Happy Monday all! I’ve just posted the latest chapter of my police thriller, The Masterminds, for your reading pleasure. We’re still going through a bit of a lull while team dynamics get established. This chapter isn’t just filler, though, so read it and enjoy!
Don’t forget that you can back me on Patreon or support my writing habit by getting a membership here now!
— G.K.
One of my daily reads is Sarah Hoyt’s blog and recently I’ve been going through some of her older entries (I’m looking for a post where she was talking about the review submission process…don’t ask) and I stumbled over several mentions of how getting us writer-ly types to organize and do anything in a uniform fashion is kind of like herding cats. Especially those of us of what she calls the Odd bent (and what I call the “awesomesauce” bent because, yay, more fellow NTs!) I’ve noticed this myself — especially back when I was submitting to agents and traditional publishers before I realized that was a chump’s game and decided to go indie. Each agent or agent house and each publisher has their own guidelines for receiving query letters and manuscripts and none of them are the same.
Considering the uniformity of the end product (mass-market paperbacks have very specific cover and print-set specifications) and the general consistency of editing software and screen-readers, you’d think that there would be some consistency. But you’d be wrong.
The only other area where I’ve encountered such a dizzying array of sheer anarchy is…the tech world. I still keep a foot in that realm (because it’s fun) and anyone who’s actually delved into code very far knows what I mean when I say that reading someone’s code can tell you everything you need to know about them. If it’s not human-readable, you know that they’re using a graphical interface to drag’n’drop elements into place and that they don’t actually know what they’re doing. They might have a cursory understanding but they don’t grasp the fundamentals and the principles. Or, they’re not a coder (and they’re not pretending to be — I had this happen a lot in my professional life) and you get the fun job of digging through a single-line (that is actually several thousand lines) of nested HTML menu items to find the one that isn’t closed properly so you can make the document strict XML compliant.
If the code has function names that are the same as variables, you know you’re deal with someone who has some experience but is still new to the game. Their comments and documentation will tend to be hit-or-miss but at least it will exist. If the code has function names that are purposeful and unique, you know that the commentary and documentation will be fairly good (or they will have outsourced it to someone who will be better at it, you hope) or it will be non-existent. If the function names are vindictive and the documentation has you going in circles, you know that you’re probably better off removing everything and rebuilding from scratch because someone high up pissed this person off and you’re dealing with a BOFH type who has decided to extract a pound (or ton) of flesh. In this case, there’s only one thing to do:
The issue is, some techies are going to be die-hard Perl scripters and everything is going to be in that. Others will prefer Python. Some never moved past C++. You’ve got your K-shell users, C-shell users, Z-shell folks, and then a quick shout-out to my peeps out there in Bourne-Again land (BASH FOREVAH!). There’s the Xwindows folks who are all about some KDE while others are hung up with their Gnomes and the rest of us are wondering why in Torvalds’ name you’re running Xwindows on a server — it’s not secure. People will cling to their text-editors and bitter fights will break out over vi versus emacs versus pico versus nano at which point G.K. boots to Windows (hey, if you’re going to run a desktop, run a freaking desktop) and opens up Scrivener. PHP devs will say you can do everything with PHP and seasoned HTML coders will snort and think about all the times they had to implement HTML/CSS/JS fixes to deal with a PHPlib error. SQL DBAs will laugh at all of them while they work on their next round of fiendishly difficult certifications.
As you can see, though…techies and writers — none of us can agree on how things should be. Oh, we all have our opinions on how they should be. Techies will even form consortiums, conventions, conglomerations, conferences, and write out long RFCs about How Things Should Be. Enough others will agree and we’ll wind up with this situation:
Which, come to think of it, is probably what happened in the publishing world.
Now, do I think that writers are going to eventually get together and decide on a uniform submission process? Hell no! Do I think publishers will eventually decide on one? Nope. What will probably keep happening is what’s been happening. It’s just interesting to see that two groups of people the average Joe Public considers diametric opposites (writers and techies) are actually very much alike.
And it’s cool to be both of them at once, yo.
— G.K.
So, fingers crossed because today is a big day. I have an interview lined up that could be interesting. And, while I’m off doing that, here’s the second chapter of my Voyager fanfic for those of you who have been asking me about it. Yes, Star Trek Voyager: Inosculation has been updated. I will be updating this story every Friday. If you’re curious, my current plan is to update The Masterminds on Monday, The Search for the Seven Scepters on Tuesday, In the Shadow of Yggdrasil on Wednesday, Risen Ash on Thursday, and Star Trek Voyager: Inosculation on Friday. A couple of people have been pinging me about getting Alayne’s Story (my insanely, epically-long World of Warcraft fanfic that I wrote over the course of five years) up on this site. A few others have been asking if I’m planning to put Adrift up here as well and a few are asking if I’ve posted it over at AO3. The answers to those questions are: yes. I am planning to add them to this site and I did post Adrift to AO3. No, I’m not going to put them up on Tumblr (the formatting is too big a PITA). There are a few problems with Alayne’s Story that need to be ironed out first but it will be up here once those are taken care of and I’ve had time to get a cover image done for it. I’ll also be adding it to Fanfiction.net and Wattpad as well as AO3.
I’ve had a couple-of-five of you email me via my contact form to ask if I’ll be putting any of my fanfics up on Amazon for 0.00. Short answer in universal sign language below:
I know that Amazon said they were working something out where fanfics could be distributed for free or sold if the rights-holders agreed. I don’t know what came of that (I’ve not kept up with it at all). In theory, I could *probably* give them away in Kindle format via Amazon (again, I *really* need to research the terms of that. I’m not promising a damned thing) or via this website (definitely could do that last one) so long as I credit the original source. The problem is that some places are pretty cool with derivative-work fan creators (Blizzard) and don’t mind too much if they have a tip jar or are selling other things or have a premium access area on their site so long as they don’t actually sell the fanwork itself. Other places (CBS, Paramount, Auntie Beeb) are a little less far down the “cool” spectrum and G.K. can’t afford awesomesauce lawyers. Factor in that, technically, fanfics are a form of copyright infringement and trademark dilution and if I were to profit from it those guys really have no choice but to come after me with a fifty-ton hammer of smiting and it’s just a headache I’m not sure I want to deal with.
Why do you think I’m not running ads on this site? It’s not because I couldn’t use the money. It’s because I’m fucking terrified that if I did, I’d have the BBC and Blizzard suing me for money I don’t fucking have and will never fucking get. We’ll ignore, for now, the fact that I’m also personally liable to David Tennant, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Helmsworth, Anthony Hopkins, AMC, Alexander Enderberg, Norman Reedus, Andrew Lincoln, Sarah Wayne Callies, Melissa McBride, and Eric Calderone (among countless others) for unauthorized use of their names and/or personal likenesses. Never mind that I took those likenesses from photos that were released to the public domain by their press representatives or publicists. Technically, the argument could be made and G.K. Masterson and family does not have the money to make a convincing counter-argument before a judge in the US or the UK.
I’m doing my best to stay well under the radar when it comes to my fanworks. I had actually seriously considered sending some of my legit work to a few of my favorite actors as a way of saying “thanks” for the countless hours of entertainment and inspiration they’ve afforded me. However, once I realized how trivial it would be for them to link my legit works to my fanworks (and that was a dumbass move on my part there) and just how liable I was on that, I ditched that idea. The repository sites like Fanfiction.net, AO3, and Wattpad can get away with it because of how they function and because of the terms they present to users. I can also post my own works here as an archive. But selling them, even at 0.00, via Amazon or anything like that…well, it gets really, really tricky when there’s a remote chance of “profiting” from the work at all even if it’s just “someone read my fanfic and bought my legit work while on my website.”
tl;dr — It’s a hassle and, tbh, I have enough stress in my life already so I’ll pass for now, thanks.
Anyway, go on and enjoy this week’s chapter of Star Trek Voyager: Inosculation!
— G.K.
Good news, everyone! I haven’t forgotten you all this week. I just have had an insanely crazy-hectic-oh-my-God-it’s-been-weird kind of week and weekend preceding it which meant that I didn’t have time to get the updates I had finished integrated until this Wednesday night. However, hopefully things will be turning around soon-ish so my life will be a bit more stable and you’ll be getting your chapters on a more predictable time-frame. That said, all is not puppies, kittens, and rainbows in Warden’s Keep. Rooster and Pig’s other owner has had a serious medical emergency. He’s okay but I’m scrambling to take care of getting this quarter’s royalty statements done and sent out as well as finishing up the new R&P website and eCommerce site. There’s also a good bit of trying to figure out who’s doing what, when, and all and trying to take care of my own side of things.
Sometimes I think Sisyphus is a slacker, yo.
Anyway, the latest chapters of The Masterminds, The Search for the Seven Scepters, In the Shadow of Yggdrasil, and Risen Ash are up for all of you who are looking to scratch your zombie apocalypse, epic fantasy, or police thriller itches or cravings. So go and get your reads on!
Don’t forget that you can back me on Patreon or support my writing habit by getting a membership here now!
— G.K.
It’s Friday again and you know what that means: time for another one of my reviews. This week, it’s Dan Simmons in the spotlight with the first book of his Hyperion Cantos, Hyperion
Hyperion is a space-age version of The Canterbury Tales. It follows pretty much the same format: pilgrims on a religious voyage swapping stories. However, unlike Chaucer’s work, there’s a meta-story at play and the tales the pilgrims exchange are not just to pass the time. They are compelling, interesting, and show that the narrators (the characters of Hyperion) have led interesting lives to put them where they are at what seems to be the very end of the world itself. As a reader, I couldn’t help but get caught up in their stories and wonder more about them which is why I’m very glad I had the second book handy because Hyperion ends in a very unsatisfactory manner. It doesn’t so much hit a wall and go off a cliff as some critics have alleged. To me, it feels like it was one book cut in half with Hyperion being the first half and the second book, The Fall of Hyperion
Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion are good books and well worth the read. Dan Simmons is a good author who spins a great narrative with compelling characters. However, you will want to get both of them at the same time and read them back-to-back which has been a cause for some to feel a bit disgruntled about paying for two books to get the story of one. Still, in this case, I’d argue that the show is well worth the price of admission.
Three-and-a-half rainbow farting zebricorns. Well-written and a good read but the sucker-punch-tenterhooks-cliffhanger ending was just a bit too much.
— G.K.
*twirls drumsticks and adjusts shades before singing*
George R. R. Martin, Guardian, Stats ‘n’ lies, Twittermobbing, Puppycide
Torgersen, NoTruFenThenDom, Noah Warding Bloc
*chorus repeats*
I told you, the lyrics are the most difficult part of the post! If you don’t like ’em, find me a songwriter who can come up with better ones and I will be happy to turn that part of this series over to them because I fail at songing almost as hard as I fail at adulting.
So, on to part the fifth of this series wherein we will delve into the first part of Sad Puppies 3 (which is going to be a multi-part year since it is A Very Big Deal). As mentioned in my earlier entries, Sad Puppies 1 and 2 were “organized” (and I use that term loosely) by Larry Correia. Once again, to recap, the goal of Sad Puppies was to prove the following points:
1. The Hugo awards were politically biased, and dominated by a few insider cliques.
2. Authors who didn’t belong to these groups or failed to appease them politically were shunned. If authors with “unapproved” politics were to get nominations, the quality of the work would be irrelevant, and the insider cliques would do everything in their power to sabotage that person.
It would seem that, in light of this year’s events, Correia’s hypotheses have been proven, would it not?
At any rate, Sad Puppies 3 saw the mantle of organizing being passed from Correia to Brad Torgersen. Larry Correia considered the controversy that SP2 had raised sufficient to prove his point and was ready to call it quits. However, Torgersen believed that the Hugos could be salvaged and that by increasing awareness and continuing the work Correia had started, only this time by expanding the list to include more authors and to move away from ideology as the selection criteria and instead to go solely on the basis of “is it good or not?” with the discard qualification being message-fic/preach-fic (meaning that SP3 didn’t care a whit what an author’s politics were or what the story was about so long as it was good and wasn’t an anti-human sermon-fic in the SJW tradition). SP3 saw a huge increase in participation both among authors and among the public. However, as it turns out, much of the success was due to Vox Day’s Rabid Puppies campaign which will be covered in depth in a future entry.
The success of the puppy slate took everyone by surprise. However, when the Nielsen-Haydens knew days ahead of the official announcements that “their” people hadn’t made the ballots and the butthurt from Scalzi and the insider crowds started, complete with a libel-laden article that made its rounds through the mainstream media (with its layers and layers of fact-checkers, yo). The SJWs weren’t content to chalk it up to simple mathematics, no. After all, the WorldCon memberbase had been dwindling for years with the Hugo voting pool growing smaller and smaller, making it much easier for smaller numbers of people to skew the results. There’s probably some mathematical name for this phenomenon but I don’t know it so I’m going to call this the “Kiddie Pool Phenomenon.”
