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Saturday, July 11th, 2009
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6:48 am - Torchwood
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| Friday, July 10th, 2009
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12:06 am - Ooo More Toothfulness
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Today was not a good day for dental work... I bled a lot. I bled for both fillings and that partly necessitated a change in the materials used for the hole under the crown that turned out to be deeper than expected. But then I may not have to worry about it not being the prettiest filling in the world because my dentist wasn't sure it would settle down and so might well need a more major intervention and root-filling. I am under orders to give it a little time to calm down and if it doesn't or 'kicks off' I am to come straight in (this delivered in the 'no I really really mean first signs of trouble' tone of voice). For a tooth that wasn't giving me any serious trouble before it's been a growly throbby beast since*. But, possibly, calming down a bit.
*it's the real bit of tooth that's unhappy, and that feels weird... it's like I can feel the crown as being something jammed over it, like a sore foot stuffed in a shoe.
Oh and BTW tonight's Torchwood episode... WTF? It looks like they decided to make the shift to BBC1 demonstrate everything non-SF watchers think SF does wrong AND do the very bad thing. Which is kind of bizarre because BBC1 and ITV1 had both seemingly moved on from always doing the very bad thing.
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| Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
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2:19 am - Full Of Grace
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You know, I can't recall now if I ever really believed Innocent would be an easy book to write -- I know I wanted something with a straight-forward top-story (in the vague hope that I could sell it for the top-story while sneaking in everything else under cover of the romance) but since even the romance is a bit challenging I'm not sure how many minutes I could have convinced myself it would be quick and easy mind-candy.
Next book will be the easy one.
I'm still trying to keep Innocent's top-story simple, though. Which makes it kind of hard to write. The latest hard bit being a conversation* on omniscience, prayer, and free will between the hero and... well... the hero.
When people talk about books being clair or noir, or consolatory versus whatever, or comedy versus tragedy (Shakespearean definition of)... I have to admit that most of mine aren't. Some days I kind of wish I could see the world that way, but as I don't... the stories I write aren't. I don't do happy chair-dancing world-saving and I don't do over-angsty everyone dies. (Or happy chair-dancing everyone dies and over-angsty world-saving, for that matter) I'm half-glass girl. (In EO the nice guys destroy each other/themselves, in Middlemost the wrong choices end up saving the world and I just flat out say that 'happy' and 'ending' are value judgements, and in Innocent... )
Innocent is the story of the end of a story, the POV characters being surrounded by backstory that's shaped their lives and which they're trapped into. It's a boy meets girl and saves her from the dragon story where the boy saves the girl, and the girl saves the boy, and then the guy who started the big story saves them and... maybe... himself. Because the top-story hero and heroine can't save themselves... not that they don't try, but there's more to it than killing the monster. It's complicated.
So yesterday I stumbled over a song the not-hero (Edwin Samael) claimed like a pin claiming a magnet -- Sarah McLachlan's Full of Grace -- which I then found on Youtube and am playing obsessively (as you do). That's how I discovered an earlier version of the song -- Fall From Grace -- which Samael also grabbed, as more perfectly describing his past/present (and no, I really don't plan to write a book about his past, what's in Innocent is probably most of what readers will get, although I know a more, with more depth, than I'll be able to fit in -- the prequel to Innocent is the book informally known as Mud, which features a different one of the not-minor characters during WW1, whereas Samael's story is back in the 1780s)
Fall From Grace.
The winter here's cold and bitter, it's chilled us to the bone,
I haven't seen the sun for weeks, too long too far from home,
I feel just like I'm sinking and I claw for solid ground,
I'm pulled down by the undertow,
I never thought I could feel so low,
But oh darkness, I feel like letting go.
But all of the strength, all of the courage couldn't lift me from this place.
I know I can love you much better than this.
I fall from grace.
Fall from grace.
It's better this way, I said, haven't seen this place before,
Where everything we say and do, hurts us all the more,
It's just that we've stayed too long in the same old sickly skin,
Pulled down by the undertow,
I never thought I can feel so low,
And, oh darkness, I feel like letting go.
But all of the strength, all of the courage couldn't lift me from this place,
Together we crumble and stumble and fall...
Fall from grace. Fall.
I know I can love you much better than this,
So it's better this way...
The later version is
Full Of Grace.
The winter here's cold and bitter, it's chilled us to the bone,
I haven't seen the sun for weeks, too long too far from home,
I feel just like I'm sinking and I claw for solid ground,
I'm pulled down by the undertow,
I never thought I could feel so low,
Oh darkness, I feel like letting go.
If all of the strength, and all of the courage, come and lift me from this place.
