Investing

What looks sillier than me trying to buy Hello Kitty stock?

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Not much, I suppose.

There isn’t actually a Hello Kitty stock, of course; the character is a property (doesn’t that sound so cold?) of Sanrio, a company in Japan. Seems HK is an even bigger deal over there, definitely Sanrio’s cash cow. The little mink is worth seven bill a year. I am looking into this for a simple reason: all of my wife’s stock recommendations, except those where I help pick the stock, do well. Since she had thought about this before I did, just hadn’t gotten around to asking me, this makes it a Deb-Approved Security that should do well.

If it does well, I don’t give a damn how silly a security looks. (Or how odious. I don’t believe in ethical investing. I believe in activism, and in investing for gain, but I do not believe in confusing the two.)

I’m not sure how easy it is to trade the shares on the Tokyo exchange, but it has US-traded shares as SNROF. Did you know that, that in most cases you can buy major foreign companies on the US markets? Generally you can. However, you can face a number of issues. You will certainly pay foreign tax, and in some cases ADR (American Depositary [spelling is correct] Receipt) fees. And yes, this means if you get a dividend, you will have to check ‘yes’ on your tax return when it asks “Did you have any foreign income?” In case you’re interested, a five-letter ticker ending in F is a foreign stock. A five-letter ticker ending in Y is typical an ADR (the distinction is not tremendously important). Some foreign stocks do not have five-letter tickers, like Toyota (TM).

Thus, this has me researching a way to buy shares of a foreign company whose main revenue generator is the image of a cartoon cat. Why would I be all right with this? In addition to the noteworthy fact that it’s Deb-approved, it’s near a long-term low. It does not look to have much downside, and based on its price history, has potential for a four-bag upside. I’m enamored of stocks my wife likes that are cheap at the price. I’m also enamored of 4% dividend yields, especially when payout seems on the upswing.

I’m greedy on dividends. I am not a fan of annual report proclamations (authored by management) of how great management is, how we’re all going to roll in money, and so on. I think: “Screw you. Pay up. If I’m going to hold this, I expect compensation now and frequently. That’s money you can’t take back later. If you bomb financially, and you don’t pay up, no problem. I was just in it for the money and I’ll be going then.”

I’m less enamored of low liquidity. One has to watch for that with foreign shares, and with quite a few investments. During Friday’s trading day, according to my research, only 100 shares of SNROF traded. That’s it. What if someone had wanted to buy 200? Might not have gotten them, especially at a limit price. People need to remember that you don’t automatically get to sell stock and ETF shares; they are not sold into a void. They are sold to someone else who wants to own them. If you want to sell, and there isn’t enough buying interest, maybe you can’t sell at all. By the same token, if no one wants to sell you any shares, you can’t buy them. Oh, someone will always cough them up–but not always at a limit price.

Foreign investing is kind of wild-west stuff for reasons like these. The governing laws are different. The style of annual report bullshit is different. (That’s not to say it’s less bullshitty, just that different cultures present bullshit in different ways.) It is generally more speculative in part because it’s harder to say how a company is doing in another country. I mean, if you’re in the US and you hear that Ford Motor Co. has turned in a crappy year and is laying off workers, well, that wasn’t hard. But if Nissan was boning the beagle financially, you might not see that splattered all over the US financial news. You’d have to make extra effort to keep tabs.

Most times, I think it’s easier and safer to just buy an ETF or CEF (types of mutual funds you can trade on exchanges) to focus on a given sector of foreign investing, but not all my ETF or CEF picks work out well. All of Deb’s do. Thus, if she is feeling it on Hello Kitty, I’ll start watching Sanrio, feeling a little silly for doing so.

Hello, kitty.

Editing/writing life

Why you don’t lie to your editor

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Are you surprised to find that some writers lie to the person they hire to help them succeed? Don’t be.

The reading public, which I love nonetheless, at times lacks a clear picture of the author/editor dynamic. In most people’s perceptions, the editor/author relationship is a battle between conflicting views of “what’s best for the book.” I do not operate according to that model. If the client thinks s/he knows better than I do what’s best for his or her book, and began this relationship simply to fight with me, I have better things to do than play the game. Maybe that person just wants to win an argument for ego’s sake, or is simply disagreeable.

(For confirmation: if you go to any message board meant for writers, you’ll see enough ego on display to last you weeks. Let it be known that you’re an editor, and you can begin the countdown to your first typo, and a smug callout from a small mind who considers that s/he has just taken a scalp. They are rarely worth one’s time.)

