I received my semi-annual statement from Penguin via my agent for The Road to the Dark Tower yesterday. I keep expecting to open these and find several pages filled with zeroes, but that hasn’t been the case yet. Exactly five years after publication, it is still selling at a pace of about 2.5 copies every day. Of the sales in the last six months, fifty were for electronic versions of the book, eighty copies were sold in Canada and the rest in the U.S. At the current rate, I should earn out my advance in three more years!
I received my contributor copies of Issue 62 of Cemetery Dance magazine yesterday. Didn’t have time to do more than scan through it yet. Looking forward to reading all the Blatty material.
I tried to watch the AMC reboot of The Prisoner last night. I recorded it, but found that it is available On Demand on Comcast so I went there instead. I made it about 3/4 of the way through the first hour and gave up. It simply didn’t interest me or hold my attention. Did anyone watch it and like it? Hard to compare to the original. Caviezel is no McGoohan.
Last night’s Criminal Minds seemed like a mash-up at first. The swimming pool scene needed the theme music from Jaws to be complete, and of course there was the obvious Hannibal Lecter influence. Prentiss was a pretty convincing flirt. L&O:SVU took on the new DNA controversy, where people are able to spin the DNA out of blood cells and replace it with DNA from another source to fake evidence. Sinister scientists rubs his hands together in glee and cackles at the end. Mwaaa-ha-ha.
I had to laugh at the clip of Al Gore’s cameo for this week’s 30 Rock: “There’s an old African proverb,” he says, “that I just made up…” I’m also getting a kick out of Ellen Page’s commercials for CISCO. She’s funny and natural. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the future.
In the rejection department: I received one that featured the tell-tale word “alas.” Any guesses as to where it came from? I have this 10,000 word contemporary urban fantasy story that is really tough to market. The protagonist is a teenager, and it’s a little flippant, but it’s also too damned long for most venues.