I know I can love you much better than this.
Full of grace. Full of grace, my love.
It's better this way, I said, haven't seen this place before,
Where everything we say and do, hurts us all the more,
It's just that we stay too long in the same old sickly skin,
Pulled down by the undertow,
I never thought I could feel so low,
And, oh darkness, I feel like letting go.
If all of the strength, and all of the courage, come and lift me from this place,
I know I can love you much better than this.
Full of grace.
I know I can love you much better than this.
It's better this way...
And yes, the top-story is a romance... and Samael is where he is because he fell in love.
And, I do find there being two versions of the song curious. Fateful even. I don't usually find a whole lot of music to make up specific playlists, and Innocent has been particularly unmusical (it likes 'When Water Comes to Life' as well, but shares that a bit more with Mud and Ashes... the way Ashes shares 'On the Other Side').
And after I'd played it a couple of times, Jacob started singing with Fall From Grace and hoping I'll find a way to help him get just a little closer to version two -- there's even less of him in the book than Samael, and most of that is bad. (The rest of his story... wouldn't fit.) But I think I can give him a chance.
::grins::
Anyhow, right after I knew how Jacob's story ends, and that I've ended up feeling sorry for him, I understood how Innocent fits with Mud and Ashes. It's always been a bit of a puzzle to me how I ended up with a WW1 prequel -- well I know the mechanics but... -- and a WW2 sequel, to a book about a peaceful village. Now I have a feel for the connection, from one little bit of conversation between the two heroes and some sympathy for the devil... Innocent is the small scale example for the big-picture in Ashes... and if I want to write that story, and ever write Ashes, I'm going to have to try and sympathise with the bad guys in there as well.
I learnt a lot about this book and its kin in the past twenty-four hours.
Doesn't make it any easier to write, though :D
*where conversation is a couple of exchanges** before we get to the 'this is my plan/your plan can't work' bit
** including another reference to rabbits... I swear I didn't know I was writing a Watership Down homage (until, yesterday, I was reminded of Bigwig and the shining wire and am now describing Innocent as The Wicker Man meets Brigadoon meets Watership Down) :D
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| Monday, June 29th, 2009
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2:06 am - Friends Don't Let Friends...
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Okay, so not doing too well the last couple or more days, and clearly my brain was seeking distraction because after watching a chat conversation about crossover Secret Garden ideas (okay wild punning) in which there was mention (by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) clarentine) of The Secret Garden of NIMH --
I went to bed, I slept, I dreamt, and I woke up with a book idea that insists it wants to be called 'Ruritania' and is the story of a revolutionary plot master-minded by intelligent bunnies (who don't trust the intelligent rats), a dog (who needs to floss more), and a girl (who's been exiled to her family's country estate while they decide what to do with her).
This is, being mine*, a world of witch burnings, pogroms, repression, and a very polite society where magic has been used to boost technological development (so a rabbit gets to explain one of the five principles of force with a train metaphor!).
And it's notsteampunk!
My subconsious... I show it you.
stillnotbored says it needs vampires. (Which is not entirely impossible... not impossible at all :D ) Friends don't let friends plot bunny books and leave out Bunnicula!
[Yes, I am actually serious about this being a book. No, it won't be funny. No, I don't need another book idea, but they do make excellent distractions when distractions are required.]
*And you can also tell it's one of mine because it's about the nature of humanity and of reality. Plus a couple of spare conversations about ethics thrown in to keep it cheerful.
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| Saturday, June 27th, 2009
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4:04 am - I'm Not Going To Spend My Life Being A Colour - (What About Us?)
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If I hear one more person imply, or just say out loud as on Newsnight Review, that Michael Jackson should have died in the 80's -- died before he became problematic, while he was easier to idolise, before the stories about his whackiness drifted from silliness to smoking gun...
Well actually my answer was to watch Black or White -- a video that wouldn't have existed -- and smile and chairdance.
Then I watched Earth Song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqeADZgjtpY and cried.
I'm not going to try and wade through the silly stories and the slanders and the sad truths to judge a troubled man whose work touched millions. But I am damn certain that his death should not be a relief and a chance to package him a little more tidily.
Shouldn't be... but the world chewed on him a long time -- it devoured his childhood and when he grew up it dined on his reputation with equal pleasure -- now I guess it'll gnaw his bones a while.
The Michael Jackson story says a lot more about us than it ever could about him.
So I wish you peace, Cousin. Go from here as you will (but perhaps, just for fun, in black velvet, with sheathed claws and a defiant roar). Fare you well.
And thank you. I didn't know you at all, but these songs and others knew me better.
Even my darkness.
