Monthly Archives: September 2011

On the Sidelines of Publishing

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Kristine Kathryn Rusch has written a couple of sobering posts about the state of the publishing industry and changes going on in it. In The Fear Chronicles, she talks about bad decisions publishers make because they are fearful of coming changes in the industry. In another post, Professional Writers, she comes down hard on writers who take “crap deals” (and then seek her approval). That post, too, features fear as a theme, because the main reason given by the unnamed writers who accepted those deals (zero advance ebook deals), was that they didn’t want to make their editor “mad” and thereby shake up their perceived fragile relationship with the publishing house. They were afraid of losing that all-important next book contract. So afraid that they are willing to literally work for free in order to keep it. So afraid that they are accepting advances only 50 percent, or even 10 percent, the size of their last advance.

When does working with a major New York publishing house cease being a business relationship and start being wage slavery? Pro writers scoff at magazines and blogs that invite people to write for free in exchange for “exposure.” Well, isn’t that what these publishing houses are doing with their “You write for no advance a story that we will sell for free on the internet, and in exchange, you can have the implicit promise that we’ll CONSIDER offering you another actual publishing contract?”

The problem I am seeing, as a writer with 1.75 novels written that I would like to see published, is that there doesn’t seem to be an actual path to success that doesn’t involve being exploited, and it makes me hesitate–a lot–over actually offering my work to them.

The problems inherent in the publishing industry include old media and new media problems. Old media problems include lack of promotion, “promises unfulfilled” (see Rusch above), lack of transparency, etc. New media problems boil down to one issue–erights. The big publishing houses are making a mess of erights, the standard 25% of net rate is unfair to authors*, and some publishing houses may be fudging their ebook sales numbers and paying authors less than they’re owed. (Again, there’s no transparency, no way for authors to check what they’re being paid against actual sales.)

Add to that the fact that the role of agents is expanding, and not in a good way. More publishing houses are using agents as slush readers, and most agents now see themselves as book doctors, and will request edits or even extensive rewrites before they agree to market a book. Many agencies, as well, are expanding into the epublishing business, and offering to publish their clients backlists–a practice that represents a conflict of interest and may violate ethics or even the law, according to Rusch.

The use of agent as editing intermediary adds an additional unnecessary step in the chain of custody of a book between writers and readers. Now editors are trying to predict what readers will like, agents are trying to predict what editors will like, and writers are trying to predict what agents will like.

All of this makes traditional publishing REALLY unattractive. The solution suggested by Rusch and her husband Dean Wesley Smith is to get involved in self publishing. The two seem to have done well that way, and they have quite a bit of advice on their web sites for writers interested in doing so. It’s a veritable font of information.

However, I have two problems with self-publishing as a solution. One is that it seems ideal for writers with a number of traditionally published books, but I’m not sure how one is supposed to make it work if you don’t have that track record and are trying to publish your first novel. Second, it’s just a lot of work and has the inevitable learning curve associated with it. Like most writers, I have a day job. Like many writers, I also have a family. That’s two jobs already. Actual fiction writing is my third job, and I have so little time left over from my first two jobs that I can barely find time to do it. I literally do not have time to become my own publisher, even if the idea sounded fun and challenging to me.

It does not sound fun and challenging. It sounds like a dreary slog. I have about ten hobbies I’d rather be pursuing than publishing and promoting my own books.

So that leaves me with some rather unsavory choices. I can try to get myself exploited by the publishing industry like many of my friends, and hope that I’m one of the lucky ones that has good sales and good support and try not to worry about the amount of money I’m losing on ebook sales (which increases dramatically year-on-year).

Or I can dive into self-publishing, which will automatically lose me status and respect among New York-published novelists, and cost me what little rest and sanity I have remaining to me. And, because I don’t have time to do it right, I will most likely fail.

Which would you choose? Would you take one of the crappy options outlined above, or would you sit on the sidelines and hope things get better?

I actually know FOUR real, published genre novelists who are sitting on the sidelines right now because of crap deals and a lack of opportunity for success. These are not failed authors. These are authors whose publishers failed them. Four of them. They are not newbies or wannabes. In fact, some have won awards.

If I can come up with four good, solid authors who have sidelined themselves to wait out the publishing craziness, there must be hundreds of them. Hundreds of authors writing and trunking books, or not writing them at all.

