So as a result of the recent therapy (on the fence about whether it's helping or not), I decided that I need to do SOMETHING even if it appears to have little chance of making a living. If I just sit here, nothing's going to happen anyway. If I go on the criteria that whatever I do must result in making a full living, I'll never get anywhere because I have no viable options.

BUT if I remove that from the table, then I have more options available. I arrive at a place where I can do something that I want to do with the criteria that it could possibly EVENTUALLY make a living, but it's not mandatory. If the criteria is, "what can I do that I could spend 40 hrs a week doing and feel as if it meant something to me", then the answer was immediately clear.

So I'm resurrecting the sci-fi novella magazine project that I was going to do just before we were told the REC was closing. It's not going to be "The Terran Conspiracy", but it will be the same project under a different title. Since I actually did file LLC paperwork and had to scuttle it, I think I should change the names so as to avoid confusion. Instead, I'm planning to call it "The Sidereal Times."

This time, I'm actually going to try to do a business plan. And I've ordered new desktop publishing, website making and photo editing programs that look to be somewhat more capable than MS Publisher. I've bought a new computer.

I've been here more than a year now in Jonesboro. I'm honestly tired of not being able to plan for the future, and I just said the hell with it. I'm tired of my life being on hold, so I'm going to assume that I'm going to be here a while and get on with my life. If I'm not, if I get excessed next week or a month from now or whatever, oh well, change all the addresses and carry on. This superstitious thing that the minute I put down roots they'll be ripped out has to stop.

In light of that, I've also put in for a week off in September. I'm going to ConStellation. I'm done with fafiating. I'm going back to fandom, and I'm going to find new friends.

There's a fanfic author I read who seems to be the fanfic equivalent of Steven Seagal. Same characters, same relationships, same situations. Only thing different is the setting. She recycles her original characters (not that they're that original). She puts in no descriptions. I was taught that a reader should be able to tell the characters apart without names -- they should be unique enough in dialogue or mannerisms or whatever that you can tell them apart without having to use their names. I was taught "show, don't tell". I was taught that the reader is not telepathic and you have to describe the sensory scene. You have to do this in as few words as possible, and so every word counts and has to pack as much info in as possible.

It's an irritation I sometimes get with fanfic. People are just good enough to get a following, but not what I would call good writers. Yes, it is frustrating. Yes, I want to be an editor and write them long diatribes on everything they are doing wrong and how to fix it.

This is not to say they're all like that. There are some fanfic writers I've read who are professional grade. But they are few and far between. Most are good, or have a good hook, or a tone or use of words I find very good. Some are clearly kids just starting out. More power to them. But this specific person has written close to a million words of fanfic. Why isn't she better than this?

I don't criticize directly because that's a disencouragement. She also has a notice on the homepage of her archive that she doesn't want any form of criticism, even constructive criticism. Her betas aren't calling her on these things, presumably because she writes great sex scenes. This is why I'm not a beta. On the few occassions I've betaed, I was quickly disinvited because I wasn't willing to let stuff like this slide. I betaed as an editor, and a lot of people can't take that or really just think "beta" means "person to kiss my ass and tell me how wonderful I am".

Bah.

Just because you do this "for fun" is no excuse to put out bad quality work.

I ask myself lately what I truly value in life, and what do I really want to do with the rest of it. What am I drawn to, what do I love, what matters to me. Yes, I am about to turn 40.

I work in a decaying history, at a job that is detailed and intricate and requires me to interact with a lot of people every moment. It requires a lot of physical activity. It is not a job that is suited for my temperament. While it may have a future now, I don't know if that's the future I want. I'm pretty certain it's not a future I want. It just seems treadmill-like. Every day come in, sell stamps, scan packages, issue money orders, deal with worried, harried, impatient, annoyed people. I like the people I work with, they're good people. But the job itself -- what do I have to look forward to? Thirty more years of this? Of the same thing over and over again for years on end? What does it accomplish? It's just running to stand still.

