Yesterday lunchtime I was sitting idly at the kitchen table waiting for the vegetables to finish steaming (carrots and cabbage, to go with the leftover braised steak and sausage with onion from the night before, if you must know) when I was struck by the label of this nasal spray:

I tried to imagine being an alien who had to interpret this message for her people:

You, sir, are an asshole!
Thank you.  Here is a friendly grenade.
Now I will slam this spray into your eye by the most efficient route.

Who do they get to design these things?

In an AOL author chat many years ago, the moderator asked me, "What kind of writer are you?" I said, "A good one." No doubt he meant, What genre do you work in?, but that's a question I've never been interested in answering. I write good novels. I aim to write great novels. Sometimes the publisher calls these novels science fiction, or lesbian fiction, or crime fiction, or historical fiction. I call them good books.

As a writer, I am ambitious.  I've never been shy about that.  (See my rant on the subject, You've been warned.)  But I hadn't consciously considered my ambitions as an editor (though I have thought about why I edit), until a writer asked me the other day, "What kind of editor are you?" I said, "A good one."  But that's not the whole truth.  Here's what I would say today:

As an editor, I am extremely ambitious--for you. It is not enough for me to help you polish your sentences, punch up your plot, and hone your characters. It's not enough to strike out your adverbs and adjectives. Not enough to point out your clichés and remind you to be specific. I will do all those things, of course--it's where we must begin--but they are only stepping stones to my real goal.

I want to help you change the world.

To do that, I'll help you write the best story of your life. I will look at your draft and I will ask you questions; I'll help you find out what you really want to say. Most writers begin by stepping around their story. I will help you drive straight for its heart. I will help you find the right words, the right scenes, the right settings and characters, the right POV, the right tense, the right trouble. I will stand sternly at the entrance to the road labeled The Easy Way Out and urge you back to the true path.

I will not shrug and let you get away with less than your best. I will keep you working until the wide way to the centre of your story opens before you. You will walk that way to the very best thing you've ever written (so far). When people read it, they will be changed.

That's what great writing does. That's the point. Oh, it entertains us, yes, it delights and amuses us, but it changes us, just a little. It widens our perspective, just a degree or two, increases our understanding, sharpens our vision. If your work changes one tiny thing in one reader, you change the way that person approaches the world. That changes the world.

Hundreds of readers have told me my work has changed their lives. A handful have told me my work saved their lives. One told me my work eased someone's death. That's why I write. That's why I teach and edit: so you can change the world, too.

Do you want to change the world?  If you don't, what do you want to achieve with your writing?

Still in Hild world, so here's some linkage instead of a real blog post.  (Though I'm considering making this a weekly feature, if I can work out how to make the time to be organised about it.)

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.  Cory Doctorow opines on BoingBoing.  The title says it all.

Leaked Courier Video.  This just does my head in.  Again.  If I win the lottery, I won't know whether to buy this or wait for the Mythical Apple Tablet.  Oh, wait, if I'm richrichrich I could get both.  (Thanks, Timothy.)

Oh for a tricorder!    L. Timmel Duchamp discusses current ethical implications of astrobiology. "This lecture focused chiefly on the search for "Life 2.0," looking at each of several sites in the solar system and evaluating their promise for delivering Life 2.0 or evidence that it once existed in those sites. Will anyone be surprised to hear there were quite a lot of references to sf, mostly Star Trek, most notably a picture of Spock and a quotation: "Jim, it's life, but not as we know it," and, later in the lecture, in answer to the question "How do we recognize alien life?" the reply "Use a tricorder" accompanied by an image of a Star Trek tricorder."

Modern Architecture - Stunning Whale-like Structure Can Float Away Wow. "Designed by Melbourne-based Peddle Thorpe Architects, Fluid is a whale-inspired pavilion that is sure to be a showstopper at the much-anticipated 2012 World Expo in Yeosu, South Korea." (Thanks, Evecho)

PoetrySpeaks.com "This is not just another poetry site. PoetrySpeaks allows you to experience poetry in a host of interesting ways."  Brought to you by the brains behind Sourcebooks.  This is going to corner the poetry market from producers to consumers to academics.  Very, very smart move.  Go learn.

Kassia Krozser and Lev Grossman talked to Jeffrey Brown on NewsHour recently about 'the shifting world of book publishing', and 'how technology and readers are changing the industry'.  I've only just got around to reading the transcript (thanks, Angelique).  Most of what they say makes sense, apart from this statement by Lev Grossman:

And it sounds a little technical to say, also, but people have not really figured out how much an e-book should cost. Amazon tends to sell them for $9.99, but Amazon takes a loss on each book. And $9.99 is -- it's not enough for publishers to recoup the cost of producing an e-book. (My emphasis.)

