Brown Belt

Last night was my promotion to first brown belt in Sanchin-Ryu.  This is the last of the kyu ranks, meaning next up is black belt.  (At which point I shall finally learn the much-feared “Boot to the Head” technique.)

Naturally, this was the night my uniform was still in the laundry, so I did my promotion while wearing a Superman T-shirt.  I kind of like that, actually.

Sanchin-Ryu is different from other styles I’ve done in that there’s no formal test.  Or, as Master Cataline puts it, your test is going on every time you come to class.  When he decides you’re ready, you get the paper form for the next rank.  I received that last week, sent it in, and then last night was promotion time.

By “promotion” I mean Jim gets out in front of the class and performs various forms while several of the black belts demonstrate another advanced technique known as “messing with me.”  I did the wrong CBA[1. Combination Basic Advanced.] at one point … but better to do something than to stand there doing nothing while you try to figure it out.  Then came the fun part, where I got to square off against three higher ranking black belts at once.

How did that go?  Well, I’m still alive.  They say when you kumite[2. Controlled practice fight, essentially.], you regress three ranks.  I can testify to this.  But all things considered, I’m satisfied with how I did.  Though this is the second promotion in a row where I’ve used a quick groin kick against one particular master … I suspect if I try that move on him a third time, he’s going to take my foot off 🙂

The next time I’m in class, I want to ask whether they have any suggestions for handling adrenaline.  During the three-on-one, I ended up striking one master in the face with more force than I intended.  That started the adrenaline pumping, like speed injected directly into the veins.  This … is not helpful.

(If you’re curious about the punch, I spoke to the master afterwards to apologize for my lack of control.  He said it was his responsibility too.  He had been told to attack one particular part of my body, and was focusing on that, so ended up stepping into my punch.)

Overall, I feel pretty good about it.  I’ve still got an awful lot to learn … in fact, now that I’ve reached this rank, I feel like I’m finally starting to realize just how much I have to learn.  (Once again, Sanchin-Ryu reminds me a lot of writing…)

But I enjoy learning, and while it’s not all bunnies and rainbows, I’m having fun and feeling good about my study.  And the best part of my style?  According to Sensei Jonathon, all promotions must be celebrated with ice cream.

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Gray Rape

Two things led to this particular post. The first was a guest essay on Jeff Vandermeer’s blog by Jaymee Goh, about Enthusiastic Consent.  The second was an article published in Cosmopolitan a while back about “Gray Rape.”

I don’t like the phrase gray rape, and the Cosmo article pisses me off from page one with “gray areas” like:

“No. Stop,” she said softly — too softly, she later told herself. When he ignored her and entered her anyway, she tensed up and tried to go numb until it was over … “It fell into a gray area,” she said recently. “Maybe I wasn’t forceful enough in saying I didn’t want it.”

and:

When [Laura] was a sophomore, she met a fellow student at a frat party. They drank, they flirted, and then he invited her to his apartment. There, they kissed for a while, and things got more heated until Laura realized that he was taking off her underwear and entering her. She was drunk, but she says she was aware enough to say no. When he ignored her, she froze — a common response, much like Alicia’s — and he continued to have sex with her.

There’s no gray here.  This is rape.  It does illustrate a common reaction to being raped, however, which is to blame yourself, and to question what you could have done differently.  It’s a reaction our culture is all too happy to encourage, emphasising the victim’s supposed responsibility for someone else’s choice to rape her (or him).

What about those situations where the victim didn’t clearly say no?  This used to come up a lot, along with false accusations, when I spoke to men about rape.  Is there a difference between rape and a misunderstanding?

Take the Kobe Bryant case back in 2003.  After the alleged victim dropped the criminal case, Bryant was quoted as saying:

Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did…

If one person believes an encounter is consensual and the other doesn’t, you have a problem.  Consent has to come from both parties.  If it’s one-sided, it’s not consent; it’s rape.

But if you didn’t intend to rape someone, and you believed they were okay with it, then it’s not your fault, right?  Just like if you didn’t intend to run someone over with your car, then they won’t really end up in the hospital with internal bleeding.

