So what have you guys been up to?

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Other than discussing theology (again — rolls eyes.  Like a dog with a favorite bone.) and making puns, I mean…

In a publishing sort of way?  Post in comments, and I’ll make it into a coherent post sometime tomorrow.

New stories?  Favorite stories?  Yours?  Your friends?  Something going free or discounted this week?  Teaching any workshops?  Let me know, I’ll post it.

148 thoughts on “So what have you guys been up to?”

  1. Working on next my novel, although publication is a ways off. This one is a supernatural murder mystery, and I’m vascillating between several differentb titles. :-D

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      1. My wife says when she wants me to have an opinion, she’ll give it to me. With a 2×4. Or maybe a shovel.

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      2. I have three right now – Bestia, Canidae, and Pactum Dioboles. Trying to find a biblical tie-in, but while I could find an easy one for the first book in the series because of who I had as the antagonist, I’m having some difficulty here – there aren’t many werewolves in the Bible. ;-)

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        2. Well, there’s always Manly Wade Wellman’s identification of “the horseleech’s daughter” with vampires. (He usually didn’t make up this kind of stuff, but drew from folk info. So I assume some 20th century US people really did think maybe that’s what horseleeches were, since the KJV they read didn’t come with a glossary.)

          Dogs do circle the Lord about, in the relevant Psalm. There’s Jeremiah 5:6, with the “wolf of the evening”, and “Benjamin is a ravening wolf” (Gen. 49:27) — that’s a good one, because those left-handed (IIRC?) Benjaminites were known to be fierce fighters. And the wolf eats the bad shepherd’s sheep. There’s also Sirach 13:21, which has an interesting counter in Isaiah 11:6 and 65:25.

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          2. Beautiful wolf, so furred, so mean,
            Waiting in the forest green!
            Who hunts wee dainties, sating his tooth
            Wolf of the evening, beautiful woof!

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  2. I put this up um, two weeks ago, it’s the third in my Family Influence series, the fourth ‘Secret’s Sanctum’ should be going online this weekend.

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  3. If you’re in the Grand Rapids, MI area Saturday, you can stop by the local author’s book fair at the Grand Rapids Public Library and say HI. I’ll be hawking “Finding Time” an anthology of time travel stories as well as my Sherlock Holmes & Mycroft story “The Aristotelian.” And I’ll be teasing my Mycroft Holmes novel “Steamship to Kashmir.”

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    1. Myself, I always wondered about parents who would name their sons “Sherlock” and “Mycroft” (of course they’re going to have issues), but then again, after “Moon Unit”, “Apple” and “Dweezil” anything’s possible.

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      1. For the longest time, I thought I’d missed my call on naming the boys. They should have been Cain and Abel. But now they’re moving out of that phase, so maybe it will be okay.

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      2. I don’t know – different times, different tastes. My g-g-g-grandfather’s name was Zachariah, and while that’s not exactly completely gone today, most children would get a pretty hard time about it.

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        1. Naming trends — like most fashions — are such that it is nearly impossible to judge the reasonableness of prior era naming. It is entirely possible that Sherlock and Mycroft were only slightly off-kilter for their times, just enough so to make them quaintly memorable. Assuredly hardly anyone these days names a child Adolph or Napolean, to cite a couple once fashionable names.

          I think you have done Marshall an invaluable favor, granting him the right to instruct any progeny of his that “Bob’s your uncle.”

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          1. LOL. We use the expression — though Robert REFUSES to go by Bob — all the time, and when Robert was little he’d get very upset. “I’m not ANYBODY’S uncle.” At any rate, we figure Marsh is our one chance at grandchildren being the more human of the two. Robert will marry his career and the only “grandchildren” we’ll get from him will be cats, or perhaps diseases named after us.

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            1. So are you saying that Robert is like how Hazel described her grandson Buster in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls?

              If you get a disease named after you, it should be a respiratory disorder which is accompanied by rather violent expulsions of breath, so that it sounds like its name (pronounced similarly to a cross between a cough and a hiccup: “You have Hoyt’s disease.”) ;-)

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              1. Actually Robert and I sound like Hazel and her son in The Rolling Stones. I hadn’t read it in a long time, and was listening to it while walking, and the cross talk was EXACTLY Robert and I and the people who saw me must have thought I was nuts, I was laughing SO hard. So I guess he’d have to marry a patient wife who could keep us both in check… um… Wonder if he’d be blessed with twin boys like Cas and Pol.

