Love in Dark Settings

"Follow our instructions. Seriously, I'm not kidding. I don't care if you are a publishing expert with 20 years experience, follow the damn instructions. There is one exception. For those who want to fail, spend 300% more time on the formatting, and have no fear of being driven terminally insane, and are generally narcissistic bastards, you may do as you please. For the rest of you, follow the instructions. Repeat after me, 'I will follow the instructions in the style guide or have a pox upon my house.' Now say it 37 times, turn around and hop on one leg."

--Brian Meeks, parodying Mark Coker putting "the fear of god" in self-publishers in The Smashwords Style Guide.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


( My task list for last week )

( Back to work, and evidence that the Clean Air Act isn't working )

( This week's menu )

( Slow but steady on editing and layout )

( The old way and the new way of submitting manuscripts to SF/F magazines )

( Reviews and recommendations of fiction and nonfiction narratives )

( Other links )

"I figured out early on that writing is about failure. Almost 100 percent guaranteed failure. You'll never write it as well as you want, you will always fall short of perfection, a typo will always slip in, rejection is more certain than death and taxes, and, if you are lucky enough to get published, a horde is waiting to happily rake you over the coals. After a while, you build up great layers of scar tissue. At this point, I don't care what anyone thinks except my readers, who are my only customers. And, in a way, they are among my closest, most intimate friends. So why should I care if some scared writer [who condemns self-publishing] tries to apply a stigma? If you're a writer, you should be scared, but if you go around worrying about other writers, you have your eyes on the wrong prize.

"Listen to readers. They rarely apply stigma. The only labels they care about are 'good' and 'crap.'"

--Scott Nicholson.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


( Dear writer who wishes me to read their book/e-book )

( What writing I'm working on, now and in the coming months )

( In the I'm-so-proud-of-my-boy department . . . )

( Muse Marathon )

( My Muse and my mental health )

( About the Doctor Who episode, 'A Good Man Goes to War' )

( Reply to comments )

"I don't think that the celebrations in the streets were our finest moment as Americans."

--Mike Hayes, quoted in Is It Wrong to Celebrate Bin Laden's Death? See also Beyond Retaliation and Rest in Peace.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


( My publication process is gelling, thanks to you guys )

( Smashwords e-books, apps, and digital media prices )

( RomanceWiki, Nifty, and Life Prison )

( Life Prison and figuring out the short story formula; plus, yay Nifty readers )

( Slow progress on Life Prison  )

( My health (and how it affects my work schedule) )

( Links that might interest you )

"When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink."

--John Keats (composed in 1818; published posthumously).

How I reply to comments at this blog.


( Deadlines and schedules )

( Eve of my relapse )

( A tribute to Sarah Jane Smith )

( Stepping off the cliff )

( And it begins )

( So far, so good with my health; plus, Torchwood and Doctor Who )

"Time is very dangerous without a rigid routine. If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival."

--Novelist Flannery O'Connor.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


( Waterman and nuclear power )

( Dinner and scheduling  )

"Information wants to be free. Authors want to be paid."

--Glenn Hauman, commenting in 1998 on the dilemma of how to market e-books.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


( Law Links's light at the end of the tunnel )

( Clearing up after the storm )

( Well, great. So now I have breathing problems. )

( Why I don't want to publish many e-books )

"Reading . . . is an act of resistance in a landscape of distaction, a matter of engagement in a society that seems to want nothing more than for us to disengage. It connects us at the deepest levels; it is slow, rather than fast. That is its beauty and its challenge: in a culture of instant information, it requires us to pace ourselves. What does it mean, this notion of slow reading? Most fundamentally, it returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. Even more, we are reminded of all we need to savor - this instant, this scene, this line. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise, the tumult, to discover our reflections in another mind. As we do, we join a broader conversation, by which we both transcend ourselves and are enlarged. . . . It is in this way that reading becomes an act of meditation, with all of meditation's attendant difficulty and grace. I sit down. I try to make a place for silence. It's harder than it used to be, but still, I read."

--David L. Ulin: The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


( Life Prison review and friendship fic )

( Weekly schedule )

( Daily schedule )

( Pizza and being spoiled  )

( Excellent day )

( Symptom check )

( Special note concerning my Friends list )

"Let me tell you a depressing little truth. Back in my starving-editor days in the late 1960s, I edited a trio of men's magazines. And it was company policy to fire any first reader who couldn't reject a story every two minutes, because that's how fast they arrived. That means he had to open the envelope, pull out the story, read that opening page, attach a rejection slip, stuff and seal the envelope, and put it in the outgoing mail tray, all in 120 seconds. If you [the author] hadn't captured him by paragraph 2, he never got to all those gems that you had up ahead on pages 8 and 19 and 22."

--Mike Resnick: Slush.


How I reply to comments at this blog.

( What I did today )

"There are many, many people who, thanks to an overdose of pop psychology and an dearth of imagination, cannot conceive of an author writing about attitudes and actions, especially repugnant ones, that he or she does not share. . . . . Such people feel that when writers show that people and cultures held unpleasant and harmful ideas in the past, the writers are saying that the harmful ideas are valid.

"Apparently, it would be better if writers whitewashed the past to make it look sweet and innocent and prettiful.

"Personally, I feel that this is disrespectful to the people who suffered in the past. You have an obligation to get it right. Prettying up the past—weaving a fantasy in which people of different races, religions, national origin, sexes and sexual orientations never suffer at all—tacitly says, 'All the rotten stuff that you guys went through? It doesn't matter. It makes us uncomfortable. We'd rather forget about it.'"

--Gehayi: Back to Basics: Historical Accuracy (And Why Historicals So Often Aren't).


How I reply to comments at this blog.

( What I did today )

( Where I stand at the moment )

Those of you who have chronic pain or some other symptom related to my condition, what do you do to care for yourself?