By now, I imagine many of you have seen Publishers Weekly’s roundup of the ten very best books of 2009, a list which just happens to only include male authors.  Sure, the girls made it into some of the secondary lists, but the ten best?  All boys.

I would also check out Lizzie Skurnick’s response at Politics Daily, which included this bit from PW: “We wanted the list to reflect what we thought were the top 10 books of the year with no other consideration . . . We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz . . . It disturbed us when we were done that our list was all male.”

So here’s my question: What should PW have done when they realized they had come up with an all-male list?

We pause now for the predictable response.

“You keep your quotas off of us, you damn, dirty PC police!”

Right.  Moving on, the thing I don’t get is that the folks at PW say they were disturbed by this, but they don’t appear to have done anything about it.  Did they ever take that next step and ask, “Why, if we were truly ignoring gender, did we still come up with an all-male list?  We’re talking less than a 1 in 1000 chance of this happening purely at random*, which suggests maybe we weren’t as gender-blind as we thought.”

Our own biases are hard to face.  It’s easier and safer to turn the blame outward or make excuses:

• It’s just one list, and we have girls in some of the others!
• Maybe more men published good books this year.
• It’s the story that counts, not the gender/race/etc. of the author.
• Women helped to make this list, so it can’t be sexist!
• Maybe women should be proactive and start writing better books!

I could go on and on listing reasons that basically amount to “It’s not my fault,” and “I’m not sexist!”  We could spend the whole month debunking most of those reasons.

But in the end, Publishers Weekly published this list.  They were aware enough to recognize something wasn’t right, and I give them props for that.  But that’s much easier than actually taking responsibility.  We can say, “Oh look, a list of all men.  That’s gonna be a problem, because those bloggers are going to raise hell that we didn’t include a token woman.”

Or we can stop making excuses and try being accountable for our own choices and behaviors.  We can say, “I tried to be  gender-blind about this, but ended up with an all-male list.  Huh.  I didn’t consciously try to pick only male authors, but maybe I’m not as gender-blind or unbiased as I thought.”

Nobody’s asking for quotas.  Me, I’m just asking people to grow up and take responsibility for their choices.  Yes, we’re talking about an industry-wide issue that affects publishing on many different levels.  But the industry is made up of individuals, and every one of us, myself included, has our own biases and prejudices. We can ignore them and make the same tired excuses, or we can face them and try to do better.

We all mess up.  I just wish more folks would own up to it when it happens.

—
*Assuming a 50/50 breakdown of male and female authors.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

I’ve been reading various discussions about the gang-rape of a 15-year-old girl in California and the aftermath. (Warning: the article is intense and potentially triggering.) One constant, as with almost every such conversation, has been the mindset when it comes to rapists and abusers.

There’s a strong sense of us vs. them.  How could they do this? How could the bystanders just watch? I’ve come across various theories–they were poor and desperate, they were in a gang, they were drunk…

We want our villains to be easy to identify, like on TV.  We recognize the bad guys the instant they enter a scene, complete with foreboding music. We cringe as the poor victim is attacked, but we rest easy knowing we were smart enough to recognize the villain for what he was. He’s one of them. Because humanity is broken into two distinct groups:

 

There’s a clear boundary between the groups. That works for me, because it excuses me from having to worry about my own behavior.  I’ve never gang-raped a girl.  I’ve never beaten my wife.  I’m safely in the “normal” circle.

It’s comfortable. The evil rapists and abusers are over there, and us normal folks are over here.

Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t work like that. People don’t fall neatly into categories. I’ve found it more helpful to look at behavior, like so:

There’s no “us” vs. “them.” No neat boundary separating good guys from bad. We all fall somewhere on the curve, and that position isn’t constant. Do you think the guys who gang-raped that girl woke up one morning and decided to be rapists? In most cases, it’s a behavior that changes over time, moving further and further to the right side of the curve.

One day it’s a shouting match with my girlfriend. Maybe I use body language to intimidate her into backing down. Eventually, when that doesn’t work, I grab her. Not hard enough to bruise, just enough to let her know who’s boss. A month later, I’ve stopped being quite so careful about the bruising. Step by step, my behavior becomes more abusive.

Likewise with rape. Maybe it starts by trying to pick up a girl at the bar. Trying to talk a woman into going home with you is just part of the game, right? If that fails, I can buy her a few more drinks to loosen her up. Then maybe a few more–it was her own choice to get drunk, right?  Or maybe I just spike the drinks to speed things along…

Our society has strong attitudes about what it means to be a man. Real men are strong and in control. We go after the things we want. We’re assertive, even aggressive when necessary. We’re determined, and we don’t take no for an answer. Given all that, do you think it’s coincidence that men commit 95% of rapes?

How could they stand by, refusing to call 911 while a girl was raped in front of them? We’ve all stood by and done nothing at one point or another. Every one of us has heard someone making sexist comments and failed to call them on it. We’ve wondered if someone was being abused, but kept silent because we didn’t know what to say or how to ask.

If your response to all this is “But I’m not a rapist,” “All men aren’t rapists,” or the ever-popular, “Why do you hate men?” congratulations–you’ve missed the point. It’s not about you. It’s about recognizing that the “me” vs. “those people” approach doesn’t really work for understanding or ending rape and abuse.

Discussion welcome, as always.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

I came across a post yesterday telling folks who complain about the lack of gender/racial/etc. balance in anthologies and ‘zines to shut the hell up.  The author has since removed the post and apologized, but the whole thing got me thinking and trying to understand where this reaction comes from.

So imagine you’re a reader, and you’re enjoying your copy of The Year in Zombies, Volume XCVIII, when someone goes online and complains that of the 20 stories in that anthology, only 2 were written by women, and 19 of the authors are white.  Others join in the now-familiar chorus of racism and sexism. But … you were enjoying the anthology! The editor picked good stories!

I can understand feeling defensive.  If you like the book, does that mean these people are accusing you of being racist or sexist?  It probably feels that way.  You might start to wonder what they want to do to fix the problem.  How many women writers would it take to make this book acceptable? How many writers of color have to be added to quiet the anger?

But then, who gets cut out of the book? Does appeasing the anger mean removing that awesome steampunk zombie tale from Whitey McHairychest? Would we lose that delightful alternate history squid zombie story from Paleface Manlyparts?  More importantly, would these great stories be excluded from the book purely based on the race or gender of the author?  Not cool, angry internet mob!  We want good stories, period.  Choosing stories based on race, gender, sexuality, and so on is bull!

I agree.  But I think the problem is that we’re already choosing stories based on these factors–that we’ve been doing it for decades.  When I complain about the latest Mammoth Manthology of Manly SF, I’m not saying I want a quota system to ensure equal representation.  I’m saying I’m tired of the quota that already exists–the one that seems to require a majority of white men in so many ToCs.

