Love in Dark Settings

"Some people and groups push e-books as democratising the publishing industry, toppling the tyrants of literary culture and saving the environment at the same time. . . . When any writer asks me: should I epublish? I say that epublishing [is] an answer, but only if you are asking the right question."

--Emily Veinglory.

Topics in this post: Internet roundup, original slash, reading fantasy, reading historical fiction, natural gardening, word usage, self-publishing e-books, self-publishing POD books, Internet addiction (breakthrough!), my mother's 1967 letters.

*** 9 May 2008

Internet roundup:

vjanssen has been reprinting some stunning World War I poems periodically. Go look at that blog if you enjoy military tales.

Parhelion has a new f/f e-book out, The High Priestess. Sorry, I didn't save the URL, but just do a search on Parhelion's name at the book catalog at Torquere Press, and it'll turn up.

I just got introduced to the concept of transmedia through a reference in a proposed Con.txt panel to the media inspired by Written by the Victors, an unusual work of Stargate: Atlantis fan fiction. To say that I'm in awe of such a project is to put it lightly. I only wish that I knew the fandom so that I could appreciate a story that inspired cover art, a podfic, a vid, historical documents, a poem, newspaper headlines, music, a mural, a woodcut, and, of course, fan fiction of the fan fiction.

If I got that sort of response to one of my stories, I'd think I had died and gone to heaven (in one of those mistransfers that occurs occasionally).

The proposed panels at Con.txt (the D.C. slash convention, which I'll be attending in June) didn't stir my blood greatly, other than a panel on Jedi ethics that looks as though it might be interesting. There are two proposed panels on pro slash (that is to say, original slash that is professionally published), but none on amateur original slash; at the 2006 con, the situation was the same.

Between 2002 and 2005, we held panels at Connexions (the Baltimore slash con) on original slash every year, and the cry every year was, "Where do we get our stories published?" These days, I suspect that the cry would be, "Where are the online original slash authors?" Is slashdom losing all of its original writers to the presses?

Well, at least many of the authors still identify as slashers. That's something.

Which reminds me: I got a note from a staff member of an original slash e-zine (yes, that one; it's the only one, right?), soliciting my writing. Given that I'd gotten two story rejections from them in the past, I was happy; of course, what this meant is that the e-zine has undergone a change in staff. (To give credit to the old staff, they did express interest in me submitting to their e-zine; it's just that their submission guidelines precluded nearly every type of gay fiction that I write.) I've had a Leather in Lawnville story in my head for a while now that I might give them. I like to support original slash projects, since I was around the fan fiction community in the years when original slashers were just beginning to organize themselves. (*Waves at maureenlycaon and remyheart and parhelion*.)

I've always been a bit bemused by the way I can skip from fiction community to fiction community and have my fiction accepted as part of every genre out there. In one place, I'm a slash writer, in another place I'm a gay fiction writer, in another place I'm a romance writer, in another place I'm a fantasy writer, in another place I'm a leather writer (that's a separate designation than "gay writer," actually; leatherfolk have their own subculture) . . . It's just as well that my fiction hasn't been published by the pro presses; the marketing guys there wouldn't know what to do with me.

Fiction roundup (with mild spoilers for the Earthsea series and Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade):

I finally got around to reading Ursula K. Le Guin's The Other Wind. It came out in 2001, but I found Tehanu terribly disappointing, and Tales from Earthsea was only mildly interesting, so I wasn't expecting much from the sixth book of the Earthsea series.

Oh, my, was I wrong.

Things that could have been done better:

There were too many loose ends in the novel, mainly caused by Ms. Le Guin telling the reader what had happened to characters and events in past books. Yes, it's entertaining to know what happened to the slave-trader from the third book in the series, but what did that have to do with this plot?

I've heard that Ms. Le Guin had harsh words to say about J. K. Rowling's novels. Granted that Ms. Le Guin is a far superior stylist to Ms. Rowling; I still think Ms. Le Guin could take a lesson or two from Ms. Rowling on how to plot. Ms. Rowling never inserts a detail into her novel unless it's going to play a role in the plot.

