Reading

Entry tags:

My New Favorite Rejection Letter

I'm still querying literary agents in hopes of hooking my book up with a commercial publisher. I don't blog very often because querying has been so dismal and discouraging. I mean, it always is -- I hated the querying process for my first book, GenderQueer -- but at least for GenderQueer I got some encouraging comments, and an occasional nibble.

It hasn't been that way for Within the Box. Nothing but a long string of form-letter rejections and one-sentence "not for me thanks" turndown replies.

Until this week.

Opened my email and found this:

Hi! First, let me apologize for taking SO long to get to your submission. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down! That being said, I shared it with my interns as well. We had a few discussions about it and talked about the strengths and areas for improvement. Ultimately, I feel it's just not ready, and would need substantial work for me to find it ready to submit to publishers. Therefore, I'm afraid it's a pass for me. I'm so sorry it's not better news. But I want to share feedback, and hope you find it helpful.

First, I love the main character and his voice. You've done a wonderful job at drawing in the reader. It's a compelling story, but the beginning and end both felt too short and not fleshed out enough. The middle section felt too long. I had questions about the parents and their motivates, too. I'd want more closure with them. Your secondary characters were a great addition, the people in the hospital with him. However, I'd like more insight on the head of the hospital who really seemed to have it in for your protagonist. Was he just evil, or a narcissist, did he have any redeeming characteristics that would make him more 3-dimensional? Also, what is the ultimate point of the story? Is it primarily to show the journey of your protagonist, or perhaps a slice of life to show the problems with mental health facilities? I'm not clear as to the reason for the story, mainly because the ending was rushed. (I loved that he made his way in the world though. That made me so happy!)

I want you to know this pass was a very difficult decision. I'm a fan of your writing and welcome any future submissions from you! You're very talented, and I appreciate you letting me read this story. I hope my decision does not discourage you from continuing to work on it and send it out. It shows real promise!!! Take care and please keep in touch.

I really needed this. Some sign that what I wrote just might, maybe, have appeal within the mainstream book market. Some sign that it's worth continuing to fish and see if I can get a bite.

This came from Tina Schwartz of the Purcell Agency. I'd originally sent a query in to Bonnie Swanson there, and instead of receiving a reply from her, this came in from her colleague Tina Schwartz:

Dear Allan,
I have read your query for WITHIN THE BOX and found it interesting. Please follow the instructions below to upload your full manuscript. I'm looking forward to reading it.

That was encouraging at the time -- a request for the full manuscript is rare and always a hopeful sign -- but then time ticked on and I figured if she's seen something she liked I'd have heard about it. Many lit agents don't bother sending rejection letters at all. "If you haven't heard anything in a few months consider it a turndown". My assumption is 3 months.

I'd rather have someone take their time and get to my material when they can, if they engage with it like this!

—————

My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.

My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves. Hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.

My third book is in post-first-draft corrections and is being circulated to beta readers for feedback. Provisionally title Within the Box. Contact me if you're interested.

Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.

———————

This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————

Index of all Blog Posts

Current Mood: pensive

Entry tags:

birthday

my birthday, again

really, where does the time go? it feels like the year started last month. not to mention, the century/millennium feels like it started less than 10 years ago.

anyway; things are persisting, but so am i. more or less.

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: 'ereabouts

More of the town walls.

This time we walked around the outside of the town walls.

( More pics: )

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: 'ereabouts

Around Conwy.

The Mussel monument. Conwy made its living on mussels:

( See more! )

Entry tags:

movie news

Guillermo Del Toro is making Frankenstein for Netflix!

And here's the first trailer!

Watch on YouTube

It won't be out until late this year, and there is a possibility that it will see theatrical release!

https://gizmodo.com/guillermo-del-toros-frankenstein-has-its-creepy-first-trailer-2000608830

Entry tags:

meme

Meme

A meme swiped from

zimena :

Give me one of these in the replies. Then repost so I can do the same for you.

* A music rec (I would LOVE this in particular!)
* A cute message
* Why you follow me
* If we could meet, how would it go?
* Something you want to know about me
* One fact about you

Entry tags:

donald trump

Did you hear about President TACO's Crypto dinner?

This is a great quote from Doonesbury's Say What:
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt rebutted criticism [of Trump's crypto dinner], saying: 'The president is attending in his personal time. It is not a White House dinner.' But he flew to Virginia on Marine One. He gave his remarks from a lectern with the presidential seal. And some of the crypto crowd on Friday got a tour of the White House."
-- Maureen Dowd

Congratulations, sweetheart, you just described and failed the Duck Test.

President TACO conned these people into giving him hundreds of millions of dollars to attend this "dinner". They were served poor-grade airline food, allegedly Walmart-grade steaks, he gave a rambling 23 minute speech that had nothing to do with crypto currency or the direction he's steering the nation in regards to it. And then he left. He allegedly had a private meeting with some of the highest donors, I haven't seen anything about that particular meeting.