Perhaps some editors do work in such an adversarial way. I prefer a discussion/consensus model, and I find that the better the writer, the better that works. The best writers crave feedback and specifics, and they will beat both out of me–exactly as they should, if by some lapse I fail to volunteer them. I cannot get away with a terse statement to them like “that’s incorrect.” They want to know my whole reasoning. This in turn makes me a better editor, because I had better not propose anything I’m not willing to defend. And if I don’t also have the solution to offer, I’m in trouble. What good am I if I can’t tell my client how to improve? Better writers make me a better editor. With them, the consensus model works best because the better writers have more grounds for valid counterpoints, which means we can put our heads together for the best outcome. Viewed another way, when someone can’t write and can’t storytell, the person doesn’t have much to defend. I can and will help that person, but he or she doesn’t usually have the ability to debate how things should be.

By now, not much surprises me, but some things disappoint me. I have had clients accept a lot of developmental feedback, then stiff me. My fault, really, for allowing the situation to get to that point. In one case, though, I was deceived from start to beyond the finish. It involved an Alan Smithee, and I think the story can now be told.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept, Alan Smithee is a pseudonym sometimes seen in cinema credits. It replaces the name of a person who did not want name credit. I use a similar method when I do not want to attach my name to a book, which can be for many reasons. The most common reason is that my client won’t listen to me, and stands firm in believing that s/he knows better, deciding to override my guidance.

Some time back, I heard from a writer with an incredible story to tell. This client, who went by an obvious pseudonym, told me that s/he had met a renegade who supposedly performed blatantly illegal activities at the behest of legally sanctioned individuals, had had a change of heart about those activities, and decided to tell the story. My client was expecting any moment to suffer great retaliation for talking about it (the renegade supposedly being either dead or beyond reach of retaliatory acts). I read the ms. There were minimal specifics about the illegal activities, but lots of sociopolitical rants, and over half the book told the tale of an abusive relationship that had no bearing on the book’s billing. Why did this renegade open up to my client? The answers were vague, where any were forthcoming at all.

I gave my frank impressions: the story’s billing was deceptive, the logic was flawed, the rants were illogical and alienating, the tone was self-serving, and the book wasn’t going to be very good. I wanted much more about the cloak-and-dagger stuff, less about a bad childhood, and much less about a very bad relationship.

My client rejected most of my guidance. S/he was often very coy, the sort of person who won’t just come out and say something, but will drop enough hints to enable one to Google. I was able to verify some of the renegade’s story, though in many cases there seemed to be two sides to that story. The client claimed to have promised the renegade to leave certain parts in; naturally, they were the very worst parts. I did trim out a lot of the fat, and I obtained the addition of a minimal segment of cloak and dagger, but in the end my client only acted on about 15% of my guidance. This client therefore wasted about 85% of the money spent, and I could do nothing about it.

I came to realize that when my copy arrived. (I do not negotiate a complimentary copy, so this was at my instigation. I take pride in being one of the first customers to buy a copy at retail. Seriously, when someone pays you thousands of dollars, the very least you can do is buy your own damn copy from your client.) I shook my head in disappointment. Early reception and sales confirmed my expectations, with those few reviewers calling out the book’s deceptive nature. The positive reviewers were obvious sock puppets. It was all rather sad.

Not long after, my client contacted me: retaliation was coming, might catch me in the target area, and s/he would no longer be able to connect with me by normal means. In so doing, this client dropped enough information to confirm what I had considered 90% certain from the start: the client was also the renegade. All the stuff about getting the renegade to tell his story was twaddle. All the stuff about material the writer had promised the renegade not to alter? Baloney. How challenging it must have been to keep up the whole charade, with the author wondering if I were just playing along, or whether I could possibly be that dumb. Maybe that’s why the client ignored so much of my guidance: going along with the pretense made me look stupid, and thus not to be heeded.

Now, of course, I had much better reason to doubt most aspects of the tale, including its fundamentals. It was not all lies; I had verified a few of the less controversial parts. The renegade was a real person. The illegal activities? I came to believe they were all inventions, and that I didn’t get specifics because the renegade/client didn’t want to author any more fiction. The author’s naive belief was that people would buy a book purportedly full of Shocking Revelations, and not mind when it turned out to be mostly a story of bad childhood and bad relationships, combined with the renegade’s desire to spin the entire story to his/her own glory and the detriment of the renegade’s enemies. Somehow, the client believed that the buyer would not feel scammed.

If the few purchasers felt taken in, I understand that. So do I. If someone isn’t honest with me, it will limit my ability to help that client. In this case, throughout my editing work, I’d had to operate as though accepting the cover story. In reality, I hadn’t been talking to a person who had made an arrangement with a renegade just before that person planned to disappear, and who thus was not a direct participant with no ax to grind. I was talking to the ax-grinder in person, and the ax-grinder had had to supplement lies with more lies.

That simply piles atrocious upon bad and flawed.

Why do that? In the end, I think that the better writer believes that the relationship is about quality, and the worse writer believes that it is about control. The better writer wants to discuss, to hear justification, to brainstorm, to learn, and to produce ever-improving literary product. The worse writer fears a loss of control, and in service of control, may keep secrets. Or tell lies. Or defend the illogical. Or bicker without need. In the end, the worse writer knows his or her work is worse, and that the fundamentals boil down to:

“Well, my client, the bad news is that neither the story nor the writing are very good, but we could fix those.”

