In which terrible people do not win the Hugos

So I have not been mantaining le blog because Real Life came along and I started a new (awesome) job. Basically I get to make cookies all day, feed people and then clean up after myself. It's fantastic.

Anyhoo, I did not intend to ever comment on the fucking Sad Puppies fiasco with the Hugo Awards. This was a thing I cared about, but in the way that you care about, IDK, contracting flesh eating disease.

If you do not know what the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies are, these were a group of people--by their own admission, mostly white and male, and by my personal judgement call, universally terrible--who decided to hijack the extremely byzantine Hugo nomination process and vote for all their friends, fellow ideologues and a couple of folk who got mixed in by mistake (these people promptly ID'd themselves by declining the nom). Their issue was that the books, stories and things getting Hugos were too socially consious and they wanted to go back to spaceships and an absense of politics. You know, like Star Trek!

Because that show totally supported the dominant paradigm in every possible way, right?

What's sad is that it worked. The Puppies ballot, with few exceptions, made it into every category, demonstrating both the apathy of most voters (Frankly I'm amazed a fan-driven award system even HAS an editor category) and the Puppies total misunderstanding of what science fiction is. And a lot of the nominees, and I mean a LOT of them, were connected to a truely awful human with the internet handle Vox Day.

I do not like Vox Day. I do not like his politics, which I would call neanderthal-ish if that weren't an insult to hunter-gatherer cultures everywhere. I do not like his books, which is a dislike wholly separate from his politics (Dude. You are not GRR Martin.). He identifies as a Christian with all the accuracy of an actor in blackface, and his nom-de-plume literally translates to "God Speaks", which I think says everything we need to know about the person. There are few human beings who can make me go from zero to "Nuke it" as quickly as Vox Day. Being nommed for a Hugo by Vox Day is somewhat akin to contracting syphilis. It means you need to re-evaluate your life choices.

However, there was good news: No Puppies nom won. This meant that several of the more esoteric awards (IE that editor award) went to No Award rather than a Puppy, but sci-fi fans in general made it clear that we might squabble over particulars, but we don't do bullshit.

Pictured: Unicorn rainbows for all. Not pictured: Bullshit.

What motivated me to write this, however, was an article obviously written by a Puppy supporter (I'm not linking, but the website starts with a B and rhymes with "Wal-Mart") in which the author proclaimed that by refusing to allow a Puppy to win a Hugo, Social Justice Warriors were "burning down the house".


This indicates that not only do the Puppies (or at least, this particular Pup) not understand science fiction, they also don't understand people.

First off, they make the mistake of assuming the backlash against them is Social Justice Warriors not wanting Good Books with Bad Politics to win things, and that by refusing to let GBwBP win things, we are somehow destroying society. That is not what this is. What this is are a bunch of literate nerds going "You want to manipulate us? Seriously? Oh fuck you." It's backfired like Uncle Buck's car, is what I'm saying here. It's not the politics that killed their ballot, my darlings. It's the dick move of making that ballot in the first place. People are celebrating that the Puppies screwed the pooch, so to speak, but it's a sick kind of celebration, relief instead of joy. You can't celebrate victory over something that should never have happened in the first place. This is the kind of celebration you have when your stalker ex finally violates the restraining order enough to go to jail. It'll be gone a while, but you know it'll be back. Nobody is happy about this. And the only person who set fire to something was the Puppies. 

But that's not the biggest error the Puppies made. No, that big error was to choose science-fiction as their last stand and final defense. It might look good on paper, but from an ideological standpoint, that's kind of Custer's Last Stand, if Little Bighorn had happened to have an unguarded storm drain running right up the middle of the 7th Cavalry, packed full of defensive Lakota.

See, science fiction is, has been, and always will be, a forward-thinking medium. Its nature demands a certain amount of agnosticism if you want it to be an observation and not a manifesto, but that's the science part talking. Science Fiction at its foundation is just as questioning as, well, science itself. In its earliest forms, everything was a what if. What if we had space ships? What if we made it to the moon? What if we were invaded by things from another planet? You can even see the development of the term Science-fiction by the early authors who knew they were doing SOMETHING, but had no idea what--in explaining his vision of Heaven as being initially painful for souls, C.S. Lewis uses the word scientifiction in an attempt to describe the body of literature he was drawing on as a source. These were questions that the then-modern science and culture couldn't answer, so the authors tried to. Here's what time travel would be like. Here's how thoroughly fucked we'd be if space invaders happened.

But the thing about asking what ifs is that eventually we start questioning assumptions that scare people. Like what if there was a society entirely without women? (Ethan of Athos, Lois McMaster Bujold, go read it it is awesome). Or what if the dominant paradigm stops being white men? And that's where science-ficiton goes from being a day-dreamy genre to being something possibly dangerous--which it is, and has been, from day one. The heavy-handed colonialism of early sci-fi is the result of white men just starting to dip their toes into the great, untested sea that is Equality and going, "gee that water's really fucking cold." What made that dangerous was the fact that their what if admitted, for some micro-fraction of a second, that maybe, just maybe, the universe wouldn't always belong to them. The argument can be made that every Alien Invasion narrative is just white culture's dormant fear of immigration finding a safe, subconscious expression--combined with the fact that hey, we did this to every other culture on the planet so why should we get off easy?

I think it says something that Alien Invasion stories were never really that popular. It's a tiny part of the genre, not the genre itself. And that kind of tells you that science-fiction is not, and never was, a friend of dominant paradigms. Any dominant paradigm.

