shelved!

I shall be catalogued.
Apparently our library (the one where I work) collects the work of local authors, especially of on-campus authors. Well, I knew that. Usually professors would give us a copy of their work, and some books went to Special Collections as well as onto the open shelves.
But that's academic non-fiction, right? Considering that UVic's Creative Writing dep't is almost vehemently anti-genre, to the extent that they won't accept news or posters about sf/f writing workshops or classes, I've always figured that fiction, unless published by a university press, or possibly by a small and very worthy Canadian press (chapbooks, with woodcuts printed in ink made from salal berries) was not to be acquired without strong advocacy.
But no. When in the course of a discussion of ordering books from Lulu, I showed a co-worker my own book (previously mentioned in this blog) Threefold, she said that the library should order it.
It's self-published, I pointed out.
Doesn't matter, she said. We bought another staff member's self-published poetry.
Oh, I said, and ceased objecting.

So there's my little book, with its own entry in the online catalogue. How very odd.

for my own amusement

I took three of my 3-Day Novels, the ones set in the same alt-Europe, and muddled about on Lulu.com turning them into a pdf and giving them a cover. This was rather fun.
I ended up using the old-style cover templates, so avoided most of the 'Hey, why not pay us to do this?' shilling that Jim Macdonald speaks of over on Making Light.

Here's the message from Lulu:
Threefold(ID #8518393) is available only through a Direct Access web URL. To allow others to see and purchase this Book, send them this link:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/threefold/8518393

The book is at cost. The download is free. I will make no money if you get either, but will be mildly flattered and pleased.
If you got Fold a couple of years back, you already have 1/3 of this book. If I've emailed you Fold, Trading in Ghosts, or Culture Heroes, you have 1/3, 2/3, or all of this book. About all I can say in favour of getting the hard copy is that the cover is kind of cool and you can read it in the bath.

An update: the Lulu website is being stupid, and the Download (Free) link has vanished. So if you'd like the free pdf, you can still get it by going to my 'storefront', where under the button that says Add Print to Cart, there is a link saying Download for Free.
My Preview feature has also disappeared, and I haven't had any luck discovering where it might have wandered off to.

The cover pic is from a number of 'creepy doll pictures' that I copied from ebay 3 or 4 years ago, and unfortunately I never thought (at the time) of noting the auction number or seller's name. Whoever took this did a number of eerie and evocative auction photos, and I wish I could give him or her credit.

PLEASE NOTE! The texts are almost exactly as when I sent them off to the judges for the 3-Day Novel Contest. Editing was no more than adding a missing quote mark or restoring a paragraph break that had gone missing. I wanted to keep the flavour of desperation and fatigue that adds so much to the experience.

I promised book reviews

and my spam promises me a 'Massage from International Monetary Fund Unit London'. I guess the economic crisis is really calling for desperate measures.
Obligatory Monty Python reference: "And now, a massage from the Swedish Prime Minister."

Anyway, yes, I have been reading. Stacking up the recently-read, I saw that I had still managed to knock off a few books through the revision blitz, in part because I can't revise on my lunch hour or while waiting in lines. Add to that more intensive reading last week, and it makes a stack I'm at least not ashamed of.

The Cup of the World, by John Dickinson, Random House 2007. Phaedra, only child of the Warden of Trant, refuses all suitors, both for fear of dying in childbirth and for love of a man she has met only in dreams. When the king's son courts her, her dream-lover comes to take her away, and proves to be the mysterious and ill-famed lord of the province across the inland sea. Her elopement is the trigger for war, and she hardly knows who to trust, who will betray her, or who she must betray next.
Not an ordinary fantasy. The world setup is nothing unusual - a continent with an inland sea, ringed with provinces & city-states, unstable politics and a king holding on by the fingernails. But the rulers came in ships, and there were aboriginal people, so there's a conflict rarely examined. The hillmen (shades of Kipling perhaps?) have a mythology involving a Great Mother, quite different from the near-Christianity of Phaedra's people. Phaedra is not an entirely sympathetic character, somewhat cold and self-centred (also only 15 in the first chapter) but with an inner core of toughness and endurance. What really stands out is how much of the story is what happens at home while the battles and raids and treaties are happening elsewhere, and how much of the intrigue and discovery is Phaedra's story and coming of age.

