Curmudgeon's Lair

What we have here today is a mixed bag. Part rant and part update.

The Zokutou word meter is back up. They disabled it just before the start of Nanorimo because use had skyrocketed and was crashing their system.

I'm not as savvy about computers as I was ten years ago. I've fallen out of the loop with many things and that is one of them. Zokutou put the code up for do it yourselfers, but i was just not knowledgeable enough to use it. Now that it's back up, here's the status for Kady's Vengeance. The Exile Returns ended on a cliff-hanger, so I can understand the impatience to get it going again. With luck (and hard work) the novel should be out the first week of January.

81,289 / 75,000 (108.4%)

So long as it does not go over 100,000 words, Jean will not start pressuring me to break it up. I could lie about the length, but my publisher reads my blogs.

And now the rant. As DragonSlayer is fond of saying about me "Cover your ears, the lizard is about to rant."

Rant One:

A never ending source of amusement for me is the stupidity of the members of the Axhole of Imbecile. Dungstain posted over at Rusty Nail that I had angered Philbin. He seemed to mean it as a threat. Philbin posted on his blog, taking many things out of context that I had said (that appears to be the standard operating procedure of a lot of folks, not just the Axholes) and then bragged that I'm giving him great PR.

As I stated before, controversy does not sell books. My readership would never purchase a book called Bukkakeworld. They are looking for another type of writing completely. As for those who hate me and read this blog, all of them hate Philbin more. So he's really not getting any place.

My rants are thoughtful and considering, while his are filled with empty vitriol.

The problems lie not with Philbin, Pacione, and Dagstine, but with a certain type of mentality that is finding less and less acceptance on the internet. There is (as I am certain many of you are aware) a netiquette movement among websites, messageboards, and blogs. When I first encountered it several years ago, I was irritated because I felt that it violated my freedom of speech. However, as time passed and i saw how toxic the net had become, I began to reconsider it. Vitriol for the sake of vitriol serves no purpose in the general sphere of positive interaction. It should never be allowed to become commonplace.

It has long been held that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. But what happens when that squeaky wheel is abusive? I am certain that you have all encountered folks who attempt to destroy a conversation by abusive language, derision, and nastiness rather than have a quiet discussion of the pros and cons of something on a messageboard. More and more messageboards are becoming aware that the problem needs to be nipped in the bud before it ruins a board for the majority of those who go there.

i post a lot at sfreader because even when the topic of a thread becomes heated, the folks there stay within bounds and no one descends into abusive patterns to take cheap shots at folks. Another nice place is Spinetinglers. Both of them are good boards. The admin at Silverthought intervened and squashed abusive posting there. It needs to be that way. Reducing the toxic level at boards makes it more friendly.

There are always places to post one's ire. I prefer to do it on my blogs. But I also try (and hopefully succeed) at finding a postive angle for my complaints.

Rant Two;

How the hell do I stop the telemarketers from calling? It used to be that real people were on the other end and when the answering machine picked up they went away. Now it is all being done by computer and last night the calls filled up my answering machine with computerized pitches for everything from Viagra to new car loans. I was sound asleep when I was awakened by one of them. Annoyed, I sprang out of bed and jerked the connections to the phone loose. I reconnected the phone a couple of hours ago and deleted all the messages. However, it was an aggravation that i could have done without.

One of the members of the Axhole of Imbecile poked his head up within hours of my previous post. The Pacione appeared and stated that an interesting young woman should be drawn and quartered five ways.

I did not know you could get five quarters out of anything.

He also got the nature of drawn and quartered wrong. I suppose that there are other folks who have the same misconception that drawn and quartered was equivalent to being pulled apart by horses. It isn't.

Drawn means that the intestines were pulled from a living man's body. They attached one end of the entrails to a rod with a handle on it set between two short poles. The entrails were reeled out. After death, the body was divided into four parts. The parts were taken to the four compass points in the city and hung up for everyone to see. Nice and simple.

Research is important. Just because you think you know what something is does not mean that you have it right. The History of Torture by Daniel Mannix is a very fine book that every writer of medievalistic fiction should have. Another one is The Instruments of Torture by Michael Kerrigan. If you wish to torture your characters (or your internet nemesis) get your facts right.

It is the sicker than thou crowd who make the horror ghetto a stinky pond. Just the titles alone are enough to turn off the average reader. Bukkakeworld. Puke of the Owl. Lovely titles, aren't they? (Someone please pass me a clothes pin for my nose or, better yet, a haz-mat suit.)

Not all literary ghettos have this pervasive stench about them. You don't see it in either the fantasy or science fiction ghettos. You certainly do not see it in the romance ghetto.

Yeah, who am I to call it a ghetto. But as the larger literary pond goes, genre fiction, regardless of which genre it may be in, have helped to create these ghettos characterized by poor advances, sales that rarely (if ever) go above mid list numbers, little or no promotion, and so on.

Ghettos are not, by definition, a bad place -- unless you're talking some parts of Los Angeles or Chicago.

Ghettos are under-appreciated niches.

Ghettos are places of safety for those who fit them. The highest form of ghetto is a place where writers are free to find expression far from the relentless eyes of the majority who would wish to apply their morality upon it. The farther from the ghetto you get, the more they turn their predatory eyes upon you and seek to keep you in line with rules that most us do not wish to follow.

However, some ghettos are more pleasant than others. Some even have pretty window boxes with attractive flowers in them.

The sicker than thou crowd are part of that corner of the ghetto that you don't want to invite your maiden aunt into. Philbin and Dagstine are loud-mouthed provocateurs from the sicker than thou crowd, a tiny niche market composed of people who have not yet outgrown their adolescent devotion to the gross.

The problem is that they strive to force feed the public and in so doing they make the rest of us smell like an over filled garbage dump.

I wish that someone had gotten a screenshot of the guidelines to Philbin's anthology of pedophilia. it is fast becoming a legend and no one has proof beyond their own word. I saw it. I remember it. But I did not make a screenshot of it.

Raping baby dinosaurs in one of his stories was one thing. Raping baby humans is another. Now, he and Dag are trying to deny it ever existed. The problem is that the members of the community have long memories.

The admin at Silverthought deleted their posts from that brainstorming for promotion thread in which they spent a long time deriding Rusty Nail and TODP and myself. I consider that an enlightened move on their part.

This is my final post on the subject until one of the members of the Axhole of Imbecile do something stupid again.

Starting tomorrow, I still have questions to answer concerning my writing and I intend to get onto it.

Silverthought publishes books for a niche market that loves the gross. However, i am not going into that part in this post, I'm saving it for a later one.

They are a subsidy publisher selling editorial services, which they call 'partnership' plans. Such things should be avoided. There is nothing you can gain by paying for a high priced editorial services that you cannot gain from having a decent set of first readers and critters.

The market for the gross has dwindled before the jading of the public. At a time when horror stories emerge from the war in Iraq and other places, people do not need to have their sensibilities offended by nasty works of sicker than thou fiction. It's a dead end market.

End of very short rant.

Dagstine went to TODP and stated that he thought Rusty Nail and I were the leaders of the TODP crowd. He did this to get TODP and I going at each other again. I misread a couple of posts in that thread and fell for it, thinking "okay, here we go again." However, a night's sleep convinced me that I was wrong.

Dagstine knew my past history with TODP and he was trying to set me up. He almost managed it. I must make a resolution to not respond when I am tired and my brain wiring is not working at optimal levels.

I am an aging warhorse who has worked in publishing since the late '70s. I have done many different things in the course of a long career. The dynamics of publishing have changed a lot. One of the biggest changes has been the advent of the internet.

I have always had a very bad temper. Sometimes I ride it like a greenbroke horse. Other times I shove a bit in its mouth and have friends hauling on the check reins and screaming "NO!"

Debbie Moorhouse, author of Sundown and other stories, has said that I have only three modes: write, rant, and self-destruct.

I think that's true of a lot of folks on the internet. Debbie is one of the wiser folks out there and avoids drama. She's also one of the first people to hollar "whoa" when i take the bit in my teeth and attempt to jump a canyon that I had mistaken for a narrow ditch.

Dagstine could learn a lot from Debbie. So could I, but bad habits are hard to break, and by the time that you're my age they are deeply ingrained.

Most writers are attention whores. If we weren't, we would stay off the net and just write stories.

The desire for attention is a double-edged sword. It cuts both ways. It can be both positive and negative. When we entertain and provide insights into what we do; when we share what we enjoy and delight in; well, then it is a positive thing.

When we create drama for the sake of drama, getting our attention by manipulation, trolling, and generally toxic behaviors, then that is the negative side of authorial attention whoring.

As I have said before, controversy does not create more sales. It just brings the lookie loos to your site, messageboard, blogs, and whatever.

What purpose does it serve to directly engage people who obviously dislike you the way that Dagstine did at TODP? I often wonder if people are stirring the shit to sniff the methane and get high.

I limit myself to my blogs and posting comments at the Rusty Nail and I go for long periods without posting. I can't put that much stress on my energy level. The post polio syndrome is hard enough to deal with without expending my limited energies on things that really don't make a difference.

When drama comes looking for me, I'll deal with it and then get back to the matters that count.

I kind of wish it would die, but I seriously doubt it ever will.

Dagstine is still trying to pull a "booga booga" on the horror community with Pacione's memoirs. I keep saying that, while they are aggravating at times, they are essentially harmless. Even if Pacione named names, in this day and age, a writer would have to be buggering children or sacrificing babies to even get an eyebrow raised at what they do in their real life.

Anyone who tried to read Pacione's memoirs would wonder what drugs the author was on when he wrote them. That's why no one in their right mind would ever take what he wrote seriously. There never was any dangerous libel or threat to the community from the works of Pacione.

Dagstine is a drama quean [sic] of the first order. Nothing more. He thinks that he is a sainted individual, and yet he hangs with the worst provocateurs in the industry.

Unless you are someone with major credits and a name, controversy no longer sells books. The number of hits someone gets on their website is not and never has been an indication of sales. The majors published books by people whose websites and blogs got huge numbers of comments and attention, only to be disappointed by the sales figures.

With so much free stuff on the net, one of the first things that a person will do, when shown a new author involved in a controversy, is to google them. The vast majority have something out there free to read, either in an ezine or on their sites. If they don't like the writing style, then there are no sales.

Back in the 1950s, 'banned in Boston' could get you more sales. But back then writers were less accessible than they are now. Today, the public has become jaded and inured to controversy. The media and publishers have done controversy to death and most folks have become yawningly blasé about it.

As the old saying goes, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Dagstine cannot write his way out of a used condom. Philbin can write, but no one really cares about his subject matter beyond a tiny fraction of hardcore fanatics who like reading about time travelers raping baby dinosaurs.

Trying to force feed -- by way of controversy -- the reading public what they do not wish to read will not sell books. Disparaging your readership and fans will not sell books.

Dagstine and Philbin are excellent examples of what is wrong with small press horror these days. Talentless writing, poor characterization, and books and novels based upon delivering the "scares" is not going to sell books. The pond is shrinking.

The old tired formula of man goes to haunted house, monster eats him, is no longer working for the larger reading public, which is dominated by the soccer moms.

Furthermore, regardless of what the powers that be say to the contrary, the US is in a recession. The bulk of the book buyers is the Middle Class. There was a time when writers were principally trying to compete for people's beer money. But in this time of rising costs, more often we are competing for their grocery and gas money. There is less and less discretionary money in people's pockets.

Economics alone are accounting for the largest share in the dwindling pond of people who will buy horror and other genre works. At $15 for a small press tradepaper, $7.99 for a mass market book from the majors, and $4.99 for the average indie ebook, what are people going to buy?

Controversy alone is not going to break someone out of the small press ghetto and into the high class sales of the mass market.

You will note the section where he begins to talk to himself in hype language like an overwrought used car salesman. I had the PM examined by some top flight minds in the industry before I began the post to xanga about it's existence.
________________________________________

Dear Ms. Frank:

I guess you might have enjoyed the interview with NP over at our MySpace component. Found it somewhat amusing. There is, however, a very scary aspect to the non-fiction book he is writing. Now three sides or three groups of people can constantly make fun of him... but here there is Libel the likes you have never seen (your name is included). If you analyzed the interview's middle portions "carefully", the way I ask my questions, (he said he posted it up at writers.org), you will have noticed I tried to make NP tell the public what this book is about, release as much information as possible. To defy the industry for publicity? No, a wake up call to some of the book's contents (hopefully).

In the actual book he does not use names like wank or bastard or mother fucker. He uses first and last names. What he is going to do against the industry. And other stuff. I want people to know what this bastard is doing "beforehand". Yes, I'm playing coy... pretending to be his friend. I have seen the drafts to this book (it needs to be gutted, but that's beside the point). Whether he publishes this book on Lulu or with Publish America or wherever, it is an incriminating book. This man must be stopped! For your career and your reputation as a dark fantasy author (it shall be tainted), as well as many other well-known mass marketers in the horror field. You could take that with a grain of salt, something to consider, or let's say info from a fellow friend and source in the so-called writing field who wants a peaceful outcome where none of us are stalked or preyed upon. Yes, we have lawyers for that. Both you and I. Big ones. But this book will cause damage that CANNOT be undone, once released.

But why publish Pacione, Dagstine? What's your game? You'll only lose sales either way. It's like you want to destroy your magazine? Why? NP was in LB#2 for the beginning, don't get me wrong, but after I read what he wrote in that autobiographical piece of crap, my MORALS stepped into the picture. As an expectant father myself, do you really think I would publish Nickolaus Pacione in the Literary Bone? After the slurs and scary stuff I have read in this book, where he plans to go further with it; I am somewhat scared myself of the repercussions.

This book could end careers.

I'm hoping you will keep our convo quiet. As I will be sure to get more pieces of the book to examine and "pretend" to give an editor's opinionated eye over. Give Nickolaus Pacione enough rope, and he'll be able to hang himself...legitamitely :)

Sincerely Yours,

Lawrence Dagstine