Shareable.net has just kicked off a new fiction series, “Visions of a Shareable Future,” with stories about a future in which sharing is part of the norm. I have the inaugural story, “The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening,” which I wrote as a kind of run-up to getting to work on my next YA novel, Pirate Cinema, which will likely be a 2011 Tor Teen title. Both “Jammie Dodgers” and Pirate Cinema are the story of streetkids in London who remix movies and screen them in impromptu theaters — the sides of derelict pubs, ancient graveyards, vaulted Victorian sewers — and establish an alternative to the mainstream Hollywood industry.

You can fit eight Jammie Dodgers into a single-occupancy Leicester Square hotel room. Provided that they don’t all try to breathe in at once. We breathe in shifts.

Cecil knelt at the window, phone on the sill, careful marks he’d made with a sharp pencil and his laser-pointer showing the precise angles to each mirror. He looked around at us all, his eyes shining. “This is it,” he said. “My Leicester Square premier.”

The monocle is already glued to the phone’s back over the projector’s eye. The phone’s been fitted to a little movable tripod. And now, with a trembling fingertip, Cecil prods the screen. Then, quickly, nimbly, spinning the focus knob on the monocle. Then the hiss of air sucked over teeth and we all rush to the window to see, peering around the drapes.

He was much better on the focus this time, faster despite his trembling hand. There, on the marquee of the Odeon, Keith Kennenson as an eight year old, begging his mother to let him have a puppy, then a montage of shots of Kennenson with his different dogs, a mix of reality TV, feature films, dramas, comedies, the story of a life with dogs, the same character actors moving in and out of shot.

Shareable: The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening

(Image: Tilt and shift – Leicester Square at night, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivative-Works (2.0) image from rthakrar’s photostream)

Hey, New York! I’m in town for the next-to-last stop of my book-tour for my new YA novel For the Win, and I’ll be at:

* Books of Wonder, May 26, 6-8PM
* powerhouse Books, May 27, 7:30PM
* McNally Jackson, May 28, 7PM

The tour ends on June 4 in Toronto, with a stop at the Merril Collection — can’t wait to see you! (full schedule)

Reminder: There are plenty of libraries, schools, halfway houses and shelters hoping you’ll donate a book to them.

More news on the activist translations of Little Brother into Burmese languages: the activists at Digital Democracy who used Kickstarter to fund translations into several indigenous Burmese languages have released a set of covers, and they are made of win.

In my latest Publishers Weekly column, I dig into the meat of the production on my forthcoming short story collection With a Little Help. In short it’s going well, but the book-tour put a major crimp in it, as did some bad assumptions on my part about the critical path:

It turns out that a few tasks were dependent on earlier stages. And Murphy’s Law being what it is, this meant delays. Specifically, as I wrote in March, typesetting delays meant that I couldn’t get into final cover designs and proofing, nor could I get into prototyping for the limited edition hardcovers. The sound editing couldn’t be done until the sound recording was done, and some of my readers had other priorities that took precedence (such as paying work!). In hindsight, I should have taken notice that the two tasks with the largest number of dependencies were also the tasks that required the most work from my collaborators.

Now, though, all the critical pieces are in place, and the book is definitely, finally, trembling on the verge of becoming a reality. And, I must say, when the typeset book arrived, it was absolutely glorious and well worth waiting for.

Closing In