Thirteen Orphans, by Jane Lindskold, Tor 2008. I really like the premise of this - that when the first emperor of China 'burned the books and buried the scholars', he unknowingly created another world, the Lands of Smoke and Sacrifice, an alt-China. I admit to some disappointment that the story takes place in our world, where the characters' ancestors (the Thirteen Orphans) fled after dynastic overthrow in the Lands. Within a couple-three generations of assimilation, the descendants mostly believe the the history of how the Twelve protected the Thirteenth (true heir of the overthrown dynasty) and how they were exiled to be delusions or bedtime stories. But the Lands are once again in turmoil, and about to spill over into our world again.
Perhaps it is my increasing age, but I was more interested in the older characters, Pearl and Des (whose full name is the wonderful Desperate Lee, because of a birth certificate misunderstanding) than in the younger Brenda, discovering some unexpected powers as she takes on the role of the zodiac Rat. I was also made a bit uncomfortable by Brenda's nemesis from the Lands, a slinky sexpot who seems like a Dragon Lady in training - I really hope she's humanised in the sequels.

I tell you, it's hard to read big thick books when coming off a revision high. My cutting goggles are still on, and I keep asking 'does this scene need to be here?'

Which brings me to The Apocalypse Door, by James D. Macdonald, Tor 2009. In which there may not even be a superfluous syllable, let alone scene. This moves at a dead run, with black humour gasped out here and there. Not what you'd read for lyrical description or introspective character development--the main character does have a crisis of faith, but he has to keep running while he has it. It's great fun, but I wouldn't describe it as a romp, because there's an edge of seriousness throughout, not so much because of the threatened apocalypse (which is almost a staple of urban fantasy: Buffy stalled it at least once a month) as the questions of faith and purpose that move the characters.
I also read The Confessions of Peter Crossman, ordered from Lulu.com, three stories of the Knight Templar special agent and his rival and occasional sidekick, Sister Mary Magdalene, leather-clad assassin and Bride of Christ. A nice warm-up for the Apocalypse Door.

Oh, and I wrangled around with pdf and jpgs and put together my three alt-Europe 3-day novellas to make a single volume on Lulu. Not public, but so I can have a convenient hard copy. After I've seen my first copy and discovered whether the cover or anything needs fixing, I can share the url for private ordering, which is $8 US for pbk, or free download.
I titled it Threefold, in case anyone wondered.

not quite Schadenfreude

more like snideness. Snidery? Snickering at the follies of others, because I am a mean and petty sort.

Backstory: ages ago, when I was a diligent critiquer on a popular writers' website, I happened to critique someone's query letter. This was a query that he had posted supposedly in order to have suggestions made for its improvement.
I say supposedly, because he then snotted two of the of the three people who offered critiques. One was me, and yes, I was one of the ones snotted. Even though I was fairly polite. I didn't even mention that his thread title said "Me begining one page synopsis". I did mention that his (presumably) supreme villain's name, Farkwar, might be subject to confusion with the not-so-supreme villain of Shrek, and that his novel title was the same as the title of a well-known film, but with the word 'the' inserted. Also that the hero being a Chosen One with a prophecy attached was more than a little overdone and might need something different to attract an agent.
He asked if I was accusing him of ZOMG plagerism (sic) and said "I spent alot of time thinking of different names, and came up with them off the top of my head." a statement which seems to contradict itself. And asked why I was attacking him for "putting in the part of a chosen one'.

