I'm sure many of you have heard that RWA has decided that Harlequin Enterprises, as a whole, is no longer a non-vanity / subsidy publishing house.

So many people seemed confused about why many writers are unhappy about the Harlequin Horizons situation. I do not believe that Harlequin Horizons is a true self-publishing house. It's really a vanity press, no matter what Harlequin calls it.

Let's look how Harlequin Horizons works — I'm going to use an example to illustrate the situation. (Judging from what's going on in the Blogsphere, using a poor new unpublished writer seems to muddy the water…)

Harlequin Horizons Scenario Explained — in layman's terms:

Let's say you're a salsa maker. Your dream is to distribute your salsa so everyone in the world can buy it from supermarkets, etc.

So you go to…Pace. Pace says, “Your salsa recipe isn't good enough to add to our Pace lineup, but you should consider taking your salsa recipe to Pace Self-Salsa. If you sell a lot under that brand, we may considering adding your salsa to our main lineup.”

So you contact Pace Self-Salsa (PSS). PSS says you have to pay them money to make and bottle and label your salsa. For every bottle of your salsa that sells, PSS gets to keep half of the profit and you get the other half. So — after paying Pace a bunch of money up front — you have to split the profits with PSS 50-50.

You decide to pay PSS because you figure you can use the Pace brand and its distribution and marketing power to sell your salsa. But later you learn that PSS has no intention of associating its Pace brand with your salsa. Pace tells you that the brand “Pace” is the “gold standard” in salsa and that it will not be “compromised” to help you sell your PSS salsa. Nor does Pace plan to allow you to use their distribution network to sell your salsa. (But you can, for an additional $12K or so, get access to the Pace mailing list. This will allow you to spam 10 million Pace customers with entreaties to try your judged-to-be-not-up-to-snuff salsa all you like. And for extra $20K, you can make a commercial video that you can upload to YouTube and other social networking sites to promote your salsa (but nothing on TV channels).) And your PSS salsa will not appear next to Pace salsa on grocery store shelves. You have to do all the legwork, etc. and you have to split any profits 50-50, even though — remember — you paid a lot of money at the start for the bottling and labeling service.

That's vanity. And, frankly, it's exploitation. There's virtually NO CHANCE that you will recoup the cost of investment (the bottling & labeling fees and so on). But PSS makes lots of money because it charges you and other salsa makers a premium for its bottling & labeling services, and it gets to keep 50% of profit made on each bottle of salsa sold. Just in case you missed it: Pace will make money up front, even if you never sell a single bottle of salsa. You, on the other hand, will need to sell a hell of a lot of salsa just to break even.

The true self-publishing model can be explained using a similar example:

Again let's say you're a salsa maker. Your dream is to distribute your salsa so everyone in the world can buy it from supermarkets, etc.

So you go to…Pace. Pace says, “Your salsa recipe isn't good enough to add to our Pace lineup.” So you decide you're going to make your own salsa company, just like Pace.

So you put in your money to bottle and label your own salsa by either contracting it out to an independent bottler or learning how to do it yourself. You study how to distribute your salsa, and you get some of your local supermarkets, etc. to carry your salsa.

People try out your salsa and buy some.

You may lose money because you can't sell enough salsa. But if you do make profit, you keep 100% of the profit.

(If you're very very successful, your salsa may become a worldwide bestseller. And who knows? Some big company (like Pace) might buy you out. Again, you assume the financial risk and you keep all the losses / profits.)

So that's the difference, ladies and gentlemen. That's why I do not consider Harlequin Horizons to be a viable option for anyone who's serious about being a career-minded writer.

Disclaimer: I like Pace salsa a lot. Pace did not pay me to use its name or to say that I like their salsa. The above are just hypothetical examples I made up.

Any questions or comments?

Fellow Samhain writers and I are hosting a Kindle contest, with our editor coordinating the effort. (FYI – I write contemporary romance under another name, Angelle Trieste.)

Prize? A Kindle (duh *wink*) preloaded with books from participating authors.

The contest is open to anyone anywhere in the world. So even if you're not in the States, come on and join us!

