Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 22 - Making a Profit At Writing In A Capitalist World

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World

Part 22

Making a Profit At Writing In A Capitalist World

Previous Parts of Marketing Fiction In A Changing World are indexed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

"Profit" is a term considered anathema in some circles - with fairly good reason.  The term "profit" has come to signify getting something you didn't earn, something actually earned by the sweat of others.

Those who oppose Capitalism could not destroy Capitalism because it is so good at racking up Profit.  Everyone wants "profit" when it is defined as "something for nothing."

But "something for nothing" is not the definition of profit nor has it anything to do with Capitalism.  Capitalism is about personal, individual ownership, which makes copyrights a form of capital.

-------------quote from a quick Google search------------

cap·i·tal·ism
ˈkapədlˌizəm/
noun
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
synonyms: free enterprise, private enterprise, the free market; enterprise culture
"the capitalism of emerging nations"
-----------end quote---------------

Google's definition of Capitalism calls it a "system" -- a political and economic system.

Capitalism is not a system and has nothing to do with politics or society.  Capitalism is "not a bug in the social system; it's a feature of Reality."

I saw this item on Quora back in June 2016 and admired the precision of this definition.

-------------quote-------------
https://www.quora.com/Why-would-a-working-class-person-prefer-capitalism-to-communism

First please understand that you can't really compare the two since they are different things. Communism is a socioeconomic concept while capitalism is a solely economic concept. Therefore there are no social policies which can be definitely associated with capitalism, which means the comparison needs to be exclusively economic or based on specific cases (e.g. USA vs. USSR). Also, no country on earth practices or has practiced true communism; by definition communism supersedes the concept of the state with small, self-organized communities, therefore neither the USSR nor China were "true" communist systems.

Now, why would a working class person prefer capitalism? I'd say because they would not enjoy living in a communist society.

-----------end quote---------- 

I could write this entire blog entry about the concept "working class" and how it can not possibly be applied to the USA.  The US Constitution can only function well if the populace understands there is not now nor never has been any such thing as "class" in the human species.  

SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE WRITERS NOTE: all bets are off if you are depicting Aliens. Create a species where "class" is a biological imperative, then launch your Love At First Sight story and see what happens next.

But where only humans are involved, the USA Declaration of Independence and the Constitution nailed it perfectly.  These founding documents are based on "All Men Are Created Equal" and we've fought out the battle over the idea of "all men" (which now includes males of different colors) and the idea that "men" includes women, too.  In other words, our social history has been directed along the lines of enhancing Individualism by turning individuals loose to craft their own destinies in their own pursuit of happiness ever after. 

These ancient words mean that in the USA, there is no such thing as class, working or otherwise.  There is no such thing as "the" 1% -- the ultra rich are "a 1%" not "the 1%."  

Social systems that divide humans into classes are called Aristocracies.  The USA views Aristocracy as resoundingly repudiated by thousands of years of utter failure.

Without a "working class" you can not have an Aristocracy.  

So in the USA, there are people who make a living by working, but they are not a "class" -- at any time, any given individual, can become independently wealthy, self-employed, employ others to work for him/her/whatever, go back to school on a scholarship, or get injured (perhaps in war action) and go on the dole or a well earned pension. Humans do not come in "classes."  Humans are resilient and adaptable - ever changing.  We all work.  There is no such thing as "working class."   

Writers work, but do not form a "class" in any sense.  We have nothing in common with one another, which is the exact trait we have in common -- unique individuality. 

That is the precise condition under which Capitalism thrives, flourishes, and produces far more than is invested.  Capitalism is an "undocumented feature" of the Reality Matrix that writers are uniquely suited to exploit.  

The term Capitalism has been co-opted by politicians and redefined.  Academics subsequently wrote a lot of books for Economics courses (often required for various majors in college) because of their Publish Or Perish business model.

To understand Capitalism, think about raw, basic survival, say on Mars or some other harsh planet among the stars. To understand what a Main Character or Hero is and does that is so admired, the writer must understand the reality of Capitalism with all the mis-directions and academics stripped away.

By stripping away that co-opted idea-grab that Capitalism is a system (thus created by humans), a writer creating fictional worlds peopled by Aliens or driven by Romance can use the core concept Capitalism to
a) create alien worlds that are truly alien but comprehensible and
b) to run their own writing business.

The basic idea of Capitalism goes like this:
A) Person One has a resource they can't use
B) Person Two has an ability to use that resource but does not have the resource
C) Person One LOANS that resource to Person Two
D) Person Two uses that resource
E) Person Two gives that resource back to Person One with some extra from what using the resource produced (amount determined by prior contract)
F) Person Two keeps all the rest produced by using that resource as personal property.
G) Person Two now has the resource and the ability to use it to create more resources
H) Person One now has the resource and more but still no ability to use it

That resource is CAPITAL, and the process of loaning it and collecting the return OF Capital and ON Capital is Capitalism.

And the story of where that Capital goes repeats the cycle as Person One finds something else to invest the resource into and Person Two keeps on producing more and more, reinvesting excess resource to grow the business and employ more people.

In the Publishing Business, the writer is Person One who has a Resource (unpublished manuscript) they can't use, and the Publisher is Person Two who has ability to use that resource but does not have the resource.

Writers LICENSE their copyright (not SELL, license, a kind of loan) to the publisher, thus loaning the publisher the resource under terms set by contract.

The Publisher uses the manuscript, turns it into a book and gets people to buy it.

After the set term of the contract, the license the publisher holds expires, and all the licensed rights revert to the author (capital is returned) plus all the royalties paid in between.

Today, in this new world, Person One now puts the book up on Kindle or other e-book format and the reputation for that byline or title created by Person Two (the publisher) continues to sell the book, fewer copies but at a greater profit to the writer per copy. Thus the writer "capitalizes" on the Publisher's hard and expert work creating reputation.

Publishing is a perfect example of Capitalism in action and has nothing at all to do with governmental forms or academic economic theories of "society."

Capitalism has to do with combining talents of individual people whose individual talents would not earn them a living -- but when "packaged" by an organizer (like a publisher or producer) those individuals' resources can be transformed into potatoes and oranges bought at the supermarket.

The problem for working writers is that what they get paid, net-net after decades in the business, about averages out to potatoes and oranges.  A good, widely published, widely reviewed writer can cover a modest lifestyle of room, board, clothing, transportation, -- today, maybe not medical care.

SFWA (the Science Fiction Writers of America) carries a healthcare policy for members that is very expensive but better than nothing.  Few can afford it, yet all need it.  Writing is way too sedentary a profession to maintain health well. The future of Obamacare is not certain, and switching policies can elevate the cost.

Nobody I know works harder, longer hours for less profit than fiction writers.

When all the time is accounted for, time mastering craft skills, time learning, time researching, time dreaming, time writing, time re-writing, time in copy-editing, time formatting, time repairing computers used to write, time marketing, time interacting with readers, time studying markets, -- already the writer of fiction makes less than minimum wage (even if they don't raise that dollar amount of minimum wage soon!)

In my experience, the most creative, sharpest minds contributing to gross domestic product get paid the least per hour worked (over say, 25 years average annual income) if they are working writers. There will be years topping $100,000 income, but then the IRS takes a chunk of that calculated on the idea that this income level will be sustained year after year.

