Yearning to Breathe Free

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

So I’ve forgotten to turn on my humidifier for the last… week, and this morning I woke up completely stuffy – having the effect of a hangover without having had the fun of getting gloriously drunk.

Which is why this post is so late.  I couldn’t figure out what to write about, until RES suggested the joys of breathing.

I added the breathing free.

You see, when it comes right down to it, there’s only three types of political views: those who want to tell others how to live, those who want to be told how to live, because then if it all goes wrong it’s not their fault, and those who want to be left alone.  I fall in the later.  I want government to leave me as alone as possible.

I’m willing to tolerate a modicum of intrusion.  While I think there might be better ways to build roads and finance armies, for instance, the ancient and quaint custom of our civilization is to do this via taxes.  (We should just be glad taxes are no longer collected irregularly and in varying amounts so you never know how to plan f… never mind.)  I’m even willing to tolerate stuff like taking money from me on the promise of an old age payment that will never come or from my husband on the promise of an unemployment payment that will come but that we hope not to need.

I’m willing to admit some poor relief might be undertaken, though I think it should be local and on very different lines.  I would seriously prefer any of those three functions be private – old age insurance; unemployment insurance; charity – and I think those are way more efficient, but when you idiot-proof your form of government someone builds a better idiot, and I don’t think privatizing those functions will be possible without a complete (and slow) change in culture.

I don’t like any of those intrusions, mind.  If everyone in the world were of my kind, we’d probably not have a government.  (We might also not have roads or armies.  I don’t play well with others – or at least that’s what Kindergarten said before they expelled me.)  And we very well might be lacking a civilization altogether (but hey, we’d have some COOL stories.)

Everyone in the world is not my kind.  There will always be those who want to tell people what to do and those who want someone else to choose for them, either out of a becoming modesty or because they want someone to blame.  (My dad always makes mom pick where to go out to eat, because then if it’s horrible, he can blame her. It’s the worst of his non-endearing habits.)

America has a higher proportion of people who – while gregarious or even cooperative with their fellow citizens (we give more to charity than any other country) – don’t want anyone telling them what to do.  This is what gives me hope for us.

But of course, even here most people want to be told what to do or to tell others what to do.

Right now I’m seeing this in my chosen field: Big publishers and small are preying on newbies who want to be “real.”

They might be doing very well indie, but they will ditch it all to go with the big house, which these days most of the time means less money, but it makes them feel “real.”  (The world is full of velveteen authors.)

Since I generally don’t care what people do, and it’s their money and their bet, this should leave me untouched.  It doesn’t.  It doesn’t because I’ve read some of these contracts or heard talk of the terms.

I’m going to say it here, once and for all: MONEY FLOWS TO THE AUTHOR.  (Thank you Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith for beating this into my head.)

Most of you have heard this and are at least somewhat leery of outfits that ask you to pay a fee to read/edit/publish/submit your book.  Bully for you.

What you aren’t – and you need to be – is aware that your writing itself has a value.  Yes, even you Ms. Beginner Writer, with the manuscript mostly about having breakfast, picking outfits and shopping.

The value in many cases is miniscule, or at least minimal, but in an era of ebooks, there IS a value.  (The (Ric) Locke Theorem:  For any book, no matter how ridiculous the subject, poor the plotting and lousy the language, there will be at least 1000 buyers worldwide who think it’s the best thing ever.)

If you’re putting it up Indie, you might only see you know, $700 dollars over ten years or so.  BUT YOU WILL SEE IT.  And meanwhile your writing will get better.

If you hand it to one of these scammers (and for the love of heaven, stop signing away your copyright – more on that later) and they bring it out, you’ll see zero.  (No, seriously.  Not just because you are probably not looking at the contract enough and half of these are for 50% of NET which means their expenses come out first, but also because these companies go under regularly.  One of my favorite indie authors appears to have had a nervous breakdown after the publishing company went nuts and went under. – No, I’m not going to identify author or company here, because it’s a hot mess all over the net, and I don’t need into the middle of that.)

The other part of this is that no author is good at evaluating his or her own work – NO AUTHOR.  Not even I with twenty five (six?) novels published traditionally and a few on their way to indie publication, much less a newby author.

We’re even worse at evaluating how much these things will sell. It was relatively easy to evaluate what would sell to some publisher (mostly in magazines.  In books only Baen has a recognizable brand.  Which is why the others are hosed… er… are in trouble now, when brand IS the only thing you can give a newby.)  While it’s sort of possible to predict what an editor/publisher will like, when you’re dealing with two or three people, max, the brand gets diluted for something like TOR with their rent-a-editor, and it goes outright nuts when you’re selling directly to the public, where … unless you’re psychic (if you are I apologize for doubting you.  Most authors are only psychotic.  The publishers made us that way) you can’t tell what the mass of humanity will like.

If you’re bleating that this is why you need a publisher, I swear I’ll come out there and bring my Oxford’s English dictionary for foreign learners (the most formidable blunt instrument ever created.)

I mean nothing of the sort.  What I mean is that your learner’s novel, which you think is just all thumbs and glue might take off and sell millions.  (I talked to someone who works for Amazon and who assures me even they have no clue what makes something take off freakishly.  They’d LIKE to.  But they’ve spent hundreds of thousands studying it, and they can’t tell.)

And then, if you gave it to one of the scammer’s companies, they’ll be making the millions, and selling the movie rights, and–  You’ll be living under the bridge and suffering repetitive stress injuries from kicking yourself.

For big publishers, if you’re going with a reputable publisher who can offer you brand support – and right now I can’t think of any but Baen, frankly that I’d trust enough – going with a publisher is trading your rights for a mess of… nothing.  For small publishers, make sure you get AT LEAST 50% and that it’s GROSS.  The dollar comes in, you get fifty cents.  And do it only to diversify your output.  Put some out on your own ALSO.  Then compare the outcomes and decide accordingly.  (And remember that short stories sell poorly unless you have a lot out.)  And make sure the contract with small publishers has a term limit.  Two years, at most.  One year if you can get it.

AND READ THOSE DAMN CONTRACTS.  Get a lawyer friend to skim them, at least.  ALWAYS.  Even with Baen – they might have been attacked by brain worms overnight or something.  You never know.  I respect them and trust them, but it doesn’t mean they couldn’t be taken over by aliens – or lawyers! – tomorrow.

Your work.  Your livelihood.  Your responsibility.  FREEDOM ALWAYS REQUIRES RESPONSIBILITY.

If you want someone to make choices for you, you’re also giving them power over your life.  This might be worth it or not.  I don’t know.  But it is worth thinking about, instead of blithely signing it all away for “prestige” particularly with small press that can give you none.

The glory of being “traditionally published” won’t keep your rent paid.  Indie work might.

(And yes, the reason this p*sses me off is that I can see stupid young me falling for this.  We writers all want to be “real” and are willing to risk starving for it.  I’m older and wiser, and I wish I could protect the young ‘uns.)

And now the cranky author is going for a walk before the snow (!) to clear her head so she can do some guest blogging.  (I apologize to those waiting for guest blogs.  I’ve found I can only do about five, before I HARD block on them for a month or so.  I think the fact that I’m also doing these posts everyday makes it harder to guest blog.  Like I only have so many non-fic pieces in me a month, and have to regenerate.  Maybe I’m like that author in TX and only have so many words.  I should avoid answering the phone or dinner time chat.  I don’t know if my family would be relieved or worried.)

I now have plot and voice for both Through Fire and Darkship Revenge, and I HAVE to clear the decks so I can work on them.

Because death, taxes, and demanding characters shall always be with us.  (Or at least me.)

315 thoughts on “Yearning to Breathe Free”

  1. I must say after many years of all kinds of writing, I retain the conviction that if ever I feel “real” I’ll have lost something. But I can see the temptation for the young or even the not so young newbie. I am so grateful for my early failures or I might have been seduced along that path myself.

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  2. “The world is full of velveteen authors” Wow… that just hit me strongly today. I’m refusing to do anything but writing and publishing my way. What do we call writers that are now doing that? (besides foolish, which I definitely feel)

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  3. …unless you’re psychic (if you are I apologize for doubting you. Most authors are only psychotic. The publishers made us that way)…

    I thought it was those voices inside you head insisting that you tell their stories or the amysdala gets it.

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      1. Ah, Sarah, did you get the file I sent? I ask because my e-mail has been acting odd (not Odd, just annoying) and apparently ate several documents last week.

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          1. Siiiiiigh. I did use that address. *glares at magic message box* I just resent to that address. That makes eight misplaced files last week, and three bounces. I’m going to blame the blizzard. Yeah, that’s it.

