Michael A Stackpole has a great post on the terms writers should insist on in their contracts. He writes about it better than I would, so head on over there and read this post now.

http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=1626

The Business Rusch: Creative Destruction

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Here it is: the Business Blog which, thanks to Marina Nelson, is called “The Business Rusch.”  I like the title for a couple of reasons.  First, I’ve had to live with the puns people make from my last name since I was a kid.  I was in high school in the 1970s when the slang phrase, “What a rush!” was in vogue.  You can imagine how often I heard that, and not always in an admiring tone.

In some ways, my last name is appropriate.  All my life, I’ve been in a hurry.  No one has ever called me patient, not even by mistake.  Once I’ve learned something, I’m ready to move on—even if no one else in the room understands it.  Once I know I’m on the right path, I hurry along, trying to get as far forward as I can before I collapse.

I’m the obnoxious kid who finished her homework early—not because I was a suck-up or even efficient, but because I thought about the assignment when I got it, finished it, and moved onto the next thing.  I spent the first week of my 11^th grade English class reading the textbook, and the rest of the year reading whatever I wanted.  And that was—and is—typical for me.

The other reason the title “The Business Rusch” appeals to me is that modern business zooms by.  It rushes from one thing to the next, headlong, heedless of the results.  That’s how we got into the mortgage mess, which led us into the Great Recession, and I suspect that’s how we’ll get out.

Changes are happening in my business—publishing—that are so rapid that things which were true in May, when I finished my most recent paranormal romance novel, aren’t true now as I finish my latest science fiction novel.

As I mentioned last week, this blog will be discussing all kinds of business, not just publishing, not just freelancing, but whatever catches my eye.  Before I became a fulltime fiction writer, I was a fulltime nonfiction writer, specializing in business.

My business specialty came because business publications, then and now, need a lot of copy from business literate writers and those of you who regularly read my freelancers guide know this sad truth:  there are very few business literate writers. Even the reporters who get assigned to the Business Desk at major newspapers often do not understand how business works.

I understand it.  I’ve owned a lot of small businesses and still run a few.  I also love business, like I love history, like I love news.  At its heart, business is about human interaction.  Businesses succeed and fail because of the human beings in charge.  You put the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time and even the most successful businesses will fail.

How does that go with rushing to get ahead?  Sometimes my desire to hurry is counterintuitive to good business decisions, and sometimes hurrying is just what the doctor ordered.  I couldn’t have written this type of column in my twenties because I didn’t know when to slow down and examine things.  I didn’t understand the importance of it.

I learned that lesson repeatedly in the School of Hard Knocks.

So I’m going to share that knowledge, along with when I believe rushing forward is important and when research, caution, and yes, patience, are the watchwords of the day.  This column will only occasionally have the structure of the Freelancer’s Guide.  I want to keep my options open so that I can examine current events or whatever is on my mind any given week.

Speaking of the Freelancer’s Guide, I’m organizing all 140,000 words now, and releasing short segments as stand-alone books, for those of you who only want one or two topics, not the whole thing.  You can find links to this week’s short book, Turning Setbacks into Opportunity, at the end of this column.  For the next few weeks, I’ll also list this blog under the Freelancer’s Guide so that those of you who have the Freelancer’s Guide on your RSS feed will get the blog.  If you’re interested in getting the blog, I suggest you add the Business Rusch to your RSS feed, since I’ll only do this two or three times.

I’m looking forward to the freedom of this column. The Freelancer’s Guide had a narrow focus: freelancing and freelance businesses.  But right now, business—heck, the entire economy—is going through a huge shift.  In talking about publishing this past weekend, writer Scott William Carter said he felt like he was going through a paradigm shift in the middle of another paradigm shift.  He was talking about the digital revolution smacking into publishing and forcing an industry that has followed the same model for decades to confront rapid and somewhat startling change.

Thirty years ago, my ex husband saw the beginnings of the video revolution and said to me, “If we had extra money, I’d open a storefront and rent videotapes to people.”  We discussed this as a business model for about three days, seeing all kinds of problems with it.  At the time, video cassettes sold for a lot of money (my memory says $60-$80, but I’m not sure if that’s right).  The industry hadn’t yet chosen a format, whether it be VHS or Betamax.  Most people did not own video cassette recorders, because they cost hundreds of dollars.