Long ago, the tax code allowed writers to "income average" over 5 years, smoothing out the spikes and valleys of tax owed, taking into account the irregularity and unpredictability of writing income.

So to the TIME spent creating and writing and marketing (even with an Agent, it's a lot of time spent marketing), add the time spent on bookkeeping and accounting and tax preparation -- or the expense of out-sourcing that work.

You aren't "making a profit" at writing until you have paid all those bills, plus your own salary, rent for your home-office and business machines and their supplies (yes, ink for your printer is a business expense paid before declaring a profit).

And that does not even begin to account for capital invested before a career can take off, money for classes, lessons, travel to and from such schooling, computers, phones, tablets of various types constantly upgraded and the professional-level software necessary to produce copy that can be submitted in the proper formats.

See?  There's that word, capital.

Running a business is all about capital investment vs. return on investment (called ROI).

The point of Capitalism is to invest a resource, then turn the crank of the business model, and return that invested Capital, keeping what's left over (after all expenses) as Profit which is then REINVESTED into that business or another business.  Capital is recycled Profit.  They are the same thing. Capital is not MONEY -- Capital is a resource, like a copyright or a house you buy with a mortgage and then rent at more than it costs you.

Money is to be spent on expenses.  Capital is to be invested and recovered plus a profit.

https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle-ebook/dp/B0175P82RA/

If your house's roof starts to spring leaks, it can cost less to patch it if you only consider the money you will spend this month. But then another leak will happen, and another patch.  You also have to consider your time as money -- to go get the materials and climb up there and patch the roof yourself is time spent not-writing, and money just spent.

Your time and your money regarded as capital would lead you to a different approach to solving the problem of a leaky roof.  Call the best roofer in town, replace the entire roof this month with a top professional job and materials (not Home Depot).  You do it that way, you have made a "Capital Investment."  Your capital (time and money) will now "work for you" and pay back in "royalties" (a little each year the roof does not cost you anything).

If you plan to charge the cost on a credit card, and pay it back slowly, the interest the card charges you is NOT a capital investment by you.  It is money spent. Calculated carefully, it can turn out that getting a whole new roof will not "pay for itself" (return your Capital) because "revolving credit" is way too expensive.

A roof can cost the entirety of a book advance plus a royalty payment or two.

Your copyright is your capital.

You invest it into a Publisher, trusting them to use it to make a profit.

You can invest the "interest" you get from loaning your capital (advance+royalties) in a roof. Your house is capital.  You've taken your "profit" (advance+royalties) and reinvested that capital in a capital investment which itself pays dividends. And you still own your copyright.

Your copyright is your capital.

Capitalism, the definition specifies, is a system that assumes you own your copyrights and can rent them out, or sub-license them how you choose.

Is Capitalism a "system" -- or is it a simple fact of surviving in the real world where no individual has all the skills and resources necessary to survive?

Capitalism is the system of contract law that allows a person with a resource to loan that resource to someone who has the ability to use that resource.

The ability to write songs is a resource, the songs written are capital -- but it takes an orchestra and maybe several singers to make a profitable YouTube Video of that song and get millions of hits and launch careers.  The song writer still owns the copyright on the song.

His or her heirs can inherit that copyright.

Copyright law specifies a number of years before it goes into public domain -- i.e. is taken from the rightful owners, the heirs -- but there is no statute of limitation on owning a house or a farm property. There is no difference between a copyright and a farm.

Art, paintings or photographs, fabric patterns, animations, all kinds of art we create become our capital which we license but still own.

Whether creating such works of art is profitable depends on the size of the market that will pay for it - i.e. depends on popularity.

Commercial Art is a different field from Fine Art.  Both create capital. Usually Commercial Art is the only kind that turn that capital into capital+profit.

In the sharing economy, the open source economy, you are free to give away your copyright, and get paid in enhanced reputation - name recognition, publicity, or just spiritual gratitude.

To some extent, people using your open-source resource will toss some money into your PayPal account from time to time, but the "open source' movement is thriving without money.  It runs on pure capital alone, or maybe some bitcoin here and there.

Fan Fiction is that kind of sharing-economy, open source resource, where the writer gets paid in name-recognition, reputation, and writes things for other people to pick up and write about.

So there is a profit to be made off the capital investment of time/skill etc., but that profit is not convertible to money.

Capital and profit are not money.

In Capitalism, capital and profit can be converted to money, and money can be converted to capital and profit.  If your unusable resource is money, you can loan that money at bank-interest+risk, and if the gamble does not fail, you get your money back, plus inflation, plus a profit.

One thing writers must understand about making a profit is that bank interest is not profit.  The tax law treats it as profit and taxes interest, but banks deliberately calculate and set the rate of interest on CD's and savings accounts to cover all their expenses (accountants, tellers, Cloud Megs, hacker intrusions, etc) and give you just exactly enough more dollars to keep your purchasing power going down.  Yes, you lose purchasing power by putting money in a CD and reinvesting the interest.  The interest rate is calculated to be less than inflation, but in such a way that you don't see it.  You look at your numbers and think you have more, but you actually have less.  That is what retail banks do for a living, and they are good at it.

Writers and other artists, being in one of the lowest paid professions, must understand this quirk of tax law - retail bank interest is return of capital, not a payment of a profit, so when you pay taxes on interest, you are actually giving the government some of your capital, reducing your ability to earn in your old age.  The only way out is to get out of the retail level of finance.  Deal wholesale.

To deal wholesale in capital and money you need a lot of capital -- a lot -- so your capital can be invested and earn money you can spend without reducing your capital.  In fact, well invested (Mutual Funds are a good start, but their fees reduce earnings potential), your capital can grow at or above the rate of inflation while yielding a good living.

The trick of it all is to get your mind around the truth about Capitalism.  It is not a social "system" -- it is a fact of reality: humans are interdependent; no man is an island.

Money can be used as capital, but it is not capital.  When used as capital, money becomes a commodity.  It can be traded as a commodity on the international currency exchanges. Money can be a thing in itself, unrelated to potatoes and oranges. In math, this is called Units Conversion.

So the operational, everyday-useful definition of Capitalism is the contract-structure that allows using other people's resources in a way that benefits them most, and yourself second.

As a writer, who owns copyrights, that means you are the one who is benefited most.

You start out with nothing, create something, loan it out, get it back plus a profit, and can loan it again and get paid again, and you still own it.

The cost of creating that something, the overhead expenses you invest in your business, have to be less than what your copyrights bring in for you to declare a profit -- and that means your business has to pay you a living wage before you can declare a profit.

It is very rare for a writer or any creative artist to make an actual profit from their work.  Only during the (usually few) years when the work is reaching its broadest audience is the income more than the cost of doing business as a creative artist or a performing artist.

A reason for that hides within the structure of the big businesses that own publishing or production.

Yes, movie and TV studios and the independent producers who sell them shows are also owned by other types of businesses.  In the case of films or stage productions, the real owners are often "Investors" (individuals with extra millions to invest on the chance they will get their money back and much more).  Many times "Investors" put up the money for a stage play or other production more for the prestige than profit, and are happy to break even.

In this "Changing World" impacted by electronic distribution, Kindle to Netflix to promoting books on blogs, the vast and significant change in the Fiction Writer's business model is also now impacting non-fiction.

