Would have had this post up earlier, but I ended up in the ER for most of the morning/early afternoon with some sort of asthmatic reaction (from the mold/shower debacle of last week?)

*shrugs*

All I know is that between last night and this morning my throat was closing up and my chest was very tight and I couldn’t breathe too well. Hence the ER. All is well at the moment, though – I was given some meds and the rest of my tests came back normal, so I’ll be following up with a pulmonary doc next week, most likely.

In the meantime, I’m getting an inspector out to the house tomorrow just to make sure we got everything out of the bathroom that needed to be removed. Whee.

Otherwise – usual Thursday posts are up – it’s all about fairy tales over at Word-Whores today, so please come check that out, as well as the latest page of Fox & Willow.

With A Trace of Moonlight coming out this fall, I’m starting to turn my eye toward my next bout of promo and swag and all the other things that may or might not improve sales. (And incidentally, there is a cover up over at Amazon and various other places, but it is a LEAKED cover – not the finished one and not of good size or quality. Rest assured I’ll post a final copy here once I’m allowed.)

At any rate, one of the things I’ve noticed is that my Kindle books are getting tagged as being overpriced. Which is nothing new. My ebooks run the same price as the MMPB – and that’s the price set by the publisher. I have zero control over it.

And I’m not objecting to people being unhappy with the prices – after all with so many books running around at the .99 price it’s hard for a consumer to understand why some books are more expensive than others.  (And obviously we’re all waiting to see what happens with the DoJ investigation into the Big 6 and Apple – it will be very interesting to see what shakes out from that.)

What I do find somewhat distressing is when readers accuse authors of being greedy or selfish. As noted above, I have absolutely no influence on when a book is released, how it is released, how it’s distributed or how much it costs.  And I’ve heard horror stories of some authors receiving death threats, threats of rape, etc, because a book wasn’t released on time or released too early, or cost too much or whatever. Which is ridiculous anyway, but it also portrays a disturbing mindset of entitlement. (This happens quite a bit in the gaming industry as well, but that’s another blog post.)

So what is it that causes this sort of reaction? Being “anonymous” on the internet? The way media tends to be more and more disposable as we go? The ability to reach out and interact with the creator of a book or an artpiece or a song with the click of a button?

In some ways, the self-publishing revolution has blurred the lines quite a bit. These days anyone and everyone can publish something on Amazon or Smashwords or wherever. The author can set their own price and get their own artwork and off they go. The average consumer doesn’t always know or care where a book comes from (and should they, really?)

All they see is the cover and the price and make their assumptions accordingly. On one hand, lower prices mean more readers are willing to take a chance on a book or author they might not otherwise do. It puts books into less of a luxury category (which a $25 hardcover would certainly be) and opens up additional pathways for media consumption and gaining readership.

But on the other hand, do readers then start taking authors for granted? There does seem to be a pervasive line of thought that anyone with a word processor can be a writer and therefore the work isn’t as valuable as others. (And if you are a writer and you’ve ever had to struggle to explain to friends and family that what you are doing is *working* and no, you can’t do X right now simply because you’re in front of a computer, then you know what I mean.  The muse is a fickle thing sometimes and it’s hard for many of us to just pop in and pop out of that zone.)

I’m not sure there’s a right or wrong here – it just *is*, at the moment – and until things shake out into whatever the New World Order is going to be, writers just have to do whatever works best for them.

I can’t think of anything to write about today, which sounds terrible – but the truth of it is that Diablo 3 is out…and um. Yeah.

I’m just going to be over…HERE.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll think of something worthwhile.

Or not.

(Randomly, btw – this week is all about fairy tales over at Word-Whores, so I highly suggest you go check it out. My post will be up on Thursday, of course, but it’s a fun topic. )

Post Mother’s Day Monday? IDK. For a fairly uneventful weekend, I spent an awful lot of time putting Avenger Lego sets together.  I’m not actually complaining, mind. I love building Legos, and my inner nerd quivers at all these lovely little characters. Lego Loki? Mmmph.

But low-key days are good and it’s been a while since I’ve just let a day slip by without fussing at myself to get anything specific done.

Paying for that a little bit now, but that’s okay.  The contractor came today and the good news it that after gutting the shower it looks as though there’s no structural damage behind the wall like we feared. We’re waiting on an estimate to rebuild/retile everything, though we may just go ahead and do it ourselves if the cost ends up being too high. (I’m sorta leaning toward letting the contractor do it this time around, just for the sake of time. I *really* want my bathroom back.

In the meantime, a new page of Fox & Willow is up today – we’ve also created a few website badges if anyone wants to help us promote the story. Feel free to grab either one and just link to here.  (Looks like the same page as the first link, but it actually takes you to the latest page, whatever that is. First link only takes you to page five.)

A little skimpy on the skin this time around, but it *is* Mother’s Day tomorrow, and I’d be happy with a little bacon in bed.

And incidentally, all the *really* good naked chef pictures seem to be so small. But here’s one of my favs…

And another….

Yeah.

So a few months ago, the DH and I decided we’d try to tackle the master bathroom and spruce it up – paint it, tile the floor, replace the vanity. And with a few small hiccups, we actually managed it.  We left the shower and the tub alone for monetary reasons more than anything else.  They were functional and the changes we made still improved the look of things overall, so I was happy enough. (And we painted the master bedroom too, so yay. Being grownups. Getting shit done.)

The only thing I wanted to do in the shower was re-caulk it. Some of the mildew wasn’t cleaning up and a re-caulk seemed like the easy fix.

Until the ants started showing up. We’d always had a few ants wandering around – I’d just assumed they were lost, maybe coming up the drain pipe. Well, upon removal of some of the caulk, we had created a small highway. The ants came up one hole, traipsed over one edge and then disappeared down another hole.

On one hand? Kinda cool to watch.

On the other? Eww.  So we called an exterminator and they put some stuff out and a few days later, no more ants. So back to deciding to re-caulk and also grout a few tiles that were a little loose.

Except that when we looked at the loose tiles, they weren’t just loose. They were rotting off the wall. DH popped a few off this morning….and hey, look at that.  Water damage. Mold. The fact that the idiots who built our house simply put tile on the dry wall instead of cement backer board. Or at least something that doesn’t crumble when it gets wet.

You know. Like you might do.

IN A SHOWER.

Poke a little further…and yep. There’s the insulation.

Can you imagine my joy right now? Imagine *real* hard.

Pssst.

Said joy is taking form in the shape of a giant rageboner.

*ahem*

Anyway, so the biggest issue – aside from the fact that we’re clearly going to have to gut the entire shower and rebuild it – is trying to determine if the water damage was caused by the shower itself (e.g. loose shower tiles trapping moisture) or if there is a leak coming from the outside of the house.

Which could very well be, as the same assclowns who built the shower also effed up the sheetrock on that side of the house – instead of laying it like fishscales like you’re supposed to do…they just threw it up however they damn well wanted to and we’ve had several leaks over the years through the window-frames as a result. (And yes, contractors have come out and fixed them as we discover them.)

Contractor is coming out on Monday, in fact. I’m really hoping that it’s just a shower thing and we can fix it quick. If not, worse case scenario is that they’ll have to rip apart that side of the house and rebuild it.

Guess I better crank out that best seller soon. >_<

Two for one updates, whee.

First off, I’m over at Word Whores, talking about genre – why I write it, why I read it and my rather awkward experience with a literary creative writing course in college. Also? The Avengers.

And of course there’s a new page of Fox & Willow up over at Sad Sausage Dogs.  I’m hoping to create some F&W website badges this weekend to help spread the word about it. Nothing fancy, but every little bit helps.

On heavy rotation on the iPod today:

I’m always a bit cautious about giving out writing advice. After all, what works for me might not work for you.  I’m hardly in a position to sit up on the mountain to dictate what people should do to get published or how to write better.

And the fact of the matter is that the game is changing – self pubbing and indie pubbing have opened doors to writers whose books don’t fit into nice little genre niches. (Which is one of the complaints I’ve seen from agents and editors – eg – “the writing is fabulous, but where would it be shelved??”)  Sometimes that just means the book is before its time – after all, it used to be that vampire books were barely a blip on the radar…and then the UF/PNR genre exploded – and now we have whole shelves dedicated to those sorts of stories.

Sometimes it just doesn’t happen – and that’s where the self-publishing venture comes into play.

Anyway, the point of this post was really supposed to be about writing rules. I was on tumblr earlier and there was a post floating about that referred to this article. Which, if you’ve been doing the writing thing for a while, doesn’t really contain anything new – we’ve seen the stuff about not using prologues, and info-dumping, or using cliches, etc. etc.

But I was reading a lot of the reblog comments – and yes, there were several that indicated that the rules were stupid, or who is this person to dictate how *they* should write, or that “X Famous Novel” didn’t follow any of these and everyone loves it.  Or that as long as a writer write a good book, rules don’t apply. Or that as long as you are passionate about your story, that should be good enough.  Or that rules are meant to be broken.

And I didn’t bother reblogging with any additional thoughts on the matter, although at least one person did point out that in traditional publishing, agents and editors still use many of these rules to weed through the slush pile.

Some of the points made by the rebloggers were valid, but I’ll admit that an awful lot sounded on the whiny side.  Which I get – no one likes to be told that they’re doing it wrong, especially if they’re doing something that they love.

At least one of them basically said something along the lines of “Thank God there’s self-publishing – I can do what I want!”)

Which makes me pause. Certainly if you’re self-pubbing, you can do what you want. You can have a 500 page prologue. You can start the story with the weather, or mary-sue yourself into oblivion.

But should you?

And I have no idea. There’s always people who will tell us what we “should do” or “ought to do,” but that doesn’t mean you have to listen to all of it. I usually tell people to take the bits of advice that apply to them and ignore the rest – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take a good long look *at* that advice.

Personally, I have a tendency to stonewall when someone tells me something I don’t want to hear (writing or otherwise.) It’s a defense mechanism, and these days I recognize it for what it is. I let it happen for a day or so and then I revisit the catalyst that triggered the reaction.  If I can see past the instinctive rage-boner and try to separate the words from how it affects me personally, I can usually find an objective way to look at it.

I think it’s probably the same way with writing advice. Just because you have a prologue doesn’t mean your writing sucks or that it’s wrong…but it doesn’t mean it’s right, either. Every story is different.

(And if you are trying to get trad published – keep in mind that your agent or editor is certainly going to have things to say about your writing that you may not want to hear – if you can’t handle just reading an article about writing, how the hell are you going to manage when your editor tells you you need to completely overhaul ten chapters?)

Food for thought, I guess.

I’ll be honest. I don’t completely get Pinterest. I have an account that I’ve logged into a few times and done nothing with (and yet I have followers. Why?)

I’m feeling a tad curmudgeonly today. Every time I think I’ve got the basics down of whatever social networking platforms are out there, another one comes along. (And oddly enough Pinterest has been around since 2009 – it’s just taking off right NOW.)

And I’m all for getting my message out there however I can do it, but there is a part of me that just wants to shout “Enough already!”

I’ve already got multiple Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, Tumblrs, Linked-In, GetGlue, FourSquare – and I can barely keep up with those half the time. The idea of adding another to the mix?

At the heart of it, I get it – you can pin stuff to your virtual bulletin board. Sort of like if Tumblr were better organized – i.e. the #tags actually worked. And if you had visual representations of those #tags.  But I already spend an unhealthy amount of time on Tumblr as it is (I follow a mostly younger crowd of  gamers and artists, for the most part – it’s one of my guilty pleasures because I can fangirl to my heart’s content and no one cares.)

So is it worth jumping into the pinning pool?

I don’t know. I read an article the other day that says Pinterest is mostly enjoyed by women – I guess the ability to categorize things appeals to our inner organizers or something. And I understand – one of the reasons I hang out on Tumblr as much as I do is because I can easily reblog pictures and inspirational sayings and all the rest of it (as well as type out actual posts, if I’m so inclined.) So maybe Pinterest is Tumblr for grown-ups?

I don’t know, but for some reason it’s just not clicking with me. Maybe it’s the organization thing – I like Tumblr because I don’t have to think much – just hit like or reblog and I’m done.  The idea of trying to organize images of unicorns or roses or fashion stuff or animals or whatever into neat little piles gives me the shivers.

I mean – I can’t even organize my house. Spending time doing it virtually?

*shivers*

But now that I’m done with book revisions, I’ll probably poke around the site again and see if there’s something I’ve missed. I do have invites, if anyone wants one.

In the meantime, enjoy this video about bacon coffins.

First up, Fox & Willow has a new page up, so go on and check that out.

(Incidentally, I just about died when I saw the hedgehog there – no, it’s not in the comic, but for obvious reasons I find it so very amusing.)

Otherwise I just wanted to note that I’ve got a signed copy of A Sliver of Shadow up on the Brenda Novak auction site. Proceeds go toward diabetes research, so definitely check it out (if not for my book, then for something else – there’s a lot of really great items for both writers and readers available.)