I disagree.  If publishers can make money on mass market paperback originals with a price point well below $9.99--many have and some still do--then they can make money on a book with no shipping, warehousing, printing or picking-and-packing costs.  They just don't make as much money.  Publishers (by which I mean the Big Six) must adjust.

Books delivered electronically at low prices are already a huge part of the reader-writer landscape.  (For example, around 30% of my royalties are now from sales of e-books.)  If the publishers want to stay in business, they are going to have to figure out how to make money for the long terms at those prices.  Those that don't will fail and fade into the west.  Newer publishers, writer-agent coops, and other strange agglomerations of stake holders, will take over.  After all, the only two truly indispensable parts of the literary landscape are the writer and the reader.   In my opinion.

What do you think?

Newsmakers: The People Behind Today's Headlines, is just published by Gale.

"Newsmakers – published quarterly in softcover – provides timely and informative profiles of the world's most interesting people. A hardbound annual cumulation makes Newsmakers a permanent reference source on 200 newsmakers of the year. Four indexes help readers locate entries by name, nationality, occupation and subject. Separate obituaries provide concise profiles of recently deceased newsmakers."

  I'm quoting in full from their website because, well, I'm fascinated by all this.  Click this table of contents and you'll see what I'm talking about:

The world's most important people include: the Chancellor of Germany, the President of Cuba, Maeve Binchy, Rachel Maddow, the Governor of Washington State, the co-inventor of Roomba, the Chair of the National Republican Committee...and me.

Life is very, very strange.

The French are going all-out for the 50th birthday of Asterix the Gaul: fly-overs  by Patrouille de France (the French equivalent of the Blue Angels), spiffy dinners with politicians, parties...

I loved--okay, still love--those cartoons, graphic novels really, of small but mighty Asterix and his hugeous friend Obelix, and all the Gaulish villagers living under Roman occupation.  I admire the translation by Anthea Bell, who gets the tone just right.  Wonderful books.  They tickle my childish humour; make me howl with laughter, even now.  The Guardian has an article here.

One day I'll buy the entire matching set (I own only a random sample, though I've read them all) and read them from start to finish.  They are witty, charming, and full of particular characters being themselves.  (And fighting, and falling in love, and taking part in Historical Events.)

Give Asterix a go.  You'll thank me.

Publishers Weekly really screws up:

"Every year, PW selects its top 100 books, and for the first time ever  PW has upped the ante by choosing the 10 books that stood out from the  rest. The titles, whittled down from the more than 50,000 volumes  considered this year, were picked by the PW reviews editors to reflect  the very best of 2009."

The ten 'best books'.  And they're all by boys.  Every.  Single.  One.  Ten books by men about men.

For me, this is just another indication that PW is rapidly becoming irrelevant to the real reading world.  After all, women read more than men--yet our tastes and our subjects are not valued.

I think this might be PW's death knell.  What do you think?

I'm chasing plot moths, dashing about in the dark swishing my net trying to catch the flittery things.  I know roughly what has to happen to Hild during her next couple of years, but, oh, there are so many ways to get there, so many possibilities.

The problem is politics.  Politics in seventh-century England were played for very high stakes: the loser died.  (My kind of century...)

Power was abominably complicated.  For one thing, everyone--that is, anyone who is anyone, that is, royal--is related to everyone else.  Often in three different ways.  They're all plotting against everyone and allied with everyone else.  It is unbelievably, mind-bogglingly twisty.

It's enormous fun.  Every time I get fed up of someone, I just whack their head off, or poison them gruesomely, or watch them die a tragic death in childbirth.  On good days I wake up thinking, O-ho-ho, who can I kill today?  More importantly, I think, And who does this doomed character remind me of in real life?  Which is just a reminder: never piss off a writer :)

Today's mission: invent a suitably horrific but genial Anglo-Saxon torture.  I think I have just the thing...

I've seen a handful of things in the last week that are worth blogging about.  But I'm in Hild mode, so instead of pondering these things at length, let me simply link to them.

Over at Lee Wind's blog (I'm Here. I'm Queer.  What the Hell do I read?), there's another infuriating tale of censorship, this time from Scholastic, who refused to carry a kidlit title at a book fair unless the author changed the dyke mums to a straight couple.  People over on Facebook have suggested a letter-writing campaign to Scholastic and/or recruiting a PTA to weigh in.  I agree.

Medical News Today has an interesting piece about back pain and vitamin D.  (Also handy for the apocalypse.)  "According to Stewart B. Leavitt, MA, PhD, Executive Director of Pain Treatment Topics and author of the report, "our examination of the research, which included numerous clinical studies, found that patients with chronic back pain usually had inadequate levels of vitamin D. When sufficient vitamin D supplementation was provided, their pain either vanished or was at least helped to a significant extent."

Publishers Weekly has a review of Eclipse 3 (scroll down).  "...Peter S. Beagle's “Sleight of Hand” and Nicola Griffith's “It Takes Two” examine the nature and power of love from very different angles."

The Times has an article on time, procrastination, and etymology.  "The longest entry in the new Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, a work that has been 44 years in the making, is for the word 'immediately'. As in - and let us pluck a thought at random here - 'We need this book finished immediately/right now/without delay.' The reason why there are 265 different ways of saying immediately? ...it is down to the human tendency to procrastinate. (Procrastinate: foreslow, adjourn, proloyne, protract, tarry, defer, delay ... ) 'A lot of the words that once meant 'immediately' came to mean 'soon', so you then needed another word that really meant 'immediately'. 'Soon', for instance - its original meaning was 'immediately'.' As in (to pick another random example), 'Yes, yes, we know you want it immediately. We're working very hard here. We'll get it done soon'."

From Sci Fi Wire: 6 secrets from the set of V.  Oooh, I'm looking forward to this.  I loved the cheesy 80s version.  This one, though: two Firefly alums.  Promising.

Enjoy.

Over at Sterling Editing I have a new blog post up, a discussion of some of Patrick O'Brian's masterful dialogue.  There's an exercise--not an easy one--for those who want to try their hand.

In the last month I've had 16,201 visits to Ask Nicola from 90 countries.  That's more visitors than usual: more than 6,000 of you came to read trembling with rage, my post about Janice Langbehn's story.  If only ten percent of you did something--talked to your neighbour, posted a blog that prompted someone else to talk to their neighbour, or filled out a ballot--then we might have made a difference.  So thank you all.  We'll check back in on November 4th when, hopefully, we'll have good results on Referendum 71.

November will be a month of head-down work for me.  Hild is reaching a critical stage.  Plus, it's just that kind of weather, y'know?  Rain pounding down, thick stews simmering on the stove, leaves piling up around the car which hasn't left the driveway for two days.  It's the time for in-dwelling, exploring imaginary worlds: writing time.  I'm looking forward to it.

Which is my way of saying I don't know what kind of blogging I'll be doing in the next new weeks.  It's possible I'll want to indulge in avoidance behaviour, and so will blog my heart out.  It's possible that I'll be wholly engaged with Hild and will post random snippets of nothing-in-particular twice a week.  Let's look at it as an adventure...

Want to know what it's like to be a novelist these days?  You sell the novel over a pleasant dinner (or an efficiently emailed proposal and outline).  You write the novel.  You send it in.  You get the editorial letter.  You rewrite the novel.  The novel is accepted.  Everyone is pleased and cautiously optimistic.  Then you get  that introductory email from your publicist.  Your abdominals clench and your heart sinks.  Ellis Weiner captures it beautifully in this Shouts & Murmurs piece in the New Yorker:

Let me introduce myself. My name is Gineen Klein, and I’ve been brought on as an intern to replace the promotion department here at Propensity Books. First, let me say that I absolutely love “Clancy the Doofus Beagle: A Love Story” and have some excellent ideas for promotion.

To start: Do you blog?  If not, get in touch with Kris and Christopher from our online departrment, although at this point I think only Christopher is left...

If you're a professional, it will make you laugh, sway with recognition, and reach for the vodka.  (No, beer is not enough at times like these.)  If you're a beginner, well, one day, if you're lucky, you too will get that sinking feeling...

I've just read a fabulously informative post by Jane over on Dear Author.  As the Supreme Court in 1943 opined that "authors are congenitally irresponsible" and "frequently they are so sorely pressed for funds that they are willing to sell their work for a mere pittance," Jane notes that

Congress, who is responsible for setting the parameters of the copyright law in the United States, recognizes the economic imbalance between authors and publishers and has tried to include provisions to correct the imbalance. One of those provisions under the current copyright law is the right of termination of a previously granted copyright.

