Satire. Fun and games. Not real.

The contract points I quoted were so blindingly ridiculous that any self-respecting writer worth his salt would burn the contract before signing it. As Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith are fond of pointing out, “In publishing, money flows to the writer!”

Writing is a business, not a hobby. Remember that.

Oh, and if you’re an aspiring writer, read Kris’ and Dean’s blogs on writing. They will help you make sense of it all. Really. Promise.

Dan Hoyt
April 2, 2011

15. Author agrees to contribute the entire amount of the advance (specified in paragraph 3) to Publisher for the purposes of marketing and publicity.  Publisher agrees to set up an escrow account for this purpose in Author’s name.  Author is encouraged (and may be required upon publication, subject to paragraph 36) to contribute additional funds.

That’s cool.  The more skin in the game, the more likely the success!  It’s great to see my publisher taking this kind of interest in my career.

I’ve heard that cover consultation is a big thing, and I’m happy to report that I got something even better:  I have complete control of the cover!  The publisher has given me a whole week to put together my vision of the cover using whatever sources I’d like to obtain for the purpose, and that’s the cover that will go to press.  Awesome!  Talk about creative control!  I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Speaking of creative control, I’ve heard so many copyediting horror stories (it’s so common that the copyediting term “STET” has become mainstream), that it’s a relief to know I won’t even have to deal with silly copyeditors:

18. Author agrees that if the services of a professional Copyeditor are required, Author will procure said services.  Publisher agrees to provide a list of suitable candidates.  Publisher also agrees to respect the Author’s creative right to opt out of Copyediting services.

Also, since Borders refuses to pay the publishers and Barnes & Noble is getting their pants sued off by Microsoft, there’s no need for bookstores any more, so my book will be available exclusively on Amazon.  The publisher will be leveraging Amazon’s famed warehousing and distribution network to ensure that my book stays in print for as long as possible.  And all of this comes free from Amazon, which means they’ve got skin in the game, too.  How cool is that?

Of course, it turns out that I’ll pretty much have a steady supply of my books, so I’m not too worried about going out of print:

19. Author agrees to maintain a reserve of the Book at all times while considered in print by the Publisher, in order to address shortfalls experienced by Amazon.  This supply cannot exceed 85% of the outstanding copies, but must not fall below 50%.  Publisher agrees to make  reasonable effort to ensure copies of the Book are made available to the Author at a 20% retail
    discount for this purpose.  If at any time or for any reason the Author’s reserve falls below the contracted amount, Author agrees to provide Print-On-Demand (POD) copies to make up the shortfall within 7 days. 

The only thing I didn’t get any real say in was the price.  The house was quite firm on that, and the prices they set were a little higher than I thought they’d be, but I felt that $19.95 for the paperpack and $29.95 for the ebook was fair with today’s inflated prices, so I didn’t push the issue.  (Besides, that just means higher royalties for me!)

I left out some of the more boring parts of the contract, but that’s the gist of it.  I just sent in the copyright application, so I expect my novel will availabe around Memorial Day weekend.  From my back-of-the-envelope figuring, I figure I’ll need to scrape up about $20K to keep up my end of the contract (it’s all deductible, so that’s cool), and I’ve decided to launch an intensive 3-month publicity tour this summer while the kids are on vacation.  I’ll be flying into all the major cities in the continental US (unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it to Alaska and Hawaii because of the high cost of airline tickets there!) — pretty much a different city every day — and stopping in at each of the airport bookstores and newstands to sign copies of my book (which I’ll have available for sale from my reserve, of course). I’m sure to be a bestseller in no time!

See you at the airport!

Dan Hoyt
April 1, 2011

My brother wasn’t a saint.  Some people found him too rough around the edges for their tastes.  Some found him likeable.  Some confused him with another David Hoyt in the same graduating class of the same high school (Stow, OH, 1977 — for the record, my brother was the trombonist, who was fond of black leather and motorcycles, not the football player).  Few found him cuddly and teddy-bear-y, although my sister and I saw that side of him more than a few times. 