“But that’s my style, Mr. Editor! That’s my story!”

“Well, if you insist, then your style and story are bad.”

“I cannot accept that answer. I will keep looking until I find someone who believes in my work.”

“Very good. Best of success to you.”

Allowing major change, the thinking goes, would lose the battle for control. I do not consider that so. Allowing major change would teach the writer to be a much better writer with a more evolved perspective on his or her products, better able to defend decisions and less likely to need to do so.

But if they lie to me, it is fair to say that the percentage of the truth I am told sets an upper ceiling on the percentage of the available good I can do them. And once I learn of the lie in mid-book, while I will finish what I started, there won’t be a second project. I don’t care much for being deceived. I find that most people who live mostly by lies are not offended when caught lying. It’s not the first time, and won’t be the last. They do not expect a consequence if they continue lying; all debunked lies are now water under the bridge. Lie too often, for too long, and it becomes more addictive than an opiate. It becomes reflex, habit, first nature. Before deciding how to answer, the person ceases to ask him or herself ‘what is the actual true answer?’ and asks only ‘what answer would best suit my needs?’

Now, if someone came to me with an explosive tale of intelligence work that would shock the nation to its core, here is the first thing I would say: “Let us have one understanding. What truths you do not wish to tell me, tell me honestly that you will not tell me those, and I will not press you. But do not, even once, tell me a lie. The moment I believe you have is the moment I reserve the right to drop the job like a live grenade. If you cannot live by that agreement, let’s go our separate ways here and now.”

Like anyone else, editors live and learn.

Homeownership

Fun with our old credit union

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Because I like our old credit union, I’m not going to name the guy by last name. He is probably embarrassed enough. In short, we left ICCU behind when we left Idaho, but only since they are not set up to do banking or mortgage business in Oregon. If we had disliked ICCU, this letter might have been more sarcastic, but we did like them and enjoyed dealing with them. They are probably the most worthwhile consumer financial institution in Boise. In fact, I liked my banker there well enough to copy him on my reply.

Here are the email and my reply, with some redactions for privacy:

From: J.K. Kelley [mailto:[redacted]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2016 7:37 AM
To: Chris; Mitch
Subject: Re: ICCU Refinance Opportunity

Hello, Chris, (Mitch, also thought you’d get a laugh out of this; hope you’re doing well, and I miss our conversations–good luck to Harsin and the Broncos; offensive line is the core of the sport)

===

On 10/6/2016 2:49 PM, Chris wrote:

At Idaho Central Credit Union we are looking after your daily balance.

That’s thoughtful of you! If this is true, then you understand that my daily, weekly, monthly, and annual balance at ICCU is zero, and you must have access to my balance at another mortgage bank in a different state, which I find fascinating.

That’s why I have identified you as a potential refinance candidate.

Have you? That’s a surprise! I didn’t know you were in the Portland market.

If you are at all interested in potentially refinancing your current property while interest rates are at all-time lows, please give me a call or shoot me an email to discuss how I can save you money on your monthly mortgage.

I have to respect your persistence, since we closed our ICCU accounts about eighteen months ago. Not with pleasure; simply that we’d moved away and sold the house. We liked ICCU, good outfit, good guys like Mitch. If we still lived in Boise our mortgage and savings would still be at ICCU.

Please answer the following questions and I’ll get right back to you with an estimate on your possible refinance:

  1. What do you roughly owe and what do you think your home is worth?

We owe $$$$K on a house I think would sell for $$$$K. Of course, the drag is that the house is in Beaverton, Oregon. Housing shortage here. We have homeless camps. People like us are making bank renting out a guest room.

2. What type of property do you own and what is the property address?

Residential. It is at Number SW Street, Beaverton. However, before driving over, please call first. It would be very sad-making for you to drive seven hours and find that we are out eating granola or something. [Afterthought. If he is so familiar with our mortgage, how come he doesn’t know the property address?]

3. Are you looking to stick with a 30yr term to keep payments lower or something shorter like a 20yr or 15yr to try and get this paid off quicker?

Now, please think about what you just said. If I wanted to make greater payments on my thirty-year mortgage, I could be doing that. In what universe would I lock myself into that?

4. If you had to guess what do you pay for in home owners insurance per month?

I don’t have to guess. Through the reserve, divided out, I fork over about $$$ per month. I cough up another $$$ per month for earthquake coverage that isn’t worth a damn. You didn’t ask about the property taxes, but they suck. Roughly triple what we paid in Boise.

5. Any idea on where your credit scores stand?

If anything, they have improved since you lent us money before, so I suggest you check your records. It was only three years ago. Should still be xxx+. Please don’t run it again, though, unless we’re looking at a 2% drop in our mortgage rate (that would put us around 1.75%). If you have that in mind, my number is xxx-xxx-xxxx; let’s talk.