This means that even if your work is still in print, you can get it back.  This isn't an immediate thing, far from it (you have to wait 35 years), but it's great news for those who felt pressed by circumstance in the past to make a less than advantageous deal.

I imagine this will have particular relevance to authors of LGBT fiction.  Please pass the word (and while you're at it, drop a comment at Dear Author to thank Jane for doing the work: ploughing through the legalese and writing a clear summary).

Yesterday I read this blog post about the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by a the partner of a woman who died alone:

U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan dismissed a lawsuit yesterday, essentially finding that the Jackson Memorial Hospital was within its rights to leave a dying woman alone while denying her present and immediate family to visit her, be updated on her condition, or even to provide the hospital with medically necessary information.

Named in the now-dismissed suit were Jackson social worker Garnett Frederick and attending physicians Alois Zauner and Carlos Alberto Cruz, who made the decision not to allow Janice Langbehn, Lisa Pond’s partner, to have standard family access to information, even after receiving durable Power of Attorney and a Living Will naming Janice as legal guardian with authority to make end-of-life decisions.

I already knew the story:

On February 18, 2007, Lisa Pond, my partner of nearly 18 years and 3 of our 4 adopted children: Danielle, David and Katie were on board the Rfamily cruise preparing to set sail.  Before leaving port, Lisa suddenly collapsed while watching the children play basketball. The kids were banging on the stateroom door saying, “Mommy was hurt!”  I opened the door, and took one look at Lisa and knew the situation was very serious.  As a medical social worker for many years, I have seen people in critical condition.  I knew that my life partner was gravely ill.  As the ship was about to leave, we had no choice but to seek medical help in an unfamiliar city. After local medics arrived, we hurried off the ship to the closest hospital in Miami, Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

As Lisa was put into the ambulance I had no idea when she signed “I love you” to the kids and I it would be the last time I would see her beautiful blue eyes.  We arrived at the trauma center minutes before her ambulance. I tried to follow her gurney into the trauma area and was stopped by the trauma team and told to go to the waiting room.  The kids and I did as we were told.

We arrived shortly after 3:30 in the afternoon, around 4pm, a social worker came out and introduced himself as Garnet Frederick and said, “you are in an anti-gay city and state. And without a health care proxy you will not see Lisa nor know of her condition”.  He then turned to leave; I stopped him and asked for his fax number because I said “we had legal Durable Powers of Attorney” and would get him the documents. Within a short time of meeting this social worker, I contacted friends in Lacey, WA, our hometown, who went to our house and faxed the legal documents required for me to make medical decisions for Lisa.

I never imagined as I paced that tiny waiting room that I would not see Lisa’s bright blue eyes again or hold her warm, loving hands.  Feeling helpless as I continued to wait, I attempted to sneak back into the trauma bay but all the doors to the trauma area had key codes, preventing me from entering. Sitting alone with our luggage, our children and my thoughts, I watched numbly as other families were invited back into the trauma center to visit with loved ones.  I was still waiting to hear what was happening with Lisa, realizing as the time passed that I was not being allowed to see her and if the social worker’s words were any indication it was because we were gay. Anger, despair and disbelief wracked my brain as I tried to figure out a way to find out what was going on with Lisa.  I finally thought to call our family doctor back in Olympia (on a Sunday afternoon at home) to see if she could find out what was happening. While on the phone with our doctor in Olympia, a surgeon appeared.  The surgeon told me that Lisa, who was just 39 years old, had suffered massive bleeding in her brain from an aneurysm.  A short while later, two more surgeons appeared and explained the massive bleed in Lisa’s brain gave her little chance to survive and if she did it would be in a persistent vegetative state.  Lisa had made me promise to her over and over in our 18 years together to never allow this to happen to her.  I let the surgeons know Lisa wishes, which were also spelled out in her Living Wills and Advance Directive.  I was then promised by the doctors that I would be brought to see Lisa as “soon as she was cleaned up”.  At that point all life saving measures ceased and I asked that she be prepared for organ donation.

Yet, the children and I continued to wait and wait.  A Hospital Chaplain appeared and asked if I wanted to pray and I looked at her dumbfounded as if I hadn’t already been doing that for over four hours.  I immediately asked for a Catholic Priest to perform Lisa’s Last rites.  A short time later, A Catholic priest escorted me back to recite the Last Rites and it was my first time in nearly 5hrs of seeing Lisa.  After seeing her I knew the children needed to see her immediately and be able to say their goodbyes and begin the grieving process.  Yet the priest escorted me back out to the waiting room.  Where I was faced with the young faces of our beautiful children to explain “other mommy” was going to heaven.

