On Friday, they turned into migraines and icepick migraines.

On Saturday, the vertigo returned, and the headaches stayed.

I got a few hundred words written on Saturday and again on Sunday on WARPAINT, but did not do anything online.

I’m working on LESSON 23 of the Self-Pub Expansion of HTTS today, and again, am working through migraines and vertigo.

I’ll answer the additional story and writing questions from the party as quickly as I’m able, but it won’t be today.

I apologize for the delay. I had a wonderful time at the party. Thank you again for coming.

TALYN Party

But while we’re here (and simultaneously live on Twitter) meet my other guests, hold conversations with each other, and ask me whatever you’d like.

I’ll happily answer questions about my books, both in-print and upcoming, my move to self-publishing, do writing neep, whatever.

I won’t give spoilers, but I will give hints.

There may be a lag in seeing your FIRST post appear; if you haven’t posted here before, I have to MANUALLY approve your post (which does pretty well keeping spam off my site). But once your first post is approved, the rest will show up right away.

I’ll be splitting time between answering posts here and Twitter, and will be around from 10 AM to 3 PM Eastern Time.

We may get crowded. If by chance we crash my site, I’ll still be on Twitter. Join me there.

Follow @hollylisle

Thank you for coming. I’m delighted to have this reason to celebrate, and delighted you’re here.

The OFFICIAL party is now over. But I’ll still be answering posts and questions here over the weekend If you have anything you’d like to know about books or courses or writing or whatever, I’ll be here tomorrow and Sunday after I get my words on WARPAINT.

Party on Friday

You don’t have to do anything special to participate on the weblog, but if you want the live feed, you’ll need to create a Twitter account, and then follow me.

Twitter is here:

http://twitter.com

My Twitter name is:

@hollylisle

I’m taking the day to just hang out online and talk to people, eat virtual chocolate, drink virtual champagne, and litter the place with virtual confetti.

Why?

Because for more than six months, I’ve been requesting rights reversion on TALYN, which has been out of print for quite a while.

And AFTER more than six months had passed, I received notice that Tor would not be reverting the rights; that they had decided to print ebook versions of both TALYN
and HAWKSPAR.

At which point, Robin and Beth got all the necessary paperwork together, and informed Tor that it had passe its six month grace period, and that their position was
the rights belonged to me.

There was a long, painful silence between last week and this week.

And then today, I received the rights reversion from Robin and Beth.

TALYN, which I consider the single best book I’ve written to date, once again belongs solely to me.

I’ll send you a reminder either late Thursday or early Friday. And a link to the party page.

I hope you’ll join me. We’ll have fun.

Cheerfully,
Holly

Here’s the latest.

Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about

Note that the article, while pointing to no increase in temperature since 1998, also notes that the folks who brought out the data say that even though temperatures are dropping, they think “man-made carbon dioxide” will be sufficient to keep everyone warm.

If that’s true, China will have the best temperatures around: it has much of the world’s heavy industry and air you can cut with a knife. The US, with relatively clean air, won’t have that spiffy man-made carbon to keep it warm.

Note also, however, that there’s debate over the release from the Met office—that scientists aren’t all falling in line with the thought police’s “carbon is more important than the sun” mantra.

Here’s the thing. The sun has regulated temperature on this planet since there was a sun. And a planet. Temperature increases in the late last century fit with the planet’s relationship to the sun. And those increases were nowhere near as great as pre-industrial increases.

The planet’s temperature cycles. It does this without out us. It did before there were humans, with much more variable swings than we’ve experienced in the last 200,000 years. It will continue to cycle without us, and not just in the next ten years or hundred years. We’re not experiencing carbon warming. Or carbon cooling. Or whatever the power-hungry decide to claim as the next great crisis.

We’re experiencing weather. Weather changes. Invest in coats and greenhouses.

(Thanks to Jim Woosley for the link.)

And for the much, much more I’ve written about this over the years, use the search button on the right side of the navigation bar, and just type in “global warming.”

Ignore Google’s ads at the top. You’ll fine a long list of my stuff.

Cady and Warpaint

I’d originally set Cadence Drake: Warpaint (my current work in progress) three years after the events in Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood. I did this because I wanted to get back to Cady’s story after she’d beaten the darkness from the first book, after she had found her way back to being a whole human being again.

But over the weekend, I realized that in doing this, I was missing the big picture and a huge, powerful story—the story of how Cady reclaimed her soul.

So on Saturday and Sunday, I put aside everything I’d already done with the draft I’d been working on. I’ll save that draft as a possible later book in the series.

And I redrafted a new, forty-scene outline for Warpaint the way it needs to be told: Cady the Weapon of Vengeance goes to war against hell and wins her way back to being Cady the Human.

I know I’m on the right track this time. How do I know?

Because this is the Cadence Drake book I’m terrified to write.

People who don’t write novels generally can’t imagine why writing one might be terrifying. I’ll explain.  My process includes living inside my character’s head while I’m writing. Cadence Drake is the person I would be if I were her—to borrow a description from Lawrence Block—and to write her honestly, I have to slip inside her skin and live through everything she goes through. And I have not given Cady an easy life.

But there’s more to this, because Cady is also the character I created who ended up fighting through an alternative version of personal darkness I was facing when I wrote her. I didn’t want to go back to the place where I left her, and I didn’t want to look too closely at why I didn’t.

It turns out I hadn’t fully answered for myself the questions I’d left her with—questions about how and why you choose to live; about how you pick your fights; about how you decide in a world in which darkness is falling and where no good answer is easy, what is right and what is wrong.  It would have been much simpler and less painful to have just blown by those questions with a quick “Three years later…”

Only I hit a point in the draft I was writing where I had to look at Cady’s questions anyway, and ask myself how she’d come through that hell, and what price she’d paid to win back her soul, and how she’d stepped out of the darkness.

And…no good answer is easy. The good answer doesn’t scream “Here I am!” at you.  The good answer whispers, “You’re going to have to fight to find me and earn me.”

This weekend, in brief form, I fought, and found in the good answer the true story of Warpaint.

This is the story I have to tell.

I was wrong. Now I'm sheepish.

You start by saying, “I was wrong.” So I’ll start there.

Last week, I looked at the EULA for a piece of software called iBook Author, and based on reading the EULA and on reading the interpretations of the EULA by folks better at this than I am, and based on the understanding that iBook Author was designed to be the creation point of original work, and not as a formatter of work created on other platforms, and with that understanding seeing in Apple’s EULA a serious and unethical rights grab, I pulled my own work from Apple’s website on principle, and informed my students that I could no longer recommend iBookstore as an ethical market for their work.

While the comments I received were primarily emotional posts about hating Apple or opinion pieces based on nothing, I also got several quiet, reasoned comments about how the software was NOT a word processor, but was in fact a software packager, a creator of interactive software designed specifically for use on the iPad.

So I downloaded the software.

And the folks who said, “It’s not a word processor” were right. It’s not software for novelists. It’s pretty nice software for taking courses you’ve created and adding interactive media to them. It creates software, and that software is only usable on the iPad.

I would not present a novel in this software, or software like this for other platforms. But iBook Author would be one way to create a version of my How To Write A Series course, for example, which depends heavily on video, with transcripts and worksheets. And paying Apple to sell the course on its site truly would be no different than paying Apple its commission for selling my books through its bookstore.

Apple has done nothing wrong with either the software or its EULA. Folks who misunderstood the nature of the software, including me, got it wrong.

My  actions and final recommendation, then?

ACTIONS

• I’ve put my books for sale on iBookstore again.
• I have sent an email to my students and readers explaining the error I made, and where my error lay.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• If you use iBook Author, make sure that you have created your work in a word processor that will allow you to preserve formatting, pagination, headers and footers, footnotes, bibliographies, etc. in a form you can easily copy and paste INTO iBook Author and other
• I recommend iBookstore as an acceptable market for writers, along with Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and CreateSpace, all of which follow open accounting practices with your work, pay regularly, and currently offer favorable terms to self-publishers.
• I strongly support presenting your work equally and simultaneously in multiple markets and formats, in order to keep competition strong among bookstores, and in order to keep the terms of each bookstore most favorable to the individual independent writer. Don’t give any market special treatment or exclusivity: Doing so will permit that market to kill competition, and eliminate your ability to work for favorable terms.

Thanks to those of you who took the time to point out what the software actually is, and to show me by example where I made my mistake. I am pleased to be able to correct my error.

1-25-2012
ADDED LATER:

I added the following in reply to a post by Scrivener, and have added it here in case later replies move that post off the page:

Okay, let me run through this for you in specific detail, so you understand why I reversed my previous position.

From Apple’s EULA including a definition of “THE WORK”

IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a “Work”), you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple.

Understand—I’m not a lawyer. I am a writer who has pored word by word over every contract I’ve signed with every publisher I’ve ever had, and over the changes my agent made before that contract hit my hot little hands. So I have experience reading contracts that apply to me. A lawyer might take my interpretation here and tell me I’m full of shit. But I’ll take that chance.

THEM: If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a “Work”),

ME: If you are charging people for the product you create with our product

THEM: you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore)

ME: you may only sell or distribute THE WORK YOU CREATED ON THIS SOFTWARE through Apple.

This is where understanding definitions comes in handy, and why I require people writing on this weblog to post their definitions when using words in ways that don’t fit the real definition of the word.

It’s also why it matters that this is a single-platform, limited-use ebook formatter, and NOT A WORD PROCESSOR. A word processor creates something that is intended to be used for original creation of original content. Such a clause on a word processor would be a rights grab.

In the first part of the sentence, “THE WORK” is defined as “that which has been created on this software.” That is its sole and limiting definition. It does not apply to any version of the work created on other software. You have to hold both parts of that clause together. You cannot separate them. If you separate them, you misunderstand the clause. As written, it is a single, self-limiting clause that makes clear the version to which Apple claims an interest in is the version created on their software—and their software creates a version that can only be used on one specific platform (the iPad) which they have created and own.

THEM: and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple.

ME: If they’re going to pay you, you have to sign their contract. Which you have to do to sell ANYTHING on ANYONE’s platform.

THE LONG VERSION:

Here’s the clause:

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

And then the next paragraph is bold-faced, just so you don’t miss it:

Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including
without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.

Here’s the guy who found, dissected, and posted about it, along with his dissection, and it will save us a BUNCH of time if you read his article.

So what’s the problem? You’re not going to use the damn software anyway!

Nope. I’m not. But I had ten books up on the iBookstore, which I put there using iTunes Producer, which is software. I do my epub versions of most of my books in iWorks Pages, which is software. And I work on Apple computers, an iPad, and an iPhone, all of which use Apple software. OS X and iOS 5 at the moment.

And the rule of software is this: Software does not get to dictate the use of output. Period. Software does not get to tell you WHERE you can sell what you’ve created, only that you have the right to sell it (in the cases where software requires a commercial license if you are producing for profit).

Software does not get to tell you, “If you create this work on our software and we don’t want to distribute it, we own the rights to the version our software created, and if you want another version, you will have to disassemble this one, and rebuild it from scratch on other software.”

The purpose of purchasing and/or using software is to make your work easier.

It is not to have the software claim ownership of any part of what you have created with it.

There is no difference—except in number of people affected—between a company claiming ownership of the rights to something you created with its ebook publisher, and something you created with its OS.

The principle is identical.

(Apple is not claiming to own rights to your work if you work on OS X. My removal of my own work from their site is on principle, not because my own work is affected.)

And there is no number of people affected that is insignificant. The smallest minority is the individual, and minority rights protect the rights of the individual because those are the only rights there are.

So THAT is why I pulled all my books from distribution on the iBookstore, why none of my further books or any of my writing courses will be going to the iBookstore, and why I can no longer recommend the iBookstore to my students.

And this in spite of the fact that Apple makes my favorite products in the world, and I hate like hell having to do this.

And if they remove their damn clause and respect the purpose of creative software and the rights of the individual, I’ll go back.

COMMENTS have now been closed on this post.  Please read the follow-up post, and if you choose, comment there.

I’ll be back when all the yuck is over.

Join the PIPA/SOPA Strike Tomorrow

All three of my sites: http://hollylisle.com, http://howtothinksideways.com, and http://writingcoursesnow.com will be blacked out tomorrow during the strike.

I am a writer, and my work is currently being pirated on a number of sites. I have done everything I can to have the pirated works taken down, so please understand that I am NOT a fan of piracy, and furthermore, I am one of the people these laws are ostensibly supposed to help.

PIPA and SOPA are bad laws.

They will NOT help me. They will not help anyone. They will simply give the US government and other governments that follow suit a way to break the Internet.

Please join me in protesting these laws, and use the links provided from any of my sites during the blackout to contact your representatives and tell them that you do not support these laws, and consider support of them an infringement of individual rights.

The Case of the Displaced Detective: Book 1

1. In a single sentence of thirty words or less, describe your main story, hero, conflict, and why my readers will love your book.

   Physicist Dr. Skye Chadwick discovers an alternate reality wherein Sherlock Holmes is destined to die at Reichenbach and rescues him, but can Holmes thrive – even survive – in our modern world?

2. What is the core of this story, your passion for writing it, the reason you wrote THIS book and not something else?

   This is a fish-out-of-water story. I wanted to take one of the most brilliant men in literature and place him in a situation where he had only two choices – lose his mind, or man up and adapt.

   Grow.

   Learn.

   I’ve been a “Holmesian” since childhood, so he was the logical choice. And once the “plot-bunny” bit, I couldn’t NOT write it. 215,000 words spilled out of me in two months. Which is why it’s a two-volume: The Arrival, and At Speed. The Arrival is an “origin story,” with foreshadowings of a spy ring after the project that brought Holmes here, and by its end we go full bore into the mystery, which unwinds fully in At Speed.



The Case of the Displaced Detective: Book 2

3. Which character do you most love, and why?

   I adore Holmes, always have, always will. He’s so brilliant, and so very human, at the same time. I wish he WAS real.

4. What was the most difficult part of writing this book, and why?

   Keeping Holmes true to himself as Doyle created him, hands down. Holmes’ character and quirks are fixed. And here I was, putting him in a situation that would stretch his very reason to its limits – imagine being jerked from your own world, leaving everything and everyone you have ever known and loved behind, and transmitted 150 years into the future! And yet I still had to maintain the essential Holmes.

5. If you were to pick a quote from the book to represent you, your writing, and what readers should expect from you, what would it be?

   “Everyone please stand behind the yellow line until the doors open. No food, drink, flash photography, or video cameras are permitted. Once aboard the ride, please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times until we come to a full and complete stop. Otherwise, they’re apt to end up in another universe somewhere without ya, and wouldn’t that fry your noggin?”
   —Skye Chadwick, The Case of the Displaced Detective: The Arrival

• http://www.stephanie-osborn.com
• http://www.sff.net/people/steph-osborn/DDTheArrival.html
• http://www.sff.net/people/steph-osborn/DDAtSpeed.html

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