Foreign News

I don't think it's possible to run into a German born after WWII who doesn't speak flawless English. For that reason, I believe, none of my work has ever been translated into German—until now. So, it is with great pleasure that I announce the release next week of a collection of my most popular short fiction by Golkonda Verlag in Berlin.



Another translation has just come out, this one in French. It's the quarterly (I think) anthology of stories previously published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder. It includes French translations of stories by Paolo Bacigaupi, Robert Reed, Carolyn Ives Gilman, and others. My own contribution is "Osama Phone Home," or "Oussama téléphone maison." I announced on this blog that that was one of the stories I would self-pub as an ebook, but a few days later, the Dark Prince bit the big one, and I changed my mind. I figured the story had seen its day. But it's nice to see it get a final outing in France.

Closer to home, my novel Counting Heads has, at long last, been released by Tor as an ebook.

What I've Been Working On: Part 1

I feel pretty lame to promise to keep readers informed about my current work and then to produce no updates for two weeks. The fact of the matter is that I came down with a case of viral meningitis. Boy, does that knock you on your butt! I NEVER want to get that again. I'll spare you the gory details except to describe it as like having the worst pounding migraine headaches in your life while you also have the flu, and to spend so much time on your back you herniate a lumbar disk and for days and nights are unable to find any comfortable position standing, sitting, or lying. The whole business lasts 14 days. Besides the pain, the worst part for me was that I wasn’t able to write or do anything for two weeks and may not have the creative stamina for another couple of days. On most days the most I could accomplish was to check my email; on some days I couldn't even do that.

I’m not telling you this to earn your sympathy (well, maybe a little) but to encourage everyone to cultivate the habit of disinfecting shopping cart handles before you use them and to never touch the “T” on your face (eyes, nose, mouth) without first washing your hands. Seriously, people!

I want to thank my friends here who found out what was going on and checked up on me daily and who, along with my daughter and son-in-law, helped ferry me to my appointments and keep me supplied with food, water, and stuff.

I titled this entry “What I’ve Been Working On: Part One.” In it I will reveal, much more than I have on any public forum, what I’ve written since 2008 when I delivered the final draft of Mind Over Ship to Tor. This will explain why you haven’t seen anything new from me since that book. In Part Two I will reveal to you as much as I dare about what I am currently working on, my brand new, hopefully outrageous, poignant, and darkly humorous novel.

OK, first off, unfortunately, I have to disappoint some of you. Some of you think that I’m working on the third installment in my Counting Heads series. I’m not. Except for a few notes on the next book, I am taking a hiatus from that whole universe. I think you have got to agree with me that for all its good points, that universe is unrelentingly bleak. And if it was bleak for the reader, just imagine what it was like for me to dwell in it for so long. As you may know, much of the writing process takes place not while the author is actually writing but while doing other things. The ideas don't conform to a schedule. They act spookily, at least in my case, like an obsession. I started developing the universe and characters in 1993, with five short stories, starting with “We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy.” I didn’t start Counting Heads, the novel, till the winter of 1999, when “The Wedding Album” came out. So by the time I wrapped up Mind Over Ship in 2008, I had occupied that world of slugs and nasties and aff conspiracies for 15 years. I decided I needed a reality break, especially since I had other stories I wanted to tell. Will I ever go back to Book 3? I honestly can’t say.
The Holy Family
In 2008, I started a novel titled The Holy Family. From its title you can glean that its major theme was religion. As an atheist (proud and loud), religion has always fascinated me. As some of you may know, I was raised a Catholic in a big family (7 sibs) mostly in the Midwest. At the age of 14, I entered the minor seminary for the priesthood (a cloistered high school). What I learned there was probably the opposite of what they thought they were teaching me. That is, I discovered that religion is a wholly human invention, with no divine involvement whatsoever. This revelation matured over the years and on my 19th birthday I renounced my religion. Still, I wasn’t an atheist. I set off on a 30-year journey of spiritual exploration, from Eastern mysteries to New Age and create-your-own-reality silliness. It took that long before I could say that I am free of all the fleas of faith, except for a few harmless superstitions. (Such as, I read the entire help wanted section in the Sunday paper. When people ask me why I explain that it's a good way to take a pulse on a community. The real reason is because if I do, I'll never have to apply for a job again. Fortunately, it’s not a large section in the Fairbanks paper.)

