text:
I dreamed about it when I went to sleep – about being stuck in these horrible political nightmares, of trying to untangle plots through bank notes and accounting, and desiring the wrong people, for all the right reasons, in a society that kept close watch on me, like a secondary world fantasy Big Brother, marching me inevitably toward my doom. I dreamed of trying to fight a system within a system that was horribly corrupt, and trying to retain my own sanity, my own decency, my own sense of self, while knowing the only way to win was to give all that up.
Horrible choices. A terrible bind.
And I admit that sometimes this is what is feels like to be a career novelist.
This theme of becoming what you hate in order to destroy what you hate is a big part of THE MIRROR EMPIRE and the sequel I'm working on right now, EMPIRE ASCENDANT. It's a theme I love, and it shows up in spades in my favorite novel of the year, CITY OF STAIRS, as well. I also dealt with it in the only short story of mine ever to appear in a "Best of" anthology. It's something I think about a lot as someone committed to women's equality, too. Equality is a necessary step. But can there be true equality in a system which has been built on inequality from the start? Is it enough to try and change it from within, when its founding principles are so fundamentally broken? Rebellion and revolution starve and kill and destroy people. But is mere existence in a broken system any better? (this is why I enjoyed Snowpiercer as well, which is unafraid to ask and answer this question).
I'm drawn to a lot of fiction that explores war, power (including the various -isms that come with it), colonialism, rebellion, genocide and the like. We have moved well beyond the days of the "war is fucking awful" post-Vietnam novels to a new wave of more complex voices who are writing astonishing stories that take on these issues in far more complicated new futures or secondary worlds. These topics were my academic interests, and seeing the interplay of all of these things in real life, they continue to weigh heavily on me. In order for me to understand a thing, it's not enough to read about it, speak to people involved in it, I have to process it the same way I process many of my thoughts, and that's by writing about it. I write about these things with a good dose of feminism, of women doing things, of an awareness of the diversity of people in the world, and the diversity of real and potential lived experiences, whether that's with family relationships or the way governments are structured. I got into this game because I wanted to write worlds that were really different.
My writing journey has been one about leveling up, time and time again. When I finally got into the Clarion writing workshop (I was rejected the first time), I found I could hold my own with the other writers, but there were certainly some who were flat out better, and even more who were flat-out better than me with particular parts of writing– they were great plotters, great at dialogue, or better at character, or worldbuilding. Instead of making me feel like shit, though, knowing that there were people who were better than me who were at this same stage in their careers was really invigorating. It challenged me. I'm a naturally lazy person, and I live for a challenge.
Which brings us to now, four published books into my writing career, with a fifth book that's been kicking my ass since February. When you bang your head against a book long enough, you start to despair. When you read some great books that are doing what you could only wish you're doing, it can get downright depressing.
But there's a funny thing that happens to me when I read great work. Yes, sure, there's the initial, "OH GOD WHY AM I NOT THIS GOOD!!?? I WANT TO BE GOOD LIKE THIS!!" But after that comes this very slow circling and narrowing of focus, and I become very intent, like, "OK, there are some really exceptional books in the world. That is a fact. Nothing has changed. It's just that there are more exceptional books nailing what I want out of a book, too. If I want to get noticed, if I want to be read, I need to be better than everyone else. I need to work harder."
Constant improvement of craft is a necessary thing in this business. If you hope to cruise along writing the same book for two decades, well… yes, there are some people who can do that, but not many. What I see most often is folks who get stuck about book four or five – where I am now – and just cease to improve. They start writing the same book, at the same level of craft, and wonder why no one's buying them anymore.
The reality is that when books that explore your same themes come out, and they are markedly better than your books, you don't have any way of carving out a place in that market anymore. I've told people before that I don't want to be a part of a genre, I want to be my own genre. I want to create it. I want people to say, "I want a Kameron Hurley book." What a Kameron Hurley book is is going to change as I do, but my hope is that I can keep leveling up my craft, keep improving my skill, and bring my readers with me.
Sometimes people get annoyed at that. They go, "Well, this is what I write, and fuck you if you don't want to read it." And that's fine for you! Do what you like. But that's not my path. I can't imagine Ursula LeGuin went, "Hey, I'll just write every book the same now, they'll all just be like THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS. I'll just spit out a few dozen more like that and call it a career."
I'm in this to get better. I want to be exceptional. And if you're in this game to do that, to become an exceptional writer, you have to work at it. And me, you know… I didn't start this game with as much talent as other people. I have to work harder.
I've been spending a lot of time with the Lester Dent plot formula, and Michael Moorcock's advice on how to write a book in three days the last few weeks, using it to up the narrative and plot flow on a project, and you know, as I'm working on this thing, and finally grokking it – it feels like there are new pathways opening up in the brain. It feels like untangling a thing that was just a dark massy blob in my head. And then you unthread it, and you look at it, and it all looks so much simpler. That is learning. Leveling up. Getting better. It's the long slog of knocking your head against a thing, coming at it from different angles, and then putting it into practice.
Active practice has been shown to be more important to an artist's "leveling up" than sheer talent. I've seen this again and again, and it's the old "ant and the grasshopper" story writ out in real life. The grasshopper might last a season through luck, but it's the ant –with hard work and preparation – who's going to consistently make it. I've taken this idea to heart, and what it means is that I'm never done learning how to write. Every book offers a new problem, new challenges, not just in their inherent structures, or genres, but the challenge to do things better at the plot, character, prose and structural level than I've done before. We don't all have a runaway success right out the gate – and to be honest, I'm a bit glad about that, because I'd rather my runaway success, the book I'm known for, was a much better book than my first-out-the-gate effort.
This is why, when people ask about what surprised me most about publishing, I say it's that the work is never done. That the leveling up isn't permanent. Publishing one book doesn't mean you're going to write books people want to publish forever. What was "good enough" last year may not be good enough this year, or ten years, or twenty years from now. Writing is a constant process of leveling up.
So you're not as good as a peer. So what? You aren't dead yet. Go back to studying great work. Look at those great books that make you jealous and unpack them. If you suck at plot, study folks great at plot. If you suck at characters, read books with great characters. And when you're not reading, watch great stories – television, film, plays, comic books, whatever. What makes a good story – people we care about, engaging in interesting things that challenge and transform (or fail to transform) them – are the same across a variety of media. As I said earlier, I found the video game Mass Effect 3 to be an exceptionally classic tragedy. I cried through most of the game. Only a great piece of storytelling is going to be able to have that effect on people. You could learn a lot from it.
I started writing books because I couldn't find the books I wanted to read on the shelf. But now, increasingly, I've been finding more and more of those books – not just because there ARE more, but because they are getting far more visibility. They are getting picked up by mainstream publishers, not just the specialty or small book publishers. The market is catching up to what many of us have been writing for a good long while.
But that also means that it's become increasingly important for me to understand what type of writer I am in this market. When you are no longer writing work at the margins, when the margins start to move mainstream, you need to figure out who you are, too. What makes you different? Why should anyone care? How is your work unique? You can respond, of course, by pushing out the margins, by writing edgier work. You can also respond by leveling up, by being the very best at writing the type of book you write. These are both hard decisions. Tough steps. But they are doable, and necessary, when the margin starts to move, and readers throw up their hands in ten years (as they are doing with grimdark now) and say, "Yes, you have diverse characters, interesting family structures, and women doing things. But the genre is FULL of those books now! WHAT ELSE CAN YOU OFFER ME???"
Finding out what I have to offer, and improving how I write those stories, is the key to my survival in the industry. Not so much in a marketing/sales sense, mind you, but for my own sanity. After all, if there are a bazillion other writers giving the market the same stories I can give them, only better, what's the point of me writing it?
To stay in this game, I need to write just a little bit slant, sometimes. And I need to keep leveling up, or none of this is worth it to me, in the end.
I want to write books that keep people up at night, where they cry through the first forty pages and keep reading anyway. I want to write books they take with them to parties and hand out to people, because really, yes, you MUST read this book.
And if I want to write those books, I have to work for them. Not just today, or tomorrow. But forever. There is no final boss level. No award that means you're done. There's only you, and the next book. Forever and ever, until the last breath leaves your body.
I really hope you're up for it.]]>
That means it should be showing up at your favorite bookstores (not just B&N) today or later this week. Amazon, B&N, Booksamillion already show it available, and any bookstore you ask should be able to order it for you no problem now.
As the holidays are upon us, I wanted to celebrate! Most of you may have already bought your paper copies of THE MIRROR EMPIRE, but if you haven't, or if you want to purchase copies for friends and family for the holidays (WHO WOULDN'T??), now is a great time.
