incipit vita nova

Book Reviews & Bestsellers: Still a Man's World Baby

For a few . . . months? . . . years? . . . more. But hardly forever, gentlemen.

People are still documenting who reviews what, etc. Book reviews make little different to book sales, with a few limited exceptions. But they do help to draw attention to a writer's work. And the very best of them can of course make a big difference.

I told audiences last month at Scripps College (You won't know it if you're heading in from Paris Review or the NY Times Review of Books - it's a women's college) that a lot of things were changing in the publishing industry and in the world at large.

It would seem the analysis of book reviews and reviewers posted at Vidaweb is what they call a "lagging indicator," because most of the successful books to come out of the new publishing paradigm have been by female authors. Here are some other lagging indicators:

 

 

When I went back and added in the bestseller list from the 1910s, a curious pattern emerged. Back before women could vote, they could write. And they did. My great-grandmother wrote short stories for the Saturday Evening Post during this period.

Here's some other stuff from my fake TED Talk.

 

I hope you had a good talk, Colin. Because I thought deeply about the media I shared with my young children too. So do all parents. 

Make 2013 The Year of the Woman

In keeping with my concept of "just change one thing," I've decided that this year, women should take any and all opportunities that arise. Any job, any activity, any organization. Any time a man has had the slot in the past, a woman should take it, at least temporarily. Yes, this includes Monday Night Football announcing duties, writing James Patterson books, making the current slate of Hollywood sequel-blockbusters, heading multinational corporations, and creating new bacteria in a lab.

They can start with a guest slot writing tech articles and futuristic speculations in Wired.

I wrote 2,200 words this morning because an absurd article and series of pictures was featured in Wired under the guise of predicting the "future of robots and jobs for people." If the article's audience had never read any sci fi published after 1935, seen Metropolis, or watched the Science Channel, they would think this was a thought provoking piece.

The entertaining photos featuring the always-adorable Jimmy Fallon having slightly scary sexytime with a hot robot mannequin, would be awesome . . . in another article. An article about Jimmy Fallon having a funny, intimidating get-together with a fembot.

Sometimes sci fi writers and individuals of the "tech" persuasion think they are smarter than other people. Smarter than horror writers, for example. 

Alan Rodgers, horror writer, had a name for the type of thinking evinced by Kevin Kelly in Wired: dumth.

I never liked Wired or got much out of it. Every time I do read something in it, I'm so overwhelmed by dumth I can't think straight.

The source of the dumth, I think, is people who don't know what they don't know telling other people who also don't know, that they know it all. It's nothing but a series of features illustrating comforting "factoids" to a subset of the population that's interested in a certain type of technology.

In this case, Kelly's "factoids" mesh perfectly with the obnoxious Fallon/fembot photos.

In this case, Wired backslid some from knowledge and understanding in the Fifties, and certainly from the Twenties.

In the Twenties, Fritz Lang's Metropolis portrayed Maria, a heroine in human form, and enigmatic some-time villainess in robot form.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Fifties, Robbie the Robot did a lot of stuff. This classic "Robby" shot seems like the reverse of the Jimmy Fallon/Fembot images to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seriously. Jimmy. Why be ashamed for letting your natural desires take precedence? Obviously your "friend" doesn't share these feelings. She looks proud of what you just did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wired could have snatched a woman off the street with a degree in engineering, gone to the corner Starbucks and found a random female writer, and advertised on Craigslist for a random editor whose native language was something other than English. They could have then stuck them in a room for 8 hours with an iPad and wireless connection, and asked them to come up with an article about how robots would affect jobs of the future, and the group would have come up with an infinitely superior article than what they shoveled up in another of their endless series of unexamined male tech-nerd assumptions.

How? Why?

The Kelly article focused on a number of speculations regarding robots, artificial intelligence, and jobs of the future. The title? "Better than Human." The thought-challenged fear-mongering subhead? 

Imagine that 7 out of 10 working Americans got fired tomorrow.

Seriously.

Fortunately, the article also features not-a-very-exciting robot, Baxter, a "workbot" produced by Boston-based Rethink Robotics, the same company that made the familiar household helper, Roomba. Otherwise known as a small robot that cleans the floor and trips people (as extrapolated in "Perfect Stranger" 2006).

I say "fortunately," because the article comes from a place of trepidation and fear-of-robot.

There are dozens of non-scary, non-human-replacing robots coming out of Japan right now. The adorable Riba, a nurse robot that lifts and transports patients safely and securely, is just one of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of the many jobs suggested for robot-replacement listed in Kelly's article, "nurse" is not one of them.

Kelly suggests that robots will take the pill-dispensing part of pharmacists' jobs away, leaving them with more time to consult with patients on medications, unaware of what actual pharmacists do, or that they've already made this switch. He is blissfully unaware of the many other tech factors that have impacted the pharmacy industry and that medicine as a whole, is working to move closer to caregiver-patient quality relationships worldwide. Robots, high-end technology and information technology are all being used in myriad ways completely not addressed in the Wired article, and far from losing 7 of 10 jobs, health care is the fastest-growing field producing many jobs throughout the world.

 

But I digress into one illustration of the article's dumth. There are dozens more.

That's not my point. My point is, the way we conduct our dialog about lots of things needs to change.

My one simple thing is: give women the microphone for a bit. Let them lead the discussion for a change.

Do this for a specific period of time. Twelve months, let's say. 

Let this be women from non-traditional backgrounds. Let it not be the daughters or wives of senators, former presidents, corporate executives, or stockholders of major companies.

Let it be women who have not heretofore had the bully pulpit, the book contract, the TED talk slot or the microphone. Let it be women from the inner cities, from other countries, and let it be people whose first language is not English. Let the women who are currently in science, engineering and math programs have the first seat at the committee table. Let women serving or retired from leadership capacities in the military take the helm of the ship, and, hold your breath, gentlemen -- take charge of an army or two. Let them lead R & D programs. 

Let them write books. Let them make films. Put them in charge of television shows as showrunners. Don't gatekeep their stories, just put them out there. Start feeling the legitimate humiliation and embarrassment you should feel when you announce repeatedly the most "notable" fact about a first-time female U.S. senator is the fact she is gay. No -- it's not. What she has accomplished are the most notable things.

What's the worst that can happen?

I don't know -- why not ask IBM, Sam's Club, Yahoo and Guardian Life? They all instituted female CEOs in 2012.

Is Campbell's Soup still tasting good and selling? Are there new, tasty soups in the works?

Yes.

Already there are too many women out there doing all of these things for the media and management muzzle to shut all of them down and shut them off. The horse has left the barn. Meg Whitman is back in charge as a CEO at HP. There may be problems with her tenure, and she is not necessarily the best CEO ever, but she, along with Carly Fiorina, will always have the distinction of serving as a lightning rods so Ginni Rometty (IBM), Denise Morrison (Campbell's Soup), Marissa Mayer (Yahoo), and the most powerful American-based CEO you have likely never heard of, Indra Nooyi, born in Chennai in 1955, who has led PepsiCo for over a decade, could do their work without being shot down from behind by a media that hates women who break molds and barriers.

Why, the world has changed so that it hasn't even been able to shut me up. The robot that selects links and articles when we write these posts selected my own writing from December. Dalek Sec, himself an artificial, mechanical lifeform, knows these truths.

 

 

 

What a thought. Seven out of ten jobs lost to robots? How about all of them, Dalek Sec - all of them! 

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Jumpstart Your Creativity By Changing One Simple Thing

Jumpstart Your Creativity By Changing One Simple Thing

Over here at ASterling, I'm going to be adapting my business information for a writing and creative audience. Here is this morning's information about how you can make a single change or do one small thing in order to get the projects going and completed that you want to do.

You can change your life. You can make things happen and energize your creativity. How do I know? Because I'm the biggest procrastinator on the planet! I've thought about my own business for the past ten years. Here are a few of the things that held me back:

• Inability to find a satisfactory logo
• Inability to come up with a name
• Inability to get website going
• Inability to complete a business plan for my self

As they say, necessity is the mother of all invention. That famous quote originated with the Greek philosopher Plato, so it has been around for a while.

So, what changed? Here is the story, and how I realized that anybody can jumpstart their creativity and spring into action by changing one simple thing.

After writing numerous business plans for other people and working with them to achieve their goals and make their dreams become reality, I became increasingly frustrated. Every time I tried to really move forward, I found myself frustrated by dozens of small barriers. I'd already come up with a name - that hurdle was covered. I had a basic idea of what I wanted to do. But I hadn't done any of the other needed steps, except reserving a domain name.

As we used to say back in third grade at Mentone School, "Whoop-de-doo."

I tortured myself. This was worse than writing a book, worse than finishing a story, worse than any writing work that I procrastinated about. It was even worse than grading papers. Sure, I could have gone back to all those steps and little tricks I'd learned to force myself to get work done in the right amount of time.

Somehow, because this was for me, I kept coming up with excuses, I kept hitting brick walls, and I never got the things done that I knew had to be done in order to start my own business.

What is the one single, simple thing I did that jump-started my creativity and got my business off the ground? The one single thing that got me to complete the logo, complete the business plan, and start everything? After another frustrating early morning session trying to get a few things done, and another fruitless logo search because, although I've done hundreds of logos for other people and other businesses, I could not possibly do one for myself, nor was I pleased with letting someone else do it for me, I did it.

I opened a file for myself on my computer, just like I was a client.

That's right. I put myself to work - for myself.

In the words of Emeril Lagasse, "Bam!" Suddenly, the work got done. On time, too. Because now I had a client. I could see the client right there in front of me. This client needed to get things done. I knew what those things were, too. After all, I'd done those things over a hundred times -- for other people.

Now it was my turn. I was working for myself. I had better do at least as good a job for myself as I always do for other people.

That's what I mean about "Just change one small thing." Nobody's going to start a business overnight, and there aren't very many overnight millionaires. I think just those people who win PowerBall and this type of thing.

For me, the one small thing was to physically open a file on my computer. This gave my mind access to all the resources, work and knowledge I had built up working for other people's benefit. Don't ask me why I am that stubborn, or find it that difficult to do these simple things for my self. I honestly don't know. I just know that everything changed after I did that one simple thing.

What's your one simple thing? Is it a phone call? A post-it note? Ordering business cards? Or is it simply opening your own file for your own self on the computer, making yourself your own client?

If you are starting or growing a business in 2013, or you would like coaching for your own business, please visit my corporate website, Pacific Human Capital.

Success as a Writer: Is it Based in Conformity or Creativity?

Successful writers are conformists, not iconoclasts. The "Way of the Cookie" may be mysterious and yummy; the way of the storyteller is much less mysterious. It's all about telling stories that people want to hear.

I woke up in the middle of the night and re-watched Eli Roth's episode of Discovery's Curiosity series. The "Bear Jew" is one of my favorites, even though the Hostel films are not. The show explored "How Evil Are You?" Roth had an MRI and genetic analysis to determine whether or not he had genetic and physical "psychopath" tendencies. He also rebooted the famous early '60s experiments of Yale's Stanley Milgram, which showed the powerfully disturbing truth: about three-quarters of people will inflict fatal harm on others if told to do so by an authority figure. The experiment's subjects are sad and sometimes extremely guilty and conflicted about hurting other people -- but they go ahead and do it anyway.

 

I've been looking at months of conformity among other writers on my Facebook list. The best, most original posts and forwards aren't coming from other writers. They're coming from artists and photographers, but mostly from my family and real-world friends. All this conformity was starting to hurt my heart. I could not and still cannot see how this type of thought process would produce good creative work. I have begun to question my lifelong assumption: creative artists are more flexible in thought than the "average person" and are less susceptible to conformity and authority. 

I'd like to think that I'd be one of the 25% who wouldn't shock someone just because an experimenter told me I "had to do it." But I've been familiar with the Milgram experiment for years; I have an advantage. I am aware of this, and know to say "no" when confronted with this situation.

I haven't had an MRI like Eli, nor have I had a complete genetic profile that would show me if I had "psychopath" or empath genes. 

Based in years of experience, I know I'm somewhere farther away from the conformity scale in what I choose to do as a writer. In a desire to actually sell my work and please readers, I've increasingly taken time in recent years to analyze "what works" and "what doesn't."

A writer cannot be completely nonconformist and reach a broad audience of readers. Work that is too strange, too disturbing or too far from the interests of most people will remain exactly that. Frequently, storytelling that is well-known, yet lacking large numbers of readers, is simply conformist to a smaller subset of the population which represents the audience for this work. I have my Paul Bowles shelf; others continue to buy and read Burroughs' Naked Lunch.

More people probably bought and read 50 Shades of Grey during a single week earlier this year than have bought and read Naked Lunch in the 53 years since its first publication. I'm not enthralled with either work for different reasons. Some might see 50 Shades of Grey as "breaking new ground" because it introduced explicit BDSM sex to a readership of millions. Yet it is deeply conformist, coming out of Twilight fan fiction. Grey made the hot fantasies of thousands of Twilight fans into a concrete story, scrubbing off the "Edward" and "Bella" personas and replacing the fantasy of star-crossed immortal love with astonishing wealth and the pleasures of the flesh.

The pitchtastic process is the same thing. 50 Shades of Grey is "Twilight Meets 9 1/2 Weeks Meets Wall Street." Twilight is "Romeo & Juliet Meets True Blood." The Hunger Games is "Hansel & Gretel Meet The Running Man."

I started talking about "successful" writers. This group includes writers like E.L. James, Stephenie Meyer, and Suzanne Collins. But what about writers who break ground? It is possible to break preconceived notions and achieve tremendous success. 

I was fascinated by Ursula LeGuin's cri de couer on the Book View Cafe blog this past week. I know Ursula and I are quite opposed in official political sentiment. But her questions and observations were exactly correct. Our country has devolved to a lower standard of living and a lower moral standard. People are accepting statements as fact from leadership that are anything but. They are not comparing daily quality of life with official pronouncements, they are overlooking obvious horrendous behavior on the part of people in positions of fiscal responsibility, and are not acting like they want to work together to make anything better.

Ursula is a great writer, uncompromising and thoughtful, powerful and skilled in all areas and levels of storytelling. The stories she has told matter. They are not "other people's" conformist stories; they are her own. And she has also achieved success and deserves much more.

We are not built to be a society made up of millions of Ursulas. We are built to be a society made up of millions of people who will fatally administer shocks on the order of those in authority. The only reason we don't go Nazi Germany is that we have sufficient guardian angels in our society, for the time being, who will step up and say "No - stop - this is wrong." 

Maybe I am one of those people, and maybe I am not. I know I am not someone comfortable with writing "Twilight Meets Gone With the Wind." I'm pretty sure I don't share genes and brain architecture with "The Bear Jew" because, while I can watch the Hostel films, I would never do it for pleasure. I've always told people they don't really want to see me do a full-on horror story because the stories I tell are very real to me, and while I might stand up to the authority figure in the Milgram experiment even if I didn't know what was going on in advance, I might also be that experimenter.

As to pitches, I can do them all day. Here is a new one for you: "Lord of the Rings meets A League of Her Own." Go ye to it and write. If I can make a story out of an Altoids tin, you can make a story out of that.

 

We Only Have One Book In Our House

My daughter Meredith attended a Christian school. When she was in third grade, I was waiting outside her classroom for parent marching orders, and thought I’d make small talk with another mom, a lady whose child had attended school with my daughter since kindergarten. I and Meredith’s dad were splitting up at this time. I had already been branded with a slutty career woman “S,” at school, and even worse, Meredith’s dad . . . wait for it . . .

Picked his daughter up after school on a Harley.

Even though I’d marked myself as headed for Perdition, I foolishly thought there’d be no harm in a few words of small talk. I had started writing for younger readers and was asking everyone remotely connected to a child about the type of books they enjoyed. “Have your kids read any of the Harry Potter books?” I asked.

“We only read one book in our house,” she said, her nose wrinkling as if I’d bathed in eau de Brimstone. No — a spritz of Burberry Brit. Satan’s own fragrance.

“They’re pretty good,” I said. “Why don’t you –”

“They promote witchcraft,” she said. “He rides a broomstick and they do magic.” This last word was spat out like two watermelon seeds.

As the tone and the whole thing sank in, I thought, this woman would gladly burn every book that is not The Book. I cannot let her in my house. Although I owned three versions of The Book, I also had 2,000 other books. Dear Lord, I thought — what must she think about the library? Bookstores? Even the Christian bookstore! There were books in there covering Satan, sex (within marriage), or even witchcraft . . . at least, “Here is what to look for if cats start disappearing in your neighborhood.”

It’s a kind of strange karmic justice that the things people most fear, or that they most try to prevent, end up being certainties.

My husband and I were the first couple to get divorced in the small parent circle at the school; we were hardly the last. Our breakup due to growing apart, that we tried hard to handle properly for our daughter’s sake, was painful for her. Over time, it became clear that this was a walk in the park compared to the dad who was caught having “relations” with the church secretary, a child’s false sexual molestation allegations, the garden variety drinking and drug problems and affairs, bankruptcies and other financial disasters, and of course, kids coming out as gay. The stricter the house and more sanctimonious the parents, the worse these things were.

The interesting thing about the ALA’s frequently challenged books lists is how many of them I’ve read. What a ridiculous rebel I am, for I have read many forbidden things. Perhaps the choice is between Hell later for eating of the forbidden fruit and riding Harleys, or Hell on earth, which is what we would have if we only read one book in our houses.

You didn’t think I was really wearing Burberry Brit, did you? It was eau de Brimstone all along.

Banning Books Is Un Sexy

BANNING BOOKS is very unsexy.

Did you know that all of Mark Twain's books have been banned at one time or another?

Most people have probably heard about the more recent banning attempts against the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The more recent objections are because of the use of the "N-" word in the book. 

Banned Books Week is coming up - September 30 through October 6.

This is one of my tribute pictures for Book View Cafe's upcoming homage to . . . Banned Books Week. Stay tuned.

 

Official Release: Female Science Fiction Writer

Female Science Fiction Writer (Short Story Collection)
Collected Stories 2001-2012
Amy Sterling Casil
June 26, 2012      $4.99      ISBN:  978-1-61138-188-7



Mint-addicted aliens. Talking horses. Little girls in wheelchairs who get the chance to pilot starships. Odd little jade carvers who save the last great Mayan city by magic. A sexy wolf girl who saves a teddy bear boy and her clown boyfriend's heart. A famous director who cloned herself and now is dying of cancer, only she's raised her clone like a normal child. Guys at the end of the world who discover they're not the world's greatest poet, they're about as bad as it gets. Fourteen stories by award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer Amy Sterling Casil.


Southern California-based science fiction and fantasy writer Amy Sterling Casil has written 26 books, and currently teaches at Saddleback College and lives in South Orange County.

Happy Female Sci Fi Warrior

This book of first stories by "giants" in the sci fi field came out in 2010, and it does contain a story by Nicola Griffith, but others noticed that it has 15 stories, 14 by males, and one by female author Nicola.

First off, if somebody called me a giant, I'd be a little distressed. Putting that aside, the editor James L. Sutter, who seems like a perfectly nice guy, caught some flak for including 14 early or first stories by 14 older white guys and one female science fiction author. "Giant" in this anthology's terminology is a relative term. One might give "giantlike" status to a number of the contributors, but others . . . it's almost like . . . well . . . can't go there. 

Was it some ACCIDENT that I titled my second collection Female Science Fiction Writer? No.

There's another book, I believe from the same publisher (does that cover above look "retro"? - CHECK THIS OUT)

I cannot outdo this. Under no circumstances can I cheese anything up to remotely compete with this awesome piece of awesomeness.

I am going qualify this by stating that Robert "Bob" Silverberg is one of the nicest-looking, classiest gentlemen I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. He is so classy, he classes up that cover that manages to take all the delight of hot James Bond girl opening film credits AND the phallic rockets of yore and geez, I guess - there's 3 of 'em! Sincerely, it's a contemporary cover that recognizes the multi-orgasmic potential of the female . . . er . . .

Listen, these other people who objected to the Before They Were Giants cover mentioned a "vagina dentata" aspect. Well . . . maybe more just like vagina tentacula or something.

What the !!! Holy !!! The more things change, the more they stay the same. Just by clicking on this article, I managed to place it above my own book. Awesome.

Yes, in 1980, Susan Shwartz wrote an article about female science fiction writers that could well have been written today. Whichever female authors were "accepted" then - they are the same ones now. Even extremely brilliant female scientists like Catherine Asaro write books that appeal more to female than male readers (often called "sci fi romance"). I know Catherine's books are popular, but the Goodreads list of books by female science fiction writers is like "all C.J. Cherryh, all the time." Now. This is not to take anything away from C.J. Cherryh, because her books have been deservedly well-read and loved for many years, but . . .

If people would give us a chance, is all I'm saying. I never even thought of writing under any type of pseudonym and I can't be anything other than what I am. But I have a hard time believing somebody would actually read Female Science Fiction Writer and . . . maybe people aren't aware that typically, stories that win either a Hugo or Nebula award have fewer than 300 votes (usually less than that).

Did ya know that? Those do not influence sales (Hugo award does, for novels). There is no such thing as "sales" with short fiction.

Just read my work. Pretend I am a man.

 

Inside Cover for Female Science Fiction Writer

I hope this looks good in the eBook format . . .

Female Science Fiction Writer June 26, 2012

Well, looks like some cover designer finally did something - for me!