By Slanted Light

I am currently re-reading this...
...(This art by Minori, of course)...

... Master of the Revels by HG. I am lucky enough to have inherited an actual zine from a friend, but the writing is teeny teeny tiny... It does have some rather gorgeous artwork by Suzanne Lovett which is easier to look at - you can see some of it here.

Way back when I was in Cambs., a friend moved to the other side of the world, and I said I'd try to find homes for some of the zines she had. I've asked various people, and mentioned them intermittently online, but no one's been interested. They've moved with me from Cambs. to Wookey Hole to my annexe, but this time if no one wants them they're going to have to go to the great recycler in the... well, that truck thing that comes. *g* So - is anyone interested in taking them off my hands, or shall I just consign them? You've got until my last night in this annexe to let me know, but preferably sooner rather than later, especially as I'm not yet sure when that's going to be...

X-Files slash
Multi story zines, mainly M/K but one or two stories are M/Sk or Sk/K
eXposure
Double eXposure
Indecent eXposure
Over eXposure

Sympathy for the Devil by Sarah Bellum (M/K)
Heads & Tails by M Fae Glasgow (multistory zine mainly M/Sk but two M/K)
Out of the Dark by Kassandra (M/Sk)

Stargate SG-1 (all J/D)
Fallen by Sideburns a collection of Descended Daniel stories (Fall to Heaven, The Long and
Live in Loves Flame by Pantha

Let me know! *g*

I need to decide the future of my Pros website, Palelyloitering, because I've not been able to update it for a while now, and it's very incomplete, and while I'd actually like to keep working on it, even sporadically, it seems a bit more complex to arrange since I was last able to do it.

( So when I first... )

I can look into it of course - and it might turn out that I can still work with pages and upload them via Filezilla, but... I wonder if anyone other than me ever looks at Palelyloitering these days anyway, or would if they could? Cos if no one does, I could just use it as my own personal filing system on my computer. Fanlore pretty much nicked all my zine information to start off their Pros zine pages (they did credit at first, but it looks like this is being dropped as they add info from other places too), and of course there's the Hatstand's Zine pages now as well, and are there people who even care about zines any more anyway..? Which would be a shame if there wasn't, and doesn't mean the info shouldn't be out there anyway, but...

One alternative is that I move the site to an lj community instead, which would have the advantage that other people could help add information and look after it...

So - here's my questions... hmmn, maybe I'll add them in the form of a poll! *g* They're basically - do you ever use Palelyloitering, and would you care if it was gone?

[Poll #2033817]

A friend of mine is selling some of her Stargate and X-Files slash zines...

Stargate - SG-1
Strange Interlude - by ELG - 274 pages - 2003
Fallen: A Collection of Descended Daniel Stories - by Sideburns - 203 pages - 2006
Event Horizon 1: A Stargate J/D zine - anthology from Doghouse Press - 132 pages - 2000
Live in Love's Flame - by Pantha - 92 pages

X-Files
The Gift of an Enemy - by Sylvia - 159 pages - 1998
Indecent Exposure - anthology - 140 pages - 1999/2000
Out of the Dark - by Kassandra - 247 pages - 2000
Benedictum IV: Heads & Tails - M. Fae Glasgow - 120 pages - 1999
Over Exposure - anthology - 104 pages - 2002
Sympathy for the Devil by Sarah Bellum and War of the Roses by Quill - 108 pages 1997
Exposure - anthology - 121 pages - 1997
Double Exposure - anthology - 138 pages - 1998

I know nothing about the fandoms, though I recognise a couple of authors from Pros in the anthologies (eg, Eliz. Holden and Gloria Lancaster, and of course M.Fae Glasgow) but if you'd like more information I'll do my best (or ask my friend for you! *g*)...

