Update on Publishing News

Random House has responded in an open letter to critics, specifically some very well-followed folks in SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) including John Scalzi.  You can find some great commentary and comments here at Writer Beware, a blog every writer ought to follow.

Here is the text of the open letter:

Dear John, Victoria, Jaym and SFWA Members,

We read with interest your posts today about the new Random House digital imprints and our business model. While we respect your position, you’ll not be surprised to learn that we strongly disagree with it, and wish you had contacted us before you published your posts. We would appreciate you giving us an opportunity to share why we believe Hydra is an excellent publishing opportunity for the science fiction community by posting ours below to them.

Hydra offers a different-- but potentially lucrative--publishing model for authors: a profit share. In the more traditional advance- plus-royalty model, the publisher takes all the financial risk up front, and recoups the advance before the author earns any cash royalties. With a profit-share model, there is no advance. Instead, the author and publisher share equally in the profits from each and every sale. In effect, we partner with the author for each book. 

As with every business partnership, there are specific costs associated with bringing a book successfully to market, and we state them very straightforwardly and transparently in our author agreements. These costs could be much higher--and certainly be more stressful and labor-intensive to undertake--for an author with a self-publishing model. Profits are generated once those costs are subtracted from the sales revenue. Hydra and the author split those profits equally from the very first sale. 

When we acquire a title in the Hydra program, it is an all-encompassing collaboration. Our authors provide the storytelling, and we at Hydra support their creativity with best-in-class services throughout the publishing process: from dedicated editorial, cover design, copy editing and production, to publicity, digital marketing and social media tools, trade sales, academic and library sales, piracy protection, negotiating and selling of subsidiary rights, as well as access to Random House coop and merchandising programs. Together, we deliver the best science fiction, fantasy and horror books to the widest possible readership, thus giving authors maximum earning potential.

As a last point to the SFWA leadership, my colleagues and I would welcome the opportunity to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss the advantages of the Hydra business model, describe the program overall, and respond to any of your expressed concerns. Please let me know a good time for us to set up this meeting. 

Many thanks and all the best,
Allison Dobson

Allison R. Dobson
V.P., Digital Publishing Director
Random House Publishing Group

I have to beg to differ with a few things in the letter, namely, that they would give the authors maximum earning potential. Really? 

Will they market for me? I assume that if they do, I'll get charged for it. If I'm getting charged for it, why not just buy it myself? And I'm not sure I'd want to buy advertising. Since we're partners, do I get a say in how much is spent and where?

What is Hydra offering that I can't get for myself and then receive 100% of the profits? They're fronting the money for production? Yes, they are. Are they spending more than I can afford, which I have to pay back with all of my side of the profits from the book (while they pocket their half--do they spend their half of the profits to help pay down some of those production costs or is it all on me?) or are they spending something I can afford, which couldn't I just spend that money myself and keep all the profits instead of paying them back and then only getting 50% of the profits until they cut me loose?

Am I reading this right?

Fire and Gunfire and Smoke

All morning I've heard reports and rumors and everything else about a fire and gunshots just a few blocks from my workplace. It's sobering, standing at my station, watching to see if something drastically changes, listening to gunfire.

And weirdly, I could see getting used to it. Not liking it, but figuring I have to eat, I have to shop, I have to work ... and going to work while blocks away people are shooting at each other, be it armies, religious sects, gangs, whatever. What if there's nowhere you can move to? People are struggling everywhere to make house payments or rent, looking for work--if your neighborhood exploded with violence, could you move? Would you?

Because I won't. Obviously I have the fair assurance that this won't happen again, and that after today it's unlikely that I'll hear gunfire and see plumes of smoke and flames and police, or worry about a crazy man somehow sneaking through a cordon and coming into my workplace. But even if I did think this would happen again, would I move? Would I leave work, with little assurance of finding another job ... and where would I go where this couldn't happen?

Because it could happen anywhere. Today it's happening here.

Weird how normal my day is. Weird how I'm having lunch at my second favorite place to have lunch because the first one is closed for everyone's safety. Or maybe not so weird. It's here today, and it'll be somewhere else in the world, maybe several somewhere else's, tomorrow.

I just hope that the wife and sister are okay. The man ... he's in charge. He'll be okay if he wants to be, and apparently he doesn't want to be. Today he wants fire and gunfire and smoke.

Sickly

I called in sick today.  I very rarely do that ... and then I overthink it and wonder if I do really very rarely do that, or if I only think I rarely do that.  I don't want to be the person who's always calling in sick and screwing it up for everyone else.

Calling in sick causes problems for my employer.  It's a small enough place (35 employees-ish, with quite a few of those being part-time so that we have considerably less than that working on a given day) that losing one person really mucks up the schedule.  It's most likely that the bookkeeper will have to fill in my spot at least for some of the day.  Not good.

There's the possibility too that I won't be the only one calling in today.  

Business will be done, and the customers probably won't notice except maybe in the form of longer waits, but my fellow employees will really feel it.  Since I like my fellow employees a lot, I don't want them to end up harried and stuck in spots doing work that I ought to be doing.  On the other hand, I don't want to spread this plague, assuming it's contagious.  A couple of people have already called in sick this week, and what I'm feeling now sounds something like what caused them to go to work thinking they could pull off another day and then sent them running to the restroom followed by leaving work sick.  On the other, other hand, since it's already going around, my showing up or not probably won't affect who will get sick.  The plague is in the building ... it's all up to everyone's individual immunity now.  And of course on the other, other, other hand, I have to think about our customers, some of whom are elderly or in poor health.  They definitely ought to be protected.

