Category: Uncategorized

*Crossposted at Classical Values.*

Let me admit that I have a bad Leonard Cohen habit.  In fact, the only reason boy #2 is not named Leonard is that my husband put his foot down and said “No” fairly emphatically.

As with Heinlein, I’m one of the odd fans of Cohen, the ones who prefer late Cohen, very mature Cohen, over the Cohen of the seventies.

I’d always liked his music.  Dance Me To The End Of Love is Dan’s and my song, as much as we can be said to have “a song.”  (Our musical tastes tend to be diametric opposites.  Yes, it’s possible to be happily married despite that.  This is why G-d invented headphones.)

But when Ten New Songs came out, I remember I saved listening to it till I’d finished cleaned the house.  Then I sat down in my office, to do some editing and put the album in.  There I was, in freshly clean and vacuumed office, with a cup of tea, ready to do some work.  Then the songs hit.  And … oh my.  I found myself just closing my eyes to enjoy them and not getting much else done.

The difference between young Cohen and old Cohen is the difference between unaged Port Wine and Port Wine properly aged in oak barrels.  One can be drunk lightly chilled as refreshment in summer – or listened to as a background to life – the other needs your full attention and will make you moan in sheer pleasure.

Still I confess I had some misgivings about his newest album Old Ideas, because the man is pushing 78 and how many people can sing at that age.

Well, I ordered it, and my husband ordered it for me.  I cancelled my order, and his came through.

First of all, if you’ve never listened Cohen let me point out that part of his attraction is highly targeted and part, probably, acquired taste.  I can’t speak to the acquired taste.  I started listening to him before ten, because my much older brother listened to him.  I don’t remember not liking his songs.  (Yes, including Don’t Go Home With Your Hardon.  Everytime I talk about Cohen SOMEONE brings this song up as if in the hope of shocking me.  Oh, please.  Have ya’ll read what I write?  There are things that shock me deeply.  Consensual sex is never one of them.)  Part of it (part of the targeted thing) is that Cohen’s mix of mysticism, sex, religious (several religions) fascination and beautiful, exalted language (in most cases) acts like catnip to people like me.  Oh, h*ll, it couldn’t be more targeted to me if he’d stopped in the middle of the song and said “This is for you Mrs. Sarah Hoyt, sitting there on your chair, surrounded by high falluting books and writing compulsively as though some higher power tells you to.  Yes, you, who have a complicated relationship with the fact that when you weren’t paying attention some bastard encumbered you with a physical body.  Yes, you, who believes in G-d almost despite herself and who has an even more complicated relationship with Him, which includes trying to discuss the plot of your life.”

And yet, as I said, as I put this album in the MP3 player with some trepidation.  There’s nothing like watching the decay of a great artist to drive home to the rest of us that we too are mortal.

In a way my fears were justified.  This album is very much about the artist and mortality.  On the other hand, my fears were insane, because this song takes the artistic fears, the mortality, the lack of control over our own careers, the creativity that goes where it lists, and the hankering for something beyond and above ourselves that we can almost touch at the edge of our creative jags.  As for how Cohen sounds, the best way to put it was the comment on one of the youtube videos “He sounds so very nearly dead and so, so good.”

The minute the first song started playing, I found myself in tears, because it is so much “artist at the end of life.”  (On this, I’d like to point out that the Canadian reviewer of this album is an ignoramus, being totally puzzled by “a brief elaboration of a tube.”  Kids – as far as it goes, evolutionarily, we are.  Also, there’s the sexual innuendo, which with Cohen you have to assume is intended.)   That is one of my favorite songs, probably for this part “He wants to write a love song/an anthem of forgiving/a manual of rliving with defeat/ A cry above the suffering/A sacrifice recovering/But that isn’t what I need him/ to complete.”  As someone who just recently found herself writing A Few Good Men and ignoring the three books under contract, let me tell you this sounds “right.”

As for the refrain “Going home/Without my burden/Going home/Behind the curtain/Going home/Without the Costume/That I wore.” anyone who believes in anything more hereafter can resonate with that.

Next is Amen and to me it has a special impact, partly because… Well, ya’ll know I write to music, right?  Well.  I tried and tried and tried to write The Brave And The Free, but I couldn’t tune in to the main character or to the voice character.  And then this started playing, and suddenly I HAD it.

Show me the place is another artist end of life song and it is full of religious imagery.

Darkness and Anyhow are not among my favorites, but they are still better than most other songs.

Crazy To Love You works on so many levels, from love affairs, to my relationship to my (admittedly fraught) career. I keep finding the words “Had to do time in the tower/Begging my crazy to quit” and also “Crazy has places to hide in/Deeper than saying goodbye” coming to my mind unbidden.  There are nods to Buddhism (when being confused between two religions isn’t enough, or why Sarah became a Buddhist at 12 though she got over it by fourteen.) such as “I’m tired of choosing desire/Been saved by a sweet fatigue.”
Come Healing is clearly a blessing song and it will touch you if you’re the kind to be touched by that.

Banjo – and we’re back to the relationship between art and artist.  Weirdly, within minutes of the release of the album there were MISHEARD lyrics for it on line that were ALMOST worthy of Cohen: “There’s something that I’m watching/Means a lot to me/It’s a broken angel bobbing/On the dark infested sea.”  The word should be banjo, not angel, but I can see why the confusion.

Lullaby – is just that.

Different sides is very much a religious song, with allusions to the separation of the surface being from another (clearly G-d, becasue “You to your side, call the Word.”) while “up above” there’s unity.  Of course my joke having always been that whatever Cohen wrote he was writing love songs to G-d, in one of the most misguided attempts at courtship since my (fixed) cat tried to copulate with my toe, I think this song is a marital argument.  And it’s magnificent.  “Both of us say there are laws to obey/But frankly I don’t like your tone.”

Anyway, I’m going to listen to Amen again, and then write the first chapter of the Brave And The Free again.

“Tell me again, when I’m clean and I’m sober/Tell me again when I’ve seen through the horror/Tell me that you love me then.”

It’s cold.  There’s snow falling.  I had a horrible week.  I want to crawl back under the covers with a good book.

I think I’ll go downstairs and play with the pastels and the drawing for a while.

*Guys, I promise to put up a good chunk of more than one chapter either next week or the week after.   I was hoping to do it this week, but I’ve had disabling-level headaches for the last three days, which means the next three chapters are still unproofed, even to the minimal level of these posts.  They read sort of like Atlanta Nights ;) particularly since they were written through the headache.  So, bear with me, but I hope you enjoy this week’s installment anyway.*

*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 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.*

For previous chapters, look here:  https://accordingtohoyt.com/witchfinder/
A Rude Wakening