So my ex and I decided there were too many variables: what if we backed the wrong format? How would we keep people from stealing the expensive video cassettes?  Were there even enough people to keep us in business?

Obviously there were.  By the time I met my current husband, Dean Wesley Smith, in 1986, video stores had cropped up all over the country.  Four years later, Blockbuster had opened chain stores everywhere.  I remember reading about Blockbuster busting the competition in the business section of the paper.  It was quite dramatic here in Oregon because the owner of Hollywood Video, which was a competitor, staged a pitched and ugly battle with Blockbuster, and the papers covered it with great glee.

But had my ex and I started that video store business thirty years ago, we’d have spent the last ten years struggling.  Change came again to the industry, and this time, places like Blockbuster didn’t know how to respond.

In July, the New York Stock Exchange delisted Blockbuster, and its stock trades at about 17 cents per share.  Blockbuster has not survived yet another revolution, one Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter calls “creative destruction.”

In creative destruction, innovative companies succeed while slower moving, often established companies do not.  My husband likens the transitions to piloting a ship.  If you’re piloting one of those floating cities we call cruise ships, turning it from its set course is extremely difficult.  Cruise ships do not turn on a dime.  They move slowly, and with deliberation, and no matter how quickly you want them to turn, you can’t speed up the process.

Smaller companies—yachts or better yet, cigarette boats—can turn quickly.  They can skim the waves of change and move into uncharted waters with ease.

Not all small companies survive creative destruction, and creative destruction does not capsize all large companies.  Some companies build response to change into their business plan.  Sunday’s New York Times profiled Netflix, which planned for the demise of its original business model as it started the business.  The owners of Netflix saw that DVDs through the mail was a short-term model, just like the video stores were a short term model.  The founders of Netflix thought the web was the next big thing (hence Netflix, not Mailflix), and sketched the business model with that in mind.

Are they planning for the next big thing after streaming video?  Only they know for sure.

Netflix’s advantage, even as it grew, was that it was a young company.  It foresaw the change, and could act upon it.  But two other industries, the music industry and the publishing industry, are much older, bigger, and have a lot more difficulty with change.

The music industry had its initial growth spurt over 100 years ago.  In one of Dean’s piles of collectibles, we have piles of sheet music which acted as the singles of their day.  The art is lovely, the music is still playable, and to collectors, the sheet music has value.

Even though there’s still a sheet music industry, it has shrunk to the point of being a niche market.  It exists for schools and for people who play/perform music.  Like everything else, sheet music has moved to the web and for a miniscule price, you can download sheet music for most titles from the past three hundred years.

But no one thinks of the sheet music industry as the “music industry.”  When we think of the music industry, we think of the big studios, once called record companies.  For decades—literally decades—these companies had a stranglehold over the music we listened to.  The companies controlled the distribution.  A small recording studio like Sun Studios could get its music played regionally, but it took the behemoth RCA to make Elvis Presley a nationwide sensation.

If an artist wanted to make millions, he had to give up millions to his distributor—the record label.  Musicians could tour; they could play bars and concert halls, but they couldn’t gain a huge audience without the backing of a label.

That situation remained the same from the 1920s until the mid-1990s. Sure, the industry went through an upheaval as CDs replaced vinyl. But the big upheaval was still to come—the MP3 player.

As the industry changed, I kept hearing that the music industry was dying. At the same time, my indie musician friends had suddenly started to make a real living—and by that I mean a living off their music.  Five-to-six figures per year, where they’d been making a thousand to two thousand before.

That gave me cognitive dissonance. How could the industry be dying and yet my musician friends were making more money than ever?  I sort-of paid attention, but didn’t really think about it.

Until the same sea-change hit publishing.  Now we’re hearing that the publishing industry is dying, yet midlist writers—the indie musicians of the publishing industry—can make a huge living for the first time in their careers.

What’s true?

Weirdly, both things.

The big publishing companies, like the big music studios, are cruise ships.  Some of them can’t turn fast enough to take advantage of the changes coming through e-readers and constantly available literature.  At the same time, midlist authors, whose early books went out of print, are the cigarette boats of the publishing industry.  We can move so fast that no one will even see us coming.

Some cigarette boats will get lost in uncharted waters, but those of us with some business savvy see opportunity here.  Like the indie musicians whose fans fund the next album, midlist writers can write books without a publisher’s backing and have a similar result.

Or so it seems.

Right now, we’re in the middle of the creative destruction.  Some—like Michael A. Stackpole—believe the publishing industry (the big guys) will suffer their largest shake-out by Christmas of 2012.  Me, I think we’re going to watch a long slow decline, and we’ll lose some publishers along the way.

The ones who can’t turn their ships fast enough will be the Hollywood Videos of the industry—the ones we’ll go, “Oh, yeah, I remember them.” Some of the publishers will become as marginal as Blockbuster. Some are doing everything they can to move quickly.  They’ve seen the changes coming for more than a decade, and have some things in place already.  Whether they have the right measures in place remains to be seen.

Does this mean publishing will go away?  No.  No more than music did.  We consume more music as a culture than we did twenty-five years ago, and the artists who understand that are making a good living.  I recently downloaded music from a group I’d never heard of, who plays only in Australia.  (If you like comics, check out Tripod)  I would never have contributed to their bottom line in 1985, if I had even heard of them.  I would have had to have Australian friends who could find the CD and then ship it to me—if, indeed, they could even find the CD.

Now, I can hear about the group from a friend, hop over to my favorite digital music site, and download as many songs as I can find.  (Which I did, by the way.)

This is just starting to happen with books—and the shake-out will be similar.  The fleet of foot will make money in this change, but the larger industry will suffer greatly.  Dean will be dealing with this a lot in his blog, The New World of Publishing.  I’ll touch on it occasionally.

I’m more fascinated with the little guy twisting in the center of all these trends.  The declining economy is good for book sales; people stay home and read. Books are cheap entertainment.  But the publishing industry has overpriced books, so new books will suffer. They already are; publishers aren’t buying as many new books as they should.  So if new books are costly, the book consumer will turn to other venues—used bookstores, libraries, and cheap downloads.

Dorchester already saw this.  They have been a marginal company for years. Writers have had to push to get payments for some time now, always the sign of a company in trouble. Rather than go bankrupt, Dorchester has moved entirely to e-publishing, and has done it almost overnight.  The nice thing about e-publishing? Small overhead costs.

Only time will tell if Dorchester’s move will save the company, but clearly no move at all would have led to the company’s destruction.

So you and me—the little guys—what do we do in times of creative destruction?  We research.  We guess.  We stay nimble.  We try things.  We keep open minds.

Recently, as the Dorchester made its sudden change and startling announcement, bloggers cried foul. Writers had already invested money in promoting their books (!), and were now worried that all the money they invested was for naught.  Never mind that writers investing in promotion never ever helps a book’s bottom line.  The writers claimed they were screwed by Dorchester.

But here’s the thing: the writers signed a contract with Dorchester.  If Dorchester violated that contract, then the writers can pull their books.  But, I’m pretty sure that Dorchester didn’t violate any contract at all.  I’m sure the company’s attorney checked that.

So what’s a writer to do?  Look at the clauses that allow the writer to cancel the contract. Depending on the contract itself, writers can cancel for a variety of reasons—so long as they repay the advance.  If writers are really upset by this, they can repay the loan that the advance is and “buy” their book back.

But too many writers are afraid to do that.

And fear is the biggest problem in this time of change.  Because fear will keep you rooted to the same spot.  You won’t be a cruise ship or a cigarette boat.  You’ll be a buoy in the middle of the ocean, buffeted by waves, insignificant, forgotten, and ultimately, you’ll sink.

So what do I recommend? What I always recommend.  Research. Figure out your place in the marketplace. Figure out what you want from your career.  Then figure out how to turn your boat—if, indeed, it needs turning.

Right now, most business owners should reassess their position in this economy.  I don’t think any business—great or small, manufacturing or artistic, distribution or service—should assume things are going to remain the same. The changes to the economy itself are too great.  Add the technological revolution that’s happening in many industries (not just the arts), and you have the makings of a great economic upheaval.

Time to look at the future.  Time to figure out your place in it.  Time to figure out how to get there.

I’m scrambling.  Part of this blog will simply be me, thinking aloud as I figure out where I’m going.  I hope it will help you figure out at least part of your future as well.

I decided I’m putting a donate button here.  If I inspire you, get you to forward the link to friends, or make you think, drop a few bucks in the tip jar.  Thanks!

