I was born in a culture in which belief in fate is unquestionable.  From lullabies about star-crossed lovers who were fated to die (no, really) to lullabies about poor boys born to be big men, (or rich boys born to be brought low,) through no achievement or choice of their own, I had imbedded the idea of fate through the fingertips long before I set fingers to keyboard to write.

It is of course a concept that exists in every culture.  And you can understand why.  Or at least I can.  Even in the most meritocratic of societies – and no society is perfectly meritocratic, because you can’t make sure that everyone has the same connections/birth, etc, nor can you prevent the social animal humans are from taking that and myriad other sub-rational cues into account  — there are inexplicable failures and inexplicable successes.  You’re left scratching your head, while the deserving sink and the undeserving prosper.

And even in the most hidebound society, where if you’re born to the right people, and have the right connections, you should have a perfect life, fate intervenes.  You get an illness, an accident deforms you, you fall in unavailing love with JUST the wrong person… and your life is a wreck, if you’re alive at all.

Humans are designed, as part of our social animal nature, to have a “moral” component.  The moral component is not exactly what we, modern people, consider moral, but something older, less ethically complicated in which morality is doing what is considered right in that society: you appease the right god, you treat your enemies/friends the right way, and you’ll be rewarded and everything will be well.

You catch a wiff of that “morality” in the older legends of mankind (and to an extent it is still around – now feeding the college bubble.)

The only way to reconcile that with reality and to continue believing if you perform X correct action, you’ll get Y desired result is to believe in fate.  You could say it keeps us from going completely insane, lost in a world of chaos where nothing makes sense.

Because of that, it shows up in even the most “rational” societies.  You find it expressed “I guess it wasn’t meant to be” or “Perhaps the time wasn’t right.”  Or “My timing sucked” or…

So… It is everywhere, it is at the back of the human brain… but does fate exist?

We all know some people are luckier than others.  It is impossible, for instance, to picture Harry Potter doing half as well if it hadn’t been the early days of Amazon, when it suddenly started selling in the US before it was available here, and the publishers who had rejected it suddenly decided to jump on the bandwagon and give it star treatment.  And eh… not that my first three books were Harry Potter (for one, I got so far up Shakespeare that they’re difficult to read – a serious flaw, I must admit) but it took amazing bad luck to – after sixteen years of trying to sell a novel, and two years of waiting for the novel to be published – have it come out right after 9/11.  (It might have ended up the same, mind you, but… who knows?)  Or to have the first real novel with a real plot I wrote (Draw One In The Dark.  Okay, I’m not saying the other novels didn’t have a plot.  Some obviously do.  But I only UNDERSTOOD plot with DOITD.  It was the first time I felt on top of the form) end up through a series of mishaps, with the worst cover possible (the hard cover cover, not the mmp.  The hard cover is not only inappropriate for a light fantasy, it displays about the level of competency my son – then eleven – could have managed at that age.)

Was it fate?  Probably not.  Or maybe yes.  Or then again perhaps.

I believe in fate on odd Tuesdays and alternate Wednesdays.  I don’t believe in it in the dreadful idea that it controls all your thoughts, all your movements, all your outcomes.  I believe in it, more, as an extra weight or an added breeze at your back.

If you study, say, Heinlein’s life before the books finally hit big, you could easily believe he was the unluckiest man alive.  Pursuit after pursuit turned sour for him.  This isn’t even unusual in people who achieve big and stay on top of their game.

Which brings me to my observation – sometime ago – that the “darlings” of the publishing field, until (at least) the publishing industry got full control of it and could control their fates were often the most unfortunate in the long run.  You get a first book you ever wrote picked up and miraculously it hits (back before the game was SERIOUSLY rigged) and then … what?  If you don’t know how to keep it up, you will sink.   Your luck might still be fabulous, but unless you’re doing AT LEAST competent work, you won’t have a career.

Which I suppose is what Heinlein meant when he said luck was how the envious explained the work of genius.  It is, like most such bon mots overbroad and … somewhat wrong.  There are people who are suddenly and inexplicably lucky.  (Is Dan Brown a genius?  Perhaps in tapping into the exact vein that publishers and wealthy patrons wanted to promote.  I mean, I could see the same opportunity and had I had no moral scruples, I could have done it.  OTOH I’ve seen enough interviews with him, I think he rather believes his bizarre theory.  So… Not genius, and definite luck.)  But at the same time, those who continue being lucky (like Heinlein himself) owe less to luck and how it’s running than to their hard work and continuous, intelligent repositioning of their options.

Or, as my friend Kevin J. Anderson put it (And Dean Wesley Smith too, I think): the harder I work, the luckier I get.

Now, to the extent I believe in luck, I know my dad’s side of the family (mom’s side is difficult to gage, because people who continuously shoot themselves in the foot might or might not be born lame – who’d know?) has the sort of luck that, to quote Thomas Bailey Aldrich (Tom Bailey, Story of a Bad Boy, available from Gutenberg project, get it, you won’t regret it) “if they made hats, babies would be born without heads.”

And yet, I would bet you half of my writing colleagues think I’m way too lucky to live.  After all, I stayed employed and managed to make a living at a time when most people got one book and were out.

Genius?  Depends on what you consider genius.  It wasn’t intelligence.  But I try to keep my eye on what’s happening in the market, and I try to learn to improve my work – continuously, but then I started at a very low point – and I work.  I work harder than most people in my field.  (I remember being shocked at someone throwing a fit because her agent asked her for two proposals – at a time I was writing a proposal a month, and three or four novels a year.)  Not harder than all the people in my field.  I know people who work harder.  But given my handicaps of health, family, other obligations, I work as hard as I can.

I do it because I know my luck is naturally bad, and my fate probably tugs towards total failure at any given time.  And I can’t be having with that.

So does fate exist?  Who knows?  It seems like the sort of thing that chaos mechanics will somehow prove at some point… like they’ve proven that the mechanics of internet memes are the same as those of an Earthquake – unpredictable but more likely to hit in some places/at some times than others.

And if it exists and you’re fated to fail, does it matter?  Well, as I said, I view fate as a current pulling a certain way.  But currents can be overcome… with enough force.

Get yourself an outboard motor and go against the current of the river of fate.  Yes, you can.  And eventually fate gets tired.

Or to put it another way – you have to deal with your destiny.  Which is why I’m so fond of the Pratchett phrase that, supposedly means that: You’ve got to dree your weird.

You can spend your life raging at those who look like they’re blessed by fate, and letting envy eat you from the inside out.  Or you can shrug, assume your luck runs to bad.  And then make it so that nobody from outside can tell.

Dree your weird!

*Some very nice people have sent me guest posts, but since today is my double-blog day it didn’t feel right.  OTOH I’m so exhausted I’m not even going to try publishing work tonight.  I slept about 5 hours last night.  So, instead, I’m fobbing you off with the new opening of Noah’s Boy.*

Chapter One

 

The sun was setting in a splendor of red and gold over the Rocky Mountains, glistening like a fire over the remaining snow on the mountain tops when the young woman drove into Goldport in a brand new red pickup truck.

No one watching would have been particularly struck by her or by the pick up truck.

Nestled against the peaks of the Rockies, Goldport had once been a settlement of miners and frontiersmen and it was now a city of students and computer technicians, with a Victorian core forming the center of a town that was gentrifying and growing, acquiring a few spectacular glass-fronted highrises and a vibrant art and tourism scene.

In that environment, a college-age woman driving a four wheel vehicle was the most common of sights.  That she was Asian or partly Asian would startle no one since Golport was host to a vibrant Asian community.  And no one would have thought anything was particularly strange when she parked outside a low slung building atop of which a neon sign blinked the words Three Luck Dragon.

Someone might have thought it a little odd, though, when she entered the shiny red lacquered door  and a hand reached out to the window and turned the Open sign to Closed, right at the beginning of the dinner hour.

* * *

Beatrice Bao Ryu, better known to her friends as Bea Ryu, didn’t find it funny, when they closed the restaurant as she came in.  She found it distinctly unsettling.  But she managed a small smile, striking a pose of nonchalance as she said, “I don’t actually intend to shift and start a battle with Himself in here, you know?”  Her warm GeorRya accent drawled out onto what seemed for a moment to be the uncomprehending server – a skinny young man with Asian features.  But he bowed to her, looking scared.  “No,” he said.  His accent less obvious but no more Asian.  But he didn’t flip the sign to Open again.  Instead, he led her to a door next to the one marked “restrooms” and  knocked politely, then said something in rapid-fire Chinese.

Bea didn’t understand it.  Her maternal grandmother was Chinese, but her maternal grandfather was tall, blond and of Germanic ancestry.  As for Bea’s father, he was the great-grandson of Japanese immigrants to the United States.  Bea’s parents spoke English and their daughter had never learned either Chinese or Japanese till college, where she’d taken two years of Japanese – which meant she could catch the occasional word and say almost nothing.

A curt Chinese word answered from inside the mysterious door.  The server opened the door and remained bowed while Bea went in.

If she’d thought about it, and she’d never done so in so many words, she’d have expected the room into which she was ushered to be a sort of throne room, perhaps with some ancient gilded chair in the center.

That would have fit with what she’d read in the letters in her father’s desk drawer.

Whatever this criminal organization was, it dressed its leader in very pretty words: “Himself”, “Revered One.”  “Ancient One.”

Instead, the room she entered was small – only big enough to contain a desk-like table and two chairs, one on either side of it.  It might have been an interrogation cell, except that the person on the other side of the table had a Ryant metal bowl in front of him into which he was shelling peas.  With a pile of unshelled peas to the right of the bowl, and a pile of shells to the left, the sleeves of his white button-down rolled up to his elbows, and his hands working busily at the homely task, the man could have been any of a hundred middle-aged Chinese employees at a hundred different Chinese restaurants.

Bea cleared her throat.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “I think I’ve come to the wrong room.  You see, I was came to talk to The Ancient On—”

The man looked up and Bea took a step back and caught her breath, not scared exactly but startled, because the eyes were older than the middle-aged face.  They were older than any face.  Looking out of barely creased features, they appeared old as time and twice as deep, as though he’d existed through the uncounted ages of mankind and kept track of every slip, every error humans had made on the way to civilization.

“Oh,” Bea said.

The man said three brief words in Chinese and then his eyes widened, as though in shock.  He closed his eyes a moment.  “You don’t speak Chinese.”  It wasn’t a question.  He raised an eyebrow.  “Japanese, then?”

She cleared her throat.  “I–  No.  You see, I took a year in college, but—”

He shrugged, dismissing the matter.  “It’s of little importance,” he said.  “Our people have spoken many tongues, throughout the centuries.  What we speak doesn’t matter, except for comfort and a sense of heritage.”  His own English was almost unaccented, save for a faint hint of something British and very high bred.  “What I need from you requires no great linguistic competency.”

Bea swallowed hard.  She’d rehearsed this, all the long drive from Atlanta, and the nights in motel rooms, but somehow, suddenly it seemed very hard to say the words she’d planned.  It was the look of immense age in the man’s eyes, she thought.  But she swallowed again and said, her voice sounding strangely wavering in her own ears, “I don’t care what you require from me.  I came to tell you to leave my parents alone–  To leave dad’s business alone.”

The man looked up and frowned a little.  His hands resumed his work of shelling peas.  “Your parents,” he said at last.  “Finally saw the light and sent you over.  Now they have nothing more to fear from my people.”

She shook her head.  “My parents did not send me over.  Not that it matters.  I have no intention of doing whatever you want me to do.  And why you think—”

“Sit down,” the man said, gently.

Bea shook her head.  Those soft words had sounded like an order, but she had no intention of obeying.  In fact, despite all her best intentions and everything she’d intended to tell this creature about himself and his criminal organization, face to face with him, she found the best she could do was disobey.  Just – disobey and hold on to her rebellion with every fiber in her being, even as she felt him trying to bend her to his will.

He raised his eyebrows at her.  “Surely,” he said.  “Your parents have told you what you owe me.”

“No,” she said.  “Owe you?  I don’t even know who you are except someone who has been messing with dad’s business.”

“Truly?  Then you don’t know we’re an organization of dragon shape shifters?”

“Sure,” she said.  “I know that.  But the only reason I even knew you existed and that you wanted something with me was that I overheard mom and dad talking.  I found out you were the reason dad’s office got vandalized and about the calls to his clients.  The reason dad has had so much trouble keeping afloat as a veterinarian.  And that to make it stop you wanted me to come and…  And do something.  I wasn’t sure what.”

“I see.  Well, you came.  That’s what matters.”

“I came to tell you it must stop.”

The man looked up at her and smiled.  “Ah.  Spirit will serve you well, but do sit down.  I have a long explanation to make, and I despise having to look up to do it.”

She hesitated, but the truth was she wanted to know why anyone, even a criminal organization of shifters would require her presence urgently enough to interfere with her father’s business to get it.

She knew she was attractive.  She had a mirror.  She knew that the combination of her varied heritage had resulted in an oval face, large green eyes, and a pleasant combination of other features, all of which looked striking with her long, glossy black hair.  Since about the age of sixteen, she’d become used to looks of admiration from the male half of the species.

But the truth was too that she had no illusions about the full extent of her beauty.  She was pretty and striking, but not so out of the normal leagues in attractiveness that dreams of modeling had ever occurred to her.  The campus of the college where she studied art could count at least a hundred women more beautiful than her.

None of her other characteristics were any further out of the ordinary.  She was smart and talented, but was not going to set the world on fire with either her intellect or even with her art talent.  So why would this criminal organization want her that badly?

She knew it had something to do with her turning into a dragon, but it was just now and then.  Occasionally.  Truly, hardly ever, since she’d turned twenty and learned to control herself.

“So?” Bea asked.  “Why is it so important that I come here?  And why do you think I should obey you?  Or that I owe you anything?”

The man smiled.  It was a surprisingly engaging smile.  It seemed to her as he narrowed his eyes that a sense of amusement touched them too.  “I think,” he said, softly.  “That I’m about to shock you very much.  However, I trust you’ll let me explain my motives before dismissing them.”

She swallowed, wondering what he meant by that.

“Forget what I said about owing me.  That was…  You see, where I come from, it is assumed you owe your ancestors unusual respect, and I’m the ancestor of most of the dragon shifters alive today.”

“That is hardly likely,” she said.  “I know all my grandparents, and I—”

“I am not your grandfather.  Not even your great grandfather.  It’s much… older than that.  Thousands of years.   How many, I’m afraid I’ve lost track.

“But that’s imposs—”

“Please, Miss Ryu.”  He paused, his hands holding a pea pod over the bowl, looking at her.  Then he said, “Hear me out.”

It wasn’t a command – or it shouldn’t have been, spoken in that voice as soft as crackling flame.  But she stopped and listened.

