#issendai

So you want to keep your lover or your employee close. Bound to you, even. You have a few options. You could be the best lover they've ever had, kind, charming, thoughtful, competent, witty, and a tiger in bed. You could be the best workplace they've ever had, with challenging work, rewards for talent, initiative, and professional development, an excellent work/life balance, and good pay. But both of those options demand a lot from you. Besides, your lover (or employee) will stay only as long as she wants to under those systems, and you want to keep her even when she doesn't want to stay. How do you pin her to your side, irrevocably, permanently, and perfectly legally?

Although the linked blog post was inspired by Jaq D. Hawkins’ Dance of the Goblins, it contains a lot of great general advice for writing and marketing books in the fantasy genre.

Some interesting notes on the stages of denial from here

Barrett and Trepper, in an article in the Family Therapy Networker (now the Psychotherapy Networker) in 1992, pointed out that families have multiple layers of denial, which often come out in the same order. As one breaks through each of these resistances, the next one pops up in its place. The presence of these many stages of denial is not a reason to avoid attempting to metacommunicate. The presence of multiple resistances represents multiple problems to be solved, not multiple reasons for giving up. [....] Barrett and Trepper’s predictable stages of denial are as follows: 1. Denial of facts (“it never happened; you’re a liar!”), followed by: 2. Denial of awareness (“I was drunk,” or “I didn’t realize I was neglecting you; you should have told me”), followed by: 3. Denial of responsibility (“You were the one who was seductive,” or “If your mother didn’t deny me, I wouldn’t have to have turned to you.”) and finally: 4. Denial of impact (“It only happened a few times,” or “It was only fondling,” or “OK, so I beat you. Why do you always have to dwell on the past? You’re just too sensitive; get over it!”).

...Yep, I've seen all of that.

The way of my people is to skip stage 1 and go straight to stage 2: "I don't remember." Neat, effective, keeps you arguing about whether or not they remember rather than focusing on the issue at hand. It also puts the power in their court because they can disremember anything inconvenient for as long as they like.