The road to Kutaisi

Here is another unpublished post I found while rummaging through some of the old drafts on my blog. I wrote it while I was teaching English in Georgia, and probably intended to publish it after I’d taken some pictures, but never got around to it.

I lived in Kutaisi, but made it out to Tbilis about two or three times per month. Over the course of my time there, I came to know this road very well. It took about three and a half hours to travel from Didube Station in Tbilisi to Tchavtchavadze Station in Kutaisi, with a short rest stop in Surami (where they make delicious nazuki bread!). This post covers the first half of the journey, just before stopping in Surami.

Originally, I was going to hunt down some pictures from the internet to fill in the descriptions here, but nothing I found really fit my memories of the experience. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so hopefully this 800 word blog post is enough to paint a picture in your mind. Just for fun, I’ve added a timelapse video of various places in Georgia, many of which I visited and remember fondly.

Kargi majos!

sakartveloIt starts in Tbilisi, the only truly modern city in a country of villages, some larger and more ancient than others. On the dusty, cracked pavement of Didube station, the sun beats down hard on the crowds milling about the dozens of mini-markets, bakeries, apothekas, and lottery dispensers. The smell of cigarettes mingles with the dust and car exhaust, punctuated only occassionally by the delicious smell of freshly cooked shaurma.

Marshrutkas and taxis fill almost every available space, their drivers shouting out the end destinations loudly and impatiently, eager to get back on the road. Large white signs with red and blue letters proclaim in bold Georgian script the names of the major towns and cities: Qazbegi, Poti, Batumi, Zestaponi, and Kutaisi.

The fastest and most popular means of transport across Georgia is the marshrutka, a van-sized microbus with a high roof and twenty some-odd seats crammed as close together as the interior will allow. Luggage typically goes in back, though there’s often less than half a meter’s clearance between the rear doors and the back four seats. Large blue and white oval lights run down the center of the ceiling, with matching blue seat covers and window curtains. Icons of the Orthodox saints can be found at the front, just above the driver holding his cigarette beside the half-opened window.

Once every seat has been filled, some with mothers holding their eight and nine year-old children on their tightly cramped knees, the marshrutka pulls out of the station and out into the city. Old Russian clunkers mingle with European sedans and Japanese station wagons, while closer to the highway, large eighteen wheelers pull red and blue trailers for Turkish freight companies. Old Soviet apartments and giant oaks and poplars provide ample shade, while children play between the white-painted tree trunks in parks along the median.

As the marshrutka pulls onto the main highway, the city gives way to steep, green hills covered in verdant forest. Every other one seems to be capped with an old stone monastery, and the more devout travelers make the sign of the cross as the marshrutka drives by. The sun’s brilliant rays shine through the clouds, illuminating villages in the distance, their medieval churches and cathedrals standing above the silver rooftops like shepherds watching over their flocks.

In a little less than an hour, the marshrutka passes through the first major tunnel and into the heart of Shida Kartli. The hills give way to a wide plain. Except for a few villages peppered here and there, the landscape is mostly free of large settlements. The magestic Greater Caucasus mountains line the horizon to the north, their white-capped peaks blending in with the clouds. To the south, the Lesser Cacausus range looms much closer, as if jealous of its older brother and eager to prove itself superior.

Before coming to Gori, the road several refugee villages from the 2008 South Ossetian conflict. Hundreds of identical red-roofed huts line the dirt roads like concrete tents, their perfect rows unbroken except for a school and a police station in the very center. The contested territory lies just over the nearby hill, perhaps less than an hour away.

If you keep an eye out, you can catch a glimpse of the statue of Stalin as the road passes Gori. Perhaps the most famous Georgian from the modern era, Stalin grew up here as Iosebi Dugashvili. Some of the locals still offer toasts to his name. The more prominent landmark, however, is the road construction for a giant highway causeway that crosses a wide brook and passes into the second major tunnel of the journey. A bumpy two-lane road leads past the construction and on to the tunnel.

The Lesser Caucasus quickly sweep up from the south, transforming the plain into rolling foothills. A gentle spring rain falls over the land, a sign of storms on the other side of the mountains.

Books I haven’t been able to finish

Way, way back in 2009, I wrote up a blog post about all the books I’d started that year but hadn’t managed to finish. In general, I only finish about a third of all the books I start, sometimes because the book fails to hold my interest, other times because something in the story actively turns me away. It’s hard to keep up with your reading goals when you don’t finish two out of three of the books you try to read.

Still, sometimes the reasons why someone doesn’t like a book can be more interesting than the reasons why they do, so I figured it was worth dragging up this old post and putting it up for you guys. Enjoy!

====================

I don’t like to be negative on this blog, but I thought I should make mention of this here. I set out this summer with lofty reading goals, but so far I haven’t met any of them. I’ve started plenty of books, but for one reason or another, I just haven’t been able to finish them.

Now, I’m not saying that these books are intrinsically bad—in fact, several of them are considered classics. My reasons for not being able to finish them probably say more about me as a reader than anything else.

Still, I think it’s worth it to go through and examine why I put down each of these books before finishing them. Perhaps you’ll find this information useful, perhaps you won’t. Either way, here goes.

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

This epic fantasy novel started out really well. The first section of the novel was just awesome. It immersed me in this beautiful, complex fantasy world and introduced me to a cast of interesting characters right away. Better yet, the intrigue and drama were deliciously intense. I loved it.

There was some sex in these scenes that made me uneasy, but not enough to put down the book. It fit in well with the rest of the story, and even if it was a bit unnecessary, at least it wasn’t gratuitous.

My favorite part was the global story arc, which was introduced at the very end of this section. An evil wizard has conquered the proud land of Tigana and, in revenge for the death of his son, has cast a spell on the minds of her people, ripping out the knowledge of their ancient heritage. Only a handful of people survive unaffected, and they are on a quest to kill the wizard before all of the previous generation dies away and Tigana’s heritage is erased forever.

The second section was all about Dianora, a Tiganan courtesan of the wizard who originally wanted to kill him, but now finds that she can’t do it because she loves him… kind of. It’s complicated. This section was basically nothing but a montage of flashbacks—hundreds of pages of flashbacks and internal commentary. I read it, but as the story slowed down, my reading slowed down as well.

For the third section, Guy goes off with one of the side characters on a quest that has practically nothing to do with the overall story arc. It felt like a giant tangent, and I lost that sense of progress that had been driving me. I meant to finish this book—I really did—but days passed without me reading it, and eventually I decided to stop renewing it and just return it to the library.

Oh, and there was some really explicit sex in the third section. It weirded me out.

Dayworld by Philip Jose Farmer

I’ve heard Farmer’s name bounced around in sf circles, so I decided to pick up one of his books from the used bookstore. This one looked interesting: it was about a society in which people are frozen six days out of the week, to reduce the strain on natural resources or some other such reason. The story is about a “daybreaker,” a guy who breaks the law and lives each day under a different identity.

I consciously decided to put this book down after Farmer started getting preachy with his views about sex. On one of the days, the main character is involved in a polyamorous relationship that involves group orgies. Farmer tries to portray this arrangement as healthy and acceptable. Needless to say, that’s when I threw the book across the room.

Before this point, however, Dayworld already had a number of strikes against it.

The characters all felt flat and unlikeable. The main character is basically a con artist and a womanizer. I saw few redeeming qualities in him at all, and never felt that I could relate to him. The only character I did like, Farmer killed off in the middle of the book. None of the other characters were compelling enough to hold my interest.

Because I didn’t like the main character, I didn’t care about his conflict. Honestly, I wanted him to get caught—he deserved it, the scumbag. I was rooting against him the whole time, so the plot twists just didn’t work for me.

Farmer spent a lot of time trying to get his world-building across, but I never got a sense of expansiveness or immersion. Too few concrete details, I suppose. Farmer was all about abstract concepts, the history of the place, the way the society operates, etc. But really… his concepts alone just weren’t that compelling—certainly not as compelling as psychohistory or the Bene Gesserit.

With all of these issues already pulling me out of the story, when I hit the sex and the preachiness, I knew I wouldn’t be finishing that one.

Colony by Ben Bova

This one I should probably reconsider. I read the first two chapters, enjoyed them, but never got around to reading further. I would probably enjoy the book.

The problem with this one was that the ideas just… didn’t feel all that new. The main character is supposed to be a genetically engineered perfect human, struggling to fit in to society. That was probably an original idea when the book came out in the 70s, but it’s been rehashed over and over since then.

That’s probably the main reason why I got bored with this one—that, and the lack of anything truly compelling. The viewpoint character in the first chapter was a slutty reporter who gets the dirt on the main character by slipping into his bed. I never really liked her, and because I wasn’t immersed in his viewpoint from the beginning, I didn’t feel attached to him.

The Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

Again the issue here was sex. Lots and lots of it. More than I could stand, more explicit than I cared to read. I had the same issue with The Forever War—I actually returned that book to the bookstore and didn’t read it for another several months.

However, with Forever War, the relativistic battle scenes in space were just so compelling that I couldn’t stop thinking about the book. Eventually, I caved in and picked it up at the library—and found that after the first few chapters, it got a lot better.

With Forever Peace, there just wasn’t anything as compelling to me as the space battles in Forever War. When the sex became more than I could handle, I stopped.

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

I hate to say anything bad about Brandon because he’s a personal friend of mine. His Mistborn books are some of the best fantasy novels I’ve ever read. He’s a great storyteller, a knowledgable writer, and a great mentor.

That said, I had a number of issues with Warbreaker, many of which are probably personal to me, not particular to the story.

