One of the commenters mentioned on my post on the convention that I might be imagining being shunned. Well… kind of but no.
Because I am depressive and I know I’m depressive, meaning, I’m likely to view things through the darkest possible prism at any given time. That means that I consciously compensate for it. This means that people wishing to offend me or pick a fight with me – you are forwarned – must go to ridiculous lengths for me to get past the certainty that “it was just an accident’ or “they’re joking.” (Mind you, most of the time it was an accident or they were joking.)
With conventions, it’s localized, it’s, yes, related fandoms, and it’s pervasive. And it’s wearing down on me. But that’s besides the point and after all there is a reason that my “home” con (by choice) is Chattanooga TN.
However, part of being naturally depressive is knowing that periodically, for reasons that are hard to pin down, I will go through times of being down in the dumps for no reason anyone can figure, not even I, myself.
For the last week, I’ve been lying awake between three and five in the morning, “waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
This could be sheer mental illness, of course, but… But premonitions run in the family, and I’m sort of a natural mega-aggregator, in that I read a lot of news from science to politics, and sometimes I get an itch at the subconscious level, something I can’t QUITE pin down.
The number of times that turns out to be something disastrous at the local/personal/national level is rather high. That said, I don’t believe in ghosts (or premonitions) I just hope they don’t believe in me. It doesn’t help this is accompanied by the signs of the cats being anxious too – manifested in an endless amount of peeing in odd places, the new and creative location being heating vents. Next house? NO VENTS ON THE FLOOR, d*mn it.
Of course the cats could be feeling my/our mood. In fact, the whole family could be feeling my mood, and that’s probably all it is.
I’m kind of getting tired of the middle of the night horrors, though.
And just like my mom’s bipolar swings found excuses in the surrounding world, my mind has decided to have a fit of anxiety over A Few Good Men and how it’s doing. Part is justified. By this time with DST I had more emails/fan mail, and there was more presence in local stores. But how much of this is real, and how much the result of the ever imploding printed book scene? And how much of it is the fact that almost everyone I know has lurched between being sick and very sick for about five months? My friend Rebecca Lickiss who is a genius in some ways, had a short story about a time traveler going back and altering history by disseminating the flu. I mean… we always think killing one’s grandpa, but of course, if everyone is out of sorts, work won’t get done and the defense forces won’t be as on the mark and…
But I am anxious about it. Part of this is that this is the only book in – ever – that I haven’t sent bookmarks or t-shirts to baen for. I asked for the address to send it to (I lose everything) and never got it, and then I got sick… Do the bookmarks do any good? Who knows? If you’re going to a con in the next two months, let me know and I’ll send you bookmarks and a t-shirt (AFGM or DST if you’re bashful) to wear. (The t-shirt, not the bookmarks. Though if you’re comely and wear the bookmarks it could be very good for everyone ;) )
There are books that leave trails in your heart and this one is one of those. No, I can’t tell you why. I love every book I write – okay, okay, maybe not Plain Jane, which is why I wrote it in three days J But I love most books I write. Some I just “feel” more than others. I know it’s a complex book and that my usual luck applies making the whole thing far more insanely controversial than it should be (AND getting me hit on NOT embracing the controversy, too, on reviews) but part of me still wants to believe that if you write a good book, it will do well. It worked for DST which, when written, was my best book to date. Maybe it was a fluke, but I want to believe.
And even as I worry about the book I KNOW most of my issues and probably what’s causing the depression is just not having fully recovered from the weekend. You see, I AM used to compensating and to monitoring the other things in the environment that might be causing the issue.
Yes, it is probable that uncertainty over Dan’s job – and uncertainty over what kind of employment the kids will find when they graduate. I mean, we’re doing the best we can, but – is wearing on me. Also, I’ve been ill – nothing lethal but an annoying succession of “bugs” and am barely recovered from the last one. Then the con twisted my sleeping schedule to bits…
And I’m worried about the crazy book business…
Which means this depression is probably more organic than anything else. But all the same, if you liked AFGM mention it to ten friends you think will like it, if you get a chance. I’m putting my webpage up with excerpts (why is it I can’t find a theme that I can put columns of pictures on the side? Never mind.) and I’ll probably buy some ads on Project Wonderful (they’re very cheap, they did wonders for DST, and I suspect would be even better for AFGM.)
Meanwhile, the Shakespeare Trilogy – while breaking no records – made me more money in the last week than it made me from Ace after the first year. And it promises to be a steady seller. This is good. And I’m going to bed with some research on Titans for the framework for the YA fantasy I must finish editing this week.
Tomorrow we’re going to Denver on son-business (yeah, yeah, robotics) and also to figure out some stuff on incorporating and which type to do and all.
So, I hope you’ll forgive me the scattered post. More rational posting (possibly. Well, I’ll try) tomorrow.
According To Hoyt 
Oh, good grief. You realize i will now be asked to wear your bookmarks? I think if i made (stopping)
And moving on from that mental image…
It is excruciatingly difficult to see the extent and reality of one’s own depression from the inside out. I know this from years of personal experience, and still can’t evaluate myself. Listen to others,
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The problem is right now — for various reasons — I think the whole family is “tilting” off kilter…
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If it’s all you’re wearing, I’ll buy ten more copies.
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It sounds like we’ve got a lot in common – I’ve got the same depressive / introverted / smart-enough-to-see-all-the-possible-downsides personality you do. And, of course, we’re all in this Great Depression 2.0 thing together. So, like you, I wake up most mornings thinking “will all the work I’ve done on this novel ever pay off at ANYTHING like minimum wage…and how will my firm do over the next six months…and will the bills get paid…and, and, and…”.
It’s rough.
What serves me best is remembering the Catholic teaching on despair, and remembering that the universe can and will deliver whatever it’s going to deliver today, but that I’m the only one who gets to choose how I will RESPOND to that.
I find that remembering that BY ITSELF often puts me in a better mood. Sort of like the psychological concept of learned helplessness, but in reverse: remembering that I’m NOT helpless, but am the primary agent of my moods and my outcomes makes me feel proactive, useful, and in control.
Good luck, and fingers crossed for AFGM’s prospects.
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Btw, when I’m in this down-in-the-dumps mood, a friend and I refer to it “Drunken Irish Poet mode” (no implication of ACTUAL drunkenness is made). I suppose there’s no reason that you can’t have a “Drunken Portuguese Poet mode”. :)
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Just don’t go the Drunken Welsh Poet route …
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Dad’s family, which is where I get this from (I was the LUCKY one. Brother got the stuff from mom’s side. No, trust me.) does have several award winning poets. Weirdly, not many alcoholics. (That runs in mom’s family.) I guess when you have the mode, you don’t have to drink?
