An Odd Afternoon

I stayed up until four a.m. working on A Twist of Love. I'm at the difficult state where it's done in my mind, but not on paper. At this point, I feel like it's old so I have to force myself to get the words down.

Therefore, I didn't wake up until after two this afternoon. And one of the first things I saw was that Susan Ellison had passed away. It unnerved me because she's only a couple of years older than me. But considering she passed a couple of years after Harlan's death, part of me is not surprised.

And ironically, I was thinking about Harlan Ellison last night when I saw this article from Bleeding Cool.

I love the pulp sword and sorcery stories. It was that feeling I tried to capture when I wrote "Justice" seven years ago. Flashing Swords #6 should have been an awesome revival.

But people read fantasy to escape from the real world and their real world problems just for a little while. Hell, I can see that just in the little uptick in my fantasy sales over the last couple of months.

The preaching hateful screed that was presented as the introduction would have been wrong no matter which side of the political divide it came from. And as a writer, you put your trust in your editor not to do something stupid when joining an anthology, just like the editor trusts you to deliver a story that fits their image for the collection.

What you don't want as a writer is an introduction that will alienate over half of your potential readership whether it clicks with your own sensibilities or not.

In my experience with Elisabeth Waters, I was sent the entire galley of the Sword and Sorceress volumes my stories appeared in. So I saw and read Lisa's introduction even though I was only require to proof my own story. And she always delivered a lovely ode to the genre.

From the chatter of those who withdrew their stories from Flashing Swords #6, none of them saw Price's introduction until the Look Inside feature went live on Amazon. The publisher has since withdrawn the book, but if you want to read the full introduction, it's out there on the interwebs.

So hopefully, both the writers and the publisher chalk this up to a learning experience on who to trust as an editor.

So what does this have to do with Harlan Ellison? He was a person who didn't tolerate stupidity from anyone: publishers, editors, fans or other writers. In the back of my head, I could hear him cussing up a storm over this kind of stupidity. It's one thing to make a stand on your own words. It's another thing to use other people's words as a launching pad for your beliefs.

This situation will make me be even more careful about which anthologies I submit to.

No, there's more to it than me submitting. It makes me want to start my own anthology because there's lots of awesome stories I want to read out there in the world, and I would guard and treasure those stories the way I would my own.

Pay the Writer

The latest scam making the rounds is where a writer ghostwrites a book for an established author and the writer pays the established author for the privilege.

Yep, you read that correctly.

For example, my friend Angie is nudging me to write Book 4 of the 888-555-HERO series. If I told her she could write the book but it would be published by me under my name, and she would have to pay me $1000 to do it, would she do it?

Angie's smart enough to tell me to fuck myself, and rightfully so. She understands money flows toward the author. I understand that concept. Probably, most of you reading this understands that concept.

But amazingly, there's a ton of writers who think paying for the privilege to write under someone else's name is their ticket to riches and glory.

I've had a couple of people get snippy with me, saying I'm anti-ghostwriter. I'm not. Some folks are awesome at ghostwriting.

A gal I used to know in Houston has ghostwritten a few celebrity memoirs. I admire her skill at capturing different people's voices. And she was paid handsomely by the celebrity or the publisher for writing those memoirs. She did not pay the celebrity or the publisher for the privilege of doing all the research and text for those books.

Cthulu dammit! Not even James Patterson is that evil! He pays his ghostwriters, not the other way around.

If you are doing the writing, you should be getting paid. Here's a snippit from Dreams with Sharp Teeth: