According To Hoyt

 

This is not a post about writing.  It is actually a post about epistemological uncertainty.  Put down the dictionary.  Do not throw it at my head.  It’s early, I haven’t had coffee and before I’m fully awake I talk almost exclusively in jaw breaking words.  This is not a brag.  It’s a logical result of my background.  Mothers don’t let your daughters be brought up in Latin languages.

Hold the line a moment.  I’m going to get coffee or this could yet become tedious.  (Become?- Ed.  Shut up wretch – Sarah)

However, what started it was Dave Freer’s post yesterday, comparing a writing career to a muddy river (we always knew there was a load of … er… mud in this profession) and describing the changing scene as the floods of ebooks come down from the mountains.

I commented with what Dan has told me before: right now writing reminds him of computers in the seventies.  Nobody knows anything and anyone who tells you he does is lying.  We’re living on the wild frontier and as yet there’s no data, only anecdote.

No one knows why some books take off on Amazon and some are left behind – Not even Amazon who IS trying to figure it out.

In what is going on in writing, right now, this is understandable.  The field is being hit by catastrophic change, so everything is moving very fast, in all directions.  In October the years before last, I went to Oregon and took a course on how to put up books.  Things have already changed so much, in terms of format, software, covers, as well as pricing, that I’m running to catch up and people whom I told how to do this who are still following my instructions are certainly doing it wrong.

As is, I’m lagging behind on things like getting on Kobo or – for  the relevant stories – All Romance.  I simply have no time, between the traditional career, new writing, doing covers for the back list (was fighting to get the backlist back!) and then getting hit by a series of bugs since… October?  (Actually mid September.) to keep up with the fast pace of changes.  I dip by my writing blogs when I can, but I should be doing it everyday.  And just keeping up with the changes in writing would be a full time job, let alone writing and all the other administrivia.

(Now I should confess I’m never very good at administrivia.  Even in the old model, I had the times I was writing, and the times I was sending out/keeping records.  The two never seem to happen in my mind at once.)

THAT however is neither here nor there.  Even the people who are plugged in 24/7 don’t know much, because there is no systematic collecting of data that presents a coherent picture.  Even Amazon can’t give us a coherent picture, and they’re sitting on the firehose of data.  Because… everything is changing, very fast.  Before the blind men can assemble the data and describe the elephant it’s turned into an emu.

In this environment you get a lot of spinners.  What is your clue that you’re being spun and that things are not what they say they are?  They often keep repeating things, and moreso they repeat them without any seeming awareness that they’ve said this before and it turned out not to be true.  So we get the repeated, screamed “Amazon is really going down, this time sweartagad it’s true, and paper books are coming back, and we’ll have full control of the distribution again” over and over and over again from the traditional publishers.  And then they say it again.

The other thing is misuse of numbers.  How misuse?  Oh, stuff like telling you that the growth in sales of ebooks has slowed down but spinning it so you think that fewer ebooks are being sold, instead of the logical and inevitable development that the PERCENTAGE of ebooks being sold can’t keep doubling forever.  (No?  Well, imagine it grows by 50% one year, and it was 50% of all ebooks sold.  In the next year it will stop growing, inevitably.  Why?  Because it’s now 100% of the market.  Does this mean ebooks are done?  Well, no.  It can’t be.  They’re a 100% of the market in this scenario.)

Most people don’t understand numbers and shut down their brain when numbers are mentioned.  Also, they have a firm faith in mathemagics, which means “math says so, so it’s true.”

If by now you’re going “but I’ve seen those signs on the economy at large”  — this is why I told you this wasn’t a post about publishing.  It’s not a post about publishing because the same thing is going on in the economy and society at large.

I’m getting very tired of starting to read articles, even in reputable investors’ journals that start with “The US economy is improving markedly, but will the world’s economy drag it down?”

Is the US economy improving markedly?  Who knows?  As in publishing, nobody knows not’ing.

Yes, I have my opinions.  Yep, the stores are boarded, every other one, in our city, but then again, you know, our city is making such stellar management decisions (Art on the streets, but no money for lighting crossstreets, for instance.  Or jacking the price of parking downtown up so much – and making the period you can park for only half an hour in some areas.  This is the work of people who don’t understand the experience of shopping downtown and think people drive down, go to a shop, drive to the next one – that only bars and nightclubs survive because they’re open after parking meters shut down.) that it could easily be  a localized thing.  Of course, I have friends all over the country, and yep, a few have lost their jobs, and found other jobs.  But then again, my friends tend to be not only college educated but also the sort of strivers who can turn their hands to a hundred different things.

The children of friends and neighbors have come home because they can’t find jobs/got laid off, but of course this, dire though it is, is not universal.  Some have jobs.

I do know the Hoyt household is pinching very badly.  As in, we’re holding on by our fingernails, and the fingernails are starting to bleed at the edges.  But then, we have two sons in college, and even though we’re doing the thing on the cheap, with them living at home, no one said the thing was cheap, after all.  And last year we were hit by a series of disasters that cost us about 30k in savings, which means we’re about to be very broke, and the taxes due.

I have sort of a sense this is normally not as a bad, that we’ve recovered from bigger expenses in the past sooner.

Most of all, I KNOW – and yep, it’s a know – that regardless of the claims that there is no inflation, our grocery bills have doubled, and that we’re not eating twice as much.  I also know (or suspect) inflation hasn’t doubled the prices of things, just the things we buy specifically.  (Meat, veggies, cleaners.)

I also know that hanging by the fingernails though we are, we’re relatively well off compared to other people, even other employed people.  (Having no debt except the mortgage does help.  Even if that means you have to drive ancient cars and pay for the repairs.)

And I know that in the same way, the rest of the world is hurting more than the US.  How much of this is their misguided policies, and how much the fact that when the US sneezes the rest of the world catches pneumonia, I can’t tell you.  I can only tell you that since the US is the main consumer, the tightening of purse strings here hurts everyone.

And I can tell you that no one I know is making big, extravagant purchases.  Everyone I know is going “one more year on the car, hopefully.”  And “One more winter on this coat” and…

In the case of the economy of course people have the data.  To an extent.  But are the data they’re looking at the relevant data?  For instance, finding that unemployment has stopped growing… is it true?  Well, no, they drop the long term unemployed.  So, as with ebooks, eventually, if they lay off everyone and wait long enough we’ll have 0% unemployment.  But no one will be working.

The problem is that the people who have the data, the people who analyze the data and the people who report the data are not even close to the same people.  If someone tells you something about their field, you believe them because you assume they know more than you do.  But what they say might not be what you hear.

What I’m saying is that even without ideological intrusion, it’s perfectly possible that journalists are lying to us without meaning to.  They’re not good with numbers, that’s why they didn’t take STEM degrees.  And they might not get what they’re being told.

Do I think this is true?  Well, no I don’t.  I think there’s a rich and yeasty combination of ignorance and malice.  Why?

Because as with the publishing houses, we see the hysterical repeated screaming and the seeming ignorance that they said this before and their predictions failed to come true.  So we get “Summer of recovery” and “Son of Summer of recovery” and “Son of Summer of Recovery, Enter the dragon” each one peddled with the wide-eyed credulity of someone who thinks we’re all stupid.

We also get the “Things are getting better” and “This time they’re really getting better” and “Happy times are here again,” even though truthfully there is no sign of anything better for us or anyone we know.

At the same time, other things have totally vanished from the headlines.  For instance, how many of you know that Egypt is sliding into dangerous radical Islam?  Well, on this blog probably a lot of people.  Out there?  Bah.  The man on the street will tell you “Arab Spring” and have a vague idea this means they’ve gone all democratic and that the veils have come off.  Or something.  The camels are dancing with the sphinx and it’s a miracle of Ramadan.  Or something.

And the average journalist would go along with them.  Not just because it suits their ideology, but because they think it’s true.  Then there’s the ideological skew, which, yes, is there.  When 98% of journalists sign on to the “progressive” agenda (and we won’t go on how it’s partly because the humanities have been taken over by the Beasts of Marxism, or this post will never end) they’re going to try to push it, of course they are.

And in that sense, it can’t be said we have a free press.  Not when progressives are in charge.

Oh, look, yeah, no journalist is going to get thrown in jail for saying something the administration doesn’t like.  But he’s going to get crucified by the other journalists, have his reputation trashed – even if he’s a legend of reporting – and probably “never work in this town again.”

This is why in fields like journalism, where the “progressives” have taken the commanding heights of being able to hire and fire (and they always hire and fire by ideology.  Unlike the rest of us who look for other attributes) people like me stay in the closet or risk limiting or losing their career.  (You don’t see that on the other side, btw.)

When your entire news is coming through people who, if they tell something that is unpalatable to the people currently in power, might lose their ability to make a living – how good do you think that information is?

And we can’t, of course, any of us, know everything.

In fact, it might have come to the point that we can’t, any of us, know much of anything.  The firehose of information is full on and despite the dreams of those who thought 1984 was a manual, that doesn’t mean people can control everything or have a full picture of how you’re supposed to vote if they just hit you on the diaper issue, because you bought diapers last week.  No, what that vast amount of information means is that nobody knows not’ing.

When we get the direct data, we get too much and a lot of it contradicts itself.  When we get it filtered, we get it according to what the media mavens want us to see.  (Look, as a writer I know this.  I’ve mentioned before – I can take the same character and present it in a way you see him as a hero or a villain.  Take Kit Marlowe: working class boy, made good, indications he was in favor of freedom of expression – yay.  But then take double agent, weirdly heretic (and I mean weirdly, and often ignorantly), possible pedophile (there’s some doubt if boys is really boys or in the sense of “dancing boys” who are usually men), almost certainly a sadist, at least in his dreams – ew.  And then add: Possible secret Catholic? False coiner? Work-for-hire writer?  What?)

Ideologically bent information was what kept the USSR quiescent so long. They knew they were hurting, but they thought the rest of the world was worse.  How could they know it wasn’t?  Most of them couldn’t travel abroad.  All they had was the reports of a press who wanted them to believe things a certain way.  Which meant they believed what they heard, and they thought bad as things were it was inevitable, and a free market would be worse.