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They say the men of Ireland
are the men that God made mad/
for all their wars are merry,
and all their songs are sad.
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You’re not alone. I have periodic cycles of the waking up at 3 am and being unable to get back to sleep for 3 or 4 hours while intrusive scenarios of past events in which I see my behaviour in a very negative light play through my mind. Curiously, it is occasional rather than constant, and I hadn’t associated it with depression because I don’t feel particularly sad or down in the dumps. On the other hand that is perhaps because I’m pretty much burnt out emotionally speaking as a result of past experience.
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That is one of the signs of depression. But my problem is more a feeling of “doom” I’ve learned to stop the self-recrimination.
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I hadn’t made that connection. I’ll have to look into it. I can usually squash the sel-recrimination at other times – its fairly occasional – but the 3 am thing is hard. Recently I’ve found that reading on the Kindle app on my tablet helps. If I can get immersed in a book I can read until the mood/feeling goes away.
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I’m very similar. My mind automatically races to the worst possible scenario. It drives my wife insane. ;-)
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Let me guess… late night phone calls are answered: “Who’s dying?”
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YES.
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For the record, I have nothing on my paternal grandmother — the side this comes from — who used to start calling hospitals and the police if my parents were ten minutes late coming home from a movie (Yeah, she was babysitting me, but that’s not the point. I sneaked off to her house every chance I got, and was as likely to sleep there as at my parents where, till I was 7, the arrangements were at best makeshift.) She routinely imagined STREET CAR ACCIDENTS
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My wife’s family wasn’t QUITE that bad. We were visiting one time and took one of her cousins with us when we went to a store to look for something, I forget what. We thought it was a good solution to get her away from the rest of the family for a while, because they had been getting on each other’s nerves. When we took about 30-40 minutes longer than they thought we should have been gone, they were getting ready to call the police.
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My sister is physically unable to show up on time– to the point that we will tell her to show up an hour to a half hour earlier than we want to be ready to go.
I STILL fuss starting five minutes short of the time it takes her to drive home from work… all the while, cursing myself as a fool.
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If you ever go to Oregon in the summer, you should go to Antique Powerland in Brooks, North of Salem. They have the Oregon Electric Railway Museum, which features an operating electric streetcar from the Porto electric tramway in Portugal running on a mile of track.
It is great. When I was last there and got to ride, they went to the end of the track and they had to get out and switch the pantograph around so they could go backwards to the starting point.
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One of my VERY earliest memories is of my mom dressing me up — white socks, little patent leather Maryjanes — and of walking between mom and dad up the street to the street car which took 20 minutes to mom’s parents… let me see… three? Four miles up the road?
I remember my mom took my birth certificate with her, because I was very tall for a Portuguese kid, and spoke very well, and conductors would refuse to believe I was three or under (the ages you got discounts at.) So if I go there, I’ll likely start crying. They retired the street cars when I was…6? Thereabouts.
Someday we’ll talk about the house my grandparents rented (terrible place, really) with a corner that jutted out onto the street. After they changed to buses and buses ran by the house, once they woke up with a bus crashing into (and demolishing) that corner. I don’t think it happened more than once, but dad, their SIL, made jokes about it the rest of the time they lived there (i.e. till grandad’s death and grandma’s moving into our house.)
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my paternal grandmother … used to start calling hospitals
I am reassured that my desires to be a helicopter parent* are not, actually, some New Thing like the media pretends.
*I want a propeller beanie embroidered with MOM. I do. I would wear it to conventions.
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That ain’t so bad. It’s when you find yourself answering “Who’s killin’ whom?” that you’ve got trouble.
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Mom, to all calls after 10:
“If someone isn’t dead or dying, they’re going to be.”
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I’ll have to remember that one. I like it.
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THAT was my answer to the kids when I heard shrieks down the hall. My best friend growing up was the 11th of 14. So, when we were kids, we often were stuck babysitting her nephews/nieces. Her normal answer to screaming/ knocking on the door demanding her was “If someone isn’t bleeding on the floor, right now, there’s going to be some sorry kids.” I adopted this when the kids were little, which was the ONLY thing that allowed me to shower/use the bathroom, eat a meal in peace till younger kid was five.
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Hmm, wonder if your mom knows mine, that is the exact same phrase she uses, except for her it for calls after 9.
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Neither parent has used that line, but they and me believed any call after 9-10pm *better* be an emergency.
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Used to be, back before the culture became too fractured, Moms-to-be were issued the official Mom Manual, a handy compendium of advice and stock phrases with explanations for appropriate usage. The manual was updated, IIRC, about once a decade to accommodate changes in, for example, world famine areas.
The original impetus for this was to facilitate cross-family visitation, allowing kids from one family to visit/stay-to-dinner/stay-over at another family’s residence with a minimum of confusion engendered by different command prompts.
As all parents know, training children to respond to oral instruction is a long and arduous process due, in large part, to the fact that children have variable command codes, often dependent upon their name being repeated some random number of times in conjunction with the desired action. Typically these will accumulate in the process buffer until the requisite number is reached.
Researchers have found by the time children reach their second decade (a period termed “adolescence”) the accumulation of data can cause sporadic misfiring of “inappropriate” responses, variously known as “acting out,” “sulking.” and “explosions.” It was in an effort to alleviate the stress engendered by this stage and to make supervisors better interchangeable that the Mom Manual and its companion volume, the Pop Manual were developed.
Sadly, the efficacy of the Pop Manual has been greatly reduced over the years as exposure to “Pop Music” with its use as meaningless background noise has left Pop mostly listened to but unheard and unheeded.
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It was actually translated to other languages. I was told over and over again that my refusal to eat beans in any form was somehow an insult to the starving children in Cambodia (or Biafra — my mom had raised my brother ten years before, and I think somehow used both manuals) who would give their right arms for those nummy beans I was ignoring. (This command was a bit odd. I don’t remember it ever working on anyone. The response of “Send it to them, then” however elicited the response of “spank” which meant one learned to stay quiet and sulk.) There were cultural variants, though. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an American mom say “I pity the man who marries you” which was my mom’s favorite answer to my obstinacy. Built into that was the idea you OF COURSE wanted to marry; you would eventually marry, regardless, so the man who’d marry you was already built in; and that your husband would expect a compliant and obedient wife. The sentence still baffles my husband, and by the way, though I tell the boys “I pity the woman who marries you” I use it …. ironically.
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PEAS– my mother used that on me– didn’t work. I used to get spanked too when I told her to send the peas to them. ;-)
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If my mother ever did that to me, it was before my earliest memory (yeah, my earliest memory doesn’t go nearly as far back as other people’s – I think the earliest memory I have is from about the age of 5), and I certainly didn’t get spanked enough as a child*.
* For anyone who hates/is jealous of me for this (not counting anyone who got it to an abusive level – I would never tell them that they were better off) – it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It leads to poor impulse control and a slovenly lifestyle, which I am only recently starting to get over.
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Earliest memory was holding onto my dad’s legs when we were on a ferry. From my dad’s stories, it must have been one of the ferries after we left Canada and moved to California (around SF). I was not quite three then. My memory that is more clear is on Mom’s birthday, when dad was coming in the door and he has a gift hidden behind his back. He is shushing us so he can surprise mom. It was before I turned four (her birthday is in May, and mine is in August).
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BTW my father thinks I made up that memory on the ferry. I still feel the water spray on my face and mother trying to get dad to go inside with my sister. Too real actually to be made up.
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My grandmother apparently did the “fine, they can eat ’em, then!” routine as a kid — and IIRC, never did it to her kid (my mom), who never did it to me. The cycle can be broken! Envision Peas on Earth!
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*snort lol I found out later in life that it wasn’t the peas I hated; it was the canned peas. I am happy to eat peas off the plant–
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Re: “I pity the man who marries you,” I think the American equivalent is, “Your grandmother (or other relative) was married when she was sixteen,” now often altered to “X had a baby when she was Y-age.”
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I have heard (and probably used the phrase) I pity the man who marries you (directed at others), and ‘I pity the woman who marries you’ (directed at myself).
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Oh geez– I heard that so much growing up (I pity the man that marries you) that I decided not to marry. Then along came the hubby. He has been through a lot with me– but still enjoys having me around so pfui. ;-)
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” … and that your husband would expect a compliant and obedient wife. “
This is of course, one of my expectations.
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You were lied to– hehehehehe
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Ah, you’ve met my wife.
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As Rick said to Major Strasser, “Apparently I was misinformed.”
Alternatively, before you complain about not getting the “compliant and obedient wife” you expected, ponder seriously that it all depends on how you define compliant and obedient. For example, my Beloved Spouse always does whatever I ask. I, in turn, am very careful about what I ask from Beloved Spouse.
The same principle applies with cats.
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This.
To the 100th.
Or, to go into religious humor– remember that the “obey your husband” is coupled with an order for men to sacrifice themselves as Jesus sacrificed himself, and consider if you’d care to be crucified.
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Oh, sure…. ;)
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I loved AFGM! I suspect it will make you a lot of money, especially since your sales model acknowledges the changing world. Pioneers collect arrows in the back and doing NEW things is HARD, but you are there first!
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One, I loved AFGM and still think the opening paragraph is one of the best in modern literature.
Two, the most intensely personal stories–the ones closest to our minds and hearts–are by definition not going to have the broadest appeal. I don’t think I’ve ever had a favorite author–other than Dick Francis–who hit the bestseller’s chart, so if you don’t make it this time, it’s probably my fault ;) I also think you’ll miss out on the romance readers–who may have driven DST’s sales a bit–for AFGM, but you can’t know for sure if/until the romance review sites pick it up.
And what controversy? Or am I better off not knowing?
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Er… considering there’s a whole genre of m/m romance for women and that Harlequin has a line devoted to it, if the Romance people discover it, I think it will do fine.
Oh, the whole gay marriage thing. To have Nat and Luce decide they need to legally marry, in the end, would have been ridiculous — for their world, for their time, for who they are. But I’m being dinged on “shying” from it.
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I could see Nat & Luce marry in the fullness of time etc etc. But I see no reason why they should marry at the end of AFGM. It isn ‘t plot appropriate.
Regarding the romance angle – have you sent a copy to SBTB ?
Oh and if you want to be depressed about something there’s always the antics of Kim Jong wossname and the worry about H7N9 swine flu in China…
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Like I’m not worried about those already. SBTB?
And no, it’s not plot appropriate.
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smart bitches, trashy books?
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O
. I don`t have an in. Anyone does. If needed I go cold,but– Sorry I`m acronym stupid
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I’ve learned to compensate by searching for context, but then I swim in a sea of TLA’s – Three Letter Acronym agencies, programs, designations, and idiocies.
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It’s not the antics of Kim Jong that are worriesome. It’s the antics of the nominal adults in the room to his antics that are the problem.
As for the flu, wash your hands, eat your fruits and vegetables, get a little exercise and don’t worry. The last really deadly flu epidemic in the US was prior to the advent of indoor plumbing, refrigeration, effective home heating etc.
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And if you go back to the Big Flu of 1918, it was not the influenza but the secondary infections that killed most people. (I highly recommend John M. Barry’s book about both the disease and the politics around the epidemic in the US.)
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Kim Jong made a deal with the US: food for giving up a test. Then he did the test anyway. And did it so soon that the president could and did cancel the food shipment. His father and grandfather were never that dumb. And he’s off the leash.
He’s gonna be a problem.
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Fat, nuclear-armed, and stupid is no way to go through life.
At least, not for long.
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I thought of the m/m market as well, so let’s hope it gets attention there.
As for people who think you should be making *their* point for them in *your* novel, I’ll just quote Bill the Cat: *Ack! Thbbft!* The new dog (aka the spring-loaded weasel) and the new cat (aka monster counter walker, and what are you going to do about it?) say the same.
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You have D’Artagnan?????
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It’s my mother’s new cat. She looked smaller in the cage at the humane society, and lethargically sweet. Perfect for keeping an old lady with joint pain company. Turned out she was playing possum.
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Well I know some of my commenters read (and a few write) in that market, and if they should want to drop AFGM in those boards, I will not protest.
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Sarah, that cats are picking up on what you guys are feeling. They’re cats. They know when their human servants aren’t feeling well or are worried and they respond to it. As for not floor vents — duh. My folks learned that lesson with a house they had in OK. Between the peeing when the cat was upset and the mice she’d drop down there after they quit playing with her — as in she’d killed and shredded them — Mom swore no more vents anywhere near the floor.
You guys just take care of yourselves.
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AFGM is a very good book. I’ve re-read it at least three times already and continue to recommend it to friends. It’s rare to find a book these days that keeps me up all night reading but I finished AFGM at 4 in the morning. The old cliche “compulsive page turner” comes to my mind. I just fell in love with Luce and Ben, then Nate later on.