I Look forward to working with you,

Chris

Idaho Central Credit Union

[title and other signature data redacted]

Well, that’s good to know.

[misc links, we-love-us, and guidance redacted]

Notice: This e-mail and/or the attachments accompanying it may contain confidential information belonging to Idaho Central Credit Union. The information contained is for the use of the intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the e-mail and any attachments.

I’m not sure if I received it in error or not. Perhaps you can tell me?

-j

===

My former banker actually replied first, with a laugh. I suspect Chris will be a little red in the face, but no harm done except to his pride.

Adventures, Married life

Narrow gauge, open mind, numb nuts

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There haven’t been any posts for a couple of weeks because Deb and I went on vacation. We drove to Colorado via Utah, then back to Oregon via Wyoming and the Teton Valley (Idaho). Part of it was to celebrate our anniversary, part just that we needed a getaway and one can rely upon Colorado for natural beauty.

One thing we did, which I had never done, was take the narrow gauge train from Durango (Colorado) to Silverton and back. One would never do this for practical means: it costs about $90/each round trip in economy, and it’s three and a half hours to go about 45 miles each way. But for those of you who have heard of this excursion, and wondered what it was like, I can now tell you.

We could have paid double for what presumably would have been a more comfortable ride. Our rather spartan coach car had padded seats, but they weren’t very pleasant for three hours of sitting. In fact, to my alarm, I lost all sensation down below. It took a couple of days for it to return, which is not something I had envisioned. If you are riding in coach, my advice is to bring some pads.

The train pokes along at about the speed a cyclist might ride, so there is lots of time for photography. If your seats are on one side headed for Silverton, they will be on the other during the return to Durango, so you will get both sides’ views. You will also be treated to a few steam expulsions, because the coal-fueled train has to stop and blow off steam to both sides. I hope there are never any animals over there to get scalded. The train also stops at a zipline adventure place and a couple of other locations, in addition to three watering stops from pipes rigged up to stream-fed catchbasins. While its public presentation is as a pure tourist line, the train serves communities along its length for some freight and milk-run passenger service.

The coal smell isn’t as strong as I expected. I wouldn’t want it all the time, but for a finite period I found it immersive. A brakeman gave us instructions (mainly, don’t stand on the platforms between rail cars) and warnings about cinders. The combustion kicks off small cinders that tend to get into riders’ eyes. He assured us he carried eyewash materials. I got a couple cinders, but nothing serious. They weren’t hot.

By late September, Silverton (never a thrill a minute at the best of times) isn’t a very big attraction. It’s mostly tourist traps and dirt roads (no pavement), and there’s nothing there you couldn’t get just as easily in Durango, plus half the shops are closed up for the season. The purpose of this trip is not to obtain two hours in Silverton; the purpose is to ride an old school train through the mountains. We had a nice time, except for the wasp moment. As our car sat in Silverton half-boarded, with all the windows open, a wasp entered the car and buzzed Deb. She is not allergic, but is highly apiphobic. As the wasp headed for the car’s rear, she ran for its front, commanding me to slay the creature. I am not apiphobic, but I hate being the center of a bunch of strangers’ attention. Didn’t matter; what mattered was my wife expected me do courageous battle against the marauding insect. I radiated resignation and ennui as I heaved my numbed regions out of the seat and followed the wasp to the back of the train; one swat with my Thor Gasket cap and it was on the floor, one smoosh of a sneaker and it was no longer among the living.

Upon my return Deb questioned whether I had truly slain the beast. She finally accepted my insistence that I had observed its smashed body. In hindsight, I should have offered to go get the corpus delicti and show it to her, as that would have made her cease to question me.

Overall impression: it’s a beautiful if very lengthy and uncomfortable ride, and in late September the aspen are in full fall color mode. Just remember that it’s a seven-hour round trip sitting on a train, and be sure that you want to spend seven hours on a train. And that you brought cushions to sit on.

Deb got hundreds of great photos, and we both appreciated the novelty of the trip (me especially when sensation returned to all suitable parts of my body). On top of it, when we got back to Durango, we had a great dinner at the Strater Hotel in spite of the fact that some nincompoop had just ruptured the gas main to the entire Durango area. How could this be?

How it could be was that we knew the Strater from our anniversary dinner the night before. It had been phenomenal, as near to dining perfection as one is ever likely to experience, but we wouldn’t normally go back to the same place the next night. We did not have much choice. When the gas is out, most of the restaurants have no real choice but to close down. Not the Strater, which is made of sterner stuff. They reviewed their menu, came up with an abbreviated version, set up a grill behind the establishment, and the show went on. And it was just as good as the night before. If you’re ever in Durango, and you don’t hit the Strater at least once, you should have stayed in Ouray (pronounced your-EH). I admired the way the restaurant combined business opportunism (thinking of a way to be open for a whole townful of tourists with dinner money to spend and very few places to spend it) and a high standard of food and service. And no, they didn’t raise the prices of those menu items. The Strater would be a success in downtown Portland. In Durango, I doubt it has an equal.

