Stacia Kane

I’m here!

I do apologize for not updating for so long; I am fine and feeling great, I’ve just been extremely busy finishing edits on CHASING MAGIC, working on edits of the short Downside story HOME (which will be published on Tor’s Heroes and Heartbreakers website), and working on a new project, in addition to the whole holiday thing.

Which was awesome. I cooked a lot. I made chicken stock from the carcass of our Yule roasted chicken. I made our now-traditional beef bourguingnon for Christmas day. I made a lasagna bolognese from scratch–long-simmered bolognese sauce and bechamel sauce–for New Year’s Day that was so gorgeous I wish I’d taken photos. I made a couple of batches of fudge crinkle cookies; I made Snickerdoodles; I made molasses spice cookies, some with white chocolate glaze and some with orange-flavored white chocolate glaze; I made pumpkin spice cookies with a vanilla-cinnamon frosting.

And we went out, a LOT, to do all of the shopping which had fallen by the wayside because of my recovery and the fact that hubs had to take a lot of unpaid time off work when I was in the hospital.

But it was a lovely holiday overall, a more fun and relaxing one than I’ve had in a while.

Oh! And, I played Dungeons & Dragons for the very first time! See, when I was a kid my big brother was a huge D&D head, but of course he never let me play with him and his friends. And I had the occasional boyfriend who played but generally when I’d go to their games they spent four hours creating characters, at which point I was bored.

But the hubs and I have a dear friend who used to play it with hubs when they were kids and he–the friend–still loves to play (he’s a Dungeon Master, which means, for those unfamiliar, that he “runs” the game), so he and his wife (also a dear friend of course) came over for spanakopita and adventure. He’d even created some characters for us in advance, which was so sweet of him. I was Lola Dragonslut, a warrior with semi-low intelligence but great charisma, and we explored a bunch of tunnels where there was supposed to be treasure. We didn’t finish the game, but we had a blast. Tons of fun; I’m looking forward to playing again.

Also, I got lots of pretty new nail polish for Christmas, so I’m hoping to start the fingernail posts again! This week my nails are peach with sparkles.

And…this morning I had an endoscopy done, a follow-up from the whole surgery thing. I’d warned them about my horrible gag reflex, and they’d promised to sedate me since the whole idea freaked me out. The upshot of all of this was that I don’t remember a thing from “You’ll start to feel drowsy in twenty seconds or so” to “Time to wake up!” But according to the nurse I talked the whole time, although they couldn’t understand a word (she said this with a bit of a giggle, which worries me. Could they really not understand me, or was I saying horribly dirty and rude things?). And according to the “Findings and Actions” sheet I was given, the intubation was “poorly tolerated” and they had to do it a second time, so there’s that gag reflex.

The bad news is the ulcer isn’t completely healed, so it’s back on ulcer meds for Stacia for another ten weeks, and another endoscopy when that ten weeks is over. Which sucks.

But again, the good news is I feel just fine and am back in the saddle. Well, it’s good news for me, and hopefully you think so, too.

There have been quite a few rant-worthy things happening lately, and I may blog about them soon. For the moment suffice to say that readers and reviewers have every right to express their opinions about books without authors responding in comments to tell them how wrong they are. (This also goes back to my posts about how once you’re published you can no longer use the “but I’m a reader, and I’m commenting as a reader” line, but again, something to possibly be blogged about later.)

So for now I’ll just say I hope you all had a wonderful holiday, and I’m hoping 2012 is a great year for all of us!

I just realized that there’s less than a month to go until the (August 2nd) release of HOME IMPROVEMENT: UNDEAD EDITION, the latest Charlaine Harris/Toni L.P. Kelner-edited urban fantasy anthology, and the one featuring–ta da!–a brand new Downside story, called RICK THE BRAVE!

I’m very excited about the story (which is a little different, and hopefully you’ll all get as much of a kick out of reading it as I did writing it), and of course *very* excited about the anthology (already getting great reviews), which features much, much bigger-and-better-than-me writers like Charlaine and Toni, Patricia Briggs, Heather Graham, Melissa Marr…you know, people of whom readers in general have actually heard. I *may* go ahead and send a snippet of it out to the Downside Army later.

Speaking of which, there are over 500 members now! I know it’s not a patch on what other, way more successful writers have, but I’m proud of it. And I’m hoping to get some activity going on in there soon, as we gear up for the release of SACRIFICIAL MAGIC, among other things (she says mysteriously).

It’s a bit weird for me, though, the whole “street team” concept. We were discussing it on a forum I’m a member of the other day, and I thought, you know, it’s hard for me to ask or even suggest that the DA members do anything to promote the books; not to mention, what do I ask them to do? Granted, by signing up they indicated a willingness to do things, and granted, there’s no obligation to do things in order to be a member, but…I think especially given some of the issues that have been had online in the last few years with writers expecting readers to do things for them, it feels bizarre for me to ask for any sort of promo help or anything like that. But I’m trying to come up with something, because there are a few things coming along the pike that it would be great if word could be spread about (she says mysteriously again). So if anyone has any ideas, feel free to share. I have a few of my own, as well, so we’ll see.

Also…on a completely different subject…quite a few people yesterday saw my tweet mentioning that my father-in-law has died. I really, really appreciate the replies and the expressions of sympathy. It’s an odd situation, really, because without going into detail we’ve been estranged from the man for a few years now; my husband did get to speak to him back at Christmas, and we’d hoped the relationship could be rebuilt, but it wasn’t something the FIL was particularly interested in. He was often a difficult man to deal with, and a stubborn one, and he’d gotten involved with a person who would much prefer my husband and I not be around and did everything she could to make that happen. Sadly, it worked.

