M.K. Hobson's Blog, page 4

Dogs, algebra, and atheism

[image error]So for the past week, NPR’s Morning Edition has been running this series about the changing face of religion in America. Today, they were interviewing atheists who have lost loved ones, examining the ways in which they have tried to find comfort in the absence of faith. And despite the fact that I find the title of this series (“Losing Our Religion“) so infuriatingly twee that every time I hear it I want to line up Robert Siegel and all the members of REM and execute a chain dopeslap Three Stooges-style, I have to admit it has made me think some thinks.

I stopped believing in the Christian version of “God” when I was very young.  This wasn’t the result of any kind of dramatic spiritual rupture—my mom took us regularly to a very good liberal church full of kind and loving people, and my experience with organized religion was, and continues to be, very positive. But, being a born cynic, the sheer ridiculousness of the proposition I was being asked to swallow put me off from the get-go. I was supposed to believe that there was some old invisible bearded old guy who ran the universe? That all humanity came from two people? (I clearly remember asking the classic Sunday School question about where the “other” people, the ones that Adam and Eve’s grandkids married, came from—I don’t remember the response, which suggests that I was fobbed off with some vague, equally non-satisfying line of malarkey.) And beyond the stuff that just didn’t make any damn sense, there was all this incomprehensible brutality, the kind found in the stories of Isaac and Lot and Job. Being told to slice up your only kid just to make God happy? Humbly submitting to torture because God and Satan have a bet going? C’mon. Seriously. I knew I wouldn’t ever do things that cruel, so what did that mean, that I was nicer than God? Kinder and more compassionate than this supposedly all-loving, all-caring being?

I got along quite nicely without God until I was an adolescent, at which point I began experiencing severe and intense bouts of existential angst. I would lay in bed at night shaking with terror, pondering the huge size of the universe, and how there was no “outside” to it … and even if there was an “outside”, what was “outside” of the “outside”? I would work myself up into huge sobbing anxiety attacks over these questions. I realized that no one, not even my parents, could do anything about the state of existence I found myself trapped within, a system from which there was absolutely no escape because there was nowhere to escape to.

I remember working through all the afterlife scenarios one sleepless night, trying to land on one that made sense. Heaven was easily discarded; I found the idea of going to Heaven pretty awful. Sit around on clouds playing harps for all eternity? It felt stifled and small, and I knew the Universe wasn’t that small. And what about pets? And what about people who had been bad but didn’t know it? What about objectively good people that I didn’t personally like—did I have to spend all eternity with them? Or would the very fact that I didn’t like them, and didn’t want to spend eternity with them, mean that I would get disbarred from Heaven for not being a team player? It was all conundrums, all the way down.

The concept of reincarnation was worse; its horrors went beyond harps and eternally insufferable boors. If you just kept living and dying, living and dying, forever and ever and ever, then everything bad that could happen—the absolute worst experiences you could imagine, the most painful forms of torture, brutality, loss, pain, suffering—were not just possible, they were inevitable. And in infinite amounts (since it’s eternity we’re talking about.) Reincarnation sounded nice until you realized it meant you had an infinity of future agony just waiting for you. Your math dollars at work.

Well, maybe the infinity of misery, pain, and suffering gets less as you go on, I suggested to myself. Maybe I’ve already experienced most of that infinite agony in my past lives, and it’s going to get easier in my future rebirths. I mean, look at me right now. I’m laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling; my head is racing, but no one is shoving bamboo spikes under my fingernails. So maybe I’ve progressed past the bamboo-spike-shoving portion of my existence-stream. Maybe those infinite numbers of reincarnations represent some kind of journey, some kind of progression …

But progression presupposes a goal, and an ultimate destination, and an ultimate “end” … and that just leads us right back to “Heaven.” And wouldn’t it be just as boring sitting around in the lotus position radiating enlightened bliss for all eternity as it would be sitting around playing harps on clouds?

Clearly, an eternity of boredom of any kind was unsatisfactory. So I proceeded to toy with the idea of just dying and being dead. But clearly, since we arose from nothingness into somethingness, why would we subside into nothingness and that be the end of it? The two sides of the equation didn’t balance. But at least this solution had the potential of being comforting, because it carried an important concept within it that my father always presented thusly:

“Was it so terrible before you were born?”

And of course I’d say (irritably, I imagine) I don’t know, I can’t remember. And then he’d offer the irrefutable conclusion, “So why should it be any different after you die?”