The people here are told, in the same way, that what we have is a free market, and that’s collapsing from being free (not from over regulation.)  And then, of course, they think socialism must be better. But even those who see behind that, can’t get the relevant data to know what’s happening in other areas, particularly areas they’re not experts in.

We’re all low information voters.  Worse, it’s highly possible the government is a low information government, something more terrifying than their drinking their own ink, even if they’re also doing that.

This is a problem because the idiocy of the government can affect the recovery (which I don’t believe exists) or make the recession (do I hear depression?) worse all without their knowing what they’re doing, and without any clue of which direction they should be headed in.

Like a skier caught in an avalanche things are changing too fast and neither us nor those in charge have any clue which way is up, even though we’re all p*ssing ourselves.

Just knowing how the writing field is changing is insane enough a job.  Knowing how the entire economy, all the tech, etc. is changing requires a brilliant mind and more time than any of us has.

I go on general principles and what I know has worked from history: for a country this side, I support less regulation, more freedom and more regional solutions (on the principle that those closer to the problem see it better.)

But do I KNOW for a fact how things are changing?  Not on your life.

Which of course means that those who favor centralized government must prove to me why they know more than the rest of us and why they think they have the information to run everything.

Once more we come to malice or incompetence and the answer is “yes”.  They are malicious because they favor power for themselves and their cronies, which necessitates central-control which is hampered by ignorance and makes everyone worse off.  Which brings us to malice again.

Nobody knows not’ing and I’m tired of their pretending they know everything.

Brief update for the Sarah Spotters: I was at No Pasaran on March 8, but got sick, didn’t read blogs and wasn’t aware of it.  Also, I’ll be at PJM lifestyle with the writing thing this afternoon, and of course I’m being a fraction of insty (where mostly I do the late night posting.)

And apologies on being so late.  We have a furnace-fixing person in the house.

*Interestingly I was just telling Dan this morning that it’s not a good use of my time to learn to do audio narration and record my NOVELS — but I will do my short stories.  I haven’t had time to create an improvised booth, and we live in a very high traffic street with a light a block away, so we get… noises.  I’m going to record a story with an improvised booth and if that doesn’t work, get a booth for $200 or so.  I intend to record the Darkship shorts first [they sell] and I’ll post my first attempts here [then delete them before I put them up] so you guys can make fun of me.  [You know you will.]  Meanwhile, here’s Sabrina’s experience — and I’ll try this as soon as I put novels up. [Right now I’m doing covers.  I have the Shakespeare trilogy and two of the Musketeer Mysteries.  I’ll share soon!]*

The Indie guide to Audiobooks on ACX

(disclaimer–this is based on the experience of publishing one (1) audiobook. No supreme wisdom on the part of the author is expressed or implied.)

I took the leap of trying the whole audiobook thing after reading about how clever ACX was, and being on the receiving end of one of Dean Wesley Smith’s rants about making your work available in all formats. Here’s what I found…

The Mechanics:

First, to use ACX you need to already have an account with Amazon, and have the book you wish to record in their system. Then you can go to www.acx.com and set up your account there, using your Amazon login. (They are sort of in but not of Amazon. Confusing, I know.) ACX will helpfully list a bunch of books using your name as a search term, which you can claim right there or do another search to find the one you want.

Next, set up the “project”. I went the route of wanting someone else to record and produce the book, but you can try recording yourself (see note below). The project profile is where you set up the description, book category, and indicate the ideal voice artist for the work (e.g. male/female, accent type, tone and so on). The section for additional comment is where you add enticing data like “I’m a NYT bestseller and have a private jet!” or whatever you think will encourage a voice artist to think you can earn them money. I mentioned my book’s ranking and how many it had sold.

You will also need to upload or link to the audition script. Pick a section from your book , roughly two pages worth, something that you think will be important to get right. In my book Firehearted, the one I picked for my initial ACX trial, II wanted the distinction between the voices of the male barbarian and the female Imperial warrior to be very distinct and suitable, so I picked a scene with lots of dialog between the two. I also added in the comments what I was looking for (e.g. she is cool and comes from a very rigid society, he is impulsive and prone to outbursts.)

Next section is deciding how you want to finance this. Options at present appear to be either pay a flat rate, or do royalty share. (OPINION) Good voice artists, the ones who can do consistent accents and different voices for different characters, will run $200 per finished hour and up. (My book ran to 11 hours, which is about average.) You have to decide if it is worth it to you. Also, if your *current* book sales will earn said voice artist enough to earn out that flat rate for your book to be worth their while (and now you know why you mention ranking and sales …) For me, a relative unknown, I didn’t have much to brag about. I got no auditions when I first put Firehearted up as a royalty-share option in September of 2012.

And Then a Miracle Occurred:

HOWEVER, ACX announced their stipend program about a month after I set up my project–and they picked Firehearted to be a part of it. All of a sudden I got three auditions, one within HOURS of the announcement email. This program paid the voice artist a fixed stipend up front, for a set rate per finished hour (I think it was $150) which was in *addition* to the royalty share.

Pending miracles or being a known bestseller, you can also check out the various artists sample clips and see if there are any you like and email them directly. I tried to do this, but really couldn’t get a sense of how they would do my book, and didn’t send any inquiries to artists myself. I may try this later with subsequent projects. I do have another project is up, for The Last Mage Guardian. It is set to royalty share only, and I haven’t gotten any auditions after several months. I suspect up-front money is key ;-)

Dealing with auditions: One of the three auditions I received really stood out. Tim Campbell is a professional voice artist, so my experience may be on the unreasonably good side. He’s also a professional actor, and has his own recording setup at home. It was easy for him to record tune-in audition clips, and to fix errors. We were both *highly* motivated to get this done quickly, both because of the stipend program deadline but also because we wanted to take advantage of the holiday gift season. after approving the proposal, I sent Tim the manuscript and a file with a pronunciation guide for all the weird names and terms that he was very happy to get. (e.g. “Talorgen” = Tah LOHR jehn) ACX has a messaging setup and he kept me posted on his progress.

“Proofing” the recording: This was the part I thought would be hard, but wasn’t. I listened to the whole bloody thing, and strangely the errors (mostly him reading too fast and skipping or substituting a word, which happened a whopping 3 times) stood out as obviously to me as it would have been in print. Tim easily fixed the errors and then I approved the whole thing for sale.

ACX approves: I’m not sure exactly what their process is, but presumably they have some poor slob checking to make sure we aren’t just saying “fnord” for 11 hours. This took MUCH longer than I wanted, but still cleared in time for the gift-giving sales bump.
ACX is weird: even though they are an Amazon tentacle, they don’t do royalties or statements the same way.  They do give you sales data, but it is *cumulative* and not broken out by week or even month. Also, they send a physical check in a folder-sized envelope, along with the royalty statement. I’ve suggested more sales data and an electronic deposit option would be nice ;-)

More Waffling and Wild Guesses:

It’s pure speculation, but I think my book was picked for the stipend program because they wanted more Fantasy/SF content. Might be a growth option, hint hint.

On the subject of doing your own–I got a nice digital recorder to play with intending to do just that, and it even came with some recording editing software (~$300). On reflection, I think it is not a good use of my time to try to do books on my own, but I might try short stories. It takes a LOT of work to record a whole book well. Professionals are not just good at what they do, they are EFFICIENT. Tim stayed in character voice through the whole book, and I’m not sure I can do that yet.

By the way, I totally recommend Tim Campbell– he is a pro and a pleasure to work with.He had a lot of fun with my characters, and it shows.

Please let me know if you have any further questions about the wild world of audiobooks!

Ms. Chase’s website is website is Chase Adventures, and you can get all her books on Amazon, as well as on Barnes & Noble.

There is a myth that is the twin of the myth of genius, and it’s the idea that best things in life “just growed that way.”

I don’t know about you, (tovarish – yes I’ve been reading The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress again?  You got problem with that?) but most things that just grow are weeds.

So how did we get to this point where we have an entire culture believing that “natural” is better?  Natural food, natural clothing, natural talent?

Part of it is a pendulum.  For whatever reason, at least in Western culture (yes, I do have reason to think it’s not in other cultures, partly because by and large they don’t seem to have a concept of adolescence as a separate state and partly because they tend to be more conformist) it’s really important that whatever you’re doing not be “your father’s x.”  So you get one generation with “new and improved” and “now with more xenon bloolon” and you get the next with “natural, straight from the soil and covered in cowpoo” fetishes.

But that’s only PARTLY true.  Since the romantics with their love of “going back to” the medieval, while the pendulum swings, it’s been going back ever further into the “it just growed, so it’s better” territory.

And since the sixties, we’ve been howling down a path to “Noble savage is better” at least in the high culture.

There is a reason for this to be a myth of the high culture.  The middle class, though in our place and time it’s waaaaaaaay better off than the upper class at any given time, still has to strive for stuff.  Our kids, given neither the benefit of all the right contacts nor legacy placement at the ivy leagues, have to actually learn to read and work their tails off – even in schools that are supposed to keep them dumb, happy and useless – so we know that “just growed” is bs at some point.  And, unless we’re G-d’s own snowflakes, at least in recent decades – like my generation’s and the next’s entire working lives – we’ve had to be nimble and smart and really good at what we do, and really hard workers to stay employed.  (A lot of us have had more sporadic work histories, but those who are “solidly middle class” worked their behinds off, and kept working.)

But the upper class?  Oh, that’s different.  Between self esteem and the way the best schools tend to really want to find rich people exceptional – well, they’ve never had a bubble burst in their faces, and they think they’re all that.