First, the info dumps were too difficult for me to swallow. Almost every time Sanderson stopped to reveal something about his world or his magic system, he seemed to stop the action to give me a textbook explanation. Most of the time, these were no longer than a short paragraph, but they were frequent enough to jar me. I found myself thinking “why should I care about this? Keep the story moving—I’ll figure this out on a need-to-know basis.”

I’ve already mentioned my issues with the sex in the book. My issue wasn’t that it was there, my issue was that the characters didn’t seem to treat it in an honest way. Siri was more nervous about the dress she was wearing than the fact that she was going to shack up with the God-king in a few hours. That just didn’t ring true to me.

The humor also made some of the characters feel inauthentic. The mercenaries were little more than caricatures; I felt that Sanderson was imitating Schlock Mercenary and doing a poor job of it. What’s more, because the overarching story was fairly dark (a forced political marriage in order to push back an inevitable war for just another year), the humor often felt out-of-place. Sometimes, it worked—I enjoyed Lightsong and felt that his sarcasm enhanced his character—but most of the time, it was jarring.

The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman

On this I have to plead guilty of letting my own personal sentiments get in the way of enjoying the story. I read The Golden Compass and LOVED it… right up to the last five pages. I HATED the ending of that book—SO dissatisfying, as if the author had stuck out his tongue at me and said “neener neener neener! I’m not going to give you the ending you want—better read the next book!”

UGH. I hate that.

So I came at this book a little prejudiced. I read the first page with a judgmental eye, thinking “nope, no hook on the first page. Oh, and there’s an unnecessary adverb, and there’s a said bookism, and there’s a…” etc.

Still, I didn’t let that stop me from reading on, and after the first chapter, I was interested in the story. I just wasn’t… I don’t know, interested enough. The book stayed in my car, I got busy with other things, and eventually just dropped it.

Date Night on Union Station by E.M. Foner

date_night_on_union_stationI saw this book on the Amazon also-boughts for my Star Wanderers books and decided to check it out. It’s a series of short novels: the first one is currently free and the others are $2.99. Like Star Wanderers, it’s a sci-fi romance, though it leans more toward science fiction than toward romance.

I really enjoyed this book! It’s a sort of romantic comedy-of-errors about a guy and a girl who go on a series of really bad dates before finally ending up with each other. She’s a member of the Earth embassy staff on a giant space station run by super-intelligent robots who view humans as a childish junior race that needs to be nurtured into galactic society. He’s a former mercenary who runs the station scrapyard and has a knack for picking up orphaned children (including one of the robots).

Their misadventures are quite hilarious. One of the running gags are the antics of the flower girls, who run their flower-peddling business with more ruthlessness than an Arab shopkeeper. They actually make more money at it than Kelly, the embassy staff employee, who can barely cover her own rent. The super-intelligent robots are the ones who run the dating service, but as each bad date leads to another diplomatic crisis of some sort, Kelly starts to feel like they’re using it more to help her do her job than to set her up. But with each new promotion in the embassy, she ends up making less and less. And those long-distance calls from her nagging mother certainly don’t help…

My favorite part of the book was watching one bad date lead to another, and wondering how these two people would eventually end up. From the way the book is structured, it’s pretty obvious that they’ll end up together (one chapter from her POV, the next from his). But some of those dates were really, really bad… at one point, she even gets kidnapped by her “date”! But when they finally do end up together, it’s quite satisfying.

So yeah, if you’re looking for a good, clean sci-fi romance with a generous helping of comedy thrown in for good measure, you’ll enjoy this book. And even if that’s not what you’re looking for, if you enjoy a good space story, you’ll probably like this one as well. I’d rate it 4/5 stars, and look forward to reading the next in the series.

Going for fun

They say that you should put as much of yourself as you can into what your right, and that’s true to some extent. But when you’re writing SF&F, there’s a much more important rule:

BE ENTERTAINING.

While I don’t think I’ve necessarily broken this rule, I haven’t always paid close attention to it. So for my current WIP, I’m pulling out the stops. I figure that the best way to entertain people in a book is to make it fun to read, and if it’s fun for me to write, I figure it will be fun for my readers as well. So my primary goal with this book is to have fun.

The working title is Gunslinger to the Stars, and if I had to give you the Hollywood pitch it would be this: Monster Hunter International meets Guardians of the Galaxy on the set of Firefly.

The main character is a freelance starship pilot named Sam Kletchka, who travels the galaxy taking various mercenary jobs. He was born and raised in the Gliese colonies, on a planet called New Texas, but although he was a gifted student, he dropped out of Earthfleet Academy his freshman year because he didn’t get stuck on a refitted Cold-War era submarine protecting colony ships in Earth-space (the galactics gave us cheap ground-to-orbit, which means that we used what we had when building our first fleet of starships).

