Blog Archives

Not Overrated

8/29/2010

It seems there is a fad this month for columns listing the most overrated writers in America, England and Canada. At least in Canada, the columnists followed up with the most underrated writers. The criteria for overrated is pretty simple – they sell reasonably well, win prestigious awards and are feted by national media and critics. To be underrated it appears all that is required is that you’ve toiled in obscurity. I like to think I’m reasonably well read; certainly I’ve read all three of the English writers mentioned and eight of the ten Canadians (and know the other two by reputation). I even had read the work of three of the underrated Canadians (though I have to admit I never heard of the other seven). The American list was a bit surprising – I’d only read one of the writers and never heard of the other nine. Don’t travel in the right circles, I guess. Oh, yeah, I have no idea who the column writers are either – other than what was said about them in the journals that published their views.

All lists are subjective. In some cases, I agree with the assessments of the various writers’ over- or underrated-ness; in a lot of cases I don’t. I’m sure the columnists are infinitely more qualified to judge literary merit than I am – at least one of them has a Ph.D. in literary criticism for goodness sake. (Though I do recall a Nobel laureate in physics once saying about a colleague’s fascination with UFOs – a Ph.D. is not an inoculation against foolishness.) Still, the tone of all the pieces does have a smidge of “why do people pay attention to them instead of me?” or perhaps just: “That will teach you to snub me at a literary gala!” My own feeling is that history will judge these things not newspaper columnists or even professors.

Having said all that, here is my list of ten writers who are neither over or underrated – merely rated by me as great. Half are dead; the rest are alive and still producing. I have excluded anyone I know personally. Since that includes a lot of SF writers, I’ve purposely left all SF writers off the list. And I’ve only included writers who write in English or for whom translations are readily available.

William Shakespeare: the author of some of the greatest plays in the English language, the work of Shakespeare has been attributed to a variety of other writers – mostly members of the aristocracy (who says the class system is dead in England?). King Lear is a model of how to construct a play; Twelfth Night, a masterpiece of comedy that explores the full range of humour. I’ve been lucky enough to act in a couple of Shakespeare’s plays, most notably as the Roman Emperor in Titus Andronicus and over the years I’ve seen about ten performed (and read most of the others).

Ernest Hemingway: winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Hemingway evokes strong emotions among many people – especially those who haven’t read him. In some respects, Hemingway’s public persona was a cover for a surprisingly sensitive and troubled writer. Among my favourites: his early novels, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms and his short story collection, Men Without Women. (“Hills Like White Elephants” exemplifies Hemingway’s iceberg theory of writing – nine-tenths submerged.) A Moveable Feast means we’ll always have Paris and the unfinished Islands in the Stream is as good a text for learning how to write as any available (Hint: compare the three parts of the novel to see how Hem went from rough to polished drafts.)

Tennessee Williams: my first in-depth exposure to theatre as an adult came from portraying Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Since then I’ve added The Glass Menagerie, A Street Car Named Desire and The Night of the Iguana to my favourites. Though his talent faded as the years went by, his ability to portray the tortured soul never left him.

Italo Calvino died too young at the age of 62 while giving a series of lectures on literature in New York. Six Memos for the Next Millennium – though left incomplete by his death -- are valuable to any serious writer. The Baron in the Trees, Cosmicomics, Mr. Palomar and If on a winter’s night, a traveler... all exemplify the values he extols in the Memos.

Chinua Achebe: Achebe’s first novel “Things Fall Apart” remains one of the most important novels in African literature. Though his subsequent fiction output has been sparse (five novels and a couple of short story collections), he continues at age 80 to produce poetry and literary criticism and non-fiction.

Tim Winton: may be the best writer produced by Australia (fans of Peter Carey may differ). His ability to portray the people and environment of western in deeply moving terms is amazing – as is his command of the English Language – Dirt Music, The Riders, Breath. All should command your attention.

Umberto Eco: people either like Eco or they don’t. The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum are immensely complicated and playful and Travels in Hyper Reality is simply ‘unreal.’ He also wrote a great essay a few years ago on how to spot fascists.

J. M. Coetzee: another Nobel Prize winner – this one living. The Life and Times of Michael K is a good place to start. And then keep going. (Of course, the fact we share a middle name probably biases me.)