“The Business Rusch: Creative Destruction” copyright 2010 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Here’s the newest Freelancers Guide Short Book:

Kindle, Scribd, Smashwords

For the first time in nearly twenty years, you can purchase my first novel, The White Mists of Power.  Right now, it’s only available in e-editions, but by October, it’ll be available as trade paper as well. Don’t worry; I’ll let you know when that’s happening.

Watch this space for more of these announcements.  As I mentioned before, WMG Publishing is putting out my backlist, including many of the novels.  (Some have publishing rights tie-ups with their original publisher; I’m working to get those changed.)

As for The White Mists of Power, it’s a high fantasy novel with some surprises.  In fact, it’s so different within its traditional structure, that it’s tough to talk about without ruining the book for you.  (Don’t read everything from the reviewers on Amazon; a few have serious spoilers.)

If you like the Fey, you’ll like this.  I reread it as we prepped it for publication, and am pleased with how it’s held up. When it came out, Booklist called it “a thrilling read,” and Orson Scott Card called it “a grand adventure.”  I think it’s both, with a touch of romance and a lot of magic.

The electronic version is in the queue for iBookstore and Barnes & Noble, among other places. If you want copies for those places now, go to Smashwords. Otherwise, it’ll arrive at those locatons in a few weeks.  Right now, it’s available on these sites–and the Kindle site includes Amazon.uk (for those of you in the U.K.)

Kindle, Scribd, Smashwords

Artwork donated by Pati Nagle.

The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: The Great Experiment

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

“This post marks the beginning of an experiment.”

That’s how I started the Freelancer’s Survival Guide, back in April of 2009.  The experiment was mine; I had no idea how well writing a book chapter by chapter on my website would work—or if it would work at all.

As I mentioned a few times, my friend Michael J. Totten has made a good living from his blog.  But Michael travels to the Middle East and reports from there, doing the kind of journalism most media outlets can’t afford to do any longer.  His readers appreciate what he’s doing and fund his travels, so that they can get the news they crave from a part of the world still undercovered in the United States.

When I spoke to Michael about writing my Guide, I knew I wouldn’t attract the readership he has;  I wasn’t providing the timely and necessary service that he is.  He convinced me to add the donate button.  I thought it wouldn’t be used.  I was wrong.

I was wrong about many things.  I figured the blog itself and the weekly deadline would keep me honest.  I would finally finish the book that I had planned to write for years. Then I would market it, and some publisher would buy it, put it in the stores at a relatively small level, and that would be that.

What a difference fifteen months makes.

Here’s what I was right about:

I finished the book I had planned to write for years.  The deadline did keep me honest, although at times it felt like a high-wire act performed in public without a net.

That’s it.  I was right about nothing else.

I haven’t yet crunched all the numbers.  In addition to finishing the Freelancer’s Guide just last week, I am finishing a major novel.  I have a revision due on another novel.  I also had to write an essay that required a great deal of research for a textbook, and finish my bimonthly column.  Not to mention a bunch of work I must do for the publisher who is putting my entire backlist online.  And I almost forgot the three e-mail interviews (time-consuming), and some research for the novel after the two I’m finishing.

Which is all a long way of saying that I had no time for number crunching of the serious variety.  I’m organizing the Guide—I got one section in order in the middle of the weekend.  Two other sections are online now, so you can order them separately if you have need of those topics (see below).  I’m still on track to get the Guide out to everyone who donated before I leave for Germany in the middle of September.  Barring unforeseen circumstances, I should barely make that self-imposed deadline.

When I do that, I will have finished the number-crunching, so that I know who donated more than once, and via different e-mail accounts, and so on.

Right now, my numbers are a bit vague.

Here’s what I do know:  People from more than 25 countries read the Guide every week.  Most of the readers came from the United States, followed by Canada and England.  Quite a few came from France and Japan, with Australia coming in sixth.  After that, it depended on the month as to which countries brought me the most readers.

The Guide was, by far, the most read item on my website.  People didn’t stop at one post, either. They caught up on past posts.  (Guess I’d better update the last of the table of contents.)  Once they discovered the Guide, many people began at the beginning and read post after post.

I got a tremendous number of private letters, more than I can count, commenting on everything from personal responses to my posts to locating a few mathematical errors (thanks!).  I learned that posts about money made everyone shut up except me.  (I love to talk money.)  I learned that posts about emotions inspired the most personal letters, often recounting personal stories which I, in turn, found inspiring.

