Introduction: Author Karen Wiesner

Author Karen Wiesner

Creating realistic, unforgettable characters one story at a time…

Just this past weekend I received an invitation and welcome from Alien Romances to join the prestigious line-up of authors gathered at the blog. I've known Margaret Carter since I asked her to join the popular promotional group I founded in 2003, Jewels of the Quill (featured in RT Book Reviews magazine with a revolving group of romance authors that produced 14 award-winning anthologies together in the 11 years we were together). Currently, Margaret and I are critique partners. Additionally, I met Rowena Cherry when I interviewed her for my reference titles published by Writers Digest Books. Considering the short notice, I thought it would be fitting to post my author biography in order to introduce myself.

 

In addition to the many hats I've worn in the last 25 years as a writing reference instructor and author of bestselling craft references such as FIRST DRAFT IN 30 DAYS, WRITING THE FICTION SERIES, and BRING YOUR FICTION TO LIFE: Crafting Three-Dimensional Stories with Depth and Complexity as well as a professional blurbologist (a fancy title for someone who writes back cover blurbs for authors) and a freelance editor, I'm also the author of 144 titles (19 series) which have been nominated or won 134 awards. I write in nearly every genre of fiction along with writing reference, children's books, and poetry which means I'll have a lot of material to talk about in my future here on the Alien Romances blog. Below, I've compiled a bullet list of my credits--with the genres that are the focus of this blog listed first--which I hope everyone finds interesting.  

 

Romantic Science Fiction:

 

-Arrow of Time Chronicles, Books 1-4 available now

 

Romantic Fantasy/Mild Horror:

 

-Woodcutter’s Grim Series {Classic Tales of Horror Retold}, Books 1-9 and The Final Chapter available now; Book 10 including three full-length novels coming September 2021

 

Paranormal/Horror/Ghost:

 

-Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series. Books 1-6 are now available; Books 7-12 as well as the first novella collection coming soon

 

-Single Titles "The Amethyst Star", a futuristic romance, and "Creatures of the Night", a fantasy romance, in 2-in-1 Supernatural Romance Novellas available now

 

-SWEET DREAMS, A single title romantic horror available now

 

Writing/craft reference titles not mentioned previously:

 -CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION: A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plots, and Relationships available now

-WRITING BLURBS THAT SIZZLE--AND SELL! available now

-COHESIVE STORY BUILDING (formerly titled FROM FIRST DRAFT TO FINISHED NOVEL {A Writer's Guide to Cohesive Story Building}) available now

 

Romantic Action/Adventure and Suspense:

 

-Incognito Series, Books 1-8 available now; Books 9-12 will be reissued in the future

 

Mystery (Police Procedural, Amateur Sleuth, and Private Investigator):

 

-Falcon's Bend Series written with Chris Spindler, Books 1-6 and three novella collections available now

 

-Denim Blues Mysteries, Books 1-3 available now 

Contemporary Romances/Women's Fiction:

 -Family Heirlooms Series, Books 1-6 available now

 -Friendship Heirlooms Series (Family Heirlooms Series spinoff), Books 1-7 available now

 -Peaceful Pilgrims Series (Family and Friendship Heirlooms Series spinoff), Books 1-3 and 5 available now; Books 4, 6-8 coming soon

 -Wounded Warriors Series, Books 1-6 available now

 

-Gypsy Road Series, Books 1-4 available now

 

-Angelfire Trilogy, Books 1-3 available now

 

-Angelfire II Quartet (Angelfire Trilogy spinoff), Books 1-4 available now

 

-Kaleidoscope Series, Books 1-7 now available

 

-Adventures in Amethyst Series, Books 1-10 available now; Books 11-13 to be released in the Adventures in Amethyst Trio of Holiday Romances collections in 2021

 

-Cowboy Fever Series, Books 1-6 available now

 

-Single Title Contemporary Romances "The Amethyst Angel" and "A Home for Christmas" in 2-in-1 Inspirational Romance Novellas available now

 

-Restless as Rain available now

 

Children's Books:

 

-Making Good Choices Series, Book 1 available now; Book 2 reissue coming soon

 

-KERI IS CUTE CUTE CUTE, out of print

 

-I CAN TOUCH THE SKY, out of print

 

-CODY KNOWS with Linda Derkez, out of print

 

Poetry:

 

Soul Bleeds The Poetry, Melodies, and Other Wanderings of Karen Wiesner available now

 

What a thrill to be adopted into this group. I look forward to my time here. My days to post on Alien Romances will be Fridays so I'll be back soon. I hope you'll post comments, and follow me at my author pages as well as here on the Alien Romances blog.

 

Happy reading!

 

Check out my Author Pages:

My website and blog:  https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

My Facebook author page: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

My pages at my publisher, Writers Exchange's, website: http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

and

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/

My Barnes and Noble author page: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Karen%20Wiesner

My Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

My Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

Names Not For Sale

If you have a trademark, you can prohibit your competitors from buying it as a keyword. 

For advertsing law firm Cowan Liebowitz & Latman PC, legal blogger Allison R. Furnari discusses a Second Circuit ruling that you can legally prohibit a competitor from using your business name as a keyword for online advertising.

Original link:
https://www.cll.com/newsroom-news-173059

Lexology link:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3ceecaba-da6e-4aad-a77f-708f01ad5c93

Does this mean that if an author trademarks her pen name, she can prevent Amazon or other search engines from selling her pen name as a keyword?  I wonder what the implications would be for the auction of "Buy Buttons" on Amazon.

What a can of worms that would be!

Legal Zoom has some helpful counsel by Jane Haskins Esquire on trademarking ones name.

https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/should-i-trademark-my-name

It's an entertaining and useful four-minute read.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

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

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Mind-Reading Technology

Scientists from the University of California, San Francisco have developed a computer program to translate the brain waves of a 36-year-old paralyzed man into text:

Scientists Translate Brain Waves

They implanted an array of electrodes into the sensorimotor cortex of the subject's brain and "used 'deep-learning algorithms' to train computer models to recognize and classify words from patterns in the participant’s brain activity." The training process consisted of showing words on a screen and having the man think about saying them, going through the mental activity of trying to say the words, which he'd lost the physical ability to do. Once the algorithm had learned to match brain patterns to particular words, the subject could produce text by thinking of sentences that included words from the program's vocabulary. Using this technology, he could generate language at a rate of about fifteen words per minute (although not error-free) as opposed to only five words per minute while operating a computer typing program with movements of his head.

Training the program to this point wasn't easy, apparently. The course took 48 sessions over a period of 81 weeks. Still, it's the closest thing to "mind-reading" we have so far, a significant advance over techniques that let a patient control a prosthetic limb by thought alone. According to Dr. Lee H. Schwamm, an officer of the American Stroke Association, “This study represents a transformational breakthrough in the field of brain-computer interfaces."

Here's an article about an earlier experiment in which a paralyzed man learned to produce sentences with "a computer system that turns imagined handwriting into words" at a rate of 18 words per minute.

Mindwriting Brain Computer

The hardware consists of "small, implantable computer chips that read electrical activity straight from the brain." The subject imagined writing letters in longhand, mentally going through the motions. At the same time, the scientists "recorded activity from the brain region that would have controlled his movements." The collected recordings were used to train the AI to translate the man's "mindwriting" into words on a screen. Eventually the algorithm achieved a level of 94.1% accuracy—with the aid of autocorrect, 99%.

While those programs are far from literal telepathy, the ability to read any thoughts that rise to the surface of a subject's mind, they still constitute an amazing advance. As long as such technology requires hardware implanted in an individual's brain, however, we won't have to worry about our computer overlords randomly reading our minds.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Bad Stuff

Disclaimer: Comcast has been down for the last 3 days with no end in sight, so I am limited. Bad weather!

Bad Actors: Goodreads.com is a site for readers and thick-skinned authors. Allegedly, there is now a problem with "review extortion" by a few bad actors.

Goodreads assures us:

"As part of our commitment to supporting our community of readers and authors, we are currently investigating a small number of bad actors who have attempted a reviews-based extortion scam against some authors on Goodreads. We do not tolerate this kind of behavior. If you have any information that might help us in our investigation, please contact us using our Contact Us form (www.goodreads.com/about/contact_us). Thank you for your help as we continue to protect the authenticity of our reviews and protect our community."

 

Bad Contests:

Writer Beware warns would-be entrants of writing contests to read the rules and regulations before signing up and submitting.

https://accrispin.blogspot.com/2021/07/how-bad-contest-entry-rules-can-be.html

Bad Contracts:

And Victoria Strauss also warns eager writers about some really bad and binding terms:

https://accrispin.blogspot.com/2021/07/bad-contract-alert-bytedances-fictum.html

There is talk that Huffpost may be rather slow to pay for content it has accepted. Again, the wise

writer will read the terms and conditions carefully and if the site says to submit an invoice within 90 days, be sure to do so.

Bad Investments:

Writers Weekly catalogues a number of allegedly bad investments in promotional products and services. Some may disagree with some of the panned ideas, but it is well worth reading the article.  There is also a list of promotional efforts that do work.

https://writersweekly.com/angela-desk/what-not-to-buy-for-book-promotion?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=writersweekly-com-112119_67

On the bright side....

Writers Weekly pays for content, and is currently looking for it, and will pay $60 for 600 words. Follow the link for necessary information.

https://writersweekly.com/this-weeks-article/need-articles-08-12-21?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=writersweekly-com-112119_67

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

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

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Handling Editorial Feedback

Kameron Hurley's latest LOCUS column focuses on how to evaluate feedback from editors:

When Should You Compromise?

Her guiding principles are "Understand the story you are trying to tell" and "Be confident in the story you're telling." In the revision process, keep the theme, the emotional core in mind; "figure out what your story is about, and cut out anything that isn’t that – and add only bits that are in support of that story." The way she describes her process, she seldom argues with editors to justify her choices. She accepts the suggestions that take the story in the direction she wants it to go and disregards the rest. If "you don't know what the book is," she cautions, you may find yourself trying to revise in accordance with every criticism you get, even those that contradict each other, and end up in a "tailspin."