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        2. I had to fight Dan to convince him Zerobabel — the name of his first ancestor born in the US — was NOT going to be bestowed on a child of ours. I think he’s still upset about that…

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          1. I personally wish some of my family would have developed some imagination in naming their children. There are some unique names, I admit, but there are also far too many “James”, “John”, “Mark”, “Charles”, and “William” amid my ancestors – in EVERY generation (my dad was James, for instance, and had a brother John and a brother Charlie — and my grandfather was also James. Does make ancestry search a bit difficult.). I’m the first “Michael” in eleven generations. My brother Robert has a namesake only two generations back. Sigh!

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            1. My parents thought they were being original naming me Travis, there were no Travis’ in their ancestry, and they didn’t know anyone named Travis. Lo and behold, I get to school and there are 3 Travis’ in my kindergarten class :)

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            2. Had the Daughtorial Unit been male, the name selected was James Gideon. James, for Beloved Spouse’s family always maintained a male with that name and even if the surname was ending we liked the tradition. Gideon, well, we like it, it goes well with James, has a good Biblical story to go with it and I liked the subtlety of of a son named Surname, J.G. — but fate and destiny decided that Female, (1), was what we needed.

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            3. You think that’s unimaginative? I’m the seventh Robert Munn in a row. My father, grandfather, great-grandfather, g-g-grandfather, g-g-g-grandfather, and g-g-g-g-grandfather were all named Robert.

              “Wait… your name is Robin, not Robert. What are you talking about?

              Yes: I had it legally changed in 2002. Not because I was ashamed of my name, but because I’ve always been called Robin (which is a nickname for Robert — in many versions of the Robin Hood story, he was originally Robert of Locksley). For years, the name on my ID didn’t match the name most people knew me by. Then just one year after September 11th, I was part of a group that went to China for a couple weeks, and the person buying the tickets bought the ticket in the name of Robin Munn, not Robert — but all my photo ID said Robert Munn. I’m still surprised they let me board the plane. It was after that incident that I had my name changed so that my ID would match the name everyone else knew me as.

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            4. We didn’t end up with kids, but when we were discussing it we discovered that my Lithuanian husband and I (Dutch/Belgian/Odessa Jew) had only a single family name in common going back a few generations: Adolf.

              Unfortunately that name is still toxic…

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          2. My mother wanted to call me Tabitha Catherine. My dad was fine with this, until he realized what the contraction would be. Sib is named for the Cajun side of the family, and started using the French pronunciation in college. Made for some interesting conversations with Sib’s friends, because our parents kept forgetting that Sib now used a different-sounding name.

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      3. Sibling had a college classmate named Chesna (pronounced Chez-nuh). While her mom was in labor, she saw an airplane go by and asked what it was. Chesna is very lucky her mom did not see a Beechcraft.

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        1. When I was in the military still, I had a co-worker who’s best friend was called Molly. Which was short for her given name – Femolly. It seems that Molly’s parents were … umm, not MENSA material. When the baby was brought to them from the hospital nursery, the parents saw her little ID bracelet, and assumed that the hospital had already named their baby … yep, the id bracelet said “Female (their surname)”.

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          1. Don’t assume NOT Mensa material. The President of the Columbia SC chapter of Mensa in the early nineties had three children: Baby boy, fat boy and baby girl. Yes, those were their names. See, that’s how hospitals back then identified them in the Carolinas. At least Robert bracelet said “Baby Boy Hoyt” — well, this TESTED GENIUS (remember that) thought it wasn’t his RIGHT to name his kids. He’d wait for them to come to the age of reason and name themselves. Since the thirdd kid was also a boy he called him Fat Boy, legally, to distinguish him from his sibling.

            He told me about this scheme with every evidence of pride. Actually the girl was the oldest and was 14 and trying on some name from LOTR. I’ve cherished this in my heart as evidence of what TOTAL ASSES and out of contact with reality very smart people can be. (And this comes from a woman who changed her name because it was “just wrong” and whose younger son goes by his middle name because he hates his first name — but neither of us would like having been saddled with Baby Girl/Boy through our teens.)

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            1. My AF friend affirmed that her friends’ parents were indeed, dumber than dirt – and yes, they assumed that the hospital had already named their daughter and there wasn’t a thing they could do without it.

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            2. I knew some people who didn’t name there kids, because they figured the kids should be able to name themselves when they got old enough, best I can recall all parents in such situations were refugees from the sixties.