Yes, editors should pick the best stories. But if some editors are consistently choosing stories by mostly white and/or male authors, what does this mean? Should we assume that women and nonwhite authors just aren’t good writers? Or does it mean these editors are deliberately and maliciously trying to keep the White Man in power?

I don’t buy either explanation. Sure, there are sexist idiots out there, but I believe most editors choose stories they enjoy, based on what they’ve read.

Looking at my own reading growing up, I read mostly books by white authors. I never deliberately tried to exclude nonwhite writers from my bookshelves; I just read what I was exposed to, and what I enjoyed. Good books all, and if you asked me who my favorite authors were, I’d have given you a list of mostly white folks.

It takes deliberate effort to read outside your learned comfort zone. It takes zero effort to sit back and perpetuate the trend of a certain privileged minority of writers dominating the genre.

If you tell me editors can only buy the stories that are submitted, and only white men are submitting to you for your project, then I’ve got to ask why that is. Places like Strange Horizons and Fantasy Magazine have made conscious efforts to broaden their range of authors, and that’s paid off. Why do you think these other authors are avoiding you and your publication?

I don’t see anyone asking for quotas. Nobody’s saying good stories by white men should be excluded in order to allow minorities into the table of contents. I think the anger comes when good stories by those authors continue to be excluded because some editors don’t make the effort to look beyond work by white men.

Discussion welcome, as always.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Yesterday, Mr. Coke Zero himself, John Scalzi, took my publisher to task for the cover of Zombie Raccoons and Killer Bunnies [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].  Others have offered up alternate covers, or just chimed in about how bad it is.

Disclaimers up front: Zombie Raccoons is the latest DAW anthology.  DAW is my publisher as well.  I was invited to write a story for this one, but the editor decided that my tale (”Mightier than the Sword”) fit better in her other project, Gamer Fantastic.  So I’m hardly unbiased.

This is not my favorite cover from DAW.  It didn’t really work for me, and I was happy to end up in Gamer Fantastic, which had a cover I liked better.

That said, I think the criticism is over the top.  Scalzi says he’s genuinely offended that a major publisher would produce such a thing.  (He also claims it will make blood shoot from your ears, but I’m chalking that one up to hyperbole.)

Is it a bad cover?  The editor loved it.  It certainly stands out, and it’s stirred up more buzz online than any DAW anthology I can remember.  On the other hand, the raccoon’s mouth gave me nightmares, and I find myself wanting to delete the Photoshopped rabbit and raccoon and see what’s behind ‘em, which seems to be a totally different piece of art.

I wanted to make a few other points, though.  Starting with the fact that, to my knowledge, DAW is the only major SF/F publisher still putting out a monthly anthology of short fiction.  These aren’t moneymakers; very few short fiction anthologies ever earn out.  But DAW continues to produce them, more reliably and consistenly than most SF/F ‘zines.

Does that excuse a bad cover?  Of course not.  But no publisher gets it right every time.  Sooner or later, no matter how good the publisher, they’re going to have a stinker.  I could fill the rest of this post with examples of bad cover art from Baen, Tor, and the rest.

That’s no excuse either, of course.  It’s not supposed to be.  It’s supposed to be a reminder than nobody’s perfect.  That when you’ve put out thousands of books over the years, you’re not going to hit it out of the park with every one.  It’s easy to sit around online and boast about how you could whip up a better cover in five minutes on Photoshop.  And hey, maybe you could.

Now do it 99 more times.  If you think they’ll all be brilliant, you’re sadly deluded.  Even award-winning artists produce the occasional stinker.

I wasn’t in on the meetings at DAW.  I don’t know what they were going for here.  Maybe the original cover didn’t work, so the bunny and raccoon were an emergency fix at the last minute.  Maybe they wanted to try something different, and they went for the over-the-top kitsch angle.  Maybe the artist backed out at the last second, leaving them only a week to whip something together.  Maybe, like the editor, they just liked this cover and thought it worked for the project.

I’m not saying Scalzi’s out of line in his critique; he’s not.  I like John a lot, and folks have every right to express their distaste.  No cover will work for everyone, and this one does seem to have failed for most.

But to say you’re genuinely offended by that failure?  That bothers me a little.  By all means, hold publishers to a high standard.  But people also say they want publishers to try things that are new or different, and every time you do that you risk failure.  High standards, yes.  Perfection?  I prefer my publisher to be human, thanks.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

I’ve been reading a lot of justifiably angry posts about those who would defend Roman Polanski, who was convicted of raping a 13-year-old thirty years ago.  I did a bit of research, trying to understand the mindset and the concerns of the people arguing against Polanski’s arrest.  What follows are the most common reasons I’ve found, as well as my translation of those reasons.

Polanski is a charming, intelligent man - We should only arrest scary-looking, deranged rapists, preferably the dirty homeless types.  Bonus points if they’re a racial minority.  Arresting “nice guys” forces us to consider that many rapists do appear charming, intelligent … even normal!  This disturbs our simple view of the world and makes us uncomfortable, so please cease at once.

The victim’s mother pushed the child at Polanski - He shouldn’t be blamed because men are helpless to resist a 13-year-old girl.  Remember, rape is always the fault of the women!  If we can’t blame the victim, we’ll blame her mother.  Even when that girl is saying “No,” and trying to get away, men are helpless to control our urges–the male penis forces us to drug and rape the girl.

It was more than 30 years ago - Accountability comes with an expiration date, and if I can avoid taking responsibility for my actions for a certain period of time, I should be absolved of that responsibility.

The victim doesn’t want to put herself or her family through this ordeal anymore* - If I can intimidate my victim enough, I can get away with it!  Note: I have a great deal of sympathy for Polanski’s victim, and I’m torn about this one.  Polanski has been on the run for 32 years.  I’ve read commentary about how hard it’s been for him–he couldn’t even get his Oscar, he poor man.  But what about the survivor?  She’s also lived for 32 years with no closure, and wants to be done with it.  *My research might have fallen short on this point.  See this comment thread for clarification and further discussion.

He didn’t know she was thirteen - All girls should be required to tattoo their ages in a visible location in order to protect men from accidentally raping them.  Also, it would have been perfectly okay for him to drug and rape her if she had been sixteen.

Nobody would even care about this case if Polanski weren’t famous - Who cares about rape anyway?

Sadly, there’s some truth to this last one.  According to RAINN, 1 in 6 women will be raped in her lifetime.  (My sense is that the numbers are even higher.)  Yet only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail.  As a society, we don’t care.  At least, we don’t care enough.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

If you’re bored by publishing talk, go learn how to build TRON lightcycles out of LEGO instead.

PublishAmerica has been around for a while.  You might remember them as the publisher who offered to buy Atlanta Nights, an educationally awful book designed to demonstrate that Publish America would accept just about anything.  Nor does PA pay much attention to things like cover art, as you can see in one of my old LOL books.

PA claims to be a traditional publisher (a term with no actual meaning).  They emphasize that they’re not a vanity press; they pay an advance (generally $1.00), and they urge writers to avoid self-publishing.  From their FAQs:

PublishAmerica adheres to the traditional publishing concept … we earn our income by selling books.