I know a lot of folks were bummed about missing out on the B&N promo because they didn't have a B&N anywhere near them. So here's your second shot:
Purchase a paper copy of THE MIRROR EMPIRE (from any bookstore in the US!) today, 11/17 through 11/30, and send the receipt to firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll send you a free bookplate AND you'll be entered to win a copy of THE MIRROR EMPIRE wall map, in full color, signed by me. The more books you buy… the more entries you get.
Questions? READ THE FAQ at the end of the post.
Here's how big the map is! Who wouldn't want this? (in fact, this is my LAST copy, so I won't have one either after this)
And here's what your bookplate will look like. A new design, different than the one for the B&N promotion, so if you're a super fan you can collect the set.
Q: Am I eligible for the promo if I backordered a copy of the book when it was out of print?
A: If your receipt is dated 11/17 (the date most major retailers listed it in stock) or any other date within the promo period (up to 11/30) then yes! Your credit card is generally not charged until your backorder is shipped, so the receipt should have a date that's valid for the promo.
Q: Am I eligible for the promo if I buy an electronic copy of THE MIRROR EMPIRE?
A: Alas, no. What would you do with that book plate?? Buy a copy as a holiday gift instead! Every book you buy gets you an entry in the contest for the wall map. Just think of the SHINING HAPPY FACES OF THOSE WHO WILL RECEIVE THIS GIFT.
Q: I'm not buying the book in the U.S. Am I eligible for this promotion?
A: Alas, not this time around. I'm trying to keep the postage for this one in reasonable limits, which is why we're also limited to the first 250 individuals who enter. But I still like you!
Q: I already bought a paper copy of THE MIRROR EMPIRE AND an electronic copy. Do I REALLY have to buy ANOTHER paper copy to enter the map giveaway and get a bookplate?
A: Think of it this way: now you know what your whole family is getting for the holidays! Your shopping is DONE!
By Robert Jackson Bennett
Unless you live under a tree, you've probably heard me rant and rave about this one. Last year I talked a lot about ANCILLARY JUSTICE (pssst sequel out now!) and why you should read it. This year it's CITY OF STAIRS. What a lot of folks don't realize is that half the experience of reading is the experience the reader brings to it. CITY OF STAIRS hit a lot of the things that fascinate me – it's a spy novel, a political thriller, an SF novel, a fantasy novel. It's about war and genocide and the danger of using the tools of the oppressor. It's got monster fights and fist punching and a tremendous sense of wonder and engaging mystery on every page. If you have not read this book yet, you are, frankly, missing out. Stop missing out. Stop it.
By Cherie Priest
Moody. Creepy. Bad ass. It's Lizzie Borden of "hacked up her parents yes/no" fame as a secret Cthulu hunter. Full of bad ass women doing bad ass things, it's an engrossing read, stringing you along with tantalizing mysteries and fabulously flawed characters. It's all that stuff you loved about Lovecraft (including the weird nightmares after you read it) without the constant facepunching. I don't read books very fast as a rule, but I plowed through this in just a couple of days, eager to see how the protagonists dealt with what would most likely be their inevitable end (Cthulu mythos, remember?).
By Aliette de Bodard
Please ignore this cover. I'm ashamed to say it was the cover that put me off reading this for some time. I'm a cover snob. But if you are a snob too and move past it as I suggest, inside you'll find a fascinating… political thriller? Space opera? Whatever the sub genre, it's SF that will make you think, interrogate what sorts of societies are populating the future, and oh yeah, it's a great story, too. War, politics, sentient stations, and fascinating, complex family lineages and infighting will keep you turning the pages. And like Maplecroft, this is a story that's very clear it's about the women who do shit, not just women who have things done to them. Always terribly refreshing.
I've heard a lot of folks talking about how the internet has become some sort of rage shitstorm of abuse and outrage without end since then, and just like we often muse about how much simpler the world of our childhoods seemed, they talk about how the internet used to be a lot nicer, and hey, what happened?
These assertions are funny to me because as a feminist blogger, the internet was never a fuzzy happy place for me, from my very first month. It was always full of assholes. I just never let them hijack my blog, my comments section, or any other platform I engaged on. I deleted all the foaming-mouth fuck this, fuck that, fuck you comments and got back on with my writing work. In conversation with my spouse yesterday, he owed up to being part of a group of folks on Prodigy (remember Prodigy? No, probably not) who actually viewed themselves as troll-crushing superheroes. Whenever a well-known troll jumped onto a thread and started derailing, they'd organize themselves, start a new thread, and goad the trolls into hopping over and harassing them to spare whoever had drawn the troll's ire.
Trolls have always existed. Just like child and domestic abuse in the 1950's, just because it wasn't talked about, or wasn't on TV, doesn't mean it didn't exist. It just wasn't cool to speak about.
Just because internet harassment shows up on CNN doesn't mean it's new. It just means it's more visible.
And yes, we're the ones who made it visible, after enduring a lot of bullshit.
After dealing quietly with abuse since the beginning of the internet, many folks, most of them women, decided to air the reality of the abuse they received, and though it took nearly a decade, men and mainstream media outlets finally started believing it was something that existed, and started signal boosting. Suddenly we were seeing posts that compiled all the horrible comments they got, the ones we deleted quietly back in the day. Not a day goes by now, it seems, when someone on Twitter isn't retweeting some horrible thing some troll said to them.
I understand the importance of doing this, of making abuse visible. I really, really do. Most folks, on seeing the actual abuse spewed at women online on full display, finally, finally, finally believed that it was happening. I actually laughed when I saw a lot of guys realize how bad it was, because it was preposterous to me that men didn't believe us, that they lived in this safe internet bubble where the worst somebody ever did was say you were a fucking idiot or post long ranty conspiracy theories that glutted up your comments section. Documenting abuse – especially in the case of serial trolls and harassers who go on to delete content and scrub evidence – is certainly important. It tells us who to stay away from. It gives us an idea of the realities women and women of color in particular face on the internet, and how that abuse both bleeds into real life and is, in truth, merely an offshoot of meat space. It's perpetuating abuse without consequences.
But by documenting the abuse of these trolls, we also seem to have inadvertently ceded the internet to them.
So now, instead of reading the witty, insightful tweets from a journalist or woman activist while I'm browsing online, what I'll increasingly see all day is them retweeting or responding to snarky comments, outright trolling, assholes, and derailers. They've given over their entire megaphone, the blog or the Twitter or the Facebook account they've worked so hard to build, to airing the views of terrible people.
By seeking visibility and transparency they've given trolls exactly what they wanted – an audience.
And now, more and more, I see people posting about how much that abuse hurts them, about how it makes them want to quit writing, or interacting on the internet all together. Even people not affected by trolling have gotten so exhausted seeing all the constant abuse aired on every single Twitter thread, or let loose in every comment section, that they're thinking of leaving the internet too.
If all we have to share are the hateful views of others, then who exactly wins the internet, here?
And to be blisteringly honest, standing up and telling a troll how much their behavior destroyed you – when most trolls are actually sadists, people who take joy in the misery and harm of another – is REALLY giving them what they want. "This abuse destroyed me!" is like a rallying cry on some dudebro message boards to redouble their efforts. "Fuck yeah mission accomplished!" I can practically hear them every time I see some online confessional about another pro leaving the internet because of harassment.
You RT their comments. They win. They destroy your faith in the internet, so you leave. They win.
Of course, this is complicated, isn't it? Because if you suffer in silence, if you don't get support, they also win. And if you don't make it clear how bad the abuse is, then people think you're just overly sensitive, you're just being a girl, the internet is hard, suck it up.
What troubles me most is not that the internet is a horrible place. It's not. This small group of people with their raging bomb and rape threats have been around since there was an internet. It's a microcosm of real life. What's changed is not that they're here, what's changed is that we're giving them access to our platforms in the form of retweets, shares, and blog posts documenting their hate speech, and media outlets have learned that there's nothing that will get you more page views than someone saying something sexist or racist in some inflammatory post. Why regulate media site comments when the more horrifying the comments, the more people are drawn into signing in and refreshing the page, and visiting, and clicking, and frothing?
As someone who's been getting hate mail since even before I had a blog (long story), I learned early how to deal with it. I just deleted it. If it seemed like a tangible threat, I'd retain it for authorities. But 99.99% of what I got was just lonely people wanting to be heard on the internet, or outright sadists, hoping to get somebody's attention so they could feel they were worth something. I eventually turned off blog comments all together, because that's where the worst stuff came from. Turning off blog comments was the best thing I ever did. I no longer had to sift through angry vitriol, some of which would go on for pages, or over multiple comments.