The book starts when he gets stranded in the armpit of the galaxy, natch. The only other human who’s stranded there with him is an attractive twenty-something xenolinguist named Jane Carter, with whom he has a history. Let’s just say that she isn’t all that enthusiastic to see him.

At one point, he describes his guns:

MERCY is a supressed Ruger 22 Charger™ Rimfire Pistol. She’s fairly small and doesn’t pack much of a punch, but she’s as silent and stealthy as a Zan cloakship in deep space. Besides being perfect for cloak-and-dagger type stuff, Mercy is also good for hunting small game, on the few occasions where I’ve been stranded planetside without supplies.

The next two guns are really different components of the same gun, an AR-15 with two uppers that I can swap out depending on my needs. FAITHFULNESS is a suppressed 300 Blackout with a 9” barrel, perfect for boarding action. I use a homemade subsonic round with the ballistics tuned down just a notch, to allow for onboard fire that won’t accidentally puncture the ship’s hull. The suppressor is excellent for firing in confined spaces, and the standard 30 round magazine gives you plenty of firing capacity to stay in the fight.

RIGHTEOUSNESS is a .50 Beowulf upper that I can swap out for Faithfulness. This massive gun packs an enormous punch, enough to blow through a bulkhead and vent some atmo. I mix an oxidizer in the cartridges to allow it to fire in a vaccuum, making it an excellent weapon for extravehicular assaults. You just have to be careful to lock your magnetic boots firmly onto the ship’s hull, otherwise Newton’s third law will send you flying.

JUDGMENT is an M203 grenade launcher that attaches quite nicely onto Faithfulness and Righteousness. She makes the rifle a little heavier, but in zero gravity, that doesn’t really matter much. With the proper munitions, Judgment can light up a firefight like Christmas.

PRESERVATION is an 18” Mossberg 590A1™. She’s a tough little girl that can pack a serious punch. I keep her on the wall of my cabin within easy reach for home defense purposes. She has a capacity of 8+1, but I usually don’t load her with slugs unless I’m doing a breach and entry. The best thing about shotguns, though, is that the ammunition is super easy to fabricate. If I were going away for a while and could only take one gun with me, it would be Preservation.

LOVE is my father’s trusty old 1911. She’s been in the family for quite a while, and when I left the Gliese colonies for the stars, he wanted me to take her with me. She’s chambered in 9mm and has a capacity of 17+1. In spite of the .45’s stopping power, I prefer a good 9mm handgun simply for the increased accuracy and carrying capacity. Besides being stupidly rugged, the 1911 is also quite easy to maintenance or to fabricate replacement parts. For that reason, it’s the handgun of choice for most offworld colonists.

KINDNESS is the Gliese Arms 2011 .45 ACP that you’ve already met. The 2011 is a lot like the 1911, but the 140mm double stack magazine allows for a capacity of 14+1. As you already saw from the gunfight at the Oasis, Kindness has gotten me out of a lot of tough spots.

TRUST is a Himalayan Imports Chainpuri 15” Kukri: not a gun, but an excellent combat knife. The Nepalese Gurkhas were some of the most badass warriors of Earth, and the kukri is their signature weapon. I acquired Trust at the Earthfleet Academy on Luna, after winning a game of poker with my fellow cadets. She’s such a beauty, I wouldn’t dream of ever gambling her away.

Thing is, he’s as good with guns as he is horrible with women. As you can probably guess, hilarity ensues.

The book was actually inspired by the most recent Schlock Mercenary storyline, where one of the subplots involves rescuscitating Vog, the twelve million year-old member of an alien race that is functionally immortal. When the mercenaries revive him, he’s lost ten million years of his memories and thinks he’s an elite warrior from when his race was in its prime. Little does he know, his civilization has collapsed, and the mortal junior races have gotten a little uppity.

Thinking about the implications of immortality on intergalactic politics made me come up with a fantastic idea for a near-future space opera universe. When CERN does a new sub-atomic particle experiment, it alerts the galactics to our presence, much like Zefram Cochrane’s first flight with the warp drive alerts the Vulcans in Star Trek. The galactic junior races have all been patronized by the Immortals, who have built a massive jumpgate network that unites the galaxy together. The Immortals don’t interact with the junior races directly however: they use mediator races as proxies. And the Immortals aren’t interested in ruling the junior races so much as… I won’t spoil it for you.

In any case, that’s the story I’m writing right now, and even by chapter three it has been loads of fun so far. Lots of shooting, lots of action, lots of intergalactic secrets and intrigue. With luck, Gunslinger to the Stars should be out sometime early next year.

Four day 50% off sale for Kobo readers in US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand!

