2007 News

One of the first things I saw on LJ this morning was James Nicoll pointing at Charlie Stross going thermonuclear about the latest SFWA nonsense. The background to this... well, suffice it to say that SFWA's anti-piracy committee, in the person of one Andrew Burt, did A Really Dumb Thing earlier this year in attempting to discourage electronic piracy of SFWA members' books. So dumb that he pissed off both the people who think that piracy isn't a problem, and those who think it is. The committee was shut down. A panel was formed to consider how to improve SFWA's handling of such matters in future. A new copyright committee has been formed, with a new remit and new guidelines on how it is to operate.

Guess who's the chair of this new committee...

Making Light has collected links to the blogstorm for your reading pleasure here: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009662.html

You could probably power a small country on the wank this is going to generate.

30 November:

So LJ have decided that they're going to implement "adult content" tagging: http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/243697.html

Now, I'm all for offering a facility that allows people to voluntarily tag their own posts as adult content, so that they won't be displayed unless the viewer makes an active choice to look at them. But this goes a step further. It allows other people to tag your posts as adult content -- in other words, it's voluntary except when it's compulsory, and other people get to make the decision for you. As currently implemented, being tagged by someone else won't automatically get your posts put behind the censor wall, but enough people tagging a post will attract the attention of the abuse team.

I have two problems with that. One is that I object to compulsory labelling of this sort unless it's on a website that's clearly designated as a space where such is expected. LJ was not such a site when I signed up to it, and I imagine that many of the people who paid out for permanent membership are not happy with yet another shift in the direction of making us all responsible for conforming to other people's notions of proper behaviour. The other problem is that this is subject to gaming, and it's subject to the whim of the abuse team. I can see this very rapidly turning into auto-approval of any request that someone else's post be pushed behind the censorship wall.

ETA: further experimentation confirms that if you don't give a date of birth at all (as I hadn't up until 30 seconds after making the original post), you're assumed to be under 18. If you claim to have been born on the first of January 1901, you're an adult. Quite what all this is supposed to achieve other than something to point at the next time they're targeted by a one-woman campaign against sex, I don't know.

29 November: Yule excerpt and release date

The cover art, draft blurb and excerpt for Yule are now up on my website.

This story's part of a set of eight called the Festival of Lights -- the series information has gone up on the lower half of the publisher's front page, where you can see the list of titles and authors, plus the short blurb for the first pair. Those two will be released on Dec 4, and as far as I know the stories will be released two per week, so you can work out when Yule will probably be out...

28 November: Paperwork, paperwork...

lindsey_mullen and I went through the info worksheet for Yule today. This stuff usually gets done at a much earlier stage, but since the story's part of a set with a standard cover throughout, there wasn't a need to get the worksheet done before the art was prepared. Draft cover blurb under the cut -- very much subject to change once the relevant people get done with it, but as I've said very little about this story so far, it'll give a few readers a sneak preview of what the story's about in return for wading through my usual navel-gazing posts. :-) An excerpt's been selected, but that needs to go to Ye Ed for approval before being released upon the world.

Very erratic work on the current WIP, but the middle story of the trio is now at 6600 words.

(draft blurb omitted, as the final version's now up.)

26 November: cover art redux

Slight change on the Yule cover art.

26 November: anthology cancellation

At the beginning of this year, I sold a short story to an anthology of slash fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, to be published by a small press that intended to market the anthology to a fanfic audience. It was originally supposed to be printed in time for the press to take it to a major zine con in May. The book launch was delayed, with the promise that it would be ready for the next suitable con. That didn't happen either. Late last month the anthology was cancelled, in a manner that I consider less than professional.

I'm not going to name and shame the publisher in a public post (and I'd ask that those of you who know who the publisher is refrain from naming them in the comments thread). I understand very well the pressures that can lead to a zine editor taking their ball and going home; as some people on my flist can confirm, I have been that editor in the past. But I think there's a difference between cancelling a zine, and cancelling a commercial anthology. In the latter case, you're dealing with fiction that has a monetary value to the author. The manner in which the anthology was repeatedly delayed and then finally cancelled has led me to cross that publisher off my list for future submissions.

I've also removed references to the publisher from my website, because I know that my having submitted to that publisher may lead other authors to think that they must be okay. Let this be a warning -- don't assume that because a multi-published author has something with a publisher that the publisher must be a good one. It could be simply that there were no warning signs and some good ones when the author first submitted. Worse, it could be that the author was put in an awkward position when a friend asked for something to help get her new epub going (not happened to me yet, but I know of it happening to others). As the EREC gang will all tell you, what authors say in public is not necessarily what they'll tell you (even if only by lack of enthusiasm) if you email them privately to ask about a publisher.

26 November: site log weirdness, or, another reason not to hot-link

I see in my website log that someone has hot-linked to the cover art of Lord and Master on his MySpace profile. The profile itself is friends-locked, so I can't see what the context is, but my impression from what little information is on display is that the guy could well be gay. From memory, the IP address likely to be his is one that shows up in my logs every few weeks (yes, it's unusual enough to stand out).

I'm bored and avoiding work, so I had a look at a few of the people who were looking at the hot-linked image. And one of the addresses apparently looking at that friends-locked profile turned out to be a major American religious broadcasting network not known for its gay-friendly policies. Assuming it's not spoofed, this rather suggests that someone was looking at Teh Gay at work, and probably not in a journalism context...

24 November: Line edits ticked off...

Line-edits (all half dozen of them) done on Yule. lindsey_mullen has some further commentary on the cover art here: http://lindsey_mullen.livejournal.com/1623.html

23 November: Cover art and ISBN for Yule

Received the cover art for the new book last night. This is the one that I've been referring to as The Feast of Odin, but it's now reverted to what was originally the working title of Yule. It's a short story, part of a set that will be sold individually, but collectively will be known as The Festival of Lights. It's my first co-authored profic with someone other than predatrix, but lindsey_mullen is another writing friend I've known since way back from when I first got into fanfic. (And indeed could be said to be the person who got me into fanfic, so if you like my writing, you can thank her.) The page for the book went up on the Loose Id catalogue yesterday, but there's not much there but the ISBN at the moment, not even the cover art.

http://loose-id.com/detail.aspx?ID=623 ISBN: 978-1-59632-597-5

The art is by the wonderful April Martinez, who did the cover art for the whole set of Festival of Lights stories -- you can see some of her earlier work for Loose Id at her website.

23 November: RIP Verity Lambert 1935-2007

Verity Lambert, the first producer of Doctor Who, the first female TV producer at the BBC, and one of the great producers of British television, has died at the age of 71. :-(

(Via altariel)

Story in The Stage.

23 November: LibraryThing abuse halted

As I grumbled about yesterday, this week a couple of idiotic authors decided that the LibraryThing friending system was the perfect opportunity to connect with interesting people, as one of them described his behaviour. Or spam themselves and their books to thousands of LibraryThing users, as some of us on the receiving end saw it.

Various people complained about it both by email and in a thread on a LibraryThing talk forum. The result is that Tim has put limits on comments-per-day that will discourage this sort of thing, and give the staff an early warning in any future incidents:
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=24257

The moral of this story for other writers is that spamming is a bad idea. You could annoy more people into deciding that they'll never buy a book with your name on it than you gain extra sales. As ever when you're contemplating some course of action as a writer, put your reader hat on, and consider how you'd feel as a reader if a writer did this to you. And if you're trying to pimp your work -- how would you feel if all of the thousands of authors out there decided that you should be told about their work in the same way that you're proposing to tell other people about yours?

22 November: it's a thin line between self-promotion and spam...

One of the things that happens on MySpace is that persons with something to sell (writers, bands, etc) will go around and friend anyone who looks like they might have in the remotest interest in something that could be claimed to be related to the thing being sold. For example a science fiction writer would friend anyone who lists science fiction in their interests. Or science. Or reading... The idea here is that people will check out your profile and with any luck friend you back. Even if all they do is check out your profile before going away -- well, that's another pair of eyeballs looking at your ad for whatever you're selling.

Since I was brought up on Usenet, I see this as spamming. Since this sort of advertising to each other appears to be one of the two main reasons for MySpace's existence (the other being the seeking out of someone to have sex with), I don't normally complain about it.

Unfortunately, it seems to be contagious.

This morning, someone friend-requested me on LibraryThing. I didn't recognise the name. When I went to look at it -- yes, it was another writer, who was friending everyone in sight in an attempt to pimp his books to them. Sorry, that's spam as far as I'm concerned. Yes, one can turn off the friending facility, but I happen to like having people I actually know friend me. You know, like happens on LiveJournal. I don't want LT turned into just another giant "look at meeeee!" advertising network. I just don't know how and where to complain about this development. :-(

ETA: there's a thread complaining about this in the Site Talk group:
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=24214
It's not just friending -- it's long comments on people's profiles, and invites to discussion groups for an author's books. It's clearly got potential to swamp LT with spam, so I've emailed one of the LT staff about it.

ETA2: I *thought* there was something in the rules banning this sort of activity, but couldn't find it with a quick skim through the website. Someone in the discussion thread has pointed at the TOS:
http://www.librarything.com/privacy
In particular:
"# Do not use LibraryThing as an advertising medium. Egregious commercial solicitation is forbidden. No matter how great your novel, this does apply to authors.
# Do not spam user comments or group invitations. Inviting people in your town to a new group is okay; inviting hundreds of members is not."

