I Didn’t Tell You So You Don’t Know

I was hiding in the bathroom from him because it was the only room with a locking door. I was sitting on the toilet while I cried and stared at the hole he had punched in the wall days earlier—a punch thrown directly beside my head. I remembered that instead of being terrified of how out-of-control he was, I was grateful he was in control enough to punch the wall instead of me.

Through the door he called me a cunt. He called me a cunt because he knew it is the word I find most offensive of all. I filled a glass with water, opened the door, and threw the water in his face. You could call this “instigating.” You could call this “the role I played in the incident.” But I was enraged and it’s all I could think to do to express it.

The next thing I knew I was shoved up against a wall and his enormous hand was around my throat. My toes were barely touching the carpet. He had 8 inches of height on me. I don’t know how much weight he had on me, because he always told me I was getting too fat and I didn’t like to think about my weight.

What I was thinking was which scarf would be the best to cover up the bruises he would leave on my neck.

I don’t know what made him stop, but I think it was because I was begging and telling him that my best friend would be arriving at any moment—fear of being caught, fear of a “private moment” becoming public. When she arrived, I was crying. Again, still, whatever. When was the last time I wasn’t crying? But it wasn’t because I was scared or upset about the fight. I was crying because I was so despondent and ashamed that I had let it come to this. I didn’t think I was the type of woman who would let a man put his hands on her. I thought I was stronger than that. I thought I would have fought back. I thought I would have called the cops, kicked his ass to the curb, shouted through a megaphone what a prize piece of shit this guy was. I didn’t do any of that. Over the next weeks, that humiliation forced me into a huddled crying mass on the floor many times until I finally got onto antidepressants, and eventually got him to move out.

I told my friend we’d had a fight, and we went to see some movie I can’t even remember.

You probably don’t know this about me, because this is a story I’ve told to only a handful of people. I withheld it because of the shame. I withheld it because I was raised not to say bad things about people. People might think less of him if they knew. (Yes, the internalized politeness that affects so many women can extend to an abusive boyfriend.) But I also thought people might think less of me for saying bad things about a person, even if they were true. I withheld it because I was able to get out before anything worse happened, and I guess I didn’t think it was a story worth telling when so many women have faced so much worse. And I withheld it because I thought some people would probably think I deserved it, just a little, because he’s such a chill guy who wouldn’t do something like that unless I really pushed him.

I am fucking sick to death of reading people defend Ray Rice, the Ravens, and the NFL—or worse, chastise them for doing “too much.” I am sick to death of hearing people say “But she didn’t press charges” and “But she married him.” I am sick of people convinced that this was a one-time incident. As if being psychologically capable of punching a woman in the face hard enough to knock her unconscious can possibly be anything close to an isolated incident, instead of one point on an escalating line. As if being drunk is an excuse. If you’ve ever been drunk you know that it lowers your inhibitions, giving you the mental wherewithal to say and do the things you’ve only been secretly fantasizing about. Being drunk doesn’t make you a different person; it magnifies what’s already inside of you.

Yesterday, I was frustrated and upset and didn’t know who to talk to, so I tweeted out into the void:

• Yes of COURSE he was a "good guy." The fact that abusers are not 100% cloven-footed monsters is what fuels the apologists & victim blamers.
• While wearing the charming persona of affability & do-gooderness, they take their darkness home to unleash on those closest, most vulnerable
• You're insane to think the person you know from work or church or (LORD) the media is exactly the same behind closed doors.
• We don't judge morality, ethics, legality by calculating the ratio of a person's good versus bad actions. We judge each action.
• Each action--THAT WE KNOW ABOUT
• If you know of a person's condemnable action and still choose to focus instead on his "good", you only truly care about his value TO YOU.
• This is a time for issues to be black and white. Condemn the action. Offer aid and comfort to the victim. Period.

But today I realized I have a lot more to say than fits into 140 characters, tagged with #WhyIStayed or #HowILeft.

Every time I read someone defending any of the horrible decisions that have been made throughout this case, or talking about the part Janay played in any of it as if she were acting and speaking of her own free, unintimidated will, I feel like I’m back up against that wall with a hand on my throat. My experience is only a shadow compared to what other women have gone through and my empathy is brimming. But so is my anger and pain.

I firmly believe that the NFL and representatives from the Ravens saw the video before TMZ released it. But that doesn’t even matter. It’s not the point. We all saw the video of Rice’s callous disregard for his partner’s unconscious body. But THAT doesn’t even matter. We knew what happened. I don’t care if she called his mother a whore and told him his dick was inside out. I don’t care if she spit on him. I don’t even care if she hit him. I am disgusted by these “wait for the evidence” trolls who contemplated elaborate scenarios wherein he drunkenly teetered into her and the elevator door knocked her unconscious, and still, even now with the evidence in plain sight, assert that their skepticism puts them on the right side of history because "how could we have known."

We knew.

A man who is demanded to be in peak physical condition punched a woman in her face so hard that she lost consciousness. And most people weren’t horrified by this until they literally saw it with their own eyes.

The thing with domestic abuse is that people don’t get to see it with their own eyes because it happens in "the privacy of the home." You definitely won’t see it; it's a secret. And you know what? You probably won’t hear about it because of fear and humiliation faced by victims, who are attacked over and over again in their own minds whenever they feel obligated to silence.

I can’t boycott or walk away from law enforcement, but I am first and foremost angry that not only is Rice not in jail—he never even went to trial. I am angered that the existence of this video was obfuscated. I am angered that celebrities and the rich are protected classes in our justice system.

I’m done with the NFL for their too little too late policies and their godawful excuse for an investigation. (And for so many reasons unrelated to this case specifically.) I'm done with the lies and the pandering to calm down an outraged public.

I’m done with the Ravens for the same reasons, and also particularly for Harbaugh’s comments that he hopes the couple can “make it work,” with its implication that an abused woman is party to her abuse, and that staying with an abuser is a good and right thing to do. I’m furious no one in the Ravens organization ever made Ray Rice apologize to Janay Rice in public or express regret at anything other than getting caught and punished.

None of this matters, of course, because no one in the NFL or the Ravens is going to notice my absence from their legion of fans. I’m not going to affect anything. The games are still going to be on in my household. It doesn’t matter because no one in the NFL actually cares about women, unless we are buying up their pink jerseys and keeping their male demographic happy. I just returned from the supermarket where I saw Ravens logos on everything from flags to chips to cakes. I’ve seen two women today wearing purple Ravens shirts, one of them in my office. I just want to yell, “Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard?” The logo is everywhere, and now it feels not only pervasive, but insidious. It serves as a brand to show membership in this giant machine, a machine that steamrolls everything in its path with a very clear message that “if you are not a part of us, you will be alone.”

It hurts to feel like you don’t matter, just like it hurts to feel your back against that wall, with that hand around your throat. But for some, perhaps many, the fear of being alone against something so big is the greater of two evils.

I’m not sure what else to say except that my heart is open to anyone who wants to feel listened to and understood. If you need help, please ask for it. You can reach the domestic abuse hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), 1-800-787-3224 (TDD) or at www.thehotline.org. If you are in immediate danger, you can call 911 and they will help you. Read #WhyIStayed and #HowILeft on Twitter and Tumblr; it will give you strength and hope. Realize that alone is the last thing you are, and help, comfort, and empathy ARE available.

You are not alone.

You don’t have to be ashamed. You don’t have to be silent.

Thoughts on Boston

I had planned to spend this evening working on my novel. I’ve written about 12,000 words in the past 2 weeks, with a planned schedule of about a thousand words per day. But today, at the risk of depleting the supply of words I may have for my novel, I am going to make words here about today, about what happened today, about what may be described as a tragedy, definitely, or what may be described, less popularly, as a wake-up call.

First of all, I am terribly hurt that lives were lost or permanently altered as a direct result of the bombings in Boston this afternoon. My heart goes out to all involved. What I have to say here should not diminish this tragedy as a personal one that personally affects so many people. However, it is impossible to regard an incident like this solely in the context of personal tragedy, and therefore discourse about the incident as metaphor is demanded and must be answered.

There is a right way and a wrong way to do this, and a spectrum of ways in between. I would assert that Alex Jones chose the wrong way,  who tweeted these two sentiments in the same breath, “Our hearts go out to those that are hurt or killed #Boston marathon - but this thing stinks to high heaven #falseflag.” I am not sure what I am doing here is the right way or the wrong way. When does the window open when it is not “too soon”; when does it shut when it is too late, when people have already moved on to the next sensation, whether real or manufactured? Perhaps there is no window at all. Perhaps, to some people, it will always be wrong for me to say these things. I’ve already been accused of “turning this political” and being in “bad taste.” Perhaps others are ready to hear what I have to say. Perhaps they have been ready for a long time.

We (and Americans, I am speaking specifically to you) need to take a moment and consider our reaction to this news. When you heard, when someone told you or you saw the headline, what was your first thought? What thoughts did you have after that? How did your brain feel, your heart, your guts? Did you try to contact people to be sure they were okay? Did you spread the word? Did you research the news to see what facts were real and which weren’t? Did you formulate scenarios, imagine who was to blame, maybe even speak aloud this speculations to see if others agreed?

Did you do the same thing after Newtown?

Did you do the same thing after 9/11?

Did you do the same thing after you heard 16 civilians were killed yesterday in Iraq by bomb, bringing the total civilian body count in Iraq to 187 in April alone?

Or didn’t you know that.

Or didn’t you care.

The thing that makes the Boston Marathon Bombing different, even though fewer people are dead, is that it happened here. Except, what about the 28 people, including 3 children age 13 and under, who were killed by gunshots over the weekend. That happened here. It happened everywhere, all over America. In fact, it happens every single day, all over America.

How does your brain feel reading that, your heart, your guts? Why is it so different than when you heard that there were two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon?

I believe it has to do with the ideas of safety, expectation, context, circumstance. The problem with 9/11, the problem with Newtown, the problem with Boston is that the people who were hurt were analogs for ourselves, for our friends and families. In our minds, these people are, we are, innocents. We are supposed to be safe. We did not choose the kind of life where death and destruction are a normal circumstance. But in our minds, if it could happen to those people, it could happen to us, and the realization that we are not in control—that no one, not our police, not our military, not even our gods are in control—is frightening on a level that goes soul-deep.

The problem, though, is that when we think of ourselves that way, as innocent, as out of the circumstance of violence, the implicit assertion is that people in those other circumstances—Muslims living in a third world war zone, say, or gangbangers living in a first world war zone—are the opposite of that. Whether subconsciously or otherwise, there is the thought that these people somehow were not completely innocent or undeserving of what they got. Collateral damage in a war zone is not shocking; it’s barely news. It’s a ticker beneath a celebrity nip slip.  Getting the annual homicide rate below 200 in Baltimore is considered a success. Maybe if those people don’t want to get killed they shouldn’t be involved in the drug trade, right? Maybe they shouldn’t be poor. Maybe they shouldn’t be black. Maybe if they lived in a nice Boston neighborhood and could afford to take the day off work to watch people run for fun and not because they’re being chased it would be more gut-wrenching when they died, and people might say it’s in “bad taste” when someone else politicizes it.

You’re not safe, my fellow Americans. Your safety is an illusion. And that illusion is a pacifier that keeps your eyes off the ticker, keeps them glazed over, keeps your mouth shut except when your knee jerks because you have a ready-made sound bite you can throw at something you think deserves throwing-at. You are not safe because you live in an aggressive, hostile bully of a country—except America doesn’t steal lunch money, it kills thousands of innocent people in foreign countries, sends thousands of soldiers to die in foreign countries, and makes the deaths of thousands of victims on domestic soil into a wedge issue instead of a dire fucking emergency.

More people have been killed by gun violence since the Newtown shooting than were killed in 9/11. You want to talk about terrorism? The government has you in terror that you’re going to lose your guns so much that you forget to be scared of actually losing your life. You’re lulled into submission because we spend more on defense than the next 13 countries in the world combined so that you can feel safe, so that “war zone” is a pithy metaphor used to describe two bombs going off in a major American city, instead of your everyday forever reality. So when something like the Boston bombing happens, you get upset because something woke you up.

It’s okay to be upset. But you really ought to follow up that emotion with some good old-fashioned, red-blooded American anger. And then you better fucking do something. The window for talking about this isn’t open and isn’t closed because it doesn’t exist because somebody somewhere made you think it was in “bad taste” to talk about it, because they don’t want you to talk about it. If we want the killing to stop, if we want true safety instead of the mere illusion thereof, we must treat all deaths equally with our brains and our hearts and our guts.

Never forget.

Never forget.

How many commercial breaks until you’ve forgotten? Don’t be one more American Idle.

Here’s my thousands words. 

Reconsideration

When I posted my “Open Letter to Book Bloggers” I had no idea it would make the splash that it did. And for the first couple days it simply laid dormant, getting the same 30 or so hits I get on most posts. Then yesterday, I logged into Blogger and notice that my hit count had spiked precipitously with nearly a thousand hits on the post. By this morning, my hit count had increased over 10% from the all-time total of a blog that’s coming up on its 5^th anniversary.

I quickly realized the post had gone viral across Twitter and the blogosphere. At first, it was pretty exciting, kind of like the first time I made the front page of Etsy back in the day. I enjoyed getting into the debate and having the conversation I wanted to have. Many commenters indicated that there are valid points on both sides, and we are facing a dilemma for which there may be no correct answer. And I agree!

But I guess I wasn’t prepared for some of the backlash I got, such as here and here. I wasn’t prepared to see conversations about me instead of to me happening on Twitter and in blog comments. I wasn’t prepared to see comments on a public forum that said basically, “lol, I’m never reviewing her.”

That was tough, and I wondered if I made a mistake. I mean, I am already blacklisted at sites that don’t review indie published books. But I honestly didn't count on actually making people angry.

I want to take this opportunity to address some of the points that have come up again and again in the comments and reactions I’ve received to the letter. There are some definite themes, and rather than repeating myself by responding on an individual basis, I will cover them here.

1. The words “duplicitous” and “condescending.” Okay, I will take my lumps for this one. Those were really shitty word choices, and for a writer, I was being awfully imprecise and ignoring the effect of connotation. I regret those words and apologize to those whom I offended.

What I should have said is that I feel like I am being held to a double-standard by people who are naturally in a position of power. There are some really beautiful book blogs out there, and there are some really, really horrible ones—riddled with typos and “creative” grammar choices, terrible formatting, flashing ads, etc. But I don’t judge all book blogs based on the bad ones. I judge each one on its merit and policies, and I go through each one: Do they review my type of book, do they accept indie authors, do they want print or e-books, how many followers do they have, how well-written are their posts, have they updated recently, and on and on.

I see a parallel there between what bloggers do and what authors/publishers/publicists do—trying to judge quality and fit. Yes, it’s time consuming. Do I wish there was an easier way to narrow down the search? Only sort of, because I am mistrustful of a selection curated by others; I want to see and judge quality and fit for myself, and I don’t want to miss any diamonds in the rough.

That is, apparently, where I differ from my detractors. We will have to agree to disagree.

2. Book bloggers are not self-publishers because they don’t get paid. I heard this from multiple parties. Some people treated the label of “self-publisher” like it was some sort of insult instead of something to be celebrated. That told me right off that the stigma of self-publishing goes far deeper than I had known. I was especially dismayed to learn about some of the bad behavior exhibited by some of my indie peers. This was news to me, and I began to form a better idea of why self-published authors are so pilloried—beyond the obvious quality issues. I can’t change that all on my own, but I think we indie authors have a responsibility to cultivate our community as a much more professional one, because we have everything to lose if we don’t.

By calling bloggers “self-publishers,” I wasn’t trying to bring people “down to my level.” I was trying to show what we have in common. One blogger said I was making “a whole crapload of assumptions.” I guess I was, but I thought I was being rather flattering. If you prefer not be considered “entrepreneurial and multifaceted,” then I take it back. Another blogger called me out on this with, “I don’t buy this ‘sisterhood,’ thing, sorry.” Fair enough, you don’t have to. But I think a “we’re all in this together” mentality is much more effective for everyone than the contentious “power/peon” mentality (see #6).

But to get back to the main point of #2: the people who said this are wrong. Book bloggers (by and large) are self-publishers, or independent publishers, or whatever your preferred term. I’m not harping on this to upset you; I’m saying it because it is correct.

To publish means to issue reproduced textual or graphicmaterial for distribution to the public. So, you’re a publisher. If you’re not going through an established publication, not having your work reviewed by an editor, formatting and posting your own entries, etc. you’re doing it yourself. There are some book blogs that have staffs and run much more like e-magazines, and the term is admittedly a misnomer for them. However, the issue of money has nothing to do with whether you can be considered a self-publisher. Which brings me to this point:

3. Bloggers are not in this for the money; authors are. Tangential to #2, but different. I got several comments that suggested authors are in a different boat because we’re trying to get paid, and that bloggers do it for love. This is sensitive, so I’ll caveat this by saying that I am only speaking about myself here: I am not doing this for the money. Writing novels for money is not a good gig. I would have to sell 8 e-books or 2 paperbacks per hour, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, just to make minimum wage. And we don’t get paid to write. We only get paid when people buy our books; that’s very different. If I got paid minimum wage for the time it took me to write the book, I might actually not end up in a cardboard box eating catfood.  

I write novels because I love it. But unlike other endeavors, not only am I not making money, I am losing money. Because I am my own publisher, the upfront investment was on me. I’m still working back my debt to myself. I sent 4 spec books to bookstores yesterday, and 2 to reviewers. The whole shebang cost me over $50 (though I do admit I used the fancy paperclips for my media kit). Hopefully it’s an investment and not a gamble.

I understand now that many bloggers are receiving far more books than you could ever hope to review. It’s difficult to see the drops in the flood. I just want you to know that from the end of individual authors, we have a lot riding on each and every paperback and ARC we send out. Even NetGalley costs $399 to join; I could send out 40 paperbacks for that amount. Most of us don’t go about this willy-nilly because we can’t afford to. So while it seems like you are being indiscriminately strafed by indie authors, that's not the case for a lot of us.

4. Self-publishing is a genre, just like fantasy or hard-boiled crime. I heard this again and again: Bloggers get to choose what they review, and they don’t have to review what they don’t like. If they don’t want to review science fiction, they have a right to say so in their policies, and science fiction writers don’t have a right to rise up against them. One blogger said, “I’ve yet to receive a letter (open or otherwise) from anyone disappointed in my blanket refusal of their chosen genre.”

I agree that bloggers have every right to review whatever the hell they want and to reject whatever the hell they want. But to compare indie-published books to a genre is false logic. You might as well say that you don’t review books with red covers. Is that taking the argument to its absurd conclusion? Yes, but here’s the thing: if you know you don’t like science fiction, it’s easy to figure out fairly quickly that a book is science fiction and you can skip it. If you don’t like badly edited books (and who does?), it’s not so easy to tell. I understand that rejecting indie-published books outright is one way of skipping badly edited books. 

But you can’t say you don’t like indie-published books, period—because that isn’t logical. The only consistently common thread is the lack of official publisher backing. There are other trends and patterns, yes. However, not all books fit this imagined mold of having ugly covers and typos and bloated second acts. I was only asking to be judged by myself and not by my peers. I do not think that is unreasonable, and I will stand by that assertion to whatever ends.

5. I’m being disrespectful of bloggers’ rights to make their own policies. The issue of respect is extremely sensitive, so here I will try to tread with caution. It was never my intent to be disrespectful. My intent was to question the status quo and to propose a reconsideration. The reaction I wanted to elicit was, “Huh, I never thought about it that way.” I did not expect that so many people’s reaction would be, essentially, to want to put me back in my place. Several detractors made it very clear that I was shitting where I eat, and several promised not to review my work. I question now whether I will receive retaliatory reviews. I hope not.

The people who were most adamant about me being disrespectful also treated me with the most disrespect, including accusing me of trying to cause a stir just so I could get some publicity for my book. Funnily enough, I was also chastised for not making my contact information readily available so that bloggers could request my book. So apparently I'm a self-serving button-pusher and also bad at it.

Let me be clear: I fully support a person’s right to read and review whatever the hell they want. I can’t and don’t want to take that right away. I have not and will not pitch reviews to bloggers who state that they do not review self-published or independently published work. I have pitched guest posts, Q&As, and giveaways to them, but I will likely stop that as well. I have not written personally to any single blogger to confront them about their policies.

If you have read my letter and done me the respect of thinking twice about why you have the ban in place, and you still believe it’s necessary for you, that’s all I can ask. I’ve made my points. Obviously ours is a relationship that is not meant to be.

As I have said over and over again, I was only asking for this reconsideration.  Some bloggers found this “insulting.” If you’re insulted by someone asking you to reconsider a belief, you’re going to be insulted by a lot, including probably everything in this post.

The unexamined belief is an oppression of the mind and soul. Through this conversation, I have re-examined my own notions and preconceptions, and have adjusted accordingly. I can only ask for the same.

6. Authors need bloggers, but bloggers do not need authors. This was the hardest to swallow. The point was stated by several people in different ways, but the basic assertion was that I was wrong when I drew this parallel: 

After all, if all the authors and publishers suddenly said, “I do not give my book to self-published book reviewers” where would you be?

The people who made these types of comments are probably right. In fact, I know they’re right. You guys have the power, and we authors are at your mercy. I pissed people off with my post, and now some of them are blacklisting me from being reviewed on their sites. And I can’t do anything about it except hope that I haven’t minimized the pool of potential reviewers to such a degree that I will never be successful as a novelist.

I need you, but you don’t need me. I live in that shadow every day. But I never thought that power would be used to say to me, in effect, “sit down and shut up.”

There’s so much more to say, and many individual points that are worth addressing, but this sums up the major points. This is a conversation worth having. I love a respectful, logic-based debate, and I love even more when I can learn and cultivate more nuanced opinions based on new insights. But I don’t abide blatant disrespect, unfounded ideological anger, or personal insults. Please plan accordingly.

In response to the comments about not leaving my contact information, here’s a bunch of it:

Personal email: ellyzupko at gmail dot com

Twitter: @EllyZupko

Facebook: www.facebook.com/thewarmastersdaughter

Book website: www.warmastersdaughter.com

Media kit, including author bio: http://thewarmastersdaughter.blogspot.com/p/media-kit.html

Free download of The War Master’s Daughter: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/115259

My book on Amazon: http://amzn.to/LC9zzg

The Child-Free Question

I typically focus on writing and publishing in this space, but every once in a while something important comes up that demands a forum here. Recently, one of my favorite online magazines, Slate, began running a series of articles about women who choose not to have children. They invited readers to "submit your testimonies on why you are child free and happy."

From Slate:

Recently, Slate columnist Katie Roiphe raised the possibility that the choice not to have children remains a taboo, that no matter what we say to our childless friends at dinner parties—that we envy them, that we wish we, too, could go out every night and wake up at 11 on Sundays—we “secretly feel sorry for or condescend to or fail to understand women who don’t have children.” Not that the child-free owe us any explanation, but we are asking for one. More like a full and proud defense. Our aim here is to clear the taboo once and for all.

I submitted my answer to their request, but it was not published (in my opinion because it wasn't a cutesty, happy, inspiring story like they wanted). So I am printing it here, because I think it is an important part of the conversation. 

***

You’re right. I don’t owe you any explanation. I appreciate the chance at a forum, but the questions that live in people’s hearts about this “taboo” are not ones I have answers for. For me, this issue is not a taboo. It’s not that I can’t talk about it; it’s that I don’t want to.


It’s so difficult for child-free men and women (but women especially) to provide a “full and proud defense” because, when we vocalize the very reasons that have led us to this decision, the reasons sound more like judgments and condemnations of those who make the opposite choice. Can a mother hear me say, “I am not having children because [insert any reason at all]” and not hear, even just a little, “I am not having children because I’m better than you”? Whether parents feel sorry for us or feel jealous of us, we’re still on the receiving end of some very negative emotions. Bad juju.


Let me make an analogy: I was a religious person for a very long time. Several years ago, I stopped being religious and stopped believing in God. I “came out” in an essay published on an atheism website, but my non-belief is not something I talk about much in public because I don’t want to answer the questions that inevitably follow. I don’t want to “defend my choice.” I also don’t want to convert you. I just want to be. And many people feel that way about religion, so it’s socially accepted as one of those hot potatoes not up for discussion—a taboo. Like politics and many social issues, it’s hardly ever a polite discussion because the questions people typically ask are not borne of curiosity. They are borne of antagonism. People are itching for a fight. People want to know if you’re with them or against them.

This battle has been foisted on the child-free by a society with little intention other than to judge us, or to examine us as cultural curiosities. There are sides now. I never wanted to be on a side. I don’t want to judge your choice. I don’t want to convert you. I just want to be.

But this child-choice issue is different from religion and politics in that you can’t easily check a box and affiliate yourself. If you have a child, you are firmly in the camp of “parent.” If you do not have a child, however, there’s this weird other camp I like to call, “But.”

“But you two would make such wonderful parents.”

“But you’ll change your mind when your biological clock starts ticking.”

“But I want grandkids.”

The expectation is that if you are without children, you are in a “pre-” state of parenthood, rather than a “non-” state of parenthood. I could write you a lovely little essay about “why I am child-free and happy,” but declaring my intentions does little good, because there’s always the “but.” I don’t know how many times I’ve told my own mother I’m not having children; she still thinks I will, eventually.

And so the child-free seem unbearably difficult to pin down, even though we’re vocally and adamantly self-pinned. We don’t want to offer up the “full and proud defense” because it always devolves into a waiting game that everyone is playing without us. At what point do I “win” this argument that I don’t even want to have? How many avowals do I have to make? How old do I have to get?

I will never be able to give anyone a reason why I’m child-free that will make them say “aha” and move, satisfied, to another topic. You seek enlightenment where there is none to be had, because you are not really seeking enlightenment at all; you are seeking a mirror in which to validate your own choices. Either I will validate those choices or I will not, but it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with you.

An Open Letter to Book Bloggers

Update 7 July at 2pm: I have posted a follow-up to this post its related comments here. Please consider reading both posts before commenting, as many points of contention are addressed in the follow-up.

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Dear Book Bloggers:

I am setting up a blog tour to promote my independently published novel, The War Master’s Daughter. Through this effort, I have had occasion to visit many of your sites to learn about what you do, how you connect readers to great books, and what your reading interests are. I think, by and large, what you do is a really terrific service. However, I must say that I was particularly dismayed to find so many sites where I read this or a similar line, sometimes bolded or underlined for emphasis:

"I will not review self-published books."

Dear bloggers, while I understand the source and continuation of the stigma on independently published work, I do not understand it coming from you. And this is why:

Traditionally published book reviews appear in established magazines, journals, and newspapers. Book reviewers are paid for their work. A team of publishers, editors, graphic designers, and support personnel work together to put out a high quality product, leveraging traditional methods and channels of operation. Because of existing infrastructure and fickle audience tastes, traditionally published book reviews tend to focus on the same general crop of books—traditionally published ones (and even then, only those with a relatively high profile).

Book bloggers, however, are different. You are mavericks. You love to read and to help other readers find new books to love, and you didn’t get hung up trying break into tough traditional markets. You chose to go it on your own. But more than that, you are entrepreneurial and multifaceted. You are your own editors, your own designers, your own marketers. You work every day to build your audience and you strive to put out a quality product. You are leaving behind traditional methods of reaching an audience in favor of a model that is more flexible, more dynamic, more democratic and personal. You chose direct ownership over your work AND over your own failure or success. That’s incredible.

You know what? That’s what independent publishers and authors do, too.

That you would close your hard-earned doors to people who have the same entrepreneurial spirit as you is at best disappointing. At worst, it’s duplicitous and condescending. You chose to go the non-traditional route. So why do you only review the same books the traditional reviewers are looking at?

I’ll keep this part of the rant short, but suffice it to say that when you hold The War Master’s Daughter in your hand, you will find it impossible to differentiate it from a book that went through the legacy publishing machine. What is a “self-published book” if you can’t tell that it’s self-published? If a tree falls in the woods . . .

I’m not going to lie about my book and tell you that it was legacy published. I’m not trying to put one over on you. “I accidentally read, loved, and reviewed a book that the author put out herself! I was DUPED!” But if I didn’t tell you I put it out myself, you wouldn’t know, short of looking me up on the web and seeing me proudly proclaim it.

Dear book bloggers, you ARE self-publishers. Don’t forget that. The next time you are laying in bed at night trying to think of your next post, considering a new platform, wondering whether you should hire a professional to design your site, or worrying your audience is too small, remember the other people who are doing the same thing: authors. Consider not rejecting us outright and consider considering each book on its own merits of first impression. Is it available in print? Does it have a nice cover? Are you hooked after two pages? That's what matters—not the imprint.

After all, if all the authors and publishers suddenly said, “I do not give my book to self-published book reviewers” where would you be?

Respectfully yours,

Elly Zupko

Publisher, SMLX Books

P.S. To all those bloggers who do consider “self-published” work, and especially those who don’t even differentiate books based on publisher, thank you for all that you do. (A special shout-out to my very first blog reviewers, The Action Prose and Alien Red Queen!) Please help others to see the light.

Wherefore YA Sci-Fi?

Fresh off the heels of finishing the short story referred to in the previous post, I realize I have no idea what is meant by the cliché “fresh off the heels” or “fresh on the heels.” (Is it an inadvertant combination of “fresh off the presses” and “hot on the heels”?) George Orwell would shame me for saying that.

Let me start again: For the first time since roughly 2009, I have a finished, polished short story that I am ready to put into circulation. I wrote a few between then and now, but they were specialized for contests or based on weird prompts. The story at hand is the first I’ve written in years that was straight from the imagination, for no other reason than I had an idea and I wanted to write it down. Felt pretty damn good, if I do say so myself, and Present Me shall now say “nyah nyah” to Past Me who so recently denounced writing short stories.

Now I face the daunting task of beginning to submit my short story for publication.* This is a circle of hell with which I am intimately familiar; I am both looking forward to and dreading re-entry. Surfing Duotrope today (a wonderful, free alternative to Writers Market), I began narrowing down a list of publications to which to submit my first round. I’ll save my whinging about hard copy submissions for another post, but the target of this particular diatribe is one certain publication that came up in my search results for a publication open to soft science fiction short stories of about 4,000 words. [Anonymous Online Magazine] described its needs thusly: 

"We are looking for hard science fiction, soft science fiction, and everything in between. Think Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, George Orwell or Ray Bradbury with a YA focus." 

“With a YA focus”? Okay, so when I was a “YA,” my YA fiction was Asimov, Orwell, and Bradbury—a lot of Bradbury. (Always and forever, a lot of Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 fits neatly into the category of read this, like, now.) It should be no surprise that I was a bookworm as a kid. But the books I remember being affected by the most were not novels; they were short story anthologies—more specifically, sci-fi and fantasy anthologies that I rescued from a box of my father’s old books from his college days. I read TheIllustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles until they fell apart.

I used to sneak a copy of copy of Playboy’s 1966 Book ofScience Fiction and Fantasy into my 7^th grade classes with a different cover on it, because I was embarrassed it said “Playboy” and I didn’t want to explain. The stories weren’t dirty, they weren’t graphic. But they made me feel something unexplainable deep inside, like there was something darker, bigger, stranger than myself out there, that there would always be something to be explored, both at the outreaches of the universe and the inner reaches of my soul. I lost my dad’s old paperback somewhere down the road, so a few years back, I tracked down a used copy just to read all the stories again. They were as good as I remembered. “The Fly” by George Langelaan! “I Remember Babylon” by Arthur C. Clarke! “The Vacation” by Bradbury is still to my mind one of the most perfect short stories I’ve ever read.

I don’t remember “YA” being its own genre when I was coming up. As a young adult, I read a few YA books: some were great; some were not so great. But they weren’t the books that turned me into a lifelong reader or a writer. Sure, it was nice to see someone like me in a book, but the books that dug in their claws and never let go were the ones that gave me a salty glimpse of what it was like to be a grown up and still be frightened, whether of what you might find on another planet or of what you might find in yourself.

This may not make me very many friends, but I have to confess that I don’t “get” the whole YA thing. I understand it as a marketing handle, but it ends there. I do believe that there are stories worth telling about characters under the age of 18. But I think it is absolutely essential that fiction not pander. Just like when a mother buys her child a coat or pair of shoes that’s just a little too big so there’s “room to grow,” children and teens should read stories that leave them room to grow. The best fiction shows us ourselves, but also shows us an “other,” so that we may experience the world outside ourselves. (As an aside, Max and Menna by Shauna Kelley is a terrific example of a book marketed as YA that does not pander to its audience whatsoever, but treats them as mature equals.)

As writers, it is not our job to tell our readers who they are by writing something “focused” on who we decide they are. Rather, our job is first to tell the truth, and then to let our readers discover their place in the world through the stories we tell.

*I feel I should explain why I would seek a publisher for my short story when I rally so vehemently against legacy publishing. I have my opinions on this matter, and explain I will, but let’s save that for a future post.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (8 of 8)

In November, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal. This is the final post in that series.

8.

Edan: “I’m Busy. Writing.”

Elly: “A Successful Writer Does More Than Write.”

Lepucki’s final argument falls so flat that it completely exposes her as a writer who herself has found little success. Here she laments how busy she is, and how she only has six hours a day to devote to her “new” novel (apparently she gave up on the “old” novel). Therefore, she is—I think she’s saying—too busy to self-publish. Well, I can’t argue that if you don’t have a novel to publish, you can’t publish a novel. You have to get busy writing before you can get busy with everything else that publishing entails. But that just can’t be what she’s saying. She wouldn’t have written an article anti self-publishing if she wasn’t considering publishing something, right? It’s more like, “I’m not publishing this first novel I wrote, because I want to write another one first.”

Wait, that can’t be right either. I mean, we all like to write. We all prefer crafting characters or metaphors or nuanced arguments to hammering out (ugh) query letters. But I’m pretty darn sure that nearly all of us write with the ultimate goal of having other people read our writing, and not to stick that writing in a drawer. I don’t think she’s planning to write tome after tome just to lock them away, unread, Salinger-style.

So if her argument is that she’s too busy writing to independently publish her drawered work, then she is simultaneously making the argument that she is too busy to get someone else to publish that work. Any writer who has at least attempted traditional publication knows there is serious legwork involved in the process. If you’re “too busy writing,” you’re too busy to: send out query letters, secure an agent, work with agent to edit your work, work with agent-found editor to further edit your work, write jacket copy (a lot of writers have to do that now, even at trad pubbing houses), schedule your book tour, do your book tour, write marketing pieces, start a blog, do blog posts, do guest blog posts, and on and on.

The traditional publishing does not mean your job as an author is only to write. Everyone knows that the better you get at a job you love the less you actually get to do of the stuff you love. If you write well enough to be published, you transcend being “busy writing.” You are no longer only writer. You are promoter, marketer, public speaker, blogger, internet personality, etc. etc. Unless, again, your goal is not to have anyone read your work, you’d better find the time to write and the time to do everything associated with being a published author.

We may all dream of the day when our lives consist solely of channeling the muses and allowing our perfect and aesthetically transcendental words flow from our fingertips like the tears of a small child hugging his puppy goodbye. But the reality is that being a writer is a job, like any other job, and with all jobs comes the crap we don’t like to do. If you’re too busy to do the crap, you’ll soon find yourself little reason to bother with the good stuff. 

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (7 of 8)

In November, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

7.

Edan: “Is it Best for Readers?”

Elly: “Let the Readers Decide.”

The essence of Lepucki’s argument here is that the self-publishing revolution is creating a “slush pile” that is publicly available. To parse it out, what I think she’s trying to say is that there is a lot of crap being self-published, and she doesn’t want to be lumped in with said crap. I think. She uses the example of her brother-in-law learning that she hadn’t sold her book, and warning her against self-publishing because it could only lead to the book being ignored in favor of something someone’s friend posted about on Facebook. I think.

I’m not sure I get the point here. Given a book of the exact same quality—i.e., the same exact book—the b-i-l wouldn’t buy it if it were self-published. But he would if he read about it on The Millions or heard about it on NPR. Huh? Sounds like a man who can’t make his own decisions about what he likes. Is this a person you really take advice from? Is this a person whose advice you really pass on to your reading public?

I’m beginning to feel like a bit of a broken record here, but seriously: I’m all about letting readers make their own decisions rather than letting their world be curated by a small, elite group of media who have other interests at stake than creating a culture of superb, enduring literature. To repeat myself, this is why I offer the first 15% of my book, The War Master’s Daughter, for free. If people are captivated by the story, they can purchase the rest. If they don’t like it, they become one of the statistics on my dashboard that shows me how many people have downloaded the sample but chosen to spend their money and time elsewhere.

Let the readers decide what they consider to be crap. I think Stephenie Meyer is crap. I think most of the books sold in grocery stores are probably crap. But that doesn’t mean my view of the entire publishing industry is colored to believe it’s all crap. Perhaps the degree of crappiness in self-publishing is higher, but I think the concomitant intellectual offensiveness tied to said crappiness is higher in traditional publishing. Lepucki trusts the curation of the same folks who put out The Time Traveler’s Wife, which sold millions of copies. Millions. That book seriously stunk it up, and I am offended that people even recommended it to me. But it's not going to stop me from buying another traditionally published book. That would be a comically poor foundation on which to base my choices. 

Encourage your readers to judge a book on its merits, not on its company. And don’t tell your readers what is “best” for them.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (6 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

6.

Edan: “The E-Reading Conundrum; or, I don’t want to be Amazon’s Bitch”

Elly: “Smashwords.”

It’s almost so easy to refute this argument that it’s difficult. In this section, Edan talks about how independently published e-books are only available through Amazon. This is wrong. I sell my e-book through three venues—including Amazon, BN.com, and my own website, through which I have sold copies and have reaped 100% royalties—and a distributor (Smashwords), which, at no cost and actually a very high value for all the advice freely offered, converted my e-book to half a dozen different e-book formats at literally the push of a button. Smashwords pushes to Barnes & Noble, the Sony e-reader, the iPad, and more. And they take less of a bite than Amazon. They’re pretty much awesome, and if you don’t know about them, 1) you haven’t done your research, and 2) you’re really, really missing out.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (5 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

5.

Edan: “I Value the Publishing Community”
Elly: “I Am an Artist, Not a Jobs Plan”

Here, Lepucki discusses all the value that the “publishing community” (agents, editors, publicists, proofreaders, etc.) bring to a book. She presents an interesting POV from author Peter Straub, who says in part that “[if the author doesn’t have his work edited] what is being said about the status or role of selflessness before the final form of the fiction as accepted by the audience, I mean the willingness of the author to submerge his ego to produce the novel that is truest to itself?”

I admit don’t have a really strong, acerbic argument against this. I don’t think Lepucki is wrong, nor Straub. It’s just not how I feel about it. I love to write, but I also love to edit, and to do layouts. I have writerly friends, whose opinions I trust with my whole heart and mind, who help me bring my writing up to the next level. I don’t pay them. They’re in it for the love of reading and writing. I use the tools I have at my disposal to have the ultimate say in how my book reads, looks, and feels. I don’t want to let go of it, pass it off at any point where I will lose control over the final product to someone who does not in fact have in mind the “true self of the novel” (whatever that means), but rather has in mind what will sell the most copies to the most people.

To me, writing is, at its essence, a solitary activity. It demands a disciplined, independent spirit. Painters don’t have “editors” or “proofreaders” who come in at the last minute and fix all the little “mistakes.” It’s a control thing; it’s an integrity thing. Perhaps, yes, it’s an ego thing. But I wrote the book. It didn’t write itself. Talk like that is a little foo-foo for me. And really, is manufacturing perfection by putting something through a series of hands really staying “true” to the novel?

Some writers do not have publishing skills beyond being an awesome writer. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I do have other skills, and I also like to have control over my work. I choose to be independent of the “community” because I can be. I’m not in this to have a little skimmed off the top for the agent, then for the editor, and for a proofreader, a graphic designer, a publicist, etc. etc. I did the work. I want to be in control and I want to reap the rewards of—and take the knocks for—owing everything to myself.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (4 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

4.

Edan: "Self-Publishing is Better for the Already-Published"
Elly: "Publishing is Better for the Already-Published"

In this point, Lepucki makes an argument converse to many I’ve seen — the argument being that a successful indie pubbed book can attract agents and trad pubbers. Lepucki says the opposite: self-pubbing is better for those already published traditionally. I really think the short of it is that sophomores are more successful than freshmen, period. Lepucki says “It’s much harder to create a readership out of nothing.” Yes, it is. But I reiterate my earlier points that whether you go trad or indie, much of the onus of marketing goes to the author. The sweat of the author—in making the book great, then selling the book greatly—is what determines success. The second book will ALWAYS be a tiny bit easier.

What bugs me most about this section, however, is Lepucki’s comment, “I don’t need an intermediary to tell me about these writers because their previously published books speak for them.” She is going back to the argument that she trusts publishers to tell her what’s good. That is trust I just can’t get behind. Besides, I think if you’re a writer worth your salt—or, for that matter, a reader worth your salt—you should be able to sniff out a good book just by reading the first paragraph. With so many traditional AND independent publishers putting out free samples of their work (such as “Look Inside the Book” on Amazon, or a free 15% on Smashwords), you should be independent enough to make your own judgments. Or at the very least, ask a trusted friend what to read next. Please just stop feeding the machine.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (3 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

3.

Edan: "I’d Prefer a Small Press to a Vanity Press"
Elly: "People still say 'Vanity Press'?"

I think the author’s point in this section is that “small presses are great.” I’m not sure what that has to do with a not self-publishing. I agree: small presses ARE great. But they have their own struggles, especially with lack of resources and a mismatch between income and output. I used to work for a small press, and it’s been hanging by a thread for as long as I can remember. Even in Lepucki’s own example, her beloved small press had to shut its doors.

Like internet start-ups, most small presses do not succeed. That’s the dirty little secret. Traditional publishing is expensive and it’s an insider’s game. When handled by a small press, books have about the same chance of success as with strong, informed independent publishing. A small press might be run by one or two people handling a dozen or so new books, and a back catalog of a couple dozen more. These are strapped, frazzled people. Well-intentioned, but overworked. Often, the onus is on the author to drive marketing and publicity on her own. The small press does what it can: secures some reviews in the trades, puts some branding on materials, networks, leverages the back catalog. But the difference between a small press experience and a good independent publishing experience is surprisingly negligible. The major difference, of course, is the bite of profits the author loses to the publisher.

Getting a book into print is only the first step. Lepucki recounts a great stroke of luck with her novella, but I hope she isn’t naïve enough to believe that will happen every time. I hope she also realizes that is the kind of traction you can create for yourself if your product is excellent.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (2 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

2.

Edan: "I Write Literary Fiction"
Elly: "The Segregation of Literary Fiction is False Logic"

In this point, the author laments that only genre fiction can find success in self-publishing and that “literary fiction” has no home there. She says the landscape for literary fiction in indie publishing won’t change until Jeffrey Eugenides and Alice Munro use CreateSpace.

Yeah, if your bar is Eugenides-like success, you’re probably going to fall short, no matter what sort of publishing path you choose. Firstly, literary fiction is a hard sell no matter what. Most agents and most trad pubbers are looking for genre fiction. In large part, only very small, very boutique houses or university presses are going to publish debut literary fiction. At the bigger houses who delve into lit fic, they either want the big name with street cred, or the ready-made movie book (or both). Literary fiction writers have the deck stacked against them no matter what, because that’s not what the general reading public buys.

Secondly, as even the author herself points out, literary fiction is as much a niche or a “genre” as, say, hard science fiction. Each has their own specific audience, with limited opportunity for cross-over and cross-selling unless the book meets certain mainstream expectations regarding plot, character, tone, etc. Separating literary fiction out is not only snobbish, it’s false logic. Both self-published and trad-published author will fail if they do not identify their audience and market to it accordingly.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (1 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

1.

Edan: "I Guess I’m Not a Hater"
Elly: "I Guess I am?"

In this point, the author states that the argument that traditional publishing is dying is moot because trad pubbers are making more money than ever. She says they consistently put out great books and she wants that stamp of approval on her own book. “I trust publishers,” she says.

Saying you trust publishers to tell you what’s good for you in literature is like trusting a doctor to give you a prescription for a pill that has him rolling in kick-backs. They don’t have your best interest in mind; they have theirs in mind. They are a business. They do not put out the best books; they put out the books that sell the most. Most of the time, these do not overlap.

Nobody’s saying that traditional publishers don’t know what they’re doing. But the model is set up to favor incumbents. Large advances—or any advances at all, really—are a gamble unless spent on a known commodity. Times are tenuous for the big guys, so they’re going to continue to put out what they are fairly sure will make money. They also have the power behind them to be tastemakers. Books that become inexplicably wildly popular (read: Twilight) do not do so solely on their inherent merits. They are calculated business ventures. See, “Recursive Self-Homogenization.”

Trad pubbing doesn’t favor the fresh or the rebellious. The whopping, weird 1Q84 would never have come out in the U.S. if Haruki Murakami wasn’t already a known commodity. Guess what: I’m not, and likely you aren’t. Trad pubbing is for folks who can have their name bigger than the title on the cover, and the occasional one-off they can squeeze in using profits from the former.