Why I don't, as a rule, do anthologies anymore (aka, the death of the anthology)

Since my last post, I got food poisoning, so this is the first day I feel mostly clear, though my stomach is still delicate (read: I'm clutching inoffensive teas like peppermint and other herbal stuff). I'm hoping to venture out today to post some paper contracts and pick up a parcel from the post office.

Elsewhere, somebody asked why there were fewer anthology calls. And yeah, some of the most prolific/inventive anthology callers among publishers have closed their doors, gone inactive or stopped doing them. I think it's a good question, and shows the effect of several changes in the current market.

Publishing in the age of tighter budgets

Personally, I think many publishers have realised that you can't make a decent profit from an anthology. All anthologies I was involved in sold abysmally (exception is Another Place In Time, which is a charity anthology and arguably an "all-stars line-up" and "invitation-only" - more about those further down). But generally, the economics just don't work out.

To produce an anthology costs at least as much as producing a full-sized novel, but sales are usually much lower. So many publishers used to offset that with lowering their costs - say, authors don't get paid at all and only receive contributor copies. I never got paid for my contribution to "Illustrated Men", for example, and we only got actual paper copies after personal intervention of the artist. That experience told me that I'm never again working for free.

Mind you, some publishers pay a token amount rather than royalties (because doing, say, 12 royalty payments for one book is work intensive and generally a pain), so may will pay something like $25 or so for a short story.

In this market, short stories are valuable

Now, paying token amounts used to work, because it was common knowledge that short stories "have no market" or "have no value." In a world of easy self-publishing and the overall resurgence of the short form (novellas and shorts do sell, if less than novels), this is no longer the case. Authors quickly realised that you can now make a LOT more than $25 off a short story. (Even my weakest shorts have made me $250 a piece - and I've had short stories that made me much, much more than that over a couple years.) 

Against that background, the established authors tend to no longer sub to anthology calls - it makes no financial sense. Therefore, you tend to end up with a) authors who can't sell their work on their own, b) complete newbies, or c) authors who haven't crunched the numbers. The first two won't do anything to up sales, and the third group is thankfully getting rare.

All work, no gain

As somebody who's compiled multiple anthologies over the last 15 years or so, if you do an open call, you get maybe 2 good stories, 2 mediocre ones, and 2 shitty ones you can polish up enough to be publishable. This is out of up to 200 submissions, which all need reading, email confirmation, email rejection, etc. Of course, getting 200 submissions is a brilliant success - in about half the times I was involved in anthologies behind the scenes, you don't get any submissions, so you start begging your friends and family and run with whatever they give you. With all the drumming up of interest and just dealing with submissions/acceptances/rejections, I'd estimate an anthology is roughly 5-10 times the work you'd have to put into processing a novel or novella submission. And it'll likely make less money.

Considering how reality is stacked against anthologies, why are they still happening?

A way to try out a publisher

If you do submit a short story to an anthology call, negotiate either a royalty payment (no token payment!) or non-exclusive rights. By which I mean standard royalty (split among authors) or the right to keep using the story and self-publish it. (Some anthology publishers will accept only signing "rights as a part of a compilation", which leaves you single-release ebooks, for example. Many out there accept "print-only" rights, which is cool, too. I've recently done an exclusive deal, but it's only exclusive for 6 months, after which it turns non-exclusive. The very day that exclusivity period ends, that short story it hitting the market on its own. 

Always negotiate your rights. It's good practice with a short story - it'll help you so much when you negotiate terms for a novel. 

DO NOT submit anything to unpaid anthologies. You might be giving away hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars over the lifetime of that story. I was in a position once where I was desperate for exposure, so I gave publishers short work for basically free, and I've signed some shitty contracts. In hindsight, those did nothing for my career, and I've regretted practically all of them. Do get paid for your work. Always.

Trying to find new talent

Many publishers try to find new talent via anthologies. It's a time-honored way of especially smaller publishers that may or may not struggle to attract longer submissions (which is where the money is). Sometimes they can be hobby horses of an editor at a house, who'd really like to see "more X", and hence write up a call for "more X". The idea is simply - attract new authors, find talent, get to know them (always better to see how an author behaves in edits when it's just a short story), hopefully build a relationship, publish something longer that makes more money for all sides. It can be a win.

The problem: reader "meh"

From a reader's point of view, anthologies are unattractive. Very often, they know and like maybe one or two authors, but the rest are unknowns. Still, they are asked to pay the price of a novel for those one or two shorts. Why not buy a novel from the same author? It's a LOT more bang for your buck. I've had readers approach me and tell me that they'd really like to read my short story in anthology X, but weren't willing to pay $6 for it, as they didn't care for the other stories.

Reviews bear this out. There's one cliche phrase in reviews for anthologies - that it was "a mixed bag", which is a polite way of saying, "I enjoyed 1-2, found most kinda meh and several shorts were WFT". Going back over the anthologies I've read to completion (most I simply give up on or end up skim-reading), that's exactly my experience.

Solutions?

I don't do anthologies anymore unless I have a very, very good reasons. Even getting paid royalties isn't very attractive because overall sales are lower, and I might get paid only pennies per sold copy, with a lot less copies sold than I would hope/expect to sell on my own.

If I do do them, the reasons have to be compelling. I'd be happy to do single-author anthologies (which really count like normal releases, just bundling a number of shorts or novellas so readers get a better deal). A variation on that is bundling with 1-2 other authors who have very similar readerships/themes.

Charity is a big reason for me. Readers are fundamentally generous and if you raise money for a worthy cause (ideally one that's tied to the theme of the anthology in some way), readers will consider buying the anthology essentially a donation - getting one or two good stories out of it is a bonus, but the satisfaction for the reader is in "helping". Getting the book is just like the free pen you get when you donate blood - it's no longer really the point of the transaction, but it makes everybody feel better.

I've donated a story to the Another Place In Time anthology, and all proceeds go to AllOut.org, which organizes global campaigns to support GLBTQ rights. I've wanted to donate to them for a long time, but by donating a story, we raised several thousand dollars - which is vastly more than I could have raised, pro rata, on my own. I'd do charity anthologies again, and hope to donate more money next year to GLBTQ homeless charities.

Another way to overcome "reader meh" is the all-stars anthology - in other words, ensure that all stories are good and/or by established names. All of those anthologies are internal affairs, often driven inside a publishing house or a circle of writer friends. It eliminates the need to drum up submissions, deal with entries that are not up to par, and about 90% of the total workload. If it's invite-only, you can judge much better what you're getting.

But obviously those won't help you find talent, and new authors might struggle to get in there unless they know people or have somebody vouch for them.

It does look a lot like new authors getting screwed - there used to be plentiful calls and at least they got exposure, some argue, and many were hoping to get into an anthology with a "big name" or "headliner" who'd sell it, and maybe their readers will discover the new writer and turn into a fan that way. 

I think that's possibly still true, but has moved from anthologies to boxed sets, which means bundling full novels and novellas rather than short stories, and these are often priced so cheaply (read: free or $0.99 for the whole lot) that tens of thousand of copies would get sold. I'm not sure how efficient they are - financially, they were more or less a bust, but they still used to be done to get every participant the coveted "New York Times Bestseller" bit before their names. But then the NYT changed its rules, so even selling a huge amount of copies doesn't guarantee anybody bestseller status these days.

I'd argue that the authors who could "headline" anthologies don't anymore, and in general, releasing a short story on its own makes more sense. I strongly doubt anybody can build or has ever built a career out of low- or non-paying anthologies, and exposure tends to happen over time, with more stories out.

There are many better ways to piggyback on established authors (network, people!) and make a bit of money from writing.

I do hope to blog about those at some point, but generally, I'd argue that the standard open-call, commercial "mixed-bag" anthology is dead and hasn't served any real purpose for authors in years.

Discuss.

Bird book is done

Just now, I've sent the 88k polished first draft of the Bird book to my editor and a number of betas who'll be able to help me with some details. So,yeah, it's done. After nearly abandoning it three or four times, in the end I'm glad I didn't. I'm hoping it'll all come together in January and we'll look at a release date either in March or August.

I'm currently in that dazed zone where I can't quite believe it's done. The book's been with me in one shape or other from at least March 2011 onwards. Since then, I've changed jobs several times. I started it when we'd just moved into the house. In the meantime, I've written about ten other books and co-written about a dozen--which should reveal just how scared I've been to mess this up.

Now, I'm planning to grab breakfast, then go see a movie (current Hobbit part) and then clean up my research books and papers. There's outlines and notes I don't need anymore, and I don't believe there will be literary historians who'll terribly mind as I throw out all the paperwork I've amassed over those years. I'm also going to seriously triage my research books, only keeping a few of them, namely the ones I might read again. (My house is getting too small for all these books.)

