Read N.K. Jemisin's GoH speech

You must read N.K. Jemisin's Guest of Honor speech from WisCon 38. There's nothing more I can say than to read it and then take up her call to action in all our lives.

And if you're not familiar with Jemisin's work, I suggest starting with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. A few years ago I urged Hugo Award voters to select this work in the Best Novel category. While that didn't happen, I still believe Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy is one of the best works of fiction to come out of the SF/F genre in years. (I also believe The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the only one of that year's Hugo finalists which has actually held up, and yes, that includes the novel which ended up winning the award. But that's a discussion for another day.)

Update: I also suggest people read K. Tempest Bradford's introduction of Jemisin and Hiromi Goto's GoH speech.

In which I escape Typepad land and experience the bliss of Squarespace

My website has been down a lot lately, which is irritating because a science fiction writer without a functioning website is a bit of an embarrassment. "Oh, you write about the intersection of technology and humanity but can't keep your website online? Ha ha ha!"

It's not that I wanted my website to be down so much, but my old hosting company — Typepad — has been hit recently with a number of denial of service attacks. During the original attacks I was sympathetic to their plight. After all, Typepad didn't ask to be attacked.

But then the effects of that attack went on and on, following by a second round of attacks, making me suspect that Typepad's response to these DDOS attacks might be part of the problem. And then I remembered all those little irritations and questions I've had about Typepad in recent years. Like why they haven't updated their website control and design systems in forever, and why most Typepad sites look like refugees from the old AOL "You've Got Mail" generation of website creation. 

That's when I realized a little something: Why hadn't I dumped Typepad years ago?

I admit it. I was lazy. I prefer to spend my free time writing instead of building and maintaining my website.

The good news is I have a new website courtesy of Squarespace. I hope people like the new design and layout. I also can't say enough about how impressed I am with the services offered by Squarespace. They offer template and design options which Typepad can only dreams of providing.

So goodbye, Typepad. And hello Squarespace.

SF/F good person of the day: Maurice Broaddus

My personal fight against the hate swirling through SF/F continues with the highlighting of another good person who gives me optimism for the future of our genre: Maurice Broaddus.

If you don't know Maurice, then your genre world is flat-out sad and you should immediately correct this deficiency. Maurice has written a ton of fantasy and horror short stories (including the impressive steampunk novelette "Steppin' Razor" from the Feb. 2014Asimov's Science Fiction, which will be on my list of the year's best fiction). In addition, his Knights of Breton Court novel trilogy from Angry Robot is an imaginative reworking of the King Authur mythology into urban Indianapolis.

But Maurice's influence in the genre extends well beyond his fiction writing. You see, Maurice is also a connector, meaning he brings people together for the improvement of us all. We saw this in the award-nominated anthology Dark Faith, which he edited alongside Jerry Gordon. The anthology explored issues of religion and belief and brought together an amazing group of writers.  And Mo*Con. I absolutely must mention Mo*Con, which is one of the most fun-filled and laid back cons I've ever attended. But Mo*Con also has a serious social justice mission at its core, a mission which is enhanced by the connections Maurice helps build among people. 

Thank you, Maurice, for all you do to bring people together in our genre!

If you'd like to recommend someone as a SF/F good person, email me with their name and why you're nominating them. And don't forget to check out my previous good person picks, K. Tempest Bradford and Jim C. Hines.

Stop the literary vampires from sucking the lifeblood out of readers

I've been avoiding the Stop the Goodreads Bullies (STGRB) controversy for a while. Hell, I thought the whole thing would blow over. I mean, seriously — authors hunting down and exposing readers who dislike their books? How can any author see that as a good career move?

But I've been wrong before and I was wrong about this blowing over. In fact, now that Anne Rice has joined in the campaign there's a chance this could snowball into a larger "reader versus author" fight. Which would be a true shame because most authors are disgusted by the actions of Rice and her fellow STGRBers.

In case you haven't heard of STGRB, a few authors have long complained that receiving large numbers of bad reviews on literary social media sites like Goodreads is equivalent to being bullied. As a result they started a campaign to punish readers who post multiple "bad" reviews. For more on this, I suggest reading Foz Meadows' analysis from several years ago, or this Dear Author post. 

But since Anne Rice joined the campaign the controversy has dialed itself up to 11. For example, when author Jenny Trout recently protested the campaign on Rice's Facebook fan page, Trout and others were blocked, with Rice calling them "gangster bullies."

Really? Fellow authors disagreeing with how Rice and others are acting makes them gangsters and bullies? 

The only bullying going on here is how these supposedly aggrieved authors are bullying their readers. The truth about being an author is that not everyone will like your stories. It's that simple. If you can't handle that truth then don't write fiction.

What really disgusts me about STGRB is how these authors are using their power and large fanbases against individual readers. In this I'm in total agreement with what Cyndy Aleo said in her amazing post "When good authors go to the dark side": 

So there are a few things I can't deal with online. I can't tolerate people who go off half-cocked without doing research. I can't tolerate people who have a huge online following who pick on smaller people. And I especially lose it when I see a combination of the two.

Aleo is absolutely right.

There's also another problem — the STGRB campaign has the potential to hurt all authors. If readers are afraid to voice their opinion online, they'll eventually avoid making any online comments about fiction, no matter if those comments are positive or negative. There's already a trend of businesses suing people for negative reviews on Yelp. Do we really want to expand censorship tactics like these to Goodreads? 

So what's an author to do if they receive a bad Goodreads review? Well, in Cyndy Aleo's essay she gives a great hint on how to handle that very situation — by remembering that Goodreads isn't for authors! It's for readers. For reviewers.

But I suspect the authors behind the STGRB campaign don't want reviewers — they want cheerleaders. 

As an author, I won't lie and say I enjoy negative reviews. But I also like having readers. And you can't have readers without also having some people who don't like your fiction.

So to every reader who has commented about fiction on Goodreads or Amazon or anywhere else — thank you. Please also know that Anne Rice and the other bullies behind the STGRB campaign don't speak for all authors.