Entries Tagged as 'Special Guest Stars'

Special Guest Friday - Stacy Hague Hill of Tor

About midway through the publication of my book, Mad Kestrel, my editor’s assistant accepted another job. Since he’d been my primary contact from day one, I was terrified! Who would answer my questions and keep me in the loop? I needn’t have worried -  Stacy’s smart, reassuring and funny, and if she doesn’t know the answer to a question, she won’t quit until she finds it. I’ve been so lucky to work with her, and I’m delighted she agreed to pay us a visit today. Now, without further ado, let me introduce you to Stacy Hague-Hill, editorial assistant at Tor!

“I’m an Assistant Editor at Tor Books, and I love my job. But, while there’s an understanding that anyone whose title involves the word “assistant” must do a lot of scut work, not everyone knows what, in the context of a busy editorial office, being an assistant means. When Misty kindly asked me to write a guest post, I thought I’d track a regular day and see how it shook out as a way to introduce what it’s like to do my job.
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Guest Blog: Yanni Kuznia

Poster’s note: I met Yanni several months ago, online, when she invited me to participate in a Subterranean Press anthology, literally the day after I’d been thinking, “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to get a chance to work with SubPress someday?” She’s up next in our ongoing attempts to get a view of other angles of the publishing industry, so without further ado, here’s Yanni! :) -Catie

Hi there and welcome to the show! I’m Yanni Kuznia. In another life I was a Russian historian, professional actress, and stuntwoman. In this life, I’m Director of Production at Subterranean Press. For those of you not familiar with Subterranean, or SubPress as we affectionately call it, we publish lavishly designed, and frequently illustrated, collector’s and trade editions of a wide variety of books, both new and previously published.

I’ll be honest: I’m pretty new to the whole publishing industry. About a year ago, I met Bill Schafer, the owner of SubPress at PenguiCon 5.0 while I was liasing for Guest of Honor Elizabeth Bear. After Bear introduced us, we happened to sit next to each other during a rather dull panel. We snarked a bit, then decided to take it outside. Turns out our senses of humor gelled quite nicely and we lived within shouting distance of each other. Not long after, Bill offered my first professional proofing gig. He called it my audition (he was pandering to my actress nature). If I did well, there would be more proofing jobs in the future. Apparently, I must have done something right as I’ve been at SubPress full-time for something like seven or eight months now. It’s been quite the learning experience for me, with a lot of growing pains and even a few screw-ups.

The question I’m asked most about my job is, obviously enough, what do I actually do? Well, my work starts after the publishing arrangements with the author, agent, and/or original publisher (if applicable) have been made. The computer file for the book is sent to me and from there I must: prepare the file for the designer; approve the initial book design, proof the book (either myself or send it to somebody else), find artwork, choose the materials the book will be printed on, and bound in, and send everything off to be printed. Thus far I’ve taken three books through the entire process and had my sticky fingers in nearly every book we’ve published since last September.

It hasn’t been easy. I’ve been reading since I could understand that the squiggles on pages corresponded to the garbled sounds coming out of our mouths. However, there’s a world of difference between reading for fun or information and reading for mistakes of various kinds, such as–but not limited to–punctuation, syntax, and formatting differences. It’s hard, folks. It’s like reading a contract. Your eyes sometimes start to glaze over. You realize that you’ve read the last three pages without really seeing them, and it’s your head if it goes to print with mistakes in it, so you go back to cover your butt–and the pages. I’ve learned that at some point you realize that you always are worried you missed something and you just need to pull the trigger to get the little bugger to the printer.

And it’s not just about the words on the pages. You have to coordinate what the author wants, the interior designer wants to do, what you want, and what you think the customers want or will appreciate. Sometimes you want to spend more on the design than the book’s price point will allow and have to make that painful decision between artistry and running a business. Because it is a business, and while making the books is artistic and creative, at the end of the day you have to pay the authors and artists and printer and all the other people involved or else what you do won’t matter because it won’t be produced.

In the end it’s really amazing when you get the book in your hot little hands and say, “I did this. I put this book together. People are going to read this!” I realize I’m biased, but SubPress puts out some beautiful books and being able to say I had a part in it is one of the most satisfying and fulfilling things in my life.

