Uncategorized – Page 73 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Life without social media

It has been more than a week since I’ve posted here, which is a bit surprising. Then again, I did decide to take a short break from writing, which pushed blogging a little further down the priority tree. The much higher priority has been finishing my friend’s basement before his wife has a baby next week (they’re inducing labor on the 14th). Twelve-hour workday sure are brutal.

In any event, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the craziness of politics these days, and the role of social media in that craziness. Without getting too deep into Trump vs. Clinton vs. Bernie, it seems sometimes that the supporters for each candidate are living in entirely different worlds.

Perhaps that’s because they are.

According to Pew Research, three out of five Americans get their news from social networking sites, with one out of five getting their news from social media often. For Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter, the majority of users get their news from the site.

But these sites are not politically agnostic. Far from it, in fact. Just last month, the story broke that Facebook may be censoring conservative viewpoints, with the head of Facebook’s trending news manager maxxing out his donations to Clinton’s election campaign. Compare that with #RIPTwitter and their Orwellian “Trust and Safety Council,” populated almost entirely by left-leaning groups that oppose free speech.

Do Twitter and Facebook have a right to be politically partisan? Yes. They are private businesses, and as such should be allowed to participate in politics just like any other business (of course there are issues when they lie about being politically agnostic, but that’s a different issue).

The problem is that people have come to rely on social media so much that it completely warps the reality that they live in.

Every online community is, to a greater or lesser extent, an echo chamber that amplifies the viewpoints that the members tend to agree on and suppresses the viewpoints where most of the members disagree. This is why we have Godwin’s Law: because intellectual laziness is easy when everyone thinks you’re right. As online communities grow, the culture becomes even more self-sorting, developing complex narratives to reaffirm and reinforce the rightness of the group.

Essentially, humans are tribal, and the trend is for online communities to be more tribal, not less. Social media accelerates this trend by enabling users to fine-tune their tribes, blocking out any uncomfortable or dissenting viewpoints and creating a “safe space” where the user’s core beliefs are continually reinforced.

When people spend more time with their carefully curated online tribes than they do with people in the real world, the online reality becomes their reality. Instead of facing uncomfortable truths about the way the world actually works, they craft their own worlds where they don’t have to be responsible for their own actions, and their beliefs are always correct, even when they’re based on a failed ideology.

(As a side note, this is why gaslighting is such a big thing nowadays: it’s the art of crafting someone else’s online reality, without them realizing what’s happening. It’s a tactic that we see very often in today’s online politic debates.)

So what happens when one of these social media junkies comes out of their online echo chambers?

Whatever your position on LGBTQ issues, you have to admit that Steven Crowder absolutely destroyed Zack Ford in that debate. It wasn’t even close. The Twitter warrior was woefully unprepared to answer even the most basic criticisms of his underlying assumptions, and seemed frankly shocked that those assumptions were under debate.

This is what happens when you live in a virtual world. When you can simply block or unfollow any viewpoint that’s inconvenient to your preferred narrative, then the narrative becomes your only truth, no matter how false it actually is.

In its extreme form, it’s just as scary as the worst propaganda of the 20th century. In fact, it’s even more scary, because we’re doing it to ourselves.

I feel like I’ve got a unique perspective on this issue because, for most of the last year, I’ve been living without social media. I deleted my Facebook back in 2014, and disengaged from Twitter back in March.

(Since then, I have gone back to Facebook in a limited way, only because there’s a particular church group where the only way to keep up with events is to be part of the Facebook group. But I’ve only friended family and close friends and liked only a couple of political pages, and even then, I’ve felt the pull. When I’m no longer a part of this church group, I will delete my Facebook again and leave the site for good.)

Life is a lot different without social media. It’s a lot less stressful, a lot more satisfying. I get out more. I have deeper and more meaningful conversations with my friends. I no longer feel like I’m perpetually caught up in imbecilic arguments with twats and idiots. I feel a lot more free to pursue constructive things, like my writing.

At the same time, it really does feel sometimes that I went to sleep ten years ago and woke up in a different world. It’s like everyone else is crazy, and I’m the only sane one (until I discovered Ben Shapiro). I’m not sure how much of that has to do with leaving social media, since I only did that recently. Perhaps it was only by leaving social media that I realized how much everything outside of that echo chamber had changed.

I’m actually a lot happier without social media than I was with it. At the same time, I feel a lot less connected with what’s going on in my country right now. But is that only an illusion? Is it kind of like how you always feel like your writing sucks just as it starts to get better?

Whatever the case, I do know that if I were more active on social media, I would definitely be the guy that offends everyone with my political views, including a lot of potential readers. I suppose I could roll with it like Larry Correia, but I’m not quite passionate enough about politics to make that my shtick.

Though with the way things are shaping up politically, I may do a fisking or two on my blog. On that note, I’ll leave you with Ben Shapiro bringing some sanity to the news cycle:

The Self-Sufficient Writer: Varieties of Collapse

What does a collapse look like?

The first thing most people think of is the zombie apocalypse. Which makes sense, considering how popular zombie stories are. The signs of collapse are clear and present, with no room for ambiguity. The world has come to an end, and the only thing left is to pick up an improvised weapon and fight.

In the real world, though, collapses are almost never so black and white.

When the housing market collapsed in 2008 and brought down the global economy with it, I was in college. With panicked capital looking desperately for a place to go, gas prices spiked to over $4 a gallon during the height of the summer. Then, as credit markets completely fell apart, retailers were forced to sell at rock-bottom prices just to keep their cash flow problems from driving them into bankruptcy.

