Cleolinda everywhere

I have been writing (good) and having health issues (bad), so I've been quieter than I would have liked. However, before I can get to a number of other things, we have a publishing kerfuffle to discuss. Yes, another one. It's gotten pretty bad.

The short overview from the Guardian: YA authors asked to 'straighten' gay characters: Authors say agent offered them book deal conditional on making a character heterosexual.

The long version: ( Pack a lunch, you'll need it )

Such as:

There is a new Made of Fail podcast up!

Foresthouse is in an American Gods contest, and if she can stay in the top 20 until May 2, those 20 entries will go to a panel to be chosen for a part in the audio book! You can vote for her here.

The Liz Miles LGBTQ-inclusive anthology that Saundra Mitchell was talking about (and is in) is now out for sale (Amazon link)! Yes, it is a Running Press anthology. However, people said they wanted to support inclusiveness, and this isn't a Trisha Telep anthology. I leave it to you.

Speaking of that whole business, ( Read more... )

BPAL has a new RPG line of scents! And they're layerable, so you can have, say, your Good/Elf/Paladin combo.

( Many people have been cast in The Hunger Games movie!  )

Meanwhile, I'm going back to try to write. Shhhh. Don't wake the Petite Lap Bear.

I know people were getting lost trying to catch up on the previous five entries (Livejournal) (Dreamwidth mirror)--I would suggest you read those in order to get the clearest version of the story. But here's the nutshell version: ( You can skip this if you know what's going on )


Picking up ETAs from yesterday that people may not have seen:

1) @francescablock: "f it no more pretty wicked things for me. i'm withdrawing." I don't know why Francesca Lia Block (who initially accepted Trisha Telep's formal apology and decided to stay in) has dropped out. I hope it's because she saw the Publisher's Weekly "article" and not, say, because people harassed her on Twitter and Facebook to withdraw. That's one of the reasons I've never listed the authors who were supposed to be in the anthology, so as not to unintentionally send people after them. (I know at least one more author has dropped out, but is not making a formal statement as such.) There's protesting a company's decision, and there's protesting a personal decision; there's protesting someone's decision in your own space, and there's protesting someone's decision in their space. You have to consider the latter more carefully. 

2)  With thanks to gwyd: Seanan McGuire's explanation on 3/28 as to why she pulled her story. I don't think I'd seen this before.

3) And, new: Jessica Verday's final statement (barring, as she says, major developments). ( Also, I wonder about blackballing )

Yeah, this is still going. Last night, domynoe pointed me to Twitter:

@SaundraMitchell: Hey @PublishersWkly since Christopher Navratil is upset the authors didn't contact him how about providing an addy? It's not on their site!

@SaundraMitchell: And nice reportage! Extremely balanced. Why didn't you talk to any of the authors involved? @PublishersWkly

@SaundraMitchell: For any author who got the "Please come back to our anthology" letter from R&P I DIDN'T authorize that quote and my story remains withdrawn!


So I'm sitting here going, "letter with unauthorized quote whaaaaaaat," and then I start getting messages from a few different writers. Some of whom are extremely frustrated at the "double dealings" going on and the way Jessica Verday is being treated. So. Some information has been passed on to me. Like a copy of the contract. ( Read more... ) 

Just as I was about to hit post: Kaiden Blake talks about why this is important in the first place, plus a story from one of his fans.

ETA: Saundra says, "I am pleased to say that they have retracted my quote from their letter and offered a wholehearted apology, which I have accepted. On that front, at least, I feel that they've behaved admirably and I thank them for that."

I'm in the middle of situation-in-progress emails so I don't have anything solid yet, but things may be headed for a turnaround. More when I find out.

ETA: @francescablock: "f it no more pretty wicked things for me. i'm withdrawing."

ETA: With thanks to gwyd: Seanan McGuire's explanation on 3/28 as to why she pulled her story.

