Feminism and I: It's Complicated

Recently I was advised to submit a short story to a group working on a collection of stories by female authors.  As I'm not a female this would seem out of place but the suggestion was made that I might be added as a "bonus story" because I have pretty good track record of writing strong female characters, and that a story in that vein might go well in the collection.

I wasn't called a Feminist but I like to think that I let my process of character creation run along similar lines as Jos Whedon and he has been given, if not taken, that title himself.  I've also been known to horribly misquote him but I like to think that my error is more along the lines of "correct in spirit if off in fact."

Oddly, though, I have to confess to a rather on-again-off-again relationship with the term Feminist.  Most "-ists" tend to be used as a form of pejorative.  Racist.  Sexist.  Misogynist.  Elitist.  These aren't nice words.  I even have a weird reaction when someone uses the term "Deist" even though I don't think it's intended harshly in most conversation.

Who Owns the World? A reaction to Kindle Worlds

As you probably know by now, Amazon has announced that they will be launching a new Kindle Direct program called Kindle Worlds.  Fan-fic authors can submit their work in one of the official licensed worlds and if accepted will find their work for sale on Amazon.com.  Along the way, Amazon gets all kinds of benefits and perks and young fledgling authors who have been writing fan-fic for fun or for practice can now add "for profit" to their reasons for doing so.

John Scalzi, who himself is brilliant in all things writer-advocacy, has a great post up where he dissects the actual agreement.  I'm going to spring board off of that myself here.

Spring boarding off of this there is one fundamental underlying question:  Who owns a world?

Charlaine Harris, Southern Vampires, and Entitlement

This is the second take of my title.  The first was "Charlaine Harris is not your B***H".  It seems very posh to quote Mr. Gaiman these days and well, it seems to fit.  Specifically it comes, so the legend goes, from a time that Neil Gaiman was asked how a fan could ask GRR Martin to write faster because they were so anxious to see where the Game of Thrones story line went.  His answer?

You don't.

And that quote started to make the rounds again as authors weighed in on the recent debacle related to the much anticipated end to the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampires True Blood series.

But, given that ChibiNeko did that for her blog, I thought I'd write up my take on the whole thing under my own title.

The best write up of the event is here at the Blog of one Mary Janice Davidson, author of UNDead and Unwed and other stories of Vampire Queen Betsy. Edited:  I originally mistyped the title of Ms. Davidon's Queen Betsy series as "Dead and Unwed" rather than "Undead and Unwed".  For clarity here's the actual book.  In fact, I need to really apologize because so much of Mind the Thorns and my own efforts to write to a similar audience was influenced by having read the first two books in that series.

Guns, Politics, and Writing

Image Courtesy Raw Data

As much as I have political opinions, I've always been leery of sharing them here because:  A)  I don't want to risk alienating possible fans (customers), B) I've got other venues to share them, and C) I really want to focus on my writing, methods, inside scoops and the like.

Once in a while these paths converge and they do so in an odd way allowing me the excuse to talk a little politics as well as talking about the writing process.

I'd been meaning to post this for a few weeks now, pretty much since I posted Chapter 11 over on Bastion, the one that focuses on the teen-aged daughter of a rugged suburban survivalist.  I did not entirely mean to get preachy in there but I realized that the more I re-read the chapter the more I had essentially worked in my own political views into the character's mind set.

Then this week, I learned of a related tragedy.

Repost: These are Terms that Do Not Exist

This is a repost from last year.  After watching the dust up over Gay Marriage in the Supreme Court and having read more than a few blogs discussing it, I thought it was worth sharing again:

Lately I've been playing a lot of Star Wars: The Old Republic.  It's scratching a lot of itches for me.  It's a solid WoW-Clone MMO with all the features you'd expect and a solid, reliable, and recognizable interface.  The story is top notch and if you play a Sith you get to have a rocking British Accent.  Unless you're undercover in which case you're supposed to sound like you're from the American Midwest.  Personally, I'd like to find that planet where you sound like you're from Boston*.

At any rate, I was looking up stuff on line related to a recent twist with my newbie operative when I came across a fascinating quote:

After a user expressed concern that Bioware had "disallowed" the use of the terms "gay" and "lesbian" on the boards in a thread titled "GLBT discrimination in forums?" a Bioware forum moderator dropped in and posted this: 

As I have stated before, these are terms that do not exist in Star Wars. 

Thread closed.

Doing Something - The Twitter Option

I've found that the moment you realize that you "just have to do something" that rational thought seems to take a back seat equally as fast. When you see someone in the path of a car, you don't think "can I get to them in time?" That would be a rational thought. And it would involve doing a risk assessment, taking time, and possibly even finding yourself unable to act because of the delay.

No, we cast caution to the wind and we do something.

A few weeks ago a woman at a convention found herself in the exact same position. She had to Do Something and she had to Do It Now. And what she did had the kind of ripple effect of consequence that a fair comparison would be that of a nuclear bomb going off. First one atom splits, then those fragments strike two more, and then four, and then eight until you've burned off all of your fissible material and leveled a city.

In fact I've taken to calling what happened the "Nuclear Option" for that very reason.

There was a game?

So Sunday I had planned to grade papers and watch the Superbowl.  As luck would have it, I was invited to my sister's for the evening and we watched most of the game there.  Of course, the Lions did not even make the playoffs, and the two teams that provided workhorses for my fantasy team were also out (the Patriots and the Redskins) so I was left really with no one too root for.

Except the commercials.

Here are my picks for the best commercials that I was able to catch:

Hungry Howies - Best Commercial if its True

Toyota - Best Twist in a Commercial

Jeep/ USO Best Commercial to Make You Cry

Repost and Update: Forget the Pearls- Destroying Eden

So some time ago, by which I mean about a year or so, a self publishing author put out a book called Save the Pearls Part 1:  Revealing Eden.  It was... hm.... controversial

Actually it was a train wreck upon crash upon a disaster with a reactor going critical just as the iceberg sent it sinking.  But, like many good dramas, this appears to be the gift that keeps on giving.  It seems that Ms. Foyt hasn't learned a single thing except that everyone loves a sequel.  So how do you follow one of the most controversial books of 2012?  Why you publish the sequel the following year!

So, to help everyone keep some perspective on this new train wreck on paper, I'm reposting my thoughts on the first train wreck this week:

The End of an Era: COH Closes its Doors

It was after Everquest had more or less run its course and before the launch of Everquest II or World of Warcraft.  It was a summer, which for me translates to more time playing games, and it was after several months of the game having been released so that it had time to get the initial hitches out.

I picked up City of Heroes, and it was my go-to MMO for a long, long time.

I was not playing it when the plug was pulled last week.  I had long moved on to other games, and hung up my cape.  Stormherald, my main hero, and one that had been born again and again in other games, was no longer level capped, and my legions of small characters remained where I had last played them.  Had a friend not posted anything on Facebook I would never have known it had finally shuttered its doors.

I could really go on about all the great things the game had, and all the things it did not, but instead I want to talk about something else.

What's left now that the game is gone, and running the client will leave you unable to ever again connect to a server?

Banned Book Week: My Love Hate Relationship

This week is Banned Book Week.

This is where we stop and celebrate that we can read books that people want to ban for a variety of reasons.  We can ride a raft down the Mississippi with Huck Finn even though putting such a bright glaring light on the evils of racism and post-slavery Southern States make some people uncomfortable.  We can ride the Hogwarts Express and learn about the power of the individual who cares even though some people don't like that there are witches and magic.  We can come of age with a nervous teenager and What [Her] Mother Doesn't Know even though many mothers would rather we not know.

This is actually a bit of a big deal.

We forget, too easily, that there are parts of the world where the government, or the religious leaders, can forbid their people from having access to words that they don't want them to read.  They can deny that printed books be sold, that internet sites be accessible.  They can lock down Twitter on a whim and can make Facebook posts just vanish.

Even in our own history, not too long ago, having the "wrong" book in your house was a way to get yourself listed a Communist, be blacklisted from your profession and have your life ruined.  We did not tolerate different very well, and most Americans worried more about keeping food on the table, and gas tanks full of fuel then they did making a fuss about their Right To Read.  Thankfully we outgrew that phase.

Save the Pearls: Destroying Eden with Self Publishing

Let me tell you about a proposed book someone had.

It takes place on another planet.  There, a great ecological event has made most of the planet uninhabitable.  It is especially dangerous to one of the three principle races.  Where the Croa's can live in the exposed environment for a few hours, the Wie succumb to a form of skin cancer and die within minutes.  Because they are so fragile, the Wie have become a minority, prized for their rarity but seen mostly as toys, or dolls, or things to keep as possessions.  They are not seen as worthy of the respect shown even the lowest Croa.  In fact they are so admonished that the Wie will hide who they are, wearing long concealing gowns, and hiding their forms so that the Croa are not reminded that useless sub-creatures are among them.

It is against this back drop that a Wie girl dreams of a better life.  She knows that her chances of survival are minimal.  If she cannot marry a Croa, she will be relegated to a short life as a trophy piece.  What can she do?  The story of her struggle against prejudice, against nature and the ghosts of the past.  She must deal with those who discount her because of her racial status.  She must prove herself and endure.

That book, I think, has a lot of potential.

That book, however, is not Save the Pearls: Finding Eden.

Life Imitates Art?

Yes this is my second blog post on the Aurora shootings.  What can I say?  It does have me thinking.
But first a quote:


There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers. I'm the kind that pays better.
-Rick Castle

I was thinking about the situation in Colorado and how it was orchestrated like an episode of CSI.  Guy shoots up a location, gets caught, and then goads the police into going to his house which is booby trapped to hell and back, hoping to blow up some more people.

In fact I think it DID happen on an episode of CSI: Las Vegas.

So, here's a question:  Are they related?