Tomorrow, I'll start on finishing Suckerpunch, so I'll be re-reading Counterpunch and get all my boxing research books/materials into line. There's also other stuff I have to do (taxes, etc), so I'll be busy for the rest of the year. Ideally, I'll wrap Suckerpunch by end-January, and I'm not planning any further than that at the moment.

Whew. Done.

Novel bunny roll call

2014 draws to a close, and personally, I'm glad it does, because holy crap, it's been a story of ups and downs - whenever I thought I had settled in somewhat, something would happen that threw it all off its track. I'm a Taurus, I'm not keen on changes I can't control.

I still managed to finish the Memory of Scorpions trilogy, polish and release Return on Investment, co-write Lone Wolf and No Place That Far, and overall managed to wrap up some projects that have been with me for years. I also did some personal development (hypnosis, et al) and hope to do more of that in 2015.

As the year draws to a close (tonight is the Winter Solstice), I'm focusing on getting the Bird Book ready to go into edits. It's my one remaining "big ticket item" I want to close.

With finances what they are (and the Kindle Unlimited-induced 40% dip in my earnings),  I have to keep my eyes open for work in the conventional economy, and I'm in the running for a job that sounds like a clone of my favourite/best-paid day job ever. The second round is is early January. The idea is to pay off the house, put together some reserves, and keep writing and hoping for that break, while developing other skills. I'm at peace with all that.

Regardless of what will happen in January, I'm still planning to write 3-5 novels next year. (Ideally 5, but, well, day job.)

So, in terms of solo books, I'm looking at the following:

• Suckerpunch - I have 20,000 words on that one and will hopefully wrap this even before the potential job offer.
• Another WWII novel - this one spans from 1940 (Battle of Britain) to  post-WWII Germany. It's about 50% written, but the research is likely patchy, so it needs a LOT of work. I call it the "Medals books".
• Franco's novel. This will complete Franco Spadaro's arch from Dark Soul. I have a plot for him and just need to sort out a way to do it--I can't do the same plot I've done for him back when I created him. It's way, way too problematic on all kinds of levels. This should be released close to LA Witt's official sequel to Dark Soul. Lots of Spadaros coming your way in 2015!
• Question of Intent (QOI). This is a kinda-sorta prequel to Return on Investment. I have about 20,000 words written and it needs a serious upgrade. However, it's 100% written in Francis de Bracy's point of view. It's not a romance, more the history of romantic trainwrecks, but that's what you'd expect from him, right?
• Yet another WWII novel. This one will be set in post-war Germany, and the bombing campaigns and civilian aftermath will be major themes. Not a feel-good novel. I'm planning to set it in my hometown - or a thinly veiled version of it. I'm still wrestling with the exact angle.

I can't commit to co-written releases quite the same way, because life happens, but Lori and I have been talking about writing the following in 2015:

• Rolex's story. We've made a start this month and have 20,000 words. It's looking like a long novella or a short novel at this point.
• A short Nick & Spencer story, to catch up with the boys.
• 2-3 more Market Garden titles of varying lengths, because they're fun and we didn't get much traction in 2014.
• Finishing up our WWII novel that's 70% done.

All of this is very much subject to change. I've been entertaining all of them in my head and they're all talking (apart from Franco, who never talks, and the last solo WWII novel, which more swirls and has no main character yet), so chances are fair they'll happen.

Right now, the main problem I could see happening is that the new day job gets seriously in the way or that the WWII research eats me alive. I've found the Bird Book a formidable book to wrestle, so I'm quite ready to expect that all historical novels will take a LOT longer than is commercially sane and healthy (Bird Book : 3.5 years+). If a book only earns for three months, it's crazy to spend six months or longer on it, but that's one of the reasons why I'm ready to take on a day job - if that's what it takes to write those books, I'm ready to do it. That was one of those tough choices in 2014. I find myself incapable of writing the stuff that sells just so I can pay my mortgage, so I need alternative avenues for that. In the end, I have to follow where the energy is, and I fully intend to do that in 2015, too.

Red wire / green wire - choose wisely

Because it bears repeating - every so often, the whole "women writing m/m" thing pops up - thankfully, the discussion now seems pretty much decided along the lines of "authors can write whatever the hell they want", so we're making progress on that front. 

However, I do want to submit the following on the topic. When people describe m/m as "gay romance written by straight women for straight women, with a few gay male authors in there", they might do that with the best of intentions, but I think it's over-simplified to the point of uselessness. This does not sum up our genre, nor does it reflect where it's going, and I hope that that cliche dies a fiery death as soon as possible.