Wait, the voices say.  Isn’t it her responsibility to say no and make it clear she’s not interested?  Is it fair to blame the guy if someone’s sending mixed signals?

This seems like a duh moment to me, but the phrase “mixed signals” means the signals are mixed.  There’s no clear message as to what the person wants … meaning you have to find out.  With as much miscommunication as you get in most relationships, don’t you think it’s a good idea to make sure you’re both on the same page?

When working with rape survivors, I talked to a number of people who had frozen when they realized what was happening.  Sometimes these were people who had been raped before.  Freezing is a survival response to a threat.  It does not equal consent.

So to everyone worrying about “misunderstandings,” you’ve got a choice.  You can choose to make sure your partner enthusiastically consents to what you’re doing, or you can choose not to.  Why wouldn’t you make sure?  I can think of only two reasons.

  1. You’re uncomfortable talking about it.  If that’s the case — if you’re not comfortable talking about what you’re doing — then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it?
  2. You’re worried they’ll say no.  Meaning you’re not sure they want this, and you’d rather risk committing rape than risk asking and being told no.

Discussion welcome, as always.

First Book Friday: Goblin Quest

I’m thinking about making this a regular feature, asking different authors to talk about their first big novel deal.  What do you think?

It was September of 2000.  I had just quit my job in Nevada and moved back to Michigan.  I was living with my parents, sending out resumes, and trying to rebuild a social life.  I was also reading a lot, including one book which should have been awesome.  It was a fantasy novel written from the point of view of the monsters, and it looked to be funny and fun and exactly what I needed.

It wasn’t.  I don’t think it was a bad book, but it wasn’t what I wanted to read.  I tossed it away without finishing because I was so frustrated.  I wanted to know more about the monsters’ society and how they functioned.  I wanted humor that came from the characters.  I wanted to see them fight back with cleverness instead of brute force.  Since this author hadn’t given me that book, I decided to write it myself.

Goblin Quest [B&N | Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon]  was the fourth novel I finished, telling the story of Jig the goblin, an underdog even among underdogs who gets dragged along by adventurers and forced to face carrion worms, zombies, a dragon, and worse.  Because I had no life and no job, I wrote and revised the book in just six weeks.

Unlike most books I’ve written, I had a clear idea how this one was going to go.  Jig and Smudge were fully formed from day one.  The plot didn’t change much.  A few names were altered — Rana became Riana, the dragon Fraum turned into Straum, Golara the cook got a K in her name — but that’s about it.

The first four query letters went out to agents on January 16, 2001.  I sent another four on the 23rd.  I also submitted the manuscript to publishers, starting with Tor on February 7. Tor’s rejection showed up on February 20.  (If only I had known about their fear of goblins!)

All total, I queried 27 agents and submitted to 10 publishers, including Baen Books in November of 2002.  In November of 2003, I came across Five Star Books, a small library press.  John Helfers was the acquisitions editor.  I knew his name from Turn the Other Chick, which included a story from me.  So I sent him a query.  When he expressed interest, I sent a withdrawal letter to Baen and mailed the manuscript to John.  A month and a half later, I had an offer.  A year after that, GoblinQuest[1. For some reason I decided GoblinQuest was a cooler title than Goblin Quest. I’m not sure what I was thinking. Removing the space was a dumb idea, and led to a number of needless database errors.] was out from Five Star.

Then things got interesting.  In February of 2005 — a year and a half after I had withdrawn the book from Baen, and three months after the Five Star edition came out — I received an e-mail from Jim Baen, offering to buy Goblin Quest.[2. Apparently they never received my withdrawal letter.]

I freaked out.  On the advice of author friends, I called several agents.  Steve Mancino at JABberwocky agreed to take a look.  Five Star only published hardcover and trade paperback, which meant the mass market rights were still available.  Steve read the book, loved it, and offered to represent me.

Without going into details, the Baen offer was withdrawn, and I entered a month-long funk.  While I moped, Steve sold Goblin Quest to a Russian publisher and encouraged me to get to work on the next book.

I ended up writing another goblin book because writing about goblins cheered me up, and I desperately needed cheering.  Steve took the new book, Goblin Hero, and sent it to editors.  The folks at Ace and DAW were interested, so we sent them Goblin Quest to read.  DAW made an offer on both books, and the rest is history.

So there you have it.  Six years from writing the book to seeing the DAW edition appear in 2006.  Today, Goblin Quest is in its fifth printing, and long ago earned out its advance.  It’s been translated into five other languages, and German sales helped put a new roof on my house.

Not bad for a nearsighted goblin runt and his pet fire-spider.

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Thursday Linkage

“Tor.com is afraid of nothing.  Except goblins.  And Cthulhu.”  And this is why the goblin series was published by DAW, not Tor 🙂  (Link and commentary from M’jit.)

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SFWA has created a Sample DMCA Generator for authors, with instructions. 

“Legally, DMCA notices must come from the copyright owner or their legal representative, such as an agent, publisher, or literary executor. Since SFWA legally cannot act on behalf of anyone from whom we do not have specific permission for a specific infringement, we are instead providing a sample DMCA notice generator for use by authors…”

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Maurice Broaddus on The PC Challenges of Being an Editor.

“At no point did I worry about any sort of “PC testing” of my table of contents (will I have enough POC?  Will there be any women?).  That’s a ridiculous way to go about putting together an anthology.  The other reason it was a non-worry?  It’s not that difficult to produce a table of contents that has diversity.  Now I’m not even talking about forcing the issue of diversity in a TOC.   I’m saying that these days you have to almost go out of your way to produce an anthology without diversity.”

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Finally, combining two great tastes that taste great together, have some LEGO steampunk.  Click the pic for a close-up.  This was created by V&A Steamworks.  Click here for more of their LEGO steampunk creations.

Endings

Assuming nobody interrupts my lunch break today, I should be able to finish up the third draft of The Snow Queen’s Shadow.  Not the final draft, mind you.  I’ve made plenty of notes about things I have to go back and fix.  But I’m hopeful that draft #4 will be the one that gets sent to my agent and editor.

This is the second time I’ve wrapped up a series.  You’d think it should get easier.  Much like each new book you write should be easier than the last, because you’re getting better, right?  Yet it seems to work the other way around.  The more skilled you become as a writer, the more ambitious you get, and the more aware you are of the flaws.

From the start, endings and the lie of happily ever after have been a central theme of the princess series.  I’m not saying people can’t be happy, but the idea of endings … unless you destroy the universe on the last page of your book, there is no end.  There’s only the point where you stopped writing.

Usually that point should bring closure to the conflicts of the book.  But if everything is wrapped up too neatly, it ruins the suspension of disbelief, at least for me.  Life is messy.  Solving one problem often leads to others.  So when I end a book or a series, I want to make sure I convey a sense that these characters and their stories will continue — even if I’m no longer writing them.

I also look for change.  If everyone and everything is the same at the end as they were in the beginning, what’s the point?  Sure, the journey might have been fun, but a story where the status quo never changes?  No thank you.

And of course, the author has to follow through on his/her promises.  For example, I introduced an unresolved romantic relationship in Stepsister Scheme.  I have to go somewhere with that tension.  Likewise, there are other character conflicts I’ve been planting and need to resolve … one way or another.

I don’t believe an author’s job is to make all the readers happy.  In part because there’s just no way to do it.  I know some readers really want to see those two characters end up together; other readers have said they don’t want that.  One way or another, some people will not get the ending they were hoping for.

For the past year, I’ve been searching for the ending that feels true.  Some things have changed a lot from my initial outline; others haven’t.  Some plotlines I had hoped to include were cut because they just didn’t fit.  And don’t get me started on trying to decide who lives and who dies…

I’ve got a lot of work left, but I’m getting there.  For the most part, this ending feels right.  It feels honest.  It answers questions … but not all of them 🙂  It provides closure, but also points toward a future (and leaves me something to work with if I someday decide to return to this series).  It is — I hope — powerful without being manipulative.[1. Deus ex machina endings fall into the manipulative category for me, as do most “It was all a dream” endings.]

Is it perfect?  Probably not.  But I’m proud of what I’ve written, and I can’t wait to share it with everyone.

