Nick Mamatas's Blog, page 33
July 18, 2014
This Should Be Fun...
From amazon's new subscription service:
"KDP Select authors and publishers will earn a share of the KDP Select global fund each time a customer accesses their book from Kindle Unlimited and reads more than 10% of their book-–about the length of reading the free sample available in Kindle books-–as opposed to a payout when the book is simply downloaded. Only the first time a customer reads a book past 10% will be counted."
Given the number of cheap/free downloads that never get looked at again, it'll be interesting to see how self-published Kindle superstars react when their monthly checks are cut in half. Amazon will work pretty hard at getting their power users to subscribe, and those users, I suspect, are just like the people who take one bite of everything on a buffet line.
"KDP Select authors and publishers will earn a share of the KDP Select global fund each time a customer accesses their book from Kindle Unlimited and reads more than 10% of their book-–about the length of reading the free sample available in Kindle books-–as opposed to a payout when the book is simply downloaded. Only the first time a customer reads a book past 10% will be counted."
Given the number of cheap/free downloads that never get looked at again, it'll be interesting to see how self-published Kindle superstars react when their monthly checks are cut in half. Amazon will work pretty hard at getting their power users to subscribe, and those users, I suspect, are just like the people who take one bite of everything on a buffet line.
July 14, 2014
Million Writers Award—Editorial and Personal Picks
The Million Writers Award for stories first published online, despite sometimes becoming biggest-blog-wins (see rule #8), is one of the better things to happen to the lit-o-sphere. I was a judge a few years ago and had fun, and later withdrew a story of my own—"Summon Bind Banish"—that had been mistakenly nominated to some minor fussing. Clearly, I should have just kept it on the list and made a bigger fuss about censorship and victimhood and the enemies that surround me! Then I could have possibly won some sweet-sweet prize money.
Speaking of, Molly and I put our heads together and these were the three stories from The Big Click's 2013 issues we nominated as editors:
Easy Off by Sean Craven
Late Night on Route 17 by Libby Cudmore
You Are Watching by Ann Sterzinger
And, frankly, because it is a fuck of a lot better than the jokes and junk I've been seeing get nominated for awards this year, I'd like you all to consider my own David Foster Wallace/Lovecraft mash-up from Fiddleblack #8, Hideous Interview with Brief Man. Readers can submit any story they happened to like, that first appeared online, last year, here.
Speaking of, Molly and I put our heads together and these were the three stories from The Big Click's 2013 issues we nominated as editors:
Easy Off by Sean Craven
Late Night on Route 17 by Libby Cudmore
You Are Watching by Ann Sterzinger
And, frankly, because it is a fuck of a lot better than the jokes and junk I've been seeing get nominated for awards this year, I'd like you all to consider my own David Foster Wallace/Lovecraft mash-up from Fiddleblack #8, Hideous Interview with Brief Man. Readers can submit any story they happened to like, that first appeared online, last year, here.
July 10, 2014
Kit Reed: A Writer for Life
Today begins the 25th Readercon, an always very interesting and occasionally horrifyingly doctrinaire science fiction convention. For those who don't know, science fiction conventions have guests of honor and program books, and generally there are a few appreciations of the guests of honor, written by friends, acquaintances, or fans.
Here is my piece, for guest of honor Kit Reed.
There are few writers one can fruitfully read throughout one’s entire life. I don't mean that one can return to an author’s book and continue to enjoy it, the way an older person might do with The Lord of the Rings. Kit Reed isn’t about middle-aged nostalgia for a sticky day of summer reading between grades three and four, she is a writer who simply writes and publishes very widely. As a child, as a teen, as an adult, when climbing the hill of middle age, you’ll find her.
I knew her books, but paid no attention to the byline, as a child. As a kid I loved The Ballad of T.Rantula, though I was tricked into having my mother buy it for me. It wasn’t about kids teaming up with a superhero-wrestler after all, despite the cover. The whole thing wasn’t even science fiction; it was just about a boy whose folks were divorcing. It was perhaps the first “real book”—as I called non-speculative material back then—that I ever voluntarily read.
The first book I ever bought with my own money—a few bucks made helping out in my uncle’s lunch counter when I was nine years old—was Other Stories and ...The Attack of the Giant Baby. The cover looked funny, and the title story was funny. But Reed’s collection also contained stories that were simply over my head, this despite having somehow gotten Naked Lunch out of the library the year prior. What was I supposed to make of “Winter”, the book’s first story? I skipped ahead to “Attack of the Giant Baby” and literally years later thumbed back to “Winter” when I was ready for it.
