Way back in the wayback, I started this blog by talking about Cory Doctorow. He really is a smart person, and in this guest blog for indie author legend Brian Sanderson he brings his ethics and intellect to bear on how Amazon is ripping everyone off.
The problem with Audible is not that it makes a wide catalog of audiobooks available through a convenient app. The problem is that Audible uses technology, accounting fraud, and market power to steal vast fortunes from creative workers and the audiences who love their books.
Disclosure: I’m an author who uses Amazon as a sales platform, but in this insular space I feel safe in expressing my deep concern that we have let a single corporation insert itself into so much of our daily lives. I’ll let Doctorow himself speak to that.
I don’t have any audiobooks for sale. Authorship and publishing take so much attention that I haven’t had any to spare for yet another aspect of it, so I can’t add much commentary. But Doctorow has nothing to gain by refusing to list his audiobooks on Amazon. In fact:
my agent tells me that it cost me a fully paid-off mortgage and a fully funded college savings account for my daughter.
w
If more big-name authors were prepared to starve Audible of their content, would Amazon cave to pressure and make the deal fair for everyone? Or is it going to take another few election cycles before President Warren (don’t laugh) demands the break-up of this predatory company?
Until then, I’ll keep listing my books on every platform I can. There is another way. We can and must find it. For everyone’s sake.
As an old person (nearly the age of a Golden Girl, for reference) I often miss out on what young people are doing. Sometimes that’s ok (Tide pods) but sometimes the next generation are doing really interesting things. Sometimes, I want in.
I stumbled across Zach Pinsent a few years ago after watching a funny video by his friend Karolina. I watched a few more historical costume videos, mostly slating films and tv for doing a really bad job. A few weeks later, I wanted to learn about tying a cravat.
There he was: so spry, so gleeful about the once very ordinary and now vanishingly rare act of starching his collar. In a matter of seconds he explained a knot that I’d been unable to tie, and completely won my heart.
My aesthetic heart, I mean. Thirst traps aside (and he shares those with the world so nbd) he just seems like a person that would be delightful to know. If he came to the party, it would be an endorsement. I went to England on his advice and was thoroughly delighted with his every recommendation.
Including the unintended endorsement of historical dressing.
Which has ruined me (the clue is in the title) for ordinary clothes. I’ve struggled with modern fashion for years. Most of it makes very little sense to me, the women’s clothes in particular. Pants don’t fit, nothing lasts, pockets are fake, and half of it is made by de facto slave labour in Chinese sweatshops one foreman’s cigarette butt away from a Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster (if you have safety standards at your job, that’s why.) And the fucking polyester gauuuuggghhh. I’m generally compassionate, but whoever said “let’s make 100% polyester bedsheets” a.k.a. microfiber, needs to be taken out behind the woodshed and dealt with.
All of that goes away if you dress differently. I am a dedicated thrift-shopper and have made some miraculous finds (from cashmere coats to Gaultier, you name it, my fingers will pluck it from the rack.) Add in my background in sewing and I can safely say I may never need to buy new clothes again (we’re making an exception for underwear, at least for now.)
And I look amazing. I’ve always been an eccentric dresser, at least compared to my friends, but this has taken it to a whole new level. My dopamine-starved brain loves the attention. The better I dress, the more compliments I get, from friends, family, complete strangers. I like standing out, and the idea that I might be the most interesting thing someone sees that day. I’m not however throwing as hard as Pinsent, who dresses exclusively in historical fashion, mainly from the early 19th century (see above)
My fits are not nearly so historically accurate, as I approach the game of historybounding with the attitude of a time traveler from the past who finds themselves in our world, granted all our opportunities but still retaining their taste for the aesthetic of earlier times. This means a lot of waistcoats but no sock suspenders (because socks now stay up on their own.) Neckties, silk scarves, cravats, yes, but no detachable collars or cuffs (because I’m too lazy to make any and washing machines exist.)
Curiously (or not if you study the pendulum of fashion history) classic style is starting to creep back into the public aesthetic. Casualness reached a peak in the pandemic, and some people are looking for more than hoodie-sweatpants-crocs. I mean, you do you, wear what makes you feel most like yourself. As for me, I would wither and die if that was my only choice of apparel.
St Nicholas Catholic (lies, lies, I’m not even baptised)
St Matthews Anglican (more lies, mom? ok…)
Riverside PS
Oakridge HS
some defunct Niagara District school for the arts for a single semester that felt like an episode of Degrassi Junior High, complete with cliques, fake IDs, sororities, achingly cool transfer students, and dating a boy who was testing if he was gay (spoiler: he was)
Oakridge HS again
flunked out
Beal HS
dropped out again
That one summer school English credit I needed to finally graduate
The funny thing is…I went to my high school graduation (Oakridge #2.) I don’t know if the system is it’s the same now, but grad was held before exams. So it was totally possible to go to the ceremony, get your fake diploma on stage, then go to the prom (if that was your thing,) and then fail.
The funny thing is…of all my classes, I hated English the most. Taking six weeks to read a book? Uggggghhhhh. “Academic” level classes were even more plodding. As a child I was such a reader I devised a way to read while getting dressed for school that involved holding the book open with my toes. In high school, my highest mark in English was a 72.
In a perfect world* this should have been when someone asked if I had ADHD. But this was (oh god I’m old) 30 years ago, when it was still called ADD, and all it meant was a boy who couldn’t sit still.
I was merely inattentive, a dreamer, not applying myself. Unable to focus on the tasks at hand because the tasks were cripplingly dull. So I just didn’t do them, or did them lazily at the last minute, then shrugged when the teacher asked why.
Oh, the shrug. The blankness. The weaponized indifference of a clever teen with a revolutionary’s heart. The number of times I met my mother’s concern, her anger even, with a shrug.
Dissociation’s a hell of a drug.
Like this post: I started with the list of schools but I don’t remember what I wanted to say. Maybe nothing, other than remind myself that my path has never been smooth. There are no straight lines in my landscape, only curves and slopes and tunnels, backways and side-ways and unexpected turns. I’d like to end on an optimistic note, but maybe the hope is simply in knowing this, knowing that I can’t get there from here without going this way and that and a few other places. In this game, the side-quests are mandatory.
*Assuming your perfect world includes compulsory education. Mine includes dragons. What, you said perfect, didn’t you?
Hi, welcome to adult-diagnosed ADHD for women, where today you’ll learn that:
While scientific evidence is still emerging about how changing hormones can impact ADHD Janine feels the link was undeniable. Oestrogen helps to modulate the release of dopamine in the brain. When Janine’s level of oestrogen began to drop as she entered perimenopause, the ADHD symptoms she had been able to manage became much harder to deal with.
I was today years old when I learned that. You might not have been masking intentionally. Your ovaries were doing it for you. As their function declines, so does your dopamine supply. An incidental cruelty. Aging isn’t a punishment, it simply is, but that doesn’t make it easier.
Might explain why I recently got back into Drum & Bass. I’m rather a connoisseur of dopamine stimulation (within the boundaries of my enduring motion sickness and terror of deep water) and there’s something about playing a belting dj mix as I rocket around my empty kitchen at 5 am that helps the rest of my day run smoothly. I’ve already invoked some chaos, gleefully triggered some joy. It’s a smooth run from there.
A holodeck and a human actor: a best-case scenario for AI filmmaking. Human actors reacting in human ways to whatever scenario the filmmaker invents, which is not much different from what goes on now.
The thing is, you can’t fake human, and maybe it’s not worth trying. Everything else in filmmaking—sets, props, locations, eldritch horrors—can be represented artistically and therefore generated with digital imaging. It’s the people you can’t fake.
Consider: we pay people to do nothing but be good at emoting. Certain people emote i.e. act more skillfully than others, and we make them millionaires and give them gold statues and big parties and all our attention. One individual, idiosyncratic human with their asymmetrical face and personality quirks and gut biome, singular among all other humans currently alive, can win the hearts of millions. You’re telling me a calculator (which is what a computer is, writ large) is going to be able to fake that any time soon?
AI research has over the years taken up billions of dollars, and we’re still nowhere near faking people. Maybe it can’t be done. A computer as intricately modeled as the human brain might need to be either the size of a mountain or be an actual biological brain, grown in situ.
We are clever soup. But we are like nothing else. We’re cheap to make, easy to teach, endlessly inventive. Why bother trying to mechanically replicate what’s already so abundant?
You know the feeling that someone is standing nearby watching you? What if they were doing that not to make you afraid but because they love you?
I generally like all my characters. If I’m going to spent fifty thousand words or more with someone I have to like them, right?
Then there’s a few who get inside your heart and never leave…
But that’s the thing with love: it’s not always up to us. Sometimes love comes out of nowhere and takes over. Makes you want to take chances. Do things you never thought you could.
And yes, romantic love does this, but so does true friendship. So can mentorship when given with a pure heart, in the spirit of service. So does love for yourself.
That’s all my characters are. Little bits of myself I set loose in worlds I created.
That I can feel such love both for and from these unreal avatars of my unconscious is part of the mystery of the human mind. I’ll take it, though. Unconditional love? We should all be so lucky.
spectacularized demons who accuse us of their crimes
while they are still committing them
like a schoolyard bully asking
why are you punching yourself?
and we reply politely
offer counter points of view
and they laugh and call us snowflakes
and we let them
let’s go on strike
whenever someone uses a lying word like
snowflake
cuck
those people
those queers
those…aw, but we can’t say that word no more
go on strike
walk off the conversational job
demand better conditions
or walk away
“I don’t owe you my time.”
“You call it an opinion but to me it sounds like hate.”
“We work together. We don’t need to be friends.”
“You’re talking about people I care about.”
“How could you believe that about another human being?”
do not do their labour
don’t scab yourself to their delusions
refuse to negotiate on the definition of your selfhood
or the selfhood of others
their lies have no authority in the court of your self-worth
they are the ones in prison
they have built the walls themselves
and here we are outside
you and I and all of us
together in the garden
loving
free
(23/03/2023)
I originally thought of calling this not-quite-a-poem “You Fuckers Wanna See Some Cancel Culture?” but sometimes short titles are better.
I also acknowledge that many of us live and work in unsafe places and cannot ‘walk away’ without causing ourselves immense harm. It’s perfectly acceptable to strike by simply not dignifying the offending party’s remarks with a response. A blank stare can work wonders when someone’s fishing for a laugh.
[edit] Look, I don’t mean for this to sound like a complaint, a “I did a cool thing and no one noticed, boo hoo” entitled little sulk. I’m just baffled. I haven’t had *crickets* in ages, maybe never. So let’s stir the pot. Will someone go back and read this?
Interestingly the post had a lot of meaning for me. The next day, I tossed together a stream of consciousness poem and posted it right away, and boom, views. And you would not believe how common that is across the creator-sphere: the thing you pour your soul into gets barely a glance, and the piece of fluff you made for a laugh goes viral. Which is really justification for making as much art as you can. Who knows what will get noticed?
The Post FKA: “The Ides of March? Never Met Him. What’s He Like?’
Three years ago, I self-published my first short story.
Two years ago, I had fourteen titles on sale, was writing a few novels, and felt like I was figuring things out.
Last year, I went over the edge.
Any old edge will do. How about this one? (photo by Alan Tang on Unsplash)
Up till then it had felt like I was doing everything right. I don’t think I knew how depressed I was, which is something my mother said in reference to the same time in her life.
Taking medication was me making a sensible choice for a goddamn change. A grown up, self-disciplined decision to rein in my worrisome habits of thought and behaviour and become (what the hell was I thinking?) a productive member of society.
The results were predictably bad. You may recall that I am manifestly incapable of doing anything directly. Plans adjust themselves, reality reorganizes, and my intentions never end up aiming at my goals. I must approach all challenges and opportunities sideways: improvise, adjust, create new ways in the midst of living them. This is a very durable feature of my personality, and it affects everything I do, including taking medication to regulate my brain function. I’m sorry, but my brain function is a bratty queer with a glitter gun and the first six rows of the audience *will* *get* *wet.* Trying to rein this in leads to wildly unregulated emergent behaviour, and it was bad.
While high on legal speed, I did not buckle down and focus on my writing, which I was suddenly unable to do. Nor did I get really organized and plan my next year, down to the hour. No, in between the bouts of tremors and sobbing into the carpet, I decided to start another blog, devoted not to writing but to (honestly, what the hell was I thinking?) historical menswear.
I swear it made sense at the time. A distraction from the stress of a publishing career and encouragement to do more sewing, and if I was lucky, a back door into being known for anything at all, which somehow optimism and fairy dust would turn into a book career. It became one more task looming over me, one more chore to neglect. I needed to write books, not faff on about cravats on a blog no one would read without me promoting it like crazy.
I took the medication for a week. I quit when they wanted me to up the dosage. Once I recovered from my inadvertent meth bender, I wrote a novella in which a doctor gets punched. I’ve done plenty of drugs under my own recognizance, and if I’d paid a schemy 22-year old in a nightclub bathroom for a pill that did to me, I’d hunt the little shit down and get my money back.
The blog lasted six months.
edit: This blog? This blog I do nothing to promote, that doesn’t sell my books, that does nothing for anyone? It’s coming up on two years. 152 posts. See? It’s just like I said. Sideways or not at all.
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