Richard McGowan's Blog: Smashed-Rat-On-Press - Posts Tagged "pimple"

In our last paranoid episode, long-time readers may recall the little SROPites freaked out and smashed our Catalog to smithereens with a hammer, left the shards around to get under peoples' feet, and dove under the roots of a pear tree for the winter.

Now that "spring" is in the air quotes of our fingers if not in the air some places, we've decided to stick our nose back out and sniff the scent of the city. Hmm. It's still a little polluted. But even so, we're feeling slightly less paranoid than we were a few months ago...

A few days ago, perhaps fewer than several, I wondered aloud whether there might be a retailer out there that meets the rigid SROP criteria for excellence, privacy, and non-interference. I was looking for some retailer that upholds the Star Trek prime directive, I suppose. LOL. As predicted, none appeared. Smashwords sent a nice, discouraging and basically unhelpful reply. (And, by the way, after reading their Terms of Service I concluded that like everyone else, they are extremely paranoid about what kinds of erotic fiction they will handle. Just in case you were looking for somewhere the thought police won't find you... that ain't it.)

I learned that DeviantArt might actually work for SROP purposes with their Premium Content facility; except that their Terms of Service exclude certain things that for some reason seem to abound in SROP titles, and I couldn't in good conscience post some books there because they contain, you know, people experiencing "certain things" with the lights on while cameras roll and stuff like that.

Other places, meh. Some charge money to put up catalogs of stuff for the convenience they offer in having shopping cart software. And everyone and their pet monkey wants to interfere in the content of the product. They all have some conformist agenda. They dislike the rogue, the renegade, and apparently the Rodentia.

In the end, it was our friend and commentator PJ who suggested what about Paypal? So that's what we're trying. This experiment may turn out somewhat like a Peabody and Sherman episode, but we'll give it a shot anyway.

We have restored the SROP Catalog to its former glory, with all links intact for paperback versions of everything. But nobody buys paper (even if it's an awesome SROP paperback designed for pleasurable reading without spine bending) when they could make do with electrons... So we have also instituted a SROP in-house fulfillment service. What!? How does that work? Well, after perusing the SROP Catalog you go to the e-book ordering page on the SROP site and use one of our handy Paypal buttons to order e-books. This completely cuts out the middle-people and leaves us in control of the entire content and format. If an order comes in, then we have our delivery rodents scurry about and send each book individually. This is not your standard instant delivery service this is real service in which a sentient creature groks your desire and makes it happen by laying hands upon electrons and e-mailing or uploading, treating each customer with white gloves and a cheery smile. And the books are still cheap—if you live in the USA, you've tipped waiters more for giving worse service, I'm sure.

If you're still looking for free, you could try our Speakeasy service.


And that's how we spent our Saturday Afternoon.

Once in a while, people don't ask where I come up with character names. I just feel like writing about them. I guess people assume these names just pop into my head. Or maybe they already know I get them from inter-dimensional books of baby names. You know, like, what to name your baby this year so it'll be named just like all the other babies born that year.

I ran across this article about literary baby names on a nice blog that I follow. (Why? Well. I follow it because it talks a lot about banned books, and I'm a total squee-spewing geek about banned books. I'm hoping someday to really make the grade; then I'll unfold my morning copy of the Star City Gazette to read that five thousand copies of A Modest Collection of Slightly Shocking Fairy Tales have been burned in a giant bonfire that accidentally lit the whole downtown on fire, and everyone present was hospitalized for inhalation of fire-and-brimstone fumes, but nobody was seriously injured, haha.)

The cited article talks about popular names from fiction. Like "Game of Thrones" has been a huge thing recently, apparently. But, as always, some people don't actually know what they're doing when they name their kids, as some of us will know, who pay attention to the difference between names and titles.) Everyone has met someone named Galadriel or Lothlorien by now, right? Or knows a hound dog named Smaug? Isn't your baby cousin's name Frodo? Or was he Pugsley? Someone I know in another life once worked with a woman named T'Pau (that's this woman from the original Star Trek show, in case anyone is too young to remember her on their own.) Apparently now it's all about Games of something or other, be it Thrones or Hunger.

If I ever write another book, once Ms Hematode hands back the reins of creation, I'm going to include some outrageous names, just to get in on the groove. Unless she beats me to it... So, if you're anxious to have some off-spring, you should buy one of my books and get in on the ground floor with baby-naming after great characters from profound literature.

Let's all slow down and work on our quality instead of releasing so darn many novels in rapid fire... (This came to my attention via The Digital Reader, by the way, so thanks.)

It seems to me that what this blogger calls the culture of write-fast, publish-much is one more part of the infectious modern notion that tells us "success" always has to be measured by quantity, whether that be sales volume or income wads, and speed.

The modern methodology, for everything "informational" from software to journalism seems to be:

0. Slap something together.
1. Sling your draft at a bunch of customers.
2. See if they report any big problems.
3. If not, then you're done, so go to Step 0.
4. If someone reported problems, then rinse a little and go to Step 1.
5. Go to Step 0.

I don't necessarily agree that every draft of every item needs to be churned through more hoops just for the churning. But time to mellow is good. A lot of writers, especially the new and the green and the newly green indie, could easily spend quite a bit more time grooming and fawning over their creations before sending those babies out onto the streets... Er, I mean, into the catalog pages...