Catfish, anyone?

We'll get to our top story in a moment. But first, the news!

The Land Sea Sky Trilogy is free through tomorrow at Amazon. Thanks to everybody who has downloaded it already -- you're all my new best friends. And a note to those who don't have a Kindle: if you'd like to read the series, drop me an email or leave a comment here at the blog, and I'll do my best to fix you up.

Also, watch this space next week for some very interesting news about Seasons of the Fool. I'd tell you now, but...well...aieee...no. No. Next week. Come back then.

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Since becoming an indie author, I have learned many new things. One of them is a new definition for catfish.

Back when I lived in Huntington, WV, the only kind of catfish I knew about was the kind that lives deep in rivers and streams. They eat the junk on the bottoms of such waterways (which is not always the healthiest stuff -- hence, the term bottom-feeder). Catfish also taste good, or so I've been told. I don't think I've ever tried one.

Anyway, thanks to the advent of teh intarwebz, catfishing has taken on a whole new definition. According to the Urban Dictionary: "A catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they're not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances." Or, apparently, to post book reviews.

This is not to be confused with an internet troll, who purposely posts incendiary statements to get people riled up. And it's also not the same as a stalker, which is defined, in internet terms, pretty much the way it is in real life.

I'm making the distinction among these terms for a reason. This week, an article popped up in the book section at The Guardian by a trad-pubbed YA author named Kathleen Hale. In her article, Hale admits to stalking a reader who left her a one-star review. At first, she simply checked her Twitter feed obsessively for tweets from the woman. But eventually Hale went so far as to contact the woman repeatedly by phone, and even -- creeper alert! -- traveled to her house to confront her. (The confrontation apparently didn't happen; no one answered the door, so Hale left a book on her doorstep. The book was Anna Quindlen's A Short Guide to a Happy Life, a copy of which, Hale said, she just happened to have in her purse.)

The story takes a side trip to "Stop the Goodreads Bullies" Land. Hale says she landed on their list of Badly Behaving Authors simply by writing about tough subjects in her book. But she also makes an oblique reference to having responded to the one-star review, and to being attacked online thereafter. She appears to use this as justification for her subsequent behavior.

I was not involved in any way, shape, or form with any of this; I am simply an outside observer who is coming to the whole thing very late in the game. But these, for me, are the takeaway points:

1. Reviews are for readers. Reviewers are (ideally) giving their honest opinion of the book. Some readers look at the one-star ratings first, because the reviewer's deal-breaker might be a deal-maker for the reader. As the author, yes, it sucks to get a one-star review. But the smart author either reads them, takes any honest criticism to heart, and uses it to do better next time; or doesn't read them at all. The last thing an author should do is respond to a bad review. (In fact, I make a point of not responding to reviews at all. It's not that I don't love the good ones -- I do! and I'm grateful for them! -- but I just think it's best to leave the reviewers to their reviewing and to keep my mouth shut.)

2. Using an alias online is not a crime. In some instances, it's necessary -- just as it's prudent for some authors to use a pen name. The use of an alias doesn't make you a catfish, even if you use that alias to post pictures of pets you don't actually own and vacations you haven't actually taken.

3. Stalking is never okay. No justification for it will ever pass muster.

4. Maybe I'm cynical. But it occurs to me that Hale writes fiction -- dark comedy, according to the blurb for her novel -- and so there's an outside chance that she meant for her tale to be darkly humorous, and perhaps not completely factual.

Moreover, her article appeared just as we're beginning the run-up to the big holiday book-buying season. Coincidence?

I really hope that's what's behind this -- that it's either an attempt at humor that fell flat, or a bald grab for eyeballs for Hale and her book. Because the only other alternative I can think of is that the author has some personal issues. And if that's the case, then I hope her publisher is getting her some help.

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This moment of bloggy definition has been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Camp NaNo, Day 13, or: My head is filled with Scorched Earth.

I have had to drag myself away from my new book in order to write this post. You may take that as an indication that the first draft of Scorched Earth, the third and final Land, Sea, Sky book, is rocketing along.

As I mentioned last week, Scorched Earth is my Camp NaNoWriMo project for this month. I am more confident than I was last week at this time that I'll finish the first draft early. I wrote 10,000 words last weekend, give or take. And I've done more than 12,000 words this weekend, even if I don't write another word tonight (which is not guaranteed -- I haven't closed the Word file yet).

I posted the cover on Wattpad, so I might as well share it here, too:

The plant in the foreground that looks like corn is called ayalendo, and yes, it plays a significant role in the book. This is the "Land" book, after all, so you can bet the bad guys will have it in for the Earth before it's over.

Speaking of having it in for someone, although maybe not deliberately, I would draw your attention to this blog post by my IU colleague Chris James. In it, he talks about a new contest sponsored by the Guardian, a newspaper in the UK, that's aimed at honoring indie books at the rate of one per month. On the surface, the contest looks like a huge step up for indies: the Guardian is a pretty well-respected newspaper with a decent book section, and a review there might be helpful to an indie's career.

But it turns out the Guardian is co-sponsoring the contest with Legend Press -- a publishing conglomerate with five imprints, one of which offers what amount to vanity publishing packages. It doesn't take much imagination to conclude that Legend Press will be collecting the email addresses of everyone who enters the Guardian's contest and will thereafter spam them with "helpful" emails, suggesting they spend hundreds or thousands of pounds to buy services for stuff they can do themselves.

I've said before (although perhaps not here), in my best world-weary voice, that I'm probably in the wrong end of this business. Authors, by and large, don't make a lot of money from their work. The stars do, of course, and the star machine (read: the traditional publishing industry) pumps up that possibility to everyone who's ever written a book; it keeps the tap flowing, so that they never run out of material to publish.

In addition, there are plenty of ancillary service providers out there who are out to make a quick buck from authors who dream of hitting the big time. Many service providers are legitimate, and most authors who go indie will have to hire at least some help -- editors and cover designers in particular. And I've worked with blog tour operators and publicists who I would hire again in a heartbeat. But it's so much work, any more, to separate the wheat from the chaff. It seems like a new "helpful" website pops up every day. Even NaNoWriMo got into the act last fall, offering winners (among other prizes) a 30% discount on an "ebook publishing package" at Book Country, Penguin's vanity publishing arm, which is tied closely to vanity publishing megalith Author Solutions (which Penguin also owns). And it's so easy to convince yourself that you need to hand over cash to somebody because you don't know what you're doing or can't possibly learn how to do it yourself.

That's why I'm so pleased to be involved with Indies Unlimited. One of our missions is to encourage indies to learn how to do-it-yourself -- and, if you're dead set on hiring someone, how to spot the good guys from the "service" providers who only want to fleece you.

I didn't mean to turn this post into a commercial for IU. But seriously, if you've written a book and you're thinking about self-publishing it, start there. We have a wealth of information on how to do it, and it's all free.

Now then: should I write some more? Or knit? Decisions, decisions....

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These moments of cautionary blogginess are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Why libraries still matter, damn it.

Brace yourselves:  I've been sick with a cold for most of this week, so I'm cranky enough for a good old-fashioned rant.

Libraries are irrelevant, huh? Tell that to the Founding Fathers!

My target is an article posted last week on The Guardian's website, in which a popular (by all accounts) children's author in the UK claimed that libraries are "no longer relevant."  Terry Deary reportedly said that libraries were originally conceived as a way to get literature in the hands of the poor.  Today, he says, 150 years after the passage of an act that created the first public libraries in the UK, "we pay for compulsory schooling to do that."

The irony is that, according to the Guardian article, Deary, who writes a kids' series called Horrible Histories, is seventh on the list of most-borrowed children's authors from UK libraries last year.  And unlike here in the United States, authors in the UK get a stipend from the government every time their books are borrowed -- about nine cents per borrow, if Google's currency converter is right, up to a cap of a titch over $10,059 per year.  Deary's books are borrowed often enough that he maxes out.  But, he observes, if each one of those borrowers was required to buy his books instead, he'd be making the equivalent of almost $275,000.

Granted, that's a pretty big difference.  But where Deary's reasoning fails is in assuming that everyone who borrows his books would, in fact, buy them.  I have to wonder how many of those kids have families who either can't afford to buy books or don't think it's important to have books at home.  I also wonder how many of those borrows are repeats by the same kid.

And if school libraries are also done away with, too, on grounds of "sentimentality," then reading assignments would be the only way anybody would be exposed to his books.  What do you think are the odds that teachers across the UK would assign books called "Horrible Histories" to their students as a classroom assignment?  And how popular is any book that a kid is forced to read for school?

He goes on to complain that people don't think twice about paying for other forms of entertainment, including movies and TV, but they expect to get books for free.  I guess he hasn't heard that libraries loan out DVDs, too -- and CDs, audio books, and e-books, as well.

Mr. Deary, I am here to tell you that public libraries are, in fact, still relevant -- and not just as a place for people to get their free wi-fi on.  When my kids were small, we made sure they had lots of books to read at home -- and yet, we would often go to the library in order to get more books.  When we lived in Denver and I was subsisting on unemployment payments while I attended paralegal school, trips to the library were a huge deal -- and not just for my daughters, but for me, too.  Even today, we visit the library for reference books, for knitting pattern books, and for pleasure reading.

No, if anything, libraries ought to be getting more funding, not less.

In fact, I'm involved right now in a group called Indie Authors for Hurricane Sandy Libraries.  As you may know, the East Coast of the United States took a pounding from Hurricane Sandy this fall.  Many houses, businesses, and government buildings -- including libraries -- were heavily damaged or destroyed in the storm.

My Indies Unlimited buddy and fellow indie author, K.S. Brooks, got the idea to recruit self-published authors  to send copies of their books to the libraries whose collections were damaged.  It's taken us a while to get responses from the libraries -- in many cases, because the libraries didn't have anywhere to store new books until the cleanup was done.  But we're getting requests now, and we've been fulfilling them as they come in.

If your local library suffered damage during Hurricane Sandy, please urge your librarians to contact us.  And if you're an author who would like to help out, please contact us, too.  The website is http://www.ksbrooks.com/AuthorsforHurricaneSandyLibraries.htm.  Thank you!

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By the way, y'all ought to be proud of me for not mentioning the word "greed" at all in relation to Terry Deary's comments.  Even though I was thinking it.  He ought to be glad he doesn't live in the US, where authors get nothing from libraries except for the royalty payment when the library buys the book.  Hmph.

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Oh, speaking of knitting, I was going to post a picture of the sweater I finished.  Here you go.

See the mistake in the cable on the left side of the picture?  No?  Perfect!

And I've already started a new sweater project.  The pattern is called Harvest Moon.  Here's what it's supposed to look like when it's done.  And I found a big button with a ridged pattern that looks a lot like the garter stitch ridges in the collar and pocket edges -- it will look terrific here.

Okay, I think I've gotten into enough trouble for this week.  I'm going to go and knit now.

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These moments of in-defense-of-libraries blogginess are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.