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            1. Got it. Might have been my issue too — depending on when you sent, I might have had one of my days of 1500 messages most of them from people wanting to help me promote my work reaaaaallly cheep! and have erased it mistakenly. On this side the problem is often BCAK (Between chair and keyboard.)

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            2. Have you noticed the Freudian slip?

              You said you resent the email – because when you re-sent it (i.e., sent it again), it still didn’t behave.

              Don’t you just LOVE English?

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              1. There are days when I love English, and there are days I’d prefer to function in German. Today is trying to be one of the latter sorts of days.

                Yeah, after last week, I resent e-mail.

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              2. Y’know, Freud must have been the biggest cross-dresser ever, with all those slips…

                (OK, I realize that is surely an old joke, but it crossed my mind, and went straight to the keyboard)

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                    3. You should have seen my reaction to that one– I did a little eye roll, a no-no, and then prayed that I could scrub that image out of my head.

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                    4. No, no, no. As a knitter with an interest in historial costuming I can tell you that they should be hand knitted stockings done in the classic knitting pattern for ‘lacy’ stockings: the faggoting stitch. And, btw, in my mind they are being held up by pink ribbons garters.

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                    11. Wouldn’t his leg hairs get caught in the fishnet stockings? I would think that would make them painful to take off.

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  4. Oh great, now I have this mental image of a bunch of writers in velveteen jackets and breeches sitting around, drinking tea with their pinkies out and sighing with unrequited publisher love. *shakes head*

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      2. The first image that came to my mind was a Stuffed Animal of the Velveteen variety. Why, I could not possibly say but it was a Rabbit. I really need to check under the hood more often I think.

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    2. Unrequited love and tragedy seem to be very popular among some people. Add misunderstood, suffering main character and the story is perfect. Perhaps some like to live it too. Very poetic, or something.

      (And now I’m seeing sighing pale goth types with running mascara. Nothing against goths, for one thing I like black and vaguely Victorian garb and dramatic make-up even if I don’t wear anything like that myself anymore – maybe I should, I think I’d look pretty imposing as a Victorian matron even with my lack of height, except I’d have to be minus the make-up due to allergies – but some of the more extreme ones can be amusing).

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      1. The Daughter would wish me to inform you that the ones that glory in dwelling in their feelings are emo and not goth.

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        2. Tell the daughter that Portugal is an entire country of emos. And if I send her a picture of my student outfit (Medieval — black suit with black tie, black square cloak. Okay, so they allowed white blouse, and I wore black lace stockings with it and made my suit a skirt suit unless it was freezing. Because I’m me.) she’d suspect us of being goths too.
          Wait, there are some youtube videos of graduation serenades…
          The ribbons: Yellow is medicine, red is law, purple is pharmacy. Languages are dark blue — so that was me. Math is baby blue (Dan got a kick out of that.) Engineering is brown. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha6JI8XimGk

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          1. How could Engineering be Brown? It should be Gun Metal Grey or some such metallic color. At the very least a primary color as Engineering has very definite results that can kill if wrong.

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            2. Engineering deals with building stuff from the ground up, a lot of times the first thing you need to do is start moving dirt. Dirt is brown, therefore…

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                2. I haven’t worn brown cords since I was in grade school. Mom bought ’em from Sears. When you run in them the go wht! wht! wht! wht!

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                  2. Yeah. When I drove up to Four Corners the red in far north eastern Arizona was impressive. Once at FC and looking north and west into Utah it did not look like the color dropped out.

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                    1. What was most impressive about the red dirt in Utah and Arizona (the parts of Nevada I have been in are a browner red) is that the dust manages to get EVERYWHERE!

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            1. Fado — in this case the goodbye fado to student life. In the second, it’s comparing the student cloak to a black rose, and also to wings that give your mind freedom. That second one is new. The others date back to my dad’s day at least, and probably before.

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        4. Heh. Yes, now that I think of it I think that has been the case for the last decade or so here too. Haven’t been following those trends much lately, but they seem to be moving in slightly different patterns from what you have.

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    4. Strangely enough the first thing that came to my mind was a Velveeta cheese commercial. And I hate plastic cheese;)

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          1. I thought it was, “Cheese, Possessed”. ‘Cause something rises up and howls when it is around.

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  5. “Real” is mattering less and less to me – my brain has been shifting slowly. (It helps that I’m a control freak, and the idea of turning over so much control to someone else chafes badly – I want to be able to check my own sales, track my own numbers, all of that, so that has helped the brain shift over quite a bit.)

    The ego thing – the respect of established authors – that still has to change, but I know it will, particularly as more and more of them turn to self-pubbing themselves. I still run across the old anti-self-pubbing attitudes, but the shift is happening, and it’s moving incredibly fast.

    With all the problems you’ve been blogging about in the past few days (and yes, we are in serious trouble), there’s still some amazing things going on. People being able to communicate with other people, en masse, without going through the bottlenecks and gatekeepers who’ve tried to dictate how we think and what we know.

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    1. Laurie,
      as an “old” (10 years or so) pro, I give respect to indie authors I read and like. The ones I read that I don’t get past two pages because they’re unreadable I give flying lessons (or want to, if it’s on the kindle.) and treat like children…

      HOWEVER I do the same for traditionally published, so…

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      1. Yes, I have been trying to do reviews for indie authors I like (I’m really bad at remembering to review books) because I want them to be successful and write more. I generally don’t give bad reviews, because it either is a book that I didn’t like for personal reasons, and someone else might, or I simply don’t care enough about it to write a review. There is one book I wish I remembered the name of (I deleted it off my computer) so I could give a scathing one star review, just to warn ALL readers away from it, I am positive someone else wrote the synopsis, which sounded very good, because the author didn’t write a paragraph that coherent in the whole book. But generally they hit the wall, I forget about them, and go looking for something else to read.

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        1. My same attitude all along the line. And I’m AWFUL at doing reviews.

          Oh, I’ll give bad reviews to household stuff. Like the sheets that say they’re 500 count thread and feel like sack cloth.

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  6. If it’s an issue I’d bet on elevated pollen counts all along the front range (gone are the days of prairie grass and cottonwoods) with windblown tree pollen.

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    1. I live in an area of the east that intersects northern and southern growing regions. We boast of more different kinds of flowering trees in our county than grow in all of Europe. Spring can be truly beautiful. On the down side, anytime the temps get over 60 we start getting pollen production. Last weekend it was quite balmy. Now it is cold, we still aren’t breathing comfortably.

      And the true green season is yet to come. For those who live in more fortunate areas of the country that is the season where everything gets thickly coated with pollen, and in bad years, even black cars will appear to be green.

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  7. You mentioned publishers Brands or largely lack of them above.

    I’ve been working on a theme for a talk I’m going to give a small business group next month. Brands are obsolete. I’m stealing a phrase from a mobile phone consultant who blogs (Tomi Ahonen – and I don’t know where he stole it from): Communities Dominate Brands.

    In the past, the bulk of marketing consisted of creating a Brand. A successful marketer created a brand, suffused it with a particular image at a particular point of socio-economic style point and hammered it via advertising. That’s obsolete. Communities Dominate Brands. Today, successful products create or adopt community. People pay big money for a sense of belonging. That’s the key to success in today’s market.

    Baen has been successful from adopting a strategy that is sort of a hybrid between the Brand strategy and the Community strategy. I think they need to figure out how to finish the movement.

    You’ve written a lot of about Indie publishing and variations. I think that is good info, but I think the future of successful business development for writers is beyond “traditional vs indie” publishing (which is basically just about channels not marketing strategy) but learning how to adopt a Community marketing strategy to their work.

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    1. I’ve never seen anyone able to CREATE a community, just give a place for one to grow. Marketers have been chasing “communities” for 15+ years, and still don’t know how to grow them.

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      1. You cannot create a community but you can fill a need in one or create a need in one. It is still Branding of a sort. Apple is a perfect example of Community Branding but since the passing of Steve Jobs the executives do not have a clue on how to use it.

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      2. Well, then you can’t “create” mushrooms either … just give them a place to grow. ;-)

        But really, there are ways to “create” community. They are unique for each product of course. Apple didn’t just find Apple users already congregated in a field wandering around waiting for the MacIntosh/iPhone for example.

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        1. Apple, unlike PC’s, was always intended to bring computers to people and not people to computers. This is why the artsy types prefer Apple products because they really do not need to know about computers but they do need to know what they want to do, edit movies, compose music, animation, etc. This is a niche market and also a branded community. This gives Apple a dual wham-o by helping other consumers of Apple products self identify with the above community of artists. Harley Davidson also benefits by this community branding when Accountants become bikers when riding a Harley.

