Because Telling Teenagers "No" Always Works

The principal of Booker T Washington High has stepped in to cancel one of their school's summer reading programs rather than let the students read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which is all about teenagers challenging wrongheaded authority. (Seriously, read it -- it rocks.) An English teacher and a librarian had set up the One-Book-One-School program, which exists side-by-side with a more standard Summer Reading program, developing a study guide/brochure for students and parents. It explains the program, and gives questions the students should answer after they read. Notice that it also encourages the parents to read the book so they can discuss it with their kids, and allows parents who object to the book to contact the coordinating English teacher to get an alternate book for their kid to read.

Apparently giving the parents final authority over what their kids read isn't enough for the BTW principal, though. When the program coordinators refused to choose a different book, the principal cancelled the whole program.

It was pointed out in comments to the Techdirt article, multiple times, that the principal could've done nothing to more effectively encourage all the students to eagerly read this book. [wry smile] A few people suggested that this might've been the hidden purpose behind the cancellation, but I think that's giving too much credit where it's probably not due.

In response, Cory Doctorow and his publisher, Tor, have donated 200 copies of the book to the school. I'd be interested in hearing what the school does with them, considering the principal's actions so far.

Oh, and note that the school's more standard summer reading program already includes Little Brother. o_O So apparently the principal is okay with the eleventh graders reading the book, but thinks it would be harmful for the ninth, tenth and twelfth graders...?

If you're interested in reading Little Brother, which I highly recommend, Cory offers the e-book on his site for free, in pretty much any file format you might want. Check it out.

Angie

Give-Away on ARe

ARe (All Romance e-Books) is releasing a set of eleven novellas this month, all "bad boy" romances by a variety of writers. A few of them are even m/m, which is great -- ARe is very supportive of GLBT romances.

They're doing a big promotion/give-away thing, too -- the top prize is a $50 gift certificate for ARe, which is enough to buy all eleven e-books with some cash left over. I get most of my romance e-books from ARe (I'm still Neanderthal enough to prefer PDFs, and that's one of the formats they offer) so this is pretty cool. Anyone else who's into romances, head over to the Bad Boys Giveaway page and check it out.

Angie

Review and Giveaway

Pattycake at Mrs. Condit Reads Books reviewed an ARC of Captive Magic and seemed to like it a lot:

Captive Magic by Angela Benedetti is a wild ride of a story that starts out with a touch of the paranormal, then takes a left turn into the Twilight Zone! The blurb covers the bare bones of the tale, but to really appreciate the unique and original twists that this story takes, you need to check it out for yourself.

Click through for the rest.

There's also an interview where I ramble on for a while about such things as how I got into writing fantasy romance, which had to do with the early mainstream fantasy and "futuristic" romances falling so far short of the mark, in my opinion as a long-time SF and fantasy fan.

If you leave a comment on the review post, you'll be entered in a drawing for a complete set of the Sentinels books -- three novels and a short story.

Thanks to Pattycake -- I'm so glad she liked the book! -- and to Mrs. Condit for hosting the review and giveaway.

Captive Magic will be release on 4 September.

Angie

Free Art

The Getty Museum has released 4600 pieces of art to be freely used -- including commercial use -- so long as the museum is credited. Whee, book covers! If you're indie pubbing and doing your own cover art, this can be a great resource.

Angie

Reading on 25 July in Seattle

On Thursday, 25 July, I'm going to be reading at a Gay Romance Northwest special SF/Fantasy event, at the University Bookstore in Seattle, along with Astrid Amara, Ginn Hale and Laylah Hunter. The U Bookstore is at 4326 University Way NE Seattle, WA 98105, and the event starts at 7pm. It's free, so I hope everyone in the area who likes SF, Fantasy and/or gay romance will come down to hang out with us.