Growing up, we battled constantly.  And I don’t mean just arguing, but knock-down-drag-out fighting, usually resulting in me getting injured, since David outweighed me by a good hundred pounds.  People wondered why I rarely got into trouble at school, why I did everything I could to avoid fights, when I seemed to enjoy a good argument (okay, so I was a bit of a jerk in high school) — it was because I had enough fighting at home.  When I left my parents’ house, there were a lot of bad feelings both ways, and I resolved to leave for good.  (I kept that promise to myself; I’ve never returned, even when it would have helped, financially.)  For a long time, I didn’t speak to anyone in my family.

Somewhere along the line, I figured out that family meant something, no matter how fractured the relationship.  (This is why so many people from broken homes end up in therapy — because those relationships did mean something to them, at an instinctive level if nothing else.)  Sometime after that epiphany, about the time of my father’s heart bypass, I started reaching out to David, started doing what I could to repair what was obviously a broken relationship.  I flew to Ohio to look after my dad the weekend after his surgery, and David picked me up at the airport.  He took me to a biker bar for a steak dinner and we talked about Dad and why I wasn’t on speaking terms with anyone any more.  I realized that my father’s health was more important than our petty disagreements, and that day I made the first steps toward building a working sibling relationship with David.

David didn’t take a step toward me that day, but we did get closer later.  His progress was slow, but it was progress.  I resolved to be patient, letting him take the time he needed to come to the same realization I had about the importance, the influence, of family.  The mark he’d made on me, and I’d made on him, that helped make us the people we were.  It was a slow process, but I knew it was worth it.  That he was worth it.

David had already starting turning his own life around, steering away from drugs, alcohol and violence, and, with the help of a woman he loved, turning toward a responsible, grounded life, centered around family.  (She had two teen/preteen children, and he talked to me about how terrifying it was to gain an "instant family," even though the kids would never really think of him as a father.)  I know David loved her, because he died protecting her, his passenger, when the motorcycle he was piloting had a blowout and they went down on the expressway.  She survived the accident, but David lapsed into a coma that ultimately proved fatal.

We were still in the middle of our journey when the accident occurred.  David never recovered from the coma; I never got the chance to tell him that I was proud of him for trying to rehabilitate his life.  Never got the chance to tell him how much our newly-repairing relationship meant to me.  Never got the chance to apologize for pushing him away so many years before.

I was surprised how much his death affected me.  We were still only cordial, not really friends, per se.  I didn’t have a lot of happy memories to reflect on.  Look, he’d always said he didn’t expect to live to 40, so I’d been expecting it for years at that point.  Why should his death matter to me any more than that of a distant cousin?  But it still shook me, hard.  On a purely self-centered level, it felt like a part of my life had been ripped away — the parts we shared, specifically.  I felt as though without his affirmation, my memories were just lies, and they’d fade away over time, eventually robbing David of his own legacy — the memory of his very existence.  I came to understand that this was just a natural reaction to the death of a close relative, and I moved on.

Over the last 10 years, I’ve never forgotten my brother.  I think of him frequently, of what his life meant to me, and I try to apply those lessons to my own relationships (especially with my wife and kids).  I remember and honor his memory every week.  I hope that there’s some form of afterlife, and that he’s found his version of peace in it.

David Hoyt, big brother, on this the 10th anniversary of your death, Rest in Peace.  You deserve it.

Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, this is an excellent example of the kinds of things I’d like to see our government spending money on in the sciences, so be sure to let everyone know about the antho.

P.S. Read what John Scalzi had to say about the antho in HIS blog.

When we were much younger, sarahahoyt and I used to knock around Porto when we were visiting her parents.  On one of those sojourns, I nearly dropped my camera trying to get a picture of a truck going by that had rather alarming letters painted on the side.  Now, to fully understand this, you have to realize that at that time there were a lot of panel vans (and sometimes panel hatchbacks — I am not making this up, as Dave Barry says), and they didn’t have the gauche American habit of painting the sides with company logos, phone numbers, etc.  So, when I saw this particular panel van driving by, I was alarmed by the possible meanings.  It was white, with three large red letters: F A G.

Let me take a moment here to point out that I have several gay friends.  I’m not homophobic, and I don’t make fun of gays.  I am, however, not above making fun of companies with suggestive names who don’t seem to recognize this fact, and I’m pretty sure my gay friends will get a kick out of this post.  This one’s for y’all.

Let me also point out that this particular company is German, and this particular combination of letters doesn’t have the same meaning as in English.  I’m aware of this; save your hate mail responses for something that needs it.

Anyway, back to the story.  I was alarmed.  Was it a specialized police enforcement version of a paddy wagon?  Or maybe some kind of demented delivery company?  I didn’t know.  As I was telling this story to my son robertahoyt this evening, sarahahoyt pointed out that it was a German tire manufacturer and I remarked that I never saw one of those vans again.  For the last twenty-some years, I’ve wondered if I just imagined the incident.  Then I thought, "Hey, it’s the age of the internet.  Maybe I should just look it up."

It turns out the company does exist.  They’re at … wait for it … fag.com.  Okay, that’s fine, but they seem to be oblivious of the English connotations of their company name, and the more I dug into the company, the more clueless they … well, judge for yourself. 

It turns out that FAG is owned by the Schaeffler Group.  Fair enough.  If you watch the beginning of their video, you’ll notice that their spokesman refers to their two other subsidiaries, "Luk" and "Ina," as words rather than the initials he uses for "FAG," so presumably they’re sensitive to what could be an embarrassing brand name.  However, they didn’t seem to notice that the order of their subsidiaries, their logos emblazoned right there at the top right of the screen, sound out a rather obscene sentence, complete with subject, verb and object.

Looking into their history (the astute reader will note from the URL that they’ve also smartly snagged fagauto.com), you’ll also find that in 1991, they established, without a trace of clue, the "FAG Aerospace Division" (it’s the 4th entry down).

At this point, I noticed that Schaeffler Group had a link to "Related Companies" under the logos, with the entry "FAG Industrial Services."  I couldn’t resist.  I swear I couldn’t.  I should have.  I just about fell out of my chair when I saw their main page, which, like the Schaeffler Group, seems to be oblivious.  That page prominently promotes — again, I am not making this up! — the new "FAG Detector III Plug and Play."  Apparently, it "provides easy access to the world of vibration monitoring."  Um … I really don’t know what to say to that.

Also, this particular product has its own website as well, fag-detectoriii.de.  And the product has a slogan, "Easy handling - low costs."

Oh, I really can’t dig into this particular company any more.  My irony alarm is just too loud.

Please fire the idiot that decided to drop the Kinko’s brand name!  (And, yes, I know they announced this in June — I just figured they’d have come to their senses by now.  After visiting my local FedEx shipping office today, I discovered they haven’t.)

This is one of the most boneheaded moves I’ve heard in years.  This is akin to Hershey’s buying Coca-Cola and changing the name to "Hershey’s Cola".  Sure, Hershey’s has name recognition — but NOT FOR SODA!  Hershey’s isn’t that stupid; they’d keep the world-renowned Coke brand name. 

(Microsoft, on the other hand, would probably change the brand to Microsoft Soda, but that’s another post.  Although I have to confess I’m intrigued by the whole idea of fine print on the soda can stating that the contents cannot be guaranteed to be non-poisonous, or even the contents as specified on the label or, for that matter, that there are contents at all!)

Wait a minute!  It was all for the stock pricing, right?  Let’s see how that went.  After the announcement on June 2, FedEx stock closed a shade over 90.  Today the stock closed just over 60.  How’s that?  Isn’t that a 33% loss in value?  Isn’t that the wrong direction? 