Things I found intriguing:

In The Farthest Shore, Ged says of a dead man, "His death did not diminish life. Nor did it diminish him. . . . There [in the world], he is the earth and sunlight, the leaves of trees, the eagle's flight. He is alive. And all who ever died, live; they are reborn and have no end, nor will there ever be an end."

A beautiful image, but I'm sure I'm not the only reader who noticed that that is not how death is actually depicted in The Farthest Land. In The Other Wind, Ms. Le Guin bravely tackles this contradiction head-on. I always find it especially satisfying when authors set out to resolve problems in their own works.

Things I feared I'd get:

I hated Tehanu because it was filled to the brim with disagreeable characters (even the sympathetic characters spent most of their time yelling at each other), because Tenar acted like an idiot (why didn't she warn Lebannen of the danger on Gont when she had the chance?), and because Ms. Le Guin's musings on gender took the form of heavy-handed didacticism. The only thing I liked about the novel was the tender exploration of Ged's fears.

Things I loved:

Nothing I disliked in Tehanu turns up in The Other Wind. There are no disagreeable characters in the novel, the only person who doesn't act sensibly is Lebannen - and his idiocy is amusing rather than irritating - and gender differences are explored in a light and easy manner.

Moreover, the supernatural scenes are haunting, and the ending is oh so right. I had to blink back tears.

By the way, I can't help but notice that Lebannen spends the entire book (1) telling everyone that he has no desire to marry, and (2) almost weeping over the fact that Ged isn't there. I'll just point out that fact. The rest of you can draw your subtexty conclusions.

As for Diana Gabaldon's Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, I liked it much better than Lord John and the Private Matter. Though I appreciated Private Matter being a novel where the fact that the protagonist was gay wasn't played up as the main point, I was beginning to think that Ms. Gabaldon was creating one of those 1970s gay characters who spends his entire life being unloved. If you grew up in that era, you know the sort of character I mean. There's a scene in the movie Fame, for example, where three friends get together: a straight guy, a straight girl, and a gay guy. At the end of the scene, the heterosexuals end up in each other's arms, and then the gay guy goes off unnoticed and sings a lonely little song by himself. That's how homosexuality was perpetually depicted in that era, and that's what Lord John's life was beginning to look like to me.

Anyway, in this novel, Lord John finally gets to do something gay other than sigh over Jamie Fraser. Or rather, in addition to sighing over Jamie Fraser.

Jamie Fraser steals every scene he's in. I didn't notice when reading the Outlander series (which is the series that the Lord John series is a spin-off from) that Jamie is a striking character, because he's in so many scenes there, and he's surrounded by colorful Scots. But when he appears in a novel filled with bland Englishmen, it's like he's a riotously colored wildflower in a garden of limp daisies.

Oh, and may I just say a thank you to Diana Gabaldon for continuing to avoid inserting political correctness into a series about the eighteenth century? The anti-homosexuality speeches were splendidly placed within the plot. (Though Lord John's outrage at being accused of sleeping with boys seems rather anachronistic. I mean, for heaven's sakes, pederasty remained mainstream within homosexuality till the twentieth century.)

Alas, Ms. Gabaldon gives in to the same temptation that Ms. Le Guin did, of providing details that are interesting to readers of her other novels, but which play no real role in the plotline of this novel. That's the only major flaw I noticed.

*** 10 May 2008

I finished the proofing of Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers. Yes, it took far longer than it should have, but I hope to get the e-books ready for publication by the time I go online next.

Tomorrow, however, Doug and I are off to look at Japanese art at the Sackler and Freer Galleries, and then we're having dinner with my father and stepmother.

*** 14 May 2008

Last week, I picked up on a whim a book from the public library: Andy Wasowski and Sally Wasowski's The Landscaping Revolution: Garden with Mother Nature, Not Against Her. I've never gardened in my life, but I ended up enthralled by what I read about natural gardening. This was what I'd always wanted around my house, from the time I was quite young (I've lived in this house since I was eleven): a natural landscape.

