Author: corwin

Site administrative account, so probably Corwin, Felix or DD-B.

On terrible, awful internet speak.

First of all, in case some of you were wondering, “totes” is not a word.  Well, okay, when used in the sense of, “He totes his piano over to the cliff and drops it,” then yes, it totes is.  But it should be obvs that that is not the usage I’m talking about.  I’m talking about internet speak,  I know some of you think it’s adorbs, but you’re wrong.

Now, my editor, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, hates these things (and, beeteedubs, so do I).  So please, make sure that, when tweeting, emailing, or, especially, talking to her, you never ever use them.  It would be totes wrong.

 

Gettysburg

Just back from a weekend trip to Gettysburg with jenphalian, TNH, and PNH, and it was amazing and my head is still spinning.  I’ll probably do another post once I’ve processed some of it.

It started Friday night and the NHs, where we watched the movie “Gettysburg,” which remains a favorite of mine.  Saturday morning we headed for Pennsylvania.

We saw most of the battlefield.  We talked, we hung out, compared notes.  On Saturday, we did everything except the Day 2 Union Right; then went to our hotel and drank and talked and it was SO MUCH FUCKING FUN.  Yeah.  Like that.

Sunday was the last part, the museum, the gift shop, then dinner with Jen’s parents in York (much fun, good food) and now back in Jersey City and I believe I will drink now.

Seriously.  I don’t know how else to say it.  The experience of seeing the battlefield was mind-blowing; trying to imagine what it must have been like on Little Round Top, or the Peach Orchard, or Culp’s Hill.  And the four of us all sort of fed into each other.

I’ve always had a fascination for what is going on in someone’s head in a moment of danger, or crisis; that’s why I write what I do the way I do.  But there are things my imagination just won’t encompass.

 

Combining trad publishing, shared world, CC

As time goes on, I’m more and more of a fan of creative commons.  I especially like the creative commons share-alike, which (as I understand it) says: Feel free to use this as you will.  Feel free to write something based on it, and get paid for doing so–provided whatever you write is also released under the same arrangement.

I think that’s nifty.  It encourages cooperation among writers, which I think has the potential to create Lots Of Cool Stuff.

Obviously, this fits in beautifully with the shared world idea.  Some of us had started a project doing exactly that a few years ago, but it fell apart because of personal problems among some of the creators.

Now, here is where it gets tricky: Is there any way to combine CC share-alike, shared world, AND traditional publishing with the usual copyright?  At first glance, it would seem impossible.  But I know so little about any of this that I’m not yet prepared to give up on the idea.

You see, there’s this book, due out from Tor in September of 2013.  To me, it cries out to be the setting of a shared world.  But for various reasons, the book itself needs to be published by the traditional model.  Does that kill the idea?

Do you any of you know enough about copyright and such to have an opinion on the matter?  I’d love to hear from you.

ETA:   The license in question can be found here. Thanks to Peter Hentges.