So The World Is Gonna Be FLEX-y For A Bit….
“So, uh,” Angry Robot’s PR department said to me. “What sort of push are you willing to give this book?”
“The full Kameron Hurley,” said I. “I’ll go all-out. Throw it all at me, I’ll do it. I’m ready, coach, put me in.”
Silence.
“You do realize,” they said, “That Kameron wrote over forty blog posts to support her book. Did like seven podcasts. By the time she was done, she could literally put together a book of her essays touting The Mirror Empire.”
“…have you seen my blog?”
“Point. Okay, fine. You get the Full Hurley.”
And immediately after hanging up on that phone call, I thought: Am I in over my head?
And then I thought: That’s Future-Ferrett’s problem.
But as my paper-baby impends, I’m finding that indeed, this promotion stuff is a lot of work. Just this weekend, I wrote five essays for other sites on various aspects of Flex, and I had to write the new book I’m first-drafting now, and change my website around to reflect the book tour, and by the time I sat down on Sunday night to write my usual Monday-morning-perk-me-up, I was out of juice.
So I apologize, dear readers: y’all knew this blog would become a first-novel repository at some point, just as I went bee-crazy at one point and straight-razor-shaving-crazy and webcomic-crazy. I’ve always been a man who blogs about his passions. (Don’t ask about the bees. I’ll tell you if they survive this bitter winter, alas.)
But what I did not anticipate is that doing all this work for other sites would leave me dry on the main blog, thus robbing you of non-book-related entries and making this even more of a promo shill than I intended it to be. And I’m not quite apologetic, because hey, my first book is coming out and y’all knew that was The Dream, but I do feel bad because were things not so flummoxy I’d probably be poking affectionate fun at Jupiter Rising or raving about The Flash or how Better Call Saul is awesome fan-service, but…
Instead, I’m just gonna refresh my GoodReads rating numbly and say that I won’t go totally dim, but it’ll be less than I’d like. Which is a mild sadness for me; I enjoy the blog, I enjoy the feedback, and it’s sad when I don’t have time to nourish this lovely connection that you and I share.
So I’ll be a little marketroidy for a while. I promise that when I visit Seattle and Portland and (hopefully!) San Francisco and LA on my book tour, I will talk about my impressions of those cities.
In the meantime, here! If you feel like going over to FetLife, I’m discussing how a Men’s Rights Advocate is harming male culture, but that’s not an essay I feel I could port over here without significant rewriting to give it out-of-Fet context.
Shut Up For Social Justice: Adjusting Women's Percentages
I was recording a podcast with the fabulous Monica Byrne last night – and as I always do when I’m talking with a woman, I worry about percentages.
Because if you put a woman in a conversation with a dude, studies show she’ll get less time talking. Like, way less time. Because men are far more likely to interrupt a woman (often specifically to assert dominance) – and according to some unsourced studies that jine up with my personal experience, women are perceived to dominate a conversation when they occupy as little as 25% of it.
So whenever I listen to a panel or a podcast composed of mixed genders, I want to keep a very elaborate shot-clock that tracks the amount of time each person speaks. Take Writing Excuses, for instance – one of my favorite podcasts on writing, fifteen minutes long and addictive as popcorn. The sole female host of the show is Mary Robinette Kowal, one of four hosts – and even accounting for the fact that Brandon Sanderson does the intros and outros, I’m pretty sure that were I do to a lot of annoying record-keeping, I’d find that Mary doesn’t get 25% of the air time.
The problem is that this is not actually a problem. Howard, Brandon, and Dan are all fascinating hosts. Everyone on that show has something interesting to say. Even if Mary is, say, 19% of the conversation, her 19% is still pure gold, and a little less Mary is balanced out in some way because Brandon’s got some relevant insights.
And there are always good excuses as to why a given woman may not speak up as much on a panel. Some people are quiet. Some people don’t have much to say on this particular take on the topic. Some people are more introverted, and may cede ground quicker when someone interrupts to take the floor.
That’s some people, not women – all of these factors apply to men as well. I’ve done tons of panels and seen laconic dudes, confused dudes, and easily-spooked dudes.