For those of you who read on Kobo and live in the territories listed above, I have some great news! Kobo is running a short-term 50% off sale, and almost all of my books are eligible! Just use the following coupon codes on the following dates:

Canada
October 28th – October 31st
Promo Code: CA50SALE

United States/Australia/New Zealand
October 27th – October 30th
Promo Code: GET50SALE

United Kingdom
October 30th – November 2nd
Promo Code: UK50SALE

Here is a list of all of my Kobo books that are eligible. You can also check them out using the links from the book pages. Basically, the coupon code works on everything $2.99 (£1.99, C$3.99, A$3.99, NZ$3.99) and higher.

The cool thing is that Kobo will still pay me full royalties on every sale, so this is a great way to support your favorite authors and get a good deal in the process!

Thoughts on the new Star Wars trailer

OMG, guys! The feels, THE FEELS!

The new Star Wars trailer came out last week, and I have watched it at least half a dozen times every day since. It’s awesome. While I’m still ambivalent enough not to rush out and buy tickets right away, there are a number of things that I think look promising:

  • The major characters from the original trilogy are all there, but they seem to be more in a supporting role than the main one. The story has clearly grown bigger than just them.
  • The gritty used-future feel of the original trilogy is back, and it looks like it’s been done very well.
  • The CG doesn’t seem to be overdone, like it was in the prequels. It looks like they actually built a set for the Millennium Falcon and several other places.
  • There’s actually some blood shown—not all the kills are clean and “cauterized.”
  • The attention to detail on stuff like the Star Destroyer wreckage is phenomenal.

Of course, this could still be a case where the trailer is awesome and the movie is awful. That seems to happen a lot these days. But still, I definitely want to see this movie—the only question is whether I’m going to see it in the first couple of months when it comes out, or when it hits the dollar theater.

I can still remember when Episode I: The Phantom Menace came out. There was a lot of hype, and a lot of building excitement, much like there is now for Episode VII: The Force Awakens. All of my enthusiasm crashed when I saw the movie in the theater. Jar-Jar Binks, Midichloriens, way too much CGI, and a pedo-tastic love story—yeah, it was a disappointment. Episodes II and III weren’t quite as bad, but none of the prequels were good enough to be redeemable in my eyes. None of them lived up to the original.

I don’t know yet if Episode VII: The Force Awakens will live up to the originals, but it does seem that this is the Star Wars movie that we’ve been waiting for—the one that we wanted and didn’t get back in 1999. So yeah, I’m excited.

Also, I love John Boyega’s reaction to seeing himself in the trailer:

I reacted the exact same way after I saw the original Star Wars back when I was seven: jumping over couches flying my imaginary X-Wing, bouncing off the walls and freaking out from excitement. So it’s good to see that one of the new actors is also a huge fan.

As a side note, I just want to say that I love the fact that we live in a world where the next Luke Skywalker can be a black kid (or a girl for that matter—it’s hard to tell from the trailers whether Finn or Rey fills Luke’s role). I don’t say that to pander to political correctness or social justice in any way—I just think it’s awesome that the lead character is black, and the other one is a girl.

But speaking of Luke Skywalker, it’s telling that we don’t really see him at all in any of the trailers. So I’m going to call it now:

Luke dies.

That’s a hunch, not a spoiler. I have nothing to base it off of except the three Star Wars trailers and my own understanding of how story structure works. But based on that, I suspect that Luke plays the Obi-Wan mentor to Finn or Rey and dies just like Obi-Wan did.

So that’s my take on it. Definitely looking forward to Christmas this year!

What do you guys want me to blog about?

I’ve been around the blogosphere (is that still a word?) long enough to know that when a blogger says “wow, it’s been a long time since my last post,” or “I’m going to start posting more often!” it’s often a sign that the blog is about to fade. Plenty of my secondary blogs have met a similar fate. But I’ve been blogging here on One Thousand and One Parsecs for the last eight years, dammit, and I’m not going anywhere.

That said, I’ve totally been neglecting this place, and that needs to change. One blog post every couple of weeks is not enough.

But I’m wondering: what kind of stuff do you guys want to read? Discussions of story tropes? Thoughts on reading and publishing? General geekiness and just-for-fun weirdness? Politics and controversy? Or general updates on my current WIPs? Also, do you guys generally like reading longer, more thoughtful posts, or shorter, more concise posts?

When I started this blog back in 2007, it was mostly just for me. That gave it a more authentic voice, I think, because I wasn’t trying to please anyone except myself. However, now that I have something of a readership, I want to write for you guys too. Ideally, I’d like to keep that authentic voice while sharing something of value, not only to myself, but to you guys as well.

Either way, I need to be more consistent about blogging. I’ve installed a plugin that will help to schedule posts, and plan to post something every Monday and Thursday at a minimum. I’ll try posting mornings, see how that works out.

Some things I’d like to blog about:

  • Reviewing some of the books I’ve read, especially indie sci-fi books.
  • More Self-Sufficient Writer posts (don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten those).
  • Some tvtropes stuff, kind of like the old Trope Tuesday posts.