Margaret Atwood: the only Canadian (and only woman on my list), Ms Atwood isn’t always brilliant (especially when she tries her hand at SF) but she is always close. Even a bad Atwood novel is worth reading just for the skill of her writing; at her best she is as good as they come. The Robber Bride is my personal favourite.

Ezra Pound: what can I say? A fascist, a lousy husband and often a worse friend, Pound was a magnificent poet and one of the founders of modernism. Try Imagist Poems or the Pisan Cantos.

Honourable Mentions: Christopher Marlowe, F. Scott Fitzgerald (for his short stories), James Baldwin, Salman Rushdie, Virginia Wolfe, Michael Chabon, Eugene O’Neill, Robertson Davies, Jane Austen and Sylvia Plath.

Choosing Leaders

8/26/2010

I’ll get back to blogging about writing soon but this has been on my mind for some time – even before, in a recent opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, Jeffry Simpson criticized the Australian process for choosing political party leaders. The leaders are chosen (and deposed) by the elected MPs. Both Gillard and Abbot – the leaders of the two largest parties – obtained their positions by leading caucus coups. Gillard replaced a sitting Prime Minister in the process. Mr. Simpson seems to view this as somehow less democratic than the Canadian practice of electing leaders by party members although Australians say it makes leaders attentive to caucus opinion at all times and is, therefore, fully democratic.

But is it actually less democratic? Remember in the Westminster system the Prime Minister is the person who can form the government by holding the confidence of the elected MPs. If a Prime Minister doesn’t have the support of his own MPs, how can he have the confidence of Parliament? But there is no system to replace a sitting leader if he doesn’t want to go – at least until the next leadership convention. Michael Ignatieff only become leader of the Liberal party because Stephane Dion agreed to resign. Then it had to be confirmed at the subsequent convention.

It should also be noted that no less an icon than Margaret Thatcher lost her job because of a caucus revolt. She was voted out by sitting MPs and replaced by John Major. More recently, Tony Blair left before he was really ready because of a threatened caucus vote. So Australia (despite its republican leanings) is more in line with the “mother country” than Canada. The Canadian practice of electing party leaders – and therefore Prime Ministers – by party members is a weird blend of British and America processes.

In the USA, presidential and other candidates are selected by each party through the primary process. Every registered voter (who are seldom party members or activists) can vote in the primary of their choice: republicans for republicans, democrats for democrats and independents for either (or in some case both). Tens of millions of Americans vote in primaries to select the candidates for various offices from President on down. And then they vote in the election for the candidate of their choice (who may well be different from the person they supported in the primary). And in the US, Presidents don’t require the support of the Senate or House of Representatives to stay in power and often govern with their direct opposition.

But in Canada, we let our leaders be chosen strictly by party members. In other words, roughly 200,000 political activists (roughly 0.6% of the population) choose all the party leaders (as well as candidates for all the other offices.) Because the leaders can claim to owe their office to aparty members, they can largely ignore the grumblings of discontented MPs who have few options to express their discontent – other than crossing the floor to another party or sitting as an independent, both of which are drastic and politically costly actions. And if that isn’t elitist enough – only about half those activists make political contributions, which means they have a lot of influence over what their parties stand for.

Recently, Alberta Conservatives experimented with letting everybody in the province vote for their leader in a multi-round process similar to American primaries. They wound up with Ed Stelmach – but that wasn’t the worse choice they could have made. I’m not sure if that system would work elsewhere in Canada (remember over 60% of Albertans routinely vote Conservative so the party was pretty sure an actual Conservative would be elected leader) – but it might be worth considering if we ever get around to real electoral reform in this country.

In the meantime, I’m not opposed to letting caucuses choose their own leaders. MPs are elected by a lot more people than party leaders (despite media spin, none of us actually vote for a PM – just for the MPs in our ridings) so it can’t be less democratic than our current system. Imagine what a change it would make in our current PM if he actually had to listen to someone else, even if it was only other Conservatives.

Senate Reform (Redux)

8/24/2010

The recent Australian election has me thinking about electoral reform – and why not? Prime Minister Harper himself, on his first visit down under, expressed the view that the Australian Senate was superior to the Canadian one because it was elected. Of course, as his wont, the PM didn’t dig a lot deeper. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so full of praise for the Australian system. Not that it’s a bad system but not one that would warm the hearts of Canada’s Conservatives. Mandatory voting has got to be more intrusive than a mandatory long form census.