Now, most of us, when we were growing up, learned that, in popularity contests, victory often goes to those who show up. SP2 and the resultant fall-out established a strong case for the Hugos being little more than a popularity contest among the WorldCon membership and not “the” definitive award of great science fiction and fantasy literature as they purported themselves to be. Nathaniel Givens’s data analysis shows that there is a reason to believe that there has been a divergence between what the reading public considers “good literature” and what Hugo voters consider “good.” What happened with SP3 is that the two puppy groups managed to have a lot more people “turn up” than they (or anyone else) was expecting.
One would think that the WorldCon crowd, though a bit surprised and maybe a little upset that their favorites didn’t make it that year, would be thrilled to see their convention growing and perhaps on the cusp of flourishing again, right? After all, the SP3 slate consisted of a lot of truly diverse authors including several Latino and Latina writers, many women, people of high melanin content, people of LBGTedness, and probably a few demi-elven-dwarven-dragon-half-vampire-werewolf-Sith-Jedi-wizards of non-indeterminate gender born under a new full moon in comparison to the lily-white slate offered by the SJWs themselves in previous years.
The success of SP3 kicked everything into high gear but isn’t due solely to SP and Torgersen’s efforts. So, we’ll talk about Vox Day and Rabid Puppies and their role in this in the next entry in this series so stay tune!
— G.K.
If yesterday’s update wasn’t enough to satisfy your epic fantasy addiction, then maybe today will give you that little extra you need. There’s a new chapter up for In the Shadow of Yggdrasil! The war is dragging on and our boys have grown up so much. Only, things are getting weird because it looks like the Jotuns have a new attack. And yay for adorableness from the littlest brother, yo. Also, I promise, while things are dark, there will be a dawn. Soon. Maybe. Who knows? I suggest you go get your read on and find out!
As always, don’t forget that you can back me on Patreon or support my writing habit by getting a membership here today!
— G.K.
Calling all you epic fantasy adventuring types out there: there’s a new chapter up for The Search for the Seven Scepters for your reading pleasure. We’re still following Sokan and Bassa around for now so if you’ve been hoping to see Kass and Blade, sorry to disappoint you. Don’t worry, though. They’ll be making an appearance Soon(TM). Also, yes, I know there are some inconsistencies in this story — this is what happens when I screw up my notes. However, I will be correcting them in the polished edition for release. And, yes, for those of you who have been asking, you will find out about the big background events I keep name-dropping as the story progresses. Now, go get your read on already!
As always, don’t forget that you can back me on Patreon or support my writing habit by getting a membership here today!
— G.K.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about honor and rules when it comes to combat, debate, arguing, and society. I’ve half-written about a dozen entries on this so I decided to come back and do an intro since it’s going to be a pretty lengthy subject. Others have written about it before and a lot of what they’ve said is worth reading. However, recent events — the fight over the Hugos, the issue with white-washing the entire Civil War out of American history, the Balkanization of society, and so on, has made me do a lot of thinking which starts out around honor.
Basically, one side believes in honor and the other side believes in “the end justifies the means.” We’re not even really fighting over the same thing here and it’s taken me quite a while to realize it. It didn’t strike me until I was re-reading We and got to thinking about dystopian literature (which, of course, always leads back to Orwell’s 1984). This isn’t about freedom vs slavery, capitalism vs socialism, statism vs dynamism, red vs blue, Democrats vs Republicans — that’s all just a front. It’s all smoke and mirrors.
It’s about power. Who has it? Who’s going to keep it? What is power, really? And does it even truly exist or is it just another illusion? Is it just another shadow on Plato’s cavern wall? I honestly don’t know but it’s got all my little INT lights just a-flickering so I’m hoping some of you will stick around with me while I knock these ideas around. They’re not going to be perfect and I welcome honest discussion on the matter because I get the sense that this is something the Founding Fathers “got” intuitively. That power (outside of actual physical power — as in “laws of physics” kind of power) is just an illusion. It’s a kind of mass mutually-shared hallucination we participate in by agreement and if enough of us decide to stop playing the game — like in the Matrix — we might be able to bring the entire system into a state of crash or some kind of kernel panic.
It’d be interesting, at least. That is if I’m even anywhere near correct on this (which isn’t a given).
So, anyone up for it?
— G.K.
I found this particular piece of stupidity over at Peter Grant’s site.
I don’t know if Moshe Feder lives in an echo chamber, has difficulty reading English, or what, so, here goes.
Here is why I am no longer going to buy any books published by Tor:
So, about the only thing they can hang on me is that I’m from Mississippi and Mississippi has the something-that-kind-of-looks-like-the-Stars-and-Bars in its state flag. Sort of. If you squint. And look at it through special goggles. Of course, this ignores the whole history of the State Flag* and the history of the “Rebel Flag” as it’s called (btw, the actual Confederate Flag is the Bonnie Blue Flag — a single white star on a field of blue).
If being from Mississippi automatically makes someone a horrible, terrible, no-good person, then, well, the world is in a whole lotta trouble. See, William Faulkner is from here. Eudora Welty is, too. Same with Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones, Jim Henson, Medger Evers, Brandy, Jimmie Rodgers, Tennessee Williams, Tammy Wynette, James Meredith, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddly, Richard Wright, Carl Westcott, Sela Ward…
Just to name a few.
You’re welcome, by the way, for the music and the stories. What can we say? It’s in our blood, black or white, it “don’t make no difference” because we’re all the same under the skin where it matters.
At any rate, I’m sick and tired of being called a horrible person. I’ve made the rational choice not to award my money to someone who calls me a horrible person. I’m quite proud of my grandfather — who fought the Nazis in World War II and would probably take umbrage at my being called a neo-nazi — and I’m also proud of all the women I’m related to who bucked the trends in their lives and lived on their own terms. Some of them got divorces back when a divorce made you a virtual pariah — but better that than living with an abusive drunk. Some of them worked outside of the home and owned businesses when that was Simply. Not. Done. My mom and her older sister are two of the smartest women I know and their older brother is probably the smartest person in that part of our family (I might have a high IQ but I can be a complete idiot in a lot of ways). They’ve all worked hard to fight for equality for all people and to make a world where you’re judged solely on how hard you’re willing to work and on your merits alone and I’m proud of that. To continue to give money to a company that calls me a racist, a neo-nazi, a sexist, or a homophobe would be to spit on my own gay, trans, black, and Latino friends as well as three generations of my family who have fought oppression.
Not to mention to turn my back on all of the people from my state who have worked so hard to make an equal playing field and share our rich heritage with the world.
So no. I’m not going to buy any more books from a company based out of New fucking York that calls me a neo-nazi based on zero evidence and refuses to issue an actual apology. New York has more money than Midas. Tell you what, though. I will up the ante. If all of these so-called “social justice warriors” really want to prove their credibility, how about they quit giving their money to people who can afford to live in New York and start donating it to groups working to provide computers, Internet access, and better educational facilities and economic opportunities to students and recent graduates in Mississippi?**
Time to fish or cut bait, y’all.
— G.K.
*Mississippi adopted the current flag in 1894 — way before the Rebel Flag became racist. Also, the canton has thirteen stars in the MS flag, not eleven (the nitwits never seem to notice this) because they stand for the original 13 states of the Union, not the 11 states that seceded. Back in 2000, the NAACP sued the state to try to force us to change the flag. Their first argument was that the canton was the Rebel Flag and that since it’s against the law to fly the Rebel flag as an official flag, it violated their right to freedom of speech and due process. However, the MS Supreme Court threw that out because 13 != 11 in base10. Still, back in 1906, the MS legislature did a general repeal of all laws and kind of forgot to re-add the flag back when they re-did the new legal code. So, on that technicality, it was found that the flag in use since 1894 was not the “official” flag and we had to have an election to decide if we were going to make it official or change it.
So, in 2001, we voted to keep it the way it was. Not because we’re all a bunch of racists but because we’re the poorest goddamned state in the Union and we’ve got better things to spend the thirty million dollars it would cost to change the state flag on. Hell, it cost over two million dollars just to have the election on the issue and it was a nearly 70% support to keep the current flag.
Biggest reason? Because it’s a piece of cloth. It’s not even the stupid Rebel Flag in the canton. Because no one freaking cares. Because changing it isn’t going to change anyone’s attitudes. Because we’ve got better things to spend that money on — schools, teachers, hospitals, roads — than what a bunch of rich lawyers in California who may or may not ever set foot in our state get a bug up their butts about.
…but I digress.
**I’mma love to hear the excuses on this one. We already have taxes in-state about as high as we can set them without causing businesses and individuals to flee and we’re already redistributing as best we can but since school funding primarily comes from local property taxes, it’s hard to make that stretch very far without causing taxpayer revolt and our state sales tax is already among the highest and the most widespread in the nation (it even is levied on food) so, yeah, we are already taxing the shit out of ourselves and the rich and still coming up short. However, “rich” in Mississippi would be “can afford to eat cat food every other day and live in a fleabag extended stay roach motel” in NYC so we are talking different orders of magnitude here, folks.