As a young man I wandered away from the greasy kid stuff that is the mainstream of science fiction and fantasy, and immersed myself in what was called “downtown” writing, at least in downtown Manhattan, where I was living. Dennis Cooper, Eileen Myles, that sort of thing. And that led me to contemporary innovative/avant-garde/transgressive American fiction generally, and who was there waiting for me? Kit Reed, with her slim novel from Black Ice Books—a defunct and missed, by me anyway, imprint of Fiction Collective 2—Little Sisters of the Apocalypse. The innovative tradition in the US is not known for sentiment, but Reed managed to create something that was both gonzo and emotionally mature, with a gag title.
I still had no idea that Kit Reed was the same author of the half-forgotten books I’d read as a child.
I first got what we used to call net.access in 1989, when I managed to find my way to a TinyMUD via a raw telnet connection. There I was told that I needed an email address, because there were “dozens of machines out there” and I couldn’t just have messages sent to me without knowing that I belonged to sunysb.edu. And Kit Reed was exploring similar worlds at around the same time. When the Web finally got up and running and became useful enough to search phrases like “book about giant baby” or “tarantula ballad divorce”, I finally realized that I was a Kit Reed fan. And Kit Reed had anticipated me with her novel @Expectations. Again, this was not science fiction so much as it was basically a novel about my own 20s, which had been spent almost entirely online.
Then, finally I was hooked. Kit Reed. Don’t just look for books with wacky titles, look for Kit Reed. Was I living with a woman with an eating disorder? Yes, and Kit Reed wrote Thinner Than Thou. In my thirties, did I start getting very anxious about starting a family? Of course, and Kit Reed wrote The Baby Merchant. When I had young cousins to buy presents for, Kit Reed was there again, The Night Children, a novel about that pretty common daydream kids have about spending all night in a shopping mall—it was a daydream I always had. (Naturally, I read the book before making a gift of it.) And only after reading The Night Children did I find her broadly similar 1980 title Magic Time, on a blanket set up on the sidewalk by a street peddler, and inhaled it. Kit knew I’d be an adult looking for an adult version of her twenty-first century YA novel back when I’d picked up my first of her titles as a child.
Now I’m middle-aged, with a baby and a day job. I’m as surprised as you are. I work in a slum zone that is rapidly being gentrified thanks to the fascist handclasp of transnational venture capital and supposedly “progressive” local government. The homeless outside my office don’t even have it sufficiently together to sell old Kit Reed paperbacks on blankets; it’s all bloody meth scabs and ranting into traffic. They live under the shadows of high-rise apartment buildings being put up on either side of my workplace—an old concrete slab where fancy social media companies relocate to get tax breaks. Those apartments are renting for $3500 a month for a studio. One-bedrooms are $4500 a month. Having a family? Living more than two minutes away from the cubicle where you already put in a twelve-hour workday? That's so random—let’s disrupt life-as-we-know it!
And just now, as I type these words, a new-to-me Kit Reed novel has arrived in the mail. Fort Privilege, about the wealthy ascending skyscrapers to avoid the rampaging poor, from back in 1986. She saw all of this, every major episode of my life, coming decades before I did.
I’ll be reading Kit Reed till I die. I have to find out what happens next.
Here is my piece, for guest of honor Kit Reed.
There are few writers one can fruitfully read throughout one’s entire life. I don't mean that one can return to an author’s book and continue to enjoy it, the way an older person might do with The Lord of the Rings. Kit Reed isn’t about middle-aged nostalgia for a sticky day of summer reading between grades three and four, she is a writer who simply writes and publishes very widely. As a child, as a teen, as an adult, when climbing the hill of middle age, you’ll find her.
I knew her books, but paid no attention to the byline, as a child. As a kid I loved The Ballad of T.Rantula, though I was tricked into having my mother buy it for me. It wasn’t about kids teaming up with a superhero-wrestler after all, despite the cover. The whole thing wasn’t even science fiction; it was just about a boy whose folks were divorcing. It was perhaps the first “real book”—as I called non-speculative material back then—that I ever voluntarily read.
The first book I ever bought with my own money—a few bucks made helping out in my uncle’s lunch counter when I was nine years old—was Other Stories and ...The Attack of the Giant Baby. The cover looked funny, and the title story was funny. But Reed’s collection also contained stories that were simply over my head, this despite having somehow gotten Naked Lunch out of the library the year prior. What was I supposed to make of “Winter”, the book’s first story? I skipped ahead to “Attack of the Giant Baby” and literally years later thumbed back to “Winter” when I was ready for it.