Guest Blog: Alethea Kontis

Poster’s note: I met Alethea a couple of years ago at World Fantasy Con in Austin when we were both on a shuttlebus together, and she and her friends very kindly enveloped me into their group and invited me to lunch. We (all) hit it off splendidly, embarking on a weekend that involved people throwing themselves through hedges to greet one another and other such silliness, and it is my utter delight to have invited her to post about a day in the life of an Ingram Buyer.

Ingram Books, for the uninitiated, is the world’s largest wholesale distributor of books. As such, it is very, very important, and not a little mysterious, to those of us who write, and so we thought a back-door look at what the people who help bring our books from publisher to bookshelf actually do day-in and day-out might be interesting…and it is. :)

-Catie

A day in the life of Alethea Kontis, Incredible Whirlwind of Beauty and Dynamite — Ingram Buyer by day, New York Times best-selling author by night.

April 14, 2008

3-something a.m. — The rumble of thunder wakes me up. I stumble out of the bedroom in the dark, unplug the laptop, shut down the desktop, and stumble back to bed.

6:15 a.m. — Wake up before the alarm goes off. Check my email. Solaris got my copyedits yesterday, but they can’t open the attachments. Can I please resave them as .rtf and send them again? Sure. Walk down to the office to power the desktop back up.

6:22 a.m. — Walk back through the kitchen. Put bread in the toaster. Look out the window. Laugh hysterically. What woke me up at 3 a.m. wasn’t thunder.

6:25 a.m. — Grab my digital camera and walk barefoot through the cold grass (there’s a freeze warning tonight) to take pictures of the dead tree that has fallen from my next-door neighbor’s yard onto my back fence. I know to take pictures of the evidence before anyone has a chance to tamper with it. I watch CSI.

7:23 a.m. — Arrive at work. Turn on computer and multicoloured rope lights. Stop by International Department for chai tea. Stop by fellow buyer’s office and check out the thumb she broke while swordfighting. Assemble audio bestseller report for NY Times. Review orders that have come up for release. Check out what my weekly returns cycle looks like. Not too bad.

7:45 a.m. — Send an email to my supervisor reminding her that I’ll be working lunches and staying late this week, because I’m leaving work early Friday to catch the plane to NY Comic Con. I still have no idea what to pack.

(Poster’s note: All this before 8am. I don’t think I do that much in a *day*. And yet there’s more!)

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Friday Fun: Joshua Palmatier!

Happy Friday, everyone! Please join me in welcoming Joshua Palmatier to the blog today! *wild applause*

Hey, everyone! I first want to thank everyone here at Magical Words for the guest blogging invite. Hopefully I’ll have something important to say. Or at least something of interest.

First, an introduction: My name is Joshua Palmatier and I’m a fantasy author, with three books currently out from DAW Books. All three are part of the Throne of Amenkor series. The first is called The Skewed Throne and introduces my main character, Varis, an orphan who’s barely surviving in the slums of Amenkor, but who gets trained by one of the city’s Seekers to become an assassin. She comes to despise her talents and then is given the ultimate mark: the Mistress, ruler of the city, who sits on the Skewed Throne. Her only obstacle is the Skewed Throne itself. It knows Varis is coming . . . and it’s insane.

Bwahahahahahahahaha!

I couldn’t resist the evil laugh. *grin* John Scalzi said I write about disturbed furniture . . . and he’s right. *sigh* But there are plenty of other things going on as well—an invading sea force! blue people! an inexplicable White Fire! and of course, death and destruction! Pretty much everyone who had to sum up my novels in one word used “gritty”. The cover for the third novel:

The Vacant Throne

gives you a pretty good vibe of what the series is all about. If you’d like to see more about the Throne of Amenkor series, including the two sequels The Cracked Throne and The Vacant Throne, check out my website at www.joshuapalmatier.com.

But enough about me and my books! I want to talk about something nearly every magical world needs, something completely non-controversial and guaranteed to create no waves: religion! Specifically, I’d like to talk about inventing a religion for you world. [Read more →]