It hit 90F in Phoenix this week. I had a box of artwork in the back of my car that I had to offload, or the contents might suffer in the heat. I drove home from work with that box almost a comfortable presence sitting unseen at my back: until I took it inside the…
Read More Old friends, new roadsSo in (slow) preparation for loading some art on my dormant Handmade at Amazon site, I’ve been doing some research on what’s already there. Some gorgeous, inspirational stuff, worthy of scrutiny. And some…that is not so much. Apparently, in the rush to sign people up, and with possibly not enough experience in the jewelry/handcraft industry,…
Read More Handmade or Buy/Sell?On the eve of several business launches, I am deactivating my Crane Hana FB page. Lest that seem counter-intuitive, let me explain. I barely use it (I might check it once a month). I really do not like a lot of FB’s policies over the ‘Real Name’ issue. Content on FB is not freely available…
Read More Deactivating Facebook pageWell, now that the 1.5 billion-dollar Powerball frenzy is temporarily over in the US, I can admit I’m one of the players that lottery officials hate. I don’t buy many tickets, and when I do, I buy only one per game. The jackpot has to reach a certain level before I even consider spending money…
Read More Lottery FatigueThis will be a stub post until I have all my data and editorial points lined up (and this will be an entry in Filigree’s Rule, too). The summary: If you are a young writer, please don’t engage in elaborate sockpuppet catfishing schemes to get reviews for your novel. At some point it’s going to…
Read More Two Fried Catfish, pleasehttps://www.gofundme.com/jbca6738# A fellow AbsoluteWrite member brought this to my attention. No one’s grandmother should lose her home to fire during Thanksgiving weekend. And if she does, she shouldn’t have to start over without help.
Read More A GoFundMe campaign worth consideringView this post on Instagram Peace for Paris A post shared by Jean Jullien (@jean_jullien) on Nov 13, 2015 at 3:05pm PST
Read More Paris, againMy Twitter feed was all-abuzz today about a post from a rightfully angry YA editor, who’d just heard that certain agents were telling their author clients not to submit diverse books. (Books celebrating non-standard POVs, characters, and situations, regarding race, creed, gender identity or sexual preference.) Or to submit certain kinds of diversity, and not…
Read More Diverting diversity, and other dangersSo, over the last few days, a prolific M/M erotic romance writer has been outed as a multiple serial plagiarist. Since 2010, Laura Harner has self-published 75 books. That’s not unusual in itself, and not a surefire indicator of bad-quality, slammed-out-for-the-bucks writing. I know several legit writers who can keep that pace. But what Harner…
Read More Another day, another plagiaristOh, looky, yet another vanity publisher cuts and runs toward bankruptcy, rather than 1) changing its ways or 2) paying its authors. Australia’s JoJo Publishing was recently profiled in a television program detailing the company’s duplicitous practices. Here’s an article about their attempts at strategic liquidation. And here is the AbsoluteWrite.com thread about them (read…
Read More Case study: JoJo Publishing (Australia)I’m on both services, even though I’m inactive on Triberr and I barely use Twitter. (When I’m near a computer I’m generally writing or doing art, not activities I can easily do with social media windows distracting me.) I don’t use Triberr because when I started it was buggy as hell and hard to use,…
Read More Triberr and retweeting (bad ranty language)Taking a break from the Tour for a quick rant, brought to you by too damn many news items. ‘Offensensitivity‘ is the punchline of a brilliant Bloom County cartoon from back in 1982. It could also be the chilling tagline for a recent host of social actions, from both right and left sides of the…
Read More Offensensitivity, part whatever (adult language)Because, really the link should say it all. Get in on Evil Girlfriend Media’s amazing new anthology about already empowered heroines. You know, women fighters who shield their midsections, pull back their hair, and put on a helmet before crunching swords into each others’ skulls. I have a vested indirect interest in this anthology. Not…
Read More Women In Practical Armor: the KickstarterOkay, I’m shamelessly weepy right now, but I managed to keep the tears down long enough to put an archival cover on a brand-new hardback book that just arrived. What’s the book? The Shepherd’s Crown, the last ‘Tiffany Aching’ novel from Terry Pratchett. The final Discworld novel. I’ve blathered on about him before, but I…
Read More The last Tiffany Aching novelA nod and sad goodbye to horror film director Wes Craven and scientist Oliver Sacks. We knew they were both failing, but it is hard to see them go. Both of them broke new ground in their fields, fearlessly and with grace, unafraid to include some very human touches in their work.
Read More Farewell, Wes and OliverIf anyone wants to follow the next stage in a ridiculous Culture War battle, the 2015 Hugo Awards will be announced tonight starting @ 8pm Pacific time. Streaming link here. http://www.ustream.tv/hugo-awards Added 8-22-2015, 11:30 pm Pacific time: the Hugos have happened in many record-breaking ways. The parties and post-game analyses are well underway. I can…
Read More Hugo Awards tonight…and why it’s not the reason you probably think. If you are a science fiction and fantasy (SFF) reader and you don’t know who Alice B. Sheldon was, shame on you. Double shame if you don’t know her more famous pen name: James Tiptree, Jr. James Tiptree, Jr. wrote in a time when many female…
Read More Why I won’t be applying for a Tiptree Fellowship…Publishing is a weird business, even to someone on the outside like myself. Over the summer, I’ve watched a newish author run afoul of some alleged very bad behavior by a junior agent who should have known better, apparently abetted or condoned by a senior agent who *certainly* should have known better. In this case,…
Read More Agents’ submission recordsOne of my Australian beta readers sent me links to several articles about Maureen Cooper, a quilt artist caught up in anti-mining protests in the state of Queensland.* On the surface, Cooper’s quilt is a lovely, well-planned, and inoffensive piece of fiber art, created to raise funds for a small nature preserve. That certain people…
Read More Is the needle mightier than the earthmover?I know two people, both younger than me. One is running from massive credit card debt, skipping from city to city, odd job to odd job and couch to couch, while his potential as an artist is wasted in ennui and his own non-materialistic creed that ‘Hey, the only thing I own is my body,…
Read More Miranda Campbell: ‘Culture Isn’t Free’