Rampant Disinformation

Victims' rights lawyer Carrie A. Goldberg, author of the book, "Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls", shared an article with TheTrichordist.com recently.

https://thetrichordist.com/2019/10/08/guest-post-by-cagoldberglaw-scared-as-hell-section-230-denies-access-to-justice-not-free-speech-protection-via-musictechpolicy/

It seems that American law protects Big Tech publishers of untruthful speech, even if it is harmful speech, doxxing, or something akin to revenge porn... as in the case she describes of a vengeful ex impersonating his former lover on an online dating site.

Writing for Australian audiences and the law firm Gilbert + Tobin, legal bloggers Alexander Ryan and Andrew Hii discuss deep fakery, and the reality that if a deep fake is used to defame a victim, the conventional defamation defense (that the damaging information is true) cannot be used.  It is a fascinating discussion of criminal deception and disinformation.

Lexology version:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=757d4839-4281-4d84-b7be-016daaf8c378

Original article:
https://www.gtlaw.com.au/insights/disinformation-takes-new-face-deepfakes-current-legal-landscape

In the USA, some legislators have introduced a bill, The Deep Fakes Report Act of 2019, to look into the growing problem of technology that can generate videos of people appearing to do things they never did, and recordings of people saying things they never said.

Lexology version:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5bb08f69-33ee-4e83-ab06-efce0ae20079

Wilmer Hale original version:
https://www.wilmerhale.com/en/insights/client-alerts/20190702-bipartisan-group-of-legislators-unveils-bill-to-address-threat-of-deepfake-videos

Meanwhile, we cannot believe our eyes or our ears.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

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

Why Does Writing Get Harder?

Kameron Hurley's latest column tackles the question of why writing fiction gets harder instead of easier with experience:

Why Does Writing Get Tougher?

Some reasons she suggests: With greater experience, we can more easily identify the flaws in our works. With this realization, we recognize the need to edit more meticulously. "There was a time when I could burn through a writing session on full steam without pausing to review." Now, though, she explains that aspiring to create novels with more complex structures makes it impossible for her to write that way. "Leveling up" in writing skill also becomes harder the longer we've been doing it for a reason that's obvious once it's pointed out: The first improvements can be made in giant leaps. As one's skills grow, one runs out of large, obvious ways to improve them. Later stages of growth come in smaller increments. The closer one gets to the ever-retreating goal of perfection, the smaller those increments become. So of course the process feels more arduous. "Holding oneself to a high standard makes each subsequent book more difficult." Hurley connects the craft of writing to the ability to recognize patterns. As we get better at that task, we can have confidence that even if the work gets harder, producing a better book is possible, because we've done it before.

Her answers to the question, "Why does writing get harder instead of easier the more we do it?" can be collectively summarized in her concluding statement, "Writing books gets tougher because we become better at it."

My own feeling about this problem roughly corresponds to Hurley's answer, although she doesn't frame it in quite the same way. I think writing has become harder for me than in my teens and early twenties because then I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't notice when my characters behaved unrealistically or the plot fell off the "because line." My story ideas excited me (it probably helped that I didn't realize how not-original most of them were), and words flowed as fast as I could get them onto the page, whether by typing or handwriting. (Now I shudder at the thought of the latter; my fingers and wrist cramp with pain after scrawling a page or two.) Now that I have a computer to minimize the physical labor and make it easy to correct typos and insert changes, my writing should have become even more fluent, shouldn't it? Alas, no.

I do think my writing has improved over the years, not only from practice and passage of time but because the word processor enables me to make revisions, including very minor ones, without no worries about whether they're significant enough to justify retyping a page. The whole process has become slower and more painstaking, though, rather than easier, as Hurley says she's heard from every writer she has discussed this issue with. Like the centipede who's paralyzed when he stops to think about which leg to move first, I now know too much to compose with the "first fine, careless rapture" of my teens. I can't escape noticing my errors and weaknesses or recognizing the problems in plotting and characterization that need to be solved. It's a bit like hearing from my physical therapist that, since I'm doing all right with the current exercises, she plans to add harder ones in the next session. "Leveling up" does make creative work tougher.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Mysteries of Pacing Part 3 - Punctuated by Plot Twists

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 3

Punctuated by Plot Twists

Previous parts in the Mysteries of Pacing series:

Part 1
  https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html

Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-2-romance-at.html

We're going to talk a little about Diana Gabaldon's OUTLANDER series,

as I assume you've all read the novels. If not, you've seen the TV Series.  I prefer the TV Series, but the entire story hits a nerve.  So think about what it takes to create a series like Outlander, and how to turn it from Fantasy Romance to Science Fiction Romance -- or maybe use it to found a new genre.

When first drafting, often pacing is the last thing you think about.  First you just need to TELL THE STORY.  You need to "get it out" so you can look at it and see if it is marketable anywhere.  Before you know who would want to read this story, you need to know what the story is.

To get a grip on what the story is, you might have to write it all, or just a scene or maybe just a character sketch, a bit of dialogue in a bar weeping over drinks and telling the bar tender the tale of woe.

But that isn't where the NOVEL starts.

The novel that can sell to a specific imprint starts where the two forces that will conflict to generate the plot (the because-line; the "what happens next" ) first crash into each other and divert the life-paths of your protagonists -- and best of all, divert the life-path of the antagonist.

In other words, the novel BEGINS (and choosing a Beginning is the determining factor in the PACING) where the Plot kicks off the Story.

In these blogs, I stick to the following definitive difference between the terms Plot and Story.

Plot = External Conflict Resolved by sequence of deeds causing events which motivate deeds; the because line of what happens next

Story = Internal Conflict Resolved by the effect the events have on the Characters changing understanding of how the world works, and the emotional import of shifts in understanding

Plot and Story conflicts should RESOLVE in the same Plot Event.

In the opening, the plot kicks off the story, and in the ending the story absorbs the impact of that kick.

In the Ending of a novel, the "world" of the protagonists has changed for them, their perception of it, and the world's perception of them.

Conflict is the essence of story - and story is the essence of change.

Readers are captivated by what happens between the kick and the integration of that impact into lives.

In other words, the essence of real life is "How do you roll with the punches?"

People read to find out how other people deal with problems.

Watching real people, you only see the outside, and you can only interpret that outside by your own inside assumptions about reality.

Reading good novels gives you the chance to use an alien set of assumptions about reality to interpret Events, try different responses, and arrive at different destinations.

So to frame a novel to write, first find a kick, a punch that is common enough to be recognizable as a punch, yet at the same time different enough to be interesting.

That punch is the kick off of your plot.

The next pacing problem to tackle is "who" gets kicked.

"Who" the protagonist is determines the assumptions in place that the kick must call into question.  It's always the protagonist who gets kicked and the antagonist who does the kicking, but the novel always opens on the protagonist's action which triggers the kick.

In fact, that is the definition of "protagonist" or Main Character, or Hero.  The active force that aims and energizes the trajectory of the plot is the protagonist.

The reactive force that is driven by the protagonist's action is the antagonist (or obstacle which the main character must overcome to achieve a goal).

This setup of protagonist as "active" and antagonist as "passive" is the only one that leads, plausibly and inevitably, to a genuine HEA not an HFN, or happily for now.

Correctly identifying the protagonist (Hero we root for), the antagonist (Villain we root against) and the moment in their lives where they first clash, is the bit of world building that fabricates a reality in which an HEA is plausible and even inevitable.

In everyday reality, most people can't see their own lives from a perspective which allows for identification of the forces at work, shaping their lives by their own actions.  Real life is a stew of cross-currents and muddy waters, along with what seem like random events and overwhelming odds.  We look to fiction to clarify the muddy waters.

The Artist's job is to see life from a perspective that does reveal the forces and counter-forces that shape personal life, group life, and even the lives of Nations.  But seeing is not enough.  Writing is a Performing Art, as Alma Hill taught me.  The Artist's job is to see, and the Artist's job is not done until that Vision is transmitted.

The novelist paints in emotional colors.

But the Characters feelings are responses to the plot-kicks predicated on the Characters ideas of how the world works.

Story is the step-by-step change in the Characters understanding of how their world works.

Plot is the step-by-step response of the world to the Characters actions.

Mostly, humans (maybe not your Aliens) fuel their actions with emotion.

