Cover Art

After months of writing alone in my dank little cupboard, lighting pine-scented candles to wash away the stink of circumspection, I found myself wanting to be distracted. Perhaps it was the light and the air and the sound of children laughing outside as they smacked the pavement with rubber balls and the street signs with rocks.

I scrabbled through the discarded threads of my correspondence. Maybe if I reached for the outside world in this way, it would respond to me -- rather than gracing my Inbox with nihilist gifts of the bottomless Zero.

The light reached out of my screen, held my shoulders with both hands.

"Yes," it said. "It's worth a shot."

To sum,

I HAVE THE COVER ILLUSTRATOR I WANTED GLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

NOTE TO SELF IF PUBLISHER SAYS THAT IT'S OK TO CONTACT HER IN MORE WAYS THAN JUST EMAIL IT IS ACTUALLY OK

Dear Husband: I am a Philosopher DO NOT ARGUE ONTOLOGY WITH ME, BUSTER, a.k.a. The Intellectual Property Argument that Almost Got Us Kicked Out of Our Local Hipster Coffee Shop

His position
1. One must pay for an object once, whether it is immaterial or material. This means that contained within the purchase price of a book is the price of the physical book and the price of the book's content.
2. The pdf is purely intellectual property and costs nothing to reproduce.
3. Therefore, it should be legal to download a pdf freely if you already own the hardback, and
4. If you have lost the hardback, it should be legal to download the pdf for free, but you should have to pay for a new hardback, however,
5. You should only have to pay the exact price it costs to produce the physical materials contained in the hardback, as you have already paid for the content.


My position
1. When you pay for intellectual property, you are paying to pass from one state, i.e. the state of "no access" to that property, to a state of "access" to that property.
2. Therefore, if you already own a copy of the book, you should be legally allowed to download the pdf for free, because it costs nothing to produce and you retain your right to access the intellectual property contained therein.
3. But if you have lost your copy, then you should pay to acquire another, because in losing your copy, you return from a state of "access" to a state of "no access".
4. Specifically, then, as the ontological object of "the book" and the physical medium in which that object is expressed, the hardback copy, are entwined, if you lose your physical copy of the book, you have no right to download the pdf for free.


Undesirable Consequences of His Position
If I find a book on the subway that someone has lost, it is immoral for me to read it, because I haven't purchased the intellectual property rights for that book, which are retained by the original owner.

Undesirable Consequences of My Position
The penalization of people too stupid or lazy to back up their pdfs, who then subsequently lose all of their copies. My position requires they buy their next copy.


DUDE WHAT THE FUCK I TOTES WON THAT ARGUMENT

Drink Drank Drunk

Pardon, sorry, can I just insert some of my really rather chronic case of hipster? Cheers, ta, carry on!

We Are Irritated.

We are tempted, yes, to emulate the writing style and royal nous of le Rejectionist for this post, as WE ARE ANNOYED, yea mightily.

BUT, dear entirely phantasmagorical readers (we check our stats, we KNOW) as we are NOT, alas, le R., as we are, in fact, an Author Friend -- a loyal and steadfast, though quiet and actually ENTIRELY COMMENT-LESS Author Friend, in fact --which may result in any attempt at emulation appearing to the cynical eyes of le R. as perhaps a form of CREEPY FAN-DOM, we feel it is our duty to return to our own positively DRY AND CIRCUMLOCUTORY voice.

We have also decided to make our presence quietly known at le R.'s Snake Mountain comment feed. JUST IN CASE.

[...]

1 (a) - Have been given far more creative control than is normally afforded writers of books save in the realm of vanity publishing, which is great, because
1 (b) - My publisher is not a vanity publisher. However,
1 (c) - My publisher is a small independent. Furthermore,
1 (d) - My publisher is a start-up.
1 (e) - She is also a lovely, insanely busy person. This is because
1 (f) - She is the number one go-to person translating her native language to and from English, and who wants to set up this publishing company Exactly Right, because it is her baby. She has also had some things weighing on her outside of job and enterprise, viz. personal stuff, which I know only because I follow her Twitter. I am forced to do this because
1 (g) - She Does Not Answer My Emails. For Months. Ag.

