Faceblock... or Whither Groups?

 Disclaimer: my title does not refer to either the Qualcomm tool, nor to the Polandball character (who is, apparently, "easily offended by questionable content"). I made the word up, then did a ddg search and discovered a coincidence or two.

Yahoo recently dropped its Yahoo groups. Here is a splendidly comprehensive discussion:
https://www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/yahoo-groups/

Also, going-going-gone perhaps... or perhaps not are the Facebook groups. Angela Hoy of BookLocker writes a fine summary of the coming and going of Facebook's groups, and their usefulness or otherwise for authors:
https://www.authormedia.com/what-the-2021-facebook-changes-mean-for-authors/
 

Angela Hoy suggests that authors will find MeWe more useful. Others seem to like io groups.

Google Groups seem still to be around, and it is well worth taking a moment or two to check ones privacy and security settings.  Allegedly, doing the same on Facebook is not going to take just a moment or two.  Allegedly, it is hard to do, perhaps by design. 

 

Google also has a freshly minted web creators community that might be worth a look.

 

As for Facebook, the legal bloggers at the Cadwalader Wickersham and Taft LLP law firm report on official concerns that even users' medical information is not safe.
https://www.findknowdo.com/news/02/23/2021/nydfs-reports-investigation-facebooks-transmission-sensitive-data

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in the apps.

"After investigation, the New York State Department of Financial Services ("NYDFS") found that Facebook routinely obtained sensitive data, including medical information, that was collected through consumers' use of third-party applications."

Apropos of nothing, if you wrote a media tie-in novel during NanoWriMo or at any time during 2020, the International  Association of Media Tie-In Writers is accepting submissions for the Scribe Awards.
https://iamtw.org/the-scribe-awards/

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

Tackling Revisions

Since I'm currently revising a paranormal romance novella under consideration by one of my publishers (addressing changes the editor requested), naturally I've been thinking lately about the process of revision. Professional advice about revision and rewriting varies widely; writers can find many different approaches and suggested procedures. There's an often quoted precept to the effect that, "Writing is rewriting." One of Robert Heinlein well-known rules for writers, however, states, "Never rewrite except to editorial order." He seems to mean that it's better to devote time and energy to a new project than to undertake a massive rewrite of an old one. (I assume he doesn't include as "rewriting" the unavoidable polishing on the sentence level.) At the other extreme, I've read advice from a bestselling fantasy novelist that assumes a fledgling writer should expect to produce multiple, extensively overhauled drafts before allowing a work to see the light of day. That expectation risks the author's turning into one of those aspiring writers who spend years on a single novel in a quest for perfection and never get around to submitting it, much less starting any other work.

Among many resources about revision available online, here's one example, very lucid and detailed:

8 Awesome Steps to Revising Your Novel

Some of the advice strikes me as well worth following, such as setting the book aside before one starts to edit (although not everybody has the luxury of "stepping back" for the month or more this article suggests) and then doing a preliminary read-through to list problems that stand out. Overall, the questions suggested for interrogating the work are definitely useful, too. Some of the recommendations, though, seem mainly directed at "pantsers." When the article explains how to evaluate such elements as plot complexity and consistency or character arcs and motivations, I instantly react with, "Why didn't you take care of all that in the outlining phase?" To me, "pantsing" would feel like an exhaustingly time-wasting method of producing a book, although I realize many writers can't work any other way. Stephen King and Diana Gabaldon, to name only two bestselling examples, demonstrate what amazing creations sometimes result from that approach.

Some writing-advice articles explicitly recommend a separate read-through for each element of editing (e.g., plot, character arcs, grammar and style, spelling, etc.). If I tried to do it that way, I would get sick of the story long before completing the process, as well as getting so familiar with it that I would probably cease to see errors. Also, the not uncommon advice not to bother with minor corrections during the first editing pass, because you may scrap or entirely rewrite that scene anyway, doesn't apply to me, for two reasons: I've already planned the story or novel scene by scene in the outline, so if a particular section didn't fit, I would have noticed before writing a full draft of it. Second and really primary, I'm constitutionally unable to read a chunk of prose without noticing and correcting errors as I go. No doubt that's a side effect of having worked as a proofreader for over twenty years.

Anyway, all writers, after seeking out and absorbing the advice most relevant and helpful for their own temperaments and stages of growth, develop their own individual revision processes.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 61 - Forged an Alex Verus Novel by Benedict Jacka

Reviews 61

Forged

An Alex Verus Novel

by

Benedict Jacka 

Reviews have not yet been indexed.  To find them search for the Label, Reviews.