Yet at the end of the day, I’m pretty sure that as a percentage, the guys have managed to outspeak the women once again.
And I like Monica. I want to hear what Monica has to say. I’m excited by Monica’s big ol’ brain, because when she drops her mad wisdom she inspires all these other cool thoughts in me, and if I’m on a podcast with her I want to tell her what just occurred to me. And I have stories I want to unveil, and insights I came up with….
…and if I’m not careful, I’m like a big ol’ overexcited puppy. I won’t mean to dominate the conversation, but it’s like trying to talk when a Golden Retriever wants your attention. You’ll be in the middle of outlining some exotic thought, and I’ll just roll over and show my furry belly and whoops, I’ve derailed you out of sheer playfulness.
That innocent intent does not, however, make it cool.
So when I talk, I try to be aware of time. I try to be an enabler for the women’s conversation – if I know their books, I will take the anecdote I’m telling and end it with a question for them that’s custom-designed for them to tee off of. I set a little mental confirmation window before I interrupt – “ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO LESSEN HER TIME? Y/N.” I wait a little longer at the end of their stories, just to see if that two seconds’ of silence draws out anything more. If I’m on a panel and some other dude interrupts, I will allow him to finish and then say, pointedly, “But getting back to what Virginia was saying…”
There are all these techniques you can do to ensure that you do not dominate the conversation. And I am not doing this because I believe I am uninteresting! Hell, I think I’m fascinating. If I didn’t have that confidence, I wouldn’t go on a podcast. But I also think that my fellow guests are fascinating, and if I’m being mindful of the circumstances then I make room for them.
That’s just a courtesy on panels and podcasts in general. But in specific, given that women are frequently curb-stomped when it comes to getting their percentage of the conversation, me learning to mute and enable feels like justice.
(TWO NOTES: One, if you wanna hear this talk it’ll be live in about two weeks. I’ll letcha know. Monica and I may giggle a lot.
(Two, if you’d like me on your podcast, I am in Severe Book-Flogging Mode, as the Book Of Doom is due out in three weeks, and I’ll cheerfully yammer away for your entertainment. I do not promise to be good. But hoo boy, I can be enthusiastic.)
Look Look I'm A Book!
So Angry Robot posted this photo today:
I do not as yet have copies of my book. This merely means it has been printed, and is currently wending its way from the printers to the warehouses to the bookstores to the shelves. (As someone who used to buy books for Borders, I can tell you that shipping logistics is a major factor most people don’t consider.) It won’t come out until 3/3, and even then some stores may take their time unpacking it for your purchasing power.
But.
There is a book out there. Several thousand of them, in fact.
With me on it.
After thirty years of trying to get there, I got there, and wow am I proud.
In other news, if you’d like to celebrate my book release with me – my “book birthday,” as they say in the trade, is on March 3rd, a date I share with Catherynne Valente’s new Fairyland book – then on Friday, March 6th, I’ll be doing a signing in Cleveland. With cake. And donuts. And me, smiling like a goon and desperately wanting a drink afterwards.
So if you’re thinking about going, maybe you can say Yea or Nay at this Facebook event, so we have some idea of how many people are coming out to Loganberry books. I will totally hug you! And say hello! And critique your donuts.
(And my fantastic coordinator Mike Underwood is figuring out the last of the West Coast dates, so look for that soon!)
Oh, My Sweet Droogs: I Told You Not To Trust Me.
Yesterday, I wrote an essay about how I’m bringing my wife along to conventions even though it’s a little inconvenient for me. And while the response is lovely, I had a lot of people saying, “Wow, reading through, I was worried you were going to do the wrong thing!”
Well, of course you were worried. I wrote that essay to throw up a tornado of red flags.
If I’d wanted to justify the decision to not bring Gini along, I never would have started with the conversation about how I didn’t want her to go. A good essay is about leading you down to my conclusion.