See, I picked that picture of Kirk kissing Uhura for a reason. Gene Roddenberry could have just said "What if people got spaceships?" and left it at that. He did not. Having a 1960s culture in a far-future spaceship makes about as much sense as imagining Victorian England maintaining its inhibitions re: sex in the presence of a fully functioning internet and he kinda got that. Instead, he applied the same what if that gave us the Enterprise to people. What if we make it to the stars. What will that do to us? And then instead of rehashing all of human history, he decided to break fucking everything. Sticking a black woman on the bridge of the Enterprise in a starfleet officer's uniform meant a whole lot more back then, when women weren't officers and black women weren't there at all, and most people were actively working to keep things that way. (There's a story about Woopi Goldberg watching Star Trek as a child and running in to her parents yelling "Mamma, mamma, there's a black lady on TV and she ain't no maid!" and whenever I start evaluating my cast's racial balance, I remember that story and break out all the other flesh colored crayons. Because we need about six billion more of those moments)

Gene Roddenbury asked "What if we worked through our sexism, racism and other assorted -isms?" and put Uhura on the bridge. And it scared people. Maybe not as vocally as we'd like, but it says a lot that when that kiss was scripted, everybody who didn't work directly on Star Trek told Roddenbury to turn it into a hug (and William Shatner basically made his O face for every take other than the one with the actual kiss, which is why that still shot exists) so that an interracial relationship could not be acknowledged or even implied. And it says a lot about Roddenbury and his cast that they actively sabotaged their own show to get that kiss on air. It says that they knew how important it was going to be, and they knew it needed to happen. Objectively, a kiss isn't a big deal. But neither is a bus seat, or a water fountain. Sometimes the only way we can say I matter is by taking a stand on the little things; it gives us footholds to step up to the big ones.

Star Trek had a lot of goofy moments, oddball plots and terrible, terrible special effects. But it held on in a way that Battlestar Galactica and other space-ship 70s shows didn't, and that was, IMHO, because it wasn't just applying the what ifs to tech, but also to people. It began to demand that science-fiction take a hollistic approach to storytelling--that it is not enough to tell your story, to ask your what ifs, from a single perspective, especially if that perspective belongs to the dominant paradigm. If you want your what ifs to be accurate, or at least realistic, you have to include everybody. Every gender, every race, every religion. Everything. If you don't, you might as well just pull a Plan 9 From Outer Space and dangle a hubcap in front of the camera. It's gonna be about that realistic.

Science-fiction challenges us to look forward and project the universe we want to see in terms of nature, technology and culture--a task that also challenges us to question our current reality. If this is what we want, and we don't have it now...why? Why don't we have spaceships? Why don't we have hoverboards? Why don't we have equality? Why do we believe that it takes a couple centuries to get a black woman in an officer's uniform onto the Enterprise? Why is true equality still considered science-fiction? And then it brings us to the ultimate what if, the point of the whole thing...what if we tried to change that right now? We want this future...what if we tried, as Captain Picard would say, to make it so?

And the thing is? These stories with non-binary genders, multicultural casts, full-spectrum relationships and inclusive narratives? Are. fucking. fun. It is as enthralling to play with the idea of a starship captain in a hijab as it is to toy with various ideas for the drives--possibly more, if you realize that a female Muslim captain will matter a whole lot more than your variation on Roddenbury's hyperdrive. Science-fiction is a game where nobody loses as long as everyone gets to play. Limiting yourself to a straight white story...you might as well just stay on Earth for the duration.

The pathetic fact about sci-fi is that the perspective is still not complete. We have Uhura and Mako Mori, but not much more than that. When we manage to include non-binary genders, we mainly use them as a joke, something for the hero to play off of, and usually the focus of that humor is one of disgust, as if a trans individual is something similar to a fart in an elevator. Homosexual relationships still haven't made it out of the support cast. In short: Science-fiction still treats a large percentage of humanity as non-existant and unimportant, as something unnecessary for the narrative. Like the rest of our culture, sci-fi is still telling people that they don't count.

But a lot of people--an awful, awful lot of people--are asking the question what if we did? What if we did matter, and our voice did get heard? What kind of stories would we get then? And, because they've imagined the stories, well, you might as well tell them. Progressive science-fiction is an oxymoron that shouldn't have to exist. There is no functional difference between imagining a space ship and imagining a progressive culture where everybody counts. Both are images that someone wants to see in the near future--and both are going to require a violent event--rocket launches for one, cultural change for the other--in order to exist.


The Sad Puppies, and their rabid cousins, fail to see this fundamental aspect because it scares them. They exist in a world where value is a zero-sum game--based, in part, on their own assumption that they are value-less. A coping skill for a poor self image is to go "I am garbage, but this person is less than garbage" and then hang the designation of "less than garbage" on an identifiable characteristic. Race. Gender. Preferences. Education. They build a ladder to stand on by knocking out everybody else and stacking the bodies. Equalizing the playing field isn't a chance to help others to them. It's a challenge to their sense of identity, to their own self-worth. And when that image is challenged as profoundly as it is today, they react defensively. Their image of the future is, unfortunately, static and unchanging, because its the only future in which their sense of value remains unchallenged. They want spaceships, but not the changes those spaceships will cause. They want the Enterprise, but they don't want Uhura on the bridge. They want to play in the sandbox, but only as long as nobody else gets admitted. In effect, they don't want the future. They want Christopher Columbus--the watered down Texas Textbook version, not the real deal--to discover the New World all over again. They just want him to do it in a spaceship this time. They want to erase the potential for any future but their own.

And because that isn't a future anybody else would want, let's hope the Sad Puppies are always going to lose. 

THE. COVER. IS. DONE!!!

The cover for Blue Ghosts, the next Exiles story, due out October 2012. IT IS FINISHED.