My big fear as I started up the blog was opening it to comments.  I’ve written columns electronically for more than a decade now, and my experience with comments has—up until the Guide—been primarily negative.  Several people on the net seemed out to prove just how stupid I was or how I couldn’t know what I was talking about.  Even more attacked me personally.

I didn’t want that to happen on my blog.  I asked several people how they managed comments on their blogs.  Most people had never had the problems I had with negative comments on their own blogs.  A few writers had, and they suggested that I moderate the comments, simply preventing the negative comments from getting through.

I sighed and agreed, not wanting to admit that I wasn’t worried about other people reading hateful things about me.  I didn’t want to go to my internet computer every morning and get told what a horrible person I was.  In short, I was more worried about my reaction to the negative post than I was about other peoples’ reactions.  But I manned up, and took the risk.

And never once got a nasty comment.  Not one.  No hate mail, none of those vile comments I had gotten as recently as two years ago on my columns for online publications.  Thank you for that.  I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the civility that you’ve all shown on my site.

The discussions were lively as well, livelier than I expected, although they never reached the depth and breadth of comment that my husband, Dean Wesley Smith, gets on his Killing The Sacred Cows of Publishing blog.  I think that has more to do with content than anything. Dean is destroying myths.  I’ve been providing information.  Information is a lot less controversial than using facts to skewer assumptions.

Finally, the donate button.  I had hoped that I would get a few hundred dollars so that I didn’t feel like I was wasting valuable  writing time, time that I would have normally been paid for.  If I had gotten no donations, I figured I could use the first three chapters of the Guide, add a proposal and attempt to sell the thing to New York, getting money nine months in or so.

Well, a couple things thwarted that plan. First, I write out of order. Aways have, always will.  I would have had to wait until six or eight weeks in before I had the right kind of material to show to a publisher. By that point, I had enough donations to pay a small advance.

Most advances from modern publishing come this way: half on signing of the contract and half on acceptance.  The small advance you folks paid me came in long before I would have gotten any money from New York.  The money trickled in during the entire time I wrote the Guide instead of in lump sums, which was nice as well.  By the time I finished, I had a full advance for a non-bestselling nonfiction book.  That’s about six months earlier than I would have received any money had a major publisher purchased the book four months into my writing process.

No major publisher has purchased the book because I haven’t mailed it to any of them.  Midway through writing, I realized the book would be larger than most publishers could comfortably handle.  I also decided that I would rather publish it myself, not just in e-book format, but in a print edition as well.

I wanted all of the information in the book, not just the topics some publisher felt should be in there.  The topics would be chosen by them, not because the others were unimportant, but because we would have to cut something to bring down the cost of production.

I also wanted the freedom to update the volume whenever I felt like it.  Working electronically and via a print-on-demand service, I could update the book each week if I wanted to.  That flexibility is important, because there are big changes coming, not just in publishing, but in many areas.  Already the piece I wrote on insurance is somewhat out of date.  That bit will change annually until 2014, when (theoretically), all of the provisions of the new U.S. health care law will kick in.

Then there’s the fact that I’m constantly learning.  I’ll probably be dissatisfied with the advice I gave in some section as I learn more about the topic or the information I have gets updated.  I wanted the flexibility to alter that as well.

Finally, I realized during one of my posts marked “Part five” that some of the sections were long enough to be minibooks on a particular topic.  I could try to convince some publisher to do the minibook or I could do it myself.  I’ve already started that process, with the two below.

The minibooks are for people like me, people who don’t want 140,000 words of some how-to book when they only really need 30,000 words on one of the topics covered in the table of contents.  The longer book will have every topic; the shorter ones will only have the topics that lend themselves to more than one post.

What has changed the most since April of 2009, however, is me.  I am much more comfortable working online.  I’m happy with doing my own electronic editions.  I’m exciting about bringing back my rusty publishing skills to get the book out in print editions.  I’ve also embraced my inner nonfiction writer.  I didn’t quite abandon her when I gave up my nonfiction career to focus on fiction.  I continued to dabble.  But I missed the opportunity to stretch my nonfiction wings more than I wanted to admit.

I declare the experiment officially over. Not only that, I declare it a success.  Although, to me, success seems like an awfully small word for the changes doing the Freelancer’s Guide has brought to me.

