These days, you have self-published authors asking their readers to finance their editing fees, the creation of the book cover, and even vacations/plane tickets/living expenses. And when these authors don’t get “donations”, they can throw hissy fits.
This is not acceptable behavior, and will only harm the author in the end. We as readers don’t owe them anything, especially without garauntee of anything back. For more, read this article by novelist and fellow writer for Self-Published Auhtors Helping Other Authors, Ruth Ann Nordin.
Posts Tagged ‘proper decisions’
Taking A Break For Today
Posted: August 5, 2013 in Living and Life, WritingTags: editing, entertainment, Laura Horn, living and life, novel, proper decisions, television shows, Video Rage, writing
I love writing. It’s my passion, it’s my dream, and it’s what I’m good at and getting better all the time at. But it’s also consuming, not just in time and energy, but in creative steam, that wondrous element to a writer that allows us to continue writing book after book, chapter after chapter, page after page, sentence after sentence, word after word.
That’ll be me after work today, mark my words.
Between Video Rage and Laura Horn, I’ve written fourteen chapters total, almost non-stop. Each book is challenging in its own way, and writing both at the same time, even though I’m switching between books every time I finish a chapter, is a lot of work. It’s like this: I immerse myself in the world of the Hydras and I’m writing about how they’re narrowly avoiding a drone or encountering someone from their past at a diner north of Denver, I write anywhere between five-hundred and four-thousand words, I finish and save the chapter, then I find myself in Washington DC about four years from now right before the 2017 Presidential Inauguration, getting into the complex thoughts of a teenager who has never properly dealt with her trauma, and writing about how she reacts to the world (and this is all before she gets wrapped up in the main plot of the story, which will be in about two or three chapters from now), write anywhere from five-hundred to twenty-five hundred words, and then finish and save that chapter!
Frankly, it’s a lot of work, and I need a bit of a break or I’ll suffer burnout and not want to write another words for days or weeks or even months at a time. So for today, and hopefully only for today, I’m taking a break from writing. By that, I mean any sort of writing. I’m only writing this blog post because I wanted to announce the darn break.
And instead of writing, I’m going to spend the day reading several graphic novels from the library and catching up on my shows. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to resume writing at some point, but for now I just need to relax and take a personal day. I’d like to go to a spa and get pampered with a massage or maybe go to a video arcade and play some games, but I don’t have the time or money for that, so I’ll just read, watch TV, and maybe fit a walk in if I can. By the time I’m done, I’ll be at full writing capacity again.
See you after my break!
Pregancy in Science Fiction and Fantasy
Posted: July 31, 2013 in Reflections, WritingTags: activism, birth control, blogging, editing, entertainment, films, human rights, ideas, living and life, novel, proper decisions, social media, television shows, women's rights, writing
Yesterday I saw a video on a Freshly Pressed post on pregnancy in science fiction and fantasy, particularly the “mystical pregnancy”. The full video is below:
This video got me thinking. First I started thinking about all the instances not mentioned in this video: Nymphadora Tonks in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Scully once again in the seventh-eighth seasons of The X-Files, Amy Pond in the sixth series of Doctor Who, Ruth Gallagher in the second book of The Age of Misrule trilogy, Lady Gaga in the Born This Way music video and live performances, Padme Amidala in Revenge of the Sith–you can stop me anytime, you know.
Then it got me thinking about the use of pregnancy in fiction, particularly the TV shows, movies, and books I like. It was a bit of a shock, how transparent and flat these women can become when they are impregnated by their writers. Some are barely there at all as characters. It’s a little sad, and kind of sexist, reducing an entire complex being to the process of pregnancy of birth. And if you need a great example, take a look at Padme in Revenge of the Sith. She gets maybe twenty minutes of screen-time, has very few significant lines, and in the end dies of heartbreak after giving birth. I think her most memorable line from that movie was “So this is how democracy ends: to the sound of thunderous applause.”
To reiterate, this wasn’t what fans were hoping to see.
But after discussing things with the Suspense/Thriller Writers group I belong to on Facebook and sleeping on the subject a bit, I came to a realization that while pregnancies, and mystical pregnancies as well, are used perhaps a bit too much in fiction, it’s the portrayal of the characters that matters the most. For example, Padme’s pregnancy is a very bad example of how badly the subject of pregnancy can be handled. However there are better examples, such as Aeryn Sun from Farscape. According to writer David Lucas: “Aeryn: surrounded by enemies, gives birth. Later, with the baby in a sling, emerges even stronger as a character and as a fighter as she has something even more precious to fight for.” Note this part of a FB comment, so that’s why there’s two colons there.