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  8. The remark that no author can evaluate their own work hits me pretty hard. I know I tried to get published many times so that I could know if I could write or not. I had an English professor (not your usual type) who told me that I could write and enjoyed reading my writings. That small encouragement meant that I didn’t have to seek approval anymore. I may not write my best every time, but I do know that I can write.

    By the way she was the first person to actually say “I like your work.” I think writers do need that encouragement or why do they go through despair and anger when they get a bad review? Until recently, I hadn’t found any group that actually taught creative writing. In college there is this myth that you either have it or don’t. No one there thinks of it as a craft. It has been my experience that the more I practice writing, the better I get at it.

    The biggest myths are the most damaging to writers (i.e. if your first book isn’t good then you can never be good). ARG.

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    1. ugh–that sentence was awkward– I thought being published would validate my writer creds. I didn’t realize that the editors were too busy to give you encouragement. Plus at the time I was starting, there weren’t good writing courses. Now I am seeing some of the more experienced writers putting together courses for new and experienced writers– great thing too.

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    2. The first pancake off the griddle is usually the worst… until my hands warm up, the first painting of the gig is not the best. Why would a first book be any different? It’s practice that brings improvement, nothing else would we expect it to be perfect right away. I know you know this, Cyn, it just made my eyes cross and say “why would anyone have told her that?” Hugs… glad you kept trying.

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      1. I had an English teacher for a college extension course (the college used high school teachers in that area) who told the entire class that I couldn’t write my way out of a paperbag. She would use my essays to prove what a bad writer I was. She would even mention my name. She didn’t treat any of the other students this way. (I was in my early twenties). I didn’t start to really write stories until after I met the other English professor. It totally changed my view of my writing. So there was exactly twenty years (more or less) that I knew that I couldn’t write. And it wasn’t true. I did gain some experience in other areas.

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          1. I was too young to understand it. I think I missed out on 20 years of writing because she had to be right. UGH– I would have made a better teacher than her… and now I wonder what she did to her high school students.

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          1. YES– Although when I was training people in electronics repair (you know the first duty station stuff), it did help to remember her and know NOT what to do.

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        3. You know, stories like these make me yearn for time-travel machines and big, stompy boots.

          Not that I’m a violent person.

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            1. I managed to get “kali” as my username at one software company I worked for. The Indian programmers there giggled at it until they realized I knew what it meant. Then the giggling stopped.

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              2. Did they then give you the “reverence” that you desired? [Wink]

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                1. Little known, Kali’s cube was surrounded with sexual symbols and dead goats. It would puzzled management, but they are also pretty afraid of crossing Kali.

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                2. The raised floor in the server room was ideal for the storage of the crumpled bodies of people who refused to reboot their computers for months at a time.

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                  1. Does he work more than one job? I’m sure I’ve got through to him when calling multiple different companies.

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              4. My callsign on convention-security junkets when I lived in the Midwest was “Lucifer”. Bad enough the obvious connotation; but for those who knew the _Battlestar Galactica_ character from whence it came…. >:)

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      2. The first pancake off the griddle is usually the worst… until my hands warm

        up, the first painting of the gig is not the best. Why would a first book be

        any different? It’s practice that brings improvement, nothing else would we

        expect it to be perfect right away. I know you know this, Cyn, it just made my

        eyes cross and say “why would anyone have told her that?” Hugs… glad you kept

        trying.

        This is the Romanyic myth of genius in a nutshell. I’ve seen several iterations

        of this idea:

        1. Everyone who will ever truly amount to anything in $FIELD has some

        innate talent that shines through on their first attempt. (Insert various

        precocious genius hagiographic vignettes to bolster the point)
        2. If you haven’t created your masterpiece by $POINT, you never will, so why

        try?
        3. All those sad people that believe practice makes perfect, or think they’ll

        make it through hard work and discipline (shakes head sadly). They’re just

        fooling themselves. These plodders might be fit to carry a true geniuse’s

        $INSTRUMENT, but you wouldn’t expect anything of true value from their dog

        either.
        4. Other iterations of this involve something I have seen called “The curse of

        the gifted”, where someone who initially does well is told that he has

        innate talent in an area, then later encounters difficulty. All along,

        his internal picture of how you succeed at something involves some immutable

        gift that can’t be developed or improved or tamed. He/she eventually gives up,

        because he/she doesn’t believe that his skills can be a product of his effort.

        And if you try to argue with this, it’s just evidence that you aren’t one of

        the gifted.

        I’ve seen it in my field too. I’ve *felt* it at various times and places, when

        faced with confusion and difficulty (and boy is there a never-ending stream of

        that on your way to understanding anything). Anyway, in my opinion, that whole

        complex of ideas is pure poison.

        It is eerie how many of the ideas out of the Romantic movement are not just bad but deeply bad at many different levels.

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        2. Yes. You’re so right. Publishers bought into this, which accounts for PART of the state of the field. If you weren’t a miraculous, unsupported success right off the bat, then you would never succeed…

          No, seriously. This myth is what accounts for “if your Fantasy doesn’t sell well, then your mystery will also crash and your sf and…” And why agents are now told they have to disclose pen names. Because see, once publishers think that, they can do stuff like keep you in midlist forever. (It’s not a lot of work) but if you then become a bestseller under another name, you prove the myth is wrong and the original publisher incompetent (because the genius is in the writer not the book. So, all of a writers’ books should sell at the same level.) So if an author didn’t go big for you (or plodded at mid list) you must insure he/she NEVER does, for anyone else, in any genre. (Gags.)

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            1. That’s … violence inducing. I’m awfully glad I didn’t start working my way in in earnest, until the advent of respectable indie publishing. Even so, my only long term plans are self-pub and Baen-pub. I have a feeling if I tried most other houses, I’d end up gaining the ekename “Defenestrator.” Which might cause a few problems down the road.

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              1. Hmm, IDK. Having an authorial pseudonym “Dave the Defenestrator” might be thematic, depending on the genre. Icelandic Sagas, Pirate tales, something Scottish maybe. :-P

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                1. Stories about the Thirty Years War, or Jan Zizka. Both Defenestrations of Prague came about because of negotiating in bad faith. This is a lesson still unlearned by many.

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                1. My current plan for avoiding messy clean-up is simple avoidance. I can write what I want, and send it to who I want, or simply put it up myself. Readers will find me, at least that’s what my beta readers’ reactions suggest. I hear “are you done with the next one yet?” a lot. So I keep writing. Need to get my act together on the business side, though. Probably time to run back through Dean and Kris’s sites. I intend to channel the latent aggression into my writing anyway. Lots of people want to read about bad people being brutally ejected from a Manhattan high rise, after all.

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      3. Whoops. Here is my post without the hash of linebreaks

        The first pancake off the griddle is usually the worst… until my hands warm up, the first painting of the gig is not the best. Why would a first book be any different? It’s practice that brings improvement, nothing else would we expect it to be perfect right away. I know you know this, Cyn, it just made my eyes cross and say “why would anyone have told her that?” Hugs… glad you kept trying.

        This is the Romanyic myth of genius in a nutshell. I’ve seen several iterations of this idea:

        1. Everyone who will ever truly amount to anything in $FIELD has some innate talent that shines through on their first attempt. (Insert various precocious genius hagiographic vignettes to bolster the point)
        2. If you haven’t created your masterpiece by $POINT, you never will, so why try?
        3. All those sad people that believe practice makes perfect, or think they’ll make it through hard work and discipline (shakes head sadly). They’re just fooling themselves. These plodders might be fit to carry a true geniuse’s $INSTRUMENT, but you wouldn’t expect anything of true value from their dog either.
        4. Other iterations of this involve something I have seen called “The curse of the gifted”, where someone who initially does well is told that he has innate talent in an area, then later encounters difficulty. All along, his internal picture of how you succeed at something involves some immutable gift that can’t be developed or improved or tamed. He/she eventually gives up, because he/she doesn’t believe that his skills can be a product of his effort.

        And if you try to argue with this, it’s just evidence that you aren’t one of the gifted.

        I’ve seen it in my field too. I’ve *felt* it at various times and places, when faced with confusion and difficulty (and boy is there a never-ending stream of that on your way to understanding anything). Anyway, in my opinion, that whole complex of ideas is pure poison.

        It is eerie how many of the ideas out of the Romantic movement are not just bad but deeply bad at many different levels.

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    3. If you want me to do a post on myths I can.

      BTW NO WRITER WRITES HIS/HER BEST EVERY TIME. Some of my stories are so far below what I think I can do it’s not even funny. Others shock me with how great they are.

