Sandy hasn’t yet finished blowing and raining, and the damage to South Jersey looks pretty shocking. I grew up in Philadelphia and spent many summers down the shore. It’s been decades since I made one of those trips, but seeing that those collapsed sections of boardwalk and ruined houses is heartbreaking.
I hope everyone reading this came through okay.
Yeah, Penguin has been spun off its parent company and will merge with publisher Random House. Also, Random House is my publisher for the Twenty Palaces books. The merger won’t affect me much at all, except that I will have one fewer market to sell future work. It does mean that some of the folks currently riding out Hurricane Sandy have to also worry about having a job once the storm clears.
This is a good place to read more.
For everyone in the path of Sandy who still has power to read this, stay safe.
Yes, I voted for Obama. No, it’s not a huge shock; even though the Green candidate was closer to my positions than the president, I held my nose and voted for the guy who drops bombs on innocent people in Asia.
That sucks, but it’s still better than what we were going to get from Romney, if his own positions could be believed (and they can’t). If it’s a choice between Obama and another neo-con, I know who I have to vote against.
Not that it matters all that much. Washington is a very blue state, so our electoral votes are not really in play. More important to me are the state, county and city issues: I voted to support same sex marriage, to reject charter schools, to reject supermajority requirements on tax legislations, to support sea wall repair in downtown Seattle, and to support marijuana legalization.
I also supported a mix of Democratic and Republican candidates, although you can probably guess that I voted for more of the former than the latter. On occasion, I’ve said (mostly-joking) that I’m about as far to the left as you can get while still remaining a capitalist, and the GOP has been moving further and further to the right in recent years, so there’s not many in that party who would be a good match for me.
Anyway: Duty done.
I can’t help but think that subject header is nothing more than an invitation for people to Beevis and Butthead this post.
Anyway, I enjoyed Rose Fox’s post on Genreville calling for stories that are less concerned with the plausible. People are feeling jaded and BTDT about the genre, yes? So why not break out of the boundaries we set ourselves regarding realism and believability?
Reading this reminded me of “hard fantasy,” a movement that writers and readers have tried to kickstart twice in the past ten years or so. The first time was supposed to be about fantasy based closely on mythology and folklore–essentially treating them as source material and avoiding other fantastical interpretations. The second time it came up was not very long after, in which hard fantasy was supposed to be little more than a well-researched story.
Which… fine. Nothing wrong with that. As stories go, having that element is neither good nor bad; other factors determine whether the story has value or not. However, back when people were talking about these movements, there was definitely a valorizing tone. “Hardness” was a virtue. Hardness was the way serious people who didn’t mind doing the hard work wrote their books. Googling “hard fantasy” brings up a few condescending blog posts on the subject.
Nevermind that remaining true to folklore is a silly metric. Never mind that showing detailed worldbuilding on the page is not appropriate for every story. This is about demonstrating science fiction-style hardness, and therefore your superiority to the rest of the genre.
And it’s misguided. There’s nothing wrong with hard science fiction as a category or an artistic goal, but the “hardness” of sf isn’t what makes it interesting, imo. I know there are other readers out there who put plausibility uber alles, but they’re a vocal minority. I don’t want to knock their tastes but I also don’t want a bunch of Stockholm Syndrome bullshit driving writers and readers toward the idea that it’s only serious (and therefore good) if it’s plausible.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to calculate the calories in an ounce of (fantasy-land) travel rations so I know how much my characters ought to pack.
By the way, if you find yourself burned out on a genre, take a break from it. Read something else: Westerns, romances, mysteries, popular literary fiction, high-tech thrillers. We all get old. We all grow tired of our favorite things once in a while. Feeling jaded? Walk away for a while, says I.
Amazon pulls fan’s review of favorite author’s book. When fan questions why, Amazon rep accuses him of being a paid shill and says “I understand that you are upset, and I regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. However, we will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on this matter.”
Sound familiar? Fan sends followup email explaining that he is just a reader; his review is legit.
Amazon tells fan that if he emails them about the review again, they will stop selling the author’s book on their site.
Hey, I guess it’s possible that this story has passed through a couple levels of Telephone before it comes to us, but is there anyone that doesn’t find this story believable on some level?
As a followup to yesterday’s post about Amazon’s bully tactics, I want to point out a link that Laurel Amberdine posted on my LiveJournal. Here’s the big surprise: the story of the woman who had her Amazon account closed for reasons they refused to divulge was a little more complicated than the original link made it seem. You’d think I’d learn to expect this by now.
However, it really doesn’t make things better, as far as the company’s behavior is concerned. That’s why I’m glad to see the updates to that link saying they reopened her account and let her have her books back.
This time, I hope she backs them up on her computer or something.
It’s not great secret that Amazon.com has been acting like a pack of ruthless sociopaths for the last few years. What good does it do to pursue your own self-interest if you define it so narrowly that the people you do business with hate you so much they can’t wait for the chance to slip a poisoned knife in your back? I’m not talking about competitors; I mean your suppliers and customers.