So I apologised and withdrew. Yet we kept tripping over each other on the forum. He posted asking whether Simon & Schuster was a reputable publisher, and what were their submission guidelines. Because everyone else was too busy laughing to answer, I posted their guidelines (don't submit, get an agent), but was ignored while he answered (politely!) everyone who was asking him if this was a joke or what?
Later he was condescending to someone new who asked if Tor was legit, asking how they could possibly question the legitimacy of Tor? I bit my tongue, or my typing fingers, and left him to his little joys.
Then he took exception to my comment on another thread that the Left Behind books made me feel icky, and said it was offensive to him as a Christian. I apologised for being an Anglican and not a real Christian to whom the Left Behind series was as scripture.

At this point I gave in and started to collect his follies, by reading his posts. I discovered that he'd been bright enough to turn down the contract he was offered by PublishAmerica, and that after being spoken to by a series of Board Elders, he decided to cancel his contract with Leann Murphy of Desert Rose Literary Agency (one of the 20 Worst Agents).
I chuckled over him saying "I am a big fantasy fan myself, but the only ones I have read mostly are Tolkein, King, and Rowling. I haven't heard of many others, but I am seeking to be a fantasy/SF writer myself."
I refrained from critiquing the chapter of his novel that he put up for critique, because I'm not that much of a fool, even though I could see several simple fixes for it. It was a massive info-dump as you know Bob:

“Yes, I already know this though,” interrupted S--. “My father was one of the leaders of my race, who kept this great secret for many years, including Tari’ who is now the besieged magical land, as well”
“Yes, I know this to be true, answered T-- shrewdly. But, I have not told to you the full truth during our studies together of that time, and before.”

This excerpt is unusual in that everything is spelled correctly, with no mention of 'faries' or of 'scared lands' or appearance of the beautiful phrase "and a new day will be born anew."

After that brief and glorious interval, we drifted apart, and so when I ran across a site that offered 'editing solutions' it took me a bit of work to figure out why the owner's name was familiar. Then I saw the spelling 'seperate' and it clicked.

We are a highly knowledgeable and educated firm that will strive to provide you with the most qualified editing services, along with outstanding customer loyalty. At --blank--, we will provide full research, copyediting, and proofreading services. We will also provide custom reprints of your manuscript upon completion of editing your manuscript, cover letter, resume or proposal.
Advertising logos will be completed as a seperate service, but will still maintain the same high quality service. Thank you for your time and consideration. Please tell us about your project today.

I suppose there are people less qualified to offer proofreading.
Maybe not.
A little googling revealed that he had previously self-published through Authorhouse, and that his fantasy (first part of a trilogy) was titled Dessert Rose. No, it wasn't about a cook's apprentice fulfilling the prophecy that she would save her land by delighting the sweet tooth of the Evil Sorcerer and converting him to the way of sweetness and lite and lo-cal. Yes, he misspelled his title.

Vainly published, and I have proof.

The sample copy of my self-published book arrived yesterday. Lulu's done a good job. The cover looks better than it did as a pdf, the paper is good quality and the binding seems sturdy--at least for a perfect-bound book.
The not-so-good things are those I already knew about. The pic on the back cover is squished, and I'm going to ask Mark if he can fix it to the required size. If he can (which I expect he can, because it's me who's the techno-peasant), I think I can just reload the picture and leave the rest of the cover as is.
The table of contents looks untidy, because I couldn't get Word (this was on someone else's computer, because I lost Word on my own) to do the ToC in the way it's supposed to, so I did it by hand, and the edges are ragged. Plus, I should have put the page numbers elsewhere on the page, because Mirror Margins didn't fix the gutters, and the verso page numbers are somewhat swallowed.
None of which adds up to a particularly big deal, especially as this is a souvenir of my folly rather than a Real Book.
But I still snagged the 3-Day Novel published winners that I own (Day-shift Werewolf, Wastefall, Body Making Words) to compare them against my minim opus. Which stood up pretty well, for production quality.
So I can go ahead with ordering more, to give as presents to the people who would actually appreciate such a gift (my ego only carries me so far into self-delusion).
I flat-out don't know whether to give one to M--. I told her on the phone that I'd gone to Lulu and would be printing out a few for souvenirs, and she said something vague about 'tell me when they arrive', or 'tell me how it goes' but she didn't ask for a copy, and she didn't ask for the url so she could download it for free. It's not that she doesn't know about downloading or e-publishing, because Irene's been e-published several times. I'm reluctant to ask her directly, 'so, do you want a copy of Fold?' because then she'd feel put on the spot, and I know from past experience she's easily made to feel pressured. Or pressurized, as they say in the UK.
Not a big issue, it's just slightly awkward not to know whether she's making polite congratulatory noises for a friend's sake or is interested in the book itself. Other friends have said, in so many words, that they want to buy a copy, or want to read it. Or have made congratulatory noises that indicate they're happy for me but not interested in the book, which is cool too, because it's an odd story, and I don't expect it to be to everyone's taste.

