Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 72

Michigan legalizes bullying by calling it an antibullying bill…

This story drives me insane because an anti-bullying bill is named "Matt's Safe School Law," after after a bullied student who committed suicide, Matt Epling, but the Michigan Republicans added language that allows for bullying so long as the harassment is religiously motivated. Hate queers? Or think women and blacks are inferior? Just say "God says so," and all your ignorant low-brow attitudes are A-okay.

There are so many things that I want to say to this, being a victim of bullying. But the one thing I want to point out is, people elected these vile people into office. Voters, look at this anti-bullying law that instead makes all bullying guilt-free if the bully just says they believe in Jebus. This is a mockery to the victims of bullying, and it is making the bullies into "saints" for enforcing their violent religious views on queers, girls, and people of color. Any prejudice is a-okay, so long as a God says so.

This is a law written for a public school where we supposedly want a separation of church and state. But a queer or non-religious kid does not have the right to an education because an ignorant religious bully wants to keep them out of the system. And the bully DOES have the right to enforce his religious views on others. Now it's enshrined as a protected right to play smear the queer, because Jebus would want it that way.

Welcome to the Republican view of "religious freedom" in modern America. Not the right to worship or not worship as you choose. No, today Michigan Republicans celebrate the right for low-brow brats to beat the children of non-believers and make them afraid of a God-fearing cult.

Now, ask me why I'm bitter.

EDIT: It would appear this is not yet law. This means there is still time. Michigan voters, of both parties, call your peoples and harass them. Do not let this become law and require another expensive court fight to take down.

"But Zoe, what about all of your outrage?" Still applies that this bill has been crafted. BUT…but, it is not a law yet. Please, people in Michigan, call up your Republican lawmakers and talk some sanity into them, please.

Texas judge recorded abusing his daughter…

I won't have too much to say on this post or the video linked within because it's just too triggery a topic for me to handle without going into hysterics. But I do want to help increase awareness about this story, and I want to ask those of y'all who read this to also do a little something to spread awareness. Abuse of any sort is bad enough, but it's even worse when it's done by an authority figure entrusted with preserving the law. That this person believes they are morally superior while abusing their own child angers me already. But they also downplayed the abuse as not as bad as it looks on the video… no, I have no coherent words to speak on this.

Please, read the story. If you can handle it, watch the video. And if you can do something to help spread awareness with a link on your blog or favorite social site, I'd really appreciate it.

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The battle plan is emerging…

It would seem that even being a bit scatter-brained and out of tune with the mainstream, I am tapped into the hive mind enough to know the rumbles of discontent when I feel them. I'm writing about IA because I'm feeling this rumble, and now here's one post, and then another post, both of them talking about this same issue from different angles. In the first is a writer saying that the successful formula in YA for snarky teens is drowning out other narrative voices. It's also creating the stereotype that all teens are whiny. I actually have plans to do a guest post about this for Mari Adkins talking about this same topic of writers who apparently hate teens writing whiny teen characters to sell them to a teen market. (I hate you, but please buy my book anyway.) So obviously, since my thoughts were already tuned this way, the first post had me nodding my head a lot.

The second is a Post-Apoc writer dealing with the issue of whether they should make the heroine eat another person's liver. Doing this feels natural for the setting, but the writer worries that this will make the story "not YA." So my first comment to this writer on Twitter is keep the cannibalism and consider another market.

I've got a first submission to the IA slush pile with two titles, ( happy dance! I knew there had to be some preexisting work to look at! ^_^ ) and that gives me a reading assignment for tonight. I'm also going to do a post for the Immature Adults site today, covering a little about my thoughts on IA branding, and asking for guest writers. I'll talk about my ideas for how IA should initially try to frame itself, and how readers should determine the ages of their reading market on a title by title basis. I want to help get ideas out that I think may help in the branding effort, but the reason why I'll be inviting in other writers for guest posts is to get their views on what they want IA to be. Maybe after I sort out a budget, I can even buy one or two short stories a month and present them on the site to give readers bite-sized samples. That's in the future, after we've got some readers to go after the IA writers.

Still, I feel very good about IA's chances for success. I'm in the right place to take advantage in a shift in the reading market, and the right time to do something about it before another corporate trend can take advantage of the hole, for once. There is a chance to do something new, something not being considered by any large commercial market as viable. And yet, I feel certain that there are enough readers unhappy with mainstream YA that I could help sell a new alternative market that returns the art to our text art instead of turning every story and every character into a formula for hooking a pre-existing market.

I don't have that many complaints that the formulas prove successful with so many people, but I think relying on those formulas alone stifles art and ignores the vast swaths of the reading audience who feel left out of these limited POV experiences. So, this is not a battle cry, "we're taking you down!" It is more of a rebuttal, like, "There's whole segments of the reading population feeling left out of your stories, and these are some of the alternatives you aren't offering."

And who knows? Maybe over time, our displays of tasteful protest might even lead to the commercial YA market picking up stories about other young adults and not just 16 and 17-year-old high school students who have a knack for snark and a complete inability to empathize with anyone else in their fictional world.

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Con ramble: The Lucca Report

I'm going to say this now: this is a long, long ramble, and not all of it is about my main topic. If you're new here, this is probably TL;DR territory. If you're not new, you know this is just a standard weekend ramble. Well, no, this one goes a bit above and beyond the standard ramble, and may be offensive. I genuinely debated only putting this on the unfiltered blog, but I decided it's not that bad. But it is close. For instance, I talk about porn in several flavors and wanting to give a blowjob to Dirk Benedict.

I now know why I was in training all summer with the Kinect, and it was to prepare me for the endurance event that is Lucca. We've been to Lucca almost every year, and with each previous year it was my habit to drop partway through the day, making a bed of other people's jackets under a booth table to sleep. Even then, I'd spend the last two days of the con in the hotel, reading books and staying in bed because I was too worn out to walk. Last year, I used my Blackberry to write 6,000 words for the start of NaNoWriMo, even. I was laying on my back either way, so I figured why not do something useful besides play with myself? And besides, I was already chafed from playing with myself.

This may seem like a contradiction, but I'm a surprisingly low-energy masturbator because I lay on my stomach to intentionally asphyxiate myself in my pillow, resulting in a faster and easier climax. Not so easy on the heart, I suppose. But it's either that or rely on my imagination to tap into my libido, and half the time I kill my own mood because my internal editor jumps my fantasies. SO frustrating to be fapping to: He gently parted her thighs and… Wait is he laying behind her or under her? Because one of his arms shouldn't be able to do that if he's beside her. This is followed by, I'm masturbating, god damn it! I don't exactly need masterpiece fucking theater, all right? And yet, the next scene I write gets the editor's invasive input too. Like taking a penis in the urethra. Some nights, I go to bed frustrated because I've mentally teased myself.

I digress, there was no fatigued fapping on the bed at the Lucca hotel this year. (Pity. I did kind of miss it, especially with all the hentai manga I picked up this year.) Which is not to say I didn't have problems. I had a relapse at dinner on Sunday and had to stagger out of the restaurant early. Every night, I lay awake for hours, unable to sleep for the pain in my knees, hips, and back. So it sounds dreadful, I know. But, would I do it again? Oh, hell yes. I did it every day of the trip, and I suffered through every night because the days were just so. Much. Fun.

Granted, if I had to live like that for more than a week, I think I'd have to kill someone to deal with the stress and pain. Okay, maybe two people.

This has been one of my busiest, fullest trips to Lucca. Being that this was my first year owning an Xbox, it was also the first year that the game booths had anything to offer me. They don't usually have much PC games in the used shops, and what they had of PC games was less Game of the Year and more Lame of the Year. So I didn't need to pick through their selection with keen interest. But before this, there were still a few thousand other booths that did hold my interest. Now there's all those other booths, PLUS games. Which exposes yet another addiction in me…I'm a shopaholic.

Lucca is a constant reminder that I'm not just a singular nerd. I can be nerdy for games, sci-fi, fantasy, comics and manga, cartoons and anime, toys and games, faeries and mythology, for arts and crafts, puzzles, for magic tricks, for computer hardware and software, for Star Trek and Star Wars. So there's not any one booth or tent I want to hang out in. And, Lucca Comics and Games is spread out across half of Lucca's interior walls, so just to get from the games tent to the Japan Palace required a forty minute walk. In between those bigger camps is a dozen smaller tents, street vendors, and cosplay folks. The streets are jam-packed, and at any time traffic can just stop for photo ops.