              Thinking about it I believe that is how River Phoenix got his name, but I’m to lazy to google it right now.

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              2. My favorite comment on that family’s name scheme was P J O’Rourke’s who referred to them as “River, Leaf and Pond Scum Phoenix.” It’s mean, but it shocked me into sudden laughter.

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              3. C. S. Lewis’s parents, out of natural shame at naming their son “Clive Staples” called him “Baby” until he was a toddler, at which time he revolted and dubbed himself “Jack.”

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                1. But that led to one of the best opening sentences of all time: “There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it.” :D

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  4. Discussing theology? Us? More like engaging in conversation about the fundamental structure of the universe and the implications of poly-dimensional reality for how we should lead our lives. NOTHING even remotely theological about that!

    I don’t know about others here, but I don’t recall making a pun in days – a period even longer than Stephanie Cutter’s explanation as to how the whole Benghazi-gate kerfuffle was the fault of Mitt Romney, or Joe Biden’s nose after Thursday night’s debate. (Hey – who knew Coal-minin’ Joey had hired Chevy Chase for his debate coach!)

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    2. I think that the current administration is getting ready to blame Hilary. (Something I read today about how unhappy former Pres. Clinton is about the Benghazi kerfluffle.)

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    1. If that’s supposed to be a link to an amazon page with a book to sell, yes.
      If that leads to a website that say, “Who is this, and how did you get this number?”, then No.
      Hold on, I think I just saw myself leaving the room. WTHeck?!

      Hey, it’s after midnight. You really want coherent responses?! It is to laugh! :-)

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    2. If you want short links to Amazon titles, you can get them direct from Amazon by using the “Share” link. An amzn.com link which is copy/pastable appears on the popup. It’s called a permalink.

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  6. I put a short story up on my DeviantArt Stash page for friends to look at and comment on before I try to send it out for publication. Maybe 20 have looked at it, but no useful comments yet. In fact, only one, who said little more than that he liked it. I was really hoping that a British authoress friend of mine would help me improve the Victorian London setting.

    I figured this would be my last attempt at magazine publishing before I re-work my series of Mad Science stories into an eBook.

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  7. Nothing new ready, working on a novel. But new pictures on the blog, the ones from this fall. My model in the new ones, Nina, is a good looking woman and the one who gave her permission to post all of the ones we took (and also permission for their free use). There were some rather good ones, so if anybody needs free fantasy themed photos keep checking.

    I’m also working on some drawings, and have started painting too, so if anybody wants to check what my work is like take a look in week or so, after which I should be posting some of the drawings, and after a month maybe a painting or two.

    Yes, I’m writing too, the drawing and painting part is more a way to clear my head a bit. The truth is I may actually have more talent on that front, if I practiced more I might become quite good, but it has never been the compulsion dreaming up stories has been. I like to make pictures, but when I don’t I can forget about that for weeks, months or maybe years at a time (and I tend to throw away most of the finished ones, I feel no attachment to them), while the damn characters and unfinished stories keep bugging me until I do something with them.

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  8. I sent this to Sarah via email last night since there wasn’t a good post to add it to as a comment, but now there is…

    Just published my very first novel (actually, my very first work of fiction), the first book of a fantasy series. Landing page here: http://perkunaspress.com/wp/books/the-hounds-of-annwn/to-carry-the-horn/

    Took five months, morning before work (I was on a mission). I’ve been ascending the very steep learning curve and, while I have a lot to learn, it has actual architecture and I’m content that it’s good as I can make it at this point in my experience. Did all the cover and formatting work myself (I’m a techie, but Smashwords just about killed me.) Hard-copy proof arrived last night — what a rush! — should go up in about 2 weeks.

    What I’m crowing about is that the very instant the book goes live on Amazon this week some kind person buys it. But even better, the instant it’s up on Smashwords, someone not only buys it, but reads it immediately and writes a 5-star review which cites a meaningful aspect of the book. In other words, someone paid me money and when he read the book, he “got it” in some basic way. Whoo-hoo! Better than drugs!

    I haven’t announced it yet to my initial prospects, waiting for the hard-copy (they’re by-and-large Luddites), and who knows how it may chug along at just a few sales until the next few books in the series come out. But I couldn’t be more pleased to be rewarded with an intelligent and satisfied reader right out of the gate.

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    1. Karen,

      a) 5 months? My gosh, you work FAST!
      b) AMAZING cover – where’d you get the artwork?
      c) I just purchased a copy. The cover REALLY helped sell this to me (note to other authors: covers matter!)
      d) used Amazon’s post-checkout “tweet this” to … uh … tweet that. Hope it spreads the word a bit.

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      1. My goodness – thanks VERY MUCH! The cover is by an artist named Ann Mei (iStockPhoto). I’ve got a whole gallery of her stuff lined up for the next books in this series.

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        1. I just added it to my cart on Smashwords after previewing (I’ll complete the purchase when I have a couple more books in my cart). It seems good so far, and even if I hadn’t seen it featured here, the cover would have made me take a closer look the next time I browsed the recently added books.

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  9. I’m prepping a novel for print (through createspace) and crawling toward the end of my current alt-hist project, so nothing of mine to announce. But please put in a word for the free serial Ilona Andrews is running at their website:
    http://demo.ilona-andrews.com/category/clean-sweep/ It’s urban fantasy but with Andrews’ distinctive flavor, so even if you’re tired of UF or would never give it a try, well, give it a try :)

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  10. Smashwords has not shipped any of my books to Kobo, ever. Word on the ‘net is that Kobo claims they’re backed up. So this week I learned how to set up ebook files for Kobo. The first one went live yesterday and it looks good so today’s project is converting and publishing the rest.

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    1. In my inbox just now:

      “Congrats on your first sale!
      You’ll remember it forever.
      Kobo readers are starting to discover your eBook and more
      will surely follow.
      Stay up to date with your sales right on your dashboard and view
      some suggestions on how you can get your eBook to more readers.”

      I don’t recall anybody else doing that. I mean, at this point I’m kind of blase about the whole thing, but still, that’s fun.

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      1. How long ago did you publish your book on Smashwords?

        I don’t know if it varies by category or some other parameter, either, but it seems that if you nose around you find that a lot of people have issues with them getting the books to Kobo and the response from Smashwords support is that Kobo will only take them so fast and they’re backed up.

        I’m halfway through converting – once I got a workflow it was very simple, so while I’m not unhappy with Smashwords and will continue to let them distribute me otherwise I’m going to do Kobo direct.

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        1. The last one sold in July 2012. The book has been up since March 2012. The problem with Kobo is that it takes three months to show on the Smashwords earnings page. And then, its several weeks before I actually get the money. Then another quarter before I get the money from Smashwords. Urg… Amazon earnings is a much better system.

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          1. Well, there you go. Smashwords’ publication count seems to be some kind of exponential curve. (They ran out of ISBN a few weeks ago. They just bought a hundred thousand more.) The complaints about not *shipping* to Kobo are relatively recent (past several months.) You beat the worst of it.

            I’m sure they’d get to it eventually, but if I can spend two or three hours and get caught up, plus save Smashwords’ cut, I’m going to do it. I’m not the most patient person.

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              1. Domestic sales are 80% royalty until the end of November… I’m just sayin’.

                After that it goes back to 70%.

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            2. Kobo takes the same EPUB file that B&N PubIt does, so it’s a no-brainer to do it directly instead of via Smashwords, I think.

              If I could do Apple iTunes myself, I would (I gather it requires a piece of software that only runs on a Mac. Thank you, Steve Jobs.)

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            3. Kobo lost my duology for a while. Smashwords eventually got them back up, recently, but now they have different URLs than before.

              This does not actually make me want to go direct with Kobo. (Not to mention I’m already signed up for one “you can’t talk about the contract” contract, and am feeling full of vinegar regarding Kobo’s own. (I’m stubborn and ornery and blame my grandmother, who bequeathed all hers to me.)

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  11. Has anyone published an ebook to Google Play? I’m having a hell of a time, mostly because books.google.com seems to be crashing a lot.

    You get there via the Google Books Partner Preview program, which means you let a sample be visible (no different from viewing samples on Amazon, etc., really), with the added benefit that you can add a “Buy the book here” link to redirect a potential buyer, along with whatever retail links Google finds automatically. That means that you can let the trade paperback be discoverable as well as the EPUB which is an actual file on Google Play.

    At least, I think that’s what all this means, because Google Books is such a confusing and uncommercial site from the perspective of the Publisher/Author, despite documentation, that I’m not sure of anything until I finish the process.

    Anyone else on Google (deliberately)?

    Also, I’m using Gumroad.com for a very simple eBook shopping cart. I got the suggestion from David Gaughran. Trivial setup, they hold copies of the files and send them, collecting monies into a PayPal account. That allows me to offer a “Buy from me directly” option to maximize profits.

