Writtenwyrdd

Ralan's has a page full of great writing-related links.

http://www.ralan.com/a.writing.php

Call for submissions

Phoenix Sullivan on her blog has a call for submissions to a new anthology, theme Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever.  Details below.

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Details
Stories anywhere from 1000 up to 10,000 words around the theme:
Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever.

You're kidding, right? Bear with me. It's a theme that hasn't been done to death (yeah, pun intended), and it's not as limiting as you might first imagine.

Think about it. Just how really "gone" are species when we can still study their bones, their pictures, the imprints they made on this earth? Why are we so fascinated by their past existence and why do we mourn their loss?

What would it have been like to run with the last of the mammoths? What is it like to fight governments for dwindling habitat or confront a poacher for his prize? What will the future hold for third-world countries if all the bees should die out?

Perhaps your story will envision rewilding Siberian tigers today or saving them through genetic engineering tomorrow. Perhaps it will examine flood geology of the past or look to the day the megavolcano simmering beneath Yellowstone Park finally erupts.

It could be revisionist history where a fateful asteroid strike 65 million years ago never happened and mammals were hunted by the reptiles to extinction. Or it could be the story of a modern-day Dian Fossey risking all to protect a dying breed.

Whether set in the past, present or future, as long as your story's theme touches on the subject of extinction, it's welcome.

So if I submit a story, it's in, right? Not so fast. There will be standards applied and editing performed. And if I don't receive enough quality stories to pad the volume out nicely, then maybe we'll just publish ALL the stories, unedited (and unpaid), to a dedicated blog instead. And, yeah, I'll choose which stories make the cut for the ebook.

The Good Stuff: What It Pays
Pay is 1/4-cent per word (that's a penny for every 4-word thought you have) on publication and a prorated part of 25% royalties paid on net whenever any significant amount builds up. Your actual percentage will depend on what the ratio is between the number of words you contribute and the total number of words in the volume.

To do the math, if you contribute a 4000-word story, that's a $10 advance. And if the volume has 60,000 words and earns out its advances, then you would get 15% of the 25% royalty -- or 3.75%. In real numbers (the U.S. $ kind), that's $3.75 for every $100 in sales.

Realistically, will there be any royalties? Who knows. It likely won't amount to much, and there's an option (highly encouraged!) of investing back into the book -- using a combined pool of payments to promote sales (blog tour prizes, gift cards, etc). After all, this is a proving ground for us to figure out what works in promotion and what doesn't.

Hey, isn't Amazon paying 70% royalties -- is this a scam? Not at all. The 70% rate only applies to books priced $2.99 and above. Let's face it, close family may pay that, but not too many other people will. The rate is 35% for books priced $.99 to $2.99 and there's a nominal book delivery fee Amazon tacks on plus administrative/production costs (mine) coming out of that, too. Things like rights to the picture for the cover. Plus, we'll probably promote the book for free at times to generate interest and see how that affects future sales. You can grab your contributor copies during one of the free periods. If we do play with the price point and sell some copies at $2.99 or above, you'll get your cut of a pooled rate of 60%.

Rights remain with you. I'll initially put the book on Amazon (US and UK sites). Here are some other venues I'll look at targeting:

• Barnes & Noble's PubIt!
• Borders
• Kobo
• iTunes
• iPad
• Android
• Diesel
• Smashwords
• Sony
• eBook.com
• BooksOnBoard
• Powell's eBooks
• Fictionwise
• Apple iStore

If anyone wants to publish it out on other sites, that's great, too, so long as royalties come through me first so I can track and divvy and make sure the formats and price points comply with those pesky contracts online publishers require you to abide by.

What about a print version? Always a possibility. Let's see how the e-version does first, though, shall we?

Kick-butt first line contest!!!

Kick butt first line contest at the blog of Jamie Rush.  She does this annually, and it starts February 1st.  So check back for the details as to how you may enter.  Currently, the link takes you to the winners and entries from 2010.  Keep checking back to see this year's entry page.

Merry Christmas!

Have a lovely holiday, peeps.  Coffee and eggnog for me...Mmmmmm.

Happy Solstice!

Happy Solstice, everyone.  I hope the day and the season is joyful and that you find what you seek during the next year.  May your hearts be warm, even as it freezes outside. 

I wish I could have stayed up for the lunar eclipse, but I'm afraid sleep called and I answered. 

Amazon's continued stonewalling

I thought you might be interested in my live chat of this morning.  I have deleted anything extraneous:

You are now connected to Tulsi from Amazon.com.

Me:You have closed/put a hold on my account and are not responding to my Qs. This is related to an unauthorized access to my account a few days ago, which I notified you about. I have replied to the last email, and you have failed to take any action, e.g. remove the hold on my account, and you also have failed to respond to my last email or any of them with useful or correct info. I spoke to customer service and they said my account or a response should be arriving soon, and that was 2 days ago. 9:20:13 AM

Tulsi:Hello, my name is Tulsi. I'll be happy to help you today.9:20:23 AM

Me:I am waiting for my account to be taken off hold. Please read the first post.9:21:05 AM

Tulsi:I am really sorry to hear about this.Let me check what best I can do for your to resolve it.9:22:27 AM

Me: Thank you. As I said in emails and speaking to customer service, your emails said you closed my account, and I have open orders as well as gift certificate money which hasn't yet been redeemed.9:23:18 AM

Tulsi:I'm sorry you've been unable to access your account. As you're probably aware from the email you received, our Account Specialists found there may have been unauthorized activity on your account, and to prevent further access, your account was placed on hold.9:26:25 AM

Tulsi:This is not intended to cause you inconvenience -- it was done to keep your account information secure. Although I'm unable to provide you with full details, I can contact an Account Specialist to let them know you called. I just need to get some information from you, and they will follow-up with you within 24 hours.9:26:35 AM

Me:This will be the third time, but okay. I am the one who caught the unauthorized access, and the fact is that your system was hacked to provide that access. I removed my payment options immediately and deleted the order immediately, as I was sitting there when your order confirmation came in. I changed my password immediately, as well, because the hacker changed it first. So, you should at least allow me to see what is what and where my Christmas orders are at. 9:28:30 AM

Tulsi:I have forwarded your concern to our account team and they will get back to you.9:31:35 AM

Tulsi:withing 24 hours.9:31:40 AM

Now, ask me if I'm expecting that promise to come true.  Cuz I'm not!

Holiday Hiatus

Hey guys, Joy of the season and happy new year to you all in advance.  I'm calling a hiatus on the blogging until the end of January.  I might post here and there, but I have a lot going on--new puppy to collect, some vacation and a home project or three--and I need to take a break from blogging.  After 4 years, I am feeling a bit unenthusiastic. 

Rest assured, I will be back, though.  I'm going to keep to the M/W/F schedule, or close to it, instead of daily posts, though.

Happy writing!

And some good news

I mentioned on Facebook, but not yet here I think that I was asked to allow a blog post to be used in a text book.  This is really just a long quote, a 'fair use' sort of thing, but it's quite flattering.  An Australian text on English studies by a major publisher of educational books.  Very flattering to my ego, which always likes attention, thank you very much.  I have no idea of when or what book it'll be in, but I'll let you know if and when I hear about it.

More on my 'issues' with the Giant Internet Megacorporation

I'm still dealing with Amazon's draconian closure of my account after it got hacked yesterday, but a found a spot where they will call you if you select it in the help section of their site.  I'd overlooked it yesterday.  They are now telling me that they didn't really close my account, just put a hold on it 'to ensure no illegal activity now that the barn door is opened' basically.

I tell you, the initial email says they closed the account and tells me to open a new account if I want to do business with them, no recourse or offers to straighten out the ensuing mess.  The phone representative spoke perfect English, although she was, I'm sure, Indian by her accent, and she was apologetic and couldn't see into my account due to the hold.  Her supervisor also said the same but assured me that Amazon would get back to me and my issues were being relayed.  (Basically, I've spent my Xmas gift certificates and if they shut me out, all that money is essentially stolen from me by Amazon, as well as all my previous order information and info about pending orders.)

They asked me to be patient and felt it would all be fixed in a day or two.  I'm no overly optimistic.  I'll keep you all updated.

Now, to be realistic, Giant Megacorporations Who Operate On The Internet are used to being faceless entities that can pretty much fire off emails about issues without much thought.  (Not that that's fair to the customers.)  So little puny me having a complaint means that it's not going to be an immediate or immediately human response.  Because that's the way they operate.  It does not make me wrong, however, and when I get this pissed about something, I don't let it go. 

Meantime, I don't have to like their stupid system, but I'll have to work with it.  They need to be fair to me as the victim of the hacking event, though. 

By the way, the rain stopped maybe 2 or 3am and the waters receded.  They got the one road filled with gravel so you can drive it, and the other didn't wash out enough to collapse.  But it was 11 degrees for some friends down in Atlanta area, but 57 here yesterday, which just beats all for weird weather, doesn't it?

My drive home...

weather report:  Maine is experiencing flooding in Southern Aroostook County, where I live and work.  I have two roads where my remote office can be reached, and one washed out this afternoon.  They closed the office and sent us home early because the other access road was a mess.  See the below picture.  I am not certain there will still be a road in the morning...

Sorry this was so dark.  It was overcast and twilight, and my phone camera is not the best.

Amazon fail (again)

This time, it's me.  I was one of the thousands of people that had an account hacked.  Amazon denies any responsibility, of course.

What happened was really odd.  I get up early, supposedly to walk on my treadmill or wave my way gently through a desultory attempt at tai chi.  So, like usual, I was playing Farmville on Facebook, and I saw an email arrived from Amazon saying I'd ordered something.  I hadn't. 

So I try to sign in to my account, but the password didn't work.  I reset the password, found a $200 order for a computer part addressed to some guy in SoCal with United Arab Emirates at the bottom of the address (made no sense, I know); and they had even entered someone else's credit card info to purchase the stuff!

After deleting both the order and all my payment options, I contacted Amazon.  The only way you can get them is via email, and I heard back just now, them saying it wasn't their fault.  I must have given away my account information, they say. 

Sure, Amazon. Sure I did.  Like I would hand some stranger my password.  And no I never respond to emails requesting information like that, and like I have had one asking for my amazon password in recent days.  Sheesh.

Long and short:  Call and check recent activity on all your credit cards.  I have been told that a hack of a few thousand account occurred yesterday/last night, and it may include you, too.

All things considered, this whole thing appeared really weird and made no sense.  They didn't charge my account, but someone else's credit card.  Since less than 10 minutes passed between order notification and my deleting the order, no harm done.  But amazon deleted my account and I don't know if my pending Christmas orders are going through or not.  And I don't know if they refused payment to the third party vendors from whom I was ordering!  So I don't know what to reorder.  Gah.  I think I will go with Barnes & Noble after this.  First blaming me, then the draconian response without clueing me in first?  Thanks so much.  After the at least $10,000 I've spent through them, you would think that they could be a bit more considerate!

Rant over.  For now.  *grumble grumble*

More not writing:

I worked on this a bit more today, just an hour or so.  I cropped it down to an 8x10 proportion and I think I like it better this way.   Now, can you see the minute changes to the face and the bustier?  One thing that bothers me is the near hand looks a bit too large, even though the proportions are correct to the photograph I used as my model from my "cheat book" of posing models.  I hate to have to redo it, but I will likely do so.

Oh, and while searching for some useful information on sword belts and other gear, I found a reference to an interesting item:  the Sword Belt, e.g. a sword that is a belt!  Check this amusing forum about it here.  There are links to the company as well.

Instead of writing:

 

You'll have to click on this to see it better.  This is a partially finished preliminary sketch.  I'm still trying to figure out Painter 11, and I really prefer pencil sketching and drawing to digital painting, so it's a bit of an uphill battle.

Well, there's nothing to say today...

This blog is suffering from ennui, or my laziness, or the winter blahs or something.  Hope you are having a lovely winter so far.  We have 19 degree weather at 4pm and just got 6 inches of snow.  It's staying below freezing during the day this week, so I have to conclude it'll be this way for the forseeable future. 

I pick up my puppy in mid January, and I have 2 weeks off then in which to seal the basement concrete and rewire the basement (as well as play with a cute fuzzy puppy).  (A friend, who is a master electrician, will really be doing the work.  I'll just be handing him tools and paying for the stuff.) 

Other than that, I haven't been writing much but I have been doing some drawing.  I like the digital tablet the more I use it, but I don't like Painter 11 yet. 

Winter has arrived!

Big storm today. We're on generator power, and the silly thing has a bown breaker in the transfer switch so only some equipment will work. But we have heat and the well pump has power, so all is well...except I'm bored.

Pick a card, any card...

Have you ever had a cliche or phrase come up in conversation and it occurs to you that if that were literally the case, the world would be vastly different?

Think of it as a world building exercise, but work with me here.  Picture a cliche that you hear a lot, a bad example being "happy as a clam (at high tide)."  Most of you likely didn't know the end of that reference, but that's it.  So, having a dumb cliched phrase to work with, try to decide what that means in terms of life in the universe as we know it.  Then consider if it were literally true.  What if clams literally were happy at high tide, and that was important?  Why would it be important? And if it were literally true, how could it affect your fictional world if they were UNhappy all of a sudden?  Are clams the keepers of sanity, or a strewn barrier to keep Poseidon from wreaking havoc across the land?  What if our overfishing or the recent oil slicks along the coast have left a breach in the barriers, and unhappy clams (e.g. dead or dying) allow evil from the bottom of the sea to enter into the country?  What if, similar to McCaffery's Pern, the ancients seeded the world with clams that are genetically designed to keep the evil sea monster at bay (an indicator of it being red tides, for example.)

See, you can get a lot of ideas just from a "dumb" cliche.

What brought this post idea up was that, yesterday morning, my coworker mentioned a comic in the paper where the people commented they could now afford to die because all their debts were paid.  he used the term "cashing in your chips," and I thought, Hmmm, what if you had to be able to afford to die in order to actually cash in your chips?  How different would the world be then?  Imagine a world where you can't die, but perhaps you want to most desperately.  I can think of a number of permutations to that.

Perhaps the twist is that the world your character experiences is actually Hell and she wants out, to be born in "heaven" which is the "real" world.  Perhaps it's believed you have 20 virgins to wait on you after you go, but the worthiness is determined by your monetary value when you elect to die (meaning that it's also bad to die on accident, because you would then go to your reward in a less advantageous position than you intended.)  Perhaps the crux of your story involves how a crime like murder is changed when the persons are being slaughtered to prevent them from attaining a certain level, perhaps to change the politics of the afterlife, sway it toward one god, political party or race?  It would be a weird type of jihad or crusade then, wouldn't it?

The point of this ramble being that, if you just consider the possibilities, you can come up with new worlds that suggest new story angles from just about any inspiration at all.

Happy writing!