      HOWEVER, over all? best according to whom? Good, according to whom?

      PUT IT ALL OUT. See how it sells.

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      2. I think I can handle the thought of readers rejecting my work because they think it’s bad, or doing the equivalent of throwing a book at a wall in disgust (ebooks only for now, so not possible if they want to keep their reading device. Perhaps angry deleting in that case.). Getting called bad, manageable. So I am going to put it all out.

        But there is one thing I am a bit scared of, and that’s having something that gets mocked. By one or two or a few people, well, that will happen to the best ones. But becoming one of the generally used bad examples everybody makes fun of would not be enjoyable. Especially if it happened without the balm of also being a bestseller, I think finding out that you wrote the next ‘Twilight’ would be okay if you also sold a lot, but without the money and the fans, say some acerbic and well known reviewer happened across your story on a bad day and then spread it’s infamy around, it might sting quite a bit. (And I haven’t read any in the ‘Twilight’ saga, only nearly fallen asleep trying to watch the first movie, but I have quite enjoyed reading some of the articles written by people who hate those novels. Even if that made me feel somewhat guilty, I generally dislike judging something without seeing the evidence which I guess I did there).

        Well, with luck that might also get you a few sales, I suppose. I quite believe the Locke theorem. Sometimes something can even become a favorite precisely because it’s so gloriously bad.

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        1. The book I consider “worst book ever written” (yes, indie) not only has six sequels, it has mixed reviews and the author makes a living from this series.

          And the writing SUCKS, the prose has internal contradictions, the plot is non-existent, the characters are cardboard cut outs, and… well… I read the first few pages aloud while older son was driving and he threatened to crash us because he was laughing so hard (and it’s not supposed to be a funny scene.)

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          1. Comforting. On some levels. Maybe the best approach is just do your best not to take the whole thing too seriously. Well, seriously when it comes to money, contracts and trying to do your best when you are writing, but not when it comes to how it is received. And I have never wanted to write the Great American Novel anyway, I’m not an American (USAian, maybe, but I don’t think that counts there) and as long as I write mostly in English I can’t write the Great Finnish novel either (besides I don’t think my style is quite melancholy enough for that in any case), so there.

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              1. Lots of very popular humor writers here. But even they tend towards somewhat pessimistic view of the world in general and humanity particularly. What we lack almost completely is the kind of stories Heinlein wrote – that even with our failings we are something worth fighting for, and there is room for optimism because we are tough bastards. There is a tendency towards individualism in us, but we are lacking when it comes to optimism. I guess that’s one of the things I most admire in Americans. You still have that optimism, at least those of you who haven’t succumbed to the leftist worldview.

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                  1. Um… Finns and Portuguese are related?

                    Speaking of which Pohjalainen, what do you read, and how much trouble would you be in if I sent you a very large box of books? (I have a lot to get rid of.) What if I marked them “Belongings of returning AFS student? (which is how we evaded prohibitive taxes in Portugal…)

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                    1. Thanks, that would be great!

                      What I read is a bit problematical to answer, because when it comes to genres I read almost everything, what I like depends on the writer and her style. Most of the time I avoid depressing stuff, though I can like even very dark during midsummer and right after it rest of the year it can affect my mood too much. So, I guess as long as it is optimistic in mood and preferably has a main character one doesn’t want to start hitting over the head with anything. Right now I have been reading a lot of cozy mysteries, and almost anything which has both humor and at least some action/adventure in them. Writers I like: RAH, ERB, H. Beam Piper, F. Paul Wilson, Andre Norton, Keith Laumer (especially Retief), Lois Bujold, C. L. Moore, Mary Stewart, Elizabeth Peters (Amelia Peabody series). With the exception of F. Paul Wilson and some ERB those are also writers most of whose books I have or have read, but that might give you some idea of what should appeal to me. Of your books I like the historical (musketeer mysteries) and the science fiction ones, but I like the Goldport stories even more.

                      As far as I know our Customs should be cool with most things that says ‘gift’, and possibly add ‘second hand books’ or something like that. There is a money limit, but as long as it looks convincing that the value of the box is not over 45 euros they shouldn’t ask me to pay anything for it. So if they don’t look too new it should be okay (it’s possible it will be opened, although not likely as there are no restrictions in books, so only if they suspect there may be something else inside).

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                    2. I think it has to be the water. Most cultures / peoples who border the North Atlantic are dour in someway. That has been my personal experience, but what can I know I am from South Louisiana and we have to deal with periodic re-building after floods and hurricanes but at least the food is good.

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            1. With the er… male anatomy that drags on the floor and leaves a trail of aphrodisiac slime,yes. Also, in the beginning the guy is fully restrained: Arms, legs and genitals… Because his genitals might jump out and …. words fail me.

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                  1. Okay. Aphrodisiac slime and overly sized male parts? Sounds as if they are more related to snails than cats. Sexy snail people, there’s a thought.

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                    2. It does kind of remind me of stories of some (don’t remember which) American Indians of a character called “coyote”, I think?

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                    4. Did you mean Kokopelli, Wayne? Some of the artwork depicting him on pottery and walls has genitalia that would come close to dragging the ground if limp.

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                    5. Well, I don’t think so, but possibly. I think it was my Anthropology professor who told a story of some legendary character who saw a girl out in a stream and laid it in the water and had sex with her while he stayed on the bank. Thought the prof said it was Coyote, but maybe not.

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                    6. There is a Guarani (Chaco area, Paraguay) forest god who has a member so long that he wraps it around his waist like a sash. Can’t remember the name, but he is short and some sort of Pan character who is pretty scary.

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              3. You don’t know how relieved I am to read this.

                IT AIN’T MINE!

                I don’t know if I could continue to hang out here if it WAS mine, but the guy must be doing SOMETHING right. Maybe being the author of “the worst indie books ever written” attracts the masochistic crowd or something. Maybe it just goes to show that the indie market is so large, even HIS books have an audience. That gives hope to the rest of us.

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                1. Well yeah, writing books about characters whose schlong drags the ground would probably attract the masochistic crowd.

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              1. Yep, it was written by several people to prove that a certain “publisher” would print anything (no matter how bad) if the “publisher” was paid by the authors.

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          4. Isn’t this what creates serial killers? Or at least seriously disturbed DMV workers (Illinois DMV at that)? ie, when you have no notion of what behavior gets rewarded, and what gets punished?

            I’m old enough and cantankerous enough that I can laugh off the success of aphrodesiac slime, but young writers must find this impossible to decode.

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            1. On the topic of “what makes serial killers”, I can recommend a couple of books: _Meditations on Violence_, and _Facing Violence_, both by Sgt. Rory Miller.

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        2. Some time back I browsed across a book collecting scathing reviews of (what are now) widely acclaimed classic novels.

          There are probably web sites devoted to the topic.

          I recommend finding and reading these; it will do much to put criticism into perspective.

          No book that touches some reader will fail to put off some other reader, and I daresay there is no book this side of Pride & Prejudice which doesn’t have at least one awkwardly turned or leaden phrase which critics can cherry pick.

          For most folks, when they say “It wasn’t a very good book” what they actually mean is “That book wasn’t my cup of tea.” Since many of those people actually prefer coffee and rate books on their usefulness as coasters, their criticism need not be cause for concern.

          The only literary criticism with which you should be concerned is mine, because I am eruditer than all others.

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          1. Hm. Should I discourage you from trying to read mine…

            I think Edgar Rice Burroughs claimed that he wrote ‘Princess of Mars’ because he decided that he could do at least as well as some of the worse writers he had been reading in the pulp magazines. I suppose that’s a pretty useful way to approach this.

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            1. On the first point, I very much doubt anybody will reach a decision about reading a book based on the crucially important “What did RES say about this?” factor. Certainly I do what I am able to ensure nobody will.

              On the ERB story, RAH supposedly wrote his first published story, Lifeline, under that same principle. As the joke goes, you don’t have to be able to outrun the bear …

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            2. He also claimed to have written it in a day, because he was bored and thought he could do as good as or better than the writers he could find to read. He is probably the closest to that myth of ‘inherit genuis’ I can find, and if you go back and reread his stuff you can see his improvement as a writer in later novels.

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              1. I suspect that ERB, like L’Amour, was an experienced storyteller. Back before the world was full of distractions people learned how to sit around the campfire or the cracker barrel and hold an audience’s attention the old-fashioned way: by doing it.

                Once you master that craft, turning your stories into books is less of a challenge. Some folk need the feedback (as the Marx Brothers found when they toured before filming A Night at the Opera, honing the timing of their best gags before live audiences.)

