That's it. I'm going to go study beetles!

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Great! There are vast areas of beetle-verse which lie unnamed and unexplored. I haven't time to do more than photograph the occasional one I haven't seen before and wish someone could tell me what it is.

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Well, that's mostly because I think that's just such a delicious turn of phrase, rather than actual annoyance you understand?

I'm mostly of the opinion that I don't care about what sources people use for their stuff - there's enough ways to 'collect' blog content in various forms and aggregate it... I mean, I've got the 'paksworld' blog syndicated to LJ, so I _can_ be lazy and read it all in one place.

Works fine for me. About the only time I get slightly annoyed is when I'm deluged with comments - that's something that a few people did with twitter back in the early days, so I got a friends page that was nothing but one line twitter updates from just one person. But even that is much more about how many posts someone makes, and less about the aggregation. Either way though, given blogs are 'opt in' I tend to take the view that if someone doesn't like it, they can opt right back out again.

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Would you be willing to share the name and I'll add it to what I read. I don't always have the RAM to open another window but adding to LJ would be wonderful.

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Oh, thank you both (not to mention E). Another lazy LJ'er who likes to keep my reading handy. That way I only have to follow LJ and sff.net -- and a number of non-f&sf blogs that I just have to go ahead and track using my Firefox bookmarks.

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Well, most blogs you run into have an RSS feed, and thus can be (and probably are) already feeding onto LJ already. You can add them at http://www.livejournal.com/syn/ (and if it exists already it'll tell you what the 'LJ name' is)

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Me too :) I have so many syndicated feeds, it's not funny. I mean, I even syndicated a friend's picasa album so that I'd know when she added new photos. It's less effort :P

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Right on, Elizabeth! You tell 'em.

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You go, girl!!

Sari

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Thank you! My partner is writing a book where the main character is autistic and wants to make sure it rings as true as possible. He's reading Speed of Dark right now (and absolutely loves it) and I know he'll want to know about the blog.

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There's more on the website (linked from the blog or my main website)--does your partner have experience with people on the spectrum? At work, in school, etc? There are ways, if not, to meet and experience their unique way of engaging with the world and their many similar ways.

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He mostly has experience at this point with people who are or probably would receive an Asperger's diagnosis. He says he's going to check out the resources you link to, and he'd be delighted if you had other suggestions as well. (And yes, he's planning to respond here himself, once his muse lets go for a moment.)

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Boy do I understand the clinging Muse thing! It's like trying to walk with someone hanging onto your leg.

Depending on his timeline for this project and your location, he might consider a) meeting with parents & families of autistic persons, b) using them as alpha-readers for chapters to get their sense of "real/not real," c) looking for autistic support groups and asking permission to attend and learn, d) volunteering in situations where NTs help autistic persons (e.g. in special-needs office of local college, at camp like the one our son attended--day or summer type.) There are subtleties that really can't be conveyed well in books--I don't think I did a complete job in my book, either. It wasn't "about autism" but about one particular autistic man.

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*laughter* And in his case, wakes him up at 3am insisting that he needs to go write about something RIGHT NOW. Fortunately I spent many years as a single parent and know how to go back to sleep.

We're in a big city (Seattle) so a lot of those are definitely good options, thank you! We've got a couple friends who have an autistic son and had already planned on asking if they might be willing to talk to satyrblade and/or be alpha readers for him, and the other suggestions are very helpful too.

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Hello, Elizabeth!

This is Phil Brucato, Damiana's partner and the author in question. You and I have actually crossed paths at a convention or two, and I seem to recall sharing a panel with you at LunaCon or MileHighCon a few years back.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I just finished reading Speed of Dark, and... well, I was floored. For years, I've been using Sheepfarmer's Daughter as a gold standard for verisimilitude; "Just reading the book," I've said to countless students and panel-goers, "you can tell that this author had first-hand experience with the things she wrote about." That said, Speed of Dark is by far the superior book. All the praise you've won with that novel is well-earned. Bravo, Ms. Moon. Bravo, and thank you!