We have some Wicked Pretty Updates. It was about to die down, and then it took a hard left turn onto WTF Street. ( Read more... )

ETA: With thanks to domynoe:

@SaundraMitchell: Hey @PublishersWkly since Christopher Navratil is upset the authors didn't contact him how about providing an addy? It's not on their site!*

@SaundraMitchell: And nice reportage! Extremely balanced. Why didn't you talk to any of the authors involved? @PublishersWkly*

@SaundraMitchell: For any author who got the "Please come back to our anthology" letter from R&P I DIDN'T authorize that quote and my story remains withdrawn!*

Quick recap: Jessica Verday dropped out of the "Melissa Marr-ish" Wicked Pretty Things YA anthology after being asked to change a "G-rated" male/male romance to male/female. The editor, Trisha Telep, made a bizarrely cheerful non-apology; Running Press claimed to both support LGBTQ writing and stand behind the editor 100%. Out of thirteen stories in the anthology, five other writers (Lesley Livingston, Karen Mahoney, Lisa Mantchev, Brenna Yovanoff, and Seanan McGuire) have pulled out as well. This still being the weekend and a situation in progress, no responses from the other seven have appeared yet. However, Ann Aguirre has dropped out of a different Telep anthology and Melissa Marr has asked them to take her name off the cover copy because seriously what the hell was that about anyway.

I'm sure that further developments will roll in tomorrow, but Caitlin Kittredge stopped by to say,

I had a story in Telep's anthology "Kiss Me Deadly" and a forthcoming one in "Corsets & Clockwork". Unfortunately, C&C had already gone to press (like, physical final copies) when all this bullshit blew open, or I would've yanked it so fast the earth would've reversed rotation.

I contacted Running Press/Constable & Robinson and told them I wouldn't be submitting/selling them any more of my short fiction while they continue to employ Telep in any capacity, and I urge other former/current antho. contributors to do the same. The quickest way to effect a positive change is to hit them in their profit margin.

Last night, I also got a pingback from Dina James' journal, where she points out the downside of a scorched-earth boycott: she had no idea what Trisha Telep's views were (and supports the Wicked Pretty Things protests), but when people talk about never buying any Running Press books again, they're talking about her books, including the ones Telep didn't edit. (She also states that she will not work with Telep again.)

On that note, Saundra Mitchell has dropped out of yet a different Telep-edited anthology, but still supports Running Press--and, to their credit, you need to know why: "I’ve withdrawn my short story “Tromsø by Polar Night” from Trisha Telep’s THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF GHOST STORIES- but I’m very proud to say that my story for C&R/RPK’s TRUTH & DARE is still on. That editor, Liz Miles, not only encouraged me to write in an experimental form, her call of entry specifically asked for stories with LGBT content."

So, despite Running Press's contradictory, have-the-cake-and-eat-it response about supporting LGBTQ writing but standing behind Telep, it sounds like the best course of action for readers at this point is to specifically boycott anthologies Telep edits. The best course of action for writers seems to be the one they're already taking: pulling stories that haven't made it to press yet and refusing to work with editors who want to make gay characters disappear.

Running count: six writers out of Wicked Pretty Things, two authors who are dropping out of different anthologies, two authors who have nothing currently to pull but won't work with Telep again, and one writer who doesn't even want her name anywhere near it.  


ETA April 2nd: There was, in fact, a formal apology from Trisha Telep that no one saw until about 3/29-3/30.

Internets, there was a lot of jackassery today. It's kind of impressive.

The Wicked Pretty Things imbroglio: Jessica Verday explained that she was pulling out of the YA anthology because she was asked to make a story with a male/male romance into a male/female romance. No problem with the actual content, violence or language; just make one of the characters a girl. Verday said AW HALE NAW (I may be paraphrasing here). ( SHENANIGANS )

Many things! So many that I only culled the very best links for the spam, and it's still hugelong. Well, it's not that bad. JUST READ IT.