This tidy little squib, while quite cute and all, was easily dismissed with a teenager’s snotty answer:  Well, how do you know that before we were born it wasn’t all pain and suffering and agony, and we just don’t remember it? But ultimately, it did turn out to be my dad’s framework (slightly modified) that I ultimately adopted. But not until I’d applied it not to myself, but to my dog, the little German Shepherdish mutt who was my rock during adolescence.

Whenever I would get scared about something (a noise, a “ghost” in my room, whatever) I would find reassurance in her calm demeanor. She was an alarm barker, and if there was something going down, she’d jump off the foot of my bed and bark her head off. But if she was just laying there snoring, if she wasn’t worried about the [noise/ghost/whatever], I knew I had nothing to worry about.

I remember thinking how it sucked that I couldn’t use this tactic to soothe my existential fears. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could count on my dog to alert me if there was some kind of eternal horror waiting to swallow me postmortem? But of course, that would never happen, because my dog wasn’t the least bit concerned about eternity. She wasn’t aware of the terrible situation all living things shared just by virtue of inhabiting the physical realm of existence; she couldn’t comprehend the enormity of the problem facing her, facing me, facing all of us.

But if she couldn’t comprehend it, what made me did I think I could?

Sure, I was smarter than her. I could do things like math and algebra. A dog would never understand algebra. That dog could be the lovechild of Rin Tin Tin and Lassie, you could train him all day and all night, all his life … and he would never, ever, ever understand algebra.

So. If my dog existed within a set of cognitive limits that she could never, ever, ever overcome … limits so hard and fast that she couldn’t even conceive of having them … then surely I existed within similar limits. Surely, there were not only things that I couldn’t understand, but that I couldn’t even understand what I wasn’t understanding. Sudden awareness of my own infinite incapacity allowed me to dismiss a whole entire class of worries. Death. Afterlife. Eternity. The existence of God. I just couldn’t know. I was incapable of knowing. I’d created an algebra book so heavy I couldn’t lift it. That was that.

Which brings me back to the atheists I heard on the radio this morning. So much of their pain seemed to stem from the belief that they could know, that they could be certain. But how is there any more intellectual integrity in the certainty that there isn’t a God than in the certainty that there is? How is saying “God doesn’t exist, we all live in a meaningless random universe, and when you’re dead you’re dead and that’s it” any less dogmatic?

I guess, in the end, I have ended up with a kind of faith: faith in the perfection of my cognitive insufficiency. I have sacrificed my desire for understanding on the cross of uncertainty. And for my reward, I get to hope that there is an answer to all this, that makes sense, that is perfectly right, despite the fact that I will never know what it is, or even if there is one at all.

Three Questions with David D. Levine, author of SPACE MAGIC

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SPACE MAGIC author David D. Levine

Today we welcome David D. Levine, who is celebrating the release of the ebook edition of his Endeavour Award-winning short story  collection SPACE MAGIC (Wheatland Press, 2008) which is out today at Book  View Café. The collection brings together 15 critically-acclaimed science fiction and fantasy stories (including the Hugo Award-winning “Tk’Tk’Tk’”), and represents David’s first foray into the wild and wooly world of indie publishing. Read all about it in today’s episode of  “Three Questions Make An Interview“.

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1) So, as I mentioned in the intro, the ebook release of “Space Magic” represents your first foray into indie publishing. What do you think of this bold new paradigm so far?

It turns out that the conversion of the text into ebook format is the easiest part of the process. Dealing with the ebook stores (especially Apple) and finding effective ways of publicizing the release have been much harder. I’ve also found that my idea of also selling each of the short stories in the collection as a stand-alone ebook for 99¢ (I call it the “iTunes singles-and-album model”) is a lot more work than I’d anticipated — despite its much shorter length, each short story ebook is almost exactly as much work to produce and upload to the stores as a full-length novel. I’m not really sure the short stories will deliver enough revenue to justify the effort. The good news is that, with 16 titles in each store instead of just one, I have spread a wider net for readers, and I hope that even if the stories do not bring in very much money by themselves they will increase the chances of people finding me in the store.

[image error]At this writing the books are available in all the ebook stores, and have sold a few copies, but have not yet been officially released. After the big publicity push of release day I’ll be able to tell you how satisfied I am with the results. I am trying to be conservative in my expectations, though, and am looking forward to slow but consistent sales. I hope to be proved wrong in this, in a positive way.