So I'm staying home, even though at this point I think I can push through without emptying the non-existent contents of my stomach on them.  (Breakfast may or may not get eaten today ... water is an iffy proposition at this point.)  I don't like to call in sick.  It makes me feel like I'm letting everyone down.  I hope my coworkers don't have a really crummy day because of me.  And I hope I didn't unwittingly spread this yucky feeling to others yesterday.  I sterilized my whole area with wipes.  Twice!  I'm sure the bookkeeper will do that again today.  And I hope my previously-ill coworkers are feeling better, not just for their own sakes but because that makes it likely that I'll be back at work that much sooner too.

Stay well, everyone, and have a good day.  

Remodeling the House of Pee Pee

Remodeling is always rough, whether you do it yourself or get a contractor.  And I've got to quit fooling myself.  The "oh, I'll just paint the upstairs and put in laminate floors" is a remodel.  

Because doing work like this is never 'just' anything.

So I got myself a crew of hapless teenagers (no, really, we'd love to help! they cried when I told them that they couldn't come spend the night because there's too much work to do.  Bet they're not coming back any time soon) and we painted the ceiling.  So far so good.  Then I started pulling stuff off the walls, filling in holes, moving furniture, you know the routine.

And I thought (this was perhaps my second mistake, the first being that I should start do this as a DIY project in the first place) since I'm moving all this heavy furniture anyway, why move it again when I have to rip up the carpet?  Besides, I'll just have a little peek at the dining room floor and see why it's a little higher than the rest of the floor.

And it was wood.  Not nice, no, not anymore anyway.  So I thought (argh) that I'll just pull up the dining room rug before I put the gigantic table back, and we'll still be in livable space.

I had forgotten something important.

We have six cats.  At one point, before all these six cats, we had a geriatric cat who decided that the far corner in the dining room was actually a cat box.  I'd cleaned up as best I could back there after she passed away (RIP, China kitty) and I figured the scent would have faded.  And it had.  When I pulled up the carpet there, the pad underneath was stained, but it didn't reek.

I'd forgotten, though, that the people before us had all kinds of dogs and cats.

And the wood floors under the pad were, well, odiferous.

I didn't notice at first.  No, it wasn't until I got the idea of first sweeping and mopping and then scrubbing the floor against the back wall that it became eye-wateringly clear.

OMG.

Stay tuned for the continuing story when, after Kami sprays with first enzyme cleaner and then bleach, she says to no one in particular, "does the smell in here just keep getting worse and worse, or do I just have really bad BO?"

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One

I just saw the latest Harry Potter movie in a second-run pub theater.  Great company, good food, but the movie didn't work very well for me.  I'd read a little about pacing issues, so I didn't go in with high expectations.  Even with that in mind, though, I had serious trouble with the way the story moved.  The elements were mostly there--fine actors, beautiful special effects that didn't distract from the story, etc.  But I kept wondering what happened to the dialogue, to the ideas, and most of all, to the charm.

I was charmed by the books, and I was charmed by many of the movies.  I don't think it was a case of no-surprises.  I enjoyed watching the story I knew come to life on the big screen in the other Harry Potter movies, as well as other movie-from-book films I'd seen.  But life is precisely what was missing here, at least for me.  

For example, I delighted in the derigible plums.  At that point I reveled in that little taste of what had been omnipresent in the books and most of the other films--the color, the environment, the quirky things that belonged there despite their often unusual character, and the sometimes awe-inspiring beauty.  These things convinced me of the existence of another world as marvelous and complex as the real one we live in every day.  I had little to nothing except those plums to convince me of another world this time.

There's an important lesson here for storytellers everywhere.  The 'telling' details often mentioned in writing courses and critiques and in criticism are really important.  They ought to be called the 'showing' details, though.  Because they show us so much, without saying a word.

Bravo to actors, special effects folks, camera men, makeup artists, costumers ... and bravo to the writers, director, producer, etc. for all the hard work, but alas, I can't recommend this movie, and I'm likely to buy it only on discount in order to complete the set after the next movie has come out, assuming this next, and last, movie doesn't do the same or worse as its brother.

Courtesy, Part 2

Some people, when they return stuff, unintentionally give me a clear picture of their house.  Two cases in point recently--two sets of sweats covered in dog and cat hair, and the sweatpants that had been through the wash were hairier than the rest.  The green had a kind of roan or frosted look.  The other case were camo-hunting pants coated in dog hair, with less near the waist band and a ton around the cuffs.  In the camo-pants situation, I had a striking image of the person trying the pants on one leg at a time on avocado carpet with a good quarter inch thick of dog hair felted into the surface.  Am I psychic?  You decide. 

Anyway, when you need to return clothes that don't fit, bear in mind:

If the merchant can't resell them because they've been washed or covered in dog/cat hair or sweated out/smell like perfume/smell like you've been in a cigar bar all night, you're basically asking them to eat the cost of the clothes because you made a mistake.  They usually won't get a credit from the manufacturer.  If the clothes are in good enough condition to hang back on the shelf, though, the merchant will be happy to accommodate you.

