LOVE IN DARK SETTINGS ¶ Suspenseful historical fantasy, friendship fiction, and gay fiction ¶ By Dusk Peterson

Love in Dark Settings

• 140 Years of Independence Day (excerpts from children's literature)

  2009 Jul 04

  Feel free to add your own quotations in the comments.
  
  o--o--o
  
  Theodore Roosevelt: DIARY (1869, as quoted in Small Voices: A Grownup's Treasury of Selections from the Diaries, Journals and Notebooks of Young Children, edited by Josef and Dorothy Berger)
  
  July 4. Hastings. Hastings town was in the celtesh time before Christ. We had such a nice walk on the cliffs for two miles and coming back we made a feeble attempt at cheering the Fourth of July.
  
  o--o--o
  
  Laura Ingalls Wilder: LITTLE TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE (1941, set in 1882)
  
  It was time to go to the races. The whole crowd was moving across the railroad tracks and out on the prairie. On a pole set up there, the American flag fluttered against the sky. The sun was shining warm and a cool breeze was blowing.
  
  Beside the flagpole a man rose up tall above the crowd. He was standing on something. The sound of talking died down, and he could be heard speaking.
  
  "Well, boys," he said, "I'm not much good at public speaking, but today's the glorious Fourth. This the day and date when our forefathers cut loose from the despots of Europe. There wasn't many Americans at that time, but they wouldn't stand for any monarch tyrannizing over them. . . . Yes sir! We licked the British in 1776 and we licked 'em again in 1812, and we backed all the monarchies of Europe out of Mexico and off this continent less than twenty years ago, and by glory! Yessir, by Old Glory right here, waving over my head, any time the despots of Europe try to step on America's toes, we'll lick 'em again!"
  
  "Hurray! Hurray!" everybody shouted.
  
  o--o--o
  
  Norma Johnston: THE SANCTUARY TREE (1977, set in 1901)
  
  Ben was behind the barn with Peter and Leslie, and a kind of scared stillness hung in the air. The smell of firecrackers was everywhere, and Leslie . . . Leslie's eyes were enormous, and there was blood dripping from his face and fingers.
  
  "I forgot how little the kid knows about these things," Ben said hoarsely. "I turned my back for a minute, and he tried to light a cherry bomb without me. It blew up on him." . . .
  
  Even through soot and blood, it looked like a couple of teeth and two fingertips were gone. I ripped the bottom off my petticoat and tied it on Leslie's arm as a tourniquet, and pressed another wad against his bleeding lip. . . .
  
  We were at the doctor's office quite a while, for Dr. Tuttle actually sewed the fingertips, hanging by a flap of skin, back on. It was a grisly and a painful process, but by the time he was bound up like the Spirit of '76, Leslie was looking rather proud of the whole affair.
  
  "Not much we can do about those front teeth, but the dentist will give you new ones, once the swelling's down." Dr. Tuttle grinned. "Guess you'll have to miss out tonight on fried chicken and corn on the cob, but I don't figure the ice cream'll give you too much trouble."
  
  o--o--o
  
  Sydney Taylor: ALL-OF-A-KIND FAMILY (1951, set at the turn of the century)
  
  From tenement house windows and from store fronts flew American flags of all sizes. The air was filled with the clang of cowbells and the blasts of horns. Youngsters in small groups yelled and hopped up and down as they waited with bated breath for their firecrackers to explode.
  
  o--o--o
  
  Sylvia McNeely: DIARY (1929, as quoted in Small Voices)
  
  Wednesday, July 3. Oh Boy, tomorrow, fire works day. I got a lot of fireworks today. Grampa always used to buy us fireworks on the fourth but he can't now because he is dead and that makes me feel lonesome still.
  
  o--o--o
  
  Carolyn Haywood: PENNY GOES TO CAMP (1948)
  
  "Don't you know what J 4 is?" exclaimed the older boy whose name was Charlie.
  
  "Well, Buns says it's an aquaplane and Butch says it's a big ship and another fellow said it's a comet," said Penny.
  
  "Oh, they're just kidding you," said Charlie. "You're both new here at camp, so they're kidding you. Just wait until J 4 comes. Boy! Oh, boy! Are you gonna be scared! J 4 is the scariest thing you ever saw. Only you can't see it. You just feel its presence."
  
  Penny's and Tommy's eyes were bulging as they looked into Charlie's face. Charlie leaned toward them and said in a low voice, "J 4 comes every year just about this time. It comes in the middle of the night. It comes up through the woods from the lake."
  
  Penny could feel a cold shiver going down his back.
  
  "Sometimes it creeps along the ground," said Charlie, "and sometimes it's up in the treetops."
  
  "Is it an animal?" said Tommy, and his teeth almost chattered.
  
  "Nobody knows exactly what it is," said Charlie.
  
  "How will I know when it gets here?"
  
  "Oh, you'll know, all right," said Charlie. "You'll be so scared."
  
  o--o--o
  
  Hazel Wilson: HERBERT AGAIN (1951)
  
  " . . . This town has not celebrated the Fourth for years in a way that appeals to boys. In making a safe and sane Fourth of July, you have merely made it safe and dull.
  
  "Now, personally, I think it is a mistake to take all the noise out of a Fourth of July celebration. Maybe it should be the one day in the year when boys can make all the noise they want to make. A certain amount of noise wouldn't be bad for adults once a year either. Let a swell of joyous sound rise in the air to remind us that on this day we are honoring the birth of this great nation. Let cannon be fired off, and let there be bands marching and flags flying. I would not," said Uncle Horace, "go back to the unrestricted sale of fireworks and fire crackers, yet under supervision there should be noise to salute the glorious Fourth and rockets and flares to zip and zoom across the evening sky. . . ."
  
  o--o--o
  
  Keith Robertson: HENRY REED, INC. (1958)
  
  Uncle Al says that outlawing fireworks was a good thing because every year a number of people, usually children, got badly burned. Some were maimed for life and some were killed.
  
  "Of course, now that we've made the glorious Fourth safe by banning fireworks," he said, "people take to the highways in droves and kill each other with their automobiles. I suppose I should take you down to the shore today but frankly I'm afraid to. . . ."
  
  o--o--o
  
  Madeleine L'Engle: THE MOON BY NIGHT
  
  [Not an Independence Day passage, but it's set in summertime, and it seems an appropriate way to end this post.]
  
  That first night in Banff the first movie was called The Two Kingstons, and it was about Kingston in Ontario and Kingston in New York, and man who played the typical (so they said) American looked like Porky Pig and was always telling the Canadian off and trying to boss him around and showing off. All of a sudden, sitting there on the bleachers, surrounded by Canadians, we felt disliked, the way we'd heard Americans are abroad, and we felt very funny about it, funny peculiar, not funny haha.
  
