Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

And how it’s not a continuous collapse — any disaster, I mean, ‘end of the world’ here being taken as apocalyptic events of some sort, for some area — but areas/times of panic punctuating areas/times of perfect normalcy.

I’ve had that post planned for weeks, and it’s even started.

And then yesterday night I realized that the wildfires in Colorado have gotten just close enough to be threatening, but nowhere near close enough to justify even packing bags.

Our old neighborhood in Manitou Springs is now evacuated.  This has a feeling of unreality to it, like in some parallel world we were awakened at three am to pack.

Of course, if it gets to us, you might as well kiss the entire city goodbye.  So I hope it doesn’t.  And, gut feeling, it’s unlikely.

All the same, when the kids wake up I’ll have them take pictures of bookshelves laden with research books and we’ll make a list of things not to forget to take.  Like the Prometheus plaque.  Probably should take that.  Of course, people and cats are a given.  Lives cannot be replaced.

But again, there is very little chance it will get to us.  Long before that, we’ll be hosting friends evacuated out of their houses.  (Charles, if you read this, keep an eye on the evacuation orders.  If it’s anywhere near you on voluntary evacuations, pack Valeria and come out. )

Which is an illustration of what I’ll write about when I write that post: we’re not yet anywhere near where we should even be alarmed, but at the same time we feel a need to be alert, and we’re aware of friends and neighbors whose lives are being upended.

And the reason I’m not writing the post today is that — I guess to prevent me from worrying — the fever dreams yesterday should have given me warning.  By night time I had full stomach-flu symptoms.

I’m perfectly fine provided I don’t eat or drink anything and don’t stand up for more than a few minutes.  Focusing my eyes very long is also a no-no.

So, with your indulgence, I’ve put the first — probably incoherent — post of pacing workshop over at MGC, I’ve explained how the dog ate my post for the day (and probably threw it up, the sob) and I’m now going to force some slow sips of water and go back to bed.

A post of Kris Rusch’s this week, about the near-religious acrimony between partisans of traditional and indie publishing made me think about my own goals.

The fighting has been terrible and just like reactions to 9/11 put pay to what remained of my writers’ group, splintering it to the four winds, this argument over whether to go indie or traditional seems to be bringing an element of insanity into a career that was at no time sane and destroying long term networks and associations.

I’ve been – on this very blog, or at least a blog linked to it – derided as “self-publishing” (implied “trash”) even though so far the only self-publishing I’ve done is of short stories that were (for the most part there’s three notable exceptions, which DO sell very well) published in traditional press.  The indie people, oddly, have never derided me, except for sometimes asking me when I’m taking “the full plunge.”

I’ve also found myself very exasperated with a beginner writer who is not making inroads in traditional, but who refuses to go indie because “it’s not real.”

The reason for all of it, including my rides-two-horses position became clear to me in reading Kris’ post.

It’s all a matter of goals.  When we start a writing career we all have a goal in mind.  Yes, the goal is usually “I’m going to be richer than J. K. Rowling” but, pardon me, that’s not a goal, it’s a daydream.  Beneath it, hidden, there is usually a true goal.

Let’s assume we’re all compelled to tell stories, or at least we all enjoy that.  Let’s also establish that no one can predict how publishing will change in the course of their career.

It’s like writing a novel.  I know few writers who are such exact plotters that their work never surprises them: no minor character steps out of the woodwork to steal a scene; no lover reveals himself/herself as a shrewd negotiator; no planned villain redeems himself.  Yet, I also know no authors who start a novel with no idea of how it ends.  You might not know who commits the murder, but you know the detective survives or not. You might not know which of two the girl will choose, but you know she’ll choose one and settle down to write the next generation of your saga.

In the same way, you might not know if you’re going to ever make it to a bestseller list; or make enough money to live from; you might not know if you’ll ever be published on paper; you might have no idea whether you’ll end up hitting in romance or in mystery, but you know there is an underlying reason you want to do this, and a goal you’d like to attain.  And your goal, whether you’re aware of it or not, shapes your decisions along the way.

As in a novel, I urge you to be aware of your goal, so you can make those decisions consciously, instead of by chance and guess.  As in a novel, knowing where you’re aiming makes it more likely you’ll get there.  Particularly since real life is notoriously resistant to editing or going back and foreshadowing.

All writers I know have one of two PRIMARY goals (the slant on these goals, and the minute variations of sub-goals are something else again.)

Writers write either to be read by the most people possible, or for prestige.  (The immediately next subgoal is usually “to make money” – but that is usually seen as a sign of either a wide and appreciative audience or vast prestige.)

The degree of “being read” or “being admired” to which we aspire varies.  I know people who are glad to be read in a fan fiction group.

I don’t know if people who want fame would be happy being famous in their state or in their genre.  I think it depends on each person.

Myself, in case it’s not obvious, I was never in it for the fame.  What I always wanted to do was tell stories.  Of course, note that telling stories requires an audience, and on that for many years was a rub.  I put a lot of ideas aside because I thought they’d never find an audience.  Now I wish I’d finished them, because I’d have them ready to go up.  No matter.  They’ll be finished by the by.

The extent to which I’ve acquired fame is amusing because being recognized by a cashier in a store or the guy who came to repair my washer is still rare enough to be fun.

I don’t know how I’d feel if I ever – not that it’s likely – acquired the sort of fame J. K. Rowling has.  Being mentioned by total strangers routinely would probably drive me to hiding under the bed and never getting out.

It’s not that I’m shy.  I’m private.  Even in this blog, there are things I hold back very strongly, some of them important, some of them frankly trivial.  The important ones usually relate to what is going on with people close to me that might be affecting me, but is not anyone’s business.  And the trivial ones include stuff like “I’m going to be out of town this weekend” which, on the practical side, is my way of avoiding getting the house burgled, and on the other side, since my haunts are relatively well known, is a way of avoiding having fans show up just as the family and I sit down for dinner at Pete’s in Denver.  (Where they tell me people have occasionally asked for me – or told me, back when we went there more often and one of the waitresses knew us.)

I’m comfortable with certain degrees of being known, because at least in the old model of publishing it was impossible to be making a living at this and not be relatively well known.  I can even enjoy cons – more so as I’ve become friendly with some of the fans.

BUT ultimately my goal is to be read and to make money, not to be recognized on the street or have people talk about the genius of Sarah A. Hoyt.

Ultimately, I’m in this to tell stories to people, not for the prestige.

A lot of people are in this for the prestige, with the telling stories and the money secondary.  This is not a judgement.  I think it’s a personality thing.

So if you’re starting out as a writer, or even if you’re a veteran, and you’re buffeted here and there by “indie or traditional” ask yourself what you want from this game.

Is it prestige?  Nothing wrong if it is.  Some people believe that to be recognized as best by those “in the know” is the reward to be coveted.  Fine.

In THAT case the prestige is still on the side of traditional publishing, though unless you’re one of the very precious few then you’ll have to do a lot of publicity.  Count that in on your plan.  Find an angle on which you can sell yourself, then push there.

On the other hand if your goal is to get your work read by as many people as possible and, preferably, paid so you can write more stuff for people to read, your path is not so clear.

If you’re not published – given how hard it is to break in now – by all means, go ahead and bring your stuff out indie.  You probably stand a better chance at a contract offer if you do well indie.

If you are published and have a good relationship with a house or two that don’t give you contracts that are too awful – or at least so awful you can’t live with the consequences – the route is more complex.  With each book it becomes an evaluation: do I think this book will reach more of its audience through me or through one of these houses?

In the end it’s case by case, and sometimes it might be “a feeling.”  For instance, for most of my science fiction I’ll go with Baen without hesitation, whether the book is written on spec or not.  It costs me money – probably – in the long run, because I get a MUCH smaller percentage than my indie efforts, and the electronic books aren’t available on Amazon.  On the other hand, I’ll be out in stores, Baen has a large fandom for its science fiction, and I’m likely to sell more books which compensate for the smaller percentage.  The fact that I get money up front doesn’t hurt, either.

However, there’s books that just aren’t Baen stuff.  (Coff, Witchfinder.) Or, for some of the books I have planned, they’re of a length Baen wouldn’t touch – around 60k words, the size of a golden age novel.

Also for most of my mystery and even the vast majority of my fantasy, I don’t think I can do better for it traditional.  Part of this has to do with not wanting to sign contracts that put my ability to write other books – ever – in strangers’ hands.  A lot of it has to do with my reluctance to sign any contracts at all right now.  I agree with Dean Smith that ultimately we’ll go to a contracting model where books – like short stories now – get their copyright leased for a finite amount of time: five or ten years being the ones proposed.  (Short stories usually are only exclusive for one year.)  As such, and because I expect that model will become dominant in the next five years or so, I’m hesitant to sign any contracts at all.  I make an exception for Baen because Baen is family, but everyone else I’d rather not deal with just now.

So, since I will still write mystery and odd fantasy, and I still want it in front of readers, those will go indie from the beginning.  Same, frankly, for most of my short stories.  I can spend months sending them to magazines, then wait a year for them to see the light of day, or I can finish them, have them edited, put them up and – by the time they’d have been published – I’ll have made what I could get for them.  The exceptions, of course, are “by invite” short stories.

Anyway, because my goal is “how do I get this novel to its fans” I don’t know that I’ll ever go fully indie or fully traditional.  It’s possible, but not likely.  Each novel is on a case by case basis, what I judge will get it read by more people and get me more money (the second being the sincerest form of appreciation.)

Do I grudge those people who are trying to do primarily indie or primarily traditional?  No.  Their goal is their goal, and how they achieve it is their decision.

So, my advice to everyone is, stop fighting and establish your map.  And then take your way, merrily, no matter how it twists and turns.  And stop trying to force your friend to take your way when his goal is different.  Send him fond letters along the way, and stand ready to help him should his goal change.  Other than that, mind your own business and blaze your own trail.

Is the new one of Kate’s Con Vampire mysteries, coming out soon from Naked Reader.  And while I loved ConVent, let me tell you, ConSensual is much better, partly because Kate is growing as a writer by leaps and bounds, partly because this one was created as a novel to be published, not as something to amuse the barflies by posting episodically on my conference in the bar.

I’d read ConSensual in first draft, but when I read it again last year, night before Fencon, it kept me awake till three in the morning, anyway.

So, since last night I spent the night having truly weird dreams, some of which featured you guys — like Celia Hayes was very upset because I hadn’t watered the snails growing rather sparsely on my wall, RES was making me study the work Jeronimous Bosch and was telling me there would be a test on Wednesday, Jason Cordova was trying to shame me into learning Spanish (!), CACS and Cyn were cooking mastodon in my kitchen (which is weird, since CACS can’t eat meat,) and were upset at me because I didn’t have any pots large enough for the stuffed leg, and I haven’t bought a new stove yet so the oven doesn’t work, and the rest of you seemed to be bumping around the house doing weird stuff — and since I’ve long held my friends responsible for that which they do in my dreams, I’m writing the post late today.

In the meantime, sashay over to Mad Genius Club, where Kate is holding a contest.  (You’d think she wouldn’t have the energy, given that she spent the night horrifying the college kids with limericks at the open mike cafe near my door, but some people refuse to admit to that which they do in my dreams. )

Here is what she says:

In celebration of Consensual’s release Real Soon Now, I have a competition.

Write a short – 2 paragraphs max – description of how you’d like to be redshirted in the Con vampire universe. Anything entered before midnight US Eastern Standard Time on Saturday 30th June will be eligible. The five suggestions that amuse me the most will be used in the next con Vampire book, and their creators will receive a free copy of ConSensual.

*Sorry this is late.  We had a doctor’s appointment this morning, so it threw everything out and the chapter is late and skimpy.  I meant to go on to the next, but then it would be mid-afternoon by the time I posted, so…  Oh, and somehow Blythe has become Blain, I note.  Well, it fits better, but it’s just weird.  Sometimes I hate my mind.*

*This is the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.   If your conscience troubles you getting something for free, do hit the donate button on the right side.  Anyone donating more than $6 will get a non-drm electronic copy of Witchfinder in its final version, when it’s published.
There is a compilation of previous chapters here  all in one big lump, which makes it easier to read and I will compile each new chapter there, a week after I post.  When the novel is completed and about to be edited the compilation page will probably be deleted.

Oh, this is in pre-arc format, meaning you’ll find the occasional spelling mistake and sentence that makes no sense.  It’s not exactly first draft, but it’s not at the level I’d send to a publisher, yet. *

The Explosion, The Princess, and The Brother

Two women stood over him moving their lips.  That’s how Gabriel first thought of it.  Two women.  He could see a power signature around each of them, though one was markedly odd.  The older one’s.  Not from Avalon.  Different.  He stared at her, narrowing his eyes.  She was moving her lips in a way that indicated she was talking, but he couldn’t hear anything at all.  So she wasn’t talking.  Perhaps it was a spell.

It didn’t look like a spell.

He looked at the other woman, still frowning.  A small, slim, dark-haired woman, quite young and with that sort of bearing that people always said meant she had a lot of countenance.  She had a large aura of power and there was something about her that he should remember.

Her lips too were moving, insistently, and now she reached over and grabbed his shoulder in a way that seemed overly familiar and moved her lips exaggeratedly.  The other woman caught at her hand and pulled it away, but not before Gabriel had seen enough of her lip movements to have his mind piece them out.  “Seraphim.”

Like that it all rushed in on him.  The girl was the long lost princess of Avalon, and she and Seraphim had come here, to the Madhouse, to seek refuge from attempts to kill them by sending them to hostile worlds.  And Marlon…

He sat up and said, quite loudly, “Marlon!  Elfborne?”  He didn’t hear himself either.  The explosion?  His ears?  He didn’t remember hearing a sound from the explosion at all, but sitting in the garden, he turned his head towards the room he’d just left and his mouth gaped open.  The entire room – the portion of the basement that was visible just beneath the bottom floor, seemed to have blown out.  The little lowered area where the stairs to the basement door had been, had been blown entirely out, and the basement itself must have been blown out, because the foundation of the house looked askew.

    The women were trying to call his attention, gesturing at him, but he had no idea at all what their gestures meant.  He couldn’t remember any sound from the explosion.  He had no idea why he couldn’t hear them.  But his mind slowly assembled that the explosion had come from where Marlon was.  Marlon!

He scrambled up to his feet, first at a shambling gait that involved his knees and his hands, before he found his balance, not so much walking as flinging himself forwarded, towards the little room, towards–

He found himself, tottering, at the edge of what was, reasonably, a crater.  A black-scorched crater that extended under the house.  One of the foundation beams must have been sundered or perhaps made askew, because the house was tilting downward there.  But– But all there was where the little basement room had been was a vast expanse, coated with what looked like black glittering dust, as though a great flame had gone by leaving it quite scorched, carbonized, and covered in ice.

Which was… exactly what it was, Gabriel thought.  It was not a physical explosion, but a magical explosion.  Slowly, very slowly, he let himself down from his standing position to his knees, then back to sit on his heels.  It was either that or fall forward into the crater and though it was fading fast, he could see now, narrowing his eyes, that there was still a fading magical field around it.  What it would do to him, if he fell into it, was an experiment he’d rather not perform.

The older woman put her hand on his shoulder, and when he looked up, he realized she was really doing some sort of magic now.  It was hard to tell what.  Though her finger-movements were cabalistic, and her words seemed to be measured and ritualistic – from what he could tell of her lip movements, the fact was that what he could see made no sense.  If someone had taken an Avalon spell and turned it inside out and sideways, he’d still have recognized it for what it was.  This was rather more akin to what would happen if someone to an Avalon spell and threw out all the important points, leaving only the form and some of the incidentals.

He blinked.  Then he heard and felt a loud pop.  It was something he had experienced before, once, when his father had taken him up on a magical rug.  It had been a foreign attraction brought to London by some Eastern merchant-rug.  They’d set up in the park and for a shilling you could go up.  Since the occasion coincided with a visit by the Duke to London, and since, when away from the house he treated both of them disturbingly alike, he’d taken both boys up on the magical rug.

Though going up had not made Gabriel quite deaf, it had made it sound as though all the sounds were very distant, and mufled and confused too.

The effect had persisted upon landing, until his ears had given a loud pop, and suddenly he could hear normally.  The same happened now, because he heard the girl– No.  Her Highness the Princess Royale, say, “– Where his Grace has gone.  His bed is undisturbed, but he couldn’t have failed to have come at the sound.”

Seraphim.  He looked towards the princess.  “Your highness!” he said.  “When is the last time you saw my brot– Darkwater?”

“Oh, please, call me Nell,” she said, blushing a little, and then said.  “So you can hear now.  Grandma–”

“It was a quick healing spell,” the older lady said.  “Mr.–”

“Pen,” Gabriel supplied automatically.

“Your brother and Nell came up, and Nell was explaining to me what had happened, and he excused himself and went to his room.  We didn’t think anything of it, assuming he needed to use the bathroom or something, and then–”

“And then there was the explosion, and he didn’t come down, and he’s in the affected side of the house, and I thought…  We called him, but there was no answer, and he doesn’t seem to be anywhere.”  She looked towards what had been the basement.  “What happened here?  What caused this?  And where is Mr. Marlon?”

Where was Marlon?  For that matter, where was the furniture that had been in the room.  Oh, surely it couldn’t have resisted the force of the explosion, and some of it might be part of the carbonized layer all over the interior of the room.  But not all.  Even a magical explosion of this magnitude would leave behind debris.  There would be pieces of sofa and table and– He swallowed hard at the thought of pieces of Marlon.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “It’s a magical explosion.  Have you ever–”

“No,” the princess said, then, quite shocked, “Is that ice over the walls?”

“Yes, and char too.  But…  I’ve never seen it either,” he said.  “But we studied them in school, Seraphim and I.  It’s…  the explosions are possible only for people of very high magical power, when they do something that is really wrong.  I…”  He shook his head.  “We were told for instance, it could happen if two different transport spells, in two different directions were applied to the same room, at the same time.”  He swallowed again.  Could that be it?  Had Marlon and Seraphim said transport spells both of them at the exact same time?  But that would only make sense, given that the explosion centered in the basement and the ceiling above it seemed charred but intact, if they’d both been in the same room.  And he was willing to bet they weren’t.  “Or two spells, both highly charged that contradict each other.  But this…”

But this was destruction of a magnitude he’d not been taught in school.  He’d been taught he might explode a table, or set fire to a chandelier.  Even for that enormous power was needed on both sides of the misguided spells.  For this–

“Was it Mr. Marlon?” the princess asked.

Gabriel shook his head before he knew why, then caught the glimmers in the force field that told him it couldn’t be.  “No,” he said, and to his own years his voice sounded slow and incredulous, as though he were speaking nonsense and even he couldn’t understand it.  “No.  There is dragon magic there and…”

“And?”

“Unicorn?” he said.  And it sounded as crazy as it was.  Unicorns were animals.  They didn’t set spells.  “Marlon,” he said.  “Got caught in the cross spell.”

“Is he dead,” from the princess, and she sounded like she was worried Gabriel would start crying or something.  She need not be.  He was not absolutely sure what he felt for Marlon Elfborn, except he knew from experience that love was not so easily nor so thoroughly killed.  He might not wish to have anything more to do with the man, but yes, knowing of his death would still grieve Gabriel.  Except that it didn’t. The idea that Marlow might be dead, that his body, carbonized, might now be part of the dark coating beneath the ice made no impact at all on Gabriel’s emotions, beyond a distant sort of horror.

“I don’t know,” he said, simply, then added.  “I hope not.”  And then because he must know.  “And Seraphim?  Where was Seraphim?”

“Two floors above,” the princess pointed.  “In his room.”

“May I see?”

She nodded and led him upward.  “You have to be very careful there,” she said.  “I’ll stay here.  I’ve braced that part of the house magically, and we think it will hold until we can get a construction company in to brace it properly and… and repair the damage, though what they’ll think caused it, I don’t know, but until it can be done, the floor will be unstable.  So, I’ll wait here, not to add unecessary weight, and you tread carefully.”

He refrained from telling her it was his dearest wish to do jumping jacks on an unsound floor, and instead walked slowly forward, on the creaking floor, to the door she had indicated.

The room was spacious, well furnished, and quite empty.  He could see on the dressing table Seraphim’s pocket watch, which they’d got from their father, and which was rigged to tell them when someone in another world was in danger.  Over the chair of the dressing table was Seraphim’s dressing gown.  It looked like it had been washed and mended from what must have been interesting adventures.  

Gabriel approached the dressing table, touched the dressing gown, not sure what he was looking for.

A shrill noise surprised him, before he realized it was the watch giving alarm.  Someone somewhere was in trouble.

They’d never figured out whose trouble precisely the watch picked up nor why, for surely it couldn’t be everyone in the universe in trouble for possessing magic at that precise moment.  Given the multitude of worlds, there would be too many people in that situation.

He picked the watch up, flipped it open, and, lacking a proper scrying surface, looked into the mirror above the dressing table.

In the mirror, very clearly, he saw Seraphim.  He had his back against a moss-grown wall and was surrounded by mastiffs.

Gabriel didn’t think.  Couldn’t think.  He pressed the right button on the watch and let the spell take him there.

Today was the first day I woke up not feeling the weakness beneath the “I’m okay.”  I’m not okay, as such, if by okay you define being well enough to roll up my sleeves and start scrubbing the house which looks like the Augean stables, only more so.  I still feel tired and sort of out of it, but not like I’m walking a thin layer of seeming normalcy and will at any minute fall through into sickness.

I wish I could explain that feeling better than that.  I don’t even know if other people have it.  I didn’t use to.  Sickness used to land on me without warning, then vanish just as quickly, but about ten years ago, I started waking up the night or two before I got sick, with that feeling of walking on a thin layer of health that will give out at any minute.  There are no symptoms as yet, at that point, just the feeling “All is not sound.”

For the last two days, I’ve woken up feeling that but in reverse.  There was this hole of “not well” but a thin layer of “almost well” on top.  And I felt grateful for it.

Today, for the first time, I feel like I’m sound through.  I will not push.  And I don’t feel strong.  But it’s more like… like I just had a really tiring weekend and today I’m recovering.  Like a lot was taken out of me, so I can baby myself.

Which is why I’m so late posting.  

The feeling/sense that I’m going to get sick, before I have any symptoms fascinates me.  There’s the temptation to say “Well, you got sick because you expected it” but actually I’m almost sure that’s not it.  More like I sense weakness that’s not visible yet.  At any rate, the type of illness it heralds can be anything and I never know what to expect.  If we’re in flu season and I rest THEN and push enough vitamin c and stuff, I might not really get ill, just have this shallow “not quite well” two or three day period.

But sometimes I’m wrong.  Vitamin C doesn’t do much for stomach flu, for instance.  And this time, I didn’t know what to expect, and then Dan got sick which limits my ability to sit back and baby myself.  (Not that he’s a demanding patient, but it means that he can’t do much, and his cat becomes hysterical, and… well… I worry.)

What I’m trying to get at is that it might be well nigh impossible for us to ever figure out what part of how we experience our bodies is real and what part is psychosomatic. We all know about hypochondriacs who display real symptoms.  There are people who can make wounds appear on themselves, as well as people who can heal themselves.  There are faith healers.

And, unrelated to illness, there is the fact that if you imagine exercise in great detail, you’ll develop muscles.  This study didn’t even surprise me because way back, when I was writing Mirrorplay, there were these five chapters where they were cutting cross-country, ten people surviving from a battle and with a plan to cut at the heart of the enemy citadel, before the enemy could expect a counter attack.  Their march involved not just a hard slog of walking, but swimming and rock climbing and crossing ravines hand over hand from a suspended rope.  I don’t think I EVER ate as much as I did that week.  I was always hungry.  And I lost ten pounds.  The cue seems to be “Imagining in detail” which for most of us and most exercise would be boring, right?  Unless you’re paraplegic or something.

It’s one of those things that bedevils me – what is real, and what is our mind playing tricks on me?  One of my writing acquaintances, who used to do Star Trek novels, which I understand are intensive bursts of work, said she used to have Star Trek Flu.  Whenever she delivered a novel, she’d come down with something flu-like where all she could do was sit in front of the TV for three days.

I’ve experienced this, particularly when it’s a novel that’s contracted, that I don’t want to write, and I have to MAKE myself write.  When I’m done, I have “flu like” stuff last a week or two.  I never know whether that is because I’ve been pushing the sickness till I can “afford to get ill” or if it’s my mind taking it out on my body.

I do know that the one time we had the money – after I finished Plain Jane – instead of launching into my normal clean up operations of the house that has waited till the book was done, I DEMANDED Dan take me to Denver for two nights.  (Had to go away, or had to clean.)  And when I came back, I did not get ill.  Mind you, all I did those two and a half days was sleep, read books and go for walks with Dan.  It was, apparently, enough.  And if the Indie thing starts making me real money, (Which of course, presupposes my feeding it!) I’ll plan that every time I finish something.  

Not this year.

This year, I need to find a balance between working hard and resting that doesn’t crash me everytime a project is done.

Not yet, I haven’t.

But I’m working on it.  And as for today, I’m going back to bed for an hour or two.  I still feel as though I can’t sleep ENOUGH.  It’s just that I’m on the way up.

It is enough for now.

I’d travel earlier this morning and write this post.

(Did anyone else wonder, hearing “If I had a hammer” what peculiarly deprived land the singer came from?  I mean, even in my childhood when things like scissors could be considered “expensive” hammers were all over the place.  Heck, hammers were probably the first weapon of mankind, and even I can make one from a rock, a stick and some rope.)

On the serious side…  I was asked recently, either here or elsewhere, what would I do if I could go back and tell my struggling beginner self that I would one day be published.

Twenty years ago, when I was pushing the baby carriage all over downtown Colorado Springs, because it was the only way to make Robert sleep so I could have two hours to write, what would I have done if I’d come from the future to tell me “You’ll be published.  Many times.  Everything will be all right.” what would have happened?

Well, beyond the fact that I’d have known I’d gotten hold of some really funny veggies at the farmers market?  I mean, supposing there was a way to travel back, or to have me see myself, or to send a note – would I do it?

For years and years, even five years ago, the answer would have been “oh, yes.”  Knowing for sure I was going to be published one day would change things for the better.  Gone would be the long, long silences of doubt, the times I spent chipping at block as though it were a big stone wall, and writing as though I were passing words out through a small hole in it.  Because I would know I wasn’t writing in vain, right?  I’d know I’d make it.

Let’s leave aside the effect this might have had on my fledgling talent.  I know for at least four years I worked backwards, working away from publishable and towards “literary” not because I wanted to, but because I thought it was the best way to break in.  (At that it might have been, just not for me.)  And I know that for three years my entire writers group worked away from “publishable” because the one published writer who’d joined thought there was ONLY one way to write a book “action adventure” and despised romance even as a plot element.  She dispensed her opinions not as opinions but as holy writ and we of course followed, even though she’d published ONE book, ten years before.  We didn’t know any better.

A little bit of self-confidence might have helped there.  Almost certainly would have helped there.  And I might have developed a voice and the confidence to have a voice earlier.

But the truth is, if I had a chance to go back, if I had the ability to speak to my younger self, I couldn’t really tell her “Everything will turn out all right.”  To paraphrase Leonard Cohen, you don’t want to lie.  Not to the young.

Would I tell her about the books written that never saw the shelves of a bookstore – let alone in sufficient numbers to find an audience?  Would I tell her about the years when I had to write six books a year because somehow the houses who were doing me a favor by publishing my trash wanted to do me a favor many times a year?  (Because that makes so much economic sense.)  Would I tell her about the contracts that I signed while knowing they’d put my own books out of my hands for my lifetime and maybe even my kids’?  Would I tell her about the contracts I signed thinking they were perfectly safe which aren’t now, because things have changed so fast?  Would I tell her about the houses holding on to books that BY CONTRACT and LAW have reverted, where it would be too expensive to litigate and they know I don’t have the money because they never paid that much?  Would I tell her about being considered seminal by younger writers and bumping into fans every other place I go, while at the same time seeing numbers on my statements that mean I should be known to my close family and only on a good day?

Back then, when I was trying to break in, would I even have believed any of that?  I’d have told myself that business was past all that.  We weren’t in the days when some company paid pennies to the maker of Monopoly then went on to make billions off his invention.  We had a conscience now, even businesses – particularly those businesses that dealt with intellectual property.  People know it’s wrong to take people’s unique work and pay them a pittance.  People wouldn’t buy Manhattan from some tribe for beads and trinkets.  Business has by and large become more moral, if nothing else because public opinion could be bad for them.

No, I probably wouldn’t risk being told that stuff.  I mean, people can die from laughing too much.  Particularly when it’s not a happy laughter.  Also, I don’t think I could have explained to my young self that while that might be true of companies that make gadgets and hammers (ah!) It’s not true of what we’ll call the “saintly industries” where people are forming people’s opinion for people’s own good.  After all, they’re doing everyone a favor by influencing what sells, and by using you – yes, you – to promote people more worthy of being seen by the public.

Also, they controlled the press for so long, and were so used to being described in glowing terms, that they still don’t get that public opinion can turn on them.  And their captive writers are fostering their illusion, and making sure they land real hard.  (Sometimes I wonder if that’s on purpose.)

So… what would I say?

I guess I would say “Yes, you’ll get published, but don’t sweat the low times, and be careful.  In the future, oh, seventeen, eighteen years in the future, there will be this time when you can put up your own stuff.  So, pick and choose what you let the traditional houses get, and don’t sign stupid contracts.

It might be worth it to you, for a while at least, to let the traditionals have a few books.  Whether your statements reflect that or not, and even taking in account you only get a few pennies per book sold – even if all is reported perfectly correctly and above board – you’re seeding an audience.  This will make your indie efforts start up faster and bigger.

But round about 2010 start disengaging from the traditional industry.  The Titanic is going down, and the lifeboats are going to be a scramble for survival until eventually you reach other ships that might make it to shore.  Just step off onto the grand piano. It will float and let you bide your time till things shake out and you know where to go.

Or to drop that over extended metaphor: at about 2010 start working on the side to launch your own indie career, so you can stop writing six books a year, and start making money.”

How much difference would that have made?  Well… I might not have signed some of the dumber contracts.  But in at least three of those cases, I also wouldn’t then have written those books, which HAVE got me some fans.  The books might be captive in enemy hands, but I wouldn’t wish them unwritten, any more than a mother whose kids fail wishes them unborn.

I might – would in fact – have kept aside some of the books I did write that I more or less gave away.  I might – would in fact – have written a few books I really wanted to write that my agents refused to send out or told me there was no market for.  I might – would in fact – have reached this point with a stash of ten or so books in the drawer and ready to go up.

And I might have written fewer short stories, which, in the long run, weren’t as useful to my particular career as I thought they should be.

But the shorts were useful as learning tools, and other than the fact that it’s a pain to put up that many short pieces, they’re little more-or-less-continuous cash cows and once I get them all up, they’ll make me the equivalent of a novel sale a year, or a little more.

And a year and ten books?  That would be the difference, otherwise?  Ah, come on.  Would it be worth going back in time for a year advantage?  And ten books?  – shrug – I could do that in less than two years even while working for Baen too.

So… if I had a time machine?  I’d tell myself what I tell beginner writers (because with the indie stuff I am in a way beginning all over again):

Don’t give away your inheritance for a mess of pottage. (Or a pot of message.) Traditional publishing in the end costs more than it’s worth – unless you find the one or two houses who will deal fairly with you.  And even then, be aware you’re tying yourself long term to getting a tiny percentage of your book’s sales.  (Not saying it’s not worth it for reaching a larger audience.  I do it.  BUT it’s not by default something you should do.)

Don’t not write something because no traditional house will take it or your agent refuses to send it out (It might be a good idea to work without an agent if you can, btw.  I know some houses won’t, and you might not be ready to drop them, but the net gain FOR YOU of an agent is a round zero.)  Write it and (eventually) put it out yourself.

Write for the public.  Forget all those how to write blockbusters books.  Those are written for how to impress the publishers, who in turn are trying to impress the distributors.  Go back before the publishing industry discovered how to pleasure itself and bent into a circle.  Read the older bestsellers and figure out how to make people who read – not the same as people who publish or distribute – happy.  Cultivate THOSE techniques.

Can you make a living from indie?  Well, I can’t tell you for sure “yes” yet, but from what I’ve seen there’s a better chance it will than that traditional ever would.

And you are free to create what you want – a freedom you only appreciate when you’ve been deprived of it from so long.

That’s about it.  If I had a time machine, it might cut two years off my attempt to go indie and make a living…  Helpful, but hardly worth it.

So, I’ll start today trying to make up that little gap.  And whistle while I work.

(Though before the portal closed, I WOULD have yelled at my past self “Homeschool those kids.  Trust me.” … but that’s a different matter.)

Unrelated: I’m almost over the killer flu, only I feel like I need to sleep rather a lot.  But it’s sleep on the way to recovery, not the ‘I’m too exhausted because I stood up sleep.”  And maybe it’s not as unrelated as that.  Perhaps that applies to my career too.  In either case, right now, I’m going back to bed for a few hours.  The future will wait that long.

I’d say Galaxy Quest was a guilt pleasure except that I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty.  If you haven’t watched the movie, it is about the crew of a show that’s a clear echo of Star Trek, many years after the show has been cancelled.  This is not a spoiler, so much as a setup: the characters, while doing the con circuit, get recruited by real aliens to help save their world.  The entire story is a send up on people confusing fiction with reality.

One of the “crew members” kidnaped was one of the “one episode” extras, the type that normally die, and so as things get dangerous, first he, and then the rest of the crew, become afraid he will die, because it would have happened in the fictional episode.  Their anxiety is heightened by the fact no one knows his last name, which was the mark of a character who would die. That this has nothing to do with the reality they’re facing is, of course, the source of the humor.

It is, of course, all the funnier, because it is a persistent human failing, and one we writers are particularly prone to.

When I ran a small press magazine I continuously got letters from people protesting a rejection.  “You can’t be rejecting me,” they said.  “I wrote the story exactly to your guidelines.”  (Of course most of the time I was rejecting the story because it was in fact VERY badly written, but sometimes I had to wonder what guidelines they’d read.)

This is why every writer in the world howls like an hyena at the cartoon of snoopy on top of his dog house, typing “Gentlemen, regarding the recent rejection slip you sent me. I think there might have been misunderstanding. What I really wanted was for you to publish my story, and send me fifty thousand dollars. Don’t you realize that?”

Because we know that in our hearts it SHOULD be that way.  It’s the way stories are.

We’re not alone in this view – if we were the US would not now be full of young people with useless college degrees (or ones that just aren’t useful in this economy) crying “I did what I should have done, I followed the rules.  I went to college.  Where is my high-paying job?”

People listen to stories.  You work hard, you follow the rules, you get your reward.

It is even true, to an extent.

If you work hard, if you follow the – sane – rules, if you look ahead to your future, you will be successful in some measure.  You might not be successful in the field you wish.  You might not be successful to the measure you wish, but you will (probably) keep body and soul together.  You will (probably) not end up in the gutter.  You will (probably) accomplish some part of what you want to do.

Why “probably”?  Because if massive civil unrest breaks out in 2 years, all bets are off.  It all depends on your skills at scavenging, not at whatever you studied in college.
Because if you tried to enter the field of buggy-whip-maker just after the advent of the automobile, nothing can save you from a fall.

Because stories are ordered, but life is a chaotic system.  You are the main character of your story, but there are millions of other main characters.  And there are chaotic, macro systems that spin things out of control.

While following the story – staying out of the forest, not talking to strange wolves – will keep you from the very worst outcomes, but it doesn’t guarantee the best.

Nothing guarantees the best outcome.

This is not a post saying “abandon all hope” – it’s just a reality check.  There are no guarantees in writing, but there are no guarantees in life, particularly not in the time of catastrophic change we live in.  (And no, the genii can’t be put back in the bottle there.  Tech has reached a certain level.  Human actors wants certain things.  Even chaos has mechanics.  The only way to stop the juggernaut is a civilizational collapse of such far-reaching horror that we are knocked back to the middle ages or before.  And trust me, you wouldn’t like that.  Well, I wouldn’t like that.  So, do try not to do that, okay.  Dude, don’t break my civ.)

Given the times we live in, almost any job you train for, almost anything you attempt is going to get upended before you get much further.  Ten years?  Twenty?  The chances are that you will have three or four “careers” before you are done with your working years.

So, no matter who you are and what you’re doing, you have to remember that the story isn’t pre-scripted.  This means there are no guarantees.  But it also means that you’re not written to fail.

You’re not the red shirt.  You’re not the disposable character.  And if you are the plucky comic relief, it’s because you want to be.

There are no guaranteed strategies to get to the top, but that means you can take the rules as a guideline and experiment.  And in publishing, right now – and in other work too – there are new ways of doing things that might give you results you couldn’t have hoped for under the old one.

I can’t say “you’ll fail for sure, because your characters are too wimpy.”  I can’t say “You’ll succeed for sure because you’re so determined.”

Publishers believed these stories, you see.  They believed if you had failed once you’d continue failing.  In fact, they more or less made sure you failed, though that’s not (of course) how they saw it.  They just believed in the stories: those who were destined to win.  Those who were destined to lose.

But the stories were never true, not unless/until they could rig the system.  They’re even less true now.

So, go ahead.  Boldly go wherever you’re going.  Work hard, study, keep your nose clean, apply persistence and…

You’re not guaranteed to succeed.  But you’re not guaranteed to fail too.

Your future is yet unborn and yours to create to the limits of your ability and the system.

Maybe they won’t kill Guy.  Maybe it’s some other character they have it in for.  After all, you have a last name.  And maybe you’ll be the plucky comic relief.

On my mother’s side.  Unfortunately it’s not one of those characteristics that breeds true.

More seriously I wonder how many people were raised with the myth of genius, whether that’s normal, whether it’s something that only happens to those of us in artistic families where the members gave up on it.

I was raised with the genius myth and in retrospect, my parents cannot possibly have meant what I thought they meant – or perhaps they could.  Perhaps they were raised with the myth too – but I thought what they were telling me was if you were a genius you wouldn’t need to learn, you’d never do anything mediocre, you’d just start working in your chosen field and it would be perfect and marketable, and success would be instant.

From what I understood – and I swear that’s what my mom told me, probably because she watched a movie that gave her that idea – Mozart was a genius because the first time he saw a piano, at five, he could play it perfectly.  It took me till I was an adult to find out how wrong that myth was, and how much Mozart’s precociousness reflected a crazy family.  (Even if he was – also – a genius.)

In retrospect I do wonder if, given all the creative talent in the family, of which I am a very minor spark, the fact that I am the only one with a career in the “arts” (even if an odd art) comes from my having left home, gone to another country and changed language and culture to such an extent that I had to reexamine most of the wisdom received so early that some of it is pre-verbal.  And I wonder how many other people have it.

I run up against the “talent” myth now and then and I wonder how far deep in the genius myth other people are.

It took a while for the myth to die.  When I first sent a story out, I didn’t bother seeing if the magazine published stuff like what I wanted to sell them because, well, if it was good enough they would publish it regardless.  And when I got back what can only be classified as an enthusiastic rejection, where the publisher – from ENGLAND – sent me a copy of their (pro) magazine so I could see what they published and submit targeted stories, I was UPSET because they didn’t accept my story…  Clearly this meant I wasn’t a genius, and so the story – and any attempts at submitting – went in a drawer while I tried to write a novel, to see if I was a genius in that.

For those of you who have tried to sell writing, or who even have spouses, friends, neighbors, acquaintances who’ve tried and who are readying the pitchforks and torches to come to my house, please, please, please remember I’m sick.  Also, I’ve been punished enough.  By my estimation my belief in the “genius” myth cost me about ten years on the way to publication.

Because, you see, even after I stopped believing that a genius could just produce a masterpiece without trying, I still believed the… ah… penumbraas and emanations of the genius myth.  I believed you had to have a certain amount of inborn talent to start (kind of like the ‘you must be this tall to ride’ bar at the amusement park); I believed language was the most important part of writing (guys, I was born to a family of poets); I believed you couldn’t learn; I believed other people could tell on site that I didn’t have enough native talent.

What this meant was that I’d try for a year, get discouraged, get a job for a year or two, then try again – rinse, repeat…  Until I HAD to stay home as a combination of being very ill for a year after giving birth and, frankly, not having spent six years in infertility treatments to give my kid to hired hands to raise.

Since I was home, I might as well write and… the process itself and joining my first writers’ group and hearing others’ stories, I eventually figured out while “talent” exists it is not a necessity, beyond a certain minimum.

Talent exists?  Yep, it does.  And you don’t want it.

Talent in writing, genius level talent, is producing a readable, cogent, fully functional novel the first time you try WITHOUT having consciously studied techniques or thought about how to do it at all.  (Novel because a short you might be able to fake.  And without studying, because some people just learn differently.  My husband is like that.  He can learn passively, by STUDYING books without needing to practice for years.  For the record I can’t, but these are just different types of minds.)

But I want it Sarah!  I DO.

Okay, maybe you do, but you shouldn’t.  Why not?  Because if you do it by genius you won’t know how to do it again.

I grant you the geniuses I’ve known might have done fine with Indie – the woman whose first novel got published, and who couldn’t then write anything approaching a publishable second; the woman whose first novel was brilliant but when it failed to get published outright, got stuck in an endless cycle of rewrites that each time made the thing worse; the friend whose career was stuck at a certain level and who had no idea how to improve it, because she doesn’t write her easy, breazy brilliant prose CONSCIOUSLY.

In indie all of them – probably – could have made a living.  But one day, sooner or later, they’d get sick, or tired, or out of it.  And they don’t know how to whistle by ear or paint by numbers.

The years you spend creeping to competency leave behind the ability to perform when you’re less than optimal.

And now, because I’m sick and think this is less than coherent, I’m just going to do a series of bullet points, contrasting the myth and the reality:

The myth: You must have a certain level of talent to even try to write.
The truth: or speak.  Or walk.  You must be homo sapiens of normal intelligence.  That’s the talent needed.

The myth: everyone who makes it, can write effortlessly

The truth: after years and years and years of practice, sometimes.  Provided they’re not sick, tired, worried about other stuff.

The myth: if your stuff is good everyone knows it immediately

The truth: do you even like exactly the same books/movies as your best friends?  I don’t.  Oh, sure, there’s overlap, but a lot of the things these people think are brilliant get thrown against the wall on page two.

The myth: if your stuff is bad everyone knows it immediately

The truth: one of my books because a – very discerning – friend’s favorite (one of top four or five books ever in his estimation) the first time he read it.  This same book earned a review saying the characters are too stupid to live.  One man’s meat is another’s poison.

The myth: if your stuff is good you’ll be an instant success

The truth: Poppycock.  Even in indie, it takes time, effort and a certain amount of luck.  Sure, you might win the lottery and become Amanda Hocking (or in traditional J. K. Rowling) but chances are you’ll have to write a few books (Amanda wrote ten?) and work assiduously before you see results.  That’s one of those ‘human condition’ things.

The myth: good writing can’t be learned or taught

The truth: don’t make me show you my juvenilia which, even beyond the fact it’s in Portuguese and possibly only Mr. Oyster (the commenter) could read it, sucked so badly it might start a black hole.  Not only did I learn, you can trace the progress and what I was learning at the time.

The myth: there are people so untalented they’ll never be published

The truth: Care to place a small bet?  Also, the ones who can’t or won’t are not failures of talent, they’re failures of learning, possibly because they believe the genius myths.

The truth is this, and let’s pretend I just came down from the mountain and have secured the ultimate advice for your career:

If you are willing to work hard; if you treat it like any other craft and study the masters and the instruction books; if you put in your time and write enough to practice it – you can succeed at writing.

And if you don’t have any natural talent, no one will EVER know.

*I meant to do a real post, but I came down with something that appears to be upper respiratory.  I’m only about 1/3 as sick as Dan is — of course our doctor is on vacation — but bad enough that reading is an effort and for the first time in many years I spent an entire day watching old mystery series, without even the benefit of hand work to keep me awake.  I’m in that uncomfortable space where I’m too sick to work and too well to sleep.  So I’m leaving you with the opening to Noah’s Boy and going back to bed and seeing if I can sleep a bit more before sleep won’t come.*

Noah’s Boy

Sarah A. Hoyt

Riverside Park, at the edge of Goldport, was a thrill whose time had passed.  Competing with the various flags, gardens and other franchised, national attractions which specialized in rides based on the latest technology, its main advantage and being cheap and therefore it appealed mostly to the young, the recent immigrants and the impecunious.

Slumbering quietly at the edge of a small lake – the River in the name being one of those mysteries no one could explain – its entrance tower dated back from the orientalist period of the nineteenth century when pseudo arabesques had been in vogue.  It looked quite nice at night, when no one could see its flaking paint and bright little lights outlined its contours making it look like something out of a fairytale.

Its vast central pavilion, which once had hosted shows by all the big bands and dancing by all the fashionable local couples, now housed bumper cars.  The hippodrome that had seen horse races back in the middle of the twentieth century had long since closed and its sun-bleached carcass, encircled in a tall wall as incongruous and desicated as the bones of a long-dead dinosaur, was posted all over with signs warning visitors off.

Not that many visitors were interested.  Most came for the corny spider rides, the colorful dragon roller coaster, and the not very horrible house of horrors.  A few afficionados and romantic souls came for the wooden roller coaster or the turn of the – twentieth – century merry- go-round.

But right then, early May, the only people in the park were there to work.  Teams of men fanned out up slope and down path, cutting down the knee high grass and calling to each other in Spanish.

Jason Cordova straightened up, as the mower he’d been pushing choked on the weeds.  Man, the least they could do is get some riding mowers.  Rent them or something.  And if not, then with grass like this, we should be using scythes.

Despite the relatively mild weather, sweat glued his t-shirt to his body and his jeans felt like they had insects climbing up inside them.  He knew it was probably his imagination, but he still had to supress an urge to scratch and an even stronger urge to take off his jeans and shake them.

He listened to the chatter around him and frowned.  It’s like they went to the day labor office and picked everyone with a Spanish name.  Which was probably exactly what they’d done.  And it wasn’t that Jason didn’t speak Spanish.  He did.  He’d studied it in college.  For all the good it was doing him in the current economy.

A shout that he couldn’t quite understand but that seemed to mean he should be getting back to work made him say, “Yeah, yeah,” as he started pulling the cord to restart the mower.  But the motor only sputtered, and then he realized the shout hadn’t been at him.

Instead, his coworkers were shouting to each other and running towards an area where  tall grass remained.  Oh, what the hell, Jason thought, as he ambled in that direction, wondering exactly what they’d found there.  A credit card?  Someone’s illegal weed patch?  Or, judging by the trend of the conversations he’d heard before, and what seemed to really interest all his co-workers, perhaps there was a girl there who’d somehow lost all her clothes?

Before he got to the place, he saw two of the guys running away, their face more green than olive, and another one throwing up into a recently mowed patch.

Jason jogged forward the next few steps.  And froze.  Laying on the trampled tall grass was one of the men he’d come here with this morning.  He was small, probably Mexican.  What remained of his white t-shirt was torn and covered in red-black blood.  The lower half of his body was unrecognizable – his stomach torn open, the guts spilling.  It looked like something had eaten a good portion of the guts.

He’d never know quite how it happened, but he found himself throwing up, too, right beside the tall grass.  But as he straightened, wiping his mouth to the back of his leather gloves, he realized there were a lot fewer men around.  Like… none.  Though he could see one or two in the distance, jumping the fence, and another desperately swimming across the lake.

Oh, good God, he thought, as he called aloud, “Stay, don’t go.  We must report this to the police.”  Which he realized was exactly the wrong thing to say, as they ran even faster.

A trail of moving grass near at hand called his attention, and he rushed there, determined not to face the police alone.  “Stop,” he said.  But then realized it wasn’t one of his co-workers he was looking at.  It wasn’t any human.  It had to be the largest feral dog he’d ever seen.  Well… feral something.  Immense, beastly, its maw stained with blood, it looked like what happens to big bad wolves who die and don’t go to heaven.

Jason felt his body clench and twist.  His mouth contorting, he managed to pull off his jeans and t-shirt before they got shredded.  “Nice doggie,” he said.

***

Rafiel felt like he was going stark, raving mad.

Okay, so no murder investigation – or in this case, what seemed to be the investigation of death by misadventure – was ever a good thing.  Ever.

Goldport wasn’t exactly a crime capital, but as one of four senior investigators in its serious crimes unit, Rafiel saw his share of seamy underside: thefts, break ins, the occasional drunken Saturday night mutual shoot out, and the share of drug traffic that couldn’t be avoided anywhere in these days. They even had murders – quite a few recently.

But on this particular Friday afternoon, he’d been finishing his paperwork, and giving some thought to the girl his parents had arranged for him to go out with that night.  His parents – heck, almost anyone – were anxious to see him matched up.  Nearing thirty and living in your parents’ house was not how the story should go.  Particularly not when you were a successful police officer.  But Rafiel’s parents should know better.

They knew that their son shifted into a lion at the drop of a hat, or sometimes even without any hats dropping.  They knew he lived in fear of hurting someone while shifted, and also that normal people, who didn’t change shapes, wouldn’t understand that he remained throughout more than half human: that in either form he tried to do the best he could and serve justice.

What did they think would happen if a woman came home to find her husband – or fiancé – had changed into a giant jungle cat?  Did they think she would take it as an inconvenient but endearing thing.  Oh, well, he’s a lion shifter, but at least he makes good coffee?

He could only imagine his parents’ desire for grandchildren had overwhelmed their common sense.  Leaving him with the task of taking this “daughter of old friends” on a first date, being polite and nice but cold, so she wouldn’t feel too disappointed when he never called again.

Some days he wished he didn’t know there were female shifters in the world, and that he were unaware that Kyrie Smith, one of his two best friends, shifted into a panther.  Some days he wished he could help thinking that he and Kyrie could have made a go of it, if the other one of his best friends hadn’t been around.  But Tom Ormson had been around.  And though he was quite unsuitable for Kyrie as a shifter – shifting into dragon – he was very compatible with Kyrie as a human.

Rafiel had had doubts about that, in the beginning, but once those two had got together, they’d stopped being individuals and become a whole that was bigger than the sums of its parts: they’d become Tomandkyrie, a composite creature more competent than either of them separate, and so assured that they were one, that he might as well try to separate siamese twins.

What made things worse, was that Rafiel wasn’t even sure he would have a chance with Kyrie if something happened to Tom.  He had a feeling that a Rafielandkyrie creature would not be nearly as good as Tomandkyrie, and might in fact fail to gel at all.  And besides, he liked Tom, the scruffy, scaly bastard that he was.

No.  What Rafiel really needed to do was find a girl he could love and who wouldn’t mind his shifting.  And the last requirement cut down the population of eligibles to a negligible number, most of whom would live too far away for him to ever meet.

He’d been contemplating that when his afternoon had got worse, with the phone call.  Riverside Amusement park, the place where, even at the height of the season, if one dropped a virus that selected for non-native-Spanish speakers, no one would catch it, had had some sort of death and the police was called to investigate.

It had been hard to understand what the heck was going on, because the person calling it in kept lapsing into something that Rafiel suspected was Greek.  But Rafiel had caught stuff about a mountain lion and Mexicans and  – this was emphatic – definitely not the owner’s fault.

Now he stood in the middle of Riverside, while a medic, who’d accompanied the police, patched up one of the workers: the only one remaining.  Not far from them, in the long grass, a forensic team went over the victim: hispanic, late twenties and dead.  Very dead.   According to the forensic team several feet of intestine – and various other things – were missing.

They hadn’t found the mountain lion, yet.  But that wasn’t the worst news.  The guy who’d been mauled and was being patched up, said it wasn’t a mountain lion but more like a dog, but even that he wasn’t sure of.  He said it was a weird animal.

And Rafiel could smell shifter.  It was a smell he’d decided only shifters could smell, metallic, with a salty tang, and unmistakable once you first smelled it.  And it was all over the place.

“So, it was a dog?” he asked the guy who sat on the chipped cement bench by the closed spider ride – the big black apparatus with its cup like seats frozen and vaguely threatening in the afternoon light.

The guy’s name was Jason Cordova, not withstanding which, he spoke English perfectly and without the slightest hint of an accent.  His only Spanish words came flying out as as the emergency medic bandaged his arm and shoulder, which seemed to have been mauled by something.  Something with sharp teeth.    His white t-shirt, smeared in blood, lay on the bench by his side.

Jason was dark enough to be some variety of Hispanic, though most of it, Rafiel thought, would be due to his working outside in the sun.  He wore his hair short, with the tips dyed white-blond, and he looked at Rafiel and shook his head then tried to shrug, which brought about another outbreak of Spanish, in which the word Madre featured prominently.  “It looked like a dog,” he said, at last, looking at Rafiel out of narrowed eyes, though they seemed to be narrowed more in pain than in suspicion.  “But it didn’t fight like any dog.  And it didn’t bite like any dog.”  He shook his head.  “I was lucky I had my hunting knife, because the day labor office is in a bad area and– Anyway, I must have cut it halfway to pieces before it let me go.  And its jaws were like… steel clamps.”

“I’ve never seen a bite like this,” the medic who’d come with the ambulance Rafiel had called, and who was probably a male nurse said.  He blinked grey eyes behind coke-bottle glasses.  “And I’ve treated all sorts of injuries, even people mauled by mountain lions.”  He looked at Jason.  “You’re very lucky to be alive.”

“Yeah, I feel lucky,” he said, in the tone that implied he didn’t.  “I’m unemployed, divorced, crashing on a friend’s sofa, and, on good months, making enough to pay for my own food and fuel, and now I’m going to have to pay for the ambulance someone called.  It’s not like the park– ”

The medic grinned, and started to put his stuff away in a little bag.  “Nah, the park will pay.  It’s not like they want you to go to hospital and have to show papers.  I’ve sent the ambulance back anyway, so it’s just my time.”  He stopped.  “I suppose you do have papers, anyway.”

“Sure I have them,” Jason said, sounding vaguely amused.  “I suspect I was the only one.  But I didn’t tell the owners.  They can’t pay minimum wage or do all the paperwork stuff, and if I’d told them I wanted that, they’d never have hired me.”

“Yeah, I won’t tell them.  You keep a watch on that.  I disinfected as much as I could, but there might be something left in there.  It’s a deep wound.  If you notice a ring of red form and start to expand, get yourself to emergency and fast.  Oh, and…”

But Rafiel was no longer listening.  Instead, he was smelling the air around him.  It didn’t much matter to him – or not exactly – whether the creature was a dog or a mountain lion, or some mutant, undefined creature.

What mattered – and this was very important – was that he could smell shifter in the area, all around.  There was a sweet-metallic tangy scent that he knew all too well.  He smelled it everyday in his own clothes, and rising from his own body.  And he smelled it from Kyrie and Tom and the dozen or so shifters who frequented the George – the diner Kyrie and Tom owned together.

The thing was that the scent lingered in areas where shifters had been.  Sometimes for hours.  It had been so strong around the dead man, that Rafiel was sure he’d been a shifter himself.  But was the killer a shifter or not?

It made all the difference.  As Rafiel stood here, away from the scene, he could hear the forensic team discussing their findings in the blood-spattered area with long grass, where the body had lain.

If the killer was just a wild animal on the loose, then Rafiel could let them figure it out in their own way.  There would be the routine of a police investigation, the normal adding up of evidence till you could take the case to trial and corner whoever was responsible for the animal being lose: police, park or perhaps the owner of the animal.  Then whoever was responsible would be fined or given community service, or something.

In that case, throughout all of it, Rafiel would be just be Officer Trall, a professional and well trained police officer.

But if the killer had been a shifter in his shifted form, it all changed.  Because a shifter who killed once, rarely stopped killing unless he were caught.  And it wasn’t as though Rafiel could bring the apparatus of the law to bear on him.  You couldn’t really tell a judge “this isn’t a dog, it’s a werewolf.”

Well, you could.  But then they put in a nice resting place, medicated to the eyeballs.  And, given that Rafiel himself was a shifter lion, heaven only knew what the meds would do to his shifting.  He might become a lion and eat a few nurses not-in-a-good-way.  He took a long whiff of the air.  There was the smell from the dead body, the smell around it, and another smell.

“Hey, something wrong?  You allergic to something?” the medic asked.

And Rafiel became aware that he’d been sniffing for al he was worth, as though he expected to find his way with his nose.  Which he probably could.  In fact, he would swear the smell came from back there, from the path to the parking lot, past the closed up hippodrome.

“Ragweed,” he said, automatically.  It had the advantage of being true, not that it mattered.  “So, could you write me just an informal report on the wounds?  In case I have to take this to trial.”

“You can’t take an animal to trial,” the medic said.  Then grinned sheepishly.  “Though I suppose you could take his owner.  And maybe should. But I bet you it doesn’t have one.  I bet you it’s one of those wild animals that seem to show up further and further into town every year.   Like that Komodo dragon that went around eating people, what was it?  Two years ago?  And did you hear about the bear who went through the trash dumpster behind the alcohol and tobacco kiosk on Fifteenth?  He then ran through bar row, looking dumpsters.  When they tried to catch im, he ran through ten backyards and across five streets, before being struck by a car as he ambled across the road in front of Conifer Park.  And I bet you that they treated him and freed him, too, probably not too far from town.  Ready to do the same again next year.  A miracle he didn’t kill someone.”

Rafiel made a perfunctory nod and said, “Nothing we can do, eh?  It’s the way it is.  But I still need that report.”

“Right.  I’ll write up something.  It won’t be Shakespeare.”

“No problem.  Shakespeare didn’t really report on medical conditions and it wouldn’t do us any good to be told the wound is not as wide as a church door.”  Rafiel said.  The intensity of the smell was driving him insane.  It was separating itself into strands, too: the dead body, or the area around it, and a trail leading to the hypodrome and another…

He should – to follow proper procedure – go over to where the forensic team was working and see if there was anything else they needed.  Instead, frowned as Jason put on his blood spattered but intact t-shirt over his badly mauled body. The shifter smell hit Rafielfull in the face, and he stared, his mouth half open.

The medic was walking away, far enough along the path that he wouldn’t hear anything that Rafiel or Jason said.  And Jason had just turned a puzzled and slightly weary face to Rafiel.

“Hunting knife, uh?” Rafiel said.  “I don’t suppose you want to show it to me?”

Jason blinked.  A dark tide of red flooded behind his tanned skin.  “I must have dropped it,” he said.  “Somewhere in the grass, I guess,” and with a shrug.  “Maybe your team will find it.”

Rafiel sighed.  He dropped to sitting in the space of bench open beside Jason.  “I’d think you were the killer, you know, and that those wounds were received from whatever that poor bastard,” a head inclination towards the crime scene, “turned into, except that they say he’s been dead since probably really early morning, before you came to work.  They think he was one of he guys they hired yesterday, and he decided to bunk here for the night.  And your wounds are fresh.  So it’s clear there’s yet a third shifter around – or maybe a second, if that’s his smell around the corpse – and that you got those wounds in a fight with him.  But don’t go telling me about a hunting knife.  You might have cut the shifter up pretty bad but it was all teeth and claws, wasn’t it?”

Silence went on so long, that if Rafiel couldn’t smell the scent of shifter coming from Cordova, made stronger by exertion, and mixed with his blood, he would have thought he was imagining it.

But then Cordova spoke, his voice very tired.  “I see.  The police know.”

“Eh.  This policeman knows,” Rafiel said, smelling for all he was worth, intent to the shift in adrenaline that would signal that the man was about to attack.  Or shift and attack.  It never came.  There weren’t even any great movements.  Rafiel extended his legs in front of him, doing his best to appear at ease

Turning, he found that Cordova was staring at him, studying him.  “What… do you change in to?” the man asked at last.

“Lion, you?”

“Bear.”  And to what must have been sudden comprehension in Rafiel’s face, “Hey, I’m broke, and I guess I like liquor?  I don’t know.  I don’t remember much when I’m already tipsy and then become… you know…  That hike from the forest reserve about killed me too.  Just happy we heal fast.  And that the person who found me thought I’d got drunk and undressed while drunk, and got me clothes and food.”

“I have a cell phone,” Rafiel said.  “Strapped to my thigh with one of those plastic coil things.  Stays in place even when I shift.  That way, if I end up too far from where my clothes are, I can always call friends.”

“Smart that,” Cordova said, and looked down at his feet.  “Only you have to have friends who know, and I don’t have those.  Even my wife didn’t know.  She thought I kept disappearing and was having an affair, and when I didn’t want to talk to her about it, she said I was emotionally unavailable.”  He shrugged.

They sat side by side a little while, then Cordova said, “But that guy, the dead one, I don’t think he was shifter.  I think the shifter smell is from the killer.  It’s really strong around all that area, and it goes that way.”  He pointed the same way Rafiel had been smelling it.

“Could it be one of the other workers?” Rafiel asked.  “Were did they go?”

A grin answered him.  “It’s as I told you before,” he said.  “They ran so fast, they’re probably halfway to Mexico by now.”

“Yeah, but what path did they take out of the park, do you remember?”

This got him a very odd look, as it should have, because Jason was not stupid.  Clearly, from his diction, his vocabulary, the man was smart and well educated.  He stood up on visibly shaky legs.  “Three of them went that way.  And a bunch ran that way.  And then a few ran that way.”

He pointed in three directions, in which the park ended in a fence, bordering a little used road.  Which made sense if you were an illegal worker trying to run away.

“Not that way?” Rafiel asked, pointing in the direction of the path to the parking lot.

Jason shook his head.  “Nah.  None of them had cars, you know?  The owners picked us up in a truck.”  He hesitated a moment.  “Say, you’re not going to try to catch them or…?”

“I’m not INS,” he said.  “And if I caught them, there would only be a mess and they’d end up on the streets again.”

“It’s just,” Jason said, gesturing with his head towards the ticket house where a motley group of people who looked Greek and who seemed to be the extended family of the owner of the park.  They were arguing – or perhaps just talking – in very loud voices.  “That I don’t think they have much choice.”

“The workers?”

“Any of them.  The workers come because they’re hired, and these people hire them because they couldn’t afford minimum wage much less all the deductions and things.”  He frowned.  “This minimum wage law and the benefits and things, it’s all very pretty on paper, but it’s like legislating the weather, man, it does no good.  All it does is make you think everything is fine until reality bites you some place or other.”