Investing

Shareholder revolts

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I love closed-end fund shareholder revolts, when you get two different ballots, and one of them is all about how management sucks. Such a refreshing change from ballots issued by management, which typically say that management is wonderful and that we should therefore vote as management desires.

(If you do not know, a closed-end fund is a form of mutual fund. Most trade in bonds. The biggest difference between CEFs and conventional funds, the kind most people think of when they hear the term ‘mutual fund,’ is that conventional funds are open-ended. All their trading is between the investor and the fund. Thus, when you buy shares, they are created; when you sell (redeem) them, they are annihilated. In a closed-end fund, shares are not created or annihilated. They are traded between buyer and seller, neither of which is the fund. I have given lengthy criticisms of conventional funds in the past, and probably will do so again, just because they need frequent slappage.)

What I love even more is when the rebels’ complaint is that the fund is going to be kept around two years before liquidation, and should be instead liquidated immediately. I guess I should have bothered to read their semi-annual reports, or perhaps this liquidation is a more recent development. In any case, it’s good to see something other than the standard blind endorsement of management. Usually the most revolutionary thing on the ballot is some proposal put forth by an environmental group or something, demanding greater accountability or constraints on executive pay. Management always votes against all such proposals, claiming that they are already doing more than what the proposal would require. You can believe them if you like; I don’t.

So. What to do?

In my case, first I go vote for the revolt. If I were keeping the shares, I might stick around to care who wins. However, if the fund is going to be liquidated, I don’t wait to be paid out. I slap trailing stop sell orders on my shares. Whatever drama they’re going to have, they can have it without my money. I can surely find a better job for my money than a fund that is being managed toward a liquidation date.

This one (KMM) was fun. It was one of my lowest yielding CEFs, and I had a capital gain to boot. Yes, please.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life, Social comment

Fiftieth anniversary of Star Trek

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Everyone has read about its impact, how it would not die, how it created a movement. True. As an eleven-year-old knuckling down to six years of protracted cruelty, I can point to Star Trek as one of the things that got me through it all. I was not the only one. I have seen a friend of color say: “Until Star Trek, I didn’t realize that the future included black people.”

Yes. Did Star Trek mean more than the Beatles? No, the Beatles are not some sacred cow that automatically surpasses every other phenomenon. They were culturally important, but lastingly more than Star Trek? I am not thinking so. Of course, I like Star Trek and do not like the Beatles, so I admit a basic bias.

BBC America is showing a bunch of old Star Treks, and I am DVRing them and will rewatch them all again. Well and good. I will see more redshirts destroyed than an overpaid college coach trying to avoid a 5-7 record in his third year of program recovery. However, the show spawned a less savory product, and I’m not referring to / fiction. (95% of you do not know what that means. ‘Slash’ referred originally to ‘K/S,’ as in ‘Kirk/Spock,’ the notion that the two of them were in a gay relationship and often expressed in fanfic (fan-authored fiction). Now you see why I think this outshines the beatified Beatles? Scoff if you wish, but gay America living through the 1970s and 1980s does not.)

After the original series’ three seasons ended, and fans refused to let the show die, there came a less savory product: paperback novels, and many of them were awful. Loopy story ideas. Inept writing. Lazy naming. So many moments of “Oh, no. Seriously? You did not just name the security team after the Pittsburgh Penguins’ first line? And you got away with this?”

No, no individual callouts. Remember, I go to some SF conventions. I could end up having drinks with someone in whose withers I left banderillas, and who would now like an explanation. “J.K. Kelley. From where do I remember that name? Ah, yes, it’s associated with the knout scars on my back from your blog comments about my writing. Well, I was 25 then. Are you the same writer today that you were at 25, Mr. Kelley?”

Here’s a secret. Want to know what made me think I could be a good editor? I looked at what was being published by New York. Then I looked at what was coming out of the smaller houses. Then I looked at the indie publishing movement. In few cases did I see books that I could not much have improved in the editing process. In many cases I saw decent book concepts botched or clumsily executed. I knew that I could help those who wanted help badly enough, and could afford the help.

Since I have a library, I must maintain it. I have learned that one of the best ways to winnow out the chaff is to look at books and be able to say: You know what? I knew you were a lousy book even before I became a professional writer or editor. I need the space you occupy. You will be donated. And thus, book by book, I have done so. I am ruthless. Is the book a piece of crap? Will neither I nor my wife ever again wish to read it? Then it does not need to take up space. I refuse to be a book hoarder.

So what I am doing is to re-read all the hundred-odd Star Trek books, most purchased cheaply from used bookstores on the Ave (referring to University Way NE in Seattle, the beating heart of the University of Washington’s U-District). And while I may re-finish those whose storylines I can now respect, if they suck, I am going to get rid of them. Stupid plot? Gone. Author can’t write (the case in 75% of those books)? Gone. Authorial laziness or fetishism? Let’s not eat a whole egg to confirm that it’s rotten. It’s time to de-dross this library–or at least, in the case of some of my trashy westerns, accept the dross with a full understanding of its drossage.

