A bit of this, a bit of that.

Firstly, my February sales for Super held steady in spite of the dreaded mid-winter slump. I'm making gas money, but I'm not selling to friends and family who are contractually obligated to love me at this point, and that is amazing. That is something that I almost doubted would ever happen. (Eh, cynic at heart, what can I say? It means that good news is such a delightful surprise!) I have the fabulous MGShogun on Twitter and the incredible Alejandra Aponte on Wordpress to thank for this. Y'all's enthusiasm is staggering and humbling.

*

In news of the Super series, Fire with Fire is in the middle of its third draft and is still on schedule for an April release, though not April 1 as I had envisioned. I always hate the third draft and have to kick and stomp a bit before I get down to it, as that's when my beta readers take great delight in telling me everything about my baby that is ugly. The final edit, the copy-edit and typo search, is much less aggravating. As far as drafting goes, I cringe to say this, but...I've put Siren, Naomi's book, on hiatus at 38,000 words while I work out some other issues. I wasn't having any fun at all, and it was showing in the writing. Part of it was pressure from the series endgame revving up, part of it was structural issues in the book itself (which I think I have identified), and part of it was pressure from the day job seeping into me, but I was dragging along at about two thousand miserable words a day and calling it lucky to get that much. I've been writing a ridiculous PNR that I outlined in a day since then; it's been delighting me and providing a wonderful mental respite so that I can go back to the Super series with all of the joy that it deserves.

*

In news of the Smashwords censorship scandal, Mark Coker has sent this message out to all Smashwords authors:

"HOW YOU CAN HELP:

Although erotica authors are being targeted, this is an issue that should concern
all indie authors. It affects indies disproportionately because indies are the
ones pushing the boundaries of fiction. Indies are the ones out there publishing
without the (fading) protective patina of a "traditional publisher" to lend them
legitimacy. We indies only have each other.

Several Smashwords authors have contacted me to stress that this censorship affects
women disproportionately. Women write a lot of the erotica, and they're also
the primary consumers of erotica. They're also the primary consumers of mainstream
romance, which could also come under threat if PayPal and the credit card companies
were to overly enforce their too-broad and too-nebulous obsenity clauses (I think
this is unlikely, but at the same time, why would dubious consent be okay in
mainstream romance but not okay in erotica? If your write paranormal, can your
were-creatures not get it on with one another, or is that bestiality? The insanity
needs to stop here. These are not questions an author, publisher or distributor
of legal fiction should have to answer.).

All writers and their readers should stand up and voice their opposition to financial
services companies censoring books. Authors should have the freedom to publish
legal fiction, and readers should have the freedom to read what they want.

These corporations need to hear from you. Pick up the phone and call them.
Email them. Start petitions. Sign petitions. Blog your opposition to censorship.
Encourage your readers to do the same. Pass the word among your social networks.
Contact your favorite bloggers and encourage them to follow this story. Contact
your local newspaper and offer to let them interview you so they can hear a local
author's perspective on this story of international significance. If you have
connections to mainstream media, encourage them to pick up on the story. Encourage
them to call the credit card companies and pose this simple question, "PayPal
says they're trying to enforce the policies of credit card companies. Why are
you censoring legal fiction?"

Below are links to the companies waiting to hear from you. Click the link and
you'll find their phone numbers, executive names and postal mailing addresses.
Be polite, respectful and professional, and encourage your friends and followers
to do the same. Let them know you want them out of the business of censoring
legal fiction.

Tell the credit card companies you want them to give PayPal permission to sell
your ebooks without censorship or discrimination. Let them know that PayPal's
policies are out of step with the major online ebook retailers who already accept
your books as they are. Address your calls, emails (if you can find the email)
and paper letters (yes paper!) to the executives. Post open letters to them
on your blog, then tweet and Facebook hyperlinks to your letters. Force the
credit card companies to join the discussion about censorship. And yes, express
your feelings and opinions to PayPal as well. Don't scream at them. Ask them
to work on your behalf to protect you and your readers from censorship. Tell
them how their proposed censorship will harm you and your fellow writers.

Visa:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=V+Profile

American Express:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=AXP+Profile

MasterCard:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=MA+Profile

Discover:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=DFS+Profile

Ebay (owns PayPal):
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=ebay+Profile

_________

Starting Sunday, if our email systems can handle it, we will send out an email
to several hundred thousand registered Smashwords members who are opted in to
receive occasional Smashwords service updates. The email will combine Read an
Ebook Week with the censorship call to action. Let's start a little fire, shall
we?

Thank you for your continuing support of Smashwords. With your help, we can
move mountains.

Best wishes,

Mark"

He lays it out much better than I ever could. Even if you're not a Smashwords author, I highly, highly encourage you to contact Paypal, Ebay, and the listed credit card companies and make your voices heard. Ill-defined standards based upon emotion, historically speaking, really don't end well.

Smashwords begins to censor its erotica titles.

Further details here.

Selena Kitt also weighs in here. (Following the link embedded in the first article doesn't take you to the correct page.)

I don't think that it's helpful to be pissed at Smashwords, as they are clearly unhappy with the decision. The only online vendor in my memory who has stood up to Paypal making an ultimatum like this is the Dreamwidth journaling service, which has an ideologically unique and dedicated user base that was willing to tolerate a lot of inconvenience while Dreamwidth found a new payment processor. Smashwords can't claim that; users are not going to wait weeks for a $.99 impulse title. And I'm honestly not sure what a good plan of action would even be to deal with this, except to spread the word and get an especial chill at the inclusion of BDSM titles under "rape." While rape, bestiality, and incest are all illegal and immoral in their real-world incarnations, consensual kink is not, but practitioners are still often targeted for persecution.

Anyway. I'll defend to the death your right to say it, then they came for me, I'm sure you can fill in your own cliche at this point.

Edited for my inability to walk away from ANYTHING: It has been pointed out hither, thither, and yon that this is not a First Amendment issue of free speech. This is true; a retailer does not have to carry any products, or businesses entertain any customers, that they do not wish. The First Amendment protects against government interference in free speech under most conditions*. It does not guarantee that your speech is protected from criticism or that you are guaranteed an audience. However, the fact that there is no real legal issue of free speech at work here does not mean that there is no moral one. Acts depicted in fiction, no matter how personally distasteful you might find them, do not do material harm to real world persons. I don't like tapioca pudding. (WHY WOULD YOU EAT SOMETHING THAT LOOKS AT YOU.) Without being able to come up with a rational and verifiable basis for its causing harm, though, I cannot on moral grounds object to it being sold. This is most apparent with the inclusion of BDSM in the list of banned themes. (I'm still waiting for one of the pro-Paypal people to provide a good explanation for this on moral grounds, by the way, or even to address it at all.) Incest, rape, and bestiality practiced in the real world would cause material harm to persons and animals. Though I think that it can be successfully countered, the argument can be made that the portrayal of these acts in a fictional context encourages their real-life practice. Consensual BDSM, however, is neither illegal nor immoral in its real-life context. It is simply, to some, "yucky." Yeah, that's not an impressive ethical or moral stance among grown-ups.

*Stop citing the Miller Test until you know what it means, though. Just stop.

I'm not much better than a raccoon, really.

Interactive book cover that changes as you drag your mouse over it.

I think that I'm one of the last five people on the planet who doesn't like touch screens, and I'm going to weep tears worthy of a Precious Moments child when RIM finally finishes circling the drain*. That being said, this is so cool. I can't stop playing with it.

Right, I'm gonna stop and get back to writing my NaNoWriMo now.

Okay, now.

NOW.

Seriously, I gotta get out of here.

*A friend dropped her iPhone two feet from the driver's seat of her car. It cracked the screen. I fell halfway down a flight of stairs with my Blackberry in my back pocket and wound up with nothing worse than a Blackberry-shaped bruise on my ass. SAD, SAD TEARS.