I've worked with many other professional writers and editors team teaching new writers who want to go professional, and every one of the professionals has had, and applied, this distinction between plot and story.  However, very seldom do such professionals agree on terminology.  Most have learned, or figured out, the distinction I've sketched here on their own, and invented their own terminology.

The terminology doesn't matter.  The underlying concepts do matter.

The core of PACING lies in the interaction between plot and story.

For example, if Characters too fast, too completely, without internal conflict wrestling with emotional matters, the reader will feel as if they are reading a Comic Book (not a graphic novel).  If a Character faces an Event that contradicts their entrenched world view, and just summarily (within minutes) adopts a different world view and suffers no consequence to the emotional-violence, no adult reader will believe that Character is a person.

As humans, we wrestle internally, resist to the death, and suffer (and inflict) pain to avoid changing our minds.

Faced with the impossible, we just don't see it, don't incorporate it into our next action.

In other words, in everyday reality, we dismiss anything that doesn't fit our entrenched world view.

Novels are about a Character who completes the process of changing an entrenched world view from first kick of Reality to final adoption of a new way of seeing the same thing.

In other words, beginning and ending are symmetric, and that symmetry is part of the Artist's toolkit for convincing the skeptical reader that these Characters have achieved the Happily Ever After, not just Happily For Now.

Misery, in fictional characters and real people, is caused by a mismatch between Objective Reality and Subjective Reality.

No human (that we know of) has a Subjective Reality identical to Objective Reality.  But each life-arc, if lived out to the full, has at least one, sometimes two, hard course corrections (kicks from an external source) that bring Subjective Reality perceptibly closer to Objective Reality.

We "live" in subjective reality, and so the philosophy that states there is no such thing as objective reality is very popular.  Objective just doesn't exist for most people.

Several times in ordinary life, we get kicked by objective reality, come face to face with the facts of life, and must change our subjective assumptions.

Story is about the successive steps in that shifting subjectivity that leads closer to objective reality (HEA) or farther from objective reality (HFN).

The Happily For Now ending implies another kick is gathering force to explode into this halcyon situation.

Happiness is not real.

For happiness to be real, there must be an element of certainty, of unchanging stability, of concrete reality.  That sense of rest on certainty comes from the AHA! moment when subjective reality shifts closer to objective reality.  That moment of SHIFT is the ENDING of that Character's story.

Whether that Character is the Hero of a single novel or a series of novels depends on how many steps the Character needs to transform from where she was at the Beginning to where she needs to be for the HEA Ending.

Sometimes, it takes ten novels to bring a Character to a new understanding.

It is possible to take too many tiny steps for a given audience, or too few large steps for a different audience.

In other words, how many steps and how large they are, as the protagonist adjusts his/her subjective reality to match objective reality, is entirely genre specific.

In Science Fiction, readers who are themselves professional scientists, tend to encounter an aberrant factoid, ask questions, fabricate experiments, observe results, try to get others to repeat the experiment with the same results, then just -- "Oh, well," accept the result and change their view.

So, to the science fiction readership, Romance genre does not seem plausible because the main characters don't accept proven results.

As Romance Characters suffer internal doubts and wring their hands, science fiction readers scoff and toss the book aside.

Plausibility, immersiveness, is a result of pacing.

How long does it take, how many steps, what size steps, does it take to get the Character to change perceived reality and act on the new perception.

In Romance, that's the final, "I love you," declaration in the Will You Marry Me ending.  What does it take to convince a Character of love?

In Alien Romance, what if your Alien has no cultural reference for Love, and no concept to which to relate "I love you?"  How does a human woman teach an Alien to understand reality as containing the dimension "love?"

Very likely, the answer is the human woman doesn't teach the Alien.  The Plot Twist does the teaching.

A plot twist is the sudden unexpected, highly improbable, Event that redirects the plot toward a new goal, or strategy.  The "that changes everything" event.  Such as, two lovers are marching into city hall to get married, and suddenly the radios are blaring WAR HAS BEEN DECLARED - and World War Two twists their lives into new directions.

A plot twist is sudden, shocking, immensely significant, and changes the reader's vision of what the ending will be.

A plot twist is not a new problem, an obstacle, detour, side-trip, or delay in the plot's development.  A plot twist is objective reality intruding into the subjective realities of the protagonists and becoming a major factor in decision making.

For example, as above, War is declared, or a key Character is assassinated, or a secret diary is discovered, or a long-lost family member turns up (an alternative heir, a dependent, or someone needing rescuing).  An expected pregnancy can become a plot twist.

A plot twist must hit the reader as a complete shock yet once it appears, the reader thinks, "I should have seen that coming."

So a good plot twist has to be foreshadowed, but never telegraphed.

When a plot twists, it must redirect the story.

The Characters have to draw upon their inner resources to meet the sudden new demand.  They must "do the right thing" (and bid a brave goodbye while marching off to war; give the family fortune to the new stranger-relative; have the baby anyhow).

To be a good plot twist, the event must pressure the Characters to adopt a new world view, to include something in their subjective reality that they previously rejected.

In modern Fantasy, that's often shapeshifters, demons, fae, or other supernatural beings.

In science fiction, it's often First Contact with an Alien from another solar system, or perhaps another dimension.

The foreshadowing that works best is built into the world that showcases the Characters.  A plot twist is usually what the Characters least expect, and have proceeded to plan and act as if it so unthinkable it was never thought of.

For example, in The Ghost And Mrs. Muir, the ghost haunting the house is not part of the Reality until he appears.  And then the whole plot twists to become about their Relationship.

Where in the plot your twist should appear depends on the audience you are aiming for.

If you're writing action oriented science fiction, the plot twist will likely be the mid-point of the novel.  This would be a discovery, or knowledge of a distant event arriving, right where the plot sags, where the characters pause to catch their breath and think things over, and causing the Characters to ditch their carefully crafted plans and race against time to the Ending.

The plot twist can, at the mid-point of a novel, serve as a "raise the stakes" moment, when more lives are suddenly at risk.

To craft an HEA ending, you need to craft a mid-point where all is lost, where the Characters decide to give up, if not in despair then in noble sacrifice.  But the Twist whirls them into a totally new calculation, they can't give up, must survive to save more lives.  At the 3/4 point, they're beaten, and at the end they triumph.

Plot twists can also be effective at the 3/4 point where decisions have been made and a point of no return passed.

Plot twists don't work well at the Ending, though, because either the reader sees it coming for too long, or to prevent that, you've left out the foreshadowing and the external event seems contrived, deus ex machina.

Wherever you place your plot twist, it is a vital part of the pacing.  After the twist, the Characters must redouble their efforts to achieve the goal.  That means the opposition, the antagonist redoubles efforts, too.

This increased effort increasing the pacing - makes the story go faster, makes the reader read faster.

Description and exposition slow pacing, so all the visuals of the settings you want to use and all the explanations of what is going on and why have to be sprinkled as tiny pieces into the narrative before the twist.

The plot twist has to reveal something about their reality that the Characters could not or would not encompass before this event.

The concept of Soul Mates presupposes the objective reality of the Soul.

Fate, Luck, Destiny, -- "we were destined to be together"  -- presupposes an objective property of Reality that interacts with, perhaps overrides, the Soul and individual will or free choice.

Luck, sourceless and random, without meaning, is often used as a Plot Twist.  For example, OUTLANDER, the Scottish historical romance by Diana Gabaldon, starts as World War ends allowing sundered marriages to rejoin. Claire's experiences have made her a different woman, and her man likewise has changed.  By accident, she touches a standing stone in the Highlands, and is wafted back in time a couple of centuries when the ancestor of her husband is an evil villain.

In a science fiction romance, the entire plot would be all about figuring out how that stone does time-travel, gaining control of the mechanism, and returning to her own time, very possibly as a twist, bringing her Scottish Laird husband with her.  The focus would not be on a modern woman's irritable response to being treated as chattel.  The focus would be on the physics driving the mechanism of time travel, while the romance would be a knotty complication.

The natural plot twist to a science plot about time travel would be the sudden, irrefutable discovery that the superstitious drivel spouted by the natives living near the standing stones had an actual basis in cold reality.

For example, the locals think there's a sprite, or pagan gods, or some entity playing havoc around those stones -- but Claire the Scientist from the future does an experiment to determine if that's true (maybe to bribe the sprite into returning her) and discovers that it is in fact an Archangel sent by the Creator of the Universe specifically to inculcate a Soul level lesson in her.  As she has resisted so successfully, the Archangel resorted to time travel to teach this lesson.