The biggest casualty in 2016 is the NEWS BUSINESS.

Here is an article from FORBES about Snapchat and its impact on the News business

http://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2016/06/19/what-snapchat-tells-us-about-the-future-of-news-and-information-gathering/#440c2d41480d

 -- by appealing to the youngest people, Snapchat is setting the stage for adult behavior 20 years hence.  And in this infrastructure shift to electronic media and personal connectivity, which is so deep and so basic (more so than maybe the Printing Press), 20 years is the blink of an eye.  Do you remember cell phones from 20 years ago?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones

That Wikipedia article shows the evolution of from 1947.  Scan down the article and look at what changes in 20 years. Realize a writing career can be 40 or 50 years because writers don't usually "retire" with a pension.

Facebook is buying these communications start-ups that appeal to specific demographics (target audiences) for a reason, but I doubt that Facebook's execs think of themselves as running a News Service (like AP or Reuters) designed to gather facts and sift out rumors and opinion.

Here is a quote from the Forbes article on Snapchat, tailor made for writers looking to make a Profit off their writing skills in a Capitalist World.

---------quote----------

Most adults, if they have even heard of Snapchat, know it as the place where messages disappear after a few seconds. But the company is adding more and more options, and it is now the network on which young people not only use different kinds of messages, and no, not all messages self-destruct in three seconds, some stay in the in-tray for up to 24 hours, and others can be kept for as long as the sender likes. What’s more, young people even read the company’s online magazine, as well as using other channels it has set up, including one to send money.

So while most of us grownups don’t even know what Snapchat is, Evan Spiegel, now elevated to the status of visionary, and his team have created a company valued already at some $20 billion—so far he’s turned down a $3 billion offer, and then reportedly another for $4 billion—and that is now the new television for young people unable to disconnect from their smartphones, and that 23 media partners are now using to reach a younger generation of readers, attaining millions of hits each month, and that other brands are using to advertise their wares during the Super Bowl. This is highly profitable advertising, as well as non-intrusive, unlike the trash that we have to put up with on other networks and publications unless we install an ad-blocker.

--------end quote---------

This business model based on advertising is one that novelists have never needed to tackle, but TV Series writers must internalize to get the climaxes (cliff hangers) just before the formulaic commercial breaks.  News (televised or internet) packages are structured the exact same way for the same reason.  A Package is that little bit of actual news sandwiched between commercial breaks.

We'll explore more of that Forbes article in Part 23 of Marketing Fiction In A Changing World, looking at the future of our business model.

Fiction publishing and news publishing (such as newspapers on paper and magazines printed on paper, even Radio and TV News or the old fashioned News Reel at the movies) were never "profitable."

Historically, book and Magazine Publishers were owned by other bigger businesses or investors specifically for the "tax write-off" and the Prestige, entree to "the right" cocktail parties and social networks.

In non-fiction, the News business also grew up as a hybrid "public service" or charitable way of paying society back for profits made on other products.  From the 1700's and "movable type" the local town newspaper was a low-margin business at the very best.

News (whether you view it as fiction or non-fiction!) is a capital intensive business.

To gather the product (information), individual people have to go out where the events are occurring, observe, gather and check facts, then cast all that data into the format of "information" by writing the article.  The article has to be transported back to the editing office,  edited, shaped to fit the newspaper's available space, laid out, compiled into print, printed on paper (which has to be trucked in from a manufacturer -- likewise ink -- never cheap), then the paper has to be hauled off to be offered to reluctant buyers.

All those people have to be paid, and all that stuff has to be bought, and all that transportation costs.  This is also true of online newspaper distribution operations such as Huffington Post.

Print papers combined the advertising model with the pay or subscribe model and survived right up until now.  They are still trying to find a way to make money online.

So historically, print and broadcast news operations are labor intensive, capital intensive operations that were owned by larger businesses, mostly for tax write-off, a public service, and prestige (in the case of "news" of course, power over political processes is another form of profit).  Even with advertising and subscriptions, even at their most profitable, news operations have never been stand-alone operations that made a profit.

Publishing and News are two kinds of business that have traditionally been designed specifically to lose money.  So they paid writers and journalists as little as possible to keep them providing material.  These businesses weren't cheating.  They simply could not afford to pay wriers and journalists more and still break even.

Today, in this changing world, Publishing has been moved from being a prestige-crown-jewel to a profit making operation.  That is one reason the price of paper books and e-books are so high, relative to what those prices were in terms of a loaf of bread a hundred years ago.

With razor thin margins, publishers had to 'consolidate' (buy each other until there are only a handful of publishers left who cover the whole world).  So they don't publish books that "ought to be published" or "deserve to be published" any more. They publish books the computer algorythms predict will sell very broadly and very quickly.  Likewise "News" publishes what will captivate the most eyes.

Even though writers are paid a percentage of the cover price for a book, and thus have a built-in wage hike for inflation, that percentage has not gone up, but agent's fees have gone from 10% to 15%, taxes (state, federal and local) have gone up.  Writers' margins have narrowed while publishers are just barely making it unless they have a few blockbusters in a year.

News, likewise, is now making a transition to a stand-alone for-profit business, and therefore needs a much wider audience for commercials and subscriptions.  The only strategy available to get that broad an audience is to make the News more Entertaining (fictionalize it, jazz it up, create a "narrative" that will keep people glued to their screens).

This shift in the non-fiction writer's business model has caused less capital (time, effort, energy) to be expended on fact-checking, thoroughness, meticulousness.  Non-fiction (News) that is fact-rich is a very expensive to create, and the truth is the market is too small.

Very few people will pay (by watching commercials or subscribing) to get a listing of un-exciting, dry, boring fact after fact.  A few will tune in for a "story."

The cure is, of course, to make fact-gathering much cheaper (Go-Pro cameras in drones?), so that news can be published in fact-rich but boring summaries to that tiny audience that prefers it.

Sometime soon, a Science Fiction Romance writer will write a book set in a world built around a new business model for publishing -- both fact and fiction publishing.

The technology is being implemented rapidly.  Something obvious is staring us all in the face that we are just missing.  The writer who sees it will write the classic everyone refers to for the next hundred years (like 1984, or The Cold Equations).

It may be as simple as what some indie bloggers, and web-radio and YouTube personalities are already doing, gathering and presenting the facts that contradict the "narrative" adopted by the bigger news operations, broadcast network or cable news.

News and Book Publishing may become, once again, not-for-profit operations that just break even in a good year and are tax write-offs in other years.

Where would your career fit into that future?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Privacy, Paranoia, and Protection

In an earlier post, probably back around January 2016, this author discussed jury service and social media... and whether or not trial lawyers may stalk jurors' social media revelations. What you post on Twitter or Facebook etc is never truly private, no matter your choice of settings.

Here is another post by Morrison & Foerster LLP about when lawyers may look at your (or my) Facebook activity in connection with civil litigation:
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=b27b39b1-3d9b-4798-bcc5-995746f9bd06

When one is a published author and is obliged to promote ones' books, one has to make an informed decision how much privacy to surrender. For instance, I see no reason to give any social network one's true birthday. Be like the Queen of England. Have a real one for the IRS, the banks, and one's doctor and an "official" one for folks who want to sell advertising and for the back matter of your novels.