Two other writers, John Saunders and Annette Wright, points out the character of Sarah Connor in the first two Terminator films. In the first film, Sarah is naïve and has to struggle a lot. But her pregnancy and its aftermath helps hone her into a fierce fighting machine, pun totally intended.
Don’t mess with Sarah Connor, people.
And there are plenty of other examples where female protagonists and other characters have used their pregnancy to grow as characters rather than become one-dimensional breeding machines. For example, Adalind Schade from Grimm becomes even more of a schemer and antagonist, because now she has something over the other characters: the birth of a new prince. Ripley in Alien 3 had a chest-burster growing in her body, but instead of letting the men do the work, she worked proactively to defeat the Dog Alien and kill the Queen growing inside her (and yes, I’m counting that as a mystical pregnancy). And there are probably loads of examples I can’t even think of, showing that portrayal is most important in using pregnancy in science fiction and fantasy.
This was a woman who didn’t let an alien baby get in her way!
So for future reference, I’ll make sure to take a look at pregnancies in fiction and see how it’s portrayed, what works, what doesn’t work, and what can make up a positive or a negative portrayal. I may even write an article on this for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors, if I can find the time.
Plus I’d like to check out the other videos in that Tropes vs. Women series. It looks interesting, and I might just learn something important that’ll improve my fiction writing in the future.
As always, thought and comments are welcome on this subject. What is your take on pregnancy in fiction, particularly mystical pregnancy?
The Pope’s New Stance On Homosexuality
Posted: July 29, 2013 in Living and Life, Politics and Leadership, Progress Report, Social ActivismTags: activism, Catholicism, human rights, Judaism, LGBT rights, living and life, politics and leadership, Pope Francis, proper decisions, religious organizations
I think, now more than ever, I like Pope Francis.
In a stunning reversal of traditional Catholic policy, Pope Francis I took a more positive approach to homosexuality than his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. While speaking with journalists on the plane ride back to Rome, the Pope was asked how he would react if he were to learn that there was a cleric in his ranks who was gay but not sexually active. His reply: “Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord? You can’t marginalize these people.”
God bless the Pope!
I’ve always been a little wary of the Catholic Church as an entity, though I know and I am friendly with regular Catholics. There’s a deep-rooted history of animosity between the Church and Judaism, exacerbated over recent years when Holocaust-denying clergy were allowed to continue practicing in positions of power. That, plus their views on LGBT and women’s rights, mixed with pedophilia scandals have really made me and other people, if not detractors, then angry with it.
But with the election of Pope Francis, who sets out to be a reformer of the Church like his namesake St. Francis, I have had some new thoughts. This pope seems much more down-to-Earth and of the people, and he’s already instituted a number of reforms in Church policy. This latest change really makes me happy. Not only does it signal a possible change in the Church’s policy towards the LGBT community–which has regarded homosexuality as a disorder, and in recent years barred gay clerics from practicing–but it also signals a change for the Pope, who as a cardinal wrote a few papers condemning people who were LGBT.
If this is an indication of which direction the Pope might go in terms of the Vatican’s relationship with the LGBT community, it could signal a major change around the world. In several nations, from Iran and Russia to Uganda and Zimbabwe, there are laws in place or in process that would seek to rob the LGBT community of their human rights, and in countries where laws support the LGBT community, such as England, France, and certain areas of the United States, there is still an uphill battle to give the LGBT community the same rights as their straight neighbors. If the Pope’s statement signals a reversal in policy, several countries may face a rise in support for the rights of LGBTers.
And another thing that I’ve noticed is that the Pope said “You can’t exclude these people.” While I do note that calling an entire community that spans the globe “these people” sounds a little exclusionary in itself, to me the greater message sends out more powerful vibes. For years, exclusion of those unlike yourself or the main part of a group has been a too-widely accepted policy. It was believed that if you excluded someone unlike yourself–because of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.–they would either change their ways, learn their place, or go away. But nowadays most people don’t bow so easily to the majority, and everyone from women to gays to Hispanics to everyone in between is speaking up for their rights, and it is working for the most part.
Something like this in the future would be nice.
If the Church is going to end its exclusionary policies, then that could lead to better relations between them and gays, particularly those who want a relationship with God and the Church. And it also shows that those who want to exclude gays from society or outright ban them may have lost a powerful ally in the Church. Which if you ask me, can only be a good thing.
I look forward to seeing where the Pope goes with this. Hopefully it’ll lead to more pro-gay reforms in the Church policy, making Catholicism and possibly Christianity in general more accepting to the LGBT community, and to people in general.
In the meantime, I’d like to say a prayer from Judaism that is said when something that hasn’t happened before happens for the first time: Baruch atah Hashem, Elocheinu Melech Ha’olam, Shehechianu v’kiamanu v’higi’anu lazman hazeh. Blessed are You, Lord Our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.
An occasion I hope will lead to something good.
Why Texas Doesn’t Care About Its Women
Posted: July 19, 2013 in Politics and LeadershipTags: abortion, activism, birth control, government, human rights, living and life, politics and leadership, proper decisions, Texas, Wendy Davis, women's rights
Over the past month we’ve seen a great battle going on in the state of Texas, one whose epicenter is in the Texas legislature in Austin and whose influence has far-reaching implications. Twice, Governor Rick Perry has called in a special session of the Texas legislature in order to pass a far reaching anti-abortion bill, which would effectively reduce the number of clinics that provide abortions from forty-two to six by requiring each clinic to be almost like its own little mini-hospital and banning abortions after 20 weeks, despite the Roe v. Wade allowance for an abortion in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.
The first session the bill was not passed, due to the heroic efforts of Senator Wendy Davis, who stood for eleven hours in a true-to-form filibuster where she talked about how dangerous this bill was to women and how it wasn’t motivated by a desire to actually help Texas’s constituents. When the GOP-controlled legislature forced her to step down because they didn’t believe talking about Planned Parenthood or ultrasounds was related to abortion, the crowds of protestors raised a fury so strong that the midnight deadline passed and the bill couldn’t be passed through all the noise.
This woman’s a hero. She will do great things someday.
That should’ve stopped the bill right there and then. Obviously if a bill is so unpopular that one woman would stand and talk for eleven hours and protestors w0uld scream and shout within the confines of the statehouse to stop it, then it should’ve been put to sleep. But no, Rick Perry called the legislature back again and issued a stern warning to all protestors that they shouldn’t disrupt the legislative process.
The result was the bill was passed. But you know what’s got me really upset? Is that the GOP and the pro-life groups claim that this sort of bill, which makes it near impossible to open an abortion clinic in the state of Texas, is “good for women”. How do they justify this logic? Well, a man named Kermit Gosnell was convicted in Virginia for doing some illegal practices that resulted in the deaths of some fetuses and one woman. Now Gosnell’s a reluctant poster-boy, a symbol of all that is supposedly wrong with the abortion industry and what is needed to “improve” it. “Improve” it.
And that’s what’s crazy. The pro-life factions and their reps in the Texas legislature say they are protecting women from horrible practices that they believe are rampant in every abortion clinic nationwide. The thing is, Kermit Gosnell was a lone example. Yes, he did some horrible things, but that doesn’t mean every abortion provider is the same. You want a whole industry with terrible practices, try the meat industry. The animals are treated terribly, the employees are working in just-barely safe conditions, and the meat is not inspected enough to insure safety, which causes a ton of outbreaks of E. coli and other diseases.
Of course, these same pro-life lawmakers have considered punishing the activists who expose the ugliness of the meat industry through legal means, so I’m not sure what pointing this out will get me from the pro-life groups. But you see the point I’m making, right?
And more interestingly, this bill doesn’t help women at all. All the clinics left after this bill goes into effect are going to be located in East Texas, which will be a pain for people living in other parts of Texas, especially communities where access to running water and electricity, let alone a good car. So these women, the women who could actually benefit from an abortion, can’t go get one, because the nearest clinic is several hundred miles away from home. Doesn’t matter if they don’t want to be pregnant. Doesn’t matter if the pregnancy will endanger their health. Doesn’t matter if the pregnancy was a result of incest, or even rape. Nope, they’re stuck with the baby because the nearest clinic is hundreds of miles away.
Or is that so? We know before Roe v. Wade, women would get abortions through illegal providers or by going through drastic measures (kitchen utensils and hanger wires, anyone?). So despite the fact that what pro-life groups really want is to save as many alleged “lives” as possible, what they are doing is actually putting women’s lives in danger.
All while ensuring that the children they think they are saving are still going to be aborted.
But if you are a woman in Texas, that won’t be a consolation. No, that doesn’t help at all. You feel upset that men in Austin are deciding your fate, and when women and activists who think like you voice their objections, the men just text or play Candy Crush on their computers, and the women who work with these men seem so willfully ignorant of the facts, it hurts.
And I could tell you a few more tales about how Texas doesn’t care about its women–including how a man wanted an escort to prostitute herself and killed her when she didn’t, but wasn’t convicted of murder (crazy, right?)–but I think I ‘ve made things clear. So women of Texas, my heart goes out to you. I’m so sorry that men who are ignorant of your lives are making decisions about your health. And I can only hope that the eventual Supreme Court trial that will occur from this–and believe me, a trial will occur from this–will end with the judges ruling in favor of you women.
God bless, and I hope the best for all of you.
Florida’s Stand Your Ground Laws Are Madness. Why Keep Them?
Posted: July 19, 2013 in Politics and Leadership, Social ActivismTags: activism, George Zimmerman, government, gun control, human rights, living and life, politics and leadership, proper decisions, social media, Trayvon Martin
It’s sometimes difficult for me to find a subject that gets me incensed enough that I write a post about it. Usually it’s related to women’s rights or gun control. Today, it’s a combination of gun control and wondering how stupid our leaders can get!
He got away with murder, and I don’t know why.
If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin. I find that hard to believe, seeing as Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watchman, saw Martin walking home at night in a neighborhood he lived in, thought that because he was black and in a hoodie he was suspicious, called the police who told him not to follow Martin, followed him anyway, got into an altercation with Martin, and then shot him. In addition, Zimmerman has had prior brushes with the law, including assaulting an ex-girlfriend and a police officer!
And yet because of Stand Your Ground laws and doubts on Martin’s role in the tragedy, Zimmerman gets off scot-free and gets his gun back, despite everything that’s happened! If you ask me, George Zimmerman not only got away with murder, he showed how dangerous Stand Your Ground laws are. These laws say that I’m allowed to use a firearm within the state, and if I claim self-defense, I can’t be punished for it. And that’s even if I go into a bar with a loaded gun and deliberately pick a fight. It’s a law that allows you to get away with murder.
I’m sorry, but aren’t we supposed to stop murderers, not help them?
And not only is the law nonsensical, it’s not applied equally. Right around the same time of the Zimmerman verdict, a woman of African American heritage was convicted. Why? She had fired a shotgun at the ceiling of her home in order to defend herself against her violent boyfriend. Under Florida’s laws, you think she would be protected and her boyfriend prosecuted for assault. You’d be wrong. Despite the defense’s use of Stand Your Ground, she got convicted and sent away for 20 years.
So a murderer get’s away with murder and get’s his gun back after killing a black teenager, but a black woman who didn’t kill anybody and was actually defending herself gets 20 years? What the heck is going on down there?
Looks about right, doesn’t it?
And despite how ineffective, unequally applied, and dangerous these laws are, Governor Rick Scott says he won’t call in a special session of the Florida legislature to review Stand Your Ground laws. Instead, he asks protestors to “talk to your legislators” and is calling for a day of prayer on Sunday.
Prayer? That’s your solution? You’re going to pray for a solution to just magically pop into your lap, Governor Scott? Why not take some action and act like a leader? Or would your NRA backers be cranky if you did that?
Honestly, I don’t blame Stevie Wonder for wanting to boycott the state. I’ll boycott it too while these crazy laws are in effect. And I hope the protestors down in Florida who want Stand Your Ground laws repealed and are the ones who are really taking action are able to enact some sort of change. Because honestly, how many more people are we going to let die for the sake of people who fear their profits will be slashed or that an all-powerful dictatorship will emerge by putting a few comon-sense restrictions on the Second Amendment?
I’ll try and write some more later. I’ve got some anger to vent over the situation in Texas, and boy, will I enjoy writing that!
Let Freedom Ring!
Posted: June 26, 2013 in Living and Life, Politics and Leadership, Social ActivismTags: activism, government, human rights, living and life, politics and leadership, proper decisions
Today I woke up to some wonderful news: the Supreme Court of the United States had declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and had struck down Proposition 8, both laws that had negative consequences for same-sex marriage. The former, signed into law in 1996 by Bill Clinton, prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, even when legalized by the states, while Proposition 8 was a ban on same-sex marriage in California that was overturned by the state courts.
At this point, it’s unknown what the exact ramifications of these rulings are. However at the very least, the government in Washington will have to recognize same-sex marriage when legalized by the states, whichwill mean a lot more people will be filing joint tax forms. I’m not sure what Prop 8’s ruling will mean exactly, but I think it may affect all gay marriage bans across the nation, of which there are more than a few.
As a long-time supporter of gay rights, let me just thank The Supreme Court for siding with liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is unfair to so many when their marriages are recognized by the states but not by the government that’s supposed to have their best interests at heart. Your ruling has been a great success for gay rights, civil rights, and human rights everywhere. I can only hope that this leads to more tolerance and more good news as time goes on.
And to those who have worked tirelessly to see that these laws were struck down, the lawyers, the activists, and finally the people filing the suits in the first place, I cannot congratulate you enough. Your hard work has helped many people, and I salute you. Because of your efforts, I will be able to stand this Independence Day proudly and be glad I live in a nation moving towards tolerance for all.
Have a wonderful and hopefully colorful day, everybody.
