Megan Lindholm

Originally published at Megan Lindholm. You can comment here or there.

At conventions and via email, I am often contacted by aspiring writers, young and old.  Many people know how to sit down at a keyboard and put a story together.  How that story gets from your fingers to the pages of a book or magazine is often less clear.

And that is where scam artists, unscrupulous ‘agents’ and fake publishing houses have a field day.  When aspiring writers go out on the internet to look for information on how to be published, the first listings they will get on any search will be vanity publishers such as PublishAmerica and AuthorHouse.  No matter how they present themselves, it boils down to this.  The would be author gives them money.  The book is created.  There is no distribution system in place, so the book does not get into stores.  The bright writing future does not materialize.

It pains me that a long-respected romance publishing house, Harlequin Books, is now getting into the ‘dream selling’ business.

For a very accurate and well written summary of the situation, please look here   Jackie Kessler does a great job of explaining all this.  I commend her analysis to your attention.

Romance Writers of America also addresses the situation, as does Science Fiction Writers of America.

In these hard economic times, unemployed people sometimes say to themselves, ‘Well, the silver lining is that I can finally work on the book I’ve always dreamed of writing.’   I’m sure that the number of  unsolicited submissions has increased at all the publishing houses.  But to decide to prey on those you don’t judge worthy of regular publication is, to speak plainly, shameful.

Harlequin, I expected better of you.

Megan

Hey. Washington voters. Can we all stop thinking about sex and talk about R-71 for a minute? And what it could mean to a lot of 'state registered domestic partnerships'?

First of all, nothing in the referendum says anything about anyone having sex with anyone else. Let me repeat that. Nothing in the referendum mandates that anyone has to be having sex with anyone. So let’s put that off the table.

All R-71 says that if two people of the same sex want to form a domestic partnership, they can. What if we called it a life alliance? What if we are talking about two single dads (and I don’t really care who the dads are having sex with, and if you do, that’s your problem) who rent a place together and share a nanny for the kids and pool their groceries and only have one car? Would it be okay with everyone if we said, “Oh, and you can share health insurance benefits, too?” How about a single mom and her second cousin who happens to be female and their kids becoming a household? What is wrong with that? Share medical insurance, have someone else who can rush to the emergency room with the kid, take out a house loan together? 

No one seems to be talking much about what R-71 offers to older couples over 62. It basically says that any sort of couples over 62 can take advantage of the domestic partnership (and you can say life alliance if it makes you feel better) change. It doesn’t even say they have to be having sex!!! So if two old ducks (or drakes, or a duck and a drake) want to share an apartment and car and groceries, and make emergency medical decisions for each other and possibly share insurance benefits, they can. And they don’t even have to have sex to do it!

To my way of thinking, the only flaw in R-71 is that it doesn’t go far enough. Why is it limited to same sex couples who might possibly want to have sex with one another and older opposite sex couples? Think of the domestic partnership or life alliances we see every day. My brother and his kids and my sister had a domestic partnership when he was newly divorced. (No, it didn’t involve sex. Are you listening at all?) They all banded together as one household and helped each other. She was listed as the emergency contact for the school, and became a Girl Scout leader for the daughters. He fixed the plumbing and did the grocery shopping. If R-71 had been in effect for them, and they had chosen to register as a domestic partnership,  the kids would have benefited from her Boeing medical insurance. And all that emergency permission stuff and who can know what about the kids when they’re in hospital would have been a lot simpler. 

Do you know any grandparent who heads a household that includes a grown offspring and some grandchildren? What if  a mom and grown daughter could be seen as ‘domestic partners’? Do you know how much that would simplify life for some of those households? Grandkids suddenly covered under grandma's insurance at work, maybe.  If Grandma croaks, the taxable estate is reduced before daughter inherits.

Let’s face it. The American family takes a lot of different shapes these days. Any two adults, and I do many ANY two adults, should be allowed the benefits of the domestic partnership without us assuming anything about what goes on in the bedroom. These are hard times, people. Stop worrying about who is having sex with whom, and let’s look at what the referendum actually says.  

Things were crazy around here this last ten days.  Lots of frantic late night editing.    Then Robin discovered that someone has substituted the word 'boobs' for breast in her book.  And dragons don't even have 'boobs'. 

Things got so crazy that somehow the assistant's hours were not faxed in on time.  Hm.  I wonder if she'll get paid this month.  :)

Then, as the office was being tidied after the deadline seige was over, a copy of the Doctorow  (no, not that Doctorow!) book  "Ragtime" was found on the desk. As it was being returned to the shelf, a mini-pad dropped out from between the pages.  Not funny, guys. 

Well, actually it was. But not as funny as the day Robin picked up the Norton anthology and all the porn fell out of it.  Vintage porn, I might add, carefully razored out of old magazines.  Except for that one photo, of course. Ew.

Months have passed but no one has owned up to that.  However, I noted that the Norton had been purchased from a second hand bookstore in New York. AND the assistant's book plate was in the front of the book . . .   I wonder if she borrowed it from that Molly person and then put her book plate over Molly's name.  That would explain a lot.  She's always going on and on about 'Molly this" and 'Molly that' and 'Molly reviewed a book'  and  "This is how Molly alphabetizes' and 'Molly doesn't have a Miscellaneous Crap file in her filing cabinet.'

Well, la de da!

M

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.  Lent will last for 40 days. During that time, I will abstain from meat on Fridays.  That's not really much of a sacrifice for me.

But today was a day of fasting and abstinence.  That means two small meals and one regular meal, and nothing else to eat all day.  And no meat.

That sort of a fast should not be a big deal, and because most years it isn't, I upped the ante this year.  No breakfast.  I went to Mass, received my ashes, and came home.

Which, as it turns out, is tough for me, as I am a breakfast person.  I started watching the clock at 10:30, and let myself have lunch at noon sharp.  A simple lunch, just bread and cheese.

By three, I was watching the clock.  I was hungry and out of sorts.  And cranky.  Of course, I had the grandkids here after school.  And all the Girl Scout cookies arrived.  Kids don't have to fast, of course.  So they had an afterschool snack, cookies and milk.

Hunger makes my sense of smell very sharp, and those cookies smelled great. It also tends to make me short tempered.

I'm proud to say I got through my day of fasting without blowing my temper.  But Robin Hobb's assistant and I finally agreed on one thing.  Being hungry is not that big a deal. Being hungry with kids around is really difficult to deal with.

And this was just a little five or six hours hungry, with the knowledge that there is lots of food in my house, and that tomorrow I will get up and have breakfast.  And that none of my kids were going hungry.

So, how does a mom living in poverty do this? How do you feel that hungry, all the time, and still manage to be a loving, attentive mom?  When the food does come how does she resist gobbling down more than her share? I can't even imagine the pain of knowing that my kids were as hungry as I am, and the despair of  not being able to do anything about it.

So.  Lenten promises.  Some people give things up.  Some people do things.  I like a combination of both.  I'm daring myself to stay out of coffee shops for 40 days. Think I can make that? 

On the doing thing, each of my grand daughters wants to contribute one item of food for each of the 40 days to a food bank.  And they want it to be foods they like themselves.  I like that idea, so I'll be putting a food item for them to donate in each backpack every morning.

And I think JRS will get my charity donation for March.

I am very, very blessed.  I hope I never lose sight of that.