Tonight, I am attempting to rewrite a very difficult scene. I am rewriting it because I realized it was structurally/narratively a duplication of something that came before, and didn't serve enough purpose, and made a particular character feel like she doesn't grow or change because of that duplication, which is one of the things that my-agent-I-show-you-her has mentioned in her notes. And then I had to turn around and check what that character's motives were, and then scale back up the whole thing from there.

I think I have the underpinnings now. Sort of. And so now I've disassembled the scene itself and I'm moving words around.

Tonight rewriting feels sort of like having a car engine in pieces. I'm sitting on the floor with my gloves on, with paragraphs and spare parts spread out all around me, and I have to stick them back together, or replace, or rewire just so; so it'll make heat and light again. And it has to weigh the right amount and be the right shape, or it won't fit into the rest of the car.

I have the distinct feeling I'd be having an easier time of this if I knew how to field-strip and reassemble some machinery...

(Back to work.)

First off? Thank you, guys. I feel seriously loved. :)

Tonight is somewhat sleepy in the way that adrenaline comedowns and rainy grey days and life-goes-ons are. I have slopped through the rain after work to pick my new passport up from the post office (thus ensuring they will let me across the border to Readercon), bought groceries, and eaten my dinner, and now I am sitting in my pajamas with a printed copy of my-agent-I-show-you-her's notes on Above, marking them up with bright multicoloured pens to get a sense of exactly how much work, how many organized passes, and how long it shall take me. This is not scary, because I have already revised this book three times, so what's one more? Also, there is really no task that is not facilitated by bright multicoloured pens.

None of this still feels quite real.

---

I will say I am really tired right now -- work is both busy and somewhat emotionally draining this week -- but I do have a garden post coming, and some other things.

This is the theme song of the last six weeks of my life. It plays in my head when I'm walking, and it plays on the radio when I randomly turn it on. It's stalking me around shopping malls, and it is perfectly apropos for everything going on here at the Casa since the end of April.

No end in sight.

It's terrifying. But...kinda wild too, I gotta say. :)

No, really. Now what?

*wanders around in circles aimlessly*

---

Writing Project Honeydew, 2009

Write "Parable of the Shower"
Write "Sugar"
Revise "Parable of the Shower"
Revise "Sugar"
Write two SU DVD extras
Revise Above

Must Do

Write "The Closet Monster"
Start either The Enchanted Generation or Saturnalia


Icing

Start "The Small Dark Movie of Your Life"
Write "The Marriage of the Harpy"
Write "Know Your Apocalypses"
Write "The Right People"
Write "Bachelorette"

---

I, um. Sort of did most of my work. I may need to put more ambition in my schedule.

So is there anything you guys think I should be doing?

1) I went to the AGO today for the first time in...fifteen years? While we did a lot of cracking wise about what is Art and what is Not Art, I realized very starkly how it feels to walk into the short fiction scene without having done the requisite background reading. Art of any kind is a conversation. It's hard to find a good line to get in on, especially when you're seeing snippets and excerpts only.

2) I finally looked up the lyrics to The Slip tonight. It is...a small brilliance of an album. Also, people on lyrics sites are extremely literal readers and think everything has to do with sex and drugs and biographical interpretation, but that's why they won't get a story out of this and I will.

3) When I am rich and famous (or just rich) the first thing I will get is a bathtub that is both long enough and deep enough. Other tall people will know exactly what I mean here.

4) I plan to have no comment on whatever's going down at Amazon until I am in possession of more facts. Not conjecture, not theory, not pattern-matching, not "well so-and-so said they said", but facts. It's only so damn easy to troll the internet because it jumps every time a stick's waved its way, you know. Keep your shoes on, folks.

5) I am actively revising Above again. Yes, I would rather put out my own eyes (with a grapefruit spoon!) than do so. I'm losing that...sense of coherence of the text. But I had a dream two nights ago where [Redacted], Agent of Man's Desiring, sent me a letter at work asking to see the full manuscript, because I'd been talking about it so much and she was interested. And I was so excited I couldn't get a thing done.

I want this. I haven't felt like I want this lately because I have, honestly, been too tired and stressed out to give much of a crap about anything. But I want this, and maybe I needed to be reminded of that.

So I will just have to make that work, won't I?

January 28, 2009 Progress Notes:

"Sugar"

Words today: 1000.
Words total: 22,850.
Reason for stopping: Round number. Still writing all the wrong scenes. Like plowing mud. Work tomorrow.

Books in progress: Robert Graves, The Long Week-end; Peter S. Beagle, The Innkeeper's Song.
The glamour: Dayjobbery. Really, that's it. Dayjobbery has been somewhat unexpectedly demanding this week.

---

Yet 'nother review of "Miles to Isengard" come down the pipe: Anthony Williams at ScienceFictionandFantasy appears to like the atmosphere, but want more explanation.

On the other side of that, I'm sure everyone on this side of the internet knows that Realms of Fantasy has abruptly closed up shop; the website's been taken down inside a day, and the editors found out via the magic of leaked internet discussion. I will not discuss how majorly shitty this is, given that RoF was the home of my first pro sale and filled a solid niche in the market that I don't think anyone else is really replicating. Also, "Mister Oak" is now homeless, and when I am a little more over that, I will have to go find it a new place to live.

My head is also sprouting with short stories, and I do not know what to do with them or where to put them.

Finally, since none of that is especially interesting to Persons Not Me, I give you this, courtesy of delta_november:

It makes me happy in the way the tea icon makes me happy.

(I need to go thief the tea icon. 'Scuse me.)

January 12, 2009 Progress Notes:

"Sugar"

Words today: 750.
Words total: 15350.
Reason for stopping: Time to go to dance class.

Books in progress: K.J. Parker, Shadow; Robert Graves, The Long Week-end.
The glamour: Did manage to do some finance stuff this afternoon. That was nice.

---

Really, I have nothing to say about the discontinuation of the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror anthology series but shit. So that is what I'm saying. Shit. This is a blow and a loss, and shit.

Maybe content when I'm back from class.

1) I got the job.

2) I got the grant.

2a) ksumnersmith also got the grant.

2b) The friends let me know I got the grant, having ascertained I hadn't been home or read my mail yet, by asking me out for dessert and springing it on me at the table. It was sort of like:

Karina: Here look!
Leah: Ooh yay you got the grant!
Karina: Read the second page.
Leah: *reads list of grant recipients. Sees own name. Slides down into chair and bursts into tears of shock*
Karina, Jana, and Chris: *laugh long and loud*

At which point we ate chocolate things and drank sangria.

2b) That means we just received grant money from a literary arts body for not one but two genre books. We did that just now. We got acknowledgment and support from the Canlit crowd.

Holy god.

---

Life is full. Life runneth over. I am still kinda stressed to hell over various things, change and responsibilities and sister's wedding next month, but...

Four literary professionals I don't know read the synopsis and first chapter of my book. And gave it money. Above is now produced with the support of the City of Toronto, through Toronto Arts Council.

Oh my god I'm a real writer.

Having slept on this, I have decided that exhorting people to talk about business for the team and praising those who do makes me a special kind of douchebag if I sit in my bunker and don't. I, as always, have no desire to be a feminine hygiene product. So today you will be treated to:

The Saga of Why Leah Doesn't Deal With Prime/Wildside Publications

With help from the copious records she keeps

Back in October 2006, when Clarkesworld was a fairly new market paying ten cents a word, I figured I'd give them a try with a story. I waited a little, and then instead of hearing from Nick, got an IM from Sean Wallace (my IM is fairly findable if you look) saying that Nick had passed the story on to him for Fantasy Magazine (which was then a print publication paying 2-5 cents a word. This, I will note, is highly irregular. The ettiquette for passing someone's story to another editor seems to be, well, don't. Recommend the author submit to that editor instead. Or if you do, you ask the author for permission first.

So I was a bit steamed, but Fantasy wanted the story, and I recall having a half-agonized conversation in a coffeeshop before a Waking City event as to whether I should turn down the chance to crack a new market because of my irritation over that ettiquette breach.

Ultimately I decided to take the sale, and woe unto me that I did, because that was the beginning of the Saga.

Skip forward a few months; "Furnace Room Lullaby" is being included in the fifth issue of the magazine, which is coming out pretty quickly, in December 2006. I'm asked for bio and photo information three times (it's lost twice) before I get any sense that it's done. Between these things falls the World Fantasy Convention, at which Sean solicits a novel from me. As I'm working with these guys partially on a "what harm short stories" basis -- knowing personally someone who got screwed hard by Prime on her two collections -- I put him off. Let's see how the short story goes, says me. Throughout this drama, Sean is chasing me for book proposals and IMing me to solicit gossip, occasionally about my personal life.

This makes me uncomfortable, but it is not business and sometimes people are odd in this business. I limit my IM availability to him and mostly shrug it off. A second story is bought by Fantasy, "A Month of Sundays", and one placed with the Japanese Dreams anthology, accepted in a land speed record time that makes me sure to this day it wasn't read the whole way through.

I start getting concerned when reviews of the story, in that issue of the magazine, hit two major review outlets. And I still don't have a contract. I get on the horn, and Sean is sending out contracts and payments; the issue is already out. I make my discomfort with the publishing without a contract known, even though the discomfort is now outright anger. Sean is very sad that he has screwed up, but does not in future take steps to correct this.

I get the contract the first week of February (the magazine came out end of December/beginning of January).

It's a really, really bad contract.

The rights in the contract do not match the rights advertised at that time on Fantasy Magazine's public guidelines. That approaches fraud. They want all rights, all languages, for two cents a word. There is no reversion date. There is no statement of legal jurisdiction, which is a standard feature of any contract anywhere. For those not familiar with short fiction contracts, this is highly nonstandard and borders on abusive. I get on the horn to Sean (this will happen a lot). He says it's all Betancourt's fault and enacts IM spy drama so Betancourt won't see him typing. I drop the f-word (fraud).

I revise the contract to standard specs, and send it back.

Time passes. And passes. Seven weeks, in fact.

And I'm e-mailing and IMing, and I'm bugging, and I can't seem to get a copy of the countersigned contracts back to make this an actual official legal agreement. Sean, who was more than happy to talk to me before to the point of calling me "dear", which is really professionally inappropriate considering we are not friends, is now avoiding me.

I am now very upset, and very afraid that given all the fast ones they've tried to pull above, and given all the horror stories I heard from authors I know, like, and respect when I "came out" as someone who was having contract and payment trouble with Prime/Wildside, that I'm never going to get those countersigned documents and they're gonna pull a fast one regarding rights somewhere quiet, where I can't see it or do anything about it until too late.

So I pull the other two stories and get on the horn to Griefcom.

---

Griefcom are fast-moving and lovely people. My countersigned contracts are wrenched out of the publisher's hands. I am assured that things are going to get dealt with by several people at Prime/Wildside in the wake of my pulling the stories and telling people at that company (other ones) why. Many promises are made.

I, however, have had enough, and do not go back.

At my last intelligence, which is a few months back, that contract was still being used. Fantasy Magazine's submission guidelines still advertise a purchase of First North American Serial Rights, despite that being impossible as they are now a web publication. The near-fraudulent issue of claiming one rights buy and substituting another in contract has not been addressed, and it has been over a year and a half since this all went down.

Sean still occasionally IMs me until I block him, shortly after the contracts are back in my hand.

That was my experience with Prime Books/Wildside Press publications.

I still have a reprint pending there, in Best New Fantasy 2, but that anthology has been delayed for a year and a half as well, and I expect it will never see print. Sean guaranteed me and one other contributor this past weekend that it was going to proofs this summer. We will see.

---

In sum: I don't know if the Prime/Wildside business model runs on, to be perfectly blunt, malice or incompetence. But as concerns my personal business, I don't care anymore. This was beyond the pale of what I've ever seen in a short fiction market, and it is not in my business plan to touch hot stoves twice.

Your take-home lessons:

1) This only got as far as it did because I did stupid things. I cannot emphasize this enough. My gut was giving me warnings about this person's attempt to assume friendship, to get in my personal space in order to get things from me, about the delays and avoidance and sketchy practices that could have been just a one-time oopsie, and I disregarded them. Never do that. Listen to your belly. It knows about publishing.

2) Do not conduct business in IM. Take any business conducted in IM to e-mail, which has a timestamped and traceable record.

3) And for that matter, keep all your business correspondence. You may need to make a case to Griefcom one day.


I no longer deal with any Prime/Wildside publication, have turned down their solicitation of a novel, and do not advise those who solicit my opinion to touch this publisher with a ten-foot pole.

As always, my experience is mine, and your business is yours, and I am not telling you what to do. But I hope this is a useful datapoint for those of you considering doing business with this publisher, or any publisher. Tell your children not to do what I have done. You'll save yourself a lot of grief, and you don't really want to be in the exclusive club of people, who as Cisco put it, got Primed.

There is this thing I do. There is a list of markets I will not work with.

I have not made large flailing noises on the internet saying so, or sent them snippy letters so they know how much I'm too cool for them or some like bullshit. Because this isn't about exercising power over someone, or being too cool. It's about what directions I want to take my business, the business of writing, in which I as CEO must decide with which other businesses to associate my name.

Here is why I am talking about this today. Take a break. Read the link.

I am not the arbiter and validator of other people's business decisions. Their businesses are not mine, and I am not placing judgment on the authors who work with Helix and are protesting people's responses to its editor's behaviour in that post and its comments. Helix, however, is one of the markets that I will not work with. That initial decision was not made entirely because of its editor's propensity for spouting off at the mouth in a racist and sexist fashion, but that was at least half of it. I don't want my name associated with Helix or William Sanders.

In that linked post and its comments, you have some pretty good authors who are now in a bad position: they're forced not to defend, but to not entirely condemn the bad behaviour of someone to whom they owe a professional obligation. I don't believe that any of those authors agree with this editor's attitudes regarding women and Muslims or find those attitudes acceptable. But their names are tied in now with Helix and William Sanders, and there is only so much they can do.

What you are seeing in nojojojo's post is called damage control. And fairly gracefully done. But learn from it, all ye readers: when Nora says "But don't tar and feather the authors in Helix just because of their association with him. That's just not right." it may well not be right.

But it's gonna happen nonetheless.

---

I'm bringing this up to point out one of the more important things I've learned about publishing:

Selling fiction, at whatever cost? To markets with sketchy reputations, or whose editors and publishers behave in sketchy ways?

Not worth it.

Publishing should be fun. Yes, it's a business pursuit, but it should leave a warm glow in your tummy. You should be able to look back in a few months or years at that publication and go "yes, that was a positive experience for me and the other guy too".

It should not be damage control.

Do business with people who will deal fairly with you and conduct themselves in good faith, who demonstrate an understanding of the social mores of the genre community and the standards of professionalism. Do business with people who give you contracts you actually want to sign, without that little qualm in your belly at 2am.

It is perfectly permissible to look at the behaviour of a market, or its proponents, and say to yourself "I will not submit my work there".

Yes, this is sometimes hard, especially if you're just starting out and have zero to a few sales to your name. They have something you want. And when you want a thing very badly, it is hard to cut people out of the herd who may be able to give it to you. But think about how you want it, too, and how you want to feel about it when you look back in ten years.

So set a standard for yourself. Apply it rigorously. And when someone does not meet it, even if they have an offer in hand?

Say thanks, but no thanks.

Because you don't want to be in that shitty situation. And because it'll make you a lot happier, as you chase down the path towards making your business a career.