So, this year, we arrived a day later than usual. Normally we arrive the day the con is being set up, but this year hubby had to attend a sales con before we could leave. I'm not really complaining, since watching people set up a con isn't so exciting. But I do like it, and I missed the chance to get around and check out people's stuff before the crowds converge. But this year, I had to spend a lot of time in crowds, moving with the flow of traffic from booth to booth to sort out what was where. It was more like being one of the attendants this year than an insider with a memorized map of where everything was. Not really a bad thing, just different. I think I liked having it different for a change of pace, having to discover everything like everyone else. Twice I walked through tents and thought I knew them, only to turn a corner a day later and go, "Wait, I didn't see this before." I also had to go around and catch up with some vendors who I've seen at multiple cons, and try to buy new stuff from them to help show my support.

Lunches at the con this year were happily less stressing on tummy because the regular con food was joined by Barilla pasta cups, both regular penne and whole wheat fusilli. These were light and satisfying, giving me plenty of energy to keep going as well as something to soak up a bit of my beer or mojito. I drank through most of the trip after lunch, but I drank real, real slow. So I barely reached a mild buzz, and once I got there I shifted back to bottled water. Then I'd drink with dinner until I hit the buzz point and moved back to water. (Well, but I was hitting my one-hitter about once every two hours all day, so it's not like I wasn't a bit sedated. Hell, half the days, I felt so good I was singing and dancing WHILE walking. Yes, people stared. No, I didn't care.)

Day one, I didn't buy much because I was afraid of getting something expensive, only to find something cool and cheap that I couldn't afford. So I wandered around with hubby in search of the anime tent. I had wrongly assumed it would be in the Japan Palace. But they had more cosplay and toys, with only a few manga vendors here and there. So I had to go back to the games tent, drop off hubby, grab a map, and hike a mile back the way I'd just been. There, I walked around the stalls for a few miles too. Not surprisingly, when I finally did sit down, it caught up with me. My knees and ankles swelled from too much activity, and I had to have help getting back to the car. I had many painkillers and a lot of pot to get the swelling down. Not surprisingly, I arrived at dinner with the munchies. After dinner, I had a fatigue attack and passed out fully clothed after falling face first into my pillow.

This meant I woke up at 5 AM with acid in my chest. Bleh. But I took out my copy of The Drowning City and alternated between it and Chaos Tryst until it was time to take a shower and get ready for breakfast. The Drowning City is still awesome, by the way. I finished part one at long last, and all the cast is assembled, and I really love everything here. The writing style, the objective narration, the balance between description of scenery and actions without being purple; it's all very well done.

I wish I could say the same for Chaos Tryst, but it's a book where I love the world and the idea the writer is getting at, but I think the characters are awful. Supposedly, they're both creatures of chaos, which explains why they're so random. But their "conflict" is so stiff and dreadful, and even the back story that they somehow have known each other forever WITHOUT actually knowing each other is not enough to make me want to root for them to get together. In my writerly opinion, this is a couple meant for a one night stand. After which point, the woman should come to her senses, realize she just wanted to make a booty call, and scram. The man-boy-bear is a waste of her time, and he's a stereotypical male show-off anyway. So while the writer is telling me, "Ooh, this is so sexy," I'm going, "No, it's kinda lame, actually. This dude is worth a pity fuck, at best." Nevertheless, the world building is interesting and I'm kind of stuck for the full ride even if I think both of the main characters are unrealistic and slightly grating.

Day two, I realized the goofiness of me bringing manga to read at the con. I'd never taken those books out of my bag, and anyway, I wanted to find new comics. So I set out to the manga tent and got a few books here and there to sample them, the first four issues of Nana and something else, but it slips my memory what just now. In fairness, I bought a LOT of new manga this year. I also found a vendor selling comics in English, and I picked up Stephen King's N. I still couldn't commit to any bigger purchases, but I found the complete Jojo's Bizarre Adventures set and got that.

Dinner on day two was a "Japanese" place called Oishii that apparently didn't understand what Oishii meant. My salad had a dressing that was mostly salt, and had some sesame seeds sprinkled across the top. There was almost nothing at all about it that was Japanese, except possibly the crab on top. But I suspect the crab was likely not from the harbors of any of Japan's islands either. They used local rice for the meal, so it had the wrong texture, the wrong flavor, and it was cooked Italian style rather than a proper Japanese style. The only thing I could eat was my grilled fish, and let's face it, it's almost impossible to fuck that up. BUT, I did note that one of the guys commented that they'd cut the tuna wrong, too. So even on sushi, raw fish, they were screwing some of it up too. Just, not a good experience.

Dinner woke me up at 4:30 with a very sour stomach, so I once again opened books to pass the time. Then I showered, staggered downstairs and had a light breakfast of yogurt and cereal with my coffee. This was a good plan, because the extra energy helped while I was walking from tenet to tent. This was the day where I committed to buying stuff, since I'd seen everything and knew what I wanted. So I picked up a bunch of complete series, Lain, Soul Taker, and something from master-cheescake fanservice-maker Ujin, Sakura Mail. I also got Aika and Boys Be… I picked up a few yaoi and yuri comics, for research. (Ahem) Ooh, also, I got some used X-box video games with a ninja theme, Mini-Ninjas and Naruto: Rise of a Ninja. I'm not even a fan of the series, but the game just looks fun to me. It was a huge haul, and getting it all back to the room just about drained me. I was hauling most of it in my backpack so it was close to twenty pound when I got done packing it. (X_x)

Which is why dinner at Varrone was such a pain, even though the food was molto buono. Varrone is a steakhouse, but I can speak from experience, they also have a FANTASTIC vegetarian menu, which I had the second year we went to Lucca because my stomach was being even worse than it was on this trip. But this year, I said "You know what? Fuck you tummy. I'm having the steak!" And tummy was like, "Fine, go ahead. See what happens at five in the morning, biyatch."

I was already worn out, but Varrone is loud, very brightly lit, and smoky. The problem with the loudness is, I strain to hear someone speaking a foreign language, and my brain is taxed just trying to translate under normal circumstance. But now every third word is lost because the couple behind me is shouting to be heard over everyone else…so everyone else yells louder to compete. By the time my third course arrived, a fantastic steak with herbs, the loud noises led to a relapses, and suddenly it was like someone was playing with my volume knob, making the crowd noise rise and fall in waves. The lighs became painfully bright and had to cover my eyes to make the stinging stop. So I had hubby help me to our friend's car, and then I faded in and out of consciousness until it was time to go back to the room. Then I collapsed in bed and let hubby undress me before I passed out. I woke up around six, and I was like "Wha's up now, tummy? I thought you said you was gonna hit me? But no, instead it's my spine." And tummy was like, "Um, I told spine to do that."

And finally, it was Monday, our last day at the con. So we had to pack our bags and put them in a truck with one group before the con. Then we went and spent the final day wandering around. I used this day to go to the gaming booths and push my way through the boys to get a hold of the controllers. This is a lot harder than it sounds, but I was able to get a feel for several games. Don't know if I was tempted to play more by any of them, except for this one weird import, Catherine. It had the look of some kind of horror based Japanese dating sim, but each "night" the actual game play sections were a puzzle-based maze, a tower that the player has to ascend by pulling and moving blocks. The bottom of the level is falling away while you play, so you have to work quickly to get to the top. Very weird game, and something I could see playing to goof off with. There's a whole other role-play aspect to the game I didn't get to try in the demo either, but the trailer made it look like something from the director of Paprika and Perfect Blue. (Both of which are incredible anime movies that left me feeling less skillful as a writer.)

I finished my last few hours combing through manga before I settled on buying the first two issues of High School of the Dead. In the final walkthrough, I also found an amazing goth art jigsaw puzzle with 1,000 piece for only 16 euros. I had a blast putting together that 500 piece goth vampire puzzle last year, so 1,000 pieces with a goth chick in snow, at least 460 of which are all grey or white from snow blinding should prove…challenging. Then we unpacked our bags from one car, moved them to another friend's car, and then we made our way back home. So just to make the trip complete, I got car sick and had to lay down and close my eyes. Whee. Oh, and the ride in the car led to this exchange about Red Bull…

Me: Oh, I don't know. I like the taste of Red Bull, but—

Fabrizio: Well of course you do. You are an American, and all Americans have bad taste.