She also says she typically has to "write a significant number of words" to figure out what the story is really about. That statement slightly boggles me. Shouldn't that figuring-out happen in the outlining phase? Granted, however, many authors consider outlines constraining and need the exploratory process of actual writing in order to accomplish what "plotters" usually do in prewriting.

I've hardly ever had to grapple with the kind of overarching plot and character edits she discusses. Maybe any of my fiction that had serious problems on that level has been rejected outright, or maybe I've been fortunate enough to work through any such problems at the pre-submission stage with the help of critique partners. Most often, my disagreements with editorial recommendations have concerned details of sentence structure, word choice, and punctuation. When the latter kinds of "corrections" arise, house style usually rules, no matter how I feel about it. I consider the "Oxford comma" indispensable, but one of my former e-publishers didn't allow it except in rare cases. Worse yet, they didn't want commas between independent clauses. I gritted my teeth and allowed stories to go out into the world punctuated "wrong" by my standards. On other stylistic issues, I sometimes agree with the editor and sometimes not. If the disagreement isn't vital to me, I usually let it go to save "fights" for instances where the change makes a real difference.

Most editors, if not all, have personal quirks and fetishes. I had one who insisted "sit down" and "stand up" were redundant and wanted the adverbs omitted. Really? Do most people invite a guest to take a seat with the single word "Sit" as if speaking to a dog? I gave in except when a word indicating motion was definitely needed. Another declared that "to start to do a thing is to do it," so one should never state that a character is starting to do something. Then how does one describe an interrupted action without unnecessary wordiness? The small-press editor who published my first novel told me up front that they didn't permit reversing subject and verb in dialogue tags; if I wrote "said Jenny" instead of "Jenny said," they would automatically change it, no argument allowed. That house rule didn't bother me, although I never found out what he had against the reversal; maybe he thought it sounded too old-fashioned.

That book, a werewolf novel, was the only fiction project on which I've faced big-picture editing such as Hurley discusses. The editor warned me that the manuscript would face a merciless revision critique, which indeed it did. The pages came back to me covered in emphatic handwritten notes. I balked at only a few of his revision suggestions and went along with the vast majority. The two I remember clearly: I refused to write out the heroine's stepfather, because I felt the story needed her little sister, who couldn't exist otherwise. I kept more of the viewpoint scenes from the heroine's long-lost father, the antagonist, than the editor wanted me to delete, and later I wished I'd retained still more. (I re-inserted a little of that material when a later published reissued the book.) The result slashed the original text by almost half. The editor wrote back in obvious shock that he hadn't really expected me to make ALL those changes. Huh? How was I to know that, with (as I felt) my first chance for a professionally published book-length piece of fiction at stake? The acerbic tone of his corrections made no distinctions to indicate which changes were more important than any others.

Although I was generally pleased with the final result, I suspect the situation was, as Hurley puts it, a case where the editor "was reading (or wants to read) an entirely different book." The publisher was a horror specialty small press, and what I was really trying to write, most likely, was urban fantasy, although the term hadn't yet become widely known at that time. The editor remarked that the protagonist was the least scary werewolf he'd ever seen. Well, I didn't mean for her to be scary, except to herself. Her father, a homicidal werewolf, was intended as the source of terror. I saw the protagonist as a sympathetic character struggling with an incredible, harrowing self-transformation. The editor also didn't seem to care much for the romance subplot, which I kept intact, not wanting the heroine to appear to exist in a vacuum and already having trimmed a couple of workplace scenes at his request. In fact, I wanted to write something along the line of Anthony Boucher's classic novelette "The Compleat Werewolf," a contemporary fantasy with suspense and touches of humor, which of course (as I recognize now) didn't fit comfortably into the genre conventions of horror. Anyway, the publisher produced a nice-looking trade paperback with a fabulous cover, and I remain forever grateful for their giving me my first "break"—not to mention getting me my one and only review in LOCUS!

In any case, Kameron Hurley's closing remark deserves to be taken to heart by any author dealing with either critique partners or professional editors: "The clearer you are about the destination you want to arrive at, the easier it is to sift through all the different directions and suggestions you get from people along the way."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Big Bad Fox. (ii)

The Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare, had the sad and cynical Jacques explain that all the world is a stage, and all people are actors, acting out predestined parts.

Jacques, by the way, can be a homophone for "jakes", which in Shakespeare's day was a synonym for a privy or toilet.

These days, all the world is a henhouse, jealously guarded by self-appointed foxes.

The Copyright Alliance is asking all creators (writers, musicians, photographers, artists, film-makers) to email members@copyrightalliance.org if their copyrighted works have been "shared" without permission on Facebook.  The copyright advocacy organization wants to obtain a good anecdotal database of the scope of copyright infringement on Facebook, and of the types of works exploited, and of how responsive Facebook is to notifications of infringements, and whether or not its "Rights Management" tool is effective. 

