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My older son, who is about to start medschool, supposing he ever has time to get an apartment and stuff, in between helping me scrape and wax floors, and clean tile, was talking to me in the car on the way to the other house about some creative project of his, and said “It’s another strand in my grand weave of ‘get rich slowly.'”

Years ago when talking to a colleague who is a friend (okay, somewhere between friend and mentor and squee, but never mind) he told me of one of the biggest writers in the field, now deceased that “he always ran scared” monetarily.

It might astonish the people outside this field because that author at one time got the biggest till then advance ever for a book and it was in the tens of millions, but those advances are tricksy.  Some of my friends have got “millions of dollar” advices that in the end translate to a median salary a year (broken up into tiny pieces) and then get cut off when the book fails to sell better than the bible, or whatever.

For many years that was the way writers lived.  And even those of us who were doing well — turning in stuff, getting advances — could be brought low by an illness or a long silence.  Particularly int he nineties and the oughts, backlist was often ignored, while being jealously held onto by the publisher.

When we embarked on this and Dan gave up his music so one of us — me — could pursue her artistic thing while the other one — him — had the steady income and the 9 to 5 job (and I’ll confess to you it probably never would have happened if we hadn’t had the kids.  I couldn’t justify staying home to write and sacrificing him, knowing my chances of success were zilch.  But, working a little harder and building a career while the kids were napping and then at school?  That I could do.) we agreed the odds of ever succeeding at any level were very low.  Realistically, I’m an ESL speaker, with iconoclastic reading (and viewing) tastes, an unsociable disposition and ABSOLUTELY no contacts in the field before I broke in.  Oh, yeah, then there was the political thing.

Well, it did take me 16 years, but I broke in, and when I’m working steadily I make about as much as I would make if I got a job as a secretary (even an international secretary.  Doesn’t pay very well in CO) or an assistant lecturer.  (Okay, that might make just a little — a very little, depending on the college — more money, but I also would be billiard ball bald by now from filling all the forms.)

The problem is that working steadily part.  It’s not just the health issues that swallowed the last two years.  This isn’t even a #waronwomen thing, because I hear the same from writing friends who are male.  It’s a #workingfromhome thing.  When you work from home, by default, you end up getting all the debris of family life tossed at you.  Cleaning and cooking (which are much easier in a suburban house than in a big, ramshackle Victorian) but also stuff like “We need to get the house ready for sale” which has eaten the last two and a half months.  It’s probably worsened in my case because I know some carpentry and am a jack-leg almost everything.

Between one thing and the other every writer I know has interruptions in their output and we have no pensions, nothing that pays when we’re not giving 100% to the job.  So it seemed to be every writer’s destiny to “run scared” until one day suddenly they had enough property accumulated that, when they died, it was just enough to cause a big fight amid their kids for the additional income.

This has changed with Amazon and publishing indie.  I can see a path to having enough to actually retire on eventually and the creek don’t rise.  (Not that I intend to retire, but you know what I mean.  Enough to look after me when I’m older and even more sickly.)

Of course, the problem now is getting done with the house and all the other stuff, and being able to write.  Yes, it’s happening, slowly. Hopefully, please G-d, these are the last two days.

But it’s not just writing.  My sons have dipped toes in art and gaming, and some of their friends are making money from podcasts and indie music.  The point is that if you are a creative, this is a great time to be alive.  You can reach the public directly and because “the public” is so large, even a small success is enough to live on, more or less.

Hence the older son’s “get rich slowly” streams which include starting work in many small fields and running it over many decades, so eventually it amounts to something.

Not to say everyone will succeed.  It still requires concentration and effort.  But it is, at least a possibility.

And eventually I’ll get done with this, and I’m starting to think “A novel a week.  Has to be easier than waxing floors.” (yeah, yeah, I know, but maybe finishing one a month? I mean a lot of them are started.)

I got back the rights to Sword and Blood last week, and the next book is a couple of days from being done.  I don’t know when I’ll have time to do the third, and since the three are an integral whole, I wouldn’t expect them before next year.  I’m also still editing the Heart and Soul books.

I must get done with the house, so I can write.  We are also now at the tipping point when getting someone to do things while I write to pay for it MIGHT work, since they’re things I don’t know how to do, like tiling.  I could figure it out, but it’s probably CHEAPER to pay someone to do it and write to pay for it.  So, two days.

Part of the problem with two days is that I set Dan’s first book on pre-order for the 19th and I intended to do a full-court press for it leading up to release, as well as typeset it, and of course none of it has happened.

And I need his book to do well, or he won’t write anymore, and I’ll be left alone to manage the “get rich slowly” stuff.

Really, it would be much easier if there are two of us rowing this galley.

So anyway, his book is not political at all, and it’s just fun, if any of you are interested.  (I am trying to forestall here the “Husband of libertarian writer hankers for the return of Rome.”  Mostly he wanted to create a messy intriguy — totally a word — environment that could get his characters in a heap of trouble. It’s not even very Rome accurate.  It’s “idiots try to recreate Rome in the future, but only get the strange parts.”)

And no that’s not — precisely — a copyrighted ship.  I modeled it.  And I made the cover, so deal with that too.

Anyway, if you are so inclined, order or promote, I’d like to push up its rank before official release.

As I said, I want it to do well, so he’ll write more weekends and evenings (and btw, considering this is his first novel, he’s way better than I.  My first written novel, I’ve just destroyed every copy of that I could find.  Think For Us The Living.  No, seriously.  Only worse.)  Because with both of us on getting rich slowly, we might get to the point I never have to paint a wall again.  (If I want to it’s different but I don’t want to HAVE to do this again.)

And now — hey, do you hear a drummer keeping time? — I’m going to go clean/wax so I can return to rowing this unwieldy boat this weekend.

*Yes, I have posts by others of you, but they have the potential to be controversial and since I’ll still be mostly out of pocket today and tomorrow, I don’t want to post those.  (Yesterday’s, btw, should have come with a note that it was written as I was contemplating coming out of the political closet and what it might mean about what was going on in my life at the moment.  I never expected it to become an argument on faith and religion.  Don’t you guys know already where you stand and that you’re each as stubborn as … the most stubborn thing on Earth [ Probably youngest son, really.]  For the record when I said if nothing existed after death what I did today wouldn’t matter I meant WOULDN’T MATTER TO ME.  I’m a nervibore and the condemnation I’m most afraid of is always my own.  Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t care about the people who come after me.  I have kids.  I might have grandkids.  AND I think you should behave as if you’re going to live forever anyway.  Anyway — floors to wax (yes, the infinite painting is done, except for the stairs to the basement) and things to do.  Sarah out.*

Universal Stories or: Were the Brothers Grimm Jungians? – by Alma Boykin

Many years ago, shortly after the planet cooled, when I was in Junior High and the Dead Sea was only sick, I found a book of folk tales and fairy tales from Vietnam, Korea, and China. I was fascinated to discover that Cinderella, the Little Goose Girl, Sleeping Beauty, and other stories had Asian parallels, and in some case almost identical stories, down to the wicked stepmother and evil stepsisters. Gee, maybe there was something to this idea that all people really are identical under the skin.

Well, once you start reading more widely (I typed “wisely.” Interesting, that) you discover that despite major similarities, there are also enormous differences, particularly in the unexpurgated versions. And in what gets left out. Sarah the Beautiful but Evil Space Princess has talked about Portuguese tales and what is missing, and some of the tales that strike modern, north-of-the-Alps or Across-the-Pond readers as brutal, misogynist, or just flat bizarre. Some things do linger though, like the power of a supernatural force to punish the unjust or badly behaved.

If you visit the main square in Klagenfurt, Austria, down almost on the Slovene and Italian border, you will find the statue of a dwarf. He has a large keg under one arm, and raises his other hand in warning. According to regional legend, he is responsible for the creation of the Wörthersee, the large, narrow lake just south of Klagenfurt that is beloved of Austrian vacationers (and gamblers). According to the stories, once upon a time, the people of the valley enjoyed all the blessings of soft rains, good weather, and fertile soil. They prospered, and the lords of the valley had a large, rich hall where people gathered to celebrate. The people began to ignore what had made them so prosperous. They continued to celebrate during the days before Easter, dancing and enjoying rich meals and fine music.

The dwarf appeared in the hall and warned them to stop dancing and to prepare for the feast of Easter. But the people ignored him, instead laughing and inviting him to dance. He vanished. He appeared a second time, and the third time, this last time with a cask under his arm. The dancers again refused to listen, instead insulting and teasing the dwarf. “You have been warned,” he said, turning the tap on the cask. Water poured out of the cask, unending streams of water, as a storm broke over the hall. When the sun rose on Easter day, nothing could be seen but a lake where once the rich hall and prosperous fields stood.

Now, if you replace Wörthersee with Bala, and the dwarf with a bard, and failing to heed the laws of religion with failing to heed the laws of hospitality, you have the story of Lake Bala in Wales. Add another twist and you have the Lost City of Ys off the coast of Brittany (or Cornwall). It’s easy to see where Carl Jung and other folk-tale and fairy-tale researchers came up with the idea of a group unconscious and archetypes. That some researchers then proceeded to dive off the deep end, and I’m glaring at you, Bruno Bettelheim, is also understandable. I had a phase where I thought Frazier’s Golden Bough explained Shakespeare, especially King Lear, and wrote a lengthy English lit paper about the fertility imagery in King Lear, using Medieval animal and botanical symbology. Yes, I got an A+ on the paper.

As an aside, Katherine Kurtz used Jungian ideas beautifully in her Adept series. The protagonist (and his mother *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*) is an adept in a magic system that uses past-life regressions and initiations, along with other forms of magical practice. He is also a psychiatrist, as is his mother. She studied with Jung, and he’s a Jungian. Kurtz did a magnificent job with her world-building and magic system, which makes room for a number of esoteric traditions as well as Christianity.

Back on the main topic, what catches my eyes now are the differences between fairy tales and folk tales, not the similarities. Sarah mentioned that there are no fairies or spirits in Portuguese tales, but that the saints intervene instead. To my surprise, the stories I read from Carinthia and Styria are full of mountain spirits, vengeful dwarves, water spirits, and other creatures. The devil, the Virgin, and a few angels also appear, but usually in disguise. Quite often, when someone tries to get out of a bargain with the devil, it is “an uncanny old woman” or “a mysterious stranger” who provides the clue as to how to outwit Old Scratch. None of the creatures are called fairies, and there is no unified fairy realm like the Irish (and Welsh and Scottish) stories describe. I would have thought that I’d find more saints’ stories, like all the tales I read from New Mexican folklore, and Italian. But no, mountain spirits and ghosts predominate. The Wild Hunt also appears, especially around St. John’s Eve (the summer solstice) and the twelve nights of Christmas (an especially uncanny time to be out after dark.)

Now this area is a mining region and has been since, well, at least the early Bronze Age. I have not come across anything yet like the tommyknockers, the little warning spirits that helped miners and warned of pending disaster. Instead there is the mountain king, all in grey, who insists on proper moral conduct by the miners and puts limits on what they will find. And mountain spirits that must be appeased (usually by good behavior and humility) or they allow scalding water into the mines, or collapse the mountain. St. Barbara and other overtly Christian figures don’t play any role in those stories.

I’m sure someone will say that this is because the stories long predate Christianity, and what remains are the pagan gods converted into mountain and water spirits. It is certainly possible. It could also be that by the time these were collected (late 1800s), people didn’t want to mention church things in folk tales. And the miners, mine-managers, and others, had been among the first to convert to Protestantism (Lutherans). Most of the miners had left, along with the regional nobility, when the Ferdinand III of Inner Austria terminated the edict of toleration, terminating a large chunk of his tax revenue in the process. It took over a century before the regional economy recovered, if then. Much of the area remains rural and lightly settled, looking back to the golden years of 1300-1550s. It could well be that the Protestants jettisoned the saints for mountain spirits. Or “yes.”

The other interesting thing is the lack of earthquake stories. I say this, because the region has been hit several times in the last 1000 years by massive quakes. You are hard pressed to find large walls that predate the 1360 quake, and others in the 1600s knocked down buildings farther north. But very few stories try to explain earthquakes, aside from very local tales about a specific mine, or a particular meadow (alp/alm) that was buried in debris because of someone’s misdeeds and greed. Did the presence of the Church prevent the development of earthquake folklore that lasted long enough to be collected? Or perhaps later disasters (the Turkish raids in the mid-1400s, the exodus of the 1500s and the woes of the 1600s) overshadowed the quakes.

Folk tales are fascinating things. I grew up reading them, and I enjoy authors who can take fairy tales and turn them into longer stories, if done well. They are a vast field to mine for ideas and world-building material, as well as to read for pleasure.

Thought out of nowhere — or perhaps not since I’ve “faced” this in many books and stories, from Tom in Draw One In The Dark facing the Great Sky Dragon and knowing there’s no way he walks out of there alive, to the girl in Something Worse Hereafter — in the Wings collection — who knows she’s dead, but there’s a second death and not how permanent, to probably countless others I’ve forgotten.

Those last few minutes fascinate me.  Oh, people die in their sleep, people die without knowing they’re going to die, but I suspect most of us are starkly wide awake for the end and we know there’s no return, that this time there will be no save.  We come into the world without knowing ourselves, and all the time we’ve known ourselves we’ve been alive.  How is it to face the undiscovered country?

This is wholly separate from religion, btw.  I’m one of those for whom faith requires and effort and a silencing of the mind.  I know what they say is on the other side, but is there?  Curiously I never doubt those I love or have loved go on, cats and dogs and people alike.  The world would have to be a nonsensical thing and life less than sound and fury for death to erase my beloved paternal grandmother, my flawed maternal grandfather or the childhood friend who died much too young.  It would have to be a strange place to have forever destroyed Petronius the Arbiter, cat from Hades.  No, somewhere I’m sure they’re alive and still integrally themselves, as is Pixel the “speaker to the humans” orange fuzzball I miss everyday.

But those people — yeah, cats are people too, got a problem? — were special individuals, in their own way saints of heroes or… bigger than life.  As for me, who am none of those, who can tell? I have a vague idea life continues in some form and hope there will be books and cats, if I’ve been very, very good, but the preferred outcome might be that there is nothing but oblivion.  Perhaps this makes me morbid, but my secret wish is that there is literally nothing on the other side.  Just… as though I’d never existed.  After life’s fitful fever (s)he sleeps well and all that.

Once I came  close enough to those final moments that it seemed a sure thing.  In fact, during an eleven day stay in hospital I came close to crossing that gateway at least twice.  (Might have been three times.  My blood ox was so low most of the time, that I don’t remember very clearly.  Brain damaged, I tell you.)  So… what was there?

Well, like the prospect of being hanged in the morning, coming face to face with your mortality at 33 does concentrate the mind wonderfully.  There are so many things I want, so many things I think, so many things I am.  And then when it all came to the end, in the silence at the eye of the storm, it all settled down and simplified.  I regretted leaving my husband and was sure if there was something on the other side, I WOULD miss him; I worried for my boys, then one and five.  But above all, around all, I felt as if the novels and stories I’d never written — at the time I was unpublished and had only written five? novels — were screaming at having to die with me.

Yes, my life changed after I got better and left the hospital.  At many times and places people have told me I need to close the office door.  I need to keep the kids out.  I must swat the cats off the keyboard.  I can’t stop in midst novel to go cuddle my husband.  Pardon me but… poppycock.  What comes after is a mystery, but one thing I know and that is that if any form of awareness or thought or memory subsists, I’ll miss my family and friends.  I’m not a good person, but those I love — and not just in terms of sexual love, but my friends too, those I refer to as being “within the magic circle” yes, even my e-daughters and other friends that I’ve only met online :) — I love deeply and I enjoy their company and I will do so as long as I can.