I was sick all the time the whole year after my divorce. It was a combo of too much worry, being too stressed out, too sad, and it pushed me past my physical limits. Once I was knocked down, I just couldn’t get back up. I caught everything that wandered in. What helped me turn the corner, was rest, accupuncture, and the realization that I *could* support myself. (I started with my family doctor, but all she gave me was a cocktail of antidepressants. I fell asleep at work! That was the end of that.) Given your current circumstances, it sounds like resolution of Dan’s employement situation (however it turns out) would at least let you know what you are facing. Waiting for the axe to fall is worse IMHO. Lighting candles for you and yours.
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You will always worry about the kids – it’s built-in.
I can empathize – BOTH of mine, with STEM degrees from VERY good schools – were out of work for one very long, simultaneous period of over a year – and that was amazingly stressful. But it passed. They’re both in great jobs now. I think your boys will be eminently employable – and I’m sure they’re very well trained. Just finish getting them through school.
This is one of the reasons for not having more of them – I still have one in college, and the associated school costs/job getting worries keep me up nights some times. Not that you CHOSE not to have more – I’m just saying.
Get Kathy Griffin a copy of AFGM.
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Kathy Griffin?
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Comedienne? Well known in the trade as a friend of gay people? Red-head? Mouthy? Very funny? Has done tours for the troops?
Think outside the (audience) box. Just a thought.
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She’s low class. Only a step shy of Roseanne Barr kind of crazy.
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Yeah, I don’t think it’s a good fit.
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First I ever took notice of her was when she took a cheap shot at Bristol Palin and earned an achievement few even moderately comely gals can claim. [SEARCHENGINE] “kathy griffin booed by troops” and you’ll see what I mean.
Nothing I’ve seen of her since has raised my estimation of her.
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Slippery slope, that – commenting on people’s ‘class.’
I like her – though I can’t take much at a time.
And you are ALMOST implying that our Gracious Hostess should care a fig about the class of people who may give her money. Which I doubt is a good marketing strategy.
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ABE,
I don’t think he meant “class” that way, but rather in the sense of “She ain’t got no class” – at least I don’t think so, because he knows my opinion of class.
The reason I did say she wasn’t a good fit is as follows: first, I would have said that anyway, because she’s an entertainer/performer. This is different than entertainer/writer. No, it doesn’t mean they’re not powerful. They just have… a lot of flunkies.
Twice, in the past, with more reason to expect results — i.e. I had an in in the entourage — I’ve sent a book to someone in that broad class. Not only were there no results, there was no sign anything was ever RECEIVED. (The third time, the performer had mentioned me, and I didn’t send a book, but I tried to make contact in various ways — same result.)
Part of this is the pull differential. Any performer of that sort, no matter how small potatoes is big enough that compared to them Weber is small potatoes. I don’t know if most of them even read, but if they do, they’re more likely to read “mainstream” and “relevant” or at least that’s what they admit to, because it enhances their image. Which brings us to Science Fiction and Fantasy, both of which (regardless of the houses’ wish to view them as “literary” are in fact “the ghetto of literature”. Even as our “culture” has penetrated main stream, in movies and geek culture, we get regarded as “off” and slightly nuts. No one with a HUGE public image (bigger than any of us, and reaching to the public) likes to admit they read fringe stuff, much less push it.
The second part of her not being a good fit, is that while we agree on gay marriage (I think — I confess all I know of her is the behavior with Cooper, which was brought to my attention by several friends, some of them gay [they were incensed/shocked/puzzled] I very much doubt we agree on anything else. This doesn’t matter to me so much, but it might matter to her, because again public image and in entertainment associating with someone of my unorthodox opinions would be worse than in writing in terms of nuking your career.
The third part comes to the “would you reject someone’s money because of their class (social or behavior, I assume.) Oh, h*ll no.
Take Two And A Half Men (Please.) First you must excuse me for sounding prudish. I’m not. Part of this is that I don’t watch television very much. Two of my family members like Two and A Half Men, and I have watched enough through “being in the same room” and/or walking by to have learned to detest it long before the issues with Charlie Sheen. While I am used to sitcoms revolving around sex and hooking up, and I even came to enjoy Friends despite this, Two and a Half men seems to me an upending of all traditional male virtues and an elevation of what was called in the seventies the Playboy culture which is, in the end, self-destructive.
Anyway, because of this I had a sneering disdain for Sheen long before the whole “Winning” scandal. That said, if he were to get in a drug fueled haze, read my blog and send me a hundred thousand tomorrow, I’d say thank yer kindly and mean it. It’s not my business to judge my readers or my patrons. (It will tell you how tired I was last night that I spent about an hour trying to figure out whether I’d return money from George Soros. I think on the balance, no. I’d just go looking for the secret sigil of the devourer of worlds in my latest book.)
OTOH let’s say that someone told me “Hey, I’m friends with Charlie Sheen, and I can get him to read Darkship Thieves and endorse it.” — would I leap on it enthusiastically?
Before the whole “Winning” debacle? Probably. I’m a writer, I work for a living. To even be mentioned, or have the book shown on Two and a Half Men would catapult me to a level of success that would possibly be unprecedented in sf/f. Or at least give me a leg up getting there.
Now? No. Why? Because the number of potential readers who — after hearing about his er… lapses — would be put off by my association with him would be as high, if not higher, as the number of those who would be lured in.
With this comedienne, judging from the outrage among the people I know — and mind you, I don’t watch TV hardly at all, but I heard of this from five or six different people who know I don’t watch tv and couldn’t normally care less, across every point of the political spectrum — it’s probably at that balance point.
Even if I thought she would read the book (unlikely, for the reasons above) and enjoy it (also unlikely) and admit to reading it and enjoying it (even more unlikely, since it’s a career killer in entertainment to be known to hold or associate with someone who holds “non pattern” opinions, meaning pretty much at least half of my opinions, aside from the gay marriage thing, which is close to pattern in the entertainment fields (trust me, I know, I was in the closet for years because of my other opinions, including — most of them — the ones they won’t get and will misrepresent) there would be a fifty fifty chance it would do good or harm.
Hence my comment that it wasn’t a good fit. Sorry for the massively long response. It’s specialized, so it doesn’t warrant a post, but I didn’t want to dismiss it out of hand. Your suggestions are usually sensible and (see my trying this two and a half times already) it might not be obvious how far fetched the idea even is, unless you’re in the field and have tried it. (And I might be wrong, btw, about the good/harm balance. It might be that the differential of power is so great that even a mention is better than no mention, even from someone with a blot on their public image. BUT the differential of power, aside from everything else, makes the whole thing far-fetched. Wholly different if I were one of the “literary darlings” but not as is.)
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You say it doesn’t merit its own post, and in the form you have presented here, perhaps not, but I think that the broader implied issue might. As I see it, the broader issue would be something in the nature of, “Is there such a thing as bad publicity?”
While many people, speaking generally of entertainers, contend that, “Any publicity is good publicity”, I would say that this is probably not the case in the current situation for someone in the smaller subgroups who are at odds with the so-called mainstream entertainment industry.
In the case you detailed, actually getting an endorsement from Kathy Griffin would undoubtedly result in a large bump in sales for the book thus endorsed. However, it would tend to be people who would be less likely to agree with the main principles driving the story, partially because that would be the majority of her fan base, but also because those who would be more sympathetic to those principles may shy away from it because of the person doing the endorsing.
Why does this matter? Because the ones inspired to buy the book because of her endorsement will not be as likely to enjoy the book, due to the main story, despite its treatment of gay characters, and in fact, may become incensed at the characters’ behavior if it’s not of the “approved” type (sorry, haven’t read it yet, but based on other comments and Max/Nat in DST, I’m presuming it’s not). Thus, while that particular book may enjoy increased sales, it may have the unintended consequence of driving potential readers who would like the book away, while causing the ones who jumped on because of the endorsement to be one-time buyers and tell anyone who might mention it not to buy anything from “that writer” because of it.
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No, I’m afraid Lucius (I’m NEVER going to live down Mucous…) and Nat are NOT approved in any way. They are, very much themselves, which is why I like them.
And yes, you’re right. Dave Freer and I have talked about this when discussing covers. The only worse thing than a bad (visually unappealing) cover is one that is brilliant but mispromisses. Say, my first cover for DOITD IF it had been well executed. It promised horror, while the book was light fantasy.This means the only readers it would keep were the overlap, which are not a lot. The ones looking for vampire zombies with udder fetishes would be upset AT ME and refuse to read anything else of mine in the future, since I clearly didn’t know how to write decent horror. And the ones for light fantasy would never pick it up because, cover, ick.
This is not the problem with AFGM. I think any number of mil sf readers WILL like the underlying plot and action (there is none of the other type of action.) I’m just afraid of losing out on about half the readers for the OTHER books, who come in for the romance. That, of course, can be fixed with reviews, and the reason I asked for SBTB contacts is that I have in the past failed to make it on their reading roster, even with DST — so even there the differential of power warrants at least an “in” to get in with one of them.
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Rhyming point:
How many folks here read books for the message, rather than the story?
There’s an entire series by an author I usually like that I won’t touch, because it’s so flipping obvious that she designed it in a set way to Win An Argument by cheating. (Yes, designing your world so it’s exactly like this one, except all the stuff that hurts your preferred view is the other way around, and then building the story around your preferred falsehood, is cheating– or possibly lying. It doesn’t even have the sweet nobility of Kenshin’s introductory talk about how a sword is a thing for killing…but he prefers the innocent’s view to the truth.)
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While I suspect AFGM has a message — possibly, probably — I would encapsulate it as “the USA is best for all the odds, and the odder the better they thrive in the republic as instituted as opposed to everywhere else.”
However, I neither wrote it nor designed for the message. The d*mn thing dictated itself. I spent a year trying to design it/not write it, but finally gave up, and it came POURING out.
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Totally different– a story that has a message beats a message that IS the story.
All good writing has some kind of a message, even if that boils down to “don’t be stupid.”
The problem is when that message 1) goes against Truth, 2) goes against how the story obviously wants to go, and 3) is a big F*ing deal anyways.
It’s the designated hero syndrome in book form.
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YES
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Story– hands down.
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Amen.
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‘Tain’t so much I read it for one or t’other; that’s like asking do I eat a club sandwich for the bacon or the turkey or the toast.
If the message is foul no story is sweet enough to make it digestible. No message can make a bland story tasty, as Ayn Rand insisted on demonstrating. The problems come when the message is just slightly off or when the story is meh.
The truly genius artistry is when the message and the story both resonate with Truth, each reinforcing the other. It happens when the characters are so real that the conclusion reached is the only one possible for those characters in that circumstance.
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If the message is foul no story is sweet enough to make it digestible.
But it has to be obviously foul– even the scent of rotting meat is sweet if it’s weak enough; bland but deadly is likewise disguisable.
(….seriously, Chrome, “disguisable” isn’t in your dictionary?)
The truly genius artistry is when the message and the story both resonate with Truth, each reinforcing the other. It happens when the characters are so real that the conclusion reached is the only one possible for those characters in that circumstance.
Then they can spawn entire sub-genera. *looks at Tolkien and Lewis*
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Greatest recent claim to fame was co-hosting the New Year’s Eve street celebration in NYC with Anderson Cooper. She appeared to be somewhat inebriated and at one point went to her knees below camera view and simulated an act of extreme affection on Cooper who was mortified and eventually fought her off. All on network TV by the way.
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D-List Doyenne Kathy Griffin Loses Bravo Talk Show
Comedian and self-described D-List celebrity Kathy Griffin’s low-rated Bravo talk show is no more. by Christian Toto 7 Apr 2013
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/04/07/d-list-kathy-griffin-cancelled
So much for that endorsement.
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I’ll confess. I got half-way through AFGM and life barged in before I could finish. Hey, I wasn’t planning on committing a trilogy, OK? I’ll take AFGM with me on my research run in two weeks, since I’ll have excess time on my hands (mutter mutter archive hours grumble snarl). What I’ve read thus far I really like.
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I haven’t read AFGM yet, because I preordered it along with a couple of other books, and one of them won’t be out until the end of May, and since I clicked the button for free supersaver shipping when ordering, they won’t ship until all books are out and they can ship together.
So, you should have gotten credit for my purchase, but I haven’t gotten to read it yet, so it is kind of hard to recommend it to anybody. Well, lots of people recommend things without ever trying them themselves, but I’m funny that way and won’t recommend a book unless I have read it, :)
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Eh, the dingers were probably miffed that you showed Luce and Nat happy and committed *without* getting married. No pleasing some people. Ever think you aren’t hearing buzz about AFGM because people are buying it and hiding it in the bunker with their scrap of flag? You don’t want the guys with the drones to know you are one of THEM.
I nominate “the pig is wearing an apron” as our Hoyt’s Horde Seekrit Password. That just cracks me up.
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The worse part? Clue zero where that came from
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Sarah I’m one of the people who have a small problem with AFGM. I started it and was enjoying it until I got stuck. My problem is I know about the brain transfer procedure while the hero doesn’t and it bothers me. If I didn’t know there would be no problem with the book.
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Keep reading, and you’ll find he gets enlightened, fast. Ignorance is a scarce commodity that gets quickly destroyed in her worlds…
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They`’re not a main plot point in this novel. Just part of the world . And yep, Mucous finds fast. Everyone else knows.
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And now a line from _History of the World, Pt. 1_ pops to mind:
“You men, come with me; the rest will run with Mucus!”
I know — ‘snot funny out-of-context…. >;)
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Lucius — this is autocorrect — I was on the kindle Fire.
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Oh. Now I am embarrassed for having concluded you were just being snotty toward your MC.
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Oh, don’t you START HIM UP. He’s a pain in the best of days. You keep that up, I’ll owe him a whole other novel!
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“The Adventures of Mucous, the Snot-Nosed Brat”? (Points to the side – “Look! A Squirrel!” Runs really fast)
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Oy, ‘e ‘asn’t earned another novel. Tell ‘im ter bugger off.
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Raises eyebrow. The wording, m’dear.
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You can’t blame me this time, I was not involved.
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If it helps, it is absolutely necessary that this reveal be done in this book as it’s a sort of “sister” series rather than a direct sequel. I came into the series with AFGM and I had no idea. The reveal was positively horrifying to me – a series of lights that went on and revealed a scene so gruesome that I had to find out if he had any friends from his old life left…
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Yes. It`s essential, and I got it done asap. From now on, it’s not essential anywhere.
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Sarah, my theme at BTB has the ability to post pictures in a sidebar. It’s called Coraline and is one of the free ones by Automattic.
I’ve had to adjust the sidebar widths a number of times and, while semi-counter-intuitive, it’s easy once you’ve figured it out. (Done in percentages of the whole width.)
I have a Library Thing widget in my right column. The only reason I haven’t put pictures or thumbnails in there is I don’t really have any content I want to put there. But I know I could.
You could use text widgets, one for each of your books, with all the appropriate links already baked in and you just drag it onto the appropriate sidebar in the Widgets panel, et violas!, it’s on your site.
I’ve also done a lot of other customization with only minimal grief, agita, and tsuris, so I’d imagine you can do pretty much anything you want with it.
M
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Oh, and I’m also finding that NextGen Galleries are incredibly handy for handling graphics, even if you don’t have a lot of content. It just makes it all so much easier. I’m using it on all the sites I’m doing for others and will add it to mine once it makes sense. It’s a free plugin and, while the documentation sucks, it’s improving all the time as they add to it.
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And. finally, you mentioned something about being hosted on wordpress.com. That could be a source of your issues, as they have severe limits on the kind of customization you can use. I might recommend you look into Dream Host. Yeah, it costs. But you get what you pay for, which — in this case — is WAY less… what was that? … grief, agita, and tsuris.
M
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That`s this blog & yes,but other site is self hosted
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The problem is I don`t savvy html. Can`t get graphics in on txt widget
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Well, as I tell all & sundry (near and far/F. Christmas in particular), it’s not rocket science. You can learn it. Hell, I did.
M
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Oh! THere’s a plugin that lets you put HTML in text widgets. I totally forgot about it, because it’s just THAT transparent.
M
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I use coastline here, but other site is self hosted and I can`t find it. Will look tonight. Away and on kindle fire right now
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And just like my mom’s bipolar swings found excuses in the surrounding world, my mind has decided to have a fit of anxiety over A Few Good Men and how it’s doing. Part is justified. By this time with DST I had more emails/fan mail, and there was more presence in local stores. But how much of this is real, and how much the result of the ever imploding printed book scene? And how much of it is the fact that almost everyone I know has lurched between being sick and very sick for about five months?
I know it’s doing pretty well at the BX– front and center of the “SciFi/Fantasy” section, right at top because it’s not a mass market paperback, more brightly colored than the rest.
Military probably wouldn’t be sending as much fan mail as usual– no idea if we’re above or below average– because everyone’s kind of nervous about what new way They will find to try to screw with us, as the only part of the gov’t that They don’t much care for.
If a book is good, we can get lost, and totally forget about reality. Writing a nice letter to the author– unless you visit her blog– drags it too far back into reality.
Incidentally, reading “Dipped, Stripped and Dead” after being familiar with the blog is a blast. :) Thank you for the trash-bag wrapped discovery at the end. (Deliberately obscure to avoid spoilers.)
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Uh… just realized not everybody is familiar with the book cases they use at the BX… in every military store I’ve been in (Seattle area, San Diego area, Singapore, Japan’s, Death Valley) the book cases’ top shelf is about four feet high; there is no top, and I think they’re adjustable, but only one or two non-cardboard cases will be set up for hardbacks, so the top of the paperback is usually full of the bigger books they think will sell really well. There was room for a minimum of four copies of AFGM and as many as six, I’ve been looking for it every time I go in, and a few days ago I got the second to last copy on the shelf.
Most of the rest of the military/scifi/fantasy fiction books aren’t newly out, or are (at best) popcorn romance, although there is one Warhammer book I didn’t recognize, so not a lot of competition.
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When I was a kid and we were in Southeast Asia, we called it the PX. Do you know why it changed? Just curious.
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It varies between services. I know on Elmendorf AFB it’s BX, but on Fort Polk it was called a PX – and if I understand right, three’s a different acronym for the navy, but I don’t know what it is. Sort of a soda/pop thing. And yes, I’ve heard ’em called BX-PX just like it’s sometimes called sodapop. I dunno either.
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Army calls its facilities “Posts”, thus Post eXchange, right? Air Force designates its facilities “Bases” and thus Base eXchange? Navy, I dunno, as they have both Ports and naval Bases and most of my mil experience is second hand.
Imputing logic to military or etymology is always illogical.
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Navy– Navy Exchange– or NEX
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It’s roughly by service– BX, Base Exchange, PX, Post Exchange, and… I can’t even remember who does which or what. “The Exchange,” with a big “EX” logo, is what they all fall under.
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The Air Force has Base Exchanges (BX), the Army has Post Exchanges (PX) The Navy has Navy Exchanges (NEX), The Marines have Marine Corps Exchanges (MCX), and the Coast Guard has Coast Guard Exchanges (CGX).
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Thanks.
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Pretty much depends on what service owns the base. BX-PX, it doesn’t matter, it’s still run by the same crooked cartel. (I’m an not a fan of AAFES)
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Out of pure curiosity, does your BX have author signings? When Larry Correia hit Ft Belvoir during a tour, it was the first time I’d heard of an author visiting on base. I was wondering if that’s because I don’t hear about it, or it doesn’t happen often.
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I believe John Ringo has done signings on military bases. It would seem a likely way for an author of thrillers, MilSF or whatever types of books are popular on base (anybody know whether such sales figures are broken out?) to give back to the troops while also helping sales.
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Odd you ask– there’s been a ton of them recently, and I was wondering if it was a new deal or something; I can’t think of a single one before… maybe a year, two ago?
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There were a few authors that braved the hazards of Iraq and Afghanistan during the last decade for signings on military outposts there. There was ONE during the year I was in Vietnam, and it was at Cam Rahn Bay airbase. I, of course, was working. IIRC, it was in conjunction with one of the USO shows.
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At Ramstein, there was always some small non-fiction writer every weekend. (2006-2008). Ft. Detrick had a monthly local writer (2009-2010). Ft. Carson has had Donald Rumsfeld as it’s biggest author draw lately, the usual mix of what I presume is local non-fiction, and even Weird Al over the last couple of years.
I never thought to look into what it would take to get a table in the PX.
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I don’t generally push folks to something, but my wake-up-early-and-can’t-sleeps were helped a lot by Rosary Army’s scriptural rosary podcasts. (The Rosary is kind of painfully awkward for me, even with a podcast I have trouble focusing on the Mystery being contemplated… but the “scriptural rosary” one has the Bible readings between each Hail Mary.)
I’ve only had to use it a handful of times, plus one really really horrible drive to my sister’s, but it seemed to put me in that mental zone that folks talk about prayer being for.
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Beloved Spouse & I spent last evening celebrating the new season of Baseball by finally getting around to watching Moneyball* and I was struck by how much the primary theme of the movie reflects discussions we have been having at this blog: an industry’s resistance to adapting new information science. The meme’s exploited by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin are familiar to us all: the entrenched advocates of “this is the way we’ve been doing it since Doubleday invented the business” who deride and obstruct every effort to employ new methods of achieving goals.
Like many such things, anybody who thinks this is a movie about baseball is missing the forest. It is sometimes useful to approach an issue from a wholly different direction in order to perceive aspects that might otherwise be obscured.
*N.B., I confess to having been an early fan of the Bill James type of analysis, if only because he was such an entertaining writer, and had read and enjoyed the book Moneyball long ago.
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Ah, now there’s a workout motivation! “Get to 16% body fat so I can wear bookmarks proclaiming “A Few Good Men”, some string, some bodypaint, and a healthy dose of self-confidence to Dragon*Con!”
…yeah, that’s about as likely as me getting to D*C this year. I shall have to find some comely young lady to do so for me instead. Hmmm….
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Like! :-P
Nominate for best motivational idea on the whole internet today.
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I’ll provide the body paint *evil laugh*
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It’s not about the percentage of body fat, it’s about the distribution.
The self confidence is the important part. You can pull off (no pun intended) an amazing amount of stuff if you really believe it’s good.
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Damn striaght! Thought I will note that Heinlein somewhere (Friday?) is entirely correct to point out that even the perfect female body looks better when there is a little covering to inspire the imagination.
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Not simply to inspire the imagination, The primary purpose of even the scantiest female clothing is to direct the eye and create the illusion of curves in the right places.
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I think part of your problem, Sarah, has been the up-and-down weather of the last few weeks — highs in the 60’s and 70’s, then snow and ice for a couple of days, then back up again. I know it’s given me fits. I haven’t hurt this much in YEARS! I don’t think I’ve been able to write more than a few hundred words in the last ten days. I KNOW what I want to say, I know how the plot progresses, and I know how the book ends, but actually putting it together has been impossible. I think the changing seasons, and the weird way we’re progressing through that change, is affecting all of us. Hold tight – it will get better!
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I’m just a consumer, so I try to avoid critics and reviewers whenever possible. I find them to be ax-grinders at best, and wannabe cultural elite otherwise. I expect you have to pay attention because you have to know what is going to be asked in panels and interviews. But I don’t think you should write to please them. If for no other reason than they aren’t going to buy enough books to make a difference.
I have a book on my end-table that your post reminded me of. The End of Fame by Bill Adams and Cecil Brooks. (it was one of the Del Rey Discovery releases)
The MC, Evan Larkspur, ex-playwright and unwilling double agent comments about critics:
[They] want to believe that when they tear down a play into arbitrary parts it is a feat equal and complementary to its composition—that writing a play is simply a reverse process…If they cut up a frog with a scalpel they’d think they were its creator’s equals…
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What? Somebody else has read The End of Fame?
A strange, strange book, but fun withal.
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Did you read The Unwound Way? The book before it? Now that was a puzzle/quest/spy-adventure/self discovery story rolled into one. Wrapped around a Cyrano deBergerac metaphor.
A beautiful two books, in a wonderful universe. Both authors claim to be poets. I wish I knew what else they had written.
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I will be going to MisCon in Missoula, MT over Memorial Day weekend, and can happily hand out bookmarks, etc. It is a smaller con (about 800 attendance last year), which is actually pretty nice as you have time to talk to folks.
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Sarah, I bought the Magical Shakespeare Omnibus and read “Ill met at Midnight.” What a remarkable book! I had to look up “The Tempest,” and “Midsummer’s Night Dream” plus review Shakespeare’s life and ended up admiring how you wove that all that together. That was your first book? Wow.
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Yep. First book. And thank you
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Damn you all, I had SOOOOO much fun reading DSR (favorite line: “If this kept up much longer, I was going to happen to someone.”) that I decided to save AFGM for vacation because I knew it was gonna be awesome. Now I’m sorely tempted to drop the book I’m reading, grab AFGM off the shelf RIGHT NOW and get started already. After all, the chores and the sleep can always be done later, right? :D
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I’m not finding an ebook copy of A Few Good Men? Am I confused, or is there not one? (My husband has forced me to cut my book collection due to space constraints. If I want a new hard copy I have to get rid of something, and there’s nothing left I’m willing to trim!)
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http://www.baenebooks.com/p-1789-a-few-good-men.aspx
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Oh, wonderful! Thank you. :)
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Amazon
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I picked it up from Baen. :) I searched Amazon and Barnes and Noble, but only found hardcopy listings. I think I’m just full of slow today. -_- Thank you!
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http://www.baenebooks.com/p-1789-a-few-good-men.aspx
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Congratulations on the Shakespeare success!
On the critics: My favorite film critic (years ago) was wrong 100% of the time. If he liked a move, I would hate it and if he hated a movie, I would love it. The moral of this story is that a “bad” review by a critic can actually sell your novel better than a good review if your audience consistently disagrees with that critic’s reviews.
Good luck with the depression. I have been there from major to minor over the years and it sucks (badly).
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I have a friend that I eat lunch with once a month and we were talking about this feeling of doom we have been having since the election. We are looking at each other and wondering out loud why so few people can see the “writing on the wall?”