Blogger! I return!

Actually, no, I don't. I'm having a number of computer issues right now that are currently leaving me internet-functional but unable to work in anything that isn't longhand, which is obviously an issue when it comes to drafting or blogging (the thing that you're all here for). I'm working on it, and begging the sweet and lovely IT guys to get me one more year with this laptop before I have to purchase another one.

In news that I hope is not related but highly suspect given the timing, my Yahoo account was hacked Saturday morning. Now, this is not the account that I use for professional correspondence, but I access them both from the same computer, and this "coincidence" in timing is bringing forth serious side-eye in me. If you get an email that looks as if it's from me, for the time being I highly urge you to contact me on Twitter before you open it. I'm MariStroud thereabouts, too.

See you when I see you, y'all, which hopefully won't be too long of a gap. (Obvious statement is obvious, but: damn if the internet doesn't move like lightning.)

Time Marches On

I have to buy a new television.

This is not a tragedy. It's an imperfect world, televisions break all of the time. I'm even lucky enough that I have the spare cash lying around with which to purchase said idiot box. I'm annoyed, however, because I shouldn't need a new television. My problem isn't with the television itself, it's with my VCR/DVD player. (Yes, one of those ancient dinosaurs still exists. Whippersnappers, I still remember what it was like when you had to set your VCR in order to tape shows.) The machine broke about a year or so again and, lazy miss that I am, I've just been watching DVDs on my laptop since then. That situation has been partly rectified with the addition of a Blu-Ray player, with just one tiny problem: my television is over ten years old and belonged to at least two other people before me. It has no idea what a Blu-Ray player is. It only knew what a DVD player was because the VCR half was willing to hold its hand, stroke its hair, and speak softly to it until the trembling stopped. But the television worked. In fact, the television still works, and I have to replace it because it's not compatible with newer technologies that will themselves become obsolete and have to be replaced with even newer toys to translate media. I'm very ambivalent about this, on multiple levels. On the one hand, inexpensive technology makes it much easier to get art and information across a wider expanse of people. On the other hand, we all know that you don't trust Skynet.

There, you know that I was going to get to a point eventually. I have other people who listen to my purely personal kvetchings, and I pay them in margaritas.

If there is one thing that still niggles at me when it comes to the e-book revolution, it's the impermanency. Viruses hit with much greater frequency than fires and floods, after all. One good catastrophe of even personal scope, and it's all gone. This is not necessarily a downside from a business standpoint: just make the books cheap enough so that the possibility of losing them isn’t such a stumbling block to purchase. I can't tell you the number of things I've impulse-bought at work because, what the hell, I can spend three bucks on soda a day when I'm really revving.

But on a larger scale than your friend's toddler pouring grapefruit juice down your tower? (Most likely because their parent thought that grapefruit juice was in any way going to agree with a three year-old's palate.) I write dark fiction because there is a part of me that cannot stop believing that humanity is going to pull some kind of zombpocalyse-level stunt at some point or another. As a group, we are probably the dumbest smart people the universe has ever seen. That's the part of me that runs in flailing circles at the idea of having the majority of any cultural knowledge, not just books, stored into a wholly digital format. Admit it, if you look at a CD, unless you're already familiar, you're not going to have any idea what the hell is on there or what you're supposed to do with it. E-readers are a little easier to figure out if you're flailing through the dark, as they generally have keyboards*, but I still worry sometimes about how fast our stores of knowledge are shifting into forms dependent upon civilization to translate them. There's a reason that we know nothing about Greek music.

Or maybe I'm just really annoyed about my television.

*Unless you have an iPhone or iPad, in which case you are absolutely, undeniably bringing about the eventual apocalypse. Sorry.

Okay, I'm posting this, anyway, because it makes me laugh just that hard, but two days after I wrote it, my car was hammered by hail. So maybe it's going to be a weather-related End Times rather than fast zombies with bifurcated jaws.