Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, Marketing, movies, Paleo-Future, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Press, Promotion, Publishing, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Titan, Writing stuff
In a post-apocalyptic world a cult of religious cyber-zombies prepare to release a hideous new engineered plague on mankind. On Saturn’s moon Titan, an aging space prospector discovers an ancient alien artifact. It will take the psycho-sexual skills of one lone young woman to unlock the secrets of the device and save mankind – but can she do it, before the aliens return?
Find out with the new Science Fiction special effects extravaganza Titan’s Mistress! Rated PG-13 for violence and language, some nudity.
(Based on the acclaimed novel Communion of Dreams)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OK, so here’s the deal. Someone read Communion this spring and *really* liked it. Said person thought that it was a very visual book, and would be perfectly suited to a film adaptation.
That’s all well and good. I’ve heard that from several people.
But this person has some connections into Hollywood.
Huh.
Nothing certain, this person says (and I have reason to trust him). But the novel has been passed on to some people who will at least take a look at it. A serious look. And they’re the sorts who can get things accomplished.
What a weird idea, that the novel could first be sold as a movie. Then it wouldn’t be too hard to do the conventional publishing thing as well.
This is all speculative, of course. And I’ve known about this for a while. But after the last couple of posts being about personal stuff unrelated to the book, I thought I’d mention this.
Could be interesting. Granted, once given the Hollywood treatment, Communion would probably wind up looking like I described above, but still.
So, who would you see in what roles? Any suggestions?
Jim Downey
I’m feeling a bit wretched; both my wife and I have a touch of some GI bug, and it isn’t helping matters. So, just a brief couple of notes . . .
Over 4200 downloads of the novel so far. Feels a little weird.
And this blog is getting more attention. We’ll pass 3500 visits sometime in the next couple of days. And that doesn’t include anyone who gets a ‘feed’. Nothing like the traffic over at Unscrewing the Inscrutable (where I post pretty much daily), let alone Daily Kos (where I post occasionally), but still not bad for just a private blog.
Maybe more later. Maybe not until tomorrow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Feedback, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
I’m deep into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so may not have much in the way of substantive posts over the next couple of days. Combining that with my care-giving responsibilities increasing over the last week due to something of a decline in my charge’s health, and I don’t have much extra energy or attention span.
But I wanted to note that we passed 3800 downloads of the novel yesterday, and I have been getting a bit more feedback here on the site to it. These are certainly good things, and I would like to thank one and all who have helped promote the book by telling their friends or posting comments about it elsewhere. Certainly, nothing that I have done has reached so many people.
Thank you!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, Heinlein, Heinlein Centennial, Marketing, Promotion, Religion, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction
Over the next week or so I’ll be writing a lot about some of the things I saw/heard/experienced at the Heinlein Centennial this past weekend. It was a fantastic, and for me, transformative experience, which will play out in interesting ways for some time, I think. Here on CommunionBlog I will be posting everything I write, some of which will be also posted on UTI and dKos). This will not be in any kind of order, and this first item was in fact just about the last thing that happened over the weekend.
Jim D
*******************************************************
I went to the Heinlein Centennial for a lot of reasons. Robert A. Heinlein was one of the ‘Big Three’ SF authors of the 20th century. His work had a profound effect on me in my early years, and still informs much of my world view. There was going to be a large component to the Centennial devoted to private space ventures, with leaders in the field there talking about the work they were doing and what was on the horizon. There were going to be any number of other top-notch SF writers in attendance. And it would provide me the opportunity to do some networking, in promotion of my own writing.
I am not much of a fanboy. I’ve only attended a few SF conventions – I’m not real big on large crowds, and the time period of my life when most people get plugged into that world I was busy doing something else which entirely preoccupied my time and energy. By the early ’90s I was busy (and broke) starting a business, then re-inventing that business in ’96, then closing that business in ’04. Since then I’ve been largely devoted to caring for my Mother-in-law, as noted in my brief bio on the left.
Anyway, while I knew the routine and what to expect from such an event, I was a bit of an outsider, a noob. On the other hand, because of some of my other life experience, I can usually pull off having a ‘presence’ – of looking like someone who is a little more established, a little more experienced, a little more than just a noob. (More on that later.) But the truth is, I had been largely fighting out of my weight class for three days, bluffing my way into discussions, handing out cards for my novel, et cetera – and was pretty much exhausted from it all.
So, the last panel discussion I decided to attend yesterday was on a topic of interest to me, but somewhat outside my main areas of knowledge, and I went intending on just keeping my fool mouth shut and listening (I’m keeping all the details vague for a reason). The three panelists came in, got started with introductions, a brief statement on the topic, and so forth. I’d seen a couple of them in other panel discussions, and had some idea of what to expect. Then one of them made some silly statements about his new-agey religious beliefs that didn’t really pertain to the subject, but he thought they did, about how the soul exists outside of the physical body, et cetera.
One of the other panelists, an academic with established cred on the subject, an author with a number of highly-regarded books to his name, got up and nicely, but very energetically and with considerable verve, tore Mr. New-Age a new asshole and shoved all the crap he’d been spewing back into it. It was a thing of beauty to behold, and I sat there thinking “cool – this guy’s a rationalist, in addition to his other credentials”.
The panel discussion proceeded, returning to the topic at hand, and everyone had a good time. Mr. New-Age didn’t seem to mind the slam-dunk he’d suffered, probably because it was done with such artistry, and the contributions of the other panel member and the audience kept things lively and interesting. I kept my mouth shut, but the fellow who’d shut down the nonesense made a comment about something that made me think he might be open to reading my book. When all was wrapped up, and the room was emptying, the panelists gathering together their things, I stepped up to the table, said something to the Rationalist, and handed him my card. As is usual in such situations, he made nice noises about thanking me, said he’d check it out if he had a chance, and I turned to go.
As I did so, I heard an exclamation behind me: “You’re Jim Downey!” (The business cards I’d had printed up say ‘James Downey’.)
Huh?
I turned to see what the hell caused that. Mr. Rationalist looked like he’d just been handed a big fat check, standing there, my card in hand, looking from me to it and back again with a huge grin on his face. “You’re Jim Downey!”
He thrust his hand across the table at me. “I’m a raging atheist – I read Unscrewing the Inscrutable all the time!! In fact, you’re the reason I’m here! I read the post you put up a couple months back about the Heinlein Centennial, and so I contacted the organizers and told them I wanted to participate! Wow!”
I was gobsmacked. Bumfuzzled. (And if you’ve never had your bum fuzzled, you don’t know what you’re missing.) I’m sure I stood there like an idiot as he continued: “Oh, here, let me…”
He reached over to his bag and pulled out his latest book. Inscibed it to me. “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to run and catch the shuttle to the airport, so I can make my flight…I really wish we had time for a drink or something…”
***
Mr. Rationalist, I wish I could convey to you what an astonishing experience that was. (Actually, I dropped him a note and told him that I was going to be posting this, and invited him to come by and contribute – but I don’t “out” someone without expressed permission.) As I mentioned, I was weary from fighting the good fight all weekend, having a phenomenal time, but also very much feeling like I was completely outclassed by all the brilliant engineers, entrepreneurs, academics, and writers. To have one such panel member even recognize me based on my ramblings here, let alone to be so enthusiastic and gracious about it – well, it was a shot of rejuvenation juice which would make Lazarus Long jump for joy. Thank you.
Jim Downey
UPDATE: and in comments: Mr. Rationalist has dropped me a note and said it was OK to ID him: Richard Hanley, Assoc. Prof of Philosophy at U. Delaware, and author of South Park and Philosophy: Bigger, Longer, and More Penetrating and The Metaphysics of Star Trek among others. I mean, how cool is that?
JD
(Cross-posted, with tweaks, from UTI.)
Happy 100!
This is my 100th post here, and there are a couple of other mildly interesting milestones to report: sometime in the next few days the 3,000th download of Communion of Dreams will happen, keeping the average up to about 600 downloads a month. We’ll also likely cross 2,000 visits to this blog in the same time-frame (plus those folks who receive feeds).
Not huge numbers, but better than I might have hoped for in each case – thanks to those who visit here, thanks particularly to those who help to spread the word about the novel to friends. My goal is still very much to land a conventional book publishing deal, but I am encouraged that people are still at least downloading the book.