What do you guys think?

A blast from the past: predictions from 2011 on how the ebook revolution would turn out

While cleaning up some of the unpublished drafts on this blog, I came across this interesting post which I wrote in August 2011 but never published.

At the time, I had just published my second novel, Bringing Stella Home, and was very much committed to the indie career path. Self-publishing was still a very new thing, however, and most of my writer friends thought that I was crazy. Sometimes, I couldn’t tell if I was crazy or if everyone else was, and I was the only sane one. Because self-publishing had such a stigma, I actually lost a couple of friendships over this. That’s probably what prompted this post.

Looking back, this was the reason why online self-publishing communities like KBoards were so important. The ebook revolution was in full swing, and self-publishing still required a massive leap of faith. No one really knew how things would turn out. Writers who had chosen to stay the traditional route of querying agents saw us indies as subversives and heretics, and every week saw a new article go viral bashing either indies, or Amazon, or ebooks in general. It was pretty wild.

Those days are over now. We won. Self-publishing no longer has its stigma, at least in the mainstream, and it’s considered perfectly normal to forego submitting to agents and editors altogether. According to some reports, indies control more than 30% of the ebook market.

But back then, everything was still very much in the air. It was in that vein that I wrote this post.

================================

1) Ebooks will radically change the way we read, write, and think of books.

Nothing has demonstrated this more to me than owning a Kindle.  It is truly a revolutionary device.  Not only do I have instant access to practically any book I want to read, I can hold my entire library in the palm of my hand and take it with me wherever I go.  I can see what others are saying about any given title, and interact with them as well.  It’s incredible.

For writers, the changes are even more profound.  Printing, shipping, and warehousing costs are nonexistent in the digital realm, and with increasingly ubiquitous internet access, distribution is no longer a problem.  Put simply, ebooks are game changing–this is nothing less than a technological revolution.

Where are we going?  No one really knows, but I find that exciting.

2) Not all major publishers will survive the change.

For numerous reasons, the old publishing system is being rendered obsolete, and I’m not convinced that all the major publishing houses are adapting rapidly enough to weather the changes.

How many will go under, and which ones?  I have no idea, but since I don’t want my book rights to get tied up in a bankruptcy case, I’m forgoing traditional publishing for a year or so until I have a clearer picture.

However, please note: this is a business decision, not an emotional one.  I have nothing against any of these houses; in fact, I’m quite grateful to them for providing me with so many good books over the years.  I hope they make the necessary changes to succeed, but until they do, I’d rather go it alone.

3) To succeed, it is critical that we acknowledge and embrace these changes.

This is why I focus so much on issues that can be so controversial.  Change can be frightening, but I think that it’s important that we engage in an open, honest, and critical discussion about what’s going on.  Doing this will help us to adapt to the new world and take advantage of its many opportunities.

4) Writers and readers are more empowered than ever before.

This excites me more than just about anything else.  If I want to read a quirky science fiction story that most people would find strange and bizarre, I can find it.  I don’t have to rely on tastemakers to tell me what is literature and what is crap; I can decide for myself.  And frankly, for someone who loves science fiction as much as I do, that’s quite liberating.

Perhaps this is why I come across as antagonistic of traditional publishing sometimes: I tend to believe that they’re under-serving the science fiction readership.  But if I am upset, it’s more with the top-down corporate system than any house in particular.  I love what Tor, Baen, Pyr, and Night Shade Books are doing, and will keep reading their titles as long as they’re still around.  I just wish they’d put out more of them, and at lower prices.

5) The future is bright.

There’s a lot of opportunity for creative types right now–not just writers, but illustrators, game designers, programmers, and a host of others.  That’s why I don’t buy into the doom and gloom arguments, and perhaps I can be a bit overzealous about it at times.  However, if I had to err, I would rather be an overzealous optimist than an overzealous pessimist.

Well, this post is getting a little long, so I’d better end it soon and get back to writing.  I just want to say that if I come across as a jerk sometimes, it’s not because I’m trying to tear anyone down–quite the opposite.  My message to my fellow writers is to not be afraid, but to recognize some of the really cool ways in which things are changing, and what that means for you and your careers.

Goodbye KBoards, or how I was banned for the sake of social justice.

In 2011, I joined an online message board forum called Kindle Boards (later KBoards) where other self-publishers had joined to give each other support, share what works, and otherwise band together as a community. Back then, self-publishing was considered the kiss of death, and many of my former writer “friends” shunned me for starting down that dark path. Having a community where people could assure you that you weren’t crazy was really a big help.

Yesterday, I was permanently banned from KBoards. But from the way it went down, I doubt that I’m going to miss the place, because it is a very different community now from the one that I joined in 2011.

