More Drew Pictures Up

We've got more pics up. These include Drew in his high chair, Drew meeting his Uncle Dave, Drew standing, Drew smiling, and so on. My fave of this bunch is the one of him passed out on me, I just wish he had his head turned toward the camera. He looks downright angelic when he sleeps. Unless he's dreaming of bananas.

Speaking of Copyright Law...

Last week, I posted about a particular case of copyright shenanigans in which an author's estate's wishes weren't followed. Toward the end of last week, Lee Goldberg once again alerted me to a case of copyright infringement. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Someone has written a piece of Star Wars fanfiction, published it without permission from the copyright holders, and is selling it on-line.

For those of you who don't know (*waves at family members reading the blog for Drew pics*), fanfiction is a genre of fiction in which a writer takes an established fictional universe or cast of characters or whatnot and writes their own story using those established entities. It's a fairly big underground thing that a lot of pubbed authors have spoken out against because they claim it violates their copyrights. The fanficcers have a broad spectrum of counter-arguments, none of which I know well enough to even summarize. In general, I don't have an opinion either way, though I'm sure that will change once I have a published fictional universe with copyrights to protect. I've seen a fair number of idiots and frothing at the mouth sorts on both sides of the aisle. There may be a body of case law to reference for fanfiction in particular, but the only case that comes to mind is the much-quoted Marion Zimmer Bradley Darkover incident, in which the fanficcer let MZB read her piece, and then sued MZB because a later Darkover novel (which never did get published) had similar elements to the fanfic piece. I can't remember if the suit was successful or MZB's publisher decided not to go through the legal mess and just pulled the novel from publication. Suffice to say, things got ugly there and they often get ugly in this debate.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden has a good summary of this particular FUBARed episode, including links to the cached views of the author's now-pulled website. Most of the blogging response if focusing on this author's insanely stupid reasoning as to why she's not violating copyright laws here (and for the best blow-by-blow smackdown of this, check out Scalzi's post). This rated a rolling of the eyes and a head shake from me last week when I read it (and was in the middle of much work at the DDJ), but I actually had time today to go to the now-cached website, and I found this amazing morsel in a review of Another Hope:

In the remarkable genre of apocryphal Star Wars mythology comes Lori Jareo’s Another Hope. Mixing familiar moments from Lucas’s first Star Wars film with a mass of new story material, Jareo gives us an alternative history of what happened on Tatooine, Alderaan and the Death Star based more soundly on the now-complete three prequel episodes.

My eyebrows shot up at genre of apoycryphal Star Wars mythology. Talk about niche. But my favorite was the sentiment that this piece of fanfiction is based more soundly [than the original SW film "A New Hope"] on the prequel trilogy. Until this point, I'd had to take anti-fanfic vocals' word that fanficcers actually believe they know the characters/stories/universe better than the actual creators, but now I see it for myself and just am absolutely stunned.

But, on the other hand, assuming this author doesn't get the pants that house her amazing cajones sued off of her, I can take this as precedent to publish my "Deal or No Deal" fanfic in which it is revealed that The Banker is really Howie Mandel's long-suffering alternate persona and NBC, having realized this after the first episode, is now working with several mental health programs to get Howie help, and the models are all robots that Howie built while working through a third personality break after "St. Elsewhere." (Well, if you were a part of a six-year long show that ended with a variant on the horrid "it was all a dream" cliche, wouldn't you have a schism too?) Really, this is the best work of fiction I've ever written and ever will write, but it won't be violating copyright laws when I publish it on Amazon because I won't be earning anything from it (all profits will be donated to the "Save Howie's Psyche Now" fund) and only ya'll will know about it anyway...so don't pass this link on or else I'll get in hella trouble with some lawyer types.

Heh.

Calculating Advances and Other Fun Facts

Anna Genoese, an editor at Tor, has been doing a lot to inform us aspiring and business-unsavvy writers about the ins and outs of getting a book from accepted manuscript to your local bookstore shelves. Her latest post gest into the nitty-gritty of the costs of such an endeavor, including how publishers figure an advance. Get your math hats on and bust out those calculators, this post is thick with number crunching. But it's a great post that sheds some light on the black box of the business of publishing. It also gave me some ideas about how the seemingly normal connections I've established via a few writing endeavors (my crit group, etc) may help boost my sales on that grand day when such a thing will be more than hypothetical. Or at least I think it will.

Drew's Cuisine

Ah, the joys of learning to eat. We've got some great video clips of Drew discovering that food comes in solid forms, too. His expression was less than enthusiastic at first. But after a day or so, rice cereal mixed with formula worked just fine for him, and proved to be a good transition step. Then we tried bananas. The Boy actually shuddered as his face screwed up in a "Ewwww, yuck!" expression--and then he ate them anyway. I suppose it makes us cruel, but we actually gave him a few more spoonfulls after he had made his distaste known. That shudder was just cute!

We thought we had found a hit with the green beans, which he really seemed to enjoy. And then we tried pears. Move over green beans. Drew ate so much of his pear mush that he was too full for a bottle afterward and also slept through the night without a bottle. He's also green-lighted applesauce, peas, and sweet potatoes. We're not sure about squash, though. Either he was overtired last night and fussed because of that or he fussed because the squash was that bad. We'll have to see. Tonight we're giving carrots a try.

It's been a blast watching Drew discover new tastes and smells and textures. What hasn't been as much fun is discovering what solids do to his diapers.

Burn, Baby, Burn

As an aspiring author, I'm always on the lookout for information about various viewpoints and actual cases on copyright law. Lee Goldberg's recent post about the matter is absolutely fascinating, as are the comments. Really, go read the post.

I'm going to have to make it a point in my will that all my journals and maybe even unpubbed work should be burned, my harddrives taken through an EM field, etc. By the time I die, there's probably going to be a damn good reason that stuff has remained my "private collection." I journal sometimes just to get thoughts out of my head that I really don't want there. If I didn't want them in my head, I certainly wouldn't want them making the rounds on the internet or whatever will pass for such in the time when my death may be something not statistically-speaking very far away. As I progress through my writing career, I may exempt specific manuscripts from this clause in my will because there may be a few books that I want to be pubbed but Death Calls before I am able to do so myself. And I'm going to get very particular about how such hypothetical MSs should be handled.

It's taken me a good three years to get comfortable with the concept of my more mature plot points and themes and such being out there associated with my name for all to see. Part of what made me comfortable with it is knowing that I have complete legal control over what the public will and will not see. This is not to say that I think all aspects of my words are perfect reflections of myself. No, quite the contrary. I've written characters that I would never want to meet in real life, worlds that make me shudder that they might ever come to exist beyond the page (or screen, or related merchandise, a woman's gotta dream, eh?). But there are places in my mind that I don't like to tread unless I am absolutely guaranteed that I'm going in alone or with a very trusted companion, where the words that live there strike too close to my own personal truths that are only my business to read. And my estate is going to damn well enforce that.

Of course, by the time I'm shuffling around in my 100s, I may be all about being a walking Freak Show and will have vanity-pubbed all my journals with purple glitter highlighting the really sordid bits and get them optioned for film and then do commentary on the DVD in which I reveal all the extra juicy stuff that rattled around in my head that I still managed to censor from even my private journals. And it will probably make for some very boring entertainment as I'm probably far less neurotic and racy even in my darkest mental nooks and cranies than I think I am. :)

Resolved: Academic Freedom and Catholic Character

A while ago, I posted my response to Notre Dame's presidential address regarding what academic freedom means at a Catholic university, specifically in whether or not such things as The Vagina Monologues or a queer film festival should be allowed in a broad campus setting. A bit ago, we finally got the president's final word. Here's what I consider the money quote, as it was much my point:

Catholic teaching has nothing to fear from engaging the wider culture, but we all have something to fear if the wider culture never engages Catholic teaching. That is why the Catholic tradition must not only inspire our worship and our service on campus; it should help shape the intellectual life of the university. Our goal is not to limit discussion or inquiry, but to enrich it; it is not to insulate that faith tradition from criticism, but to foster constructive engagement with critics.

Through the various bits and pieces of rhetoric and such in his response, my first impression was that the president knew exactly what decision he wanted to make (keep whatever secular media and non-Catholic viewpoints in the campus setting, but get just as loud and broad with a counter presentation that shows the Catholic doctrine) and took this opportunity to galvanize the campus into such an action on their own without a top-down "you will do this or else" approach. Maybe that's giving him too much credit or making him sound Machiavellian, I don't know.

It's just good to be proud of my alma mater and be reassured that it is a place where I would be happy to send Drew to not only get an excellent education but also to learn more about his faith. Not to assume he'll either want to go to Notre Dame or that he'll necessarily care a snit about Catholicism at that or any point in his life. I'm not ever going to be one of those "Momma was a Domer, and so you will be" alums, and I hope he actively questions his faith before he gets to college age. And this all assumes that Notre Dame would even want the son of a lowly genre writer whose novels contain, to use a Simpsons euphemism, "adult situations."

