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Friends,

It's a busy month for my books.  Below are the August releases:



http://www.amazon.com/Exiled-Clan-Claw-Book-One/dp/1439134413/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1299294988&sr=1-1

In an alternate Bronze Age where the Chicxulub meteorite never impacted, sentient saurians and felines must fight for territory, as the Mediterranean Basin infills.  A shared universe with Harry Turtledove, SM Stirling, Jody Lynn Nye, John Ringo and myself.



http://www.amazon.com/Lawyers-Hell-Janet-Morris/dp/1937035018/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0

In Hell, airborne lawyers including Joseph McCarthy and SV Benet must seek the head of the most honest man in Hell, to be deposed by Satan himself.  Also catch my friend Leo's story, "Revolutionary Justice," wherein Che Guevara is condemned to be recognized as, "That guy off the T shirt."



http://www.amazon.com/Citizens-John-Ringo/dp/143913460X/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0

A collection of stories by veterans, including several classic works and some new ones. Eric Frank Russell's "Alamagoosa" is my favorite.



http://www.amazon.com/Do-Unto-Others-Michael-Williamson/dp/1439134596/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1259774149&sr=1-1

A paperback reprint of last year's Ripple Creek story.  A family that owns an entire system of resources hires Ripple Creek's best team to keep them alive in a domed mining colony of hostile agents.

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http://www.amazon.com/forum/anthologies/ref=cm_cd_dp_rft_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxZ8FZHFP6EYOQ&cdThread=Tx2TJYCXTCHU620

Interesting discussion.  I note that half or more of the comments are by people pimping their own short stories or fanzines.

Then there's this comment:

 says:
Absolutely not. Simply asking the question shows that the medium still has relevancy.

Er, huh?

"Does anyone still speak Linear B?"

No, I think that reply is a logical fail.

Consider the work of the following authors: Dave Eggers, Etgar Keret, Wells Tower, Roddy Doyle, T. C. Boyle, Miranda July, David Schickler... You cannot possibly tell me that you are unable to parse out a heartbeat there.

So people are writing short stories. The followup question is, are they making money at it, and are their publishers?  I also get the impression he's trying to impress us by namedropping. Keret hasn't published anything in several years, and his Amazon rankings are not impressive.  Eggers is doing well, but he's also one of those literati darlings. He may be an excellent writer, but I suspect his sales have more to do with zeitgeist than quality.  Schickler has published two whole books, one of which is out of print and one ranking down around 1,000,000.  So regardless of quality, sales seem to...suck.  July dabbles in everything, her last book was 4 years ago from a small press.  I had to google them and I haven't heard of the others.  They're certainly not "Stephen King," who did write a lot of shorts but now mostly writes whole books, nor Hemingway.

In SF, Heinlein got paid 5c a word in the 1950s.  That was serious money.  And around 2006, SFWA raised the minimum "professional" rate for SF to....5c a word, from 3c.  You are not paying any bills with that.

Someone comments:

The mid-length short story may be in somewhat of a (temporary?) decline as print magazines are struggling with all the publishing changes. However, ultra-short fiction forms (flash fiction, micro fiction, hint fiction etc.) are on the rise as more people discover (free) online reading and the range of ezines available.

Oh, it's hardly temporary.  Magazines that had circulation in the hundreds of thousands have dropped into the mere thousands, and there are less all the time.  The specialty mags are happy to get hundreds of readers (out of a US population approaching a third of a billion).  As for free content--it's worth what you pay for it.

It is true more content is moving online.  There's likely more of it, but, with the proliferation of amateur sites, it will become increasingly difficult to find an audience, and there will be less development by the practitioners.  You will see less and less great stories, and even if they exist, you'll see less of them as they are swallowed in the mire of puerile shit.

See, part of what professional publishing brings to the table (as many of us in the field try to remind people), is that development and filter.  Few people can finish a story.  Fewer a good one.  Fewer still can convince someone to part with a mere nickel per word up front for their story.  If no one is willing to pay a nickel per word, in the hopes that advertising will recoup those few dozen dollars, is the story really any good?  Probably not.