All of this is my roundabout way of saying we’d actually dealt with this loss several years ago, so while this is a shock, and a sad one, we’re okay. It’s another reminder, though, that life is short; too short to let petty differences get in the way of things. I know the hubs feels much better knowing that at Xmas he reached out and tried to mend things; it doesn’t make him feel less rejected, or less sad about how difficult their relationship always was, but it does mean he can take comfort in knowing that he was able to tell his dad he loved him that one last time, that he proved himself to be the bigger man by making the gesture.

So thanks to those of you who saw the tweet and said something, and to the few people who emailed me, and thanks to those of you who’ve read this little exercise in navel-gazing, but please don’t feel you need to leave a comment here or anything like that. Perhaps it’s presumptuous of me but I’m going to take your sympathy as a given (since you’re all such awesome people) and just issue a blanket thank-you, and don’t worry about commenting on it; not because I don’t care or don’t want to hear it but because I’d rather we discuss and think about more cheerful things, like new Downside stories and fun activities and being kind to people we love (and to those we don’t love, too, for that matter). How does that sound?

We went shooting today!

There’s a Sharpshooters shooting range maybe fifteen minutes up the road from us; I’ve never actually even noticed the place before, but there it is. And I didn’t know we were going there today; the hubs set it all up as a surprise for me. It’s been years since I’ve shot a gun–and the last time was with rifles at cans in a field–so I was pretty excited about this.

It was just as much fun as I remembered it being.

The gun range is kind of a weird place to be. Not in a scary way, but in one of those “These people are all so friendly and nice but they could drop you in a heartbeat” kind of way. Like the lane attendants who were really friendly and helpful but who had loaded guns in holsters on their waists, I guess in case somebody decided the power was just too much for them and they were going to open fire on people. It’s kind of dimly lit in there, too, and since you have those super earmuffs on everything is very subdued. It took me a few minutes to stop jumping when people fired, just because I still hadn’t acclimated.

It was kind of like stepping into another world, a little. A world where the wording of the Second Amendment is printed on the walls around the room, and people take “personal defense” very, very seriously. I don’t say that to make fun or anything, at all. It’s just that like with any other specialist kind of place, the sudden focus on one particular item or issue or whatever can be a bit jarring. But seriously, a nicer bunch of people you’d never want to meet; everyone was friendly, everyone was excited to see us and help us and everyone sincerely hoped we had fun and that we’d come back, which I totally want to do. They even have a Ladies Night, which you can bet I’m going to attend as soon as I can.

First we rented a Glock; the Glock 19, to be exact. Which was fun, but…eh. I wasn’t crazy about the Glock, to be honest. The grip was texturized even up the back, which meant it irritated the skin between my thumb and forefinger, you know that web of skin there? Firing the Glock made it reddish and kind of itchy, and I didn’t like that.

Aside from that, though, the Glock was fun. We bought 50 rounds and went through them in about twenty minutes, taking turns (we’d load 5 rounds into the clip, fire them, then hand off). What’s cool about that place is that in addition to the “classic” targets, you can also choose a burly prowler or several zombies at which to shoot.

We chose Zombie Steve. Read the rest of this entry »

(Most of you know Michele, I think; she’s a writer and reviewer, and someone I’m lucky to count as a friend. Don’t miss her Book Love website.)

Doin’ it All Anyway

by Michele Lee

So at this point a lot of you are wondering just who I am and why I’ve taken over Stacia’s blog. My name is Michele Lee. I’m an author (HWA qualified, but not SFWA, and an anthology featuring one of my shorts is Stoker nominated this year), a reviewer (for Dark Scribe Magazine, Monster Librarian and The Letter), editor (zombie review editor for Monster Librarian, though I have fanzine editing experience as well) and I’m a bookseller for Borders (at least until April when our store closes). About the only thing I haven’t done in publishing, other than the whole bestselling author with a three book deal gig, is agenting, and that’s because no one’s offered me the opportunity.

I’m here today because I am exactly the kind of person certain internet folk are claiming that Stacia and the YA Mafia say shouldn’t exist, and reasonably, I take issue with that. First of all, YA Mafia? Pu-lease, in the horror ghetto where I was spawned we have the Cabal, which has been ruining careers and sacrificing puppies to elder gods when they should have been writing for over ten years. I call your mafia and raise you ancient cannibal fauns, nasal parasites and zombie-fucking-apocalypses.

But I digress…much like the original discussion started about Stacia’s blog.

Here’s the down and dirty point I think she was trying to make: People treat you differently after you’ve been published. People treat you differently when you have book cred. They take your words wrong. They put intent there that wasn’t. And for some reason just because an author has a book or two to their name their opinion weighs heavier even when it’s still only their opinion and they’re still only people who don’t know everything.

That aside, let’s look at the real reason I’m here: Can authors also be reviewers?

Well, sure they can. Many of them do. Charlaine Harris recommends books on her blog all the time. Zadie Smith just took over the book column in Harper magazine and have you heard of a place called Publishers Weekly? Many authors have reviewed, anonymously and not, for PW.

Can if affect your career? Absolutely. It would be silly to assume it wouldn’t. Once you set out to have a career everything can affect it. Sitting around watching TV can affect your career, particularly if you’re not writing when you should be and Tweeting snide comments when you shouldn’t be.

Can they co-exist? Carefully they can.