I continued to assert my self over the ensuing hours again that we needed to be with Lisa.  I even showed the Admitting clerk the children’s birth certificates with both Lisa and my name on them… and said if you won’t let me back, let her children be with her. I was told they were “too young”.  I thought how old do you need to be to say goodbye to your mother?

In nearly eight hours, Lisa lay at Ryder Trauma Center moving toward brain death – completely alone and I continue to this day to feel like a failure for not being there to hold her hand to tell her how much we loved her, to comfort her and to sign in her hand “I love you”. All my pleas fell on deaf ears.

Lisa’s sister arrived driving straight from Jacksonville as soon as I knew Lisa would not survive.  She announced who she was and I was at her side staring at the same person who had been denying me access all those hours. It was only then that I was told Lisa had been moved almost an hour earlier to ICU… and the hospital just kept the children and I waiting in the same waiting room, where Lisa was not even at.

A woman can share children with another woman, she can have Durable Power of Attorney and be named in a Living Will as legal guardian--and still she has no rights and no recourse.  Because she's a lesbian.

I am trembling with rage.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, so I won't belabour the point.  We need equal rights.  We need same-sex marriage at the federal level.

Here in Washington, voting has already begun on Referendum 71, which asks voters to reconfirm expanded domestic partnership rights which were signed into law in May, 2009.  I've discussed this before, but I'm going to say it again: if you live in Washington State, are eligible to vote, and do not do so for any reason (barring ICU or earthquakes of apocalyptic proportions), you are not welcome in my real or virtual homes.  I will block your email.  I will unfollow you on Twitter.  I will refuse you entry to our big parties.  I will point you out at readings.  I will turn my back on you in public.  This is my line in the sand.  I'm done with being wise and kind and understanding.  Now is my time to be vengeful.  You do not want to piss me off on this one.

So here's my challenge to all of you, wherever you live: talk about this.  Blog about it.  Donate money.

If you live in Washington State, talk to your neighbours, your co-workers, the woman in the checkout line.  Ask them if they know any gay or lesbian people.  Tell them that, in your opinion, voting yes, voting to approve referendum 71 is the right thing to do.  Tell them Lisa Pond's story.  Feel free, also, to tell them that if us queers do not get our rights we will rise up: the big bad butches will rip the tires off your car.  The gay salon owners will burn your hair off.  And all the queer cops and dental hygenists and plumbers and customer service people will fuck up your lives to the point of misery.

If you don't live here, think of someone you know who does, and call them.  Talk to them.  Send them Facebook messages.  Write them a letter--but be quick.

This is happening today, this week, this month.  Act now.

When you've done something, let me know in the comments.  Perhaps it will encourage others to do something, too.

Amazon and Wal-Mart are fighting a book-price war. Walmart cut the price of their new hardcovers (blockbusters by Stephen King, John Grisham etc.) to $10. Amazon matched them. Wal-Mart dropped theirs to $9. Amazon again matched and announced it will offer same-day delivery in select cities (New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Seattle and Washington). Wow, readers might be thinking, this is awesome--cheap books! Well, yes. And no. If this continues, the ones who will suffer are the writers and, as a result (writers not writing = fewer good books) you, the reader.

Richard Curtis explains it all here.

Typically, publishing contracts reduce author royalties when the discount offered to retailers reaches a certain threshhold. I'm looking at some contracts with big houses that state that when the discount reaches 56%, the author's royalty is cut from one based on list price to one based on net receipts. For example, on a $25 book that means your 10% royalty drops from $2.50 (10% of the list price) to $1.10 (10% of the $11.00 your publisher actually collects from the retailer). So, authors, this is not merely a spectator sport. Some of you are gonna get killed.

This doesn't currently affect me; I'm not a blockbuster seller. (Wow, never thought there'd come a day when I was pleased about that.)

I'm not saying, Don't buy these cheap books! For one, it would be pointless--you'd do it anyway, right? I know I would. (Actually, I'm eyeing the Stephen King book as a present for K; that price, wow, it can't be beat.) I'm simply saying that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Models will change, whole niches in the publishing ecosystem will soon be laid waste, things will get worse before they get better. They will get better. It's actually pretty exciting (as I've said before). But change is hard and price wars are wasteful.

I can't fix this, so for now I'll ignore it. I'll go write some more Hild. I wonder what kind of publishing world she will debut into...