The narrator of my book Holy Creatures To and Fro is borderline Asperger's. I had considered the idea of making her more deeply autistic, but research on the subject has shown that although she shares many diagnostic characteristics of the disorder (heightened sensitivity to some stimuli with imperviousness to others; social disassociation, enhanced pattern recognition, hyperfocus with certain tasks, communication withdrawal, sensory distraction, physical tics), she lacks many other elements of that condition. Outside social situations, Silk functions on a practical level. Although her sensory impressions are strange and often overwhelming, she generally processes her environment in quick and accurate baseline "normal" terms.

As I've gone deeper into the character and unlocked more of her voice, I've realized that she's actually somewhat delusional, with elements of synsthesia, Asperger's, dyscalculia, and a whopping case of social anxiety disorder from peer and familial abuse.

Silk has been inspired by three people close to me - a niece, a lover and a friend - all of whom have a certain degree of Asperger's Syndrome. The primary real-life inspiration bases her human interactions on animal pack behavior, and draws many of her social cues from canines rather than from people. My feral protagonist does the same, and I've been running the rough chapters past the woman who most closely inspired the book. So far, she likes it a great deal. *knock knock*

Thank you so much for your suggestions. I'm still keeping them in mind and using a few of them as opportunities arise. Once again, too, thank you for At the Speed of Dark. I loved it!

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Hi, Phil. Boy, you've sure given your character some big problems to struggle with! That's a compliment, by the way.

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Personally, I was just thrilled to find out that you had a blog at all, more-so one that I could communicate with you through (and not be sending you emails or written letters because for some reason that's a step that intimidates me). O.o

I guess some people just don't understand that you're a real person with a job and a life and can't cater to their every whim.

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Considering my response would tend to be a bit more "colorful" I'll just say that my sentiments line up with Neshel's comment....

"I guess some people just don't understand that you're a real person with a job and a life and can't cater to their every whim."

Then I'd follow up with my husband's favorite saying --- Don't explain. Your friends don't need it and your enemies don't care.

While I'm always greedy for more, I appreciate what you give us. After all, it could be much less. And as soon as you get Facebook figured out, I'll "fan" you there.

Kathleen

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What they said. What you post and where is entirely your choice. It is the choice of everyone else which places they use to follow your posts, OR NOT. Thank you for posting here, since I don't watch Twitter.

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:-D

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Inflammatory arthritis? I have an undifferentiated inflammatory arthritis that's thrown me under a bus for the past 7 years... So, much sympathy.

In happier news, my seeds from Native American Seed arrived in the mail this week. Any thoughts on whether or not it's too late to sow them this fall? The packaging suggests to do so from August to October, so I gather it's a bit beyond the ideal recommended window.

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No, mine's simple overuse...wrote so much so fast that I've damaged the joints.

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In the Hindu pantheon, there are apparently as many gods as there are beetles. HOURS of study!

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Not good enough, Elizabeth my dear, you should send every fan a personal e-mail twice a day. ;-)

No, seriously, not many authors give their readers so much! I llver every paksbook update, but I still think you should write the book and have a life before feeeding us fans.

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Knickers firmly unknotted - it's just wonderful to be able to have this sort of contact with one of my favourite authors. Even 7 years ago this wouldn't have been possible, and I feel most chuffed that I can follow your well-informed and interesting postings (I especially loved the climate change series a couple of weeks ago).

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Thank you for finding the time to post here. I very much enjoy reading what you choose to share and I appreciate the gift. In no way is anyone reading what is freely given entitled to it.

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You're generous to share part of your life with the world, and people complain that the way you're doing it is *inconvenient*????

One boggles.

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The Empress has Spoken!

:)

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Oh my yes, you're just SO mean not to cater to the whims of every person who demands it.

Do people even think??? You are a writer. It's your job and calling. Your readers are your market, not your owners nor your boss. You owe us a decent read, nothign more. If you are inclined to post cool stuff for our pleasure, hooray, but you are not obliged and readers have no right whatsoever to make demands.