So who do you think they’re selling those books to?  You’ll find few if any PA titles in bookstores.  They’re listed on Amazon like everything else, but an Amazon listing by itself doesn’t sell books.  As far as I can tell, PA appears to make most of their income by selling books to their authors.

PA recently joined Twitter as @publishamerica.  They’ve already protected their feed.  For those of you who don’t want to follow PA, let me sum up.

There’s a note about a 66% discount for online orders, which is cool.  I’d love to be able to sell my books at 2/3 off.  (But my publisher doesn’t sell horribly overpriced books, so that kind of discount is difficult to pull off.)

Reading on, I see a few tweets about individual authors … and a ton of tweets talking about how great PA is.  Canadian libraries stocked seven of our books!  Our authors have booksignings in 50+ bookstores this weekend!  A bookstore in NY just ordered some PA titles!

This isn’t advertising intended to sell books to readers; it’s aimed at selling PublishAmerica to new authors.

Compare this to @dawbooks, my own publisher’s Twitter feed.  DAW also uses Twitter for marketing, but almost every post includes an author’s name and/or a book title.  The goal is to sell books to readers.

From the PA stream:

one cool element of PA’s success is that it drives the opposition nuts. they keep writing about us, fortunately spelling our name right.

Opposition?  That implies that PA has any impact whatsoever on serious publishers.  But they’re right about one thing.  PA does drive me nuts.  It pisses me off when people take advantage of new writers.  I spent years trying to break in.  I remember that feeling of desperation, of wanting someone, somewhere to validate my work.  Of wanting to finally be a published author.

If all you want is to be published, PA might be the right choice.  You’ve got almost zero chance of rejection, and they’ll create a book with your name on the cover.  You’ll probably even get that $1.00 check as a bonus.

If, on the other hand, you want to be read–if you want people to seek out your book, to read and enjoy it–well, there’s a simple test.  PA claims to have 35,000 authors, orders of magnitude more than any commercial publisher I’m aware of.  How many PA books do you own?  How many PA writers have you read?

So how does PA stay in business?  I’ll toss out one final tweet to answer that one:

one twitterer just purchased 200 books, using his ‘twitter’ coupon. his savings: over $3000.

Why worry about selling books to readers when you’ve got authors willing to shell out thousands of dollars for copies of their own books?

There are no shortcuts.  Frustrating as this road can be, I’m very happy to have waited until I could sign with a publisher who would get my work out to readers and fans.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

---

• 4 weeks until the release of The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy]!  Early reviews are starting to pop up.  Romantic Times called it quick-paced, engaging, and a great read.  Rhonda Parrish, who won the NCADV auction for an ARC of the book, posted a nice review here.  ::Happy dance::

• I’ve said before that it’s okay to write crap in a first draft.  For me, this helps me get to the point where I can figure out the story and rewrite to actually make the thing work.  Dean Wesley Smith offers an alternate approach.

#

Welcome to everyone who showed up after yesterday’s Neil Gaiman Facts post!  Lesson to self: if you want more blog traffic, joke about Gaiman groping Ellison.  Huge thanks for the linkbacks, the comments, and the extra Gaiman facts.  (The comments include some very funny suggestions.)  Y’all gave me a serious case of the warm fuzzies

No love, however, to the very small minority who simply copied and reposted the whole thing without asking.  Way to harsh my warm fuzzies, people.

I was torn about whether I should even say anything.  I’m not planning to go all DMCA on anyone’s ass over this, but it bothers me.  Maybe I’m oversensitive after dealing with the whole Google Settlement mess, I don’t know.  But here’s the deal: reposting someone’s work without permission is rude.  It’s also illegal, but in this case I’m more annoyed by the rudeness.

The primary reasons I post stuff like the Gaiman list are because it’s fun and because I love entertaining people.  It makes my week to get comments from folks telling me they laughed so hard their significant other came in from the other room to find out what was going on.  It’s a high like nothing else, and I love it.

There’s a secondary reason, though: the crass, greedy, totally commercial reason.  When I write and post this sort of thing, it brings new traffic to my sites.  New people who might remember my name, who might decide to stick around on the blog, who might even decide some day to go out and buy one of my books.

If you repost the whole list, you’re taking away some of those new visitors.  Is it a terrible, crippling blow to my success as a writer?  Not at all.  But it is rude.  So don’t do it, ‘kay?

Enough on that.  I love 99.44% of you, and I’m not going to let the other .56% spoil things.  So as a reward for reading this far, here are a few more Gaiman facts.  Enjoy!

1. Neil Gaiman writes faster than Harriet Klausner reads.
2. Neil Gaiman solved the Rubix Cube in 7 minutes. One-handed.
3. Chuck Norris could roundhouse kick Neil Gaiman in the head. But Neil Gaiman could write Chuck Norris out of existence.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Potentially triggering discussion of rape and victim-blaming.

Yesterday, tinylegacies pointed me toward an article about a woman who was raped at gunpoint by a stranger in the Stamford Marriott parking garage.  The woman filed a civil suit against the hotel, claiming her attacker “had been in the hotel and garage acting suspiciously days before the attack, as well as the afternoon of the attack, and the hotel failed to notice him, apprehend him or make him leave.”

The full article is at http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/ci_13048639

The article is too vague for me to judge the hotel’s responsibility.  Did they receive complaints about this individual?  What does “acting suspiciously” mean?  Was the rapist’s behavior something a reasonable person should have noticed?  What security precautions should be in place?  I have some ideas, but I think these are questions to be answered in court.

What really struck me was the approach the Stamford Marriott took in defending themselves.  They claim the victim was careless and negligent, and “failed to exercise due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities.”

Let’s break this down.  Gary Fricker stuck a gun into this woman’s back, forced her and her children into her van, and raped her, threatening to do the same to one of her children.  The Marriott claims that this was “unforeseen and beyond their control,” but at the same time, they’re blaming the survivor for her carelessness, for not being sensible enough to avoid “mitigating her damages.”

In other words, it’s not the Marriott’s fault, because everyone knows rape is the victim’s responsibility.  If she got herself raped, that’s entirely on her.  She should have … well, what should she have done differently?  What are we really asking victims to do here?

• Enter parking garages at your own risk!  (Make sure you bring a big burly man to protect you!  Don’t forget bullet proof jackets for yourself and the kids!)
• Use common sense!  Everyone is a potential rapist, so don’t let anyone get within 100 feet of you or your children.*
• If a guy sticks a gun in your back and threatens your kids, it’s your duty to “mitigate the damages.”  I suggest spontaneously developing superpowers.  Freezing time is a good one, as is the ability to generate a magical force field.  Superspeed will do in a pinch.
• Stop worrying about your kids.  If this woman had been searching every shadow for potential rapists instead of wasting time watching her children, this whole situation could have been avoided!  If your 3-year-old gets run down by an idiot driver, that’s a small price to pay for your safety.
• Avoid places you might be raped, including parking garages, hotels, dark streets, your own home, your friend’s place … actually, you should probably just lock yourself in a bank vault and be done with it.

The Stamford Marriott has attorneys who are responsible for defending the hotel in a lawsuit.  It’s their job, and I understand that.  But why is this an acceptable defense?  The lawyers should have been laughed out of the courtroom the instant they made such a bullshit claim.

Maybe they would have been, if not for the fact that it works.  Because too many of us still buy into the idea that survivors of rape deserved it.  That they were asking for it, or they were careless, or they were drinking too much, or they were dressed slutty, or they didn’t scream or fight back enough, or….

Lawyers play this defense because it works.  As pissed as I am with the Stamford Marriott and their attorneys for spouting this crap, I’m even more disgusted with the society that continues to believe it.

—-
*I don’t know how many times I’ve heard men complaining, “Why do some women say I’m a potential rapist just because I’m a guy?  That’s sexist!”  Well gosh, could it have anything to do with incidents and reactions like this one?

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

So this is International Blog Against Racism Week, which seems like a perfect time to point to the Open Letter from the Carl Brandon Society on racial/gender discourse.

I’m hopeful that, as in previous years, I’ll learn some things and get to read and participate in some good discussions this week.  But reading that letter, I found myself wondering how long it would be before I came across the first “Oh noes, the PC Nazis are Censorin’ our Free Speech!” response.  (Answer: not long at all, as it turns out.)

Let’s start with the PC part.  I’m not sure when “Politically Correct” turned into such a ridiculous phrase.  The belief seems to be that, in order to be truly politically correct, I must immediately go through my goblin books, rewriting the goblins as hygienically impaired, height challenged creatures with alternative dietary habits.  (Actually, now I want to write a story about Veka demanding that the rest of the world describe her as a goblyn, but that’s a tangent.)  The point is, people have waved their wands and cast reductio ad absurdium on the whole concept.  We’ve turned it into a joke (perhaps because then it’s easier to ignore it, and we don’t have to actually do anything?)

I keep thinking about the first time someone told me what “politically correct” meant to them.  She said, “I want to be able to choose what label people use to describe me.”  Why is that such a ridiculous premise?  It is really so absurd to think that an individual should have the right to say “I prefer to be called ________”?  To choose to be addressed by a label that isn’t demeaning, insulting, or simply not what that person wants to be called?  People don’t seem to mind that I prefer to be called Jim rather than James, but if the Carl Brandon Society tells Harlan Ellison not to use the term NWA, suddenly it’s a massive inconvenience and political correctness is censoring our freedom.

It annoys me how easily we toss the word “censorship” around.  Spend 30 seconds reading the comment threads for just about any news article that touches on race (the Gates/Crowley stories should provide plenty of reading).  Trust me, there ain’t no PC Censors working in this country.

Complaining because someone censored your comment on his/her blog not only misses the meaning of the word, it’s also rather insulting to those people who have actually had to deal with censorship.

• People disagreeing with you is not censorship.
• People stating that they don’t like your cover art and think its racist, sexist, or whatever, is not censorship.
• People banning you from their blogs is not censorship.
• For the writers out there, an editor rejecting your story for his/her publication is not censorship.
• People saying they don’t like something you said is not censorship.
• People telling you racial slurs are unacceptable is not censorship.
• People criticising, mocking, or insulting you for choosing to use racial slurs is not censorship.

The nice thing about my country is that you’re free to say just about anything you like.  I don’t have any obligation to provide a platform for your words, but you can certainly go out and create your own.  The very fact that people are writing 1000+ word rants on their blogs about being censored tends to undermine their point.

But freedom of speech does not equal freedom from criticism.  If you say something offensive, you’re probably going to get challenged on it.  If that’s a problem for you, you might want to examine your words more carefully.  Either that or move somewhere that censorship actually exists — that way you can start suppressing those who disagree with you.

We talk about freedom of speech, but I hear very little about responsibility for speech.  You choose your words.  You’re responsible for what you say.  If you say something offensive or insulting, that’s on you.  You might disagree over whether something is offensive, but now we’re getting back to political correctness.  Tell me, who has the right to say whether the word “nigger” is insulting?  Do I as a white man get to tell black people that they’re overreacting and shouldn’t be offended if I use that term?

To put it another way, Freedom of speech does not protect you from the consequences of saying stupid shit.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

I linked yesterday to Tempest’s post about the disproportionate number of scantily-clad females on Realms of Fantasy’s covers, and the mermaid gracing the new issue of the relaunched ‘zine.  Last night, Doug Cohen posted a response.

Doug is the new art director for Realms, as well as being the long time editorial assistant for the magazine.  I’ve worked with him a few times, and he struck me as a generally nice guy, one who cared a lot about the magazine and was always willing to go the extra mile, reading and commenting on my stories even when they were getting an automatic pass up to the editor.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s the nicest guys who fail the hardest when it comes to discussions of sexism, racism, and so on.  “I’m a nice guy!  How dare you call me sexist!”  [Insert image of face-melting fury at the injustice of such a horrific accusation here.]  We then get to hear all about how these accusations are utter nonsense, and don’t you dare judge me, and the accuser is unfair and angry and mean.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Before I left on vacation, I was planning to do a post about the sexist aspects of Transformers 2.  I enjoyed the movie, but it has some seriously problematic aspects, from our opening shot of Megan Fox on the motorcycle to the Decepticon pantybot* to the Infinite Dorm of Gorgeous Girls.

But as I was reading other reviews and commentary, I kept coming across the same reactions.  “It’s just a summer action flick.  What did you expect from a Michael Bay movie?  Stop analyzing and just have fun!  Why do you have to suck the fun out of everything with this P.C. garbage?”

I find it interesting which stories people believe are worthy of literary analysis and critique.  The attitude seems to be that critical analysis is best left for dusty old tomes in the ivory tower.  Joyce, Melville, Shakespeare, and so on.  If we’re going to think about movies, we’re supposed to limit it to the highbrow art-house films.

Maybe I’m crazy, but that seems backwards to me.  How many people actually read Joyce these days?  Compare that to the number of people who went out to see Transformers.  So wait, we’re saying discussions of racism, sexism, and so on are fine, so long as they’re not about the stories most people are actually reading or watching.

I don’t write deep literary fiction.  My books have flaming spiders and nose-picking injuries and Sleeping Beauty & the Little Mermaid kicking the crap out of each other.  Because my stories are “bubblegum fiction,” as one reviewer described them, does this mean I should be given a free pass on issues of race, sex, and so on?  Because I find that a little insulting, to be honest.  When I screw up–and we all do sometimes–I expect to be called on it.

I understand these discussions can be uncomfortable, especially if we’ve enjoyed the story in question.  I’m still struggling with major dissonance over Transformers.  I have serious problems with the stereotypes and clichés in this thing.  I also had a lot of fun watching it.  What does it say about me if I enjoyed a movie while at the same time finding it problematic on so many levels?

Personally, I believe it’s important to examine and challenge popular culture, whether that’s movies, TV, books, music, or whatever**.  It’s important because it’s popular.  Because racism and sexism have survived and thrived in large part because we make excuses and turn a blind eye.

—–
*Decepticons can create perfect human doubles, and the best plan they can come up with is to send her to hop into bed with Sam?

**I say this as a man who wrote about Darth Vader in my Master’s thesis.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

It’s an interesting paradox. As a writer with four novels in print, one of the most common questions I get is “When are you going to quit your day job?” On the other hand, take a writer who has done just that and runs into financial trouble. One of the first questions they hear is “Why don’t you just get a real job?”

Writing “professionally” is a real job.  It’s more work than any day job I’ve had.  There’s the actual writing, the rewriting, the communication with editors, agents, and fans, the paperwork (contracts, taxes, etc.), and that’s before you decide to go to that convention or booksigning, or try to do some publicity for your work.

The real question is “Why don’t you get a safe job?”  One that would provide you with stable income, health insurance, and everything else you needed to avoid this mess.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

So I was killing time, following a link from Michael Brotherton to the Death Clock, which supposedly predicts how much time you have left. Apparently I’m going to die in 2048. (At my current rate, this means I should be able to churn out about between 30 and 40 more books.  Yay!)

Anyway, I know this is just as reliable as any other online quiz, but what stuck with me was the basis for the prediction: 

1) I don’t smoke.
2) I’m 5′7″ and 161 lbs.

This, along with my gender and birth date, is the total data collected by the site*.  #1 is the “healthy” answer, but according to the site, #2 means I’m overweight and heading for an earlier grave.

Screw you, Death Clock. Screw you and your “Lethal Danger of Being Fat.”

Of course, deathclock.com is owned by Life Extension, a site whose front page is plastered with ads for vitamins, supplements, and — you guessed it — weight loss products. It’s a brilliant industry. Make people feel like crap, then promise them they can be skinny and happy again, and isn’t that worth an obscene amount of money? Of course they want to warn me of the deadly dangers of being 161 pounds. How else can they convince me to rush out and send them all my cash?

I do understand that obesity can have an adverse effect on your health.  Yes, I’ve heard that we have an increasing trend toward obesity in this country (though you wouldn’t know it wandering down to my daughter’s school and glancing at the kids).  Heck, I’ll even admit I’m in much worse shape these days than I used to be.  More exercise would be a very good thing.  But overweight?  Give me a freaking break.

I am so sick of my country’s attitude toward weight.  We don’t give a damn whether you’re healthy.  We care about whether you’re “pretty”.  And if you’re not?  If you’re heavy?  Congratulations, you’re a 21st century leper, and the rest of us can feel free to mock you and look down on you, because it’s your own fault.  Because you made yourself unhealthy.  You did choose to be fat, didn’t you? So by reminding you how fat you are, by making sure you know exactly how grotesque the rest of us think you are, I’m helping you!  I’m motivating you to get past your unhealthy habits and become healthy!  Because if you didn’t want to be fat, you wouldn’t be.

If that was the way things worked, I should weigh about 300 pounds.  Tonight I’ll eat almost an entire large pizza for dinner.  Healthy?  Definitely not.  But I was fortunate enough to be born with my mother’s metabolism.  I can hit the ice cream for a snack before bed, and I’ll still be 161 pounds at my next checkup.  I know people who eat far healthier than I do, exercise daily, and they’re still heavier than me.  Their bodies simply won’t lose the weight. But it’s so much easier to assume fat people are all lazy slobs gorging themselves on ice cream every night.

If it was really about health, we wouldn’t have diabetics deliberately going off insulin so their bodies would cannibalize themselves for fuel.  It’s effective — I lost about 30 pounds that way when I was first diagnosed.  It’s also toxic and potentially deadly.  But hey, better dead than fat, right?

I’m sick of it.  You don’t even want to know how young my daughter was the first time she came to us worried about her weight. And don’t get me started on the ever-popular Hollywood “Fat = Funny!” formula.

There are some seriously beautiful people out there who would be labeled heavy or even obese. I don’t mean that feel-good “Everyone’s pretty on the inside” stuff. I’m talking about Garcia from Criminal Minds being one of the hottest characters on TV. I’m talking pure, physical, completely shallow sexiness.

As a kid growing up, I couldn’t see that.  I was an idiot. As I can’t go back in time and kick my own ass, I’ll settle for venting on the blog.

Be beautiful.  Be healthy.  The rest of it can go to hell.

—–
*I forgot that they also ask if you’re optimistic or pessemistic, and yes, I recognize that the site gives a lot of emphasis to your attitude. Which doesn’t change the fact that their numbers label me overweight and then present me with nothing at all about attitude, but a nice little treatise about how being heavy is LETHALLY DANGEROUS!!!

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

beth_bernobich wrote an agentlove post in response to another Agents are Evil! essay. Coincidentally, that same day I found myself in an Amazon chat on self-publishing wherein I was told that self-publishing is the future, publishers won't buy new work, and the industry hasn't changed much in 150 years so if it was good enough for Charles Dickens*, it's good enough for us!

This has been a long month, and I find myself less patient than usual when people splash stupid all over my screen. Publishing hasn't changed in 150 years? Heck, look how much it's changed in the past 15, or even the past 5. Print on demand, ebooks, Google deciding copyright is more of a guideline than a rule, the decline of independent bookstores, the bankruptcy of a major distributor.... Look, I've got nothing against self-publishing. Goldfish Dreams was put out by a PoD press, and is now essentially self-published over on Fictionwise. (At 30% off today, by the way.) I just get frustrated by ... not ignorance, but the aggressive stupidity.

It's the same sort of stupid that Beth linked to, the kind that leads people to proclaim that agents (or editors, or publishers) are Evil, that they're stifling truly original and genius works and seeking instead third-rate formulaic hacks, that they're destroying literature and crushing the true artists.

Agents and editors want books that people will read and buy. Agents who pick books people won't buy end up going out of business. (Or they become scammers and start ripping off would-be authors, but that's another rant.) Usually the "Agents are mean poodoo-heads" rants come from writers who have themselves been rejected. So let's look at two possible scenarios for why Author Bob gets rejected.

1. Bob's book is truly brilliant and revolutionary. This book would change lives, and would sell millions of copies. It's a powerful book, and readers would love it if only those self-serving agents weren't working so hard to "ensure that quality fiction never hits [the publisher's] desk." Alas, Bob's chances have been crushed by those enemies of literature, the agents (or editors, depending on the rant.)

2. Bob's book isn't as good as he thinks it is.

Good books do get rejected, and sometimes agents and editors make mistakes. An agent takes on a book and a client for two reasons: because they love the book(s), and because they think those book(s) will sell. If either of those factors are missing, you're probably going to get rejected. Get over it. I know writers tend to have supersized egos, but if you think getting rejected means the agents and editors of the world are conspiring to crush literature, then we're looking at a whole new level of egomania.