So I need to sit down and really think about what meaningful work means to me. And how do I get myself into something that means something to me, that allows me to live in all senses of the word.

I want to work for that future worth living for I'm always talking about. I want to see more of the world than the American South. I want to make things people want to read or watch or listen to. Even if I don't live to see it, I want to know what the future will be like. I want to see it with my own eyes.

How close are we to that world of 2230, Xyl and Jodo's world?

My own dreams are the only guide I have.

What You Walkin' On?


I found an old man in a wooden lifeboat, rowing his way through space toward a ring of burning white light. A spiral path of stones seemed to mark the path he followed.

I walked up beside the boat and kept pace as he rowed. "So. Where ya headed?" I asked.

"Kansas City," he answered in a gruff tone.

"How ya gettin' there?" I asked next.

"Gonna walk," he answered as he pulled once more on the oars.

I sped up to keep pace as the lifeboat pulled away. "That's a boat but I don't see any water. What're your oars pullin' on?"

He looked up briefly and pulled again while the lifeboat creaked. "Yeah well... what you walkin' on?"


Inspired by "Gate", the artwork of Alexey Andreev

Someone did a short review of MO...

See the review here

It pays to Google yourself from time to time.

Been a while and might be a while more before I can get back on here, so make the most of the time.

There's been a lot going on and all the sudden I've got a lot on my plate. Actually I think the plate became a serving platter, and somebody tried to cram three whole fried chickens on it. And a Coke. (... oh come on you don't recognize that? The Blues Brothers. Sheesh.)

First off, I finished Telaon. I am now giving it some time before I start the editing, though I might fob it off on one of the folks I met at DragonCon and use it as a learning experience. But the first draft is done. Came out to about 52k words.

In related notes, I need desperately to do a podcast to assure my audience of this fact. I may do that today.

In other news, wild hair ideas can get your ass in deeper poodoo than you can possibly handle. On July 20th I posted a topic on the ISBW forum about a "wild hair idea I'd had for doing a quarterly novella magazine. Yesterday, I sent off the paperwork to start a limited liability corporation called "Purple Ink Publishing, LLC". There will be an e-text PDF format magazine going fully live on January 1st. It will be called The Terran Conspiracy. And I... am now Editor in Chief. Aside from my webmaster guy, I'm the only permanent employee at the moment. But hey, I've got, what, 2 months!

Don't go looking for the website yet, it doesn't exist yet.

Usually when I come up with crazy ideas either no one answers or they go "yeah, that's cool" and that's it. This time a couple people actually said yeah let's think seriously about it. So here I am, about to risk my savings and possibly get myself into deep financial trouble to start a magazine. I've never done editing of anybody else's stuff but my own. I've never run a business, much less a publishing business. I have a house that needs serious work and I'm about to go spend the money I was saving for it to buy ads and Google AdSense keywords. I'm going to need at least 800 or so subscribers in the year to pay all the bills. I'll probably spend every waking moment when I'm not at work working on the magazine. I probably will never be able to write my own stuff while I'm doing this, which will risk my own sanity. The podcast may have to be mothballed. But I'm still doing it.

If people aren't actively participating in a culture, it dies. "Actively participating" to me means getting new authors with good stories out into the minds of fandom. The roots of fandom and sci-fi are in words. This culture began with nothing more than words on pages sent through the mail. I aim to continue that with the new versions given to us by the computer -- electronic text and downloading rather than mimeographing and sending through the mail. Make it as painless as possible and people will be more likely to subscribe. $20/year or $6/issue, and an e-mail alert when each new issue is released for download. After a year, the magazines go into an archive and the issues are free for the download under Creative Commons. Each issue will be 10 novellas, and will end up being 2 or 3 novels worth of material. And I'm determined to make it 80 to 90% new authors.

It's a big idea. But it's worth it. Science-fiction and fandom are worth it to me.

I could use some help, though.