In other words, per usual, SCAM.

Oh, I almost forgot the second part. And GRIFT.

Entry tags:

books

The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters by Julie Klam

full title is The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters: A True Story of Family Fiction.

from amazon;

Ever since she was young, Julie Klam has been fascinated by the Morris sisters, cousins of her grandmother. According to family lore, early in the twentieth century the sisters’ parents decided to move the family from Eastern Europe to Los Angeles so their father could become a movie director. On the way, their pregnant mother went into labor in St. Louis, where the baby was born and where their mother died. The father left the children in an orphanage and promised to send for them when he settled in California—a promise he never kept. One of the Morris sisters later became a successful Wall Street trader and advised Franklin Roosevelt. The sisters lived together in New York City, none of them married or had children, and one even had an affair with J. P. Morgan.

The stories of these independent women intrigued Klam, but as she delved into them to learn more, she realized that the tales were almost completely untrue.

an interesting book, not only about the morris sisters' lives but about family truths and not lies exactly, but mistaken beliefs about what happened and what didn't in a family. and how much can you believe what you've been told about your distant family.

like; can you believe that your great-great grandfather's brother was on the team that developed some kind of revolutionary invention? or that your grandmother was the inspiration for a character in a well-known novel?

Entry tags:

podcasts

podcast friday

When someone tells you that something is "inevitable" or "here to stay," you shouldn't believe them. You should, in fact, do something between vicious mockery and other, more high-level spells on them. They are lying to you and they want you to suffer.

In the past, massive political and socioeconomic changes were enforced through violence. Before Margaret Thatcher could have people believing that There Is No Alternative, she had to crush the miner's unions. Before neoliberal structural adjustment policies were enforced on the Global South, governments and corporations had to rig elections, murder Indigenous people, and starve their populations.

So why are we accepting this massive change—the enshittification of all things from labour to education to the arts—that no one asked for and no one wants? Because we are a very passive, bovine population that has been conditioned for decades to accept anything that Big Tech tells us that we want. Which is why I get daily emails from companies and my employer giving me best practices for incorporating plagiarism into my pedagogical practice, etc.

The handful of independent tech reporters who still have brains, like Ed Zitron and in this case, Paris Marx, put the lie to that. Tech Won't Save Us has a great episode, "Generative AI is Not Inevitable with Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender" that discusses how obvious it is that gen AI has not lived up to the hype, that it's an industry propped up by wishes and VC capital rather than an actual market, and that we can actually nip this in the bud. It's very empowering and I'm definitely going to check out the book that the two guests wrote.

Entry tags:

cybercrime

Pakistan arrests 21, shutting down $50,000,000+ cybercrime ring!

GO, PAKISTAN!

It's always lovely to see these arrests take place in countries where you don't expect them to happen.

This particular ring, who operated the Heartsender malware service, are accused of stealing more than $50mil from U.S. businesses over the last decade and are under investigation in the EU for more theft. Their package was advertised as undetectable to malware/anti-virus systems and used to trick businesses to make money transfers to criminals.

Great malware, lousy opsec (operational security).

The guys apparently thought that Pakistan was totally fine with their running a big cybercrime operation with no consequences. And perhaps they were, I don't know if other countries 'encouraged' Pakistan to get serious about shutting down people like this or what.

This is where it starts getting good...

"Mr. Shahzad ['alleged' head of the group] was named and pictured in a 2021 KrebsOnSecurity story about a series of remarkable operational security mistakes that exposed their identities and Facebook pages showing employees posing for group photos and socializing at work-related outings.

...

Sometime in 2019, The Manipulaters failed to renew their core domain name — manipulaters[.]com — the same one tied to so many of the company’s business operations. That domain was quickly scooped up by Scylla Intel, a cyber intelligence firm that specializes in connecting cybercriminals to their real-life identities. Soon after, Scylla started receiving large amounts of email correspondence intended for the group’s owners."

Like I said, sloppy opsec.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/05/pakistan-arrests-21-in-heartsender-malware-service/

Entry tags:

smart coding buddy

I feel like MS Copilot is my new buddy at work. The company has the business version which is supposed to keep the company's data private and secure, and we are authorized to use it. I haven't been using it inside of VS Code or other IDEs, which would require an extra license. The browser interface doesn't require an extra license and has met all my needs so far.

From what I last heard, the version that runs in VS Code can't yet answer questions that pertain to the whole big code-base, rather only to the current file you have open. To me, that wouldn't offer much benefit over the browser version, as I can paste the contents of a file into the browser chatbox or I could select the file to attach.

