*TODAY’S POST — SUNDAY PROMO AND VIGNETTES — IS BELOW THIS ONE -S.A.H.*
Yes, blog funding is going fairly slow on all fronts, partly I think because of the times we’re in. It’s not that fewer people are giving, but that people in general are giving less.
This is not a complaint against the givers. I’m also giving slightly less. Because of the times we’re in. And no one should feel obligated or even hinted at to give more than they can afford. This is not an emergency fundraiser.
Mind you, this is not to say it’s not needed. For various reasons, but mostly a lot of death and illness, this year has been brutal on my fiction writing even if I’m feeling more capable of writing. It’s made the ol’ publishing pretty slow, which means yeah, less money. And you know what costs are. BUT this is known, it’s not an emergency, this is not a rescue (I promised I’d never ask for another of those, after all) and we’ll be fine.
Still, I might do the thing where I put a post up top, pinned, with the details of the fundraising, and then mention it at the end for a week every three months or so. For various reasons, I don’t like doing that. OTOH a lot of other bloggers have gone to more than one fundraiser a year because this year has been brutal for everyone, so it’s not like this is peculiar to me.
And here’s the important thing: Heinlein said that writing for free was immoral. And he was actually right.
How?
Well, the context he was saying it in was Ginny writing a free article for a skating magazine. Apparently the magazine just didn’t pay. But he said writing for free was immoral.
It is. If people are willing to write for free, it drives the value of all writing down. It wasn’t just that skating magazine. The more people were willing to write not-for-money the less magazines paid, till when I came in the field they were paying less than they’d paid in the fifties, for short stories, professional rates.
I’ll also note that in Portugal publishers just plain don’t pay — and do a lousy job of promoting, as a consequence — because the job of writing is so prestigious that all sorts of people will do it for free. So it has become a hobby for everyone, and only foreigners make money from Portuguese readers.
Now, of course, Ginny was doing it for fun, and perhaps for exposure.
I’m not a hundred percent sure how Heinlein would view the current market place for writing. Writing for fun and exposure is how everyone (including book authors) starts, in the hope of creating an audience who’ll want to pay them.
It is what I did in this blog, even when the exposure — in terms of selling the fiction — only sort of worked.
And I worked assiduously for years at building an audience who’d be willing to pay. I believe I have built that, at least if last year’s fundraiser is any indication.
Have I?
You can choose from Give Send Go, in which case you are donating to make it possible for me to keep this blog up and not lose my mind or get incredibly ill as …. as has been the case these last ten years. Give Send Go forbids incentive donations. So, that’s that.
If you want to donate to keep Sarah marginally healthier and saner while writing blog and books, please go here: Link Here.
If you wish to more directly support my fiction writing, other than by buying books (again, this helps me do things like pay my assistant, and maybe finally pay someone to revamp my blog) and this other means is part of the funding: Subscribe to my substack, where I’m serializing the novels Witch’s Daughter and Winter Prince. (Update on Witch’s Daughter up, and Winter Prince are up. Another chapter of Winter Prince being finished after this. We … uh…. had a middle of the night wake up. Yes, reasons. No, not health.)
Anyway, to subscribe to Chapter House, the link is: Here.
And finally, a few of you informed me you are Patreon Donors. I have no idea what to do with Patreon, since it has some issues copyright and other ways. BUT I will try to do a post once a week. My warning that it will be mostly about cats is, well… a warning. It can be tons of other things, such as art or an outtake on a past or future novel. And probably will be. Unless I’m mourning a very beloved kitten and share that. (Sorry.)
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo,please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months(unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
In the face of extinction, you do what you must, regardless of who stands in the way.
Tom Beadle only volunteered for NASA’s neighborhood watch program when his department said it would maybe help him get tenure.None of them counted on the Neighborhood Watch becoming a mortifying political liability when a malfunctioning probe accidently reveals an asteroid hiding behind the larger outer planets, setting off impact alarms– and politicians looking for blame. When their answer is to defund the Watch program and fire all involved, Tom’s only chance to save the earth is to lie through his teeth and try to deflect the asteroid under cover of harvesting rare not-of-this-earth elements. And even that may not work.
[Please note that this book collects the three Seasons stories previously published individually in e-book format — “Saving The Spring”, “A Midsummer Night’s Hunt”, and “Autumn’s Smile”. There is no new material; this edition is intended only to provide a physical paperback alternative.]
Despite Ragnarok, gods still walk the world.
Odin All-Father still cares for his human children. And at his order, Midgard is protected by four surviving Asgardian “royals” who control the climate: The Queens of Spring and Autumn, and the Kings of Summer and Winter. Loki the Trickster hates Midgard, wishing it to freeze over and become more Cold Lands. Challenging the King of Winter to single combat, his malignant trickery is responsible for the New Madrid earthquakes in 1811-12, the Year Without a Summer (1816), and the Deep Snow of 1830-31. Can the other three royals combine their powers to prevent the world from falling into another (and likely permanent) Ice Age?
“Fans of Alma T.C. Boykin and Tom Rogneby will love this short story. It begins as a road trip with a couple of middle-aged snowbirds (well-armed ones) and turns into a fight for life, honor, and the immortal love of a lady as old as time. The plot is delightfully clever, the action fast and furious and you will love the main characters as they forge a new destiny.” — L. Paul, reviewing Saving The Spring.
For many people in my life, my military time was a closed book. I realized that they had no clue about large portions of my life. Many of the things I did, saw, and experienced while in the Army were completely alien to them. I started writing out little stories for them to illustrate points or to show them why I was laughing at something.
So, what you have here is a collection of some of my stories strung together in an order as chronologically accurate as I can manage. These memories and stories are based on things I recollect, things that actually happened, things that might have happened, and things that in no way happened but are hilarious to me. Names may or may not have been changed. My goal with this epistle is to entertain and maybe, just maybe, make someone smile with recognition.
MORE VALUABLE AS A WEAPON THAN A KINGMAKER, HE MUST MAKE HIS OWN CHOICES TO SECURE THE FUTURE.
George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, had hoped to settle into a quiet life with his new family, but it was not to be. Gwyn ap Nudd, Prince of Annwn, has plans to secure his domain in the new world from the overbearing interference of his father Lludd, the King of Britain.
The security of George’s family is bound to that of his overlord, and he vows to help. But when he and his companions stand against Lludd and his allies at court, disaster overturns all their plans and even threatens the Hounds of Annwn themselves.
George and his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, must survive a subtle attack that undermines them both. Other gods and gods-to-be have taken an interest, but the fae are divided in their allegiances and fear the threat of deadly new powers in their unchanging lives.
George and his companions must save themselves if they are to persuade their potential allies to help. But how can they do so, attacked on so many fronts at once? Will he put his family into greater jeopardy by trying to defend them?
A rapid-fire western of the cow-country of Arizona!
When Hall McIvor of Kentucky rode into this harsh land, his first taste of Arizona hospitality was to be ambushed and threatened with lynching by the Scarborough brothers, for the crime of being “one of the Bassetts”. The fact that he was new to these parts was neither here nor there to them.
Hall didn’t care for feuds, he was here on a mission to end one himself, by means of marrying a girl from a clan his own people had been in feud with for generations. But intrigues, double-games, and hot flying lead would pull him into this one, too, until he finally dealt .45 calibre justice to The Man-Killers!
This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context.
“With this sword, I can even slay the volkh lordling, were he not hiding behind his dwarven puppet”
Jeremy and Galena traveled with Bolgor to his home city, only to find the legendary city of the dwarves torn apart by politics. What was to be a pleasant visit turned into a struggle against the Dark attempts to corrupt it from within.
The young wizard, his bear-shifter lady, and his dwarven sword brother must find a way to deal with different political parties, monsters, and assassination attempts. They have to find the instigator in a different culture with very different rules. Rules that separate Jeremy from Galena. Among a people many of whom think the volkh are frauds.
And the fall of this city to Darkness would lead to a new reign of terror as its satellite cities fall and a new Dark Empire arises in the North. Only Jeremy and his friends stand in the way of a new age of war and the bloodshed that will bring.
Click above to join Jeremy as he faces the latest challenge of the dark. A challenge that threatens not only those he loves but an entire civilization and perhaps the world. If you like adventures set in a unique magical world, you will love the latest in the Avatar Wizard series.
Olivia Markham lives a complicated life. By day, she is a star CIA officer working a cover as a graduate student in Vienna. By night, she is a self-appointed, kick-ass superhero wearing a harlequin’s hood and wielding a wicked bō.
Life is about to get more complicated.
The sexual predator that Olivia tracks one July evening to Vienna’s Stadtpark calls himself Asmodeus, a demon’s name. Olivia doesn’t care what he calls himself. She’s just there to save an innocent young woman. What Olivia doesn’t know is that Asmodeus has followers he calls bogomili after an ancient sect of believers. She suddenly finds herself fighting to save her own life against these vicious, soulless creatures whose mission is to release souls from the bonds of a corrupt world.
Across the Stadtpark another hears Olivia’s battle with the bogomili. He is a drangùe, a powerful warrior with supernatural abilities who is duty bound to save innocents from Asmodeus. This drangùe will stop at nothing to defeat his age-old enemy—even if it means risking everything to bring Olivia into his world. A world in which the drangùe has his own cover identity. He has good reason to distrust this beautiful young woman who hides secrets that could get him killed or worse…. But the drangùe must keep Olivia close in order to stay one step ahead of Asmodeus. The only problem is that the closer he keeps her, the more the drangùe wants to keep Olivia in his life. And that is not part of his long-term battle plans.
The library holds many marvels. Lena and her betrothed Erion had found things that helped the beleaguered Celestians of the city.
But when the king’s caprice decides to sacrifice Erion to protect himself, Lena can only hope a legend can help her. A legend of just kings. And lions.
I always keep my word. That’s why I’m headed back to Mars for a case. That’s also why the Spiffies – Space Patrol Intelligence Force – came sniffing around my office. I told them to get lost. They told me my case had connections to their search for the Bloodsword, the pirate ship that destroyed my first command and cost me my career in Space Patrol
But my case has roots far older than my six-year quest for vengeance against the Bloodsword. Roots that stretch back to the dawn of Martian civilization.
And Trouble, my partner and lover, is right smack in the middle of it all.
This is what happened this month, is it really something anyone should be proud of? I’m just continuing to track the daily news, trying to analyze it, whatever observations come to mind. The title came to mind very early, we’ve really had enough of this. Our masters are tearing us down any way they can and they obviously have some large events coming up shortly. To be honest, I’m surprised we’ve lasted this long, but their plans aren’t always working out the way they intended. I know what we need to do about this and will continue putting this signal out as long as possible.
The B-side collects the comic strips I did throughout the month, The Struggling.
THIS NEXT ONE IS WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR, WHO DID NOTHING TO MAKE ME LIKE HIM, EXCEPT WRITE A KICKING SERIES. FOR ALL I KNOW HE WOULDN’T ASSOCIATE WITH THE LIKES OF US. STILL A KICKING BOOK A LOT OF US HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR:
The war that collapsed the Empire is finally here.
The invasion force descends on Station Noir. The leaders in charge of its defense are dead or missing, so it’s up to Gunny and his team to organize a resistance before humanity’s last safe place in the galaxy is wiped away forever.
But a bigger threat is pulling the strings and it’s not finished with Gunny or the Station.
Can Gunny stop the armada, keep his crew safe, and unravel a centuries-old plot before it destroys them all?
If you enjoy non-stop action, interstellar intrigue, and galactic crime you will love Gunny’s thrilling adventures in Invasion Hustle, the 6th and final book of Space Station Noir. Get your copy today!
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
It has been suggested that I keep a discrete post up top indicating links on the side of the blog for the fundraising sites, so people can hit the tip when they feel like/have extra money.
What does the commentariat think?
I haven’t done it in the past mostly because idiots use this as proof that I don’t make enough as a fiction writer. But that’s not the calculus — though frankly, I’m just starting to ramp up the fiction writing again, as health recovers — it’s rather that I do this every day, and people seem to appreciate it, so it should be paid. I.e. it has a value. Besides, Heinlein said writing for free is immoral. And that tastes right to me. So perhaps it’s a remnant of sensitivity from the days when I had to look good to (traditional) publisher, even if it hurt.
Of course, I’ll have to hire someone to put in the links, because Dan has been working round the clock, and I can’t figure out how to put the links in when the blog is hosted by wordpress. (They’re…. special about links.)
Anyway, day five of blog funding. Slow but not stopped! Hanging fire at 11.5k
You can choose from Give Send Go, in which case you are donating to make it possible for me to keep this blog up and not lose my mind or get incredibly ill as …. as has been the case these last ten years. Give Send Go forbids incentive donations. So, that’s that.
If you want to donate to keep Sarah marginally healthier and saner while writing blog and books, please go here: Link Here.
If you wish to more directly support my fiction writing, other than by buying books (again, this helps me do things like pay my assistant, and maybe finally pay someone to revamp my blog) and this other means is part of the funding: Subscribe to my substack, where I’m serializing the novels Witch’s Daughter and Winter Prince. (Update on Witch’s Daughter up, and Winter Prince are up. Another chapter of Winter Prince being finished after this. We … uh…. had a middle of the night wake up. Yes, reasons. No, not health.)
Anyway, to subscribe to Chapter House, the link is: Here.
And finally, a few of you informed me you are Patreon Donors. I have no idea what to do with Patreon, since it has some issues copyright and other ways. BUT I will try to do a post once a week. My warning that it will be mostly about cats is, well… a warning. It can be tons of other things, such as art or an outtake on a past or future novel. And probably will be. Unless I’m mourning a very beloved kitten and share that. (Sorry.)
Finally, if you must send things by snailmail, yes, we accept checks, cash, cat toys* and gold coins. *Please do not send live rodents. It freaks the manager.
Welcome to day four of blog funding days. Yeah, I probably am not going to make anywhere near the total, because the first week are when most of the donations are, and even between GSG and Substack subscriptions, it doesn’t come close. BUT …. But it is what it is. And I still have to ASK, which is hard, but is the point. I mean, I put in about 30 hours a week on this blog, and if I don’t get funding, it makes it very hard to also write fiction.
So, fully aware of how difficult it was to pay on the blog pledges from last year (still will do it) this year is different.
You can choose from Give Send Go, in which case you are donating to make it possible for me to keep this blog up and not lose my mind or get incredibly ill as …. as has been the case these last ten years. Give Send Go forbids incentive donations. So, that’s that.
If you want to donate to keep Sarah marginally healthier and saner while writing blog and books, please go here: Link Here.
If you wish to more directly support my fiction writing, other than by buying books (again, this helps me do things like pay my assistant, and maybe finally pay someone to revamp my blog) and this other means is part of the funding: Subscribe to my substack, where I’m serializing the novels Witch’s Daughter and Winter Prince. (Update on Witch’s Daughter up, and Winter Prince will be up before midnight. This week is fun with doctors, so things are slightly mistimed.) Anyway, to subscribe to Chapter House, the link is: Here.
And finally, a few of you informed me you are Patreon Donors. I have no idea what to do with Patreon, since it has some issues copyright and other ways. BUT I will try to do a post once a week. My warning that it will be mostly about cats is, well… a warning. It can be tons of other things, such as art or an outtake on a past or future novel. And probably will be. Unless I’m mourning a very beloved kitten and share that. (Sorry.) Anyway, to donate on Patreon, please: Go here.
If you absolutely must send me a snailmail check, a drawing of a squirrel, or a picture of your cat, this is the address to send it to:
304 S. Jones Blvd, Suite 6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107
This brings day four of blog funding begging to a close. Real post is below this one. Have fun.
