madgeniusclub

No, this isn’t about body-modification. That’s next month. This is, well, it’s less about writing, and more about the author-as-public-figure. Now, for those who aren’t aware, former NYC mayor and billionaire in his own right Michael Bloomberg formed a gun control advocacy group a number of years ago. They’ve lent weight – and money – to any number of state and national political campaigns and legislative efforts, as well as bankrolling other astroturf gun control groups.

Recently, Everytown has announced the formation of an Author Council. 130 authors have signed on to prevent gun violence. Notables include Jodi Picoult, Lev Grossman, and Tim Federle. (Truthfully, those were the only names I recognized. I don’t know whether that reflects the make-up of the group, or of my reading tastes. (I’d also like to note that I’ve never read a Jodi Picoult novel. Not my fandom.))

I’ve seen a middling amount of reaction from my online circles. Everything from shrugs to calls for informal boycott. Me, I don’t care. I’ve never let political leanings get in the way of enjoying (or writing) a good story, and I don’t look to start. That said, as so few names are even on my horizon, I’m unlikely to look to this list for my new favoritest author evar.

Regardless of your opinion on gun rights, Bloomberg’s opinions, or politics in general, the Author Council’s call to action is an important point for writers to consider.

Do you like money? Do you want people to commit egregious commerce with you, turning gobs and scads of their money into your money? I know that’s one of my major writing dreams (too far off to be a goal, at least until I get more writing time into the schedule). I’m really somewhat admiring of this council thingy. They’re rocking their market targeting by doing this. By simply publicly signing their names to a gun control group, they’re advertising what kind of people they want to buy their books. Jodi Picoult could probably drink puppy smoothies for breakfast and not lose her readership, and Lev Grossman has a successful television series based on his big work, so there’s less courage there.

But for anybody less well-known, or well-selling, this is a great way to tell whole swaths of readers that you do (or possibly more significantly, don’t) want them to give you money for your efforts. As an author, causes you come out in support of or opposition to are going to mark you to readers. Some readers. The ones who pay attention to that kind of thing, at least. And among certain genre (like ourn) this is a more fraught venture.

Witness the fallout of the Puppy campaigns.

Any number of writers were outted (rightly or wrongly) as one thing or another, and calls for boycotts were loud and shrill. “Friends” were shunned and writers lost readers. Which is a shame.

How does this matter to you? Simply put: be aware. Know your genre, know your industry, and know your readership. For example, I suspect most of the authors on the council aren’t writing milSF. Joining a gun control group and writing scifi gun porn would be almost as poor a choice as writing stereotypical high fantasy and publicly raging about the evils of western civilization.

Should you then not stand for principles in an effort to gain more readers? By no means. If you’re passionate about something, you should advocate for it. Just be aware that doing so will likely lose you some readers, though that may simply be in potentia. I doubt my eventual milfantasy will get me many leftist readers. Certainly my views on individual liberty and the proper role of government would lose me them.

And I’m fine with that. They wouldn’t have read me in the first place. I’m too publicly associated with the rest of this band of reprobates, and I don’t much care who knows it. I’m also the smallest fry among the MGC.

It likely doesn’t matter, anyway. Who we are as writers comes out in our writing, and people will love or hate that as they’re individually bent. I don’t read Larry Correia for the heart-wrenching scenarios (though I still haven’t forgiven him for Sam), just like I’m not pulling out my much-thumbed copies of David Eddings to read his exhortations about which firearms to choose and how to plan a military campaign (he rightly implies that the most exciting campaigns are often the ones where things go spectacularly wrong. At least for the heroes.)

Look at Sarah’s Darkship books. Written by a statist, they ain’t.

The message to you, the writer, is as I said above. Be aware of your market. Know what they want to get out of your writing. Do they want polemics? Do they want entertainment? And what kind? I read for fun, and tend to avoid certain things. Lev Grossman’s Magicians looks (admittedly, from the television spots) like a rich world with complex characters and a compelling plot. That doesn’t mean I’m going to like it. The way it was first described to me didn’t sound like something I would actually want to read. Which is fine. You can’t snag every reader, and he won’t miss my book budget.

And be wise about how you choose to advertise your causes. I suspect most of the authors on the council aren’t trumpeting their involvement. Certainly not where it’s impacted my life. Maybe a blog post. “Hey, all, I’m in a thing,” is probably the extent of most. I hope. Should your championing of something extend beyond that to, “and everyone must kowtow to my thing for reasons,” you might want to consider dialing back the intensity. Just a mite.