And I got all huffy and shit. Not because I was told I had bad taste, but because I could be lumped in with the rest of you assholes so easily. Kidding! Come back!

On the trip we also discussed green energy, advanced in solar panel science and glass industry advancements, the bad politics behind the green movement, and why more average Joes need to be sold on the concept on individual investment into the energy grid to create local solutions tailored to the people instead of being forced on them by someone else. We talked about how society needs to move away from consumerism, and back to the idea that every person has a responsibility to invest in their world to get something positive back when those investments are returned a few years down the road. But we also talked about how the lack of entrepreneurship in most countries has led to people being less likely to invest in themselves, in their local economies, or in the energy plans of their cities. Instead they hope to find people to invest in them as an employee rather than making the much larger risk of starting a business and hiring others themselves.

So this led me to a whole rambling tangent where people need to be given some kind of pep talk selling the concept of making money from their excess energy. Because all people can see is how much it costs at first to plug into the grid and start sending them energy instead of receiving it. And it is HELLA expensive. To get our place rigged for solar and get onto the grid, it's a minimum 6,000 euro investment. When you convert that into US dollars and factor in inflation, that's a cost so prohibitive that a lot of US people cannot imagine EVER making the change. So, I reasoned, if the government really wanted people to embrace green energy, they would offer financial incentives and tax breaks to individuals, allowing people to recoup most of their investment as a show of gratitude to the homeowners for investing in their local grid.

This talk in the car was something of a eureka moment for other reasons, because we talked about Beppe Grillo, and how he got elected to office, and how in Fabrizio's opinion, his complaining all the time is what helped the Italian left parties lose to the right again. I don't know if it was all Beppe's fault, because honestly, watching the left government in inaction was sad. They made every mistake possible, and then some. They made Obama look good. Yeah. So, saying that Beppe was the cause was, I think, a bit much. What mattered and led to the eureka moment was Fabrizio's impression tha Beppe was only complaining. Whether he was right or not had nothing to do with his views. He simply didn't like the tone that Beppe was taking.

Holy shit. A man got hit with the tone argument by another man. Eureka, we have full equality in our cynicism. BUT, this conclusion also led me to think that sometimes, who I am as a punk taints the projects I start because there's too much other stuff in between my relevant points related to said project. People don't want to have to wade though a river of my whinier bullshit just to get to those points that are interesting to them. And, part of me being a crazy thick-headed punk makes me naturally inclined to say "Piss off, I don't bloody care."

With this new thingie I'm pushing, I really don't want this to be about me, but about an idea that I hope one day might become an institution much like punk has moved from being an idea to being this huge amoeba alternative music culture that's always evolving to take on new aspects. So I was thinking how it's not just important to have a good idea, but to have a good "face" on that good idea, so people find it easier to look upon and approach. And, so that's what led me to the idea that as soon as I got home, I needed to register a new wordpress blogs for the Immature Adults market.

Something that was different for this con from previous years is that every year, hubby would tell people I was a writer, and then when they asked if I had any print books, I could get that defeated look and explain that I'm only a self-published writer, and I don't sell many print books. BUT, this year, I had a book, and as I had copies to give away, I did. One copy went to a publisher friend of mine, who took it as an attempt at a submission. Since I just got back the rights, I wasn't about to correct him. So, in theory, the book might have a new home with another small press if he's not opposed to sci-fi that's a bit…quirky. Also, these guys are so small, they don't mind if I do my own ebook edition. So it's not like I slipped a book in with Mondadori, or anything spectacular. Still, there was not one copy I gave out that the other person didn't ask for an autograph. So it was very cool to finally have something to show folks and go "See? I have a book in paper!" Also, it felt kind of good to be a minor celebrity for five minutes at a time. And I got to see one real celebrity that I knew and had a childhood crush on too.

Oh, right, Dirk Benedict. Yes, Dirk was at the con, less that a hundred yards from the booth that hubby was painting at. I kept going over to the booth where he was doing signings and photos, and I wanted to tell him, "I grew up watching you on Battlestar Galactica and A-Team." I wanted to say a lot to him, or maybe even give him a copy of my book. But every time I walked around, I always seemed to come by when he was looking flustered or tired. So I thought how I'd feel being so tired and having yet another person walk up to say how much they love me. Then I'd wander away from the booth feeling guilty for wanting to bother him, and then feeling guilty because I couldn't work up the nerve to say "My gosh, I think I still have a crush on you after all these years."

BUT…at one point, Dirk looked at me. I completely lost it and ran off, and I'm sure he must have thought I was a crazy stalker. And that's really rather sad isn't it? That one of the highlights of my trip is my childhood crush looked at me. I can't even add that we shared one special moment, because I looked away too fast.

I used to joke that if I ever became a celebrity I'd screw it up because while my fans were squeeing over me, I'd be squeeing that I had fans. But Dirk makes me realize that if I had a lot of fans, after a while, even saying thank you must be very draining. I mean, I know he was making money for every photo and autograph, but I don't think the fans give much thought to how draining these events are. They're just so excited to meet their idol that they can't see the person, just the character. But I don't see Face. I see Dirk, and I realize, I don't want to be as famous as him. Cause that shit taking thank you's from the fans looks like a lot of work to me.

And, Dirk looks great, even bone tired. At one point, I amused hubby by saying, "He's so overworked, and he's still handsome. I think I should go over and say, "Dirk, would you like a blowjob?"

I've got to go through the photos and erase blurries, but once I have the pics sorted, I'll put out a photo slideshow. I drained the batteries on my camera every day, and of course each time it died, that was when the awesomest photo-op ever would walk by.

And a completely random observation: during the con, I watched a boy of thirteen walk up to his gamer girlfriend and smack her butt. He rubbed it a bit and then got behind her to start really playing with her butt while she was trying to play a game. About then I thought, I probably shouldn't be watching this. So I wandered away to go watch something older and less guilt-inducing. But as I wandered around, I thought how this really is a whole different world from the US. In the US, some complete stranger adult would have come up and admonished the boy for mistreating the girl. Here, it's no big deal.

Another example: While I'm paying through the yaoi, a girl of about 14 ran up and starting pulling book, handing them back to someone else to say (I'm translating from Italian) "Here, this is really good. The sex is great, but the story is so good!" Well, I'm still reading another book from the same artist and writer, so I'm not thinking to look back. Then the other woman asks, "But they're both men having sex?" She sounds confused, not to mention a lot older.

So I look around, and I realize that this kid is introducing her mom to yaoi manga for the first time. And as I'm watching the girl explain stories to her bemused looking mother, I was trying to imagine how this same scene would look to an American audience. Would they laugh and find it amusing as I do? Or would they say this was filth and the mother should be dragging the girl away to punish her for thinking unclean thoughts? Or, as hubby has often said as a joke, "We have boobies and ass on TV every night, and it still hasn't led to the youths rioting." I just wonder, if you had boobies and ass on US TV every night, would it lead to someone rioting? And if it did, would the rioters be the sex-crazed maniacs looking for women to molest? Or would it be the religious and moral fanatics looking for victims to blame?

We have beer and wine at the cons, but no drunks, nor drunken fights. When on the last day, the power went out, a resounding cheer of delight went through the crowd, and when the lights came back on five minutes later, the place erupted in applause. Everywhere are people wearing free hugs signs, there's random acts of kindness, and even the cops and bootleggers have a comfy relationship. (The bootleggers sit just outside the con tents at the back. The police only patrol the front and sides of the tent, so they somehow "miss" seeing the bootleggers. And, if you think that's just the cops, I've heard the con organizers talk this up, and they say it's better to let them come and not make them feel excluded. Can you imagine an attitude like that working at a US con? Because I can't.) It's like a con hosted by happy hippies. Which may explain why I love the whole thing so much.

Setting aside the bad meal at Oishii, this has been one of the best Lucca Comics and Games I've attended. The weather of the last two years was wet and cold, but this year, it was warm enough for me to go sleeveless in the afternoons. I never mind con crowds, and even going to the gamer tables to watch the nerdly pursuits, I never once encountered a case of "gamer funk." I got jostled here and there, but half the time, as I was saying "scusa," so was the person who bumped me. One kid I ran into, we even seemed to get into a contest to see who would have the last apology.

