According To Hoyt

 

Yesterday night I had one of those moments when you feel like you should get up from the computer and go look in the mirror, to make sure your consciousness hasn’t – somehow — transferred over to another universe, and you’re not, by any chance green with poka dots and perhaps antennae. (I always wanted antennae.)

First let me point out that I’m one of those people who only links other people on facebook when either I know them extremely well or the matter I just raised is either something that will interest them.  Of course, sometimes I’ve just accused them of something heinous in jest. For the later this is usually my very closest friends and the joke is somewhat of an in joke.

So it always surprises when people I’ve never traded even two words with tag me on something. Note I said “surprises” not “upsets” me. Normally what I get tagged on are con pictures, a quote of something I said while running my mouth, an echo of a post of mine or of course cat pictures. And I’m not so foolish as to wish to deprive myself of cat pictures.

Sometimes my friends at Baen tag me on something when they wish me to engage in a discussion because my opinion – say because I grew up abroad – is valuable. Sometimes I answer, sometimes I don’t depending on how busy I am, because those threads go on forever and a lot of them seriously damage my calm. But again, it’s not that I mind as such, it’s that I’m surprised because I wouldn’t do that. (Well, okay, sometimes I call the Baen League.)

So, when I get tagged I always at least look at it, even if it’s to say “why is someone linking a cartoon about having small kids on my timeline? Oh, probably tagged in error” and not approving.

Yesterday I had a tag from someone I’d never seen before with “I particularly want the opinion of Sarah A. Hoyt and X because—” X was a colleague of mine who is so far to the left of me that I’d need powered binoculars to see her. We’re not talking one of those “wrote a conservative book once, so everyone thinks she’s a conservative”, we’re talking pretty much everyone knows she thinks Stalin was a bit of a wet blanket and if he’d just had some firmness, we’d already have our earthly paradise. So even though I’d just landed back home from Ravencon and had something like 200 notifications, I had to go look at it and see what this person could want both our opinions on. (We’re actually both very interested in renaissance history so I thought it might be that.)

The tagger was someone I don’t know. Note, it doesn’t mean I haven’t seen her name or even shaken hands at conventions. I have a horrible memory for names and faces. I know most of the regular posters here, but if you are a lurker who introduced himself at a con, (and you know there’s five or so of you at every con I attend) don’t be offended if you have to introduce yourself again and again. I usually remember people on the third introduction. It’s not you. It’s that in cons I meet so many people, it takes a while to stick.

As for remembering people from internet arguments, unless you did something so out of the ordinary insane as to make me laugh like an hyena – such as think I’m a white supremacist – or were so incredibly persistent with stupid attacks as to stick in my memory, sorry.  I won’t remember you and you’re safe from my vengeance (which usually consists of not lending you a hand when you need it). I’m not so much good-natured as vague and too lazy to be bothered much.

So, this person was no one I knew. The thread was the whole thing about whether we should have politics in science fiction and what measures should be taken so only the “right people” got in. She seemed to be you know, at least at the edge of the crowd that thinks it’s terrible that Larry Correia is on the Hugo ballot. (Later Amanda Green did a search and confirmed for me that she is indeed one of the many young politically correct writers who think that science fiction must be made safe for the special feminist glitter, and if males are allowed to talk at all these poor precious blossoms will find themselves back in the kitchen and pregnant. A feat for the young men in this crowd, but I’m sure they’re afraid of it, too.)

And then came the moment when I had to go to the bathroom and look in the mirror to make sure the antennae were properly glossiferied because you wouldn’t want to go around with your antenna kerflected.

The comment I was tagged on, by the originator of the thread, was “I particularly want to know the opinion of Sarah A. Hoyt and X because I don’t want to work with authors who are difficult or are going to cause trouble.”

I looked at the name again, looked at the picture, scratched my head, thought “Well, some houses are hiring them practically out of the cradle these days and maybe she’s younger than she looks” – but even then I had the “Ahahahahahah!” building at the back of my mind. (And I’ll explain why.)

Then I went and looked at her home page. She’s the editor of a micro press, the sort it’s just the person and a few friends. Say Naked Reader Press. Maybe smaller.

At this point the “Ahahahahaha!” is getting louder.

I go and look in the mirror and check my antennae, and come back and think about this. What in hell do my political opinions have to do with my being trouble as a writer? I’m actually so laid back as to be practically supine. I’ve protested exactly three edits in my life, to any marked degree, and even then, all the times, after the edits had gone WAY beyond what other writers would have jumped down people’s throats for. As for the other side of this, when I worked as an editor, the two worst types of trouble a writer has given me have exactly zero to do with politics. (And weirdly, I never got a “my words are just too precious, don’t change a single one.) One of them was asking me every ten minutes if I was going to accept the story (weirdly, I did buy one of those. It was that good.) The others were people who sent me corrections every day, even after the short story had been delivered as part of an antho that had gone to press. This had absolutely NOTHING to do with where the writer was on the political spectrum, but had to do with being a neurotic pain.

So the fact this woman considered my (and I presume the other woman’s, but who the heck even knows) political opinions to be a problem caused me to answer with “Oh, it’s okay. I’ve decided I won’t work with any editor who thinks I should go back in the political closet on either side, so we’re all good.” (Then she went and “liked” this comment which flabbergasted me even more.)

What I should have said, of course, was “What? You want me to reassure you I’ll stay quiet on politics so I get to work with your micro press? WHAT IS THIS? THE 1980s OR a parallel world?” (And I knew it wasn’t the later. I mean, my antennae are jus’ fine.)

Yes, there were much bigger people on that thread, including editors for a lot of big houses, but do I look that stupid? I’m already on their black list and they wouldn’t publish me ever unless I reached J. K. Rowling level, in which case their corporate bosses would make them.

But here’s the kicker: they weren’t publishing me even before. And they weren’t publishing me on the political color line – because I was insufficiently vocal with the leftist tropes. (No, this isn’t having a big head. I’ve seen what they publish. On both competence and entertainment value, I’m way better than most of their stable. But I always had a whiff of possible wrong think about me. In fact, they agree on the competence. One of the funniest things this week was to hear one of them concede that Larry and I “can write well enough to win a Hugo.” This same person, five years ago, though I was too incompetent as a writer to buy. Have I grown that much in five years? Well, I’ve grown, but not that much.)

So by this point the ahahahahahahahahahah should be perfectly clear.

Look, when I broke in, I KNEW – I heard enough conversations, caught enough of them in unguarded moments that I knew – that they would not knowingly publish someone they considered right wing or libertarian. And “right wing” as well as “libertarian” meant someone who was slightly (very slightly) to the right of Lenin. They were, by and large, a left-academic bubble, and had been so steeped in Marxism, some of them from the cradle, that they thought “reasonable” opinion started with Lenin.

I knew this, but there were no other options, and no one had answered my submissions to Baen, and I’m a writer and writers will do almost anything to be read. (It’s part of the stories screaming in your ears.) I couldn’t be vocal left. I just couldn’t, not and look at myself in the mirror. But I thought if I stayed quiet and kept my head down, I could make my way on “fun stories” and make a living, which is all I ever wanted.

I was wrong. As we’re finding out, push, awards and recognition go to those who VOCALLY endorse the same dead (and stinking) platitudes that have caused 100 million dead around the world. Because only “the good people” should be endorsed, pushed and recognized.

And that’s fine. That’s peachy keen. I’ve known that for years.

Would I have remained quiet if they’d allowed me to reach the upper echelons of my profession by staying quiet? Maybe. I have decided opinions, but the flesh is weak. Though even then the dream was always that I’d get to a point I COULD talk.

However, who knows? Baby needed college tuition. Maybe I’m more corruptible than I think.

But that’s neither here nor there. It didn’t happen. They would never even consider it. Not unless you’re of them. (Which reminds me of the math teacher who said she’d give me an A if I joined the communist party. At 13, my answer was: “Madam, for good or ill, I believe I have an immortal soul. I’m not saying I might not eventually sell it, but for an A in math – even if that means entering Engineering school? – The price is way too low.”)