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                1. That was one of the cues for me. Kris Rusch heard me tell a story (about my maternal grandfather, as it turned out) and she said “you need to channel that storytelling into your writing, instead of going all stiff and self-conscious.”

                  It worked.

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                  1. This is why I thought dictation would be a good way for me to write, and I can do it for a nonfic story. But it doesn’t work for me for fiction, and I hate talking to a computer so much that in nonfic I usually spend more time going back through and fixing stuff than I would have to type it the first time.

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          2. When commenting on books, I often include the “YMMV” line. IE “Your Mileage May Vary”.

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            1. Back when I used to get free movies by working part-time at a theatre, people would wander up to the box office and ask “What’s good?”

              Laying aside my utter incomprehension that people would go to theater without having an entertainment already in mind, and laying aside the fact that as a (then) avid and pretentious film geek my idea of “good” very possibly included foreign languages and obscure references, I learned how to answer this question in a way that (largely) ensured a happy customer.

              Before telling them what was “good” I would ask: What was the last really good film you saw? What was the last really bad film you saw?

              Given that targeting bracket it was usually easy to direct them to a film they would like.

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        3. The mocking would bother me, but mostly from people I know, which is why, when I finally go to publish something, it will be under a pen name.

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          1. In other words, I think I can take mocking from people I don’t know, or even from people I DO know, as long as they don’t know it’s me they are mocking.

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            1. That . . . makes too much sense.

              On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 2:19 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:

              > ** > Wayne Blackburn commented: “In other words, I think I can take mocking > from people I don’t know, or even from people I DO know, as long as they > don’t know it’s me they are mocking.” >

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              2. Just don’t start dancing around like the Sarah Jessica Parker in Hocus Pocus going, “A-mock! A-mock! A-mock! A-mock! A-mock!…” (runs)

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                1. Pshaw – I’ve never seen Hocus-Pocus but it is obviously nonsense. Everybody knows you don’t dance a mock, you run one.

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                    1. I think mocking stalls is when you have a hilariously cutting rejoinder but, by the time you get the comment block to open (or reboot the computer after a freeze) you can’t … quite … come up with the words.

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                    2. Mocking Stalls is a small municipality south of Ann Arbor MI. It is famous for being the traditional site that General Mad Anthony Wayne discovered flan. There was a post office named after that city in the 1890’s in Oregon, when the Post Office Department ruled that the proposed name, Pheasant Pluckers, was too stupid for words.

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                    5. We used to use “I’m a happy mother pheasant plucker. I pluck happy mother pheasants” as a sobriety test at one of the airports where I worked. If you could not get the words out correctly, someone else drove you home.

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                2. Treat it seriously, and play it straight. Drives them *nuts* when you answer their clever rhetorical questions with in-depth detailed analysis. A few subtle clues like a reference to Poe’s Law will be enough for those who want to laugh along.

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          2. Have to admit that same reason figured when I decided to use a pen name. Other, connected reason is that it’s quite possible I’m the only person in the world with my name, both my first name and my last name are somewhat rare and while I have been able to find people who are close I haven’t found a single exact match so far. Which makes the possibility of getting mocked a bit more scary, plus just in case – there are nutcases around, and I would be very easy to locate if you know my legal name.

            The other reasons had to do with being able to use last and first names I happen to like, Lappi was my mother’s maiden name. Well, I would have perhaps preferred ‘Marja Lappi’, unfortunately there is one Finnish writer named that, and I like the name Kiti too so went with that after I found out about Marja Lappi. At least neither google nor pipl can’t seem to find any (other) Kiti Lappis so hopefully I’m not stepping on anybody’s territory with that.

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            1. Sometimes the choice of a pen name can come back and bite. A relative, who I will not name, chose a Japanese name to post her fan-fic writing. Later a Japanese porn actress choose the same name as her nom du cinema.

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                1. Yes, I know. Advantage of being a known libertarian. “Hey, we have topless pictures of yourself at 19” (Yes, there are those. Not, I think on the net. A friend took them at as a joke but gave them to her — male– cousin to develop and it became a nightmare. I was SUNBATHING in an all-girl environment) “So? Deal. I’m libertarian.” “Your name is the same as someone in a group marriage.” “So? Deal. I’m a libertarian.” “You write gay characters.” “So? Deal. I’m a libertarian.”

                  I mean, my only potential embarrassment would be someone saying “You’re a secret communist.” And then, in my case, you’d know the person was insane, so no issue.

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                  1. So, I’ll know I’ve made it when somebody threatens to expose pictures of my shirtless at 19? Of course those pictures are on my mother’s fridge, and I’m sure she could come up with worse pictures to threaten me with.

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        4. Being mocked into infamy is not a bad thing, look at the authors and books who have been, most of them made a very comfortable living, and many were bestsellers. ERB, Louis L’amour, Mark Twain, RAH, and for more recent writers we have Stephany Meyers of Twilight, J. K. Rowling, and whoever wrote Fifty Shades of Grey.

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        5. Pohjalainen, when you start getting reviews for your work, don’t sweat the less-than-five-star ones too much. For example, my work gets better reviews on one site (Kobo) than on another. I still wonder if that reviewer noticed the “short story collection” part in the book information. *shrug*

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          1. That ‘not noticing what they are buying’ problem is why I ended up with overlong explanations attached to the title. Short fantasy, short horror story, etc. I’m hoping that would be impossible to miss so I won’t end up where the only review is one star just because the buyer didn’t think to check what he was buying. There seemed to be quite a few of those attached to short stories. Perhaps not the best possible way to do it, but until and unless I can think of something better I think I will keep them. :D

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            1. If they could only keep the review length in proportion to the length of the story I would call that progress.

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              1. Two of your stories have reviews on Kobo so you should get something from them. I’ve switched from B&N to Kobo. If you like, I can let you know when I buy something so you can see if they’re honest.

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                1. Those are reviews that originate from Goodreads. Kobo sucks those in automatically. They weren’t bought there.

                  It’s not that I think Kobo is dishonest, but it’s mysterious to me how some authors report significant percentages of their sales coming from Kobo or B&N. I know they can’t explain it, either, but zero just strikes me as… odd.

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                  1. Also– some of the kids were using the reviews as message boards (I think it was kobo)– so having reviews really didn’t mean you had sales. It is a problem on a lot of the sites that don’t review their reviews.

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      3. I beg to differ. Harper Lee. But then again that first time out was: 1) a doozy and 2) the only.

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  9. Ahhh. The Ric Locke Theorum explains a lot. I’ve been wondering why books that I love and think are incredibly fantastic and the “best thing ever” don’t sell like crazy. I guess not being a writer or a critic I have no idea what a reasonable subject is, what a good plot is, and what good writing looks like. I only know what I like which I guess is pretty limited knowledge.

    The question is how to get to the 1,000 unknowledgeable readers like me that will like some set of books with limited objective merits. I’m not sure this post answered it.

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    1. It took me a number of years to discover that the realms of “Books that Are Good” and “Books That I Think Are Good” not only lacked a 1:1 correspondence but that the overlap was dismayingly slight. So I recalibrated the first category as “Books That Other People Think Are Good” and found the result no more satisfactory.

      So I reverted to the former category, on the basis that in such matters my taste in reading material is the only criterion that is material and now have perfect correspondence between the two sets, with a slight overlap in the “Books That Other People Think Are Good” category.

      I early on learned that “Books That Will Impress Other People” was a very poor basis for selecting what I read.

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        1. Likewise. Sometimes I have also liked movies which were flops financially. Like ‘Battleship’. Well, parts of it, anyway, like when they finally commandeered the old, actual battleship. So I guess I have bad taste when it comes to movies. Or maybe just bad taste in general. :D

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          1. Hang out in places where authors congregate, see if any of them are willing to sleep with me. Eliminate those as being too lacking in discrimination and judgement.

            Look for Baen symbol on the spine (seriously – one time I found I had gone through the SF section at Borders and pulled a dozen or so books to consider … and when I sat down with them I realized every one had the Baen sigil.) Baen also frequently has a table in the back advising: If you liked this book you might also like …

            Look for authors I’ve read. Read more by those authors.

            Pick up books at random, read the cover, read the first couple pages, read some pages from the interior. In spite of the adage, I do believe you can reach some conclusions about a book by its cover: you can determine what genre it is trying to persuade you it fits into, for example. This works best in brick & mortar stores.

            Whim. Reviews from trusted sources (e.g., if Sarah Hoyt or Andrew Klavan recommends a book I will probably check it out.) Author reputation — if an author has been mining a genre for years, even if not writing series, I am more willing to try one of their works, especially if it is on a topic of particular interest, for example Ken Follett’s On Wings of Eagles.