Move Me

Recently I've been looking for a book or a CD that will move me. Being entertained is all well and good, but every now and then, you want something to come along, slam into you, and leave you flat on your back on the floor going "Whoa." The last book that did this was Threads of Malice. I read one book recently that I thought would have the impact I was looking for, but instead it had quite the opposite. It was the first book I hurled across a room (thank God it was a paperback). I even threw it across the room TWICE because not only did it piss me off, but it did so in the last couple of pages. Yeah, note to self: a pleasant reading experience does not involve the author doing his best Dark Helmet "FOOLED YOU!" imitation. Is it too much to ask to find a book that both entertains and makes you think in a fashion that is easy to read and profound? And why do the arguments of "art vs success" always seem to fall into "us vs them" lines that indicate genre writers only entertain while literary writers only go for the deep thoughts? Dammit, I want something other than fun fluff to read, but I don't want reading it to be a chore!

I've been a bit luckier in the music department. Thanks to Jacquandor, I have discovered the bliss that is Rachmaninov. After oohing and aahing over "The Isle of the Dead," I picked up his Symphony No 2. Wow. And recently, I have found Blue October. Their recent single "Hate Me" has been bouncing around in my head, so I decided to check out the other tracks on Amazon. And damn if I didn't realize that the songs I had been attributing to Peter Gabriel for some reason were actually by Blue October (the lead singer's voice sounds somewhat similar, but it really took me too long to straighten this out; guess I'm just used to Peter Gabriel being very eclectic).

So at least my music needs have been met. And I know there's gotta be at least ONE book in my terrifying To Be Read pile that will give me the deep and entertaining experience I crave. Just gotta find it.

Getting Closer

In the midst of the insanity that was last week, my little countdown up top there dropped into the double-digits. Once we get the final date of Mark's defense, that number is going to shrink a bit more. I think he'll hack a good two weeks off it at least, but he who is doing all the writing and preparation isn't so sure. Also, he just had a review he co-wrote with his thesis adviser accepted, adding to his growing list of professional pubs. His resume is killer--he just needs to get it out there in the coming months. The insanity of the move is drawing nearer, we just don't know for sure where we're moving to yet. The goal is Arizona, of course, and things seem to be pretty hopeful for that possibility. Everyone keep their fingers crossed for a continued good forecast for the biotech economy in Arizona.

Sharing a Moment

Life is getting back to whatever passes for normal with an infant, and now I have time to process again. I finally have some time to reflect on the big event of the past month: the trip to North Dakota. We're advanced enough medically that five living generations of a family isn't as rare as it once was, but we're also changing society in a way that delays having children, so it may become rarer despite medical advances. At any rate, my family has been blessed to have five surviving generations, a linked bloodline of five people counting back to 1911. It was a great weekend of family memories and fun. And the side benefits were great: after spending all but the first month of Drew's life by ourselves, it meant a lot for so many of his relatives to be there to see Drew experience a pool for the first time, to watch as he first learned how to munch on his toes, to share in his amazing smiles. My grandfather worked the trip into his chemo schedule, and in a recent spate of news of bad weather across the country, it was a nice prayer answered that their drive back home didn't delay them and interrupt his very important regimen. My uncle who hasn't seen my great-grandmother in twenty-four years surprised us all by showing up for the weekend.

But all those great stories aside, I keep coming back to this picture. I know it will be the first image that comes to mind when I reflect on this trip over the years. The five generations picture is great--despite the fact that I've still got ten pounds of baby fat to lose--but it's posed, it's heritage. This picture here is a moment. Great-Great Grandma Arel is saying something to Drew, and he's listening intently. I'm not sure I heard what she said then, and I know Drew couldn't have understood it, but it seems to represent the entire point of the weekend. A sharing of wisdom, a serious encounter. Great-Great Grandma Arel is looking at Drew, fully aware of who he is and of who she is, the single point from which at least 50 people are connected by blood (and if I had a better grip on all my cousins, I'd know the exact number). And Drew is looking back, very serious, very attentive, with the mind of a beginner, full of curiosity, wondering who he is, who she is, and who those 50 people are and who else is to come.
I've never had much of a chance to get to know my great-grandmother well, and I'm not sure my mother had much of a chance either. Mom lived decently far away from North Dakota growing up--though not quite as far as I did--ensuring that any visit would be brief and usually a part of a "quick, we've got two weeks to visit everybody, gotta smush it all in" mindset. Plus, my great-grandmother hasn't been able to travel much herself for a while now. I do know that she lived on her own until a year ago when her circumstances no longer allowed her to do so. She's survived as a widow for thirty years (actually, longer than that, I think). And despite the fact that she hasn't been happy in the nursing home, she had lots of smiles for everyone that weekend. She keeps a rosary by her favorite chair and that chair doesn't face the TV in her room, it faces a bulletin board brimming with pictures of her family.

