Category: Uncategorized

There will be a real post later today and one at Mad Genius Club too.  Right now, I’m running to an appointment… however, I want to make this very clear:

If I find out one of you jokers sent my characters to wake me this morning, that joker will be DEAD.  That’s dead with a capital Malice.

I should have wakened up at six thirty, so I could do the posts before the appointment but I thought “another ten minutes” which probably would be another ten minutes, except that I swear I kept dreaming I was waking.  WORSE I dreamed I was awakened by my space opera characters, one after the other.

If you men think you’d love to be awakened by Athena, revise your dreams.  No, seriously.  She stands at the foot of the bed and glares.  And taps her foot.

Lucius is worse.  I’d forgotten he was raised as a nobleman.  I got the raised eyebrow and the “you’re falling down on the job” “Now, Sarah, really!”

And Nat…  People who train recruits should not wake me.

So, due to the fact that I was “awakened” every five minutes, I got up an hour late.

It’s the characters’ fault.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  Even if I can feel Athena glaring at the back of my head.

Let me start this by saying I approve of sex.  It’s a great concept by and large, and it forces even hermits like me who would otherwise live entirely in books into relationships, which in the end make us better persons.  Besides, it’s the most fun you can have with someone you’re not collaborating on a book with.  (Or vice versa.)

And when you’re in love with someone and particularly if you’re married, sex can make an otherwise oh hum day into a full holiday with fireworks and stuff.  I understand it also has health benefits.

I need this disclaimer up there, because I’m about to sound like Mrs. Grundy.

I’m not biblio-sexual.  Sex between the pages of a book – besides giving you paper cuts and who the heck has a book that big? – does nothing for me.

Note I didn’t say sexual tension does nothing for me.  I am human.  I’m also woman, which means a prurient interest in other people’s sex life comes baked in the cake and is frankly most salutarily exerted on fictional characters.

I’ve wanted characters to get together and do it already, and not only most of Heyer’s and a good number of Heinlein’s.  The main characters in The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie SIZZLE even if the girl is very much a geek chick.

No, the sex that does nothing for me between the pages of a book comes in two varieties.  First, the almost exhaustively clinical “And then he put it in five times, stimulating…”  Second, the highly improbable “His kiss made fireworks go on inside her head and a choir of angels sing Halleluiah”  (Both of these are exaggerated for comic effect, but not by much. All the women who know, just know, on the first kiss that they’ll bear any hardship to have HIS babies might exist, but they’re certainly not very plausible.  As for choirs of angels and fireworks, if you’re having a stroke while kissing, it might be a good idea to kiss a doctor.  Or something.)

When my husband stumbled onto romances – hey, they’re free on Amazon and I can’t always look over his shoulder and go “I don’t care if that says science fiction, that’s really a romance” – I spent more time telling him “no, that is physiologically impossible” than I spent laughing at the passages he read, and TRUST me that’s saying a lot.)

I realize I’m not “normal” in this – or at least I presume I’m not, though I’ll go into that in a moment – because I still remember, with a slight puzzled frown and the look of “wha?” that I also get while reading the news these days when a co-worker of mine (this was back when I had honest work as a multinlingual translator and the book will date how long ago that was) pressed Clan of the Cave Bear on me because “there’s this scene where he plays with her breasts and it’s just… oooooh.”

I read the book, made rude noises at the plot, and passed that scene (which was all of two paragraphs.  Oh, how we’ve come along.) with “okay, he touches her breasts.  Wheee.”

Now, the same scene might have got me interested (it was brief enough, mind you) if I’d been interested in the characters and rooting for them to get together, but THEN I wouldn’t pass it on with “he plays with her breasts” – I’d pass it on with “They have this great chemistry and you just want them to get together.”

For those of you who are in science fiction/fantasy and who think I’m being unusually prude – and you might if you are the sort of person who thinks Heinlein had too much sex in his books – let me point out that Heinlein has NO sex in his books.  He has allusions to sex, talk of sex, pillow talk after sex.

The modern iteration of books – and not just romance, urban fantasy is rife with this – has actual sex in books.  How it felt when it went in, what it did when it was in there, how many times it went in, and which orifices it disported in.

The sad thing, the truly sad thing is that it doesn’t even upset me – not really – it just makes me go “oh, yawn” and go past those pages.

But here’s the thing – the books often have nothing else to hold them together and THAT is what upsets me.

It seems the proportion at which sex is being put in books is the same proportion at which books are becoming politically correct pap and “emotions” signifying nothing. This includes Romance, where even the “bodice rippers” of the seventies and eighties had sex like Heinlein had sex, but they did have plots and were often interesting or experimental (no, I didn’t read romance then, but I’ve read old ones now.)

And I think there is a co-relation.  I think there is a very strong correlation.

Look, I first noticed this not with sex but with what I call “precious posturing.”

I confess to being guilty of that myself.

What do I mean by that?

Well, when I was under political cover, and therefore neither my novels, my plots nor my characters could be about stuff I cared PASSIONATELY about, I had to make the books interesting enough for me to write.  Hence, the Shakespeare trilogy, where I tried to combine high flung Shakespeare with “easy enough to read” and historical accuracy.  It was a stretch, and it kept me interested.  Then there was the Magical British Empire, where I had to figure out how things were in three continents at the close of the British Empire (without traveling there because us poor fiction writers don’t get that kind of advance.)

It was challenging.  I see a lot of this being done in science fiction and fantasy, not all by people who are under cover, but clearly by people smart enough to know that what they’re saying has been said a thousand times before and is – objectively – boring.  So, they put in all the historical details plus some, and try to marry reality and fantasy seamlessly.

These… exercises can be lots of fun but they have limited appeal.  For one, they require a public literate enough in history to know how much fun you’re having.

Other writers admire this greatly, but I suspect overall it doesn’t sell very well.  (My numbers on MBE aren’t exciting, though weirdly it’s still on shelves many places.  Go figure.  Of course, the relation of the numbers to the sales is mostly an imaginary one.)  At any rate, I don’t think the publishers see much point in it.

Which brings us to what the publishers see point in.  The one thing.  Somewhere in the lizard brain there is a cell that says “Sex cells.” And therefore the reptilian lords of NYC publishing say “More sex.”

I’ve actually had that imperative shouted at me.  (No, not by Baen, which is sane.) And to get push these days, you need to have sex in the book (again, not with Baen)

I’ve also had the length dictated “We need a page and a half of sex here.”  (This led to the famous “I’ve done two paragraphs.  You want more write it yourself.” Probably the reason I don’t work for that house anymore.  Well, that and there’s only so much I can take.)