Discussion welcome, as always.  What do you look for in an ending?  What are the best (or worst) endings you’ve read?  What makes it work?[2. Also, see Aliette de Bodard’s SF Novelists post on cultural expectations of what makes a good ending and a good story in general.]

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Taking the Hit

I’ve talked before about the similarities between writing and martial arts, but the more I study Sanchin-Ryu, the more I appreciate it as a metaphor for writing.  (Or maybe writing is a metaphor for karate, I don’t know.)

One things I struggled with in Sanchin-Ryu is that there’s no blocking.  Oh, you learn pretty quickly to keep your hands up to guard, and there are strikes to intercept an opponent’s attack, not to mention learning to move into your opponent to disrupt their attack.  But no blocks.

Because you’re going to get hit. No matter how long you study blocking, no matter how fast you are.  Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Jackie Chan … they all get hit.  So we focus on acting instead of reacting.  On controlling the confrontation instead of trying to guess and deflect our opponent’s strikes.  On learning to take the hit, minimize the damage, and return that energy.

If you’re going to be a writer, you’re going to get hit.  Some of those hits are going to hurt, as with my very first submission to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, which came back with a note “You must have had a point to this story … but I have no idea what it was.”  Or learning my French publisher wouldn’t buy the third goblin book because sales had been lousy.

Other hits are easier to shrug off, such as a negative review of The Stepsister Scheme which said “the book goes from happy girl power romp … to a few things that I’m sure could be found in an S&M porno.”

You can’t block every hit.  Some of them are going to knock you on your ass, like the day I learned Baen Books had withdrawn an offer to publish my novels.

Growing up, I remember the kids who would go crazy when hit, flailing about like a cross between Gonzo and the Tasmanian Devil. That happens with writers, too.  It’s not pretty.

You’re going to get hit.  Rejections and bad reviews, not to mention jealous friends or peers, trouble with editors and/or publishers, online trolls, flamewars, and so much more.  And it’s going to hurt.  Part of being a writer is learning to take the hit.

I think the most helpful thing is to regain your stance.  A good hit steals your balance.  Take it back.  Your writing career could span decades.  This is only one review, one rejection, one setback.  In the case of my French publisher, I had to remind myself that other aspects of my career were still going well.  (Happy side note: I now have a new French publisher which has picked up the first two princess books.)

In the case of Marion Zimmer Bradley, I found a way to send that energy right back.  I took her rejection as a challenge to write an even better story, one she would have to buy.  (I sold my first story to her in 1999, four years later.) 

Know which hits require a response, and how to respond.  Random Amazon reviewer?  You have to shrug it off.  Publisher refusing to pay you?  Start with one well-targeted strike from SFWA’s Griefcom.

Keep your focus.  Don’t let an opponent dictate how things are going to go.  One of the reasons I banned an individual from my LiveJournal last week is that I simply don’t have the time or energy for it; I have a book to finish.

And most importantly, remember to breathe.

Other suggestions or advice on how to take a literary hit?  Or how not to?

Notes From a Booksigning

Thanks to everyone who came out to Schulers last night!  I hope you all enjoyed yourself.  Thanks also to the staff at the store, particularly Emily, who did the planning and prep work.

I’m told they ordered 50 copies of Red Hood’s Revenge.  By the end of the night, I believe there were two left.  Booksignings can be hit or miss, but I’m counting this one as a solid win.  As always, it was a bit of a blur, but here are some of the things I remember:

1. Jim C. Hines, demonstrating his professional writing skills, attempts to spell Linda’s name with a “Th”.  Sigh.

2. Seeing my parents pick up the book for the first time, and their reactions when they discovered I had dedicated it to them.  (Followed by Emily’s comment, “And you’re making them buy their own copy???”)

3. The following exchange:

“Can you sign these for charity?”
Jim: “Sure!  So you just want an autograph, then?  No dedication?”
“Um … I was kind of hoping you could sign them to me, Charity.”
Jim: “D’oh!”

4. My son coming up to sit on my lap at the end of the night and announcing “I want to sign a book!”

5. Seeing everyone — friends, coworkers, family, and strangers — who came out to hear me read and get a book signed.  (Or maybe just to eat pizza.)

