Ye Olde Randome Stuffe

I’m going in a bunch of directions today, because none of the stuff I’m reporting on can make a full blog on its own. Together, though, they should make up an entry long enough that you’ll figure you’re getting your money’s worth. Wait a minute, this is free. Yeah well.

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Freedom of speech was fun while it lasted. The other day I tried to get onto my publisher’s website and discovered the library system’s onerous content filter is back in operation. Once again the system is determined to protect my innocent eyes from lascivious content, including the smutty books I myself wrote. I didn’t check, but I’m pretty sure the filter still allows people onto the site that shows you how to make pipe bombs. So sex is verboten but acts of terrorism are fine. Glad to see Lancaster County’s priorities are firmly in order.

This couldn’t come at a worse time, because—drum roll—I sold that book I was working on! It’s the smuttiest of smut, with a dominant woman who buys a pair of slaves for, um, personal entertainment. You know, juggling and card tricks and stuff. Hey, kids could be reading this. Gotta watch that content filter.

Anyway, I sent it out last Thursday evening and got the acceptance email on Tuesday. Siren’s nice in that regard; they don’t make you wait months and months for a reply. Some publishers don’t respond at all. “If you don’t hear from us, we’re not interested.” Yeah, well, you won’t be hearing from me again, because I’m not interested in you. I can publish books on my own now. Or I’ll be able to once I learn how. I think I’ll write straight-up porn and self-publish on Amazon, which skates right by the library’s content filter and has all sorts of nasty stuff right out there in the open for everyone to see. So there.

I wish I knew why descriptions of adult fictional characters enjoying themselves get so many people in a tizzy. And don’t try to tell me, “We must protect the children!” The children aren’t going anywhere near these sites. They’re playing video games that let them blow stuff up and save the world from the zombie apocalypse. You know, practical life skills. You keep your hands to yourselves, you zombie menaces! We’re watching you!

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Having finished a book, I’m now faced with the usual problem of having to start another one. Looks like the winner this time around will be a Talbot’s Peak book, which means self-pubbing because not all the characters or concepts are mine. I was able to bypass that with Jessalina’s Pets because even though the initial post appeared on Shapeshifter Seductions, it’s not set in our fictional town and doesn’t use any characters created by anyone else. Ditto for one of the M/Ms I’ve got on the back burner. I transported the main characters to Philadelphia and created a whole new background and supporting cast. I can’t do that with this one. Better familiarize myself with formatting.

I’m not that concerned with the text of the book. It’s the cover that’s got me worried. In spite of working in the typesetting industry off and on for several years, I don’t know the first thing about fonts and typography and Photoshop and creating a cover. I’ll probably have to pay somebody to do that. This is why I’m still subbing to regular publishers. I’m just here to write the book. Let someone else worry about all the technical crap. That’s what they’re gobbling down half the royalties for. Dammit, I knew I should have taken art classes when I was in school.

I wonder if I have Photoshop on the laptop? I’ve got a ton of programs just sitting on the hard drive that I never even look at because I bought this for Internet and email and to serve as a typewriter. I could probably be a publisher if I knew how to work this stuff. Maybe I can teach myself. That’s what the library’s for. It isn’t for researching erotica publishers any more, that’s for damn sure.

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Let’s start the learning curve by attempting to make a link. If I did this right, you should be able to reach the blog post that became Jessalina’s Pets by clicking here. If I didn’t, it’s at October 9, 2013. I’m going to miss paper when it finally goes out of fashion, even though typing on a computer is so much faster and easier. And nobody cares if you make mistakes because you can correct it on screen. I guess that guy from the Monkeys, whose mother invented Wite-Out, doesn’t get royalties any more. Them’s the breaks, fella. Time marches on.

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I put food out for Stray Kitty this morning and he let it sit again. A neighbor told me he doesn’t like fish, and this had tuna in it. Talk about picky. I hope he likes the taste of no food. I’m sure somebody else will slip him something, or else he’ll catch a bird or a squirrel. We know he’s not fishing in the creek. And I’ve reached a decent word count, so we’ll wrap on this finicky note. See you next week!

A Minor Crack in the Rules

I’m going to give a writing lesson this week. But first, here’s a censorship update: I finally found a brand-new copy of It at Barnes and Noble. The offensive word still exists throughout the text, just as it does in modern copies of Huckleberry Finn. So that answers that.

The follow-up question still remains: If a newbie writer submitted a book with such liberal use of That Word, would it be accepted and printed as is, or would political correctness necessitate a thorough editorial scrubbing? There’s no way to tell without writing such a book and sending it around to agents and editors and see what kinds of comments you get. Would they even give that as a reason for rejection? I’ll bet they’d cite something else. It’s like job interviews. They’ll say you’re over- or underqualified or lack a specific skill they need or don’t have enough experience, when the truth is the job went to the son of some friend of the owner’s or that girl who looks hot in a skirt. Nobody’s ever going to tell you you’re wrong, just in case the reason why can be used to file a lawsuit. You just weren’t as right as the other person. Congratulations! We finally live in a world where everybody’s perfect!

I wonder what writers of historicals do? Especially those trying to write Civil War era fiction. Set the story up North? That would be the easiest solution. Or they could follow Disney’s Tarzan example and simply not show a large segment of people who would have been living there historically. I’m all in favor of equality, diversity and inclusion—I thought Thor did an excellent job in subtly adding Asian and black gods to the Norse pantheon—but c’mon. Sometimes the contortions we’re forced to go through in order to avoid offensiveness get out of hand.

We make our living with words. Some of those words can be hurtful. Like “bitch” and “slut” and “cunt.” Those words are still acceptable. But that’s a different blog.

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I’m currently typing up a book I hope to send to a publisher, probably next week. It’s a ménage—one woman, two hot guys—and falls under the romance umbrella. Like all genres, romance comes with its own set of rules. I’m still in the second-guessing stage of the writing process, so now I’m wondering if I may have violated one of them.

In this case, the rule in question is, “Woman meets her perfect mate as soon as possible.” Chapter One is good. First page is better. First paragraph of first page is trickier to pull off, but can and has been done. My female main character doesn’t meet her men until Chapter Two. Chapter One is the setup; a minor character makes a remark that sets the plot in motion. So she meets the guys late for a romance, but it’s not necessarily fatal. And she meets two of them. That might make up for the late start.

Here’s the problem: Another male appears in Chapter One. My FMC doesn’t like him. With good reason: he turns out to be the villain of the story. But there he is, on page 2 already, and there she is, tossing insults at him. That’s also a standard romance trope. Some readers are likely to read this exchange, note his early intro and assume, “This is the one, this is the hero, this is the man of her dreams.” Uh, no. But try telling readers that once they’ve formed expectations. When she meets the real heroes in Chapter Two, a lot of folks are liable to feel betrayed. What’s a writer to do?

I could rewrite the entire beginning. Nah. Too much trouble too late in the game. I could change Chapter One to “Prologue.” Then Chapter Two becomes Chapter One. Any man you meet in the Prologue may or may not be important to the story. I can make my bad guy appear even slimier. Then people who assumed he was Da One will feel relieved when they meet the other two. I may have already helped things along by titling the book Jessalina’s Pets. That “s” on the end implies she gets more than one, so even those who invested in Chapter One Guy should be willing to switch allegiance after Chapter Two. Ditto for the cover. When/if I get one, it’ll show two men whose descriptions don’t match COG’s. That should also work in my favor. I hope so.

To top it off, one of the men she buys at the slave market has brown skin. Weren’t we talking about offensiveness in the first part of this blog? That’s easily fixed. I can just call him “tanned.” We’ll see what the publisher says.

I think I can skate by in the other case too. I need to intro the bad guy early so he doesn’t pop up out of nowhere later on. Readers would be even less forgiving of that than they would of a perceived bait and switch. I’d better make sure to emphasize she really detests this guy while she’s instantly attracted to the other two. That’ll make it go down more easily.

Dammit, this conforming to expectations is hard. Why did I want to be a writer again? Oh yeah, because it beats working. Back to the keyboard.

One Thing Leads to Another

The saga continues. After visiting another bookstore and still not finding a copy of It, I decided to go to the source, and checked both Amazon and the Penguin site (the book’s current publisher). Copies are available. How recent are they? Well, a 25th anniversary edition came out in 2012, but I’m not paying $400 just to see if a politically-incorrect term is still included in the text. I couldn’t determine if the paperbacks for sale on the sites were old copies or recent reissues. Since I found the word in question in a brand-new copy of a different Stevie book, I’m going to go ahead and assume any future versions of It will include all the words Stevie originally wrote, including the offensive ones. Freedom of speech and all that.

However, this question led me into another one. Suppose Stevie was just starting out, and submitted his lengthy, bad-word-laden manuscript to today’s publishers in today’s PC climate. Would they still publish the book as is, or would they demand that one racially-charged word be removed?

(I’m sure the other dirty words, like fuck and cunt and shit, would be okay. See, I just used them myself and nothing bad happened. So far.)

I can’t answer this question. The only person who could with any authority would be an acquisitions editor, and I doubt if they’re spending their rare free time reading my blog. Unless and until somebody comes forward with this inside information, all I can offer are guesses and theories.

My theory is: it depends.

Publishers have their own set of do’s and don’ts, which vary from company to company. Almost all romance publishers won’t accept incest, rape and underage sex. Mainstream has no problem with any of that. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo contains things that have gotten other books taken down from Amazon. Ditto Game of Thrones, which is shelved under Fantasy. I know of at least one instance where a writer was told to make a gay character straight if she wanted the sale. She chose to self-publish. I’m sure she could have found a more accommodating publisher if she’d kept looking. Plenty of agents and editors have “more LGBT characters” on their wish lists. You just have to connect with the right one.

I myself hit an odd taboo back in the ‘80s, when I was trying to market a science fiction novel. It kept getting rejected. Why? Well, because it sucked. Looking back on it now, I get down on my knees and thank all the gods it didn’t sell, it was so embarrassingly bad. I don’t even know if I could rework it today to make it any better.

So what was the reason given for all the rejections? It could have been any number of things, from unworkable concept to unbelievable/underdeveloped characters to dirty language on down, but here’s what the editors said: they didn’t like the book because—brace yourself—one of the characters smoked. Yeah. That was my biggest mistake. This was the 1980s and the beginning of the anti-smoking campaign. The editors were trying to quit, and having a character light up hit them in a sore spot. Or so I was told. None of them said they’d buy the book if I had the guy drink instead. I suspect it was just a handy excuse to reject an unsalable manuscript, but who can say for sure?

I have a book on the market now. This book may also suck. Or the sticking point could be my biracial (Japanese/Latino) main character. I’ve only gotten form rejections so far. Until somebody tells me flat out that’s a no-no, I can only keep guessing. I’ll keep you posted.

Given what facts I’ve uncovered so far, I’ve come to this conclusion: if your story absolutely has to include possibly-offensive material, don’t write genre. Aim for mainstream. Seriously. Genre publishers tend to be smaller and can’t afford to lose any sales. The big publishers may put out genre lines, but their cash cow is general fiction, and they’re big enough to get away with things smaller or self-pubbers can’t.

This is why I’m assuming It still contains objectionable terms, even though times have changed. Next time you’re in a bookstore, look where Mr. King's books are shelved. He was never stuck in the F/SF section with the other horror books. He started out on the Fiction shelves, with the “real” novels. For a long time there was a separate Horror section, but only because Stevie and the copycats who followed him made it popular. Horror as a separate genre didn’t exist until Stevie started selling megacopies. Last week when I was in Barnes and Noble, I noticed there’s no longer a Horror section. Horror is back in F/SF, and to a lesser extent in Young Adult. Stevie’s back on the Fiction shelves, next to Dean Koontz and whoever else outsold the competition, and his books are just the way he wrote them back in simpler times. The power of the publisher.

Which leads into yet another question. Suppose you wrote a book and sent it off to a publisher. Suppose they offered you a ton of money for it—but only if you made certain changes, like making a gay character straight or a person of color white or removing a certain word. Suppose making these changes would damage the integrity of your novel. Would you still do it?

This question’s gotten easier to answer. Thanks to self-publishing, writers don’t have to bow to the will of the Big New York 5 anymore. We can write our books the way they need to be written and still get them into readers’ hands. We might get trashed on review sites, but that happens no matter who the publisher is. I take no responsibility for any lawsuits filed because of alleged hateful language.

And no, I wouldn’t make my biracial hero white in order to make a sale. He has to be the way he is, for reasons to be explained in a possible sequel. Somehow I get the feeling the evil Catholic priest will make it past editors unchallenged. Editorial fiat is often stranger than fiction.

The Perils of Pantser Pauline

But first, a censorship update. Since Monday’s bad weather bypassed us, I was able to get to our local Barnes and Noble to see if It, Stephen King’s vintage ‘80s opus, is still politically incorrect. And the answer is … Don’t know yet. With four shelves devoted to Mr. King’s oeuvre, B&N did not have a copy of It. Neither did the used book store down the street. Neither did the three libraries I checked. I’m not saying it was on loan; I’m saying they didn’t have a physical copy at all. One had an audio version, but it was out. The next-nearest B&N is over in Berks County, and there’s another library along the route. I’ll keep you posted.

I had better luck with Huckleberry Finn. That one’s readily available in libraries and bookstores, uncut and in all its offensive glory. That’s the advantage of being a classic. You can’t just sweep it under the rug without protest and a lot of discussion. Discussion is good. Discussion exposes people to new ideas. This is why we write, and why we battle censorship.

I don’t think It has been censored. It could be the publisher hasn’t issued a new edition in a while. For all I know, B&N did have a copy and sold it the day before I got there. I found the word I was checking up on in another Stevie book, which answers my original question. I’ll stay on the lookout for It, though, just to be thorough.

B&N had plenty of copies of 50 Shades of Grey. For some reason, Flowers in the Attic is now shelved in the Young Adult section. Because the protags are kids? I suspect with the rise of the New Adult label, publishers are scouring their backlists for former bestsellers with 20something protags in order to hop on the NA bandwagon and squeeze a few extra bucks out of readers. I never read Flowers—couldn’t get past the first two pages—but I understand it contains child abuse and brother-sister incest. I guess that’s okay everywhere except in self-published romance. Wonder if Amazon’s taken it down yet?

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Here’s a cautionary tale for all you pantsers out there, and for any writer thinking of attempting a serial novel. I hear people are experimenting with those again, now that self-pubbing has made it feasible. That’s where you treat a book like one of those old movie serials—a new chapter every week or month or whatever, preferably ending on a cliffhanger to bring the reader/viewer back next week. Charles Dickens’s work was published this way, in monthly magazine installments. Up until the advent of the Internet, the only modern (1990s) example I can think of is Stephen King’s The Green Mile, which was doled out in print booklets, a chapter a month, as an experiment to see if the reading public would buy a book that way. I guess not, since I’m not aware of any other print serial novels. The Internet’s a different beast. You can post a chapter a day if you want to.

Assuming, of course, you’ve written it.

Over on my other blog, Shapeshifter Seductions, I’ve been posting a story in roughly 1000-word chapters, one every Monday. I’ve put up nine chapters so far. It’s even spilled over into some of my fellow writers’ blogs. I’ve got my characters, action, romance, a threat to everybody’s happiness, and something resembling a plot. What I don’t have is the second half of the book.

I’m a pantser. I don’t plot things out before I start writing. I just plunge right in and see where the story goes. Sometimes I know what happens; a lot of times I only have a vague idea, or no idea at all. That can be good or bad. The good: you don’t know any more than the readers do what’s going to happen next. Surprise is guaranteed. The bad: if you don’t know what happens next, you can’t write it. The story comes to a screeching halt.

The ugly: readers who’ve invested their time in your story are going to be pissed as hell.

If you’re a pantser and you’re considering posting a serial novel, take it from me: WRITE THE ENTIRE BOOK FIRST. Finish it. Polish it. THEN put it up on Amazon in installments, or on your blog or wherever. Plotters can post as they go because they’ve already outlined their book. They know where they’re headed. We don’t. We run the risk of hitting a wall with no immediate way over or around it. Meanwhile, the readers are clamoring for the next chapter. Even worse, they’re liable to walk off in a huff, never to return.

This is where I find myself right now. I’ve got two more chapters in the can and that’s it. Game over. It’s a shame, because I know where I’d like to see the story go. I know what happens to most of my characters, who gets the happy ending and who doesn’t. There’s a big action scene with help from an unexpected source. A gigantic monster gets taken down in an unusual way. Most of the characters get what they want, including one of the bad guys. Two characters who should be mortal enemies bond over their mutual love of grenade launchers. I even have an alternate ending for bad guy Cochrane, which I’m sure Serena would enjoy.

Trouble is, I have no idea how to get from where I am now to where I’d like to be. Until I can figure that out, the whole thing will have to go on hold. I should probably write the ending, even though it may change. How about it, fellow writers? Any suggestions? Encouragement? Advice?

Now I know how J. K. Rowling must have felt. She wrote her final chapter first, then had to write an entire seven-book series to get there. I think she’s a plotter, though, so she had an advantage. And a ton more money than I do. It might be time to brush up on my atrophied outlining skills. Y’think?

All Hail Freedom of Speech

Before we get into this week’s blog, I’d like to devote a few lines in tribute to Harold Ramis (shown above, right, with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd), who passed away earlier this week. If you don’t know the name, you know the movies he wrote or co-wrote: Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day and Analyze This, among others. If you went to a movie comedy in the late 1970s-early 1980s, you probably either saw him or heard his dialogue in the mouths of John Belushi, Rodney Dangerfield or Bill Murray. He was a member of the legendary Second City comedy troupe and, as time has demonstrated, a writer of comedy classics. Thank you, Dr. Spengler. You were a man of rare talent and you will be missed.

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As you may remember, a couple months back, before all the snow closed the roads, I conducted an experiment in localized censorship by visiting libraries in different counties to test what their content filters deemed too “adult” for me to look at. This was sparked by Lancaster County’s library system blocking my publisher’s site, shielding my innocent eyes from “adult content” I myself had written. Because we’ve got a large, conservative religious population of Amish and Mennonites in the area, it didn’t surprise me at all that Lancaster would block anything with even a whiff of the nasty on it. The system still allowed me access to a site that showed me how to build a pipe bomb. I suppose as long as you don’t try to have sex with it, the filter considers that okay.

Well, talk about your 180s. The other week I discovered, quite by accident, that the ban has been lifted. I doubt if customer protests or First Amendment rights had anything to do with it. Lancaster County recently upgraded their library computer system. I’m betting the content filter had to be reset, and hasn’t caught up with all the dirty sites yet. It even let me onto Ellora’s Cave! That proves the filter’s not working. It’ll probably get back to blocking erotica publishers eventually. Until then, I’d better do a lot of research and download a ton of submission guidelines. And look at porn, but I can do that on my laptop. The library doesn’t need to know.

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I’m almost done with my reread of all 1100+ pages of Stephen King’s It. That’s the one about an evil entity lurking in the sewers beneath a small New England town, killing children and promoting all things malevolent. (Which got me to wondering what’s lurking in the sewers under Peyton Place. Anybody want to write that one?)

What does a ten-pound horror novel have to do with freedom of speech? I’m glad you asked. This book, written and published in the more lax era of the 1980s, features a character who freely uses a certain word with, shall we say, negative racial connotations. Because even alluding to the word in question has resulted in legal action in the past, I’m not going to repeat it. I’m pretty sure you can guess which one I mean.

Now, I’m sure Mr. King is not a racist or a bigot. If he is, he knows enough to keep his mouth shut on the subject when in public. But he is a writer, and writers feel compelled to tell the truth as they see it. The truth is, people like the bad guys in It (at least the human ones) do exist in the real world, and they’re going to use that word, or similar words, against the people or groups they don’t like, regardless of political correctness or racial/sexual/whatnot connotations. You know, like what happened with Duck Dynasty.

Here’s what I got thinking about: my edition of the book dates back to 1985, before political correctness tightened its stranglehold on freedom of expression. Have modern editions been cleaned up—filtered for content, if you will—to protect the sensibilities of the modern reader?

That’s my next mission. Next time I’m in a bookstore, I’m going to look for a more recent edition of It and see if the book still exists the way King originally wrote it, or if it’s been cleansed for modern consumption. I should check current editions of Huckleberry Finn while I’m at it. That book ran into problems over the same word a while back. Wonder what it looks like today? If I own an early, pre-PC edition of Huckleberry Finn, am I in possession of offensive material?

One thing I’m certain of: the words bitch, cunt, cooze and fuck will still be in there, in all their offensive glory. Y’know, I’ll bet if the B-word ever becomes as big of a no-no as that other word, it’ll mean the end of literature as we know it. Half the movies in existence will be yanked from the shelves, and rap music will become extinct. And what will the women on almost all of Bravo’s reality shows call each other? We really need some unisex, ethnicity-neutral insults. Any writers out there up to the challenge?

Oh, and hey, Amazon: I understand depictions of underage sex violate your terms of service. It has a scene where an 11-year-old girl does the deed with all six of her little buddies. Plan on deleting one of Stevie’s bestsellers from your catalog any time soon? Look on the bright side: she doesn’t use the no-no word. Trying to earn a living as a writer gets trickier every day.

Adventures in Censorship, Part II

This is a continuation of a minor side project of mine. To recap: I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a heavily conservative area. Earlier this year, their public library’s content filter started blocking the web site of my publisher, Siren-Bookstrand, on the grounds of “adult content.” Hey, I told the folks at the desk, I’m an adult. I’m a writer. I create some of that content you don’t want me to look at. I’m not even on the library’s computers. I’m looking at smut on the privacy of my own laptop. Is there any way a grownup can look at grownup sites at the public library?

Nope, they told me. It’s the computer system. It scans for certain key words. If those words come up, the site goes bye-bye. There’s nothing they can do. (Translation: “It’s not our fault.” No human being’s to blame. Funny how often that explanation comes up.)

Anyhoo, last month I was at a library outside of Lancaster County, and I got onto the Siren site just fine. In fact, I got onto several sites blocked by Lancaster County’s content filter. Which got me wondering: does this hold true all over? Do different counties in the same state—the same general geographic area—have different ideas of what constitutes objectionable material? Is what’s too “adult” for the goose in Lancaster County good for the gander in Chester?

Having nothing better to do, and as always looking for an excuse not to write, I decided to find out. I visited libraries in four of Lancaster’s neighboring counties: Dauphin, Chester, Berks and Lebanon. I attempted to log onto four erotic publishers’ sites: Siren, Loose Id, Liquid Silver, and the queen of dirty books, Ellora’s Cave. As a “control” I picked a site I know for sure is porn, even though it’s all prose and no pictures. Which content filters would let me on where?

Keep in mind all four of these publishers have their own content filters. They don’t publish anything that includes rape for titillation, underage sex, forced sex, bestiality (werewolves don’t count), necrophilia (vampires don’t count), incest or pseudo-incest, or fun with bodily functions. They do include actual plots and characters, things usually missing from true porn. It’s all consenting adults doing consensual things, all in words with no dirty pictures, not even the covers. I guess anyone under (or over) 18 isn’t deemed ready for that.

All five library systems blocked the actual porn site. So occasionally these systems do the job they were designed for. Good to know. On the other hand, all five systems let me onto a fan fiction site that contains stuff just as twisted, kinky and smutty as anything you’d find on the porn site, some of it written by the 14-year-olds the system is supposed to be protecting. The difference is the fanfic site doesn’t flash the key words the computer’s looking for, so it gets a pass. The same holds true for an artists’ site I know about, or Google Images, for that matter. You can access true porn on a library system if you know which sites to look for.

And now, on to the main event. How did the various content filters measure up?

Lancaster County, my stomping grounds, blocked everything. Like I said, I used to be able to get onto Siren, but that ended earlier this year. I was never able to get onto Ellora’s Cave. The system let me onto Liquid Silver’s home page, but wouldn’t let me navigate around the site. I can still get onto Samhain’s site without problems. I guess the computer hasn’t caught that one yet. Oddly, Siren’s Manlove site is still available, probably because nobody thought to program that word into the computer. I’m betting “erotic,” “erotica” or “erotic romance” are what’s dinging the system’s bells. The funny thing is, I can access Siren’s books on Amazon, so the same smut they’re blocking on one site is fully visible on another. How is that supposed to protect the children?

Dauphin County lets you look at anything. I accessed all four sites with no trouble. Dauphin’s the home of Harrisburg, the state capital, so maybe they’re more grown-up over there. Or maybe our state reps like to look at porno in public. I’ll have to write to my congressman and ask him about that.

Chester County blocked Siren, although the page told me I could still get on if I asked the librarian. It let me onto the other three without a blink of the screen. Yep, even Ellora’s Cave. Wonder what poor little Siren did to upset their content filter? Bet if they took that “erotic romance” label off their banner they’d slip through the crack just fine.

Berks County okay’d Siren and Loose Id but blocked Liquid Silver and Ellora’s Cave. Don’t know why. Were the former deemed less dirty? Are there different gradations of smut? Something must have hit the Berks computer’s early warning system on the latter two sites. Or maybe the computer just hasn’t gotten around to Siren and Loose Id yet. Or maybe nobody’s ever tried to access erotic romance publishers’ sites often enough for the computer to notice. I’ll address that in a sec.

Lebanon County let me onto everything except Liquid Silver. Again, I don’t know why. Liquid Silver is too adult but Ellora’s Cave isn’t? I suppose I could have asked the librarian in any of these cases, but I didn’t want to draw attention to these sites and risk them all getting blocked everywhere. I’m sure I’m not the only writer trying to research potential publishers and who doesn’t have Internet at home. I didn’t want to mess things up for anyone else.

Yeah, what about that? What about the innocent children these systems are supposed to be shielding from Da Smut? Chester County’s system said flat out they were acting in compliance with the Child Protection Act. Is the system working?

I see kids on computers all the time at my local library. Here’s what they’re doing: they’re playing games or they’re on Facebook or they’re watching videos or they’re—gasp!—doing legitimate research for homework assignments. One thing they’re not doing is trying to access erotica publishers so they can read the dirty bits. That’s what Mom’s paperbacks are for. Or 50 Shades of Grey, which is sitting right out there on the Walmart shelves for anybody to publicly flip through. In the last ten years we’ve only had one case of somebody accessing porn sites at the library that I’m aware of, and that was an adult. And me, trying to research possible markets.

Holy smokes! I’m the one the system is trying to protect from Da Smut!

While we’re on the subject of protection, here are some sites Lancaster County’s system did let me onto: how to build a pipe bomb (videos and written instructions); how to make homemade explosives; how to grow marijuana (indoors and outdoors); and a site selling automatic rifles. This was on the library’s own computers, not my personal laptop. The library system even deleted my browsing history for me when I was done, so the government can’t track me down. So if I ever want to buy a gun or build a bomb to blow up the library for not letting me onto the site that offers my own books for sale, I know right where to go to get the relevant info.

But hey, they’re keeping dirty books out of the hands and away from the eyes of The Children. That’s the important thing.

I think for Christmas I’m going to treat myself to home Internet through my cable TV provider. They’ve already assured me they don’t block anything and their office is right up the street so if problems arise I can go yell at a human being. In the meantime I can continue to get free WiFi at the local McDonald’s, which lets anyone look at anything, including flat-out porn. Plus you can get McNuggets. Can’t beat that with a stick.

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.

# # #

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.