Signal Boost: "Not Enough Clue Sticks In The World"*

Via Making Light and nihilistic_kid the jaw-dropping astonishment of this: illadore writes a piece on apple pies of the medieval/renaissance era, for a reenactor's site. The pie recipes look lovely.

The article is picked up by Cook's Source, a give-away magazine. Well and good, except that the article was picked up without the author's knowledge, without permission, and without payment. And when the author contacted the editor, asking for a (very modest) fee, the editor basically told her that A) the entire internet is Public Domain. Anything you can access is up for grabs. Srsly. B) the author should be grateful because they improved it with editing, and now she has a nice piece for her portfolio. C) the editor knows all this because she has three decades in publishing and this is how the world has always worked, and anyway. And the editor had the nerve to scold the author for heated language in their email exchange.

Heated? I'd have gotten out the personal thermonuclear weapons round about now.

I don't know if the author is going to look for legal redress; I hope so only because this woman (the editor) is in sore, sore need of education. Meanwhile, it doesn't hurt to boost the signal and spread the word. After all, this is the internet and it's all public domain, right?

*line courtesy of Patrick Nielsen Hayden

eta: I was wrong; the article was attributed correctly. Just stolen, is all. Fixed here.

Potching and Fail

I have been trying to put together a website for myself, and one for Sarah Tolerance. Potching around in iWeb, the site builder that comes with the current version of the Mac OS, I have, at least, a draft of each (although I need to gather up some content to slap in there).

And I've been getting recommendations about hosting sites. So today the Spouse said someone recommended Squarespace, particularly because of the site building/editing tools. They have a free 14-day trial period, no credit card needed, and if at the end that time you don't want to follow up--poof! it goes away. So I signed on, and have spent the last two hours trying to rebuild a version of what I did on iWeb on Squarespace. They may think it's easy and intuitive, but it's not. Want to put a picture on your website? I'm sure there's a way to do it, but it's difficult to find out exactly how. I don't want a "gallery," I want one piece of art. I want it the size I want it.

Grumble, grumble. I've got 13 more days to figure this out, then I bail.

New E-Books at BookView Cafe!

Four new ebooks will debut at Book View Café this month.

Two are backlist fiction (GALVESTON by P.G. Nagle and HIDDEN FIRES by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel), one is original fiction (THE HANDS OF GOD by Gerald M. Weinberg), and one is original non-fiction (the long-awaited WRITING HORSES by Judith Tarr).

The books range in price from $2.99 to $4.99 for DRM-free ebooks. Full details here. Having copy-edited Judy Tarr's book on horses and writing I can say: it's terrific, and should be immensely useful.

And On the Subject of Books...

That another recent Book View Cafe offering is Brewing Fine Fiction (note the cafe metaphor), in which I have several pieces on the care and management of writing and career. There's a lot of good stuff in there.