The Twist would be the introduction of real supernatural creatures to this Outlander world building.  As written, the supernatural is just religion, things people believe.  And that is underscored by the children's adventures visiting a ruin and eating a plant that appears to be the benign native plant, but is in fact an interloper, and poisonous.  In that adventure, Claire uses science to see through the illusion of superstition.

This establishes that in that world, the supernatural is not part of objective reality, but it is part of subjective reality.

This is the raw material of the Plot Twist.  The firm belief in the supernatural that is only subjective suddenly gains objective manifestation, proof positive.

In this case, the supernatural the locals believe in is what we call superstition, fairies.  But they also believe in the Christian God, in the Bible, and won't allow any challenges to that belief.

In Outlander, the series, the priest tries to exorcise the child who poisoned himself, thinking the poison is a possession acquired at the ruins.  Nobody dares challenge that priest.  Later, after Claire cures the poison, the priest apologizes publicly at her trial for being a witch, saying she was correct that the problem was no possession.  But he doesn't say possession is not a real thing.

In that world, Christianity and Superstition are inextricably mixed.

A plot twist can separate them, put a whole new frame around the concept of time-travel-via-standing-stone, and give your readers a new idea of what life and love are about.

To pull this kind of twist off, you need to establish the real elements of your world as you build it for the reader.  Gabaldon used "love" and "magic" to get readers to suspend disbelief long enough to plunge Claire into Scottish politics.

The opening sequences with her modern husband serve to answer the question "how did she, a nurse, know all this Scottish history and lore?"  In the course of showing, not telling, where she learned all she knows, we learn a lot about who she is.

Actually, a woman born about 1918 would not have had the spunky attitude toward her new Scottish husband when he whipped her bare bottom for disobeying him.  Men beating their wives into submission was common even in the USA at that time, even the women who won the war as nurses, pilots, riveters.  In the Appalachians, it has persisted as a common habit.

So Claire's 21st Century attitude in ancient Scotland just doesn't "work" dramatically.  It is too implausible.

What would make it plausible?

The introduction, by plot twist, of an Archangel sent by the Creator of the Universe to administer a soul-level-lesson to Claire.

Why would such an Archangel be sent?  Well, we've seen enough of Claire's personality that we could easily imagine that, had such an Angel been sent to teach her to be more compliant to her husband (maybe not to become a front lines trauma nurse?) but failed, and instead she acquired 21st Century attitudes (Angels don't fail like that, so we know there's more going on than meets the eye), the Archangel in charge that failed Angel would have to take a hand in schooling Claire.

Well, to pull off such a plot twist (the time-travel-stone is not magic, and not Alien science, but an Act of G-d), we need a Theory of Angelic Hosts Organization and Structure.

There are many extant, from all kinds of Christian, Pagan, and Jewish sources, and I expect the Muslim sources abound with great source material.  You can construct a plot twist using any of them, or one you make up.

If you make up a whole new theory of Angelic Hosts that you want readers to have the patience to pretend has credibility, you'd do best by learning a few of the theories people do know, or believe.

The Bible is full of source material for three major religions, so it is a good springboard for world building the majority of readers world-wide could understand.

Here is a short article on Archangels.

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3825092/jewish/What-Are-Archangels.htm

-----quote--------
Note that, unlike people, angels cannot multitask. That’s why G‑d had to send three separate angels to visit Abraham—each one was tasked with a separate mission: one to bring Abraham the news of Isaac’s impending birth, one to overturn Sodom, and one to heal Abraham.2

And although people can have multiple modes of serving G‑d—love, awe, etc.—when it comes to angels, each one has its own specific form of Divine service that does not change.

Michael and Gabriel: Fire and Water
In the Midrash, Michael is called the “prince of kindness (chessed) and water” and Gabriel “the prince of severity (gevurah) and fire.3” Thus, Angel Michael is dispatched on missions that are expressions of G‑d's kindness, and Gabriel on those that are expressions of G‑d's severity and judgment.

However, as we explained earlier, angels don’t multitask. Therefore, although Michael may be the chief angel or “prince” of chessed, he has many underlings, angels that work under him and represent a service of chessed.

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

So maybe the Angel who failed to impart the exact lesson to Claire worked for Michael, so it was up to Michael to repair the damage.

So maybe Michael's plan was to waft Claire back in time to meet a prior incarnation of her husband, and by comparison learn just how VAST a change can be wrought over a few lifetimes - from cruelty to gentleman.  She needs to make a Soul  level shift of that magnitude.  She is his Soul Mate, and needs to stay in step with him.

Or possibly, this novel would be about how Claire impacts the Soul of this prior-incarnation of her husband, and turns him into the gentleman he is in the 20th Century.

But of course Claire, being Claire, goes and marries the Fraser Laird.

Angels, even Archangels, it says in that article are not terribly flexible.

What would Michael do?

That deed is your Plot Twist - it would reveal the objective reality of Angel-kind to humankind, and thus upset the course of History.

Or would it?

Scots are famous for knowing things others around this planet don't know.

In other words, the Plot Twist is how the science behind the time-travel-stone is actually mysticism, or Soul Science - the science of the immortal soul.

The series would trace the journeys of several Souls through incarnations, shepherded by the extremely frustrated Archangel.

Using Angels as Characters is not new. It's been done often on TV, sometimes well.  So you need a new theory of what an Angel is, and how they become involved in individual Soul development.

You need a scientific theory of what a Soul is, and how (or if) it changes, reincarnates, etc.  You need a theory of what an Angel is, what an Archangel is, and what the limitations might be.

In addition to that bit of world building, you need a theory of what a human being is.  We make so many assumptions, thinking we know what we are. Do we?

And in addition to all that, you need a theory about what Life is, whether Destiny, Fate, etc is real, and whether free will is real or in any way free.

Gathering all those pieces, you can drop your Characters into the mix and let them discover what you have determined is objective reality.

Here is an item that meshes perfectly with the article on What Is An Archangel, called "What Is Divine Providence."  The Hebrew term for divine providence or supervision of this world is Hashgacha, and hashgacha pratit means the very personal and individualized involvement of the Divine in our individual lives.  Hashgacha implies a two-way interaction between Creator and Creation -- e.g. you can argue with your Creator and sometimes add a plot twist to your life's path.

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1409433/jewish/Hashgacha.htm

This article barely scratches the surface, but does outline the argument (conflict) between whether the Creator leaves the creation to run like a machine, or keeps molding and re-designing as we go along.

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

Jewish philosophers, however, saw G‑d in a more passive role. To them, the degree of divine supervision corresponds directly to one’s transcendence of earthly matters. A tzaddik is wrapped up in G‑d’s supervision in every detail of his life, whereas a coarse, materialistic person is cast into a world of haphazard, natural causes along with animals and flora. In this lower realm, the philosophers see hashgacha applying only insofar as an event affects the divine plan. Yet, even according to this view, “chance circumstance has its source in Him, for everything stems from Him and is controlled by His supervision.”4

The Baal Shem Tov is credited with the reintroduction of the idea of hashgacha pratit—detailed divine supervision of every occurrence and every creature. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, one of the foremost early proponents of chassidic thought, articulated a rational basis for this view, linking hashgacha to another vital theme in Jewish thought, continuous creation.

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

Other traditions put their own subjective twist on these ideas.

Think about the Time Travel By Love And Magic concept, and see if you can find a mechanism for Time Travel that would make a basis for Science Fiction Romance.  The plot would have to be driven by probing, exploring and conquering the mechanism of time travel, even if that means making friends with a frustrated Archangel whose purpose for existence is to be kind.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Signature Abuse

Have you noticed that email signature "files" are exploding?

Authors have long used the space below their name for self-promotion. In addition to a tag line and urls for websites, there may be banners, .gifs, cover art,  lists of current releases, quotes, awards, and quotes.  Estate agent, and lawyers, and CPAs do it, too.

Some email providers limit the number of lines that can be auto-added to every outgoing email. Some online forums try to limit the size of sig files.

There is an etiquette.
https://www.syntaxis.com/email-signature-files

There are also risks.
https://superuser.com/questions/1075497/are-eml-attachments-a-security-risk
This week, an alien eml file caused me first embarrassment and then consternation. I politely requested some business information that I had not received. It could have been a royalty statement (it wasn't). Someone who could have been my agent (but wasn't), sent me an email with 4 attachments. Two were unnamed small-KB attachments that I ignored, and two were labeled MB files, obviously containing the info which I had not previously received.

I replied to thank the man who forwarded his copy of the info, and noticed in the email stream of my reply two sig files from a stranger named Wanda that seemed to suggest that she had sent me these files the same day, and that I had in fact replied to her email providing the info I wanted  with my claim that I had not received that info.

Those small-KB attachments turn out to have been eml files. They did not just "populate" the email sent by Wanda to my male correspondent. They also populated his fwd, and they populated my reply to the man although I did not include any attachments.

In times when emails are considered legal documents, proof of contracts, or of credibility or of incriminating contact with persons one swears one has never met or corresponded with, the ability of other peoples' eml files to infiltrate your clean stream is problematic.

Lesson learned. Always read through your email stream

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

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

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesda

blah

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Bait-and-Switch Book Beginnings

Stephen King's latest novel (which I consider one of his best recent works), THE INSTITUTE, starts with a long section from the viewpoint of a secondary character (who doesn't reenter the story until close to the end). It then switches to the protagonist, a 12-year-old boy with a slight degree of psi power who gets kidnapped by the titular Institute. Both characters are deeply engaging, and their separate stories end up skillfully meshed. It's Stephen King, so it works! Nevertheless, spending that much space at the beginning of a novel on a secondary character before even introducing the protagonist is definitely not what most readers expect.

What I think of as "bait-and-switch" narrative is common enough, in a modest way, with suspense and horror fiction. Such novels often start with a brief introduction of a character whose main purpose is to get killed. (A regular reviewer of the SUPERNATURAL TV series used to call this type of victim "doomed teaser guy.") Even in those novels, however, I feel sort of cheated if the author allots too much wordage (more than a few paragraphs or at most a couple of pages) to a doomed character. The writer has fooled us into mistaking this short-lived person for the protagonist, luring us into an emotional investment in her or him, after which we have to start all over getting engaged with a new character.

The sense of being "baited and switched" can pose a difficulty with prologues. If the prologue focuses on a character other than the protagonist of the main text, we may feel as if the author has started the book twice. We get all excited about the prologue's main character and may feel let down when he or she disappears or fades into the background in favor of a different focal character for the story as a whole.

Some readers may feel "baited and switched" by the entire opening volume of George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. While I wouldn't say I felt cheated, I was certainly shocked by that first exposure to his "anyone can die" authorial strategy, when the man I assumed to be the protagonist of the entire series didn't survive to the end of the first book.

Assuming this kind of shift at the beginning of a book is sometimes justified, how can an author pull it off so the reader won't feel tricked? Or lose interest when the focus switches to a different viewpoint character after the opening scenes have lured us into caring about the character first introduced? It's a little different, although still potentially tricky, when a narrative repeatedly switches perspectives throughout, presenting scenes through the eyes of two or more equally important viewpoint characters, as Martin's series does. In reading such a text, I sometimes have trouble getting back up to speed, emotionally, after each switch.

This let-down feeling doesn't have to result from a change in viewpoint characters. Long ago, I read a book intriguingly set in an alternate present where supernatural creatures exist openly, and social and economic structures are accordingly different from those in our primary world. The protagonist is a private detective who works with supernatural-related cases. (At that time, this worldbuilding concept was new and uncommon, not a familiar trope as it is nowadays.) In the first chapter, the protagonist deals with a vampire in a very funny scene. "Oh, goody, a cool vampire novel," I thought. Alas, nary another vampire in the entire book, although it wasn't a bad story on its own terms. Granted, this kind of problem isn't necessarily the author's fault. Other readers less vampire-focused than I might not assume from the first chapter that the point was to launch a vampire plot rather than (as it actually was) to introduce the protagonist's profession. Still, in my own case, I approached the rest of the story with a negative bias as soon as I realized my initial assumption had been mistaken.

Then there was the bait-and-switch of a successful chick-lit novel called MUST LOVE DOGS, whose inciting incident has a friend persuading the protagonist to place a personal ad in a dating venue. The friend gets her to include "Must love dogs" as a way of attracting nice guys, although the heroine doesn't have a dog and knows almost nothing about the species. Between the title and the inciting incident, I was expecting a romance with, you know, lots of dog content. Nope. The story soon leaves that premise behind. Maybe I would have felt less cheated by the plot if the inciting incident hadn't been combined with the title and a dog-centered cover (neither of which might have been the author's fault, admittedly, especially the cover illustration).

Do you feel "baited and switched" by these kinds of abrupt turns in a novel? And, as an author, how do you handle them if you have reason to write them?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Mysteries of Pacing Part 2 Romance At The Speed of Thought

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 2

Romance At The Speed of Thought 

Part 1 of this series is:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html
and is about how digital assistants can now read the text you type back to you aloud.

OK, it's not a dramatic reading and is paced very slowly compared to how a reader reads a book to themselves without subvocalizing.

But it can help a writer spot grammatical and stylistic quirks that could well annoy most readers.

In learning to "pace" your storytelling, you are both adopting a style (or Voice) and targeting a readership.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

I don't know if there have been any studies of genre-taste vs I.Q. or any other measure of "intelligence" currently being tested.

But I do know that Science Fiction originated as "The Literature of Ideas" written by scientists for scientists as the recreational play-time for the extremely intelligent.

If you survey the early days of Science Fiction, you will find Ph.D. attached to the names of writers quite a bit more often than in other fiction genres.

It was once thought women had generally lower I.Q. than men.  Consider that!  Today, employers are having a hard time getting women interested in learning "coding" (computer programming), and nobody really knows if that's cultural, genetic, I.Q. or gender-related.

Today, with the extreme emphasis on "equal opportunity" and equal pay in the workplace, we are striving with all humanity's might to erase differences among us.

In the early years of Science Fiction, the fans of the genre (who were actually, also the writers) repeated the mantra, "Different is dead."

For the most part, fans and writers considered themselves socially rejected because they were different from the majority.

What is that difference?

Nobody knew then, and until today, as far as I know, it has not been defined.  It isn't I.Q.

However, we saw the same pattern among the devoted and active fans of STAR TREK.

There is a quality of some sort that distinguishes this tiny slice of humanity.

It may be 1%, but I think the slice is more like 10% who read at least one novel a year.

I have also seen the persistent statistic that book-buyers, readers in general are only about 5% of the total population even in a Literate country like the USA.  Books just aren't the central interest of most people.

Among those who center their lives around novels, reading, writing, publishing, reviewing, book clubs, and associating with people who have read the same books, there is a vast difference in taste in entertainment.

Some read Chemistry textbooks, or the encyclopedia for fun.

Some read best selling, popular fiction -- Tom Clancy, Stephen King -- things you see made into action-packed films.

Some prefer cerebral mysteries - who-dun-it or procedurals, open and closed.  Some prefer relax by concentrating on solving the puzzle of the mystery, and some prefer to solve the puzzle of Romance (e.g. What Does He See In Her?)

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

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-1-whats.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-2-whats.html

And some, of course, read Romance.  Among readerships, Mysteries and Romance are the biggest categories, though Westerns used to rank with them, all trailed by Science Fiction.  Times have changed, as have the very definitions of what constitutes each of these genres.

But one element that unites all genres is that each genre has a unique style preferred by its readers.

Historicals can use long, involuted sentences, flowery language, and obscure names for articles of clothing, all slowing down the reader's eye, tripping up the mind, evoking images.  Mysteries have to "play fair" with the reader, not hiding the facts needed to solve the mystery, but obscuring them amidst many irrelevant words.  Westerns have to be terse, action packed, and fast paced as does Science Fiction.

Each imprint within a genre has a preferred style.  In Romance, for example, certain imprints require a certain number of sex scenes with a particular amount of nudity and explicit description.  So which publisher you aim to sell to determines a lot of the style you must mimic or adopt.

I have not been able to identify a certain level of intelligence (I.Q.) common to readers of particular genres.  But studies you can find on Google have identified connections between scores on I.Q. tests with reading speed.

