Lilith Saintcrow

Well, there’s good news and fantastic news. The fantastic news is that all five of the Valentine books are on Amazon for order or preorder now. So, as things stand:

Working for the Devil (Will be reissued in September with new cover)
Dead Man Rising (Will be reissued in September with new cover)
The Devil’s Right Hand (September 2007)
Saint City Sinners (November 2007)
To Hell and Back (January 2008 tentative)

The good news is the next Watcher book, Mindhealer, should be in the production queue soon over at ImaJinn. Or at least, so I’ve been told. (You can email them for further updates.) And Steelflower should be available, last I heard, from Samhain in print this September. (You can email them for updates too.)

And of course, next year after the Valentine books are all out, the Kismet books should start being released. I’m very excited. I’m just about to start writing the third Jill book, tentatively titled Redemption Alley. It’s weird to have such a long time between actually writing a book and doing the marketing for it.

I’ve got a blasted summer cold (again, a real doozy of a one this time) and just finished the revisions on Hell And Back. Hopefully not much tweaking is needed before Teh Editor is happy, for I am heartily sick of Dante. I still love her, but finishing the series means that the characters are done for me. I might go back to that world for the Hell Wars and Gabe and Eddie’s daughter…but then again, I might not. Time will tell.

Agh. Off I go to take my cold medicine and lie in a puddle while watching cartoons. The kids are feeling a little ooky today too, so we’ve declared it a holiday deserving of a break from schoolwork. We might even have biscuits with our tea today. And that is always welcome news.

There’s been a lot of froufrou and folderol in the blogosphere lately about artists “selling out.” Making Art for commercial purposes! Oh, heavens! Dear Jehosphat! Not that!

Why do we assume in our culture that artists don’t need to get paid for the work they do? That their children don’t need to eat? We don’t say “starving plumber” or “starving mechanic.” No, it’s starving artist. As if our kids are epiphytes and can live on air. As if there’s some virtue in starving to death.

Pardon me if I sound bitter over this. My parents always told me to get my head out of the clouds, that the artsy-fartsy stuff wouldn’t put food on the table. That I needed my feet on the ground and I needed to do real work. I needed to be a doctor, to fulfill one of my parents’ unfulfilled desire. Or a lawyer, that would be okay too. I was smart enough, driven enough, capable enough.

The trouble was, I didn’t want to. I didn’t know then I wanted to write for a living. In my house such a thing wasn’t possible to think. So small are the limits of the world, when dreams are shut out.

When I actually started conceiving the idea of writing for a living, not just as a shameful hobby I was unable to stop, I had to struggle with all those voices in my head informing me that I was worthless, and anyway, a real artist would starve and create just for love. That an artist didn’t have any right to expect a living wage.

Bollocks, I say.

Art is a necessity for a culture. No really, it is. Every culture has art. The Scythians to the Spartans (who were Hellenes, of course they had art.) The Russians? Golden ikons. Eskimos? Bone and blubber and fur. Every single culture has art. I don’t know why we don’t consider it necessary.

Don’t tell me art is just a luxury. Souls need feeding just like bodies do, and that food is art. Otherwise cavemen wouldn’t have painted their caves. It’s as necessary as air, or water. But we have this idea in our culture, probably springing from Calvinist or Puritan denial of pleasure, that it isn’t. That it’s faintly dangerous, and those who choose to practice it deserve to starve.

But that’s not precisely what we’re discussing here, is it? No, we’re talking about selling out.

In other words, about an artist getting paid–and paid quite well, because it’s not selling out if you’re still starving–for producing work the public likes a lot.

Excuse me, but isn’t that the point of art? To produce something people like a lot? Yes, there’s the joy of just doing it, but the point of doing art is to communicate, and if you produce a piece that speaks to many people, how is that selling out?

I know, you’re thinking of bringing up boy bands, Britney, and pop art. Manufactured expressly for the purpose of separating people–most often teens–from their money. Does that make the rehearsals any less grueling, or the emotional cost of paparazzi stalking easier to pay? As much as we look down on boy bands and Britneypop, the fact remains that it speaks to kids. There’s a formula for creating the art that speaks to them on that level, well and good. But it’s not selling out. It might be swill, but it’s swill that serves and fills a need in the teen psyche. Who are we to say it’s not art, when thousands of teens feel otherwise?