The other thing is that I started taking the writing more seriously — without neglecting my family or friends.  It went from being a whishful, sort of hobby that might one day be a job, and it became a driving passion.  And the reason I write as much as I do.  I don’t want those stories to die unread, in my head.  Life is too important to waste, unlived.  And stories are born to be heard.

Other than that?  I don’t know.  I’ve faced it so many times in writing — what will it be like in real life, and how will I feel when it comes?  One thing I know — it will come.  It sounds like one of those sixties truisms, like “we’re all naked under our clothes” but life TRULY is a fatal condition, and everyone dies eventually.  To pretend otherwise robs our life of urgency and strength.

All I can hope is that if I’m required to face it before I expect to, I’ll do so with courage, because whether there’s nothing on the other side; whether the dreary dust-world of the ancients lurks; whether ressurection and eternal life looms…  in all of those, I’m sure that for those left behind the manner of one’s death will count.  For some reason — probably the movie — I’m thinking of the Greeks at the Hot Gates.  The manner of their death sure as hell mattered.

And for the rest, I’ll leave it in the words of one of those men long dead who I’m sure is alive and vibrant somewhere, and probably still writing:

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

Go to college, my parents said, you’ll never have to do hard manual work, they said.

Don’t follow your grandfather — and every construction worker — around while he’s working and ask how it’s done, they said.  You’re smart enough you’ll never have to work with your hands and you’re a WOMAN for heaven’s sake.

A) They were wrong.  B) We all are.

Their advice was absolutely right for their time and place.  I get a kick out of going back and listening to my friends being called “doctor” by their nannies and live-in maids and what not.

No, they’re not doctors, but in Portugal there are so few doctorates awarded and through my time it was so difficult to get my degree (the rough equivalent to a bit past the masters here, at least when I tried to finish out my doctorate I had a year to go — then I got pregnant and had pre-eclampsia, one of the ways in which Himself kept me from wasting money getting real credentials when ALL I really wanted to do was write.) that people just called you “doctor” anyway.  I don’t know if it’s the same now, because now there are private colleges which are easier to get into and get through (failure rates of 2/3 after a selective process that cut out 99% of applicants was normal in my time.)

However, my friends get called “doctor” even with degrees easier than my own (fact, it was easier to get into geography, philosophy or a dozen other degrees) and never have dipped their hands into dish soap.

I chose to come across the sea, and regrets?  Well, sometimes, while fixing the fence or painting a wall, yeah.  But on the whole no.

What I got in exchange for having to do some of the “rough” with my own lily-white hands (more like golden, really) is that I get to break out of class stereotype, which I couldn’t have done in Portugal, as a college graduate, of my year.  I’d have had to be a lady and dress just so and talk just so, and the heck with that, I was never good at fitting in.  As for doing the rough, I always enjoyed a good day or manual labor.

So, worth trading my birthright for a bunch of hard work.  BUT OMG, not days on end of it, no.  I’m too old for this, and I’m starting to think that if I wake up and nothing hurts, it’s a sure sign I died.

So — I will not do this again.  Once the house is finished (please G-d, before the end of the week? Though the fiddly details at the end are proving harder than I thought) I will write like a demon so next time we move (what not moving?  Not an option, unless everything comes out just so and both boys end up in CO, something that’s less than probable) I DON’T HAVE TO FIX THE FRICKING HOUSE WITH MY OWN HANDS.

Also, from this day on I will buy no more Victorians, forever.  I’d like to live in the 20th century for a change.  The 21st can wait.

The advantages of this, though?  Days of 12 hours of writing will seem easy.

On the wider application of all this — my parents couldn’t tell what would face me, even if I hadn’t moved — I understand even in Portugal, right now, handymen and manual laborers aren’t as easy to find as they once were, and people have to do manual labor who are unsuited to it.

So under “Change is coming faster and faster, here is my “teach your children well” advice:

1- Teach your kids all types of work you possibly can.  Manual, intellectual, and just fiddly craftsman.

2- If you have  a specialty in something pass it on, even if you hope your kids never have to do it.

3- Teach them work is work and nothing is beneath them.  Even the loftiest of minds can sometimes need to be kept alive by manual work.  Do it.  Don’t repine. Work is work, and adults work for a living.

4- Teach the kids that change is normal and learning is fun.  I learned to use a computer for my job and didn’t throw fits, because, well, change is normal.

5- someone did a test in which the probability of success in life was strongly correlated to ability to lick tape.  Licking tape is not harmful and doesn’t hurt, but it’s unpleasant.  The more tape you can force yourself to lick, the better the chance you’ll get where you’re aiming to go.  Teach your kids (and yourself) to lick miles of tape.  I don’t care how talented you are, in the end every success story I know that remains a success story (not a flash in the pan) licked miles and miles of tape getting there.  Persistence is 99% of success and sometimes it’s d*mn unpleasant.  Do it anyway.

And now I’m going to lick tape scrape and wax floors.

Yesterday some point was raised about how an early twentieth century person would react to the modern day.

Well, give them some years to adapt.  I know.  You see, I am a time traveler.

I think I have mentioned in the past that I was reading a book on the Middle Ages (the Time Traveler’s Guide to the Middle Ages, I think) and kept coming across things that I went “so?” on.  Because they were the same conditions I grew up in.

It’s hard to explain, truly, because we had buses and cars (not many cars.  For instance there were two vans and one car in the village.  When I had a breathing crisis in the middle of the night (every few months or so till I was six) we had to knock on the door of the grocer across the street who — poor man, may he rest in peace, he died with Alzheimer’s — is as responsible as my parents for my still being here.  He would throw on clothes at any hour of the day or night and drive us to emergency in the city, then wait with my parents until he found out if I’d be sent back home or kept on oxygen.

We also had telephones.  In the grocery store.  If something dire happened to one of the relatives overseas, they’d call, and so when we got the knock on the door and “call for” we knew it was bad news.  Only worse news was a telegram.  Mind you, my brother used that phone to call in song requests to request programs on the radio.  (Programa de pedidos.)

Oh, yeah, we had radios.  Everyone had a radio, even my grandparents, and had had them from the beginning of the century.  There were dead tube radios in the attics, which is how I built myself my first radio.  (“Dad, I want a radio.”  “Good, you can have one.”  And then he went back to reading Three Men In A Boat. I’m not actually joking.)

And then there were televisions.  Well, every coffee shop had a TV, which is how they attracted the after-dinner crowd who, for cultural reasons, were mostly male.  Then again the nearest coffee shop was a mile away.  Through ill-lit streets.  So, yeah.

My godmother and the housekeeper for the earl’s “farm house” catercorner from us had tvs.  We often went to watch TV with the housekeeper, when the earl and his family wasn’t in (which was 99% of the time.)  And all I have to say about my godmother’s door pane is that she really shouldn’t have gone on vacation at the time of the moon landing.  And besides we cleaned up and left her money for the replacement.  (Sheesh.)

We got a TV when I was eight, but programs were mostly on at night — and an hour at noon which was cartoons for the kids who had morning classes — and most of the stuff was more than 20 years old US programing, except for “talking comedy” and game shows, most immensely popular.

BUT the main form of entertainment was the radio.  There were soap operas on the radio and when I had morning classes (imagine a country that outstripped its school space so far that the kids have school either five hours in the morning or in the afternoon.  Mind you, I rather liked that, because it gave me half the day for myself.  Particularly morning classes) and came home by bus, I could walk down the main village street and listen to the Soap, as I passed each door, a sure sign that the lady of the house was cooking and listening to the travails of some wronged damsel.