As for AFGM, it was on of those books that I couldn’t put down. It turned out that I didn’t sleep that night. So I don’t see it as a “bomb” unless you mean that it was a great book. It had a good pace and I wanted to know what was going to happen to the MC. I ended up with two btw. lol So I will have to give one of them away, maybe to my friend. She might like it. ;-) I did promise the hubby that he could decide who gets the extra book.
As for depression I am also naturally depressed. I know that if I didn’t have certain people in my life, I would probably be on some type of med. The hubby has learned how to make me laugh. I have learned how to make him laugh. I see so many of the bad things and know the interpretation (my mind sees in metaphors in symbols so symbols are easy). It is much harder to explain it to others.
So hugs– find ways to be happy. If it comes, it comes. If you have good things to remember the bad things are not so horrific.
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A Few Good Men is my all time favorite book. At my age, and with the numbers of books I’ve read, that is a huge statement – and it is true, and heart-felt.
The blue mollygobbles get to us all, at different times. Especially if we read a lot and let the subconscious start knitting scenarios out of bits and pieces of news reports.
But friends are there to lend a hand, lend a shoulder – or lend a shovel and help hide the bodies :-)
Now I’m going to re-read my favorite book :-)
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One thing that struck me about A Few Good Men was how, contrary to the Baen stereotype, so much of the combat occurs offstage. The book could have easily had another 100+ pages had the author adhered to the strict Baen policy of deeply detailed combat carnography.
One might almost conclude that the reputed Baen stylebook demand for such description is a myth, but that would be crazy talk.
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Oh. *Looks at purported bootleg copy of Baen stylebook* Hmmm. That might explain . . . Nah.
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She’s been sentenced to time served in the gulag for stylebook crime.
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I REFUSE to write battle scenes. I’ve never been in combat. Street fights, general hooliganism and unorganized violence (used to be Saturday night) but not organized combat. I think there’s a difference you can’t surpass by JUST reading bios.
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I agree with you ;-) Although I think if I had to write about battle, I could ask the hubby– he has been through a few attacks in Vietnam and also he was in Germany on the border looking at East Germany– for a few years. He wouldn’t know that battle scheme stuff– you would need some officer for that info.
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If you read bios they generally either gloss over the combat scenes, or give a matter of fact after action report. I have seen the same done in fiction, sometimes by the same authors who wrote bios, but often those authors can write very explicit, emotional, battle scenes, but very seldom do in the bios.
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Overall, a good point. But in reality its uneven, there are some very good writers of battle scenes that were never in combat. I’m a fan of Patrick O’Brien (who I believe never served despite a probably false claim by him to intel work) and whose descriptions are comparable to C.S. Forester who was an officer in the RN in corvettes during the Battle of the Atlantic.
Alastair MacLean, who also served in escorts in the RN during WWII wrote a great first novel about a fictional cruiser in action on the Murmansk run but never wrote a decent battle scene thereafter IMO.
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Hmm… based on recollections of others, I think I could write certain types of battle scenes (or else spaceship battles, because I can at least work out the comparative physics, and outside that, who is going to really disagree that much?), but I would never pretend to be able to write large ground battles, because I guarantee my tactical abilities are not merely inadequate, they are missing entirely, as my experiences in chess can show.
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Bernard Cornwall, especially the Sharpe’s & Uhtred of Bebbanburg books.
Stephen Pressfield’s depiction of Thermopylae, Gates of Fire.
I don’t think either man was ever in a shield wall, but each makes you feel the experience. Which is not to say their descriptions are accurate, and even if true it merely means they are good writers possessing a particular talent not enjoyed by all.
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I expect most here will have caught the Instapundit reference to this, but I want to point out in particular one paragraph from Robert [genuflect] Heinlein’s letter to Theodore [genuflect] Sturgeon:
I will wait while everybody runs off to read the entire thing, so as to fully appreciate the context and realize Heinlein was not only gifting ideas to Sturgeon, he was pointing him toward a likely buyer for the idea.
Anybody here NOT think that world sounds like Eden?
N.B. – this letter is addressed in the notes to The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Vol. IX: And Now the News . . .: , a series now available in e-book format and well worth the money and time you will spend on it, although it may prove intimidating to aspiring writers (or is that writer aspirations?) and will assuredly consume much time you might otherwise spend writing. For those too young to be aware, at the time of this letter the $100 Heinlein sent was a very significant amount of money, comparable to a week’s wages for a slick magazine editor at a time when gasoline ran about twenty cents a gallon (thus a straight extrapolation on that single metric makes it equivalent to $3.500 in today’s dollars.)
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What exact knowledge of how human beings work can enable a man always to make other people happier simply by his own presence?
Cats have made a racket and a good thing out of this knowledge for seven thousand years without even bothering to flatter the recipient of the pleasure.
Hmm, sounds like Kit for Athena, too!
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I was struck by the breadth of ideas and wondered what RAH would have done with a blog. He’d have probably made Larry Correia’s exploding head tally look like a firecracker alongside Mt St Helens.
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Anybody here NOT think that world sounds like Eden?
*raises hand*
I am way, way too good at pissing folks off– especially when it comes to telling the truth. For some reason, folks keep asking me uncomfortable questions so that I’ll lie to spare a third party’s feelings, then get pissed when I don’t.
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It sure would be expensive for me to keep bidding my own price up … ;-)
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Eden as depicted in DST, not the OT one.
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Ah, sorry.
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LOL. Yes. Actually have post for tomorrow that goes into some of this.
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I really enjoyed AFGM. Very nicely done. I’m recommending it to my friends.
Re worrying about stuff, well, there’s stuff to worry about, but I’d bet it’s more related to the cycling minor ailment thing – when I notice I’m down, I get ready for the symptoms to hit, as for me that seems to be part of my precursor symptomology for any of the bevy of fun viruses to which I’ve played host this winter.
Certainly everything from Amazon Reviews By Morons through to the Norks worrying posturing all rate attention, but keep in mind there’s good stuff too. It’s springtime. Spend time with your guys. Go for some walks. Pet your cats. Write some more awesome stories.
I hope you feel better soon.
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I came across this quote about Leo Strauss’s opinion of Edmund Burke’s view on the futility of opposing popular social movements like the French Revolution:
and thought, if that isn’t a definition of Human Wave tragedy I don’t know what is. Winning or losing matters less than why we fight.
Taken from a Hillsdale College lecture on the WWII films of John Ford.
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I picked up AFGM at the bookstore about a week ago, and started reading about two days ago. I’m about halfway through and am definitely recommending it to the book-reading types I know. :)
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Thank you.
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