I don’t think very many new writers, trying to sell their first novel, are sidelining themselves, though. The myth of having “made it” when you get a contract from one of the Big Six is still powerful, and there’s a lot of peer pressure within the community to become a novelist. There’s a pecking order, and if you’ve “only” published short stories, a lot of writers don’t take you seriously. Many times I’ve heard comments by non-novelists dismissed or mocked because they “don’t know what they’re talking about.” And I’m aware of a number of networking opportunities that are not open to unpublished writers or writers who have “only” published short stories.

I’ve made intermittent attempts to get my first novel published, and have had intentions of sending my second novel to certain editors that have had positive feedback on that first one, but I am very unsure that I really want to accept a publishing contract. For one thing, I can’t afford to sell a novel for $3000. As a nonfiction writer, I have the experience of having my work valued, and I know that no publisher who offers me a $3000 advance will provide much in the way of promotion or support to get me enough royalties to make that worthwhile. I literally would rather trunk a book than take a typical advance of $3000 or even $5000.

Secondly, those e-rights are a real bone of contention. I had thought that if I got an offer on a novel, I might negotiate a print-only deal, and retain the e-rights myself (to self publish or work with an e-publisher with better terms). Kris Rusch tried this, though, and was given a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum. She left it. That makes it seem pretty unlikely to me that a new, first-time novelist could negotiate a print-only deal with a New York publishing house.

I hope and expect that within the next five years or so new business models and new publishers will emerge, and that authors will be able to offer their work to publishers directly without having to go through the agent/book-doctoring process, and that e-rights will be handled in a fair and transparent manner. Until then, I’m not really sure what I’m going to do, except finish the current book and start another.

*I’m so sorry I misplaced the link the very excellent analysis I read. I fail at bookmarking, and promise to do better in the future. If you know the link I am thinking of and have the URL, please help me out.

 

 

Cancer Discrimination in the Hospital

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Most people are familiar with how the health care system sometimes discriminates against obese people. Doctors may insist a patient lose weight before they will address a health problem, even if the patient’s weight has nothing to do with the problem. Well, it also happens with cancer. Here’s how it works.

Let’s imagine a 23-year-old lumberjack. He is healthy in every way. While he is out in the woods, cutting down trees with his chain saw, he is attacked by a piranha that latches onto his face and won’t let go. His comrades call 911, and he arrives at the emergency department with the piranha still attached.

The physician examines him and says, “Lo! You have a piranha attached to your face! I will surgically remove it and give you some cream and antibiotic tablets and you will be on your way!”

Now let’s imagine that the lumberjack is 90 years old, retired, and he has recently had treatment for a cancerous lesion. He is feeling pretty well, though, and in fact sustained the very same piranha injury as the young lumberjack while he was out in his back woods trimming some trees with his chainsaw. His 90-year-old wife, who was helping him load the trimmings into the tractor and haul them to the trash pit saw the whole thing and called 911 in a timely manner.

When he gets to the emergency room, however, the physician says, “Ah, there’s something on his face. We see this a lot with elderly cancer patients. Our recommendation is that we make him comfortable and tape a plastic bag over it so that he can shower without exposing the wounds to infection.”

And his family says, “Are you out of your mind? He has a piranha attached to his face. Get it off!”

And the medical team give each other significant looks, and they say, “We’re going to call the social worker up to talk about options for your grandfather. We’re very sorry this happened.”

And that’s what I’ve gone through with my mother, over and over again. Last year I had to listen to doctors telling me she wasn’t going to walk after breaking her hip and had no treatment options left for the cancer and needed to be in a nursing home. She recovered, got back on her feet, and responded well to the same cancer therapy she’d been on before. (Most of her “recurrences” have been triggered by the doctors discontinuing therapy.)

This time, it’s pneumonia, and I feel like I’m in some kind of surreal alternate reality trying to convince the doctors to just treat the pneumonia, when they keep trying to tell me that Mom is ventilator-dependent and simply too weak to breathe. I can’t micromanage the care. I have no idea what types of tests or treatments they may be overlooking because of assumptions made about her condition. But I do know that a person who had no breathing problems before she went into the hospital, and was even a regular exerciser does not go from that to respiratory crisis and ventilator dependence in TWO WEEKS just because she is old and weak.

Do the doctors listen to me? No, they never listen, because it’s new doctors every time. If we could work with the same team from one crisis to the next, they might get it. But instead every crisis has a new team, and from their point of view, my mother is just some kind of anomaly or exception that does not disprove their overall philosophy of treating older patients with cancer.

