, or during contract negotiations \u2014 but Tor retains the overseas rights to that title, and they tend to leave their mid-listers out of the loop on such matters.\u00a0 (Starfish<\/em> was my first book, a deal offered to me when I was literally sitting on the toilet with my pants around my ankles. I have since learned that this is perhaps not the best position from which to negotiate.)<\/p>\n

The first time something like this happened \u2014 an Italian editor approaching me out of the blue, asking me to write a special introduction \u2014 I actually thought it might be some kind of pirate trying to print an unauthorised edition, and dutifully e-mailed Tor with my suspicions. These days I just roll my eyes. Oh, Tor. Is there anything more charming than your whimsical economy of effort when it comes to us mid-listers?\u00a0 Will there ever come a day when it\u2019s not<\/em> too much trouble to drop us a line concerning the fate of some novel we poured heart and soul into?<\/p>\n

Oh, how I hope not.\u00a0 I want to remember you just the way you are.<\/p>\n

Still, let us not dwell on such minor irritants. At some point I\u2019ll get a small unexpected chunk of change from Russia, which is one good thing.\u00a0 Here’s another:\u00a0 a fan by the name of Ellen Herzfeld took on the gruelling and unenviable task of converting Blindsight <\/em>into e-pub format, entirely on her own initiative.\u00a0 I\u2019ve posted it over on the Blindsight<\/em> backlist page<\/a> (or just save yourself a couple of clicks and get it direct<\/a>), with awestruck thanks.\u00a0 I still don\u2019t even have an e-reader, much less the skills to convert such files, and Ellen did more than a simple conversion.\u00a0 She checked my references, updated a couple of obsolete ones, and fixed broken links.\u00a0 If I ever meet the woman face to face, I owe her dinner. A nice one.<\/p>\n

Finally, in keeping with the traditional optimism of the season (Happy faux-birthday, baby Jesus! Only thirty-three years until the religious establishment nails you to a cross!), you\u2019re probably all familiar with my incessant refrain about how we won\u2019t have earned our own sense of self-importance until we use our big brains to control our instincts, instead of just making excuses for them.\u00a0 Well, here\u2019s something that might give us hope:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I mean, if these<\/em> guys can put their hardwired instincts aside so easily, we should be able to, right?<\/p>\n

Right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evidently Starfish has sold in Russia.\u00a0 I know this because I\u2019ve just received a bunch of questions from a Russian translator.\u00a0 You might think that I might have heard earlier \u2014 at the offer stage, perhaps, or during contract negotiations \u2014 but Tor retains the overseas rights to that title, and they tend to leave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2577"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2588,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577\/revisions\/2588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}