 

It is easy and free to join the copyrightalliance. 

https://copyrightalliance.org/get-involved/creator-membership/

"Streaming" rips off residuals and hurts the keys and grips and below-the-line union workers. Disney is alleged to be merrily breaching contractual agreements. Chris Castle explains.

https://musictechpolicy.com/2021/08/06/ddayan-is-the-only-journalist-who-gets-the-deep-implications-of-scarlett-johanssons-streaming-lawsuit-against-the-happiest-place-on-earth/

There's an Orwellian irony about the term "consent decree".  Forced consent is not really consent, is it? Chris Castle reports on the issue of permissionless representation, where the rights and payments of all the song writers in all the world are being carved up by a small, apparently predatory elite who allegedly have no rights at all to negotiate on behalf of copyright owners whom they have never met, never consulted and with whom they almost certainly have no contract.

No one elected those foxes, or so the claim seems to state.

https://musictechpolicy.com/2021/08/05/frozenmechanicals-crisis-comments-of-helienne-lindvall-davidclowery-and-theblakemorgan-to-the-copyright-royalty-board/

"Inauthentic Activity" is a thing on Facebook. They define what constitutes "inauthentic activity", and to prevent what they deem to be inauthentic activity, they will shut it down and delete it. Criticizing Facebook is inauthentic activity, apparently, so say says Sophie Zhang.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/facebook-whistleblower-sophie-zhang-severance

In 2014, apparently, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that employers do not have to pay employees for activities before or after the "principal activities" for which they were hired.

Something has changed. Maybe employers explopited that decision, and added a great many mandatory, onerous and time-consuming peripheral activities at the beginning and end of the working day. Amazon lost in July in Pennsylvania.  Appl;e may face a similar issue.

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-paying-millions-to-workers-over-bag-check-lawsuit-2021-7

There is a site called GetHuman that offers a secrret customer service # for Amazon: 1 888 289 4331 which mikght be useful for authors and other copyright holders who need specific assistance beyond the capabilitties of a bot reading from a script.

The first Copyright Claims Board has now been seated.

https://copyright.gov/newsnet/2021/906.html?loclr=twcop

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

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

RoboDogs

Is the public ready for a RoboDog on the police force? New York City, Honolulu, and the Dutch national police force have tried a robotic police dog nicknamed Spot, created by Boston Dynamics:

Useful Hounds or Dehumanizing Machines?

In connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, these automatons have scanned people for fevers and conducted remote interviews with positive-testing patients. In Belgium, one was sent to check the site of a drug lab explosion. Utlity companies can use them "to inspect high-voltage zones and other hazardous areas." They can also "monitor construction sites, mines and factories, equipped with whatever sensor is needed for the job." A representative of the manufacturer points out, "The first value that most people see in the robot is taking a person out of a hazardous situation.” On the negative side, some critics worry about weaponization of robots, especially under the control of the police. Another company, Ghost Robotics, has no qualms about providing similar robot dogs to the military. While Boston Dynamics tries to promote its product as friendly and helpful, some people worry about the potential for "killer robots" employed by police departments. The issue of human rights with regard to robot police dogs brings to mind Asimov's robot stories, with the Three Laws to limit the potential for harm, as well as governmental hyper-caution demonstrated by a prohibition against deploying robots on Earth.

An article exploring why Spot, renamed Digidog in New York, didn't work out well there:

The NYPD's Robot Dog

The design of the "dog," with its "very imposing profile," the way it moves, and the context of its use influenced the public's response to it. At a time when police departments were facing increased criticism about officers' interactions with civilians, Digidog was taken into a public housing project, where it exacerbated the "very big power imbalance that’s already there." It's proposed that the reaction to Digidog might have been more positive if people had seen it used for jobs such as bomb disposal or rescuing victims from fires. Also, science fiction has created stereotypical expectations of what robots are and how they function, ideas both positive and negative.

I find these machines a little disappointing because they don't live up to my idea of a true robot. The animatronic hounds can't act on their own. At most, when ordered to move in a particular direction, they can navigate stairs or rough terrain without being micromanaged. Spot can act autonomously "only if it’s already memorized an assigned route and there aren’t too many surprise obstacles," a long way from science-fiction robots that can receive broad commands and carry out all the necessary steps without further guidance. Also, the robot "hounds" don't look much like real dogs. Why weren't they given a canine appearance, with fur as well as other animal-like features? Wouldn't people accept them more readily if they were cute? Maybe, as hinted in the article linked above, that was part of the problem with their failure in New York. Surely they could be made more pet-like without falling into the uncanny valley of "too" realistic.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Group RX For Writers

If you are a member of Authors Guild or SFWA, and based in the USA, you have until August 15th, 2021 to find out if LIG Solutions might be right for your health care needs.

SFWA links:

https://ligmembers.com/sfwa/

https://www.ligsolutionsrx.com/

AG link:

https://ligmembers.com/authorsguild/

If you are not a member, there might still be time to join.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

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

The Internet of Trees

An old song laments, "I talk to the trees, but they don't listen to me." Apparently, however, trees listen to each other. Some of them communicate among themselves by means of a symbiotic fungus connected to their roots:

Plants Talk to Each Other

Mycelia—thin threads that make up the underground portion of mushrooms, far more extensive than the part we see aboveground—"act as a kind of underground internet, linking the roots of different plants." In a symbiotic relationship, mycelia that colonize the roots of plants "help the plants suck up water, and provide nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen," while the host plant supplies the fungus with nourishment in the form of carbohydrates. The fungus also enhances the host's immune system. In addition, through their mycelial connections some plants "help out their neighbours by sharing nutrients and information – or sabotage unwelcome plants by spreading toxic chemicals through the network." By transferring nutrients such as carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen, large trees have been found to "help out small, younger ones using the fungal internet."