What about Nirvana? Funny how everyone was yelling about Kurt Cobain “selling out” until he committed suicide and paid an ultimate price for achieving success. Being a successful artist is like being a sexually-free woman in our society–as long as you pay a horrible price or are whipped into repentance, it’s okay.

So an artist produces work a lot of people like, and gets paid for it. All of a sudden other artists turn on him. “It’s too bad about X. He’s sold out. His work’s derivative and in any case, he’s not a real artist because real artists suffer.”

Bollocks again. The reason artists starve in our society is because we don’t value them. Shamans and artists in some other societies are granted living wages, or at least stipends, in order to help them continue their work. And how do they prove themselves worthy of a stipend? By producing art that speaks to people.

Now, nothing’s perfect. In Soviet Russia those with exceptional talent were trained and fed by the State. Unfortunately, the repression forced those artists to eventually flee, if they were lucky. Can you imagine a starving Baryshnikov? How much poorer would the world be if he was too hungry to dance.

How much art are we missing out on because artists can’t afford to feed themselves, or their children? Because they don’t have time, working nine to five or longer?

Or because they shoot themselves in the foot by thinking that any art someone will pay for is “selling out”?

As I write this, the kids are watching one of the Harry Potter movies. I love Harry Potter. I’ve read all the books and am looking forward to the seventh. I’ve read–who hasn’t?–about Rowling being unable to afford heat in her apartment, so she wrote most of the first book in a tea shop while her child slept beside her.

How much more could she have written during those years if her apartment hadn’t been cold? How much more could she have written if she and her child had enough to eat? How much sooner would we have that blasted seventh book?

Yes, I’m belaboring the point here. But you get it. Selling out? Please. Find something else to hate your fellow artists for. Or, if you truly want to get over it, be as happy for your fellow artists’ success as you are for your own. Every time an artist hits it big, it kicks the starving-artist syndrome square in the nuts.* If we were happy about that instead of jealous, we might stand a chance at changing the way our culture looks at art. Eventually.

Yeah, I know. I’m an optimist. So sue me.

* Not to mention the fact that people are shelling out hard-earned money to buy their art. Who are you to say it’s not worth it? It’s their money, after all.

Because I’m functioning with an accumulated sleep debt the size of the national deficit, voila! I bring you the best of last night’s sifting through YouTube in search of bad 80s music videos to show the Sullen One. I found…well, more than I bargained for. Who knew bad music videos were so hard to find, and that they would lead one down the primrose path?

(more…)

I don’t even know where to begin.

Cheney’s Recurring Nightmare, Set To Poe’s Raven.

*jaw hanging ajar in wonder*

Let that be a lesson to all the boys out there: poetry is sexy. Good poetry and politics make old lady writers (that would be me) fawn on you.

Heh.

My weekly post at the Midnight Hour is up. It’s an open letter to the gods of Internet connectivity.

No, really. They were messing with my router. It wasn’t gremlins, it was THEM DANG OL’ INTERNET GODS. I don’t know why people laugh when I refer to the capricious immortals who rule Internet connections.

Speaking of the Internet, here’s something I think every author (or just plain anyone) should think seriously about before interacting online, whether it be through a blog, email, a loop, or what-have-you.

THE INTERNET IS PUBLIC. Engrave that on your brain, chickadees. It is not private in any sense of the word.

What brought this on? Oh, the recent kerfluffle over at Smart Bitches about Triskelion Publishing.

Here’s the deal.

1. Smart Bitches get a tip and a forwarded email. The tip is about Triskelion Publishing’s problems. The forwarded email is from a loop of over 200 Triskelion authors and editors, and contains, among other things, TMI about the personal life of the new head of the publishing house.

2. Enter an explosion of comments about how they shouldn’t have posted it.

3. Smart Bitches respond. (You can also find responses to the situation over at Dear Author, from the RWA, Triskelion authors, and the new head of Triskelion.)

4. Enter even more explosions of comments, with some people pointing the finger at SBs as Big Ol’ Meanies Who Spread Personal Information.

My friends, I call bullshit.

You cannot be on an email loop with over two hundred people and think you’re going to get privacy. Emails, loops, and blogs are not automatically private or privileged communications. I hate to break it to everyone, but neither are letters. If you write it down, it’s proof. Don’t believe me? Ask Scooter Libby or Karl Rove.

Now, an email between me and my agent, or my agent and my publisher, can have some expectation of confidentiality because of business. An email between me and the Selkie, for example, containing explosive personal stuff, has some expectation of confidentiality because the Selkie is my friend, and I presumably wouldn’t send her some personal information unless I trusted her.

But sending TMI to over two hundred people on what is supposed to be a professional loop dealing with authors and editors of your publishing house? Nobody in their right mind can seriously expect that not to be public. It is at the very best unprofessional behavior that should make any author think twice about signing with this house.

Now, the majority of the email contained information that made it clear why Triskelion was disinvited from a RWA convention, and further made it clear why the business practices over at the publishing house are so hopelessly messed-up some authors are jumping ship and regretting signing with the company. (Disclaimer: some authors are perfectly happy, too.) That’s not the issue I’m addressing here.

A lot of people have trumpeted that they think it was “unethical” for the SBs to post the letter in its entirety, that it was leaked and obviously confidential since it contained TMI about the sender’s personal life. It was certainly leaked–but sending an email containing ANY explosive personal information to over 200 people, most of whom you are only professionally connected with, is dangerous at best and outright stupid at worst. Email loops are not confidential. They are for sharing information. Once you hit that “send” or “post” button, your expectations of privacy have drastically lessened.

The fault, if there can be said to be any, in this situation rests solely and squarely with the person who had the bad judgment to commit such damaging personal information to a public loop tangled up with information that illustrated exactly why the publishing house is suffering business-wise.

What on earth could this person have expected? To trumpet after the fact that it was “personal” and someone wasn’t “ethical” by spreading it around is hogwash. It is hard but true, my ducks, that once you hit that send button you have lost a great deal of control over whatever information you send. If that risk is acceptable to you, then by all means go ahead. If not, don’t frocking hit that button.

This goes for blogs, too. Even if you have privacy settings on your blog, the post and the information is on a server somewhere. It is no longer under your personal control. If that risk is acceptable to you, fine. If it isn’t, don’t bloody well put the information in a blog post!

Ethics don’t come into this. Sarah of SB politely eventually edited some of the more inflammatory personal information out of the email that was leaked to her, but she didn’t have to. It was courtesy, plain and simple, to her readers by that point. She was under no ethical obligation to do so. The obligation rested with the person who let that information out inappropriately in the first place–on a LOOP. With OVER 200 PEOPLE. Most of whom were only PROFESSIONALLY, not PERSONALLY connected with the sender.

It just boggles me that people “blame” the leaker or the Smart Bitches for what is so patently someone misusing the Internet’s information-sharing capabilities out of sheer stupidity and unprofessionalism. Now, I’ve shared personal things in my weblog, but I’ve thought long and hard over doing so and I am responsible for whatever information I share. And when I send an email I think twice before I hit that button. When I send a letter I think twice before I drop it in the mail. If I make an incorrect judgment as to the trustworthiness of someone I send personal, emotional information to, I can expect flak.

If my publisher or my agent should ever leak business information that impacts my sales, that’s a whole different kettle of fish, and it’s not applicable here. This is about someone being stupid and pressing the send button. What gets lost in the shuffle is the fact that the SBs provided a useful valid service for any author thinking of trusting their work to Triskelion. I wouldn’t want to be professionally involved with someone who can’t get the fact that the Internet is public through their noggin. The shocking lack of common sense on behalf of the person who sent the email isn’t the SB’s problem OR their bad.

And that’s the bottom line.

Feel free to disagree, but that’s my take on the whole thing. I now return you to your regularly scheduled Friday.

*thinks twice, and hits “post”*