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            1. Well, dang! This was supposed to attach to bretwallach’s question about selecting books to read.

              There can be other methods, of course. Back when Dick Cheney had his hunting accident the single best thing I read about it was a Washington Post article by Stephen Hunter. On learning he was author of the Bob Lee Swagger series I tried the first of those.

              If you routinely hang about in Web forums (Forii? Forae?) such as the Baen Bar you will often find yourself associating with folks of similarly perverse tastes whose recommendations become a quantifiable factor. OTOH, such venues tend to become horrendous time sinks, rendering you with less time for reading novels.

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              1. Thanks for the suggestions. I don’t have a lot of trusted sources, but I’ll give the Baen Bar a try.

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              1. I don’t know. It is in my “to be read” pile as well. I am looking forward to it, but first I have a new Hoyt coming tomorrow, about six Dresden Files, a few Harry Bosch, several Bob Lee Swagger (and a couple about Earl), a few Pratchett and Heinlein, some histories, a couple Bernard Cornwell, some Kratman, some Lackey (losing ground on her … the more of them I read, the less I want to read more of them), Van Name, the new Bujold …

                I have seen figures on how many books the average American has in their home library. I reckon I have at least that many books in my waiting to be read pile and, like the Red Queen, I must run as fast as I can to not lose ground.

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                1. I think Lackey is no longer getting any editing. :/ There was a book that rendered me incapable of reading any of the new Valdemar series (I can re-read some of my old favorites still – but I can’t bring myself to “risk” a new one). I don’t tend to like most of her other worlds, so I was pretty well stuck with her Elemental Masters series. But the last few have been so poorly edited that it was heartbreaking. Like.. including two versions of the same chapter. (The characters do one thing at the end of one chapter, then it breaks to another set of characters. When the story returns to the first set, the chapter was essentially rewritten with different details and attitudes from the characters. It was beyond confusing.)

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                2. Well, that’s a TBR pile that gets my vote, though I’m way ahead of you on some of them, so clearly there’s SOME overlap with other human beings.

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                  1. I’ve read all the Dresden’s and I now have AFGM on order from Hoyt– I am re-reading Kris’ Fates series (I read those when I need some light-hearted reading). I am also reading a lot of Poker Boy– and I am staying away from traditional pubs (besides Baen) so that I won’t get disappointed. ;-)

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              2. bearcat | March 4, 2013 at 6:39 pm | Reply
                > Ah, On Wings of Eagles is in my to be read pile, is it worth my time oh eruditist?

                *YES*!

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        2. Do *NOT* get me started on the movie _Sucker-Punch_; the reviews I’ve seen for that one all cause the same reaction: “Did you *actually* *watch* the movie, dumbass?”

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      2. So how do you find new books to read if you can’t rely on what others think? I have an algorithm which works okay but I’m trying to refine it so I’d like to find out what others do especially those whose tastes don’t seem to line up with a large majority of others.

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          1. There’re hundreds of thousands of new books each year. How do you decide which samples to read? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

            Here’s what I currently do (note that I only read books with sequels):

            1. Goto amazon kindle books
            2. Select genre of interest
            3. Select 4 stars or more average
            4. Sort low price to high price
            5. Ignore books with less than 20 reviews.
            6. Ignore books that aren’t the first in a series.
            7. Ignore books with titles that aren’t appealing (I’m not too picky).
            8. Ignore books with covers that aren’t appealing (I’m not too picky).

            This works okay in that it’s found a couple of book series I’ve really enjoyed but doesn’t work optimally because my three favorite series in the last two years I discovered in ways that I can’t readily duplicate (they all happen to be associated with this blog). The above method yields more than 100 free books per month in SF/Fantasy alone. Note that once hooked on the first book, I’m happy to pay full fare for the rest of the books in the series.

            I’m trying to figure out how to modify the filter to boost quality (though I have yet to hate a book I’ve found using this approach) and reduce the sheer volume of choice.

            It’s impossible to read every sample and since the books are free I just start reading them. Ten years ago, I would always finish a book I started. But now since there’s so many books, unless it grips me fairly quickly I just delete it and move on. Again, not because I wasn’t enjoying it at all, but just because there’s so many books, so little time.

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            1. Note that once hooked on the first book, I’m happy to pay full fare for the rest of the books in the series.

              I believe this is called the “loss leader” tactic. Your first hit is free/cheap-enough.

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          2. I don’t know. I have usually put in a great deal of thinking when assembling my reading pile for an upcoming year. Then someone inevitably comes along and says, ‘Here, I need you to read this, please, now.’ This past year that worked out alright.

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        2. How I decide on what to read– Cyn’s tutorial
          1. I look at the cover, especially the blurb on the back to see if it is what I like to read. I have a special liking for hard-boiled cross-genre with sci-fi or fantasy. (Those are my favorites, but I will read almost anything if it is not gray-goo. I have read children’s books if there was nothing else to read. Dang, warning labels as well).
          2. I read the first two chapters (or on kindle I read the sample). If it passes those two tests then I buy it.
          3. If I want to throw it at the wall after that, then I ban the author. I have quite a few authors I just don’t read again. I can forgive a grammar errors, but if there is inconsistencies in the story, or it becomes pornish (I can abide soft porn in Romance although I don’t like it), then it is out of there. I had to quit reading LKH because of that. Plus if the series never resolves… I enjoyed Robert Jordan at first, but he never brought the series to a close– I quit reading him because I felt he violated my trust as a reader. I wanted to know if his MC (he had too many MCs) could clean up the tainted magic. I suspect that he went towards despair instead of to hope– I really dislike that–
          4. I will read dystopia if there is a happy ending. If it doesn’t the author goes on my banned list– happy ending means the entire town plus MC didn’t die. ;-)

          Finally– you have to work hard to really destroy a story. There are some newbies out there that are really good storytellers. I find that I will give an indie a first change where I quit reading newbies on the traditional route because the indie newbie actually has a good story to tell that is not a complete replica of some bestselling story.

          It’s what works for me. I have been reading for a very long time. Plus I am a reader first and a writer second.

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          1. Author I know first off, but none of them ever write enough :( Or something recommended by people with similar tastes (like here) but often this fails. I tend to find authors I like and then read whatever they have written, so if they cowrite something and I like it, I will then check out the cowriters stuff. Baen used to have a couple pages in the back of their paperbacks that would say, if you like X you should try Y, I found this often useful. Also if a writer I like is constantly being compared to another writer in reviews I have had good success trying that author, this is how I first discovered David Weber, by reading Elizabeth Moon and ALL of her reviews compared her to Weber’s HH books. Other than that, a title that catches me, and I always read the blurb on the back, if that interests me I will likely try it. I am in the minority here, but I don’t look at covers virtually at all, except sometimes after I have read the book, to see how the picture on the cover relates not at all to the description in the books.

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            1. I used to do that too– I got to the point in my late twenties, early thirties that I quit reading sci-fi altogether. Now though I have found some authors I like– here mostly. So I am reading more space opera. If sci-fi story is basically a tech manual, I get bored pretty quickly. The plot (and character) is the thing.

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              1. I didn’t read SF or Fantasy until in my twenties, well at least claimed I didn’t. I read ERB, but somehow failed to consider him SF, because… I didn’t like SF and I liked his books ;). Not sure what turned me off to it, but I had read a few Anne McCaffrey books as a grade schooler and liked them, so I picked one of them up at a thrift store one day and found I still liked her. So I read her but still no other SF, until one day while waiting to meet someone I picked up a sequel to the worst book she ever wrote, and found I liked the sequel she cowrote with Elizabeth Moon. That introduced me to Moon, Baen, and mil-scifi, and I now find the majority of my reading falls into sci-fi or fantasy written by authors who also wrote scifi I previously read. In reality I find genre not nearly as important as author, some authors suck in certain genres, but as a general rule, if I like an author in one genre, I will find what they write at least readable in all genres.

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                1. I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was Phillip Jose Farmer’s book that I read in 1983 that took me away from sci-fi altogether. I may be impugning the wrong man. The book I remember though was that there were rooms after rooms where the MC would escape into another room. It was plain gray-goo. I did read a few of Neal Stephenson… but not his newer stuff. So that turned me off– Before that I read RAH, Gordon R. Dickerson, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Isaac Asimov, and others in anthologies. Oh yes, Andrew North and Andre Norton — I think those are both of her pen names.

                  Plus I just don’t like time travel novels. And for a while there you could only find time travel. So I am coming back — slowly but surely.

