the contest, and research
Just to bring you up to date on the contest, a couple of points:
1. Ten people still are hanging in limbo because they haven't replied to the confirmation email. If that's you, get in touch so we can fix it, okay?
2. Right now there are 83 people signed up, not counting the ten mentioned above. So put out the word, because we have to hit 300 before I'll schedule the drawing. You'll notice the box to the right with a link to the sign-up page. Point people to that.
3. I finally added up what it would cost to buy all four books on unabridged cassette. With shipping, tax, etc, it would come to $492 for me. Also, I get a limited number of these things from Books on Tape. This is not a piddly paperback giveaway we're talking about, just so you know.
Change of subject.
Two mornings a week I work on Pajama Jones. I'm still in the preliminary stages, drawing town maps and writing up character reports and struggling with names -- which is shorthand for the most important thing, getting to know the characters. I get a great deal of pleasure out of all this. I love planning the town. My daughter says I should get SIM City, so I could really go crazy putting it together (the town's name, at the moment, is Greenbriar, Georgia).
When I was very young I remembering going to play at the house of two girls my age who lived around the block on Larchmont Street. They had a playroom in their basement, and the whole thing was taken up with a city they had built out of shoe and candy and jewelry boxes, cans of all sizes, and blocks. I was enchanted, and also, I was infected with the city building bug. I've always done this, but it didn't become legitimate work until I started writing novels.
So I said to my daughter, I said: speak to me more of this SIM City. And she went on to tell me about the possibility of growing my city from the ground up, starting with major geological events to get the land formation features I want. Apparently the software would remind me about the need to locate the sewage treatment complex someplace appropriate, along with other crucial but generally invisible matters. There are discussion boards where people wax philosophical about everything from schools to public parks. The SIM City website makes it sound like a career move:
As you build a city, the regions around you become important as you can set up deals to provide water, power and more. You can even work to build industrial parks and bedroom communities!
I admit, it sounds kind of interesting. It also sounds like the mother of all procrastination techniques. I'd have to upgrade my mac, because SIM City is ravenous when it comes to RAM. I'd have to learn it. I'd be obliged to go foraging for information and background and samples on the internet. Then there are the forums. I'd end up doing so much research that I'd most likely be qualified for a degree in urban planning. So, no. I'm not going to go that route, no matter how interesting it seems to me. I'll use pencils and graph paper and sometimes Photoshop, as is my usual approach.
On other research fronts, these are some of the topics I've been going after for Pajama Jones: Swedish car manufacturers in the U.S., how car factories are planned, historic building laws and procedures, architectural firms and how they work and get paid, famous philanthropists, what kind of education a head buyer for a high-end specialty store would have, designers of bed linens, designers of pajamas, the treatment of phobias, psychiatrists who specialize in phobias, the causes and treatment of bacterial endocarditis, heart transplant support groups, heart transplant procedures.
If you've got some good information to share on any of these topics, please do speak up.