My editor at DAW rocks. She's brilliant when it comes to helping me improve my books. She and the other editor at DAW are good enough at deciding what to buy and what to reject that they've kept a major publisher in business for years. She's also one of the nicest people I've talked to. She's given me steadily increasing advances for my books. She's hooked me up with some great cover artists. She loves Jig the goblin and my princesses.

My agent kicks ass too, and I say that even though he rejected one of my earlier books. I probably could have sold the latest princess book to DAW without his help, but he negotiated a better royalty structure that I never would have considered. He sells the books overseas and probably triples the amount I earn on each book. He contacts publishers to remind them when checks are overdue so that I can do things like keep up on the mortgage payments. Plus he springs for pizza when we're in Chicago.

They're not the enemy. There's no conspiracy. Writing is hard, publishing is a business, and it ain't personal unless and until you try to make it so.

----
*See here if you want my rant on self-publishing "success" stories.

---

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books linked to the New York Times review of "The Jewel of Medina".

As a general rule, I don't think it's a good idea to argue with reviewers. But like everything else in writing and in life, no rule is absolute. SBTB singled out this particular passage for heated mockery:

Should free-speech advocates champion "The Jewel of Medina"? In the American context, the answer is unclear. The Constitution protects pornography and neo-Nazi T-shirts, but great writers don't generally applaud them. If Jones's work doesn't reach those repugnant extremes, neither does it qualify as art. It is telling that PEN, the international association of writers that works to advance literature and defend free expression, has remained silent on the subject of this novel. Their stance seems just about right.

I had to read this carefully. Lorraine Adams, the reviewer, isn't saying "The Jewel of Medina" shouldn't be protected by the Constitution, only that it shouldn't be championed. In other words, free speech advocates need to pick their battles, and this one isn't worthy. That's not the same thing as saying it's okay to censor the book.

That said, Adams still pisses me off. Because as I read her paragraph, I feel like she's setting up the proposition that certain works are more deserving of protection than others. Yes, the Constitution protects porn and Nazis (and what a fascinating juxtaposition that is, but that's a topic for another time). But what the hell does the approval of "great authors" have to do with anything? Who gets to determine whether something is art, and why does that matter, unless you're saying "art" is more worth of protection than "The Eye of Argon" or the collected works of L. Ron Hubbard. Who gets to say what's most worthy of protecting?

Lorraine Adams, of course.

Adams points to PEN's silence as support for her position that "Jewel of Medina" is less worthy. Or maybe, just maybe, PEN has remained silent not because this book is less worthy of being championed, but because "Jewel of Medina" hasn't been censored!

Random House decided not to publish the book. I think their decision was wrong, but as a publisher, they have the right to make that decision. Is that censorship? Is it censorship when FSF rejects my short fiction? I still have the freedom to share those stories -- I could post them in my blog today if I wanted to. The publisher is a business, and they're under no obligation to publish anything they don't want to.

You can read my rant on Random House's decision here. I think they made a bad choice. But of all the things that pissed me off, "censorship" wasn't one of them.

"Censorship" is a loaded term, one that gets tossed around far too quickly and casually. "Oh noes, you deleted my 600-word comment on your blog. You got your censorship in my Freedom of Speeech!!!1!!11!" It's depressing, especially because in this particular case, the review itself was pretty informative. It's clear Adams isn't impressed with the book, but it was a relatively helpful review ... up until Adams leapt onto her ill-constructed soapbox to go off on censorship.

She opens that last paragraph by saying, "An inexperienced, untalented author has naïvely stepped into an intense and deeply sensitive intellectual argument." I'm ... not going to touch this one.

This has been your weekly dose of rant. I'd also recommend Neil Gaiman's blog post, Why defend freedom of icky speech?

---

The rewrite is done and off to my editor. Woo hoo! That means I can get back to the blogging, and what better way to start than by pissing off some readers? (I figure if Orson Scott Card's political rants irritate me, my own will likely have the same effect on some of my own readers.)

Back in 2004, my state (Michigan) passed an amendment to the state constitution stating that, "the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose." Shortly afterward, I watched a friend I had known since age four move to another state, because she and her partner could no longer support themselves here.

I've struggled for a long time to understand why people work so hard to ban gay marriage. A lot of people, myself included, have posted that gay marriage is no threat to our own marriages ... but that's not the point. I don't think I've heard anyone claiming that if two dudes get married in Massachusetts, then the marriage of Jane and Jack in Iowa will spontaneously combust.

The religious argument appears to be more popular. Just look at the testimonials on the Protect Marriage site.

All right, let's go there. You believe your Bible prohibits gay marriage. That's your reasoning for supporting Prop 8 in California and all the rest of the laws against gay marriage. Fine. But now you've got a choice to make. You see, there are other countries that also base their laws on their religious beliefs. Let's pick Iran, where you've got women being arrested for daring to protest inequal rights, things like needing to obtain her husband's approval before taking a job, marriage that grants a man up to four wives (but doesn't work the other way around), and provides little protection against "honor killings" wherein rape victims are murdered (whereas "a husband - or a father - who kills the rape victim may face only a short jail sentence.")

If you're going to claim that United States law should be based on your religious beliefs, then you have to allow other nations to build their laws based on their own religions. Or if you feel that it's wrong for rape victims to be stoned to death, your other choice is to revive the crusades and convert the world to your particular view of Christianity. Otherwise, if you're saying the U.S. should follow Christian law but other countries can't make law based on their own religions, then you're a flaming hypocrite.

Me, I like that whole "separation of church and state" theory. I understand that your religious beliefs might be different than mine. You have every right to believe homosexuality is a sin. Your church shouldn't have to acknowledge the marriage of two men, any more than it should have to accept the marriage of one man with six wives as valid. But your church does not get to determine the legal status of my marriage.

I also got into a discussion with jonathanmoeller about gay rights activists going too far and crushing people's right to free speech. Given the activities of anti-gay extremists like old Fred Phelps, merrily picketing the funerals of high school students, I don't see a serious threat to free speech any time soon. But even if we grant that some people might want to make it illegal to say anything mean about gays, and even if you do feel threatened by that, in what possible way can you justify protecting your right to free speech by taking away another group's right to marry? If a black man robs your house, should we take away the right of African Americans to vote?

This brings us to the question of whether marriage is truly a right. Heck, marriage itself has evolved and changed a lot over the centuries. Anyone who thinks marriage has always been about two people who love each other freely choosing to live their lives together is in serious need of a little historical perspective.

But I struggle with how to define an inalienable right. The whole concept of rights is somewhat arbitrary, an invented concept which encapsulates different ideas depending on the region and the time period. You could argue that a right is whatever the government says it is, in which case gay marriage is not a right, because the government says it ain't.