Mom who worked Ringo-like i.e. nothing for months and then a month of very late nights, often listened to radio while working till all hours.  Which was interesting because the late programs were incredibly stuffy, like stuff on History or Greek Myth. At one time they did “readings from Russian Literature” which is why my brother ended up nicknamed Miguel Strogonoff.

But these were the frills.  The reality went on alongside.  Most people in the village had beaten earth floors in the kitchen.  (Yeah, we were higher class.  Grandma had red concrete poured.)  The bedrooms, and other rooms tended to be wood.

A “nice house” wasn’t a pretty one, though my grandmother might refer to one of the more modern-built, all convenience houses as a “right palace.”  A nice house was one with a chicken coup, maybe a pigsty, almost for sure a barn for a bull.

(For reasons totally unknown to me, we stopped keeping larger animals — bulls, goats — long before I was born.  If I were to guess, I’d blame it on grandmother’s reluctance to see things she’d raised killed.  It’s one thing to “retire” a laying chicken and keep her till her natural death.  A bull, now…)

A nice house ALSO had a vineyard.  Because  most of the land plots were tighter than your suburban backyard (unless it’s the area we’re renting, which would be about half of grandma’s backyard) the vineyard would a) cover the patio.  Well, surely you don’t want your kids to sit in the full summer sun, right?  It would also cover the chicken coup, the storage outbuildings, granddad’s workshop and the wash tank.  Come grape harvest we got trained in solving logistic problems that would make your mind spin.  Like “How do we harvest over the workshop when there’s barely enough space to lie down on your back?”

You weren’t allowed to harvest from a ladder till you were five.  This meant you were restricted to harvesting the one vine near the woodshed in the back where you could reach from the wood pile.  I LONGED to harvest from a ladder, like the grownups.  The next step up was “harvest like a teen.”  My brother and cousin were allowed to harvest the difficult places in hero mode.  (“Mind the roof of the chicken coup.  The metal is rusted and we don’t want you cut.”)  For some reason it lost some of its glamour once my brother and cousin were married and I was the ONLY one doing the “difficult spots”.  After I married those spots went unharvested.

People only bought food if what they produced wasn’t enough.  We always had eggs and vegetables, though in winter that was mostly cabbage.

Bread was the exception, because we ate A LOT of bread — bread and soup was a sufficiency for a meal — rye-corn bread (broa, clearly a Germanic word) from the farmer across the street and pao (pronounce pown, from Panen the Latin survival) from the bakers.  The bakers delivered.  You left a little bag tied to to your kitchen door, and in the morning it was filled with fresh bread.  (This is the thing I missed MOST as newly wed here.)  This originated a competition in “nice bread bags” among village ladies, so these were very fancy work, embroidered or open work, or crochet.  I brought half a dozen in my trousseau, and it only now occurred to me to wonder where they ended up.)

The rhythm of the day was medieval.  We even had the bell tolling, and you were supposed to stop at any time you heard it and say the prescribed prayers.  (“So and so’s book of hours” made perfect sense to me.)  Most people worked insane amounts.  Boredom was assuaged with singing, or handywork or rarely reading.  (I was WEIRD, okay.  Actually my whole family was.)

On Sundays you sat by your front door and watched your neighbors and gossiped. (I could never get a determination on whether it was sinful to read on Sunday, so I just hid out and read anyway.)

As for modern conveniences… Well… I didn’t know electrical typewriters existed.  Dad bought me a manual one for my 14th birthday, and he bought a very expensive one, because it would have to last me my whole life and, if he knew me (he did), I’d make my living by words.

I not only didn’t see a dishwasher till I was 12 (I think) but, having heard of them, I imagined them kind of like the robot diners in Simak.  Arms come out the wall and wash dishes.

I was by no means the person from the most backward environment to become an exchange student.  I certainly didn’t come from as backward a place as my host-parents expected (look, host-mom was descended from Portuguese.  What she didn’t realize was that it had changed since her grandma’s stories.)  They showed me how to flush the toilet…

However there were myriad culture shocks.  The all-day tv, for instance.  (I watched for two days solid, then decided it wasn’t my thing.)  But mostly, at that time, the culture shock was the prosperity.  My host mother bought a small tv for the kitchen on a whim, at a time when, in Portugal, you’d still have to save for years to buy ANY TV. Or the things considered necessary.  We had patio furniture, though I don’t think anyone but me EVER went outside.  (Not to blame them.  Ohio has two seasons: Deep Freeze and Sauna.)

The refrigerator.  When I came over we had a fridge.  We got a fridge when I was ten.  But a) it was the size of a dorm fridge.  b) mom was still in the habit of shopping every day.  So the morning was devoted to shopping for the food for lunch/dinner.  The main thing we used our fridge for was ice-cubes, one per drink, because more than that might kill you.

My host family shopped once a week, and kept stuff in the deep freezer, so you didn’t need to run out to get food every day.

But now, note, I’m writing this on a computer.  I own a dishwasher, a deep freezer, an mp3 player (my brother’s transistor radio was a wonder and an object of envy for everyone in the village.)

Most of the transportation in the village was by ox cart.  It’s how my parents moved house.  Moo-haul.

How did I adapt?  Well, like Lizzy Bennet, so gradually I was in the middle of it before I knew what was happening.

Adapting to a higher standard of living with more conveniences is easy.  Mind you, our early century guy might not “get” or might feel vaguely disquieted by innovations.  I was after all an SF reader, which helped.

However, Man is infinitely adaptable.  I know since the great summer of non recovery in 2008 we’ve made a lot of adjustments to our lifestyle, mostly in terms of “we can’t afford this” and while it hurt at first, now they’re hardly even noticed.

Which is how people in downward-spiral countries convince themselves things are still ever-better.  (Usually with a little help from the traitorous media.  [Did they try Summer of Recovery this summer? Did I so totally tune them out I didn’t notice?])  And why Greece’s crash was “unexpected” to Greeks.

There are things left behind, in that past I came from, things I can easily live without.  First there’s the lack of access to medical care.  Most Europeans who are happy with socialized medicine are happy because at the time it was introduced it was a huge step up over what was available at the beginning of the century — when it was introduced there.  If all you have in the way of treatment is a local nurse who administers shots, the local pharmacist which (say, apropos nothing) will change dressings on the back you completely skinned while seaside-cliff climbing (or rather falling from.  I managed to turn around and take the slope on my back.  I still don’t remember/have no idea how we kept mom from seeing the dressings) and the occasional overworked, over harried doctor who will do house calls at a prohibitive price if you’re seriously ill, yeah.  Socialized medicine is an improvement over that.  I don’t think the progressives (I almost typed primitives — curse you, auto-correct mind) who push for socialized medicine understand that it’s not an improvement even over the f*cked up bureaucracy of the US.  They tend to live in a state of envy of the fact that France has a pony and imagine that pony neither craps nor eats.

I don’t miss the tribalism.  Though frankly the tribalism in my field gets to me at times (to paraphrase Anne in Black Tide Rising “Why is my field so filled with screwed up people?”) it’s not as bad or the same kind as in the village.  As in, when a boy from the next village over came courting my aunt, my dad had to stop the local boys from beating him up.  And when some guys on motorcycles (with, I swear no encouragement.  At 14 I still had no idea what Mr. Hormone was for.  I mean, I was developed, and I had an INTELLECTUAL knowledge of reproduction, but I failed to see why it would apply to me.) followed me home, it came in useful as some of the guys in the village beat them up for “Coming trying to poach one of our more select girls.”  BUT that type of tribalism is nutty and holds back people from working together or even from moving to the next village, no matter how good the opportunity.  Which in turn stunts lifestyle and wealth.  (And I wonder what they feel about my husband whisking me right across the ocean.  I know my brother still resented the girl his generation who married an American.  She was reportedly the most beautiful woman of her generation and her parents had, in a fit of foretelling, I guess, named her America.)

I don’t miss having to scrounge for books or re-read books a million times because they were so expensive.  And I don’t miss not having the internet.  First time I read of “something like the internet” was in Friday, and I wanted it with lust-like intensity from the moment I heard of it.  If I didn’t have a work ethic I got from grandma, I’d spend my day, every day, cruising for weird info on the net.  It’s what other people do — I think — when they game or watch TV.

Anyway, yeah, I don’t like TV and I get most reference jokes because friends make them so much, rather than because I remember the show/program.  And sometimes you come across a meme/show I never heard of, and are shocked.

But over all, I’m here to tell you time-travelers adapt remarkably well.

Even if my kids can’t imagine a world without computer games, they’d probably adapt too.

Elastic.  That’s what humanity is.  And why we’ve become the dominant species.  And that’s why — to me — the doom and gloom, everything rusting and no hope for anyone books don’t pass the sniff test.

That’s not how humans live.  Humans adapt.  In the darkest pit we find hope and joy.  And in the brightest paradise, of course, we go lusting for flaws.  Which explains the rusty-decaying-future literature.  Not to be confused with apocalyptic but hopeful literature, like Black Tide Rising.  Yeah, I mention it a lot, because I’m listening to it, while hammering and painting.

Which reminds me: I need to stop typing and go clean and wax floors and stage rooms, while older son finishes the one room that needs painting.

World without end.

So, #derpcats are fed (why is it no one but me knows how to pour dry food?) and #derpfish is fed (he’s happier now in his bigger aquarium, and not hiding behind the heater looking like a sardine all the time, but he’s not making bubbles yet, so maybe not fully acclimated. If he doesn’t start making bubbles soon, I’ll do half a water change) #derpsarah is caffeinated and has had two ibuprofens, so it’s time to tackle the paint tray again…
This is a short post so you guys know I’m not dead. Mind you, death would be way easier, but not dead, no.
Yesterday I worked 12 1/2 hours on the house. Before you yell at me about doing too much, if I just do a couple of hours a day we’re going to completely miss the Colorado selling season this year, and I really, really, really don’t want to pay mortgage and rent for another year if I can help it.
Not that there’s guarantee it of course, but I feel due diligence I should try to have it up by mid-month and give it at last two and a half months to sell.
The big stuff is done, except for the living room.  Today is a lot of moving stuff around, waxing floors, touching up woodwork, and staging.  Oh, and a run to the dumpster.

Yesterday, when I came home at the end of a grueling day I realize we’ve forgotten what work is — those of us who don’t engage in manual labor as a rule.

What made the day grueling is that I was hammering down porch boards that had come loose/cupped (the Colorado sun is a b*tch) for most of the day.  To be effective the hammer has to be heavy…

Despite my weight — as soon as the house sells and we have money for copays, I need to go see an endo, because my weight makes no sense whatsoever — I’m in fairly good shape.  On normal days, walking three miles doesn’t even break a sweat, and I can carry at least half what the boys can carry over time — and mind, that’s not bad for a fifty two year old woman.

However the rhythmic effort of raising and dropping a heavy hammer over and over again (we have two heavy hammers and two “wimp hammers”  which are not effective, because heavy allows gravity to help you, and that’s good.  The boys named the two lighter hammers, btw.  “Oh, man, do I have to use a wimp hammer?)) just about did me in.  I have blisters on my blisters.  My thumb and the middle finger of my right hand are now two very large blisters.

And then I had to suck it up and go finish painting the hallway.

And just when I was feeling sorry for myself, I thought of grandma who, at eighty, could clean a two floor house and wax all of the floors in an afternoon.  And she could and did take care of a small backyard farm, look after “the creation” (rabbits, chickens and for a while pigeons) and the dog, and generally have the kind of day I had yesterday over and over again, at way older than I am.

Glenn Reynolds is fond of saying that if they could sell the effects of exercise in a pill, we’d all take it.  He’s probably right.  But here’s the thing: even those of us who exercise are nowhere at the level of “normal activity” for our ancestors.

Once we buy next (and possibly real) permanent-house, I intend to have a treadmill desk.  My office here is at the bottom of narrow stairs and it’s not feasible to bring the treadmill down.  But even with treadmill desk, I won’t be near the level of activity of my ancestors, which also involved lifting heavy stuff and scrubbing and hammering heavy stuff and…

What is this in the name of?

Well, we often wonder about the singularity.  Or at least the transhumanists do.  I think they should be talking about a SECOND singularity.  Our way of life, say, since the mid 20th century on is completely unfathomable to anyone in history to the point they wouldn’t get it.

The majority of humanity in Western countries doing sit down work?  Gettoutofhere.  You only need so much writing and documents.

The reason we didn’t notice is that it happened so gradually. It took most of the twentieth century to change over.

But we are in a space that is completely incomprehensible to most of our ancestors.

Is it good for us?  Who knows?  It’s changing us.  Some people don’t do well with ease.  I’ve realized sometime ago a lot of the neurosis (“I want meaning”  “Stop suffering in the world” etc.) in our young only attacked the young of the very rich before.  I’ve also realized Heinlein was right.  Humans thrive on strife.  We might not have enough strife.  This would seem to be reflected in the birth rates of Western countries, and the sort of bored wandering away from civilization and belief in noble savages on an epic scale.

I have no idea what is on the other side of this transition.  If we don’t manage to make it all collapse in the meantime.  (Yes, I’ve seen the news about the stock market, United and the WSJ.  And the Chinese stock market.  And Greece.  I’m working while listening to Black Tide Rising, which is appropriate, but I’ve stopped myself from humming “this is the end of the world as we know it.”  It might be.  Or not.  We are an ingenuous animal and we thrive on strife.  And I’d bet the US against just about anything, including treason from within.  Maybe I’ll hum “we shall overcome” or the battle hymn of the republic.)

There was a joke, when I was growing up that you could tell the different places “work” occupied in Germany and Portugal because Arbeit is a serious word with weight to it while Trabalho, or as often referred to “trabalhinho” isn’t.  I don’t know.  I met people who worked hard and laid back people who spoke both languages.

But whatever you call it, it is clear we’re each year more distant from work as our ancestors knew it.  We are the lilies of the field.

What will that do to us?

I don’t know.

It will be interesting to see, though.

And incidentally, after this stint, sitting at a desk and writing, even for 12 hours a day seems like it will be a walk in the park.  ;)

LIBERTY CON AAR Part Two, in which our hero learns that his best laid plans are no match for …. -David Pascoe

The next day, we arrived at the Choo Choo just prior to nine, when the gathering for the range trip … had already left. Those of us “late-comers,” several of whom were barely upright, apportioned ourselves into vehicles and left in mad pursuit. It was upon this trip that the Separate But Awesome plan was revealed. Essentially, after the- but I’m getting ahead of myself. You see, in the scramble to Not Arrive At Friends After Midnight (six hour drive, and we didn’t. Quite. /sigh) I’d misplaced a couple of things. Notably, the keys to the bang-bang cases. Well, all but the one. And I didn’t discover this until I went digging through my range bag to find said keys. Sitting – as I found out later, once we’d arrived home – exactly where I’d left them: on the bedside table. Another lesson learned.

Fortunately, Eeps (aka Eudyptes Diabolicus aka Evil Penguin aka Rex Mason’s Favorite Unwilling Test Pilot) was another one of my fellow late not-ontime-enough comers, and suggested that the Choo Choo maintenance folk would have access to bolt-cutters. And indeed they did, so with only a slight delay (to wait for the maintenance dude, and then a couple of security dudes (“We just need to make sure this stuff is actually yours, sir. Can you tell us what the first thing we’ll see is when we open this- oh, that’s a nice Ruger, I sure wish I could go shooting today, too. Maybe after my shift’s over.”)) we all ponied up and got on the road. After another short stop, as the ATM in the lobby was out of order. Arriving at the range nearly an hour fashionable (there was a mid-freeway, 70mph soppresatta waving incident, but the less said about that, the better) meant we were fortunate enough to sit through the safety brief for the beginners. We were not beginners, but there were several who were first-timers, and James kept it interesting. Also, the AC was pleasant, as the day was another humid scorcher.

The time spent at the range was possibly some of the most relaxing all weekend. This isn’t to say that I didn’t find the convention an excellent opportunity to recharge and recreate, just that shooting is a zen experience for me, and one in which I do not get to indulge nearly often enough. My new (year old and completely unshot; I am a terrible gun nut. At this rate, I’ll have to turn in my official Right Wing Conspiracist Membership Card) almost-GI 1911 was quite pleasantly boomy, the repairs to the wheelgun have taken nicely, and the addition of a red-dot and the railed dust cover on the carbine work quite well. I may some day even have a chance to zero it (double-sigh. I sure hope Mrs. Dave’s next PCS is to somewhere more shooter friendly than the PRMaryland.). I was also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to fire a few of the offerings brought by others. James’ wife, Ginger, had a little Colt Plus II in .380 ACP that was just far too fun. I could burn through a mess of brass with something like that. Eeps brought a shotgun I’ve been eyeing, and it was great to get the chance to try it out before dropping more money I don’t really have on same. One of the range safety officers brought a M1A in 7.62 NATO which was great fun. And a stealthy shoulder bruiser. BANG! BANGBANGBANGBANG! “That’s fun. And doesn’t kick nearly as much as I- why is my should sore?”

Riding with one of the other RSOs, I didn’t head back to the Choo Choo until we were all decidedly baked (by the sun) and more than slightly dehydrated (despite consuming much water). Early on, we stopped for protein and fluids (burgers and gatorade, for those who are curious) and so nearly enjoyed the probably-not-pleasant experience of pancaking into the back of vehicles stopped in the left lane, at the tail end of what turned out to be a symptom of a traffic jam with no apparent cause. Docfather’s quick reflexes – along with what I presumed to be communication between truckers – saved our bacon as he swerved into the right hand lane, just ahead of the aforementioned tractor trailer. Seriously, that could have been truly awful. The car ahead of us disappeared in a puff of dirty gray smoke as it applied brakes and slid into the median to avoid the one ahead of it. Highly adrenalized, we took the next exit and rocked the surface streets back to the Choo Choo.

Just in time for Opening Ceremonies! As one of the few things on my schedule (I was horribly late getting in on the action, another lesson learned, and I’ll bug the programming director about much earlier. My cunning plan is to ensure Herself has fewer panels to mind, so she can take Wee Dave for more of the con. Plotplotplot) I quickly found my lovely wife and darling son lurking in the back of the theater, and enjoyed Howard Tayler’s excellent opening speech. Several folk wandered through to find others, and I got trade nods with Jason “Stealing All the White Women Since 1978” Cordova, and several other like-minded (read: “slightly mad” and “writers,” but I repeat myself) individuals. I was heartening to hear my name read off among the truly impressive list of guests.

Immediately following Opening Ceremonies, I took part in the What’s New in Dark Fantasy panel, as I have new stuff in (arguably) dark fantasy. The rest of the Unquiet Gods shorts (short story to (barely) novella length) are up on Amazon. These could easily be considered urban fantasy, as well. Some parts draw heavily on horror writing, too. I’m not sure they really are dark fantasy or not. I don’t have enough readers to tell me (hey, I just record the darn things). My thoughts on dark fantasy are as follows: a subset of fantasy that uses horror tropes. Other than that, each writer is going to leave an individual mark. My soundbite comment from the panel was along the lines of, “horror is when find the Things That Go Bump In the Night; dark fantasy is when you then punch them in the face.” While this wasn’t shared by my co-panelists, we had a pretty decent conversation with the almost-empty theater. One gentleman, Louis Puster, suggested that dark fantasy stories take place in a world where the Big Bad won. I’m not certain that’s always going to fit. Brandon Sanderson played with that idea in the Mistborn books, but I’d argue those are more epic fantasy with dark fantasy trappings. It’s an interesting, but ultimately academic discussion, unless it turns to how to market specific kinds of stories.

All of this while I was out of uniform, too. One of the things about being a professional writer in genre fiction is branding. Subgenres, writing style, voice, and similar things are a major part of it, but personal appearance is another major part. Sir Pterry wore black, to include his signature oversized fedora (high crown, broad brim). Kevin J. Anderson typically wears a black suit and black shirt. John Ringo is John Ringo (seriously, at a certain level, it doesn’t matter what you wear. Much, at least). I’ve got my kilts, and wear those with a natty hat, a nice shirt, a vest, and usually a tie. Being one of the best dressed at a convention is a good way of standing out, not that my sales exactly reflect it. Weeeeellllll, the thing is, I didn’t wear that to the range trip. I did wear a kilt (and the hat, fortunately for my head), but just wore a t-shirt. Getting back as late as we did, and then going immediately to Opening Ceremonies, and then right into the panel, I hadn’t had time to clean up, let alone change. So I looked a bit … scruffy. It was a little bit embarrassing, I will tell no lie. Still, the panel went well, and then I had a chance to get back to our room and clean up, before getting back to the Choo Choo.

The BbESP and her Consort, and the Redhead of Doom and her Evil Muse had their reception Friday evening. Much baklava was consumed, Johnny LaForce’s ribs were devoured (Aloha Snackbar!) and a good time was had by all, at least until the Pint-sized Tyrant insisted it was time for bed. Ah, well. More shenaniganning was to occur the next day.

*We’re making a megapush to finish the house this week (I REALLY can’t afford not to write for this long) and therefore a blast from the past.  A lot of this has changed with indie.  I.e. putting your manuscript out there for sale is now a good strategy.  (yay) Was this really ONLY five years ago.  It’s like another world.

On the other hand, note the part where I talk about viewing writing like “schoolwork” and being sure there’s a passing mark somewhere.  There isn’t.  And in the age of indie it’s more imperative than ever that one stop looking for the “magic fix” to career problems and concentrate instead on the fact that we are artisans AND business people.

A minor joke.  Got spam headed “Business Grants” and took a moment of blinking to figure out they weren’t talking about Peter and Dorothy.*

Periodically people – on facebook, via email, through my site – try to get me to read their manuscripts. Unless they are friends or I know that what they really want is an honest critique, I do not give it. This is difficult, because some of these people are quite, quite, quite persistent and keep coming back with “but I’m sure you’ll love it if you just read it.”

I’m not saying that they’re wrong. For all I know, most of them or a significant portion of them are right and their manuscripts would absolutely knock my socks off, set my world afire or rock my aesthetic perceptions.

I’ve long ago learned not to judge how good someone’s work will be by whether or not they’re published. Being published involves all sorts of other qualities/events than being a very good writer. For example, one of my best friends was writing much better than I was – or probably ever will – when she was completely unpublished and is still doing so now, when she’s only published short stories and I’ve published several novels. Her novels keep getting rejected, though. Another of my best friends writes so much like me that my own husband can’t tell our work apart. She’s published almost nothing compared to me.

So these strangers who absolutely want me to read their novel might be amazing writers, much better than what I can buy off the shelf. I’m still not going to read their work, because it wouldn’t do either of us any good. Note my examples above. These are people I like very much and on whom I depend as though they were family. They are still largely unpublished. Why? Because writers don’t have that kind of power. We can’t do the editor’s job for them. It’s not OUR job. We can at most – if we love something – recommend it to an editor/publisher/agent. I’ve now recommended my two friends a couple of times. They’ve been rejected. Mind you, they got the up close and personal rejection which means my view of their work is correct – they’re very good and publishable. But something about the work, something about the timing, something about the editor’s/agent’s taste keeps them from breaking in.

It might seem to you getting an author’s recommend, or a personal introduction gets you closer to the goal, at least, let me disabuse you of that notion. I have a lot of friends, many more – much, much more – successful than I am. Their attempts to give me a hand up have been about as successful as my attempts to get my friends published. Oh, it happens, once in a blue moon, that an author friend – and almost always these are close friends – will recommend you to his/her editor/agent/publisher and you’ll get a contract. However, just on percentage, it’s easier for you to go through the normal channels of submission. Discovery sounds glamorous, but it’s harder than normal acceptance.

Of course, some more creative souls do stranger things, like post samples of their work on my blog comments, my facebook wall or – and this is very creative indeed – send it to my agent/editor with a note that I recommended it.

The first two are at best annoyances. Look, yeah, I have a few editors/agents who, sporadically, read my postings. They do this because we’re friends outside of “work” and like to joke or tease me about stuff I post. They do not do this to find “the next best thing.” To be blunt, most of them get quite enough submissions to read during their normal work time. In fact, reading submissions is the chore that never ends. They get submissions through the normal channels, they get work from writers they met at cons and social occasions, and they get submissions from people (not always writers) who recommend friends and co-workers. And this is work for them. No matter how much they love reading, no matter how much they tell you, in interviews, that they love “discovering” new work, when they read submissions it’s in a different frame of mind than when blogging or reading blogs/facebook/twitter. TRUST me on this. I’ve edited in the past. When I read with an eye to what might be publishable/needed, it’s not the same as reading say Austen fandom, which I often do read.

I’m not saying they might not look at your work. I’m saying that after catching on it’s a “sneaky submission” slipped into their leisure time, they’re likely to be mad at you and, if I don’t take steps to delete it or dissociate myself from it, at me for ambushing them with work during their fun. Ambushing them in that way is as impolite as ambushing a doctor at a party and asking for a diagnosis. I don’t have numbers, but I’d bet you a lot of money that you stand a better chance of being ambushed by a meteor in a back alley than you have of selling a book this way.

In fact, some writers will block you/defriend you/shut you out for this sort of thing. I won’t, because I can understand where you’re coming from. (More on that later, as well.)

The third method – to send something to my editor or agent and telling them I recommended it when I didn’t – will get you defriended/blocked/shut out if I ever find out it happened, because frankly it could potentially affect my professional relationship. POTENTIALLY – as in, unlikely, but it could happen. The reason it’s unlikely to damage my professional credit is the same reason why this fraudulent action manages to be both dishonest and stupid.

The person who comes up with this brilliant idea doesn’t realize that there have been several people to try it before him/her and that therefore there are procedures in place to circumvent it. For instance, unless I send my agent or editor a letter asking “Would you like to see my friend’s…” and the editor or agent answers with “sure” any over the transom submission saying “Sarah A. Hoyt loves this” will be seen as a fraud. MOST of the time (exceptions made for writers’ group members I HAVE introduced to the editor and even those just in short stories, frankly) such letters from me to editor and answers are followed by MY sending the manuscript I’m recommending to the editor/agent, with a copy to the author, with whom future correspondence will take place.

What all three of these methods will do, in any case, is cause untold damage to YOUR reputation and your chances of publication – if they’re noticed. You should pray they aren’t. This is because the one thing the publishers fear is “the crazy”. “The crazy” might have been a perfectly normal person driven insane by the process of getting published and their fundamental misunderstanding of that process. Or they might be – and very often are – people who think of themselves as artists and tortured souls: people whose work doesn’t depend on excellent craft and practice, but on the bolt of lightening of inspiration or the touch of a god of some description. These people just KNOW they’re good. (A surprising number of them have ‘something’ – usually smothered under layers and layers of twitdom and lack of craft.)

For the Touched By The Gods Artist it’s hard to endure the fact that they have to go through the same selection process as common mugs. This is reinforced – for practically everyone – by

a) the fact our society’s method of educating the young gives everyone, even adults this bizarre idea everything is a class and has an exam/grade. So when your work is good enough and you’re still not getting bought it’s an “injustice”.

b) Stories of strange methods of discovering writers circulated around and highly publicized. I’ve heard these stories the same as everyone else has and I can tell you nine times out of then when you dig into them you find that they just ain’t so. There’s always something that’s not told, like that the new, amazing star happens to be the best friend of the editor’s boyfriend/girlfriend and that’s why their blog post got read. Or they went to school with the agent or the agent’s best friend. Or…

The stories of sudden discovery are just that – stories, which make for d*mn good publicity. But again, you stand a better chance of being snatched up by aliens to be their king.

The Artist doesn’t know this, or if he does, he thinks he deserves that almost-impossible chance. And that means, he tries creative methods. The other things that lie in his path should he not wise up are what will get him blacklisted at the first sign of “artistic temperament” – a lot of these tortured souls will make threats to published writers/agents/editors; they will act unhinged/aggressive at cons; they will at best be nuisances and at worst dangerous.

Worse yet, even if they don’t do any of those things, and manage to get published, they’re unlikely to be able to bear up under the slings and arrows of publishing fortunes. And if you want to know what I mean by that, let me just say I thought I was uniquely unlucky until – while siting with about twenty other writers, some of them bestsellers – we started comparing horror stories. And then I realized I’d practically been treated with kid gloves by lady luck.

As into every life a little rain must fall, into every writing career – even of those who will end up being bestsellers – a little sh*t happens must fall. And the sh*t includes but is not limited to: horrible covers, dropped publicity campaigns, completely failed early books, disaster doom and lack of sales. The people who go on to be bestsellers end up shouldering these issues, and forging ahead – not matter how much more difficult the road has become.

This is why the best and fastest way to get published is to play by the rules. This shows an even temperament, understanding of the field, and taking a realistic attitude towards the BUSINESS of publishing. It means you have a better chance of persevering, working hard and not causing trouble – all excellent qualities in a contractor, which is what the publisher/editor is looking for.

Nowadays, I agree the process of submission is a mess. I’m not going to advise you on that beyond the barest level: find editors/agents who take slush submissions, or find an agent and leave the process to them. Or if you’re absolutely sure you’re not a twit but a real writer, publish your own work, publicize heaven out of it and sell enough to then submit to a real house. All of these methods have been proven to work, as has climbing the ranks from small press to major publisher.

Things that will help your path will be attending cons and both making personal acquaintances in publishing (always showing yourself polite and professional, of course), reading in the field to know what people are looking for/like, and – needless to say – work at perfecting your craft, because the great idea must be married to great execution to work.

And then… keep at it. In my experience, a good publishing career depends on – preparation, persistence and professionalism. Luck helps, but it’s neither indispensable nor all important. And notice that the “p” of potential or the “g” of genius are not mentioned. Most bestsellers or even mega bestsellers didn’t make it on either but on sheer slogging and persistence.

Questions? Protests? Worries? Let me know and I’ll answer as I can.

I am now reading An Air of Treason, the last of PF Chisolm’s Robert Carey mysteries.  Took a break in the middle to re-read Black Tide Rising.  (Bad idea btw.  As I’m still having auto-immune from hell and keep dreaming I’m a zombie.  Anyway…)

The Chisolm mysteries are interesting from a writer pov.  As she’s traditional, I wonder where the decision to take the characters to London and get them involved in the court came from.  Since it happened on book four it has that whiff of “we have to make this series ‘big’ by having important people appear.”  I could never understand this idea on the part of agents and editors, and I could never dissuade them from the stupid notion that “having important historical characters appear sells books.”  Particularly when the important characters are the center of the plot.  I kept telling them “but we know how it ends.  They weren’t killed.”

Anyway, I found mystery 4 and 5 set in London less enjoyable, partly because I have my own vision of Elizabethan England.  And while hers makes a certain sense with the remaining history and bits, her “sense” of it was different.  It feels more Marlowe than Shakespeare, as there are no clean people, not even Shakespeare.

This sort of thing depresses me, so even though I liked the main characters those two books left a bad taste.

The sixth book leaves the confines of London, though it’s still not back to Scotland.  I hope the next one will be, as I like those much better partly because it’s like the old west crossed with Elizabethan times.

Anyway, I came upon a chapter in which Carey’s Scottish lieutenant has been set upon by bandits on a lonely road, robbed and beaten within an inch of his life, and he’s thinking if he were in Scotland, he’d call the surnames (having a surname marked you as better than a peasant) related to him and burn out the bastages, and kill them onto the 7th cousins.

I was thinking about that, and the tribal nature of humanity came into sharp relief as something useful in building civilization.

Yeah, it’s barbarous to go and kill people related only vaguely to those who hurt you.  No, it is in no way “fair” or “just.”  You can see though how it would have helped build civilization — or perhaps we should call it “the self taming” of man — when any type of rule of law was at best weak and uninterested in “justice.”

Assume humans put out more violent (we’d call it psychopathic) people in the past.  We know psychopaths tend to be charming and therefore more likely to leave descendants.  So, imagine that you had a few of those in your tribe or clan.  Unless you were the strongest in the area (and even then, as the others could gang together and still beat you) you had a good incentive to keep the crazier people connected to you under control, lest death be visited upon you.

I have no proof of this, of course, but there seems to be proof, or at least indications, that we’re much “tamer” than people even four hundred years ago, and I could totally see this being one of the ways it came to happen.

On the other hand, we’re still tribal.  Which got me to thinking.  A lot of the fights we are involved in on the net are tribal.  And metaphorically speaking, one side involves itself in a lot more burning of towers while one side — ours — seems to want to fight by the Marquess de Queensbury rules and be strictly fair and honest.

Again, part of that is because we value fairness, honesty and the rule of law.  All understandable.  However, not only does it put us at a disadvantage, but it also might be unfair to our opponents.  By not hitting them on the nose with the rolled up newspaper when they — metaphorically speaking — mess the carpet, we’re training them on the idea that they’re so righteous that even their crazier members should be lauded, not restrained.

This leads to what someone has called “peak crazy”, as in, people like cabbage head, who can “talk to plants” and thinks all piv is rape are taken seriously and given university posts.  Or worse, government posts.  (Shall we count the members of the current administration wearing Che t-shirts?  In public?)

Worse than that, though, it allows all the “markers of respectability” to be concentrated on the other side.  What I mean is uninformed observers assume the side that isn’t being CALLED crazy and maligned in bizarre ways in public must be above reproach.  And this means when journalists, etc, need a quote they go to those people.

Now where they to uniformly report on the people they talk to this would be no problem.  I doubt cabbage head can hold it together and not sound like a psychiatric case for a whole interview.  However, journalists then discard the obvious nuts (a human think “ooookay, so, not airing that one.  She thinks women could ‘evolve’ a way to reproduce without men.  right.”)  So the ones they keep are the ones that while joining the crazy lynch mobs can appear reasonable for the purpose of being “experts” on air for twenty minutes.

Thus are info wars lost.  And this is why as much as I hate tribalism and clan warfare, we might want to consider burning a few towers now and then.  Metaphorically speaking.  Fairly, because we’re us, after all.  But you know, most of these people don’t have skeletons in the closet.  They have skeletons dancing in red dresses in the living room. Pointing out these skeletons and the peak crazy statements is just fair.  And it’s better for them.  We can’t complain they’re totally out of touch with reality when we make no effort to rein them in.

Clan warfare has its uses.  And hey, at least we don’t need to kill babies up to the seventh generation.  Just do a bit of research and engage in a cleaner and saner version of the mudslinging they do.

Because as long as we let them cover themselves in the mantle of respectability, that’s what interested observers see.  And it’s not good for anyone in any field of human endeavor.

You know, life is really odd.  Inside, I mean, really at the core of who I am, I’m still a little kid following grandma around on her daily chores.  (They called us Roque and Friend, a Portuguese equivalent of Sherlock and Watson, because we were always together.)

Somewhere, deep inside, the most important thing is feeding the chickens and petting the cats and maybe later we’ll go to cut grass for the rabbits and there will be daisies to chain.

I think the most difficult part of moving away wasn’t missing the family (though that was very bad until I got used to their absence) or the friends, or even going from being a self-sufficient, employed adult to being a newby who had no idea how to do the simplest things and couldn’t even drive to the grocery store.

No, the most difficult part was being on my own.  It’s kind of like when you’re learning to swim and you suddenly realize the person teaching you let go (at which point I reliably panicked, swallowed a million gallons of water and had hysterics, which is why I still don’t know how to swim.  Eh.)

Because when you’re young you have this impression that the world is an orderly place, and there are adults up there who take care of everything important.  You’re not in danger, and never will be.  I mean, you might be in danger outside the house when you get in scuffles and outright fights, but you know the house will be there to come home to and that even though it might be your job, if you don’t do it someone else will clean and cook.  And someone else will surely pay the bills.

I had the good fortune of a stable family, so there was never a question of the lights going out, not even when we were so poor we weren’t sure where food would come from next.  Because grown ups didn’t let the electrical be cut.  Well, not people of good upbringing.

And I spent at least two years wearing my brother’s modified cast-offs, but I never went naked, and we never came up to winter and me without a coat.

The first time mom left me in charge of the house for two weeks was the first time I felt like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over me.  My brother was in the army, at the time, and I discovered the joys of washing his uniform after they’d been on night maneuvers, crawling through mud.  Then there was the fact that if I didn’t order it, bread and milk were not delivered.  And that I had to somehow stretch the money left to me for groceries.  (We managed ably by doing mom the “favor” of cycling her older emergency canned stuff.  We weren’t killed because it actually needed cycling, but the dishes we produced were… interesting.)

Since these two weeks coincided with my brother’s 23rd birthday I realized, with a shock that I’d forgotten to do anything for it.  Mom always had parties for our birthday, but I hadn’t even made a cake.  My bacon was saved by all his friends, instigated by my future sister-in-law (though I don’t think they were even dating yet) showing up at the door with cake and party-stuff.  BUT it was a first too, my realizing that my dereliction could destroy someone else’s special celebration, that, even if I was overwhelmed and strictly speaking it wasn’t my job, it was my OBLIGATION to make sure his day was special, or the world would be a little dimmer for everyone.

What these rambles tend to is this: twenty four years ago today (well, tomorrow, I slept 30 some hours after the emergency caeserean) I woke up to the realization that I was now the one holding up the pillars of the world for a little person.  It was a cold shock to realize this little creature was dependent on me for everything and that as he grew up I’d be one of the people he relied on for his sense of safety and security and everything right in the world.

Have we been perfect?  Probably not.  But we’ve tried.  We’ve tried to keep the special special, and we’ve tried to make home a safe place for him to come back to.

He’s grown up, now, and on the verge of moving out.  (And yes, before any of you mentions it, I know he stole Heinlein’s birthday and Heinlein did it better. And we’d planned to name him Robert Anson even though he was due on the 4th of July.)  To be fair for the last year he’s only stayed home to help us with the move and the fixing up of the house (got delayed by my being SO tired from LC, but it shouldn’t go past Sunday) since he’s been making enough from work to move out.

And that’s another thing too, learning to rely on him for the brute strength.  I was always able to deploy it, but I’m not now after years of illness and of a chair job.  So I’m glad he can do it and, what’s more, does it without a complaint.

I wonder if part of the problem with our body politico is that people are never “let go.”  People are raised with the idea that it’s someone’s responsibility to make the world safe and snug for them, and they simply can’t let go of it, and when it can’t be their parents, obviously it must be someone else.

I don’t know.  I know that contemplating the world from this end, from the “we kept him safe and warm and fed and he’s now fully grown and ready to leave the nest” is very weird.

It feels wrong, because I’m just that little girl following grandma around.  But it feels right too, because despite all my fears and inadequacies, I did it.  And the kid is a man.

Miracles happen.  And I’m grateful for this one.