"I used to dream,
I used to glance beyond the stars,
now I don't know where we are,
although I know we've drifted far"
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| Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
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12:28 am - Not Loitering Anymore
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I'm happy to announce that Scott Andrews of the muchly pretty "Beneath Ceaseless Skies" has said nice things about my Old West fantasy 'Pale' and bought it.
::grins:: Can't tell you how pleased I am that it found a good home.
[And stories like 'Pale' should be out there working, not loitering on hard drives :) ]
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| Monday, June 15th, 2009
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4:22 am - When Falling Isn't Moving
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The backstory exposition:
Last year, before the computer mess started, I'd been working on a short story called Crimson -- Arthurian romance with serial killer. And got the idea that it might be fun to write the same story in two different voices -- Crimson being in Victorian archaic, and Red more rawly modern (And yes, the titles are from 'I see it crimson, I see it red'). But pretty quickly I found the language in Crimson allowed me too much distance -- and while that might make it more saleable (Dexter-itious) it's also not something I want to write, or turn this idea into. If I can get to grips with it (and honestly even distancing I was uncomfortable so I may not) it'll have to be less mannered and so there won't be enough room for Red to be unmannered in.
But having decided that, I still wanted to use the other title. (Or possibly I just really want to try selling first rights on the same story twice :D )
A couple of days ago I realised that there was a pretty obvious way -- tell the same events from a different POV. And, since there is an obvious other POV, that rocked.
But if I was going to give the two boys stories, it seemed really unfair not to give the girl her own -- she has, potentially, a unique perspective -- and so now Crimson and Red are joined by Swansdown.
And that's where I laugh at how my brain works, because in my books (at least the ones where the point is not entirely a romantic relationship) I have a fondness for tripods -- three POVs to tell a story. (I also tend to find myself with two male POVs and one female). Wait on then, with three POVs, and those likely a bit long in the shorts (Pale was 5600 words and very much less story), surely this is really a book rather than a crazed experiment in short fiction (where the experiment is *not* seeing what kind of trouble a girl can get into by trying to sell first rights to the same story three times although that would be crazed enough).
Obviously the sane thing to do would be to turn this into a three POV book.
Except, of course, that as a book it wouldn't work at all.
There are bits of writing advice we take for granted when we're learning... when people talk about how a sentence/paragraph/scene/chapter should do at least two/three things, the list from which those two/three things are picked usually includes 'move the story forward', it's the obvious one, the one you don't have to think about -- and the most important. And it's as true of POVs...
A long while ago I critted a chapter on the OWW where the writer took one POV through a series of events (as I recall it was the lead up to someone falling off a dragon) and then there was a scene break and another POV character related their view of and reactions to exactly the same events, (and the next chapter picked up from that point and then all four POVs gave their versions of the next chunk of events) Despite that the different POV characters did have very different 'takes' on the scene, by the time you've read two eyewitness accounts of an incident the third has trouble being interesting even if that's the one where you're discovering it wasn't an accident. I have a vague recollection that not even pride in my work could get me through the fourth version.
Crimson, Red, and Swansdown will all relate the same events, but to work each POV has to rerelate in new and astounding detail a pretty large slice of the events the other POVs have already covered -- also in detail -- and yes those versions are very different but they're still working with the same underlying architecture of actions. If I intercut those POVs you'd keep finding yourself rereading the same events, and however brilliantly I write the different interpretations, or skew the character filters, the reader knows what happens in this bit already -- the story will have stopped moving forwards.
Like the dragon rider in freefall stops falling.
A difference in perception is not enough to keep a story moving. Even major revelations in the later repeats are unlikely to, and may have a reduced impact because they're buried in a repeated scene.
But wait, you say, there are books and TV shows and movies that do this and they work!
(Although right now I can only think of the various detective dramas where similar eyewitness accounts of events are told in flashback -- oh, and the ITV drama 'Mobile' which pretty much illustrates that if you're going to tell a story from several different POVs it's probably best to give each one a seperate episode -- and even then it didn't rock my world because the first episode used up most of the drama and the second exposed most of the twistiness, leaving the third with a less entertaining, unconvincing, and heavily expository trudge to the denouement)
And jolly good luck to those who attempt it!
Thankfully Crimson, Red, and Swansdown aren't going to be quite as impossible as they won't tell the same events in quite the same order. Structure is our friend :)
Crimson has a 'now' frame round a set of backstory narrations. Red will tell the story from start to finish. And I think that Swansdown will start and end earlier -- for obvious reasons -- and I may just be insane enough to use a past frame with prophetic flash-forwards.
Because I can.
::giggles::
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| Monday, May 18th, 2009
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7:17 pm - And We All Have A Choice
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I feel entirely crappy today - surviving two bouts of flu has mucked my system about and now I am having weird generaised discomforts shading into serious discomforts...
But without that I suspect I would still be uncomfortable about any group called 'fuck you'. My presumption is that either whoever set this up is trolling for personal amusement B'tard style, or else this is one of those subtle first steps where condoning an antisocial act for the greater good leads gradually to being required to take part in antisocial acts and then to an escalation in the kind of acts performed.
Let's put it this way -- no, thank you.
I'll say it now, because I can and because there are way too many people living and dead who end up doing things they would have sworn they were way too upright and saintly to do. And whining about having no choice afterwards.
I'm not a saint.
Fuck you is not a sentiment I choose to support.
Edit: And no, I'm not going to shut up and go along... That's exactly how the conditioning works -- social pressure to keep people saying yes until they're so deep in that they no longer even consider saying no.
current music: Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog - On the Rise & Finale
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| Monday, May 4th, 2009
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5:29 am - Fate
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| Monday, April 20th, 2009
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5:11 am - Oh Yes
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I must have picked this nasty little bug up when I went out on Friday. Saturday evening my throat was sore. Sunday morning very sore. Now fever, nose blowing, stomach and earache are involved.
Myabe if I'd waited and gone out Saturday, or tomorrow, I wouldn't be sneezing and (now) coughing.
Patience *is* a virtue.
(And I need a Charlie Crews zen icon or two)
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| Thursday, April 16th, 2009
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2:09 am - Valiant Hearts are Oft'times Broken
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Things that never get old include -- when you're mostly bored and your mind is all about the bad places, suddenly being given a reason to laugh out loud.
And I think part of the deal there is that now I have to give headroom to Mr post-not-apocalypse. Who has probably won the name battle, because he's pretty definitely an (almost) undoubting Thomas. And another of my sad bad sociopathic lads... though, unusually for one of my guys, he wants the whole narrative to himself
[I think he may be right, because he'd be really unflinching but thoroughly unreliable about it all and the girl... wouldn't]
"Truth is I love you, more than I wanted to, there's no point in trying to pretend. There's been no one who, makes me feel like you do, say we'll be together till the end" pretty much sums up his story, and it's a nicely unpublishable one. Dark and deadly watching confused as blessed and beautiful acts out her good intentions.
I might just call it Pitbull.
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| Monday, April 13th, 2009
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6:57 pm - Hmmm
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I love a good conspiracy theory.
http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html
http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html
But this looks more like those guys who jump up and down and claim terrorist attacks etc that they didn't do. I especially like that first we have the self-confessed troll who points people towards the idea that there's been a master criminal at work, and then we get the master criminal confessing and citing the genius of his John the Baptist (and I'd have got away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids! -- only, of course, there's no taking a bow if you get away with it).
Troll-boy says he paid good money ($50 per person per day) to get help (well we all know those second/third world chappies work for peanuts) and used
'http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=0/?ie=ASCII&rs=1000&keywords=Gay_and_Lesbian&rh=n%3A!1000%2Ci%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3AHomosexuality&page='`echo $count`|grep \/dp\/ >> /tmp/amazon
((count++))
to grab the books he wanted to derank. Really? I'm entirely not any kind of coder but that doesn't look right for the results.
Also... does Amazon actually have a 'report as adult' button? Considering I've run into more than a few reviews complaining about certain books suddenly having ADULT content that they weren't expecting, I'd kind of expect those reviewers to have found the magic button and got the book removed from the rankings... only that doesn't seem to have happened. I know of plenty of PA author squabbles and I'd expect to have heard about how his function had been used during those slapfights, but I haven't. And I can't find it on the couple of pages I've looked at today -- maybe someone can point it out. Funny but no one pointed it out when I suggested tagging books inappropriately... I mean that would have been way more nuclear so I'd have expected it to come up.
And as far as I know no one knew prior to this that a complaint would remove a book from the ranking system (not from the site just from the ranking system...)
(Heck, the hoops I've had to jump through to report a mistake in a listing... )
But the bigger problem is that this can't account for Amazon replying to an author/publisher saying that Amazon's policy is to strip the rank from 'adult material' so that it doesn't appear in the site's bestseller ratings etc. Troll-boy isn't claiming to have an inside man.
[yes, it was the Easter holidays... except my dealings with Amazon.co.uk customer service have lead to the conclusion that a fair chunk of customer serive is outsourced to India, where Easter/Passover isn't that big a deal. And I'd kind of expect a pretty good team to be left watching an online shop over a holiday period because shopping online is something you're more likely to do when you're *not* at work -- I do most of my Amazon shopping outside traditional shop opening hours, if Amazon were to crash over a holiday weekend I'd expect wailing and gnashing of teeth over the lost income]
The master plan also requires that Troll-boy knows Amazon will pull the rankings from books. That Amazon will not notice a sudden upsurge in the use of a feature a regular user like myself doesn't even know exists. And that Amazon does indeed have a policy of removing books from the rankings system and not restoring them, or having a system in place for restoring them, when queried by the authors/publishers concerned.
And then it requires that the authors who have their book's rankings pulled and are ignored by Amazon to complain loudly in blogs *and be listened to* (which is not a forgone conclusion - it requires that the more influential folks pick up on the story).
Troll-boy isn't claiming collusion with any or all of the 'fag' authors, or to have been trolling the crowd.
Like the guy said... strikes me as being the plot of a James Bond movie. Otherwise known as fantasy for boys.
And while I know there are some pretty perverse minds out there who get their kicks the strangest ways... the easier way to get credit and lolz here is to hoax everyone into believing that you are very very clever and they are very very stupid... And all it would take is waiting for a wave, getting sock puppets to link in several places to a 'theory' for what had happened, normal internet paranoia with sock puppets, and a confession. Easy, and no financial outlay.
A domino topple doesn't work just because you shove the first domino... the secret is in having placed all the other dominoes so that they will push the next and the next. This topple wouldn't work (as described) unless some pretty important steps aren't being described (otherwise all you'd get is some random author's books being pulled off the Amazon best-seller listing... not being removed from sale or most searches... nothing big or dramatic or very claimable -- more your 'I got this tramp sleeping in a doorway'.)
So no, I don't believe -- not on the evidence being offered.
Sometimes the obvious answer is the obvious -- big companies make stupid mistakes trying for lazy PR wins. Or yanno, like bankers giving themselves massive bonuses when they're being bailed out by the tax payer.
EDIT: http://bryant.livejournal.com/672165.html
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4:24 am - I Was Going To Write...
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A post about the girl and boy who walked into my brain this morning and insist that they are not just darker versions of One Night and Once but entirely different people from an entirely different story -- any resemblance to other extant ideas being entirely coincidental.
At first I thought they were post-apocalyptic too, but gradually I realised that it was a different kind of apocalypse to the usual (not that One Night and Once or Aspirin have usual apocalypses but this is one with a lot more people... more of a not-apocalypse)
And they're kind of fun to be with right now (some characters just help when I've got pain... don't ask me why)
...
Day before yesterday I got an idea that probably should have gone to jmeadows -- YA fantasy with just a bit of Romeo and Juliet.
Looks like my idea generator is working.
...
And that would have tied in to the post I've been meaning to write for the last couple of days, about ideas... and how lots of folk round queryfail were declaring how ideas aren't copyrightable etc and mocking those who value their ideas.
Maybe I'll get around to that another day...
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2:37 am - The Post I Was Writing
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I'm still paying the price for yesterday's adrenaline rush so forgive me not yelling about this... and if you can, forgive me for not seeing it as primarily a GLBT issue.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/ plus a lot of other places, seek and ye shall find.
Amazon -- and Amazon.co.uk seems to be doing this also, which is unusual because changes to the US site are sometimes trickle-fed to us after a while or never happen at all...
Amazon has removed their Amazon ratings from a lot of books.
"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature."
This is probably the stupidest and laziest way of implementing such a policy I can think of -- and I've run into several stupidities from Amazon.co.uk. so from them stupid isn't new it's expected.
But the policy itself annoys me.
Not just that the way they've chosen to enact it seems to be classifying anything with the word gay (or whatever) in the marketing, or title, or tags (or however they're picking some books out) as adult, but the one that says any book they've deemed to be adult has to be treated differently from all the others.
I am an adult. I move in a world full of adults. And I am kind of pissed that Amazon is denying me the adult world I live in because it's too lazy to cater for the juvenillisers in our society any other way than by putting books I might want to read in a back room where I am unlikely to run into them unless I know to ask (even if lots of other people know to ask and have done so).
It's just that step further than putting them on the top shelf... and yes, I'm a short person.
Most of the books they claim to be targetting were never going to make it into any bestseller listing. Those they have targetted that would have made it ... deserve to be there.
Heck, if they're bestsellers then why should I be protected from knowing? Why should I be denied that knowledge of my own society (that people buy books other people don't think they should read)
This is not going to prevent me from buying a book and then being shocked to death by two men/women kissing. Any more than I can be protected from running into a gratuitous rape scene, or animal cruelty, or... whatever I don't like being reminded exists (even if only in an author's mind).
And if it's about keeping kids from randomly running into porn... kids seldom randomly run into porn, they seek out whatever's available with incredible persistance -- if Amazon wants to create a safe site for children they might be better creating parental controls that allow those parents to let only a limited age-appropriate version of Amazon load on their child's computers and blocks *all* links to material not in children's books or DVDs.
This policy is spin. Stupid. Mindless. 'We did this for you gentle customer' spin. That really doesn't do anything useful because if I browse for the word 'filly' up comes the ratings deprived Probst book... perversion on display and all I wanted was a kid's book about girl horses!!!
It doesn't do what it says on the tin.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Spin.
Unluckily this stupid 'customer protection' spin could have, I hope unintended, potential fallout if it continues.
When a bookseller declares they won't sell books of x-thickness anymore, the publishers stop producing those books, stop buying those stories, and agents stop representing the authors who write them... Pretty soon even if people are still writing those books -- even if there are people wondering why they don't write them like that anymore -- they're not being bought and sold.
I don't want that happening with GLBT books. I don't want writers omitting GLBT characters because their book might acquire negative sales potential.
But here's where I say it's not a GLBT issue... I don't want that happening with any adult books. (And I'm not using that as a euphemism for porn... I'm pretty sure porn will always find a way.)
I don't want books being left off the Amazon ratings system because a section of the customer base complains about them being there... I don't want those books getting harder to publish. I don't want people being scared to write adult characters and adult themes because somehow they might acquire the wrong tags and end up in an Amazon 'adult' ghetto.
This isn't just about equality of sexual orientation.
As bricks and mortar booksellers come under increasing pressure from online sellers, the last thing in the world I want those new gatekeepers of the written word to be doing is using their powers (as some bricks and mortar stores have in the past) to make this kind of decision about what does and does not get offered an equal opportunity to sell (yes I know there isn't a level playing field, but that's no excuse for deliberately skewing it more against certain books) -- and if such decisions need to be made then it should be by a wider society than Amazon spin doctors and their less than intelligent algorithms.
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1:14 am - On Amazon
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I was in the middle of writing a post about how I thought this was a poor enactment of a bit of stupid spin (it ain't doing what they say it will any day of the week) and I was checking out whether what they' done was just to remove the rating by whether a book had a 'gay' or similar tag...
And it seems like they might be.
Which put a most evil way of sabotaging this inadequately thought out policy into my head.
It'd need a few more people to check whether this would actually work (it is only a mad-cap thought) but what if people went out and tagged books that haven't any adult content as having it?
I mean, Harry Potter is definitely gay. So is Twilight. So are all those cookbooks by men...
[if one were going to experiment with this I would suggest not picking small sales and midlist authors, who could lose out but go where amazon makes it's money and the bestsellers]
EDIT: really, I have no idea if this has any direct effect (chances are they're using some kind of poorly applied marketing tags to sort the 'adult' content and that those don't show up on the pages) but hey, scientific experiment produces data :)
EDIT 2: http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amazon-possibly-using-category-metadata-to-filter-rankings/ I still claim SCIENCE! ::grins::
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| Saturday, April 11th, 2009
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8:02 pm - The War with Canada
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Or.. why I didn't achieve what I intended and also ache more than I should...
I ventured out into the madness that was town to buy crimp beads. (The madness being added to with the multiple bands here for the international youth music festival thingy that used to be good and is now somewhat more chaotic... kind of like having a bunch of brass bands busking)
Anyhow, I got to the bead stall to find it lacking in custom and hemmed in by a bunch of aggressive Canadian brass players who were being very loud and intimidating. There is practice and there is fifty odd young people gathered around a tradesman's stall playing random notes/snatchs of music very loudly.
The bead cart has two sides. I asked them to move away and let me get to the other side of the cart. They did so grudgingly, leaving me just enough room to squeeze through and then I had a saxophone played within six inches of me. This is not conducive to a pleasant shopping experience. I gave the nearest the eyebrow and they shuffled back very slightly. The bead guy pointed out his new stock item. He had to yell at me to be heard above the cacophony. I moved round the cart, and found a couple of the band following me. More
eyebrow. I had to shoo them back from the cart again when I wanted to go back the other side. I checked out the crimp beads... and discovered that with all the noise I couldn't think whether the crimps (and the pearls, I'll admit I had a sneaking yen for some crystal pearls) were a good price and the right size. I went to ask the bead guy and realise that I would have to yell at the top of my lungs -- I am not exaggerating. he and his daughter looked strained and very unhappy.
At this point I spotted a woman with a red sweatshirt (called Beth) moving around the kids... and not stopping them. Indeed she seemed to be encouraging them to play/play louder/move closer. So I went over to her and asked her if they couldn't make somewhat less noise and be a little more orderly -- actually I had to shout this at her because of the noise level. She yelled that they'd been invited and just got off the plane (I didn't tell her that Harrogate doesn't have an airport so this was not particularly true). I yelled that was all very nice but back in my day we turned up and played music, we didn't hang around before or after causing a nuisence and deafening people with a godawful noise.
[these things I know, the bead guys cart looks portable but it isn't -- the generator means it needs a car to move it -- he pays a helluva lot of money to to trade a very few days a year... but if he moves from his very small pitch he could lose that license, and he could also lose it if he gets involved in any public disorder (so he can't do more than ask politely for the band to go to their appointed pitch... which was round the corner)... he generally leaves his daughter looking after the stand when he goes for lunch, but clearly he was too concerned about the intimidation to leave her on her own (I am not surprised a group of fifty plus people being rude is not something you want to trust your kid and livelihood to)]
Beth the band-lady said to those actually standing next to us to quiet down. I thanked her. Then when it became clear that she wasn't going to raise her voice to extend that order to those closer to the stall I politely yelled at them that they might have missed hearing but they'd been told to stop playing and doing so would demonstrate their good discipline. I thanked them, and went back to browsing the stall.
They stared. There's something about having fifty people stare at you and mutter.
They stared and shuffled. I kept browsing. Because it was pretty obvious that the minute I left they'd start up again. It was quiet enough that a few other people even came up to the stall (which kind of proves that it was the noise and aggression driving off the guy's custom)
And a little time later, while bead guy and I were chatting about last month's bead event, Beth came over and yelled at me that I was the rudest person they'd met since they'd arrived (not much of a challenge since they'd just got off the plane but eh she thought she'd worked out the key words required). I told her that she and her band certainly exploded the myth of Canadian politeness. She yelled a bit more. I asked her what the name of the band was so I could complain to the festival organisers. She refused to tell me and repeated her observation of how rude I was and that she hoped one day I would go to Canada and be treated as rudely as I was treating them (o.o). I said she'd have put me off wanting to go to Canada except that I knew a few Canadians and would certainly remember I was a guest so hopefully not be so provoking. She squawked some more and included words that sounded a great deal like a threat to 'teach me a lesson'. I told her she was lucky I didn't make a complaint to the police. She stepped away a little. I went back to talking with the bead guy and he tried to interest me in this great new silver chain and beads (which is, apparantly, a guaranteed earner for very little outlay -- he's a market trader at heart but I like his wife). I was so pumped with adrenaline aftershock I could feel the body chemistry ripping me up (I have a seriously bad reaction to my own adrenaline). She yelled over at me that I was the rudest person she had ever met. And I, temper fraying, commented about her enlarged sense of entitlement. (The internet -- helping the people of the world learn how to insult each other more effectively)
Two minutes of dignified huff later, she, her fellow 'adults', and the entire band, went and set up round the corner -- in one of the places earmarked for the visiting bands to use. (A couple of years ago the bead guy actually had his pitch there, and preferred that location, but the Council now reserve it for this kind of event... the irony bites, so it does)
Seriously, they are supposed to use the arena area or the market gardens square... another band set up right outside M&S blocking the road (since when do brass bands sit in circles and play at each other instead of facing the audience?). The Big Issue seller was not happy, because that's his pitch and he'd be shoved off it. Plus, no one could actually stay and listen because the narrowing of the road meant all the pedestrians were trying to get through a metre wide gap... you do not accumulate an audience if there is nowhere for the audience to stand without passersby trying to walk where they're standing. A festival is not festive if a) you can't do audience things b) everyone is infuriated by people making noise instead of music c) people spend the rest of the day wondering why their rates money goes to support this crap.
And yes, both bands had buckets. The bucket shaking aspect is a courtesy, they do not have official permission to collect money. They certainly do not have permission to leave their appointed pitches in search of places they think will yield better levels of cash.
Some people have to make enough money to pay back the rental cost of the pitch. It's a lot of money. And some people are trying to make enough money to eat and keep a roof over their heads.
I guess you can tell where my sympathies are.
...
As an addendum, there were a bunch of complaints phoned in to the police -- some people ask others to behave better, some just go straight to reporting them. (I kind of think they were lucky they ran in to me because if they'd kept on with what they were doing the police would have had to turn out and take names. They were pissing off the local shopkeepers...)
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| Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
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7:21 pm - Gah!
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And today I get a big scary looking packet from the financial ombudsman service -- it's my big packet of complaint paperwork that I sent friday before friday before last (just over two weeks ago) being returned.
Because apparantly the bank telling me that they're not going to pursue this matter further and I should sue TPSL is *not* a final letter. Or not final letter enough. A final letter has to mention the FOS in such a way as to give permission for them to intervene.
A 'pursue your other options' letter is not a final letter. A 'you can go to the FOS' is not a final letter. Lloyds TSB very carefully did not word their last-letter-we're-sending-about-this letter as a final letter.
The letter I have... it's just a letter telling me they're not going to do anything more (yah boo ha ha ha gotcha!) They have ten days more to send a final letter.
And if they don't?
THEN I get to send the entire complaint package back to the FOS.
In ten days.
I send all this paperwork back.
...
And the wheels of the FOS would appear to grind rather slowly too.
(plus there are a LOT of people the credit card companies are playing these games with)
...
I guess it's not bad news, just no news very emphatically announced, but -- and maybe this is writerly conditioning -- I was somewhat less fretted when all the paperwork was off with the FOS. I'd done what I could for now and it was just about waiting for an answer. I felt a degree of relief.
But this is me having to remember to send this package off again (the Friday before my birthday), and having to keep on thinking about it for the next two weeks, instead of trying not to remember that this is dragging on, and on, and on, with no end in sight. (And this is me with a sick feeling in my chest and the helpless-hopelesness of being in a situation I can't fix or even pretend to be fixing -- or be choosing to leave unfixed)
I thought, back last November, that I was being a tad pessimistic that it could take till the end of February to clear this up. Now optimism says 'maybe by the end of July...'
And the laptop keyboard and I still dislike each other.
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3:36 am - Oh Look
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You may recall that I sold a story last year -- I just found out on Ralan (a month after the event but I don't get to Ralan much these days) that it's been unsold. The zine has gone on indefinite hiatus.
Which takes me back to two published stories (and two sold but then released unpublished).
Hopefully that is the worst news I'll get this year about things which happened last year.
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| Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
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7:37 pm - Fool's Rush In
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So, I managed to finish a harpy story and get it sent off to SH before the last gasp of April 1st (which was a challenge too under the current computer circumstances).
Of course I had a flash of guilt at not getting those 2170 words on Innocent, but the thing is I just wouldn't get two grand and change on Innocent in two days (especially not more than one and a half in a single evening/night). Innocent is hard work. The two other shorts I've briefly flirted with were hard. This... well one of my darlings for The Patience of a Saint was "I stared at the screen like a cat, seeing movement and nothing more, until the centre forward was plucked up from the pitch, ripped into pieces, and those pieces scattered, bouncing, on the grass." ::grins::
Really, with any luck, if I can find something with less art in it, the next book could go a little quicker.
[and yes, that's probably after I drag myself through the last impossible challenges of Innocent]
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| Monday, March 30th, 2009
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6:18 pm - Yesterday...
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There was the self-harming at the bead fair (if I was a saner person I'd not have gone, or come home sooner... but my watch stopped and I did actually think the crowds were thinning for reasons other than it being the last half hour and it was really neat being able to get to the stalls without queuing or being leaned over).
Oh, and I met a lovely chocolate labrador in guide-dog training. Who looked up at me with great suffering doggedness, gave my fingers the brief sniff of protocol, and then shoved his head under my hand. I petted. His person was not paying attention. Dog could not be bothered to maintain training discipline since a) this was clearly the most boring event known to man -- indeed several very bored men were standing with bags trying to look necessary and b) BLIND PEOPLE DO NOT GO TO BEAD FAIRS BECAUSE THEY DO NOT BEAD. He communicated this to me while I guiltily squoobled and skritched and he sighed at the clear stupidity of his trainer. We continued on our separate ways... and half an hour later he announced his arrival at my side by shoving his head up beside my hand for further petting. The third time we didn't quite cross paths and so he just waved his tail from a distance and sighed.
I like smart dogs. Don't get me wrong, I like thick as two short bricks dogs too, but smart dogs with a sense of humour are an absolute joy.
Anyhow, I now have a nice pair of round nose pliers (and have decided the Beadsmith ones do not feel good in the hand and I'm a bit too old for the cute mini ones - I went with comfortable and workmanlike which happened to also be cheapish). So I can finish the beading kits I got for Xmas!
It's funny, I like embroidery but mostly it's about practice and regaining/expanding skills I have. I can invent in it and know what I'm doing. I'm enjoying beading because I don't know what I'm doing :)
[and yes, Made dropped by for a brief chat... the politest book about war crimes evah! ]
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