Personally, I don't feel attacked when/if people mis-gender me - I'm pretty much at peace with my identity, and it takes more than (often well-meaning) ignorance to shake me up. I've been called "tranny" behind my back by some cis-male gay authors in the genre, but I'm OK with that. It's their ignorance/malice rather than my identity. 

What is so much more important is that we really don't know the gender identities/sexual orientations of people in this genre. To my knowledge, there is no hard data that's truly representative. Also, the genre is changing.

I'm basing my observation largely on anecdote, and I understand that the plural of anecdote isn't "data", but it's the best I have after 6 years inside the genre. 

For example, I personally know at least 3 trans*/genderqueer people who'd look "straight & female" on their profiles or outward presentation, and at least about as many as that who are fluid in one way or other. I also know a number of bisexuals who appear "straight", but have or have had same-sex relationships and who haven't come out. Some don't because their families don't know, or because they rightly fear repercussions at the work place. Sometimes, it's safer to be and stay in the closet or communicate only to the people who have an actual stake in their orientation/gender identity - namely the people they live/sleep with.

Some of us don't communicate non-cis, non-straight identities because it's simply extremely private and people prefer to keep their innermost identities protected - not all of us enjoy our orientation/identity to spark off discussion/controversy on the internet; we're writers, not celebrities. Our performance is (ideally) our work, not who we sleep with or where we fall on the male/female spectrum. Basically, we're not Kanye West. We also don't have his bodyguards or his PR strategist who carefully times every mini-scandal to maximise album/ticket sales.

Lastly, I've done a (very informal) poll of readers/writers inside the genre during my keynote speech in Bristol mid-2014, and asked an audience of about 150 people directly whether they identify somewhere on the queer spectrum. Out of 150 people, 60% raised their hands, so in my book, m/m/queer romance is a genuinely queer genre, written and read by predominantly queer people of one shape or other, while straights/cis people are welcome. (And hopefully feel welcome.)

I'd be about as careful when talking about "straight cis-women writing/reading m/m" as I'd choose the red over the green wire when dis-arming a bomb. Wrong choices get people hurt.

Seattle

I've been invited to stay for a few weeks in the Seattle area with my co-writer LA Witt, so I landed on the 12th November and we've already seen/done quite a few things, like made an expedition out to the Olympic peninsula and checked out the area where Bluewater Bay is located. (Also met wildlife, like a bald eagle, several kinds of deer and lots of ravens and crows). Hurricane Ridge was really cool, too.

We also went to downtown Seattle and spent two productive days writing our respective books at the Seattle Public Library (central) and ended up bantering with them on Twitter. Lori actually finished her Christian book there yesterday and I've still a few chapters to go on my historical, but it's all moving along. We've also met lovely people, like readers and writers, and I'm looking forward to meeting friends in Portland this weekend.

I think I've most overcome my jetlag (the 8-hr time difference scrambled my brain a bit), so I'm almost on "local time" now. The Dude is going to join us for a week on 3 December, and then we'll do some of the local highlights.

Lori took me to Halfprice Books (and they had a 20% off day too), which was cruel. And while driving along on the peninsula, we stopped at a Native American art gallery and I bought an eagle carving. It's actually an eagle catching a salmon, and I asked the lady what the meaning of the salmon is, and she said, "Oh, that's determination." Well, sold. I'll put it up in my study and let it remind me that writing a book can be like swimming upstream with bears fishing for you. So that was apt.

Overall, very much enjoying the change of scenery and the overall Washington State - seems like a lovely place to live.

Today, we're likely staying in and writing. Lori's working on a half-finished book, and I still have a few chapters of the Bird Book. But I'm pretty sure I'll wrap the whole thing before the end of the month. I did some really good, very emotional scenes and I'm definitely on the home stretch (the last 5-10%). Just need to get from about 20 July 1944 to where the book ends, which isn't much more, time-wise. It'll just be intense.

Wake-up call

I started that full-time writing thing with a dose of optimism. Return on Investment did much better than expected (about 500 sold copies since July and more than that lent via Kindle Unlimited), although it's now much slower and sells about one copy a day on average. Sales and lowering the price did nothing to boost sales, but considering how weird and uncommercial that book is, I'm still happy with how it's done. I'll call it a modest success.

I didn't walk out of that job without a "business plan". I did projections based on about 12 months of sales data, built a model based on average yield per book (aka, how much do I make per month per book). For yield, I went with the sales of "backlist" titles - not the ones that are just out and might sell a thousand copies or so in their first month, but the few dribs-and-drabs sales I get on titles that are "older" (= older than six months).