I brought home from the library yesterday a bunch of books on natural gardening and found that they didn't go far enough for my taste. What they were describing is how to add plants so that the yard looks natural. What I wanted to know is how to maintain what naturally grows in the yard, of its own accord. Still, there were a few helpful hints, such as how to encourage your moss to grow to cover the entire lawn. (That hint came from Stevie Daniels's The Wild Lawn Handbook: Alternatives to the Traditional Front Lawn, which was the best of the books I brought home, since it recounted anecdotes from various folks who had engaged in natural gardening.)

I came into Doug's room and babbled excitedly about what I'd read. He'd already expressed skepticism earlier about the idea of letting the grass grow instead of trimming it to look like a golf course, so I showed him a picture of a lawn that was mostly mowed, but had an area where the wildflowers had been preserved. He seemed mildly interested.

I said, "I'm going to go out tomorrow and figure out which parts of the yard should be preserved."

He said, "I'm mowing the lawn tomorrow."

I said, "But - but - but--"

He said, "I'm mowing the lawn tomorrow."

We finally agreed that, if I got up at dawn, I could examine the yard first. So I did. This is the equivalent, for me, of being martyred by torture.

Doug (having slept later than I did) came outside after I'd been examining the yard for a half hour. "We have a wonderful yard!" I exclaimed and proceeded to give him a tour, showing him all the bits I thought should be saved from the lawnmower. At the end of the tour, he said, "I'm glad to see that you're so enthusiastic. You can pick up these branches and trim the bushes."

So, on my first day ever of gardening, I did three hours of work.

However, I received due payment for my labor: Doug preserved most of the areas I'd pointed out to him. He even mowed around individual stalks of buttercups, which is certainly not something I'd asked of him.

*** 15 May 2008

An exhausting Sunday, stress in dealing with family matters during the following four days, and too much time spent on leisure reading (probably as a direct result of the second problem) - it's all added up to a terrible week, workwise. I might as well have been online all week, because I've spent less than two hours reading fiction, less than an hour editing, fifteen minutes on publishing, and no time on writing.

So I've cancelled my weekly online session and my Sunday outing. Hopefully I can get a little work done over the weekend.

*** 16 May 2008

I remember once having a discussion with K. M. Frontain over a certain matter of word usage. (Ms. Frontain is an excellent editor whom I had the good luck to have beta read for me, back in the days when she was giving away her considerable talents for free.) In a telling manner, we went about the matter of figuring out the correct usage in different ways. Ms. Frontain checked what the usage commentators had to say. I checked the usage commentators, and then I did word searches on a number of Project Gutenberg books to see whether authors over the centuries were actually adhering to what the usage commentators thought they should be doing.

The difference between Ms. Frontain and me in this matter has a technical name: prescriptive word usage versus descriptive word usage. Prescriptive word usage says how words ought to be used; descriptive word usage says how words are used. Contrary to popular belief, descriptive word usage folks may care keenly on whether a word is used properly; it's just that their definition of "properly" will differ from that of prescriptive word usage folks.

(In case you're curious, the question that K. M. Frontain and I were exploring was whether there needed to be an and between a comma and the word then - for example: "She examined her face for a moment, [and] then returned the mirror to its bag." Prescriptive commentators say that, since then isn't a conjuction, an and is needed if there's a clause before then. What I found from my short, unscientific survey was that and has been dropped in such cases as far back as the writings of Daniel Defoe, but that and was more often used than not until the twentieth century. Since the twentieth century, the general tendency has been to drop the and.)

What brings this topic to mind is that I've been keeping Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage in the bathroom and am reading it there, cover to cover. It makes for good light reading matter, thanks to the book's dry wit.

"The committee for the defense of belly as applied to people seems to have been formed by Fowler 1926, and Copperud 1970, 1980 lists nearly every commentator he checked as a member of it."

"It was Edward S. Gould who, in 1856 as he himself tells us, first underook to distinguish between the two [beside and besides] for a benighted and confused world, since the dictionaries of his day did not."

"During the 1970s a great deal was written about Black English. It has two competing theories of origin: one theory holds that the characteristic features of Black English have their origin in a creole at least partly derived from African languages; the other holds that Black English shares most of its features with the Southern dialect spoken by whites. The proponents of the two theories do not, it appears, speak to one another."