In the wake of the Yahoo hack of over 500,000,000 users' information, and the recent revelations that Yahoo created specific software to enable the government to search every email sent or received by every Yahoo mail user, privacy is even more of a concern for authors. We could be flagged for special interest based on research we might do in the course of writing a novel!

Paranoia aside, this author would like to suggest to all readers that all too many of the sites that use secondary verification use all too easily discovered questions such as phone numbers, birth dates, distaff-side names. Protest. If someone is pretending to be you and calling your bank or stock broker, they've probably gleaned that info from the Dark Web or from Yahoo or Facebook.  Ask them to ask something else!

Also, hope that the number changing credit card will soon be for real. See ZDNet!
http://www.zdnet.com/article/this-number-changing-credit-card-may-help-eliminate-fraud/?ftag=TRE17cfd61&bhid=24357684409836269984444908372715

Angela Hoy of Bootlocker has some fascinating links and writings on her website concerning bloggers' and journalists' rights, responsibilities and protections, or lack thereof; also on European Union restrictions on the use of descriptive terms when reporting on current events; and

http://writersweekly.com/uncategorized/whispers-and-warnings-for-10062016

I admire and respect the Writers Weekly posts greatly because Angela Hoy stands up vigorously for her own copyrights and those of others.

A favorite blog specializing in musicians and especially songwriters' rights and copyrights has been running a series on how two major sources of subscription, downloading and streaming music are allegedly exploiting a loohole in the Copyright Act in order to avoid paying royalties at all to musicians.
https://thetrichordist.com

See also https://musictech.solutions/2016/10/03/big-techs-latest-artist-relations-debacle-mass-filings-of-nois-to-avoid-paying-statutory-royalties-part-3/

Authors should watch this, because it may indicate what could happen with "orphan works" in the future, or what could even already be happening since both the allegedly-bad actors also distribute books.

All the best,


Rowena Cherry

Good Out of Evil?

In Barbara Hambly's CRIMSON ANGEL (which I reread last week), the protagonist of the series, Benjamin January, a free colored resident of antebellum New Orleans trained as a surgeon in France but making his living as a musician, unearths the notebooks of a physician known as "Dr. Maudit" ("Accursed"). The doctor drugged and vivisected hundreds of slaves, many of them bought for the purpose. The quandary of whether to benefit from the information in those notebooks addresses an ethical problem still relevant. The situation brings to mind Dr. Mengele, the Auschwitz "Angel of Death," who performed cruel experiments on concentration camp inmates, especially twins. If Mengele's studies had yielded any useful knowledge, would it have been morally right to preserve that information? In the case of Mengele, the question is moot, because by all accounts his methods were flawed and his "experiments" useless. In Hambly's novel, however, given the state of medical science in the 1830s, the doctor's dissection of living bodies yields a wealth of knowledge unobtainable in any other way. January is strongly tempted to keep the notebooks, recognizing many instances where the discoveries recorded therein could have saved patients' lives if he'd had that knowledge in the past.

Is it simply wrong to profit from the evil actions of another, even if the result would contribute to the welfare of many people? Or would preserving the knowledge gained by vivisection of unwilling victims salvage some good out of the original evil? Couldn't it be argued that failure to use the information would mean their deaths have been completely wasted? One character in CRIMSON ANGEL says "it is wrong to keep the profits of a crime" because such behavior "is an incentive—a permission—for others to commit crimes for the sake of the rewards." In the end, January decides he must destroy the notebooks despite his bitter regret for the loss of the knowledge in them.

This scenario relates to perennial hot topics in medical research and bioethics, especially nowadays with issues surrounding experimentation on embryos and stem cells.

The episode mentioned above isn't a true spoiler for CRIMSON ANGEL. You can still enjoy plenty of suspense in reading the book, which takes place in New Orleans, Cuba, and Haiti, and discovering the deeper secrets behind the murders. I highly recommend this long-running series, which begins with A FREE MAN OF COLOR. Hambly has done in-depth research about New Orleans and the South in the 1830s, and through the experience of a mixed-race (but mostly black) protagonist, she explores the nuances of race relations in the former Spanish and French colony where Americans are seen as brash interlopers who don't understand the subtle distinctions of the racial caste system and the free "colored" demimonde.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 21 Crafting Book Links

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 21
Crafting Book Links To Track Via Google 

Previous and future posts in this Marketing Fiction In A Changing World series are indexed
here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

Sometimes it pays to read spam.  Sometimes it pays to click links on pages.

I don't recall how I stumbled upon this post on creating Google tracking links so you can see
what is happening with your marketing campaign.

There might be filters on browsers that flag these links as toxic, and if there are not right now,
there might be soon.  Test-test-test -- then get someone else in another region to test with a
different computer and browser set-up.

But here's the core of the matter:

---------quote------------
So let’s say you’re linking to the landing page for your next book on your author site. The URL

might look like this:

http://myauthorsite.com/mynextbook/

Adding the tags

Now comes the real magic. We’re going to add those UTM codes onto the link.

We’re going to use utm_source to mark the title of the book (or a code that will let us know the

title).
We’re going to use utm_campaign to tell us which retailer the reader bought the ebook from.
And we’re going to bend the meaning of “medium” a bit and use utm_medium to tell us where in

the ebook the reader clicked.
Letting a web browser know that the codes are parameters — non-essential add-ons, rather

than part of the actual address requires that you use special separators. Before the first

parameter, you have to have a question mark (?).

Before each subsequent parameter, you need to add an ampersand (&). So let’s say we’re

creating a hyperlink from the “Other Books By” section of your ebook. For the version of

ebook that’s going to be sold on Amazon, the complete link would look like this:

http://myauthorsite.com/mynextbook/?

utm_source=mybook&utm_campaign=amazon&utm_medium=other-books

Notice that each UTM code is followed by an equal sign (=) that links it to the value we want

Google to pick up. Notice too that you should NEVER put spaces in the middle of a URL!

Replace them with hyphens or underscores.

Here are some examples from ebooks .... READ THE ARTICLE

-------------end quote---------------

This article is/was (I hope it is still up by the time you read this and act on it)
http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2016/06/laying-track-tracking-ebook-links-google-analytics/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday Links

Correcting a misconception: a plaintiff is not required to prove that copies are unauthorized.  When you think about it, how would one prove a negative proposition? If there is a contract, either party can prove that there is a contract by producing it. But, if a copyright infringer uploads an illegal copy of an ebook, it would be unreasonable to force the author to provide every contract ever executed to show that there wasn't one with this particular infringer.

This article by McDermott Will and Emery is about the plight of an artist when someone else started selling prints of the artist's works.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=595934b7-df7b-4959-9dbd-ddd2dc106099&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2016-09-30&utm_term=

Baker and Hostetler LLP commence a series comparing how the most popular social media sites respond to complaints from copyright owners about "user generated" copyright infringement on their platforms.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=a8400cb9-cf87-4cb4-95dd-2e35df328c0d&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2016-09-30&utm_term=

It may be a tad depressing reading! The BakerHostelter sidebar had some excellent links, one that particularly upset this author is an account from July 2016 of further difficulties for copyright owners (raising of the legal bar) to prove that a website was wilfully blind to copyright infringement.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=59d917d8-b851-4d1c-9e40-e36f345e7a6f

"Red flag knowledge" has long been an issue with the DMCA. Now, it gives even greater protection to websites that apparently knowingly host copyright infringing stuff.