For those who don’t know, Australia has a modified Westminster-style Parliament just like Canada, that is, a bicameral system with an upper chamber called the Senate and a lower chamber titled the House of Representatives (our Commons). The head of government is currently the Governor-General (though Aussies have strong Republican leanings and have often talked of replacing the office with a President) and the Prime Minister is the head of the government (usually majority) party in the lower house. The Senate, like in Canada, is not a confidence house and can’t defeat the government – though it can defeat government legislation. It also can’t initiate money bills (i.e. raise taxes or directly require the government to spend money). It can lower taxes and it can indirectly result in the government spending money to meet policy goals.

However, it is the method of election that makes Australia significantly different from both Canada and the United Kingdom. The two houses are elected with all of the HR seats and about half of the S but the method of election differs between them. In the lower House 150 members are elected by votes in constituencies. However, the Australian ballot uses a preferential system. That is, each voter marks their ballot by listing their order of preference for each candidate – 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on. If a candidate gets over 50% when the first preferences are counted, he or she is elected. But if no one gets 50%, then the candidate with the fewest votes is dropped and their 2nd place votes are distributed. This continues until one candidate gets over 50%. (Interestingly this is the same way the Hugo and Aurora science fiction awards are determined.) That candidate can then say that more than half the voters prefer him or her to the loser. Preferential voting tends to favour big parties and prevent little ones from winning many or any seats. It generally produces small majorities for one side or the other. This year, for the first time in 70 years, they have a minority, but other than Labour and the Coalition members, there is only one from the Greens and 3 or 4 independents – all former National Party members who rejected the Coalition.

As an example, suppose you were voting in a three party race in Saskatchewan. You prefer the NDP candidate but could live with the Conservative. The Liberal gives you the creeps. You put a 1 beside the NDP candidate and a 2 beside the Conservative. On election night, the first place results are Liberal 40%, Conservative 36%, NDP 24%. In our current first-past-the-post system, the Liberal would win. But suppose ¾ of NDPers feel the way you do. Then, the final tally would be Conservatives 52%, Liberal 48%. The winning candidate would be the one who initially finished second. I use this example because this is pretty well what happened in Australia on a national level. The Coalition (Liberal and National party) got more first place votes than Labour but Labour got more votes than the Coalition preferentially. Hence both parties can (and are) claiming to be the people’s choice.

But what about the Senate you ask. The Australian Senate is elected on proportional representation so that the number of Senators elected (selected from party lists made public before the vote) pretty much reflects the number of first place votes the party got in the election. As a result, the Senate is a much more diverse house. There neither the Labour party nor the Coalition is even close to a majority. The Greens have 16 Senators and the balance of power. And that is the way it usually is with the Australian Senate. Governments may have a majority in the lower house but usually have to negotiate with other parties in the upper Chamber. It has certainly led to some wild political deals and several constitutional crises.

So what would such a system do to Canada? It’s not easy to predict with certainty but one can make some educated guesses. Canada is a very different country than Australia. Though there are certainly regional differences in our antipodal sister, they are not as marked as in Canada. Australia has no equivalent to Quebec – or Alberta for that matter. So over the short term, the impact on the House of Commons would be minor. In Canada, over half of MPs are elected with over 50% of the vote in their ridings – so initially at least those won’t change. Polls show that very few voters who don’t vote Conservative make them their second choice. In Quebec, people who don’t vote BQ in the first place aren’t likely to support them as their second choice.

So, for the first election or two, the Liberals would do considerably better, the Conservatives and BQ somewhat worse and the NDP and Greens would pick up a seat or two. But over the long term, we would tend towards the same system as in Australia. Generally the Liberals and Conservatives would dominate – taking up positions just to the left and right of centre. The other three second-tier parties would eventually be diminished in the House of Commons – though the Bloc might hang around longer that the other two. For a while both the major parties might be stuck having to negotiate with separatists to get their programs through but I think majorities would be the rule.

But the other parties would never go away – because they would all win seats in the Senate. In fact, there would be a proliferation of small regional or national parties all aiming for representation of their own views, not in the House of Commons but in the upper chamber. Based on the last election we would currently have about 39 Conservatives, 28 liberals, 20 NDP, 11 Bloc, 6 Green and maybe one “Other” in the Senate. That assumes the national vote applied – if PR was applied on a provincial or regional basis (reflecting the current purpose of the Senate) those numbers could be quite different. And in the future there might be even more diversity. Wouldn’t that be fun?

I wonder if that is what Steven Harper had in mind.

But, of course, these kinds of changes like any substantive Senate reform would require a constitutional amendment. Good luck with that.

What are you afraid of?

8/20/2010

The most common question writers get from non-writers is: where do you get your ideas? My response is generally – “Ideas? I’ve got more ideas than I could possibly use.” Either that or I tell them I buy them by the job lot on e-Bay. Depending on my mood.

However, one real answer to the question is I ask myself (and sometimes other people) basic questions. Everyone in science fiction will have heard Isaac Asimov’s definition of the field. SF is all about the response to three uses of the word “if”: if only..., what if... and if this goes on. But there are some other questions that are just as valuable.

Two that come to mind: What are you afraid of? And what could you not bear to lose?

Fear and loss are two great triggers for powerful writing. Almost all horror writing, of course, begins with “fear” – whether stark raving panic or more subtle existential terror. And loss figures in much of great literature, whether it is the lost generation that Hemingway wrote so eloquently about or the more intimate losses of “The Time Traveller’s Wife.”

At this point in my life, I’m not afraid of very much. Death not a big concern though I worry sometimes about the transition. I don’t like spiders or Brussels’ sprouts but I’m not afraid of them. And there are lots of things I’d just as soon avoid – fundamentalists and home renovations are both pretty annoying. But they don’t turn my spine to jelly. No. Dentists and bears pretty much cover the gamut of my terror. I don’t think either of these fears are particularly irrational. I have a long history of suffering at the hands of dentists – even the best of them have managed to cause me pain and the worst – well, it’s a long story but I’ll summarize. I had a dentist once who insisted that a root canal should be done without anaesthetic so “I can be sure I get the entire nerve.” Foolishly, I let him do it.

As for bears, I know most bears will run away if confronted. I know from experience that this is true of black bears. But grizzlies? Polar bears? I’m not convinced. But I have a simple solution. I stay out of their habitat (wilderness parks, ice floes) and hopefully they will stay out of mine (bookstores, 4-star restaurants). That way I only have to deal with them in my dreams.

The loss question is easier for me to answer. My freedom sits pretty high on that list. I’d hate to lose flowers or my curiosity. I’d be bereft without love. All of these potential losses and more have fuelled most of my writing. But on the other hand, I never worry about losing money or things – you can always get more things. As for thinking that someone else’s gain is somehow and inevitably my loss – that just makes no sense at all.

Fear and loss are a great inspiration for literature but they make a pretty dismal prescription for life. Spending most of your waking hours afraid of someone or something must be terribly debilitating. The debilitation makes it pretty hard to act rationally. That’s why so many abused women have a hard time getting away from their abusers (not to mention that the are controlling violent monsters who refuse to let go). Worrying constantly that someone or something is going to take away what you value must bear heavily on your spirit.

Yet fear and loss seem to be the driving force behind much of modern conservative thinking (and by conservative I mean everything from Al Qaeda to Glen Beck – and, no, I won’t link to either of their pages). Fear of crime, fear of terrorists or infidels, fear of strangers (especially if they have a different religion or skin color) fear that somewhere someone might be having fun. And fear – irrational fear – leads to anger which leads to hate. And hate is a terrible emotion. It frequently leads to violence against those who are hated and moral decay among those who hate.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t fear or hate conservatives – though I will admit they sometimes make me mad. I’ve known too many decent conservatives and too many liberal jerks to think that one’s political persuasion is the only factor in human decency. I’ll always remember what a 70-year old Alberta rancher (and it’s hard to get more conservative that that) once said to me about gay marriage. (Imagine this in a slow drawl) “Those homosexuals just want... what everybody else wants. To be happy.”

Fear is natural as is the anger that flows from it. It is part of our ‘fight-or-flight’ response without which none of our ancestors would have survived long enough to become our ancestors. But the transition to hate is not driven by evolution and it certainly isn’t part of any moral teaching – religious or otherwise.

Hate is a lifestyle choice. While I’m a pretty tolerant guy, it’s not a choice I can support.

Can-Con Update

8/18/2010

My book launch has been rescheduled to 6 p.m. on Saturday, August 21 (instead of five). And don't forget the launch of Marie Bilodeau's new novel on Friday night!

Writing Home and Away

8/15/2010

I’m currently reading through a novel I wrote a few years ago with a view to re-writing it. The results are mixed. Most of the central ideas and a lot of the writing is pretty good; other parts – the action scenes as it turns out – are overwritten and drag. Some of the technology definitely needs an update – though not as much as I thought. It will take a lot of work to get it up to snuff but probably less than writing an entire new novel. And the story is still of interest to me, which isn’t always the case with older work.

The story involves a journey – from a place that was home but no longer can be to a place that really only exists as a hope for a better life. Cyberpunk meets The Grapes of Wrath. So some of the story takes place where I was living at the time (Calgary and southern Alberta) but a lot of it takes place in places I’ve only visited (Seattle, Idaho, New Mexico and Mexico). And of course some places I’ve only been in my imagination.

A lot of Canadian writing is deeply rooted in place. Landscape is another character for writers like W.O. Mitchell and Margaret Laurence. Where would Mordecai Richler be if he weren’t in Montreal? Robert J. Sawyer confounded popular publishing wisdom by setting many of his novels in distinctly Canadian places. Some writers write about where they live while they are living there; others, like Alice Munro, have to move elsewhere to return home in their fiction. And, of course many of the great new Canadian writers, like Ondaatje and Mistry, are immigrants who write both home and away simultaneously.

My first two plays were set in the NWT, where I lived for nine years. One was written while I was living there; the other shortly after I left. Two of the next three were set in my hometown of Amherst, N.S. It was only after I’d been living in Calgary for three years did I write something set in the city. My first novel, published over 15 years ago, was set in places that I or my father had lived in. My most recent books, The Steele Chronicles, are set in Calgary, but were mostly written while I was living in Ottawa. Most of it was written from memory.

Does the adage, ‘write what you know,’ require a writer to get the details of place precisely right? Or is there a truth that goes beyond the facts? One deliberate mistruth I told throughout the Steele Chronicles was about a jazz bar, Kaos Cafe, where I worked for a year. The bar first moved and then closed but in my novels it is right back where it was when I worked there. Metaphorically and emotionally, I needed it to be there. As I read through my old book, I come across scenes where I can say I definitely saw and heard those things; others where I know I made it up; some I can’t really tell. Does that matter? I don’t know – though as I get to the end chapters where the characters have to make new home in a place I’ve only visited – I may find out it does. Getting that right may be my biggest challenge yet.

Can-Can at the Can-Con

8/13/2010

The Conference of Canadian Speculative Arts and Literature, better known as Can-Con 2010, will take place over the weekend of August 20th to 22nd. I’m pleased to be a guest at the Con along with GOH, Marie Bilodeau, and several other Ottawa SF luminaries. If you will be in the Ottawa area and have an interest in speculative fiction or writing of any kind or just feel in the mood for something fun and different, I encourage you to attend. SF Cons are a great bargain for your entertainment dollar!

The Con opens at 5pm on Friday at the Travelodge Hotel on Carling.

My schedule:

Friday, 6pm, Time to Write: – how should a writer manage his/her time? Yes, you want to write, but when? Writers talk about time management and tips to get going on the days you really don't feel like you can.

At 7pm, I’ll be attending the book launch of Marie’s new novel, Destiny’s Blood.

Friday, 9 pm, How to Prepare your Manuscript for the Market: -- This discusses the long (and sometimes arduous) process that a *completed* manuscript
must undergo before it is published and reaches the local bookstore. From editing to sales pitches, from finding an Agent to release timing, this covers all
the tasks that authors usually are unaware of -- but are needed before a book reaches the bookstore's shelves.

Saturday, 11am Reading: I’ll be reading some of my short fiction.

Saturday, 5pm Book Launch of my new Novel, Stealing Home

Sunday, 10 am Writers’Workshop with the inimitable Matthew Johnson.

And, of course, I’ll be around for all the other fun events that the Con has to offer.

Anyone who wants to attend my Book Launch but won’t be attending the rest of the Con ($40 at the door), you should let me know by Thursday so I can make arrangements for your admittance.

The Future of Publishing?

8/3/2010

It seems that everybody I know – and a lot of people I don’t – are mulling over the future of publishing. Some people seem excited (almost to the point of Schadenfreude) with the predicted demise of big publishing; some seem distraught; most seem confused. I fell into the latter camp. I have no idea what the future of publishing will be. If I did, I’d take my life savings... and invest it somewhere else. Publishing has never been great for the ROI (not the French King but the return-on-investment).