  "What did they mean by it?" John said indignantly as we walked back to the tent. "Why would they show a picture like that?"
  
  Daddy said calmly, "After all, there's a certain amount of truth to it, even if it isn't very tactful, and even if it's only a half truth."
  
  Rob and Suzy ran and played as usual on the way back to the tent, but I felt as though someone had scrawled in large letters on a wall, "AMERICANS GO HOME!" . . .
  
  [A Canadian family nearby in the campground] had three kids, the youngest a boy about Rob's age, and two girls, the oldest about Suzy's age. The five of them got together (the kids weren't worried because Rob and Suzy were American) and asked if they could go down to the playground while breakfast was cooking. Mother and Daddy said okay as long as I went along to keep an eye on them. The Canadian parents (their name was York) didn't seem too keen on the idea, but finally they said the kids could go if they were back in fifteen minutes sharp.
  
  We ran down to the playgrounds, so they'd have as much time as possible, and I sat on one of the bleachers and watched while they see-sawed and swang and ran around and had a marvelous time and didn't seem to be thinking about being Canadians and Americans at all. I really don't think kids think about things like that. It's all dumb grown-ups. Why is it that some grown-ups just seem to go on getting dumber and dumber year by year instead of learning anything?

• Daily life: Life under construction

  2009 Jun 30

  "I am more and more certain that I still have not left the world but keep lingering on the edges. I am plainly and simply scared of 'no return,' and fear that the road of total commitment . . . is arduous, painful, and very lonely. . . .
  
  "It is this type of extremism, of absolutism, of total surrender, of unconditional 'yes,' of unwavering obedience . . . that frightens me and makes me such a wishy-washy soul, wanting to keep a foot in both worlds. But that is how one stumbles."
  
  --Henri J. M. Nouwen: The Genesee Diary.
  
  For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
  
  
  *** 23 June 2009. Simplicity: Taking a second look at my life.
  
  On Sunday I spent twelve hours online, only two of which were devoted to business.
  
  On Sunday evening, I told myself that I clearly needed to spend the next day on simplicity tasks, in order to refresh my mind. I also told myself that I didn't have the time, because I wanted to get my paperback layout done before my father left for Europe this week. I went to bed uncertain of what to do.
  
  On Monday, I spent five-and-a-half hours reading and writing about gardening.
  
  On Tuesday, I spent eight hours reading, writing, and acquiring library books about gardening.
  
  On Tuesday evening, I finally admitted to myself that I'd gone straight from an Internet browsing addiction to an offline browsing addiction. I made firm plans to devote the next day to simplicity tasks. As preparation, I picked up The Genesee Diary, where I found the words I quoted above.
  
  Almost a year ago, I swore to myself that I would dedicate the next twelve months to changing my life. At the beginning of this year, I renewed that vow.
  
  But how much progress have I really made? I've achieved little improvements in various areas, but have I fundamentally changed the core of how I approach life?
  
  The core of how I approach life is without simplicity. I know the difference between the simple life and the complicated life because my heartbeat picks up when my life is complicated. I flit from activity to activity and lack the ability to concentrate on anything except with the help of my hypomania. I ignore clear indications that problems have arisen in my life. I'm callous to the needs of other people. I let important tasks pass by in favor of more enjoyable tasks. I act as though I'm on speed.
  
  When my life is simple, things slow down. I'm more aware of my environment, my friends and family and online acquaintances, and the activities I undertake. Enjoyment comes as a byproduct of mindfulness on any given task rather than from a perception that certain tasks are better or worse. I do fewer tasks, and I do those tasks slower, but I do those tasks better.
  
  At the moment, the only way in which I can achieve this state is by deliberately choosing to do only a select number of tasks that I know are unlikely to trigger hypermania in me. I severely limit reading, because that has a strong tendency to trigger my hypermania. Ditto with writing, and video-watching is off the agenda altogether. The only other things I allow myself to do are tasks that I normally avoid: housework, upkeep, phone calls, and exercise.
  
  This works. It slows me down. This is my version of "leaving the world."
  
  But I have to return eventually. And when I do, I find myself, like Father Nouwen, torn between two worlds.
  
  Thinking about it tonight, I decided that, if spending one day a week on simplicity tasks isn't proving sufficient to keep me from falling back into old patterns, then I need to increase the amount of time I devote to simplicity to every other day. Because heaven knows that I have plenty of upkeep and housework to do; it's not as though, in a purely practical sense, I'd be wasting time if I devoted more time to that type of work. And the results might increase my efficiency at professional work on other days.
  
  Which is avoiding the main point, of course. I need to do this regardless as to whether it's beneficial from a practical point of view. But I can't avoid thinking about the practical impact, because writing is my vocation.
  
  What is it they say to new writers? "Kill your darlings"? The idea is that, in order to achieve the best writing, you must delete the passages you most love. What Father Nouwen was struggling with was the same problem: of how to achieve the best by giving up beloved attachments.
  
  *** 24 June 2009. Simplicity, Gardening, and Home: Spiders, housework, and me.
  
  "O ye green one," Doug said dryly when I proposed that, after our current mower dies, we buy a push mower.
  
  I spent another day gardening-focussed, but it was a more relaxed day. I cleared out more English ivy and went looking for wildlife on our property. (I found birds I could hear in the trees but not see, an earthworm, ants, some relative of the dragonfly, a lightning bug, some little striped flying creatures that looked as though they might be some sort of bee, various tiny flying insects I couldn't identify - such as an insect that glowed copper - lots of spiders, a daddy longlegs, and mosquitoes. I didn't see the last, but I got bitten six times.)
  
  I also exchanged friendly words with one of our neighbors for the first time since . . . I don't know when we last exchanged words. Probably in my childhood. My mother had a running feud with these particular neighbors, and I'm reasonably sure that they're the ones who called the cops city inspectors in to tell Doug and me that we couldn't pile brushwood in our garden.
  
  On the other hand, the neighbors have bird feeders in their back yard, and they said not a word when we let our back yard (which adjoins theirs, though with shrubs in between) turn into a meadow last summer. So I'm mildly hopeful that they won't declare war on us as I make changes to the yard. At any rate, it was a pleasant surprise to have one of the neighbors greet me. "Looking for rabbits?" he asked, having found me staring (I suppose rather blankly) at the thicket of trees and shrubs that constitutes the entrance to the western side of our back yard.
  
  "No, I'm looking at our garden," I replied with a smile.
  
  Doug sniggered when I reported this conversation. "Okay, so I was looking at what used to be our garden," I added to him. (The garden - an upraised bed of earth next to our back patio - has been taken over by trees and shrubs that planted themselves during our period of idleness. One lone rose struggles on valiantly.)
  