I hope Drew absorbed a lot in that moment, looking into his great-great grandmother's eyes. There's a lot of wisdom and love there, and even though I only had brief moments to encounter it myself, I feel truly blessed to have witnessed it at all. Yes, this picture will be the first image that comes to mind when I think of this special weekend.

Lemming Time

While I finish digging myself out of the hell that is the DDJ, here's a fun meme I found via Andi and Tambo.

Meme Instructions: Go to Wikipedia. Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal.

Events (Couldn't limit to 3)
763 BC - Assyrians record a solar eclipse that will be used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.
1219 - Dannebrog - oldest national flag in the world - and flag of Denmark. According to legend, fell from the sky during the Battle of Lyndanisse (now Tallinn) in Estonia, and turned the Danes' luck.
1667 - The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean Baptiste. He transfuses 12 fluid ounces (350 ml) of sheep blood to a 15-year-old boy. The boy later dies and Baptiste is accused of murder.
1752 - Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity.
1785 - Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, co-pilot of the first-ever manned flight (1783), and his companion, Pierre Romain, become the first-ever casualties of an air crash when their hot air balloon explodes during their attempt to cross the English Channel.
1924 - Native Americans are proclaimed United States citizens.

Births (No limits here either)
1330 - Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales (d. 1376)
1755 - Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy, French chemist (d. 1809
1915 - Thomas Huckle Weller, American virologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1917 - John Fenn, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1939 - Brian Jacques, British author
1973 - Neil Patrick Harris, American actor

Deaths (I limited myself to only one extra)
1381 - John Cavendish, Lord Chief Justice of England
1849 - James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States (b. 1795)

A quick, fun "circle of life" reminder. And some story ideas. I mean, a flag--one with a name, no less--falls on my birthday nearly 800 years ago and it's recorded? The chronology of Mesopotamian history started with an eclipse on good ol' June 15, 763BC? Groovy.

Another Draft Bites the Dust

I finished the first round of revisions to Carson's Learning last night. I think I kept only 20% of the original version. And all but 500 words of the 10,700 I wrote this past week (GO ME!!!) were brand new. I had planned to finish the new draft of this project last Monday when I was taking care of all the errands we missed while we were out of town, but I only got 5,500 words (yes, I know, "only") before I realized that I had no gas left and a decent amount of territory left to cover. So I put Soz aside so I could crank CL out, and I wrote the last word last night. Now I'm going to let that bad boy sit in the dark for at least two weeks before I head back in for revisions. And I have some decisions to make. Technically, the anthology for which I intended this piece didn't put a word limit on submissions, but they did say 4,000 to 10,000 words was the preferred range. Um, even with some stellar revisions and tightening of transitions and phrases and so on, I'll be hard-pressed to bring the word count down to 14,000, let alone 10,000. I'll still give it a try as I think CL would be a great fit for this project, but I'm not sure they're going to read my cover letter beyond the word count.

That's been the focus of my life in between handling major stress at work, getting sick (feaver and chills = fun!), getting Andrew all checked out and immunized, introducing him to solid foods (after three tries, he's a pro), and acting as a personal driving service for Mark and a colleague while the bus drivers are on strike. Wheeeeeeee.

Travelin' Man

Drew has now been to four states: Colorado, Arizona, Minnesota (our layover this weekend), and North Dakota. He's not even six months old. Pretty cool. I've got a longer post in the works for the weekend and some others that have been brewing since January, but the DDJ became the Frackin' DDJ this week and I use my free time to remind myself to breathe. To tide you over until I have a moment for more interesting posts, check out Drew's latest photos.

Five Generations in One Room

I was going to write tonight. Honestly. Then the fracking car accident on Tuesday kept me up way past my bedtime. Then my brother called late last night and kept me up past my bedtime (of all the reasons to lose sleep, this comes in second to comforting Drew and taking care of him at night, meaning I don't mind). Then Northwest cancelled our later in the morning flight for one leaving at 7:30 tomorrow. And we live an hour away. And DIA is not an airport to chance getting there only an hour before your flight. Do the math. I will be crashing as soon as we are packed tonight.