19 November: f/f writing community

Tidying up my email, and found something I meant to post a while back -- LJ community for lesbian-centric writing discussion, both profic and fanfic. Only women are allowed to join as members, but the markets postings are unlocked and open to all to view. I know a couple of the f/f writers on my flist already have it friended, but there are more of you who might be interested.

16 November: Touched by His Noodly Appendage

Making Light notes that the Flying Spaghetti Monster has hit the mainstream, with CNN coverage of a panel on the Pastaferians at The American Academy of Religion meeting this weekend.

16 November: Hurry up and wait

A couple of further queries from Ye Editor this morning in reply to our comments on first round edits on The Feast of Odin. Reply from lindsey_mullen and self saying we'll go with her suggestions. So that's the first round of editing out of the way. Now we sit and wait for the copy-editor's comments...

It's still not on the Loose Id website and no release date as yet. But given that it's part of the Festival of Lights set and it's a Yule-themed story, I can make a fairly good guess as to when it'll be out. :-)

I've just realised why there's a faint itch as of "I've forgotten something". I haven't done a cover blurb for the story, because the paperwork went to the primary author, i.e. lindsey_mullen. And obviously somewhere in the depths of my mind there is a tick-list, with an item that feels as if it's been left undone.

16 November: Triskelion bankruptcy -- contracts sold to Siren

Siren Publishing won the bid on the book contracts in the bankruptcy auction of Triskelion's assets. They will be releasing all the contracts, with a generic release letter sent to each author.

Note that the original list of authors and titles supplied to the bankruptcy court was not accurate, and there is still some disentangling to do.

(Picked up via EREC: http://www.erecsite.com/2007/11/it-is-rumored-that-siren-publishing-has.html )

14 November: Edits done

Woke up this morning to find first round edits for The Feast of Odin in my overnight email. lindsey_mullen and I have gone through them and sent them back, so that's one task ticked off. Skype is ever so useful for being able to discuss the edits on the voice link while typing bits into the chat box.

14 November: Food porn -- fudge

Oh yes, fudge...

In the comments in my post linking to an essay on the crystallisation science of fudge, soshoni posted her recipe, and I promised that I'd post mine. And then got distracted...

So, fudge. This is a very simple recipe, taken from an ancient Women's Institute cookbook. It's also from memory, because I've been making it so many years now that I don't look at the recipe, I just do it, and the recipe book isn't in the same country as me at present. I suspect that there are really, really obvious things I will miss out...

recipe at Livejournal

13 November: New small press

Anna Genoese, formerly of Tor, has just announced on her blog that she is opening a non-profit small press (by which she means that the authors will be paid royalties, and they will be applying for grants from relevant bodies).

Blog post with more details
Por Vida Press website
Guidelines in pdf format

11 November: Musings on writing

This little section in one of my books was based on something real:

The short version was that Simon had spent Saturday morning tracking down the provenance of the summerhouse and found that it _was_ a summerhouse, or at least that was what it had last been used as. It was the seaside retreat of an old and almost extinct family, which had been land rich and cash poor for some decades before the last remaining male family member had inherited the estate.

"And he still lives around here, so I went to see him. Interesting old coot. Apparently they lost all the younger men in the Great War, and his dad was the only direct male heir left. Too young to even be a bugle boy. Same pattern in the Second World War, only he was the one left behind."

Simon looked distant for a moment. Martin could sympathise. It was bad enough looking at the little village cenotaphs, with the toll of names that left no family untouched. Actually meeting a representative of one of those families that had lost an entire generation of young men, and not just once, but twice ...

Not quite three years ago, I drove down the A350 to see watervole. It's an old road, one of the narrow twisty ones that goes through every single village, with no bypass for miles. And every one of those tiny villages has a cenotaph, with its sad roster of names. It was a cold, misty day, with nobody about. Just the red wreaths, drooping a little with the damp. Every single one of those cenotaphs had at least one wreath and a scattering of single poppies or crosses. I didn't stop to look at any of them that day, but I knew what would be on them. Some names from the Second World War, but probably a greater number from the Great War. The war to end wars, until they had to come round and put on another plaque for another generation. And all too often, the same name more than once. On both plaques.

A common question asked of writers is "Where do you get your ideas from?" They are, alas, all around us, waiting for someone to see them and pick them up.

11 November: At the going down of the sun...

On the mantlepiece in my parents' house, there sits a brass box. Not so very big a box, just enough to hold a few things to bring some Christmas cheer. A ration of tobacco and cigarettes, perhaps some chocolate or sweets. A Christmas card from HRH Princess Mary.

It's a link with the past, with a man I never met. He survived the trenches, to bring his Christmas box home with him as a souvenir, but he died before I was born. As did another great-grandfather, who carried a souvenir of the war in his scarred lungs until his too-early dying day.

Both of my grandfathers survived the next war. Those men I did have in my life, though others of their generation in my extended family are among those who never came back.

I remember. Had any of those four men met the fate so many did, I would not be here to remember.

11 November: OOP

Looks like my first ever profic sale is out of print again. It's been in two ebook anthologies over the years, the first of which went OOP when the publisher folded a couple of years later. (I'd been paid my 42 pounds on publication, so I didn't lose out.) I haven't been notified by Torquere, but the second anthology has been off their own site for a while, and it now looks as if they've pulled it from Fictionwise. It's the third anniversary of publication, so I expect it's gone OOP.

Must consider what to do with the story -- new publisher, pixel-stained technopeasantry, or trunk. It was good enough to sell twice over (it was my first reprint sale as well as my first sale), and it was the first in a sequence of shorts that one day will be a themed collection, but I would hope my writing's improved in the last six years.8 November: Another book up at Fictionwise

Loose Id has released another batch of books at Fictionwise, including Lord and Master -- with a 15% discount in the first week: http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/eBook52418.htm

It's also at All Romance ebooks, though no discount: http://allromanceebooks.com/product-lordandmaster-4881-0.html

8 November: phone browsing

My site logs often offer interesting little snippets of information. Apart from the usual collection of strange search strings, this week's log has the first appearance of the iPhone browser. Yes, someone out there was looking at my website on their iPhone, and not just the front page.

I've also seen the occasional Symbian phone (mostly Nokias). If this turns into a trend, I'm going to have to think about catering to the mobile phone users, even if it's just offering a selection of the free short stories in a format they find easy to use. Any of you smartphone users got an opinion on this? rpdom?

ETA: Don't think I can really slant the website design itself towards phone users (especially as it's already heavily biased towards accessibility for disabled readers), but if there's anything on my site that causes serious problems for phone users, speak up. As an example, the free shorts (beware of the gay smut) index page is here:
http://www.julesjones.com/fiction/downloads.html
and the book reviews, con reports and essays (mostly work-safe) are here:
http://www.julesjones.com/misc/misc.html

8 November: Divided by a common language

There is a descriptive word which is gendered in some English dialects and not in others. I tend to use it as gendered, especially when gender is actually relevant to the context. So I'm not quite sure what the following passage is going to look like when my American publisher's editing and proof-reading team get through with it...

Bob smirked unsympathetically. "So you hired a bright young scientist for his technical ability; but you couldn't resist having a bit of fun with the fact that he _looks_ like a male version of the fluffy little blonde hired for her chest measurement and not her typing speed. And then the game turned real on you."

"And fluffy little blonds aren't even my type!"

"I know." Bob gave him an evil grin. "That's what makes it so funny."

ETA: It's a good thing that post and comment thread was a mostly serious discussion of a point of language, because my publisher *answered* it...

7 November: wordage finished

13,264 words, and the first draft of the Lord and Master sequel finished. I'll probably be looking for beta readers at some point, but I think I'll wait until I've done the other two shorts I've got planned in this set, as they'll probably end up being published together as a fix-up rather than individually.

6 November: wordage

End of chapter, end of second sex scene, and it's taken the story to 12100 words total so far. Only 500 words today, but still a good place to stop for a tea break and think about next chapter...

6 November: geek filk

predatrix pointed me at a song on Youtube called "All OSes suck", a sentiment with which I heartily agree. It made me feel old, because I remember a lot of the stuff he talks about. When it had finished playing, YouTube offered me a selection of "if you liked that, you might like these". One of the selections was "The day the routers died". It's going to completely baffle a lot of people, but for those of you who would be amused by a filk about IPv6 to the tune of American Pie...

5 November: behind the sofa

It was allegedly the last day of the Doctor Who exhibition in Manchester, so kalypso_v and I sallied forth this morning to admire the Whovian props. I say 'allegedly', because the flyer we picked up last month said it finished today. When we got there, the posters in the museum said it finishes first week of January. Well, at least it gave me an incentive to get there today...

It's essentially a decent batch of costumes and props from New Who (including one old-time prop in the form of K-9), plus a souvenir shop which as far as we could see could only be accessed by buying a ticket for the exhibition. Whether it's worth the 6.50 admission is debatable; I'm glad I went, but I wouldn't bother going again unless I was a costumer or model-maker who wanted to be able to look at things close up and in detail in order to reproduce them. For someone in that category living in the Manchester area, it might well be worth a season ticket.

