Wildfires and publishing bad, books pretty

1. The air quality in NYC today was horrible. Was bad yesterday too. It's in the upper 70s and 80s, with a smoke filled haze, courtesy of the wildfires in Nova Scotia and Quebec, which has had more than 150 wildfires.

"Try to limit your outdoor activities today to the absolute necessities," the city's mayor, Eric Adams, advised on Twitter to anyone with breathing issues.

It marked the second day of hazy skies across a wide swath of the country. Smoke blanketed the landscape from the Ohio Valley to as far south as the Carolinas on Monday. Air quality advisories were in effect Monday in southeastern Minnesota and parts of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as well as in more than 60 counties in Wisconsin on Monday.

More smoke was expected Wednesday in New York City.

"Smoke and haze from wildfires across eastern Canada will continue working into the region this evening," National Weather Service forecasters wrote in a text forecast. The forecasters said the concentration of smoke might lower overnight, but also that widespread haze was expected into Wednesday morning.

I wore a mask outside today, and took it off inside. KN94. I might upgrade. I'm allergic to smoke, mold, dust, tree pollan, hay, feathers, cat, dogs...
so wore the mask.

It helped. A bit. I was one of maybe 20 people.



(I grabbed a friend's photo on FB. It's a generic photo. I take no credit for it. And it will disappear in a month.)

2. Update on the Amazon package snafu.

They did not redeliver my packages to me. Nor did the super pick them up and deliver them from the other location. (I think someone probably stole them from the other location.)

At any rate - Amazon agreed to refund me for the ones they couldn't locate in inventory, and resend the two packages that they did locate. So, I'm getting the new air purifier and replacement filters, but had to re-order the replacement filters for the existing air purifier. Which actually turned out to be less than the original order. The original order was $59.68, the new order $30. So it cost Amazon more than it cost me. I got a cost savings.

Yay, team.

3. Update on friend who has self-published a series of novels on an Indian Harem. Okay that may be the wrong description?
( Read more... )

There, that's the right one.

Anyhow? I convinced her to reduce the first book to $.99 on the Kindle.
Apparently she went through betas. One of them has taught creative writing, and that one's sister is published. That beta read three of the books and provided good suggestions on the first three books. She'd had nine people say they would be her beta. Only two gave helpful feedback, she wrote the others twice to sk if the stories were boring, etc ,but got no response.

This is unfortunately par for the course regarding betas. And why I'm leery of it. I've been burned. My father was burned by them - and rescued me by sending me to his line editor. I tried the amateur beta approach or free beta approach with three different books. The last one? Went to professional line editors finally. I also got hoodwinked - people approached me online, I met a couple in person, they told me they had contacts, they read my book, ripped it apart and shut me down as a writer.
It was painful. Actually the closest I got to a literary agent was a friend/acquaintance from college - she got me closest.

Anyway, I texted former college roommate today, and found out what she was doing. Apparently Create Space is now Kindle Direct Publishing, and they offer the same services more or less. She ignored their cover service and figured out how to create her own using Youtube videos. Also handled her own marketing copy and forwent the line editing (which is 65% of the cost). So she didn't spend as much as I did, which is good considering she did four of them.

The problem with writing - is sharing it with other people. The writing part is actually easy. The hard part is sharing it with well you, the readers.

I honestly think we should burn it all down and start from scratch. It's why I thoroughly support non-traditional publishing and indies, and so should you.

College friend wants to get her story developed into a screenplay but doesn't know how to adapt it - so is looking into entering it into screen play adaptation contests. I didn't know these things existed? I should look into it - mine would make a good film or television series. Although I've not a lot of interest in either. I do not want to be in that business.

3. Speaking of publishing, and the competitive nature of publishing...I've been flirting with R. F Kuang's best selling publishing satire - Yellowface, which was cheaper via my phone for some reason. It's .99 cents on audio on my phone, but over $12 on my computer. Very weird.

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

Like most books, and really all best-sellers, it has mixed reviews. Some loved it, some hated it. I'm thinking it works better if you are in publishing and academic? I got that from the reviews.

I don't know it may annoy me. Satire often does. I tend to prefer British satire to American satire. I can't always tell if the Americans are being serious, is the problem, or they are annoyingly over the top.

Plus, the problem with Satire is characterization is often sacrificed on its lofty altar, as is plot. Satire comes first, and that's not always a good thing.

And...the writer comes across as annoying. So there's that. I might wait until I can get it dirt cheap on a Kindle Daily Deal.

4. Almost done with the Viola Davis memoir, which is equal parts interesting and annoying. I liked her better prior to listening to her memoir. Although she does go into depth on a few interesting things - like the making of The Help, and the backlash that followed, also the process of adoption.