To begin: the new Made of Fail, "Self-Esteem is for Everybody," is up. I'm not on it (Scarlett is of Scarlettopia and the Spoony Experiment is, much to Dayna's twitterpation), but Dayna and I were talking a few days before, and she had me write down what I was saying so she could read it on air (about 28 minutes in), and it was: my advice to geek boys. My sad, hard-won, somewhat embittered advice. Alas, earwax.

Also, the Christopher Pike thing just got better. (Scroll down to "ETA again.") Not only is he now accusing caligirl_08 of being the one with an army of Amazon review sockpuppets, he's claiming that bookfails is "a livejournal community sponsored by someone of Turkish background who has taken things much too far and is trying to rob fiction authors of their artistic license." Such artistic license includes claiming that the Aryans of India are the same as the "Nordic ideal" Aryans.

However: sad news as well.

Hollywood legend Tony Curtis dies at 85. 

Bonnie and Clyde Director Arthur Penn Dies at 88.

'Marty,' 'Chinatown' actor Joe Mantell dies at 94.

More linkspam: ( Read more... )

Internets, I am not feeling so good. Just sinus blarg and a low fever, but I have been sleeping a lot. So that's where I've been.

Two bits of writerly advice:

@victoriastrauss: Agent Andrew Lownie on how to blow your chances in the first line of your email.

@MaryRobinette: Debut Author Lessons: 10 things about signing books.

Linkspam: movie news and your chance to be a werewolf, for really real. ( HOW CAN YOU BEAT THAT VALUE )

Well, the bad news is that I was trying to wrestle the e-book onto Lulu yesterday and I realized that while it's true, there are no production costs for an e-book, they DO calculate 25% of the price when you set it and add that back on top for themselves (not unreasonably), which means that the e-book would now be $6.25, and after a quick straw poll on Twitter in which no one told me to drop dead, I decided to hell with it, we will just CHARGE that much extra, OMG WHY IS MY LIFE SO HARD ("...she said, as the entire population of Darfur shot her the bird"). (ETA: Apparently this shakes out to £3.92 and €4.47?) So after screaming at the computer for half an hour and literally pounding on the desk, I got the thing on there with relatively little trouble.

And then I had a Woodchuck and the second half of a large bar of chocolate, because I had apparently just published my second book, with this whole thing about needing to send a copy to the Library of Congress.

The good news is that someone overseas was asking when it would go up, because they were eight hours ahead of me. I had wanted to put it up on Sunday evening, like I said, because people will be bored and have nothing to do since it's a school/work night. Well, it's 11 am here, so I figure it's already bore o'clock overseas, so you can have it now. You ought to be able to use Lulu outside the U.S., but if you're somewhere that it won't allow, I have a couple of options I can work out for y'all. Right now I just want to make sure the whole Lulu thing works out okay (we did a couple of test sales yesterday and it seems to).


A few questions pre-emptively answered:

There are notes on this thing for everyone, including people who have no knowledge of Harry Potter except for the parodies, or even people who are just reading the parodies for the first time. (I actually tested this thing out on a couple such people, so I know this to be true.) I mean, you don't have to know anything about it to read me running on about the origin of the color puce or the stupidest folk band in the world or where "dead from coke" came from or the etymology of "w00t."

Yes, it ought to work on most e-reader devices--I don't know about the Kindle specifically, but this is just a PDF file. It ought to work in on your computer, Adobe Reader, the Stanza reader or iPhone app, and maybe even internet browsers? I don't know. PDF is generally one of the most universal file formats, so it ought to work for most people in most circumstances. I hope.

No, I can't really sell a print edition of this. I mean, I could, but it would be a defective product, because the outbound links and footnote jumps wouldn't work. So there's a reason this has to be an e-book; it's actually sort of interactive. I mean, it won't play checkers with you or anything, but it does stuff dead-tree books can't do.

Yes, I am going to pay taxes on whatever I earn. I'm not going down like Capone.

So... yeah. Hope you enjoy it, tell people about it if you like it, wish me luck, etc. Pardon me while I go chew my nails.