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I suppose that it could also be called ghetto. Whether you choose to call what I write ghetto or niche (profane or polite) it doesn’t change that fact that it is what it is.
Even as I write this post, I know that someone will snap up pieces of it as a justification for their own choices.
I proved myself to myself in my youth. Yes, I rant and I rage at times, but in those still, calm moments, when I am centered and at peace, I would not change what I have.
I don’t know how many of you ever listened to Frank Sinatra, but his song “I did it my way” has always touched a chord with me. I always did it my way.
It was never easy and there was hell to pay for it more often than not. My grandmother despaired of ever teaching me anything as a child, because for every good solid suggestion she made to me, I came up with a different (frequently less workable) solution to the problem we were discussing.
My daughter is like that also. Many times I just want to slap her. But then I have to shrug and grin, because we all know that paybacks are a bitch. Everything that she does to me, things that infuriate me most, are the exact same things I did to my grandmother.
I keep dragging my feet about trying to get an agent, or even finishing something new to submit to an agent or a publisher.
It all comes down to ‘my way’ and wanting to do things my way.
While I would love to have books published by the majors, I would have to give them what they wanted.
My way. My way is not their way. I have enough fans and an audience base to enjoy. But more important is my lifelong inability to compromise.
So instead, I will keep my niche and plant roses in the flower boxes of my ghetto, and be satisfied with what I have.
Because I can do it my way.
Why does it always come down to this?
I’m dealing with a prima dona over at my message board.
He’s been a freelance journalist for all of 18 months.
And he’s giving inaccurate advice to people.
And I’m a washed up, unprofessional, has-been for challenging him in my usual Cuss Mode.
Basij shots to death a young woman June 20th
I joined HWA in 2003. I was not prepared for what greeted me. My response to that was the following post created on 9/28/03
Needless to say it got me into a shitload of trouble.
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I would like to say that after closely observing the functioning of this organization from an anthropologist’s standpoint I have decided that what I am witnessing is a little league game comprised of five tribal groupings. I pray that you will have patience and understanding as I present to you my findings.
Tribe a) Angry Pros and their allies, the serious affiliate students of the craft
Tribe b) Coalition Forces of the Self Published Overly Glorified (including those from PA) authors and OEWs (old embittered wannabees)
Tribe C) Associates and neo-pros
Tribe D) Occasional Voices of Reason
Tribe E) Loose Cannons
It is a troubling and often distressing mix. Especially, for me, Tribe B. Supposedly this is a professional organization which, out of the goodness of its heart has expressed a serious willingness to allow the inexperienced with no professional credentials so that the pros can “pay forward”, and instead it has been turned into a sycophantic vanity press hotbed where self-styled, self-published, self-acclaimed geniuses whom no professional editor has yet paid to publish congratulate each other for buying their way into print. And then Tribe B wonders why the others are so unaccepting of them. Well, DUH. Let me point out that taking something to a vanity press is a cop-out, it’s a lame excuse for not doing the job, for not paying your dues and seeing it through, for not making that commitment to excellence and giving it all you have. It is not a reason for congratulations.
No one ever said that making it as a writer was going to be easy. No said that you were even going to make it. Only that you had a shot at it. But buying your lame ass way in is like some john walking up to a damned prostitute and asking how much for a blow job. You want to sleep with a lady, you gotta earn it. You lame ass jocks ought to stop fondling yourselves and start doing the damned job. This is probably going to be taken down as soon as sys ops gets a look at it but at least some of you will see it. And I’ll probably post it on my website and extrapolate.
Like all of the books in the Lycan Blood series, Kynyr’s War (book four) was a victim of the original publisher, Renebooks. I dropped entire threads that contributed to the conclusions of the last and second to last books in the series, because if they went beyond a certain length the publisher, Jean Marie Stine, would chop them up into components like she did the first three books in my Dark Brothers of the Light series.
I just finished revising and restoring over 40,000 words to Kynyr’s War. The Doherty family is now back in the books as they were originally meant to be instead of appearing (almost) out of the blue in the final two novels.
I have pitched it back to the editor and now wait on his reactions to it. There were a few places where I did not make the changes he asked for, and instead requested that he clarify what he wanted a bit more. The final version will come when I have that clarification in hand and can work on it.
And of course, he has to approve all of the added material.
I try hard to communicate with people, but then when I finally lose my temper they are surprised and offended.
To my mind I had tried repeatedly to discuss and make it all understood. At times I have believed that I was understood.
In the end nothing was achieved and months passed.
I suppose there are two possibilities.
1) the person did not remember our previous conversations.
2) I cannot communicate well.
I suppose I ought to add a third one:
I can’t succeed at anything.