It at my lunch guys and girls. IT SO VERY MUCH ATE MY LUNCH. My working method with painting is usually a lot smoother. Though it didn't help that the day after I posted that WIP? THE COMPUTER ATE THE MASTER FILE. And I had to start over. THANK GOD I POSTED THE WIP is all I can say.

So here you are. Look upon it. Feast your eyes upon this glorious cover. And be ready for Blue Ghosts in October! First week of October, boys and girls, very first week!

(BTW her name is Abbey. Just FYI.)

This is gonna be SO MUCH FUN!

BOOK SAMPLE!!!

(We interrupt this program to show off a lil' bit. Blue Ghosts comes out in October 2012. Here's a sample for your reading pleasure)

           Dinner with an Elf. You don’t do that every day. Casey Winter straightened the skirt on her very best dress, which was about six hundred dollars too cheap for her surroundings, and tried not to worry about what her dinner date would wear. Corpus Christi, Texas, wasn’t exactly a cultural hub, but it did have several nice restaurants. Marco Creed, the elf in question, had invited her to the nicest.

           The Republic of Texas. By God, was it ritzy. Dark wood and burgundy trim glowed under expensive lighting. Cut crystal glasses full of aged scotch sat at elbows. Lush greenery curled around brass fixtures. Wait staff moved with the collective grace of cranes, and with the sharp eyes of hawks spying rodents in the grass. Empty glasses were filled, plates were whisked away the moment knife and fork hit four o’clock. Complicated telepathy kept questions to a minimum. Here’s a salad, a soda, the entrée, your scotch. Plate clink, silverware song, mummer of voices under soft, slow jazz. Casey felt six inches tall when she asked the hostess about Marco’s table. It wasn’t ready yet, they said, and handed her an expensive glass of champagne.

           Good God in heaven, girl. What am I getting into? She wondered. A whole bottle of this stuff probably equaled her next royalty check. No way Marco made this kind of money on a mechanic’s salary. Oh, I’m sorry. He’s a car modifier. He’s still not pulling this kind of cash. Unless he actually did. When your dinner date is immortal, nothing is guaranteed.

           She wasn’t waiting long. A throat cleared behind her, and when she turned her nerves—well, around this man, they definitely didn’t settle.

           Elves are handsome. Marco Creed was also hot. Every time she met his eyes she thought about Chippendale dancers and underwear models and the large number of games you can play with ice cubes. Peach skin, eyes in almost luminescent blue, long gold hair in a braid he pulled off about as well as a lion in a circus tutu. And—this made her feel so much better—his well muscled chest was hidden by a suit about fifty bucks cheaper than her dress.

           He took her hand and ran his thumb across her knuckles. Shivers raced up her spine. “Ms. Winter.” He kissed the back of her wrist, then turned the charm on the amused hostess. “Table for Creed.”

           “Right this way.” The Republic of Texas sat on top of the Omni Hotel, and the hostess carried two menus towards a small table near a window. It had a breathtaking view of the moonlit ocean. Small boats and buoys floated through silver currents. The American Bank towers rose to the right, sides hit by spotlights. Falcons nested on the window ledges, spreading wing to spiral down to the pavement below. Light Wednesday evening traffic motored through the streets. Marco pulled her chair out for her, then sat in his own chair with effortless grace and dignity.

           Which he promptly blew by scraping his chair up that extra half inch. Nobody looks dignified doing the scoot-and-jump boogie.

           A waiter arrived with a bottle of champagne, the same brand as her first glass of bubbly, and he poured it with the majesty of a ritualistic magician. Marco thanked him, and checked the label as soon as his back was turned. Air was sucked through clenched teeth. “Pricy?” Casey whispered.

           “Yep.” He jammed it back into the ice. “Thank God, I’m not paying the tab.”

           “You’re not?” Casey was perpetually broke and currently unemployed. So was she relieved Marco wasn’t blowing hard earned cash on her, or disappointed?

           “I intended to,” he said, quickly. “But I told Razeil about our plans, and she had the manager bill her. A reward, she said.” He rolled his eyes.

           “You don’t think so?” Casey picked up the menu. Oh, my god, orange glazed quail. Sounded like one hell of a reward to her.

           “Raziel’s gifts come with strings—no—steel cables with thousand-volt generators attached. She’s up to something, and it bothers me that she’s involved you.” He brushed stray hair out of his eyes, drawing her attention to something that should have been there, and wasn’t.

           “Your ears,” She said. They’d been pointed three days ago. Now they were human blunt. 

           “I’m splurging.” A shy kind of sheepishness spread across his features. “Magically, I mean. It takes relatively little power for me and Raziel to hide ourselves—especially for me, where there isn’t much to hide—but the others…not so much. I wind up donating most of my personal magic so they can have a normal life…or something like it.”

           “And it takes so much, you can’t hide your ears all the time?” She asked. The waiter returned, and Casey ordered the quail. Marco ordered steak and lobster, and waited for the waiter to retreat before he answered.

           “Baseball caps work just as well. I’d rather not waste the power. I’ve got a lot, mind, but I’m not Sidhe, or even Elestrin. The well, in my case, ain’t bottomless. And magic on Earth is limited. Back in Ambercross, we could draw power from the trees, from the sky, from the Earth herself.” He looked at the vase in the center of their table and touched a daisy. “Everything was so…alive.” Roots curled out of the flower stem, and sudden pea green shoots curled around Marco’s fingers. Three more daisies flowered while she watched. “Alive on a level that you can’t even imagine. It sang to us, colored our every waking moment. But here…” he took his hand away. The daisies tried to cling to him at first. Then they withered, petals falling, leaves turning brown and disintegrating onto the table cloth.