Barbara Ainsling, Dowager Duchess of Darkwater woke up without a sound.  Before she woke, she knew that something was wrong – very wrong.
Normally she woke with her personal abigail, Jane, bringing in a tea tray.  It had become a ritual, and the Duchess’s first consciousness came with the sound of the tray being set on the little table by the bed, followed by the sound of calm footsteps across the floor which in turn was followed by the sound of curtains being drawn back.  Then light filtered gently past the sheers and the Duchess woke, composed and ready for her day.
Today there was no light, no tray, no calm footsteps.  Instead she had awakened to the sound of the door opening, then closing, stealthily.  It was followed by the sound of someone panting rapidly, as though in a panic.
Barbara Ainsling had for many years been a Duchess, surrounded by both comfort and propriety, hemmed in by the precise politeness of her position.  But she’d not forgotten her years as a child in a vast wooded estate in Derbyshire; her years of climbing trees and fishing with the tenant sons.
The much younger daughter of a large family, whose next youngest child was a full ten years her senior, she had learned to make her entertainment and had bid fair to become a hoyden, if not a tomboy, till the lure of her mirror, and how well she looked in ball gowns, and the effect she had on boys had called her to more feminine pursuits and thence to marriage.
But even at forty four, inside she often felt she was still that same wild girl she’d been.  So she sat up, instantly alert, and reached, silently, for anything she could use as a weapon without moving much.  Unfortunately the only thing she could reach without getting up was the coverlet over herself.  It would have to do.  It was Barbara’s experience that very few people could be nepharious while trying to extricate themselves from a blanket.
She clutched at the coverlet with both hands.  And then the person panting in the shadows gulped and said, “Milady?”
Barbara let go of the blanket, and, half careless, made the gesture for the spell that brought the magelight at her bedside to full power.  By its unblinking light, she saw Jane by the closed door, both hands clutching at her apron which, by the look of it, had been twisted between those clutching hands.
Jane was a most superior servant, abigail to milady and about Barbara’s age.  In fact, she’d been helping Barbara dress and arrange her hair since they’d both been fifteen or sixteen.  Barbara trusted her so much that she had disdained to hire a dresser, as most ladies of her class were wont to do.  No, for Barbara’s purpose, Jane must do very well.  And normally she did.  And normally, on demeanor alone, anyone looking at two women would easily take Jane for the Duchess.
But now Jane looked discomposed and ill, her face blotchy as from crying, her hair disarranged.  She had dressed herself, and even put on her largely decorative lace apron.  But she hadn’t combed her hair, and her cap was altogether missing.  “Milady,” she said again, and gasped, her eyes full of tears.
“What is it Jane?” Barbara said, trying not to sound as worried as she felt.  The truth was that she’d never seen Jane this discomposed.
Jane swallowed again, audibly, and let air out, slowly, between her half-parted lips.  “There are constables in the house, Your Grace, and men from his majesty’s magical enforcement force.”  She swallowed again, convulsively.
Barbara’s mind flew to Seraphim and, with only a little delay, to Gabriel, to Michael missing, and thence, in a moment, to her husband’s suicide, to that horrible moment they’d found him in his dressing room, his gun fallen from his nerveless right hand, his pocket watch clutched convulsively in his left, so hard that it had taken a wait for rigor mortis to pass and his fingers to let go.  It clutched, aimlessly, at shadows and hints: at her sense that her husband had always been doing something far more complex, far worse, in a way, than mere affairs and infidelities – even if he’d done that too.  And lately Seraphim had been secretive and Gabriel had, of course, been helping.  And they were involved in something.  And there had been a man killed by magic.  And Michael was missing, perhaps kidnaped into fairyland.
Oh, those boys, she thought, those careless boys, and surprised herself with thinking it, as though Gabriel and Seraphim, and perhaps Michael too, were about five and heedless, and not grown and almost grown men and playing with something very dangerous indeed.
She became aware that Jane was speaking, in between gulps and sobs.  “It is the man as was killed, madam, you see.  It is the man who was killed.  They say as his grace done him in purpose because he was the lover of that woman as– Well, they say his grace done it for jealousy and not in self defense, and they are– ” she swallowed.  “They’re demanding to take his grace before king’s justice, and Mr. Penn with him, as well as Mr. Michael.”
“I see,” Jane said.  “And His Grace says?”
“Well, that’s just it, Your Grace, as they say he’s run and that’s a sign of guilt.”
“Run?  Seraphim?” Barbara said.  If there was one thing she couldn’t believe Seraphim would do was run.  Charge ahead foolishly, perhaps.  But run, never.
Jane nodded.  “I don’t see how it can be, Your Grace, but they said as he and the young–  The young person, Miss Felix, transported from the room where she– That they transported to another world, Your Grace, as is forbidden under the law.”
Yes, Barbara could see how that story would assemble itself, in the servants’ minds, and in the minds of the magistrates too.  They’d think, of course, that Seraphim had been in the young woman’s room, when he heard the constables come in, and had transported them both to somewhere safe.  And she could well imagine the construction placed on his being in that room, in the night.
Barbara didn’t believe it.  Not for a minute.  Oh, it was possible that Seraphim was romantically involved with the woman, though Gabriel had claimed she was his fiancé.  For that matter the strange liaisons that men engaged in with a certain sort of woman were not something she wanted to probe.  But something sounded very wrong in all of this, including the fact that Barbara didn’t get the feeling Miss Felix was that sort of woman.  Or not precisely.  For that matter, though no one had ever told her exactly, she didn’t think Gabriel Penn was the sort of man to be engaged.
The whole thing felt wrong, a sort of scene concocted to deceive the eye, but not very deeply thought out at all.  A story to deceive onlookers.  She heard herself say, hollowly, “Something is very wrong with that story.”
Jane started, then nodded.  “Yes.  I thought so too,” she said, slowly.  “Because it doesn’t explain how the corpse got to Miss Felix’s room.”
“The corpse?”
“The corpse of the man as the gardeners say attacked his grace, the one his grace … killed.”
“Ah.  Yes.  He was in Miss Felix’s room?  No.  That is not explained at all.  I don’t think that anyone would carry him there, would they?”
“No, miss.  And he looked like he had fallen there, after walking, you know.”
Barbara didn’t know, but she could well imagine.  “I see.  And what does Gabriel say about all this?”  Because if anyone knew anything, it would be Gabriel.  Gabriel was and had always been Seraphim’s willing accomplice, his faithful dog’s body.  Seraphim wouldn’t do or know anything that Gabriel either didn’t know or couldn’t guess.
A deep breath from Jane foretold that the news there wouldn’t be good, and Barbara felt a stab of foreboding.  “He’s missing, isn’t he?  Mr. Penn?”
“He’s …”  Jane swallowed.  “Emma, you know, the kitchen help, well, her room is directly above Miss Felix’s guest room, and she says that she heard him… that she heard him say something very loudly from… from the area of Miss Felix’s room, just as the pounding first came on the door.”
“What did he say?” Her Ladyship asked.
Jane colored and opened her mouth.  “I wouldn’t like to repeat it.”
“I’m sure I’ve heard the word, whatever it is.”
“Well… he said … shit.”
“I see.”  She didn’t in fact, see.  She couldn’t imagine Gabriel shouting anything of the kind loudly enough to be heard through the floor into the upper floor.  But she was sure Jane wouldn’t repeat it, unless she were certain it had been correct and properly heard.  “And what does he say to that?”
“No one can find him,” Jane said.  “His room…  His traveling bag is missing, and his personal effects, at least some of them, and–”
“And?”
“Well, then, Mr. Penn locked the door on his room and… transported out.  They are trying to sense where he went, but they haven’t traced him beyond London and– ” Jane stopped.  She looked like she was holding back tears by an effort of will.
So.  Seraphim was gone.  And Gabriel had followed.  She didn’t know how or why Seraphim had left, but she was sure it wasn’t because he had run.  Not in any sense of the word.  The only reason she could imagine for Seraphim to have left, at all, would be if his staying could only make things worse for his family.  In that, he was like his father, who, despite his multiple sins against matrimony, had always tried to protect his family and his estates.
And Gabriel too, for all his sins, would never have left – would certainly not have left without leaving them word of where he was going – without good reason.  The reason being that his staying would make things worse for all of them.
Michael was missing.
That left the family house, the servants, and Barbara and Caroline to look after themselves.
Without Barbara knowing, the decision had made itself in the back of Barbara’s mind.  The constables and for that matter the magical enforcers would do nothing to the servants and the house.  Nothing, that is, beyond ransaking the house and having the servants keep it up.  At worst, if judgement were brought in against Seraphim, the house would be confiscated.  The risk was to Seraphim, who would be beheaded, but not to the house or the servants.  She shook her head.  That part she didn’t need to worry about.  So, what was there to fear?
The only thing she could think of was that she and Caroline could be used as bait to bring Seraphim and Gabriel back.  And to lead to their being executed.  No.  That couldn’t be allowed.  And so Barbara Ainsling, who, like her son, would not run from danger to herself, must put herself and Caroline away from danger.
She’d go to her brother.  No one would dare penetrate her brother’s estate in Derbyshire.  “Jane, can you go to the stables?  Are there… are there law… people, there?”
Jane’s eyes grew large.  “As of yet, no, Your Grace.”
“Very well.  Then go there, and wake Johnson, in secret if possible.  Ask him to get the small traveling carriage together, with the match black horses, and to arrange for escorts for myself and Miss Ainsling.  As quietly as possible.  Tell him… yes, tell him to get the carriage ready in the alley outside the walls.  Without, if at all possible arousing our… ah… illustrious visitors.  Tell him – in the greatest secrecy of course – that Miss Ainsling and I will be going to Lord Hartwitt’s in Derbyshire.  Can you, Jane, and keep it quiet?”
“Well, of course,” Jane said, and bobbed a courtesy.  “What shall I pack for you?”
“Nothing.  I shall travel as swiftly and as quietly as possible, and I’ll acquire whatever I need on the way.”
Jane blinked.  “Oh, no.  I must go with you.  And, Your Grace– ”
“No, Jane.  This is likely to be very dangerous.  I can’t allow you to risk yourself.  Go, and tell Johnson to have the carriage ready.  I’ll take a carpetbag with my absolute necessities.”  As she spoke, Barbara got up and started to brush her still mostly black hair and pin it back.
“Your Grace!” Jane said again, in a tone of shock.  But Barbara was Barbara again and not just the Duchess of Darkwater.  For years now, since she’d married the Duke, the bright, sparkling woman who’d been Barbara Hartwitt had been subsumed in the Duchess, the mother, the wife.  Now…
“Leave it, Jane,” she said.  “I can take care of myself.  And send Miss Ainsling to me, as quietly as you can.”
“Your Grace,” Jane said again, in the tone of one who doesn’t quite believe what she’s being told to do.  She apparently, from her expression, could also not quite believe what she was seeing, as Barbara selected her most plain and sturdiest traveling dress and, with nimble fingers and hands still quite capable of reaching behind herself, started lacing herself into it.
“Now, Jane, there’s not a minute to be lost, if we’re to save something from this debacle.  And should the magical… ah… gentlemen ask, you know nothing of where I went.”
Jane moved then, bobbing another courtesy, and heading for the door.  Before she opened it, though, the door opened, and Caroline came in, fully dressed.  “Mama,” she said.  “Oh, I’m so glad you’re up.”
Jane hesitated, looking at Barbara but at Barbara’s quiet, “Go then, Jane, take care of that matter,” she nodded and scurried out.
Caroline closed the door behind Jane, and turned to Barbara.  “We must leave, Mama.  And quickly too.  You see, Gabriel sent me a message through a compulsion on a maid, and he said that Seraphim was pulled by a trap into another world, and Gabriel himself was leaving as fast as possible, so he couldn’t be used to bring an accusation of magic malfeasance against Seraphim.”
“Yes,” Barbara said, gratified she’d reconstructed the situation properly and trying not to think of the cold feeling, in the pit of her stomach, because of what the boys were risking, and because of the trouble coming down on all of them.  “I realize that.  And I thought it best if we left too, and could not be used against them.  I’ve given orders to have the small traveling carriage prepared, in secret, so that you and I can go to my brother, in Derbyshire.”
Caroline’s eyes widened.  “Mama!  You must be all about in your head.”  And then, realizing how improper what she’d said was.  “I beg your pardon, but you see it must be so.  How can you think we’ll escape in the carriage?  Mama!  They’ll find the carriage easy enough.  All they have to do is send a fast rider.  And no matter how much you tell Jane or the coachman to keep the secret, they have magical compulsion and the right to use it by royal decree, and they– ”
“Jane, credit me with some thought.  We shall leave, in the carriage, and then transport from it while it’s moving.  They will not be able to trace the transport spell, unless they can pin point exactly the place in space from which we transported.”
“To your brother’s?  In Derbyshire?”
“No, of course not.  I confess that was my first thought, but then I realized…”
“You realized?”
“While we might be safe at my brother’s, it’s too much like running away, and the Ainslings do not run away.  It’s obvious someone is trying to entrap your brother– Your brothers, and bring this house down.  And fairyland is involved, which is …  We must find Michael.  And Seraphim.  And there’s only one person who can help us.”
She looked at Caroline’s blank expression and almost laughed.  “We shall go pay a visit to Mrs. Penn,” she said.  And by way of explanation, “Gabriel’s mother.”

One of the ways we lie in fiction is to make change quick and hinging on a pivotal event.  This is needed — or course — because the whole point of fiction is to make sense out of the otherwise unorganized, multiple inputs the real world offers.  And the change, the climatic, all important change to society, to the evil kingdom, to a love affair, to… has to be such that fits within the confines of a book or the much tighter confines of a movie.  And the clues to that pivotal event, and to what is causing the problems, have to be so large, so magnificently prominent, that were this real life your character would need to be deaf and blind not to see them.

This is not real life. It’s fiction.  It’s entertainment.  So sue us.  We get paid for lying.

Sometimes writers try to portray a more gradual change, a more realistic transformation of character and circumstances.  These books get called atypical and while cherished by a few crazy people, like yours truly, they usually baffle normal readers.  Take Georgette Heyer’s A Civil Contract.  Love develops there, but not in the way it develops in most Heyers — through high adventure and suddenly — but rather daily, by quotidian domestic contact and a myriad small sacrifices on the part of the one who loves from the beginning.

It doesn’t seem to be most people’s favorite Heyer.  It might be mine (followed  or preceded closely by Venetia, which manages the business by galloping bounds by using a pretty unlikely coincidence in the middle.  [One of the best arguments for the use of the one coincidence allowed rule is that it mediates the middle ground between realistic and fits within book.]  Arguably, in the unlikely event I ever have the naming of a baby girl, by birth or adoption, I shall name her Venetia and not A Civil Contract, but that is entirely different, surely?)

Heinlein, also, in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress tried to give us a more “realistic” view of revolution than is common in science fiction books.  To do so spans not just a political transformation, but also several years.  The only way to manage it, particularly in a first person narrative, is to have your character out of where the action is for large portions of the war/fighting/maneuvering and to report it in “memoir” mode.

I found this was a narrative necessity when writing A Few Good Men, where I take “reality” a small spot further, by realizing that no, in fact there wouldn’t be a revolution all over the Earth, but multiple revolutions, and only one of them would in any way resemble the American revolution at lest in spirit.  (I still don’t know how it plays out in terms of government, but I daresay I’ll find out over the course of the series which might run to ten books.)  And that, is the author pushing the odds as is.  Think of all the revolutions of the 20th century, a lot of them from colonies throwing off colonial powers.  How many of them resulted in anything close to our system?  Right.  And how many of them turned really nasty, really fast?

(I still have no clue how that book will play, btw.  I’ve heard there’s an editorial letter for it, but I have no idea if it’s an editorial letter with an offer or an editorial letter under the guise of “friendly advice.”  Quite possibly the later.  As I said, it’s an odd book. A pity as if it goes Indy it might take years to find an audience.  OTOH, I wrote it because it had to be written, so it’s probably all academic whether it’s bought by a publisher or not.)

Anyway, I found the memoir tone annoyed some beta readers, though most of them only disagreed with the parts that made it clear some characters survive.  There is no indication that the revolution is won till almost the last chapter and at that, it’s not even very clear.  Only that it’s considered an historical building.  But it didn’t matter.  I couldn’t do it any other way, because in the same way my character can’t go to war because I CAN’T read enough about war to make it believable, I can’t cram ten years into a book first person and not bore the reader to crying fits.

(Some identified the mode as coming from TMIAHM but it’s not really — if there’s an Heinlein Ancestor to the book, it’s If This Goes On — it’s more that similar narrative necessities create similar narrative outcomes.  The writerly equivalent to parallel evolution.)

The problem is, as I’ve noted in the past, that reading fiction is not JUST a pasttime.  We might think it is.  But the way the human brain is built, we can’t help bur recall vivid emotional experiences (which good fiction provides) as things we lived through.  Which means we are stuck in a rut of expecting things to change suddenly.  (We also expect ever after, which I think accounts for a lot of divorces, since fiction, mostly as movies, has become more and more prevalent in society.  Because ever after happens in intermittent patches, not as continuous and unalloyed bliss, but our “trained” brain tells us we want the latter, not the first and that it’s possible.  We’ve lived through it before, surely?)

What is this in the name of?  This is in the name of the relationship between publishers and writers.  And also between writers and market.

In the previous thread, in comments, Tolladay told me to impose order on my schedule by dictating to the publishers.

You have no idea how appealing that sounds.  And how impossible.

Yes, yes, there will come a day when the power is all with the writer — not yet.  Note my advance mourning at the idea [gathered from the tone of the email and the fact no offer is attached] that AFGM will have to go Indie.  It will go Indie, and I trust over time it will find many readers.  But it doesn’t compare — yet — to the power of a major house putting it out.  Oh, in money… probably, over two or three years.  But in dispersion?  Not so much.

But why you say?  Can’t readers find it by word of mouth?  Sure they can.  But some astonishing number like 80% of people still prefer to read on paper, regardless of how bad the industry and what’s available has become.  So why do they do it?  Habit.  It’s engrained habit.  And that changes slowly.  VERY slowly.  It won’t change fully for about ten years, when I suspect it will flip.  To flip earlier we need one of those “coincidences” — something that makes paper books infinitely worse, or ebooks infinitely better.

And you know what, even if it were 50/50, it will take even longer for publishers to ACCEPT that writers now have power.  Worse, it will take the writers YEARS to accept they have the power.  The relationship has been set in stone forever.  A generation will need to retire and another to come in BEFORE that changes.  So, my trying to dictate to publishers would simply get me pushed into going completely Indie before I’m ready.  Things don’t change that fast.

[And by the way, I’m not repining on having to take AFGM indie, if that’s the case.  I have complete faith in that book, odd though it is.  While I can see the publisher might hesitate or even balk at it, I think it will sell, and I think I’ll make considerably more than I can make from traditional publishing within five/ten years.  But the nature of the book make me wish it could have a more traditional birth.  Neither here nor there, I’m grateful to have the alternative.]