Part of this is because schools want to make money.  My mom and dad who were – btw—at the time stone cold broke (as in they bought our school books used or not at all, and we had to shift) discussed sending my brother and I [my brother was demonstrably smart from very early on.  With me, they didn’t catch on I could do this school thing till fourteen – partly because the doctor who delivered them told them at best I’d be educable mentally retarded (because of birth issues) and so they should give up on ideas of having BOTH their kids go to college, and concentrate on teaching me housework and being nice, and maybe I’d find a nice man to marry me and support me.  When they caught on my being top of class through ninth grade – rolls eyes – wasn’t just a fluke, they also realized that the schools were horrible and I could possibly do better.] to private school.  I mean, if it was best for us, they’d have worked double jobs or found the money somehow.  BUT dad who went public school and had many colleagues who were private said the only thing private school gave you was the certainty you were exceptional – because they wanted you to continue paying.  In the meanwhile, the public school teachers had no reason to pass you if you didn’t know the material.  Now, I realize that calculus is somewhat different in the states, but not for the very rich.  Anyone think that the school teaching the presidential daughters will send them home with a bad report?  Tell them that frankly they’re phoning it in?  Do more than teach them lovely manners?

Colonel Kratman made a comment about us being ruled by the people who do best on IQ tests…  Um… Not exactly.  Not recently.

(The Colonel commented: Read it again, Sarah. _I_ said “Our world is being run by people who do very well on standardized tests, and then use those scores to get into the most highly regarded schools, which they they parley into positions of wealth and influence.” Someone else interpreted that as “best,” but “best is not what I said. — and he is right, but let it stand to mean that while he didn’t SAY that — for the purposes of the ruling class, they think this is doing “best” and that the schools are the best too.  My purpose was not to counter his point so much as to illustrate how this is seen from above… even if I phrased it clumsily.  I thought his comment was ironical and directed at how these people perceive themselves.)

Most of the admission tests aren’t IQ tests.  Any semblance of proper evaluation is done away with by stuff like questions that involve interpreting texts “the right” – meaning ideologically left – way, as well as essays, which allow “evaluators” to fudge the requirements and let “the right” (again ideologically left, or very wealthy, or usually both) person in.

Very smart people can fake it.  (Or people who had extensive training.  I’ve known for twenty years the sort of book I should write to get madinsanepush and all the awards in the industry.  I know this because I grew up under a Marxist regime, and I can see those markers very clearly.  So why didn’t I do it?  Well, I sometimes feel guilty about that, because, you know, if I had, the kids probably could have made it into top colleges, both on money and my reputation.  I didn’t do it because I’m dumb as the rocks.  No, really dumb.  I didn’t do it because ultimately I couldn’t sleep with myself at night, and, worse, I couldn’t wake up with myself in the morning.)  The middle smart people can be TAUGHT to fake it, though.  And the average people can be fudged in.

Most of the upper crust seem to be average (at best.  If we don’t ignore actors, it comes down a bit.)   I can speculate on why, including the politics of marriage.  But I won’t.  However, between contacts and presenting themselves just the right way they can get into the best colleges, be wafted into the best jobs, etc.

This is not a 99% lament – bah, I don’t lament.  I do.  The OWSers think that shoulder to shoulder will change anything.  The rest of us know work and application and knowledge does.  The OWSers are the children of the 1% who are too dumb to make it up the ladder even with all the help and support – it’s merely a statement of fact.

It is also a statement of fact that due to being raised in cotton wool, lest their little egos get bruised, most of them have NO CLUE that they aren’t in fact the best and the brightest.  (And because this touches on Malice or Incompetence in respect to the current running clique, let me say “both.”  Their malice comes from thinking that the US is uniquely bad and if it is taken out, the world will flourish into a paradise and the sheer incompetence at living (aka stupidity) is revealed by the fact they believe that.  These people with unique travel opportunities, money to buy all the books they want, etc, believe this counterfactual because it’s what they were told at school.  Which is why I say they’re at BEST average intelligence even if they’re savants in some field or other – at least first generation money.)

So, they go through life thinking that if they can do all this effortless and without the least sweat, everyone can.  “It just grows.”

In the same way, they think those poor people, down there, who clearly aren’t naturally as brilliant as they are need al sorts of help because, logically, we’re all born into a caste system where the natural is everything and if you didn’t “just grow” you’ll never make it.

Both the way these people are raised and the ease of putting them in charge and the fact they have no idea they didn’t just “grow” that way are a bad thing, and if not altered (oh, there’s a big alteration coming, one way or another.  I hope it’s peaceful like the collapse of the Soviet Union – largely – was) it will lead to the destruction of Western Civ (No, not just us.  Europe – Anglophonic and not – is afflicted with this in spades.)  Both because they think they just growed that way and because they have no idea of their own limitations.  So they think they’re the best, and clearly all those other pull people cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps either.  (Curiously, after I started to write this, I went to facebook to check on someone, and Larry was posting about the concept of bootstraps and those who believe in it and those who don’t.)

From a food point of view, the concept of “natural is always better” drives me to screaming fits, because well… between a hydroponically grown lettuce and naturally grown hemlock, which is better for you?  Even less insanely, all the babies killed by baby food since I’ve been a mom and paid attention, have been killed by “organic” baby food.  You see, some bacteria resist the “natural” sterilization methods.

From the writing point of view it makes me want to shove heads in, because – frankly – no matter how “talented” you are (and I’ve mentioned before I’m not even sure I believe in talent as such, right?  I mean, writing “talent” is a combination of so many inclinations and abilities, like facility with language, a fine observational eye for people’s behavior, etc.) you still need to shape what comes out naturally into what other people want to read.  Very few of us want to listen to someone’s dream, right?  With all the characters that go nowhere, etc.  What comes out pre-first-draft, if you have a lot of practice (me) might be readable, but it still requires a lot of editing (plotline, not JUST typos) to be something others will pay to read.

People who think that the story should pour out fully finished, particularly before they’ve trained their subconscious well enough, and who run away screaming when their first book isn’t an instant success (or more likely mope, lament and act hard-done-by) bring up my “needs killing” reflex.  First because they perpetuate the myth for the young and innocent (or either) and second because they are very annoying.

From the cultural point of view, the assumption which sneaks into a lot of artwork, that the unpolished (often urban) savage, feral and murderous, is better than the civilized human is the sort of insanity that brings down civilizations (and along the way it does things like discourage the young, create the idea of other civilizations as sort of open-air museums, and makes the west powerless before those who would take us back to the stone age.)

BUT more importantly, from the individual point of view, it sets artificial limits on people’s dreams.  (If I thought the upper class were smarter, I’d think this was deliberate.)  Kids will believe if they didn’t get into the best school; or if they don’t have all straight As; or if they’re not a marathoner the first time they try long distance running; or they don’t play like Beethoven after three lessons… well, that’s it.  They’re not naturals.  They’ll never get anywhere.

And, you know what, that’s nonsense.  More than IQ, more than talent, more than natural advantages, contacts, whatever – the strongest determinant of someone being able to do something and do it well (by which I don’t mean be a millionaire from doing it.  In case you didn’t catch the drift, this is not a meritocracy.  But you can do well enough, if you’re really, really good.) is their determination to work really hard at it and to do what it takes.

I mean, you know, I keep reading – IN SPECIALIZED LINGUISTICS BOOKS – that if you aren’t a native of a language, you’ll never speak it well enough to UNDERSTAND all the nuances of phrase, and you for sure can never express yourself artistically in it.

This despite the fact I’m not even the TENTH ESL writer to make it professionally ahead of countless native speakers.

Now, did it take natural talent?  Probably.  For some reason English works better for me than any language I ever learned (my native language included.)  It fits the pathways of my brain better, is the best way I can explain it

However – was it effortless? – no.  I have mentioned before that I was coasting, not studying the first week of my English course, confident I could cram before the test, when the teacher called me to the blackboard and I was utterly humiliated, since I knew NOTHING.  So, instead of cramming for the test, because the teacher was one of the tricky ones and I didn’t want to be embarrassed like that EVER again, I spent my evenings studying English grammar and vocab, and, halfway through the year, found a used copy of Dandelion Wine and read it with dictionary and notebook by my side, one to look up stuff, the other to make note of constructions.  That summer, I read other books in English.  By the beginning of the second year, I could think in written English (I couldn’t pronounce ANYTHING properly till my third year, when it clicked.  Well, as properly as I ever will.)

But even then, even though as an exchange student in 12^th grade, I spoke English better than a lot of natives, to write it for a living was something else again.  I’m STILL training myself to get past a tendency to use latinate and “bookish” words and it’s done one step at a time and the only progress I notice is when I read stuff more than ten years old.  I’m still working really hard.

Do I work harder than those who speak English natively?  How do I know?  I’m just me, behind my skull.  For all I know I have it easy and other people are figuratively speaking breaking rock with their minds.

I just know I’m working as hard and as much as I can possibly do.  Because I want to be as good a writer and as widely read as I can be.  And I don’t expect to be a natural.

I don’t trust the upper class to know who or what is good or not.  And I don’t expect to get anywhere simply by being present.  In my experience, that’s not how life works.  And even if it were, I’d make it work another way, rather than wait for a hand up or a hand out.

Oh, look at that, those are boots.  And they have straps.  And I’m pulling up.

Good morning from snowbound Colorado.  As never fails to happen, I found myself without eggs this morning, so we rolled out of bed and went to the grocery store, before the snow got any worse.

I have two projects to finish this week, and for a chance the house is clean.  However, I forgot to take decongestant this morning, which brings up…

You know how I always have trouble figuring out if I’m sick or just depressed.  Seventeen years ago, we had a winter like this – a bunch of little sicknesses, one after the other, and at the end of it I ended up in the hospital and in ICU with pneumonia.

People like to say “you should have known you were sick!” but how could I have known that, exactly?  We had  a four year old and a one year old.  Starting around October, the viruses started circulating through the household.  The entire family had stomach flu.  This with a toddler and a very small boy meant endless loads of sheets and crib sheets, and scrubbing the crib because the baby had thrown up all over the slats.

Around November, the entire family got an upper respiratory thing and were honking like geese.  The entire family but me. I wasn’t coughing, and while I felt congested, I thought I was imagining it.  My main symptom is that I was SOOO exhausted.  The exhaustion grew, and by the beginning of January, I couldn’t get dressed in under an hour, because I had to rest between pieces of clothing.  I went to the doctor and they said “Well, you know, with what your family has been going through, you probably just need rest.  Go to bed.”  So I went to bed, and we got a friend to watch the kids.  Finally, just before President’s Day weekend, I got up from bed (where I’d ended up restricted) and tried to go to the bathroom.  I passed out in the middle of the hallway.  Dan took me to emergency.

Even the trained medical professionals couldn’t SEE anything wrong with me, except my blood ox didn’t register when they tried to measure it.  They couldn’t hear anything when they listened to my lungs.

Following the rule that doctors assume you’re completely crazy and only listen to what you’ve been doing the last few days, the first thing they did was give me a leg ultrasound, because they were convinced since I just lay around on the sofa and the bed, I’d got a leg clot that had got to my lungs.  (This completely missing the fact the reason I’d been lying around – for a week – was that I was ILL.  NOT a normal thing, and even then not enough for leg clots.  No one was carrying me to the bathroom, and I was still cooking, I just wanted to sleep a lot.  HOW grown men thought a young mother with no household help could be immobile enough for leg clots, I don’t know.)  Finally (as a last resort) they did ever more refined ultrasounds, and they noticed my lungs had this fine-spray pattern.  It’s since been classified as intercellular pneumonia.  They gave me antibiotics (after Dan yelled at them. They wanted it to be something exotic.) and eventually I got well.

But when your main symptom is tiredness, and you’ve been confined to the house with a sick family, and when professionals themselves don’t see anything wrong with you at first glance, how are you supposed to know?

Well…  I still have three guest blogs to go, and I wasn’t getting much of anything done, including editing, and I just felt like sleeping all the time.  And it suddenly hit me this is awfully familiar, and maybe I’m not just worried about our finances  (the taxes are going to wipe out our savings.  This is a problem, since the savings are what we keep from my income, aka, what we supplement our living expenses on.) and a little depressed.

So I decided I’d take decongestants morning and evening and see how it works.  I don’t think it’s pneumonia, at least not yet, but I’d bet on bronchitis.  So… Yesterday was like a new lease on life.  My brain worked, I could function.  So, of course I forgot the night decongestant and feel like a zombie too stupid to know what brains are.  Yes, I’ve taken decongestant now.  And I’m going to start the humidifier going in the office.  And if I’m not markedly better Monday I’ll go but my doctor for antibiotics.  Might be hard to convince him, as I bet it’s not really audible in my lungs, but we’ll see.  I’m not coughing at all, but my chest feels “tight.”

Anyway, maybe I’m not getting depressed and stupid, maybe I’m just sick.  Something I need someone to engrave on my bathroom mirror, I think.  What finally tripped me was looking pale enough I might be made of wax.  I thought I was just tired before that.  But tired doesn’t make me that pale.

The plan today is to take it easy, read low-brain-power books, and make some hot soup for dinner.  Okay, and edit Shadow Gods, supposing my brain comes back from extended vacation.  And to read a friend’s book I was asked to beta.

I will record a short story this weekend (supposing breath is back by tomorrow, and it should be.)  I need to test the equipment.  If you guys want to tell me which of my published shorts you want me to record, I might as well give you what you want.

Speaking of which – my comment about the (dis)Honorable Jon yesterday was because I wasn’t sure if you guys wouldn’t run screaming from the way his mind works.  I wasn’t holding a bathtub full of gin to his head.  Yet, I got a bunch of donations so I would “spare” him.  This gives me a terrible idea of a way to make a living.  If I weren’t so soft-hearted with my characters, I’d do it too.  “A hundred dollars, or the character gets it!”

On side note, the next chapter is Helen and also first person.  I’m not sure how this will work long-run and halfway through it might switch to Jon first person and everyone else third.  We’ll be.  It’s an experiment.

Oh, yeah, and if you guys would be so kind as to put stuff you want to promote in the comments.  I meant to as yesterday, and I spaced it.  I’ll do a post, probably tomorrow.

And now be good.  I’m going to have some tea.  (I went out uncaffeinated.  The horror.)  Then I’m going to colonize the confy chair with the kindle and my laptop and enjoy what I hope is the last snowy weekend of the year.

*This might be the first chapter of a new free novel to be posted here every Friday.  Or I might drown the Right  Honorable Jonathan, Earl of Blythe in the bathtub.  (He’d prefer if the bathtub were full of gin, he says.)  His thoughts move like a spider on acid.  To make things worse I think you mugs might have wished a multiple first person POV novel on me (like I haven’t suffered enough!)  Encouragement will be taken in the form of cold, hard cash, (or soft electronic cash) and $6 dollars gets you an e-copy of the finished novel.  (Yes, those of you who paid for Witchfinder will get it, I’ve been dealing with RL which delayed the edits.)  Discouragement can come in any form, provided you don’t throw rotten fruit at me, because I’m wearing a nice shirt.*

Rogue Magic

Sarah A. Hoyt

Jonathan:

The Honorable Earl

When I was very little, I used to have this nightmare where I was locked away in some inaccessible dungeon with a view.

What I mean is, it was some sort of dungeon, and it was very silent and somewhat dark, and I was chained hand and foot to the wall, but through the other wall in front of me I could see my sisters playing and my nanny crying “Master Jonathan,” but I couldn’t reach them.

Even in the dream, I knew something was wrong, because if I were to suddenly vanish and leave my nanny in charge of only the four girls, she wouldn’t cry.  More likely she would give thanks fasting.  And no one would blame her.

But then as I grew older, I’d come to understand that Nanny would indeed cry, because I was the only male heir, then, before Edward and Reuel were even born.  Had I disappeared, the entail on the family title and lands and on Blythe’s Blessings, our all-too-profitable magical business, would have passed to my cousin Eldred.  Which meant that Mother and Honoria, Helen, Harmonie, and Hosanna would have been quite destitute and nurse turned out to graze, or whatever it was you did with old servants.  So Nanny would have cried, certainly, despite the various frogs in the knitting basket, grass snakes in her bed, and other less savory tricks with which I enlivened my dreary childhood.

I wondered if it was because of those tricks that I was – in a way – condemned to eternity in something very like the dungeon of my nightmares.

“Blythe!” Mamma said, in exactly the same tone she’d used to say “Jonathan!” until three weeks ago, when I’d arranged for Papa’s death and, inevitably, ascended to his dignities.

I blinked and, to my chagrin, became aware of my location which was the breakfast table, across from Mama, who was – in her day – a remarkable beauty, and who remained – I was assured – a very pretty woman, despite her one or two strands of grey, and her less than fresh complexion.  Almost as pretty as the girls, and truth, how much older than them could she be.  She’d married and had me at twelve, if you were to believe her.  Not that she ever said that, precisely, but she claimed to be thirty nine, which would make her nine on the happy day of her marriage to papa.  ‘s truth, I thought she’d probably been fifteen or so, so not that far off.

“Blythe!” Mama’s voice had just that nice blend of impatience, command, and a hint that she was terribly, terribly disappointed in me.  From the foot of the table she glared at me, then her gaze went sideways to my right, and I looked.  And almost dropped my napkin, because one of the footmen was standing there, holding a silver salve, with three letters on it.

I reached over and took the letters – though I’m fairly sure that was not what I was supposed to do, but I could never remember what I was supposed to do.  The footman, a tall, not uncomely young man of maybe nineteen straightened up and I said “Er…”  because I could never remember the creatures’ names, though Mama assured me that my sainted father never forgot a single one. The sainted must mean he belonged to some very odd religion because according to the dictates of the Christianity practiced in this isles, Papa must now be burning and sizzling in a circle of hell almost as deep as the one I’d someday be consigned to.

“Jon–  Blythe!” Mama said, and a shadow of alarm joined the reproach in her voice.  I realize I was staring straight ahead which unfortunately meant I was staring at a region of the footman’s anatomy at which no nicely brought up Earl should stare.

I wasn’t nicely brought up.  But I also wasn’t interested.  I looked up at the footman’s face, which was a shade of red one shouldn’t be able to turn unless one was halfway through becoming a tomato.  His name came to me in a flash.  He was Thomas, and he was our housekeeper’s son.  “Thank you, Thomas.  You may go.”

He bowed slightly, still bright red, and turned and went, which, from the purely aesthetic point of view, provided a not-unpleasant view.

Not that I was interested.  I wasn’t.  Once, when I was very drunk, I’d gone with some choice spirits to this club on Totenham Court Road, where they had boys whom one of my boon companions assured me could do what no girl could.

I suppose that would be correct, insofar as the parts were different, but for my money, give me a well grown wench of twenty or thereabouts, with a compliant disposition and a rounded figure.  It would have cost me less of my money too.

Which doesn’t mean a man is either blind or devoid of imagination.

Before Mama could open her mouth – though I could feel her admonition hanging in the air – I turned to the letters, while saying, “Yes, Mama, I know.  Blythe.  Indeed, your use of the name begins to be tedious.”

I was aware of twin gasps from my left, where Harmonie and Hosanna – whom we called Hanna, because we’d never understood by what freakish lapse mamma had come to pick such a name – sat, and of a smothered giggle from the right, where Helen buttered her toast.  Honoria was as dead as Papa, and in as dishonorable circumstances, though I’d managed to scotch that scandal at least.  What call a girl had to get herself with child by a dragon, and one who didn’t like women at that, was quite beyond me.  But Honoria had always been like papa and, ultimately, unreliable.  Which meant it was a good thing she was gone.

I met Helen’s eye with a mildly reproving look, and she looked back at me, all proper, but I swear her eyes laughed.  She was the only one in the family who looked like me, with curly dark hair and dark brown eyes, all the rest of the family looking like they’d run in the wash.  She might resemble me in other ways.  It bore watching.

I looked down from Helen to the letter I’d opened and realized, with a start, that it was from Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, now the royal Witchfinder and Prince Consort, since he’d married the Princess Royale.  Who was having more trouble getting used to his dignities than I to mine.

The proof was right in this letter.  It started with “Dear Jon” as though we’d still been boys, together, at Eaton – not that he’d ever called me dear, then.  No one did.  Until the age of twenty I’d thought my name was Jon, No! – and proceeded just as informally with, “There is a problem for which I’m very afraid I will need your help.  Without it, the whole world could be lost. Please come see me as soon as you may after twelve” It was signed Seraphim A. and he’d not even bothered to use his signet ring.

I sighed forlornly.  First, one is supposed to conform to his dignities, not to toss them aside and ignore one’s own importance.  And second, I must be slipping if Seraphim knew I’d be awake shortly after twelve.  I wondered what half of London would say if they knew I was awake at nine.  How very unfashionable.  I’d be quite disgraced.

I set aside the letter, met the eyes of my elder surviving sister, who, from the smile twitching the corners of her lips, seemed to know far too well what was going on in my mind.  For a second I tried to remember how old she was.  Seventeen?  Eighteen?  Old enough, at any rate, and I must find some unwary unfortunate to foist her upon in holy – or at least legal – matrimony.

“Helen!” Mama said, disapproval, asperity and a sort of despairing sigh mingling in her voice.

Well, it was neither Jonathan! nor Blythe at any rate.  Just like when Nanny suspected the nursery maid, and not me, of having put salt in her tea, it was a relief.

I opened the next letter, noting the cheap paper and the clumsy handwriting of a man who is not used to plying a pen for a living.  After opening the twice recrossed page, I looked down to find the signature of Wolfe Merrit.

I frowned at the handwriting, trying to make it out.  Even uncrossed, Wolfe was hard to read.  A good practical magician, and he kept Blythe’s Blessings and our various magically powered manufactures going as I couldn’t, but his father had been a farner, and it always seemed he’d be more at home with a plow then a pen.

By dint of glaring at the page, I made out the words corruption and magic, and something about one of our factories in the North being in dire trouble.

Well, that would need to be dealt with, and before Seraphim’s demmed noon appointment.  Without the factories, I would lack the money to dower Helen, not to mention the money to dower Harmonie.  And though I had the vague idea that Hanna should still be in the schoolroom, I also had a feeling she was out already and likely would need a dowry.

I was lucky enough that neither the king nor any of the persons injured had forced me to make restitution on Father’s ill gotten gains, but I could not now let the modicum of wealth we’d managed to wrest from ruing fall between my fingers.  My sisters – and my brothers’ too – must be provided for.  Yes, I must see Wolfe, confound him.

Helen let out a breath, with the sound of having held it long, and I looked up at her, as I set the letter aside.  What was she looking so peeky for?

But she looked away from me, as I picked up the third letter, and that was all very well.  I’d have to find out what was going through her head – hopefully not a dragon! – but that would wait till another time.

The letter in my hand was also cheap paper, but it was addressed in an unmistakably female hand and if I had any experience of it – and I did – a well-bred female hand.  It had no name of origination.  But the beautifully shaped, not at all vulgar handwriting put paid to the notion that it might be from my latest cher amie, who could barely hold a pen.  I must remember to give her her conge.  It didn’t do for the Earl of Blythe to keep a flirtation that had done quite well for Jonathan who very much hoped not to inherit the title.

I frowned down at the paper, registering that the letter was very short, that it started with Dear Sir, and that the signature was blotched with tears.  The last was an unusual enough circumstance, but the text was even more peculiar.  “Dear Sir,” it read.  “I have understood that you’ve been endeavoring to find me.  You must not.  Oh, you must not.  And you must forgive me the injury I’ve done you.  Indeed, when you discover it, you must keep in mind that it was no fault of my own, and all of my circumstances.  Please do not think badly of me.  Indeed, you must believe me when I say if circumstances were different—”

This was where the blotching started, which extended all the way to the signature.

The strange thing about it was that the letter did not put me off, and I have the greatest dislike of females abuse indeed and who act as watering pots.  I mean, once they’ve given in to your advances, what use is crying?  And if they haven’t, it’s easily remedied.

But there was to this letter the feeling of a personality, the sense of a woman nearing the breaking point.

And besides, I had been looking for a woman, since that night when I’d ascended to poor Papa’s dignities, after his untimely suicide.

That night, in a not totally unrelated phenomenon, London had swarmed with demons, and while fighting them, I’d met—

Her image rose up before me: red hair, an impudent little face, and the sort of figure I would pay my money for.  Only she was not the type who takes money.

She’d told me her name was Ginevra Elfborne, and she’d dressed like a governess.  But she’d fought like a warrior for her gaggle of screaming debutants.  And she’d disappeared like a lovely dream in the summer heat.

I’m not the type to pine for a bit of skirt, nor indeed for anyone.  But I’d not been able to forget Ginevra nor to find her.  My polite enquiries had said such a person had never been heard of, by the family she supposedly worked for.  My respectable enquiry agents had come back empty handed.  And my not so respectable agents had been bewildered and assure me no such woman existed nor had ever existed.

My eyes fell on that line, before the tears blotted her writing: Indeed, you must believe me when I say if circumstances were different—

I was sure the first three letters of the tear-soaked signature were G I N.

There are things you can do to a letter that will tell you where the writer is right then.  Particularly a letter infused with tears, as this one was.  Nothing a respectable magician will do, of course, but fortunately I was not a respectable magician.

“Blythe!” Mama’s voice said.  “Your kidneys!”

Since this referred to my breakfast and not my body, I chose to ignore it.  I wasn’t hungry at all.  I must get to my office.  I had a spell to perform.

And then maybe I’d find the little red-headed imp I couldn’t forget.

Yesterday, in the comments, conversation strayed to whether or not we’d interact well as a group in meat-space, followed by the strong doubts that we wouldn’t.

I’m not sure about this, because now that we’ve met, in the mind-space of the internet, we can probably carry that over into real life and enjoy ourselves immensely.

The thing about the internet is that we get to meet as onto angels, mind to mind and thought to thought, as if the incidentals of life counted for nothing.

As someone whose external looks have always been somewhat at odds with her mental processes (ones exist, the others are sporadic, yes.  Well done.) this is a boon.

What I mean is that bc – before children – and massive weight gain from bed rest for six months (something no figure seems able to survive) I was passably good looking, petite, female (I still am that), and liked to dress up.  Since my particular fixation when money permits (i.e. bc) runs to high heeled shoes and lace stockings and since I know how to apply make up, I could on a good day make heads turn.

This lead to my finding myself in any gathering of trained professionals (I was a multilingual technical translator.  No, that wasn’t my title, but it was what I did) or any group of people who met for intellectual pursuits, from book groups to investment classes, and being asked the question “Who are you here with?”  I can’t convey the tone of it, but let’s say it wasn’t an attempted pick up.  The idea seemed to be that if I were in a group of people pursuing something more complex than what type of shoes to wear, I must be there to please a man.

Well, the prettiness, as all the philosophers (and Will Shakespeare in his sourer moods) warn is transitory and beauty is vain.  That passed.  People don’t run screaming into the night when they see me, but as an overweight chick ™ I was allowed to have brains.  Except…

Except that I also had one or two kids in tow, and we all know that women take the mommy track when they can’t cut it in business.  No?  What do you mean no?  Known fact that.  I have mentioned haven’t I, the recent college graduate from a humanities degree who joined our writers’ group years ago and ASSUMED myself and the other co-head of group were at best high school graduates and at worst, high school drop outs, because, you see, we had kids and stayed home to raise them rather than farm the task to strangers.

As it turned out, at the time my co-head-of-group, Rebecca Lickiss had a bachelors in physics (she’s now either working towards or has finished her doctorate.)  And while my degree was humanities, it was not – as this young lady’s – a degree in my own language (something that always struck me as a cop out) but a degree in a foreign language, with another five languages coming along for the ride.  It was also a degree that translates between a masters and a doctorate here, and, let’s face it, foreign languages are arguably the most rigorous of humanities’ degrees.  Or at least they are if you want to do something useful with them, like scientific translation.  You can’t argue on the meaning of “is” after all.  At least not unless you are a highly placed politician.

However the young lady looking at us could not imagine ever giving up a possible career for which one has trained for the sake of training the next generation and making sure they have the tools to make it in life.  She also missed – most single people do – the inherent possessiveness in being a mother, the “I made him, I get to raise him.” And likely she missed the joy in it too, poor thing.

But more important, she failed to get that both my friend and I were writers.  Writers can train for good jobs because we are fairly sure the writing won’t carry us for a while.  And we can put on a good show of working at those jobs, too.  But those of us who are driven to write always view the day job as just that: a way to make money until writing can carry us.

So when given the chance to stay home, raise your own kids AND have a few hours a day to work on what we hoped would become a career, both my friend and I (individually) took it.

None of this mattered.  All this stranger saw, looking at us, was “mommy” and therefore that must be all we were equipped to be, mentally.  (Years later, I found out this was aggravated by my habit of crocheting through meetings.  Dan has forbidden me from taking this to cons, because he says people will think it’s rude and that they’re boring me.  In fact, I crochet so I can concentrate on what is being said.  Doing something with my hands while listening/talking prevents my mind wandering off.  It’s not that people/conversation are boring, it’s that I need to be engaged in at least two activities to be able to sit still.  Back before low-oxygen-level for days pneumonia and concussion, I used to need to do three or four things at once, or my mind wandered.)

Then there’s the other layer.  A couple of people here have tried to get my goat (oh, come on, guys) on the subject of the government now considering me Hispanic.  Eh.

My first boss in the US – okay, retail, young and low education, but still, if you meet me you’ll see how silly this is – thought that I was Mexican.  You see, he’d gone on a cruise where they sang Feliz Navidad.  My given name then was Alice, which – in Portuguese – is pronounced like Elise.  (That duality of name/pronunciation and having to pick one, plus my hating both names led to my naming myself after a Bible verse “And Sarah laughed.”)  To this man Alice and Feliz were the same word.  Therefore, I must be Mexican.  (Well, also, I was a variety of foreigner, and the only one he knew was Mexican.)