In exchange, the publisher brings a podium.  You can have the best message in the world.  Shout it in the middle of the Tibetan Plateau and you waste it.  Whisper it in the right location in Times Square, say, and you'll have half the world as your audience.  Then the message can do some good.

Now, the short form is not dead.  However, it's not what it used to be.  The magazines are dying, the web won't really offer much in the way of money.  These days, the primary reason a writer produces short stuff is for promotional purposes.  If you like the short content (and blogging counts), you may spend money on the heavier content.

So the answer comes in three forms:

Yes.  Kiss the mags goodbye, they're done.

No, but you're really going to have to dig to find it.

No, but it's never going to be what it was in the past.

I do still write quite a few shorts, but largely as promotion to keep my name out there.  I mean, I enjoy it, and I try to deliver the best story possible, but they're all in existing universes and the publicity benefits me more than the few bucks.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/10/us-wisconsin-idUSTRE72909420110310?pageNumber=2

justiceserved wrote:

Republicans rolling back 100 years of workers’ rights one at a time. Soon right to work laws will eliminate minimum wage, 40 hour workweek & overtime will be gone, and of course they want to eliminate the EPA & OSHA. Now if we cut laws that govern business, cut back on SS & Medicare we can continue our slide into third world status which Corporate Republicanism favors! Thank God we’ll still have our guns for the next revolution.

~~~~~text break~~~~~

Is that a threat of violence from a Dem?  Funny how that happens whenever they don't like how the legislative process works.

 ~~~text break~~~

 And a followup:

http://www.reuters.com/article/comments/idUSTRE72D73O20110314#post

Nuclear is by far the stupidest way to get energy, waste that is dangerous, hard to store, potential terrorist bomb, and all on an earth that will keep changing, destroying one plant at a time or worse yet-old obsolete plants will continue to meltdown!

 ~~~text break~~~~

 And a reply: 

justiceserved:  Coal puts out more radiation than nuclear per power produced, due to uranium and thorium particles.  The number of people killed in coal accidents exceeds that killed in nuclear accidents, not even accounting for acid rain, stripmining damage to the ecosystem, and CO2. 

Wasn't it you ranting about labor debates returning us to the 1800s?  Yet here you are endorsing 1800s technology, and the labor and filth that goes with it.

And nuclear waste is easy to get rid of.  It's been done for 60 years. The best way is to recycle it as fuel for two to three generations of power, and minimize what's left--it has less energy than the starting fuel, by definition.

Why don't you try putting away the lefticle papers and reading something above a 4th grade level?

Solar only works in sunny environments.  Wind is horrifically inefficient and damages weather patterns.  So either you accept nuclear power, or you get a pedal generator to power your intarweb.

I swear you people disgust me.  It's "big oil," "big pharma," "big finance," and now "big nuclear."  Why don't you all cut up your credit cards, throw away your prescriptions, shut off your computers and go live in the trees?  The rest of us have a future to attend to.

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Parable: 100 guys with shovels came over to my yard and dug a swimming pool. This demonstrates the value of labor.

Except it was my neighbor who wanted the pool, and those shovels were built by a capitalist corporation.

This undirected labor was valueless.  In fact, it was worse than valueless.  I now have to fix a hole, and someone is out the cost of shovels.

The capitalist who purchases the shovels, provides the blueprints, lines, marks, supervisors, and arranges the contract for the pool in the first place has more investment in the project than all the labor combined. Their investment is a few hours time. His investment is more time, more resources, more money, and development.

Therefore, yes, in fact, he is entitled to the majority of the proceeds.

The laborers can demonstrate the value of labor by going to the desert, digging holes with their hands, and waiting for prospective buyers to want to come along and line them with concrete to make pools out of them. Good luck with that.

Alternately, they must develop a source of contracts, materials and capital investment, thus becoming capitalists.

TL;DR: Marx was a @#$ing moron.

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