So, do I expect indie to triumph and writers to have a lot more power in the future?  Sure I do.  But it takes time.  I doubt I’ll see the full transformation in my lifetime, even if I turn out to be as long-lived as my ancestresses plus a bit more for better tech, and come to touch or near the full century.

It doesn’t matter, since in the meantime I should be able to make a living and to have somewhere to put properties that MUST be written, but which the houses won’t touch.

It is sometimes helps to remember that the pivotal event might have happened (In the case of ebooks SEVERAL pivotal events.) but that change still creaks in slowly and through the back door and not suddenly, in a great climax of sound and light as it does in fiction.

And it helps to get used to this idea and realize small, incremental changes are often worth our entire devotion and our entire life, because they set off other changes, which eventually lead to a whole new world — in the future we might not see.

(And now I think about it, that too is the theme of A Few Good Men.)

Now I’m going to make a large, obvious change to the cat boxes, then move dust around a bit and make the house fractionally cleaner.

When I got in this business – by which I mean, when I actually sold – I was so scared of deadlines that I tried to finish books three to six months ahead of time.

This is relatively easy when you have one book a year, or even two.  Because I write every day – or everyday there isn’t some crisis going on.  Um… okay, half the days – I was always early with books and developed a reputation for it.

Then came a time when I had to take three/four contracts a year.  And I started slipping a little.  Yes, I write very fast.  Yes, given a quiet day and eight hours, I can do twenty thousand a words.  But a novel is not twenty thousand words and cap it.  A novel is coherence, an idea that forms before hand, and in my case, SF or historical or even “just” fantasy there’s research and worldbuilding.

Some of this overlaps writing the last book, but it’s difficult.  Say, you’re in the twenty fourth century and reading everything about Tudor England.  Language leaks in, if nothing else.

Also, I always wondered if Misty Lackey was talking about writing when she came up with the magic for Valdemar.  Trust me, when you write books back to back without down time, or – worse – using the downtime to catch up on editing and shorts and stuff, you get the sense that your “channels” have been “stripped.”

When you are, as I’ve been for most of the last five years (yes, yes, you don’t know, because a lot of those are closed pen names or other type of work) on six books a year, well…  All it takes is one cold, and it pushes everything else forward, and suddenly you’re two years behind on a series (Noah’s Boy for the Shifter’s series) and wondering how the hell you got there.

Because, you see, this writing thing is not just writing.  At least not for traditional press work (though I’ve found also not Indie.  I’ll explain later.)  You write, then send it out, then it comes back, usually, with an editorial letter of some sort.  Then it goes back and comes back with copyedits.  Then it goes back and comes back as page proofs.

Each one of these is GUARANTEED to come when you’re in the middle of the trance on another book – the part of the book where you’re eating, breathing and sleeping the characters and the situation.  It stops work on the new book AND makes it difficult to “tune in” to the book under revision.  Oh, and if it’s a messy revision requirement, it’s bound to come with “ASAP” stamped on it.  Did I mention you have no control over these, which go at the house’s pace?  Yeah.  Once, I decided to go to the front room of our house to get something as the taxi that would take us to the airport and for a two week vacation in Portugal pulled up.  While picking up whatever it was (I THINK a book) there was the “thunk” of a package on the front porch.  Fedex.  Revisions and mark upon one of the musketeer’s books, which had then to be accommodated in the suitcases.  (Let alone if it had been five minutes later, it would have had to wait two weeks, which it couldn’t, by house schedule.)

Now that is one part where I can see Indie helping.  Yeah, I know, I’ll still have edits and “revisits” to the book, but since it’s on my schedule, it’s easier to control.  And maybe I can get a handle on this.  OTOH as I’ve pointed out, for the foreseeable future I’m living in two worlds.  (When I was little, I saw this act in a circus where a pretty girl stood with a foot on each horse, galloping side by side.  I still have no idea HOW she did it, but I guess I’ll have to learn.)

What this means in practical terms is that on top of the madness above (and I have three books due at traditional presses this year – two overdue, which IS a full schedule for most authors, as well as a book overdue at Naked Reader and two more novels with them (Orphan kittens which already has cover, and a fantasy one and a collaboration with Amanda Green [Rye Crisp – a paranormal mystery]) and a few short stories too and a few books I want to finish for Goldport.) I also have to keep on top of software and the changes in platform at various retailers.  And I have to SOMEHOW redesign my web site.  And, oh, yeah, a bunch of the short stories I have set aside for Goldport Press need a rewrite.  And, oh, yeah, the Marlowe mysteries short stories are doing well for me, and I’d like to finish the novel and give it a chance, but – as with the Red Baron one – this almost requires my going away and hiding so I can immerse myself in the time period.

And through all this, rewrites requests will continue to come, and requests for submissions, and page proofs and…  And my health seems to be even more … uh… amusing than it’s been for years.

Who, complain, me?  Did I ever say I didn’t want to live in interesting times?

If you need me, I’ll be under my desk, braiding my hair and studying a rewrite letter.  Then this afternoon, I’ll be working on one of the late books.  I have a nervous breakdown penciled in for 2020, and I intend to enjoy it thoroughly when the time comes.

It might be the only way to get some rest around here.

Over at Mad Genius Club yesterday we got into what good editing was worth.  Oh, okay, Dave Freer (aka Doctor Monkey) did.  But I got more into it in comments, because – and this is not JUST me – in this age of turmoil and strangeness, it seems like editing is becoming a point of contention.

Perhaps it always was.  The bad edit not only shall always been with us, but you bet your bottom vowel it has always been with us, now and forever, world without end.  Part of this is that publishing houses (and in my time in working traditional) and agents had a vested interest in “making it more marketable.”  (We won’t go into how “marketable” when it comes to books, in my time, mostly meant “I want to appeal to the two or three reps who determine if it goes on shelves.) This of course might or might not have anything to do with the writer’s vision or what the writer is trying to get across.

Look, I’m the first to say, speaking as a variety of writers, genus compulsive, sub-genus intuitive, that my people aren’t the most rational things around.  Our relationship with our ideas is mostly that of cats with a fast moving object across their field of vision.  We cannot help but follow, and we will eat it even if it happens to be a roll of string, and not the tasty earthworm we thought it was.  Guilty as charged – to an extent.  I’ll also admit that my people, collectively, have the sense of business that G-d gave a gnat.  A gnat who has gone bankrupt several times.

But now that we’re done talking in general, let’s talk in specifics, shall we?  I’ll admit I fit some of the “artistic” stereotypes.  No, not by choice, but as my grandmother used to say “we don’t make ourselves” which is true either case, whether you believe the divine (or, er… the other side) had a hand in, or whether you think that we are the result of nature plus nurture.  There are things you can’t eradicate, even if we try.  And I’ve realized at some point that getting rid of the irrational compulsion to create would also get rid of the writing altogether, which, considering how central it is to my personality, might lead to a nervous breakdown or worse.

So I have a compulsion to write, and sometimes I have a compulsion to write things I know will never find a market.  Listen, I have written things that not only aren’t marketable, but which will never be shown to anyone, my closest friends and my spouse included.  They were in head and that was the only way to get them out.  (And if the kids try to publish them after my death, hauntings WILL be real.)

HOWEVER – and it’s a big however – aside from that compulsion and other minor stuff I can’t control about the writing — I’m a rational, not to say a hard nosed person.  Which is good because – this is still part of that however, as it applies to my entire generation of writers – I came up during REALLY tough times.  Your chances of getting published at all were minimal, and your chances of continuing to work — as I am to this day — past book three, or even book two, were well…  In this environment, I’ve been continuously under contract (save for a few months in 03) for ten years.  If you think this was dumb luck and chance, let me tell you you’re dreaming.

It isn’t that I’m so smart, either, but I’m good at knowing “what will sell” – that is, I’m good at knowing where my insanity intersects with that of the people I’m aiming to sell to.

And that’s what’s changed.  I have – for years now – learned to sell to agents/editors/publishers.  In the last two years, I’ve been tuning to how to sell to the public.  Which, no, is not the same as selling to publishers/editors, because well… THEY’ve been selling to reps and not to the public.  And most of them still are.

This is where we get back to the matter of edits – you knew we would, right? – by a circuitous route.

I’m not a prima-donna, though I can default to prima-donnaish attitudes as a reaction/defense.  Let me explain: when I started in the field I rewrote everything the way they told me to rewrite it.  Rational.  Without passing the gatekeeper, I could never get read.  Besides, I never think I have the ultimate answer, and while I admit to some artistic quirks, I’m more craftswoman than a’tist.
So, when my second agent said “rewrite this” for All Night Awake, the middle book of the Shakespeare trilogy, I did.  And I wrote it to his specifications.