Perhaps it is my bias, or perhaps something is in the air.

McDermott Will and Emery also take a look at willful copyright infringement.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=22f36369-0155-45e2-93d4-4d5d5ac0e3ef&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2016-09-30&utm_term=

If you enjoy The Register, I recommend this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/13/google_piracy_we_really_care/

And also this two-page article (also on The Register) on the unexpected consequences to the set-top box "wars". Who would think that there could be a downside to getting rid of those rented proprietary boxes?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/29/fcc_death_vote_golden_age_tv/

Ending on a more positive note, European courts are ruling that hyperlinks to illegally uploaded copyrighted works stored or hosted elsewhere is copyright infringement.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c4ee9be1-8731-44dd-ac35-b5a1c14a2b54&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2016-09-29&utm_term=

Thanks to Squire Patton Boggs for that!

That's a lot of links, but, as always, this author has brought you only the most interesting out of hundreds of copyright-related topics.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Following a Script?

In an article in our Tuesday morning newspaper about local citizens' reactions to the first presidential debate, one person charges the opposition candidate with a habit of giving "a scripted answer." I'm not going to tackle the pros and cons of the candidates; rather, I'm struck by the implications of that person's apparently unquestioning belief that "scripted" equals "bad." I suspect many people might agree with that assumption, because our contemporary culture values spontaneity. The general attitude seems to be that a spontaneous reaction is more "authentic," more "honest," than a pre-prepared one. The more I think about it, the odder it seems to me that an off-the-cuff emotional answer would be valued higher than a product of careful thought and planning.

In my opinion, spontaneity is overrated. How many people actually enjoy surprise birthday parties? If you had a meal ready to put on the table, would you really be thrilled to be whisked out to an expensive restaurant on the spur of the moment? Erma Bombeck wrote a column about her husband's impulsive suggestion that they instantly drop everything and go on a spontaneous family trip. An hour of frantic arrangements for dog-sitting, car pools, etc., later.... In general, I think most pleasures are enhanced by preliminary expectation. (If my experience of fifty years of marriage is typical, "spontaneous" sex can't hold a candle to anticipation of a planned romantic evening.)

The difference between "scripted" and "unscripted" reactions speaks to the purpose of literature as well as the patterns of real life. In the major rites of passage in our lives, a script gives us a framework for expressing the emotions of the occasion in a way most of us would find hard to articulate on our own. A funeral service bestows a shape on the messy process of grieving; a wedding gives shape and weight to the couple's commitment. (How many "write one's own vows" ceremonies scale the poetic heights of the traditional marriage service? And even when a couple writes their own ceremony, they're still following a script thought out beforehand.) As for literature, good fiction portrays the joys and sufferings of individual characters in a way that all readers can immerse themselves in and identify with. In A PREFACE TO PARADISE LOST, C. S. Lewis devotes a chapter to defending poetry that embodies what some of his contemporaries disparaged as "stock responses." Lewis values "a deliberately organized attitude" over what one of his fellow-critics praised as "the free play of experience." To Lewis, this imposition of shape on "the free play of experience" is precisely what we want from ritual and literature.

As he puts it, "In my opinion such deliberate organization is one of the first necessities of human life, and one of the main functions of art is to assist it. All that we describe as constancy in love or friendship, as loyalty in political life, or, in general, as perseverance—all solid virtue and stable pleasure—depends on organizing chosen attitudes and maintaining them against the eternal flux (or 'direct free play') of mere immediate experience."

Lewis recognizes that the differences between his view of spontaneity versus "deliberate organization" run so deep that he's not likely to convert his opponents to his opinion. People who "think that to organize elementary passions into sentiments is simply to tell lies about them" aren't likely to change their minds when the contemporary zeitgeist mainly endorses their belief. Imagine what Lewis would think if he paid a quick visit to today's world and found how far the attitude he criticized has spread since he wrote A PREFACE TO PARADISE LOST in 1942.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 16 - Scientific Evidence For Happily Ever After

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration
Part 16
Scientific Evidence For Happily Ever After 

Previous parts of Theme-Worldbuilding Integration are indexed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

We have discussed, under Theme-Symbolism Integration, why it is that we cry at weddings.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-3-why.html

That entry has links to the two previous parts of that series on symbolism.

There is, at such turning points, a moment when our view of Life, The Universe, And Everything cracks open and a shaft of metaphorical "light" from beyond shifts the light-shadow pattern we think is reality.  We see potential futures and yearn either not to see such hopeful views or to live with that vision constantly.

Each person, at a wedding or other turning point in life -- birth of a baby, death of a grandparent, college graduation -- reacts differently to the vistas of potential open before them.

And even one given individual may react to the same kind of Event (wedding, birth, graduation, funeral) differently at different times in life.  Individuals change in response to experiences.

There is a commercial for a memory-enhancing product that declares, categorically, that YOU ARE YOUR MEMORIES.

Personally, I do not see that as true in any way.  You are YOU before you've had any experiences, and you are the same person after you've forgotten about a particular event, but chosen to cherish and memorialize other Events.  A lot of what you remember is consciously selected, but most of it is not.

Take post-traumatic-stress disorder, for example, much in the news with our discussion of war and allowing returning soldiers to purchase firearms -- and other attempts at crafting a "filter" to determine who is (or is not) allowed to carry (concealed or otherwise.)

In post-traumatic-stress disorder, often a memory recirculates with the impact of reliving an event over and over.  This produces all sorts of nervous system malfunctions -- depression, anxiety, etc. etc. This sometimes occurs in the bystanders, parents, spouses, and co-workers of those people killed at a mass shooting or some sort of Terrorist driven Event.  The impact of losing a child to random violence can produce the same recurring flood of memory/emotion as being in an army combat unit overwhelmed by enemies.

Does that memory make you "who you are?"  Can you ever go back to who you were before that Event disrupted your nervous system?

Are you just your physical nervous system and physiical brain?

Or are "you" a physical body plus something else?

Yes, of course, your Identity (that makes you distinct from all other humans) is entwined with the things you do, the consequences that splash back on you, the actions and reactions of Others, and all the "accidents" that intrude into your life.

We ordinarily think of our "self" as a blended combination of all that, plus profession, current job, who you're married to or live with or have as an "Ex" whose presence in your life disrupts your plans and constrains your freedom.

What you think a "Self" is -- where it comes from and why it exists, how it is shaped or crafted by Events -- influences whether you consider a Happily Ever After condition possible (for you, or for anyone).

The concept "Soul Mate" is all tied up with that theory of Identity.

Pick a theory of Identity for your "World" that you are "Building" to cradle and showcase your "Story" and you narrow the range of options for each subsequent choice you make as you build the world around your story.

A primary question relevant to whether your story ends in Happily Ever After or Happily For Now, or misery-forever, is "What Makes People Different From Each Other?"

Or perhaps your world is built on the most common assumption extant today, that humans actually are all alike, and the differences just blemishes to be polished off so a society can function smoothly, like a machine.

Over centuries, different theories have been experimented with about how a society should handle sexuality.  There's "males have all the rights" cave man style.  There's "smart women seduce the strongest male" so offspring will be fed and protected.  There's "women own everything and rule men" matriarchy arrangements we have seen described among African tribes.  These variatiions have more to do with survival than with happiness.

Happiness is an add-on item.

One theory is that power makes humans happy, and only one person can have all the power so only one can be happy.  Usually, our novels, stories, and cautionary tales describe how miserable someonoe with "all the power" is bound to be.

Is happiness caused by oppressing everyone and making them serve you? (the harem theory).

Is "stability" (the same thing your grandparents had) the ideal model for "happiness?"

Younger people crave "novelty" for its own sake, but is endless novelty the key to happiness?

These are THEME questions -- answer them and further narrow the options for more of your world's dimensions.

Keep in mind how subjective our view of the world actually is.

Each of your Characters can live in a world where the answers to those questions of Identity and the nature of Happiness are different from all the others.  This is the best way to generate Conflict any reader can understand both internal and external conflicts -- thus also plots.

Many great Romance novels have been constructed around the "arranged marriage" -- either via resisting the arrangement or reluctantly going along with it, then falling in love with the Other Party despite one's better sense.

Today's world scorns societies that rely on "arranged marriage" -- often viewing such things as misogenistic since it is the woman who usually is bartered like a possession.

But maybe there's more to be said for the "arranged marriage" -- perhaps we have just lost the technique for matching couples?  Online Dating services operate as (or cast the allure of) Marriage Brokers.

There has been some success (also spectacular failures) with using math and science to match people in marriage.  New research that has serfaced at time.com in June (of course) of 2016 indicates that an arranged marriage between two who expect to work hard at changing themselves (rather than changing the Other) actually does lead to "Happily Ever After."

One of the key ingredients in making Marriage 'work' happily, the article points out, is how we choose to edit our memories and cherish certain aspects of Events over others.

Or possibly, these choices are made subconsciously and are a product of inherent traits of Personality -- you can choose which to include in the world you are building to write your story.

http://time.com/4366236/relationship-secrets-research/

This article is well worth reading in its entirety.

Here is the summary from near the end and there's more after this bit. Read this whole article, and the book it is about!

----------quote------
Sum Up

Here’s what Jonah had to say about how to make a relationship last:

Similarity doesn’t matter: Matching music playlists don’t predict happy marriages. Sorry. Focus on emotions.
Arguing is good: Negative communication beats no communication every time.
Know it’s going to take work: The healthy way to get to “Romeo and Juliet” is to think “arranged marriage.”
Have grit: Devotion. Loyalty. That’s grit. And it predicts success at the office and at home.
“Glorify the struggle”: It’s all about the story you tell. Did the conflict lead to a happy ending? Hint: it better.
Love is a challenge. But life is a greater challenge. We’d like a sure-thing that guarantees happiness and takes away all the pain. But that’s fiction.

If you’ll excuse a superhero analogy, you need to stop trying to be Superman. He’s invulnerable. But nobody is invulnerable. Bad things happen to all of us. We cannot avoid pain.

You’d be better off trying to be Wolverine. He isn’t invulnerable. But he can recover from almost any injury. You can’t live a life free from conflict but you can learn to cope with the hard times until the good times return.

And what helps you cope with the problems of life better than anything? And makes you successful and happy? “Our closest relationships determine how we respond to the toughest times in life.” Here’s Jonah:
---------end quote------

The article discusses a book titled A BOOK ABOUT LOVE and has some video clips of the author of that book.

https://www.amazon.com/Book-About-Love-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/1476761396/

The description of this book on Amazon says:

--------quote--------
Weaving together scientific studies from clinical psychologists, longitudinal studies of health and happiness, historical accounts and literary depictions, child-rearing manuals, and the language of online dating sites, Jonah Lehrer’s A Book About Love plumbs the most mysterious, most formative, most important impulse governing our lives.
--------end quote---------

And is particularly skeptical of "online dating" sites -- which make great plot-points but perhaps in "life" have not yet perfected an "algorithm."  In science fiction romance novels, you can simply postulate that some new genius hacker had naiiled that algorithm and is running a dating site that really matches soul-mates.

As of June, 2016, that would be science fiction romance -- arranged marriage using a science that is too absurd to exist, or perhaps is just dreamed of.  Lots of plots can be turned on the idea that an imaginary online dating site is defrauding subscribers.

How "science" is regarded in your built world will determine a lot of the plot and conflict, but the decision is a THEMATIC one.  Is "science" infallible?  Is a "science denier" certifiably crazy and not qualified to buy a gun? Is "science" always wrong?  Or is the pursuit of real scientific answers to "personality" and "life choices" blasphemy?

Perhaps in your world, Online Dating Site Fraud has become a political issue in a major Governor or Presidential campaign?  Government must control the internet and scrub out all false and fraudulent information -- make sure the wrong people don't get hold of the ability to, say, "3-D Print" an AR-15.

Guns and Romance mix very well, as we've seen in the film FACE OFF.

That image is an Icon, and you can create such images on purpose to symbolize your World, and the core beliefs of your Characters.  Here are some more previous posts on symbolism, icons, guns and romance:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/06/mr-ed-and-writing-great-american-novel.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding_14.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/big-love-sci-fi-part-viii-unconditional.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Art vs Tech (Art Lasts)

This is a must read paen of praise for art and culture, and especially for music, and some deep scorn from the inventors of the internet for those who say that artists must become marketers.

Please read:
https://thetrichordist.com/2016/09/25/must-read-t-bone-burnetts-keynote-address-at-americanafest/

All the best,
Rowena Cherry.

Please Sign The Copyright Alliance Petition

The Copyright Alliance has penned an open letter to the 2016 Political candidates, pointing out that the need to protect creators' rights to publish and distribute their own work and to profit from their own work is not a partisan issue.

Please read the letter here:
https://copyright-alliance.rallycongress.net/ctas/open-letter-to-2016-political-candidates/petition

If you agree with the sentiments, please consider adding your name, zip code, and email address to the petitition.

Just today, I received a telephone call from someone with a foreign accent claiming to be from Microsoft, and offering to help me since my "microsoft computer" had sent them a signal that it has been hacked.

Yeah, right!  These people will give their intended victims a "serial number" to prove that they really do work with Microsoft, and really have received communications from "your microsoft computer" but this is a number that all computers have.

The sixth thing to do when the Microsoft phone scam targets you is "Tell People". Here is a good article about the scam:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/security/microsoft-phone-scam-dont-be-victim-tech-support-call-3378798/
It is written for our British friends, so if you are not British, don't bother with the Action Fraud link. Otherwise it is helpful.

Continuing the theme of dishonesty and the internet, ZDNet put out a helpful article about ransomeware this week:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-ransomware-is-exploding-and-how-your-company-can-protect-itself/?ftag=TRE17cfd61&bhid=24357684409836269984444908372715

ZDNet also published some advice from Edward Snowden:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-allo-dont-use-it-says-edward-snowden/?ftag=TRE17cfd61&bhid=24357684409836269984444908372715

Last, but not least, you probably know that 500 million Yahoo users have had their names, email addresses, passwords, birthdays, security questions, phone numbers and more compromised.

Here's what to do asap:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-protect-your-busted-yahoo-account/?ftag=TRE17cfd61&bhid=24357684409836269984444908372715


All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Feminist Bonobos

Among bonobos (formerly known as pygmy chimps), older females often protect younger ones against male harassment:

Bonobo

This behavior is especially remarkable because female bonobos, unlike some other species of apes, typically leave home at adolescence and join other groups, so adult females in a bonobo band mostly aren't relatives. Yet they form coalitions with unrelated females. Bonobo society has been described as more matriarchal than that of common chimpanzees; males derive their status from the status of their mothers. Bonobos have a reputation as the "make love, not war" apes because their social interactions depend more on sexual overtures than on aggressive dominance displays. They've even been known to make conciliatory sexual gestures toward members of other troops rather than attacking them.

Many behaviors formerly thought to set apart human beings as unique among primates have been observed in chimpanzees, e.g., tool-using, cooperative hunting for meat, and, sadly, rape, murder, and something like war. Bonobos especially demonstrate such features as non-reproductive sex for purposes of affection and bonding, oral sex, the importance of the clitoris in erotic stimulation, same-sex erotic activity, and face-to-face intercourse. The riddle of why human females ceased to have estrus cycles becomes less significant when we learn about non-reproductive intercourse among bonobos. The status of "receptive" to mating vs. "non-receptive" turns out to be a continuum rather than all or nothing.

These apes can shed light on human social evolution. They still, however, leave unresolved the big differences between Homo sapiens and all other primates—habitual bipedalism and the loss of most body hair. We're the only "naked apes." As Elaine Morgan discusses at length in her fascinating books on the "aquatic ape hypothesis," the replacement of fur with fat is unusual only among land animals. I still find her arguments compelling, even if she may have made some errors in detail and if a few of the big problems of human development she tackles in THE DESCENT OF WOMAN (e.g., intra-species aggression, perpetual sexual receptivity) have become less problematic in recent decades.

Jared Diamond, author of GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL, also wrote THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE, which explores human evolution on the premise that an alien observer would view chimpanzees, bonobos, and Homo sapiens as three equivalent, closely related species. Diamond speculates on why our variety of "chimpanzee" evolved to become the dominant species on the planet.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Lost Fleet: Beyond The Frontier - Leviathan by Jack Campbell

Lost Fleet:
Beyond The Frontier
Leviathan
by Jack Campbell 

I've recommended Jack Campbell's space-war novels (actually several series in the same world he has built) since 2013, and I'm still recommending them considering the 2015/2016 entries in this series of series.

Here are some previous discussions pertaining to Campbell's worldbuilding in space: 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/reviews-2-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/depiction-part-6-depicting-money-and.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/07/depiction-part-16-reviews-26-depicting.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/08/depiction-part-18-interstellar-commerce.html

These Jack Campbell novels have several love stories in them -- super fantastic love stories -- and the material for a Romance is right there on the surface, but these novels are not category Romance.

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Fleet-6-Book/dp/B011M9JF1W/

I've discussed them from several different angles, all of which are salient to the Romance field in general, science fiction Romance in particular -- and even Historical Romance because Jack Campbell is doing meticulous worldbuilding.  The same worldbuilding techniques he uses apply to Romance -- though the worlds and themes might not.

He focuses on the combat, the politics, and the "bear trap" plot of a mostly regular sort of Character volunteering for a job and finding out that it entails much more than expected, leadership of an entire battle Fleet, or several solar systems.

Technically, both the Lost Fleet and the Lost Stars series are not "war stories" or even battle stories.  All of these series, including the first contact with Aliens novels, are about what happens after a 100-year war, how humans can't adjust and after 5 generations of war just do not have the cultural background to think non-war-thoughts.

This is the fabric of dynamite Romance, and it is not plagiarism to lift a concept like that from published work and run with it.  There is much more to say about how humans would relate to each other across interstellar distances.

In the Lost Fleet and Lost Stars series, Campbell has explored what would happen if Aliens (really alien aliens) discovered humanity expanding among the stars and played a high-tech game of "Let's You And Him Fight" (a situation you can rip from today's modern headlines about the Middle East).

By ripping the material from modern headlines, Jack Campbell has produced a timeless work of art.

To get that "timeless work of art" perspective, you need to read most all the books, think about them and remember them as you read on.  It is the Big Picture that shows the art.

Large portions, pages after pages, of these novels are pure narrative describing space battles between fleets of ships (a fleet is like a symphony orchestra, composed of many kinds of instruments that must be brought into play with precise timing).  These battles take place under strict and limiting Newtonian laws of motion.  The fleets maneuver for hours or days then flash by each other in split seconds at perhaps .2 Lightspeed, which requires weapons to fire by computer.

The world Campbell has built includes two kinds of FTL travel, one natural wormholes and one kind using "Gates" that people can build and put places where wormholes are not stable.  Transit is different depending on which kind of entry is used.

So fleet maneuvers can include dodging in and out of some other dimensional space.  When sitting in Newtonian space, sensors "see" only at Lightspeed -- so when ships appear on the other side of a solar system from the Fleet you are in, you "see" them appear hours and hours after they actually appear.  Computers can compensate for some Relativistic distortions, but not others.

Campbell has figured the time-delay issue into Fleet Maneuver decisions and DEPICTED the effect Newtonian mechanics and the Lightspeed limit would have on success or failure of Fleet combat.  He includes some inertial damping on his ships, but it is not perfect.  Human presence aboard limits what a ship can do when changing vector.

Here is the index to Depiction

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

What can a Romance writer learn from reading the depiction of Newtonian space combat?

Combat is a form of communication where each maneuver is a sentence in a conversation.

Sex is a form of communication where each maneuver is a sentence in a conversation.

It is very hard to learn to write great sex scenes.  Reading great combat scenes is boring to Romance writers.  Combat, fight scenes, are just plain boring.  So, since you do not get caught up in the material, do not bring a thousand assumptions to the scene, you are able to penetrate the facade of the scene down into the mechanism of the writing craft that produces the scene.

Once you can see what Campbell is doing that so enthralls his intended audience, you will be able to block a sex scene that moves your Romance Plot ahead just as compellingly as Campbell's fleet battles move his vast Interstellar Politics and Human Nature plot ahead.

In THE LOST FLEET: Beyond The Frontier: LEVIATHAN, Campbell explains (in show don't tell) how and why it is that his Hero, John "Black Jack" Geary, has no interest in taking his Fleet to the home world and taking over the government, setting himself up as emperor or something like that.  Many people want and expect him to.

In part, Campell depicts the Character of Black Jack as dedicated to the Republic model of government by democratically elected officials by showing how he befriends (in previous novels) the aliens called The Dancers (because of their ship Fleet maneuver grace), and now by how The Dancers choose to help him defeat this new enemy.

And we come to the new enemy.  It is "the enemy within" -- and enemy created by the very government Black Jack supports.

When the interstellar war against the other half of Humanity (the Syndic) was being lost, Black Jack's side created a last bastion the government could retreat to if they lost their home world. And they created a Fleet of battle ready ships, with no human crews, because they thought there wouldn't be anyone to man a fleet if the home world was overrun.

This fleet was run by autonomous Artificial Intelligence recently programmed to flight like Black Jack Geary.  In other words, Black Jack must now pit his fleet against HIMSELF.

And, in true Major Motion Picture form, Campbell brings Black Jack's win from a B story, a sub-plot, led by a Character who seemed mere window dressing (a love story distraction).  She turns out to be The Hero of the final triumph.  Yes, Black Jack wins by dint of the efforts of women who get full credit for their efforts, not just from him but from society.

By this point in THE LOST FLEET - Black Jack is married to the Captain of the flagship from which he commands his Fleet.  There's a lot of sexual tension on that bridge.

But there are two major lessons in the fleet battle scenes: A) They Occupy The Place A Romance Would Have A Sex Scene, and B) If The Battle Scenes Bore You, You Now Know Why Romance Bores Other Readers.

Note how many words each battle scene goes. Note where you lose interest.  Write your sex scenes to the length you want the battle scenes to be, and you will broaden your readership.

Beyond that, you can learn a lot about worldbuilding by noting how Campbell "reveals" bits and pieces of the entire canvas of interstellar civilization(s) he is using.  He does not tell you everything at once, does not spend pages and pages giving you information about politics, the different planets, their economic inter-dependencies etc.  If you learn any of that, you learn it by figuring it out.

Examine the entirety of all of these novels and you will see that you do not need to use everything you invent for your universe.  The reader does not have to know most of it.

Note how Campbell using a very tight point-of-view technique to show you the slice of that whole universe he's built that actually pertains to this one person's life and life-choices.

The dilemmas and conflicts that drive Black Jack Geary are clear, human, immediate and comprehensible -- even though he lives in an incomprehensible universe.

Now remember that to most of your readers, the condition of being "In Love" -- the reality that suddenly becomes tangible to those caught in Romance -- is as alien as Black Jack's interstellar civilizations are to you.

Depict and explain it to those readers in Show Don't Tell.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dishonesty And The Collapse of Moral Authority

Earlier in the week, Margaret posted about the loss of privacy in the internet age, and I happened to read her post  while I was outraged by a breach of my own privacy.

There's no turning off or opting out of the online spying by Google and Facebook, but their "targeted" and "interest-related" advertisements go too far (IMHO) when those adverts suggest that an individual is a liar, a cheat, a fraud. It is almost defamatory, isn't it?

To digress....On the other hand, there is little civility on the internet, because one has the illusion of anonymity when one can adopt an alphanumerical nickname, and can write mean-spirited remarks that one would never say to someone's face. That may be an illusion. Just yesterday, a retired spook advised everyone to put a piece of tape over the camera hole on ones computer. It's not just Big Brother who is watching you!

What kind of mindset exists in America when students cheat routinely, and businesses set up shop blatantly to facilitate cheating? Apparently, this sort of thing is tolerated, expected even. How, then, can we ever be sure that anyone is qualified for anything?

What kind of future world will we see, if humankind continues on this path? This path where the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that it would be an intolerable hardship if politicians could be punished for lying to

the electorate?

(The Obama administration allegedly presented a friend of the court brief that for candidates to lie to get themselves elected is protected speech

  http://www.alternet.org/obamas-first-amendment-defense-political-liars )

How 1984 is that?

No wonder so many science fiction novels are dystopian. Do we really want a dystopian future? Is there a non-totalitarian way to turn the tide of moral decay? Could honest people wear a futuristic version of a Mood Ring that would change color when one lies? Would it be possible to turn those podiums that political candidates grasp into lie detectors?

All the best

Rowena Cherry

References:

http://www.solitaryroad.com/a864.html


This is an older account by someone claiming to be of immigrant descent, who has seen everything from roofers, to auto repair shops, to dentists.... all cheating customers, and even to hateful food workers spitting into the food of restaurant diners.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/tolerance-dishonesty-fundamental-problem-culture.html

A discussion of tolerance of dishonesty in American society.

An expose of the cheating crisis in schools 

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=132376

and the names of businesses that profit from helping people cheat.
Scientific American has a copyrighted article describing some experiments to study the thoughts that occur before one makes an honest or dishonest decision.http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-honest-people-do-dishonest-things/

In the words of Warren Buffett, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it."

PS.  I apologize for the size of the print.

Privacy Under Siege?

Speaking of privacy, as Rowena's recent post does: Cory Doctorow's column in the latest LOCUS delivers warnings about privacy threats from the Internet and the cutting-edge "Internet of Things."

Privacy Wars

Doctorow discusses the "absurd legal fiction" of the ubiquitous "notice and consent" requirement. You know, those policy statements and conditions of use for which we have to check "accept" before we can run software or access certain web content. As Doctorow points out, nobody can really read all that stuff. To do so in detail with every device or program would eat up most of our waking hours. Yet by checking "accept," we often give permission for all sorts of tracking software to interact with our computers and phones, without even realizing we've done so. Pokemon Go players probably realize the game "knows" where they are at all times, but they accept that knowledge as part of the cost of playing the game.

I don't own a smart phone and never plan to get one (unlike my husband, who upgraded to such a device a while back). So at present my activities and movements in the physical world can't be tracked by any incarnation of Big Brother (public or private—and isn't it interesting that Orwell envisioned an all-seeing government, yet nowadays it's mainly commercial entities that observe us?). I'd direly miss the convenience of ordering from my regularly-visited websites without having the enter information every time, though. And it's a great boon, when I'm not sure whether I own copy of a certain book, to learn from a glance at the Amazon book page whether I've bought it already. To get that convenience, we have to accept cookies and all that comes with them.

Doctorow's vision of the totally connected future takes on an apocalyptic tone, as in this paragraph:

"You will ‘interact’ with hundreds, then thou­sands, then tens of thousands of computers every day. The vast majority of these interactions will be glancing, momentary, and with computers that have no way of displaying terms of service, much less presenting you with a button to click to give your ‘consent’ to them. Every TV in the sportsbar where you go for a drink will have cameras and mics and will capture your image and process it through facial-recognition software and capture your speech and pass it back to a server for continu­ous speech recognition (to check whether you’re giving it a voice command). Every car that drives past you will have cameras that record your like­ness and gait, that harvest the unique identifiers of your Bluetooth and other short-range radio devices, and send them to the cloud, where they’ll be merged and aggregated with other data from other sources."

Do you think our digital footprints will, on a practical level, become that detailed and all-pervasive anytime in the near future? What company or agency would have the time, resources, or motivation to aggregate and make active use of so much miscellaneous data? On the other hand, I agree with Doctorow that the mere fact of having all this information unguardedly accessible SOMEWHERE is frightening.

Coincidentally, in an interview in the same issue of LOCUS, Charles Stross speculates on the benefits and potential hazards of living surrounded by interactive objects. He narrates an anecdote from the pioneering days of microprocessors, back in the 1970s. Someone joked that eventually the chips would become so cheap we'd put them in doorknobs. Everybody laughed. If you've stayed at a hotel lately, you've routinely encountered computerized door locks. Stross proposes the example of replacing city sidewalk pavement with stones containing chips that have "the equivalent of an iPhone 4 in computing power." Then suppose most pedestrians are wearing clothes with radio ID tags designed to interact with the washing machine for optimal cleaning—which incidentally also contain unique identifying data. If a person collapses from a heart attack, the sidewalk could summon an ambulance instantly. But a fully networked city could also track us everywhere we go.

Forsooth, smart technology can indeed be a mixed blessing.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt