Untitled

Illegally small

Does Hardison run like a giant group chat of Nana’s former foster kids where they coordinate who gets her what for Mother’s Day and her birthday? Is there like a spreadsheet involved? Are there arguments at 0:01 on the day after her birthday that NO, DARRYL, YOU CANNOT SIGN UP TO BE THE ONE TO GET HER FLOWERS AGAIN THAT IS CHEATING.

Parker picks up, but says “can’t talk now.” And hangs up.

Hardison, now pacing, frantically calls Elliot.

“Damn it Hardison, what do you want?”

Hardison replies, “Parker hung up on me, all the presents are gone, I’m supposed to be at Nana’s by 9 am and I’ve got nothing. I figure you and I break into a couple stores before morning and-”

Elliot interrupts “Parker has all the presents.”

“What now?” Hardison stammers.

“Yeah, hold on.” Elliot grunts. There is a sound of a pulley.

“What do you mean Parker has the presents. Elliot?”

“Hold on, man.” Elliot’s voice is distant, like he put the phone down.

“Who are you talking to?”

Hardison recognizes Parker’s voice, “Parker? Parker… Parker!”

There is the sound of the phone being picked back up, “Oh, hey Hardison.”

Hardison, still pacing, “Parker, where are all the presents. I need to load them up in Lucille-”

“Santa delivered them.”

There is a pause before Hardison responds, “What?”

Parker replies, her voice twinkling with jingle bells and holiday spirit, “SAANTAAA!”

“Give me that.” Elliot takes the phone back.

“Elliot…. where are the presents?” Hardison’s head is now in his hands.

Elliot sweeps the hair out of his face, “Like Parker said, Santa.”

Just before Elliot hangs up, Hardison hears sleigh bells.

The next morning all the kids in Nana’s wake up to a pile of presents around the Christmas tree, all the cookies have bite marks, the milk is half drunk, and the carrots for the reindeer are gone too. When Hardison arrives later, the little kids eagerly tell him that Santa came, and point out the sooty boot prints by the fireplace.

“People have always felt a sort of ownership over art, and that’s actually good. It’s why you keep a book on your shelf and return to it, it’s why you hang a picture on your wall that speaks to you. But when this gets out of hand and you mistake access or a personal connection with your rights, as happens so often in our Internet age, it leads to a dangerous sense of entitlement. That’s why readers feel empowered to complain, directly to the creator, that a book or show doesn’t have absolutely everything they want: the romantic pairing they’d hoped for, the language they find most friendly, the ending they desired. And it’s also why, for instance, the last Harry Potter book leaked on the internet before it was officially published: fans saw the book as something they were owed, not the product of labor that deserved compensation. Not that J.K. Rowling needs more money—but she, and all authors, deserve to have their work recognized as work.

And of the authors that reported that they were, in fact, full-time authors, only 63% had ANY earnings to report. The average of those who did earn something was $43,247. Which means, looking at the difference between the median and average, the average is heavily weighted by the superstars.

MOST of your favorite authors are either working a second (or third, or more) job, have a partner who earns more money, or is living hand-to-mouth, or some combination of the three. 

Libraries are your friends. Most have ebook collections now. I know readers gotta eat, but writers do too.

Also, if you’re in the UK, borrowing from the library does directly support authors financially too! They get payments from library books being borrowed!

If you’re avoiding Amazon, remember, Abe Books, Book Depository and Audible are all Amazon companies.

I also recommend Better World Books for both new and second-hand books. They have free, fast delivery. And they are owned by a non-profit! Which is partnered with the Internet Archive! They’re so good.

Waterstones.com is a decent alternative to Amazon, if you’re struggling to find a local indie or you need somewhere with a really huge range. Waterstones is a chain but it’s a chain that the indies need to survive - its buying power helps keen publisher prices down so Amazon and the supermarkets don’t have a monopoly.

And yeah - public libraries! You can join online for free and borrow ebooks and audiobooks as well as physically going in. It’s so easy there’s literally no justification for pirating books.

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“Of course you already know to use a paragraph break between speakers,” they said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Depending on style, you can either indent or line break, as long as you keep it consistent.” “Exactly! But did you know that if your single speaker goes on and on and gets a little rambly, and you find yourself needing to put in a paragraph break but not switch speakers, you should do the exact same thing?   “Only, in this case, don’t close off the quotation marks until that speaker is completely done talking. See how after the question mark above there isn’t anything? Indent or line break for your next paragraph – however you’re indicating – and use a beginning quotation to mark the dialogue, but leave the initial paragraph open, so that the reader can tell it’s not a different person now speaking,” they finished. 

As @thewritinggrindstone mentioned:

“If you’re breaking dialogue up with an action tag”—she waves her hands back and forth—”the dashes go outside the quotation marks.”

However, if the action that breaks up the dialogue also makes the speaker pause while speaking, the line breaks/EM dashes go inside the quotation marks, and the action should be a complete sentence.

For example:

(We even said so at the time, even though a screenshot of that tweet didn't make it into the post above.)

To give you a sense of how much traffic the AO3 servers can handle, we saw a total of 65.6 million page views on Sunday, January 3rd, which was a new record. That's an average of 2.73 million pages served every hour (more at peak times, less when a majority of users are asleep), or 45,555 pages per minute, or 759 pages per second. This level of fannish activity did not crash our volunteer-maintained servers, and we're actually kind of proud of that accomplishment!