That's not good enough for me. Let's break down just a few of the privileges that come with marriage.

• My employer provides health benefits for my partner.


• If I die, my partner is the default beneficiary.


• If my insulin pump is taken over by Skynet and puts me into a diabetic coma, my partner has the right to come to the hospital and to make decisions on my behalf (assuming she's not busy fighting killer robots).


• I was able to adopt my partner's daughter as my own.

Do these things qualify as "inalienable human rights", or are they simply privileges granted to me by our government & society? Many of these benefits are written into law. They're expected. (Please note that none of these benefits have anything to do with religion.) Regardless of the semantics games we could play about what a "right" really is, the fact is that our society treats marriage as a right.

And that right is denied to some of my best friends. That right could be denied to my son or my daughter. And God help me, but I just can't understand why.

Stepsister Auction Update: Up to $112.50 with three days to go.

A while back I posted what I intended to be my only real political post this season. And then I caught part of the third debate, specifically the part where McCain and Obama were discussing abortion, and McCain says:

"Just again, the example of the eloquence of Sen. Obama. He's ... [air quotes] 'health for the mother'. You know, that's been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything. That's the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, health. But, look, Cindy and I are adoptive parents. We know what a treasure and joy it is to have an adopted child in our lives."

Both candidates have said things I disagree with, and things that annoy me. This was the first time I wanted to reach through the screen and punch one of them in the face.

Note -- I talked to my wife Amy last night to make sure she was comfortable with me talking about this here.

It may be that McCain, like I used to be, is a little ignorant about exactly what pregnancy can do to a woman's body. I had no idea until I watched Amy carrying our son.

My wife has been dealing with various health issues for years. In addition to fibromyalgia, she has serious arthritis and a degenerative spinal condition. She manages her pain through a number of pills and sheer stubbornness.

I'm glad we chose to have this child, but there were consequences. A developing child leaches calcium and other nutrients from the mother. For some women, this means they end up getting cavities because their teeth lose some of their nutrients. For my wife, who had several preexisting bone issues? After my son was born, she needed five surgeries on her knee just to help her walk again. She now has a permanent handicap tag for the car. Despite several years of physical therapy, multiple doctors and specialists, regular chiropractic care, and pretty much anything else we could think of to help, the fact is her health and quality of life are significantly worse today than they were before she became pregnant.

I love my children. I suspect we probably would have had a third by now (despite the fact that I sometimes feel overwhelmed just trying to keep up with two!) I know Amy wanted to have another child. But we both know that choice would be crippling to Amy.

Is that meaning clear enough for you, Senator? Nobody's speaking in code here. "Health of the mother" means Amy and I had to make a very hard, very painful choice not to have another child. It means if something happens and Amy does become pregnant, the two of us have another difficult choice to make. I'm an adoptive father as well, so please don't pull that crap with me. This has nothing to do with putting a kid up for adoption, nor is it about being "extreme pro-abortion"; it has to do with the clear and devastating effects another pregnancy would have on my wife. It has to do with not trusting a condescending old man in Washington to decide whether or not my wife is going to be permanently crippled.

I don't pretend this is an easy issue, and I doubt I'd respect anyone who did. Most of you know I worked as a rape counselor, so I could get into all of those issues of rape and incest as well. You think the mother's health isn't an issue when the mother is a 10-year-old girl pregnant with her father's child?

This has not been easy to write about, but I thought it was important. I'm leaving comments open, but I'm not asking for advice, and I certainly don't intend to get into an abortion debate. Simplistic, condescending rhetoric might be good for the campaign trail, but it's not welcome here. I'm feeling pretty raw after writing this, so please do me a favor and either keep things respectful, or get the hell out.

I hate politics. I didn't used to ... for a while I was pretty apathetic to the whole thing. But the older I got, the more I started to see how much this stuff mattered, both on the large scale and the small. The more I started to actually care who was running things.

These days, I wish I could go back to apathy, because I'm sick to death of this crap. Sweet FSM in His Gilded Pot, it's like a bunch of cranky children whining and screaming to get what they want. Hey, I'm a fantasy author, so here's a fantasy -- how about the candidates get up there and tell us what they believe, and what they plan to do in office? Don't waste our time telling us your opponent is a lying poopy-head. If the other candidate is lying, it's the media's job to call them on it. (I said it's a fantasy, remember? Though I'm fairly impressed with what I've seen at factcheck.org.)

I hate that five minutes on FactCheck leaves me thinking the potential leaders of my country are all liars, idiots, or both. I hate that I live in a battleground state and have to spend the next month and a half listening to this crap every time I switch on the TV or the radio.

Mostly though, I hate what politics does to me. I'm not talking about my blood pressure skyrocketing every time I leave the house and see my neighbors' yard signs. I'm talking about falling into that same "us vs. them" absolutist Sithlord mindset.

One of the things I take pride in as a writer is my ability to develop characters and make them three-dimensional, interesting people, particularly the villains. As a rule, I dislike cardboard characters, especially the moustache-twirling villains who embrace evil for no better reason than because good is dumb*.

I already know who I'm going to vote for, and I know he's not perfect. But when I think about the other guy, I'm not thinking about a human being. I'm thinking about a cardboard villain who's going to ruin my country. Same goes for anyone who supports him. I don't think that maybe their priorities are different than mine, or maybe they have information I don't, or maybe there are other valid reasons for making a different choice. Nope, I just think to myself that they're a bunch of flaming idiots. My reasons for supporting my guy are good, strong, and best for the country. Your reasons are asinine.

Over the course of various books and stories, I've put myself into the minds of a lot of scummy characters, trying to see things from their point of view. Trying to humanize them and understand their choices, even though I don't agree with them. Murdering goblins and scheming stepsisters, evil overlords and KKK wizards. Goldfish Dreams has several scenes written from the point of view of a rapist. Those were among the hardest I've ever had to write, but I still tried to get into his head and understand things the way he would see them.

But I can't do the same for someone who says they're going to vote for the other guy? Someone with opposing political ideas is somehow a worse villain than all the rest? Something's seriously out of balance here.

In conclusion, please vote for Jig and Smudge this November. They're backstabbing, selfish little cowards who would eat their own mothers, but at least they're honest about it!

---
*Dark Helmet gets a pass here, 'cause he had a big Schwartz.

---

I love Order of the Stick. Some strips are stronger than others, just like with anything else, but I was especially fond of this one. Silly ninjas...

So normally my mental wheels are slow and creaky in the mornings, but when I glanced at LJ early today, I found an entry from namelessarchon which woke me right up. With namelessarchon's permission, I'm going to talk about it here. And before I do, I want to make the rules clear. I disagree with what namelessarchon wrote about me. That does not mean he's wrong, or that I want people to bash him for what he wrote. Keep it civilized, or go away.

Let's start with this quote, referring to my post on my tie-in prejudices.