Not only did I hate the result – which he loved – but people who read my stuff/liked my first book, hated it too.  Of all my books even the other-name-deep-secret-small-press ones, that one sold the absolute worst.  Was my original version better?  I don’t know.  Both are available in one volume from Baen Webscriptions, so if the question bothers you, go find out.  BUT I know the original second one is more my own.  It might have needed editing, but it didn’t need a radical plottectomy and formula transplant, which is what it got.

This has served as an object lesson.  Since then, even when it meant alienating a publishing house, I draw the line when the editorial letter starts by telling me how much they love the book, then asks me to change it… in a way that requires I scrap everything but a few pages and write it again from page one to make it a different type of book.

Around the house the guys have learned to read my expression when I receive one of those letters and they call it (from the Code Monkey song) “Maybe editor wants to write g*ddamn book herself/Novelist does say it, outloud/Novelist is crazy AND proud.”

I’m perfectly aware this might come across to some people/houses as my being primadonnish.  And that’s too bad.  It’s not that I think my book is perfect – most of them aren’t, mine or others – it’s that I’ve learned through my own experience that people who buy my books want… well… my books.  While a book by someone else might sell way better, it won’t sell way better if it’s a book by someone else written by me.  For instance, All Night Awake got a thriller plot shoved in.  Have you guys noticed the distinct lack of thrillers in my line up?  Yeah.  That’s because while I read them (I read everything, including want ads for professions I don’t know) they’re not… vital enough for me to want to write them.  They just don’t INTEREST me enough.  So, when I write them, they come out second best, at best.

Remember that thing I did, way back, about some ideas aren’t yours?  Well, the fact that it’s your publishing house telling you that this idea is what your idea should be does NOT make it yours to write.  And look, while Sarah A. Hoyt might be a niche brand, while J.K. Rowling or Stephen King are massive blockbusters, I can write D*MN good Sarah A. Hoyt.  I can at best do subpar J.K.Rowling, and I doubt I could do King at all.  (Throws book at head of giggler on back row.)

There are other things I’ll stick at.  I’m not a pantser.  I think I’ve mentioned that.  However, some pantsing bits always fall in to my writing.  For instance, while needing to make my character do something relevant with communications, I found out I’d already seeded that detail in the first book, in a throwaway line I put in without knowing why.  This could be said as “the subconscious has reasons the mind doesn’t know.”  So when an edit wants to remove a detail and that feels WRONG, I’ll put both feet up against it and say “NO.”

So, do I take any edits?  Sure I do.  Toni Weisskopf told me to add a whole section to Gentleman Takes A chance, and the minute she said it, it was like the skies opened, etc.  Also, with Darkship Thieves, it felt fractured till she told me it needed to be divided into sections.  And then it made sense.  (Does this mean she’s always right?  Probably not.  She’s not me.  Ultimately I’m the best judge of what I was trying to say/do.  Also, after 21 books I’m the best judge of whom I appeal to, and more importantly, whom I CAN appeal to, given ideal circumstances.  People who read Doc Travis or Ringo might like my stuff too, but they would be very put off if I tried to BE them.)

Also, a friend of mine who is possibly the best editor I have ever worked with, does edit some of my books and stories.  I listen to him very closely, partly because he’s not intrusive at all, and never tries to superimpose his own ideas of what the story should be.  Instead, he tells me when I’m repeating myself, or when my meaning is not clear, or suggests I make something more obvious.  And I take it.

He also copyedits.  This is what most people call “editing” but it’s not.  It’s at the word level.  He’s very good at that too, and can make my clunky sentences sing, while keeping my style.  I’ll confess I’m if anything overeasy on the copyedits.  Most of the time if you want to use flare instead of flash, I go “whatever.”  It takes a lot to make me scream on those (a recent copy edit on an historical managed it, but it was only the second book in my career to do so.  I mean, there have been the occasional spit-takes on the occasional line, but only two that I said “Not only no but h*ll no” to most of it.)

In fact, lest you think I REALLY am primadonnaish, out of 21 acknowledged books and – mumble – unacknowledged ones, there have been exactly three rewrites I’ve stuck my feet in the dirt and said “you can’t make me.”  One of them I ended up doing, anyway, the aforementioned All night Awake – and lived to regret it.  The other one I did the Code Monkey variation and killed my relationship with that house, possibly for good. (BUT — and this is important — the book sold much better than ANA.)  And the other one … eh…  I’ll tell you when the ulcer subsides whether compromise is possible.

But the thing is, both the edits and the copyedits I’ve got recently are tipping the scales of “we want something else completely different” and from what I hear through the grape vine, so are everyone’s.

How come?

Well, I think the reason is twofold.  First, houses are running scared.  They are now not marketing ONLY to the reps, and they simply don’t know what to do.  So they’re doing everything.  At once.

Second, houses are running scared.  Writers are jumping ship to indies.  They realize that for years, they’ve done nothing for writers but get them on shelves, and now they can’t do that reliably.  So they want to offer something, and they can offer – they think – quality editing.

To quote The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress “Oh, Bog.”  They’re doing the exact wrong thing.  Because they don’t know how to sell to the public better than the writer – particularly if the writer came up in the last ten years and have learned to psych the buyer, be that the public or the publishing house – and they surely don’t know the writer better than the writer knows him/herself.  All their panicky effort to make everyone “better” by making them more like other writers will do is… frustrate a lot of writers into going indie.

As I’ve said, I don’t intend to be under contract again, if I can help it, and I don’t intend to do drastic rewrites on any books not under contract. If a drastic rewrite is required, book goes to my friend to edit, and then goes indie.

Does this mean I’ll be digging my own grave?  I doubt it.  Yes, we’re all familiar with writers who should be edited and aren’t.  Weirdly though, they usually sell very well, nonethless.  Which, I think shows that it’s better to be a better yourself than an ersatz someone else.  (And besides, I’ll be edited.  Just not “reshaped”.)

However, even if I fall on my face, at least I’ll fall on my face under my own power and through my own hand, and not because I was trying to be what someone else wanted me to be.

(And,  under this, is Mika’s Grace Kelly.  I first heard this song when my kids were playing it and I was going through heck with the mystery house who wanted me to change my name, yet again and write “a craft mystery.”  This was the third name change, and that song resonated.  Under that again, is Leonard Cohen with Going Home.  It’s from the new album Old Ideas.  I’ll completly admit Cohen is an acquired taste.  I have acquired it.  This particular song baffled a reviewer as in “who is speaking to him?” and “what does he mean he has to say what whoever it is wants, even though it isn’t welcome.”  This reviewer, my dears, is NOT a writer.  Or at least not my kind of writer.  We often write what has to be written, not what we want to.  Which is why edits can be so jarring and so wrong, even when they don’t seem to be…  From the outside.  Which is all that editors have access to.)

*Sorry to be so late, and hopefully the post below makes sense.  It’s one of those days when there just ISN’T enough caffeine.*
One of my friends recently told me he knew why I wrote science fiction – it was so I could write about people as they should be, instead of as they are.

It took me a while to think my way out of that one, because there’s some truth in it. Not about Science Fiction, specifically.

Writing – story telling of any kind – is a way of imposing on order on a reality that is essentially disordered.  I don’t mean that actions don’t have consequences, of course.  Of course they do.  But society, like the economy or the weather, is a chaotic system.  As such, its inputs are so many and so varied, that, in the course of living one’s life it is sometimes hard to impose a logic on it, much less a satisfactory logic.  So, part of what the writers do is impose logic and order on reality.

Of course, that’s not the reason I write as such.  It’s certainly not the WHOLE reason I write.  My writing mostly falls under the first three reasons Heinlein wrote:  I write for money because I have a household to support and in order to earn that money I must entertain the reader.

I grant you the contribution I make to the household is negligible, but it is the difference between us living so close to the bone it occasionally cuts into the bone, and our being able to take the occasional (four times a year, usually) weekend in Denver, and maybe set a little aside for when my thirteen year old car needs replacement (it’s making some very funny noises.)

But is there more to it then that?  Well, of course there is.  I could make the same money, just about, as a secretary and at this point the kids aren’t young enough to NEED me in the house 24/7.  And being a secretary would not make me travel over half the country (I hate flying) and it wouldn’t make me work weekends, either – at least not most of the time.  And heck, I could start a house-cleaning or even a furniture rehabilitation business and make more money than either writing or as a secretary.  And sleep better at night.

Given that, why do I write at all.  Is it the prestige?