Also, Italian cons mess with your head. Like, I'm walking along and there's a little girl and her younger brother who are almost the same height, and then behind them is a woman who's the same height as the girl, but she's like 45. Height is totally not an indicator of age around here. You can't just make a quick glance and assume anything. That cute kid in the cosplay outfit could be thirty. Look closer.

This is kind of the exact opposite way of how I watch the world in snatched moments and fast glances. But at the con, I have to change the way I people watch to really look around. If I don't, how else do I pick out the guy playing Ash from a dozen other costumed guys walking nearby? No, this kind of event requires staring to make sure of what I'm seeing. Which is why I spent so long watching the kid play with his girlfriend's butt where I normally would have looked away after the first spank. I had to stare and go, Whoa, she's really young for him to be… Whoa! he's really young to have that good a technique already! Which was followed by, I SO should not be watching this.

And, even trying to avoid being sexist or objectifying, I saw a LOT of breasts this year. I mean, they just swam into view at all angles no matter which way I looked. There was even a set of girls protesting. One had frizzy hair and wore a sign that said Bello Capelli (Pretty hair) and the other had a sign hung over her enormous breasts that read Grosso Tette (Huge Titties) I loved it, their idea for wearing their labels out as a protest, so of course it made me even more aware not to oogle. So I didn't oogle, but that doesn't mean I didn't see any breasts. The only way to have avoided them was not attending. All ages, all sizes, in all kinds of skimpy costumes. But I couldn't ask "Can I protograph you?" without looking or sounding like a pervert. (It's the drooling that makes it awkward, I think.) So mostly, I just took shots of groups in candid poses, or if someone else had gotten them to pose. No way was I going to ask the Mortal Kombat chick, "Can I see you posed with your legs apart?" And, there was a chick who made a Chelle costume that was SPOT ON, right down to her having the boots and a portal gun made from scratch that brought tears to my eyes for how nice it looked. But my tears were because ALL my batteries were dead, and I couldn't photograph her either. (She had lovely breasts too. Not big, but lovely.)

I got a Star Wars parade on the camera because I was outside at just the right moment, but I missed a chance to photograph the awesome Lord Duku they had who looked just like the movie character, right down to the displeased scowl. Dude was so totally in character, but he turned his head right as my camera clicked, so you get nothing of his acting, just his hair. GUH.

And, the whole trip, I sat across from the two most devious and evil toy sellers I've ever seen in my entire life. One guy is piloting a remote control helicopter and offering flight lessons. This sells the choppers like hot cakes. The other guy is driving a car on the floor, bumping the feet of kids and adults, and then driving the car back to him. Then he gives a big, friendly, handsome smile. EVIL. The dude pulled in a lot of marks with the car and the smile. Both of them had the charm going on, and the whole time we were at the con, my little gadget geek brain was screaming "DO WANT!" Alas, the model I wanted was 50 euros, and that's a lot for someone who has a limited yearly budget for new manga and anime. 50 euros is 3 complete DVD series and a couple yaoi manga from the neighboring booth, so yeah, I loved the choppers, but I resisted their evil temptation so that I could give in to many other evil but cheaper temptations.

And I think that's about the whole con report. I loved Lucca even when I'm having a bad year, but this was actually a very good year for me. It's always a privilege to show up at the con and get the minor celebrity treatment, even if it's just because I'm the "American author" of the group. I keep explaining that no one in America knows me either, but they still think I'm "refined," so I let them live with their delusions.

I show up and get free food, a free room, and escorted rides to the con from the hotel. All we have to pay for is travel arrangements. I've always loved going to cons, and we go to Cartoomics and pay our way in and buy the con food. But at Lucca, I get a staff badge, and I get to wander into a few of the booths cause I'm staff. Hee. Like I said, it's a bit like being a minor celebrity. It's a great trip, and this year was just awesome. I'm already missing everyone, and I can't wait for next year.

And in conclusion, Dirk, if you're ever in Milan and want a coffee, let me know. I mean a coffee, by the way, not a sly reference to a blowjob. But if you did want the blowjob, I'm sure we can come to an arrangement.

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Opening an IA slush pile

I am back from Lucca, and I want to deliver the mother of all rambling road reports. But first, I did promise that I would talk a bit more about IA when I got back. Believe me, all weekend long, my thoughts have kept returning to this new market, and the first thing my muse wants to do is a gay werewolf romance. I have no idea when I'm supposed to schedule writing all of this stuff, but time and energy output are abstract concepts that my muse isn't concerned with. She's just the idea person, really.

But anywho, as I said on Friday, some writers may have read the previous post describing IA and felt that they had already written a story to fit this new market. I'm pretty certain a number of writers have material out that would fit the market, and instead of having to wait a year or two for folks to turn in new stories, we can also get the ball rolling with existing material.

And when I say "we," I mean once I have your titles in my comments, I can put together a slush list and start reading your stuffs. What I like will be added to my own promo lists, and I will work to promote your IA titles free of charge, and with no strings attached that you have to reciprocate with shared links to my titles, or with reviews in return. It's more important to me to build the concept of the IA brand with writers and readers than it is for me to promote any of my own titles, and I'm hopeful that having that little extra free promotion is enough incentive to consider using IA for your existing titles.

IA really needs a home of its own, something away from me where I can ballyhoo for other people without people getting links to my bookstore first, and then everybody else's stuff. So I've registered a new blog, immatureadults, and once I've got some titles to show off from other people, I'll start posting the results here, and there. So new readers who ask "What's this IA about?" can go to the blog, read some stuff, and not have to put up with my ranting and rambling.

So, comments are definitely open, and I want to invite all writers with preexisting potential IA material to offer their wares. Short story, long; poem, or novel, it's all good. I don't mind if it's free or if it's a paid product. I don't care if it's a published item being promoted under an existing market. There is such a thing as market overlap, so if you think you've got a match, toss it here as a link. Or send me a little pitch, and I'll email you to get either a sample or the full file. I'm going to try and make a slush pile of IA candidates, and my reviews and promotions will begin to come out shortly thereafter.

This works out two ways for you. First, the list of comments itself can become a long-tail source of new readers, and second, if I like your work and decide to promote it under the IA label, I'll be posting my review on several blogs, on Goodreads, and on Amazon, should you be offering the title there. I'll tweet links to the review, and to your book online. And all of this is free.

An obvious question is, what if I end up not feeling your story is a good fit for IA? First, you're still free to use the term. My verdict is not final, nor will you need a committee stamp to use the term. You just lose my free marketing if I don't dig your stuff. But I wouldn't want to spoil you off using the term. After all, every writer using the term is helping to build the brand. So even if I say, "this didn't work for me," You can still be IA. The term should be more broad than just what works for me, anyway.

A caveat to remember: My reviews are blunt, and one of the things I'll be looking for is the use of negative stereotypes as literary shorthand. What I mean is, if you describe the school bully in your story as "ugly, in that bully sort of way," I'm going to call you on it. Even for a stereotype where you as the writer think I should agree to this kind of easy stereotype, I'm still going to point it out in my reviews and explain why I don't think a title is a good fit for IA.

Generally, this will mean it's a suitable YA or CoA submission, so not being on the IA list is not a bad thing. It may just mean you're a smashing success in a different market. Having said that, if my review ends up being really harsh, like in the 1-2 star range, I will email you a copy of the review first and ask if you want me to just skip the review. I do not want to turn this into, "show me your work so I can diss it." So I'll give you first whack at my promotional reviews under three stars to let you decide if you want my help or not. But even if I give you a bad review, do consider that a bad review still often leads other readers to check out the work. Or put another way, even a bad review can be a good promotion if you spin it right.

I hope that after a few titles have been promoted under the IA banner, other IA reviews will show up across the web. I will try to keep track of these for the immatureadults blog, and I will try to keep a running list of IA titles that I've read and agreed to promote. So if your book is for sale somewhere, I'll post a link directly to your book. No commissions, royalties. Nothing. I do it all for the love of your work…provided I love your work, obviously. Ooh, a final thought: once other reviews start coming in, I hope writers who get good reviews, but don't see them on the blog will forward them to me. In addition to promoting those linked reviews on the IA blog, I'll also tweet the review a few times to my followers.

So, as I hope you can see, I'm very excited to be pressing forward with this concept, and I hope that the potential for free promotions with no strings attached will entice some writers to show their wares. And please, writers, also feel free to talk to your other writerly friends about joining the IA market. At this early stage, there may already be some great IA waiting to be discovered. So the $64,000 question is, who's ready to promote their existing works under this new label?