Anyway, MS Copilot helps me with creating PowerShell scripts and complex regex expressions, and with answering various questions. The version at work seems to give a lot more accurate answers than the one I access from my personal laptop; it's likely a better model. Unless the difference is due to the kinds of questions I ask there versus here.

Entry tags:

Why the big change won't come

In reaction to a text from

onb2017, I get upon the following:

As a Westerner speaking from within the West, I don't really see a unification to stand up against those forces which want to keep the workforce and majority of the population of the world down ever coming so soon.

The reason is the following: Everyone - differing groups - can't even agree on the color of turd.
How do you want to achieve a higher and more complex goal like that, if you can't even manage that triviality?

On the other hand, there is to be considered and has to be admitted: Do I want to work together with feminists, with intersectionalists, with Identity Politics disciples, which want to tell me that the suffering of a woman or a black person is always bigger than mine, if I happen to be a paleface and are not female?
Do I want to work together with people whose primary business every day is first offending me, ridiculing me and telling me that I'm the source of the evil of the world because I have the wrong sex (or want to convert into the wrong sex)?

These people should check out health problems with biological origins... Then they would learn that the problems they refer to - social problems - are solvable, if everyone really wants to, while biological health problems rarely are that solvable that they'll be gone completely. Plus, you can't run away from them, as you carry them with you wherever your go, even to the edge of the world with no other humans around anymore.

What I want to say by this: You stupid fools, obsessing with your social/human problems... Get a life. This will keep both of your hands busy with enough to do.
Even if human-made problems can be quite nasty, evil, violent, brutal and malevolent - still they are solvable (because it "simply" requires human agreement on a common basis and fairness), while problems resulting from bad material, material that cannot be exchanged after developing anymore, often aren't.
This type of problems can hit everyone, regarless of skin color, regarless of sex, regardless of ethnicity or wherever you were born on this planet.
Regardless of what you believe in, prefer or think is right and wrong.

And as long as there are larger groups of people which put their reverse racism and sexism as the top priority on their list instead of recognizing the usefullness in achieving something which everyone benefits from, the road to working together for a particular goal is going to be blocked.
Same for people who subscribed to esoteric nonsense, fucked up conspiracy theories and religious faith, who are hostile to fact-based edcuation and well-established medicine (and/or only accept the "education" and "medicine" which they approve of), who react aggressively if they get put in their place once in their lives - who only put an interest in getting themselves and their kin the best life and the best resources, making their children and grand-children and parents survive and leave everyone else to die.

You can't act together if there is no common ground and if each group is only interested in lobbyism for the social group they want to represent because they think their group is the best of all living creatures and everyone else is unworthy trash.
You can't act together if hate and despise for each other is the greatest point you have in common.
And if those who still want to be fair are being laughed at, silenced and then trampled upon - like, what they want and demand from everyone is totally impossible to achieve, or even "ignorant of all the wrongs being done to group X in history".

At least I find, I can't work together with people brain-washed and self-obesessed like that.
(They only want to change to the other side of the table anyway... That's what the character of their acting and their mindset strongly implies.)

Parts of them you even don't want to be seen with because their stupidity and greed is embarrassing as hell.

...Therefore, even if not wanting to subscribe to all that crap that divides everyone, there is no real way around having to surrender to parts of it because the differing social groups in society are so mutually incompatible with each other (also with your own viewpoints) - it's like wanting to make a lion work together with a type of animal that is its natural prey.

Entry tags:

rock

FLASH WARNING: Latter - "I Don't Owe You" 2024

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

books

Reading Wednesday

Just finished: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. I really enjoyed this one, with the caveat that it was hyped to me as the most disturbing thing, read it before giving it to a student, etc., and it was a very different (if very good) kind of book. Though possibly my calibration for disturbing is way off. I did find it a very strong story about family and community vs. extractive industries and the MMIWG epidemic, and one of the best use of dreams in fiction I've seen since we all decided that kind of thing was gauche.

What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher. I enjoyed this one too. After barely surviving the events of the first book, our lead and ka (?) companions return to their home (fictional) country, where the caretaker of the estate has suddenly died. The villagers won't go near the place and claim that it's haunted by a creature that sits on your chest and sucks out your breath. So, they have to fight it, all while dealing with PTSD from the war. Fun stuff.

Two things I particularly liked about this: 1) it actually was disturbing as shit, especially the scene with the horses. 2) this is kind of the reverse of what I complained about with Someone You Can Build a Nest In in terms of queernormative fantasy settings. The imaginary country is integrated into the Serbo-Bulgarian War, but it is clearly a country with different norms, myths, and traditions. The novella has a nonbinary lead, and this identity is important and plays a role in their backstory, but it also has a different meaning and definition that in would have in our world (it's important to note that this is queernormative and Alex doesn't appear to be discriminated against in their society, but there are still gendered expectations and roles). It contributes to the worldbuilding as well, so there are different pronouns for both God and priests, and that adds interest rather than erases difference. Anyway, it is pretty cool.

Currently reading: The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. This one was also really hyped up and I can see why. There's a longstanding war between two empires: Varkal (which is kind of industrial-age but uses genetically altered animals as its technology) and Med’ariz (which has floating cities and more technologically based weapons). The causes and parameters of this war are deliberately fuzzy to the POV characters, but Med'ariz seems to be winning. Alefrat, the leader of the pacifist resistance in Varkal, is blown up, kidnapped, and imprisoned by his government, and let out on the condition that he travel to the Med'ariz front line, infiltrate them, and create the same kind of grassroots uprising that he did in Varkal. He's accompanied by Qhudur, a brutal soldier/prison guard.

This is very good so far; it pulls no punches either in its depiction of war or its depiction of disability (Alefrat's leg was blown off before the story begins, and there's a bizarro doctor who had started to regrow it with wasps, and the entire thing is very nasty). It's definitely problematizing pacifism and its role in defanging political movements, though I am not sure where the author/narrative is ultimately going to fall on this. It feels like a slog, and this is intentional; every inch of the characters' journey is painstakingly fought for, and you feel it.

real ones by Katherena Vermette. I really liked the other book I read by Vermette; this one is better. It's about two sisters, June and lyn, whose father is Michif and mother is white. Said mother, Renee, is an acclaimed artist winning all the arts grants by pretending to also be Métis. When her identity is exposed, the sisters are not only faced with digging up the trauma of their childhood (this is nowhere near the only shitty thing Renee has done) but having their own identities, careers, and community ties thrown into question.

Pretendians are somewhat of a national obsession here, and I don't weigh into it much because it's not at all my business, and it's a source of pain for Indigenous folks that I don't want to accidentally aggravate. Besides just being a really good story, this is an amazing look into the psychology of someone who fakes Indigenous ancestry and how it affects everyone around her. I haven't seen this tackled in fiction at all and Vermette does it spectacularly. It's also weirdly relatable in the relationship that the sisters have with their mother—growing up with a mostly-absent conman father, I get how they can't bring themselves to cut off Renee entirely even when she wrecks destruction in their lives.

Also the look at the media and arts landscape of Canada is just spot on. Perfect. It's so good.

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: 'ereabouts

Plas Mawr

Conwy also has a very fine Elizabethan mansion with amazing plasterwork!

This is probably the finest Elizabethan building in the UK.

The Front entrance with the arms of Elizabeth I:

( Here be pics! )

Entry tags:

probably not made in the U.S.

While shopping for bed slats (not for me), I found a set on the Kohl's website that says it is made "right here" in the USA from Canadian wood. But while checking out that brand's website, Continental Sleep, I belatedly realized the wording and grammar on their pages isn't quite right. So now I wonder, is the "Made in USA" claim a lie? Or do Chinese companies have factories in the U.S. making that kind of stuff? I could have sworn I saw that "Made in the USA" claim on one of their website pages too (for only that one product, which made it seem all the more dubious), but am not finding it anymore.

I looked up info on the company but found nothing other than a reference to "Continental Sleep Holdings", which was likely a different company, on a Wikipedia page about "Sleepeezee".

The reviews on the ContinentalSleep website seem fake too, with similar grammar and wording issues; not the kind Americans would make.

It's a bit surprising they haven't used an LLM to fix the grammar on their webpages. Once Chinese companies get better at doing that, there won't even be that tell to give them away.

Entry tags:

food

Only one country produces the food it needs to be self-sufficient

You'll love this: GUYANA.

A small South American country just above Brazil.

"The study, published in Nature Food, investigated how well each country could feed their populations in seven food groups: fruits, vegetables, dairy, fish, meat, plant-based protein and starchy staples." China and Vietnam produce enough in six of the seven categories. Out of 186 countries, 65% overproduce meat and dairy.

Concerningly, "...six countries – Afghanistan, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Macao, Qatar and Yemen – did not produce enough of any food group to be considered self-sufficient in that category." Dr. Jonas Stehl, first author of the paper, said that a lack of self-sufficiency is not inherently bad and can be due to any number of reasons: lack of water, bad soil, etc. But at the same time, "... low levels of self-sufficiency can reduce a country’s capability to respond to sudden global food supply shocks such as droughts, wars or export bans..."

The study was based on the World Wildlife Fund’s Livewell diet, which "... describes itself as “a flexible diet that involves rebalancing our protein consumption toward plants, eating more vegetables, pulses and wholegrains, and fewer foods high in fat, salt and sugar.”"

BBC article:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/only-one-country-produces-food-it-needs-self-sufficient

What appears to be the actual full study:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-025-01173-4

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/05/23/1912252/only-one-country-in-the-world-produces-all-the-food-it-needs-study-finds

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: 'ereabouts