The article compares this network to the global communication among trees in the 2009 movie AVATAR. The fungal internet also brings to mind Clifford D. Simak's 1965 novel ALL FLESH IS GRASS, which portrays an invasion by a "planetwide biological computer that works through photosynthesis," manifesting in the form of purple flowers, as discussed on this website:

Intelligent Plants in Science Fiction

Do plants in fact have some form of intelligence? A few scientists think they might, according to this article about plant neurobiology:

New Research on Plant Intelligence

Of course, plants don't have neurons. They do, however, display reactions analogous to memory, learning, and response to stress. Their roots shift direction to avoid obstacles without coming into physical contact with the obstruction. Experiments have shown plants producing defensive chemicals when they "hear" a recording of a caterpillar eating a leaf. So it all depends on what we mean by "intelligence."

If we visited a planet dominated by a global hive-mind composed of sentient trees, would we be able to communicate with it? Or would the time scales on which our thought processes operate be too different for mutual comprehension?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

APP Your Peril

Can an app wreck your life?

Apparently, so. From Electronic Freedom Foundation to RedState, dark cautionary tales abound. At bottom, it is data brokers to blame, and you really cannot stop them. Even if you pay them to remove your info, it seems to get re-upped with regularity.

You can be wrongly tagged as a terrorist, and you have little recourse, as Cindy Cohn explains a Supreme Court ruling.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/supreme-court-says-you-cant-sue-corporation-wrongly-marked-you-terrorist

You can gaily go around town browsing online for so-called sinners to seek out and perchance to save, and be judged.

https://redstate.com/streiff/2021/07/23/powerful-catholic-priest-outed-by-his-grindr-app-data-may-be-an-omen-of-more-to-come-n415535?utm_source=rsmorningbriefing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=6fed806fc43048eb10861e86d69f2ada

Time was, if you had a Ring in your door, you could be subpoenaed by the police. Now, at least, the use of your app to surveille your street may be voluntary... if you use another Amazon app. Matthew Guariglia has it covered.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/ring-changed-how-police-request-door-camera-footage-what-it-means-and-doesnt-mean

Matthew Guariglia assembled a horrifying graphic and article to demonstrate the thirteen wonderfully overlapping ways that unlucky urban citizens are watched by Big Brother. It really is a must-read compilation, and --even better-- it includes some suggestions on how to fight back.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/graphic-overlapping-infrastructure-urban-surveillance-and-how-fix-it

Legal bloggers Carrie Dettmer Slye and Julie Singer Brady for Baker & Hostetler LLP discuss (doubtfully) whether all this tracking and spying and brokering of data may meet the standards necessary for class action lawsuits.

https://www.bakerlaw.com/alerts/panning-for-litigation-gold-in-1s-and-0s

Pandora's box was filled with apps, it seems.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

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

No Time Like the Present?

What accounts for the current fad of present-tense narrative in fiction? Most of the time, it makes my teeth grind with annoyance. Even a recent urban fantasy novel by Charles de Lint veers onto that strange byway. The traditional convention of writing fiction in the simple past demands no mental contortions from the reader. Its familiarity makes it "invisible," allowing the story to come through unfiltered from the author's mind to the reader's, or at least producing the illusion of unfiltered immersion in the story. Present tense draws attention to itself and away from the characters and plot, until the reader manages to shift mental gears and adjust to that technical oddity.

Now, the writer might have an artistic motive for purposely directing the audience's attention to the narrative technique itself. Even so, in my opinion, doing this for a longer span than a short story is usually so off-putting as to defeat any such purpose. I can think of a few circumstances when present-tense narrative serves a legitimate function: In the case of an experience told in the first person by a protagonist of horror or suspense, writing it in the present could avoid the near-certainty that the narrator will survive until after the end of the adventure. Unless he's speaking from the afterlife, the reader will assume that if he narrates in the past tense, he lived to tell the tale. Another reason for the use of present tense by a first-person narrator might be that the narrator's mind is somehow clouded or she has some other cause for extreme confusion. Present-time narration could give the impression that she's groping her way through a strange environment. Also, I've read a few novels with lots of flashbacks that distinguish in-story past and present by alternating the verb tenses accordingly. And, of course, if a text is framed as a diary or series of letters, parts of it might legitimately consist of a stream of consciousness in the present. In the case of the rarely used second-person narrative voice, past tense—a blow-by-blow account of what "you did"—might sound peculiar unless (as in an effective horror story I once read) the "you" has amnesia and the story is telling the protagonist about his or own past experiences in an attempt to awaken memories. Present tense therefore has some advantage in a second-person narrative.

