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The Problem of Being Too Good

Having been up to my eyeballs in Sad Puppies things, and The Day Job (particularly The Code of Cthulhu), I pretty much missed my chance to comment on Sarah’s post about Literature (as opposed to literature which is quite a different beastie). Buried in that post is the comment: “It annoys me when I can see the writer sweat.”

Now here’s the thing. I was raised in a musical household. It was a given that I’d be learning to play something (it wound up being trombone, and I was at one point bordering on good enough for professional work. If I’d had a half-decent singing voice, I could have taken that to professional level) and joining whatever local bands, orchestras, or whatever happened to be around and at more or less my ability level.

One of the things I learned was that in pretty much any creative endeavor the really good ones don’t look like they’re making any effort. They’re so good they make it look easy. They make it feel easy, and they appear to effortlessly produce the effect they’re aiming for, be it a gem of a musical performance or a story that’s a perfect or near perfect example of its art – and it’s so apparently effortless and clear that those of lesser understanding can too easily fail to see the work the author or musician or artist has carefully concealed behind the appearance of easy. That is why seeing the writer sweat is annoying.

Of course, this leads to those of lesser understanding (many of whom think they’re the bees knees and – to paraphrase Douglas Adams – the every other assorted insectile erogenous zone in existence) thinking that a book (or performance or whatever) that looks effortless actually is effortless and therefore is easy. Simply put, they mistake sweat and visible exertion for skill.

In the field of literary endeavor, this often translates to such things as deriding Terry Pratchett’s prose as “basic”. After all, he doesn’t go in for verbal special effects… Instead, Pratchett’s prose fades into the background as the vehicle bearing his plot and characters and everything else in the perfect manner for the tale he’s telling. Had he indulged in his love of words (which mostly found its expression in the footnotes) in the body of his prose, his books would have been poorer for it.

Dave Freer’s prose suffers in a similar way: Dave layers so much meaning into something that looks simple and easy to follow that people who think they know Literature dismiss his work as plain and low-brow (and miss the devastating satires, the gentle affection, and all the other little goodies Dave buries in his works).

I will confess: I’ve tried to read some of the Literature set’s darlings. The third or fourth paragraph that didn’t parse to anything meaningful was enough to convince me I didn’t want to waste my time on that. Even Stephen Donaldson, for all his sins with his thesaurus (and they are legion), usually managed to say something as opposed to using the sounds of words as a kind of perverse aural art work.

Sarah in her literary mode is virtue personified beside that. So is John C Wright. Intricate, artful prose with enough polysyllabic words to sink a ship can work, provided said words fit the story and say something of value to the reader – who is, always, the ultimate judge.

Obligatory PSA: Don’t forget Hugo nominations close today. Make sure you’ve put yours in.

Going Indie For Dummies- 2 – The Long and Winding Road

So, here you are.  You decided to go with an author-owned, single author press.  (We’re going to use that because it’s easier to explain.  You might have a co-op of authors, but that’s harder to explain because some of the things I’ll say you should do are really the job of your friend Bob.)  You registered with your secretary of state, went to the bank and made an account just for your press.  You have business cards (heaven knows why, but I presume it makes you feel official.)

Last Saturday morning, you put on a suit and had a business meeting with yourself (and the cats) and decided on a publication schedule for the press.  After some heated argument (your spouse came and checked on you and went away muttering “thorazine, for the love of heaven, thorazine”and you have a month to get that first book out.

It’s going to be a tight schedule.

The first thing to do is to get an Amazon (and if you really must B & N and Smashwords and … what else is out there these days? At one time I had an account with Kobo and Draft to Digital I honestly don’t even know) account set up.

Put your suit back on.  The first thing you have to decide right now is “Amazon only, or the seven (I don’t know, there might be that many now) dwarves also?

And this is a decision only YOU can (save mankind) make.  I can’t decide for you.

There are pros and cons.

Pros to going with every possible retailer: Your tiny little press will look like it’s legitimate.  That’s sort of the whole point of having a press anyway, so as not to raise the indie flags. (Some people will still refuse to read Indie, but no one refuses to read Trad.)  And why would you not offer your stuff for sale wherever fans will look?

Cons: Some of these are beyond difficult to get a manuscript up on.  In fact, none of them are as intuitively obvious as Amazon.

Smashwords is probably the worst, and a good example on how you can fall from being the lead in this business and never recover.  Indie used to BE Smashwords.  But their “meatgrinder” engine is a pain in the *ss.  It catches formatting stuff that you need to almost be a programmer to find AND it does stupid stuff for no reason anyone can understand.  It once put the second half of one of my books all in small caps, a problem no one else had.

More importantly, I left Smashwords due to payment non-transparency.  What do I mean by that?  Smashwords made deals and more deals with people who will lend the book or other weird arrangements.  But there is no way for you to SEE how many times it’s been borrowed, and there’s no clear specification of how much you’ll get paid for these.  They might have changed that, but when I left they hadn’t.  So I left because while I know the books will get pirated, I see no reason to have it done officially.

So, whether this applies to Smashwords or not, anymore, keep a careful eye on how you get paid.  Ultimately that’s why you’re doing this.

For me it was the how you get paid and how much that made me take all my books Amazon only.  Look, I was getting $12 or so from B & N a month, less from the others.  In 11, B & N was half of Amazon’s pay out, but no more.  Amazon was giving me a paycheck, everyone else gave me a double pizza in aggregate.  Then I found out the payments through KULL are the same as for the sales, AND all I had to do was go Amazon only.

Mind you, I still have the accounts at the other places, and should Amazon play funny tricks, I’ll go wide dispersal again.  And that’s the other thing to remember.  You’re a business and your relationship is business.  Amazon is not your best friend, they’re just your retailer.  (It is useful, and difficult, to keep this in mind about your traditional publishers as well.)

However, it’s important to note here that I do have friends who make as much or more off Kobo or Draft to Digital or Barnes and Noble as they do with Amazon.  It seems to have to do with the GENRE and SUBGENRE of the book and how you present it.

This is why I can’t make a decision for you.  Go and argue with yourself.  I’ll wait.

So, you decided?  Good.  Next up: website.

Why have a website for your press?  I don’t know, and I’m very bad at keeping mine up to date.  I need to do that, because I’m told people google your press name to find more books.

Look, it costs almost nothing.  Get the domain name, trick up your site with wordpress or another easy engine, and don’t do as I do: make announcements and keep things up.  (I’m going to try okay?)  It’s the cheapest publicity.  Whether you want to invent press employees or not, it’s up to you.  Arguing with imaginary people is marginally less crazy than arguing with yourself, right?) Again, it makes the thing look more respectable and as Dean Wesley Smith told me: You’re a writer.  You should like making up people.  (Righty oh.)

Okay.  Now you have those things in place, we move to the serious stuff.

Cover.  This is where most indies either stop cold or forge ahead, in full confidence they can do it all with a cheap photograph and Times New Roman.

So, next week: Cover up.  How to make a cover that won’t break the bank and sends the right signals.

A Bumkin’s view

Now, as Mike Glyer informed me that moral people would accede to the writer’s request to publish the entire work, unfisked, I am putting him to the test. I would like anything I write that they quote, quoted in full by File 770 and any Puppy Kickers.

Firstly a little message for Easter: Hu’ta’ QISt! Hu’bejta’!

You can call me a country bumpkin if you like (call me anything you please. I don’t really care. I’d hardly call myself ‘monkey’ if I was worried). I can wear that one with pride, because you’d call a lot of men I look up to and try to emulate ‘country bumpkins’.

On Friday I was part of select group of such men, men where being accepted and liked means a huge amount to me – more than any award ever would or could. We were slaughtering pigs, processing eight of them for 4 different families. It’s totally un-commercial – these are pigs raised for home consumption, by people who farm sheep and beef for your consumption. It’s hard physical work, and for the record, probably the most humanely acquired meat, short of growing it in a vat. I’m the only one who isn’t a full-time farmer, and the age ranges from 17 to 70. We have a chiller, and shoot the pigs, but pretty much everything else is like stepping back a thousand years. Yes, even the jokes.

I’m the smoker, and do the bacon and hams. The old guy who used to do it for them died, then they tried to send them ‘away’ to get done, but I do it better, which is my contribution, along with my share of the pigs. Curing and smoking a craft bordering on art, and I’ve got thirty years of experience at it. One of the others does the brawn, sausages are Norm and I, and the slaughtering and butchering get divvied up. Honestly, you send Bernie along, he’ll learn more about real socialized effort and reward than you could outside of an Amish barn raising, and yet a less urban socialist set of people would be hard to find.

Couple of other things are, well, interesting, from writing world perspective. The first is, we’re all men. Not all white men – two of the five guys working would qualify as that. Like my mutton-birdin’ friends, this is real traditional life, which yes, has some degree of separation by sex, in quite a lot of cultures. The reasons are entirely pragmatic, and no-one gives a toss if you have balls or not. It’s just a case of can you lift a hundred and fifty pounds and carry it? The job is hard, hot, dirty and not without risks. You get there by being willing to do it, not by some mennist plot. It’s hard to find folk who will (same with the birdin’). A first invitation is easy. A second one, isn’t. And honestly those who don’t get a call ‘we need to kill some pigs. You in?’ probably don’t want to be there. It’s backbreaking and easier to go to the butcher. You don’t know how it dies, it’s not the same quality (our pigs all live well, mostly free-range, and die unstressed, content until the last), but it’s only money you have to put in. I’m through to my fifth now (and sixth birdin’).

I noticed (because noticing is what I do. Good writers notice and remember, and I want to be as good a writer as possible) that of the five men, I saw all bar one (and I’ve seen him do the same other occasions) take minor, un-necessary steps to make the animals they were going to kill more comfortable. Petting a pig (yes, pigs like being scratched. They’ll also cheerfully eat you. The two are not exclusive) giving it a food-treat, fetching water for it. They were able to put themselves in the pig’s trotters, if you like. Feel empathy, but divorce themselves from that enough to do the job that had to be done.

The other thing that is fascinating – particularly after Snowcrash’s comment last week on MGC — is just how the guys think. Now the youngster – one of the guy’s sons, is the only one there who hasn’t come up from hard-scrabble, who hasn’t looked farm-disaster, losing everything in the face (that’s me too. I was managing a fish-farm when our feed price, our major cost… trebled) and survived. Their timescales tend to be at least two years, to generational. These are supposed to be ‘slow’ country bumpkins, but in disaster (and in farming – and killing pigs, something always goes wrong. As sure as in combat) they sure do think fast and inventively. There’s no point in waiting for the fire-brigade, the plumber, or the snake handler, or even the ambulance.

With me rock-climbing and diving (and for both, being old, and still, last I looked, alive) these are easy and natural ways for me think. Risk and response to that go hand in hand, as does assessing the risk, thinking through the disasters when –and before they happen, working out the odds, that’s like breathing. I’m not even aware of doing it, just as my farmer friends are not. That certainly was true for a lot across the world back in human history. If you just did stuff because it seemed like a good idea, because you felt like it, for emotional reasons, without working out the consequences… well, think of it as evolution in action. On the other hand you have react fast, decisively and YOU have to do it, when you can see it needs doing.

Things have changed, and with a lot of our of our population being urban, fixing problems yourself and thinking long term about what effect your actions have are probably near Darwin Award stuff in many a city. The cops, and the plumbers, and politicians (really, there is a difference between them) take a dim view of you horning in on their jobs. In crowded environments it does make a degree of sense, because your bit of evolution in action can be hundreds of other people dying or being injured.

Of course you don’t select for long-term thinking, empathy, personal action and personal responsibility both in culture and genes for millennia to have that vanish overnight. It’s still common and I believe still useful in places where these things are no longer life-essential necessities. I do believe it’s frowned on by most politicians and ‘leaders’ (community, thought and otherwise) and those in positions of power and authority.

It does mark a growing divergence, though. There used to be a pretty solid continuum between grasshoppers and ants. If you’re one side of that, be aware the other side exists. This, I suspect, is particularly true if you want to write their characters, understand their motives. You might still wish or need to have whatever nasty fate they’re destined for – bacon or sausage, but it still helps you as a writer. And yes, I mess it up too. There are certain occupations – farming, diving, diving, rock-climbing, are obvious to me, but there are many more – running your own business — that NEED the ability to look at the viewpoints of others, and to think about consequences. But the one that needs this most is writing good fiction.

For me the most difficult phases of plotting a book are early ones, when actions – possibly small actions – can cascade, and change the direction of the book. Working through those possible scenes, working out how or what your character will do is like playing many games of somehow interlocking chess, many moves ahead. I plot first, but those plots change with the actual story and depth of the characters developing.

As a writer – looking at it as a story. There have been three telling things about ongoing Hugo debacle.

Firstly: the Puppy Kickers – even the brighter ones, not mere camp-followers, have entirely failed to grasp what the Sad Puppies were about. We’ve still got puppy kickers saying ‘Oh it’s about getting Larry Correia/Brad Torgersen or Vox Day a Hugo.’… because that is what would be the motive for them. I set out my position here. I think just about everyone in Sad Puppies has done so. And everyone who is in the obvious running for the Novel … have recused themselves. Yes. They have said – Not like John Scalzi ‘out for now’ — They’re OUT. (Yes, that includes me. I’m the most minor and irrelevant of the Sad Pup authors. Which makes resolving the situation… tricky, to near impossible.)

Then we get ‘Oh they only want manly men doing manly things and oh they’re all misogynist racist homophobes etc etc. Mind-numbing stupid slanders that don’t stand up to two seconds robust examination… but they still keep on bleating the same dumb. And those among the Puppy Kickers who know they’re wrong and easily debunked are silent and complicit.

At least the more intelligent Puppy Kickers do understand what we’re about and were trying to do. But they don’t WANT to believe it or accept the trouble their precious WorldCon, Hugo or the genre in general is. They don’t want to accept that to survive they need to move toward demographic representivity and the center. They hope it’ll just go away and they can continue just like they were… which was dying, but it was not as painful as trying to be revived. Of course some do know exactly what is going on, and how the pond is shrinking. But it is their personal short-term interest to encourage the wilder insanities instead. Some of them are very nasty pieces of work, who don’t care, as long as they’re all right, for now.

This is denial – which is a very important thing for an author to understand, and be able to write about.

Secondly: consequences, consequences, consequences. The grasshopper way of voting is not to think about those, or to only think of absolute immediate. It’s more about that immediate gratification than ‘will this help us get through winter. I suppose some Pansters write like that… The situation traditional publishing sf/fantasy finds itself in right now, is one where the author body (and, indeed the editorial staff) are just WAY off the demographics of the possible readers. If you take the Gallup poll of who consider themselves ‘liberal’ – 24 % of US population does. On the other hand if you did a count – especially among the newer authors in Trad Publishing, it probably runs 95%. That 95% can only survive by selling to the part of the audience who do not share their social and political views. The opposite is not true. 5% can do pretty well out only selling to 76%. Better with less competition, really, if they were going to be as mean as the Puppy Kickers. The 24% never bought their books before anyway. The Puppy Kickers have generated a lot of polarization (and before you say that was the Sad Puppies too – ask the hard question: who had everything to gain by NOT generating polarization? Who has nothing to lose? Work it out.) If – and this is an election year, when things are heated – this polarization spreads further among the readers, who loses? If Sad Puppy supporters decide in the light of last year and the Hugo committee’s decision to take sides and hand over the data to people from Making Light, to vote in the noms… and then unless they have candidates they REALLY want to support, to simply withdraw their interest, who loses?

Thirdly: We have the writer’s typical dilemma. We have characters on both sides of story with very different points of view. We have had (and will have) actions which have consequences. How do you resolve all this? Or is heading for further collapse with implacable certainty? That’s not a fun story to read, especially for those with most to lose. If I was writing the book I’d change at least some of the actions of those with most to lose. The Puppy Kickers face hard decisions, need forethought they have never displayed. They need to provide some large motive for the Sad Puppies not follow the most likely courses of action. I said last year after Sasquan that the price for that would be high. It’ll only get higher and harder.

I am glad I don’t have to write this novel. I’m only a country bumpkin, who needs to work out his bacon cure per weight.

Puppy Related Fatigue

I’ve alluded to on occasion over the past couple years, but never outright weighed in on the mess the Hugos have been for a while now. There are reasons for that. Prime among them, I’ve not really got the time or energy for it. I’ve got a toddler and an infant in the house, and between them (Wee Dave is Being Two a lot more these days, which isn’t great fun, and results in misapplied enthusiasm toward Miss Moxie. She is growing and developing as infants do, and finally sleeping more through the night, a Thing to which her mother and I have been greatly looking forward), the Necessary Evils that are my responsibility as the one at home most, and my hmm-hmm-mumble writing career, the field where I grow mine is pretty barren. On most subjects, really.

Close behind that, I’ve got friends on both sides of the divide. Friends I’d rather keep than be right one way or the other. Well, to push hard enough to be “right.” Much like religion and politics (but unlike philosophy, *sigh* no respect, I tell ya), the Hugos and the State of F/fandom have become tar-pit subjects best left at the curb when I spend time in certain friends living rooms, virtual or meatspace.

There’s plenty been written about the four years of Campaigns to End Puppy-Related Sadness, and only a tiny percentage has been written here at the MGC. A slightly larger portion has been accurate in presented details. Almost nowhere else have the writers actually addressed the deeper question the last two campaigns have been about: who is a fan?

There have been a truly mind-boggling amount of posts about how the Sad Puppies are bad people by virtue of being white, male, straight, whatever. It apparently hasn’t mattered that none of those are universally true, but even if they were accurate in every particular, these judgements would be based upon nothing more or less than factors over which the Puppies have no control.

Next came the usual attacks based upon supposed behaviors. You know, the ones taken up by international media outlets across the globe. The Puppies are homophobic, racist, misogynist, Islamophobic, etc, ad nauseum. Only nobody ever demonstrates particulars. It’s always simply “known.” (Seriously, find the quotes, post them in the comments. Give context and analysis. The burden of proof is, as usual, on the accusers.)

Much more has been made of supposed alliances between campaigns, based more upon circumstance and wishful thinking than anything approaching reality. Denials haven’t mattered. Publicly available intelligence refuting the supposed alliance has likewise been ignored. Public disgust with the tactics employed has been deemed of no consequence.

And this year, Kate’s moved to a completely transparent system based on a public website. You can go count the votes yourself if you want. And still she, and the system, and the people who have made their opinions on last year’s collection of scifi are insulted and questioned. And some of the creators who’ve received the public acclaim of their fans are once again requesting that they be removed from consideration by others of their fans. None of which is surprising, especially given the horror show last year’s surprise nomination sweeps generated.

But it is disappointing.

In other industries, people are united under the umbrella of an organization. I have friends in the auto industry, and they describe similar kinds of infighting to what’s been going on in scifi recently. I have friends in the military, and while the mission still comes first, politics (in the philosophical sense of how groups of people interact together) still happen, much as we might wish they happened to someone else.

What we’re dealing with is human nature. I tend to agree with Sarah that it comes down to tribalism. We identify more closely with some groups than with others. Those others become the Other, and over time are identified as the enemy, to one degree or another. This is normal. It happens at all ages, and in all places. It’s still disappointing. Especially when we’re closer to each other than to most of those around us.

Let me tell you a little story. In 2009, I went to Renovation. My folks lived just north of there, and my wife was home from deployment, so we burned some cash and got there. I got to meet Larry Correia, Howard Tayler, Steve Jackson, and several other creators I’d theretofore only known as names on the Internet. I made some long term friends. It was pretty heady, and several folks have turned into genuine friends, whose friendship I treasure. I’ve since done similar things a couple times, most recently at LibertyCon in Chattanooga.

And yet.

Thing is, even then I noticed a lot of us/them dividing going on. A lot of that is natural, if unfortunate. It happens within families. Call it sibling-rivalry. I like this thing more than that thing. I like her more than I like him, etc. Or the converse: he said something I didn’t like. Or, what I consider more common, she did or said something that the people I want to like me don’t like. A lot of that going around these days.

Larry apparently experienced much the same thing. He’s detailed his experience over at Monster Hunter Nation. He pointed out the bias he experienced firsthand, and was told he was smoking something. He then demonstrated it in the most belligerent manner he could come up with, and it pissed off a lot of people. He did it again, and got even more people interested in what had been a declining con, and an award slipping in prestige.

Last year, Brad worked hard to get even more people involved in the process, and again, a lot of people got pissed. A lot of filth was spewed, and a lot of feelings got hurt. Some folks who should have known better allowed their inner twelve-year-olds to run rampant.

And now Kate has run a completely transparent campaign to gather people together to laud the works they find award-worthy. And that hasn’t stopped anybody from calling her names, calling us names, calling for removal of works from The List (seriously, look up slate in the dictionary, people). Or, at least, it hasn’t stopped everybody, though it should have.

And I have to ask: what’s so bad about being recommended for an award? You’re not responsible for who buys your work, who likes your work. You’re not responsible for who recommends you receive an award for your work. If someone else comes along and tries to fabricate a connection between you besides creator and consumer, they’ve got an agenda. And do not have your best interests at heart. And if someone is willing to torpedo your chance at recognition to serve their own ends, then they were unlikely to pay you for your work in the first place.

Will the Hugos survive this latest dust-up? Frankly, I’m experiencing no small amount of puppy-related fatigue: I really don’t care. I want to get paid for my art. Recognition is nice, but it doesn’t put food in my son’s mouth. Nor does it maintain friendships.

Why The Internets No Can Has Nice Things

I thought this week’s post would be about Lunacon – which I thoroughly enjoyed and will be writing an after-action-report for eventually if life doesn’t hit me first (it might. The job is going nuclear right now) – but no. It seems the usual suspects, the ones who like to point and shriek without any actual substance, decided I’m the ultimate in evil (or should that be Eville) for doing exactly what I said I was going to do from the start: report, to the best of my ability, what the top 10-ish items in each category were from the Sad Puppies 4 comments, and link to the full list.

From the outraged squeals and even, I’m told, Twitterized threats of lawsuits (for what? Not even the British libel laws are that insane – You want to sue someone for suggesting you be nominated for an award? Really? You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, I hope), you’d think I’d suggested something truly vile like… oh, I don’t know, putting the loo paper on the hanger the other way. You know, real villainy, not this fake stuff.

For the record: no, I did not choose who ended up on The List. The folks who contributed to the category pages on the Sad Puppies 4 site did that. All of them. I made a few suggestions, but mostly I kept my yap shut on my preferences. I won’t be posting those until after nominations close. When it’s too late for a statement of what I think deserves to be on the ballot to influence any voting.

As far as updates and corrections go, this is what is happening: the post I made last week will not be modified. Its counterpart on Sad Puppies 4 will be updated as I get corrections in and recheck some of the places where my army of slightly belated fact-checkers (Thank you judgeadd and the one or two others who commented on my typos and oopses) suggested I might have miscounted. I’m flagging the updates as I make them so it’s clear what’s happening.

Those who have asked to be removed are being asterisked instead to indicate that they asked to be taken off. My perspective is that this is a list of people’s recommendations. There is no need to ask for permission, any more than anyone needs to ask for permission to post a review or purchase the work. Frankly, I think asking to be taken off anyone’s list of award-worthy pieces is an insult to the people who genuinely believe the work is that good, so unless someone asking to be removed is prepared to institute a policy that requires prior approval before purchasing their work, reviewing it, and so forth, they stay on the list.

If someone wants their very own asterisk on the list, they need only ask me. I’m not that difficult to get hold of, and I am asterisking those who ask on the two list posts. I’ll asterisk someone who asks here, too. There may be a delay, since I do have a rather demanding full time job, but it will happen.

Finally, I’d ask those who are looking to everything that happens here to find fault to consider this: what is more important to you – fandom (and by this I mean small-f fandom, the one that lives under the really big tent and includes absolutely everyone who loves the genre whether in movie, book, game, or some other form) or winning? If you want to quibble about who fandom is, or you’d rather see it burn than fall into the hands of “those evil (insert epithet here)” I’d suggest that you really care more about winning.

Those who would rather see fandom die than lose are the problem. I want to see fandom thrive. I want to see more people involved, doing whatever they can to bring more people into the scene. If you don’t agree with my attempt at that, how about instead of pissing on what I’m doing you get out there and make your own attempt at making things better?

Hark, the mover van comethe

I’m sorry, I meant to continue indie for dummies, but we’ve been in a madness of packing, because two weeks (which is what we had after TVIW and other commitments already made, is not enough to pack a four bedroom house, not even with packers.

For more insight into what’s going on, see here: The State of The Writer

And after being selectively quoted by Jim Hines who pretended I was calling anyone not with the puppies worse than those who abetted the holocaust and the holodomor, by cutting out the part where I addressed those who destroy lives and reputations for a plastic rocket, we have at least established what Jim Hines is.  He’s not duped by those destroying reputations and lives.  He’s one of the principals.  I have only one question for him: But for Wales, Jim?

It’s good at least to start identifying the poisonous vipers.  It means we don’t unwittingly step into their nests.

I’m starting to feel like Heinlein’s description of the Crazy Years: a man (or woman) with all his/her gaskets tight is at least at risk of being jailed.  Or possibly sent to coventry by the howler monkeys.  I wonder if they realize the more they shriek the more the circle tightens around… them.

And now I go.  I have more important things to do.  I’ll resume the indie posts next week, hopefully.  Sorry for the delay.