We looked at MARKED, #9 in Benedict Jacka's Alex Verus Series.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/reviews-44-marked-by-benedict-jacka.html

And here is #11 in the series, FORGED,  - which ends off with a lot more adventures in store for the intrepid team which the hero, Alex Verus, has put together. 

https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Alex-Verus-Novel-Book-ebook/dp/B085BV7JF5/

This is not a Romance Series, but the plot is driven by iron-clad Bonds among individuals, some male, some female, some not human.  In this entry to the Series, we meet a self-aware Artificial Intelligence who willingly joins Verus's team after being rescued from the bad guys.

The whole novel (and series) is composed of fast-paced action scenes - with astonishing and unexpected weapons, skills, attacks, and mishaps appearing out of nowhere.  

It all makes perfect sense when you understand that Alex Verus is essentially a "good guy" with his fanny caught in one horrendous bear trap and his goal merely survival.

He's not out to destroy, expunge, or vanquish the bad guys.  He doesn't want power over them.  He doesn't want to become the boss of the world or correct all the wrongs of the world. He just wants them to stop trying to kill him and his friends.  To move toward that goal, he has killed many, sometimes dishonorably. 

In the ensuing battles, some of his friends get killed, some captured and tortured, (sometimes rescued by him or his other friends), and the total situation of the massive war that scampers across alternate-Realities changes with nearly every blow landed in combat.

The real meat of the story, though, lies between battles, between attacks, in the quiet moments when Verus cements his bonds with his friends, frenemies, and even former enemies, and potential Lovers. 

This is well written, easy reading, with deep characters whose predicaments make you ask yourself hard questions about your own life, and what you wouldn't do to survive.

And it does pose good questions about how or if Love can actually conquer "All."  By the end of this Book 11 in the Series, it does seem that friendship has a serious chance at stopping the violent attacks, and might forge new alliances.  

If you are trying to write a Romance, this is a good Series to study for ideas about what sort of "All" your Characters' Love might have to conquer.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Talking Trademarks

Time is short for those who might like to sign up for a free Trademark Basics Boot Camp webinar run by the USPTO. The deadline to register is February 22nd (Monday!).

https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/events/trademark-basics-boot-camp-module-4-application-filing-walk-through

The event is on Tuesday February 23rd from 2pm to 3pm Eastern Time.

Click the link for more information, please.

 

I believe it is expensive to apply for a trademark and be denied, so before you apply, for instance, to trademark a catchy phrase you should do some research, and perhaps even some soul searching. Does that phrase uniquely describe your book series, your brand as an author, your range of products and their source? 

 

Writing for the Baker & Hostetler  blog that focuses on IP Intelligence (as opposed to the other nine or ten blogs that this prestigious law firm owns),  Robert Horowitz details several tales of trademark application woe and offers some very wise advice to would-be trademark owners and to those advising them.

https://www.ipintelligencereport.com/2021/02/16/considering-a-common-phrase-as-a-trademark-dont-expect-it-to-be-registrable/#page=1

 

For those seeking advice or representation, the World Trademark Review conducted a series of interviews with leading TM attorneys.  Here are three links:

https://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/brand-management/mark-hiddleston

https://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/brand-management/anna-olsen

https://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/law-firms/lara-kayode

 

Note also the informative right-margin sidebar with topical, trademark-related Tweets!

 

Question: What do Sexual Performance, Wind Power, and Trademarks have in common? 

Answer: "Use it or lose it!"

 

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

Survival in the World of Publishing

Kameron Hurley's new LOCUS essay reflects on her first ten years as a published author:

How to Survive a Decade in Publishing

Her first series went through three publishers, the last of which folded when one of the owners allegedly absconded with the royalties that were owed. She notes that "publishing is weird," a conclusion supported by her examples from her own career and those of some other writers. Knowing "the one thing we can control in this wild business is the words on the page" (and not always even that, where the finished product released to the market is concerned), we have to accept that the "glorious highs" and "very low lows" of a writer's life depend heavily on many outside factors, including luck.

Her remark that all her adventures as an author since then have been "measured against that first foray into the publishing world" resonates with me. I had two very different publishing experiences at the start of my career. My first two books were mass-market paperback anthologies, CURSE OF THE UNDEAD and DEMON LOVERS AND STRANGE SEDUCTIONS. The sale of anthologies edited by someone with no prior writing or editing experience to a major publisher was an amazing stroke of luck then and would be impossible now. At the time, I thought I would thereafter (1) make lots of money and (2) sell everything I wrote. It is to laugh. The advances did constitute more money than we'd ever received in one lump before, although they were probably modest even by early 1970s standard. One of them did provide the down payment on our first house. Neither book earned out its advance, though, and the publisher didn't buy anything further from me.

As for the second expectation, my next publication was the first full-length book I wrote myself, a nonfiction work of literary criticism on vampirism in literature. After a couple of years of floundering around, still not very knowledgable about the industry, I contracted it with a small press that proved to be disastrous. They printed the book by offset from my typed manuscript, long before word processing, so the thing looked sadly unprofessional. It had a small print run, as typical for academic-oriented works, and it was exorbitantly overpriced. It cost something like $29.00 in 1975, when the average paperback went for $1.25 and most hardcovers for under $10.00. (I checked those figures by glancing at books from that decade on my shelf.) It's a wonder any copies ever sold. Moreover, after the first year or two the publisher stopped communicating with me, and I eventually resorted to a lawyer's letter to get them to disgorge a meager royalty payment. Years went by before my first professional fiction sale, to one of the early Darkover anthologies, and well over a decade between that monograph and my first novel, to a startup small horror press—which treated its authors well and even paid an advance. So, not forgetting that aforementioned ghastly vampire monograph experience, with later publishers I felt good about the deal when they actually answered mail and disbursed royalties on time.

Hurley reminds us that at every stage of a writing career, rejection will happen, and she recommends an attitude of "grim optimism." For surviving in this industry, she advises writers to "create a strong support network. Get a good agent. Understand that everything changes."

I've read that something like 90% of published authors don't live off their writing, but have another source of income such as a day job, a pension, or a well-employed spouse. Of the other 10%, few support themselves by writing fiction; most depend on occupations such as journalism or technical writing. Anyone whose principal goal in becoming an author is to get rich or even affluent is probably doomed to disappointment. To survive the highs and lows described in Hurley's essay, one has to write for its own sake. As Marion Zimmer Bradley famously said, nobody told you not to be a plumber.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Worldbuilding for Multiple Alternate Universes Part 5 Why Are There Alternate Universes in Your Reality

Worldbuilding for Multiple Alternate Universes

Part 5

Why Are There Alternate Universes in Your Reality?  

Previous parts in this series:

Part 1 - Star Trek Fan Fiction

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/01/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate.html

Part 2  - Find Some Crazy Ideas

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/01/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate_19.html

Part 3 - What Makes and Idea Too Crazy

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/02/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate.html

Part 4 - How to Make Ghosts, Vampires, and Demons Real

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/02/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate.html

So what do you need multiple alternate universes for? 

'The Netflix original series titled Enola Holmes is described as :

"Her mother?  Vanished.  Her brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft?  Useless.  To solve this mystery, she'll go it alone. The game is afoot."  

Utterly intriguing, but not suggestive of the Relationship driven plot that is at the core of a good Romance.

As professional writers, we study "pitches" -- what few words will grab an editor's attention, a producer's?  What utterly different few words grab a writer's?

What grabs me is pretty simple.  Here I am in "this" reality, but what's going on in ANOTHER REALITY?  

Every piece of fiction, regardless of the media channeling it to me, is going on in a "world" that some other writer "built."  And their world is not like mine.

The key ingredient that always grabs me is, "What is different in that Reality from my everyday Reality -- or from a Reality I have built for my novels?"  

What's DIFFERENT is the hook.  

Note in the description of Enola Holmes, here is a sister of Sherlock and Mycroft.  In those few words, the blurb writer has framed the entire "world" built around this Character, Enola.

No, at this writing, I have not yet watched this 2 hour movie, but I do intend to.  Being a Sherlock Holmes fan, I think I could write it better -- but that "what is different" question just hooked me. I have to see what these writers (always more than one on a movie) have done that I might not have thought to do.

We can regard this Enola sister's story as an Alternate Universe.

Holmes myth has spawned hundreds, maybe thousands, of alternate universes as the Baker Street Irregulars were writing original Holmes stories even before Star Trek fanzines took off.  In fact, the publisher of one of the very first Star Trek fanzines, T-Negative (which published my original Kraith Series), Ruth Berman was already famous in the Baker Street Irregulars fandom when she started T-Negative.

Science fiction fans have always been Sherlock fans -- it's a natural, as Spock is a very similar character with similar problems "fitting in."  Note that in Kraith, I gave Spock a half-sister who was a real pain for him.

By adding a Character, you shift a fictional universe sideways one tiny increment, and that increment can grow.  So that can be one reason your story needs Multiple Alternate Universes.

If you can't figure out the physics read up on mathematics.

Mathematics always invents methods just before physics figures out a way to use that new Math to describe something new -- and in fact, may go looking for that something new because the existence of the Math that describes it indicates it's real.    

Currently, theoretical physics is postulating that we live in a reality that is just a "simulation."  And there are parallel universes.  Hence one of the oldest SF premises is new again - alternate universes.

But in the world you are building, WHY do the alternates exist?  Is it only that your Character's story needs to shift sideways and back again to teach your Character the lesson you have in mind (your theme?)

Or do Multiple alternate realities exist in the world you are building because you see that this world actually is one of many alternates?

And that brings us to the dramatic hook -- do you postulate multiple alternate universes to demonstrate the contrast that the differences make among your universes?  

In one Universe, magic doesn't work but science does. In another magic works but science doesn't. In a third, both work, but only for certain "gifted" individuals?

And so on.  What rule of normal, everyday life, is different in your alternative universes? And what other differences are generated by that original difference?

To craft a "world" that contains multiple alternative universes, and Characters that have the intellect and emotional stability to travel "paths" between them, among them, and back again, you need a model, a thesis, of the ultimate Nature of the Human Being.  

What exactly is a Human?

In Romance Genre, we have two main (and many  branches) assumptions about the nature of humans: a) a human is a great ape, an animal subject to the overwhelming physiology that compels reproduction (e.g. "...but they couldn't resist the primal heat between them...) -- and b) a human is bifurcate, body of an animal imbued with and welded to a Soul that can, but often does not, Rule the primal urges of the body.

What if these 2 concepts of "what" a human actually is are both TRUE -- but in alternate universes?

That would be a "difference" in the rules of science, of theology, of cultural norms, and thus of the course of History (think Helen of Troy -- suppose the battle had gone the other way, and today the whole world was Ruled from Troy?)

Also note in the description of Enola Holmes, the emphasis is on  "... she'll go it alone."  The trailer establishes that Enola is "alone" spelled backwards.

What exactly does "alone" mean in a world where the animal body generates what we perceive as Soul?  What does it mean in a world where the Soul comes from elsewhere and gets welded to a body it "rides like a horsewoman?"  

To study "alone" closer, take a lookout the Netflix original "The Queen's Gambit" - a series about a young orphan girl who is a Chess Natural and sets out to become a tournament champion (decades ago when, "girls can't play chess.")

Chess happens to be my game -- I dearly love everything about it but haven't played in many decades. So I was delighted to watch this young (9 year old, the age I was when I learned) girl playing an obvious champion and learning the game.  After a few matches, they showed the two of them rapidly moving through a classic game pattern, and about 90 seconds before the teacher conceded, I shouted, "SHE WON!"  I still recognized the moves.  The series might be "boring and dull" to some viewers, but Chess is the quintessential generator of Alternate Universes.

This young orphan girl doesn't have a bosom buddy in the orphanage, and isn't involved in multi-level relationships as young girls usually are.  That is somewhat typical of budding chess champions (male), so it is authentic, but pushes this series away from Romance.  I've only seen part of Episode 1, so maybe there's a Romance in her future.

Another Netflix Original worth watching, with LOTS of "relationship driven plot" and many possible alternatives is "Sweet Magnolias" about 3 grown women, divorced and on their own, who were bosom buddies growing up, and now combine again to open a new business in town, a Spa, in an old mansion they renovate.

I haven't seen enough of it yet to say, but it definitely has the "feel" of Romance.

None of these shows, Enola Holmes, The Queen's Gambit, or Sweet Magnolias is science fiction -- and none have the worldbuilding structured around dodging across Multiple Alternate Universes to either escape from or ambush or conquer some existential adversary.

But each of these 3 rather pedestrian fictional worlds has the potential to be one of your Science Fiction Romance alternate universes -- a "place" your Character races through or gets stuck in for a few chapters, and has to cope with the rules of reality there.

I hope they are still available on Netflix when you get to search for them -- taken together the 3 open vast perspectives of what is possible with an Alternate Universe Romance that doesn't need a Fantasy Element to be gut-wrenching drama.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

What's Moral Got To Do With It?

For anyone who has ever thought of having a photograph copied and inked onto their body, or --possibly-- thought of putting a copyrighted photograph onto the skin of a fictional character, there's an interesting lawsuit in progress.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.809742/gov.uscourts.cacd.809742.1.0.pdf

Color me draconian. I was very interested to see whether the remedies sought by the copyright-owning photographer of a very remarkable photographic portrait of a great musician included a request for either the removal of the offending tattoo or a follow up tattoo to add the copyright management information. Apparently, the remedies sought are financial.

What, though, if the person with a copyright-infringing image on their skin were to be liable for infringement any time they took off their shirt in public? What if the image-bearer were a traditionally published author or musician and the copyrighted image might be somehow politically disfavored?

Publishers have "morals" or "moral turpitude" clauses in contracts, some more loosely worded than others, that allow publishers to cancel publishing contracts with authors and other artists.  When negotiating a contract, authors should pay attention to the contractual definition of "immorality". A mere accusation or allegation in private or on social media should not be sufficient. The "immoral" actor (or author) ought only to have their contract imperiled if they either admit to the immorality or if they are convicted in court of that immorality.

The "immorality" ought to rise to the level of illegality, and should not merely be a difference of opinion or something subjective. Also, the publisher should be able to show a realistic likelihood that the "immorality" is sufficiently offensive as to affect the anticipated market for the work.  Moreover, the "immorality" would have to be something of which the publisher was ignorant/unaware before signing the contract.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/