Go you, and give such demands the weight they deserve (little to none).

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Just before I opened up LJ, I was telling a friend about all your different social media, and how it could be such a time sink. -- and here is this post. Sic 'em!

Much as I enjoy your posts, I want your novels more.

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Much of the blame goes on publishers who think authors are supposed to be spending more time building a platform than actually writing novels. Lots of pressure on authors to figure out a way to be the new "it" writer on the internet with thousands of followers, because if the author can post on every social networking site and manage that, the publishers aren't having to spend money promoting. [the fact that thousands of authors are all attempting to do the same thing simultaneously is beside the point]

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Publishers, though, are responding to pressure from booksellers, and writers are also responding to pressure from individual readers. The big bookstore chains are telling publishers they don't want to shelves books by people who don't already have a platform of support--they don't want to spend shelf space on unknowns. I can't recall now who quoted a bookstore employee as asking why bookstores should "support" (by giving them shelf space) writers if writers aren't supporting bookstores (by promoting themselves online.) The fact that writers produce the merchandise bookstores need in order to call themselves bookstores has been downplayed--it's as if the stores are doing writers a favor rather than having a reasonable supplier-retail sales business relationship.

And I received many emails and letters from readers who weren't satisfied with whatever venue I was on at the time, urging me to join *their* favorite network. These were of the "I don't want to have to go to X-network, that I don't like--you should join Y-network so I don't have to go anywhere else to find you" variety. It's not true of all readers, obviously, from the reactions here, but it's true of enough that it's affected how writers and their publishers see the need.

Just the other day, someone pointed me to a particular blog post and the comments to it on how people react to identical posts in different venues--something I'd seen talked about before, so this wasn't a one-time thing. The blog-reading population contains both those who read only in one or two venues and those who read in many, via feeds that make collection of posts in these other venues easy. The blog-writing population--esp. that part of it using blogging & social networking as a business tool, which would include just about all writers--wants to reach both those who read only in one venue, and those who read across venues. Time constraints being what they are, duplication of posts across venues will occur--to the annoyance of at least some of the "wide-angle" readers.

The technological solution would be a filter on the reader-side of the feed that recognized and removed duplicate posts.

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I think my reaction to all of this was shaded by a friend who felt it necessary to become a big name tweeter/blogger, spent lots of time cultivating a following, and finally saw no boost in sales whatsoever when her next book came out. She felt like she'd been putting in major time and stressing herself out to be entertaining and post to various genre blogs when her book would be on the shelves, with no payoff. I just don't think everybody can develop the kind of following a few have, but that whether it's booksellers or publishers, there is this idea that every writer should "do the work" to become Scalzi or Dooce, without understanding that's pretty much the same as insisting that they be King or Rowling. Anyway, she ended up jaded and bitter over what she perceived as unrealistic expectations attached to the idea of branding and establishing a platform.

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I can understand the people who don't want to go to X-network to read what you have to say. I don't have any desire to have to go to multiple websites every day to find the things I want to read. However, they want something from you so they should be willing to make some small amount of effort to see your posts. That's what RSS feeds are for. I will admit that I respond a lot more to LJ posts than to anything else because it is easier not to have to make the extra step of going to the original location of a post and possibly needing to set up an account there.

I really don't understand people who think they somehow have the right to tell you how you should do things. That attitude seems to be becoming increasingly common all over the place though.

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Much of the annoyance of crossposting can be avoided by including a LJ cut in LoudTwitter (because it's fun to follow twitters, not so much fun to a) see them again and b) see a lot of @ replies to people you don't know), and likewise by using the selective twitter app on facebook, where only messages with #fb get added as FB status updates. The problem isn't one person doing it. The problem is when you have ten or twenty prolific twitterers on your flist who all crosspost without cutting, at which point they render your flist collectively unreadable.

And in the interest of completion, your other blogs are 80acresonline and speed_dark_feed.

I have to say, I love your idea of beetle revenge...