Here's the official statement on the contest website:

I wanted to make it convenient for people and make it easier for people to participate, soooo…. we will not be doing the contest on Saturdays and Sundays, and we will not being doing the contest on Thanksgiving (US), or Black Friday (the day after US Thanksgiving). Monday through Fridays only. :) I think not doing it on the weekends is a given this time of year…we all have a lot of holiday things going on, like parties and shopping. Woo hoo!

Now, remember, in order to participate, you'll have to post a relevant comment (No, ‘Hi! That's great.', etc.), and you'll have to answer the scavenger hunt question. Do not post your answer in the comments! There will be a link to a form to answer the scavenger hunt question and to give me your name and address. After all, I'll need to know where to ship the preloaded Kindle, right? Posting you answer in the comments will cause the comment to be deleted and the commenter to be disqualified. Not just from that day, but from the entire contest. So, yeah, you don't want to do that. :)

So here's the schedule:

You only need to answer one scavenger question to enter. The more you answer, the more chances you get. So don't be shy! Participate for your chance to win a Kindle! The website is editortera.wordpress.com.

Good luck!

On Friday November 13 at around 1:30 a.m. Japan Time, I found Shiro lying on her side under her favorite big wheel in the green cage. When I touched her, she was cold and didn't respond at all. I thought she was dead, but Hero Material said she was still breathing.

He took her out of the cage and held her gently between his hands. They're almost always warmer than mine, and we thought maybe if we could make her warm again, she'd be okay.

After all, that courageous hamster had fought and won against many illnesses.

I still remember the first time I saw her in a local pet store. She was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen: pure white except for the soft velvety gray ear tips and gorgeous sparkling black eyes. She lived in a small glass cage with Kuro. We were initially going to get only one hamster, but I thought maybe she'd be lonely by herself. So we bought Kuro as well.

They were my first pets. That night as they were playing in their new cage with a wheel (their old one didn't have one) I couldn't take my eyes off of them. They were hilarious, active and utterly adorable. I was in love.

Subsequent discovery that Kuro is a male hamster shocked me — he was supposed to be a she! — but Shiro and Kuro got along so well I didn't have the heart to return him to the pet shop. Nor did Hero Material. We kept them both. Shiro delivered her first litter: Peanut and Buttercup.

Then a disease ravaged her small body. It was a diarrhea caused by some parasites. I don't know how she got it, but it destroyed her appetite on top of everything else. She refused to eat her favorite food — green veggies, nuts, seeds, etc. At one point, her weight dropped all the way from 55 grams to 17 grams. When she collapsed on her side, we thought this was it…until she jumped back up.

She never made a full recovery — the diarrhea never stopped even though her weight reached around 36 grams. That's still very small for a hamster. Her mate Kuro weighs around 50-55 grams.

Small or not, sick or not, she was a fierce mother. I remember the time when I decided to clean her cage after she had her second litter. It was getting very stinky, and her babies were old enough that I could clean her cage without turning her against them. When she realized that her babies were exposed to some alien presence, she gathered them together and covered them with her own body, while giving me the death glare.

She always gave her affection to us generously. When I put my hand near her, she placed her paw on my fingertip and said her little hamster hello. She nose-kissed Hero Material many times, and she loved the attention she got from us.

So as she lay cold on Hero Material's palm, we took Kuro out, so they could say good bye. He groomed her cold blue belly and petted her a little.

I don't know how long we held her. I started to feel anxious because I saw blood where she'd lain down. She had no wound or open cut on her, and because where the stain was, she'd probably vomited the blood before we found her.

Finally when her paws started twitching and her whispers flickered, we thought maybe…maybe she'd come back to us just like she'd done many times before. However, it turned out to be her last breath.

Most winter white hamsters live for 2-3 years. She was only one year old.

We placed a big cashew nut between her forepaws. Cashews were her favorite food in the whole world. We didn't want her to be hungry. Then we wrapped her in a long swath of scentless white tissue. It was her favorite thing to make nests with. We wanted her to have something she liked so she can make a home for herself. Then we placed her in a white box in which our wedding ring came and buried her under a beautiful willow tree by the river, so every time we walk by, we can say hello. So that she knows she'll always be remembered and loved.