The primary place I engage with people now is Twitter, which is a fabulous platform because that troublesome dudebro only gets off one, maybe two tweets – some of them not even terrible, most of them just passive-aggressive, so I know they're just poking for a response – before I mute or block them outright. That leaves them to scream at me on the internet quietly, safe in their own little bubble of 11 followers, without hijacking my time or my audience.
I also reduced the number of email threats I got really easily, by simply changing my email address to a "publicity@" address instead of a "Kameron@" address. When someone sends you something hateful, they want to KNOW you're getting it. They don't want to think it's being vetted by some publicist. And now, I've reached the point where all my email really is vetted, sorted and forwarded by my assistant (no more subterfuge, ha), so I never see anything hateful at all unless I'm inclined –for some wild reason – to visit the "hate mail" folder in that inbox.
I drew very careful lines around my online life. All that time in the trenches in the early days of the internet, arguing feminist theory with trolls, taught me a lot about patterns of trolling, online abuse, derailing, and who I'm actually here to serve.
I'm not here to turn someone hateful into a happy angel. That's laughable. I'm here to connect with folks looking for experiences like theirs, someone interrogating and exploring the same issues, folks who want to think, to discuss, to learn. I'm not here to turn a misogynist into a feminist. At best, long reading of my blog and my work might teach someone who thinks they're all about equality that they are actually affected by misogyny, that they think racist and misogynist things, and hopefully work to fix them.
But me yelling at someone on the internet isn't going to do that. Yelling on the internet never persuaded anyone.
The most persuasive piece I ever wrote was a story about llamas, for goodness' sake.
So if you're going to Fight the Man, Fight the Trolls, Upset the Internet, Change Hearts and Minds, go for it. But I suggest that you carefully consider what you're here to do, and who you're willing to signal boost on the platforms you've spent so long working to build an audience on. Interrogate what it is, exactly, you're going to accomplish by engaging with some snarky dudebro or well-known genre troll on Twitter who hauls out the same tired arguments day after day, decade after decade. I actually got a tweet from a well-known genre derailer in response to something I posted about racism, and he said something to the effect of, "But you're forgetting about class!" and I muted him outright, because I knew exactly what his derailing argument would be – I'd read it a thousand times in other venues, seen a million other folks take this one on. The song was not going to change. I knew where it was headed.
I'm not telling folks to pretend abusive comments and campaigns don't exist. Certainly not. If you find it cathartic to write a post every quarter with a roundup of your best hate mail, that's fabulous. But if you find it horrifically painful to dredge through, and it continues to upset you every time you see it, maybe this isn't something you should do. Maybe you should delete all that bullshit and get back to work and save the commiseration for a con or a private email exchange with a friend. Putting up a big post every week saying how much it's destroyed us… I worry about those posts. I worry that posts like that get trolls very excited, and the excitement and delight that it causes them? I'm not sure there's public good being done that is enough to offset that. Say your peace. Work it out. But then please, please, please, get back to work. Because what angry, jealous, mean, frightful people want most of all is to derail you from your work. Shut you up. Move you off the internet. And if all you're doing is talking about them constantly, retweeting them, sharing their mail, you've given them a voice, and well – they feel heard, which is exactly what they want. So they double down, and things get worse. They want the time and attention of someone they are jealous of, someone they fear and hate for being everything they wish they could be, because you are loved and admired and talented and awesome, and they know they aren't. Yes, that's you: you're awesome. It's why they hate you.
So please consider your narrative, and how much of your own space you want to give over to the people who hate you, and how often.
I promise: the best revenge is being awesome.]]>
Folks generally tell me the story of a web designer or illustrator who's so burned out after working on corporate projects all day that they don't have the headspace to work on personal projects. But for me, corporate copywriting and writing novels are very, very different pursuits. They use entirely different parts of my brain. Corporate copywriting tends to be far more analytical – I'm not asking what I want, I'm not pulling fantastic stuff from the air; I'm asking what will appeal to a particular audience, and balancing that with the requirements the client has given me for a specific piece. Contrast this with novels, which are mine from start to finish. There's no endless rounds with stakeholders. It's not copy by committee. The suggested edits from your agent, your editor, your copyeditor, are just that. There is no client with a red pen who has the final say. What you write is what you own is what goes out the door.
Corporate work, by contrast, will sometimes go out the door resembling some mutant freak food, not the funny little treasure you originally penned.
That said, you can pick up a lot of skills as a corporate copywriter that serve you well with novels. I'd go so far as to say that you can often tell the difference between a novelist who's worked for hire and a novelist who hasn't purely in how they respond to reviews, feedback, business concerns, and deadlines. I was talking about just such a thing recently with some other writers who had worked extensively in corporate copywriting and other types of writing work outside of publishing. And the consensus was that OH DEAR GOD TALKING TO NOVELISTS WHO DID NOT WORK FOR HIRE OMG THEY LIVE IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE HOW DO THEY SURVIVE? (the answer is often: they don't. Or, they had a book or series that was so got-lucky successful they never had to learn)
So somebody on Goodreads says they didn't like your book. So what? I once had a client email me feedback on a project that was (and yes, this is a direct quote), "This copy is just a jumble of words." This was somebody I had to work with in order to keep the lights on. I was so angry I had to get up from my desk and take a walk around my work campus before I came back to untangle what exactly "jumble of words" meant to this client so we could make it more like what they wanted. I've won awards for my fiction, sure, but I've won awards for my corporate work too, and having someone ten years your junior tell you you're incompetent, and then you're nodding and smiling and revising it to their specifications, is just a part of the job. Do you like to eat? I like to eat.
So a conservative writer says you're a mealy-mouthed hack of a liberal and you have to sit down to a group dinner with him at a convention? Try having a client tell your boss you're an worthless, unpleasant hack, and then find yourself required to sit down with that person in every single project meeting forever after, where you have to laugh and joke and dutifully write down their direction for a new projects. And then you must deliver them your best work with no fuss, no sarcasm, no guff. You suck it up. Because you're a professional.
So your book is due in a month. That's tough. Try the valuable client who keeps your entire agency afloat who needs four creative concepts by 8 a.m, and it's already 4:30 p.m., or the big web sales project that has to go up by midnight because it kicks off the entire sales season for your company, and you're up at 11:30 p.m. emailing the President, the CEO and the VP of Marketing to get endless edits and sign-off on hastily rewritten copy.
The truth is, the most mind-numbing, exhausting job I ever had had nothing to do with writing. It was when I worked as a project assistant at an architectural firm, and 80% of my job was updating project spreadsheets. Yes, spreadsheets. I added and changed dates as projects were completed or pushed out. I commuted three hours every day. Yes, that's 15 hours of commuting time a week, and then they started flying me out to another city once a month to update spreadsheets there, too (Yeah, I know. "Face time" was important, I guess?). That job wrecked me for writing. Even during slow times at that day job, I didn't have the energy or focus to work on my own writing projects during the lull. I ended up reading blogs and making Neverwinter Nights modules instead.
Being a corporate copywriter teaches you that writing is a job – it has deadlines that can get you fired if you don't meet them. It forces you to work with people who really don't like you, or who view you as some kind of word computer, some non-sentient being that just craps out words when provided with the right stimulus. You also get really used to being taken for granted. I'm reminded, often, of Peggy Olsen, the crackerjack copywriter in Mad Men, yelling at her boss about how she works incredibly hard for him and he hasn't said one word of thanks or encouragement and he yells, "That's what the money's for!" You are paid for a service. If you expect glowing reviews or fabulous friendships, you should find another profession.
Corporate copywriting does pay well, the longer you do it. Far better than novel writing. But as the examples above illustrate, the burnout rate can be very high, depending on what type of work environment you land in. You'd think being a game writer would be fabulous 24/7 fun, too, but at the end of the day, you're working for a corporation with release dates and deadlines, just like at any other corporation. You learn to write to a deadline, within the parameters of the story set down by your team, or you go home.
It's this idea, that writing is a job, a business, that I so often take for granted when talking to other novelists. It's why I'm often brought up short when I hear writers tell me a book was due in a year but takes five years. Or when I see SFF authors descend into high school theater style "I hate you for that comment that one time! That person hates me for that post! So-and-so loves such-and-such! Here's who's on this side!" politics. I mean, c'mon, who cares? In 90% of cases, the folks you interact with at conventions are your business colleagues, not your friends. If they are your friends, you better be seeing each other a lot outside conventions, sharing baby and dog pictures regularly, and occasionally weeping onto their shoulder about various relationship problems. If not, you're probably not friends. You are work colleagues. Act like it.
I've also found myself confused a lot by writers' indifference to the business side of writing and publishing. I negotiate my salary and work conditions at my day job. I should be negotiating my novel contracts, too. I'm aware of the HR and benefit policies at my day job. I should be aware of the licensing and foreign rights management of my books. Right?
The most dangerous lie that writers are told is that novel writing is worthless, that it's a "fancy," that it's somehow romantic or special because one often takes joy in doing it. The reality is that no middle man will buy your words if they don't think they can make money from them. End of story. I've seen the analytics on how much money my words can make (and are making) the clients I work with, and trust me: it's worth the rates I charge. It's the same with my novels – I know about how much my publisher(s) are making on my books, and it's enough that more people want books from me (but not enough for those fabled million dollar advance… YET!). Publishers are not working for free. They aren't publishing you out of pity, any more than your boss is hiring you to write copy out of pity. They are here to make money. If they offer you a contract, it's because they believe they can profit from it (and, in many instances, sure, it means they like what you write, but that's an aspect to why your corporate boss hires you, too. They like it insofar as it's good for the company).
I worry a lot about other writers' approach to being a novelist. I have to keep in mind, often, that many writers are playing a different game than I am. They are not here to be career novelists. They are here to write weird books, or pretty books, or win awards, or sell X amount of copies, or make X amount of money. And all those reasons for writing, all those different paths, will have a different game plan. A different approach. Your approach is going to depend entirely on why exactly you're in this game. The sooner you figure that out, the sooner you know what career you want, the better. Because let me tell you – there are a million ways to hack this business depending on what your goals are, and a trillion ways to fail at every single one of those goals an endless number of times.
I write copy to keep the lights on, sure. But I also write corporate copy because I enjoy the challenges. I like the idea of tapping into the hopes, dreams and desires of an audience to position products. That may not sound sexy until you realize that this type of persuasive advertising is how we change human behavior, too. It's how we got people to smoke, and stop again. It's how we got people to wear seat belts. To vaccinate children. To get flu shots. There is a tremendous amount of public good you can do if you know how to speak to audiences. If we're selling widgets today, well, maybe tomorrow we're selling universal healthcare, and I'll have the tools at my disposal to do it.
In the meantime, corporate copywriting gives me the financial security that writing fiction doesn't, right now. Fiction writing will be a forever feast-or-famine cycle. Even if you're an author making great money, the amounts of "great" will vary wildly from year to year.
And maybe that's the greatest thing writing corporate copy has taught me: it's taught me not to quit my day job. Because the fiction market will always be more unpredictable than the corporate one. Because we will all buy stories that sell products in greater numbers than we will buy stories that challenge us to change the world.
And the world we publish in is changing far faster than we can type – I learned that doing corporate work, too.]]>
THE MIRROR EMPIRE did far better than I think any of us anticipated, and sold out of its first US and UK print runs in… a month? Six weeks? Something insane like that.
Getting this reprinted was up at the top of the to-do list once the changeover happened, and I can finally share an official "in stock" date for the US version of THE MIRROR EMPIRE (I'm down to my last two copies, myself).
You'll see them all in stock again on:
NOVEMBER 11th
Not as soon as anyone hoped, but hey, it's BEFORE THE HOLIDAYS, so that pleases me. Now you know what to get your friends! I'd grab them before they're all gone, as we have a pretty big backlog of orders already. People have seemed super excited about this book, which is really gratifying.
Thanks again to everyone for the support, and remember: HOLIDAY SHOPPING NOVEMBER 11th FLESH EATING PLANTS, BLOOD MAGES, SATELLITE MAGIC OH YES!
Don't miss out! Who knows how long THIS print run will last, eh?
So I decided to be someone else.
I did what a lot of teenagers did, when feeling out of control, and powerless over their own lives in the late 90's:
I created an online persona.
Let's call him Adam, for simplicity's sake.
Adam was several years older than me. Confident. Tall. Wiry. Cocky. Single, of course. He was a funny flirt, a writer, and after conversing with some SF/F writers in an online forum for six months, he got invited to edit an early online magazine, which I did for six months more.
Being Adam was a fabulous escape from my shitty life. It was the one place I could feel confident, because I was being somebody else. But giving myself that confidence boost meant duping a lot of people. Flirting with a lot of women who thought I was a hot 20-something dude (and probably a lot of 40 year old dudes pretending to be women) and spinning tales about a life I certainly did not have. And I did that with many people who were being open and honest with me in return. It was the wild west of the internet, though, and I didn't take much at face value. I had learned in the early days of the internet that you could be far more confident, and get taken more seriously there than anywhere else at that age. I remember getting into conversations with people in online forums when I was 15, and having them speak to me as if I were an adult. It was addictive. It was an escape. It was fabulous.
It was all a lie.
Now, to be honest, Adam didn't rant about how author so-and-so should have acid thrown in their face, or such-and-such should have his dick cut off, but I conversed with several writers in the field (and interviewed a couple of them!) as this dude, and edited stories as this dude. I went around telling lies to people, because it was too painful for me to be anyone else but a fictional character.
Eventually I escaped my shitty relationship, and quit editing the magazine, which went defunct soon after. I needed that persona to survive that year and change, though, and it worked. It reminded me there was a life outside myself, one I could build. If I had the strength to be that confident as Adam, I could learn to be that confident as Kameron.
I started my blog in 2004, after traveling around the world and getting a couple of fancy academic degrees. I'd gone out and built the life I wanted, and I was ready to be me. But I had to become someone I didn't hate before I could do all that.
I've spent over a decade learning to rein in my anger, my resentment, my hatred for people, for situations, for bullshit. I used to get into angry screaming fights in my teens. I'd lose my temper at the sound of loud voices. I'd snap, lash out, grind people under my boots. It wasn't until I was 27 or 28 that I realized I wanted a real healthy human relationship that lasted, and that if I wanted to do that, I had to learn patience, compromise, discipline.
I had to learn to talk out the seething anger. I had to learn where it came from, and stop trying to destroy people with it. I learned my limits. I figured out I was severely introverted, and that when I was ready to lose my shit, I needed to tap out instead, and retreat to a dark place to gather myself again. Much of my anger, I realized, was driven by anxiety and fear. When I'd remove myself from overwhelming social situations, I was better able to manage it.
But all this took time.
I had a lot of growing up to do.
I'm still angry a lot. I use tactical anger in many posts. But when I lose my shit now, it has a purpose. It's no longer just blind rage on the internet. Confidence helped with that, but mostly it was just getting older, it was getting a chronic illness, it was finding that the life I was living was not how I wanted to live, and changing it.
I was lucky in that I could do that. I had the resources at my disposal. My parents are solidly middle class. I have academic degrees. I've been working regularly since I was 16. I'm white, I'm reasonably presentable, my physical limitations are not obvious.
I made the choice to change my life, and with those resources, and my own will, I was able to do it. But it was a hard slog, learning not to lash out at everything with hate. Learning to be somebody I liked.
In my early days of reviewing on my blog, back when it was called Brutal Women, I said exactly what I thought of the bullshit sexism I saw in books. I received more than one angry email or comment from an author who thought their hurt feelings at being called out for writing a sexist book was some kind of crime. As if I'd actually physically taken a knife to them myself, when it fact it was their own ego-google search that led them to my review, and their own eyes that continued to read it, and their own fingers that typed up the email to send to me so they could engage with me and hear my opinion, once again, first hand, delivered to their inbox at their request.
Emailing me to argue about whether or not your book is sexist after I already said so online? Dick move, my friend.
That said, time heals many rifts. Many perceived hurts. Many perceived wounds. Or they at least scar over. And I am, at least, on "colleague" terms with all those folks today.
Though I have scaled back those honest reviews, I miss them sometimes. I miss saying what I really think. I'd be lying if I told you I didn't occasionally consider creating another persona, a pseudonym, who could speak the raging, blinding, ballsy truth I want to piss all over the internet some days.
But I realize this is my career. I'm a grown up. I suck it up. I save the pseudonym for another day.
I carry on.
Having lived on the other side of the review divide, I have a particularly healthy(?) relationship with angry reviews of my own work, in particular the sort of angry reviews that have reached the level of those by Requires Hate, who was known for writing seething, hate-filled, pus-spewing reviews full of such vitriol that they were both horrifying and entertaining in equal measure. I eventually had to block that reviewer because people kept RT'ing her on my timeline, and my life was just too short to wallow in the mean-spiritedness of it all. And yet, when RH reviewed GOD'S WAR, it was not a big deal at all, to me. The review boiled down to "This book is so fucking white it's whitey white white written by a white person" and I'm like, well, yeah, that's true. You really can't debate or cry about that. And the buried, useful parts weren't anything I didn't already know. I shrugged and moved on, because let's be real, my friends, I've read worse reviews of my books, and I've written some pretty angry reviews of other people's books.