No, if I’d wanted to convince you that what I’d done was a good thing, I’d have started much harder with the stress of grief, and how me dealing with Gini’s fear of crowds was holding me back from going out to the people I needed to see. I’d present a scene of sitting in the house with just her for the fourteenth night in a row, her wanting nothing more than to curl up and watch Star Wars again, me feeling itchy and isolated and not knowing what to do because she needed my help but I was dying inside. I would have talked about how I wasn’t able to comfort her because my emotional batteries were also drained, and we just kept bumping up against each other, unable to recharge the other because there was nothing left for me to give.
And I’d have emphasized the reluctance I felt about going out to GKNE alone, how uncertain I was, so when it turned out that GKNE was awesome for me you would have been there in my triumph.
Then I would have mentioned the other arguments I’d had to get Gini to go out with me, the ones where I’d failed, to show what a good guy I was. And I wouldn’t have just talked abstractly about what GKE did for me – I would have given you a scene where I showed you just how that first BDSM scene blew the doors off of what I knew, made you understand just how this was what I’d been seeking all along.
Then I would have talked about how Winter Wickedness gave me the strength to come back home and be better for her, that it was an oasis of healing for me to give Gini more comfort in her hour of need…
…And it wouldn’t have been quite as heart-meltingly nice but damn, I woulda sold some of y’all. Probably a lot.
And I’m sure some of you would have gone “Um, not sure about that” if I’d written about how I needed to go out to cons alone. Some of you are perceptive, and call me on my shit. But a good writer can bury his red flags, and manipulate emotions so you see what we want you to see. We’re like magicians.
Which is not to say that I don’t believe what I told you yesterday. I do. Thoroughly. And I think some of that belief saturates my work and makes me a better writer. But I also know just how I’d tweak my tale to tell you the exact opposite thing I said, and make it sound goddamned good.
That’s why I tell you not to trust me. Or anyone.
Because predators also know this trick. They know how to shift the mirrors to lead you deeper into the funhouse. And they’re very good at knowing what emotional dials to tweak, which moments to amplify, to lead you to the conclusion they desire.
I do believe in what I say. I do. But if I didn’t, it’d be really hard for some of y’all to spot that, because I know how to shift things around to mask my intentions and make good things seem like bad ones.
A lot of people do that. Hell, I could be doing it right now. So read closely. Question. Interrogate the text. Because there are people out there trying to mash your heart-warmed button so hard that it occludes your logic, and if you’re not careful they can lead you to some very wrong places.
So watch.
"It Would Be A Lot Easier For Me If You Didn't Come To This Convention."
“I’m going to be presenting at Winter Wickedness down in Columbus,” I told my wife. “It’s another kink convention. It would be easier for me if you didn’t go.”
This was a conversation we had to have, but I wasn’t looking forward to having it.
See, kink conventions are a new thing in our lives, and my wife’s never been to one. The first time I’d been asked to talk on polyamory was at the Geeky Kink Event: New England two years ago, and that marked the start of our long nightmare with our goddaughter. I’d asked Gini along to co-present with me – and why not? if I’m talking about poly, she’s smarter than I am – and she’d happily agreed.
Literally two hours out from the convention, we got the call that our goddaughter had gone into convulsions and was being medivaced out to Philadelphia. We cancelled. And spent the next nine months watching brain cancer take this precious girl we loved from us.
Not a good time for sexy convention fun.
But the Geeky Kink Event asked me back the next year, and I decided that for me, a vital step in my recovery was getting out again. Yet in the wake of our goddaughter’s death, Gini had acquired an anxiety about crowds. So she told me to go alone, and I did…
…and I had a great time. The kink actually led to some breakthroughs in my grief; there were moments where I was forcibly restrained so I could let loose with the huge sorrow I felt, and not feel like I could be torn apart by this infinite sadness.
But it was also fun. I was effectively single poly at these conventions, free to do whatever I liked, not having to coordinate with anyone’s schedule. If I wanted to do fireplay or take someone back to my room for cuddles and conversations, I could do that. I did a lot of smooching. I lost myself for a bit.
It was so much fun that I went and did it again at the next Geeky Kink Event, where Gini was still worried about being among hundreds of people in a noisy, potentially panicky environment. And that event was another time for Slutty Weasel to come out and play, a safe space where I could flirt and feel unabashedly good about life, which helped my recovery process.
And as I drove back from GKE cheerfully marked up by friends, I pondered how things were getting awkward on the convention front.
It would be harder and harder to integrate Gini into this convention life I had, the longer I did it. And that wasn’t the kinkiness of these cons that was going to be an issue, though that was a contributing factor: it was that I was creating a parallel social life that my wife was not at all involved in.
See, if you’re doing conventions right, you accrete friends as you go. You have a great conversation in a hallway, you friend each other on Twitter, and the next thing you know you have someone you really want to catch up with the next time you see them! The first con is usually a little lonely, but by the second con you have people greeting you in the lobby, and by the third time you hit a con you get to what I call “critical mass” – i.e., so many fun people you want to talk to that you can’t possibly schedule them all in.
This had happened at my writing-conventions before, too. I had so many people to catch up with that I was booked solid with my friends.
And by the time Gini came along to our first big writer-con, she felt a little isolated. I was always catching up with people I was so stoked to see, and while I introduced her as best I could, the fact was that I was at a con where I had tons of people who I had a past history with, and she was starting fresh. She felt a bit like a third wheel, even though so many people were psyched to meet my wife (who I don’t ever stop talking about, for the record).
So she felt lonely at the first couple of cons. Eventually, with a bunch of dinners and talks at parties, she started to form her own connections. Now she has her own friends she sees at the sci-fi cons – and there’s a bunch of overlap with the people I know, but she has her own bonds with folks now.
It was a hurdle.
But at a kink con, well, things can get awkward. The default mode of interaction at a sci-fi con is the group chat, where anyone can hop on-board. And that’s present at kink conventions, too! There’s a lot of great conversations to be had in the lobby, just like any other convention.
But the prevalent mode at a con is the scene – you and someone else doing something one-on-one. And so at a kink con, if I just did what I’d been doing before, I’d leave Gini alone for half the day while I went off and did fireplay.
Considering she’s still working through her anxiety of crowds, that would be a spectacularly shitty experience for her.
So I sat her down for a talk. “Look,” I said. “When I go to a kink convention, I spend a lot of time alone with people. And I really, really like this freedom of just being able to go off with whoever and do whatever. It would be a lot easier, and actually more fun for me in a lot of ways, if you didn’t show up…
“…but I don’t want that.”
Because yeah, it’s fun to go to a convention and stay up until 4:00 in the morning curled up talking with a girl I just met. It’s fun to do five straight hours of fireplay and not have to think about anyone else. It’s fun to be super-selfish.
But the danger of that is that I build a parallel social life, one where my wife isn’t welcome to visit.
And there’s nothing wrong with building parallel lives that my wife doesn’t *want* to visit. When I had a Magic group, my wife wanted nothing to do with that because she dislikes the complexity of Magic, and that was fine. If Gini wants to go to quilting seminars or something, I don’t care, enjoy yourself. If you have activities you like pursuing, you shouldn’t lop them off to fit neatly within a partner’s comfort-box.
But Gini likes conventions, and she likes sexy things – she listens avidly when I tell her of my grand adventures at these cons, amused by all the nuttiness that happens there. And as convenient as it might be to leave her behind because she’s still processing the several great losses she had in 2014, that would create a slow schism between us.
That schism wouldn’t be her resentment.
It would be me, evolving in the absence of my wife.
Part of the reason our marriage works so fucking well is that Gini and I are on the same page. Marriages break apart often not because people were bad for each other, but because people were great for each other when they started and then drifted apart. If you could somehow reset them to the people they were when they made their vows, then they’d still be together.
And kink conventions are potentially life-changing situations. It’s where you discover new forms of sexuality that you want to pursue, see other ways of approaching relationships, uncover sides of yourself that you’d never recognized before. Going into the Kinky Geek Event I didn’t realize how cathartic being held down could be, but a rope scene helped drain some toxic grief from my wounds…
…and Gini wasn’t there for that. She wasn’t with me in the hours afterwards to help me process that. She wasn’t seeing all the forms my grief could take.