I started reviewing after my second short story was published. I was looking for a way to get and stay involved in the publishing community, even when I didn’t have a story coming out. I was looking, like all budding authors, for a little legitimacy. Let me make this clear though, reviewing was always part of my plan of attack when it came to building a career.

Here’s why:

Reviewing makes me read. A lot. Things I never would have picked up on my own. Things I loved and had to dial down the fangirl in order to assess. Things I hated and had to neutrally assess the pros and cons of.
Reviewing made me have to think, really think, about the elements of a story and why it worked or failed for me. Which in turn made me think about the elements of my own stories, whether they were as effective as they needed to be.

Reviewing for other people means I have to meet deadlines, both in actually doing the reading and in sending in my analysis.

Review editing pushes me to be more firm in my publishing presence. I have to made myself more comfortable with (or just able to fake it better) approaching authors, publishers and editors for review copies, interviews and other interactions. In short I can’t flake out when I’m feeling insecure because people are depending on me to do my job. And since those same people are the ones I work with in my personal writing I figure if I can ask them to send me free copies of books and do interviews with me I can ask them to add my query to the pile they’re already reading anyway.

Also, complete cheat here, as a writer knowing the market, supporting it, reading it helps me target my submissions better. What I’m reviewing is the same people I’m submitting to, so I can better target my submissions by sending to the places putting out work I like or am impressed by. Reviewing is market research (albeit harder than just buying magazines and reading them).

So what are some of the cons?

Reviewing sucks up as much time as writing. More if you let it because lots more people want you to read and review their work than want to read yours. And if you get stuck in a slump where you just need to feel like you’re moving forward adding more reviews to your credits and crossing things off your to do list feels a lot better than sending out another round of subs on a story that’s been out there for a year.

You have to read some bad stuff. Really bad stuff. That makes you want to cry, especially when you think about your poor rejected manuscript making the circuit, yet this is published. Also you have to read some really good stuff that isn’t going to get the attention it deserves because it’s not the current trend, or is a small press release that most people will never learn about.

Yeah, people get upset if you don’t like their work. Usually they don’t ever say anything to your face, they just quietly stop talking to you, or give you a polite cold shoulder if you meet them face to face, if anything at all. Why does being a published writer make someone not a human capable of disappointment? (Not that being disappointed means you should plaster it all over the intarnets.) You do have to consider what happens if you don’t like a book. Sometimes it’s not worth it to publicly state that you didn’t like the book. (Even though yes, negative reviews do sell books.) Other times the editor you’re reviewing for expects you to be honest. Honest doesn’t equal cruel. Usually if you treat it like a job you must be professional at, meaning mention positives as well as negative, consider who the audience would be, if it isn’t you, and avoid personal statements (“This books is…” not “this author is…”) and true nastiness you’ll be okay.

However bad reviews aren’t the only ones that can hurt you. What if publishers get hooked on the idea of you as a reviewer who is predisposed to like their work and decides to keep sending you things to review, and likewise rejects your work because they’d rather have you supporting them as a reviewer rather than having to support you as a writer? It happens, and it sucks. Just like writers can get pigeon-holed by fans into writing the same kinds of stories, reviewer-writers can get trapped in the role of reviewer and be completely unrecognized as a writer.

You can burn out faster if you’re playing writer and reviewer. You can get tired of seeing the same thing over and over. You can find yourself too tired of a genre to keep writing in it. When something becomes business, much less double business, it’s easier to get bored with it and groan when you see another zombie decorated cover with “Dead [Insert random word here]” in dripping gore letters on the cover.

Books are a solid, holdable thing, but publishing is an industry built on ideas. It is too vast., too varied, to wild a thing to be determined and controlled by a handful of people. Publishing is a sieve, and there are too many agents, editors, publishers, self publishers, magazines, anthologies and webzines for someone to be completely locked out of it by one or a handful of people.

Top that off with the insane crazy busy of the industry and expecting there to be some sort of collection of people who can be successful AND have time to blackball people is like expecting the ocean to stay still for a picture because you asked it to.

Yeah it’s easy to screw up if you’re trying to be a reviewer and a writer. The big mistake is not expecting the two to affect each other. But if they are both aspects of your job, a job you go about as professionally as you would a day job in every aspect that you can, they can coexist. The key is professionalism, and remembering to keep an eye on the overall goal, not letting the individual parts run themselves with abandon.

Someday I will probably have to make the decision between one or the other. Maybe it will be a happy occasion, because I’ll be forced to chose because I have a multi-book deal at auction and have to focus on writing. But I don’t ever expect that I’ll stop recommending the books I love to people. How and why I do it, though, is something that takes more care and consideration the more “well known” I am.

Before I start I want to make something really, really clear. This post is NOT about any specific review outlet/magazine/blog/website. It is NOT claiming this is the case for all reviewers, in all places, or that this is a constant. And most importantly it is NOT saying reviewers can’t feel about a book however they want to, or view it through any lens they want to, or whatever else. I also want to make it absolutely, positively clear that I am thrilled beyond words at how readers and reviewers in general have taken to my books and characters; this isn’t about some sort of personal grudge on my behalf, not at all. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I’ve seen several other people discussing it recently, so wanted to stick my nose in.

I also want to mention something else, because judging from a couple of comments I need to clarify. The story about bookstore shelving was one small indie bookstore. This has nothing to do with where books are shelved. It’s about the perceptions of those books once purchased/the standards by which they are judged/the dismissal of them. But it’s not about where they’re shelved at all.

What kinds of books do women write?

I know, I know. Women write all kinds of books. But it seems–from a very extensive search I’ve done over the last few weeks/months of various bookseller sites/review sites/magazines/databases/blogs/whatever elses, that books written by women are far, far more likely to be categorized as romance, reviewed as romance, and judged by romance standards, than are books written by men.

In a Twitter discussion about this (Twitter use update: I’ve been using Hootsuite the last few days because Seesmic has a slight tendency to balk when I leave it up all the time, which I do; it’s always the second tab in my browser. I do miss the little crunch noise, though, and will be going back to Seesmic; I like switching back and forth between them, but Seesmic is the main one I use) someone told me about a bookstore near them where any books written by women that have any sort of romance subplot or whatever–including sci-fi and of course urban fantasy–are shelved as romance. Period. SFF written by men is SFF, no matter how big the romance subplot is. But if the author has ladyparts, it’s romance.

I’ve talked before here about the frustration of women’s books–urban fantasy in particular–being categorized/called/dismissed “chick books” just because there are sex scenes in them or just because finding love/romance is part of the story. And how romance is often a subplot in books written by men, too, but those books are not dismissed or judged as romances, and why it is that women’s books are denigrated as “not real fantasy” if they contain stronger romance elements but those written by men aren’t.

Neil Gaiman’s STARDUST, for example, is still called and reviewed as Fantasy, despite its incredibly strong romance plot/subplot. But I’ve seen Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy series called and reviewed as Romance. Why? What’s the difference? Carey calls her books Fantasy. Gaiman calls his book(s) Fantasy. Why is his categorization honored and hers isn’t? More to the point, why do reviews of his book–including reviews written by women, too–focus on the writing and story, whereas reviews of Carey’s books focus on the romance?

In her book How to Suppress Women’s Writing, Joanna Russ–herself a fantasy/sci-fi author, among other things–uses as one of her methods “False Categorizing.” She says:

It is bad faith that stands behind what I shall call Denial by False Categorizing, a complicated now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t sleight of hand in which works or authors are belittled by assigning them to the “wrong” category, or arranging the categories so the majority of “wrong” Glotolog fall into the “wrong” category without anyone’s having to do anything further about the matter.

Later, she elaborates a little further:

The assignment of genre can also function as false categorizing, especially when the work appears to fall between established genres and can thereby be assigned to either (and then called an imperfect example of it) or chided for belonging to neither.

Does this sound familiar?

Again, reviewers have every right to bring their own tastes, thoughts, and opinions to a review; honestly, this really isn’t about reviews or reviewers as such. It’s more about genre itself. But what’s happening is, every time a work of literature, or a work of fiction in a genre that is not romance is reviewed as a romance, that author is being denied her agency; she is being denied the right to have her work seen on its own merits, and is instead being forced back into a particular box. In other words, her work is being denigrated not because it isn’t a good or worthwhile example of what it is, but because it’s not a good or worthwhile example of something it never claimed to be.

This is akin to giving Schindler’s List a bad review because it isn’t funny enough, or complaining about Caddyshack because the viewer didn’t find it scary. That these films never claimed or set out to be funny or scary doesn’t matter; the work isn’t being judged by how well it is what it’s supposed to be, but by the standards of something completely alien–standards which may even be totally unknown to the filmmakers.

Is this a way of suppressing women’s writing?

How many books by men do you see re-categorized in this fashion, either as women’s fiction or romance or whatever?

I often see Lolita discussed when the topic of underage sex comes up in regards to romance. And the very correct argument is made that Lolita is not a romance, and therefore should not be judged by romance standards. But do you think the difference would be so clearly and carefully mentioned if Lolita was called Laurence, and was written by Valentina Nabakov? Do you think people would avoid mentioning how sad and saggy Humbertina Humbertina was, how desperate to recapture her youth, how sexually useless she was, being past her sell-by date?

Of course, I am chiefly talking about genre fiction here, since it’s where my experience is and what I read, so it’s what I pay more attention to. But I honestly can’t recall the last time I saw Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden novels dismissed as “chick books” or downgraded in reviews because the reader didn’t fall in love with the main love interest in whatever story. I don’t remember seeing Mike Carey’s Felix Castor novels treated that way either. But I see lots of urban fantasies by women being downgraded for exactly that reason.

It’s not just the romance or lack thereof, though. It’s the “unwritten rules of romance” which are applied to women’s books but not men’s. And they’re applied not just by reviewers, not by a long shot (like I said, this really isn’t about reviewers) by society in general, who insists on shoving books into certain boxes or classifying them/their main characters as “good” or “bad” according to a strict set of rules.

It’s about how male characters–in any genre–can sleep around and their exploits are cheered; it even makes them more desirable, but a promiscuous heroine–again, in any genre–is looked down upon. Not only is she disliked for her sexual escapades, but it’s automatically taken as a sign of some intrinsic weakness in her character, i.e. she obviously needs sexual approval to feel whole, or she obviously has no self-respect.

The promiscuous heroine is unlikable–and worse than unlikable, she is unworthy–simply because she likes sex, and likes to have it with whomever strikes her fancy, at any time she feels the urge. Again, whereas the promiscuous hero is applauded; he is an object of desire. Getting him to settle down is the chief achievement of the heroine in those romances or romance subplots, in fact (of course, it should be in a genre romance). Every woman’s dream is to make him settle down, and if any negative mention is made of his bed-hopping past it’s made with a sort of wink, a boys-will-be-boys sigh. Either that, or his past promiscuity is made much of, but it’s made clear that this sort of prudery is part of the heroine’s prim/uptight character. She’s generally a virgin, or someone who’s only slept with one or two men, and she generally has other very straight-laced views and thoughts.

The hero’s promiscuity is an aspect of his character, which may or may not have consequences. The heroine’s promiscuity is a flaw, one she usually must answer for.

It’s also about how male characters can be distant or cold, even in some cases borderline psychotic/sociopathic, but they’re still regarded as likable and appealing. Whereas a cold and/or distant heroine is regarded with hostility and suspicion, because women are “supposed” to be kind/loving/feeling/friendly/caring.

Male characters can be intrinsically violent; shoot first, ask questions later, and readers approve. When female characters are like this they’re called “too angry” or “flies off the handle too fast” or, again, just plain “unlikable.”

A man whose morality is relative is morally relative. A woman whose morals are relative is morally vacant.

And yes, when male characters have drinking or substance abuse problems very little mention is made of it–the hard-drinking detective is a genre staple, in fact–but for a female character to do the same makes her a bad or unworthy person, one who should be ashamed of herself.

Does whether or not the author is a man or a woman make a difference as to how these characters are perceived? What do you think?

What about if the main character is a man or a woman? I haven’t seen any reviews of K.A. Stewart’s A Devil in the Details (which is excellent, btw, and has a male MC) called romance or put down for being UF, but J.F. Lewis’s Staked was dismissed by quite a few people simply because it has a woman on the cover, regardless of the fact that the MC is a man; and some people who did expect it to be a romance judged it rather harshly because it isn’t, although, again, it never claimed to be..

How much of a difference does it make if the reviewer or reader is a man or a woman? I see far less slut-shaming coming from men/male reviewers than I do female ones, but I also see men/male reviewers as quicker to dismiss books by women unread because it “looks like a romance,” or to cast it aside as a romance because there is a sex scene in it or a romantic subplot, as if romance isn’t a valid genre in and of itself or one that may have some worth to men (again, I discussed all of that this summer, and how I don’t understand male dismissal of romance or of UF by calling it romance, or the sort of “eeew cooties” mentality which seems to often go along with that dismissal). Again, that may simply be where I’m looking.

How much of this do you think is because of the blending of genres? Perhaps because the genres have blended a bit to a certain degree, readers/reviewers/whomever are paying less attention to authorial intent/classification (although again, it seems men’s wishes/thoughts in that regard are taken more seriously and heeded far more).

I just find this all saddening, and disturbing. I find the way women tend to put down other women for not conforming to be very disturbing, and always have; it’s been an issue with a direct effect on me my whole life, quite frankly. And while I stopped caring about shit like “fitting in” or being accepted by people who were essentially unpleasant, or whose entire achievements were that they had very shiny hair, or people who were narrow-minded that anyone who had a different viewpoint or opinion on an issue was automatically worthy of insult or simply stupid/lying/whatever–people who felt they had a right to judge others and/or the choices of others based on the presumption that everyone had the same privileges, possibilities, educations, finances, lives, cultures, etc. as they did–it still disturbs me. (In fact, I read a fantastic quote the other day that summed up my feelings on it exactly. It’s from Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film (which is tons of fun, btw, and the authors definitely know their shit) which reads: Acceptance from the fascist hierarchy is death of the spirit.

This sums up pretty much my whole life.)

I certainly don’t intend to blame anyone for this. My thought is more to examine it. Is this something we do, consciously or unconsciously? How guilty are we all of doing it? It’s not something isolated; it’s pretty widespread. And I believe that the person ultimately hurt by this is the reader, because they’re not being given accurate pictures of what the books are and are not; the romance reader who grabs a book from the romance shelf in the bookstore mentioned above, only to discover it’s not in fact a romance, will be pretty angry, and they have every right to be.

And is this inevitable? Are we all going to judge a main character according to our specific 21st-century Western middle-class/upper-middle class standards, with no regard for time period/world/adversity suffered/whatever else? (This is part of another discussion, actually, the one about characters in historical novels being surprisingly PC or about books written hundreds of years ago being rewritten to make them more “acceptable” to modern audiences.)

What do you think? Have you see instances of this lately? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

First, lookie! The German version of UNHOLY MAGIC, which will be published by Egmont Lyx in July 2011, has a cover! And a new title. SEELENZORN, which as far as I can tell means either Angry Souls or Soul’s Anger or something like that. (Also, Egmont is calling the books the “Ghostbusters series,” which is awesome and yet very scary in a trademark-infringement sort of way. So, um, I’m not the one calling it that, okay, Sharp Hawk-Eyed Lawyers? Totally not me.) Anyway, here it is:

Sigh, no bangs. But it's still cool.

There’s a blog, a review-and-interview-and-everything-books blog, called Floor to Ceiling books, and Magemanda, the lovely lady who runs it, has posted her Best Of… list for 2010. Guess who’s on it? Me! Well, me, for “Breakthrough Novelist,” which she says is in part because of YOU, and the fantastic little community you guys have made! So thank you all so much. Also–and I know this part will interest you far more–Chess and Terrible won for “Best Kiss.” Nice, huh? She doesn’t say which book it’s for, though, so I’ll ask you guys. What was the best kiss?

And I know you’re all dying to hear how my Twitter odyssey ended. It hasn’t. I did look into Destroy Twitter, which I liked the look of quite a bit–I loved that you could customize it and pick different themes. Unfortunately, not only is the info/FAQ/etc on the site really sparse, to the point where I had no idea what the thing would even DO unless I downloaded it and actually started running it, it was also a download program. Which makes me think it’s a opens-in-its-own-window thing, which as we know, I don’t want.

So it’s down to Hootsuite and Seesmic. I’m actually liking both of them. I’ve hooked up my Facebook page to Seesmic, so I’ve actually gotten a few FB updates in yesterday and today, which is nice. I don’t know if I’ll make Seesmic my only program, though. I do like it. The more I use it the more I like it.

The problem is, the more I use Hootsuite the more I like it, too. They both have things I really like and things I don’t like as much; the bad part is those things complement each other. Like I don’t like Hootsuite’s DM thing, because it doesn’t automatically show me the ones I send. But I like Hootsuite’s photo uploader much better. Plus Hootsuite has that cute little owl. But Seesmic’s FAQ etc. is more comprehensive. Seesmic allows me to quote part of someone’s tweet, and–I LOVE this–when you go to someone’s profile it tells you if they’re following you as well as whether you’re following them. So it’ll say, “This user and you follow each other,” or whatever, which I’ve always thought Twitter should do. But Hootsuite has some cool Google Chrome extensions available, whereas Seesmic has none. I love that neither of them force me to look at people they think I’d be interested in following. I detest that.

So I don’t know. For the moment I’m keeping them both open in separate tabs and switching back and forth between them, basically.

Also, an update on the Downside Market. I’m basically waiting to get bigger versions of the original designs, because some of them look really small on the shirts etc., and we don’t want that. I’m also going to get white ones to go on black or dark-colored shirts. I’m trying to make as many color options available as possible.

And I’m doing a few more with text, because that’s a bit cheaper, so again, lots of color options. I’m trying to get maybe a few Downspeech phrases in there, just some sort of fun stuff. And some of the really basic shirts are very inexpensive, which makes me happy. I’m also expanding the UF stuff a bit, more pro-genre/genre-related shirts.

And of course, if anyone out there wants to do some designs, please send them in! And if your design goes into the store I’ll send you a shirt. You can find the specifications right here, if you’re interested.

Oh, and I’m ripping out and rewriting like 40k words on Downside 4. More explosions! More violence! More dying! I’m hoping it’ll be a really good time when it’s done.

I think that’s all the updates I have for the moment.

Thanksgiving. I know it’s fashionable to hate Thanksgiving, but I actually don’t. I like cooking, especially the kind of big elaborate meal that I don’t bother with most of the time. I particularly enjoy any sort of dessert made with pumpkin, so the holidays are right up my alley; last weekend I made a pumpkin pie and a pumpkin bread pudding with toffee sauce, which was seriously amazing.

And usually it’s just me, the hubs, and the girls for Thanksgiving, which is nice. We eat–I don’t actually like turkey, but I’ll eat it on Thanksgiving–and we watch our two annual Thanksgiving movies, JAWS and L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. The last few years we’ve also watched the Saturday Night Live Christmas special.

And I admit, one of the most enjoyable things about Thanksgiving–about the holidays in general, really–is that no one thinks it’s odd if you start drinking at noon, and you can spend the entire day in a tipsy haze, which is most pleasant.

This year we won’t be doing a big dinner, for a number of reasons, chief among them we just don’t have the space to cook all that food. But you know, that’s okay too. One of my favorite Thanksgivings was the year Princess was a baby; she was about three months old, and neither of us felt up to a big celebration. So we had our typical Christmas Eve meal, which is cold cuts and cheeses and crackers and bread, maybe some scalloped potatoes or cocktail meatballs for something hot. I spent the day reading Stephen King’s INSOMNIA and eating corned beef on Ritz crackers, drinking Riesling and sherry (something about this particular holiday lends itself to girly drinks). It was a lovely day.

This year I’ll be working. We’re well over 100k on the fourth Downside book, and the end is in sight, finally. As I said on Twitter yesterday, I think my first draft will end up around 125-130k, and I know I’ll be cutting at least 15 out of that. CITY OF GHOSTS was 110k, so this one will probably end up right around there, maybe a bit longer. I am fairly pleased with it, I am, and wrote a scene I absolutely love the other day, in addition to, I think, one of my favorite lines I’ve ever written, and one of my favorite lines of dialogue I’ve ever written (which came, surprisingly, from Lex, but then he’s surprised me a few times in this one). So I’m chugging along, and I’m nervous about whether you’ll all like it but I’m feeling fairly confident that at the very least you’ll enjoy one particular scene.

Anyway. This is the time, because it’s a Thanksgiving post, when we’re supposed to share what makes us thankful and all that shit. But that’s so cliched, isn’t it? And really, we all say the same thing whether we mean it or not: our families, our health, blah blah blah. Those are all good things to be thankful for, sure, but really, it’s not very personal.

I do have something to be thankful for this year. I have books on the shelves, and I have readers who actually liked them and took the time to let me know, and that’s amazing. You guys have truly made this year one of the best in my entire life, despite the fact that some genuinely lousy things happened to go along with that, sigh, but that’s life. Anyone who expects to have good things happen without paying for them somehow is, well, they’re not living my life, that’s for damn sure.

Still, let’s not tempt fate. Rather than share what we’re thankful for this year, let’s talk about what we’re not thankful for; what we hate about the upcoming holidays, what irritates and annoys us. As always anonymous comments are welcome, if you’re afraid the friend you want to complain about will read where you say you want to smack her if she invites you “shopping” one more time and spends the whole afternoon in one store trying on things for herself.

One thing, though. Let’s keep it light-hearted and apolitical, okay? This is supposed to be fun.

Here’s mine:

1. I hate the insane crowds everywhere. I can’t even go get groceries without fighting my way through gaggles of people standing around staring at displays of green cookies.

2. I hate the fucking spam emails. I get enough email without getting constant offers from every online store I’ve ever shopped at, and every “customer loyalty” points group I’ve ever joined is offering me quadruple points if I will just please give them some money, any money, they don’t care how much, just please give them something and they will shower me with points like some kind of festive points raincloud.

3. I hate the pressure to do family things. Sorry, but I do. All those people around me all the time make me itch.

4. As I mentioned above, I don’t like turkey. I cook and eat it because it’s traditional, and I am obviously such a very traditional sort of girl that I can’t help it. No, seriously, I’m not, but in Thanksgiving dinner I am. It’s the only holiday meal I do according to popular consensus; like I said, our Christmas Eve meal is cold meats, cheese, etc. before we open presents, and Christmas day the last few years I’ve done beef bourgoignonne (or however the hell that’s spelled, I’m too lazy to go check). I do a Yule dinner, roast pork and vegetables, which is also traditional to large degree, but still. Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving, and everyone wants turkey, especially my husband and the Princess who like turkey and never get it because I do the cooking, so too bad for them.

5. I hate the preachy “heart-warming” homilies and shit we’re all supposed to smile and tear up over. Sorry, but suddenly acting like a human being from mid-November to January 1st doesn’t excuse the fact that you’re a completely heartless piece of shit the rest of the year.

How are those? What are yours? Specific ones, general ones? Go ahead and let it out. Let’s screw those holidays together!

We all know I’m pretty tech-stupid. We also know I bought a netbook a while ago. We may also know that I’ve been having problems with Safari (which I use on my Mac) for months and months; it freezes whenever someone even says the word “Flash” in its presence, for example. Or it’ll halt and stick when people have animations in their sig lines on forums. Stuff like that. But of course being tech-stupid–in addition to being someone with a semi-pathological hatred and fear of change–the idea of switching to a new browser made me Very Nervous.

Anyway. Last night I took a little break from working to mess around online. I’ve been using the netbook to write lately; I bought a portable hard drive to use for memory for it (it’s gotten lousy reviews, I see. Personally it works great for me, but again, all I’m using it for is extra memory for the netbook). I find the keyboard on that easier to work on; the keys aren’t as stiff as on the Mac so it’s less painful on my fingers. And–although this may change now–it wasn’t as easy to browse online on the netbook, which meant I focused more on work.

So I decided to do something bold, and download Google Chrome instead of continuing to use IE on the netbook. Yes, it was a crazy move, but I’m just wild that way. I also uninstalled Norton antivirus, because I’m sick to death of being constantly interrupted by it, and installed the Microsoft Malware/Virus tool thingie instead. If I could figure out how to uninstall IE and Netflix I would, because I like uninstalling things and making room.

Anyway. I played with Google Chrome for several hours last night, discussed it a bit on Twitter and io9, and today I decided I like it so much I wanted it on the Mac. So I’m not using it exclusively on the Mac and the netbook, and I’ve installed some nifty extensions (that I had no idea what they were until a Twitter pal and then my io9 pals told me about them and where to go) that make me all happy. It really is MUCH faster than Safari or IE were, and it’s pretty (you can customize the background & colors and stuff) and fun. So I’m recommending it, at least for now, assuming it doesn’t fall apart on me in the weeks to come. It imported all of my bookmarks and saves all of my passwords and does all kinds of nifty things. So I’m happy.

And, I’m about to get back to work. This is a pretty dull little post, I know, but what the heck. I’m in the final stretch of Downside 4–it’s never taken me this long to write a novel before, but hopefully it’ll end up worth it–and can’t really think of much else. All hell is breaking loose, and we have death threats and decayed bodies and nasty witchcraft and ghosts and bloodshed and the requisite personal intrigue and all of that. (And yes, I have used the name of my Name-A-Character-Contest winner.) So I’m at the point now where I’m having tons of fun and I’m about to have a LOT more. Heh heh heh.

And I’ll hopefully have a title to share soon as well; I just sent my editor a big long list of possibilities.

I’ve got a couple of longer ranty posts to go up, but those will have to wait until after the book is finished.

So…I know you’ve all been following the Suvudu story-in-the-round A GLIMPSE OF DARKNESS, right? Of course you have been. How often do you get to tell writers what do do, right? And they have to listen.

Well…it’s my turn. Yes, this week, you get to vote on what you want me to write, and I have to obey.

Kelly Meding’s Chapter Four is here. (If you click the first link provided, you’ll see ALL of the chapters, so you can get all caught up on the story!) At the bottom of Kelly’s installment, you’ll see the poll. What do you want Munira to do? Fight snakes? Head for the door? Or try to make her way through the mysterious and dangerous Pier 12?

Go ahead and vote!! Make me your slave; make me write what YOU want me to write!

VOTING ENDS AT 3 PM EST ON THURSDAY.

After that…well. I’ll have, essentially, 48 hours to write my part. Then there will be about 12 hours in which to edit. And then it goes up. So this is your chance to have me working frantically for you! (Well, I do that anyway, but this time it’s according to what you want.)

So don’t forget to vote!