I'm an adult with book deadlines. I move on. I have shit to do.
The reviews hurt the writers who read them (don't ego-search!). Turned off a lot of readers who might have otherwise bought the book. But they also hurt the reviewer who reviewed them, in the same way I was hurt by all those sexist novels I ranted about back in 2004-2006, just as often as they were about entertainment. I understood the feeling, even if I was put off by how it was delivered. It may have lost folks some readers, just like a bad book review at any other blog, but it didn't ruin anyone's career. The hurt was not a real knife to the throat, but hurt feelings of someone pointing out perceived failures for the entertainment of a horde of readers looking for a public savaging of someone's work.
It turns out that I'm a big kid, and if I don't want to read reviews like that, I don't have to read it. So I didn't.
I blocked RH. I didn't read the blog.
I moved on.
At the end of 2012, I read an astonishingly beautiful short story that had me so enthralled that I read the whole thing on my phone, hiding the phone under my desk at work so I could finish. It was the sort of fiction I wished I was talented enough to write. I saw a lot of the same themes that fascinated me– war, relationships between women, SFnal worlds that felt more like fantasy. But it was from a gifted writer who knew how to turn a phrase with far more beauty and passion than I'd ever been able to.
It was mind-blowing, heart-wrenching, to see writing that good. I fell in love with it immediately.
It turned out that the author's work was all like that – exceptional, intricate, lovely. I voted for her for the Campbell Award without hesitation, and told everyone else to as well. I followed her on Twitter. We had lovely conversations. She tweeted about bees and makeup and beautiful stories.
She was fabulous. The writing was sublime. I was in love.
It was all a lie.
Back in 1967, a writer named Alice Sheldon created a whole new life, an entire persona, called James Tiptree, Jr. She managed this fiction for many years. Robert Silverberg famously said of Tiptree, "It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing."
Sheldon found a particularly beautiful world in that persona, for many reasons, among them the confidence and freedom it brought. After she was outed as Tiptree in 1976 (after fans saw a letter of Tiptree's about his mother dying in Chicago, they looked up the obituary, and made the connection) she said, "My secret world had been invaded and the attractive figure of Tiptree — he did strike several people as attractive — was revealed as nothing but an old lady in Virginia."
Being outed was devastating, but the secret, like all secrets, was bound to come out, and Sheldon must have known that as much as RH did when she decided to turn her hand at publishing fiction in the very venues she's critiqued, befriending the very authors whose work she'd been shiv-grindingly reviewing for the lulz. The house of cards always comes tumbling down.
Sometimes you are well prepared for it. Sometimes you've completed the transition, and moved on, as I had with Adam. Sometimes you haven't.
When secrets come out, sometimes people feel betrayed. I'm sure Silverberg felt sort of silly, probably the way I felt at being duped when I learned the writer who wrote the fiction I loved was the same one pissing vitriol over the internet. I was lucky in that I got to sit with the uncomfortable knowledge that it was very likely the same person for several months before it was confirmed. It gave me time to digest the anger, sure, but more than that – the grief. I physically grieved for an online character I'd developed an affection for the last two years. It was like losing a real person.
The idea was actually brought to my attention by the writer herself in a DM conversation that someone was looking to draw a connection between the two of them, and when she admitted to knowing about the RH review of GOD'S WAR, I felt a clench of sadness, because the sort of writer she pretended to be online was not the sort of person who would know about that review.
But RH would. Because RH had written it.
The manipulation was masterful. I often wonder if RH has a day job, because let me tell you, it all sounds super exhausting to me.
On the internet, no one knows who you really are. You can be anyone you want to be. Some of us are better at pulling that off than others.
In my heart of hearts, I'd hoped it would all go away. God knows people like Harlan Ellison have been saying the dumbest, most abusive and hateful shit for years and no one seems to fucking care, even when they assault another writer on stage. But for some reason folks were really, really upset that a woman who ranted angrily on the internet for the entertainment value of a few hundred people was going to be successful by pure virtue of how great their writing was.
Somehow duping everyone into thinking they were some nice person was a hateful crime against humanity, as if we all haven't been pretending to be somebody else on the internet ever since there was a fucking internet.
Doxxing, to me, always screams of punishment. It screams of anger. Of fighting hate with hate. Burning someone down to make yourself feel better. It's me screaming angrily that if I can't be happy, no one can be happy. It's me screaming like a shrieking toddler, because somebody who said my cookies were shit is now making great cookies.
It's me sounding like a fucking bitter jerk.
Life is a game. Some people are masters at it. Life, succeeding at life, is about manipulation, about being the best, about connections and networking. Any rich white dude will tell you that with pride. Many of the writers we uphold as being absolute paragons of the field are screaming racist misogynists who've done far worse than write an angry review on the internet or tell people in an email what they really think of their book. They are people who've physically abused and assaulted women in the field for years, pinched asses, raped women, told women writers in person that they weren't worth the shit on their shoe, and we buy their work. We praise their work. We put it on reading lists and say, "Yes, Lovecraft is indeed a racist but he's a product of his time!" and make awards in their likenesses.
We make excuses for men. We make room for men.
You should keep being Tiptree. You aren't the same if you're Sheldon. Sheldon is just an old woman from Virginia. We can burn Sheldon down and erase her.
In truth, many writers are assholes. They aren't people you want to go to tea with. I don't like people, generally. I find them exhausting. I don't want to be friends with Harlan Ellison or Larry Correia or Orson Scott Card. Nick Mamatas has been one of the genre's biggest fucking trolls for ten years, and nobody blacklisted him or sent around a petition, and when he's got his asshole meter turned down, he too can be terribly entertaining on the internet.
But they are dudes, and that's expected. It's their place to be assholes. To be shit-stirrers. We make excuses for them, and their behavior.
We are assholes for doing it. But we do it.
There is a lot of hate in the world. A lot of righteous anger. We spew a lot of words at people, saying stuff like, "Who the fuck do you think you are?" We get angry for feeling hurt, for feeling duped, when the best way to respond when someone plays a masterful game is, quite simply, this:
"Well played. You're a remarkable writer. I wish you the greatest success in your career."
We say that shit because we are fucking adults. Because the writing is good. We're not here to be friends. I don't like a lot of writers. But when their writing is not bullshit, I still read it, quite often. The persona may be a lie. All of them may be a lie. Shit, the work may even be a lie! But we are not in love with pixels on the internet, we are not in love with the ideas of people and their petty fucking feuds and scrambling attention-grabbing. We are in love with the work.
Boycott whatever you please. Get angry at me for duping you, you four writers I interviewed back when I was Adam, but if you are going to blacklist people for being duplicitous, or for giving their opinion on the internet, or emailing you their opinion when asked, then you better blacklist me too.
Our actions have consequences. I'm all for consequences, and I support you saying, "Fuck that, I'm never reading that asshole again, not letting them join my club, and cutting off all contact." Perfectly fair and healthy, desirable, even! But going beyond that, reaching for the pitchforks and torches to destroy somebody? Maybe consider why it is you're ready to burn someone alive. Is it because they put a knife to your throat, or because you're angry and hurt that they said something true? Are you angry because you were duped? Because they're talented? Because they played a good game? Do you just want to burn it all down in hate, in retaliation, like a fucking asshole in turn?
The abyss, my friends. Don't stare too long in it. You get to choose the person you want to be, so you better choose wisely.
Because let me tell you this, to achieve what you want – the blacklisting, banning, burning, the destruction of another human being's success, transforming yourself into everything you despise –requires very little.
It requires only that you hate.
Postscript: Trolls are indeed bad people you should distance yourself from. See the roundup here. However, for a cautionary tale of an author who became obsessed with an abusive troll reviewer, and became everything she hated in a quest for revenge and closure that would never be possible, see here. tdl;dr Don't become that author, friends. The world is full of bad people. Get back to work.
If you really want to push all that rage somewhere, Elizabeth Bear suggests you pour it into supporting women, minorities and other marginalized writers in our community.]]>
For those wondering about the cover, well, we're sticking with the yellow/red/purple color scheme (though in the UK it's red/yellow/purple). Here's your final iteration of Nyx and her bugs, for a bit:
After years in exile, Nyxnissa so Dasheem is back in service to the bel dames, a sisterhood of elite government assassins tasked with eliminating deserters and traitors.
The end of a centuries-long holy war has flooded the streets of Nasheen with unemployed – and unemployable – soldiers whose frustrations have brought the nation to the brink of civil war.
Not everyone likes this tenuous and unpredictable "peace," however, and somebody has kidnapped a key politician whose death could trigger a bloody government takeover.
With aliens in the sky and revolution on the ground, Nyx assembles a team of mad magicians, torturers and mutant shape-shifters for an epic journey across a flesh-eating desert in search of a man she's not actually supposed to kill.
I realize very few people will probably get that that's a giant centipede thing on the bottom, but whatever. I do like the city stuff in the back, and the quote from SFX magazine.
You can pre-order RAPTURE from your favorite UK bookseller starting… now!
I'm super proud of these books, and they get better as they go. I do hope more people read INFIDEL and RAPTURE, which both myself and reviewers agree are way, way better than the uber-award-winning first book. GOD'S WAR did indeed get a reprint in the UK, which is nice, but the other books, my friends. SERIOUSLY. THE WELL SCENE IN INFIDEL! THE DESERT SCENE IN RAPTURE!
In any case, it seems to be requested more now than with prior work (people keep pointing me to them in my mentions, and it came up in a couple interviews, which is super annoying even when I've cut down on social media use here as book deadlines loom), so I'd like to state here, for reals, and for posterity:
I don't respond directly to negative reviews, folks. If you're lucky I may paraphrase a particular point and snark about it on Twitter about it, but that's it. There are very good reasons for this.
1) I'm a professional author, and I have better things to do than rant at some fourteen year old reader (especially trolls posing as readers) on the internet. There is no greater mark of the non-professional than going after Jo Blow Reader and taking them to task for being upset because they found the names in your book difficult or because they think you're trying to bring your feminist gay agenda poly communist socialism to the masses. It's just a book. I've published four of them and need to finish the fifth one, and I have better things to do. People being upset about being uncomfortable with the themes I bring to the page in my fiction is something I expected. Troll backlash, GamerGate/Your Slip is Showing style, with dudes posing as queer women of color who are totally being objective was also expected (these get easier to spot as you go along). Classic troll behavior LIVES for author meltdowns. I'm actually not very good at real meltdowns. Trolls tend to be sadists who take delight in the pain of others. I find a lot of responses to my work tell me more about the reader than the book, and find them deeply funny as opposed to painful. Which is why I could never date a sadist; they would die miserably while I laughed.
2) Book conversations are for readers, not authors. Social media has made creators more accessible than ever before, and I get wanting to ask us questions about what our intentions were, about what we meant, about What It All Means. But the reality is that half of the reading experience has to do with the person reading the book. Only half comes from what I actually put on the page. That means that reader conversations about books should generally stay reader conversations, without me barreling in to muck things up.
3) Authors butting into reader conversations shuts down discussion. The moment I post a big rant, or show up in some comments section is the minute the discussion of a book ceases to be about the book and instead becomes about my reaction to reviews. This also makes readers who may not comment hesitate to publicly discuss my work on the internet, for fear that the Eye of Sauron will beam down upon them at any moment, waiting to descend on their comments section and take them to task. I like readers reading my work. I have no interest in being Sauron.
4) I respect the book blogger's role triaging books. I read book reviews too to find great new books. There are a ton of book reviewers whose opinions don't gel with mine. I don't read those ones for book recs because, invariably, they will hate books I love. Alternatively, folks like Justin Landon will love books that I have no interest in whatsoever. But if both Justin and Liz Bourke like a book, then I may take a look. The reality is that many readers who get book recs online rely on these sorts of tastemakers to decide what books to read. When I'm looking at movies to watch, I read movie reviews from Charlie Jane Anders, because we seem to have the same "just cheesy enough to be fun but not horrifying" taste in film. We all have particular reviewers who we use as touchstones to guide our reading experiences. Trying to shut down one of those voices is the dumbest thing ever; bad reviews actually sell a lot more books than you might think, especially the ones that are more about the reviewer than the book.
5) I am not going to stop writing because people are angry on the internet. Listen. People get justifiably angry over all sorts of things. That's good anger, understandable anger. I'm good at reading through reviews to find out where I've made people angry because I've honestly done something hurtful or got something wrong and when people are just angry because they're uncomfortable about having to think about things they never had to think about before. So don't worry: I am hearing the stuff that is actual stuff I could do better, and discarding the stuff that is people going through the process of growing up into a world that is bigger than they are. There is a difference and I'm good at spotting it. Take heart. Have some faith. I will also note that in a world where my fan mail far exceeds my hate mail, and where the sort of fan mail I get is of the "you saved my life" variety, I have no intention to cease writing because some people are uncomfortable. What's one person's rage at me ruining epic fantasy compared to saving people's lives, to showing people what is possible, to making a real, tangible difference?
It means absolutely nothing. Ok, maybe it means I make some popcorn and delight in the show. But emotionally, intellectually, career-wise? Nothing.
So seriously, my friends: leave me out of discussions about the book on Twitter, for reals. We've sold a lot of fucking books (for me), and I have a lot of readers hungry for a second book that needs to get written, and will not get written if its author is ranting like a n00b on the internet about every. single. reader. response. I have books to write, my friends.
Books for people to RAGE about!]]>
How am I still standing?
Well, I didn't give myself much choice.
There was no possibility of failure, here.
In about five weeks I did:
Now I have no interest in speaking to any humans for at least three months. Which is a good thing because the sequel to THE MIRROR EMPIRE, EMPIRE ASCENDANT, is due in February. That's a pretty hard date at this point because I have other things in the hopper that will be due after that, which I hope to be able to announce before the end of the year. With things at my publisher still up in the air, there are some things undecided, but it turns out that a couple of Hugo wins and really strong sales for MIRROR EMPIRE have opened up a lot more opportunities for me, which is fantastic.
So hopefully more on that later.
Aside from announcements and sharing of various things I've already recorded during this period, I plan to have a pretty low profile online until the end of the year, too. I'll be checking Twitter twice a day on weekdays to make sure nothing explodes, but if you have a request that's urgent, I recommend contacting firstname.lastname@example.com to get what you need sorted.
Audio Book
Tonight I'll be recording pronunciations for the audio book of THE MIRROR EMPIRE. I've approved a narrator, so that's in the works. I hope to announce that release in a few weeks.
Foreign Rights
Lots of interest, hoping something comes of some of them. Again, with things in flux at my publisher, I'm not holding my breath on any of this.
Google Play/iBooks Availability
Yes, well, nobody is perfect. See the publisher-in-flux note above.
Indie Book Store/Amazon Availability for Print Books
Yes, we already need a reprint! (yay) There will be slight delay. (boo!) Details here.
Worldbreaker 3 Release Date
See publisher-in-flux note above. Hoping to have news about that soon, but again: you'll get blue in the face holding your breath. Patience, grasshoppers.
What is your next project?
See notes above about pending announcements. Much of publishing is "hurry up and wait."
Story of my life.
As ever: Keep buying books! Keep talking about the books! Keep sharing them! This ensures I get to write more books…. and you get to read them.
It's a win-win.]]>


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Added Nov 3, 2010
Paris, France
This dress was supposed to be all red but I had to change the collar to a black velvet ribbon when I fell in love with a picture of Zooey Deschanel wearing a black&red dress :)
It was a hard project as the silk is very slippery. I think I will go back to cotton for a while.
The project is based on a Burdastyle pattern but I altered it A LOT :)
Silk & velvet ribbon
Nov 4, 2010, 03.59 AMby morganelle
I love the black ribbon! So cute!
Nov 4, 2010, 12.39 AMby Zane Tanqueco
Lovely dress! The black color is a great addition=)
Nov 4, 2010, 07.27 PMby charlotteauzou
Thanks a lot !
Nov 3, 2010, 10.14 PMby loyl8
soo cute. I <3 Zooey Deschanel!!!! You should add an inspiration photo to go with it
Nov 4, 2010, 07.26 PMby charlotteauzou
You can check it on my blog there
Add to Favorites 17 people added it
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Can a 17-year-old girl sign an apartment lease in the state of Washington without emancipation?
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Some critics have called Anniversary a delayed version of Snapchat, but the two seem to have entirely different purposes. How is the user experience of Anniversary different than that of other photo sharing apps like Snapchat?View Full Interview
How old do you have to be to be emancipated from your parents in Washington State?
Answer You have to be at least 16 in order the petition for emancipation in Washington state and you have to meet all the requirements in order for it to be gran…ted. Emancipation is rarely granted in any state. (MORE)
Can an emancipated minor sign a lease?
{| |- | Yes, they can sign a lease. That is the entire purpose of emancipation. It allows the minor to legally sign a contract. They should be ready to show the legal d…ocument that emancipated them. |} (MORE)
How can a teenager move out in Washington state without being emancipated?
Answer You can�t. Not unless you have parental consent (and you're moving to a safe and appropriate environment) and even then your parents would still be res…ponsible for you. (MORE)
Weekly Apartment Rentals in NYC
Weekly apartment rentals in New York City were banned in mid-2011, but it's still possible to find a short-term rental if you know where and how to look. It's still legal to r…ent apartments in New York City for vacation stays, and many of the available apartments rent on a (MORE)
Tips for Finding Apartments in Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Located in northern Brooklyn, Greenpoint is gaining in popularity as more young professionals move to the region. Much like Williamsburg, Greenpoint offers a variety of apartm…ents for rent that are bigger and cheaper than comparable Manhattan apartments. In addition, it has a shorter commute into Manhattan than other Brooklyn neighborhoods, (MORE)
In Buying
Furnishing an Apartment to Make a Small Space Appear Bigger
One of the most difficult things about furnishing an apartment is dealing with spatial issues. When apartments are designed, they are intended to make the best use of the spac…e so they can conform and be compact. This can cause walls to be built at awkward angles and in strange (MORE)
In Oklahoma
Can a 17-year-old girl get emancipated in Oklahoma and what are the requirements?
Confirmation of Majority Rights Gives minors the legal right to contract, but rarely granted in court in Oklahoma. There is no emancipation law.
Can a 17-year-old sign a lease for an apartment in Michigan without emancipation papers but with parental permission and a boyfriend being the main leaser on the lease?
Answer The legal age of majority for the state is 18, anyone under that age cannot enter into a legal contract of any sort, unless an exception has been gra…nted by the court of jurisdiction. (MORE)
Can a 17-year-old in a state without emancipation move out because they think their parents are unfit to take care of them?
Answer Probably not. If you have a department of children and family services in your state, call them if you're in a dire situation. If you're just antsy to ge…t out of your parents' home because you're 17 and can't wait to be 18, stick it out. It's a lot tougher to live on your own than you think. Answer Not legally. But, here is something the person might wish to consider; even though a state does not have established grounds and procedures for emancipation action it does not mean said person cannot file such a petition. The interested party might wish to contact the circuit court clerk in the city or county where they reside for specific information. (MORE)


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The median home value in New Ross, IN is $84,800.
This is
lower than
the county median home value of $105,900.
The national median home value is $170,100.
The average price of homes sold in New Ross, IN is $84,800.
Approximately 83.1% of New Ross homes are owned,
compared to 13.38% rented, while
3.52% are vacant.
New Ross real estate listings include condos, townhomes, and single family homes for sale.
Commercial properties are also available.
If you see a property you're interested in, contact a New Ross real estate agent to arrange a tour today!
Learn more about New Ross Real Estate.
Well maintained tri-level home located on the east side of the county for easy access to Indy. Triangle shaped corner lot 1/4 mile from Walnut Elementary. 4 bed 2.5 bath, 2 car attached garage. Move in condition.
An attractive 3-4 BR home on deep tree shaded lot with garden area. Home has been painted, decorated & move in ready. Home with character & charm starts at the front entry- Open stairway to 2+ bedrooms, Den/office could be used as 4th bedroom. Nice size rooms, eat in kitchen plus a larger formal dining area. Covered front, newer thermo windows, covered front porch, basement & detached garage. Great living in small town where your neighbor waves a friendly Hello! Easy access to I-74 & Indy.
Nice, very solid 2 bedroom home, at the edge of town, (New Ross) New paint, nice one car garage., unfinished basement. Very convenient location, on State highway, Large living room, dining room, large pantry, and all has been recently painted. Nice covered front porch, basement for storage, and laundry. good solid home, cheaper than rent.
Enjoy small town living in this well-maintained home in New Ross. Nice front covered porch, paved drive, 1.5 car garage, & large shed. Newer siding, roof & windows. Move-in ready.
Despite the New Ross address this is a Boone County Farm, 54.7 acres, 40 Acres crops, due west of Zionsville. 45 min. to downtown, near I-74. 8 Yr new Amish-built, Plain. 4 bedrooms, 3 wood stoves, electric heat, horse fencing, large farm barn, separate office/house has 1000 Sq Ft., 5 acre and 1 acre pond to fish & swim. Totally secluded and Survival Built.
5.77 acres. Good productive soil, good building site. Approximately 400 feet of road frontage. Asphalt street, near I-74, Seller will lease back if desired by buyer. Make an offer.
Good productive soil, close to interstate, Approx 392 ft. of Asphalt road frontage.
Real Living Homes & Beyond
2575 N SR 9 / PO Box 239
Lagrange, IN 46761
Email Us | Visit our Real Estate Website


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Jarrah has a delicious selection of wonderfully rich and creamy instant coffees, in both frothy and flat varieties. The frothy range consists of Cheeky 'Cino Cappuccino, White Choc-a-mocha Latte, new Mocha Truffle Latte (a satisfying truffle flavoured blend of cream, chocolate and coffee flavours), Vanilla Thriller Latte and Crème Caramel Latte.
In the flat range named Coffee Sensations, Jarrah has a wide variety of smooth and exotic flavours such as French Liaison, Swiss Moments, Bavarian Bliss, Brazil Delight, Vienna Velvet and Vienna Velvet with Reduced Sweetness. Best of all, the entire range is 98% fat free when made up as directed.q
Australian Association Of Girontology National Conferenc
Event Date: 26 - 28 Nov 2014
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National Conference On Nutrition: Challenges & Opportunities
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sending enquiry


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I have purchased a developer account from Apple. By taking development provisions, I have tested example app in device. Then I have downloaded
cocos2d-iphone-1.0.1 and set it up. Then I created a project called
FirstGame. When I compile sample cocos2D project on device, it gives this error:
Code Sign error: A valid provisioning profile matching the application's Identifier 'com.yourcompany.FirstGame' could not be found
In the build settings of project, the development profiles are not enabled. I am using Xcode 4.6.
Edit: I've found solution applying this solution.:


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S.A. shoppers snap up Gray Thursday deals
Top Stories in Local
Venezuelan classical music system under fire
Top Stories in US & World
Second act of shopping in full swing
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McCoy and Philadelphia defense gobble up Dallas
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Sopapilla cheesecake tops list of most Googled in Texas
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25 things you need to know about this holiday weekend
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S.A. has full holiday calendar
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Broadband merits utility classification
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2015 Dodge Challenger 6.4L Scat Pack — Seventies muscle car redux, especially the color.
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Weak consumer, business demand may slow US growth
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Real Estate
Giant Wimberley country home going for $2.8 million
Top Stories in Homes
The Road Map to State Highway Safety Laws report rated all 50 states. A green rating is good. A yellow rating calls for improvement. And a red rating is the worst.
Nebraska: The state was given a red rating by Road Map to State Highway Safety laws report. The report gave the state a rating of 6 out of 15, ranking it among six worst states. (Photo: Jimmy Wayne, Flickr)
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YouTube Hall of Fame: Kid Nation
Yesterday, NBC released its mid-season schedule on which the charming, abysmally rated Community is nowhere to be found. The network says the show will return, but it's unclear when or for how long (presumably none of this bodes well for a fourth season). While we await official word, this week's YouTube Hall of Fame remembers the TV shows that were cancelled before their time.
My personal pick: CBS's reality show Kid Nation, which ran for thirteen episodes in 2007. The premise was simple (and awesome): Forty children between the ages of 8 and 15 were left to fend for themselves in a New Mexican ghost town. Without any adult supervision, they were asked to prepare their own food, clean up after themselves, and form a functional government, competing each week for "gold stars," which came with prizes like toothbrushes and outhouses. Hilarious controversy ensued, though, when one kid burned her face on a stove and a few others drank bleach that had been left in an unmarked soda bottle. Even though nobody died, CBS pulled the plug. My feelings on Kid Nation are already a matter of public record, but I'll share them again anyway: Kid Nation was the greatest reality show of all time. Watch the above clip, in which the kids slaughter chickens, fight over who should make breakfast, and troubleshoot a minor plumbing problem ("You don't realize how important water is until you learn the hard way"). Please, CBS, bring this show back.
Filed Under: CBS, TV, Youtube Hall of Fame
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Photo of the Day
Ocean Springs's Marcus Buckley tries to pull down Oak Grove's Cameron Myers Friday November 21, 2014 at Ocean Springs High School.(Press-Register, Chip English/Gulflive.com) SPORTS MISSISSIPPI PRESS
This photo is part of the following galleries: OAK GROVE VS OCEAN SPRINGS 11-21-14
Created on November 3, 2014
Attorneys meet with current and former Singing River Hospital employees' Monday November 3, 2014 about taking legal action against SRHS for lost pensions, at the Pascagoula Senior Citizen Center.
Created on November 21, 2014
Ocean Springs hosts Oak Grove Friday November 21, 2014 at Ocean Springs High School.
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text:
|By Business Wire
Article Rating:
|July 14, 2014 08:12 AM EDT
Smarthome™ announced today that it has expanded its offering of connected home products with the introduction of the new Honeywell Lyric™ thermostat.
The Lyric thermostat is the first offering in a new family of innovative connected home products from Honeywell. Using smartphone location, the Lyric thermostat knows when you are coming and going. It automatically sets the thermostat in energy saving mode when the house is empty, and when it knows you are coming home it automatically heats or cools the house to your preferred temperature. The Fine Tune feature factors indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity and weather into its algorithm, enabling it to provide the most comfortable temperature in the home.
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"The Lyric thermostat is an exciting and innovative new offering from Honeywell, and we expect it will be very popular among Smarthome customers," said Scott Holder, Vice President of Marketing, Smarthome. "With this addition to our product lineup, we reinforce Smarthome's vision to be the one-stop source for home automation, lighting and appliance control products."
The Lyric thermostat will be available 7/14/14 at Smarthome for $279.99. To learn more, please visit http://www.smarthome.com/29938/Honeywell-Lyric-Smart-Wi-Fi-Network-IP-Thermostat/p.aspx or www.lyric.honeywell.com.
About Smarthome
Smarthome was created based on the realization of a need for automated products that make lives easier, safer and more enjoyable. Today, Smarthome sells more than 15,000 hard-to-find products, including home automation solutions featuring award-winning INSTEON technology. Smarthome sells online through its award-winning website, its direct mail catalog, its partners - such as Amazon, New Egg and Sears, and its brick and mortar retail store located in Irvine, CA. Smarthome can also be found online at Smarthome.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/smarthome and on Twitter at Twitter.com/smarthomeinc.
Connected devices and the Internet of Things are getting significant momentum in 2014. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Jim Hunter, Chief Scientist & Technology Evangelist at Greenwave Systems, examined three key elements that together will drive mass adoption of the IoT before the end of 2015. The first element is the recent advent of robust open source protocols (like AllJoyn and WebRTC) that facilitate M2M communication. The second is broad availability of flexible, cost-effective ...
Nov. 26, 2014 10:15 PM EST Reads: 952
How do APIs and IoT relate? The answer is not as simple as merely adding an API on top of a dumb device, but rather about understanding the architectural patterns for implementing an IoT fabric. There are typically two or three trends: Exposing the device to a management framework Exposing that management framework to a business centric logic Exposing that business layer and data to end users. This last trend is the IoT stack, which involves a new shift in the separation of what stuff happe...
Nov. 26, 2014 10:00 PM EST Reads: 799
The Internet of Things will put IT to its ultimate test by creating infinite new opportunities to digitize products and services, generate and analyze new data to improve customer satisfaction, and discover new ways to gain a competitive advantage across nearly every industry. In order to help corporate business units to capitalize on the rapidly evolving IoT opportunities, IT must stand up to a new set of challenges. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Jeff Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrateg...
Nov. 26, 2014 09:00 PM EST Reads: 927
We are reaching the end of the beginning with WebRTC, and real systems using this technology have begun to appear. One challenge that faces every WebRTC deployment (in some form or another) is identity management. For example, if you have an existing service – possibly built on a variety of different PaaS/SaaS offerings – and you want to add real-time communications you are faced with a challenge relating to user management, authentication, authorization, and validation. Service providers will w...
Nov. 26, 2014 07:00 PM EST Reads: 957
Cultural, regulatory, environmental, political and economic (CREPE) conditions over the past decade are creating cross-industry solution spaces that require processes and technologies from both the Internet of Things (IoT), and Data Management and Analytics (DMA). These solution spaces are evolving into Sensor Analytics Ecosystems (SAE) that represent significant new opportunities for organizations of all types. Public Utilities throughout the world, providing electricity, natural gas and water,...
Nov. 26, 2014 06:00 PM EST Reads: 958
"Matrix is an ambitious open standard and implementation that's set up to break down the fragmentation problems that exist in IP messaging and VoIP communication," explained John Woolf, Technical Evangelist at Matrix, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held Nov 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Nov. 26, 2014 05:45 PM EST Reads: 908
DevOps is all about agility. However, you don't want to be on a high-speed bus to nowhere. The right DevOps approach controls velocity with a tight feedback loop that not only consists of operational data but also incorporates business context. With a business context in the decision making, the right business priorities are incorporated, which results in a higher value creation. In his session at DevOps Summit, Todd Rader, Solutions Architect at AppDynamics, discussed key monitoring techniques...
Nov. 26, 2014 04:45 PM EST Reads: 628
Want to enable self-service provisioning of application environments in minutes that mirror production? Can you automatically provide rich data with code-level detail back to the developers when issues occur in production? In his session at DevOps Summit, David Tesar, Microsoft Technical Evangelist on Microsoft Azure and DevOps, will discuss how to accomplish this and more utilizing technologies such as Microsoft Azure, Visual Studio online, and Application Insights in this demo-heavy session.
Nov. 26, 2014 04:45 PM EST Reads: 607
When an enterprise builds a hybrid IaaS cloud connecting its data center to one or more public clouds, security is often a major topic along with the other challenges involved. Security is closely intertwined with the networking choices made for the hybrid cloud. Traditional networking approaches for building a hybrid cloud try to kludge together the enterprise infrastructure with the public cloud. Consequently this approach requires risky, deep "surgery" including changes to firewalls, subnets...
Nov. 26, 2014 04:45 PM EST Reads: 611
The Internet of Things will greatly expand the opportunities for data collection and new business models driven off of that data. In her session at @ThingsExpo, Esmeralda Swartz, CMO of MetraTech, discussed how for this to be effective you not only need to have infrastructure and operational models capable of utilizing this new phenomenon, but increasingly service providers will need to convince a skeptical public to participate. Get ready to show them the money!
Nov. 26, 2014 04:00 PM EST Reads: 1,003
One of the biggest challenges when developing connected devices is identifying user value and delivering it through successful user experiences. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Mike Kuniavsky, Principal Scientist, Innovation Services at PARC, described an IoT-specific approach to user experience design that combines approaches from interaction design, industrial design and service design to create experiences that go beyond simple connected gadgets to create lasting, multi-device exp...
Nov. 26, 2014 03:45 PM EST Reads: 971
P2P RTC will impact the landscape of communications, shifting from traditional telephony style communications models to OTT (Over-The-Top) cloud assisted & PaaS (Platform as a Service) communication services. The P2P shift will impact many areas of our lives, from mobile communication, human interactive web services, RTC and telephony infrastructure, user federation, security and privacy implications, business costs, and scalability. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Robin Raymond, Chief Architect...
Nov. 26, 2014 02:00 PM EST Reads: 1,469
High-performing enterprise Software Quality Assurance (SQA) teams validate systems that are ready for use - getting most actively involved as components integrate and form complete systems. These teams catch and report on defects, making sure the customer gets the best software possible. SQA teams have leveraged automation and virtualization to execute more thorough testing in less time - bringing Dev and Ops together, ensuring production readiness. Does the emergence of DevOps mean the end of E...
Nov. 25, 2014 11:30 PM EST Reads: 1,134
Scott Jenson leads a project called The Physical Web within the Chrome team at Google. Project members are working to take the scalability and openness of the web and use it to talk to the exponentially exploding range of smart devices. Nearly every company today working on the IoT comes up with the same basic solution: use my server and you'll be fine. But if we really believe there will be trillions of these devices, that just can't scale. We need a system that is open a scalable and by using ...
Nov. 25, 2014 09:30 PM EST Reads: 1,221
The Internet of Things is tied together with a thin strand that is known as time. Coincidentally, at the core of nearly all data analytics is a timestamp. When working with time series data there are a few core principles that everyone should consider, especially across datasets where time is the common boundary. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Jim Scott, Director of Enterprise Strategy & Architecture at MapR Technologies, discussed single-value, geo-spatial, and log time series dat...
Nov. 25, 2014 09:30 PM EST Reads: 1,272