Sorry.  Sorry.  Choked on laughter there for a moment.  Yeah.  Prestige…  When people are being nice, they call me a hack…

No, the reason I do it, the reason I write at all is that it feeds some need within me.  I think in stories, would be the easiest way to tell it.  When I face a trauma of some sort, I make a story around it, so I can process it.  (No, this doesn’t mean that I lie about it.  It means I take the feeling, or the events, or whatever I’m having trouble digesting, and set it elsewhere and live it again through the mind of a character.  This allows me to think about it in a rational way that’s impossible while I’m in the middle of it.

And see, I think that other humans work that way too; even if they cannot make up their own stories to process their own trauma.  (And they can’t.  At least most of them can’t; not cogently.)   We are discovering that you can derive almost the same benefit from “living through” a vicarious experience, in someone else’s “shoes” as you can by living it yourself – of course, with a lot fewer bad consequences.   So, by writing, I can help people process various issues confronting them – WHILE helping myself and getting paid, it seems like a pretty good deal.

BUT why write science fiction?  We know now that most likely the future will not be as we imagine it (In fact, I’m finishing an article about that for Otherwhere Gazette) so why write about societies and worlds that have never happened?

My friends on the left will tell you that it’s as cautionary tales, or as social criticism, or some other of those reasons they are so very fond of.  I utterly reject the second motive.  Societal criticism, qua societal criticism might serve a purpose, but mostly it seems to add up to a cult of victimhood and a hatred of any success that ultimately leads to a hatred of the human race.  Criticism as such and stripped of anything else is just the ravings of society outliers (which most sf writers are) and lead one to ask “and what qualifies you to say that?”

Do I criticize current society in my science fiction?  Of course.  But it is sort of a by-product.  Because what I do in my science fiction is a continuation of what I do in my historical fiction.  In my historical fiction, I try to take the current reader and set him in a world where his assumptions that can change all change.  How women should be treated is different, for instance.  And also how one presumes man relates to his world.  Language is used differently, too.

By writing historical fiction, I strip human nature of the incidentals, and show you where we came from, what has changed and perhaps what can change again, so hopefully the reader can look at the mores of his own world with appropriate detachment but also not think man is infinitely pliable.  (He is not.  And she is not, either.)

However, historical fiction is limited.  I can’t show you the past as it truly was.  No, seriously, go and read Dumas, as opposed to my elaboration of it.  All the servant-beating, horse-killing…  If I wrote my musketeers like that, the reader would shut his mind against it utterly.  And there would be people who disputed it and who, without reading the original (or in the case of other historic fiction without researching the past) would condemn me for painting these people as unpleasant for my own nepharious motives.

Enter science fiction, where I can adjust all of the society around so even a wife-beating, horse killing “hero” can be good in comparison.  (Not that I intend to write one of those.)  Enter science fiction where I can extrapolate some of our assumptions that we don’t think are assumptions way into the future and into their most ridiculously exaggerated, and show to myself how it would turn out.

Not social criticism, as such, but sort of a social math, where I take the factor sand project them, then can come back and see if my premisses were wrong to begin with.

But there’s more.  You see, when I was young I loved strolling by the sea.  At some level I knew the sea had always been there, would be there centuries uncounted after my death.  This made the whole span of my life, let alone the little problem confronting me at the time – whatever it might be – seem inconsequential.  You could argue my visits to the natural history museum have the same effect.  I can look at fossil trilobites and know my time and my worries are a blink – a moment in the present, barely registering in the history of Earth, let alone of the universe.

For me this feeling is a good thing.  It puts it all in perspective, and keeps me from overdramatizing.

In a way science fiction is like the sea.  It makes it real to me – and hopefully – to the readers that there will be a future long after we gone.  And it makes us okay with it.

Insofar as writing and reading fiction are ways to make sense of the world, science fiction reconciles us to the idea of our mortality – perhaps the hardest things for humans to believe in.

Is this the full reason I write science fiction?  No, of course not.  Among many others, some of which I’m probably not even aware of, there’s that moment, back in pre-history, when I stumbled upon a copy of an sf book, and my brother explained to me “it’s like an history for the future.”  It was then I realized what it REALLY was: the collective daydreams of humanity in our time and place.

Day dreams are rarely expected to be true, but they are often what keeps us going from day to day, through the hard times in our life.  I think science fiction does that too.

So the answer to my friend is: I try to write about people how they are even if I have them doing what they SHOULD.   Because one can always day-dream that in the future, they will do so.

( And for those who know of my son’s peculiar habit of writing a report about Ultra Bowl — which is Superbowl in a parallel, supernatural dimension, this year’s report is up.  If you like it, consider donating for the kid’s college books, or hiking on over to Amazon and buying one of his stories.)

 

Oh, yeah, also, I posted over at Classical Values today.  Please, be aware these are my “Political” posts — though this one is more social, and if you don’t want to know, don’t go there.  Heaven knows I wish a lot of writers I like as writers — particularly in mystery — would never mention politics, particularly in the books.  Also, as a caveat, because I am proud to blog at CV it doesn’t mean I agree with EVERY post.  We are a loosely bound group and Eric is truly libertarian in feeling, in that he lets each of us express ourselves, without restricting what we post.  It’s an admirable case of practicing what he preaches that often startles me.)

Over at Mad Genius Club, my group writers’ blog, Amanda Green has been doing a series on Digital Publishing how to.  It’s an amazingly good series, so go look at it.  She asked me to come in and do the segment on covers, possibly because she got tired of hearing me moan about the covers some of my mentees put up.  So… keeping in mind this is not my metier, but a trade I’m being forced into, I’m echoing the post here:
Cover Me! I’m Going In!

I was brought in by Amanda to do the segment on covers because I’ve more or less taken over this duty at Naked Reader. The various people who did cover design and art selection/direction before were sweet and about as clued in as I was. In fact, one of my first things out with Naked Reader Press, I did the cover which is now up to be redone, because it was wrong, wrong, wrong, miles and miles of wrongitude. That was A Touch of Night, which I’d drawn the art for, too (so, sue me.) I might actually keep the art, since it could be worse [Grin] but that blue border and the lettering… How bad is that lettering? Can you read it? No, I didn’t think so.

The A Touch of Night cover just screams “amateur.”

So, how did I come to make this mistake? Oh, very easily. I had been trained by years of covers. What do I mean by that? Well, take the book that was on my bedside table this morning, Georgette Heyer’s Frederica from 1965 (when I’m not feeling well, I not only read stuff I’ve read before, and often light stuff, but I tend to read only the — happy — ending.)

Now, we can all agree, right? that whoever designed this cover did not intend to scream “Amateur”. But the sixties book market was quite different. I don’t actually KNOW as such, since — though I learned to read at four, that was a year later than this and — I wasn’t reading, much less buying, romances, but from what older friends have told me, you bought books from the corner store often from one of those spinning racks. With the book about at your eye level face out — and if not, you knelt, I think, or at least I used to — that cover is great. The author name, which is the important thing, is still readable. But the title just doesn’t quite come across in the digital age, does it?

These are the books we grew up looking at and loving and they formed our idea of “good cover” only, of course, times have changed.

How much have times changed? Oh, boy… well… First they changed so that you had to see something that caught your attention spine out on the shelf of a megastore, and picked it up. This led to any number of wrap around covers and what I call “brocade and embroidery” particularly for what they considered a “prime” title or a “classy title” covers. The publishers were going for feel and impression, rather than in any way representing the book:

And for a slightly different feel, something from the thriller isle which still shows that concern with “let’s get the customer to pick up the book and give it more attention” — here’s the first Repairman Jack I read (we’ll return to this.)

Hosts is a little better, because it’s from a slightly different era. It was given away for free at World Fantasy 2001 — which means the publisher was pushing it.

Unlike the other two, which came in around that time, too, and quite unlike Frederica, the cover for Hosts takes in account a new reality — Amazon. While most of the books were still sold in paper (correction, most of the books still ARE sold in paper) Amazon was coming up from behind to become a leading outlet for those, which meant how things looked in thumbnail mattered, at least if your publisher had a clue. (Many publishers STILL aren’t Sherlock Holmes.) So you see on that cover that you can read the title and the author’s name in high contrast. But you can also tell the title was foiled (covered in foil, not “curses, foiled again” in a way that makes it harder to read electronic. that was because electronic was a negligible market and that short of shimmer and fade on the title meant it was foiled, which is an expensive process and therefore signified to your mind “pushed.”