This week was yet another Jim ‘dislikes’ column. Now given, Jim prefaces these columns with some self deprecation, but the essence of each is still truth, like the latest which said he has issues with Tie-in novelists not being ‘real’ writers. Although he explains that such a view is bad and he needs to change, he still feels it and is open enough to state it. Still, it reminds me of his issues with e-published authors not being ‘real’ writers, or his feelings concerning the evils of self promotion, which he does without relent because I guess it is ok if you are a ‘real’ writer and not a lesser version who isn’t signed by a company listed on SFFWA entry forms.

Right off the bat, this brings up something I've noticed myself, and haven't been entirely happy about. Namely, I seem to be writing more rants these days. I even have a rants tag now. On the one hand, there are issues I care about, and I have every right to write yet another one as the mood strikes. But I've been questioning what I want this blog to be, and whether it's a good thing that it's evolving to include more rants. The fact that those rants are some of the most commented-upon of my posts is food for thought, but they also bring a certain amount of negativity, and I generally prefer to keep things happy.

That said, it's my blog, and I'll figure out what direction I want to take it in. I doubt I'll be doing away with the rants altogether, if only because I need to vent somewhere when things piss me off.

It's the next part that bothers me, where I'm described as having issues with e-published (and later on, self-published) authors not being 'real' writers, or that self-promotion is evil unless you're a 'real' and SFWA-approved author like me.

I'm going to start by looking at my own publishing history, starting with Goldfish Dreams, a mainstream novel I wrote which was first published by a small POD press, and now exists only on Fictionwise as an e-book. I also wanted to link to a review of Tales from the Whole Universe, a self-published e-anthology I did with my writing group years back. (Unfortunately, that link only takes you to the preview page. The actual one-star review seems to have disappeared, which is a shame.) Coming in November, I'm publishing "Red's Tale" in the Cats Curious Faery Taile Project, a small press which definitely doesn't meet SFWA qualifications. My last goblin short story came out in Andromeda Spaceways, another small and non-SFWA-qualifying market.

Does flashing these credentials prove I'm not biased against small/self/e-published authors? Not at all. But I figure it's a good starting point. Likewise, I don't feel that I'm anti-promotion. I hope not, since I just ordered 5000 bookmarks for The Stepsister Scheme, not to mention those goblin tattoos I'm still giving away...

That said, I've certainly posted rants about self-promotional tactics. Just as I've complained about interactions with self-published writers at times.

To give an example of what I do and don't believe: when you e-mail me, unsolicited, a 4 MB copy of your unpublished novel, and then follow up with e-mails urging me to pass it along to my friend, then I believe you're being a dick. That does not mean I believe self-promotion is bad. But this kind of self-promotion? Not cool. Now, my opinion about what constitutes acceptible self-promotion is just that -- my opinion. Yours will likely vary. Some people might feel that me using my book cover as my MySpace user pic is tacky. Maybe so, but I still do it.

Self-published books? To be honest, I do feel that a book which has made it through some sort of filtering process (slush, agents, etc.) and subjected to rigorous editing by a professional editor is in most cases going to be superior to a book published through Lulu. I also believe the proliferation of self-publishing and vanity presses means there's a lot more self-published work out there, and much of it was not ready for publication, any more than my first, second, or third novels were ... even though I believed otherwise when I wrote them. Does that mean I believe I'm a real author while self-published folks aren't? Of course not. I'm not even sure what a "real" author is.

There are a lot of reasons people choose to self-publish. I agree with some of the reasons and disagree with others. (The idea that self-publishing is the paradigm of the future and is the best way to break out as an author would be an example from the "Disagree" column.) Do I look down on self-published authors for making this choice? Nope.

I do look down on those self-published authors who tell me I'm a commercial hack and a sell-out, and that my writing is worthless tripe whereas theirs is brilliant and revolutionary, which is why those idiots in New York were scared to publish them. If you're pushing that line, I'll probably glance at your writing, and then I will mock you and look down at you, yes.

It's possible that some of my posts have been less clear than I intended. I know in some cases people have taken my rants personally. And I doubt namelessarchon is the only one to assume this is what I believe. If I've written clumsily enough to contribute to that misunderstanding, then I apologize. On the other hand, there's no such thing as writing that's clear enough for every single reader to take it precisely the same way.

Hopefully this is clear enough, 'cause I don't plan on spending much more time on it. If you've got questions, ask 'em now or hold your peace. And in the future, if you truly feel that I'm bashing either on you personally or on some broad class of writers, please let me know either in the comments or by e-mail. Thanks!

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Most of you remember the William Sanders rejection letter flap, which included the line, "I don't think you're going to sell it to any other genre magazine, for that reason - though you'd have a hard time anyway; most of the SF magazines are very leery of publishing anything that might offend the sheet heads."

I hadn't intended to say anything more about this, but then I came across a story about Sherry Jones, an author who sold two books to Random House for a six-figure deal. The first book, "The Jewel of Medina," was a "racy romance novel about Muhammed" set to come out on August 12*.

Random House pulled the book.

Thomas Perry, deputy publisher at Random House Publishing Group, said that it "disturbs us that we feel we cannot publish it right now." He said that after sending out advance copies of the novel, the company received "from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment." Full article from the Wall Street Journal.

More on Sherry Jones, from mediabistro.

Random House obviously isn't a SF magazine, but as much as I despise Sanders' use of language and treatment of those writers who disagreed with him ... well, we now have a major publisher backing out of a contract because they're afraid of a) extremist violence and b) offending a portion of the Muslim community.

You know, if "The Jewel of Medina" really was a horrible or historically inaccurate or offensive book, then Random House shouldn't have purchased it. I have no objections to publishers saying, "This book is hateful trash, and we don't want to publish it." But this is a book they felt was worth a major advance ... up until one of the people who had been asked to blurb the book complained about it. (Side note: Denise Spellberg -- the professor who first complained -- appears to be both non-Muslim and American.)

So what's the difference between this and the cancellation of O.J. Simpson's book "If I Did It"? I had no objections to that book getting shut down, whereas I'm thoroughly disappointed in the decision to cancel Jones' book. I think the biggest difference is that Random House doesn't appear to be cancelling this book because of the book's content. I've yet to find a quote from the publisher indicating any complaints about the story itself. Instead, they're acting out of fear.

Fear of what? That some people find the book objectionable? Oh, I'm sorry -- it's fear that those people might find the book objectional.

Do we cancel books because we're afraid of "small, radical" segments of the white community? If so, I'm not aware of any examples. Because of course radical white people never go nuts and blow shit up. So we won't worry about offending the nice sensible white folk, but everyone knows how crazy they are. If we publish this book, teh Muslims will plant IEDs in our libraries and crash planes into Barnes & Noble!

I suspect this will be used as ammunition to attack political correctness run amuck. "Random House is just caving in to the PC Nazis." Sorry, but no. Political correctness is about respect. This is about fear of the other, and I find it disappointing as hell.

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*If you're curious, you can read the prologue of the book through the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books site.