  Today I also sorted some of my books, putting aside the ones I haven't read in twenty years and probably never will. I browsed through Mother's photographs. I began to tackle my overly voluminous inbox. And I tried, as much as possible, to stay calm and laid back.
  
  Though I didn't quite reach the heights of simplicity today, I've decided that spending every other day on simplicity/exercise/housework/upkeep is an excellent plan. It puts less pressure on me during my editing/layout days - I don't have to try to cram in housework/upkeep on top of everything else - and it automatically winds me down after a day of activities that are likely to get me hyped.
  
  *** 28 June 2009. Gardening: An unexpected visitor.
  
  I spent the pre-dawn minutes of Saturday morning replying to gardening comments on my blog, chatting away about the wildlife I want my garden to attract, and explaining to one person that I virtually live in a nature reserve, because there are so many nature reserves around here.
  
  Finally, at dawn, I shut down my computer. I went downstairs, turned to open the refrigerator--
  
  --and saw a deer walk past my patio door.
  
  Okay, so that's a bit bigger than the type of animal I'd anticipated attracting to my yard.
  
  We do have lots of deer in my hometown. We have a national park in the south part of the city and city-owned woodland to the northeast; deer are to be found in both places.
  
  But there's a four-lane highway between our house and the national park, and we're quite a few blocks away from the city woodland where the deer dwell. I don't ever recall seeing a deer visit our yard. (My mother would remember. I keep wishing she were still around to ask these questions.)
  
  This deer didn't stay long; it headed, in a leisurely manner, into the neighbor's yard while I was racing upstairs to wake Doug and tell him. A half hour later, as I was sitting in my study, I saw the deer saunter through our front yard and cross the street.
  
  Of course, I know that it was visiting our neighborhood for all the wrong reasons. We've had deer overpopulation in this area because of the lack of predators. And I sure hope that the deer got back home okay. (This being dawn on a Saturday morning, I couldn't think of any authorities that I could contact in time to let them know of the deer's presence.)
  
  Still, it's nice that we have enough trees on our property that the deer didn't look as though it was entirely out of place.
  
  *** 28 June 2009. Writing: Miscounting The Eternal Dungeon.
  
  Finally got the paperback template done.
  
  I think. I'm still waiting for the inevitable moment when I discover another problem. But I did begin laying out the text of Rebirth today. I think I'm going to have to run the results past my father; there are things about the layout I'm uncertain about. (I hope he took his laptop with him to Europe. With my luck, he'll have only taken his iPod Touch.)
  
  However, I had a moment of wincing when I looked again at the word count of the third volume of The Eternal Dungeon - the volume I was sure was complete - and discovered that I'm two novellas short of a novel's length.
  
  I know how that accident happened. I'd originally planned to include two additional novellas in the volume, but they ended up getting so long that they turned into the fourth volume in the series. Well, it's just as well that I need to write additional material; the third volume, as it stands, has an incomplete feel to it, due to me having torn out those two final stories. And gosh, it just pains me to know that I'll have to write more Eternal Dungeon stories. :)
  
  More worrisome is the fact that my latest Kindle novel hasn't been discounted by Amazon. I hope that's just a temporary setback, or it will screw up my plans to publish various novels in Kindle format.
  
  *** 29 June 2009. Writing: Progress with publishing and with my Internet addiction.
  
  A good day. I worked out a revised publishing plan today that will cut down on the amount of work I have to do in getting my writings published, but will also, I hope, bring in greater profits. I'll give more details when I've put the new plans into place. For now, I really feel as though a weight has lifted from my shoulders.
  
  I also had some remarkable progress in fighting my Internet addiction. I went online to check on something that couldn't wait till later this week, and I only spent an hour and forty minutes online. Marvellous. I hope that this new regime turns out to work; if it does, I'll pass on my secret.

• Retro daily life: Blue Diary (age 12) - Part Two

  2009 Jun 30

  What was happening during this time: Just a few items of everyday life.
  
  Background to my retro daily life entries
  
  
  * * * 30 July 1975: Trespassing.
  
  [The reference in this entry was to our tenant, who lived downstairs. Why was I using the downstairs bathroom? Because that was the only way I could get away with reading after I was supposed to be in bed, with the lights out. I had chronic insomnia all through my childhood, and some idiot doctor told my mother not to let me read in bed. My mother invariably detected when I was reading in bed or in the upstairs bathroom; hence my foray downstairs.]
  
  I feel awful!
  
  I was in the downstairs bathroom reading Anne Frank at about one o'clock [a.m.] today. I was just coming out when suddenly Malcolm came in! I stood behind the door, trying to think of what to do. So I said, "Hi!"
  
  Malcolm jumped out of his skin. He mumbled "Excuse me," and started to go out. I said, "Excuse me," and walked into the study, where I am now.
  
  * * * 3 September 1975: Kid power.
  
  Daddy got me a book called Small Voices. It is (as it says on the cover) "A Grown-up's Treasury of Selections from the Diaries, Journals and Notebooks of Young Children." "Young Children," indeed! Some of them were 11 or 12, and I'm not a "Young Child"!
  
  * * * 9 September 1975: Questions about death.
  
  I had a thought last night. Does you brain stop working when you die? In most cases the brain isn't affected when the person dies. If the person was to come alive again would his brain still be working? When a person dies, even if he can't move anything, can he still think (and see, if his eyes happen to be open)? I must think about this.
  
  * * * 9 September 1975: Neighborhood kids.
  
  I was at the Jamesons' today, playing Bingo with Steven, Lee, and Kevin when Kevin and I had to come home. As we walked home Kevin made excuses so I wouldn't come in. First it was "The pinball machine is broken," then, "We're having company." "You betcha [you] are," I replied.
  
  When we got to his house, Kevin said, "I've got something that'll get you away!" and he breathed on me and dashed inside. I rapped on the window, saying, "Alms for the poor! Alms for the poor!" Kevin opened the door, saying, "Be quiet! You're scaring the bird!" Oh, well. Tomorrow's another day.
  
  * * * 12 September 1975: Book dedications and our car.
  
  I've been thinking about dedications. Of books, I mean. Daddy says they go back a long time. He says some of Shakespeare's plays were dedicated. That was about 250 years ago. [A little bit more than that, actually . . .] There wasn't any dedication in Bambi and Bambi's Children ([I own the] first editions we think), nor in my Laura Ingalls Wilder series, but there was in The Story of Doctor Dolittle, though.
  
  Dedications are sometimes dedicated to a large group in general, such as all the children in the world. I remember reading one book where it was dedicated to the character in the story. But most books are dedicated to friends or relatives or people who made this book possible. I'm different. I think the people in the dedication should have to do with the book itself. For instance, The Secret Garden is dedicated to Alise and Michael Moretti, the main characters of the story, and Alison, the cousin in the story. The story I've promised Tina is dedicated to Cortina, my favorite car.
  
  [Our family owned a Ford Cortina, which we had bought in England in 1969. I wept when my family finally exchanged it for a more up-to-date car. Nor was I alone in such sentiments. When the Cortina was taken out of production in Britain during my late teens, a British television show was dedicated to it; in one scene, viewers saw a man weeping at a pub counter, choking out the words: "I just can't believe she's gone." ]

• Boilerplate warnings

  2009 Jun 27

  "If you really don't want to post actual warnings, a generic 'I don't warn' statement is better than nothing. Though, please always warn for mpreg and watersports. That way I can find stories I want to read. I mean avoid. Umm, yeah."
  
  --Not giving credit on this one, for obvious reasons.
  
  Below, a slightly edited version of my response to Jane Carnall's post about the warnings issue. Only likely to be of interest to folks in the fan fiction community.
  
  o--o--o
  
  I think that the use of warnings depends on context. When I open a book at a bookstore (the example that K. S. Langley uses), I don't expect warnings because bookstore literature is usually pre-censored. In the few cases where it isn't, the publisher generally plasters warnings all over the book, either through blurbs (I agree with K. S. Langley that this is the best way to warn readers) or by a notice that the book is adults-only (which is publisher-ese for saying, "Triggery stuff ahead!"). So I'm afraid that the "bookstore versus fandom" analogy doesn't work for me, because fandom is inclined to post stories with very touchy content that is unpublishable.
  
  I'd really like to know how the warnings tradition developed in the fan fiction community. When I did a survey of readers many years ago, I found that 50% of them read warnings to find out if the story has something they'd like to read. And that is exactly how the erotica community uses story codes. I think this issue would be regarded a lot less negatively if fandom hadn't chosen to use the word "warnings" to describe its form of story codes.
  
  I decided early on that (1) I wouldn't spoiler readers, and (2) there are ways to give warnings to readers who need them that don't involve spoilering. For the most part, I use this warning. It covers the triggery scenarios in most of my stories without giving away whether any of those activities will actually occur (because in far too many of my stories, the lack of a character-death warning would be a sure-fire indicator that the death-endangered character would live). I think that a boilerplate warning like this (which I link to whenever I post a fic at community blogs) is all that most readers need.
  
  By the way, you'll notice that I warn for love and respect. I really do think that positively wording one's description of the type of stories one writes is the best way to approach such matters.
  
  So I end up taking the middle road on this. If an author doesn't want to give warnings, I'll defend to death their right to not do so. But it seems to me that the amount of energy that some writers spend in saying, "It's against my rights as an author to create warnings!" could be better put to use in creating a one-paragraph, spoiler-free, boilerplate warning . . . or simply saying, "No warnings given," which will alert the reader to the fact that the author doesn't give warnings.
  
  o--o--o
  
  What I didn't mention in my reply is that I do have triggers. My online triggers are all visual. So when I visit a blog where somebody hasn't LJ-cut their art, guess what? I'm often triggered. That can have nasty consequences.
  
  As an Internet addict, I also have the "hey, would you like another drink?" trigger. It goes like this:
  
  Friend: "Hey, did you know that metafandom is having a really interesting discussion of warning labels?"
  
  Me: (*Zips to the computer and spends the next twelve hours online*.)
  
  So I do understand the perspective of folks who say that it's not quite as simple a matter as "Just put the story down if you find you don't like it." By the time you put it down, it might be too late. And friends and recs aren't always the most reliable way to discover what type of story you're going to be reading.
  
  The most reliable way, I've found, is to know beforehand what types of stories the author usually writes. That's why I recommend a boilerplate warning that says something along the lines of, "I just love to write fluffy stories about people who have no problems!" (*image of Dusk hitting the back button*). Or, alternatively, "I kill off characters with frightening frequency!" (*image of Dusk checking carefully to see whether the deaths are gratuitous*). I sure as heck wish a lot of mainstream authors would give such warnings.

• Daily life: Countdown to publishing my first paperback

  2009 Jun 21

  "Books are normally built up from gatherings or signatures - printed and folded sheets - with each signature forming a unit of 8, 12, 16, 24, or 32 pages. The 16-page signature is by far the most common. Typographers therefore work to make most of their books seem divinely ordained and conceived to be some multiple of 16 pages in length. Seasoned book typographers recite in their meditations not only the mantra of points and picas - 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72 . . . - but also the mantra of octavo signatures: 16, 32, 48, 64, 80, 96, 128, 144, 160, 176, 192, 208, 224, 240, 256, 272, 288, 304, 320, 336, 352, 368, 384, 400. . . .
  
  "In a work of continous prose, the illusion of divine love for the number sixteen is obtained by straightforward copyediting."
  
  --Robert Bringhurst: The Elements of Typographic Style.
  
  For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
  
  
  *** 10 June 2009. Writing: ISBNs.
  
  Well, I bought my ISBNs. I suppose that it would have been harder to sell my first-born? I don't have much experience to compare this to, because I've never spent $275 in one fell swoop before, other than as part of my rent. I mean, I've had other people pay that much on objects for me. (That's why I co-own a house.) But back in the period of my life when I was actually able to pay all my bills on my own (that would be July 1990 to February 1992, the period when I worked for the Johns Hopkins University Press for a salary of $18,000 - I felt rich), I never spent that much money on any single object.
  
  On the other hand, don't ask me how much I've spent cumulatively on books over the years; I don't want to feel ill. So I suppose it's appropriate that my first big purchase would be code numbers for books.
  
  Still feels like a lot of money to spend for a bunch of digits.
  
  *** 11 June 2009. Writing: Death and leading.
  
  Some people worry about taxes. I worry about leading.
  
  I'm using Hoefler Text for my typeface. It's a beautiful type with lots of neat features. As the designers' Website puts it, "When Jonathan Hoefler founded the company in 1989, digital typography was in its infancy. . . . Hoefler Text, designed in 1991, was an opening salvo in the fight for fine typography. Following on the heels of the Adobe Originals program, which had just begun to introduce designers to such far-out concepts as 'old-style figures' and 'small caps,' Hoefler Text resuscitated a number of other traditions that had once been central to fine printing: extended ligature sets, the engraved capitals of the early twentieth century, and the arabesques of the renaissance."
  
  I just know that you font fetishists are getting warm at the groin now. I deliberately chose a dark typeface because (1) I wanted the PDF edition to be easily readable onscreen and (2) I think a dark typeface looks classy in print.
  
  But Hoefler Text's darkness made me nervous about whether the amount of leading that my father had placed between the lines in his experimental layout - two points - was enough. (The general rules is, the darker the typeface, the more leading you need.) So I spent the day being jittery about that, to the point where I went online to try to find examples of Hoefler Text as set in books.
  
  Mistake. Six hours later, I managed to tear myself away, now jittery with Internet addiction.
  