Someday I’ll learn how to balance wanting to talk to everyone with the need to keep the line moving.  Still working on that…

The downside to the evening was coming home and banning someone from my LiveJournal.  Much as I enjoyed the booksigning, I’m still an introvert.  I can be “on” for an event, but leaves me drained afterward, and I just didn’t have the sporks to deal with this person.

I suppose I should be grateful that the False Reporting post was ban-free for the first 200 comments, but I still hate doing it.

But enough of that.  The signing was a blast, and we sold the heck out of my books, so I’m gonna hold on to that feeling.  Dr. Phil, who braved thunderstorms to drive out from Kalamazoo, posted a few pictures of the event.  I like the “reading faces” one 🙂

And because I haven’t done one in a little while, here’s a LEGO pic for the Futurama fans.  Behold the World of Tomorrow, by Pepa Quin.  Click here or on the photo for the full collection.

My Job Rocks, Part XVIII

For anyone in mid-Michigan, I’ve got a booksigning at pizza party tonight from 6:00 – 8:00 at Schuler Books in Okemos.  (Former Lansing signings have been at the Eastwood location.  If you go to the Eastwood store tonight, I won’t be there, and neither will all of that hot, yummy pizza.)

Any suggestions or requests for what you’d like me to read?

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I also wanted thank everyone who’s posted reviews or comments about Red Hood’s Revenge on Amazon, Twitter, blogs, or wherever.  It’s very much appreciated, and I’m glad most of you have been enjoying it.

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Not writing-related: my daughter Clara returned last night after a week up north with a friend.  She brought a monarch butterfly chrysalis and a caterpillar who’s about to form another chrysalis.  (She’s always been interested in the bugs.)

I’d never seen a monarch chrysalis before, and I couldn’t photograph the thing, but they’re beautiful.  Light green with metallic gold highlights.  It looks exactly like someone painted gold leaf over the raised ridge and bumps near the top.  Very cool.

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Anyway, back to the rocking job.  In the past week, I’ve received books by Stacia Kane (autographed!), Sherwood Smith, and Beth Bernobich, and I should be receiving a copy of Erin Hoffman‘s forthcoming novel Sword of Fire and Sea soon as well.  Three of these four books won’t be out for a little while yet, but I get to read them all.  Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!  I love my job!

  

False Rape Reports

After my Rape and the Police post, I said I’d do a follow-up on false reports of rape.  I do this for two reasons.

  1. False reports do happen, albeit rarely.  Rare or not, they’re worth discussing.
  2. By posting this discussion here, the next time I talk about rape and someone starts to derail the conversation by talking about false accusations, I can redirect the commenter to this post.

The issue of false accusations used to come up every time I spoke to men about rape.  It’s come up in almost every rape-related blog post I’ve written.

I worked with one rape counselor who told me flat-out she didn’t believe anyone would ever falsely accuse someone of rape.  However, I find there’s nothing so heinous that someone, somewhere, hasn’t done it.  (After all, look at the number of people who commit rape.)

I’ve been told only 2% of reported rapes turn out to be false, but I’ve never found a reliable source for that statistic.  A 1996 FBI report found that “Eight percent of forcible rape complaints in 1996 were ‘unfounded’ …”  This includes complaints found to be “false or baseless” … and therein lies a problem.

What qualifies as an unfounded report?  Many reported rapes aren’t prosecuted because those in the legal system don’t feel there’s sufficient evidence.  That doesn’t mean the accuser lied.  Likewise, is “baseless” the same as “false”?  How do we categorize or even identify cases where victims are bullied or intimidated into retracting their statements?

Playing fast and loose with definitions is how you get “Men’s Rights” groups reporting highly inflated numbers of false reports in order to show that rape is exaggerated and used as a weapon against men.

I believe false reports of rape are rare, but they do happen.  I wrote about one case in Michigan, back in 2004.  A student falsely accused a teacher of rape.  The teacher’s name was published in multiple newspaper articles.  The accused teacher’s fiancee was quoted as saying the false charges “took their toll on him,” and he later died of a heart attack.

I can’t imagine the fear and the anger and the stress he must have experienced.  The fact that he was exonerated and his accuser was arrested and sentenced for filing false charges doesn’t undo the pain he went through.