Where are we going? Grand Forks, North Dakota. Drew will meet his great-great-grandmother and renew his acquaintances with his great-grandmother and his grandmother. He will dazzle them with his ability to smile at the least provocation, to babble excitedly at his pacifier, to grab his toes and roll onto his side, to roll onto his tummy, and to sit up all on his own for long periods of time. And we all get to watch as he experiences a swimming pool for the first time. Stretch-marked Momma will be covered from shoulders to knees and dangling her feet in the pool. (Actually, I really don't care too much what a bathing suit would reveal about my postpartum bod; I just don't feel like trying to squeeze the time and money in to buy a suit that I won't use again before I have lost the last bit of my pregnancy weight. Lemme clarify: I don't care what a one-piece bathing suit would reveal. Ain't no way in hell I'll be wearing a two-piece for a bit.)

Watch for fun pictures on Tuesday.

OK, Murphy, the Well is Full

I've got enough experience at the moment to keep the well of my creativity quite stocked, but Lady Luck and Murphy think that I could stand to use more, apparently. It wasn't enough to give me the surprise of unexpected proceedures at the urologist yesterday. ("Oh, they'll just do an ultrasound of your bladder" turned into "Now we'll do this quick five minute procedure with a catheter and some tubing".) Last night as I was coming home from my fabulous critique group, I got into a very minor accident. It was on a stretch of road that is notorious for drivers thinking they have more room and turning rather than waiting that the curves of the road aren't tricking them (which they almost always are). I've been driving this bit of road for five years. It's the shortest bit of road on my commute, really on any drive to and from our apartment, but it's the one on which I'm always the most vigilant. More than once that vigilance has paid off as I honked or braked or swerved out of the way to avoid an accident. No such luck last night. The snow didn't help. Neither did the car in the other lane help, cutting off my other escape route as someone tried to make a left turn in front of me. I couldn't swerve without potentially having a head-on with another car. I had to slam on the brakes, which turned into an ice skating adventure, and ended with a minor bumper crunch.

Everyone was fine, it was just me and the other driver involved, Drew was safe and sound, asleep in his crib at the time. And the accident wasn't my fault, so we won't have to do the Deductible Crunch on top of the Bumper Crunch.

I was mighty tempted to just dissolve into tears or hysterics, but I kept it together for the hour it took for the cops to get there and write up the report. I even managed to find the positive. It helped that the other driver was just a kid, (read: 16; I remember the horror and terror of my first accident, also minor; hard to get mad) and his family was very nice to both him and me. It also helped when a car with fireman's plates pulled over and made sure we were OK with a quick thumb's up gesture. And I was listening to Rachmaninov's "The Isle of the Dead" which is a beautiful, haunting piece that does wonders for SoZ inspiration and kept me calm, oddly enough. I think I would've lost it had the radio been on and something cheery and bubble-gummy had come on.

Sigh. When it rains, and all that.

Writing Update

I've been very bad at updating my word counts in the sidebar. I usually remember to update the counts on a Monday or Thursday, when I'll be writing that very night. So I don't update, knowing I'll be changing those numbers in a few short hours. Today I remembered, and I won't be changing those numbers again until Thursday, and then only the Carson's Learning ones (I revise CL Thursday nights, work on SoZ every other writing night I get). And seeing as how I finally came up with a title for this first Velorin book that I like and that lends itself to a pattern for the other Velorin titles, I figured I'd post a writing update and update the darn sidebar.

First big news is that I renamed Strings of Discord (originally Strings of Betrayal) to The Shadow of Zehth. This fits much better with the big problem facing the characters and is a phrase used several times in the book. I won't be changing this title unless those who decide to represent and/or publish it tell me to. Feels good to finally have that settled. I have never enjoyed the titles I gave this project in the past. Now I do. Oh, and the draft creation is moving swimmingly. I had hoped to break 50k this past weekend, but Saturday night was a date night for me and Mark (our third since Andrew came along) and Sunday night I could barely keep my eyes open despite taking two naps during the day. We're going to Grand Forks this weekend, so breaking 50k will have to wait until next week unless I can find some time at work or squeeze it in elsewhere.

The next big news is that I have really enjoyed and seen a lot of success with the alternating works-in-progress I've been doing. I hope to finish my CL revisions on Monday (taking that day off from work, mainly just in case we have trouble getting out of Grand Forks on Sunday, but I'm planning on it being a hefty writing day). I'll leave that project alone for a couple of weeks, do another (hopefully much less extensive) round of revisions, and then submit it to this anthology. While the majority of my writing time will still be spent on SoZ draft creation, I intend to keep Thursday nights as non-Velorin writing. I'll work on the novel that continues the events and characters from CL (it's in The Masque's universe, and I do intend to revisit that novel, but if CL makes it into the anthology, I'd like to have the "follow-up" novel ready to go by the time the story gets published. I'd also like to have SoZ finished then, too, so I have two novels to submit to agents and editors with my "Oh, and I've published a novella" query letters. (Damn, I said if in there. I suppose that's OK for specific publishing opportunities, but if doesn't belong in my general publishing goals.)

That's the State of the Writing as of today. Consistent progress and a submission on the horizon. That'll work.

The Upside

A lesson I started to learn when I was unemployed but didn't fully get until I held Andrew while having my c-section incision packed is that there's always a silver lining. Sometimes it's very small compared the huge-ass cloud hanging around, and sometimes you don't see it until the cloud is gone, but it's there. I went through a lot last year, but I got a beautiful baby boy out of it. That's a fairly obvious silver lining. Very strong, very clear, very visible. And while I was going through that pregnancy, I had his kicks and punches inside me. Obvious again. I think there's a reason why all my morning sickness and sleeping ickiness stopped when I started to feel his movement. It gave me that extra boost I needed to push past any mental blocks keeping the first trimester yuckiness entrenched.

Recently, I've been having some more medical problems. Again, nothing too crazy, just some fairly severe abdominal cramping about once a month and some minor cramping more frequently. Add in the fact that my bladder hasn't been "normal" in over a year and a skin lesion that's been hanging around just as long, and we've got a recipe for more medical poking and prodding.

But hey, at least that damn root canal is done.

After reading Tess's post about refilling the well, I've realized that I've got more of an upside to this than the usual (my health is still basically fine despite these few blips--and I've got excellent health insurance, I've got the basic neccessities and then some, I've got time to write, I've got my bouncing baby boy--who just mastered rolling onto his tummy--and I've got Mark and lots of supportive family and friends). I'm just adding to the a ton of unusual experiences I can bring to my writing. And I get to meet a lot of different people in the process (Urology seems very specific for a part of the body that I didn't think would need a specialist; shows what I know). This is just another of my many adventures. Granted, I'd rather stop having adventures that involve my health, and I might go verbally postal at the next phlebotomist who tells me they could draw my blood better if I'd drink more water (I drink 3 liters a day, my veins just aren't easy to find), but it's still a large glom of new experiences waiting for me. And I say this knowing I've got a biopsy of that lesion in my future with the bonus weight of my father's and uncle's recent malignant skin tumor removals to manage. (Excuse me while I take a moment to do some strutting for how far I've come in this particular arena of life. OK, the Snoopy Dance has ceased.) New experiences and new people equals more to draw from every time I sit down to my writing.

Tess goes to Libya, I go to the urologist.

Everyone's Talking Shop

Well, that's not entirely a bad thing. Maybe a tad overwhelming, though. PBW gathered questions from her readers and started a sort-of meme to get the answers, and started to answer them herself. (This post has the best "what to do when you get The Call" list I've read.) Tam weighs in on the meme. Tess tracks the insanity of her latest book's title. And then Scalzi reports his numbers.

Did I mention my head hurts? And I think my jaw is still sagging after reading Scalzi's numbers. But it's a great article for aspiring writers, because, yes, he does make $100k/yr, but he does multiple projects to get that. He doesn't just push out a book a year and let the dough roll in, which is what a lot of people think writers do.

These are such great essays about the business of writing that I may actually print them out and keep them in a binder somewhere handy. For that day when I will need it. (I think I might eliminate "if" from my vocabulary when it comes to my writing. :))

The Business of Writing, Or "Ow, My Head Hurts!"

Tobias has a great post about writerly self-promotion, and Tess puts a different spin on work-for-hire contracts that many writers need just to survive. I like it when I find articles like these because it reminds me that I have to consider the mechanics of publishing as well as of writing.

And then there's Anna Louise's post about the business of publishing (part of her demystifying publishing campaign), and my head starts hurting. I think I should've read a post a week, not all of them at once. This is good information, good perspectives, good things to keep nattering around in your head as you move beyond the step of getting the darn book written. (By the way, it's frustrating when you know you can complete that step faster but have to go off and do something ridiculous like earn money for forty hours a week. It's even more frustrating when you get a great critique, read some great advice, and have your instincts start screaming, "This is it! This one is going to make it!" but you know you're at best eight months away from submitting your current WIP, and that's assuming you'll be able to finish the draft and revise it in those eight months. Oh, and you'll be moving to a new state sometime in those eight months, buying a house, etc. I'm remarkably more patient than I used to be, but there are days....)

