Rereading Critically: A Meditation on Georgette Heyer

Elizabeth Zelvin

I’ve been giving myself an intellectual rest by rereading Georgette Heyer. The mother of the Regency romance as well as a dozen Golden Age mysteries is still popular with mystery lovers (exemplified by members of DorothyL). I inherited most of her works in paperback from my Aunt Anna, who died at 96 leaving an apartment full of Harlequins and other light reading. I’d been dipping into the Heyers on her shelves whenever I visited since I was a kid. Printed in the Fifties, some of them are literally crumbling into dust, but I’ve been able to replace those with cheap Kindle editions that I can take along when I travel and gulp down one after another like M&Ms. I still enjoy them, but part of me steps back and wonders why.

Heyer has been credited with making the Regency period her own and reinventing the colloquialisms of the times, including slang and thieves’ cant as well as the idiom of polite society. I suspect most genre writers have read her at some time, because I’ve spotted some of her typical expressions—for example, “added to his consequence” and “how to go on”—in science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. The romance plots slip down easily, the resolution satisfies (I’ve always been a sucker for a happy ending), and much of the humor holds up. One of Heyer’s strengths is that her heroes and heroines share intelligence and a sense of the ridiculous. Earnestness, foolishness, and stupidity as well as greed and vanity are reserved for characters who serve as foils for her protagonists. All of the above contribute to my enjoyment of these books even now.

But as I reread them today, in the post-feminist era and in light of a lifetime’s knowledge of who I am, I notice elements of the book that make me marvel why I never objected to them. For example, there are the detailed descriptions of Regency fashions, still an essential feature of historical romance novels as well as certain contemporary cozies. I don’t give a hoot what people wear. (I was once asked in an interview on the mystery blog Jungle Red, “Crocs or Jimmy Choos?” My answer: “Crocs all the way.”) Then there’s the class snobbery and the physical attractiveness standard. Yes, yes, it’s all appropriate to the period and class she’s writing about. But how did I ever suspend my disbelief long enough to identify with the characters?

A young woman who is “base-born,” ie illegitimate, or has thick ankles is ineligible to be cast as a heroine. Hey, you can’t help the ankles you were born with—or the circumstances of your birth. Nor can she be “vulgar” or “bourgeois.” The upper class values ascribed to Heyer protagonists include contempt for anyone who works for a living, a lifestyle that for women consists mainly of parties and shopping, and for men, sport and gambling, with the occasional supervision of their inherited property. “Debts of honor,” ie paying up on gambling losses, are a must, but it’s simply not done to settle up with tradesmen, ie pay the bills that result from all that shopping.

Then there’s the dynamics of the hero’s relationship with the heroine. I don’t mind the heroines so much. Historically, they have to be concerned with marrying well, and there are a few governesses and at least one writer among them. But the heroes tend toward being domineering or patronizing, and while in the typical character arc, boy and girl detest one another on sight, in the end, girl is delighted to be overcome, overruled, and ruthlessly swept up in boy’s (or, more likely, older man’s) arms. If I were the girl, would I like that? Indeed, it would be no such thing!

Who are you calling an amateur?

by Sandra Parshall

The more things change, the more they remain the same.
 
With publishing in such turmoil, changing drastically at record speed (who would have thought anything in publishing could move quickly?), you might expect writers to band together to help each other steer clear of pitfalls. But no. The sniping continues. The words change, the targets shift, but it still comes down to “I’m making better choices than you are, I make more money than you do, so I’m a real writer, not an amateur like you.”

Not every writer takes that attitude. But it’s prevalent enough to be unpleasantly noticeable. 

Remember when self-publishing e-books for the Kindle caught on in a big way? Plenty of traditionally published authors regarded the self-published with disdain. Poor things – not good enough to snag a real publisher, forced to resort to a new form of vanity publishing. The reaction from the other side was equally harsh: It’s stupid to hand over total control and most of the profits to a dinosaur print publisher when you could keep it all for yourself. Now that we know e-books aren’t going to put a stake through print’s heart at dawn tomorrow, the shouting has died down a bit, but the toxic sentiments remain.

The occasional success story, like Amanda Hocking’s, hasn’t bolstered either side’s argument more than the other’s. On the one hand, Ms. Hocking’s sale of a million-plus downloads of her YA fantasy e-books proves success is possible in that medium. On the other hand, her jump to a New York publisher (for a $2 million advance) proves that within every e-book writer’s heart lurks the intense desire to be published in print by a respectable house. Or so some people say.

What I find sadly familiar in all this is the use of money as the measure of an author’s worth. Amanda Hocking was just another wannabe who couldn’t get an agent or a publisher to take her on – until she started making money, a lot of it, with e-books. Even the most disdainful traditionally published authors had to respect her success. And, wow, a $2 million print  contract with St. Martin’s! That clinched it. Ms. Hocking was suddenly acknowledged as a real writer. A professional.

Those $2 million contracts are scarce. In most years, not a single writer will receive an advance anywhere near that. Ms. Hocking had to prove she’d already attracted an enormous audience before a print publisher would pay a whopping amount for her work. Most advances are only a few thousand dollars. Some are considerably less. And print books are becoming harder to sell to readers. According to Nielsen BookScan, sales of adult hardcovers have dropped 8% so far this year, and mass market paperbacks have dropped 26%. That’s on top of drastic losses in the previous couple of years.

A lot of writers aren’t doing well financially. Some surveys suggest that half of all self-published writers make $500 or less per year from their work. The average income is said to be around $10,000, a figure that is skewed by the few big successes. But guess what? Plenty of traditionally published writers have similar earnings. The exact figures vary from survey to survey and year to year, but only a small fraction of writers – as few as 10% – make enough money to live on. The familiar warning still holds true: If you want to get rich quick, steer clear of writing as a career.

Yet some people cling to the idea that income is what distinguishes a real writer from an amateur. Recently I saw authors who aren’t making a living at writing described as “hobbyists” in a publication of a national writers’ organization. By this measure, 90% of all published writers are hobbyists producing “niche” books. I’m one of them. (See my guest blog for Buried Under Books  on the subject of so-called niche books.) I’m published regularly by a reputable traditional press, my books receive good reviews, but I’ll probably never make enough in royalties for anybody to live on. What does my low income say about the quality of my writing? Absolutely nothing, in my opinion. And yeah, I've become a little defensive on the subject.

I wish every writer could make a good living doing what he or she loves. I wish more people bought and read books and were willing to pay a fair price for them. I wish we had better ways for readers to find good but obscure writers, both traditionally published and e-published. And I wish writers themselves would stop using words like “hobbyist” to categorize other writers.

How do you define amateur and professional?

Have you discovered a small press or self-published author who deserves a wider readership? Tell us about him or her. Maybe you’ll help make a sale or two.

Silos and Imagination

Sharon Wildwind

Scroll down to the bottom of the blog to see the search results that 11 people did the week after this blog was published. Click on the charts to see them in a larger size.

Suppose you and I research the same topic. We type the same search term into the same search engine. We get the same results, right?

Wrong.

Welcome to the age of personalized search results. Here’s the key phrase, “Every click is a clue.” Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can be traced, so as soon as we sign on, those data collecting people—see last week’s blog about mountains of data being collected and stored—know that I’m in Calgary and either you are, too, or you’re somewhere else. Exactly who we’ve chosen for our ISP tells them volumes.

Even the way we enter information personalizes our Internet use. Let’s say we’re buying the same item, from the same on-line site. We’re asked to enter our credit card number and, as it happens, we have the same kind of card, with the same spending limit, from the same bank. My credit card number is entered with two clicks because I copy-and-paste. Your number is entered with several clicks, pause, clicks, pause, clicks, pause, and clicks.

Best guess? I do so much Internet buying that I have my number on my computer to be copied-and-pasted. You do a lot fewer purchases and are typing in your number as you read it from your card. That conclusion—correct or not—might mean that we are offered the same product at different prices. Because the computer concludes I’m more likely to make future purchases, I get a lower price than you do so that I’m encouraged to return later and buy more.

What does that have to do with on-line research? Put millions of clicks together over time, feed that information into search engine algorithms, and the engine personalizes what search results we get. If I go to Wikipedia all the time, and you don’t, Wikipedia is likely to show up in my results as the #1 or #2 hit. It may show up on page 3 or 4 of your results. If you are a Facebook user, and I’m not, you’re more likely than I am to be referred to a Facebook page related to your topic.

It’s called being directed to an information silo. We go up and down the silo to comfortable sites, which we probably like a lot, but we don’t branch out.

What’s wrong with that? I like Wikipedia; I get Wikipedia. You like Facebook; you get Facebook. Sweet, eh? Non-challenging. No need to be exposed to information that might rock our world view.

Therein lies the issue.

Cross-fertilization feeds imagination. If I go looking for avocado recipes and migrate along the way to a YouTube video about the 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, I might get a poem out of the experience. On the other hand if I go looking for avocado recipes and the computer decides to keep me in the recipes and kitchenware silo, chances are that I’ll end up with a tasty meal, but no poem.

Don’t think it’s possible to migrate from avocados to collapsing bridges? You haven’t wasted nearly enough time surfing the Internet.

We can probably live with a limited view of avocado recipes. But what if, as writers, we need to research competing views about controversial topics, such as social justice, child abduction, or identity theft? If we can’t turn off the creation of information silos—and we can’t—what can we do instead?

Do multiple searches, for example, “social justice, negative” and “social justice, positive” should give vastly different results.

Use Internet contacts and social media sites to ask people from very different backgrounds to do quick searches for us and send us the results they get on the first 1-3 pages of hits. A white, middle-age woman living in a small Midwestern town might ask a twenty-something woman of color in New York city and a older man living in Australia to do the same search for her. And return the favor by doing searches for them.

Game the system. Don’t stick to the same links all the time. Go exploring. Ask people of different ages and backgrounds what sites they go to for news and information and occasionally visit some of those sites. Do searches for weird topics. Play with the system. The more complex a pattern we build with our clicks, the harder it will be to force us into silos.

After this blog ran, several people expressed an interest in testing it. The following week I set up a search "women in engineering" and gave people 6 days to do the search and send me the results. 11 people participated. No one got exactly the same results, though the #1 result was #1 for everyone, and the top 4 results showed up in the same order for a lot of people.

Demographic spread of 10 of the 11 people who did the same search.

11 people did 12 searches (one person did two) The only perfect score was the IEEE Organization was first on every search.

The first 5-6 searches were coded as to where they came in that order. Some people sent screen photos with more than six results, and those results from 6 to 10 are listed at the right side of the chart. The number in parenthesis is how many times they showed up in results.

Some people had lists of related searches, differentiated between sponsored (advertisements) and non-sponsored listings. Over half of the sites had a photo of women engineers coupled to a link to Wikipedia.

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Quote for the week

Growing up, I didn't have a lot of toys, and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon. 

~Terry Brooks, American fantasy fiction writer

An Unexpected Visit

by Julia Buckley

On Saturday night there was a knock at our door; I sent my husband out to see who it was, and he found that it was a police officer.  Our neighbor had called him after seeing two men go from his yard to our yard to the next yard, peering into all of our windows.

This is disturbing no matter how you slice it, and it's even more so because we were IN our houses when this happened, but it was dark outside, and had my neighbor not pulled up in his car and spotted the men, none of us would have known that they were out there, interlopers, probably assessing things while planning a robbery.

But the audacity of their actions is nothing new.  I need only read the crime report in our local newspaper to see that people are committing bold daytime robberies and burglaries, some of them at gunpoint.  They don't even restrict themselves to dark alleys or out-of-the-way places these days.  People are robbed on major thoroughfares in the middle of the afternoon.

So has this always been the case, or are criminals more audacious?  If it's B, why is it so?  Is it the difficult economy which has people brashly committing crimes without fear of the law?  (As of yet, I don't know whether or not the police apprehended our own peeping toms).  Are today's burglars empowered by the same sort of self-centeredness that seems to have become a societal staple?

We live close to Chicago, where this year's murders (according to the Huffington Post), have exceeded the killings of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.  We're in a Chicago suburb, though, where there are rarely murders at all. But other crimes, like carjacking, assault, and theft, are regular realities.

In any case, while I'm disturbed by the fact that strangers were up to no good and as close as my doorstep, I'm not surprised.  It's not the first time people have been there.  When my sons were little, their brand new bikes were stolen off of our protected back porch; the training wheels were torn off and left behind.  Sometimes when I leave out donations for Goodwill or Amvets, they are taken before the truck gets there.
Our neighbors to the south had their entire house cleaned out in the middle of the day.  The burglars came in through their back yard (which has a high fence around it) and had a truck waiting in front.  They did a quick, business-like cleanout in a matter of minutes, and all electronics were gone.

And perhaps most interestingly, our neighbor once called us to tell us that three drunk men had climbed the tree in our backyard and sat in it for several minutes before climbing down and moving on.

It's probably no surprise that my sons have grown up very security-conscious and rather obsessed with locks and  bolts.  This incident will probably increase their vigilance, and I suppose that's a good thing.  But it's also sad that they can't feel safer in their own neighborhood, as I did when I was a child.

Sean Chercover Discusses His New Thriller, THE TRINITY GAME.

Sean Chercover's new thriller, THE TRINITY GAME, is available now.  In it, Father Daniel Byrne works for the Office of the Devil's Advocate, which debunks miracle claims. Things get complicated when his latest assignment is to expose his own uncle as a fraud--especially because his uncle is a well-known televangelist who has newly begun speaking in tongues, and each event actually predicts the future.

The televangelist Tim Trinity reminds me of someone like Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart (to whom a character compares him in the book). Were they in your mind when you built his character?

Hell, I had dozens of these guys in my head while writing THE TRINITY GAME. I’ve been watching televangelists since I was a kid. They often make for great theatre.

I like the idea of a priest (your main character, Danny) who is conflicted about his faith, first because it seems authentic and second because it’s not stereotypical. Did you interview any priests about this book (or do you know any priests personally?)

I did speak with a couple of priests while writing the book, and I’ve known a few over the years. Interesting that I’ve gotten a couple of complaints about the occasional profanity used by the priests in the book. Truth is, I toned it way down – some of the priests I spoke with use very salty language indeed. And I’ve gotten very complimentary emails from over a half-dozen members of the clergy – only one of whom had a problem with the profanity.

I enjoy the fact that your book engages in a dialogue about faith—what it is, who has it, who doesn’t have it, and how this philosophical question is bogged down, hijacked, by earthly greed and selfishness. Were you playing with the notion of Original Sin, or were you merely reflecting the scenario as you thought it would play out?

I don’t believe in Original Sin. I believe we are risen apes, not fallen angels. But human nature being what it is, there’s plenty of room for unethical (sinful, if you prefer) behavior, including within religious institutions. Without it, there would be no crime fiction.

Tim Trinity has a very unique (and dangerous) ability. How did you happen to figure out that your character would achieve this unique twist on speaking in tongues?

It wasn’t something I figured out; it actually hit me like an epiphany. Tim Trinity just bubbled up from my subconscious one night in the bathtub. I knew who he was, what he believed (or didn’t) and his predicament with the tongues and the predictions. I knew that the Vatican would send an investigator to debunk him, and that the predictions would make him a target of heavyweights in the gambling industry. It was the first time that a character ‘came upon’ me, fully formed. An amazing experience.

How great! In one of his sermons, Tim Trinity says that “most people who call themselves Christians have a fundamental mis-understanding of the nature of sin.” Would you agree with this statement? 

Well, most Christians I’ve spoken to think of sin as certain types of behavior. Murder is a sin, adultery is a sin, theft, and so on. But if St. Paul is to be believed (and Paul is the principal architect of Christianity as it is most widely practiced) then those behaviors are not sin – they are caused by sin. Sin, according to Paul’s writings in the Bible, is actually a demonic force that causes people to act against God. So, I’d agree that most people have a misunderstanding about the biblical definition of sin, but I don’t believe in a demonic force that causes people to misbehave.

Your priest character, Daniel, is thirty-three—the age of Christ when he died. Were you aware of this parallel, or is this just a coincidence? 

I was well aware of it. It’s the reason that I made Daniel thirty-three.

One of your characters cites one of Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws of prediction: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Do you find this especially true in light of the Internet? 

I think it has always been true. I don’t think it is especially so in light of the Internet. But I do think it is especially true in light of what we’re learning about how the Universe operates on a quantum scale, and the technological advances that are resulting from our ability to manipulate tiny things like electrons. The Internet is just one example.

How did you decide upon the name “Tim Trinity?” 

I didn’t decide, at least not consciously. He came into my mind with that name.


You have a Catholic priest who is still emotionally tied to an old girlfriend who happens to be an atheist—yet they both believe in miracles. Do you think this is ironic or realistic?

As an atheist, Julia doesn’t believe in miracles in any religious or supernatural sense. She believes that human understanding of the Universe is limited and there are many things that we do not (yet) understand. And she calls things miracles (in the secular sense) that are simply awe-inspiring. Daniel, on the other hand, believes in true miracles that show the hand of God. This difference of belief does not prevent them from being in love, and I find that realistic.

Without going too deeply into spoiler territory, there are parts of your book that remind me of Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER. Have you ever read it, and if so, was it ever on your mind when you wrote this?

I read THE SCARLET LETTER in high school, and again in college. Loved it both times, but it wasn’t consciously in my mind when I wrote THE TRINITY GAME.

You refer to your wife as Agent 99. Are you both GET SMART fans? :) 

Ha! GET SMART was a staple of after-school television when I was a kid and like many boys in the ‘70s, I loved the show and had a sizable crush on Agent 99. My wife is protective of her privacy and I never refer to her or our son by their real names on Twitter or Facebook, but I needed to call her something. Agent 99 was the first thing that popped into my head. 

Thanks for chatting with me about The Trinity Game, Sean! Best of luck with the book.

Thanks so much for having me, Julia! It was fun.

Find out more about Sean at www.chercover.com.

Chameleon

by Sheila Connolly

 

 

Recently I was invited to be the speaker at a private literary club in Philadelphia.  Since I write the Museum Mysteries series based in Philadelphia (in the very neighborhood where the club is located), I was happy to do it.  I've also been going back and forth with the library in the town that is the model for my fictional Granford from the Orchard Mysteries series:  they want to hold an apple festival event next month—with me as the main speaker.

 

I sat down to put together a talk for the Philadelphia event, and realized that for each series I present myself as a different person. When I talk about my writing to others, I'm three different people—DAR member with a family tree that goes back to 1620; former fundraising professional in the big city; daughter of Erin.  I don't have to make anything up, but they're all different.

 

Some of you may remember that I began writing under the pen name Sarah Atwell, with the Glassblowing Mysteries.  This was a work-for-hire series, a three-book contract offered by Berkley Prime Crime, and I am grateful to them.  However, I told them that I had never blown glass and had never seen Tucson, where they wanted to set the series.  They didn't mind—they liked my writing.  The first book in the series, Through a Glass, Deadly, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Book, but that wasn't enough to save the series, which ended with the third book.  Was that because it didn't feel "true" to readers?  I don't suppose I'll ever know.  What I do know is that it's hard to convey the sense of light and air in the desert environment of the Southwest when you've never been there.

 

Now I write three series:  the Orchard Mysteries, set in western Massachusetts; the Museum Mysteries, set in Philadelphia; and the County Cork Mysteries, set in Ireland.  And I have direct personal ties with all of those.  So when I set out to talk about writing the Museum Mysteries, I could point to my more than twenty years of living in Pennsylvania, first with my parents, then as an adult; I can spin anecdotes about working for Philadelphia's financial advisory firm, at a time when the city faced imminent bankruptcy; and I can refer to my various jobs at Philadelphia non-profit institutions, and what they're really like behind the scenes. 

 

 

Choose Column A, the Orchard Mysteries, and I'll tell you about my hundreds of New England ancestors, and distant relatives such as Johnny Appleseed and Ethan Allen and Emily Dickinson; if I'm in "Granford" I can point to the 1790 census, where I'm related to at least a third of the Heads of Household.  The house I use in that series is a real one, built by an ancestor.  I've been inside it several times, from basement to attic, and I've laid hands of timbers that I know were cut cut 250 years ago by people I can identify and I'm related to.  While I may have moved a road or two in the series, other features, such as the Great Meadow, are real.

 

Column C? My grandfather John Connolly was born in County Cork, but regrettably I never knew him.  I first traveled there more than a decade ago, hoping to understand him better, and to learn about Ireland, which is as large a part of my heritage as all those New England Yankees.  I immediately fell in love with the place and have been back several times since.  As for writing the series, I came to realize that a small Irish town in a rural part of the country is as ideal a setting for a cozy mystery series as is a small Massachusetts town (or an equally small cultural community within a big city like Philadelphia).  Cheers had it right:  it's a place where everybody knows your name—and your grandparents', and when your great-uncle Denis emigrated to New Zealand a century ago and who attended the send-off party.

 

Some writers say that the setting is as important to any book as the human characters, and I tend to agree.  Sure, we writers can all do research online these day, including accessing 360-degree views of many places from street level.  But it's not the same as being there and observing.  There are too many small but significant details that you will not notice on a computer screen.  Like all the gum stuck to Philadelphia sidewalks, or the (to us) amusing names of Irish products such as Fairy Liquid (a cleaning solution), or the fact that half the street names in "Granford" came from farms that belonged to my ancestors.

 

What do you think?  Can you sense when an author is making things up and has no real connection to the place?  What details make it come alive to you?

 

Therapy, Recovery, and Finding Out Whodunit

Elizabeth Zelvin

The Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library, where I’ve participated in several panels on mystery and crime fiction as a member of the New York chapter of Mystery Writers of America, was kind enough to invite me to give a talk that would combine my experience as a mystery writer and my “other hat” as a psychotherapist and mental health professional who has spent much of her career helping people recover from addictions, codependency, and other compulsive behaviors, such as eating disorders. My presentation on “Therapy, Recovery, and Finding Out Whodunit” took place earlier this week.

In a murder mystery, there’s a crime, a victim, an investigation, and a solution. In real life, when emotional problems or addictions become so painful that those who suffer from them are willing to get help and change, a similar process takes place. I find it both fascinating and moving to observe (and sometimes guide) adult children of dysfunctional families, as well as alcoholics, codependents, and people with eating disorders take this journey toward emotional health. It’s not surprising that I chose to endow my fictional characters, recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, and his best friend’s girlfriend, world-class codependent Barbara, with these issues and this with this opportunity for growth.

Readers of a traditional mystery series love to track the development of their favorite characters from book to book. Some of us enjoy that aspect of the story even more than how they’ll manage to solve the next murder that they stumble into (assuming that, like mine, they’re strictly amateur sleuths).

Most of my clients, over a career or more than twenty-five years, come from the kind of families that we call dysfunctional. The literal meaning of “dysfunctional” is “doesn’t work.” Whether because of alcoholism, mental illness, domestic violence, or some other reason, the parents in a dysfunctional family are unable to provide their children with nurture, safety, and support or foster their self-esteem and ability to grow by providing role models for expressing love, tolerating all human feelings, making the normal mistakes from which we learn, and creating an emotional environment that’s a healthy balance of connection and good boundaries.

Whatever their other problems or issues may be, my clients have one thing in common: a wounded inner child in desperate need of healing. I find “inner child” an expressive and useful way of describing how someone can go out of control, overreact, push people away, and find all sorts of ways to self-destruct because unconsciously, it’s not their rational adult self, but rather the frightened, angry, powerless child he or she once was who governs their thoughts, feelings, and behavior in moments of stress.

The traditional mystery structure has its parallel in the treatment or recovery process. The crime is parallel to the dysfunctional family: the “something” that went wrong at the beginning, causing trouble until it can be set right. The investigation is parallel to the work that takes place in a psychotherapist’s office or a 12-step program like those my characters belong to. The task is figuring out what happened, how it affects what’s happening now, and what has to be done to break the pattern and keep the wrong from perpetuating itself. In a mystery, the resolution is revelation and, if possible, justice. In life, the resolution is emotional health.

Is Grandma addicted to Facebook?

by Sandra Parshall

Somebody on the Murder Must Advertise e-mail loop for writers recently wondered if it’s possible to reach older readers – who buy a lot of fiction – on the internet. “Do people over 50 use social networking?”

The rest of us found the question amusing, because virtually everyone who actively participates on that list is over 50 (or over 60 or 70 or, in at least one case, 80), and we’re all pretty much addicted to social networking.

We’re mystery writers, though. Maybe we’re more connected to the cyber world because we do research online, look for advice from other writers online, and reach out to readers through social networking. Are we representative of older adults in our internet use?

As it turns out, we’re beginning to look typical for our age group, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

This year, for the first time, more than half – 53% – of U.S. residents over 65 are using the internet or e-mail. In the 50-64 age group, the number is higher: 77%. About 70% of the internet users over 65 go online every day, and 76% of those between 50 and 64.

They do it in style, too. “It is also now the case,” the Pew report states, “that once seniors start using the internet, they most often have access to high-speed connections at home.”

In the overall adult population, including everybody over 18, 82% say they use the internet or e-mail at least occasionally, and 67% do so every day. Ownership of computers, particularly laptops, by older people has been growing rapidly over the past few years. 

Furthermore, 70% of all adults over 65 own cell phones, and 56% of those over 76 carry them. However, this age group is less likely to go for expensive, multi-tasking smartphones, with only one person in ten owning one. As retro as it may sound, older Americans want nothing more than a device that will let them make and receive calls.

But what about social networking, which many writers see as the avenue to readers? As of February 2012, the Pew report says, 50% of people aged 50-64 and 34% of those aged 65 and older use social networking sites. Those numbers represent a significant and rapid increase. While younger people are still the most likely to use social networking, the report states, “from April 2009 to May 2011, social networking site use among internet users 65 and older grew 150%.”

The hitch, as far as writers are concerned, is that most adults over 50 say they use social networking primarily to stay in touch with family. Those under 50 are more likely to be accumulating thousands of Facebook “friends” and chatting up strangers.

So does social networking bring writers and readers together? What do you think? If you’re a writer, have you sold any books because you use Facebook, Twitter, etc? (I know I have.) Have you bought any books because you “met” the authors online? (Again, I have.)

Computer Green

Sharon Wildwind

This past week I listened to audio books while I did a lot of hand sewing. I learned some helpful things about social media and a lot of disturbing things about computers and the environment.

Computers are not green: mining raw materials, manufacturing first components and then devices, packaging, around-the-world shipping distances create a large carbon footprint. A huge amount of electronic waste not only ends up in landfills, but is turning landfills toxic.

What really surprised me is that the number one ecological impact is not from machines. It's from data storage.

I’m talking about every video, TV show, movie, digitized book, electronic news story, map, drawing, photograph and document ever posted on the web. Close to every e-mail and social media interaction sent on the Internet.

Who needs that much data? Apparently we do. Every time we search for 10 Easy Avocado Recipes, a kid does homework on-line, a scientist does research or we click on a link to see grand baby photos, get directions, or any of the millions of other things we do on-line every day, that request ends up at a data farm. Search engine have to have access to stored and indexed files.

So much data is being collected that new measurements had to be invented. The data storage for my first computer, a cassette-tape fed Radio Shack, was measured in kilobytes, a unit so tiny that, like the penny, it’s too small to be of use any more.

Increases in data storage capabilities are not neat like having a 1,000 unit jump each time. Each jump is a 1,024 unit increase.

1 megabyte (an average novel manuscript) contains 1,024 kilobytes

1 gigabyte (a small library of about 1,000 books) contains 1,024 megabytes

1 terabyte (a 1,500,000-book university library) contains 1,024 gigabytes

1 petabyte is 1,024 terabytes

1 exabyte is 1,024 petabytes

1 zettabyte is 1,024 exabytes

1 yottabyte is 1,024 zettabytes

There are people who say that the “yotta” is not big enough, and that new terms will be created in the near future.

For decades data storage increased while physical storage space decreased. If my 3 gig chip was pulled from my current machine, I could balance it on the tip of one finger.

We have this mistaken idea that as memory capacity goes up, storage space always goes down. It ain’t so. By the time we reach petabyte level—we are already there with some university libraries now building storage systems capable of holding a petabyte of information—we’re talking multi-story buildings with huge energy requirements. Those requirements continue all day, every day. The lights are literally never off.

Actually the lights are off because these buildings don’t require much human intervention, so they are kept dark, but the cooling systems, and the banks of data storage machines suck power constantly.

So much power that local governments are being asked to build new power plants to service one building. Not only are many of these data storage buildings in rural areas, they are often in rural areas already facing water shortages, and most power plants use water in some way to make power.

Smarter, more powerful people than me are going to have to make the big decisions about how much data storage is enough and how many resources are going to be devoted to data farms, but we might want to do a little detective work and see what’s being built close-by. It might surprise us.

If we want to act locally, really locally, like on our own desks, here are some things we can do.

Considering upgrading or buying new electronic devices? Check out energy consumption requirements and expected life span before buying. The fewer peripherals, the more energy saved, so making choice like buying a combined scanner/printer may be a better ecological choice than buying two separate machines.

Here’s a biggie. If we’re going away from our computer for a brief period, like a coffee break, set the power saving features to turn off the monitor after 10 minutes and the hard disks after 20. If we plan to be away from our computer longer than 20 minutes, turn it off. All the way off. Turn the monitor off, too. Turn the power bar off.

Screen savers do not save energy. Sleep cycle saves some energy, but not as much as we think. The idea that there is less wear and tear on a machine by leaving it on 24/7 is ancient history. In fact, because internal components are now packed so tight, heat generated by being on all the time isn’t good for the machine.

Use the power saving features on both computer and printer, if it has one. Turn the printer on to print and off immediately afterwards.

Plug all computer equipment, including peripherals into a power bar or surge protector. A computer that is just sitting there, turned off, still leaches energy from the electrical socket. I have no idea where this electricity goes. Perhaps Dr. Sheldon Cooper, of The Big Bang knows, but he’s a busy man and I don’t want to bother  him by asking.

For more practical tips check out

British Columbia Hydro Green Computing Guide 

Discarding electronic gadgets? Here are 11 Facts about Electronic Waste.

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Quote for the week:

The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. It is not only a mirror of ourselves, but a focusing lens on what we can become.

~ Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson (1912 – 2007), first lady, environmentalist, co-founder along with actress Helen Hayes of the National Wildflower Research Center

Meet My Writing Friends

by Julia Buckley

These nice women are Kathi and Martha.  We meet every month or so in a local eatery in order to discuss our writing: what we are working on, what we plan to do with it, how successful we've been with our latest projects, how much support we need to keep on plugging away.  These women are crucial to my writing life, because only they understand the particular joys and sorrows associated with writing novels.

We first met back in 2000, when we all took a writing course under the tutelage of a local university professor.  That class morphed into a writing group, and four members of that writing group (and a fifth who came later) still meet today, twelve years later, to critique each other's manuscripts.

But our weekend breakfasts are independent of the writing group; they provide psychological support in the form of  good friends, good food, good advice (and afterward, some retail therapy). It is a chance for three women either nearing fifty or past fifty to share the view from mid-life, and to laugh about the things that once made us cringe.

Why are they such good influences for me?  Because no one understands a writer like a writer.

Kathi, who recently published her first YA novel, does extensive research in her genre.  She got her MA in creative writing with an emphasis on young adult fiction, and I've never seen someone work so hard on honing her craft.  She is my inspiration with her willingness to revise, revise, revise.  She pursues excellence and achieves it.  At the same time she has a career as an occupational therapist, and works to provide support for her son, who is midway through his studies at DePaul University.

Martha is a natural writer with an impeccable sense of timing and character. Like all good writers, she gets inside the skin of her characters and lives their lives as she writes them.  I'll be very excited when she publishes her first book, because it will be a hit. She too has a very busy professional life that has her working long hours and even leaving the country now and then.  She finds time to write, though, because she says writing is more entertaining than watching television.  Her three children are either just out of college or in graduate school, so she's finding a bit more time to perfect her craft.

We laugh together, at least once a month, about the way writing becomes a sort of disease within us--we sometimes become angry about its hold on us, but we'll never get "over" it and stop writing.  So we've given in, knowing that we can rely on each other to help us through the adventures that a life of writing brings.

They are two of my best Muses, and I'm grateful for them.

Who are your Muses?