  However, I've decided to be brave and go with two-point leading.
  
  Which reminds me . . .
  
  *** 11 June 2009. Reading and viewing: Oo, shiny! Font Conference video.
  
  Font Conference. I sent this to my father several months ago. He mercifully refrained from telling me what he thought of my low taste in comedy.
  
  *** 15 June 2009. Home: Life outside the Internet: gardening.
  
  I finally admitted to myself yesterday that my Internet usage has been completely out of the control for the past three weeks. So I devoted today to simplicity activities; I feel much better now. I think I'd gotten myself into the bad habit of regarding the offline world as my workplace and the online world as my play space. So I reminded myself today of how many fun things I can do offline.
  
  The evening was spent at my father's, but earlier in the day I spent three-quarters of an hour fighting with the English ivy. (Me, discussing alternative solutions to tackling an ant problem my father and stepmother were having: "There are green solutions to that, aren't there?" My father (smiling): "No, you attack them with a bazooka. This is war. None of that namby-pamby green stuff.") Anyway, it turns out that my warfare against the English ivy was a good idea, because it's been twining itself around the cable leading down from our house's lightning rod. That can't be good. So I began untwining the ivy - with the aid of clippers - and am going to clear a spot on the ground around the cable, to prevent this from happening again.
  
  The nice thing about English ivy is that it's easily cleared. You tug up a root, and the stem turns out to be attached to six feet's worth of vine, which you can pull up within seconds. I've got nearly all of the western side of the house (one of the side yards) cleared of the ivy now - not that there was much there to begin with, but it gave me a sense of accomplishment.
  
  "Did your mother plant the ivy?" my father asked. (My mother was the gardener in the family.)
  
  "No, I think it was there when you and she bought the house," I replied.
  
  "Oh, yes, I remember now," my father said. "It was a tiny patch."
  
  Thirty-five years later, the ivy has taken over one-third of our spacious front yard. Doug hinted at one point that he wouldn't mind if it took over the entire yard; he hates mowing the remaining grass but is afraid of not doing so, as long as any grass remains there. I think he envisions riots from our neighbors if the grass grows over two inches. Since one of our neighbors has turned his entire front yard into a vegetable garden, I have a bit more faith than Doug does in our neighbors' tolerance of natural gardening. But still, there's no point in taking chances. Daddy recounted tonight the occasion, many years ago, when some teenage kids raced their motorbikes over a neighbor's meticulously manicured lawn. The neighbor appeared at the front door with a rifle in hand.
  
  (I hasten to say to any foreign readers that the reason my father still remembers this anecdote thirty years later is that this sort of thing doesn't normally happen in my part of the U.S.)
  
  (Rather, it happens in my apprentice's part of the U.S.)
  
  Since I don't like the way that the English ivy has been throttling the remaining plantlife in the front yard, I've decided that the best thing to do would be to clear the ivy out of the area closest to the house and the big trees, but leave a border of ivy further out, running parallel to the sidewalk - and encourage Doug to allow the ivy to grow into the lawn area. At the same time, I'll keep the area around the trees mulched, and hopefully some interesting plants will grow there. Thus we will reclaim our yard from the evil suburban lawn.
  
  Meanwhile, Doug and I are fighting about the forsythia that serves as the border for most of our property. "You can't let it grow wild!" he cried.
  
  "Why not?" I asked. "It's a wild thing."
  
  Well, I've volunteered to clip the forsythia this year. (The part of it that faces the sidewalk really does need to be clipped yearly, to keep the right-of-way clear.) If Doug decides I haven't clipped the forsythia enough, he can go in and do the job himself.
  
  We do seem to be in agreement, however, about turning part of the front lawn - the part closest to the forsythia and therefore not easily seen from the sidewalk - into a wildflower meadow. This is in fact where wildflowers naturally grow, because it's the sunniest part of the yard. Last year, the blooming was so beautiful that I was able to persuade Doug not to mow it, after shown him some gardening photos where part of the grounds was kept as a meadow while the rest was mowed. So he tried the experiment of leaving that part of the lawn unmowed, and nary a neighbor complained. (Well, they'd better not. Our town's public works department does exactly the same thing with part of the main grassy area in the middle of town.)
  
  This year, I'd like to create a border around that area - such as a fence or a low wall - so that it will be obvious that we're letting the grass grow for gardening reasons, and not because we're lazy. (Or, as Kirk would put it, "Not just that.")
  
  *** 19 June 2009. Home and Writing: Gardening, layout, and publishing plans.
  
  Yesterday, Doug told me that a thunderstorm was on the way, so I rushed outside to do a bit of gardening before the storm arrived. At a certain point, as thunder was rumbling ominously behind me, it occurred to me, Maybe this isn't the best time to be clearing out the ivy from behind the lightning rod.
  
  At any rate, I've now pulled all the ivy off the house's walls and cleared out the ivy from the west side yard. Now I'm going to take a break in order to deal with the forsythia, provided that Doug and I can come to any agreement about the pruning. (I don't suppose he'll go for the argument that the neighbors will be really envious when they see what tall hedges we have.)
  
  Meanwhile, I'm continuing to struggle with InDesign. I've never met such a needlessly complicated bit of software in my life. I'll spend thirty minutes struggling to get it to do things in the "easy" manner that it promises, will finally give up and do things the hard way, and then will go on to the next step, only to find that the next "easy" job is impossible to do. I'm making about a millimeter of progress each day.
  
  It really shouldn't be this hard to lay out a novel that has a straightforward design.
  
  Editing and electronic layout are going a lot faster than that, thank goodness. I've finished all but the last bits of editing on Transformation and am making progress on various Website changes and Kindle e-books. By the end of July - barring unforeseen circumstances, such as me murdering InDesign - I should have the first three Eternal Volumes laid out for online/Kindle publication and the first volume laid out for paperback/PDF publication. That will leave me the rest of the summer for marketing, heavy editing, and research.
  
  I'd set myself the goal earlier this year to get all of my completed stories online by the end of my 2010 publishing season. WIth the possible exception of the first novel I ever wrote - which will need very heavy editing before I let it see the light of day - I think I'll meet that goal. Next year will be my Three Lands publication year: I'm one-and-a-half scenes away from having three more volumes from that series ready to post (other than them needing to be betaed and edited). I'm also hoping that, if I do enough research this summer for my Prison City series, my Muse will get the hint and hand me the first two volumes of that series next winter. If he also decides to finish the fourth volume of The Eternal Dungeon or the first volume of Loren's Lashes (I'm halfway through completing both those novels), I won't be at all displeased.
  
  As for paperback publishing, we'll have to see how Rebirth sells before I make any further plans. At least I know that this is the hardest work I'll ever do on paperback publishing. Once I have the template and routine in place, subsequent paperbacks should be a lot easier.
  