I’m not saying, mind you, I totally object to writing sex, or that I wouldn’t totally put a scene in, if it flowed naturally out of what I was writing AND were necessary to advance the plot.  It probably wouldn’t be done to length.  As is, I’ve never had need to do it.  I can suggest a lot with a line about a touch or a look, and I think it’s more powerful if the reader imagines it.  BUT I’m not saying it won’t happen in the future.

What I’m saying is this: Sex shouldn’t be used to distract from the fact that there is no there there.

This is a mistake often committed by very new writers.  It often indulges the peculiar kink or fascination they have.  And because it interests and gives them a rush, it blinds them to the fact their characters are really only going shopping and talking a lot and nothing is happening.

I’ve redirected any number of young writers to “cut all the s &m” out or “cut all the fetish clothing out.”  Now, look at what you have and figure out how to make it interesting.  Then you can add that stuff back in, if you think it’s needed.

It almost never is, or only in small amounts.

Except most of what is on the shelves these days IS that stuff.  “No plot, no problem, have them screw NOW.”  “No tension?  Throw in an illicit love affair.”

It’s not the abundance of sex I’m objecting to (Though I do object to plumbing-level, uninteresting sex) but the fact that it’s there to cover the lack of anything else.

So, why do people still buy it?  I don’t know.  I think very young people buy it because they have this misguided frisson of the forbidden, and because it makes them feel grown up.  “Oh, look, ma, I’m reading dirty books, I really am.”

BUT overall, people aren’t buying.  As in, reading for pleasure falls ever lower.

Of course that is the fault of TV and video games and–  It’s like, in the hey day of cinema it totally killed reading for pleasure, which is why the pulps never happened, right?

Or perhaps we should give people books that mean something?  That pose interesting ideas? That challenge and interest and, yes, have plots?  Sex optional and well written sex that means something welcome?

It’s a crazy idea.  But it JUST might work.

I have bad news.  Men and women are different.  Oh, I don’t mean that – vive la difference, right? – I mean men and women are different in the way they relate to others, the way they relate to society, the way they present.

Is some of that culturally set?  Well, no sh*t Sherlock.  The “revolutionaries” and “daring innovators” of the sixties kept coming up with ridiculous things like you know, in some cultures wearing pants would make you non-womanly, and in Scottland men wore kilts.  Well, again, no sh*t Sherlock.  A lot of the external signaling of gender and the way people er… for lack of a better phrase, strut their stuff for the opposite gender (or the same) is different depending where you are.  (I had the d*mndest time convincing my parents that no, Dan wasn’t gay, because he doesn’t drink alcohol, or not a lot of it.)

Do these differences in the way gender is expressed invalidate the concept of gender and make us all tabula rasa? Can we raise boys to behave as women and women as boys and nothing at all will be different?

I’d ask how stupid you have to be to believe that except that I know most psychologists and sociologists practicing today were TAUGHT that – whether they believe it or not depends, I guess on how much exposure they’ve had to the real world.  And I know places like Sweden and Holland and Germany and other “enlightened” locations have swallowed this hook line and sinker, which is why we have “gender neutral” toys and the idea that kids get to choose their gender as adults, kind of like some “enlightened” parents let kids choose their own names “when they’re old enough”.  As though it were just some accoutrement, and not an essential part of who you are, formed and molded into muscle and thought and hormonal load from the time you were in the womb, and formed before that over millennia of evolution.

Yes, men and women had different evolutionary pressures.  There is a pattern to humanity.

Yes, yes, I know.  If you look hard enough you’ll find a tribe in Africa where, if you squint kind of sideways, the women hunt and the men look after the children.  Humans are very plastic and in unusual circumstances or do to some external reason, that pattern can emerge.  Yes, yes, there have always been women warriors, and I’m sure there have always been men who spun and sewed and looked after the kids, too, though those aren’t nearly as celebrated as the “warrior women.” Because in these enlightened feminist times, women who act like men are celebrated, but never men who act like women.  There is no worst chauvinist than a “feminist” for devaluing traditional female roles and valuing male ones.

HOWEVER those are outliers, whether tribes or individuals.  Throughout most of human history and pre-history, men did the outdoor/dangerous/difficult work and women the boring/annoying/indoor work.

It all comes down to men hunted and women gathered.  Neither work was – before I get jumped – easy or what we’d call safe, but they presented different kinds of danger and different kinds of overcoming it, which in turn led to very different group mechanics.

Men needed to trust each other absolutely; needed to know their place in the hierarchy; and allowed for innovation in the service of group success.  Women, on the other hand needed to have a cohesive group, meaning you had to behave like the rest of the group.  Sticking out was bad because it didn’t materially help the group – you didn’t have to corner berries together, or … And striking out on your own was bad because, if we see the patterns in the rainforest today, for instance, the berry-gathering group is also the child watching group.  Mothers like me, who rather preferred not to be submerged in a ‘mommy group’ would either have to be beyond very good, or they’d lose the vast majority of their kids, and thereby not pass on their genes.

More than that, when it comes to the relationship between men and women, it is marked by the fact that they outweigh us, out-lift us and out-run us.  We can outlast them both in effort and in longevity, for what consolation that’s worth.  BUT physically they’re stronger than us, even at the same size.  (I had a moment of shock when my then 11 year old son, who was still shorter and slimmer than I, could easily lift 100 pounds in a dead lift which I couldn’t do.)

This means in interactions between men and women – as adults and partners – men must modulate their strength and women must find non-physical ways of projecting theirs.  We see women doing this as far back as pre-history.  The wise counselor.  The advisor.  It’s in all our legends and quite a few of our histories.  The man goes home and consults with his wife.

I’d say our “civilization” – our road to being human – started when hominid males decided to court women rather than simply overpowering them.

Is it evolutionarily favored?  It would seem to be.  Women are more likely to raise to adulthood children willingly conceived.

Not to say that rape isn’t good reproductive strategy – if it weren’t, the Vikings wouldn’t have left swathes of blue eyed people all across the shores of Europe.  I’m just saying it’s not EFFICIENT.  Unless you’re going to make rape a way of life, and have a way to spread the damage across the world, then I wouldn’t recommend it, because I’d guess a lot fewer children conceived of rape reach healthy reproductive maturity.

So overall the men who courted won out over the men who raped.  Regardless of the whole culture of rape thing, very few men want to pursue rape as a reproductive choice.

But… women don’t understand this.

Heinlein had something in Stranger about men and women each being locked in his own way of being in the world and unable to understand the other gender.  This is not true at least for some of us who grew up with mostly members of the opposite sex, and who still have members of the opposite sex as close and trusted friends.

A while back there was a book about a woman who dressed up and passed as a man – I think it’s called Self Made Man – and the revelations she got this way.  The things that “wives can’t know about husbands” type of revelations.  By and large, she got me to blink and go “you didn’t know that?” or “You mean most women don’t know that?”  Because I already did.  But I might be a different case.  As I said I grew up around my brother and his friends, and they tended to think it didn’t matter what they said in front of me.  And my husband and I talk about just about everything.

BUT that said, there is a group of women, we’ll call them “the sob sisters” who are really really dumb about this.  They either view men as a sort of hairier woman with a penis, or they wish he were so.  These are the women who fight you tooth and nail on things like “Men are truly different” and “No, gender is not all ‘social construction’.

I never understood their psychology, though I’ve been interacting with them since Kindergarten.  They were the little girls who wanted to boys to admire their pretty frocks, but didn’t want to play rough lest they tore the frills, and therefore demanded that boys not be “rough” around them.  (Which largely amounted to their not being boys.)

They don’t understand that the decision to court rather than rape is built in very deeply in a man’s psyche, layered by thousands of years of evolution and – yes – sexual conditioning.  It is a gentleness born of strength.  Men who know themselves to be stronger than any woman they want, discipline themselves to go slowly, to court her.

Even in the most primitive tribes, rituals are instituted to bend men into this civilized mold.  Because when the mold is broken, the result is that men abuse women, women abuse children, and the world goes to hell.

The sob sisters don’t get this.  They are gentle because they’re weak and this forces them into being gentle.  Hell hath no fury and ability to oppress as one of these weak, die-away sisters given some power, but every woman here will know what I’m talking about, because sooner or later you find yourself fin a group where one of these has got the bit between their teeth.  Their power is mostly gossip and back stabbing and unbelievable psychological abuse, but they use it to the hilt.

Which is why they think that if men aren’t using their superior strength, it must be because they’re weak, and the “solution” to society (they nurse in their black little hearts the hope of not just making women equal but reversing society and having women do all the masculine jobs and men do the feminine ones.  It’s nuttiness) is to raise men to be weak and not to know their own strength.  Hence the entire “rise of the sensitive male.”

The problem is this – you don’t reverse evolution in two generations.  Even if you could, it would be stupid, mind, since there are muscular and hormonal reasons for men’s strength, but the point is you can’t do it, anyway.

So when you educate children to believe it’s all a social construction and there’s no difference, you run up against the fact that there’s differences.

Yes, girls can sleep around as much as men, but since our endocrine system predisposes us to attachment after sex, this means the majority of women CAN’T do that and be happy… Even when they tell themselves they are.

And yes, boys can be taught to act weak and much like the sob sisters.  The problem is they aren’t.  Not even when they’re raised to act that way.

The end result is that they don’t know how to express their strength and they’ve never been taught to modulate it.

Men who have only been taught to “act sensitive” but have no other discipline, no other moral, no other idea of what it means to be a man, will in fact hoist the pirate flag.

Whenever a memoir surfaces from the sixties, the thing that always strikes me is how these men who were considered champions of women were in fact nasty little petulant creatures, taking advantage as much as possible.  Say, the story of Ayers raping a girl and then making her sleep with someone she had no interest in, by bullying her with the idea that not to do so would be unenlightened.

I often think that the people now controlling education were women who went through this, and therefore want to stop boys from being… well boys.  But what they’re doing in fact is creating more sociopathic males who will act as you want them to, but will take as much advantage as possible.

If they’re going to be considered criminals for being males; if none of their good qualities (their superior strength, their loyalty, their protectiveness) are appreciated; if they’re told they can only be this sort of inferior ersatz female… what is there for them to control themselves for?  Why not present the face the world wants and take advantage of women behind it?

Chivalry and the code thereof was the laying down of those good reproductive (and civilizational) rules that make for a functioning society that passes on its values to its young: men who put their strength at the service of the weaker; women who praised them and admired them for it; and children who were raised to do the same.

Tearing it down might seem like freedom, but you can’t remove the walls and wish the roof would remain standing.

This has nothing to do with women working (women always worked, at least in the lower classes.  And in the upper classes they often helped administer domains) though working outside the house is a new thing for both men and women, frankly.  What it has to do with is the relationship between men and women.

Men and women are not the same.  They are different at the sinew level, at the hormonal level, and yes, at the brain level.  Different signals of dominance and submission are baked into each of them by thousands of years of evolution.

You can’t upend it quickly or efficiently and the attempt is likely to reduce to rubble everything built since the first proto-human gave a girl a flower instead of throwing her to the ground and having his way with her.  You’ve been warned.  Disregard it at your own risk.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit Readers and thank you Glenn Reynolds for the link.

Rage Against The Darkness

Cedar Sanderson

(Sorry it’s so short this week!)

*This is the new free novel I’m posting here a chapter at a time.  This is pre-first-draft, as it comes out.  It is a sequel to Witchfinder which will soon be taken down (once edited) and put for sale on Amazon (It’s now done and with beta readers and editor.  My wretched health this year delayed everything.  (Meanwhile, if you donate $6 or more, I’ll get you a copy of Rogue Magic, once finished and edited, in your favored ebook format when it’s done.  Of course, if you’re already subscribing to the blog at a level at which you get whichever books come out that year, you don’t need to worry. *

NOTICE: For those unsure about copyright law and because there was a particularly weird case, just because I’m making the pre-first draft of my novel available to blog readers, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t copyrighted to me.  Rogue Magic as all the contents of this blog is © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013.  Do not copy, alter, distribute or resell without permission.  Exceptions made for ATTRIBUTED quotes as critique or linking to this blog. Credit for the cover image is © Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

Myth And Man

Jonathan Blythe, Earl of Savage

I’d tossed her on the bed.  It was the sort of bed you expected at Mage Place – big and soft, covered in velvet and crowded in lace pillows.  She lay against the lace pillows, panting, her breasts pushing out on her dress, her skirts in a pile and exposing the exquisite form of a well turned and very white ankle.

I took a deep breath and thought of snow storms.  After all, with a creature – whatever she was – such as she was – whatever that might be – one could never be sure these little displays were unintentional.

In fact, I’d wager quite a lot on their being intentional.  And I never gamble to lose.

“Tell me why you set the blight on my world,” I said.  “And what it means.”

She was looking at me, her eyes slightly crossed as though she were trying to look at my magic.  She would too, I thought, but that was besides the point.  But what she said next shocked me nearly out of my skin, “Who are you?” she said.  “Really?”

That had never occurred to me as something that might be in question.  I blinked at her. “You know who I am,” I said.  “Jonathan Blythe, for my sins the Earl of Savage.”

But she shook her head, not so much calling me a liar but as though she’d asked me the time of day and I’d answered “cow.”  She shifted among the lace pillows and so far forgot herself as to cover her ankles.  “You weren’t supposed to be able to follow me,” she said.  “None of you were.  I let out a burst of magic, as I ran.  Not even on purpose.  It’s something like the ink a squid releases when scared.”

I refused to discuss ways in which this lovely woman – well, this lovely female creature, anyway way – was like a squid.  Instead I cast back my mind over the last few moments in Seraphim Ainsling’s office.  No.  There had been no difficulty at all to following her.  She’d taken the bomb from my pocket and run.  Now I found there were obfuscating measures.  Lovely.

How long before Seraphim set sniffers on our trail to find out why we’d maliciously exploded a statue?  He’d probably think I was in league with the lovely Ginevra, too.

I’d like to be in league with her all right, but not that way.  And in fact I was starting to wonder if I wanted to be associated at all.  Some people, no matter how tuppable, are not someone you can live with.  Or even consort with for a limited time.

Her eyes focused again, and she tried to give me what she probably thought was a smile, but which was really a small grimace.  Then she shook her head.  “Which story should I tell you?” she asked, worriedly, and frankly more as though she were speaking to herself than to me.”

“The truth,” I said.  And heard my voice become frighteningly like Papa’s when he used to say the same thing to me in childhood.  “Or I’ll know about it, and it will be the worse for him.”

Her eyes widened a little bit, and for a second the  cross-eyed look was back in her eyes.  Then she gave me a little prim school girl nod, rearranged herself so she covered her ankles and held her skirts down around them with her hands, and said, in a tiny voice, “I told witchfinder a great deal of lies.”

That was the truth, I realized, and at the same time I realized that her demure little girl act was just as much of a ploy to get me to go easy on her, as her showing her ankles and enticing me had been a ploy to distract me.  I didn’t hold it against her. After all we each must fight with what we had, and what she had was a female form, a weak but pleasing body and the inherent chivalric conventions of my society.  Of course she would use them to protect herself or gain advantage.

But I didn’t let the understanding show in my face.  Instead, I said sternly.  “I know, but now you’re going to tell me the truth.

She looked distressed, opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again.  What came out was pretty close to a wail, “But don’t you understand that would be breaking all the rules?”

“What rules?” I asked.

“The rules of the… for lack of a better world, Mythworld.”

“You are entirely of them, then?”

She gave me a very odd look, like she thought I’d taken leave of my senses.  “Of course not,” she said. “If I were, I wouldn’t be able to be here, in your world.  That’s why…”  She made a gesture midair and I was very careful to watch, in case it was some of her spells.  “That’s why Zeus had so many half breeds with humans and why…  Of all of our people very few pure bloods can walk between worlds.  And it is between worlds.  They can’t stay too long near the world of men.”  Her eyes crossed again.  “Hermes for ins–  You’re not Hermes, are you?”

“I’m Jonathan Blythe,” I said, with unwonted patience.  “Earl of Savage.”

Again the little head shake, as though I’d just informed her I was a particularly showy kind of duck or something equally inane.  “Well,” she said, as though conceding points.  “My mother was human.”

“I see,” I said.  “Then why did you turn against Earth and set evil magics on us.”

She blinked at me.  “Why, to save Fairyland, of course.”

Mostly.  But chapter will be tomorrow.  It’s started and everything, but I’m having trouble concentrating because… sinus infection.  For today, I have two announcements, the first general.  I don’t know if you’ve heard of Liberty Island, but if you haven’t they’re looking for submissions from Liberty-minded people.  (And I owe them a short.)  Later on Charlie and I will be bringing out a Human Wave Anthology through them.

L iberty Island is a digital media company that publishes and produces short stories, novels, short films, documentaries and other creative products.

In addition to telling great stories, Liberty Island has a mission: to promotes the values of personal freedom and public liberty, and rejects all forms of orthodoxy, dogma and political correctness.

As a reader-supported enterprise, we encourage creators and readers to engage and interact throughout our site. While our online community is free for all to join and enjoy, we ask that readers share a few bucks in a creator’s “tip jar”–it allows them to keep working, and ensures that Liberty Island will continue to have a deep roster of talented, often undiscovered, writers, filmmakers, and other creators contributing to our enterprise.

Does this appeal to you? Then you’re in the right place.

If you’re a writer and would like information about our guidelines, write us at submissions@libertyislandmag.com. We are looking for original works in Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Political and Historical fiction, Satire/Parody, and other popular genres.

If you’re a reader who loves high quality popular fiction, sign up with your email address for notification when we go live later this year.

If you want to talk to us about anything else (advertising, investing, press inquiries, etc.) write to us at info@libertyislandmag.com.

You can also join us on Facebook to become a charter member of our online community: https://www.facebook.com/LibertyIslandMagazine.

And follow us on Twitter: LibertyIsleMag.

We look forward to sharing Liberty Island with you!

Best, the Liberty Island team.

The next announcement is strictly local:

TOP SECRET //GCHQ/NSA/DGSE JOINT  SHAPESHIFTER TASK FORCE.…DECLASSIFICATION DATE 01AUG43

SURVEILLANCE FIELD NOTES // 1AUG13 THROUGH 30AUG13

SUPERVISING FIELD AGENT J. CAESAR

IN ACCORDANCE WITH GCHQ/NSA/DGSE JOINT SHAPESHIFTER TASK FORCE ORDER 12-003623 DATED 12NOV12, SURVEIL TEAM DELTA MOVED TO COLORADO DENVER METRO AREA ON 29JUN13 TO INVESTIGATE INTEL PROVIDED BY AGENT [REDACTED] REGARDING POSSIBLE LOCATION OF RUMORED “THE GEORGE”. SEE PREVIOUS FILED SURVEILLANCE FIELD NOTES DATED 30JUL13.

IN ACTIVE SURVEILLANCE OF POTENTIAL SHAPESHIFTER SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS, SECONDARY ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE TEAM FOXTROT INTERCEPTED CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN PREVIOUSLY NOTED SUSPICIOUS PERSONS TENTATIVELY IDENTIFIED AS “HOYTS HORDE”, WOMAN WITH ONE SUSPICIOUS MALE AGED HER CONTEMPORARY AND TWO SUSPICIOUS MALES OF AGES APPROX 18 & 20.

INDIVIDUALS WERE DISCUSSING UPCOMING FUNDRAISING EVENT FOR A FIBER ARTS NON PROFIT TITLED “TACTILE” WHICH WAS OFFERING A FUNDRAISING SALE ON DONATED FABRICS, BEADS, YARN, SEWING PATTERNS, NOTIONS, INTERIOR DECORATOR FABRICS, WHICH WERE DESCRIBED AS GREAT FOR UPHOLSTERY OR COSTUMES. ALSO SEWING PATTERNS INCLUDING VINTAGE PATTERNS, SEWING MACHINES OFFERED FOR $25 EACH. ALSO DESCRIBED AT THE SALE WAS LACE TRIM, LACE COLLARS, VINTAGE TABLECLOTHS AND NAPKINS.

THE SALE IS SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 28^TH, FROM 10:00 AM TO 5:00 PM WITH A SPECIAL BAG SALE – ALL YOU CAN FIT IN A BAG FOR $10 FROM 4:00 PM TO 5:00 PM.

LOCATION IS 1955 S. QUINCE ST. DENVER COLORADO 80231

WEBSITE: www.tactilearts.org

And now I’m going to clean the house and have a lot of caffeine, so I can write.  The chapter, yes, but other stuff too.

One of the things I love most about our country is that it’s weird.  No, I don’t mean deep-fried-beer-at-Texas-State-fair and come-see-the-world’s-largest-ball-of-yarn weird.  Those are cool too, and sort of a side effect of our weirdness, but not the main thing.  The ways in which we are truly weird make us… well… misunderstood by other nations.  And often cause us to misunderstand other nations, too.

It in conjunction with our truly horrible education is responsible for how so many of our fellow citizens hate their own country and attribute to us all the ills of mankind and none of the good.

Wait, what?  Didn’t I say I love the way in which we’re weird?

I do.  The way in which we’re weird is what has made me American.  And despite that horrible side effect above, it makes us also kinder, more morally conscious, and in many ways the best country the world has ever seen in terms of our effect on the rest of the world.

The problem is this – we need to be aware that we’re weird.  We need to be aware of it when we interact with other countries.  Else, they could kill us.  It’s what happens to kids who are like us.  Or at least they get severely beaten.

I’m not going to claim our country is autistic, though it has certain things in common with it.  Instead I’m going to claim that our country is Odd.

It’s become a truism to say that all SF/F fans and authors are somewhere in the autistic spectrum.  We related oddly to people, and we have weird ways of going at life.

I don’t agree.  I think it gets swept in the autistic spectrum because it’s a fashionable diagnosis and lots of things interact.  The reason most SF/F fans/authors present as autistic is that most either have a higher aggregate IQ than normal or a higher specialized IQ than normal.  (I’m the later.  I’m a very special kind of idiot savant, relating to verbal processing only.)  But even those of us who are “just normal” as far as tests are concerned tend to be… odd in our development.  That is because the literature itself self-selects for odd.  (It’s entirely possible too that the act of reading itself self-selects for odd these days.)

I’m only saying the “in the spectrum” thing doesn’t apply because some of us are almost pathologically gregarious.  (Younger son, me at one time.)  But we still have some of the odd symptoms that we share with people in the autistic spectrum.

I’d summarize these quickly as “unable to do what comes naturally to others” or perhaps “Thinks so much they hardly do anything else.”  Or if you prefer Pratchett “has the first sight and the second thoughts.”

What this means is that many of us on letting our kids go to the blackboard jungle for the first time, cringe a bit.  We know what waits them.  Our kids generally stick out like a side of beef on a seafood buffet.  And the other kids know it too.

How many of you had their kid come home and say something like “none of the other kids wants to play with me.”  This eventually, usually, eases, as they find their own group of odds and outcasts and form their own group.  At least people like me did, usually by protecting all the LITTLE odd ones (since I was a big moose by Portuguese standards.  Only Portuguese standards.  In my day, I grew out of pre-made when I reached my adult size of five six and a size seven. It’s different now.  Better nutrition.)

But most of us spend most of our lives in some form of “Why are they doing that?” or – at a certain age – puzzling our way through mating rituals that come normally to other people.  “He’s looking at me funny.  What does he want?  How do other people know when they want to kiss?”  (This is why the first guy ever to kiss me had to ask verbally and got the answer “okay, but I never kissed so it probably won’t be very good.”  Which made him laugh.)

I made it my business to study people, and I still get faced with stuff that I go “But WHY?” particularly when it’s completely irrational.  (For instance, how is it proper in an argument over the hugos to call someone a “conspiracy nut?”  Particularly when the argument is “people don’t care as much about the hugos as they used to?”  Or to complain the other side is “armed to the teeth” – if we were, buckos, and you knew we were, you’d talk more respectfully, I reckon.)

Well, as a country the US is an Odd.  If it were a kid, it would read SF/F and be able to give you the statistics on the bestselling books going back to 1940.  It would do it, too.  In public.  At parties.  And it would dress funny, not that it’s not completely able to analyze how people dress for various occasions, but because it spent time in front of the mirror overthinking it.  “They said business casual, so that means no tie.  But you always dress a bit above the norm, right, because when you’re new to the club… so, tie.”  This would result in its showing up three hours late, wearing a tux shirt and bow tie, with a sweater over to loosen it up, cerise pants to show its playful side, a loafer on his left foot and a tennis shoe on the right.

And this is what other nations see us like.

When they “get” us at all.  Half the time they don’t get us at all, and tend to assume we’re just like them.  And we assume they’re just like us.  And both of them are close to fatal errors.

What I mean is this: deprived of a unity of blood or a reason for existing as a nation other than our constitution – words on paper and principles agreed on – we think and argue and live by our constitution.  There have only been two nations in history formed by law and the other one had blood too.

We don’t.  We’re a nation of principles, of paper, of laws.  Take our law away and we’re nothing: a group of unrelated peoples living in a common area, that’s it.  Okay, genetically some other nations have great variety, but they also have history in common.  Our history of continuous immigration means we don’t have even that.

We have the laws, we have the papers, we have the principles.

We are like a little kid who grew up in books and doesn’t understand life outside them.  He expects the principles of the books to apply in the playground: honor, duty, right and wrong.  And he’s going to be pounded on by everyone until he learns that out here that doesn’t apply, only the self-interest and the casual cruelty of the playground.

Unless she – me – is a big moose, in which case she will run around imposing honor and duty and loyalty and all those things that she read about in books, until the entire class is a very odd one and makes the teacher puzzled.

In a way the US is like me in that playground.  Because we believe in things like that nations are constituted for the benefit of their citizens, we run around making it so.  Or we fall down on the side that claims to want so – sometimes with disastrous results.

The end is that we end up making the world a better place – a place where sometimes, occasionally, even outside this nation, the welfare of individuals counts.

But it also means the rest of the world hates us.  Even our allies think we’re weird and that’s at the best of times.  When we go a little nuts and try to prove how wonderful we are by electing someone who has confessed by word and deed that he hates us, well… our allies have reasons to keep their distance.

And yet, which odd kid hasn’t tried that in the past.  “If I’m nice to the bully, maybe he’ll reform.”  And while your friends look on in horror, you give them the cold shoulder and try to make up to the bully… until he betrays you, and then you wake up and it’s back to your old friends.

It’s very important that we, as a nation, understand that the world doesn’t work like we do.  Out there, on the world playground, the rule is instinct, self-serving, and the casual cruelty of children.

It’s no use coming out with things like “China will take over being the world’s policemen and make a good one because they were once victims” – that’s not how other nations work.  That’s not how anything works outside certain pious books.  China will act according to its self interests and subjugate all in its path if it serves them.

Yes, other countries have constitutions but to none of  THOSE are a raison d’etre.  They’re more the corporate statement.  And you know how much those matter.

It’s not use saying things like “but how could Iraq have WMD, they don’t even have clean water.”

These countries have different priorities.  Study their history.  Study the history of the European wars, and the shifting alliances.  None of it matters much, other than the ego of the kings or rulers.

No other country has ever beat itself over its moral (or lack there of) contribution to History.  The English make French jokes, they don’t go “If we hadn’t invaded them, and they hadn’t—“

We do that sort of thing.  We do that sort of thing to such an extent that, our seriously misstaught intellectuals view it as proof only we are culpable.

Take slavery (please?  I don’t want it.)  EVERY COUNTRY HAS HAD SLAVES.  (And now I see some people go “whoa, every country?  But… Africa!”  Africa had slaves too.  Many countries still do.  Also, there’s nothing particularly African about slaves.  Slaves used to come in all colors and types.)  But here we have people who angst forever about being descendant from slaves and slave owners.  DUH.  That just means you’re human.  ALL OF US ARE.

What’s more, other countries had as many African slaves as we did.  Some had  more.  BUT no other country ritually beats its breast over it like we do.

As a result our gullible young and even OTHER countries think we INVENTED slavery.

Or take the fact we ritually beat our breast over the wars we entered in, and in which we weren’t angels on Earth – oh, even the Civil War, but also every other war ever, including and not limited to WWI.  WWI was the butcher shop of Europe, but do other countries worry and fret over what they did in it?  No.  Only us.

We stopped them pounding each other into nothing, but somehow we emerged the villain.

That’s because we’re the odd kid.  We don’t act the way they do, they don’t understand how we act.

Only in the US could intelligent people honestly believe the UN would be anything but what it is – a squabbling of children, each trying for his own best interests – only in the US could anyone think of world government and not realize it would be two wolves and a sheep discussing dinner.

But we think about it, and our intellectuals believed and believe in it.

Oh, and we’re a big moose.  So all of them try to pound us.

We need to teach history in schools.  Real history.  The back and forth of nations and how little of honor and duty and loyalty there is in the interplay of nations.  It’s the only way we’ll stop creating a class of overly educated idiots who hate our country because they think all others are angels.

We need to teach why we’re exceptional – and we are – and how, though we’re human, at least we try for honor and duty and all that.  We fail, but at least we try.  Other nations aren’t trying, not really.

Other nations aren’t going to understand that what we say isn’t window dressing.  Other nations aren’t going to understand that when we beat our chest we’re NOT really worse than they are.  (You see, other nations don’t admit to even obvious atrocities, much less accusing themselves of made up ones.)  We need to stop making friends with the bullies.

You know the stuff you’d tell an Odd child to help him get through his first year in elementary?  Yeah – we as a nation need to learn all that.

We’re probably never going to get “the games nations play,” not at an internal level, just like your Odd child will never get the games of dominance and one upmanship in the school yard.  That’s fine.  Most of those are nonsense, anyway.  As long as we don’t let ourselves be drawn in to one of them needlessly by someone flapping jaws about “right” and “duty.”

Staying apart and intervening only when threatened works for odd kids, and will work for us.  Stopping obvious bullies is self-protection-before-time.  Because if the bully gets the rest of the world to attack you, even you could be obliterated.

Other than that feel free to stay out of the what-France-said-about-Russia-who-heard-it-from-Egypt battles.  Most of them are just jockeying for position.

But first and foremost we need to learn what every kid who is a little odd needs to learn to survive.

When someone says they hate you, believe it.

Oh, and – It’s not only okay but it’s right and just to defend yourself.  Particularly when you’re a big moose and a berserker, not presenting as a wuss is the best you can do to PROTECT others. BEFORE you’re forced to obliterate them, let them know you can and will, if pushed too far.

Like the odd kid in the playground, like the odd adult at work, failure to learn this will cost us our lives – literally or figuratively.

I’ve been useless for about a week.  Spinning my own wheels.  Sweating the small stuff. Have the novel finally in my head, but not the strength to write it.

Yesterday I realized I was in “cringe mode”.  I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

This is stupid.  Or at least my friends who know better than I do tell me it is stupid.  They say Al Quaeda might not be on the run, as our president so quaintly said, but it is too degraded to hit us.

Maybe.  I don’t think rolling over like a puppy and displaying our underbelly to the world is the way to avoid being hit again.  And no, I also don’t think that bombing Syria would make us safe because “they wouldn’t dare attack us.”  I think the clown show of the last two weeks has increased our danger immeasurably, but I also realize that even a simple attack can be years in the making.

Maybe.

This afternoon I came to realize that what I was feeling was what my grandmother used to phrase as “Once scalded, the cat is afraid of cold water.”  And also that I’ve totally lost faith in our government and our institutions to protect me or mine, or even to avoid making my kids’ future a third world horror.

Nine eleven – the first one, in 2001 – didn’t do it.  Oh, sure, I can talk all day about how we weren’t effective enough, we weren’t decisive enough, we shoulda, coulda, woulda….

But I felt like they were at least trying, like, you know, the people in power were trying to keep the nation safe and trying to punish those who had hurt Americans.

Then came 9/11/12.

What do you do with that?  What do you even do with that?  If I could forgive apology videos in Pakistan; if I could forgive blaming America for the attack; if I could forgive “What does it really matter” – I could not forgive that they’ve done nothing to apprehend the culprits.

If we’re very lucky, our children and grandchildren won’t pay with their lives for the feckless, reckless, self-aggrandizing nonsense of this Marxist administration.

And meanwhile?

They’ve abandoned us.  They’ve left us exposed.  Worse, in one of those crimes that used to make it to legends, back when societies had moral compasses and a sense of themselves, we’ve forgotten our dead.  We’ve forgotten those who were sacrificed just because they were Americans, we’ve forgotten those who died doing their duty, and we’ve forgotten the heroes who rushed to the fight and paid for it with their lives.

The tears un-cried over the blood shed call out to us. It is not a law we enforce.  It is not something we hope for.  But blood un-avenged leads to more blood.  It always has as long as humans were humans. It always will.  One way or another it will.

And in the lull before the storm – whatever form that storm takes, whenever it comes – I look at my neighborhood in the golden light of a September afternoon and remind myself that if I no longer believe in American authorities, or at least not in those elevated rarified authorities in DC who deal death with a word and appease enemies with the other, I do believe in America.

I believe in the Americans who live their lives honestly, who look after those who need them, who work  and pay their dues.  I believe in Americans, born free and unwilling to submit.  I believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  I believe our constitution and our great founding, and our coming together from all over the world make of us a nation different enough, strong enough, innovative enough that we will come through the night and the storm and emerge stronger: a beacon of light and plenty for the world again.

Today we mourn.  Tomorrow we go back to innovating and building under and being American.  Tomorrow we go back to being that which the statists fling at us as an insult: Ungovernable.

Today American mourns its dead.  Tomorrow it resumes living twice as hard.

It would do well for our enemies to remember: our leaders are not the country.  This clown show can’t endure forever.  In the end we will survive.  And trust me, we will remember.

UPDATE: Post up at Lifestyle as well

Sorry to be so late in posting, but we got up early to go vote on the giant rat Morse recall.  For the Morse recall and in favor of replacing the giant rat, of course.

And because these days if I’m on less than five hours of sleep I get sick to my stomach (no, I don’t know why) I then had to nap an hour or so.

Look, I’m not even going to go in what is fair in recalling a legislator.  ANY legislature that takes power PARTICULARLY if it’s a side that hasn’t been in power in a long time, and sets about corrupting the voting process by doing things like all-mail-in-ballots, no id verification and other squirrely business should be automatically recalled.  There should be a safeguard in place that says in effect “you can’t change the rules so you’re never unelected.”

But, you say, isn’t it the same as changing the rules to require voter ID and voting in person and (though no one is suggesting this, they really should be.  It tightens the screws on the ability to perform fraud) early voting?

Of course it’s not.

Objectively – from a distance as it were – what would you consider more likely to encourage fraud?  Voting in person on the day of the election?  Or voting by mail, with no controls on the other end?  Voting after showing ID, or voting because you walk in and you’re so and so (particularly when you consider that our voters roles aren’t purged?  Only being able to register to vote in advance, after showing proof of citizenship, or the “motor voter” registration, where once a visiting Japanese journalist registered to vote in the US by using his Japanese passport as proof of identity, while getting a temporary permit to drive in the US?

Yes, of course, any of those restrictions will cost someone the opportunity to vote, who should “legitimately” have been able to.  But the opposite creates a chance for people who shouldn’t vote to vote and dilute the vote of people who are legitimately allowed to.

The reverse of the tightening of the ballot that might turn away one or two people who would otherwise vote, is to make the vote of hundreds or thousands worth less.  And don’t tell me there is no fraud. The way the system is instituted it’s IMPOSSIBLE that there is no fraud.  Human nature is such that the only thing we won’t cheat to obtain is that which has no value.  No, I don’t mean you personally, I mean people in general.  In other words, the only way to make people uninterested in cheating in elections and to make fraud INEXISTENT is to make government power so limited that only political animals like me care.  (I’m all for it.)

The second best thing is to make it so difficult to cheat that the fraud is very limited.

Look, if you really trust your fellow man not to cheat to that extent, I invite you to put all your passwords on line.  No?  Then shut up about “there is no fraud.”

Next, let’s take all of these measures that make voting more “inclusive” in order:

Mail in ballots – I mean, we’re all so busy.  So, why make us go in.  Just fill the ballot, drop it at any box.  Surely, it’s secure.  I mean you sign it.

Let’s leave alone for a moment that if you’re too busy to vote, so sad, too bad.  It’s a DUTY not a right.  But let’s leave that aside.

How is it that the part that doesn’t want parents notified their 13 year old girl has been given the morning after pill, or is having an abortion, because they’re afraid the girl’s decision will be influenced is nevertheless PERFECTLY okay with putting everyone’s voting in the hands of everyone else who lives in the same house?  Tyrannical father?  Sure.  He can vote for all his kids.  Crazy mother?  Sure, she can vote for her husband and kid.  Dementia patient?  Sure, caretaker will vote?

Why but the knowledge that this party benefits from most of that skullduggery?

Voting without showing ID – of course makes things much faster – and besides, you know, some people don’t have ID.  Really?  REALLY?  REALLY?  Who doesn’t have ID?  No, seriously.  Who, of legal age lacks any form of picture ID?  And how do they live?  Unless they are essentially dependents on other adults and possibly impaired, and even then I think an ID is needed to cash disability checks.  My bank requires me to show an ID.  Hell, my grocery store requires me to show an ID – but my government doesn’t.

There you have it, gentlemen.  Your right to vote is worth less than a load of groceries.

So – what about the person in a million who doesn’t have ID? – if they can’t be bothered to get one (no, the money is not that much, and besides I suspect anyone pleading hardship will get financed by either the state or private donors) why should they vote?  How much thought did they give it?

And motor voter – oh, the gift that keeps on giving.  Do you know what the rationale is for not asking to see proof of citizenship when you register to vote?  It’s that people are more likely to ask for that to people with an accent or who look “of another race” – read Hispanic.  Okay, then.  I have it on good authority I don’t look Hispanic, though the boys do.  BUT I do have an accent you can cut with a knife.

Would I be offended at being asked for proof of citizenship?  Would the boys?  Oh, hell no.  THEY’re proud to be American, and I worked to become a citizen.  I’m offended NOT to be asked for proof of citizenship, because that means my sons’ birthright is being given away for a pot of message.

YOU DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT NOT TO BE OFFENDED.  It’s not on the constitution anywhere.

What about early voting?  This is the one I’m most divided on.  It’s big risk comes from the other loose controls.  Because if they know in advance how many votes they need to fabricate to cheat, then it facilitates it.  If the rest were tight, this might not matter.  And yes, of course, you often can’t vote on the day.

But is there any reason it should be “no questions asked”.  I don’t see why.  Yes, it might be more convenient to vote early or late. BUT it’s not a NEED.  When voting was on the day, employers cut you slack on that day.  They had to vote too.  And early voting required you to do the same things you do to postpone jury duty: show that you wouldn’t be in the country or that you had the sort of job you simply couldn’t take time from.  I voted early once, before all these shenanigans, because we were going to be at World Fantasy and had plane tickets.

Again, voting is a duty, not a right – by which I mean that of course if you have right to vote, but from the moral pov it’s a duty, not something that should be made easy and brought to you, as it were.  It’s like being armed.  We have a duty to defend ourselves, but no one brings you a gun because you happen to be unarmed.  (In fact, I suggest tightening of voting parallels tightening of gun ownership.  Or vice versa.  You want this extremely lose voting, make it easy for everyone to have an arsenal.  Then at least we have redress.)