In fact, you should go to the Repairman Jack site and look over the cover retrospective. In particularly, look at the Young Repairman Jack series which came out wholly in the electronic age and see the difference. But, you’ll say, the difference is also that it’s YA. Right… but no. Look at the very last of the Repairman Jack titles, Night World — that’s a title fully in the electronic age and they finally got the message. See how the title is HUGE and the art recedes in importance? Right. That’s part of what’s happening. Let’s do a quick retrospective of “highly pushed titles” (Pushed = what the publisher paid big bucks for and wants you to believe is the best thing since sliced bread) over the last few years, shall we?

Do you see how the covers become more and more “inconic” and stripped down, till all that is left of the art is usually a highly memorable image, having more to do with logo-making and image-making than with actual “art” as we used to think of it for a book? The contrast is particularly great if you compare it to the brocade (or small details) era of just ten years ago.

Now mind you, not all publishing houses have got the memo, and a lot of them too, aren’t doing a lot of their selling in ebooks,(Yet) or — the idiocy — are trying to discourage selling that way, under the belief if they keep their fingers over their ears and scream “there’s no place like home, auntie Em” they’ll be back in the — for them — halcion days of the nineties. As sad as that is, most of the houses HAVE got the memo and as you can see the covers of  their headliner books have changed a lot over the last ten years.

Now, for a snapshot of the amateur leagues, let’s head over to smashwords, where most of the books are self published. I am NOT picking on these people — my early covers for Goldport press were as bad or worse. Here are some books up on the first page when I looked this morning, while writing this post:

Okay, is there any chance, no matter how remote you’d think that was a traditionally published book? Well… no. First of all the book “orientation” is wrong. It’s wider than it is tall. And while you often see that in printed children’s books, the rest of the cover also screams “amateur.” The type is so small you can barely read the title. the author name IS there, but runs off the page on Smashwords, and I guess it didn’t copy. And while the cover is a gorgeous photograph, with tons of visual interest, and has a doggy on it, it is a photograph, which almost by itself, these days, screams “self published” (except in some sub-genres, though I’ve found even including a photograph as PART of the cover seriously brings my sales down in GP. Go figure. People are internalizing the new signaling, I’d guess.)

I’ll confess to you I didn’t check if the next book is self or traditionally published. It might VERY WELL be traditionally published, because it’s poetry, where covers are always screwy at best. However, as a cover it screams “amateur” — that is, if you can read it at all.

I can’t. Oh, it’s the right aspect, though it came up poster size, taking up the entire window, and when I reduced it, I might have done it violence, and it’s a painting or someone at least treated a photograph with one of the “brush stroke” simulating programs, to look like a a painting. But that title and the author’s name… what is that, exactly?

So, so far, let’s go with our lessons, shall we? “no fonts so fancy you can’t read them,” “No fonts so small you can’t read them” and the right aspect for books. (Aspect meaning orientation and size. Set your program for nine inches by six inches, the size of a trade paper back. Unless you’re using sigil where Amanda tells me, at least the cover to go on the inside needs to be 590 pixels x 750 pixels. I recommend making a different one for the inside, then, because otherwise the “aspect” instinctively says “textbook.”

More random examples of covers up on Smashwords this morning:

Photograph AND the title and author’s name sideways. I’m not sure why but… oh, no. Also, the contrast makes both almost impossible to read and they’re WAY too small.

And this last one: The picture actually works, for what it is, though to me it says “WWII fiction” instead of a contemporary article.

Yes, I know if I look at details I can tell it’s far more recent than WWII but the faded look first gives that impression. HOWEVER the letters are still too small. FAR FAR too small. yes, they can be read, which is good, but they trigger our mental “self published” triggers.

None of this is written in stone, okay? You can still look in the kindle paid bestsellers and find astonishingly “antique” looking covers. The Help’s cover comes to mind. But then if you step back and ask yourself what THAT marketing strategy was you think “movie + marketed to ‘literate’ people” and you realize it might very well look that way on purpose.

I’ve found that the covers that do best for me (by and large) have the following characteristics: relatively simple art (I’m no advertising maven, and I have so far fallen short of finding a “branding” type image. Large type,usually in Times New Roman or one of the other simple fonts (remember fonts are copyrighted. You can’t just pick one up off the web without making sure you have the rights to it. OTOH if you’re using a program to make the covers and the program is freeware OR licensed to you, you’re fine.) Large enough that it can be read from a distance, or in thumbnail side. No tilting, funny fonts, running blood or anything of the sort, unless VERY EXCEPTIONALLY because of the book it is. (I tilted the title of ConVent because it is supposed to be a convention banner, also, italic — PROVIDED IT’S LEGIBLE, which a lot of it isn’t — can work for romance.) Usually a tag line somewhere there — which is too small to read in thumbnail but readable if they click on it. Don’t ask, but this gives the impression that it is a printed book, even when it isn’t.

When I can, I use a drawing rather than a photograph, though photographs are de-rigueur for certain types of books — just go look at the books that have done well in your subgenre FIRST — that, btw, NEVER includes SF or historic romance.

So, where do I find this art? Do I just take it off the web? No. Art is copyrighted, and I try not to steal others’ work. Do I commission it? Well… this is a little difficult. If I end up bringing novels out with Goldport, I probably will commission the art, unless, of course, I happen to find art that fits so wonderfully that there is no point (It happens. My collection Five Far Futures is one of those — look below.) However, for short stories, it’s a numbers game. I get most of my money from QUANTITY not from individual shorts (tons of people don’t buy shorts, etc.) So… Well… go here and you’ll find any number linked, including public domain sources. Most of my art comes from Dreamstime because it’s a large enough site to have a lot of things and their search engine is actually pretty good once you understand the logic of terms used (which might make you cry for the general education or psychology of the users, but that’s something else. For instance, if you search for handsome man, you come to realize most photographers have no clue what that word means — occasionally either of those words.)

If you’re publishing only in ebook, you can usually get away with buying the extra small size because your eye simply can’t see details past a certain point, not on the screen. So, go for it, then expand the image to the size you need. Now, if you’re printing, you’ll have to buy the larger size or resign yourself to extreme pixalation (which sounds like a reality show.)

Keep in mind a few things: first, if like me you have a bunchaton of covers to make, you’re not always going to hit a homerun. In fact, if most of your covers are meh but professional, you’re ahead of the game. The cover doesn’t necessarily have to reflect the content. In fact, if Baen rejects A Few Good Men (I hope not, but they might. It’s a “risky” book — not risque, but risky — for many reasons, the cover I’d like is a man in a tattered shirt (war tattered, not romance-tattered) holding up an arm, which holds a futuristic weapon. From his wrist hangs a broken manacle. Behind it, a tattered American flag (very tattered, I found a nice image of it practically in ribbons, which I am saving to show artist) and there might be a flying car/air-to-space in the distant horizon. Now, my character was never shackled, but he was imprisoned for fifteen years. Symbolically that works. (On other levels too.)

Keep in mind too, that you’ll get better with practice (save for those days you’re “off”) and just keep doing it. And keep in mind that as long as it’s electronic you can always mess with it. For instance, I need to go do something about the cover of Nocturnal Serenade because it doesn’t come across at all that there’s a sexy woman silhouette behind the letters. Amanda is going to kill me, but I’m going to muck with it next week, sometime.

The only other advice? If you think your title and author name is large enough — bump it up a little. This is where most of us err. Also, for the love of heaven, make your name either the same or close to the size of the title. Name of author has been used for so long to indicate “known, well selling author” that people look at little ones and the back brain goes “ignore” — so, make yourself a lead author. Go for it. You have my permission.

Okay, now some of the covers that I made which PROBABLY don’t suck:

Okay, the fanfic is on hiatus for a while, mostly because I realized the version I have is not the public one at Austen, and I need to read that one, to figure out how to continue without bogging down in contradictions.

OTOH Saturdays are a problem.  They pretty much just are.  I’m going to declare Saturday not exactly a day of rest but a day of fun of fluffy stuff at ATH, so that I can … well, do the other stuff that’s not writing.  Like proofing and putting stories up.  Or ironing (on the slate for today) or art.

So, today the inanity is Which Jane Austen Character Are You?

Apparently I’m Lizzy.  I know you’re shocked, right?  So, who are you?  (And I was in fear I’d be Mr Darcy, btw…)

*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 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.*

For previous chapters, look here:  https://accordingtohoyt.com/witchfinder/

After The Bird Has Flown
There was no worse feeling, Gabriel thought, than arriving to close the door of the birdcage a moment after the bird had flown.
Not that Seraphim and Miss Felix were birds, or that the odd portal – was it a portal?
– to another world was a cage door.  For one, Gabriel was almost sure that neither Seraphim nor Miss Felix had meant to go through it and into– Where?
And then, in that split second after he realized he’d lost track of his legitimate brother, the head of his house on whom,  in fact, his entire family depended, he realized that he had a bigger problem
The corpse was shambling towards him.
He’d had some experience in Cambridge with reanimated corpses.  He wouldn’t say that was what had put paid to his one and only love affair, but it had certainly exploded the whole thing into the public eye and had forced him to leave Cambridge in disgrace.
Normally the only way to kill a reanimated corpse was to get the person who’d first animated it to help.  That had been the problem, really, back then, though perhaps Gabriel hadn’t dealt with it as sanely as he should have.
But now, ten years later, he still had no idea how to deal with it.  You couldn’t put an animated corpse down without the collaboration and the help of the person who’d reanimated it.  Who could have animated Antoine?  It had to be someone in the house?  But who would have done it and set him up as a magical trap to send Seraphim and Miss Felix– Where?
He backed up as the corpse shambled forward.  He raised his wand.
And then, as if a switch had been turned, Antoine’s corpse closed its gaping mouth, swayed, and fell, forward, with all the grace of a sack full of sand.
Gabriel realized he was shaking and sweating, standing alone in the empty guest room, staring at a dead man and wondering where Seraphim and Miss Felix were.  Always, that question came back.  What had happened to Seraphim and Miss Felix?  And what would happen now?
Gabriel backed up, until his back hit the wall of the hallway, opposite the door to the room.  For a moment – for just a moment – he thought he’d go back in and pull the bell pull and call for help.  But what help could he call?  The Duchess?  Already fearing for the life of her younger son, and perhaps for his sanity, lost in fairyland, what could she do about the loss of her older son?  Caroline?  Caroline was a mere child.  Oh, precocious beyond her years, but how much help could she be?  Worse, how much help should he ask of her.  They were very likely to be dealing with forbidden magics here, before it was all said and done.  Travel to other lands, for sure, and probably meddling in their affairs too.
Worse, he realized, with a feeling as though a leaden weight had settled on his stomach, some people – perhaps even the duchess, almost certainly not Caroline, but surely every servant in the house – would suspect him of having done this.  The magic was so odd, the animation of the cadaver, the portal.  Fairy magic, they’d say, and they’d talk about him behind their hands.  He’d once again meet the odd looks that focused on him for a moment, then slid sideways, and know, know as he did in his first days in the house, that behind their backs they held their fingers crossed, an impotent attempt at stopping the evil magic he had no intent of using.
What could he do?  He couldn’t leave Seraphim lost.  Or Michael.  Or possibly even Miss Felix, if she was innocent in this.  His mouth went dry in a panic, and at first he thought the loud banging was coming from his head or from his heart.
Then he realized it was coming from the front door.  Someone was pounding on the door, loudly, and shouting something.  Sound of running feet echoed through the house, and distantly, Gabriel heard the front door open.
There were shouting voices, one of them almost for sure the buttler’s.  Here, in the guest wing, where every room was unoccupied, there was a great silence, but the shouting voices continued, and now there were many people coming in, at least if Gabriel was interpreting the voices correctly.
Gabriel was the only son left in the house, even if he wasn’t a son of the house, properly speaking.  He must protect the dowager and Caroline.
He ran towards the noise, but before he got there met with a maid running in the other direction, towards the family wing.  He stopped her, daring – an unwonted familiarity in him – to put his hand out to her shoulder.  He couldn’t remember her name, though he was sure he knew it.  Bessie or Annie or something like that.  All their names swirled in his head, and what came out of his mouth was, “Please, you must tell me.  Please, what is happening.”
If she was shocked at being touched, she didn’t show it, though she did drop back and drop him a courtesy.  It seemed to be unspoken etiquette of the house to treat Gabriel as an upper servant and to give him the deference they gave the butler and the house keeper, just short of the deference they gave Seraphim or the family.  “Sir,” she said.  “Sir.  It is the constables.  And the king’s magical police, and they want His Grace.  They said as he done murder, and the murdered man, killed by magic is in the house!”  Her mouth worked and no words came out.  “Sir.  And they say as you helped, sir.”
There are moments when a man’s life hangs on a thin thread of decision.  Gabriel was the only man left in the house, the only male descendant of the late Duke of Darkwater, who might protect the women in family.  But he was also half fey, easy to paint as a villain in this tale that had spun itself out to ensnare his family.  Not that he minded, or not too much.  He’d grown used to it, if not easy with it, over the years of living amid the mortals.  But in this case, what he was, who he was, could be used to taint all of the Darkwaters.
If they were going to argue that Seraphim had killed this stranger for no good reason, they’d need to get the closest witness out of the way, and that was Gabriel.  Who also happened to be the only witness to the fact that Seraphim had disappeared against his will.  And Gabriel would on top of all, make people mistrust the family that had harbored him – his family.  After all, people that took a half-fairy child into their home, would surely do any sort of stupid thing, any sort of criminal thing.
Gabriel swallowed hard.  He put his hand out again, and this time held onto the girl’s arm.  Given how leery he was, usually, of touching anyone at all in the house, it should have alarmed her but it didn’t.  Instead, Gabriel found her gaze fixed intently on him with a sort of puzzling expression.  Was it hope?  Did he add to all his sins the broken hearts of housemaids?  He removed his hand slowly, and raked back his hair which somehow had fallen forward over his face, “Listen, Annie,” he said, and in that moment knew the name was Bessie, but didn’t want to correct it.  “Tell Her Grac– No, tell Caroline, Miss Ainsling, that I’ve gone to… to avoid the… my presence can only hurt them.  Tell Caroline that Seraphim was pulled into another world, and I’m going in search of him and find him or die trying.  Tell her and then…” he thought, and suddenly realized for the girl’s protection itself, there was only thing he could do.  He put magic behind his order, to make both parts a compulsion.  “Tell her immediately, and then forget it.  It never happened.  You never saw me.”
He let the girl go, and watched her walk – no, run – towards the family wing in that half-mechanical gait of people under a compulsion.  And then he ran the other way, towards his room.  He ran faster than he’d ever run.  He ran as though the fires of hell were burning at his heels, the hounds of hell pursuing him.
He could hear the voices of strangers in the house.  He could hear the tones as the Buttler tried to keep them from coming in further.  He’d have to use a spell to leave.  That would leave a signature, but never mind.  He’d go to London, where the magical trace was harder to find, and then he’d transport from there.  And then he’d stop long enough to figure out how to find Seraphim.
Blindly, he pulled his luggage from under the bed.  Blindly, he threw clothes into it, both from the trunk at the foot of his bed, and from the peg on the wall.   There were steps on the corridor, and his mouth was dry, and his heart was pounding.  And now there was a knock at his door, and a voice calling out, “Mr. Penn?”
And the voice was not one he knew.
Without looking, without turning, he lifted his hand and threw a lock spell at the door.  It wouldn’t hold any sort of constabulary for long.  Not if they had a magician with them, which they would.  Surely, they would.  But it would slow them down.
He looked down at himself and realized he was still wearing only his underwear and his dressing gown.  His feet were bare.  There was nothing he could do about that, and it was almost funny that he should leave this house as he had entered, grossly underdressed for the weather.
He lifted his hand and with a pass, opened a portal, and found himself, between one breath and the next, in the betweener, and then, suddenly, again, on an alley in London.  Nearby, a baby cried.  Somewhere, further off, a woman laughed, a full throated laugh that reminded Gabriel of his mother.
London was a criss cross of magical comings and goings, and it would take them a while to track him here, but how long was a while?
In his mind, the events of the last day had assembled.  Someone had tricked Seraphim into committing what could be construed as a crime, and then they’d taken him away, so he couldn’t demand king’s justice.  They’d taken Michael too.  And now he, himself, had had to leave.  Why?  What did they want?  Access to the house?  Possibly.  Or just to destroy the family?  Possibly also.
But whatever they wanted, and whoever they were – perhaps the shadowy cabal he and Seraphim had encountered in distant worlds and nicknamed The Others – they would not be stopped by something like the difficulty of tracing someone in London.  They’d barely be slowed down.
In his mind’s eye, he saw his room’s door smashed down.  Now they’d be tracing him… now.
There was only one place he could go; only one place he could hide.  Marlon, curse him, had a tight enough lock on his lodgings that in ten years of living outside the law, no one had caught him, nothing had emerged about his wereabouts.
And Marlon, curse him, would take Gabriel in, though the price would be more than Gabriel would ever pay for himself, by his own choice.  But to save the only family he’d ever known?  There was no price too high.
He lifted his hand and, loathing himself, loathing his necessity, opened a portal to secret coordinates he’d promised himself he’d never use.