Yet, after all my exploration, I understood nothing. I had no difficulty refutiating religion (to use my ex-gov’s neologism), but what about faith? And why do nearly 90% of my fellow Americans cling to religion? Could everyone (but you, my dear readers) be stupid? And not just Americans, but all cultures in all of history? At one point I concluded that people weren’t stupid, per se, but psychologically immature. After all, if I could fight my way out of the papist brier patch, why couldn’t they fight their own culture's fairy tales? I know how elitist this must sound, and by 2008 it was no longer adequate an explanation for me. So I began to research and read all the “militant atheist” books by Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett, et al, but I felt they were barking up the wrong tree. They were largely engaged in polemics, not analysis. It seemed to me they were trying to browbeat a world of right-handed people into becoming left-handed, and none of their strictly biological arguments moved me much. (But as a member of their choir, I enjoyed reading them anyway.) I read other theories; the ecstasy of nuns at prayer or theta waves during meditation seemed unrelated to faith. The God Gene theory has long been refutiated (I seem to like that word.) Even the book’s author hesitated to claim there was an actual gene, and it was his publisher who gave the book that title over his objection.

Then, while I was reading a popular science journal article at Barnes & Noble about a recent discovery in neurobiology, everything started falling into place. I suddenly understood why faith is so prevalent in the human animal. What a kick in the head! The explanation was similar to something Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion, but it took it farther than he did and, from my readings, no one has quite come up with it. I could easily be wrong, but it may be an original idea. Or at least an uncommon one. (Though my big idea might be false, it passes the test for a good science fiction story--plausibility.) And it did not denigrate faith or people of faith, or non-believers, for that matter.

I literally plowed into my story, which I set in a mixed-faith family in the generic Midwestern landscape of my youth. But, as some of you who know me can guess, I wasn’t satisfied with writing a mere book. The Kindle had recently been released, and I envisioned my new novel to be wholly digital. Also I knew that my agent, Ralph, had a Kindle of his own. He had started loading his clients’ manuscripts on it to eliminate the burdensome reams of paper he used to carry on his daily commute between Manhattan and Long Island. So in 2009, I bought a Kindle. My book would have illustrations and internal and external links. It would have an attached website where fans could pin their own fan versions to the text at appropriate places (controlled by me so as not to distract from my story) and download monthly updates to the novel. The genre wasn’t exactly science fiction but fictionalized science. I wrote most of the “scientific” articles that under gird the story, but I also linked to actual articles in popular magazines like New Scientist and Nature. It was great.

My plan was to write and polish part 1 (of 4 parts) and send it in Kindle format to Ralph. This took me an entire year. I sent it off and nervously waited for his reply. When it came, I was devastated. He wrote, “I do not understand what this is you sent me.” And I hadn’t even revealed the most outrageous part. That is, the internal illustrations would gradually take over from the text, and the entire 4th part would transform into a comic novel. This was not a gimmick; the story required it.

Ralph’s disapproval was not enough to sink the project. What did sink it in the end was a niggling realization in the back of my mind that I had stepped over the line from fiction to didacticism. I wasn’t spinning a yarn; I was giving a lecture and pounding my fist on the lectern. I had my big idea; but I didn’t yet have my story. So sad. I put it in a drawer and dreamt about what might have been.

And, no, I’m not going to reveal my big idea. Read the upcoming “What I’m Working On: Part 2.”

What Choice Did We Have?
Somewhere around this time, a respected editor asked if I had a short story for an anthology of his. I had only one in the pipeline, and I agreed to push it along. It was of novelette length and eventually took the title “What Choice Did We Have?” It was a fantasy, my first. It was also set in my generic Midwestern city. I sent him my finished piece, and he rejected it.

Some years ago at a con, someone told me there was a rumor going around that if a story of mine was rejected even once, I abandoned it. I’m sorry to say that the rumor is mostly true. I realize that that’s no way to try to earn a living writing fiction, and that’s why I still live in a crummy cabin and drive a 20-yr-old pickup. At least I have the freedom to write what I want, which I believe is at least as important as money. Anyway, although he had suggestions on how to improve it, I withdrew it from consideration. He wrote back encouraging me to revise it and that he’d like to see it again. I thought, what the hell, why not? I revised it, completely changing the ending to make it more clear what I was after. In the end, he rejected it a second time but assured me that another editor was bound to snap it up.

I do believe it’s good enough that another editor would take it, and if not, I could self-pub it, as I’m doing with my older stories. But I deep-sixed it anyway. There’s a thread running through it that now makes me uncomfortable. The thread is so essential to the plot that there’s no way I can think of to extract it. And so the story sits, completely finished and polished and sparkly and new, occupying a few hundred KB of hard drive, and it will never see the light of day. So sad. But I am master of my own career, even if it's a leaky dinghy.

Queen Sarah


You might get a kick out of this next one. In late 2009, I was attending an educator’s conference event for authors and having drinks with authors from around the state. I opined, “You know what would make a million dollars? A counter-autobiography of Sarah Palin.” Her own fictional autobiography, Going Rogue, was about to come out. People around the table chuckled and went on to other topics. But the next day, one of them quietly approached me and asked when could we begin. We began at once, laying out our collaboration agreement at the banquet table.

Here what was going through my head. I’d never particularly wanted to collaborate with another writer, with a few exceptions. One being, to work on a project I wouldn’t consider doing myself or was a newbie at (like a screenplay). And this one fit the bill. We were both competent writers, and while I enjoyed the polishing process, she could draft at least twice as fast as me. Writing is usually such a lonely process, I thought it might be fun to work as a team, albeit living in two different towns.

Also, and this may sound petty and vain to some of you, though I’ve been publishing quality fiction from Fairbanks for 18 years, up here I’m not actually considered to be an “Alaskan” author. I’m not asking to be made state writer laureate or anything, but geesh, it would be nice to be recognized as an Alaskan writer whose topic just happens not to be Alaska, or her land, people, history, beauty, or wildlife but rather an Alaskan writer whose subject is the attack of brain-melting nano-goo. I might be overreacting but it’s a personal pet peeve of mine. This book would fix all that in one swoop, even though we planned on releasing it under pseudonyms.

We set ourselves a two-month deadline to come up with a killer idea. The counter-autobiography fell by the wayside early on. Going Rogue hadn’t come out yet, and it was possible that we’d be unable to come up with anything wackier than her own words. Whatever it was to be, it would be political satire, using our knowledge of the state and current affairs. We worked hard, bouncing encrypted emails back and forth every day. We followed the anti-Palin blogs, read and annotated Going Rogue (what a chore), tried formats like in Stuff White People Like. (Entry: Wasilla, the whiz stop on the way to Denali Park) Despite our best efforts, at the end of two months, we didn’t come up with an idea we had confidence in. Meanwhile, other projects were beckoning my partner, and so we dissolved the collaboration and parted on friendly terms.

I was left contemplating what I should start next. Two things occurred around this time. Another writer friend, this one in Fairbanks, told me in passing that she had an entire novel on the gov finished and almost ready to go to an agent in NYC who was eagerly waiting to read it. I told her about my and the Anchorage writer’s project. We marveled at the coincidence. Secondly, I learned on the blogs that Palin was in talks with a cable network to produce a series on her life to be called Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Boy, this chapped my bum! Now she was claiming the whole state as hers? What an insult.

Back when I was writing Mind Over Ship, I watched an episode of The Apprentice and wondered how men named Donald felt about Trump appropriating their name for himself. As in “the Donald.” I thought I’d do Donalds everywhere a favor and reclaim their name for them. That’s why I named the space station line of clones, “the donalds,” and drew them as so unappealing. No Donald has yet thanked me for this, but that’s OK. It was a freebie. Now my half-term governor was claiming my entire state. That was intolerable.

While brainstorming about my next project, I found I couldn’t wean myself off the Palin blogs. They were deliciously vile and informative, and I continued to browse them every day, mainly Palingates.blogspot.com, which is a compendium of the Queen’s many sins. (I realize that by now I may have alienated all Christians and Palin supporters reading this blog. Sorry, the migraines made me do it.) A couple of months later, the Fairbanks writer emailed me to say that her agent asked for revisions to her Palin novel. We met at a coffee shop to discuss her novel, and before long we agreed to collaborate on a completely new Palin novel. I shouldn't have done it. I was learning that collaboration between writers, as opposed to artists in completely different fields, like writer and illustrator, is an iffy proposition, much like a marriage. The Anchorage author, with several collaborative novels under her belt, was able to guide us through the rocky patches, and we emerged on the other side unscathed. I knew in the back of my head that the Fairbanks author and I might have less than complementary writing styles, maybe even incompatible ones, but in my eagerness to save Alaska, I ignored any warning bells and jumped right in.

Our strategy was to write a realistic novel, an alternate biography, but with a snarky tone. Our model, except for the tone, was the 2009 bestseller, The American Wife, which is a fictionalized biography of Laura Bush. As in that book, all the names would be changed, and we invented a new Wasilla that was a composite of various Alaskan small towns we knew well. Thus we “owned” it in a literary sense and could write about it as experts. As in my earlier train wreck, THF, we would draft and polish Part 1 (of 4 parts) and start shopping for an agent. Since my agent didn’t like THF, I didn’t think he’d want anything to do with this one either, but we would give him a crack at it.

I was totally engaged in the work. I was having fun, a reason to jump out of bed each morning. And we made decent progress. Unfortunately, our personal differences started to show up and interfere. Still we mushed on. It took us nine whole months, but we produced a good reader draft of part 1. But just as we were passing it around to our first readers for feedback, the collaboration imploded from shear incompatibility. Probably my fault more than hers. I guess I’m not easy to work with, to put it mildly. So we quit, it never went to the agent, and that was that. Palin won again, dang her; Alaska was still in peril.

That pretty much catches us up to November, 2010. Failed literary masterpieces: 3. David: 0. Time elapsed: 3 years. But wait! Is that a phoenix I see rising from the ashes? Is a new day dawning? All I can say is: Watch the skies, my friends. Stay tuned and look for “What I’ve Been Working On: Part 2.’ Coming soon on this blog.

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And now for some crass PR. If you are enjoying my new commitment to keeping you in the loop, why don’t you press the Subscribe To link in the sidebar so you don’t miss an episode (even if I do). And if you have friends who appreciate my work, or you think might like to read me, for God’s sake, tell them about this blog. Sorry if that sounded too strident. It’s the migraines.

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And now for some really crass PR. You can’t have all read my Playboy story by now, “She Was Good--She Was Funny," but the Kindle store stats say you’re not buying the ebook version (and they know who you are). What’s the matter? Don’t you have an e-reader yet? Are you dwelling in the past? Today's financial section says that Kindle announced that since April 1, they've sold more ebooks than paper, even when the free ebooks are not counted. If you’re waiting for the Nook version, that was delayed by my illness but is coming very soon. Also you can download free Kindle and Nook apps for your phones, tablets, and computers. True, the story isn’t science fiction, but it’s a hoot, and it’s set in Interior Alaska! Not Sarah Palin’s Alaska but in David Marusek’s Alaska. Where else can you find such world class entertainment for only 99 cents? Anna Nicole Smith was on the original cover, for crying out loud. It was translated into Dutch, and Drew Barrymore was on that cover. It’s cosmopolitan, people. The protagonist was a Brit--in Alaska! On the Italian cover was Shannen Doherty with doves perched on her knees! What more can you ask? Don’t do it for me; do it for Alaska.

I think I need a nap.

Some Feedback to your comments . . .

I want to thank everyone who took the time to respond to my recent post. Your feedback came in the comments on this blog, directly to me via email, and on Facebook. By far the most responses came via FB, and so I will definitely have to keep it in the loop.

Here are some things I’ve gleaned. I would appreciate any further feedback y’all can give me about them or other thoughts you have. I’m trying to tailor my PR efforts to your preferences.

1) It was suggested I start a forum so that fans can discuss my work on their own with occasional input from me. I think this is a great idea, but I’ve got to wonder if there are enough fans out there who would participate. Amazon offers a forum feature on my Author’s Page, and no one takes advantage of it. I’d hate to launch a forum that only collects cobwebs. Anyone out there dying to discuss my work?
2) Here’s an important one: what should I share on this blog? One person encouraged me to share my wit here (and referenced the witticisms in my books to demonstrate that I do indeed possess wit). But another respondent said about the opposite, to steer clear of opinion and keep my witticisms IN my books, not on my blog. That leaves me wondering how much of my life and thoughts to share here. Another person said she appreciates my posts about Alaska. Everyone’s interested in hearing about Alaska, right?
3) Twitter. People follow Twitter. It was suggested I learn how to use hashmarks. I’d love to. Can anyone explain them to me? BTW, if you want to follow me there, my addy is http://twitter.com/davidmarusek.
4) Someone said I should consider using a fan page on Facebook, as opposed to a personal one. Anyone got any ideas about that? My FB addy is http://www.facebook.com/davidmarusek. BTW, I don’t play Farmville or any other games or stuff there. I just don’t have the time/interest. Does that make me a bad person?
5) Someone said I should link this blog to more places, such as Goodreads. I’m not sure how to do that. Blogger has Twitter and FB buttons, which makes it easy. Assuming I can figure out how to link elsewhere, where should I link to? Where do you go to get your book/author news?

Well, that’s all for now. Any feedback is appreciated.

David Wakes Up!

The datelines on my most recent posts show that I haven’t kept you, my readers, or the world at large informed about my life or work. In large part that’s because of my need for privacy. Also because I don’t believe people, even my readers, are much interested in how I live my life. And finally because I’m not really convinced that social media and self-promotion have much of a positive effect on my career. Some SF writers seem to bubble over with news, opinions, and facts and still have time to put out a fairly decent novel a year. I’m not one of those writers. In fact, I’m quite the opposite. Nothing ever happens, so there’s no news (with a few notable exceptions. See below). I’m opinionated, sure, but don’t consider my opinions especially worth airing, except when they come out of the mouths of my fictional characters. As to social media, I just don’t get it. Call me a social grinch, but I’d rather spend five minutes breathing the same air with someone than an hour reading their updates online. As to promotion, I’ve always felt that that was my publisher’s job. After all, they take 85% of every dollar in sales of my books.

But that’s all about to change. Why? For two reasons. First, my longtime agent, Ralph Vicinanza, died unexpectedly last November. I was lucky to have representation by a person of his caliber. He steered the course of my first novel, Counting Heads, and I will be forever in his debt. Now I am faced with decisions of how to chart my future course, which leads to . . .

Ebook publishing has exploded. Ebooks had been a tantalizing possibility for years, but no one knew how to bring them to the market. Amazon changed that with the Kindle. There had been ebook reading devices before, but Amazon put theirs together with the largest online bookstore in the world, making it easy and relatively cheap to find, download, and read books. IMO, the Kindle has done for books what iTunes did for music. And with Barnes & Noble and Apple jumping into the game, it seems clear that ebooks are the next step in publishing. Moreover, e-publishing has the potential to cut out the middleman, the traditional publishers, from the process. In five years, if such giants as Macmillan and HarperCollins are still in business, that business will be unrecognizable by today’s standards. In the meantime, we authors have the ability, like indie musicians, to cater to our fans directly.

Of course, that means we’re responsible for getting the word out ourselves and to build and cultivate our own fan base. In other words, self-pubbing equals self-promoting, and at long last I accept the challenge.

What does that mean? First off, it means that I’m committing myself to letting you know what’s happening with me and my work on a more timely basis than once every six months. For the last 15 years I have counted Saturdays as just another work day for writing fiction. Now, and for the foreseeable future, Saturdays will be my “social network” day. I have to admit, I still don’t know how to do it, and I’m hoping that some of you reading this can give me some hints. What’s the best way to get the word out about my fiction? Where do YOU go for news about your favorite writers? What do you want to know about me? How can I best use my time? Come on, give me a clue. I’ve had a Facebook account for years, but I never updated it, using it only as an easy way for people to find me. Now, I will at least copy these blog postings onto FB, but what else is FB good for? Do you follow Twitter? Does anyone really care to read tweets from me? What else out there should I be using?

It also means that I will begin to self-pub some of my short fiction as ebooks. I’ve already got “She Was Good—She Was Funny” up on Kindle for 99 cents. This was my second-ever published short story, and the only one that’s not science fiction. Actually, it’s a kickass story about love and murder in the Alaskan bush, and it appeared in Playboy magazine. It’s never been collected (except as a premium feature in the Subterranean collection, Getting to Know You) and is pretty much unavailable, until now. I’ll get it up on Nook next. After that I’ll do a mini-collection of three stories: “Osama Phone Home,” “A Hard Man to Surprise,” and “Timed Release.” The first of these appeared in MIT Technology Review, and the other two are flash fiction stories that appeared in the British journal Nature. These three stories have also never been collected or anthologized. They are available online but only behind a paywall. And then, if I can secure the rights, I’ll do an ebook edition of my most popular story, the novella, “The Wedding Album.”

There’s a lot of work getting all this put together. A lot of administrative hoops to jump through creating accounts, not to mention the formatting of the ebooks themselves. I’ve been forced to update a bunch of software (plus I need a new computer! I need broadband!) and to learn the finer points of .mobi and .epub formatting. More on this in coming weeks.

My big news


The biggest personal news I have to share is the fact that I’m a new grandparent! Here’s my little darling only three hours old, fresh from her water birth at home. If my daughter and son-in-law allow, I’ll be sharing more pix in future weeks.

Well that’s enough for now. But check back next week for more. I’ll tell you about the novel I’ve been working on for the last three years. And please leave comments (or send email) about things you’d like to see here.

Endeavour Award

Hey there--Looks like my novel Mind Over Ship won the Endeavour Award. Very Cool.

New story out

My latest "flash fiction" short story, "Hard Man to Surprise," appears as the Futures feature in this week's issue of Nature (July 30). It's an adventure in social networking in the era of designer drugs (as was my previous entry, "Timed Release." That must be a theme of mine or something). I hope you check it out.

If you are a Nature subscriber, you can read it online for free. If you're not a subscriber, you might be able to read it on your local university's server or find it in a library or on a newsstand. Otherwise, you might have to wait until December of this year when my contract allows me to make it available on other sites. I'll release both stories somewhere.

The photo above has nothing whatsoever to do with "Hard Man to Surprise." It's a detail of my license plate during my recent tour of South Central Alaska. You'll note that most of the splattered bugs are mosquitos.

Counting Heads Audiobook

Counting Heads has just been released as an audiobook by Recorded Books. Looks like it's available as a download (for $28) from Audible.com, through Amazon. This is my first audiobook, and I'm pretty excited about it.

Back from Vacation

I've just returned from a couple of weeks in a remote corner of Alaska. That is, in the Wrangell--St. Elias National Park and Preserve, where my family owns land in an inholder subdivision. The photo above is of my friend Rusty who accompanied me during his first visit to Alaska. He's standing in front of the Kennicott Glacier near McCarthy, which is about 10 miles from the subdivision. The old Kennecott Copper Mine can barely be seen in the background on the right.




We're going to build a cabin on our lot, and one of this summer's chores in preparation was to clean up a mess the bears made of stuff they pulled out of our storage shed. Here's a bear-mauled plastic bottle of Clairol hair conditioner. The bears found it irresistible.

New flash fiction story

"Timed Release," my latest story, is in this week's issue of Nature (June 11, 2009). It's a flash fiction piece and concerns a "bachelor aid" technology I am waiting for someone to invent. I thought maybe if I got my idea into one of the world's premier science journals, maybe an enterprising chemist would see it and be inspired to work on it. I believe it would be a boon to civilization and could make some drug company a ton of money.

Dueling Interviews

Two new interviews came out yesterday, one in the Alaskan writers blog, 49 Writers, and the other in the SF blog io9. This sure has been my time for interviews.

The photo above is a shot of my recent reading at Barnes & Noble in Fairbanks.