Fiction written in the second person, however, foregrounds the narrative technique itself so emphatically that it seems to me suitable only for short stories. At novel length, I'd think it would be intolerable. Many years ago, I read a horror novella I liked very much, except that the whole thing was told in second person, present tense. That choice still puzzles me, unless the author hoped it would draw the reader into the deepest possible intimacy with the protagonist. It seems to me that the writer was taking a serious risk; readers might be repelled by the narrative voice, viewed as an annoying gimmick. I was enthralled enough by the plot that I stuck with it despite the odd style of narration, which combined two distracting techniques in one story.

What do you think of present-tense narrative? Legitimate writing tool, a pointless variation from the norm that hampers suspension of disbelief, or something in between?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Influence This

If we publish, we promote. There's no avoiding it.

If we have assistance, increasingly, it has to be willingly given (or subcontracted), and the willingness has to be properly defined with waivers and contracts.

We cannot --or should not-- snag or take an image of a famous person or character, and exploit it without permission for our own profit and fame.

Take broadly smiling Borat, for example. Or to be more precise, do not take Borat.
https://ipandmedialaw.fkks.com/post/102h2vi/borats-subsequent-litigation-lawsuit

Edward H. Rosenthal, blogging for for Frankfurt Kurnit Klein + Selz PC   discusses a variety of copyright-related claims brought by the actor Sacha Baron Cohen against a Massachusetts based Cannabis dispensary which used his image as the Borat character on a billboard, in total disregard for Mr. Cohen's rights, reputation, and feelings.

Motorists glimpsing the billboard might be given the false and misleading impression that Mr. Cohen willingly and probably profitably endorsed the dispensary's product.

As Edward H. Rosenthal points out, "No matter how this one turns out, it is very risky to make commercial use of a celebrity's image...."

For what it is worth, it is probably risky to profit from any photograph or video taken of an unwilling subject.

Most authors have blogs specifically for marketing/promoting our works.

David O. Klein  of   Klein Moynihan Turco  LLP  has some very good advice about using blogs and social media for marketing which is well worth reading.
https://kleinmoynihan.com/promotional-marketing-concerns-associated-with-online-and-mobile-media/

Beware of posting fake or paid reviews of your own work. Or of someone else's work!

Proper disclosure will protect the blog or website owner from the appearance of deceptive marketing. Bloggers are not expected to be paid spokespersons.  Is this a concern for hosts of blog tours?  Presumably, it is not, if the hosts are not paid, but what if they are paid?

Mr. Klein's focus is not an authors, but he summarizes the most interesting updates too the FTC's  Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. 

Authors must disclose clearly and quite prominently what the author stands to gain in connection with writing/posting same.

Also, "The guidelines also make clear that fake testimonials are strictly prohibited and, when using an authentic testimonial, the blogger or writer must not edit or change it from the original in any material way."

What does that do to the long-standing tradition of taking the most fulsome "snip" from a lengthy review?

Not many authors can afford to hire an influencer, but, if one does so, one must do it right. 

Marcus Lee  blogging for  Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP offers six great tips for engaging an influencer.

https://lewisbrisbois.com/blog/category/labor-employment/top-6-legal-issues-for-influencer-agreements

And also three things to consider if hiring a model
https://lewisbrisbois.com/blog/category/labor-employment/three-things-to-consider-before-hiring-models-for-your-marketing-campaign

Finally, from the UK, legal blogger Astrid Arnold representing Stevens & Bolton LLP  shares a bit of good British news for someone who contributed mightily to the development of a movie, but did not get credit or a fair share of the writing royalties.
https://www.stevens-bolton.com/site/insights/articles/getting-the-right-credit-on-imdb
  

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

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

Monopolies and Interoperabilty

Another LOCUS article by Cory Doctorow on monopolies and trust-busting:

Tech Monopolies

He begins this essay by stating that he doesn't oppose monopolies for the sake of competition or choice as ends in themselves. He cares most about "self-determination." By this he means the individual consumer "having the final say over how you live your life." When a small handful of companies controls any given field or industry, customers have only a limited range of products or services to choose among, preselected by those companies, even if this limitation remains mostly invisible to the average consumer. Not surprisingly, Doctorow focuses on this constraint as imposed by Big Tech. He recaps the growth of "the modern epidemic of tolerance for monopolies" over the past forty years. In the present, technology giants tend to crush small competitors and merge with large ones.

To some extent, this tendency—e.g., the situation Doctorow highlights in which everybody is on Facebook because everybody else is, in a feedback loop of expansion—provides a convenience to consumers. I'm glad I can find just about anyone I want to get in touch with on Facebook. As a result of such "network effects," a system becomes more valuable the more users it has. As a reader and a bibliographer, I don't know how I'd manage nowadays if Amazon didn't list almost every book ever published. I resent the brave new broadcasting world in which I have to pay for several different streaming services to watch only a couple of desired programs on each. I LIKED knowing almost any new series I wanted to see would air on one of our hundreds of cable channels. (Yes, we're keeping our cable until they pry it out of my cold, dead remote-clicking hand.) On the other hand, I acknowledge Doctorow's point that those conveniences also leave us at the mercy of the tech moguls' whims.

