The #Womentoread hashtag on Twitter

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In response to the Strange Horizons analysis of male/female review statistics (spoiler: books my men get more reviews than books by women) a number of folks on Twitter have been contributing to a #WomenToRead hashtag. It’s meant to be a way to get female authors’ names in front of readers who have a habit of only buying books written by dudes, but I’m not sure how effective it is.

Reading through, it seems more like an exercise in frustration than genuine recommendations. In the better tweets, someone will say, “If you like [male author x], try:” followed by a number of names, or else writers will be listed by genre.

Unfortunately, while it’s great to point out what sort of books these women have written, they don’t really tell readers why they would fall in love with any particular writer’s work. When I see a laundry list of authors’ names scroll past, my eyes glaze over very quickly, especially when so many of them are Twitter handles.

Still, I understand the frustration: I personally feel invisible within the genre; I continue to get very nice emails from people who love my books but only discovered them well after the series was cancelled. My sales were so shitty that I don’t deserve to call myself “midlist.” To most people, I’m barely a hanger-on.

And yet I still got reviews in a number of places, and nice critical attention, too. Imagine how it must feel to not even get that much. Imagine how it must feel to work like crazy on a book for a year knowing that no magazine anywhere is going to bother reading it, let alone devote column inches to it.

There’s also this (please imagine replacing the word “math” with “writing.”)

From this page: http://xkcd.com/385/

People (mostly guys) have this weird idea that fiction written by women are all one sort of thing, as if it can all be lumped in as one type. There’s also the idea that, if a subgenre has a lot of women writers and readers, it has a yellow “Caution” tape around it to warn guys away.

For instance, two years after it was posted I still get traffic from this Tor.com article: Urban Fantasy and the Elusive Male Protagonist (let us turn away from the issues around the blog post itself, which I tried to address in the comments) and the comment section can be instructive/cringe-inducing/hope-for-humanity-destroying. To quote (copy & paste, so sic):

its come to the point where i wont touch a book with a female on the cover unless its been recommended by some friends or an author i respect.

it seems as if its all about alpha werewolves and master vampires in a three way relationship with an independant ass kicking woman, the majority of it could also be classified as soft-core pron.

For a lot of people, men write books in a genre (or in a tradition) while women all write the same book over and over with a few proper nouns switched out. What’s more, That Same Book is usually considered Someone Else’s Thing.

Anyway, I’ve been pretty up-front in the past that I don’t think reviews have much of an effect on sales figures, but it’s not just sales we’re talking about here. We’re also talking about the critical conversation within the genre (such as it is): how it changes, what’s becoming old hat, what’s offensive or wrong-headed. When women are left out of that conversation, their contributions become ignored.

So, to wrap up I want to make two points: First, if you’re recommending female authors, a long list of names, even if you break them down to five or six in a genre, are just going to make people skim. Pick one or two, give a good reason why for each. Make a specific pitch. Yes, that means people you know will be left out, but this isn’t a one-time thing, right?

(To that end, I’ll recommend Sarah Monette’s The Bone Key. I bounced off Monette’s epic fantasy series, but this story collection blew my mind. Kyle Murchison Booth is nothing like Ray Lilly, but the setting and tone of these tales are a fantastic antidote to the tentacle monster stories that dominate so much of the dark fantasy genre. And this shows why I’m crap at giving recommendations, because I’m always reading years–or decades–behind, so I’m never up on the current stuff.)

Second, if you’re one of those readers who glances at their bookshelves, sees nothing but books by dudes, then shrugs it off, it’s time to break a bad habit. There’s a wide world of great books out there to be enjoyed and no reason to hide from it. If you like awards, start checking out books written by women that win or get nominated for them. If most of your reading is off the bestseller list, start trying some of the female writers there.

The truth is, your results will be mixed just as with anything. Some writers you’ll hate, some will be meh, some will be new gotta-read favorites. Of those books by “gotta-read” authors, some will also have “a female on the cover.” Take chances. Grab things from the library or try the sample chapters on your ereader. It may take a while before you start finding new favorites, but if you’re like me, the favorites you have now took a lifetime to collect. Don’t give up quickly. Keep stretching.

Added later: As pointed out on LJ by user martianmooncrab, RT has a review section for SF/F but their numbers are rarely included in these surveys.

Added later: The Revenge: The author who started the hashtag explains her reasons.

I participate in yet another Kickstarter

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It’s a shared-world anthology and I’ve promised to write a short story for them if they’re funded. Check out the premise and the other authors. I think it’s pretty cool.

Randomness for 4/22

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1) The annual Shorty Awards have chosen the Best Quora Answer of the Year: “What does the first day of a 5+ year prison sentence feel like?” The answers that made the list of finalists are at that link as well.

2) If Facebook made a Facebook house.

3) “Tie” Chi: knotting a Windsor as a martial arts kata.

4) Chemical-free “natural” swimming pools that are cleaned by plants. This looks a) awesome b) a lot of work and c) inappropriate for Florida. Still, it’s green and gorgeous.

5) From College Humor, Batman vs. The Penguin (played by Patton Oswalt). Video.

6) 27 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts In 2012

7) Seattle’s King Street Train Station has finally received its finishing touches and is ready for a Grand Opening. And it’s gorgeous. I’m tempted to take a train trip just so I have an excuse to go down there.

How to get hired as a Marvel Comic Writer and or Artist

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C.B. Cebulski explains how a noob can get hired to work at Marvel as a writer or an artist.

In fact, if you’re published traditionally, they make it super-easy. Super-duper easy. If I had the money to keep current on the Marvel U, I’d mail one of my Twenty Palaces books in.

Check it out.

Update: A lot of new readers have been visiting this post in the year since I posted it. Hey, new readers, check out my books. You might like them.

What’s controversial about being someone else’s dandelion fluff?

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Apparently there’s been a bit of controversy surrounding Neil Gaiman’s speech at the Digital Minds Conference at the 2013 London Book Fair. Instead of hearing about it second-hand, you can watch it here:

Actually, you can probably just listen while you do other things, since it’s Gaiman talking at a podium. There’s no RSAnimate stuff going on, and no flow charts.

There are a lot of interesting ideas in there but nothing revolutionary: Try new things, be generous, accept that sharing without payment is how people find new things they love, books are great, books might not last, maybe people won’t be able to make a living as a “novelist” in the near future.

However, the big thing I take away from it is his talk about about “dandelion seeds.” The idea is that you release your work into the world and some of it goes nowhere and some lands in a fertile place and leads to something great: Fans, more work, new opportunities to connect with people, and so on.

That’s all fine, but I should say that it works best once you already have the sort of much-deserved fame that Gaiman has. He can stick a drawing under a rock and fans will run for blocks to fetch it. I can publish a book in every store online and off and few people would ever know. So, his perspective is his, and it works for him, but I’m not sure if he understands how different things are for low-level mooks like me.

Why does it matter? Because it’s not just creators who are blowing dandelion fluff into a strong wind. It’s also publishing companies who do this. Some of those little seeds represents a year’s worth of work for authors trying to make a career for themselves, and damn, if it doesn’t give me a chill to know that my toil and hope is someone’s offhand experiment.

Troll proclaims his love for the site that he harassed for years.

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Anyone who’s paid close attention to the way people laugh can tell you that most times people laugh, they are not laughing because something is funny. I mean, sure, we laugh because things are amusing or absurd, and sometimes we laugh to minimize things that scare us. But most of the time we laugh because we want to cement social connection to others.

So imagine my surprise when I read this interview with a troll. The guy admits that he’s sent insults to the guy writing the blog for years, that he’s claimed to have fucked the writer’s ex in incredibly degrading ways, and has even done things like claim that Native American genocide didn’t go far enough.

So what happens when the writer puts out a call for the troll to contact him for an interview, with the promise that his identity will never be outed?

The troll turns out to be a huge fan of the site, a fan of the writer himself, and a person who… actually, let me just put a little quote from the troll himself:

… but I felt like we had, you know, a sort of special communication going on.

He was just pinging the guy. He had an “immature sense of humor” and thought it was funny to say outrageous shit that made people angry. What’s more, he assumed no one else would ever be seriously bothered by what he did.

When asked why the troll agreed to the interview, he said:

I did it, I guess, in part because I feel like you and I have had this odd relationship over the last several years, so I guess I felt this would be sort of a good conclusion to that. But also, I kind of felt, I guess, that I owed you an explanation. Again, I never really thought you were offended by anything I wrote, but I would hate it if you told me that I had actually injured you in some way. And so I did feel the need to sort of explain myself to you.

PING! The guy wanted a human response, especially one he could control. He wanted to type awful things and make people angry while telling himself at the same time that he didn’t really mean to offend anyone.

In other words, he was lonely. He visited the site every day to keep up on the latest athletic uniform design news (which… really? Okay, I guess) but he had to treat it like shit for lulz, too.

And how broken is that?

Where webcomics go, so goes ebooks

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In an embarrassment of riches, we have two different posts comparing the self-publishing ebook gold rush of today with the self-publishing webcomic gold rush of yesteryear. That first link is to Ursula Vernon, who is awesome, and the second is to KB Spangler, who I had not heard of before now.

Both make similar but not identical points and they’re both worth reading (the first post for the comments; the second post has some important links showing how little some incredibly talented comics creators earn). Important to note: people continue to point out the outlandish rare success stories and say “I want to be like that!” People continue to suggest “Hey, you could just do it for yourself” as though that route is equally attractive and equally beneficial (those aren’t the same things) to everyone. People still talk about it like it’s astrology: the success stories prove that it’s 100% viable while the failures are always failures of poorly applied process (wrong cover, not enough self-promotion, too much self-promotion, you should have bought ads on blah blah blah).

A big difference that neither poster touches on is the payment method. Webcomics are something people want to consume for free and creators have to make their money through merchandise, or selling collections of back issues, or ads. Personally, I read three or four different webcomics and I doubt I would pay for any of them. Maybe Order of the Stick, but even then I would watch for trade paperbacks and then put a purchase request through my library. That’s how I read corporate comics, too. I love comics, but comics are expensive.

People are used to paying for novels. In fact, there’s a general perception that free or $0.99 novels are not very good. When Del Rey set the ebook for Child of Fire at that price, I made a point of including the words “promotional” and “limited time.” I didn’t want people thinking they would get what they pay for.

As for the whole BUY MY BOOK thing… look, you can find out about my novels right on my front page. That one on the top is self-published, but do I want to push a “BUY MY BOOK” message? Nope. I want to push a “READ THE SAMPLE” message. Amazon/B&N/Apple/Etc all let you download the first 20-some percent so you can give it a taste test.

The difference being, you can’t get the whole book for free. If you like it, you have to pay to get the rest. If I like Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, I can just keep clicking the little arrow on the right until I run out of fun or accidentally click an Google ad and shove a couple of pennies at the creator.

The novel is something I can sell. A webcomic is something that draws in people who might someday click an ad, pledge in a Kickstarter, or buy a “Wookie Jesus” tshirt. The difference there is non-trivial and I realize how much that sucks. I am an ass who does not send money directly toward the people who make things I enjoy. Either I get it for free or I ask my library to pay. I have to do the same thing with books, mostly, so don’t hate me.

Anyway, if you’re curious where ebooks might end up, both links are worth reading. Check them out.

As news media announces an arrest in the Boston bombing…

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Let me link to this article in the NY Times: Richard Jewell, 44, Hero of Atlanta Attack, Dies

When the name of the person arrested has been released, do not rush to Facebook to harass people with the same name. Do not start digging into the personal lives of complete strangers to see what dirt you can find or what political prejudices you can confirm. Jewel was harassed for months simply because a newspaper said the FBI was investigating him. Police asked him to sign a confession they had written up as a “training exercise.” In truth, his life was ruined.

And he’s not the only one.

The modern news media may be in a headlong rush to share every rumor or minor development, but we don’t have to follow. We’d be better off spending time with people we love or writing to our members of Congress about pending legislation. The last thing this country needs is to crowd-source our criminal justice system.

Finally got to play Race to Adventure last night

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Now that season one of Veronica Mars is over, the family finally had a chance to play RACE TO ADVENTURE, which I backed as a Kickstarter.

Here’s the layout near the start of the game. Of course I played Prof. Khan.

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You can see I’ve collected the passports for the USA and Switzerland, while to the right my son has collected USA and GB. However! I am about to collect Nepal in that very turn, while my son was hoarding clues at the Library of Congress.

Yeah, that’s my kid giving the thumbs up.

My wife… I’m not sure what she was doing. Let’s just say she had a busy day and wasn’t concentrating too well.

Here we are at the end of the game, when I had returned to the Century Club, said (house rule: no shouting) “I have returned!” and won the game.

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The others also collected all of their passports (and rescued the prisoner from Atlantis) but, having saved Egypt for last, they were still cursed. They were also way behind. Mwah-ah-ah-ah!

As for the game, it was terrific. I think I’d like to play it once or twice more on the tan side of the tiles before flipping them to the more advanced “shadow” game. We stumbled a little bit with the rules at first, like we do with every game, but by the end the turns were flying by. This might be the first game ever that says it takes 30 minutes to play and really means it.

The nice thing is that there’s no luck involved (no blowing your plans because of a lousy roll of the die) and the strategy elements were light but still effective. It’ll be a good fast game when we just want to play something fun without a ton of calculation.

On a day when the news was filled with blood, horror, and people coming together to help each other in dire need, it was good to sit with my family and play a game.

Best wishes to the people of Boston and to the marathon runners

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No links here. I just want to send out good wishes to everyone affected by the double explosions at the end of the Boston Marathon.

Also, keep in mind that early news and social media reports are likely to be wildly inaccurate. It’s probably best to disconnect from things like Twitter at the moment and give first responders a chance to do a thorough investigation.