In marginal economic times, it doesn't take long before merchants have to decide whether to accommodate errors in size-choice (which we all make, and is a courtesy on their part) or to decide whether to keep their doors open.  Returns are built into business plans, but it's not hard to see how increased returns, or just normal rates of return when the business is struggling due to greatly decreased sales, could kill a store that managed to survive up until this point.

I do understand that lots of people don't really care if the little clothing boutique dies or their local drug store closes ... but they better not complain that the only places still open are Fred Meyer and Walmart.  And on the other side of the table--the best way to ensure you'll be able to return clothes that don't work for you is to take good care of them.  More and more businesses are refusing to take back stuff that's been misused.  They simply can't afford to take the hit anymore.

The exceptions, of course, are obvious manufacturing defects.  The manufacturers make good on those.  

Courtesy

Courtesy is ...

When a toilet seat you've purchased two weeks ago breaks when you sit on it, it's polite to clean it before you return it to the point of purchase.

At least wipe off the drippy stuff and the little curly hair.

Big Goat Day

I haven't posted about the goats in a while. Other than taking care of their daily needs, I haven't done much with the goats lately. So naturally I had to do everything at once yesterday, with the help of my DH.

Imagine taking a ton of tools out to the barn in a wheelbarrow. With the puppies, because they needed some quality time with the goats.

Imagine the goats immediately starting to play with any tools you don't happen to be using at the time.

Imagine the ripe scent of composting manure as we stripped away the relatively clean top layer and started mucking our way down toward bare earth. Mmm mmm mmm. Then of course wee little white flies arrived and hummed about. Then somehow, while going out to check on the dogs, I managed to get a bug, I think it was a flying black ant, in my eye. I got the body and wings out, not sure about all of the legs.

Imagine hauling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of muck (my DH did this part all by himself) out to the garden at the far end of our property (on the top side--at least he didn't have to manage the hill.) Some of it was dry and light, some quite damp.

Imagine, just as you're starting to really dig in, the nature of the muck changing such that it wants to come off the ground in big chunks that keep falling off the shovels, sometimes by breaking in the middle like old, crumbling pottery. This same stuff, when chopped at, bounces shovels. Try not to imagine the coughing and the snot as our bodies tried to fend off the dust.

During those times when my DH made a wheelbarrow run, I worked on pulling out the old hay feeder (the goats had torn it to shreds) and put up a new one. Then I took out the old fencing that divided the goat side from the chicken side. So easy to say, so difficult to wrestle with twisted sections of wire field fence and to yank out staples with a hammer (we couldn't find our fencing pliers, which are perfect for this sort of thing.)

Imagine the feeling of satisfaction when we finish spreading the diatomaceous earth and straw. We turned the old chicken coop we kept in the barn into a sleeping shelf for the goats, and Snowblaze immediately had to leap up on top of it. Top bunk! (The inside is big enough for a goat to use as a house, and I suspect that's where Scooter will probably sleep, if not cuddled up to Snowblaze on top. Or they might both end up inside, because Snowblaze had to play around in there too.) The barn glowed with cleanliness and smelled great. I stayed to bask for a while, then buckled down to trim goat hooves. A piece flew off at one point and hit me in the eye. The same eye. But I persevered, and the goats have nicely trimmed hooves again. Those hooves really grew a lot in a month, which is normal for this time of year. Later I'll be able to trim much less frequently.

Left to do--one more dose of Panacur for the season (spring is worm season. Ick!) and the goats could use a good brushing. I also (eventually) want to build a stanchion because when they're not in the mood to stand for hoof trimming, they're pains in the butt. Weirdly, though, I had fun. If you don't have fun doing this sort of thing, rethink any ideas about having livestock.

I was sore even before we finished the work. I'm even more sore today. Maybe I'll take my camera out and take a pic, but it's more likely that I'll make tea and curl up around my computer and write most of today. It's too rainy to garden anyway.

Burble

This is an argh of quiet desperation.

Actually, I'm not really desperate.

The DH and I are at the Laundromat. Are we here because we wanted to catch up on bedding? No. Are we here because we're doing a bunch of pillows? Wrong again.

I went into our laundry room looking for underwear. (C'mon everyone, sing it from Dr. Horrible! Underwear ... tumbling ...) I heard what I thought was a rat really going to town, nibbling. After I hit the wall a couple of times with no effect, all the while wondering how the rat could have possibly gotten in there and where to set a trap to catch it, I realized it didn't sound exactly like a rat nibbling. Actually, it sounded like water dribbling and burbling behind the wall.

And I had this awful, sinking feeling that the wet towels on the floor weren't from the kids dumping the towels in there after some weird cleaning scheme like I'd initially thought. You see, those damp towels had been damp for a couple of days, and--

"Rory! Turn off the water upstairs! I need to check something!"

"What?"

I dashed upstairs and got him to stop washing his hands, then hurried downstairs again. Still dribbling. It wasn't drain pipe noises, which ended my last hope that I was just hearing normal plumbing sounds.

It was raining outside.

And the dogs had been digging.

Sure enough, when my DH looked outside, a little stream was running down a deep trench they'd dug straight toward the laundry room.

The director of my life cued the adventure/danger music as I ran out to the shed, grabbed a shovel, and began to reroute the water toward the French drain my DH and the boy had installed a few years ago.

For about fifteen more minutes, we heard the dribbling behind the wall, and then it stopped.

Luckily there's a drain in the laundry room floor, so this didn't affect any other part of the house, and also (sort of) luckily the towels and stuff on the floor soaked up a lot of the moisture.

So here we are at the Laundromat (with my freezeray I will STOP the pain) washing all the wet stuff. Some of it was gross because all the laundry on the floor had been quietly soaking up rainwater that had run behind the wall and onto the laundry room floor for the past few days, unbeknownst to us, and did what wet laundry on the floor is wont to do.

Stink.

Argh.

The House, She is a Mess

I looked around in despair yesterday at a living room completely dripping with clutter sauce and a kitchen that had either crumbs or something greasy or both on every surface, including the stove. Gaaaah! The kids and I started cleaning up a bit, so it's better, but it's not good. I still flinch when I look around, but I can actually do something in those spaces other than run away screaming or start cleaning with a crazed look in my eyes.

I will have to clean some more, not just for my own peace of mind but so that I can concentrate on work. I used to have a higher tolerance for clutter. That tolerance is wearing thinner and thinner the older I get. The good part is that overall, our house is nicer. The bad part is that if I fall behind on cleaning, my writing pace really starts to fall off until I get my housekeeping act together. Fortunately I don't put off housework so long that it's a clean-by-diverting-a-river kind of situation anymore (most of the time, ahem) but like now, I do sometimes ignore it for long enough that the clean up will take a not-insignificant amount of time to rectify. Ugh.

It's that time of year to wash windows, too. The recent profusion of sunny days has revealed the quality and quantity of dirt on all my exterior glass surfaces. If I don't do something about it soon, all the windows in my books and stories will be grimy, dusty, cobwebbed things.

I just want to dance in a circle chanting ick ick ick ick ick! I wonder if it's possible to train cats to clean.

That should be enough whining for now. I think I'll go write about someone with a really bad housekeeping problem.

Rats!

Sorry about the lack of posts. We're still in iffy territory as far as internet connection and my office. We're working on it. I've also got a rotten cold of some sort. Bleh.

Anyway ...

I keep telling myself, it's not nearly as bad as last time.

But still.

We're finally tearing down the ceiling downstairs to rid ourselves of our ongoing vermin problem. In the middle of this (of course) the power went out in half the house. The half with my office.

Never fear! The good news is that I don't lie awake at night wondering if the house is going to burn down because a rat or mouse chewed through an electrical wire. Well, not too often, anyway. Turns out the wiring all looks pretty good except for one small spot that had nothing to do with the power going blink blink out. Turns out the power went out because of an overload on one of our breakers, now fixed. Yay!

The boo part is that we still have more ceiling to take down, and one of those rooms is my office. So there's really no point in setting up the computer in there, only to take it out again to make sure falling debris doesn't pop the screen (again.)

Blogging, email, everything computer-communication related is pretty much toast on the home front until we finish tearing stuff up and cleaning out icky mouse nests and making sure the wiring is safe and sound. Then I'll set the computer back up to its designated line and we'll be limping along at blinding (as in sometimes I think I'll go blind waiting for pages to load) dialup speeds. Because of line noise on our main line (yes, I've tried a noise reducer and it doesn't help that much) we have limited incoming email capability, no outgoing email (it times out) and very limited ability to look at web pages. Sorry.

My DH took point on the ceiling tear down. Have I mentioned lately he's my hero? Now, we didn't find bags and bags of dog food and rice like the last time I had to do this (in the boy's room, which is still blissfully clean.) But it's still disgusting to have that stuff raining on your head and arms. The ick factor doesn't shower off all that easily. Oh sure, the dirt rinses right off but the heebie jeebies need some serious scrubbing and the bleck bleck bleck requires toothbrushing, gargling, and then a second shower before it comes off. And of course we have a new influx of eeeee! spiders! that have until now lived all content and happy between the ceiling and floor.

We got the family room/library done in a day. Hopefully it'll only take a day to do the bottom of the stairs (there's a mousie spy hole there--they know we're coming and probably setting up ambushes, but they never man up to ever follow through,) my office and my daughter's room. We hauled off 840 pounds of gross stuff to the transfer station. Unfortunately that day or two won't be immediately forthcoming--we need a good combo of weather, lack of cold/flu stuff, and uninterrupted hours. It's bad to start a ceiling tear down and stop mid-way.

Where will we go from here? We have a cunning plan for what to replace the ceiling with. Details will come out after we've tested the system. Wish us luck!

All about bottoms and/or hinds

We've been doing housework, the crazy kind where you get into back corners and discover things are living there.  Brings to mind Tolkien's dwarves in the mines of Moria.  They delved too deep and awoke Durin's Bane, the balrog.  The things at the bottom are downright scary.

Rory has taken on the bedroom.  There the ancient tombs hold precious cloth, now rotted by time, and treasures long forgotten.  I think he's mostly, if not all done in there.  I'm glad he took care of some of those ... things ... he found.  I'm afraid!

I'm working in my office, which has been gone over before a few times, but I'm getting rid of paperwork and that means a time-consuming slog through boxes and bags of to-be-done-later stuff, which has transformed to to-be-done-now boxes and bags.  Among the tomes and dusty parchment she searches for mention of the One Ring ...  and I've barely gotten started.  I've already sent up several boxes and bags of paperwork to burn, but the office doesn't look much changed.  It just goes on and on.  And there are spiders.  Lots and lots of spiders.  Well, not that many, but for me more than two is a lot.

Beast, at one point during a short break, managed to open the front door and came in.  He ran around happily until we caught him and decided it would be a good time for a brushing.  Rory wrestled him to the ground and showed him who was boss while the girl and I scrubbed him all over with a brush.  Then he got to run around some more as a reward before we booted his freshly-groomed hind outside.  Two dogs down (Brian got a good brushing the other day,) Finn to go.  But first, back to the quest.

Mixed in with all this domestic duty is the never-ending programming thing and writing deadlines.  They're coming at me from all sides!  If it weren't for the clean up project around here, I'd have a flat hind and wrists swollen to twice their normal size.  I hope I'll have time to go for a walk or something tonight.  Yesterday we went shopping, but that isn't the same kind of walking around.  That's the kind that makes you grumpy, rather than the kind where you feel easy and pleasantly sore and your lungs feel clean down to their bottoms.  Or hinds.  It's all about hinds today, I guess.

Charity

I know, I was going to post more stuff about Ireland.  Next post, maybe even later today, but first I want to talk about charities.

I got a call from Washington State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police late last month.  Since I'm a nasty, suspicious person, I didn't want to give them any credit card information over the phone, so I asked that they mail me information.  I felt uncomfortable, because the caller clearly didn't sound like a volunteer.  He used pushy jargon, didn't seem particularly grateful when I said I'd contribute $25, and then asked if I would contribute more when I got my invoice in order to help cover overhead associated with mailed contributions.  I hung up feeling iffy about the whole thing and was glad that I'd have a chance to investigate further once I got the mailed materials.  I hearts teh internets.

The letter I received looks very shiny and promises to contribute to all kinds of things I normally eagerly support:  helping out police and families in distress, developing crisis management and stress support programs,  LEO Torch Run for Special Olympics, college scholarships for children of LEO's, etc.  Seven items were listed as examples.  I thought wow, this is great!  But, being horribly suspicious, I did a web search.

I won't call them a scam like some have.  But they do appear to be a commercial, money-making venture rather than what I would call a true charity.  Their last report to Washington State's secretary of state reveals that 20% of money actually reaches the LEO community.  I've also seen an older figure of 18%, so I guess they've improved.  (Yikes.)  The BBB hasn't received any requested information from them--which isn't necessarily bad, but raises my eyebrows and makes me want to dig deeper.  I'm glad I did. 

The Charity Navigator puts some perspective on overhead and percentage of charitable contributions that actually goes to charity.  My feeling is that 20% going to charity isn't good enough, not even for government work.  $20 of my $25 would have gone to the company for their overhead.  Well.  It seems obvious that if I want to give money to police programs, there have to be better and more efficient ways to do that.  In 2008, Washington State Lodge brought in $816,882 and spent $576,131 on fund raising.  They also spent almost $40,000 on conventions, conferences and meetings.  I totally feel their pain in the convention department, but having said that, with their additional accounting expenses and what-not, have very little left for, you know, charity, the reported purpose of their organization.

I can't support this kind of inefficiency, even if it's not deliberately set up to provide jobs off of people's goodwill rather than help people (or animals) in need.

Always, always check out charities before contributing.  I'm all about feeling good for helping out a good cause, but I want that good feeling to be real and justified, not a phantom thing because I went through the motions and poured money through a phone line.

It's a shame.  I would love to support LEOs and their families, especially when they're in crisis.  I'll just have to find another route, to honor the pledge I made.  It most certainly will not be through the Washington State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police today or next year or ever unless they shape up their organizational practices. 

To Jay with Love

Back to Ireland soon, but first, I would like all the folks out there who know Jay Lake to send healing thoughts his way.  Jay received bad news regarding his cancer.  He faces what many people in America face silently, privately, for many reasons including not wanting their friends to treat them like the walking dead (or to avoid them for fear of being uncomfortable or saying the wrong thing.)  

The very sick are often isolated.  Jay has chosen to be public about his illness, hoping to teach us one aspect of what we as a society once knew when we had our loved ones with us through all stages of life.  I see it with births too, not just serious illness and death where people spend endless hours in hospital beds behind white curtains.  

I'm not any smarter in this regard than anyone else.  I want to learn how to relate to people better.

Jay often posts that if love could heal, he'd be the healthiest SOB in the world.  I hope knowing he's supported and loved will help.  I believe it can, maybe in surprising ways, but certainly in the obvious ones.  Fighting cancer takes willpower, courage, and every last shred of energy a person has (and some they don't.)  Family, friends and community are essential to keep going.  Think of a sporting event you've participated in.  Ever had a teammate urge you on?  Come on, just a little farther, you can do this.  I know you.  You're strong enough.  You're smart enough.  