Since then, I’ve been used to myself and the kids being referred to as being “from another race.”  (Inexplicably, the boys are darker than both Dan or I, but coming from the North of Portugal, my ancestry contains a good bit of Celtic, French, Germanic, the unavoidable Greek and Roman and the inevitable bit of Africa [Although both my parents will have words with you if you mention Moors, because THOSE are the ancestors of the SOUTHERNERS in Portugal and my family ain’t no Southerners – think Civil War around the same time as the US, issue of absolute versus parliamentary monarchy instead of slavery, and the sides reversed geographically, and you’ll get that bit of insanity.])  This is particularly insane since, even if you concede we are Latin (Rome did very well in Portugal.  It scored) or, at a stretch Hispanic, (the kids do have a good bit of Amerindian,) not even the federal government calls those races.  They call them “cultures.”

Except for the dark hair and eyes (and now it’s only the eyes) I look largely Celtic.  Or maybe not, since while drawing my portrait, my kid found out if he used a shade too dark, I looked African.  Whatever.  I look like a hodge podge.  That is, American.

However, something in our demeanor, the way we look – who knows – leads people to lump us off as “another race.”

I learned early on that saying I was from Portugal (where most people decide it’s Porto Rico) made people hear a Spanish accent, including a twit who swore I sounded just like Ricky Ricardo.  (Now, if you guys find one of the recordings of me – there’s some around – I sound more like I should be saying “please show me the way to the nuclear wessels.”)

So… What is this all about?  Grievances?

Oh, h*ll no.

Am I saying you shouldn’t judge people according to stereotypes?  Well, yes, but no.  To be blunt, stereotypes exist because nine times out of ten they are right.  And what the heck if you apply the Latin woman stereotype to me, you’ll hit about half the notes.  I am… er… excitable (or as my mom put it, boil in very little water) and I do like to dance (or did, bc) and I like to dress up, and I have a preference for bright colors.  I also clean like a demon and run the kids with an iron paw (and a lot of rapid speech.)

Here’s the thing, I also apply stereotypes, everyday.  If I am at officeish, and in the elevator alone, and see a woman rushing to catch it, I might press the hold button.  With a man, unless he’s much older and smaller, I’m pushing the door close button.

Is every man in the building a rapist?  I doubt any of them is.  Is every woman safe?  I doubt that too.  BUT a woman is less likely to overpower me in a small enclosed space than a man is.  And women are less likely to attack women, sexually or otherwise (except psychologically, and if a woman comes in the elevator and says “that shirt, really?” I’ll glare at her.

And if I didn’t tell you about when Robert was thirteen and walking home from school and I was going to the post office to mail a contract, I should.  I was about halfway to post office, head down, with peripheral vision scanning ahead.

I became aware of very large, dark dude with three-day growth beard, in black leather jacket, walking towards me and instinctively, started scanning for chance to cross the street.

And then potential threat said “Mom!” and it was my high school freshman.

So, was I wrong to apply stereotype?  Well, in Robert’s case, certainly, but my scan and switch strategy has kept me safe in some much rougher cities than the one I live in.

I apply stereotypes, we all do, because when you look at a person it’s almost impossible to see what is inside them.  And while it might be stupid to assume most stay at home moms are uneducated (that REALLY is stupid, btw.  Particularly from a politically-correct person) it is also dumb to assume most of them are physicists (I think most of them are a mix like other people.)  But it is incomparably dumber to assume every dangerous looking dude walking towards you on the street is a thirteen year old who plays piano and pursues Roman history for fun and wouldn’t hurt a fly unless in self defense. The first one only marks you as a twit.  The second could cost you your life.

That’s ultimately the issue, see.  Humans are wired to deal in stereotypes.  It’s just the way it is.  We don’t have time to evaluate everything we come across everyday in terms of threat-or-help (or in my case, I’m threat-or-menace, natch.)  Instead, we learned broad categories early on and shove people and things into them.

The little nerd who followed Robert halfway home from football practice taunting him about how all football jocks were wrong and while Robert was a “mountain of flesh” this kid had “brains” was wrong, of course.  However, he was betting the right way. Nine times out of ten he would have been right.  (And nine times out of ten he’d have had his nose broken, instead of the kid enduring it, because he was laughing inside.)

What most “tolerance” people do is simply replace a stereotype with the other.  Instead of the evil foreigner, they throw in something that looks like the twenty first century’s cousin of the noble savage.  (I was going to say instead of the dumb stay at home mom, they have the stay at home mom who saves the world from a lair in her basement, but that’s just something I want to write.  I don’t think that is a stereotype ANY politically correct person has ever doubted.)  Instead of father-and-protector they see evil oppressing patriarch.  Instead of—

The thing is that their stereotypes aren’t in any way more correct in the real world.  (It’s called political correctness, not real correctness.)  In fact, their intersection in the real world is smaller.

And as someone who is often subjected to both kids of stereotypes, let me say that the person who tells me to go back to Mexico (to paraphrase Larry Correia – I was standing around in a Home Depot parking lot and Toni Weisskopf drove by in her pick up, leaned out the window and said, “I need three people to write novels.”  I hopped on the back of the truck and have been stealing American jobs since) has a better chance of being abashed and becoming human – and eventually even a friend or friendly acquaintance – when corrected than does the politically correct busybody.

Total strangers who ask me why I don’t teach my kids Spanish so they know their heritage, and/or who start telling me about the inequities of Americans towards “my people” (well, I do think science fiction writers are unappreciated and would it HURT you to send us chocolates?  Have a ticker tape parade for us?  I mean, really?) are not only wrong, they are usually deaf when corrected and – because I’m Latin and excitable – bring forth my wish to cuss them out in three languages.

Because, you see, the second group thinks they’re being KIND to me.  And they’re being that KIND to a total stranger because my country of origin is sort of a soft handicap, a “poor thing” type of situation, that requires I be helped.

This is why G-d gave me middle fingers.

I will be misjudged and victimized, of course.  All of us will.  White privilege is a myth, a poisonous one.  There is such a thing as “wealthy privilege.”  And our image of wealthy is often a well groomed white male – because so many of our politicians are white males, I think.  And all of them become wealthy.

HOWEVER if a well groomed, well dressed black man wanders onto a car dealership at the same time as a scraggly bearded Charles Manson look alike white person in cutoffs, no shirt and barefoot  (Or even in a cheap suit) salesmen will swarm the black man.  And they should.  Yes, the black man might be there to sell them encyclopedias, and the white guy might really be an eccentric millionaire.  But that’s not the way to bet.

“White Privilege” besides being a Marxist sledge hammer, was invented by people who know they’re discriminated against and IMAGINE other people aren’t.  Other people are.  One of the things that made a huge difference to me as a teen was to realize that other people judge you at first sight.  So while you might really like your Cthulhu pendant, which you wear ironically, strangers will think you’re either a Satanist or some sort of squid fancier (in Portugal, H.P. Lovecraft is not that well known.)  In the same way while you might not have time to fuss with your hair, if you wear your hair tied back, no makeup and jeans, your sweet old lady teacher is going to think you are “some kind of radical” even if the most radical thing you’ve done in her class is question her interpretation of a poem.

But most people only know what they experience and imagine other people must lead charmed lives.

In a way, I’m glad I have something obvious about me – foreign origin – for people to fixate on.  It allows me to know what they think they’re seeing and work for/against it.

In meat space, out there, where people have bodies, we all have to deal with how people react to our bodies.  And we all have to make the best gamble we can based on other people’s appearance.

The way to deal with it is not to replace stereotypes with other stereotypes, but to stay open to changing our mind, when it’s proven that the soul in the all too solid (and large) body is that of an angel.  Until then, we should bet with the higher likelihood and stay safe, or not annoy the already-on-the-edge writer by lecturing her about HER culture.

And we should be grateful for the internet, where we can meet, mind to mind.

UPDATE: Kate Paul, who should know better, asked me to post for her at Mad Genius Club.  So if you feel like making fun of this strange lapse in judgement on the part of a fairly sane writer, go read Kate Paulk Is Not Permitted To Associate With The Rest Of Us.

Sometimes I think that reading the news is what I do instead of exercise.  I mean, the whole purpose is to increase your heart rate, right?

Yesterday, Instapundit had a link to the Chinese creating super-genius-babies.  I thought “Okay.  This sounds like everything is going according to my predictions.*)

Of course, I found it a bit disquieting, because this is China, which ruthlessly puts to death toddler girls, rather than allowing their parents to raise them.  When someone who values human life so little starts messing with the genome, it’s disquieting.  Besides… besides, I didn’t think the science was quite there yet.

This is when I made my mistake.  I went to the site.

It wasn’t even the article.  That is stupid enough. It’s also the comments which raise the stupidity to the Nth degree plus one.  But let’s leave the comments for now and concentrate on the stupid  what China reports to be doing.  (Children, when totalitarians with full control of the press say anything, don’t trust AND verify.  Apply that wherever suitable.)

So… This article says that China is trying to improve the IQ of its population.  This was the first thing that made me go “oy” because, well, why is it that communists, supposed to be government by the people, always end up – one way or another – trying to create a new people?

Then we get to the definition of “intelligence.”  If I got the gist of the article right, they’re not looking for raw IQ as such, but for what I would call credentials “Where have you published?”  and “What college did you graduate from?”

At this point my head was hovering towards the desk, and I had to exert effort not to hit head on desk repeatedly because… Who in H*LL confuses credentials with IQ?  I mean, other than our media and the Chinese?  Take my children (please.  I give you a good price.)  The younger one has some testing issues, but the older on has always taken his tests with flying colors, had great grades and graduated from IB which most colleges respect.  So… why did he end up in a state school and not an ivy?  Mostly?  Because we didn’t have the contacts, we weren’t willing to hire a coach to see us through the application process, and we didn’t know where to go and what to do – in other words, the boys were handicapped by having parents who are out of the loop for these things.  I know for a fact some of the kids in their class who went to the ivy league schools are not only not as smart but not as proficient (and no, this is not a mother talking.  It’s damning my kids with faint praise.)

So… anyway, they’re picking these highly credentialed people from Europe and Asia (where of course, connections family, privilege have nothing to do with credentials.  Excuse me, I have some sarcasm stuck in my throat.)  And they’re examining the DNA to determine which sequence is common to all these people.  (Here, the older boy informs me that we have yet to be able to sequence the DNA of ova or sperm WITHOUT destroying them.  So, while they can determine that some sequence is present, by that time the reproductive material will be gone.  Never mind.)

Then, they plan to inseminate ova with this sequence with sperm with this sequence, sit back and wait for their geniuses to appear.

[Hits head against desk, to distract from greater pain of enduring the stupidity of central planners.]

Smart kids – smart people in general – are something I have a great deal of experience with.  And I find that nothing – nothing, except maybe the creation of great art – is imbued with more symbolic meaning by every day people.  And few myths of humanity, including the entire pantheon of Greece and Rome are more out of touch with reality than the myths that surround genius.

Someone in the comments brought up the existence of multiple forms of intelligence and got promptly pounded down.  To an extent that’s right, because “multiple forms of intelligence” has become code for “everyone is special.”  Which is bull hockey.  On the other hand, particularly when you approach triple niners, they will be very high across the board, but usually only one form will manifest.  They will SURELY not manifest all at once, anyway.  In fact, extremely smart kids often develop slower than other kids, at least for  a while. This is something that alarmed us with both of our kids, and  which led us to learn the phrase “Saltational development.”  This means that gifted (really gifted, not the schools idea of this) kids tend to develop in jumps.  Instead of say developing their drawing skill slowly and along a slope, they’ll be doing stick figures while the other kids in sixth grade are doing perspective drawings.  And then one day – you never see it coming – they pick up pencil and draw like DaVinci.  (This is not common, because there’s such thing as finger memory, but younger son pulled this on us.  I think it was a matter of not showing us the attempts, but the psychologist says I’m wrong and it was a matter of things clicking.)  And it’s that way with everything.  And because – particularly the very smart – will ONLY learn what they’re really interested in, this means none of them will be a genius across the board, and often can approach slow in some things.

There is something we in this house call “inverse genius” most often seen in older son, but often exhibited by all three males.  It is something so stupid only a genius could think of it to do it.  (Yeah, I put my finger in the blender while forgetting to unplug it.  But it can’t be inverse genius.  I’m not a genius.)

What I’m trying to get across is that even for people who have experience of dealing with people smarter than them genius, like pornography, is often a “I know it when I see it.”

There are also cultural variations. The reason China is looking for geniuses by credential is that this is the way genius is established in their culture.  Another component, as I understand it, is that Chinese education (and thus what’s considered “very smart”) is mostly based on memorization.  (It’s the same in Portugal, actually.  I was so so at it, so I made do with wild improvisation.  It served.  But my brother, who had an eidetic memory did much better than I)

This means that though the myth is that “genius” is genius, what China is looking for under that name would not be a genius in America.

Then comes the OTHER myth (in the comments, too) where the idea is that the Chinese are doing this to further their position in international commerce.

Children, we count several geniuses and a number of Mensa members among our acquaintance.  I don’t think a single one of them is a millionaire.  (Maybe one.)  And most of them aren’t even middle management.  Hell, if you’re looking for the Mensans in a business building, you’re more likely to find them in the janitorial service than in the boardroom.  (Dilbert got that absolutely right.)

There are several reasons for this (which make raising geniuses such a challenge) including the fact that they’re likely to try to do five or six things at once (older son: art, comics, writing, graphic design for family and friends, pre-med, fencing club.  And the least said about younger son the better when it comes to how he can find a thousand different things to do) which means less concentrated effort than the mildly intelligent person who pursues only one thing.  But also, and more importantly, geniuses tend to be Odds, which means they range from not fitting into any given human group to making other people run screaming.  Reading other people is NOT usually an ability of the highly gifted, either, which means in anything involving others they’re likely to be kept out in the cold.

However, even if we grant China the idea that they’re selecting for the right “genius” – i.e. that the article is not very faithful to their idea – there are other technical difficulties.  While they might be solved mid-century, they certainly aren’t now.  To put it bluntly, and risking offending people in the commenter pool: High IQ correlates, almost always with highly undesirable characteristics of an intellectual and physical nature (which, supposing it gives geniuses any advantage over other people – debatable – still explains why genius IQ hasn’t propagated through the population like wild fire.)  Autism, in some degree, seems to be almost inescapable above a certain IQ – and when it’s not there, you get the sensory stuff younger son has.  Or you get severe auto-immune disorders.  There might also be epigenetics involved, and I’m told that the gene sequence for genius is PROBABLY the same as for utter moron.  It depends on which geniuses get flipped in gestation or after birth.

So… If they’re really trying to do this, it’s one of those crazy totalitarian eugenics things that should make all sane people shudder.

Only it doesn’t.  The educated morons in the comments were going on about how this just means China is going to dominate everything and is leaving us in the dust.

Of course, these same educated morons also believe that Chinese economy is doing great… based on reports coming from within a totalitarian regime with a controlled press.

Which proves that perhaps we DO need IQ improvement.  But NOT the way the Chinese are doing it. For one I should hope we have more respect for the infinite variety of human beings than to create them to order.

*[From Hoyt’s Future History – the background to Darkship Thieves and The Earth Revolution — middle of the twenty first century, it’s discovered that Russia has been creating the first form of “mules” – babies gestated by large animals and created from sperm/ova left over from infertility treatments.  This is a way of increasing young population, in order to have enough laborers to care for the increasingly older natural population.  The children are often mentally handicapped, due to a mistiming of enzimes.]

UPDATE: I forgot to say, there is a writing post over at Mad Genius Club.

The Frontiers of Publishing

A Guest Post By Jason Dyck

 

I should note up front that I am not an expert on the publishing industry. I am an editor and a bibliophile, and I have more than a passing understanding of marketing, but I currently have no books of my own for sale. This is my attempt to pass along what I learned from someone orders of magnitude more experienced than me.

I had the chance a few weeks ago to sit at the feet of the great Tracy Hickman and learn about his experiences in the new frontiers of publishing. Tracy and his wife Laura have been experimenting with new ways of reaching their readers, new ways of delivering content and getting paid for it. They have decades of experience in the industry, and they’ve recognized that the world is changing, and they need to keep up. The Hickmans have a series of books they’ve been using as subjects for these experiments called the Dragon’s Bard. The books use (among other things) the serial novel format, with chapters released regularly to subscribers, who also receive special collectible editions when the book is complete. This model is what led them to understand the changes in sales model that I’m about to share with you.

You see, the Dragon’s Bard publishing model was initially based very closely on the traditional publishing model. Being a lifelong bookworm, I was somewhat aware of that model, but in a fish-in-the-water sort of way. Until Tracy laid the whole thing out for me, I’d never really stopped to think about how it worked. The old sales model looks like a pyramid in three tiers, and works something like this:

* Hardcover- Initial sales are to hardcore fans, collectors and trendsetters. The publisher is looking to generate a great deal of hype with a beautiful book and rave reviews from the important people who will be the first one’s to own the book.

*Trade Paperback – Six months to a year later, the paperback is released. Sales are driven by the hype generated by the tastemakers who liked (they hope) the initial release. There is (as I understand it) less marketing push here: earlier sales are expected to drive these later sales.

*Mass Market / Discount books – This is just cleaning up the stragglers. Selling to people who would not otherwise have read the book, scraping up the bits of profit left in the book as you move on to the next one.

The old model is obviously very top-down, relying on 20th century-style media channels. Good Morning America and Oprah were the kind of outlets that would generate your initial buzz, which would trickle down into the lower enthusiasm and price brackets and direct them to your book.

That model is mostly dead. With the changes in publishing, distribution, the rise of ebooks, economic pain for buyers and sellers both, and the democratizing influence of the Internet, that top down approach has very limited effectiveness. There are still lessons to be learned from it, and ways it can be adapted for current trends. For example, since the gatekeepers are gone there is now a demand for guides to find the good stuff, a way to avoid the worst of Sturgeon’s Law. That’s what that top tier and the publishers themselves were needed for, and what still needs addressing today. However, the model itself is defunct.

That was roughly what Dragon’s Bard tried initially. Subscribers would receive chapters as they were written, and at the end receive a fancy, hardbound, numbered book. Paperbacks were introduced later, intended to be driven by the buzz from the subscribers. That didn’t work nearly as well as they hoped, and eventually led them to understand the right way to go about it. The new model flips the whole thing on its head, to become a funnel. Here’s what it looks like:

* Cheap or Free Content – Blogging, sample chapters, short stories, limited time giveaways of books. People today want to try your material before they will spend money with you. The Hickmans tried selling snippets of two chapters each week leading up to the release of one of the later DB books for two dollars. Fans bought them, and then bought the book as well. All of those people who now know you’re style and quality can be funneled down to buy your

* Ebooks – Low cost, easily available. The golden price range is between $2.99 and $4.99, which is essentially an impulse buy for someone on a modest but steady income. Many people will buy your book even if they aren’t raving fans at a price and convenience like that. Depending on their lifestyle and how much they liked the book, many of them may funnel down to buy your

* Paperbacks – There are several kinds of people who will buy paperbacks. I should note that this differs <em>heavily</em> between fiction and non-fiction. I’m going to deal strictly with fiction; you can probably apply the principles to non-fiction easily enough. Some may not have an ereader, though there are fewer and fewer of those. Some people buy the physical book just to better support an author they like, or to have something they can have autographed at the next con. A few want a copy to gift or lend, though many of those will opt for a nicer option for gifts. According to Tracy, most of the paperback sales are in trade paperback, rather than the smaller mass-market or pocket edition – those have mostly been replaced by the ebook. Among these people who want physical books, a few will be devoted enough to want

* Hardbound – These are the casual collectors and the old fashioned. Again, motivations may vary, but at this point they are mostly a matter of aesthetics (having a nice book on the shelf), or pride (having that book on the shelf), or for giving as a gift to someone else. A very few of these buyers are going to demand this.