           “Our world is dead?” She asked, horrified.

           He shook his head. “Sleeping. And like a dragon with a sore tooth, it’s a good thing it sleeps. The undercurrents I can touch are…angry.

           “But its slumber affects us. The sources a Merrow would use to shape shift, for example, are closed to her, and they have no personal reserves of power. Raziel and I, however, we’ve got big resources. Finite, but profound. That’s why we’re the leaders. Piss one of us off…” he pointed at the withered daisy. “No magic for you.”

           Seinfeld fan. She thought. Aloud, she said, “I thought it was because you could hurt them if you had to. Elves and Elestrin are big time scary when they want to be.”

           “Well, yeah. But it’s more effective to lead with a carrot than a stick.” Their salads arrived, and Marco smiled politely until the waiter retreated again. He picked up the pepper and shook it over the lobster. “Okay, your turn.”

           “What?”

           “Tell me something about yourself that I don’t know.”

           She tried to wipe the deer-in-the-headlights look off her face. “Um…what is there to know? Between Facebook, Twitter, and that blog my agent makes me update once a blue moon, my life is an open book.”

           “In Ambercross you would be tortured to death for that pun. We’d shove wooden splinters under your fingernails until you relented.”

           “That’s kind of the point.” She grinned and took a bite of salad.

           Casey had been marginally successful writing about elves and magic and a world named Ambercross…and had been flabbergasted three days ago to learn that it was, more or less, a real place. Neighbor-world to Earth. The kind that borrows your lawnmower and never returns it. She had some bizarre, unconscious connection to it, something even Marco couldn’t explain. He didn’t understand it any better than she did. But he claimed that, more often than not, when she wrote about Ambercross she was describing something real.

           Earth had Faerie population, too. Exiles from Ambercross, they’d latched onto her books as if they were a direct line to home…which, she supposed, they were. Most of the Exiles were immortals born in Ambercross, but even the Earthborn liked to read tales of their grandparents’ world. As for the Faerie-born…they missed their home world passionately. They clung to Casey’s literary straw, hoping against hope it would turn into gold.

           And that was a lot of heavy to put on her shoulders.

           It could have gone straight to her head—hey, she was a magical newscaster!—but it hadn’t. Mostly because her only benefit so far had been books that barely sold and getting shot at when a Faerie twisted off. Marco had saved her life that time, first by taking a bullet for her, and then by tangling with a fully shifted Merrow whose great goal in life was murder. Not bad for somebody who should work for Calvin Klein.

           She owed him something for it, but, well…“You know every part of me, Marco. There’s nothing to share.”

           “Not every part.” He waggled his eyebrows seductively and she underhanded an ice-cube at his lap. He deflected it with one smooth hand. Then the watts in his smile dipped. “What about your marriage?”

           He might as well dump ice water over her head. She shrugged, super casual. “I was married, he was an ass, he broke my leg and I divorced him.”

           “If he was an ass, why’d you marry him?”

           She flicked hair out of her eyes and took the last bite of her salad. The waiter whisked her plate away. Damn it, he was watching her too expectantly. He could probably out-wait her, too. She sighed. “You’ve told me world-shattering secrets about yourself. I suppose it’s only fair.” Her entrée arrived and she picked half-heartedly at the quail. Marco poured them both champagne, and Casey downed her entire glass before she spoke again. “He wasn’t an ass when I met him. He wasn’t even abusive. Jack was…God. Jack was great.”

           Noises rose around them. Someone laughed, high and long, as the jazz gave over to a live pianist. Whoever it was had skill, she thought. It was one of those heartrending melodies guaranteed to put tears in your beer.

           “He was the artist for my book covers,” she said, at last. “And he flew down to Houston for a convention. We met at this Irish bar. The Mucky Duck.” She laughed a little bit. “He had long hair and he tied it back with a zip tie. There was red paint on every single part of his body. And he--” she stopped, her eyes distant and dreamy. The memory had barely faded. Smell of old cigarette smoke. Warm wood bar and tables and stools, neon beer signs advertising Harp and Guinness. A slender young man with sharp blue eyes and long black hair smiling over the lip of his beer. Within twenty four hours his warm lips would be exploring more than personal history. “He was perfect.”

           “Love at first sight?”

           She shrugged. “Lust, I think. The love came later, when he…” She dropped her head because her eyes were stinging. “Our second date, we go out dancing. After about an hour he spots this little girl in a corner, crying her eyes out. She’s sixteen, she had Downs Syndrome, she was crying her eyes out, her mom was trying to comfort her. I would have kept going and let them do whatever. But Jack…he went right over and asked what was wrong.

           “He asked her, you understand. Not her mother. He asked the little girl.

           “Turned out, the most popular boy in school had asked the girl out as a joke. She’d had her hopes raised and then shattered because he and his sick buddies thought it’d be funny. And you know what Jack did? He took that little girl out on the dance floor and danced with her. He’s bumping around on the dance floor, I don’t know what the hell he’s doing, the girl’s doing something completely different…Marco, her smile lit up the whole world. All her mom could say was thank you. ‘Thank you both.’” Casey sniffed. “That’s when I saw that he was beautiful.”

           “And then he hit you,” Marco said, dryly.

           Sharp intake of breath, like a punch to the gut. She closed her eyes and nodded. “He got sick. Brain cancer. Then he had a stroke, and when he recovered…” she trailed off. At some point she’d begun rubbing her right knee. The deep, ridged scars from her last surgery could be felt through her panty-hose. She put both hands on the table. “He didn’t know who I was. Who he was. Anything. I thought if I were good enough, if I did enough, if I worked hard enough, I could fix him. I could bring my Jack back.”