I might get in touch with the people who do the "Voices of Fandom" podcast. They're old-school fen and I think they'd give me moral encouragement at the least.


And of course there's work, and wondering when they're going to shut us down, and the possibility that whatever job they offer me I won't be able to take and I won't be able to find another job in this crazy economy. And Mom freaking out worrying about her retirement accounts with all the investment company failures and having to talk her down from her metaphorical cat-clinging-to-ceiling thinking she's going to spend 30 years eating dog food. I could always point out if she could afford canned dog food she could afford Campbell's soup and thus wouldn't be eating dog food in the first place, but what do I know I'm just the kid who won't have any social security at all because her generation ate it all. So you see, I have to have faith in the future or I'm going to go stark raving bonkers and start killing people with a baseball bat because I have nothing to live for. No future, no consequences, no fear.


Am I crazy for doing this thing with the magazine?

Professor Campbell always said "Follow Your Bliss".

Douglas Adams said "Don't Panic."

I'm going with that.

Why do I do it?

Because longer ago than I am comfortable recalling, the only people who understood me were the people who lived only inside my head. Even now when the gray hair is all too visible and I know perfectly well it's all nothing but a long-ingrained coping mechanism, my imaginary friends are more real to me most times than the people I talk to every day. "I met the most amazing person!" has entirely opposite connotations whether the amazing person is real or imaginary. I don't think there was ever a time when I didn't know I was talking to imaginary people. The line has always been there. Contrary to popular belief, I've always known exactly where it was, and that I was on the wrong side of it and always would be.

So I write about them. I'm an embedded reporter in another dimension. And for a while, when I'm writing, there is no line. There is no separation. The pain goes away.

It's a weird and scary feeling when you realize that the wild-hair crazy ass idea you've been batting around your head could actually be done. That all aspects are feasible and the major questions are answered.

"A path will be placed before you; The choice is yours alone."

OpenOffice's built-in PDF maker can be set to encrypt said PDF files, unlockable with a password.

Thus, should I choose to do the quarterly novella 'zine I've been playing with as a thought experiment as an e-book PDF, I can lock the files with a password only available if one pays the subscription price. Which would be lower due to lack of printing costs, etc., of paper copies.

And PDFs can work on almost anything. That's the whole point of them. Portable Document Format.

There's now a PDF reader for the new iPhone for Zarquon's sake.

An update on things going right or nearly so in my world:

• Nominated for Parsecs.
• Working on 5th (?!) Zulu-5 Story
• 11 babies outside my back door! From 2 litters born several weeks apart.
• Figured out how to put map files in Open Arena
• Have lost 66 Lbs.

Caveats to above:

• "OMG, I could have sent a better submission! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!"
• "Working" on the 5th Z5 Story means sitting at my desk in the Temple writing out the jumbled mass of scenes in my head one to an index card with the intent to somehow make some kind of outline of them, and wondering how the frell am I going to turn this goopy mass of aimlessness into a coherent story.
• 11 Babies means 18 lb. bags of cat food every week, and realizing I needed to get automatic feeders for DragonCon, and spending $100 at PetSmart. Then the smallest give me the most disgusted look when I put the 3 gallon water tank out for them as if to say, "You expect me to drink from THAT?"
• Sure, I've got new maps for OA... and now the sound has gone out on the laptop.
• Have lost 66 lbs but my metabolism has adjusted by slowing my heart rate by at least an average of 10 beats/minute. So I will have to begin exercising to keep the metabolism up to burn off the remaining 40 lbs. Grrrr....

Other than that, the Stargate guy I met at LibertyCon sent me a nice e-mail saying he was starting to read the print-outs of the stories I gave him, so hey... one of them is "Wings of Icarus", tho, and I've warned him at least twice that it's slash, so if he sends me a disgusted e-mail re "Jack and Daniel SLEEPING TOGETHER?! WTF?!" he was warned. If he gets through that without squicking, then I have no fears for the copy of "Seeds of Invasion" I put in with it. 'Nuff said.

Well. I'm sitting here doing this while I let my lunch go down before I go to the gym. (bangs head against keyboard)

So much for being a professional lazy slob.

I finally settled on "Seeds of Invasion" for a title for the 3rd Z5 story. Maybe not the best, but it fits. I'll get used to it.

Got Part 1 of 3 posted tonight. Oy!

I want to strangle my subconscious.

But on the other hand, when your characters completely obliterate the outline and start acting on their own, that's the mark of a good story. It's also the mark that you're in mythic territory. I haven't done any analysis of the story while I've been writing it, I've just been concentrating on the writing. All that happens during the editing and afterward. But after spending years doing this you can kind of tell when these things are happening.

Well. The commander of the Axis-class cyborgs, A-2, apparently got orders from Bayles to scuttle the explosives set-up, secure the site and the holomorph, and arrest Trouble for desertion, theft of Marine Corp property (the Tithonus cyborg body) and something else I can't remember right now. When I quit writing last night he was ordering his men to get the EMAW Trouble had been carrying and to put him in restraints. With Rage, Rumble and Danger right there, not to mention a bunch of their group from Chronos. Up until that point, A-2 had been a bit of a hard ass but on the whole he'd been fairly nice to Trouble. All of the Axis-classes had, after some initial uncomfortableness. T got complacent, or something. I think he forgot these kids work for Bayles, and they're loyal to Bayles to the nth degree.

Well. I gotta go to work. But... damn...

Had a weird epiphany this morning on my way to work. The shower, driving on the way to work... why can't these things happen when I'm at home sitting at the computer?

Anyway, some few weeks ago I bought some back issues of Parabola magazine on EBay. Parabola comes out quarterly and is one of the publications that Prof. Campbell specifically recommended. So I've begun collecting back issues and reading the current issues. Anyway. I was reading one of the back issues this morning before work. Each issue is centered on a theme, and this one was on Masks and Metaphors. I was reading an article on these masks used by Balinese topeng dancers to portray the characters of their plays. These characters are archetypal characters from their mythology, and yet the mask makers sometimes specifically carve the masks to resemble real local people, sometimes as a parody of them but mostly to give the characters relevance in the current world. The article said that the actors will spend many hours simply meditating on the masks after they're made, internalizing the character and the mythic, archetypal meaning of it in the stories they perform.

Okay, so I put the magazine down and got in the car to go to work, and on the way it occured to me in a visual flash: the Green Man image from the old pagan days and then the image of the face of my character Trouble from the Zulu-5 stories. With these images and what I had been reading, it came to me that a cyborg is the modern equivalent of the old Green Man images. The Green Man represents the personified lifeforce of the forests, a manifestation of the forest itself, drawn from and composed of the living greenery it represents. The cyborg is made of the stuff of his world in the same way, built of metal and circuitry and sensors, the face is shaped of the stuff of its world. Where the Green Man represents the embodiment of the lifeforce, the god concept, of the forest, the human brain within the cyborg represents that same lifeforce embodied as a human mind. Both are the animating principles in the masks.

You can't have a mythology unless you have symbols that speak specifically to your place and time. It's the same archetype, but this is a modern symbol that speaks to modern people, here and now. A cyborg is the personification of our world now. It's a synthesis of man and machine, a symbiotic relationship between man and machine. The human brain can't live without the machine to sustain it, and the machine can't live without the human brain animating it. And as our world is composed now of technology and will only become more so in the future, this is the symbol that personifies both the aspiration and the fear of what humanity will become.

So, yeah, I'm writing mythology.

Still haven't gotten word one done on the next Z5 story, but I'm thinking.

The problem is I have a lot that I could do. Too many choices makes for too big of a nut to crack.

Considering shifting the perspective to that of a new character, a cyberpsychiatrist who volunteered for the biopod operation in the hopes he could volunteer for the Saturn expedition. He's a colleague of the guy who pioneered the biopod operation and cyborg technology, essentially the guy who created cyborgs. The guys won't trust the cybershrink because he literally has been a cyborg for only a few weeks prior to their arrival back at Mars, plus they really don't like being under someone's microscope so to speak.

It still amazes me, all the worlds and people that have come out of my head.

Well, I think I've reached final form for "Tantalus".

I can't exactly tell since I have no "first readers" to tell me if something is glaringly obvious, nor do I have a critique group willing to read through the whole thing.

Over the last couple of years I've lost literally all my friends to one reason or another, and while the ISBW forum is okay no one really goes into depth there. So I've edited it as much as I know how, but I'm not a professional editor. It's kind of hard to get any perspective and distance on it when you're basically talking to yourself.


The Grand List of Social Failure
as of February 20, 2008

Friend who I went to high school with who has known me over twenty years -- lost her job at the bookstore in the mall, I don't have her phone number any longer as it was on my cellphone that was stolen, and I have no idea where she is. She, however, has my phone number and never calls me. Count that one as
"lost contact".

Friend who moved to Atlanta and got married. New hubby doesn't like me. Haven't spoken or heard from her in about 2 1/2 years.

Scout Who Walks in Concrete Moccassins got married, but we weren't speaking anyway since I really don't appreciate being the one you only call when you're drunk, bored, and you know I'm the only one awake at that time of night. No loss there.

Comedy Friend left the place where we work and got another job, and now I don't hear from him but once in a blue moon. But to be honest I guess I'm not much on the friendly side there either. I don't jump into bed with people unless I want to, not because they're desperate. I'm not a kid anymore. I drove off that bridge a couple times already and I don't like being thought of as a slut.

Other person who used to be fairly important to me, but now has a new girlfriend and avoids me.

The CGAW, the Cute Guy at Work left the Post Awful quite some time ago, so no more eye candy. Alas.

Boo disappeared.

And that's about it.

I have several acquaintences at work who by sheer dint of us working together all these years I guess you might consider friends, but it's not like I'm at their houses or having lunch with them. Most of them I have a hard time remembering their names. I don't really know them at all.

So I guess I could spend $600 and send "Tantalus" to Christopher Vogler's story consulting operation, but that seems kind of extreme for a 36 page story.

Or just say the heck with it, it's as done as I can make it, and go ahead and podcast it. Just accept it's not as good as it could be, swallow my damned pride and just do it. Despite my determination to not release material that isn't in the best shape it can be in.

*sigh*

I've been working a bit with the Monomyth lately (the Hero's Journey structure). I got a new Joseph Campbell book and I've been re-reading Vogler's "The Writer's Journey" as a way to get a different perspective for "Tantalus and Sweet Charity". Boy howdy did I.

Okay, so when I wrote "Tantalus" I did so using the plot skeleton formula, which I heard about on a podcast from the Odyssey writer's workshop. (Show #11 of the podcast). Just to make it more challenging and interesting, I wrote the story in first person from both Rage and Trouble's perspectives, alternating between them. They both go through the entire plot skeleton structure. After I got done with the first draft, I let it go for a couple days and in my sudden influx of spare time started re-reading Vogler's book again.

I've now spent the last couple of hours analyzing the story ("Tantalus") on the Monomyth structure, and it's changed my entire conception of the story. This isn't just a simple adventure to rescue Rage. The entire story is about violation, trauma, and about reconciliation and healing from them.

I was going through the whole thing and finding more and more indications of this in the dialogue and action and getting more and more creeped out. This is the kind of thing you pray for as a writer, but at the same time it can completely freak you out seeing the stuff in your story you didn't even know or intend to put in there. You go into it to write a simple adventure rescue story. You come out with a psychological story about violation and healing. And that kind of story was the furtherest thing from you conscious mind when you wrote it.

IT ... FREAKS... YOU... OUT.

More later as events warrant.

Have finished the first draft of "Tantalus and Sweet Charity", my second Zulu-5 story. 24k words. Finshed 2/9/2008 at about 10:30 PM.

Despite having now issued a printed "official" version of Zulu-5...

I am working on it again. On an experimental basis. Because during the times lately when I have been laying awake at O-Dark-Thirty lo these many mornings with a cat kneading my head and another cat crushing me under his 19 lbs of fur and muscle, it occured to me that the whole thing with the 'borgs trapped outside didn't work.

So I changed it. On an experimental basis.

I've now got them hooking all those batteries into the power system proper. And I made Trouble a bit more angry in that exchange with Rollins. And changed the end of the scene where Rage jumps for the mail boat at the end.

I may do more editing on it. I dunno.

Can't get the characters out of my head now.

As a writer, you know you've got a good thing going if you want to know what happened after the end.

For your consideration ...

=====


I wish I could tell you that we went out with a bang and not a whimper, but that's not how it worked out. I wish I could tell you I saw the Senate vote on TV, but I didn't -- not as it happened, anyway. I knew it was going to happen that night, of course. It had been the only thing on the collective mind of my comm for the last week, and damned near the only thing for the last several months since it was first brought onto the floor of the House. We'd all known within hours when the bill was first drafted; the bots we'd left in LegiWiki IM'ed us and began saving off the draft even as it was being revised. It's a mad world out there. Four pages into the first draft of the bill I found out just what the word "mad" meant.

As it was, the only one of my home comm who actually saw the final vote was Archon -- known to his parents in St. Petersburg and the daylight world as Arkady Yelnikov. He was the only one home at the time, momentarily between jobs but kept busy minding the shop in the Bazaar and running a little gold-farming operation on the side to keep from falling behind on his bills.

"2074 PASSED SENATE, 89/10/1 ABSTAIN," came the IM, timestamped 8:21 under the screen name Archon. "SEN. ALBRUTH DELIVERING RESIGNATION LETTER UNDER GLARE OF CNN CAMERAS. BLOOD IN THE WATER, FRENZY IMMINENT. WATCH YOUR BACK ON WAY HOME."

That was Archon -- always thinking ahead.

No, I didn't see the signing on TV either. I heard it on the radio. Like any good Flaming Liberal, I heard it on NPR.

"I think you'd better leave," my supervisor said less than five minutes later.

I took out my earbuds, shoved my radio and iPod into my bag, and left without even logging out of my terminal. On the way out I ripped off my badge and door card and threw them in the door of the supervisor's office, not looking and not caring where they landed. I heard footsteps behind me, heard other small clatters as my friends saw what I'd done and did the same. As protests go it was pretty lame and childish, but we'd all just officially become criminals anyway so what did it matter? What could they do to us? We'd already been condemned to what amounted to a concentration camp.

I heard Twink's chains and bangles jingling beside me, knew she was right behind me, probably flipping the bird to the off-duty cop who served as the mandatory security guard for the installation, just as I shoved open the door to the parking lot. "Stay behind me and don't stop for anything," I muttered to her as I crossed the parking lot to my little Honda hatchback.

She may look like a purple-blue haired biker vampire fairy, but Twinklebell is no fool. She knows she's a target -- she'd been shot at only two nights before on her way home from work and more than once she'd found dead animals and death threats tied to her bike. I'd had the windshield busted out on my car and my tires slashed twice, with the blood of a dead chicken sprayed all over the car.

Arkady is the king of understatment.

"Oy-ya, sisters mine," Arkady's voice said in my ear as I shoved my phone in my ear, watching Twink doing the same before hauling on her helmet and firing up her bike. I turned the key in the ignition of the Honda and locked the doors as Arkady kept talking. "The comm is alive with the sound of outrage."

"Any word yet from Oberon?" I asked as I watched four more people come out of the building into the night. They weren't of my comm, but they were friends and long-time acquaintences and they were gay too. I knew I was lucky to have the comm. Blood turned on you. Comm didn't, because comm came together out of the things people got persecuted for.

"Good King Oberon has yet to make a statement to his adoring proletariat," Arkady joked, letting his accent come through.

"It's only been a few minutes," Twink said in the channel as we turned out onto the street. Glancing in my rearview mirror I saw her pale face in the faceplate of her helmet. "Where is he tonight? RL, I mean."

"In the crowd in front of the Senate Office Building," Arkady answered.

And that's why we loved him. Oberon, King of the Geek Fairies, didn't tell us to get in the trenches and fight for our rights. He hopped on a plane, went to Washington, marched into Senator Albruth's office in his leather trench coat with his laptop bag on one arm and his SO Psyron on the other, and volunteered his services as the 'Net's equivalent of a jack-of-all-trades. We aren't a large comm as comms go, only about a thousand members give or take. But our name says it all -- every one of us with our fingers in a panoply of technological pies from circuit-bending to netmedia to flashnet to design to admin to gold-farming. We're hacktivists and merry pranksters and artists. We live all over the world but call our virtual island nation Synthara home, which is where Arkady now awaited the arrival of our King for word of what we should do now.

That's because the other thing we all share in common as Geek Fairies has just been criminalized. Every one of us -- every last Geek Fairy who ever stepped a virtual foot on Synthara's shores -- are homosexual.

"Sisters mine," Arkady said again, "CNN just announced that the President has ordered the relocation. We have two weeks."

"Two weeks?!" Twink burst out over the channel. "It was supposed to be thirty days!"

"Twinkle my love," Arkady said softly, "Since when do promises get in the way of spite?"

Yaaaaayyyy!!! Patricia Kenneally-Morrison is intending to do more Keltiad books! And she's self-publishing on Lulu!

For those of you who don't know, Patricia Kenneally-Morrison is the lady who was handfasted to Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors. But before I ever knew about any of that, I knew she was one of the most captivating writers I'd ever read. I found her first novel, The Copper Crown, when I was shelving books at the library when I was 18 years old. A short description is "Kelts in Space". The more detailed description is, "What if the Celtic peoples of Earth had left Earth with the coming of Saint Patrick and made themselves a kingdom in a distant region of space, with magic and technology intertwined, a society fully infused with the true old religion and with a kick-ass Queen and about three thousand years of history behind them?"

I'm somewhat embarrased to say that the Keltiad books slightly inspired what I consider to be my best fanfiction, the Stargate SG-1 story "Bridge Between Worlds". Nothing overt, mind you, but definitely inspired. Of course they didn't have mecha in Keltia, or Goa'uld, but the planet in question is the capital world of the Empire of the Seven Nations, and the throne city Alaharu is situated on a coastline with the royal palace on a mountain and cliffs over the sea a la Eryrie and Caerdroia and Turusachan.

Loreena McKinnett's music is sort of like the musical equivalent of Keltia. Seriously. If they ever made a movie, they'd HAVE to get Loreena for the soundtrack.

Anyway, Miz Morrison didn't just do the first trilogy with Aeron and Gwydion. She went on to do another trilogy based on the Arthurian mythos, also in Keltia but 1500 years earlier than Aeron and Gwydion. Another book called "Blackmantle" about a character even earlier in Keltic history which was also a sort of biographical/tribute of herself and her other half, Mr. Jim. Lastly there was a book called "The Deer's Cry" which rather distressed me as it was not nearly as good as her other stuff and most uncharacteristic of her. I later learned she'd been trying to stuff an entire trilogy into one book. Yep, that'll do it. As detailed in her post of today, there was some trouble with her publishers and agents and editors and as usual the rassum-frassum "establishment" dropped her. And she dropped out of sight, at least until blogging came along.

But she's apparently come to the same conclusions I have regarding the publishing industry and self-publishing. What wonderment!

I got that warm fuzzy feeling of vidication. Ain't it grand?!