Google turns up this interesting statistic:
---quote-----
The average person in business reads no faster than people did 100 years ago. The average reading speed is 200 to 250 words a minute in non-technical material roughly 2 minutes per page.
-----end quote-----

The average screenplay films about 1 minute per script-page.

If it's true that reading speed goes as I.Q., then higher I.Q. individuals would likely tend to read faster, even when reading fiction.

I suspect that no matter your I.Q., you can train yourself to speed-read with fair comprehension (in any subject area you are well familiar with), but you can read faster than your emotions can biochemically shift.

In other words, reading fiction, especially Relationship based fiction, has an upper speed limit dictated not by word-comprehension-speed, but by the body's ability to produce emotional responses.

So the writer aiming at an audience of I.Q. 130+ people would have to use a lot of words to showcase a given emotional pitch.  You don't want the reader to zip through a scene and not feel the impact even while fully comprehending what happened.  It's like watching a movie on Netflix where the lips don't sync with the sound-track voices.

Aiming for an audience of I.Q. 90 people, the writer would use fewer, sharper, smaller words to depict the high impact emotional scenes so the reader doesn't have to read as fast to keep the emotional sweeps in sync with the words.

The objective would be to get the rise and fall of emotional tension in the story to match the reader's progress through the words.  A match like that would produce the greatest, most memorable, and most talked about reading experience.

So which kind of story should naturally engross which kind of I.Q. readership?

What material do you aim toward which I.Q. segment?

Would the story that entertains a low I.Q. person also enthrall a high I.Q. person?

Science Fiction, as I noted above, is the Literature of Ideas, of hypothesizing about abstractions.  Romance is about imagining the Happily Ever After.  Both are about making those abstract imaginary situations into concrete Reality.

Genre publishers have focused science fiction on making scientific advancements real via war, explosions, mayhem.  Romance publishers have (hitherto) constrained Romance genre to non-violent relationships.

All of those constraints have been lifted, especially with small publishers, and self-publishing via electronic means.  The Gatekeepers no longer have a gate to keep.

As a result all sorts of exploration is currently in progress, novels pouring out online, looking for readerships.

Here is a graphic that purports to depict the social spectrum by I.Q.  This is a result of meta-analysis of data collected over many decades, now being re-analyzed in ways that weren't possible when the data was collected.

The methodology and results are sketched in this article:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html

Which, near the top, has a note [see illustration] which is a link leading to this graphic:

http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfredbox2.html

This article explains a factor of Intelligence called g.  Just the letter g.

This entire thesis on human I.Q. may be completely wrong, or have no actual basis in reality, but it gives us a jumping off place to start thinking about the market for our fiction, and how the target reader chosen affects the style that will work best for the story you want to tell.

This graphic, with a breakdown of percentages of a given I.Q. level by social and Relationship activity, may give you an idea of how to Target an Audience by giving you an idea of what activities feature prominently in that Audience's common experience.

For example, the legend of the graph shows that 0% of young white men of  I.Q. 130 have been incarcerated.  Only 9% have been divorced within 5 years of marriage. Only 10% have been out of work for a month.  But only 5% of the total population has an I.Q. of 130.

Note the scale doesn't show all the way to I.Q. 200, but I've known people of I.Q. 220.

The I.Q. 130 slice of the white male population may have been poor for a while, but they don't LIVE IN poverty.

Only 2% of I.Q. 130 women have had illegitimate children.

And 0% of I.Q. 130 dropout of High School.  College might be a different story - as there are way smarter ways to make a living than getting a degree that makes you "over-qualified" for the most fun stuff you want to do.

Look at the line that says Career Potential and think about those 4 segments as you choose a readership to target.

To get the most book sales, you need to target a bigger readership.  The number of people under the middle of the distribution curve is that bigger readership.

So to sell a LOT of books, you need to target Clerks, Tellers, Police Officers, Machinists, and Sales people.

Notice how "Chemist" (e.g. scientist) is over the I. Q, 130 section of the curve -- that's where you find the preponderance of dedicated, avid, talkative, networked, science fiction fans.

There aren't enough to support a publishing imprint under the print-warehouse distribution model.  Certainly not enough to support a blockbuster film, or a TV Series that are just too expensive to make.

Hence purveyors of the Literature of Ideas have to include an element in the story that will entertain everyone down to I.Q. 90 -- for which purpose they have chosen "action" which is easy to understand but hard to actually do.  Very few fans of Action Genre are physically fit enough to perform the feats of speed and strength the Hero of the story executes routinely.

However, also notice that Romance, while as a genre has become focused on the more highly intelligent woman with the education of an even more intelligent person, still appeals to everyone across the spectrum.  Note also that these highly intelligent, over-educated women gravitate to Romance genre reading during the years when they are raising children (i.e. performing the duties of food service worker and nurse's aid 24/7).

Now, when you combine Science Fiction with Romance, you get a new genre that has the "reach" to engross I.Q. 130 and above, all the way down to I.Q. 90.  In other words, "Romance" acts as the "Action" ingredient to broaden the reach.

Explain the life-experience and point of view of one segment of this population to the other segments using Characters from the various segments, and you could find you have written a Classic.

The article which this graph illustrates only pertains to YOUNG and WHITE ADULTS in the U.S., so don't expect any rule to hold true across the real population.  There will be scatter blurring the categories.  Just see if you can absorb the implications and use them to extrapolate how the arrival of Aliens From Outer Space might impact these social segments differently.

Which segment might accept a human having an affair with an Alien?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Words Matter... As Do Spelling, Punctuation, Grammar

Which is correct, "inalienable" or "unalienable"?

This aposite quiz for this particular alien romances blog is posed by legal blogger
Elizabeth Scott Moïse writing for Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough LLP. in a fascinating article about the origins of the O.E.D.

https://www.nelsonmullins.com/idea_exchange/insights/the-scrivener-word-up

or

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7ecde481-056d-4b18-85a0-4d6949aa00c3&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-09-25&utm_term=

There are many more multiple choice vocabulary perfection tests, so please check it out.

Also worth reading: the argument presented by Authors Guild on why permissionless captioning is wrong and dangerous and not in the interests of culture and authors' rights.

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/the-authors-guild-files-friend-of-the-court-brief-in-audible-captions-case/

Any traditionally published author, who has spent multiple hours striving with copy editors, editors and proof readers to perfect spelling, punctuation and grammar will understand how distressing it could be to see well-crafted script reduced to phonetically generated "captions".  Any reasonably well read person who has turned on the captions function on television should see the potential problems.

AG is most persuasive.

Finally, and nothing to do with Sp/P/G, the 2015 Fresh Fiction hack has something in common with Groundhog Day.  No matter how many times one changes ones passwords, it seeems, the hacks persist.

If you are not actively videoconferencing with someone, cover up the camera eye. Then, when/if you receive a well-written email from a shady someone trying to prove their bona fides by revealing your latest Fresh Fiction password, you will be less likely to believe that they truly have infected your device and taken naked pictures of you.  Don't even open that email.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Animal Minds

I recently read two books by ethologist Frans de Waal, ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE? and MAMA'S LAST HUG, respectively about animal cognition and emotion. ("Ethology" means the study of animal behavior.) They're very lively as well as informative, drawing upon a lot of the author's personal experiences. De Waal makes a sharp distinction between emotions and feelings. He defines feelings as internal mental phenomena we can’t know unless the individual describes them to us. Emotions, on the other hand, are observable in the form of biological changes that can be described and measured. Through unbiased observation of nonhuman animals, he maintains, we can't avoid noticing that they have emotions similar to ours. Therefore, it's not a stretch to believe they have inner lives and consciousness analogous to ours. If we assume certain reactions by our human peers mean those people are experiencing the same internal states we experience when we react that way, it's at least a reasonable provisional hypothesis that the same assumption can be applied to other creatures. We're often reluctant to make that assumption because it challenges the idea of human uniqueness.

Part of ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE? surveys the history of the study of animal intelligence. During the reign of behaviorism, the majority of scientists took it for granted that learning occurred the same way in all organisms, so nothing was lost by restricting most experimentation to easy-to-handle subjects, e.g. rats and pigeons. Why bother with difficult animals such as primates if there was no essential difference in the workings of their brains? Ethologists nowadays recognize that animal learning and cognition is inextricably linked to the particular species' methods of perceiving the world and interacting with other animals. There is also an increased willingness to accept that animals have desires, intentions, and goals, that they remember past events (not just in a rote learning, stimulus-response way), modify their behavior on the basis of those memories, and plan for the future. Parrots don't "parrot," for example; they use the words they know in appropriate contexts. Some of them demonstrate counting ability and recognition of numbers. Visually oriented species, including some birds, recognize faces as readily as we do.