I’d like to invite any and all to just say hello in comments, and of course I’m always happy to have feedback on the book or blog.
Best,
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, Gene Roddenberry, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Star Trek, Writing stuff
A friend sent me this in response to yesterday’s post:
I’d missed the list of Honoured Guests. Have to make sure my autograph-mad friend doesn’t find out, I’m sure he’d ask me to round out his collection. Me, I just plan to be completely starry-eyed, at least about the space travel people. The writers – eh. No offense, but anybody can make stuff up; it’s really cool people who make it happen.
My reply:
None of it is necessarily mutually exclusive, and there are roles for both. I don’t expect you or anyone else to attend the event for the same reasons I do, and that’s OK. But you’ll note that it is being held in honor of the writer, not some engineer.
But Wil Wheaton’s response is a whole lot better:
“We are some of those people, and we are gathered tonight in one of those places. When we were here a few weeks ago to shoot footage for our documentary, I discovered that this museum is more than just a collection of cool artifacts from the final frontier and beyond. It is an affirmation of why I, and so many other people around the world, love science fiction, and why science fiction endures – whether created by Jules Verne in 1864, or Gene Roddenberry in 1964, or some hot new stereovision writer in 2064 – with a relevance that transcends generations.
“There are countless examples here of the real power that science fiction has to address current events in a way that’s safe and acceptable for most audiences, while speaking very seriously about them to those who look beyond the spaceships and rayguns to the ideas behind the stories. Whether it was written one hundred years ago or just published last month, science fiction can give us warnings about the future, hope for the future, or just blissful escape into the future, visiting fantastic worlds that are light-years away – and as close as our bookshelves and televisions.”
That’s just an excerpt from his post about being the one to induct Gene Roddenberry into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in Seattle. Go read the whole thing.
Jim Downey
(Via BadAstro Blog.)
Filed under: Feedback, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff
JK, a good friend of mine, just had a chance to read the novel through for the first time, and sent me a response. He’s clearly going be biased by his friendship, but I still thought that it might be interesting to see the email exchange we had. Caution: [Major Spoilers Ahead.] JK’s comments are in italics, my replies after.
I really liked the book. For what it’s worth, I expected the return of the fire flu and guessed that Mallory was the carrier and that there was likely to be something screwy about the cyberwear he made, guessed that Gates had some strong connection to the clones, figured that Darnell had told earth about the artifact.
I’m not sure whether this was due to reading it so slowly that I had ample time to consider and reconsider or if it a result of my analyzing everything these days. As I restrict my access to the general noise in the human world I find myself looking deeper into those bits I do let in. It’s been getting to the point that when I take Tasha for walks that I have to remind myself about that little physics story – and that the sky is simply blue and has birds in it 🙂
Heheheheehehehe. I’m not in the slightest bothered that you were able to figure out those things – in fact, I’m glad to hear it. I was very careful to build the necessary clues into the narrative so that anyone could go back and find them. That carries a risk that a few people who are reading carefully and are smart enough will pick up on some or all of the ‘mysteries’. That you did so just means that I did a good job in having sufficient information there to draw the legitimate conclusions later – that I was ‘playing fair’ with my reader.
Anyway, I loved how you developed the action around my expectations. And the biggest surprise to me was the “use” of the artifact. I had really been convinced from early on it was going to be an alien art show direct to the solar system and the gel was part of the power system required for the “beaming” into our heads.
An interesting idea. I hope that the final revelation was nonetheless satisfactory, and fit the available data.
As I mentioned earlier, I found it especially entertaining to have the clear references to current and recent past happenings.
Good, good.
The only technical part I keep coming back to is the experts and their trouble with non-inertial frames. I haven’t gone back through all of it so the following is “lose”. The experts can’t travel well on the space transports but they can seemingly do ok with the quick change of the AG systems. I know for several of the technologies you mentioned oddities in the theories surrounding them. I don’t recall details about the AG that would explain the differences, but then I read Chapter one more than 6 weeks ago and I am nearing 50 🙂
Nah, it is a fair criticism. There are two ‘weak’ spots in the tech of the book – that is one of them, and the other is the biology which lead to the creation of Ling with her latent abilities (which, interestingly enough, I was going to blog about this morning). My only defense is that it *is* science fiction, and while I make a good-faith effort to keep everything working and compliant with science as we understand it today, there is some slop allowed for the effects of the artifact and discoveries we’ve not made yet.
The quickening of the pace of the story in the final chapters was exhilarating! To quote a hackneyed phrase – I couldn’t put it down. Really. I read straight through from C 15 to the end (letting the weeds have a reprieve 🙂 )
Excellent. Paul [another friend] and I were talking about this last night, and he said that he just couldn’t understand people who wouldn’t feel compelled by the book this way. I know I have had a couple of people tell me that was the case. Then again, I have had several tell me that they dived in and didn’t put it down until they were finished 12 or 13 hours later. I don’t expect *everyone* to love it, or even like it – people have different tastes, and that’s OK.
Thanks!!
My pleasure. With your permission, I’d like to post this entire exchange on the blog, since it might just help some agent or publisher to see that there is a readership out there for the thing. I’ll not ID you other than by initials, unless you want to claim ID.
Well, about time to get MMIL up, get the morning really going.
So, there it is. Draw your own conclusions, or make your own comments.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, Marketing, NPR, Podcast, Promotion, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff
A suggestion early on was that I do a series of podcasts of the book. The topic came up over dinner with friends the other evening, too, with my friends (only one of whom has read the book) being very positive about the idea.
I’ve got some experience in radio and public speaking. I think I could do this, though it would require me to relax in my speaking style (my good lady wife, when I bounced this idea off of her this morning, was somewhat more frank than my friends about my tendency to become “RadioMan!”…you can see what she means in this interview I did with NPR almost 6 years ago), and go with something more conversational. It would also require me to go through the learning curve and get the necessary components (hardware and software) to produce the podcasts, though I’m less concerned about that.
Given that at this time I find it difficult to maintain the kind of concentration necessary to be working on a new long piece of fiction, this might give me an additional creative outlet. It could also help to market the book, and is a strategy being used by many other authors.
So, if you have some thoughts on the matter, or some advice to offer, I’d love to hear it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, Depression, Feedback, General Musings, Society
When I was still new to being in business as a bookbinder, I had someone call me one morning about doing some conservation work to a musical instrument. After I carefully explained that I was a book conservator, not an artifact conservator, they said that what they needed was the replacement of a small piece of leather which had been pared down to suitable thickness and then mounted, and that there wasn’t anyone in 100 miles who could do this for him. The guy practically begged me to help him out. Finally, I relented, and told him to bring the instrument in so that I could see what exactly he was talking about, but I made no promise that I would do the work.
He was in that afternoon. Opened up his case, took out his instrument. It was an accordian, about a century old. Needed a small piece of leather to function as part of the bellows assembly, if I remember correctly. Wasn’t very big, just a few inches across and about the same wide, and would need to be mounted under a strip of metal on each side. But the leather would have to be pared down very thin – a simple, but time-consuming task. I told him that it would take altogether about an hour and a half of my time, and with materials would run about $50.00 (my rates were only $25.00 an hour then).
He looked at me like I was nuts. “But it’s only a little piece of leather!”
“Well, yeah, but it’s going to take me 90 minutes to prep the piece, remove the old piece, mount the new one, and get everything secure.”
“But this thing is only worth about that much,” he protested. “I won’t make any money on it if I pay you that much to fix it. How about $10.00?”
I sent him on his way. And learned that it was pointless for me to try and help people who don’t really need it or want it. Unless someone values my services, and wants them applied in a suitable fashion, it doesn’t make any sense for me to try and convince them otherwise.
Which brings me back to this post, which generated some good feedback here and at UTI, and in private correspondence. I’ve thought a lot about this matter over the last several days, and thanks to the discussions I’ve had I’ve come to understand that this, like the above episode, is a matter of principle for me. And the principle is that I cannot force these people to do the right thing – I can only offer my services in a suitable manner, at a fair price, and then let them decide for themselves what the best course of action is for them. It’s not my job to save the world, or even to save the books in this collection from the people who now own them. It is simply my job to do good work when contracted by those who want my services. The rest is on their shoulders.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 