I shall screen comments in case anyone wants to ask questions that might include personal info etc... Feel free to tell friends about them, buy them as Christmas presents... *g*

Good morning! Feeling much more alive - now that it's time to go back to work... *headdesk* Actually I did yesterday too, and got lots of sort-y out things done, which was fab. And then just as I was going to settle in to catch up on emails...

Is anyone else having problems with googlemail? My googlemail is ridiculously slow right now - it's sort of pausing before it does anything... Anyone else, or is it just me and I need to be really worried? (A quickscan hasn't picked up anything nasty, I've got a bigscan running right now...)

OTW people - can anyone tell me how the hell you let someone know there's mistaken/misleading info up on a page at Fanlore? I spent an hour surfing around trying to find out how yesterday, to no avail! It's great to see that the person editing the Pros page has included Palelyloitering, but it's neither a list like the Yahoo lists she's grouped it with, nor is it a "gen and slash" list - it's very much slash-based with gen thrown in to help slashers avoid it! Gaaaah! Yes I know I could register and spend hours figuring out how to edit the pages myself etc etc, but I'm already behind with so many fandom things, and if I take on one more thing I'll explode - never mind doing even fewer of them well. And yet I don't like being misrepresented either. Surely there must be somewhere people can point out inaccurate information?

Red Shirt Press posted a very disappointed post the other day about cancelling their forthcoming Pros zine through lack of submissions. Apart from their single post to Safehouse, did anyone see any publicity about it anywhere else? Did anyone think about submitting? They're blaming the internet culture in Pros for lack of submissions (I commented to suggest that more publicity might have helped) but I kind of think a better job might have been done in asking us to submit! After all - who are they?! I even flisted their lj and didn't see any further posts about the zine (reminders, requests, etc) after their first one. Gaaaah!

And finally - ooh, this has turned into a bit of a grump again! - the Amazon thing? I see they're now blaming an employee in France. WTF?! I've been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt to some extent so far - everyone fucks up now and then, as long as you're honest and you fix it then I can understand and forgive - but why in the world make the point/imply that the employee was French? What relevance does that have to anything except to make a more villainous scapegoat (France still being en vogue as a baddie, I've noticed) and to distance Amazon.com itself from what happened? No, it wasn't us, it was some idiot in France... I don't think so! I'm peeved - I want them to work this out, but they've just made it so much worse in my eyes!

On the bright side - I'm going to catch up on stuff today, I am! Off to loiteringpalely! *g*

'tis s a lovely looking day outside, all blue skies and buds on the trees, but I seem to be having a hard time getting going, so I thought I'd have a ramble and see if that helped... *g*

You know those mornings when you just don't know where to start? And the bits that you do start sort of make you blink? Well I was very good, and when I was woken by five year old wailing (she's five for gods' sake, but she insists on wailing when she wakes up in the morning - not a sunny nature before ten, that one!) I looked out the window at the gorgeous frosty morning and decided I would go for a walk. Be all peaceful, get the woken-by-wailing grump out of my system. Except that I got to the bottom of the hill, and was suddenly assailed by the sound of children shouting, and mother shouting and gawd knows what from the big house up there. If I carried on walking ahead I'd be listening to that for 20 minutes, if I took the footpath to the right I'd still be hearing it for quite some time - the only way to avoid the shrieks of other people's children was to go back. So I did. I was a good quarter of a mile away from that house, by the way - and there was nowhere else it could have been coming from! And it was only just after seven in the morning! Buggers.

So then I was wandering around lj, catching up on threads I'd been chatting in, working up the energy to think of things decently enough to converse with other people (I know, I don't usually let that stop me... *g*) when I came across this beside one of my contributions:

Icon hijack! I want my B/D in leather jackets back, but as it's hijacked on my userpic page too, I suspect I will have to fix that myself. Buggers!

Aaaand... stuff. So I have to go to the post office, and transcribe from a dvd (old play performed in Manchester in the 70s, very cool and quite good for Pros-y research in fact - remember the attitudes - but very time consuming! It takes about an hour to transcribe six minutes of film!) And I should tidy, and I should take advantage of the day and go find somewhere quiet to walk! (Or at least interesting... *g*) Aaaand... stuff. Oh, and I totally have to post about loiteringpalely and the whole zine thing, because I've not done that yet... and I have betas to do... I need some energy back, some motivation to get on with it! Where does that come from, again?

On the bright side, I've already opened me Comic Relief fic, to carry on from where I left off yesterday (I actually have been doing it!) Now I just have to work up the energy to get involved in it... and everything else. Help! Someone kick me!

Can I just say - gaaaaaah!

Have just been wandering around on Ebay and found some of the most blatant rip-off prices for Pros zines that I have ever seen - please, please please don't pay these prices for zines, especially ones that are still in print!

Links are not to the ebay seller, but...
The Peerless Pair - a fab AU historical zine by HG - is being sold for US$50.00 +p&p. It's available for half that price, brand new, from the publisher! That's being sold by someone called bandit2142 - he's always been overpriced, he's a dealer, and he's totally making money from HG's writing here. Making a profit from someone else's hard work and generously given effort! Leech!

In the Public Interest III is being sold by "Doctor Beth2000" for - wait for this - US$100.00 +p&p! Three of the stories are available in the archives - and I bet the other two are on the UK paper circuit.

Where do these people get off charging prices like that? They're blatantly making money from fic that was given freely to fandom - bastards!

Another one - Bene Dictum: A Dickensian Christmas can be downloaded for free at the publisher's own website - printed off in exactly the zine format, and comb bound yourself if you want it - "DoctorBeth2000" wants US$45.00 for it! The stories are also available for free online at the Circuit, Hatstand and on the ProsLib CD! Gaaaaaargh! I've seen her around ever since I was in Pros, and always overpriced too. I hear that she claims to be selling off her own zine collection - at the risk of sounding cycnical, yeah, right...

You know I love zines - I adore zines, proper paper stories, so much more than reading from the internet and my computer screen, but... please, please, please don't be ripped off by these people! You can defend capitalism all you want to me, and tell me that people won't pay it if they don't want it, and if they do then that's a fair price, but... no. Selling fanfic like that, blatantly making a profit from selling other people's writing when those authors were careful enough to fly under the fandom radar themselves? Just... no!

Grr.

Now back to writing. Which will always be free to Pros fans! *g*

Wandering around lj as you do, I came across some interesting discussions/thoughts about zines and fic and different types of access to such things, and I'm all curious now about what Pros-y people think about them, so... I thought I'd post here! Plus, coffee-break! Plus, I'm in a very think-y Pros-y mood this week, what with all the brilliant discussions etc going on at the moment. So here's another one! *g*

There's a poll here, which asks an interesting question: If I was to take all my fanfic off the internet, and offer it in downloadable e-zine form instead, available for $20 (US$ I presume, so about £14 at today's exchange rate) - would you buy it?. It's not specific to the poll-er, it's a hypothetical question - if people did that, would other people spend money on it?

( Zine talk )

So, I decided to expand my zine compilation mission slightly - I've included the summaries/blurbs for zines given at the various distributor sites. I'm assuming they won't mind, its kind of free publicity. (If anyone knows differently, do tell me!) So that whether a zine has been recced or not, if there's any information on it at all to help decide whether or not to buy it, then its in the list. Actually two lists. I've done anthologies and novels separately. Hope that sounds okay to everyone who was interested...

And this morning's useless information for anyone who's not me?
It was -23C at the cabin this morning, which sounds alot colder than -10F. I'd forgotten the joys of static electricity.

So, as a follow-up to last night's pondering on zine recs it would probably be helpful if I explained what I would like "recced". Which means explaining what I like. As the bods from ProsLit quite rightly pointed out, there really is a huge range of Pros fic out there, enough for all our tastes, but unless you know someone's tastes...

( So here are some of my tastes )