"Several commentators note that these words [blatant and flagrant] 'are confused,' which, being interpreted, means 'have senses that overlap in meaning.'"

"Almost everyone knows a ship is bigger than a boat, and a number of usage writers - Kilpatrick 1984, Harper 1985, Shaw 1975, for instance - allow themselves a display of their nautical lore by elaborating on the theme. This is all part of the folklore of newspapering, and goes back at least as far as James Gordon Bennett's 'Don't List' of the New York Herald, in which everyone is directed not to use boat '(except in describing a small craft propelled by oars).' Copperud calls the attempt to restrict boat to this sense 'a naval fetish.' The literate general public, no doubt mostly landlubbers, pay no attention to the restriction and uses boat for a floating contrivance of whatever size it wishes."

As you can gather, Merriam-Webster's is on the descriptive end of the word usage scale; though it will often distinguish between formal and informal usage, it will only outright condemn a usage (as far as I can tell) if the usage is confusing, sounds awkward, or simply isn't in use by anyone else. Here's an example: "A number of handbooks along with Heritage 1982 and Longman 1984 point out that there can be ambiguity when because follows a negative verb in a sentence. . . . Our evidence shows that sentences of this type are very rare in edited prose. Professional writers seem to revise them and you should too."

Merriam-Webster's is therefore in stark contrast to prescriptive commentators such as H. W. Fowler, whose Modern English Usage, Merriam-Webster's comments, is "packed with a combination of good sense, traditional attitudes, pretension-pricking, minute distinctions, and a good deal of what Otto Jespersen, the Danish scholarly grammarian of the English language, called 'language moralizing.'"

I'd recommend Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage even to those who prefer prescriptive commentaries on word usage (and heavens knows that I want to know what the prescriptive commentators say before I decide whether they're talking nonsense), because the dictionary does what is rare in any usage book: it describes the views of anyone who disagrees with its own views. Thus you get the opportunity to make up your own mind.

Last I checked, the book was available online - in full! - on Google Books, though the scan is poorly done.

*** 19 May 2008

I completed the RTF and DOC editions of "Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers" in the space of ten minutes, hurrah. However, I'm having problems with the LIT edition, and I can't do the PRC and Kindle editions till I work my way through the newest FAQ about Kindle from Amazon, since the two editions use the same HTML file as a base.

I'm really uncertain at this point about doing an audio book edition, either for this book or for future books. The audio book edition has been taking more time than any of the other editions combined, and I haven't seen any sign that there's a demand for it. Maybe I'll just offer it free to disabled readers.

At any rate, I'm down to the final stretch with the e-book; I'll definitely get it published by the end of May.

So what do I tackle after this? I'd planned to publish Blood Vow (The Three Lands) next; then I discovered the missing beta report for Right or Right (Darkling Plain) and thought I'd do that next.

But my mind keeps drifting toward the idea of publishing Whipster (Michael's House) before them. It's unfortunately on a touchy subject matter, but I'd really like to get a print book out this season, and "Whipster" is one of my few gay novels/novellas that is already edited. I'd only have to proofread it. (I say "only," rolling my eyes.) I'm not prepared to put my gen or het stories into print at this point, because I'm doubtful of their sales potential. But gay love stories are always in demand.

(Well, okay, it's friendship fiction with gay subplots to lure in readers. I like to be subversive.)

*** 21 May 2008

Well, it took my an hour and fifteen minutes of cursing at the Kindle FAQ and at Mobipocket Creator, but I finished the Mobipocket and Kindle editions of "Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers." Now I just need to figure out what the problem is with the LIT edition, do the finishing touches on the booktrailer, and do a final check on my domain update. At that point, I'll be ready to publish.

*** 22 May 2008

I fixed the problem with the LIT edition but am not quite finished with "Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers, as I've decided to go ahead with the audio book after all.

Later:

Everything's done except re-adding the parental control metadata to my domain. (Netscape Composer always strips it out when I save a file, so I have to add it back in at the source-code level. Fortunately, I only have to do this for a few pages.) So I'm go for launch tomorrow, though it will take me several days to get everything done online that needs to be done. I'm not going to rush.