His nail ripped the pea pod apart and his finger swept down the green envelope, trickling glistening little globes into the bowl.  “I have…  that is…  I don’t suppose your parents told you that I am your ancestor in—” He seemed to be counting in his head.  “Your mother’s mother’s side and your father’s mother’s side.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.  “My father is Japanese and you—”

“Oh.”  He dropped another spent pea pod on the growing pile and made a gesture, either dismissing that restaurant or the entire world.  “This is an identity of convenience,” he said.  “I told you my people predate most such things.  Dragons—Dragons belong to the whole world, even if our type is mostly of Asia.  There are other types—”

He resumed shelling peas, now very fast, as he spoke.  “It is the immutable rule of our people that the Great Sky Dragon must be a descendant of the previous Great Sky Dragon in the male line.  Unbroken male line.  And that he must be a Dragon shifter. We don’t know why but that’s how… that’s how it works.”  Peas tinkled into the metal bowl like falling rain.  A green smell filled the room.  “That was me, the many times grandson of the Great Sky Dragon, growing up on the banks of the Yalu River at a time when—”  He shrugged.  “It doesn’t matter, except to say that in my very long life, and sometimes I forget how many thousands of years it is, exactly, I’ve had wives, concubines and lovers, but—”  He looked up and smiled at her.  “There is no reason to blush.  In a life as long as mine, well, there will be friendship and love, and, occasionally, less honorable associations.  But what I meant to say is that of all my connections with human and shifter, many daughters were born.  My line is threaded through dragon kind, Ryus and Lungs and many other family names are honorably descended from me.  But in that time, only one son was ever born to me.”  He looked up again, and amusement pulled at the corner of his mouth.  “He was not born of a normal marriage.  It was more… a treaty and a ritual pairing.  Years ago, there was a … another dragon tribe.  Near the frozen… ah… I believe what is now called Scandinavia.  Their ruler was a woman, a female.  She was called the Queen of The West, as I was the King of the East.  We made a treaty, to keep our people from fighting each other, and..  There was a symbolic marriage.  Which resulted in a son, who was not a shifter.  I thought our blood didn’t work together, that we’d never have children who were shifters from that line, so I ignored it.

“Until someone stole the Pearl of Heaven and I found that while I could touch his mind, I could not control him as I could other dragon shifters.  And it wasn’t just because he had dragon-blood from the tribe of the west, for I could sense he had my blood too.  I had people trace back through his ancestry and found that he was descended from that long ago forgotten son.  And he is my only male descendant on the unbroken male line, the only one with a power close to my own.  The only one who can carry my burden.  The one who will carry my burden.”

A fleeting poor bastard crossed Bea’s mind, but she did her best to look attentive and blank.

“His name is Tom Ormson and he is…” The man she was now sure was The Great Sky Dragon shrugged.  “Very young.  I think in his early twenties.  He lives here in town and owns a diner, the George.”

“Yes?” Bea said.

“I’d like you to marry him.”

For a while, Bea was speechless.  She’d heard of arranged marriages, of course, particularly in Asia, but her parents were American and thoroughly modern, and they would no more think of contracting a marriage for her, than they would think of binding her feet. When she found her voice, she said, “And he’s agreed to this?”

“Oh, no.  He doesn’t even know about it.”  A frown pulled at the old dragon’s mouth.  “In fact, I think he has plans of marrying a panther shifter.  At least he’s living with her.  Completely unsuitable, of course.  Her people are not our people.”

“But you think he’ll agree?” Bea asked.

“I think he’ll tell me to go to hell,” the old dragon said, and looked up with a faint smile.  “And so will his girlfriend.  She’s feisty enough, and she has no fear of me.”

“But… you want me to marry him?  You said you can’t make him do what you wish, so…”

“No.  You’ll have to find how to make him do what I wish.”

Bea stood up.  Her legs were trembling.  She couldn’t let her father lose the business he’d worked for all his life, but neither could she agree to this.  The elderly man-dragon wanted her to seduce a total stranger one who was in a serious relationship.  No.  There were limits to what she was willing to do, even for her beloved father.  They’d get tired of trying to force his hand eventually.  They’d leave them alone.  Bea couldn’t sell herself for life for the sake of her father.  That was prostitution and slavery, combined.

Standing, she glared down at the Great Sky Dragon.  She could feel power rolling off him, though she could not have explained what type of power or how she felt it.

And anyway, though she didn’t have a boyfriend, she’d be damned if she was going to be thrown at this stranger and make him marry her even though he was living with someone else.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “You’ve got the wrong person.  I’m sure there’s someone else you can call on, who will be willing to do it.  I don’t want to trick a man who is in love with someone else into marrying me.  I don’t want an arranged marriage.”

There was a long silence.  “I’ll let myself out,” Bea said.

“Stay!”  It wasn’t so much an order as a sudden plea.  She’d turned to leave the room and now turned again.  The Great Sky Dragon was looking up at her, and his eyes held an expression she’d have thought impossible: raw, undiluted fear.

“Don’t you understand?” the Great Sky Dragon said, his voice low.  “Do you think this is something I’d want, throwing an untrained girl at a stubborn boy and hoping for the best?  Compared to me you’re nothing but babies.  I thought he could have his panther girl and be happy, and when it dissolved in a century or two, then I could guide him towards a marriage that will produce dragons.

“But there is a trial coming and I’m not sure I can–  If I’m not here, he’ll need to be married to one of our own, recognizably our own.  He doesn’t look like our kind.  My people will rebel at his orders.  And it will need to be known that he will have dragon children, to rule after him.  In the battle ahead, there might not be thousands of years to spawn.”

Bea didn’t realize she’d sat down, but her trembling legs were about to not let her stand up anymore.  “Why would he be giving orders?”

“My grandfather told me of the dragons-beyond-the-stars who could—who would one day attack the Earth.”  The Great Sky Dragon shrugged.  “I always thought it was a legend, nothing more.  But–  Lately I’ve had signs that it is not.  There is a great power out there, encircling, trying to remove me, trying to…”  He frowned.  “I think trying to attack my people.  I’ve lived very long, and death doesn’t scare me, but—”

“But?”

“But when I go all my power, and the destiny of my people will fall on the head of Tom Ormson, a stranger, raised outside our traditions.”  He held up a hand to keep her from interrupting.  “Oh, I know, you also have not been taught our traditions, but everyone knows your parents, both of them, are descended from my first-born daughter.  They will fall in line.  And you can help your husband through the trial to come by winning for him the respect of our people.”

Yesterday a commenter said something to the extent that while she loved to write but she didn’t know if anyone wanted to buy it.

This is, of course, where all of us start – pro, amateur, wanna be, and those who spend years writing novels and throwing them under the bed, never even telling their nearest and dearest that they’re writers.

In this way, I think (though correct me if I’m wrong ) writing is worse than music or art (though the reason my husband never pursued performance in music is that he freezes in front of an audience.  Or he used to.  Age cures a lot of that.) because it’s more interior and more part of who you are, in a way.

Don’t yell at me.  I do art too (at a very beginner level) and I know all about how it changes how you see things – most of art is teaching you to see.  Now I think about it, that’s also learning to write, only it’s learning to perceive the world in more ways than normal – but it’s still not the same thing.

If you’re the sort of person who will grow up to want to write, chances are you’ve been putting yourself to sleep, every night, with these little stories you told yourself.

If you’re like me, you were telling these stories to your little friends in elementary and possibly – with a stronger more “adult” edge to your teen friends.  Further, you were writing them in exercise books and passing each completed chapter back, so the class could read it.

Okay, you might not have been doing any of those things.  The fact that I was doing those things and they started so far back that I can’t remember how they started, probably helped make sure I wasn’t just putting books in the drawer for twenty years.  I knew some people liked my stuff.  I just didn’t know how many or if they would pay for it.

But I suspect more introverted people, or people who were introverted in a different way (I often used/use stories as a shield between me and the world) never showed these stories at all.  So when they started writing them…  They knew these were the stories they told themselves, the stories they liked to listen to, but not if anyone else would want to hear them, much less pay for them.  And unlike telling a story, you don’t get a reaction. Plus, in blogs or Amazon even, if you dare put it up, you’re always going to get the Obligatory Jerk Commenter TM.  It’s a fact of human nature that people are more likely to comment when they’re upset/irked than when they’re happy with what you did.  So you might have 100 devoted readers and never know it.  BUT the minute something goes up you’ll have the OJC.

Ric Locke was fond of saying that in this brave new world of publishing there are enough buyers with varied enough tastes that you can sell practically anything.  It doesn’t matter if your story is “bad” in the opinion of North American readers, it might catch the fancy of the French and take off like a rocket.  (The thing to understand is that there is no such thing as OBJECTIVELY bad.  There’s “objectively incomprehensible” – i.e. what I call “written in Martian” – and those don’t do too well.  But there’s very few of them.  Other than that what I consider horrible and would hate to be forced to read can and often does make money hand over fist.  To wit, Dan Brown.  And I’m sure some of my odder tastes would make a lot of you run screaming into the night [mostly because I like ingrown and involuted “literary” when I’m in a certain type of mood.])

So, given a large enough market Ric is bound to be right – and the emarket is very large indeed.  It sprawls all over the world and grows larger by the day, both in spread and in reach via cheaper and more ingenuous ereaders.

Because of that, if you’re sitting there, holding onto your “precious” and afraid no one will love it, chances are someone will love it.  As long as it’s not written in Martian.

Now, it might not take off right away, and if it does it might not make you millions, but a steady income every month.  Which is, of course, more than most of us ever got.

So if you put it out, don’t rush and take it back because “nobody loves it” – it takes time and opportunity for someone to find you.  And they’re more likely to do so the more you have out.  Dean Smith says you get a bump every thirty books (or shorts, or whatever) or so.

I know you’ve heard all this before, and I’m only repeating it as a sort of mea culpa.  I’ve told you guys this, over and over…

And I haven’t taken my own medicine.

Oh, sure, I have books out, though not many of them, mind.  “Books” in this case are short stories I’ve published before, and we all remember the charming moment when I was trying to figure out what to price them a few months ago and RES had to remind me they’re not sausage, you don’t sell them by the inch.

Which brings us to…  Which brings us to the fact that when I put them out, I thought in stupid terms.  Most of the stories I’m putting out have been published before.  I’ve been paid for them once.  (Often not much, as there was no pro market for space opera.)  It was, too, a time when people were putting up entire novels for 99c to 2.99.

So I thought… “Well, I’m a pro, 99c for a short is justified.”  And I put “shorts” up to about 7k up at 99c.  Stories above that went at 2.99, as did collections of five stories.

They did okay, though they didn’t make much money.  Hard to do at 33c a sale.  And it sort of made me slack off on putting them up, so months went by with nothing new, even though I have tons of shorts sitting in the drawer.

And I busied myself with the other writing.  Until recently the idea started filtering through the noise that the bottom of short stories was now 2.99.  You could sell a short at 99c as a loss leader, but if you wanted to be taken seriously, it was 2.99.

I also have bought a bunch of indie stuff lately, and realized that I was paying 3.99 and 4.99 for novellas of maybe 10k to 15k words.  And not grudging it.

I still thought you guys were all drinking your own ink and that no one would buy them at the new prices.

However, in a fit of daring, yesterday, I went over to Smashwords and changed all the prices, while at Office-ish.  I didn’t have the time/opportunity to do that for Amazon and Barnes and Noble until late at night, so those have only been up a few hours, particularly Amazon which takes almost 12 hours to process.

However, this morning, out of curiosity, I checked sales and… you could knock me down with a feather.

Look, take in account that Smashwords SITE – not the affiliates – is all you can see easily till you get the reports once a quarter.  It is also – for various reasons, including a sclerotic search engine – the worst selling of all the sites SW has access to.  Normally I sell – off the site — about 10 books a month, give or take.

Well, I sold 3 overnight, and of the more expensive ones.  And on Amazon I sold three copies of one of the short stories since it went up at a higher price, which was about an hour.  (And while my sales are usually larger there, that’s still very good.)

So… what have we learned from this?  It’s a lesson I’ve learned over and over again from more tangible things.  Like, we buy used furniture, I refinish it, we use it for a while, and when time comes to sell it, I’ll go with say double what I paid for it when it was a mess.  And we get no calls, or if we do people find all sorts of problems with it, and try to talk us down to what it was when we bought it, in bad shape.  BUT leave it to husband or son, who price it at five to ten times what we paid, and it will be gone within the day, and people just fork over the money and leave all happy.  Or look at the last house we sold.  We were getting extreme low-ball offers, and people found all sorts of things to bitch about.  For two years.  Then we raised the price 50k and it sold in three months at very close to asking, in one of the worst real estate markets we’d seen at the time (now it’s worse, but that’s something else.)

What does this mean?  I don’t know.  That we tend to undervalue that which is ours/we have.  That writers, in particular, are chronicle self doubters.  That most people are… er… more loose with their money than I am.  Or not, since I pay the inflated prices, too, provided it’s something I want to read and it gives me an hour of nice reading before bed.

It definitely tells me people value more that which they perceive as more expensive.

Of course, there is a ceiling to this, but where is it?  I hear people talking of a bottom of 4.99 for short stories and I go “That’s just crazy talk” – but given the price of an ice-cream cone or a coffee… well… maybe it isn’t.

For now, I’ll leave them at 2.99 to 4.99 with the really short “lighter than air” stories at 1.99.  But … well… we’ll see, right.

And for those of you who say “yeah, Sarah, but you have a name” – yes, but Sylvia Haute (my pen name for the juvenilia) doesn’t, and she too just sold a couple of shorts at Amazon.

I’ll keep you posted on how it does in a month or so, but for now it looks like a rousing success, and a lesson in not undervaluating yourself – in getting things out there and not being afraid to charge what the market will bear.

It shouldn’t be a hard lesson to learn, but it is, an one I must have beaten into my head very often, apparently.

 

 

It is not true that I’m cheap.  Given enough money to spend I could make beautiful music.  Now and then – when the prize is really high – I buy a lottery ticket for the joy of spending three days dreaming of all the things I’d spend the money on.

Actually the sad thing is that I’m not really interested in things, as such.  The more you have, the more you need to dust.  But I’d love to be able to hire people to do the stuff that eats up most of my day.  It’s not that I dislike doing it – I actually like cooking, I enjoy certain types of cleaning and sometimes I think ironing (particularly with the super dooper iron, which is recommended for start up ironing services.  So, you know I have a fall back) is my zen practice, and I’m fond of grocery shopping because I’m good at finding bargains and if I can drag one of the guys along it’s even more fun.  And then there’s all the things I enjoy which I don’t even have the time to try to do – garden, for instance.

The problem is that it’s very easy to spend the entire day picking up this, sifting that litter box, running to the store for a box of eggs… and not sit down to write at all.  There’s always any number of repairs around the house (Okay, stupid of me to live in a Victorian) which are waiting for my having two hours to do them.

And then there’s the other stuff.  I don’t know how many blog sites I’ve angered because I said I’d do an interview and then it went clear out of my mind.  And there’s books due.  And there’s mentoree’s stuff to read – since two of those are my kids, I get ambushed at the oddest times with “Mom, have you read?”  (Younger kid shows a disturbing tendency to write good historical stories about events that I had no clue he even knew about – I guess he’s been reading from my bookcases?)

And on top of this there’s publishing.

So, if I ever get rich, I want a cook, a house cleaning service, the clothes shall be sent to the laundry, and I’ll hire an assistant to keep my stuff in order.

But the problem with that is that the lottery guys keep picking the WRONG numbers.

So, I have to get real and deal with the fact that I am poor (house repairs, car repairs, two kids in college) and I have a lot of back log to publish, and other stuff I wish to write to publish.

Consider that most short stories sell for 99c so you’re getting 33 c per story, and that short stories don’t sell that well (not as well as novels.)  I will sell – on Amazon, I apparently sell more through Smashwords affiliates, but that’s not coming on line yet – about 10 of half the shorts a month.  Which means right now, for the sake of simplicity $30 for all 20 (I think I actually have 22) stories out.  About $3 for each story.