There's a time when all we have, and all our friends have and family has, isn't enough.  There's no reason to believe that Jay faces one of those times.  It's time to cheer him on, to rally, to lend him strength where and when we can, not because he's dying, but because he's fighting for his life.

If you have an ailing friend or relative, or if someone you know is a new parent, consider calling or writing a letter, right now.  A few minutes of your time may help them through the next stretch.  

Incidentally, I know this would never occur to most of you but I've heard of it happening--people who offer help, but don't follow through.  If you know you have a habit of procrastinating or forgetting, then think twice before making a promise, even if you honestly mean to deliver.   This is a situation where 'it's the thought that counts' gets into iffy territory.  You don't know when your promise might be someone's last lifeline and they might be waiting for you by the door or next to the phone, waiting for you to do what you promised you would, be it making a phone call, a casserole, or arranging for music therapy.  

Stuff to think about.  If you want to learn, check out Jay's posts.  Click on the cancer tag if you dare, and follow along.  If you're inspired, offer a helpful comment.  It may make a difference.

non sequitur of the day:  back up your computer!

Farm Drama Trauma

It's been a while since I've had an OMG moment.  It's been building, I think.  Fortunately for us, the mice planned things poorly.

See, when you time a critical sabotage operation, you have to carefully observe the habits of the humans (check,) make sure all mousey watches are synchronized (check,) and put your plan into operation so that the sabotage will be noticed only after considerable damage will have occurred.

This is where the mice ran into a snag.  Although they had the time correct (10pm, humans going to bed or already in bed, mwa ha ha!) what they didn't count on was that the water (!!!!)(&@#H%!!!!) would divert onto the boy's bedding, thereby alerting the humans with an unexpected puddle on the blanket which then dripped onto the floor.  (No futon was harmed in the process of this operation.)

"Hey mom," the boy human said, "there's water dripping into my room from your room."

Seek and mitigate protocols went into immediate effect.  There's no water source in the adult female human's room, therefore, she correctly deduced it must be coming from the kitchen.  Her keen ears perceived a hissing noise.  Not behind the fridge, not behind the kitchen linen drawer, not behind the oven, not behind all the canned food (grr!) and not behind the pots and pa--wait a minute, the hissing was definitely louder even though the cabinet appeared to be bone dry.  

The mice had been working on an entry hole from the downstairs wall to the upstairs kitchen pot and pan cabinet and nicked the (not currently in operation, see refrigerator woes)(note the additional humor in the fact that the tv stopped working since that post and we now have a new tv) water line for the ice cube maker.  After some wrestling and cursing and barking of orders and an emergency caving expedition where the humans sent the young girl human into the back corner of the cabinet to extricate some needed slack from behind a retaining nail, the adult human female was able to (finally!) pinch off the hose and duct tape (yay duct tape!) it that way in two places.  A towel was applied, but proved to be useless--the fine spray had dripped between the walls and (happily) ran a bit sideways into the human boy's room, which caused the alert.  If it had remained between the walls or in the cabinet, it would have been some time before the problem was discovered.

The mice sighed.  "What'll we do now, Brain?"  (reference, Pinky and the Brain)

Luckily we didn't have to call a plumber for an emergency call.  He can come out whenever, and not charge us after hours rates.  I don't think there's any serious damage to the floor (from underneath seepage) or wall, but only time will tell.

Ugh ugh ugh ...

Fame

Last night I spent a little time, while on hold on the phone, looking at Breaking Dawn reviews, commentary, and the author's official responses to a couple of different issues.  That along with my (minimal) experience with detractors has gotten me thinking about fame.

It seems like a lot of fame is no fun.  For whatever reason people feel a need to own something of what you have.  Maybe it's a control dynamic?  I'll try to get a little more specific here to illustrate.

One example is that the readers of a book series felt the book didn't end the way they wanted.  Fine.  That happens a lot in fiction.  Some people like happy endings, some people like tragic or non-standard endings, some require a strong twist or some sort of surprise/revelation.  Often the kinds of endings are incompatible.  My personal fave?  A happy ending with a down note--there's a cost, a heavy price and the hero usually doesn't get to enjoy the full fruits of his or her efforts, or achieve his/her personal goals completely, though overall the world is a better place.  I like happy so I let the hero live in that improved world and reap the benefits thereof.  Other folks like the big, happy ending where it all comes together in celebration, with no big price tag.  My Big Fat Greek Wedding is one such that I really enjoyed.  But I prefer Chocolat.  The price was the loss of a friend, and more subtly, a small loss of magic and the loss of the ability to help other villages, other people, though overall the immediate world of the village is a better place full of freedom and life.

Bitter readers, instead of accepting that this is the way that the author wrote it and satisfying themselves with analyzing what went wrong and where, are demanding their money back.  Um, sorry?  They bought the whole package when they bought into the series, with no guarantees that it'll come out the way they want.  A good comparison made has been clothes.  It's unethical to wear a dress to the prom and then return it because you're not going to be able to use it anymore.  Or a sweater that you wore once and decided you didn't like the color.  Presumably these readers tried on the fit--read the opening, the jacket cover, read some reviews online, and in the case of this particular book, read all the books prior.  They have no grounds to return a 'faulty' product no more than I have grounds to return a CD after listening to it and deciding all but one song on the CD was crap.  Art, music, clothing design, dance, culinary arts and so forth are not a one size fits all!  There's no fault in different tastes.  You'd better decide within the first bite if the chocolate cake you ordered is going to work for you.  It's not fair to refuse to pay for it after you've eaten most or all of it.