            “And what happened?” Marco asked.

           “I burned dinner, and he beat me with a rolling pin. Three times in the face,” hand on right cheek, where six surgical pins held the bone together, “then the shoulder,” right collarbone snapped in two, “chest,” two broken ribs that still ached in cold weather, “and then my right knee.” Her right little finger began tapping her water glass over. And over. And over. “They said the bone looked like marbles in a sack. When I woke up all the way, I asked to be moved so this new version of Jack couldn’t find me. If I had stayed another day, I think he would have killed me.”

           Marco was quiet while he tried his steak and she ate a bite of quail. It had a strong citrus flavor, and was dreamily tender.

           “So that’s why you were working at a convenience store?” he asked.

           She nodded. “Yeah. The medical bills are pretty big. Reconstructive surgery. Physical Therapy.”

           “Wouldn’t Jack have to pay for part of it, at least?” He sounded outraged.

           Casey shrugged, feeling like a microbe on a telescope. “Texas is a no-fault divorce state. It was easier not to fight. I just wanted him out of my life.” She paused, and then a little of the old vitriol came out. “It was nasty. I don’t get alimony, I couldn’t keep any of his paintings. In one year he went from being the best human being I ever knew, to being this…vindictive, dangerous child.”

           “And he broke you.” Marco said.

           “He did.” She looked away and took another bite of quail. Outside the window, the hawks were settling in for the night. She shivered.

           Marco’s beeper went off.

           “Jesus. Who even has those anymore?” she said.

           Marco sighed, extruding long-suffering from every pore. “Raziel got one in the nineties and fell in love with it. I’d buy her a cell phone, but she’d use it for target practice.” He studied the number, then pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I’m sorry—”       

           “—but you have to take it. I understand.” And she did. Something told her a relationship with Marco Creed would be a little bit like dating a cop. Nice to know her instincts worked at least some of the time.

           After two rings, Marco flinched. He didn’t identify himself either, just listened for several minutes. “Wait,” he said, “Wait a second. She’s not—” more time passed as words flew across land lines and the atmosphere. Then finally, he sighed. “Alright. I’m making no promises. And if you hurt her—fine. Fine.” He hung up. Storm clouds brooded in his eyes. Storm clouds, and a bone-deep fear that put shivers up Casey’s spine. He sighed, then stood and put his napkin on the table.

            “Raziel wants to meet you.”

           “Trust me, Casey. This is not a good thing.” Marco turned his truck down Rod Field Road. The stereotype said Marco should have driven a pretty silver environmentally friendly Prius; this truck could have eaten five of them. The inside was pure white, not one scratch on the vinyl, not one smear on the dashboard. The outside was fire-engine red with metal flake and emblems from his home world airbrushed on the hood. He also liked heavy metal and the Black Eyed-Peas. She had yet to forgive him for the latter. He clicked his blinkers on and pulled into an apartment complex. Casey frowned.

           “She lives here?”

           “Yep.”

           “But…this is all student housing.” The apartment blocks were stark white and framed with palm trees and hibiscus, as if to argue that this was not some form of industrialized storage system disguised as living quarters. It didn’t really work.

           “It’s government supplied housing.” Marco paused a long time, then sighed. “She doesn’t work for a living.”

           “So she lives off the government?” Casey said, a definite edge to her voice. Though maybe she should reconsider. Being magical could be damn near crippling in this day and age, right? Elestrin were technically humanoid, the way unicorns were tangentially related to horses. Maybe government assistance was the best she could do.

           But Marco kept talking. “We pay her dues, and she keeps us out of trouble. Bails us out, keeps a separate apartment in case one of us needs to lay low for a few days. She’s not a bad person.” Marco said. It sounded more like he was convincing himself than Casey as he pulled into the main parking lot.

           Nighttime shrouded the buildings, turning soft yellow stucco to shallow off-blue. Cars occupied most of the spaces, including one incredibly shiny Jag with a Spectraflare paint job. It threw rainbows even in the moonlight. A lawn chair and board blocked off the space beside it. Marco stopped the car, got out, shoved the board and chair up onto the lawn, and then parked.

           “Raziel blocks this space off.”

           “Oh, so she’s one of those. Entitled to a parking space, so she takes one even though she doesn’t have a car.”

           “No. She has a car. Specifically, that one.” He pointed at the shiny monster parked beside them.

           No job, she lived off her charges, and she owned a Jag. Casey’s opinion of this woman was sinking fast. “You give her money for gas and insurance, too?” She said, climbing out of the car. “Or does she panhandle in her spare time?”

           “She does a lot of good things for us, Case. Exiles need a leader, and Raziel is better than most.”

           “Right. You know, David Koresh was awful nice to his cash cows, too.” They started up the stairs. “Is anyone else going to be here?”

           “Tim, maybe. Ero. Maybe everyone. I don’t know. The last time we introduced a human to our society she dragged people from Victoria down. She’s not predictable.”

           “And yet you’re expecting trouble,” Casey sighed.

           “Some things are more predictable than others.” He knocked on Raziel’s front door.

           The woman that answered the door was gray. Not the genteel tones of an old lady, but the deep steel of hurricane clouds. Her hair and skin were the same color, her eyes a slightly deeper oil smoke. She was tall like a lightning strike, narrow waist, almost flat-chested, and every seam of her perfect blue suit had been mathematically calculated to remind you that this was a razor blade masquerading as a person.

           “Marciaus.” The gray eyes tracked to her. “Winter. Karoline with a K. Come in.” She turned and walked back.

           Danger, Will Robinson. Casey thought. Danger. Danger. She walked into the house.

           You can tell a lot about a person by their house, and Razielara the Elestrin warrior-maiden had a front room straight out of Better Homes and Gardens. Gardenias in vases, sofa cushions in alternating shades of shale. Cutesy scrapbook dioramas. It felt like icing on a plastic cake, so Casey was relieved when Raziel lead her guests through the window dressing without pause. But the ruffles and gumdrops in cut crystal bowls left her very unprepared for the room they entered next.

           No frou-frou. No flowers. Almost no furniture at all. The heavy desk in one corner was almost a medieval throne. Its surface was mathematically neat, papers here, pens here, lamp emphatically there. And the centerpiece was a knife in a stand, the blade bare, razor sharp, and turned so that if you stumbled against her desk, you’d lose your hand. A starburst of swords, arrows and axes hung on the wall behind her chair, each blade rippling with skill and definitely sharp enough to kill. In one corner a full suit of armor, complete with a fox-shaped helm, stood guard over a display of six-shooters, each with their ammo lined beneath the barrel in a neat row. The bullets were polished, too.

           This was not an office. This was an armory run by a psychotic.

           Raziel sat behind the desk. There were no chairs for Casey or Marco. Her bad knee was aching already.

           “You have caused me a lot of trouble, Mrs. Winter,” Raziel said.

           “Ms. Please. I’m no longer married.”

           The tiny bit of good humor in those cold, gray eyes died. “You have killed a person who was under my protection.”

           Casey felt equally as cold. “I defended myself and Marco from a crazy woman and her boyfriend.”

           “You destroyed a creature of Faerie. This is not something that can pass without consequence.”

           Great. Casey was on the defensive in a room made of knives. Not the best place to be. “We didn’t have another option, ma’am. If you had been here—”

           “She would have gone quietly, and I would have another trophy. So not only did you destroy one of my people, you denied me the pleasure of a hunt.” Her smile was very dark.

           “What else should I have done?” Casey asked.

           Raziel laughed, beautifully, and nails on a chalkboard would be more calming. “You have made one disastrous assumption, Mrs. Winter, in coming here. You assumed that I care for the humans in this city. I don’t. You assumed that I would have protected you because you deserved it, or because you are famous, or because you can provide my people with a hope for return to Ambercross. I would not. What matters to me is that you have done something that cannot be undone. By our laws your life could be forfeit, and if I thought for a moment you could give me fair sport I would take it. A legal kill does not often come my way.”

           “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Casey said. Marco gave her a warning look.

           “But,” continued the gray woman, “You preserved the life of Marcaius as well as your own. And you are one that our people would listen to. And you have an extraordinary knowledge about us, thanks to your Gifting. You’ve potential to be a useful tool, and I don’t discard my tools without purpose.”

           “Raziel,” Marco interrupted, “No one holds to the old laws these days.”

           “The McHally family does. Lyrene was the daughter of their patriarch. They have already petitioned for your life, Marcaius. I have denied them the privilege as attacking your leader for sport is not a just kill. For now, they do not know about Mrs. Winter’s involvement, so they cannot petition her life. If this were to change, I would not give either her or you more than a few days. They would not go through me. By our laws, they do not have to.”

           “You’re threatening me,” Casey said. And doing a damn good job of it. “What do you want?”

           Another cold, knife-edge smile. “I need a problem-solver who will keep my secrets without worrying about her own. Preferably, because she has none, save the ones I give her.” She looked down for a moment, then back up. “Marcaius has told you about our problem child, yes? The missing Phooka, Prix.”

           “Yes.” Casey nodded.

           “You are to find her and bring her to me.”

           Marco exploded. “Wait a minute. She’s human, Raziel. She can’t stand up to--”
                        Raziel waved a hand. That was all, just one motion. But Marco went silent as if he were choked. He turned an alarming shade of red while Raziel watched, amused. When he stopped fighting, she looked back at Casey. “A human, indeed, but with magical gifts.”

           “I don’t know how to use them.” Casey said.

           “And even if you could, Portal power is no kind of a defense.” Raziel nodded. “But tools prove their usefulness outside of their intended purpose. Consider it a test of your abilities. I expect you will have Marco’s help, which means you will have the aid of those loyal to him. You will have five days to find Prix and bring her back to me.”

           “I don’t even know where to start.” She said. “And why five days? Why such a big hurry?”

           Raziel folded her hands on her blotter. It did not seem very surprising that she was the type who had a blotter. She probably used it to catch the blood of her victims. “Four people have been injured on the Lexington. Two tourists, two workers. All injured either at night or during a black out, with no sign of how they were injured or why. One of our people visited the site, and claimed to have found the scent of magic and fear. The Phooka seems an obvious conclusion.”

           Not to Casey, it didn’t, but she decided not to argue the point. “You’re not worried because people are getting hurt. What’s the real problem?”

           The look in Raziel’s eyes could have blistered nail polish. “People think the Lex is haunted. A reality show wants to investigate. They’ll be here on Friday. There will be cameras, tape recorders and many people to witness Prix’s violence. Publicity of our kind must be avoided. If Prix, or any Faerie, were to appear on camera, the lives of all witnesses become lawful prey. Something you and Marcaius would want to avoid, yes?”

           “I’d think that’d be your idea of the perfect day,” Casey said. Marco actually hit her.

           Raziel smiled, looking more and more like a great white shark. “She’s spunky, Marcius. From what passed in the tabloids I expected a little mouse, and instead I get a spitfire. A hunt would be very interesting, Ms. Winter, very interesting indeed with you at its end. You and whomever Marcaius can pry out of hiding will pose as a second group of investigators. And you, you alone, will bring Prix in…or kill her. Succeed, we’ll call the books even and your future assistance will result in reward. Fail…” the gray woman smiled. “Well, you will probably be dead, so it won’t matter.”