2) I know you’re also working on a new novel right now. Give us the elevator pitch!

I’m currently writing a YA Regency Interplanetary Airship Adventure. (Yes, another one of those. Sorry.) It takes place during the English Regency in a world in which the solar system is full of air and it’s possible to travel to Mars and Venus by airship. Naturally both of those planets are inhabited. My main character, Arabella Ashby, is a young woman who was born and raised on Mars but was recently hauled back to Earth by her mother, who didn’t want her youngest daughters growing up surrounded by aliens and turning out as wild as Arabella. Arabella, child of the frontier, is a Patrick O’Brian girl in a Jane Austen world; she’s stifled by England’s gravity, climate, and culture and dearly misses her father and brother, who remain on Mars. When her father dies and she learns her evil cousin plans to travel to Mars to kill her brother and inherit the family fortune, she disguises herself as a boy and joins the crew of a fast merchant ship in hopes of beating him there. But pirates, mutiny, and rebellion intervene. Will she reach her brother in time?

This novel takes place in the same universe as my story “The Wreck of the Mars Adventure” in Old Mars, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, which will be published in October.

3) Back in 2010, you spent two weeks at the Mars Desert Research Station. Would you consider putting your name in the hat for Mars One, even though it would be a one way trip?

Heck no. My adventure at MDRS was a blast, but I like the comforts of home too much to sign up for that for the rest of my life. I would miss good food, live theatre, and all of my friends too much. And air. I would definitely miss air a lot.

Not to mention the fact that if even if I signed up, and even if I were accepted, and even if the project sticks to its extremely aggressive schedule, the earliest I could land on Mars would be at age 62. Talk about an active retirement!

[image error] David D. Levine is the author of over fifty published science fiction and fantasy stories. His work has appeared in markets including Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, and Realms of Fantasy and has won or been nominated for awards including the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and Campbell. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Kate Yule, with whom he co-edits the fanzine Bento. His web page is http://www.daviddlevine.com.

Some good publishing news …

[image error]Having signed the contracts, sent them in, and allowed ample time for someone in a position of authority to come to their senses and rescind the offer, I am pleased to announce that Audible.com has bought the rights to The Warlock’s Curse and The Unsteady Earth. As you may or may not know, The Native Star and The Hidden Goddess (the first two books in the Veneficas Americana series) are already available through Audible.

No word yet on when they will go up, nor do I have any production details. More info as it becomes available!

 

Revolutions in Paper (and Pixels)

[image error]So, maybe you haven’t noticed, but traditional publishing is in a kind of a weird space right now. In October, Random House and Penguin announced that they were merging, Transformers-like, into some combinatory RandomPenguinHouse super-publisher capable of doing battle with the evil overlord AmazonPrime and his evil henchmen OptimusGooglus and AppleusSpartacus … or … whatever, my Transformers knowledge is not sufficient to sustain this poor, exceedingly weak metaphor. My point is, there is some serious freaking-out going on. And as it happens, this freaking-out is not without historical precedent.

In 1939, it just so happens that traditional publishers were facing a similar threat. And their reaction demonstrates that “sky-is-falling” freak-outs are nothing new in the world of traditional publishing. On the contrary, such freak-outs seem to be the rule, rather than the exception.

So, 1939. It was the beginning of what would come to be known as the “paperback revolution,” (fascinatingly detailed in a Bloomberg.com article by Ellen F. Brown that appeared earlier this year.) Read the passage below and see if what it’s describing doesn’t sound just the tiniest bit familiar:

According to Publishers Weekly, word spread at the 1939 American Booksellers Convention that “some reckless publisher” was going to bring out a series of paperback reprints of popular novels to be sold for only a quarter a piece. The industry was equal measures aghast at the nerve of such a plan—American readers had proved notoriously resistant to paperbacks—and terrified that it might succeed. Major publishers fretted that, if the books proved popular, the reprints would kill hardcover sales of the featured titles.

Cheap books? Oh, the horror! Get the children into the storm cellar and make sure we have plenty of canned goods … the end of the world is nigh!

But despite the fact that “most booksellers refused to stock the series, unwilling to compete with their existing inventories of full-priced books,” they (of course) sold like hotcakes and that “reckless” publisher’s less-reckless competitors immediately rushed in to launch paperback reprint lines of their own.