*BEFORE THE POST AN ANNOUNCEMENT: Due to WordPress being less functional than normal, would you please sign your comments with your usual handle? (Also, yelling “we’re number one” is allowable, of course.) It might, though knowing the Huns it’s not guaranteed, limit the amount of friendly fire around here.*
I was sharing the link for the substack installment of Witch’s Daughter (Winter Prince tonight. This week and next are rocky, as they could/should be titled “fun with doctors.” For us or the cats.) and came across a discussion about “My feelings are valid.”
I really have no clue where this came from, except of course people wishing to use their feelings as cudgels on other’s heads.
I mean, assuredly, your feelings are “valid” in the sense that you have feelings, and no one can tell you not to have the feelings you have or that you do not in fact feel that way. By virtue of being an internal (and often not entirely controllable) phenomenon feelings are out of the reach of others. Others can’t deny them, or tell you don’t have them.
So, in that sense they are “valid” in that they exist. Or maybe exist. (How the heck do I know. I’m not you.)
But the question that comes to mind after establishing that is “Yes, and?”
Most of the “my feelings are valid” crowd are claiming that because they have these feelings, you have to change whatever you’re doing that gives them unpleasant feelings. And that is… what is the technical term? Oh, yeah: batshit insane.
To be clear, no matter how you feel, other people can’t do anything about it. This means they can’t do anything about your feeling sad/despondent/insulted because they did something you think triggered your bad feelings. You can say that people did it on purpose, and maybe they did, but the same principle that dictates that we can’t invalidate your feelings, also dictates that we can’t control them.
The truth is that while your feelings are real, they are fundamentally disconnected from external reality. They exist, but they are created by a confluence of who you are, your entire past and what actually happened.
Take the ridiculous attacker (probably Clamps trying to evade the block. I didn’t have enough interest to look it up) who came by to leave his first comment saying something like “This fat bitch won’t allow dissent in her comments. Enjoy your echo chamber, you fake American.” I think I was supposed to feel really bad. Note the fat, which will hit about any modern woman — except I know I’m fat, know it’s not entirely under my control, since it relates to thyroid, and feel no guilt about it. Also, I’m too old to care about being a slinky sylph — and bitch — Which frankly I’ve been called by better people — and the not allowing dissent in my comments, which is of course anathema to a libertarian — except this libertarian doesn’t feel the need to invite the drunken uncle to the wedding. I allow you guys to duke it out, but insults like that would catch you a ban even if not first time, and not directed at me — and then the “fake American” — except I have the passport, and I’ve studied the culture and the history, and frankly? No one has the right to judge if I’m fake or real, and certain not an asshole troll. So, did I feel bad? A little. I felt bad I didn’t have the time to go in the back panel to ban him permanently after approving his first comment to say “Oh. I’m sorry. Does this blog make me look fat?” But hey, we can’t all have everything we want.
So, that comment went way off the mark. (And is not even the worst I’ve come across. Everyday some enjoin me to attempt impossible anatomical feats or worse. I honestly don’t even read most of them now. My assistant has permanent orders to delete the crazy ones that start off with name calling and profanity. Not that they affect me, really. They just give me a feeling of wading through a sewer.) It made me giggle and want to answer back in that way in the worst way possible. (Which I suppose is why I’m quoting it. Because I still think “Does this blog make me look funny?” is hilarious.)
Or take when Mary Three Names called me “racist” for using the term Chicom. I think I was supposed to feel guilty and immediately apologize. Except I know for a fact that communist is not a race — it’s a mental illness — and therefore I just made a post mocking her insanity and had ever-so-much-fun. (Which is why “bitch” is probably an appropriate descriptor. Meh. Sometimes it’s needed.)
These insults went wide, because I’m not your standard issue person my age and type or national origin, or whatever the heck you wish. And because frankly my writing career has most resembled a series of kicks in the teeth. So after a while what you’re kicking is scar tissue and doesn’t hurt.
However, I have friends — some of them my age, and with similar experience — who simply couldn’t take either of those accusations without dissolving. These friends largely stay out of politics, and often don’t even read them, because they could not engage and give as good as they got.
Their feelings are valid. And yes, the current climate causes their feelings. But it doesn’t mean, as much as I love them, that all of reality should stop in its tracks and everyone should — or can — start being nice to wrap them in cotton and spare them.
For one, because that’s impossible. For another, because their feelings are theirs, and an intersection of who they are and what else they’ve experienced. I can’t fully understand why they’re so sensitive, or how they became that way. But I don’t have to. I just have to realize they are that way, and when I get annoyed because they run and hide at the slightest thing, I can use my realization to stop feeling angry at them.
Because ultimately, your feelings are valid, but you’re the only one who can change them.
Say you love the color purple, and are deeply hurt and offended whenever someone says that purple sucks. Your feelings are real, of course. But you can’t demand that everyone, including strangers, respect your feelings and abstain from saying purple is an ugly color. Trying to do that will turn into a full time job, not to say a crusade. And if you could police the entire world, all you’ll achieve is having people trash-talk purple behind your back. Knowing that, you’ll probably feel even worse.
What you can do is — instead — learn to cope with the fact other people hurt purple. You don’t have to like it, but you can learn to accept it, and thereby stop feeling hurt and offended. They don’t hurt purple to offend you. They just hurt purple.
Then there is the other aspect: We can agree your feelings exist. Or at least, we can’t say they don’t.
However, we don’t have to agree with your diagnosis or your feelings.
Most of the craze of transing kids is because “kids’ feelings are valid” and if a little boy says he’s a little girl, that means he’s a little girl.
Uh…. no. It means he says he’s a little girl. Which means he might feel it — or not. Kids, literally say the craziest things. My kids spent an entire summer being an Alien and an Evil Twin (BUT as he kept telling me, not the ALIEN’S evil twin.) — or he might be pretending, or he might be playing. But even if he feels he’s a little girl, this isn’t necessarily an informed opinion. No, your two year old son doesn’t know what a two year old little girl feels like. How would he? He’s not one. What he knows of little girls has nothing to do with growing up to be women, and he has no more concept of sex than most of us do of advanced physics. So, if he feels like a girl, he probably likes pink, or would like to wear a dress for about an hour (before he needs pockets, or wants to climb a tree.) “Feeling like” doesn’t mean what you think it means.
It might also not mean what the person themselves think it means. Look, I have no beef with adults transitioning (well, not people older than 21. I think if you can’t drink, you really shouldn’t be allowed to overload on opposite sex hormones either. If the brain isn’t fully grown up for one thing, it’s not fully grown up for the other) but when an adult “feels like” the opposite sex, is that true? Or are they feeling something they interpret as feeling like the opposite sex?
We used to have very complex tests to make sure people really would be better off as the other sex, to avoid irreparable harm. But in the era of “Your feelings are real” all you have to do is say you feel it really deeply and boom, you’ll get hormones.
This is a guarantee of irreparable harm, because feelings change and sometimes you find that the other half isn’t what you felt like. You really felt like you’d like your life to be easier, say, but it turns out this patriarchy isn’t all it’s been advertised to be, and men don’t have it easier.
In the same way, the mass of loonies who stop people say expressing opposing opinions, because they feel attacked. Just because you feel attacked, it doesn’t mean you’re being attacked. And if your reasoning for feeling attacked is something like “The speaker is conservative, and therefore hates gays, women and people of color, so since I’m one I’m being attacked.” the attack is mostly between your ears and part of your defective thinking meat. If you actually clean out the ear wax and listen to what people are saying, chances are you’ll find that the speech doesn’t have anything to do with you. Instead it’s about things like the rule of law, the abstract advantages of free speech, or even things like taxation. Which aren’t about you and therefore boring, and might make you feel bad in an entirely different way.
Feelings are feelings. I feel, you feel, we all feel. But feelings are a worst way to run a society or determine a political system than moist bints submerged in lakes and distributing magical swords. And just as uncontrollable.
“Respecting other feelings” belongs to the realm of polite party manners, not the realm of adult society. In adult society, where we discuss important things and even more important principles, someone is going to get upset.
I often get upset at gross injustice. And I work through my feelings by writing blogs about it, because at my age, lack of connections and avoir-du-pois I really can’t do much more than push the ripple out and make more people aware of the injustice. It isn’t’ much, but it does help me deal with my feelings.
Which is what we all, as adults, have to do. I might feel that a vast portion of the population would be better off dropped from helicopters, but the question is: how do I identify them? Further questions are: whose army would help me with this task? And further questions: How could I buy that many helicopters. And then: wouldn’t it be terrible for marine ecology? And then: I don’t even know if commies can be safely eaten by sea creatures. (Yes, that is facetious. I am not, in the words of facebook, coordinating harm.)
So, instead, I accept that my feelings are real, but there is no way to assuage them, and instead make a lot of St. Augusto de Puma memes and afflict other people’s feelings, and let them deal with that.
Because yeah, your feelings are real. And they’re valid in the sense you feel them, and we can’t stop you feeling them.
But they entail no obligation on anyone’s part to change them, or make you not experience bad feelings.
If you’re a little kid, have a lollipop.
If you’re an adult, learn to cope with your own feelings. Other adults weren’t put on this Earth for your joy and comfort. Find something to do and stop angsting about how you feel.
Or, if you can’t, do what my more sensitive friends do, and abandon the field of battle. Restrict your activities to things that don’t inflame your feelings.
Because the only one who can do anything about your oh, so valid feelings, is you.
As you have probably all noticed, WordPress has broken displayed commenter names. For the time being, please do your fellow readers a favor and sign your comment in the text box.
(Why bats? I don’t know. But just as last year, y’all donate more when I put up a picture of a bat. It’s entirely possible this is done to drive me batty.)
NOTE TODAY’S POST, A BARN-BURNER BY PHANTOM IS BELOW THIS POST.
Now, what is a nice blogger like me doing with a fundraiser like this?
Well… I hate doing fundraisers. I used to jokingly put out a thing on the 29th of February every 4 years. And I averaged about 2k per year in blog donations. Which is nothing to sneeze at and hey, it financed our trips out to eat, but as the blog started taking more and more of my time, the family grumbled more and more about unpaid work.
You see, when I started out, the blog was supposed to promote my books, which would then pay for the time on the blog in a delayed and round about way. But then the blog was supposed to be a few lines of something short and quirky….
Only I don’t do short and quirky, and it seems like the publishers and agents really overestimated the raw hunger for a blog JUST about writing and a writer’s life. And also, I have a hole in my head when it comes to politics, so this blog went political and stayed political. It turns out that’s not a great way to promote books (to be fair, it turns out no type of blog is) and my audience for the blog and my audience for the fiction were almost completely separate.