First pitch for IA, or Immature Adult…

During the previous week, I'd talked about starting a new market called IA, or Immature Adult. I've been toying the idea with for a while without finding the right term for it. Immature Adult is the perfect label for the projects I have in mind, with immature being used in a somewhat sarcastic manner. But imagine my surprise when some writers started asking me, "What's this IA all about?" I would love to get other writers involved in the push for this market. I also would like to interest readers, since I can't make a market without y'all. But in this first pitch, I'm aiming for the writers first and readers second. If some of the writers are sold and put out IA titles, I'll make more reader-friendly pitches based around those new titles. (I said I'd do this pitch on Monday, but I really, really want to get the ball rolling before I go to Lucca. So, here we are.)

To begin, IA, like YA, is not just one genre. It is a market, so there can be IA contemporary, IA comedy, IA horror, IA fantasy, or any combination or fusion of the standard genres. Obviously, you know any market I'd try to launch would encourage experimenting.

But, why use IA over Young Adult or Coming of Age? Both of these are viable markets, so there's no reason that some IA stories couldn't also be seen as YA or CoA. Indeed there may even be some overlaps between the markets. However, commercial YA and CoA carry with them reader expectations about the behavior of characters. Without being too specific or resorting to complaints, YA and CoA create a smaller pool of acceptable characters and acceptable behavior. As a teen reading these markets, I often felt frustrated and shouted, "But that's not how I would act, and it's not how anyone I know would act!" There is a huge market of people who do identify with these stories, but I'm certain there are others like me who feel that our stories aren't just being glossed over by commercial YA and CoA. They're never considered for publication at all.

IA is not seeking to protest these markets, but rather to exist as an alternative market for readers who feel put off by the mainstream stories. IA explores stories and characters who have trouble fitting into the established YA and CoA formulas. As a first example, consider a football jock who wants to read YA. Being a jock seems like a pretty mainstream experience, so our new reader dude shouldn't feel alienated by YA, should he? Except, he is because a lot of mainstream YA and CoA propagates the stereotype of all jocks being stupid bullies. This is not always the case, but without meaning to, many writers seeking to create a likable dialogue with people who don't trust jocks end up alienating jocks.

IA should be for the jocks as much as it is for the "weirdos". It's for cheerleaders who are tired of seeing themselves depicted as evil harpies, for gamer nerds who are tired of being bit characters to be made fun of by the non-gaming main characters, for the gay kids who are tired of being the "safe" side character not allowed to be seen as sexual, even if they're homosexual. It's for the straight teens who aren't virgins, and who are tired of being told by writers they're not as good because they didn't abstain like "good kids". It's for the bisexuals who are tired of rarely having a part in any story, even as a bit character. What I want is for IA to be the market for everyone else who doesn't feel represented by YA and CoA. Making this a GLBT version of YA would risk perpetuating the same harmful stereotypes used commonly in commercial YA, and it pushes away all those other readers who might get the idea that IA is just queer YA. It isn't meant to be.

Further, IA stories shouldn't be the same as YA. If a story trope could be used comfortably as YA or CoA, then writers should work with those existing markets rather then try to push into this new smaller market. Go where the money is already flowing if your idea is good YA or CoA. IA is meant for the stories that aren't morally black and white, and for characters that are seen predominantly as negative stereotypes in commercial YA and CoA.

The basic IA character will be 15-26, but beyond that, there's no hard rules about what kind of person is an ideal immature adult. But the unifying theme behind IA is, these are not the stories of people making the right choices and saving the day. IA stories should be more complex in their presentation of characters, and should challenge the reader rather than curry their favor for the sake of being likable. IA should encourage critical thinking and ask readers to question every aspect of the story. If an IA story's moral points can be summed up easily in an elevator pitch, then they're better suited to YA or CoA.

While writers may employ first-person or third-person narration (or second, if they're bold enough), IA narrators will avoid using stereotypes to establish characters. So, no dumb jocks, unless the dumb jock later has a chance to display that some of his stereotype isn't true. There should be no evil cheerleaders, or mean sluts, or anything that might alienate a person simply because the writer wanted to resort to "literary shorthand". This is not to say IA can't have a bullying jock, a mean cheerleader, or a promiscuous girl as an antagonist. But the characters have to be more fleshed out than a cardboard cutout.

So what are some possible story premises for IA? Here's some examples. ( a few may be stories of mine.)

IA Comedy – A long-term couple indulges in ecstasy at a party and have a wild night of passion, only to discover the next day that they can't stand each other. Follow both characters after their split as they seek out other people and move on with their lives.

IA Fantasy – A young witch discovers her powers after an attempted suicide and learns that her best friend is a werecat. Her friend is supposed to kill her, as werecats and witches are mortal enemies. Instead her friend sends her into hiding until the teen werecats can find an independent warlock to train the witch. Along the way, fights with weredogs occur.

IA Contemporary – A college jock falls in love with two women, and rather than choose one or the other, he asks both to move into an apartment with him. Shockingly, this story does not end in an unmarked grave for the jock.

IA Romantic Comedy – Same premise as above, but with a female protagonist who is initially asked to choose one guy or the other in the classic YA style. The protag's friends all advise her that not choosing one or the other just isn't right, or that it's greedy to want both. Ultimately, the character ignores peer-pressure and opts to ask for both men to move in with her in a climatic tri-date. Bickering ensues, but both men decide they don't hate each other so much that they can't live together…as roommates. With separate beds.

IA Contemporary – A transitioning teen remains "dressed in drab" until she stumbles into a new life of cheerleading, attending parties, making out with guys (and a girl), and dodging bullies. She discovers that many of the assumptions she made about others weren't true, and she also learns that some bullies are more dangerous than others. She has three romantic partners, two guys, one girl, none of whom ask her to pick them, and she has parents who sometimes wish she was just a little less honest.

IA Comedy – The day after high school graduation, a cheerleader is dumped by her boyfriend because he's attending a college across the country. The cheerleader has to sort out dating without the benefit of her old social network, and the guys she meets aren't working out…but there is that one girl at the donut shop that she can't wait to see every morning. So, is she les, or bi? In the search for answers, hilarity ensues.

IA Romantic Comedy – A college party girl attends 15 parties in search of Mr. Right, and she finds 15 Mr. O'Godno's instead. Her friends coach her to clean up her act and find a "good man," but all the "good guys" on campus also come across as jerks. Party girl finally goes to her roommate for his opinion, only to discover that he's been pining for her since college started. Realizing that she's lived with him this long without finding too much to hate about him, party girl decides to give her roommate a chance.

IA Dark Fantasy – A former victim of sexual abuse moves in with a foster family and begins a relationship with a younger neighbor. He gets caught and thinks being punished is bad enough, until he learns that he's cursed to be a werewolf. Then his abusive mother escapes from prison, ruins his life, kidnaps his girlfriend, and forces him into a fight as revenge for him reporting her to the police. And yet, he still doesn't have a clue how to transform into a wolf.

IA Adventure – A college soccer player contemplates the use of steroids and his mediocre grades until a meteor hits him and he gains super powers. Being the only super-powered person to ever be struck by a meteor, he…keeps it a secret to take advantage of others. Despite being independently wealthy and popular as the fastest and strongest athlete in school, he comes to recognize that he's missing something…could it be romance? His super powers aside, actually wooing the babes requires something he can't fake: he has to be himself. So how does he do that, when he's not even sure who he is yet?

IA Horror – A young vampire discovers glitter and instant popularity with teen girls, only to learn that glitter causes aggressive colon cancer in vampires.

Okay, maybe that last one could just be an IA short story. But so that's the first pitch for IA. Now to go to the writers and beg and plead with them to read this post.

EDIT: As the obvious question has already been asked on Twitter, some writers may look at this description and say, "I think I already wrote IA! How do I get in on this?" I will make my very next post a pitch to you writers with existing material to consider promoting your work under the IA term. There MAY even be butt smooching involved.

But we are just a few minutes from going to Lucca, so I'm out of time to address this. Suffice it for now for me to say, yes, I do want to hear about your potential IA projects in any genre. (Even IA poetry or flash fiction.) I'll get more detailed after I'm back from the con, but I hope I've created some buzz for y'all writers to think on this weekend. Have a great holiday weekend and a fun, safe Halloween!

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Guest post: The Inner Animal

I have a guest post up for a Halloween Monster Movie Marathon at Wag The Fox, where I talk about my two favorite werewolf movies, An American Werewolf in London and Dog Soldiers. I'd completely forgotten I had this assignment due. In all the chaos of the month I lost the original, and had to write up this replacement on a moment's notice. So, apologies for it being a little rough with the occasional typo or swapped word. But I hope you'll check out one or both films as part of your Halloween viewing. American Werewolf is a classic and should be required viewing for anyone looking into the history of film horror. And Dog Soldiers should be a classic if not for being a newer film. I love both, so I hope you'll try one or the other out.

I should have one more All Maid Up episode done before the weekend silence, but I won't be posting that here. So this being the last last post before the holiday, happy Halloween, and y'all be safe.

A convention, some holiday begging, and a writing update…

I'm going to be out of town this weekend for Lucca Comics and games, which as usual will be held in Lucca. Pisa was in talks to steal the con, but Lucca made a very convincing argument that the name sounded better in their city. Yes, I'm totally making this up. But the part I'm not making up? I'm going for free. And, did I mention women walking around dressed in skimpy cosplay costumes? The only things this place is missing to be heaven are fog banks of pot smoke and angel wings.

Obviously, I LOVE attending Lucca Comics and Games, and last year, I was able to live tweet from the con thanks to my Blackberry. Sadly, I killed my beloved smartphone, and while it was an accidental killing, I've been making do with my older Nokia as penance for my heinous crime. This means I have no app to tweet, or to blog, or to check in with anyone. So this next weekend's silence is not depression. I'm just going to a con to eat heavily and paw through manga and anime DVDs. And hentai porn. But you coulda guessed that last one.

Becka, ever a source of good promotional ideas, has suggested that for Halloween I should try to promote some of my more accessible stories for some holiday themed reading. So I thought, why not point y'all to a couple stories with a playful theme on "Things that go bump in the night"? For zombie fans, I'd like to direct your attention to Zombie Punter and the sequel, Confessions of a Zombie Lover. Both Zombie Era novellas are fast reads, and both have been given good reviews. So if you want an apocalypse with a slightly…saltier flavor, this should prove entertaining.

For vampire fans, I've got a number of stories to offer you, some of them even free. And while you're paying for bags of candy to give out, a little free reading for the holiday might not suck…if we weren't talking about vampire books.

I'd love to offer you some of my stories about Vicky the vampire, a long-running character in my Mystical World Wars series. Each of Vicky's episodes tends to be self-contained, so you don't need to worry about where you're at in the timeline. So whether you read A Phone Man Visits the Vampires, Job Interview With a Vampire, or my free story (which isn't supposed to still be free, but I'm lazy) Stark Raving Bonkers, you should find something in Vicky's world to keep you smiling. Or if you'd prefer a vampire to nibble a little deeper and tickle your funny bone more, there's always my free novel, My Gay Sparkly Vampire Romance: A Twilight Parody. This has now been reviewed by an almost equal number of Twilight fans and haters, and both sides agree, what I've done with this "fan-fiction" is a whole new vision of Meyer's world, told in the Bronx instead of Forks, and with a wickedly queer take on the relationship between Bella, her vampire paramour and her werecat rival.

Of course, I have longer works featuring Vicky the vampire such as Touched, Blood Relations, and Redemption Lost. But those could all take longer than a night to read unless you're a fast reader, and before you read Redemption Lost, you might want to try the first two books in the trilogy, The Lesser of Two Evils and Trail of Madness. (I've got glowing reviews on those too.)

Hard to believe, but despite all those titles I just dropped, that's not even half of what I've published. As sampler packs go, it's not bad. But I should go ahead and mention my one offering for folks in the YA market with Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies, and for people worried about whether the series will go on, I offer promises that I'm already working on Sandy Morrison and the Pixie Prohibition. In the new book, Sandy's new connection to fairy godmother Danie Dragontamer leads to her being recruited by the FBI. (Fairy Bureau of Instigation) But her first assignment through "impression" leads her to a clan of bootlegging pixies who are sworn enemies of FBI because the fairy godmothers have declared a prohibition on certain potent pixie potions. So…should be good.

I'm offering something darker and more disturbing for those of you in the IA crowd, what I'm calling the Immature Adult market, (I promise I'll explain that term in a future post, someday) with Peter the Wolf, my dark fantasy story about a former child porn star who is coming to terms with his past and with his cursed blood. It is not a book for sensitive readers and deals with subjects of abuse's side effects and molest. So, if you can consider all of the other titles listed above to be more accessible to one degree or another, consider this book "highly challenging." This is not my first controversial book, but it is the one that resulted in animosity toward me for what "I did" to a fictitious minor. So, I hope you'll consider that fair warning.

Shifting mental gears, if any of you were reading All Maid Up and thought I'd stopped writing it, I didn't. I just stopped posting update copy-pastas now that the story has a dedicated home. I've got a link in the sidebar listed among my links, but you could also use some RSS reader to keep up to date or bookmark the other site.

I've been doing episodes pretty fast, sometimes even turning out daily episodes. But there is obviously going to be some slow down during the holidays. I have to put away the writing to make time for what's important: food and cuddles. Anywho, I guess I'm about halfway through the series now, so those of you worried about this stretching out to infinity and beyond, don't. At most, All Maid Up will cover two years of Ginger's life in high school. While the serial won't end in a happily ever after, I hope the outcome leaves readers with a satisfying sense of closure.

Random Brain fart about All Maid Up 1: I would love to promote the soap to more folks as the "show" nears the spring season with two trials and with Ginger now "owning" one of her worst enemies, but I still don't really know who I'd promote it to. I'm tempted to say it might work for readers of Shimmer, since they're both trans serials. But while the story of a trans cheerleader's hectic life is a little fantastic at times, I can promise Ginger will never dress in tights or display super powers. It's not that kind of soap opera. So I don't want to suggest that All Maid Up is quite as cool as superheroes.

Random Brain fart about All Maid Up 2: Man, some of my WebLit friends are so going to bust my chops about Ginger owning someone. It's a theme in their work that makes my guts so jumpy I can't read their stuff. Their writing is good, but the topic is too triggery for me. Which is what Ginger is feeling about it too, and even if the bully had been a jerk to her for years, having the chance to turn the tables on him isn't sitting well with her.

Random Brain fart about All Maid Up 3: I wanted to promote on Twitter through the #TuesdaySerial tag, and when they read the first episode, they asked, "Hey, is this erotica? Because we don't work with erotica." And we sorted out that while there was some making out here and there, the story wasn't really erotica, even if certain scenes were erotic. I also said that eventually I plan for Ginger to "go all the way." Folks who read the spin the bottle episode tweeted to the #TuesdaySerial folks to agree that, yes, that episode was erotic. So, not wanting to be a drama queen (for once), I asked, "Is some sex okay, or should I walk on?" And they decided that if it was not all sex, all the time, then sure, a little sex now and again in a soap opera wouldn't be so bad.

Which would be GREAT for Ginger, if she could convince ANY of her romantic partners to take that first ride. Sadly, in Ginger's soap opera world, her noble pursuits of happiness and hawt sex often end in disasters and plot twists. Or bullies. Which are often both disasters and plot twists.

Also note my oh-so-subtle teen drinking lecture by way of allegory in this last season: "Kids, drinking heavily means you bleed out faster if you're stabbed at a drinking party. Drink responsibly to keep thicker blood…er, wait, don't drink at all, is what I meant to say. Fuck, I need a drink." *hic*

So, that's a writing update and what I hope was a polite amount of pleading and begging for sales. (Or, just readers for the free stories.) If I don't have the chance to say it later in the week in another post, have a good Halloween, and try not to eat so much candy corn that you hurl. (Yes, I'll be able to follow that advice…*haughty sniff*…because I only eat chocolate till I puke on Halloween. So there.)

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The numbers game is still a shell game…

So I read this blog post by Jami Gold that says a lot of what I've often ranted about with social media and the illusion of numbers. Today, I'd like to briefly illustrate that point in a way that I hope will be humorous and not inflammatory.

First, right now I have 923 followers. Note, these are not 923 buyers of books, or 923 diehard Zoe E. Whitten fans. In fact, some of these followers aren't even human. They're bots who I haven't blocked or who haven't been removed by Twitter yet. Some are porn bots. What? You think someone who writes sex scenes all the time doesn't occasionally need inspiration for new positions? But even if some of those bots are useful, but they still won't RT my stuff or buy a book. Cause bots don't read much.

