Deep thoughts

There's a fresh, steaming pile of "oh look, sexism" on the internet (when is there not? but this is particularly noisome because it comes from high-level publishing professionals and authors). I can't do much to help clean it up, but there's one thing I can point out.

This weekend I was at a con and had a lot of fun, and talked to a lot of people I don't know. Two different women I got into conversations with (at different times) kept referring to men generically. One of them even said, "Men don't have the tastebuds to appreciate chocolate."

What? Seriously? Yes, she was serious.


There's an artificial wedge between men and women in our culture. Any time someone says "men can't" or "women don't," whether the generalization is meant as a joke or compliment or a real observation, it hits that wedge hard with a hammer, driving it in deeper.

But in real life, instead of in the cartoony headspace some people seem to inhabit, people are individuals. Saying stuff like "women don't understand math" or "men don't have any fashion sense" is stupid, because it's not true. Some women don't understand math. Some men don't have any fashion sense. But not all of them--not even close.

Don't hit that wedge. Don't say stupid stuff without thinking about it first. Most importantly, don't teach your kids that the wedge is real, because goodness knows we've got a hard enough climb to reach "people are individuals and all deserving of the same respect" without that big old wedge getting in the way.

Be happy like ice creams

Last night I set that pic to my desktop. I will be happy all month, I told myself! It's my birthday month, and Halloween is coming, and the weather is cool and breezy and drizzly just the way I like it. NaNoWriMo is next month. Harper Voyager has a two-week open call starting today and I have two projects to submit (there's no limit to how many you send them).

Then this morning my alarm clock went off and I couldn't find it. Seriously, what the hell? I have five things on my nightstand overnight: a box of tissues, a tube of lavender hand lotion that I don't use but which looks pretty, the alarm clock, my glasses, and my cell phone as a backup alarm since my alarm clock is old and sometimes doesn't go off. Sometimes it just stops keeping time, too. I fumbled around in the dark, cursing and knocking my glasses to the floor, before I smacked the alarm and got up. Then I remembered the happy ice creams.

It hasn't been a bad day, actually. I've tried really hard to keep a good attitude even when, for instance, I had to wait ten minutes for a security guy to show up at work to open the closet where I keep my stuff (and which I do not have a key to). I made beef stew and chocolate chip scones tonight and did not burn either hardly at all. I sent my two submissions to Harper Voyager--and yes, I didn't get an autoreply email for either the way I was supposed to, so I had to send an email to make sure they got them and I haven't heard back yet. And the book I was reading had a stupid ending and both ebooks I had as backup books turned out to be terrible. But I HAVE A GOOD ATTITUDE DAMMIT BECAUSE THE ICE CREAMS ARE HAPPY.

I will sit here and breathe deeply through my nose now until I can be civil.

The Grouch turns in her Hugo ballot

When I bought my Chicon World SF convention ticket almost two years ago, I was excited about being able to vote for the Hugo awards. I thought carefully about who I wanted to nominate this spring, and waited eagerly to see if any of my choices made it onto the ballot.

They didn't. Alas. And yes, if you read the original version of this post you'll remember a different paragraph here, but I decided I was being way, way too snarky and changed it.

Soon we'll all be reading the same book over and over

Harry Connolly, author of the awesome Twenty Palaces series of kickass, blood-soaked urban fantasy, posted an announcement today. His publisher, Del Ray, has dropped the series after disappointing sales.

A few months ago Moira J. Moore, whose Hero series is set in one of the most unique and unusual SF/fantasy worlds I've ever read, posted a similar announcement. Her publisher, Ace, has dropped the series.

And earlier this summer, mystery writer Karen E. Olson, who is one hell of a writer and whose books ought to be required reading for anyone who wants to study character and voice, announced that her publisher, Obsidian, declined to extend her Tattoo Shop series contract.

I could probably find several other examples without trying too hard, but these are three authors whose books I love and whose books deserve much more attention. I just don't get it. Ebooks were supposed to save publishing, right? So why are publishers nosediving like this? Why aren't books selling, if everyone's buying Kindles and Nooks? Why the hell am I trying to break into a field where I'll be lucky if I get a few thousand bucks advance per book and will probably see my contract dropped after three or four books?

If you read this, please go out and buy a book this weekend that you might not otherwise have bought: a book by an author who doesn't get tons of advance hype and all the reviews, who doesn't have an HBO series based on his or her books, who maybe only has one or two books on the shelf instead of half a wall. I guarantee you'll discover a great new author.

Heavy sighs all around

For about half a year, Jim C. Hines has been running First Book Friday, which I've really enjoyed reading. They're posts by various authors--usually fantasy authors, but not always--talking about their first sales and how they came about. In my memory, all the stories are atypical--no one ever does what we're supposed to do: writes a good book, finds an agent, and the agent sells the book to a publisher. This afternoon (because, you know, I don't have enough to do) I went through all 33 posts and reread them, and actually kept track of how each author got his or her first book sale.

It actually was pretty surprising, although admittedly it's a small sample. I made very broad categories as I went, and here they are:

Got an agent, got a publisher - 14
Approached publisher directly - 5
Tie-in novel/revived career in different genre - 3
Helped by established pro - 8
Self-published/got small publisher first, then agent - 2
Self-published only - 1

Where there was a year mentioned, I jotted it down--1985, 1987, 2000 (three reports), 2003 (two reports), 2004 (two reports), 2007 (two reports). A few authors mentioned how much easier it was to find a publisher ten or fifteen years ago compared to now.

So after reading all those accounts, I'm now bitterly depressed (although breaking the stupid lawn mower earlier today probably didn't help). While many authors said that they'd written lots of books before they sold their first one, I don't think anyone has written as many unpublishable books as me.

Seriously, here they are--and these are just the ones I can remember, and doesn't even count the awful books I wrote when I was in middle school, high school, and right after college:

late 1990s - The Ghost in the Snow, The Rooftops of Simminee Soo, some book about a dragon I can't remember the title of, Weaver's Shroud
early/mid 2000s - a different book about a dragon, Evil Outfitters Ltd., The Weredeer, Jack of All Trades
late 2000s - Stag at Bay, Stag in Velvet, The Taste of Magic, Blood and Taxes, The Dragon Whisperer
2010/2011 - The Trickster Society, Shadows over Oakhill, Bell-Men, Bloodhound (well, Bloodhound will be finished this week, anyway)

That's 17! And yes, I've sold three to small publishers with two more under contract to other small publishers. But where's my big payoff for years and years of hard work? I've queried 43 agents about Bell-Men, which is easily my strongest work, with only two partial requests and no interest whatsoever. Yeah, Angry Robot still has the full, but the odds are very slim that it'll make it to the next tier of reading. Meanwhile, I'm writing more books and editing/revising old ones, and working hard all the time to improve. I know I'm not a bad writer. I know I'm writing at a professional level. I just wish someone else would see that.

Hmm. I didn't actually mean to end up ranting. I really, truly meant to just give some interesting statistics about those First Book Fridays. Oh well.