Ten years in (I’m a slow learner) I realized that I was spending about half the time I have for writing on the blog…. and it didn’t pay at all. On the other hand, it helped me think, and it gave me a social life of sorts. But all the same, I mean, people get paid for opinion pieces. And for running homes for wayward commenters, too. (I mean, I’m inferring the later. I never actually heard of one, as such.) And the family grumbled I should be getting paid. To be fair, the late great Jerry Pournelle was upset I wouldn’t run a fundraiser. He said given my levels of engagement, I should be making around 50k a year.
I didn’t run a fundraiser because I was sure I would get $20 and a coupon for a pack of gum.
Then I had to run a “need” fundraiser, and my family’s injunction on that was that if it worked, I was to do a fundraiser every year. Which I’m trying to fulfill. No, I have no idea what they’ll do if I don’t, but I suspect it will involve reducing my blogging to 3 times a week at most.
The fundraiser last year was a mess, partly because of gofundme going stupid and kickstarter not being much better. So, I couldn’t keep donation levels straight, and when I finally got lists, it turned out anti-spam measures made it impossible to mail our rewards. I’ve put the lowest level on the blog for download and the others are coming, save for the mass (and math) deaths and tuckerizations, which are coming too, just slower.
So, this year I am not, (emphasis not!) doing that. Instead, I have three ways of donating, which are all more or less self fulfilling.
The first way to support this blog is Give Send Go: Link Here.
I offer no incentives there, because GSG forbids it. All I can do is promise I will do at least 4 blog posts a week, though one of those might be memes. (And the others might have guest posts or something of the kind some weeks — though not most weeks.) And I’ll try to make them as good as I know how.
The total…. well, it’s supposed to be the total fundraising for the whole thing (And yes, from what I can tell it’s more or less on track, though slower than last year, but then I started it on the fourth.) And it’s that because it’s around what Jerry said it would be.
This is not a need fundraiser, it’s a “Sarah would like to get paid for her 7 days a week of tending the blog, even if she can never get paid for the 10 years without fundraising.”
I do however understand that times are tight for everyone, and I will not hold it against anyone who doesn’t donate. Do not hurt yourselves!
I’m not closing the GSG and I intend to keep a link to it on the side bar, in case you win the lottery and want to gift me a million or you know $5 for coffee. whatever.
The second way to donate, also with no obvious incentive, and for those of you who really don’t like electronic payments, is by mail. We accept checks, cash inside chocolate wrappers (you know who you are) and cat toys. Okay, I don’t particularly accept cat toys, but Indy cat will thank you from the bottom of his silly heart. Some of them will even get Havey-cat to play. Anyway, that’s: Sarah A. Hoyt, 304 S. Jones Blvd, Suite 6771, Las Vegas, NV 89107
Then there is Chapter House, a blog where I will be serializing novels: It’s seeded with two beginnings of novels. I’ll be adding 2 chapters each a week. (Yes, you’ll get two chapters each on the Chapter House novels by Friday. Yes, this Friday too. I’ll try to have Witch’s Daughter done on Wednesdays, but depending on the week that sometimes will slip. [This week and next week the theme is “fun with doctors!”]). These are as written, and yes, with their typos upon them, (And Witch’s Daughter is particularly bad on typos and weird phrasing, I noticed yesterday.) But when they’re done, you’ll get a chance to download a cleaned up ebook to download. For those of you with Amazon-dislike, this should work. (I’m going to try to find a work around for non-subscribers to buy the ebook too, but I’m not quite sure how.)
Anyway, to subscribe to Chapter House, the link is: Here.
And while I’m fully aware that Patreon is… iffy, I’ve been asked to have a Patreon account. There I will give away the things more commonly given away in such accounts. Yes, the setup says a lot about my cats. This is because let’s face it, they’re cute, and I’ll end up doing cats if I can’t think of anything else.
Also, I’ve bought the basic setup from fluent pet and intend to teach Indy to talk with buttons. (Like the try to teach chimps to talk.) Let’s just say that Indy is the smartest and most interesting cat I’ve ever shared my life with, so I’m curious what will come of it. Also in a few months, when we get Indy a younger sibling, he or she will join that fun. I have no idea if it will be entertaining, but we can hope. Also there will be snippets of work in progress, beginning of stories that attack me out of the blue and the like. I promise to do something once a week. Heck, it might be a recipe. (NO, NOT FOR CAT! What kind of a sick mind do you have?)
If you lose your mind and subscribe to all of the above, it remains for me to warn you that you might get an overdose of Hoyt. While studies on these are inconclusive, I should warn you there is a slight chance of insanity. At least judging by my closest friends and family, I seem to have that effect on people. You’ve been warned.
I’ve said, since Canada adopted the metric system in the 1970s, that it sucks. It is a stupid French utopian idea, and I hate it.
At a very basic level, metric doesn’t mean anything to me. How big is a centimeter? I have to check every single time. It has no meaning, it’s an arbitrary thing.
Imperial is based on real things. How big is an inch? My thumb, pretty much. My foot is about a foot. My stride is about six feet. Close enough to get me in the ballpark, anyway. Weights and measures are the same thing. An ounce, a quart, a pint, these are every-day amounts of things you use in food etc. A pound is roughly how much bacon you want for family breakfast. A kilogram is 2.2 times as much as you want, which is stupid.