*** 25 May 2008

I'm estimating it will take about thirty hours to proofread and do the final editing on Whipster (Michael's House), with another ten hours or so for layout and cover art. Taking into account the time I'm spending promoting "Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers," the fact that I have a slash con coming up next month, and the general rule that I'll willingly suffer prolonged torture before doing proofreading, I'm estimating a July publication date. I'd like to be able to push it up, though.

The above calculations don't count the time spent doing layout on the print edition, which I'm likely to issue after the e-book edition. However, if I can just get my darned template completed (I need to fiddle with the margins again), that shouldn't take long. The harder task will be producing the PDF file and the cover art. I've been hearing horror stories on the self-publishing lists about how hard it is to get POD printers to accept one's file, no matter how carefully prepared.

Later:

I got the booktrailer to "Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers" successfully uploaded to Google Video, and I announced the book at MySpace.

Later:

I made submission requests to review sites, and I posted notices on all of the e-mail lists and blogs I was planning to post notices on, other than the LiveJournal and InsaneJournal communities, which is a massive job I've put off till next week. I tried submitting the Kindle edition to Amazon, but Amazon's publishing interface choked at two stages, so I've put that task off till next week also, as well as the task of redesigning my MySpace profile to feature "Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers."

So basically, I've done twelve hours of work, and have maybe a half dozen hours left on promoting this book. It's not that I lack energy; it's that I lack review sites. I only know of one non-romance erotica book review site, and it won't consider books as short as mine. Gay book review sites are almost equally scarce; I wrote to the only two I know of that might accept review copies from me. So, as is so often the case, I'm going to have to bypass the gatekeepers and go directly to the readers, namely the members of the fiction communities at LiveJournal and InsaneJournal.

In the first twenty-four hours of publication, I made three sales. Since it took me a month to sell one copy of "Bard of Pain," I'm mildly pleased.

*** 26 May 2008

I've been trying to continue my winter schedule of being ready at any moment to drop everything when my Muse arrives - which, in practice, means reading as much fiction as I can. Yesterday, I read a passage in Stephen King's On Writing that said, "The sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate - four to six hours a day, every day . . ."

"Four to six hours!" I exclaimed. "I'm lucky if I can get two hours of fiction-reading done these days."

The problem is basically one of conflicting duties - between my writing Muse and my publishing Muse, if such an entity exists - and I'm ending up doing a poor job serving both Muses at the moment.

So I've decided that, instead of centering my day around two or more hours of fiction-reading (with anything else scheduled around the fiction-reading), I will - for the forseeable future - center it around two hours or more of editing and one hour of publishing (with anything else scheduled around the editing and publishing). I need to do something to step up the pace of my publication, or I won't get any more books published this year.

We'll see whether my writing Muse cries bloody murder at this schedule.

*** 31 May 2008

Well, my book production has certainly been stepped up by my new schedule. I predict that, by tomorrow, I'll have finished proofreading Part One (of three) of "Whipster" - twenty-five thousand words proofread in the space of five days.

At that point, I'm going to take a brief break to try to work again on the template for my print books. My father's going overseas in late June, and I'm attending Con.txt in mid-June, so I need to meet with him some time in the next week or so about the template, if his schedule allows this.

*** 31 May 2008

I'll mention this in my Life of Simplicity entries too, but it's big enough news to mention here too:

I've finally found a way to control my Internet usage.

The magic formula turns out to be:

1) Stay online for no more than one hour at a time (preferably one hour per day). It turns out that spending more than an hour on any activity in my life triggers my mania.

2) Minimize the amount of links chasing I do. Clicking links is more likely to trigger my mania than, say, posting blog entries.

3) Go online every day as part of an utterly rigid schedule that I know I can't deviate from without the rest of my day collapsing. By doing the same things day after day, for limited periods of time, my mind gets to the point where it says, "One hour. We're going online for one hour. Then we're continuing with the next item on the schedule."

In case you're curious, here's my current schedule. It takes into account the fact that, for the foreseeable future, I'll be spending three hours every day at my mother's, doing chores while she's recovering from her operation.

o--o--o

DAYTIME (afternoon to early evening)

* Meditate on dreams.
* Do research reading (authorship and publishing) while eating.
* Proofread fiction.
* Call Mother.
* Walk to the Center (i.e. the town center); then do chores at Mother's, with a break in the middle to read fiction while eating.
* Come home and edit fiction while eating.
* Call my apprentice.
* Nap.

NIGHT-TIME (after midnight)

* Meditate on dreams.
* Optional: Write fiction.
* Do simplicity reading (Great Books) while eating.
* Proofread fiction.
* Do publishing work online for one hour.
* Do simplicity reading (monasticism or eremitism) while eating.
* Record schedule.
* Blog entries.
* Lectio divina.

o--o--o

I'm holding my breath, hoping this isn't a delusion, but it looks as though, after eleven years, I've finally found a way to control my Internet addiction.

I never would have been able to do this if I hadn't committed myself to a life of simplicity last December and begun attacking all of my most fundamental assumptions about how to lead a good life. Here's a toast to the examined life.

*** 1 June 2008

I've been reading the letters that my mother wrote to my father when he was in England in the summer of 1967. I was four years old at the time.

My mother has been telling me for years that I was a sweet child. As I'd long suspected, I was also a hell-raiser. I had three-hour temper tantrums that left my mother in tears. Then I'd be all sweet again for a while.

I was especially amused to run across a reference to me reading a story in my Sabbath school magazine "about the 'Magic words' - Please, Thank You, Excuse Me, I'm Sorry." Mother went on to say that I'd been "trying to remember those at appropriate times."

Well, yes, I evidently did remember them. (If you haven't read the story, skip down to the paragraph beginning "Oh, it's always necessary to be polite to a top".) I'm not sure, though, that my mother would consider that to be one of the appropriate times.

*** 2 June 2008

From the POD Publishers list comes the exciting news that CreateSpace is waiving its usual $40 set-up fee for its pro service till the end of July. (The pro service gives you a bigger cut of the profit.) That settles which printer I'll use to publish "Whipster," and it also means that I'm going to try my darnedest to get Bard of Pain into print by the end of July, since it won't cost me a dime to get my book onto Amazon. (Well, there's a five-dollar annual fee for each book, but that's all.)

I'd been straddling the fence till now over whether to go with CreateSpace or with Lightning Source as my printer, since Lightning Source allows you to take 20% more of the profit and distributes your book more widely. But Lightning Source's set-up fee is higher, it charges a hefty fee for revisions, and the stories about the difficulties in getting Lightning Source to accept PDF files of books has made my hair stand up on the back of my neck. I asked plaintively on the list whether CreateSpace was just as hard to work with, and someone who had submitted books to both printers replied that the difference between Lightning Source and CreateSpace was like the difference between driving with a manual shift and driving with an automatic shift.

He added, "Of course, you get better mileage with a manual shift. . . ."

*** 2 June 2008

I'm continuing to read my parents' 1967 letters, which offer occasional interesting glimpses of me, such as when my mother noticed me "sitting on one side of that double swing talking to an imaginary friend on the other side." My mother treated this as a sign that I was lonely, rather than as a sign that I was a budding writer. (My first stories were about that imaginary friend.)

Mostly, though, the letters offer me insight into my parents, who were in their twenties then, and sound it. In the letters, they show sides of themselves that I never knew, yet I can see the seeds of later events in their lives.

The letters also contain little tidbits about the era, such as my mother's comments on a Smothers Brothers routine about the Vietnam War, and my father's comments on the mod fashions he saw in London.

And then there was the reaction to such fashions by the administration of the Seventh-day Adventist university where my father taught: "They [the administration] attached a note for us faculty wives re no sleeveless dresses, short hems, low necklines, or odd shoes or accessories." My mother's comment on these restrictions: "Well!"

Meanwhile, I woke up this morning wondering whether "Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers" (which is awfully short) is too short to be a printed book. I won't know till I slap the text onto the template. I'm sending the template off to my father tonight to see whether he can help me get the margins right.