Tag Archives: Holly Lisle

Why I’m Deleting My Facebook Account
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Today, nearly a week after a Lulzsec/Lulz Security hack resulted in my Facebook page being hacked by jackasses who sent awful spam to nearly a thousand of my students, friends, and family members before I could get the page blocked, Facebook finally got back to me on my account.

Hi Holly,

Your account was suspended because one or more photos you uploaded [my emphasis, not theirs] violated Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. This content has been removed from the site. After reviewing your situation, we reactivated your account.

[Some content snipped for being a form e-mail totally irrelevant to my situation]

You may now log in. For technical and security reasons, we cannot provide you with a description or copy of the removed content. Learn more about our policies by reviewing the Facebook Community Standards: www.facebook.com/communitystandards/

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your cooperation going forward.

Thanks for your understanding,

Cedric
User Operations
Facebook

—–Original Message to Facebook—–
From: Holly Lisle (hdl@hollylisle.com)
To: The Facebook Team
Subject: Re: My Personal Profile was Disabled

Since my site is one of those that was hacked by Lulzsec/Lulz Security, I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out the problem promptly.

Thank you.

Holly Lisle

So, first…a word to Facebook:

Don’t thank me for being understanding, Cedric. I’m not the least bit understanding about this. My page was HACKED. You’re still blaming me.

But now, what really matters

When I got back into my site, I had one thing, and only one thing, I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to apologize to each and every person who’d received spam from from the Lulzsec/Lulz Security hackers through my account.

I wanted to say “I’m very sorry you were spammed in the worst imaginable way by someone purporting to be me, and I’m very sorry I had no way to contact you when all of this was going on to let you know it was NOT me doing this, and that as it was going on, I was fighting as hard as I could to make it stop.”

What I discovered instead was that all my friends, family members, students, and others were gone. I had no way to contact them to apologize for the awful content they’d received from the hackers.

I was completely alone on my defaced, ruined, still-pornographic page.

Here’s what I discovered about Facebook.

If you’re on Facebook, Facebook owns you. They own your information, they own your contacts, they own your family members, they own your mailbox, they own whatever you create on the site. And in an instant they can take it away, and you cannot get it back. You have no other way to contact friends you connect with through the site but the way they offer you—so all the people you love can disappear out of your reach in an instant’s notice, through no fault of your own.

If you friended me on Facebook, I’m very sorry I could not reach you. I’ll apologize here and hope anyone who knows me from both Facebook and my weblog, mailing list, or Twitter, will pass this along so the people I care about, with whom I have once again lost contact, will at least know where to find me if they want to.

I will not go back to Facebook.

When I realized I could not reach the people I needed to reach to apologize, I immediately requested the page be deleted permanently.

In fourteen days, everything connected to my account will be off Facebook permanently.

I will not be part of anything that exercises that sort of control over people’s information and lives, and that does so in such an irresponsible, cavalier, and incompetent fashion.

If you have people on the site you don’t know how to reach in any other way, fix that today. Exchange phone numbers, exchange real email addresses, set up a place where you can contact each other independently of Facebook’s closed network.

Don’t assume that Facebook will be there for you, that the system will work the way it should, that if you live by their terms of service, Facebook will back you up.

Don’t end up where I am. It’s an ugly place to be.

New Writing Course Goes Live
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Holly Lisle's THE WRITING CRAFT: Dialogue -- Episode 1: Dialogue and Subtext

Holly Lisle's THE WRITING CRAFT: Dialogue -- Episode 1: Dialogue and Subtext

I’m delighted to announce that I finally got my act together and put up Episode One of THE WRITING CRAFT: Dialogue, which is Dialogue and Subtext.

 

Have tested everything, it all works, and you can check it out now.

This is the first time I’ve done a pure video course (though naturally it includes worksheet and transcript as well), and I’m delighted with the way it’s coming together.

Each episode stands alone, and you’ll be able to buy only the ones that interest you, or eventually, whole sets.

Future episodes in this 8-part series will be out as close to monthly as I can make them—but I am deep in novel now, and reserve the right to focus on Dreaming The Dead as necessary to do it right.

I hope you’ll find Dialogue and Subtextenlightening, helpful, and fun.

And I hope you have a great weekend. Back Monday.

Friday Snippet: from MOONROADS
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I wrote this and liked it. It’s a bit after the last snippet, but not so much that you can’t ellipse the missing action and figure out things have not gone well.


NOTICE: This material is copyrighted, unedited raw first draft, probably buggy, possibly not even going to be in the final book. Do not quote or repost anywhere or in any format. Thanks.

The dragon said, “It was quite clever on their part. And sure as sunrise in the morning. Because no one who walks into my lair walks back out. The bones of my victims line the passages, and the screams of the sacrifices who have been thrown to me echo still through all these chambers. Your deaths will end a lot of people’s plans, and bring joy to some nasty fellows.”

“But,” I said. “But. You know the truth. And you do not sound like you love the rich old men and all their power. Surely you’ll let us go.”

“Surely I won’t,” the dragon said. “If any lived who had walked into my domain, do you think humans or nightlings would still fear me? Do you not think they would then send in hunters to kill me for my skin, and meat, and bones. Do you not think a pack of them would sneak in here intent upon claiming my head to hang above their fireplaces, forever after to have the bragging rights for having killed me?”

His head lowered until it lay almost on the floor, and he said, “None who walk into my lair walk back out. None. Not even little human girls who have my sympathy. “

His great jaws gaped wide, and he roared to deafen us both. We screamed. Oh, Spirit and little gods preserve me, but I screamed until I was sure my throat would tear itself apart. I was in his mouth, his teeth a cage around me, and Catri was with me. His tongue pushed at me, at her, and I toppled into a great bag of skin I thought must be his stomach, and Catri was gone. I kept screaming. Screaming, and flailing. I had my dagger yet, and I tried to stab anything, anything.

I did not even scratch him. Catri was gone, though I could hear her screaming, too. And beyond the gaps between the dragon’s teeth, which the light around my neck still showed me, I heard cheering from a distance.

The cheering of men and monsters.

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