My stuff
Lot of people thought it was pessimistic and depressing. It’s probably depressing, but that’s because life is depressing (economic collapse, environmental collapse, corruption, plutocracies, etc., etc., it’s sensible to be depressed about the state of the world).
Is it pessimistic? No, I don’t think so. I can think of a lot worse scenarios (lot lot worse). In this scenario at least people are writing.
And made the last two stories available for free. I hope to explain what I think of how the project went.
In a nutshell: stop following others and start doing research. It isn’t hard. Hire somebody to do it if you’ve been in management too long to figure it out.
I wrote about the genesis of the Knights and Necromancers self-publishing project. Hopefully a start of a series. We’ll see.
I may have lined up almost thirty posts to publish on the blog over the next month or so.
Fun stuff by others
Angelo Badalamenti explains how he wrote “Laura Palmer’s Theme”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgXLEM8MhJo&w;=560&h;=315]
Noelle Stevenson explains why Frozen is a reason to be slightly hopeful
I enjoyed Frozen. I don’t condone its failings, I had my issues with it, but in the end I saw a movie aimed at a mainstream audience where the central relationship is between two sisters, who love each other and try to save each other and have their own distinct personalities. A movie where the romantic interests are secondary and relatively incidental to the love between two women.
Judge says Arthur Conan Doyle estate can’t bend the law to suit their business model
There was one other part of the ruling that was somewhat important. In our post about the the Conan Doyle Estate’s response, we noted that the Estate tried to argue that every work after the initial Sherlock Holmes story should not be considered a “derivative work,” so various case law concerning derivative works should not apply. As we noted, there was no legal basis for this, and the only real reason the Estate seemed to come up with was that it was somehow insulting to suggest later works were “derivative.” Thankfully, the judge rejects that argument as well.
From “Judge Says That Sherlock Holmes Is In The Public Domain”.
Then some crazy-ass idiot over at Publishing Perspectives argues that the judge was a busybody for adjudicating based on law and legal precedent instead of storytelling logic:
When Courts Adjudicate the Quality of Literary Characters
No, he wasn’t adjudicating the quality of literary characters. That’s just stupid. And even if he were, the quality of literary characters should never trump the law. According to this line of reasoning judges should always make decisions based on what would make a better story, which isn’t just stupid, but also insane. The Arthur Conan Doyle estate wanted him to base his ruling on vague ideas like literary quality but the judge rejected it for good reason: it’s a very stupid idea.