Tag: Stealing is Wrong

Office Closed Tomorrow

Exercises in Futility Number Five Thousand Four Hundred Thirty-Three.

Google Home Assistant: And! I can do more things now. You can ask me complex questions and I’ll be able to answer with help from Gemini!

Me: Hey Google. Why did the AI companies steal my life’s work?

Google Home Assistant: . . .I’m sorry. I don’t understand.

Yeah, me, too, Google. Me, too.

Well.

The WIP currently stands at 129,943 words. I’m still fixing the baby fixes. Once that’s done, I need to write some scenes and put them where they belong. Deadline is April 15.

I have Remarks for my event on Saturday. I have also a Reading.

It is not supposed to snow on Saturday, but it will snow on Friday night.

In the meanwhile, and as much as I haven’t been around this week — tomorrow, February 20, the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory will be closed. Thank you for your understanding.

Everybody stay safe.

Tali and Rook, birdwatching

Thursday open for bidness

OK, let’s see…

Thursday. Sunny and cold. Feeling much more the thing than yesterday, which — just let’s say that it was a day when you drink peppermint tea and honey because your stomach hurts and that turns out to be a bad idea.

Got in an early four hours with the WIP this morning, and have verified that I’ll be removing about 9,000 words. This is not a surprise; I kinda sorta knew I was going to hafta do it, unless I Thought of Something. Which I haven’t, so — into the Pull File they go, and maybe they’ll be useful later.

I have a doctor’s appointment at 2:30, and need to verify where I’m going. Also, I have emails that I need to answer, and! I need to tell Draft2Digital that, yes, I do want Pinbeam Books to be listed with Bookshop.

Still waiting on that one outstanding 1099-MISC.

I see that the judge overseeing the Anthropic Settlement has extended various deadlines for opting in, out, and sideways, which will likely put back the expected payout schedule, originally projected to begin in August. Granted, I never expected to see any money from this “settlement,” but the whole thing’s so infuriating that even reading the subject line kicks up the blood pressure.

And FedEx has just arrived to deliver a letter, so it looks like the range for hitting my house really is between 11:15 and noon. Which is actually useful information.

Trying to figure out if I want to try to see John Mellencamp’s off-Broadway fine-tuning of his play at Ogunquit in October. I expect if I want to do that, I’ll have to reserve a room at Ogunquit realsoonnow. Must lookout prices.

For now, I need to do my duty to the cats, and then heat up the soup I didn’t eat yesterday, ref stomachache, and — oh, yeah, find where the heck I’m supposed to be at 2:30.

How’s everybody doing today?

The Late Wednesday Report

As previously advertised, it’s snowing. I asked Google what the snow accumulation was going to be and it said, “One-point-three-seven inches,” and I know it’s just messing with me.

The WIP now weighs in at +/-100,700 total words, with more words yet to be written. Despite my having removed manymany words, this is still going to be a long book, as we here in the Liaden Universe(R) count book length. I apologize in advance.

The name of the belly dancer whose clip I shared on FB the other day is Rachid Alexander and at least one 10-minute performance is on youtube. In case anybody might be interested.

In other news, I’m out of cookies. I’m not sure how this keeps happening. Probably the cats eat them when I’m out running errands.

Michael Carbonaro, a magician, is coming to the Waterville Opera House in March and I wanna go see him, because — Magic! Show! OTOH, I’m looking at the prices and — eep. Well. He’ll prolly sell out without any help from me.

I am going to have to call the lawyers handling the Anthropic business and get myself to a humanbean. It transpires that my affairs are not straightforward, what a surprise, and I’m running out phucks to give, which — it would be smart to continue with the giving of phucks for a little while longer.

So! Since I’m done writing early today, and the lawyers are in Seattle, where it’s just after lunchtime, I s’pose I’ll get on the phone.

Bah.

Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe.

I’ll check in tomorrow as can.

Oh, Firefly was caught on camera, Helping:

Communique to the Internets

Saturday. Cool and cloudy.

Before we get to the recap, someone — Alma? — had asked how you remove the stabilizer without damaging the embroidery. I had previously used stabilizer, which was impossible to wash out, but! Improvements have been made. The instructions for the stablizier on which the pattern for my embroidered shirt were printed said, “Rinse under a stream of warm water.” So, I took it into the bathroom, turned on the shower and stuck the shirt under the warm water. Somewhat to my surprise, because, I, too had expected A Fight, the stuff just melted away. It took — what? A minute. Then I hung the shirt up and let it drip.

Mind you, it was stupidly difficult to embroider through the stabilizer, which is too bad because apparently the kit-making people have latched onto this as The Answer, and are now sending a bit of linen, a pattern printed on stabilizer, thread, etc. So, the two kits that remain on-hand (both black-cat-themed, what was I thinking?) are both “affix the pattern to the cloth.”

# # #

Feel free to skip from here to the next # # # if you’d rather not hear an elderly lady complain about her old war wounds.

You have been warned.

Yesterday was No Fun At All. I owe Patty Briggs for the timely arrival on my tablet of the chronicle of Asil’s yuletide adventures, which made the day somewhat less bad, but even a beautiful, doomed, ironic man can only do So Much. One does wonder what looms — well, but that would be a spoiler, and we already know what looms.

My back hurt sufficiently that I took the drugs, even though I knew that was probably a Bad Idea, as indeed it was. The drugs make me sick. I know this, but they do also, sometimes, work against the pain. Sadly, yesterday was not one of those days. Tali gave it her All, but even so . . .

At 9:30, I just fell into bed, exhausted, and slept for three solid hours, then off and on in hour-sized chunks. Firefly was on night-watch, and she, too did her All, including smacking Rook off the bed, when he decided that I would feel better if I played. (She did allow him to remain later, when he snuck up and curled against my knee.)

I finally got up sometime after 10:30, took a shower, made myself a mug of peppermint tea and sat down at my desk to write this communique to the internets.

Since the drugs were such a disappointment, I have decided to quit the course. Yes, my back still hurts. A lot. But if this is going to be my life, I guess I’m going to have to learn how to ignore the pain and do what needs to be done though it. You wouldn’t think this would be hard, since I’m pretty good at ignoring various other sorts of pain, but the back pain is my nemesis. So! a project.

Just what I needed.

# # #

My Plan for the day is to find something non-threatening to eat after I’ve finished my nice mug o’peppermint, then go back to Steve’s office and get some writing done.

I have in my in-box two letters from the law firm representing writers in the Antropic settlement, replying to mine of several weeks ago. It looks like I’ll need to get Madame the Agent involved on account of Steve being dead like he is. I’ll look at those again when I’m feeling a little more the Thing.

So, that’s caught us all up. The cats, I believe, are in Steve’s office, and I — am going to make another cup of peppermint tea and a piece of toast, and go join them.

And how’re y’all doing today?

Destination, Bangor Maine

What went before: Sat with the WIP for a bit, added some words. Dissatisfied with the name of a new character, which isn’t the name they gave me — which is to say, they gave no name — but I felt like I had to call them something. So! I may be wrong about that. I’ll look again tomorrow, and if I’m still unhappy and they haven’t forked over, I’ll just do without for now.

Vividly I remember the pitched battle I fought with Rool Tiazan’s lady, me demanding a name; she informing me that hell would freeze over and Satan down with pneumonia before that would happen. I threatened to call her Bubbles. She laughed. And? She won. Tough cookie, Rool Tiazan’s lady. I don’t think this one is of that caliber — because, let’s face it, who is? Certainly not me — so it may be that I’ll be worthy of knowing their name after we’ve worked together for a couple chapters.

Scheduled a flu shot for Friday. They had openings for Thursday, but I draw the line at getting a vaccine on my birthday.

Need to do a couple more things before I go off to ply my needle.

Everybody stay safe; I’ll see you tomorrow.

Wednesday. Foggy and chill. I had to ask the heat pump in my office to provide heat to take the nip off.

Slept for almost 9 hours again. This seems to be an Emerging Theme — short sleep for however long it takes me to get so tired I’m staggering, then 9 hours of sleep, lather-rinse-repeat. I’m not a fan, but at this point I guess I’ll take what I can get.

The cat bowls have been refreshed, and the cats have each graciously taken a small mouthful, to indicate that they have noted and approve of this attention to their comfort.

Breakfast was a peach with a side of cottage cheese, and now I’m having a cookie for dessert, because what’s the point of making cookies if you don’t eat them? Lunch is a puzzler, but we’ll get there.

The big news in the world of writers and AI, which SFWA tried to get my attention for a couple days ago, but it took a friend writing to me to get me to look at my part of the thing again. . .

The Big News, I say, is that the Anthropic class action suit has moved to Another Level. The motion on the table includes up to a $3000 payment for each work scraped and used to “teach” the AI engines, and a guarantee to wipe their databases.

Though I fully expect this to be whittled down by lawyers to “arrogant non-apology and we’ll only use our databases for good as defined by our stockholders,” it does mean that I now have to become a specific member of the class — which means filing the titles of the scraped works that belong to me, via a webform, with the Attorneys on the side of Writers.

For fun, I went through the Atlantic Database of Stolen Properties (this is not its official name; just a little pet name I’ve given it) last night and! There are about 200 titles for Sharon Lee, and Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Some of them are not us — not many. Some are duplicates — surprisingly few — though perhaps a few more, since so much of our stuff has been reissued in multiple editions.

The lawyers’ webform. Have I mentioned that it is very Slow?

Yeah. I wrote to the firm, asking if perhaps, given the sheer number of titles involved, I might be allowed to submit One Long List with all titles, ISBNs, publication date(s), and whatnot. Otherwise, it’s going to take, conservatively, 50 years to enter, and even with two of us on-board and able, it would have been a lot.

In other news, I have a load of laundry drying. I need to get the clean dishes out of the dishwasher, and do my duty to the cats, but aside that, and ignoring the To-Do List, what I really want to do is write, so I’m thinking I’ll be doing — wow. Every fire engine, battlewagon, and ambulance in town has just gone charging past the house. That’s exciting. . .

And now? It’s quiet. . . .too quiet.

Well.

What are you ignoring on the to-do list today?

Today’s blog title brought to you by Mr. Roger Miller, “King of the Road.”

Cat Census:

Nobody right til somebody wrong

What went before: Wrote 980 new words this afternoon. Again, they may not be beautiful words, but you can’t fix the words you don’t write.

I am … not in a good frame of mind. I did subscribe to The Atlantic and ill-advisedly looked up our names in the database of stolen works.

Every. Word. either of us has ever written, in every translation has been ripped off. Even if they’re made to “pay,” there’s nothing that can balance this theft. I know I’m only one of a vast number of colleagues who have also had their work vacuumed up to feed the greed of rich men. The number of people who hooked school the day “Stealing is Wrong,” was taught passes belief.

And here I sit, trying to write a book. And I really wonder why.

#

Thursday, sunny and warm(ish).

Breakfast was hummus, naan, and an orange. Second cup of tea to hand. Lunch is again on its own.

I’ve been up for a while, though late getting to my updates. I had some correspondence that needed to be answered, and some cats that needed to be snuggled. Figured out how to get from end of this scene to the beginning of that scene. Gordy needs to make a choice, here, and while I know what the choice is, he has to actually do the work of reasoning his way to it.

Thus, the difference between authors and characters.

I haven’t seen anything to the contrary, so I’m expecting there’s ASL class this evening. I should do one more review, and I also want to get Gordy to his decision, so I’ll mostly be here at the desk today.

I want to thank everyone who spoke to the value they place on the universe Steve and I worked in for more than 40 years. Your regard means a lot.

However, as I said elsewhere — the core problem with our society is this notion that awarding someone a dollar amount rectifies a wrong. The only people punished by being made to pay an amount of money to “rectify” a wrong are those people who have no money to being with. Rich people laugh, pay the fine, laugh, and continue down their road, having learned nothing, and utterly without remorse.

In the case of the theft of my life’s work, I don’t want money. (I have never been motivated by money. If I had, I wouldn’t have become a writer, even in a world where my work wasn‘t simultaneously considered frivolous and valuable enough to steal.) I want Balance. I want Them, in the words once written by an author, to lose something that means as much to them as those stories mean to me. I want them to hurt, and to cry, and to bear the scars of their wrongdoing forever.

NPC, indeed.

deep breath

Bedtime reading lately has been Very Nice Funerals, by Crusie and Mayer, the second Rocky Start book. I think the third’s one out now. I should look into that.

I note that Tuesday, April 1, is Book Day for Diviner’s Bow, for those of you who preordered from Amazon, BN, &c. I’ll have to find my Book Releasing Clothes.

So! What’s everybody reading that’s fun?

Today’s blog title brought to you by Mr. Eric Clapton: “It’s in the way that you use it”

Cat census below: