Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Bankruptcy Notice

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Some disappointing news today: the furniture store I used to work at,* C.J. Woodmaster, closed this past weekend and will file for bankruptcy.

The announcement was in Saturday’s News & Observer (second item).

The CJ Woodmaster furniture stores in Raleigh, Cary and Fayetteville have closed. Those three stores, plus the one in Durham, which had already closed, will file separately for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in a few weeks.

I drove by the plaza on Sunday afternoon and it looked dark, but it was just a little after what would’ve been opening time so I didn’t think much of it. I hadn’t seen the newspaper article; one of my old associates called me this evening and let me know.

That’s too bad. I worked there a little over a year — the longest I’d ever worked in retail — and knew they were having trouble when they let me go (right before Christmas last year). I’m sorry to hear that’s how it ended.

___
*Apologies to the grammar ninnies: “at which I used to work.”

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Hello, my name is Gandalf

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Elliott, one of our church friends, has taken to calling me Gandalf: as in Gandalf the Grey (or, if you will, the Gray). This morning, Brian, our piano player, followed suit and called me Gandalf also. It amuses me.

I really appreciate the fact that so many of our church friends are science fiction & fantasy fans. (Maybe not to the point of being fen, but fans nonetheless.) My Star Trek tie was a big hit, for instance, and one of the girls drew the U.S.S. Enterprise on a star-strewn curtain that was put up for decoration. Pastor Mark has even used Star Trek references in his sermons.

So if you’re a fan of SF&F, and find yourself in Cary on a Sunday morning wondering where you’d be welcomed in church, come on by North Cary Baptist Church. You might be surprised at how well you fit in.

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And now, it's a lawsuit…

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Just 3 days after I found my house on Google Map’s “Street View,” I saw that a family is trying to sue Google for posting the images of their house. As if anyone can’t drive by and see the house — so what if they use the Net to virtually “drive” through the neighborhood?

Okay, it was a little creepy to open Google and see my house. But not creepy enough to file a lawsuit over.

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No More Book Advances?

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My fellow writers will be interested in a report in today’s Huffington Post that a new imprint at Harper-Collins plans to try an experiment in which authors would receive lower advances (or no advances at all) in exchange for a higher back-end share of book sales. Given the way Hollywood’s creative accounting usually reduces the back-end share to nil, I’d be afraid of the publisher adopting similar techniques. Also given the fact that most authors — and especially new authors — don’t get big advances in the first place, and the further fact that many authors rely on what advances they get to pay for niceties such as food while they write the books in the first place, this doesn’t sound like a winning situation for authors.

The article is “New HarperCollins Unit To Try To Cut Author Advances.” In this experiment,

At least two planned features break from traditional practices that have been aggravated by the increasing reliance on blockbuster hits for profits: The imprint will pay lower advances, or none at all, but divide profits equally (instead of 15 percent of the retail price or lower for the author); releases will be sent to stores on a nonreturnable basis.

At the moment it’s one imprint of one publishing house; it’ll be interesting to see whether this idea works — especially in terms of the rule that “money flows toward the author” — and if it spreads.

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Sputnik Documentary

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This TED segment was posted in the last few days (it was originally presented last year), in which documentarian David Hoffman presents clips from his movie Sputnik Mania. His hindsight isn’t quite 20/20, I don’t think — he seems to ascribe nefarious motives only to the U.S. — but some of the historical footage is quite good.

Note the comment on the page, pointing out a technical error in the animation. Mr. Cordes, the commenter, is quite right: the animation shows the satellite traversing from northeast to southwest, but in a prograde orbit its ground trace would traverse either southwest to northeast (ascending) or northwest to southeast (descending).

I wish I could say I’d caught that, but I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Which is why I wouldn’t make a good movie critic.

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I Saw My House on Google Today

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Not on the overhead satellite view in Google Maps, which is pretty neat, but on the “street view.” It puts you right out in front of the house: look, there’s the car in the driveway.

The picture looks to be 6-9 months old (the plants around the mailbox are different now and the neighbor’s house is no longer for sale), and apparently has been on the Net for about 6 weeks. Why our little suburb was important enough for them to photograph and upload, I don’t know; but if it’s any indication, I expect your house will be up there soon.

What a world we live in.

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Why I Write Stories

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On my shelves are books by people at least tangentially related to me, but which I have never read. I’ve picked them up, thumbed through them, and put them back again more times than I can count.

The history of the Page family is interesting mostly for the plate in the front with the same coat of arms that’s engraved on my onyx tie tack (which may have been part of an official seal); the printed version is much more detailed than the signet, with the motto Spe Labor Levis (“With Hope, Labor Becomes Light”) proudly emblazoned on the scroll. I haven’t cared to read it because marriage and adoption make that family name about thrice-removed from me (that, and the fact that it’s 115 years old and not in great shape). In a similar way, the slender chemistry book is interesting primarily in establishing for me a link between nitric acid and the manufacture of explosives, but it’s not something I care to pore over. I feel certain my descendents and others further removed will feel the same way about my nonfiction, which I’ve tried to make timely but will never be timeless.

If I can write some decent stories, however — with lively, realistic characters facing difficult challenges — stories that speak clearly and perhaps powerfully, stories refined in the crucible of professional editing and publication — maybe they will be more than bookshelf curiosities. At this point in time that’s still an “if,” but I keep plugging along. And maybe as my body returns to the elements of the universe, someone can read my words and find some value in them.

That’s why I write stories.

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Fixing Broken Links

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This weekend I worked on my monthly website update, between sessions of reading a high-priority manuscript for Baen and, for the university, editing a bunch of page-long program descriptions into single paragraphs each. Not only did I not get as far on the update as I would’ve liked, I got bogged down trying to fix a bunch of broken links.

I’m pretty certain I missed a few, and the question is whether I’ll be able to find and fix them before I go final with the April installment. I think I already know the answer to that one.

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Play Ball!

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Opening night of the new baseball season, with a stirring rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and a decent first pitch by President Bush — not a strike, but better too high than to throw it in the dirt.

Now, if only I didn’t have two simultaneous projects to work on so I could actually enjoy the game….

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Reading AUDACITY

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As if I don’t read enough already — slush for Baen, science and current affairs articles for my university job, and a little (precious little!) pleasure reading — on the advice of a good friend I started reading Senator Obama’s The Audacity of Hope. (I love libraries.) It’ll be slow going, I think, since I’m using it as my “put me to sleep at night” reading.

I was interested in his characterization of his run for the Senate as “one last race.” Famous last words, as my mom used to say.

And I wasn’t sure how to take his detailed descriptions of the Senate chambers — the doors and damask and all that. On one hand, I was surprised that anyone other than an interior decorator or architecture buff would be so observant, and so was skeptical that he actually wrote that part himself. On the other hand, I was a little jealous that I’m not that observant … and I think my writing probably suffers as a result.

More on this subject at another time. Break’s over; back to the slush.

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