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Note: I’ve not seen an official statement from The Library Of The Living Dead Press. They locked the discussion forum on this issue. If they do have an explanation, I’d very much like to see it. Update: LLD Press has posted a statement here. “…with all the things that are going on in my life right now I didn’t think it all the way through. I became afraid I would upset people by publishing the book. That’s the reason in a nutshell … If any of you don’t know, I’m a huge supporter of the GLBT community. They are my brothers and sisters.” He’s offered to pay those who wrote stories. I’m afraid there’s nothing here that makes me change my initial reaction. How do you claim to be a “huge supporter” of the GLBT community while simultaneously cancelling your GLBT-themed project because it might upset people? Thanks, kirizal, for the update. # So last month, Library of the Living Dead Press put out a call for an LGBT zombie anthology (which sounds like a very cool project, actually). Yesterday, the publisher pulled the plug on the anthology. From the editor: “It is with deep regret that I must inform you that the publisher has pulled the plug on this anthology. It seems that homophobia had reared its ugly head..NOT from the publisher, but with some authors that are contributers to the publisher.” In other words, it sounds like some of the authors who publish with LLD found out that their publisher was doing an anthology that had teh gay in it, and complained. I hope there’s more to the story. I hope there’s another reason this project fell through, some explanation other than the fact that the person or persons running this publisher are a bunch of miserable, cowardly, unprofessional twits. As for the authors who allegedly complained? You’re writing for a horror micropress. It’s okay to write about gore and blood and violence and horror, but homosexuality is right out? What the hell is wrong with you? If anyone reading this is associated with LLD press, please pass this link along to the powers that be. I really, really want to hear how they justify backing out of this project, and whether they have an excuse that doesn’t involve wedging their heads quite so far up their own asses. I hope so, and I’ll happily post a follow-up with their side of this story, if they’d care to share it. I know not everyone feels the same as me about LGBT issues. Some people don’t support gay marriage; some don’t want to repeal don’t ask, don’t tell; and so on. I disagree, but I recognize those opinions are out there. But it’s one thing to disagree. It’s another to announce a project, then turn around and cancel it for no other reason than the homophobia of authors who (presumably) weren’t even submitting to the anthology. I debated whether a horror micropress was worth the attention of a blog post. But I’m a SF/F author, and this publisher is a part of my circle, even if they’re a tiny part, and I didn’t feel right letting this pass without condemnation. I hope there’s a better explanation. But if not, I hope all those involved with this decision will please feel free to go to hell. (Thanks to Christian Young for the link.) Catherynne Valente recently posted two essays about gender issues, both of which are worth reading.1 “If you watch these ads, and mainstream sitcoms, you see this place. This place where men and women can barely stand each other long enough to have mutually unfulfilling sex and procreate. Where women are the sole source of everything irritating and wrong in a man’s life, plus she’s never hot enough, plus you have to, like, interact with her sometimes.” It’s gotten me thinking about masculinity and what it means to “Be a man” in this culture. The way we’re taught to act with other men and with women, the roles and responsibilities we’re supposed to take on, the things we are and aren’t supposed to worry about…. What a bunch of insane, contradictory crap. Here are just a few of the “rules” I’ve come up with.