Penultimately, please accept my fulsome apologies for the timing of this missive. I’ve chosen to put family ahead of career, at this point in my life, and that means things like my MGC posts come after the kids are cared for. I’d like to be able to manage things concurrently, but I wasn’t given enough hands for that.

Finally, however you honor my fallen brothers and sisters in arms (or not), this weekend, please be courteous to those who do so differently than you do. Some awesome folks will be found in our national (and other) cemeteries, cleaning, tidying, and placing flags and flowers and suchlike. Y’all rock. Many, many more will be found hoisting beverages of varying levels of inebriability. Or applying heat to flesh, via grill, or outdoors at a beach or park. Or both. This is cool. Most of those who’ve died in service of our country would appreciate that, too. Be well, be safe, keep an eye on your buddy, and if you’ve had too much to drive (read: any) call Chief, or failing that, the Old Man. Both will be happy to make sure you get home alive.

When you stop to think about it, all of us are largely products of our history. We make decisions based to a large extent on our experiences up to that point, and our experiences are influenced by the choices of those close to us – who are making their choices based on their experiences. And so on, all the way back to the first sexually dimorphic organisms. Probably. Possibly further, since even asexually reproducing organisms can be affected by environment and then have that impact propagate through their clones.

The writerly term for this is backstory.

Most authors will figure out the backstory of their main characters, along with some key bits of their minor characters, but it go so wrong its either hilarious or horrible depending on your perspective. And by hilarious or horrible, I mean stuff like granddad who’s eighty or so and has vivid memories of the Napoleonic wars. And the US Civil War. Oh, and it’s late 20^th century, and granddad isn’t immortal.

I believe the kindest way to describe this is “um”.

Now, okay, you’re probably not going to do that in a contemporary setting. But you can certainly cram that much living into a character backstory if you’re not careful. Partly it’s the convenience of having granddad able to tell your main characters cool stories about stuff they didn’t experience which turn out to be really useful even though they’ve been groaning to themselves every time granddad starts the whole “When I was a lad…” or “Back in the day…” But there’s only so much, “well… he gets a bit confused, you know,” you can push through. Overdo it, and instead of being pulled into your wonderful story, your readers will be wondering when granddad found time to have kids. And what grandma thought about him being off fighting monsters or wars or whatever all the time.

See, even in the most turbulent eras, there are usually bursts of “ohshitohshitohshitI’mgonnadie!” interspersed with a lot of relatively peaceful times. Even a really adventurous character probably doesn’t spend all his/her/its time battling monsters, slaying princesses and rescuing evil. Um. Or something. More likely there’s going to be a few months of high adventure with several years between times recovering, training for the next adventure, and investing the spoils of the last one (or just spending it and having way too much fun with the persons of negotiable virtue until said spoils run out and another adventure becomes a financial necessity).

Heck, even in the most war-torn areas, it’s not really battles all the time (World War 1 was something of an anomaly) in any single spot. Long sieges were rare enough to be noteworthy, and battles rarely lasted more than a few days. Even during World War 1, actually – as I understand it, the trenches were manned continuously, there’d be as close to constant artillery barrage as possible, but at the same time people were being rotated in and out all the time so an individual soldier would spend maybe a month on the front lines for every three months in the area (I’m dredging this from the stainless steel lint trap of my memory so the details might be fuzzy. If not completely wrong. But the general idea isn’t) – most individual combat engagements weren’t that long.

The point being that no matter how neat that character’s backstory is, if it involved almost non-stop adventure and said character is now elderly and relatively sane, they ain’t human. And that’s presuming you got the chronology right.

I’m not saying you need to write a biography of every named character in your books. You don’t. You do need to have some notes so you don’t accidentally regress someone’s age between novels or have Fred remember doing the thing that George did in book 1. You might not remember, but I promise you at least one fan will.

Now that I’ve managed 600 words or so of digression, I was going to say something about how character attitudes and reactions rise from their past experiences, but you know what? My recent past experiences include a cat with bowel issues, a major software release, and all the cleaning up – metaphorical and physical – both entail. I’m not sure I could manage to return to the topic and post anything sensible.

I guess that will be another post.

Several years ago, when I was green as lettuce and attended the Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith workshops on fiction writing — which made me a little less green, if nothing else by providing a much needed wilting — they kept saying the same puzzling phrase “Treat it like a business.”

And of course, I understood what they meant, and it was sense, but at the same time it wasn’t.  It’s very hard to treat as a business a career you have no control over, and which does not, and unless you’re very lucky cannot (yes, talent comes into it too, and the balance of talent and luck vary according tot he writer, but you still need to be in the right place at the right time, something you in the end have no control over) pay a living wage.  At least not if you’re already in the business and know that they’ve got you slotted mid-list.

Well, ladies, gentlemen and filofaxes, all that has changed, in the seven years, changed completely and turned on its head.

Even if you are, like me, still writing for traditional as well as indie, you have so much more control over your career, it’s not even funny.  The fact that indie authors who actually work at it are out-earning their traditional colleagues; the fact that my indie book out-earned my traditional ones, means I have options.  If for whatever reason working in traditional publishing becomes intolerable, I can escape and make more money.

And right there I can see some of you go “but if you can make more money, why are you still working for Baen?”

Because I treat it like a business.  Baen gets me exposure and distribution that indie can’t — yet — get me.  If and when that changes, I can always reevaluate.

The thing is a business isn’t just money.  Business isn’t having a product and selling it.  That’s what my mom used to call “buying and selling” a genteel hobby for a lady (according to her, don’t ask me.  She tried to convince me what I wanted to do — be a journalist — was no fit profession for a lady, while a little genteel buying and selling was okay.  Of course, I presume ladies had more money than we did, but there you have it.  Mom was aspirational.)  It’s not a business.  It is to some extent what I had before indie became viable.

What is the difference you say? Well, the first and most important difference is that you can’t “build” on a little buying and selling.  It happens, it’s not really fully under your control, it has no long term future.  Sure you can make a lot of money if you’re in the right place at the right time, but that’s only partly controllable because the authority is not in your hands.  Yes, it’s different if you come into the field at a higher level and your publisher doesn’t view you as midlist, because then you always have the power to walk for a better deal.  But if you were in midlist hell in the good ol’ (not) days, all you could do was take what was dished out, good or bad.  Which meant you couldn’t really make plans or work to build your future.

And in the end that’s what this writing business is “a future.”

No one — or at least very few people — makes a living from their first book.  I’m however reliably informed that after the 10th indie book (for whatever reason reissues don’t count) things get VERY interesting.  I’m not there yet.  I have one — count it, one — book published all on my own.  That’s going to change this year, and I hope to have ten by next year at this time.  However, I can plan to get there.  It’s under my control

At the same time I can plan projects to build my career with my publisher, and if they reject those projects I can take them indie.

The freedom is something I couldn’t even have DREAMED back six or seven years ago.

But with freedom comes responsibility.

Because any book you put out there is going to be scrutinized more closely than traditional books.  No, it’s not fair, but fair is a place where you sell livestock. Just like in the oughts people had an image of bloggers as working in their pajamas (I don’t.  I found out long ago if I treat the work day as a job, I work better and more.  so I’m sitting here wearing business-casual.  I am, however, on my sofa. The real post-blogging work day is upstairs in the office.) they have an image of indie authors as working at their kitchen table, and never proof-reading.  Which means if you have the average number of typos in a traditional book, you’ll get reviews talking about how you need editing.  Heck, even if you have no typos, someone from the school of “no sentence fragments, every sentence must be perfectly grammatical” will come along and slap you for no reason.

And then there’s other stuff, particularly if you are a new-ish writer.  Look, I’ve been at this for — heaven help me — almost 20 years from the time I sold my first book (but not that it came out) and let me tell you, even young geniuses can’t see the flaws in their plot or structuring.  More importantly, they don’t see how to “punch up” a book and make it better.  And of course you want your books (each of them) to be as good as possible.  Each book is an opportunity to hook readers who will read everything else you write, but you have to make sure you are as good as you can be.

So, this is where being a business comes in.  You hire people to help you, you manage your costs. Your forecast your revenues.  You set your schedule.

We’ll start with “atmosphere and impression.”  What I mean is that we humans are monkeys of habit.  Monkey see/monkey do.  And studies have shown, and it’s true, that what you wear and your environment affect your performance.  So, take off those skivvy jeans.  Now put something decent on.  I confess I don’t wear great clothes, mostly because I gain a ton of weight whenever an auto-immune attack hits and more if I go on prednisone.  So I don’t HAVE any great clothes that fit me.  I do wear jeans, but mostly black jeans, and a blouse of some sort.  (a step above t-shirt.)  I don’t look out of place when I have to go with Dan to the office.  I found early on that getting up on time and wearing clothes made it easier to get myself in working mode.  It also helps to “walk to work” (I walk about a mile, then go to the office to work)  And it helps to have different computers for different tasks.  Like I have a writing computer and an editing computer, and an art computer.

Okay, now that’s out of the way.  You, the CEO of Yourself corp, are in your office. You looked at your schedule, and you have a book due to be delivered in two weeks, and one making its way through your betas, and one being edited/getting a cover.

So, first thing in the morning, you make some “calls” (these are now mostly actually email.)

To begin with let’s clarify the process books go through.  Few people can write a clean first draft, even with much experience.  So the first thing you do to your book is read over for continuity.  Did you forget a character halfway through?  Did you change someone’s name/haircolor/etc?  More importantly, if your book changed directions halfways through (mine often do) did you go back and fix all the “pointers” in your foreshadowing (the thing that hints to your readers’ subconscious what’s going to happen?  For instance, if your girl was supposed to fall in love with A but she insisted on loving B, did she still notice how A looked, etc in chapter 3, while ignoring any mention of B’s looks?  Do one read for all of that.  Sticky notes are your friend.  (Yes, this is still easier done on paper.)  Then do one read for wording.  Are you really calling a desk “thingy for computer” because that morning you couldn’t remember “desk” to save your life?  Fix that and that sort of problem.  Do a third read for typos.

You are now done with your solitary work on this manuscript.  Send the manuscript to betas now.  Get as many betas as possible because most won’t answer.  No, it’s not your book.  It’s unpaid work, and people have jobs and lives.  I get about 25% response.

When your betas come back evaluate their input.  If three or more agree in a misstep, give it some thought.  It might not be exactly what they think it is — for instance when all my betas complained nothing happened in the first five pages of a short, they were objectively wrong: someone got killed, the body got hidden, etc.  However, I used passive voice throughout — but they’re seeing SOMETHING.

Some betas will also be nit picky on grammar and typos. Consider their input, but don’t change your voice/the tone of your book/your word choice unless you REALLY agree with them.  Some non-writers have the funny idea that fiction should be written in carefully constructed sentences consisting of subject/verb/predicate or object every TIME.  If you do what they want, you’ll achieve a soporific result.

Okay.  Now the free part of your book process is concluded, and you engage in the “paying pros” part.  Indie publishing has sparked whole rafts of associated professionals who do various parts of the journey of your book from head to market.

First up: structural editors.  These are not copy editors.  They’re people who will go through and tell you things like “if you punch up this scene, it will make a big difference”.  Or “Lose this character.  He’s not doing anything, and it slows the action down.”  Or… whatever.

These are probably the highest paid of the associated professionals.  And, let’s face it, most of them are not very good.  If you feel — or have become convinced — you need one, be prepared to shell $500 to a thousand, and take them only on recommendation.  I can recommend only one of those, D Jason Fleming. Editing at  djasonfleming dot com. Also if you’re on facebook, he’s on my flist.  He’s good enough not to do the thing bad structural editors mostly do: tell you to write the whole book and make it something THEY would write.

Next up: Copy editor.  Copy editors run anywhere from $100 for 20k words, and up.  There are people who will do it cheaper, though.  You ask the price and you see if you can live with it.  I can recommend Dave Truesdale (he edits Tangent online, so you can probably get to him via that. Or, again, my flist on facebook)  He charged me $400 for a horrendously in bad shape book (artifacts of conversion from Word Perfect to word everywhere.  Some words obliterated by them)  but less when the book is relatively clean.  Also, our very own Jason Dyck, aka Free Range Oyster, is a good and thorough proof reader/copy editor.  (Freerangeoyster at gmail dot com.)

Then there’s covers.  For covers I can heartily recommend Jack Wylder (again my flist on fb) who does the covers for my refinishing mysteries.

The caveat is that it’s not his profession of choice, and he takes limited jobs.  I do okay at taking art, modifying it, and slapping a title/author name on it.

My son’s upcoming collection cover:

It was a picture of a guy fishing.  I did things to it…

My husband’s cover:

This one is a composite of many elements, plus a filter to do the cool effects.

Amanda’s covers:


Most of these are from stock art, though several of them are made of various parts of art and run through filters.  I charge $200 and I have exactly ONE person who pays me.  The others we work out things.

Which brings us to another point: you see, it depends on how much money you can expect to make.  I made 20k (plus some) from my one indie book, but the thing is that until I have more of a frame of reference, I can’t be sure this is replicable.  So I try to put books out as cheaply as possible.  I do what I can do (covers) in exchange for copy-editing with Amanda, for instance.  A lot of writers have this sort of round-robin relationship in groups.  It’s more complex than paying, but also cheaper.  Again, it’s a business decision.  You have to decide.  if you’re a crazy-good copyeditor who sucks at art, but your buddy can do art and not copyeditting, it’s a no-brainer.

While talking of covers, I must mention that even if you don’t want to do your own, you’d benefit from taking the WMG cover class.  Most of the professional cover makers out there are either used to making literary-and-little covers, or — often — doing things to gratify their own artistic sense, and not to make a selling cover for you. Even if all you’re doing is giving art direction, it helps if you have a clue what a selling cover looks like.  Yes, the workshop is expensive.  That’s life.  All I can say is it will save you/pay you thousands in the long run.  Same for their typesetting/paperbook making course.

If you decide to make your own covers, there are free stock art sites.  My favorite is pixabay.  I’ve also worked with Morguefile, but there are others, and I’m sure they’ll show up in the comments.  If you can’t find what you want, the stock place I use most is Dreamstime.

When I put out a call for names and contact for associate professionals only two responded.  I don’t work/haven’t worked with either, but I know people who have.  The associated pros are:

Meghan of hyde-n-seek-editing.blogspot.com

Another patient day in the endless waiting, waiting waitingggg life of a working author passes. I remember Snoopy, the great author, being sure his mailbox was eating his replies from publishers… And then of course there is that terrible mistake which publishers so frequently make, where they send us this bizarre letter saying that this manuscript was not suitable for their present needs. I have been obliged to point out that I was not waiting for a letter about their needs, which are no concern of mine, but that check for a million dollars, which is very much my need. They really are a bit obtuse about something quite so obvious. Sadly the quality of staff they are able to recruit these degenerate days, is not what we would like to become accustomed to.

That of course is not what I am waiting for. And no, it’s not my royalty statements either. Perhaps because they deal in fiction, due dates are also fictional in publishing land – and I’m sure they would have no problems delaying their wages by three or four months, so why should I? One of joys with Independent publishing is you do know what you are going to be paid, and the lag is much shorter, and payments are monthly and reliable. This does make life a little easier, and something I believe publishers would be well advised to move to. But no: I am waiting for something else.

I have been preparing the gilded stable. I even put up an advert for stable-hands (the only source of advice I have found says it takes a staff of 36 to adequately care for each animal) – as I am the father of two sons it should be obvious I can’t do the job. I haven’t had any responses. Perhaps looking up the most common baby name in Britain for my pseudonym (I wouldn’t everyone to know what the job was, I’d get people taking shameless advantage) was a mistake. I’ve ordered (from Amazon) all the food, as well a pair of suitable silver bridles. Yes I am getting a pair of them. As I said elsewhere I hope to start breeding them. Google has rather let me down though, I don’t yet know if the foals have horns on birth, or if they develop later. My theory now is that they’re soft, rather like baby rhino horn (one of the more unusual delights of my life was getting to pet an orphaned baby rhino. The baby in question adored the attention, and would have made an ideal housepet, if they stayed that size, that affectionate and that cute). Perhaps the reason the animals are so rare is not the shortage of virgins, but the fact that if the horn is hard and sharp… well it’s a caesarian or kill the mummy.

The problem is there is so little good literature on the care and rearing of Unicorns. I’d have read it all while I wait.

Amazon is sending me not one, but two. You get them when you get 50 posted reviews. I know this is true because I read it on the internet. We all know that’s even more reliable than the NYT.

Seriously, I was delighted to see that TOM and CHANGELING’S ISLAND both have hit the 50 landmark. (the pictures are links).

That’s remarkably cool even if I don’t get to go into the bottling of unicorn farts to sell as an alternative power source. (I am sorry to be so mercenary, but the cost of unicorn tucker (complete with sparkles – entirely natural and made from organically grown vampires) is such that it dwarfs California’s deficit, and I have recover the money somehow.)

And now that I have temporarily finished being silly I thought I’d bring up a subject which ought to be close to the heart of all authors.

A reader – a good guy, a hard scientist who shall remain nameless, but a lifelong sf/fantasy reader – asked a facebook group if he had to attend sf cons to be a fan. A group he’d commented on implied such to be a requirement. And, um, did he have to dress up in costume?

He of course got a resounding ‘No, of course not! If you read sf/fantasy you’re a fan, and welcome!’ It was very good to see – especially from my perspective, because it has always been my attitude. As far as I’m concerned if you’ve read one sf/fantasy book and would like to try another… I’m ready and eager to welcome you in to the ‘club’. Aside from my professional interest, we share an interest in something I love. Something I want to foster, encourage, and have as many people enjoy as possible. Suggesting otherwise gets the same dropjawed look of shock that my sons had on their faces when someone said their Physics class was excluding women. The idea was just so bizarre. They wanted EVERYONE to be physicists. And, generally, their group’s idea of wet-dream was a female who even vaguely understood, or cared about their precious subject. The slightest accidental expression of interest would have you in danger of being physically dragged eagerly into their midst, and finding yourself neck deep in quantum tunneling.

Speaking professionally it’s probably even more the case. A fan – as the guy whose entire livelihood hangs on people liking my books, liking my genre enough to even try my books – this exclusionary ‘keep out of our treehouse’ attitude is as welcome as a dose of the clap.

Yet… it’s out there. There are Cons at which this has indeed become the case. They tend toward the pretentious literary ones, but tread with care. WorldCon has sadly increasingly become something you’d probably like to avoid, which is a shame as there are still some great older authors to be met. But it’s become very cliquish, substantially political, and overtly unwelcoming to people who aren’t ‘trufen’ (who don’t fit the ideological mold –something that seems to get narrower by the hour let alone day). There are still good people, both running and attending, and it is possible to enjoy yourself despite this. But seriously, it’s a lot of money, you want to actually mix with welcoming fans of similar interests, get meet authors that interest you and attend panels that interest you, and hear readings from authors you like. You don’t want to watch out that you don’t accidentally cause offence, or find yourself subject to claims of harassment or worse, from which you’re not even permitted to defend yourself. It might never happen… but you are there to have a great experience, not walk on eggs, constantly worrying about whatever the latest ‘offense’ is, that you might unwittingly commit.

My own feeling is: you’re better off at the smaller cons (where there is enormous variation) or the big commercial cons like Dragon Con. Look at the author/guest list. Look at the panels. If your interest is Military SF and firearms, DON’T go to one with one with a GenderQueer intersectional poet as the GoH with panels on the rape of Gaia by the conceptual white patriarchal penis – and vice-versa. Talk to people who have attended recently. Good cons tend to have people like my sons’ Physics crowd supporting them – eager to help and welcome you. Bad ones attract the sneering asses.

You don’t have to ever attend a con to be a fan. There is a delight in sharing your interest with others who also love the genre. There are loads of welcoming groups all over the internet – and a few I would avoid where they’re very keen on keeping the wrong people out of their treehouse.

One of the things about groups with an interest in anything out of the mainstream, from sf to steam railways – or, as in some those I am involved in – Writing, Scottish Country Dancing and Rock Climbing, is that there are always a few jackasses who attain positions of power and influence, enjoy that, and try to keep that power. And the only way to do that is maintain the status quo, restrict entry –or at least make sure it’s only the ‘right’ sort of suitably indoctrinated noobs coming in.

You don’t have to be mathematical statistician (but it helps) to see that this is a recipe for medium/long term destroying that group, that interest and for damaging its reputation. It’s almost mind-bogglingly stupid, except for the shortest of short-term self-centered benefits. That doesn’t ever seem to stop at least some cliques trying the same dumb stunt over and over again. SF-fantasy has its share. The minute they start telling you you’re not a real fan… you’ve found them. They like to pose as the cool kids table, but really they’re more like mean girls table. Ignore as much as possible. They’re worthless.

Which is why I take I take anyone I can possibly gull into it climbing, and have invested thousands of hours in teaching, showing people cliffs, routes, lending them gear, taking them to-and-from airports etc. Do not express the vaguest interest in Celtic music unless you’re prepared to firmly defend yourself from invitations to join us in our capering. And writing – well, Mad Genius Club is just one small part of the efforts this group put into helping anyone who might wish to write.

Because without new writers, and without new readers, without a welcome mat…

Something I see as wonderful would die.