Weirdsville

Yeggs

For various reasons, I never used to like my eggs any other way than scrambled.

Fortunately, though, I’m now forty-mumblemumble years old and have cultivated the habit of trying things I never liked every once in a while just to be sure. And I’ve found out that fried eggs with salt and pepper, their yolks maybe not entirely hardened, are great on sourdough toast. And each time I eat them, I say a silent little fuck you to the abusive asshats who tried to rob me of simple joys.

It makes them taste even better.

It’s nice to try new things, it’s nice to try things you once disliked and find out you like them now, and it’s also nice to try things you never liked once in a while and think “Nope, still not for me.” All three are useful, especially to a writer.

Have a lovely weekend, chickadees!

Soundtrack Monday: Wondering Where the Lions Are

Welcome to another edition of Soundtrack Monday! We’re doing this song again, because last time was just a short skim.

Plus, I was looking at old book soundtracks this morning, and came across Carcajou, which is what I wanted Weasel Boy to be titled. (Even I understood Weasel Boy wouldn’t be quite be, uh, romantic.) It eventually ended up as Taken, which was all right… but in my heart, it will always be Weasel Boy.

And one of the first songs on the soundtrack is Bruce Cockburn’s Wondering Where the Lions Are. Cockburn excels at finding warmth and gentleness even in the worst of situations. (He also did the fantastic If I Had a Rocket Launcher, which is not gentle but is very understandable.)

Much of Zach’s tension and growth in Weasel Boy comes from him finding out where his particular lions are, so to speak. He knows what he has to do, he’s just… afraid. When you know that your anger literally will not let you stop until you’re dead or victorious, you learn a healthy respect for that anger–and an unwillingness to let it rule you. This is at the heart of many (though not all, by any means) modern werewolf or shifter stories, a lesson quite unlike their “original” meanings.1

I’ve often held that werewolf and vampire stories, like many myths, are somewhat blank screens for us to project our own cultural anxieties onto, and they survive in direct proportion to how well they adapt to that projection.

Which is why they’re so much fun to work with, frankly.

Anyway, Wondering Where the Lions Are is a beautiful song, and even though Cockburn probably wouldn’t like the use I put it to, it’s fabulous material. I suspect he might think it’s a serious song meant for serious things instead of for a romance novel, but there are plenty of serious themes in romance novels, even this one.2

Zach knew he was strong enough, that wasn’t the problem. He suspected he wasn’t gentle enough, and the tension in the song between living in a war zone (polished and precise like the mind behind the gun should be…) and finding a moment of beauty and clarity (But some kind of ecstasy’s got a hold on me…) resonated with both me and the imaginary hero inside my head.

Anyway, I could natter on forever about the mythological, psychological, and musical underpinnings of Weasel Boy, but there’s work to be done and more stories to tell. Enjoy the tune, and have a lovely holiday Monday.

Leek Iteration

I love potato-leek soup for many reasons, not least of which is this little science experiment. It’s close to magic, and every time I walk by the kitchen window, I am reminded of the deep, abiding fuck you inherent in all earthly life, clinging on the surface or in the crevices of an insignificant rock whirling through space in a backwater galaxy.

The kids are making “Leek 2.0” jokes. I haven’t told them about why leeks figure heavily in fertility magic, though. They can figure that one out on their own.

If you’re reading this, you’ve beaten tremendous odds already, and there will never be another you in all of eternity. Every once in a while, contemplating that–the uniqueness, the fragility, and the deep endless strength of life–makes me feel very small, very awed, and very unreasonably happy.

Not bad for a leek that also gave me soup.

Revisions, Frazzle

HOOD

I long to finish these Poison Prince revisions and then… go straight into revising HOOD‘s Season Two. I’m sure by the time both are finished I’ll be a quivering ball of nerves, and will head straight into the next thing on the to-do list, which escapes me at the moment because checking said list seems overwhelming.

Anyway, the epic fantasy has grown from 113k to 132k, and shows no sign of stopping. It’s good–it means a richer experience for the reader–and at the same moment, extremely time-consuming, since not only am I layering in fresh detail but also adding notes to a pad of paper, to be typed into a series bible later. I used to just keep details in my head, tying them in a. sort of memory palace to the lighting in specific books/series, but nowadays I need that RAM for other things, so to speak.

Also this morning, the Princess had breakfast with me (a semi-rare but always welcome occurrence), I had to send an email I’ve been dreading, and a good-natured semi-prank came to fruition and I’ve been laughing nonstop about it. All in all, it’s been a mixed bag, and I still need to walk the dogs and swallow yet another toad, making an appointment I’ve put off for a long while.

Never rains but it pours, no silver lining without a cloud, and so on. Today is subscription day, so Crow’s Nest and serial subscribers will be getting goodies anon.

It will be somewhat of a relief when Poison Prince revisions are over. The second book in a trilogy is often the most difficult, all the bridging and connective tissue has to be juuuuuust so. It will be nice to shift to a futuristic setting and have some of the deep formality and rhythm drain from my speech; when I write preindustrial-set fantasy, I’ve noticed that I become even more formal and aware of verbal restraint. I don’t quite milady, but it’s close.

In other news, Sir Boxnoggin is overjoyed at the small, slow, preparatory runs we’re doing. He enjoys being out solo with Mum dreadfully much, and bounces along springily, tail held high, eager to defend me from passing cars, falling leaves, and other pedestrians. He’ll learn to differentiate between what’s usual and what’s not with enough outings under his belt, but for right now we go very slowly and there’s a lot of encouragement and direction needed. It does me good to have to talk while moving; it forces me to think of form and plan ahead even more than I usually do during runs. But it also makes them far more exhausting than when I used to take B after she was fully trained in running etiquette.

Miss B is, alas, a little too elderly for running anymore. The daily walks, as well as ceremonial postprandial wrestling with young Boxnoggin, are quite enough for her. The exercise keeps her healthy, but still… she’s getting up there. Losing Trundles was bad enough; when Miss B goes I will be utterly gutted.

They are worth it, these fuzzy little jerks, but I’m not looking forward to that pain.

It’s a day of good things and not-so-good things, happening so close together they blend into a hum of frazzled nerves. Ah well. Time to swallow another toad, then get out the door and walk off the canine fidgets.

I suppose I’ll add Thursdays to the list of days I never quite got the hang of.

…it’s a long list. Upward and onward, I guess.

The (Non)Burning Table

Awake early, but not up then. I set an extra alarm about an hour before get-up time, because I need that hour. I crave the quiet, the solitude, the darkness. When I don’t have that soft, internally focused time, the anxiety mounts daily until I hit the edge of burnout, bare nerves sparking like uninsulated wires.

Now I’m up. I even did the dishes while waiting for the coffee to finish–and I’m already one up on yesterday, because I remembered to put the ground coffee in the Bialetti.

Small mercies.

I need to have a chat with the child who has taken responsibility for cleaning the kitchen, who seems to think I won’t notice if the “cleaning” consists of filling the dishwasher with the least number of bulkiest pans possible and then leaving the rest piled in the sink and on the stove because “it won’t fit.”1 I mean, props for figuring out a way to partially escape the chore, but that’s not how this should be done.

I suppose I’ve put off having that chat for so long because I was beaten as a child if I didn’t clean the kitchen “properly”, including (at intervals best described as “random, and you must be a mind reader to discern them at all”) wrapping a rag around a butterknife to clean carved grooves on the legs and on the border of the dining room table. As you might guess, there are FEELINGS involved with kitchen duty, and I need to be in a place where I’m dealing with what’s actually happening instead of responses to what happened decades ago before I embark on discussing the issue with the young person in question.

…and now I’m thinking about how satisfying it was to “deal with” that table. Before I broke off contact with childhood abusers, they held a “garage sale”, and I ended up taking the table. Guess what I did with it.

Go on, guess.

If you guessed “beat the shit out of it with a hammer, took all the bolts and hardware for scattering alongside a highway, and let it be dumped” you’d be quite right, my friend. My only regret is that I didn’t stage a fiery death for the wooden article in question, but honestly, it was only a table and not responsible for my angst. Not to mention there might have been carcinogens in the varnish, released by hungry flames.

Though dancing in a circle and screaming while it burned would have been intensely therapeutic, cancer chemicals or no.

Anyway, Sir Boxnoggin is almost frantic with desire for a walk, and I think today is the day we start training him for runs. He was too young when we got him2 but now I’m absolutely certain his bones are finished melding and he’s in good shape. Plus, I’m on a program with significant walk breaks while I recover from a few injuries, and there’ll never be a better time to ease him into the manners required. Poor Miss B has become too elderly for even gentle runs; a morning walk tires her out for the entire day.

So that’s my Tuesday, my chickadees. Later this morning a new writing post (three things about characters) will be up on Haggard Feathers, and very soon3 that site will transition to a different model, with one free post a month and other weekly writing posts (as well as a weekly open thread) paid-subscription-only. For right now, though, you can taste-test the NaNoWriMo posts to get an idea.

Off I go. I might even escape the worst of the rain, though honestly, living in the Pacific Northwest, why bother?

Edging In With the Lake

I’m edging back into piano practice again, and it feels good. Of course, every time I play this I expect to see a red-eyed Natalie Portman, but that’s a price one pays.

I want to finish this book of exercises and go back to doing Bach. Next year I’ve got to start working seriously on my Goldberg Variations Before I’m 50 bucket-list item, so it would be good to practice before then. And a session after dinner starts the evening most agreeably; it forces my brain into a different mode that makes it easier to not-work before bed.

Bonus bit: Long-time readers will know I put a Swan Lake reference in the Valentine series; it was super fun. I did have thoughts of doing a short story with a psion bounty hunter who also dances, but it died on the vine. Probably for the best, the last thing Danny needs in her life is to shoot someone in a tutu.

It’s almost the weekend, my dears, and the holidays are almost over. We can do this.

Over and out.

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.