This will take a while, but I expect to thin this collection out to the minority of books worth revisiting. And it’s time.

Homeownership

Things that go bang in the daylight

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I sat at my keyboard, doing my work and bothering no one.

Bang.

Some noise from the far side of the house, it seemed. Ho-hum.

Thump.

Neighbors obviously doing something, but it sounds like it’s hitting my house. I got up to inspect the likely direction, and learned only that my rosebushes are overgrown. Back to my office.

Bump.

I snarled an imprecation, got up. Left knee is worse than usual today, hurts even with the brace. I took another look around the same side; all calm.

Bonk.

Wait; that came from inside. I went back in and inspected the dog’s activities. The dog looked up at me without comprehension. He was innocent, and I let him be. Back to the office.

Whump.

Now my eyes narrowed; I spat a curse. It sounded like some kids throwing something at the house. I considered taking a weapon, rejected the idea; let’s not get carried away. But I was going to find out who or what was ruining my concentration, and it was going to stop. While I headed for the back door, there were two more bangs.

Whack.

Yeah, we’ll see, you little bastards.

Thump.

I wonder how my arm is these days. Some of those little green pine cones are pretty hard. If they can throw them, I can throw them back. I step outside, look east, and wait. Fuck you, you little shits, I used to throw a hard fastball that kept batters loose, and I will hurt you.

Blonk.

It’s a green pine cone, fallen from directly above my eave-trough, hitting it with a metallic sound. Okay, so pine cones are falling. I can see from the roof that bunches of needles are also falling.

Splop.

Obviously this is not some kids’ idea of comedy. I relax. Then it occurs to me: I have fourteen mature lodgepole pines. Why is all this stuff falling in this one area? I’m a bit worried about one of my trees; is another one flaky?

Crack. That was a real hard one.

And then I saw movement, a legacy habit from my long-past hunting days. A branch moving, not as if by wind. Nope, a squirrel.

Thump.

“You little shits,” I said, and went back to my office.

I’m fond of them.

Editing/writing life

I want to call this author out, but I can’t quite

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Last few days, I’ve been rereading a moderately successful SF series. I hadn’t revisited it for twenty years, since back before anyone paid me anything to write or edit. I won’t go so far as to say that I had no critical perspective back then, but years of doing this stuff professionally do alter that perspective. I am more perplexed now than before by the popular acceptance of bad writing.

Not that I ever sniff “well, clearly she should fire her editor.” We’ve been over that. In the first place, I do not know whether she had one. In the second, I do not know whether she heeded him or her. In the third, there are many different types of editing. The most I could ever say would be something like: “The book does not reflect competent copy editing.” That may be the the publisher’s fault, as in one spectacular screwup where the house printed and distributed an early draft by mistake. I am not joking. They really can be that stupid and haphazard.

No, the problem is greater: I have to live with these people, and with my words about them. That wake-up call came at an SF con. I have no idea what the panel’s subject was, but one of its participant authors rang a bell. I sat there trying to remember why. Something vaguely familiar here. And then it came to me–I’d read one of her books, and panned it on Amazon. Odds she would remember me, even if she happened to look at my name tag? Very low. Odds of me meeting her socially at all? Not so low. Odds of me feeling awkward? Bank on that. Yes, I would have stood by my words, but the issue is that I’m in the business too. In theory, at least, she was a potential client.

Now let’s consider the leap from a harsh Amazon review to this  blog. One might write many reviews on Amazon, or elsewhere, and have them lost in an ocean of snippy “obviously she didn’t have a good editor” junkfests. To dissect this author by name, in this space, would take it to the next level. That would single her out as an example of what not to do. She would probably learn of it, from a devoted fan or message board if not through her own searching. People being people, she would wonder who the hell I was, and what she had ever done to make such an enemy of me. She would remember my name, whether or not she were fool enough to reply here, and the memory would be unfriendly. It would not be that I said anything unfair, or that I didn’t mean. Her best rejoinder would be: there are tons of books out there with similar flaws, or more grievous ones. Why single me out? And while we’re at it, this is my work twenty years ago. You of all people ought to know that we evolve. Why pummel me today as if my older work represented my current standard? How would you like to be judged and strung up for writing you did during the first Clinton administration, hm?

She’d have a point or two, and such a reasoned reply would be the best case scenario. Authors can be sensitive. It could get awkward. Could she harm me professionally? Not really, but she could make sure I didn’t soon hear the end of it. What if I’m on a panel with her someday? Even if she did not notice, or did not bring it up, I know I’d be pretty uncomfortable. The issue would not be that I had been critical. It would be that I had made a vindictive-seeming, special, personal effort to hurt her. If I were here, I wouldn’t like that either.

So we’re not going to talk about how authors come up with motifs they evidently consider very clever, then hammer them so hard that each mention might as well come with “thissss…issss…significant” background music (props to my bro John for that joke, moderately edited and recycled). We’re not going into how “She felt…” are two of the worst words in narrative fiction. And we’re not going to say who is so guilty of contrivance that the story becomes predictable. And no, before some of you who know me personally begin to suspect, she is no one I have ever met in person. But I might.

And that’s why we won’t be citing examples. It’s also why I write rather few reviews on Amazon (along with not much wishing to donate free labor to the behemoth). If I don’t feel comfortable being objective and candid there, silence is best.

Privacy, Social comment, Technology

Blowing off Steam

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For those who don’t know much about PC gaming, Steam is an online service that provides copy protection, game e-tailing, and probably does other stuff as well.

I wouldn’t know for sure. Way back when Valve was announcing a game called Half-Life 2, there came an announcement that one would also have to use a service called “Steam.” One would have to permit one’s computer to phone Steam to validate one’s non-piracy right to play the game; not just upon install, but all the time. I had loved the first Half-Life to the level of remembering specific moments in the story and how I’d handled them. I also am not prone to automatic acceptance of pretty much anything. Me being me, I took at look at that and said: “nah, ain’t doing that, don’t need a game that badly.”

Most people did not take this stance. Most people just accepted the concept, just as most people accepted debit cards and juice bag drinks. I did not just accept it. And over time, I have come to understand that it means the end of my buying new PC games. When my old ones will no longer work under new systems, I just won’t be a gamer any more.

It wasn’t about unwillingness to buy. I don’t mind paying for software. I do mind the idea of having to keep spyware running just to play a game. For my OS and applications, it’s one thing; I hate it (oh, trust me, how deeply I hate it), but the price there would be my livelihood (and yes, I realize they know that and that’s why M$ does it, and yes, be assure that I take time to take that as personally as possible). I can be forced into it for a word processor, though I’ll remember that they did that. I can’t be forced into it for a game.

Thus, no Steam for me.

It ripples outward. I kept taking PC Gamer for quite some time, and would have continued, but now they no longer list in reviews whether a game uses Steam copy protection. When last they did, most games seemed to use Steam, so I infer that Steam is now assumed and thus needless to state, like “requires monitor.” With that, PCG lost its relevance to my world, and it’ll join about ten other print mag subscriptions in the recycle bin.

It’s not the only area in which I’ve done such a thing. There is increasing social pressure to own a “smart” phone, a device I consider mostly loathsome and unusable, not even very good for the basic purpose of speaking to others. For example, if someone under 40 organizes a meeting nowadays and creates an event on Facebook, and at the appointed time the venue turns out to be closed, the organizer will not post a sign on the closed door. The organizer will update the Facebook event, taking on faith that everyone checks Facebook from his or her phone. If you don’t, you’re left out. I realize that this will see me left out of a certain number of social events.

Once, I might have minded. Now I simply ask myself what I am really missing. That’s not sour grapes, but experience. An event with a bunch of people with smartphones will probably lead to the barbarism of a bunch of people staring down at their groins, madly “checking in” and posting Instagraphs (whatever they are), and making sure the whole world knows their status. I wouldn’t be a good fit anyway. At a group gathering, if I don’t mute my cell phone, you know that either something very important is going on, or I forgot, or I have so little regard for the value of the gathering that it’s valid to ask why I’m even there.

At some point during such obstinacies, the original issue becomes less important than the obstinacies themselves. No, I won’t take a debit card, even if I could see rare applications for it. Why? Because by now, debit cards can go to hell for their own sakes; I’ve enjoyed boycotting them for at least twenty years, and I see no reason to abandon the fun.

I don’t have phone conversations with disembodied voices, either. I will press numbers, but I will not speak understandably. Companies and government need to continue to hire human beings to do business with other human beings, and I’m not going to make it easier for them to get rid of more human beings. Making it harder for me? Okay, we can play that game. I view human interaction as important, and worth some invested time in order to foster.

It might seem like I have a fundamental aversion to new ideas. I don’t. I just have a fundamental aversion to new ideas that are pressed or forced upon me, especially when it’s one that is mainly for the forcer or presser’s benefit. Please consider that clause carefully. That’s my complaint about Steam: it’s there so that it can send information from my machine. That does not benefit me. That benefits game companies, maybe, but I’m not here to benefit them; therefore I’m fine if they go to hell. Same with smartphones. To me they look like a tiny chiclet keyboard and unusable screen at data rates that bloat up faster than a dead steer in August. Seems like $500 to begin the suffering, then $100+ per month of ongoing suffering. Go to hell, not doing it. Automatic bill pay? Seriously? Let me get this straight. I’m to let them take money out of my account without even reviewing the validity of their charges? What if they make a major mistake? You’re saying I should trust the company to do the right thing and be honest? Yeah. I’ll get right on that. I think I’ll be the one making decisions about who gets paid with my money, thanks.

I don’t look down on anyone who chooses to accept situations that I have rejected. I do think more highly of anyone who stopped and thought before making that acceptance. Can’t live without gaming, and decided to kneel and accept Steam? At least you thought. At least you did not just kneel by reflex. That’s really all I advocate: accept it for a considered reason, not just because a corporation ordered you to do so.

In the end, there may be more isolating choices, and I’ll have to decide what’s worth it to me.

I know one that is not, and it is Steam.

Religion

Removing stickers, fossilized or not, from books

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Different people love books in different ways.

My mother first immediately broke the spine of every paperback she read. That way, she said, she didn’t have to worry about that any more. To me, that’s sort of like becoming a heavy tobacco and alcohol user so that one won’t have to save for retirement, but they were her books. Long as she kept her Visigothic, mutilating ways off mine, we were fine.

Some people keep no books, giving them all away. Some keep a selection, for show or rereading. Some have gone over to e-readers. Most people, I think, do not much care how much wear and tear they put on books. I believe this because of the condition of the used books I buy: creased covers, dog-eared pages, cracked spines, and probably body fluid stains.

Many have bookstore price stickers or remnants thereof. In many cases, someone brutally clawed at the sticker without much luck, leaving lots of nice divots and grooves. Sometimes there are three labels, one atop one or more others. Sometimes they are on the spine, which creates delicate circumstances; without special care, peeling the label may rip off part of the spine. ‘Used’ labels from school bookstores are always on the spine, and it’s not strange for them to be fossilized. It’s not strange for any label to be fossilized. The gum eventually hardens.

It’s not that my soul is crushed by the damage to a thing (though I think it’s pretty shabby to abuse a book, in my heart of hearts). It’s that I like to maintain valuable things in good condition. Books are valuable things. And for that reason, I’m going to take any sticker on a book as a personal challenge. I have now developed an improved method for this. Considering the demographics of my readership, there is a reasonable chance some will find this interesting.

First, gather supplies and books. I would practice on beat-up used books. Supplies:

  • Books with labels or remnants thereof
  • Bottle of Googone
  • Paper towel
  • Q-tips
  • Scissors
  • Some form of protection for the work surface, if needed, like an old plastic placemat
  • Plastic bookmark, or some other plastic potential scraper suitable for gentle work
  • A little patience

Method:

  • Examine the first book for stickers. Locate all, including all remnants and gum residue.
  • Make at least one gentle effort to peel off each sticker without help. New stickers may well come off. Some will leave residue.
  • Rip off a paper towel just so it’s handy. Cut a piece of that the size of the label you want gone, or slightly bigger.
  • Set the piece over the label and drip the Googone onto it. The idea is that by having the piece in place, it doesn’t all run off–Googone is thin.
  • Repeat for any other labels on the same exposed side of the book. Drip a bit more Googone on the paper towel piece, now and then–it evaporates, and if the label is paper, keeping it soaked is how you get the solvent through the paper to loosen the gum.
  • It can take some time to soften up completely hardened gum. You can test with the plastic bookmark (works better than fingernails). Most labels loosen up after several minutes kept soaked with Googone. Once you loosen it, you can q-tip some more Googone onto the residual gum.
  • If the label is plastic, this is going to take a while. If it won’t peel safely, use just a little Googone all around the edges, and wait for the stuff to eat away at the gum until you can peel up one side a bit. Then q-tip a little more on, wait, peel, q-tip more, wait, peel, etc.
  • Eventually, all labels will come off. Baste the remaining residue with Googone, then use the rest of the paper towel for a vigorous rub of the whole surface. If some got on the pageblock, or there’s a stain, don’t worry; it’ll evaporate. Give it a day or so to do that. The book will not smell like that forever, but a week or so is not odd.
  • Enjoy the original color of the cover, because on a used book, the uncovered area will be darker than the faded remainder.
  • Take a moment to scoff at their feeble labels.

If you are concerned about safety, wear those thin kitchen gauntlets and eye protection. I’m not, but I’d never encourage anyone not to. Googone has a very strong orange smell and is a petroleum distillate, and can be persistent, so I try to do this somewhere that won’t be a problem. I do make a point of washing my hands very well afterward, and that can take some effort before my hands no longer smell like this stuff. If you are concerned, the company website has Safety Data Sheets in .pdf.

The company’s website also indicates that they have a spray gel, and that may yet be a better method. I’m so cheap that I probably won’t consider it until I’ve used up my current supply of the original. They’ve even got a package they bill as the sticker-lifter, so the Googone people know their customer. Haven’t tried that one either.

Now if only I can figure out a way to fix cracked spines.

Blogging freelance editing, writing, and life in general. You can also Like my Facebook page for more frequent updates: J.K. Kelley, Editor.