As a young man I wandered away from the greasy kid stuff that is the mainstream of science fiction and fantasy, and immersed myself in what was called “downtown” writing, at least in downtown Manhattan, where I was living. Dennis Cooper, Eileen Myles, that sort of thing. And that led me to contemporary innovative/avant-garde/transgressive American fiction generally, and who was there waiting for me? Kit Reed, with her slim novel from Black Ice Books—a defunct and missed, by me anyway, imprint of Fiction Collective 2—Little Sisters of the Apocalypse. The innovative tradition in the US is not known for sentiment, but Reed managed to create something that was both gonzo and emotionally mature, with a gag title.
I still had no idea that Kit Reed was the same author of the half-forgotten books I’d read as a child.
I first got what we used to call net.access in 1989, when I managed to find my way to a TinyMUD via a raw telnet connection. There I was told that I needed an email address, because there were “dozens of machines out there” and I couldn’t just have messages sent to me without knowing that I belonged to sunysb.edu. And Kit Reed was exploring similar worlds at around the same time. When the Web finally got up and running and became useful enough to search phrases like “book about giant baby” or “tarantula ballad divorce”, I finally realized that I was a Kit Reed fan. And Kit Reed had anticipated me with her novel @Expectations. Again, this was not science fiction so much as it was basically a novel about my own 20s, which had been spent almost entirely online.
Then, finally I was hooked. Kit Reed. Don’t just look for books with wacky titles, look for Kit Reed. Was I living with a woman with an eating disorder? Yes, and Kit Reed wrote Thinner Than Thou. In my thirties, did I start getting very anxious about starting a family? Of course, and Kit Reed wrote The Baby Merchant. When I had young cousins to buy presents for, Kit Reed was there again, The Night Children, a novel about that pretty common daydream kids have about spending all night in a shopping mall—it was a daydream I always had. (Naturally, I read the book before making a gift of it.) And only after reading The Night Children did I find her broadly similar 1980 title Magic Time, on a blanket set up on the sidewalk by a street peddler, and inhaled it. Kit knew I’d be an adult looking for an adult version of her twenty-first century YA novel back when I’d picked up my first of her titles as a child.
Now I’m middle-aged, with a baby and a day job. I’m as surprised as you are. I work in a slum zone that is rapidly being gentrified thanks to the fascist handclasp of transnational venture capital and supposedly “progressive” local government. The homeless outside my office don’t even have it sufficiently together to sell old Kit Reed paperbacks on blankets; it’s all bloody meth scabs and ranting into traffic. They live under the shadows of high-rise apartment buildings being put up on either side of my workplace—an old concrete slab where fancy social media companies relocate to get tax breaks. Those apartments are renting for $3500 a month for a studio. One-bedrooms are $4500 a month. Having a family? Living more than two minutes away from the cubicle where you already put in a twelve-hour workday? That's so random—let’s disrupt life-as-we-know it!
And just now, as I type these words, a new-to-me Kit Reed novel has arrived in the mail. Fort Privilege, about the wealthy ascending skyscrapers to avoid the rampaging poor, from back in 1986. She saw all of this, every major episode of my life, coming decades before I did.
I’ll be reading Kit Reed till I die. I have to find out what happens next.
July 8, 2014
Big Click Bizarro Crime Issue, And Recommendations For Editors
The new Big Click is out, and it's a special Bizarro issue, featuring work by Cameron Pierce and Stephen Graham Jones. I haven't even read it yet, as we had a guest editor in the form of Molly Tanzer! (lj's own
vegan_vulcan
)
The interesting thing about this to me is how excited Molly was to guest-edit. She's 'worked' for other magazines, handling submissions and scheduling and other office management type stuff, but nobody ever looped her in to creative decision-making. This seems to be a universal in the current crop of supposedly "professional" magazines that exist primarily via a volunteer labor subsidy. Whether it's managing editors who do only scut work, or slush-readers who are given zero training, no way to "move up", and no real input, they are why magazines actually get published in a timely manner. Slush-readers are generally not even allowed to submit their own fiction to the magazines for which they volunteer, which is craven madness.
