#DisneyMustPay - Part Deux

A long time ago, in some states not so far, the name Disney was synonymous creativity and fairness.

Not so much anymore.

Back in November, I talked about SFWA publicly shaming  the House of Mouse in order to get them to pay back royalties to esteemed SFF writer Alan Dean Foster. I'm glad to say according to SFWA, Mr. Foster and Disney came to an agreement.

Unfortunately, that "agreement" is lawyer speak for Disney giving Foster some of the money, but not all of it with a high probability of "If you take this to court, we'll bury you" and/or "You'll die before you win in court" thrown in.

(Sometimes, I hate knowing enough to read between the freakin' lines.)

The problem is Mr. Foster wasn't the only creative Disney has been abusing. More writers have been coming out to SFWA and other author organizations. Worse, there could be hundreds, or even thousands, of writers who have been screwed over and don't even know it.

The #Disney Must Pay Taskforce is working to rectify these problems. It isn't just a matter of money. Copyright law hinges on it. Disney claims it can make money on intellectual property without paying the owner. This is an incredibly dangerous precedent if it is either codified or becomes a judicial ruling.

It means no writer is safe if Disney is allowed to continue on this route.

Check out the #Disney Must Pay Taskforce, especially if you could possibly be an affected author.

Another Workshop Sale!

WMG Publishing is having yet another "Don't Catch COVID" sale. Go check out Dean Wesley Smith's website for more details.

For the TL;DR version, WMG is having a half-price sale on every class, challenge, pop-up, etc. they offer on Teachable. Use the code IN-BETWEEN. Sale ends on Thursday, May 4th.

Yeah, everybody's using Star Wars Day to get attention, including Darling Husband's company. *sigh* 

Coronavirus Pandemic Day 412 - The Slowdown Has Commenced

The day-to-day numbers are starting to look better, even though the overall numbers are grostesque. 32,244,617 known cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. 577,224 known deaths due to COVID-19.

People I know are getting their vaccines as soon as they possibly can. I hope the rest of you are, too. COVID-19 is an ugly way to die, literally drowning in your own blood. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

But the increase in vaccinated people and the use of masks and social distancing are lowering the infection rates, and with that, the deaths.

In the meantime, I'm entering my own slow growth period. I need to get caught up on paperback releases in May and type words on the next Justice book because at the end of June/beginning of July, I will become a grandma. And yes, I know I will be distracted.

We just got back from a visit with Genius Kid and Significant Other in Texas. The new crib and mattress didn't arrived until after we left, but we did get them baby and children's books to read to Adorable Spawn, plus Deadpool and Star Trek:TOS onesies while we were there. A.S will be the geekiest baby on the block.

I did get work stuff done during this road trip, so that bodes well for future road trips. And I don't mind performing the late night duties while we're there later this year. However, we are definitely getting a hotel room because my body has become too old for air mattresses on the floor. Heck, we might even be able to take Princess Puppy Bella with us if we stay at a hotel. We simply can't have her beating up on Blaze the Wonder Shepard.

Dean Wesley Smith calls summer the time of Great Forgetting. I'm not forgetting a damn thing. My priorities have changed because I want the new generation to have a healthy, loving start in life.

I Love the '00's!

Can you believe Madge was pregnant with her second child when she filmed this video?

I Love the '00's!

This man gives Barry White a run for his money.

Another Amazon Product - KDP Vella

This week, Amazon announced their new KDP Vella program. What is it? Well, it's a rip-off of the South Korean reading app Radish and the Candian reading website and app Wattpad. I'm going to stick with comparisons to Radish since it and Wattpad now have similiar structures, but Wattpad started mainly as a fanfic website.

For those who don't know what Radish is, it's a smartphone app that publishing serialized stories. It's a 21st version of the magazine and movie serialized tales going back to Charles Dickens and Buck Rogers. A reader buys tokens, and each episode costs X numbers of tokens. Writers get 50% of the pro-rated value of the cash value of all tokens bought in a particular month.

And Amazon has essentially copied all of Radish's terms. I know. I wasted the last two afternoons reading through and comparing them.

The thing is you can't just rip up a novel and publish it by chapters. Well, you can, but it may not be the best avenue for you. The episodes really do work a lot more like the old black & white Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials of the 30's and 40's.  There's a typical sequence: problem set-up, problem conplication, problem solution, and cliff-hanger intro for the next episode.

In fact, George Lucas followed the same basic set-up in the first two Star Wars trilogy. If you need a different genre, watch and break down Pretty Woman or the first season of Heroes TV show. Or check out any soap opera or telenovela.

Is KDP Vella worth it for writers? I don't know. I have a feeling income will be similar to KDP Unlimited. I think it will cost more for a reader in the long run. But Radish and Wattpad have made anticipation work for them.

Finally, I think it shows Amazon has reached maturity if they are following other companies now instead of leading the innovation. There were a lot of writers who used KDP Unlimited 1.0 as a serialized format when it started approximately seven years ago. However, Amazon intended KU to be a subscription service a la Scribed or the late Oyster. Amazon changed the terms a year later to KU 2.0, which paid per page read instead of per borrow. Otherwise, they would have created Vella six years ago.

Will I try it? I'm considering it, but the audience for the serialized phone stories are different than the audiences both Alter Ego and I currently have. I'd have to do subgenres neither names writes. If I change genres, I'm also considering a new pseudonym.

It'll be something I consider during the summer road trips to Texas to see Adorable Spawn.

Coronavirus Pandemic Day 398 - The Plagiarism Files

31,397,113 known cases of COVID-19 in the United States. 567,591 known deaths because of this blasted disease.

I've been encouraging my friends and family to get their vaccines. COVID-19 is spiking in our part of the  country. It's obvious from testing both in Ohio and across the border in Michigan, the British variant is racing through the counties. It's a little scary because only a third of the country has received their vaccines so far.

I'm really considering to keep the mask-wearing in public a permanent thing. I haven't been sick since this damn pandemic started. I'm immuno-compromised thanks to chronic conditions. It's been a lovely year in that regard.

The writing and publishing world has been rather quiet since the combined #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements unleashed chaos and retrospection. I'm still waiting to see how that all falls out. I don't have much hope with the increased attacks on Asian-Americans.

There hasn't been much scandal lately except plagarism in Romancelandia. I swear to Cthulu that's ALWAYS happening. This time it was S.M. Soto who was caught. (Google it. I'm not linking to give her more publicity.)

Here's why plagiarism is stupid in Romancelandia. These readers are voracious. And they have memories. If you need to find a book you read decades ago, but you can't remember the title, ask romance readers. Usually, someone can give you the answer in twenty-four hours. So if you plagiarize, or worse you plagiarize La Nora, YOU WILL GET CAUGHT.

Oh, maybe not on the first book. Or the second. But it will happen. If you're lucky, you'll only be embarrassed. If you cross La Nora, you will find yourself on the wrong end of a lawsuit.

There's easier ways to make money, folks.

I Love the '00's!

What can't this lady do?

Rethinking My Summer Writing Plans

After completing the WMG Publishing Challenge next month, I essentially planned to take June and July off from publishing so I could spend some time in Texas with the first grandbaby Adorable Spawn.

That doesn't mean I'm not writing, but I am rethinking my plans for the summer.

I've been getting a lot of questions lately from other writers/indie publishers. It would be best to combine every business thing I learned over the last ten years about the crazy industry in one volume.

Except I did that eons ago, and had to take it off the market because I couldn't keep up with all the changes. But now that indie publishing is maturing, maybe it's time to revamp the darn thing.

Anybody out there have any suggestions on what they'd like to see in this guidebook?

Musings of a Mid-Range Career and Mid-Life View

In some ways, it's interesting observing baby writers as they make their way through the publishing landscape. It's not different than watching your children grow up.

You want to help. You don't want to see them make the same mistakes you did. But you have to let them learn to walk on their own. And that means letting them fall.

Things change over time, and the problems the baby writers may not be the same problems as older writers did. Older writers miss out on  new subgenres and new techniques because that's not how they did it when they were winding their way through the publishing path.

I felt the same way when Genius Kid was growing up. The difference is I'm learning to keep my mouth shut.

I can make a suggestion if asked. But I need to let go when my suggestion isn't taken.

Maybe our fate is simply to roll through cycle after cycle, and nothing ever really changes.

Or maybe it's time for Ohio to legalize recreational marijuana.

Coronavius Pandemic Day 391 and the Race Against Time

It's been over a year since the U.S. went into the first lockdown. There's more than 30,925,269 known cases because Florida's Governor DeSantis is trying to hide how bad things are in the state and there's folks I know how have had COVID-19 in other states and weren't added to the official count.

Even worse, there's 560,601known dead from COVID-19. Over a half million. Those are somee awful numbers to contemplate.

Especially when less than a third of the people living in the U.S. have only have their first dose of a vaccine.

Look, I get being stuck at home is boring. I'm not a fan of masks anymore than the craziest right-wing neighbor. But I don't want to be responsible for carrying a potentially dangerous virus around. Especially when I have a grandson on the way and there's an even more contagious variant of COVID-19 running around the U.S.

The race against doesn't only refer to getting people inoculated.

The next volume of 888-555-HERO is due out in ten days. I have to meet this deadline because I'm prohibited by Amazon's policy to miss it, else I lose all my pre-orders. I've typed 3K words so far and I've got a couple of thousand to go before bedtime.

So, this is a mental break (sort of) before dinner and Jeopardy! See y'all on the other side!

I Love the '00's!

Ms. Aguilera was such range and purity in her vocals. I often cry hearing her ballads.

Still Learning about Kickstarter

I've been taking a workshop on how to do a Kickstarter. I've supported various Kickstarters over the past ten years. The first one I ever supported was performance artist/comedian/fellow geek girl Pam Noles.

Since then I've supported a movie, plush critters, and children's books. Things that were labor and money-intensive to do right.

But I never really thought about doing one myself. Let's face it. People aren't going to give you money for your bills if you don't have a product. And by the time I have a product, well, I figured I might as well deliver the product to retailers for sale.

But I've got two new series planned. I have the covers already. So I've been considering using one of them for a test of whether I can make a Kickstarter work.

Or I could use both for different purposes. I could do one for sheer testing purposes. I've already got some cool stickers. And the overall concept fits what a lot of parents have gone through over the past year with the pandemic. So all I need are some additional swag, like t-shirts or something.

The other series is a new fantasy trilogy, a little more sword and sorcery than the Justice series. Justice started as sword and sorcery, but somewhere along the way it turned into a full-out epic fantasy. But again, I have the covers already. And it would be a perfect series to test  out whether hardbacks are worthwhile for me to produce.

So it's a question of whether to do one series. Or both.

Either way, I would need to write the books before I ever start the Kickstarter.

And for all of my "Should I?" or "Shouldn't I?", the end result is I might end up doing both. Just to see what happens.

I just don't know what scares me more--failing or succeeding.

So while I sit in my office chair and debate my works' future, here's an entertaining piece from Pam Noles from 2011. You'll understand why I supported her Kickstarter.