There's a lot to know about publishing after you get that book finished and polished. The author's work does not end with "The End". This is hard for an as-yet-unpublished writer to deal with, though. The primary goal for those of us trying to break into publishing should be to write the best book you can. But you also have to be ready for that fabled moment when you get The Call--with absolutley no guarantees that it will ever happen. So if you're someone like me, whose current definition of multitasking involves plotting while pumping, you'll probably be inclined to hold off on learning the business of writing in favor of just writing, dammit. You'll wait until the business of publishing becomes something relevant to your limited time--usually meaning after you get The Call from an interested agent or editor, and by then you're playing catch-up for the rest of your career. In some ways it feels a bit like preparing to win the lottery, read: a bit of a waste, but probably vital should it ever happen. OK, so I've exaggerated a bit there. But it makes the point: not only is it hard to just write the damn book, it's doubly hard to be prepared for the off-chance of getting published both in the sense of everything you have to know to keep yourself in the game and in the sense of finding the time (which is usually always pegged toward writing the damn book) to learn it all.

That's why it's nice that we have folks in the biz who take the time to distill vital information into easy to read and understand bits and pieces to at least give you enough background that you won't be flying blind when The Call arrives. Yes, I said when again. No ifs today either.

Field Research

Between the general cataloging of my books after the busted pipe and Jenny Cruisie's cover design lecture, I got to thinking about how I buy books. I do buy a lot of books. I never really used to, and I often swapped books out at used books stores to save and still get new-to-me reads. I even dabbled in the local library while I was unemployed, but I found that my SF&F selection was pretty much limited to hardback releases, thus drastically winnowing the genre pool. So I started finding bargain deals and eking out wiggle room in my budget to regularly buy books (it became necessary as my critique group meets in Borders once a week; I have a lot of willpower, but I'm going to cave and snag a book at least once a month given that temptation). I buy books for two reasons: publishing research and pleasure. The books I buy purely for pleasure are new titles from authors I know, and most of the time I grab them as soon as they are placed on the shelves. Those are the books that I bounce around about, eagerly anticipating their release date, scheduling time to bury myself in them as soon as I have them in my hot little hands.

The books I buy for research purposes are another matter entirely. Into this category fall: books that were recommended by authors I like; books that were recommended by my writing family and friends; books that were recommended by non-writing family and friends; books that I've heard have similar elements to my ideas; books I snagged simply because the cover drew me; books I picked up in a bargain bin that seemed marginally interesting and were only a buck or something; books that got good industry buzz; books that had a unique marketing approach; etc. Now that I've budgeted for it, I tend to buy a lot of books for all the reasons the publishing folks say sell books. And then I assess how well each method works in a very anecdotal, memory of patterns sort of way. I don't keep tallies, don't keep notes. I just kind of go with my gut, wing it, get an impression, and file the information away for my use later. (By the way, I tried this with the music industry once and only once. I find that I'm willing to risk the $7--or less with the deals I tend to find--on a book that I will end up not liking, but I'm unwilling to risk $12 on a CD that I will end up not liking. This is because I can still learn a lot from a book I didn't like and put that $7 to use in a very tangible way, but that $12 is gone unless I can find a used music store willing to take the CD for anything close to what I paid for it.)

All this translates to a spectacular To Be Read pile. Or not so spectacular, depending on whichever book I pull out of the stack. It's all very haphazard, but I really like it that way. Sure, I could make science out of this, catalogue each book by reason I bought it, note my impressions, etc. I could create very pretty spreadsheets and such. Talk about sapping the fun right out of everything. And it seems to be a bit contrary to the reason I do this. Instinct can't be quanitified. Reactions can't be measured. This is something I do purely to get a sense of the market, the industry, what readers are actually looking for and drawn to. It's already paid off in that it keeps reading as a fresh hobby for me (I never know what I'm going to pick up next and why sometimes), and I think it will pay off when I have to start thinking about things like cover copy and covers art and such. And, yes, I said when. No ifs today.

What SF & F Mean to Me

A while back, Tobias had a great post about the fun and relevance of SF. He talks a bit about how he came to love SF and maps the history of his reading adventures. That got me thinking about my own journey to reading SF and fantasy and to writing it.