So when I stood on that wind-blown ledge, deciding whether to come out of the political closet, to jump into the maelstrom of public argument, I knew PRECISELY what I was doing. I knew that I’d become a leper. I knew the most heinous things would be said about me and that half the people would believe them without checking. I knew people would read my non political books – Noah’s Boy – and find right wing messages (which is a treat, given I’m a small l libertarian and half these people are European where “Right wing” means something completely different.)

I knew.

I knew if my books with Baen tanked, all I could then do was be indie. And I knew this would mean a diminution in lifestyle. In the same way I knew to the extent that the main houses of publishing could confer on me the ability to not struggle anymore – and they still can to an extent – I was blowing that down the wind.

But there was never much chance, because I couldn’t even pretend to be a communist and wake up in the morning and look in the mirror.

I was more afraid that readership in the mushy middle would eschew my books because if there’s one thing the left propaganda machine can do is make one untouchable. Or could do. I’m not so sure now.

In the moment before I jumped I considered that. Then I looked at what has happened because people like me have stayed quiet. In a way those young people who think Marxism is valid could curse us and the generation before us. Those of us who stayed quiet, at least. And if they ever realize to what extent they’re mistaken they will, too. Because we should have been dissenting voices so they realized this was not the default option, as their professors were telling them. Even if our voices were small and barely heard, we should have been there.

And you know what? If I stop selling altogether? I can write tentacle porn or something. (And then with my other tentacle…)

And then I jumped. When I jumped, I said goodbye to any chance of awards, any chance of recognition, any chance of ever being published by a traditional house other than Baen.

But now someone is trying to push me back in line with the threat of not publishing me in her micro press? Ahahahahahahahah.

Look, I could see this in the seventies or eighties, when if the other doors shut on you this was your only option.

But how is this for failing to get it? If I were capable/willing to abjure, then I wouldn’t ever need the small presses. I do have the craft. I can write. Even if I never got the big push, I could make a living in any publishing house today if I were willing to do that. I wouldn’t need the little presses.

AND if it got to that point that I needed a micro press? Well, that’s why G-d gave us indie. Where if I’m going to sell only 200 copies of a book, I’ll make a lot more out there on my own, with my own micro press.

It was just such a surreal moment, I had to write about it. My thought was “Oh, my heavens, you didn’t realize that we GOT the stick before, right, and that that’s why we were quiet? You thought you were hiding it in velvet and that no one knew there was a political color line? And now that we’re vocal you thought you could push us back in line with THAT STICK? It never occurs to you that we thought through our decision to come out and that one way or another we’re no longer afraid.”

Sweetie, that stick is made of liquorice.

It’s much too late for the stick. And your carrot has precious little power. You’re going to have to come out and debate the cherished ideas that were foisted on you with people who disagree with your mentors and guides and the people you were taught to revere.  You might even find yourself in the “not cool” group.  Just mouthing platitudes won’t get you through.

Welcome to the human race. Welcome to adulthood.

Oh, and also ahahahahahahahahahahahahah.

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

 

 

UPDATE: The Sarah has landed.  I’ll have to see what’s been going on around here.

Blessed Are The Stirrers — by Cedar Sanderson

I’ve been watching the whole Hugo brouhaha with a rather detached eye, not really being “of” fandom, besides the small and Odd group that is the Baen Bar. Honestly, until a couple of years ago, I had never heard of the Hugos. But it did bring something to a head for me, as I mused on the behaviours of people who called themselves professionals and acted in strange and perverse manners.

 

There have been attacks, counter-attacks, and in general a lot of very bad words used all across the spectrum, and as I read some of it, a few things occurred to me. One, the fine art of stirring the fecal matter has its uses. Bear with me here, because I know some of you have a vivid imagination and it’s not a pretty picture. Dung can tell you a lot about the creature that left it: healthy vs sick, dietary preferences, parasite load, and so forth. I’m equating some of these blog posts to this dung… For one thing, poke at fresh droppings and see movement, then you know the creature was infested with parasites. I’m going to quote John C Wright here, not just link to his blog, because his take on a human parasite was breathtakingly beautiful usage of the English language.

 

“The simian creature does not write in his non-work hours, as do I; he is a beggar. An aspiring beggar. Nay, let me insult no beggar. The creature is not an honest beggar. Honest beggars asks and accept only alms freely given.

He fawns and licks the bloodstained hand of Caesar, and suckles at the bloody teat of Caesar, drinking up the wealth and labor of honest working men like a vampire. The creature is a slave and less than a slave: a sycophant. He is a catamite literally, but, worse, figuratively, and plays the role rumor says Augustus as a boy played to Caesar.”

Vox Day, someone I do not know at all, nor had I read anything of his previous to about a year ago when he was himself the center of a controversy, is one who seems to take great pleasure in flipping over the leavings of those who react without rational thought. It’s interesting, I learned as a girl that if I were being pestered and teased, the best way to make it stop was to ignore the gadfly. There are those who haven’t learned that lesson, and at their age, seem unlikely or incapable of learning. But by their reactions and venoms, they make themselves out clearly to be what they are. Vox may be as abrasive as coarse sandpaper, but at least seems to be honestly so. Those who bullied him out of their organization have shown themselves utterly without couth. Brad Torgerson in an online conversation stated it best: “ The thing with Vox is discouraging because basically it’s following the rules of political radioactivity: get enough people to agree that a man is “untouchable” and suddenly anyone who dialogues with him becomes tainted by default, and also untouchable. This is about as far from LIBERAL as it gets. Liberal means having an open mind and not declaring people untouchable. That was the whole thing from the 1950s through the 1990s: pushing to get more and more “off limits” people included in society . . . . only now they’re turning the tables and drawing up lists of people for eviction. Hypocritical barely describes such thinking. Illiberal and patently Marxist is how I’d put it.”

Without even looking very hard, I found this comment, by someone who chose to use a nom d’ plume rather than a real identity: “In better days, people were easily thrown out of the city and the gates were locked behind them, let them starve. We need a system like that today, people like Vox Day need to die on the vine. Anyone who holds such opinions should not be allowed in society, it doesn’t matter what the quality of their “art” is. I’m sure that there were many people who thought Hitler was a good painter.”

So stirring the, er, pot has its uses. Rough on the stirrer, at times. That, and reading through the blog droppings to try and diagnose the parasites and diseases can be tiresome as well. Frankly, I rarely have the stomach for it, and I was raised on a small farm shoveling the real stuff. It begins to be very depressing, when you see rant after rant with no basis in truth or reality, and you wonder what the human race is coming to.

But they are only words, right? It’s not like they are sticks and stones being thrown. Perhaps, for now… That edge between meatspace and cyberspace is knife blade thin. When ‘hitting’ online spills over into the real world, what then? The manners are corrupted online and it’s going to have repercussions outside the internet as people forget what kindness, empathy, and decency really are. I have seen on this blog, in comments, a commenter suggesting that perhaps someone ought to rape the hostess so she would know what it really felt like. I have seen blog posts that called for the actual bodily harm of those who disagreed with them, like the comment above suggesting people he doesn’t like should be exposed to the elements for death.

It’s easy to say, oh, they are just blowing off steam, they wouldn’t hurt a fly… but I am suspicious of that. I see the people who are armed, trained, and have seen the elephant being abrasive, sure, but not threatening. They know what could happen, were this wretched hive of villainy to spill over into the streets. They won’t lift a finger until they are forced. While those who would have us all stripped of the slightest defenses scream, rant, and threaten grievous damage to those who oppose them.

Manure is a good thing. You can feed your garden with it, properly aged and prepared. But when you flip a piece over and find the wriggling white things, then the proper reaction is to recoil. It’s not going to end well, if you argue. There’s no mind there, to argue with, only a voracious appetite that will devour, and never cry enough!

Now, you may be wondering why I refer to the fine art of stirring what most of us prefer not to think about, let alone see. Because it’s a difficult job. Larry Correia, with his Sad Puppies campaign, embarked on an epic level of it. And they are flinging that which has been stirred up at him. But without the blogs and comments being brought into the light, and that light shone on them, so a larger audience could see what is wriggling in it… we might not know, until the infestation was so dire there was no recovering from it.

Larry points out in the post I’ve linked above: “If right wing authors share their opinions, they will be openly chastised and attacked by very vocal, very angry people. Any deviation from the approved narrative is met with scorn, mockery, character assassination, and because the author doesn’t want to damage his career, he will usually fall back into line and shut his mouth. Basically if you step out, they form an angry mob and attack you until you roll over and apologize for something that shouldn’t be apologized for. Once you’re apologizing for your principles, they own you. They really don’t know what to do about people like me.”

It isn’t just here, in our tiny little corner of the world, either. While the Hugo furor might have seemed like a big deal, it really isn’t. It is merely a microcosm of the world around it, where the bigger badder predators roil the global waters, draining the life from those who work for their living, and trying to hide in their own odure. We need people with metaphorical sticks, to poke, and reveal, and hopefully to provoke actual thought, not just poo-flinging.

It’s a horrible metaphor, I know. But blessed are the shit-stirrers.

 

 

Confessions of a reformed liberal – by Tom Knighton

*Reading this reminded me of the conversion stories in If This Goes On.  If we could just figure out what causes it…*

I am a libertarian. I wasn’t always one. I used to be a liberal. The story of how that changed is kind of odd, but it also kind of makes some sense that I now find myself among the diehard fans of science fiction.

When I was young, I liked Jimmy Carter because he was from my neck of the woods. Yes, that’s a pathetic reason, but I was still in diapers so please cut me some slack.

As we all know, Carter was replaced by Ronald Reagan, and the country began to improve. I liked Reagan just fine, though I didn’t really consider myself a Republican. Of course, my liberal mother jokingly compared me to Michael J. Fox’s character on Family Ties, Alex P. Keaton, who was a proud Republican.

As I reached high school, I found myself concerned about things like the environment and how the government had treated American Indians through the years. I was drawn to the Democratic Party.

More and more of my teenage years were spent looking at liberal politics as a panacea of solutions to most of the world’s problems. It just seemed to make so much sense. Taking care of the poor was the humane thing to do. Limiting gun rights obviously would reduce crime.

I was a rare creature. I was a liberal who enlisted. This was during the Clinton administration, and boot camp in Great Lakes Recruit Training Command had a fair amount of my Company Commander belittling our Commander in Chief. I said nothing though, not wanting to rock the boat.

For years, I continued to support liberal ideology. Ironically, it was possibly the most unabashedly liberal television shows in history that started my slide.

The show was The West Wing, which told the tale of the White House staff of a Democrat administration. As a counter point, they included a character named Ainsley Hayes. The character of Hayes was hired after she schooled Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn on a talk show.

In one episode, an argument outside the Chief of Staff’s office has Sam Seaborn berating Hayes for her party’s alleged belief that there was only the Second Amendment. She immediately countered as to how Democrats think there are only nine amendments in the Bill of Rights.

I was struck. She had a hell of a point. After all, there are ten amendments there, and if I wanted to protect some of them, I needed to protect all of them. At that point, I was a pro-Second Amendment Democrat.

That continued on for quite some time. It was comfortable and I knew it well. I was the outlier for the Second Amendment crowd, but I was fine with that.

One day, while looking for something to read, someone on a gun board suggested I read Atlas Shrugged. “Why not?” I thought. I ran to the bookstore and bought a copy.

I devoured the book. Seriously. I read it from cover to cover in a week, though I admit to skipping most of John Galt’s speech. It truly was a life changing book.

However, it wasn’t the final straw. You see, Ayn Rand showed me the flaws of my thinking. She showed me how people react to handouts and talked sense in that way. However, she didn’t show me how we could replace it.

Even Galt’s Gulch was a poor example. After all, the inhabitants of Galt’s Gulch were handpicked by Galt. If you pick the right people for a small scale community, any system can be made to work.

It was shortly after that when someone suggested I read Freehold by Michael Z. Williamson. Where Rand warned of what would happen with handouts, Williamson showed what a libertarian society might look like.

That was the moment when I became a libertarian. Gone was the idea that people should be free so long as they wanted to make good decisions. In its place was the understanding that while people will occasionally use their freedom to be colossally stupid, it was their God given right to be colossally stupid if they chose.

I’m not the flavor of libertarian who simply believes that if we would embrace libertarianism as a nation, everyone’s world would be all puppies and daisies. It won’t. For some people, especially at first, there will be a high price to pay.

However, the end result is that people will be free to make or break their own lives. If someone fails, they fail. If they succeed, they succeed. It’s not anyone else’s responsibility either way.

Being a libertarian has lead to some pretty awesome things. I started blogging about politics. That lead to some local coverage, including apparently being the first blogger to ever buy a newspaper. It didn’t work out so well, but it’s still something no one else had ever done. I was quoted by Judge Andrew Napolitano, who I’m a big fan of. I contributed to TheBlaze. All cool stuff.

Now, I turn my attention toward fiction. Maybe I’ll make something of myself there as well. Maybe not. While a certain amount of that may depend on other people (editors, publishers, etc.), it’s still ultimately on me. All those other people can do is say “no”. It’s up to me to actually take that and accept it on face value.

Of course, the old me didn’t realize it. I’d have been convinced it was all on them. Honestly, this feels so much more empowering.

 

 

 

*I met Doug at the Superstars Writing Seminar this year.  I haven’t yet had time to read through his work, but it is on my virtual to be read pile and I hope to get to it next month (at which point likely there will be bloggage.)  Meanwhile, I asked him to tell us something about his journey to publication. I don’t know if there will be book plugging today or not, it depends on my access to wireless!  I forgot to tell the Clam to email early.*

How I Became an Overnight Success in Fifteen Years. -by Doug Dandrige

 

First off, I would like to thank Sarah for allowing me to do this guest blog. I have found so many authors to be very helpful to others with the same mental illness (obsessive writing), and Sarah is one of the best.

I guess in some respect, I always wanted to become a writer. I was told in high school that I had a knack for story telling. One of my earliest works was a story about terrorists taking my home town of Venice Florida, which is built on an artificial island with three bridges connecting it to the mainland. I wrote for the school newspaper, and later for the brigade paper in the Army. I finally got my chance in 1997, when I was fired from a job at a drug treatment clinic for making the observation that the clinical director didn’t do real therapy. I stormed home, sat down at my PC, and wrote an 80,000 words expose’ on the Mental Health Industry in two weeks. It came very close to selling. Next I worked on a well researched and poorly written alternate history. I had scored a 790 out of 800 on the English portion of the Graduate Record Exam, but still didn’t seem to know the difference between its and it’s. I followed that with a 260,000 epic fantasy set in a Universe I used much later. I was scammed by a fake agent on that one, and $300 later, which I understand now to be cheap, I learned to run away from scams. I also didn’t submit to agents again until 2010.

The next thirteen years I was an on again, off again writer. Some years I would write four books (seven in 2010). Other years, nothing. I kept sending them, and all the short stories I wrote, to magazines and the publishers that would accept unsolicited manuscripts. In 98 or 99 I received a rejection letter from Marion Zimmer Bradley that said, although she liked my elf vampire story, it violated three of her principles. 1) It featured vampires. 2) It featured elves, and 3) It featured elves that were vampires. She asked me to send her another one and promised to buy something from me, and then passed away. I also met Charles Sheffield and Holly Lisle online. Both told me I had the talent, and definitely needed to keep putting the effort into it. So I kept plugging away, trying to write the novel that would get me that traditional contract. Non-sparkly vampires, a steampunk fantasy, another fantasy based on my first epic, Refuge, hard scifi with strong female characters.   Tried everything I thought might break me in to what seemed like a closed inner circle of authors. The rejections got better, most of them. Some were actually two page letters with enough references to let me know they had actual read the manuscript all the way through. Others were the standard form rejections. I was told that one was better than the other, but to my mind they were both failures.

In 2010 I tried agents again, making sure I only sent them to the legit ones. Again I got some good rejections, some requests for something else, some notes stating that I was obviously talented. But no real success. The most humorous one was from an agency that replied three hours after I submitted electronically that after careful consideration they had decided to pass on my novel. I was very thankful that day that they didn’t jump to a quick decision. Most of the rejections I got said, after some obligatory compliments about my ability and how well written the books were, that it wasn’t for their list, or there wasn’t a market for it. In 2011 I learned about self-publishing at a local writer’s conference. On December 31^st, 2011 I put two books, The Deep Dark Well and The Hunger, up on Amazon. A week later I got my first review, which stated that the book, The Deep Dark Well, was a page turner, but so poorly formatted that I got three stars. That was a part of the learning process. For the next nine months I sold forty books, and kept putting out my backlog, hoping one would be the breakout.

In September of 2012 I offered The Deep Dark Well as a freebee on Amazon, and gave away 4,100 of them. The book has since sold another 4,600 copies. I did a couple more giveaways, then published what turned out to be my breakout indie novel, Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1. I was planning a promotion, but when it started selling a hundred books a day in November 2013, I left it alone. It was really fantastic seeing books one and two selling two hundred copies a day in January of 2013. The series of five books has now sold over 58,000 copies, and has 550+ worldwide reviews with a 4.4 star average. I have college professors, military officers, even an astronaut as a fan. That was when I decided to quit the day job. I have lots of other books on Amazon, and all of them are well rated, even if some haven’t sold that much.

I went to Superstars Writing Seminar this year, and was lauded and applauded for my success. But, like the man climbing the mountain, I had stopped on a ledge and was looking up at the true giants on the peak. People like Kevin J Anderson, who runs the Seminar. I came home with a depressed attitude, and didn’t do much of anything for the month of February. Until I received an email from a retired Marine major, who told me how much books like mine did to relieve the stress and boredom of a combat deployment. That email got me going again. I realized that it wasn’t about becoming a New York Times bestseller, though that would be nice. It was about entertaining people who needed to be entertained. Right now the sky is the limit, and maybe after another decade or so I may have finally arrived.

Humanity’s worst nightmare has come from the stars, as the Ca’cadasan Empire, which the human race had escaped two thousand years before, finds the species they have sworn to exterminate. The Ca’cadasan Empire is twenty-five times larger than the New Terran Empire, and has rolled over all opposition for thousands of years. While the human Fleet, which has never lost a war, has had to fight tooth and nail at every juncture, advancing as the ultimate fighting machine of the Perseus arm. A war of extermination is in the making, a war that neither side can afford to lose.

The Exodus series has to date sold over 58,000 copies, and has over 550 worldwide reviews on Amazon, with a 4.4 star average rating. Books three through five have made it to number one in Military Science Fiction and Space Opera on Amazon UK, and has hit the top ten in those categories in the US, book 3 actually reaching number two in both categories. Book 6 is coming out on April 27^th, and in celebration book 1 is free from April 25^th through 29^th.

 So, get it.

Biography

 

Doug Dandridge is a Florida native who grew up in the space age. Stints in the Army and National Guard, as well as entirely too much time in higher education at two Universities, have given him a very unusual outlook on life, making him really unfit for any political party. Doug currently has 18 books on Amazon, all self-published, and sold almost 79,000 copies to date. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida with four cats, and attends just about every sporting event at the local University he can. He has also discovered the joy of Cons, having attended Dragon*Con last year, and found a multitude of other people as crazy as he is. This year he will be attending the Alabama Phoenix Festival, Liberty*Con, Dragon*Con and Honor*Con. Book 6 of the Exodus series is due out April 27^th, while book 3 of The Deep Dark Well trilogy and book 4 of the Refuge fantasy series will be out later this year.

When you read this, I’ll be miles above you. Or at least I hope so because the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about, and you guys know I don’t like flying anyway. Not so much because of the flight as such, but because I can’t drive, nor can I make sure that the pilot is someone I trust. I have… issues leaving myself in the hands of strangers.

Anyway, for obvious reasons, no chapter tomorrow unless a miracle occurs and I have access from the hotel – I wouldn’t bank on it, though.

No chapter at MGC on Sunday either, and I hope someone will cover for me. Not Kate, though, because Kate will be with me this weekend, planning world domination at Ravencon, in Richmond, Virginia.  BUT there will be guest posts here, and they’re good ones.

Unless my Kindle Fire fails, I’ll be answering comments, but the auto-correct shall be with us.  OTOH maybe I’ll have connectivity.  I will have my laptop.

Right now you guys probably know more of my schedule there than I do, mostly because I’m having trouble holding anything not directly novel related in my head for more than ten seconds at a time.

PARTICULARLY since now, more than halfway through final pass on Through Fire, Zen finally condescended to tell me why she’d decided to run away to Earth. And, you know, it makes perfect sense and it solves one of the things about her that drove me nuts, because what kind of lunatic just ups and runs away from home to another world. To escape what? Notoriety? Turns out, no. And she does have a perfectly sane reason, but for the love of little fishes, couldn’t she have told me earlier? What do you mean figment of my imagination? Pfui. If she’s a figment she’s a badly behaved one. And I can’t hit her with fish. She’s inside my head.

What else?

The last week was truly appalling for my indie sales – not just Witchfinder but everything else – and if it weren’t for the fact everyone’s reports are universally the same and also that my selling of the excess books has come to a complete crawl, I’d think I was cursed or someone had managed to put a warning on my page “Warning, do not buy.”

I did not forget, BTW, I owe the rest of you an edited copy of Wtichfinder – and it will come. This week was just one of those where I had appointments, and repairmen coming over and… eh… just everytime I sat down something happened. I used to have a joke with my friend Rebecca Lickiss that she must have an alarm in her house that told her the minute I went into the bathroom, because that’s when she’d call. She was also particularly good at targeting mid-shower.

Now apparently there’s an ap for that and everyone in town has it.

But I made progress both on the book (not enough, d*mn it) and on the sorting/packing (also not enough, but better than nothing.) The hard part is for the neat freak to convince herself (myself) to live with the mess for two months or so.

As for the rest, everything is in the air, everything suspended. We’re not sure,, yet, what #1 son will be doing next year (it’s complicated) and that in turn affects our plans for staging the house, and what we’ll be doing till it sells. I hate this type of time, because I figure my life is complicated enough, thank you so much, and what’s going on inside my head unsettled enough without adding instability in Real Life. However, no one gave me a choice in this.

And under the counting of blessings, the girl cat is still with us, we all seem to be in decent health (which compared to last year is great) and I am making progress towards the goals. I just wish it were a little faster.

Okay – so I’ll stop whining here. If you come see me, I’ll whine at you in person! Okay, not really – but I WILL find a comfortable place and talk and/or read whether it’s my reading time or not. I shall have laptop with me.

Come on out. If you’re lucky, I’ll introduce you to Kate Paulk. (No word on whether Jim will be attending.)

And now I’m going to stop typing and go to bed.

Sorry this is late. Last night by the time I was ready to write a post I was so slap-happy that I started auctioning the destruction/sparing of countries in the Diner on Facebook. (Which isn’t entirely a bad idea, since with money for moving repairs, money for renting somewhere while this house is for sale – you can’t show a house with cats in it, one of them a geriatric cats who keeps getting close to the box but not in it. You also can’t show a house with my sons in it. The problems there hinge more on “What book did you leave in the bathroom again? Honey, you’ll scare people” and “Honey, dirty clothes belong in the hamper, not in a trail leading from your room to the bathroom.” – and I’m still late with the books, probably the latest I’ve been, and yeah part is recovering from being sick, and part is just having time in the middle of the madhouse, but anyway, with one thing and another, Number One son is graduating in May and I’d like to take him somewhere nice without feeling guilty about it – if I thought you were stupid/crazy enough to do it, I’d auction the destruction/sparing of cities and countries for $6 a pop, and the one (destruction or sparing) with the most votes would win. Would sign you for Rogue Magic, too, which only has about ten subscribers, I swear. BUT I don’t think you guys are that stupid/crazy, and you all know in DST there is very little trace of our current world, so I’d have to get creative and describe how they were destroyed long ago. So, ah well. As I said, I was slap-happy.)

Anyway, tomorrow I’m flying out to Ravencon, so if any of the Huns are in Virginia and within reach come out and say hi, would you? Kate Paulk will be there and Speaker To Lab Animals, and a bunch of other people, including number three son by adoption David Pascoe, and his lovely wife (Number one Daughter In Law by adoption). Speaker and Dave and I promise to protect you from Kate Paulk. Really.

I’m looking forward to the con, among other things because it’s a new one I’ve never been to, but I find myself wishing it was a week from now, because I never know if going to a con is going to stop my flow on a book as I’m nearing (I swear to heavens I really am) the end. And because we’re trying to be out of here and have the house ready for sale by late June, and it’s sort of weird as we don’t know where we’ll end up, because it depends on what number one son is doing next year, and I’m trying to finish the book, and I’m trying to figure out what furniture to sell/donate (and books. You don’t want to know about the books. I think our attic is mostly books. And not INTERESTING books – not to us – but stuff we bought long before we had kids because “our children will like this” and which now makes me wonder about exactly how stupid we were. No seriously.)

There’s also stuff like processing the backlog of clothes. In case ya’ll haven’t noticed, my guys all wear button downs. In the younger son’s case that’s because of sensory stuff. For whatever reason, knits next to the skin disturb him. In older son’s case it’s because he was born starched up and stuck at age 53 or so. One of these days a young lady– Never mind. Anyway, so, they all wear button downs, and I iron them. No, it’s not a war on women thing (rolls eyes.) They would quite gladly go off having spun the shirts in the dryer to minimize the wrinkles. But I was trained by my mother, okay? These men are yours, they belong to you, and how they present to the world reflects on you. Yeah, I know it’s stupid. But then take into account that ironing is the ONLY time I watch any television/movies (mostly through prime. We don’t have cable.) Without ironing I’d never have watched Buffy or Stargate. So, there it is.

Only with being sick/trying to catch up, there’s a massive backlog of ironables. Five baskets full (consider a basket an hour, just about.) Some of it is table cloths from the holidays (all of them) last year, and some are short sleeve shirts, which the kids haven’t needed till now. So, normally I’d catch up whenever, but not knowing where #1 son is going to be as little away as a month or two makes a difference, and also the fact we need to start boxing things (like rarely used elaborate table cloths) to put in storage until we have a place of our own again – hopefully after this sells. So I’m trying to do at least half a basket when I wake up, then do some book/furniture processing and/or fix something in the house before I sit down to write. And then I’m trying to write like a demon, something not facilitated by one of the hardest-to-write characters I’ve ever done.

Last night when I went to bed – after the slap happy had worn off – it occurred to me it was a wonderful time to feel sorry for myself.   Here I am so busy, and I’m fifty, and it’s too late for me to have to deal with all this stuff, and and and boo hoo.

I assure you this is not my normal mode, and that about ten seconds after that thought, I started pointing and laughing at myself.

Given the rest of the world, or even America right now – I read this week my age group is the one moving in with their parents fastest and NOT because parents need looking after, but because with job instability, utilities, insurance, we’re mostly broke and losing houses at a record pace. – even if the absolutely worst happened (and trust me, it’s not LIKELY. It would take something like a fire running through town) and we lost everything, we still have training and jobs, we’re still making money, and we’d find a place with a roof for over our heads, and we have a nice family and four … four cats (nice might be too much), at any rate (plus Greebo who is not our cat.) And we would have our jobs and our minds, and books and music, and—

Yeah. Ain’t nobody going to be pitying me – or at least nobody should – just because I had a lousy health year last year and I’m slowly crawling out of the hole which involves working my behind off. Some people – most people, probably – in the world work like this all the time, and never get the rewards, like days at the zoo and dinner at Pete’s.

And heck, my very super busy days don’t compare say to the day of a cleaning lady when I was a kid, let alone in the Victorian age. They just don’t. Or even to my grandma’s days, up to the last year of her life, cleaning the house, looking after “the creation” – chickens and rabbits, mostly – and whatever strays she’d adopted, and the little backyard mini-farm.

I was thinking about this and thought about someone who claimed you know, being a white male is going through life in the easy setting. In a way he was right, because being a white male of the US middle class is easy compared to just about anyone in the world ever. Being an American of any gender and color who is born to two parents, in a place where people don’t shoot at each other in the night streets is easier than just about anything. Hell, even being an American in the worst parts of Chicago (I’ll destroy Chicago. Cheeep. Six dollars!  And you get Rogue Magic.  Kidding, kidding.) is easier than life in most of the world. This reminds me of the PJ O’Rourke joke about people being willing to trade a state apartment in Moscow in the eighties for a sleeping bag on the streets of NY city.

More than that, it shows a becoming awareness on that writer’s part that no matter what struggles he’s had are minimal compared to most people.

This is at least much better than the critter who was running around Facebook this week attacking people then accusing them of lack of compassion for swiping back, because she had broken her arm, and had we no decency. Colonel Kratman, who, like all men, has way too much Ruth (I didn’t even know it was that popular a name) said the silly git must be high on pain pills and we should cut her some slack. I don’t think so. First her page showed that this is fairly standard behavior. Second, I’ve been on pain pills – and fever – and it never occurred to me to use it as a magical shield. I’m more likely to post about seeing pink lizards and leave the politics and politicking over awards for when I’m sober. (Though I confess to having done the gifferic post while high as a kite on fever.)

It occurred to me the true tragedy of the human race, as individuals, is that we can’t SEE into each other people’s lives. We see some things, and interpret them, but there’s no guarantee what I see matches what it is like for YOU. So according to my temperament, I either decide I’m veeeeery unfortunate, or the most blessed person in the world, compared to others, and it has nothing to do with reality.

Take every time someone posts here or sends me an email saying “I don’t know how you do so much” and I’m thinking “Me? I’m a slacker. Just yesterday I took a two hour walk for the heck of it” or something. And then I look at #1 son who ALSO claims to be a slacker and who for years has run double the credits recommended, written Ninja Nun, written stories, contributed substantially to house upkeep, and taught himself things like game programing, and I think “Uh.”

This is why making statements about entire (Marxist) classifications of people is silly. You really don’t know what other people’s lives are like. And also – having gone through times of being very ill, where I couldn’t do half what needed to do – you don’t know what they can do. What might look easy to you could break other people. On the other hand, what you think is very hard, I guarantee some people are shouldering, every day, without a complaint and probably thinking they’re doing nothing.

Note that the wise man said “Pick up your cross and carry it” not “expound on what weight the crosses should be, and make regulations as to who should carry how much to make sure it’s evenly distributed.”

It will never be evenly distributed. And this is not even a matter of temperament but biology. I’ve known since I was very young, for instance, I’m on the high end of capacity for lifting weights for a female, and was even when I was a little slip of a thing who weighed 100lbs soaking wet. This doesn’t mean that should we be on a forced march with weights the woman next to me should have to carry exactly what I do. As an ex-marathoner and rather muscular woman, I guarantee it would break most of them (heck, what I could carry as a kid would break me now.)

And this is why an entire society based on redistribution of the ah… burdens of civilization is crazy. No one can know what others can carry. No one can know when others are being crushed. We can guess, but we can’t know. And we certainly can’t do it by numbers. Humans are not widgets.

What we need is a decent understanding that all of us are supposed to do our parts to the limit of our abilities – pick up your cross and carry it, if you will – and that reliance on others (when not mutual) is vaguely indecent; coupled with the understanding that when we need help we SHOULD be given it, because if someone is that broken as to be asking, then it’s a desperate situation.

Will there be abuses? Oh, of course. As I said, some people think “I broke my arm, your argument is invalid” is a proper trump card.

Some people will think being made to earn a living is a terrible imposition. Which is why we can’t do it by the numbers and charity – all charity, even government charity if that’s to continue (and we all know my opinion on that, right?*) — should be as local and as granular as possible, because we might not be able to see inside each other’s lives, but to the extent we have limited visibility, it helps to be close enough to see it day to day.

Will the system be gamed? What, because it isn’t now? Sure it will. But at least we won’t be treating people as widgets, and we stand a better chance of helping those who really need it.

And yeah, I know this entire idea and $2 (I’ll destroy Chicago for $2!  Sale) will get me a cup of coffee.

And now I’ll shut up and go iron clothes.

 

*I’m against government-run charity not because I think we should let the poor starve in the gutter, but because government is a blunt instrument for such a fine tuned purpose. Or to put it another way, government is force, but charity should never happen at the point of a gun. Yes I know “Government is the word for what we choose to do together” but how much choice do you have, when a majority vote is treated as a reason to disregard almost half of the population and you’ll be thrown in jail for disobeying? “Choose” is rather a loose term. If a mugger holds a gun to my head I choose to give him money for instance – and government is more intrusive and less subtle than a mugger.

 

 

(I was about to write a post that was pretty much this.  And then I thought “I already wrote it.”  And I had, and I found it.

I’m still broken.  Sometimes scarily so — take my obsessing over my sales on Amazon when the sales dip — but I’m also still me.  Would I be me if I weren’t broken?  Doubtful.  And sometimes, my best “luck” comes from how broken I am.)

If I had a dime for every time I’ve read that “every baby should be planned” and that “every puppy should be wanted” and that “everyone should have a fulfilling occupation” I’d have too many dimes to be contained in the universe.  But the question is: would every dime be shiny?

What are you getting at Sarah?

What I am getting at is that many people seem to have completely lost track of the distinction between ideal and actual.  Let me spell it out for you: ideal exists only as a perfect thing in your mind.  Like the battle plan not surviving contact with the enemy, it will never survive contact with reality.

That perfectly planned child will suddenly become unplanned when it turns out to be a girl, rather than a boy, or a boy rather than a girl.  Or when he/she turns out to have a personality completely different from what his parents’ expected.  While IQ might be broadly inheritable, at least in components (mostly from the mother, interestingly enough) the way it’s expressed isn’t necessarily.  So you’ll have the bookish parents with the mechanically gifted child, or vice-versa.  Planned?  Who told you you could plan a chaotic system?  It’s sort of like planning your day tomorrow – you’d best have three layers of plans in case it rains, in case a wildfire comes through, in case it’s fine and beautiful.  And even then, it will find a way to surprise you.

And the puppy who was so wanted?  The family that adopted him will get sick and have to give him away.  They’ll unexpectedly lose their jobs.  The puppy will turn out to have a condition that’s not fatal but is a life-long drain and expense.  Or something else will happen you can’t predict.

But, Sarah, you say, shouldn’t we PLAN for the ideal?  Then we just adapt to less than ideal.

It depends on the plan.  There is a type of positive planning, in which you leave the route open to the wonder of the broken (yes, I’ll explain) and the negative planning, where you won’t take anything less than absolute perfection.  The negative planning is usually what you get when government bureucrats or do-gooding busybodies get involved.

It concentrates on NOT LETTING the less than ideal happen.  These are the people who think you should be licensed to have children, after you pass classes that say you’re an ideal parent in THEIR WAY.  The people who think every unplanned baby should be aborted or killed up to three months after birth (you only think I’m joking.)  These are the people who post on craigslist screaming at people giving away puppies and kittens that they are terrible people and should have had their animal spayed.

Let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that I think overpopulation is lies, damn lies and statistics and that in fact the current worldwide crisis is caused by population ALREADY falling.  (I confess the evidence is circumstantial and thin, but there is some and – more importantly – the evidence on the other side is dubious and suffers from wrong-process.)  That’s the subject for a whole post and one I don’t have the energy to write right now.  Let’s leave aside the fact that I think our obsession with spaying and neutering in fact can act (is acting?) as a sort of reverse selective breeding, pushing cats and dogs back to non-domesticated (no?  We keep the cutest/friendliest from reproducing.)  And also that in some areas of the country – here – you either buy a breed dog, adopt a dog who turned out less than ideal for someone else, or … adopt a puppy imported from elsewhere.  In Colorado puppies seem to come from Texas.  But in some places they come from abroad.  Cats are more abundant because… they’re cats and harder to catch and confine.

Let’s instead look at the other side of the coin, and why negative planning for the ideal and temper tantrums at people who don’t follow your version of ideal, are stupid: because broken plans and broken ideals often come as a blessing.

Sorry to use the religious term, but I don’t know how else to express it.  Sometimes the crisis-unplanned turns out to be the best thing you ever got.

Right after our cat Pete died, we found ourselves adopting Euclid because otherwise he was going to be euthanized because he had an uti and our humane society euthanizes those, so it doesn’t spread throughout the pens.  We had about twenty minutes in which to decide.  We had – G-d knows – enough cats.  But he would have died otherwise.  We adopted him.

Yes, Euclid is broken in interesting ways.  My son calls him a feline Woody Allen.  Only Woody Allen isn’t into extreme body modification, while Euclid chews off his leg hair and gives himself a poodle cut.  Also, some right b*stard trained Euclid to fabric before we got him, which is why we can’t have rugs on our floors, not till Euclid departs this vale of tears. (On the good side, Euclid doesn’t show any propensity to love on adopted daughters.  Of course, he doesn’t have any.  Um…)

But in the days after 9/11, when it seemed I could not stop crying, he was the cat who came and loved on me.  He’s the one who sits on you when you’re sick or worried, and purrs and reassures you all is well in the world.  And sometimes that purr is your only connection to happiness.

Or let’s look at how many not only unplanned but disastrously unplanned children go on and make the world a better place.  Right now it’s early morning and only Leonardo DaVinci – unplanned, illegitimate, broken in interesting ways – comes to mind, but I know there are scores of others.  (Yes, there’s also people like Hitler – but there is no indication that it was the fact they were unplanned that sent them spinning towards evil.)

A friend who had a terrible childhood once told me that she supported abortion unconditionally, because it would have been much better to be aborted than to be abused.  What she was missing was that her parents would never have aborted her.  She WAS planned and needed in the family: as a scape goat.  The kids that get aborted in that type of calculus are the ones whose parents are afraid they can’t give them the very best – just like the animals who get spayed are those whose owners fear that they can’t find good enough homes for the litters – not those that are born to be mistreated.

Part of this, I think, is that our life has become so good compared to that of our ancestors that we think we can push it just a little further and make it ideal.

Every baby will be wanted!  Every pet will be loved!  And there shall be no more tears and suffering!

Never works.  Ever.  There will always be people who need a kid as a scape goat.  And even if you certified parents there will be parents who are fine young, and then get some illness or some other problem and – there you have it.  Less than ideal.  And before you say “but then the kids can be taken away” think of strangers evaluating and deciding family life from the outside.

I was a disastrously unplanned child, born premature with all the problems that implies.  I had the world’s sickliest childhood.  Mom has health problems that make her less than an ideal parent.  (She knows this.  She never wanted children.  She ended up with two of us by accident.)  Were there rough patches?  Oh, sure.  Aren’t there in everyone’s life?  But my family has a shared sense of humor, which helped.  And I got to live and write, and marry and have kids of my own.  Would it be better if I never existed because I wasn’t wanted?  Or even because I would, of necessity, always be at least partly broken?

Some of the best pets I’ve had have been mutts or even feral babies whom I tamed.  Right now we have Havey-cat whom we found on a mini-golf course, starved and covered in grease, and with a broken tail.  He now presents and behaves as a Turkish van.  Is he?  At least partially, probably.  But he’s not less loved because he came to us when we were maxed out on cats and definitely not in the market for one who is a fuzz machine (we’re all mildly allergic to cats.)  And he is, again, one of those animals who can lift your mood, because he’s a born clown and still kitten-like after three years.

Oh, yeah, and through no fault of anyone, I never fit in Portugal.  But my askew childhood and youth – difficult as they were in living them – resulted in my falling in love with a stranger from a strange land, and finding home that way.

Will some percentage of children you give up for adoption be abused?  Inevitable.  A controlling system can’t prevent that.  No system can.  What it can do is keep children trapped in foster care or convince people to abort rather than put the kids up for adoption.  Will some percentage of kittens given away end up as snake food?  Inevitable.  No system can prevent that.  I doubt it’s as many as we’ve been led to believe, though.  Most cats throughout history have been pets and not snake food.  Most humans are predisposed to at least not mistreat pets.  Call it co-evolution.

Look at your lives: really look.  Could you have planned everything that happened?  Would your ideal life have been REALLY better?

Take my career: did I intend to have my first trilogy tank, trapping me in ten years of midlist hell?  Well, no.  But let’s imagine it had succeeded.  I’d now be stuck in the “literary fantasy” niche, which btw pays lousily and where they expect only one book every two years.  Worse, I found by my third book that while I can do it and even enjoy it to an extent, if I do nothing but that I become horribly depressed.

But the trilogy failed, and I was broke, and we were paying on two houses and I was fixing the “old” house for sale, and I couldn’t find a day job.  Then Jim Baen offered me money.  Then Berkley paid me to write Plain Jane.  My heart was broken, I didn’t want to write anymore.  The dream was gone.

But I needed money, and so I wrote, and even through the hell of six-books-a-year the dream came back.  And now I’m facing the chance for a better career than I hoped for AND I have the skills of incredible amounts of practice under pressure.

Would I have chosen this route?  No.  Was it rough as heck at times?  Yep.  Would I wish it undone?  No.  I wouldn’t wish any of the books unwritten.  I wouldn’t wish what I learned unlearned.

There is no perfect upbringing – for man or beast.  There is no ideal situation that can’t be reversed.  There isn’t any reason to believe that wanted – animals or humans – are better.  There isn’t any reason to believe the most peaceful places or eras are better.  Yes, the fourteenth century was a terrible time, but it gave us the renaissance and, eventually, the enlightenment.

Taking the broken and doing the best we can with it is all we can do.

And sometimes it’s much better than the ideal could have been.

I am not going to blog about the whole Hugo nonsense. I have very fond memories of the Hugos from my youth. One of the things on which my brother and I would go halfsies every year was the collection of the Hugo nominated short stories. But since then, the awards have suffered a decline. I continued to buy the collections, mind, but about ten years ago realized I wasn’t actually reading them and that was the end of that.

Mind you, most of this is probably not so much the decay in the awards as the fact that I’ve noticed, over the years, that my reading has got way more selective. Used to be that if I started a book, I had to finish it, no matter how much it disgusted me. Then around my thirties (and small kids) things started changing, and books fell into three categories “read through”, “read beginning until disgusted, then skim the rest.” And “drop half read.”

Drop half read included the Harry Potter teenage whine installment. Probably prompted by the fact that at the time I had two teenagers. I just set it down, face down, which by itself is bad news, as I BOOKMARK books I’m enjoying. And then I forgot I was reading it. And since life entered one of its “interesting” phases and the kids cleaned that room for three months, when I cleaned it next, I found it wand went “oh, yeah, I was reading this.” Never restarted, though.

If I could track down this change in my reading methods, it was when I realized I had just read the beginning of one book and the second half of the other and NOT REALIZED IT.

This mind you was when I had a two year old and a five year old, so addled was where I lived, pretty much, year around. Also, I have beyond sucky memory for names. (One of the reasons I beg you not to have characters with the same first letter and last letter to their names. Because I will never tell them apart. Jane and Janine used to be the same to me, since – uncertain about English names – I just read the first and last letter. Now they’re not, but if I set the book down and come back a day later, I will not remember the difference.) Both books were “noir-cozy-mysteries” set in London. Well, maybe procedurals, I don’t know. But not like American procedurals, where you get the nitty gritty of the investigation. Instead the emphasis is on the main character’s (usually a policewoman) personal life, conflicts with her role, and how this notches in with solving the crime. The result is this almost-cozy feel.

Anyway, what used to happen (this was before we took vacations, even in Denver. Afterwards, this ritual became “the beginning of a long weekend in Denver) is that we’d go to the mystery book store in Denver every six months. They were new/used and the used were reasonably priced. When we started going there, two full paper grocery bags ran just over 100 dollars, which was a lot of bang for the buck. So we’d come back and those books lasted me three to six months at which time, if we had money, we went back. (I read slower with the kids attached to me.)

So I finished this – I thought – book, and the ending was satisfactory and everything. But there was some detail that bugged me. I don’t remember what, now, but let’s say in the first book, the murder happened by jumping out the window while in the solution to what I thought was the SAME book, they went on about how the rope had led them to the killer. I thought this was very weird, so I went to the beginning and read through the first murder and realized it wasn’t the book I’d read. Then I tracked the other book down where I’d left it a day before, when I had to go do something for the kids.

I think it was at this point that I gave up on “I’ll read every word.” Because if books were that generic, why would I?

And that’s my main complaint of most of the Hugo nominees/talked about books. It’s not that they’re bad… It’s more the same reason I stopped watching TV dramas/comedies. I can tell from the setup how they’re going to end.

In the same way, though some occasionally surprise me, more and more, in science fiction, when I start reading a novel or short that has earned the approval of the glitterati, I know exactly what twists it’s going to take and how it will end.

Some of this, undoubtedly, is that I can see the strings and pulleys, because I know the craft – as I’ve warned those of you I mentor, when you learn the craft it ruins some of your reading enjoyment – but the other part is that I know what the approved path of thought is. In the same way I could predict where that (discovery Channel?) future evolution program would go, because I know what they hate, and first they eliminated mankind, then anything that resembled us, including all mammals (and there was no logical reason for it, there was thin-veiled handwavium) and ended with intelligent octopi swinging from trees. (I wish I were joking.) The octopi were a little surprising because silly is surprising, but I knew it would be something like that, or an insect, or something.

In the same way, the overriding characteristic of all those “highly approved of” works is… “yawn.”

Perhaps they dramatically excite the members of the choir. What do I know? They don’t do much for me, though.

There wasn’t much choice until indie. It was Baen or conform.

Now? Shrug. I’m not even sure how much difference if any the Hugos make. It all seems like inside football, when facing a worldwide potential readership.

And eh – she says, after remarking the grapes are too sour to eat anyway – I don’t have a dog in the fight.

So I’m not going to write about the Hugos. I’m just going to say that when there is a storm all over FB about how the awards need to be awarded to more “women” and “people of color” you’ve lost the plot.

Leave alone for a moment the disgusting, viscerally repulsive racism of assuming that the inside of a person’s head always matches their skin color/gender. And let alone the fact that all this smacks of “special award, for extra-deserving minority.” (As a minority – double, if you count women as a minority – I’d like them to take their award and stick it up where the sun don’t shine. I’ll win on my own terms, in competition with everyone of whatever color or gender, or not at all. Not that anyone is offering me an award, of course, since I’m a gender and ethnicity “traitor” (How can you betray something you never swore allegiance to, anyway?))

We’ll leave that alone, mostly because I found myself typing obscenities on the subject on a friend’s FB page last night, and no one wants to see that (right?)

Let’s just consider, for a moment, that their motives are pure. That they think that not having women or people of color among the nominees is the result of racism and sexism (which would mean they don’t expect anyone to judge on the merits of the STORY, but never mind.)

That just shows how the award has fallen. Because if it were given to the most popular work among the fans, no one would care (or often know) what color/gender the writer is.

There is this Reiner Kunze poem which I haven’t run across yet, in my book-clearing, and which at any rate, I only read in German and so will quote from memory, possibly with omissions/additions.

The trees grow top on top

None is taller than the others

The branches filter the rain so the

Torture of thirst is avoided

The trees grow top on top

None sees more than the others

To the wind, they all whisper the same.

And this is the real problem with most stories (genre or not) these days, at least those that come out of the literary-industrial complex. It is not that they’re produced by white people or brown people, or purple people. It’s not that the person who wrote them has a penis or a vagina. That doesn’t matter or shouldn’t matter. I’m not saying there won’t be markers/assumptions, though a really good writer can write convincingly from another perspective, without breaking a sweat.

Those things don’t matter, because that’s not, in the end, what you write with. (I can see typing with a penis, but if you type with a vagina you should take your act on the road, or at least get a webcam.)

You write with craft, with art, and yes, with a bit of your soul, but those don’t always match the external bits. (You’d think the people going on about the tyranny of cis-thisandthat would get that, no? Even when it doesn’t refer to gender? That someone truly imaginative can imagine growing up in say Elizabethan England, and for that time BE that person?)

If you’re not subduing your inner self to what the establishment expects you to be, not trying to conform to “what all the right people think”, not trying to be accepted by the cool kids, if you truly try to think for yourself – particularly in SF – your work will surprise. It might not shock, but it will surprise enough to keep the jaded palate reading.

And you won’t be a tree in a forest of identical trees, none of them worth the pulp paper they’ll eventually become.

Because writing and publishing science fiction and fantasy is not a form of social science. It’s not your “duty” to right the wrongs of the world, or even to “change the world.” The teacher who told you that was wrong. Oh, sure, if you can make people THINK after they finish reading you, great. You might even make them see things your way. (Or not. I enjoyed many a leftist writer without doing more than roll my eyes at his assumptions.) But that’s irrelevant.

What you really need to do with your science fiction and fantasy (or mystery, or horror, or romance) is ENTERTAIN your reader, so that as they close the book they think “that was money/time well spent. I’d read the next one.”

Everything else will come after that, by accretion. But that is essential. Because if you don’t do that, none of your beautifully crafted message that is going to uplift and change the world counts for anything.

And also chances are the reader can see your message coming ten miles away and is running in the other direction even if he agrees, because he’s read it SO many times before.

So, if there are going to be general genre awards (dubious in the days of distributed publishing) let’s make them about fan enthusiasm and good writing. Let the man with the most interesting story win.

Even if he is a she or a he/she or a she/he, and even if he’s white, or purple, or a chameleon who takes on local coloration.

I don’t care. So long as the story is good.

A Loss of Perspective – A Guest Post By Amanda Green

 

This weekend, the final Hugo ballot was revealed. In case you’ve been off-line, under a rock, deep in a cave or otherwise cut off from the internet, what is usually a rather ho-hum announcement from a fan perspective has taken on the characteristics of a farce. Accusations of ballot stuffing, fraud and worse have been flying, but only in one direction. The folks on the receiving end of the accusations are frankly sitting back shaking their heads and I don’t blame them. Heck, I’m doing the same thing.

You see, what happened is that conservatives made it onto the ballot. Worse, these conservatives are white and male. But the problem is that at least two of these so-called conservatives really aren’t – conservative, that is. But that doesn’t matter. Why? Because the evil overlord of the universe, Larry Correia, dared do what authors have been doing for years when it comes to the Hugos. He asked his friends and fans to vote for him. Then he suggested that they consider voting for other writers who happen to write entertaining fiction, not message fiction that hits us over the head with a hammer.

Each year at WorldCon, the Hugos are presented. It is a “big deal” for some in the field, mainly because of the cachet they seem to feel is still attached to the award. The problem, in my opinion at least, is that the award really isn’t that relevant any longer. The nomination process is flawed and is the determination of what is or is not eligible. Look at this year’s nominations for Best Novel. There are five “novels” in the field, including Larry Correia’s Warbound. But the fifth “novel” is anything but a single work, no matter what the committee decided. That “novel” is Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. The last time I looked, WoT was comprised of 14 novels. Yet, the committee says it is a single work under the rules of the award.

So, my first question is this: if WoT is a single work, why isn’t Larry’s nomination for The Grimnoir Chronicles instead of for the third book of the series?

My next question is why aren’t those crying foul over Larry, Vox Day, and others being on the ballot also gnashing their teeth because of the vast body of work represented in WoT as compared to the other works in the category? And, yes, I know the answer. They are happy to let anyone but Larry win in the category because he refuses to apologize for being proudly cis-male, libertarian, gun owner, father, and the author of books people want to read because they are damned fun stories.

And that latter is something those screaming about Larry, Vox, Brad, et al., being nominated seem to forget matters when it comes to the Hugos. The Hugos are a popularity contest. Nothing more and nothing less. According to the Hugo rules, “Each member of the administering Worldcon, the immediately preceding Worldcon, or the immediately following Worldcon as of January 31 of the current calendar year shall be allowed to make up to five (5) equally weighted nominations in every category. “ Nowhere does it say that only authors, editors and publishers can nominate or vote for Hugo award winners. These rules specifically leave the voting open to fans, those folks who actually buy and read the works in contention. Not the “pros” who vote for their friends and fellow SJWs in the industry.

So, what did Larry do to bring down this latest attack by the GHHers and SJWs? He conducted Sad Puppies 2. He reminded folks that Warbound was eligible for a Hugo this year and asked that they consider voting for it. Despite what at least some of his detractors have alleged – and I really do have to wonder at their sanity for taking on a man who has already proven he can shred them with logic and facts and never break a sweat – he did not stuff the ballot box nor did he buy memberships for all of his friends and families and then vote for them. Yes, I have seen at least one post where they said they’d like to see the IP addresses of the votes for Warbound to see how many came from Larry’s computer. Even if Larry had considered doing such a thing, trust me, he’d be smart enough not to vote multiple times from the same IP address.

Making matters worse, at least in Larry’s detractors’ eyes, is the fact that he also listed other authors and recommended his fans consider voting for them. This “slate” has been the cause of much gnashing of teeth which, in its own way, is funny because this is exactly what others have done for years. Just as past winners have campaigned by “reminding” their readers to vote for them (check out last year’s winner for best novel. I’ll let you exercise your google-fu to find the different posts. But, to help you, the winning novel really was nothing but fan fiction for a sf series that first started in the 1960’s.)

What the whiners aren’t pointing out as they attack Larry is that he didn’t list one title per category, at least not for the major categories. In fact, going to his Hugo slate post on his blog, he never once said that his readers have to vote his way. What he did say was that the titles were his slate. He also noted that it was important to vote if you’ve paid for your WorldCon membership. But that, according to his detractors, was stuffing the ballot box.

My biggest issue in all this is that those who are yelling the loudest aren’t talking about the quality of writing. They aren’t discussing the number of books read. They aren’t even willing to admit that maybe people like Larry and Brad and others received enough votes to be included on the final ballot because readers finally stopped sitting on their hands and voted for authors they enjoy reading. No, these detractors have resorted to calling names and miscasting people. Why? Because they don’t fall into lock step with what the current politically correct mantra happens to be.

Instead of crying because authors who write books people enjoy reading – why else would someone supposedly as vile and evil as Larry be a multiple-time NYT best seller? – have made it onto the ballot, perhaps they ought to ask why more of their cadre weren’t? Of course, that might require some introspection, true introspection, and that is something these folks don’t do. They’d much rather condemn those who don’t agree with everything they say.

They aren’t asking why WorldCon is dying. If more than 5,000 people actually attend – real figures and not the inflated figures so many cons seem to put out – I’ll be surprised. Now, look at other cons, vibrant and healthy cons. Cons that have tens of thousands of fans attending. Those are the cons the literati of SFF – the SJWs and GHHers – hate. Why? Because they aren’t the cool kids there. But at WorldCon, just as with SFWA, they are the cool kids and what they say goes.

So, be prepared for the barbs to continue to fly because of the Hugo ballot. Those protests are the screams of terror as power slips from their fingers. Poor dears.

Or, as they say down here, Bless their hearts.

As for who to vote for, that’s up to each person who is eligible to vote. Me, I say vote for the works you enjoy reading because you enjoy them. That’s what the Hugos are all about, no matter what the other side says. Otherwise, there’d be a roomful of stuffy professors judging the writing skills of the authors. In the meantime, I have my popcorn, I’m in my comfy clothes and I’m ready to watch the show because, if the GHHers and SJWs aren’t careful, Larry will decide that it is really worth his while to respond – with facts and figures – to their accusations. That is when the real show will begin.

UPDATE:  Have an easter egg!

Normally this is a blog where things are jumping:

But with one thing and another, this week has been holy days and today is a holiday for most of you — and me (yes, most of me.  Look, guys, I’m a writer.  I work by committee.  Like you think I’m alone in my head!)

It’s time to stuff your face

 

And spend time with friends and family, even those really odd looking relatives

I’m going to be writing too, of course, (a writer relaxes by writing) but I’m going to be more or less away from the net most of the day.

So you guys go and have fun

And don’t forget to eat the flowers!

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it, and I’m out a here!  (But we’ll be back tomorrow!)