Based on that, I averaged out yield and then assumed that future books would sell about the same. I was hoping that the front list sales spike and maybe even growing readership would mean I was low-balling, but I didn't count on either of those. Basically, I was running what I thought was a worst-worst case scenario.

So when I got my royalty payment for last month, I thought there was a mistake, but I went through the statement and ran the numbers, and it's pretty alarming. Almost half (40%) my royalties are from one front list title that's rapidly fading. It had a very good three months, but the money from that title is falling at a rate of 50% a month. And worse: My strongest, long-term sellers sold a good 50% less than they had for the last 1.5 years.

Overall, my backlist (the books I rely on to pay my bills), are over 40% down, and once that strong front list title hits sales hell in a couple months, and assuming my back list doesn't recover by some miracle, I won't be able to pay my bills/fixed costs in about 2-3 months. If the sales trend continues, I'm going from "below minimum wage" to officially "poverty line" in the same timeframe. It's the kind of crash that makes me look at my monthly outgoings and ponder which one I can/should cut. Do I really need regular haircuts? (And yeah, it's made worse by living near one of the most expensive cities on the planet - not really a choice as long as my partner works there.)

(I don't mean to be whining. I have the best readers, and I'm grateful for every book they bought in September - or earlier, in the case of the retailers. I'm speaking quite candidly because it might be helpful for other writers. If any of you have seen the same sales drop, you're definitely not alone.)

I'm not sure what a viable strategy is for the future. I clearly over-relied on my backlist and my worst-worst case scenario was about 50% too optimistic. Which means I quit my day job about 3-4 years too soon. I knew I'd be scraping by for a few years and hoped I'd write my way out of there, but this month really claw-hammered that confidence.

I'm not good at writing the kind of book that sells inside this genre. And I don't see that changing.

And just the explicit/gay/bisexual content means a somewhat limited audience - that material doesn't get into the mainstream. I'm currently pretty much aiming at a sub-group of a sub-group of a sub-group, and apparently that niche audience is too small to sustain me.

One part of me is completely freaked out. (And freaked-out writer = too freaked-out to write, so this isn't even a productive frame of mind, much as I'd prefer to call it a "kick in the pants".) I prefer to have a rough idea where things are going, how much money I can expect, because I want to intervene on time and steer against it.

This might have been a freak month, and gods give that it is, but I have to act pretty much now to be prepared if this is the shape of things to come. (Smoke, fire, the works.) Anything I write now and publish via a small press will still take 9 months at least to earn me money (At least 6 months of production time for a publisher, plus 3 months until Amazon pays out), and it's closer to 12.

Self-publishing is closer to 6 months - three months of production time (editing, layout, cover, etc), plus 3 months until Amazon pays out. I can't do much until mid-December (as I won't be here, and I'm still working on the Birds book), but from mid-December, I really need to act.

Going the traditional route (getting an agent, getting a big publisher) is now literally something I can't afford. I can't wait 4 years or more to get paid. I'm entering crisis/survival mode now.

What it'll mean above all is: 1) I will self-publish some things fairly quickly. 2) I need to write faster, and even a LOT faster. 3) I have to diversify in terms of genre. 4) I will very likely re-join the workforce in early 2015.

Number 3) means I'll likely launch a second pen name and write speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy,  historical) under a different name. For that, I'll likely revive my old German pseudonym, but it's not yet decided. I think a new name would be good to leave some expectations at the door (read, no more disclaimers that the current book "isn't a romance" - there won't be romance expectations attached to it. This might prove to be tremendously liberating.)

It'll also mean I'll be writing from a different angle. My characters might still be gay or bisexual, but there won't be any explicit content on the page (this will likely affect my urban fantasy series I've been planning as well as my historical thriller). There might still be a romance sub-plot, but it won't be the main focus of the story. I'm also very likely going to write a few books with a female lead. Which will be brilliant, I think. I have at least two books that focus on women, and only one of them is bisexual.

Above all, it means re-shuffling my release/writing schedule. I knew that writing fantasy and historicals was a financially risky idea, but now I have the actual numbers to see just how fucking stupid it is to write either and more than maybe one a year.

I will still indulge myself and finish the Bird Book, because I've already almost lost this book twice, and if I stop now and desert it again, I fear it'll just wither and die off - gods know when I get into the position again where I can devote several months to it. Yes, it's a luxury I can't afford, but screw it, I'm 70-75% done with it now.

