Water Through the Gills

Someone emailed me about January’s giveaway (still ongoing), complaining that I was “only” giving away two copies of a book they weren’t “interested in”, and furthermore scolding me for making it clear I’d be sending the prizes media mail. Apparently, if this person had condescended to enter, nothing but a yet-unpublished book exactly suiting their personal taste and wafted to their doorstep immediately upon the wings of cherubim would suffice.

I blame Amazon training some consumers to think this is acceptable behavior. Still, the “I want it now, and cheap/free to boot” entitlement has been with us from the beginning, I suppose, and shall always be, yea until Saint Peter opens up the pearlescent gates at the end of time.

I refrained from sending a personal response, mostly because I suspect my sarcasm would leap from a screen and put an eye out. I wanted to point out that nobody’s putting a gun to this person’s head, forcing them to enter my giveaways, but I don’t think logic will make any dent in the entitlement.

It rarely does.

*sigh* Ah well. Yesterday’s holiday was quite pleasant, especially since I’m on some intermittent fasting for various health reasons. It was nice to have a day off my exercise schedule while I’m somewhat hungry. I began revisions on HOOD‘s Season Two, and am finally at the point where I’m pleasantly surprised by the book. Season Three is going to be a wild ride, and all the connective tissue in Two appears to be in place. Which is a vast relief; it’s always nice to look at work one did months ago and find out it isn’t completely unusable.

Today will also see a Haggard Feathers post on Word vs. Scrivener. You can sign up for Haggard Feathers posts here; come February one post per month will be free and the rest will be available to paid subscribers. That’s going to be my site for writing/publishing advice, or at least my own particular brand of it. After so long spent in publishing I do have a little experience to share, and that seems a good place. I’ll do the subscription thing for a year and see how it works out.

Always trying new things, that’s me. Keep smiling, don’t stop swimming, got to force water through the gills. The dogs need a walk, though both of them are currently achieving liquid status on the office floor, and damn it all, but I don’t want to do paperwork today. I want to bloody well write.

So I’d best get started instead of complaining, huh? Very well. There’s a break in the clouds, and if I hustle, I won’t have to drag a complaining Boxnoggin through the rain. (He’s from Texas, and considers our weather a great affront.) You’d think he’d be used to it by now.

Happy Tuesday! May you have enough leeway to do everything you want to today, my friends, and nothing you don’t.

Today Feels Better

I don’t know what the hell’s up with all passive-aggressive functionaries refusing to do the job I’m literally paying them for lately, but there are at least two in the world now who know not to fuck with me, so there’s that.

Yeah, yesterday was a long day, can you tell? Today is just as damp, just as chilly, but it feels a lot better, maybe because I took yesterday afternoon and evening (bracketing dinner) and played with a trunk novel. It’ll never see light of day but it pleases me, and that’s the important thing when one’s reached the edge of recovering from a hard revision.

It’s amazing how passive-aggressive assholes automatically assume I’m easy prey. They learn their mistake at about the fourth exchange, where I refuse to be sidetracked or gaslit and keep asking (politely, of course) the questions I need clearly answered. I can get away with this sort of bureaucratic or interpersonal judo–I am, after all, a pudgy middle-aged white lady; I do my damndest to use my powers for good and for punching up.

And, let’s face it, most of these jackwads are pikers. Having survived much worse and deeper passive-aggression, gaslighting, and just plain aggression as a young sprout has stood me in good stead. Calmly and crisply repeating the questions I need answered despite all attempts at fancy verbal footwork to fob me off? I can do that all damn day, my friend, with a side of “let’s hear from your supervisor, and no I will not call so you can browbeat me over the phone, we’re going to do this in email where there’s a record of every damn word, so choose your next ones carefully, sir.”

I almost want to hire myself out for bureaucratic judo–say, being a patient advocate, or someone who just comes with someone who might not have my advantages to various appointments, sitting in the corner and watching while making notes on a pad.

For some reason, a pudgy middle-aged white lady taking notes makes a lot of petty tyrants shape their shit up on the spot. I could probably do a lot of good in that arena.

Anyway, that’s a career choice for if the writing doesn’t pan out, I suppose. Right now it’s time to climb back up on the horse–HOOD‘s second season needs a deep revise so it can shamble towards publication. And Season Three is lurking, starting with a jailbreak and ending with a speeder chase–Marah’s piloting is going to be put to an ultimate test, and so is Robb’s self-loathing. Giz, of course, just has to sacrifice everything he’s worked for to win what he wants.

But I’m ahead of myself. There’s revision to be done before I can have any more fun, or beat up any more characters in new and interesting ways. (Yeah, I just said “fun” twice, basically.) Not to mention dogs to walk and more coffee to get into my tissues so I can stop mistyping small words. It’s taken a ridiculous amount of time to get this post done, honestly.

On the bright side, it took only two days completely off and a day and a half of light work before I felt recovered, which is some kind of record after a revision. The trick will be not pushing myself into a breakdown because I feel temporarily better. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Happy Thursday, chickadees. And may all of us be free of passive-aggressive petty tyrants, now and forevermore, amen.

Weary or Wicked

Finishing a complex, hard-fought revision leaves me feeling like I’ve been punched in the head–dazed, pained, and wondering where all the red stuff is coming from. Recovery always takes twice as long as I think it will, but I don’t have time to really let the dust settle. HOOD needs Season Three started and Season Two compiled chapter by chapter for serial subscribers, not to mention revising, editing, proofing, and formatting for release probably in March.

It’s gotten to the point where I’m listening to Wagner again. I just loaded up my Spotify queue with the Ring cycle; that’s a few days of lugubrious listening. The motifs, heavy and somewhat graceless as they are, are familiar enough that I don’t have to spend any time thinking about or untangling them.

It’s strange, I’ve never had the urge to see a Wagner opera, though I’ve listened to the Ring cycle more than I’d care to admit. Not as much as I’ve listened to Mahler’s Fourth or Debussy’s La mer, both old friends from back in my insomnia days. Then I found the Goldberg variations, which worked about 50% of the time–way more than anything else, so I used them until Calm Therapist talked me into going on meds.

Anyway, it’s calming to have Siegfried bellowing in the background. I should, one of these days, watch the operas, but there’s so much else to get through before then.

I did take yesterday off and read Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair, which was quite pleasing. I’m willing to be convinced of Bossy’s theory, and while some of the reviews took exception with his writing (too recondite, too learned, too complex in the sentence) I really didn’t have a problem with that. As a matter of fact, I found the book lucid-clear, and it was a relief to have an author talk to me as if he respected both my intelligence and my historical knowledge. (However small either may be, indeed.)

I’ve moved on to some Peter Grey; his Apocalyptic Witchcraft bored me to tears but so far, Lucifer: Princeps is extremely interesting. I did fall asleep in it face-first last night, always a good sign. If the book hits me on the nose (being dropped while I’m reading on my back) or I wake up on my stomach with said nasal promontory mashed in it, it’s more a function of the interestingness of the text than my level of exhaustion.

Though there was that one time a dictator’s biography kept hitting me in the face; I think I was passing out from sheer distaste. Anyway.

The dogs need walking and there’s a Tuesday writing post to put the finishing touches on. The monthly newsletter needs to go out soon, too, so that means I’ll be looking at my finances and seeing if I can afford to run a giveaway this month.

Rest? Who needs that? Supposedly, I’ll sleep after I’ve expired. (Or once I’ve achieved my final fighting form, if anime is any indication.) No rest for the weary or the wicked, and I intend to be both all the way down to the ground.

Monday Capabilities

Well, the holidays are officially officially over and it’s back to work. Which means Miss B has turned her nose up at her brekkie, though I can hear her tummy rumbling from where she lounges resentfully in my office, and further means that I somehow forgot, in my first attempt at making coffee, that I needed to actually put ground coffee in my Bialetti.

In short, it’s a goddamn Monday.

I’m not too worried about B–every once in a while, a dog just doesn’t want to eat kibble at a particular moment. She’s not going to starve and there’s nothing wrong with her, she just wants human food instead of kibble and wet, and she’s not going to get it. Both dogs sometimes disdain breakfast until after walkies.1

I’m looking over the list of Things to Do Today and internally weeping. I think Past Me was extremely generous in her assessment of my Monday capabilities. There’s the top to bottom revision on The Poison Prince to begin now that all the fresh scenes are written, there’s the upcoming “three things about characters” post for Tuesday’s Haggard Feathers, a Soundtrack Monday post to prep, the day’s Latin lesson2 to stamp into the ground, and the ever-popular walkies for said dogs.

Which are going to be fun, since it’s a somewhat stormy day. No lightning, but rain and a bit of wind, so the cedars are tossing their arms with damp glee. Both Sir Boxnoggin and Miss B will be beside themselves the entire way through their walk; neither like the wind’s invisible fingers touching their hindquarters. Miss B will dislike the wind taking liberties with her skirts, Boxnoggin will be verklempt at the rain and prancing to keep his delicate paws high and dry.

In short, they’re both going to be unlivable, and I think I’ll temporarily put off Boxnoggin’s harness training for runs alongside his human. It’s too much to ask him to focus on two things at a time–running properly alongside me and ignoring the rain. Dogs, like very young humans, do better when you set them up to succeed instead of fail.

I woke up with the strange urge to listen to Lucifer Rising, so that’s what’s going to be playing while I work for a little while. When it gets a little brighter, I’ll be out the door, but for right now, there’s coffee (finally! I remembered to put the ground stuff in! a small victory, but victory nonetheless!) and a few more things to do.

Mondays. I never quite get the hang of them until they’re almost over. At least there’s the finish line to look forward to, no matter what else happens today.

Fewer Books of Less Quality

We are in the throes of the shopping season. Stress and tension are everywhere, from the aisles where tired, overstimulated children cry to the checkouts where overwhelmed parents, counting their pennies, feel the sick thump of what if I forgot someone or what if I can’t afford what Little Spawn wants? It’s just as bad online, too, and the usual “Should I have run a holiday sale, what price points are good, things are ordered and I have to stand in long queues to ship them” discussions are afoot on author loops and social media.

This year I’m also seeing a lot of discussions about ebooks. Specifically, the question “Should I lower my ebook prices in the new year?” has been asked at least five times (and counting!) on different loops and in different social media I’m privy to.

I’ve typed some shorter answers, but I figured why scatter them all over the map when I can put them all in one place?

So. Generally, my TL;DR answer is “…no.”

You already know my thoughts on the convenience of ebooks (without concomitant protections against theft) leading to massive entitlement and piracy. The convenience has YET another unpleasant aspect, made monstrous by Amazon’s business practices.

The race to the bottom in ebook prices is terrifying for any author trying to earn a living. The way the industry is currently set up, either you starve because your ebooks are priced too low for you to get a reasonable return on the investment of time needed to produce a quality product, or you up your production schedule and end up burning out, in the meantime risking cranking out heavily compromised texts that could have been great if you’d had the resources to take the proper time and care with them.

Or, if you price your books reasonably in line with the time and effort spent, you can be inundated with nasty emails calling you a sellout or accusing you of “taking advantage” of readers somehow. And, as a bonus, informing you that your books are going to be stolen in “protest.”

Fun times for all.

Here’s the thing: low across-the-board ebook prices are not good deals. You end up getting fewer books of less quality in the long run, not just because of writer burnout and starvation, but because that’s the way the business model is set up. That’s what it’s engineered for.

Amazon’s success means it’s been able to impose a number of conditions on the market. Amazon profits on volume when prices on ebooks are kept artificially low, because they don’t care what you’re buying as long as you’re buying a lot of it. Authors do not benefit–they work themselves into the ground or the grave, or they quit publishing because they literally can’t afford to keep going. That means readers don’t benefit either; the quality fiction you crave gets harder and harder to find because selling algorithm bumps is profitable as all get-out and/or because the writers experienced and talented enough to provide that quality fiction have been driven out.

Who does benefit from this? You guessed it–Amazon. They profit both coming and going. There’s a fresh crop of hopeful new baby writers willing to be fleeced each season, the plagiarizers and page-stuffers pay Amazon for the privilege to play, writers are working themselves into burnout, and it’s all going into Bezos’s pocketbook. The ‘Zon gets their cut of even a $.99 ebook, you’d better believe it, and enough of those going out the door is a nice chunk of change. Who cares if it’s readable, if it’s quality, if it’s what you actually wanted? You’ll buy anything, according to Amazon, as long as it’s cheap.

Now, Amazon’s done some good things, largely without wanting or trying to. I suppose you could find a few beneficial effects in any cancer if you narrow your focus enough, too. And I’m sure a lot of people will say “books are a luxury anyway, nobody who creates them deserves to make a living because it’s not a real job.” I’ve heard it all, from “all authors are rich anyway”1 to “but if books aren’t less than a dollar apiece people will HAVE to steal them, you just hate FREEDOM.”

But if you’re a fellow publishing professional looking for advice on ebook prices this fine holiday season, take it from someone who’s been in the game for a little while and saw the first explosion of ebooks and witnessed the race to the bottom afterward: Price your books however you damn well please. I’ve raised some of my prices recently to better reflect the time and energy spent on writing and taking the books through quality control; I haven’t been sorry and haven’t noticed any dent in sales. In fact, pricing my books to reflect the quality I try to put into each and every one has had a somewhat salutary effect, I’d say, because it’s clear I respect myself and my work and Readers tend to follow suit.

Trad, indie, and small publishers all refine price, discounts, and deals all the time. It’s part of the game, and self-publishers should do the same. There may come a time when I look at the industry and say “yeah, prices are outta control, I’m dropping mine.”

But today is not that day.

Amazon profits immensely from the race to the bottom in ebook pricing, and has been doing everything possible to keep it going. Nobody else gets a good shake out of the deal, and we’re all somewhat at the mercy of the elephant in the room. Until the rapaciousness of their business model provokes a reaction and a shakeup, it’s pretty much every self-publisher for themselves, not least because getting writers to work together for better conditions is like herding caffeine-crazed hyperactive felines.2

In the end, very little will change until readers are tired of swill choking the gunnels and their purchasing habits change as a result. When a market reaction comes, it’s going to be quite painful for a lot of people and I’m not looking forward to it. In the meantime, though, I’m going to price my books to reflect a fair value for my time and experience, and I encourage any of my peers considering the question this holiday season to do the same.

And I wish everyone, publishing pro, Reader, or anything else, a low-stress holiday full of good food and free of family or other arguments. This time of year’s awful on everyone; I say we all go to bed until New Year’s.

I know we can’t, but it makes me feel better to contemplate the prospect. Over and out.

A Teaser, For Reasons

Already this morning I’ve cut a PDF teaser for Finder’s Watcher. The full book’s been sent to the publisher and I’m hoping to hear back from them once the holiday crunch is over. There’s no reason why subscribers–both newsletter and otherwise–shouldn’t have something nice for the holidays as well, though, so I decided to do a up a little taste for you. Every subscriber–newsletter, Patreon, or Gumroad–will get the teaser. I’ll do my best to make sure they all drop at the same time, too.

And don’t worry. The book is finished, so if the publisher doesn’t want it (for whatever reason) it can be edited, cover art can be found, and it can be released otherwise. I just wanted all the Watcher books to look the same, especially if I want to write another one.

Just to keep my hand in, I suppose.

It was a chilly night. Sir Boxnoggin did his level best to wriggle under the covers with me. It’s hard out there for a slick-coated dog, I guess. Miss B, of course, has enough of a coat that she gets up several times a night to lie on the cool tile of the loo floor, but poor Lord van der Sploot has to make do with cuddling the human. He’s also very terrier, which means he likes enclosed spaces. He’s somewhat catlike–if there’s a box, he’s checking it for fit, and whether or not it fits, he sits.