Also, a quick note about the Downside Market. Now that the pre-order period has ended, items are starting to be printed and will be shipping shortly. And we’re going to be revising the items a bit, eliminating a few, adding a few, according to what did or did not sell. So if you’ve been undecided about something, you only have a couple more days to order it before it possibly disappears completely. Sadly, like the glasses; huge apologies to those of you who ordered them, but the supplier dug in their feet and wanted a pre-order of 72 of them before they would print any (not Southern Promo, but the people who supply the glasses to them). Which would have cost me like $900, considering we had three different varieties of glasses. At some point we hope to get them back up on the site, but for the moment, sadly, we had to cut them. So if you ordered glasses, the money either has already been refunded to you or will be shortly.

We’re also working on getting some options in there that are even less expensive, but still high-quality. So stay tuned for those! And of course, huge thanks to those of you who already ordered!

That’s about it for today. I’m still hard, hard, hard at work on Downside 4, and it’s taken a really exciting turn that’s tons of fun to write. So yay! Of course I’m still a bit behind on it, but I’m optimistic.

Oh, and a really fun discussion was had this weekend on Jezebel, about skin care. I of course extolled the many, many benefits of baking soda as an exfoliant and skin soother (it’s all I’ve used to exfoliate for years), and, even more fun, I had some very lovely conversations with a few ladies there about natural remedies for various complaints. See, back when I was pregnant with the Faerie and had a really impossible time writing, I sought another creative outlet. So I started my own little business, reading Tarot cards and making natural skin/hair/body products. It didn’t go really far, because when the baby came I didn’t have the time to devote to it anymore, of course, and I could write again and wanted to devote myself to that, so I stopped doing it. But it certainly was fun, and it brought me some much-needed cash at the time. (Hmm, maybe I should consider getting back into it!)

So basically, I’ve still got all of this information in my head about various herbal remedies and how to make natural lotions and masks and how to make various types of bath bombs and all of that sort of thing. And I picked up lots of tips and information and advice.

So this weekend I got to pull out a lot of that, and talk about it, and it I really enjoyed myself. And I’m really looking forward to hearing how my suggestions work out for them, and I very much hope they do.

So that’s pretty much it for today.

Don’t forget to visit Suvudu and vote! Make me your slaaaave, baby. I’ll do anything you want. Heh heh heh.

(I don’t know why I bother capitalizing my titles, since the website blog puts them in all caps anyway. But then. livejournal doesn’t. Anyway.)

I spent like 4 hours last night going through all of the shirt designs and picking which items and in what colors to offer them. Most stuff is going to be black, white, red, gray, or pink, with a few baby blues thrown in there. There are a few items that are Girls only (I seriously doubt a man is going to walk around in a few of these) but most stuff is unisex. Everything will be available in babydolls and ringer babydolls, and almost all of those will come in plus sizes up to 2XL; I tried to do the widest range I could, but some clothing items just aren’t offered in as wide a range as I would like. There will be tank tops and spaghetti-strap tanks too; they offered a tank with a shelf bra but I figure my readers are the type who like to show a little strap, heh heh heh. (I certainly do.) And hoodies, since people asked for them.

We’re still on track to get things going by the end of the week. So I’ll be mentioning this again, but let me just say it now first: if you have a logo idea you don’t see, let me know. If something isn’t available on an item you would like, let me know. As I’ve said, I went with Southern Promo rather than a place like Zazzle because I have more control, and I want it to have stuff people will like and want, and I want it to be available at a price people can afford, or so you can even maybe afford more than one thing. That’s worth paying a small monthly fee for it to me.

Also, and this is important. The stuff in the store isn’t the only stuff there will be! I’m working on stuff like bowling shirts and jackets and stuff too, and there will be more designs, and if you’ve done a design and want to see it on a shirt get in touch with me. So please, any thoughts or ideas, anything you’d like to see, let me know. Yes, I’m doing this because it’s fun and everything, but the main reason I’m doing it is because you guys asked for it.

Also, I’m thinking of cutting my hair. While internet shopping last night–without buying, which sucks, I hate shopping when I can’t get anything–I saw a girl with the most adorable hair ever. It’s short, which is different for me (my hair hasn’t been short since my early twenties), but I think I’m going to give it a go. So look for pictures soonish.

Also last night, while I was making the huge long list of products and colors, I was watching the “ID” channel. Does anyone know this channel? “Investigation Discovery.” Really interesting; they most air shows on forensics, or 48 HOURS specials on murders and stuff like that. Shows like that fascinate me, they do. But yesterday I had the ID channel on all day in the background, and right around two am I suddenly realized that I was just creeping myself the fuck out. I went outside for a cigarette and heard a noise; it was probably a bird landing on the porch but in my mind it was a crazed serial killer trying to jump the fence to slaughter me, probably after raping and beating me for good measure. I practically jumped out of my skin; I threw down my smoke and ran back into the house, where I locked both locks.

That’s when I decided maybe it was time to stop watching the ID channel for a little while. Twelve straight hours of murders–usually murders of women–was a little much even for me. So I put in Goodfellas instead, because Goodfellas is fucking awesome. (I worked in a movie theater in high school–one of the best jobs I ever had, seriously, at Wehrenberg Des Peres 4 “Cine’” [which is apparently now some sort of monstrous 24-screen place, but back then it was 4, and I loved it]–and we got Goodfellas when it was released. One day I went in to check the theater for loudnicks–we used to throw them out, the way theater management is supposed to do–and got totally engrossed in it. So I came in on my next day off to watch it. And ended up watching it twice. I’d go up after school to hang out with friends–we all hung out together all the time–and decide to go sit in Goodfellas for a while. I think I must have watched it thirty or forty times before we finally lost it. So, yeah, you could say I like Goodfellas a lot.)

I should play another round of Review Roundup, but I’m not in the mood, and this is just a quick one anyway.