Taking Names (And Violating Authors' Human Rights For Profit?)

By "taking names", I mean "taking" in the sense of misappropriating famous authors' and artists' real names or pen names, and without permission or compensation, taking and selling those names as advertising keywords.

In 2013, according to Penny Sansevieri of Author Marketing Experts, Amazon took the moral highground when debut authors attempted to exploit the names of celebrity authors (without permission) in order to market books.

https://www.amarketingexpert.com/amazon-making-big-changes-authors-beware/

Now, I hear, Amazon is cashing in, and selling celebrity author names as advertising keywords. Perhaps Jeff Bezos has (allegedly) lost his morals because Mark Zuckerberg is (allegedly) doing it? And getting away with it.

I am fairly confident that Amazon indeed may be selling names as keywords, because the Kindle advice forum is replete with advice on, for instance, how to pay Amazon to suggest to readers that ones writing is comparable to that of  JK Rowling.

https://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=245100.0

I took Mark Zuckerberg's name in this context because Hypebot suggests that Facebook sells celebrity musicians' names as advertising keywords, and Hypebot quotes the "litigation risks" paragraphs from Facebook's own  2015 disclosures to investors as proof.

Facebook allegedly warns stockholders that American and international laws about the use of (presumably copyrighted) content, and the rights of publicity (that is persons' rights to their own names and likenesses) etc. etc. are still "evolving", and Facebook could be sued and lose--presumably massively-- in court(s).

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2017/01/selling-artist-names-as-keywords-facebooks-misappropriation-problem-.html

Hypebot quotes Article 27 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

“Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.” 

In my opinion, that suggests that Facebook may violate artists' and creators' human rights for profit.  If that's what Facebook is getting away with, it looks like Amazon is getting away with it, too.

Facebook and Amazon probably have a high-placed friend in Senator Sensenbrenner (R WI ) who, according to The Trichordist, is proposing to strip copyright owners (at least, the beleaguered musical authors) of the right to statutory damages and to legal fees, even if they prevail in court in a copyright infringement action.

https://thetrichordist.com/2017/07/29/you-think-its-bad-for-songwriters-now-wait-until-the-sensenbrenner-r-wi-shiv-bill-passes/

That will put an end to copyright infringement class action lawsuits against permissionless innovators!

In my opinion, authors and songwriters and musicians should be explicitly granted the right to opt in to having their names sold as advertising keywords (opt out is more onerous, and leads to problems of payment if the search engines "cannot find" someone) and they ought to be paid royalties every time their name is sold as a keyword.

Since that is rather unlikely, and might even require an Act of Congress, what's to be done about it?

The legal blog of FR Kelly discusses reasons to trademark your name, or the names of your children.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=4f7b84bb-f84c-490e-bf92-9aad96a93f3a&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2017-07-21&utm_term=

As they say, there may be money to be made from a name, so it is wise and prudent to make sure that the rightful owners of the name own the trademark. Otherwise, someone else could trademark the name first, and not only exploit it for profit, but also, prevent the rightful owner of the name from using it.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

A Good Take-Down (DMCA related)

This week, I had a most excellent experience of the Take-Down kind with Scribd.

A Google Alert  informed me (a daily occurrence) that one of my works had been uploaded to the internet for free distribution by a French-speaking user rejoicing in the improbable name of "treaczoyrossu(date redacted)".

The "(date redacted)" is minor editorializing on my part. To my knowledge, my works have never been lawfully translated into French or any other foreign language.

I followed the link to Scribd, and after establishing a good faith belief that my copyright was indeed being infringed, I discovered this page on the platform.

https://www.scribd.com/copyright/report-infringement

Below the blurb is a very easy, mostly pre-populated form for copyright owners to use. It was quick, simple, and effective. Within a few hours, the page was down. If your work is being shared without your permission on Scribd, use the site. Don't bother paying any of the pirate hunters.

The Copyright Alliance would like you to share your experiences with Take-Downs and Bad Actors.

Please complete the Copyright Alliance survey no later than February 17, 2017.

It's a "Survey Monkey" survey; they known when you have done it (even if you switch on your PVA and try to do it again from a different part of the world... I know that, not because I was trying to cheat/troll but because I wanted a good link to post for you all, rather than a "you've-done-this-survey" link.)

And now for the "Good Catches" of the week, aka other interesting blogs and articles you might enjoy, if you are not watching sports today:

Artist as underdog
https://hughstephensblog.net/2017/01/23/the-artist-as-underdog/

The Accountability of Web Platforms
http://illusionofmore.com/the-accountability-of-web-platforms/

More on Accountability
http://copyrightalliance.org/ca_post/bmg-cox-accountability/

On the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch and his significance for authors, the Authors Guild opined guardedly in a recent newsletter. Judge Gorsuch "is more likely to interpret the copyright law, including DMCA provisions dealing with online piracy, in accordance with their plain meaning (whereas many courts in recent years have stretched the provisions far beyond their plain meaning in order to protect technology platforms)..."

The newletter was mailed to Authors Guild members. I cannot find it online, but there were invitations to forward the entire newsletter to others, or to "share" it on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorsGuild/

Some stock advice from very savvy musicians:
Facebook:
https://thetrichordist.com/2017/02/02/without-music-licenses-facebook-cant-pursue-long-form-video-should-investors-say-fckthezuck/

Spotify: (Two intriguing stories, one mentioning a $200,000,000 class action lawsuit)
https://thetrichordist.com/2017/01/26/was-daniel-ek-really-joking-when-he-offered-obama-job-at-spotify-was-obama-joking-when-he-asked-for-one/

and
https://thetrichordist.com/2017/02/03/will-spotify-convertible-debt-cannibalize-major-label-and-insider-equity/

And, my take on the following article is that it looks like the Copyright Office, funded by the American taxpayer, is being used to facilitate copyright infringement on a massive scale.

https://musictech.solutions/2017/01/26/mass-noi-update-christopher-sabec-and-rightscorp-tackle-the-copyright-office-problem/

Final reminder:

Take the DMCA Survey Here

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Soul Mates and the HEA: Real or Fantasy? Part 1

Soul Mates and the HEA: Real or Fantasy?

Part 1

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

This is labeled Part 1 because I expect there will be future parts.

Our readership for Romance and all its variants has a deep skepticism about the existence and plausibility of the Happily Ever After ending, or HEA.

This is based on real life experience.  Few of us know or have experienced and survived the exaggerated, dramatic, larger-than-life Events that divide a life.