                  BTW hubby is reading Darkship Thieves and he has not put the book down, which is a good sign. :-) (I mean he reads a few chapters a night and hasn’t thrown it against the wall.) Plus he hasn’t read much fiction for the last few years.

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                  1. I second you on the Time Travel books, the only ones I could ever stand were the Time Scout books by Linda Evans and Robert Aspirin (that is one of the book titles, I don’t remember the name of the series) and more recently Eric Flint’s 1632 series.

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                    1. I like some of the older stories, like ‘Lest Darkness Fall’. Or ‘Door into summer’. But in them the time travel is usually one shot, or nearly so, not something the characters do on a regular basis.

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            2. Excuse me. But, with the possible exception of myself, I believe that everyone here reads a book a great deal faster than it takes to write one. So, of course you will find that you will run out of an author’s books. The situation is exacerbated by the publishing industry’s decision to limit the books any given author may publish in any given year. Therefore it is best to find more than one author whose works you appreciate.

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              1. You’re not the only one. Just too much to get through, and he summarizes previous events over and over, it drove me nuts. Even now that I know the series ends and was ended by someone whose writing I like, I can’t make myself go back and finish it (and if I start something I usually want to finish it)

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            2. Fixed the Wheel of Time? How? Went back and removed half the pages from the middle of the series? Stopped the sniffing?

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      3. I have found in books and movies stay as far away as possible from anything that has been in any way described as art. It usually is self indulgent and movers at a pace only Glaciers would appreciate.

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        1. So, you’ve been suckered into Game of Thrones too? Any portion of the series is written engagingly enough but it is accumulating a suspiciously large quantity of goo of a dubious colour.

          The worst aspect of it is that the penultimate book is guaranteed to take us down to the depths without assurance the final volume will resolve all things in non-annoying manner.

          The strong critical acclaim for the books certainly makes me glower at them.

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          1. This! I read the first one, and said something along the lines of, “I’d rather gouge out my eyes with an ice-cream scoop that read more about the characters I actually like getting the schtuff and life removed from them shred by agony-filled shred.” I don’t care how well written they are, or how well realized the world is: I dunnae like it, and I’m not a-gonna go back. I had a similar problem with Robin Hobbs Assassin series.

            SPOILER!!!!

            Fitz goes through a short lifetime in several kinds of hell, and saves pretty much everybody in the end, and a faked death and permanent exile from everything he’s known is a RELIEF. Not what I consider edifying reading material. I don’t care how gritty and realistic such things are.

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              1. Good to know. I may dig that up at some point. When the “to read” and “to write” piles are much smaller than now. Especially the latter.

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  10. But, but, having a publisher accept your work for publication, no matter if you have to provide the funds for printing, promotion and distribution (which typically means driving around with boxes of the book in your car, stopping at regional bookstores and cajoling the manager into accepting a few on consignment) is like getting a gold star from teacher.

    You haven’t made it as a professional writer until …

    Other writers come up to you at cons and tell you where the good con bars are.

    Other writers teach you the secret handshake.

    Other writers sneer at you behind your back and complain you just got lucky … or slept with somebody … or are proof the public has no taste.

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    1. Can you believe it– you don’t have to be a writer to have other people say you slept with someone to get a job (or rank). When I earned my PO2 in the Navy one of my classmates told the Chief that I had to have slept with someone to get the rank. She got slapped down, but I continued to hear that one at that duty station.

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      1. The other day we made a list of all the guys I’m supposed to have slept with to get to my not very impressive position in my career. (Once by an editor, who accused me of sleeping with a reviewer.)

        Let’s say there’s a reason I’m always tired and leave it at that…

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        2. There is an old Hollywood joke about the starlet so dumb she thinks the way to get ahead is to sleep with the screenwriter.

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    2. . . . other writers claim you stole their best idea, even though they have not written anything about sentient wallpaper.

      . . . other writers compare your work unfavorably to their ex-spouse.

      . . . other writers haul you out of line in the agents’ meeting room and hiss “no! You’re too good for him. Go talk to the woman in the brown tweed coat by the elevators. She works for,” furtive glances for listeners, “Baen. Tell her Shorty sent you.”

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  11. You know what makes me feel like a real writer and editor? Little love notes that start with the words “Pay to the Order of”. That’s all the validation I need.

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    1. Checks are not in use anymore where I live, so I find a few problems there (banks take foreign ones, but there is a hefty fee). But the general principle is definitely solid.

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  12. Thanks for the advice Sarah. It gives me a definite direction. I’m working on my next book and it already shows improvement over my first crack at writing and it can seem a little weird throwing it up on Amazon or Smashwords like a toaster on Ebay. Then again given all the books out there I might have a better chance of being a recognized brand if I sold toasters.

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  13. The Grand Master RAH made no bones about being in it strictly for the money. He more than once said he’d write just about anything if it paid. Just so happened that SF paid better than most. I do suspect he did get significant pleasure out of twisting the collective tails of the establishment, especially later in his career.
    I strongly urge anyone not yet conversant with his truly great speech “Channel Markers” given at his alma mater Annapolis back in the ’70s IIRC on how to write and how to sell. Only thing lacking is any recognition of indy as such was not at the time even a gleam in anyone’s eye.

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  14. After much discussion between the Road Crew and I, we decided that Baen would be taken over by alien lawyers. It just makes the most sense.

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        1. With Baen authoers? Why wait? I’m pretty sure armed author resistance will show up long before the comet does.

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        3. A comet hitting Mars… anyone checked to make sure we still only have one Stonehenge?

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  15. Wildly off-topic, but I thought it merited notice (and that it was late enough to slip in a digression or two):

    http://washingtonexaminer.com/are-portuguese-hispanic/article/2523046

    I’d just like to be the first to congratulate our host on her recent promotion to the ranks of the storied “aggrieved”. Your official, brass-plated hyphen is already in the mail, as well as the necessary forms to open an account and begin accumulating v-cred (victim cred).

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    1. The schools have been considering kids hispanic for years… (Don’t get me STARTED.)

      As for me… um… I’ll have to talk to Baen. See, I think I was supposed to hate Asians. (I don’t know why. I always found Asian males hot, so, that’s odd. But that’s what I was assigned, since we’re all supposed to be haters at Baen.) I don’t know who’s supposed to hate Hispanics but I’ll have to talk to him and get an exception. I know Larry is supposed to hate white people, so of course he was already considered hispanic. Sigh. This being a hater thing is SO MUCH work.

      Hey, ya’ll, what THIS: I’m Baen’s WISE Latina.

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      1. About that hating Asians requirement … is that Pakistanis, Indians (all Indians or just some of the ethnic groups? Can you like the Bengali, or perhaps the Gurkhas while disliking the Jat and Rajput and hating Marathi and Kashmiri? How about the Gujarats? Do you get to pick some from Column A and some from Column B to hate or is this an all or none package? Wikipedia isn’t clear but indicates over 300 ethnic groups in India.) Are you required to hat the Bangladeshi, Thais, Ceylonese, Burmese, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Mongolians, Chinese (just the Han or some or all of the other 55 ethnic groups comprising the Chinese population? How about Taiwan?) Do you have to hate the Koreans as North & South or do you get to hate them together? Are the Samoans included? Do you get to hate all Australians or just the aborigines?

        Asians is a big category, comprising about half the planet’s population. Most of them hate all the rest of them, too. Wouldn’t it make more sense to hate people retail instead of wholesale? Given time most people can provide ample reasons to hate them, there is no real point in hating them because of the continent on which they reside.

        About being Baen’s Wise Latina? I think you left three letters off of the Wise there. (Well, one letter is used twice, so that might make it only two letters.)

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          1. I thought Larry was supposed to hate women. Y’know: guns, adventure, guns, monsters, guns, superpowers, more guns, plotplotPLOT and finally, lotsamoreguns. I mean, he usually comes off as white as rice (funny story: ate black rice tonight with homemade Tom Kha, nomnom) and sounds as nerdy as they come. (‘nother funny story: at LTUE chatted with a gaming buddy of Larry’s who studied Brazilian Portuguese and cringes every time Larry – or anybody else – says his last name. Poor guy can’t pronounce it so it sounds like Korea.)

            Also, just about anything that comes out of MadMike’s loquacious pie-hole should be take with a grain of salt that outweighs me. Because reasons: I’m just sayin’.

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            1. I keep correcting Larry’s pronunciation of his last name too! He just smiles at me.

              No, this started with a letter Larry go accusing him of coming over here, hating on whites and… it was WEIRD.