This event is a lead-in to the Gay Romance Northwest Meet-Up on 14 September, at the Seattle Central Library, in the Microsoft Auditorium. The library's at 1000 4th Ave Seattle, WA 98104, right downtown. This is a one day event, with registration starting at noon, the event itself from 1pm to 5pm, and Happy Hour from 5pm to 7pm for folks who can't stand to leave and want to stay and chat a while longer. (I'll be there the whole time, and hopefully we'll get a group to go to dinner after. [crossed fingers])

Early registration for the Meet-Up is $15; it goes up to $25 on 1 August. This is a great price; I've been to a lot of conventions and conferences, and I haven't seen one-day prices this low for a couple of decades. Pre-register here.

Writers attending the Meet-Up in September:

Astrid Amara
Talya Andor
Eric Andrews-Katz
Cate Ashwood
Heidi Belleau
Angela Benedetti
Sarah Black
Kade Boehme
L.C. Chase
Megan Derr
Stormy Glenn
Amelia Gormley
Ginn Hale
Lou Harper
Daisy Harris
Laylah Hunter
Amber Kell
Nicole Kimberling
Morticia Knight
Pender Mackie
Finn Marlowe
Sasha L. Miller
M.J. O'Shea
Rick R. Reed
Devon Rhodes
P.D. Singer
Tara Spears
Andrea Speed
Ethan Stone
Lou Sylvre
Anne Tenino
Piper Vaughn

This event is being hosted by Old Growth Northwest, a non-profit organization working to support a complex ecosystem of writers and readers in the Pacific Northwest. Thanks to them for helping put on these events!

A New Year Starting With Free Stuff

I hope everyone had a great holiday and is humming along back at work. I'm doing well -- could hardly be worse after 2012 -- and have a couple of major goals for this year. One is to write at least 250K words of fiction. I've done that before, should be able to do it again, and have joined a challenge through one of the mailing lists I'm on to help encourage me along the way. On track so far, yay.

The other is to get into indie publishing this year. I have backlist stories that are sitting on my hard drive, unavailable to anyone who doesn't hang out on pirate sites, and I need to get those back up and available. I also have stories that've collected multiple positive rejections -- the kind that say, essentially, "Good story, well written, not buying it, enjoyed reading it, looking forward to reading more from you." If you have to be rejected, that's the kind of rejection you want to get, but it's still a rejection. I have some stories that've gotten multiples of these, from multiple professional editors. I figure any story that multiple pro editors thought was well written and enjoyed reading would probably be enjoyed by readers too, so I'm going to start putting them up myself.

To help me along with that, I downloaded and printed out the Smashwords formatting guide, figuring that was a good place to start. Then, in a great piece of serendipity, I heard that Adobe is giving away free copies of a lot of its older-version software, stuff that it's been using phone-home DRM on for a number of years while newer versions have been released. It's no longer cost effective for them to maintain the validation servers for their older packages, so rather than cut off all the customers who've handed them money for their software packages, they've released free, non-DRMed copies of this stuff, and it's open for anyone to grab. The list includes both Photoshop and InDesign, and I've grabbed copies of both. If you're thinking of indie pubbing, or if you're doing it already but have been saving up for expensive high-level software, I highly suggest you grab it too: Free Adobe Software. I have no idea how long this is going to last, so get it while you can.

And major props to Adobe for being cool about this. Plenty of companies in the same position just say, "Too bad, buy the new version, here's a percent-off coupon," and leave it at that. Making sure that the honest customers who've handed them money in the past can keep using the software they've paid for is a class act. Letting other people (like me) try these older versions for free is also very classy, and might make them some money in the future, if I like these tools and decide to upgrade.

Angie

Free Story -- Birthdays Suck

I just put Birthdays Suck up on my web site. This is a free short story, part of the Sentinels series, set back in the early nineties when Paul was a teenager. It's Paul's birthday, and he's not at all happy about it, because he's sure his life is pretty much over.

Note that this story has a MAJOR spoiler for A Hidden Magic. If you haven't read that, and plan to, you'll want to read that first, then go read "Birthdays Suck" afterward.

Enjoy!

Angie

Free Story Plus Convention

Hey, all! [wave] I'm here at WorldCon in Chicago and having a great time. I just got back from a reading and Q&A session with John Scalzi, who's always entertaining, and who has a short story (I'm not even going to try to remember the title; it's long and funny) up for a Hugo this year. I'm also hoping to get into Laura Resnick's Bheerfest thing this evening, if one or two people ahead of me on the list don't show up, which would be pretty cool. (I don't drink beer, but I'd love to sit at a table with Laura Resnick and BS.)

I also have a free story called Birthdays Suck up at Cryselle's Bookshelf. It's set in the Sentinel verse and is about Paul's 17th birthday. It has no sex in it, so it's safe for folks who aren't into graphic sex in their fiction, but be aware that there's a major spoiler in this story, if you haven't read A Hidden Magic yet.

I'll put this up as a free read on my own site in two or three weeks, something like that, but for now it's only available at Cryselle's place; my thanks to her for hosting it. :)

Angie

Over at the Torquere LiveJournal Today

I'm hosting the Torquere LiveJournal Community today, talking about Emerging Magic and anything else that comes to mind. We have candied bacon, so come on over and hang for a while.

I'm going to do a drawing tomorrow for a $10 Torquere gift certificate; for every post of mine you comment on over there today (up through noon Pacific time tomorrow) you'll get a slip in the drawing. I'll be posting throughout the day, so check back a few times, or just wait till later and do it all at once -- maybe during a gap in the Olympics coverage or something. :)

Angie

Blogging at Torquere

I'm hosting my publisher's blog today, and I'll be giving a $10 Torquere gift certificate to one of the commenters. Check out my first post for details, and a discussion of holiday and climate and assumptions. There'll be more posts later in the day for more chances to win. (Except I'm going to bed as soon as I have all this posted, so the next one won't be for a while. :) )

Angie

Q&A at Grave Tells

I'm doing a Q&A session over at Grave Tells today, and they'll be raffling off a copy of A Hidden Magic. There are a eight different ways to get a ticket in the raffle hat, so hop over and enter. :)

Angie

Free Story -- "Custody"

Cryselle is a reviewer who does a "Thousand Word Thursday" feature where she posts a photo and invites writers to send her a short fic based on it. Last Thursday's pic was of a cute little green dragon, and it spawned a short story (about 2500 words -- yes, I'm an overachiever sometimes :D ) about him and his people, called Custody.

Flicker keeps showing up at Branden's cottage, even though the tiny dragonling is supposed to live with Branden's ex, Tol. Branden and Tol can't live together, but neither is happy apart, and Flicker's refusal to understand that he only has one person now isn't helping at all.

(For folks not into m/m, there's no sex in this one, so you can click through safely. ;) )

Angie

Some Book Recs

I'm up at my mom's doing Holiday Stuff, plus trying to write, and (kinda-sorta) keep up with online stuff only not really, so this is going to be short.

Judy Tarr has published a collection of her horse blogs in a book called Writing Horses -- The Fine Art of Getting it Right. This is a book about writing horse stuff the right way, by a writer who also breeds horses. I've been reading these blog posts all along over at the Book View Cafe, and I definitely want this book so I can have all the good stuff in one place. The info is presented in a way that particularly serves writers who are writing about horses. I've written a bit of horse stuff using horse reference books intended for people who have and/or ride horses, and Judy's method is definitely better if you're writing instead of riding. Highly recommended.

I know I've mentioned Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Freelancer's Survival Guide here before. She started posting chapters on her blog for free back in early 2009, believing that the economy made it imperative that the info get out to people immediately, rather than in the year or three it would've taken to shop a proposal around, write the book, then wait for the steady but slow gears of New York publishing to get it into bookstores. This is an awesome collection of info, experience, do-and-don't lists, things to think about, assorted resources, and things you never knew you absolutely needed to know. It's useful for freelancers of every kind, but examples pertaining to writers turn up fairly often. :) The link above goes to a page where you can buy the paperback version (580 pages!), but it's also available as an e-book, and it's still up on Kris's blog in chunks for free. Any writer who's making or hoping to make money on their fiction should read this, in whatever format. Me, I'm going for the paperback.

Angie

Free Halloween Stories

I'm driving the bus over at Torquere Social today, on LiveJournal. I'll be posting throughout the day, and for every one of my posts you comment on between now and noon (Pacific) tomorrow (to allow for folks in other timezones), I'll throw a slip with your name on it into a bowl. The drawing is for a bundle of my Halloween stories -- three short stories, all set in the Hidden Magic universe, plus my ghost story "A Spirit of Vengeance," which is a novelette. Two of the shorts, "Chasing Fear" and "Candy Courage" are from years past, but "Reach Out and Touch" is brand new, just released yesterday.

I have two posts up now, and will be posting more later on. Come over, hang out, chat, and enter to win free fiction. :)

Angie

Anniversary Contest

Torquere has been around for seven years in September, which is, like, practically pre-Gutenberg for a small e-press. :) They're having a contest to celebrate -- a scavenger hunt, with a Nook as the major prize, plus a bunch of smaller prizes. Check out the contest page (the last link below, at the bottom) each day in September to participate in the anniversary celebration and try for some great free stuff. :)

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Torquere Press Celebrates 7th Anniversary!

Seven years?! No, we can hardly believe it either. Seven years of bringing readers the best, the sexiest, the most romantic GLBT fiction. And to celebrate, we're giving away prizes -- great themed gift baskets, gift certificates for free books every day, and a scavenger hunt that will give readers a chance to collect a deck of cards that will win big -- a Nook from Barnes & Noble!

Readers will get the chance to "collect cards" by visiting each participating author's website, blog, or Facebook page. By collecting all the cards and filling in the form, players have the chance to win free books daily, a gift basket once each week, (including BDSM, werewolf and ménage themed baskets), and be entered in the grand prize drawing for the Nook.

We'll also be having random sales via our blog GLBT Romance, Facebook, and Twitter

With bestselling GLBT romance authors like Chris Owen, Tory Temple, Kiernan Kelly, P.D. Singer, Sean Michael, and B.A. Tortuga, you'll have a blast playing along. Just log onto Torquere Press's website, check out the contest page, and start hunting!

So, ya feel lucky, dude? Let's play!

New Release

I have a new story out, a short called Unfinished Business. It takes place right after A Hidden Magic wraps, focusing on a couple of supporting characters -- master mage Aubrey and his apprentice Cal -- and a bit of unfinished business left hanging after the novel was over. It's short and fun and sexy; I just had to write it and let the boys finish what they'd been doing earlier. :)

Drawing: I'm hanging out on Torquere's LiveJournal community today, playing host, talking about whatever comes to mind, and holding a drawing. For each of my posts you comment on today, you get a ticket in the drawing, and tomorrow I'll pull a name and send the winner a $5 Torquere gift certificate.

Sale: It just happens that Torquere's having a sale today and tomorrow. Enter "prejuly" in the coupon code box when you check out, and you'll get 15% off your purchase. Add that to the fact of the backlist books' prices going up on 1 July, and that makes these two days a really wonderful time to grab some bargains. Or to just have your five dollars go that much farther if you win the drawing. :)

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From "Unfinished Business:"

After a morning of saving the world, apprentice mage Cal Toscani heads down and works a full day in his busy restaurant, because foiling the bad guy doesn't pay the bills. After midnight, bruised and aching from the aforementioned foiling, and exhausted from a long day of work, Cal goes home hoping for a hot bath, a nice massage and some sex, not necessarily in that order. His lover and master, Aubrey Fletcher, unfortunately remembers that he'd given Cal a lesson that morning before everything got exciting, and he's determined that Cal's going to finish that lesson before anything else happens -- yes, right now. Cal finds himself naked in bed, trying to figure out how to remove Aubrey's spell, while a naked Aubrey does his best to be distracting. Cal's pretty sure he's going to explode long before he figures the damn thing out!

==========

Cal grinned, tossed his jacket onto a chair, then spread his arms and did a slow rotation in place. "No orc bites!" he reported, his expression a parody of relief.

Aubrey just raised an eyebrow, then pointed at him and drew a twitchy little sigil Cal couldn't quite catch before it was gone. An ominously familiar warm weight on either side of his head made him groan. Those damn ass's ears again!

"Now?" he griped. "Come on, I just finished work, I'm tired, I want a shower and was kind of hoping for a nice massage and sex. Can't we finish this tomorrow?"

His master crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway. "Do you think enemies--"

"--will wait until you're rested and ready?" Cal chorused with him. "No, I know, but come on!"

Aubrey just stared at him.

"Fuck."

One corner of Aubrey's mouth twitched and his eyes twinkled up into Cal's. "Maybe." He uncrossed his arms and moved closer, leaning in until their bodies touched from chest to knees. "Maybe you need some incentive?"

Cal felt a hand slide between them and rub at his suddenly-interested cock. The hand moved away again immediately and he moaned in protest.

"You have six pairs of ears right now," said Aubrey. His eyes were still twinkling and the old bastard sounded like he was having a grand time. "They're quite colorful and rather cheery, but I'm assuming you want to get rid of them. For every pair you banish, I'll escalate." He lifted up on his toes for a moment and gave Cal a quick kiss, then backed away.

==========

Read the Rest

Reject and Resubmit, and a Great Resource

One of the stories I have out on submission bounced last night, although with a nice paragraph of personal comments, including the fact that they found the story "intellectually interesting." Hey, I'll take that. :) Also some comments on POV which might be valid, but reworking it as suggested would take like 90% of the suspense out of the story, so I think I'll keep it as-is and see what a few other editors think.

(I've decided to stop specifying which stories I'm discussing in the back-and-forthing, unless/until they sell. We know it's all supposed to be about the story and nothing else, but human nature says that making it easy for an editor to exercise the Google-fu and see that sixteen editors before them have bounced the story is probably not a great idea. [wry smile])

I also signed up with Duotrope and threw them a few bucks. I've been using them on and off for a while now and they're a great resource; it's only fair to contribute. For anyone who hasn't been there, Duotrope provides submission info on like a bazillion fiction and poetry markets. Their searches are easy to do and provide all the basic info you need to sort through markets, with quick links to the market's own web site for more detailed info.

Signing up lets you create an account (which is free, by the way) and gives you access to a personal database to track your submissions. You can enter info about your stories, which lets you run quicker targetted searches when it's time to send something out. It also tracks how long a story's been out, how long it took the market to respond, and what kind of response you got; collecting that info lets them display, on the market's page, what their minimum, mean average, median and maximum response times have been over the past year, what their accept/reject percentage is, how often they reject with a form versus a personal note, etc.

Good stuff, highly recommended.

Angie

Failure

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has been posting a book she's writing entitled The Freelancer's Guide to Survival on her blog a chapter at a time. I think I mentioned it here before, but in case I didn't, she's been at it for a while now and has compiled a lot of great info and advice.

Ms. Rusch is a writer and editor who's worked in a number of genres (I'm familiar with her from SF/Fantasy -- she used to edit F&SF) and does this stuff full time, which is the definition of "successful" in the writing world if ever there was one. She's also run a couple of businesses, one in publishing and one not, so she knows what she's talking about.

She's posting the book on her blog with a tip jar, rather than just writing it and letting us all wait until it's been published, because the current economic mess has forced a lot of people into freelancing, and is encouraging a lot more to give it a shot. The info needs to be out there now, not two years from now, so she's making it available as a community service.

Note also that the info she's giving is applicable to all kinds of freelancers, whether you're a writer or an artist or a landscaper or an architect or own a shop -- if you're your own boss, this book has great info you'll find helpful.

The most recent chapter is on Failure and even if you don't read any of the other parts, I think you should read this one. Even if you're not any kind of freelancer, there's still some stuff in here to make you go, "Huh."

Because the bottom line is that everyone fails. We all have failures in our past, and unless we get hit by lightning five minutes from now, we'll have failures in our future. It's part of being a human and trying to get along in the world. Certainly people who've achieved great things have all (so far as I can tell) had some failures on their resumes, and often some pretty spectacular ones. The trick is what you do when you fail, how you respond to things coming crashing down. Do you pull yourself up and keep going, or just sit there and cry and swear you'll never try X ever again?

Which made me think about romances, because seriously, I wish I had a nickel for every romance book I've ever read where the thirty-some-year-old hero is cold and snarky to all women because his mama was mean to him when he was a small boy and he's Never Trusted A Woman Since. Or where the heroine was betrayed by her first teenage love, or had a boy she liked laugh at her, or whatever, and has therefore Never Let Herself Fall In Love.

Really? I mean, seriously, I know there are a few people here and there who do have reactions that over-the-top to single incidents, but they have major issues, you know? I've always eyerolled over these kinds of characters, but I've never articulated why I thought they were idiots until now. But reading Ms. Rusch's Failure chapter made me see that this is exactly it -- these characters had one failure and in response they shut down an entire chunk of their lives and personalities. These people need a lot of therapy. And yet it's presented in romances as a normal and understandable way to respond to a painful setback, something which requires careful nurturing by The Great Love Of His/Her Life to bring them back into a normal mode of living and feeling.

Yet in reality, most of us have multiple romantic setbacks before finding someone to live with and love for the rest of our lives. And even the person you thought was The One might turn out not to be, ten or twenty years down the line. When failure happens, we keep going. Sure, we might need some time to cry and some time to wallow in life's suckitude, but then we get up and keep going.

Then, however many years later, we look back and see that everything we experienced in our lives up to that point, including all the pain and all the failures and all the embarassment, has contributed to making us who we are now, and putting us in the situation we're in right now. I have a lot of suck in my own background, some of it pretty darned major, but if it all contributed to getting me where I am now -- a published writer with the best husband in the world -- then I don't regret a bit of it. Sure, I have occasional fantasies of hopping into a time machine and changing this or that, things I regret or which still embarrass me to think about. Then I wonder whether I'd have ended up here if this or that had been different, and suddenly I don't want to change anything.

Learn from it? Sure. But it all brought me to where I am, and it's all important. Good enough.

Angie

Raffle

Today and tomorrow, PD Singer, Mara Ismine and I are taking over the Torquere Social community on LiveJournal to celebrate the release of our mini anthology, Walk the Plank. A number of the posts -- well, most of them so far -- are marked PIRATE RAFFLE in their titles. If you comment on those posts and participate in whatever activities we've got going there, you'll be entered into the drawing for one of three free copies of the anthology. For each post you participate in, you'll get one chit in the hat; hang out with us both days and you could really stuff the raffle. :)

The first Pirate Post is here, with Mara on watch alone for a while 'cause she's in England. I chime in here with a story from my misspent youth [cough] and an invitation for others to share, for a raffle entry.

We'll be around all day today, and tomorrow through midnight Eastern or so. Come hang with us, have fun, and enter to win one of the free anthos!

Angie

Come Spend the Day

I'm driving the bus over on Torquere Social today, so come on over and hang out with me. I'll be posting a series of questions and contests, and collecting names of folks who participate into a hat (well, probably a bowl, but close enough) and drawing a name for a five dollar Torquere gift certificate. (You can get about half my backlist for five dollars, so if you've wanted to try my stories but haven't had the money, this'd be a great opportunity. :D )

I'll be posting throughout the day, so check in whenever you're around. [wave]

Angie