Nevermind this article here, which details how Luxembourg-based Amazon.co.uk only pays 3% VAT tax yet demands a 20% VAT tax payment from UK publishers.
At this point, they’re now turning on their customers. One woman discovered that her account had been closed and all of her books deleted. Why? Amazon doesn’t feel that it has any reason to explain. They take your money, they erase the goods they sold you, they act like shitheels when you ask for their reasons.
You know what sucks? I sell the Twenty Palaces prequel through every service I can, from Smashwords to B&N to this very site, but the overwhelming proportion of my sales come through Amazon. We’re talking 95%. Also, a few years back I spent a full month posting affiliate links exclusively to Indiebound and then a full month doing the same with Mysterious Galaxy. No one bought anything. They only bought books when I linked to Amazon.
This puts me someplace I really don’t want to be: Most of the money I’ve earned this year has come from a company that I’ve grown to hate. I feel dirty doing business with them. I’ve been a customer of theirs, too.
So how screwed up is it that I can’t wait from someone to come along and kick their asses?
1) I still like riding on the train, despite some of the later points here.
2) During the trip, I went back to every bad food habit I have. I ate without planning. I ate because of stress. I ate when I wasn’t hungry to be social. I ate my son’s leftovers because I didn’t want to waste them. Yowch. Bad habits might go but they never go far.
3) This trip was wall-to-wall Pokemon. On Thursday during the train trip he found another player and stayed up until midnight playing in the observation lounge. On Friday he met some other kids in the hotel lobby and he played until after dinner. After the tournament on Saturday he played all evening until midnight again. On Sunday, even though he didn’t make the playoffs, he went right back to the event to hang with is friends and play pick up matches. Then we caught the train on Sunday night and he kept playing late into the night and all the next morning until the other kid’s stop arrived. Who knew there was so much Pokemon to be done?
4) One downside of riding the train is that there is usually one person who’s had too many. It doesn’t normally get too ugly, but sometimes people can be loud and obnoxious. On the way down, for example, I was sitting across the boys while they played a match, and a man walking the aisle fell flat on his face. He was in his 50’s, kinda tattered, and I had the powerful urge to Not Engage.
Someone else in the room asked, reluctantly: “Are you okay?” As the guy tried to get up, he answered “Of course I am. I’m tough.”
Since then, that line has become something of a joke around here, along with (no context) “Trees are made of cells. Your argument is invalid.”
5) The long, long train trip left me with a screwed up back. I’m moving like an old man, stretching my legs and back as much possible, slathering on the Topricin, and gulping acetaminophen. At the moment, it’s mostly better which is good. The bad thing is that I’ve completely lost the thread of the Twenty Palaces short story I was going to write. The POV was supposed to be from a predator instead of Ray Lilly, but with the way I feel I just can’t find the voice.
So it’s shelved for now. EPIC SEQUEL WITH NO DULL PARTS opens with a scene where someone recovers from terrible injuries, and that’s coming along just fine. I just wish I had more places outside my home where I could write while standing.
6) The Coast Starlight offers really beautiful views. Not Oakland, but northern California and southern Oregon were gorgeous: mists blowing through evergreen valleys, stands of dogwood with golden leaves, broad rivers and lakes with pelicans, herons, ducks and even an eagle. Even a rainbow. It’s a lovely country, if you get the chance to see it.
Rachel Manija Brown posted something provocative about so-called “portal fantasy.” For those who didn’t click the link: essentially it’s a Narnia-style story, in which a person or persons from our mundane world is transported to a second-world fantasy setting. Apparently, agents reject those stories at the query stage without ever requesting a full manuscript, and the reasons described in the post (all frustratingly second-hand) strike me as extraordinarily bogus.
They’re talking about non-adult books: YA and MG, but I don’t remember seeing a lot of adult-oriented portal fantasies.
But it’s only after I read a post on Making Light that I realize I myself have been All Over Portals in my books.
Now, that Making Light post is talking about Fantasy With Portals In Them rather than Portal Fantasies, which is not exactly a subtle distinction. For one thing, modern person transported to fantasy world setting is a very specific thing. Still, Circle of Enemies and Twenty Palaces both contain literal portals in which Things Intrude Into Our World, and the other two books have implied portals.
What’s more, EPIC FANTASY WITH NO DULL PARTS is full of portals; the barely-Iron-Age society conducts trade through them and they are the center of the plot.
It’s not portal fantasy, per se, but… is this my subconscious calling to me? Has the online discussion finally made me look into my heart and realize that what I’ve really longed to do all this time was write a book about a mafia hitman transported to pseudo-Narnia? Or a pipe-fitter in Osgiliath?
Well, maybe not, but it’s fun to think about.
2) Economists study/work to regulate online video game economies.
3) It turns out that “Christ, what an asshole” isn’t just for New Yorker cartoons.
4) Can Dungeons & Dragons Make You A Confident & Successful Person? | Idea Channel | PBS Video
5) Comparing Photoshopped Victoria Secret pictures with their unretouched originals.
6) Catch the Ice, Dude. Video. omg, so funny.