But most of all, the reader can't control the writer.  They can influence and inspire writers, but ultimately it's the writer's choices they're buying, not their own.  The writer makes a gut call about a story and writes it the best they can.  I think writers that don't listen to their audience are being foolish, but we all know that going too far the other direction creates a work by committee, and those rarely come out well.

Another thing people do in a fame situation is to try to disparage or elevate the celebrity disproportionately based on their own agendas.  I see this happen all the time.  A famous lawyer who happens to be a bachelor recently reported on an interview that not only is he criticized irrationally, but he's been attributed with good works that he never did.  Like chickens pecking at a red spot until they create a wound deep enough to kill, some people will take a small issue and turn it into a huge problem in their minds.  We see this with politicians but also with artists, writers and other people of fame.  They'll also take a small positive quality and make it gawd-like--and the celebrity has nowhere to go but down from there (not to mention it's very isolating.)

I've talked before about knowing what you're getting into as a writer.  In the highly unlikely event that you or someone you know becomes famous, don't imagine it's all going to be happy happy joy joy.  Be careful out there.  Your average person isn't mentally and emotionally prepared for fame, and once you're on that big pedestal there are lots of directions and long distances to fall.

Green Drying

Today my dryer went kaput.  Won't even tumble.  It's just dead.  It's dead, Jim.  It's an ex-dryer.  Now, I had been planning on getting a new washer/dryer set.  Tomorrow?  No!  Like, September, October or December.  Not tomorrow, not next week, not three weeks from now.  And I'm not going to do it.  Not not not!  (Stubborn stomp.)  The good news is that it's summer and the stuff I had in the wash can line dry outside.  The bad news is that I have to line dry outside until I figure out what I want to do (besides research washers and dryers and cave and go to the laundromat.)

I've line dried before.  And those of you who plan on waxing rhapsodic about line drying including how it makes clothes have that special smell and so forth, go ahead but be warned that I may feel an irresistible urge to hunt you down later and talk about how we should all go back to catching and killing our own food and eating it raw.  I can talk for hours about that.  Days even.

Here's the deal with line drying in my limited and reluctant experience.

Upsides:  

• It saves lots of electricity and yes it makes clothes smell nice.
  

Downsides:  

• The clothes often don't feel nice unless you beat and shake them after they're dry.  I especially dislike crispy towels, but some people do like them so this may be an upside for them. 
  
• That nice smell includes an infusion of pollen, so if you're allergic, guess what!?
  
• Spiders and bugs will quickly find the clothes and cuddle up inside their nice shelter.  You have to turn everything inside out and shake to make sure you don't have any unwanted passengers.  Fleas or ticks will not shake out, but fortunately they rarely hop on in the time that you've left the clothes outside.
  
• Birds will settle on the line and leave little whitish and grey presents.  Happy birthday!  (But it's not my birthday ...)
  
• It takes a lot of room.  The pic shows one load.  While you're line drying, unless you have a really nice line drying rig (which I covet, btw) you're limited by warmth and wind as far as how many loads you can do in a day.  
  
• If you want to dry anything big, like sheets, you need a much higher rig than I can conveniently string right now.
  

Hints:

• Don't use a stretchy string or a string that will stretch when wet (like cotton, unless it's woven around a non-stretchy core like many clotheslines are.)
  
• Don't let the clothes touch plants.  Bugs will crawl from the plants onto the clothes.  They'll still creep up the posts and along the line or simply hop on but you won't get as many as you will from the plants.  You'd be surprised how much traffic there is on a single grass stalk.
  
• If you use your spouse's rappelling rope, don't take a pic of it and then post it on the web.  (Oops ...)
  
• Unless you're in a windy area you don't need a lot of clothespins.  Only for socks and underwear.  If you need to put wet clothes out to dry in an emergency situation where your dryer has just quit, assuming it's not super-windy right then, hang the clothes first so they start to dry and then go get your clothespins.  You're less likely to overbuy that way plus they'll be drying while you're driving.
  
• Try not to hang them at a time when they'll be out overnight unless you have no choice.  They'll get dew damp in the morning and you'll have to wait until they dry before you can hang your next load.
  
• Try not to hang clothes in strong winds.  They collect a lot more dust and pollen that way.
• Don't run long stretches of line.  They'll sag a lot.  Additionally, put heavy stuff by the posts first and then hang the remaining lighter stuff in the middle of the line.
  
• If you have jeans out to dry expect that they'll take forever to dry.  Jeans and other heavy clothing items need to be turned and/or turned inside out in order to finish drying.  The rest is fine as-is.
  
• Take in clothes as they dry.  On a warm day things like light polyester or poly-cotton blend work shirts, handkerchiefs, thin socks and/or nylons and scarfs can dry in just a few minutes.  Generally speaking, woven clothing dries faster than knitted.
  
• You can dry stuff outside in very cold, even freezing weather.  It takes longer, but if it's very dry (like it often is in winter around here) the ice in the clothes will sublimate (dry off.)
  

Please feel free to shoot me down or disagree or give me helpful hints or fun laundry stories.  I'm open to ideas, encouragement, and laughs.  Just so you know, I'm also resisting the go to the laundromat option.  It's pretty expensive and inconvenient.  But I'll probably get up tomorrow morning, look at the laundry pile, and cave.

Yes, yes, I'll be looking at Energy Star products, Craig's List (aka I stole this list,) and Sears is at the top of my list for places to shop.  Btw, I've never, ever had a new washer and dryer, so I'm a little excited about the possibility that I'll be getting a new or late-model set.  Not excited enough to offset the aggravation of the timing (couldn't it have quit a couple of months later?) but still.  

My appliance guy had just fixed this thing recently, too.  I may have him take a look, but I've already poured a lot of money into it for repairs, so ... Ugh.

My brain is full

Normally I post something pagan-ish around the solstices and equinoxes.  Aside from a late night feast and some indulgence for the kids, we didn't do much religious observance on the longest day of the year.  I often get up with the dawn during the solstice, but I didn't set my alarm.

I could theorize, but it boils down to my brain is full.  I've got too much to do in too little time.  Oh well.  Life's always been busy.  As long as I keep breathing, the family and animals stay healthy, and the house isn't falling down around our ears I guess it's okay.  I feel a little weird in my summer dress stinking of sweat from stress and muggy weather, but weird is okay too.  Dakota sighs, content to lay on the cool tile in my office.  The cats demand attention and purr like mad when they get it.  The kids laugh while watching a silly movie, and I smile in answer.  

In writing projects, I'm juggling two novels and a short short.  That's two editing projects and one naked writing.  I really need to send out another agent query for Masks too.  Habits are formed through repetition.  The habit I need to form is the submitting habit, and I've definitely fallen down on that in the past few weeks.  Yeah, yeah, blame the man of the house, but honestly I have hours, daily, to myself now and that excuse doesn't hold up.  

The sad lot of the writer is the same sad lot of a self-employed anyone--by being able to schedule your own hours, every moment can be a potential work or play.  Play can make you feel guilty for not working, and work can seem endless and without sane limits.  When my focus is on I don't feel the stress from self-scheduling.  Right now I'm very unfocused and it's bothering me.  Bother bother bother.  Fortunately I have nice escapes in all directions.  When the writing feels too heavy I try art to get away from the pressure.  It's work, and yet play.  Same with gardening.  Same with gardening as work--the overwhelming sense of endless mowing--I can escape it into writing as work/play or art.  It's still not easy.  But when my brain is full, it helps.  A lot.

I didn't get into details about the storm the other day because I was feeling so yucky.  I'm still feeling pretty yucky, but better.  I'm not looking forward to sleeping tonight as last night I woke up in a nasty sweat.  Sleep came in brief snatches after that as I shivered, sweated, shivered some more, slept fitfully, and sweated even more.  I put on a long sleeve shirt and kept a towel on hand to mop up after myself.  I'd say it's an impending chrone thing, but I'm just a tad bit too young (not by too terribly much, but not within the standard age range for my family) and also I had someone ahead of me with the same illness go through the same thing.  He sweated for four nights.  Man, I hope it doesn't take four nights for me to get done with it.

Anyway, the storm:

Dove gray skies, distant sounds of thunder

Silver boiling into black

Flashes

Standing on the deck 

Eyes reflect jagged bolts that span miles

Funnel cloud orange skies to the west

Rain, light, then pouring, then dumping

It doesn't rain here like this

But it does

Then hail comes

A step back

Heavy hail, thunder hail

The storm is overhead

Trees sway, branches snap

Leaves shred

Dogs running, whining, howling, eyes wild

A rescue is launched into the storm

Prying up deck boards

A trapped white dog scrabbles to freedom

Dogs in the house, running, trembling

Wet animal hair and the scent of a fresh clearcut

Spruce, maple, shattered flowers

Hanging baskets sway, filled with white

No birds, no life, no sound but storm

Hail spills like river rock onto skin and bone

Salvage all we can, all we think to salvage

Fill a glass again and again with hail and whiskey

The thunder and hail pound music on the world

Until, softly

The rain comes again, softly

Thunder, long thunder

Rumbles into the night, a long goodbye

The black and gold caravan rolls into the distance and is gone.

I started to make a list and it got kinda poetic on me.  Please excuse the amateur.  

Time to settle down, I think.  I hope I don't sweat for hours again tonight.

Llama Trials

The doc said I'd get worse before I'd get better.  Man, he must be psychic.

My voice is still shot.  My temperature is going up, not down.  I'm getting a few little red rashy spots.  I'm the picture of yuckiness.  But, as bad as I feel, I'm still not as bad as I was with the dread flu when we came back from Victoria a couple of years back.  Anyway, I can still dance the dance of sickness superiority (I think) because my temp hasn't even gotten close to the temps the boy and the man got when they got sick, aaaaand I have a productive cough.

(Oooo!  Ahhh!)

Yes, it's true, the boy and the man can't seem to manage a productive cough, while the girl and I are practicing for the llama spitting trials later this year.

Well, I guess I'd better get back to full time suffering.  Be well out there!