For the next ten years, everyone perked along quite happily making a tidy bundle on paperback reprints. Then, in 1949, Fawcett Publications sent everyone running for the storm cellars again when it announced the launch of a new paperback line—a line of paperback originals. Oh my GOSH. Actual original books that had never been published anywhere else before … in paperback.

Mainstream publishers predicted that paperback originals would undermine the entire structure of publishing and threatened to blackball agents who negotiated contracts with Fawcett. Critics said quality authors would never be interested in selling their new work at such a low price and that the series would only be able to offer books unworthy of publication. [Emphasis mine, because seriously, that is the most awesome bit of freaking-out I've ever read.]

Again, sound familiar? The rest of the story is just as familiar. The readers loved the low prices, and the paperback originals sold like crazy. While some authors did fret that having their work come out in paperback instead of the more prestigious hardcover would hurt their careers, the reality was often quite different. Writers who probably never would have been published in hardback—edgier, non-mainstream writers like William F. Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut, as well as dozens upon dozens of now-famous genre writers—found their way into the hands of appreciative readers.

And so, despite all the mumbling and grumbling, did paperbacks kill traditional publishing? Um—no. The old market for books didn’t collapse—instead, it expanded, as new customers who weren’t readers before were lured in by the lower prices and greater availability of paperbacks.

So, there you go. History! Isn’t it wonderful? Like our beloved drunk uncle with all the tattoos who used to serve in the merchant marine, it always has something to teach us. It can even give us a glimpse of what we might expect to see as the digital publishing marketplace matures. Because, it’s important to note, the paperback boom times certainly didn’t last forever:

The new products also had a hard time maintaining their early successes. It’s a simple matter of economics: Delivering a high-quality product at a bargain-basement price is difficult. Once competition heated up in the cheap-book market, signs of strain began to show. Editorial standards slackened, paper quality declined and, in a desperate attempt to catch the eye of readers in the crowded marketplace, many discount publishers resorted to covering their books in lurid images that often had nothing to do with their content. Readers eventually balked at the increasingly shabby products, and publishers were dismayed to find themselves stuck with warehouses of books they couldn’t give away. One firm resorted to burning its excess stock in an abandoned canal outside of Buffalo, New York. By 1969, the New York Times Book Review was asking, “Is the Paperback Revolution Dead?”

Thus, taking History as our guide once again, I suggest you watch this space for a blog post in 2021 examining the burning question that will then be on everyone’s lips: Is Digital Publishing Dead? Until then, I’ll be the author with the lurid covers, selling her ebooks at fine digital retailers nationwide.

Want to read more? Here are some other interesting links: The Paperback RevolutionHow the Paperback Novel Changed Popular Literature 

My dogs are weird

[image error]A lovely Thanksgiving was had by the Hobson family, even by the dogs—who, as you will note from the title of this blog post, are weird. By the way, you’re not even seeing all of them in this picture, because Sugar Cookie (mom) is a lot like me and hates being in family pictures. She avoided this shot by hiding behind her dad’s recliner.

Anyway, the reason they’re weird is this. We had Thanksgiving dinner at my mom’s house yesterday, which was really delicious, and it was nice not to have to cook the whole meal. However, it did leave us a bit thin in the leftovers department—and since we are used to eating for three or four days off our Thanksgiving bird, I had to come up with an alternative. So I talked my mom out of the turkey carcass. I brought it home and plopped it into the stewpot, along with all the roasting vegetables and the bouquet garni, simmered it overnight and most of the day today, and ended up with a positively ambrosial broth, which I have combined with onions, garlic, parsnips, kale, white beans, carrots, celery and turkey sausage to make an enormous pot of soup that will last us all weekend and possibly longer.

(I promise you, I’m getting to the weird part.)

So while I’m making the soup, all the dogs are in the kitchen with me (of course) eyeing me with intense interest, as dogs will. I know they like carrots (they chew on them like chewy bones) so I gave each dog a carrot and sent him/her on his/her merry way. A few minutes later, having dispatched the carrots, they were back. But by that time I had moved on from the carrots and was deveining the kale, laying the discarded veins on the edge of the counter. The black dog (Charm) sniffed at one of these veins with great eagerness. So, because I’m nothing if not experimental, I let him have it to chew on. He loved it. All the other dogs expressed a similar adoration, devouring my kale leavings with crunchy alacrity.

So my dogs like to eat kale veins. I don’t know, I think that’s pretty weird.