I routinely hear of people paying $100 to someone to get a cover, edit and put their short stories up.  At $3 a month that’s going to take a while to pay back.

Even for a novel, say you make $100 a month.  If you paid – and I’ve heard of this — $4000 to get it there and ready, you’re in the hole for… how much?

So below I’m going to outline the process I go through to put stuff up on the cheap.  My goal is to have shorts pay for themselves within 3 months.  Novels… I have to risk more.

If you’re not up to that, consider a micro-press which has mechanisms to do this.  A caveat is to make sure that your contract is for no more than two years.  Things are changing too fast for you to keep that property tied up longer.  The other caveat is that it’s a game of numbers.  Even a micro press (or a small.  Or a large one) can’t give you the publicity to make one book fly.  But two books, you’ll do better, three books even better, etc.

1-      If you’re not an old pro – by which I mean you haven’t published at least ten short stories and three novels, all of which sold either to publishers or sell well to the public – for the love of BOG have someone read your stuff before it goes out.

No, I don’t mean for copy-editing, that comes later.  I mean for sense, pacing and general cohesion.  I.e. to find out if it’s a story or a cabbage.  Even for me, and I’ve written over thirty novels, it’s all too easy to write a novel and concentrate only on the parts that interest you and no one else.  Say you really like shopping.  Your characters might very well shop more than anyone else has an interest in.  Or say you like eating… well, okay, most people like eating, but all the same the novel should not be a succession of breakfasts.  [What about dinners?—Ed.  Shut up – Sarah.]

You need to make sure the story is actually there.  How do you do that on the cheap?  Well, find six friends who read more or less what you write.  (This is important.  There’s stuff I can’t judge because it’s not what I read primarily, so I don’t know what readers of it like.  Say contemporary romance.)  Get them to read it.  If three of them don’t agree on a problem, then don’t change anything.  If they do, consider it.

Friends, mind, not your spouse, mother or cat – ie people who either won’t tell you the truth or who are so close to you that they won’t see the holes in your reasoning or your story telling.  [Your cats read? – Ed? Shut Up – Sarah]

2.  Have the dang thing copyedited.  On the cheap?  Sure.  Either find one of those annoying friends who live and breathe comma placement (everyone has one.  I have several) or trade with other indie writers.  “You proof mine, I proof yours.”  It can be done.

If you can have it copyedited twice, then go over it one more time.  You’d be amazed what you miss.

3. Covers.  You’d be amazed how much people spend on these.  $250 or $500 are counted as “cheap”.  This is insane for short stories.

If you have a program like photoshop (though older son does well with paint.net, but he’s a better artist than I am) or paintshop, you don’t need to pay someone for cover design.  Go and study covers for your genre at Amazon and your local supermarket, so you know what’s current.

Then… Then there are several sites.  This site has a bunch of free ones. (Be aware some of these are NOT properly vetted and pirated stuff falls in.)

I usually cruise by morguefile and if I don’t find what I want there, go to dreamstime.  If you set the search for art only (not photographs) and start at lowest price, it is possible to get art for under $2.  (Depending on what you write.  Sometimes the photos are fine, of course.)  For novels, I’ve been known to spend $7 on art for a cover.  Yeah, I know, last of the great spenders.

Things to remember: fonts are copyrighted.  If they come with a program you own, you’re fine, though.  Also, if there’s a recognizable person on the cover, make sure there’s a model release.  If there’s a recognizable commercial property (bar, restaurant, shop) make sure there’s a property release.

As with the novel, show it to someone before you put it out.  Second pair of eyes HELPS.

Oh, yeah, 3.a – for conversions I use sigil.  If I can figure it out, your kindergartner can.  So, try that.

And that’s it. Now go and have fun.

For those who don’t know and under “Membership hath privileges,” those who regularly comment here get to promote their own stuff … should be once a week, but it’s actually once when I remember it, because now the days just blur between novels.

I haven’t read my readers’ books and I make no warranty of their quality, I’m just passing along what they tell me.

So, here is what they posted in comments:

From Leah Cutter: 

I just put out a collection of short stories, “The Shredded Veil Mysteries.”

December 21st, 2012 hadn’t been the end of the world, but the Great Unraveling.

The veils between the Seen and Unseen worlds had shredded.

The living had suddenly learned they weren’t alone.

Andy had seen it all, done it all, as a detective working Vice when he’d be alive. Now, as a ghost, he works as a private investigator.

Come explore the mysteries of Heaven and Hell, of cameras with souls, and thieves with hearts.

Includes the short stories “Hell By Any Other Name,” “To Hell And Back,” “Hell For The Holidays,” “High Stakes Hell,” and “Postcards From Hell.”

It’s available all the usual places, but I’ll just include the Amazon link.

From Cedar Sanderson:

I have a novella on Amazon. A SF story of first contact, but not your usual encounter with aliens. How human is a genetic replica? How much emotion should a planetary scout allow themselves towards the unknown and unknowable? I love to read first contact stories, and drew elements from a favorite Art Noveau illustration as well.

From Pam Uphoff:

A collection of three novellas.
Free through Monday!
Then I’m going to bump the price up, as per Dean Wesley Smith’s advice.

From Gina Marie Wylie:

My book “Hannah Sawyer” is available now on Amazon in Kindle format, hard copy will follow next week. It is the third book in the Kinsella Universe. No, I can’t write a book every month, I have a backlog of stuff I’ve posted online. Hannah Sawyer is a diffident young woman who is caught up in a unimaginable war, a war that requires the best efforts of everyone if humanity has any chance at all of surviving. She learns bitter lessons about what bravery is, what duty is, and above all, who she is.

From Mike Weatherford:

I’m still working on my novel about the Mastodon party. I have posted the Prologue and a few other things to my website, Old Patriot’s Pen, for all to get a taste.

From Jonah Hewitt:

The Sequel to my first novel, Limbo’s Child, is coming out around Christmas (with any luck) but the first one is available on Kindle now! It’s getting great reviews. There’s a sample chapter of the next book in the current one.

From Alistair Young:

t’s not quitean indie work in the publication sense yet, but I’m currently writing one-a-day or thereabouts nanofics set in my SF universe, the Associated Worlds. Some story, lots of metafiction and vignette-type work. And while I’m currently posting them to my blog:

http://eldraeverse.com/category/writing/fic-a-day-writing/

…I do plan to collect them, the rest of this year’s. and some longer pieces into an actual e-book (and possible physical book) sometime around the start of next year. If that would qualify, I would surely appreciate a pointer!

From Stephanie Osborn:

Chromosphere Press just released my SF short story, “The More Things Change.” It’s available on Kindle and Nook.

November 6, Travis Taylor and I will have a nonfiction book coming out from Baen titled, “A New American Space Plan.”

November 15, Book 4 of my Displaced Detective series, “The Case of the Cosmological Killer: Endings and Beginnings” will be released.

Both the latter 2 works will be in print and ebook.

From Bill Swears:

My apocalyptic science fiction/urban fantasy/ horror story with hope, Zook Country, will be published by Twilight Times Books in trade paperback on December 15th. It’s already available as an e-book here and can be liked here: https://www.facebook.com/ZookCountry.

From Mackey Chandler:

“Down to Earth” the sequel to “April” will be free to download for Amazon Kindle all day Monday the 8th. April is a young resident of an orbital habitat who eagerly got involved in a rebellion and war of independence. “Down to Earth” continues her adventures after the war trying to keep what they have won. The third book in the series, “The Middle of Nowhere” will be ready later this year.