Those Events come roaring into a Life like a flashflood, boiling rapids, sweeping away the person and everything they have built and identify with.

Astrologically, there are two planets that produce this effect when in certain transits -- Uranus which acts without apparent warning, and Pluto which undermines structures and passes, leaving the Events to surface later (like a Sinkhole opening up under your car -- it seems sudden, but took months of rain to hollow out the hole leaving just the thin cover you fall through.)

These outer planets move slowly through a Natal Chart.  Pluto and Neptune (Romance is related to Neptune) never make it all the way in a normal lifespan.

So at birth, life is set up to hit "rapids" once or twice.  The tumbling destruction can last a couple of years, or up to ten years or so.  While you are inside this pattern, you can't even think that there will ever be an "End" at all -- that this is life.

And some Lives actually go on and on like that, from pillar to post, like a Soap Opera plot.

So we look around at our own life, at the lives of others we know, and see there is no Ever After -- only Happily For Now.  People who thought they were Soul Mates get divorced in 5 or 10 years.  It's not real, but we wish it were.

Or, if we yearn to attain this state of HEA with a real Soul Mate, we kind of hope it's not real because as life goes on, it's too late.

What if others have attained what we want, and we are locked out of happiness?  That is just too bleak and painful a way to look at the world.

Many people, given a glimpse of such a harsh reality, internalize the disappointment and transmute it into anger.  Carrying internalized anger often shortens lifespan.

So a lot scientific studies have investigated "Happiness" and the mental and emotional strategies of "Successful People."

There seems to be a universal yearning for an inner peace that is just beyond reach.

Here is an article referencing a wide variety of studies probing the mental condition known as "Happiness."

BTW "Happiness" is usually symbolized in Astrology by Jupiter and/or Venus.

Here is the article I found on Flipboard and spread through Facebook:

3 secrets to dealing with anger the right way, according to neuroscience
http://www.businessinsider.com/dealing-with-anger-according-to-neuroscience-2015-11

At about the same time, I got drawn into a Facebook discussion on a Romance Writer Group about whether Romance is real.  Some writers said yes, and cited how many decades they had been happily married to the same guy.  Others said no, and cited failed Relationships.  It was a long, involved and passionate discussion.

At one point I said:
Remember that space ships and life on other planets and even cordless phones (Robert Heinlein), was all classified as "escapist fantasy" by most of the world while we (Science Fiction Readers, Star Trek Fans) went and made it Reality. Romance writers can do the same for the Soul Mate and HEA concepts.

The trick of communicating the passionate aspiration to make the HEA a reality in our modern world is in the Worldbuilding.

That connection between the Soul Mate being Real and the worldbuilding behind every novel, even Contemporary Romance needs worldbuilding, is what I go on about on this blog.

To solve that "Is it Wish Fulfillment Fantasy OR Is It Real?" dilemma for you so you can convey the ambition to Make It So to your readers, I pointed to that article cited above, DEALING WITH ANGER ACCORDING TO NEUROSCIENCE.

That article talks about point of view (though they don't know it). The best graphic I've found to explain what that article is talking about is

  Note how that graphic I keep referencing on this blog joins "Soul Mates Are Real" to "Soul Mates Are Escapist Fantasy."

Writing craft requires the arduous practice of getting people up out of their circles and squares either/or mentality and into an understanding of Reality that transcends and joins the two options into a seamless whole while, at the same time it validates all the choices in the dropdown menu.

Life is not an either/or choice.  Nor is it a single choice you must make from a long list of choices.  Nor can anyone "give you a choice."  Choice is yours, and the options among which you choose are yours to invent.

Your life is yours -- and nobody else's.

Your life is unique and you are unique.  Your life is a work of art you are creating from the raw material you find around you.  What raw material you can find depends on how good you get at the "reassessment" exercise suggested in that Psychology article on Anger and Neuroscience.

You attain that much coveted inner tranquility called "Happily" by "reassessing" what you are looking at and choosing an appropriate inner dialogue to describe it to yourself.

Once you have your description, that raw material becomes yours and you can craft it into a Happily that can plausibly last Ever After.

If you, the writer, can not SEE that potential in the raw material around you, it is very likely you will not be able to reveal that potential to your readers.

A great Romance, the kind of book or series of books that force readers to memorize your byline and look for more, is one that the reader finishes and turns around to start reading again.

Readers reread books because they evoke an ambience that tantalizes the edges of their everyday Reality with the promise of insights beyond human ken.

What you put into a novel is not what the reader gets out of it.

But if you put in your vision of Reality, the reader can take out of the book their own vision of Reality.

Yes, reading fiction is an adventure into the amorphous subjective world -- but in the hands of a fine craftsman, subjectivity becomes objective.

That's what happened with STAR TREK.  Fans grabbed it out of Gene Roddenberry's hands, and "made it so."  It was college age kids who wanted to play video games with kids on other campuses who invented ways of connecting computers.  It was a guy off in Europe who figured out the idea of the "internet browser" -- software that interprets code.

Now we do this on our mobile devices.

With massive data crunching capacity, we are now exploring the farthest galaxies back to the beginning of time.  We are finding planets, some that might harbor life (maybe not as we know it, but life.)

We can't say this is a direct result of Star Trek -- a silly, cheaply made cardboard set, silly-uniform TV show with pointed ears -- but that is also the way Romance works, indirectly.

Romance Genre is uniquely suited to showing (not telling) readers how to achieve that mental shift described in that Psychology article.

The most efficient way of showing readers how to think in "reassessment mode" is by using the techniques of Science Fiction Writers and Gamers, combined and repurposed.

The Romance Genre of 40 years ago is GONE -- the Romance Genre of "now" is over-emphasizing monkey-sex (not that such isn't important in correct proportion), while the Romance Genre of ten years from now is barely glimpsed.

We are pioneers in the most exciting field extant.

One of the Romance writers on that Facebook Group noted that one reason many Romance novels seem implausible is that the Relationship develops too fast, without context and time for the psychological lessons to sink in and be assimilated.

I agree the "speed" in many Romance novels ruins the effect which is, I think, why we're seeing a rise of the Adventure-Kickass-Heroine-With-Love-Story-Sidebar genre -- in Fantasy, SF, Military SF, and Paranormal (Vampire slayers etc).

In Science Fiction, the series long ago became the best selling format, even before the Multi-Generation-Novel format.

Long ago, I had a Best Selling Romance Writer come to me with a Werewolf novel she had written but couldn't sell in either romance or Science Fiction markets.

She asked why it wouldn't sell to the SF market. I told her what to change. She did. She sold it to a science fiction imprint.

Then she called me up a few years later appalled that the publisher was going to REPRINT it and was asking for a sequel. She didn't know if she should be offended and say no to that offer.

Back then, Romance didn't get reprinted and didn't have series, but Science Fiction did. I lived to see that massive shift in the Romance genre toward the publishing habits of the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre, and I am so pleased I did.  We are headed into a convergence of genres which will then diverge into new categories with new labels.

It will all work out, but every novel needs at least a Love Story if not a full blown, giddy-and-crazy Romance driving the plot.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-3.html

So, based on that Psychology article, my conclusion is that Soul Mates and the HEA are Real -- which is why they make the best Fantasy!

We all live in a subjective bubble that warps the Reality that is objectively out there.  We can change how we regard things and that will objectively change how objective life goes.

So the choice "HEA real or fantasy" is a false choice.  It is both real and fantasy.  Fantisize efficiently and you can realize it in your life.

Real life is mostly imagination, as it says in that article.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 9 - Kabbalah by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration
Part 9
Kabbalah
by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

The previous parts in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

On Facebook, a writer commented on the experience of teaching story  Analysis to children, and I responded with a comment about how much harder it is to teach Synthesis.

The writer then asked, " Do you analyze first or tell your story and then analyze and synthesize?"

I responded with a long post about Kabbalah, and the value of that point of view to Science Fiction writers.

Synthesis is what I've been hobby-horsing on in the various series of Writing Craft Posts on this blog.

I've been presenting bits and pieces (teased out of Headlines and other parts of "reality") for you to synthesize into new stories.

I analyze reality and hand you stripped out bits to synthesize.  Most of those bits are "theme" material.

Synthesis is what writers do.  It is what artists in general do.

Rearranging the pieces of reality that the audience sees around them into something that unlocks vistas of new possibilities is what artists do that is of value.  Readers call those novels Inspiring or Refreshing or Riveting.  It's what we get paid for -- jarring thinking loose to roam free-range.

Worldbuilding is about analyzing our real world into bits and pieces, then synthesizing, putting them back together into a new pattern, building a new world from the same components we already have, and maybe one or two really alien ones.

Theme is about the organizing principle that arranged those bits and pieces to begin with combined or synthesized into the new principle you invent to build your fictional world around.

What makes fiction believable and the source of value to your customers is the internal consistency of the rules for your built world.

You need to find the Rule that keeps our actual real-world "consistent," for your target readership, understand how the existence of consistency is relied upon by your reader/viewer in daily life.  Then you can build a consistent world to display your story that uses a Modified Rule around which it is organized, but a Rule that the Characters can rely on the same way your customer relies on the consistency of everyday reality.

All of this analysis and synthesis is first done consciously, then forgotten about.  That sinks it all into your unconscious.  Years later, sometimes decades later, you have "An Idea" for a story -- and it just comes pouring out.  Meanwhile, you study and practice writing craft exercises, learning to frame a scene, concoct characters, split their roles in two to create conflict, resolve conflicts, etc etc.  All the skills we've been discussing, practiced to the point where you just don't ever think about it while doing it.

So in essence, the answer to this writer's question about how I do it, is "neither" or perhaps "both/and."

It is easier master both analysis and synthesis as cognitive exercises, if you can come to understand that both analysis and synthesis are rooted in a fallacious view of the universe.

This writer's question is actually a question about Kabbalah.

 I answered this question in a long-winded, oblique way, in the 5 Tarot books now up on Kindle.  The cheapest way to get all of them together is the combined volume.

http://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Minor-Arcana-Books-ebook/dp/B010E4WAOU/

The 5 individual volumes are 99c each.  The combined volume is $3.25 or free on KindleUnlimited.

In short The Not So Minor Arcana is my diatribe against the Hellenistic way of looking at Life, which all our modern cultures are either founded upon or infused with.

Plato (it seems to me, partly because he lived at about the right time) seemed to be on a terror-induced campaign to disprove everything in the Torah, and his concepts seemed to me to be rooted in a deep, instinctual terror of the Reality described in Kabbalah.  Considering the politics at that time in History, it just seems impossible to me that he didn't know what was happening in Israel.

Given the Hellenistic Pantheon, which does reflect basic human nature, it is also plausible to me that he was desperate to disprove the existence of such gods (all bullies from dysfunctional families with nasty parental issues).

I learned about the Plato vs. Torah dichotomy in a couple of college courses years before Star Trek, but a decade after deciding to become a professional Science Fiction writer (about age 15).

I had honed an awareness of the place of CONFLICT in DRAMA and thus saw how useful the Plato/Aristotle et. al. vs Torah conflict could be in generating a new kind of Science Fiction -- which it seems I have been credited with doing.
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2015/06/free-ebook-brief-history-of-science.html

So, pondering the Hellenistic view of the Universe vs. the Torah based view of the Universe (even with Christian inflections you get the stark opposition between Plato and Bible), I have found it easy to portray Alien Civilizations (such as Kraith's Vulcan),...

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/

...just by building into the cultural THEME element of the drama, a challenge to the unconscious assumptions we have all been "programmed" with as children - assumptions about the Nature of Reality -- assumptions which would be viewed as fallacious in a Torah based culture (even Israel today does not have such a culture.)

The interesting thing, to me, is that Gene Roddenberry (a Humanist) eventually allowed a bit of Torah based reality to be sketched into the edges of the Vulcan culture that Spock represented (the Mind Meld, the Katra).  I just did a 5k essay on the Katra and it is reposted here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

"ANALYSIS" and "SYNTHESIS" are Hellenistic (Ancient Greek Philosophy) concepts (see the Greek roots inside the words?), and very possibly utterly fallacious (as most of their ideas via Plato, Aristotle etc are. Pythagoras is particularly interesting in this regard.)

This Hellenistic description of reality works PERFECTLY (witness all of Science as We Know It) as long as you consider only "reality" (i.e. the bottom-most of the 44 Sepheroth of the structure of reality).  That's where we live and that's where all of physical science is absolutely valid.

That's why there is no conflict between "science" and "religion" if you consider "religion" to be the Torah.  Science describes and manipulates, perfectly, a "special case" within the totality of Creation -- that tiny 44th fraction of the whole.  You really don't need to know more than science reveals to live easily in material reality.

Many people never feel anything lacking.  Those who do, though, have a hard time reconciling Science with Torah -- because Aristotelian Logic demands Either/Or thinking, True/False thinking, and is the foundation of the Zero Sum Game (for you to win, someone else has to lose).  In Reality, two mutually exclusive things can not co-exist.

In that Hellenistic Reality -- the Soul Mate and Happily Ever After concepts are fallacious.

If you can wrap your head around the concept Infinite and the concept ECHAD (One), you have no trouble with mutually exclusive things co-existing.

But it's a long-long-long philosophical journey to get to that ECHAD based vision of reality.  You have to learn a totally new idea of what "exist" actually means -- which pretty much means learning Hebrew where the verb TO BE is used differently than in other languages.  That's what Kabbalah is all about.  ECHAD is the key.  EMET is probably the lock.

Aristotelian logic has divided our cultural mentality with impenetrable walls to prevent us seeing the world as ECHAD, and defying those walls can make you go crazy.  One of those walls is what gives rise to the concepts ANALYSIS vs SYNTHESIS as being opposites.

The go-crazy effect of trying to break out of Aristotelian conditioning is now being revealed in brain-studies showing how synapses develop, how the brain is plastic and changes under experiences.

Thus study of Kabbalah is not recommended for everyone.

Some people will hurl themselves at this problem of Science vs. God and slam themselves into a bloody pulp trying to choose to "believe" or to "think logically."

You can't have science and still believe in God, they assume.

That's a fallacy -- and it is the fallacy which you will find in Plato if you dig hard into his writings, and the surrounding culture that produced him, and read his stuff in terms of how crazy-scared he was of Torah and the effect a functioning (well, somewhat functional) Jewish Kingdom was having on his world.

What you learn from Kabbalah is a view of the universe that is not "either/or" that is not "zero-sum-game" that is not real/not-real, that is not "God/No-God" -- but rather "both and" -- somewhat like the Particle/Wave problem in physics.  People discard the Bible as ridiculous because they read it with either/or Aristotelian-conditioned eyes -- from that point of view, it is idiotic.

Look hard at this graphic:

That's the classic Lover's Quarrel.  It really is the core essence of Science Fiction Romance where the "science" is the science of the brain and "seeing."

Consider the classic optical illusion of the two faces facing each other -- or maybe it's a vase?  Blink, and it changes.

That's what I'm talking about -- the exact SAME "reality" and two views that our brains interpret as DIFFERENT only because we can't break out of the Aristotelian Cultural Conditioning rooted in Plato's personal political neuroses.

I will probably discuss this graphic again and again in various contexts and various esoteric applications of the principle having to do with the metaphorical "light" by which we understand what we see as the difference between right and wrong, and what the Biblical penalty translated as "Cut Off" actually means in practice.

Remember the Bohr Atom model was Aristotelian.  Atom is a Hellenistic concept.  Science is now revealing some of the fallacious concepts behind that thinking, but the people doing the science are so steeped in Hellenistic thinking that they do not know Hellenistic Thinking even exists, (a fish doesn't know water exists) therefore they have no idea what they are discovering!

So REAL ALIENS (and yes, I saw the discovered planets news) will probably have conditioning of their own, and very likely neuroses or the equivalent built into their cultures.  Understand how neuroses propagate through millennial to affect our current culture, then create some Aliens.

If you're going to build a world where your Human Character is Soul Mate to such a Real Alien Character, you have to include Alien Neuroses to make your invented fictional world seem 'real' for your reader, consistent, organized around a principle as tightly as our everyday reality is organized around a principle (we just don't all agree what that principle is).

Your fictional organizing principle will be different from the one your Reader sees (do stare at that graphic a while longer.) Explain the difference in Show Don't Tell.  Then explain that there is no difference, in Show Don't Tell.

The only way I can see that we can pull off a FIRST CONTACT without a war of extermination is to shed Plato's neuroses and Aristotle/Pythagoras's ideas of what constitutes reality.

The artificial and fallacious division of processes into Analysis and Synthesis (do stare at that graphic some more) may be one of those ideas we have to shed to be at Peace with ourselves -- and thus be able to make first contact without extermination.

Once the question is asked, "Is it fallacious?" then we come to "Well, if not Analysis and Synthesis then what do you use to think with?"  And there you will hit that wall built into your mind by early conditioning.

Your challenge as a science fiction romance book writer is to postulate answers Aliens might be clinging to as firmly as we cling to Plato-Aristotle et. al.

If you find you have no ideas, nibble at those books explaining Tarot in terms of Kabbalah, and you will very likely come away overflowing with ideas, compelled to write, just to contradict what they say.  Contradicting is good!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 12 - Marketing To The Young

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 12
Marketing To The Young
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

The Index post with links to the previous parts of this series is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

Facebook has gained the reputation for being the venue of the old fogies, while younger people seek other social networks. 

On Twitter, a #scifichat topic brought up this post on comics for 7 year old girsl:

http://www.itinthed.com/16328/what-taking-my-daughter-to-a-comic-book-store-taught-me/

We'll reference that comics issue in Part 13 of this series.  Now let's look at what the adults are discussing on Facebook. 

A question popped up on Facebook in the Allan Cole's World Group:

https://www.facebook.com/peggy.brunyansky  posted this question:
----------QUOTE-------------
This semester, I gave my students a list of songs that had a history behind them. They were to research the songs and explain that history among other things. I used "Abraham, Martin and John," "It is Well with my Soul," "Imagine," and a number more. I will add "Fortunate Son" next semester. Does anyone have suggestions of songs to add to my list?
-----------END QUOTE---------

Allan Cole recommended IN FLANDERS FIELD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkKEynoTwp8

Whereupon a lively discussion ensued that ranged across centuries of history and drew me in.

My first answer:

https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg

--------QUOTE----------
Nichevo -- an "old Russian Folk Song" written specifically for the film Fraulein and sung in that film by Theodore Bikel (who later recorded it) who knows quite a few real Russian Folk Songs and did a marvelous job of faking the reality of the Hollywood-originated brand-new-old-traditional-folk-song. He tells the story on a concert-album - BRAVO BIKEL, and I finally found the movie on Amazon.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/bravo-bikel-theodore-bikel/id898873818
 That album is a history lesson and a half all by itself.
--------END QUOTE-------

Then Peggy answered me:

------QUOTE---------
Neat. I love sneaking in a little history and literature when students aren't expecting it. ...
---------END QUOTE-----------

Which inspired me -- meanwhile, others were posting very interesting comments about what songs to include.