It’s developed a community.  It’s put me in touch with old friends and helped me make some new ones.  It forced me to formalize my own thoughts and opinions about various topics.  It showed me the freedom of online publishing.  It also brought in readers who would never have come to my site otherwise, people who don’t read fiction, people outside my insular genre fiction universe.

Thank you all for participating.  It’s meant a lot to me.

As I came to the end of the weekly portion of the Guide, I had mixed feelings.  I wanted to be done, like I always do on any book that I write.  I wanted to have my Wednesdays back.  I disliked the deadline, but I loved it as well.  The Guide made me more productive.  I found that on the days when my health problems make it hard for me to write fiction, I could generally work on the Guide.  I hadn’t missed my deadline, so if I was going to be out of town or teaching, I figured out a way to rearrange my schedule so that I could get the Guide done.  (I even got up four hours early one morning to finish, which is more serious than you realize, considering how allergic I am to mornings.)

The closer I got to finishing the Guide, the more I realized I didn’t want to give up my weekly nonfiction work.  I like the interaction.  I like exercising different writing muscles.  I even like the deadline, although I complain about it.

A number of you wondered what you would read on Thursdays now that the Guide is done.  I had been wondering that for a while. And in that jigsaw puzzle way my brain works, it doled out the answer when it was good and ready—last Thursday, after I had put up the last Guide column.

Starting next week, I’m going to write a weekly business blog.  It won’t be as focused as the Guide, although there might be a stretch of weeks on the same topic.  The reason I decided on business is this: it allows me to talk about a variety of things, from the latest publishing news to importance of this week’s manufacturing numbers, things that don’t fall into a narrow topic defined by a book.

Part of the blog will be an interactive feature called Ask the Freelancer.  If you have a question about freelancing, ask me, give me permission to use your letter, and I’ll respond on the site.  If you don’t want your name added, use a signoff like you might find in an advice column: Wondering in Wichita or something like that.  I’ll make sure to use it.

The Ask The Freelancer part will occur as often as I have letters.  If I don’t, I won’t use that feature.

I’ll also use the business blog to post the updated Freelancer’s Guide articles, the ones that have changed since the original post.

I have a variety of other ideas as well, but those are the ones I can put into words right now.  The one thing I don’t have is a good name for the blog.  I’d like it to be plain like “The Business Blog” but I’m certain—without even doing a Google search—that there are hundreds of those.  So if you have any ideas, feel free to send them along.

Installment one of the Unnamed Business Blog is next Thursday.  We’ll continue with our discussions.

Again, thanks for the help with my great experiment.  I know a number of you have said that the Freelancer’s Guide made a difference in your lives.  It certainly has made a difference in mine—and it couldn’t have happened without y’all.

As promised, here are the two sections of the Guide already in ebook format.  I’ll let you know each time we publish more sections of the Guide. The books will be available in all e-formats, however it takes a while to get to some of the sites.  If you can’t find what you’re looking for on your favorite site, go to Smashwords and download there.

Kindle, Scribd, Smashwords

Kindle, Scribd, Smashwords

More stories in e-editions.  Three here, two mysteries and one sf novella.  Both “Details” and “Coolhunting” are readers’ choice winners.  ”Stomping Mad” marks the first appearance of my fannish detective, Spade.  As always, if you can’t find the editions on your favorite source, either wait a few weeks or go to Smashwords and download what you need.  And, as always, enjoy!

George has lived a full life as a decorated WWII veteran, high-end attorney, family man. But the incident that haunts him only took five minutes, five minutes when he shared a Coke with a woman on her way to California, a woman who would die hours later. Murdered. Maybe even by George.  Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice winner.

Kindle, Scribd, Smashwords

This Locus Award Finalist and Science Fiction Age Readers’ Choice Winner follows Steffie, a coolhunter, as she tries to save her genetically altered sister’s life.

Kindle, Scribd, Smashwords

When a dead body turns up at Dinocon, Secret Master of Fandom and Private Detective Spade knows just who might be behind it all: Lucinda Danielle Stanhope who calls herself the Martha Stewart of Science Fiction. Now he just has to prove it. “Stomping Mad” marks the first appearance of Spade, who along with his sidekick Paladin, is one of Rusch’s most popular characters.

Kindle, Scribd, Smashwords