So what did that look like? For me, an extremely expensive road trip back out to Utah, followed by a spending spree. I bought a really nice corduroy sports jacket for $15, and thought “hey, I could live with this recession.” Two years later, I was singing a very different tune.

In any collapse, people’s experience of the collapse varies wildly. Take the Euro crisis, for example. A couple of years ago, the Germans I chatted with online dismissed any claim that the EU was on the verge of falling apart. Now, the UK is holding a referendum on exiting the union, and no one really knows which way it’s going to go. Germany has not (yet) experienced the kind of depression-level unemployment that many of the southern countries have. To the middle-class government worker in Athens who lost all their savings in the recession and hasn’t been getting a paycheck for years, the German narrative of Greek laziness as the root cause of the crisis does not conform to reality.

When Ernest Hemmingway was asked how he went bankrupt, his answer was “gradually, then suddenly.” The same can be said of most collapses.

But there are different kinds of collapses. There are total collapses, such as the USSR where the entire national system just completely fell apart. Then there are more segmented collapses, where different parts of the country (Detroit) or sectors of the economy (banking, housing, construction) fall apart, leaving the rest weakened but still standing. Then you have all the stuff that happens on the level of individuals and families, such as bankruptcy.

Each level feeds into the next. If enough regions or sectors go down, it can bring down the whole system with it. Likewise, if the disintegration of families becomes too widespread, every other aspect of society falls apart. We see this right now in a lot of Black communities right now. Police brutality is certainly a problem, but it is a symptom and not a cause.

Very rarely does a super-virus come out of nowhere and turn everyone into zombies. The collapse happens gradually, then suddenly. People who know what they’re looking for can see it coming a long ways away. Everyone else clings to their false and misleading narratives (“the housing market can only go up!” “the rich should pay their fair share!” “Black lives matter!”) because the message is comfortable and doesn’t require them to change.

That is why self-sufficiency is so important, especially for us writers. We cannot afford to be comfortable. We cannot afford not to change. Perhaps there was a time, way before indie publishing, when writers could just sit back and write pretty words all day, but I doubt it. The industry today is changing so quickly that it’s easy to be left behind.

Every career writer will experience a crisis where they will be forced to reinvent themselves or face the utter collapse of their career. That’s according to Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katherine Rush, who have been around long enough that I believe them on this point. If you know that your career is going to collapse at some point, shouldn’t you do all that you can to prepare for it? And if you’re already preparing for a personal collapse, why not take the extra step and prepare for something larger?

Personally, I think that the collapse is already upon us. I’m not yet sure what kind it is, or how total it will be, but I do think that when we look back, we will see the Great Recession as a prelude to the main event. Right now, it is easy to ignore or dismiss because no one’s experience of the collapse is the same. We are all like the seven blind mice arguing about the elephant, whether it is a fan, or a pillar, or a rope, or a spear. That’s what makes this period so dangerous: the fact that there’s no shared experience yet. It creates the kind of environment where false and enticing narratives can thrive.

Will we reverse course and take the steps necessary to reverse the collapse? I’m not optimistic. Ever since the Great Recession, our policies have focused on putting off the pain as long as possible rather than fixing the root causes of our social and economic problems. At this point, I doubt that this nation has the political will to endure the pain necessary to fix our problems. In other words, we’re caught in a vicious cycle, and it would take an extraordinary event (like a war) to break us out of it. That, or hitting rock bottom.

But even if something extraordinary did happen, and we avoided the collapse to enter a new era of peace and prosperity, I would still strive to develop the skills and habits of self-sufficiency. Why? Because not all collapses look like the zombie apocalypse. Sometimes, the collapse is so small that no one experiences it except for you.

No matter the variety of collapse, the best way to be prepared is to be self-sufficient. Independence is the ability to take care of yourself when everything else you depend on fails. For that reason, a true indie writer is also a self-sufficient writer.

The Self-Sufficient Writer (Index)

A political rant

There is no meaningful difference between Clinton and Trump.

Both are narcissists.

Both are habitual liars.

Both are corrupt.

Both have a tendency to blame others for their failures instead of taking responsibility for their own actions.

Both treat the people underneath them poorly or with outright contempt.

Both think they are above the law, and seek to use the law to put down those who stand in their way.

Both are masters of saying what their audience wants to hear without saying anything of actual substance.

Both have flip-flopped 180 degrees on major national issues.

Both want to accelerate the same fiscal irresponsibility that got us into the Great Recession and prolonged it for so long.

Both are perfectly willing to order the military to do things that violate their sacred oath to defend the Constitution.

Both believe in an authoritarian government that violates constitutional principles and the basic rule of law.

I cannot, in good conscience, vote for either of them.

My greatest political fear is that our Republic is about to be overthrown and transformed into an Empire. We have a system of checks and balances to prevent that from taking place, but that system has been steadily eroded ever since the New Deal (or arguably the Civil War).

Eight years of economic stagnation have created a tremendous amount of restlessness. Looking at global trends, it seems that things are going to get worse before they get better. Historically, this type of chronic restlessness tends to lead to war, as leaders seek to either deflect it toward an outside enemy or channel it for their ruthless ambitions.

And both Clinton and Trump are nothing if not ruthless.

Everything old is new again. The authoritarian ideologies of the 20th century have resurrected and taken on new forms. Every day, I hear echoes of the deadly drumbeats on social media and the news.

Fascism is back. Communism is back. The 21st century equivalent of bookburning is taking place on campuses across the nation. The class warfare that started with the Occupy movement has taken on some decidedly racial undertones. If we’re following history’s playbook, a strong leader will soon emerge, promising security and prosperity at the cost of liberty.

