Updates, Hack Jobs, and Regional Censorship

 

My publisher, deemed too "adult" for even me to look at

Well, I’m in! I sent my blurb and first chapter to the Harlequin contest on Monday. The book is a paranormal. Whether or not it’s a Nocturne will be up to the judges to decide. I’m hoping it at least hits the minimum word count. I don’t know because I haven’t finished even a first draft yet. Guess I’d better get on the stick, seeing as how I’m now committed and all.

I don’t expect to win, but there’s still a chance mine could be one of the fifty picked, so I have to have a book ready. Last time I entered a contest I didn’t even have my draft typed, and events got rather hairy. Looks like I’ve got a couple long weekends ahead of me.

I’ve asked myself if this constitutes hackwork and decided it doesn’t. I can justify that because I started this story a couple of years ago, and was thinking about getting back to it before I found out about the contest. The contest just provided incentive to work on a book I was going to write anyway, eventually. Therefore, not hackwork. I can look at myself in the mirror again.

Anyone who wants a sneak peak at all the first chapters can click on over to www.soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com and read through any or all of what’s up there. Mine’s “Spark.” For this one I’m going by the nom de plume of Dana Stewart. After the noticeable lack of crossover readership between my M/F and M/M books, I’ve finally realized I should have gone with a pen name when I switched subgenres. Since my last couple books were M/M and had my real name on them, Dana will be writing my M/F paranormals from now on. P.E. me still writes SF and fantasy minus the romance element. Gerald S. Parker has a horror story out in an anthology. Some day he may get around to writing a novel in the Stephen King tradition, but he’ll have to wait in line.

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And now, a tale of censorship. I was out and about in the Hershey, PA area last Sunday. That’s Dauphin County, as opposed to my regular Lancaster County stomping grounds. Since Dauphin County libraries are open on Sunday, I stopped in and got an Internet guest pass so I could check out my email. While I was at it, I ran an experiment. Earlier this year the Lancaster County library system blocked my publisher’s site on the grounds of “adult content.” Did that hold true outside Lancaster? I decided to give it a shot.

Guess what? I had no trouble getting on the publisher’s site in the Hershey library. They even let me access Ellora’s Cave, that well-known morass of smut. I checked a couple other erotica publishers denied to me by Lancaster County’s morality police and got on without so much as a disapproving cluck or tsk-tsk. Or having the screen freeze up, which once happened to me when I accidently ended up on a Lord of the Rings Aragorn/Legolas slash site. Talk about embarrassing.

This proves a theory I’ve been harboring: Lancaster County is afraid of the dirty, and I think I know why. As with almost everything else, it all boils down to money.

If you Google us, you’ll discover Lancaster County is synonymous with “Pennsylvania Dutch.” We have a large Amish/Mennonite community. Our tourist industry is built on it. Don’t let the pictures of the farmers in buggies fool you. These people own businesses. They have money. They spend money. If they moved out, all those tourist dollars would go with them, and there goes the county’s economy.

This is a conservative area. You’ve heard of the Bible Belt? We’re the Bible Belt, Top Hat, Black Tie and Tails. One of our school districts banned the Harry Potter books on the grounds they promote witchcraft. I kid you not. You think it can’t happen in this day and age? It sure as hell can. I’m writing M/M paranormal smut in the sister city of Salem, Massachusetts, one step ahead of the stake.

And that’s why the library won’t let me access my publisher’s web site any more. I doubt very much if it’s about protecting The Children from obscenity. I’m convinced it’s about not wanting to offend the strictly-religious Amish and Mennonite population and their significant contribution to Lancaster County’s financial survival. The Amish are heavy library users. You don’t piss in the well you drink from, and you don’t upset the Amish and their Amish dollars.

Our local Barnes and Noble carries maybe half a shelf of Gay/Lesbian Studies. About twice that space is reserved for sex and sexuality. An entire aisle (both sides) is devoted to Christianity. Haven’t checked the amount of Muslim and Buddhist offerings yet.

I didn’t get a chance to try out the Adams County library system when I was in Gettysburg, but I might be going back for additional research so I’ll give it a shot then and see what sites I can get onto. Same for libraries in the neighboring counties of York, Lebanon, Chester and Berks. I have a feeling Berks might block me. They used to have Blue Laws. York and Chester, I’m fairly certain, live in the 21st century. They’re more industrialized. Lebanon’s got a lot of farmland and might be on the fence.

In the meantime, if I want to access my publisher’s site, I can still get on at McDonald’s, which is big enough to thumb its nose at everybody. At some point—like maybe if I get a publishing contract out of this contest—I’ll say screw you to the library and get Internet at home so I can look up porn in peace, or at least until the mob with the torches and pitchforks comes pounding on my door.

By the way, the Ephrata Library has three copies of 50 Shades of Grey. Haven’t read it yet. Seems all three are always checked out.

Watch the Content

I used to like the library. I still do, in some respects. I can do research, read all sorts of books for free, and watch movies and entire seasons of TV show. I’ve now caught up with Hell’s Kitchen on DVD. Watching alleged professional chefs screw up even simple dishes and get reamed out by a psychotic Scotsman makes me feel much better about my own lack of cooking ability.

The library is where I’ve been getting my Internet for the last decade or so. I started out checking emails on their computer system. Now that I have a laptop I’ve been taking advantage of the library’s free WiFi to post blogs, buy stuff from Amazon, check the emails, look for jobs and writing markets, and watch videos on YouTube. Don’t look at me like that. Everybody watches videos on YouTube. Just not everybody admits it.

Things were going along so well, until I ran afoul of the danger inherent in any free program offered by an institution funded by taxpayer money: censorship and restrictions. In this case, the library system’s content filter.

I suppose all public libraries have a content filter. Without it, the library would be filled with 14-year-old boys surfing porn sites, which would upset other parents. (Not the parents of the boys. Their boys don’t do things like that.) Our local library had an incident about seven-eight years ago where a grown man got arrested for accessing porno on the library’s computer system. I live in a hard-line conservative area (lots of Amish and Old Order Mennonites here in the Dutch Country). Imagine some Mennonite woman and her brood drops in to the library in search of children’s books. They pass the computer section and some doof is watching Girls Gone Topless. Explain that to a six-year-old raised in a religious environment. Hence the restrictions on content.

I had my own incident on a library computer once, when I was cruising for Lord of the Rings and hit an Aragorn/Legolas slash fan site. The computer froze up and the screen informed me I wasn’t allowed to be there. I had to go to the desk and explain how I’d “accidently” done a no-no. The new program doesn’t freeze the screen, it just tells you content’s been blocked. A vast improvement, I say.

I never minded the restrictions so much. Sure, it’s a hassle at times, given my choice of genre (primarily M/M). I can’t watch gay porn videos or research too much of anything having to do with sex. That includes publishers like Ellora’s Cave, which is blocked for adult content. How the hell am I supposed to check out new markets for erotica when the system won’t let me look at their sites? In those cases, I can just go to McDonald’s. They have free WiFi too, and they’ll let you look at anything. You don't even have to eat the food.

But mostly I just shrugged and continued to go to the library. Where I live, it’s less than a quarter mile away. I can walk up the street and take advantage of the freebies. All good.

Until last week, when I went to log into my publisher’s site and discovered it had been blocked for “adult/explicit sexual content.” Huh? Wha? I’ve been cruising that site for the last half-dozen years and all of a sudden it’s a threat to morality? What gives?

So I went to the desk to find out what gives, and got even more bad news. The content blocker is a countywide system run by computer. There’s no way around it. You have to accept the library’s Acceptable Use Policy in order to use the free Internet, and the content blocker’s part and parcel of it. The folks behind the desk can temporarily shut it off for the library’s computer system, but those of us using our own computers are basically SOL.

Apparently the IT folks recently updated the system. That’s why my publisher, who’s been flying under the radar lo these many years, suddenly ended up on the program’s Do Not Access list. So I can’t get onto the site any more. I can’t get into my author account to check my sales or royalty statements or bring myself up to date on bestsellers or new releases. There's no such thing as a free lunch, or trouble-free WiFi where local government funding is at stake.

There’s also the possibility I could be blocked from my other blog, Shapeshifter Seductions. I was clicking through our blog hop over the weekend and one of the sites was filtered out for content. We’ve got the word “seductions” in our title. It’s only a matter of time.

What can I do about it? Well, I can go to the local McDonald’s, about a mile away. It’s a good thing I live in a commercialized suburban area. I could even drive over to the Barnes and Noble’s in Lancaster and use their WiFi system. I’ve never set up my laptop in a bookstore’s café. Some writer I am.

I can’t go to Burger King. They use a content blocker.

Eventually, I’ll have to bite the bullet and get home Internet, probably from my cable TV provider. They’re also right up the street from me. If anything goes wrong, I can go to the office and scream at a human being instead of having to wend my way through some labyrinthine phone answering system. You can’t beat that with a stick.

And in case you were wondering: the same library that won’t let me log onto my publisher’s site or access my own books any more does carry 50 Shades of Grey. Three copies, in fact. Seems there’s quite a demand. They also have Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, which is the next best thing to commercial soft-core porn. I’ll have to check the shelves to see if they have any of Anne Rice’s books.

I should also check for war or crime sites and see how many images of explicit violence the content filter lets through. Something tells me that would be okay.

So, until I cough up the bucks for home Internet, I’ll be viewing my publisher’s site, and my porn, at McDonald’s. For the really hardcore, skeevy stuff, I’ll just go on fan fiction sites. You can find any kink you like, all in explicit detail and all for free, and it’s still accessible through the library’s system. Hypocracy, gotta love it.

The Care and Feeding of Your Local Librarian

"The Linebaugh Public Library System's purpose is to provide you the freedom to discover and the resources to explore a lifelong love of reading and learning."

I love my library's mission statement. It really gets to the heart of why most of us enter the profession, either as a librarian or a paraprofessional. A lifelong love of reading and learning is something library folks treasure and we want to share that with our communities.

I had planned on covering all of the useful things libraries can do for working writers. But as I wrote about our thoughtfully constructed collections and our database subscriptions and the knowledgeable staff who provides premium research and readers' services, I had an epiphany: writers and librarians are kindred spirits, dedicated to words and information. Most of you already utilize and celebrate library resources in the creation of your work. If you're published, you've probably made some appearances at branches in your area. But did you realize that there are library-based promotion opportunities beyond the book signing?

Your secret weapon for local promotion is the desk clerk.

Okay, I have to admit, I'm a little biased. I work the front lines every day, and perhaps sometimes I feel that what I do is more important than it really is. But let's think strategically for a minute. We come in contact with almost every patron who walks in the door, even if only offer a greeting. Branches in my system can service anywhere from 300-1,500 people (sometimes more during the summer) every day. That's a lot of people.

Let's take this a little bit further. Even though some of these people come in for internet access, faxing, general research, etc, a goodly number of them are fiction readers and most of them like to book talk. These patrons want to know what we're reading and what we think about what they're reading. They request books, they recommend books, and solicit recommendations from us. Library staff handsells as much as booksellers do. For example, one of my favorite fantasy writers is Kristen Britain. I handsell Green Rider to my fantasy patrons when they come to me for recommendations or during a conversation, and the circulation numbers, when compared to similar titles released around the same time, reflect our effectiveness.

Green Rider by Kristen Britain- 76
Blood of the Fold by Terry Goodkind - 42
Firebird by Mercedes Lackey - 25
Acorna: the unicorn girl by Anne McCaffrey - 34

During readers' advisory sessions and book talk conversations, we introduce our patrons to writers they might not have picked up on their own and, frequently, that turns into later sales. A good number of my regulars try before they buy. They'll only borrow what they're not sure about and buy the authors they know they're going to like. Once they find you, they'll buy you if they deem you worthy for their shelves at home.

The bottom line is, if we know you and we like your books, we're going to tell people about them. It's our job. We'll recommend anything to a patron if we think they'll like it, but we can't shut up about the authors we know and like. And with the advent of Web 2.0 - blogs, podcasts, wikis, LibraryThing, social networking sites and all that fun stuff - we have the opportunity to reach so many more people both in our communities and outside of them. Just google Nancy Pearl or Wendy Crutcher to see the potential for web-wide readers' advisory.

So, how do you get our attention? How do you get on our recommendation lists? How do you get us to handsell you? To talk about you? To book you for panels and signings? Well, you have to seduce us.

• Get to know us better. I have a core group of regulars that I see at least once a week. I know who likes to cook, whose taste in historicals runs to regency, and which woman prefers law enforcement heroes in her romantic suspense as opposed to military men. I also know my writers, published and non. The ones I see regularly, the ones I have positive encounters with every week are in the forefront of my mind and are frequently the first ones I think of when a patron is looking for something in the genre in which they write.
• Spend some quality time with us. A couple of volunteer hours a week is frequently worth more to a library than money. Library staff is doing more with less these days, and having someone reliable to help the pages shelfread, notify patrons about available holds, and doing other odd jobs really helps. When you regularly volunteer, you form relationships with the staff - you become a part of the library family. And it's difficult to find a more loyal, enthusiastic group of people than library people.
• Make us feel special. Libraries are always in need of supplies. Sponsoring an activity or providing programming will get you a huge public thank you and some warm squishy feelings from the staff (who will, more than likely be more than willing to talk about how nifty you are!). And not only will your kindness be noticed by the staff, it will draw attention from the storytime moms whose children benefit from the crafts you provided or the patrons who check out the books you donated to the collection.

Don't forget to see other people once in a while, though. It's difficult to forge relationships with staff in every library. But we all travel. Planning a book tour? Include some library stops. Going on vacation or to a convention? Pop in and say hi. Sign copies of your books. Maybe leave some bookmarks with the desk staff (because the patrons go through bookmarks like crazy!) A ten-minute visit can go a long way.

Now it's your turn. I'd love to know about your favorite library. Are you a regular patron, or do you just visit once in a while while you're in town? What makes it special?

Reading for Writers series:

• Books that Suck and the Readers Who Love them
• The Care and Feeding of Your Local Librarian
• April 14 - Non-fiction: Not Just For Research Anymore

Series Coming Soon: Abusing the TBR Pile