My site is: http://mackeychandler.com/

From Nas Hedron:

My SF novel “Luck and Death at the Edge of the World” and my novelette “The Virgin Birth of Sharks” both came out this year (May and July). All my books are available through my Amazon author page(http://tinyurl.com/NasOnAmazon) and through Kobo and WHSmith through the links on my home page (www.NassauHedron.com). Both books have an extensive “Facts in the Fiction” section after the story itself that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the factual background to elements in the fiction. Finally, both books also have brand new companion web pages where prospective readers can find samples from the book and existing readers can find bonus content (http://luckanddeath.wordpress.com/ and http://virginsharks.wordpress.com/). Great blog by the way! Nas Hedron.

From Cyn Bagley:

My last collection of short stories is called Ghostly Glimmers II.
Amazon kindle
Smashwords

I am putting my novel Perchance to Dream on my blogspot http://scrambledsage.blogspot.com – it is a character-driven supernatural horror story about two women and one man affected by a church run by demons.

Once I have finished Perchance to Dream, I will do an edit and then put it up in 2013 on Amazon and Smashwords. I am working on Hilda’s Inn for Retired Heroes. This one is a fantasy epic. Plus I will be putting together the second novel on EJ Hunter’s world.

In the background, I am writing another paranormal romance (my way–not harlequin’s way) between a woman and a motorcycle mechanic werewolf. Plus the hubby and I went to Goldfield for some material for a book I started writing and quit writing a decade ago. It’s a desert story about two different generations of Nevadans. It will end up having supernatural components.

So that is what I am doing– I hope I have enough time to finish it all. I have more in the works.

From Sandra Ulbrich Almazan:

I have a SF novella called “Lyon’s Legacy,” which is about a scientist’s attempts to sabotage the cloning of her ancestor, a TwenCen rock star. It’s available on Amazon B&N and Smashwords. You can find links to the paper and audio versions on my Amazon page

From Sabrina Chase:

The print versions of all three books of my SF Trilogy are now available on Amazon and directly through CreateSpace — The Long Way Home (book 1)  , Raven’s Children (book2) and Queen of Chaos (book 3)

From Kiti Lappi:

Five short stories on Amazon Kindle  Night Work, After the Night Descends, Dealing With Elves,  Raven’s Night, The Task

have used a couple of the free promo days, will use the rest but right now I’m undecided as to when. Three are vampire stories, one urban fantasy and one a more traditional one.

And maybe I should add this since some of you might find some use for it, at least anybody who might be looking either for something to use for cheap/free fantasy style cover pictures, or as references for drawing or painting: I’ve spend the last two days trying to figure out how to use the WordPress free blog option. I’m not going to start actual blogging, too lazy, but that seemed to be the easiest way for me to put up some pictures somewhere. So, mostly photographs for now, some I have played with a bit with the rather crappy editing programs I have. Most of them are of friends of mine running around the nearby castle ruins dressed in a cloak and/or tunic and waving a sword or a staff (I do have a couple of friends who are crazy enough that they actually seemed to enjoy doing that even if there were other sightseers there both times – just one person in every picture, both women, by the way, I went with one friend in the spring and with another last week ). I mainly plan to use them, myself, as reference photos, but since I didn’t have anything ready when I finally got the nerve to put up those shorts I ended up using a few for (temporary, hopefully) covers.

If you find anything you like feel free to use it.

One reason I wanted those pictures originally was that I couldn’t find that many good photos of how a full cloak acts in a wind. So, the cloak used is a full circle one, and both days were somewhat windy. But even if the original purpose was fulfilled I liked those photo sessions well enough that I will probably do this a few more times, whenever my models have the time.

Uh, how do you make links here? The address where you find the photos is kitilappi.com. There isn’t much now, but I will be putting up a lot in the next weeks and months.

And yes, I do have permission for this from the models.

From Edward Willet:

This week I republished myself two previously published humorous science fiction short stories. “Strange Harvest” originally appeared in Western People (supplement to an agricultural newspaper!), was reprinted in OnSpec, and had national airing on CBC as part of a series hosted by Nalo Hopkinson. It’s about a small-town reporter who’s trying to figure out where the rash of exploding tomatoes and incendiary radishes is coming from. “Waterlilies,” originally published in Space and Time, is a nanotech apocalypse comedy satirizing modern art…if you like that sort of thing. They’re on Kindle  and Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/242744, https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/242743). My YA dystopian novel The Chosen and my YA ghost story The Haunted Horn have now also made it to Smashwords.from Kindle Select. The Chosen is at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/144418 and The Haunted Horn at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/242736).

From Jeffro:

I am an amateur writer that mostly focuses on vintage games. My best work that has gotten the least exposure is probably the interviews I’ve done. I have thought about doing these on some other topics– first hand accounts of men that have served in Afghanistan for instance– but the right opportunity has yet to turn up. (If I meet someone that has a story that needs to be told… I try to do what I can to get it out and edit it down into something accessible and readable.)

Here are my interviews:

Ramona Richards, professional writer: http://jeffro.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/exclusive-ramona-richards-interview/

George Dew, game designer: http://jeffro.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/exclusive-interview-with-george-dew-of-dark-city-games/

Ken Schultz, witness of a significant moment in game design history: http://jeffro.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/an-insiders-view-of-metagaming-and-the-fantasy-trip/

From Eugene Woodbury:

The Gentleman and the Rake is an unconventional look at two landmark works of English literature. First, a lighthearted take on the critical events in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of Fitzwilliam Darcy. Then Mr. B, the redeemed rake of Samuel Richardson’s scandalous Pamela, is summoned to court to tell his version of the story. http://eugenewoodbury.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-gentleman-and-rake.html

And coming later this month, Fox & Wolf, a contemporary fantasy about a werewolf and a kitsune (Japanese werefox).

From D. Jason Fleming:

Sometimes the course of your life is set out clearly. Sometimes it’s altered by the music you chance to hear in the dead of night when you can’t sleep. And other times, it’s even less predictible than that.

What wouldn’t you do, “For the fragile Muses…“?

(It’s a short story I dashed off because I had to. Currently the only thing I’ve got out, but that’s going to change in the next month or two.)

FROM CHARLES E QUINN:

Dance Shadow Dance and other stories

(If not available it’s in the middle of getting its cover changed.  Try again another day.  This was one of the early covers for the publisher, and we didn’t QUITE have the hang of it.)

*I will do the post promoting y’all’s work this evening.  I did not forget.*

Writers Who Disappear

In 03, the first great “layoff” I witnessed, where at world fantasy you’d see people go off with their editors and come back crying, (This didn’t include me, I decided I wouldn’t die even if they killed me which was the beginning of the zombie career) things got bleak.

They got even more bleak in the Summer of 04, when the writers list I belonged to often carried stories of attempted suicide and people just disappearing and no one could reach them.

This is not the type of “writers disappearing” that Kris Rusch is talking about in her posts.  What she talks about is accurate (I think.  I know only one writer who had “accomplished what he wanted to” and I think that was because new-wife didn’t approve of SF) and of course she is going to continue the series next week, so it’s incomplete.

For those of you too lazy to click through on this Sunday morning: what Kris is talking about is not writers who vanish as though taken by a very specific Rapture (though there’s a story in that.  “I need a team to help me write the next part!” said the booming voice in the sky) but writers who vanish from the shelves not to be heard from again.

This includes writers whose series stop mid stride – I still get angry letters from fans of the Musketeer’s Mysteries – because the house decided it wasn’t selling ‘enough’ and of course it was the writer’s fault not covers, insane titling or lack of push.

It also includes – according to Kris – writers who’ve accomplished everything they wanted to.

And it includes writers who’ve made themselves toxic.   (Weirdly, I know who the guy is who called the distributor to ask why his book wasn’t on the shelves.)

It doesn’t include what, in my experience, over the last ten years is the main reason for giving up: battle fatigue.