I awoke in a very specific mood, one that can only be served by coffee and listening to Florence + the Machine. She’s like Jandek, I have to be in just the right space to listen, but when I am, absolutely nothing else will do. So it’s the Ceremonials album this morning, after which the itch should be scratched enough to draw blood and let it recede.

I have coffee, and drinking it means I get to cross an easy item off my to-do list. Today’s the day I make some decisions about Haggard Feathers, too. I think, going into the New Year, I’m going to hive off some writing about writing and let there be a subscription. I might even set up a dedicated mailbox for that, but I haven’t decided yet. God knows I get enough mail otherwise. Going through old writing posts for the second volume of Quill & Crow is a good idea, too.

In all my copious spare time, of course. I should also get together a book of collected short stories.

ANYWAY. I’ll invent all sorts of things to keep myself out of revision today, it seems. Which is why I must make a list, check it a few times, and settle into working through.

It’s Tuesday. Let’s punch the day in the throat together, my friends.

Quasi-Surprise Week

Well, this week is… not going the way I thought it would. First there was Quasi-Surprise Jury Duty (not a surprise, but I’d forgotten about it entirely until my phone reminded me, which happens for Certain Things I Don’t Like Thinking About) and then I slept for twelve hours and woke up with body aches, a full nose, and a mild fever.

The cold I’ve been fighting off knows that yesterday was high-stress, and it has chosen to put up its banners and ride to war.

So it’s going to be that kind of week. Of course.

Edits for the second book of the epic fantasy trilogy are underway. Today is for setting up the workspace and cleaning, as well as getting myself back into that headspace. If my language acquires a certain formality, we all know what to blame now.

Of course, I am often a formal creature, when I don’t know someone well. Those manners are built to keep everyone in the room on an equal footing and make sure I don’t overstep; they are a comforting way for me to show respect and be careful of other people. I know manners can be deployed as weapons when punching up, and I like doing that, but I also like using them just as a matter of course.

Anyway. I had plenty of things planned for today, including writing some thoughts about Bede (oh, my GOD, but Christianity is a TRIP) but that’s just… not gonna happen. I’m knocked off-center and hideously out of breath.

I will say, however, that I’m looking at moving away from Twitter. Not entirely, but there was a conversation this morning about deleting tweets past a certain age, and it resonated with me. There were a few options I considered; one was Semipheremal, which needs some programming know-how to deploy, and the other, recommended by a couple fellow authors, was TweetDeleter.

I loved the idea of Twitter when it started, and I’ve made some relationships there I am loath to lose. But… honestly, it’s a hellscape, full of bad-faith actors and unregulated shittery. I’m pretty sure I’m going to set TweetDeleter to erase everything over a year old. Right now I have it set between one and a half to two years, just because I like to ease into things.

The major draw of Semipheremal is that you could choose certain parameters–a tweet with more than a hundred likes, frex–and keep those while deleting other old tweets. But then I started thinking… you know, if a post of mine gets over a hundred likes, it’s a sure bet that the asshats looking to troll, hijack, and harass aren’t far behind. Plus there will inevitably be accusations of “deleting to cover things up”, which are par for the course with Photoshop and screencaps running around nowadays.

And of course I’m only a semi-public person, not a government official whose words and boosts should be recorded for posterity and for the people the government is claiming to serve. So I’m feeling like it’s an ethical choice to use the service in the first place, and to set a time limit on how long those things stay active in the second.

So I’ll probably drop the time limit down to a year. Of course, I’ll keep stuff on my Mastodon, where most of my microblogging goes anyway.

In any case, I should get moving. Waking up full of snot and body aches was not quite optimal, and I’m going to be drinking ginger and lemon in hot water by the bucketful to try to get this crud washed out of my system. Some searing hot curry wouldn’t go amiss, either.

And with that sorted I can step back into a preindustrial society, take a look at the architecture of a book, and start trimming, tweaking, and expanding. thank the gods nobody’s going to be in the office until after New Year’s, that means I have a reasonable amount of time to get this beast into better shape. 150k now, 200k by the time I’m finished, I’m sure.

…even just typing that made me tired. Maybe I should schedule a nap, too.