              Larry wrote a very funny response about hanging out at home depot, and Toni drove by in a truck and said “I need someone to write a novel” and Larry has been writing novels and stealing white jobs ever since… :-P

              Yes, he’s paler than I — though not by much — and looks like a considerably less tanned and BIGGER version of #1 son, who is built the same but only six one.

              I keep thinking between Larry and my boys, people will go to Portugal expecting these giant men…

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                  1. ??? Isn’t that how you pronounce Korea? Well actually I often pronounce it cur-ey-uh, but I thought the other was the proper pronunciation.

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                    1. no. Sorry, I mistranscribed and you clearly saw oo as in door.

                      It’s C o makes a sound like [sh]oe or [thr]ou[gh] the R sound doesn’t exist in English. It’s closest to a double French r. the ei sounds somewhat like the sound in “Hey,” without the H. and the a is read uh

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                    3. actually it’s a Portuguese double R. The Portuguese have both the French R, the English R, a combination r and this r — when I said French R it was just to make it possible for Americans to “get.”

                      This R is not lingual. Lay your tongue flat. Now pronounce the r in your throat for double the time.

                      Pronouncing that lingual with the r against the back of the front teeth is a regional accent “from behind the mountains.” My maternal grandmother had a trace of it, which is bizarre since that I know of neither of her parents or grandparents came from there. Now, if it had been on the other side, sure. But it was just odd.

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                    4. I could never say the rr’s in Spanish (I have not heard the Portuguese r’s) because my tongue would get tangled or I would roll too much. lol

                      I have heard the French r, but probably didn’t know what I was hearing. My hubby took French in high school. I didn’t have a second language except bits and pieces of Afrikaans until in my late 30s. (I was in Japan in early 30s– learned mainly greetings and how to find dinner. Plus in Panama I learned enough for greetings and buy food– can you see a pattern?) We like food.

                      And since I haven’t spoken any German since we left Germany, I lost most of it too. Oh well, I do speak English however because I was born and learned to speak in Canada, some Americans can hear that accent in my speech. I don’t. I really think I have the bland accent… but I guess you can’t hear your own speech as well as someone else. o O

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                    5. My comment just disappeared. UGH–
                      Basically I haven’t heard the Portuguese double R; I have heard the French one, but didn’t know it. I didn’t learn a foreign language until my late 30s (German). But I was in Japan, South Africa, and Panama for several years so I do have enough to say hello, point at things, and ask for food. :-) Don’t leave home w/o knowing how to ask for food.

                      So that is a little Japanese, Afrikaans, and Panamanian Spanish. I was born and spoke my first English in Canada so I have carried a slight accent with me my entire life. Sometimes natural-born Americans don’t understand what I say– which I don’t understand because my accent blended when I was in the military. I can understand heavy accents if I listen for a few sentences.

                      Also– the point of this is that I used to try to roll my r’s, but either my tongue would get tangled or I would roll too much. lol So I never got the knack.

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                  2. That is how I hear it in my head– (I was in Panama for seven years so it skewed my American accent– and then Germany for six years.) urg–

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        4. Samoans are considered Polynesian. I thought they were grouped with Pacific Islanders in general. Are they now lumped with Asian as well?

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          1. Depending on who is doing the grouping Pacific Islanders are sometimes considered Asian, or Native American (don’t ask, I don’t know why) or their own seperate grouping. The one that through me was the Australians, I’ve never heard of them being grouped with Asians before.

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            1. This is why it is important that anybody desiring to hate an entire continent worth of people needs to carefully define their terms. There are ALWAYS some groups around the edges who might be being hated unnecessarily while others are overlooked and thus unfairly miss out on the hatred.

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              1. Oh, never mind. I’m too tired to hate anyone. We’ll have to find someone new to write for Baen and hate Asians. I’ll just write for Baen. (And right now mostly I hate the pushy critters.)

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                  1. well, if you had sixteen guys you’ve been accused of sleeping with…

                    What puzzles me is this — I hate flying and these people live all over the country. How am I supposed to have done that?

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                    2. How? See recent discussion of mammoth* genitalia; obviously those 16 guys were big dicks.

                      *NB, so far as I am aware there is nothing in the fossil record allowing us to speculate on the size of the “packages” of the mammoth, wholly or otherwise. Use in this context should not — repeat, NOT — be viewed as incentive for people to build time machines for the purpose of checking out the mammoths. Besides, you might step on a butterfly.

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                    3. Are mammoths one of those animals that lack a bone in their genitalia?

                      Sidenote: do any of those here that drink tea use a raccoon bone to stir it with? For whatever reason there is a market for them as tea stirrers (properly cleaned) and the ones that have been broken and healed crooked are worth three to four times more.

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                    4. Phone sex?
                      Though sleeping over the phone you loose so much of the experience, don’t you. Telephony just doesn’t carry the subtle nuances of the snoring.

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              2. While we’re on the subject, what are Madagascarans considered? (and if anyone says orangatuans they are getting oranges thrown at them… rotten ones)

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                1. Madagascar is African.

                  Orangutans are Asian, found primarily on the islands of Sumatra (with great rats) and Borneo. And one magnificent specimen resides in the Library at Unseen University.

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                  1. For whatever reason, possibly Clint Eastwood movies, I have repeatedly had people assure me orangutans come from Madagascar, thus the threat of rotten fruit.

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      2. See now it would make since if you were supposed to hate Muslims (since they invaded Portugal). But why would you give a flying flip about Vietnamese and Koreans? Ok, maybe you can hate Russians to, since they imported their screwed up politics to Portugal.

        It really irritates me when people think you should automatically hate somebody WITHOUT HAVING A REASON WHY YOU SHOULD!

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        1. Who said it had to be logical. Consider that Asia covers some 17,212,OOO square miles and encompasses some 48 countries.

          From Wikki:

          Asia is defined as comprising the eastwards four-fifths of Eurasia. It is located to the east of the Suez Canal, the Ural river, and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains (or the Kuma-Manych Depression) and the Caspian and Black Seas. It is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean.

          There are numerous language groups. The cultures, religions and traditions vary greatly. But, hey, they are all Asian. So they should have the same political interests…now they are here.

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        2. Whattaya mean, “WITHOUT HAVING A REASON”? You hate them because you are raaaaacist. Once you have been identified as raaaaacist, that can be assumed as the reason for your hatred.

          Never mind that such logic generally requires the logician shove their head up a very tight, dark malodorous place, it saves them all sorts of actual thought.

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          1. Seeing as there’s no permutation of the grievance calculus which places me in the “victim” category, I’ll continue hating all life in the solar system, (even the little purple men on the moons of Jupiter) as is my designated “role”.

            Also, you lot are the sorriest excuse for sapient beings I’ve ever encountered. (so nyah)

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    2. oh, as for the hyphen I have an idea. First we tie up a bureaucrat: hands, feet AND most particularly genitals. And then we do SOMETHING with that hyphen. (The worst part is I’m stone cold sober.)

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  16. What?!?!

    I thought if you’re not sufiring for your art your not living the dream was one of the firsting things they taught in Artsies 101, right of after be mysterious & aloof?

    And I blame Poe.

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            2. Loofa is a sponge. Large natural sea sponges used for bathing are called loofas. It has been considered a bathing luxury. Loofa is also a gourd which when grown to full ripeness and then dried resembles and can be used like the sea sponge, although rougher on the skin. Manmade loofas are available on the market, more comfortable than the gourd, but not quite as nice to use as the natural.

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                3. Cyanide? For us or yourself? For some of us, a steel baseball bat would be better. [Wink]

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                  1. No, I suspect it is intended for me for having crossed over the line from BAD into vermin territory.

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                    1. No. Me. If you read the Con books… Kate included that, because when I wake up unable to cope with the world, I’m likely to go “I need coffee. And cyanide.”

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      1. Tall, dark, and depressing? That’s Byron. I’ve dreamed of taking him to Lithia Springs, GA, along with Poe, and dunking them in the water.

        Yeah, typed by she who wrote bad poems about dead trees and would have been a goth if her parents had not vetoed all the black clothes and hair dye.

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        1. The Daughter has the advantage of pale skin and hair that, outside of bright sunlight, appears black. She also inherited her father’s ability to glower. So looking goth comes naturally, not looking goth takes effort.

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  17. Commercial Break.

    I’ve posted the first _Noah’s Boy_ Snippet on the Bar (in Sarah’s conference), on Sarah’s Facebook Page and on Eric Flint’s place (http://www.ericflint.net/).

    I’ll be posting them twice a week (Tuesdays & Fridays) until the Dead Tree release date of July 2nd.

    Oh, it’s good!!!!

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