Ordinary Day

I am taking a mental health day today, and am giving myself minimal exposure to the Internet. I’m avoiding reading my usual social media feeds, as well as most of my usual RSS feeds as well. I don’t have enough stock of Cope to be able to deal with people right now, nor can I really comfort myself with the usual pop culture or book things I like to read about.

What I have done, though, is glance at some of the LJs and Dreamwidth accounts from people in my extended circle–QUILTBAG folks as well as allies. This is the theme I’m seeing: we’re fucking terrified, and also trying to keep it together enough to have one another’s backs. Because moving forward, into the next four years, we’re going to have to have each other’s backs even more so than we have been up till now.

I know people all over the QUILTBAG spectrum, and I know multiple people as well who are raising non-binary-gendered children. One fellow author I know was despairing about how to explain the fallout of last night to her offspring, and how to give said offspring strength to be able to face school.

I know multiple people as well who are now also terrified about the imminent evaporation of their healthcare. Because now that we’re looking at a Republican President, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate, as we move into 2017, you better believe we’ll be looking at the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Because apparently if a Democratic President put it into play, tearing it down is more important than making sure Americans who need reliable healthcare actually get it.

If you happen to be against the ACA and think it should be repealed, do us both a favor and do not try to debate with me about it. Because until I actually hear the new administration coming up with something better, I will not believe that they have any fucks whatsoever to give about Americans getting reliable, affordable healthcare. Before the ACA showed up we did not have a system that gave us this. We still don’t, even with what small gains the ACA has given us–yes, I know, the ACA has its problems, but it at least has tried to get health insurance to Americans who haven’t had it before.

And you know what else I know? I know that there are way, way too many people who have had to turn to crowdfunding to try to raise money for their medical expenses. I see GoFundMes crop up all the damn time for people who are desperate to pay for surgeries, for dental care, for treatment after accidents, and more.

How is any system of healthcare that drives people to beg the Internet for money to cover their expenses at all fair? How is it just? How is it looking out for the well-being of our citizens?

And you know what else I know? I know that the American health care system is a root cause of why my parents died as young as they did. It’s not the only cause, but it sure is a big one. My mother died in 1985. She was 38 years old. Thirty-eight. And the cancer that struck her just about the time I was born beggared our family.

My father died in 2001. He was 57. Did he ever have health insurance? Fuck no. Hell, for a chunk of when I was growing up, after Dad got custody of me and my younger brother, he couldn’t afford to keep us. He struggled to hang onto jobs and stable places to live all throughout the rest of his life. Where in here would he have ever been able to afford to pay for proper medical care for himself, care which could have realized the damage he was doing to his heart and his lungs, and which might have helped him survive that heart attack?

And you know what else I know? I know that while I have been fortunate enough to have stable, lucrative employment for most of my adult life, that even the reasonably decent health insurance coverage I’ve had has lasted only as long as my jobs have done. One of the reasons I’ve clung to my current day job with every scrap of strength I have in me is because I know what’ll happen if I have to change positions. My insurance coverage will reset and there’s all sorts of risks that my now stupidly complex medical history will get “pre-existing condition” stamped all over it next time I have to change jobs.

And that’s even assuming I change jobs voluntarily. If I get laid off and have to go back to COBRA, it gets harder. How do I know this? I know this because of all the times I’ve had between tech jobs, when I’ve been on contractor positions, and you know what all those tech contracting firms DON’T do when they’re trying to get you that year-long gig at Microsoft or wherever? Give you health benefits. I know this because of everyone else I know in the tech industry, too, who’ve been in the exact same boat.

And you know what else I know? I know that even with a well-paying job and stable health coverage, Dara and I have still had to lay out multiple thousands of dollars per year for the last several years because medical shit just keeps fucking happening. I live in low-level dread that this superpower I have of generating precancerous tissue is going to wake up and bite me again as I get older. I’ve already lost one breast, my thyroid, my uterus, and my ovaries. I’m just waiting for something else to get something growing on it that’ll have to come out–and let me tell you, when I had to have an MRI of my head lately to try to figure out why the hell I have ongoing pulsatile tinnitus in my right ear, I was terrified they’d find a tumor.

Because guess where my mother’s cancer was. Right in her brain.

And you know what else I know? I know that with a new incoming administration who is on record as being hostile to queers, Dara and I are going to be braced going into 2017 just waiting for a repeal of marriage equality. At minimum, we’ll be expecting the return of DOMA or something like it. If that happens, even though we live in a liberal state, this will impact us. It will mean we have to pay taxes at the higher single-payer rate instead of the rate married couples get to use, even if I work for a company that is pro-domestic-partners.

More than that, though, we are terrified about the ramifications for fellow members of the QUILTBAG community all over the red states. There will be a resurgence of transphobic bathroom laws–hell, that shit’s even tried to get a foothold here, and that was even before last night’s election. There will be a resurgence of hate crimes against queers.

We are terrified about what this means for people of color. Every single POC I saw commentary from on Twitter last night was justifiably afraid. All throughout this shitstorm of a year, we’ve continued to see outbursts of hate against immigrants, particularly Muslim and Latinx ones.

Dara and I have already had multiple renewals of offers from Canadian friends to give us emergency crash space if we ever need it. We’re not exactly planning on bolting across the border tomorrow–for one thing, it’s not just a matter of “fuck it we’re noping off to Canada, chuck everything into the Raptor and go”. We’d need jobs. We’d need housing. We’d need to sell both our properties. And we’d need to find out whether my stupidly complicated medical history would be a problem. None of these things lend themselves well to immediate emigration.

But there are reasons Dara and I live as close to the border as we do. And every one of those reasons was in play last night–and will be in active play as we move into the next four years.

We are terrified. Don’t try to tell us everything will be okay and that we’ll be fine–because in our experience, living through the history of how treatment of QUILTBAG persons and POCs and people of minority religions has played out in this country, the likelihood is high that no, everything will not be okay.

All we can do now is try to weather the oncoming storm and hope we do not drown.

QUILTBAG folk, women, POCs, and anyone of minority religions who reads me: hugs. Let’s look out for one another. We are going to need one another more than ever. Vent to me here if you need to.

ETA: Dara’s reaction post is here.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

I was going to point and laugh at the Puppies some more today, after seeing this post yesterday reporting that they’ve called for an official boycott of Tor. Now, I am NOT pleased with Tom Doherty’s throwing Irene Gallo under the bus the way he did–but on the other hand, several of my top favorite authors are published by Tor, and I’m fully cognizant of how trying to boycott an entire publisher pretty much only hurts the authors involved. Dara has additional commentary about why this boycott is doomed to fail, and me, I feel some solidarity with Mr. Hines: “I’m disinclined to acquiesce to his request.”

But then the Charleston news exploded over Twitter last night, and suddenly pointing and laughing at Puppies seems rather less important.

Except for this: there’s a thing that the Puppies brouhaha has in common with Charleston, with Ferguson, with Baltimore, with the pool party in Texas, and with every other horrific shooting this country has experienced in the last few years.

That thing is toxic bigotry.

The kind of toxic bigotry that leads people to sniff that SF novels with non-white people on the cover are clearly “message fiction” and aren’t as deserving of awards as books with white people on the cover. That exiles those books to minority-only sections of bookstores, thereby gutting those books’ chances of actually selling in reasonable numbers.

The kind of toxic bigotry that also erases non-white protagonists from covers and whitewashes characters, in the name of trying to make them sell better to white people.

The kind of toxic bigotry that leads people to believe it’s somehow okay to hurl screamingly racist insults under the aegis of an official genre author organization, and then to get pissy when that organization boots their ass out. Pissy enough to then turn around and orchestrate sabotage of the most revered award in that genre.

The kind of toxic bigotry that leads people to believe it’s somehow okay to bitch about non-white people showing up at a science fiction convention–because maybe, y’know, they like science fiction–because they preface their remarks with “There’s no way to say this without sounding racist…”

The kind of toxic bigotry that leads school systems to believe that it’s okay to teach their children that black slaves were “happy”.

The kind of toxic bigotry that leads otherwise rational people to feel threatened because somebody who doesn’t look like them lives near them. Or works with them. Or gets elected to political office, including the White House.

The kind of toxic bigotry that would rather destroy any chance of poor Americans getting health care they desperately need than allow a black President to succeed at something. Especially if the poor Americans in question are also black.

The kind of toxic bigotry that consistently vilifies black victims of shootings in the media, while at the same time refusing to call a white supremacist shooter what he is: a murdering racist terrorist.

The kind of toxic bigotry that can lead a young man to invade a house of worship for the express purpose of killing people who don’t look like him.

It’s all bigotry. It’s all toxic. The only difference between all of these examples is degree–whether the victims are only a little scarred by the acid or have been pushed into a roiling pit of it. It all still causes pain. And when you have to deal with an existence of constant little scars, eventually, it’s just as bad as being pushed into the pit.

And it needs to stop.

I saw this tweet on Twitter this morning:

I'm going to need all White people to denounce this ugly act of racist domestic terrorism.

— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) June 18, 2015

CAN DO. I denounce it, and the culture that has allowed it to take place. And I will also say these names: Rev. Clementa Pinckney and Sharonda Coleman-Singleton. For them, and for the rest of the victims in Charleston, I denounce the ugly act of racism that has caused them to lose their lives.

Toxic bigotry kills.

And it needs to stop.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Dara has a post up today with an analysis of Google/YouTube’s new music streaming service–and why its terms are a very, VERY bad idea for independent musicians. Her analysis, in short, is that this is aiming to make it utterly unnecessary for your listeners to come to you for any reason–because YouTube will already have all your stuff, and at a streaming quality that is essentially indistinguishable from CDs.

If you’re at all involved in independent music, you should go read what she’s got to say.

And if you’re an independent author, you should definitely keep an eye on this, too. Nick Mamatas reshared Dara’s link by noting, quote: “Imagine Kindle Unlimited if it weren’t optional and if Amazon were trawling physical libraries and scanning every book or story you’d ever written because you have one item up on Kindle.”

Because yeah. I’ve already seen reports that Kindle Unlimited is gutting ebook sales for participating authors–and may even be impacting sales for authors who aren’t participating. Dear Author noted on this post at The Digital Reader with reports to that effect, and links to further reading on the matter.

All of which, for me, continues to add up to deep reluctance to commit my work to any one channel. At the end of the day, I’m not seeing any evidence that signing up for KDP Select, for example, will do any more for me than distributing myself out to Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Smashwords, Kobo, and Google Play too–not to mention selling the print copies of Faerie Blood and Bone Walker.

John Scalzi has said repeatedly on his posts about Amazon and other big-name vendors of books that they are not an author’s friend. They’re there to make money, and if they think you can make them money, sure, they’re going to dangle shiny enticements in front of you to try to get you to commit your work to their exclusive systems. And anything that chokes off the due flow of money to you for your work should be treated with all due caution. I’m not saying indie musicians should never sign up for this new service, or that indie authors should never join Kindle Unlimited–but if you do, do it with your eyes open, and be aware of what it’s likely to do to your ability to sell your work.

In music and in writing, money should flow to the artist.

Read everything very carefully, and find out what will happen to that flow before you commit.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

As I’ve periodically posted before, I’m a member of the Outer Alliance mailing list, a mailing list for queer authors and queer allies. One of our members, Dennis Upkins, is a gay man who also is black. And as you might expect, Dennis has been paying very hard attention to the events that have been taking place in Ferguson over the last many days.

He’s put up a post called Your Ferguson Resource Packet, which is pretty much a roundup of a lot of critical reading, especially if you’re a white person who might need to make sense of the massive shitstorm of FAIL that has been Ferguson’s handling of this entire affair.

Go read what he has to say. And if you’re a white person and you find yourself getting angry or defensive, read it anyway.

Because here’s the thing. You may not be a racist yourself. Your friends and loved ones may not be racist. You may personally know and love honorable members of your local police force. But you need to recognize that this isn’t about you. Or about people you personally know and love.

This is instead about the bigger picture of how the justice system in our society is massively skewed against anybody who isn’t white. Ferguson has been an all-too-graphic case in point about this. So was the entire Trayvon Martin case. So was the Marissa Alexander case–which, notably, was a black woman trying to defend herself against an abusive husband, which should have been a legitimate defense for Florida’s Stand Your Ground law and yet SOMEHOW was not applied to her. GEE I WONDER WHY.

And there are dozens of other examples. Dennis points at only some of them. Google. Educate yourself.

Recognize too that even if you yourself are also a member of a minority (e.g., you’re a woman, you’re queer, you’re cisgendered, you’re poor, etc.), if you’re a white person, you are not exempted from experiencing white privilege due to being any other kind of minority. And what does your white privilege mean? It means that chances are really good you’re never going to experience the kind of shit from the police that Ferguson citizens have been enduring from theirs.

Likewise, it means that if you stand up and say “this is bullshit and it needs to stop”, chances are likewise really good that your voice will be given more weight simply because you are, in fact, white.

This is what privilege means. It doesn’t mean you have to feel guilty for being a white person. It means that you simply need to recognize that by default, having white skin will give you more power in our society than being any other color will. It’s the same principle in play that gives straight people more power than queer people, rich people more power than poor people, the cisgendered more power than the transgendered, and men more power than women.

And if you also think that is bullshit and needs to stop, if you want to know what you as a white person can do to help, then again, go read what Dennis has to say. And seriously listen to what he’s saying, and think before you reflexively try to engage him or any other PoC in counterarguments. Pay particular attention to what microaggressions are, and learn to recognize when arguments you may want to put forth to people of color are in fact microaggressions that they hear day in and day out, ad infinitum, and which are way, way more common than you may think. Because I guarantee you that a lot of the counterarguments that may spring to your mind are ones they’ve heard before.

(And if you’re a member of any other minority, try the mental exercise first of seeing how you’d feel if a hypothetical other person tried to wing the same counterargument at you–about women, or the poor, or the transgendered, or what have you. If it would piss you off if somebody said that argument to you, that would be an indicator that maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t say it.)

And don’t stop there, either. Here is a roundup of campaigns and fundraiders to help Mike Brown’s family and the people of Ferguson in general. If you want to put your money where your mouth is, that would be an excellent place to start.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

I’ve been seeing a great deal of brouahaha going around about the news that Facebook conducted a psychological experiment on users in 2012, manipulating their news feeds to see if showing them more negative content made them post more negative things, and likewise with more positive content.

I fall well and thoroughly on the side of THIS IS NOT COOL, FACEBOOK. Because while yes, we may have technically agreed to this with the Terms of Service we all clicked on to use the site to begin with, this is a step above that, and I feel it should have required serious informed consent for people who were selected to participate in this study.

If nothing else, I know way too many people who are dealing with a lot of hugely stressful situations in their lives, and in some cases, who are actively fighting depression. It is seriously, seriously not cool to put those people at risk by manipulating what news updates you show them, when they don’t need that kind of crap in their lives. None of us do, really.

Some of you may be saying “well yeah, duh, Facebook. What do you expect, they’re evil, we knew that already!” I grant you, this is the latest in a long line of NOT COOL things that the site has done, and I grant that continued use of the site puts you at risk for that kind of shit. I also freely admit that I get too much use out of Facebook to just bail on it on general principle. What then, can users do about this kind of thing?

For myself, I usually bypass any dickery Facebook wants to pull with my news feed (like the whole NO DAMMIT WHEN I SAY I WANT STUFF IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER I REALLY MEAN THAT thing that they seem to be willfully ignoring over and over and over) by putting all my top critical people into personal Lists, and checking those lists instead of the main feed. If you don’t know how to do that already, I recommend that as a workaround.

Also, I directly subscribe to pages I want to follow (for various bands and individual musicians) in an RSS reader. Which does still work, for the time being, and which is an argument for keeping an RSS reader around.

I don’t hit Facebook in any browser in which I haven’t installed an ad-blocking plugin. Because I have no interest in seeing any of the ads they’re likely to show me. And I also made a point of turning off auto-play on videos on my news feed, because SUPREMELY ANNOYING.

If a third-party site wants me to log in with my Facebook account, I will make a point of avoiding doing that, with a few specific exceptions. I don’t mind having Goodreads and Tumblr linked over to Facebook. Anything else I’m doing–especially anything I’m buying–again, Facebook doesn’t need to know.

Last but not least, I continue to be wary about what I put up on Facebook. Over and over, the site keeps asking me for things like “have you seen this movie?” or “have you read this book?” It wants to know where I live, what my phone number is, and all sorts of other things that, frankly, are none of Facebook’s business. I know that the site really just wants to know all this to data-mine me and figure out what ads to show me, but again, screw that. People who want to know what books I’ve read can follow me on Goodreads, which is the only place I need to be keeping track of that. Anything else about me, if I don’t post about it publicly, you probably don’t need to know. If you DO need to know, I will tell you.

So yeah. I’m not going to stop using the site–it’s too useful to me, and I talk to too many awesome people on it, particularly in Quebec music fandom. But I will use it with my eyes open, and I’ll continue to ask myself whether any given thing I post really needs to go up.

I encourage you all to do the same.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

I’m not a well-known writer by any stretch of the imagination. In any given month I’m lucky if my sales numbers crack two digits. This means, Internets, that every time a reader reaches out to me, it’s a rare and special occurrence.

I mention this because I was contacted on Goodreads by a reader who thanked me profusely for Faerie Blood, specifically because she’s a reader of color, and it meant a lot to her to see Kendis, a heroine of color. She told me that she talked the book up to her friends as well, because she was so excited to find a book with a heroine like her.

Now, y’all, I’m a white woman. And I’ll say straight up that I was a bit nervous about making Kendis a heroine of color–because since I am a white woman, by definition, I’m not going to be able to write about a PoC with the same perspective and experience that writers of color can. It’s very likely that as I continue to write Kendis (because Bone Walker IS on the way, I swear!), I’ll probably screw something up in that regard.

But on the other hand, I felt like it was important to make Kendis non-white. As with a lot of aspects of my writing, this grew out of my love for Elfquest and the simple fact that I saw the Sun Folk–elves of color!–so vividly portrayed on the pages of that series. I’m also very aware, after a lifetime of reading SF/F, that protagonists of color are still pretty damned thin on the ground. The ones that do get written about run the risk of being whitewashed on their covers if they’re written by white authors–or of being exiled to non-SF/F sections of the bookstore if they’re written by authors of color.

And I’m aware that as a white author, I have a certain level of privilege that may get my book looked at twice when an author of color’s book might not be. The same applies to Valor of the Healer, where I also have a distinctly non-white heroine (and I’m grateful to Carina for making sure that’s clear!). At the same time, I acknowledge that yeah, I might screw something up, and that I need to listen if a reader of color comes and tells me “hey, you wrote this wrong”.

I hope I have the grace and sense to listen when that happens, to learn, and to do better next time.

But for now, I want to send a public shout-out to Colette on Goodreads. Thank you, Colette!

* * *

Along the same lines as above, some links y’all should be aware of if you haven’t seen them already.

N.K. Jemisin gave an excellent GoH speech at Wiscon this past weekend, and posted the transcript of it on her site here. Jemisin is calling it like she sees it in re: racism in SF/F, and she’s not wrong. It’s ongoing, it’s horrible, and it needs to stop.

Likewise, I’d like to call out Hiromi Goto’s GoH speech from the same convention. Pretty much her entire speech resonates with me, especially the closing where she talks about the Japanese word kotodama. We are, in SF/F, writers and readers. Words are powerful to all of us. They can effect change, and as both Jemisin and Goto so passionately proclaim, there’s much our words can do if we let their spirit move us.

Just before Wiscon, too, Mary Robinette Kowal put up an excellent post on the need for diversity in SF/F over here. I’d particularly like to point out the discussion in the comments, wherein the question is raised by a straight white male writer about what he can do to promote diversity. It is very, very important to note that in the replies he got, one of the big points made was that diversity does not mean that straight white men have to shut up or stop writing. Or that they even have to stop writing about characters like them, i.e., straight white men. Diversity includes SWMs too.

Diversity isn’t a zero-sum game. It doesn’t mean that just because minority writers are getting more of a voice, majority writers have to stand down. It does mean that those of us who enjoy majority privilege–whether because of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or whatever–need to have the grace to let others have their say too.

* * *

And this also applies to sexism. Like many of you, I’ve seen the horrible news going around about the shooting in California, and the virulently misogynist motives of the shooter. I’ve seen the response of #YesAllWomen springing up on Twitter, and roundup posts like this one on The Mary Sue, featuring some of the most powerful tweets with that hashtag.

I have seen men I know posting their bemusement about what “rape culture” means, and what on earth they can do in the face of such vicious hatred. I’ve seen other men I know, however, posting their sentiments that they need to stand up and say enough and this is not okay. They’re right. Because women keep screaming this–and mind you, we’re not going to stop–but the simple bitter truth is that there are a lot of men out there who aren’t going to hear us simply because we’re women. Men need to say it too–and turn their gender privilege into a force for good.

I’ll close this post with a pointer over to this post of Vixy’s, in which she lays down a lot of words of wisdom on this very topic. Go listen to her.

Then go speak, too–because we’re all stronger when we’re speaking together.

ETA: Adding this link because thank you, Arthur Chu. Who uses his aforementioned gender privilege as a force for good.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

We have one at the Murkworks–or we did, because Paul just discovered this recall announcement talking about several different brands of dehumidifiers being recalled. DUE TO CAUSING FIRE DAMAGE.

Yeah, that’s just a LITTLE bit too much water removal there.

Couple other articles on the story:

• USA Today
• Seattle Times
• Seattle PI

In short, YIKES and check your dehumidifiers. ‘Cause I’m generally a pro-not-letting-our-houses-burn-down voter, people.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Out of respect for the ongoing situation in Boston I am holding all book release promo activity on the various social networks for the rest of the day. ‘Cause, um, yeah, seriously? I’ll keep. Y’all will hear back from me tomorrow.

Meanwhile, to friends in Boston, check in when you can and let us know you’re okay! I’ve already heard from rmd but I’m waiting to hear from lyonesse as well. Anybody else in Boston, if you were anywhere near the activity at the marathon, or had friends or family who were, my thoughts are with you and I hope things settle down there soon.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

You can’t be on the Internet tonight and not be aware that Steve Jobs has died. That hit me bleakly–less because I’m a user of Apple products (Macbook and iPhone and iPad, yo), and more just because I’m a cancer survivor. And even though I didn’t know Mr. Jobs as a human being, his work nonetheless has had a formative effect on my life the last several years. I cannot help but feel for the loss of someone who’s touched my life like that.

I played “Da Slockit Light” for him tonight–by reading the sheet music for it out of the TunePal app on my iPad, which has become a critical tool for my session practice.

And after I did that, I fired up Le Vent du Nord’s “Lanlaire” on my iPhone, and listened hard via the earbuds to try to pick out the first few measures of Olivier Demers’ fiddle solo. Because, again, music, and music delivered to me on a device that wouldn’t have existed–certainly not in its current known forms, anyway–without Steve Jobs.

And I’ve raised a glass to him tonight: Ardbeg, mixed with Blenheim spicy ginger ale.

RIP, Mr. Jobs. Thanks for all you did, sir.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

General safety tip: when you've heard that a bank has been robbed in the immediate vicinity of your evening bus stop, and that the police and FBI have cordoned off the area due to a bomb threat, alter your commute plans. 'Cause seriously, that's a bit more excitement than anybody needs on their way home from work.

I heard about this going down when the news came over the company-wide email alias at work, about 45 minutes or so after everything went down. By the time I left I'm sure all the main excitement was over, but the streets were still cordoned off. So I was betting that all the busses that normally go down Pike on the way to I-5 would be significantly delayed.

Ergo, I went up Denny instead on foot to Fairview and caught the 70 to get to the U-district (where I made a point of stopping for bubble tea and a pop into the U-Bookstore as long as I was there), and then took the 372 to get home. I didn't get home until 8pm. But then, I didn't run into any barricaded streets or cops hunting for bank robbers either, so I consider this a win all around.

In other news, I now have my final reconstruction surgery scheduled: March 5th. HR and my lead at work have been notified of what's going on and hopefully we can get this done and dealt with with minimal fuss. I'm to go in for the pre-op briefing on the 16th, which, conveniently, is President's Day. So I don't have to worry about juggling the appointment around my work schedule.