* Collectibles – This is a high-quality hardbound, possibly with exclusive cover art, definitely signed and probably numbered. This is for the hard-core collectors and the rabidly devoted fen. There will be few of these sold (and if you can accurately predict how few, you can make them even rarer and make those collectors happier still) and the margin may be smaller, but they will make those customers happy and inclined to support you more, both morally and financially.

Sell to your widest audience first, and let them generate the buzz for your more expensive options. Make sure that you’re hitting all the sales avenues, but always from broadest to narrowest. This model isn’t exact; for example, some people may skip a level (for example, many people may buy a paperback instead of an ebook) but the general idea is solid, and your approach will be essentailly the same. As I mentioned earlier, there is still a need for guides, and as they appear they are worth engaging and courting, but there won’t be a few, controlled central message channels that you can dominate to create interest in your book.

Of course, all of this is logistics. The key to making a go of writing professionally is in your audience, which the Hickmans well understand. “It’s no longer about being published … it’s about being read,” Tracy told us. “It’s all about the audience today; acquiring direct contact with the reader, maintaining and growing that relationship. Anyone can get ‘published’ today. Being an author is all about having readership.” Understanding distribution is all well and good, but there has to be someone to buy those books. Without a story worth reading and people who know about it, you’ve got nothing to distribute.

The world is changing, the ground is broken up around us in this business, but from my own observations and the Hickmans’ experiences, this looks to be a pretty good roadmap for the new lay of the land.

*Full disclosure: at the same symposium where I met Mr. Hickman and listened to him explain all this, I also happened to win free tuition for the writing seminar that he and his lovely wife run. My name was drawn at random, not in exchange. You can find more information on that seminar here; I highly recommend it.

Jason Dyck is our very own Free Range Oyster (which is one of my favorite handles ANYWHERE) and his professional  site is here.  Jason is attempting to break in as something all of us need.  Well, no, not a multimillionaire, though that would help (us and him!).  He’s trying to break in as a freelance editor.  If you need one, consider giving a try to one of our very own ATH family.

©Jason Dyck 2013  If you wish to repost this, please seek permission from the author.

Good Morning Huns and Hoydens.  Today my finger feels better, so likely it will heal very fast, which is good, because I have books to write, and I can’t be having with that.

Meanwhile, back at the Hoyt demesne on Friday we went to a writers’ get together.  It’s supposed to be close to monthly, which means we usually end up going once every three months, because someone is finishing a book, someone else is on tour and–  We writers don’t keep too regular hours.

Anyway, the get together is also known as the Not-Movie night because it used to be the movie night, but then indie hit and we spend so much time discussing how to do this and how to promote that there’s never a movie watched.

Only this time, we talked ourselves out (possibly due to the fact yours truly was mostly thinking “ouch” about her finger (not that she is a main contributor to general babel, of course, being meek, of a retiring disposition and, generally speaking the sweetest lamb in the flock.)

So we ended up watching a movie.  Well, two movies, as older boy and I sat through The Immortals which was going on when we came in, and quite unintentionally entertained the company with MST3King it, which the movie is HIGHLY suited for, if nothing else.  Let me put it this way: bare guy chests, drool sharing, Olympians (who die?), a virgin oracle who is a slut, and not the slightest resemblance to Greek mythology.

Anyway, the next movie chosen, the one everyone pretty much watched, was Wreck It Ralph.

Um… The movie is watchable.  More than I’d expect in a movie about a game character.  Disney followed the hero’s journey quite closely, after experimenting with movies that didn’t, like Finding Nemo.  (Because story telling decisions made by corporate boards are… never mind.  Art done by businessmen (who aren’t also artists) suffers from their believing all the myths, such as that unstructured story telling is better, more artistic, and possibly cures cavities.

HOWEVER about five (?) minutes in I started feeling uncomfortable.  This is when they go to a support group for villains and the affirmation is “I’m bad, and that’s good.”

Then there was the overarching message of the movie.  And then there was the potty mouth (literally.)

About halfway through the movie my son put my vague feeling of discomfort into words “Man, this is a movie traditional Indians would love.”

That’s about it.  It’s not just the quasi caste system, which makes sense within the setup of movies, but which is meant to apply more broadly of course.  The moral isn’t just “Stay where you’re planted” (which is a common moral of fables, and which always makes me grind my teeth so loudly that people in Denver complain their windows shattered.)  That is, in my opinion, bad enough in a movie for children.  But the exact moral here is “stay where you’re planted and in the exact role you’re put in.”

Caste system.

But wait, there’s more.  The system of morals is pagan.  Not modern pagan – that system is best exemplified in the Tiffany Aching books and my pagan friends will forgive me for saying it owes an awful lot to Judeo Christianity.

The situational morals exemplified in “if you’re put in a place you have to be bad, then being bad is the best thing you can do” is as far as we can tell how ancient pagans thought.  (It’s relatively hard but not impossible.  There was writing in a lot of these societies, and please, no, don’t tell me it was the bad Romans/Christians/Jews who wrote it wrong, because it is still the thought system of modern pagans not in western society.  Moral used not to be this high falluting abstract thing about love for your fellow man and what not, but merely a matter of appeasing the divinities who could whomp you. And you never challenged the established order, because the gods wouldn’t want to be challenged either.

In case you think the load of that was accidental at the end, when Ralph comes to terms with his role in life, he repeats “I’m bad and that’s not bad” or something like that.

Is this normal in movies now?  I confess I’ve been a bit away, (they lost me with Nemo) but I remember when Disney was all about stuff like making your own destiny, for which they appropriated The Little Mermaid among others (A fable cautioning against young female passion and jealousy.)

The message seemed particularly poisonous aimed at children.  “Don’t dream.  Stay in the game you’re in and the role you were assigned.”  While it might make the kids more tractable, which parents (and teachers) appreciate, it is overall a bad message.  It is also an unexciting message.

Which brings us to the next step.  You know those people complaining that there isn’t enough swearing in SF/F which reduces it to literature for children?  Yeah, I’ve heard the same about lack of explicit sex.

I have absolutely nothing against swearing and/or sex in a book not aimed at children or teens.  In fact, I’ve got dinged for both in the past because some people want ALL their books to be accessible to their kids.  (Not sure WHY anyone would think the Shakespeare fantasies, with their three-tons of language per page would be good for children, but any number of people looked at it and went “YA” and then got all bent out of shape over sex in it (which is so veiled as to be difficult to figure out.))

However, after enduring the ten minutes or so of (literally) potty jokes in Wreck It Ralph, it occurred to me that those – and were they in older Disney movies?  Did I miss them because I didn’t get puns? – were the equivalent of the heavy sex and swearing load in books for adults now.

I often find this as a trap beginning authors fall into.  They know that books (and movies, but now I’m talking about books) are supposed to elicit a strong emotion.  They have clue zero how to do this and – trust me, I was there – even the rawest beginner knows when he’s falling short.  Mostly when the stories bore us.

So they throw in things that make the story titillating to them (and the sex ends up being of the odd and pushing boundaries kind.  I’m convinced 50 Shades was the result of this process.)

This is in itself not a problem and always has been a process writers go through.  What is a problem is that non-erotica (of course in erotica you have a heavy load of sex, duh) publishers have now fallen into this trap too.  And clearly so have children-movie writers.

I think the reason they’re doing this – and I want to point out the sex I’m complaining about here is what I call “purposeless sex” and often “repellent sex” which seems to have invaded science fiction and fantasy and be almost a requirement.  – is that they have castrated the genre.

The genre has “appropriate messages” and “things you can’t say.”  Most people writing know that, and know when they’ve crossed the line to where no traditional house will buy us.  We’re not even talking about political things.  If you read James Hogan’s Kicking the Sacred Cows, you’ll know violating any of those will make your book unpublishable.  (Political things apply too.  No?  Do try to write a bad feminist in some book, or make fun of the credo of female superiority.  Remember, John Norman was selling quite well when they drummed him out.  – And no, I could never read him, but that’s besides the point.)

This has extended everywhere in the field, anywhere you could insert an “interesting” idea.  For instance, I’m very fond of books where our ancestors came from the stars – but I got told over and over again I couldn’t violate “known facts.”  (Ah.  I have an idea on how to do this fitting known facts, and someday Doctor Les Johnson and I will find the time to write it and Baen will more than likely bring it out.)

The messages books are putting out – and movies – are the unexciting kind of “be what you are, with a little twist” and the pap they’re shouting from the rooftops, so far from telling truth to power is the power shouting down at us (no science fiction or fantasy book published by a main house – always excepting Baen – would run afoul of any of the colleges restrictive speech codes; the messages could be proclaimed in class or from the pulpit in the more progressive churches.

So they must bring in that emotion, because you know, the Greeks were right, people watch or read story for the catharsis and resolution, for heightened emotions they don’t have in their private lives, and which in a way rinse the system for daily living.

To bring in the shock and emotion and a counterfeit of catharsis, they have sex and oodles of swearing (or potty jokes, which do the same thing for kids.)

But that’s not real emotion, and it leads to a surfeit.  It also does not allow children – or adults – to escape the most basic stimulus/reaction chain and to… well… engage the mature emotions.  Instead, we’ve gone right around the bend to equate sex with maturity.

And this, this is the problem that traditional publishing is in. The shock and awe that’s sex or language related pushes you to ever greater extremes, till a lot of novels are indistinguishable from erotica, except for the print on the spine.  Which would still be okay, if they weren’t about nothing, essentially.  It is that hollowness that cloys.

Of course, if you prefer another moral, this is the reason Sarah shouldn’t be allowed to watch children’s movies.

 

 

Yesterday I almost sliced off my finger in a bizarre incident that involved near-unbelievable stupidity on my part.  No, I’m not telling you.  Let’s say if a character of mine did this, I’d get dinged for writing an idiot.

Proving that we all do stupid things when sleep deprived and odder than normal

I’ll be back tomorrow.  I don’t do this often — but once every two months or so I hit a wall where I can’t write a post.

I think I’m going to do some stuff in that zazzle shop I’ve been promising ya’ll.

Feel free to leave me future topics to write about in the comments.  Part of my issue is that, as I concentrate on fiction, those have been running dry.