Rafiel nodded thinking that Jason was definitely over-educated, but just said, “So none of them went where the smell goes,” he said.  “Which means…  Shit.  There is another shifter at bay.”

Cordova hesitated.  He lifted his hand, then let it fall.  He looked over his shoulder and all around, to make sure he was suitably isolated and that no one could hear him.  Then he sighed.  “Man, I don’t want to tell you this.  You look like you have troubles enough.”

“What?”

“After… in the fight, you know…  I had a pretty good grip on this dude, and I was biting and then…”

“And then?”

“He shifted and slipped out of my grasp,” Jason said.  “He just became this skinny, young dude, maybe fourteen or fifteen…”  He hesitated while Rafiel gave vent to a string of profanity, from which – his having grown up in Colorado and having Spanish-speaking friends, the word “Madre” was not entirely absent.

Jason Cordova just nodded at it, as though Rafiel had made an observation worth noting, then said, “Yeah, but… that’s not the worst of it.  I grant you I was shifted myself, and I don’t remember what happened really clearly, but from the way he looked and how… well… I don’t think he’s all there.  And I’m almost sure he’s not, you know… normal.  His eyes, you know. They were more feral as human than in animal form.”

Update:  The previous books in this series Draw One In The Dark and Gentleman take a chance are available in electronic, non DRM format from Baen Webscriptions

I should have said that earlier, but thinking hurts.  Turns out “feel much better” lasted … two hours, and then a truck ran over me, which is weird, since there’s no highway through the bedroom.

When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are….

Given a little talent at astrophysics, a lot of study, some native talent and having been born in a society with sufficiently advanced science and tech, you might eventually help launch a probe that will bring us fractionally closer to colonizing that star.
            
But no, you say.  No, no, no, no, no, no.  That’s not how that story is supposed to be.  It’s supposed to be “your dream comes true.”

Yes, it is, isn’t it.  Everyone knows that story.  But here’s the thing about stories, even ones that become immensely popular, so popular that they live rent free in our heads: stories (trust me, I make them up) aren’t true.

You know, we humans are weird beasts.  Even those of us who don’t write for a living live and die by story.  Story is the way that the human mind makes sense of the chaotic input of reality.  This is why story is so important for culture – each culture has its own peculiar stories, which entwine in the subconscious of the members of it, and, in most cases, help keep them safe in the environment the culture inhabits (or inhabited at the time of it’s formation) or keeps them within cultural boundaries.  “Don’t go traipsing into the woods alone because a bad wolf will try to eat you” is a great moral.  As is “Be a good girl, work hard, and a prince will marry you, even though your sisters have prettier dresses and go to balls.”

Mind you, these morals are not necessarily good for every member of the culture in every situation, but if you follow the story moral – and most of us do, they really do live rent free in our heads – you’ll be all right more than not.  So the mechanism, by and large, works in favor fo the culture.  It might be bad for 20 members out of 100 (who need to go into the woods to gather mushrooms; or who never marry a prince because he rarely comes to the kitchen.) It is still better for the culture, though.

Even more unfortunately, though, some of the stories are soothing syrup.  They’re not really designed to enforce behavior or to help members of the culture.  They’re designed to keep the crazies in line, or to let us sleep soundly at night.

Keep the crazies in line?  Well… yes.  Or allow them to try things that are so fraught with peril, so completely insane – for the individual, but which might, in the long run, bring benefit to society – that otherwise no one would do it.

One of those is the “If you wish upon a star” or “If you want it badly enough” or the other endless “the wish is the action” things.  “You know you’ve got to stay hungry” or “Fire in the belly” or…

There is a certain amount of desire needed to accomplish anything.  Of course.  And success at crazy things like writing are – ALWAYS – a matter of perseverance.  (Crazy?  By definition.  It’s done by a minority for no visible EXTERNAL necessity.  It’s crazy.)  At least they are unless you get the lucky break that’s the equivalent of winning the jackpot five times in a row.

Because we’re all aware the chances of major success from a writing career are minimal – unless we’re two, live in a well or have never heard a writer’s story of success.  (Even J. K. Rowling – Fortune’s Favorite Daughter – was rejected 21 times.  A risible amount for most of us, but still adversity from the POV of any other profession.) – writing has accrued all these myths, like incrustations.

One of them is “true genius will tell” – particularly present in the Rowling mythos, but to an extent in others, as well – which I’ll deal with sometime next week.

The other one is “If you can be talked out of it, you should be.”  

I hate this myth.  I hate it with a burning, blazing passion.  It’s usually said by mentors and people in power over you, so you have to button your lip and nod.

It is also pure bullshit.  If I could get a gram of it, my garden would be perfectly fertilized.

Look up at the first paragraph.  Yeah, someone who thinks that by wishing he should be able to reach a star needs to be talked out of it.  That’s because it’s completely insane to think you can do that, at our current tech development levels.

In the same way, if someone is chiseling his words onto the skin of armadillos and thinks he’s going to be a bestseller by all means talk him out of it.  It might take a straight jacket, though.

For everyone else – WHY?  Why if you could be talked out of it you SHOULD?  What sense does it make.

Someone in my group on FB said “Because it’s a difficult road and it’s likely reward would be minimal.”

Oh, I see.  So you’re talking people out of it for their own good?  How kind and compassionate of you.  And you think they don’t know it’s a hard road and reward would likely be minimal?  You meet many authors who are two?  Or who have lived their whole lives under a rock with ear plugs on?

Do you see how nonsensical this is?  It’s marginally less nonsensical if it comes from someone who had a hard slog to get up there, and if they’re using that odious statement as a way to start telling their story.  And if they’re aware they’re being pricks and abrogating to themselves the right to decide who should and shouldn’t follow in their footsteps.

But it’s also said by peers.  And it’s used to justify things like: cut down critiques; judging your motives for trying this; and sheer sadism.

Ms. Breslin said she did her “Why You Shouldn’t Be A Writer” because if you push back then you have what it takes to make it.  (Rolls eyes.)  There will be a whole article on that particular fallacy.  (There is absolutely no indication self-confidence has a direct connection to ability to make it as a writer.)

At the bottom of that is “if you can be talked out of it you ‘should’ be.”  And at the bottom of that is ‘if the dream/wish is strong enough, you’ll make it.’

Apply this to other risky, hard to make it there professions that provide things we absolutely need: medicine.  Right now in the US there are artificial barriers to entry into medschool.  You can be a straight A student, do well on the M-cats and you still need luck to make it in.  So, if someone is willing to try to slog it through, should we try to talk them out of it?  For their own good?  And then what happens if we don’t have any doctors?  Or any doctors who aren’t freaking delusional ego-monsters?

Engineering: it’s hard to get jobs in engineering in the US, the way to the end is hard.  So, if you can be talked about it, you should be, and it’s a good thing I have that horse carriage in my barn.  (No, I don’t really.)

Plumbing: you have to work really hard, and there are all these regulations that will make your life difficult, and if you can be talked out of it, you probably should be.  Good thing I know how to dig a latrine.

Look – I’ll be blunt.  Whether you can be talked out of it or not, has NOTHING to do with your talent (to the extent talent exists), your willingness to work hard, or even weirdly your passion.  It has to do with a bunch of things, including your natural altruism (one way to get me to drop out that almost worked was “you’re making your family suffer for nothing.” Fortunately my family kicked me back into play, forcefully.) your self-confidence and even the type of stubborn you are.  (I’m very good at absorbing rejection.  However, give me a good nasty cut-down by someone I admire and it can stop me for years.  I’m still recovering from one I got from one of my mentors – I think accidentally? – five years ago.  It’s still putting traces of diffidence in my voice.)

I daresay if you try long enough and target it JUST right, everyone can be talked out of it.  I probably have the writing bug in extremis, but I could, once upon a time, have been convinced to spend the rest of my life writing Austen fan fic in my spare time and putting it up for free.  Frankly, at that time, it wouldn’t have taken much.

It doesn’t mean they “should” be.  Not for their own good, not for others.  Saying that if they can be talked out they should be is an excuse for insecure dwarves with souls ten sizes too small to try to clear what they perceive as competition.  (Competition in this field is not like that.  Writing doesn’t work on the Marxist model. We don’t have a finite number of books we will read in a lifetime.  It’s actually to some extent true that the more you read the more you want to read.  But Marx has always appealed to people with small souls.)  It’s an excuse for casual writers’ group sadists to have fun while pretending it’s for other’s good.  It’s an excuse for editors not to do their job but to try to be cutting and malicious instead, for the “wannabes own good.”

This is a myth that’s ripe to die.  It’s time we bury it deep.  Yes, the way is arduous.  Yes, the chances of great reward are small.  BUT the way itself will dissuade those who don’t have enough fortitude to make it. (And in some cases we’ll lose great writers, because as with medicine, the way has been made unnecessarily hard in traditional publishing.  Thank G-d for Indie.)  And if THAT doesn’t do it, who are YOU to tell them they should quit?

I say we need all storytellers willing to work hard enough to – metaphorically – get us fractionally closer to the stars.  

It’s obvious this culture is desperately in need of better myths.