meomeoim

Two weeks ago, we had a torentual rain. It was like our house had been on fire, and to save us, Superman had taken the top from a water tower and dumped it on our house. But then we got water in our basement. So thanks, but no thanks, Superman, you douche. Batman would've just put out the fire with his fists. We didn't get a ton of water in our house. Maybe an inch, and only in really in the parts of our basement that don't have carpet. So it's not too bad. But my office in the basement, and my office has carpet.  Pretty much immediately after we got water in the basement, I had a party, and I had friends staying with us, and then we left for Comic-con. So we did not get a chance to properly dry the carpet. So now my office smells like musty stinky death. Eric claims it doesn't stink, but I'm starting to not trust his nose. At any rate - I'm totally neurotic about writing. Like hardcore. Everything has to be just so and just right, and I'm having a hell ...

When a reader is deciding whether or not to read one of my books, they weigh a few things. Whether the book sounds interesting, what they've heard about it, if they've enjoyed my previous books, the price, things they've heard about me, etc. When I have to decide what's in the best interest for my readers, my books, my career, and myself, the decision becomes a lot more complicated. Especially when considering what's good for one reader might be not-so-good for another. When I decided to sell the rights for the Trylle Trilogy to St. Martin's, it wasn't something that I came to lightly. It was something I discussed with people, struggled with, and weighed the pros against the cons. I knew there would be cons - and one of those cons would be backlash from people who didn't understand or agree with my decision. But in the end I came to the decision based primarily on this one fact: With St. Martin's, I would be able to produce a better quality product t...

I'm home! I had a great time at Comic-con, and everyone on the panel was super nice. But I'll go in to that in more detail in another blog, because I have more announcements to make. (Other than to say that I saw Charlie Hunnam and totally squeed). My announcement is this: I'm taking down Switched today, which means that in approximately 24-72 hours, it will no longer be for sale, (EDIT: Switched is no longer for sale as an ebook) and I'll be taking down Torn and Ascend by Friday, August 5, 2011. You may be saying, "Wait a second. I thought this was good news!" But it is! Because first of all, you still have plenty of time to buy any of the books in their current state at their current price. And if you don't get a chance to get them or decide not to get them now, they will be available again in a few months. In an earlier blog, I mentioned I would be taking down the books in August and September to get ready for the St. Martin's release of the Tril...

This is my first posting for websphere portlet factory re-branded as web experience factory. I guess I'll have to get used to WEF, at least it sounds like a word now although not very meaningful. Looking Under the Hood I often seem to find myself snooping in code, usually when trying to fix a bug or extend some OOTB functionality to my liking. In this case I had a need to display some busy indicators during an unusually long ajax call, which led me to the javascript that enables ajax in WEF. The file of interest is WebContent\factory\clientjavascript\ajax\ppr.js and inside it, the following code can be found: // Can overload these to, e.g., show a progress indicator for long operations. startLoad: function() { }, endLoad: function() { }, Since directly altering this file is not a good idea, we can instead take the advice in the comment and overload the functions in our own script: dojo.require("dojox.widget.Standby"); var standby = new dojox.widget.Standby({ ...

It's been a long time since I've last blogged, but for good reason. My life has been incredibly busy the past week and a half, but good busy. I turned 27 last Tuesday, so now I'm officially the same age as Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Brian Jones were when they died. But I'll live, because I'm not a musician, and I don't mix sleeping pills with wine or heroin. Because of my birthday, I had friends staying with me for a few days, and that was loads of fun. Plus I got to have a party where I saw people, which is neat, because I like people. At least the one I'm friends with, anyway. And check out my super rad birthday cake: My friends from out of town left this week, and on Wednesday, Eric and I headed out to the fine city of San Diego, where we are now. And let me tell you, the city is beautiful. The weather is divine. When we left Minnesota, it was 98 degrees with like 90% humidity. Here it's a cool 72 and breezy. Plus, ther...

This is the question on everyone's minds. Or it should be. Because I have been trying, without success, for several years to get Eric to watch it. I think it's important that he see it so can really appreciate what it means when I ask him to be my wingman. The thing that frustrates me the most is I only suggest movies for Eric to watch that I think he'll enjoy. And he watches them, then enjoys them. (Remember, Beaches , Eric? Or how about Hello Dolly? And Princess Bride ?! Or Clue ? Flash Gordon ? Heathers ? Huh?! I know you better than you know yourself!) But for some reason, he's been refusing to watch the following movies: Top Gun and Moon. Like me, Eric is a big fan of Sam Rockwell. Also like me, Eric is a big fan of things that are well done. Since Moon is both of these things, I can't imagine why he wouldn't like it. I've also recently learned the director of Moon is David Bowie's son. That means that he come from the loins that we've seen ...

One time, a month ago or so, I had dinner with my publisher and editor, and it went really well. But my publisher had talked with their website design guy, and he said that I post blogs at the worst possible times ever because it's like three in the morning, and that's bad blogging posting time. I know he's right. Because he is. And I suppose eventually I'll have to correct it by posting blogs at real times, but for now, I'm writing and posting this blog right now because I want to and I can. I actually have quite a few things to share with you guys, and almost all of it's awesome. So in no particular order: Here's something new I'm doing. It's called Formspring. I don't really know what it is or why it exists, but you can ask me questions there and I'll answer them. Not all of them all the time, but I'll check it sometimes and answer some questions. So if you want to ask me a question, you can check it out here:  http://formspring.me/Am...

I have been alive along time (nearly 27 years), and in that time, I have seen many things. Some things made me laugh. In fact, lots of things make me laugh, quite a lot. But I have never once laughed as hard as I did back in that fateful night of November 2009. That is the night I saw RiffTrax Live - a live telecast performance of RiffTrax riffing on Plan 9 From Outerspace in theaters across the country. RiffTrax are three of the fellas from Mystery Science Theater 3000 (namely Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett (Crow T. Robot), and Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo)), and RiffTrax is essentially the exact same thing as MST3K but without the puppets. When I'm explaining it to you, it sounds stupid. Because basically, it's just three guys talking over a movie. But the fact is, it's really frickin funny. Anyway - to continue with this story. I've seen many funny things. I have both entire serieses of Monty Python and Kids in the Hall on DVD, as well as having a lot of episodes of Family...

I went ten whole days without Tweeting or blogging or Facebooking. TEN DAYS. (Although I did retweet things Mark Hoppus and Neil Patrick Harris said last week, because I wanted to). Side note: Did you see the most awesome thing in the universe? (In case you're wondering the significance of said tweet, it's that my heroes are John Hughes, Jim Henson, Mark Hoppus, and Batman. Out of those four, Mark Hoppus is the only that's still alive and not fictional. So... that's awesome.) Anyway, back to the story. You may ask, why did you go ten days without using those things? Were you trapped in a cold dark cave without any internet? So I'll recap for you what my life was like for the past ten days: Last Tuesday, I left to go on a houseboat with Eric and my dog Elroy. The plan was to get away, relax, enjoy nature, and finish my book. I'm going to make a long story short but what ended up actually happening was that we got on the boat, parked to take a nap, and woke up to ...