So I added some more clues:

Lay down a breadcrumb trail through IMDB.COM to Broadway Musicals (like FIDDLER) back and back to the Theodore Bikel AUTOBIOGRAPHY titled THEO -- which tells the tale of his escaping Vienna (he's 90 in 2014) right before the blast of WWII, pioneering in Israel, Studying theater in London, just a goshwow tale in evocative prose written by a master raconteur. His career takes you all the way to musicals on Broadway, then movies and then TV. (Yiddish Theater - get his Yiddish album).

The grabber for modern students though is that Theodore Bikel played 2 parts on Star Trek - my favorite as Warf's human adopted father. Make them learn to use IMDB.COM and teach about inter-corporate ownerships -- Amazon, IMDB, GOODREADS, audible.com, (it's an education in Business Model of Entertainment Industry) and what it means "Voice Talent" other than singing.

That opens the topic of the remake of the music distribution system. There are few examples of actors students KNOW whose life-history in music goes back past 1929. Theo makes it easy to learn history with his exquisitely written (he's a WRITER, too) autobiography. You've got to read it to believe it. I've read a lot of them and I've never read one this good.
http://www.amazon.com/Theo-Autobiography-Theodore-Bikel/dp/0299300544/

-----------END QUOTE------------

Do you see the depths of worldbuilding techniques you can learn by reading autobiographies? 

Track which companies own which, look at corporate decisions and they won't be so mystifying when you know what they're trying to do to you (yes, TO you).

Last year, we had a major hack of Sony.  Will that be in your autobiography?

I asked Peggy if I could excerpt her assignment and my answers for this blog entry.  She replied:

--------QUOTE----------
Jacqueline, you are welcome to do so. I am so pleased that you like the assignment. My students do too and, as their first assignment, it eases them into research and citations as well as sneaking in a mini-history lesson. They tell me they enjoy the class more than they anticipated.
-----------END QUOTE---------

Many popular songs of the past are Romances -- as this discussion revealed.  Many are political rabble-rousers, too -- but Romance is there.  And many very popular actors of the past are associated with such Romantic songs from Broadway to Hollywood. 

Making a poem like In Flanders' Field or other such commemoratives into a "song" in your novel could give you a marketing tool as part of a video promo on YouTube.  Now you might have to write the song and coerce someone you know into recording it -- margins for such productions promoting a novel are very slim, but there are many unexplored possibilities. 

People who have been through Peggy's course may be both the source and the audience for such an effort.

Soon, we will discuss some more innovative developments in the field of Romance Genre publishing.  

For now, consider the potential of music as a component of Worldbuilding.  Remember how famous Spock's Vulcan instrument became?  Nimoy even made an LP album of songs (on Vinyl and some now digital
http://www.amazon.com/Spaced-Out-Leonard-William-Shatner/dp/B000W223QU/
) mostly because of that quick scene on TV. 

Today television rarely does that to an actor's career, but YouTube does. 

Go where your audience is, express what they're feeling with all the tools at your disposal that are not at their disposal because they aren't professional writers who study the craft all day every day. 

The ability to express an emotion with precision is a hard-honed talent that has become a rare skill.  You can trace that kind of development if you follow the career of Theodore Bikel.  And as I've recommended before, read all the Allan Cole autobiographical works. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

   

Social Networking Is Not A Promotional Tool - Part 2 Comparing Services by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Social Networking Is Not A Promotional Tool
Part 2
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Comparing Services  

Here is Part One on Social Networking

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/social-networking-is-not-advertising.html

A few months ago, someone on a Facebook Group of Screenwriters (serious beginning professionals with accomplishments to their names) asked what use TWITTER might be, and how to work with Twitter. 

A whole lot of people on the group had experiences with Twitter to relate and opinions about how effective the time spent on Twitter might be, plus hints and clues about how to get the most screenwriting info out of Twitter.

I tossed in a couple of answers, and someone tossed a question to me: "What is Google Plus?" 

Oh, boy, how this world of social networking is exploding so fast! 

Even those working hard to sell screenplays don't know what's happening in social media, even though it is reported on TV often and in depth!

I've been on Google+ since it was by Google's invitation only. 

So I put a link to my G+ page
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JacquelineLichtenberg/posts

And my twitter:
https://twitter.com/JLichtenberg

And the questioner went and looked at it and noted some differences from the way Facebook presents information about people. And I answered that.

So the person who asked me looked up the stats and commented: the stats reveal Gplus has 300MM users compared to FB 1.2 BB   AND FB users spend 6 hrs a week or month vs Gplus 7 minutes...

That's about true.  G+ is much FASTER to use, somehow.  You get more done in 7 minutes than in an hour on Facebook.

My opinion, as you all know, is pro-Twitter.  I follow many video producers, actors, writers, directors, and production companies, Indie film promoters, just a lot of people in The Industry and the Indie segment of the film industry. 

But the Sime~Gen fans have created a Group on Facebook, so I also spend a lot of time with Facebook as well as Google Plus.

Here's the explanation of the comparison I wrote for the Screenwriter's Group on Facebook.

-----------QUOTE-----
I don't think it's worth while to compare Google+ to FB.  Both are just tools.  Your reward will come from your need for that tool and your ability to employ that tool to accomplish your purposes. 

One neat thing about G+ is that it can be set to use the same login as you use for your blogger.com blogs, for your gmail and other google tools.  And as with FB you can use that google login on other sites.  That neat thing is it's main drawback.  Lots of exposure to things you'd rather not be exposed to.  But for a professional, it can be worth the risk.

Many people I know are on both G+ and FB and cruise through those and several other social sites at whim.  Both are just TOOLS -- how rewarding the experience is depends on who you know not what you know. 

As a professional writer, I go where the people who want to talk to me are -- it is my responsibility to make the effort to accommodate the habits and preferences of my customers, without regard for my own. 

There are more people on FB, but G+ lets you connect easier with people you don't know but who want to know you. 

In socializing, it's more about quality than quantity, so the fact that FB is bigger is why I'm here and why my fans are gathering on the SimeGen Group here.  The fact that there are large numbers of writers on G+ is why I'm there.  Also there are lots more image-oriented people on G+ and writers are always evaluating images for cover potential.

G+ has been handling images better, but FB has caught up during their launch of more advertising in your stream.  FB interfaces with lots of other social media products so you can aggregate posts by making those connections.  Post an item on your tumblr blog and set tumblr to post that item on FB, Twitter, etc -- but G+ won't allow that cross-posting (yet.) so posting to G+ is a separate operation.  That's a huge drawback.  Also my blogger blog auto-posts itself on FB. 

My point here is that you don't choose ONE or THE OTHER -- you establish a core presence where it's convenient for you, then connect to all the other networks where your own customers tend to hang out with their friends.  Your objective is to do the most connecting with the least time/effort on your part as possible.  Efficiency is the watchword in social-media.

FB limits the number of friends you can have (outside of your "Page" as a celebrity one-way communication).  G+ has no such tiny limit, which makes it valuable to me.  On FB I have just over 1K connections, but on G+ in half the time I have acquired 7K followers.  I have about 2200 followers on Twitter.  But as with FB only a few dozen actually TALK BACK when I say something.  I treasure those commentators because they really think!  

Both G+ and FB allow for Groups and Communities where you can meet and talk to people who aren't connected to your stream and don't see your general posts.  Each community on G+ has its own rules (just like FB) and a focused interest.  The NaNoWriMo folks are huge on G+ and they are a kick and a half! 

I suspect my problem is that I just love PEOPLE -- lots of them all talking to each other.  I sit back and marvel at the rich harvest of story-ideas! 
------END QUOTE---

So my advice to people who want to use social media to promote their work is don't do that.

Use social media as a source of your work, not a destination.

Then people who want to talk to you will appear.  You will get to say what's dear to your heart, and they will run off and repeat that while pointing their friends at your work.

Draw your story ideas from the subjects, ideas and attitudes bandied about among your primary audience, then tell them you have this new novel or whatever available in such a way that it's clear you understood what they meant. 

Don't tell them you took their ideas (which you didn't, but that's hard to explain).  Tell them their ideas.  They will recognize their own ideas, and run around espousing this ultra-clear statement of their own ideas by someone they barely know -- "I couldn't have said it better myself."

Even more, when you do it this way -- your readers will see confirmation and maybe even vindication in your restatement of their ideas because you can utilize SHOW DON'T TELL as the mechanism for explaining these very abstract matters.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 1 Battle of the Sexes by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 1 Battle of the Sexes

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Buzzing through the June 2013 kerfuffle started by a SFWA Bulletin cover (classic brass bras Warrior Woman image) and a blog post that ignited another explosion in the sexism wars, I've been surveying some of the blog entries by both men and women writers on the acceptance of SFR by SF writers. 

And of course, every day I spend a bit of time watching the TV news -- just for fun and inspiration.

And suddenly while watching the news after viewing an episode of NBC's J. J. Abrams REVOLUTION, the world flipped into a new focus. 

It was one of those "artist's eye" things I've been talking about here since I started discussing writing craft techniques one at a time.  (yes, we'll get to three at a time!). 

And I went, AHA!!! -- that's THEME-CONFLICT INTEGRATION!!! 

Trying to explain what I saw in a) our fictional environment b) our (allegedly) real world environment and c) our writer's marketing environment --- all three integrated, BANG in one 3-D vision -- is going to be a serious challenge.

But if you can grasp what I'm saying, then look at your world from your own personal point of view, you may become the one to launch this enormous breakthrough novel/film that we've been envisioning on this blog since I began the writing craft series here.

So you may want to review some of the elementary posts on structure, and where conflict fits into it all.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

There are hardly any posts I've done that don't involve the use of conflict to generate the plot (and everything else in a Romance Novel).

But you might want to review these:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-1-action-vs.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-2-avatar-and.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html

Conflict is absolutely the hardest thing for writers to master.  Women have the hardest time with it, but I've seen men writers who just can't "get it" either.  It's a blind-spot common to both genders at the beginning of the learning curve.

Once you get conflict, you start selling even if your stuff is really bad, an embarrassment so bad that eventually you adopt another pen name because you don't want your current stuff associated with that old stuff.

Conflict is the essence of story, and has been since the beginning of story-telling as an art-form (think cave man fireside entertainment).

And yet, it is very hard to learn how to go about arranging the distinctive elements of your story around a core of a conflict to create a plot.

You know it when you see it in a novel or movie, and you love it, every time.  CONFLICT - WORKING OUT - RESOLUTION.  That is a highly commercial winning sequence every time, regardless of the content.

However, there is "throw away" entertainment -- what they once called "the pulps" -- cheaply produced magazines to read and toss, and there is classic literature.

The error that we, as Science Fiction Romance writers, have been trying to correct is the assumption that Romance is "pulp" and only pulp.  The assumption is that Romance is suitable only for lining bird cages and wrapping dead fish.  Oddly, that was always the assumption about science fiction.  Hmmm. 

It is an unconscious assumption, and our entire civilization is founded upon it. 

Once you see that manifesting in TV News, popular TV Series, and heated blog controversies over "sexism" you understand that we've been had.  Big time.

Like Science Fiction, Westerns, and many other genres so disparaged, Romance is not now and never has been "throw away" literature.  It is CLASSIC by it's very nature.

That fact is so terrifying that it is buried in the subconscious (Neptune, Pisces -- the best horror genre novels are fabricated out of NEPTUNE EVENTS (illusion) just as Romance Genre pivots on a Neptune Transit).  Buried in the collective subconscious, that fact about Romance being Classic Literature by its very nature is left to suppurate and rot us all out from the inside.

Do you see how I've taken a CONFLICT (the battle of the sexes over the prestige of Romance Genre) and edged it over into a THEME? 

Read the series of posts on Theme-Character Integration:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/theme-character-integration-part-1-what.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-character-integration-part-2-fire.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-3-why.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-4.html

The process I just demonstrated, extracting a theme from a mishmosh of something else is discussed in those theme-character posts as is the crafting of the ending of a novel. 

The ending is the point in time where the theme is rammed down the character's throat and becomes totally assimilated, thus ending the story.  The ram is the Plot.  At the ending of a story, plot and story become indistinguishable.  That's how you know you are at an ending. 

One of the most often repeated errors beginning writers make is to start at the end.  And that's why beginners often can't grasp the difference between story and plot. 

To find the beginning of a story, you must train yourself to think backwards from an ending or a middle that first occurs to you to find the place in the story-arc where the story and the plot both begin.

And that same kind of backwards, inside-out thinking is useful in extracting a theme from "the world" as it exists in a mishmosh.

I had immediately noticed that the SFWA Bulletin cover controversy hit critical mass when the simple blog post
http://www.thestoryhub.ca/talking-sci-fi-romance/
ignited a firestorm.

And the firestorm was all about sexism -- in the SF community, and in the world in general.

Many horror stories emerged via comments on Ann Aguirre's simple and factual post about her experiences in associating with SF writers:
http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

And the conversation became laced with outrage over sexism.  All the old tropes were trotted out for an aria or two center stage.  People complained that the same-old-same-old discussion was boring.

It is boring. 

As Theodore Sturgeon pointed out many decades ago, writing science fiction is all about training your mind to ASK THE NEXT QUESTION.  Don't just accept what is said.  Question everything.

That's how art (all fields) is done, and that is the drill that produces (a few times in a lifetime) those moments such as I described above where everything flipped into focus, AHA!  (such as when a character reaches THE END of the novel and the theme is rammed home by the plot events intruding into the story.)

People commented on the blogs with comparisons to 1953 -- saying that the women's movement had won in the 1970's so why are we fighting this battle over again?  And others commented on that view saying things like we just have to wait for the old guys to die off -- or we have to fire them. 

And others insisted this is a NEW WORLD.  Everything's changed (which I've been pointing out on this blog for a while now) and we won, we defeated the ugly monster of sexism, so therefore it is gone.  Why is it still here?

While reading commentary along those lines, I was thinking about J. J. Abrams (and the Star Trek movie, Star Trek: Into Darkness which I discussed here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-plot-integration-part-11-correct.html

And I was thinking of J. J. Abrams TV Series Revolution, and the news of the day (wall-to-wall-scandals lightly laced with murder trials and fresh new murders), and I was thinking of how we choose our (scandal prone) politicians for their sexy TV images rather than boring desk-jockey skills, and the next question occurred to me.

What if there is not now and never has been any such thing as a Battle of the Sexes?

That could explain why it is absolutely "un-winnable."  It does not exist.  It is an illusion of Neptune.

If you haven't read the posts on Astrology Just For Writers -- the whole Neptune and Pluto relevance is explained in these posts which are listed in this post:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Note the fellow who claimed responsibility for the NSA security leak involving data collection is a 29 year old.  That's the year of the Saturn Return (when Saturn gets back to the place it was when you were born -- happens to everyone at that age, and every 29 years thereafter).  The first Saturn Return is notorious for having certain kinds of dramatic effects (being an Ending and a Beginning just like in novels). 

Knowing the clues in those posts on Astrology makes character creation and plotting very easy.

This Question -- what if ...?  Is the core-essence of Science Fiction.  Thinking out of the box, daring to ask the un-askable, the un-thinkable. 

It is an unthinkable question because throughout recorded history, and as far as anyone can tell from pre-history, males and females have always been at war, and we all accept without question that sex and violence are related.  There must be dominance in sex, right?  Must! 

Throughout the Middle Ages (the model for so much Fantasy-Romance with Kings, Queens, handsome Dukes, etc.) The Church kept women subjugated because of the story of Adam and Eve, which (to them) clearly says Eve was a bitch who tricked Adam, and therefore all women are Evil.

In the USA, we had to fight (FIGHT!!!) for the right to vote, have a bank account in our own name, etc. etc. 

Now the fight is over abortion, equality in marriage, and equal pay for equal work.

Where does it end?  What does Victory actually look like? 

This Battle of the Sexes is like the wars in the Middle East where we hammered two countries to smitherines, then tried to get soldiers who specialize in killing people to "nation build."  And then we leave, unilaterally proclaiming victory.  Huh? 

They coined a phrase to describe this process that we see in The Battle Of The Sexes.  Mission Creep.  Politicians call it "Progressivism" -- and I call them scam artists (like guys who just want to get you into bed, and leave when they get bored).  Move on dot Sex! 

I discussed grifters a little bit here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html

It's a scam.  The Battle of the Sexes is a scam just like on the TV Series Leverage -- a 21st Century version of the old Mission: Impossible.   

One of the principles of running a game on a mark is that you must rivet the mark's attention AWAY FROM what you're doing -- like a stage magician, prestidigitation. 

To do this, you create a problem for them -- it's not real, it doesn't exist, so it can't be solved, but while they're busy trying to solve it with increasing urgency as you "play" them, you have a clear field to steal everything they have.

In the case of the Battle of the Sexes, what is being stolen is Identity. 

Your strength, your ability to cope with the world and stay alive in it, is based on your sense of individuality.  Take that away, and you are helpless - a mark ripe for the grifter's art.

If you want to understand the world: Follow The Money.

Or to solve a Murder Mystery, find out who benefits from the death.  Motive; Method; Opportunity.

Our mystery is Who Is Running This Scam? 

Apparently, both males and females are the Marks.  So who's the Identity Thief?

Who's playing "Let's You And Him Fight?" 



Someone is cleaning up, big time.  Bet on it.

Money, as I discussed in the Tarot Just For Writers posts, is a form of Power. 

Here are the Tarot posts in case you missed them.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

To understand power intoxication, read this non-fiction book I reviewed in depth under DIALOGUE titled How To Write Liar Dialogue:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

The principle used by the best grifters is that the mark must never know he's being played until the coups.  Then he falls down to the mud, head spinning, utterly paralyzed with the realization that he's been had.

Are we there yet? 

Are we aware we been had? 

Because that's THE END of this novel -- that's the point where the theme is rammed home into the guts of the story by the ram of the plot events.

Or are we waking up in the middle of the scam, not yet had, not YET fleeced?  Do we have a chance to turn the tables?

There's a massive, blockbuster Romance theme in that idea of turning the tables on the grifter running The Battle of the Sexes, but if you try to write it outside SFR or Paranormal Romance, you will have a hard time selling it -- because it will be deemed implausible. 

If you don't think The Battle of the Sexes is a scam yet, find another explanation for the entire kerfuffle over that SFWA Bulletin cover and a reasonably innocent blog post by a guy who apparently is being played by the grifters behind this thing. 

Why is the Battle of the Sexes unwinnable if it is a battle at all and not a scam?

If it isn't a setup, if we're not being had, then what would the world be like after one side or the other WINS? 

Post-apocalyptic is very popular right now -- J. J. Abrams TV Series, REVOLUTION being only one of many examples.  Think of all the zombie stuff that nearly took over the world.  We are obsessed with "what will happen after all this falls apart?" 

What if the apocalypse is not vampires, zombies, werewolves, EM Pulse attacks, nano-whatevers?  What if the apocalypse is "we been had."  What happens after that?

Here are some comments I made online that convinced me to try to start this Theme-Conflict Integration series now instead of next year. 

http://www.facebook.com/groups/130939813657941/permalink/469377513147501/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg: If there really is no difference in capability and potential, in respect due for accomplishment, between male & female humans, then why is every comment on this issue based on the assumption that there is a difference? If we believe what we're preaching, we should behave accordingly. There IS NO SUCH THING as "sexism" because it's based on a false premise. So to "fight back" as if the enemy has a case is to legitimize that case. We shouldn't be fighting. We should be explaining, as Starla Huchton pointed out -- because THEY HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THEY'RE DOING WRONG.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg: Consider the 'glass houses' issue, and first ask yourself what WE are doing wrong. Certainly we can't be entirely correct on every underlying issue in the SF vs SFR confrontation? Find the hole in our argument, fix it, then explain to "them" where the hole is in their argument. We should do a workshop at a con where everyone has read the same pair of novels demonstrating the dichotomy, and explain where both sides are right, and where both sides are making errors.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg: Look on Ann Aguirre's blog entry comment 387 by Carole Ann. She is from the UK. CONSIDER women are proven just as capable of being techs, and we read the SF-war-stories just as avidly, love ACTION (there is such a thing as action-romance, I hope you've noticed!), and we have attracted a number of men into reading, writing and discussing SFR. Think about what Carole Ann told us in that comment -- How can you win a "war of the sexes" and it not be a Pyrrhic Victory? The whole point of Romance is men and women love each other, fit together, make dynamite teams. Somewhere in History someone suckered us into thinking in terms of War. Do we have to let "them" (whoever they were) set our agenda? http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

And from Gini Koch's blog
http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2013/06/06/its-time/ 

Gini Koch says she has nothing to prove, and I think she's nailed it.  There is no controversy, there is no war of the sexes, there is NO CONFLICT here and thus NO STORY.

by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Guest Post Experiences From Twitter: RIXSHEP on Cons and RPG

On #scifichat on twitter, in September, we set a topic for convention experiences for the following week, and one of the more interesting twit-folk @rixshep found me on Facebook and gave me the following information to relay during the next week's chat -- when he would not be able to attend.

Since RPG and especially online RPG, Star Trek, with a counterpoint undertone of my own Sime~Gen Novels, are going to become an ongoing topic on this blog next year, I wanted to give you these URLs.

---------QUOTED EXCHANGE FROM FACEBOOK----------

Howdy, Ms. Lichtenberg!

I know I don't get to #scifichat as much these days, or to your blog page, as much as I would like. Probably won't improve much in the near future. But, considering next week's #scifichat topic, I wanted to pass some items along to you, that I thought you might appreciate.

Back when I had a lot more time, I used to do a lot of role play on a site known as The Keep. Chat based stuff. Over time, I created a couple of rooms and characters that got a lot of mileage.

One was a typical Dungeons and Dragons / Forgotten Realms type fantasy tavern that was very successful. It was called The Prattling Pirate Inn and Tavern. The other was a scifi tavern that never got used as well, imo. It was The Stardust Lounge on Starbase 12. This one is based on Starbase 12 from Ishmael by Barbara Hambly, and the lounge itself is loosely based on Draco Tavern by Larry Niven.

(By the way, Yesterday's Son by Crispin and Ishmael by Hambly are two of my favorite Trek novels. Another big one with me is How Much for Just the Planet? by John Ford. It is a parody musical, and one of the characters in it is Ann Crispin!)

For various reasons, I think you would appreciate some of what was done with these fantasy/scifi taverns. So, here are the links to these two places. I think you will like the scifi one better.

The Prattling Pirate Inn:
http://www.freewebs.com/jon_teela/

The Stardust Lounge at Starbase 12:
http://www.nexxushost.com/rpg/thekeep/whois_popup.php3?L=english&power=weak&U=Starbase12

I will be traveling all day next Friday, so may not get to participate, and if I do, I won't have any of my files available.

Meanwhile, good luck with the contract work on the game!

Rick Shepherd / rixshep
Prattling Pirate Inn
www.freewebs.com

JL: Oh, thank you! I'm going to put those links into the aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com blog, if you don't mind.

Rick: Not at all. The link for the starbase is in The Keep, and it goes away after a couple of weeks, if I don't renew it. Eventually I will get it added as a distinct page on the other website where I keep the pic of the Prattling Pirate Inn. Hope you like them! Btw, I was thrilled to hear you had a hand in Ann Crispin getting started! Very nice!
-----------Chat Conversation End--------------

You can follow Rick on twitter as @rixshep

He mentioned YESTERDAY'S SON by A. C. Crispin because I had mentioned on this week's chat that I had agented that book -- a topic which came up because the guest for the chat was:

James Kahn  who was a (terrific) guest on #scifichat today.

http://www.jameskahnwordsandmusic.com/

He is @thatjameskahn on twitter

Here's the transcript of the chat:
http://flyingpenpress.com/DavidRozansky/blog/scifichat-script-120921/  

He has a new book out titled World Enough And Time.  Here is a whole page on Amazon with his Star Wars novels and other great stuff: 

James Kahn on Amazon

And I connected James Kahn with one of my favorite talk show hostesses, Lillian Cauldwell.  She wrote to him thusly:

------excerpt------
Dear Mr. Kahn:

Jacqueline Lichtenberg recommended that I contact you and see if
you're interested in doing an interview over PWRTALK's airwaves.
You can find the station at http://pwrtalk.ning.com and http://pwrtalkondemand.com  or the newly upgraded http://pwrtalklive.com/

In the first six months of 2012, PWRTALK received an additional one million and one-half
new listeners from RETWEETS alone.
The network is heard in over 200 countries and our largest demographic base is college
and university students worldwide.

The following days and times are available for an interview. All times are Eastern.
All programs are LIVE, 30 minutes, RECORDED, and posted on the website,
social media, and heard for the next 3 months via PWRTALK's automatic
radio software. Over a 3 month period, your interview will be heard over 400
times. You can include a 30 second commercial advertising your books should
you wish.


Best regards,
Lillian S. Cauldwell
---------end excerpt ----------

Lillian's show will be running Black Friday author-specials Nov 22, 2012.  http://pwrtalklive.com/

Lillian included a number of times, and he chose Monday, October 8th, 2012.  So now, in November, that interview should be available in the on demand section at Lillian's website. 

And James Kahn wrote back to me thanking me for connecting him to Lillian and saying we should keep in touch.  We're planning to meet at Worldcon in San Antonio. 


Now let's see who else we can connect to whom!  It's all about networking. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com