           “And if I refuse to help at all?” Casey asked.

           “I will tell the MacHallys that you killed their daughter, and you will die.”

           Casey closed her eyes. Three days ago she had been shot at by a crazy mermaid, and the responding officer had been a hard-assed no nonsense bad boy. He’d retreated from Raziel’s business card like it were made of snakes and not card stock. Casey now found this a testament to the man’s nerves. Raziel favored mahogany lipstick and brown-gold eye shadow. She looked like a storm cloud inches from a tornado. “We have a ghost problem, Mrs. Winter. Who you gonna call?”

            “Somebody with better taste in movies.” She took the papers out of Raziel’s hands. “I’m in.”
(And if you liked that, check out my other books on Smashwords)

Book Bitch: Mission Earth 1 chapters 9-

So when we last left Hubbard's self inserts our villians:

The censors told us Earth doesn't exist, the robots told us we can't swear, Hubbard told us this is SATIRE, ladies and gents, Soltan Gris works for the C.I.A., Lombar Gris kidnapped Space Elvis and Earth is of critical importance to Voltan, the place that just told us it doesn't exist!

And without further ado, we get to read a fucking eternity of pages before we get to find out what this all is about!

Technically this is not chapter 9. No. This is chapter 1 of part two. Because this book needs to have parts. Shoot me,God. (my own pointless excercise in Tables of Content notwithstanding)

So in Chapter One the Second, Soltan Gris gets called to Lombar's office. And--oh noes!--Lombar is being nice to people. This, my dear friends, is always bad. But first something happens. Something not very important in terms of story, but something very, very important to the book. As in it swivels around and shoots the book in the face:

"Have a chank-pop," he said...he shoved the box towards me urgently and I managed to reach out and take a chank-pop and somehow get the top off. The lovely scent made a gentle explosion across my face, cooling it, waking me up. 

It's not important now, but remember that sequence of events. Also, that Lombar, Soltan, Jettero and EVERY OTHER FUCKING CHARACTER becomes drunk frequently. You're going to scream at this book once the payoff hits home.

So Lombar gives the whole operation to insert an agent into Earth (Remember, we must be Rescued From Ourselves) over to Soltan. Who wisely shits himself and says its a bad idea. Lombar listens to his every protest, then says:

"Have another chank-pop."

And after Soltan has been drugged into joy, Lombar reveals two things:

1. The special agent will be none other than Space Elvis himself, Jettero Heller, AND

2. Mission Earth must fail.

So basically, we've got the dumbest set of morons in the fucking universe set against the Do Gooder of all Do-Gooders, and you know they're going to fail harder than a stoned skateboarder grinding his first rail. At this point, I am wishing to God that Jettero was our narrator. And in reality, that would totally have fixed this book. Instead...

*sigh*

So chapter ten. They go down into Spiteos, the prison so bad even the guards will rob 'ya, to try to convince the guy they kidnapped to work for them. Let me tell you what I would say under these circumstances:

"Sure."

Would I mean it? No. Would I book for the hills the second their back was turned? Yes. Do you think someone as good and honorable and Space Elvis-y as Jettero is going to manipulate these bozos like a magnet with iron fillings? You bet your ass he will.

Jettero is being kept in a cell with no furnishings or food, with handcuffs that give him continual electrical shocks.

It is implied there are more than one set of these.

The electric bills must be through the fucking roof is all I'll say.

Soltan sees the inhumanity of this--after all, he's got to get the guy on his side--and Lombar pulls the old, "This was a test to see if you are worthy to join us" routine out of the hat, which would work if it weren't already established that 1. only the wash-outs join the Voltarian CIA and 2. mayonnase is overqualified for the job by means of its intelligance. Soltan goes back inside and...

*sigh*

Jettero Heller starts trying to save Soltan. From himself. Using methods that would make a Jehova's Wittness go "Dude, it's called subtlty" And Soltan can't resist laying it on thick:

He really wasn't thinking about himself. He wasn't thinking about the pain of electric cuffs or hunger or thirst. He actually felt sad that another being could sink as low as I. His question had nothing to do with himself at all. Only me!

And this would have worked if we were in Jettero's fucking head to begin with. Or if Hubbard had shown us this rather than forcing it down our throats with a pallate knife.

Moving on.

Soltan asks a bunch of questions to pretend they're actively recruiting Jettero--for a job mayonnaise could do, remind--and then asks one real one:

"Why did you let the other player win?"

Jett replies that the other player's sweetheart was in the stand, and he would have been shamed if he'd lost, Annnnnnd this is when Jettero's selfless hero persona goes out the fucking window. I was going to rant on it before and I am damn well going to bring it up now.  The other player lost. Obviously lost. As in he had no ammo left and had literally fallen to his knees in surrender. Jettero deliberately disqualified himself in a way that made it obvious he was disqualifying himself so the other player, who had stopped playing, would win by default.

That's fucking humilation no matter how you square it. If Jettero were truely the character Hubbard's trying to force down our throats, he would have thrown the game in a way that would make it look like he'd lost legitimately, rather than this "Oh, look how good I am at sports, how sportsman-like I am at letting this other player win. Look at me! Look at me!" shit that he pulled in the ring.

Soltan bemoans this fatal character flaw of compassion. Jettero will never be a good spy! But Lombar wants him. He's DOOMED!

And we're done. Tomorrow: fuck-all happens. Also, Hubbard kisses his own ass!