Farewell, Shiro.

I've been a bit distracted with several things.

First — I came down with a cold. (I still have it, although it's not as bad as it used to be.) Hero Material got it first, then lovingly gave it to me. I think he called it “early Christmas present”. Hmmm. But he paid for the doctor's visit and medicine, so I guess all's forgiven.

Second — I decided to do NaNo. Well, technically I'm not working on a novel from scratch, but more like trying to finish Acts 2-4. I've written like tons of different pre-drafts and scenes and snippets, but none of them really gelled or gave me any insight into my characters. Hence NaNo.

Scarily enough I'm writing many of my scenes out of order right now. I've never jumped back and forth like that, but with WriteWayPro it's easy to rearrange scenes, etc. So I'm giving myself permission to write later scenes first. Once I got over the initial resistance, I realized that it was actually helpful for me to do it. I can see better why Angel and Mikhail fell in love in the first place and why they thought it couldn't work, etc., and why they broke up but why they're together again now, etc. etc. etc.

BTW — is it wrong for me to like the ruthless Russian mafia boss more than the U.S. bureaucrats in my story?

Third — My netbook is having the same issue it did last time. It's been, like, a week since Samsung fixed it. They took it back — again, very courteous and apologetic. So I'm without a netbook for another week or two until they repair it. (Hopefully permanently…)

Fourth — I reformatted my Macbook this week. I use Apple Boot Camp to use XP on it — that's my preferred OS; the Mac OS just does not feel very intuitive to me — but BCXP refused to shut down correctly for two weeks in a row. It's partially my fault for having installed all kinds of stupid programs that I shouldn't have in the first place. (And the fact that when I first created the HD partitions and so on I think I did something wrong b/c the driver installations, etc. didn't go very smoothly…)

Anyway, 30 hours later, it's done, and my computer's faster. Yay. :)

Fifth — Hero Material and I started on another drama series: Dexter. It's just so twisted, I love it! We're still on the first season. Can't wait to watch the rest.

Finally — the Olympic season!!!!! I'm a huge fan of figure skating (have been since Kristi Yamaguchi's heyday), and I've watched the first Grand Prix events. Yuna Kim rocks my world, and I'm so thrilled to see Shen and Zhao skate again. Shen and Zhao are my sentimental favorite in pairs, and I want them to achieve their dream of winning the Olympic gold medal. It'll be a first for China.

I'm also rooting for Yuna since I adore her skating, and it too will be the first Olympic figure skating medal for Korea.

OTOH — I'm heart-broken about Mao Asada. She's just imploded this season. I don't even know if she can make it to the Grand Prix Final, and it won't be the same without her. I have my own theories on why she's not doing so well this season based on the media coverage. Gambatte, Mao!

Oh and if you're wondering why I don't seem all that interested in Evegeny Plushenko's comeback…well, it's because I don't think he's all that exciting to watch. I mean, yeah, his jumps are great and he can do some interesting footwork, but something about his skating just leaves me cold. I also suppose it's because I still long for Alexei Yagudin's awesomeness — great jumps, great footwork, superb artistry. Unless he messes up unbelievably, I think Plushy will win the gold medal. Brian Joubert's been incredibly unprepared and erratic at Trophee Eric Bompard, and Oda can't seem to land quad jumps consistently. Evan…well, he reminds me of Todd Eldridge — another dull dull skater.

As for why I don't care about Sasha Cohen's comeback…well, I'll believe when I see it. I think it's nothing more than a publicity stunt on her part, especially since all Sasha seems to talk about is her “injuries”. If she does show up at Skate America, Yuna will crush her, and maybe even someone like Rachael Flatt and Fumie Suguri may be able to beat her.

My prediction? Sasha withdraws from Skate America, shows up at the U.S. Nationals and gets a spot on the Olympic team. The international judges are brutal, and with the more severe crackdown on underrotations and wrong edges, Sasha won't do very well. But American judges at the Nationals will most likely overscore her. I hope Sasha proves me wrong, but I'm not very optimistic.

How about you? How have you been doing? Any cool plans? Are you excited about the Vancouver Olympic Games?