I'm putting the other five WWII novels and any further gay fantasy novels on hold for the time being. I literally can't afford to write them, and I'm sorry for that, but the bank wants the mortgage money every month, and I like eating.

In mid-December, I'll start on my straight-up historical with a main character who's most definitely bisexual, but will only be courting women. My partner has been requesting that book for the last 3 years, and it's time I write a book I can sell to mainstream readers without having to "warn" about the gay sex. It'll mean a screeching halt on my WWII stuff and pushing hard into the crusades research, which is not what I was aiming to do, but hopefully more sustainable. It'll also mean that what WWII research I've done will go into a book told from a hetero/female POV.

Overall, and as weird as it might sound, I'm still optimistic. What I consider crisis mode now might lead to some amazing books/experiences/growth. And I'm all for that.

So, yeah. This is my Halloween/Samhain post. The irony doesn't escape me. This is as "horror" as I can muster, and it all comes back to one of my main fears: fear of change, fear or loss of control. I'll get over it. This is most likely a good thing when seen from a couple years' distance.

Inspiration: Family

I think I've written repeatedly about family. It's clearly something that keep coming back, so I'll just risk repeating myself.

I think real life has made writing about family A Thing in my work.

Let me explain. My family, gods bless them, wasn't/isn't the sanest one. While my mother managed to create a more supportive micro-environment, my family's psycho-dynamics are shaped by a grandmother who had 8 living children (out of 12 births), but neither the interest nor the emotional resources to care for even one of them.

They were fathered by a WWII veteran so fucked up from his close, prolonged brush with death (he got out of Stalingrad before the 6th Army was locked in) and wracked, for the rest of his very long life, by what we would now call survivor's guilt plus a massive dose of PTSD. One symptom of that was ... let's say "emotional unavailability". He wasn't nasty, but he never did come home from Russia. And the only thing he ever loved were his horses. (You will recognize him in my next book after this one. I have a young officer there who even looks like him.)

Eight children, all competing to the blood for the love of parents that weren't there in any meaningful way. As they grew up, my grandmother played favourites. Two of her eldest daughters were pulled into a toxic game of "today I love you, tomorrow I hate you", played in a fashion that always pitted one against the other, and played essentially for forty years. I don't think she did it on purpose. There's also the story that she worked as a nurse at 17. She saw a lot of people die.

But all that still travelled along the bloodlines. And while I was lucky and never at the core of the toxic jockeying and politicking, it has shaped how I view families, and how I write them. Many of my characters are from toxic families, families that literally threaten their sanity and continued existence (say, the Spadaros, and I think the Krasnoradas fall into that too, in the widest sense).

Others have dead mothers. Some have dead mothers and fathers. (Inspiration for that is basically taken from real life.) Say, Kendras and Adrastes - and both of them deal with their dead fathers in different ways. Both recognize themselves in their fathers or try to not make their father's mistakes.

Other families exist, but far away, some kind of benevolent (the Bird Book), some anything but (Malcolm's family in Country Mouse/City Mouse).

You can always spot the autobiographical wound. It's in every book, even when I mask it or write around it (I don't want to be that authorial one-trick pony who keeps writing about the same stuff). At times I'm leaving family out (Return on Investment), but even the absence signifies something. The unspoken can be just as significant, and usually is.

As a writer, I think I'll eventually get there to write about families that are not toxic, destructive/self-destructive/oppressive/dangerous. It would make a nice change. On the other hand, I think all families are messed up - by some standards, mine isn't even anything special. Some of its members needed 15 years of therapy to be able to cope, others have the luxury of writing about them.

Over time, I'll continue to dig into that toxic mess from several angles and try to make sense of it. I haven't even managed to write about the really vile stuff - the crimes and deliberate cruelty. There's an "accident" (read: likely murder) and at least one rape that'll keep me busy if I ever want to write a *really* dark book. I'm not there yet. Maybe I'm hoping that people die before I can write what I think is the truth, or at the very least, a compelling enough "myth" that it shaped my family and how those people act and react and interpret life.

And I'm not even beginning to look at the small, but much more pervasive stuff (like family members, both blood and married, who are not just right-wing but could be legitimately be classed as skinheads and Neo-Nazis).

Somebody once said that just surviving into adulthood means you have enough material for a lifetime of books. The books I'm bringing from there will at times be dark. It's my baggage, the load I carry. Above all, I'm glad for the distance in time and space and that I have the tools to make sense of it all.