    I wanted to have a shopping cart to handle both digital downloads and paperback orders, but the solutions were all very complicated, overkill for my needs. I’ll settle for offering the CreateSpace product page as the “Buy from me directly” option. At least that can handle all the fulfillment, and I’ll live with the 20% royalty to them for now. Hopefully most buyers who want to buy directly will not be buying both ebooks and paperbacks.

    Any other simple shopping cart recommendations?

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    1. I am not on Google in any form I can possibly help, because Google is evil. Especially in regard to anything to do with creators of intellectual property. And I’m kinda buying Dean Smith’s position on promotion by authors (Summary: Don’t.) at this time anyway, so from what I understand of how that thing works I don’t think it’s very valuable in any event.

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      1. I agree with you on Google (the evil part) and have a hard time getting traction with ANYbody, because it’s so damned CUTE. They’re gonna be the Borg, mark my words. (What? They aren’t already? — Ed)

        I agree with Dean on the “don’t promote”, but, basically, because I’m lazy and think sales is … well … evil. (But that may because I’m a creative who’s been shoehorned into sales his whole life and resents it.)

        M

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        1. I have a problem with sales too. The salespeople I know are this close (finger and thumb) to being conmen and women. No offense Mark. So I just keep writing and posting and hope someone gets interested some day.

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          2. I worked my way through college and law school as a salesman. I was extremely good at it, and I never cheated anybody nor even tried to trick them. I’m fairly certain I saved several lives, too.

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            1. well, you either HAVE the sales thing or you don’t. People who don’t come off looking smarmy. I don’t even do that. I’ve been known to be unable to GIVE AWAY things at garage sales. I’m that sad.

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              1. LOL – I can offer to throw a party and no one comes. Happened to me at least twice. So I realized that the sales gene missed me completely. (Yep, mother and members of my family are sales people so I know how it works). BTW Marc – no offense.

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                1. [raises hand] Couldn’t sell space heaters to eskimoes. (Crap – WP wants to spell that m-o-l-e-s-k-i-n.) Strike the e-word, insert Inuit.

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                    1. When posting my next comment, while thinking about this one, I had an idea (don’t laugh, I get one of those every few years) and right clicked (got a new mouse today whose right button actually works) on the comment and came up with checking spelling as an option.

                      Guess what, bearcat isn’t a word ;)

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              2. Oh, I’m good at it. (Which I suspect is why they stick me with it.) I just hate doing it. I have a real THING about telephones, too.

                And me with an iPhone. You’d have to know me to know what a concession that is.

                M

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            2. Don’t take it personally Marc, I have met salesmen that were honest, they are just a very rare (possibly endangered) species. Kind of like upstanding lawyers. /runs away fast/

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              1. I take neither of those observations personally. Please always remember that it’s just 95% of the lawyers who give the rest of us a bad name.

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                  1. I have one friend who’s a lawyer – and I’ve known him since we were in junior high. I don’t care for most of them.

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                    1. about half of my current close to relatively close friends are lawyers. It’s VERY odd. Highest percentage ever.

                      My best friend from elementary school married a Frenchman…but neither of them are lawyers.

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                2. You are far too hard on your profession. 93% … 93.5%, tops.

                  If y’all would be honest about being hired gunfighters with lower ethics than prostitutes your reputation would improve. I don’t blame lawyers for doing what your clients want, I blame your clients and your outrageous educational debt obligations.

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                  1. My Martian Lawyers series was written specifically to poke fun a a lawyer friend. Every time I asked “Am I being too harsh?” She’d say “Oh, no. In that situation the senior partners would be telling junior to stop wasting her time saving people and find something she could get paid for.” I’m sure she was kidding . . .

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                    1. I went to your site but found no sign of a Martian Lawyers series. Link, please! It sounds like something I might enjoy.

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  12. I’m revising my first novel “The Powers of the Earth”. Without false modesty I’m a pretty decent NON-fiction writer (I’ve sold something like 7 out of 7 articles I’ve submitted to national magazines), but fiction is new to me, and there’s SUCH a juggling act with plot, characters, dialogue, fore-shadowing, and so much more.

    I started work on this libertarian-rebels-on-the-moon-vs-socialist-Earth-government (yes, yes, I know Heinlein did it first. …and better. ;-) novel about two years ago (1 Jan 2011). Since then I’ve

    * written the first draft (160,000 words)
    * revised it to make the plot coherent (220,000 words, split into two novels)
    * and am now 40% of the way through revising it again

    I hope to finish this pass (draft 3) in another 50 days or so, take a two week break for the holidays, then work on draft 4 (the FINAL draft, I pray!) for the first 3 months of 2013. Then off to copyediting.

    Details, in case anyone is interested:

    http://morlockpublishing.com

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  13. Peaceweaver, my 973 Wakes book my agent said would never sell, came out last month from Desert Breeze. Working on its sequel and my first try at indie-work: Hello Again, a contemporary romance, will release as soon as I figure out this formatting thing.

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  14. The Tiny Publishing Bidness just signed two clients this week, and I’ll have to be working on their books over the next two months – so I went all-out this week on my own next book: working title “The Quivera Trail” . It’s about an Englishwoman who marries a Texas cattleman in 1876; think of it as Mrs. Gaskell meets Zane Grey. I’ve posted sample chapters, and put together a list here: http://celiahayes.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/back-pages-and-sample-chapters/ I’m about three-quarters through. I think. Something may come up, plot-wise. Settled some of my Christmas schedule: three days at the Weinachtsmarkt in New Braunfels, and a Saturday at Christmas on the Square at Goliad, the first Saturday in December. And there was also a bit of the usual blogging, and an excursion into the Hill Country by back roads, which produced some marvelous photographs.
    And yesterday, we went to the BMT graduation parade at Lackland, to support the son of a neighbor of ours, whom we had encouraged and helped to enlist in the Air Force.
    Busy week, all told.

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  15. Nothing yet, but by late November (or sooner) I hope to have the first set of short stories up on various e-book sites. I should probably dedicate it to Kris, Dean, and Sarah, because otherwise I would not have worked up the nerve (or found the press) to toss ’em out and see if they swim. Or at least survive, since the MC cannot float, let alone swim. :) The title is “A Cat Among Dragons: The Story Begins.” I’ll release the subsequent stories individually.

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  17. I’m not using Google to promote, particularly (the limited Preview feature is no different in kind than Amazon sampling). They have a retail eBook store: Google Play. Why not be in it?

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    1. No particular reason unless you are a nasty person like me who refuses to give Google any more money than they can possibly avoid. It’s not like they power their servers with burning kittens or anything. That anybody’s been able to prove.

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  19. Re-flogging my short story from last month, “For the fragile Muses…”

    Amazon: http://goo.gl/52HXe

    It’s a lot more po-mo than I usually like, but it insisted on being written that way. Starts off as a guy in a bar telling you the interesting bits of his life story, but ends up being… something else. ;)

    I’m currently pounding out a novel that’s a meditation on power, politics, social change, and psychic powers. Or an exploration of the conflict between Booker T. Washington’s ideas and the ideas of W.E.B. Dubois (or, if you prefer, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, given that it’s set in the ’60s), but does not directly confront race. Or it’s thinly disguised fanfic. Or all of the above. :D More on that one later.

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    1. I can’t find the quote right now, but Malcolm X at one time said, “they will deal with Martin Luther, because they don’t want to deal with me.” (paraphrased) which was very true.

      Like him or not Malcolm X had a lot of great quotes, and I got tired of going through them looking for the one I wanted.

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      1. Malcolm X is a very interesting man, much more complex and thoughtful than he sometimes gets credit for being. He’s remembered for his angry period much more so than for the destination he finally reached in his personal journey.

        I disagree with most of what he thought during his angry period, but it’s easy to understand how he got there.

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        1. I think what you call his angry period, I call his Muslim period, then he decided Islam wasn’t as good an idea as he thought; and they killed him.

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          1. I can confirm the quote as having been attributed to Malcolm and ain’t gonna bother tracking it down; I been hearing it that way for forty years or more.

            As to his Angry/Muslim period — IIRC, that was when his knowledge of Islam and Africa were largely theorhetorical* — once ha had performed his hadj</I? his views matured by virtue of contact with Reality (Reality – don't leave home without it!)

            *Not a typo, not a real word (well, NOW it is) it is a portmanteau. Figger it out.

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                1. I haven’t, by the use of the word alleged I assume you have some doubts on him actually being the author? Or possibly even authorizing someone else to write it?

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                    1. Aw, C’mon man – next thing you will be sayin’ is Haley exaggerated, stretched, compressed, made-up and flat out fabricated portions of his own ancestral biography, Roots. Both of those books were published by major mainstream old-line publishing houses (Note: NOT indie) where they have editors and fact-checkers up the wahzoo just to make sure everything is properly supported and documented.

