A Three Pack 

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

December 19^th, 2008

            Recently some Jack ass posted a bunch of author's books on the internet for free download. He said it was to promote reading. Further, he and all his idiot friends were under the misguided notion that if they gave the books away it wasn't a copyright infringement and they couldn't be charged.

            I hope someone sues the living shit out of them.

            Look, everyone seems to think that authors are all rich. We aren't. With most jobs there are guys on the bottom, who struggle to just make a living, and most people there make a decent living—present times excluded, Thank you president Bush!!!—and some make more than they need and a couple of guys at the top are filthy fucking rich—usually these are the guys who sit on their ass all day and do nothing. When you are talking about the arts there are a handful of people at the top who are rich. Just under them are a small group who make a living and everyone else—I'm just going to say probably as much as 90% of the rest of us—can't make enough money to pay even one of our utility bills on a regular basis. So we work crap jobs, live off our working spouses, and live sub par lives becoming more and more bitter every moment of every day.

            And here's the thing, it's not like other jobs where you can see who's a good worker and who's not. Where hard work and brains lead to better jobs and more money—present economy excluded—Thank you corporate America!!! In other business you never see anyone with no talent and no brains making million while people with all the talent and all the brains are sweeping up bolts and nuts off the floor.

            William Shatner can't act, we all know he can't act, yet he always works and he's worth millions. Tom Cruise is—in my opinion and mine is the only one that matters because I'm writing this—the worst actor who ever lived. Do you know why his costars tend to get nominated and even win academy awards? Because next to him they look brilliant! Demi Moore can't act, she's not working right now so I'm guessing someone caught on, oh but I forgot men who can't act can work forever but women, even women who can act can't do so past forty.

            Those fucking Twilight books, you know the ones that have made the author—whose name I don't even know—rich and have now spawned a movie that's making her even more money...   Well I picked one up when I was at the beauty shop because it was sitting there and it was all anyone in the shop could talk about—I was there to get a damn hair cut all right? A freaking horney teenager could have written that book and here's the thing it isn't anything special, the concept has in fact been beaten to death.

            We [at YDP] have dozens of books and they outclass anything the masses are reading, but trying to get anyone to read anything that all their friends aren't reading is nearly impossible. People are sheep.

            And let's face it people just don't really read any more. The economy is in the toilet and all the major publishing houses have had major layoffs and a lot of the minor houses are folding like maxi pads in a vending machine.

            And it's not the Twilight, or Danielle Steel or Steven King novels that aren't going to get printed, it's anyone who's new or who hasn't made them rich.

            There are lots of ways—legal ways—that the public can stiff an author out of their royalties like only check books out of the library or buy only used books. Worse than either of these why not buy only half-priced books? You know, the new ones that the author never got a royalty on because the books were remaindered. At least on used books the author got paid once—same is true of library books and even the book you loan to thirty-five of your friends—at least you paid for it once and the author got their royalty. On half-priced books the author got zilch; same for those books without a cover. Half-priced and torn-cover books were supposed to have been pulped and never appear on any statement anywhere. Stealing by any other name…

            My point is it's hard enough to make someone think you have a product worth paying for without some dill hole posting your books for free on the internet without your permission.

            You want free e-books to read? Go on over to Baen's Universe. They have dozens of titles up to read for free and the authors gave them permission.

            Look... you'll give money to the bell ringers to help the poor. Right now there is no community in this country in as bad a shape as the writing community because guess what? No one is going to come bail out the small presses, the large presses are in big trouble, and there just isn't anything to take up the slack. If you like to read, now's the time to put your money where your mouth is and buy a damned book!!!

Selina

Edward Leon Gibbs died July 19, 2009

July, 2009

            My father had been seriously ill for two years, and during the last two months, he just went down hill fast. In fact, for the last month of his life he was mostly bed ridden. Still, when my mother and sister dragged him to the car to take him to the doctor -- he was convinced if he went to the hospital he would die -- I still wasn’t sure he was close to the end. You see, The Mayos (my father’s mother’s family) were always dying. It took them so long to die that when they did in fact die, people were either stunned because they couldn’t believe they were finally dead or were thinking, “Gee, I thought they died years ago.” But three days later, when I started for Washington Regional Medical Center, I knew he was dead or close to it.

            We made the decision to put him on comfort care, which was not only a good decision but the right one. Then my mother and I sat with him for three hours while he slowly died. Just before they stopped forcing him to take the medicine that was keeping him alive, I told my dad I loved him, and he said, “I know.” That’s comforting because, you see, he and I had such a love-hate relationship that I knew I loved him, but I was never really sure that he knew I actually loved him. It wasn’t at all like you see in the movies. He made no death bed confessions. He never apologized for the way he treated any of us or our mother.

            The last thing he muttered before he went comatose was, “Where’s Mother?”

            So we stood there for those last three hours, my mother and I holding my dad’s hands and telling him all the things he’d done and all the places he’d been in his life. None of the bad stuff; just the good. We opened the curtains and the window and just talked to him till he just stopped breathing.

            My father hated and loved me, and I hated and loved him. He was abusive to me. I was the oldest and, while he was sometimes rough on my sisters, he was hardest on me. He also did more with me and taught me more than he did them. He was always verbally abusive to me -- and often physically abusive.

            Though he was never diagnosed, he was seriously bi-polar. When he was good, he was very good and when he was bad, he was horrid. You never knew what you were going to get at the end of the day when he walked through the door.

            He was selfish in the extreme most of the time, and then he would do something just for us. He never went on vacation that he didn’t also take the kids.

            He was an amazing talent. He could sing, dance, draw, paint, and sculpt. He could write, though he rarely did when we were kids, but he would tell us stories he made up that were brilliant.

            I loved him and I hated him. Everything that is good about me and everything that I hate about myself came right from him.

            He never admitted to faults, except the physical -- he never wore a short-sleeved shirt because he hated his body. He never apologized for anything. The closest he ever got was when he was in the ICU about four years ago and had been deep in something they call “ICU psychosis”. He had been screaming about all sorts of weird shit for days. Mother and I would come in and try to calm him down and likely as not we did more harm than good. Then, in the middle of one of these tirades, he looks at me and my mother starts to cry and he says, “I’m sorry I’ve always been such an asshole.” My sister Tania said then that I’d better take it and run because it was the only apology any of us were likely to get.

            My father married me off to my son’s father when I was 16. He and mother signed the paperwork that made the marriage legal after a discussion he had with my first husband, in which they arranged the marriage. I was a virgin at the time. He married me off to a 34-year-old man in order to keep me from being queer -- which he had apparently known about me, if you believe what he later said, since I was three. That’s a lot of resentment and anger to carry around so I try not to. At that point I would have done anything to get away from my father. What I didn’t realize was that I was trading one father for another.

            Dad never really praised any of us. In fact, I can only remember a couple of times in my whole life when he said anything positive about what I’d done without instantly telling me everything that I did wrong.

            My dad was bigger than life -- a real character -- and everyone who knew him either loved or hated him. Those that knew him best often did both, and often at the same time.

            We were talking about gun safety awhile back and my mother says, as if it was a perfectly sane thing, “Daddy always kept his bullets in a different room from where he kept his gun. That way, he said, he might be over being mad by the time he loaded his gun.” Now there’s handgun safety for ya.

Selina

My Play

September, 2009

              I wrote and directed a play for the Mulberry Little Theater titled “IN HERMAN’S GARAGE”. It’s the story of a man who has recently retired and is finally looking forward to enjoying his life-long dream of being a writer, but his family keeps getting in his way. The play starts with Herman’s wife Mary Anne moving his “office” into the garage when their oldest daughter moves back home after leaving her husband. It is a comedy in five acts that takes place in today’s economic climate.

            The whole experience of seeing my words acted out and spoken was just an unbelievable thrill! The cast -- Leroy Kizer, Marla Walker, Tania Mears, Charles Belt, Sarah Kizer, and Theresa Richards -- were perfect, and their stellar performances bought tears to my eyes. The theater was sold out all three nights, and it was just such a high time.

            So what is this doing on the bitch page? Well, I’ll tell you. The problem with having something so life-affirming and perfect happen is that then you have to go back to reality, and reality bites on good days. No one cares who you are or what you’ve done. They just want you to get through the checkout line as quickly as you can so that they can checkout and go home.

            Your family still doesn’t think you’re all that special. They still expect you to do all that shit they don’t want to do and do it with a smile or don’t do it at all, by G-d.

            And here’s the thing: having something work out so close to what you actually wanted makes failure that much harder. I got two rejection letters in a row shortly after the play ran and, well, I’ve been in this business for a long time. I’m used to rejection letters. It’s part of the game. But when I saw these -- a day apart -- I was like. “Wait, this can’t be. I wrote a play! I directed it! People loved it! They laughed! We filled the theater three times! What are these dick heads thinking -- rejecting me?”

            All right, truth be told -- I always think that last part.

Shalom,

Selina