(Remember kids, Starbleached is free until the 10th, so go pick up your copy while you've got a chance. Coupon code is ST83W . Go get it.)

The Sci-Fi Book of Mystery! Cover! Title! SAMPLE!

 

Sample after the cut, info first. 

Starbleached will be released Monday 9/3 via Smashwords (I know, total change of plans. I be sorry). It will appear at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks and elsewhere sometime in the next couple of weeks (dependent upon Smashwords doing its thing). 

Saturday 9/8 we will have a coupon set up to get Starbleached for free. And just to make it fair, we're going to extend the coupon through Sunday, 9/9.

And you know what, guys? I am so excited about this. Above and beyond any ambitions, failed or otherwise, I really like this story. A lot. And I wouldn't have written it the way I did if I weren't flying on my own recognizance. 'Cause ain't nobody gonna publish a 30k book. 

Alright, enough of my ramblings. What you came for is after the cut. SAMPLE:

Brand new Week!

Whee! Or...not so much, as this is Labor Day Week, Guys and Girls, and if you work retail, or restaurants, or any other industry that depends on large numbers of people having many days off, Labor day is less "Whee" and more "HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE COMING HERE???"

We already have reservations for Saturday. I. Am. Frightened.

In happier news, I have started Cover Art for the Sci-Fi Novel of Mystery. It is going so well I think I can promise to release the cover as well as the title and sample on the First. Which will be Labor Day Saturday.

Have I mentioned yet, that I bought whiskey today? I bought whiskey. Because this is Labor Day week and I am tired of giving my boss money back just because I want a whiskey sour. I should not drink quite as much as I have been (thank you, oh boss who hands me things with booze in them and says "finish that") but about the ninteenth time someone looks at the lovely goodness of Eggs Benedict WITH hollindaise sauce I made myself and says "Can I have some ketchup?" you realize, my dear and lovely blog-readers, you realize that there is not enough booze in the world.

BUT! Saturday is the first! And you shall get a taste of the Sci Fi Novel of Mystery! Which you lovely blog readers may have for free! REMEMBER THIS. IT IS THE PLAN.

Labor. Day. Weekend. Why did I think this first was going to be anything other than OH MY FUCKING HELL THERE ARE PEOPLE? There will be fancy doughnuts. There will be armies of fancy doughnuts. They shall dance through my dreams like soldiers. Square ones. With powdered sugar on them. Which I shall fry and fry and fry until--

BOOKS! Right. And I am confident in promising that the book itself WILL be live by weekend after next. Not only that, but you will get a sample of the next one after that, a continuation of one of the stories in Silver Bullet...

The liquor store is scared of this week. The fucking liquor store.

Be here on Saturday. Look at the Sci Fi Book of Mystery in all its mysterious goodness and shiny shiny artwork, and leave me comments. Not necessarily on the book. Just remind me that there is life after Labor Day.

P.S. No less than three purry incursions. I surrender. I will throw her out of the house before Mother and Stepfather return, but I know when to bow to the inevitable.

Names

I think the thing that creeps me out the most at work is when people use my name. Total strangers whom I have never known before. I know it's better than "hey you", but call it a pet peeve of mine. If I don't know you outside that building and/or you haven't been in there more than once? Don't call me by name. You're not my friend. You're my customer. I am not going to be buddy-buddy with you.

A lot of people ask about naming characters, too. They don't ask me, of course (You gotta have chops for that) but in the forums I visit inevitably they'll ask "What about names? How do you come up with those?" and the inevitable come up: Baby books, fancy names, remember what you like. Ect. Ect. Names are surprisingly important. Just not the way we think of names as being.

People are more likely to be successful if they have a normal name. Jane. Bob. John. Edward. Ana (my reading tastes suck sometimes. Yes. I read Fifty Shades of Gray. Yes. I LIKED Fifty Shades, and yes, eventually I will blog about that series. Someday.) (also, dear readers, never ever ever write a book where ENTIRE E-MAIL CHAINS are reproduced IN THEIR ENTIRETY. It does not work out) It gives us the impression of being solid...and kind of makes it easier for us to exchange our name for theirs.

My favorite book heroine who is not Honor Harrington (Because we can't all be Honor) is named Jane. The only slightly scary vamp in Twilight? Jane. The most snuggable character in Firefly? Jayne, which is one Y away from being a girl's name.

You know when I get annoyed with books? It is when someone starts getting fancy with names. I hated the names of everyone in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy except for Arthur Dent. I made it about three pages into Old Doc Methusulah before L. Ron Hubbard's idea of a good name made my eyes cross, and we are not going to get into what Mission Earth did to me (actually, we will. Very soon. Jesus Christ was that a bad book. I can almost forgive LRH for Scientology. I can't forgive him ever for Jettero Heller)

There are books with non-normal names that I do like. The Belgariad, for example (FYI that stands for every David Eddings novel ever written. They are all the Belgariad, just with the names changed). But he hit on a naming game that kind of eases you into it. Garion is Garion, which looks close enough to normal, Belgarath is Mr. Wolf when you meet him, Polgara is Aunt Pol, Silk is Silk...and in all his other books it doesn't matter because you recognise that Serephrena/Aphrael/Emmy/Mother Goddess Person from Elder Gods is Polgara in a new hat. (I think that he gave up after The Belgariad and didn't bother recycling Garion. Sparhawk/Althalus is Belgarath) BUT! he plays games with the names, gives you something kind of normal (Pol, Wolf, Silk, Errand) to hang your hat on so when the real stuff shows up (Polgara, Belgarath, Kheldar) you're already in love with the character.

Point? There isn't really one. Just a nice rambling for your evening pleasure.