Happy Thanksgiving!

[image error]The action in my recently-released novel THE WARLOCK’S CURSE takes place over the winter holidays—Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s—but unfortunately, they prove anything but festive for my main characters, William Edwards and Jenny Hansen.  By the time we get to Christmas, neither of them are feeling much like celebrating …  and by the time we get to New Year’s Day, they’re both probably more interested in drinking to drown their sorrows than to celebrate. The only holiday that comes off without some horribly tragedy attached to it is Thanksgiving—and even that is marred by a family quarrel. (But then, what Thanksgiving isn’t?)

By 1910 (the year the book takes place), Thanksgiving was a well-established holiday. It had officially been annual tradition since 1863, when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens”, to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26. (There was a whole kerfuffle about the date of Thanksgiving during the Roosevelt administration, which led to the “Year with Two Thanksgivings” in 1939 … an interesting historical aberration which I will have to file away for incorporation in a future book, as I doubt that if anyone were to select a year in which Americans were doubly-thankful for anything it would be 1939.)

Anyway, back to 1910 … by this point, the mythology of Thanksgiving that is still taught it many schools today (a jolly coming together of pilgrims and Native American over a groaning board of plenty) was well entrenched. Certainly, precious few associated the revelries of the canonical celebration with the first Thanksgiving proclamation issued by the colonists of Charlestown, Massachusetts, on June 20, 1676. That proclamation named the day of Thanksgiving as June 29, 1676, and was really quite astonishing:

“The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy, and giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been sensible of, if it be the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, It certainly bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the Lord should take notice under so many Intimations of his returning mercy, we should be found an Insensible people, as not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as well as lading him with our Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions …”

If you didn’t read that whole quote (and who can blame you?) here’s the abridged version:

“Thanks a lot, God [eyeroll] for leading us into this wilderness (which isn’t really a wilderness because there was a whole civilization of people already living here, but whatever) and those people I just mentioned, the ones who were already here, are kicking the shit out of us for some completely unfathomable reason. We are so super thankful [heavy sigh] not only because we know that it’s an awesome character building exercise for us to have to put up with your bullshit, and also for all the times the people who were already living here could have kicked the shit out of us but didn’t, for some reason we choose to ascribe to your being ever-so-much-more on our side than theirs. Yay! Fuck it! You rock, God!”

But really, the whole point of Thanksgiving (at least the modern Thanksgiving in which we aren’t bitching at God about Heathen Natives) is food. The traditional dishes haven’t changed all that much. Here’s a suggested Thanksgiving menu from the San Francisco Call in 1910, which could just as easily have been printed in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2012 (except you’d have sprinkle in a few instances of “Heritage,” “Organic,” and “Deep Fried.”)

“A menu suited to the home dinner is: cream of corn soup, roast turkey, cranberry jelly, oyster pie, sweet potato balls, creamed and baked onions, Spanish rice, pumpkin pies, fruits, nuts, coffee.”

OK, I’ll admit, I have no idea where the Spanish rice came from. But it is the San Francisco treat,  I am reliably informed. My point is, the menus really haven’t changed all that much. The family would have eaten, then retired to gather around the piano, or perhaps even the Victrola if they happened to be early adopters of new technology. The youngsters in the house might have gone off to a dance (the whole country was mad for dances) and the weary elders would probably have settled down read the evening newspapers. In those papers, they would find reprinted President Taft’s Thanksgiving proclamation, a Presidential tradition since George Washington. (Note that another popular Presidential tradition, the “pardon” of the Thanksgiving turkey is more recent; it is said to have originated in 1947 with President Truman.)

[image error]Taft’s thanksgiving proclamation in 1910 was short and sweet. It contained this lovely passage:

“We continue to be at peace with the rest of the world. In all essential matters our relations with other people are harmonious, with an ever-growing reality of friendliness and depth of recognition of mutual dependence. It is especially to be noted that during the last year great progress has been achieved in the cause of arbitration and the peaceful settlement of international disputes.”

Don’t you just wish we could say the same in 2012? Having congratulated himself and the nation on all that peaceful settlement-ing, Taft then proceeded to sit his 300-pound-self down to a feast. As one might imagine, Taft knew how to feast. In 1909, his Thanksgiving bounty had included:

“… a huge Vose turkey, a 50-pound mince pie, and a 26-pound Georgia possum—one of the president’s favorite dishes. The New York Times reported he once ordered a possum that was still alive on the platter, where it snarled and gave Taft a bothersome ‘reproachful look.’”