At what point do you say, "Hey, we screwed up; do over?" 

Kinko’s is one of the few examples of a second-generation genericized trademark, one that replaced the original genericized trademark (Xerox in this case — boomers tend to refer to a photocopy as a "xerox" copy; younger people refer to "Kinko’ing it."  Eli Stone‘s episode this week even referred to "Kinko’s" copies — 5 months after FedEx dropped it!).

I, for one, plan to avoid FedEx Office locations for copies, and I’m seriously thinking of dropping FedEx for shipping, because I can’t count on their judgment any more.

Yeah, I’m pissy like that.  But I’ll be all right in a minute, after I finish my Microsoft Soda cola-flavored beverage.

Scrooge 1 and Scrooge 2 — as they shall henceforth be called (at least until Christmas) — have been giving me flack for playing Christmas music on the car radio.  Tonight I declared the official start of Christmas movie season, and they paled visibly.

It’s not like I’m pushing Christmas on Halloween — or even Thanksgiving; in fact, I absolutely refuse to acknowledge Christmas before December.  We don’t really decorate the house — maybe a string of white lights on the balcony a week or two before Christmas.  Heck, we probably won’t even trot out the tree until at least the 20th (those of you with multiple cats will understand). 

I can’t see how a little music and a movie or two qualifies as excessive in the Scrooges’ books.

Is there something wrong with the Scrooges?  Or is it me?

I spent a couple hours setting it up, including internet (our wireless is encrypted and uses MAC filtering, so I have to find the MAC addresses first, then add them to the router, and then I can set up the internet!), proper household LAN setup, Star Office tweaks (the screen res is 1024×600 — already a bit short – and the default word processor has THREE lines of icons taking up real estate), etc.

I’ve read quite a few reviews claiming that the Xandros pre-installed wasn’t robust enough, but nearly all of them seemed to decide this after they decided to make the eeePC their primary PC.  For a writer’s travel laptop, I think Xandros is perfectly fine.  We’ll see what sarahahoyt  thinks as she uses it.

My only problem now is that I want one!

Look at me, lazybones.  Do I look young and athletic to you?  Unless you’re parked in the handicap spot, chances are you’re healthy enough to wheel the empty cart 20 feet more to the return, considering you probably just wheeled it fully loaded about 100 feet to get to your car.  I know I am healthy enough, and if a fat old geezer like me can do, so can you.  So do it already, and don’t give me any excuses!

It was an accident.  Really.  I like the Smart car.  Sarah and Robert think it looks dorky.  Okay, it kinda does, but I still like it.  I’ve wanted one since before it was available in the States, when I saw one of Sarah’s cousins pull up at her parents’ house in one.

So, anyway, we were driving my wife’s Expedition in Denver, near Cherry Creek, and there was a yellow/silver Smart approaching in the oncoming lane.  I air-high-five’d the car and yelled, "Smart!"  (The windows were up, BTW.)  But I realized at the last second that my wife and kids probably didn’t have the context and tried to point at the car.  I didn’t notice at the time, but both Sarah and Robert told me afterward that they heard me yell, "Smart!" then flash the "L" sign at the Smart car.  Both of them figured I’d finally come around to my senses and said nothing.

To that driver of the yellow Smart near Cherry Creek, who was driving along, minding his own business, only to have some unapologetic jerk in an SUV sign him that he’s a loser, I’m truly sorry.  I didn’t mean it that way.  Please forgive me.

By the same token, I hope that Smart driver doesn’t condemn me just because I’m driving an SUV.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about fuel prices, or where we get the fuel, or the environment, or whatever it is that some non-SUV drivers think.  It means we live in Colorado, where an SUV is the most prudent choice in cars for us. 

I’d just like you to respect my choice in vehicles as much as I respect yours.