We did examine the "be a Dalek" cutaway Dalek closely to get an idea of various features for future reference, and while doing so were instructed by someone else's Small Child on how to operate the voice system. Small Child clearly felt that nobody's visit could be complete without doing a Dalek voice, and I would have thought exactly the same thing at that age. Alas, I am too old and self-conscious now. The Dalek bit of the display was enormously popular with various Small Children, as was obvious even when we went into the shop. Extermination continued apace, and the noise reverberated around the shop, which was right next to the Dalek display.

The shop was disappointingly free of Captain Jack porn material, but on the other hand they did have a stash of the old Target novelisations at 1.50 a pop. One or two may find their way to Redemption's swag stash, if I don't manage to lose them in the meantime.

On the way back, we stopped at the chip shop to buy lunch, and then stood in a doorway and watched the drizzle as we ate our chips out of the paper parcels. A most excellent way to finish off a morning of reliving our youth...

(And a thought occurs to me -- anyone want to filk "Day trip to Bangor"? As in, "And on the way back, I cuddled with Jack"...)

4 November: "Life on Mars" symposium

hafren points out a one day symposium on "Life on Mars" being held at Cardiff later this month.

Of course, the litgeeks I know who might find this of interest and won't have already seen it through hafren are mostly geographically challenged...

October 2007

31 October: Halloween contest

From my monthly newsletter, which doesn't have much else that hasn't already been posted here:

Halloween contest

It's Halloween, so it's time to give away a copy of my vampire short "Promises to Keep". If you'd like a chance to win, send an email to my Gmail address with "Halloween contest" in the subject. I'll draw a winner on Sunday 4 November.

31 October: And the earth moved...

I lived in the San Francisco Bay area for several years, causing a certain amount of commentary from friends about earthquakes. The only one I ever actually felt was the largish one three or four hundred miles away in 2003.

I moved back to the UK a few weeks ago.

This morning, I woke up to wall-to-wall the earth moved on the first page of my flist...

29 October: "Trouble with Lichen" on BBC7

watervole points out that a radio adaptation of John Wyndham's "Trouble with Lichen" starts tonight on BBC7 at 6:30. I imagine it will be available on Listen Again for a a week or so after the initial broadcast. http://watervole.livejournal.com/288300.html

26 October: I think I've got a new sig line

In a conversation on IRC which was getting ever filthier in a literary fashion (as happens on that channel), Jedit to me:

Yes, but you are a perfect purveyor of perpetual perversion perpetration

26 October: paperwork

It's royalty statement day. I didn't notice last month because I didn't look at the total that included the Fictionwise sales, but a second title is now over 1000 copies sold (God knows how many pirate copies there are out there, but that's the number I got actual money for). Another probably will be by the end of the year. Small press numbers, but definitely respectable small press numbers.

Just received the formal renewal offers from Loose Id for First Footer in A Kiss At Midnight, and Spindrift 2: Ship to Shore. The wonders of the modern age are such that these have arrived four days after I posted the new contracts back to the Nevada office. I actually got the renewal offer and a pdf of the current contract by email last week, but to be official it has to be sent by snail mail as well. :-)

When LI first started, the contracts followed EPIC guidelines on renewal, and said that renewal had to be by formal written offer/acceptance by both parties. There's a good reason for that guideline, but once they got two years in and had to actually start dealing with renewals for multiple books per week, I suspect it rapidly became a paper-chasing nightmare. They've now switched to a system where the contract automatically renews on the anniversary date unless one or other party sends formal notice of termination. In the meantime, those of us on the old contract have to send in a new one as the old one expires.

In my case, that's been quite a lot of contracts to check, fill in and sign, especially when we get to the nice complicated ones like The Syndicate, where there are two authors, two of the ebooks published at different times were combined into a single print edition, and there was a completely separate contract for the print rights rather than the combined contract we have now. I'm sure treva2007 winces when she sees an email from me with the header "contract questions"... I haven't got my files to hand at the moment, but I *think* that this is almost the last of them, and Pulling Strings is the only one left on the old contract.

26 October: Food porn

Via pecunium, a blog post on the crystallisation science behind making fudge. The recipe the blogger links to is possibly not of great relevance to the .uk people, as it's American and thus involves corn syrup, but the post itself is well worth a read:

http://www.headblender.com/joe/blog/archives/2005/02/

ETA: Oh, and pecunium's recipe for an oxtail galantine, which I will link here so that I don't lose it.

http://pecunium.livejournal.com/281882.html

25 October: wordage

Somebody hit me the next time I look as if I might be thinking of agreeing to collaborate in the normal fashion, with taking it in turns to write chapters instead of doing it together on Netmeeting or Skype.

Why yes, it did just take me a week to write some 2500 words for my section of the Yule story lindsey_mullen and I are doing for Loose Id's Festival of Lights. This is in large part because on co-authored things I'm used to discussing the story on a daily basis with predatrix, regardless of which of us is actually setting fingers to keyboard. This didn't happen on this story, for various reasons including lack of phone line at this end, and then lack of voice at the other. So a wodge of story appeared in my in-box, and even though we'd discussed the basic plot and started developing the characters before she started writing the story, I didn't quite know who these people were. It was like getting blood out of a stone to get words down.

Anyway... it's just gone back to her so she can write the last 500 words it needs to give the HEA. After that I will probably get it back to fill and polish in spots, but the skeleton of the story should be there now. So I can go back to the Lord&Master short now, and try to get that finished by the end of next week. It's currently on 10841 and about to get into the second sex scene. However, they're currently having a Meaningful Conversation, which may need to be trimmed.

20 October: shopping

Went into Manchester in pursuit of lawyer-type person yesterday, and decided that now I was there I might as well start getting my bearings in the city. Strangely, I spent a certain amount of time in Waterstones, though I did manage to escape without spending any money. Accumulating a foot-high To Be Read stack in a library sale last week helped a lot there.

I did do the usual quick check for familiar names. Two titles from anghara, and the standard full shelf of autopope -- but no copy of Halting State on the shelf of US imports, damn it. Also two copies of desperance's latest hardback, which did not surprise me, and a copy of the last volume of Ace's paperback edition of The Books of Outremer, which did. Ran out of spoons at that point so didn't check for anyone else.

Also shopping today. Other Half, kalypso_v and self went in search of the accessible-by-bus John Lewis in the next town, and were mostly successful in acquiring Stuff. I have still failed to find a local supplier of the printer I have fallen in lust with, but I may manage to do that on tomorrow's shopping expedition. If not, I will just have to order it from the intertubes without playing with a demo model. Why do UK stores not have the demo printers set up so that you can run a demo print, as Frys most sensibly does? I wish to check the print quality *before* I buy the thing, thank you.

20 October: pseuds, pseuds, luvverly pseuds

I deduce from my website log that someone's been trying to find my fanfic by searching on *this* pseudonym. Not quite sure why, as while I'm up front about having written fanfic, I'm also up front about having written it under a different name.

The particular pattern of hits suggests that if the person concerned thinks about it, they will be able to find it using information on my website. It's just not obvious to anyone who doesn't already know. And bluntly, it's a small enough fandom that if you don't already know, you're probably not familiar with the fandom, and thus will not actually understand the fanfic. Hence it may be a pointless exercise...

17 October: I can has internets naow

At last! Not only a landline (which appeared on Monday, thus at least giving me dialup access, which sucks but doesn't suck as hard as having no access at home), but a DSL router! And it even works!

Of course, I still have a load of stuff to chase down and install and change passwords on, but I have web access. I am no longer cut off from my online research facilities. This *matters* when my home library is sitting in a shipping container in Oakland...

12 October: cat vacuuming with Who slash

I'd done my 300 words for the day, so I looked at LJ. And found communicator's link to a very silly, very funny Doctor Who video by 45eugenia. Spoilers for end of third season.

My boyfriend's back and you're gonna be in trouble.

12 October: kdflnhdf

I am currently suffering from Cat On Keyboard. Yes, desperance, you may laugh. One of the local cats has decided this morning that she desperately needs to be cuddled by me, even though she's not normally a cuddle cat. Me, not predatrix whose cat she is. And I know that if I *wanted* to cuddle her, she'd run away.

And when she's not sitting on my keyboard or waving her tail in my face, she's knocking things off the desk in order to get our attention. Three pens and a small box in the last two minutes...

11 October: Zine awards

No, not fanfic zines... For some reason I'd never actually joined obscene_filkers, even though several of my friends are on there and I was reading it moderately regularly (i.e. whenever one of said friends mentioned having posted a new filk). Thus I've only just discovered that a zine spawned by the community, Clues and Gropes, is eligible for the best fanzine award at Novacon this year, as detailed in this post:
http://community.livejournal.com/obscene_filkers/8825.html
As I'm a co-author on two of the filks included therein, I have a personal interest in this. :-)

And remember, ladies and gentlemen --
Never let your heroes dangle

11 October: Literary polygamy

I have taken up with another writing partner (though not abandoned predatrix). We've worked together on assorted material for many years, but the Yule story for Loose Id's Festival of Lights is the first time we've gone all the way together as co-authors on a fiction piece. She's now on LJ, although hasn't said much as yet:

http://lindsey-mullen.livejournal.com/

10 October: Discworld cross-stitch

Someone on afp posted a link to a small cross-stitch kit company that's doing licensed kits of Discworld art -- mostly Paul Kidby, but also some Josh Kirby and Stephen Briggs. They're moderately expensive, as they're licensed, but you do get a nice kit for your money. Since I can think of at least one person on my flist who'll be interested, here's the url to the first page -- there are three pages of Discworld kits in the online catalogue.

9 October: More user profile spam

I'd forgotten that in theory I have a Yahoo 360 profile. At least until five minutes ago, when I got my first "Hi, let's be friends, please look at this url" spam to it. Interestingly, it is for a poker gambling site, rather than the porn spam I get regularly on Myspace.

There is no option to mark it as spam, which suggests that Yahoo hasn't had a problem with such spam yet. That will probably change soon...

8 October: A rail pass is a wonderful thing

Just arrived Chez predatrix, where I have broadband access. Still slightly restricted access, as I'm camping on Mr Predatrix's computer desk and he will want it back when he comes home from work, but at least I can log on without having to take a twenty minute walk first. *And* I have a date for the landline and broadband to be installed at home. My world would be complete had I not started a migraine on the train, and thus been unable to spend a couple of hours of quality time with my laptop in spite of being at a table seat with a power point. At least I noticed what was happening in time to take the codeine.

Time for caffeine now...

6 October: Broadband will happen eventually

Still no landline at new flat, and thus no phone and no net access save by walking to kalypso_v's place. But I do have a date for installation of landline, and broadband with it. Not for another week, but that is because I am going to see predatrix for a few days next week. Writing may be involved.

In the meantime, I have accumulated another 3000 words or so on the L&M sequel...

1 October: New short story available online

My short story And if I offered thee a bargain has just been published on the free webzine Forbidden Fruit:

http://forbiddenfruitzine.com/bargain.htm

This is the one which was accidentally dropped from the Distant Horizons anthology. A warning to the romance fans -- this one's from the sf/fantasy side of my output, and while it has a love story, it is *not* genre romance.

September 2007

30 September: short story sale

Sale on proposal of co-authored short story to Loose Id for their themed set of Flings later this year. Now we just have to write it... A new (in profic) co-author for this one.

30 September: normal service will be resumed eventually

I don't have access to the intertubes at home at present. In fact, I don't even have a landline. Fortunately I have a tolerant friend with a wifi router twenty minutes' walk away, but this does mean that I'm not casually ambling around online annoying my friends with quite my usual regularity. Feel free to send email if you think I should have seen something but have not responded -- it is quite possible that I have not seen it, unless it's email.

28 September: New Who slashy goodness

Okay, so now I've seen series 3 of New Who, I can go looking for the porn and other fannish goodness that I've been studiously avoiding for fear of spoilers. kalypso_v provided me with the url of an utterly brilliant macro sequence of That Phone Conversation in The Sound of Drums. Just in case there is anyone left on my flist who has seen the episode but not the macro interpretation:

http://nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com/1336208.html

26 September: Barrowman guh

I love the CPSLK_BARROWMAN community. It provides me with things like this to look at while I'm eating breakfast:

http://community.livejournal.com/cpslk_barrowman/13786.html

Ever so much better than reading the Times...

(Flicker warning: the illo used in the page header flashes rapidly and is epilepsy and migraine hostile. Scroll down fast to see the pretty pictures underneath.)

25 September: US edition of Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica

I got my mitts on my trib copy of Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica a couple of days ago, which reassures me that the book really does exist. Interestingly, I've got the US edition (published by Carroll & Graf), not the UK edition, which amongst other things means that I now know the US ISBN. The book *is* available from Amazon US, but they've confused it with an earlier volume under the same name but by a different editor, and assumed that it's just a new edition of that book.

The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica
ISBN-10: 0786720441
ISBN-13: 978-0786720446

22 September: random news

My website is AWOL, as are several other websites dear to the hearts of some of my flist -- the Waveney Webs server blew a gasket last night, and thus we are awaiting the arrival of the Man With The Spare Part before such sites as Orbital and Redemption return to this world. Tomorrow, with any luck...

My net access for the last month can best be described as "erratic". I'm hoping that it will return to something vaguely approximating normal in a couple of days. Which may not be an entirely good thing, as it allows for far too much cat-vacuuming while working on the new stories.

I have been prodded to provide bio and story summary for the sidhe story, from which I deduce that it will be appearing at Forbidden Fruit in the near future.

I appear to have committed myself to co-writing a novelette. Um. So I'd *better* have decent net access next week.

Today I have found and *bookmarked* That Bra on the M&S website. (For the benefit of certain hashafp members...)

22 September: fangirling

Just finished watching the third series of new Who.

It's slashy.

Very, very slashy...

16 September: I've got a rail pass and I'm not afraid to use it

Staying with watervole for the next few days. Was good and did some writing on the train down, as I was on a Voyager most of the way and managed to get a table seat with a power point so I could run my laptop off mains power. Managed to get around a thousand words done on the first of a sequence of shorts about the Lord and Master characters, in spite of feeling somewhat inhibited by the presence of an audience. Not sure how much of it will still be there by the time I've finished the draft and then gone back and edited, but it's wordage after a spell of being too busy with Life to write.

I switched to the urban fantasy when someone actually sat right next to me, but rapidly realised that it wasn't as clean as I'd thought. It's not that there are any sex scenes in it -- it's just clear on a high proportion of pages that there will eventually be a sex scene...

13 September:

Picked up from dsgood's roundup of science headlines:

Public Release: 12-Sep-2007
Bipolar Disorders
Manic phase of bipolar disorder benefits from breast cancer medication
The manic phase of bipolar disorder favors destructive behaviors. Stemming it quickly is important. Tamoxifen's effects were dramatic -- 63 percent of patients responded vs. 13 percent on placebo -- and it kicked in faster than many current medications. Tamoxifen skips some of current drugs' biochemical steps and acts directly on the enzyme protein-kinase C, giving scientists a more direct target at which to aim new medications in their search for faster-acting treatments.
NIH/National Institute of Mental Health
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/niom-mpo090407.php

This is an early trial looking into improving the (currently several days) response time for drugs that halt an in-progress manic episode, and it's going to be quite a while before this turns into a general treatment, if it ever does. But a heads-up anyway, given that there's more than one person on my flist with an interest in this.

10 September: If you want to self-publish an ebook...

If you want to self-publish your ebook, don't jump on the first offer that comes along. Do your research into self-publishing, just as you would with conventional publishing, because the packages on offer vary widely in quality and cost, and you could find yourself with a self-publishing outfit that is poor value for money, or an outright scam. If you're paying an upfront fee and/or more than 20% of an ebook's cover price to a storefront site, you could do better.

Several erotic romance epublishers have gone under in the last few months, and you can expect a flurry of new publishers setting up to provide a home for the authors who've suddenly found themselves without a publisher. There have also been the usual suggestions that authors will be much better off if they self-publish, and at least one new self-publishing outfit set up in the wake of the recent bankruptcies and closures. Self-publishing does look tempting for some, but take your time and look into what self-publishing entails and what a reasonable fee is.

I haven't got time this morning to do a full-on article about this, but there's one url you should look at as an absolute bare minimum of research before signing up with a self-publishing outfit, and that's Lulu's terms and conditions for digital media:
http://www.lulu.com/help/index.php?fSymbol=download_faq

Lulu have a track record of five years, so there's a good chance they're going to stay in business. There is no set-up fee. They charge 20% of the cover price for ebooks downloaded from their website, giving you 80% (with a minimum fee of 19c, although they'll waive that if you give away the books for free). If you wish you can also make the book available in print or as an ebook on CD, although those options will cost more because of the physical production costs. There is no set-up charge for the print and CD options. That price includes a storefront hosted on their website, and they handle all the details of collecting payment. They don't take any rights to your material, and there is no minimum contract length.

If the self-publishing outfit you're considering isn't offering you a pricing deal as good as Lulu's, ask yourself what else they're offering to make up for it. If the answer is "making me feel warm and fuzzy and part of a family" -- how much money are you willing to pay for that feeling?

9 September: Well, I suppose it's free publicity...

I was ploughing through my website logs last night and found a particularly odd episode of bandwidth theft by hotlinking. Seems that there is an American sports team of some sort which goes by the nickname "Dolphins", and someone on the fan forum of an enemy team had the bright idea of Googling on "gay dolphin dreams" in order to find something with which to insult them. So now there is a forum post with "the Dolphin dream" and a picture of a trophy, and "the reality", and a familiar-to-me book cover. Except the bugger just hot-linked to the image on my site, instead of doing the polite thing and copying it to somewhere like Flickr first. At least he only linked to the thumbnail and the thread doesn't seem to be popular viewing, so it's not trashing my bandwidth as yet.

I am amusing myself with the thought that American football fans are not as 100% manly heterosexual as some of them like to think, and there may be more interest in the book cover from other forum members than he realises...

9 September: Some background for Dolphin Dreams

I'm planning to put up a background material page on my website for each of the books, although this is going to be a long term project. A lot of the material on these pages will be the sort of thing I talk about during online chats, or in response to questions and comments in fan mail. Since I've had such a piece of fan mail this week, it was a good prompt to start gathering some of the stuff for Dolphin Dreams.

***

background material for Dolphin Dreams at LiveJournal

7 September: Madeleine L'Engle, 1918-2007

oracne posts sad news to genreneep:

Madeleine L'Engle, 1918-2007.

4 September: Sale at Loose Id

Loose Id is having a sale on all series titles, with 5% off until 1 October. Yes, that includes several of my books -- those in the Buildup, Spindrift and The Syndicate series. There are plenty of other good books in the sale as well.

2 September: New short story out now

I haven't seen my contributor's copy yet and I haven't been into a bookshop this week, so I have no direct evidence that the book physically exists, but Amazon UK says it now has stock of the anthology where you'll find my latest short story.

Alex and I saw a call for submissions for an anthology of funny lesbian erotica, and while we don't normally do f/f, we liked the premise of the anthology so much that it sparked an idea. Unfortunately, while the story was held for further consideration, the anthology never came out -- a victim of the publisher having to rearrange its schedule after Hurricane Katrina. So I submitted it to the Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica, and it was accepted. The anthology was released on 30 August, and is available from Amazon UK and other European Amazon sites, if I'm understanding the foreign language pages correctly. It's published by a UK publisher, and at the moment doesn't appear to be available from Amazon US, though doubtless it will turn up there eventually. Here's our blurb for the story:

Love Is Blind
Contemporary erotic romance short story (with Alex Woolgrave), f/f, mild BDSM, 2800 words. It's a hard life being a writer's partner, especially when they want to try out an idea for practicality -- at four in the morning...

August 2007

28 August: Male romance authors

The Smart Bitches have been talking about men who write romance, and the attitude towards them of some readers. There's some interesting commentary over there, including people claiming that they knew that certain authors were really men because of the way that they write. Now, I think it's true that there are noticeable differences, and you really can tell -- for *some* authors. Not all. And the markers aren't as reliable as some seem to think. One of the things someone in the comment thread has cited as a dead giveaway for a male author behind a female pseudonym is doubtless a contributing factor in why so many people assumed me to be male.

They were compiling a list of men who've written romance under a female pseudonym. I know there's at least one such on my flist, but I don't want to out anyone -- the discussion's here should any of you wish to wander over and take part:
http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/male_writers_of_romance

(Note this is about commercial publishing and genre romance -- I know that rather a lot of my flist does fanfic without regard to traditional gender boundaries in the genre.)

26 August: meeting up in meatspace

I was aware that a bunch of apfers were planning to have a get together in a field somewhere sometime, but what with being otherwise engaged I hadn't registered exactly where or when. Not until I logged onto irc a couple of days back, and discovered that it was this weekend, in Buxton. And when they discovered that I'm currently not so far away, it was proposed that I should go, at least for the afternoon. Not only that, when I pointed out that I don't actually have a car as yet, da_pol offered me a lift on Saturday afternoon. So da_pol and I had a pleasant afternoon in a field outside Buxton seeing a bunch of people that I hadn't seen in meatspace for years if at all, and then had a pleasant meal in a local restaurant with kalypso_v, followed by much cross-fandom conversation. The meal would have been more pleasant without the exceeedingly noisy party at the next table, but the food was good. :-) I'll get to see more of the local afpers later.

22 August: Anthology available for pre-order

I did have another story in a print anthology this year, and it's finally available on Amazon UK for pre-order. :-) This one's been a bit of a rough path to publication as well. Alex Woolgrave (aka predatrix) and I saw a call for submissions for an anthology of funny lesbian erotica, and while we don't normally do f/f, we liked the premise of the anthology so much that it sparked an idea. Unfortunately, while the story was held for further consideration, the anthology never came out -- a victim of the publisher having to rearrange its schedule after Hurricane Katrina. So I submitted it to the Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica, and it was accepted. The anthology is currently scheduled for release on 30 August, and you can pre-order it from Amazon UK now. It's published by a UK publisher, and at the moment doesn't appear to be available from Amazon US, though doubtless it will turn up there eventually.

Love Is Blind
Contemporary erotic romance short story (with Alex Woolgrave), f/f, mild BDSM, 2800 words. It's a hard life being a writer's partner, especially when they want to try out an idea for practicality -- at four in the morning...

The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica

20 August: Dear Author analyses Triskelion bankruptcy filing

More from the romance blog Dear Author about the Triskelion bankruptcy. If you're a Triskelion author, you need to read this. But it's also worth your time simply as a case study if you're involved in small press, especially epublishing. Jane analyses the bankruptcy filing, and digs out some interesting information. The comments are worth reading as well, particularly the description of a publisher behaving badly towards authors who decided that they wanted out.

The Triskelion mess is an excellent example of why you should do your homework before submitting to a publisher. It won't guarantee you don't get caught up in something like this, but it will improve your chances of avoiding a publisher with trouble brewing. December Quinn has an excellent series of blog posts about finding the right publisher:

http://decemberquinn.blogspot.com/2007/06/find-right-publisher-part-one.html
http://decemberquinn.blogspot.com/2007/06/find-right-publisher-part-two.html
http://decemberquinn.blogspot.com/2007/06/find-right-publisher-part-three.html
http://decemberquinn.blogspot.com/2007/07/find-right-publisher-part-four.html
http://decemberquinn.blogspot.com/2007/07/find-right-publisher-part-five.html

You also want to check out Emily Veinglory's guest post at Dionne Galace's blog, about the wide range of sales figures within epublishing:
http://dionnegalace.com/wordpress/2007/07/30/guest-author-emily-veinglory/

19 August: Short story sale to Forbidden Fruit

Technically, not a sale as such, as

They didn't, but what they did have was A Modern Herbal (Volume 1, A-H) and A Modern Herbal (Volume 2, I-Z and Indexes) in Dover reprint, which seems to be roughly the same sort of thing except three times the size and from 1931 (so thus missing the modern medicine, but including a reasonable bit from what was current at the time). The plates are relatively few and in black and white, but it looked a pretty decent reference book. I resisted temptation because it's not what I actually need for research material right now and I already have a fair bit of herbal material, but I may well get a copy at some point.

And for the benefit of brooksmoses, the book on cooking with wild plants and history of their use is All Good Things Around Us.

8 August: pruf-reeding

A typo in the British Fantasy Awards shortlist in this morning's Ansible provided me with a certain amount of amusement speculating on exactly what desperance had been writing:

Chaz Brenchley, _Bride of Dreams_

(It's supposed to be Bridge, not Bride.)

7 August: I know I said I wasn't buying any more books this month...

brooksmoses and I had lunch in downtown Mountain View today, followed by a trip round Books Inc (the new bookshop) and BookBuyers (the used book emporium next door, which appears to be a branch of L-space).

We admired the entire shelf of Strossian works in Books Inc before deciding that it was definitely going to be short the copy of Toast by the time we left. I bought it, in the end, though if I hadn't brooksmoses would have.

Also pleased to see a couple of copies of desperance's Bridge of Dreams in stock, though we didn't do a serious scan for anyone else we know. Then wandered off to the remainder shelf to look for the signed hardback copy of Simon Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 I'd been told about -- still there, in spite of it having been a week or two since I was told about it.

Then on to BookBuyers, where I nobly restrained myself from buying more than three books in the mythology section, much to brooksmoses's amusement. Didn't get the specific book I was after (though I can get it from Amazon at a reasonable price at the moment, so merely nuisance factor). But I did find a book about silkies, The People of the Sea, which would have been Jolly Useful about 30 months ago. Bought it anyway -- I do plan to write more in the Spindrift universe some day, and I may want to write a pure fantasy piece at some point.

Oh, and they once again have stock of How Much for Just the Planet? by the late, great and very much missed John M Ford. I've already got a copy, but it's in storage. I'm sure I can find a home for a spare copy.

And bringing up the rear (ooh er, missus), a first print run copy of Killing Time. Yes, the Trek one where it's rather obvious that the author wrote slash fanfic. :-) I already have a copy, but a good home can always be found for a first print run copy of this book -- the one from before it was hastily reissued with the purplest sections edited.

7 August: The joy of research

Writing is intermittent at the moment (because of Stuff that's higher on the priority list for the next few weeks, not because of failure to write). Nevertheless I did 2000 words on Sunday, in the course of which I discovered that Google is not good for everything. I have a fairy who has been abducted by Bad Guys, and it occurred to me that they'd probably use a mix of modern pharmaceuticals and old herbal lore when they stick a syringe full of tranquillizer into him. My memory refused to cough up specifics of herbal lore relating to controlling fairies, and the books I might have skimmed through are mostly in storage. Alas, my Google-fu failed me, and I couldn't think of search terms that didn't result in hundreds of results in the class "twee modern nonsense" and no serious folklore research.

I think I'll have to go and hit the mythology section in BookBuyers this afternoon. And if that fails me, I'll have to do it the old-fashioned way, and go to a library...

4 August: More pen porn

Having just Googled for a supplier of my favourite editing pen, Pentel's R56 rollerball in red, I stumbled into this purveyor of all things pennish:

http://www.cultpens.com/

*Serious* stocking of all those hard to find refills and exotic ink colours, as well as the pens themselves.

Bookmarked...

4 August: pen porn

Started clearing out the Westercon detritus from my con bag, and found the business card from the person who makes handcrafted pens in woods and fancy plastics. These are utterly gorgeous, and I have enough pen fetishists on my flist that I thought I should get her catalogue URL. Of course, I may not be thanked for providing a new way to spend money on something people don't really *need*, but want. :-)

Index page:
http://www.foxtrot-designs.com/pens/index.html

Current catalogue:
http://www.foxtrot-designs.com/pens/pages/currentcatalog.html

2 August: not wordage

Thought I'd better do some long overdue updates on my website -- and discovered that I hadn't updated the blog mirror for three months...

Anyway, have spent the last two days tidying the website rather than writing. And it's not finished yet. However, 722 words on Saturday, 508 on Sunday, 214 on Monday plus a short story submission prepared and sent off. Nowt on Tuesday because I was focusing on job hunt. *Still* haven't managed to upload my CV to the New Scientist jobs website [sigh].

1 August: Minneapolis bridge collapse

I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis -- Twin Cities fandom check-in here: http://community.livejournal.com/mnstf/94019.html

(via Making Light)

July 2007

31 July: GLBT horror market

The latest issue of Speculations has just arrived in my email, and among the market listings is one that might be of interest to several people on my flist:

NEW G/L/B antho UNSPEAKABLE HORROR: From the Shadows of the Closet seeks H (1k-7.5k words) that reflects its theme; pays 5 cents/word for FNASR. Subs MUST follow GLs at http://unspeakablehorror.com/submissions/. Query deadline, 10/07. Deadline, 6/08.

(If you want the full market listings, you''l just have to get your own subscription. :-)

29 July: Thread drift

A classic piece of thread drift: a discussion of 's new job has sprouted a sub-thread discussing the sexual orientation of theremins (an electronic musical instrument)...

28 July: book log; book review -- Reiko Momochi: Confidential Confessions

Finished re-reading Modesty Blaise earlier this week. When I went to check some books for the Making Light discussion I noticed that some titles in Souvenir's recent re-issue of the series have gone out of print -- I think I should order the ones I still don't have, while they're still readily available.

Also re-read Shout Out Loud 4 with a view to writing a review.

When I bought some second-hand copies of Fake off eBay, the same seller had a copy of Confidential Confessions 1 for a dollar, so I thought I might as well get it to try. This is a shoujo manga series and thus aimed at teenage girls, but rather than being the stereotypically light and fluffy, this one is fairly dark and tackles some serious issues. The first volume has a long story about bullying at school and teenage suicide; there's also a shorter story about teenage prostitution.

I couldn't get into it at all, but I think mostly because it's not my sort of thing, and as a middle-aged Brit I'm not the target audience anyway. Skimming through it, I can see why it has great reviews on Amazon -- it's neither soap opera nor preachy, but takes a realistic look at problems that a lot of Japanese teens face in real life. That also means that it doesn't have a guaranteed happy ending. This may be depressing for some people; for others it will be helpful, as when you're depressed yourself it can make things worse to be reading fiction that tells you that everyone else gets a happy ending. This manga appears to be aimed at providing fiction that comforts by saying "You're not alone in feeling this way." As it says on the cover, "because real life doesn't always have a happy ending."

This particular volume is also very, very blunt about what attempted suicide actually means, and what goes through the minds of people considering suicide. It's going to be an emotionally tough read, and there is the possibility that it could be a trigger for someone, although I think it's much more likely to help than to harm.

Not my thing, and I suspect that it's not going to be one for most of the people I know, but I'll provide the Amazon links for volume 1 anyway. There seem to be six volumes.

Confidential Confessions, Book 1 at Amazon US
Confidential Confessions at Amazon UK

26 July: Don't ask...

http://community.livejournal.com/slashersofgor/

26 July: Ow

I was actually managing to do something constructive with my morning for once, when I was assaulted about twenty minutes ago by something combining some of the more annoying features of both icepick and cluster headaches. Rapid stabbing pain, heavy congestion and tearing up in that eye. It is not actually all that painful, as such things go, but it is incredibly distracting. It's lunchtime anyway, so I've just dumped some pasta into the microwave to cook (when I'm in this state I don't trust myself with anything that doesn't turn itself off automatically), and chopped some tomatoes. And when I've had that to line my stomach with, I'm going to swig a couple of Codis. You may insert here the standard rant about the American attitude to mild opiate painkillers. Fortunately I can bring personal use quantities back with me when I've been visiting family in more enlightened countries.

25 July: Curse you, Amazon

Amazon has noticed that I want to buy the final volume in the "Shout Out Loud" manga series when it's released. This morning I found in my inbox an email with the subject:

Now available: "Shout Out Loud! Volume 5: (Yaoi) (Shout Out Loud!)" by Satosumi Takaguchi on Amazon.com

Now, you'd think that would mean that it's available *now*, that if I hurry over to Amazon and put my order in, it will be in a parcel tonight, wouldn't you? But no, when I open the email, I find that what it actually means is

you might like to know that Shout Out Loud! Volume 5: (Yaoi) (Shout Out Loud!) will be released on August 7, 2007. You can pre-order yours by following the link below.

Bastards, getting my hopes up like that...

24 July: Books redux

I read Light Errant, the sequel to Dead of Light, on Sunday, Yes, in one sitting again. Not quite the same slam in and grab the brain effect as the first book, because it's a "what happened next" and I already knew what the setup was, but still a page-turner. Now I'm somewhat bemused as to how to review it without massive spoilers for the first book. In fact, I'd have liked to discuss the first book in a good deal more detail than I did, but held back because of the spoiler issue.

Also need to review the Fake manga series, having finished that a week or two back.

I bounced into Modesty Blaise yesterday courtesy of a discussion on Making Light, but after that I should tackle some more of the book loot from recent cons, and a couple of beta-reading jobs I've been neglecting for the last month.

23 July: Nekkid Martians

Please note that agentxpndble has been making good use of blingee.com (as used by cpslk) to highlight some of Mr Simm's more interesting features: http://agentxpndble.livejournal.com/214052.html

I'm sure there were one or two other links I meant to inflict on my flist today, but I can't remember what they were. Doubtless they shall return to me.

23 July: Nekkid Gallifreyans...

Oh dear God...

cpslk_barrowman hath spawned.

First post in cpslck_tennant is a full frontal pic of David Tennant wearing nothing but a policeman's helmet...

(ETA: Beware of the flashing banner currently at the top of the Barrowman comm, it's not very migraine or epilepsy-friendly. I'm not giving a direct link to the Master capslock comm, as that has the rapid flashing as a background to the full screen, and is much, much worse.)

23 July: SF Bay area -- Suspect Thoughts fundraiser readings

Suspect Thoughts Press is having a series of salons in August as an emergency fundraiser after they were told at short notice to find premises elsewhere. There are some seriously heavy-duty names in queer literature doing readings at the salons in San Francisco and Oakland -- more details at the Suspect Thoughts website here: http://www.suspectthoughts.com/salons.htm

('Tis a curious irony that the only thing of mine published by Suspect Thoughts is also my only *straight* smut piece...)

20 July: Dreams

Edmund Hillary is 88 today.

On his 50th birthday, humans set foot on another planet for the first time.

Nowadays we don't bother to keep track of who's stood on Everest -- it's still hard, it's still an incredible achievement for those who do it, but it's become commonplace.

Only twelve of us ever walked on the moon.

Maybe one day we'll change that.

19 July: I *do* need new glasses...

Well, contact lenses.

I was right -- the reason I was having trouble with close vision was as much my base myopia prescription having changed as my presbyopia getting worse. Or translated into English, I'm very short-sighted, but my prescription has drifted slightly again, and the contact lens for my right eye is now too strong because that eye has improved by a quarter of a dioptre or so. The left eye has actually got very slightly worse again, though not enough to need to change prescription. The combination was messing up my focusing.

I've got a pair of trial lenses in right now, and am feeling much more comfortable. I've also got an accurate prescription for reading glasses for both reading distance and computer monitor distance (yes, they're different), so I'll get a pair for reading some time this week. I may feel more like reading now that I've got the prescription sorted out.

18 July: Books

After a month or two of reading being like wading through glue, unable to handle anything but fluffy manga and even that an effort, I felt a sudden urge to read two nights ago. Not just to read, but to read a specific book. I finished "Unnatural Death" this lunchtime, and with the momentum still up, went looking for something else. I grabbed desperance's Dead of Light, which had been sitting around along with everything else I bought at Westercon -- and have just finished it.

Oh wow.

Something more coherent in the way of comment may be forthcoming later.

16 July: spam, spam, lovely spam

Look, I know I go on about LibraryThing quite a lot. But I do so in actual conversations -- I don't send "Join me on LibraryThing" auto-emails to random acquaintances. I don't even do that to friends.

I can only conclude from the sudden arrival today of several auto-emails for a recent clone that some of the romance review sites have decided that it would be a really good thing to invite lots of authors to join them on said clone. :-/ I'm not sure whether this is because the rival actively encourages people to spam their entire address book with invites -- and since I'm not convinced that they aren't, I'm deliberately not giving them the benefit of being named, never mind a link.

[rummage]

Yes, they do encourage you to invite your entire address book.

[sigh] Welcome to Web 2.0...

14 July: Yes, I am a sad Who fangirl

yourbob was evil and linked to something at geektoys. Naturally, I then made the mistake of looking around at the "if you liked that..." links.

And found a sonic screwdriver. For $15.

Wants.

I may actually get a couple, as I can think of one or two people on the Christmas present list who would appreciate one.

12 July: RIP Peter Tuddenham 1918 - 2007

Peter Tuddenham died on 9 July, according to a report at the Horizon news page. He was probably best known for playing the computers Zen, Orac and Slave on Blake's 7, but had a wide-ranging career as a voice actor.

I only met him once, at the Blake's 7 twentieth anniversary con in 1998. He was a charming man with a great store of entertaining stories about his time in vaudeville -- a living fragment of our entertainment history. The thing that I particularly remember was that I'd won breakfast with him one morning (breakfast with a guest is a common fund-raising raffle prize at cons), and he was late because he wasn't feeling well -- and he couldn't apologise enough for being late, even though he was a frail man in his late seventies by then, and it was quite understandable that he was finding the con very tiring. It reflects what I've heard about him from other people; that he was unfailingly friendly, courteous and considerate, and appreciative of fans' interest.

He was much loved by fans, with reason. May he rest in peace.

11 July: RWA says that epublishers are vanity presses by definition

Guess what. The hoop's just been raised again. RWA has just put out new definitions for vanity publishing and professional publishing in which epublishers are labelled vanity presses by definition. Here's part of the paragraph listing the criteria which will immediately class a publisher as vanity:

"publishers whose primary means of offering books for sale is through a publisher-generated Web site;"

In other words, any epublisher is a vanity press in RWA's eyes, even if it isn't a vanity press by any sane definition involving "money flows towards the author". Because this is how epublishing works -- the primary means of offering ebooks for sale is through a publisher-generated website, even where the publisher also uses distributors such as Fictionwise.

Obviously there were far too many of us "vanity"-published authors who were managing to make $2000 in royalties from a single title.

I do not have an issue with RWA deciding to demand that a publisher offer a significant advance to every author as one of the qualifications for being considered a pro publisher. It's what SFWA does, after all, and there's a sound rationale behind that (though I really, really doubt that said rationale is the reason for RWA doing it). I wouldn't have a problem with RWA saying that my publisher is a small press -- there are many highly respected small presses in science fiction.

However, I have a serious problem with RWA declaring my publisher to be a vanity press purely on the grounds that it uses the distribution method that is most appropriate to the format the books are published in.

This is a very clear message to epublished authors, no matter how successful they may be -- the RWA not only doesn't want us, it's prepared to tar us as vanity-published to make sure we get the message that we're riff-raff and not welcome.

And in order to deliver that deliberate insult, RWA has quite thoroughly muddied the definition of vanity press. How on earth is that supposed to protect writers who are trying to understand the warning signs to watch out for? When RWA has such a blatantly stupid criterion that labels legitimate small presses as vanity presses, then authors may start wondering if the other "vanity press" criteria they list are really so bad. And some of us already have enough work trying to explain the difference between legitimate small press and vanity press to new people on the writer forums.

8 July: tomato report

Had the first fruit from the Siberia tomato in my lunch today. This is supposed to be a very early variety, but in fact it was 12 days behind the Patio Dwarf, and also behind the mystery tomato. 59g, although the first ripe fruit was one of the smaller ones on the plant and I expect the next couple to be a good deal heavier. A couple of small flaws that had to be cut out during preparation. Raw taste was mild and slightly sweet. Pleasant enough flavour if nothing outstanding, and it wasn't early as promised, but it's a heavy cropper as a patio pot plant, and so far has shown no tendency to get out of control and head for the eaves. On the showing so far, it wouldn't necessarily be my first choice, but I'd certainly grow it again.

Speaking of out of control tomato plants -- the Brandywine was planted under the flowering plum. It has now reached a height of six feet, and is merrily climbing into the tree...

ETA: pictures here: http://jules.jones.googlepages.com/tomatoporn -- click on a thumbnail to get a full-size version.

6 July: Brava romance novella contest

Brava (part of Kensington) is running a novella contest: http://www.bravaauthors.com/novella-contest/

750 word excerpt from a 25-30 kword romance novella, one man one woman but any heat level goes. Entries accepted via the online entry system from 1 August to 30 September. No entry, fee, entries will be judged by Brava-published authors, top twenty get looked at by Ye Editor for potential publication. More details in their forum, linked to from that page.

If you write het romance novellas, this looks like a good one.

5 July: I can has Cuecat

So my Cuecat arrived from LibraryThing today, and naturally I have wasted an enormous amount of time this afternoon playing with it. The verdict is that when it works, it's very good, but it does take some practice to get right and even then it doesn't always work. And of course it's only useful for books with barcodes. On the other hand, when it's working well and you have a stack of books, it's a fast way to get them into LibraryThing.

Unfortunately, because I am a filthy porn writer I'm having a hard time keeping a straight face while using the thing. Because it is astonishingly phallic...

***

Changing the subject back to food porn rather than book porn, an excellent way to deal with the bacon fat left from one's pasta sauce from dinner the night before is to use it for making an omelette for lunch. The filling naturally included today's tomato harvest, a 31g specimen of Mamma Mia. Also some chedder, and some shredded pieces of the rather nice herbed turkey breast slices from the Milk Pail. Yum.

4 July: more tomato smugness

Harvested the first Mamma Mia plum tomato late last week -- 63g, and they are on the small side compared with plum tomatoes I've grown before. But good solid flesh, and a nice flavour both raw and cooked. A couple more are ripening now. I should stake the plant, as it's getting big enough to need it.

The mystery tomato started ripening some fruit over the weekend, and turned out to be something yellowish-orange. Just picked the first one, and it weighs in at 103g. I think it was slightly underripe as it was reluctant to part from the stem even though it's been a fairly solid ripe colour for three days or so. Not much scent. Very meaty when cut open. Raw flavour is fairly mild, definitely tomato but not that strong, and no acid.

Just picked the second fruit on the Patio Dwarf, and several more are ripening. 60g, Light scent but stronger than the mystery tomato, mild tomato flavour with slight acid.

The Siberia started ripening some fruit yesterday, but has a few days to go before I can pick something.

Also had the first two sunflowers start opening bud yesterday. I think the first corn is ready to eat, but there has been marital disharmony on this topic, so they remain on the plant for now.

The two tomatoes picked before dinner became part of dinner. I cut up some applewood smoked streaky bacon, fried it for a few minutes, then added the diced tomatoes and fried them gently for a few more minutes while the pasta was cooking. The mystery tomato held its shape well, but still picked up flavour from the bacon fat. The Patio Dwarf was a little mushier. Both had a good cooked flavour after frying, and held their colour well. I wish I knew what the mystery tomato was, because I'd like to grow it again next year. I think it's probably going to be a good barbecue tomato.

3 July: Back from Westercon

That's my Westercon done. Didn't go to any panels today other than the Broad Universe Rapidfire Reading -- we did get a room, and even an audience. I won the bidding on two pieces of art -- naturally the two most expensive ones I'd bid on, but they're gorgeous. chrisdolley made it to the end of the reading, so ritaxis and iIwere able to talk to him for a little while longer and say goodbye to him. It's nice to meet up with someone I know from online.

I'm awake but fairly tired, so it's going to take me a while to get through outstanding email and Stuff, including a critique I'm supposed to be doing for someone and some info about the erotic romance market for someone else. Sorry guys.

Got a load of notes from panels, so I'll see whether any of them make sense tomorrow...

2 July: briefly -- third day of westercon

Third day was excellent, have taken lots of notes in good writing panels, have bought too many books, have bid too much on art show, latter two items may be regretted now am home and have seen autopope's comments about Palm TX as replacement for current PDA love of my life, Palm IIIxe, will probably want that money to spend on Palm instead, oh dear.

Brain switched off about five minutes ago and can no longer type cleanly, so will stop working through the day's email. Will reply to some of it later this week.

Should have stopped earlier and spent time deciding on excerpt to read tomorrow at BU Rapdfire Reading while I was still awake enough to think about it...

2 July: Broad Universe Rapidfire Reading at Westercon

We have a time slot for the Broad Universe Rapidfire Reading at Westercon. :-) Five Broads on the reading list so far, so probably ten minute excerpts. Now I have to go and find an excerpt that is clean, about ten minutes long and still makes sense, that hasn't been heard before...

Rapidfire Reading
Tuesday, July 3
1 PM
Synergy Room 2

2 July: briefly" on day 2 of Westercon

Second day of a four day convention yesterday, and I was already exhausted. Amongst other things missed the erotica writing panel because it was on at 10 pm and I was too tired to stay that long. But went to several panels during the day, including two about the editor's job where I took quite a few notes -- will write those up later in the week if I can still remember what they meant by the time I'm awake enough to write a con report.

Back to black -- wore my Redemption 2007 teeshirt yesterday, which is in your typical UK fannish colour theme of Black Goes With Everything. I had culture shock when I first went to a US con -- something felt *wrong* and it took me a while to realise that it was because US fans don't have the black teeshirt uniform. Also did my bit for advertising with some flyers on the flyer table. Probably won't be a lot of interest, but there may be one or two people who would be interested, so it's worth putting a few out.