When something big changes in my life, I want Gini there to see it. Because she’s a part of me, and goddammit, even if she’s not holding the rope she holds my heart.
“Yeah,” I said. “I won’t get to fool around as much at the conventions, if you come. And I’ll have to shepherd you around for a while until you can find your own friends there, and hopefully your own scenes. And I’m not trying to force you – if you don’t want to go, then we’ll find some other way to work this out. But if you’re just scared to go because crowds still flip you out, then I will find some way to bring you there, and if you have to spend the whole goddamned weekend attached to me at the hip, then I will do that.
“Because I need you to walk next to me, even if that’s not always convenient.”
She didn’t go to Winter Wickedness. Her mother passed on in November, and she’s still grieving, and it was too soon.
But she’s coming to the next convention. And that means I get less fireplay, I get less just running off for snuggles, I have more maintenance and concern at these cons as I ensure my wife is comfortable in this new place.
I cannot fucking wait.
They're Not Dumb, They're Just Not Where You Are Now
I got a comment the other day sneering at my so-called “genius” for writing a post full of super-obvious advice for dumb people.
And it’s true: what I wrote wasn’t rocket science. If you’re experienced with relationships, “Talk extensively with your partner before making major changes to your relationship” is Dating 101.
But someone’s gotta teach the introductory classes.
This is not me hoisting my banner high and shouting, “It’s me! I have to teach the n00bs!” Rather, it’s me noting that constant irritation emanating from more experienced people at the mere existence of the n00bs – when I go to Linux forums to look up an answer, I see beardy admins sneering at these clueless kids. Whenever I see writing advice for first-time National Novel Writing Month participants, I also see haters bitching about HOW COULD THEY NOT KNOW. And yeah, every time I write a Poly 101 thing, I attract folks who say, “They don’t know this by now? What idiots! They don’t deserve to be taught!”
But chances are good you’re not smarter than they are: you just got an education elsewhere. A lot of what I see as “dumb” can be written off as “inexperienced.”
The good news is, “Inexperienced” can be fixed with a bit of teaching.
Dumb may be an inherent state, depending on the person.
Which is why I try not to sneer at the newbies too much. Yeah, they’re often inconvenient, clogging my Linux feed with questions like “How do I move a directory?” They often embarrass me, because I see so-called “poly” newbies wrapping themselves in the name of a lifestyle I love and being the worst and most psychodramatic ambassadors of it I could imagine. And they’re sometimes an out-and-out harm to the community, when new dudes to Fet assume that every woman on a dating site just wants to get fucked and propositions a million women crudely, thus degrading not just the women but their positive experience on that social network, actually driving them away.
(And then they have the gall to go, “Why is it so hard to find a date?” But that’s another essay.)
Newbies can warp a community in weird ways. It’s not wrong to have rules that rein their puppy-dog tendencies in, or even to have communities that exclude folks without a certain level of skill in the topic.
Yet none of that means that a newbie is necessarily stupid. It means they’re starting out, and when you start out you make mistakes, and if you’re not making embarrassing mistakes you’re not growing. I’m willing to bet if we could pull up the history of these newbie haters, many of them made similar mistakes years back when they were first learning the ropes. (Or if they didn’t screw up, they had circumstances where they got valuable lessons handed to them – a form of privilege – well before they could make the mistakes.)
Point is, yeah, I think a lot of my essays don’t say anything new – they’re rehashing old topics in a folksy way that’s easy to read. I don’t see that as a flaw in my writing, though. Like a lot of writing, it’s not meant for you. If you’ve done a lot of poly, you can probably skip over 80% of my writings, because this is shit you know.
But someone doesn’t. I know this because sometimes they email me to thank me. And I write because I wish to God I’d had this great repository of knowledge of all these blogs when I was in my early twenties learning about sexuality, and I see all the other people writing awesome fucking advice that would have saved me so much humiliation, and I’m proud to contribute to that body of knowledge.
You know this stuff already? Good for you.
Pass it on.