The Class Guy on LJ

Your dad used to be the spooky-mysteries TV show host Professor Midnight. Your grandmother lives in the basement and only comes upstairs after dark. Your mom died when you were a baby, and nobody will tell you about her. Oh, and you have two birthdays, both on Halloween. And that's the part of your life that's normal.

But with this birthday, everything is going to change.



Free electronic file at Scribd.

Epub, Kindle, and other electronic formats ($3.95) at Smashwords.

Kindle edition at Amazon.

Trade paperback ($14.99) at Lulu.

Hardcover ($21.95) at Lulu.

why isn't Midnight Girl with a major publisher?

For over a year, it sat with a great editor at a major house who wanted to buy it. She said:

I don't just love it, I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!! Cat is one of the most kick-ass heroines I've ever come across. And talk about conflict and things at stake! (I keep having to tell authors to beef up the conflict because there's never enough.) First [spoiler deleted]. Then [spoiler deleted]. And *then* she has to make an impossible choice between two equally horrible fates. I love every single character in the book, even Ms. Arkan. I couldn't put the manuscript down. I devoured it in one sitting. Anyway, that's how much I love it.

Alas, her boss did not like it. Because she was so excited, I did a rewrite. The boss still did not like it. So my agent sent it out to a number of houses, and in every case, the results were mixed. Here's a note I just got from my agent:

I was on the phone today with one of the editors at [Major Publishing House]. He loved Midnight Girl, and went to bat for it. The word he used was "brilliant." Unfortunately, powers that be felt otherwise. But at least you now know that it did have an in-house fan. He's a young up-and-comer, so I've made a note for future work of yours.

Clearly, I have to learn how to write for publishing's old farts.

first Midnight Girl review (after a sweet twitter comment):

An gives YA a thumbs up. It's a mighty sweet review.

The twitter comment:

chaoticcalm: @willshetterly I just finished reading Midnight Girl (after the rec from Gaiman) and it was wonderful! *rushes off to read your other work*

I'll tone down the pimpage after this. But it is sweet to hear from folks I don't know that the book worked for them.

Joy may have found the source of this picture here.

The challenge of all holidays is to take them back from the merchants and find the spirit of their makers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Because it's a holiday, I'm crossposting this for the people I love on LiveJournal. And for the people who don't know I love them, too.

ETA: Terri Windling has an excellent Thanksgiving post.

Thinking about the way some people love to hate reminded me of Gaza Doctor Receives Angry Reception at Press Conference:



It's not nearly as heartbreaking as Gaza doctor's tragedy caught on Israeli TV. Or rather, it's as heartbreaking in a different way.

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish wrote:

The l6th of January, 2009, is the day when my three precious daughters and niece were killed by Israeli shells. I do not want anyone in this world to see what I have seen.

What I have lost will never come back. I need to go forward and be motivated literally by the spirit of what I lost, and to do them justice. I lost three precious daughters, but I am blessed with five other children and the future. I believe that life is like riding a bicycle, as Einstein says - “To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” I will keep moving.

And what about forgiveness? Is forgiveness necessary? When you forgive someone, you forgive and value yourself. Forgiveness is about letting go, completely and permanently.

Then there is the choice, the crossroads, the path of light or the path of darkness. I chose the first. Most people assume that this path, that of forgiveness, is difficult, but in the long run it is easier to forgive than to live with hatred or be consumed with revenge.

Forgiveness helps you move forward, away from the pain of the past to the brightness of the future. Indeed, forgiveness opens the door to a future that will not repeat the old tragedies. Sometimes the beauty in forgiveness is to forgive when you do not know whom to forgive, when no one asks you for forgiveness.

Whatever the situation, to err is human, but to forgive is truly divine.

If you visit daughters for life, your heart will break a little. And that's good.

I'm crossposting this to LiveJournal, because people there wanted to talk about forgiveness in general.

ETA: autographedcat reminded me of real live preacher's excellent forgiveness.

ETA: I hesitated before making this a public post, but RaceFail and its fallout were so very public that this seems necessary, especially if ktempest , sparkymonster , or anyone else is truly concerned I'm carrying a grudge and hoping to act on it.