I’m pretty sure that publishing in some form or another will have a future. Unless the fundamentalists completely takeover people will still continue to read books – probably in roughly the same type and numbers as they have for the last twenty years. E-book formats may slightly increase the accessibility of books; they may even lower the average cost (though they still don’t come close to competing with remaindered or used books) which will slightly increase demand. But my suspicion is (and I’d be happy to be corrected on this) the supply curve for books is slightly inelastic and a significant cut in book prices will not lead to as significant rise in book sales at least not in the long term. From a sample of one – I read between 25 and 35 books a year. It’s all I have the time or appetite for. Even if books were free I wouldn’t read more than I do now. After the initial burst of e-book sales – a combination of techno-geeks who don’t normally read but like the neat gadgets and bibliophiles buying e-versions of books they already own – the curve will smooth out. So the bottom line is e-books will not increase overall book sales. They will simply reduce the sale of physical books. Even the most conservative old-style publishers seem to think the balance will wind up around 50-50 for each format.

The big questions seem to be: What will the price point for future book sales? How will the revenues be distributed? Most people say that the market will ultimately determine the price of books and to some extent that is true. Markets can be rather efficient, even brutal, at assigning values to things. But the book market – like most markets – is subject to distortions. If you remember your Economics 101, efficient markets require lots of buyers, lots of sellers, preferably of similar size and perfect communication between them. I believe the parlance these days is: FAIL. Amazon and few others dominate the retail sales and a few big publishers dominate the wholesale ones. And communication between both groups and the large mass of consumers is confounded by proprietary technology, rhetoric and marketing spin. These kind of efficiencies generally work themselves out but, for a while, we are likely to see competing pricing models more than competing prices.

Economic change happens. Whenever it does, some people win and some people lose. Generally speaking in the long run, there are more winners than losers. The invention of internal combustion engine initially put a lot of buggy makers, steam and electric car manufacturers and livery stables out of business. It also dramatically reduced the horse population of North America. At the same time it made billions for the Ford family and employed tens of thousands of autoworkers at stable high-paying jobs. There are a lot of towns that exist because of the auto industry. And a lot that are being wiped out by the social, economic and environmental factors that have led to its decline. Make no mistake – the transformation of the transport industry will create a lot of new winners but that is little consolation to a 48-year old assembly line worker looking for a job at Tim Horton’s.

So somewhere down the line we will have a new model for the book business. That model will produce a lot of winners and some losers. Though there is no way to say who exactly will be on one side or the other, there are some clues. Big publishers are in trouble – some have already gone out of business and others have dramatically cut back their author list. They are caught between an aggressive marketer in Amazon who already has agents marketing backlists directly to them, and writers and a suspicious consuming public who suspect they are greedy and oppressive. I have my doubts about the rhetoric in that regard but it will create great difficulties for most publisher’s ROI to meet writers and agents demands for higher royalties and Amazon and consumer demands for lower prices. In a world where capital constantly seeks the highest return, a lower ROI means a dramatic decline in traditional publishing. No wonder they are fighting so hard!

There will still be publishers, I am sure, but they will be smaller and will struggle to be heard. More books may get published but, in the noise, fewer copies will be sold of each one.

But who cares? Well, other than the hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who will lose their jobs and way of life, I care. And I suspect, so should a lot of writers in my position. Part-timers with a few books and hopes for a modest career.

I was going to call this blog – I Don’t Need Another Job!

I am a part-time writer. I have a full-time job, one that fortunately is fairly flexible and gives me periods when I can find blocks of time to write (and others when writing is out of the question). I’m fortunate that I write quickly. But still, I have a full-time job with a salary that probably exceeds that of the majority of full-time writers (having been a full-time writer for 6 years, I know exactly how little one can live on when one is creatively satisfied). As a part-time writer, I write, I try to sell my writing and when I do, I promote it by going to Cons and using blogging and Facebook and a web-site. Some years my revenues from writing exceed my expenses; others, they don’t.

The only way I am likely to consistently show a profit is if I sell a lot more books than I currently – which means I need my current publisher to get bigger (and I sincerely hope they do – Virginia deserves it!) or I need a bigger publisher. Because frankly I need the expertise of book layout and editing and marketing to make it happen. I’ve got one full-time job and don’t want another and, when I retire I don’t intend to work full-time just to stand still.