So, eliminating bots from my numbers, let's say I have 850 real live human beings. They all live in different time zones from me, and not all of them are in the US. When I post a link, it would be awesome to think that all 850 human beings are live right then and there, and they all go, "Oh my God, it is a new important link from the most wonderful person I know, Zoe E. Whitten! I must read this link, and then share it with the world, and then read it again, and then write a long glowing review!"

That's what I'd like to happen. But it's more likely that of those 850 followers, only four were looking at the screen when I tweeted. Of those four, three were already committed to their next fart joke and can't stop in the middle of their thought streams to RT my link.

You ask, "Well where were the other followers?" I'm SO glad you asked. I made a list:

357 were asleep in bed

20 were asleep at their desk

1 was asleep on his wife, much to the wife's chagrin

120 were making a sammich

5 were men turning around to tell their women to make them a sammich

3 have never recovered from their injuries

1 now answers to Sally

6 were having, like, real life drama while watching reality TV

105 were having sex

23 were wishing it wasn't a solo act

10 wished they'd stop thinking about their grandmother while doing it

59 were taking a poop

21 were taking a pee

13 were praying to the porcelain god

1 was servicing a senator in a bathroom

300 were engaged in SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAA!

So, these number scientifically show how just because I have a lot of followers, it does not lead to RTs, to sales, or to any kind of play with young women with loose morals. In fact, I haven't even gotten my first groupie email offering free sex, and I've been on Twitter a long, long time. Like almost two and a half years now. So yeah, really long.

And, I don't mind that I have 850 live human followers and a hundred or so bots. I don't mind that they aren't all dedicated fans. I don't mind that they don't RT book links. They're away when I tweet, and Twitter happens fast, like a rushing stream. When I scroll back to check in on other conversations, there's a limit to haw far back I go. I'm sure other people do this too, so there's very good odds that fully two-thirds of my followers will never see the tweet I really want them to see.

According to Klout, I'm highly influential, with a score of 59 for now. But this doesn't really equal any useful benchmark. A higher or lower score doesn't result in better book sales, or in more RTs for my book links. It just means people are likely to engage me in conversation on Twitter. Which would make sense, because that's what I use it for. For gabbing.

I had great numbers on most every social network I was on, but having good numbers and a good networking score didn't mean I made money. And I'm not saying it should have. I'm agreeing with Jami that there's a trap publishers are getting themselves into that thinking social media numbers will relate to more useful numbers like sales figures.

Publishers, I'm telling you, don't think because you have 10,000 friends on Facebook that you have 10,000 buyers. And readers, don't think adding a writer to your friends list alone is doing them any favors. If you really like a writer, point them out to your friends. Or point out links to their writing samples. There's a part of the post I want to quote (Bolding is my edit):

Word of mouth is what sells books. Not direct selling.

And authors cannot do their own word of mouth. So the numbers of the author don't matter as much as the numbers of those who spread the word for them.

Hmmm…you know, what? I think some other writer said that too. Who? Oh right, me. And at every turn that I've brought up this inescapable maxim, I've been called entitled. For pointing out the obvious, that writers cannot survive without word of mouth promotions. Publishers have relied on shotgun marketing to promote only certain titles while leaving the work for their "lesser" titles up to the authors. Who, by the way, usually aren't qualified to sell their own books and are thus doomed to fail.

And readers don't help. Readers feel that the authors should do all the work of writing the story, all the work editing and submitting, all the work of building every single reader relationship as a one-to-on interaction, all the work of promoting their reviews, all the work of promoting their guest posts and podcast appearances. Readers should just be able to show up and get the latest book. So what if the writers are starving? Readers don't owe writers anything. After all, it's not like you're getting anything by reading fiction, is there? We don't strive to educate or challenge you. We're just wasting time that you could have spent doing something else. Like pooping. Or masturbating.

I've heard readers say, "I only comment on what really moves me." Which is why so many published, paid writers fail to sell even 10% of their first print runs. Because so few of their readers feel moved to help. Writing is one of the few professions where making slave wages is still seen as romantic. That this attitude persists is because readers refuse to acknowledge their part in our poor welfare. Authors NEED more than just a few hundred friends on Twitter to guarantee success. They need more than just friends numbers from the latest hot social site. They need fans who are willing to help spread the word.

If I went to a publisher with a book that had 5,000 readers, that's a different set of numbers. 5,000 people pay me to buy a story, and those are numbers that a publisher should want to know about. But having 5K in followers does not mean I sold 5K in books. I know it doesn't, and shouldn't, but I worry that some publishers may be falling into the trap of thinking that followers are fans. And nothing could be further from the truth.

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On blogs as a medium, platform, and artform…

Amanda Palmer has this great rambling post about the blog being seen as a lower-class art form because anyone can do it. She's talking in part of it about the great freedom and simplicity that blogging offers, allowing anyone to deliver anything they want to a worldwide audience. A musician can start a blog and release music samples globally. An artist can start a photo blog to capture all their latest creative efforts, whether sculpture or painting, or the photograph itself. And yes, writers of all types can bring you pieces of their mind one post or one book at a time. Not every writer sells fiction either, and some blog writers are not artists at all, but instead are citizen journalists attempting to cover the holes they see in mainstream news.

All of this is true and it's what makes blogging so awesome. And what I'm doing is like a fusion blog where I offer fiction and news and reviews, but I also add in a lot of ranty personal journal entries. And yet, there are downsides to this level of vulnerability.

I find this is true for me as a reader of blogs as much as it is for me being a writer of several blogs. Blogs bring the possibility of learning that an artist I love and listen to is virulently anti-trans. (Bill Corrigan, FTW.) Or I learn a writer I thought I respected has personal views so repulsive, it ruins my perception of them. I might read someone's blog post and get so upset that I will never read that person's books, even if I may have been following their blog for months.

What I'm saying is, blogging isn't meant to be a precise and perfect medium. It's meant to bring issues to the attention of readers as reports come in, and sometimes, those initial reports are way off, or are off-putting. I hate bringing up 9/11, but do you remember how the mainstream media first reported 30,000 people dead? The numbers lowered fast. Not low enough to take away the shock or the pain, but the people paid to have all the facts fudged their numbers ten-fold. Those same people have said that blogging as a news source leads to an unfair, unbalanced view, and that we should still rely on the media because they help put these tough issues in a proper perspective that a blogging journalist might not. Riiiight. Because CNN and Fox are so balanced and accurate in all their reports too. And, at this point a lot of blogging journalists are also working as reporters for traditional media. So it's not like the field is full of amateurs. And it's not like the amateurs are doing such a bad job either. Look at how many big stories in the past years broke first on blogs?

Blogging is an indie-vidual experience, and each blogger brings to you what they consider important. After a while here on my blog, you should know what to expect. I'm either going to talk about something I'm reading, playing, watching, or writing. When I read the news and report it back to you, I also relay my opinion. In this way, I'm an amateur journalist. But I also offer you the link to the original article, so you can see for yourself the story I'm reacting to. Maybe later an update will come out, and the facts of the original post are not so accurate. In which case, it's likely that I'll post an update. Because even if I like to be an amateur bullshitter and tell a lot of tall tales, when I'm reporting a story to you about someone else's civil rights fight, I'd rather leave the bullshit behind and just present what I know, and what I feel.

A lot of people don't like how blunt I've become recently. A lot of people would prefer that I go back to telling more jokes and not talking so much about prejudice and privilege. But as a victim of one who lacks the other, I need this outlet to say "I exist! This is how I feel about this messed up world." And some people read my stuff here and decide they never want to read my books because they don't like the tone of my journal.

I get the same problem when a guy like Scott Adams puts his foot in his mouth when blogging his views on women. (He pulled the blog, but I certainly won't forget what he really thinks.) And I will never regain my respect for these people after learning how little they think of others. I will never regain respect for the other Zoe. The people who now hate my guts will never again respect me either. Those bridges done already been burned.

So there is a huge risk in being this vulnerable. When I see a writer blogging, I inwardly cringe, because I wonder how many posts I'll get in before I find something that sends me running away. I can read a musician's blog and then listen to their album as two separate things. But I find it less easy to do this for a writer who is also a blogger. Amanda talked about musicians who get tired of music while on tour, and I think this may be a similar problem where I have to blog about writing, so I'll be damned if I want to read another writer blog about writing. And if this is how I am, I'm pretty sure other readers AND writers feel the same way approaching my blog.

