Holly Lisle's Blog, page 67

EVERYONE gets my Patreon rewards this month… with NO sign-up

I’m new to Patreon.

I probably made an error setting up my rewards for the day after Patreon said it collected pledges, which is on the first of each month.

It’s now the fourth of the month, and as far as I can tell, Patreon has not collected a single pledge from a single one of my patrons, and all the rewards I set up to become available on the 2nd were still locked.

WERE. They’re not locked anymore.

Because Patreon can only work on a “good faith” concept, and good faith has to run both ways.

You ask people to fund you, they do so in the good faith that you’ll do the work you say you’re going to do, and you reward them along the way for sticking with you and helping you fund your art, or music, or in my case, new fiction.

So this month, even though I’m not entirely certain the system is working correctly, and even though I’ve not yet heard back from Patreon on my request for information, I’m holding up my end of the good faith agreement with my patrons.

I’ve released the October downloadable / watchable rewards to everyone. These are segments of the in-progress revision of Longview #4: The Vipers’ Nest.

And when I say everyone, I don’t mean just patrons. I mean you, too.

You can get the Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 deliverables here. If you’re not a patron, you won’t get your name in the Longview 4 Acknowledgements, or get the extra things that patrons get.

But you can see a small slice of what I’ve been doing, and actually watch over my shoulder as I write one complete scene.

Recommending an interview with Camille Paglia about Hugh Hefner

Yes, the sun is now the moon, cows are spherical, and ice cream is a health food.

I am recommending as relevant, interesting reading for both men and women (but especially women), an interview with a feminist.

In the 1970 and VERY early eighties, I was a feminist. This was when feminism was supporting equal pay for equal work, which I thought was important.

At the point where feminists started screaming “All men are rapists“* (current article, not another link to either an Andrea Dworkin quote or to a statement that Andrea Dworkin denied saying it,) and claiming that women who murder their own children are “victims,” my response was, “You’re a bunch of fuck-headed morons. I’m outta here.”

 

Anyway, I found myself agreeing with a great deal that Paglia said. Not everything. But a lot.

She hasn’t (even remotely) convinced me to consider myself a feminist again. But she did give me some hope that somewhere out there, women who call themselves feminists have not all lost their minds.

LITTLE SIDE NOTE: Classing men as de facto rapists is the same as saying that someone who copies a movie onto a disk is a pirate. Pirates have ships and guns and kill people, and rapists use force without consent and rape people.

 

Cat Superpower #37… Invisibility

Seriously…

In this rare and exciting display of stunning cat stealth and coolness, Sheldon turns himself invisible.

Do you have a pet with superpowers?

Snapshot from the Fiction Frontlines

It is in fact possible for the explosion of your revision to be a GOOD thing.

My patrons hit Patreon Goal #1: $500/month. Rewards are coming!

I spent the morning writing fiction and putting together the rewards for my patrons.

And I’ve done a post on the Patreon site for everyone.

Today was my first day back to work after starting to prep for Hurricane Irma, and I came back to a lot of emails with questions about Patreon, and what I’m doing, so I’m going to answer them here.

“I would love to sign up but I’m not sure what the sign up page is doing? Is it linking me to a list or a payment plan (and if I use the email method … what does “password” mean? My password to your site or password to my email?) And how do you get payments?”

Patreon is not my site. It’s a separate site for people who create, and who are working to build incomes from their creation that allow them to pay bills, buy food, and make creation their full-time jobs.

Patreon recalls the medieval system in which the rich were patrons for artists (think Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo), who paid them to create, and then got to show off their creations.

Only instead of having one patron who basically owns you and everything you do (in modern terms, think “publisher”), you have folks who pay a dollar a month, or two dollars a month, or five dollars a month, (or more) and get an insider’s look at what you create, and how you create it… and get to let you know what they love and want to see more of, and who still get to show off the work that you create, and say, “I made that possible.”

Patreon has different ways of charging. I chose monthly payments rather than per-creation payments, because novels take a long time to write (in the “paying bills and putting food on the table” scale of time, and set a monthly amount of money per month against the number of bills and the amount of food my work in that amount of time could cover.

And Patreon will bill patrons’ PayPal accounts or credit cards on the first of each month, take a small percentage over the payment processing fees from PayPal and Stripe, and send what’s left to my bank account.

I would love to support you. However, my cash flow is pretty rigid, so if you could do a monthly option, it would be easier for me to plan to give you $10-$20 a month.

Pledges are monthly.

I don’t have anything set that high, because what I’m doing for rewards is… er … letting people watch me work.

Screenshot of Month One Level 3 reward, 56-minute video of me writing a new first-draft scene for The Vipers’ Nest

As rewards go, that’s pretty weird. So I figured a buck a month would let folks see a small piece of in-progress fiction, and two bucks a month would let them see a bigger chunk of in-progress fiction, and $5 a month would let them look over my shoulder via screen-captured video as I write first draft.

There have been several folks who have pledged more (and in two cases, significantly more) than my suggested pledges.

But I don’t want this to be a hardship for anyone, and I still want you to get cool stuff that I can create WHILE I’m making fiction, rather than things I would have to create separately.

When you move, you should come to….

I got a lot of really cool invitations.

However, I have an adult kid in North Carolina, and an adult kid in Georgia, and I’d like to be somewhere in between the two so I get to see them from time to time. And I want to be well and gone from the ocean.

So I’m looking at places in western North Carolina, western South Carolina, northwest Georgia, or western Virginia. I’m an Ohio girl by birth, and I have no objection to the cold, to snow, to hills, or to raking leaves. I love to be outdoors, but Florida only has “outdoors” as I understand it for about a week in January.

I have not been outside voluntarily in seven years, because I don’t do well in heat.

So anyway.

I’m now writing 20 hours of fiction a month (though I ran over that limit by about an hour today, because I had to make the video reward, and I had to get to the point in the revision where I needed the new scene before I could write that).

The project I’m finishing is Longview #4: The Vipers’ Nest, and the rewards folks will get October 2nd will all be from that story.

Thank you again for making this possible for me.

Hurricane through a pinhole: the post-Irma post

The pictures that follow were taking during calmer periods in the storm, through one of the tiny holes in the bathroom shutter. Smallest window, least danger from opening it.

On some of the pictures I took, you can see the curve of the holes where I didn’t have the lens lined up quite right.

We lost trees, lost power three times (but it came back up each time, so we were really, really lucky compared to most of the folks in the area), and we had the slashing rain and screaming wind that come from high sustained winds and higher gusts.

The shutters and our homemade hardware held. We had no way to see what the damage outside was, though. You don’t want to put your eye up to the hole and chance debris being blown through at that moment.

I figured out that the lens of my cellphone camera would fit against the hole in the bathroom shutter, though, and I could look at the screen and see what was out there, whether trees or light posts or power lines were down. And while I was looking in between bands, I took a few pictures.

The whole process was frightening and exhausting. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in two weeks.

Sheldon was a trooper. He kept going to the windowsills trying to see what was going on outside, but most of the time, he sat on laps and snuggled and stayed with us.

All three of us were glad for his company.

We came out the other side of this with everything intact but our nerves, took the shutters down yesterday, have sunlight in the house again for the first time in about a week and a half (for most rooms).

And Monday, I’ll be back to work.

Thank you to every person who offered comfort during this. We didn’t have Internet until Tuesday, and that was spotty. My daughter in Georgia, where the infrastructure hasn’t been hardened against hurricanes, was without power for a couple of days, and just got her internet back steadily yesterday.

And if you missed the notice, and related to the hurricane, and my realization that I’m going to be 57 on the October 8th, and I don’t want to face another thirty years (or even one more year) watching hurricane maps and filling empty soda bottles with tap water and wrangling heavy shutters over windows and wondering if this is going to be the time we lose everything (again)…

I put together a Patreon to fund the writing of my fiction, with the plan being to have my fiction create a fund for moving us to a hurricane-less place.

Patreon is a site that allows any creator’s fans to pay small monthly amounts to fund the creation of work, in exchange for monthly rewards from the creator. The site handles the money and the delivery of rewards, lets patrons know about new posts and reward delivery, and gives folks like me a little security in knowing there’ll be some money each month to cover bills while we create.

If you’ll take a look at the page, consider becoming a member, or let someone else know about the page, I would really appreciate it.

Last Post Before Hurricane Irma Hits Us

Hurricane Irma, or what I’ve decided to think of as the Okefenokee Wildlife Relocation Plan, now looks like it will start raining poisonous snakes and prehistoric reptiles on the South Florida burbs around eightish tomorrow morning.

A bit early for that sort of thing, and the better class of hurricane never calls on a Sunday. Irma is clearly no lady.

Along with the rain of alligators and any such tornadoes as might amuse the storm to cast our way, we’re also still looking at a Category 4 hurricane with very high sustained winds for about four to six hours.

I briefly fell into the error of looking at the tracks, seeing them go west, and thinking, “It looks like it’s going to miss us.”

9-9-17-irma-composite-computer-models

Then I remembered that the dot on the track marks the center of the storm eye.

I looked at the radar image, mentally superimposed it over the dot on the track, did a little double take, and muttered, “Oh!”

9-9-17-irma-with-hurricane-overlay

On its current track, the eye won’t go directly over us.

But the Gulf of Mexico will be feeding it nice warm water, and the eye will have a chance to get a bit bigger and stronger. So we’ll get lots of really big fun with everything else.

We’re in now. Not going anywhere today. Folks who haven’t been working on this all week are now in full last-minute-panic mode, and we want to stay out of that.

And a word for the folks all ready to get offended and judge-y about my smart-ass tone when referring to a storm that has already killed people and will kill more.

We are going to be in this thing with hurricane shutters held together by home-made hardware engineered by:

A woman who once knit a cat, and could knit a house out of wire if required to — but who can’t swear it would withstand a hurricane
A man who used to rebuild aircraft engines for the Air Force, and who knows the importance of good long pigtails and lots of twists per inch, but who has no experience with working on the part of the plane that has to withstand 130-140 mph winds, or with a plane that is actually a non-aerodynamic condo with non-aerodynamic shutters
And BUILT with shit we bought at Lowes.

So here’s the rule. If you’re on the way to the gallows, you’re allowed to crack wise. And you get extra points for style if you can make the audience laugh.

On that note, I’m outta here. Packing up and storing the computer now.

And I hope I’ll be back to write more posts once Irma has done her worst.

Ave Irma, morituri te salutant.

I’ve created a Patreon Page

At the request of a number of my fiction reader, I’ve put this together: https://www.patreon.com/hollylisle

I’ve explained the whys and hows there. I’m hopeful about this being my path to getting back to full-time fiction writing (4 hours / day).

If you take a look, thank you very much. If you let someone else know about this, double thanks. If you decide to fund me, HUGE thanks. And a cookie. ‘Cause… Damn.

 

Hurricane Irma: Most Recent Update

SEPT. 8, 12:01 AM: Holly Lisle

For readers of HollyLisle.com, writers at HollysWritingClasses.com (HWC Writers), and folks using the HELP DESK…

While all writing classes will remain open, I will not be available to answer questions, reply to comments, or fix problems you may have on any of the sites.

My family and I live in Broward County, South Florida. We’re directly in the path of Hurricane Irma. We’re expecting to:

Lose power
Lose water
Lose phone
Lose cell service

 

…for an indefinite amount of time. The hurricane is currently on track to go over us or near us at a Category 4.

We’re in a good building, we have shutters, and we’re hunkered down to deal with this as best we can, but please realize that with Wilma, there were folks without power for a month, and this is a bigger storm than Wilma was.

So I might be gone for a while, and unable to get any word to anyone. It can’t be helped. We’re here for the duration with no alternatives, no matter how ugly this gets.

Please keep us in your thoughts, and please be patient. If you have problems with classes, my daughter Rebecca will attempt to cover everything but…

She cannot do refunds because she does not have access to my account
She is in south Georgia, and may get hit by Irma too.

 

That’s the entire help desk staff. Her. Me.

We’ll be back as soon as we’re able.

Holly Lisle

The cursor on the image is where we are.

Hurricane Update 2

Ragged “what’s going on right now” update.

Our place was repainted this year,
and came with hurricane shutters, BUT…
the people who lived here before us tiled the balcony,
and either threw away the hurricane shutter hardware or
took it with them when they left.
We live on the second floor.

 

These five facts are essential to everything that follows.

First, the company that repainted coated all the hurricane bolts in paint to make them look pretty.

To fix all the goddamn pretty requires the following:

And me, and elbow grease, in order to change the bolt on the right into the bolt on the left.

Last year, Matt ordered bolts from Amazon (couldn’t get them around here). But the company that made the shutters went out of business years ago, and the proprietary hardware for these shutters has not been available for some years.

We are missing handles and lockdowns for the final panels in each window. You cannot complete shutter installation without them.

We got this far on the first window, and Matt brought in the final panel for that window. “There are no handles that will fit. Any ideas?”

I looked at the panel and told Matt, I looked at the panel and told Matt, “Yeah. Find me some wire.”

He said, “The handle is going to have to support the entire weight of the panel while it and I are hanging out the window. It has to be rigid so I can use it to move the panel around, because with the last panel, the handle is the only thing I can touch to get the damn thing in place.”

Remember, we’re on the second floor. Dropping one of these panels is a non-option. They bend, we’re screwed. Falling out the window because of being unbalanced by a floppy, heavy panel is a non-option.

I thought it through a little further, considered his engineering specs, and said, “I can still do this. Just get the wire.”

He found a lot of hundred-pound multi-strand wire, and brought it home.

Here’s the back side of Handle One, which faces the hurricane and doesn’t have to be touched.

Here’s the front side.

I did two passes through each hole with a single straight strand of wire to serve as guides, and then built the handle with tight wrapping on the front, and loose wrapping twisted into a tail on the back. I did extra wrapping around the holes both front and back to act as ad hoc washers, and meet the ridigity spec. Took about half an hour to build this one.

It worked perfectly. No wobbles. Rigid as hell.

I got one more finished yesterday, because all the bolt scrubbing and hanging of other shutters came before. We have the two biggest windows done now. Five more to go. Each of those five still needs a handle.

They’ll all be done by the end of today.

Which leaves the balcony the assholes who lived here before tiled.

They had the bottom track for the balcony door removed for their tile, and the construction folks attached it to the wall. Where it does shit-all.

The floor is now too high for the shutters. So the door is gonna be hurricane duct-taped inside and out, and THAT is probably going to do as much as nothing.

So we’re probably going to lose at least some of our stuff. Current projections the last time I looked but this on top of us at a Cat 3. That’s pretty big, and pretty bad, but not what the folks on the islands are getting right now.

So. Break time is over, and I have to get back to work. Still a LOT of things to be done on the inside, including packing up the office. Because guess where the balcony is.

Right. Off the office.

So you aren’t going to hear from me for a while, though the moderators can contact me directly, and will be able to pass on stuff as we go through this.