Here’s another example from Maine, which was reported only yesterday.  A woman allegedly made up a story of being raped by five men after a fight with her partner.  I can’t help noticing this line…

“[Police Chief] Craig said he plans to have the woman charged with filing a false report and plans to push for the maximum penalty.”

… and thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if police departments took real rape cases this seriously?

Lying about rape is a horrible thing.  It hurts the one accused, and it hurts victims of rape by giving fuel to those who would use false accusations to deny the reality of rape.  I have absolutely no sympathy for someone who deliberately and maliciously makes up an accusation of rape, for whatever reason.

I wonder though, how many anecdotal stories of false accusations are truly false.  When someone comments how a friend’s cousin’s buddy was falsely accused of rape, what does that mean?  Were charges filed and dropped?  Did the accuser retract her (or his) accusation?  Did the accused say “She’s lying!” and everyone simply chose to believe him?

False accusations are in many ways the reverse of rape cases.  Rape as a crime tends to be underreported and disbelieved.  Stories of false accusations, on the other hand, seem to be both widely believed and incredibly common … which makes sense, in a way.  After all, the first thing someone’s going to say when accused of rape is, “Oh, she’s lying.”

Discussion welcome, as always.  But as with other rape-related discussions here, I’ll be watching the comments and will moderate as needed, so please keep things respectful.

PublishAmerica: Now With 67% More Poodoo!

Fun fact: did you know that back in 1997, Miranda Prather (Executive Director of PublishAmerica) was arrested for faking a hate crime?

This doesn’t really surprise me. After all, this is a company widely reviled by anyone with the slightest clue about publishing.  It’s the company that accepted the deliberately and brilliantly awful book Atlanta Nights, the same company that published Night Travels of the Elven Vampire with a horribly Photoshopped (and illegal) cover of Orlando Bloom. The Absolute Write boards have a great deal of info on PA, everything from their $1 advance (so they can claim to be an advance-paying publisher) to advice on how to get out of a PA contract. Here’s a summary at AW about why they don’t recommend PA.

Apparently it’s now reached the point where even PublishAmerica wants nothing to do with PublishAmerica. From Writer Beware comes PA’s latest “offer” — PA authors can get their books relisted with a new imprint called Independence Books with the following benefits:

  • Not registered as POD in vendor databases.
  • Not registered as PublishAmerica.

That’s directly out of PA’s letter to their authors. I’m suspicious of the PoD designation thing, but it’s the second part that gets me.  I wish I could have been there for the meeting where they decided the best thing they could do to sell books was to try to disguise them as non-PA titles.  Just for fun, I’m imagining the conversation with various Star Wars characters doing the voices.

Emperor: “It appears that we’ve so thoroughly destroyed our reputation that bookstore staff spontaneously burst into sickly green flames at the mere mention of our name. Something must be done!”

Rookie Stormtrooper: “Hey, what if we tried producing better-quality books, and maybe started trying to sell those books to readers?”

::Flushing sound as the new guy is dropped into the rancor pit::

George Lucas: “We should hire that Brittany Spears guy to produce a video where he cries and says ‘Leave PublishAmerica alone!’  Better yet, I’ll create a CGI alien to do it in a really bad accent.”

Emperor: “Implement this plan immediately.”

Vader: “Perhaps it’s time to offer another ‘deal’ to our authors. Our prices are 50-75% higher than other publishers’ titles, so we can let our authors buy books at 40% off and still the Empire shall profit.”

Emperor: “Inform our authors that we are displeased with their lack of progress.  That should frighten them into buying more copies. But it still doesn’t fix our reputation.”

Jabba the Hutt [Translated (badly) from Huttese]: “Dude!  You should, like, totally change your name.  Like when you were sayin’ ‘I’m Senator Palpatine,’ but then you went all ‘I’m Darth Sidious, fool!’  Because nobody saw through that one!”

Emperor: “Excellent. Be sure to make them pay for the privilege…”

Jabba the Hutt: “And you should totally call it ‘Imperial Poodoo!'”

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Seriously, when things are so bad that you’re offering your own authors the opportunity to hide their association with you, maybe that should be a clue that it’s time to give up and go home.

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