So yes, blogging is an ugly and unpolished communication format that has its share of flaws. Even when I feel like I'm doing what I wanted to accomplish here, it doesn't mean my readers see things the same way. They may feel I'm attacking them instead of talking to the problems. They may not even see a problem, or they may feel I'm exaggerating. And, I don't really know, because it's really rare for anyone to comment, "By golly gum, this post really made me think, and thanks, chum." I mean, aside from spam-bots. Because really, who else besides bots says "By golly gum" and "chum"?

Drifting, and that is kind of my point. Blogging doesn't have to stay in one topic all the time. Even a dedicated blog like Daily Kos still has open post threads meant to talk about other stuff. I'm a fiction writer, but on my blog you might come here on any given day and find a news article, or a book review, or a ramble about my health, or a rant about "you people." You don't tune me in because you want to hear a particular topic being stressed, although you might do that on a blog with a specific focus. You come here because you want a piece of my mind. What I offer from day to day may not be to your liking. The questions that you as a reader should make are, do you want to weather the posts you don't like to make it to the posts you do like? And, should you decide that you don't want to waste time here, is it because I say mean things, or because sometimes some of those mean things make you feel uncomfortable?

I get a lot of heat for not finding nice, non-divisive ways to phrase my thoughts. But I haven't seen any success from people who are forced to use professional decorum. For instance, scientists of many fields have presented their findings with the most rational language possible, and have still been accused of manipulating the data, or of playing politics. (That's political pundits projecting…preposterously.) They have all faced death threats for saying the truth in nice, polite terms.

I, am no scientist. I mean, I could be, if I could ever get my ass back to college to keep studying math and astronomy and geology and what not. The topics are endlessly fascinating to me, and I've often lost whole nights to research when I'd meant to be writing. But what I'm saying is, I'm a punk writer who was formerly a punk teen. It is not in me to be nice to people who do not respect me. It is not even in me to fake niceness to potential customers. So punk, but perhaps not so profitable.

There aren't many punk writers, despite there being cyberpunk, steampunk, and splatterpunk. There ARE punks in those 'punk fields, but not every 'punk writer is really a punk. But I'm really a punky punk long before you think of me as a punk writer, even if I don't write in any of the traditional 'punk fields. Clear as mud yet? Good, let's move on.

But the thing is, some people think that even if I am a punk writer, and that my blog is also a part of my artistic platform as a punk, I shouldn't really be a punk. I should be nice in every post and find some way to bridge the gap of understanding. It's a bit like asking NWA if they could act less like rappers during public appearances on TV so white folks can sell more of the records to…oh wait, people DID ask that, didn't they?

I can't help that I'm a punk. I wouldn't want to change, and I don't mind being on the fringes of every group. Sure, I'd love to be read by more people, but I can't carve a path as an anti-mainstream artist and then complain that the mainstream won't even touch me. As I've been joking to friends on Twitter, it's not much of a marketing platform to say "I write in protest of everything you idolize." But in a nutshell, that's what I am and it's what I do.

I don't long to be mainstream. Okay, that's a lie. I wish I could write at least one commercially viable book that would get me enough funds to live off of for a few years. But my muse hasn't come up with anything even remotely close to the term commercially viable, and I don't think she ever will. I don't like to covet what I can't have, and I'm not one to move goal posts and complain that the mainstream is too narrow. It's closer to the truth that I'm not for everyone.

So my blog isn't really trying to court every reader. Hell, most of the time, I'm not even sure who it is I want to be reading my stuff. And blogging is like the more immediate way to assess me without having to read my other stuff. So if you don't like me, you don't have to spend money on my books. I'm cool with this, with people deciding whether to read me without investing funds. Like I said, I'm doing this too.

At the same time, I cut slack for some writers. Like Stephen King? I hate reading most of his opinions these days. But I'd still read a new book from him. Same thing for Anne Rice. Well, except I'm not reading her baby Jebus books. She can lub her some Jebus without me paying for it, thank you very much. But I have gotten Angel Time, and one day, I may even read it. Really.

What I'm getting around to saying is, maybe sometimes, we need to learn to separate blogging from other facets of an artist's life. And I say "we" because this is probably something that I should force myself to do too. Because there's a number of people who've recently revealed sides of them that I don't want to know, and yet, I do know those people are good writers. By blocking them out now, I might miss something brilliant that they do later. And what about writers who I previously admired, but who have taken time to directly insult me online? (This is a surprisingly long list of people, actually. It almost makes me feel like a celebrity to have been digitally spit on by this many folks.) How do I follow someone who raises my hackles, even if I may want to read their book?

I can't not be offended after being triggered. I can't undo the damage and walk on. I don't see how most people can, so I'm not saying it's easy. So after being triggered by a writer's blog, I have a hard time going back. If I don't, how do I know what they've released a new book? Twitter isn't reliable for these kinds of announcements, and the blog is ideal for finding out when to order the new stuff. So how do I follow someone whose posts can become like an emotional toxin for me without warning, when all I want to know is when the next book is out?

And, I have the same problem here with my blogs. Some of you probably just want to know when the books are out, and you don't want to know I'm a crazy cat lady in need of at least two cats to feel complete. Or that the stray fur has slipped off my ratty sweatshirt. Which is why I'm trying out this filtered and unfiltered approach. And yes, there is no duplicate of this long ass ramble on the other blog. Welcome to unfiltered country. Mmmmmm, now that's flavor.

It's an experimental medium, and I never said I was doing this right. I'm probably one of the few long-time indie-authors who doesn't have a book on how to self-publish and make it big promoting yourself. But that's because my goals were never about being a big-time writer. I don't write the right kind of stories to pull in those six-figure paychecks. I try, really, but by page fifty my handsome main is chugging cock like a Cuban corona. Either that or I kill a dog or molest a fictional kid. And if it's a female protagonist, she's probably bi or trans, possibly both. But to date, only one of my characters has sparkled…two…okay, wait, three…no, four…

NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!

It's never, ever been my low self-esteem talking when I say I'm not working toward the mainstream. There's fifty thousand writers who can all write mainstream. Some of them even with a marginal degree of skill. I am a fairly skilled writer in my own right, and I am prolific as a motherfucker, but one thing I can never call myself is mainstream. This is a realistic assessment of my art and my perception of where my art fits into traditional markets. It doesn't fit, which is why I'm not exactly working my ass off to be on every social site and forum. I can't be everything to everyone, even if I wanted to. That I don't makes it even trickier.

But this is my only platform now, aside from Twitter. This is my only chance to get readers to sit down, and sadly, as a punk, half the time I want to write a post entitled, "Why I hate you, and why you should be glad I don't have access to The Button." (The button in question being the History Eraser, a big red, jolly, candy-like button.)

I know, I should be sweet and tell you how I want us to be bestest buds. Except, I don't. I'm sorry, but I cannot possibly be bestest buddies with every single one of my readers. I have trouble just keeping up with my relatives, and I'm talking about the ones I love and WANT to talk to. So if you wanted to send me an email, great. I'm sure I'll send back a reply, but I'm not thinking of you as a friend, just as a fan. If that's too impersonal for you, sorry. But hey, if you want someone honest who is passionate about her beliefs and thick-headed, I may be the right thick-skulled punky chica writer for you.

I just want you to read my stuff and react. That doesn't mean you have to buy anything, or agree to anything. If you're reading an article, I probably want you to act on the article. That is, unless I say I'm just bringing it to your attention and don't expect a reaction. But in those cases, I generally try to say that upfront to avoid confusion. But if I'm working my butt off as an artist and as a journalist, part of why I do it is because I want to make a reaction. It may not always be a good reaction, and often the reaction I get is not the one I was aiming for. As I've said, experiments fail.

Still, I like to experiment, even if it ends in a lot of failures. I try to invite y'all along for the full ride, but some folks don't want that. Some folks just want the stories, and having to deal with me ruins everything else I do. I can't see stopping this outlet for my feelings, so the best solution for me is to have two blogs; one where I'm really me all the time, and the other where I hold back a little so as not to push away people who might have read one or two of my books. It's not a perfect solution, but it is an attempt at a compromise. Whether that compromise means anything to readers will take a while to determine. But the experiment goes on…

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