Five Quick Publishing Links And One Long One

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Let’s round up a bit of publishing this and that with some links and brief comment. Very brief, in face, since today’s a big writing day.

1) Remember way back in the misty dawn of yesterday morning when I pointed out that Paula Deen, having been dropped by one corporate partner after another, saw her next cookbook shoot to the top of the Amazon.com bestseller list even though it doesn’t come out until October? And that her last book was sitting pretty in the number two spot?

Well, that upcoming book isn’t listed on Amazon anymore because Random House cancelled the contract.

Yeah, they had a lot of pre-orders through the online giant, but if Wal-Mart, Target, et al were no longer willing to carry her work, the P&L must have looked pretty dire.

2) Hey, did you guys know that, in the original submission draft of Child of Fire (then called Harvest of Fire) Ray Lilly wept for the child who was so horrifyingly transformed and destroyed in that first chapter? Completely true. The kid died of an acute case of Evil Magic, his own family forgot he ever existed to the point of denying him, and Ray mixed up his feelings about the kid’s unmourned loss with his own imminent unmourned death. Then he wept.

This was the first thing my editor asked me to change. She said it made the character seem weak, and one of the other readers at the publisher immediately assumed Ray was a woman (it’s a first-person narrative, for those who haven’t read it, so there were no helpful pronouns).

Me, I hated the idea of changing that bit, because if a tough guy can’t weep over a dead child, what the fuck?

Still, was this the hill I would fight and die on? My first note in the first chapter of my first published book?

So I turned to a mailing list of readers, writers and friends to ask them what they thought. The overwhelming majority of the responses were along the lines of: “The main character is a guy? And he cries? Sounds sketchy.”

I was surprised and disappointed. I also thought it was a bullshit assumption, but if it was so wide-spread, was I really the one to fight it? So I revised that part of my book (whole chapter available here) like this:

I watched them go, feeling my adrenaline ebb. I couldn’t stop thinking about that little boy, or how fiercely hot the flames had been. I looked down at my own undamaged hands. I felt woozy and sick.

Annalise called my name again. I turned away, ran to the edge of the lot, and puked into the bushes.

When that was over, I had tears in my eyes from the strain of it. They were the only tears that little boy was ever going to get. I tried to spit the acid taste out of my mouth, but it wouldn’t go away.

I wiped my eyes dry. My hands were shaking and my stomach was in knots. That kid had no one to mourn for him except me, and I didn’t have that much longer in this world, either. Something had to be done for him. I didn’t know what it was, but as I wiped at my eyes again, I knew there had to be something.

I heard footsteps behind me. “Don’t get maudlin,” Annalise said.

That passed muster, apparently, because Ray’s eyes well up from tossing his cookies and totally not because he is feeling grief, horror and loss.

Why am I bringing this up? Because this is the proverbial stopped clock in Rod Rees thoroughly embarrassing blog post on whether men can write female characters. (Update: the post seems to have been taken down.)(Now it’s back.)

That link was making the rounds yesterday while the whole Frenkel/harassment issue was going on so I didn’t give it much attention until later. Yeesh, is it a tone deaf mess.

However, on this topic I will say: just because the stereotypes male characters face limit you doesn’t justify using the stereotypes female characters face.

3) But there’s more bullshit in that Rod Rees post, but rather than try to pick it all apart, I’m going to link to someone who’s done a fantastic job already.

I’ll just add that Rees seems like a pretty terrible writer, based on the samples and on the content of his post, but I suspect he’s terrible in a way that will earn him a bit of success. Still, someone should explain to him that certain scenes will break reader disbelief not because of the characters or behaviors the scene describes, but because of the way they’re written. Word choice is character, too, and it matters.

4) In even stranger news, Weird Tales has begun releasing unpublished stories back to the authors. Not due to quality, either; several of the stories have been described as excellent in the past. They’re doing it because they have a backlog of fiction and the pressure to open to new submissions has been intense.

I’m not even sure what to say about this. A magazine is not its slush pile. Still, if the publisher and editor is missing the thrill of going to conventions and meeting people who are desperate to be published in their pages, maybe they could put out a few issues. Maybe they could publish those stories rather than return them.

Why did these guys want this magazine in the first place?

5) Can I just make mention of how humble and grateful I am that folks are so kindly pledging in my name for the Clarion West Write-a-thon? So far, we have raised almost $400 for the workshop and I really didn’t expect so much. It’s a great cause. Thank you all for pledging.

6) Have I mentioned something crazy? When you write a lot, books get done faster. I know, right? The Great Way is nearing completion at a much faster pace that I expected. In fact, I’m entering the series of climactic confrontations about three hundred words from now. Then the first draft will be done and I can start fretting over the Kickstarter.

I don’t go to conventions, but there’s a chance you do.

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If so, you should read this guide to reporting sexual harassment at a convention. The dude who did the harassing is named in comments, and a number of people on Twitter are expressing amazement that he wasn’t outed years ago.

If you’re a convention-goer, that post and the others it links to may be useful resources for you.

Actually, some kinds of publicity are genuinely bad no matter what

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Hey, guess who has the number one book on Amazon three and a half months before it comes out! Paula Deen! (link to her book removed since it’s been canceled.) Sure, she may have lost her Wal-Mart deal and her Food Network show and whatever, but average folk are buying up her books like piranha swarming a whole platter of doughnut-bun cheeseburgers.

But who are these people? Well, you aren’t allowed to leave reviews for books that haven’t come out yet, but there’s “good” news! The number two book on Amazon is Deen’s last book, and the comments there are ripe.

The normal thing to do would be to screencap and post those, but time is tight and I don’t want this shit in my Flickr account. Instead, I’m going to just pop in some quotes:

Political correctness is just tyranny with manners. I’m glad her book sales soared 1300%. Where are the rappers being scrutinized for using the N word? They use it in every song, no matter what color they are, and face ZERO repercussions. It doesn’t matter where you use it, saying it is bad in ANY case. The double-standard is entirely obvious, and plain wrong.

I’m shocked and saddened at the public lynching of Ms. Deen. What on earth has she done that is so offensive?

I don’t even cook but I am buying this book in support of the liberal media crucifixion of Paula Deen. If she said it, so what. Bill Cosby, Red Foxx, Eddie Murphy, Lisa Lampanelli, and many other comedians say it all the time. It is said in many movies. Blacks say it to blacks everyday.

I AM SO SICK OF THE MEDIA OVER DRAMATIZING EVERYTHING. THEY ARE DEFLECTING FROM THE 100 MILLION DOLAR VACATION TO AFRICA THE FIRST FAMILY ARE TAKING NOW. HOLD YOUR HEAD UP GIRLFRIEND. AM IOOKING FOWARD TO TRYING YOUR RECEIPS.

She voted for Obama people. She is a registered Democrat. The liberals, that she thought “felt so good” to support, are the ones that did this to her and she is only getting what she deserves. All Americans that support the liberal agenda are going to find out that that they will be tossed under the bus with the rest of us. Keep being stupid liberals. Your time will come too and you will see.

I don’t cook but I dislike terrorist acts,shame on media and especially Matt profiting on someone’s pain. Decided to buy 3 books.

I also appreciate Amazon not abandoning Mrs. Deen.

I conclude my ‘review’ with this poem about the rise of Nazism by Martin Neimoller:

“When they came for the butter-fried Twinkies, I did not speak up because that stuff is gross.”

So, Deen has lost a bunch of mainstream income but is now beloved of the sort of people who complain about Obama’s $100 million “vacation” in Africa, call criticism “lynching” or “terrorist acts”, and who think it’s some sort of clever riposte to point out that rappers use “the N word.” Sure, she has the #1 and #2 books on Amazon at the moment, but her fan base has shrunk down to these assholes. Yeah, you can make a living off of those people, because there are more of them than we’d like, but it’s not a living I would feel comfortable with.

ADDED LATER: If you’re curious about the actual complaint against Deen and her company, read here.

DOMA Cracks

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Today’s SCOTUS decision overturning the Defense Of Marriage Act is more than welcome, it’s long overdue. Clinton should never have signed it, but the further we get to fairness and justice in the U.S., the more intense the pushback. The nice thing is that “gay marriage” can be simply “marriage” for now, as far as the federal government is concerned.

Speaking of pushback, the Voting Rights Act was struck down yesterday. This is bad news for voters in NY, CA, and the other states affected by that law, but it’s also a rallying cry to the rest of the country. There’s no excuse for making black voters wait twice as long as white voters in this country. Jim Crow may be gone, but historic injustice remains.

So the work isn’t done. Same-sex marriage legislation needs to be passed in states all across the country. National legislation that ensures convenient access to voting booths nationwide needs to be enacted, not just in the parts of the country covered by the VRA.

We can do this. It’s up to the people to create a just society; no one will do it for us. If you want to know what to do, writing a personalized letter to your elected representatives–even if they’re far on the other end of the political spectrum from you–is surprisingly effective.

Beautiful things we find online

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People make fun of Google plus, but like any social media it has exactly the value that you and the people you interact with put into it.

For example, Fred Hicks posted this:

It’s amazing. Seriously, you should watch it with the sound on. Don’t bother if you can’t listen, too.

Social media is a lot like real life socializing. It’s not usually what you do or where, but who’s there with you.

Circle of Enemies reviewed at BLACK GATE

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Here’s the relevant review. Overall, a very nice one.

It’s funny though, what he says about the (lack of) supporting cast. My wise editor recommended that I create one for the series. Yeah, Ray was the lead and Annalise was his boss and that was it. She wanted a colorful group of people who could turn up in every book, the way The Dresden Files does, or Sue Grafton’s alphabet novels do.

Those weren’t the examples she used. They’re just the ones I’m thinking up now.

I resisted, mainly because I envisioned the series having a structure more like a series of private detective novels, where the protagonist gets thrown into a completely new situation each time, surrounded by new people, and has to manage things on his own.

Oh well. There were a lot of choices I made for those books that could have gone another way. They’re all lessons for the future, I guess.

Playing Your Assigned Familial Role

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The thing about being in a family is, you get assigned a role within the family. They decide you’re a certain kind of person and, for the most part, treat you that way for most of your life. Growing up, I was the lazy kid who always made as little effort as possible just to get by. Even when I was a grown man, getting up at 2 am to write before I went to a 5 am dayjob shift, I still believed that’s who I was.

Anyway, we have family roles in our home, too. For instance, my wife is the one who Won’t Throw Anything Away. We live with a lot of clutter. I’ve always told myself that, if it were up to me, I would pitch out a great dumpster full of stuff so we would have more room. Can’t do that, though, because my wife collects blue glass bottles that she will Do Something With Someday, and jars of stones that she collected on a trip somewhere, which reminds her of the people and that time.

And it’s a touchy subject. From her perspective, we have a lot of useful things that could be kept neatly if we could just put them away. From mine, there’s no way I could know where everything goes and it would be like a wizard’s medicinal shop around here, with a thousand little drawers and shelves and boxes and cabinets. My failing is that I’m good at cleaning but terrible at creating order out of chaos. If it’s not simple, I can’t deal.

So imagine my surprise last Friday when my wife just went nuts on the kitchen, digging out all the old equipment that we never use and will never use, so she can donate it.

The result: our kitchen is much nicer than it was. Other result, I had a mild hoarder’s reaction to seeing all my old cooking stuff in plastic bags marked “BLIND”. The insulated cookie sheets that are genuinely awesome (but we don’t bake anymore). The potato cutter that never really worked. The plastic mandolin that’s just too fragile. That old pan! I used to cook with that pan all the time! And… this thing? What is it? It might be useful if I figured out what it’s for.

Essentially, the family role that I’d imagined for myself was taken by my wife, and I found myself fighting the same urge to hold on to possessions that I’d always attributed to her.

Ugh.

If she’s ready to let go of things, I think it’s great and I support her. I certainly don’t want to undermine the work she’s doing. I just have to guard against playing her “role” now that she’s letting go of it.

Pratt’s writing advice, with my addendums.

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Tim Pratt posted a letter he sent to a writer who wanted to be published by a big New York publisher and it’s full of great advice. If you’re looking for advice on becoming a pro (or you’re just generally interested in that sort of thing) you should give it a read. It’s good stuff.

I would add a few things, though. First, if you’re looking to find out who is the agent for a specific writer, I find it’s much easier to just Google Specific Writer agent before I try searching their websites or acknowledgements in their books. If you Google Tim Pratt agent, you find his agent’s name right in the previews on the Google search page. If you do the same for me, you have to click through, but it’s the work of a few seconds. Super easy.

Second, rather than pay Publisher’s Lunch, I’d drop by the database of Agentquery. You can click the checkbox for one (or more) genres, then do a search (recommended: Put a “not important” in “Actively seeking new clients”), and you’ll get dozens of names of legit agents.

Sadly, it will be in no damn order at all, as far as I can tell. However, it’s easy enough to copy pasta their data into a spread sheet, then sort it by, for example, the agency where they work. It’s boring work but it’s damn easy to do.

Agentquery is also kind enough to link to agency websites. Info on their own site trumps anything you might find on other websites, such as whether they’re currently accepting queries (that’s why I suggested “not important” above).

After that, it’s a good idea to plug the agent’s name into the “Search This Forum” box at Absolute Write’s Background Check board, just in case they’re clueless or a scam.

A further bit of advice: if you’re making a list of agents and you decide you don’t want to submit to one (let’s say you are querying a science fiction novel right now but plan an epic fantasy series in the future, and discover a great agent with no interest in fantasy) it’s best to change the text of the agent’s information to a nice bright color like red rather than delete them outright. The reason is that this can be very time-consuming, and you don’t want to waste hours or minutes researching an agent you’ve already decided against once.

And that’s all. Good luck. #SFWApro

Writing about PTSD and more than PTSD

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The Public Insight Network has posted a comic called Moral Injury, Beyond PTSD (well, they’re calling it an “illustrated story” but so what). It’s incredibly powerful stuff and I recommend everyone read it. I’d originally planned to drop it into a Randomness post, but it felt too big for that.

Seriously, you’ll want to read that.

I’ve seen this sort of thing addressed in fantasy before, but not in a way that satisfies me. Not in a way that breaks out of the hero/villain paradigm.

Part of it, I think, is the incredibly powerful appeal of the dehumanized enemy and the heroic capable figure. Is Aragorn supposed to have nightmares about all the orcs he’s killed? Is he supposed to change his most basic self-concept after all that killing? Frodo returns from his adventure a ruined man who can no longer live in his own community, but that’s due to the proximity to and temptation of the power of evil. It’s not because he recognizes that he did evil to an enemy that was very like him.

I’m also revisiting Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (by watching the dvds). The whole thing plays like a parody of the superhero genre written by someone who wants to call out its most fascist aspects. And yet, even while I’m disgusted by, for example, Miller’s contempt for peaceful protest, I’m also feeling the powerful pull of the narrative of justified violence.

It’s incredibly affecting and entirely artificial. Reading that comic I linked to above makes me a little ashamed of it. #SFWApro

The Clarion West Write-a-thon

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Yes, it’s the solstice, and yes, I’ve signed up for the Clarion West Write-a-thon.

That link above will take you directly to my pledge page, but if you want more information, here goes.

Clarion West is a famous writing workshop in Seattle.

For nearly 30 years, Clarion West has been run for six weeks during the summer. As you might guess, it spun off from an older workshop with the same format in Michigan (I think) called simply “Clarion”. It’s taught by five writers and one editor, each trading off for a week, and writers come from all over to attend. They quit jobs, end relationships, lose apartments, and generally uproot their lives to spend a month and a half sequestered away from the world working on their fiction.

I’m not a graduate. I applied once in the 90’s but was turned down. However, the list of graduates is sure to include authors you love.

Clarion West has a reading series.

This is how I know the workshop. As part of the fundraising efforts, the workshop runs a reading series. It was the first place I ever heard a writer read, way back in the early 90’s (back when they held them in the basement of Elliott Bay Books), and it helped me find some terrific writers.

This year’s instructors are: Elizabeth Hand, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Margo Lanagan, Samuel R. Delany, and Ellen Datlow. Too bad I have a kid or I would definitely be busing across town for these.

Clarion West still needs support.

Times are tough for everyone, including non-profits. To help raise money, CW is holding a “Write-a-thon” in which people pledge to walk a certain distance write a certain amount of words while the workshop runs.

Me, I’m hoping to wrap up the first draft of THE GREAT WAY in that time, so any pledges in my name will be considered serious and for real motivation.

Hey, it’s a good organization and a good cause. If you can bear to make a pledge, please do. #SFWApro