2 (a) - Emailed MLFEaBFoF (Megahuge Literary Fiction Editor and Best Friend of Father) because I miss my dad and even though he died years ago, I'm still getting over it, and I'm gradually trying to regain the connections I felt to his side of the family and his friends, despite it being horribly painful and something I would rather avoid.
2 (b) - I am paranoid that MLFEaBFoF is wary of my "getting in touch" advances because I want something from him professionally.
2 (c) - As is evident to my loyal EPRs (see above for acronym), I display such a depth of utter naïveté when it comes to holy shit he/she edited/wrote/sold WHAT/HOW MANY networking that I did not even realize that MLFEaBFoF was M until very, very recently.
2 (d) - You have to understand, I tried to network a little bit after my epiphany several weeks ago. I called my mother and asked her if WKSFAaOFoM (Well Known Speculative Fiction Author and Old Friend of Mother) would be maybe, perhaps, just a little interested? Maybe? If it's not too much trouble? In reading a tiny, eeny, weeny, little smidge of my book? PLEASE GOD DECIDE YOU LOVE IT AND GIVE ME A JACKET QUOTE PLEASE Just for feedback.
2 (e) - I did not go this route with MLFEaBFoF. First of all, he's a lot more M than WKSFAaOFoM. Secondly, he was a friend of my dad's, which means he's cynical. Thirdly, he's fucking famous, which means he's Cynical. If I want to keep my genuinely-affectionate-sounding-tone-of-voice-when-answering-the-phone-privileges, I must Never Again mention my aspirations towards literary fiction unless asked. MLFEaBFoF is a Total Dude and Truly Awesome and thus I am horrified by the idea that he might think I'm trying to use him.
2 (f) - To Sum: it is the case that I suddenly realized the potential of networking and in doing so remembered I really should keep in touch with MLFEBFoF for entirely different reasons. However,
2 (g) - The P.O.S. (Do I need to explain this acronym? Really?) part of my brain tells me that I'm TOTAL SCUM contacting him for all the wrong reasons, so I feel guilty. Cheers, brain.

3 - I just realized after months of worrying that I'm going to come under my contracted approximate word limit, I may well come in at 20,000 words OVER. &*%@$*!!%&.

4 (a) - The illustrators on my I Want Your Art to Do My Cover Hard list are all super nice and super patient.
4 (b) - Publisher pushed deadline for list back until January, not specifying when in January. I asked her how many people she wanted on the list in oh, November. She has not responded. I sent her a list of five people last week. She has not responded.
4 (c) - &*%@$*!!%&.

5 (a) - I joined an online writing group of sorts early last year.
5 (b) - One of the members of said group has been an absolute dick to me for perhaps a few months. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I've been somewhat absent from the group because of it.
5 (c) - She's pretty influential in the group.
5 (d) - In the real world, she's not published and nowhere near publishable.
5 (e) - The conflict between (c) and (d), plus the fact of (b) and my status as actually getting a book deal holy shit leads me to simultaneously believe that she's acting this way because of jealousy and also how can I think that she's just jealous what the fuck am I, she knows other people being published and she's not a dick to them, it must be she just hates me for no fucking reason, and also that I'm annoying the fuck out of her somehow and it's not her fault.
5 (f) - She's very subtle about being a dick, so I can't rally support.
5 (g) - She occasionally displays gratuitous niceness to me, either because she's feeling guilty or because she's unaware of what she's doing.
5 (h) - She's cutting off the one resource I have left for critique and friendship given my RL friends are scattered to the winds and are all busy, awesome people.
5 (i) - TELL ME YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM OR SO HELP ME I WILL WRITE MY NEXT BOOK ABOUT HOW MUCH YOUR WRITING SUCKS. And I will sell it in the millions.

Grammar 101: Colons and Semicolons

Semicolons

1. A semicolon can only join sentences. It cannot be used in place of a comma.
2. When a semicolon joins sentences, it conveys the suggestion that they have something to do with each other, like a progression in thought, in space, or in time, or perhaps as a group of concepts. It is therefore incorrect to link sentences with a semicolon when those sentences have nothing to do with each other, as the meaning intended by the author is not what is conveyed to the reader.


Colons

1. A colon joins two clauses. One of these clauses must be independent and contain the main verb phrase of the sentence to make the sentence complete.
2. A colon may only be used to indicate expansion of a concept or an idea. The clause before the colon is the concept; the clause after the colon is an expansion of the concept.


Correct Examples

1. I wonder what my mother is doing; she hasn't said a word to me in fifteen minutes.
2. The boat was well-loved: my father spent insane amounts of money keeping it in good shape.
3. To my right the curtains were red; to my left, they were blue.
4. The tube stop was horrible: graffiti covered the walls, half of the lights were flickering, and it stank of urine.