Both Clinton and Trump promise to be that strong leader.

There’s a long tradition of doomsday predictions among political commentators in this country. At the risk of sounding paranoid, I’d like to chime in with some of my own. After all, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that everyone isn’t out to get you.

First, the gobal economy is about to suffer a massive downturn. China, Russia, the Eurozone crisis—it’s all headed toward collapse. The US will come out on top, but only because we won’t fall as hard as everyone else. We’re still going to take a fall.

Healthcare in this country will continue to be broken and unaffordable for the next four years. Best case scenario, Obamacare collapses and the gridlock in Washington prevents us from replacing it with anything else. Worst case scenario, socialized medicine stiffles innovation, costs and inefficiences skyrocket, and committees are formed to decide who lives and who dies, just like every other nationalized healthcare system.

The originalists on the Supreme Court will be replaced with activist judges who will dismantle the checks and balances of the Constitution, causing it to hang by a thread. Frankly, this is the thing that scares me the most. It’s already starting to happen with the controversy surrounding Scalia’s replacement, and he won’t be the only Supreme Court justice who passes in the next four years. This will be the ultimate legacy of whoever wins the presidency in 2016.

The world is about to get a lot less safe for Americans abroad. It’s already a lot more unsafe after eight years of Obama, but it’s about to get worse. The chaos in the Middle East will spread. Terrorist attacks will accelerate, both abroad and at home. The wars and rumors of wars will increase.

There are a number of unlikely but plausible scenarios I’ve been mulling over. The most frightening of these involves a second American civil war, in the form of an insurgency, and the true nightmare begins when the UN sends a peacekeeping mission into this country much like Lebanon or the Balkans. Like I said, I don’t consider it likely. But it’s just plausible enough that it would make an excellent novel—the kind that later generations laud as being written before its time.

In short, I predict another four years of economic stagnation, fiscal irresponsibility in Washington, cronyism, corruption, and collapse. If America becomes “great” again, it will only be the Empire at the expense of the Republic.

So what am I doing about it?

Stocking up on food storage. Growing a garden. Learning how to be a responsible gun owner. Striving to be as independent and self-sufficient as possible.

And you can bet that all of this is influencing my writing. There’s a war of ideas that’s raging right now, one that may influence the ultimate outcome of our era more than any elected official. As a writer, I see it as my responsibility to play a role in that battle, not through message fiction per say but through stories that reflect truth. I have no idea if any of my stories will be as influential as 1984 or Les Miserables, but I intend to write them as if they could be.

It appears we’ve been cursed to live in interesting times. Let us rise to the occasion and write timeless and interesting stories.

Why Kindle Unlimited is a broken system

I recently became embroiled in an unexpectedly hostile discussion on Mad Genius Club over the brokenness of Kindle Unlimited. In retrospect, though, there was nothing surprising about it.

The OP had asserted that Amazon is “still the only real game in town,” which I attempted to refute. It ended with the fine folks at Mad Genius Club putting words in my mouth, threatening to ban me for my “tone,” and calling me a “pompous blowhard” and a “prancing, self-aggrandizing, self-congratulating spunkmuffin.” Which would have been amusing except that… okay, it was pretty amusing. But it was also a bit infuriating to watch so many people deliberately take offense simply because I disagreed with them.

(The irony was especially thick as they viciously attacked me, then turned around and emphatically denied that KU pits authors against authors, all while demanding me to prove to them that it does—often in the same breath.

And for the record, I do not think that there’s anything “dickish” about asking the other side to back up their argument with sources. This is especially true for things that “everybody just knows,” and doubly so when forming a negative argument, such as “no one bothers with outside Amazon.”)

In all fairness, however, there were a few arguments I made that I could have done a better job supporting. And since this is my blog, where no one holds the ban-hammer but me, it seems appropriate to make them here.

First, though, I want to make it clear to any KU readers that I’m not trying make you feel guilty for subscribing to KU. If you are a KU subscriber and you enjoy the program, great! I have nothing at all against that. Whether or not the system is broken, we’ll still find ways to get paid. Have fun, and as always, thanks for reading.

Also, I want to point out that even though I believe KU is broken, I would still love to enroll my books. The problem, as I’ve pointed out before, is that Amazon demands exclusivity for the privilege. Not only am I wary of putting all of my eggs in a basket (especially a broken one), I also think that that’s a bad deal for my readers on iBooks, Kobo, Nook, etc, or who live outside of the territories where Amazon operates. Their numbers are not insignificant.

So why is Kindle Unlimited a broken system? In a word, incentives.

In a healthy system, writers write the books that readers want to read, readers support the writers by voting with their dollar, and the middlemen (publishers, distributors, booksellers, etc) provide value to both readers and writers commensurate with the cut that they take.

A healthy system is not closed. If readers collectively decide to read twice as many books, writers collectively earn twice as much. If another writer’s books do twice as well, it does not take away from the money I earn from my books.

Contrast that with the closed system that is KDP Select. We have only a ballpark estimate for the size of the KU subscriber base. Amazon keeps that (and most other KU-related data) close to the chest. We have no idea if the pay is commensurate with the subscriber base.

Instead, writers are paid out of a fixed pot, the KDP Select Global Fund. If readers collectively read twice as many KU books, it doesn’t increase the size of the pot. The pot only increases if Amazon decides to increase it, which again may or may not be commensurate with the increase in books read, or subscribers enrolled. We have no way of knowing.

Worse, because pay is based on a share of the pot, if someone else’s books receive twice as many borrows, everyone else’s earnings go down—even if their readership remains unchanged.

This is why so many writers are up in arms about the latest KU scandal, covered in depth by Phoenix Sullivan and Ann Christy. To summarize, the current iteration of Kindle Unlimited (KU 2.0) pays authors based on number of pages read, and scammers are gaming the system with text synthesizers and click farms. It’s not impossible to make $500,000 a month with this scam, all of which is taken out of the share of legitimate writers.

Is Amazon working to fix the problem? Until last week, it wasn’t clear that they were—and it’s still an open question if they can. It’s a perpetual game of whack-a-mole where the moles keep getting smarter, increasing the odds that legitimate writers will get whacked.

When you look at the way the incentives are structured, however, there’s nothing surprising about this unmitigated mess. Amazon has divorced the readers from the writers in such a way that pricing signals no longer work. Worse, the fixed pot pits authors against authors in a zero-sum race to the bottom. You do not earn more by simply getting more readers—you earn it by getting more reads than other authors. In the meantime, Amazon keeps lowering the KENPC payment rate, and authors keep bending over.

Is there still value in an ebook subscription service? Readers certainly seem to think so. If there’s value for readers, it shouldn’t be too difficult to also find value for writers.

But when you look back on the history of KU, you realize that it’s not really about providing value for readers or writers, but undercutting Amazon’s competition. KU launched right around the same time as two other subscription ebook services: Oyster and Scribd. These subscription services did provide value to writers, as they paid full price for every completed read.

Amazon responded by launching KU 1.0, which paid writers significantly less. However, since Amazon had most of the ebook market share (at least in the US), and since non-KU books receive much less visibility on the Kindle Store than KU-enrolled books, authors were aggressively pressured to sign up. Amazon’s exclusivity requirements kept its competitors from receiving content, and as a result, they have since either folded (Oyster) or failed to gain much traction (Scribd).

It ultimately comes down to the contrast between makers and takers. KDP Select is a closed system, where the size of the pie is fixed and the best you can expect is to get a larger slice than the person next to you. This turns everyone into a taker: someone who feels threatened by other people’s success and jealously guards their own.

Is it any wonder then that KU authors, when presented with someone critical of the KDP Select program, resort to rhetorical tactics like gaslighting, lampost-moving, name-calling, and conflating disagreement for personal attacks? Sadly, no. These are all classic hallmarks of a taker, which the system has forced them to become. In this way, Kinde Unlimited pits authors against authors.

It’s a broken system, but of course, different people experience the brokenness in different ways. When I was living in Georgia, I met several older people who believed that things were better under Communism. Without a doubt, the Soviet system was broken, but these people did better under it than they did after it fell. In the same way, there are a lot of authors doing very well under KU 2.0 who would love to keep things exactly the way it is.

Several of them employ text synthesizers and click-farms.

And when KU 3.0 comes out, as it inevitably will, it will sort out a new batch of winners and losers just like KU 2.0 did before. Because of Amazon’s exclusivity requirements, many writers will lose just about everything, having developed no other income streams.

But not the scammers. They’ll just find a new way to game the system, based on the way KU 3.0 misplaces the incentives. Amazon will continue to aggressively insert itself between readers and writers, breaking the incentives structure in new and interesting ways.

And the cycle will begin again.

Racism is trendy again

“People of color” is an inherently racist phrase.

There. I said it. I may get into trouble for saying it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Before we unpack the phrase “people of color,” let’s first define our terms. This is where the heart of the controversy lies.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, racism means:

: poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism means:

Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.

I refer to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary specifically because they are the two highest authorities in the English language. In the interest of impartiality, I’ll include the Wiktionary definition as well, which anyone can edit:

Prejudice or discrimination based upon race.

Seems pretty clear, right? Racism is discrimination based on race.

That is, unless you’re a progressive. To them, the only people who can ever be racist are whites, because racism is systematic and the systems of oppression benefit whites at the expense of non-whites. This is called “white privilege,” and the fact that most of us cannot see it is further proof that it is true.

(Pay no attention to the fact that a black man became President of the United States—effectively the most powerful man on Earth—in the face of these “systems of oppression.” How do the progressives justify this? I have no frickin’ idea. The mental gymnastics it must take… but I digress.)

Because the system is racist, and all non-white people are oppressed, according to progressive “logic” non-whites cannot be racist. This effectively gives them a free pass to discriminate in almost any way, shape, or form against people who are white.

This is where the term “people of color” comes in. It’s simply a more polite way of saying “non-white.” Don’t believe me? Check out the Wikipedia article. It’s right there in the first sentence:

Person of color (plural: people of color, persons of color, sometimes abbreviated POC) is a term used primarily in the United States to describe any person who is not white.

In other words, it is a term that was invented to discriminate against whites. What do African-Americans, Punjabs, Japanese, Mayans, and Australian Aborigines racially have in common? Nothing at all—except that they’re all non-white, and therefore fall under the catch-all term “people of color.”

I despise the progressive redefinition of racism as much as I despise the term “reverse racism.” There is no such thing as reverse racism, because racism doesn’t have a damned direction! When ANYONE discriminates against another person based on ANY race, whether black, white, yellow, red, green, or purple, it is racism pure and simple.

Lately, I’ve seen the phrase “people of color” come up in the submissions guidelines of a number of short story markets. Usually, it will be something along the lines of a call of submissions for a special issue, though it sometimes appears in their diversity statements as well. To me, it always raises a red flag.