  *** 20 June 2009. Writing: Prison City research day.
  
  Arnold Lunn's The Harrovians arrived at the interlibrary loan office of Montgomery County public library system this week, two months after I'd put in a request for it. I'd say, "This is unworkable," but actually, it's the most workable of my solutions for getting access to interlibrary loans, for a simple reason: Doug picks up the books. That's vitally important, since six months out of the year I can't take the bus over to the University of Maryland to pick up books from its much swifter interlibrary loan office. (Even assuming I could spare $150 to pay for access to that system, which I can't.)
  
  Doug dropped me off at the university library today on his way to pick up my loan (his own interlibrary loan had arrived at the same time), so I spent a while drooling over the juvenile fiction collection there. The University of Maryland has an excellent collection of mid-twentieth-century children's books; I'm going to pore through it this summer, and if the books I find there aren't available through the State of Maryland's interlibrary loan system (which only covers this state), I'll put in more requests through Montgomery County's interlibrary loan system (which covers every library that's hooked in with WorldCat).
  
  If this all sounds complicated, it's because it is. I dream of a world where I could pay a fee to download an electronic copy of any book I wanted.
  
  At any rate, I'm glad I was able to get my hands on Arnold Lunn's school story, because it's obvious that Alec Waugh (whose The Loom of Youth is my main resource in creating the boarding school in my Prison City series) is heavily indebted to Lunn. Lunn's papers, you may recall, are held by Georgetown University in D.C., including his school diary, which The Harrovians is supposedly based upon. It looks as though it might be worth my while to visit Georgetown, perhaps in August.
  
  While I was at Maryland, I perused through other research material: 1960s books on journalism, a couple of retrofuture books, and issues of Seventeen from 1962.
  
  "It must have been horrible to be a girl back then," I said to my apprentice afterwards. "All that Seventeen talked about was fashion and dating."
  
  "I hate to break it to you, Sir," my apprentice replied, "but that's all that Seventeen talks about today."
  
  Oy, vey. Well, at least we have GQ now, so that the guys can have equal opportunity to be shallow.
  
  My library research isn't done yet; I have to browse through more 1960s periodicals and more 1960s journalism books and more memoirs of 1960s life among folksingers and Greenwich Village residents, and I haven't even started yet on the boarding-school historical studies. Fortunately, Seventeen has turned out to be an excellent source of mid-sixties slang, so I'm no longer worried about locating texts with that slang (which had previously looked as though it would be a major problem, because I need to get the language right). But the two retrofuture books that I looked at today were so unhelpful compared to the retrofuture Websites I've found online that I suspect that my main sources for retrofuture information (aside from the oodles of media I've already looked at) will be the 1960s "life in the future" newsreels from British Pathe - available free online, hurrah.
  
  And the Jetsons. Seriously, even though it's meant to be comedy, it's turning out to be one of the best retrofuture sources I have.
  
  *** 20 June 2009. Reading and viewing: A WTF moment: "Career Building Through Fan Fiction Writing"?
  
  Career Building Through Fan Fiction Writing, by Miriam Segall.
  
  According to one blogger, "The book doesn't suggest that anyone try to make money from writing fan fiction, but instead use fanfic as a way to practice your writing and get your name out there," but still - what an overly provocative title. What's really worrisome is that I can't find any references within fandom to this book. Did I miss the stir about this?

• I've got six invite codes to Dreamwidth

  2009 Jun 21

  Anyone need one? If so, let me know where to e-mail yours, or just drop me a line.

• Stuart Carroll (Minotaur), 1964-2009

  2009 Jun 21

  Some of you will have heard this already - I only just received this news - but Minotaur, a member of the slash community and of Gaylaxicon, died on June 14.
  
  The entry on him at Fanlore, with related links. See especially the testimonials section.
  
  The details of his death, as posted by his roommate, and news about memorials in his name.
  
  I owe a lot to Minotaur; at the time I entered the slash community, in 2002, his Slash Page Database Project was one of the few Web directories collecting links to original slash and original yaoi (as well as many other types of slash and yaoi). The database helped me to find other original fiction sites and to get the word out about my own.
  
  I also crossed paths briefly with Minotaur through his appearances at Connexions and Con.txt. I was very sad to hear of his death.

• Daily life: "The lovely wild place"

  2009 Jun 15

  "'I wouldn't want to make it look like a gardener's garden, all clipped an' spick an' span, would you?' he said. 'It's nicer like this with things runnin' wild, an' swingin' an' catchin' hold of each other."
  
  "'Don't let us make it tidy,' said Mary anxiously. 'It wouldn't seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.'"
  
  --Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden.
  
  That's what I want too: a "lovely wild place" that "would be a wilderness of growing things." But I'm darned if I can find any writings on this topic.
  
  What I want are some writings - online or in book form - about taking care of one's home landscape, with minimal interference.
  
  I've tried looking under every keyword I can thinking of - natural gardening, sustainable gardening, organic gardening, conservation, forestry management, native landscapes, habitat garden - and I can't find anything that talks about conserving what you already have. They all seem to assume that the homeowner will want to plant things.
  
  I don't want to plant. I want to take care of my garden in such a way that seeds or nuts that plant themselves will grow. And I want to leave plants alone, as much as possible, to see what they do.
  
  My mother, when she sold us this house, told me how to prune the rose in our back yard. I didn't prune it. As a result, we now have an eight-foot-high rose. It's awfully interesting to see it swaying in the wind.
  
  I'm getting rid of the English ivy because it's taking over our lawn and choking the other plants. I'd like to do anything else that needs to be done to encourage young plants to grow.
  
  o--o--o
  
  They were working industriously round one of the biggest standard roses when he caught sight of something which made him utter an exclamation of surprise.
  
  "Why!" he cried, pointing to the grass a few feet away. "Who did that there?"
  
  It was one of Mary's own little clearings round the pale green points.
  
  "I did it," said Mary.
  
  "Why, I thought tha' didn't know nothin' about gardenin'," he exclaimed.
  
  "I don't," she answered, "but they were so little, and the grass was so thick and strong, and they looked as if they had no room to breathe. So I made a place for them."
  
  o--o--o
  
  That's my vision of gardening. The closest I've been able to find what I'm looking for is information on the Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, but again, he's talking about planting, not letting seeds plant themselves.
  
  Have you guys stumbled across anything similar to what I'm talking about? Do you have any suggestions for keywords I could try?

• REVIEW: Recommendation of Josh Lanyon's "Man, Oh Man! Writing M/M Fiction for Kinks and Cash"

  2009 Jun 14

  Josh Lanyon: Man, Oh Man! Writing M/M Fiction for Kinks and Cash. (Author's Website.) A popular writer offers advice on authoring M/M fiction, as well as quoting professionals working in that field. ¶ Male homoerotic nonfiction, authorship manuals. ¶ Nonfiction books and nonfiction e-books. ¶ On-screen sex. On-screen violence (occasional). ¶ Review.