How much is a milliliter? Um, who cares? I’m not a doctor, I don’t titrate drugs in exact amounts. I’m not a machinist, 1/64th” is about the finest measurement I ever need. If I need to do better I get out the micrometer and do things in thousandths. Which is decimal not fraction, just like metric right? The only difference is 1/1000 of something I know instead of 1/100 of something I don’t.
But I am constantly told I am a troglodyte and I must get with the Modern Age. Because… well no reason, really. Just because. Shut up, old man.
If you had to estimate the dimensions of a room without the benefit of a tape measure, you might walk its perimeter heel to toe, counting your steps. To estimate the height of a wall, you might count hand spans from floor to ceiling. In doing so, you’d join a long human tradition. Most human societies around the word—perhaps all—have employed similar body-based measurement strategies, according to a first-of-its-kind study published today in Science. And these informal body-based systems can persist for centuries after a culture has introduced standardized units of measure because, the authors argue, they often lead to more ergonomic designs of tools, clothing, and other personalized items.
“Nobody has ever done this kind of systematic, cross-cultural study of body-based measurement before,” says Stephen Chrisomalis, an anthropologist of mathematics at Wayne State University who penned an editorial accompanying the new paper. “It brings together a huge amount of data that [show] not just how common they are, but that they tend to fall along certain patterns. That is actually an extraordinarily important finding.”
Everybody, all over the world, throughout history, used the hand, the foot, the span, the yard, etc. Only the French were so ridiculous to invent a system that relates to nothing. The meter is the length that it is because some guy said so, and for no other reason (and he made it that way because it wasn’t a yard.) A yard at least started as the distance from the king’s nose to his outstretched index finger, which is something.
If you are making any object for use by human beings, be it a chair, a spoon, a car, the human body dictates the design. The proportions of the body also dictate artistic sensibility. If the proportions conform roughly to those of the human body the thing will be appealing. If they do not, it will be ugly. Which makes a yard or a foot useful information. A yard is how far your arm can reach. A shoe is a foot long.
That this is news to the academic world, an “extraordinarily important finding” quoth the authors, seems to me to represent an abject failure of the education system as a whole.
It seems as if none of these people studying these things has ever made anything with their hands. If they had, they’d know you don’t proceed to make a thing by manufacturing all the parts to a listed tolerance. You start with what the thing is for. From there you decide how big the parts are. Then you proceed in logical fashion from the most awkward part to the easiest.
Chair seat first, then the holes for the legs, trim the legs to fit the holes (because it is EASIER to trim the leg than to trim the hole), then the leg braces, then the back, then the arms, etc. Each piece is measured from the previous piece, or from the body of the person who is going to sit on it.
Tables, chairs, boats, all made the same way, each one unique. Because it doesn’t matter if no two are the same. It only matters if it fits the person it was made for.
Making a standardized object in a factory out of standardized, interchangeable parts is a profoundly unnatural process and only began in the 19th Century. Such a process requires all kinds of things that had never been required before. Two of those things were accuracy and precision of physical dimensions. The tapered pin that goes into the tapered hole must be accurate to within a few thousandths of an inch for diameter, roundness, taper and length. In the 18th century such things could not even be measured. In the 19th they were commonly being produced in lots of ten thousand. The Singer sewing machine, patented in 1851, is an example of a device that would have been impossible to make at all 100 years before.
But no one in Academia these days seems to appreciate what that means. Even the notion of measuring by rule of thumb does not occur to them, apparently. What did they do when they built those sailing ships to cross the Atlantic the first few times? Inch, foot, yard, fathom. That’s what. We’re humans. That’s how we do it. Except the French, whose one driving need throughout history is that they have to be different.
Yesterday I had a really strange interaction with a friend: he pinged me and said he saw I was doing a blog fundraiser and did I think he should do one too?
I scratched my head because, well, you see, his blog is paid. I pointed out that in my opinion it was in poor taste to fundraise on a subscription blog because you’re already getting paid. Unless, of course, there is a major emergency. Then it came out he didn’t realize this blog wasn’t paid.
No, I’m not a hundred percent sure how this blog would be paid? But then when I started writing it, back in pre-history, it was sort of supposed to pay for itself.
So, it was to be a cute blog, about my cats and my daily life, and my writing, and what I liked to do, and it would drive mad sales to my books and–
Does this work for any writer, ever?
I don’t know, I know that in the early oughts editors and agents were convinced it was the ticket to the big money for unknown mid-list writers. You just had to start a blog and automagically you’d be a best seller. In fact when submitting to a new house, while they were considering and negotiating, they often asked if you had a blog, and/or how many followers you had in whatever media. (This of course drove the purchase of chinese bots, and that– anyway. I don’t actually know if publishing houses have become aware of this, yet, or if they’re still buying people based one “two million followers on twitter.”)
One of the things we found, at any rate, is that a twitter/facebook/blog following correlates poorly with fiction sales.
However, before all that, I’d gone off the reservation in the strangest manner possible. It was the perfect storm, in a way. I had to write a blog every day, or at least a few times a week, because that was the formula. But I had no idea what to write about. I didn’t want to write about my then elementary and middle school kids, because…. well…. I didn’t want them to be prey. (And the one time I did it created a firestorm at their school.) I didn’t want to write nothing but cats (though of course, cats are always fun) and writing about my writing process is weird most of the time.
“Write about something you think about all the time” they said. I guess they would think it would be sex? (Though how that would sell my books, which aren’t really sexy I don’t know.) But it turns out I have problems based on when and where I grew up, so what I think about all the time is politics. You see, I feel about Marxists the way people in seismically unstable regions think about the ocean. You don’t turn your back on the ocean when a sudden Mare Viva (Live tide, in Portuguese) can flood the beach and drag you out to sea, and you don’t turn your back on Marxists when they’ve infiltrated a culture and are running in possession of weaponized envy. Because they could suddenly destroy everything that makes life possible.
And so this blog became more and more veiledly — and finally nakedly — political over time. Which is fine. I mean, I hate the filthy stuff, but in this place, at this time we do need to keep our eyes and mind on it, because we have no redundancy left and we can’t afford many more Marxist shenanigans.
The problem with that is that while this blog has its own fans and its own community, it’s only so so at selling fiction.
Mind you, it still does sell some. It’s the closest thing I have to publicity. I mean, no one has figured out what works for book publicity yet. This …. um…. there’s maybe a 25% cross over to buying my fiction.
The problem is this: it’s not so much it takes all my time (only about half of it) but that it’s notoriously hard to take time off, or run off and do something else, or–
Pretty much every morning I wake up and do a blog, unless I did it the night before, before posting at a instapundit. And then during the day I keep an eye on the comments, because we all remember the eruptions when I didn’t, right?
So, I do on average 30 hours a week on the blog? (I work weekends, too.) Sometimes more, sometimes less, but around there.
And the problem is that my family gets very testy about my doing that unpaid. For years they kept telling me everyone else ran a blog fundraiser, why didn’t I?
The real reason I didn’t is that I thought I’d get 20 dollars and a pack of gum, so why bother.
Not only family, but friends, like Jerry Pournelle kept telling me the work I did here I should be paid.
Well, last year, after the massive rescue fund raising, I decided to actually do it, and sons says it should be over the fourth of July, so…. And it worked. Even though because I had to do it on paypal, the incentives and lists were…. anyway. MP3 soon, and collection soon, and then I’ll give critiques pending. The rest? I’ll kill you at my leisure. And if you send me your snailmail, I’ll mail you books, probably next month. (We’re going to be without the ability to drive for about a week. Long story.) But it still worked, by and large.
Now, I can’t go back and do fundraising for the ten or so years I worked for free. I do feel guilty about that because it would mean the boys would have no student loans. But it is what it is. At least I can get paid now.
Because, well, I like this community too. And the give and take in comments about my posts has often changed my ideas or sparked new ones. Which I think is important, particularly as I age.
BUT if I’m getting no compensation it becomes hard to explain to husband why I can’t just go off on a trip somewhere and forget the blog for a couple of weeks or why it’s midnight and I’m finishing tomorrow’s post, or why–
And it becomes even harder to convince myself I shouldn’t JUST be writing.
Anyway, because I’m a florid disaster at keeping track of pledges and due stuff, (VERY easy with Gofundme, because they kept track of stuff for you, but not so with anything else I’ve found. And I’m not using Gofundme for the same reason I’m not using Paypal) this year I revamped into a practically self-fulfilling format.
The first way to support this blog is Give Send Go: Link Here.
Because of Give Send Go policies I CAN’T offer incentives. If you donate there, be aware you helped me get paid for this blog (and the ten unpaid years) and kept me going for a year. Yes, that amount looks outrageous, because it’s what I hope for out of the whole campaign. I just wanted the total somewhere. Also because I’m not closing the campaign, at the end of fundraising days (7/19), but just putting a link on the side of the blog, so anyone wishing to impulse-donate can do so.
The second way to support the blog…. Well, you see, I used to do serialized novels on the blog. That fell by the way side, partly because the world went nuts (and my life too) and partly because there were other things I wanted to talk about on that day, and also the hits on the stories were always lower. I’ve been meditating for some time on how to do this in substack and get paid. So… I’ve created Chapter House. It’s seeded with two beginnings of novels. I’ll be adding 2 chapters to Witch’s Daughter on Wednesdays, and 2 to Winter Prince on Fridays. If you subscribe (Paid Subscriber, I mean), you’ll get each chapter hot off the press, and be able discuss it as it unfolds and yell at me if you think I should go another way, and download each book in various formats, as I finish them. If you just take a free subscription… You get to see the beginning of each chapter? And you will get, if I can, a short story or so a month.
Oh, and if you subscribe, you also get to know you’re supporting the writer. This might or might not give you the warm fuzzies, but it MIGHT. Anyway, to subscribe to Chapter House, the link is: Here.
And if you don’t want to do givesendgo and — I guess some people do? — have a patreon account and that’s how you’re used to donating, I’ve created a patreon. This will only get a post a week (probably Wednesdays, because it’s my I do all the blogs day.) and it will be what the blog would originally have been: You will get stories about my cats, or bits I started writing that didn’t go anywhere, or deleted scenes from the current book, or… stories about my cats. Because my cats are cute.
So, fully aware of the problems of patreon (Which is why not putting original to be published work there), I’ll do something exclusive there once a week. If you want to sign up for supporting me on Patreon: Go here.
And that’s it. Mostly I just want to get paid for my work. Which also relieves the pressure some on the other work, because I can pay for fiction editors and for someone to keep me on track. (And yes, someone to revamp this blog and my writer website. I have someone. I just need to coordinate it.)
According To Hoyt 