When all of the major markets are regulary running “people of color” special issues, with diversity statements calling for more submissions from “people of color,” then we’ve achieved a system that is racist to the core. If it weren’t for indie publishing and the Sad Puppies, I would be very wary of this trend. And if things change in the indie world to really put the squeeze on writers (subscription services, exclusivity agreements, royalty cuts, etc), I would be very concerned.

Make no mistake about it: “people of color” is a racist term. It’s also quite trendy, but that doesn’t make it any less racist.

I’ll leave you with this hilariously topical video from Sargon of Akkad:

WIP Excerpt: The Sword Keeper, Chapter 4.1

This is the first scene from the point of view of Alex Andretzek, the warrior tasked with protecting Tamuna until she comes into her own as the last sword bearer. The interesting thing about their relationship dynamic is that Alex was in line to become the next sword keeper, and because of Tamuna, that honor will never be his.

Tamuna, Nika, and Alex are the three major characters in the book. Nika is the lovable if slightly incompetant friend, and Alex is the highly competant one who’s constantly aloof, to the point where Tamuna wonders if she hates him. He doesn’t, and he’s actually very loyal in his own way, but as you’ll see in this excerpt, he has a lot of stuff to work through.

To set up this scene: Tamuna and Alex leave the village under cover of dark and are immediately pursued by a band of horsemen led by the evil bearer of the bloodstone blade, Araste. They narrowly escape and run into Nika, who has left by an alternate route in order to catch up to them. Miffed, Alex decides to take them to the nearest town, Kutaisa, where at least they will be safe in the short term. It is now a few hours before dawn, and the three of them are walking along an empty but well-worn country road.

The sword has chosen a bearer, Alex thought for the hundredth time as he crept through the moonlit woods. And the bearer is a tavern wench.

Even now, he still found it difficult to believe. Years of training and months of trekking through the high Kevonas had led him here, to this insignificant Kevonan backwater—and for what?

So the sword had chosen its final bearer. That was worthy news, even if it meant that he would never have the honor of being the sword keeper. With the prophecy already in motion, he could expect to see some major events soon. But a tavern wench? One who could barely even lift the sword, let alone wield it?

He still remembered, as if it were yesterday, the first time he’d laid eyes on Imeris. He’d been only sixteen at the time, one of the youngest novices to ever be initiated into the order. After passing all the tests and receiving all the rites, he’d finally been given a chance to draw the blade.

“Remember,” Master Ivanar had told him, “Imeris has not taken a bearer in centuries. If he refuses you, it is no dishonor.”

“I know,” Alex had said. “And whether or not it chooses me, I swear to serve and uphold the blade, even for the rest of my life.”

Master Ivanar nodded. “Do you remember the prophecy?”

“This sword IMERIS,” Alex recited eagerly, “though last to be forged, certainly shall not be the least. For in the days when the order is broken and darkness sweeps across the face of the land, he shall await the one who will wield him in truth and wisdom to free the world of men.”

“That is right. You are a worthy initiate, Alexander Andretzek.”

Master Ivanar took the sword from the table behind him. The other monks in the circle bowed their heads, and Alex knelt in reverence.

“Arise,” said Ivanar, holding out the emerald-studded hilt. Alex rose to his feet, his heart pounding with nervous energy. He stared at the sword ancient for several moments. The workmanship was extremely fine, with every detail perfectly wrought and every adornment beautifully fashioned. The emerald gleamed in the flickering candlelight.

“If Imeris chooses me,” he had asked in a subdued whisper, “how will I know?”

“You will know,” Master Ivanar had assured him. “The blade will leap into your hands, and you will feel a bond with it the likes of which you have never experienced. He will speak to you in your mind and in your heart, and you will know, without a doubt, that you are the foretold bearer.”

Alex had nodded and swallowed. His hands felt cold and clammy, but he closed his eyes and wrapped them tenderly around the handle. It felt strangely warm against his skin, as if the sword itself were alive—which indeed it was. For a brief, hopeful moment, he almost imagined he felt something. But one moment turned into two, then three. The cackling of the fire broke the solemn silence, and his stomach sank as doubts crept into his heart.

Before letting go, he gave the sword one brief, ineffectual tug. For years afterward, he’d wondered if this had been his downfall—the reason the sword had refused him. It couldn’t have been his lack of faith, or an unwillingness to serve. But patience was a virtue he lacked, and arrogance was a vice he possessed in great abundance. Either way, he’d spent the next few years running the events of that day over and over in his mind, picking it apart until there was nothing left but an awful sinking feeling he could barely choke down.

But at least he was slated to be the next sword keeper. At least that honor would one day be his.

Until now.

And of all the people more worthy than him, the sword had chosen a tavern wench?

At least she knows how to step softly, he thought to himself. The peasant boy, on the other hand, was louder than lovers in a hay loft. Between his blundering and her chattiness, it was a wonder that Araste hadn’t made quick work of them already. No doubt his brothers in the order were hard at work, leading the enemy away.

The forest soon gave way to fields and vineyards. Out in the east, the sky was just starting to grow blue, while the moon set behind them over the mountains. The road was now wide enough for two carts, with large river stones for pavement. The people of this country were too poor to build proper roads, but that was only a minor annoyance. The main city shouldn’t be more than five or six miles away. At their current rate, they would make it in a couple of hours.

He glanced over his shoulder and rolled his eyes in disgust. The girl was leaning on the peasant boy’s shoulder, drunk with sleepiness. She yawned and blinked as she steadied herself, but it was clear that if they stopped, even for a minute, she wouldn’t wake up until well past dawn.

“Can we stop and rest for a minute?” the boy asked. “Tamuna is tired.”

Alex narrowed his eyes at him. “Are you trying to get her killed, boy? If you knew what hunts her, you wouldn’t dare let her rest.”

The boy clenched his fists. “My name is Nika.”

“And mine is Alex. I’ll call you by your proper name when you’ve earned my proper respect.”

They went on for a good ten minutes in silence. The air was thick with dew, and not quite cold enough yet for frost. It was interesting, how these mountainous lands could be so full of moisture. In the alpine forests just below the treeline, moss dangled from tree branches like tattered clothes on forgotten clotheslines. Up where the wolves and bear were plentiful, fresh mineral springs gushed out of the rocks like untapped fountains.

“Where are we going?” the boy asked, shattering his half-bored thoughts.

“Kutaisa.”

“Kutaisa?”

Alex didn’t have to look back to detect the frown in his voice.

“That’s right. We’ll reach the city just before dawn.”

“But—but I thought we were supposed to go over the mountains to Aramand.”

Alex turned on his heel and planted his finger squarely in the boy’s chest. “If you want to get us all killed, then say that a little louder. The only reason we’re still alive is because our enemies haven’t yet put that all together.”

The boy shrank and blushed. Next to him, the girl shook her head and yawned.

“Wha—what’s the matter?” she asked.

Alex didn’t grace them with an answer. He walked off down the moonlit road, not bothering to check if they still followed him.

My next impossible dream

If I keep doing what I’m doing, writing and publishing my books, and building a steadily growing readership, eventually I’m going to come into some money. My readership will reach a critical mass, one of my books will hit the market in just the right way, and I’ll find myself riding the rocket to career heights that were previously unthinkable. Writing is very much a feast or famine thing, and the feast years will come if I keep at it long enough.

When the money comes, I will invest it in something more stable, like a rental property. Provo is a college town with a high demand for student housing, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find a couple properties and improve them myself. The DIY aspect is crucial, because everything that comes next will build on it.

Once I’ve got a couple rental properties that are producing a steady income stream, I’ll use that money to buy some cheap land. This land will be deep in the mountains a couple of hours southeast of here, far enough to be in the middle of nowhere, but close enough to grow in value as the cities along the Wasatch Front expand. The land will be pretty much useless for anything except future development, which will actually make it fairly valuable in fifty or so years, so long as things go well.

If things don’t go well—if the economy collapses and the country falls apart, our runaway national debt catches up to us, a fascist tyrant comes to power, a war devastates us, cyber-terrorists take down the electical grid, or a massive pandemic breaks out—if any of these things happen, this property will be an ideal place for a bug out location. That’s important. When crap hits the fan, I want to be like the father in Farnham’s Freehold, with a cool-headed plan. I want to be able to rebuild civilization with my family if I have to.

Of course, in the event that things don’t get that bad, it will still be really great to have a vacation home way up in the mountains. This home will also double as a cabin for writing retreats and weekend getaways. When I die, my kids can either keep it in the family or sell it for a tidy profit, after all the improvements I intend to make.

The first year, I plan to build a small hangar shed and dig a well. I’ll install a thousand gallon tank, which I’ll use for storing water until I can build a proper cystern (at which point I’ll probably convert the tank into a septic tank). I’ll plant several fruit and nut trees, since the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago (but the second best time is today). I’ll build a modular watering system and plant at least ten trees each year thereafter.

In either the first or second year, I’ll buy some heavy earthmoving equipment and keep it in the shed. I’ll use that equipment to start improving the property, laying the foundation for things to come.

The first thing will be a tiny house, maybe 200 or 300 square feet, with solar power, a composting toilet, a small water tower hooked up to the well, and another tower for cellular internet. This house will have a loft for mom and dad, roll-out cots for the kids, a living/kitchen/everything room, and shelves built into the walls for food storage. In a lot of ways, it will basically be the dream house I wrote about here.

There will be several garden plots, though they will probably lay fallow unless crap hits the fan and we have to move in permanently. If I can afford it, though, it would be really cool to set up some self-regulating aquaponics systems, with computer monitoring that can alert me remotely if anything goes wrong. The property will be close enough for a weekend visit, so it won’t be hard to make a trip up if I have to. However, the idea is to design it in such a way that it can be mothballed until needed.

When the tiny house is complete, my dream will be mostly realized. However, I don’t plan to stop there. With the skills I’ve learned from improving the rental properties, and with help from some of my contractor plans, I’ll use the heavy equipment to build a proper house. This house will be off-grid just like the tiny house, with solar powers, well-water and rainwater collection, a root cellar, a greenhouse, a couple of freezers full of game meat, etc. etc. It will be the ideal mountain cabin, serving not only as a bug out location, but as a place for weekend getaways, writing retreats, long family vacations, and perhaps even a retirement home.

I plan to be as self-sufficient as possible on this property. Everything will be designed with self-reliance in mind. Rainwater collection, greywater reclamation systems, solar power, a wood-fired oven and furnace—it will be rustic and self-sufficient, satisfying all of my family’s needs.

I don’t know how bad it’s going to be when crap hits the fan. There are some scenarios (Yellowstone caldera) that kill everyone pretty much instantly. Others are so long and drawn out that the sheltered elites may deny that it’s even happening (sounds like the Great Recession, eh?). Regardless, it will be good to have a castle that I can retreat to, along with my family.

That’s the dream right now: to make it big enough to get the ball rolling on this project. It’s going to take decades to reach full maturity, but even after just a few years, it will start to bear fruit.

And who knows what will happen in future? If you’d told me fifteen years ago that I’d be where I am today, writing for a living and selling books all over the world, I’d get all bug-eyed just thinking about it. A lot can happen in ten to fifteen years.

Whatever else happens, I’ll still be writing.

The Self-Sufficient Writer: Makers vs. Takers

There are two kinds of people in the world. No, not those who can count and those who can’t. No, not those with loaded guns and those who dig. Stay with me for a minute, because this is important. In fact, it may be the most important realization I’ve ever had.

We have a tendency to see the world in terms of haves and have-nots. This is because it’s so easy for us to see the difference. The haves tend to live in nice houses, drive nice cars, and have (hence the term “haves”) lots of nice stuff. The have-nots, on the other hand, tend to scrape the bottom of the barrel just to get by.

This distinction between haves and have-nots, while real and present, isn’t actually that useful. Why? Because it doesn’t get to the crux of the issue: it doesn’t explain why some people have and some people have-not.

Sometimes, a have-not is just a have going through a downturn or temporary setback. Sometimes, a have is just a have-not who won the jackpot and is spending himself back to poverty as fast as he can.

This doesn’t just apply to socioeconomics, by the way. A writer who “lacks talent” may just be the next Kevin J. Anderson writing his way through his first million words. A bestselling author may just be a one-hit wonder who hit the current zeitgeist in just the right way. This also applies to personal virtues and character traits: there are haves and have-nots of honesty, compassion, generosity, charisma, etc etc.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter at any given moment who has and who has-not. What matters is what you—what anyone—chooses to do about it. And that’s where we get to the heart of the matter.

There are two kinds of people in this world: the makers and the takers. A maker, when presented with a narrow slice of the pie, immediately thinks “I should go make more pie,” while a taker grabs the knife and tries to re-slice everyone’s piece.

Makers recognize that there isn’t a fixed amount of wealth, or success, or happiness in the world. They don’t feel threatened by another person’s success because they know that it doesn’t take away from their own. They are confident in their ability to go out and create, knowing that their only limitation is their ability to innovate and solve problems.

Takers, on the other hand, are obsessed with fairness and equality. They view wealth as a finite resource that need to be redistributed in order for everyone to get their “fair share.” They are threatened by other people’s success and feel that it diminishes their own. This often leads them to sabotage their relationships, leading to things like gaslighting, manipulation, and abuse.

Makers believe in freedom; takers believe in control. Makers judge people by what they do; takers judge people by what they are. Makers pursue opportunity; takers try to shut other people out. Makers are pioneers and entrepreneurs; takers are parasites and thieves.

I’m deliberately oversimplifying this in order to show the two extremes. Of course, no one is 100% to one side or the other. There are areas in our lives where we are makers, and other areas where we are takers. Humans are complex variables that don’t fit neatly into any equation.

What isn’t gray is that making is a virtue and taking is a vice.

So what does this have to do with writing and self-sufficiency? In the age of indie publishing, just about everything.

The publishing industry today is full of both extremes. In the contract clauses of traditional publishing, we have some of the most eggregious rights grabs that have ever been penned. Non-competes, rights reversions, right of first refusal—it’s a minefield out there, littered with the bloody, dismembered limbs of broken dreams.

On the other end of the spectrum in indie publishing, there is a perfect confluence of opportunity for makers to do what they do best: make. In the indie world, you have no one but yourself to blame for your failures, but your successes are all your own. Yes, there are a lot of failures—but there are also a hell of a lot of successes.

In other words, publishing is the wild, wild west right now. And just as the west was notorious for robbers and bandits, it also saw some of the greatest pioneering the world has ever seen.

Do you want to be self-sufficient as a writer? Do you want to be able to live off of your writing through the good times and the bad?

Be a maker, not a taker.

When you see an author outselling you with a crappy-looking cover and a blurb/sample rife with grammar and spelling errors, don’t fall prey to jealousy. Don’t be petty about it. That book is not preventing people from reading yours. That author’s success does not diminish your own. Don’t try to take his success away from him; go and make success of your own.

When you’re talking shop with other writers and things get into an argument, don’t throw down the gauntlet by demanding that everyone share their sales numbers. Don’t turn it into a dick measuring contest. The only circumstance in which sales numbers prove one side right is a controlled A/B test, where everything else is constant except for the thing that you’re trying to test.

Again, it’s not about the haves and the have-nots. Just because another writer doesn’t currently have as much success as you doesn’t make them wrong. Be a maker: strive to learn from everyone.

Avoid your toxic writer “friends” who seek to diminish your success because you haven’t hit such and such bestseller list, or won such and such award. Don’t attach your emotional well-being as a writer to the opinions of other people. Hell, don’t attach your emotional well-being to anything that isn’t in your control. Be independent, not codependent. Cultivate self-sufficiency by making your own success.

Don’t obsess about book piracy. If your books are fairly priced, DRM free, and widely available, a pirated book is almost never a lost sale. Instead of playing whack-a-mole with takedown notices, focus that energy on finding new readers who are willing to pay for your books.

Don’t obsess over book reviews. Don’t try to control every little thing that people say about your books. Let readers freely and honestly express what they liked and didn’t like about your books, without any interference from you. And if it turns out you wrote a stinker, learn what you can from it and write a better one next time.

Be a maker, not a taker.

Only makers are truly self-sufficient. When the takers run out of haves to take from, they inevitably tear each other apart. If you’re in a writing group or online community where that is currently happening, don’t let yourself get caught up in that. Leave.

A maker is someone who can leave everything behind and start over with nothing. It’s never easy, but when it has to be done, you will always be better off for it. The self-sufficient writer recognizes this, and strives to live and writes in such a way that they can start over if they have to.

Being a maker is a choice. It is something that you can always control. Even as an indie writer, there are a lot of things you can’t control. You can’t control how well your books will sell. You can’t directly control how much success you experience, or how soon you will experience it.

You can’t always choose to be a have or a have-not. But you can always choose to be a maker instead of a taker.

Be a maker, not a taker.

The Self-Sufficient Writer (Index)

Why I stopped writing

This will probably come as a shock to most of you, but I’ve decided to give up writing. It was a good run while it lasted, but the time has come to pack it away with my other childhood dreams, like living on a houseboat or becoming a paleontologist.

Why did I give up writing? Because frankly, I just don’t have any new ideas anymore. Whenever I manage to come up with one, it turns out that someone else has already done it. Accidental marriage in space? Firefly. Trek across a desert planet? Dune. Colonizing an unexplored nebula? I don’t know off the top of my head, but I’m sure it’s been done before.

Even if I could come up with an original science fiction idea, I’d be woefully unqualified to write about it. I mean, I’ve never even been to space, much less piloted a starship or visited another planet. They say you’re supposed to write what you know, which pretty much limits me to stories about struggling writers.

Which would be perfect, if I were trying to break into literary fiction. But even there, it would never happen, not only because my politics are wrong, but because I’ve (gasp!) self-published. What was I thinking? The gatekeepers of publishing will never take me seriously again, and I have no chance of ever turning this writing habit into a career.

But even if none of that was an issue—even if I had great ideas and enough life experience to write them well, with the means to get my stories out to market, who am I kidding to think I can make money at this? There are MILLIONS of books published, and the best ones are all free! Why would someone pay to read one of my books when they could get Tolstoy or Dickens or Austen on Project Gutenburg for nothing? Even if they’re looking for something published recently, they can always go to the public library. And don’t get me started on book piracy!

Point is, it’s just stupid to think that this writing thing could ever go anywhere. It was fun while it lasted, but the time has come to close up shop and go into something practical, like sanitation or accounting. Science fiction is basically just talking squids in outer space, and I’m an adult now. It’s time to give up these escapist fantasies and start acting like one.

Besides, does anyone even read books these days?

Lights Out by Ted Koppel

About a year ago, while doing research for prepper-type stuff, I came across this interview of Ted Koppel, discussing his book Lights Out.

It piqued my interest, especially since Ted Koppel is not the kind of person I’d peg as much of a prepper/survivalist. The part about the Mormons sounded interesting too, so I reserved the book from my local library and checked it out.

I was not disappointed.

Lights Out is a fascinating examination of the possibility and ramifications of an attack on the US power grid, written by a veteran journalist with dozens of high-level connections across both the government and the private sector. It starts with a tour of the system’s vulnerabilities, quickly moves on to the government’s contingency plan (or lack thereof), then assesses the general preparedness of the rest of the country and what we could expect to happen if the power grid went down. Ted Koppel makes a compelling case that:

The infrastructure of the power grid is highly dependent on the internet.

This dependence has created a series of vulnerabilities that could destroy large portions of this infrastructure.

The private sector has failed to reliably safeguard against these vulnerabilities, mainly because the companies at the failure points have little incentive to develop the safeguards.

State and Federal agencies cannot impose sufficient safeguards because of lobbying efforts and privacy concerns.

Because most of the infrastructure is generations old and not standardized, it would take months or even years to replace key components in the event of a successful attack.

The Russians and the Chinese already have the capability to bring down our power grid, and with the proper expertise it is fully within the capability of rogue states like Iran or North Korea, or non-state actors like ISIS, to do so as well.

The Federal government fully expects an attack on our power grid in the mid to near future, but the various agencies do not have a clear plan for how to deal with such a contingency.

The general US populace is woefully unprepared for such an attack, except for certain communities such as the Mormons. They would not be able to provide for everyone, however, and would probably use force to defend themselves in the event of a collapse.

The only way our society could survive an attack is if everyone who can afford it would store three to six months of food, water, and emergency supplies. Otherwise, if the power grid went down, a collapse would be swift and catastrophic.

Freaky stuff. What was really freaky was the way that people who should have been taking more responsibility, such as the CEOs of major power companies or the directors of Federal agencies such as the DOD or DHS, all seemed content to pass the buck and give Ted Koppel the run-around. He described in detail some of his interviews, and the way in which various officials passed him off to one another like a hot potato.

And then he got to the Mormons.

I have to say, the chapters about the Mormons were some of the more fascinating parts of the book. Ted Koppel only expected to get a phone interview, but instead, Elder Henry B. Eyring flew him out to Utah and gave him a personal tour, including the welfare farms, the distribution centers, the canneries and home storage centers—they even found a local Utah family to cook him a food storage dinner! The gold-ticket treatment definitely impressed him, and that shines through in the book.

Of all the books about Mormons written by non-Mormons, I have to say that Lights Out gives one of the fairest treatments I’ve ever seen. Ted Koppel touches only lightly on church history and doctrine, but he makes it clear how these things tie into our emphasis on self-sufficiency and preparedness. While his impressions are quite favorable, he doesn’t shy away from asking the difficult questions, such as whether we would take up arms to defend our supplies if roving hordes threatened to take them from us by force. As he points out, there’s a great deal of constructive ambiguity from our leaders on that point.

If you’re as interested in potential doomsday scenarios as I am, or in emergency preparedness and self-sufficiency, this is a great book. It raises some frightening concerns without being too alarmist or devolving into sensationalism. For those who are concerned about this sort of thing but don’t have much experience with preppers or prepper culture, the book offers a fascinating look at this growing subculture and the motivations that drive it. Definitely worth a read!