And if other patients don’t have stubbornly aggressive families full of health care professionals who will advocate vigorously for them to get that damn piranha off, then their practice of giving up on cancer patients can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The thing that gets me is that these doctors who are specialists in other fields like pulmonology or orthopedics or whatever don’t actually know shit about cancer. They try to tell me that the lung problem is maybe cancer related. What?!? No, it f—ing isn’t! This is multiple myeloma–it does not cause respiratory failure, most especially when there isn’t one single bone lesion. (If not for the chemo, she might be getting a bit anemic by now because her bone marrow isn’t producing enough healthy blood cells. She would certainly not be suffering complications from advanced cancer or be at the terminal stage.)

Same thing with the kidney failure. The nephrologists, who got paid something like $300/minute to consult on the case, said that the kidney failure was probably cancer related, and would not get better. Cancer related? No, it f—ing isn’t! Myeloma can cause kidney failure, but only in very advanced stages of the disease, when the blood levels of calcium are high from all of the dissolved bone. Fortunately, I ignored that asinine consultation, and Mom’s kidney function began improving literally the next day, and has been improving every day since then.

Why didn’t the nephrologists diagnose her with kidney injury from the chemotherapy treatment she’d just had, which is a common, well-known complication of the treatment, and instead reached for a lame-ass cancer explanation? I don’t know! I wish I did.

I’ve been told that doctors don’t want to get families’ expectations too high, because we might be disappointed. But what are we, FIVE YEARS OLD, that we are worried about disappointment, here? If my mother dies, I am going to have larger grievances than having had unrealistic hopes during her illness. I’m going to, you know, actually miss her and stuff. It’s really kind of a self-centered attitude among doctors to think that a family’s grieving process is really all about them. Are we going to be angry? Yes. You know why? Because people get angry when they go through a major loss. Are they going to be angry at the doctors and hospital that didn’t save their loved one, even if it doesn’t make sense? Yes, they are. I’ve seen it before. Get over it. As a physician, you can’t expect to be loved and appreciated all the time, and pre-emptively stomping on people’s hopes is not the same as doing right by them.

(Paradoxically, I’ve been told by someone who was a caregiver for a younger cancer patient that doctors were unrealistically positive about that patient’s prognosis, so there’s definitely an age element. And also a “doctors are making shit up as they go along” element.)

All I can do about this is refuse and redirect when it seems like what I’m hearing doesn’t make sense. But doctors have a great deal of power to set the tone and frame a discussion, and it’s really hard to gainsay them when they get into that mode. It’s stressful and exhausting and frustrating, and there’s no payoff when they’re wrong. They don’t come in and say, “Wow, I totally called this thing wrong. I almost sent your loved one home with a piranha stuck to his face because I thought it was a cancer lesion.”

Noooo…instead, they come in and say, “Wow, we never expected your loved one to pull through. This is obviously an inexplicable miracle or possibly due to my brilliant doctoring and there is no lesson here that I need to learn for the future.”

Maybe some doctors can learn from patients, but when it comes to the conduct of clinical practice, only doctors can really influence other doctors. They need to get started on that.

Hungarian Noodle and Cabbage, Ultimate Comfort Food

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Over at Aliette de Bodard’s blog, we were talking about egg noodles. She describes her perfumed egg noodles as a “bland” dish that can be served alongside dishes with a stronger flavor. However, the noodles have no less than six seasonings added. I couldn’t help comparing it to one of my favorite egg noodle recipes, a dish my family calls Halushka. Halushka is seasoned with salt. That’s all. My Hungarian grandmother would have fainted at the idea of adding ginger, chili-garlic sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, garlic, AND onions to a noodle dish. She might, in fact, protest that it is impossible to digest such a dish.

(Now, don’t get me wrong. Aliette’s perfumed noodles sounds delicious, and I fully intend to try it out. Do visit her site, by the way, because it is full of wonderful Vietnamese/French cooking deliciousness and would appeal to all people who love food.)

Now, my egg noodle dish is delicious in its own way. The simple mixture of cabbage, egg noodles, butter, and salt is one of the most comforting and satisfying meals in my cooking repertoire, and it brings back many happy memories, to boot. All of Hungarian food is comfort food, really. But Halushka is the ultimate–the epitome of comfort in food form. It is comfort food for people who get heartburn from macaroni and cheese, and find mashed potatoes unsatisfying.

Now, we call it Halushka, but it is eaten throughout Eastern Europe and known by many names. The word Halushka, actually, is generally used to refer to a noodle or dumpling. Hungarian dumplings are not those fluffy things you get at Cracker Barrel. They’re more like German spaetzle on steroids. Complicating things further is the fact that my maiden name is Haluska, which in Slovak is pronounced Halushka. (Slovak and Hungarian food and culture bleed into each other extensively, and I’m not an expert on either.)

So my family name is the name of a dumpling or noodle, which is also the name of a tasty dish we make with noodles and cabbage. Essentially, or family crest is something like this:
001

So now that all of that is out of the way, here’s the recipe.

Halushka

One head of cabbage, shredded finely

1/2 stick of real butter (please don’t make me cry by trying to use margarine or some kind of vegetable oil)

One pound dried egg noodles (It’s ok if you want to use an egg-free pasta or even a gluten-free pasta. It should be a short, wide noodle, though.)

Cook the cabbage in the butter over low heat until it’s soft and translucent. I usually put it in an electric stock pot and leave it on low for an hour or more. You don’t want it crunchy or crispy brown. Meanwhile, boil the pasta in salted water. (If you’re on a low sodium diet, you probably won’t enjoy this recipe, as it doesn’t have a lot of flavor to replace missing salt. My grandmother used to make unsalted Halushka for Grampa when he was having his heart problems, and it was always disappointing.)

Drain the pasta and mix it with the cabbage. Salt to taste. Yum! It goes with anything, and keeps well in the fridge. My family uses Halushka like Italians use pasta–serve it with everything!

This is a participating post at Real Food Wednesday by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

 

Fiddly fiddling

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I continue to tweak and fiddle with stuff on wordpress. Comments on livejournal should be restored. (Oh, my aching ticky-box finger!) I try to check that things are coming through on livejournal and generally not looking weird, but if you notice something awry, please let me know!

What Poverty Isn’t

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There’s a new online game called Poverty Is Not a Game that you can play to understand some of the limitations of poverty (and try to beat them). I read an interview with one of the game’s creators (and can’t find the link–darn!), and one thing she said really resonated with me. She had grown up in poverty, but was able to rise up out of it in her adult life. She said that the life of poverty seemed so far away to her, and therefore hard to imagine.

My family was also poor when I was growing up, and I, too, feel that that life is very far away, and hard to imagine and remember. Sometimes, when I’m at the store, and I’m grabbing food or impulse items with no regard to the cost, I stop and try to remember what it was like not to be able to have those things any time I wanted. Poverty is like pain. When you are not in it, it’s difficult to imagine. And when you’ve never experienced it, it’s almost impossible.

A lot of people think they understand poverty, but really don’t. Poverty is a lot of things, and the experience can be very different for different people. (Let’s not even start with the difference between first and third world poverty–it will break our brains.) But there are a few things that poverty is NOT.

1. Being a college student is not poverty. For most people who are not wealthy, college is expensive, and that means living on a strict budget, making sacrifices, working a part time job, and maybe eating a lot of ramen noodles. None of that is poverty. All of that is temporary. Poor people do go to college, but their challenges are a lot more severe than needing to make an uncomfortable phone call to Mom and Dad because their spending money ran out before the end of the month.

2. Poverty is not a cash flow crisis. So you didn’t manage your middle class income well enough and you are running out of money at the end of each month. Maybe you had some bad luck and had an expensive car repair or something. Dude, that really sucks. But it’s not poverty.

3. Poverty is not bankruptcy. Even fabulously wealthy people can go through bankruptcy, without ever dipping a toe into the waters of real poverty. Bankruptcy can be a precipitating event for falling into poverty, but all alone, in itself, it is not poverty.

4. Poverty is not lack of health insurance. A large uninsured health crisis can put you into poverty. However, all by itself not having health insurance is not the same as being poor. In fact, in the U.S. if you are poor enough you can qualify for Medicaid, which provides better benefits than most private health insurance. (There are people who are pretty poor, but not poor enough for Medicaid. I am not trying to say all poor people have health insurance.) Poverty and health care are issues that overlap and interact extensively, but one is not the same as the other. If you have no health insurance, but you have your health, you are ahead of the game.

5. Poverty is not a state of incompetence, stupidity, irresponsibility, alcoholism, mental illness, or drug addiction. All of those things can absolutely contribute to poverty, but they are not the same as poverty. Well educated, responsible, competent people may also be poor due to bad luck, poor health, lack of support in a crisis, discrimination, or other reasons. You don’t magically fix poverty by fixing your character flaws. Rich people also suffer from all of the above.

I have mixed feelings about Poverty Is Not a Game. When I was in high school, the economics teacher ran a game like that in the classroom, and I was never sure what I was supposed to learn from it. I suppose it’s useful in educating privileged suburban kids about the realities of poverty, but she was running it in a classroom at least half full of kids from poor families. They didn’t need a game to tell them that being poor involves a lot of crappy choices and bad luck. The take home lesson of the game seemed to be that poverty was a hopeless situation that you could never get out of. It would have been nice, actually, if she’d followed it up with some life and personal finance management lessons to help those of us who wanted something better in life than to choose between owning a television and having life insurance (followed by drawing a “misfortune” card with an expensive funeral).

Blogging: How’s that workin for ya?

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Pretty good, actually! Thanks for asking!

I’ve been meaning to start doing some serious blogging since about 2008. Heretofore, I’ve maintained a Livejournal that I’ve considered nothing more than a social media/networking tool. I knew that blogging “for real” would be a lot more work, and I wasn’t willing to put the time in.

When my Mom feel seriously ill early in September, I no longer had the ability to concentrate on my novel-in-progress, and I had to, by necessity, take a number of days off from my regular day job (which also requires a great deal of concentration and focus). However, I needed to keep busy, so I decided to dust off those old blogging plans.

The first thing I did was send a note to my web host service asking them to replace the old content on my web site with a wordpress blog. I then ported my Airstream series into the blog and got started fiddling with themes and settings. I knew I needed traffic, so I researched how to find new blog readers.

A lot of writers have blogs, but I think by and large most of them rely on their published works to bring readers/fans to their blog. There’s another way to go about it, though. You can go out and attract readers and fans to your blog, and then sell them your published works. Yes, you can!

I got tripped up for a lot of years by the idea that a blogger needs to have a niche, and stick to it in order to be successful. Well, I’m sorry, but I just can’t blog on forever on one subject. I’m interested in lots of different things. I finally decided that I’m just going to have to be an eclectic blogger and rely on my sparkly writing skillz to sustain an audience. Maybe that’s not the easy route to success, but it’s what I got. (And also in part inspired the blog title. We named the Airstream So Shiny, and I immediately recognized how apropos that would be.)

I’ve seen traffic to my domain increase exponentially over the past month (which is not hard when it’s sitting at virtually zero). Probably the most effective strategy I’ve used to attract visitors is joining the Blogher network. I’ve also seen traffic surges from comments left on other blogs and by participating in blog carnivals.

I actually interviewed some bloggers a few years ago, with the intention of doing some blogging about blogging, but that got backburnered for a long time. I expect to finally get those written up and posted starting this week. I think writers can do a lot more to raise the profile of their blogs–thereby introducing new readers to their work, and sharing some wisdom with each other is a great place to start.

7 Quick Takes Friday

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7 Quick Takes Friday is hosted at ConversionDiary.com

 — 1 —

We’re buying a new violin for Glen, and I’ve learned a lot about how to choose and judge violins. The most important lesson, of course, is to have an expert, like your violin teacher, evaluate any instrument you’re thinking of buying. We settled on a good quality instrument made in a Chinese shop that has a nice bold sound that my son likes. It took us about five minutes to choose that one, and the teacher approved it, too, although she said we should have the adjust the sound post to correct a “foggy” sound on the A string. I had not heard this and neither did my son, but we had the adjustment done. I’m always impressed with the highly trained ear of a violinist!

— 2 —

After the violin, we had to go back and choose a bow. The teacher specified that it should be a bow that could produce a good sound when played spiccato–an emerging style at my son’s learning level. The salesman offered us three very different bows and we again borrowed them so we could have the teacher evaluate. The process was not only choosing the best quality bow, but the right bow for the instrument, so it was an iterative process of playing similar runs of notes, both fast and slow, and of course some spiccato, as well. My favorite bow was a very lightweight pernambuco made by R.L. Meinel that played very sweet legato (long, slow) notes. However, when played vigorously, the lightweight bow bottomed out, and you became in peril of rubbing the stick on the strings. As well, it didn’t live up to strong, vigorous music as well as another pernambuco Meinel bow. We quickly eliminated the Brazilwood Decker bow which had been the salesman’s favorite. That’s how fiddly (heh) the process of picking out a bow is. I think we’ll probably go with the heftier Meinel bow, which, coincidentally, is the most expensive. Funny, how that happens, isn’t it?

— 3 —

I use a 3/4 size violin, and have had this plan, for many years, that when Glen progresses to that size, we would buy him a nice one and then I would keep it after he grows into a full size. But each violin has a sound that should match the style and personality of the musician. Now that Glen is in a 3/4, I realize that his violin will never be my forever violin. It’s a fine instrument. I could play it happily, and it’s certainly better than the student instrument I got for $150. But it’s definitely not my sound. Glen is a brawny kid who likes a bold sound, whereas I favor a sweeter, darker, more playful voice for my instrument. When he outgrows this instrument, in approximately 3.5 weeks at the rate he’s growing, it will go back to the shop for trade-in. Which is fine because it will probably be a year or two before I can think about taking lessons again. I will simply have to save up and shop for my own “forever violin” when the time comes.

— 4 —

This is perhaps a buried lead, but my mother showed some really dramatic improvements over the past two days. I, my sister, the whole family, even the doctors are giddy with relief. She is a very complicated case, and what the docs have been doing the past couple of weeks amounts to some tricky troubleshooting. They’ve not been able to treat some symptoms as well as they’d like for fear of making others worse. But with persistence, creativity, great nursing care, Mom’s strong will to live, and the grace of God, she seems to be out of the woods. It is not appropriate to share the details of Mom’s treatments here, but I would like to acknowledge that the hospital pharmacist scored the winning goal, and that makes me happy because pharmacists are some of the smartest, least-appreciated health care professionals.

— 5 —

We had a tough family meeting with the health care team around her case–one that left me terrified, stressed-out, and despondent. Afterward, one of the docs said they “like to set expectations low” for family so they “don’t get disappointed.” I am really questioning that strategy, though. First, after many years and many meetings where doctors have lowered my expectations, and Mom has beaten them, I’m kind of traumatized. Maybe it’s okay if you have to have a meeting like that once or twice in your life, but it’s been practically a yearly occurrence for me, and I’d like to say PLS I CAN HAZ HI EXPECTASHUNS? Also, I came really close to ending my mother’s life. Yes, there was a time window this week when I was asked to make a life or death decision. I didn’t like being pressured. Wanted more time to watch and wait to gather information, but the docs had to have a yes or no. So I said, “You know what? If you’re going to make me decide now, then I want you to save her life.” And so they made a plan around that. I could easily have said, “She’s suffered enough. Let’s get those tubes out and give her some peace,” and if I had done so, I might be planning her funeral right now. It’s a hell of a lot of responsibility, and I don’t need doctors mucking with my process by trying to adjust my expectations downward.

— 6 —

Mom’s starting to wake up and interact for portions of the day when they lighten her sedation. She can’t speak, but she has been mouthing some words. She quite clearly said to my sister, “I want some coffee.”

— 7 —

Isn’t this little silk outfit adorable? I found these at a local sushi place and bought a set–a “boy” and a “girl”–that I have on display on a wine bottle and gin bottle on my dining table at home. I have a friend who has an antique silk komono on display in a plexiglass case in her home. I’m not the kind of person who collects and displays antique kimonos, but these little doll-sized chinese outfits that I can use to dress up wine bottles are TOTALLY my style. Combined with my weakness for tiny tea sets (the tinier the better), I think I have the makings of a dangerously cutesy decorating style.

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Taking another look at “drama”

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A new article by Dana Boyd, and opinion piece by Boyd and Alice Marwick (via BoingBoing) looks at how bullying among teens becomes reframed as “drama”–an agentless event that saves face for the victim, but also lets the aggressor off the hook and denies support to the victim. Although this article focuses on teens specifically, it has relevance for bullying and other types of aggression among adults, who also do not want to be characterized as either victims or abusers.

In truth, I hesitated to use that word in formulating this series of posts, and inviting people to share stories, because I know that people do not want to view themselves as victims, and that there is some empowerment in looking at an abuser as a gnat that is barely worthy of notice. On the other hand, in doing this we are giving mean people a free pass to repeatedly abuse people, often the same people over and over again. It can be painful to recognize yourself as a victim of aggression, but in the long run it’s even more empowering if you can find support and take action against the bully.

 

A Dance With Dragons–Pretty Good Actually!

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I’ve finally finished reading A Dance With Dragons, by George R. R. Martin, the fifth book in his Song of Ice and Fire series. It was a long wait between book 4 and 5, and there was grumbling. Okay, full disclosure. I was one of the grumblers. Not only was the author’s note in Book 4 rather misleading about the state of completion of Book 5, but it was also kind of unsatisfying. There was a lot of laying of pipe, a lot of page time devoted to characters that didn’t really seem that important to the story–just a lot.

It led me to believe that Martin had lost his way. That he was no longer in control of the story, and that further installments would be increasingly painful. I’m quite pleased, then, to report that A Dance With Dragons is well worth the wait and chock full of action, intrigue, plenty of time with favorite characters, and quite a lot of payoff for your investment. I felt more bereft than usual when I finished the last page, and am waiting eagerly for Book 6. (Let’s hope not another 5 years!)

Anyway, I felt like I owed Martin some props after all of the grumbling, even if most of it was in private to friends who had also read the same series. (I was appalled to hear that many impatient fans had gone beyond grumbling to harassment. Not cool.) Go ahead, give it a try. It’s a really fine piece of storytelling.

Leaving Cats at Home

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simbarides2

I would say that RV traveling with the dogs was a success. However, what to do with the cats was more of a problem. Some people take their cats RVing with them, but those cats are probably not indoor/outdoor cats who are expert escape artists and prone to explosive vomiting and diarrhea when they travel in cars.

In the past, we have done well just leaving the cats at home with a neighbor to look in on them, but we knew we’d be away for at least three weeks, so that didn’t seem like a good idea, either. I looked at kenneling them. It would have been more than $30 per day for both cats. I love my cats, but that’s a lot of money. I finally decided to hire a pet sitter.

The pet sitter talked us into hiring her to come every other day rather than three times a week as I’d proposed. She had a good point that when cats get sick, they can crash rapidly, and often do not recover well. I had a terrible experience in childhood when one of our family cats went missing for three or four days. She must have been locked in a garage or something, because she came back severely dehydrated. Even though we took her to the vet immediately, she didn’t make it. Cats can get dead in a hurry when they feel like it, nine lives notwithstanding.

So I booked the petsitter, who did a fine job, as far as that goes. The problem is the cats didn’t really cooperate. I assured the pet sitter that both cats would be lonely, and would volunteer themselves for petting and feeding when she arrived.

What actually happened is that one cat disappeared somewhere in the house, not to be seen by human eyes for the ENTIRE trip, and the other cat moved out and became feral.

If you know my cats, you can guess which cat did which. Diamond became invisible cat, detectable only by disappearing food and occasional leavings in the litter box.

Simba used the cat door to try to find himself a new family. I got a couple of calls on the road from the family he was trying to adopt. They helpfully escorted him home, but he persisted in hanging around their yard and hunting their rodents. They didn’t feed him, because they didn’t want to encourage him, so he lost a lot of weight.

Having communicated with the pet sitter we knew that Diamond was missing and could not be confirmed to be safe or well, so we were relieved when she materialized instantaneously upon or arrival. She literally jumped onto the hood of our car as if she’d been waiting by the driveway the whole time. We have no idea why she went into ninja cat mode while we were gone. She’s actually quite social.

Simba! I had to call the neighbor and get directions to his house and fetch Simba home. He came home, ate probably a whole pound of cat food, and then disappeared again. I had to go back the next day and bring him home again before it stuck.

Simba’s prospective family adored him. Apparently he’s been visiting for quite some time. They had given him a name and regaled me with many stories of the amusing things he would do. On the phone, I had asked if he had jumped on their shoulders yet. Later, the man was very excited to tell me that Simba had jumped on his shoulders for the first time. The discussion of what an intelligent, friendly, unique, entertaining cat Simba was just went on and on. Simba was not the least bit embarrassed by it. All of the world is full of his admirers. As it should be.

I’m not sure what we’ll do about the cats if we go on another long trip. I’m actually kind of stumped. $30/day is a lot to add to the cost of a trip for cat security. But I think our absence ended up being traumatic for both of them.