I was planning to transition into my own thoughts about being a man. What I think a real man should be. A healthier, better list. But it didn’t work. Say you go with “A real man takes care of his family.” Why does this have anything to do with gender? “A real man protects those who need his help.” And a real woman doesn’t? “A real man respects women.” No, a decent human being respects women. And men. But I did come up with one guideline. Because a real man can speak out against sexism and homophobia, and be heard in a way that women speaking those same words might not be. Because women complaining about sexism are dismissed as ball-busting feminazis with no sense of humor. I’ve watched it happen again and again. A woman writes or speaks about a topic and gets ignored. I or another man speak out about the same thing, and there’s an outpouring of support and agreement. I still get blown off, but not as often or in the same way as I see happening to women. Being a man means I’m given certain advantages, including the power to speak out and be listened to. Being a good man means using that voice to fight this hateful sexist crap. —
Yesterday, Victoria Strauss tweeted a link to The Ugly Truth About Getting Your Book Published, in which Phil Cooke is just the latest voice to proclaim the Awful Truth about Publishing. The article flaunts various numbers to show that book sales are PLUMMETTING, and everything is AWFUL! (He also includes strategies for dealing with these awful truths. Coincidentally, Cooke runs Cooke Pictures, a media/publicity consulting company who will happily help you survive this terrible storm … for a fee.) (ETA: Phil Cooke commented to say that he does not, in fact, charge a fee for his services. And then follows up with a sockpuppet. Sigh…) For example, “Bowker reports that 560,626 new books were published in the U.S. in 2008, which is more than double the number of new books published five years earlier (2003) in the U.S. These figures include print-on-demand and short-run books, which is where most of the growth has occurred.“ (Emphasis added.) And then, from point number three, “Average book sales are shockingly small, and falling fast.” Ladies and gentlemen, we have MathFail. Let me break it down with simple and totally made-up numbers. Let’s say a decade ago, 1000 different books were published, and each book sold an average of 10,000 copies. 1000 x 10,000 means 10,000,000 books sold overall. Then print-on-demand technology leads to an explosion of self-publishing and vanity presses. Ten years later, we have twice as many books being published. But the average PoD title sells what, 100 copies? Let’s be generous and call it 200. Assuming no change at all in traditionally published1 books, we see: 1000 x 10,000 = 10,000,000 traditionally published books. Oh noes! Average book sales have been cut almost in half! It’s the end of publishing … even though, in our made-up example, traditionally published books are selling just as well as they did a decade ago. If you want to educate me, show me useful data. Be specific. Don’t just flash around misleading and utterly useless generalizations. Want another example? “A book has less than a 1% chance of being stocked in an average bookstore.” MathFail Redux. If you sell a book to Tor or Baen or DAW, you have an extremely good chance of having your book stocked in an average bookstore. “Sell” to Publish America, and your chances are closer to 0%. But lump everything together, and you can get your average to be nice, scary, and utterly meaningless. “Here’s the reality of the book industry: in 2004, 950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies.” And how many of those titles are out of print? Specialty books? Vanity Press? It’s true that publishing is in a rough place right now. Print runs really are down, overall … but not necessarily to the extent implied in Cooke’s article. Things are changing, and we’re working to keep up and adapt. It’s not the end of print, the end of publishing, or the end of the world. —
In DAW’s defense, I believe the budget for their monthly anthologies is significantly smaller than for original novels, which I suspect is why they tend to go with stock art for the former. And artistically, I like the look of this one. I just wish they’d gone with stock art that showed a Chinese dragon instead of a western one.
“Nimira is supposed to be dark-skinned! The book trailer captures that and is true to the book (check it out here) but the girl in the US covers is definitely white.” It’s deja vu all over again.
I know many publishers have multiple imprints, but when did Baen launch their “Orgies in Space” line? I’m all for not judging a book by its cover, but even as a teenaged boy I don’t think I could have brought this one into the house. As a grownup wanting to introduce my daughter to SF/F, I’m embarrassed for my genre. Click on any of the thumbnails for larger versions. Please keep in mind that authors have little to no control over their cover art. Larbalestier was able to push for new artwork for her book, but she’s a fairly high-clout author and was able to rally reader/fan support. Generally, the author has little input into the cover. So, what do you think? From this week’s episode of Criminal Minds, “The Uncanny Valley”: “Diabetics metabolize everything they consume differently. Food, drink, drugs … it all gets broken down into blood sugar.” Ignoring the fact that not all food and drink gets broken into blood sugar (Coke Zero, anyone?), you’re telling me my drugs all turn into blood sugar too? Guess I’d better start taking insulin with my cholesterol pills from now on. The show also asserts that diabetics can metabolize drugs faster, and thus our victim could shake off the paralytic. (Which was being received via an I.V. drip.) This struck me at first as either poorly researched or poorly explained. So I spent this morning digging up research so as not to come off as an idiot when I wrote my rant, and what do you know. I came across a 2007 study from The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases which states: In fact, type 1 diabetes not only leads to activation of drug metabolic genes, but also has a profound effect on the metabolism of certain drugs. Mice with induced type 1 diabetes rapidly clear their systems of a compound that induces temporary paralysis, while normal mice cannot. From that same article, “Controlling the diabetes reversed the effect: when insulin was given to the mice, the CAR-induced genes turned off. “ So in theory, since this woman was off her insulin, there might have been a window where she would have thrown off the effects of the drugs before falling into a diabetic coma. I’m not finding anything to support the idea that drugs all break down into blood sugar, though. That one still strikes me as goblin dung. According to the article above, a diabetic with out-of-control glucose doesn’t clear the drug by breaking it down into sugar, but because (in mice, at least) this activates certain genes that clear the drug from the system. So, I’m cranky about the “Everything turns into sugar” bit, but it looks like they did the research on the rest. Thanks for that, Criminal Minds — the widespread laziness and misinformation spread in most books and shows when it comes to diabetes is a huge peeve of mine. On that note, if any of my writer friends are ever doing a story that includes diabetes and have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’m not a doctor, but I can give you the basics and tell you what it’s like to live with the damn disease. Also, I think I have a man-crush on Dr. Reid. Dear Anonymous Commenter, Thank you for taking the time to comment on my post about Self-Publishing Myths. While the poor grammar and spelling were annoying, (something you might want to work on as you self-publish that second book), I was struck by this part of your comment: “Lets be realistic- how many people get published through traditional publishers? When people used to ask me if i was published i would ask them if they had won american idol. I spent way too much time thinking about your words, trying to find a response that would capture the true depth of my feelings. I came up with the following: Bite me. To elaborate, you wander over to the blog of an author who’s published five books with a commercial publisher and proceed to explain that talent and skill and work have nothing to do with it; I just got lucky and knew the right people. Because the right people will happily risk their careers to publish their friends’ books, even if those books suck. Is that the line of pseudologic you’re following here? From what I’ve seen, this sort of nonsense usually comes from one of two scenarios:
You go on to say, “My books are good, as im sure a million unpublished books out there are.” Right. Much like everyone who tries out for American Idol is sure their singing is good, and that they deserve a major record deal. Because it’s so easy. Because anyone can sit down and crank out a great story. Heck, my cat hocked his breakfast onto the keyboard last week and produced a dandy little flash piece about zombie squids. Everyone’s wonderful and brilliant, and it’s just a lottery as the Publishing Gods roll their d1,000,000 to see which of those worthy candidates shall be chosen. Most of the people who get rejected from American Idol are sent home because they suck. The ones who make it to those final rounds are the ones who’ve worked their asses off to learn how to sing. Writing is the same way. It takes time and a lot of work. No magic fairy is going to blow sparkly story dust up your butt and transform you into the next J. K. Rowling. I understand if you’re frustrated. I know it can be discouraging trying to break in as a writer. I’ve been there, and so has every other commercial author you so casually dismiss as “lucky.” You chose to go the self-publishing route. Maybe because your unique creative vision was too special for the New York publishers. Maybe you really are as good as you think you are, and the entire publishing industry was just too blind to see it. Maybe not. I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care. I wish you all the best, and I hope you’re happy with your choice. But if not–if you’re going the passive-aggressive “publishing is mean and out to get me” route to console yourself–could you please at least keep it to the privacy of your own blog? Thanks. From time to time, I get an e-mail or a comment from male readers who enjoyed my goblin books, but are hesitant to pick up Stepsister Scheme or Mermaid’s Madness because they look like they’re for girls.
I’ve said in multiple interviews that I wrote Stepsister for my daughter, in response to the Disney/Barbie princess infestation we went through at the house. So in a way, these books are written for girls. Or at least for one girl. Which means … what, exactly? I don’t even know what a “girly book” is. I assume it’s shorthand along the lines of: Boy Books = Action/Adventure; Girl Books = Romance There’s value in being able to find the kind of books you want. If you’re into character-oriented fiction, you want to be able to discover those books in the store. You don’t want to buy a book, take it home, and discover that what you thought was an action-packed vampire adventure is actually a 400-page relationship angst-fest. I get that. But trying to classify those preferences by gender, with all of the stereotyping and judgement that goes with that? It doesn’t work for me. Josh Jasper wrote