De Waal objects to the preoccupation with comparing animal cognition to human capacities, as if nature conformed to the old model of a "Great Chain of Being," a linear ladder of species with us at the top. He considers it more realistic and productive to study each species as important and interesting in its own right, with its own techniques for dealing with its environment and other creatures. Why try to measure another species' intelligence by investigating how closely it corresponds to ours, when that other species experiences the world through biology and social structures different from ours? As he puts it, he emphasizes "evolutionary continuity" rather than the "traditional dualisms." The useful comparison isn't between human and animal intelligence, but "between one animal species—ours—and a vast array of others." Most scientists in the past thought only a few nonhuman animals had self-consciousness, on the basis of the "mirror test" (whether they show evidence of recognizing their own reflections as themselves). Quite a few other species have been admitted to the club now that researchers have realized it doesn't make sense to test such diverse creatures as elephants, dogs, birds, and dolphins in the same way as primates. "Theory of mind"—the awareness of what others know or don't know (useful in trying to hide food from others who might want to take it, for instance)—has been demonstrated in a wide variety of animals, some of which catch on quicker than human toddlers. Ethologists have also discovered that many behaviors previously attributed solely to "instinct" depend on experience, learning, and planning.

In MAMA'S LAST HUG, De Waal explores animal (especially primate) politics and society, whether any emotions are unique to Homo sapiens, empathy and sympathy, animals' sense of fairness, and the questions of free will and the meaning of "sentience."

It's fascinating to read about the many different creatures whose intelligence, emotional life, and social skills far exceed what previous generations of scientists believed possible. The octopus, for example, probably the most intelligent vertebrate, has "brains" in each of its tentacles, so that a severed arm can continue to move on its own for a while and even seek food. Contemplating the "vast array" of creatures on Earth is a great resource for inventing extraterrestrial beings who are more than humanoids in special-effects makeup. If we met aliens on an extra-solar planet, how would we judge whether they were intelligent in the same sense we are? If aliens landed here, would they realize we're intelligent, or would they view our cities the way we regard termite mounds and beehives?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Mysteries of Pacing Part 1 - Siri Reads Text Aloud

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 1

Siri Reads Text Aloud 

I posted an article from Forbes Magazine on the Sime~Gen Group on Facebook, and discussion erupted immediately.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenduffer/2019/05/28/readers-still-prefer-physical-books/#4e60e2df1fdf

Readers Still Prefer Physical Books

Since we are all obviously online and using electronic devices, you'd think everyone on this Facebook Group would be entirely into ebooks by now.  Maybe they'd all have favorite formats or providers, but you wouldn't expect to find Tree Book Lovers on a Facebook Group.  But you do!

Just as this Forbes Magazine article indicates, readers still love, appreciate, and collect hardcopy books.

Some comments pointed out how text that needs to be constantly updated, such as textbooks, and databases such as phone numbers, plus other material you wouldn't want to save and archive, benefits from ebook distribution.

A counter argument for tree books came from one of the writers on the Group Edward B.Wilson P.Eng., M.Sc. P.E.

------quote-----
Edward Wilson When you are serious about eternity it is pressed into wet clay and fired.

Books are a legitimate harvest of trees, and they are usually replaced quickly in North America with younger fast-growing trees that harvest more CO2 from the air. As long as the books are not burned they are an environmental draw (Perhaps a win, and certainly not a loss unless burned).

Note 30 or 40 years ago a Green organization came to the Acta Publishing company complaining about their magazines. The Greens didn't like the large amounts of clay (Sizing) and that Acta used metallic dies that were quite toxic so the magazines couldn't be recycled easily.

Acta, a science publisher explained, They publish the basis of our civilization (including the proof of Flemant's Last Theorem), their magazines are designed to last for 1000 years, not three weeks. They are NOT meant to be recycled they are meant as the lasting record of what is going on, and what is known in science and engineering (Two totally different subjects).

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

Traditionally, Romance novels have been read-and-toss category, but all that changed as other genres were blended in, and a woman could become the hero of a woman's story.  Science Fiction Romance and Paranormal Romance novels are not only breaking new ground, but also tackling deep, profound, and far-ranging topics at the edges of human awareness.

Some will become classics, republished in more permanent form.

See How Do You Know If You've Written a Classic series.  Part 1 is about people "discovering" novels, Part 2 about Spock's Katra and Theodore Bikel, while Part 3 is written answers to questions posed by the producer of a podcast who interviewed me in 2019.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/07/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

One of the attributes common among works elevated to "Classic" status (i.e. that appeal to more than one generation of readers, become gifted to children by parents who want them to understand the world) is pacing.

Pacing means many things too many people.  Editors look at it one way, publicists look at it another, and writers -- well, most writers just muddle along as best they can.

But discovering what pacing is and how it alters the reader's perception of what the novel says about "life, the universe, and everything," is very possibly the most advanced lesson in writing craft.

Many writing courses emphasize that a writer should test-read aloud the words she has just crafted to discover what to change.  This works for some, and will uncover some chronic errors (accidental alliteration being one big deal! Incessant word-repetition is another.) it doesn't work well for most writers.

Writers are readers, and most readers don't SAY the words in their heads while reading.  Somewhere in elementary school, you learned to detach your tongue and throat from the flow of words through your eyes.  You don't say or hear them, you read them.

Much of the craft of "pacing" a story lies within the simple choice of word, length of sentence, and grammar.  Language usage to evoke non-verbal cues in the reader is an art form.

But all art requires craft.

Focusing on how the reader absorbs the words, and how the reader responds emotionally to the words, and how much time it takes for the reader's autonomic nervous system, and endocrine system to process the words into meaning, will help the writer unleash their art.

In screenwriting, and in learning acting, -- in casting a stage play -- there is a part of the process of production called a "Table Read" where actors who will play the parts sit around a table and read their parts, beginning to develop how to bounce dialogue off each other and create the Characters they are portraying.

Reading your own words aloud won't get you that effect because you know what you wanted to say.  It's as ineffective as trying to proof-read your own typing.

Most writers don't have a bunch of friends who happen to be trained actors or vocalists, and if they do, those actors are too busy acting to spend the hours doing chapter by rewritten chapter Table Reads of raw material.

There is now, in our modern world, a tool writers can use to get an idea of how their writing sounds when read aloud.

Experienced and very active blind people use Siri to read text aloud.

I assume other platforms have similar features, but as we were discussing the preference for paper printed books that persists, one of the responders who is severely sight impaired supplied the following information in answer to my question about how Siri on iPhone can read aloud from ebooks and pages.  I know I have a number of blind fans reading Sime~Gen as the series was one of those selected for Braille and recorded editions by the Library of Congress.

If you write on a word processor, you can use Calibre (on Mac or Windows) to convert whatever you write to whatever your voice assistant reads.  Some people might want to try different voice assistants to compare.  We are in a world full of adventure.

So to use Siri, take the advice of Cheree Heppe, experienced reader. 
https://www.facebook.com/cheree.heppe


---------quote--------
The feature where a voice on the iPhone reads books and things is marvelous. It is not incompetent, like dictation.

This feature can be enabled so that it can be turned on and off with a simple command or gesture. Are use the triple click home gesture because it works fast and because I have a home button.

I think Siri can turn the voice over feature on and off, but I don't use that way because there is interfering ambient sound in some of the venues where I want to make adjustments.

I prefer an exploratory method for the screen. I do not like the method where a user simulates a board game for the structure of exploration by flicking, flicking, flicking through choices until finding the right one. This method is very 1970s and inefficient and plays on an old stereotype about blind people not having spatial orientation sufficient to explore a screen. I found out that someone invented it so trainers who are cited would not have to try to use eyes free methodologies to explore the screen.

The voice I use is the Karen voice. This is an Australian female. I have the speed and the voice set so that this voice reads my books and is my main voice for the iPhone. I have also set voices for Hebrew, German and Spanish. These have to be configured in Settings/General/Accessibility. I think the sub setting is Speech.