And going on the principle that one just can’t get enough ‘possum, it was was once again to be found on the White House menu in 1910:

Taft’s Thanksgiving turkeys competed for attention on his holiday tables with chubby Georgia possums, each with a potato stuffed in its mouth. Taft was a Cincinnatian by birth but a Southerner in his tastes, the newspaper accounts of the day noted. His Thanksgiving meal in 1910, thusly, was prepared by three cooks, “all Negro women, the very best of southern culinary artists,” the Detroit Free-Press observed.

A few years later, in fall of 1916, the post-Thanksgiving dinner evening newspapers would have been full of very different stories. The war in Europe had been raging for two years. In January of 1917, Germany would announce the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, which would virtually assure America’s entry into the Great War. As a result, President Wilson (who had just that year been reelected on the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War”) issued a Thanksgiving proclamation markedly different in tone from the one Taft had given just six years earlier:

The year that has elapsed since we last observed our day of thanksgiving has been rich in blessings to us as a people, but the whole face of the world has been darkened by war. In the midst of our peace and happiness, our thoughts dwell with painful disquiet upon the struggles and sufferings of the nations at war and of the peoples upon whom war has brought disaster without choice or possibility of escape on their part. We cannot think of our own happiness without thinking also of their pitiful distress.

Now, Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do appoint Thursday, the thirtieth of November, as a day of National Thanksgiving and Prayer, and urge and advise the people to resort to their several places of worship on that day to render thanks to Almighty God for the blessings of peace and unbroken prosperity which He has bestowed upon our beloved country in such unstinted measure. And I also urge and suggest our duty in this our day of peace and abundance to think in deep sympathy of the stricken peoples of the world upon whom the curse and terror of war has so pitilessly fallen, and to contribute out of our abundant means to the relief of their suffering …

[image error]I jump forward to 1916 mostly because I want to share the story of a very interesting Thanksgiving had by 46 members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Washington State. Having been arrested in North Yakima during a large street meeting intended to persuade apple pickers to ask for a better wage, they were taken to the decrepit Yakima City Jail, which was crawling with lice. The incarcerated men, apparently believers in due process, first voted to condemn the jail before proceeding to demolish it from the inside out.

In response, a vigilante squad composed of 200 local businessmen armed themselves with pick and ax handles, and marched in a body to the city jail. They herded the strikers (who all were soaking wet, having gotten the business end of the local firefighters’ hoses) through the freezing winter cold to the train depot. At the depot they forced the strikers into two refrigerated railcars and ordered the train crew to remove them from town. The train crew refused.

The impasse was ultimately solved when a representative of the State Labor Council, Edward Maurer, noted that if the IWW were prevented from organizing, then other unions (those he represented, for example) wouldn’t be able to organize either. And so, Wobbly organizing among agricultural laborers continued in the Yakima valley, with a fair amount of success, though the one big union never obtained control of area industry.

But the end of the story for the 46 strikers was that the IWW hall, which had been closed by police, reopened in time for a Thanksgiving Day feast to be served. The repast included Direct Action Duck, Chicken a la Sabotage, Rebel Cranberries, and Liber-Tea.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

A Geek’s Christmas in Oregon

[image error]So my daughter Nora and I have decided that for her “big” Christmas present this year we are going build her a geeked-out (well, reasonably geeked-out) gaming PC. The bargain-box HP Pavillion she’s had several years is, at this point, absurdly and comically insufficient to her needs. Our goal is to put one together that will hold her through high school (and one that will … ahem … keep her the hell off my Mac Pro.)

What makes this whole project extra awesome is that I’m going to let her do the actual build herself. (After making her watch this first.) When I was about Nora’s age, my dad and I used to build our own computers, so it will kind of feel like a holiday tradition. [image error]

RequirementsNora is a budding digital artist, and she wants a machine she can use with a Wacom tablet (the cost of which is not factored into this build, by the way.)She’s also a gamer (Skyrim, Minecraft, etc) and wants to escape the tyranny of her broke-down, largely unreliable Xbox. One of the tradeoffs we have agreed upon is that she won’t ask for any Xbox schwag for Christmas—this concession frees up significant coin that can be put toward the project.We’d like as many of the components as possible to be upgradable, so that if we want to throw zoomier bits in there at some future date we can do so.And of course she needs to be able to use the computer for all the normal stuff like internet surfing, email, schoolwork, and the like. It will likely be running Windows 7. (Blech.)Components

Below are the components we’re thinking of going with. We came up with this build after doing a bunch of internet research, but as a long-time Machead who has maintained a blissful ignorance of the intricate gnostic mysteries of PC systems, I am by no means confident we’ve arrived at that optimal intersection of “price” vs. “performance” that equals “value.” So I’m posting this in the hopes of getting feedback and suggestions from all my vastly tech-savvier friends. If you know of alternative components we should consider, please post them in the comments—but please try to keep them in the same price range as the ones shown. We’ve set a target of under $800, which is reflected in the build shown below. I know, we could get a gaming system off-the-shelf for less, but this way is so much more fun.

Motherboard

[image error] GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

CPU

[image error] AMD Phenom II X4 965 AM3 3.4Ghz 512KB 45NM 125W 4000MHZ

RAM

[image error] Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz

GPU/Video Card

[image error] Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB
PCI-E Video Card

SSD Drive

[image error]Crucial 128 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/sSATA Drive

[image error] Seagate Barracuda 7200 1 TB 7200RPM SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB

Case (Option #1)

[image error] Cooler Master HAF 912 – Mid Tower Computer Case with High Airflow Design

Case (Option #2)

[image error] Cooler Master Elite 430 – Mid Tower Computer Case with All-Black Interior

Power Supply

[image error]

Coolmax 600W 140mm Blue LED Fan Power Supply

So, what do you think? As you can see, we’re of two minds on the case. Case #2 certainly has more of the “gaming rig” look, but on the downside I’ll have to bump the budget up to cover the bazillion LED fans Nora will surely demand (at $8 a pop they do add up!) There’s no optical drive listed because we’re planning on scavenging the old 16x one from Nora’s HP. I’m also hinky on the power supply. The alternative is this—it’s only 550 watts, and it’s about the same price, but it seems to have better reviews.

Anyway, if you have any suggestions, recommendations, questions, helpful hints, or dire warnings please leave them in the comments. Otherwise, we’ll be blogging the process as we proceed, just for fun. There may be a video involved. And for the benefit of Nora’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other interested relatives, the Amazon wishlist is here. [image error]

Worthy Causes

[image error]Today is payday for me, which means that I’m finally able to send contributions to a couple of very worthy causes I’ve been following. To encourage others to donate as well, I’m starting a new semi-regular feature in which I’ll share great giving opportunities and thank those who support them with a little extra gift!

Here’s the Deal

Donate at least $10 to one of the two causes below by 11/30/2012 and I will send you a free ebook of THE WARLOCK’S CURSE in your choice of format. Details at the bottom of the post.

Rolling Jubilee

I am REALLY excited about this one. To quote the website: “Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt project that buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. Together we can liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits.” I donated $40, which functionally clears $800 of someone’s debt. Even if you donate just $10, you’ll clear $200 of someone’s debt. That’s pretty incredible math, no?

St. Johns Booksellers Reborn

Since 2005, St. Johns Booksellers has served the North Portland neighborhood of St. Johns with more than just books. They are a neighborhood meeting place and are very supportive of local authors. Like many small businesses, they’ve struggled through 4 years of recession, and they are raising funds through IndieGoGo.

The Fine Print

So here’s how you claim your bonus ebook of THE WARLOCK’S CURSE:

Donate at least $10 to one of the worthy causes shown above by 11/30/12.Forward your donation confirmation email to mkhobson at demimonde dot comPut the words “WORTHY CAUSES” in the subject line (this will keep it from getting filtered out as spam.)Please indicate in the body of the email what format you’d like  (epub, MOBI, or PDF)Once I receive your email I will send you a coupon for a free download. It’s that simple!

“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” –Buddha

 

Blog tour kicks off today!

[image error]The Warlock’s Curse blog tour kicks off today and runs through the end of 2012. Just about every day is filled with reviews, guest posts, interviews, and awesome prizes (signed book sets, ebooks, and other schwag!) Visit each stop for bonus entries!

Tour Schedule:

11/14- Books and Things – Guest Post
11/15- Book Briefs – Review
11/15- For Those About to Read - Interview
11/19- Melissa’s Eclectic Bookshelf – Review
11/19- Moosubi Reviews – Review
11/21- Tabitha’s Book Blog – Review
11/24- Tara Loves Reading – Review
11/24- LovLivLife Reviews - Guest Post
11/26- Words Escape Me – Review
11/27- Reading and Rising With the Sun – Review
11/28- Read My Breath Away – Review
11/30- Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers – Guest Post
12/6- Jean Book Nerd – Guest Post
12/7- In the Hammock – Review
12/10- Lizzy’s Dark Fiction – Review
12/13- Book Labyrinth – Review
12/16- Above Average Below Special – Review
12/17- My Guilty Obsession – Guest Post
12/17- Paranormal Indulgence – Review
12/19- Books in the Spotlight – Guest Post
12/20- Confessions of Novel Junkies - Review
12/21- Coffee, Books and Me – Guest Post
12/22- The Reclusive Reader – Review
12/27- Books: A True Story – Review
12/28- Books, Thoughts and a Few Adventures- Review

Today, I’m over at Books and Things talking about how I arrived at the decision to self-publish The Warlock’s Curse. Swing by and drop me a hello in the comments!

A huge THANK YOU to all the tour hosts–and an even bigger thank you to the incredibly hardworking Candace at CBB book promotions who organized the tour! (Author buddies, take note–she’s great!)

The Next Big Thing: The Unsteady Earth

[image error]So there’s this meme making the rounds called “The Next Big Thing” where authors answer ten pre-determined questions about their current work-in-progress. I was tagged to respond by the incomparable A.M. Dellamonica. (And by the way, you can read her answers, about the new trilogy she’s working on for Tor Books, here.) My answers are below.

Make sure you read all the way to the end or you’ll miss the part about Nikola Tesla stark naked and covered in Nutella.

1. What is the title of your Work in Progress?

It is called The Unsteady Earth and it’s the sequel to The Warlock’s Curse, which just came out in October. It is the second book in the second duology of my Veneficas Americana historical fantasy series.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

The central concept for this book follows on from elements I introduced in the first duology, The Native Star and The Hidden Goddess. Beyond that, it’s part of a much bigger project—a multivolume, multigenerational historical fantasy saga that follows a family of American witches and warlocks from the 1870s to the present day.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Historical fantasy.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

[image error]This is always a very difficult question for me, as I’m almost completely unfamiliar with the current crop of Hot Young Things. The character of Jenny Hansen would certainly be played by a long-dead actress from the early 20th century named Lily Elsie—in fact, my cover artist Lee Moyer used a photo of this incredibly lovely woman in his artwork for the book’s cover. I have absolutely no idea who I would cast to play Will Edwards, the book’s protagonist—maybe my readers have some suggestions for me?

[image error]I do know that I would cast Matthew Goode as Will’s older brother, Ben. But then again, I would cast Matthew Goode as anyone, anytime, as long as the director didn’t make the unforgivable mistake of making him blonde. (Ugh.)

 5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book?

Humanity faces a vexing little problem when it discovers that the spirit of the Earth itself is not only sentient, but insane.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Both. While I will self-publish the paperback and the ebook versions, my agent (Ginger Clark) and my digital strategist (Steve Kasdin) will help me get the book out into the world, as they have done for The Warlock’s Curse.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Well, I haven’t finished it yet! But the 70k I have written has taken me about four months.

8. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

Hmm.  Well, we’ve got apocalypse, graveyard humor, personal tragedy, and ultimate redemption. Also politics, anarchy, intrigue, betrayal and family secrets. Oh, and revenge. Lots and lots of revenge. So … geez, I don’t know. The Manchurian Candidate meets The Prestige meets Reds meets Gone with the Wind meets …? The elevator pitch gets pretty bizarre pretty quick.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

While I don’t always love reading Anthony Trollope (he can be just a bit turgid for my taste), I love the way he interconnected his novels, with main characters from one becoming secondary characters in another. I’ve always wanted to emulate that kind of broad-canvas approach. I love seeing characters develop within one story, while also seeing how their actions resonate down through subsequent generations.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

In this next book, readers will get to see Nikola Tesla STARK NAKED AND COVERED IN NUTELLA. (No, I’m just kidding. Nutella wasn’t invented until the 1940s. But that  might pique the readers interest, right?)

Tag … you’re it!

I am tagging in three awesome local writers to do a “Next Big Thing” post: Meilin Miranda, Simone Cooper & Kath Nyborg (though I doubt the latter two will get to it this weekend because of AmberCon). Looking forward to your posts, ladies!