As usual spent too much money in the art show, assuming that I win any bids. ritaxis thinks my stash of art under the bed in the spare room is hilarious. We ended up sitting and having a nice gossip with the art show staff for half an hour in the afternoon -- good place to chill out.

Someone came to me after one of the editing panels yesterday, and said, "You read at the Broad Universe reading, didn't you? I bought the book, and really liked it." Enjoyed that... Also gave her and someone else info on submitting to Loose Id, so it was worth taking a couple of the LI brochures in my flyer stash.

Got home to fanmail asking if the rest of The Syndicate will be out in print as well as ebook. Second time this week someone's asked. Don't think there are any current plans (and even if there are it should wait until after the honeymoon story is written, which could be a while), but it does give a warm fuzzy glow that people want it in print.

1 July: Westercon

Home after first day of Westercon -- it's only twenty miles or so down the road so ritaxisis staying with me and we're commuting.

Much smaller and quieter than Baycon at the same hotel this time last month, but had a pleasant first day. ritaxis and I had dinner with chrisdolley, who is over from France to do Westercon this weekend and Readercon next weekend. Is after midnight now, so am not doing a report for the day...

June 2007

29 June: This blog is rated G

That blog rating meme that's going around? I didn't bother posting the result when I first tried it (infected by james_nicoll IIRC), because I am reluctant to link to external images that aren't on book porn websites (that's Amazon, B&N and Powells, thank you). Sometimes those external images *change*, you see, and while I'm not overly bothered by goatse myself, I'd rather not inflict it on the unwitting and unwilling.

Nevertheless, it does seem to be a popular meme, so I thought I would boggle you all by pointing out that *my* LiveJournal is rated G, or at least it was the last time I checked.

28 June: Bujold signing in Mountain View

Lois McMaster Bujold is signing at Books Inc in Mountain View at 7:30 pm on Friday evening. Since this is about fifteen minutes walk from my house, I am inclined to go and fangirl. :-) Anyone else interested? Possibly with dinner on Castro Street beforehand?

28 June: Timelash on DVD

Bad wig alert!!!

That great and wonderful Classic Who story, Timelash, is now available for pre-order at Amazon UK, at a great pre-order price of nine quid. For this price you get the Sixth Doctor, *and* a space rebel doing a Richard the Third impersonation! In a bad wig!

Doctor Who - Timelash [1985]

(Explanatory note for the bewildered -- this story is notoriously bad. It also had Paul Darrow, who played Avon in Blake's 7, amongst the guest cast. Thus it is the subject of mockery from both fandoms.)

28 June: belated squee

Oh yes. The Who episode on KTEH last night was the one with the "Ladies, your viewing figures just went up" scene.

Pity it got censored by the Powers That Be, but it was still enjoyable. :-)

Shallow, me?

26 June: tomato smugness

Harvested, and ate, the first tomato of the season yesterday. It was a 115g specimen from the Patio Dwarf, and a good flavour, though nothing outstanding.

We ate it as part of the salad accompanying the cold steak of wild-caught King salmon I'd cooked at the weekend. WholeWallet had the wild-caught on special offer so that it was only moderately more expensive than the farmed Atlantic salmon, and at the moment wild-caught is more environmentally friendly than farmed unless I can find organic farmed, which I can't round here. However, it was worth the extra money in taste as well as guilt factor.

The first Mamma Mia plum tomato has been colouring up since Friday, and will be ready to eat in a day or two. There are a couple more fruit on the Patio Dwarf just starting to colour, so we're definitely getting into tomato season now. I'm not sure about whether the anonymous variety in one of the pots is about to ripen, because I have no idea what it is and therefore am not sure what colour it's supposed to be. It was labelled as a Yellow Pear, but the fruit is salad-sized rather than cherry-sized, and it looks to be a determinate plant, so one thing it definitely isn't is a Yellow Pear.

What is thoroughly annoying is that the Brandywine and the beefsteak are not setting fruit at all. Not a single one. Big healthy plants with lots of blossom, but it doesn't come to anything. Good thing I got more plants than I expected to need for actual amount of fruit consumed, because I wanted to try a lot of varieties. There are still half a dozen plants that *are* earning their keep.

25 June: Money, money, money

Received my cheque for the story that was accidentally dropped from an anthology. Also received my royalty statement from Loose Id, which included a pleasing milestone -- Dolphin Dreams has now earned over $2000 in royalties, in its first nine or ten weeks on sale. Yes, that's still small press level, but it's also the level RWA has set in place as a requirement for individual authors to be considered for professional membership. They've been reworking some of their membership requirements, and PAN membership now requires an author to earn $2000 from a single title within a two year period. Getting that amount in the book's first quarter is rather gratifying.

24 June: Dear Author on Triskelion bankruptcy

Jane at Dear Author goes over the whys and wherefores of the Triskelion contract, and explains why the bankruptcy clause in the contract does not guarantee that the authors get their rights back:
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/06/24/authors-rights-when-a-publisher-files-bankruptcy/

There was a long discussion about various things including this a few years ago at Making Light, after Teresa offered up an example of Very Bad Advice that was being promoted at the message board of a well-known vanity press:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002703.html
Of particular note are the comments at 4, 44, 46 and 49.

24 June: spoilers

I would like to remind people that not everyone is either in the UK or busy pulling Who episodes off bittorrent. Which means that some of us who have to wait for our Who fix would appreciate it if those of you who have seen the latest episode would put big fat spoilers like who is playing a returning character behind marked cut-tags on LJ, and on the spoilerific-channel on #afp. [glares at various culprits].

23 June: RWA legal advice re Triskelion

Dear Author has put up a copy of RWA's legal advice to the authors caught up in the Triskelion bankruptcy.

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/06/23/triskelion-update-rwa-responds-to-triskelion-closing/

22 June: Triskelion folds

It occurs to me that there may be people reading who have an interest and have not yet heard -- the erotic romance epublisher Triskelion is declaring bankruptcy, and officially closes on July 2nd. There is some useful discussion at Dear Author:
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/06/20/triskelion-publishing-closes-its-doors/
and later details at
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/06/20/triskelion-bankruptcy-update-contract-clause/

Jane has said that she will post an article about some of the consequences for the contracts of authors (no, they *won't* necessarily get their rights back) on Sunday.

Note that Triskelion was an RWA-approved publisher. RWA approval means that a publisher meets certain minimum standards, but it is no guarantee that the publisher is long-term viable. It is a good guide and is a factor to take into consideration when looking for a publisher, but you still need to do your homework, as even established publishers can run into trouble. There were clear warning signs a month back, when RWA took action over concerns raised by members, and rumblings before that. Always check out a publisher (or agent) before submitting, ideally in several places. And always think about what's being said -- sometimes aggrieved authors really do kick up a row over nothing simply because they feel slighted, even if that can also be a convenient excuse for a publisher caught behaving badly.

21 June: Happier now

Well, that's cheered me up... I don't discuss most of my reviews, but I think I'll mention that I've just received my first ever Recommended Read from a review site: http://www.joyfullyreviewed.com/reviews/RRs/June07RR/LordAndMaster.JJ.html

Of course, it would be for my first contemporary romance rather than one of the cross-genre books. :^)

21 June: bother

I should have asked "where's my contract?" sooner. It turns out that the editor *did* send the contract for the story I sold to a Haworth anthology -- but to the wrong address. It is alas too late to get the story back in the anthology, but he has apologised profusely and very decently said he will pay me anyway. So I'm not out the money, or technically the credit for the sale; but it would have been nice to have the exposure.

In fact, it would have been nice to have the anthology to wave at people. I wanted to be in this anthology because it was a science fiction market, and I've mostly sold to romance and erotica markets. I have never yet actually seen print in what is, when all's said and done, my home genre. I've *sold* things, yes -- but this isn't the first time I've been paid for something that then doesn't actually appear. I'm starting to feel jinxed.

In other anthology submission news, last month I got my annual "no, but please keep submitting" rejection from Maxim Jakobowski for the Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica. It arrived during Baycon, which is why I forgot to post about it at the time.

Back to http://ralan.com and http://www.erotica-readers.com/ERA/G/Call_For_Submissions.htm -- I have other stories I need to find a home for anyway...

20 June: Promises to Keep at Fictionwise

Loose Id has just added some more of its catalogue to Fictionwise, including my vampire short Promises to Keep. The new books are currently discounted by 15%, so right now it's $1.69, or $1.44 for Club members. The story was released by Loose Id a couple of years back, but if you haven't got it yet and would like to buy it through Fictionwise, you'll find it here: http://fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook47242.htm

19 June: There is always one more bug

Yesterday I re-read one of my older books, as I've just sent off the renewal on its contract and thought it might be as well to assess whether it has any potential to be sold to a bigger publisher now that some of them are starting to notice the market for original slash and yaoi. It's a good book and it was as well written as I was capable of at the time; but that was two years and a couple of hundred thousand words ago. So time to re-assess it now that I have some emotional distance from it.

I re-read this book's manuscript more than once before I sent it to my editor, doing as much self-editing as I could. My editor read it carefully, and covered it with electronic red ink. It went to a line-editor. Then it went t