                      Carp! Next you will be telling me the Nobel Committee awards its Peace Prize to terrorists, racists and aspiring wannabees with no actual achievements!

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                    2. You forgot “plagiarized”, which he did (and settled the lawsuit).

                      Doesn’t stop Roots from being a spectacular book, which it is, but yeah. I don’t mind the fictionalization, which was more or less required for what he was trying to do with the book. But the plagiarism, not so much.

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                    3. That, and the fact that it was later demonstrated that he made s**t up on the wholesale level in Roots, his alleged masterpiece. I have no idea whether Malcom X would make stuff up to suit his purposes, but I don’t really care if he did or not, since the person who actually wrote the book I *know* would do it. It’s the Wine/Sewage rule.

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  20. What doing? Well… The Patch Factory is having me build a new website for them. It should go live before the end of October. Just landed a possible freelance Web design client. Have discovered Spotify and am playing with that..

    On the writing front, I have determined to FINISH It’s Dolly’s Birthday THIS. MONTH. (Already and dammit!) I want to start NaNoWriMo with a new novel. It is a re-drafting of more of the Dolly Apocrypha, but this time I intend to take DWS’s advice and NOT just edit the old copy, but draft it fresh and anew. Somehow, that feels like standing on the high board without a suit, looking down into a wash bucket full of murky water in the bottom of an empty pool, nerving myself up for the plunge.

    Know what I mean?

    M

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  21. It’s my fault for choosing college courses which require a lot of papers (usually about 3 every two weeks,and take up both research time and creative energy), so my real writing has slowed to a crawl. Meant to have one published in October and another in December; looks like it’ll be December and January now. On the other hand, my German History course has given me LOTS of “free” research material for my next historical novel (based in Budapest), so there’s that.

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  22. I’m working on revising an anthology story. I’m quite pleased with how it has turned out, and the anthology universe owner author likes it too, which is even better. :)

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  23. Working on the sequel to “Perigee”, which had been giving me fits until recently. Finally had a breakthrough and am now at that magical point where the characters are talking back to me and I’m anxious to see where each chapter ends up.
    It also helps me to keep my mind off of politics, though the last week or so have left me feeling more encouraged.

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  24. Just a general question: Does anyone have a problem with something you’re working on getting excessively wordy toward the end? This stupid story I’m working on I expected to be done 1500 words ago, and it’s looking like it’s going to possibly run 2000 more, which will make it nearly 12,000.

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    1. yes and no? The close always looks simpler BEFORE you do it. Kate Paulk talks about my “magical last fifty pages” which always turn into a 100. She always goes, “So, on what page of fifty are you? 76?”

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    2. No, because I usually write the ending if not first, then certainly not last. My beginnings are what gets wordy.

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    3. I ramble in the middle, after getting distracted by some fascinating bit of plot or setting, and then SQUIRREL! A thousand words or so later I’m back on course. It’s bad enough that I have a file of “nifty bits edited out” saved for possible future use.

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  25. Well, I deleted the last 5 thousand words in the novel I am working on today, and wrote about 200; somehow I think I’m working in the wrong direction. But it just didn’t work right the way it was written, just did not lead into the next part of the story

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  26. Trapping the most-recent feral-cat colony in the backyard — momcat, and *eight* kittens. So far, all save one kitten have been trapped; the momcat is recovering from her surgery (she gets the “snip-clip-and-ship”), while the kittens are being contained in a bathroom.

    It’s this sort of thing which explains why I never have a moment free to actually write anything publishable….

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      1. I do this too. Sigh. I’ve been longing for an orange kitten, but I’m not allowed one till I have a bestseller.

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          1. Well, if it is a New York Times bestseller; if written from the right politic perspective approximately 9, if from the wrong perspective… I can’t find the infinity symbol on my keyboard.

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  27. My two self-pubbed stories are now on B&N and Smashwords as well as Amazon (where they’ve been all year).