Once the voice or voices for the different languages is set, it is possible to change settings on the fly, such as speed and which voice responds to text, by using a gesture called the rotor. This rotor gesture is tricky to use. Especially if an operator is working eyes free, but it is a doable thing. It does require practice. One time, I got stuck in a language I didn't understand and had to call Apple to get me out of the jam.

When this voice feature is enabled through accessibility, it changes the gesture patterns. This is why it helps to be able to turn the accessibility feature off and on, especially if the phone is used by people who see, as well as by people who want eyes free operation.

Apple Accessibility Help Desk support is available 24 seven. They ask that people using their service either have a disability or that the people calling be in the process of setting up a device for someone who is disabled.

The phone number for this help desk is:
1-877 204-3930.

This help desk, which is open 24 seven, can screen share if they require detailed examination of a problem situation.

If someone were to call and need help with this service and they thought that someone was not disabled under the definition, it should be possible to solve the problem suggested in that short story, Operation High Time, where a Gen could slip through by wearing retainers.

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

Here is a cultofmac.com article on getting an iPhone to read aloud.
https://www.cultofmac.com/627620/how-to-make-your-iphone-read-any-text-out-loud/

You can use this method to find out what your blind fans will hear from an A.I. reader, which is a totally different experience from an audiobook.

Whether you want to alter your style to translate well into Siri, you will learn a lot about how your work communicates with your readers.

It is a start on unraveling the mysteries of Pacing.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Once upon a time, an online book seller began to sell a convenient device that made it possible for purchasers of that device (or others like it) to read myriad tomes of copyrighted intellectual property (books) conveniently, and quite cheaply.

As time passed, people who had bought that device or others like it, came to feel entitled to cheap and free entertainment, and they called the entertainment "content".  Then, they came to feel that public libraries ought to lend them "content" without any charge or restriction.

If they thought at all about the rights of authors to be paid, the thinking was very similar to the "let them go on tours, give concerts, and sell T shirts for a living" mindset that plagues elderly musicians who once thought that royalties on the timeless songs they wrote and performed in their prime would sustain them in their old age.

Library patrons claim that if they can read everything an author writes in e-book form, borrowed free and as soon as it is published, the author will benefit from the exposure and publicity.  Readers will read free, they won't even have to visit a library or interface with a librarian.

Apparently, libraries are worried about delays and wait times for e-book-reading patrons if new releases are "embargoed", and librarians fear that limited availability of new releases will make it difficult to expand and sustain their e-book programs.

Heather Schwedel writes sympathetically for Slate on these librarians' concerns.
https://slate.com/business/2019/09/e-book-library-publisher-buying-controversy-petition.html

But wait....  why is it a priority for librarians to expand their e-book programs?  Who benefits?  Patrons who have an urgent desire to read a particular book can visit a library, and borrow a physical copy. There is no embargo on physical copies. The librarians can buy as many physical books as they need, and the authors are paid.

Surely  physical patrons inside libraries are a good thing.  If patrons don't physically visit libraries, librarians could be replaced by chat bots.

Librarians' other complaint (in this case about MacMillan Publishing) is that a two-year license for one e-book costs $60. Is that really an outrageous sum?  Two years is 24 months. If a library allows each loan to last for 14 days, the one e-book could be read by 48 different readers.... more if some readers return the e-book more quickly.

If the book is new, or a very popular read, the library could limit the loan per patron to 5 days, or even to 2 days as they do with movie rentals. Over two years, that $60 could cover 360 readers, which works out at 60 cents per read.  It could even pay for itself if slow readers had to pay fines.

Apparently, chat bots are "a thing".

Writers can use them.
https://publishdrive.com/messenger-bot-writers-build-use/

Writers can develop a "chat bot" so their fans can have chats with fictional characters from books, with minimal interaction with the author. There was a time when authors were honored to communicate one-on-one with their readers, and readers wanted to interact with their favorite authors.

Is a bot really a satisfactory substitute?  What do you think?

One of the vanity publishers (at least, I assume that is what they are), is suggesting to their paying subscribers that they can use Facebook Messenger Chatbots to get "positive, verified" book reviews "on autopilot", and allegedly, this canny method will thwart Amazon's unceasing attempts to ensure that book reviews are legitimate.

The Authors Guild and Romance Writers of America author chat forums reflect authors' concerns that valid and legitimate good reviews are removed because Amazon bots cannot tell the difference between a friend and a fan, and bad reviews are given the respect of a bot, even when the "review" is by someone who has not read the book in question.

Piling on Amazon, there are complaints that the site is using its advertising power to give preferential search treatment to its own products.

Dana Mattioli writing for WSJ covers the topic thoroughly:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-changed-search-algorithm-in-ways-that-boost-its-own-products-11568645345

Finally, and only for those who subscribe to the New York Times, there is an op ed by Richard Conniff  about book piracy, especially in academia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/opinion/book-piracy.html

It gives new meaning to old sayings about "being" or "getting" "on the same page"!

 

All the best,

 

Rowena Cherry 

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

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Digital Media Bait-and-Switch

Cory Doctorow's latest column targets DRM but touches upon the abusive business practices of digital marketing in general:

DRM Broke Its Promise

The philosophy behind restricted access to the media we "buy" begins with the premise, "The problem with markets is that selling things is inefficient. There are so many people who don’t need the thing, just a momentary use of the thing." So the promise of DRM was, "Thanks to a technology called 'Digital Rights Management,' sellers and buyers could negotiate a subset of rights and a reduced payment for same.. . .In other words, we were told that we must reject the promise of unfet­tered digital in favor of locked-down digital, and in return, we would enter a vibrant marketplace where sellers offered exactly the uses we needed, at a price that was reduced to reflect the fact that we were getting a limited product." As Doctorow sardonically summarizes, "In the futuristic digital realm, no one would own things, we would only license them, and thus be relieved of the terrible burden of ownership." The actual outcome: "We got the limited product, all right—just not the discount." For example, the DRM-protected books from publishers who use that technology cost no less than Tor's unrestricted e-books. The promise of "flexibility and bargains" gave way to the reality of "price-gouging and brittleness."

Doctorow discusses several limitations and abuses arising from the fact that we don't own the digital media products we thought we were purchasing. Without warning or recourse, customers can suddenly lose access to books, music, or video content (e.g., Microsoft's e-book store). Libraries pay more for e-books than print books and have restrictions on the number of times a book can be borrowed. Streaming services control how consumers can use the content they rent or "buy" (e.g., inability to skip commercials). College textbooks are a particularly egregious example. Electronic texts should be cheaper than hardcovers, but that's not necessarily so. Moreover, the login codes for mandatory online supplements have to be purchased afresh every year. Having finished my terminal degree well before e-textbooks, I had no idea of this catch before reading the article. I have a personal gripe with academic publishers (those that publish scholarly works rather than college textbooks): When they started producing electronic as well as print editions of their exorbitantly overpriced books—clearly marketed with libraries, not individual scholars, in mind—the e-book versions should have been cheaper. Much cheaper, within reach of individual would-be readers. Instead, they're typically priced only a few dollars lower than the hardcover editions. A $90 book discounted to $80, to pick a typical pair of figures at random, is still too expensive for the average unemployed or under-employed academic to justify buying. Granted, producing an e-book requires paid labor, just as a print book does. But in the case of an electronic edition of an existing print book, most of that work (editing, proofreading, etc.) has already been done. I often mentally rage, "Don't those people WANT anybody to read their books?" Some of us who would like to do so don't have access to a university library.

In an electronic media market where consumers have little or no choice but to spend "more for less," Doctorow summarizes the state of affairs thus: "DRM never delivered a world of flexible consumer choice, but it was never supposed to. Instead, twenty years on, DRM is revealed to be exactly what we feared: an oligarchic gambit to end property ownership for the people, who become tenants in the fields of greedy, confiscatory tech and media companies." Don't hold back, Mr. Doctorow; what do you REALLY think? :)

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy Part 9 Mixing Soul, Science and Politics by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy
Part 9

Mixing Soul, Science and Politics

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts of this series are indexed here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/05/index-to-soul-mates-and-hea-real-or.html

More on how to incorporate Headlines that are current news into fiction plots, themes and Characters aimed at a possible future audience is here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/index-to-posts-about-using-real-world.html

In Part 7 of Soul Mates and the HEA, we delved into the esoteric theories of how a Soul is structured and why science can't locate, identify, or characterize a Soul.