a piece over at Genreville about genre shame, and about being male and reading romance novels. “Why should I be ashamed of reading something fun when women aren’t? The answer is that I’m afraid of being judged by people I don’t know, whose opinions don’t really matter, about something they have no real business judging me over. Social conditioning is strange and stupid.” When you ask me if Mermaid and Stepsister are girly books, the answer is that I don’t even know what that means. I don’t want to know. I can’t tell you whether or not you’ll like the books, but I can try to give you an idea what they’re about and let you make your own decision. In a nutshell, the princess series is about: Fighting and magic and family and fairies and revenge and unrequited love and requited love and hairy trolls and sailing and a three-legged cat and flying horses and wolves and drunk pixies and sewer goblins and enchanted swords and mermaids and friendship and ghosts and strong women and not-so-strong women and also some men and birds and rats and lots of ass-kicking. It’s bad enough we still try to force people into fairly rigid gender roles. Do we really have to do it to books too? In 2006, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania instituted a policy that students with a BMI of 30 or higher must take a “Fitness for Life” class. The students affected by this rule are now seniors, some of whom may not be able to graduate, either because they haven’t gotten their BMI tested by the university or because they have a BMI of 30 or higher and haven’t taken the class. James DeBoy, chair of Lincoln’s health, PE, and recreation department, explains: “This country’s in the midst of an obesity epidemic … We need to address this problem directly with our students. No student should ever be able to leave Lincoln and not know the risks of obesity.” For reference, I’m 5′7″, around 160 pounds (which means I’m “overweight”, according to the BMI). If I hit 200 pounds, that puts my BMI at 30.5. I am now “obese,” and would be required to take the extra class in order to graduate. (Presumably, I’m also required to pay the university for the privilege.) My God, what would these people do without the rest of us to remind them how fat and unhealthy and generally repulsive they are? It’s not like heavy people get smacked with this message every day. The underlying assumption is that obesity is caused by a failure of willpower. People are fat because they’re lazy, gluttonous, or both. If they really wanted to, they’d lose the weight. Ergo, they’re fat because they choose to be. In some cases, there’s truth here. When I switched from a job fixing computers throughout a six-story building to one where I sit at a desk all day, I gained weight. I could have added exercise to my life to make up for the walking I wasn’t doing anymore, but for a long time, I didn’t. However–and this may come as a shock–people are different. Not everyone’s body works the same. I know people who eat healthy and play high-intensity racketball for 2-3 hours a night, 3-5 nights a week, but are heavier than me. My wife knows enough about dieting and healthy lifestyle to teach that Lincoln class, yet despite living a much healthier life than me, she struggles with her weight more than I ever have. But she’s the one who would be punished by Lincoln’s arbitrary policy. Do the folks at Lincoln really think fat people haven’t picked up on the fact that society thinks they’re horribly unhealthy and undesirable? That’s not a problem. To pick one study, “[o]ver half of the females studied between ages eighteen and twenty-five would prefer to be run over by a truck than to be fat.”1 (Emphasis added). I’m sure Lincoln’s intentions were good. They’re trying to help people be healthy. Healthy = thin! Everyone must be thin! (By the way, an APA study found the death rate for eating disorders to be between 5 and 20 percent.2 But at least they died thin!) If you want to add a class on lifestyle and healthy eating, that’s one thing. Having seen what people pay for diets and weight loss programs, the class should fill up fast. But to force everyone with a BMI of 30 to take your class, or else they can’t graduate? Sorry, Lincoln. Your bigotry and ignorance are showing. Just ask the the Mayo Clinic: “[O]verweight patients had better survival rates and fewer heart problems than those with a normal BMI. This apparently perverse result, drawn from data from 40 studies covering 250,000 people with heart disease, did not suggest that obesity was not a health threat but rather that the 100-year-old BMI test was too blunt an instrument to be trusted.” 3 (Emphasis added). Can obesity be a health risk? Sometimes, sure. But if you think that gives us the right to judge, condemn, and punish everyone who doesn’t conform to our screwed-up ideal of human beauty? Well, I’m planning a mandatory logic class for everyone with an HUA (Head Up Ass) score greater than 30, and you just qualified. —
By now, I imagine many of you have seen Publishers Weekly’s roundup of the ten very best books of 2009, a list which just happens to only include male authors. Sure, the girls made it into some of the secondary lists, but the ten best? All boys. I would also check out Lizzie Skurnick’s response at Politics Daily, which included this bit from PW: “We wanted the list to reflect what we thought were the top 10 books of the year with no other consideration . . . We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz . . . It disturbed us when we were done that our list was all male.” So here’s my question: What should PW have done when they realized they had come up with an all-male list? We pause now for the predictable response. “You keep your quotas off of us, you damn, dirty PC police!” Right. Moving on, the thing I don’t get is that the folks at PW say they were disturbed by this, but they don’t appear to have done anything about it. Did they ever take that next step and ask, “Why, if we were truly ignoring gender, did we still come up with an all-male list? We’re talking less than a 1 in 1000 chance of this happening purely at random*, which suggests maybe we weren’t as gender-blind as we thought.” Our own biases are hard to face. It’s easier and safer to turn the blame outward or make excuses:
I could go on and on listing reasons that basically amount to “It’s not my fault,” and “I’m not sexist!” We could spend the whole month debunking most of those reasons. But in the end, Publishers Weekly published this list. They were aware enough to recognize something wasn’t right, and I give them props for that. But that’s much easier than actually taking responsibility. We can say, “Oh look, a list of all men. That’s gonna be a problem, because those bloggers are going to raise hell that we didn’t include a token woman.” Or we can stop making excuses and try being accountable for our own choices and behaviors. We can say, “I tried to be gender-blind about this, but ended up with an all-male list. Huh. I didn’t consciously try to pick only male authors, but maybe I’m not as gender-blind or unbiased as I thought.” Nobody’s asking for quotas. Me, I’m just asking people to grow up and take responsibility for their choices. Yes, we’re talking about an industry-wide issue that affects publishing on many different levels. But the industry is made up of individuals, and every one of us, myself included, has our own biases and prejudices. We can ignore them and make the same tired excuses, or we can face them and try to do better. We all mess up. I just wish more folks would own up to it when it happens. — I’ve been reading various discussions about the gang-rape of a 15-year-old girl in California and the aftermath. (Warning: the article is intense and potentially triggering.) One constant, as with almost every such conversation, has been the mindset when it comes to rapists and abusers. There’s a strong sense of us vs. them. How could they do this? How could the bystanders just watch? I’ve come across various theories–they were poor and desperate, they were in a gang, they were drunk… We want our villains to be easy to identify, like on TV. We recognize the bad guys the instant they enter a scene, complete with foreboding music. We cringe as the poor victim is attacked, but we rest easy knowing we were smart enough to recognize the villain for what he was. He’s one of them. Because humanity is broken into two distinct groups: There’s a clear boundary between the groups. That works for me, because it excuses me from having to worry about my own behavior. I’ve never gang-raped a girl. I’ve never beaten my wife. I’m safely in the “normal” circle. It’s comfortable. The evil rapists and abusers are over there, and us normal folks are over here. Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t work like that. People don’t fall neatly into categories. I’ve found it more helpful to look at behavior, like so:
There’s no “us” vs. “them.” No neat boundary separating good guys from bad. We all fall somewhere on the curve, and that position isn’t constant. Do you think the guys who gang-raped that girl woke up one morning and decided to be rapists? In most cases, it’s a behavior that changes over time, moving further and further to the right side of the curve. One day it’s a shouting match with my girlfriend. Maybe I use body language to intimidate her into backing down. Eventually, when that doesn’t work, I grab her. Not hard enough to bruise, just enough to let her know who’s boss. A month later, I’ve stopped being quite so careful about the bruising. Step by step, my behavior becomes more abusive. Likewise with rape. Maybe it starts by trying to pick up a girl at the bar. Trying to talk a woman into going home with you is just part of the game, right? If that fails, I can buy her a few more drinks to loosen her up. Then maybe a few more–it was her own choice to get drunk, right? Or maybe I just spike the drinks to speed things along… Our society has strong attitudes about what it means to be a man. Real men are strong and in control. We go after the things we want. We’re assertive, even aggressive when necessary. We’re determined, and we don’t take no for an answer. Given all that, do you think it’s coincidence that men commit 95% of rapes? How could they stand by, refusing to call 911 while a girl was raped in front of them? We’ve all stood by and done nothing at one point or another. Every one of us has heard someone making sexist comments and failed to call them on it. We’ve wondered if someone was being abused, but kept silent because we didn’t know what to say or how to ask. If your response to all this is “But I’m not a rapist,” “All men aren’t rapists,” or the ever-popular, “Why do you hate men?” congratulations–you’ve missed the point. It’s not about you. It’s about recognizing that the “me” vs. “those people” approach doesn’t really work for understanding or ending rape and abuse. Discussion welcome, as always. |
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Copyright © 2010 Jim C. Hines - All Rights Reserved |
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My reaction to this is all over the place. The goblin books went over well with younger boys, and I can understand why a teenage boy might be hesitant to walk around with a book that has three women surrounded by swirling pastels on the cover. I also think it sucks that we’re still raising boys to think it’s shameful to be caught reading something “feminine,” but having been a teenage male myself, I can understand that reluctance.