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I'm not using LoudTwitter but twittinesis.com and it allowed me to not include replies to comments (mine or others') which I thought would help avoid the truncated conversation thing. I have no idea how to add an LJ cut to the Twitter feed I'm using--and I still can't make LJ cut where I want it to, when I decide partway into a post that it's going long and should've had a cut after the first paragraph. Repeated attempts have not worked. I like WordPress SO much better. I can add the cut anywhere, at any time.

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The code for a LJ cut is straightforward: <lj-cut text="Read More...">This is the text</lj-cut> (I've used the HTML, those need to be angled brackets) - first tag at the beginning of the cut, second tag at the end, more than one cut per entry possible. I've never had a problem with this, neither posting from a client nor adding it manually. Not unless I've messed up the tag, which, ahem, happens.

I'm not familiar with twittinesis.com. In general I would say I haven't been on Twitter long enough to know which one I'd prefer - all twitters or just the public ones - but I definitely prefer them under a cut. As I said, it's not any single twitterer, it's the accumulated weight of them.

At some point in the future I think that readers will become smarter - there will be more tagging of content, which will allow readers to filter out posts better, but that will always depend on a) how well people are tagging their own posts, b) how disruptive thoughtless people turn out to be, and c) how invasive spammers become. (Twitter's new 'report as spam' function seems to cut down on the annoyances there, but for a while it was a real annoyance - every time you used 'health' in a tweet you got twenty spam followers and any number of messages with spammy URLs in them etc.)

(On the whole I'm all in favour of being able to communicate with writers - but I feel that this whole 'platform' thing is becoming ridiculous. I want writers to pour their energy into writing and writing-related tasks, and blog in venues and to a degree that they enjoy. Nobody likes 'I hate this place but my publisher insisted I join it' messages - they defeat the object IMHO. (Not saying you do that - but I've seen a couple recently.)

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I think the platform thing is a reaction to the perception that books are losing out to other media.

Receiver-side software would be the right place to filter--for instance, I can sortakinda imagine what it would take for software at that end to look at feed downloads, compare them, and not report identicals.

On mechanically adding the LJ cut after going past where you want the cut...does this mean I have to post in HTML?

It would've been so smart of LJ to do what WordPress did and give users a single button to push that worked *anywhere* in the post, any time a user thought of it...

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I think the platform thing is a reaction to the perception that books are losing out to other media.

Very likely, but that's a rant for another time.


I use the HTML editor, which turns anything that looks like a tag into a tag, so if you type an angled bracket, the editor thinks it's a command. In that case, you need to type out the code as it appears on the screen. (If you read comments sent in e-mail, you'll see that I used the round about HMTL code - <[semicolon] so the brackets would be displayed instead of interpreted in your post.)

If you're using the Rich Text editor, inserting the code by hand doesn't work. Instead, you get a whole row of buttons at the top. Hover your mouse, and one of them says 'Livejournal Cut'. If you just click it, you get a popup dialogue asking for the text (the 'text' part of the code I gave you' and which puts a grey box around text you can then replace. If you want to hide stuff you've previously written, you need to select it, then click the 'lj cut' button, at which point the cut text will again appear in a greyed-out box. _However_, it appears that it becomes impossible to retrospectively edit the cut text. I like the HTML editor because it gives me much better control over what I'm posting - I can see where the cut starts and finishes, and I can edit the text - but it all depends what works for you.

I much prefer to post through a desktop client anyway - somewhere I can write a post, save it while I'm working on them, and that gives me easy access to all the tags I might want to use including macros for things I use frequently.

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Have you tried using any of the LJ clients? I find it much easier to make posts with Semagic.

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No.

I should not have to add additional software to my computer to post text messages, is my (admittedly selfish) opinion. I would have no other use for an LJ client than posting to LJ, so it would be a waste of space. Also I don't know who wrote those LJ clients (if it's the LJ programmers, I KNOW I don't want it on my machine), do not know if it has security holes, etc., etc.

So...no, and I'm not going to.

Signed, grumpy old lady

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