    “The Mother Anthony” tells of a teacher on a starship in peril, and the sacrifices she makes for the sake of her students. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-mother-anthony-martin-shoemaker/1113474440?ean=2940015588194 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/244949 http://www.amazon.com/The-Mother-Anthony-ebook/dp/B006C1ST2M/ref=la_B001K895W0_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1350161860&sr=1-6

    “Sense of Wonder” tells of a Lunar geologist and the price he pays to do science on the Moon. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sense-of-wonder-martin-shoemaker/1113474444?ean=2940015588262 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/244990 http://www.amazon.com/Sense-of-Wonder-ebook/dp/B006Y025P8/ref=la_B001K895W0_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1350182270&sr=1-7

    And on the Kindle Fire (other formats pending)… “Ulterior Motive Lounge: UML, 80s Flicks, and Bunny Slippers”. Learn software analysis and design techniques from the world’s first (and only!) UML comic strip. http://www.amazon.com/Ulterior-Motive-Lounge-Slippers-ebook/dp/B006OBV4HC/ref=la_B001K895W0_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1350185877&sr=1-4

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      1. Today I’m glad. Your delay gave me all day to figure out B&N and Smashwords (and utterly fail to figure out Kobo, so I’ll let Smashwords deal with them).

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  28. I recently Kindleized (probably not a word, but should be) a friend’s amusing fantasy novel, Aluvir and the Circle of Twelve. Old-school gamers should get a nostalgic kick out of it. Sean Rhoades, the author, was active on the gaming scene and wrote for Cosmic Encounter and Earthdawn. I’m also pleased how the cover came out, as I have minimal artistic talent; just took some photos and used Microsoft Picture It to apply some filters:

    Reading your recent comments and articles, I’m going to have to raise the price soon from $2,99 by a buck or two! :-)

    The synopsis is: “The formidable mercenary guild known as The Circle of Twelve had perfected a simple, lucrative business model: Orc Exterminators Incorporated. Their latest job clearing caverns of dungeon vermin was supposed to be routine. But soon they were caught up in a web of ancient intrigue involving dark elves, daimonic possession, and nothing less than the dragon apocalypse. Would anyone be left alive to pay their wages?”

    I’ve also been working on improving the formatting, redoing the covers and adding NCX to some early Kindle books I put up, which were vanity projects to publish the posthumous poetic works of my grandfather, chief among them the Gospel of Demetrius, which in 400 verses purports to explain where God came from, where the Universe came from, where You came from, where your Brain came from, where your Soul came from, and why Atheists are definitely wrong. With a full description of Life after Death!

    So much content to format, so little time…

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  30. Just an update: Halfway through the Koboversion, my wife decided she needed new glasses and I had to go with her to pick out a lamp for my office. Thanks to incompetence on a truly mind-boggling level at Lenscrafters, my entire day was more or less high-jacked. Then when we got back I had no motivation whatsoever.

    But, I got better. She has new glasses, I have a lamp, and ALL the books for both pen names are awaiting Kobo’s blessing. And I learned how to turn Word documents into epubs with a very simple workflow which actually makes them look better than Amazon/B&N/Smashwords’ conversions. From now on only Smashwords gets .doc files. (They don’t take any other format.)

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  31. I’ll probably be doing a public/televised reading on Tuesday at Loussac public library in Anchorage, along with ten other local authors. It would be a reading/signing, but I won’t have copies to sign for a few more weeks. I’ll be joining three other writers to a reading/book signing at UAA bookstore on November 15th.

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  32. Published Runaway! [book:Runaway!|14402305] about a literate slave boy fleeing for freedom on the Underground Railroad. Good gift for teens/young adults, historic fiction. He sees churchhouses nailed shut, printing presses thrown in the river, and elections before the secret ballot, but thinks it’s not his fight. Good gift for teens/young adults, historic fiction.

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    1. So, you’re saying it is factual? Or do you mean some different evil cult than the one founded by the Mad German Karl Marx?

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  34. What doing?
    Final stages of editing a manuscript on german long-knife fencing (langesmesser, take a bowie knife the length of your arm, give it a crosspiece, and then make it really light and nimble), finished an article on medieval swordplay in general that’s waiting for redrawing of manuscript images, and have started on the sequel to Malik the Pawn, which is young-adult fantasy (http://www.amazon.com/Malik-the-Pawn-ebook/dp/B006P76ESE/ref=tmm_kin_title_0). That’s one story, and ALSO involves theology in a fantasy context, but apparently is going to be epically long by the time it’s all told.

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  35. A further update:

    Today I am packing my office for my company’s relocation.

    In the dark, because the movers have managed to cut the power to the overhead lights. Not the outlets. Just the overhead lights.

    Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

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      1. Sorry for turning your comments into a stream of consciousness, but I had the page open and I needed to vent. :)

        What I’m really dreading is the paper cuts and/or the even more ferocious corrugated-cardboard cuts. I need some of those chainmail gloves.

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