Compare this to, say, the seemingly unprofessional New Yorker—one of the best ways to get published the magazine's pages is to be an intern there first. At World Horror Convention, someone I know lamented that she couldn't submit to some magazine she was reading for and Ellen Datlow—actual professional editor—said she felt that was a silly rule. I agree.
I've always told people who want to write that they should spend six months reading the slush for some magazine or publisher, but no more. My joke is "Six months, and you'll improve your own writing via negative example. Six months and one day? PERMANENT BRAIN DAMAGE."
Now, no more jokes. I've just seen too many people be endlessly exploited for the chance to play Pretend Editor. I still think reading slush is good for new writers, but if the editor of the publication for which you read slush is basically using you as a mail sorter, quit. Right now. Let them read their own shit.
Editors: here is what you should be doing with slush readers and office staff, even if the staff are all virtual volunteers.
If they find a story worthy of publishing, let them edit it.
Have a slot or two for a slush reader to select.
Use their input not just as a way of collecting the cream of the crop for you to read individually, but as a way to actually create issues.
Talk over edits and other issues with them.
Let them guest edit, write copy/reviews or conduct interviews, and submit their own work.
(Aside: I put my money were my mouth is: Kathleen Miller made her publishing debut in The Battle Royale Slam Book. She is a former VIZ intern, and she went through the normal editorial process, got paid the same rate as most anyone else, etc. Real publishing companies do this.)
Or, if you can't or won't do any of the above, pay your readers a small honorarium. Even fifty bucks a month will do.
But using volunteers as an email sorter is a shit move, and is unprofessional, no matter what you pay your writers.
Yes, I am sure to receive plenty of "Oh oh, but I do that!" comments from some editors but I am betting—and I am betting because I've already talked to any number of slushpile volunteers—that I won't hear such enthusiastic claims from the ranks below.
Incidentally, we have a couple more guest-edited issues of The Big Click coming up, and I would be interested in entertaining even more ideas for guest editors. Drop me a line, with a real thematic idea and some author suggestions, if you are interested.
vegan_vulcan
)The interesting thing about this to me is how excited Molly was to guest-edit. She's 'worked' for other magazines, handling submissions and scheduling and other office management type stuff, but nobody ever looped her in to creative decision-making. This seems to be a universal in the current crop of supposedly "professional" magazines that exist primarily via a volunteer labor subsidy. Whether it's managing editors who do only scut work, or slush-readers who are given zero training, no way to "move up", and no real input, they are why magazines actually get published in a timely manner. Slush-readers are generally not even allowed to submit their own fiction to the magazines for which they volunteer, which is craven madness.
Compare this to, say, the seemingly unprofessional New Yorker—one of the best ways to get published the magazine's pages is to be an intern there first. At World Horror Convention, someone I know lamented that she couldn't submit to some magazine she was reading for and Ellen Datlow—actual professional editor—said she felt that was a silly rule. I agree.
I've always told people who want to write that they should spend six months reading the slush for some magazine or publisher, but no more. My joke is "Six months, and you'll improve your own writing via negative example. Six months and one day? PERMANENT BRAIN DAMAGE."
Now, no more jokes. I've just seen too many people be endlessly exploited for the chance to play Pretend Editor. I still think reading slush is good for new writers, but if the editor of the publication for which you read slush is basically using you as a mail sorter, quit. Right now. Let them read their own shit.
Editors: here is what you should be doing with slush readers and office staff, even if the staff are all virtual volunteers.
If they find a story worthy of publishing, let them edit it.
Have a slot or two for a slush reader to select.
Use their input not just as a way of collecting the cream of the crop for you to read individually, but as a way to actually create issues.
Talk over edits and other issues with them.
Let them guest edit, write copy/reviews or conduct interviews, and submit their own work.
(Aside: I put my money were my mouth is: Kathleen Miller made her publishing debut in The Battle Royale Slam Book. She is a former VIZ intern, and she went through the normal editorial process, got paid the same rate as most anyone else, etc. Real publishing companies do this.)
Or, if you can't or won't do any of the above, pay your readers a small honorarium. Even fifty bucks a month will do.
But using volunteers as an email sorter is a shit move, and is unprofessional, no matter what you pay your writers.
Yes, I am sure to receive plenty of "Oh oh, but I do that!" comments from some editors but I am betting—and I am betting because I've already talked to any number of slushpile volunteers—that I won't hear such enthusiastic claims from the ranks below.
Incidentally, we have a couple more guest-edited issues of The Big Click coming up, and I would be interested in entertaining even more ideas for guest editors. Drop me a line, with a real thematic idea and some author suggestions, if you are interested.
July 4, 2014
There are no important documents
Email has been compromised.
July 1, 2014
Too far
I complained about this piece a tiny bit, in more private parts of the Internet, but now that a blog post speculating about my race and sexual orientation has republished on Strange Horizons, I will say publicly that I am appalled and annoyed.
Hmm, might an author be "white-passing"? Gee, is Mr Ford the white-passer? Is it Mr Vandermeer? Or is it—as the kids back in grade school used to say it—Mr Ma-ma-ma-ma-hahaha-tas?
Hmm, might an author be "white-passing"? Gee, is Mr Ford the white-passer? Is it Mr Vandermeer? Or is it—as the kids back in grade school used to say it—Mr Ma-ma-ma-ma-hahaha-tas?
Time keeps on slippin'...
Hey, it's my third wedding anniversary! And to celebrate, I'm home alone all month as Olivia and Oliver do a tour of the East Coast. (Olivia will also be finishing her dissertation while my parents and then hers watch the baby.) Plenty of work to do, plus I get to watch TV with the volume up again. I may even—*gasp*—see a film that work doesn't send me to! (PS: go see Edge of Tomorrow!)
I think we may have hit exhaustion when it comes to anthologies. I have work in two—these were from the May rush—and one book is called Shadows Over Main Street and the other is called Streets of Shadows. You might be thinking, "But but..." and yes, but the books are different. The former is Lovecraftian fiction in a small-town or 1950s setting, and the other is noir-meets-urban fantasy-whatever-that-means. Anyway, contents!
Main Street (alphabetical order):
Chesya Burke, Mountaintown
T. Fox Dunham, Father or the Flesh
Brian Hodge, This Stagnant Breath of Change
Kevin Lucia, The Black Pyramid
Adrian Ludens, Estranged
Nick Mamatas, Χταπόδι Σαλάτα <--hey, it's me
Rena Mason, Red Hill
Lisa Morton, The Ogre
Aaron Polson, Undergrounders
Mary SanGiovanni, The Floodgates of Willow Hill
Lucy A. Snyder, The Abomination of Fensmere
John Sunseri, Homecoming
Richard Thomas, White Picket Fences
Jay Wilburn, Boss Cthulhu
Mean Streets (I presume publication order):
“What I Am” – Tom Piccirilli
“A Game of Cards” – A.C. Wise
“Shooting Aphrodite” – Gary Kloster
“Santa Muerte” – Lucy A. Snyder and Daniel R. Robichaud
“Morrigan’s Girls” – Gerard Brennan
“Such Faces We Wear, Such Masks We Hide” – Damien Angelica Walters
“The Man Who Has Been Killing Kittens” – Douglas F. Warrick
“The Large Man” – Paul Tremblay
“Unfilial Child” – Laurie Tom
“Street Worm” – Nisi Shawl
“Der Kommissar’s In Town” – Nick Mamatas <--here I am again
“The Shadow People” – Brandon Massey
“Hand Fast” – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“Beware of Dog” – Kevin J. Anderson
“Stay: A Tale of the Spellmason Chronicles” – Anton Strout
“God Needs Not the Future” – Jason Sizemore
“Relics” – Tim Lebbon
“Cold Fear” – Lucien Soulban
“In Vino Veritas” – Tim Waggoner and Michael West
“Best Served Cold” – Seanan McGuire
“Toby’s Closet” – Jonathan Maberry
So, these will be out in autumn. The former story, as you may have guessed, has a Greek theme and is indeed about the aftermath of Omaha, Nebraska Greektown riot one generation later. Also, octopus salad.
"Der Kommisar" (hey, two non-English titles!) is about psychogeography, Occupy, and the practice of dérive, but I'm told people are reading it as an allegory about all the recent generational and political struggles within science fiction fandom and prodom. Given that the story ends with a MOVE-style bombing (the anniversary of that police terror was just two weeks ago), what can I say but "Here's hoping!"
In other news, Chizine is having a 99-cent sale on all its ebooks from today (Canada Day) till the 4th (US Independence Day). This includes my novel Bullettime , and the recently released horror-Western Haxan by Mark Kenneth Hoover, which I enjoyed and blurbed.
So check those out.
I think we may have hit exhaustion when it comes to anthologies. I have work in two—these were from the May rush—and one book is called Shadows Over Main Street and the other is called Streets of Shadows. You might be thinking, "But but..." and yes, but the books are different. The former is Lovecraftian fiction in a small-town or 1950s setting, and the other is noir-meets-urban fantasy-whatever-that-means. Anyway, contents!
Main Street (alphabetical order):
Chesya Burke, Mountaintown
T. Fox Dunham, Father or the Flesh
Brian Hodge, This Stagnant Breath of Change
Kevin Lucia, The Black Pyramid
Adrian Ludens, Estranged
Nick Mamatas, Χταπόδι Σαλάτα <--hey, it's me
Rena Mason, Red Hill
Lisa Morton, The Ogre
Aaron Polson, Undergrounders
Mary SanGiovanni, The Floodgates of Willow Hill
Lucy A. Snyder, The Abomination of Fensmere
John Sunseri, Homecoming
Richard Thomas, White Picket Fences
Jay Wilburn, Boss Cthulhu
Mean Streets (I presume publication order):
“What I Am” – Tom Piccirilli
“A Game of Cards” – A.C. Wise
“Shooting Aphrodite” – Gary Kloster
“Santa Muerte” – Lucy A. Snyder and Daniel R. Robichaud
“Morrigan’s Girls” – Gerard Brennan
“Such Faces We Wear, Such Masks We Hide” – Damien Angelica Walters
“The Man Who Has Been Killing Kittens” – Douglas F. Warrick
“The Large Man” – Paul Tremblay
“Unfilial Child” – Laurie Tom
“Street Worm” – Nisi Shawl
“Der Kommissar’s In Town” – Nick Mamatas <--here I am again
“The Shadow People” – Brandon Massey
“Hand Fast” – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“Beware of Dog” – Kevin J. Anderson
“Stay: A Tale of the Spellmason Chronicles” – Anton Strout
“God Needs Not the Future” – Jason Sizemore
“Relics” – Tim Lebbon
“Cold Fear” – Lucien Soulban
“In Vino Veritas” – Tim Waggoner and Michael West
“Best Served Cold” – Seanan McGuire
“Toby’s Closet” – Jonathan Maberry
So, these will be out in autumn. The former story, as you may have guessed, has a Greek theme and is indeed about the aftermath of Omaha, Nebraska Greektown riot one generation later. Also, octopus salad.
"Der Kommisar" (hey, two non-English titles!) is about psychogeography, Occupy, and the practice of dérive, but I'm told people are reading it as an allegory about all the recent generational and political struggles within science fiction fandom and prodom. Given that the story ends with a MOVE-style bombing (the anniversary of that police terror was just two weeks ago), what can I say but "Here's hoping!"
In other news, Chizine is having a 99-cent sale on all its ebooks from today (Canada Day) till the 4th (US Independence Day). This includes my novel Bullettime , and the recently released horror-Western Haxan by Mark Kenneth Hoover, which I enjoyed and blurbed.
So check those out.
June 26, 2014
Today only!
Weightless Books is selling ebooks of my novel Sensation for $1.99, today only.
They have lots of great stuff, btw, including a complete run of and subscription accounts for The Big Click.
They have lots of great stuff, btw, including a complete run of and subscription accounts for The Big Click.
June 23, 2014
Marion Zimmer Rapely
A few years ago, a once-close friend of mine—someone whose house I had been to, who slept on my couch, who ran my first website, who lent me money and borrowed money from me as well—was convincingly to my mind accused of rape by a romantic partner. I instantly disassociated myself from this person on the Internet and RL, even as various social justice sorts wrapped themselves in pretzels trying to say simultaneously that the victim was a victim but that the perpetrator was not a perpetrator—in direct contradiction to a normal "believe the victim" stance. (My once-close friend had started aping a lot of SJ outrage to get in good with that community, and it worked.)
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Marion Zimmer Bradley's daughter wrote an open letter to the world describing her rapes at the hands of her mother, starting at age three. And for a couple of weeks, I've seen tons of comments and posts and tweets that basically start off by saying, 'But but...she bought my first story' or 'I sure do like those books and she helped lots of women get published but but but...'
So my question is, WHAT IN THE HOLY BLUE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?!
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Marion Zimmer Bradley's daughter wrote an open letter to the world describing her rapes at the hands of her mother, starting at age three. And for a couple of weeks, I've seen tons of comments and posts and tweets that basically start off by saying, 'But but...she bought my first story' or 'I sure do like those books and she helped lots of women get published but but but...'
So my question is, WHAT IN THE HOLY BLUE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?!
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