Because I am a truly silly person and because I have friends who, like me, love words, I've started a seriously silly (and sillily serious) Face Book group called Writers for the Advancement of "Kerfuffle" (and other marvelous words). So, if you like odd words and want to see them spread around, come and visit.

(Yes, I know most of you already saw this, but a few people don't hang out on FB or Twitter.)

If you missed hearing it live, the Write On Radio! interview from this morning on KFAI FM Minneapolis/St. Paul is heading into their archive, so if you want to hear it, just go to the Archive and scroll down until you find the date 09/10/2009, then go to the listing for Write On Radio! and click the Listen Now icon. (RealPlayer or other mp3 player required.)

Anne and I were first up.

The timing on the Google Settlement opt-out/objection deadline. I put it off before since I was at the tail end of copyedits, proofs, first conventions, and taxes. Now it has come back around and the deadline to say "fuck off and die" or "I'm going along with this, but I think it stinks" are coming up in 4 days. And I have a million things to do that are more immediate than the filing of yet more paperwork.

I don't have a problem with the initial urge behind Google Books--really I don't. What's wrong with a highly detailed and accessible index? I've benefited from Google Books as a research tool, being able to look into the specific pages of a book that I thought might have been useful without having to buy it or toddle off to the library in person and waste everyone's time only to discover the book was useless, or to reject a book that sounded useless only to discover later it had the info I needed, but had no way of discovering without reading every page. The index I don't have a problem with and I don't have a problem with the idea of a company who's done a huge amount of work to make this index happen and functional making some money off their effort. I make (or hope to make) money off my efforts, too.

What I really don't like is the way the index then morphed into an electronic sales and distribution net that has more rights and privileges over the material than the creator or copyright holder does. This is largely due to the settlement clauses introduced by the Author's Guild, not by the action of Google. The immediate problem now is that there are only 4 days left to file the paperwork to say "this sucks" or opt out and be screwed until someone else takes Google to court (but not the AG for their ham-handed way of trying to "settle" the issue.)

I'm still not sure how I feel about the options, except that I don't see how this can be legal: the Authors Guild does not represent me, I never gave them my proxy to act in my behalf on this, and "opt in by default" is not a legal standard. How can I be held to agreements to which I was no party and in which I had no proxy? How can the court legally defend giving my rights away to a group I don't belong to and do not support nor receive any support from? I don't want to be stuck in a bad business relationship with a pair of companies who have, without my permission or participation, effectively redefined copyright license and exercise in perpetuity, to their benefit and not to mine and without any consent or agreement from me. I can only hope the judicial review of the settlement in January throws the abomination out.

I have, and always have had, strong reservations about the Authors Guild. I'm not a member; I've never felt they truly had my interests at heart, and I've rarely seen them go after the issues that most worry me while they are still small--they tend to let it slide until the big money is on the line and then grandstand just like they have here (eg: they ignored the "audio" issue when it rested with Kurzweil in the late 1980s, but not when it was Amazon in 2009 and they still ignore that issue with Adobe's Acrobat reader for Mac). Google I used to like quite a bit, but this situation is out of hand and they started it and then acted like royal tits when confronted with the ramifications of where they were headed. There just is no good end to this situation short of the judicial review throwing the settlement out as untenable, illegal, illconceived, and unconstitutional. Unfortunately, I don't think they will, but if they don't they will have handed the defining and licensing of copyright to two commercial entities with special interests.

Looks like I'll be getting even less done this week than I'd hoped....

There's another interview with li'l ol moi up at Midnight Moon Cafe and you can enter by midnight this Friday to win any book from my backlist. Nifty yes? Yes! So go, go... what are you waiting for?

It appears Vanished is up in a poll at Bitten By Books for most anticipated book of August. Not only is the competition really stiff but a lot of them are friends of mine and I certainly want to read their books more than mine. I love my book. I would love to win the silly poll, but I don't have the fan base of Richelle Mead or Vicki Pettersen or Melissa Marr....

And I'm in Oregon on business so I have to run away now and do bookstore things. Maybe I should just settle for selling as many copies of my book as possible....

Ho hoho! The fabulous Matt and Shannon of Seattle Geekly have posted the new podcast, #23, complete with comics news and an interview with lil ol me! not to mention various contests, Geek-outs, game news and other Nifty Stuff!

And early in the Friday, I'm off to Portland, and then onward to Salem on Saturday for the Escape Fiction mass signing! If you're in the Salem OR area on Saturday from Noon to 2 p.m. drop on over to Escape Fiction at 3240 Triangle Dr SE, Salem, OR 97302 (503) 588-5865. There will be a pile of cool urban fantasy folks hanging about, signing books, acting silly, giving stuff away, and did I mention acting silly...?

OK, I give in: I have a Twitter account. http://twitter.com/katrchrdsn. Happy now? :p

Things are just a bit nutty over at Bitten By Books, where the silliness will continue until midnight with--oo!--prizes and more strange replies to questions from lil' ol' me.

Also, I'm updating the main website, so there should be a complete Appearances schedule there (at least as far as I have one) soon.

I'm going to be doing a day-long interactive interview and Q&A at Bitten By Books tomorrow (Thursday, May 28). Five lucky people get an Amazon gift certificate and a puzzle! Be there or be... umm... haunted.

Sooo... first there was a post by Warren Ellis that led to the Pubcrawler, a bicycle powered mobile bar in London.

That got me thinking about the local "spider bike" we frequently see crawling down the Burke-Gilman in good weather, so of course I had to find that. It turned out to be a "Conference Bike 7" as I discovered at Serge the Concierge, and it's available for rental at Dutch Bike in Seattle, just a few miles from here. (Though I still think "spider bike" is a better term.)

Other links about the spider bike led to Web Urbanist, which has nifty pages about office furniture and geek living room furniture. The latter led to a chair my husband has exclaimed he simply must have when we own our own castle: the Creepy Sheepy chair. I think it really needs a flaming coffee table along side, but perhaps done in brass and iron... to go with the steampunky Nethrone work station.

And of course, another link on the living room page led to coffin furniture (warning: automatic music here) and from there to the utterly goth-necessary (or if you happen to be a fan of The Munsters) coffin motorcycle trailer.

The fun never ends on Teh Intarwebs....

I just love this... the question was "What is it about writing you enjoy so much?" (over at the Ravenous Romance magic bus tour.)

Inara LaVey: It’s the ultimate power trip. “I created you, I can destroy you! BWAHAHAHAHAH!!!!” Plus it’s just plain fun.

A woman after my own evil heart.

My darling buddy Dana Fredsti is kicking off the blog tour for the Ravenous Romance Ornery Eleven today at her blog, Zhadi's Den. If you like your romance hot, hot, hot, it's the place to be this weekend.

The blog tour schedule is near the bottom, so be sure to look all the way down... you know where.

For those of you not already familiar with the First Church of Steve the Intergalactic Fruitbat (Glory to his Name--no faux-hawks please) hie ye hence and be enlightened on the bestest neo-religion since the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (I blame Mario, but he's such an easy target....)

Apparently someone has decided I'm a source... of "dzzt"! OMG--the comic was never completed or published! Some people need to vet their work better...

I have a facebook page now... and a profile, too. I feel so cheap.

I'm aghast: I'm watching my mail client download the mail. I checked 30 minutes ago and got 20 messages--mostly spam--now, I'm watching it download 4032. Yes. Four-thousand, thirty-two. I may be sick....

A friend of mine sent me to Evite Alternatives because I was complaining about how much I hate Evite and how much "invitation" spam I get and how legit stuff ends up in the trash as a result. I can't tell a legit Evite from a spam with a faked link sometimes and I really hate that. But surely you all know how I feel about spam....

Anyhow, here it is as a public service: neat apps you can use instead of Evite.