In Part 8 we looked at the Science behind the HEA, citing the most recent Harvard study, an 80 year project, that came down to steady life infused with happiness (by the study participants self-assessment of how happy they were with their lives) is most likely to be achieved by those who establish and maintain solid Relationships.

Relationships are key?

Really?

For this we need science?

An 80 year study?  How much did that cost?

So let's explore how Aliens (in our Alien Romances) might view happiness, and how that might cause a Conflict with humans they could fall in love with.

On this blog, in the Tuesday posts about writing craftsmanship, we're discussing the Romance Genre and the respect it garners (or does not garner) among the general population.

We've focused on how to convince skeptics and disbelievers in Romance that this genre actually contains value for them, personally.

There are so many urgent problems in our general society, that would, it seems to me, be more easily solved if everyone read Romance novels in their spare time.  You can take any Genre - Western, Mystery, Action, Intrigue, Suspense, Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy - and insert a Love Story.  From there, to a hybrid-Romance sub-genre is a matter of adjusting the Plot so that the usual genre content is carried on the Story while the Event-Sequence focuses on the stepwise development of the Relationship.

If Relationships are the key to Happiness, and therefore to Happily Ever After (THE HEA), and if as noted in Part 8 of this series of posts, the disruption of the family and its ties to local community has left a generation bereft of the brain-development necessary for Relationship Building, then it seems to me Romance genre is the key to healing society.

In Part 8, we also noted the epidemic of Loneliness now officially noticed by sociologists.

This Harvard study
https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/harvard-spent-80-years-studying-happiness-we-now-know-1-key-habit-that-makes-people-happier-the-problem-most-people-never-even-try.html

says many important things and links to other articles in Inc. Magazine, but this one stands out to me because it's mentioned only in passing:

---quote---
From a pure physical health perspective, researchers say loneliness is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
---end quote---

That's from US government statistics.

Here's the thing.  Tobacco use became a huge government focus, forcing warning labels with black borders onto packages, raising prices with huge taxes, litigating to bar smoking in public places without consent of others there (so now we have outdoor areas designated for smoking breaks).

So tell me, why isn't there government action targeting LONELINESS?

This same article in Inc. Magazine puts forth the cure for Loneliness.  It says people have the most success breaking out of the prison of loneliness when they VOLUNTEER -- to help others, just do something for free.

In Part 7 of this series we looked at theories of the intricate structure of the Soul as described in articles posted on chabad.org

That's a Jewish religious organization, the fastest growing one in recent decades.  People drift into it, feel comfortable, and just linger or return.

One core message of Judaism that has communicated to both Islam and Christianity, and which has arisen to prominence is all the other world Religions, is that doing a Charitable Deed benefits you as much (sometimes more) than others.

The leader of Chabad (called The Rebbe) often prescribed some act of Charity for the woes people brought to him.

Doing an act of Charity almost always changes a person's life direction, mostly for the better.

Mostly, it doesn't matter what the motive is.  GIVING initiates a cycle of interaction with the world that is different.

We talk of Giving And Receiving -- always with giving coming first in the sequence.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/theme-element-giving-and-receiving.html

Is this a magical principle, a religious principle, a scientific principle, or some social or political principle?

Some might say the demands of "socialists" to strip wealth from the 1% and level the income distribution curve (nobody ever says to what slope we need to level it) is flat out wrong because it's stealing.

Others might say that the insane profit margins that "capitalists" demand are stealing.

Maybe they are both correct?

Maybe money isn't the root of all evil, but rather is the source of happiness?

Most religions extant today insist that money can't buy happiness.

Maybe they're wrong?  Maybe happiness can be evoked, instilled, triggered, or initiated somehow only by GIVING.  To give, you have to HAVE what to give.

Maybe the monetary transaction that transports happiness from one to another is not "purchase" at all?

Aliens with a different view of what a Soul is, and thus a different experience of Romance, Bonding, and all Relationships, might consider money (the artificially created coin of a realm, such as a dollar) a medium of exchange, but not one of "giving."

That is, Aliens might view Charity as every sort of Giving except the giving of money.

One can give Service, Respect, Honor, handicrafts, skills, education, information, and sometimes the Performing Arts can give entertainment.

If giving Charity, or as the article in Inc. Magazine noted, Volunteering, is the one thing securely happy people do, and happiness depends on secure Relationships, and Relationships depend on volunteering (e.g. giving) why isn't government focused on the Public Health Benefits of free will giving?

Giving, by definition, has to be a chosen action, a free will choice, without any coercion or requirement or form to fill out to prove you did it.

It's not a tax deduction.

What would these Aliens who think of Charity as everything but money see in us, today?

Today, government has become the largest Charity institution -- and has labeled many of its Charitable institutions "Services."  But all the Services are provided by people who are paid money (coined and regulated in value by that very government).

The money the government sends out to people who can't support themselves is likewise coined and valued by that government, but it is taken (by force of taxation) from the people who would benefit by giving it to the poor.

After having been fleeced by the government, these people don't have any money to give as Charity.

Small wonder loneliness is a spiritual plague sweeping the world.

What would the Aliens who don't see money as something you can give as Charity make of us?

Catholics still pass a plate at services, to collect donations, and the givers who put money in the plate gain in virtue.

When natural disasters strike, our first impulse is to establish a FUND, so people can GIVE MONEY.  Some organizations still collect things (food, blankets, shoes, laundry detergent) to distribute to disaster victims. But that has become too inefficient to be useful in today's world,  so organizations ask you to Message a certain number to donate $10.

It's a wonderful feeling to be able to help out others without getting mud on your own shoes -- but suppose our Aliens held us in contempt for that, and blamed the use of money instead of personal effort as the source of our misbehavior as a species.

Suppose we were deemed ineligible to join galactic civilization because we regard giving money as giving while at the same time the money we are giving has actually been TAKEN from its rightful owner?

Government TAKES from tax-payers.  Every cent government gives in disaster relief (or social services) it got by taking from its citizens.  Even coining money reduces the value of money people have saved, (that's hard to grasp, but it's true), so coining more money to distribute for disaster relief is another form of TAKING.

Taking doesn't have the same Soul-level effect as Giving does.

If the Aliens we're talking about regard Humans as having kindred Souls, as we noted in Part 7, G-dly Souls, and therefore regard humans as potential mates, potential Soul Mates, but see human Souls as somehow unable to mate because of trying to do Charity in impossible ways, what sort of Conflicts would you construct for your Alien Romance?

Humans might be regarded as infected with a Loneliness Plague (which could be deemed contagious) because of this abuse of Money.

The Loneliness Plague is deadly because it reduces lifespan measurably.  Humans know that, but ignore it and keep on (insanely, the Aliens would think) taking money by force and then giving it instead of real Charity.

Do you see what I'm doing with these Headlines?

The headlines combine into a Theme:  Giving and Receiving
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/theme-element-giving-and-receiving.html

From the THEME - a world is built.  A strange world inhabited by governments that take money by force.  Who ever could imagine such a thing?

The point of view Character has emerged, confounded by the specter of humanity and human insanity.  He's looking at a global civilization morally impaired by misbegotten beliefs and no valid concept of ownership, what it means, where it originates, what it's for, and what dangers it presents.

Humans are either idiots or proto-intelligences.  There's something very wrong with Earth.  It's toxic.

But his job is to infiltrate and map this global civilization.

So he puts on his human-disguise, lands in a remote location, and proceeds to infiltrate -- oh, say Los Angeles where the stranger would not be noted.

He's scared to death, but doing his job.

And he meets his Soul Mate.  She's out collecting Charity donations for Earthquake victims in Japan.

What is she asking for?  Money, bills or coins.

He's met his Soul Mate, and she's a raving lunatic who thinks Charity has something to do with money, especially government coined money.

What happens next?

Or take the set of Headlines we've discussed in Part 7, 8, and 9 and rip out a different theme, something having something to do with Loneliness, Happiness, and Volunteering.  Design your postulated Soul-Structure differently, so that your Theme, Conflict and Resolution speak about something other than Giving and Receiving, and Charity.

Find another answer to the question: "Why is government not addressing the Loneliness Plague as a disease caused by substituting Taking for Giving?"

That answer is your Theme.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com