On being (a)social

I have a confession to make. One that will shock you, I know: I’m not that into blogging. (I've been making an attempt to blog on a more regular basis, but who knows how long that will last.) I spend a little more time on Facebook than I do here, but not much. Mostly, you’ll find me on Twitter, but even then, compared to most of the Twitterati, I’m barely there. My non-writer friends who don’t use Twitter for conversations are probably laughing at that, but it’s true. I tweet far less than any writer I know. I suppose it’s no surprise I should be a social networking wallflower since I’m even more so in person. It’s not that I don’t like spending time with friends, it’s just that it seems to take a gargantuan effort for me to engage with anyone. The very idea of “hanging out” can exhaust me, let alone the prospect of a party or club. The most I can manage is a quiet weekly tea with a very small group, and even that I sometimes have to force myself to do because of all the other people I might incidentally have to interact with along the way.

So when it comes to socializing for an actual purpose—the whole “building a platform,” networking, and marketing shebang—you might as well tell me to get a clipboard and go down the street and schmooze with the other “do you have a moment to sign this” clipboard people who frequent my neighborhood. (Confession #2: When I see the clipboard people, I sometimes go blocks out of my way to avoid them, no matter how worthy the cause.)

Ultimately,  I have my doubts being social actually sells books. Maybe I’ll feel differently once my book is for sale, but I know I personally don’t buy books because the author blogs and tweets. After I buy a book and fall in love with it I might go looking for the author’s blog because I want to know more about them, find out what they’re working on now and when the next one’s coming out, and maybe where I can meet them at a local book signing.

Do I buy books because I already know the authors through social media? Sure, if it’s something I’m interested in. But even if every single person following me on Twitter bought my book, while I’d be flattered and humbled and pleased as punch, it wouldn’t make much of a dent in the numbers publishers look at (and sadly, not even in my pocketbook.) Most people following me on Twitter don’t even read my blog. In all honesty, outside the Robert Downey, Jr. Effect, I get about three hits every time I post an entry, even after tweeting it from both my author and personal accounts and with an auto-post on Facebook.

I read a blog this morning from an author whose recent post on self-publishing got over 2,500 hits and ended up getting a mention in Jane Friedman’s weekly round-up of the Best Tweets for Writers. Agent-mate Roni Loren was also recently featured on Jane’s Best and regularly gets multiple retweets and comments—and deservedly so. But I can tell you now I’ll never end up on that list, because I don’t write the kinds of posts that merit such attention. I considered it early on and decided I simply can’t give advice—not on writing, not on querying, and certainly not on publishing. I feel profoundly uncomfortable doing so when there's so much advice out there from so many people better equipped to give it.

What I do instead is more like an extended Twitter feed. I post pictures that inspire my writing, I talk about oddities I’m researching (last night it was the distance across the English Channel and how long it takes to swim it), and every once in a while I share the vagaries of my writing habits, like using the tarot to solve plot problems or taking a shower to talk to my muse. I suppose it’s as much a stream-of-consciousness babble as anything else. But, hey, that’s who I am. If you’re one of the “lucky” few I sometimes see socially, you’re probably used to it. ;)

My point (er, really, I do have one) is that in the end, I wonder if it matters. There’s so much buzz in the social mediaverse that it begins to blur together. I feel the same way at an office party with all the simultaneous conversations going on and the slowly rising voices as each person attempts to be heard above the rest: I don’t hear anything at all but noise and I quickly find an excuse to get out. Maybe everyone else is able to tune out the conversations they aren’t following and focus on the ones that interest them. And maybe those are the same conversations that build true buzz as more and more people at the party gather around to see what’s so interesting. Either way, those are conversations I’ll rarely be in on, as speaker or listener. Most of the time, I’ll just be talking to myself. And that’s okay.

Throwing Chora

So an interesting thing developed while I was writing the Queen of Heaven series. The beginning of The House of Arkhangel'sk opens on a card game. It was one of the first images I had of this world: a den of "iniquity" in heaven, where an angel of the ruling House of Arkhangel'sk, disguised as a local in heaven's ghetto, played cards with a demon. I thought my demons should have a deck of cards more suited to heaven than earth, so I invented one that used the angelic orders in four suits for the cardinal elements, and called the game "wingcasting." (Don't ask me where the name came from. It's lost in the primordial soup of the book's beginnings. All I remember is that I was looking for Victorian card games, and something put this combination of words into my head, and it stuck.)

The game is played much like poker, but to make it more complicated, I added a twelve-sided die with a different animal representing one of the four cardinal elements on each face. The play of each hand is preceded by a cast of the die, giving one's opponent the opportunity to call out a symbol before it lands. If that symbol appears on the face, the casting player must surrender a card. If it doesn't, the opponent must increase his bet to continue to play.

This was all well and good, and deliciously impossible to win. My naughty demon Belphagor became a master player—through both skill and tricks—and beat the pants off my little angel. (Or rather, beat the pants onto her...well, you'll have to read it.)

Little did I know, there were other demons hanging around the slums of Raqia who used the cards for something else entirely. One demon in particular likes to keep things from me until she springs them on me at the last minute out of the blue, and she was busy turning this harmless little deck of cards into a much more useful tool. Thus the divination system called the Chora (for the choirs of angels depicted on the cards) was born. More than just a device for fortune-telling, it became a means of communicating between the spheres, when such practicalities as the Internet and cell phones could not be had in my late-Victorian Heaven.

Why am I telling you all this? Heavens, I don't know. You're the one who came to the blog; don't blame it on me. What do you want, pictures of half-naked tattooed men every day? Well...okay, then!

Oh, and I'll be blogging over at Here Be Magic tomorrow about plotting with the tarot.

Wherein I am maudlin, rambling, and insufferably sentimental

With such a preface, how can you resist? Read my first post on "Here Be Magic," the Carina Press fantasy authors' blog: Ring the Bell, Close the Book, Quench the Candle. Sure, it's a little long, but you people are readers, aren't you? So act like it, and suck it up! And then be grateful it will be another six weeks until you have to read one of those from me again. ;)

C'mon, I even bought an image for it. It's classy.

There be magic

A fabulous group of fantasy, paranormal romance, and steampunk authors at Carina Press have recently joined together to create Here Be Magic. You'll find me in good company there, with some fantastic writers published or soon-to-be published by Carina Press and elsewhere. Look for my first post on New Year's Eve. I'll be blogging about endings and beginnings.