Half of his article discusses interoperability as a major factor in resisting the effects of monopolies. Interoperability refers to things working together regardless of their sources of origin. All appliances can plug into all electrical outlets of the proper voltage. Any brands of light bulbs or batteries can work with any brands of lamps or electronic devices. Amazon embraces interoperability with its Kindle books by allowing customers to download the Kindle e-reading app on any device. Likewise, "all computers are capable of running all programs." For self-published writers, services such as Draft2Digital offer the capacity to get books into a wide range of sales outlets with no up-front cost. Facebook, on the other hand, forecloses interoperability by preventing users from taking their "friends" lists to other services, a problem that falls under "switching costs." If it's too much trouble to leave Facebook, similar to the way it used to be too much trouble to change cell phone providers before it became possible to keep your old phone number, consumers are effectively held hostage unless willing to pay ransom in the form of switching costs (monetary or other).

Doctorow concludes, however, with the statement that the fundamental remedy for "market concentration" isn't interoperability but "de-concentrating markets." Granting a certain validity to his position, though, how far would we willingly shift in that direction if we had to give up major conveniences we've become accustomed to?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Recipe For Disaster?

Sharing favorite recipes is a great way for authors to reach new audiences, and ever so subtly to promote a book that perhaps mentions a particular dish.  Often, authors will get together to publish a multi-author recipe book, or blog series.

Can that get one into legal hot water?

That depends. A published recipe is generally fair game if treated as a list of facts... that is, the list of ingredients, and the sequential list of actions necessary to assemble, mix, and otherwise prepare those ingredients.

However, it would not be prudent to lift several consecutive recipes from the same publication. Just as a photographer can copyright a photograph because of the unique choices made by the photographer about light quality, angle, shadow, time of day, exposure, and other ephemeral elements, so the creator of an anthology of recipes makes unique and artistic choices about what to include and in what order.

One is asking for trouble if copying and publishing someone else's images of the ingredients or the dish. Much better to take ones own photographs (and copyright them in bulk). Try to use unique and original illustrations.

Unique and original words are always good to use in the description and specification of ingredients and in the instructions... assuming that the unique words are your own.  Perhaps avoid the appearance of a product endorsement of a trademarked kitchen implement, even if you do use a miniature hockey-stick/mashie (golf-club) hybrid to fold, lift and pummel your pastry.

Canadian law blogger Kiera Boyd  for Fasken offers some interesting "Takeaways" on whether or not recipes are protected by copyright in Canada, also insights into US case law. 

https://ip.fasken.com/tag/canadian/#page=1

 

Katharine Stevens, partner at the UK law firm Bird & Bird LLP, discusses intellectual property rights in recipes and food (in the UK), with especially interesting analysis of trade secrets and patents for unique creations.

https://www.twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2020/uk/intellectual-property-rights-in-recipes-and-food

 

For the aptly-named Chip Law Group (pardon the pun) Pramod Chintalapoodi covers specific samples of food trade secrets, food patents, food trademarks, recipe copyrights in the USA and offers great tips for those who would write about other peoples' recipes.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=93e4b81e-69d8-4b6b-9254-d55599bc3eaa

The original is an AWS document.

Watching the movie Julie & Julia from a copyright enthusiast's perspective, it is not so hard to understand why Julia might not have been a fan of Julie.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

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

 

PS. Publishing early owing to past and expected power cuts.

Educating the Passions

Over the July 4th weekend, columnist David Brooks wrote about the importance of storytelling:

America Has a Great Story to Tell

Skipping past the explicitly political content, I was particularly impressed by the discussion of "propositional" (intellectual) knowledge versus "emotional and moral knowledge." Brooks quotes 18th-century philosopher David Hume: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” My first reaction, as many readers' might be, was, "Huh?" But Brooks goes on to explain:

"Once you realize that people are primarily desiring creatures, not rational creatures, you realize that one of the great projects of schooling and culture is to educate the passions. It is to help people learn to feel the proper kind of outrage at injustice, the proper form of reverence before sacrifice, the proper swelling of civic pride, the proper affection for our fellows. This knowledge is conveyed not through facts but through emotional experiences — stories." I would add, by the way, that poems and songs perform the same function. Think of "America the Beautiful" or "This Land Is Your Land," to name only two examples.

The importance of educating the passions (i.e., emotions) forms one of the core messages of C. S. Lewis's THE ABOLITION OF MAN (1943). He adopts from Plato the metaphor of the human personality being composed of three parts, the head (reason), the chest (spirit, in the sense of emotions), and the abdomen (basic appetites). Reason should rule the whole person, including appetites and desires; however, it does so, not directly, but through the "chest." One of the chapters in THE ABOLITION OF MAN, in fact, is titled "Men Without Chests." The "proper" attitudes alluded to by Brooks develop not through intellectual study, important as that is, but by osmosis, so to speak, permeating a child's world-view before he or she has any idea what's happening. And that happens through implicit assumptions that may never be explicitly stated. For instance, in Lewis's book he analyzes passages from a pair of English textbooks for pupils at British elementary schools (as we'd call them). Both of them convey the underlying, taken-for-granted idea that there are no such things as objective values. The authors of the texts may not have even consciously realized that's what they were doing. Lewis covers similar ground in his PREFACE TO PARADISE LOST, where he refutes the disdain of one of his contemporaries for "stock responses." The attitudes and emotions dismissed by some critics as "stock responses," Lewis maintains, are not innate and automatic. They have to be deliberately shaped through years of growth. Good preconceptions as well as bad have "got to be carefully taught" (to quote the song from SOUTH PACIFIC).

As writers, we should be heartened to recognize the vital importance of stories in that process.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Downside of Anonymity

Privacy is very important to many individuals, creators, artists... and erasing privacy is highly profitable for crooks, advertisers, copyright infringers, data miners, evil-doers.

In 2018, legal bloggers J. Alexander Lawrence and Siena Sofia Magdalena Anstis  for Morrison Foerster LLP sent a warning flare over the bows of  pirates who surfed the internet. 

https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2018/01/09/anonymous-internet-users-beware-a-new-presumption-in-favor-of-unmasking-the-losing-anonymous-defendant/#page=1

 

Lawsuit losers may lose their anonymity. Also, copyright infringement is not protected "speech".  It's well worth re-reading.

Then, there are witnesses who wish to be anonymous: whistle-blowers, or persons who are not so proud of their private lives that they want judge, jury, and court reporters to know the details of who offended whom with an allegedly offensive comment. The jury is still out on this case.

UK lawyer Michael Halsey, blogging for the law firm VWV  discusses sympathetically the arguments for accepting anonymous testimony in British employment law.

https://www.vwv.co.uk/news-and-events/blog/employment-law-brief/fair-witness-anonymity

 

And then, there's Banksy. 

Jennifer Heath, blogging for  D Young & Co explains why Banksy's preference for anonymity cost him his standing to sue for trademark infringement.

https://www.dyoung.com/en/knowledgebank/articles/trademark-banksy-anon

 

On the same issue, senior art law associate, Becky Shaw, on the Boodle Hatfield "Art Law & More" site discusses what the Banksy trademark losses mean for street artists at large.

https://artlawandmore.com/2021/06/30/banksy-loses-trademarks-but-protects-anonymity-what-does-this-mean-for-street-artists/#page=1

The bottom line appears to be that creators of all stripes cannot sue those who infringe their copyrighted works as long as the creators are unwilling or unable to give up their anonymity. Or, to be pedantic, artists can sue, but it appears that they cannot win.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry   

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

 

Talking with Aliens

When extraterrestrials visit our planet, or vice versa, will we be able to communicate with them? This article discusses the issue of learning alien languages:

If We Ever Came Across Aliens...?

Many linguists and psychologists maintain that the human brain is hardwired with a universal grammar. All human languages we know are built from variations on a few basic structures. Would intelligent beings who evolved on other worlds share the same innate grammatical structures we've developed? If not, an unbridgeable chasm might exist between the two species. The other theoretical framework, the cognitive view of language, places more emphasis on meaning—concepts and semantics—than on sentence structure. In that case, we might expect any sapient creatures to share certain "building blocks" of meaning. The difference between these two theories brings to mind the two main SF approaches to telepathy. In one view, mental conversation works like silent talking. The people communicating telepathically have to understand a common language. So there's no possibility of immersing oneself in another's mind and learning things he or she doesn't want to reveal. In the other approach, whole concepts are transferred from one brain to the other, and the receiver "translates" the transmitted thought into terms he, she, it, or they comprehend.

The article mentions the possibility that inhabitants of other planets might communicate in sound ranges inaudible to us. However, we might find more radical differences. Suppose the aliens' language consisted of flashing lights, bands of color, carefully modulated odors, or hand (or tentacle or pseudopod) signals? They might not recognize our mouth noises as attempts at communication. In CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, an incident in the early life of orphaned Cro-Magnon child Ayla illustrates problems that might occur even between two human subspecies. The Neanderthal shaman, trying to teach Ayla the Clan's language, worries because she's so slow to catch on. Maybe she's mentally impaired? Meanwhile, Ayla wonders why he keeps waving his hands around, distracting her from hearing his words. The breakthrough occurs when she realizes hand signals constitute the core of the Clan's language, with oral speech in a secondary role.

The classic story "A Martian Odyssey," by Stanley G. Weinbaum, features a friendly alien whose language doesn't contain words with any fixed meaning. Every sentence is unique. While I can't quite visualize how that would work in practice, it's a fascinating idea. In one of the most thought-provoking episodes of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, Captain Picard deals with a species who converse in metaphorical allusions to cultural myths and legends. (As I've heard someone mention—probably Jean Lorrah—this mode of discourse can't be their only language; at the least, there must be a children's dialect for communicating with offspring too young to know the metaphors. Also, in my opinion they have to possess a straightforward denotative dialect for scientific and technical use.) In Robert Heinlein's BETWEEN PLANETS, the highly intelligent dragons of Venus wear electronic devices that translate their mode of communication into grammatical sentences in a Terran language. (In the case of the dragon who becomes a friend of the hero, it's English, of course.) I have faith that no matter how aliens converse, we'll figure out ways to bridge the linguistic gaps.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt