Blogetary (Weblog + Commentary = Blogetary)

to the book vendor of your choice? One of the authors at Drollerie Press is hosting a blog contest. Review a Drollerie Press book by October 10 and be entered in a drawing to win. You can read about it here.

Again, for some reason the pics I’m trying to upload don’t seem to want to show up on this blog and the WordPress forums aren’t very helpful as they only seem to be for people who know code and not for ordinary folk like me who just want a blog. So, if you came by and want to see the cover art then try checking out my blogs on Blogger or Live Journal.

Drollerie Press talks about their upcoming new releases here.

Drollerie Press (which is having a live chat on Sunday, September 27 at 4 pm Eastern and will be giving away books during the chat) is hosting yet another blog tour and the September theme is how music influences our writing. For this tour, a number of Drollerie Press authors are hosting each other on our blogs. I am hosting Isabelle Santiago. You can read my post on Angela Korrati’s blog here.

Isabelle Santiago is a romance writer who likes to mix it up. The author of “Surfacing,” “Cinematic Royalty” and “Dark Hollywood Nights,” she is not content to write the typical alpha male/lady in distress tales of love and/or lust. She instead writes more unconventional, and even uncomfortable, love stories. And while the settings of these romances vary from historical to fantasy to crime to YA to regular old contemporary, they all carry in common the demand from the hero and heroine to be more.  As she notes on her website, the heroine doesn’t choose between bad and good, but between good and better. Every decision brings change, and sometimes sacrifice. People get hurt and life doesn’t always offer a happy ending, but not everyone is looking for a typical romance, either.

Isabelle’s upcoming story through Drollerie Press, “Zerah’s Chosen,” is the first of a series and is high fantasy involving elementals, prophecies and forbidden love. It will be exciting to see what she does with it.

For now, I have the pleasure of hosting her here as she discusses how music has influenced her writing. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce, Isabelle Santiago.

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About two years ago I was introduced to the amazing world of fanmixes. What is a fanmix, you say? Ahhh, well, let me share the incredible magic of this form of fanatical expression.

A fanmix is like a mixtape, devoted to your favorite fandom. It can be about anything. A major character, a couple, an unconventional couple (not someone who ever hooked up in said movie, tv show, or book), a friendship, or even a particular episode or book from a series.

I,  being the music junkie that I am, find this whole concept to be deliciously addictive.

Livejournal has a great community for fanmixes. And I’ve seen a mix for just about everything you can imagine. Which of course, got me searching through my music archive for songs I could put together in some sort of fanmix. The mixes usually tell some sort of story. A progression of the story told, or some new story, from the mixer’s point of view.

Mine turned out more like a soundtrack, chronicling the relationship of two characters in my fantasy series. They’re best friends, but he’s very much in love with her, and she’s very much in love with someone else. Ahhh… isn’t that what makes so much wonderfully angsty music? As an author, I use music all the time to help me create moods, but this differed in that I searched out music specific to two people and their character and relationship arc. What I found was absolute magic and loads of inspiration.

Here’s just a sampling of the songs that made the cut:

Near to You – A Fine Frenzy:

Near to you, I am healing
But it’s taking so long
‘Cause though he’s gone
And you are wonderful
It’s hard to move on
Yet, I’m better near to you.

You and I have something different
And I’m enjoying it cautiously
I’m battle scarred, I am working oh so hard
To get back to who I used to be

Recently I was involved in a discussion on Tribe.net in the Culture Whores tribe about torrent sites. It started out simple enough, I suppose. Someone just wanted to know a little bit more about one, but another person there started in discussing how many torrent sites put up music, art and books for free online and how wrong it is and the discussion was on.

There was one person there who really does believe in the post-currency world and that artists should give up ever getting paid again for their work. And they will get more exposure by giving their work away for free etc. (There’s a word for that, it’s called a scam, but I digress.)  There are certainly a number of people out there who believe the same thing, which would be fine if we really did live in a post-currency world and didn’t need to worry about paying rent or buying food or clothing or kitty litter.

But the truth is that we do live in a world that values money and currency. What’s more, we live in a world that doesn’t really value things that are free. Worth is measured in dollar amounts. So, you may have the world’s most beautiful novel ever written. But if you post it up there for free, people will not value it as much as if either 1) you were paid for it or 2) they had to pay to read it. In fact, many artists guilds and organizations will not recognize an artist (writer/musician/visual) until they have a portfolio of proven work that they were paid for. True, sometimes that means doing some work for free in order to get the paying work, but still, getting paid for your work is one of the ultimate goals. We don’t feel validated about our unless we are paid for it, and people do not value it unless we are paid for it (or they pay for it).

That’s just the way it is, and most of us understand that.

However, we still have to live with the people who think we live in a post-currency world and who think we shouldn’t be offended if we are asked to give our work away or if our work is stolen from us and we never get paid for what we did. And I’m not talking about when you do trades with your colleagues and friends. That’s a different sort of payment and an accepted practice in most places.

I’m talking about the times when a book or piece of music ends up online, free to all the world and suddenly you lose sales, but also about the times when people just don’t seem to understand how much work you do when they say, for example, “can you do up a cool menu for us? This is what we’re offering, but we want it to look like this and sound like this.” A graphic designer friend of mine worked on that type of project for months and her friend/clients never did seem to understand how much work she put into it every time they said, “no, not that” and then changed their mind and asked for something else. Then, after all that, balked at paying her a professional price. I think she ended up making $5-10/hour if that. And she did it because she knew them and was hoping for more business from them, which didn’t happen if I remember correctly.  She is an educated professional and her story is a common one. If I listed all the similar stories I had heard along that same vein from the different artists  and freelancers I know this blog would be too long. It’s a common enough story that people all over write about.

And not just a discussion in a dying social network, it can also be read about on Writers Weekly, as well as freelancers blogs such as Screw You, as well as in all sorts of writers forums and groups. Recently, some books from Drollerie Press found their way onto a blog that was bragging about free books to download. The authors were not happy. They depend on the sales of those books to help them make a living. One of my neighbors has written a fantastic set of how to books for making camera rigs. When his sales dropped he happened by a torrent site and saw that someone had uploaded his book. He was dependent on the sales from that book for his livelihood and someone stole that from him.

Now, there will always be some work that freelancers/writers/painters/graphic designers/musicians, etc do for free, whether for friends or connections or a good cause or because we just get talked into it. The point is, though, that we ARE worth the money we charge; we DO deserve to be paid. We do not deserve to have our livelihood stolen from us and then be given a jaded shrug and told that we’ll “get good exposure.” Good exposure doesn’t pay the bills.

And we need to remember all of this when dealing with our fellow artists/writers/musicians, etc. Trades are fine, but make sure they’re fair. But most of all, be fair to yourself.

THIS JUST IN……..

Karen Mahoney has sold her first novel, The Iron Witch!!!!!

YAY!!!!!!

So, if you haven’t drop by her blog and wish her well!

Just a reminder, there is another blog contest going on that will be over by midnight September 30. I blogged about it a little bit here. And you can see a copy of the September issue of Aoife’s Kiss here.

Ever since the Powers That Be at WordPress decided to change the template people use to work on their blogs, I have been unable to upload any images, so, you will have to go to the link to see what it looks like.

Nonsequitur … this is my 900th post! Wow!

A friend of mine noted my distress on a political discussion on Facebook and tried to remind me it was just political debate and not to take it personally. I could see what she was saying. I went across the street to Curves to get the stress out of my system, but even after that, I couldn’t let it go. I DO take it personally.

The discussions people are having on health care reform are very important. But it’s also the discussions on such things as Separation of Church and State and the right for a woman to do as she wills with her own body and for anyone to believe and express themselves as they see fit. These are all very important discussions. And yes, I take them very personally.You could say I’ve grown up with this huge chip on my shoulder because I don’t think anyone should be relegated to second-class citizen status. And I am especially angry when it happens to me.

Why?

Maybe it was watching my mom scrape enough together to buy a trailer (or mobile home) and raise two daughters on her own. I remember at one point she was making $3.50/hour. And she never went to public assistance or took a second job as a waitress because we lived in small towns where anything she did was a reflection on us. So she worked hard, donated her time at church, and took extra classes when she could to increase her worth at work. She already had a B.S. in English Lit., but apparently that wasn’t good enough to make a living wage.

My dad, on the other hand, because he was a man and mechanic, made more. And rarely paid anything to us when we were kids other than the occasional birthday check.

Where was our church, you ask? Well, like I said. We were in small towns. Any church we went to, Mom had to face being a possible persona non grata because she was a divorcee. She couldn’t be seen getting too friendly with pastors or elders or any male and didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings if she asked for help. So, she pitched in at church, but other than make sure my sister and I had youth groups to go to (that usually cost money one way or another), those churches really didn’t do so much for us as a family. We were second-class citizens at those churches. My sister figured it out before my mom and I did.

I remember at one youth group there was a discussion. The leader asked a question. I raised my hand and answered. He shrugged and asked for another answer and called on the guy behind me. The GUY behind me said virtually the same thing I did. He got recognition for his input. I did not. And that was common.

I left those churches that thought of women as second-class citizens. I left those small towns and found people who I thought would let me express myself. And I found out it’s not just churches and small towns that shut women down. Apparently we’re second-class citizens with some guys who profess to be liberal thinking when it comes to women’s rights.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been shut down in San Francisco and Los Angeles by men who said with their mouths they believed women were equal, and then would turn around and tell me I didn’t have a right to speak up for myself or express an opinion or idea, or told me that I was not talking to them right – not giving them enough respect.  Or would shut me down as soon as I expressed something. As far as they were concerned, I was a second-class citizen. Maybe it’s not because I’m a woman. Maybe it’s because I’m working class or not in their social crowd or not of their class – but I’m still a second-class citizen in their eyes.

Growing up, I watched Mom finagle how to come up with the extra money for my orthodontia and my phenobarbital as a childhood epileptic as well as make sure her other healthy daughter made it to the doctor and dentist and she was able to pay what was needed out of pocket. I watched her stay up late to sew clothes for us instead of buying them and wondering where the fees were going to come from and the new shoes; I watched her creatively make a friend’s donation of several bags of frozen corn last a month because we couldn’t afford food that month. And we did the same thing a little later with a box of frozen pizza bottoms, too.

We were lucky. Mom finally got a job at a place that, by some weird quirk, had her particular accountant’s type job as a union position. The day she became a Teamster was the day we started having real clothes and shoes and groceries in the fridge and were able to go visit the doctor and dentist again on a regular basis. And glasses. Don’t forget glasses. Because of that job.

But, without that job and its benefits? I’m not sure my sister and I would have had the nutrition or wherewithal to get through high school, be healthy, be able to take all those pre-college tests and even get into university.

But not all jobs offer health benefits anymore.  I don’t have benefits and I can’t afford to pay for them on my own. In fact, I’ve been turned because of my weight (which I’m working on and which is due in large part to the lack of thyroid meds I had when I no longer had health benefits because my then employer ceased paying for them). I have friends who are fortunate enough to have jobs now that offer benefits, but one of them picked up her much-needed medication one day and had to pay three times what she normally does because her boss changed the coverage and didn’t tell her or give her another option. Another friend tried to find coverage for her family when her husband was trying to start his own business. They were denied repeatedly because her daughter is developmentally disabled. They are lucky now. Her husband has an employer who covers them and in group insurance plans they can’t deny you. But, what if he loses that job? What if the company goes belly up? So, is my friend’s eight-year-old daughter now suddenly a second-class citizen and not worthy of coverage because of her pre-existing condition? Is my friend who needs to get her medication, if she loses her job or her boss decides to quit paying for coverage – will she suddenly be considered a second-class citizen because she needs access to that medication and can’t afford it without coverage?

Are we not allowed to speak up for ourselves? Do we not have the right to stand up for ourselves and protect our rights? Or are we to be shut down, told to shut up because we’re second-class citizens and not allowed to be heard.

And this brings me to another worry – the Separation of Church and State. It’s something I have vehemently believed in since I was old enough to believe anything. Yes, I am a Christian. But I don’t want any religious form to be dominant in our country. Once that happens, I believe we are in serious trouble. If we call ourselves a “Christian” country, doesn’t that make Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, Atheists and Agnostics second-class citizens? Isn’t that against the Constitution? I had ancestors who fled Europe because of religious persecution. To let any one religious form be dominant is to leave open that possibility of religious persecution against anyone who disagrees.

And it also leaves open the possibility that extremism will take over. And whenever extremism takes over, the women and the children are the ones who end up being the – yes, you got it – second-class citizens. Suddenly, women will no longer have rights to their own bodies or to think on their own or to speak for themselves. And women still have to push against a glass ceiling. And it’s been pointed out that if there were a critical mass of women in higher positions our country would not be in the mess it’s in now, at least not financially.

And people out there who have never had to worry about health care, or food, or clothing, or never been told that they have no right to express themselves, say go to the churches for help. Go to the organizations for help. Work hard. Save money. Well, people are working hard and trying to save money (though there’s not enough left over at the end of the month to save). They go to churches and organizations for help. Sometimes they get help. Sometimes they don’t. It’s a crap shoot. And when they admit to going for help they’re treated like…

Second-class citizens. Ne’er do wells. Drag on the system. Lazy bastards and bitches who don’t know how to work hard and save money…..

And the poor just end up getting poorer.

And poorer.

And poorer.

So, yeah. I do take it personally. I take it all very personally.

First up, let’s announce the winner of the Beyond Centauri July 2009 Seventh Anniversary Blog Contest. There were seven entrants by midnight last night. I don’t trust those Random Number Generators for some reason, so names were written on uniform pieces of paper, which were folded up, tossed into a hat, shaken around and the resulting winner was…. LISA!  Lisa was an entrant from Tribe.net.

(Now, normally, there would be a picture here of that particular issue of Beyond Centauri, but the people at WordPress have seen fit to change everything and now suddenly, none of my picture files will upload, or they only have a broken image. So, just imagine a picture of the July 2009 issue here.)

Next up, my next story, The Crow King, is out now in the September 2009 issue of Aoife’s Kiss!  Again, time for a BLOG CONTEST! So, if anyone is interested in receiving a signed copy of this issue, leave a comment on this blog (this one here) by midnight, September 30, 2009.

(Again, normally there would be a picture here of that particular issue of Aoife’s Kiss, but the people at WordPress have seen fit to change everything and now suddenly, none of my picture files will upload, or they only have a broken image. So, just imagine a picture of the September 2009 issue here.)

And that’s it for now, or until I figure out why pictures, etc., are not uploading. Maybe it’s just that Mercury is in retrograde.

For now go here and watch this video. This has nothing to do with writing, but everything to do with the health care debate, which is a particular issue with me: Can\’t Wait…