Eventually I'll expand it, probably by expanding Cami's storyline, perhaps by adding more episodes of Palev's wanderings. The great thing about picaresque narrative is the loose structure. But I've no idea still of which publishers to send it to. I'd have a bit of a leg up for small Canadian presses, being Canadian, but since the story itself isn't set in Canada, neither in the depressed rural parts nor the gritty inner city parts, it has a strike against it.

Anyway, I am now totally a self-published author. Expect to see me harrassing bookshop managers and writing sockpuppet posts to message boards. I'll have to do a better job than my first attempt, though. I'll plagiarise Zolah and Emil's versions, those are way better.

In other news, I decided on the Miele Umbria City bike, with coaster brake and Nexus 8 internal gears. I've been biking to work, and after raising the seat twice I think I've got the correct angle. I'm still not sure where the bumps on the handlebars are supposed to be to properly fit my hands, but I'm supposed to take the bike in after two weeks, to make any adjustments, so I'll ask about it then.
The arthritis is subdued by medication. So far no notable side effects, though the promised 'loss of appetite' has failed to kick in, alas. Instead I'm ravenous in the evenings, even after dinner. I'm hoping that's due to the time change and will settle down. My doctor says if the Hydroxyquin does its job, I'll be able to drop the Neproxene and the associated risk of it eating my stomach lining, so good news abounds, really.
And my bike is very black and very cool. I'm refusing to leave it outside overnight until I have something to lock it to that's out of the rain. I bring it in, as if I were living in a city apartment.

(Self-)published at last!

Ahem. Let me be factual first. Remember my 3-day novel entry, the one that was shortlisted? I thought it would be fun to have a few copies printed and bound as a souvenir for myself and gifts to a few friends.
Lulu is generally considered to be the place to go for this, or else your local copy-shop (which saves on shipping). Lulu's website has a friendly tutorial (insert Don't Panic reference here) that makes things look simple enough for the technologically-ungifted like me. Amazingly this turned out to be an accurate representation. Uploading the text was dead simple.
I ran into problems working out the cover, partly because I wavered between the cover I'd designed (a brilliant use of actual, physically crumpled paper!) and a picture from the lulu gallery showing paper being folded and trimmed, which would have been at least as relevant. When my picture stalled in uploading--time went backwards, right there on the little indicator, time went backwards--I tried to cancel my upload and choose the lulu picture. There doesn't seem to be a cancel button on the screen, unless I missed it. For a while the program was trying to load two things at once, I suspect, and it didn't go well. This used up half an hour or so. Possibly more, what with time running backwards.
Somewhere in my to-ing and forth-ing, my specs shifted from Creative Commons to Standard Copyright, which is a bit annoying, though since I'm not making the story generally available, it's not particularly relevant. Lulu has something called Direct Access, where the work isn't findable by searching on lulu, only through someone clicking on the url of the work itself. So I can give particular people the url, and they can order or download, but random strangers won't be coming across it--not that I expect huge interest from random strangers, nor do I fear plagiarism.
The story strikes me as not an easy one to sell, even to Tiny Canadian Presses. Eventually I'll expand it and start submitting to Tiny Canadian Presses, who won't like it because it doesn't have Canadian flavour or a Canadian setting. It is about Survival, kind of, but it's not about Survival in the Wilderness or the Downtown Eastside.
I'm hoping to order my copies tonight. The website warns to order a single copy first, to make sure it all works, but the pdf looks fine, so I'm a bit impatient. Since I'm not selling the books, I've set no royalties and no cost for download.

Done with the sober factual part.
Perhaps I've spent too much time hanging around writing/reading boards, and too much time observing the manoeuvring of the self-published self-promoting. Over on the AbeBooks forum, we regularly get sockpuppets popping up to promote mysterious books they've read and loved, but no one else has heard of. Sometimes the publisher/author himself is honest enough to come forward as himself. Sometimes not. Some do drive-by spammings and never come back, which is just as well because they're either ignored or have holes poked in them by the more cynical forum members. Some hang about for a while and argue. They're more fun.
What, are you thinking I'm one of the more cynical members? For shame! Just because the first thing I do is to check who the publisher is.
Now I am a self-published author myself! Except for the part about making the book public, which I can't say I've really done. But I am self-published enough to feel the infection working in me, squirming through my veins and bones, mutating....
(pause to fall on floor off-camera, writhe, and rise again, fearsomely altered)
I feel the urge to self-promote, to post spammy messages on book fora, to pretend to be a casual reader who simply must share the news about this brilliant book (ordering information below).
I want to argue bitterly about how the publishing industry is broken, how new writers don't stand a chance and how self-publishing and internet promotion is the Way of the Future. Scoff now, but in five years you'll be following my tracks!
Where's my Dread Legion of Sockpuppets? To your keyboards, gentlemen!
The trouble is, I don't seem to have the knack (although I have made and used real cloth-type sockpuppets, including a rather charming dragon from a green hand-towel) of posting with the combination of aggressive enthusiasm and utter lack of detail that characterises your dyed-in-the-wool sock. This was my best effort, posted to the Furtive Scribblers, and you'll agree it falls short:

Does anyone know anything about a new writer called BML Gordon? I just read an amazing book called Fold by her or him and I want to read more!!!! My friend got Fold from lulu.com and I picked it up at his place and couldn't put it down! It's hearbreaking and griping! Evyerone should read it! and give it to their friends!

Zolah replied with a far better example:

OMG!!! Ive just finished rseding this totally awsome books its the best thing i've read eva!!! I was like, totally hooked from the ferist page and i good not put it down it is about this amazing adventure and i wnat to read more who is this writer???/!!1? i'm a totlayly changed person since reading this everyone should read this wow!!!1

Printed here with her permission and the following acknowledgement:
(I'd like to thank my mum, my dad, my dog, my stylist and all the wonderful little people who work behind the scenes. Also Jesus.)

And Emil followed up with a dandy pastiche of several recent spammings:

Hey I just found a great new book! Fold by BML Gordon. I got it off Lulu.com. Its really a thriling story and is printed on high quality. About God's plan for Shiloh dog breeding. BML Gordon must be a really spiritual and insightfull writer to write such a great value book LOL!. (Only $3.33.) I like Dan Brown, Harry Potter ect. and this is great, its a new twist on the classic good/evil conflict, it really stands out! Don't listen to the bashers they are jealous.

You'll note that he was the one to remember to include the vital ordering information. Zo hit the tone of illiterate enthusiasm.
Further contributions to the Spam Buffet are welcomed. Remember, actual knowledge of the book is not required. If you mention anything about the story itself, some Eval Plaguerist may steal it.
My bad angel is further urging me to collect samples (spamples?) from the ABE boards and post some here, as exempla, purely for teaching purposes of course, and stripped of identifying features. Hm.