ETA 2: This is not a retraction of my earlier apologies. Making peace—with yourself and with others—has two parts, apologizing for what you did and forgiving others for what they did.

The discussion about this is also going on in the comments on about forgiveness.

ETA 3: I've edited this to remove things that don't need to be public. I often explain too much in my early drafts.


I forgive everyone involved in RaceFail 09.

There were strong hints last month that I needed to forgive, when K. Tempest Bradford tweeted:


I was amused that she called me "shitterly"--something the children of the local Ku Klux Klan did in fourth-grade when I was known as the nigger-loving son of the only liberal in Levy County—and by the notion that mentioning her online was equivalent to stalking. By that standard, she's been stalking me since 2007 or earlier.

But my reaction was unkind. In the old days, I would've felt sorry for her and tried to assure her that she needn't be concerned. I should've seen that as a sign things had gone too far.

Her tweets and sparkymonster 's participation were provoked by my discovery that coffeeandink had hotlinked her legal name and her LJ identity even after claiming she meant to be pseudonymous. I'll never know whether coffeeandink used her real name casually on her LJ for years because she didn't understand how pseudonymity works online or if she simply decided during RaceFail that she didn't want her legal name connected to her attacks on former employers. Either way, I forgive her. It was a flamewar, and by definition, everyone involved has something to regret.

Forgiving everyone in RaceFail means I'll greet them as I would anyone else, and I'll help them as much as I would anyone else. It means that if they were concerned that I meant them ill, they should relax. I'll continue to think their understanding of power is flawed, but their intentions are good. I'm pleased that they've begun to include "class" in their definition of intersectionality, a concept that was originally limited to the intersection of race and sex, but which has broadened as feminists and anti-racists realized there are other oppressions than the ones that give them their names. Perhaps we'll be able to be allies someday, not in their sense of being a white person who unquestioningly accepts Critical Race Theory, but in the meaningful sense of being people who have differences and still work together.

Yes, it's Will Says Goodbye to LiveJournal Again time—I should have a song for it. LJ is just a bad interface for me. I'll only post at my main blog for the foreseeable future: it's all one thing. I'll probably pop back for special pimpery, but that's a very bad reason to continue to friend me. Enjoy the word of the year with my blessing now!

Warning: This is about RaceFail 09.

I updated the pseudo-pseudonymity of Coffeeandink yesterday with this:

Weeks after she complained that she had been outed, after K. Tempest Bradford deleted the links “outing” her at Fantasy Magazine and I deleted them here, Coffeeandink linked her identities again. Le sigh.

This morning, I found the following comment there:


If you do, email Vic at janeaustensworld@gmail.com

ETA: I just saw that Tempest Bradford is back in her teapot with a claim that this is "stalking." That would be the Tempest who hotlinked Coffeeandink's legal and LJ names for two years at Fantasy Magazine. I've taken a lot of shit from people who believe Coffeeandink honestly wants to be pseudonymous. As a gesture of goodwill, I nuked my WordPress blog to help her identities be separate. Yesterday, I checked to see if my work had been for naught—and I found that was so, because Coffeeandink continued to hotlink her own identities. If she truly wants to be pseudonymous, she should stop that. Vic is happy to help her. I, on the other hand, am done helping her. Whether she "outs" herself in her sleep, I dunno. It's not my concern anymore. But if she doesn't contact Vic, I will believe she never really cared about pseudonymity. Her history suggests that, but perhaps she just didn't understand how search engines work.

ETA #2: Yes, this looks like another flareup of CompassionFail. I might wish that Tempest would stop "stalking" me, but that's life on the internet.

ETA #3: I do wonder how Tempest came across this post. Was she "stalking" me or vanity-googling? Well, life on the internet. Hi, Tempest! Long time, no see!

ETA #4: If any of Tempest's or Sparkymonster's friends drop by, feel free to leave a comment. I don't ban anyone because I'm not afraid of competing ideas and I welcome corrections. If you've enjoyed this post, you might also like the people who mock class issues.

ETA #5: Also allies are equals: people who shut up and listen are never equals.