The brewhaha started when a new member posted a thread to announce a book promotion site that she had just started. These types of sites offer advertising opportunities to authors and curated book recommendations to readers. There are dozens of these sites across the internet, and they are an important part of the indie book world.

On the thread, someone noted that the OP’s promo site did not accept erotica or LGBT books, according to the submission guidelines. Immediately, people began to pile up on the OP, demanding an explanation and accusing her of being unfair. The pile-up had all the signs of a social justice mob:

  • Unsubstantiated accusations that get taken at face value and added to a laundry list of perceived wrongs.
  • The formation of a narrative that ties in with a much wider set of perceived injustices, making the accused guilty by association.
  • Calls for “justice” that make a peaceful and mutually amicable reconciliation impossible.

I’ve seen it happen many times, as I’m sure you have too. If the accused tries to make amends, it only makes the social justice warriors howl even louder. The only thing that can satisfy them is the complete ruination of their enemy—and sometimes, even that is not enough.

As a side note, I would like to point out that I have nothing wrong with people who write LGBT books. Should these books be allowed to be published? Absolutely! The book world is a richer place because of them. I have nothing against people writing them, reading them, publishing them, or promoting them. People should be free to write whatever they want, so long as it does not cause criminal harm (such as doxxing or child porn).

But that’s not what this social justice mob was about. They had taken one line from the submission guidelines (which has since been removed) about not accepting LGBT books, and twisted it in every possible way to skewer the OP. For example, people took it to mean that books of any genre with LGBT characters would not be accepted, when original intent was pretty clear that genre LGBT would not be accepted. There is a difference. They then went on to say that LGBT is “not a category” (though according to Amazon, it most certainly is), and to accuse the OP of all sorts of other things.

When I saw this social justice mob forming, I decided to step in and stop it by deflecting some of the attention onto myself. The idea was to tank their attacks, rile them up just enough for the moderators to take notice, and leave it to them to stop the bullying.

Until this point, my opinion of the moderators at KBoards was pretty good. Even though I’d been on the receiving end of the “cattle prod” a couple of times, I’d always felt that they were more or less fair—or at least that they gave fair reasons for everything that they did. On the KBoards forums, the mods are generally praised as one of the main reasons why the place is so friendly and welcoming.

Part one of my plan worked out perfectly. I poked the SJWs just enough for them to show their true colors, and the thread was predictably locked. The OP and some other KBoards members sent me private messages thanking me for standing up to the bullies. When the mods re-opened the thread, however, all of my posts were gone, but the pile-up that had started the mob from forming was still in place. And predictably, the bullying began again in earnest.

I was disappointed in the mod’s decision, and stated as much, but tried to exercise restraint since there wasn’t much else I could do. Then someone openly accused the OP of being “discriminatory” because their site didn’t promote LGBT books. In response, I started a new thread:

Can we please stop calling promo sites “discriminatory”?

On another thread announcing a new promo site, a bunch of writers are piling up on the OP for stating in their guidelines that they do not promote LGBT books. Rather than derail that thread even further, I figured it would be better to start a new thread to say my piece about it.

It really galls me when anyone accuses a promo group of being “discriminatory” because it doesn’t promote their particular kind of book. By turning their rejection into a social justice issue, it flies in the face of the obvious: that readers aren’t morally obligated to like every kind of book equally, and that promo sites have to pick and choose which books they promote according to (among other things) the tastes of their readers.

Look, I have no problems with people writing, reading, publishing, or promoting LGBT books. If you’re an LGBT author who writes LGBT books, rock on and more power to you. But as a reader, I probably wouldn’t subscribe to a newsletter that promoted them—not because I hate gays, but because it’s just not the sort of thing that I read. Does that make me evil and discriminatory? Am I having “wrongfun”? Should I be forced to read a book that I don’t want to read? No? Then why say all that of promo sites that don’t carry those kinds of books?

My BS test for this sort of thing is to replace the allegedly oppressed minority group with Mormon Texas Czech (I defy you to find a smaller minority group!). If a promo site rejected, say, religious historical fiction, would I get all huffy and accuse them of discriminating against my Moravian Mormon heritage because they rejected my novel about a 1920s Czech immigrant who ran away to Utah and started a kolache shop? No—I’d shrug and figure my book probably wouldn’t do all that well at that site anyway, since their readership obviously isn’t into that sort of thing, and look for a promosite that would be willing to carry my book. And if that site doesn’t exist, I would create it!

Behind these knee-jerk accusations of discriminatory behavior is an implicit call for a new regime of gatekeepers to ensure that the “right” books—the ones that promote the accuser’s particular brand of social justice—are entitled to premium placement. But the fact is that no one is entitled to anything in this business, nor should they be. Besides, we tore down the gates years ago.

I knew that the thread would ruffle some feathers, but I did not predict the response—though in retrospect, it wasn’t surprising at all. Instead of trying to engage with my ideas, the SJWs reported the thread to the mods, who promptly locked it. Only two responses got through, both of which came within spitting distance of Godwin’s Law (“What if a promo site refused to accept books with Jews in them? Huh? HUH?”).

A lot of people were upset that the thread got locked. It accumulated more than 400 views before it dropped off the front page, and I got several PMs saying “I totally agree, these people have gone too far,” and “I was in the middle of my response when the mods locked this thread,” etc.

When I got back to my computer, I posted on the first thread, where I basically said “I find it telling that instead of engaging with me, you got the mods to lock my thread. Since when did disagreement become tantamount to hate speech?” In response, I got the following PM from the moderators:

Joe,

even before the blow up in the My Book Cave thread, you had been pushing the boundaries in your posts here and many had to be edited or removed.

In the My Book Cave thread, it was the tone of your posts that was the problem.  I advised you via PM that people who appreciated the restrictions posed by My Book Cave were welcome to post their support in a civil manner.  You have refused to do that, instead choosing to make more than one inflammatory post or thread.  I refer you again to  my most recent PM.

Accordingly, you are placed on post moderation.  I note that this at least your third significant moderation action.  As you indicate in your most recent post, now deleted, perhaps you need to think about whether KBoards is the place for you.  Hopefully this period of post approval will give you that opportunity to think about it.

Betsy
KB Moderator

In response, I wrote the following:

The question is not whether Kboards is the place for me, but whether KBoards has become the sort of place where people can be bullied in the name of social justice. In the last couple of days, I have received multiple PMs thanking me for taking a stand against these bullies, which tells me that this problem is much larger than just me. The fact that your response is to put me on post moderation tells me everything that I need to know: that disagreement truly is seen as hate speech in this community. I won’t be the only one who leaves KBoards because of this.

The final message that I received from the moderators was this:

Joe,

Please tell me where I equated disagreement with hate speech?  In the My Book Cave thread, to the best of our ability, we have removed and continue to remove posts on both sides that attacked other members or the OP in the thread and left those that stated their reason for not using the service or asked more questions about it.

I refer you again to my prior PM.  You, and others, are more than welcome to state your support for My Book Cave in a civil manner.  Instead, you have attacked your fellow members for stating their reasons for not wanting to use the service and for asking questions to clarify the restrictions.  There were also questions about the erotica restriction and the restrictions on language.  These are reasonable questions.  It would also be reasonable for a member to state (as you did, in one bit of your locked thread), that you would appreciate a site that had restrictions.  Posts that stated a different point of view in a civil manner without attacking your fellow members would have remained and have been protected.

You chose not to do that, but to instead start yet another thread that attacked your fellow members.  While we were discussing that thread (which had not been permanently locked at that time–we were still in discussion), you chose to make yet another post continuing the same discussion in the original MBC thread.

Refusal to accept moderation is a bannable offense.  You have been previously banned and placed on post moderation and tonight have refused to accept post moderation.  Immediately after posting this, I will ban your account.  KBoards is clearly not the right forum for you.

I wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Betsy
KB Moderator

There are a number of things that I found disingenuous about this exchange.

First, I never attacked anybody. I never singled anyone out. I never engaged in personal insults, though personal insults (now deleted) were directed at me. And while I was aggressive in the way that I engaged, I also endeavored to be as intellectually honest as possible. I cannot say the same of those I disagreed with.

Second, it’s pretty clear that the mods were not treating me with the same benefit of the doubt as the bullies. SJWs have a way of rewriting history, and that’s exactly what they were doing by claiming to ask “questions to clarify the restrictions.” There were no attempts to clarify the promo site’s submission guidelines: as soon as one person suggested that any book with an LGBT character would be rejected, everyone assumed that it was true.

Third, it seems quite clear that the mods were waiting for an excuse to ban me. They locked down my thread within minutes of posting it, based solely on reports from people who disagreed with it. With the phrase “perhaps you need to think about whether KBoards is the place for you,” they issued a veiled threat which they followed through on within minutes. Their claim that they hoped “this period of post approval” would help me turn around was duplicitous on its face. So was the question “Please tell me where I equated disagreement with hate speech?” because my account was locked and my IP was banned, making it impossible for me to respond.

Looking back on what I could have done differently, I suppose I could have toned down my rhetoric a bit, or refrained from engaging. But at what point does silence become complicity? If I had let the social justice mob run its course, and the OP had been attacked outside of the boards, would I have done the right thing? When it became clear that the mods were going to let the bullying continue, what was I supposed to do?

Honestly, I feel like I came out of that exchange with my integrity intact. If that means I got banned, so be it.

And to be frankly honest, if KBoards is the kind of place where social justice warriors can dominate the discussion and drive out anyone who disagrees with them, then I really don’t feel bad about getting banned. There is a war going on in our culture today, and I would rather pick a side than be complicit through my silence.