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Below are the most recent 15 friends' journal entries.
| Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 |
sfwa
[ sfwa_admin ]
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3:00a |
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sub_textual
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3:47a |
FREE AT LAST! FREE AT LAST! I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M FREE AT LAST!
I'M DONE WITH MY APPLICATIONS!HOLY SHIT PEOPLE. THIS CALLS FOR SOME KIND OF CELEBRATION OR SOMETHING. I've been doing nonstop applications for so long that I can't remember what it even feels like to not be doing applications! This is a very surreal feeling. I don't even really know how to describe it. I don't really think it's hit me yet. I still have one more signature page to send off before I can be completely free from the BONDS OF APPLICATION OPPRESSION. Oh my god, everyone. I CAN HAVE A LIFE AGAIN. I CAN START ....commenting on LJ again. This is kind of. Unbelievable. *__* In other news, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hieronymousb has been here. We have some pretty funny pictures though my camera broke so I don't have nearly as many pix as I wish I did. We spent Christmas at jaquiel's house, and I'm sure eventually we'll write a very huge write-up of everything that happened with pictures and stuff. There have been some fun moments, though I hope this week will be even more fun. The snow kind of really put a huge damper in all of our plans, as did a few unexpected turn of events, but hopefully now that the weather is getting better, we will be able to do more things... ALSO, MY BIRTHDAY IS THIS FRIDAY THURSDAY. Yes, I was born on New Years Eve. I have... no idea what the hell I'm going to even do. :F;; Maybe I'll get very drunk or something. I can't say Christmas went exactly as planned, so I'm hoping my birthday/NYE/the first decade of 2000 will go out with a big, exciting bang. On a side note, jaquiel has the girliest room on earth. There are even unicorns and everything. :F;;; Magical, really. anat_astarte, we still have yet to make plans with you, dammit! MUST DO SO THIS WEEK. ARGHHHH. Anyway, I foresee the following things for this week: 1. Library. Amber and I have to actually work on our book. 2. Galavanting all around NYC. Chinatown, Soho, all the touristy spots, Central Park, Times Square. 3. Nice dinners and parties. Yes, this sounds like it will be a good idea. Also, I miss ksmash. She is off in Japan doing fun things and I am very jealous and nostalgic at the moment about that. This time last year, I was in Tokyo with naukhel, living it up something major. We did some pretty insane shit in a single week. Ahhh, Japan. I miss you so. I figure that hieronymousb has a week left in NY, so that's enough time for us to do a lot of insane shit too. On a major shoestring budget. I just have to figure out what insanity we will be embarking upon. |
| Sunday, December 27th, 2009 |
unayok
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9:52p |
pictures from a con
 Very belatedly, I have now posted my pictures from Chicago TARDIS 2009. First real convention with the new camera, so I'm still figuring out how to deal with some of the difficult lighting in the various spaces, but I think a few good pics came out of it. And a few... amusing ones. It was a good convention, though the best bits are sworn to secrecy (as it should be!) Current Music: Bear McCreary - The Olympic Carrier |
| Saturday, December 26th, 2009 |
sfwa
[ sfwa_admin ]
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3:00a |
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unayok
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1:26a |
Eesh
I am really not good at updating. Actually, I sort of am, but the small, minor day-to-day stuff ends up on FB. After pretty much a year of continued suck, the last couple months have followed an uptick. Rebalancing of supplements has evened out the biologics. That's a useful basis, but it's not enough to rely on chemicals for improvements. Medical imaging shows that I'm about where I should be a year on from the surgery. Intellectual challenge has been an important part of the recent trend as well. Getting to flex mental muscles is a good framing element -- getting paid for it makes it better. I'm doing iPhone application development now, stretching the minimal Objective C knowledge I've been carrying around for years. Any rants and raves about iPhone development (libraries, environment and app store policies) is quite a different post. It's certainly significantly more interesting than the work I was doing before. The weather has been co-operating to an extent; I was riding my bike to work (12.5km) even this week. The last few days were a bit brisk (-10C, -15 windchills) but quite tolerable. Traffic this week was lighter than usual and I was actually fairly pleased to be doing it. There's more, but it's all secret, you see. Or at least delayed to some future post. (ha!) |
| Friday, December 25th, 2009 |
sfwa
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4:29p |
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| Thursday, December 24th, 2009 |
sfwa
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3:00a |
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sub_textual
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11:28a |
"Portrait"
 I may say I hate analyzing poetry, but sometimes poetry is the most powerful thing there is to capture a feeling. Or a moment. Whether happiness or heartbreak. Current Mood:  exhausted |
| Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 |
sfwa
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9:20p |
Ursula K. Le Guin resigns from Authors Guild
 Copyright © by Marian Wood Kolisch On December 18th, Ursula K. Le Guin posted an open letter on her website, resigning from the Authors Guild in protest about its role in the Google Book Settlement. She has been a member since 1972.
In part, the letter says:
I am not going to rehearse any arguments pro and anti the “Google settlement.” You decided to deal with the devil, as it were, and have presented your arguments for doing so. I wish I could accept them. I can’t. There are principles involved, above all the whole concept of copyright; and these you have seen fit to abandon to a corporation, on their terms, without a struggle.
So, after being a loyal if invisible member for so long, I am resigning from the Guild. I am, however, retaining membership in the National Writers Union and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, both of which opposed the “Google settlement.” They don’t have your clout, but their judgment, I think, is sounder, and their courage greater.
Today, the Guild responded to her letter, arguing that the deal was good for authors and ultimately protected copyrights.
Litigation, particularly litigation over the bounds of fair use, involves risk. Some critics of the settlement wrongly dismiss that risk, but the fact is that we certainly could have lost the case. Losing would have meant that anyone, not just Google, could have digitized copyright protected books and made them available through search engines. Since creating a search engine is rather simple, anyone with a website — Civil War buffs, science fiction fans, medical information providers — would then have been empowered to start the uncontrolled scanning of books and the display of “snippets.” Authors would have no say in those uses and no control over the security of those scans. The damage to copyright protection would have been incalculable.
Mirrored from SFWA | Comment at SFWA |
sfwa
[ sfwa_admin ]
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8:33p |
Speculative Literature Foundation Announces 2009 Gulliver Travel Research Grant Winner
 The Speculative Literature Foundation announced today that its 2009 Gulliver Travel Research Grant has been awarded to SFWA member Caren Gussoff. The $800 grant will be used to help Gussoff to travel to western Washington State in order to research the setting of her near-future novel The King of Seattle.
Gussoff’s stories have appeared in Abyss & Apex, PodCastle and Fantasy Magazine, and in several Seal Press anthologies. Her novel explores a post-pandemic Puget Sound, in which mental illness is a communicable disease.
An excerpt:
—–
Pills? I asked.
Yes, the majordomo answered. He held his hands still, and said, SSRIs, SSDIs, neuroleptics, anticonvulsant mood stabilizers, anxiolytics, hypnotics. Trans-dermal, sub-lingual, prophylactic. Peach, pink, blue. Then he looked at me.
I was holding my hand up against my mouth.
You’re about my age, he said. You’ll get used to the naked faces.Then he looked down at his rubbing hands like they had nothing to do with him. Do you remember before we knew you could catch crazy?
Yeah, I said, nodding. I remember.
——
This year the competition was especially fierce, with many excellent entries. Five Honourable Mentions were given:
Nisi Shawl
Jeremy Smith
Livia Llewellyn
Emily Jiang
Nadia Kalman
The Gulliver Travel Research Grant is awarded to assist a writer of speculative fiction in his or her research. As in previous years, the 2009 grant of $800 is to be used to cover airfare, lodging, and/or other expenses relating to the research for a project of speculative fiction. The grant is awarded by a committee of Speculative Literature Foundation members on the basis of interest and merit.
The grant is named after Gulliver, a character in the 1726 story “Gulliver’s Travels” written by Jonathan Swift. The story represents one of the earliest examples of fantasy travel.
Applications for the seventh annual Gulliver Travel Research Grant will open on July 1, 2010.
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| Monday, December 21st, 2009 |
sfwa
[ sfwa_admin ]
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10:34a |
Drewlie and Julia: Or, The Case of the Alias’d Literary Agent
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
 Last August, I received several emails from writers who’d had a very strange experience.
They’d submitted to a literary agent in Boston called Sara Levine, only to be informed by Levine’s assistant, a few weeks later, that Levine had died suddenly of a heart attack. The regretful assistant suggested they contact Levine’s colleague, Julia Levin of the Florida-based Julia Levin Literary Agency, who was taking over Levine’s business. Other writers who’d submitted to Sara Levine were approached by Julia Levin herself, with much the same story.
No one had ever heard of Julia Levin before. Her profiles on MySpace, LinkedIn, and Facebook (the only info that could be found on her, online or off) indicated that she’d been in business since 2005, both on her own and as a co-agent with Sara Levine. In emails to prospective clients, as well as in a September Open House on Facebook, through which she hoped to add to her agency roster, she reported a number of recent book sales to major publishers.
Read the rest of this entry » Mirrored from SFWA | Comment at SFWA |
| Saturday, December 19th, 2009 |
sfwa
[ sfwa_admin ]
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9:00p |
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| Thursday, December 17th, 2009 |
sfwa
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9:00p |
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sfwa
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12:26p |
Link: Why Are Europeans White?
When working on the world-building for your secondary fantasy world, here’s an interesting thought to chew on. Did you know that Northern Europeans are uniquely depigmented?
 “White,” of course, is a a social designation. The question really is, “Why are northern Europeans depigmented?” Here is a map of human skin tone. The natives of northern Europe are oddly light-skinned. They are paler than anyone else on earth.
Most people know that it has something to do with sunlight, UV, latitude, and vitamin D. Here is a map of solar UV at the surface taken from satellite. It matches the skin-tone map everywhere but Europe.
Read the entire article as it traces development back step by step to figure out why Northern Europe is unique in its depigmentation.
Mirrored from SFWA | Comment at SFWA |
sfwa
[ sfwa_admin ]
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11:30a |
The UK’s Society of Authors Issues Guidance on Ebooks
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
Given Random House’s recent claim on electronic rights in older contracts, Macmillan’s recent announcement that it will be issuing “enhanced ebooks” simultaneously with some of its hardcover releases (and charging even more than for the hardcovers), and the thorny rights and payment issues raised by the rapid expansion of the ebook market, this seems an especially relevant piece of news: the UK’s Society of Authors has issued guidelines on ebook licensing and royalties for authors and agents.
The full text of the statement (which I found via the excellent TeleRead blog) can be seen here. The guidelines are below, and seem to me to make a great deal of sense.
1. Consider granting publishers a licence for 10 or 20 years, rather than for the full duration of copyright;
2. Limit any grant of ebook rights to the verbatim text. Wider electronic rights (e.g. for enhanced ebooks) should be negotiated separately and only if there is a definite intention to exploit the rights.
3. Royalties on ebooks should be much higher than they are. Until the economics and scale of the market become clearer, we consider that publishers should share ebook income equally with their authors. In any event we particularly encourage authors to try to negotiate steep increases to their royalties at agreed sales thresholds (as publishers recoup their set up costs). When a book has become well-established, it may be reasonable for the author’s share to rise to as much as 75%. On other forms of electronic access – e.g. rental and pay-per-view – authors should receive at least 50%, preferably nearer 85%, of the publisher’s receipts.
In suggesting these royalties we have taken into account that:
(a) publishers need to cover their overheads and make a profit; but
(b) the direct costs of originating, producing and keeping an ebook ‘in print’ are low (e.g. no printing costs); and
(c) the cost of making an ebook available through a third party distributor such as Amazon is minimal. Publishers’ warehousing and distribution costs are eliminated, as are losses from dealing with returns and unsold stock.
4. Authors should have the right to initiate a review of ebook royalty rates every 2 years and have the right to insist that royalties be increased to match those then prevailing in the trade.
5. When enhanced ebooks are developed, authors should have the right to approve – and be involved in – adaptations, abridgements, and dramatizations, as well as decisions on musical, interactive or other embellishments.
6. Contracts must allow authors to regain rights, if they so choose, once sales have all but ceased. When the work is POD and / or ebook only authors should be able to terminate their publishing contract on one month’s notice if sales in the home market in traditional and/or electronic form fall below an agreed level (or if the author’s income falls below an agreed amount) over 12 months, once the advance has been earned or more than, say, three years have passed since publication, whichever is the sooner.
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