• POD self-publishing options: Lulu vs. CreateSpace vs. Lightning Source

  2009 Jun 12

  As an antidote to a really discouraging day struggling with InDesign, I've decided to put together a guide to the most popular print-on-demand services used by self-publishers. At least two of you folks here might be interested by this information. :)
  
  (Those of you who are knowledgeable, please correct any mistakes I've made.)
  
  Currently, the Big Three are Lulu, CreateSpace, and Lightning Source. All three services take care of printing and distributing books for self-publishers, for fees that range from moderate to zero. All three are recommended frequently enough to suggest that they're reasonably satisfactory services. I've only used Lulu myself, but I've hung out at forums where CreateSpace and Lightning Source self-publishers post.
  
  LULU
  
  Lulu's overview and Lulu's FAQ.
  
  Types of services: Lulu is divided into three services: Basic Distribution (in which the books are distributed only at Lulu's Website; this service is free), Published By Lulu (in which the books are distributed at Amazon.com, with Lulu as the publisher on record), and Published By You (in which the books are distributed in a variety of places, with the self-publisher as the publisher on record). In most cases (though not all), CreateSpace offers better profits than Published By Lulu and Published By You. However, CreateSpace only distributes to Amazon.com, so Published By You is an option for self-publishers who want to be distributed widely but don't want to deal with Lightning Source.
  
  The remainder of this entry is about Lulu Basic, the free Lulu plan that provides the most profits to the self-publisher.
  
  Extent of distribution: Lulu e-store only. In other words, people are unlikely to stumble across your books while looking for something else; you will have to do more extensive marketing to readers than if you chose other services. (Lulu seems to be changing this at the moment by allowing its Basic books to be sold through Amazon Marketplace, but that information isn't yet available in their Help menu.)
  
  Friendly to international customers? Yes and no. Lulu has several printers around the world, but anyone living outside those countries may need to pay hefty shipping fees.
  
  Customer support: Primarily through Lulu's very active forums, though one-on-one support is available too.
  
  Minimum level of technical expertise needed: Beginner. Lulu offers the option of cover templates and automated translation into PDF. On the other hand, if you're an expert, Lulu will let you do everything from scratch. Its publishing process is simple.
  
  Fees: There is no set-up fee for the Basic plan. Lulu takes twenty percent of the profit from every book sold. Its printing fees are higher than that of the other services.
  
  Profit per book: Moderate, under the Basic plan.
  
  ISBN needed? Since the books are only sold at Lulu, an ISBN isn't needed, unless you're selling the books through another self-publishing service too. That lack of an ISBN can save you a lot of money, and you can still be listed at Lulu as the publisher on record.
  
  Pros and cons: Everyone agrees that Lulu is the ideal service for very small distribution - say, if you're likely to sell your book to under a hundred readers. It's also great for creating review copies.
  
  However, Lulu Basic won't get your book onto the sites of online booksellers (except, maybe, Amazon Marketplace, depending on how that experiment goes), and the other two Lulu distribution plans cost so much per book that you'll have to price your book uncompetitively high, in most cases. However, if you're not interested in big sales, or if you're a total neophyte and don't want to spend a lot of time learning how to publish, Lulu is a good choice.
  
  CREATESPACE
  
  CreateSpace's overview and CreateSpace's FAQ.
  
  Types of services: CreateSpace (which is owned by Amazon) offers a free Standard service and a $39 Pro plan. You get higher profits through the Pro plan. The remainder of this entry is about CreateSpace's Pro plan.
  
  Extent of distribution: Through CreateSpace's e-store. Optionally, you can be listed at Amazon.com. The option of being listed at international Amazon sites is not offered.
  
  Friendly to international customers? No. Books are only printed in the U.S. That's fine if Americans are your target audience, but not so great if your customers are paying to get a book shipped to Australia.
  
  Customer support: Primarily through CreateSpace's reasonably helpful forums. You can also e-mail CreateSpace's customer service, but I'm hearing nasty reports about how responsive they are.
  
  Minimum level of technical expertise needed: Moderate. CreateSpace offers the option of cover templates, but offers no help on the layout of the text; it advises total neophytes to use BookSurge, which is Amazon's subsidy press. If you're an expert, CreateSpace will let you do everything from scratch. Its publishing process is simple.
  
  Fees: There is a $39 set-up fee. CreateSpace takes twenty percent of the profit from every book sold at its e-store and forty percent of the profit from every book sold at Amazon. Its printing fees are slightly better than those of Lightning Source, but at Lightning Source, you can give the wholesaler half of what you're forced to give to CreateSpace (20% versus 40%).
  
  Profit per book: Moderate.
  
  ISBN needed? Yes, if you want to be listed as the publisher on record. If you're willing to let CreateSpace be listed as the publisher, they'll supply you with their own ISBN for free.
  
  Pros and cons: The biggest controversy over CreateSpace is that Amazon used strong-arm tactics to get it going; Amazon now refuses to distribute books from subsidy presses that don't use CreateSpace's printer. This has led some commentators to suggest that Amazon is trying to establish a monopoly so that it can take a high cut of the profit from self-publishers' books. Also, there've been reports in the past (before Amazon bought the printer that CreateSpace uses) of poorly made books, but I haven't heard enough of those complaints to be able to tell whether the problem continues.
  
  At any rate, at the moment, CreateSpace's fees for the Pro plan are moderately good. You won't get as much profit as at Lightning Source, but CreateSpace is specifically designed for self-publishers, while Lightning Source (though it does work with self-publishers) is designed for traditional publishers. In addition, CreateSpace requires a bit less technical expertise than Lightning Source to use, though more than at Lulu.
  
  If you're aiming mainly for Amazon sales, and if you're not quite ready to tackle Lightning Source, CreateSpace's Pro plan is a good stepping stone. Its free Standard plan is great if you want your book on Amazon and can't afford to pay a set-up fee (though see the news above about Lulu's Amazon Marketplace option).
  
  LIGHTNING SOURCE (LSI)
  
  Lightning Source's overview and Lightning Source's FAQ (go to the top and click on "site map").
  
  Types of services: Only one, fee-based. Lulu uses Lightning Source as its printer for its Published By You plan - but if you go with Lulu, you're paying Lightning Source and the middleman, Lulu. Lightning Source is a sister company to Ingram, the largest wholesaler in the U.S. (A wholesaler gets your books to booksellers.)
  
  Extent of distribution: Worldwide, thanks to Ingram. Let's be realistic: Most self-published books aren't going to get into brick-and-mortar bookstores, though Lightning Source permits that. What's more important is that Lightning Source gets you into more online bookstores than CreateSpace does. Depending on how many of your customers come from outside Amazon.com, this may or may not affect your sales a lot.
  
  Friendly to international customers? Yes. Books are printed in the U.S. and (optionally) the U.K. and are available in other countries through various online bookellers.
  
  Customer support: You're assigned a customer representative; reports are that they're usually helpful. There are no official forums, but the e-mail lists POD Publishers and Self-Publishing both have lots of Lightning Source customers, some of whom are very knowledgeable on printing matters. So you get as much support there as you would from the forums at Lulu and CreateSpace.
  
  Minimum level of technical expertise needed: Advanced. It's not quite as bad as it looks initially; a lot of the information that Lightning Source throws at you is intended to keep you from screwing up in preparing your PDF. And Lightning Source has recently revamped its site to provide easy-to-follow instructions. Even so, dealing with Lightning Source is a learning curve, if you're new to publishing. It's not a service designed for beginners. Its publishing process is relatively simple, but once you place your book into wider distribution than Amazon, you have to leap through a few hoops outside of Lightning Source to make sure that your book shows up properly at various sites.
  
  Fees: $75 for the set-up fee. The printing charges are comparable to CreateSpace. However, whereas CreateSpace automatically takes a 40% cut, you can set the cut for distribution to be anywhere from 20% up. Since Amazon will list books that have a 20% distribution cut, this means that you can potentially make a greater profit at Lightning Source than at CreateSpace (even leaving aside the fact that Ingram distributes more places than CreateSpace does). However, unlike at Lulu Basic and CreateSpace, Lightning Source charges a hefty fee ($40 each for the cover and interior) for revisions.
  
  Profit per book: High (at least as far as POD books are concerned).
  
  ISBN needed? Yes. And unfortunately, ISBNs are expensive in the U.S.
  
  Pros and cons: Lightning Source is complicated to learn, a bit more pricey than CreateSpace, and not designed specifically for the self-publisher. On the other hand, there are lots of people and books out there that will help you, if you want to train yourself to use Lightning Source. This is the service used by most of the self-publishers who are making high profits from POD books, and it's also used by a lot of small presses.
  
  If you want your book to be priced competitively, and you want to have it sold at booksellers other than Amazon.com, Lightning Source is your best choice.
  
  So basically, it's very easy to see the differences between the services.
  
  Lulu Basic: Little distribution, moderate profits if you overcome that "little distribution" problem, and designed for beginners.
  
  CreateSpace Pro: Moderate distribution, moderate profits, and moderate expertise needed.
  
  Lightning Source: Wide distribution, high profits, and advanced expertise needed.
  
  The three services do have some things in common. They're all relatively cheap, they all do their best to make things as simple as possible for the people who work with them, and they all offer services that are in reasonable relation to how much money the self-publisher is likely to make from using their service.
  
  So basically, they're all good plans, in their own way; it's just a matter of figuring out which one fits your needs best.
  
  RUNNING THE NUMBERS
  
  Here's how much you'll pay for each service (as of June 2009), and how much money you'll get back. As my example, I'll use a 300-page, 6 x 9 paperback that has a list price of $15.99.
  
  Lulu Basic:
  
  Distributor's cut: 20%.
  
  Print charge: $4.50 (cover) + (300 pages x 2 cents per page) = $10.50.
  
  $15.99 (list price) - 20% (distributor's cut) - $10.50 (print charge) = $5.49 cents profit per book.
  
  Other fees: Optional proof copy ($10.50 [the price for the book to be printed] + mailing charges).
  
  CreateSpace Pro:
  
  Distributor's cut: 20% (e-store only) or $40 (Amazon distribution). I'll use 40% as my example.
  
  Print charge: 85 cents (cover) + (300 pages x 1.2 cents per page) = $4.45.
  
  $15.99 (list price) - 40% (distributor's cut) - $4.45 (print charge) = $5.14 profit per book.
  
  Other fees: Set-up fee ($39), optional ISBN (currently $275 for a block of ten ISBNs in the U.S.; you pay this fee to the U.S. ISBN agency, not CreateSpace), annual catalog fee ($5), and mandatory proof copy ($4.45 [the price for the book to be printed] + mailing charges).
  
  Lightning Source:
  
  Print charge: 90 cents (cover) + (300 pages x 1.3 cents per page) = $4.80.
  
  Distributor's cut: 20-55%. (The self-publisher sets the fee. I'll use 20% as my example; that will get you onto Amazon and other online booksellers.)
  
  $15.99 (list price) - 20% (distributor's cut) - $4.80 (print charge) = $7.20 profit per book.
  
  Other fees: Set-up fee ($75), mandatory ISBN (currently $275 for a block of ten ISBNs in the U.S.; you pay this fee to the U.S. ISBN agency, not Lightning Source), annual catalog fee ($12), mandatory proof copy ($30, which is inclusive of mailing charges within the U.S.), and revision fee if you have revisions ($40-80).
  
  FURTHER READING
  
  Michael R. Hicks's blog has a series comparing POD options. So does this site.
  
  Mel Keegan gives a blow-by-blow account about working with CreateSpace. (Accounts like this about working with Lulu abound on the Web; just do a Web search.)
  
  Aaron Shepard's Aiming at Amazon is a very useful guide to the steps that Lightning Source customers need to take before and after their books are printed, especially if their target market is Amazon. He's working on another book that will describe how to work with Lightning Source.
  
  Pete Masterson's Book Design and Production - written by a Lightning Source customer who has worked as a printer - is helpful for figuring out the fundamentals of print-on-demand layout. Although the book looks overpriced, it isn't; it's a 300-page book whose pages are much larger than that of a trade paperback: 8-1/2 x 11. The glossary alone is 100 pages long.
  
  Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style is (as its title suggests) the Strunk & White of the book design world, the text that nearly everyone refers to. It can be a bit difficult for the neophyte (though the glossary helps a lot), but it does such a good job of describing the time-honored traditions of book design that it's worth perusing. Besides, you really don't want to miss passages like this:
  
  "An increasing number of persons and institutions, from e.e. commings to WordPerfect, now come to the typographer in search of special treatment. In earlier days it was kings and deities whose agents demanded that their names be written in a larger size or set in a specially ornate typeface; now it is business firms and mass-market products demanding an extra helping of capitals, or a proprietary face, and poets pleading, by contrast, to be left entirely in the vernacular lower case. But type is visible speech, in which gods and men, saints and sinners, poets and business executives are treated fundamentally alike. Logotypes push typography in the direction of hieroglyphics, which tend to be looked at rather than read. They also push it toward the realm of candy and drugs, which tend to provoke dependent responses, and away from the realm of food, which tends to promote autonomous being. Good typography is like bread: ready to be admired, appraised and dissected before it is consumed."
  
  Translation: Don't get too fancy.