I just had a very special experience. Yesterday I tried to delete a message from my inbox and suddenly *EVERYTHING* in it was gone. I filed a support request, and was told that perhaps I'd accidentally clicked on a select all box instead of the individual message. I'm reasonably sure I didn't but of course there's no way to tell. AND NO WAY TO GET ANYTHING BACK. Nada. So sorry. Perhaps you still have the copies sent to your email address.

I'm cautious, and believe in backups, so I do, but I thought I'd just pass on a warning about this to my friends here who may be less cautious. If you have messages you care about, forward them somewhere else and back them up. 

Oh, and if you sent me a message recently that may have been in the 9 unread messages that I never even got to see, I apologize for not replying.

I have to say I'm surprised and disappointed by this. A mail system where you can nuke everything with 2 mouse clicks in the and not get so much as a warning message saying "Hey, you're about to delete your entire mailbox? Are you sure you meant to do that?" Even Microsoft does a better job of user interface than that. Not to mention that all the big players (Microsoft, Yahoo, Gmail) have an undelete option.

Now I'm wondering if Live Journal handles this any better. Time to go check.

The nice people at Queer Magazine Online invited me to do a guest blog in honor of the release of Torquere's Charity Sip Blitz yesterday, which they are being kind enough to commit to reviewing. I ended up writing a little essay on how writing things which you aren't, and why it's a good idea:  http://www.queermagazineonline.com/easyblog/entry/so-whats-a-lesbian-doing-writing-mm-romance

Stop in, leave me a comment if the mood strikes, and check the rest of the site while you're there. There are some very interesting articles.

I'm happy to announce that I've just had a story accepted for Torquere's annual Charity Sip Blitz. If you're not familiar with it, every year for the past several years Torquere Press and it's authors have joined forces to offer a collection of short romances (3000-8000 words) with all proceeds going to benefit a charity. The charity varies from year to year. In 2010 it was Doctors Without Borders, and if you're hearing about this for the first time, please go check out the offerings from that collection: www.torquerebooks.com/index.php   Those stories will be available until roughly mid-September.

This year's efforts will benefit the It Gets Better Project.  The release date is likely to be some time toward the end of September. I'll post an exact date here when I know for certain.

Since these collections share a common theme, they tend to make me step outside my comfort zone a bit. For this collection I'm trying something new - a contemporary story with no fantasy elements whatsoever. It's a brief (for me) window into the lives a gay married couple who work for an environmental emergency response contractor, and find themselves responding to an emergency in the home town one of them had hoped never to see again...

I've been doing all kinds of guest blogs in the past month or so, promoting my new release. I really should have been posting daily updates here as these went live, but I'm working the bugs out of this whole promotional effort.

• May 6, 2011 - Rosalie Lario's blog:   Does Your Werewolf Use a Condom?
  
  • http://rosalielario.com/2011/05/06/does-your-werewolf-use-a-condom-plus-win-a-copy-of-kathryn-scannells-leap-of-faith/
• May 5, 2011 - Romance for the Rest of Us: Weddings Matter
  
  • http://glbtromance.blogspot.com/2011/05/normal-0-false-false-false.html
• May 5, 2011 - The Book Boost: My Worst Writing Mistake
  
  • http://thebookboost.blogspot.com/2011/05/time-tracking-with-guest-blogger.html
• May 4, 2011 - WriteEachDay: Writing is More than Just Adding New Words
  
  • http://www.writeeachday.com/2011/05/writing-is-more-than-just-adding-new-words/
• May 3, 2011 - Suzan Isik's blog: How Does Magic Effect Society?
  
  • http://www.suzanisik.com/2011/05/03/how-does-magic-affect-society/
• May 1, 2011 - Raine Delight's Blog: Interview
  
  • http://authorrainedelight.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/guest-author-kathryn-scannell/
• May 1, 2011 - Manlove and Paranormal: Erotica by Ellis: Breaking Rules
  • http://elliscarrington.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/guest-blog-breaking-rules-by-kathryn-scannell/
• April, 2011 - Creative Chatter: On How to Write good M/M Scenes when You're a Woman
  
  • http://creative-chatter.blogspot.com/2011/04/welcome-guest-blogger-kathryn-scannell.html
• April 27, 2011 - Savvy Authors: Writing Fiction Featuring People Instead of Men or Women
  
  • http://www.savvyauthors.com/vb/content.php?1105-Writing-Fiction-Featuring-People-Instead-of-Men-or-Women-by-Kathryn-Scannell
• April 22, 2011 - Black Velvet Seductions : Things About My Characters that Didn't Make it into the Book
  
  • http://blackvelvetseductions.com/readers_blog/?p=2285
• April 19, 2011 - Haunted Dreams and Dark Destinies: How Dark is Too Dark? 
  
  • http://www.pamela-turner.com/2011/04/tuesday-guest-post-kathryn-scannell.html
• April 14, 2011 - Full Moon Dreaming: The Pitfalls of Titles
  
  • http://julielynnhayes.blogspot.com/2011/04/guest-blogger-kathryn-scannell.html
• April 12, 2011 - Suzan Isik's blog: Using Borrowed Mythology in Your Fantasy
  
  • http://www.suzanisik.com/2011/04/12/using-borrowed-mythology-for-your-fantasy-story/
• April 10, 2011 - Margaret Fieland: Poetry and Prose: Interview
  
  • http://margaretfieland.com/blog1/2011/04/10/interview-with-author-kathryn-scannell

I've done two guest blogs this week, in anticipation of the release of Embracing the Dragon on the 13th:

I'm a guest at Suzan Isik's blog today, talking about good ways and not so good ways to borrow real world mythologies for your fantasy novel. I'm also giving away a free short story (M/M romance) to everyone who visits and comments, so please come check it out:

http://www.suzanisik.com/2011/04/12/using-borrowed-mythology-for-your-fantasy-story/


I also have an interview up at Margaret Fieland's blog:

http://margaretfieland.com/blog1/2011/04/10/interview-with-author-kathryn-scannell/


On Thursday I'll have an essay on the Pitfalls of Titles at Julie Lynn Hayes blog, Full Moon Dreaming: http://julielynnhayes.blogspot.com
This blog has adult content, so you may not want to visit if you're at work.

On Sunday, assuming Live Journal is operating normally,  I'll be hosting the Torquere Social Live Journal community: http://community.livejournal.com/torquere_social/ . Stop by and say hello

I'll also be at Pat Brown's Blog: http://pabrown.livejournal.com/ on Sunday.

Finally, the Literary Nymphs Chat Yahoo Group ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LiteraryNymphsChat/ ) will be having a multi-author chat this weekend (April 16-17), showcasing authors of M/M fiction. I'll be dropping in there on Sunday. If you want to get the chat you do need to join the group. I'm not sure if you can browse messages without joining - a group can be set up either way.

There will be more blogs coming next week, but I'll save those for a separate post later in the week.

I just got notice that my submission to the upcoming Dragon Moon Press anthology, Swords and Swashbucklers, has been accepted. Details of the line-up are on the editors blog: http://vg-ford.livejournal.com/606113.html

This is a companion volume to Rum and Runestones, and like its predecessor, is a collection of stories features pirates and magic as primary plot elements.

I'm excited because this is my first sale outside the romance genre. My story, currently titled "Running from the Storm", is set in the same world and several of my romance stories (Embracing the Dragon, Lessons, and Winter King), but it's pure fantasy, with no romantic elements at all.

Morien, an Elven mage with a rare talent for manipulating weather, has been captured and enslaved by Tengri pirates. When the ship is taken by a larger pirate boat, he expects to die. But life rarely gives you what you expect. Will the new ship bring him simply a new set of masters, or a chance of rescue?

No publication date has been set yet. I'll post when I know more.

I came across a reference to this op-ed piece from the New York Times on a friend's LJ: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/opinion/03galassi.html?ref=opinion

It's a very thought provoking piece, but as a writer I find some of it disturbing.

First, the piece presents a somewhat narrow view of e-publishing, in that it assumes that you're only talking about exactly reproducing an edition of a book that existed first in print somewhere. In the case under discussion, that's apparently the situation, but that's a relatively small portion of e-publishing today. There are a great many smaller presses these days which publish primarily in e-book format. Often the e-book is the first edition, complete with ISBN, and print rights may be negotiated for later. The two are very clearly differentiated in the contract between author and publisher.

With respect to the situation which prompted the editorial, it seems pretty clear that the current copyright holders of the text cannot legally simply reproduce the Random House edition without the permission of Random House.

For one thing, while Mr. Styron's heirs own the copyright to his works, subject to agreements he made with any publishers which may they be in force, they very likely don't own the rights to the cover or interior art. If the rights to the text have reverted to them upon expiration of an agreement with Random House, the right to the art have probably also reverted to the artist, unless they were considered work-for-hire, in which case Random House still owns them.

Nor can Random House simply produce an e-book edition, unless there's language in the original contract which allows for multiple formats. If Random House still holds rights, and the language in the contract regarding formats is sufficiently vague, then they might be able to generate the e-book edition, and send royalties as specified in the contract. Otherwise they would need to negotiate with the current copyright holders for the additional format rights.

However, as an author I'm disturbed by the suggestion that the editor was such a substantial contributor to the work that it conveys any kind of proprietary interest in the work to the publisher, beyond the term of the contract between author and publisher.

It's pretty clearly spelled out in my contracts that I supply the work, and am expected to work with the editor to make it meet my publishers house editorial standards. There's a give and take between author and editor, which results in a final product. That final product is still mine, regardless of the amount of blood, sweat and tears the editor expended on it. (And I don't mean to denigrate editors here - a good editor is a wonderful thing.)

But when my contract lapses, if the publisher doesn't renew it, or I turn them down because I don't like the terms, or for no reason at all, the final text which the editor and I agreed upon is still mine to take away. Not the typesetting, layout, page design, and production details, and not the marketing text and materials (unless I also wrote that, which is often the case with my current publisher), but the edited final text is mine.

This article reads as if Mr. Galassi would like to claim otherwise, and that bothers me.

I got my very first piece of fan mail about one of my stories earlier this month. After my immediate reaction, which was to do a very undignified happy dance, it prompted me to think about the whole question of the relationship between readers and authors.

I was inordinately pleased to receive the letter. As an author, I write something and send it out into the world with no real idea who's going to see it, or indeed if anyone is going to look at it. I know the editor who bought it liked it, and presumably thinks other people will like it, but I have no way of knowing if they're right. Eventually, if it's going somewhere that pays royalties rather than a one time payment, I'll get some feedback, at least in terms of how many copies of it have sold. That doesn't tell me if the people who bought it liked it when they read it though.

So I'm sitting here with a piece of genuine, unsolicited feedback, thinking how wonderful it is to know that at least one person really like my story. Then it hit me. I've read dozens, maybe hundreds of things that really touched me, that spoke to me in ways that made me read them over and over again. But it never once occurred to me to pick up pen and paper, or in more recent years, email, and write to tell the author that.

I always felt that authors were terribly important people, who would never have time to read my letter, or care than some fan had written to them. After all they were famous and undoubtedly very busy. They wouldn't care that a fan had written to them. It would probably just get thrown out by some secretary. (And all the authors who are reading this are probably now either laughing or wondering what planet I grew up on.)

Now it suddenly dawns on me that I'm, at least in theory, now one of those important busy people. And all kinds of things I thought about what it's like to be an author were completely wrong. I haven't suddenly become too busy and important to care what my readers might think. In fact, it means quite a lot to know what that what I wrote worked for someone, and maybe made their day a little brighter. I'm learning now that even established authors have days when they question the value of their work.

I find myself thinking now that perhaps if I had written to some of those authors whose work really touched me, it would have brightened their day just as much as the letter I received did for me. I wish I'd realized that. Who knows, maybe one or two of them would even have written back.

So if something someone writes touches you, don't be shy. Write the author and tell them so (assuming you can locate an address). As long as you don't overdo the number of letters to someone, the worst thing that will happen is they ignore it. On the plus side, your letter may be a bright spot on a day when they really needed one, and maybe you'll make a friend.

Today I'm hosting the Torquere Press Community on Live Journal (http://community.livejournal.com/torquere_social/). Come on over and check it out. I'm posting snippets from the new story, and will be trying my hand at writing a short bit of fiction based on prompts from the community members.

I've just sent off another story submission. This one is going to Torquere Press's annual charity benefit:

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http://www.torquerepress.com/submissions/anthologies.html

Anniversary Charity Sip Blitz - Changing Lives

In 2008, Torquere Press decided to use its September anniversary and its Sip short story line for a little good work. Dedicating the month to supporting the fight for equal rights in marriage, Torquere and our
authors published gay and lesbian wedding themed stories, with the profits going to charities such as the Lambda Legal Fund. To date, more than $5000.00 has been donated to the selected charity.

In 2009, our authors have chosen the Matthew Shepherd Foundation as the recipient of our anniversary Sip Blitz, with the theme of Changing Lives at the core of the stories.

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This one is called "Leap of Faith." It features a secondary character from Embracing the Dragon, Greg Taylor, Danny O'Riordan's personal attorney. It's set about a year before Embracing the Dragon, and tells the story of how Greg came to be working for Danny, and found the courage to come out of the closet.

Assuming they decide they want it, it will be available as a stand-alone item, and probably as part of a collection of all the stories submitted for the benefit.