Before we moved to Germany, SF&F would've been right up my alley. I used to play "V" on the playground, orchestrating who got to be the aliens and who got to be the resistance and who would be captured. I think there was often a queen alien involved, though I don't remember if that was a part of the show. The game often devolved into a lot of running around and screaming and kids pretending to rip off their faces to reveal the alien underneath. Then there was the really cool set of trees in the play area across the street from my house, where we made a little gathering area in the center of the trees (I think they were really dense weeping willows; they would have been right behind that lighter colored pavilion-looking thing not too far from the center of this shot). In addition to the generic playing of "house" in this nifty spot, I created some sort of fantasy world with magic and some dire problem we all had to fix, but the tree place was "safe." I remember playing that particular game until dusk, and the willows looked especially ethereal then.

We moved to Germany in the midst of a family crisis, and I buried a lot of my creative instincts, thinking that they wouldn't serve the needs of the family. Still, I managed to do a lot of day-dreaming that I kept entirely to myself. It helped living in neat little villages--sort of hard not to let the imagination run away every now and then. Our first house in Germany had been the local pub haunt of Schinderhannes, the German Robin Hood. Our second house was at the edge of town, right before farmlands that sloped into a forested valley where a very old castle ruin sat (four walls, that's about it). I could get lost in the stories I would spin while climbing the cherry trees at the edge of town or while hiking through the valley around the castle ruins. Our third house in Germany was also at the edge of a village, overlooking yet another valley, this one a bit steeper. There was a lot of mystery buried in that valley, but no castle. (Actually, the castle in this town was perched on top of the hill, rather than buried in the valley; also, the castle had undergone extensive renovation to be some sort of resort/hotel-like thingy.) No, in this valley, we'd sled down at a breakneck speed during the winter, dodging the fences of animal pens; and in the summer we'd run down the valley as fast as we could without breaking our necks and then go tearing down the lane that led to someone's hidden cottage. After this fun spot, we moved into the housing on the military base, but we were still at the edge of the base and had ample forest to wander through before bumping into the barbed wire fence marking the base boundary, thus making up for the drastic lack of imagination one could find in base housing itself.

What does this have to do with reading and writing SF&F? Well, all that day-dreaming and those unique surroundings kept my creativity going despite my efforts to squash it. I didn't read anything beyond the standard bubble-gum pop-ish fare for my age group, and that didn't bother me--reading heftier books was for school. I watched a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and that added a lot of fuel to that creativity thing I kept telling myself I didn't have (I was a scientist, dammit). All of those experiences mished and mashed and melded until I got to my senior year of college and realized that I had periodically been starting a story or a novel a couple times a year while at school. And I discovered that the fluff I was letting myself read was distinctly boring and not doing much other than annoy me in the precious little down time I had from classes and research. I can't remember why, but I felt the pull of the SF section of the bookstores in South Bend. And I started wandering through them, trying to figure out which were the gems and which were the sparkly poo. I picked up Anne McCaffrey's Freedom series (she was one of the few names I recognized; I think my mother had read the Pern novels at some point when I was really young and the covers must have caught my eye), devoured it, and found myself disappointed in its lack of detail. I wanted more. So I went back to the bookstore and found the thickest damn book in the section that caught my eye. It was Melanie Rawn's Exiles.

I. Was. Hooked.

Since then I haven't come up for air, trying to make up for all those years that I read only Sweet Valley High or The Babysitter's Club and so on. In some ways, I'm glad I waited to discover SF&F all on my own after my formative years. It makes me feel like a kid again everytime I'm in that part of the bookstore, dazzled by genre, comforted by it, belonging to it. It's my own, something I went and found after I worked my way through a bunch of crap growing up.

Writing SF&F is another matter. I first started writing because I had a Point. Yes, the awful, dreaded lecture was the impetus for Human Dignity. That's the main reason that it might be quite some time before I go back to it. I have a Point in all my other projects, but it is always secondary to the Story. Or, rather, the Point is reflected in the Story instead of the other way around. And because SF&F as reading material was my own discovery, it felt natural to stick with that genre when I discovered writing as my own dream--not anyone else's, not what I thought anyone else wanted my dream to be.

Science Fiction and Fantasy unlocked something in me, or it was there when I unlocked a part of myself I hadn't realized I had been shutting away. Other genres are fun to read, and I certainly enjoy including other genre elements in my writing, but I don't think I'll ever leave SF&F or let another genre into my life as completely as this one.