That is, you are not doing badly enough (are you doing badly at all?  Depending on how my negotiations go to get my rights back from a publisher that shall remain unnamed until and unless they go badly – when the statements go public — you might be able to judge.  The statements just received cross the line of believability, claiming well under 100 sales for a book still on the shelves (two years out) AND apparently having phantom books held as reserves against returns, while the returns count separately, leading to a negative number, where no negative number can be.  Very interesting.  I think they have their accounting done in a fantasy world, or perhaps by the Fed.  It prevents their cutting me a check, though, so all is good, right?  They used to just take the books out of print at that point, but now, well… there’s erights, so they’re keeping them on, and dancing like nobody’s business.  Considering this particular publisher is now suing authors for amounts that should be petty-cash, I REALLY want my rights back.) that they fire you for good, but they keep hiring you and making you (trust me) write four books a year, and then the numbers are dismal again, and…  And you start feeling like someone who just has baby after baby and hands him/her off to the high priests to throw in the volcano.

After a while this feeling of “What the heck, why bother” sets in.  Worse, it’s like aversion therapy.  Because you’re selling on proposal and when the book’s turn comes around you might not feel like writing that (H*ll, you often won’t feel like writing at all) it makes what you’ve always loved doing into a form of torture.  After a while, just the thought of writing makes you depressed.

Part of this I think is the body’s defense mechanisms.  I’ve often told people that when Mercedes Lackey talks about magic and “stripping the magical channels” in the Valdemar series, she’s really talking about writing.  Of course whatever you write with (other than certain brain areas) isn’t physical, but you feel like it’s a channel attached to you, and when you’re forced to write book after book you feel less than enthusiastic about and which you know they’re going to kill one way or another, you start feeling like it’s stripped raw and like you’re doing yourself physical damage.  And your body learns to shut down whenever you sit at the computer to write.  I got to the point I’d be feeling fine, and suddenly, at the desk, all I wanted to do was sleep.

Some of us stay on.  Like dancers who dance on injuries, like athletes willing to become deformed through excessive training, we go on.  Maybe we don’t do our best work, but we work.  Sometimes we wonder if we’re getting Alzheimers, because we can’t remember our character’s name (or occasionally our own) from page to page, but we go on.  And if you’re there, step back and consider indie — I later, during the year Dan forced me to take off (sort of.  I only wrote one book) realized this was a sign of clinical depression.

The sane ones don’t.  And here, I’d like to point out I’m sane enough, but when we bought this house we were paying on two houses.  And then… stuff happened.  Like replacing our heating system.  Like the wall of the bathroom falling down on Robert during a shower.  Stuff like that.  And lately tons of stuff happened, stuff like runaway inflation, two kids in college, etc – and we need my income.  It’s as blunt as that.  Notwithstanding which, were it not for Baen, were it not for indie, I too would have walked away two years ago. I came within a coin toss of doing just that and going “Let the house be foreclosed.  Let’s just walk away.”

Because there is another barb that the writer in that position must suffer.  If you say anything – the slightest complaint – you get, from both the publisher, and the wanna bes who’ve never made it “How can you complain?  You’re living the dream.  You’re making a living doing what you love!”

Which is sort of like telling that to a ballet dancer forced to dance with broken feet and weighed down with a ton of rusty iron.

And you can’t talk back.  Or you couldn’t.  Now I can and my answer is: If you work at anything 18 hours a day, seven days a week, unless it’s something REALLY stupid, you too can make a living at it.  But after a while even what you enjoy goes stale.

No, I’m not announcing my quitting – you guys saw me go from “I can only go traditional” to the freedom of indie.

I just wonder how many of those writers who disappeared, leaving the windows of their writing house wide-open and the doors swinging in the breeze, will be aware of the opportunities of indie.

I’m hoping some of them come back, close the windows, light a fire in the hearth, find their writing desk and resume their work.  Because some of the ones driven away were very good indeed.

And meanwhile, today – the completion of Noah’s Boy having been put-off by a return of the stomach flu in an attenuated form (seems to be one of those that comes back weaker and weaker till it’s gone) – I’m going to write rights reversal letters for ¾ of my work (yes, in case you wonder, I REALLY want to continue the Musketeer series.)  And then I’m going to do some publishing.

Because I can.  And because I refuse to fade away.

In the comments below tell me what works you have out that you want to promote this week, what you have free, what will come out, etc.

Come on, don’t be shy.  I’ll do a post on it tomorrow!

Recently in an email exchange, two of you reminded me that happiness is a choice.

Of course, I’ve known that for a long time, perhaps always.

A look around will be enough to verify this.  It’s not a matter of how much you have or how perfect or imperfect your life is, but whether you decide to be happy or not.

We all know people who have everything they want and a cherry on top and they still hate their lives, themselves and everything.  They get up every morning wishing they were dead and they go to bed even more so.  (In fact the unhappy rich has become a truism, partly because it’s true, though only in limited circumstances – and partly because it serves a purpose.  It might convince a lot of people they have to be unhappy, too.  Who knows?) And we all know people who have horrible miserable lives, but at heart are quite happy.

Being happy is not a matter of what you have, of how hard you work, of what you do or don’t do.  Being happy is a choice you make.

No.  Stop.  Don’t tell me you’ll be happy if only…

I have my own list of if-onlys, mostly relating to making enough money from this writing thing that I can hire someone to do the endless list of other stuff I need to do, including but not limited to house administrivia, cooking, and editing and publishing.  Also, that I can write just a smidgeon less so I have time to take, say, Sundays off and sleep late then read in bed.  Oh, yeah, enough money to go out to eat on weekends would be nice too, but I might be reaching for the moon.

And I’d like to live nearer the places where they have lunch time lectures I’d like to attend, so that I don’t have to factor in the price of gas before considering a free presentation.  And I’d like…  you know what I mean.

But that just gives me something to strive for.  Right now I’m pretty happy.  Hey, I have my husband and kids, a roof over my head and three meals a day.  What is there to be unhappy about?

I think the first time I realized how happy I was was when I was lying in bed and expected to die of pneumonia.  The room I was in had this BROAD view of the rocky mountains and I wasn’t sleeping well.  So I’d lie there and watch the sun come up over the mountains, and realize I’d lived another day, and be happy about it.

I wanted to be out of bed and going to garage sales with the guys, but that was a higher form of happiness, and it could wait.

Still a lot of people are unhappy – and I don’t want to blame them, because it’s not …  They don’t view it as a choice.

There are of course obvious circumstances when it isn’t a choice.  If something were to happen to my family, I’d be pretty unhappy for a long time and if I ever found happiness again it would be a happiness of small things: of cats on lap, of doing a task.  Of not thinking beyond that.

But if you’re not grieving or in horrible pain (and some people in horrible pain are still happy) and you still aren’t happy, then think about why you aren’t.

Is it that you want something you don’t have?  Well, then… sketch out a plan to obtain it, to the best of your ability and subject to revision, of course.  And then be happy because you’re on the road there.

Or is it something about yourself that makes you unhappy?

Here we must distinguish between two things: if what you don’t like about yourself is something that affects only yourself — you’re too fat, not brilliant enough, you never learned to waltz, whatever the heck you use to beat yourself over the head – well, start working towards it, and understand you don’t have to be perfect.  If you think you have to, you’ve been sold a bill of goods.  No one is perfect.  The best we can do is try.  If you’re trying you’re doing your best.  Pat yourself on the back, and don’t be too hard on yourself when you fall.

Or is it that something you are/do hurts someone you love?

Here too we must distinguish between two instances.  Is it that they disapprove of something you do/are?  And if so, can you change it?  For instance, if they disapprove of your being too tall or – in the case of someone I dated – having breasts that are too large, or… whatever…  It’s not your problem.  It’s theirs.  State firmly that they’ll have to live with it, and then remember it’s their problem.  If it’s something you CAN change, like leaving the toilet seat up, or something more serious like refusing to do something that needs to be done or doing something that actively hurts someone you love, the thing that’s making you unhappy might be your conscience.  Change it, or make efforts to change it.  You’ll be happier that way.

What if you’re unhappy because you can’t find the minimum of existence?  There’s always a way.  Yes, the job market sucks.  Do you perhaps have extra books you could sell on Amazon?  Is there a hobby you can turn into a paying profession?  Take steps towards that, and you’ll start feeling happier, even if the ultimate goal is out of sight.  CHOOSE to take charge and be active about it, and you’ll be happier.

But what if you were never wanted, and no one in life has ever loved you, and you don’t belong to anyone or anywhere?

First… You belong to you.  Be happy in you and what you are.  Be happy you’re breathing.  Be happy in your hobbies/your pets/whatever.  And start reaching out.  I had a teacher once who whined no one had ever loved her.

The problem was that she had never loved anyone.  Take the focus out from within you and put it outside in something else.  It could be something as inconsequent as rescuing kittens or puppies, or as important as volunteering to do research.  All of them will allow you to connect with your fellow humans, and that’s important too – we are social animals.

But I don’t understand.  You had a truly horrible past, and you have scars.  Yeah, and?  You’re not that injured child.  You’re an adult.  Deal with the scars.  Stop holding your breath and going “but I wanted it to be different.”  You’re not entitled to perfect, and if you knew other people’s stories, you’d find we’re all walking wounded.  We all favor one point or the other.  We all shift and walk around burned spots in mind and heart.  We all do the best we can to be happy.  And holding your breath and wanting it perfect won’t get you anything.  That’s not how the world works.

I’m not telling you “Don’t worry, be happy.”  That was one of the stupidest phrases ever coined.  I’m not sure why those two things should be linked.  Some people like me would break in two to stop worrying.  Worrying is part of making sure we look ahead and we plan, and that’s how we survive, and some of us can’t stand to live any other way.

But it doesn’t mean, for all the worry, we’re not happy anyway.

Be happy.

(Right now I’m going to be happy while doing a massive amount of laundry.  Catch you on the flip side.)

*Better late than never, right, guys?*

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

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

The Princess And The Power

“Honoria?” Seraphim said.  “No!  I was–  I suppose I still am–  engaged to marry her.”

Something in his reaction, possibly his genuine shock seemed to reassure Valerie.  She looked at him a long time, as though examining his expression, but her features relaxed.  “I see,” she said, at last.  “There is a conspiracy, but it is not yours.  I thought—” she ran a hand over her face.  “But then I thought perhaps it was because my magic is not of this world.”

Seraphim had in turn managed to back against and old rocking horse and half-sit on it.  He should feel, he thought, scared or outraged, or perhaps confused, but he felt nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  “Is that what we’re accused of?” he said.  “I thought it was murder…”

Valerie frowned.  “It was murder at first, I think.  It’s very hard to think about it, but it was undefined, they said, and then…”  She shook her head.  “And then things changed.”  Her frown indicated deep concentration, deep thought.  “Until you said that, I didn’t remember it, and now it’s hard for me to think about it.  I think they first said you were accused of murder, and I think they couldn’t… I think they couldn’t locate the corpse.  And then they said that you, and your father, and your whole family were guilty of conspiracy to kidnap the royal princess and, by magical means, make it seem like she belonged to another family.”

“But why would we make her seem to belong to another family?” Seraphim said.  “Would it not make more sense to keep her to ourselves?”

“No! Much was made of your offering to marry her, because, you know, if you married her… you’d someday be king.  You could not marry her if you were her brother.”

“No,” Seraphim said.  “But we have, or at least we had, friends and dependents and surely any of them would be more reliable as marriage prospects than our rivals, the Blythes.”

“Yes, but—” Valerie was visibly fighting something.  “I think they did something – something magical.  I’m not sure what, and even saying it makes me feel as though I might be going insane, because the amount of magic it would take… and for it to be undetected…  but I think they did something to make us believe it.  Because, despite all the changing stories, everyone has believed.  And the king has recognized the lady Honoria Blythe as the princess Helen.”

Seraphim groaned deep in his throat.  Urgency came now.  Not because Honoria had usurped the place of the princess, not because she would be the heir to the throne of Avalon if this went unchallenged, but because she had taken Nell’s place. The idea of Honoria in Nell’s place was unbearable and near-paralyzing.  When he could think again he said, “You must take me to the nursery, Valerie, you must.  Trust me, that’s where the spell was first set, and if I can reach the center of the web, I can stop it.”

She stared at him for a moment then sighed.  “It is only, Your Grace might not know it, but you are—”

“Wanted?  I do know it.  But I have a spell on me which makes me unrecognizable unless…  Unless I wish them to see me clearly.”

She looked at him and frowned a little again.  “I wondered why it made my eyes want to unfocus, but I’d guess I’m not getting the full effect, since you do wish me to recognize you.”  A little thought and she nodded.  “Can you pretend to be here to measure the nursery.  It is of course being completely remodeled since the Prin–  Is she the princess?”

Seraphim shook his head.

“I was afraid of that. In any case, she is engaged to be married and therefore the nursery must be remodeled, in the hop—”

“Honoria is engaged to be married?  To me?”

Valerie looked down.  “No, Milord, to Lord Sydell.  It was of course thought odd, his being old enough to be her father, and not exactly high enough in nobility… but he was the one who rescued her and the king could not deny him her hand, their being sincerely attached.”

Seraphim opened his mouth to say from what he had heard and things he’d glimpsed at certain clubs he found it hard enough to believe Sydell was Marlon’s father, and the idea of his being sincerely attached to any woman was so unlikely as to border on the impossible.  Then he realized he couldn’t shock Valerie with any such implication, and felt a strong pang of missing Nell.  Nell wouldn’t at all be shocked.  In fact, if Nell had any hint of it, she might blurt out what he was thinking without checking her tongue.

It would be, he thought, great fun to have Nell as a Princess Royale, even if it made any union between them impossible.  Her solecisms and that irrepressible humor would set the palace on end.

But of course, he might as well wish for the moon.  As far as Avalon was concerned, Honoria was now the princess royale, and his family the villains who had stolen her.  It made no sense to anyone who knew anything of the tracings done at the time of her disappearance, but very few people remained clear on that, and a lot would never have been reported at the time.  Just a strong spell over the people in the palace, and it would carry.

And the spell had to be in the room from which the infant Nell had been taken.  Any further spell layered on the one that had hid the identity of her captors, any spell designed to make it seem like Honoria was Nell would need to be twisted into the original.  He would go and he would pull it apart, if it was the last thing he did.

“Will you have the power to do anything,” Valerie asked.  “If you are spending it to keep the illusion over your features?  And the illusion that there is no spell there?”

He smiled at her, though it felt like his face would crack.  “It is not my power being used for that, and I suspect that the one spinning the illusion doesn’t even notice the expending.”

Valerie inclined her head.  “Very well then.  I shall take you through back stairs,” she said.  “Begging your pardon.”

“I’d expect nothing else, and remember I’m no longer a duke.”

She looked like she would say something, then shook her head, compressed her lips and said, “Please to follow me, Your Grace.”

And this blogger needs a “there, there” dear.  I just misspelled something on Insty.  Okay, so it’s the President’s name.  This is why my characters are named things like Mary and Bob and Candyce and…  Seraphim.

SOBS.

STOOOOOOOOOPID fingers.

Sulks.  It’s not my fault.  The sun was in my eyes.  And I LIVE at high altitude.  And I never have enough caffeine.

Eh.  At least I’m not running for anything.

Dyslexics of the world untie!  You have nothing to loose but you cairns  cans chaims  aims? commas!

Seriously, for the love of Bob, those of you who are following it?  Ping me when I mess up, okay?  You HAVE my email  sahoyt – at- hotmail – dot- com.  It’s not like I’m only doing one thing at a time.