So, how do I feel about the recall of Rodentus Maximus?  Well… not hopeful.  Why not?  Because even though mail in ballots didn’t go out in time to most people, apparently “students” are dropping backpacks full of ballots at voting places.  And apparently we can’t do anything about it.

You know my view on how you know the fix is in: when the other side isn’t making even a token effort and yet is sure to win.

For instance, nominating Hilary and being sure she’ll win the presidential election is a sign the fix is in.  The fact that Hilary rolled over and played the good soldier for her enemy is a sign that the fix was already in back then.

In the same way, the Morse side has made less than token efforts to campaign.  Mostly some adds paid for by Bloomberg.  And outside the poling place there was only one of the unwashed brigade, with a homemade sign crossed and recrossed with unreadable stuff from which only NRA stood out.

The state party isn’t making an effort, because the fix is in, so why bother.  Also, at the poling place I heard workers say that they were turning away half the people for being outside the district.  Maybe they are.  Or maybe…  Who knows?

But hope springs eternal and sometimes a miracle happens.  So I went and voted for the recall of Ratus Giganticus Morsis.

It’s Quixotic, but sometimes tilting at windmills works and surprises both you and the windmill.  If you’re in the Springs go and vote.

I don’t want to have to move from Colorado.  Vote.  Why should they make US run away?  Vote.

It’s Monday and my head is empty.  You’re just lucky I’m not roaming the netz looking for brains.

Partly, paradoxically, my head feels empty because I have too many things in there, including but not limited to several characters whining, b*tching and moaning that I haven’t written them yet.

I’m still in catch up mode – might be in it for the rest of my life at this rate.  Partly this is from having been sick, of course, but partly it’s because the way I figure it I’m holding down three jobs, or at least what passes for a job for other people who work on line: I’m doing a blog post a day; I’m (at least trying to.  We’ll see if I make it) writing four novels a year and a few short stories along the way; and I’m doing six to ten posts for PJM (I know it was slack last week.  I just couldn’t.)  On top of that there is the trying to put up the backlist in my copious spare time.  And I’m sure I’m forgetting other stuff…

Part of the sense of tiredness is that this month on Amazon I’m possibly having my worst month ever, and I wonder what is going on, if my prices are too low or too high or if the fact I’m ranty has a bad effect.  In other accounts I monitor, the hits are picking up, but not in mine, so I’m moping around and considering going to eat some worms.

I wonder if it’s because I put up the long collections and now no one is buying anything waiting for me to put more of them up? (ain’t happening.  I put those up because they pre-existed the ebooks, as it were.)

I need to get the musketeer mysteries up.  And I need to write new novels.  I need to get the recording booth set up, and I want to have t-shirts done for the subscribers and I need to finish my web site and… yeah. …And I just want to know where I can get the extra time.  Maybe that’s why we’re painting the recording booth as a tardis.

Of course, the fact this month is lousy in sales so far just makes me go “Why bother?” and that’s a bad thing when I’m on the treadmill and have been running as fast as I can for a long time.

Unfortunately I pretty much know I have a year – two if I’m lucky – to bring this up to where it can support us, (at least we can count on a year, probably.  I am not willing to bet on two.  Though we could get lucky) and honestly, sometimes it feels the more I do the less money I make overall.  It’s distressing.  Or maybe I’m just whiney today.

On the good side and extreme progress, I’ve sent Witchfinder to the editor.  I’m considering entering the obvious “in your face” stuff the early readers have sent back, then setting up a quick-and-dirty create space version so I can send out arcs.  I need to ask the artist about the cover, and if it’s not going to happen, I’ll need to make other arrangements.  But I understand arcs to places like Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist are important, even if they get awful reviews.  I understand it’s rougher (word wise) than my normal work, and I wonder if it is because I wrote it so slowly and piece meal, or if it is because I’ve now revised it four times, because I was trying to fix the structure.  I’ve learned long ago that when I revise something I lose the sense of what I was doing, and tend to kitchensink it, so if I do it too much, it will get rough.  I trust my editor with my words which for writers is more difficult than trusting someone with your life, (I’d probably trust him with my life too. He’s a friend.)  But should I send the earcs out, before that polishing is done?

Anyway, it will get done, one way or another.  Things will go up, even if I’m feeling tired and all discouraged.  It just might take a little while longer – like a couple of weeks.

This week I need to get back to Through Fire and stick wedges under Zen’s nails until she talks to me.  I feel like I’m missing 1/3 of the plot, at least and she won’t talk.  Of course, she’s Kit’s sister.  Torturing her might make her clam up more.

Unfortunately to re-orient from editing Witchfinder to finishing Through Fire, I need to re-read A Few Good Men, and you know how bad an idea that is?  No?   Lucius and Nat are going to camp in my head again.  I had a hard enough time not letting them have the entire series.

There are… characters who stay.  There are characters who show up for a story, then leave, others stay.  Unfortunately for me, those two – let’s face it — bad dudes who took up residence in my head when I was SOCMOB seem to be persistent ones.  I’m not sure if there’s a market for more stuff with them as main characters, so I just worry.  And once I read their book they’ll be awake and trying to get me to write them again.  There is a story, around the time Nat gets invalided from service, and it is either a long novella or a novel slotting in after Through Fire in the time line – but whether Toni would be interested, or whether I should even worry about that is something else.  Should I do them Indie instead?  But then will it sell at all?

At any rate, right now the plan is to finish Through Fire and then Darkship Revenge in the next month (by, say, mid-October) and then do either Bowl of Red for Baen or The Brave and The Free for me.  (And that one is also loud.)

Meanwhile should I go on throwing the back log short stories up there?  Or do I just concentrate on writing novels?  And what about the shorts?  Doesn’t volume count?  Or does volume make it harder for people to find my longer stuff?

And there’s other administrivia that needs to be done.

BUT for now, I’m going to read A Few Good Men and get back in the series mind space.  Then I’ll write the rest of Through Fire, hopefully with the missing third showing up soon.  (WHEN did I become a pantser?  I don’t like it.)

So pardon this scattered and whining blog.  It’s all TXRed’s fault (and for those who don’t read comments, TXRed is a commenter here) for having given me her sinus infection via the computer.  Infected sinuses always make me crabby and whiney.

I’m going to stick to blaming poor Red.

And we won’t even go into the sustained depression that is politics and international affairs, because NO ONE wants me to get locked up in a padded room.  (At least I hope not.)  And September 11 is coming, and I still haven’t got over the anger at what happened last 9/11.  See, if my nation gets angry, I don’t have to.  If my nation tries to sweep it under the rug…  I wake up screaming.

So, yeah, I know.  It’s a whine.  This too shall pass.

Real post tomorrow.  Thank you for letting me b*tch and moan.